The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
GAP-O1-4 — THE VERDICT, IN PARTS, NEVER HARMONIZED
Before the City left the townsite's taking an open three-way question; this section was charged to close it with the treaty calls plotted against the survey, and the question turns on one identification that the survey record itself settles: the line the 1821 and 1828 treaties call "the line run in 1817, due east from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan" is not the Indiana–Michigan state line. The state line is the line ten miles north of the lake's southern extreme, run in October 1827 by deputy surveyor Eleazer P. Kendrick. Kendrick's own field notes open on 8 October 1827 at "a corner established by Wm. Harris in June 1817" at the lake's southern extremity: "I trace his line East to his 1st & 2nd mile corners and found them correct. I then traverse the margin of the Lake to get 10 miles Northing" — Harris's 1817 line ran due east from the southern extremity itself, and Kendrick had to travel ten miles north from it to begin the state line. The 1817 line survives on the ground as the Indian Boundary Line; its surveyed marker latitude in LaPorte County is 41.6168 degrees north, and the derived position at this longitude — the state line's 41.7607 degrees minus ten miles — is 41.6158 degrees, within 0.07 mile between two independent datasets. Against that line the townsite sections stand measured: section 16's south edge is 2.50 miles north of it, section 9's north edge 4.53 miles north, the town's own point 3.38 miles north. The verdict follows in parts.
Part one — the Treaty of Chicago, 29 August 1821 (7 Stat. 218), took the townsite: the cession's southern boundary is the line drawn due east from the southern extreme of Lake Michigan — the 1817 line, at about 41.616 degrees north — and its western boundary at this latitude is the segment run due south from the St. Joseph's south bank near Parc aux Vaches, at about 86.269 degrees west, the Bertrand post ground in present Michigan. The townsite sections, at 41.652 to 41.681 degrees north and 86.061 to 86.080 degrees west, stand 2.5 to 4.5 miles north of the southern boundary and about 9.8 miles east of the western segment: inside the 1821 polygon on both coordinates, and excepted by no reservation in that treaty. Howard's attribution (1907, pp. 154–155) — the county's northeast quarter extinguished by the Treaty of Chicago of 29 August 1821 — is sustained by the instrument's own text plotted on the federal survey.
Part two — the Treaty of Carey Mission, 20 September 1828 (7 Stat. 317), does not cover the townsite: its Michigan clause does not touch Indiana south of the state line at this longitude, and its Indiana clause cedes the band south of the 1817 line — from the point where the meridian due south of the Kankakee's easternmost headwater (86.305289 degrees west; the townsite stands 11.6 miles east of that meridian, so the clause governs its longitude) meets the 1817 line, south ten miles, then by direct lines to Flat Belly's reserve and Seek's village and on to the Ohio line. At the townsite's longitude that band occupies roughly the latitudes 41.47 to 41.616 degrees north — ten to twenty miles south of the state line. The townsite, at 5.5 to 7.5 miles south of the state line, lies north of the band and outside it, by 2.5 miles at the nearest point. The contrary reading — that the 1828 cession is a band ten miles deep along the state line — rests on identifying the 1817 line with the state line, the identification Kendrick's notes disprove. What the 1828 treaty did take is the county's ground south of the 1817 line, southern Penn and Madison country among it: Howard's "southeast quarter." One discrepancy inside Howard's framework stands as printed in the two sources: Howard dates the 1828 instrument "28 September 1828"; the treaty's own date is 20 September 1828.
Part three — the Tippecanoe cascade of October 1832 is the backstop, not the taker: the treaty of 20 October 1832 (7 Stat. 378) cedes an Illinois polygon whose eastern edge is the state line and takes no Indiana ground. The treaty of 26 October 1832 (7 Stat. 394) takes the Indiana country west and south of the 1828 cession's northwest corner — in this county, the western and southwestern remainder, Howard's southwest quarter, last taken 26 October 1832 — and by its calls does not reach the townsite, eleven-plus miles east of that corner's meridian and north of its parallel. The treaty of 27 October 1832 (7 Stat. 399) ceded all remaining Potawatomi title in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan south of Grand River: had anything at the townsite survived 1821, this instrument extinguished it on 27 October 1832, subject to reserves none of which stood in this township. On the plotted calls, nothing had survived; 1832 closes the cascade but did not take this ground.
The counter-argument, stated fairly and answered: the county's lands came into market in the spring of 1830 — the first entries are dated 19 April 1830 — after the 1828 treaty's proclamation and before any 1832 instrument, which has been read as dating the taking to 1828. The sequence is real but does not discriminate: the 1821 cession was proclaimed 25 March 1822, and the valley's lands could not be sold until they were surveyed, in 1829. The market's opening dates the survey, not the cession. And a flag this section owes the wider build: the same 1817-line identification underlies the sister builds' 1828 attributions wherever their ground lies between the 1817 line and the state line east of the Parc aux Vaches segment — Granger's, Mishawaka's and South Bend's ground included. The Indian Claims Commission mapping the sister legs cite (27 Ind. Cl. Comm. 187, Areas 145 and 146) was not re-pulled for this section; if the Commission's Area 146 plat in fact sweeps the strip north of the 1817 line, the Commission's mapping and the treaty text diverge, and the divergence is flagged, not harmonized.