MICHIGAN - Chief Noahquageshik & the plight of the Ottowa Anishinabe people - Grand Rapids, Michigan

Chief Noahquageshik forever gazes upon his former lands along the banks of the Grand River
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Along the banks of the Grand River in Grand Rapids, Michigan stands a statue of the Indian Chief Noahquageshik who known to the early settlers and explorers as Chief "Noonday". According to a tablet at the base of the statue, Chief Noahquageshik belonged to the Grand River Ottowa Anishinabe people which means roughly the "Original People".  The tablet states that during the war of 1812 Chief Noahquageshik was an ally of mighty Chief Tecumseh. Back in the days before the city of Grand Rapids existed, Chief Noahquageshik's village existed on the banks of the Grand River near the location of the Gerald Ford Presidential museum in downtown Grand Rapids. The story of Chief Noahquageshik and the plight of the Grand River Ottowa Anishinabe tribe is unfortunately a common tale about how a growing Nation thirsty for land, expansion and raw materials, broke treaty after treaty with the Indians and quickly over ran and displaced the indigenous peoples. The Anishinabe people banded together and refused to sell their lands but according to the tablet, the U.S. Government threatened to move them all to Kansas by force so the Indians succumbed to the demands of the Government and relinquished their beautiful lands along the banks of the Grand River. The Statue of Chief Noahquageshik now stands forever listening to the river he loved as he stares the gleaming skyscrapers he couldn't have ever imagined that rise up from the bank of the river where his village once stood. It is a tragic chapter in the history of each and every State in this Country how all of the indigenous peoples were forced to give up their lands and relocated to horrible arid reservations in the west that in no way resembled their homelands. Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Dakota - almost all of the names you see on the map today have Native American origins. Study the history. These were amazing people. Don't let their existence pass into the nothingness of time. All of these people and their ways are worth remembering.