lookout point
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Celebrating an anniversary, and remembering a troubled past Story by Adam Berger Photos courtesy of Andrea Denham, UPLC
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s the fall colors emerge, celebrate the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Chocolay Bayou Nature Preserve. With help from more than 150 local individuals, organizations, and businesses, the Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy (UPLC) acquired this 13-acre wetland property in 2016. Located near the Michigan Welcome Center on U.S. 41, just southeast of Marquette, along the North Country National Scenic Trail and Iron Ore Heritage Trail, the Chocolay Bayou has become a favorite place for watching migrating birds and other wildlife, looking for wildflowers and enjoying an easy stroll in a peaceful, wooded setting. The Chocolay Bayou is also accessible by kayak and canoe, as the chocolate-hued Chocolay River connects to Lake Superior. As a nonprofit land conservancy, UPLC protects wilderness throughout the Upper Peninsula. UPLC also promotes knowledge of the history of that land. Visitors to the Chocolay Bayou Nature Preserve can enjoy the site’s natural beauty while contemplating the 1836 Treaty of Washington as one example of how Native lands were
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taken as the United States expanded west. In 1836, the Chocolay River became the border between the United States and Ojibwe land in the Upper Peninsula. According to the Treaty of Washington, signed March 28 and ratified by Congress May 27, Ojibwe and Odawa leaders ceded approximately 13.8 million acres in the western lower peninsula and eastern Upper Peninsula, approximately 40 percent of the land area that is now Michigan. Under the terms of this treaty, east of the Chocolay River became U.S. property, and west of the river remained unceded Ojibwe territory. The American Fur Company, founded by John Jacob Astor (1763-1848), extended credit to Native hunters in the northern Great Lakes each fall, requiring payment in furs in the spring. By the 1830s, over harvesting diminished furbearing species in the region. Astor himself pulled out of the Great Lakes fur trade. Ramsay Crooks (1787-1859) took control of the northern part of the company. Particularly poor fur harvests in 1833 and 1834 left many Native families owing large debts to the Amer-
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ican Fur Company. Elbert Herring (1777-1876), Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Secretary of War Lewis Cass (1782-1866), knew the debts held by Anishinaabe people could be used as leverage to acquire Native land. He wrote to Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), then working as Indian Agent at Mackinac Island, telling him to travel to the lower peninsula to pursue the matter. Schoolcraft wrote back that the events of the past several years had prepared Native people to sell their land. Anishinaabe people were very much aware of the threat of violent removal from their territories without compensation because of recent actions against their traditional enemies, the Sauk. In 1832, a Sauk leader named Black Hawk refused to leave territory in southern Wisconsin. United States troops and Dakota warriors launched an assault against Black Hawk that killed 1,300 of his people. The United States government invited a select group of Ojibwe men from the Upper Peninsula and Odawa
