Read by Miss Isa Smith.
My earliest recollections of Prairie Ronde date back to the spring of
1830, when, one evening, I was lifted out of a covered wagon and set
down upon my short legs, in front of Esquire Duncan's log house. It
stood upon a rise of ground, among stately trees; a little stream, with
white sand and clear water, running close by, making it a cheerful
place, even with no fences or other evidences of civilization. Years
afterward, a saw-mill was built a few feet from the site of this log
house, known as Duncan's saw mill. There is no vestige now of log cabin
or mill, and very little evidence that a tree ever stood there.
I was tired, hungry and sleepy, and perhaps cross, for this was the end
of a long, toilsome journey through swamps and dense forests. While I
stood there, scratching my mosquito bites, with no very pleasant
countenance, father and mother crawled out and stretched their weary
limbs. Mr. Duncan's people welcomed us, as they did all emigrants and
travelers, no matter when or how they came. Very soon after, we were
gathered into the one square room of the house and I was allowed to
absorb a bowl of bread and milk. Father and mother and the teamster also
had their supper of corn bread and butter, washed down with sage tea,
eating with an appetite, which everybody carried about in those days of
scanty fare and hardship. As soon as the sun disappeared, mother
prepared to put me to bed, at which I kicked up a small row, because I
did not wish to be thus disposed of without my supper, and I dimly
remember that, at last, she managed to convince me that bread and milk
was supper in that house, after which, very little force was necessary
to put my tired frame to rest for the night. Late next morning, when the
woods were alive with the songs of birds, mother succeeded in getting my
eyes open again, and took me directly from the bed out into the
sunshine, sat me down in the middle of the brook, where the sparkling
water was hardly knee deep, and then I had a good time, kicking and
splashing and allowing the minnows to nibble my toes. Then I was
considered washed and ready for dressing and breakfast. I am told we
were at Esquire Duncan's about a week, of which I remember nothing
further, but afterwards can recall another log house, about two miles
north of Mr. Duncan's, in the edge of the prairie, with its vast, open
green expanse on the east, and an impenetrable forest on the west. Abner
Calhoun, who was the owner of the house, had come, from Ohio, in advance
of us a few weeks, and had just completed it, and nearly built a log
stable, all but the door and the "chinking." Mr. Calhoun being a very
hospitable settler, allowed us, (who were of the tender-foot class,) to
occupy his house, while he, with a family of wife and three children,
moved into the unfinished barn. Of the Calhoun's, there was one boy
about my own age, one younger and one older. Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun were
just plowing up a bit of the prairie near the house, for immediate
cultivation. The long, wooden mold board plow, with the end of its beam
resting upon the axle of a lumber wagon, or rather the front wheels,
drawn by two pairs of small oxen and one pair of young heifers, I well
remember. In the morning, while Mrs. Calhoun busied herself in washing
up the scanty assortment of breakfast dishes, and putting the house in
order for the day, Mr. Calhoun would gather his miscellaneous team and
hitch them to the plow. By that time his wife was ready for work, and
placing herself between the plow handles, the business of the day
commenced. I presume our modern plow-men would criticise their work, but
it was sufficient to raise mammoth corn and splendid potatoes with which
to feed everybody another season. Not long after we were settled, an
event occurred, which suspended the plowing for two and a half days.
Preparatory to that event, I was turned loose to run with the other
children, hedged in by many earnest warnings to keep from the woods and
snakes. Mr. Calhoun went to work chinking his stable, and the cattle
revelled in the fresh prairie grass and rested. Mother was very busy,
both at home and across the way, all the first day. The next day she
invited me to go to the other house and see a new baby, probably the
first one I was ever introduced to. This was Calhoun No. 4. On the third
day Mr. C. gathered up his team again and made an addition of an oblong
box, fastened between the wheels of the plow, and at noon the newcomer
was neatly packed away in said box, amid a pile of blankets, and
business was once more resumed, very carefully and slowly, however. I
can remember Mrs. Calhoun's resting, the picture of contentment, while
seated upon a stump, nursing No. 4. Soon other experiences were
impressed upon my mind, such as the serenades of prairie wolves, who
would gather about our doors and make night hideous with their dismal
howls and barks. We kept the chickens in a box in the house, otherwise
they would have been snatched up in short order by these hungry demons.
These concerts were arranged upon a regular program, like our modern
entertainments.
As soon as it was dark and the lights extinguished, some old veteran
would begin with an opening solo in a minor key, with very little
variation, then another would join in, and another and soon the entire
pack would make the air tremble with the chorus of from twenty-five to
fifty voices. These entertainments scared me, and, at first, kept the
old folks awake, but they soon became used to them and could sleep on
undisturbed. Occasionally we had other concerts, performed by big grey
wolves, which were of a more serious nature. When the "sable curtain of
night" closed on one of these celebrations, they savored more of
business and sleep was not enjoyable. Men thought of their calves and
pigs shut up in log stables, perhaps exposed to the depredations of
those bloodthirsty, but cowardly brutes. Generally a rifle ball, shot in
their midst, would disperse the pack. One night, before Mr. Calhoun had
made his door, and still had a quilt hung up as a substitute, he was
aroused from sleep by a scuffle between a grey wolf and his dog, who
remonstrated against this invasion of the house. He sat up in bed and
shivered (with cold of course,) while the wolf flogged his dog, went
into the house, under the bed and ate up all his precious stock of soap
grease. He never thought of the loaded rifle hanging within reach. In
this case the wolf was probably the greater coward of the two, but poor
Abner did not know it.
The Duncans and Calhouns were not our only neighbors. Within a radius of
a few miles were other settlers; the Harrisons, Clarks, Barbers,
Nesbitts, Hoyts, Knights, Shavers, Wygants, Bairs, Armstrongs and
others, all hunters, each and everyone possessing peculiarities of
character belonging to himself. Distributed all over the south half of
Kalamazoo county, then called Brady, were 100 or more people from almost
every state in the union. Hunting and trapping were the chief
occupations of the times, with a liberal division of work, farming and
house building, thus combining business and fun. Saturdays were always
devoted to fun, such as horse-racing, wrestling and jumping, target
shooting, etc. Sunday was the visiting day. Game was as common in the
woods and on the prairie as cattle, horses and sheep are now. Whisky was
the only luxury and cheaper even and better than it is said to be now.
Everyone drank it to keep out cold, heat, pain of every kind; as an
antidote against ague and a bond of sociability. And yet in those early
days there was apparently less drunkenness than now.
Father received a small stock of goods about this time, belonging to
Smith, Huston & Co. How he got them, I do not know, but probably in
about the same way the Klondike miners receive their supplies. Some one
also lent him a few barrels of whisky to sell on commission. Our one
room was then divided in the center by a board partition, leaving the
stove-pipe and back part of an ancient cook stove in our living room.
Subsequently the stove, in our next and more pretentious house, gave
place to a capacious fire place and brick oven. With the advent of this
whisky, we became at once the center of attraction for 15 or 20 miles
around. The Indians were our most numerous customers and neighbors.
They went once a year to Detroit or some point in that region to receive
pay for lands relinquished to the state. When they came back, money was
plenty to pay for powder and lead and calicos, and when that was
exhausted they obtained their goods by exchanging for them venison and
skins. Mother soon became a favorite. They called her "the good white
squaw," and took great pains to teach her their language, in which she
soon became quite proficient. She could control them as well as their
old chief, Sagamaw. They had not taken to whisky then as they did soon
afterwards, and, as a rule, were honest and reliable. The chief was a
personal friend of the Smith family and used to make its weekly visits
with his family, staying from one to two days. He was very strict with
his tribe as to any violation of our rights or social privileges. Once
mother lost a silver thimble, and, suspecting it was stolen, stated her
case to old Sagamaw. He promised to attend to it, and if her suspicions
were correct he would know. A few days after a knock was heard at our
door, and mother admitted a pretty, meek looking young squaw, with a
long tough buck whip in one hand and the missing thimble in the other.
The thimble had a hole in it where she had strung it to wear around her
neck. She gave it to mother, then the whip, and said. "Sagamaw say, you
whip squaw," but being so pretty and amiable, mother relented, thinking
she was almost justified in helping herself to ornaments for her comely
person, and so the girl went her way rejoicing. One day the chief, very
delicately suggested to father that it would be proper for such good
friends as they were to exchange wives, and even offered father two of
his prettiest squaws for a bona-fide bill of sale of my mother, but
somehow the trade was never consummated. I presume, in that event, I
would have been thrown in to make a complete exchange of goods, and thus
I failed to become an Indian chief, and Sagamaw never owned a white
squaw. They were constantly bringing me presents of live birds, fawns,
young foxes and wolves, and once when I was on a sick bed, with a high
fever, an Indian brought me the half of a dressed deer, to tempt my
appetite. They were very kind in sickness, but of little use about a
sick bed. There were no wise Indian doctors in those days, such as now
come to cure us of every imaginable disease. This first year we had to
go 60 miles to a flour mill, consequently had to subsist upon corn, in
lieu of wheat bread, and this sometimes made from pounded corn at that.
One day Mrs. Calhoun sent mother a pan of flour as a rare treat, but
when she learned that it was all she had of the precious stuff, she
objected to taking it. Mrs. C. insisted that she must not refuse it, for
mother was not used to going without, and she was. We had very little
pork or beef, but so much venison and wild game that they soon became a
drug. Vegetables and wild fruit being so plenty, we lived as well as we
do now taking our healthy, keen appetites into consideration. Small
game, such as turkeys, partridges, quail, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels,
also fresh fish, were the favorite meat diet of our family.
In the winter and spring of 1831, father built a log house on the
south-east side of the Big Island, as it was called, a circular forest,
of about a mile in diameter, with prairie all around it. This was known
far and wide, and had been, for hundreds of years, the camping ground of
Indians, traveling east and west. It was almost impassable from the
thickets and windfalls of great trees, and filled with game of all
kinds. So, in the spring, we bade adieu to our good host, Calhoun, and
moved into a house of our own. This place soon became known as
Schoolcraft, and a village plat was surveyed, with streets and a park.
It was many years, though, before we knew just where these luxuries were
located, without looking on the map. One street, Eliza street, was named
after my mother. We soon had neighbors, however, and Schoolcraft and Big
Prairie Ronde were known as the garden and grain supply of the state of
Michigan.
I must have been about six years old when I attended my first school,
which was taught by my aunt, Miss Mary A. Parker, in a log house on the
bank of E. L. Brown's marsh; then later in a little frame building near
where Thos. Westveer now lives. I became acquainted, as a pupil, with
Miss Pamela Brown, now the widow of Dr. N. M. Thomas, and my respect and
reverence for her was dated from the time of her flogging a certain bad
boy, Archibald Finlay, by name. It was over his shoulders, with nothing
but a shirt between and administered with such good effect that, in
spite of his determined obstinacy and combativeness, he promised
reformation. I was also a bad boy, but was so impressed by this example
of thoroughness that my good resolutions were effectually strengthened.
One more Indian story and I am done. In the summer of 1829, father
traveled over the southern prairies of the state on foot and alone, to
look for a new home. At Ann Arbor, on his way west, he heard of a
notorious Indian robber, Shavehead, known as a dangerous customer to
lone travelers. Not wishing, just then, to part with his scalp, he made
a circuit of 30 miles or more to avoid meeting him. He was reported to
have killed and scalped 90 or more white persons, and as being in his
war paint, and wearing these scalps, at all times. Father was tired ere
noon, and, secure in the thought that all danger was passed, seated
himself on a fallen log and proceeded to eat his dinner of bread and
cheese, and make himself comfortable for a noon-tide rest. He was
delighted with the fresh woods and prairies, and gave himself up to
air-castles, when he could make his home in this western paradise and
have his family about him. Suddenly, in the midst of these reveries, a
light hand was laid upon his shoulder, and looking up he was confronted
by a tall, brawny, fierce looking Indian, in scalp-lock and paint,
sharp, keen eyes, divided by a prominent, hawk's beak nose, looked down
upon him in stern silence. Father, in describing it afterwards, never
said he was scared, but admitted it was a "surprise party" to him, and
that he instinctively thrust his hand into his pocket and grasped an old
pistol, which would hardly kill at three paces under any circumstances.
However it also flashed through his mind that if this bronzed old
warrior had intended murder he could have committed it as easily with
his wicked looking tomahawk as thus to have laid his hand upon his
shoulder, so he smiled on Shavehead and offered his hand, and they
shook, but with unbending sternness on the part of Shavehead. Then they
sat down together on a log and proceeded to get acquainted as best they
could, mostly by signs. Father took out his pipe and tobacco, divided
the plug with Mr. Red-man, which pleased him very much, and thus they
talked in pantomime with each other for an hour or more, when the
interview ended by mutual consent. They again shook hands, this time
more cordially, but yet no smile softened the face of old Shavehead. And
they parted, the Indian silently melting into the forest, and father
sturdily trudging along his trail towards the west, now and then
glancing backward at the vacancy made by his strange visitor.
In 1831, a few weeks after we were settled at Big Island, father came
into the house, from his work, one day, and there, seated complacently
by the stove, watching mother about her cooking, was the veritable
Shavehead, still with his head shaved, save the scalp-lock. This time
they shook hands as friends indeed, but the stolid face wore no smile as
before. From that time he was a frequent visitor and we all learned to
like him and respect him. He belonged to no tribe about us; did not
associate with other Indians. If he happened to be in the house, with
them, when mother was distributing food, as was often the case, they
would divide it among themselves, leaving out Shavehead, who received
his portion direct from mother, and ate it in stern silence, amid the
sociable chattering of the others. Shavehead was very peculiar. He never
carried a gun, but was always armed with a powerful bow and arrows and a
murderous looking tomahawk and knife, but the 90 scalps at his belt we
never saw. He never rode a pony, like the others, and never got drunk,
as the others surely did, whenever they could get the fire water of the
whites.
So far as we could know, he was without an Indian fault or foible. Long
afterwards, when the Potawatomies were gathered up by the government and
taken away to a new reservation, in the west, there was one Indian they
could never find. They searched the woods diligently for months, but
Shavehead mysteriously melted out of all knowledge, leaving only kindly
memories of a brave old chief and a steadfast, though silent friend.