The peoples of the valley, in sequence

FIRST IN THE RECORD, AND IN POSSESSION AT CONTACT

Two different facts, stated as two: the first people the written record names in this valley are the Miami — the Myaamia — whose own account of emergence at Saakiiweeyonki, "the Confluence," on the St. Joseph River is carried at full strength, with its two placements unreconciled, in the South Bend leg where the question was dug. The people in possession of this ground at contact and through the French century were the Potawatomi, whose towns stood at the portage and down the lower river and whose country this south-bank ground was — its hunting and fishing upcountry, its creek mouths and oak openings worked from the river towns. On this ground itself the record names no village, no chief, and no band: no published source reached places a named site on the townsite or in Penn Township's river reach, and the state's archaeological site file is closed to this build. The published valley distributions — the Notre Dame study of the two counties' recorded sites, and the valley-wide plotting of sites against the river-oriented economy of winter hunting, spring maple sap, spring and summer fishing and the fall nut harvest — are carried in the Granger and South Bend legs at their strength. This section's statement is narrower and complete: the ground was Potawatomi country, held from the river towns; what stood on the townsite itself, the record reached does not say, and the Tribes leg owns the valley's people at depth.