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NILES CHARTER TOWNSHIP — The Berrien County Sheriff’s Department is asking for the public’s help in the search for a historic statue that was stolen from Madeline Bertrand County Park Thursday in Niles Charter Township.

A three-foot bronze statue of Madeline Bertrand was stolen from Madeline Bertrand County Park Thursday in Niles Charter Township, according to Sheriff Paul Bailey. The statue was erected in the park in 1983 during the Niles Charter Township Sesquicentennial celebration.

Madeline Bertrand, the daughter of Potawatomi Chief Topinabee, married French trader Joseph Bertrand in 1804. After the Potowatomi ceded their lands to the federal government with the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, Madeline Bertrand consented to locate a village on her land, which was named after her husband, one of its founders. The statue, created by Harold “Tuck” Langland of Granger, Ind., depicts Madeline as a young woman leaving her Native American family to marry Bertrand.

Anyone with information on the statue’s whereabouts is asked to call Berrien County dispatch at (269) 983-3060.