Some said it was dropped from an airplane but that theory was never confirmed. Hydrology and characteristics Papakeechie has a drainage area of . The dam length is 2460.00 feet (749 m). It has a maximum discharge of 291 ft³/s (8.2 m³/s). Normal storage is . The Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is the state regulating agency. The Papakeechie Protective Association was formerly embroiled in controversy with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which asserted that the Association's dam and levees were badly outdated, unsafe, and not in conformity with Federal and State law. The DNR had threatened to breach the dam if the Association failed to fix and enhance its dam and levees as required. Engineering experts estimated that the cost for this project could exceed as much as $800,000. In 2012 the Association successfully completed the rebuilding of their levee system to the satisfaction of the State of Indiana. Chief Papakeechie Papakeechie, or, more properly, Papakeecha, or, still more so, Pa-hed-ke-teh-a, was the name of the most influential Miami chief in the region around Lake Wawasee. His name is prosaically translated, "Flat Belly"! At the time of the arrival of the white man, he was about sixty years old and was described as of a dark copper color, inclined to corpulency, and given to wearing a silver ring or a fish bone through the cartilage of his nose. He was a brother of Wau-wa-aus-see and, like most of the chiefs in this part of the country, claimed to have fought in the Battle of Tippecanoe. His reservation, ceded to him in 1828 and returned to the Government in 1834, had an area of thirty-six square miles, being six miles square. Its western boundary, drawn north and south, almost bisected Lake Wawasee. The present sites of Our Lady of the Lake Seminary and the South Shore Inn lie just within the western edge of this old reservation. His Indian village in Noble County, and the brick house built for him by the Government, to fulfill a treaty provision, was about a mile and one-half northwest of Indian Village. And occasional piece of brick from the house still may be found in a field there. After 1834 Papakeechie's entire reservation was included in the million and one-half acres of Indiana lands given by the Government to the Wabash and Erie Canal. Later it was sold and the proceeds squandered