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· 157 · C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N  He Was Smart as Steel  I t didn’t take long for the interpreters and aides of Gov. Lewis Cass to realize what Jacob Smith was up to by the time the final treaty council was held at Saginaw. Smith, they warned, was trying to have Indian names for his white children written into the treaty provisions that granted section of land for individuals .1 Smith’s intervention on the question of who was to receive reservations on the Flint River probably seemed reasonable at first, for the governor’s men knew Smith had a daughter, Nancy, with a Chippewa woman who had lived near the mouth of the Clinton River at Lake St. Clair; Smith had objected, in the presence of Cass, when he saw she wasn’t on the chiefs’ list of mixed-blood individuals who were to receive a section of land. Witnesses said that Cass himself agreed that Smith’s Indian daughter should get land, as certain other sons and daughters of white fathers and Chippewa women had been picked to receive sections. Of course, the governor’s men also understood that Smith took charge of the list of those who were to receive individual reservations. Chippewa witnesses said Smith introduced to Cass several Indian children as the persons who were to get that land, apparently to allay any suspicions on the part of the governor and the · 158 · c h a p t e r f o u r t e e n Indians, too, about what he was up to. And Smith had met with Chippewa chiefs and the governor, apparently to translate their requests and demands in the negotiations . In reality, Smith was maneuvering to get what would become valuable riverfront land for his white children. Cass later wrote that his aides brought the matter to his attention: While Smith did indeed have a half-Chippewa daughter, his other children in Detroit—his son and daughters with Mary Smith—were white. Cass had met Mrs. Smith before she died, and he had been introduced to her children, so he knew this was true and he would testify to it years later. But these white children had been given Indian names by their father’s Chippewa friends, the governor’s men said. They warned Cass that Smith was attempting to have Indian names of his white children written into the treaty provisions so they could, in time, claim reservations of land on the Flint River.2 Did the chiefs of the Saginaw Chippewa truly want Smith’s white children to receive reservations? Did they watch Smith introduce several Indian children to the governor and understand this was just a deception so Cass would think that they were Smith’s mixed-blood sons and daughters? A government official in Detroit maintained in 1822 that Cass wrote a letter in which he called this action “fraud.” Yet, in time, the governor and his men also stated that the chiefs really did intend for Smith’s white children to get land.3 “I have been requested to state the facts connected with the reservation of eleven sections of land at Flint River, made under the treaty of Saginaw, so far as respects any interest held therein by the children of Jacob Smith,” Cass later wrote in a letter from Detroit, dated June 22, 1831, to the Indian Department in Washington. “At the time this reservation was made, I understood that the Indians intended that a number of the sections—I believe five or six—should be granted to the children of Smith, and the names given by them as the grantees were said to be his children.” “From circumstances not necessary to detail here,” he continued, “I was led to suspect that Smith designed [i.e., planned to get] the land for his white children, and that most of the names purporting to be those of his Indian children were, in fact, the names of his white children, which the Indians—who were in the habit of frequenting his house—had given to them.”4 In referring to “his house,” Cass meant Smith’s home in Detroit at the corner of Woodbridge and Woodward. Louis Campau agreed that Smith was trying to get land for his white children, and that he understood Smith had brought forward Chippewa children in order to · 159 · He Was Smart as Steel accomplish this. He testified...

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