Pokagon Band History

Potawatomi people have called the land in the lower Great Lakes area home for hundreds of years. Around the turn of the nineteenth century when American settlers first came to southwestern Michigan, they would have found the Potawatomi leader Leopold Pokagon and his villagers living in what is now Bertrand Township, Michigan.   

As the 1833 Treaty of Chicago established the conditions for the removal of the Potawatomi westward, this small band of Potawatomi, under Pokagon’s leadership, negotiated the right to remain in their homeland—in part because they had demonstrated a strong attachment to Catholicism. This connection was most poignantly illustrated with the founding of the University of Notre Dame: Fr. Stephen Badin ministered to the Potawatomi in Pokagon’s original village in Bertrand, Michigan, but then moved the mission to the current site of the University.  

In 1838 Leopold Pokagon purchased land for his village in Silver Creek Township near Dowagiac, Michigan, and moved his people there. As the Indian Removal Act played out, Potawatomi from northern Indiana and Michigan sought refuge at Pokagon’s village. The descendants of this group today are the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. The Pokagon homeland is identified now as the six counties of LaPorte, St. Joseph, Elkhart, Starke, Marshall and Kosciusko in northern Indiana and the four counties of Berrien, Cass, Van Buren and Allegan in southwest Michigan. 

For a more indepth look at Pokagon Band history, click the link below.

Pokagon Band History 

The Tribal Historic Preservation Office is charged with protecting tribal history and cultural knowledge.