Indian/Colonial Point Multi-Cache
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Size: 
(small)
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Indian Point - This two-mile peninsula at the northwest corner of Burt Lake has been called by at least two names. The old maps call it Indian Point, a name reflected on the road that runs along its eastern shore. Other maps refer to it by the name it was given by the real estate developers - Colonial Point. And that, too, seems fitting when you drive past the colony of summer homes along the water's edge, steering around the well-tanned joggers and dog-walkers as you go. From a historical perspective, both names are equally to the point. This place, once thoroughly Indian, was forcibly colonized a century ago in one of the most shameful and least-publicized episodes in Michigan history. There are no historical markers to tell the tale; only a series of unmarked white crosses on a bluff above the water along Chickagami Road, decorated with artificial flowers and sprigs of cedar. This is the old St. Mary's Cemetery, the only remaining sign of a village that served as the social, religious and cultural center of the small Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. These were no "backward savages;" they were hard-working Catholics who farmed, fished, and drew paychecks as lumberjacks and millwrights for local logging operations. And this land was theirs, not by some vague aboriginal right or a promise from far-away Washington. They had bought and paid for it themselves under the white man's own laws. In 1836, the federal government had promised them a 1,000-acre reservation around Burt Lake; when it failed to deliver on that promise, the Indians pooled their money and bought Indian Point for themselves, deeding much of it to the state of Michigan in the belief that they were creating a tax-free reservation. Until John McGinn came along. McGinn was a timber speculator with friends in high places, and he had his eye on the Point. Using loopholes in the state's land acquisition laws, he "bought" the land at an illegal tax sale in 1900, and a few days later - while most of the male villagers were in town getting their paychecks cashed - he moved in with Cheboygan County Sheriff Fred Ming. Herding the women and children out into the cold autumn rain, they doused their houses with kerosene, set them on fire and ordered everyone off. The homeless Indians walked 35 miles in the rain to the mission settlement at Cross Village, the closest place where they could find shelter. Three years passed before the state admitted the land had been taken from them through fraud, but it refused to restore their property; instead it offered them swampy property that wasn't suitable for farming. Eventually some of them moved a few miles north, to Indian Road, where a second St. Mary's Church was erected in 1908 around a settlement that came to be called Indiantown. Robbed of their land, the Burt Lake Band has been thwarted elsewhere, as well. Unlike other Michigan tribes, the small 650-member community has no revenue-generating casinos or high-priced Washington lobbyists. They've been fighting since the 1930s to win federal recognition for their existence as a tribe - a goal that has consistently eluded them. More historical info can be found at http://www.burtlakeband.org Michigan Law closes all cemeteries at dark. Please be respectful while at cache locations, and if you see a fallen item, please pick it up.
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