History of Macomb County, Michigan, Part 2

Author: Leeson, Michael A., [from old catalog] comp
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago, M. A. Leeson & co.
Number of Pages: 952

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That mysterious people who, like the Brahmins of to-day, worshipped some transitory deity, and in after years, evidently embraced the idealization of Bood- hism, as preached in Mongolia early in the thirty-fifth century of the world, together with acquiring the learning of the Confucian and Pythagorean schools of the same period, spread all over the land, and in their numerous settlements erected these raths, or mounds, and sacrificial altars whereon they received their peroidical visiting gods, surrendered their bodies to natural absorption or annihilation, and watched for the return of some transmigrated soul, the while adoring the universe, which with beings they believed would be eternally existent. They possessed religious orders corresponding, in external show at least, with the Essenes or Theraputæ of the pre-Christian and Christian epochs, and to the reformed Theraputæe or monks of the present. Every memento of their coming and their stay which has descended to us is an evidence of their civilized condition. The free copper found within the tumuli; the open veins of the Superior and Iron Mountain copper mines, with all the modus operandi of ancient mining, such as ladders, levers, chisels and hammer- heads, discovered by the French explorers of the Northwest and Mississippi, are conclusive proofs that those prehistoric people were highly civilized, and that many flourishing colonies were spread throughout the Mississippi Valley, while yet the mammoth, the mastodon, and a hundred other animals, now only known by their gigantic fossil remains, guarded the eastern shore of the continent, as it were, against supposed invasions of the Tower Builders who went west from Babel ; while yet the beautiful isles of the Antilles formed an integral portion of this continent, long years

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN.

before the European Northmen dreamed of setting forth to the discovery of Green- land and the northern isles, and certainly at a time when all that portion of America north of 45 deg. was an ice-incumbered waste.

Within the last few years great advances have been made toward the dis- covery of antiquities whether pertaining to remains of organic or inorganic nature. Together with many small but telling relics of the early inhabitants of the country, the fossils of prehistoric animals have been unearthed from end to end of the land, and in districts, too, long pronounced by geologists of some repute to be without even a vestige of vertebrate fossils. Among the collected souvenirs of an age about which so very little is known, are twenty-five vertebra averaging thir- teen inches in diameter, and three vertabræ, ossified together measuring nine cubical feet ; a thigh-bone five feet long by twenty-eight in diameter, and the shaft fourteen by eight inches thick, the entire lot weighing 600 pounds. These fossils are presumed to belong to the cretaceous period when the Dino- saur roamed over the country from east to west, desolating the villages of the people. This animal is said to be sixty feet long, and when feeding in cypress and palm forests, to extend himself eighty-five feet, so that he may devour the bud- ding tops of those great trees. Other efforts in this direction may lead to great results, and culminate probably in the discovery of a tablet engraven by some learned Mound Builder, describing, in the ancient hieroglyphics of China, all those men and beasts whose history excites so much speculation. The identity of the Mound Builders with the Mongolians might lead us to hope for such a consum- mation ; nor is it beyond the range of probability, particularly in this practical age, to find the future of some industrious antiquarian requited by the upheaval of a tablet written in the Tartar characters of 1700 years ago, bearing on a subject which can now be treated only on a purely circumstantial basis.

THE SECOND IMMIGRATION

may have begun a few centuries prior to the Christian era, and unlike the former expedition or expedtions, to have traversed northeastern Asia, to its Arctic confines, and then east to the narrow channel now known as Behring's Straits, which they crossed, and sailing up the unchanging Yukon, settled under the shadow of Mount St. Elias for many years, and pushing south commingled with their countrymen, soon acquiring the characteristics of the descendants of the first colonists. Chinese chronicles tell of such a people, who went north, and were never heard of more. Circumstances conspire to render that particular colony the carrier of a new religious faith and of an alphabetic system of representative character to the old colonists, and they, doubtless, exercised a most beneficial influence in other respects ; because the influx of immigrants of such culture as were the Chinese, even of that remote period, must necessarily bear very favorable results, not only in bringing in reports

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of their travels, but also accounts from the fatherland bearing on the latest events.

With the idea of a second and important exodus there are many theorists united, one of whom says : " It is now the generally received opinion that the first inhabi- tants of America passed over from Asia through these straits."

The Esquimaux of North America, the Samoieds of Asia, and the Laplanders of Europe, are supposed to be of the same family ; and this supposition is strength- ened by the affinity which exists in their languages. The researches of Humboldt have traced the Mexicans to the vicinity of Behring's Straits; whence it is con- jectured, that they, as well as the Peruvians and other tribes. came originally from Asia, and were the Hurignoos, who are, in the Chinese annals, said to have emigrated under Puno, and to have been lost in the north of Siberia."

Since this theory is accepted by most antiquarians, there is every reason to be- lieve that from the discovery of what may be called an overland route to what was then considered an eastern extension of that country which is now known as the "Celestial Empire," many caravans of emigrants passed to their new homes in the land of illimitable possibilities until the way became a well-marked trail over which the Asiatic might travel forward, and having once entered the Elysian fields never entertained an idea of returning. Thus from generation to generation the tide of immigration poured in until the slopes of the Pacific and the banks of the great in- land rivers became hives of busy industry. Magnificent cities and monuments were raised at the bidding of the tribal leaders, and populous settlements centered with happy villages, sprung up everywhere in manifestation of the power and wealth and knowledge of the people. The colonizing Caucasian of the historic period walked over this great country on the very ruins of a civilization which a thousand years before eclipsed all that of which he could boast. He walked through the wilderness of the West over buried treasures hidden under the accumulated growth of nature, nor rested until he saw, with great surprise, the remains of ancient pyra- mids and temples and cities, larger and evidently more beautiful than ancient Egypt could bring forth after its long years of uninterrupted history. The pyramids re- semble those of Egypt in exterior form, and in some instances are of larger dimen- sions. The pyramid of Cholula is square, having each side of its base 1,335 feet in length, and its height about 172 feet. Another pyramid, situated in the north of Vera Cruz, is formed of large blocks of highly polished porphyry, and bears upon its front hieroglyphic inscriptions and curious sculpture. Each side of its square base is eighty-two feet in length, and a flight of fifty-seven steps conducts to its summit, which is sixty-five feet in height. The ruins of Palenque are said to extend twenty miles along the ridge of a mountain, and the remains of an Aztec city near the banks of the river Gila, are spread over more than a square league. Their literature

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN.

consisted of hieroglyphics ; but their arithmetical knowledge did not extend further than their calculations by the aid of grains of corn. Yet, notwithstanding all their varied accomplishments, and they were evidently many, their notions of religious duty led to a most demoniac zeal, at once barbarously savage and ferociously cruel. Each visiting god, instead of bringing new life to the people, brought death to thou- sands ; and their grotesque idols, exposed to drown the senses of the beholders in fear, wrought wretchedness rather than spiritual happiness, until, as some learned and humane Montezumian said, the people never approached these idols without fear, and this fear was the great animating principle, the great religious motive power which sustained the terrible religion. Their altars were sprinkled with blood drawn from their own bodies in large quantities, and on them thousands of human victims were sacrificed in honor of the demons whom they worshipped. The head and heart of every captive taken in war were offered up as a bloody sacrifice to the god of battles, while the victorious legions feasted on the remaining portions of the dead bodies. It has been ascertained that, during the ceremonies attendant on the con- secration of two of their temples, the number of prisoners offered up in sacrifice was 12,210 ; while their own legions contributed voluntary victims to the terrible belief in large numbers. Nor did this horrible custom cease immediately after 1521, when Cortez entered the imperial city of the Montezumas; for, on being driven from it, all his troops who fell into the hands of the native soldiers were subjected to the most terrible and prolonged suffering that could be experienced in this world, and when about to yield up that spirit which is indestructible, were offered in sacrifice, their hearts and heads consecrated, and the victors allowed to feast on the yet warm flesh.

A reference is made here to the period when the Montezumas ruled over Mex- ico, simply to gain a better idea of the hideous idolatry which took the place of the old Boodhism of the Monnd Builders, and doubtless helped in a great measure to give victory to the new-comers, even as the tenets of Mahommetanism urged the ignorant followers of the prophet to the conquest of great nations. It was not the faith of the people who built the mounds and the pyramids and the temples, and who, two hundred years before the Christian era, built the great wall of jealous China. No; rather was it that terrible faith born of the Tartar victory, which carried the great defences of China at the point of the javelin and hatchet, who afterwards marched to the very walls of Rome, under Alaric, and spread over the islands of Polynesia to the Pacific slopes of South America.

THE TARTARS

came there, and, like the pure Mongols of Mexico and the Mississippi valley, rose to a state of civilization bordering on that attained by them. Here for centuries the sons of the fierce Tartar race continued to dwell in comparative peace, until the

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN.

all-ruling empire took in the whole country from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and peopled the vast territory watered by the Amazon, with a race that was destined to conquer all the peoples of the Orient, and only to fall before the march of the arch-civilizing Caucasian. In course of time these fierce Tartars pushed their set- tlements northward, and ultimately entered the territories of the Mound Builders, putting to death all who fell within their reach, and causing the survivors of the death-dealing invasion to seek a refuge from the hordes of this semi-barbarous people in the wilds and fastnesses of the North and Northwest. The beautiful country of the Mound Builders was now in the hands of savage invaders, the quiet, industrious people, who raised the temples and pyramids were gone ; and the wealth of intelligence and industry accumulating for ages, passed into the possession of a rapacious horde, who could admire it only so far as it offered objects for plunder.

Even in this the invaders were satisfied, and then, having arrived at the height of their ambition, rested on their swords and entered upon the luxury and ease, in the enjoyment of which they were found when the vanguard of European civiliza- tion appeared upon the scene. Meantime the southern countries which these adventurers abandoned after having completed their conquests in the North, were soon peopled by hundreds of people, always moving from island to island and ulti- mately halting amid the ruins of villages deserted by those who, as legends tell, had passed eastward but never returned ; and it would scarcely be a matter for sur- prise if those emigrants were found to be the progenitors of that race found by the Spaniards in 1532, and identical with the Araucanians, Cuenches and Huiltiches of to-day.

CHAPTER II.

FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT.

The fame of Marquette continues to gain strength as days advance. Notwith- standing all his countrymen had written of him, the new Americans continue to inquire into his magnificent career, and to add to the store of information regarding him, already garnered. Rev. Geo. Duffield, of Detroit, is one of his latest biogra- phers, and from his writings on the life of the missionary, we make the following extracts :

Jacques Marquette came late to his fame. Open Davenport's Dictionary of Biography, 1831, " comprising the most eminent characters of all ages, nations and professions," and you will not find even so much as his name. Turn for that name

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN.

to the Cyclopedia of Biography by Parke Godwin, with a supplement by George Sheppard, A. D. 1872, and you will not find it there, and so with many similar works. Hence we see the need of such an historical society as the present, that one of the greatest and best of the original founders of Michigan may receive his due credit, and be honored with an appropriate memorial.

Marquette was born of an honorable family at Laon, in the north of France, in the year 1637, but the month and day of his birth are not easily found, and I have nowhere seen his portrait. In 1654 he joined the Society of the Jesuits, and in 1666 was sent to the missions in Canada. After the river St. Lawrence and the great lakes had been mapped out, the all-absorbing object of interest with Governor Frontenac Talch, the intendant, and Marquette himself, was to discover and trace from the north the wonderful Mississippi, that DeSoto, the Spaniard, had first seen at the sonth in 1541. In 1668 (according to Bancroft, III, 152), he repaired to the Chip- pewas at the Sault to establish the mission of St. Mary, the oldest settlement begun by Europeans within the present limits of the commonwealth of Michigan. On the day of the immaculate conception of the Holy Virgin, in 1673, he received his orders from Frontenac, to accompany Joliet on his long-desired journey. Taking probably the short trail through the woods he found his companion at Point St. Ignace, where, after many remarkable vicissitudes, both in life and death, he was at length to find his grave, where his numerous friends and admirers, both French and Indian, were for so long a time to lose sight of it again, and where a second time he gains his place as one of the founders of Michigan.

Apart from his peculiar mission, which was looked upon by " the Protestant colonies " of New England with anything but favorable eyes ; apart from his pecu- liar dogma of the conception, which has only been officially sanctioned iu our day and by the late Pope, there were many things in the life and times of Mar- quette that, to the lover of biography, make his character as attractive as that of Francis Xavier, " the great apostle of the Indies," or of his still greater master, Ignatius Loyola. The man in these days who can not admire, and even to a certain extent venerate man as man, apart from his more immediate antecedents or local surroundings, has but a very limited and mistaken idea of the enlightened spirit of the age, or the true dignity of human nature. Honor to whom honor is due, is not only a sound maxim, founded on that equity which is the highest form of justice, but is also in just so many words one of the very first principles of Christianity itself. When I can not give a man credit for what he really is, because he belongs to another party than my own, or give him credit for what he has done, because he belongs to another denomination than my own, I deserve to be consigned for the remainder of my days to a hole in the woods.

The pioneers of our country, no doubt, have had a very hard time of it, and

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN.

none more so than my Scotch-Irish ancestors in central Pennsylvania. From the childhood of Daniel Webster down to the present hour, it would argue a very igno- rant mind and most unfeeling and ungrateful heart to read the toils and trials and privations endured by men and women in the early settlement of this or any other State ; but after all what are the hardships of the early settlers compared with those of Allouez, in 1665, afloat in a frail canoe on the broad expanse of Lake Superior, of Dablon, Marquette, LaSalle, and others of the original explorers ?

" Defying the severity of climate," as Bancroft has it, " wading through water or through snows, without the comfort of fire ; having no bread but pounded corn, and often no food but the unwholesome moss from the rocks; laboring inces- santly, exposed to live, as it were, without nourishment, to sleep without a resting place ; to travel far, and always ineurring perils ; to carry their lives in their hands ; or rather daily and oftener than every day, to hold them up as targets, expecting captivity, death from the tomahawk, tortures, fires"-(Bancroft, III., 152.) It seems to me that if there are any two classes of men who should be most cordially linked in closest bonds of sympathy with one another, it is the pioneers and explorers.

Marquette was much more than a religious enthusiast. He was a scholar and a man of science. Having learned within a few years to speak with ease in six different languages, his talents as a lingnist were quite remarkable. A subtle element of romance pervaded his character, which not only makes it exceedingly attractive to us in the retrospect, but was no doubt one of the great sources and elements of his power and success among his beloved Ottawas and Hurons, and others of the great Algonquin tribes, who were found in the immediate vicinity of the straits of Michilimackinac. With a fine eye for natural beauty, he was as much delighted with a rapid river, or extended lake, with an old forest or rolling prairie, or a lofty mountain as a Birch, or a Cole, or a Bierstadt. Every one who touches his character seems emulous of adorning it with a new epithet. Parkman speaks of him as "the humble Marquette, who with clasped hands and np-turned eyes, seems a figure evoked from some dim legend of medieval saintship." Bancroft calls him " the meek, gentle, single-hearted, unpretending, illustrious Marquette."- Vol. III., p. 157. Many call him " the venerated ;" all unite in calling him " the good Marquette," and by this last, most simple, but appropriate title he will be the best remembered by the generations yet to come. " A man who was delighted at the happy necessity of exposing his life to bring the word of God " within reach of half a continent deserves that title if any one does. His Catholic eulogist, John Gilman Shea, (Catholic World, November, 1877, p. 267,) writes with pardon- able pride : " No missionary of that glorious band of Jesuits who in the seventeenth century announced the faith from the Hudson Bay to the lower Mississippi, who

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN.

hallowed by their labors and life-blood so many a wild spot now occupied by the busy hives of men, none of them impresses us more in his whole life and career with his piety, sanctity and absolute devotion to God, than Father Marquette. In life he seems to have been looked up to with reverence by the wildest savage, by the rude frontiersman, and by the polished officers of government. When he had passed away, his name and his fame, so marked in the great West, was treasured above that of his fellow-laborers, Menard, Allonez, Nouvel or Druillettes." May I not add that, most of all other States, his name and his fame should be dear to Michigan ?

Such, then, was the man who on the 17th of May, 1673, with the simple outfit of two birch canoes, a supply of smoked meat and Indian corn, and a crew of five men, embarked on what was then known as Lac Des Illinois, now Lake Michigan. June 10th they came to the portage, in Wisconsin, (III., 158,) and after carrying their canoes some two miles over marsh and prairie, " he committed himself to the current that was to bear them he knew not whither-perhaps to the Gulf of Mex- ico, perhaps to the South Sea, or the Gulf of California." June 17, 1673, where now stands Prairie Du Chien, he had found what he sought, " and with a joy that I can not express we steered forth our canoes on the Mississippi, or great river." We know that the honor of this discovery is very stoutly contested in favor of LaSalle, but for the present we confidently hold with Parkman (Discovery of the Great West, p. 25): "LaSalle discovered the Ohio, and in all probability the Illinois also ; but that he discovered the Mississippi has not been proved, nor in the light of the evidence we have, is it likely." In 1846 W. J. A. Bradford, in his notes on the Northwest, says very dogmatically : "Father Hennepin must undoubtedly be considered the discoverer of the Mississippi;" but if the proof of it is only to be established by Hennepin's own narrative, which Parkman describes as a rare mon- ument of brazen mendacity, the proof is still wanting. His famous voyage from the Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico must be considered not only as a falsehood, but a plagiarism.

Fortunately for the fame of Marquette, the true record of his labors was not left to doubtful tradition and the hearsay testimony of Charlevoix. Among the papers some twenty-five years since in the archives of the College of Quebec are accounts of the last labors and death of Father Marquette, and of the removal of his remains, prepared for publication by Father Dablon ; Marquette's journal of his great expedition. the very map he drew, and a letter left uufinished at the time of his death. So at least says Mr. Shea, and that these documents are to be found in his work on the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi Valley.

Leaving, then, the doubtful narrative of Charlevoix and the romantic page of Bancroft founded upon it, we learn the real story of his death. October 25,

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN.

1674, he again left St. Ignace to fulfill a promise to the Kaskaskias in Illinois. December 4th he reached Chicago, hoping to ascend the river, and by a portage reach the Illinois: but the ice had closed the stream and it was too late. A winter march, facing the cutting wind of the prairie was beyond his strength. His two faithful companions erected a log hut home and chapel-the first dwelling and the first church of the first white settlement of the city-known for its great misfortune the world over, the city of Chicago.

With the opening of Spring the good father again set out, and his last letter notes his progress till the 6th of April, 1675. " Just after Easter he was again stricken by disease (dysentery), and he saw that if he would die in the arms of his brethren " at St. Ignace, he must depart at once. Escorted by the Kaskaskias, who were deeply impressed by his zeal, he reached Lake Michigan, gave orders to his faithful men to launch his canoe, and commenced his adventurous voyage along that still unknown and dangerous shore. His strength, however, failed so much that his men despaired of being able to convey him alive to their journey's end ; for in fact he became so weak and so exhausted that he could no longer help him- self, nor even stir, and had to be handled and carried like a child. He nevertheless in this state maintained an admirable resignation, joy and gentleness, consoling his beloved companions, and encouraging them to suffer courageously all the hardships of this voyage." " On the eve of his death, which was on Friday, he told them, all radiant with joy, that it would take place on the morrow, and spoke so calmly and collectedly of his death and burial that you would have thought it was another's and not his own.

Thus did he speak to them as they sailed along the lake, till perceiving the mouth of a river, with an eminence on the bank which he thought suited to his burial, he told them that it was the place of his last repose. They wished, how- ever, to pass on, as the weather permitted it and the day was not far advanced; but God raised a contrary wind, which obliged them to return and enter the river which the father had designated.

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History of Macomb County, Michigan, Part 2

Author: Leeson, Michael A., [from old catalog] comp Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Chicago, M. A. Leeson & co. Number of Pages: 952

Author: Leeson, Michael A., [from old catalog] comp
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago, M. A. Leeson & co.
Number of Pages: 952