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The nations' own histories, read for this valley
The tribes file named the modern nations through statutes and secondary accounts; here each nation speaks in its own published history, and its valley account is stated in its own terms. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians' own history tells it this way: the Potawatomi, Neshnabék, the original people, known as Keepers of the Fire, held the country around the southern lake — present Wisconsin, southern Michigan, northern Indiana and northern Illinois — when Europeans first came upon them. Under the Removal Act of 1830 and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, removal was directed for the whole nation; a small group, with Leopold Pokagon among its leaders, earned the right to remain in the homeland, in part through their attachment to Catholicism, and their descendants constitute the Band. Pokagon's village stood in what is now Bertrand Township, by Niles; told in 1838 that his people must remove to the Odawa country, and refused room there, Leopold bought land in Silver Creek Township with annuity money and gathered his people there, near present Dowagiac. Federal recognition was reaffirmed by act of Congress on 21 September 1994. The Band's own framing of the valley — allied villages along the St. Joseph, Paw Paw and Kalamazoo rivers — places Union Township inside the homeland it describes, while naming no village on this township's ground, which agrees exactly with this build's village test. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma's own account, in its removal publication prepared by its Cultural Resources office, grounds the nation in this same valley: the Myaamia first emerged as a distinct people along the banks of the Saakiiweesiipi, the St. Joseph River near present South Bend, and lived in this homeland from time immemorial until the arrival of Europeans. Its removal telling is dated and numbered: the 1840 treaty called for removal; in October 1846 some five hundred Myaamia were forced west by canal boat and steamboat to Kansas, and a second removal in 1867–1873 carried the nation to Indian Territory, present Oklahoma. For this ground the two voices divide as the record divides: the Pokagon voice claims the valley as unremoved homeland, the Miami voice claims it as the emergence ground from which the nation was taken. Both are printed as their nations publish them; neither is merged into the other.