In 1923, Stanley Newton published, “The Story of Sault Ste. Marie and Chippewa County.” This is part twelve of a continuing series about the history of Sault Ste. Marie and area in its early years. I have left punctuation and grammar intact. – Laurie Davis
Perhaps the memory of those merry little Saulteurs, untutored as they were, went up the lake with Commissioner McKenney. Article VI of the treaty of Fond du Lac, concluded by him and Governor Cass with the Chippewas, reads as follows: “With a view to the improvement of the Indian youths, it is also agreed that an annual sum of one thousand dollars shall be appropriated to the support of an establishment for their education, to be located on some part of the St. Mary’s River, and the money to be expended under the direction of the President; and for the accommodation of such school a section of land is hereby granted.”
This treaty in its entirety was signed by the Saulteur Chiefs Shingauba-Wossin, Shewaubeketoan, Wayishkee, and Sheegud.
On their return to the Sault, the party came ashore by way of the race or canal, which had been cut by the soldiers, to let in the water for a sawmill. The mill had been destroyed by fire a short time before.
A census of the Lake Superior Indians, under the circumstances very incomplete and uncertain, was taken by Governor Cass on this journey. From Mackinac and the Sault to the Fond du Lac, or head of the lake at the St. Louis River, the Chippewa Indians were estimated to number about eight thousand. The fur business was at a low ebb, the receipts at the Sault for a twelve-month period having been only a thousand dollars in value, being principally beaver and otter skins.
Doomed to Barrenness
As for agricultural prospects, “I consider,” says McKenney, “this whole region doomed to perpetual barrenness.”
He was wrong. He might have known better after his glimpse of the gardens at the Sault. A thousand fertile farms in Chippewa County alone laugh yearly at the foolish predictions of McKenney and La Hontan. In this regard at least they were superficial observers.
The commissioner’s eyes and his heart were sound if his prophecies were not. On leaving for Detroit, he bade farewell to Charlotte Johnston with the deepest regret and grieved exceedingly because he could not take her with him. Some years later she became the bride of the Reverend Mr. MacMurray, Protestant Episcopal missionary in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada.
Late in the autumn of 1823, the Reverend Robert McMurtie Laird, of Princess Anne, Maryland, an unheralded stranger, came to Sault Ste. Marie, as its first Protestant clergyman. The annals of Schoolcraft do not mention his denomination. “No power but God’s,” writes that author in his memoirs for the year, “could have directed his footsteps here. The Indian wabeno drum, proclaiming the forest tribes to be under the influence of their native diviners and jossakeeds, was nightly sending forth its monotonous sounds. But he did not come to them. His object was the soldiery and settlement, to whom he could utter truths in the English tongue.
Enough to Try a Saint
“He was assigned quarters in the cantonment, where an entire battalion of infantry was then stationed. To all these, but one single family, it may be said that his preaching was received as “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” Certainly here were the elements of almost everything else but religion. And while occupying a room in the fort, his fervent and holy spirit was often tried.
‘By most unseemly mirth and wassail rife.’
“He came to see me, at my office at my lodgings, frequently during the season and never came when he did not appear to me to be one of the purest and most devoted, yet gentle and unostentatious, of human beings. It is hoped his labors were not without some witness to the truths which he so faithfully taught. But as soon as the straits were relieved from the icy fetters of winter, he went away, never perhaps to see us more.”
Such was the left-handed welcome accorded the first clergyman of any branch of the Christian faith to visit Sault Ste. Marie in one hundred twenty-seven years. If any other community on earth needed religion more than Sault Ste Marie at that time, no one knows its location.
The Reverend Alvin Coe, Congregationalist, was the next Protestant clergyman to visit the Sault, apparently on behalf of the U.S. Indian Bureau. In 1828, the latter was expending considerable time and effort in an endeavor to enlarge and improve its methods of instructing the Indians along various practical lines, and Mr. Coe spent several months at the Sault in that year, probably in a secular capacity.
Baptist Preacher Arrives
He was here when the Reverend Abel Bingham came to make his home in the village by the rapids. Mr. Bingham was sent here as a missionary by the American Baptist Missionary Society. He found himself in a small community of Americans, Frenchmen, Indians, and half-breeds, and four companies of soldiers. There was a card table in every cabin, and fifteen thousand gallons of whisky were in dealers and in private hands, which it was hoped would be sufficient, with care, to supply the needs of the inhabitants until spring. This was in October.
Mr. Bingham at once, proceeded to organize a temperance society and a school. The sessions of the latter were held in a building which stood within the square, whereon the Chippewa County Court House now stands, close to the road first named Church Street, probably because of the old mission church at its foot, and afterward Bingham Avenue. He soon had over fifty scholars, most of them learned the alphabet from him.
Shocked at the almost universal local intemperance, Mr. Bingham set out resolutely to procure signatures to a teetotaler pledge. He asked the Saulteur Chief Kabanodin to sign, and the chief replied: “If my mouth were sewed up and my legs tied together, possibly I might keep from drinking.” But he scrawled his signature to the pledge and became a very temperate man.
The Sault Goes Dry
Whisky was part of the daily ration of the soldiers, and they were permitted to buy additional drinks at the fort canteen. The Sault traders sold whisky as commonly as they sold flour and sugar. The Indians who had the price could get all they wanted, and they wanted a great deal. Drunkenness was common and was taken as a matter of course.
Mr. Bingham induced the Fort Commandant to head a community pledge, and after two years of hard work, the wettest spot on the continent was dry as a bone for a time at least. The local traders cleaned up their stocks and kept out of the business, no doubt with considerable sacrifices, the fort canteen was closed to liquor sales, and the Indian Agent and his subagent ceased to dispense the stuff to the Indians.
Mr. Bingham lived in the ground floor rooms of his house and held school and church services on the second floor. Afterward, he built a separate school building, that stood on what are now the Junior High School grounds, and which was placed nearly at the corner of the present Maple Street and Bingham Avenue. He held regular meetings at Fort Brady, and many soldiers united with the Mission Church. Afterward, when the command was ordered to Chicago, these soldiers participated in the organization of the first Baptist Church in that city.
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