1816 treaty between the United States and representatives of the Council of Three Fires
The 1816 Treaty of St. Louis secured a 20-mile land corridor from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, later enabling construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
Key Facts
- Date signed
- August 24, 1816
- Date proclaimed
- December 30, 1816
- Compensation to tribes
- $1,000 in merchandise over 12 years
- Land corridor ceded
- 20-mile strip connecting Lake Michigan to Illinois River
- U.S. negotiators
- Ninian Edwards, William Clark, Auguste Chouteau
- Canal later built on ceded land
- Illinois and Michigan Canal (1848)
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
The United States sought to consolidate land claims in the Illinois region following the War of 1812, intending to distribute the territory as land grants to war volunteers. The Council of Three Fires tribes — Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi — occupied land overlapping an earlier 1804 Sac and Fox cession, creating legal ambiguity over title that the U.S. government wished to resolve.
On August 24, 1816, U.S. commissioners Ninian Edwards, William Clark, and Auguste Chouteau met with representatives of the Council of Three Fires at Portage des Sioux, Missouri. The tribes formally relinquished all claims to land previously ceded by the Sac and Fox in 1804 and additionally ceded a 20-mile-wide corridor linking Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, in exchange for $1,000 in merchandise distributed over 12 years.
The ceded corridor was surveyed by John C. Sullivan and originally allocated as War of 1812 bounty land. Decades later, the same land became the route of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, completed in 1848, and subsequently the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, fundamentally shaping the commercial development of the Chicago region and connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River system.
Political Outcome
Council of Three Fires tribes ceded land claims to the United States, including a strategic corridor between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, in exchange for $1,000 in merchandise over 12 years.
Council of Three Fires held title to lands along the Illinois and Milwaukee rivers, including areas overlapping prior Sac and Fox cessions
United States held clear title to a 20-mile corridor from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and all land from the 1804 Sac and Fox cession lying south of a due-west line from the southern tip of Lake Michigan