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Howard (1907), Chapters II–III; Chapman (1880), Chapter I; the 1875 county atlas
The Potawatomi tie is positive and general; the Miami tie is earlier and at valley strength. Howard: when La Salle reached the St. Joseph in 1679 he "found the country in the possession of the Miami Indians," the main body of the Miamis seated in 1680 on this river "a little above the site of South Bend" — the Miami village at Mount Pleasant on Portage Prairie, west and south of this township. The Potawatomi "had come from the Green Bay country" and "took possession of the southern shores of Lake Michigan and the adjacent territories now known as southwestern Michigan, northwestern Indiana and northeastern Illinois," so that "the Indians known to the early English speaking inhabitants of St. Joseph county were therefore chiefly Pottawatomies. With them were mingled some Miamis, Chippewas and others." Chapman agrees: the county's original inhabitants were "more particularly the Miamis and Pottawatomies, the first named being in possession when the Catholics established their missions here." The 1875 atlas: "The Potowatomie tribe were the principal occupants of the country." All of this is valley and county strength — it establishes whose country Clay Township lay in, and it is printed at exactly that strength; neither history ties a named band's seat to the township itself, which is the next article's test.