2007 Student Essay Prize Winner

The Road to Ruin? "Civilization" and the Origins of a "Michigan Road Band" of Potawatomi

by
Ben Secunda

Source: Charles C. Royce, comp., Indian Land Cessions in the United States, part 2, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–97 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), plate 126. Land cessions to the United States
A road can be a very boring thing, until someone wants to build one across your land. Today road building often evokes heated debates over property, commerce, traffic, tradition, and even race and culture. In this regard, little has changed since 1826. The Michigan Road cut through the center of Potawatomi country. It passed through the fledgling town of Logansport, cleaved the northern half of Indiana into eastern and western sections, and ended in southwestern Michigan. During its construction from 1826 to 1834, this particular road had the ironic effect of dividing a tribe while uniting a band. One group of Potawatomi clung to a traditional lifestyle and eventually accepted—under U.S. pressure—removal to the West. Another group, however, pursued a strategy of adaptive resistance, adopting usable cultural and economic practices from Euro-Americans in the hope of remaining on a portion of their traditional lands. These Potawatomi, whose villages coalesced into a distinct band alliance in opposition to those who accepted removal, had no intention of surrendering all their land and offered U.S. officials just a narrow corridor for a road to facilitate travel and trade. This tactical decision, initiated in 1826, became a defining element in their new identity and a way to manage risk in a rapidly changing environment.1	1
The primary risk for the Potawatomi was that they owned desirable land. Joel W. Martin characterized the American view of territory in the west as a "gaze of development."2 This phrase implies something more than the mere establishment of homesteads; it suggests the incorporation of a region peopled by Euro-Americans into the expanding nation. Migration would foster new communities in western lands and link them to eastern population and commercial centers through a developing transportation network. The "gaze of development" viewed land as both property and a resource that Euro-Americans intended to own and exploit.3	2
Native Americans had an opposing view—the land was theirs. This remark is not meant to be flippant; it accurately reflects the statements of tribal leaders. It also summarizes the basic impasse that U.S. and Potawatomi negotiators encountered every time they met for talks. Prior to the 1831 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, which declared Indians "domestic dependent nations ... in a state of pupilage," the federal government had acknowledged basic Native land rights.4 By the 1820s and 1830s, however, U.S. officials began to insist that Native land rights required occupancy and use. The problem was that the U.S. government and Potawatomi leadership defined these concepts differently.5	. . .