USA > Michigan > Hillsdale County > Compendium of history and biography of Hillsdale County, Michigan > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77
For thirteen years from the coming of the first settlers, Baw Beese and his Pottawatomies lived on terms of perfect amity with the new comers. They were either all "good" Indians, or the influ- ence of Baw Beese was a very potent one. Baw Beese is described as being always ready to en- tertain a white man with food or shelter, yet he was still more ready to receive than he was to pro- vide. When visiting a pioneer cabin if he was not invited to partake of refreshments, he would ask for anything that he might desire to eat or drink. During the fishing season the Indians usually camped on the shores of Baw Beese lake, as it was one of the best fishing places of the country, there being no dams on the river to prevent the numerous fish from coming from Lake Michigan. The largest of the cornfields of the Indians was in the north part of the later township of Wright, and consisted of about fif- teen acres. Near the eastern line of Wheatland was a log cabin, said to be the home of Baw Beese, but he, with his squaws and pappooses,
2I
HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
were wandering so much that it was rarely if ever occupied by him.
It was in connection with an Indian execution that the early settlers first became acquainted with this band. Some time before the coming of the whites one of the Indians discovered that his wife was unfaithful to him. She was given an Indian trial, found guilty and sentenced to death. To a locality in the south part of Jonesville vil- lage she was taken, and, in the presence of the assenibled band, she was shot to death by the chosen executioners. From the frequency with which this story was narrated to the whites and the feeling of awe and horror connected with their manner of telling it, it is evident that such crimes and such punishments were very unfrequent among the dark residents of this land.
By the treaty of 1833, whereby the Pottawatto- mies ceded their title to the lands of this section, they were to remove within two years to certain specified reservations, but Baw Beese and his band ignored the treaty stipulations, they evading every attempt at removal until 1840, the whites of Hillsdale county tacitly acceding to their remain- ing, as everything was peaceful. The Pottawatto- mies of St. Joseph and Branch counties were of another character ; brawls, fighting and even mur- der's were of frequent occurrence among them and the people of those counties hardly felt safe in the occupancy of the land taken from the Indians by the treaty so long as they were in the vicinity, so, in 1840, the Federal government made a deter- mined effort to transport them to their allotted reservation at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Various ef- forts were made during the summer by the U. S. commissioners to accomplish this result, but to no avail. Baw Beese showed great anxiety and fear, saying : "Sioux kill me. Sioux kill me. Sioux kill us all. Sioux bad Indians, tomahawk squaw, scalp pappoose, ugh!"
In November, 1840, the Federal government took sterner measures. It sent a detachment of soldiers to aid the commissioners, who formed a camp and sent the troops to bring in the Indians. They did not resist, but the young men would break away whenever they could do so, while the squaws would conceal themselves so adroitly that
it required great skill and much time to find them and gather them together. Finally nearly all were "rounded up" and the commissioners made ready for a start. Poor, fat, good-natured Baw Beese wept bitterly when he saw that they must go. To every attempt at consolation he had but one reply : "Sioux kill me. Sioux kill us all." Previous to this event a pioneer would often hear a knock on his door in a cold or stormy night, and, on opening it, a warrior, with his squaw and pappooses, or two or three stalwart braves, would step in with the salutation of "How. How." Then would be said: "Indian cold; squaw cold ; pappoose cold ; want fire." The settler would pile up the logs in the big, old-fashioned fireplace, and the Indians would lie down on the stone hearth or puncheon floor, as close to the fire as they could get without burning their blankets, and both whites and Indi- ans would slumber peacefully until daybreak. "No one seems to have feared them or to have remembered that their ancestors had engaged in indiscriminate destruction of the Americans in the Revolutionary and other wars, or that some of the very men they were entertaining might have been with Tecumseh in the War of 1812 and taken part in the dreadful scenes that occurred on the banks of the river Raisin."
On the day after breaking camp the sorrowful procession passed westward through Jonesville. At the head of the column rode the aged Baw Beese alone in an open buggy drawn by an Indian pony, with his gun between his knees. An in- fantry soldier, with a loaded musket on his shoul- der, marched before the buggy, while on each side was another guard. The Indian wife of the chief came next, a woman of sixty years, mounted on a pony and escorted by a soldier. After her came Baw Bee, a half-brother of the chief, with about a dozen middle-aged and younger Indians squaws with pappooses on their backs. These were probably the children and grandchildren of the chief, and had an escort of six sol- diers. Following these were the rest of the little company, moving in groups of five, ten or twenty each, stretching along the road for half- a-mile or more. A few were on ponies, but most of them were walking; stalwart warriors, with
22
HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
rifles on their shoulders, but with mournful faces ; women still more dejected, with blankets drawn over their heads; boys and girls, careless of the future and full of mischievous tricks ; and, slung on their mothers' backs, the black-haired, bright- eyed, brown-faced pappooses, the cutest-looking creatures in the world, gazing with infant won- der on the unwonted scene.
The soldiers guarding the company marched along in single file on either side of the road, but were scattered quite a distance apart. A great number of the settlers had come to witness the departure, and, as the Indians saw one after another of their friends, they called them by name, saying: "Goodbye." The whites cordially gave them farewell greetings, and these, the last of the Pottawattomies, left forever the home of their ancestors for the, to them, unknown land of the West. The large Iowa reservation whither they were conveyed did not please them, and, after they had repeatedly importuned the Federal government to remove them elsewhere, in 1850 they were transferred to a reservation thirty miles square on the Kansas river, seventy-five miles west of its junction with the Missouri, where Baw Beese died of extreme old age.
With the passing of Baw Beese and his band of Pottawattomies, Indian occupancy was forever ended on the soil of Hillsdale. It was succeeded by a new era, that of civilized possession. When the few first pioneers looked on this land it was not the landscape of today that they beheld. Al- though in its peculiar wild and virgin aspect it was wonderfully attractive, still a dense and tangled jungle of heavy cedars, tamaracks and cypress, mingled with maples, elms, oaks, wal- nuts and other evergreen and deciduous trees covered much of the ground, which, water- soaked and fungus-bearing, was much like that of a swamp, even where extensive swamps did not extend. The rivers and creeks, choked by fallen and rotting logs and the debris of ages, moved languidly in their beds, while smaller streams, now dry or scarcely discernible, kept sinuous course through the extended marshes
and forests, and furnished homes for thousands of finny inhabitants, the watery surface being made much more extensive by the numerous dams made by the plentiful beaver.
The oak openings and ridge lands presented another aspect. John T. Blois writes of it in 1838: "To the traveller, the country presents an appearance eminently picturesque and delight- ful. In a considerable portion the surface of the ground is so even and free from underbrush as to admit of carriages being driven through the uncultivated woodlands and plains, with the same facility as over the prairie or the common road. The towering forest and grove, the luxuriant prairie, the crystal lake and limpid rivulet, are so frequently and happily blended together, as to confer additional charms to the high finishing of a landscape, whose beauty is probably unrivalled by any section of country."
The settlers found awaiting them a great variety of land and soil. The oak openings, divided into "openings" and "timbered openings" from the difference in growth of trees, consisted mostly of table-lands lying between the streams and often bordering them. They were usually very sparsely covered with oaks of different varieties and of a diminutive height. There was no underbrush and the trees appeared un- thrifty, this appearance being caused by the an- nual fires that ran over the openings. After the fires had been kept out for some years, a rapid growth of timber occurred, showing the real fertility of the soil, which is a loam, with a mix- ture of clay and sand, generally of a dark color, dry and stiff in its structure, containing lime. which caused a great superiority in the growing of wheat. On some of the uplands were varia- tions of this soil, but the openings were generally of the character we have described. The "plains" resembled the openings, except that there was more sand or gravel in the soil, and they were often covered with a beautiful growth of timber free from underbrush, appearing almost like the orchards the settlers from Western New York left on the hillsides of their old home. The prairies were not as large as the settlers might
23
HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
have found in Indiana and Illinois, but those in this county possessed a deep, rich, black soil, in no way less fertile or productive than the larger ones in the above mentioned states.
The wild grasses grew with great luxuriance on every kind of land. The blue joint of the prairies attained a height of five or six feet, and the luxuriant wire grass and red top grew in abundance on both openings and prairies, while immense expanses of wild rye, standing from six to eight feet in height, afforded a pleasing sight to the new comer. All of these were nutritious, and the cattle brought from the east had ample provision supplied by nature in great abundance. The ground, especially that of the prairies, was literally covered with a profusion of many kinds of wild flowers of every conceivable hue, crimson, purple, violet, orange, yellow, white, etc.
Another attraction to the pioneer was the pure, clear water, plentifully found in all parts of the county. The lands being equally well adapted to tillage and grazing, could please all classes of agriculturists. Deer were in abun- dance, and other wild animals gave zest to the pioneer's quest for them .. The streams, lakes and marshes were inhabited in great numbers by beavers, otters, minks and other fur-bearing ani- mals, whose soft coats were readily exchangeable for such "store goods" as were needed in the pioneer home. Squirrels, both black and gray, and of other varieties, were everywhere. Enormous flocks of wild geese, ducks and swans ruffled the waters of the lakes and ponds, while the wild turkey, the crane, the partridge, the quail, wood- cock, snipe, prairie chicken and wild pigeon furn- ished not only sport to the hunter, but most de- licious additions to the primitive larders. It is probable that at this time no other portion of the Union possessed so many waterfowls, or could furnish so many or varied attractions to a sportsman. "Every kind of wild fruit which is, and some kinds that are not, found in the same latitude eastward are not only lavished in superior abundance, but sometimes in superior quality," is the way an early settler of the county wrote of the attractions to the pioneer in that direction. Cranberries were so plentiful in the open, water-
covered marslies as often to make them appear in the fall like great red fields. When these ad- vantages were known to the people of the eastern ' states, it is no wonder that a great tide of im- migration set in. For at least the third time, a new race was taking "seizin" of the soil. The Indians roamed here and travelled to and fro on their mysterious trail for many successive genera- tions. Here they gathered game and fur and glided away; the fall of their moccasins striking soundless on the yielding forest carpet. The demoralized remnants of a once powerful tribe had been sent to the West, leaving a few, faint, fast-disappearing tokens of their nomadic life, but of the earlier race, the predecessors of the Indians, who can tell aught of them? In this particular portion of the state they left few signs and slight evidences of occupancy, but they were here. They lived, loved, warred, fulfilled their destiny and passed away. The Indian here next existed, fulfilled his destiny and he, too, has gone. Will the record of the third, the Caucasian, race in time to come be that of the others? In the early swarming hither of the pioneers there seems no possibility of such an accomplishment. As we look to-day, in the opening years of the Twentieth Century, at Hillsdale county in its magnificent state of completed civilization and high intellectual standing, the thought of such a passing away seems the airy nothing of an airy dream, nevertheless, two races have thus passed away. What will be the destiny of the third ?
The extinguishment of the Indian title to the lands of Hillsdale county was accomplished by the treaty negotiated by General Cass on August 29, 1821. The Chippewa, Ottawa and Potta- wattomie tribes were present in numbers, and, after the usual time passed in bargaining and in arranging details, the specific terms of the treaty were agreed upon and reduced to writing. The Pottawattomies, as the occupants of the land, and the other tribes as their allies, ceded to the United States a tract of land extending east and west nearly across the state, its description being :
Beginning on the south bank of the St. Joseph
24
HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
river of Michigan near Parc aux Vaches (a short distance above its mouth) ; thence south to a line running due east from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan ; thence along that line to the tract ceded by the treaty of Fort Meigs in 1817 [which was far to the east of Hillsdale county], or, if that tract should be found to lie entirely south of the line, then to the tract ceded by the treaty of Detroit in 1807 [the western boundary of which was twenty miles west of Lake Erie and the Detroit river] ; thence northward along that tract to a point due cast of the source of the Grand river ; thence west to the source of that river ; thence down the river on the north bank to its junction with Lake Michigan ; thence southward along the east bank of the lake to the mouth of the St. Joseph river ; thence up that river to the place of beginning.
.
From the tract thus ceded five reservations were excepted, none of them being in this county, unless one of three miles square, which was described "as situated at the village of Match-e- be-nash-o-wish, at the head of the Kekalamazoo river." might have been partially contained therein. As the Kalamazoo river has several head-water branches, and, as the Indians did not long retain possession of the reservation, there is no means of knowing its exact location, but it was probably in Jackson county. In considera- tion of this cession, the United States agreed to pay to the Ottawa Indians $1,000 a year forever, in addition to $1.500 annually for fifteen years to support a teacher, a farmer and a blacksmith. The Pottawattomies were to be paid $5,000 an- nually for twenty years, besides $1,000 a year to support a teacher and a blacksmith. This treaty is of peculiar interest, as these provisions were among the first attempts made by the U. S. government to civilize the savages. This treaty is the basis of all the land titles of Hillsdale county. As the Grand river heads in the north- west corner of the county, a small portion of Somerset township may have been left out of the land thus ceded, as the line runs west to the source of Grand river and thence down that stream to the lake, but, as the land north of this
line was also ceded only a short time later, there was no ground left for contention of title.
Hillsdale county was now the white man's land, but it lay unsurveyed and roads were not yet existent, nor could the land be purchased by prospective settlers. In 1823 a U. S. land office was established at Monroe for a district which included all the territory of this county. In 1824 civilization drew nearer to its confines, as a set- tlement was made in Lenawee county. In this year, through the influence of Gen. Lewis Cass, who held the office of governor of Michigan with most distinguished ability from 1813 to 1831, the Federal government ordered the construction of a public highway, or road of 100 feet in width, from Detroit to Chicago (with a branch from near Monroe, striking the main line near the castern line of Hillsdale county), and appro- priated $10,000 to pay for its survey, which was commenced in the spring of the succeeding year, the surveyor planning to run on straight lines.
He soon found that this would involve . so much labor in cutting a clear space through the dense woods and underbrush, and in spending so large a part of his time in searching for good routes and proper places to bridge the numerous streams, that the appropriation would be expended before the road was surveyed for one-half of the distance. So, to accomplish the duty of fully completing the survey and not exceed the $10,000, he followed the old trail we have heretofore spoken of, which became known as "the Chicago trail." It has been said that he followed this so faithfully that there was not an angle or a bend in the trail that was not followed by the road. This is doubtless an exaggerated statement, but the road presented enough turns and crookedness to partially justify it. The surveyor was, how- ever, wiser than his critics, for the trail had been selected before him by the greatest masters of woodcraft, the Indians, and probably no better route could have been taken. The road was not opened for use by the government for several years after the survey, but the fact that it was established by the government, and surveyed at an immense cost, caused immigrants to follow its
25
-
HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
line and thus was a determining factor in bring- ing the land on both sides of the road in touch with the western bound pioneers. And in the very next year after the road was surveyed, in 1826, a few prospecting parties with hunters and trappers, followed its blazes westwardly, and some of them, seeking the best place to locate, went on to Lake Michigan. At this time the blazed road was the only sign of civilization for the most of the many miles of its winding way. No white person had established a home or taken a location in the territory of Michigan west of Lenawee county.
The members of the surveying party of 1825 returned to their homes with glowing accounts of the magnificent and fertile country they had crossed, which tended largely to send into a state of "innocuous desuetude" the falsities which had been spread broadcast by people interested in the sale of lands in other states, and others who were inimical to Michigan, that the territory was a des- ert waste of insalubrious climate and its soil a dismal swamp, the home of loathsome reptiles. Even as far back as the early years of the Nineteenth Century these ideas had become prev- alent. On May 6, 1812, Congress passed a bill authorizing the survey and location of 2,000,000 acres of public lands in the territory of Michigan to be given as bounty lands to the soldiers then serving against the English, but, on account of representations of the worthlessness of the whole territory for agricultural purposes, the law was repealed in 1816 and the lands located in Illinois and Arkansas.
There was a resident of Wyandotte, Wayne county, a brave soldier of the War of 1812, who is said to have been one of the road-surveying party. His name was Capt. Moses Allen, a name to be connected forever with Hillsdale county as its pioneer of pioneers. In the first half of the year of 1826 Captain Allen, in company with John W. Fletcher and George Hubbard, made an extended prospecting tour through the whole extent of the valley of the St. Joseph river. One especially beautiful and attractive section, a fertile prairie, met his entire approval as a site for a permanent residence, and, although the land was
not yet surveyed and no title could be obtained until the survey was made, he took a squatter's privilege, and, in April, 1827, arrived here with his family and household goods, and located a claim on the east side of this prairie, since bearing the name of Allen's Prairie, but known to the Indians as Mas-co-ot-ab-si-ac, Sandcreek prairie.
Not only was Captain Allen's settlement the first within the confines of the present Hillsdale county, but it was also the first known permanent settlement of civilized man in Michigan, west of Tecumseh. Captain Allen was accompanied by a brother, who resided on the prairie for several years, but never acquired title to land. A rude cabin of logs with a puncheon floor was soon erected and here the family resided for over a year without a white neighbor east of them for fifty miles (Tecumseh), west of them for about the same distance (White Pigeon prairie), while southward rolled the forest, relieved by an occa- sional prairie, and here and there a solitary set- tler, far down into the state of Ohio and Indiana. There was not a permanent white settler's home between the little cabin of the Allen's and the north pole.
During the summer of their advent a crop of corn was raised, for it is known that in the spring of 1828 they had an empty corn crib. Campau's abandoned trading-post, cabin or tent, had formerly stood on this prairie, and the trader had here constructed one of those primitive grist- mills, made by hollowing out a large hardwood stump so that the cavity would hold a suitable amount of corn, which was ground, or rather pounded to pieces, by a large wooden pestle fastened to a springpole and worked up and down by hand. This mill was standing all ready for the use of the Allens when their first crop was ready to grind.
In June, 1828, Benaiah Jones, Jr. and family and brother came to the county and until they constructed a residence on their location at Jones- ville they resided in . the empty corn barn of Captain Allen, and here in August, 1828, was born the first white child of the county, Cordas M. Jones, the sixth son of his prolific parents.
The land was surveyed and ready for pur-
26
HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
chase by 1829 and on June 8, Moses Allen and two other settlers, who had come to the county through his representations, Benaiah Jones, Jr., and Edmund Jones appeared at the Monroe land office and there he purchased the quarter section of land on which he had located. His career in the land of his choice was of short duration, how- ever, for he labored hard to get the logs together for a substantial tavern and had the "raising" in the summer of 1829, and the buikling was not quite completed when he was taken with a sick- ness from which he died in October of the same year in which he purchased his land. His was the first settler's death of the county, and the few neighbors, who had followed him to the infant settlement, cut down a big black-cherry tree and "whip-sawed" it into boards from which a coffin was constructed. He was given the rites of a Christian burial, and the pioneer's memory will ever be kept in fragrant recollection.
Wewill now present to our readers a history of early events written by F. M. Holloway, Esq . an intelligent gentleman, who long bore a con- spicuous part in public affairs and was himself an early pioneer. The manuscript has never been printed. There is in some place a repetition of matters already spoken of by us, but, as the "point of view" is a different one, we think our readers will be pleased to see his presentation of the subjects.
CHAPTER II.
BY F. M. HOLLOWAY, ESQ.
On the 16th of October 1826, General Cass concluded a treaty with the Pottawattomies for all of their possessions east of the Mississippi river, this was identified with our territory. The removal was not carried out until 1840.
The year of 1827 was fraught with but few incidents of general interest, the extinguishment of Indian titles was still progressing, on the 19th of September General Cass concluded the last treaty with the Pottawattomies by which they ceded all of their claims to the lands in southern Michigan, a special necessity existing at this
time for the purpose of building the Chicago road through the territory.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.