Removal of the Pottowatomie Indians from Northern Indiana  

Lands ceeded by the Indian tribes by they treaties.

Daniel McDonald, editor for many years of the Plymouth Democrat newspaper and later State Senator (as well as being historian, early club member on Lake Maxinkuckee, has written several of the major works of local, 19th and early 20th century history...The History of Marshall County (1882 and a revised edition in 1908), A History of Lake Maxinkuckee.

Daniel McDonald's fascination for the deported Pottowatomie Indians of the Lake Maxinkuckee and Marshall County area is evidenced in much more than just the naming of his lake cottage. His History of Marshall County contains a good deal of information on the Indians as well. In fact, McDonald's interests in local Indian history would lead to his writing, The Removal of the Pottowatomie Indians from Northern Indiana, in 1898, a book which -- along with the journals and writings of eyewitnesses like George Winter and Fr. Benjamin Petit, remains one of the important sources of information about the Pottowatomie Indians of the area and their removal The book below is much more thorough, and is all the more interesting for its inclusion of photographs of some of the principle players in the events

McDonald was heavily involved in the issue of the deportation of the Potowatomie Indians (after the fact -- his parents were some of the 1836 settlers to the area shortly before the 1838 deportation at the "Trail of Death") via his writings and his campaign to have the Menominee monument built and the log cabin chapel restored (both were dedicated in September of 1909). Far more visible and far-reaching, however, is McDonald's almost single-handed creation of the Chief Menominee monument near Twin Lakes, a feat made possible by his role as state senator of Indiana during the regular and special sessions of 1869 and the regular sessions of 1905 and 1907. In A History of Marshall County, McDonald wrote, of his efforts: In 1905 the writer of this history was elected a member of the Indiana legislature from Marshall County, a nd in the session of 1905 introduced a bill appropriating $2500 for the erection of a monument to Menominee and his band of 859 Pottawattomie Indians who were driven away by the state of Indiana west of the Missouri river in 1838, and for the rebuilding of the old Indian chapel at Twin Lakes, in Marshall County. The bill – House Bill No 37 – was referred to the committee on ways and means, who, in a spasm of reform, recommended it, with five other monument bills, for indefinite postponement. When the bill came up before the house for action, Mr. McDonald delivered an address fully explaining why the provisions of the bill should be adopted. As a matter of history, the House of Representatives deemed it of sufficient importance to order two hundred copies of it printed for the use of the house, which was done.