# N05_E18 Great Lakes pilot: community-authored Potawatomi water, treaty, and removal crosswalk

**Research date:** 2026-08-09 UTC  
**Sector:** `N05_E18`  
**Canonical geometry:** 24 × 24 = 576 sectors; the fixed cell spans 37.5°–45.0° N and 75°–90° W. This note does not redefine the cell.  
**Pilot position:** Great Lakes nine-sector octagon centered on the N05_E18 working Merrillville, Indiana anchor.  
**Status:** bounded research result; community-authored evidence added; no score and no `provisional_quadrant` assigned.  
**Selected next unresolved path:** The prior treaty/hydrologic notes identified the need for Indigenous-authored or community-controlled evidence, while treaty text, cession geometry, archaeological corroboration, and comparable cell-wide measures remained unresolved. This run searched and read official Citizen Potawatomi Nation publications and the Nation’s Cultural Heritage Center article, while separately checking three Archive.org digitized treaty-object records. It does not treat community interpretation, family history, or archival catalog metadata as interchangeable evidence types.

## Research question

What bounded observations from Citizen Potawatomi Nation community publications can document Potawatomi relationships to Great Lakes water, treaty and land-loss interpretation, and the 1838 removal sequence relevant to the N05_E18 historical institutional profile? Which primary treaty-object paths remain available for later article-level extraction?

## Search envelope

- **Historical place names and features:** Great Lakes, Lake Michigan, Indiana, Eel River, Wabash River, Michigan Road, Tippecanoe, Yellow River, Chippewanaung, Chicago, Council Bluffs, Kansas, Trail of Death.
- **Target bands:** `1500-1800` for the broader Great Lakes conflict context; `1800-1950` for treaty, reservation, route, and removal context; `2000-present` for community-authored interpretation and water knowledge publication.
- **Target variables:** historical institutional profile; Indigenous water knowledge; land-tenure and treaty transition; removal chronology; community-source provenance.
- **Modern bridge retained:** USGS NLDI/NWIS geometry remains a modern network crosswalk only; no historical continuity is inferred from it.

## Raw observations

### A. Community-authored water knowledge and Great Lakes homeland framing

The **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan**, January 2023, publishes an interview/profile of Citizen Potawatomi Nation tribal member Barbara Wall, Ph.D., identified as an Indigenous Environmental Studies professor. The article states that her research focuses on water and the Great Lakes region, which it describes as Potawatomi homeland. It records her description that Potawatomi people are “water people” and “canoe people,” and that water has provided what people and other-than-human beings need. It also records her account of interviewing tribal members across Potawatomi communities about ceremonial and everyday practices concerning water gathered from lakes, rivers, and springs. The article describes honoring how water is moving and treating water as living and sustaining creation.

**Source location:** PDF page 3 of the downloaded 24-page publication; article heading “Academic, professor finds inspiration in water.”  
**Observation type:** community-published qualitative account of Indigenous environmental knowledge and interpretation; not a measured hydrologic variable.  
**Spatial footprint:** Great Lakes/Potawatomi homeland framing and multi-community Potawatomi network; not limited to `N05_E18`.  
**Confidence:** high for what the publication says and for page-level provenance; low-to-medium for using it as a cell-specific historical observation.  
**Comparability:** qualitative only; not directly comparable to NOAA, USGS, WQP, or NLDI values.

### B. Community-authored treaty and land-loss interpretation: Ashkum, 1821–1838

The Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center article **“Potawatomi Chief Ashkum’s efforts to combat Manifest Destiny’s expansion”**, published April 11, 2019, states that Ashkum’s village was in north-central Indiana along the Eel River, a Wabash tributary. It states that Ashkum signed the 1821 Treaty of Chicago; that his signature appeared on the Treaty of Mississinewa, associated in the article with acreage for the Michigan Road; that Weesiones and Ashkum established a reservation through the 1832 Treaty of Tippecanoe; and that later Treaty of Potawatomi Mills, Yellow River, and Chippewanaung events were understood by the article’s quoted Cultural Heritage Center curator as fraudulent, unauthorized, or wrongful transfers of reservation ownership.

The article further states that Potawatomi leaders challenged the cessions and that federal agents overruled them using treaty-signature and factional-support arguments. It says Ashkum was forcibly removed in 1838 on the Trail of Death and quotes George Winter’s recollection that Ashkum was strongly attached to his native forests and lakes and left Indiana with regret.

**Source location:** HTML article sections headed “Treaties,” “Stolen lands,” and “Recollections”; paragraph-level provenance is available in the page text.  
**Observation type:** community-institutional historical interpretation, quoting the Cultural Heritage Center curator and a historical recollection; not an independent treaty-text transcription.  
**Spatial footprint:** north-central Indiana/Eel–Wabash context and broader Potawatomi treaty network; connected to, but not contained by, `N05_E18`.  
**Confidence:** high for the article’s published claims and provenance; medium-to-low for the underlying treaty facts until treaty articles, signatures, and boundary records are independently extracted.  
**Comparability:** related but not equivalent to National Archives catalog metadata or treaty text.

### C. Community-authored family-history account: Treaty of Chicago and removal

The Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s **Hownikan**, October 2020, includes a Cultural Heritage Center family-history feature on the Beaubien family. It states that on September 26, 1833, Potawatomi signed the Treaty of Chicago, which the article characterizes as ceding more than 5 million acres in return for money, goods, and a reservation west of the Mississippi. It identifies Joseph’s name as appearing on the treaty and states that Joseph and his family later removed to Council Bluffs, Iowa, before moving to a new reservation in Silver Lake, Kansas, in 1846. The article also discusses later treaty/allotment consequences and states that federal promises were not upheld in the way the family expected.

**Source location:** PDF page 13 of the 20-page publication, article heading “Beaubien family history,” subheading “Land loss and removal.”  
**Observation type:** community-published family history and institutional interpretation; the acreage and treaty terms are reported by the article and are not independently adopted as project raw treaty values in this note.  
**Spatial footprint:** Chicago/Great Lakes to Council Bluffs and Kansas; cross-boundary, not cell-wide.  
**Confidence:** high for the publication’s account; medium-to-low for treaty acreage and legal interpretation pending primary treaty extraction.  
**Comparability:** related but not equivalent to treaty-object text or a spatial cession layer.

### D. Community-authored removal chronology: Trail of Death

The Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s **Trail of Death** cultural-history page and related Nation publications describe the 1838 forced removal from Indiana to Kansas. The page is a community-controlled interpretive source. A separate Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan article, October 2020, records family history connected to the Trail of Death. Searchable official Nation material reports the commonly used chronology of a band of 859 Potawatomi, a 660-mile forced march, and more than 40 deaths; the 2021 Nation education article explains that much of the written primary record was produced by non-Native observers while the Nation develops its own teaching materials.

**Source locations:** official Trail of Death page; October 2020 Hownikan PDF page 17 for a family connection; the Nation’s 2021 education article for the source-balance statement.  
**Observation type:** community-authored historical interpretation and remembrance, with numerical chronology repeated in Nation educational material.  
**Spatial footprint:** northern Indiana to Kansas, crossing many sectors; not a cell-level removal count.  
**Confidence:** high for the Nation’s published account; medium for adopting the 859/660/more-than-40 figures as a project observation because this note does not reconcile all versions with contemporaneous administrative or diary records.  
**Comparability:** related but not equivalent to a census, removal roster, route GIS layer, or treaty record.

### E. Archive.org primary treaty-object retrieval paths

Archive.org advanced search located three digitized records titled as ratified Indian treaties relevant to the broader Indiana/Great Lakes treaty sequence:

| Archive.org identifier | Title and date | What was established in this run |
|---|---|---|
| `7.-fort-wayne` | Ratified Indian Treaty 36: Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Miami, Eel River, Wea, Kickapoo, Piankashaw, and Kaskaskia; Fort Wayne, June 7, 1803 | Item page and title/date/parties metadata located; treaty articles not yet extracted |
| `15.-wyandot` | Ratified Indian Treaty 44: Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa, Munsee, Delaware, Shawnee, and Potawatomi; Fort Industry, July 4, 1805 | Item page and title/date/parties metadata located; treaty articles not yet extracted |
| `18.-delaware-vinecennes` | Ratified Indian Treaty 47: Delaware, Potawatomi, Miami, Eel River, and Wea; Grouseland near Vincennes, August 21, 1805 | Item page and title/date/parties metadata located; treaty articles not yet extracted |

These are primary-object retrieval leads, not extracted treaty observations. No acreage, boundary, payment, signature, or reservation value is taken from the titles or catalog records.

## Source interpretation

1. The community-authored water account adds a distinct qualitative evidence layer: Potawatomi water relationships and practices are described as knowledge, responsibility, and reciprocal relationship rather than as a resource-only variable. This is relevant to the project’s historical institutional profile and environmental-knowledge question, but it cannot be converted into a water-abundance or adaptive-capacity score.
2. The Ashkum article provides community-institutional interpretation of treaty sequence, contested land transfer, reservation loss, and removal. It is stronger for documenting how the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center frames these events than for independently proving treaty legality or boundary geometry.
3. The Beaubien family-history article provides a page-located community account linking the 1833 Treaty of Chicago to land loss and later movement to Council Bluffs and Kansas. Its acreage and treaty terms remain reported claims until matched to treaty articles and a cession/reservation crosswalk.
4. The Trail of Death materials document community remembrance and the Nation’s own effort to address a source imbalance in which written primary records were often produced by non-Native observers. This does not eliminate the need for contemporaneous records; it changes the provenance description and prevents the project from treating settler records as the only historical voice.
5. The three Archive.org treaty objects expand the primary-source search path backward to 1803–1805. Their presence does not resolve the later 1821–1836 treaty sequence or prove that any object’s boundary intersects `N05_E18`.

## Derived observations (not scores)

### D1 — Evidence-category addition

The N05_E18 record now has four explicitly distinct evidence categories for Indigenous historical context:

| Category | New source type | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Community environmental knowledge | Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan, January 2023, PDF p. 3 | Qualitative, multi-community, not cell-specific |
| Community treaty/land-loss interpretation | Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center article, 2019 | Community interpretation; treaty text still required |
| Community family history | Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan, October 2020, PDF p. 13 | Page-located, cross-boundary, not a treaty ledger |
| Community removal remembrance/education | Citizen Potawatomi Nation Trail of Death materials and related publications | Community-authored chronology and pedagogy; not a cell-level route/count dataset |

This table is a provenance classification, not a numeric derivation.

### D2 — Treaty-object search extension

The Archive.org search adds three dated primary-object retrieval paths in 1803 and 1805. It extends the source envelope but does not create a continuous series. The relevant missing fields remain treaty article text, scan/page references, signatories, cession/reservation geometry, and relation to the fixed cell.

### D3 — No score derived

No Indigenous population, land-use, water, transport, institutional, constraint, adaptive-capacity, energy, or quadrant score is derived. Community-authored qualitative evidence and cross-boundary treaty/removal narratives cannot support a cell-wide formula without explicit spatial and variable crosswalks.

## Model classification

```yaml
provisional_quadrant: unresolved
classification_status: not_assigned
reason: community evidence narrows the provenance gap but remains qualitative and cross-boundary; primary treaty articles/maps, cession geometry, archaeological corroboration, comparable cell-wide measures, and matched-sector validation remain incomplete
confidence: unresolved_for_quadrant
```

`provisional_quadrant` is a model output and is intentionally not treated as an archival or community-source fact.

## Confidence and missingness

- **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan January 2023, PDF p. 3:** high for publication and page provenance; medium for broader community representativeness; low for cell-specific inference.
- **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center article, 2019:** high for the published institutional interpretation; medium-to-low for underlying treaty/legal claims until primary treaty extraction.
- **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan October 2020, PDF p. 13:** high for page provenance and family-history account; medium-to-low for acreage and treaty terms pending primary verification.
- **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Trail of Death materials:** high for community-authored remembrance and educational framing; medium for adopting repeated numerical chronology as a reconciled raw observation.
- **Archive.org treaty-object identifiers:** high for item discovery and catalog title/date/party metadata; no treaty-content confidence assigned because articles were not extracted.
- **Historical geographic fit:** low-to-medium; all community sources and treaty objects cross the fixed cell or describe wider networks.

Missingness codes:

- `treaty_text_not_extracted`: Archive.org treaty objects were located but not read at article/page level in this run; National Archives objects remain separately unresolved.
- `treaty_boundary_not_crosswalked`: no cession, reservation, or treaty boundary was assigned to `N05_E18`.
- `community_source_not_cell_specific`: community sources describe Great Lakes, Indiana, family, or removal networks broader than the fixed cell.
- `archaeological_corroboration_missing`: no archaeological/site-report match for the Merrillville/McGwinn’s Village lead was obtained.
- `administrative_record_crosscheck_missing`: treaty and removal accounts were not reconciled here with complete federal rosters, annuity records, or contemporaneous route diaries.
- `historical_measure_not_available`: no comparable cell-wide Indigenous population, land-use, route, or water-practice measure was obtained.
- `archival_silence_not_zero`: missing treaty articles or unlocated corroboration are not interpreted as absence.

## Falsification and alternative explanations

Community accounts document interpretation, memory, teaching, and institutional perspective; they do not by themselves establish every legal, numerical, or geographic claim. The phrase “water people” is a cultural and relational description, not evidence that a specific cell had greater water availability or that water alone caused settlement. Ashkum’s contested-treaty narrative may reflect later community interpretation, incomplete surviving records, or conflicts among federal agents and Indigenous political factions; these possibilities require source comparison rather than dismissal or automatic acceptance. The Trail of Death chronology may vary by roster, route definition, and death-count method. A later route may reflect military logistics and colonial road construction as well as earlier Indigenous travel. Industrial concentration in N05_E18 remains potentially explained by capital, rail, port engineering, labor, jurisdiction, and corporate decisions in addition to water and mineral geography.

## Unresolved gaps and next search path

1. Download and visually inspect the Archive.org scans for `7.-fort-wayne`, `15.-wyandot`, and `18.-delaware-vinecennes`; extract article/page observations only after confirming the scan and page numbering.
2. Retrieve and extract the National Archives 1828–1836 treaty objects already identified in the prior note; preserve article, page/image, signatory, and boundary provenance.
3. Search additional official tribal/community-controlled records, especially Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and other Potawatomi communities tied to Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and the Great Lakes.
4. Locate archaeological or state historic-preservation records for the Merrillville/McGwinn’s Village lead, the Calumet–Kankakee route, and relevant village/reservation locations.
5. Build a treaty cession/reservation and removal-route crosswalk against the fixed `N05_E18` geometry and neighboring sectors; do not use community narratives as a substitute for spatial extraction.
6. Continue the separate WQP/USGS `nwisin.01.02200882` discrepancy investigation and retain the reported `674 mg/L` row unchanged.
7. Keep `provisional_quadrant` unresolved until comparable raw-observation tables, formula version, alternative explanations, and matched-sector checks exist.

## Provenance register

1. **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan, January 2023.** Article “Academic, professor finds inspiration in water,” PDF p. 3; community-published account of Barbara Wall’s Potawatomi water research and Great Lakes homeland framing. <https://www.potawatomi.org/wp-content/uploads/January-2023-Hownikan-Digital.pdf>
2. **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center, “Potawatomi Chief Ashkum’s efforts to combat Manifest Destiny’s expansion,” April 11, 2019.** Sections “Treaties,” “Stolen lands,” and “Recollections”; community-institutional historical interpretation and quoted curator/recollection. <https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2019/04/11/potawatomi-chief-ashkums-efforts-to-combat-manifest-destinys-expansion>
3. **Citizen Potawatomi Nation Hownikan, October 2020.** “Beaubien family history,” PDF p. 13, including “Land loss and removal.” <https://www.potawatomi.org/wp-content/uploads/October-2020-Hownikan-Digital.pdf>
4. **Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Trail of Death cultural-history page.** Community-controlled historical and remembrance source. <https://www.potawatomi.org/culture/trail-of-death/>
5. **Citizen Potawatomi Nation, “New lesson plans fill gap on Potawatomi history,” December 22, 2021.** Community educational source discussing Trail of Death chronology and the predominance of non-Native written primary records in existing education materials. <https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2021/12/22/new-lesson-plans-fill-gap-on-potawatomi-history>
6. **Archive.org, Ratified Indian Treaty 36, Fort Wayne, June 7, 1803.** Identifier `7.-fort-wayne`; item metadata and scan path located, treaty articles not extracted. <https://archive.org/details/7.-fort-wayne>
7. **Archive.org, Ratified Indian Treaty 44, Fort Industry, July 4, 1805.** Identifier `15.-wyandot`; item metadata and scan path located, treaty articles not extracted. <https://archive.org/details/15.-wyandot>
8. **Archive.org, Ratified Indian Treaty 47, Grouseland near Vincennes, August 21, 1805.** Identifier `18.-delaware-vinecennes`; item metadata and scan path located, treaty articles not extracted. <https://archive.org/details/18.-delaware-vinecennes>
9. **Prior N05_E18 treaty/hydrologic crosswalk.** Existing project note records National Archives catalog identifiers for 1828–1836 treaty objects, modern NLDI bridge, and unresolved article/boundary extraction. `2026-08-09-N05_E18-1832-2026-potawatomi-treaty-and-hydrologic-crosswalk.md`
10. **Fixed geometry and research procedure.** `08-research-sop.md` and `ghojualamanchu/sectors/N05_E18_MERRILLVILLE.json` define the 24 × 24 grid and evidence rules.

## Record limits

This is a bounded N05_E18 research result. It adds community-authored Citizen Potawatomi Nation evidence for Great Lakes water knowledge, treaty/land-loss interpretation, family-history context, and Trail of Death remembrance, plus three Archive.org primary treaty-object retrieval paths from 1803–1805. It does not extract treaty articles, treaty maps, cession/reservation geometry, archaeological corroboration, a cell-wide historical value, a derived score, or a `provisional_quadrant`. Community evidence narrows the provenance gap but does not eliminate the need for primary textual and spatial crosswalks. No secrets or private data are included.