Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

LANSING TO)WNStIIIP AND CITY, WITIt HISTORY

537

CHIEF OKEMOS AND "GANG" SWOOP DOWN ON BIG
"FEED" BACK IN 1855.
Old Timer, Who Bought Old State House, Tells of City's First
Days.
Old Okemos and a hundred or more of his hungry braves, their
squaws and papooses swarming into Lansing, July 4, 1855, and
consuming the profits that had been hoped by two of our enterprising citizens from a big patriotic feast they had provided here
on that date, was a circumstance of only yesterday.
Only yesterday when we pause to consider that Myron Green,
still living right here in Lansing, was one of the promoters of that
Fourth of July feast; yet centuries ago was that occasion, if we
measure not by actual time, but measure, rather by the changed
aspect of Lansing and life in Lansing. Never before has so great
a change been. We are living right in view of that miracle of
change, and yet we scarcely ever pause to be impressed by it.
Massachusetts a hundred years after the Pilgrims landed was
not impressively different than it was the day they came; but
Lansing, within a lifetime, presents a change that is nothing short
of a miracle. Woods and Indians yesterday; a big, modern city
today.
Of an almost identical time and of a quite identical circumstance
in Kansas, William Alden White, in a paragraph of his best fiction
writes:
"Either the canvas-covered wagon was coming from the ford of
Sycamore Creek, or disappearing over the hill beyond the town, or
passing in front of the boys as they stopped their play. Being a
boy, he (John Barkley) could not know, nor would he care if he
did know, that he was seeing one of God's miracles-the migration of a people, blind but as instinctive as that of birds or buffalo, from old pastures into new. All over the plains in those days,
on a hundred roads like that which ran through Sycamore Ridge,
men and women were moving from East toWest, and, as had often
happened since the beginning of time, when men have migrated, a
great ethical principle was stirring in them. The pioneers do not
go to the wilderness always in lust of land, but sometimes they go