In the 1836 Treaty of Washington, Michigan tribes ceded claims to land in Northern Michigan—and opened it to settlement. In the 1840s, Odawa villages lined the Lake Michigan shore, especially from present-day Harbor Springs to Cross Village. The area on the tip of the peninsula was mostly reserved for native tribes by treaty provisions with the U.S. federal government until 1875. Early government had been centered around Mackinac Island and St. Ignace, but between 1840 and 1853, the state broke up this single large Michilimackinac County and established names and boundaries of ~21 counties across Northern Michigan. This naming and surveying allowed platted lands to be sold at the Land Office. Increased white immigration and homesteading in Northern Michigan brought difficulties in dispatching of Native American land claims stemming from the treaty of 1836. Bands of Chippewa and Odawa Indians sought redress through the Treaty of 1855; by this 1855 treaty agreement, lands and payments would be set aside for individual Native American families related to the 1836 treaty, but after this treaty, the US would cease to owe anything ("land, money or other thing guaranteed to them") to Indians or their tribes.