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Sugarbush Road Was Glacier Trail Used by Native Americans

The original Chesterfield Township settlers leave their mark on the community roughly 10,000 years later.

The first inhabitants of the Chesterfield Township area were Native American tribes who came to the area 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. The waters of the last Ice Age began to recede about 11,000 B.C. and the Great Lakes basins were ice-free by 6,000 B.C.  At about this time the first Paleo-Indians arrived, probably from crossing the Bering Sea land bridge.

The Native American tribes that chiefly occupied the general Chesterfield Township region were the Chippewa/Ojibwas. One of their most well-known trails was simply called The Trail. It was the ridge of the original glacier, and this trail, more than 5,000 years old, became what is today Sugarbush Road.

An early source states that the Chesterfield area wasn’t visited much at first except as a cemetery area. Many discoveries of large deposits of Native American remains would appear to support this legend. However, another early account mentions the existence of an early Native American village near Lake St. Clair and the Au Vase River.

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The earliest non-Native Americans were the French trappers and traders. The early French settlers co-existed with the original inhabitants even after the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 brought English settlers to the Michigan region.

Michigan became an official territory in 1805. Territory officials met with the various Native American chiefs in 1807 and  persuaded the chiefs to surrender their claims to the lands in southeast Michigan, including Macomb County, for $10,000 cash and other items. 

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This was recorded in the Treaty of Detroit, which also set aside the area south of the Salt River up to River Aux Vase, as a reservation until 1830. Another Indian reservation was established near what is now Brandenburg Park. After 1830, the Native Americans were moved farther west.

In 1936, Emerson Greenman, an anthropologist from the University of Michigan, found more than 350 skeletal remains in a mound in the present Green School area. Also found were a variety of artifacts including pottery, copper beads and elbow pipe fragments. The Green School had long been renowned as containing a large Native American burying mound.                                                     

Alan Naldrett is the author of “The History of Chesterfield Township." The Arcadia Publishing book is due for release July 4.

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