in which i get dangerously close to Discourse Blogging re: "land acknowledgements"

At this time last year, I was scrambling so hard to get everything done that I straight up closed the library for the last week and a half of school. This year, I'm better at my job. Better enough that instead of closing the library, I'm mostly sitting here being bored in it. It is a library. It is hard to stay bored in. I've spent the last couple days learning about the US Public Lands Survey System (PLSS). If you live in one of the states with mostly square or rectangular counties within which townships are also mostly square or rectangular, you're in a PLSS-surveyed place. I got interested after finding an 1847 plat map that included my parents' farm, the one I grew up on. And then remembering that my mother has always claimed their farm originated as payment to some soldier for his service in the War of 1812. But the area wasn't even PLSS-surveyed until the 1820s. And then I remembered the first Treaty of Chicago wasn't signed until 1821. And then I was like "so when exactly did…