USA > Michigan > Genesee County > History of Genesee County, Michigan, Her People, Industries and Institutions, Volume I > Part 12
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It is quite easy in the light of modern sanitary science to see the cause of this serpent myth of the pestilence in the unsanitary conditions that would accumulate around a village of these primitive men. The strongest palisades were of no avail against its insidious approach. No remedy known to the medicine men of the forest folk availed to stay its ravage. This myth furnishes a more probable hypothesis of the disappearance of the two vil- lages of the Iroquois of Cartier's day than any forced suggestion of war against them successfully waged by an enemy who from every other sug- gestion was utterly inferior. All these attempts to explain the matter, how- ever, belong rather to the domain of fiction than history; suffice it to say that the coming of Champlain found an entirely different race possessing the
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valley of the St. Lawrence; and here turns the fate of nations. The events that followed, in which he was the prime mover and principal actor, were of greatest import to the generations that were to inhabit the vast country of northern America. If we were to apply the canons of historical criti- cism, it would not be difficult to see in his career and in his administration of the affairs of France in the new world, events that have determined the course of all its subsequent history; which gave the new world over to free- dom of religion, freedom of thought and democracy, and which may leaven the old world models and mould their tendencies, until the entire world shall have become democratic.
Champlain had brought a number of young men, or rather boys, who were to learn the languages of the Indians and become interpreters. Among them probably the most celebrated was Stephen Brule, who was the first white to come up the Ottawa river and the first to behold our Lake Huron. Wisdom would have suggested that Champlain should have waited for these young men to qualify for their office, and to obtain the knowledge they could impart before entering into any alliance which might prove entang- ling. Champlain was ignorant of the affairs of the Indians beyond the valley of the St. Lawrence. The little knowledge he could derive from the imperfect communications with the Algonquins that he came in contact with, apprised him that they were at enmity with a race to the southward, against which they sought his active aid. He had no means of determining the jus- tice of that quarrel. Who were the aggressors, what questions of right or wrong were involved, he knew not. Especially was he utterly unadvised as to the number or power of that southern race, or the possible results of his alliance with the Adirondacks. He was a dashing soldier, but not a diplo- mat. Under these circumstances he listened to their siren appeals and formed an alliance with the enemies of the great league, an alliance cemented and sanctified by those ceremonies that meant so much to the Indians, but were lightly entered into by the French.
He soon joined an expedition of his allies against their enemies. His allies included the Ottawas, who dwelt up the river that now preserves their name, the same warlike people to whom the Hochelagans referred in their tale to Cartier and the "Mantagnais," a rather indefinite term, referring to some highland band of the Algonquins, and some of the Hurons, who be- cause of territorial location had become joined to the Algonquins in the war against the league.
It was June, 1609, when the fateful expedition of sixty red men,
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armed with their native weapons, and three whites-Champlain and two others-paddled up the Sorel river out on the placid waters of the lake now named for Champlain. There the little flotilla of canoes sighted a similar flotilla of the enemy. Fighting on the waters is not to the taste of the Indian. The narrow confines of a canoe forbid the room for the strategy of the red man. Both parties took to the shore. There a few discharges of the guns of the Frenchmen decided the battle, and Champlain and his red allies saw their enemies flee from this new and terrible instrument of destruction. They regarded their victory as complete and from the standpoint of the Indian it was. The Algonquins saw an enemy before whom they had often fled, and whom they had always feared, flee before the new alliance. They returned to the St. Lawrence and soon afterward another battle was fought by the French and Indian allies against some Iroquois who held a palisaded fort; even this advantage was of no avail against the weapons of the white men. Champlain was jubilant, for he had now earned the gratitude of his red allies, who promised him aid in exploring the great west and northwest.
The effect of these two conflicts on the league was the opposite. There was no jubilation. They saw the French in alliance with their enemies and with a new weapon against which their crude ones were useless. This did not bring them to despair, but the seeds of implacable hatred toward the French were sown in the breasts of the people of the long-house, and never afterwards could the diplomacy of the French quench that hatred.
Not far from this same time when Champlain's canoes came up the Sorel from the north, Hendrick Hudson came up the Hudson from the south. He came in friendship and in him the leaguemen saw a different race of white men. He came to open up trade. The Indians had furs and wanted the new weapon of the white man. The Dutch were astute traders and they wanted the furs of the red men. They sailed up the river and met the Iroquois, smarting under their defeat from the French, and they soon supplied the new weapon to the men of the league and taught its use, and so commenced the traffic which was destined to make New York City the first emporium of the New World, as the Iroquois of the league had made it from the time of Ay-oun-a-wa-ta, the Empire state.
So there began the conflict between the French of Canada and their Indian allies on the one hand, and the Five Nations aided by the Dutch, and later by the English, on the south-the French representing despotism; the league, Dutch and English representing the ideals of democracy. Who can say that it was not the power of the league that decided the fate of
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America by turning the tide in favor of the democratic principle, which was the vital principle of their own polity.
This brings the general view of Indian history down to the early years of the seventeenth century, and this century saw the attainment of the great- est power of the league. Ay-oun-a-wa-ta had dreamed of universal peace, an entire world without war, as men today dream. The fruition of this dream was the great peace between the five peoples; as today, their ethics were tribal and, being at peace with each other, they had more oppportunity to make war against those outside the league. All their history during this period and their activity in war were motived by their hatred for the French and their allies. Beginning about 1638, after their harvest of furs for a score of years had been great, and nearly all of which had been traded with the Dutch into guns and munitions, they began systematically to destroy the outlying bands of unconfederated Huron-Iroquois and such of the Al- gonquins as had joined the French. It is needless to say that this warfare was carried on ruthlessly, and that opposition was punished by extermina- tion, especially since they were located far from the home of the league, which made adoption into the tribe less practicable.
The superior equipment and morale of the men of the league triumphed over the numbers, however great, of their enemies. The Huron country was completely overrun. The missions shared the same fate. The Jesuit fathers, busied on errands of mercy and endeavoring to relieve the dreadful suffering, being French, fell under the club of the invading force. Some died at the stake and so sealed a life of devotion with a martyr's death. But, regardless of the general cataclysm that came upon the Huron country, there still remained bands of this people, who came over into Michigan, or remnants of the Huron-Iroquois of an earlier day, who, even as late as 1800, still lived in our peninsula and to some extent retained their tribal customs. According to Copway, the Hurons were divided into five distinct tribes who, in imitation of the confederated five nations, had formed some- thing like an alliance. On their dispersal the first nation fled to the south of Lake Huron, about Saginaw; subsequently it moved further south on the St. Clair. A part of the Huron people fled to the isle of St. Joseph in the Georgian bay. A remnant of the Tobacco Nation, the Petuns, fled to Mack- inac island, and were joined by Ottawas. Here they failed to find the safety sought, for even in these hidden places the warriors of the league sought them out, and they started to the islands of Lake Michigan near Green bay; some went northward to Chequamegon bay, of Lake Superior,
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where Father Allouez found them. These fugitives, fleeing from one enemy, came into the sphere of the dreaded Sioux; driven back again they sought asylum on the island of the Turtle, Mackinac, where in 1671 they received the ministrations of the gentle Father Marquette. During these troublous times, in the milder parts of the Canadian northland there hung like a threatening cloud, a hardy race of Indians, the Ojibways-or the Chippe- was of later times-whose history is inseparably connected with the history of Michigan and of our county. The year 1800 found a village of them within the present bounds of the fifth ward of the city of Flint.
Of the early habitations of the various Indians in Michigan and vicin- ity during the years both following and preceding the dispersal of the Hurons, we get only a kaleidoscopic view. So rapidly did one tribe appear in a particular locality, and so suddenly vanish; so frequent were the forays of the ever-active Iroquois of the league, that only certain salient points can here be shown. The salient points, or landmarks, leading up to the eigh- teenth century appear to be, first, the formation of the Iroquois league by Ay-oun-a-wa-ta; second, the coming of Cartier in 1535, and the glimpse we get of the condition at that date, followed by a period of oblivion during which we find that great changes occurred; third, the coming of Champlain up the St. Lawrence, his ill-advised alliance with the Algonquins and Huron enemies of the league, causing the French to be placed by the Iroquois league in the category of its enemies; fourth, the coming of Hendrick Hud- son up the Hudson river at practically the same time as Champlain, and the consequent opening of trade by the Dutch, resulting in arming the warriors of the league; and fifth, the successful wars of the league against the allies of the French, resulting in their dispersal.
Their dispersal was the beginning of what may appropriately be called the volkwanderung of the native races in and about Michigan, similar to the period of European history which followed the breaking up of the Roman power and the irruption of the northern races. In our local volkwanderung we have another parallel; there was a northern nation, which, profiting by the disintegration of the more southern tribes, was to pour down into more congenial because more southern homes. This was the Chippewa nation, which was destined for a time to hold in dominion a greater extent of terri- tory perhaps than any other Indian tribe, not excepting the great league.
Around these historical nuclei we may group many facts derived from the oral history of the various races. There are stories told by the "Keepers of the faith," and to these we may add the deductions of the ethnologists,
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who under governmental sanction and at governmental expense, have gar- nered the field, sifted out the chaff and built up a splendid monument to the memory of our Indian brothers.
There is a beautiful story told of a little people who once dwelt on the island of the Turtle, or Mackinac. They were peaceful and happy, they were simple in their habits, temperate in their desires, and found upon and about the island that was theirs and on the adjacent shores of its encir- cling lake all that their hearts could desire. They grew numerous, and the lesson they impressed upon their children was that of contentment and thankfulness. But even in their retreat they did not escape the baleful ac- tivity of the Iroquois, who came upon them and destroyed their villages, killed their men and women. But a few escaped by the direct aid of their manitou, and these few, transformed by their manitou into ethereal beings, for many years haunted the forests of the state. When some belated hunter, lost in the depths of the woods, heard peals of merry laughter, he knew it was from the little fairy folk, who had been so miraculously saved from the hands of the hated Iroquois, to wander in the forest far from the island of the Turtle, but always happy as in the day of their glory.
SWAG-O-NO-THE-PEOPLE-WHO-WENT-OUT-OF-THE-LAND.
There lingers in the traditions of the Senecas a story of a band of their own race who once lived on the St. Lawrence, but who in very early times became dissatisfied with their own country and determined upon a general exodus in hopes of finding the Utopia of their desires. They gath- ered together their meager holdings and, like a stream, went out of the land. It should be remembered that the Indians had no domestic animals except the dog, consequently no beast of burden. They were their own means of transportation, except when their route followed a waterway, when the canoe furnished a means of transportation, but this also required hard labor. The name of these emigrants was a compound built up of Indian words : "Swageh; pronounced gutturally, meant flowage, or flowing, like the waters of a stream, and it takes but little imagination to see in this word the imitation of the noise of swirling waters of a swift stream like our word "swash," a name that Southey might have used in his description of the waters at Ladore had he been acquainted with the dialect of the leaguemen. Akin to this is the Chippewa word "See-be," which, according to Copway, means a stream and is also an imitation of flowing waters. If we add to this word the Indian word "O-no," meaning people, we have "Swageh-o-
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no," meaning the-people-who-went-out-of-the-land. If the Indian referred to the place, or country of this people, he appended the location, "Ga," and the word became Swageh-o-no-ga, literally translated as the place-of-the- people-who-went-out-of-the-land. This Iroquois name is now preserved in the geographic "Saginaw" and the "Saguenay" of Cartier's record; while the first part is the name of the "Sauks," "Saukies," or "Sacs," an Indian tribe which in more recent historic times lived in Wisconsin, but whose tra- ditional homeland was the Saginaw country. Here we come into touch with our own locality, for our county of Genesee was part of this Saginaw country, and so the-people-who-went-out-of-the-land were our predecessors in occupancy of this our present homeland.
Of the maps of the eighteenth century, the English maps generally in- clude this portion of Michigan as territory of the Iroquois of the league. On maps of Hudson's bay, etc., in 1755, and on later editions in 1772, we see the eastern portion of this peninsula as belonging to the "Six Nations," but they place a village of the Ottawas on our river not far from Taymouth, Saginaw county. These maps also place a village of the Messisauges on the east bank of the St. Clair river just above the lake of St. Clair. "Accurate Map of North America," by Ewan Bowen, Geographer to His Majesty, and John Gibson, Engineer, 1763, gives the eastern portion of lower Michigan as occupied by the Iroquois, and also marks the Ottawa village and that of the Messisauges the same as in the Hudson's Bay map above. It is to be noted that the Senex Map (English) of 1710, shows no name of occupants of this region, and the folding map in Colden's "History of the Five Na- tions," published in 1747, shows no name of the Indian inhabitants of this portion of Michigan except a village of the Ouwaes down toward Detroit. The French maps of this period do not give to the Iroquois the possession of this region. The map of 1746, auspices of Monsigneur Le Duc D'Or- leans, shows the Ottawas in the lower Saginaw valley, but no Iroquois. The French map of Sr. Robert DeVangondy fils, dedicated to Le Conte D'Ar- genson, secretary of state, in 1753, shows a village of "Ouontonnais" at the head of Saginaw bay.
Were there no such story as given above of the people-who-went-out- of-the-land, were all the evidences given by the writers and map-makers and all history from the Indians themselves utterly lost, there would still be indisputable proof that the Saginaw country, or the valley of the present Saginaw river, with the Flint, Shiawassee, Cass, Tittabawassee and their affluents, was once and for a long period occupied by a branch of the great Huron-Iroquois family of tribes.
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The written record may be uncertain, the traditional one vague, but the evidence furnished by the stone implements and other relics tell a tale that convinces. In the careful exploration under the supervision of Mr. Doyle, of Toronto, of the educational department of the province, we have data as to the kind and character of the things made of stone, and some- times less endurable materials, that once entered into the domestic economy of the former inhabitants. Many of these are of ethnic value, that is, they are of form or function peculiar to some tribe, used perhaps in some rite or ceremony which was not observed by any other tribe. All over the por- tion of Ontario, from Lake Huron eastward to Toronto, and even farther, which was the ancient home of the Huron-Iroquois, are found these stone implements of peace and of war, ornaments, and things used in the rites of sepulture, and these are almost monotonous in their similarity. North, south and east we find a different condition. The testimony of these stone witnesses from the ancient days bears witness of a different people, whose habits differed, who had a different religion. There we fail to find the butterfly amulet of banded slate, common throughout the Huron country. The little stone effigy of a bird, also of the Huronian slate, which the women of the early day wore in their hair to announce pregnancy and claim its privileges, is not to be found; but in the most of this Canadian land and extending over into Michigan, we find the same conditions. The tell-tale stone bird, with the base drilled at each end to receive the thong that tied it upon the head of the squaw, the butterfly stone, and even the etched pic- ture of the clan totem-all these have been found in profusion here in Gen- esee county, thus proclaiming that the same people who occupied the parts of Ontario above referred to also occupied the eastern part of Michigan, including Genesee county. Were these relics found but rarely, or in iso- lated instances, the deduction would not be justified; but such is not the case. They are found all over this and adjacent counties, scattered here and there in great numbers, especially along the streams where the Indians naturally built their hamlets.
It is probable that the Iroquois people-who-went-out-of-the-land, and who gave us the name Saginaw, were not limited to a single migration, but that many such streams of migrants, following one after another, for many years, came to Michigan and that the ties that bound the Hurons of Michigan to those of Canada were close and intimate.
Of these former possessors of Genesee county, one alone has survived and preserved its tribal identity-the Sacs-and from their traditions we have the fact that they came from Canada to the Saginaw country, thence
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were driven out and went on to Wisconsin, where they settled and became closely connected with the Foxes, or, to use the Indian name, "Outagamies." So closely united were these two in country and policy that, in history, the Sacs and Foxes are generally mentioned together as forming one political entity.
This occupancy of our county by the Huron-Iroquois people is the earliest of which we have any knowledge either from the traditions of the Indians or from the deductions of the ethonologists. All the remains- whether in the form of mounds, places of sepulchre, arrow points, stone implements-point to these people as the earliest occupants, and also show that their occupancy was one of long duration. Probably they were a hun- dred years or more before Columbus came, and continued until the disper- sion of the Hurons in Canada about 1638, or until what may be termed the volkwanderung of the Algonquins and the unconfederated Huron-Iroquois of this region.
THE MOUND BUILDERS.
The earliest explorers of America came illusioned with certain theolo- gical conceptions, which dominated all their conclusions as to America and its people. Among these was the belief that the Hebrews were the original people, and that any other people must of necessity be an offishoot of that race. They made no exception in the case of the Indians and attempted to trace this entirely distinct people living in another continent, of a distinct language, of a different and inferior status, without flocks, back to the Hebrews. To do so called for the exercise of great ingenuity. The lost tribes of Israel furnished the basis of many fantastic hypotheses put forth with perfect assurance as to the origin of the Indians. The Indians being of an inferior status, this must be accounted for, and it was assumed that their predecessors in America had been of higher civilization. With these basic assumptions, the investigations, as is wont to be the case, resulted in corroba- tory evidence of preconceived theories. Linguistic affinities, mostly imagin- ary, were pointed out. Flood myths were discovered which of course must refer to the story of Noah. And to cap the sheaf, did not the very name of the progenitor of the Hebrew race, Adam, mean red? What caviler could ask for more cogent evidence of the fact that the Indians were merely Hebrews transformed into Americans in some manner and fallen from their earlier and higher status of civilization.
The result was that in the larger mounds of the Ohio valley and vicinity they saw the remains of the earlier civilization. The men who built those
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mounds became the "Mound Builders," and they were endowed with the arts and customs of the civilized status. The illusion did not stop at pseudo- scientific statement. It had a basis of theological misconception and it became the basis of a new theological system. A romancer seized on the explanation of the theological scientific explorers of the mounds, and wove it into a romance of a people who by the command of Yaveh, before the Babylonian captivity, left their home in Judea and, with their flocks, household goods, families and servants, and under guidance of deity, traveled by land to the sea, where, after building a ship, they set sail and after many days and the hardships of Aeneas, they landed in a new country. Then followed, in archaic language and poor orthography, a tale of the spreading of these favored people of Israel over America, who were thus led to a new world and saved from the impending captivity in Babylon. They separated into two branches, one of which, by departing from the precepts of their God, sank into barbarism. The wars between these two people resulted in the extermination of the more enlightened nation, so America reverted to barbarism, and the ancient civilization of these Hebrews, thus miraculously led to a new world, ceased; and when Columbus came he found the darkness of savagery where once flourished a civilized and advanced race.
Kipling, in his inimitable tale of "Griffin's Debts," tells of the drunken and broken soldier who went among the natives and by a heroic death became to them a god, and who "may in time become a solar myth." The realization of this suggestion could be no more astounding than the fact that this fiction of the romancer, whimsied by the common conception of the Indian's origin, has become a sacred book to a great religious sect, as the Mormon bible.
For many years this mythical people were believed to have held sway over the eastern portion of the United States, and for want of any more definite name were called the "Mound Builders." The school books of earlier days had chapters about them, describing them as a people superior to the Indians; but later investigations, and the credence now given to the Delaware tradition, have relegated them to the category of the hyperboreans and cen- taurs of the more ancient fables.
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