Long before Three Oaks existed, this land was home to Native peoples in a Michiana region rich in game, fish, wild rice, and fertile soil. Ojibwe, Odawa, and Miami Indians all lived in Southwest Michigan, but by the early 1800's the area was primarily occupied by people who called themselves Neshnabek and were known in Algonquin as Bodéwadmi, later spelled Potowatomi by European settlers. Leopold Pokagon led Potowatomi villages in the area as the U.S. government forced many Native peoples west of the Mississippi River, but the Pokagon Band avoided removal after converting to Catholicism and adopting European-style agriculture. In 1833, while many chiefs signed the Treaty of Chicago and submitted to forced removal, Pokagon won a delay and used treaty money to buy land near Dowagiac in Cass County, and a Michigan judge later blocked federal efforts to remove the band from those lands. In 1850 Henry Chamberlain settled here after moving from New Buffalo with a contract to supply 4000 cords of wood for steamboats, loading it onto railroad freight cars at Chamberlain's Sidetrack. Train crews recognized the spot by three large oak trees, and their calls gave the town its name when postal service began in 1854. Chamberlain built the first permanent residence, sharing a double house with Joseph Ames, a general store operator and postmaster. After incorporation in 1867, with Chamberlain as first village president, Three Oaks became a regional economic hub as lumber demand rose after the Chicago fire, and by 1873 it had 23 businesses. Merchant Edward K. Warren transformed the village after patenting Featherbone in 1883, a woven material made from turkey feather spines that was cheaper and sturdier than whalebone for shaping garments. His factory grew rapidly, a second factory for buggy whips opened in 1885, and the village nearly doubled in population during the 1880's as Featherbone buildings reshaped prosperous Three Oaks. Warren later expanded into sewing notions and early plastic goods, and Warren Featherbone factories employed generations of residents for eight decades before moving to Georgia in 1956. The township's early educational history included Spring Creek School, whose 1844 wooden building was replaced by a brick schoolhouse in 1886. Warren also reshaped civic life, leading a successful campaign to ban liquor in 1896 and then driving the "Three Oaks Against the World" effort that won the village national attention and the Dewey Cannon. After Admiral George Dewey captured the cannon during the Battle of Manila, Three Oaks led the nation in per capita fundraising for the war effort, raising $1,132.80, and President William McKinley came for its dedication on June 28, 1900, attended by 10,000 people. Before his death in 1919, Warren created a charitable foundation that helped establish Warren Woods and Warren Dunes as state parks, and he also owned the bank, newspaper, and Acorn Opera House, a center for performances, lectures, dances, and basketball in the 1920's and 1930's. In the late 1980's, the film Prancer was shot in and around the village. In 1994 the Pokagon Band finally won federal tribal recognition and has since prospered while working to preserve its culture and language.