The Sashabaw Project

If you have spent much time in Oakland County, Michigan, you know the name.

It’s on a highway. It’s on a middle school. A creek. There’s even a large geographic formation with the name: The Sashabaw Plains.

But who is Sashabaw?

Is he the best friend of American War of 1812 hero Oliver Williams, as conventional wisdom would have us believe? Or is that a myth created to glamorize Williams and to whitewash what the settlers did to the Native Americans?

Or is he really Sassaba, an Ojibwe who has eerie parallels to Sashabaw but who fought with the British in the War of 1812 and who despised Americans?

Was he buried on a bluff overlooking Silver Lake in Oakland County, as the historical marker near Dixie Highway and Omira Drive says? Or was he buried 12 years earlier near Sault St. Marie?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, and neither does anyone I’ve contacted.

I do think, however, that regardless of the version of the truth you believe, a terrible injustice has been committed against a famous Native American. Either the white man has whitewashed history or the remains of a great leader have been ignored.

If it’s the latter, I think I have information that could reunite his remains with his descendants. But here’s another injustice: If Sashabaw is indeed distinct from Sassaba, no one seems to have bothered to trace his descendants as they were dispersed across Michigan and even to the distant plains of the American West.

I started this project because of a family legend concerning bones dug up in the yard of my grandparents, who lived on a bluff over Silver Lake. The legend says that my grandparents were told they were the bones of Sashabaw, a great leader. The legend continues that my grandparents wanted to give the remains to the proper authorities, but in the 1930s the “proper authorities” were not the least bit interested in the bones of a Native American, no matter how much he might have helped the white settlers in the area create what is now thoroughly modern Middle America.

I set out to debunk this legend. But then several archeologists and anthropologists confirmed that the legend could be true. So if that’s the case, I thought, my grandparents could not have tried very hard to find someone interested in the remains.

I was wrong again. Even to this day it’s hard to find someone interested in these human remains. It’s easy to find people interested in Oliver Williams; plenty of people want to document the arrival of white folks like me to the area.

It’s harder to find anyone curious about Sashabaw, and those I do find are frightened by the myriad laws and prejudices that surround the handling of Native American remains.

Somehow there must be some truth to the adage that the truth shall set you free. Somehow there must be some resolution for the poor soul dug up on the shores of Silver Lake.

Somehow there must be a better way to honor a legendary Native American than with sign on a freeway overpass.

Somehow there must be a way to honor the past and move forward, united as Americans, whether native or not.

Literally. In the The Clarkston News, to be exact. Great story, too.

Read the story here.

The plaque on Dixie Highway tells that Sashabaw was a Chief who befriended the white settlers in the area.

I’ve been on a mission to find evidence to confirm this piece of history, but everywhere I turn I come up empty.

Ah, but wait! Here’s a treatise from Michigan History Magazine from 1940 titled “Chieftainship among Michigan Indians.” Very scholarly. In it, we learn that Sashabaw was a “valued friend to the Pioneers.”

Eureka! But wait again … The evidence for this claim? The bronze plaque on Dixie Highway. Oh.

Interestingly, the author goes on to describe in some detail another chieftain. You guessed it. Sassaba.

The Clarkston News seems to think so. Here’s the story.

Here’s an odd source for an update on the dig on and near my grandparents’ property … from a campaign website for someone running for the state House.

Here’s another source who thinks “Sashabaw” is in truth Sassaba. Unfortunately, there’s no attribution in this excerpt from a book about Native American place names by William Bright.

The U.S. Navy named a ship after Sassaba, according to this reference.

Here’s a story of Sassaba’s opposition to Americans from a book by Willard Carl Klunder.

And here’s a citation from Virgil Vogel’s Indian Names in Michigan.

Seems someone else thinks Sashabaw was buried on her property.

I just came across this rather old story from a recent Waterford Historical Society newsletter about a woman who says her house was “on or near” the burial ground.

The legend of kindly white settler Oliver Williams tenderly caring for a fragile Chief Sashabaw has a certain appeal, portraying Native Americans as warm and welcoming, unlike so many portrayals that demonize them. So even if the whole thing is a myth, it’s best to let be, right?

Maybe. On the other hand, it portrays the white settlers as kind and caring, and omits little details, such as how they stole the Indians’ land and shipped them off to distant reservations. It also casts the white man as the hero in the story. That’s fine. If it’s true. If not, it’s demeaning.

What drives me in this quest is that if the legend is true, it should be celebrated because it has lessons about living in harmony that we could learn from today. But if it’s false, it also contains a lesson we could learn from today: Assuming that white invaders will be welcomed by those they conquer can lead us to do some stupid things …

One possibility for the confusion is two men with the same or similar name because the Ojibwes were found both near Detroit and in the Upper Peninsula (see history).

Another possibility is that white historians used some poetic license or confused individuals, as in the case of another Ojibwe legend altered by Schoolcraft and Longfellow, when Hiawatha suddenly appears at Lake Superior.

So far, I’ve contacted a number of tribal historians from the Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi nations; several professors each at the University of Michigan, Oakland University, Wayne State University and Michigan State University; the Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society; the Oakland Press; and several Oakland County librarians.

Some, primarily tribal historians, think Sashabaw and Sassaba are the same person. The others fall into two camps: Those who think they are different men but don’t know with which tribe Sashabaw was affiliated, and those who have no idea if Sashabaw ever existed except in legend.

I find it odd that tribal historians who can trace Sassaba, a relatively minor historical figure, but not Sashabaw, whose legend far exceeds that of Sassaba.

If you have suggestions for other leads I can follow, please send them to me using the contact form.