Mascootah-siac
The first wave of settlers in Hillsdale County, beginning with Moses Allen, chose to live in the “oak openings” or prairie around the Sand Creek.
The property Moses Allen settled had on it an abandoned french trading post and a Native grist mill which was basically a hollowed out stump with a mortar that was attached to a spring pole. [1]
This was also a place where two of Hillsdale County’s main Indian trails intersected. [2]
The Potawatomis referred to this area as “Mascootah-siac”. [1]
Now, Maschootah means Mascouten. But according to my research, “siac” does not exist in the Algonquin lexicon. The closest word that I could find was “wi-yak” which derives from the word “wiyakihe-wa” meaning “sad loss”. [3]
Sad loss of Mascoutin Indians?
Before the Iroquois Wars (1609–1701) southern Michigan was home to the Fox, Kickapoo, Mascouten, and Miami. While the Potawatomi inhabited much of the northern lower peninsula.
By 1653, the Iroquois War had virtually emptied the lower peninsula of Native Americans. The Fox, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Miami, and Potawatomi who survived had migrated to Wisconsin, around Green Bay.
By the time the Iroquois had been defeated by the French in 1701, Ottawas, Hurons (Wyandot), Potawatomis, Miamis and other groups started inhabiting southern Michigan. The Chippewas/Ojibwa/Ottawas had centered around Mackinaw, and also the Saginaw Bay. The Fox, Kickapoo, and Mascouten had spread along Lake Michigan from Green Bay to Chicago & St Joseph.
The following is a passage from Richard White’s book “The Middle Ground” does an excellent job describing what happened next:
“The trouble begin in 1710 when more than a thousand Fox along with their Kickapoo and Mascouten allies moved to Detroit at the invitation of Cadillac. From Detroit they hunted in southern Michigan, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois. They also opened, as had the Ottawas, Hurons, and Miamis before them, tentative diplomatic and trade negotiations with the Iroquois and the British. They did all this with an arrogance and ready violence that alarmed all the nations from Michilimackinac south to the Peorias. The Fox claimed (presumably on the basis of their residence in the area before the Iroquois Wars) that they were the rightful masters of Detroit. Soon rival hunters were murdering each other in the woods.
The situation, created by the French, demanded French mediation, but Governor de Vaudreuil was at the time understandably preoccupied with the danger of an Anglo-Iroquois invasion of Canada. Although he presciently warned the Fox not to provoke a conflict that might destroy them, he delegated the affair to the Detroit chiefs and to the temporary commander at Detroit, Joseph Guyon Dubuisson. Events rapidly escaped Dubuisson’s control. The report this poor Frenchman submitted of what followed is full of mysterious comings and goings, British plots, fortuitous rescues, and the inexplicable failure of the Fox to undertake the attack about which they and the British had supposedly long conspired. It is a document written by a man who never understood what was going on around him.
Dubuisson had gotten his conspirators wrong. The Fox were not conspiring to eliminate the French; instead, virtually all the Algonquins from the Peories to the Ottawas of Micilimackinac had agreed to eliminate the Fox, Mascoutens, and Kickapoos from southern Michigan and surrounding areas. The other Detroit Indians and their allies not only refused to negotiate their differences with the Fox, but they prevented the French from doing so. It was they who managed to convince the French that the Fox were conspiring to destroy Detroit. The Algonquian roots of the fighting at Detroit are revealed in a remarkable speech delivered by Makisabe, a Potawatomi war leader and chief from Saint Joseph who, on the verge of death, spoke to Governor de Vaudreuil in Montreal in 1712. According to Makisabe, the originator of the plan to attack the Fox was Sakima, a much feared Michilimackinac Ottawa war leader and chief. He enlisted Makisabe who in turn enlisted his own people and the Miamis and the Peorias. During the fall and winter of 1711-1712, the Potawatomis and the Ottawas attacked the Mascoutens hunting along the headwaters of the Saint Joseph River, slaughtered the prisoners they took, and destroyed the village they found. “ [4]
This was the beginning of the Fox Wars.
In Dubuisson letter to Vaudreuil he says the Fox and their allies became especially upset “when they heard that the Mascoutens, who had been wintering on the headwaters of the St. Joseph’s River, had been destroyed, to the number of a hundred and fifty men, women, and children, by Saquina, war chief of the Ottawa and the Potawatomies.” [5]
Could it be that Allen’s Prairie was the site of a the Mascouten village that was besieged by the Potawatomies and Ottawas in 1711, in what was the first major event in First Fox War (1712-1716)?
Such an event would certainly have been engrained in the historical memory of the Potawatomi, after all, it was their ancestors who committed the attack. And the Sand Creek is very much part of the headwaters of the Saint Joseph River.
Let me know what you think!
Update:
3. https://protoalgonquian.atlas-ling.ca/#!/entry/5ab2bdf5-b364-457a-8daa-15f4074b97b0
4 The middle ground : Indians, empires, and republics in the Great Lakes region, 1650-1815. Page 154
5. Michigan Pioneer and Historical collections. v. 33 page 537
Comments
Post a Comment