A source-state experiment
The ground stays put.
Nothing on the left moves. Open the documentary states on the right.
The experiment asks whether a visitor can feel a change in what a record is doing without being carried to another place.
Brake: the states below are neighboring older-Robert / Section 4 source bodies. Their adjacency here is an experiment in documentary state, not a new person-identity join and not a claim that every earlier place description has been geometrically located onto the later survey tract.
Place arrives as testimony.
In General Deposition No. 28, Oon-ta-chea gives testimony about Robert Bell’s treaty-time residence and possession.
The source job here is human recollection under examination. It is not yet a surveyed title instrument.
Carrier General Deposition No. 28 · 11 May 1838
State testimony about historical residence / possession
Do not promote witness-carried place into a modern point, patent tract, or continuous person identity merely because later Section 4 bodies exist.
Place becomes an administrative field.
The Crawford / Office No. 37 approved-list representation carries Robert Bell with NW ¼, Section 4, Township 12, Range 12 East under the heading PLACE OF RESIDENCE.
The phrase is important because it types what the table is doing. The quarter-section is not presented here merely as later patent land.
Carrier T. Hartley Crawford submission · 8 March 1843 · later printed representation
State surveyed unit carried as a place-of-residence field
Do not promote residence field into proof of exact house location, continuous occupation, or identity with every earlier Robert Bell place occurrence.
Place becomes patent land.
The later patent body names Robert Bell and carries the Section 4, Township 12, Range 12 East land into a title state, with the patent dated 14 December 1846.
That later legal state does not travel backward and rewrite the earlier evidence. Patent is a new documentary act.
Carrier Robert Bell Article XIV patent · 14 December 1846
State federal title instrument
Do not promote title into proof that every earlier residence / field / memory body describes the same spatial extent or the same person occurrence.