HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY,

INDIAN HOSPITALITY

In December 1833, Judge Miller went to Midland upon some errard, and while returning to his hoe along the highway of the Tittabawassee, passed through an experience which he relates as follows:

“When I started for home, about sunrise in the morning, I put on my overcoat and thought a few vigorous pulls at the oars would warm my blood so that I should be comfortable the rest of the day. I had just pulled far enough to get into deep water, when my oars slipped from the rowlocks, I lost my balance, and plunged heels over head into the icy fountain of the Tittabawassee. After much ado, I got on board the boat again, but the prospect for a comfortable day was not very flattering. Twenty-five miles of rowing before me, to get home, and sixteen before I should come to a house where I could warm myself or dry any of my clothes. After passing down the river two r three miles I saw an Indian wigwam on the bank, where I landed, and being able to converse in the Indian tongue, I told the woman of my mishap and requested the privilege of warming myself and drying some of clothes. She made up a rousing fire and furnished the best facilities she could for me to dry my clothes. When I first went in she sent a little girl to the river with an earthen plate to wash; after the plate (which was an unusual piece of furniture in a wigwam), was made clean, she took some meat that was cooking over the fire, placed it on the plate and offered it to me to eat; but I told her I was not hungry, and she put it back in the kettle. Presently a neighboring Indian woman came in, and after learning why I was there, and not seeing any signs of my having partaken of any food there, she inquired of her neighbor with much surprise if she had not given me anything to eat; the woman told her she had offered me something but I had told her I was not hungry. That circumstance and all my experience in my contact with the red man led me to believe that the virtue of hospitality was never wanting among them. My experience was, that when ever I was at an Indian’s camp, so far away from home that I could not get there at meal time, I was invariably offered the best they had to eat; and if I wished to stay all night, the best place in the camp for sleeping was allotted to the white stranger, and for that reason, though their begging propensities are sometimes annoying, I can never have the heart to turn them empty away. After getting my clothes partially dried, I returned to my boat, and soon after leaving the Indian’s camp, had an exciting chase after a deer that was swimming in the river; so I got home without experiencing so much inconvenience as I anticipated when I as bumping my head against the bottom of the boat, endeavoring to find the end so that I could climb into it”

ANOTHER EXPERIENCE

“I have mentioned in a subsequent article having a stock of cattle and horses feeding on the rushes of Quanicassee in the Winter of 1835-36, with a camp near for the convenience of the men who cared for the stock. At the breaking up of Winter, when it was no longer practicable to get supplies to the camp, it was broken up, and the cattle and horses, for the time being, left to themselves. One bright morning in April, 1836, I started from my home, near Crow Island, accompanied by B.F. Trombley, to cross the prairie and timber, to the point where the stock was kept. The water on the prairie averaged about ten inches in depth, but the weather was warm, and we passed along without much inconvenience from it and crossed the Cheboyganing Creek on a fallen tree, and at night arrived at an Indian camp, near our place of destination, where we remained during the night. The next day, during a heavy rain storm, we spent in looking after the stock. We found the cattle all doing well but some of the horses had died, after the men had left the camp. At night the rain still continued to fall, and we encamped without any shelter on the driest spot of ground we could find near the Quanicassee prairie, preferring that to traveling three or four miles out of our way to reach one. The rain continued until about twelve o’clock, when there came such a change in the weather as is known in but few localities outside the Saginaw Valley. In the morning, our blankets that we had slept under, were frozen hard, and all our clothes being saturated with the recent rain, we were not in a very good plight to encounter the fierce northwest wind that swept over the prairie, but after partaking of a scant breakfast we started for home, and when we got to the prairie, we found that the rain had greatly increased the volume of water, and before we got across the Quanicassee prairie, we sometimes had to wade waist-deep in the water, but when we reached the timbered land we had four or five miles of comparatively comfortable traveling; but when in the afternoon we reached the Cheboyganing prairie, the prospect was rather disheartening for tired pedestrians; the wind was blowing a fierce gale, accompanied by frequent snow squalls. The water on the prairie was a foot deep, covered by ice that would bear us about every tenth step. There was five miles of that kind of traveling, and the Cheboyganing Creek between us and home; and it was presumptuous for us to undertake to perform it under the circumstances, for we could have built a fire in the timbered land, and subsisted till a change came in the weather; but we thought of nothing but to push ahead, and started out. Trombley wore moccasins which the ice soon cut in pieces. He then tied his mittens on his feet, and walked in my tracks, so as to protect his feet as much as possible. Our limbs soon became completely benumbed with the cold, a our movements seemed mechanical, and we passed along in great suffering till, at the dusk of evening, we reached the Cheboyganing Creek, the volume of which had been greatly increased by the recent rain; and nothing could be seen of the bridge that had carried us over safely two days before. I walked into the water till I could progress no further, when, without motives or thoughts of why I did so, I sent forth a shrill Indian whoop or yell, which was immediately answered by an Indian, and in a moment a canoe hove in sight, paddled by an Indian who had been out on the creek hunting for ducks. He came and rescued us from our perilous situation, and in a few minutes landed us on a dry spot of ground on the opposite side of the creek, where he had encamped that day with his family, preparatory to making maple sugar. We were so much exhausted that we could hardly walk from the canoe to the wigwam, but the Indian

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made a good fire for us, and after a good supper we soon revived. After spending the night with our kind Indian friends, we proceeded to our home, which was about two miles from the wigwam, but so great had been the sufferings of that day, that we presented the appearance of convalescents from a severe illness.