THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



19 



Section Eighteen, One West. 



%*<ii 



I inquired of the doorman at the Saginaw 

 ■Club for Mr. "William Callam. 



"You mean Bill Callam, I suppose," re- 

 sponded the young man. 



I found that "Bill" Callam was the man 

 I was seeking. He was fully seventy, spare, 

 tall and straight as an arrow. His eyes 

 were as keen as a boy's, and the grasp of 

 the hand he gave me when I introduced my- 

 self was strong and hearty. 



"Yes," he said, "I knew your 

 father. He used to work for me 

 up on the Chippewa. He could 

 £ght for the heart of a tree with 

 any man. He is dead, you say? 

 Well, there's few of us left — few 

 of us and fewer still of the pine 

 trees we loved so well. 



"This has been a great coun- 

 try and it has had a long history. 

 The Saginaw valley has been 

 marked by events of importance 

 for a period covering more than 

 four centuries. It was in this 

 region — the 'Sag-e-nong' of the 

 Sauks, — that this tribe of red 

 men was literally obliterated from the face 

 of the earth by their more warlike neigh- 

 bors the Ojibways. Later the Ojibways were 

 known as the Chippewas. This was away 

 back in 1.520. In 1665 the noted French 

 priests, Allouez and Dablon, established a 

 mission here at Saginaw, and three years 

 later Pere Marquette paid his first visit. 



"A century later the first white-winged 

 vessel of the pale faces to plow the waters 

 of Lake Huron, the Griffin, anchored at the 

 mouth of the 'Saginaw river. It was near 

 ^Saginaw in 1819 that General Lewis Cass 

 signed the memorable treaty with the Chip- 

 pewas. The particular spot of this famous 

 powwow and treaty I can point you out at 

 this day. It is known as the 'Bend of the 

 Cass.' It was in this Saginaw valley that 

 the pine lumber industry of the west first 

 assumed a proportion that was for years a 

 marvel in magnitude. 



"Yes, Michigan was a great timber land, 

 and it was laid out under the personal su- 

 pervision of the Almighty. This job was 

 never intrusted to a subordinate. Think of 

 it, my boy. Here was this mighty estuary 

 known as the Saginaw river opening out 

 into the great bay, and connected by lakes 

 and rivers, for a thousand miles, from the 

 New England country on the east to Chi- 

 cago on the west, and to the then great 

 unknown land at the head of Lake Superior 

 •on the northwest. Here was the Saginaw 

 river like my wrist, and flowing into it like 

 the fingers of my outspread hand were the 

 Shiawassee, Cass, Flint and Tittabawassee. 

 Each of these streams in turn had its trib- 

 utaries. They were all great logging 

 streams. The giant white pines grew over 

 the entire area of .their water sheds. It was 



7 packed up Jtisf eight y 



pounds and started up 



the Pine." 



An Old-Time Michigan Tale of Actual Experience. 



easy lumbering in those days. There was no 

 need for logging railroads. The timber could 

 almost be felled into the streams, and the 

 logs would float almost unaided to the mills 

 on the Saginaw river. 



"I came to Saginaw when I was a boy. 



I worked in a lath mill. It was my job at 



first to bundle lath, fifty pieces in a bundle. 



Every one was made clean and sound in 



those days from the great slabs that came 



off the logs. Then I ran the lath 



saws and afterward, as I 



grew stronger, I bolted the 



slabs. Oh, we boys worked 



when I vas young. I grew up 



with Wellington E. Burt's big 



saw mill, and became foreman of 



the mill in the summer sawing 



season and foreman in the woods 



in the winter. 



"There were no banks in those 

 days. When a boy saved money 

 his boss was his banker. When I 

 was twenty-three years old, and 

 married, I had saved $2,.500.- It 

 was deposited in the hands of the 

 mill owner to my credit. I got an ambi- 

 tion to be my own boss. I had looked 

 timber a little, and the winter before, when 

 I had been directing the felling, skidding 

 and hauling of logs for the man by whom 

 I was employed, I could see away up to 

 the north other apparently 

 endless tracts of white pine 

 timber that I knew never 

 had been entered at the 

 land office. 



"I went home and con- 

 sulted my wife. I told her 

 of my ambition. She warned 

 me against it. 'Let well 

 enough alone. Bill — we are 

 doing right well. It isn't 

 every young couple that has 

 a good home and twenty- 

 five hundred dollars.' But 

 I overpersuaded her and ob- 

 tained her consent to my 

 plan. Then came the or- 

 deal of facing the boss. I 

 him: 'I am going to quit.' 

 " 'What for. Bill?' 

 " 'I am going into business for 

 myself, sir. ' 



" 'Now don't be a fool, Bill. Ain't you 

 doing well enough? If you ain't, tell me 

 what you want and I will give you more 

 wages. You have grown up here with me 

 and I want you to stick.' 



"But 'twas no use. I had the fever of 

 independence on me. I wanted to be my 

 own master. One day in the woods the win- 

 ter before, far away from camp, away up 

 the Chippewa, I had found a most beautiful 

 body of white pine timber. I could size 

 it up as it stood there — fifty, sixty, seventy 



and even eighty feet to the first limb of 

 some of the giants. I stumbled across the 

 witness tree and the corner stake that had 

 been planted by the government surveyors 

 only a few years before. It read, 'Section 

 Eighteen, One West.' I had that witness 

 tree in mind when the old man grudgingly 

 counted me out my hard earned dollars. 



"I went home and my wife and I care- 

 fully concealed the money in a comer of 

 our bedroom underneath the rag carpet. 



"Before sun-up the next morning I start- 

 ed out with a few dollars in my pocket, 

 taking along as a companion an old 

 muzzle-loading rifle that had fallen to me 

 in a previous Thanksgiving raffle, and set 

 out on a tramp up the Tittabawas. It was 

 in the fall of the year and the weather was 

 fine. We always have great weather here 

 in Michigan in the fall of the year. There 

 was nothing but a trail. This was in '58. 

 It was even before the plank road was 

 built to Flint — and say, that plank road 

 was a great road. There was a plank road 

 over thirty miles long, built of 3-inch clear 

 white pine plank, that would be worth to- 

 day $85 a thousand feet. What a waste 

 of money that wasl 



"As I said before I took the gun. A 

 gun wasn 't taken out just for ornament in 

 those days. You could stumble on to bears 

 and cats and deer, wolverines and such like, 

 almost anywhere. Now, bears never trouble 

 a man, unless it's occasionally an old she- 

 bear, unless he gets cornered, 

 and then he is likely to get 

 ugly. I got up to the mouth 

 of the Pine and arranged with 

 the old chap who ran a store 



J 



" Without leaving my sitting position I drew bead 

 on the buck.'' 



there for an outfit. I packed up just eighty 

 pounds of pork, flour, beans, tea and salt in 

 a pack, and the next morning started up 

 the Pine and branched ofE up the Chippewa. 



