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The Land — North Liberty
Before it was a townsite, the ground North Liberty stands on was Potawatomi country in the St. Joseph valley, and its passage to the United States was by treaty. Which treaty is a question this build answers from the instruments themselves: the boundary calls of each candidate cession are read, bounded, and tested against the townsite's measured position, and the verdict is checked against the federal mapping of the cessions. The answer is not the answer the county's north strip gives, and it is not reached by borrowing one. This section prints the taking, the working, the instruments that did not take this ground, and the state of the title today.
The starting title
Before 1832
At the start of the treaty era the townsite and all the country around it stood in Indian title. The valley of the St. Joseph and its tributary Potato Creek was Potawatomi country — the nation whose chiefs treat with the United…
The taking: the Treaty of Tippecanoe, 26 October 1832
26 October 1832 · 7 Stat. 394 · Royce Area 180
The townsite was ceded by the Potawatomi treaty concluded on Tippecanoe River on 26 October 1832. The instrument — Articles of a treaty made on Tippecanoe River between commissioners Jonathan Jennings, John W. Davis and Marks…
The 1828 treaty, tested: it did not take this ground
20 September 1828 · 7 Stat. 317 · Royce Area 146
The Treaty of St. Joseph of 1828 — the taking instrument for ground north and east of here — stops at a meridian east of the townsite. Its first article cedes two tracts. The first runs up the St. Joseph river from its mouth to a…
The other instruments, each tested
1821 · 1826 · 1832 · 1833
Every remaining candidate cession was tested against the townsite, and each is negative. The Treaty of Chicago, 29 August 1821 (7 Stat. 218, Royce Area 117), ceded the country between the 1817 line and the meridian of Parc aux…
Reserves, tested at tract level
1826 · 1828 · 1832
No reserve stood on the townsite — the test is printed tract by tract. The two reservations the 1828 treaty's calls use as anchors, Flatbelly's reservation and the reservation at Seek's village, stand far east of this county, in…
The survey frame: Township 36 North, Range 1 East
Second Principal Meridian
The townsite is measured, not assumed: T36N, R1E, Second Principal Meridian — by the plat's own dedication and by independent measurement. The dedication Howard prints settles the frame in the record's own words — the plat lies…
First sales: the record not yet extracted
After 1832
The cession of October 1832 opened this ground to survey and sale; the first entries on the townsite itself were not extracted. The sequence the record does carry bounds the item: the ground was ceded 26 October 1832; the first…
The title today
As of November 2026
The cession of 1832 is the whole of the townsite's passage out of Indian title, and nothing since has qualified it. No reserve was carved from the ground, no grant preceded the cession on it, and no later instrument re-opened it…