USA > Michigan > Branch County > History of Branch county, Michigan, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 8
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In the spring of 1$25. the chief surveyor began his work. planning to run on nearly straight lines. He soon found. however, that if he followed this plan, cutting a vista for his compass through the dense woods, and spending a large part of his time in hunting up good routes and good places for bridges, the money would all be expended before he should have half completed his task. So he determined to follow the " Chicago trail," the old pathway which the Indians had followed from time immemorial in passing between Detroit and the point at the mouth of Chicago River where the great city of the West now stands.
This he did so faithfully that it is said there was not an angle. bend. or turn of the Indian trail which was not pre- served by the " Chicago Road." as the new thoroughfare was soon universuly called. Some of these meanderings were afterwards straightened by the authorities. and yet even now a glance at the map will show that there are au- gles cuough in the present road to give good reason for erediting this statement. The dagmen were sent ahead as far as they could be seen, the bearings taken, the distance chained, and the results noted in the feld-book ; then the dagmen were again seut ahead, the axemen meantime blazing the trees fifty feet on each side of the central line.
It was not a very bad plan. though it caused considerable crookedness. The Indians had avoided the worst marshes. which were the principal obstructions to road-making, and. what was equally important. they had selected the bes: fording-places of the creeks and rivers that could be found.
The fords, too, had been improved by the squaws, who had carried gravel and mail stones, year after year. in their " mworks. er 'ark baskas. waking s. lid the bottoms of the streams, so the penles confi ereces without sinking in the mire, and soaking the seanty household goods, which
35
HISTORY OF BRANCH COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
were loaded upon them. The road was not opened by the government for several years after the survey, but the fact that it was surveyed and established as a road caused emi- gration to follow that line, and the emigrants here and there did a little something toward making it passable.
As early as 1825, and probably before, there was a trading-post established where the Coldwater Cemetery (Oak Grove) now is. The owners were Loranger & Foster. In the year just named the late Mr. Marantelle, of Mendon, St. Joseph Co., though then only a French stripling of eighteen, had charge of the post. At that time, as stated by Mr. Marantelle during his life, the Sacs and Fores, and perhaps other Western Indians, among whom the afterwards celebrated Black Hawk was the most prominent, were in the habit of going annually to Maklen, Canada, to obtain annuities allowed them by the British government.
When returning from this trip in 1825, they stopped at the post in charge of Marantelle, to trade, that being the last one before reaching Chiengo. They dismounted and tied their ponies, and in a few moments the room was full of braves and squaws. Black Hawk, armed with a long lance, stood grim and stately in their midst. The boy soou had his hands full selling his goods to his dark-skinned customers, and occasionally purchasing some article of forest produce which they had to sell.
While the bargaining was at its height, a squaw offered to sell young Marantelle a fine smoked deer-skin, which he immediately recognized as one which he had bought a few days before, and which had his mark (16 | -) on the corner. Ile immediately seized and claimed it, but the squaw clung to the other end, and both pulled lustily at the coveted article. The Indians began to crowd around. Black Hawk advanced with impressive mien through the throng, and laid his lance across the skin ; either designing to command the peace or possibly purposing to end the dispute by taking possession of the contested article himself. But Marantelle immediately picked up another deer-skin from his pile, and laying it down beside the one claimed by the squaw, showed the two corresponding marks to Black Ilawk and his braves.
" llow ! How !" exclaimed the chieftain, lifting his lanee and relinquishing the skin to the bold boy. " llow ! How!" cried all the Indians and squaws, as they drove the dishonest one out of doors, and then returned more eager to buy than before. So pleased were they with young Marantelle's be- havior. that before they left they purchased between five and six hundred dollars' worth of goods.
As early as 1826, a few prospecting-parties began to pass westward along the Chicago road, looking for the best places for settlement, some of them going through as far as Luke Michigan. There was still, however, no white man, save an occasional Indian trader, residing west of Lenawee County, in the Territory of Michigan. In November, 1826, the territory of Branch County was brought under municipal jurisdiction by an aet of the legislative council, which declared that all the country within the territory to which the Indian title was extinguished by the treaty of Chicago should be attached to and compose a part of the county of Lenawee. On the 12th of April, 1827, another act enacted that all the territory thus annexed to Lenawee
County should constitute the township of St. Joseph. This township must have contained at least ten thousand square miles.
In the spring of that year (1827 ), the first settlement was made in Hillsdale County, at Allen's Prairie, and the same season the earliest pioneers of St. Joseph County lo- cated on White Pigeon Prairie. Six or eight other emi- grants passed through the territory now constituting Branch County, and made their homes in St. Joseph. The reason evidently was because the Mick-ke-saw-bee reservation in- closed one of the largest prairies, lying near the centre of the county, on both sides of the Chicago road, and people did not desire to settle in the immediate vicinity of it.
Strennons efforts were made to concentrate all the Indians of the various reservations before mentioned on a single tract, and in September, 1827, a treaty was concluded to that effeet. It recited that it was desirable that the Indians should be removed from the Chicago road, where they were in constant contact with the stream of white emigration, for which and other reasons they ceded to the United States all the tracts reserved by the treaty of Chicago except that at Nottawa-seepe in St. Joseph County, and received in return a large addition to that reserve, bringing it up to ninety- nine sections, which lacked but seven sections of being as much as the area of all the reservations had been. This treaty was not signed by Topenabee. The list of signatures was headed by Pee-nai-sheish, or Little Bird, followed by " Peerish Morain," a Frenchman, who had become a chief of the Pottawattamies.
This brings us to the verge of settlement in this county. Before entering on a description of the pioneer period, how- ever, a chapter will be devoted to a delineation of the situa- tion in which the first white settlers found the territory now comprising the county of Branch.
CHAPTER VIL.
THE SITUATION AT SETTLEMENT.
The Primevat Forest-Prairies and Openings-Coldwater-Cocoosh and Bronson's Prairies-Surface and Soil-Rivers and Lakes-Old Monnds and Fortifications-The Supposed Mound-Builders-Re- marks regarding them-The Pottawattamiex again-The Notturca Indians-Pierre Moreau-Sau-an-quett-Wandering Habits of the Indians-Their Villages in Branch County-Their Houses- Squaws, Boys, and Papooses-Indian Hunters-Indian Trails.
IN the year 1828, when the first permanent white settlers located themselves in the territory now constituting the county of Branch, they found a traet of mingled forest and prairie, seldom, if ever, surpassed in fertility or in beauty. More than half of the district in question-the ground- work, so to say, of the landscape-was a dense forest of oak, elm, beech, maple, black walnut, whitewood, and some miuor varieties of trees. The two last-named species were especially noticeable for their large size and fine quality. This forest was diversified by several fine prairies. Near the centre of the present township of Coldwater was one about three miles long, east and west, and near a mile and a half wide, north and south, at the broadest place ; the city
36
HISTORY OF BRANCH COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
of Coldwater now occupying its eastern end. This prairie, like the others in the vicinity, was not exactly what a resident of Iowa or Kansas would call a prairie; that is, it was not an absolutely treeless expanse. There were many burr-oak and other trees scattered here and there over its surface, and in some places, especially near the edges of the heavy timber, these were so numerous that these places were more properly designated as oak openings than as prairies.
Some three miles north of Coldwater Prairie, in township 5 south, range 6 west (now Girard), were two prairies known as " Cocoosh" and " West Cocoosh." Cocoosh was the Indian name for hog, and the whites adopted their appel- lation for the two prairies, though unfortunately, the stream which meanders through them has received the less musical name of Hog Creek. Cocoosh Prairie, which included the site of Girard village, contained about a thousand acres. West Cocoosh, about a mile directly west of the former, was somewhat smaller.
South of Coldwater Prairie for six miles, was a heavy belt of the finest timber, principally whitewood and black walnut, running east and west through the county. Many of these trees were so large that when afterwards cut down and taken to mill, it was necessary to hew them down considerably before they could pass through an old-fashioned perpendicular saw-gate.
Still south of the timber belt just mentioned, the remain- ing territory of the present county was occupied principally by a heavy forest, broken by occasional small prairies and openings. Of the prairies, the principal was the one since known as Bronson's Prairie, in the township of the same name. It was about three-fourths of a mile wide north and south, and full a mile long from east to west. This, unlike some of the others, was a regular Western prairie, what there was of it, with scarcely a tree upon it.
The surface of the future county was level compared with the eastern country, from which most of the emigrants came, but did not quite match the sameness of an Illinois prairie. In the central portions there were few undula- tions, but in the northeast and southwest occasional hills were seen, though none sufficient to interfere with culti- vation.
The soil of the prairies was generally a dry, black, rich loam, changing into a somewhat level, sandy loam in the openings, and showing an admixture of clay in the heavy timber.
The general, though slight, slope of the land was to the westward ; all the streams being tributary to the St. Joseph River, which, having started on its course in Hillsdale County, and made its way northwest into Calhoun (barely touching the northeast corner of the present township of Butler), turns to the southwest, enters Branch County eight miles east from the northwestern corner, pursues an almost directly southwest course, and passes out nearly seven miles south from that corner. Thence it makes a long détour southward, but returns to the north and enters Lake Michigan at St. Joseph, a little farther north than the northern line of this county, having flowed a distance of two hundred miles besides its minor windings.
Its principal tributary in the territory which forms the subject of this work was the Coldwater River, the two
branches of which both began their course in the present township of California, ran northwestward a few miles apart through various lakes and united their waters in township 6, range 6 (Coldwater), just above the point where the Chicago trail crossed the combined stream, which continued thence in the same general course through another series of lakes, till it joined the St. Joseph, half a mile after its entrance into the county, at the place where Union City now stands. The whole distance from the head of either of the branches to the mouth of the river, was about thirty- five miles.
" Cocoosh" Creek, as the Indians called it, though their prosaic successors insist on denominating it Hog Creek, rose in the edge of Hillsdale County, meandered through the present townships of Quincy, Butler, and Girard, and united with Coldwater River, in the eastern edge of the township of Union. The territory of the present townships of Bethel, Batavia, and Mattison, with part of Bronson, were drained by the waters of Swan Creek and Little Swan Creek, which united with each other and with the St. Joseph River shortly after entering St. Joseph County. Farther south, Prairie River, finding its source in a cluster of beautiful lakes on the Indiana line, flowed northwest- wardly through the present towns of Gilead, Bethel, and Bronson, making its exit from the county six miles north from the southwest corner, and passing on until it entered the St. Joseph, two miles below the site of the city of Three Rivers ; its total length being about fifty miles. The lakes which formed the head-waters of Fawn River were close to those which flowed into Prairie River, in the present town- ship of Kinderhook, but the former stream immediately passed into Indiana, returning and crossing the southwest corner of the present township of Noble (and of Branch County) and finding its way into the St. Joseph, a few miles below the mouth of Prairie River, after a tortuous course of about the same length as the latter stream.
In describing the rivers and creeks it has been necessary to make frequeut mention of the lakes. These were a most interesting feature of the country. The hunter, the Indian- trader, the land-seeker, as he made his toilsome way across the prairie or through the " openings," frequently found his steps arrested by a small sheet of water, lying silent and sparkling in the sunlight, around which a détour of from one to five miles must be made ere he could continue on his former course. Still more noticeable was the scene when he had been plodding for miles through the dense forest, the giant whitewoods and black walnuts shutting out almost every glimpse of the sun, and the air below heavy with the heat of an American summer. A glimpse of light is scen ahead, a few eager strides are made, and the trav- eler emerges on the shore of a bright little lake, perhaps half a mile in diameter, its pellneid waters shut in by the darksome wood on every side, displaying by the contrast its glowing beauty in bolder relief, while wild fowl rise scream- ing from its surface at sight of the stranger, and perchance an antlered deer, drinking at the margin, stands for a mo- ment, with head flung back in startled indignation,
" Like chief who hears his warder's call,"
and then bounds away at headlong speed into the forest.
37
HISTORY OF BRANCHI COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
Of these lakes and ponds, no less than sixty-nine were to be found in the embryo county of Branch, from the dimin- utive sheet of water which scarcely made a perceptible open- ing in the forest up to Coldwater Lake (the southernmost one of that name) on the line between townships 7 and 8, range 6,-Ovid and Kinderhook,-which was about three miles long and from half a mile to two miles wide. The lakes were more numerons and of larger average size in the southern part of the county, fractional township 8 in range 6 (now Kinderhook) being particularly well supplied with them. Besides Coldwater Lake, before men- tioned, the larger ones in the county were two connected together in the present townships of Coldwater and Girard, which also received the name of Coldwater ; one in Matti- son, called Mattison Lake; one in Sherwood, named Sher- wood Lake; one in tQuincy and Algansee, called Marble Lake; two in Ovid, known as Long Lake and Lake of the Woods; two in Gilead, called Gilead Lake and Island Pond; two in Kinderhook, known as Silver Lake and Fish Lake; and one on the line between Kinderhook and Indiana, bearing the appellation of Lake George.
Around these lakes and through the forest the deer roamed in large numbers. llere. too, at night was heard the howling of innumerable wolves, always apparently hun- gry and seeking with ill success for food, their principal reliance being some superannuated or crippled deer which they were able to overtake. Occasionally a black bear rolled his unwieldy form beneath the trees, fattening him- self on acorns, walnuts, etc., in summer, and retiring in winter to some hollow oak to live on the accumulated capi- tal of his own flesh. At still rarer intervals, the shrill scream of the panther, fiereest of American beasts, was heard afar in the forest, making all other animals tremble with fear, and startling even the Indian warrior with the prospect of more than ordinary danger.
Raccoons, squirrels, and other small animals abounded ; wild turkeys trooped in noisy squadrons through the uu- dergrowth, wild geese and dueks in spring and autumn often covered the surface of the placid lakes, while amid the branches of the trees flitted thousands of smaller birds, of varied song and diverse size, and many-hued plumage. On the ground, besides some harmless varieties of ser- pents, the deadly rattlesnake, generally of the "moccasin" species, made its tortuous way, preluding its fatal stroke with the warning note which distinguishes it from all rep- tiles.
But by far the most important occupants of the county at the time of settlement were the Indians. Before, how- ever, describing their situation at that time, perhaps it will be well to make brief mention of some relics believed by many to indicate the existence here of a much muore highly civilized race than the red men found by the early ex- plorers. We approach this subject with much diffidence, for the ascertained facts are really very few and trivial, so far as this section is concerned, while the theories which have been built upon them are so extensive as to tend to overawe any one who has not made the subject a special study.
First, as to the facts. In this county, as in various other parts of the St. Joseph Valley and throughout the region
of the great lakes, there were found by the first settlers numerous mounds, some of which were evidently places of sepulture, while others had every appearance of having originally been erected as fortifications. Hon. E. G. Fuller has described to us several of these mounds, now almost obliterated, as they were when he first saw them. They are located on ground now belonging to Mrs. Reid, in the township of Girard, near the road from Coldwater to Union City. At the time of settlement, the largest one was fifteen or twenty feet high, and about six rods in diameter. The next largest was eight or ten feet high and near four rods in diameter. Oaks two feet thick were growing on the top of the larger mound. In one of them a few bones and some rude stone implements were found, but not many of either. Besides these and some smaller mounds there was also a small fort, about six rods in diameter, inclosed with a wall only a few feet high. Similar remnants of other days have been found in Bronson and in other parts of the county. In St. Joseph County they are still more numerous.
Similar works are found all along the shores of the great lakes, as far east as the foot of Lake Ontario. As we go southward the works become more extensive and elaborate, and in the vicinity of the Ohio, they are so large as to have attracted the most earnest attention of scientific men. It has long been a matter of general credence, that these were built by some race anterior and superior to the Indians, to whom, for lack of any other name, has been given the appellation of " Mound- Builders."
Many, too, believe that the slighter mounds and forts ereeted in the lake-country were the productions of the same people, but of this there is considerable doubt. In fact, the generally trivial character of the works in the lake- country, compared with those on and near the Ohio, natur- ally raises the presumption that the former were not built by the same raee as the latter. Moreover, the northern structures are certainly such as could have been ereeted by the Indians, whether they were or not. True, the Indians were not in the habit of building earthen fortifications when the whites first settled in America, but they did build very elaborate palisades out of logs cut down with their stone-axes, and this required much more labor and skill than the construction of a small earthen fort.
It should be observed, too, that while the fortifications and mounds throughout the lake region are all of a com- paratively trivial character, and could easily have been con- structed by a barbarous race, yet within a hundred miles of Lake Erie-noticeably at Newark, Ohio-we find far more important works, giving evidence that civilized or at least half-civilized men designed their form and superin- tended their erection. It is, of course, also well known that a half-civilized race, with numerous important buildings and fortifications, were found in Mexico by the Spaniards.
It does not seem improbable, therefore, that a half-civil- ized race did once occupy the Ohio Valley and construct the mighty works found there, while the shores of the great lakes (and the peninsula which lies between two of them) were held by the ancestors of the modern Indians. The latter would naturally imitate their powerful neighbors, and build intrenehments to protect themselves against them (as
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HISTORY OF BRANCH COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
the Creeks and Choctais built breastworks in imitation of the whites at Talladega and Horse-Shoe Bend, to guard against the troops of Gen. Jackson). When the " Mound- Builders" disappeared from the Ohio Valley (either on ae- count of internecine wars, or from a desire to migrate to a milder clime, or for some other unknown reason) and the Indians spread over all this portion of the continent, the latter would naturally cease to build the fortifications in- tended as a defense against their half-civilized foes, and content themselves with the palisades, which were sufficient for their bow-and-arrow warfare.
This is only a crude and hastily-constructed theory, yet it seems difficult otherwise to account for the very marked difference between the immense and elaborate structures found near the Ohio and the comparatively insignificant ones which line the shores of the great lakes and of the rivers which empty into them.
Let us turn to the Indians who were in the territory of Branch County at the time of its settlement by the whites. These were almost entirely our old friends, the Pottawat- tamies, though a few Ottawas and still fewer Chippewas had drifted down from the north and had permanently located themselves among their ancient confederates. They were sometimes called the Nottawa Indians, because their principal abiding-place was the village of Nottawa-seepe, around which, after 1827, was the only reservation they had in Michigan.
Topenabe, so long the head chief of the Pottawattamies, was not yet dead, as will appear by subsequent treatics, but had doubtless become too old and infirm to exercise the duties of active leadership, as his name does not appear among the signers of the treaty of 1827. Penaishees, or Little Bird, whose name appears at the head of the list, was afterwards recognized as head chief of the Pottawatta- mies, but the principal man among the Nottawa portion of the tribe was the second signer of the treaty of 1827, whose name appears there as " Pierish" Moran, or Morau, but who is by some called Pierre Moreau, a full-blood Frenchman or French Canadian, said to have been of good family and good education.
In early life he began business as a merchant in Detroit and failed. He took the remnant of his goods to the St. Joseph River and began trading with the Pottawattamies. His goods were soon used up, but by this time he had acquired a strong influence over the Nottawa band and a strong liking for Indian habits. He married an Indian woman, lived with the Indians, dressed like an Indian, became practically an Indian in everything but color, and did not differ much from his red comrades even in that. His influence steadily increased, and he became at length the head of the Nottawa band.
An Indian named Cush-e-wees is said to have been the hereditary chief of the band, but was supplanted by the superior intelligence of Moreau. In 1828, the latter had become old, decrepit, and to some extent imbecile, and Cush-e-wees 'sought to regain his lost authority. Ile was resisted, however, by Sau-au-quett (or Sau-quett, as he was commonly called by the whites), the oldest son of Moreau by his Indian wife. Sauquett was at that time a remarkably fine-looking, stalwart half-breed, six feet three inches high,
straight and well-proportioned, with a kcen intelligence, a strong will, an imposing address, and winning manners ; but unprincipled and, like nearly all his people, very fond of whisky.
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