Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways

Observer Staff

1/25/2005 12:00:00 AM

There is a bronze plaque mounted on a large fieldstone just northwest of the Chippewa River on Old Mission Road in Union Township. This is the only reminder of the first town in Isabella County, which was variously called Isabella City, Indian Mills or Dogtown.

On Aug. 2, 1855 in Detroit, the Saginaw, Black River and Swan Creek bands of the Ojibwe Tribe signed a treaty with the U.S. government. They agreed to give up all land claims in the state of Michigan in return for a cash payment and the supposed allotment of land grants (almost 100,000 acres) in Isabella County. Also, the sum of $12,400 was set aside for the maintenance of a blacksmith shop for a 10-year period and $8,000 for the establishment of "..grist and sawmill for said Indians."

This led to the establishment of Isabella City in 1857-only three years after the first white settlers arrived in Isabella County. It was a small, 12-square-block town which housed the grist and sawmill called for in the treaty.

The machinery for the mills was poled up river from Midland on a platform erected between two large canoes (keenan).

Eight years after the city was laid out, it consisted of the mills, a council house, a hotel and tavern, store/post office, wagon and blacksmith shops, as well as six frame houses. The city was the first white enclave in the county and functioned as the county seat until 1860 when the seat of population and power shifted to Mt. Pleasant, a few miles south.

The census of 1860 shows that the population of Isabella County was comprised in equal portions of Tribal members and white settlers, about 700 of each. Within several years however, the flood of white settlers had begun and Indian Mills (by then known as "Dogtown") was abandoned in favor of Mt. Pleasant.

In 1865, the federal government ceased to subsidize the blacksmith and the mills, hastening the city's end. By 1870, the mill had burned, the dam was no longer in place and most of the buildings had been abandoned.

In line with federal policy, Isabella City was founded partly to help the Tribe assimilate into the farming culture that white society was based on. It failed at that partly because most Tribal members were by choice, custom, and ingrained tradition, fishers, gathers and hunters.

The city that was founded to help the Ojibwe acted as the magnet for white settlers who soon numerically overwhelmed the Tribe and brought the speculators who later illegally divested them of their most valuable asset-the land.

(Editor's note: This story appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Noodaagan "Messenger" from the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways.)