The Dead and Dying, Back in My Little Town

This week, I'm at a conference in Michigan for the Society for the Study of Midwest Literature.  I'm presenting a semi-academic but mostly-creative piece that I've written about the Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial School - a school for the "re-education" of Native American children that was in operation from 1892 to 1933 in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, just North of my hometown of Shepherd.

Large portions of my piece, though, are taken from archived letters and news reports about the school.  So, for this week's letter, I'm forwarding along a fragment of a particularly odd piece of correspondence from a businessman from my hometown to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, proposing Shepherd as the site of the new Indian School.  

"October 4, 1891

Sir, The undersigned committee acting for the citizens of Shepherd & vicinity respectfully submit the following offers for a site for the Indian school to be located in Isabella county, Michigan.

Before specifying the offers we desire to recite the advantages of the village.

Shepherd, Coe Township, Isabella Co. is on the line of the Toledo, Ann Arbor & North Michigan R.R. 9 miles from Mt. Pleasant & 10 miles north of Alma where is located the Alma College which under the care of the synod of Michigan has taken such deep interest in the education of the Indian youth.  The surrounding is one of the finest farming tracts in the state, the farmers are all well to do & very frequently could for many weeks give employment to hundreds of Indian youth.  

The village has four religious societies, Methodist, Baptist Disciple & United Bretheren, the first three have each fine large edifices the village has a commodious opera house, a bank, a saw mill, a shingle mill, a planing mill, clothes pin factory, foundry & machine shops, a roller process mill with a daily capacity of 125 bushels & numerous stores representing all branches of business, good union school & a well equipped fire department with all modern conveniences, population 600."

Ten days later, Estee sent another letter to the Commissioner, complaining that "your representative Col. R. S. Gardiner has not given the locations which we offer a proper and careful examination. [...] Col. Gardiner did not examine the springs in fact did not see them and never saw the 40 through which the spring brook runs except from the highway as he drove by. [...] The balance of some two weeks Col. Gardiner has spent in the interest of the Mt. Pleasant petitioners.  We therefore respectfully urge that a more competent examination be made of the sites offered by us before a decision is made."

There is no evidence Estee's request was granted, and just a month later the decision was made official in favor of locating the school in Mt. Pleasant.  Estee and his fellow businessmen, no doubt, thought they had been deprived of an important opportunity to establish the prominence of their town in the area.

Today, the former buildings of the Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial School are still standing, but are empty and abandoned, and the town has largely forgotten about them and the concerted efforts of local businessmen to get them built there.