The Grand Traverse Stone and other local, lost relics

By Samantha Graves
Sun contributor

Albert Einstein once wrote, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.” He said it was fodder for everything from great scientific discovery to art. In the greater Grand Traverse region, such mysteries are unearthed in old articles, uprooted by the farmer’s plow, and some hidden away for protection. Each reveals something about the people who once lived here, whether the prehistoric native peoples or early settlers, they tantalize us with the mystique of the unknown.

Evidence of human activity along the shores of Grand Traverse Bay and Lake Michigan dates back some 12,000 to 14,000 years, long before the pyramids of Egypt were erected. Some of these sites are a few thousand years older than the world’s first recognized civilizations.

Now, imagine yourself an Ojibwe chief walking the forested lands of the Leelanau peninsula or Old Mission more than 350 years ago. As far as you’ve known, this land has been used for hunting, the canopy is dense overhead, you are largely alone in this place. And there before you, ensnared in the roots of a tree hundreds of years old, you make a discovery of an object that was crafted so carefully, you cannot imagine it being made by any human. This is not a tale of fiction; it is part of our local history.

Stories of the “God Kettle”

Sometime in the middle 17th century, Ojibwe Chief We-we-gen-deby was surveying lands gifted the tribe by the Odawa. The gift of hunting grounds came following a dispute between an Odawa and Ojibwe man over fishing at the Straits of Mackinac. The story goes that the Odawa man killed the Ojibwe man, and this violent act put the peaceful relationship between the tribes at risk. Rather than go to war, a settlement was made.

The settlement included hunting grounds south of Mackinac at a place known today as Grand Traverse. Chief We-we-gen-deby, in walking these lands, made a great discovery. A narrative by Minnie Wait, the daughter of local 19th century historian S.E. Wait, contained within the book Old Settlers, published by Wait in 1918 offers the following account:

“We-we-gen-deby was the first settler in this tract… One day as he was roaming the forests of the newly acquired hunting grounds, he discovered a shining copper kettle nearly embedded in the roots of a tree. It had a bright spot on the bottom as though it had never been used, and was so large that a whole deer or bear could be cooked in it.”

We-we-gen-deby thought the kettle unique in its build and so old by its entanglement among the roots of the large looming trees. He believed it a creation of the Great Spirit and it is said the kettle’s discovery was the impetus for the location of the first settlement in Grand Traverse. In the coming years, this large copper kettle, known to the native people as the Manitou-au-kick (Great Spirit Kettle), was brought out for special feasts and events and hidden away in between each use, revered for its sacredness.

Minnie Wait’s interest in the kettle was likely inspired by her own father’s accounts of witnessing the kettle in his youth. A partial description is included in her narrative: “The awe of (the kettle) having somewhat lessened, it was used for boiling maple sugar. A rim and bail were added in 1840 at the Government blacksmith shop at Old Mission.”

Examination of the kettle would almost definitely reveal the identify of the maker, and likely era of manufacture. Or perhaps, it is the reverence for the mystery surrounding the Great Spirit kettle that must, above all else, be preserved.

The Mound Builders

Prior to the arrival of the Anishinabek, the Hopewell Indians roamed a vastly different looking region than the one we know today. Following on the heels of the receding Laurentide ice flow, and tracing the waterways and lakes from the Ohio River valley up into northern Michigan, these early Native Americans were known for their earth-moving feats. While many of the burial mounds constructed by the mound builders have been destroyed over the years, a few were documented in and around the Grand Traverse region. The aforementioned copper kettle may very well have been an artifact manufactured and buried some several centuries before the arrival of Chief We-we-gen-deby.

As a single relic, the “God Kettle” represents some of the most unique and turbulent aspects of our human history in this place we call home. Its location may not be known, or may not be widely known, but what is known is that objects like the kettle represent an important part of our regional history, and their presence, or in the case of the kettle, their absence, tells a deeper story.

The Rambler, a voice of dissent

It’s nearly impossible to talk about the antiquity of our region without considering the huge devastation caused by one culture upon another. From the time the first plow began unearthing artifacts and disturbing burial locations, these objects and remains were often stolen away to museum archives, later igniting a debate over the rights of a people to the remains of their ancestors and sacred burial artifacts.

Remarkably, at the time S.E. Wait was watching the slow unraveling of sacred attribution to the kettle at Old Mission, a lone voice rose up in opposition to the desecration wielded by settler and plow.

As intriguing as the discoveries made by the native people and settlers alike, it is the progressive commentary by D.R. Latham, a local writer and Methodist minister, that speaks to the underlying story. Latham’s vocal dissent on the destruction of Native American culture and burial grounds was presented in letters supplied to the newspapers of the day under the pen name “the Rambler.”

In one such letter to the Grand Traverse Herald, printed January 21, 1858, Latham wrote:

“Poor Indians! The graves of their fathers are no longer sacred, and when a few more years shall have passed by, the dust that was once animate, will be disturbed by the plow-share of the pale face. Already have some of the graves been invaded by the plow, and bones and utensils exposed to the sacrilegious gaze of the settler. ‘Tis not enough that the Indian is driven from his hunting grounds; not enough that the hills and streams he called his own, have been taken away from him; not enough that the avaricious Yankee takes his last cent as pay for the liquid poison that is fast completing the sad tragedy of the Indian’s destruction. The graves of his ancestors must be desecrated. The Indian must not only be robbed of his home, but his last rest must be disquieted, and of all the lands that he once possessed, not even his graves is left him; and future generations will talk of the deeds of the Chippewa Chief as they feast on the grain that will have grown upon his grave.”

Latham was one of the first non-native persons to decry the notion of “civilizing” a people, the process by which was most uncivilized. His scathing observations are as significant today, as the day they were penned.

The Grand Traverse Stone(s)

The plow did its share of destruction and discovery. At the base of the Leelanau on a farm near Cedar Lake, another significant artifact was unearthed. In 1871, the son of a farmer was following his father’s plow, picking up and removing larger stones from a field, when he noticed something peculiar. He lifted a stone from the earth that appeared polished and flat, and upon the broad surface it bore foreign symbols. The boy showed his father who took the artifact to town. The duo were treated as hoaxers and sent home without explanation.

A few years later, however, another similar stone was unearthed. This time on the farm of a prominent figure in the greater Grand Traverse region. Judge Jonathan G. Ramsdell, who was known both for his integrity as a judge, as well as his horticultural prowess, claimed to have stumbled upon a stone of similar make on his farm located off Ramsdell Road, about six miles from the other stone’s location.

While the discovery of a second stone with similar markings does not negate the possibility of forgery, it was unlikely Ramsdell, a man known for his high moral character, would have perpetrated such a hoax. Ramsdell was a man of science and sent the stone for analysis to what was then the Kent County Institute in Grand Rapids (now the Grand Rapids Museum). However earnest the men who found these stones were, the Ramsdell artifact was carefully evaluated by the state archeologist and declared a “likely forgery.”

The article describing the stones first appeared in the New York Times in August of 1875, and accompanies an account of burial mounds unearthed on the Leelanau. Since the discovery of these burial mounds, the plow long ago flattened the earth in the farmer’s pursuit of cherries.

Echo of an artifact

While neither of the Grand Traverse Stones have been located after exhaustive searches of museum archives, a photograph taken by Kent County Institute Curator M.L. Coffinbury of a rubbing of the stone survives. Should the stones or the kettle ever resurface, modern archaeological techniques for dating these artifacts could shed additional light on their stories. In the narratives, more discoveries are made — not all tangible, but no less notable in their echoes of our region’s history; whether a sacred kettle, a stone unearthed by the farmer’s plow, or the progressive words of an outspoken minister.