The drawing shown is an original limited edition 1993 print of Chief Baw Beese, a Potawatomie village chief of Hillsdale County, by artist Jim Wildt of Litchfield, Mich.
The background was created based off of a photograph taken on the east side of Baw Beese Lake in February of 1993. This is the only known accurate depiction of Chief Baw Beese and represents what he would have looked like around approximately 1825.
The St. Joseph River Potowatomies were an Algonquin-speaking tribe that came to Hillsdale County around 1721 from Green Bay, Wis., area and were closely related to the Ojibwa and Ottawa Indian tribes. Baw Beese and his tribe provided local pioneer families with meat and traditional medicinal care through many hard winters. As such, he and his people were well-loved by the local population and continued to co-exist with the white settlers far past when most southern Michigan tribes had been relocated to reservations. But in the autumn of 1840, one of the pioneers wrote a letter to the current president at the time, William H. Harrison, requesting the removal of Baw Beese and his tribe for their settlement on lands that he had rightfully purchased from the U.S. government. On the day that the Federal troops came to roundup and escort Baw Beese and his tribe out of the county, all the schools were let out to bid them farewell.
Baw Beese, driving a horse-drawn buggy, and his people were led west through Mississippi, to a reservation at Council Bluffs, Iowa. They were then relocated to a reservation in Miami County, Kan., where Baw Beese’s and their village descendants remain up until this day.
jkilgore@hillsdale.edu
