Life at Old Mackinac
By: Agnes C. Laut
Taken From: The Outing Magazine Volume LIII October 1908 - March, 1909
Mrs. Elizabeth Baird...one of the earliest white women to reside at the fort
Life at Old Mackinac had its compensations. It would be hard to find a place in America where children had a better time than our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers when they were boys and girls at this old gateway of the Upper Lakes.
To be sure, they hadn't Teddy Bears and Noah's Arks with animals running round on casters; but then, they had real bears that ran round without any casters; and husky dogs harnessed tandem hauled the old-fashioned, high-backed, carry-all sleighs along roadways tunneled through snow banks even with the door-tops. And every spring came the gala event of the year the sugaring off- when officers and traders moved out with their families from Mackinac to Bois Blanc Island, five miles down the ice of the Straits, to a white city of tents in a sugar-maple grove.
Sometime about March 1st, the sap began to rise in the forests of northern Michigan. Sunny days, and frosty nights to prevent the flow when no one was there to take away the sap - were the ideal weather for sugaring off; but soon as the warm sun set the sap running, Mackinac prepared to go camping for some three weeks. Sleighs were brought out, carrioles (sleigh), backs and sides painted gorgeous crimson, runners black, inside cream, crammed with fur robes against the cold, and hitched tandem behind dogs keen to be off as the children muffed in furs to their eyes, wriggling restless to set out. The officers were usually accompanied by their families. Grand dames - wives of the big fur traders, Astor's magnates from New York, or pompous Northwest partners from Montreal - went along garbed as for a fete, in sables and martens with huge beaver hats topped by plumes gay as ever nodded in Eastern fashion.
Abreast each tandem team as driver stood a French-Canadian wood-runner, blanket coat, sash, toque, beaded moccasins shining new as squaws could make. A crack of the leading officer's whip! Away all raced, dogs and sleighs and drivers, the dogs barking and jingling their bells, drivers yelling, as out swept the runners from the snow-walled roads of Mackinac to the glare ice of the Straits. A rabbit lopes for cover! The dogs bolt in pursuit, spilling a sleigh-load of big people and little people about on the ice, none the worse of the mishap, and well-padded in furs. Or another team spurts for the lead on the down grade with yowls and jumps as the sleigh nips heels. In less than an hour all sleighs are at the sugar grove of Bois Blanc Island, where forerunners have kindled a roaring fire, and all camp kit has been left from the preceding year.
While the half-breed servants and black slaves move rugs into the big main tepee - fifty by two hundred feet - and erect the smaller tents of canvas and deerskin, it falls to the ladies of the fort to prepare supper. A kettle is slung to a chain between four corner-timbers. Partridge and duck and wild goose kept frozen from the fall hunt, bears' paws and beaver tails and stuffed rabbit are roasted whole at the end of long sticks; and one can guess whether youngsters at the end of a five-mile rough-and-tumble drive through frosty air thought the simmering, smelly things took long to cook; but the real fun only began when the ladies of Mackinac set to frying the pancakes, or flipping the flap-jacks. What dire portent it was to let a pancake fall in the fire when you flipped it - I don't know: very ill-omened for single ladies; and it took a deft hand to toss the browned side up from a flat, rimless frying pan and catch it on the toss to brown the other side. If the thing tossed down in a man's cap, that ended peace of mind for him; and a good many Mackinac officers must have wanted to lose their peace of mind; for when pancakes began, there was a wild scrabble of men with hats. Later, when the sugaring off, proper, took place, that is, the last night of boiling the sirup into sugar, the whole evening was spent flapjacking, the pancakes served, of course, with maple sirup. Supper was eaten in the camp firelight above the crusted snow, with a crisscrossing of shadows like ghosts from the wind among the branches of the melancholy pines and leaf- less maples.
The big wigwam was given up to the use of the women and children. It was a long slope-roofed cedar-bark affair, like the side-tent of a circus, with platforms of huge logs down each side, an enormous fireplace in the middle with the usual posts at the four corners, and a big hole in the roof to let the smoke out, and - as Mrs. Baird relates - "to let the stars in!" On the logs were spread the fur rugs for beds, though some of the grand dames brought out their down mattresses. Along the walls to keep out drafts, that make you mighty sad if you sleep next to a good brisk one in the small of your back in the small of the night, was tacked heavy gun-sacking. Sticks driven in the bark supplied hooks to hang clothing. The fireplace was built big enough to admit whole logs, and though the tents outside were assigned to the men, one can guess how long everybody lingered round the main fireplace of the big wigwam, lounging on rugs listening to hunters' yarns. What with the smoke curling out and the stars shining in and those big beaver hats with the ostrich plumes that the ladies wore, and the gold braid on the officers' uniforms, and the red firelight on faces that were good to look at without it - with all that and the flapjacks, it isn't awfully surprising that weddings were as frequent at Mackinac as there were singles, and that most of the singles didn't wait much past fourteen.
Night time was fun. Morning, the real work began. Birds sounded the reveille at that hole in the roof above the dead fire. Soon as the stars began to fade and daylight to come through that hole like a sheeted ghost, the blue jays began to scream, the whiskey jacks to twitter, the swamp pigeons to whistle and coo. A tame old owl nested near, and he used occasionally to peer from the ragged edge of the hole with a hoot that startled the wigwam. When the whip-poor-wills began to lash from near-by trees, Mrs. Baird says the campers knew it was time to go home; for the ice would break up. But the day's work really began with the call of the birds.
Brooms to keep the big tepee clean were extemporized from cedar branches fastened to a long handle. You can see these brooms in use to-day among the habitants of Quebec or the Indians of the West. The most of the dishes for sugaring-off were made of birch bark; troughs of two gallons set out at the tree to catch the trickling sap, three-gallon pails or buckets carried by an oaken or cedar yoke across the shoulders with ropes suspended hooked to each pail, macocks(type of melon) or macucks (type of mellon) holding a hundred pounds of the sugar. Bark for these dishes was gathered at Bark Point, the year before, preferably in August. The dishes were shaped as desired. All seams were sewed from the outside with basswood strips and gummed with pitch. To clean these dishes a single layer of bark was removed from the inside and the dish rinsed with scalding water. The grooved spouts or gutters were of basswood. The barrels were of staved oak hooped with tough bark. No pine was used because it would taste the sugar. The strainer was a big flannel bag. This was cleaned by scalding without soap. To stir the sirup, there was used either a hemlock branch or a basswood paddle. All the brass and copper kettles were scoured with water and sand, though the kettles were really what we would call big pots, such as farmers use out of doors for bran mashes. Sugar not required for immediate use was buried in the earth to prevent souring.
Spite of the hilarious fun, sugar-making was hard work. First of all, the trees must be tapped. This meant long walks over the crusted snow through the March winds. Into the nicked bark the spout was pushed, slanting down. Under the spout was placed the birch-bark trough; and down trickled the sap in a stream - as I remember in my childhood days on the east side of Lake Huron a century later - about the size of a very small lead pencil, with a faint odor as of flowers in spring. On Bois Blanc Island was a maple grove of some thousands of trees, and though they did not tap every tree every year, still Mackinac sugar was the main supply for the Lake traders, and they must have tapped a great many trees. Once a day, someone must go from trough to trough of the maple trees with the yoked pails to see that the troughs did not run over and to carry the sap to the oaken buckets and big brass kettles. That was task enough to keep a large camp busy so long as the sap ran. Two or three others to each section of the sugar grove must haul the sap to camp on hand sleighs; for the precious cargo must not be risked with bolting huskies.
If the weather were exceptionally fine, the boiling might be done outside, but ordinarily it took place over the great fireplace in the main wigwam. A good bed of coals was prepared but not too blazing a fire yet. It took the strength of three people to hoist the great kettle; but first a splash of sap was thrown on the bottom to prevent scorching. Then the big pot was hooked to the chain above the coals and lifted. Bucket after bucket, the sap was poured in. If many people were at camp, and the year a specially favorable one for sap, half a dozen sap boilers might be hoisted at once. Then the big logs were plied, watchers standing stirring day and night, three to a kettle, with hemlock branches and paddles, to keep the sizzling amber fluid, now letting loose all the fragrance of the imprisoned forest, from boiling over in a blaze. From twenty-four to forty-eight hours it took for the sap to turn to sirup. When half-boiled it was transferred to a fresh kettle.
The next thing was to boil the sirup into sugar over a slow fire. At this stage the fun of the first night redoubled. If anybody had not come out from Mackinac he came now for the final sugaring-off, which was always timed for a night frolic, an all-night of it, often. Sugar to be sent to far distant points - and in the early days of Mackinac, sugar was sent as far as New York, St. Louis, the Arctic - was ladled out to harden in the macocks; but the taffy and the sugar for the night's fun were either poured on basswood chips or spread out molten on a stretch of clean-crusted snow. If you scrambled for somebody else's chip, you stuck to it! I have been told - though children do not remember how they looked in similar sugarings-off a century later - that as far as small people were concerned it was very hard to tell where their hoods stopped and where their faces began; after the first ladling all visible was taffy. And the youngsters were not the only sinners over the taffy spoon. Mrs. Clarke, widow of John Clarke, Astor's leading trader, now a grand old lady past the century mark, tells of a sugaring-off when one young officer from Montreal made a frantic grab for the amber stream poured on the crusted snow. His foot slipped; into the lava of taffy he plunged full length on his back. The campers shouted, for when he sprang to his feet, a trailing cloud of taffy glory clung from his shoulders. Grown-ups and youngsters, black servants and half-breed drivers, pursued with a whoop the flying phantom of a uniformed gentleman twisting in and out among the trees with a taffy-train trailing from his back. Now, too, was the time when small people gouged their birch bark molds into shapes of rabbits and bears and horses and beavers, filled them with taffy or sugar, and placed them in the snow to harden. Sugaring-off often lasted till the stars faded and the whip-poor-will whipped in daydawn. Then there was a rush to break camp, for the whip-poor-will warned warm weather, and that meant the ice would run like a fury through the Straits as the campers paddled back upstream to Mackinac. If the wind rose, there was nothing for it but to land at any fishing shelter and wait till the churning waters calmed.
As I said before, there were compensations in the life at Old Mackinac, though people didn't change their fashions every three months the way we do because some tradesmen in Paris and London make it their business to make us buy things we don't want. It was a long way from Mackinac to the nearest stores - eighteen hundred miles - and when the grand dame of the Straits put on her best gown, it was put on for a year - black silk, the kind that will stand alone and not let you poke your finger through it.
Look at the map! Mackinac lies just where Lake Michigan sweeps through a narrow pass to Lake Huron, and Lake Superior comes down through the Sault or Jumping Rapids. All roads led past Mackinac. It was the first and earliest gateway to the West. Nicollet passed this way in 1634, when he came jaunting westward hunting a path to China. So did Radisson and Groseillers and Marquette bound for the Mississippi. So did La Yerendrye a century later on his way to the Saskatchewan. In those days Mackinac was on the north side of the Straits at what is now Point Ignace. And when French power fell in Canada, and English power in the New England colonies, the way Westward still led through Mackinac, built about 1781 on the island in the center of the Straits. Hither came Astor's fur traders on the way to the Mississippi and the Missouri and the Pacific; and here paused the Scotch merchants of Montreal on their way to invade the country of the Saskatchewan. And when the settlers came on the heels of the fur traders, the way still led through Mackinac. You took schooner for the fare of one dollar from Buffalo to Detroit. From Detroit, for the sum of twenty-five dollars, you took another vessel up to Mackinac. From Mackinac, you could go South down the shores of Lake Michigan to Indiana and Illinois and Kentucky and Missouri; or West across what is now Wisconsin to Iowa and Minnesota and the Dakotas; or North by way of Lake Superior to the great valley of the Saskatchewan. Astor and General Clarke and General Ashley, the great traders, always went from New York to St. Louis by way of Mackinac, rather than by ocean voyage through the Gulf of Mexico, even when Ashley was on the way to Utah and Colorado. There were no harbors on the east and west shores of Lake Michigan in those days; and vessels from Mackinac to Fort Dearborn (Chicago) came back ballasted with sand. As soon as navigation opened, there was a constant flow of notables, not to mention fifteen thousand gallons of whiskey annually, through Mackinac bound for the Far West. Robert Stuart, who had been with Astor's hunters on the Columbia, was wintering-partner of the American Fur Company at Mackinac. Capt. Benjamin Pierce brother of the President, was commander of the garrison, and among the permanent residents were families whose names are to the West what the Mayflower ancestors are to the East - Biddies from Philadelphia; the Kinzies who fathered Chicago; the Fishers of Red River, Manitoba; Mrs. Baird, whose reminiscences give the best picture of family life at Mackinac; Doctor Mitchell, an English surgeon, Pooh-bah and millionaire of the island; the French-Canadian family of Laframboises, whose sons explored literally every state from North Dakota to California, serving alternately Astor for the Americans, then McLoughlin for the British; Tanner, who had been stolen as a boy by the Shawnees in Kentucky; that good Jo Rolette, father of Wisconsin and Minnesota, who was the first man to take cattle to the settlers of Red River, Canada, and the first to bring ox-cart brigades from what is now Winnipeg to what is now St. Paul. That Jo Rolette's nerves were made of iron as well as his courage, may be guessed from Bishop Kemper's testimony that the stalwart trader could drink eight glasses of brandy at a meal and smoke every day twenty-five cigars the size of a poker without ill-effect.
Prior to the War of 1812, English agents yearly came to Mackinac with presents for the Indians of the West, a suit with gold lace, cocked hat and sword for the chiefs, silver circlets for hair and wrist of the warriors; and the Indians camped every autumn in a mushroom city of tents on the water front. Behind on the upper cliff were the whitewashed fort and the whitewashed town and the glittering spire of the chapel; for the dominant tone of Mackinac was both French and Catholic. By the time the Indians had scattered to their hunting grounds and the fur traders had departed for the East, it was Christmas season, a week kept as a holy festival with constant ringing - ringing - ringing - of the angelus chimes and chant of the mission priests - six in the morning - midday - six again at night. Then, when psalms and prayers were over, the whole population gathered at the largest of the manor houses, where pigs were roasted whole at open fireplaces and stuffed goose cooked at the end of a stick and supper served, with dancing till daylight. New Year's Eve, the men of the fort tramped from house to house singing the Old Year out and the New Year in; but soon as dawn came and the matin bells rang, every child, grown or small, in every household, knocked on the door of the parents' room, entered, and knelt for the mother's blessing.
To return to those weddings yoked up under the stars of the sugar camp - I said the sugaring-off was the great event of the year, but I'm not sure I ought not to have said the weddings. You can judge for yourself. There was a slaughtering of the innocents among those officers and traders of Mackinac. Miss Josette Lafrom-boise, staying at the white manor house of the Mitchells, meets and marries Captain Pierce, brother of the President; but though there was an Indian strain in the Laframboise family, there was also the blood of the good old French-Canadian noblesse. Besides, Madamoiselle Josette had been to Montreal schools, so her wedding was not so typical of Mackinac life as some of the other unions between wellborn native women and white men. Joseph Bailly had married one of the Minnesota Fairbaults; and when his Indian stepdaughter became espoused to one of the Philadelphia Biddies, the families of Mackinac with native blood determined to show the white race what they could do in the way of an Indian trousseau. Of furs, the bride was dowered with the richest money could buy. The bride's dress was of black broadcloth embroidered at the ankles to a depth of six inches with finest beadwork in blue and red and white and green. The leggins were also of black embroidered broadcloth. The moccasins were of leather stained scarlet and embroidered to match the skirt. The blanket, which Indian etiquette demands as a woman's veil against insult similar to the custom of Oriental women, was of red broadcloth fringed and beaded and worn as a Spanish lady wears her mantilla. The bodice beneath was of red silk fitted tight as a glove to a form, perfect in every line. The sleeves were tight almost as the bronze skin of the bride's arm. Belt and collar of beads to match the skirt with silver brooch-clasp for each - completed the costume. Four such gowns as this had the bride; and the feast that followed the wedding was like the festival of Christmas Day or the sugaring-off. Of course, with such unions there was always the sequel, which novelists do not tell - the loneliness of the bride if she left her own people to go among the whites; the isolation and sometimes slumping down (you can hardly call it "degeneration," when the man remained decent) of the white husband as associates gradually became limited to his wife's people. In the case of the Biddies, the sorrows of the alien alliance fell heaviest, as usual, on the children, A daughter, a very beautiful child, was sent East at an early age to be educated with her aristocratic cousins in Philadelphia. When she came back she was a grown woman with a white girl's tastes and customs; and she came back to an Indian mother hot to resent and tender to be hurt by comparisons, though unuttered, with civilized life. The girl pined away in silence and died of what the records called consumption, but what was more likely loss of anchor-grip, mental, moral and physical, on the life in which she found herself. Good Madam Laframboise prevented a similar tragic ending to the union of her Josette. The Laframboises were very devout Catholics. They were among the few traders who never gave the Indians liquor. Mrs. Baird relates that no matter where they were or at what work, when the angelus rang or the hour of the angelus came round though they were far from sound of the chimes in the depths of some Michigan forest, father and mother dropped their work and with the sign of the cross knelt in prayer. They had gone up the coast of Michigan to Grand River in two Mackinaw boats accompanied by some twelve servants, Indian and negro. La- framboise had refused to barter liquor to a dissolute Indian. One night, the trader was kneeling at prayer in his tent. Sunset or campfire threw the shadow of the devotee on the tent wall. A shot rang out; and Laframboise fell over dead pierced by the ball of the malicious Indian. The body was interred at what is now Grand Haven, and Madam Laframboise continued the fur trade in the wilds alone. Through the maternal line, she belonged to the Ottawa tribe, and she always dressed in Indian style, though her heart was whiter than many a Christian’s, which was shown by her treatment of her husband's assassin. The slaves had caught the murderer and brought him to camp. Then they came to Madam's tent and demanded whether "he should be scalped or burned." Did the Indian blood in her veins cry out for revenge? She stifled the cry and answered: “I do as my husband would have wished! I forgive this man! I leave him to the Great Spirit! He will do what is right." This was the woman whose daughter Commander Pierce had married. Robert Stuart declared she spoke French like a Parisian; and all her children had been educated in Montreal; but if rumor is to be credited, at the time of her husband's death the wife could neither read nor write. However, she procured a fur-trade license for herself, and yearly took her brigade of canoes to Montreal. That is worth noting by "womans' rightsters." Here was an Ottawa woman who took her rights and didn't talk about them, took them by virtue of her fitness, which is the best charter of rights. And now, in 1821, Mrs. Pierce, her daughter, died, leaving little children. If sent away East so young, Madam Laframboise could easily foresee they would come back to Mackinac weaned from their people, as Miss Biddle had come, to pine and die. Madam ponders the matter of these little Pierce children; but she doesn't rail at fate! Instead, at the age of forty, she sets herself to learn to read and write and master subjects of English study, that she may teach the children and keep pace with them when the time comes for Montreal schools. This Ottawa woman of Indian blood donated both land and funds for the Mackinac church.
One of the interesting families in Mackinac a century ago was the Mitchells. Doctor Mitchell was English by birth and hotly loyal; but he had married an Ottawa woman staunch and true like Madam Laframboise, but born to the airs of the grand dame like a princess. The Mitchells kept open hospitality in their white house with its green shutters, and Mrs. Mitchell was recognized as mistress of all occasions at Mackinac. Her children were educated in Montreal, with finishing courses of travel in Europe, and when they came home to the fort, weekly whist parties and receptions were held at her house, or else society went tandem driving with a round-up "hop" at the Mitchells. Mrs. Mitchell was a very large woman and always dressed in heavy black silks with deep military pockets in which she carried the keys of wine cellars and account boxes. No one wore more gorgeous hats nor finer plumes. About the time Mackinac became American a funny thing happened. The Doctor was so ultra-British that he would not stay. The wife was so American that she would not leave; so the husband moved across to Drummond Island, which was British in those days, where he plied his fur trade, and Mrs. Mitchell stayed on at Mackinac, where she carried on her fur trade. Twice a year husband and wife visited each other in the most amicable fashion in the world.
To Mackinac as to all frontier posts, drifted strange waifs and strays. On a boat from Detroit, in 1819, came a James Tanner, of Kentucky, son of a clergyman, searching a brother, who long ago had been stolen by the Shawnees. Lord Selkirk when in Red River, had employed as scout a white man by name of John Tanner living as an Indian among the Crees, of Manitoba. Selkirk advertised for the man's relatives in American papers. In answer to this advertisement came James Tanner from Kentucky. The scene must have been strange when the brothers met.
After searching the Cree camp of Red River for three days, James Tanner came to a white man lying on the broad of his back in the sun, dressed as an Indian. James Tanner stretched out his hand. "John," he said. John gazed back unmoved. "John Tanner is your name," continued the other. "Don't you remember? I am your brother! Don't you remember your sister Martha?"
A film of recognition, of dawning memory, came over the lost brother's face; and the two talked far into the night. The stolen child had been traded to the Ottawas of Mackinac, where he lived for many years, and married a woman of the Sault. When the elder brother tried to persuade the younger to renounce Indian life, a troubled look came over John Tanner's face. He had Indian children. He knew no life but that of the wandering hunter basking in the sun today, hunting tirelessly tomorrow, feasting one week, starving the next.
"I suppose there are no hunting grounds back in Kentucky? I don't want my boys to grow up like girls indoors all the time. To be a man, my boys must prove they can kill a man - they couldn't do that back with you! In a few moons will be a buffalo hunt. Have you any buffalo there? I don't want to live like white men who have to tell lies for their living. I don't want my boys to. As for the girls, they can go to the whites where they won't have to chop wood. A woman is a woman no matter where! “What answer the civilized brother made, I don't know. He found one of his brother's little girls was the image of a Kentucky cousin. For four months James Tanner stayed with his Indian brother, and John at last consented to go down to Kentucky; and James departed for the South.
The next July (1820), John Tanner, four children and an Indian wife, arrived in a birch canoe at Mackinac. An infant had been born on the way. Naturally, the wanderers attracted great attention, especially Tanner, who could no more wear civilized clothing without looking grotesque than an Indian could. His trousers were inches too short. His coat flapped to the wind. His hat jammed to the ears above a tangle of long hair looked like a scarecrow. What had once been a boiled shirt slipped anchor free of belt and braces. The poor fellow, now neither a white man nor an Indian, was wretched. To aggravate unhappiness, his wife refused to go on to the white man's land. The ladies of Mackinac took the disconsolate family under their wing for some twelve years. Tanner went on alone by way of Chicago to his relatives.
Fate has a ghastly trick of being tragically funny sometimes! While Tanner, the poor Ishmaelite of two races, was finding out that he could not fit himself to white life in Kentucky, his Indian wife and family up at Mackinac had been converted to Catholicism, baptized, sent to school and civilized. When Tanner came back from Kentucky, he found his squaw such a civilized woman that she would no longer live with him because he would not marry her according to the Catholic faith. You see - Tanner was a Protestant. Let us not laugh! It is tragic! For two years, husband and wife bickered along - then Tanner broke loose, went to Detroit, married a white wife and came back to live just round the point at the Sault.
I don't need to add that Tanner's last condition was worse than his first. Scripture tells of a man out of whom the devils went and into whom they returned. His white wife left him. He became an outcast, bitter to the inmost core of his being, his hand against every man, every man's hand against him. Personally, I often wonder just how the angel of records untangles things in a life like Tanner's. On the American side of the Sault, lived that family of Schoolcrafts from whose Indian legends Longfellow framed his “Hiawatha.' There was a quarrel with the Schoolcrafts. A member of the family was found murdered. Suspicion fell on the poor outcast, and until the Mexican War it was firmly believed that Tanner had committed the murder. In the Mexican War, a dying deserter confessed that he and not Tanner had been the guilty man. Meanwhile, poor Tanner was like a demon-haunted thing. Taking his gun, his only and last friend, he fled to the swamps on the Canadian side of the Sault. Next spring, trappers found a man's body in the swamp, clothing torn to tatters, bones picked clean by the wolves. Beside the skeleton lay a rusted gun. The gun was Tanner's.
Some descendants of Tanner became active missionary workers on the frontier of Minnesota and Dakota; so perhaps his life was ultimately not utter waste; though that is poor compensation to Tanner.