Pioneer Day Exercises

by Mich.) Ladies' Library Association (Schoolcraft

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.