Compendium of history and biography of Kalamazoo County, Mich., Part 4

Author: Fisher, David, 1827-; Little, Frank, 1823-
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago [Ill.] : A.W. Bowen & Co.
Number of Pages: 598

USA > Michigan > Kalamazoo County > Compendium of history and biography of Kalamazoo County, Mich. > Part 4

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The Indians did not make their sugar in cakes as much as we do. Their usual process was to stir it with a stick while it was cooling, thus graining it. They put this, in quantities of one- half bushels or less, into mococks, which were made of birch bark sewed together with thongs from slippery elm bark. These mococks, filled with sugar, were strung in pairs over the pony's back. making him look like an eastern donkey loaded with paniers of oranges. Thus loading

the ponies, they would bestride them and go to the "she-mo-ka-man's" cabin to "swap" for quas- gun (bread), sammock (tobacco), or any other article they wanted.

CHAPTER IV.

TOPOGRAPHY AND PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.

Nature was prodigal of her gifts when she created this section of the American Union. Kal- amazoo county is a typical county of the rich southern portion of the state. It is in the south- western part of the Lower Peninsula in the sec- ond tier of counties from the southern boundary of the state. Distant from Lansing sixty miles, lying one hundred and thirty miles nearly due west from Detroit, thirty-three miles north of In- diana and due east from Lake Michigan forty-four miles, it is very conveniently located, having fine communication with commercial centers and ex- cellent shipping facilities by the various railroads traversing it. It is in the forty-second degree of north latitude and the eighth degree of longitude west of the Washington meridian, containing the congressional townships Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 south of the base line and ranges Nos. 9, 10, 11, 12 west of the principal meridian. It comprises 368,640 acres of land according to the survey, but, by rea- son of the convergence of the range lines and errors of the first surveyors, its actual area is a few hundred acres less.

Kalamazoo county is surrounded as follows : Allegan and Barry counties on the north, Cal- houn county on the east, St. Joseph county on the south and Van Buren county on the west. There are sixteen townships within its boundaries, Al- amo, Cooper, Richland, Rose, Oshtemo, Kalama- zoo, Comstock, Charleston, Texas, Portage, Pa- vilion, Climax, Prairie Ronde, Schoolcraft, Brady and Wakeshma.

The name of Kalamazoo is of Indian origin. George Torrey in 1867 writes thus of the name: "On Toland's Prairie there had once been an In- dian village, and it was here, according to tradi- tion, that the name Kalamazoo had its origin. A friend, Mr. A. J. Sheldon, to whom the writer is

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indebted for many incidents and historical notes regarding the Indians, says in a recent letter, 'There is no reason to doubt the truth of this story, as I took great pains to ascertain the true meaning of the word while among the Indians. Schoolcraft and the other authorities say its etymology is Kee-Kalamazoo, it boils like a pot. or the boiling pot, receiving this appellation from the numerous small boiling-like eddies on the sur- face of the river now bearing the name.

"The Indian tradition is that many moons ago Toland Prairie was the site of an Indian village, where one day a wager was made that a certain Indian could not run to a specified point on the bank of the river and return to the starting place before the water, then boiling in a little pot over the campfire, should have fully boiled away. The race was made; the result has not been handed down to us, but the beautiful river was ultimately given the name it now bears, Kalamazoo, where the river boils in the pot, although at first but a small part of the stream was so called."

Geologists have placed Kalamazoo county in the "Waverly group" of geologic strata, assigned by Dana and Winchell to the carboniferous period, but by others to the upper half of the Devonian. This group extended in a circular belt around the center of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, having a width of from' twenty to eighty miles and covering fully one-half of this peninsula, or about twenty thousand square miles. This group is the reservoir of the vast accumulation of salt brine, which is the source of the great wealth of the salt factories. It also furnishes nearly all of the good building stone of the peninsula, being the source of the supply also of the "Huron grindstones" so familiarly known. This formation is thought to be the thickest, about one thousand two hundred feet, in the northern and central portions of the group.

The upper division is mostly a sand rock, having inferior beds of shales, to the depth of three hundred to three hundred fifty feet. The lower strata are mostly shales, more abundant in fossils than those of the upper division. The whole formation is filled with salt brine. This is generally stronger in the lower beds, although

in some places the order is reversed, as at Sagi- naw. The Waverly rocks must be reached by boring in this county. The depth of the super- imposed drift can only be obtained by this pro- cess. Two hundred feet or more of the drift rest upon the rock, for the Kalamazoo river has no- where cut through the alluvium to this group. The thickness of the Silurian and Devonian formations in this county are probably from four thousand to five thousand feet. These forma- tions carry coal measures in many sections, but not here. Brine from which salt can be obtained can probably be found by boring from one thou- sand two hundred to one thousand five hundred feet in any part of this section.

At the time of its first occupancy by the whites the county was a marvel of wild, untrained beauty. Its exquisite scenery rivalled the effects produced on many of the old estates of Kent and Somersetshire in England, where landscape gar- deners for centuries have exhibited their skilled artistic talent. At this early period a luxuriant growth of forest trees of primeval date covered the greater portion of the land, and these were di- versified by stretches of prairie oak-openings, marshes, bluffs and ravines, that alternated in a will yet pleasing disorder.

Three-fourths of the county was classed as "timbered lands." Numerous varieties of oak grew in these dark forests in massiveness, many of giant size. Several varieties of hickory, wal- mut, elmi, beech and maple here cast their shadow of their variegated leaves in the long, dreamy days of the Indian summertime. Basswood, black cherry, tulip, sycamore, ash, pepperage, birch, beech and cedar gave great variety to the land- scape, and, here and there, a few pines brought their solemnity to heighten the effect.

The frequent oak openings appeared like a succession of cultivated orchards, as they were scattered amid the expanses of the giant speci- mens of the heavy forests. One of the finest of these oak openings occupied the site of the pres- ent beautiful capital city of the county, and a rare wisdom has preserved many of the original trees to beautify the City of Homes in this open- ing decade of the twentieth century.

KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MICHIGAN.

The whole of the southern part of the state is picturesque and beautiful, this county well maintaining pre-eminence in this regard. The drives are interesting, presenting fine expanses of river and valley lands, hills, prairies, lakes and streams. Modern residences of artistic archi- tecture, quaint old residences dating back to early days, dales of exquisite beauty, hills of emerald verdure, orchard trees, and flelds of waving grain flit past the carriages or the automobiles of the traveler or those on pleasure bent, each mile giv- ing new charms and the whole showing a rural presentation of country life in manifold forms of beauty, utility and grace.

The pure air of this section in combination with its attractions of health and enjoyment have for years attracted thither during the enjoyable summers large numbers of people from the great cities and manufacturing towns of this and other states, and in many places the summer cottages form lively little centers of life, while in still more retired locations white tents are pitched in num- bers along the shores of the lakes and ponds, by the sides of the streams or under the trees, where the summer breezes sing sweet songs of rest to the tired children of the cities.

Compared with the vast stretches of prairie land in Indiana and Illinois, the prairies of this state are small in size and few in number. Their richness equals those larger ones, however, the black soil producing heavy and valuable crops. In this county the prairies worthy of especial mention are Prairie Ronde, Gourdneck, Gull prairie, Climax, Grand, Toland's, Dry and Gen- esee.

Prairie Ronde stands fully at the front of this number and is one of the largest, if not the very largest of the state. This level stretch of from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand acres ex- tends some distance into St. Joseph county, at least thirteen thousand acres of it belonging to Kalamazoo. This has been preserved in Ameri- can literature by James Fenimore Cooper, in his exciting pioneer story, "The Oak Openings." Today thousands of pleasant homes are located on its productive soil, making a rural scene of rare beauty.

Gull prairie has nearly three thousands acres of fertile lands, where other homes nestle under groves and orchards of charming appearance. Gourdneck prairie, of twenty-five hundred acres ; Climax, of eight hundred acres; Grand, of eight hundred acres ; Toland's, with five hundred ; Gen- esee, of four hundred, and Dry prairie, of three hundred, conclude the list of these rich plains. which, in all, comprise over twenty-one thousand acres of as fine land as the state can show.

The more or less precipitous escarpments along the margins of the river valleys are called "bluffs." They vary but slightly in height in this county, but do increase in size as they pass westward toward Lake Michigan. The township of Oshtemo claims the highest elevation of the county, the top of the bluff there being fully two hundred feet above the river and three hundred and fifty feet above Lake Michigan. The high- est point on Prairie Ronde is two hundred and seventy-eight feet above the lake and seven hun- dred and thirty above the sea. The general height of the county is from eighty to one hundred and fifty feet above the bed of the Kalamazoo river.

Kalamazoo river in an early geological period was of enormous volume, filling the valley to the height of the upper terrace from bluff to bluff. The valley, like that of the other streams, was eroded from the original level of the Southern Peninsula, this erosion dating from the Cham- plain geological era, that closely followed the sub- sidence of the immense continental glacier, whose irresistible onward movement toward the south and southwest covered the entire region between Lakes Huron and Michigan with the worn and shattered debris of the crystalline and sediment- ary rocks of the Upper Peninsula and Canada.

Powerful currents of fresh water followed the melting of the great glittering masses of ice. These, in their rapid movements toward the lower level of the lakes, excavated the various river beds of the Lower Peninsula. As the frozen masses of ice slowly disappeared under the high- er temperature of the lower altitude the supply of water furnished to the streams diminished, with the result that they became slowly and stead- ily smaller in volume, until, when the glacial ice

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had all melted they shrank to their present size, leaving the sharply defined terraces to mark the various periods of their intenser activity.

The river has its sources in Hillsdale and Jackson counties and pursues its way with many windings northwesterly to Lake Michigan. The current is gentle, except where "rifts," as the small rapids of the stream are called, interrupt its placidity. Estimating its winding course to be one hundred and fifty miles, its total fall approx- imates three hundred feet. Its volume is quite uniform when heavy rains or floods do not in- crease its size. This regular flow is caused, first, by the numerous unfailing springs pouring their limped waters into its channels; second, by its receipts from the large number of lakes and marshes that hold back much of the accumulated water supplies of early spring and by the level character of the country through which it flows.

From the days of the first settlement of the county the lower fifty miles of this river was used as a waterway, many crafts traversing it until the construction of the railroads rendered them useless.

Canoes, barges and flatboats, and even steam- boats, have sailed for pleasure and for profit upon its tranquil current. The principal branches of this river within the county are Augusta creek, Gull lake outlet, Portage creek and Spring brook. At Augusta, Galesburg and at Kalamazoo the stream has been diverted to great service in man- ufacturing. The townships of Ross, Charleston, Comstock, Cooper and Kalamazoo are traversed by the river and much of the consequence and importance of the county seat in the pioneer days and later periods came from its location on this beautiful river.

Over half of the county is drained by the Kal- amazoo river, the remainder coming into the wa- tershed of St. Joseph river of Lake Michigan. Ross, Richland, Cooper, Alamo, Kalamazoo, Comstock west of Charleston and Portage and portions of Oshtemo, Texas and Pavilion are in the Kalamazoo valley, Climax. Wakeshma, Brady, Schoolcraft and Prairie Ronde, with parts of Charleston, Portage, Texas and Pavilion, are in that of St. Joseph river.

Other streams worthy of mention are the Big and Little Portage creeks and Bear creek, drain- ing the southern portion of the county, and the one that, having its source in the township of Alamo, flows into the Paw Paw river in Van Buren county. The other streams of fair pro- portions flow southerly from Schoolcraft and prairie Ronde. The lakes abound with fish of various kinds, which afford fine sport to fisher- men, while the streams are stocked with trout "and here and there a grayling."

The springs of the county are mostly crystal- line in their purity and softness. Some of them however, possess mineral properties, and one on section 27, in Cooper township, has deposited a large quantity of calcareous tufa. About ten thousand acres of Kalamazoo county are cov- ered with water in the form of lakes and ponds. There are about forty of these, ranging in size from fifteen miles in circumference to much smaller dimensions. Those large enough to be designated as lakes are Gull, having 2,000 acres of surface: Austin, with 1,200; Indian, 700; Long, 610; Rawson, 400; Gourdneck, 370; Eagle, 350; West, 300; Paw Paw, 170; Crooked, 150; Howard, 150.

Gull Lake lies twelve miles northwest of Kalamazoo city. Its greatest length is six miles. Formerly reached only by a wagon road, in 1887 the Chicago, Kalamazoo & Saginaw Railroad brought it into direct touch with the outside world. From Hawkes Landing carriages run to the railroad at Yorkville. The waters of this lake are clear and full of fish and they afford ex- cellent bathing facilities. The irregular shore line with its grassy beaches romantically touches meadows and hillsides, forests and clearings, cultivated lands and unbroken wildwood. A de- lightful steamer trip of from twelve to fifteen miles is not the least of the attractions of this favored spot. A grove of several acres in extent stretches for some distance along the shore where ample hotel accommodations and facilities for camping parties are afforded.

Long Lake, eight miles south of this city, is touched by a spur of the Grand Rapids & In- (liana Railroad and quite a popular summer re-

1142743

KALAMAZOO COLLEGE. By courtesy of the Gazette.

BRONSON PARK.

KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MICHIGAN.

sort of village proportions has been here devel- oped. The lake is from four to five miles long in its extreme length and on its surface several steam and gasoline launches glide on frequent pleasure trips. The surroundings on this gem of lakes are very handsome. One of the most beau- tiful of the slopes of land stretching gracefully down from the uplands to the water's edge has been thickly covered with summer cottages. Many of them are truly artistic and of generous propor- tions.

Gun Lake, twenty miles from Kalamazoo city, has been made the permanent summer camping place of several of the city clubs, who wisely chose one of the finest of nature's creations to occupy and show their earnest appreciation of out- door life in such surroundings.

White's Lake, in close proximity to this city, is noted as a popular picnicking resort. A vaude- ville theater and other attractions draws thither many whose tastes or means prevent them from going to more distant locations for recreation.

CHAPTER V. PIONEER LIFE.

A. D. P. Van Buren, an early settler, gave a number of interesting and gossipy articles on life and customs of the early days in a local news- paper, which space forbids us to give in full, but from which we extract sufficient to indicate something of the wild, free and independent life of the man who lived in close touch with nature as a pioneer. He says : "My parents, a sister and myself, on the first of October, 1836, left our home at New York Mills, Oneida county, N. Y., and took passage at Yorkville, one-half mile dis- tant, in the line boat 'Magnet,' on the Erie Canal, for Buffalo. As we left, we heard the whistle of the locomotive at Utica, two miles east. Rail- way travel in New York was completed to that city at the time. The next time we heard the 'whistle' it was in 1845, in the young and pictur- esque village of Kalamazoo. One week's travel on the Erie Canal brought us to Buffalo. Here, taking a new steamer, the 'United States,' we

made a speedy trip up the lake to Detroit. The boat was crowded with people, mostly emigrants from various parts of the East, bound for the West. Each family had with them all the par- aphernalia for starting new homes. My father and son-in-law, Edwin Dickinson, had the year before visited Michigan, and, after making a pur- chase of land, returned. Two of my brothers, Martin and Ephraim, had preceded us, going in the spring of 1836 to erect a log house for the family, who were to come in the fall. As we stopped off the steamer at Detroit, we found Ephraim, who had come from Milton, Calhoun county, one hundred and twenty-five miles dis- tant, with two yokes of oxen before a lumber wagon, to take the family and their goods to the new home.

"Detroit at that time was the rendezvous for all emigrants who came west by the lake. Here they stopped to get their outfit, if they had come without it. Here they made preparations, got needed supplies and started out to begin a new life in the woods. There were some half-dozen not very imposing brick blocks, and no very grand buildings of any kind at that time in Detroit. There was not much prepossessing about the place, the muddy streets discounted largely on the whole town. They, although apparently im- passable from this mud, were yet full of the stir and turmoil of business, mostly of the teams pass- ing and repassing. Conspicuous among these were the emigrant wagons, of various and non- descript kinds, sizes and construction,-some with the rude canvas cover and some open, some drawn by one yoke of oxen, some by two, and some by .three. Occasionally horses were used. These wagons were loaded with boxes filled with house- hold goods, the largest ones being placed at the bottom, the next smaller on these, and so on to the top. Then the various articles of the house- hold paraphernalia were 'stuck on' or fastened here and there upon or between the boxes, look- ing as if they had budded, blossomed and branched out from the load. The sturdy emigrant and his resolute wife were seated in front on the load, and cropping out here and there on the boxes behind there were bonnets and little hoods, caps

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and curly heads, and occasionally, following be- hind, hitched with a rope to the wagon, was 'old crumple-horn,' while various other cattle, of diverse and sundry ages and sizes, were driven by some of the older boys, attended by 'old Bose,' the dog. We followed, on leaving Detroit, a wagon track, which for the first thirty-six miles wound through heavy timber lands. It seemed to us as the worst road that mortal ever traveled. Some idea may be had of its condition from the phrases and stories then in vogue about it. It was called a hard road to travel,' 'one continuous mud hole,' 'a road without a bottom.'

"The first interior county of the state was set- tled in 1817. This was Oakland, on the great In- dian trail connecting Detroit with the Saginaw valley. The counties further west were visited by the first pioneer settlers about 1827 and the tide of immigration increased rapidly for ten years, when the conditions were such as to preclude the occupancy of more public lands. A well beaten Indian trail traversed the state from east to west, which divided the center of the state, one leading southwesterly across along the route later used by the Michigan Central Railroad, the other taking a more southerly course.

"When we were established in the new home, we began to cast about us for means of sub- sistence. As was most usual, when the pioneer reached his lands here and erected his cabin, his money was all gone. We were left to our own · resourse,-labor. This was all the capital we had. My brothers had cut hay for the cattle from the marsh near by. But we must have winter stores for the family and corn for the cattle, the pigs, and the hens. The latter two were yet to be pro- cured and paid for somehow or other. The settlement on Goguac was about five years old. This was our Egypt for wheat, corn, potatoes, and other necessary supplies. There we found a chance to husk corn and dig potatoes on shares, and by dint of various kinds of labor we secured some wheat and pork. Many things were not to be had for money or labor. Here the rich and poor were on a level. Wheat and corn suggested a gristmill. The nearest one was at Comstock on the west or Marshall on the east,-some seven- teen miles to either of them.

"At the new home all was virginal. Out-of- doors was beautiful, wild Michigan. Our cattle had a boundless range to feed and roam over in the oak paths and Indian trails that meandered through them. From the door of our log house we could often see long files of Indians, on foot and on ponies, wending their way along on these trails that were in places worn down to a depth of two feet. There always appeared to us to be strange, romantic history connected with the lives of these wandering children of the forest. Deer also could be seen feeding at leisure, or trooping by the door in droves. Occasionally in the night we would hear the lone cry of the wolf. The deer went foraging through the corn fields, or snuf- fling round the 'betterments' for a pig, while the fox paid nightly devoirs to our henroost. The weather remained remarkably fine through the fall. Such Indian summer days used once in a while to visit us in New York, but here they seemed to be 'to the manor born,' and we had them by the week full.

"As there was never any wheat raised the first year, this was the discouraging time with the settler. Corn was sooner raised, and 'Johnny- cake' for a while was the staff of life. Pork was scarce because hogs were scarce. Every thing of the cattle kind was used, the cow for milk and butter, and the ox for labor. A cow or stout heifer was sometimes worked by the side of an ox. In the spring of 1837 provisions of every kind were very scarce and dear. Wheat was over two dollars a bushel, corn and oats very high where they could be bought at all, potatoes were ten shillings a bushel, and it was necessary to go to Prairie Ronde, a round trip of about sixty miles, to get them at that price. There was a primitive gristmill one-quarter of a mile from our home, in a small Indian hamlet on the banks of a rush bordered lake. On several occasions we had no- ticed the squaws grinding corn at this mill. It was constructed in this manner-a long pole or sapling was pinned to a tree like a wellsweep, the lower part of which was pestle shaped; the top of the stump was hollowed out to hold the corn. The sweep was then worked up and down by one of the squaws, while another steadied and directed the pestle, which, as it came down,

KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MICHIGAN.

mashed the corn in this crude mortar. We con- cluded not to take our grist to this mill, and as the Battle Creek mill was not running, we went to the one at Marshall. This with an ox team was a two or three days' trip.

"We would occasionally kill a deer, and then venison would supply our tables with meat. My father had brought five hundred pounds of cod- fish from New York and this was exchanged for pork with our neighbors. This exchanging was called paying the 'dicker.' This 'dicker' was all the money we had and was of denominations so various that we can not name them. Each settler was a banker, and all his movable property (large and small) was his bank stock. He paid for an oxyoke by giving its equivalent in so many pounds of pork. This was the first original start or trade, giving the products of one kind of labor for those of another. 'Dicker' was all the money the settlers had until real money found its way into the settlement. The pioneer did not take the poet's advice, 'neither a borrower nor a lender be.' During the first decade of his life here he 'spelled his way along' with the axe and the plow ; borrowing sometimes was the very means to help him out of difficulty and set his enterprise going again."

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Compendium of history and biography of Kalamazoo County, Mich., Part 4

Author: Fisher, David, 1827-; Little, Frank, 1823- Publication date: 1906 Publisher: Chicago [Ill.] : A.W. Bowen & Co. Number of Pages: 598

Author: Fisher, David, 1827-; Little, Frank, 1823-
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago [Ill.] : A.W. Bowen & Co.
Number of Pages: 598