There were many Indian Trails, with the main trail running from Chicago to Detroit. A trail branched off the old Chicago Rd. and came from Jonesville to a camp or Indian village in the southwestern portion of Pittsford Township.  This camp was called Squaw field, from Squaw field camp the Indian trail headed west through the north edge of Wright Township, and proceeded to head through Medina and into Morenci. Just north of Old Morenci there is an old Indian burial ground.  From Morenci the trail headed into Ohio.  The first road in Wright Township was an old Indian Trail extending from Toledo to Chicago and was called Territorial Road.  Fort Dugway was 1-½ miles south of Waldron.  It came by the name when Territorial Road was being surveyed.  While the surveyors were digging a hill down, a band of renegade Indians attacked them with such force the surveyors dug a fort into the hillside for protection.

In Wright Township Squawfield Rd was named after the Squaw field Indian Trail and Camp at the corner of Waldron and Squawfield Rd. where the monument still stands.  This engraving upon the stone at the corner of Squawfield and Waldron Roads southwest of Hudson or north of Waldron on the banks of little “St. Joe” River, is a timeless monument to the area’s first inhabitants who saw the beauty and utility of the surrounding knolls and streams.

The lake on Hillsdale city’s edge bears the name of this tribe’s noble chief, Baw Beese.  The memorial plate at Squawfield and Waldron Roads replaces the Chief’s likeness that vandals so disrespectfully stole about the middle of the century.

At this point it would be proper to mention, that almost a century after Chief Baw Beese and his tribe were forced to leave their beloved country, a native of Wright Township, Mr. Ralph M. Lickley, had a memorial erected in the year of 1938 to mark the site of the last camping ground of Chief Baw Beese and his clan.  The beautiful natural rose-colored rock stands on the southeast corner of the intersection at Waldron Road and Squawfield Road, six miles north of the village of Waldron.

The arrowhead from which the pattern was taken was found on the Lickley farm, west of Squawfield Corners.  The Indian head was drawn by Miss Mildred Rathbone of Lansing, Michigan.  The giant rock used for the memorial was taken from the center of the original road, and placed beside it when the new road was built.  Later, Mr. Lickley had it placed in its present site, by Floyd Holliday, member of the County Road Commission, living north of Pittsford.  Ralph Lickley paid Mr. Clarence Brown, Mortician in Hudson, who had the plaque made of copper at cost.  The evergreens on either side of the monument, were planted there by Mr. Lickley and for several years have been cared for by Mr. Chester Mohr.

In the summer of 1966, Mrs. Kate Lickley of Grand Ledge, Michigan, widow of the late Ralph M. Lickley, had the faded plaque rejuvenated.  The thorough polishing of the metal arrowhead was accomplished by Mr. John Marker and Mary Anita Marker and the painting of the Indian head was done by Mrs. John Marker the writer of the historical sketch of Hillsdale County, Michigan.

The southwest corner of the intersection at Squawfield Corners was used by the Indians as camp ground living.  Ashes of the ancient campfires are still plowed each year.  The northwest corner comprised a section of land that was used for a racetrack where the Indian Ponies were raised and trained.  The graves of their people were on the land along the west bank of the St. Joe River, what is now the northeast corner and the southeast corner of Squawfield Corners and is divided by the road passing eastward over a new bridge, rebuilt in the summer of 1966.

It was here that old Chief Baw Beese repaired every summer, with his entire band of Pottawattamie Indians, and remained for weeks while the squaws cultivated corn, pumpkins, etc., in their extensive fifteen-acre field.  Hence the name “Squaw Field”.

Here too, they repaired and renewed their equipment for the chase and for war; and from here the government finally took them to their new reservation at Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1840, and later to Kansas.

The farmers of the vicinity at plowing time disinter arrowheads, stone hammers, and other relics, and this keeps local interest keen.

Chief Baw Beese

When Chief Baw Beese was a handsome youth he loved and wed a beautiful maiden.  They set up their wigwam on the shores of the lake.  After many happy moons together, a daughter was born to them whom they named Wenona.  She was like her mother, the pride of her father, but birth cost the life of her mother, who was buried in the lake.  The young chief was desolate, and though he married again, had sons and daughters, none was as dear to him as Wenona.

Wenona grew up and was given in marriage to a member of a neighboring tribe.  She did not love him, but loved her cousin, Ash-te-Wette.  She had tolerated him until one day she discovered he had stolen and sold, outside the tribe, her pony, a wedding gift from her father.  Blind with rage, she seized her knife and stabbed her husband to death.  The neighboring tribe demanded the penalty, Indian law, ‘an eye for an eye’.

Baw Beese was faced with the duty, as Chief, of executing his own daughter.  He fulfilled the law; then broken-hearted, alone, astride his pony, he bore her away.  He was gone for days but never revealed the spot where he laid his daughter.

Years after the Red Man had left the area, the remains of an Indian girl with a silver cross around her neck and other marks of distinction about it, was accidentally exhumed some miles south of the lake.  It was assumed, and perhaps so rightly so, that it was Princess Wenona.

The White man kept pushing westward in the settlement of America.  In this virgin territory where only the red man lived, he desired to settle, clear the land, and cultivate the soil.  Consequently the Federal Government wished to negotiate treaties with the Indian Chiefs, with payment, which would relinquish the Indian titles to the land.  It was notable that Chief Baw Beese did not sign.  The early settlers were constantly seeing him, a Pottawattamie, and his band of 150 members.  The old chief was good-natured; neither he nor his tribesman had any trouble with the settlers.  He was always willing to give shelter or food, and equally willing to accept the same hospitality, but far be it for him to beg.  It has been said that many of the early settlers might have gone hungry if it had not been for the Indian’s generosity.  His band was peaceful; the settlers accepted them.  Various efforts were made by the Federal Commissioners to move them out, but to no avail.

Finally in November, 1840 the Federal Government took sterner measures; it sent a detachment of soldiers to aid the commissioners.  The older Indians offered little resistance but Chief Baw Beese showed great anxiety and great fear saying, “Sioux kill men, Sioux kill all; Sioux bad Indians, tomahawk squaw, scalp papoose, Ugh!”  The young men would break away whenever possible and the squaws would conceal themselves so adroitly that it took some time to find them.  Finally they were all rounded up and the Commissioners were ready to start.  Chief Baw Beese had disowned his oldest son, Pamasaw, because he had refused to leave white wife, Betsy Merger; and Owasa, daughter of Osseo, who had married Martin Langdon, a former teacher near Grannisville, who was allowed to remain since her husband had title to his land, also.

On the day of breaking camp the sorrowful procession passed westward through Jonesville,  Aged Chief Baw Beese rode alone in an open buggy, drawn by an Indian pony, with his gun between his knees.  An Infantry soldier marched before the buggy while on each side was another guard. The Indian wife of the Chief, a woman of sixty years, came next, mounted on a pony, and escorted by a soldier.  After her came Baw Bee, whom the Chief had designated to succeed his son, Pamasaw, with about a dozen middle aged and younger squaws with papooses on their backs.  They were probably the children and grandchildren of the Chief.  They had an escort of six soldiers.  Following was the remainder of the band moving in groups of five, ten or twenty each, stretching along the road for a half a mile or more.  A few were on ponies, but most were walking, stalwart warriors with riffles on their shoulders.  The squaws were more dejected, with blankets over their heads.  The children seemed unaware of the future and were full of pranks.

Many of the settlers came to see their departure and as Indians saw one after another of their friends, they called them by name saying “Goodbye”.  They were transported to Council Bluffs, Iowa but were not happy there and repeatedly asked the Federal Government to move them elsewhere.  In 1850 they were taken to a reservation thirty miles square on the Kansas River, seventy-five miles west of its junction with the Missouri River where Chief Baw Beese died of extreme old age.  With the passing of Chief Baw Beese and his band of Pottawattamie Indians, occupancy was forever ended in this territory.

Material from different books, including “Reflections on the Bean” and “Bean Creek Valley” at the Waldron District Library. Also with material from The Wright Guide Thursday September 14, 1967A story Written by Mary Marker. And with material from Chris Douglas.

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