A Brief History of The Western Great Lakes Woodland Area, 1685-1838

 With the threat of the Iroquois League lessening in the western Great Lakes region, the Algonquian tribes that had fled to Wisconsin began to move back to the south tip of Lake Michigan. The Miami settled in the St. Joseph River valley and the northern tributaries of the Wabash River. In 1689, the French Jesuits established the mission of St. Joseph at Niles, Michigan. The Potawatomi of the Woods  settled across the river from the mission. 1695 brought a formal peace with the Iroquois League, allowing the villages south of Lake Michigan to reestablish themselves. The dunes, wetlands and grand Kankakee marshes limited where the villages could be built. Most were seasonal camps, excepting those towns along the high ground of the Illinois and the lower Kankakee Rivers, along the Valparaiso Moraine and in the valley of the St. Joseph River from Lake Michigan to beyond the great south bend of the river. The historic Potawatomi villages were numerous with a dozen in central Lake County and a half dozen in central Porter County. Chiqua's Town, just east of Valparaiso and Tassinong north of Kouts are among the best known.

 By 1718 the Saint Joseph Potawatomi had become central to the Potawatomi nation. The First Fox War (1712-1716) saw the old alliance of the Three Fires partially restored as the Potawatomi and the Ottawa joined together to raid the Mascouten in Wisconsin. By 1718, the Miami of the St. Joseph Valley had moved eastward and south to the Wabash. They established Kekionga at Fort Wayne, Indiana as the center of their nation. The Second Fox War (1728-37) saw Fox raiding parties skirting the lakeshore heading to Detroit.

 The French and Indian War (1755-1763)  impacted the nations of the region in many ways. The Miami moved from the western Wabash to Piqua, Ohio. Smallpox devastated all the tribes in 1750 and 1757. It was not until the French left at the end of the war and the British arrived that war again threatened the region. The British moved quickly into the Old French posts at Michilimackinac and Detroit. Here, they were in close contact with the Ottawa and Ojibwa people. The British rules and changes in trading methods lead to a disruption of trade. Pontiac, a leader among the Ottawa, created a confederacy of tribes to drive the British out and bring the French back. In 1763, a series of attacks were made against the British posts, including Fort St. Joseph (Niles, Michigan) , Fort Miami (Fort Wayne), and Fort Michilimakinac. In the southern region, the Potawatomi from the Lake Michigan shores joined with the Ottawa,Ojibwa, and other tribes to destroy the British garrison at St. Joseph. Initially successful, the war collapsed when the French made no attempt to return. A Peoria Indian killed Pontiac in 1769. The St. Joseph Potawatomi joined with the Ojibwa, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, Winnebago and Ottawa to find the murderer of Pontiac and have revenge on the Illini.

 The frontier wars of 1774 and American Revolution (1776-1783) saw little activity in the western Great lakes area. It was not until December 5, 1780 that the war reached northern Indiana. An American raid was planned against the St. Joseph Post and the Potawatomi village there. The troops had come from Cahokia (Illinois) on the Mississippi. Arriving in the village while the warriors were on a winter hunt, the Americans burned everything. Their return route took them along the lakeshore. Meanwhile, the British Lieutenant assigned to the post discovered the disaster and quickly organized a Potawatomi raiding party. Following the American raiders, they over took them near Fort Creek, the abandoned site of the Old French Petit Fort (1750-79). There in what is now the Indiana Dunes State Park, they killed three of the sixteen soldiers and captured the rest. In one raid the American Revolution came to an end in the region.

 For the next decade, most of the region was relatively quiet. Groups of warriors  would join with the eastern tribes to war along the American Frontier, but their homelands remained in peace. The Treaty of Fort Harmar (January 9, 1789) ended the raids in the Ohio and Kentucky country. The Miami wars (1790-94) saw the defeat of General Harmar, Fort Wayne, and the defeat of General St. Clair at Ft. Recovery (1791). When Gen. Charles Scott advanced up the Wabash, it looked like the Miami war would spill into the Lake Michigan country, but the Wabash tribes (Wea, Piankashaw, and Kickapoo) quickly made peace.

 The Battle of Fallen Timbers in Ohio, August 1794, brought an end to the Miami wars. Because some of the Potawatomi villages had supported the Miami, Chief Topenebe of St. Joseph participated in the Treaty of Greenville, August 3, 1795, as head of the Potawatomi Nation. Here, all the tribes ceded the area around of Chicago to the United States. Soon a trading post was built in Chicago with resident trader, Pierre LeMai (1796-1804). In 1803, Fort Dearborn was constructed. 

 In 1808 Chief Main Poche of the Prairie Potawatomi invited Tecumseh  and Tenkswatohwa, the Prophet of the Shawnee, to live on the Tippecanoe at the Wabash,  among the confederated Indian Nations at Prophet's Town. The growing distrust of the Great Lakes Nations for the Americans was fed by their British contacts at Fort Drummond and Fort Malden. Governor William Henry Harrison, fearing an all out frontier war, marched north to the Prophet's Town. Here on  November 6, 1811 in the Battle of Tippecanoe, he defeated those Indians remaining there in Tecumsah’s absence.

 With the outbreak of the War of 1812 (1812-14) the Great Lake nations now turned to support the British in driving the Americans from the lakes. The Prairie Potawatomi lead by Main Poche with Black Partridge and Shabbona's Potawatomi of the Illinois supported the British. Lead by a British officer the Potawatomi gave the garrison at Fort Dearborn and their families the opportunity to leave (August 1812). When the Americans were a mile from the fort, the Indians attacked, killing 55 of the party. Those few who escaped with the help of some of the Potawatomi chiefs, fled across the lake or through the sand dunes to the St. Joseph and Huron Potawatomi villages in Michigan. The Woodland Potawatomi returned the refugees to the American posts at Detroit and Mackinac.

  The Peoria War of 1813 saw Potawatomi raiding parties from the villages of Black Partridge, Sanatuwa, Iatapucky and Gomo along the Kankakee and Illinois River moving south and west to the Kickapoo and Illini villages along the tributaries of the Illinois River. It was not until the Treaty of Greenville (22 July 1814) that peace was restored around the shores of Lake Michigan. It was 1815 and three additional treaties later that all the tribes made peace along the shores of Lake Michigan.

 From 1816 until 1837, a series of treaties removed many of the the Indian communities around Lake Michigan. Native lands were taken by treaty in Illinois and Ohio, then along the Wabash and the Vermillion Rivers of Indiana. In 1818 the Miami moved onto the Big Miami Reserve near where Plymouth, Indiana now stands. Then the Treaty of Chicago (August 28, 1821) took lands in northern Illinois and what was known as the Ten Mile Purchase. The Americans wanted the shoreline of Indiana and took a strip 10 miles wide running north of the southern most tip of Lake Michigan, making the dunelands non-Indian lands. The Huron Potawatomi moved to a Michigan Reservation in 1827. In 1828, the Reverend McCoy of the St. Joseph Mission went to Kansas with a group of Potawatomi and Ottawa Chiefs. Their visit was to see if Kansas would be a place the Great Lakes nations would find acceptable and out of the way of American settlers. The trip was timely as many of the last tribal rights to northern Indiana and southwest Michigan were ceded to the United States on September 20, 1828 at the Treaty of Carey Mission. The next year, the Delaware nation that lived along the White River moved west and the last remnants of the Indian titles to Indiana were ceded at Prairie du Chien (July 29  1829).

 Congress dispossessed the natives of their ancestral homelands with the Removal Act of 1830. The treaties ceded more rights to northern Indiana and finally, the Treaty of Chicago ( September 26 1833) traded five million acres of Potawatomi lands in Illinois for land in Missouri. The following year, the Prairie Potawatomi left their Illinois and Kankakee lands for Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Potawatomi of the Woods were next with the Treaty of Washington (February 1837). Many local chiefs refused to sign, but it did not matter to the States of Indiana and Michigan. Chief Menominee never signed and Chief Nottawaseepe was poisoned for refusing to sign. Some villages fled to Ontario and northern Michigan to avoid transportation west. Finally, on September 4 1838, Governor David Wallace ordered the forced removal of the Potawatomi from Indiana. The `Trail of Death' threads its way across Indiana, Illinois and Missouri to Kansas. It is lined with the unmarked graves of those who died each day. The Huron and Pokagon Potawatomi evaded capture and returned to the valley of the St. Joseph River.