The principal Indigenous leaders, whole: Pokagon, Topinabee, Menominee — and the printed negative

ABOUT 1758 – 1841

Topinabee (Topenebee), the valley's principal chief before the town: Topinabee — also spelled Topenebee, Topenebi and, in treaty clerks' hands, Thu-pe-ne-bu — "He Who Sits Quietly," was born about 1758–1760 in his father's village on the St. Joseph River, in present southwest Michigan. His father was Nanaquiba (Aniquiba), hereditary chief of the Potawatomi of the river. The Newberry Library's Indians of the Midwest record, from the treaty scholarship, carries him as one of the main village chiefs of the St. Joseph River Potawatomi, of the Bear Clan, who "pursued a policy of accommodation with Americans, refusing to support Tecumseh during the War of 1812." He signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 — Barce's 1918 study in the Indiana Magazine of History, carried in the Tribes fragment, prints him signing as the first of the "Putawatames of the River St. Joseph" — and, in the standard biography, eleven more treaties after it. In 1821, when the Potawatomi did not want to cede southwestern Michigan, the elderly Topinabee signed the Treaty of Chicago as principal chief and first signer, with Leopold Pokagon among the chiefs signing with him. He died in 1826, near present Niles, Michigan; John N. Low's ethnohistorical account, from Pokagon family sources, gives the probable date as 29 July 1826 and complicates the received portrait whole — a leader who may have fought at Fallen Timbers, may have stood with Tecumseh's confederacy, and is carried in the usual narrative, which Low contests, as degenerating in his last years. Both the accommodation portrait and Low's counter-narrative stand. His tie to this ground, exactly: his villages stood opposite present Niles, at the head of the valley system the Mishawaka village stood downstream in; the 1828 treaty that took the Mishawaka townsite was negotiated two years after his death, by his successor. He is not a chief of the Mishawaka village, and no source makes him one.

Leopold Pokagon, the leader who stayed: Leopold Pokagon (about 1775 – 8 July 1841) succeeded Topinabee on his death in 1826 as head of the St. Joseph valley's Potawatomi. His early life is surrounded by legend, printed as legend: stories carried in the tribal oral histories and the standard biography suggest he was born an Odawa or Ojibwe and raised from a young age by the Potawatomi; he married Elizabeth Topinabee, the chief's daughter, and took leadership of the St. Joseph villages after her father's death. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation's Cultural Heritage Center carries him the same way: a headman among the St. Joseph Potawatomi who "ascended to leadership after marrying Elizabeth Topinabee." In 1830 the valley's Potawatomi sought and received a Catholic mission — the Tribes fragment prints the baptism accounts in their conflict, Badin in August 1830 against Reze in July 1830, Pokagon's own baptism in 1833 in the scholarship — and the Catholic affiliation became his band's public identity. At Chicago in September 1833, when the United Nation's treaty bound the Potawatomi to removal west within three years, Pokagon held out until a supplemental article allowed his band to remain in Michigan "on account of their religious creed"; the 1994 Senate report on the band's restoration states that in the Treaty of Chicago "the Pokagon Band is the only Potawatomi Band that negotiated a right to remain in Michigan." With treaty money and the sale of family reservations he bought land in fee — 874 acres on Silver Creek in present Cass County, Michigan, in James A. Clifton's history of the band — ground no removal order could reach. When the Army moved against the Catholic Potawatomi anyway in 1840–41, Pokagon took the treaty to Associate Justice Epaphroditus Ransom of the Michigan Supreme Court, whose written opinion that the band had a right to remain General Hugh Brady read — and honoured. Pokagon died 8 July 1841 with his people still on their ground. His son Simon Pokagon (about 1830–1899) carried the band's case into print in The Red Man's Rebuke (1893). Congress restored the band's federal acknowledgment in the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians Restoration Act, Public Law 103-323, signed 21 September 1994; the band today is a sovereign nation headquartered at Dowagiac, Michigan, with a ten-county service area that includes St. Joseph County. His tie to this ground, exactly: the Tribes fragment prints it plainly — Mishawaka is not named in the band's published village list (Hartford, Rush Lake, Dowagiac, Niles and Buchanan in Michigan, to South Bend in Indiana) in any version reached, and the band holds no trust parcel or seat on Mishawaka's ground in the record reached. His claim here is the valley's claim: this was Pokagon Potawatomi country before it was a townsite, the 1828 cession that took this ground was signed in his leadership years by the valley's chiefs, and in the band's own published framing this ground is ancestral homeland still. That is profile size at true strength — and it is not a Mishawaka-village chieftainship, which the record does not give him or anyone.

Menominee, the leader who refused and was removed: Menominee (about 1791 – 15 April 1841) was a Potawatomi chief and religious leader — a preacher, baptized in August 1834 by Father Louis Deseille under the Christian name Alexis, on the Indiana scholarship carried in the search record — whose village stood on the reservation at Twin Lakes, at the headwaters of the Yellow River in present Marshall County, one county south of Mishawaka. The treaty of 27 October 1832 reserved that ground for his band; Menominee maintained the later instruments could not take it, and his written protest of 4 November 1837 charges that his signature to the Yellow River treaty of 5 August 1836 was forged. When that disputed treaty's deadline passed on 5 August 1838, Governor David Wallace authorised General John Tipton to remove the band by force; Tipton's militia surrounded the village, the rolls recorded 859 people, and on 4 September 1838 the column set out — 660 miles in sixty-one days to the Osage River country at present Osawatomie, Kansas, the march the Potawatomi remember as the Trail of Death. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation's published account records that militia members burned the band's fields and houses as the wagons departed and that the leaders rode shackled in a wagon at the column's head; the standard accounts count forty-two dead on the road, twenty-eight of them children, and 756 arriving. Menominee survived the march and died 15 April 1841 at St. Marys, Kansas, less than three years after it. His tie to this ground, exactly: the march did not pass the rapids — its route ran south and west from Twin Lakes through Logansport and Danville — and no Mishawaka encampment, death or marker of the Trail of Death stands in this record. His tie is the treaty system's: the same instruments that took Mishawaka's ground in 1828 took his reserve's paper title in 1836, and his refusal is the valley nation's documented answer to that system, one county away. He is profiled here at that strength, and no closer tie is claimed.

The printed negative, in full: No chief is named for the Mishawaka village in any source reached for this build. The standard village lists of the nation carried in the tribal-history compilations name Menominee, Aubbeenaubbee, Metea and Winamac for Indiana and Pokagon, Topinabee, Moccasin and Match-e-be-nash-she-wish for Michigan — and no village at the Mishawaka rapids appears among them under that or any recognised name. The explanation the record supports is De Kever's: the village was already abandoned, about 1820, when the written record of this place begins, a dozen years before the first treaty that could have named its chief was negotiated at the river. A village that emptied about 1820 leaves no signature on the instruments of 1828 and 1833; it leaves a cornfield, a name, and a paragraph in the town histories. What governed it while it stood, this record cannot say — only whose valley it stood in.

Sources:

1. The Tribes fragment of this build — the chiefs' line from Nanaquiba to Topinabee to Pokagon; the villages opposite Niles; the 1833 supplementary articles; Pokagon's band whole, from Clifton, Secunda, Buechner and the 1994 restoration report; the removal of 1838–1843 and Chapman's removal sentence; and the village-lists negative.
2. Newberry Library, Indians of the Midwest, "Topinabee (or He Who Sits Quietly)" — born about 1760, Bear Clan, the accommodation policy, Greenville 1795, the treaties of 1818 and 1821 as principal chief and first signer, death in 1826.
3. John N. Low, "Chief Topinabee — Using Tribal Memories to Better Understand American (Indian) History" — born about 1758 on the St. Joseph River, probable death 29 July 1826 near present Niles, and the counter-narrative printed against the usual portrait.
4. Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Cultural Heritage Center, "Pokagon" — vitals about 1775–1841; the marriage to Elizabeth Topinabee and the ascent to leadership of the St. Joseph villages.
5. Wikipedia, "Leopold Pokagon" and "Chief Menominee," read November 2026 — Pokagon's succession, the Ransom opinion, death 8 July 1841 and the modern band; Menominee (about 1791 – 15 April 1841), the Twin Lakes village, the 859 removed, the 660 miles in 61 days, 42 dead, and death at St. Marys, Kansas; the Indiana scholarship summary for the 1834 baptism and the forged-signature protest as carried in the Tribes fragment.