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Potawatomi villages in the second tract, identified as Royce Area 147 (ie, the so-called "mineral" or "lead mine region"). The latter point is significant because it indicates that these Potawatorni well understood that they did not have to actually occupy an area to hold it in recognized indian title, and the United States as well.

15. The 1829 treaty established the Shabeni band's new reservation at the site where this band had located itself on Big Indian Creek, more than a decade earlier. The fact that this location was, at the time of its founding, distant from other Northern Illinois Potawatomi band-villages would not have had and did not have any effect on the affiliation of the Shabeni band with the other bands making up the Illinois-Wisconsin coalition. Historically, the Potawatomi expanded their territory by establishing new villages some distance removed from affiliated kindred bands; and, customarily, they periodically moved their villages sites short distances to compensate for the exhaustion of local resources (e.g., declining soil fertility and fuel sources), without affecting their standing regional alliances. So there was nothing unusual about the Shabeni band's original settlement at a distance from others in this coalition.

16. Two documented historical incidents are particularly telling in demonstrating the emergent autonomous tribal identity of the Illinois-Potawatomi bands. FIRST: At a time when the Illinois-Wisconsin bands were being pressured to abandon their western lowa reservation and to join the Michigan and Indiana Potawatomi (or "Mission bands") on a "national reservation" in Kansas, their subagent at Council Bluffs, Dr. Edmund James, on December 18, 1837, explained to St Louis Superintendent William Clark why they were opposed to doing so. Dr. James stressed, "I hope it will be remembered that they [the Prairie bands] are essentially a distinct people from the Potawatomies of Indiana and by far the larger and more reputable part of them wish to remain so." Dr. James was a highly educated physician-geographer-linguist well experienced with Great Lakes area indians. SECOND: Following Billy Caldwell's death in 1841, the council of chiefs petitioned the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, requesting that thereafter they be called "The Prairie Indians of Caldwell's Band of Potawatomies." Although this appellation was never formally adopted or used, its significance is that these northern Illinois-southern Wisconsin "Prairie Potawatomi" were signaling to American authorities their intention to continue their opposition to arbitrary treatment, and their desire to be treated as a tribal entity separate from the other Potawatomi groups. This petition is of interest, also, because it is one of the first instances where these Illinois-Wisconsin bands referred to themselves as the Prairie Band Potawatomi.

17. Following the 1829 treaty, which established the Illinois reservation allocated to the Shabeni Band, the emergent Prairie Band tribal council negotiated four successive additional treaties, any one of which might conceivably have included stipulations altering that Illinois reservation's status, by converting its title to fee simple, for instance, or by ceding it to the United States. None of these treaties, as amended and ratified by the Senate, included provisions doing so. These were the treaties of Chicago, September 26 and 27, 1833 (7 Stat., 431 and 442); the treaty of June 5 and 17, 1846 (9 Stat., 853); the treaty of November 15, 1861 (12 Stat., 1191); and the treaty of February 27, 1867 (15 Stat., 531).

18. In Article 3 of the ratified 1833 treaty, two of the three band reservations established by the 1829 treaty were in fact ceded to the United States. These were the reservations of the Wabansi band and the Awnkote band, and these two bands were compensated for these cessions. In contrast, Article 5 of the original draft treaty in 1833 contained provisions for converting the Shaberri band's reservation title to fee simple. However, the Senate flatly and pointedly refused to give its advice and consent to this change in title, and struck out Article 5. So, once ratified, the 1833 treaty left intact the recognized Indian title of the Illinois-Wisconsin Potawatomis' Shabeni band to this reservation.

19. In the 1846 treaty, the Prairie Band ceded their separate lowa reservation and accepted, in partial compensation therefor, a share of the new "national reservation" in Kansas. Article 2 of the 1846 treaty stipulated that it was mutually understood that, "these cessions are not to affect the tide of said Indians to any grants or reservations made them by former treaties." Therefore, rather than altering the status of the Shabeni Band's title to the Illinois reservation, the 1846 treaty reaffirmed and reinforced it.

20. The 1861 treaty partitioned the "national reservation" in Kansas, which had been established by the 1846 treaty. A pro rata portion of this reservation was allocated to the Prairie band, to be held in-common by them, with the balance of the lands to be allotted in severalty to the members of the now detribalized Citizens (or Mission) band, or declared surplus and sold to third-parties. Nothing in this treaty had any explicit, specific bearing on the Shabeni band's reservation in Illinois.

21. The last of the Potawatomis extraordinarily lengthy series of treaties was that of 1867, reestablishing the Citizens Band on a new reservation in Oklahoma The Prairie Band, whose autonomous tribal status was now fully recognized by the 1861 treaty, was not directly involved in this treaty. So, this treaty had no effect on the title or tenure rights to the Illinois reservation.

22. The Chicago treaty of 1833 obligated the Illinois and the Wisconsin bands to evacuate the ceded territory and to make their way the West, where they were to resettle on lands assigned them in westemmost Missouri on a tract known as the "Platte Purchase " Because at the time the State of Missouri was in process of annexing that same area, the emigrant Potawatomi were allowed to remain on the Platte Purchase tract only temporarily, and they soon agreed to substitute a reservation in westernmost lowa. This 1833 treaty obligated the Illinois bands to emigrate immediately upon ratification of the treaty, while the Wisconsin bands were allowed a three year grace period before being required to emigrate.

23. The removal provisions of the 1833 Chicago treaty created an anomaly with respect to the Shabeni band. The anomaly rested on two facts. ONE: although the Shabeni band held title to an unceded reservation in Illinois, they also shared in the rights this treaty granted the Illinois-Wisconsin Potawatomi coalition of bands to a new, separate reservation in the West; and, TWO: despite their valid title to the Illinois reservation, like almost all other Potawatomi signatory to this treaty, they were nominally supposed to evacuate Illinois at a time-certain (upon the treaty's ratification) and emigrate to their new lands 24 So. soon after the 1833 treaty was ratified (February 21, 1835), Shabeni and his hand had to confront and cope with several eonflicting, interlocked problems. FIRST: he himself remained one of the senior, most influential wkamek of the Illinois Wisconsin bands' governing council; but these bands were soon to evacuate their ceded lands and resettle in the West SECOND: he had to deal with the anomaly of his own band's holding recognized title to both the Illinois reservation and their in-common share of the new, valuable, game-rich tract west of the Mississippi, with the possibility of their being subject to pressure for resettlement there. THIRD, the environment surrounding the Illinois reservation had so changed-with increasing American settlement, the decline or disappearance of the big game herds on which the Potawatomi had depended for subsistence, and competition between the remaining Potawatomi and the settlers for the remaining game-that it was no longer possible for his entire band to sustain themselves by hunting while based on that reservation. FOURTH: the whole Shabeni band, numbering approximately 130-140 persons, could not sustain themselves if confined to the resources available on the Illinois reservation, which consisted of merely 1,280 acres. FIFTH: Article 4 of the 1833 Chicago treaty stipulated that, after three years, all annuities due the Potawatomi signatories would be paid only in the West, and only to those Potawatomi who were located there 1837 was to be the last year any annuities would be paid to any Potawatomi who had not resettled in the West (This stipulation did not apply to Shabent's personal lifetime annuity of $200 granted him by this treaty.)

25. Saabeni, certainly after seeking the consensus of the headmen of his band and his own adult sons, resolved these conflicting problems, in part by adopting a strategy that had been traditional among the Potawatomi for several centuries-fission and migration. When faced with the problem of declining local resources insufficient to support a growing band population, for many decades Potawatomi bands had habitually subdivided or fissioned, with part of the population resettling elsewhere. In addition, Shabeni himself (with some of his family) adopted a pattern of alternating residence, between the collectively held new lands at Council Bluffs and the band's reservation in Illinois. This enabled him, for several years, to continue to discharge his responsibilities as a senior chief in the Prairie Band's tribal council on the Council Bluffs reservation, to collect his family's per capita share of tribal annuities when they were paid at that location, and also, with much reduced population pressure, to maintain his ties to the now adequate in size -- Illinois reservation. It should be added that, as one of the principal negotiators of the 1829 treaty, in which the Illinois-Wisconsin Potawatomi bands ceded a tract to which they held recognized title but which they did not actually occupy, and in which no conditions or limitations were attached to perpetual title of the three band reservations established thereby, Shaben understood that continuous week-to-week occupation of the Illinois reservation was not required of him or his people in order to maintain their treaty granted tenure rights.

26. It should be emphasized that the pattern of alternating residence adopted by Shabeni was not unique. In 1847, for example, Little Miami declined to settle on the newly established "national" reservation in Kansas but instead led most of his band back to Wisconsin, where their descendents remain today. 27 The efforts of Indian Department agents to implement the removal provisions of the 1833 treaty commenced in early summer, 1835. That June, as provided for by the treaty, a large exploring party supervised by William Gordon and led by Billy Caldwell journeyed west and examined the tracts in western Iowa and Missouri that had been set aside as a reservation for the signatories to the Chicago treaty. Then, the first organized removal party of 712 persons was assembled by subagent John Russell and departed Illinois in late September, destination the Platte region. Shabeni had not joined the exploring party, and declined Russell's overtures to add his band to the group of Potawatomi emigrants this "conductor had assembled that year.

28 Russell was replaced by Gholson Kercheval as the subagent responsible for removing the Illinois Potawatomi bands July 26, 1836, and shortly thereafter the latter started work trying to persuade the remaining bands to join his emigrating party that fall. In his reports on these efforts, Kerdheval indicated that Wabansi and his band had refused his overtures to remove that season. This probably included Shabeni's band, as well, because as events determined Wabansi and Shabeni were making their own jomt arrangements for traveling west, independently of Kercheval and party, relying on their own transportation and securing their own subsistence (mainly by hunting along the way). This reluctance to rely on govemment "conductors" and the services they provided was not unusual for the Illinois-Wisconsin Potawatomi bands: a substantial majority of these, similarly, arranged their own transportation and subsistence, traveling in their own time by routes they preferred. However, this means that there are available no official rolls for Shabent's party of emigrants. Such lists were kept only by the government conductors for groups whose emigration they managed. Two such lists were required by Indian

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Service removal regulations, the first consisting of persons enrolled at the start of the journey, the second of the group actually delivered at their destination. There are none such for Shabeni's band.

29. In Kercheval's journal of events for his party's journey, ir October, 1836, he noted that upon arriving at the Mississippi River he had learned that Wabansi and Shabeni's group were traveling west some distance behind him. On several successive days Kercheval halted his group and waited, anticipating that they would join up with him. Wabansi and Shabeni never did so. Instead, they went on their own way, relying on their own means. Shabeni's group haited in the Platte lands, while Wabansi went own to the Osage River tract, where he stayed briefly.

30. Later, in 1837, Shabeni's group, in company with the band of Perish LeClerc, traveled north to the newly agreed on "final" cestination, the reservation near Council Bluffs, where they settled in with the other Illinois-Wisconsin bands. In August, 1837, the new Chicago subagent, L. H. Sands, knew that the Shabeni band was located in the West, because at that time he dispatched their share of treaty annuities to the St. Louis Superintendency so that it could be distributed to them there. In the lowa lands, these relocated bands continued their standard practice of establishing their villages many miles from one another. The Shabeni band's village was probably located about thirty miles south of Council Bluffs, along the bands of Shabbonne Creek, near present Tabor, lowa.

31. The years speat on the lowa reservation were momentous for the coalition of Illinois-Wisconsin bands (sometimes called the United bands, or the Prairie Band as they were soon known). There the bands merged, to form a new, autonomous tribal polity. The merged bands continued their older practice of council-manager governance for some years. This tribal council, especially so in its dealings with American authorities, consisted of a small cadre of highly respected, capable, elder band chiefs. These band chiefs, in Potawatomi custom, were serving not only as representatives of their own bands, but as kiktoweninek ("speakers") for all Potawatomi on the lowa reservation. This council, representing the now merged Prairie Band tribal entity, functioned autonomously in governing the external affairs of this tribal people quite independent of and separate from any other Potawatomi groups located elsewhere. Until his death in 1841, Billy Caldwell continued to serve as their business manager.

32. Between 1837 and early 1846, annually, the Prairie band tribal council was involved in a regular flow of exchanges with American authorities. On the one hand, these consisted of either face-to-face conferences with their Indian agents, the St. Louis regional superintendents, military officers, and treaty commissioners dispatched to negotiate with them, as well as sundry other parties such as Catholic missionaries and Mormon leaders. On the other hand, they consisted of written petitions, memorials, appeals, and letters dispatched to various officials, often to the President. The substance of these communications, verbal or written, was of vital importance to these Potawatomt. In the main, it consisted of their efforts to persuade Americar authorities to abide strictly by and to implement the terms of the 1833 Chicago treaty, and of their responses to the efforts of American authorities to persuade them to cede their separate reservation and to give up their autonomous status, in exchange for a "national reservation" in Kansas, where Americans officials wished them to "rejoin" the other Potawatomi bands and form "one nation." This latter overture the Prairie band effectively and bitterly resisted, until they finally relented and agreed to the Treaty of 1845.

33. In this period, at least through year-end, 1845, perhaps into early 1846, Shabeni regularly was one of the leading chiefs reported as being active on the tribal council, participating in debates, placing his name on the memorials and petitions, and so on. Indeed on at least one occasion he acted as kiktowenine (speaker) for the tribal council, a position at other time assumed by elder chiefs Wabansi, Padegoshuk, or Miamise. Moreover, Shabeni was one of the cadre of chiefs which hotly debated the three treaty commissioners dispatched to meet with them in the summer of 1845; and he was one of the select delegation the Prairie Band dispatched to Washington in late 1845, there to negotiate with the President and hammer out terms agreeable to themselves for ceding the lowa lands and resettling in Kansas. Also in this period, Shabeni and family began their practice of alternating stays on the lowa reservation and on the Illinois band reservation. Consequently, he was not always present in lowa to participate in tribal council affairs; but neither was any other senior chief invariably present for such deliberations.

34. For this reason, most likely, Chief Shabeni apparently did not participated in the final negotiation of the Treaty of June 5 and June 17, 1846 (9 Stat., 853), although he had been active in working out the preliminaries for same. He certainly did not place his mark on this agreement, signifying his approval of it Had he done so, he would have signed this treaty near the top of the list of chiefs and headmen, so reflecting his senior rank, in company with such other elder Prairie band chiefs as Miamise and Abtegizkek. Had he done so, the secretary recording his presence would have rendered his name as "Shah-benay," which is the spelling the same treaty commission secretary had been using since 1845. There is a name, third from last of the long list of chiefs and headmen signing this treaty which might be confused with that of Shabeni (or Shah-benay, as the secretary wrote it), but only if handled carelessly. This name the commission secretary rendered, in the hand written draft treaty, as "Sha-bon-niah," although due to a typographical error it appears on the printed treaty as "Shau-bon-ni-agh." This is not the name Shaben. It is the name of a minor chief or headman whose village before removal had been on the Kankakee River. This person (AKA Chevalier) was apparently a Franco-Potawatomi, and the name itself is not of Potawatomi provenance. The spelling used by the treaty commission's secretary, "Sha-bon-niah," is an American's effort to render in English orthography the Potawatomi pronunciation of a French word, Chevalier (phonetically -- /shvallje). Because the Potawatomi language has no /r/, /, or /v/ phonemes, speakers of this language pronounce W's as /sabon'ije/, phonetically, which the secretary rendered as "Shaboniah"

35. There are various conceivable and plausible reasons that might explain why Shabeni apparently did not participate in the final negotiation of the 1846 treaty, and why he certainly did not sign it. In their report, the 1846 treaty commissioners emphasized that all the Prairie band chiefs and headmen who were present gave their consent and signed the treaty. If this is accurate, then Shabeni was not present for these negotiations Exactly why he was not present, absent further documentation, is an unresolved question. What is known is that, about this time, either somewhat before or shortly after the 1846 negotiations (when he was about sixty-five years old), Shabeni in effect retired from political leadership in the Prairie Band tribal council, eventually returning to Illinois permanently to live out his remaining years. Although Shaben in his last years settled in Illinois with a several members of his family, the Shabeni band proper remained a constituent part of the Prairie Band in lowa, until they resettled together in Kansas soon after the 1846 treaty was ratified.

36. Once the Prairie band moved onto the "national" reservation, they continued to express their separate poitical identity by deliberately isolating themselves geographically, minimizing contacts with the Mission bands from Indiana and Michigan. The latter, by-and-large, established their settlements south of the Kaw River. The Prairie Band placed ther settlements in the northwest corner of this new reservation. In so doing, the Prairie Band were following an ancient practice, that of expressing political-cultural differences and their separate social identity as a distinct people spatially

37. Soon after their settlement on the Kansas reservation, the older band social organization which had characterized the Illinois-Wisconsin Potawatomi in earlier generations began breaking down. By the early 1860s and after, it is not possible for an ethnohistorian to discern separate and distinct bands. One reason for this was that the elder generation of influential band chiefs were now deceased or aged and incapacitated. But the central cause was that, confined as they were to a highly restricted land-base, there was no longer sufficient territory for them to establish widely separated band-villages In any respect, the memberships of the several bands melded into one tribal population on this much smaller reservation, including the members of the Shabeni

band.

38. Nevertheless, the Prairie Band tribal council continued functioning, and has done so to the present day. However, by the 1860s, rather than representing geographically isolated bands and villages, the chiefs and headmen represented segmentary kin groups, such as patrilineal clans and lineages or extended families, the memberships of which were, increasingly, intermixed geographically. Included among these were the descendants of the Shabent band, for some time including most of Shabeni's lineal and collateral descendants. So, despite the 1846 treaty, the preamble of which represented an American conception of a "unified nation," the Prairie Band successfully sustained their separate existence.

39. For example, starting in 1853, for several years there was a concerted effort on the part of the United States to break up and to diminish or disestablish all the reservations in eastern Kansas, which had been awarded to the tribes relocated from the Great Lakes-Chic valley region under the now obsolete removal policy. These were to be allotted in severalty to the members of the resettled tribes, with the members eventually to become citizens, and the "surplus lands" of the reservations placed on the market and sold. The Kansas Potawatomi, led by the Prairie Band chiefs, refused to accept this and (as it happened temporarily) avoided the application of this policy to all Kansas Potawatomi. So, by the winter of 1854-1855, the "national reservation," including the Prairie Band Potawatomi area, was the only intact reservation remaining out of all those established for the resettled eastern tribes.

40. That changed six years later. Nevertheless, the separate political existence of the Prairie Band tribal entity was confirmed by the United States with the Treaty of November 15,1861 (12 Stat., 1121) By the terms of this treaty, the members the Mission bands (hereafter known as the Citizens band), accepted a share of the Kansas reservation, which share was allotted to them in severalty, with provisions for fee patenting these allotments, and American citizenship. As a consequence, the Citizens Band was detribalized, and was no longer to have government-to-government relations with the United States. Not so the Prairie Band Their tribal council refused to countenance such steps, insisted on remaining a tribal entity, and retained a pro rata share of the reservation, which provisions the 1861 treaty sanctioned, stipulating that their now much diminished reservation would be held in common, i.e., in recognized ind an title.

41. A quarter century later, following passage in 1887 of the General Allotment (Dawes) Act, the United States undertook to implement this legislation by securing Prairie Band consent to the allotment in severalty of their reservation The Prairie Band's leaders fought a bitter, losing battle against this, preferring to continue their in-common tribal ownership of their remaining lands. In the end, the United States arbitrarily allotted the reservation without their consent, with no attention to local community or kinship ties and preferences. Thus the Prairie Potawatorni's membership was left scattered willy-nitly across the reservation, with each family or individual holding title to a small, privately held patch of ground. Once their titles were converted to

fce simple, the process of land loss began. So, by 1962, the Prairie Band held only eighty acres in common, with but twenty-two percent (22%) of the original reservation lands (out of 121 square miles or 77,440 acres) stil! held in restricted fee titles or by multiple owners (ie., heirship tracts).

42. Politically speaking, the contemporary Prairie Band of Potawatomi, a federally recognized entity with a tribal government conducted under the terms of an Indian Reorganization Act Constitution and By-laws, is the direct, lineal successor to the coalition of northern Illinois-southern Wisconsin bands who negotiated the Treaty of 1829. That coalition of bands remained together following their several dislocations and treks, first to the Platte Purchase, thence to the lowa reservation, finally to the corner of the "national" reservation they elected to occupy in Kansas, finally on their own separate reservation which was established at their insistence by the Treaty of 1861, where they remain today. Over the years they were known by several different names, including: the United Bands of Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, the United Bands, the Prairie Indians of Caldwell's Band of Potawatomies, and, finally, simply the Prairie Band of Potawatomi These are no more than successive synonyms for the same historic political entity

43. Throughout this period, until the Indian Reorganization Act was imposed on them in the mid-1960s, the Prairie band was governed by a tribal council of their own selection, according to their own preferences. Originally and for many years, this council consisted of the wkamek (chiefs) of the constituent bands, with the most senior and influential chiefs acting as an executive cadre in important dealings with the United States. For some years thereafter, after the band organization had fallen into disuse, the leadership of this tribal council represented clans and extended kin groups. By the early 1960s, the tribal council consisted of the key leaders of a set of unstable parties or factions, mostly kin group based. Since their IRA constitution was approved, their leaders have been elected by secret ballot, but for the most part they continue to represent extended kin groups. Throughout this political history, the politics of the Prairie Band have been kinship based, whether hand or clan or kindred.

44. Interestingly, while the contemporary Prairie Band's secular affaurs are managed by a democratically elected tribal council which follows Robert's Rules of Order in its decision making, these Potawatomi have also preserved in a second institutional form their ancient, traditional political structure, but in a sacred arena. In their Dream Dance Religion (or Drum cult) there are six segments or religious sodalities, iterating the ancient clans or bands in ritualized form. Each of these six sodalities consists of a series of formal "offices," or ritual roles, including Chief, Speaker, Pipeman, Herald-Messenger, Chief of Warriors, Chief Woman, and so on. These are the traditional leadership roles of the early historic Potawatomi bands. Following a ritual calendar, every season, and at other times during the year, the Prairie Band adherents of this religion come together and reconstitute, in a sacred place, these ancient political institutions, there exhibiting their preferences for traditional values and ways.

45. One of these six ritual sodalities commemorates the memory of Chief Shabeni, being named for him. In the early 1960s, the Shaben: Drum was kept in the home of Pkukaokwe, Shabeni's great-grand-daughter, then reputed to be over one-hundred years of age. Pkakaokwe's husband, Frank Masha, was also a (collateral) descendent of Shabeni. This was the only one of the six sacred Drums named for one of the prominent wkama (or any lesser chief or headman) dating to the early nineteenth-century period of the Prairie band's Illinois-Wisconsin history. There was, for example, no Caldwell, or Abtegizhek, of Miamise, or Padegoshuk Drum, nor any other celebrating the memory of one of Shabeni's contemporaries Thus, in a sacred arena, the contemporary Prairie Band Potawatomi preserve and honor the political identity and the institutional forms of the histone Shabeni band.

46. In many other respects in language preservation, food-preferences, traditional medicines, cosmology, values, etc. the Prairie Band is one of the two most culturally conservative of all the numerous Potawatomi communities in the United States and Canada, a close second only, perhaps, to the Fores: County Potawatomi of Wisconsin, a much smaller and far more isolated community.

47. There is a story, told by a Citizens Band Potawatomi to anthropologist Alanson Skinner in 1923, to the effect that those Potawatomi who had sided with the dissident Sauk leader, Black Hawk, had denounced Shabeni because he had betrayed Black Hawk's plans and led his people into American ambushes. There is no historical evidence in support of any part of this derogatory legend, and much that contradicts it. In the first place, none of the Potawatomi are known to have "sided" with Black Hawk during his incursions, which precipitated the "Black Hawk War" Instead, the Potawatomi either entirely avoided these Sauk, or they sided actively with Americans, as did Shabeni and numerous others. Moreover, during this period Shabeni had no direct contact with Black Hawk and his "British band," so he could not have led them into ambushes or betrayed their plans, assuming that Black Hawk had a plan of some sort. Again, this legend is counterfactual, little more than malicious goss.p

48. There is no other Potawatomi community, band, tribe, nation, or group in the United States or Canada which can legitimately claim to be the political successor to the historic Shabeni band of northern Illinois, other than the Prairie band.

49. It is true that a good many of Shabeni's own lineal and collateral descendants live in other places, are not enrolled members of the Prairie Band, and may be errolled in (or are presently seeking enrollment in) some other Potawatomi band, as well other tribes such as the Kansas Kickapoo Shabeni had several wives, who bore him numerous children. Six to eight generations later, these descendants have multiplied considerably. Some of these disaffiliated themselves with the Prairie Band by migrating ciscwhere in search of better economic opportunities. Some niarried spouses in other tribes, where their children were enrolled, losing their legal Potawatomi identity. If any portion of these descendants assemble temporarily, they would constitute what anthropologists call an "ancestor based kindred," rather like a collection of persons who might claim descent from Thomas Jefferson, but who otherwise have little to do with one another. This would constitute a special or single-purpose secondary group or voluntary association, not a band or community of any sort, which are face-to-face groups characterized by intensive, regular interaction for many, varied purposes. In any respect, such persons are merely some, not all of Shabeni's descendants Of greater importance, the Treaty of 1829 did not establish the Shabeni band's reservation as his private property, which could thereby have been passed on to his progeny. This was established as a collectively owned reservation, with the title held by a political unit, the Shabeni band, which long since has been merged politically into the Prairie Band of Kansas. Further, in 1833, when the United States Senate was presented with a draft treaty containing a proposal to convert the band's collective title to a conveyable or heritable fee simple title in Shabeni's name, the Senate flatly rejected this, leaving the collectively held band title to this reservation intact.

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Mr. HAYWORTH. Well, Mr. Vice Chairman, we very much appreciate both your written testimony, your oral testimony here today and your generous offer to answer our questions. We are sure that there will be questions that will be forthcoming.

I just would make a note that Ms. Hale's affidavit, per your request, will be included in our record today without objection, and we appreciate the opportunity to have that as part of your testimony and point of view as well.

[The affidavit of Ms. Hale follows:]

AFFIDAVIT OF ELIZABETH HALE

1. I, Elizabeth Hale, am a current member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe. I

have been a member since my birth on March 11, 1905.

2.

I am very knowledgeable of the Prairie Band Potawatomi's history, culture, and traditions. Our people today, like our ancestors before us, strive to conserve our old traditions and ancestral culture. Each generation passes to the next our history, traditions, and culture through our strong oral tradition. We teach our children at a young age our tribe's history, and to respect and practice the ways of our ancestors. Our traditions play an important role in our lives, and define who we are as a people.

3. Our tribe has existed for over 150 years. Our history says that the Prairie Band came from Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1847 and settled in the northern part of the Potawatomi reservation. Different bands from elsewhere settled on the southern part. A treaty in 1861 recognized that the northen part of the Kansas reservation belonged to the Prairie Band Potawatomi and reserved this land separately for us. Today, we still reside on this reservation. Our tribal council has also existed for over 150 years. It is how we have governed ourselves since we were at Council Bluffs.

4. Chief Shab-eh-nay and the members of his Band have been preserved in the Prairie Band Potawatomi's oral history for as long as our tribe has been in Kansas. The Prairie Band people have always recognized their descendence from the Shab-eh-nay Band.

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