This is Joliet Road on Door Prairie in LaPorte County, Indiana, from my 2004 ride to the Black Hawk war zone. It’s somewhere between Door Village and Westville.

This is a map of Michigan Road Lands from the Indiana State Library. I’ve drawn the route between Door Village and Westville on it.

The road lands are the areas shaded in white. The Michigan Road does not pass through the place shown here, though it isn’t too far away to the north. In the 1826 Treaty of Mississinewa, the Potawatomi people in Indiana ceded to the United States a strip of land through their remaining territory, so a road could be built from Lake Michigan to the Wabash River, and from there to Indianapolis and on to the Ohio River. They also ceded a square mile of land contiguous to the road for each mile. The U.S. Congress soon afterward authorized Indiana to sell that land to pay for construction costs.

This entry shows where the road passed thorugh Fulton County, as an example of how it worked.

But there was a controversary over which square miles of land could be used to pay for the parts of the road that passed through parts of Indiana that had already been ceded to the United States in previous treaties. A state road commission for this purpose tried to select land in those previous cessions that still had not been sold by the federal government. But the federal land offices said, in effect, “No, that’s ours to sell; go take land from the Indians.”

The Indian agent John Tipton then wrote to the Land Office in Washington:

I feel bound to state to you, and through you to the President, that at the time of negotiating this treaty, these Indians did not understand that their land, not embraced within the bounds of the tract then ceded, would be required to construct this road, except where the road passed through the country retained by them; and that they understood the sections requried to construct the road through the ceded land would be taken therefrom precisely in the manner in which the commissioners have selected it. This was also my understanding of this treaty at the time it was made. Should the United States cause these lands to be sold, and the State of Indiana be authorized to take the best lands now owned by these Indians, it will greatly disappoint and distress them… Two, or at most four years, may find Indiana clear of these Potawattamies, provided a tender course is pursued towards them…” (Tipton to Elijah Hayward, November 8, 1830, Tipton papers, Volume 2, pages 366-367)

It’s not hard to guess what happened. The Potawatomi had to give up more of their land to pay for parts of the Michigan Road, even parts that were far away from any area they ever occupied.

And the state road commissioners were not bashful about taking the land of highest value, including a lot of excellent cropland in LaPorte County. Enough to pay for about 55-60 miles worth of the road is shown on the map above.

I didn’t notice until preparing the overlay above that the road commissioners were careful not to select section 16 from the townships that are shown, e.g. the section in which Door Village is located. That was land that the federal government would eventually give to Indiana anyway, for the purpose of funding schools.

And why the odd 80-acre holes in the selection, I don’t know. Maybe a look at a topo map would tell me. Or it might make for an interesting bicycle detour to take a look. In any case, I plan to take the above map along with me next time I go riding there, so I can compare the Michigan Road lands with the lands the road commissioners did not select. (In the case of the land shown in the photo, I just don’t remember exactly where along the route it was taken, even though I’ve ridden there several times.)