List of Tribal Members from Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, and other indigenous tribes of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois
In this 1912 Declaration of Ejectment from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Law Case File 30943, Frank Elie, et al. vs. the Illinois Central Railroad Company et al., hundreds of members of the Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, and other indigenous tribes of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois are individually listed across 14 pages. At issue were lands along the lakefront of Lake Michigan in the Chicago area that were promised to be reserved for the tribes in the Treaty of 1783 (The Treaty of Paris) and August 3, 1795 (Treaty of Greenville), and the Treaty of St. Louis of August 24, 1816, which together granted "one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of Chicago River." Based on the government survey of 1821, named the Walls Survey, the plaintiffs claimed ownership of this land and demanded damages of fifty million dollars. The affiliated Equity case #133 Chief John Williams et al. vs. City of Chicago et al. made it to the Supreme Court in 1917, which ruled that the Potawatomi “abandoned” the territory and decided against the plaintiffs by stating “The claim set up in this cause is without merit.” This ruling was cited as precedent when turning down other tribes’ requests for compensation for land they lost, and it is still referenced today in land acknowledgments
List of Tribal Members from Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, and other indigenous tribes of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. National Archives Identifier: 222562978
View and download the Declaration of Ejectment from Frank Elie, et al. vs. the Illinois Central Railroad Company, et al. on the National Archives Catalog. This record is one example of many held in District Court Law Case Files at the National Archives at Chicago, IL. You can explore more of our holdings by visiting our online Catalog or by visiting our research room in person. These records are located within Record Group 21: District Courts of the United States, Series: Law Case Files, 1912–1938. Many of the records in this collection have yet to be digitized. We encourage researchers to visit us onsite or contact us remotely to explore these records and learn more about the archival collections held in the National Archives at Chicago.