Laventure’s Reserve
The indigenous inhabitants of Milan Township were the Algonquian-speaking Miami People. In the “Treaty with the Miami” executed on October 23, 1826, one section, 640 acres, of Milan Township land was reserved for “Laventure’s daughter”, whose father, Laventure Toucher, was a French trader and whose mother may have been a Miami.[13]
Laventure Toucher had been convicted of treason by the British in Fort Detroit in 1779 during the Revolutionary War. The colonists had recruited neutral French inhabitants of the Detroit region to be spies and sympathizers for the American cause.[14]
The reserved section occupied land bordered now by the Rohman and Platter roads. At the time of Indian Removal in 1846, those Miami who held separate allotments of land were allowed to stay as citizens in Indiana. Around 1872 the reserve was partially sold to non-native settlers, and by 1879, plat books were showing the “first family” Milan Township surnames of Lampe, Vondereau, Shafer, Bruick, Landin, and Yerks on that land.[15]
Although the Indiana Miami were recognized by the US in an 1854 treaty, that recognition was stripped in 1897. While an Indiana Miami Nation still exists to this day, the officially US-recognized relocated Miami Nation resides in Oklahoma. In 1980, the Indiana legislature recognized the Indiana Miami and voted to support federal recognition.[16][17]
