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· 185 · C H A P T E R S I X T E E N  U.S. vs. Jacob Smith  W hen the federal census takers made their count in Detroit in 1820, one recorded that the household of Jacob Smith was comprised of one white male under the age of 10 (presumably son Albert), two white females between the age of 10 and 15 (likely daughters Caroline and Louisa), and at least one white male aged 45 and older. If 1773 was the year of Smith’s birth, as evidence indicates, he would have turned 47 sometime in 1820, so that entry almost certainly indicated the presence of Smith himself. But different transcribers of this census don’t agree about the data from Smith’s household. One transcription indicated that there were two men living there. If this was correct, it may reflect the presence of a man named “Doane” who was recorded as working with or for Smith in 1821. A member of the government surveying team that traveled to the Flint River that year would remember Doane helping Smith cultivate crops planted near his cabin–trading post–farm on the Flint River. Whether Doane was a friend, partner, or hired man isn’t clear, but that 1820 census noted that one person in the home was “engaged in agriculture.” This indicates Smith was farming near his Flint River trading post, possibly because · 186 · c h a p t e r s i x t e e n he had received an appointment as a government-paid instructor to teach white men’s farming practices to local Indians.1 Jacob Smith was due back in Wayne County court early in January 1821 in the lawsuit brought by Joseph Campau. This was the matter of the estate of another member of that clan, Dennis Campau, who had committed suicide in December 1818. Joseph Campau charged that Smith had owed Dennis Campau money going back as far as 1815; Joe Campau wanted that money and damages, for a total of $500. The jury hearing the case agreed, but only to a point. “Detroit, 4 January 1821,” wrote jury foreman William Brewster on a slip of paper that recorded their decision. “The jurors find a verdict for the plaintiff for $320.19.” Smith made plain he would appeal the case to the Supreme Court of the territory.2 Smith continued to work for or supply Governor Cass in one way or another, and that month he was paid $25 “for 1 cwt. tobacco issued to Indians previous to Saginaw treaty.” This referred to the first annual payment to the Indians, made under the treaty terms, in the fall of 1820. Smith received that check just two days before he began acting as an interpreter for nearly two months, from January 20 through March 21 of 1821. For this service he was paid $64.3 A young surveyor who met Jacob Smith that summer and who experienced frontier Michigan for himself was Harvey Parke (also given as Hervey Parke). He had been raised in Connecticut and was teaching in Camden, New York, early in 1821 when he decided to join government surveyors under Joseph Wampler of Ohio. Wampler had teams running township lines in the regions that would become Oakland, Lapeer, and Genesee counties, and early in May, Governor Cass instructed Smith to aid Wampler and act as liaison between the Indians and the government surveyors. Parke would write in later years that he set off with others in the surveying team on June 13 of that year from the town of Pontiac and found the Flint River so swollen by heavy rains that they could not ford it. “We started up the river to the Kearsley [Creek], where we felled a suitable pine, about sixteen feet of which we removed from the main body of the tree and shaped it canoe-like, digging out the same, so far as could be done with axes,” he wrote. The men floated down the river to “where the city of Flint is now located. Here we found Jake Smith, called ‘Wabeseis’ [Wabesins] by the Indians, who had been [an] Indian trader for several years, and who had recently received the appointment of Indian farmer,” Parke recounted. “He had built a comfortable log house a few rods below the present railroad bridge,” the surveyor wrote about Smith’s wilderness home, referring to a mid-nineteenth-century trestle to indicate · 187 · U.S. vs. Jacob Smith...

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