The Sashabaw Project

If you have spent much time in Oakland County, Michigan, you know the name.

It’s on a highway. It’s on a middle school. A creek. There’s even a large geographic formation with the name: The Sashabaw Plains.

But who is Sashabaw?

Is he the best friend of American War of 1812 hero Oliver Williams, as conventional wisdom would have us believe? Or is that a myth created to glamorize Williams and to whitewash what the settlers did to the Native Americans?

Or is he really Sassaba, an Ojibwe who has eerie parallels to Sashabaw but who fought with the British in the War of 1812 and who despised Americans?

Was he buried on a bluff overlooking Silver Lake in Oakland County, as the historical marker near Dixie Highway and Omira Drive says? Or was he buried 12 years earlier near Sault St. Marie?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, and neither does anyone I’ve contacted.

I do think, however, that regardless of the version of the truth you believe, a terrible injustice has been committed against a famous Native American. Either the white man has whitewashed history or the remains of a great leader have been ignored.

If it’s the latter, I think I have information that could reunite his remains with his descendants. But here’s another injustice: If Sashabaw is indeed distinct from Sassaba, no one seems to have bothered to trace his descendants as they were dispersed across Michigan and even to the distant plains of the American West.

I started this project because of a family legend concerning bones dug up in the yard of my grandparents, who lived on a bluff over Silver Lake. The legend says that my grandparents were told they were the bones of Sashabaw, a great leader. The legend continues that my grandparents wanted to give the remains to the proper authorities, but in the 1930s the “proper authorities” were not the least bit interested in the bones of a Native American, no matter how much he might have helped the white settlers in the area create what is now thoroughly modern Middle America.

I set out to debunk this legend. But then several archeologists and anthropologists confirmed that the legend could be true. So if that’s the case, I thought, my grandparents could not have tried very hard to find someone interested in the remains.

I was wrong again. Even to this day it’s hard to find someone interested in these human remains. It’s easy to find people interested in Oliver Williams; plenty of people want to document the arrival of white folks like me to the area.

It’s harder to find anyone curious about Sashabaw, and those I do find are frightened by the myriad laws and prejudices that surround the handling of Native American remains.

Somehow there must be some truth to the adage that the truth shall set you free. Somehow there must be some resolution for the poor soul dug up on the shores of Silver Lake.

Somehow there must be a better way to honor a legendary Native American than with sign on a freeway overpass.

Somehow there must be a way to honor the past and move forward, united as Americans, whether native or not.

The evidence keeps mounting that the widely accepted legend of Chief Sashabaw is a myth, most likely a glorification of actual events that transpired on the banks of Silver Lake. Please read on, paying special attention to the work of amateur historian Kim Crawford.

If you have any evidence or opinions, please post a reply or contact me by email.

Editor’s note: Amateur Michigan historian Kim Crawford has uncovered stories from one of Oliver Williams’ sons that cast further doubt on the truth of the legend. Here is what Kim Crawford has to say (special thanks to The Clarkston News for its story, which is where Mr. Crawford read about my search):

In 1876, Oliver Williams’ son, B.O. Williams, spoke at the yearly meeting of the Michigan State Pioneer Society at which he said that a male Indian (Williams didn’t give a name) who had been killed by a bear was buried on the family farm property on Silver Lake in 1824.

B.O. Williams described this man as the husband of an Indian woman who had been friendly with the Williams family shortly after they had settled on Silver Lake.

What follows are his exact words, as printed in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. 2, pp. 39-40. At this point he is talking about the year 1819 (that is, the year after his father had built their cabin) and he describes how the family had been very sick that year with what I understand to be a kind of malaria sometimes called “intermittent fever.” I have inserted some information in parenthesis that I hope helps to explain some things.

“The next fall (Sept. 1819) Gen. (Lewis) Cass (territorial governor of Michigan) made the Saginaw Treaty with the Indians, and on the return of the party, stopped over night at our house. Our family, comprising thirteen persons, had all been sick for months with the shaking ague — you all well know from experience what that was. The mother of the Indians who brought me the war club which I have shown you, came daily for weeks and sympathized with my mother, bringing us medicinal roots and herbs, also fresh venison, birds, honey, and every species of berries the woods afforded, a free offering of real friendship and kindness. Her husband, a great hunter, was killed in 1824 by a bear and was buried on our farm. That old woman died near Chesaning about three years ago (about 1873). I had the pleasure of giving her from year to year articles of clothing, and paid the last act of gratitude I could to her on earth, by furnishing her funeral shroud.”

Again, B.O.Williams gives no names for this Indian hunter and his wife, but I have seen other accounts of Michigan pioneers, such as the Williams’ one-time neighbors, the Stevens family, that tell of close friendships, gifts and trade with Indians, all of whom seem to have been Chippewa/Ottawa Indians.

While this is not absolute proof, of course, it’s a pretty good indication about the possible ID for those remains found on the Silver Lake property. I checked in the indexes of the MPHC and also in the Territorial Papers of the Michigan Territory for any references to Sashabaw and couldn’t find a single one. If I had to bet on it, I’m thinking the stories of Oliver Williams’ friendship with “Chief Sashabaw” are romanticized versions of this sketch by his son, with the details getting lost over the years.

Now, just to be completely honest about this B.O. Williams sketch, there are a couple of other points you need to know.

First, he wrapped up his talk in 1876 with a story about how a Saginaw Chippewa Indian chief he called “Kish Kor Co” — given as Kishkauko and other variations in other reports and memoirs — stopped by the farm with a group of warriors in the fall of 1820 and demanded barrels of flour and pork. But, the story went on, Oliver Williams said he didn’t have those things; instead, through an interpreter, he told the chief he would share with them pumpkins, corn and potatoes. This, according to B.O.’s sketch, resulted in the chief gratefully smoking a peace pipe with Oliver, giving him an Indian name and ensuring that the family wasn’t bothered by them any more.

This is a nice story, but in fact, Oliver Williams wrote an angry letter of complaint to Gov. Cass about this incident in the fall of 1820 — Williams was furious that the Indians, traveling between Detroit and Saginaw, were demanding food from him, so much so that he said it was becoming impossible for him to support his family. This letter is in the Lewis Cass papers (microfilm) in the Bentley Library at U of M.

Of course, Oliver Williams wasn’t the only settler this happened to, and not long afterward Cass and other territorial officials appealed to the U.S. government to set up a fort at Saginaw, which was then an Indian village where fur traders set up posts. Of course, that fort was there for one reason — to project federal authority and remind the Indians of who was now in charge of the region.

So as you can see, the truth of the matter of Indian-settler relations is rather a mixed bag. Yes, there were close friendships, but there was also the matter of two very different cultures coming into conflict.

Another note: There was a chief or headman of one of the Chippewa-Ottawa bands of the region named “Shashabak” who signed in 1819 Saginaw Treaty with Cass, though I can’t find anything that says this was the “Sashabaw” with whom Oliver Williams was supposedly friends.

Literally. In the The Clarkston News, to be exact. Great story, too.

Read the story here.

The plaque on Dixie Highway tells that Sashabaw was a Chief who befriended the white settlers in the area.

I’ve been on a mission to find evidence to confirm this piece of history, but everywhere I turn I come up empty.

Ah, but wait! Here’s a treatise from Michigan History Magazine from 1940 titled “Chieftainship among Michigan Indians.” Very scholarly. In it, we learn that Sashabaw was a “valued friend to the Pioneers.”

Eureka! But wait again … The evidence for this claim? The bronze plaque on Dixie Highway. Oh.

Interestingly, the author goes on to describe in some detail another chieftain. You guessed it. Sassaba.

The Clarkston News seems to think so. Here’s the story.

Here’s an odd source for an update on the dig on and near my grandparents’ property … from a campaign website for someone running for the state House.

Here’s another source who thinks “Sashabaw” is in truth Sassaba. Unfortunately, there’s no attribution in this excerpt from a book about Native American place names by William Bright.

The U.S. Navy named a ship after Sassaba, according to this reference.

Here’s a story of Sassaba’s opposition to Americans from a book by Willard Carl Klunder.

And here’s a citation from Virgil Vogel’s Indian Names in Michigan.

Seems someone else thinks Sashabaw was buried on her property.

I just came across this rather old story from a recent Waterford Historical Society newsletter about a woman who says her house was “on or near” the burial ground.

The legend of kindly white settler Oliver Williams tenderly caring for a fragile Chief Sashabaw has a certain appeal, portraying Native Americans as warm and welcoming, unlike so many portrayals that demonize them. So even if the whole thing is a myth, it’s best to let be, right?

Maybe. On the other hand, it portrays the white settlers as kind and caring, and omits little details, such as how they stole the Indians’ land and shipped them off to distant reservations. It also casts the white man as the hero in the story. That’s fine. If it’s true. If not, it’s demeaning.

What drives me in this quest is that if the legend is true, it should be celebrated because it has lessons about living in harmony that we could learn from today. But if it’s false, it also contains a lesson we could learn from today: Assuming that white invaders will be welcomed by those they conquer can lead us to do some stupid things …