In 1923, Stanley Newton published, “The Story of Sault Ste. Marie and Chippewa County.” This is part eleven of a continuing series that tells the history of Sault Ste. Marie and area in its early years. I have left punctuation and grammar intact. – Laurie Davis
The most cordial social relations were maintained by the Government officials of the time with the townspeople, the traders, and the North West House officials on the north bank of the river. Some of the army officers were Colonel Lawrence, Captains Clark, Thompson, and Beal, Lieuts. Barnum, Brant, Waite, Griswold, and Folger. The first Post Surgeon was Dr. Wheaton. Lieutenant Brant was the first Quartermaster.
Among the townspeople of old Sault Ste. Marie about the time of the establishment of the fort were Mr. E. B. Allen, an independent trader, and Mr. John Agnew, Collector of Customs. In the Canadian Sault, there were Dr. Foote and Mr. Siveright, surgeon and factor respectively of the North West or Hudson’s Bay House, and Mr. C.O. Ermatinger and his son, independent traders. A favorite diversion of the winter months was a caribou dinner and a dance at the Ermaninger stone house on the Canadian side, and the officers and their wives often crossed on the ice in the evening to dine at the Ermatinger or the Siveright homes. Occasionally when coming home in their sleighs they missed the blazes or evergreen boughs stuck in the ice to mark the path and were pitched into the snow, for all the world like the convivial Michigan Saulteurs of nowadays who tarry too long with the liquid delights of the Dominion.
New Year’s Celebrated Hilariously
New Year’s Day was then and continued to be long after a day of hilarity in Sault Ste. Marie. Gayety and good humor appeared everywhere, and visiting from house to house was in order. Dining room tables and sideboards were crowded with refreshments, and the humblest individual was welcome and expected to make his appearance. The French custom of salutation prevailed; a kiss on the cheek and a warm embrace.
Governor Cass visited us again in 1826, on his way to Fond du Lac to negotiate a treaty with the Chippewas and other tribes. With him were Colonel Croghan and Thomas L. McKenney. The latter’s record of the journey, “Tour to the Lakes,” contains copious references to Sault Ste. Marie.
Mr. McKenney made a careful tabulation of the buildings in the village. Most of them were one-story structures and some were covered with bark. The list is as follows:
24 Occupied Buildings
33 Unoccupied Buildings
01 Cooper Shop
04 Warehouses
04 Storehouses
01 Bake House
01 Tailor Shop
01 Blacksmith Shop
03 Retail Stores
02 Grocery Stores
At the time of Mr. McKenney’s visit, there were in the village, forty-seven men, thirty women, and seventy-five children, a total of one hundred fifty-two. This probably includes whites and Indians.
Most Buildings on Water Front
Most of these buildings were on the river shore, a street about ninety feet wide dividing them from it. Some of them were on the north or river side, of the street, and at the head of wharves or landing places. A few of the buildings were scattered upon the elevation above the bank and upon the level plain, which ran back for some distance. The plain was covered with undergrowth to the distance of half a mile southward. Beyond that, the growth was larger and was composed of pines, maples, mountain ash and some elms.
Most of the buildings were occupied by voyageurs, Indian families, and says McKenney, “their dogs.” The fort occupied a part of this level ground and stood between the village and the Johnston home. It was garrisoned by about two hundred troops, commanded by Colonel Lawrence. Potatoes of the finest quality were growing on all sides, and some oat fields were doing well. Peas were in blossom, and the strawberries were just turning. Having read of the barrenness of the north country, McKenney was amazed at the productiveness of the gardens.
On the Canadian side, Mr. McKenney saw the old North West Fur Company’s establishment and counted about eighty houses strung for two miles below it on the north bank. The principal one, a large and commodious home, was owned by Mr. Ermatinger. It was almost directly opposite the Johnston family home, which was the finest in the Michigan Sault, at that time.
Charlotte Johnston Beautiful
Mr. McKenney dwells at length on the grace and beauty of Charlotte Johnston, who charmed him with her vivacity, her singing, and her loveliness. He was delighted when she presented him on leaving with the skin of a waub-ojeeg, or white fisher, saying, “This is my grandfather, at least in name.” “If this beauty lived in Washington or New York,” says McKenney in his book, “she would be without doubt the belle of the town.”
He found within the walls of Fort Brady, a school for white children, the first in Sault Ste. Marie, the schoolmaster being Sergeant McCleary. There were twenty-four scholars, only two of them over ten years of age. There were two drawings by the Sergeant in the schoolroom. One of them represented a soldier of the United States Army, embracing a Chippewa Chief in Indian costume. In the center of the picture was an eagle with a scroll in his beak. On the scroll were the words “Washington and Lafayette,” and beneath it this motto:
We are a firm and solid brotherhood,
Which neither treachery from within,
Not assaults from without can dissolve.
The other picture was of the Goddess of Liberty, with the words:
NATIONAL JUBILEE
Fiftieth Anniversary of American Independence.
From a feeble infancy, she was grown to a
giant’s size and a giant’s strength.
Here may the oppressed of every country
find a refuge, and the industrious a home.
Our agriculture has reduced the wilderness
to submission.
Go back one hundred years and picture if you can this scene of McKenney’s, staged in the vicinity of Bingham Avenue and Water Street:
“The Indians who live about here in summer, and who subsist on the fish taken by them in the rapids, but who go in winter into the interior to hunt, assembled to witness the inspection and the maneuverings of the military. It was easy to see that they had yielded the contest for supremacy. They looked as if they believed the white man had got the ascendancy. They sat in groups upon the green, upon their hams, as is their custom, their bodies naked, with a blanket around their hips, smoking their pipes – silent, but watchful.
Smoking Seemed an Essential
“The pipe of an Indian is generally from two and a half to three feet long. This, and the pouch made of the skin of some animal, in which he carries his kinnikanic, a kind of fragrant weed that has a leaf like our boxwood, and is gathered from a vine, or his tobacco, or both, are his constant companions.
“The first thing he does on sitting down is to take out of this pouch some of these leaves, and if he has it, some tobacco. The tobacco he holds between his finger and his thumb, and cuts it slowly with his knife into small particles, which drop into the palm of his hand, then rubbing them there with his fingers into powder, he presses it into the bowl of his pipe. By means of a steel and flint, he strikes fire into a bit of punk and lights his pipe. He then rests the bowl on the ground, or the stem on his knee, and putting the other end in his mouth, smokes until he envelopes himself with these fumes, which, if the wind should happen not to blow, is soon done.
“Thus seated, and thus smoking, the Indians of this post watch the movements of the military. The little naked Indian boys, and hardly better-clad girls, were meanwhile sporting over the green, playing ball, bag-gat-iway, caring no more about the military than the military cared about them.
This ball playing is not unlike our game of bandy. We strike the ball, you know, with a little stick, curved at the end; they catch it up with a dexterity which for my life I could not imitate, with a stick having a little pocket at one end, about twice the size of the ball and made of net-work.
“With this, and when in full run, they strike the ball and dexterously take it up, flourish it over their heads, and run and throw it as they think proper when the whole group, gives chase to overtake it and change its direction. These boys and girls are as nimble as fawns, and fleet as the wind.”
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