Past and present of Shiawassee County, Michigan, historically; with biographical sketches, Part 4

Author:
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Lansing, Mich. : Hist. Pub.
Number of Pages: 580

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it was quite morning, and while the dance was on and pleasure at its greatest height, the gold or silver money which had been officially counted, was placed in a stout saddlebag and given to a trusty lad who mounted a swift horse and rode away to Flint, where the next bank the commissioner was to visit was lo- cated. Of course, when the commissioner ar- rived at Flint and counted the required specie there, he found it exactly correct. But it was the very same money he had been counting for the last three days, first at Ypsilanti, then at Howell, then at Shiawassee Exchange, and so on."

But there came a day when the commis- sioner appeared at the bank unannounced and unexpected, after the manner of present day bank inspectors. In the consequent examina- tion of the bank's reserve a small amount of paper and seven coppers were discovered, against which were bills in circulation to the amount of twenty-two thousand, two hundred sixty-one dollars, thirty per cent. of the cap- ital stock having been required by law. Upon the discovery of this fact the Exchange Bank shared the fate of similar wildcat enterprises of the day, and ceased to exist.

About 1839 the Exchange farm was bought by Sidney Seymour, who had come to the county from New York in 1836. For some years the place was still known as a wayside inn and ball room, which occupied nearly the whole of the second floor, was the scene of many a winter night's gaiety. It was subse- quently owned successively by Joseph, Grace, George Roys and Porter Rogers. Sometime in the '60s it was purchased by Rochus Elses- ser, in whose possession it remained until his death about five years ago, and the ownership is still retained by his heir. In 1895 Mr. Elses-

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ser decided to replace the "Old Exchange" as it then had come to be called, with a modern residence. As he wished the new house to stand nearly on the site of the old one, the ancient building was torn down, the plan fol- lowed being to saw the entire structure through the middle and leave one half standing and occupied while the new house was building. The second half stood until the spring of 1896, when it too was de- molished.

Mr. Henry Goodrich, of Bancroft, was the builder of the new house ; he also took the old one apart and in the process discovered many interesting things about its construction. The frame was fifty-six feet in length and twenty- four feet wide. It was made principally of oak of a superior quality; the posts, sills, and plates were of hewed timber, but the joists, studding, and rafters had all been sawed by hand, with a whipsaw. Every part of the wood except that used in the sills, which had come in contact with the ground, was found in a perfect state of preservation. The flooring of the second story was of pine boards one inch and a half in thickness, planed and matched by hand; and the wainscotting was also of pine boards, perfectly "clear" and twenty-six inches wide. Every moulding used had been made by hand and the workmanship was of a quality to excite a builder's admiration. The several fireplaces were massive ones of stone, with smooth stone hearths and the chimneys were correspondingly large.

The feature which attracted most attention was the walnut cornice mentioned before. It was made from a single piece of black walnut extending the length of the building, and was a combination of cornice and eavestrough. Its dimensions were: Width, sixteen inches ; .

thickness, six inches; length, fifty-six feet, and it consisted of the plancher, the facia, the moulding, and a generous extension which formed the eavestrough, this being squared on the lower surface, the hollow in the upper side being as perfect as if made by machinery. Every inch of this remarkable cornice had been made by hand and the carving and finish were undeniably the work of an artist. There was no piecing in any portion of it; the whole had been carved from a solid block of wood and nowhere in it was the heart of the tree visible.

It is a feast for the imagination to think of that walnut tree; of its excellent height which furnished that block of wood fifty-six feet long ; of the girth which gave out of one side the sixteen by six inches; of its beauti- ful straightness of grain; and of the long, long years in which its roots were nourished by the soil of Shiawassee; the years in which its branches reached farther and farther to- wards the blue arch above them ; the summers when its leaves drank dew and rain and sun- shine, and the winters when they lay about its foot, returning to the soil the richness it had given.

. It is a pity that the name of the man who executed that ingenious bit of carpentry has been lost, with a multitude of interesting items of the county's early history, which, if pre- served, would have been valued by later gen- erations. It would be gratifying to give the skillful hand the praise it merited ; and, more- over, exact information upon which to rely for accuracy is highly desirable in narrating even the minor events of life. So we have taken pleasure in recording the now apparently un- important fact that Mr. Goodrich is the per- son who built the new "Exchange," and that

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it is to his courtesy we are indebted for the facts given in describing the old one. These statements are made for the benefit of some unborn historian who, fifty years from now, may wish to satisfy himself that the famous eavestrough was not a figment of our fancy.

In the further interest of that future chroni- cler it may be mentioned that Colonel George A. Parker, of Bancroft, was at some pains to secure for preservation a portion of the cor- nice ; that he had a cane made from a piece of the historic walnut, and at a meeting of the Pioneer Society of Shiawassee County pre- sented the cane to Mr. Lucius E. Gould, whose family are doubtless in possession of it at the present time. The remaining portions of the wood he treasured and exhibited to his

friends as the last existing relics of the pioneer frame house of the county. They were once temporarily in his office at Bancroft while he had as a guest a young nephew from the east. Coming into the office on a chilly afternoon, the Colonel found his guest sitting before the wood stove in which a fire was briskly burn- ing, and was cheerily greeted with the in- formation that the fire had been kindled ex- pressly for his comfort out of "those pieces of old black wood which had been littering up the room." Colonel Parker was inconsolable over his loss, and it is presumed that the fire proved sufficiently warming to satisfy the young man's solicitude when he learned that the fuel he had used was the almost sacred relic of a bygone age.

LATER INDIAN HISTORY

During the years in which the Williams brothers conducted the fur business they formed a wide acquaintance with their cus- tomers, who were the Indians of most of the different bands inhabitating central Michigan. They learned to speak fluently the Chippewa language, and it was through the knowledge they thus gained of the character of the In- dians and the conditions under which they lived that most of the history of the Shiawassee bands has been preserved.

When the trading post at the Exchange was opened in 1831 the Indian villages or settle- ments on the Shiawassee river were the same three which Bolieu had found there in 1816. They were Kechewondaugoning on the reser- vation of the same name; Shig-e-mask-ing, "soft maple place" and Che-as-sin-ning, or "Big Rock." Only the first two were within

the boundaries of Shiawasee county, the vil- lage on the reservation being the summer home home of Wasso, the principal chief of the Shia- wassee bands. The third was at the site of the present village of Chesaning, in Saginaw county, and was much the largest of the three villages.

A small settlement on the south branch of the Shiawassee, in what is now the township of Cohoctah, in Livingston county, was aban- doned by the Indians about 1830, after the death of its chief, Nabobish. This village had formerly borne the name of the chief, but was known later as Assineboining (meaning "rocky place.") The treaty of 1819 had stip- ulated that a reservation of two thousand acres be located at this place, but it was merged in the forty-thousand-acre tract near Sagi- naw. "The reason why the Nabobish reser-

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vation was never surveyed and set apart for the use of the Indians is not known, but the fact that it was never done caused great dissat- isfaction among them ; and during all the years of their stay in this region they never ceased to refer to it in bitter terms as an act of bad faith on the part of the government."

"On the Looking Glass river in what is now the township of Antrim, there had been an Indian village of considerable size, but this had been abandoned prior to 1831. On the south bank of the stream which the early French traders called La Riviere du Plain, but which the English-speaking settlers named Maple river, was the village of the chief Maki- toquet. This village remained and prospered -as much as any Indian village can ever be said to prosper-for a considerable time after the coming of the first white settlers. There were also villages of Makitoquet's people far- ther down the river, in the present county of Clinton ; they were, however, more like camps than permanent villages, but were always fully occupied during the sugaring season."

Away to the eastward, nearly on the bound- 'ary between Genesee and Oakland counties, the Fisher tribe of Saginaws had a village called Kopenicorning. Descendants of this band were still living in Genesee county a few years ago and it is probable that they may be found there now on farms which were in the individual reservations, as none of these was surrendered to the government when the tribal reservations were bought in 1837. Some of the Fishers must have removed to the villages in Shiawassee county about the time the first white settlers arrived, for the earlier settlers invariably referred to the Indians whom they knew here in the '30s as members of the Fisher tribe.

A few miles south of the southern boundary of Shiawasee county, in the county of Ingham, were settlements of the people known as the Red Cedar Indians, though they belonged to the Shiawassee bands of the Saginaws. Their principal chief was the veteran Okemos.

The various bands all belonged to the Chip- pewa tribe, there being only a few stray Otta- was among them. Speaking of these Indians, in an interview given about twenty-five years ago, Mr. B. O. Williams said: "We found them scattered over this vast primitive forest, each band known by its locality or chief. They subsisted principally by hunting, though all had summer residences where they raised mindor-min (corn), potatoes, turnips, beans, and sometimes squashes, pumpkins, and melons."

Such agriculture as the Indians engaged in was carried on in a careless, slovenly and su- perficial way. Of course they were ignorant of the use of plows, and the few implements which they had were of the rudest and most primitive kind. At or near all their villages on the Maple, the Looking Glass, and the Shi- awassee there were corn fields which they planted year after year with the same crops. Fields of considerable extent were situated midway between Vernon and Shiawasseetown. From lack of care and the planting of the same fields for many years in succession, these had become overgrown with grass, weeds and sumach bushes, so that the crops obtained were very meagre, and but for the almost boundless stores of food furnished by the streams and forests, the people must have been constantly in a state bordering on famine. At Keche- wondaugoning there was a small Indian or- chard of stunted and uncared for apple trees, and similar ones were found at several places

SHIAWASSEE COUNTY

in the county. The Indians had plenty of poor and scrawny ponies, but these lived wholly without care and were never made use of ex- cept for riding.

It was their custom during the autumn to move from the vicinity of their fields, pro- ceeding up towards the heads of the streams, making halts at intervals of six or eight miles, and camping for a considerable time at each halting place for purposes of hunting and fish- ing. Upon the approach of winter they floated back in their canoes, which they carried around rapids and other obstructions, and betook themselves to their winter quarters, in compar- atively sheltered places within the denser forests. From there the young men went out to the winter hunting and trapping grounds, through which they roamed till the approach of spring, when all, men, women and children, engaged in sugar-making until the sap ceased to flow. The manufacture of maple sugar was one of their principal industries, if the term industry can properly be applied to anything existing in an Indian community of that time. They produced large quantities of this article, and of a remarkably good quality, considering the rude manner in which it was made, with the use of only wooden troughs for catching the sap and even huge troughs made out of logs for boiling the syrup, which was accom- plished by heating stones and throwing them into the liquid. After iron kettles were brought into the country the Indians made use of them for the boiling, but the small troughs were used even by the white people for some time after they began to make sugar. These were made of sections of basswood or pine log sawed into pieces about two feet in length, each section being split in two lengthwise. The rounding side of each half was hewed off

slightly to form a level bottom and in the straight side a hollow or basin was chopped out in which to catch the sap. These were set at the foot of a tree and served the purpose of the tin buckets now in vogue. Elderly people sometimes fondly insist that the sugar made with those rough utensils had a flavor superior to that of the refined article now pro- duced from the few maple groves left standing in the county. Perhaps the basswood troughs had something to do with the flavor and pos- sibly the keen appetites of youth have preju- diced their memories.

The Indians' resources were, of course, al- most unlimited, for noble groves of maple abounded everywhere. Having completed the manufacture of the year's product they packed it in "mokoks" which were vessels or packages neatly made of birch-bark, and buried it in the ground, where it was kept in good condition for future use or sale. After this process was finished they again moved to their cornfields : then, after planting and harvesting, they fished and hunted up to the headwaters of the streams, again returning to their forest camps or villages to pass the winter as before.

Once a year, soon after sugar-making, near- ly all the Indians of the interior repaired to Kepayshowink (the great camping ground) which was where the west side of the city of Saginaw now stands. They went there for the purpose of engaging in grand jubilee of one or two weeks' duration, of which the principal features were dances, games, and feats of strength. As they were usually able to obtain liquor there, these gatherings often brought about quarrels and deadly fighting. "If an in- jury had been done to one party or another, it was generally settled here, either with prop- erty, such as arms, ponies or blankets, or by

PAST AND PRESENT OF

the price of life. If the injury had been one of an exceedingly aggravated nature a life was demanded and stoically and unflinchingly yielded up by the doomed party." Many an in- veterate Indian feud reached a bloody termin- ation on the great camping ground at Saginaw.

"The Chippewas, like all other Indians, were extremely superstitious ; indeed, they appeared to be more marked in their peculiarity than were most of the other tribes," says Mr. Franklin Ellis. From his history has been gathered the following interesting comments on this characteristic weakness of the Chippe- was.

It has already been mentioned that the ancestors of the later Saginaw Chippewas imagined that the country which they had wrested from the conquered Sauks was haunt- ed by the spirits of those whom they had slain, and that it was only after the lapse of years that their terrors became allayed sufficiently to permit them to occupy the "haunted hunt- ing grounds." But the superstition still re- mained, and, in fact, it was never entirely dis- pelled. Long after the valleys of the Saginaw, the Shiawassee, and the Maple became studded with white settlements, the simple Indians still believed that mysterious Sauks were lingering in the forests and along the margins of their streams for purposes of vengeance ; that "mun- esous," or bad spirits, in the form of Sauk war- riors were hovering around their villages and camps, and hanging on the flanks of their . hunting parties, preventing them from being successful in the chase and bringing ill fortune and discomfiture in a hundred ways. So great was their dread that when, as was frequently the case, they became possessed of the idea that the munesous were in their immediate vicinity they would fly as if for their lives, abandoning

everything, wigwams, fish, game and peltry, -and no amount of ridicule from the whites could convince them of their folly or induce them to stay and face the imaginary danger. "Sometimes, during sugar-making," said Mr. Truman B. Fox, of Saginaw, "they would be seized with a sudden panic and, leaving every- thing-their kettles of sap boiling, their mokoks of sugar standing in their camps, and their ponies tethered in the woods,-and flee helter skelter to their canoes, as though pursued by the Evil One. In answer to the question asked in regard to the cause of their panic, the invariable answer was a shake of the head, and a mournful 'an-do-gwane' (don't know.)"

Some of the northern Indian bands whose country joined that of the Saginaw-Chippe- was, played upon their weak superstition, and derived profit from it by lurking around their villages or camps, frightening them into flight, and then appropriating the property which they had abandoned. A few shreds of wool from their blankets left sticking on thorns or dead brushwood, hideous figures drawn with coal upon the trunks of trees, or marked on the ground in the vicinity of their lodges, were sure to produce this result, by indicating the presence of the dreaded munesous. Often the Indians would become impressed with the idea that these bad spirits had bewitched their firearms, so that they could kill no game. "I have had them come to me," said Mr. Ephriam S. Williams, of Flint, "from places miles dis- tant, bringing their rifles to me, asking me to examine and resight them, declaring that the sights had been removed, and in most cases they had, but it was by themselves in their fright. I have often resighted and tried them until they would shoot correctly, and then they would go away cheerfully. I would tell

SHIAWASSEE COUNTY

tliem they must keep them where the munesous could not find them. At other times, having a little bad luck in trapping or hunting, they be- came excited and would say that game had been over and in their traps and that they could not catch anything. I have known them to go so far as to insist that a beaver or an otter had been in their traps and got out, that their traps were bewitched or spellbound, and their rifles charmed by the munesous, so that they could not catch or kill anything. Then they must give a great feast and have the medicine man or conjurer, and through his wise and dark performances the charm is re- moved and all is well, and traps and rifles do their duty again. These things have been handed down for generations."

A very singular superstitious rite was per- formed annually by the Shiawassee Indians at a place called Pindatongoing (meaning the place where the spirit of sound or echo lives), about two miles above Newburg, on the Shia- wassee river, where the stream was deep and eddying. The ceremony at this place was witnessed in 1831 by Mr. B. O. Williams, who thus described it: "Some of the old Indians every year, in fall or summer, offered up a sacrifice to the spirit of the river of that place. They dressed a puppy or dog in a fanastic manner by decorating it with various colored ribbons, scarlet cloth, beads, or wampum tied around it; also a piece of tobacco and ver- milion paint around its neck (their own faces blackened). After burning, by the riverside, meat, corn, tobacco, and sometimes whiskey offerings, they would, with many muttered adjurations and addresses to the spirit, and waving of hands, holding the pup, cast him into the river, and then appear to listen and watch, in a mournful attitude, its struggles

as it was borne by the current down into a deep hole in the river at that place, the bot- tom of which at that time could not be dis- covered without very careful inspection. I could never learn the origin of the legend they then had, that the spirit had dived down into the earth through that deep hole, but they be- lieved that by a propitiatory yearly offering their luck in hunting and fishing on the river would be bettered and their health preserved."

Of the general character of the Indians of this region and their melancholy fate, Mr. Wil- liams said: "They were hospitable, honest and friendly, although always reserved until well acquainted; never obtrusive unless un- der the influence of their most deadly enemy, intoxicating drink. None of these spoke a word of English, and they evinced no desire to learn it. * * I believe they were as virtuous and guileless a people as I have ever lived among, previous to their great destruc- tion in 1834 by the cholera, and again their al- most extermination during the summer of 1837 by the (to them) most dreaded disease, small- pox, which was brought to Chesaning from Saginaw. They fully believed that one of the Saginaw Indians had been purposely inocul- ated by a doctor there, the belief arising from the fact that an Indian had been vaccinated by the doctor, probably after his exposure to the disease, and the man died of smallpox. The Indians always dreaded vaccination from fear and suspicion of the operation.

When the smallpox broke out in 1837 they fled to the woods by families, but not until some one of the family broke out with the disease and died. Thus whole villages and bands were decimated, and during the summer and fall many were left without burial at the camps in the woods, and were devoured by

PAST AND PRESENT OF

wolves. I visited the village of Che-as-sin- , ning and saw in the summer camps several bodies partially covered up, and not a living soul could I find except one old squaw, who was convalescent.

"Most of the adults attacked, died, but it is a remarkable fact that no white person ever took the disease from them, although in many instances the poor, emaciated creatures visited white families while covered with pustules. It is a singular fact also that although the disease was so exceedingly fatal to the Indians on the Shiawassee, and in less degree to those in the valley of the Looking Glass, it was not communicated to the Maple river Indians at all, and they remained wholly unharmed by it. Thus passed away those once proud owners of the land, leaving a sickly, depressed, and, eventually, a begging, debased remnant of a race that a few years before scorned a mean act and among whom a theft was scarcely ever known. I do not think I possess any morbid sentimentality for Indians. I simply wish to represent them as we found them. What they are now is easily seen by the few wretched specimens around us."

The brothers A. L. and B. O. Williams were men of unusual ability, intellect, and high character, and exerted a marked influence on the early history of Shiawassee county. After their removal from the trading station their in- terests were principally identified with the growing city of Owosso, where they made their homes during most of the remainder of their lives. They were a connecting link be- tween the transient traders and the permanent settlers, and possessed the best qualities of both classes. They were also often the friend- ly medium through which the settlers and Indians communicated with each other. Know-

ing the Chippewas' language and understand- ing their character and customs better than did most of the settlers, they were often called upon to act as mediators when disputes arose between their new white neighbors and their . older red ones. While the Shiawassee Indians as late as the '30s could not be classed as war- like, and never showed any real hostility to the settlers, yet it was inevitable that there should be occasional clashes between them, caused by misunderstandings.

In the spring of 1836 B. O. Williams, with his elder brother, Gardner D. Williams, of Saginaw, went to the city of Washington, in charge of a party of thirteen Saginaw-Chip- pewa chiefs. for the purpose of concluding a treaty by which the Indians should sell to the United States the tribal reservations granted them by the treaty of Saginaw in 1819. This negotiation was ultimately successful. The deputation remained about three weeks in Washington, and the whole journey consumed about two months,-the means of traveling at that time being by stage and canal.

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Past and present of Shiawassee County, Michigan, historically; with biographical sketches, Part 4

Author: Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Lansing, Mich. : Hist. Pub. Number of Pages: 580

Author:
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Lansing, Mich. : Hist. Pub.
Number of Pages: 580