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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 and thence to the nineteenth mile tree on Indiana's northern boundary and west with that boundary to Lake Michigan: bounded on the south by the state line, with the town south of it. Its second cession (Royce Area 146, northeastern Indiana) begins, in its decisive call, "at a point on the line run in 1817, due east from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan, which point is due south from the head of the most easterly branch of the Kankekee river, and from that point running south ten miles; thence, in a direct line, to the northeast corner of Flatbelly's reservation; thence, to the northwest corner of the reservation at Seek's village; thence, with the lines of the said reservation, and of former cessions, to the line between the States of Indiana and Ohio…" The cession's northern boundary is the 1817 line itself, and its westernmost point stands near present South Bend, some fourteen miles east of the town: its nearest approach to the townsite is the 1817 line, about 5.8 miles south, and it never reaches the town. The strip between the 1817 line and the state line at this longitude had already been ceded in 1826. The treaty's third article grants individual sections — eighteen individuals in the reserve catalogue — expressly "located upon the second cession above described," with the proviso that "no location shall be made upon the Elkheart Prairie, nor within five miles of the same"; none can fall on the townsite, and none does. Its second article is consideration and annuities, not grants. Its fifth article anticipates the missionary establishment on the St. Joseph being "compelled to remove west of the Mississippi." (One dating caution travels with this instrument wherever the county histories are quoted: Howard's text has been found in a sister build to misdate this treaty "September 28, 1828"; the instrument is of 20 September 1828, 7 Stat. 317.)