From the Tablelands to the Forks: Native Roots & Pioneer Settlements | Midland Michigan
- Kevin Crampton
- Aug 13
- 11 min read
Ojibwe Homelands Along the Rivers (Pre-1830s)
Long before American settlers arrived, the land that became Midland, Michigan was part of the homeland of the Anishinaabe people – specifically the Ojibwe (Chippewa) of the Saginaw region. For centuries prior to European contact, Ojibwe communities lived along the Tittabawassee, Chippewa, and Pine Rivers, relying on these waterways for travel and sustenance. Archaeological surveys have identified multiple indigenous village sites in the area; in fact, at least six Ojibwe villages existed within an eight-mile radius of present-day Midland, including one on the Pine River. These villages were part of a broader network of Saginaw Valley Ojibwe settlements connected by river routes and trails.
James Whitman – who was born in 1843 to one of Midland’s first settler families – later recalled that as a child he saw the banks of the Tittabawassee and Chippewa “dotted with picturesque tepees of bark and hides,” with untouched forest overhanging the waters. This vivid memory confirms that Ojibwe campsites and seasonal encampments were still present along the rivers even as Euro-American settlement began, illustrating a period of coexistence between indigenous residents and the earliest pioneers.
Over generations, the Ojibwe and other Algonquian peoples had adapted to the “bounteous” environment of mid-Michigan’s rivers and woods. Wild rice grew in the region’s marshes, and fish, waterfowl, and game were plentiful, supporting a robust native population. However, the advancing frontier brought tremendous disruption. After the War of 1812, U.S. officials sought to extinguish Native title to central Michigan. In 1819, Governor Lewis Cass negotiated the Treaty of Saginaw, in which Ojibwe leaders (along with Ottawa and Potawatomi representatives) ceded over six million acres of central Michigan land to the United States. This vast cession included the entire Saginaw River basin – encompassing what is now Midland County. The treaty opened the area to American traders and settlers, although it also reserved certain small tracts for the Ojibwe. Subsequent treaties in the 1830s–1850s would force the Saginaw Chippewa onto a reservation and further dispossess them.
By the mid-19th century, most Indigenous inhabitants had been pressured to leave or confine themselves to designated lands, but their legacy in Midland endured in place names, archaeological sites, and the continued presence of descendant communities (the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe). The era of exclusive Native stewardship was ending, and a new chapter of fur traders and pioneer settlers was about to begin at the historic river junction known as “the Forks.”
Fur Trade at “The Forks” (Late 1820s)
Even before formal settlement, the Midland area entered historical records as a remote trading outpost. By the late 1820s – only a few years after the Treaty of Saginaw – Midland’s locale had been established as a fur-trading post of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, managed as a satellite of the main post in Saginaw. At this small riverside post, Company agents bartered European trade goods for animal pelts brought in by Ojibwe trappers from the surrounding forests. The exchange of beaver, otter, mink, and other furs was the primary economic activity in the region at that time, tying Midland into the broader Great Lakes fur trade network.
In addition to the American Fur Company’s presence, the Campau family of Detroit – an influential French-Michigan trading family – operated an independent trading post at the Forks in the late 1820s. (Louis Campau and his relatives were active fur traders in Michigan; one of them likely set up this private post to compete with Astor’s company.) These early trading posts were not permanent towns, but rather seasonal or temporary stations usually staffed by a handful of traders. They were visited frequently by local Ojibwe people, who would paddle down the Chippewa and Tittabawassee Rivers in canoes laden with furs.
During this fur trade era, the spot where the Chippewa and Tittabawassee Rivers meet – today the heart of downtown Midland – was simply a convenient river junction known to traders and natives alike as “the Forks.” Its strategic location at the confluence made it a natural gathering place and exchange site. However, aside from a few log structures for trading and storage, the Forks saw little permanent development in the 1820s. The land around was still dense pine and hardwood forest, and indigenous families camped here during hunting and trapping seasons.
American and European influence remained minimal and transient. That began to change in the 1830s and 1840s, as the fur trade waned and the first homesteaders arrived to put down roots. The gradual shift from a frontier trading hub to a settled community would transform the Forks from wilderness into the earliest incarnation of Midland.
Pioneer Settlers and Early Settlements (1830s–1840s)
Following the fur traders, the first permanent Euro-American settlers trickled into the Midland area in the 1830s and 1840s, attracted by its rivers, forests, and newly available land. One of the very first families was that of John and Sarah Wyman, who built a log cabin near the junction of the Chippewa and Tittabawassee Rivers (the Forks) in the mid-1830s. In this cabin on July 6, 1837, Sarah Wyman gave birth to a daughter, Julia A. Wyman, who is recorded as the first white child born in what would later become Midland County. The Wymans’ solitary cabin marked the humble beginnings of a settler presence; for several years afterward, fewer than half a dozen white families lived in the entire vicinity, surrounded by vast timberlands and the lodges of their Ojibwe neighbors.
A significant early arrival was Charles Fitzhugh, a lawyer by training, who came to the area in 1838. Notably, Fitzhugh and his family reached the Forks aboard the Buena Vista, the first steamboat ever to navigate the Tittabawassee River up to Midland. In the spring of 1838, exceptionally high water levels allowed the steamer to travel that far inland, delivering the Fitzhughs and their supplies. Fitzhugh became one of the very first Euro-American settlers in the region and later played a civic role (officiating local marriages, for example). His arrival by steamboat also symbolizes the growing accessibility of this once-remote area.
By the 1840s, a few other pioneer families had followed. Joseph C. Townsend arrived as a boy with his parents around 1846 to settle “near the Forks”. Other early names included the Cronkright family and a handful of others who had “squatted” along the banks of the Chippewa River by the mid-1840s. These settlers lived in simple log homes, eked out livelihoods by hunting, fishing, and small-scale farming, and traded with the local natives and the Saginaw outposts for supplies they couldn’t produce themselves.
The honor of Midland County’s first permanent settler is commonly attributed to John A. Whitman, a New Englander. In 1844, Whitman moved from Saginaw into the forests of what is now Ingersoll Township (just south of the Forks) with his wife Lucinda and their infant son, James. He staked claim to a 600-acre tract of land along the Tittabawassee River and built a sturdy log house on a rise known locally as “the Bluffs”.
Whitman immediately began clearing timber to create farmland, an arduous task in the dense woods. Over the years he expanded his homestead – by the early 1870s his farm included 200 cultivated acres, large herds of sheep and cattle, and multiple buildings. John Whitman’s family grew as well; his eldest daughter Jane (born in 1848) was reportedly the second white child born in the county (and the first born in Ingersoll Township). The Whitmans’ experience typified that of the first Midlanders: carving farms out of the wilderness, largely self-sufficient in food, clothing and shelter, and contending with isolation and occasional visits from curious Indigenous people.
In reminiscences many decades later, John’s son James described the wild early landscape – from the Native tepee camps along the rivers to forests “untrodden and unknown” just beyond the clearing. Such accounts underscore how small and fragile the Euro-American foothold was in the 1840s.
Throughout the late 1840s, this tiny frontier community slowly grew. Travel remained primitive (footpaths or canoe routes; there were no roads yet), and settlers had to haul necessities from Saginaw by canoe until rudimentary cart trails were cut. Still, families kept coming. By 1850, a federal census counted just 65 residents in the entire Midland County area. Over half of these early settlers (34 people) had migrated from New York State, while another 26 were Michigan-born children under ten (the offspring of those pioneers). This pattern reflects the broader mid-19th century migration, as many young families from New York and New England moved westward into Michigan’s wilderness.
Aside from a few Canadians and New Englanders, “Yankee” New Yorkers formed the core of Midland’s first American population. They brought with them the Protestant, Anglo-American culture of the northeastern United States, which would soon shape local institutions. Yet in 1850, the community was still just a loose collection of homesteads and logging camps with no real town center. The stage was set for more organized growth in the ensuing decade.
Organizing a County and the Rise of Midland Michigan (1850s)
The 1850s saw Midland transition from an informal settlement to an organized county with a nascent village at its heart. On March 29, 1850, the Michigan Legislature officially approved the act organizing Midland County. At that time, the population was exceedingly small – “a small number of lumberers and fur trappers” scattered along the rivers, as one history puts it. (Surveyors had actually drawn the boundaries of Midland County on the map as early as 1831, but it remained unorganized and sparsely inhabited for nearly two decades.)
Once the county’s creation was authorized in 1850, territorial governance slowly took shape. Midland Township was the first civil township established (initially created in 1850, though formal organization was completed in 1855). Over the next few years, as more settlers arrived, additional townships were carved out (Ingersoll and Egbert townships in 1855, Jerome in 1856, etc., each often named after prominent individuals or places). The name “Midland” itself was chosen because of the county’s location near the geographic center of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula – literally in the “mid-land” of the state.
By the mid-1850s, local government was functioning in rudimentary form. The first county-wide elections were held on July 3, 1855, in the tiny log cabin of Dr. Edwin P. Jennings (one of the early settlers) which served as the polling place. Only 17 qualified voters lived in the county at the time, and they all participated! At that inaugural election, the community chose its first officials: for example, H. C. Ashman was elected the initial township supervisor (and later became Midland County’s first representative in the state legislature), John A. Whitman (the pioneer farmer) was elected treasurer, and other roles like clerk, sheriff, judge of probate, and surveyor were filled by the tiny pool of settlers. These first officials often doubled up duties – Whitman, for instance, continued farming even as he managed county finances. Government affairs were conducted in homes or multi-purpose buildings; there was not yet any dedicated courthouse until Timothy Jerome (a Saginaw entrepreneur) financed a modest frame courthouse building in 1856. Importantly, in 1856 Supervisor Ashman was authorized by the state to select the permanent county seat, and he chose the settlement at the Forks (Midland) for that honor. From that point on, the nucleus of Midland County’s civic life was fixed at the growing village by the river confluence.
At the same time that civic organization progressed, Midland’s population began to climb—though it remained small by any measure. In 1850 there were only 65 people in the whole county, and Midland “City” (the immediate Forks area) had perhaps about 27 residents that year. Over the next five years, the population increased several-fold, but was still only in the low hundreds. One account notes that by the time Midland County was fully organized in 1855, the entire population “barely exceeded 200 people”.
Most of these residents were young men engaged in river-based logging – the lumber industry was just getting underway – or in related support jobs. Sawmill crews, log drivers, timber cruisers, and land speculators were arriving, drawn by the vast stands of white pine upriver.
Logging quickly became the cornerstone of Midland’s growth, as lumbermen felled trees upstream and floated huge log rafts down the Tittabawassee to mills in Saginaw (and soon to mills in Midland itself). The county’s forests “attracted the attention of many lumber industry speculators and workers” in this period.
Parallel to the timber economy, some pioneers established homesteads and practiced subsistence farming on the newly cleared tracts. These early farmers led hardscrabble lives: they built their own log dwellings, grew potatoes and vegetables in small patches, kept a few livestock, and made or traded for essential goods like clothing and tools. Virtually everything they consumed – food, clothing, lumber for building – was produced by their own labor or traded locally, as trips to Saginaw were infrequent and arduous. Money was scarce; barter was common.
By the late 1850s, Midland was still a frontier community but showed signs of a budding town. In 1855, John Larkin, an early entrepreneur, established Midland’s first sawmill, taking advantage of the rich timber resources and river transport. This mill (later known as the Patrick sawmill) was built at the foot of today’s McDonald Street and signaled the start of a local lumber manufacturing industry.
A few other businesses soon appeared to serve the lumbermen and farmers – blacksmith shops, general stores, perhaps a tavern – though the “downtown” was at first just a scatter of buildings near the river. The community’s social life often centered on multi-use structures or private homes. For instance, Dr. E. P. Jennings’s house not only hosted elections but also religious services and meetings, and John Larkin’s home was sometimes used for public meetings and even county business in the 1850s. Most dwellings were simple log cabins, but by 1856 one frame house had been erected (built by the Townsend family) – possibly the first frame-built house in Midland. These developments indicated that the settlement was evolving from a transient camp into a permanent village.
Midland’s population boom in the latter 1850s illustrates this transition. The county’s headcount jumped from 65 in 1850 to 787 by the 1860 U.S. Census – a more than tenfold increase in one decade. (By 1865, after the Civil War, the population topped 1,300.) This growth was “propelled by river‑based logging” and the burgeoning lumber trade, which created jobs and attracted waves of new migrants, including many lumbermen from Canada and the northeastern states. Still, Midland in 1860 was home to fewer than 800 souls – a rough-hewn logging village at the edge of Michigan’s civilization.
Observers at the time described Midland as an “outpost of civilization” – the last town before the wild interior woods, and the “gateway westward of the Saginaw Valley” for pioneers moving further north and west. The community had progressed from its indigenous “tablelands” roots to a pioneer settlement at the Forks, laying the groundwork for the city that would grow in the late 19th century.
The foundations were set: a resilient native heritage, a handful of enterprising settlers, and an economy built on the rivers and forests. From these origins, Midland, Michigan would continue to evolve – with the coming era of railroads, the chemical industry, and further population growth still on the horizon in subsequent chapters of its history.
Sources: Historical news archives and local histories provide the factual backbone for Midland’s early history. Key references include the Midland Daily News “Throwback” series and Midland County Historical Society materials, which recount pioneer accounts and archival records (e.g. Whitman’s arrival in 1844 and James Whitman’s recollections). The History of Saginaw County (1881) and archaeological studies like W.B. Hinsdale’s Archaeological Atlas of Michigan contribute details on indigenous village sites and trails in the Midland area. Official records, such as the 1850 census and Michigan legislative acts, document the county’s formation and demographic makeup. Additionally, the Treaty of Saginaw (1819) is noted as a pivotal document by which the Ojibwe ceded the land to the U.S. These sources collectively paint a picture of Midland’s first chapter – from Native American roots through the pioneer era – “from the tablelands to the forks.” Each fact has been verified through these historical sources to ensure an accurate portrayal of Midland, Michigan’s early heritage.
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