History of Saginaw county, Michigan; together with ... portraits ... and biographies ... History of Michigan ...

HISTORY OF SAGINAW COUNTY.

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burnt over." That river, after leaving the northerly part ofLapeer
county, bears southward to the Grand Traverse (city of Flint) and
then curves northerly to meet the Saginaw, the crescent which
it thus describes lying upon the southern border (or nearly so) of
what were the Lome possessions, intact and unaffected by previous
treaties, of those bands of Chippewas whose chiefs and head-men
met Gen. Cass in council at Saginaw.
"Well-beaten trails upon the Flint and its tributaries, reaching
to their headwaters and upon all the affluents of the Saginaw, all
converging to the main river as the center, forming a network of
communication which might not inaptly be compared to an open
fan, with the handle resting upon the treaty ground, gave the
Chippewas, upon the banks of those streams, unobstructed access,
by land as well as by canoes upon the rivers, to the Commissioner
in council. The advancing wave of white settlements had already
approached, and in some instances had without authority encroached
upon the southerly border of their net-work of trails upon the
Flint.
"In point of location, geographically, Ne-ome and his powerful
band stood at the door, the very threshold of the large tract of
land which our Government, through its faithful and earnest
Commissioner, wanted. To any one standing at Detroit and
looking northerly to the beautiful belt of land lying westerly of the
river St. Clair and Lake Huron, it was plain that the old chief;
Ne-ome, stood, unless well disposed toward the treaty, indeed a
lion in the path. Ne-ome was honest and simple-minded, evincing
but little of the craft and cunning of his race, sincere in his nature,
by no means astute, firm in his friendships, easy to be pursuaded
by any benefactor who should appeal to his Indian sense of gratitude; harmless and kind. In stature he was short and heavily
molded. With his own people he was a chief of patriarchal
goodness, and his name is never mentioned by anyof the members
of his band, even at this remote day, except with a certain traditionary sorrow, more impressive in its mournful simplicity than a
labored epitaph.
"After Gen. Cass had made known the purpose of the Government in calling the council, he found the Chippewas were, as before
detailed, with minds by no means disposed to treat or cede.
There was a power rested in the hands of an Indian trader who was
known to the Chippewas as Wah-be-sins (the Young Swan), and to
the border settlers as Jacob Smith. He had been for a long time
a trader among the Indians at different points on the Flint and
Saginaw, both before and after the war of 1812. His principal
trading-post, which he made his permanent one, the same year of
the treaty, was at the Grand Traverse of the Flint, in the first ward
of that city, near where the Baptist church now stands. By long
residence among them he had assimilated his habits and ways of
ving to those of the natives, even to the adoption of their mode of
dress, and spoke their language fluently and correctly. He was
generous to them, warm-hearted and intrepid. Though small in