Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution

Chapter I: Pioneers---Colored and White

Chapter I: Pioneers— Colored andWhite The number of nations that has "pioneered" in Fitzgerald is not known. Working back, we find America, Britain, France and Ojibwa. Then the national identities become murky. If national political units have always been as unstable as they are today, with at least one different nation occupying the same area every hundred years, then Fitzgerald has enjoyed the patriotism of one hundred and twenty different nations since manfirst occupied it. American Indians are colored; indeed, they are of the same racial stock as the Chinese. It is pure white prejudice that insists that America was settled from the east. It was invaded from the east. America was settled from Alaska and the Northwest to the South, eventuallyas far as the tip of South America. Indian pioneers first settled Fitzgerald approximately twelve thousand years ago. They are known as Boreal Archaic , and lived by hunting and gathering. Several Indian sites and trails existed in the Fitzgerald area. Between 1650 and 1679, the Iroquois Indians, based in upper New York State, depopulated Southeastern Michigan through warfare. Remnant Indian bands later drifted into the area; most of these Indians were Ojibwa, or, as they were named by the English, Chippewa. The Indians themselves preferred the name Ojibwa, which was French, to the English name Chippewa, because French rule over the Indians was vastly more humanitarian than English rule. The Ojibwa were well entrenched when white settlers started "blockbusting " in their role of "The Original Pioneers." Ironically enough, it was on the other early roads followed Fletcher's Indian trails that the white pioneers first came into Fitzgerald. Woodward was one such Indian trail, Grand River another. Hubbell Road, a mile and one-half west of Fitzgerald, started as an Indian trail drifting northwest from Grand River. The first documented whites to enter Fitzgerald were Joseph P. Fletcher, surveyor, and his crew. They arrived in 1816. They went north on Wyoming to the Eight Mile Road, then east to Livernois , and turned south. As they came to McNichols (Six Mile) on the Livernois leg, they 7 FITZGERALD DISTRICT UNDER THE OJIBWA INDIAN NATION 1800 turned west to Wyoming and then back to Livernois . By this back and forth process, Fletcher located the mile and half-mile east-west streets: McNichols (Six Mile), Puritan (Five-and-a-Half Mile) and Fenkell (Five Mile). Thus Fletcher determined the orientation of the neighborhood and the location of many of its streets. Most of the other early roads followed Mr. Fletcher's survey lines. Pioneers began to come to Fitzgerald on these trails and roads in the middle 1800's. Down through the generations the pioneers' stories were told of the enormity of the wilderness,of the oxen straining on nearly impassable tracks. The first night on the land is long remembered in pioneer families.The Fuersts spent their first night under a tree just across from what is now Fitzgerald School on the south side of Puritan. The next day they made a crude shelter of logs, beginning the long evolution of homesteads , and moved in. Later the Fuersts helped the Pocherts into their forty acres of wilderness on the southwest corner of McNichols and Livernois; the Pocherts in turn spent their first night under a tree. "Real pioneers," these people were called. But though the white pioneers were sympathetic to each other, they could not extend their sympathies to the Indians. Although first encounters were generally peaceful, the race prejudice displayed by the English Americans against the Indians exceeded any in the nation's history. "The only good Injun is a dead one," they said. They had a special slogan for the Indian children, "Nits make lice." The land was surveyedand divided by the whites for the whites while its colored Indian occupantswere simply slaughtered. "Mad Anthony" Wayne — the Heinrich Himmler of the Ojibwa nation — burned their villages. Remnants of the nation were herded into human zoos, euphemistically called "reservations." Today this butchery is proudly recalled as "The Winning of the West." White racism has caused innumerable skirmishes and five violent local revolutions by the colored: 1763 (Pontiac), 1833 (Insurrection of Negroes), 1918 (Second Insur8 I-1 rection of Negroes), 1943 (Belle Isle), and 1967 (General Insurrection). The revolutions were put down, but they all required full federal intervention, and greatly shook the power structure. Yet, occasionally justice was given the Indians. Fred Schulze's mother worked in Detroit...