Kaskaskias by which the government secured about eight million and six hundred thousand acres, lying on the borders of the Mississinewa and Illinois rivers. In August, 1804, at a treaty concluded at Vincennes, the Delawares and Piankeshaws relinquished their claim to the tract of country lying between the Wabash and Ohio rivers, and south of the road which led from Vincennes to the Falls of the Ohio. In 1805 the Delawares, Pottawattamies, Miamis, Eel Rivers and Weas ceded a large tract on the Ohio River, and in December of the same year the Piankeshaws ceded about two million six hundred thousand acres lying west of the Wabash River. By these treaties the United States had acquired the title to all the Indian lands along the Ohio River from the mouth. of the Wabash to the western line of the State of Ohio. In 1809 Governor Harrison obtained from several of the tribes, by a treaty concluded at Fort Wayne, about three million acres, lying principally on the southeastern side of the Wabash River, and below the mouth of Raccoon Creek, in what is now Parke County. Governor Harrison, by his several treaties had acquired for the government, about twenty nine million seven hundred and ten thousand five hundred and thirty acres of land. Tecumseh, and his brother, the Prophet, rejected the treaty of Fort Wayne, and refused to be bound by it. The next treaty was in 1818, when the Delawares ceded all the lands claimed by them in the present boundaries of Indiana, but they reserved the right to occupy the land for three years after signing the treaty. Between that and the year 1840, when the Indian title to the last of the lands claimed by them in Indiana was extinguished, thirty-three separate treaties were negotiated.

It will thus be seen that the process of extinguishing the Indian titles was a slow one, and that the Indians were not finally dispossessed until after Indiana had been a member of the Union for nearly a quarter of a century. In most of these final treaties certain tracts were reserved by the Indians for favorite members of the tribes, and are yet known as "reservations," although about all the lands have passed to other persons than the descendants of the original beneficiaries. A few descendants of the Miamis still live. in Wabash and Miami counties.

As above stated, the Miamis, by treaty of October 23, 1826, ceded all their claim to land in Indiana, lying north and west of the Wabash and Miami (Maumee) rivers, except six small tribal

and six individual reserves or grants, only one of which was in northern Indiana and none in Elkhart County.

FINAL TREATIES

September 23, 1836, various bands of the Pottawattamies ceded the lands reserved for them by the treaty of 1832 (being all their remaining lands in Indiana).

By the Miami treaty of November 6, 1838, a reserve of ten miles square was made (out of the general cession) for the band of Me-to-sin-ia.

By the treaty of November 28, 1840, the United States agreed to convey this tract to Me-shing-go-me-sia, son of Me-to-sin-ia, in trust for the band. By act of Congress approved June 10, 1872, this reserve was partitioned among the members of the band, sixtythree in number, and patents issued to each of them for his or her share. This ended all the Indian tribal titles to lands in Indiana.

ALONG THE PRIMITIVE HIGHWAYS

What is now Elkhart County was along the primitive highways of travel, which were rudely traced before the coming of the white man, between the populous Indian regions of the Northeast and the North and that grand western outlet toward the Mississippi, the Valley of the Illinois. To use a homely illustration, when you "cut across lots" you instinctively select the path of the easiest grades the line of the least resistance. So it has always been with the migratory routes across the United States, or any other country, whether selected by Indians or whites, afoot, horseback or in wagons; whether by canal builders or railroad engineers. It is the old story of a study in the saving of labor, which is at the basis of progress and civilization.

What is now Northwestern Indiana was a very important section in the Great Short-Cut from the lands of the Chippewas and the Iroquois, from the territories of the Sacs and Miamis and Pottawattamies, to the prairies of the Illini and the Sioux.

As Lakes Erie and Michigan obtruded themselves southward from the Great Chain and the most populous and fertile districts of the East were in a latitude not far from their southern extremities, while the teeming prairies of the West lay in substantially the same

zone, it was inevitable that the continuous migrations induced by wars and racial pressures should be along the comparatively easy grades. By water and by land, generation after generation, these migrations poured along, from East to West, and no strip of soil has been more ceaselessly worn by man and beast than that which lies betwen the foot of Lake Michigan and the banks of the Kankakee and the St. Joseph rivers.

GREAT INDIAN TRAILS

A famous Indian route was known as the Sac Trail, and crossed Northwestern Indiana in a generally southwesterly direction to Joliet, which marked the western limits of the Sac country. From the main Sac trail a branch struck southward near the Lake of the Red Cedars and across Lake Prairie to the rapids of the Kankakee at the present site of Momence, Illinois. Another trail came in from the East and hugged the shores of Lake Michigan, leading to Fort Dearborn, afterward Chicago. The last named was much used by the Pottawattamies. Indians, traders, travelers, scouting parties, military expeditions and frontiersmen passed along these trails before the wagons of the pioneers widened them out with their wheel tracks.

It is an unprofitable matter of conjecture as to how early the dusky children of the Upper Lakes region commenced to make tracks across the country bordering Lake Michigan on their way toward the Mississippi Valley, or when the Iroquois and other eastern tribes begun to push in along their own trails.

THE OLD CHICAGO TRAIL

But it is quite certain that the intrepid and executive La Salle, with his companions and followers, was the first white man to test these Indian trails, which even in his time (1680) were old. The waters and the marshes of the Kankakee, alive with water fowl, muskrats and mink, must have been a welcome sight to the chevalier, who had as sharp an eye for the fur-trade as for exploration and discovery. We also remember how he united the tribes of the Ohio and Illinois valleys against the invading Iroquois, and it must have been largely along these trails, not far from the southern shores of Lake Michigan, that the Miamis, Pottawattamies and other tribes

of the Middle West migrated, to afterward gather in the Valley of the Illinois under La Salle's leadership and make such an effective stand against their fierce enemies of the East.

THE POTTAWATTAMIES OF THE ST. JOSEPH VALLEY

As the St. Joseph Valley was the acknowledged keynote to the settlement and development of Southwestern Michigan and Northern Indiana, so was the old Chicago trail-later, the "military road"—the avenue along which the Indian tribes and the first white settlers entered this section of the county. From the advent of the first Frenchmen and Englishmen who penetrated into the central regions of the United States, until the period of Black Hawk's greatest activities, from 1812 to 1832, the Indian trail around the foot of Lake Michigan had been the highway for the red men of Northern America traveling anywhere by land between the regions of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi Valley. When the country became a battling ground between England and the United States, in 1812, and Detroit and Fort Dearborn were recognized as military keys to the occupancy of interior America, the old Indian trail was still the traveled path between those points and was utilized by both white and red men.

In the war of 1812, Black Hawk was the most powerful native ally of the British. He felt that he had good grounds for deserting the Americans, but found, after he had joined the British, that they were not as powerful as he had been led to believe, and soon returned to the home of his people (the Sacs and Foxes). During his absence these tribes had been removed by the United States government up the Missouri River, and Black Hawk found that he had been displaced by the more pacific chief, Keokuk. Through the influence of the two, the Sacs and Foxes were divided into war and peace parties, in their relations to the Americans.

After the war of 1812 Black Hawk was in constant communication with the British government, and every year passed along the Chicago trail, at the head of other less noted warriors of the Sac nation, to receive his annuities from his royal patron represented by the authorities at Fort Malden. When the procession began to approach the settlements, runners were sent out to notify the inhabitants along the trail that the main body of dusky warriors was coming and to assure them of the pacific intentions of the Indians.