TEE OCCUPATION OF THE LAND 153 



Emmet, Isabella, Mackinac, Chippewa and Leelanau 

 counties, all in the north; although counties as 

 far south as Allegan, Saginaw, and Cass made a 

 fair showing. The presence of missions, schools 

 and reservations, together with the distribution of 

 game (for the Indian is still a huntsman) seems 

 to determine the location of this Indian population. 

 This same census also disclosed that among the 

 Chippewas, 109 were farmers, and 286 farm laborers 

 in 1910; that of the Ottawas, 109 were farmers 

 and 278 farm laborers; and that among the Pot- 

 tawatomies 35 were farmers and 63 farm laborers. 

 While neither quantitatively nor qualitatively is 

 the Indian a present important agricultural factor 

 in Michigan, the pioneer farmers of European stock 

 had to reckon with him in many ways. While the 

 Michigan Indians seldom were dangerous, except 

 sometimes when in liquor, they frequently were an- 

 noying. Even if their labor was not prized, they 

 might on occasions keep an ill-provided family from 

 starvation with their berries, corn and maple sugar, 

 venison and fish. Indian agriculture was crude. It 

 was exemplified by the squaw, not by the men. "They 

 were excellent judges of land," writes C. A. Weissert 

 of Hastings, "and cultivated the prairies or the black 

 soil of the river flats. They planted their corn not 

 in rows but haphazardly, the product being softer and 

 whiter than that brought in by the whites. To pre- 

 serve it the Indians smoked it and then buried it in 

 the earth." He tbiiiks that this "probably was the 



