There were two major destinations for my April 18 ride. This was near the first one, near the northwest corner of the old Mickkesawbe Reserve in Branch County.

The north border of that reserve is Jonesville Road. That road is bicycleable enough but it does carry more traffic than other roads in the area. So I took Williams Road, a gravel road, to minimize the amount of riding on Jonesville.

There I came across the above building across from the driveway to an Amish farm. People sometimes put up little structures like this so kids can have some protection from the elements while waiting for the school bus. It made me wonder if the Amish people in this area use the public schools. (I don’t know.)

And here I was heading south, approaching the intersection I had come to see. Well, my destination was actually 60 rods to the west of the intersection. Tonight I was going to explain how the Potawatomi Indians resisted the government surveyor’s attempt to make the reservation boundary coincide with the section lines. There is still a visible mark on the landscape that came about because of that disagreement. But tonight I got distracted.

James Tompkins was the person who told the writer of the 1879 Branch County history about the discrepancy on the ground that came about here. This James Tompkins is the same person on whose land grew the apple trees that some Potawatomi women decided to cut down. On a ride last year I met a descendant of Tompkins. She still living on the land where he lived. But tonight I got distracted by one aspect of that story that I had not thought about before. It was in this passage on page 232:

…Anger and hatred were depicted by face and gesture. The squaws demanded to be paid for sparing the tree. At this juncture William McCarty came up, and as he understood the Indian dialect he acted as mediator, and peace was once more restored by Mr. Tompkins agreeing to give the squaws a certain amount of flour.

Hmmm. Here was a farmer settler, newly arrived in this place, who knew enough of the Potawatomi language to be useful in settling a dispute. I wondered if there was more information about him and his background.

I learned that the land patent for McCarty’s first land entry in the county says he was from Wayne County (the county that includes Detroit). And that eventually led me to the fact that McCarty was an officer in the War of 1812, when Detroit was captured by the British, and that he had inlaws with connections to some well known incidents and characters in American history, including the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, and persons such as Albert Gallatin and perhaps Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Von Steuben. I haven’t found out just where McCarty learned to speak Potawatomi, but it’s not too hard to see where he might have had opportunities.

And there is an amusing anecdote in his wife’s family history that is an ironic parallel to the incident with the apple trees. It’s amusing to me, anyway. I’ll write that up after I get some photos to go with it. For that I need another bike ride.

I was planning an overnight bike ride to Cass County this weekend, but now I’m thinking I should instead go south to Branch County. It’s not just the William McCarty story that is drawing me there. The wind forecast for Sunday afternoon’s ride to Cass County keeps getting worse. It might be more pleasant to ride south instead.

googlemap

This googlemap shows the locations of the above photos.

YTD mileage 426.5