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RECALLS BIG CHIEF
Birch Bark Wigwam
Dedicated at Ypsilanti.
POKAGON
BUILT IT
Head of Pottawatomies Honored
at Normal School.
Granddaughter of Warrior Crowns Girl
student as the "White Princess
of Michigan."
(The Evening Press Detroit
Bureau.)
Yypsflanti [Ypsilanti], June 15, - Students of the
Ypsilanti State Normal college have proved themselves wide awake by seizing
an opportunity to buy an historic Indian tepee, which was placed on the
college campus near Science hall with appropriate dedicatory exercises
today.
The wigwam is a relic of the ones great tribe of
Pottawattamies, the ruling Indians of southern Michigan and keepers of the
great council fire of the northwest, having been built at Hartford by the
last of the Pottawattamie chiefs, Simon Pokagon.
At his home near Ruch [Rush] lake, north of Hartford,
Chief Pokagon completed the tepee for exhibition at the Chicago World's
fair. It is twenty-four feet high and sixteen feet in diameter, made
of a double layer of white birch bark - a typical Indian home - and it
excited the admiration of visitors from all parts of the world.
The old chief took the tepee home with him at the
close of the fair and after his death it became the property of C.H. Englee
[Engle], a Hartford attorney, who has been the friend and advisor of the
Pokagon band of Pottawattamies for the last half century.
Standing on the lawn of the Engle home the tepee has
been one of the points of interest to Hartford sightseers and from there has
been shipped to various parts of the country for exhibition.
Dedicated by Granddaughter
Perhaps the most notable of these journeys was into
Indiana in October, 1909. It was here that the granddaughter of the late
Chief Pokagon unveiled the Pottawattamie statue on the seventy-first
anniversary of the removal of the Indians from the state of Indiana.
Pokagon's granddaughter, Julia Quakano Pokagon,
delivered the dedicatory address at Ypsilanti. Following the address
the Indian princess crowned Miss Nettie L. Purdy with a handsome birch bark
certificate of her new title.
Attorney C.H. Engle of Hartford gave a short history
of the tepee and also a sketch of the life of his noted friend, Chief Simon
Pokagon.
In the evening an old time campfire will be kindled
near the tepee, and Indian anecdotes and stories will be told.
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