Instead of writing up the story of the apple trees from Thursday’s bike ride to Girard in Branch County, I’ve been spending my time planning a Sunday afternoon bike ride in the opposite direction, to Sunfield Township in Eaton County. My main destination is circled in yellow on the map below.

This map is from Wilbert B. Hinsdale’s “Archaeological Atlas of Michigan” published in 1931. The red lines are Indian trails. The triangles are village sites. I regret to admit that I’ve forgotten what the red dots and the circles with a cross inside are. One or the other may represent agricultural sites.

What follows is a partial draft I’ve been writing for my Black Hawk Slept Here wiki. The yellow circle above is where Section 21 of Sunfield Township is located.

In 1840 most of the Potawatomi people in Michigan were rounded by the U.S. Army and evicted from the state. An anecdote in the Eaton County history that was published in 1880 seems to be a glimpse of a moment in this episode. It took place in Sunfield Township.

In 1840, [Edward O.] Mr. Smith moved to the Peter Kinne place, on section 21, on which were better improvements than his own, and allowed a man named Knapp to occupy the farm he had temporarily vacated until the latter could build for himself on land he had purchased across the line in Vermontville. While residing on the Kinne farm, Mrs. Smith was one day very much frightened by seeing a band of 260 Pottawattomie Indians pass by, on their way to reservations beyond the Mississippi. Their dress was different from that of the Ottawas who resided in the neighborhood. The latter wore white blankets, while the Pottawattomies mostly had on red blankets and red leggins, furnished them by the British.

Some comments and observations on this anecdote:

The name of the landowner is spelled Kinne in this account, but in the Land Office Records it’s spelled Kinney.

Edward Smith could have been the person who provided this information for the county history. He was still alive at the time of publication, 38 years after the event. His wife had died in 1842.

It is stated that the Indians were passing by, almost as if it was of their own volition. But they did not want to leave Michigan. They were taken by the U.S. Army at gunpoint.

It is not clear why the Potawatomi people would have been dressed differently from the Ottawa. Both Potawatomi and Ottawa people in Michigan would make annual trips to the British in Canada for the annual distribution of presents, at least in the 1820s and early 1830s.

It is possible that the Potawatomi seen by Mrs. Smith people were those who had fled from a village 20 to the south, at present-day Bellevue, when they received word of the soldiers’ coming. The same county history that tells her story also states elsewhere (page 350) that some of those at Bellevue fled to the north, taking with them a sick woman who impeded their travel. Soldiers and other government agents scoured the woods for Indians and surrounding them them where they were found hidden in a swamp. The Indians held out for 2-3 days before being taken.

According to that account, after they were captured, the Indians were taken to Marshall. We know from other sources that they were taken from there to the Chicago Road and to a route along the Illinois River.

But one wonders if what Mrs. Smith saw was not the people after they had been captured, but earlier, when they had been fleeing to the north. It seems unlikely that she would had reason to fear a captured people being guarded by soldiers. Stories told at third hand 38 years after the event can sometimes get a little garbled.

There is more to say about this, but that’s where I’m stopping for now. I hope to have some photos tomorrow to go with it.