Potawatomi at St. Mary's, Ohio (1818)

What happened

On October 2, 1818, Jonathan Jennings, Lewis Cass and Benjamin Parke, commissioners for the United States, signed a treaty at St. Mary's, Ohio, with the Potawatomi nation. The text has no preamble stating a reason.

In Article 1 the Potawatomi ceded a country starting at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River. The line goes up the Tippecanoe to a point twenty-five miles in a direct line from the Wabash, then roughly parallel to the Wabash to a point on the Vermilion River twenty-five miles from the Wabash. It then runs down the Vermilion to its mouth and up the Wabash to the start. The Potawatomi also ceded "all their claim to the country south of the Wabash river."

In Article 2 the United States agreed to buy any just Kickapoo claim to part of the ceded country below Pine Creek. In Article 3 it agreed to pay the Potawatomi a perpetual annuity of $2,500 in silver, half at Detroit and half at Chicago, and to pay their older annuities in silver too. In Article 4 it agreed to grant land to persons named in a schedule. They could not convey it without the President's consent.

A Myaamia Center blog says that "four interwoven negotiations took place at St. Mary's in western Ohio over the course of several weeks in early autumn of 1818," including the Wea, Delaware and Potawatomi as well as the Miami.

Summarized with AI assistance from 3 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error