THE CHIPPEWAS.

The Chippewas, or Ojibways, were a hardy northern race, generally of fine physique and great powers of endurance. Their ancient seats were around the western end of Lake Superior, and north of the lake. They were of Algonquin race, closely related to the Ottawas, and became allies of the French together with that tribe. The rigors of their climate prevented the development of agriculture to the same extent that it prevailed among the Hurons and other more southern tribes, and drove them to the chase as means of sustenance, making life more precarious. The old men were recognized as the receptacle of wisdom garnered through the many summers. The old women were the arbiters in all matters of genealogy, and whenever anything depended upon birth or decent, whether office, heritage or honors, the decision of the oldest woman was the final decision, as she was the ultimate register of vital statistics.

With the Chippewas, with a less dependable source of food supply, with famines occurring with almost periodical regularly, the aged became a burden upon the band, lessening its social vitality; consequently they were to be eliminated in the interest of the safety of the tribe. Among all the Indians of the extreme north, of the lower social status, those of feeble age and who were unable to earn their own living, who thus became a burden upon the tribe, were to be done away.

There was a myth of the river of sacred waters, of such magical properties, that when anyone was drowned in its floods he was immediately transported to the regions of the blessed in the hunting grounds of the Indian paradise. This adhered in the belief of the Chippewas, and when any old person who felt himself a burden upon the community expressed a desire to go to the river of sacred waters, his wish was obeyed and the pilgrimages that went to this fabled river took with them these feeble ones who went down into its sacred waters, and through them to the reward of the next world, and so was preserved the race.

The Chippewas were subject to frightful visitations of the pestilence, in the many forms of filth diseases. So great had been its ravages among them that in the common sign language of the more western Indians, the sign that meant a Chippewa was made by picking with the thumb and finger of the right hand on the body, initiation of the picking of the scab from this disease. Their medical knowledge was much inferior to that of the Hurons, and far inferior to that of the "grandfathers,' the Delawares, who excelled all the other Indians in this branch of knowledge, so much so, that, as Heckwelder states, it was common for white women who lived in contact with them to call the Indian doctor for their diseases in preference to the white practitioner.

The Chippewas in earlier times were associated closely with the Ottawas, and in the language of the early French writers the term Ottawa is often used in a generic sense to include all the Algonquin tribes about the lake who came down the river of the Ottawas to trade. Parkman, in his "Frontenac and New France," page 151, describes them as "a perilous crew, who changed their minds every day, and whose dancing, singing and yelping might turn at any time into war whoops against one another, or against their hosts, the French. The Hurons, he adds, were more stable.

The later years of the seventeenth century brought about something like a respite for these Indians. The wasting wars had weakened the confederated Iroquois, and their forays had become less frequent and less fierce. In 1690 the Chippewas and their allies came down the river of the Ottawas with beaver skins of the value of about one hundred thousand crowns, and an era of prosperity dawned upon them. Some of these furs were probably taken from the Flint river, for we have seen that in the spring of 1688 Lahontan found something like three or four hundred of the Ottawas from the north leaving the valley of our rivers, where they has wintered, trapping beaver.

It was not long after the coming of the Ottawas, and probably soon after the peace of 1701, that the Chippewas of the north came into our valley. They came peacefully and were welcomed by the Ottawas, their allies, who had preceded them in settling in the valley of the Saginaw, which had been the common hunting grounds after the departure of the Sauks. There was room for all; for, as Parkman states, referring to the Indians of fifty years later, the greater part of Michigan was tenanted by wild beasts alone; the Indians were "so thin and scattered," he says, "that even in those parts which was thought well peopled, one might sometimes journey for day together through the twilight forest and meet no human form." Such was the Paucity of the Ottawas and the Chippewa inhabitants of our country that it is quite probably, that, all told, they may never have exceeded five or six hundred.

The branch of the Chippewas that settled here in our region came to be known as the Chippewas of the Saginaw, and by the year of 1761, as we learn from the journal of Lieutenant Gorrell, commandant at Green Bay, the Chippewas and Ottawas had partitioned the state of Michigan, the Ottawas taking the west region and the Chippewas taking the east, the dividing line being drawn south from the post at Michilimackinac. It may be a question as to whether this partition applied to the two tribes in lower Michigan, but it is quite certain that we soon find the Ottawas of the lower portions of the state, including those who were on the Flint river, settled westward; and all did not go, as appears from the fact that the treaty of Saginaw some Ottawas participated and became signatory parties of the same.

In the meantime, French traders and many half-breeds had become residents for trade or otherwise among the Indians of our county, and they to a considerable extent adopted the dress and conformed to the customs and manners of natives. They painted themselves for the feast or fight according to the usages of the Indians, and the people of the county of Genesee became a mixed race, Ottawas, Chippewas, and French, among whom were the half-breeds; the language became a mixed one, with many French terms, a jargon of the three languages. The testimony of many writers makes these Chippewas of the Saginaw a depraved people. Under their dominion our county was less moral, less law-abiding, less productive, and in every way of a status inferior to what it was under the Huron Sauks. In place of the grave religious festivals of that people, the practices of the Chippewas were irreligious and irreverent. The Hurons had lived here many generations, and each place was doubtless the subject of some tradition; sacred association clustered about them, and her and there along the rivers were the common grave of their ancestors. The Chippewas were new comers, who had been corrupted by association with the worst element of the whites, and they seem to have left behind many of the sterner virtues of their rugged ancestors of the north. Among the more settled and developed tribes there existed an intricate clan system, each clan being represented by some animal. The members of each clan were of blood relationship to each other, and such consanguinity brought duties of hospitality. The Hurons has four of these clans, the Bear, the Wolf, the Hawk and the Heron. The Chippewas had only partially developed this clan system, as the ties of blood were less strong and relationship less certain.

The event of greatest historical importance that happened to these Indians was the war of Pontiac. If we could have the history of tht momentous even in its entirety, of the men who went out from Mus-cat-a-wing to fight for the mistaken cause of the conspirator, who was led to his destruction by his faith in the French and hatred of the English; if we could tell the deeds of daring, the eloquence of the chiefs, the devotion of the men, we might have something of greatest interest as local history. Unfortunately, we only know a few of these facts, and can state them only in such general terms as quite eliminate the human interest so inseparably connected with personal adventure.

The chiefs of the Saginaw Chippewas attended the council held at Ecorse on April 27, 1763. "There were the tall naked figures of the wild Ojibways, with quivers slung at their backs, and with light war-clubs resting in the hollow of their arms; Ottawas, wrapped close in their gaudy blankets; Wyandottes, fluttering in painted shirts, their head adorned with feathers, and their leggings garnished with bells. All were soon seated in a wide circle upon the grass, row within row, a grave and a silent assembly. Each savage countenance seemed carved in wood and none could have detected the ferocious passions hidden beneath tht immobile mask. Pipes, with ornamented stems, were lighted and passed from hand to hand." So Parkman described the council of our Indians, including those who came from Mus-cat-a-wing, on the Pewonigowinsee-be, where is now the fifth ward.

They listened to the burning eloquence of Pontiac, who played upon their hatred for the English and their traditional friendship for the French, to his appeals to their superstitions to his interpretation of the dream of the Delaware of the Wolf clan, who by fasting, dreaming and incantations was permitted to approach the Master of Life, and of the message that the Delaware brought back to the Indians, of the wishes of the Master of Life to extirpate the dogs in red coats, and restore the primitive conditions of the Indians when they were master of the land. The decision of the council was for war, and in this decision the men of the Saginaw country joined.

Wasso, chief of the Saginaws, led two hundred men from our valleys to the camp of Pontiac in May and they took an active part in most of the fighting that followed. The invitation from Pontiac to the Chippewas of this region to join him against the English is shown in the following speech, as reported in the "Journal of Pontiac." "I have sent wampum belts and messages to our brothers the Chippewas of Saginaw and to our brothers the Ottawas of Michilimackinac and to those of the Thames river to join us." This speech was delivered at the Pottawatomie village on May 5, 1763.

Not only did the Chippewas of our region receive the belts and wampum, with the messages, but they also send a delegation to the Chippewas at Michilimackinac, as appears from the report of Alexander henry, quoted by Warren in his "History of the Chippewas," page 213, that there arrived at Michilimackinac a band of Indians from the bay of Sag-u-en-auw, who had assisted at the siege of Detroit, and came to muster as many recruits for tht service as they could. These emissaries also wanted to kill Henry, who was found by them to be English, but they were prevented in their designs by M. Cadotte, who had acquired great influence with the northern Chippewas; he also advised against the participation of the northern branch in the war.

Our Chippewas returned from their northern trip with little encouragement, and soon afterwards there happened a most disgraceful episode in which our Indians were the principal actors and in which our chief, Wasson, lead the perpetrators. In the "Journal Of Pontiac," page 208, we find the account of this occurrence as follows: "About four o'clock in the afternoon an officer who had commanded the fort at Sandusky and had been taken prisoner by the Indians, escaped from the camp, or rather, from a French farmhouse where his Indian wife had sent him for safe-keeping. It was learned from him that the Indian who had been shot and scalped was a chief and nephew of Wasson, chief of the Saginaw Chippewas, and that Wasson, enraged that his nephew had been killed in the skirmish of the morning, went to Pontiac's camp, said abusive things, and demanded Mr. Campbell for revenge saying: 'My Brother, I am fond of this carrion flesh which thou guardest; I wish some in my turn; give it to me.'" The story continues: "Pontiac gave him up and Wasson brought him to his camp where he has his young men strip him of his clothes. Then he killed him with a blow of his tomahawk and afterwards cast him into the river; the body floated down stream to the place where the Frenchmen had taken him when he left the fort, in front of M. Culliero's house, and it was buried,"

The act of chief Wasson brought a stain on the fame of Pontiac, who had many excellent and chivalrous qualities. One version of the affair is tht Wasson took the prisoner from the camp of Pontiac in the absence of that chief, and tht on his learning of the fate of Campbell, he was so enraged that Wasson fled to Saginaw to escape the fury of the chief. News of peace between the French and English had already reached the Indians before this act of Wasson, and they were informed tht their Great Father, as they were pleased to call the French king, had given up all claim to the land they were fighting for; but renegade Frenchmen, who wanted to keep alive the hatred against the English, whom they hated, to this end informed the Indians that the pretended peace was an invention of the English and that even then two French armies were coming to aid them. In their credulity the Indians of our region were thus stimulated to hold on, even after the Wyandots and Pottawatomies had entered into agreement for peace; and they with their allies, the Ottawas, made up the ambush at the bridge in the battle of Bloody Bridge, where they inflicted great loss upon the British.

The deferred fulfillment of these promises of aid, more cogent then this, the approach of winter, cooled the ardor of the Indians, and in the fall they gradually deserted the great chief and returned to their homes. The men of the Saginaw country returned to their friends at the various villages along the Saginaw and the Flint.

In the council tht was held between General Bradstreet, on behalf of the British government, and various tribes of Indians who had favored the conspiracy and fought in the war the year before, Wasson represented a considerable number of the tribes and was the principal orator of the occasion. In his opening speech he said: "My Brother, last year God forsook us. God has now opened our eyes and we desire to be heard. It is God's will our hearts are altered. It was god's will you had such fine weather to come to us. It is god's will also there should be peace and tranquillity over the face of the earth and of the waters."

After this pious exordium, he frankly admitted that his Indians had been responsible for the war against the fort at Detroit, and in direct contradiction of the custom of the Indians to lay on the young men all initiative in a war, he said it was the misguided chiefs and old men who planned the same. He promised to receive the English king as the father of the Indians in place of the French king, and so the men of Mus-cat-a wing transferred their allegiance from the French to the English. This must have been a hard task for these people, who had steadfastly adhered to the cause of the French from the time of Champlain, who were bound to them by so many ties and associations, and whose hatred for the English had been fostered by every wile that French diplomacy could suggest.

Chief Wasson, who represented the various tribes at the council above, was perhaps the most prominent chief of all the Indians of our valley and, from a historical standpoint, the best known. We now have no knowledge of his life here, but as the principal chief of all the Chippewas of this region, he was no doubt a frequent visitor to our locality and especially to Mus-cat-a-wing on the Flint.

In the War of the Revolution, which followed soon afterwards, the Indians of this locality were not so partisan in favor of their new masters; but that they joined the British in the various battles can well be accepted. The activity of the Five Nations under the influence of the Great Johnson could not have failed to influence these Indians, who were so warlike in their nature.

As the Indians in 1763 had refused to transfer allegiance from the French to the English, so in the years following the War of the Revolution they refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the American government. They were situated at a point so accessible to the Canadian side of the border, and were so much in contact with them, that their influence still continued to be felt, and the intrigues of the British in Canada, who hoped for the further prosecution of war, which would restore the lost colonies, aided in keeping up this equivocal relationship between the Indians of the Saginaw region and the territorial government established in 1787. The Indians of Mus-cat-a-wing have been especially effected. Among them were many French and half-breeds, who were very poor advisors in mattes of tribal safety. There were also in close touch with their Chippewa brothers at the north, all of whom were very well disposed toward the English.

Abut the close of the year 1811 there was a noticeable unrest among the Indians of the lake regions generally, and this was accompanied by an abundance of arms, of a kind and character quite beyond the ordinary reach of the Indians. The source of this supply was apparent. The English of Canada, anticipating the coming war, had in advance armed the Indians upon whom they could rely, and this policy of preparedness also extended to the Chippewas of our region; they were one of the tribes easiest to reach and easiest to persuade and, in accordance with the general policy of securing the aid of the Indians, which is patent in the correspondence of the various English officials, these Indians had been approached before actual warfare started and their alliance sought. M. Lothier, agent for the Michilimackinac Company, writes January 13, 1812, that the Indians throughout the country where his company traded were all dissatisfied with the American government, and expressed opinion that in event of war between the British and Americans, "every Indian that can bear arms would gladly commence hostilities against the Americans." John Askin, from Michilimackinac, in June, 1813, Tells of the activity of the Indians recruiting at that point, of which he apparently had charge. He pledges the active aid of all Indians capable of engaging in war to aid the British, including all the Indians along the Michigan side of Lake Huron and taking in the Indians of this region. According to communications from Wisconsin, it would seem that the Indians generally had been persuaded that the "lives of their children" depended on the success of the British in the war.

In 1814 they were actively engaged as fighting men and as spies for the British. In a letter from W. Claus, from York (Toronto), dated the 14^th of May, 1814, is the following:

"The Indians, who arrived at Burlington on the 6^th inst. from Sandy Creek, Saguina Bay, report that Mr. Dickson was at Green Bay during the whole of the winter, and that the Winnebagoes, Folavoines, Chippewas, and all the Nationals of the north side of Lake Michigan, met with him in sugar making season, and that he was collecting a great many cattle in the Green Bay settlement.

"thirteen Indians of Naywash's band arrived at Burlington on the 9^th Inst. from Flint river, and say they were informed that two vessels and six gunboats, with about 300 men, had passed the river at St. Clair about 22 or 23 April, for Michilimackinac, and that about 250 men remained at Detroit. These Indians report that there are about 500 men at Saguina Bay, who are ready to show their attachment to their great father, whenever his troops shall return."

This Naywash was perhaps the chief of the Chippewas who in 1786 joined in a deed of certain lands near Detroit to Alexander McKee, in consideration of good will, etc., and who states that the grantee had fought with them in the late war against the enemy.

They had listened to another "Prophet", and against they had been sadly misled to their defeat. At the close of the War of 1812 it may be believed that the Indians of our valleys had become bewildered by the various tempting promises of the British and, earlier, of the French; by the dreams of Pontiac; by the visions of this later prophet; all this had lured them to defeat and destruction, and when Cass and his comrades met them at Saginaw to treat with them for their lands, and reminded them that as a conquered people they could not make demands but must take what their conquerors dealt out to them, the grim logic of this suggestion must have come home to these deluded people--losers in every war they had undertaken--with a crushing force, which found its sequel in their giving up to such a large extent the territories they claimed.