Chief Baw Beese Potawatomies until 1840.

Chief Baw Beese

    Among the Indians reportedly never agreed to relinquish the land was Chief Baw Beese, a Huron-Potawatomi with a Scottish name for half-penny. Baw Beese, a council or peace chief, was one of the Indians of the so-called Huron-Potawatomi who had agreed to a treaty to relinquish land on the Huron and Raisin Rivers and to move west of line running straight north from the flagstaff of Fort Defiance, to a point on the Grand River-a line roughly marking the boundary between what now constitutes Hillsdale and Lenawee counties. In return for this the Baw Beese band was to receive $400 per year forever. The Moquago band at Nottawa Seepe (Near present day Athens, Michigan) was to receive a similar amount. Payments were made at Nottawa Seepe until the Baw Beese band was moved west. Thereafter, only the Moquago band received the payments, the last of which was made in 1910.

    Consequently, Chief Baw Beese considered himself a landlord and treated the early settlers as his guests, from whom he could and did demand rent. It has also been reported that he attempted to charge the settlers for the water flowing out of Baw Beese Lake.

    Historical research has revealed long-lost details about Baw Beese and his people. Those first settlers credited Baw Beese and his tribe of about 100 for helping their pioneer families by providing meat and traditional medicinal care through the long hard winters. The Potawatomies were known as successful planters and growers of maize (corn), who fished and hunted in fruitful locations. Baw Beese led his people around the county to three primary spots. The first was near the shores of Baw Beese Lake (supposedly named after the old chief by an early settler, Colonel William Fowler), where they fished; the second was near the corner of Squawfield and Waldron Roads, where they grew maize; and the third was just south of Somerset, where they hunted. The native inhabitants also made excursions into Ohio and Indiana, as well as into neighboring Michigan counties.

    Most Southern Michigan Indians had been relocted to reservations in Iowa and Kansas by 1838. However, because the majority of settlers in Hillsdale County admired and appreciated the local Indian population, Baw Beese and his people continued to co-exist with their white neighbors until the autumn of 1840. After one of the local pioneer`s wrote a letter to then President William H. Harrison requesting the removal of Baw Beese's people from the land he had rightfully purchased, federal troops were sent to roundup the "Red Men" to be escorted out of the county. It was a sad day when Baw Beese left. Schools were let out to bid the old chief and his people farewell. With Baw Beese driving a horse-drawn buggy in the lead, the federals took the Indians from the camp at Squawfield, through Jonesville and Litchfield to Marshall. From Marshall they went west, then down the Mississippi, up the Missouri River and eventually to a reservation at Council Bluffs, Iowa where Baw Beese feared his mortal enemy, the Sioux. Later, many members of the Hillsdale County band were relocated to the reservation north of Topeka, Kansas. Descendants of Baw Beese's village remained on that Kansas reservation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. There is some historical evidence that some of the original inhabitants hid in the forests, or were hidden by settlers, and remained in the area. Other reports indicate that small groups of the Indians taken west returned to Hillsdale County and took up the ways of white men, eventually assimilating into the Euro- American culture.

    Even before the Indians departed, the first school in the county was opened in the tiny settlement of Allen by Hiram Hunt in 1831. A school was also opened in Jonesville in 1832 and was attended by the youngest son of Baw Beese. Jonesville later became the first organized school district in the state.