Last week’s issue of The Chesaning Argus hinted at the possible survival of a relic from the area’s indigenous past in the form of a grove of butternut trees that may have been cultivated by the residents of the nearby Indian settlement at Bear Creek.
Chesaning was an important center of Indian activity prior to the arrival of European settlers, as indicated by the large number of artifacts (such as arrowheads) that could once be found almost everywhere.
Unfortunately, all the of more significant evidence of their presence has long since been eradicated from the landscape.
This is a sad but seemingly inevitable consequence of the march of history.
Most of the buildings and landmarks that we see saw on the 1877 map of Chesaning have also left behind no trace for us to find. We only know of them from written record and handful of surviving photographs.
The local Indians had no native form of writing, and had largely disappeared from the area by the time the camera came into widespread use.
The break in cultural continuity that came from large scale depopulation due to disease and forced displacement also meant that there was little opportunity to preserve an oral history of the region.
The information we do have comes almost entirely from the second hand remembrances of the local white settler population and a number of landscape features that managed to survive long enough into the modern period to to be recorded by historians.
Here is a brief summary of some important Native American sites whose presence is attested in various sources.
We’ll start about six or seven miles north of the village of Chesaning in an area of St. Charles Township that was once known as Indiantown.
The center of Indiantown was a section of land bounded by Fergus Road Road to the north, Turner Road to the east, Birch Run Road to the south, and Stuart Road to the west, although it extended further out in every direction.
Local maps of the area show that even as late as 1877, a high proportion of the residents were Native Americans.