: "The next place you
pointed to, was the Little River, and you said you wanted two miles
square at that place. This is a request that our fathers, the French or
British, never made of us; it was always ours. This carrying place has
heretofore proved, in a great degree, the subsistence of your younger
brothers. That place has brought to us in the course of one day, the
amount of one hundred dollars. Let us both own this place and enjoy in
common the advantage it affords." Despite this argument, however, Wayne
prevailed, and the control of Kekionga and the portage passed to the
Federal government; that ancient Kekionga described by Little Turtle as
"the Miami village, that glorious gate, which your younger brothers had
the happiness to own, and through which all the good words of our chiefs
had to pass from the north to the south, and from the east to the west."

Returning to the Potawatomi, it will be seen that this tribe, which
originally came from the neighborhood of Green Bay, was probably from
about the middle of the eighteenth century, in possession of most of the
country from the Milwaukee river in Wisconsin, around the south shore of
Lake Michigan, to Grand River, "extending southward over a large part
of northern Illinois, east across Michigan to Lake Erie, and south in
Indiana to the Wabash." The Sun, or Keesass, a Potawatomi of the Wabash,
said at the treaty of Greenville, that his tribe was composed of three
divisions; that of the river Huron, in Michigan, that of the St. Joseph
of Lake Michigan, and the bands of the Wabash. In the year 1765, George
Croghan, Indian agent of the British government, found the Potawatomi in
villages on the north side of the Wabash at Ouiatenon, with a Kickapoo
village in close proximity, while the Weas had a village on the south
side of the river. This would indicate that the Potawatomi had already
pushed the Miami tribe south of the Wabash at this place and had taken
possession of the country.

Far away to the north and on both shores of Lake Superior, dwelt the
Chippewas or Ojibways, famed for their physical strength and prowess and
living in their conical wigwams, with poles stuck in the ground in a
circle and covered over with birch bark and grass mats. The Jesuit
Fathers early found them in possession of the Sault Ste. Marie, and when
General Wayne at the treaty of Greenville, reserved the post of
Michillimacinac, and certain lands on the main between Lake Michigan and
Lak