The Indian Boundary Line

The Indian Boundary Line was a 20-by-70-mile strip of land stretching from Lake Michigan southwest to the Illinois River near present-day Ottawa, Illinois. It formed the northern border of a corridor created by the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis between the U.S. government and members of the Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes, known as the Council of Three Fires. Treaties like this exploited differing land ethics and concepts of ownership, as Native nations often viewed them as temporary permissions to access land in their territories while the U.S. government viewed them as ways to acquire, own and sell the land. The boundary line encompassed today's Greene Valley and Mayslake forest preserves, and the U.S. government used land within it to construct the Illinois and Michigan Canal, connecting the Chicago and Illinois rivers by 1848. It also created a safe corridor for European settlers moving west. During the early 1800s, the U.S. government shifted treaties with Native nations from peace and alliance to land cessions and removal, and generations of Indigenous peoples displaced from this area now live in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Oak Brook, Illinois · United States