In a previous article I quoted the 1880 history of Eaton County that said the wife of Edward O. Smith saw a large group of Potawatomi Indians during the Indian removal of 1840, the year before she died. (The county history said she died in 1842, not 1841. I would usually trust the gravestone over the history.) This cemetery is next to Edward O. Smith’s farm, though it’s not the place he was farming in 1840. And here I learned the name of his wife. She was Anna Carpenter Smith.

Her original gravestone is here under a tree, and her husband’s is the tilted, sunken one to the right of it, where it is being pushed over by the tree.

Their son’s old farmstead is across the road. There is a home on the parents’ old place too, but it’s not a place that looks so much like an old farmstead.

I tried to speculate on why in the very first years of farm-building they would have let someone else farm here one year while they went to farm another place they didn’t own a few miles to the north (where the big Indian trail crossed). Their investments in fencing and clearing were so crucial to success, and the difference between success and failure so small, that it’s hard to imagine what would have been in it for either party. I didn’t get any ideas from looking at the two places.

This part of Sunfield township was slightly more rolling than I had expected, but most people would call it flat. The cemetery is on the biggest hill around. I thought it was a pretty setting — certainly a good place for a bike ride. There is a small Amish settlement just three miles to the south, but I was not fast enough to get any Sunday afternoon buggy photos there.

Another scene from Sunday’s ride. A few miles back I had been at Edward O. Smith’s old farmstead toward the southeast corner of Sunfield Township, Eaton County. I was now on my way to the place where he farmed for one year in 1840, and where his wife had seen a large band of Potawatomi Indians during the military roundup operated by Gen. Hugh Brady. I had this quiet gravel road, called the Bismark Highway, all to myself.

The 1880 county history said that a portion of the Potawatomi people at Bellevue fled north in 1840 when they heard that Gen. Hugh Brady’s soldiers were coming. My destination for the day was about 20 miles north, in Sunfield Township, where a Mrs. Smith was said to have been surprised and frightened to see 260 Potawatomi, probably these same people who had fled north from Bellevue.

I didn’t stop to take photos until I got to Vermontville, about 2/3 of the way to my destination. There is a tank on display there to remind us that the U.S. Army still has a presence, in a manner of speaking.

David Lucas is the name of the person who provided the information about the Potawatomi reaction to the arrival of soldiers. He was said to have been on good terms with the Indians. Tonight I spent some time looking in the county histories, land records, and census records for more information about him. Here are some tidbits:

• He was a chairmaker and cabinet maker in Bellevue.
• Three of his sons were also in his household in 1850, working as chairmakers.
• He bought about 170 acres of land from the government in Section 4, about 4 miles north of Bellevue (not too far from my route).
• He registered a stock mark for his animals.
• His wife was named Mary.
• There were 10 people in his household in 1840.
• He was born around 1802, in New Jersey. He went to Pennsylvania before coming to Michigan.
• He died unexpectedly, before reaching old age.
• At least one of his sons, and probably at least two of them, later moved to the Paw Paw area in Van Buren County.

There is nothing particularly noteworthy here. When I do this kind of research, what I’m usually looking for is additional bike ride destinations. I’m not sure I found any good ones. I suppose I could sometime ride to take a look at the land he owned. In 1873 (after he was dead and ownership had passed to other people) there was a residence on the property.

If I ride there, I’ll have to take some dirt roads. That part is OK. But I wish I had a better excuse. If Lucas had ever lived there, I’d call that a good-enough excuse. But he probably lived in town.

I tried a different route from the west into Bellevue on Sunday afternoon’s ride. Then I noticed the name: Brady Road. Was this Brady road named after the Gen. Hugh Brady who was in charge of the roundup of Potawatomi Indians in 1840? A township in Kalamazoo County is named for him — much of the Nottawasepe Reservation was part of what is now that township.

Brady

Was this road named for him, too? This road is 2-3 miles from where a group of Potawatomi men had been seen in hurried consultation upon hearing that Brady’s men were coming.

I suppose it’s possible that the road is named after some other Brady. I saw a big “Brady” sign in somebody’s yard along the way, but didn’t stop to ask what it was for. I now wish I had. After I got home I looked in census records and on old plat maps for a Brady surname in the vicinity, and haven’t found one yet.

In my mind, I’ve always thought of the top of the hill on the west side of the Battle Creek River as the place where Potawatomi men were seen on horseback, horses all nose to nose facing inward in a circle, trying to decide quickly what to do about the soldiers who were coming. Here is the way the 1880 county history described it:

In 1840 the government of the United States removed the Pottawattornies from Michigan, beyond the Mississippi River. Government agents and soldiers, under the superintendence of General Brady, were scouring all through the woods to collect and remove them. David Lucas, of Bellevue, a great friend of the Indians, saw them in council just west of Bellevue. They had received intelligence that the troops were after them. Mounted on the backs of their ponies, huddled together as closely as they could stand, with the heads of their ponies all towards a common centre, they were in deep, anxious consultation around their wisest heads. Soon they scattered like a flock of blackbirds. One company fled north, far into the forest. They had with them a sick squaw, which impeded their travel….

This old-fashioned drive-in on the west side of Bellevue, at the top of the Battle Creek valley, has cars instead of horses all pointed toward a common centre. I’ve stopped here for a bite to eat on bike rides once or twice, but it’s only 20 miles from home, so I’m not usually in need of food at this point.

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.

I got to thinking that for my bicycle rides, I often look for maps a lot older than that.

Sunday afternoon’s ride was guided in part by an 1873 atlas of Eaton County, Michigan. The part I was interested in — the northeast part of Hamlin Township, is shown above. (The atlas is online at Michigan County Histories and Atlases.)

When I saw from the map that in 1873 John Montgomery (or a like-named son) still owned some of the prairie he had settled on, and when I learned that he was still alive in 1880, I figured there was a good chance that house still existed. It does, and that’s the one I wrote about yesterday.

The location is circled in red on the above map. I had to get that map out as I rode east along the street. There were several old houses amongst the newer ones, which probably correspond to the other residences marked on that map, and I had to use the map to remind myself that Montgomery’s was very close to the county line.

I wondered if there was still a school at the location kitty-corner across the street from Montgomery’s residence. As shown above, a school-like building is still there, now nicely converted into a residence.

The east-west street leading back into town is busier now than it was in John Montgomery’s day. I’ve ridden there before when it was -very- busy. But once you get into the city limits of Eaton Rapids, there is a marked bike lane.

For yesterday’s bike ride, I looked for a destination in Eaton County. The wind forecast suggested that would be a good direction. I searched the county histories, and came up with a Black Hawk anecdote that was new to me. From the 1880 history of Eaton County, page 477, is the following material (which seems to have been taken from some other source):

He began his military career soon after coming into the county, in Washtenaw County, as a minute-man. He had been there but one year when the Black Hawk war broke out. He was then orderly sergeant in Capt. Loomis’ company. The Indians were numerous, and people becoming fearful many returned to the East. So general was the alarm that the authorities stopped navigation on the lake for the time being to prevent settlers leaving. In line of his duty as orderly sergeant he warned out the men from four townships, and the companies were marched to Ann Arbor. In anticipation of leaving for the seat of war, Montgomery had arranged to have his wife return to her parents; but the celebrated chief was defeated, and the men returned in peace to their firesides.

Previous to the Toledo hostilities, Montgomery had been commissioned as major, and at the breaking out of that demonstration he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was chosen by the general voice of the troops to be their leader in the campaign. They marched to Toledo, then consisting of a few scattering houses, remained there three days, fired some shots into the river, and, as no more rampant foe put in an appearance, they marched home again.

The part about the Black Hawk war is a bit of a puzzle, because Le Roy Barnett’s roster of Michigan men in the Black Hawk war does not list Montgomery. Nor does it show that there was a company under a Captain Loomis. The roster of Michigan men in the Toledo war does list Montgomery, though, with the rank of Major. I haven’t yet investigated this very far — I haven’t even checked all the easy-to-check sources. I needed a bicycle destination, and it seemed a good chance there was something to this story, so I went with it, thinking there was a chance that Montgomery’s house was still standing.

One might notice that the above events took place in Washtenaw County, while my bike ride destination was in Eaton County. The same 1880 county history tells about the connection. Montgomery first settled in Washtenaw County. He came with an idea once common among farmers from the east, that good farmland was land that could grow trees. He would not be talked into anything else. He found some such land, near Dexter (and very near some other anecdotes from the Black Hawk war) but soon realized his mistake. He sold his farm after five years and then looked for prairie land.

The above-pictured house is on prairie land Montgomery bought just east of Eaton Rapids. An 1873 atlas shows a residence at that location, on land that still belonged to J.S. Montgomery. And the 1880 history says he was still alive at the time of writing. So I presume it was a farm house that he built. It’s now a residential area, not farmland. But just to the east, across the county line in Ingham county, is part of the prairie that is still being farmed.

Mileage for the day: 64. Year-to-date miles: 691. I’m still way behind on my yearly mileage goal. Yesterday’s afternoon ride gets me to about the first week in March. This 64 miles was a lot easier than last Sunday’s, which is no surprise given that this time I was going mostly with the wind, was not carrying all my camping gear, and was well rested. It took me well under half the amount of time, and instead of collapsing at the end of the day I had enough energy left to work in the garden and do a little drywalling.