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The Land — New Carlisle
The ground New Carlisle stands on was Potawatomi ground within living memory of the town's founding: the tribal cession that took it was signed nine years before the plat, the quarter-section the town was platted on was an individual Potawatomi grant six years older than the town, and the family that held it was still the townsite's only household when the first settler families arrived in 1834. This section plots that title course instrument by instrument. Its headline is a correction of the easy assumption: this ground, north of the 1817 line, was taken neither by the Treaty of Chicago in 1821 nor by the Carey Mission treaty of 1828 — the two instruments a reader of the sister cities' histories would reach for first — but by the Treaty of 1826, whose last-clause tract the record names Royce Area 133.
The ground: Terre Coupee prairie and the survey frame
The frame
The town stands at the southeastern extremity of Terre Coupee prairie, a body of rich, once-marshy ground that Chapman measured at "over four miles in diameter and contains 3,000 or 4,000 acres, which is worth $80 to $120 an…
Starting title: the Potawatomi Tribe as landowner
To 1826
Before any cession, title to this ground stood in the Potawatomi Tribe. The Indian Claims Commission, in the consolidated Potawatomi cases at 27 Ind. Cl. Comm. 187 (28 March 1972; Dockets 29-D, 29-E, 29-J and 29-K — not Docket…
1821: the Treaty of Chicago does not reach this ground
29 August 1821 · 7 Stat. 218 · Royce Area 117 — NEGATIVE
The town lies west of the 1821 cession's western boundary, though north of its southern one. Article 1 of the Treaty of Chicago begins its cession "at a point on the south bank of the river St. Joseph of Lake Michigan, near the…
The line run in 1817: five and four-fifth miles south of the town
The survey line
The 1817 line runs due east from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan — through that point, at about 41.616° north — and it passes some 5.8 miles south of the federal place point of New Carlisle (41.700°), cutting the southern…
1826: the treaty that took the townsite
16 October 1826 · 7 Stat. 295 · Royce Area 133 — POSITIVE
The townsite was taken by the second tract of the first article of the Treaty of 16 October 1826. The treaty, made near the mouth of the Mississinewa, cedes two tracts. Its first tract — Royce Area 132, the Wabash and Fort Wayne…
1828: the Carey Mission treaty takes ground on both sides of this strip — not this strip
20 September 1828 · 7 Stat. 317 · Royce Areas 145 and 146 — NEGATIVE
The town lies in the gap between the 1828 treaty's two cessions. The treaty made at the missionary establishments on the St. Joseph — Carey Mission — cedes first a Michigan tract (Royce Area 145) running up the St. Joseph River…
1832–1833: the Tippecanoe treaties and the removal treaty
1832–1833 — NEGATIVE as takings of this ground
Three treaties of October 1832 and the Treaty of Chicago of 1833 complete the instrument roll; none of them takes this ground, which was already ceded. The treaty of 20 October 1832 at Camp Tippecanoe (7 Stat. 378, Royce Area…
The reserves on this ground: the Carey Mission scholar quarter-sections
1826–1835
The individual-reserve test for Olive Township is positive, and its center is the townsite itself. The sixth article of the Treaty of 1826 and the schedule of grants annexed to it (the schedule text at 7 Stat. 299) grant, in the…
The state as landowner: office, survey, and first sales
1830–1835
Ceded in 1826, the county's lands "did not come into market until the spring of 1830." So Chapman prints the sequence, and the frame around it: the land office for this country was at Crawfordsville — the Olive Township settlers…
The speculation era and the closing state line
1835–1837 and the account closed
The speculation era's instrument for this town is paper: the extended plat of 15 March 1837, lithographed in New York with "a beautiful view of the town overlooking Terre Coupee prairie," prepared in numbers to circulate in the…
The State as Landowner: The Michigan Road Grant and How Grant Land Was Sold
The Michigan Road land mechanism, 1826–1835, and the point where the published record stops short of this township
The grant itself: By Article II of the treaty made near the mouth of the Mississinewa on October 16, 1826, the Potawatomi ceded to the United States a strip of land commencing at Lake Michigan and running thence to the Wabash…
The Speculation Era and Its Bust: A Named Buyer, a Paper Town, and a State That Went Broke
1835–1841: the promotion, the Panic of 1837, and the slow local measure
The first buyer, named: The townsite was not bought by a syndicate on paper. It was bought by a man. The town's own Discover New Carlisle history records that in 1835 Lazarus Bourissa's 160 acres were purchased by Richard Risley…