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Tribes — North Liberty
The town stands on Potato Creek, in the southern drainage of the St. Joseph valley — country the record of the treaty era assigns to the Potawatomi, whose name for themselves, Bodéwadmi, prints here first because the section is theirs before it is the town's. What follows tests the received way of telling a townsite's Native past against what the record actually carries for this ground: no village is named on it in any source, no reserve was laid on it, and the trail record is one unnamed line in an 1880 county history. The taking itself is dug whole in the land section; here the instruments print at anchor size, as they touch this ground, and the human course — cession, removal, and the band that stayed — is told at the strength the record carries it.
The peoples of this ground
The treaty era
The nation of this ground, in the instruments that touch it, is the Potawatomi. Every treaty that cedes, bounds, or reserves land in this part of the St. Joseph valley treats with the Potawatomi — the treaties of 1821, 1826, 1828…
The village test: none on the townsite in the reached record
Tested, November 2026
No Potawatomi village on the townsite appears in any record reached — the finding prints as a tested negative, with the record searched named. The record searched is the frame of this whole build: Chapman's Liberty Township…
The nations, tested one by one against this ground
1821–1833
One nation's instrument took this ground; the others' did not reach it. The Potawatomi: the ceding nation, by the Treaty of Tippecanoe of 26 October 1832, plotted whole in the land section. The Chippewa and Ottawa: parties with the Potawatomi to the Treaty of Chicago of 1821, whose cession ran between the 1817 line and the Parc aux Vaches meridian — north and east of here — and took nothing on this ground. The Miami: named in no instrument for this ground in the reached record; the valley's treaty course from 1821 forward is a Potawatomi course, and no Miami cession, reserve or village is asserted for Liberty Township. The test prints because the county's older tellings sometimes assign the whole valley loosely; against this townsite, the record is specific, and it is printed specifically.
Reserves and the band that stayed
1826–1838
No reserve stood on this ground, so no band's removal or remaining runs through the townsite itself. The tract-level reserve tests are printed whole in the land section: the 1828 treaty's anchor reservations stand in the Elkhart…
The modern nations
As of November 2026
The descendant nations of the valley's Potawatomi stand in Michigan, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin today. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians — the band that remained in the St. Joseph valley's north, its federal recognition…
The record's edge
Named gaps, with their settlers
The survey-era ground truth — villages, trails, clearings, and the creek valley's use as the first surveyors found it — waits on the General Land Office field notes and plats for Township 36 North, Range 1 East. The valley's…