ALONG A PLEASANT STREAM IN MICHIGAN

In the mid 19th century, the general population's fancy was caught by what was called the Old Northwest in Southern Michigan.  My paternal grandmother's family was part of that.  Beulah Swan Finney Strachan.  I'm told Swan is a common Metis name. 

My grandmother as a teenager

In a country largely based on agriculture, the land was valuably fertile because of the many streams that ran through the hardwood forests.  In those early days the homeland still belonged to the Odawa Indians.  In 1833 a well-connected man named Samuel Dexter, Jr. arrived from the East with associates and the tribe sold their crops to them, then moved to the Flat River.  In 1850 they were relocated to Oceana County to be part of the larger Ojibwa domain there.

The white people thought of themselves as the only race present, but my grandmother spoke of walking with her mother from one farm to another on a woods trail and meeting a small group of indigenous men.  They were respectful and moved to the side.  One was heard to say, "Woman heap brave."  That story is probably apocryphal to some degree.  But "Indians" soon learned to be invisible and to find quiet corners that were safe.

The rich soil was contributed by rivers overflowing their banks.  Remnant feral "Indian" corn persisted years afterwards and plowing turned up pink quartz artifacts.  Game thrived but most people only kept domestic livestock for their own use.  The stability and prosperity of the area supported education and real achievement in the next generation.

"The Treaty of Detroit was a treaty between the United States and the Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot and Potawatomi Native American nations. The treaty was signed at Detroit, Michigan on November 17, 1807, with William Hull, governor of the Michigan Territory and superintendent of Indian affairs, the sole representative of the U.S." (Wikipedia)

The most prominent tribal leader through these times was  Cobmoosa (1768 -1866) AKA Weebmossa.  It means "Great Walker".  He seems to have been Metis, the son of Antoine Campau and the usual "Indian princess." (But there were half-a-dozen additional wives.)  Cobmoosa said of his half-French father, he "espoused the cause of liberty with the Americans and remained firm to the end."  Cobmoosa was considered "majestic and eloquent."  For a while he ran a trading post and then later a grocery store, much respected, and died at age 98.  After his death a fancy Victorian declamation called "Cobmoosa's Lament " was published in the Grand Rapids Eagle in 1854.  It is the familiar sad and sentimental essay, written by Alden Jewell.  I know nothing about descendants.  The citizens named a town for him (Cobmoosa, MI) and erected a modest monument.

Returning to the man who displaced Cobmoosa's original camp, remember Dexter?  Descended from him was a totally different kind of person.  Among Dexter's descendants was Katherine Dexter McCormick, an MIT graduate with a BS in biology, the second female graduate.  She married a son of Cyrus McCormick, who had invented the McCormick reaper.  The son was not so famous but because of his father he was wealthy.  It turned out to be Katherine Dexter McCormick who became justifiably famous.  She was a distinguished researcher in biochemistry and schizophrenia. She had no children, which may have been deliberate or merely fortunate, since her husband and his sister were diagnosed and hospitalized schizophrenics.  Maybe this is why she almost single-handedly paid for the development of the contraceptive pill and pushed for the 19th amendment that allowed women to vote.  She co-founded the League of Women Voters.  In a society that puts a woman in the hands of her husband, no matter his circumstances, these are vital safeguards.

Dr. McCormick had no descendants but remained close to the collateral family.  As she grew older, she lived in California near the clinic where her husband and his sister were patients.   But back in Michigan she bought Dexter Hall where Samuel Dexter had lived.  The house was believed to be a stop on the Underground Railroad.  "Millisent Dexter employed a string of Black servants, all of whom were recent arrivals and none of whom stayed long."  The house had many secret rooms in the basement.  The house went through several owners, including the University of Michigan and then the Methodists.

Though such things as mental illness and liberal politics don't always persist through generations of descendants, sometimes they do.  Besides biological inheritance, there is a kind of cultural heritage.  When combined with the hard work and caution of a local prosperous farming people, culture can become a powerful force.  Ag people are impressed by the name McCormick because of the combination reaper/hauler he invented, but he was only Dr. Katharine McCormick's father-in-law.  Those who really "know" are more impressed by Katherine Dexter McCormick herself whose work almost caused a cultural runaway in the Sixties and Seventies.  Her financing of the Pill and her work to liberate women, combined with her biochemical knowledge in general and pressing interest in schizophrenia, would have put her in the middle of things.  She didn't die until 1967.

So -- a lady doctor and an "Indian Chief" are legitimate examples of American rootstock and achievement.  They don't overlap in time, but they occupied the same rich soil along the pleasant leafy streams of Michigan when it was the Old Northwest.