Treaty of Saginaw's 185th Anniversary Recalls Chippewa Tribe's History
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Cover of Saginaw Treaty Sesquicentennial program shows treaty area and depiction of Cass addressing tribesmen.
This year marks the 185th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Saginaw between the Chippewa tribe and the United States.
The fact that the original intention of the government to force the natives to move to Oklahoma was avoided during the 1819 talks and never fully carried out is seldom recalled.
The Treaty of Saginaw was not all grand and glorious for the natives -- they ceded six million prime acres for $1,000 in silver a year. The tribe later was granted the site that recently has become a bonanza for them and the area -- the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort at Mt. Pleasant, opened in 1998.
The Treaty of Detroit in 1807 had secured 12 counties in southeastern Michigan for the government. Although more land wasn't needed since there had been little settlement in the Detroit treaty area, the government wanted more land in mid-Michigan.
President James Monroe commissioned Gen. Lewis Cass, then territorial governor of Michigan, that included Wisconsin and Minnesota east of the Mississippi, "to negotiate a treaty in which the Indians of that area would cede their lands to the U.S. and agree to remove west of the Mississippi River."
Facts about the treaty are in the program from the 1969 Sesquicentennial celebration held in Saginaw.
Gen. Cass asked Saginaw fur trader Louis Campau to construct a council hall, which the pioneer did by placing poles between tree branches, covering them with boughs and erecting a raised platform of flattened logs. Timber seating was provided for the natives and guests.
Several thousand Indians viewed the proceedings, three councils held over two weeks. Cass' position was that the Indian lands were forfeit because the tribe had sided with the British in the War of 1812 but that the U.S. would not take the land without proper payment. After initial Indian reluctance, fur trader Jacob Smith and other traders promised that tribal reservations would be established and used their influence to persuade the Indians to agree to the pact.
According to reports, the traders gave a troublesome chief, Kish-Kaw-Ko, the "Crow," whiskey so he would stay drunk in his wigwam and away from the talks. Cass placed five whiskey barrels in plain view but would not open them until the Indians had signed the treaty. After the signing Campau opened 10 barrels of whiskey and provided dippers for use by the Indians.
The Crow, who appeared to have white blood, wassaid to be arrogant and of a violent temper with everyone, white or red. Despite his personality shortcomings, he was given a tract of land on the east side of the River in Zilwaukee Township, now known as Crow Island.
The treaty was signed Sept. 24, 1819 by 114 chiefs including the well-known Ogemaukeketo, a fine speaker who is buried in Bay City's Roosevelt Park. Cass sent a copy of the treaty to Washington and gave one to the Chippewa. The treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate on Mar. 2, 1820.
The treaty promised to allow the Indians to hunt on the ceded territory but the government immediately began to sell the lands. Settlers clashed with the Indians who tried to walk on their lands and in 1822 Gen. Winfield Scott ordered two companies of soldiers under Col. Ninian Pinckney to establish a fort at Saginaw to quell the Indian disturbances. The fort only lasted a year as malaria and typhoid broke out among the troops, caused by swarms of mosquitos in the swampy area.
The program recalls: "...as late as 1853 a number of Chippewas still came to Saginaw to receive the meager annuities due them under Treaty conditions." Some of the Indian men rolled up in blankets and slept on the floor of the Webster House, an old hotel on the west side of Saginaw, while awaiting their payments.
Of the approximately 100,000 acres in 16 reserves set aside for the Indians in the treaty, the largest was 40,000 acres on the west side of Bay City from the bay shoreto Saginaw. The 16 reserves were ceded to the U.S. in 1837.
Sale of the 640 acre John Riley Reserve to the Saginaw Bay Company for $30,000 in 1837 provided the land for much of present-day downtown Bay City. Other reserve lands were also sold over the years, including the 640-acre Bokowtonden Reserve in the Kawkawlin River area, two Riley reserves in Saginaw and about 6,000 acres near the grand traverse of the Flint River.
The government also promised in the treaty to provide a blacksmith, farming equipment and cattle and an instructor in agriculture. The "Indian Farmer," sent from Detroit to Bay City to teach agriculture to the natives, was Gassette Trombley, and later his brother Leon Trombley, while Benjamin Cushway was the blacksmith sent to Bay City to help the Indians.
Gen. Cass, a hero of the War of 1812 and friend of President Andrew Jackson, has been criticized for using whiskey as an inducement for the Indians to sign the Saginaw treaty. But few historians have given him credit for recognizing that removal of the Indians from Michigan would not work and avoiding any attempt at forceful removal as occurred elsewhere. "This country was so well adapted to their way of life that they would not listen to any proposition about removal," states the 1969 Sesquicentennial program, published in connection with a celebration in Saginaw.
Gen. Jackson later used force to take Indian lands in Georgia, Florida and other southern states under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Thousands of Indians were either killed or had to endure terrible hardships on the infamous "Trail of Tears" to Indian Country, later Oklahoma.
On Aug. 2, 1855 "the United States set apart all of the unsold publiclands in six adjoining townships in Isabella County, Michigan," about 98,000 acres, for use by the Chippewa. This treaty was intended to be a final settlement of earlier agreements and the government agreed to pay $220,000 the Saginaw and Swan Creek and Black River bands of Chippewa as well as give each family 80 acres of land. Tribal organizations were to be dissolved and the Indians were to cede all lands previously owned.
New York capitalist Henry Sage and others bought much of the landfor lumbering and the Chippewa lands were whittled down over the years to today include mainly the 1,500 acre Isabella reservation and 350 acres at Saganing in Arenac County.
In addition to exploitation for their land, the Chippewa were victims of the racism of the time. A contingent of Chippewa from Mt. Pleasant offered their services as a Native American unit to the Union Army in the Civil War but were refused enlistment. Some individuals did serve in the military during the 1861-1865 North-South conflict however.
Luckily, a photocopy of the treaty in possession of the Indians was made in 1934 because both original copies have disappeared. That photocopy is in the Hoyt Library in Saginaw.
The program is a 96 page compendium of history on a variety of topics and included a 16 page listing of the players in the history pageant entitled "The Valley People" that played for five days, Sept. 20-24, in Arthur Hill High School Stadium.
One episode in the pageant takes the story back to prehistoric peoples who were said to have lived here 13,000 years ago. That is an earlier date by several thousand years than any I have ever heard and the source is of unknown origin. Bay City's famed Skull Island, one of the many sites where the Sauk Indians were massacred by the Chippewa and allied tribes about 1650, is featured early in the pageant.
One of the Trombleys, also primarily a Bay City pioneer name, the Treaty of 1819, the visit here by French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, and Norman Little's land development in Saginaw are subjects of other episodes. Little Jake, Saginaw's legendary clothier and hell raiser, boxer Kid Lavigne, the Saginaw Kid, movie cowboy Tim McCoy and scads of Indian maidens, pioneers, adagio and square dancers, lumberjacks and townspeople flit through the pages of the program.
The selection of Miss Timbertown Queen, Alice Marie Spero, sesquicentennial belles, "squaw-dettes," les belles quatorze, city hall belles, sunbonnet sues, loony belles and belles of all descriptions prance across the pages so that just about everyone in Saginaw has their name in the program.
A "Bay County Day" honored the area once known as "Lower Saginaw," with themain event a rock concert on Ojibway Island.
All the modern hoopla of 1969's hokey promotion, typical of the beard-growing, guitar-plucking, stump-jumping community anniversary events of the time, is accompanied by some real serious stuff about how we got all this land from the natives.###
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foxeskimo Says:
On February 09, 2010
at 06:06 PM
did they leave out louis campau's brother henri or did you?
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Dave Rogers |
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