At this point on Sunday afternoon’s ride, I thought I was approaching the intersection across from which lay Harvey Jones’ farm. I stopped here just in case there wasn’t anything else to take a photo of. But I was off by half a mile, which I came to realize when I stopped to visit at the first farmhouse on the right.

The flowers reminded me of a bad joke that I thought I invented long ago. Twice a year I am reminded of it: Christmas really ought to be in the spring, so we could sing, “While shepherds watched their phlox by night.”

I am not surprised to learn that I am not the only person. Here is Melanie Rochat’s version.

And here are more phlox from Monday’s 74.5 mile ride to Cass County.

Total YTD: 668.5

Last August 17, on the 2nd day of a weekend bike outing, I spent some time in Shavehead’s country. Shavehead was a Potawatomi leader who was feared and disliked by the white settlers. He did not sign any of the treaties by which southern Michigan was ceded to the United States. As a result, he didn’t get any annuity payments from the United States, which led to his being marginalized among his own people. The lack of annuity payments meant he couldn’t provide things for his own people like other Potawatomi leaders did.

It is possible that the British in Canada made up for it somewhat. Almost all of the Potawatomi leaders, whether pro- or anti-American, used to make annual trips to Fort Malden in the 1820s to get presents from the British. In the British Indian agent’s records I’ve found the names of many of the other Potawatomi leaders who were talked about by the early settlers, including many of those who did sign the treaties. I’m pretty sure Shavehead’s name is somewhere among them, too, given his anti-American attitude, but I haven’t been able to identify it. The problem is that I don’t know what his real name was. I don’t know if his Potawatomi name even has anything to do with “shave” and “head” or “hair” or anything else like that. He didn’t sign treaties, so didn’t leave a paper trail among the Americans. I’ve looked through the records, with an Ojibwe-English dictionary in hand, but haven’t found anything that suggests a connection. Of course, even though there are many cognates shared by the two languages, Ojibwe is not Potawatomi. And I don’t speak or understand either one of those languages, though I’ve learned just a tiny bit of Ojibwe. And like I say, I’m not even sure what to look for. I don’t have much to go on.

Howard Rogers, author of the 1875 Cass County history, said this about him, among other things:

This chief received his name from the peculiar manner in which he wore his hair, it being nearly all shaved off, leaving only a lock on top and a small portion on the back of his head, which was trained down behind, giving him a very peculiar as well as a savage appearance. He was of a sullen, morose disposition, and always seemed to feel that the settlement of the country by the whites was an intrusion upon the Indian’s rightful domain, and treated them accordingly.

Rogers also said Shavehead’s band of 9 families (50 people) used to spend its summers on Baldwin Prairie. The road shown in the above photo is Highway 12, also known as the Sauk Trail. It’s the route that the Sauk leader, Black Hawk, used to take on his treks to and from Fort Malden. Baldwin Prairie is a small prairie off to the left, and it is still good farmland.

Although Shavehead didn’t leave a paper trail, there is a lake and a road named for him, among other things. The old house above is on Shavehead Road, 2-3 miles east of the lake. (I haven’t yet learned anything about the owners or builders of the house.)

This weekend I did a two-day ride, mostly so I could visit some historic sites in Porter Township, Cass County, Michigan. I didn’t need to carry my gear. Myra drove and camped with me, near Bristol, Indiana. We went out for breakfast together this morning before I started riding again. She picked me up late in the afternoon. Mileage report: 76 miles yesterday, 40+ miles today.

I did something here I haven’t done for a long time — marked my route on a map while it’s still fresh in my mind. This time I did it on a Google Map. I guess it works well enough.

This was my last photo for the day, taken on Patterson Hill Road in Newburg Township. Not all of Cass County is rolling like this, but the southeast part of that county is a good place to find this kind of road.

Late edit:  I take it back.  That photo is not the last one of the day, and it was not taken on Patterson Hill Road.  Instead it was taken on Born Street.  But at least I got the township right.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/08/17/ride-to-porter-township-cass-county/feed/ 2 http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/07/21/road-along-christiana-creek/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/07/21/road-along-christiana-creek/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:24:23 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/07/21/road-along-christiana-creek/

It has been over a year since I did any riding in Cass County, Michigan. The above photo was taken on Turpin Road the last time I was there, on June 10, 2007.

I recall that I decided to take the gravel road (see google map below) because it would be something different and I wanted a break where I could slow down.

It’s a psychological thing. On gravel I don’t have much choice but to go slower, so I just enjoy it.

Turpin Road

What I didn’t realize until just now while checking my photos was that this gravel road follows Christiana Creek. The creek should have been off to the left, according to the maps I’m looking at.

Why does that matter? Because my next destination that day was a place near Vandalia where I could take some photos of the creek. I should have been looking off to the left for views of the creek, here, too.

Why do I care about Christiana Creek? Because the name is a mark left on the landscape by the wife of the Rev. Isaac McCoy (who I’ve written about in several other posts).

The latest book I started reading is “The Geographic Revolution in early America : Maps, literacy, & national identity” by Martin Brückner (2006).

Whether it’s a good book or not I’m not yet sure. I just barely got started.

But in the introduction, Brückner calls attention to something I hadn’t ever thought of before. The literal meaning of the Greek word geography is, “to record, draw, and write the earth.” In other words, as he points out, geography is about the verbal as well as the visual. Geography is “a material form and stylistic device of literary production.”

I’m pretty sure he’s talking about more than just maps, but it’s true, a map consists of words as well as pictures, even if it’s just some sort of legend.

Here’s another map, showing section 7 in Porter Township, Cass County, Michigan, from an 1872 atlas. (This map fragment is courtesy of historicmapworks.com. If you click on the map, you’ll be taken to the county map from which it was taken.)

This map, too, has words as well as pictures. The words I’m interested in are Schellhammer and Schelhamer. (I’m not sure if the different spellings are significant.) Two Schellhammers served in the militia during the Black Hawk war, and these places may have a connection to them. I’m hoping to go for a ride, soon, to check the places out, and to see if either of the residences marked on the map are still standing. I’ve already ridden on some of the roads that are shown, but it has been a while. And I didn’t know about the Schellhammers when I did it.

I’ve marked Black Hawk’s old route from the 1820s in yellow.

This photo was taken shortly after sunrise on Labor Day, 1999. It’s just outside of Castalia, Ohio. The farm of Orlean Putnam’s parents was somewhere in the background, and it was probably somewhere near there where the Odawa raiding party captured little Orlean and his mother in 1813. Those two were among those who were kept alive and taken to Detroit, which was then in British hands.

The 1882 Cass County (MI) history tells Orlean’s story, which includes this part:

Orlean Putnam was taken by the chief, who had adopted him, to Detroit. This chief proved to be no other than the great Pontiac who, in his time, wielded more power than any other Indian in the West. Mr. Putnam remembers perfectly the tall, commanding form of the celebrated warrior, although he was but five years old when in his custody, and he has a vivid recollection of the capture on Cold Creek, Ohio, and the horrible fate of his little companions. At Detroit, a Judge May, who had known the Putnam family when they were in Detroit two or three years before, prior to settling in Ohio, recognized Orlean, and interceded with Pontiac in his behalf, telling him that he must return the boy to his mother. He objected, saying that he was going to raise him as a chief…

This Pontiac would not have been the celebrated Pontiac of the 1760s and the siege of Detroit, but he was Odawa as was his famous predecessor of that name.

This is a portrait of the Judge May who was instrumental in Orlean’s release. (It’s in Sheldon’s 1856 “Early History of Detroit”.) May was indeed in Detroit when the city was in British hands. I have not found any mention of little Orlean and his mother in his papers, though. Not that I should have expected to.

But what about the part where Pontiac intended to make Orlean a chief? Could that be true? It would have been unusual if it had happened, but wouldn’t have been entirely implausible.

Consider these words about Indian and white captives that were written by Benjamin Franklin. They are quoted in James Axtell’s article, “The White Indians of Colonial America” (William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Volume 32, Issue 1 ( Jan 1975) 55-88).

When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return. [But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.

Many other observations were made by others about this phenomenon.

Orlean wasn’t a captive for long before he was ransomed, but it would have been interesting if someone had later in his life quoted these words of Franklin to him to see if he had any insights as to what it was all about.

In the last post I had a photo of Castalia, Ohio, near where Orlean Putnam’s family lived when he was a little boy. The above is the farmstead where he eventually settled in LaGrange Township, Cass County, Michigan. There seem not to be any buildings remaining from Putnam’s day.

When he first came to Cass County, Michigan as a young man, he did a lot of work for government surveying crews. He was working on one such crew up along the Grand River when the Black Hawk war broke out. The county histories have his stories of how nobody else wanted to go looking for their missing horses, with that news in the backs of their minds, so he volunteered. He found the horses at one of the Indian villages along the river. The implication seems to be that he was more at ease around Indians than his fellow crewmembers, possibly because of his experience as a small boy.

I have not yet gone looking in the surveyors’ records for corroboration for that story. This, BTW, isn’t the only instance of survey work being interrupted by the outbreak of the Black Hawk war. It would be nice if the surveyors had dated all their field notes so one could know where they were on which date. But they tended not to date the individual pages.

On Labor Day weekend 1998 I did a ride to Castalia, Ohio near Sandusky, and then partway back. Myra said she had been to Sandusky once and wasn’t interested in driving there again to pick me up, but some place like Adrian would be OK.

The story I was following ended up being one of the most momentous of the Black Hawk Slept Here project for me, because of the additional archival information it led me to. But this bike ride itself was an especially memorable one.

It was the first time I set foot in Ohio. (I don’t count driving through on I-80 and getting out at the rest stops as having been in Ohio any more than I count a flyover of Massachusetts as having set foot in that state.)

Towards the end of Day Two I was slogging east against the wind, towards Fremont. It seemed there was no likely place to camp, so I decided to look for a motel, about 20 miles short of my intended destination. I learned that all the motels were on the east end of town, on the half-ring road that carried the heavy traffic of US-20 around the town.

On my way through town, I passed a park-like place with a cannon and historical markers. It looked very interesting in the fading light, but it was getting too late in the day to stop. Little did I know at the time that it was a place where Black Hawk had been in 1813, hanging out along the edge of the Battle of Fort Stephenson. I was passing up one of the main Black Hawk stories for a story on the periphery. But the peripheral story was a good one, too.

I crossed the Sandusky River in town, and then saw an older, downtown-type motel. I decided to stop there instead of going any further. A man in the far end of the parking lot was doing some cleanup, and I waved hello as I went into the office. In another minute that man was in the office, too, instructing the desk clerk to give me a discounted rate, $30 including tax, because I had come by bicycle. Even in 1998 that was a good rate. The room was clean and had a desk where I could plan my routes for the next day.

It was going to be difficult to have enough time to ride to Castalia, spend some time in the area getting photos, and then ride back to Michigan for Myra to pick me up. I decided I should leave early in the morning, well before the sun was up.

And that’s what I did. I don’t remember the hour of morning, but it was pitch dark. This was before I had any kind of headlight for my bicycle. Riding through town was OK, because there were streetlights. When I got past the ringroad, it was still dark, and there were no more lights to help me. I could barely see where the road was. There was almost zero traffic, which I think was a plus. I was glad that these Ohio roads were in much better repair than a lot of our Michigan roads, because I was not able to see well enough to avoid potholes. Once in a while I rode past a rural residence with a yardlight, and that helped.

By the time I crossed state road 510, it was getting light enough to see easily. But the sun was still not up when I reached Castalia. While waiting around for the sunrise so I could take photos, I was pleased to find that the historical event that brought me to Castalia had been commemorated on a marker, which is shown on the photo above. (Most of the photos in this blog, including the one above, are clickable for a better view.)

The story that brought me here was that of young Orlean Putman, a farmer in Cass County Michigan, who had told of having been captured by Indians during the War of 1812. He was five years old at the time. I haven’t been able to verify every detail of what he told, but I have found quite a bit of corroboration, and nothing to contradict anything he had said. This story of the Snows and the raid by Ottawa Indians as told in the histories here in Erie County complements the story that Orlean told when he was living in Cass County.

There is a lot that can be told about this incident and about Orlean Putnam. I still haven’t quite figured out the best way to tell it all, because it connects to a lot of people, places, and events in the history of the region. But this is enough for one blog article, anyway, so I’ll stop here by posting a photo portrait of Orlean Putnam that I scanned from the 1882 History of Cass County.

Oh, I didn’t make it quite as far as Adrian that day. Myra agreed to come as far as Perrysburg, Ohio (near Toledo) to pick me up. This was a memorable day for her, too, because she slipped and fell while touring Fort Meigs there with me, and still has some problems that originated with that fall.

The Cass Counties have information about him. Actually, it’s Frederick Garver Sr. that they have information about. It was probably his son who served in the militia. But I don’t have any information that says where he lived. He owned a fair amount of land, so it’s hard to narrow it down.

I tried to play detective using plat maps that were made long after he was gone. A map from 1860 shows residences. Garver was gone for 25 years by then, but the site of his old log cabin might have become the site of one of the residences then existing, and some of those homes are still standing.

I can no longer retrace my original line of reasoning, but somehow my attention was drawn to this particular location on what is now Redfield Road. In 1860 it was owned by a Bacon; the man Garver had sold out to was a Bacon. Bacon also had extensive land holdings, so it was hard to say which building site he lived at.

But a 1928 plat map showed only one parcel still owned by a Bacon, and it was this same one I had already had my eye on. I was thinking that maybe the descendants had over the years sold off the land except for the home place. And if that was a site good for Bacon’s home, maybe it was one that had been first picked out by Garver.

It was a pretty flimsy line of reasoning, but it was good enough for a bike ride to check it out. The morning of day two had been an unsuccessful search for Garver’s grave site in Elkhart County, Indiana. In the early afternoon, I got to Redfield Road and found that sure enough, there was still an old house at this location. It’s an old Greek Revival house that looks very much like it predates the U.S. Civil War.

I didn’t see anyone out and about to ask about it, though. Whether or not it has anything to do with Frederick Garver, I called this one a success.