History of Bay County, Michigan, and representative citizens, Part 4

Author: Gansser, Augustus H., 1872-
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond & Arnold
Number of Pages: 738

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gesture, 'we Indians USE a great deal of whis- key, but WE do not MAKE it.'" This was a very pert Indian version of the scripture quo- tation : "He that delivereth it unto thee hatlı the greater sin."

The home relations of the red men have ever been the subject of interesting study, and the savants who early visited these parts gave vastly different views of the life of the aborig- ines during the first 30 years of the 19th cen- tury. Polygamy was not uncommon among the Hurons, the more influential chiefs usually having several wives. A missionary named Catlin made a study of the Indian tribes of Michigan, and he found that, like the tribes of the East, the drudgery of the family devolved entirely on the women. The women carried the baggage on the march, and erected the tepee when a camping ground was reached. The women gathered the fuel, started the camp-fire, cooked the simple meal and patiently served the lord of the household, who disdained all work, as fit only for pale faces and women. Even the little patch of corn was cultivated by the women. The warriors followed the chase or the war-path, leaving all domestic and agri- cultural cares to the women. For untold ages this had been the life of the red men, and when the white men invaded their hunting grounds, and compelled the Indian to till the ground, when he ceased to be a hunter and became a farmer, his whole existence was changed, and many people attribute the gradual extinction of the Indians to a pining away of the race for the wild and unfettered hunter's life of their an- cestors.

While the Indian women were shown but little tenderness by the stoical warriors, and their miserable and degraded life was one in- cessant round of labor and care, there were many instances of touching devotion among the Hurons. A story is told of a dying Indian

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woman, who expressed a great desire for a mess of corn. A famine in these parts made the gratification of her wish seemingly impossi- ble. but her devoted husband lost no time. Through the almost untrodden wilderness he hurried to the settlement at Detroit, more than 100 miles away, told his troubles to a German pioneer, secured enough corn to fill his blanket, and immediately started back home with his load. The last few days of earth for his stricken squaw were cheered by the food secured under such trying circum- stances.

While the pioneers found much that was laudable, and still more that was ridiculous and condemnable in the daily life of the red men, the children of the forest also found much sub- ject for hilarity on the other side. In a coun- cil of the early pioneers, government agents, surveyors and trappers, with the Chippewas on the shore of Saginaw Bay, an aged chief re- minded the white men that the Indians had not only a surer way of getting a wife than the pale faces, but that an Indian was also more certain of getting one eventually to his liking. Through a French interpreter his argument was given something like this: "White man court and court, maybe one whole year, maybe two year, before he marry. Well. maybe he get good wife, maybe no! Maybe her very cross, scold so soon as he wake in the morn- ing, scold all day, scold all night! All the same he must keep her! White man's law say he must keep her! Well, how do Indians do? In- dian sees good, industrious squaw, he goes to her, places two forefingers close beside each other, make two look like one, look squaw straight in face, see her smile, and take her home! No danger her be cross, no, no! Squaw knows he throw her away if she be cross, and take another ! Squaw love to eat meat. No hus- band, no meat! Squaw do everything to please

husband, big chief brings plenty of meat, and we be happy always!"

The Indians never chastised their children, thinking that it would damp their spirits, check their love of independence, and cool their mar- tial ardor, all of which the parents wished to encourage. Reason will guide our children, when they come to the use of it, argued the wise men of the tribe, and before that their faults cannot be very great. Boys were given uncon- trolled freedom. Respect for their father and old age were alone inculcated into their young hearts. Among their own it was a great crime to steal or tell a lie, but to an enemy, and every pale face was long treated as a hereditary en- emy, it was right to do so, for they must be injured wherever possible. The warriors en- deavored by example to train the youth to dili- gence in hunting and fishing, and to animate them with patience, courage and fortitude in war, as well as to inspire them with contempt of danger and pain and to court death, which among the Hurons were qualities alone worth possessing. When a famous chief became too old to indulge in the chase, or to go on the war-path, he devoted his time to exhorting the youths of his tribe. In glowing phrases he would recount the great deeds of their tribe. Daily the children gathered about these aged chiefs among the tepees on the Saginaw, and DeTocqueville recites how they urged the young men to be brave and cunning in war, and to defend their hunting grounds against all en- croachments. "Never suffer your squaws or little ones to want, and at all times protect them from insult and from danger. Respect the aged. Never betray a friend. Be revenged on your enemies. Drink not the poisonous strong water of the pale faces, for it is sent by the bad spirit to destroy our race." Alas! Too few heeded this last appeal, and pathetically it is written :

HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY

For plagues do spread, and funeral fires increase, None can the wrath of the Manitou the Great appease Since to the poisoned waters of the paleface, all are slaves !

The sage chief counseled them to fear not death, for none but cowards really die. "The brave warrior goes to the happy hunting grounds, the coward becomes a tortured spirit before Manitou the Great. Love and adore the Good Spirit, who made us all, who supplies our hunting grounds, and keeps all alive." Then with hands and eyes uplifted toward heaven, he would recount his deeds in war and peace, and thank the Great Spirit for keeping him so long in health and strength. "Yet like a de- cayed prairie tree do I now stand alone among you. The friends of my youth, the compan- ions of my sports, my toils and my dangers, rest their heads on the bosom of our mother earth. My sun is fast setting behind the West- ern hills, and I feel it will soon be night with me. But you will soon be men, then must you prove worthy of your forefathers!"

While the Ottawas and other tribes wor- shipped the sun, the Hurons were content to erect at odd intervals in their midst some hid- eous idol, which they adored as their talisman, until some defeat in war, a famine or other mishap to the tribe, appeared to indicate that the potency of their little Manitou was no longer a saving grace. About 1840 some mis- sionaries held a church service on the west shore of the Saginaw River, two miles from its mouth. Trappers, hunters, fishermen and traders came together for miles around to hear once again a service so rare in the wilderness. A few Huron Indians stood outside of the cir- cle of worshipers, speculating on the trend of the strange festival before them. They pre- sumed the white men were asking for some- thing, and the guileless children of the forest wondered if they were getting their loudly ex-

pressed wishes fulfilled by their Manitou. As the missionaries exhorted for an hour, and more, the Hurons concluded they were not get- ting much encouragement from on high. They marveled at the perseverance and eloquence with which this appeal to Manitou was pressed. When the pale faces joined in singing a plain- tive hymn, one savage was heard remarking to the other : "Hear them now in despair, cry- ing with all their might !"

A good story is told of the first territorial Governor-Stevens T. Mason. A number of workingmen were erecting a warehouse for the Governor on a cold fall day, and among the idllers looking on was a Huron warrior, in the scanty attire of his tribe. "Hark ye, friend," said the Governor to the brave, "why don't you work like these men, and get decent clothes to cover you?" "Why you no work, Governor?" replied the Huron. "I work with my head," said the Governor. "and therefore need not work with my hands. You go kill a deer for me, and I will give you a shilling." The Indian ere long brought the carcass of a good-sized buck. The Governor asked him why he did not skin it? "Deer am dead, give me my shill- ing, Governor. Give me another shilling and I will skin it for you," which was done, but the Governor plotted to get even. Some time after, the Governor wanted a message taken to the Governor at Toledo, and he hired the same Indian to deliver it, but as the Indian demanded an exhorbitant messenger fee, Mason asked the brother official to chastise the red rascal. On the way this Indian met one of Governor Mason's regular employees, and by claiming that the Governor told him to give the letter to the Governor's old trusty, the latter was in- duced to deliver the letter to the Toledo dis- ciplinarian, and got soundly thrashed for his pains. Governor Mason was very wrathy when he heard his trusty's report, but the sav-

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age had vanished into the interior. At a coun- cil held in 1836, preparatory to the ceding of 40,000 acres of the Chippewas' reserve to the United States, Governor Mason found Chief Ma-sha-way occupying a prominent place among his nation. When asked why he had played such tricks on the Governor, he merely pointed to his forehead, saying: "Headwork, Governor, headwork!" The pioneers enjoyed many a laugh over the recital of the Gov- ernor's discomfiture.

DeTocqueville found that the majority of the tepees or wigwams along the Saginaw shore consisted of a few poles driven into the ground with a few mats thrown over them. In this far Northern latitude a good camp-fire was their substitute for warm bed clothes. In the dead of winter they often encountered fam- ines, when a handful of meal and a bit of water was their only food for days at a time. Equally startling is his recital of the practices of their medicine men. A cave in the side of a sandhill was given a white heat, when those suffering from rheumatism and similar diseases entered the hot bath, and amid the steam and smoke looked like fiends infernal. After many in- cantations, the medicine men and the sick rush out of the inferno, straight into the ice-cold river. This must have been on the principle of "kill or cure," although numerous cures were actually effected by this drastic treatment.

The Indians of the valley enjoyed hunt- ing. and did not follow their game merely for the sake of the venison. The Hurons loved the adventure and excitement of the chase and for their great tribal hunts they prepared by fasting, dreaming and other superstitious ob- servances. A certain district which was to be hunted over was encircled, and the game driven to a common center, where it was killed in the primitive manner, of the aborigines, for few firearms had found their way into this secluded

nook of the Northwest. In the early fall or early spring the Indians sometimes chased the game out on thin ice, when it was easily se- cured. Deer were much sought after for their hides and venison, but the trappers early taught the Indians of this vicinity the value of the beaver skins, and the Chippewas and kindred tribes of Huron extraction were far-famed hunters and trappers. They secured the beav- ers by placing themselves on the cut dike, which enclosed the busy beaver village, and when the beavers ran out to see why their water was running out, they were easily captured. In winter a hole was made in the ice, to which the beavers would come to breathe, only to be snatched by the remorseless hunters. A bear was never attacked by the Indians single- handed, if they could avoid a fight. Their tom- ahawks and stone or flint battle-axes made lit- tle impression on a fighting bear, and the war- riors respected his prowess, and sang of it, as they did of the industry and intelligence of the beavers. Dogs were the only domestic animals found among the Hurons, and they were not well treated, being left to find their own food, and proving a nuisance to missionaries and travelers, but they were invaluable to the red man in the chase.

The Chippewas never ate their victuals raw, but rather overboiled them, and for a long time they had no use for salt, pepper or other condi- ment. An Indian chief, being invited by some trappers to a feast in the wilderness, saw them use some mustard, and out of curiosity put a spoonful into his mouth. The result can be imagined. Wishing to escape ridicule, he made desperate efforts to conceal his torture, but violent sneezing and tears streaming from his eyes told their own story. His hosts ex- plained how mustard should be used, but the brave never after touched the "boiling yellow," as he called it. The Chippewas apparently had

HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY

cast-iron constitutions and capacious stomachs. They were known to live without food for many days, and seemingly did not suffer for it. On the other hand they would sit down to a feast, and prove regular gluttons, it being a rule with them to never leave anything on the table. All must be eaten, and the rule never troubled them much.

The remnant of Sauks in the Far West ap- pear to have been more civilized than the Chip- pewas of Michigan, who drove them from this valley. Dr. Carver, for instance, found the Sauks' houses built of well-cut and well-fitted planks, with cozy rooms, while their conquer- ors in "O-Sauk-e-non" still lived in shabby shacks or shabbier tepees.

The war and ceremonial dances of the In- dians living within the confines of what is now Bay County varied little from those of all other Western tribes. Usually some 40 or 50 warriors, and at times as many more squaws, would exe- cute one of their fantastic dances about a huge fire. With their monotonous chant, a violent stamping of the feet, and peculiar contortions of the body and arms, they kept time with the chant, broken now and then by ear-piercing shrieks, and demoniac howls. The war-dance and the medicine-dance were pantomimes, and more elaborate than the other Indian dances. De Tocqueville rather liked the calumet, or pipe of peace dance, and also the marriage dance, given when some chief of note took unto him- self a wife. In the Chippewa medicine-dance, their medicine men used animals' heads and all other imaginable toggery to complete their gro- tesque and startling make-ups. These Indian dances were an event along the valley up to 40 years ago, and whenever a dance was planned all the early settlers made an effort to be pres- ent. It broke the monotony of hard work and isolation for them, and while the Indian cere- monies were often shockingly suggestive, and in

the later years made even more diabolical by the Indians taking strong liquors to stir up their passions, before and during the dances, still it was in the nature of a weird show, and gave the scattered settlers an opportunity to meet and greet one another. The early Ger- man settlers from Franken, in Bavaria, who created the township of Frankenlust out of the wilderness, and whose sons and daughters are to-day scattered all over the county, thriv- ing farmers and business men and women, be- ing very devout, looked on these Indian dances with horror. To them the dances were savage idolatry, and for years they esteemed it a griev- ous sin to even look at the medicine-dance! Many of the other pioneers to the valley came to trade with the Indians, and some of the more adventurous even dressed as the aborigines did, and took part in the dances. Well might a Longfellow sing :

Should you ask where Nawadaha

Found these dances wild and wayward,

Found these legends and traditions, I should answer, I should tell you, "In the birds' nests of the forest,

In the lodges of the beaver,

In the hoof-prints of the bison,

In the eyry of the eagle! "All the wild-fowl sang them to him.

In the morelands and the fen-lands,

In the melancholy marshes!" -Adapted from The Song of Hiawatha.

The Hurons were far-famed as orators, and the early settlers often listened for hours to Chief O-ge-ma-ke-ga-to and other great men of the tribes wandering about these parts recite the great deeds of their great warriors. They would tell of hunting with Tecumseh, and the old men of the tribe would grow eloquent in speaking of Pontiac, whom they had seen in all his splendor as a leader and orator. Their tradi- tions tell us of his visit to the wigwams on the Saginaw, where he met in council the chiefs

DOLSEN PUBLIC SCHOOL, Bay City, E. S.

FREMONT PUBLIC SCHOOL, Bay City, E. S.

.......

WASHINGTON PUBLIC SCHOOL, Bay City, E. S.

BAY CITY HIGH SCHOOL, Bay City, E. S.

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of the Chippewas, Dakotahs and Objibwas, on his mission of arousing all these scattered tribes for one concerted effort against the pale faces, who were slowly but surely dispossessing his race of their favorite hunting grounds. He could not stop the onward march of civil- ization, great as was his native genius and abil- ity, but he did stir the hearts of the red men, as they had never been stirred before or since. His race has no written records, and the recital of his daring, eloquence and generalship is now but a tradition among the old men of the tribes he led. His deeds have been but charily com- memorated by the historians of an inimical but stronger race. Of Pontiac the old chiefs were wont to tell, how he told the emissaries of the King of England, that he would call him "UNCLE" but never "KING." Pontiac, too, re- alized the advantages of this distant valley and, if we are to believe the traditions of his de- scendants, he frequently hunted in these parts.

Certain it is, that the valley was a favorite camping ground of the Indians. Along the shores of the Kawkawlin and the other tribu- taries of bay and river, from the time of the first pale face explorer to the present day, are found the mounds where sleep all that was mortal of these children of the forest and prairie. In some of them are found to this day the weap- ons, wampum and other trinkets, that were placed with the dead for use on their journey to another and a happier hunting ground. The Indian collection of the Pioneer Society in the Capitol at Lansing owes some of its finest spec- imens to this valley. The mass graves found by the early settlers spoke of death in battle and death in pestilence, for smallpox and the plague often brought whole tribes to the verge of extinction. So great were the attractions and advantages of this valley to the red men, that for centuries it was considered the most thickly populated by the red men of Michigan.

Not even the superstitions about evil spirits dwelling in the dismal forest on the shores of Saginaw Bay could keep the natives away from a spot so blessed with all that went to make it an ideal place for human habitations, whether those habitations be the wigwams of untutored savages, or the palatial summer homes of 20th century captains of industry.

When, in 1849, Longfellow entertained at his home in Boston the famous Ojibwa chief, Kah-ge-ga-bowh, he heard much of this won- derful valley, and much of the traditions and legends so beautifully blended together in his immortal poems. "Evangeline" and "The Song of Hiawatha," centered about these beloved hunting grounds of the race his genius immor- talized. The Acadians driven from their homes find protection, food and profitable em- ployment amid the hunting lodges of the Sag- inaw, although they are wanderers still and Evangeline seeks her Gabriel in vain on the banks of the Saginaw. He, too, is restless, seeking, hoping for that loving heart, that alas, was not to find him in this world, until his weary spirit was ready to soar to the spirit re- gion, whence none return. And the pale faces who came in the middle of the 19th century, they, too, had heard this poet of the red men, and the enterprising colony on the west shore of the Saginaw River, which this very year, will become the West Side of Greater Bay City, was named "Wenonah" after the mother of Hi- awatha, who gave her beautiful young life that Hiawatha might live.

And the West-Wind came at evening, Walking lightly o'er the prairie, Whispering to the leaves and blossoms, Bending low the flowers and grasses, Found the beautiful Wenonah,

Lying there among the lilies,

Wooed her with his words of sweetness,

Wooed her with his soft caresses, Till she bore a son in sorrow,

HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY

Bore a son of love and sorrow. Thus was born my Hiawatha, Thus was born the child of wonder; But the daughter of Nokomis, Hiawatha's gentle mother, In her anguish died deserted By the West-Wind, false and faithless,

By the heartless Mudjekeewis. -The Song of Hiawatha.

Can there be any doubt what region the poet had in mind, what scenes he pictured when he wrote :

Now, o'er all the dreary Northland,

Mighty Peboan, the Winter, Breathing on the lakes and rivers, Into stone had changed their waters. From his hair he shook the snowflakes, Till the plains were strewn with whiteness,

One uninterrupted level, As if, stooping, the Creator With his hand had smoothed them over. Through the forest, wild and wailing, Roamed the hunter on his snow-shoes ; In the village worked the women, Pounded maize, or dressed the deer-skin; And the young men played together On the ice the noisy ball-play. -The Song of Hiawatha.

Passing from the enchanted realm of the poet and seer to the ever present, grim reality, we find that the Indians were very num- erous here when the first permanent set- tlers arrived, being variously estimated at from 2,500 to 5,000. As late as 1865 they numbered about 2,000, but after the tribe ceded its last reservation of 40,000 acres to the government, many of the Indian families removed to the agency at Isa- bella, and the Indian settlements at Saganing, Indiantown, and Quanicassee. Very reluct- antly they gave up the arms of the huntsman, and took up the plow and the harrow. While some are very industrious and even successful as up-to-date agriculturists, the majority eke out a miserable existence in shacks but little bet-

ter than their ancestors used centuries ago. In- tercourse with the white race, their changed lives, occupation and surroundings have robbed them of that robust physique and fiery spirit, which in past generations made a smoke-filled wigwam a palace for the hardy aborigine, and at all times preferable to the confinement of a white man's stone mansion. Broken in health, they are also broken in spirit. Little of ro- mance clusters about the poorly clad, frail sur- vivors of a once powerful race, who still live within this county. There is little about their poverty-stricken shacks that would induce one to call them, as of old, the noble red men! Time, exposure, and contamination with all that is most degrading and injurious in our own boasted civilization, are slowly but surely wiping out the last remnants of the nation of Hurons and the tribe of Chippewas.

But lately, the community was shocked at the recital of a local Indian on a rampage. Filled with liquor, he terrorized a West Side resort with a vicious looking knife. A burly guardian of the peace stepped in, and the drink- crazed brave was easily landed in limbo, where next morning he begged meekly enough to be allowed to go to his shack on the Kawkawlin, where every cent he so recklessly squandered would have meant so very, very much to his helpless family. A week later we read, with pitying interest, of the pangs of hunger, of cold and privation in another such shack, where a poor Indian woman lies in the last throes of consumption, getting only such care and nour- ishment as the poor authorities of Bangor township can provide. Alas! How the once mighty race has fallen ! But let us draw a veil over, the grim scene! Let us as a strong and prosperous people, however, never forget that after all they were the original owners of all this vast territory, and that they received little enough, when they were dispossessed. Let us

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accord them in their declining days something better than the crumbs that fall from our mu- nicipal table in alms and charities. They, too, are a twig from Adam's tree; they, too, have souls. And they, perhaps more than all other living persons within the confines of prosperous Bay County, should merit our sympathy, our encouragement, and substantial remembrance.

Thousands of dollars are annually sent from this part of Michigan to the yellow races in Asia, and the black races of Africa, for mis- sionary effort, while a dying race of red men, at our very doors, to whom we really owe something, appear to be entirely forgotten. They have a smacking of our civilization, it is true, and most of them profess the God of our fathers. Let us then treat them as broth- ers, aye, as brothers in need, and accord them every encouragement in our power. Then when the sun shall have set on the last of the Hurons, we may have no vain regrets. For the blood and the bitterness of the past, where the rival

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History of Bay County, Michigan, and representative citizens, Part 4

Author: Gansser, Augustus H., 1872- Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Chicago : Richmond & Arnold Number of Pages: 738

Author: Gansser, Augustus H., 1872-
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond & Arnold
Number of Pages: 738