(Sep 28, cont.) I lingered several minutes where my route crossed the 1809 treaty line. This blog will linger there, too.

The above photo looks south-southwest along the treaty line. It’s about at this point that the land starts to become gently rolling. On a 2007 ride when I had followed this road, the land had been fairly flat all the way from the Wabash River in Adams County, across the Salamonie River valley, and down this road until about this point. Then the terrain started to get more interesting.

I still haven’t learned who surveyed this line, and when. But while looking I came across a transcription the journal of the proceedings of the treaty. The treaty was signed on on September 30, 1809, two hundred years ago. That’s only two days later than this ride. I wonder if the weather at Fort Wayne was similar that year.

The transcript, published in 1910, makes for fascinating reading. According to the preface, this particular journal had been omitted when other such journals were published in the American State Papers, so it took a little investigating to find it for the 100th anniversary of the event.

It is worth reading. The duplicity of the American negotiators is still astonishing. And this is their own side telling the story, which probably leaves out some of the more unsavory behind-the-scene “negotiations.”

Much of the affair has to do with the role of the Potawatomi people. I find this particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. The Potawatomi involvement particularly infuriated Tecumseh and The Prophet, because this land in eastern Indiana was not Potawatomi territory. And the Potawatomi leaders that are spoken of came from elsewhere, including my own part of Michigan:

[September] 16th. Part of the Putawatimies arrived under their Chief Winemack The Governor learned with regret that the head Chief Tipinipe of the Putawatimies & Five Medals were not returned from Detroit but authorized their son & nephew to act for them In the evening the Eel River Tribe arrived & more of the Putawatimies.

I’m not sure exactly where this Winamac lived, but it was probably north and west of the ceded territories. In the 1820s Topinibe had a village near present-day Niles, Michigan. Five Medals’ village was just south of present-day Goshen. Moguago is not mentioned in the Journal, but he was a signatory on the treaty. I’ve been privileged to meet some of his descendants who now live in Calhoun County, MI (which is my home county, too). Before starting up his own reservation here in the 1840s, his son lived on the Nottawasepe reservation in present-day St. Joseph County, near Mendon. In other words, they were not from here.

BTW, that’s a nice touch on the part of Governor William Henry Harrison, “authorizing” the son and nephew of Topinibe and Five Medals to act on their behalf, as if he is the person to decide who is authorized to negotiate for the other side.

There is a statement in the journal for the next day (the 17th):

Measures were taken also to explain the wishes of the Government to the Putawatimies & to engage their cooperation. More of the Putawatimies & Miamies arived the whole number on the ground this day was eight hundred and ninety two.

We are left to imagine what kind of “measures” those were. Then, after taking these “measures” to get the Potawatomi leaders to put extreme pressure on the Miami to sign, Harrison pretends to play the peacemaker:

26th. A meeting of the several Tribes took place. The Putawatimies urged an immediate compliance to the proposal of the United States. The Miamies from Mississinway took the lead in the debate & declared that they would never consent to sell any more of their lands that they had been advised by the Father the British never to sell another foot. The Putawatimies poured upon them a torrent of abuse & declared that they would no longer consider them as Brothers but that they would loose the chain which had united them with the Tomahawk & setting up a shout of Defiance which was echoed by all the warriors proceeded immediately to the Council House to inform the Governor of what they had done, the Governor blamed them for their rashness & made them promise not to offer the Miamies any further insult to put their cause in his hands.

On the last day of this treaty meeting (the 30th) these Miami were still holding out. Harrison feigned not to understand why so many of them continued to oppose the treaty. As for their objections to the Potawatomi role in the process, he claimed he was just doing what the Miami had wanted:

The Governor assured them that it never was his intention to purchase the land from the other Tribes that he had always said and was ready now to confess that the land belonged to the Miamies and to no other Tribe that if the other Tribes had been invited to the Treaty it was at their particular request (The Miamis).

But on that day the treaty was signed. Later the boundaries were surveyed. Later still, Governor Harrison was elected President of the U.S. But on inauguration day didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain. He caught pneumonia and died shortly thereafter. He is gone, but the marks of the survey are still on the landscape in the form of property lines and roads.