236 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



undertakes the task of setting in due order an outline of probabilities as 

 regards dates, and a task that will require no little ingenuity in tracing to 

 their sources the various varieties of fruits, large and small, which were found 

 in comparative abundance in the first thirty years of the present century. I 

 cannot undertake to say anything upon this subject except what relates to the 

 Tittabawassee river, my knowledge of the fruits growing in other parts of 

 the valley being so limited as not to permit me even to make a guess as to what 

 may or may not have been done or discovered in the other parts. 



The statements I may make will be principally from my own recollection, 

 the accuracy of which I shall try to make accord with the recollection of 

 others. 



I do not know that there were any Indian apple trees on Green Point, but 

 clumps and clusters of wild plum trees were found along the Tittabawassee above 

 its junction with the Saginaw, and almost every fall canoe loads of red and yel- 

 low plums could be gathered, and the supply was always more than equal to the 

 demand. The first apple tree to be met with, passing up the river, was near 

 the Briggs house, of which I can say but very little. The first of any impor- 

 tance were on the James Frazer farm, not only because they were way marks 

 along the river and at a convenient place forgetting out of the canoe to stretch 

 the limbs and rest a few moments in their shade, but more especially for their 

 being forcible reminders of the civilization that had been left so very far in 

 the rear, and enormous crops some of them produced. Several have been 

 known to produce eighty bushels of apples on each tree in a season. A semi- 

 wild ness in their cast and complexion, and still more so in their taste, the 

 atmosphere that settled around them while they were ripening in the autumn 

 months intensified ; the lazy smokes from hundreds of wigwam fires scat- 

 tered along the river banks had something to do in giving that peculiar luster 

 of complexion so characteristic of the fruit of the Indian orchard of fifty 

 years ago. The apple trees near the State road bridge were thrifty growing 

 trees, and some of them had beautiful appearing apples, one of them bearing 

 a very rich red apple, of good size, but oh, how sour ! The next were on the 

 Span farm, now occupied by the Tittabawassee Boom Co., and were a little 

 ways back from the river. One or two of these bore very good fruit. The next 

 were at Aptewatchwon, or half-way to what is now Midland City. There were 

 quite a number of trees at this place, some with very inferior fruit, and others 

 very fine and good keepers. These trees grew on the Indian reservation, and 

 after it was sold to the government some of the trees were taken up and trans- 

 planted by settlers on their own lands, but previous to the sale the Indians 

 had the sole right to the product of these trees, known as an usufructuary 

 right which ceased when purchased by the actual settler. The Indians were in 

 several instances allowed by the purchasers of these lands to help themselves 

 to the apples growing upon those trees, they claiming that they remembered 

 when they were little children how they assisted their aged parents in setting out 

 the trees, and as it is taken for granted by some that Indians never lie, and 

 the word "Kewenim*' could never find a lodging place on the Indian side of 

 the question, so no one ever thought but that the settlers were simply doing 

 as they would be done by, and so were commended by their neighbors for their 

 generosity. Since I have been looking up this matter and making inquiries, I 

 believe that the whole history of these trees has been unknown so far as truth- 

 fulness is concerned. In the first place I do not believe that a single tree was 

 bought of a tree peddler or nurseryman, neither do I believe that the seeds 

 from which these trees grew were ever planted by Indians. 



