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1721–1880, as the record reaches · Run B #216
The verdict is sustained at county frame on Chapman's own testimony, and the two picturesque proofs the test names do not survive as proofs: Chapman states the fact flatly, twice. In the natural-history chapter the buffalo "grazed upon the verdant prairies" of this county and "has been driven westward" by 1880; in the preceding narrative chapter (p. 336, quoting an 1878 South Bend Tribune writer on the first inhabitants) "the buffalo, the deer and the antelope, as well as the wild fowls and fish, all belonged to them for their sustenance and support." That is the bison evidence at first hand for St. Joseph County: a compiler's statement of former presence and completed departure, with no date, herd, hunt, or township locality attached. No bison bone, kill record, or specimen for Penn Township stands in any source reached — Chapman himself notes that of the county's larger animals not even a preserved specimen could be found in 1880.
The Parkovash half of the test is printed at its true strength. The Parkovash — the Potawatomi camp and fishing ground on the river at the portage — is Howard's ground: Timothy E. Howard's A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) carries "V. The Parkovash, Indian Camps and Trails" at pp. 43–48, with "Sec. 3. Howard's Parkovash text was not read first-hand in this section, and no buffalo statement is therefore quoted from it; the Parkovash-as-buffalo-evidence claim settles, if it settles, in Howard pp. 43–48 read whole, and that reading is the named remainder of this item. What corroboration the wider record does offer is a place-name, and it stands just outside the county: Parc aux Vaches — "cow pasture" — at Bertrand, Michigan, on the river above the state line, named by the French, its state marker states, "for the wild buffalo that once grazed here." A French pasture-name for buffalo on the St. Joseph River corridor is consistent with Chapman's county statement; it is not evidence for the Parkovash itself, and this section does not spend it as such. The "ox-head of Portage Prairie" — the monstrous head the item's Fort Wayne form attaches to the prairie's name — was not found in any source reached for this ground: not in Chapman's county or Penn chapters as read, and not in the searches run. It is printed as not found, not as disproven.
Sources: Chapman (1880), p. 336 and Ch. II, p. Howard (1907), Vol. 1, contents (Ch. II, §V, "The Parkovash, Indian Camps and Trails," pp. Michigan historical marker L1363C, "Parc Aux Vaches," Madeline Bertrand Park, Bertrand, Berrien County, Michigan (erected 1987, Bureau of History, Michigan Department of State), via the Historical Marker Database — printed as corridor corroboration at boundary size only.