Vic Socotra

18 July 2008

Chief Ignatius

Picture Postcard of the Railroad Station and Downtown Bay City, circa 1900

I have been daydreaming about North Michigan lately. I don’t do that so much in the winter, but I cannot help myself when the steam rises up out of the ground on the flat banks of the wrong=2 0side of the Potomac in the summer.

I seem to have stumbled into another of the primordial rhythms Washington. When I was in the program business, the Executive Branch always wrapped itself in knots around the Holidays as we struggled to prepare the President’s budget for submission.

It completely screwed up Christmas and the New Year’s holidays. As a government contractor, I find myself dealing with the detritus of the budget cycle- the Government fiscal year ends on the 30th of September, for r eason best known to itself, and thus the end-of-the year flurry to get funds obligated before they expire.

Everyone looks a little frantic and sweat-stained, and everyone is fighting with their Significant Other about not being able to get out of the sweltering city and go to the shore.

Yesterday, my Brooks Brothers Shirt was ringed with dark sweat by the time I got back in the Hubrismobile and got away from the Agency, headed back toward Arlington and some air conditioned refuge. Crossing the 14th Street20Bridge and looking as the broad brown swath of the river, I thought about Millions Dollar sunsets back Up North, and the cool breeze off fresh water so blue that it could be liquid turquoise.

When the gold of the sun sinks into the blue, it might as well be the most precious piece of jewelry created by the hand of God herself.

I got an idle question about the history of little Bay City where the folks are retired. It was one of those pre-retirement questions, one of the “Well, if you didn9 9t have to work, where would you go?” sort of exchanges in which you try on geography like a new sport coat.

That naturally led to a discussion of the history of Bay City, since the Northland does not have much of it that we care about, except for the passing of the great French Voyaguers, some massacred Red Coats, and a lot of lumbering.

Bay City pops into history just before the American Civil War, since it was not an important fur trading post, or a strategic post like Fort Michilimacinac in the straits between the vast inland seas.

I consider the history of Bay City to be Mom's turf, and I try not to meddle in it. She was president of the Historical Society for a decade, and has slide shows and files on almost every aspect of the town.

The Earnest Hemingway connection is a distinct strand of literary history, which I cannot improve upon, so I will leave that completely to her. The other narrative is that of who actually lived on the Bay, and the rise and fall of the tourist trade in the no rth woods.

The short version is that Chief Ignatius of the Little Traverse Band of the Odawa Indians was the major landholder in Bay City, and the place might as well be named for him.

The Andrew Porters are remembered as Bay City’s first White family, which is how history used to be reckoned, and the Littles of Reed City were the second. They pitched a tent on the shore in the late Spring of 1873, down near where the abandoned train station is now. They watched a sunset and immediat ely set about building a house to protect themselves from the winter blast.

The mission church of St. Francis Solanus was just south of there. Built in 1859, it still stands on the original location just down the bluff from Mom’s house near the Regional Medical Center.

Ignatius was the headman in the Bear River village at the time. He had a large extended family, and had taken advantage of the treaty of 1855 to secure the best property on the Bay.

The treaty was one of the most significant in Michigan history, and it cut two ways. The terms of the agreement were signed between the Great White Father here in Washington and representatives of the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Pottawatomie nations. With this treaty the government confiscated Native American land in exchange some payment to members of the tribe, and 40 or 80 acre plots returned to each adult.

Chief Ignatius was no fool, and turned the agreement to the advantage of his band. Most Native Americans were, of course, disenfranchised and expelled from their traditional hunting lands, since the agreement was intended to evolve the locals from hunting and fishing to farming.

Chief Ignatius also bought land from the government so that he owned much of the land on which the city of Petoskey now stands. The revenge of the Odawa was took more than a century, but revenge, when it came, was sweet. Their casino dominates the highlands above Bay City, and they still have the best land in town, all the result of Chief Ignatius’s acumen.

A visitor from Back East wrote a column for a national magazine in 1876 in which he described the Chief as “The best-heeled Indian he had ever come across.”

Development was coming. The State Legislature changed the names of the northern counties from Indian names to ones that commemorated the jurisdictions of Ireland. Homesteading brought settles, and the veterans of the famed Michigan Iron Brigade were awarded twice the normal amount.

The Little family built the Rose House, first hotel in town, and the post office and general goods emporium near the outflow of the Bear River. A fellow named “Pa” Smith also went into the hotel trade, along with Dave Cushman, whose Cushman House was considered the most luxurious on the bay, until the glittering Arlington was thrown up.

The Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad had a grant of land from the state to extend service upstate, with Bay City as the End of Track. The company began an aggressive advertising campaign to promote the scenic beauty and healthy cool summer air.

The first train arrived at End of Track at five o'clock the evening of November 25, 1873. There was only a baggage car and two private coaches for the officials of the Railroad, along with Michigan's Governor John Bagley. The Methodists were interested in the sunsets, too, and they began work on establishing one of their ubiquitous camps just north of town. It changed, over time, from tents to magnificent gingerbread Victorians homes that are a wonder today.

The homesteading rush that followed the Panic of ’73 reached a torrent, and though not all the settlers did well. Hunger confronted many of them, out in the boonies, and it was the flyways of the magnificent Passenger Pigeon that saved the new population. The meaty and somewhat dimwitted birds20saved the North in those days, and the settlers relied on them to such an extent that the local economy depended on them for survival.

The Passenger Pigeon once made up nearly 40% of all the birds in North America. The last nesting birds were reported in the Great Lakes region in the 1890’s. The last reported individuals in the wild were shot at Babcock, Wisconsin in 1899, and in Pike County, Ohio, on March 24, 1900.

A few individuals remained in captivity. That is how we have a record of the extinction of the species. The last Passenger Pigeon was named Martha. She died alone at the Cincinnati Zoo at about 1:00 pm on September 1, 1914.

The automobile killed the train, and the loss of the train killed the hotels that were the heart of Bay City. People had access to the little clear lakes that sparkle like a diamond necklace in the pines. The Arlington, luxury hotel of the north and the beautiful "homey" Cushman House both burned to the ground and were not re-built. The Perry Hotel, first brick “fireproof” structure constructed in the 1900s is the only one still in business.

It is now known as the Perry-Davis, and Mom enjoys lunch there sometimes with the other ladies of the Historical Society and the Ladies Book Club, the oldest social organization in town.

They just erected a statue of Chief Ignatius. If they knew about Mom, and her courageous Nancy Drew investigation of the sordid embezzlement scheme that would have rocked Bay City, they would erect a statue to her, too.

But that is another story, for another steamy summer day when anyone in their right mind would rather be in Bay City.

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