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· 142 · C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N  The Treaty Councils Begin  T he invitations to the Indians were made by Cass, and other arrangements for the treaty were set in motion. But complaints about thefts by Indians and incidents of violence on settlers continued around Detroit. By May, the territorial governor was complaining that he needed more soldiers to help keep the peace, and he had roads improved so as to be able to move troops over southeastern Michigan. The treaty plans went forward, though not always smoothly. Cass worried that summer when the U.S. bank in Chillicothe initially refused to honor a check for over $10,000 for silver he needed for payments due under terms of earlier treaties to Indians of southeastern Michigan. “This draft was destined to pay the annuities due to the Ottawas, Chippeway and Potawatomy Indians which by our treaty stipulations are to be paid in silver,” the governor explained to Secretary of War Calhoun. “The failure of payment will injure the publick interest and may affect the result of the proposed treaty at Saginaw.” As it turned out, Cass had to raise the money himself from the bank that had been established in Detroit, just a couple of weeks before he was to leave for Saginaw that fall. Eventually the federal government paid for his treaty expenditures. · 143 · The Treaty Councils Begin Other arrangements for the treaty talks were handled by Louis Campau, who left for Saginaw shortly after his meeting with the governor in Detoit. “I went across the country,” the ex-trader recalled many years later, “built the council house, rolled in logs for seats, crossed it over with elm and cedar bark [and] built a crotche of trees.” In court testimony given years afterward, Campau was even more specific about the features of his buildings near the Saginaw River. “I was requested by Cass to come on ahead and make suitable provisions for a store-house and dining room and council room,” he said. “There was a long table in the dining room, and the private council was held there—the office and the log buildings were all together, end to end. These were six to eight rods from the room where the grand council room was.”1 Amateur historian and lawyer Charles P. Avery, who apparently spoke to people like Campau who attended the treaty, described this room as a large, open-sided log structure built along the river. The roof was made of boughs and branches woven together. A foot-high, stage-like platform allowed Cass and his officials to sit on benches above the earthen floor in the center of this hall, while the assembled chiefs and warriors sat on the logs rolled in by Campau’s men. With the buildings completed, Campau went back to Detroit to get goods and supplies. Jacob Smith also had responsibilities in advance of the treaty, including building a bridge over the Cranberry Marsh—Louis Campau said this was the swampy area that lay between Detroit and Royal Oak—so that the governor’s party and their packhorses could move more easily through on the way to Saginaw. Smith also rented his trading post/house at Saginaw for the governor’s purposes, and the use of his boat to move supplies to the council site.2 As the time drew nearer, two ships carrying supplies and a company of soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment under the governor’s brother, Captain Charles L. Cass, left Detroit and sailed to Saginaw Bay. To get to the site of the treaty (now part of the city of Saginaw), the soldiers rowed boats from the bay near the mouth of the Saginaw River, landed on a beach near what is now Essexville in Bay County, and marched along the river more than 10 miles south. They were, of course, present to protect the territorial governor and his party and serve as a living embodiment of U.S. authority. Even as the traders and soldiers and government aides prepared for the treaty, there was no letup in the rivalry between Jacob Smith and Louis Campau. When two large Mackinac boats bearing Campau’s goods arrived at the mouth of the Saginaw River, Smith told the commander of the U.S. revenue schooner Porcupine, · 144 · c h a p t e r t h i r t e e n a man named...

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