The Fur and Trade Fortune: The Burnetts, Coquillard, and the Removal Contracts

1776–1851 · the valley trader line, at fortune size and at this ground's share

The shape of the fortune: Before the townsite speculation that opens this section, the valley's first fortune-form was trade: furs and goods moving down the St. Joseph to the lake, treaty money moving up it, and — in the trade's last decade — government removal contracts that paid by the head. The fortune had two seats in this valley, and neither of them is Mishawaka's ground, a boundary this entry prints before it prints anything else. What is Mishawaka's is the trade's passage and its end: the river road ran past the rapids village, the valley's people were gathered for removal out of the county this city stands in, and the contracts that paid for that gathering are part of this ground's money record at their documented share.

The Burnett line — the mouth of the river, boundary-printed: William Burnett came to the St. Joseph River about 1776–1782, from New Jersey, and built the trade's valley seat: a post on the river about a mile and a half above its mouth — present St. Joseph, Michigan — with further posts toward Niles and on the Kankakee. He married Kaukima (Kakima), daughter of the Potawatomi leader Nanaquiba and sister of Topenebee, the principal chief of the St. Joseph valley, and the marriage was the fortune's foundation in the trade's own terms: kinship with the nation whose furs he bought. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation's Cultural Heritage Center carries the line whole — two successful trading posts, seven children — and the treaties converted the kinship into the fortune's second form, land: the Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) schedule granted two sections each to James, Isaac, Jacob and Abraham Burnett and one section each to Rebecca and Nancy, six of the sections on the Wabash at the mouth of the Tippecanoe and six at the mouth of Flint River, and the Chicago treaty schedule of 1821 granted further sections to the Burnett children; Abraham Burnett received three sections near Logansport in 1826, and the town of Burnettsville carries the name still. Burnett disappeared during the War of 1812; his son James managed the post at the river's mouth until 1833 — the trading fortune's active life closing in the year Mishawaka's townsite was bought upriver. Its size: no catch value — no season's pack count, no annual return, no estate total — for William Burnett stands in any source consulted for this entry; his letter book survives and was published (Wilbur M. Cunningham, ed., Letter Book of William Burnett, Fort Miami Heritage Society, 1967), and it is correspondence, not a ledger of totals. Under this section's rule the Burnett fortune is therefore printed as what the record prices: successful posts, a chief's kinship, and some twelve treaty sections to the children in the 1818 schedule alone — sized in land and standing, unsized in money, because no figure was ever published.

The Coquillard line — the carrying place, boundary-printed; the contracts, this ground's share: Alexis Coquillard's seat was the carrying place at the great bend — his trading post of the 1820s is South Bend's founding fact, and his townsite dealings there are that city's fortune record, boundary-printed here and not retold. What moved through this record is his second business, and it is documented to the dollar. When the Indiana removal of 1840 was organized — under the treaty provisions of 1834 and 1836, General Hugh Brady superintendent of emigration — the conductor's contract went to Coquillard, and the War Department contract of 13 June 1840, made by Brady, priced it exactly, in the Kansas Historical Society's annals' words: Coquillard "agreed to remove the Indians for the sum of $55 each." The performance matches the price's scale: he gathered about five hundred Indiana and Michigan Potawatomi — the county's own history states the course in its quoted sentence, the people "removed in 1840-'43, per order of the general Government, into Iowa, under the conduct of Alexis Coquillard" — and the caravan record puts 524 persons arriving in the Osage River country on 6 October 1840, with Abram Burnett, the trader's grandson of the line above, interpreting for the column: the fur fortune's second generation earning from the removal of the nation its first generation had traded with. The rate's context prints with it, because the record carries the bidding whole: in May 1840 Coquillard himself reported to Brady that British agents in Canada were offering the Potawatomi ten dollars a head plus clothing and provisions to remove to Canada instead — the government's $55 against the Crown's $10 is the market the removal was bought in. The rate held as the trade's standard into its later contracts: the Godfroys received sixty dollars per person for removing their party, on Larry M. Wyckoff's study of the 1840 Michigan removal; Coquillard offered in 1847 to remove the remaining Potawatomi at $55 to $65 a head and was directed to collect them at $25; and the Miami removal contract he conducted as active partner with the Ewing brothers and Samuel Edsall — a joint venture seated at Fort Wayne and South Bend, boundary-printed here at its contract's size — was let at a lump $55,000 against an anticipated 650 people, transported 383 in the event, and was reckoned by the Treasury, in the Indiana Magazine of History's account of the Lafontaine emigration record, to have cost about $140 for each Miami actually emigrated, a rate the Commissioner of Indian Affairs himself called extravagant against the contract's terms. The 1838 removal — the Trail of Death, from Twin Lakes in the county adjoining this one — stands in the tribes record whole and is not a contract of this kind in the record reached: it was a militia operation under General Tipton, not a per-head conductor's contract, and no per-person rate for it is printed here because none stands in that record.

The trade at the rapids village — this ground's own share, unsized: Of trade conducted at Mishawaka's own ground — a post at the rapids, a trader resident in the Potawatomi village on the south bank, a catch taken at this reach — no documentation stands in any source reached for this build: the before-the-city and tribes records carry the village, its tenure and its end, and name no post and no trader on this ground, and the Story of Mishawaka section's first trading fact is Hurd's furnace speculation of 1832–33. The valley's trade fortune is therefore carried here at the size the boundary discipline assigns it: made at the river's mouth and at the bend, converted to treaty land along the Wabash, and finished, at this county's share, in a $55-a-head government contract whose columns gathered the valley's people — some unknown number of them from this ground, the muster rolls that would count them named in the tribes record as the settling source — and marched them past a townsite that trade had already left behind.

Sources:

1. Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Cultural Heritage Center, "Burnett Family" encyclopedia entry and Hownikan family history (Autumn 2023) — William Burnett settled on the St. Joseph River near Niles after the Revolutionary War; two successful trading posts; the marriage to Kaukima, daughter of Nanaquiba and sister to Topinabee; the seven children; Abraham's Choctaw Academy schooling and his three sections near Logansport (1826); Abram Burnett's interpreting and Kansas course.
2. Larry M. Wyckoff, "Potawatomi Reservations in Indiana and Illinois, 1818–1832" — William Burnett at the St. Joseph River from about 1776; the posts in Berrien County and on the Kankakee; the Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) schedule of Burnett sections (two each to James, Isaac, Jacob, Abraham; one each to Rebecca and Nancy; six on the Wabash, six at Flint River) and the 1821 schedule; Cunningham, Letter Book of William Burnett (1967), cited.
3. Louise Barry, "Kansas Before 1854: A Revised Annals, 11," Kansas Historical Quarterly (Autumn 1963) — the War Department contract of 13 June 1840, made by Bvt. Brig. Gen. Hugh Brady with Alexis Coquillard of South Bend, "to remove the Indians for the sum of $55 each"; the party of 524 persons arrived 6 October 1840.
4. Larry M. Wyckoff, Removal of the Michigan Potawatomi in 1840 (corrected 2025) — Coquillard's May 1840 report of the British offer of ten dollars per person plus clothing and provisions; about five hundred gathered, departing 17 August 1840; the Godfroys' sixty dollars per person; Senate Document No. 97, 26th Congress, 2nd Session (the War Department's 1840 contracts statement), cited.
5. "Chief Francis Lafontaine and the Miami Emigration from Indiana," Indiana Magazine of History (scholarworks.iu.edu) — the Miami contract's $55,000 lump against about 650 anticipated, 383 transported; the Treasury's reckoning of about $140 per person; the 1847 offer at $55–$65 and the Department's direction at $25 each; Coquillard as the venture's active partner with the Ewings and Edsall.
6. This history, tribes record — the Indiana removal of 1840 under Brady with Coquillard conducting; Chapman's county-history sentence, quoted whole there; the 1840 caravan of about five hundred with Abram Burnett interpreting; the Trail of Death of 1838 as a militia operation from Twin Lakes, its route not passing the rapids; the muster rolls named as the settling source for any Mishawaka figure; and the before-the-city record — no trading post or resident trader documented at the rapids village in any source reached.