CHIEF OKEMOS in life and death

Johnny Okemos was born in near Knagg's Bridge, Shiawassee County in the 1788. He always claimed to be 110 years old. He grew up following the tribal customs of the Ottawa's.

Okemos was chief of the Grand River Band of Chippewa (Ojibway) Indians who camped and farmed along the Grand River from Portland, Michigan to the Red Cedar in Okemos, Michigan.

It has been said by some that he was the nephew of the great Chief Pontiac, of the Chippewa Indians, but there is little reason to believe that such was the case, though it is not strange that he should, be more than willing to favor the idea that he sustained that relation to the redoubtable Ottawa chieftain.  He is first mentioned in 1796, when he took to the warpath. Okemos and 16 others enlisted with the British and acted as a scout against the Americans.

Okemos' first appearance as a warrior was at Sandusky in the war of 1812, and his participation in that fight was the principal event of his life. On that occasion eighteen young Chippewa braves, among whom were Okemos and his cousin Manitocorbway, and who were serving as scouts on the side of the British, had come in from the river Raisin, and were crouching in ambush not far from the fort of Sandusky, waiting to surprise the American supply-wagons. The Indians, entirely surrounded, were cut down to a man, and gashed and pierced by saber-thrusts, were all left for dead. Most of them were so, but life was not quite extinct in Okemos and Manitocorbway, though both were wholly insensible, and remained so for many hours. At last Okemos returned to consciousness, and found that his cousin was also living and conscious. Together these two managed to crawl to a small stream near by, where they refreshed themselves by drinking.

 Okemos was but a common warrior in the fight at Sandusky, but for the high qualities and endurance which he showed at that time he was made a chief, and became the leader of the Red Cedar band of Shiawassee Chippewa's. , In 1814, he presented himself to a commanding officer at Fort Wayne in Detroit and announced that he would fight no more. For his valor he was pardoned and made leader of a Red Cedar Band of Shiawassee Chippewa Indians, which was no outstanding position, but he did take the title Chief.

Okemos had enough of fighting and shortly after his recovery he and other chiefs signed a peace treaty with Lewis Cass, who was the Territorial Governor on Michigan. The peace treaty was faithfully kept.

Chief Okemos was one of the better known Chiefs, even though he was just five feet tall. He usually wore a blanket coat with a belt and had a steel pipe hatchet tomahawk and a long hunting knife. He sometimes painted his face with vermillion on his cheeks and forehead and over his eyes. You could tell if he was around because he always played his pipe or flute in the early morning.

In the 1830's, the smallpox and cholera epidemic wiped out most of that tribe and he became a wanderer, eventually making the Shimnecon area, near Portland, Michigan, his residence. Okemos was said to have four wives.

After the close of the war Okemos made a permanent settlement with his band on the banks of the Cedar River, in Ingham County, a few miles east of Lansing. There were the villages of Okemos, Manitocorbway, and Shingwauk, - the latter two being also chiefs. They subsisted principally by hunting, though all had summer residences, where they raised min-dor-min (corn), potatoes, turnips, beans, and sometimes squashes, pumpkins, and melons.

At or near all their villages, on the Maple, the Looking-Glass, and the Shiawassee Rivers, there were corn fields, which they planted year after year with the same

Although the Red Cedar band, of which Okemos was the leader, had its settlements several miles south of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties, yet a brief mention of the old chief is not out of place for the territory was roamed over as a hunting ground for many years by him and his followers in common with the bands whose villages and fields were within its boundaries.

afraid, look right in my eye and see if you can discover fear there. The chief became enraged, and ordered his men to enter the trading-house and roll out a barrel of whisky saying that he himself would knock in the head. Go in if you wish to, said Williams, carelessly, my door is always open! But the braves were discreet, and did not move in obedience to their chief’s order. Then Okemos grew doubly furious, but in an instant Mr. Williams sprang upon him, seized him by the throat and face with so powerful a grip that the blood spurted; he snatched the chief’s knife from his belt and ordered him to hand over his tomahawk, which he did without delay. He was then ordered to leave the place instantly, never to be seen at the trading-house again. Disarmed, cowed, and completely humbled, he obeyed at once, and moved rapidly away followed by his braves, who had stood passively by without attempting to interfere in his behalf during the scene above described.

The Chief never lost his dignity and was a proud man until he died in 1858, at an Indian settlement near Portland. He was buried near Okemos Rd. on State land within the (oxbow) of the Grand River.  Okemos died on the 4^th of December, 1858, at his camp on the Looking Glass River, in Clinton County, above the village of DeWitt. His remains - dressed in the blanket coat and Indian leggings which he had worn in life - were laid in a rough board coffin, in which were also placed his pipe-hatchet, buckhorn-handled knife, tobacco, and some provisions; and thus equipped for the journey to the happy hunting-grounds, he was carried to the old village of Peshimnecon, in Ionia County and there interred in an ancient Indian burial-ground near the banks of the Grand River.

The age of Okemos at his death is not known. The Michigan Legislature renamed the village of Hamilton to Okemos, in his honor in 1859.

An article published in the Portland Observer of 1873 gives the following account of his death and burial.

On a bleak day on the 6th of December of 1858, a small train of Indians entered DeWitt, having with them drawn upon a hand sled the remains of an old Indian Chief of the tribe of the Ottawa’s. The body was that of Okemos and they who accompanied it were his only kindred. They brought it from five miles northwest of DeWitt where he had died on the previous day.

They brought tobacco and filled the pouch, powder for the horn and bullets for the bag. They also brought, contrary to the usual custom of their race, a coffin in which they placed the remains and then took up their silent march toward the Indian Village of Shimnecon on the Grand River, twenty-four miles below Lansing, near Portland, the principal residence of the Chief.