‘Our land melts like a cake of ice’

Remembering what the Ojibwe lost at the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw

By Mike Mills

Deceitful fur traders, fistfights, drunken mayhem, an ambitious territorial governor with sacks of silver coins and six million acres of prime Michigan land vanishing from Indian control. Such was the experience of thousands of native Michigan Ojibwe people at the trading post of Louis Campau after…