The removal era — 1838, and what became of the congregation

The mission stood in the path of a policy, and in the autumn of 1838 the policy arrived with soldiers. The framework was the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the treaty cessions that followed it — for this valley, above all the treaties of 1832, by which the Potawatomi of Indiana ceded their remaining reserved lands and agreed to remove west of the Mississippi, and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which did the same for the Potawatomi of the lake country generally. What removal meant on this ground differed by village, and the difference is the article. The Catholic Potawatomi of the mission were not one band but several, and they met 1838 with different papers in their hands.

Menominee's band, at Twin Lakes in Marshall County — the southern flock of De Seille's and Petit's ministry — had refused the logic of the 1832 cession as applied to their reserve, and in the summer of 1838 the state moved to enforce it. On 4 September 1838 the forced march that history knows as the Potawatomi Trail of Death began at Menominee's village: more than 800 Potawatomi — about 850 in the marker literature's rounding — rounded up and marched at gunpoint west, down the Michigan Road through Rochester and Logansport, along the north side of the Wabash to Danville, Illinois, across Illinois and Missouri to the Osage River country of Kansas, some 660 miles in 61 days, arriving 4 November 1838, with roughly 40 deaths on the road in the standard accounts. Petit, permitted by Bruté to go with his people, caught up with the column at Logansport — "the Potawatomi were overjoyed to see their priest again," the diocesan history says — and his letters, written along the march, are its intimate record: the baptisms of dying children "who with their first step passed from earthly exile to the heavenly sojourn," the burials under roadside crosses. A precision belongs here, because the task of this section is this ground: the Trail of Death column did not form at the lakes or march through the campus ground. It formed at Twin Lakes, south of Plymouth, and its road ran south and west, away from the St. Joseph valley. What passed through this valley in 1838 was removal itself — the enforcement climate, the troops and agents in the region, the emptiness spreading from village to village — and the valley's own mission flock met it in the other form, below.

Pokagon's band — the lakes mission's own core congregation — was not on the Trail of Death, and the reason is a document. In the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, Leopold Pokagon negotiated an amendment permitting his Catholic Potawatomi to remain in Michigan "on account of their religious creed," in the summary of the National Museum's exhibition record — the only Potawatomi band, as Indiana's own state history puts it, that gained permission to remain: some 280 people. Pokagon did not trust the paper alone. In 1836 he bought land in fee simple — 874 acres on Silver Creek, near Dowagiac, in Michigan — and resettled his people on land no treaty could cede out from under them. When federal troops attempted a general removal of the remaining Potawatomi in 1840, disregarding the exemption, Pokagon stood on the exemption and on the law: he obtained an opinion from Judge Epaphroditus Ranson of the Michigan Supreme Court that, as Christians and landowners, his people could not be removed, and the band stood its ground at Silver Creek. The congregation of Ste. Marie des Lacs thus survived — but it survived in Michigan, a day's journey north of the lakes, around its own chapels, and its descendants are the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, whose federal recognition was reaffirmed by Congress on 21 September 1994 and whose government sits at Dowagiac. The mission at the lakes, meanwhile, lost its people without losing them to Kansas: they were twenty miles away and, for the purposes of the little station at St. Mary's Lake, gone.

Between the removal and the college there is a four-year interval that the record keeps thin, and thin is how it is printed. Petit dead in February 1839, Bruté dead that June, the asylum already a ruin of good intentions, the Pokagon congregation resettled in Michigan, Menominee's people in Kansas, "as many as two hundred Indians still in the area" by the mission chronology's count for 1842 — the lakes station in those years was a chapel, a priest's grave, a few métis and settler families, and a tract of church land carrying a condition. The tract passed with the see of Vincennes from Bruté to Hailandière. In 1840, the Foundations history records, it was offered to Father Ferdinand Bach of the Fathers of Mercy in the hope he would found a college there; Bach secured additional land and in time returned the papers. Late in 1842 the offer was made again, to Edward Sorin, on the two-year condition — and that offer, the November journey, and everything after belong to the university fragment of this record, where they stand at full size. The grant chain itself — Badin to Bruté, Bruté's see to Hailandière, Hailandière to Sorin — likewise stands there, and is pointed to here for the last time in this section. What this article leaves on the record is the interval's shape: the mission era did not hand the college a going concern. It handed it a place — a chapel, a graveyard of two priests (a third grave, Badin's, would come home later), a famous carrying place gone quiet, and a congregation whose survival is written, to this day, in Michigan rather than in Indiana.

Sources: Indiana Catholic History, "The Trail of Death 1838" (march beginning 4 Sept. 1838; route via the Michigan Road, Rochester, Logansport, the Wabash's north side to Danville; Petit permitted to accompany; his 26 July 1838 letter to Bruté). Historical Marker Database, Father Petit and Trail of Death markers (Sept. 4–Nov. 4, 1838; about 660 miles, 61 days; Petit's death and remains). Today's Catholic, 9 Mar. 2022 (Petit catching up with the column at Logansport; arrival 4 Nov. 1838; about 40 deaths; Hoecken handover). Confronting Colonialism exhibition record (1833 treaty amendment permitting Pokagon's band to remain "on account of their religious creed"; 874 acres bought 1836 on Silver Creek; 1840 removal attempt defeated with Judge Ranson's opinion). State of Indiana, Native Americans in Indiana (Pokagon Band the only Potawatomi band permitted to remain, 280 people; federal recognition context). Historical Marker Database, "Avoiding Removal — The Pokagon Band" (over 800 removed in 1838; recognition reaffirmed 21 Sept. 1994). John Theodore Wack, Notre Dame: Foundations, 1842–1857 (1840 offer to Father Bach; additional land; papers returned in 1843 in Hope's dating — the sequence printed here follows Wack on the offer). Dorothy V. Corson, chronological chart, University of Notre Dame (1842: as many as 200 Indians still in the area).