Handbook N-P - Fulton County Public Library

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Notice of order of sale by Cass Circuit Court, apprais ed $10,085, belonging to Jessie
Taber.
[[ibid Saturday, March 24, 1877]
At last the Pottawattamie flouring mill property has come into the possession of our
townsmen. It was formerly owned by the Smiths and Tabers, of Logansport, but last week the
enterprising firm of Elliott, Leiter & Hickman purchased it for the modest sum of twelve thousand
dollars
[ibid, Saturday, September 15, 1877]
Sale of Mill Property. The Pottowattomie Mill property has been purchased for the sum
of $20,000 by parties residing in Kosciusko and Huntington counties.
[Rochester Union-Spy, Thursday, October 29, 1868]
[NOTE: Listed as William J. Leiter, Erie elevator, 185 Main, in Directory of Rochester,
Ind., 1907.]
Presently owned by Fulton-Marshall Co-op.
See Hickman & Leiter.
POTAWATOMI TREATY OF 1826
The tribe of Indians inhabiting Fulton County when the white men arrived was known as
Potawatomi. They were a division of the larger tribe of Algonquins, but had separated themselves
on the southern shores of Lake Michigan. The name “Potawatomi” means “Keepers of the fire.”
The first treaty that directly affected Fulton County was concluded October 16, 1826, at
Wabash at the mouth of the Mississinewa. This treaty ceded much Potawatomi land north of the
Wabash River to the U.S. government and ceded a strip of land 100 feet wide from Lake Michigan
to the Wabash River for a road.
The treaty obligated the United States as follows: In consideration of the cessations of
land, the U.S. agreed to pay to the Potawatomi tribe $2,000 in silver for 20 years, to appropriate
$2,000 a year for their education, to provide and support a blacksmith for them at some convenient
spot, to build them a mill for grinding corn, to provide and support a miller, and to pay them
annually 160 bushels of salt.These were to be paid by the Indian agent at Fort Wayne, General
John Tipton.
[Potawatomi Treaty of 1826, Shirley Willard, Fulton Co Folks, Vol. 2, Willard]
POTAWATOMI TREATY OF 1836
The villate of Chippewanong, about a mile east of the Old US-31 bridge on the
Tippecanoe River, was the site of several more treaties in March, April and September, 1836. As a
result all the Potawatomi territory from Chicago to the Tippecanoe River was ceded to the United
States, and the Indians were to be moved to lands west of the Mississippi River. To persuade the
Indians to accept the treaties, liberal amounts of whiskey were frequently used.
Payment for the land was in gold or silver, brought by wagon from Fort Wayne and
distributed by the Indian Agent, Abel C. Pepper. There was a riot during the payment of
September 25, 1836, at Chippewanong. The treaty was concluded September 23 and $63,000 in
gold arrived two days later to pay the Indians for the land they had ceded.
But two white traders, Ewing and Tabor, who operated a trading post at Chipeway (where
old US-31 crosses the Tippecanoe), claimed that the Indians owed them $24,000. There were
several other claimants too, and violence broke out among the white men. Col. Pepper called all
the money back in, but $14,000 could not be found. The money was redistributed, and in the end
the Indians got only $16,000 out of the $63,000.
Even this amount the Indians did not keep long, as the white men sold him fire-water, and
while he was drunk, took the gold from his box and filled it with sand. Or he sold the Indian a
blanket and then stole it back while the Indian was drunk and sold it to him again and again.