The first time I rode southwest from Niles, Michigan along Black Hawk’s old trail, was in 1997 or 1998. I had sampled some of the Sauk Trail in Michigan (US-12) and found the road in poor repair — not pleasant to ride on in many places. Much of it has since been resurfaced, and is much better to ride on now. But back then, I was glad to find that here was a piece of Black Hawk’s old road that was such a pleasant place to ride — there wasn’t a lot of traffic to disturb thoughts of how it might have been back in the 1820s.

Chicago Trail

It had been an idyllic ride, so it was a bit of a shock to all of a sudden come across a Chicago commuter train track at Hudson Lake. Talk about a quick jolt back to the 20th century.

This is a view along the last leg of the path from the paved road to the Maria Creek Baptist Church cemetery. (The road is one between Oaktown and Freelandville, Indiana.) The gravesite of Charles Polke is near the trees, left of center in the photo, where it would be hard to see at any distance if not for four steel fence posts set in the ground at the four corners. They are not visible in the photo, but can be seen as one gets closer.

Isaac McCoy was pastor here for eight years before going away to do missions to the Indians on Raccoon Creek in present-day Parke County, at the Carey Mission near Niles, Michigan, and in Kansas. He was in fact a person who while in Michigan was agitating the government to remove Indians to Kansas, which views happened to be agreeable to that same government, which happened to be funding his mission school. The Potawatomi people of southwest Michigan didn’t particularly like that aspect of McCoy’s activities when they found out about it. It cooled their relationship somewhat.

McCoy’s missionary ideas were controversial while he was pastor here at Maria Creek. There were anti-missionary Baptists who were opposed to mission boards and such activities as McCoy was starting to get into among the Indians. The present-day Primitive Baptist Church is descended from the anti-missionary baptists and gives its side of the story here.

The controversy is fairly complex, and I will not try to summarize it. Instead I’ll mention one aspect that it seems they were opposed to. Mission Boards tended to sponsor celebrity preachers who would make brief stops at congregations, trying to raise enthusiasm and money for their work. McCoy was one with these tendencies; another was John Mason Peck whose activities were mostly on the other side of the Wabash, in Illinois. In secular terms, we can say this was contrary to the democratic and egalitarian spirit of self-government that was present in the young United States.

There is a lot more to it than that, but I do not have the knowledge or resources to attempt a summary at this time. When I first learned about it, it seemed one of those internal squabbles within a religious group that would not be of interest to those on the outside. But I would now like to learn more, because it seems to be not so “internal” after all.

There is not much visible sign of it at this site, but it makes it a special place worthy of some care.