An Early Visit To The Upper Au Sable

In the Report of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, Volume 2, published in 1880, is an account of an extraordinary trip that was first read before the State Pioneer Society at its annual meeting in February, 1878. (It was written originally for the Saginaw Courier.)

The writer was a Mr. B. Williams who, experienced and well-skilled in wilderness travel, was hired to guide a military party in an attempt to survey a "military road" from Saginaw to Mackinaw. The year was 1839.

Williams, after visiting a brother in Saginaw, traveled further north to see his younger brother who was a member of a survey team at an encampment of the Topographical Engineers Corps of the United States Army located near an Indian village on the Tittabawassee River, at the "forks of said river."

It had taken this party of ten, led by a Lieutenant Poole, over a month to cover the territory from Saginaw to the lower "forks" (probably near the present town of Edenville north of Sanford). (Williams doesn't give any account of his trip from Saginaw to this encampment, which certainly wouldn't have been an afternoon stroll.)

Upon his arrival Williams, when asked, appraised the condition and competence of the survey crew and advised Poole, apprehensive about the unexplored wilderness they were about to enter as they went north, that this expedition, as presently organized, would be a failure. Poole then requested that Williams reorganize the crew and help him lead it to Mackinaw through the central part of the state.

Williams consented and within a couple of weeks, after much bureaucratic delay resulting from the required approval of Poole's superior in Detroit, replaced most of the crew and then with Poole led the new group of thirteen north toward the "upper forks," which is in the present county of Gladwin upstream of Wooden Shoe Village.

The advance party under Williams's supervision then proceeded through "dense pine and fir woods to within about twenty miles of the Au Sable river" directing "the running of the road line so as to avoid every swamp possible." (It isn't exactly clear from the narrative how Williams knew he was twenty miles from the river. The reader must assume he knew this by hindsight.)

Williams implies that the information from Indians was unreliable, that they claimed the land was nothing but marshes, and that "no surveys had been made of the lakes, no linear lines run north of Saginaw, and no definite idea of where Mackinaw really was, except it was in the straits at the north end of the peninsula." In other words, go north the best way you could.

He further observes that "in going forward we soon lost all evidence that man had ever preceded us, as no signs of fires were to be seen, except occasionally when unmistakable evidence showed that lightning was the cause."

He also states that "the density of some portions of the spruce, fir, and cedar lands exceeded any tropical forest I have ever seen, and my experience in Central and South American states has been considerable." The forest was so dense with so many windfalls that they were "at times compelled to creep on the ground, and within a few yards were then at least thirty feet above the earth."

The work was slow and tedious (much detail is given in Williams's description) as he led the advance party northward while the main party followed, under the direction of Poole, doing the slower detailed work which involved some clearing of the land for a road. For example, he observes that the "mosquitoes and gnats were almost intolerable to both man and beast," and that "at times the gnats would cover both men and horses black, and our only protection was a dense smoke."

Williams with his advance party reached the Au Sable River when the main party was but "thirty miles north of the forks (of the Tittabawassee)" and found the Au Sable to be a large, deep, swiftly running stream. The advance party would usually carry provisions for two weeks and then, for rest and supply replenishment, would return to the main party which lagged behind by ten miles or more.

Poole and Williams soon "found it necessary to procure our (additional) supplies, if possible, via Lake Huron, and thence up the Au Sable River." They sent a couple of men (one being Williams's younger brother) "back to Saginaw on foot to (acquire and) take the supplies in birch bark (canoes) to the mouth of the Au Sable River and thence with the aid of some Indians, paddle or track up the river," where the main party would meet them. His account continues: "It was deemed practicable . . . (for the men coming with supplies) to reach the point on the river, where a pine tree was to be felled on the south bank, to indicate to the commissary party the point where the line would cross, when the party reached the river. We took the risk of its being the Au Sable, but how far from its mouth none knew, as no signs of fire or marks of Indians could be discovered along the banks."

Sixteen days after the commissary party left the main party to return to Saginaw for provisions, "the (main) party made a forced march of many miles to the south bank of the Au Sable river and encamped." Desperately short of food, they then waited for rescue, for the commissary party to come up the Au Sable.

As they rationed their meager food, they tried hunting and fishing (with homemade wooden spears), without success. "Many fine large fish were pierced by myself and others, but they invariably escaped . . ." and "occasionally a spruce hen or grouse was killed (with shotgun and buckshot)." No deer were seen. One man became very ill.

According to Williams's narrative, after a few days of waiting, he led a party down the river and after much effort through rapids and portages for more than two days he contacted, to his delight, the contingent coming up the river with supplies. The relief party had been thirteen days coming up the river from its mouth. They managed, with another supreme effort to get back up the river to those they left behind.

Poole and Williams then abandoned the road survey, sent one group back down the Au Sable with their "luggage," and made their way with the remaining members to Mackinaw "by forced marches as best we could." It took them more than a week to come upon a large "lake with a wide beach." They could not discern if they were "on a bay or lake, as neither end was to be seen" and they "were again out of provisions."

Williams wondered: "Was it a bay of Lake Michigan? We must travel easterly to reach Mackinaw, and if a bay of Lake Huron, then we should go west. Here was a dilemma. We couldn't tarry."

With some complicated logic involving footprints of an Indian and a dog's tracks they found an Indian village and decided they were on ". . . Rum Lake, and that the stream we had followed down by the Indian trail was called by the same name." They also believed it was the "most easterly of the great inland lakes upon the Cheboygan River." (This sounds like Mullet Lake to me.) From there they found it easy going downstream to Lake Huron and then to the village of Mackinaw, even though they "stove a large hole in the bows, and sunk our boat going down the river between the lake and main Cheboygan River," and later, "whenever we reached other rapids we sprang out into the water, thus avoiding any further delay or damage."

They probably reached Mackinaw in early September. By the middle of that month Williams and others returned to the mainland and explored the most westerly lake which "was then called Cheboygan," and were "hospitably entertained by the half-civilized Indians."

Later in the month, Williams came down with cholera and, then upon recovery, "returned to Detroit in October upon a lower lake schooner."

Williams also relates that "Poole and the party ran the survey line back toward the Cheboygan River, crossing above Long Lake, and in October discontinued the survey until the next year." The next summer, the road survey continued back to the Au Sable from Long Lake. (There is no mention of the survey being finished from the Au Sable to where it was apparently abandoned somewhere north of the upper forks of the Tittabawassee River.)

In this brief synopsis of Williams's narrative, I have left out much of his detail. It is by any standard a fascinating and literate account of an early, if not the first, exploration of the upper Au Sable. It is my belief, after a careful reading, that the party crossed the Au Sable below McMasters and above Mio. There is, however, no certainty of this.

It also adds to confirm some other suspicions about the history of the interior of the northern lower peninsula, such as: there were few if any Indian villages in the interior; the Indians lived near or on the coasts of the Great Lakes; and the old belief of a shortcut between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan (by going up the Au Sable to some point above Grayling and then portaging to the Manistee and proceeding down to Lake Michigan) is probably a myth.

Can we even imagine what the river looked like then with the huge pines and cedars, with the blowdowns blocking the river at every bend? If any group had tried such a venture they would have spent more time carrying their canoes and gear through swamps around blowdown dams than in the river. It would have been a next to impossible trip, taking up to two months.

The year was 1839. Less than five decades later the virgin forest was clear-cut, the land was considered worthless, the rivers devastated by log drives, the native grayling were on the verge of extinction, and civilization had taken its roots in the north woods. The real woods, however, was forever lost.

The account by Williams was sent to me by John Wernet, an attorney from Grand Ledge. This is taken from his letter:

Some years ago I discovered the enclosed article while doing research on a lawsuit involving Indian treaty rights in the Mt. Pleasant area. It is a reminiscence by a member of a survey crew that struggled through the central part of the state all the way up to the Au Sable back in 1839 or so, trying to find a route for a road. Some of his recollections are fascinating and, I thought, might be as interesting to other members of the Anglers as they were to me--especially his descriptions of what was then entirely virgin country, largely unoccupied even by Indians. I was especially impressed by his statement that "The density of some portions of the spruce, fir, and cedar lands exceeded any tropical forest I have ever seen, and my experience in Central and South American states has been considerable." And to think that we clear cut essentially the entire peninsula!

Thank you John. I know I haven't done justice to Williams's account but I tried. To have experienced the north woods in the early nineteenth century must have been something we couldn't even dream about today. RWOL

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