INDIAN HISTORY
Any history of the settlement of Michigan must begin with the Indians, and here in the Grand River Valley they had established more or less permanent campgrounds. Fortunately, these Ottawas and Chippewas represented no danger to the early settlers who came in the "occupation" years of 1833-1838. On many occasions they were most helpful in erecting shelters, in supplying venison and fish and maple sugar and in hunting the bear, wolves, fox, wild boar and panther which are mentioned as undesirable inhabitants of this wilderness.
The Newman family, arriving in 1836, found an abandoned wigwam near the point where the Grand and Looking Glass Rivers converge and used it as temporary living quarters for the womenfolk while their double log cabin was being built. Finding an Indian cemetery nearby, this same family fenced it off so that their cattle would not trample on it, and the Indians were most grateful for this consideration.
In the spring of 1839 there were about 600 Indians living at Meshimeneconing (Shimnecon) meaning "apple orchard," a village in Danby Township upriver from Portland. In the fall of 1841, following the return of some of the Indians from a trip to Grand Rapids, smallpox broke out in the tribe and all but 150 of the Indians in the settlement died. Their chiefs were Daynae and Manuquod while among others of some prominence were Onewanda, Nacquit, Negumwater, Sisshebee, Nikkenashwa, Whiskemuk, Pashek and Squagum and his sons, Thargee and Chedskunk.
In 1846, Manasseh Hickey, a Methodist missionary, came to these people and together with his interpreter, John, and his wife, Mary, and Rev. John Compton who farmed an area across the river, was able to teach them and to help them to a civilized existence. They built a mission with contributions of material from Portland merchants and other interested people and here school and church services were held in one part while the missionary had living quarters in the other half. When no missionary was available the Indians turned to Rev. Compton.
From the reminiscences of Rev. Manasseh Hickey in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collection, we have the following description: "After visiting and preaching to this band a few times in council, we persuaded them to purchase a tract of land located on the north side of Grand River in the town of Danby, Ionia County. There were about 160 acres. It was on the Oxbow bend of the river.
The purchase was made of Mr. Fitch who lived in the vicinity of Lyons. In the first payment of the lands he took 5 ponies and the balance in specie at the three following annual Indian payments. I secured a surveyor from Vermont Colony, about 20 miles south, who surveyed and cut up the land into small lots. Each lot had a front on the river for their canoes. A street was laid out through the center of the land, and on each side of the street we had contracts let to Mr. John David to build eleven log houses for these families, the Indians paying for the same in ponies, furs and money. Other log houses were afterward built. I myself carried the surveyors chain to survey and cut up this tract of land for this Indian village.
At the lower end of the central street we located the Mission House. Of logs it was constructed. "When the government gave the Indians their land at Mount Pleasant in 1860, the Shimnecon land in Section 22 of Danby Township was sold to Charles Ingalls. He, in payment, was to build them a sawmill on their land in the north. This he did, but unfortunately they did not understand the operation and several of them were killed, so the project was abandoned.
It is not known if all the Indians went north. Portland residents remember Indians being in the area later than 1860, but this might have been part of a summer encampment. Exact information on this is lacking. Certain it is that all that is now left of Shimnecon are some of the apple trees in the original orchard and the gravestone of Chief Okemos which was placed there by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
CHIEF OKEMOS
The history of the Indian would not be complete without considering Chief Okemos – a most controversial subject, albeit, an interesting one. Okemos was born in Shiawassee County probably in the 1770's although he always claimed to be 110 years old. He grew up following the tribal customs of the Ottawas, and in the War of 1812 he acted as a scout for the British against the Americans. In one skirmish which turned into a massacre for the Indians, he was left for dead, but eventually recovered from the skull fracture and severe saber wounds.
In 1814 he presented himself to a commanding officer at Fort Wayne, Detroit, and announced that he would fight no more. For his valor he was made leader of a Red Cedar band of Shiawassee Chippewa Indians which was no outstanding position, but he did take the title of Chief. His settlement was in the vicinity of the town which now bears his name, but the smallpox and cholera epidemic in the 1830's wiped out most of that tribe, and he became a wanderer, eventually making the Shimnecon area his residence.
He was said to have had four wives in his lifetime. He is remembered by the early settlers as always ready to boast of his exploits and always ready for a free handout. He made his appearance at temperance picnics or any gala occasion attended by eight to twelve young ragged and dirty Indians all of whom he claimed as his children. An article published in a Portland Observer of 1873 gives the following account of his death and burial: "On a bleak day on the sixth of December of 1858, a small train of Indians entered DeWitt, a village of Clinton County Michigan, having with them drawn upon a hand sled the remains of an old chief of the tribe of the Ottawas. The body was that of Okemos and they who accompanied it were his only kindred. They had brought it from five miles northeast of DeWitt where he had died the previous day.
They bought tobacco and filled the pouch, powder
for the horn and bullets for the bag. They bought also, contrary to the usual custom of their race, a coffin in which they placed the remains and then took up their silent march toward the Indian village of Shimnecon on the Grand River, twenty-four miles below Lansing, the principal residence of the Chief.
"Hall Ingalls tells an entirely different story and inasmuch as he was known to be a friend of Chief Okemos and even spoke the Indian language and was working on the mission house in Shimnecon at the time, his version cannot be disregarded. He claims that Okemos died there after an illness of several days, and he was asked to bury the Chief.
A direct quote from a newspaper article follows though it is not documented for date or name: "The grave the Indians dug was larger than usual, for it had to hold the personal effects of the chief as well. It was four feet deep, seven feet long and four wide. Mr. Ingalls had the Indians gather bark, a floor was laid on the bottom and the grave was also sided up with bark. It was co close to the hut where the remains were lying that but few steps were required. The body was lowered and then covered with blankets. Blankets were placed under the head so that the August sun fell full upon the face. At the Chief's right were his two guns. At his left his tomahawks, scalping knives, and other personal effects were placed, and over the whole went another blanket as a shroud. Bark was then laid over the whole and the grave was filled with earth."
Referring to the Indian grave-yard in the village, Almeron Newman remarks: "I must say something more of the Indians, and of the service they were to us in that early day. I said their burying-ground was on the spot where the foundry stands now. We made a cow-yard at that point, and Elisha Newman fenced the grave-yard, so the cattle could not injure the graves. When the Indians found out what had been done, they seemed utterly unable to express their gratitude for the kindness, and they were ever afterwards our fast friends. They came every year as long as they remained in the country, burned whiskey on the graves, and performed other equally strange ceremonies. The Indians were greatly of service to us in bringing to us venison, fish, etc., which they were glad to exchange for flour, pork, or money."
There were also, on the bluffs overlooking the north bank of the Looking Glass, several so-called ancient mounds, of which faint traces are to be observed at this day. Curious investigators claim to have penetrated these mounds, and report says they found numerous skeletons of people seemingly of far greater stature than the average modern man. Whatever the mounds may have been, or whatever the stories about them, they were doubtless only a few of the many similar constructions alleged to have been observed all along the shores of the river in the Grand River valley by the early comers into Michigan.