USA > Michigan > Shiawassee County > Past and present of Shiawassee County, Michigan, historically; with biographical sketches > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71
The council threatened to come to a speedy and unsatisfactory end. With all his show of civil and military authority, which might have been expected to impress the Indians, General Cass had failed in the outset to gain his chief object. Succeeding only in arousing a spirit of fierce resentment and seeing that he could not accomplish what he desired, he turned the negotiations over to the traders, with the un- derstanding that they would offer a compro- mise on the question of removal. The plan for complete removal was to be abandoned and another substituted by which a number of reservations, large and small, some tribal and some individual, should be granted, within the tract to be ceded. The traders, having a much more intimate knowledge of the Indian nature than the Governor had. and bringing to bear their combined influence, were able after sev- eral days' earnest efforts to persuade the chiefs to accept the proposition offered. Their keen interest in the consummation of the treaty on these terms may be explained by the fact that some of them had Indian wives and half-breed children for whom they expected to claim choice portions of the land preserved, and oth- ers were creditors of certain of the chiefs in considerable amounts and hoped to receive payment out of the price which Governor Cass was prepared to give them in coin (silver half- dollars). Those who were scheming to get land for their families succeeded so admirably that one prominent trader secured about 3,200 acres on the Flint river, which grant of land, says Mr. Gould in his history of Knaggs' Place, "in time made a matter of law and equity that took the courts of the state forty years to set- tle." But those traders who were hoping to have their debts liquidated were doomed to disappointment. The red men with the cash
SHIAWASSEE COUNTY
in their hands were difficult to impress with any argument as to the policy of honesty.
The treaty was signed with imposing cere- monies on the 24th of September, two weeks after the day the council had been convened. General Cass and one hundred and fourteen Chippewa chiefs affixed their signatures to the document. Twenty-three of the secretaries, military officers, traders, and interpreters signed as witnesses. .
The reservations made present a somewhat imposing array of figures, the list numbering about thirty and the tracts ranging in size from six hundred and forty acres to forty thousand acres. Only two reservations were laid out in the Shiawassee valley and only one of these came within the present limits of Shia- wassee county. It comprised three thousand acres and was located at a place which the In- dians called Kechewondaugoning; the first French trader on the river named the place the "Grand Saline", from some salt springs which were found near the river, which name the English speaking settlers afterward altered into the "Big Salt Lick". With the passing of Indian, trader, and the early settlers, the names all passed out of use and the present generation merely knows that there was once an Indian reservation where certain beautiful farms are now located, in the northwest corner of the township of Burns and portions of the adjoin- ing townships of Shiawassee, Antrim, and Ver- non. The other reservation on the Shiawassee river was a ten-thousand-acre tract at "Big Rock", which is now the village of Chesaning, in Saginaw county, a few miles north of the Shiawassee boundary. The area of territory ceded to the United States by this treaty is estimated at about six million acres and in- cluded most of the southern and eastern por-
tions of the Lower Peninsula. For this, the government agreed to pay to the Chippewa nation annually, forever, the sum of one thou- sand dollars in silver coin.
The terms of previous treaties which gave the Indians the right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands while they remained the property of the United States, were also included in the treaty of Saginaw. For more than a dozen years longer the Shiawassee bands of the Chip- pewas remained in happy possession of their bartered birthright. Not until the year 1833 did the advent of white purchasers of the land disturb the serenity of their existence, and it was even some years later when they began to realize that their actual rights were limited by the boundaries of the reservations. Then the idea of inducing the Indians to emigrate be- yond the Mississippi or at least to the west- ward of Lake Michigan, which had been the principal object of General Cass in negotiating the treaty of 1819, was revived. Proposals for removal were again made without exciting resentment as formerly. No doubt the limita- tions of life on the reservation were extremely irksome when they became an established fact. Perhaps a longing for the old conditions of absolute freedom in a wide range of country was the persuading influence. The Chippewas were at last willing to entertain the proposi- tion, and early in January of the year 1837 the Indian Commissioner, Henry R. School- craft, met their chiefs in council at Detroit. On the 14th of the month a treaty was con- cluded, by which the tribe ceded to the United States all the reservations granted under the Saginaw treaty, except those granted to indi- viduals. The lands embraced in the ceded reservations were to be surveyed by the United States and "placed in the market with the
S
PAST AND PRESENT OF
other public lands as soon as practicable, and the amount due the Indians from this source to be invested by the President in some public stock, the interest to be paid annually in the same manner as their annuities were paid."
The time set for the final evacuation of the Michigan peninsula by the Saginaw tribes was January, 1842, or five years from the con- clusion of the treaty of Detroit, but the govern- ment's plans for their removal were never car- ried into effect. Long before the time came for their departure they had bitterly repented of their agreement and begged the government that they "might remain on almost any terms and die in the land of their birth." In the meantime smallpox had been making terrible ravages among them. The bands were broken up, some of them being almost exterminated, and the survivors became too widely scattered to be gathered together for banishment. Some crossed to the Canadian shores, but the greater proportion wandered northward into the great forests.
The Pottawattamies, like the Chippewas, had ceded to the United States the reserva- tions granted them by earlier treaties when they had made a general cession of their lands. They also had repented of their promise to emigrate to a tract selected for them in the west. While their villages were remote from Shiawassee county, lying to the west of the Chippewas' territory, we may properly notice in passing a pathetic incident connected with their deportation, because it occurred within the borders of our county.
The Pottawattamies not having become scat- tered as had the Saginaw tribes, the govern- ment insisted that they carry out their agree- ment to evacuate the ceded lands. Many of them, however, successfully and repeatedly
evaded the conditions, and on the several occa- sions when bands were renewed, hundreds hid themselves to avoid being taken. In the sum- mer of 1840 a body of these fugitives num- bering about two hundred appeared in the northern part of Shiawassee county. In the early autumn of that year, General Hugh Brady arrived at the village of Owosso in com- mand of a detachment of United States troops, under orders to round up the Pottawattamie band and escort it into exile. To gallant old General Brady, who had fought with "Mad Anthony" Wayne in the Indian campaigns and faced death in the bloodiest battles of the war of 1812, this must have been a most distasteful duty, but his orders left him no choice.
The Indians were found picking cranberries in the marshes a few miles north of Owosso, in the present township of Rush. Their chief, old Muckemoot, with two or three followers made a last break for liberty, but was captured in the vicinity of Pontiac. The main body did not make much effort to escape, and after the return of the chief surrendered peaceably. They were finally all brought into Owosso and placed under guard. Some of them were quar- tered in a wooden building which had been erected for a hotel, but more in a log cabin which had been built at the southeast corner of Main and Washington streets as a rendez- vous for the supporters of Harrison and Tyler in the presidential campaign of that year. They were kept in those buildings until the preparations for departure were completed. The melancholy manner in which they started on their long-dreaded journey is thus described by an early writer : "A number of four-horse wagons were brought to the place and into them were loaded the women and children, with their few utensils and other movable
9
SHIAWASSEE COUNTY
articles. Some of the men were allowed trans- portation in the wagons, some rode on ponies, but many were obliged to travel on foot. Formed in this manner and closely guarded by troops in front and rear, the mournful pro- cession of Pottawattamies moved out on the road and sadly took their way to the place of their exile beyond the Mississippi."
Thus briefly may be told the story of the Chippewas' occupation of the fair county we call by the name they gave to their winding river. Just when the land came into their pos- session, the time of their terrific onslaught upon the Sauks, how many generations had lived and died between their coming and their leaving are merely matters of conjecture. From their own traditions we have learned that the land became theirs through covetousness, con- spiracy, and violence, culminating in a mas- sacre so hideous that the image of its horrors was forever stamped upon the conscience of the nation,-not only on the conscience of the perpetrators of the deed, but of their last de- scendants. For aught we know to the con- trary, the Sauks had wrested the same coun- try from those nameless builders of mounds in the same savage manner. It was the only way they knew to get what they desired. Oblivion is kind to them, perhaps, in conceal- ing all but the mounds of the one race and the name of the other. But the Chippewas had many witnesses to reveal their history and the character of their people. They them- selves have told us how they came to the land. The manner of their going we have been
told by those who were here to see their melancholy exit from the stage, the center of which they had held so many, many moons.
We know, too, the methods by which our people in turn became masters of this land which was the red man's land of heart's de- sire. Whether those methods were blameless a simple chronicler of events may not attempt to determine. If the business of the soil is to produce crops, then the red men were ob- structionists and as such were swept aside by destiny's resistless broom. If the ghosts of the possibly defrauded Chippewas ever haunt- ed the Indian commissioners who induced them to surrender their lands or the white settlers who made their homes in the places where the Indian wigwams had stood, that fact has in some way missed being recorded. After a settler had arrived at a certain tract in the untamed wilderness, with weeks of travel by ox team or "by hand" behind him; after he had paid the price the government required for that portion of his country's forest and marsh ; after he had built his cabin home of logs felled by his own ax ; after he had transported provisions for his family's subsistence forty or fifty miles until a "breaking-up-team" had sufficiently loosened the soil so that a crop could be planted; after burning log heaps ; after fever and ague, and wolves; after, in short, he had torn up a section of the forest with his bare hands and converted it into a farm, it would seem unlikely that the usurper ever had any misgivings as to his moral right to own the land he had conquered.
10
PAST AND PRESENT OF
TRADERS
The first white man known to have set foot within the limits of Shiawassee county was not a missionary bringing the story of the Cross to his pagan red brethren. He was not an explorer looking for a fabled fountain of eternal youth. Had he been a scientist in search of specimens or a prospector looking for mineral or even a government surveyor, his advent would have dignified the opening page of the story of the white man's occupa- tion of the county. Had that first paleface invader been only a "soldier of fortune" in search of adventure, he might have shed a light of romance around the first authentic date we have to record. But a decent regard for facts compels us reluctantly to acknowl- edge that the man who has the distinction of being the leader of our race into the valley of the winding river was simply a trader in search of "hides,"-a French trader with an Indian wife. His name was Henry Bolieu and the year in which he first paddled his canoe up the current of the Shiawassee was 1816. The principal branch of his business was like that of all the early traders, the purchase of furs. It was the custom of these traders to establish a post at some convenient point on one of the many small rivers flowing through the dense forests. The trading posts became widely known as centers of trade for the In- dians of the surrounding country and land- marks for the settlers who in later years came looking for lands upon which to locate.
Bolieu had been trading in the Saginaw country some years previously to his first trip up the Shiawassee river and must have had a wide acquaintance among the tribes inhabiting
that territory. Among the traders he was a free lance and did not establish a permanent post as did the others, on the Saginaw and Flint rivers, but instead had several places of residence among which he divided his time. Some interesting facts concerning this pioneer of pioneers have been found in a series of ar- ticles which constitute "A Story of the First White Settlement in Shiawassee County," written by the late Mr. Lucius E. Gould, of Owosso, and published in The Evening Argus about four years ago. From one of these papers we are permitted to quote the follow- ing:
"Not only was he friendly with the Indians and the traders, but was of great assistance to the pioneers who came to build for them- selves homes either in the beautiful 'oak open- ings' or in the marshy, briar, and vine-en- tangled woods along the Flint and Shiawassee rivers. Long before other white men had followed him into these woods he had discov- ered where the most convenient places were to ford the streams and to each of these river crossings he invariably gave the name 'Grand Traverse.' It was Bolieu who guided Jacob Smith to the Grand Traverse of the Flint river at which place is now located the city of Flint.
"At several of these river crossings Henry Bolieu built for himself a log shanty. They were generally erected over or in a hole in the side of a hill, fashioned somewhat after the style of a western 'dugout.' The one excep- tion to this was the log house he built about the year 1816 or 1817, on an Indian clearing in a wide, level field at a point on the Shia-
1
11
SHIAWASSEE COUNTY
wassee river which in after years was known as Knaggs' Place. Mr. Edson Lyman says that when he was a boy he saw the ruins of this log house. The only other house that Bolieu was known to have built in Shiawassee county was near Che-boc-way-ting, or Big Rapids, now Owosso. The late Benjamin O. Williams, who came into the country with his brother, Alfred, as early as 1829, a short time before his death pointed out to L. W. Todd, of Boston, then a boy, the exact place where this log shanty of Bolieu's once stood. And, indeed, parts of some of the logs were still in the ground at the time of their visit. It was situated on land now owned by Mr. Albert West, and on the hillside near the river in the rear of his residence on West Oliver street."
In his account of the early traders, Mr. Ellis states that he visited the same scene with Mr. Williams about 1880 and at that time there was still in existence portions of two ancient chimneys and some other ruins. He also states that at the same place there were still to be seen pits in the earth, evidently made for the burying of canoes, and adds in explanation that "the Indians (and the traders, who learned the custom from them) were in the habit of burying their canoes in winter to prevent them from being ruined by the frost."
In a later series of papers written by Mr. Gould and also published in the Evening Ar- gus, in the spring of 1902, is the following description of the first journey up the Shia- wassee valley of the first white trader.
"When Henry Bolieu made his first voyage up the river into the regions of the Shiawas- see, he found three Indian villages or settle- ments. The first one he came to was the Chippewa village of Che-as-sin-ning, or 'Big Rock,' and to-day better known as Chesaning.
At this place Henry found not only the largest village . on the river, but one of those Indian orchards that made the country through which the Shiawassee flowed famous not only to the Indians, the trader and trapper, but the actual settlers. After stopping for some time at the 'Place of the Big Rock,' Bolieu paddled on up the stream for several days until he came to the village of Shig-e-mas-king, or the 'Place of the Soft Maple.' The word 'ing' or 'ning' at the end of an Indian name means 'the place' or 'spot.' From Shig-e-mas-king it was but a short journey to the place of the Big Salt Licks, or the village of Kechewondaugon- ing.
"Although Henry was well acquainted with the reputation of this place as being the cen- ter of valuable hunting grounds which fur- nished to all the Indians of the region a con- stant supply of food, and such provisions as were in those early days gathered from the woods, he was more interested in ascertaining the quantity and value of the fur-bearing animals of the country, upon which his own living and comfort depended. In fact our trader and trapper made his voyage up the Shiawassee not so much for the purpose of seeing the Indians and their orchards and gar- dens, as to visit a colony of beavers that were said to inhabit some of the creeks and marshes which were two or three miles to the southwest from the river. Therefore, all in due time Henry again took his canoe, this time with a guide, and paddled up the stream from the clearing of the Kechewondaugoning to a small creek which was then and still is, to this day, pouring its waters into the Shiawassee from the west. Here Bolieu left his boat, and his guide conducted him along a well worn In- dian trail which now and then crossed the
12
PAST AND PRESENT OF
creek as they traveled to the west. This trail and the creek led them over land which in after years was, and is now known as the 'Bradley Martin farm.' At this point they changed their direction from due west to south, and when they had journeyed about a mile were stopped by a large pond of water. This pond was formed by a dam which had been made by beavers. The ruins of this beaver dam were something like two hundred feet in length and were well known to the early settlers of the town of Antrim.
"After making a careful examination of this colony of beavers and measuring the length of the dam, as well as estimating the number of lodges contained in the pond, Henry fol- lowed his guide in a southerly direction until they came to an Indian orchard of plum and apple trees. From this point they traveled to the southwest for nearly a mile when they ar- rived at a group of Indian mounds. From these they turned and after a short walk through the woods came out on the bank of a lake which the Indians in those days called Ketch-e-gan, or Big Lake, as it is named on the map of Antrim of to-day.
"Now when Henry Bolieu returned to his camp on the river, he was so well pleased with what he had found while on his tramp in the woods, and so well satisfied with the in- formation he had gained in regard to the re- sources of the country, he determined to es- tablish his summer home at the Kechewon- daugoning. All this happened about the year 1816, or about four years before Whitmore Knaggs established his trading post at this point on the river. But the buildings Knaggs erected were shanties compared with the cabin
home of Henry Bolieu * * * It was constructed of logs and was covered with a
bark roof. For twenty years this cabin was a famous landmark in central Michigan. Situ- ated as it was on the east side of the Shia- wassee river, about eighty rods below the present Knaggs bridge, in the township of Burns, not far from a point where three In- dian trails converged for the purpose of cross- ing the river at the one convenient place which was afterwards known as Knaggs' Ford, Bo- lieu's cabin became as well known to the In- dians and the voyageur des bois as was the log house of John Knaggs at a later date. The stone chimney of Bolieu's cabin was built of boulders taken from the bed of the river. It was a French chimney. The same kind can be seen to-day attached to the small farm houses just outside of the city of Quebec. Long after Bolieu's cabin and the cabins of his- toric Knaggs' Place had entirely disappeared and even after the log houses of the pioneers of that vicinity were gone, that stone chimney was still standing, not unlike a monument to the heroic deeds of both the 'pathfinder' and the 'old settler.'
"Henry Bolieu showed great foresight in locating his cabin. It was an ideal place for the home of the trader and trapper. We are quite sure the reader will pardon us for again mentioning the reasons why Henry built his cabin on the old Indian clearing of the Keche- wondaugoning when he learns that the build- ing of that cabin was the beginning of a series of historical events which by the year 1822 resulted in the setting apart of portions of the region of the Shiawassee to be and become one of the counties of the territory. To the traveler of the wood, the practical value of the location of the cabin was that it marked for him the exact place where to cross the river in safety. If the 'voyageur' chanced to
13
SHIAWASSEE COUNTY
be a stranger to the wilderness of the Shia- wassee and if he asked for directions when about to leave either Detroit or Toledo, the answer he received was usually in the words : 'You must go through the woods to the north or northwest until you come to the seventh river. * Now, when you reach the * Shiawassee you must search along the east bank until you come to a large clearing in which, at a short distance from the river, stands one of the cabins of "Hank Bolieu." It is surrounded by some apple trees and a patch of corn which the Indians have planted. But you will know the cabin, for it not only has an outside oven but a stone chimney. Going on the Looking Glass, are you? Well, in that case you will find the cabin an excellent place to stop over night. Never mind if the owner is not there. Pull the latch string and go right in. Build a fire on the great, stone hearth and make yourself at home.'
"The arrival of Henry Bolieu at the Big Salt Licks in 1816 marked the beginning of the geographical history of Shiawassee coun- ty. For more than half a century prior to the year 1822 the boundaries of that wild and mys- terious region known as Shiawassee were in- definite. In 1822 Shiawassee appeared upon the map of Michigan for the first time. It was during that year its boundaries were first es- tablished by a proclamation issued by Gov- ernor Lewis Cass. Notwithstanding the fact that General Cass's proclamation greatly re- duced the territory of the Shiawassee known for years to the Indian, the trader and the trapper, it still contained within its legal boundaries of the northeast quarter of the county of Ingham, the north half of the county of Livingston, and eight townships now in the county of Genesee. However, as time went
on, the above named counties were organized one by one, and each new organization drew from the territory of the original Shiawassee till it was reduced to its present limits, one of the smallest counties in the state."
While Bolieu first came to this neighborhood from the Saginaw he also prosecuted his trad- ing business with the Indians living on the Flint, and, without doubt, with those on the Looking Glass and Maple rivers also. It is probable that his later permanent home was on the Flint, as he married a full-blooded In- dian woman, a sister or near relative of Neome, head chief of the Pewonigo band of Indians, who lived at Pewonigowink, on the Flint river. However, their daughter, An- gelique, and doubtless the remainder of his family were sometimes with him at Kechewon- daugoning. Angelique Bolieu, it is said, was sent to Detroit to be educated. She married a Frenchman named Coutant, and after his death she became the wife of Jean Baptiste St. Au- bin, of Detroit.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.