The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

Last summer my husband and I met with the Blue Water Indigenous Alliance to donate an heirloom bible given to my husband's fourth-great-grandmother by John Riley, Ojibwe chief of the Black River Band. The bible is currently on display in the Port Huron Museum and will become part of a new museum highlighting native heritage in the Port Huron area.

The 1826 New Testament had been published by the American Bible Society without a binding. Someone encased it in thick, rich brown leather held together with coarse thread. The book has a gentle curve as if kept in a back pocket for a long time, the edge of the book worn away.

My husband's great-great-grandmother read that volume daily until the day of her death, and that made it special to her family, but to hold an artifact that once was in the pocket of their ancestor and kin was even more sacred to those of Native heritage gathered to accept it.

I have often thought about that meeting. For all my research on John Riley and my reading about Native American history, after that meeting I felt my otherness and my ignorance. I read the white man's histories and think I know Riley. What arrogance.

Reading The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich reinforced my awareness of ignorance born of privilege in a European dominated society. I had never heard of the Indian Termination Policy being carried out just after the time of my birth. Natives were to be assimilated with all the rights of an American citizen. It was intended that individuals find work and become self-supporting and pay taxes. Reservations were taken out of Native control, health care and education no longer provided. Life was harsh before termination; it got worse after termination. It was 'extermination' under a new name.

Erdrich's novel is based on her grandfather's life and his successful endeavor to block the termination of the Turtle Mountain Reservation.

The night watchman is the hardworking hero of the story, a family man who works nights at the new factory that employs Ojibwe women to perform the delicate job of creating jewel bearings. He is determined to protect their reservation and people from termination, working around the clock and raising money to travel to Washington, D. C. to present their case before Congress. Their way of life, their community is threatened. They feel a deep connection to the land that supported their ancestors since time immemorial.

Patrice is one of the young Ojibwe women working at the factory. The job allows her to support her mother and brother. She dreams of going to university to study law. She tries to blend into European society but encounters racism and sexual harassment. Two men vie for her attention, unaware of her naivety about relationships and sex and desire.

When Patrice's sister Vera goes to the city disappears, she goes takes all her savings to look for her. It is a nightmarish trip into the depravity of the underside of the city, a place where young native women are vulnerable prey. She returns with Vera's baby.

It is hard to write about this novel. It left me with strong feelings, including deep shame for how the prevalent European society has treated Native Americans since we landed on these shores. Erdrich does not exploit our feelings, there is no melodramatic writing when describing chilling scenes of exploitation and abuse.

The courage and strength of the characters is inspirational. I loved how one love storyline was handled, showing that true love is communal and not about personal desire.

Fiction can educate and enlarge our limited experience. And I thank Erdrich for furthering my understanding.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Night Watchman
by Louise Erdrich
HarperCollins Publishers
Pub Date 03 Mar 2020
ISBN: 9780062671189
PRICE: $28.99 (USD) hard cover

My Favorite Books of 2016: American History

One of my reading themes in 2016 concerned American history. Events from places I have lived and the times I have lived in, presidential history, Native American history, African American history, and the American Revolution continue to be interest areas I am drawn to.The books were galley ebooks, Arcs, or books provided by the publisher. All were my choices to read.

Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression Era Detroit by Tom Stanton brought to life a city thrilled by its team's sport wins while The Black Legion, a hate group spawned from the KKK, pressed unsuspecting people into membership at gunpoint then sent them out to kill.

The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World's Fair by Margaret Creighton peels back the tinted postcard memories of the Pan-American Exposition to reveal the seamy side of American society a hundred years ago. 


67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence by Howard Means was a moving, important, and disturbing book, particularly for my generation.

Of Arms and Artists by Paul Staiti shows how artists of the American Revolution created a national identity.  

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe by Elaine Showalter reveals the complicated life of the woman who penned our national anthem.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink reveals how the lack of preparation by a for-profit hospital resulted in avoidable deaths.

Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital by Joan Quigley is the story of 90 year old Terrell's fight to end segregation in Washington D.C. in 1950. It is the inspiring story of how age has nothing to do with standing up for what is right.

The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping by Lucy Maddox is a historian's study of the Fugitive Slave Law through the kidnapping of two African American teenagers.

Truevine: Two Bothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South by Beth Macy concerns Albino African Americans enslaved by a circus and their mother's endeavor to protect them.


Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy by Gary Roberts was commissioned by the United Methodist Church. Leaders in this attack on 'friendly' Native American women and children were Methodist. It is a warning of how 'good people' can be led by cultural norms to commit crimes against humanity.

The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, The Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History by Paul Andrew Hutton is a dense and comprehensive history, another revelation of treaties broken and genocidal military leaders.

The Thunder Before the Storm: The Autobiography of Clyde Bellecourt is a raw, honest, and moving relating of his journey from juvenile delinquent to the leader of the American Indian Movement.

John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery by David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason draws from Adams diaries to trace his evolving understanding, personally and legally, of slavery, culminating in his eight year battle to end the Gag Rule that forbade the House from accepting petitions to end slavery.

Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye is a fascinating biography focusing on Bobby's evolution from McCarthy staffer to Civil Rights spokesperson.

Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency by Charles Rappleye is a great study on how the Great Humanitarian, a successful business man, failed as president.

The Gatekeeper:Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Partnership that Defined a Presidency by Kathryn Smith is the first biography of President Roosevelt's constant companion for twenty years in the office and out, the first female 'chief of staff'.

Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair that Shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn considers the friendship, and possibly love affair, that supported the First Lady to blossom into leadership.

Valient Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick shows that our country's founding was pretty messy and the ramifications of leaders obsessed with image, personal power, and monetary success.

Washington's Spys: The Story of America's First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose is the book behind the series Turn, the real story of the Culpepper spy ring.

Love Canal: A Toxic History From Colonial Times to the Present by Richard S. Newman was another upsetting read of how industry used Niagara Falls for profit, leaving a legacy of chemical waste, Activist Lois Gibbs work helped establish the Superfund, which almost immediately was defunded. We are all affected by industrial toxic waste.

A History of New York in 101 Objects by Sam Roberts is a more lighthearted look at our past, considering the things that made New York, and America and the world, what it is today.

Dead Wake by Eric Larson is the moving tale of the Lusitania.

I hope you found something here to put on your 2017 reading list!

Clyde Bellecourt Tells His Story as Founder of the American Indian Movement

After reading The Apache Wars and The Sand Creek Massacre I was ripe to learn about the Native American civil rights movement that occured while I was in my late teens and early twenties. As if on cue, Edelwiss offered The Thunder Before the Storm, The Autobiography of Clyde Bellencourt, the founder of the American Indian Movement.

"We started a movement to take back everything that belonged to us: our spirituality, our hunting and fishing rights, our water rights, our gold and minerals, our sacred rites--and our children."

Starting with his childhood on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, Clyde Bellecourt (his colonial name; The Thunder Before the Storm, Neegonnwayweedun, is his Ojibwe name) relates a grim story. Clyde grew up hearing his father's stories of being taken from his family to be educated in a boarding school so hateful that he enlisted during WWI. Later he discovered the origin of his mother's limp: at boarding school her punishment for speaking her native language was to scrub floors with bags of marbles tied to her knees.

Clyde grew up without knowledge of his native culture, spiritual traditions, or language, which had been violently supressed for generations by a Eurocentric majority culture. He was deemed "incorrigable," a truant and runaway, resistant to the mission school authority, repeatedly in juvenile detention, and in solitary confinement in prison. His life mirrored that of many Natives on the reservations, with high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse resulted in a typical lifespan of 44 years.

While in prison Clyde became part of an Indian cultural program and an Indian Folklore Group. He learned his native language, ceremonies, prayer songs, and history.

"I was typical of the other Indians there: spiritually and emotionally bankrupt."

It was the beginning of Bellecourt's spiritual revival that lead him to becoming an activist, using "confrontaion politics" to demand the end of discrimination on the local and national level. European education, organized religion, and the Bureaus of Indian Affairs were the institutions that needed to change. He became the leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The goals included addressing immediate concerns in housing, youth, employment, education, communication, and citizenship. The long range goals included unification of the Indian people, participation in local affairs, and fostering economic equality. Bellecourt brought back the Sun Dance which had been banned.

AIM found friends in civil rights workers including Coretta Scott King, religious leaders such as Dr. Paul Boe of the America Lutheran Church, and local political leaders along the way, but they were also targeted as 'terrorists' by local police, the FBI, and the American government. AIM was besieged, spys infiltrated the group, including assasins, and members were murdered.

Like many visionary leaders, Bellecourt is not a paragon of perfection; he struggled with demons-- alcohol, drugs, and infidelity; he was imprisoned on drug related charges; and he survived assasination attempts.

I was glad to read about Bellecourt's work to remove racism from American sports, particularly the National Football League and the Washington Redskins name. It helped me to understand the associations of this kind of branding from the Native American viewpoint. "Redskin" was used to "denigrate and dehumanize" the natives, who believe the term refers to the bloody scalps taken by  bounty hunters. The "tomahawk chop" to Native Americans is a reminder of the weapons used to scalp their people.

I consider how I grew up with cowboy and Indian TV westerns and movies, the cliches and easy stereotypes, racism in the form of entertainment. We kids didn't know about the drive to exterminate First Peoples, the lies and broken treaties, and the continued supression of Native culture that was still ongoing. I had a cowboy hat and a holster, squinting my eyes as if always looking into the sun, a little blond-haired girl imitating what she saw on tv.

At college a friend told me about going to Pow Wows and of his interest in the Indian ways. It just seemed like a fad. And while I was working my husband through school, barely in my twenties, Wounded Knee seemed far away and alien.

I have been spending a great deal of time, now in my 'golden years', making up for the ignorance of my youth. It is frustrating to know that the entertainment industry still forms most of young people's historical knowledge. I know--the goal of public education is to make good citizens, and somehow that means supporting the image that America was always right. But I think that making good citizens should include the understanding that America has committed heinous crimes, but that we are continually learning to see the error of our past choices. Right now I am afraid that we may not be learning, as a culture, to recall history and resist making the same mistakes.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Thunder Before the Storm: The Autobiography of Clyde Bellecourt as told to Jon Lurie
MNHS Press
Publication Novemeber 15, 2016
$27.95 hard cover
ISBN: 9781681340197

To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

In 1885 Colonel Allen Forrester, a veteran of the Apache Wars, was commissioned to explore Alaskan territory newly acquired from the Russians. It is a journey that took Allen and his men into a land of myth and legend, encountering natives with vicious reputations, shapeshifters and shamans.

Forrester left behind his newly wed wife Sophie, an amateur naturalist whose sensitive love of beauty and the wonders of this world had enchanted him. Sophie endured hope and loss, and discovered work that fed her soul as she waited for her beloved's return.

Their story is told in letters and journals which have been given to an Alaskan museum by Allen's grandson, Walter, now elderly and wanting return the stories to their source. In those pages, museum curator Josh encounters his own lost Native American heritage, documented only in the words written by the Alaskan explorers.

To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey was an enchanting read, at once an adventure tale of Alaskan exploration and the story of an independent woman seeking self-fullfillment, determined to become a photographer.

It is also an exploration of how the evil we wreck returns to destroy us. Allen's team includes men who served with him during the Apache Wars. During their journey Lieut. Pruitt declines into a physical and spiritual morass, haunted by his participation in the massacre of Native American women and children. He is an empy shell, a living man without a soul. Can these bones live again?

The characters traverse more than miles; they are on a deep sea journey of transformation that brings an understanding of the harsh truths of life, for at the edge of the world comes life-altering knowledge.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

To the Bright Edge of the World
Eowyn Ivey
Little, Brown, and Company
$26 hard cover
ISBN:9780316242851

Mini Reviews: Sagas of the Handicapped, the Chinese, and the Apache

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg was my Book Club selection for June. It was the Great Michigan Read selection in 2013-14. After his mother's funeral Luxenberg discovered a secret aunt and set on a quest to discover Annie and why she was kept secret.

The immigrant experience, the Holocaust, the Depression, and Detroit's Eloise Asylum are revealed in his search. Luxenberg discovers more than one family secret.

My book club enjoyed the book and identified with the concept of family secrets, but several found the book at time repetitive and lacking in focus.

Shanghi Girls by Lisa See

I borrowed this book from the library after seeing it was the 2016 Everyone's Reading pick for the Detroit Public Libraries.

Pearl was born in 1916, the fourth year of the Republic of China, in Shanghai. Women's lives had changed for the better; foot-binding was forbidden, arranged marriages were replaced by free love and marriages for love. Pearl attended the Methodist Mission, posed with her younger sister May as a Beautiful Girl immortalized on calendars and advertising, and stayed out late clubbing. When her father gambled away everything the price was selling his daughters in marriage to two brothers, one a fourteen-year-old with brain damage, the other a 'paper son' adopted to inherit the business. The girls are to travel to the US with their husband's family but 'miss the boat'.

With the Japanese invasion the girls and their mother flee their home town. They meet with tragedy that alters Pearl's life forever. Finally managing to arrive in the US to go to their husbands they are delayed for months living in prison-like isolation until proving they are legit. Life in America turns out to be hard, jobs scarce and the Chinese forced to live in ghettos.

Shanghi Girls tells the saga of Chinese immigrants in America from the 1920s into the Communist regime and McCarthy era. Told in the first person by Pearl the novel lacks emotional depth and deep characterization, although the experiences she undergoes are harrowing. The book's appeal is learning about the broader history of the Chinese in the 20th c. and for those who are not familiar with how America treated these refugees the story will be a real eye-opener. See's research included taking oral histories, some of which appear nearly verbatim in the novel.

The follow-up novel Dreams of Joy takes Peal and her daughter to Communist China. Readers will learn about life under Mao, with the characters secondary to the greater picture.

The Apache Wars by Paul Andrew Hutton was my Blogging for Books choice. It was a subject I knew almost nothing about.

At nearly 500 pages this book offers a complete and detailed history of the relationship between the Native Americans of Apacheria and Americans whose expansion encroached into their traditional homelands. This is not a book for the fainthearted, and I rued not making a list to keep track of the ever-changing major players. The publisher description calls it a "sprawling, monumental work" about the "two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it." Because the book is encyclopedic it can be overwhelming.

I moved by the stories and quite disgusted (once again) by the horrible choices American government has made concerning those we fear--or those just plain in the way of 'progress,' which mostly means making money. It was very interesting to learn details of the Apache culture.

When I was a kid in the 50s watching the TV and movie westerns there were several cliches, one being 'white man speak with forked tongue.' Well, that is about it in a nutshell. Treaties and promises were broken with impunity, and the Apache who sought peace were treated badly and barely trusted. And there were leaders who tired of war and just wanted peace with the White Eyes. Not giving them a fair deal lost their trust Even when President Grant endeavored to change how the Apache were treated by sending Dutch Reformed agents did not improve how the Apache fared.

Hutton's knowledge is incredible and his treatment of this war fair and unbiased.

The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Sand Creek Massacre

We grew up on stories of Indian raids, the scalps taken and women and children murdered. We have heard tales of children kidnapped by Indians. We were raised on tv shows and movies full of pioneer families fearful of Indian attack. In 1764, my own sixth great-grandparents were murdered by Native Americans led by a white criminal. Rev. John Rhodes was a Swiss Brethren pacifist, an early settler in the Shenandoah Valley. Theirs was not the only family targeted in the area. It must have been a frightful time for the new immigrants. Their ancestors had faced persecution and death because of their faith. They had hoped their life in the New World would offer better.


What we don't often hear about is America's policy of genocide, the massacre of Native women and children, the broken treaties--justified by European Christians who believed that God had ordained them to inherit the earth and to convert the savage.

Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy by Gary L, Roberts was commissioned by the General Commission on Archives ad History of the United Methodist Church. It rose out of the 2012 General Conference of the United Methodist Church through the Council of Bishops call for repentance and healing of relationships with Indigenous peoples. They called for a full disclosure of the Methodist Episcopal Church's involvement in the Sand Creek Massacre.

In 1864 at Sand Creek in the Colorado Territory, 250 Cheyennes and Arapahos under the protection of the US. government--mostly women and children--were murdered in a raid led by John M. Chivington, a popular Methodist minister. The Territorial Governor whose policies led to the attack, John Evans, was a prominent Methodist layman. 

Roberts book is scholarly in its approach. It is not a popular narrative history. He details the culture and mindset of American society at the time and considers how Native American and Western cultural paradigms differ. He offers a synopsis of American/Native relations.We learn about Chivington and Evans as religious, political, and military leaders. The natives were divided, some seeking American protection but some bands attacking the settlers. Fear was magnified and all Natives were vilified. Chivington became adamant about decimating all natives.

Thankfully, Roberts does not dwell on the outrage of the massacre, for the details he offers are too horrendous to want to know more. The reaction to the massacre was explosive and polarizing. It was considered the worst crime ever committed by America. But Methodists were reluctant to accept the charges against those responsible. They were, after all, church leaders and greatly admired.

What was the culpability of the Methodist church? Was it a lack of moral leadership, its alliance with an immoral culture? Why did the local Methodists not take a stand against Chivington? Can we judge the actions of our forefathers based on today's values and understanding? How could a society based on freedom enact such evil? Roberts explores these crucial issues.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"It is time for this story to be told. Coming to grips with what happened at Sand Creek involves hard questions and unsatisfactory answers not only about what happened but also about what led to it and why. It stirs ancient questions about the best and worst in every person, questions older than history, questions as relevant as today's headlines, questions we all mus answer from within." from the publisher

Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy
by Gary L. Roberts
Abingdon Press
$19.99 hard cover
ISBN:9781501819766

The Bible of John Riley, Indian Chief

Many years ago my mother-in-law gave a family bible to my husband. This is what she wrote about the bible:

This testament is being passed along to you. It was given to me by your Grandmother O’Dell and given to her by her maternal grandmother Margaret McDonald who was born in Batavia, New York in 1807 and married Abija Schoville. When she was in her 20s they moved to Lynn Township, St. Clair Co., Michigan. Indians were the most predominate resident in this yet uncleared land. Margaret McDonald Schoville was given this book by John Riley, an old Indian. This book was an old one then and she kept it in her bedroom and read it until her death in 1890 at the age of 83. In 1976 the book would have been in the family approximately 144 years.

Margaret McDonald Scoville and family. On Margaret's right side is her daughter Harriet Scovill Nelson,
 who is holding her daughter Grace Nelson. Grace married John O'Dell; their child Laura was my mother-in-law.

Margaret McDonald Scoville, according to her granddaughter, was born in New York State around 1807.  She appears with Abijah and their children, Edward, Alexander and Laura, on the 1840 New York State Census in Bath, and on the 1850 New York State Census in Lyndon, Cattaragus. By the 1860 Census the family is living in Lynn Township, St. Clair County, Michigan. I know they were living in Lynn by 1851 because there is a marriage record for their son Edward at that date. Margaret and Abijah appear on the 1860 Census in Lynn, Riley Twsp., St. Clair County, MI. In 1890 Margaret is a boarder, widowed, still living in Lynn Township. Margaret died in 1891, twenty years after Abijah had passed.

The John Riley New Testament has a leather cover, and is held together with string lacing.
 It shows great wear.  It may date to the early 1800s.

Once the book had a beautiful leather cover. The leather has worn away along the edges. At some point heavy thread or string was used to stitch the leather onto the paperboard. The book has a curved shape, as if carried in pants back pockets for many years. The inside front cover is filled with writing. The letter ‘S’ is penciled over and over. A penciled triangle shape appears ghost-like hovering near the center of the page. And in pencil is written, "Indian Chief John Riley his book."

 

I was skeptical that an "Indian Chief" had given the book to Margaret, and went to Ancestry.com to research this John Riley. I was shocked to learn that there was a John Riley in Michigan history. How did Margaret McDonald Scoville come to meet John Riley, and why did he give her his bible?

A Brief History of the Riley Brothers

John and his brothers James and Peter were the Metis sons of an Ojibwa 'Indian Princess" and James Van Slyck Ryley of New York State. Ryley worked as a U.S. Indian Commissioner and interpreter. He was born around 1761 and served in the Revolutionary War. He also had a wife and children in Schenectady. "Judge Riley" served on the court of common pleas, as sheriff and as postmaster back in Schenectady. He appears as an elder in the First Reformed Presbyterian Church in 1818.

Ryley was with Territorial Governor Lewis Cass at the Treaty of Saginaw and his signature appears on the treaty. He used his power to obtain tracts of land for his three Metis sons. 

The Riley brothers were described as passing seamlessly between 'white' and 'Indian' society, being well-spoken and intelligent. They sided with the Americans, fighting with General Lewis Cass, in the war of 1812. The 1810 Michigan Census shows John Reilly as an interpreter in the Saginaw, Michigan area. 

The treaty reads:

ARTICLE 3. There shall be reserved for the use of each of the person hereinafter mentioned and their heirs, which persons are all Indians by descent, the following tracts of land:
For the use of John Riley, the son of Menawcumegoqua, a Chippewa woman, six hundred and forty acres of land, beginning at the head of the first march above the mouth of the Saginaw river, on the east side thereof.
For the use of Peter Riley, the son of Menawcumegoqua, a Chippewa woman, six hundred and forty acres of land, beginning above and adjoining the apple-trees on the west side of the Saginaw river, and running up the same for quantity.
For the use of James Riley, the son of Menawcumegoqua, a Chippewa woman, six hundred and forty acres, beginning on the east side of the Saginaw river, nearly opposite to Campau’s trading house, and running up the river for quantity.

For oral histories on the Treaty of Saginaw go to
http://www.mifamilyhistory.org/bay/1819treaty.htm

Articles can be found at
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mi/county/lapeer/gen/ch3/saginaw2.html
and http://web2.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/Saginaw-cession.html

Another signature on the treaty is that of Louis Campau, nephew to Joseph Campau who was an early landowner and trader in Detroit. Louis later was an early landowner in Grand Rapids, MI and employed James Riley until James died in 1829. James had been Lewis Cass's interpreter during his 1820 expedition to find the source of the Mississippi River. Read more at
http://www.ehow.com/info_8252959_michigan-settlements-1800s.html#ixzz2oPLt2DMy

In 1835 John Riley owned land and a general store in what is today downtown Port Huron, MI where the Black River enters Lake Huron.

From "A History of St. Clair County" by A.T. Andreas:

The site of Port Huron was then owned by John Riley, the half-breed...He was not only proprietor of the place, but the chief of a band of Indians, most of them, at that date, residing on the opposite shore of the St. Clair [river]. He had been educated at the Presbyterian Mission at Mackinaw, and read and spoke good English. He was a gentlemanly appearing man, mild in his address...He dressed after the fashion of the whites, but his wife, a full-blooded Indian, though neat and tidy in appearance, dressed in true Indian style."

From "The Early History of St. Clair County": 

One of the leading spirits among the Indians was an Ojibwa chief who resided on the south side of Black River, Port Huron near the corner of the present Military and Water Streets. He was a half-breed, a man of commanding appearance, quite educated, and spoke English very well. He was here in 1813 and may have been earlier.

An oral history told that the Riley clan camped around John's cabin. Other stories tell how he was with Black Duck and became incensed when Black Duck bragged about the American scalps he had taken during the war, and John shot him dead. Luckily Lewis Cass intervened and instead of Black Duck's clan taking John's life they settled for a lot of whiskey and some trade goods. John was also reported as to have killed a Harsen's Island settler while drunk. Another history by an early Methodist pastor says that the Riley clan was hospitable and taught him to hunt and fish. There is evidence that John was disbanded from his chiefdom and returned to "white" society for the rest of his life. There is another story about the Riley boys riding with Cass to retrieve a "white" boy who was captured by "Indians" during the War of 1812. The boy was outside of the city limits of Detroit looking for a lost cow when he was taken.

Riley Township was organized in 1841 and named for John Riley, "a mixed-race Chippewa whose father had bought land in the area in 1836 and gave John a lease on the land for six cents a year." 

RILEY This township-town 6 north, range 14 east-was detached from the township of Clyde and organized by act of March 6, 1838. It was named for John Riley, the half-breed Chippewa Indian who lived for several years on the reservation at Port Huron, and was in the habit of going regularly to the woods in what is now Riley township for making maple sugar and for hunting. In October, 1836, the same year the Indian Reservation at Port Huron, upon which John Riley lived, was bought by the United States. Riley's father bought the southwest quarter of section 27 in this township and a few days later gave to John a life lease of it at the rental of 6 cents yearly. It is said that John opened a store but extended too much credit to his white friends with the result that he lost his goods, and money, and first mortgage and then sold his property. Belle river runs southeasterly through the township, and the incorporated village of Memphis lies partly in section 35 and partly in the adjoining township of Richmond, in Macomb county.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micounty/BAD1042.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext

One history reports that in 1851 John Riley was Chief in Munceytown on the Thames River in Ontario, and the Rev. Peter Jones was the Methodist missionary. The Rev. Jones had been converted by "The Father of American Methodism," the Rev. William Case, in 1823 at a camp meeting. The Rev. Jones was an Ojibwa of the Mississauga clan from Brant, Canada. He became an import missionary to the Native Americans, translating hymns and the Bible, and traveled to Europe and met Queen Victoria. He was also a political activist who helped his people obtain clear title to their lands. 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jones_(missionary)

There is some evidence that John Riley died in 1858 in Saginaw Co., Michigan. This based on Michigan 1812 Pension paper showing an $8 payout to John Riley who died December 11, 1858. But an oral history has a man saying he performed John Riley's funeral in 1842!

History of Margaret McDonald Scoville/Scovil/Scovile/Scoville

According to my mother-in-law, her grandmother Margaret McDonald was born in 1807 in Batavia, New York. I do not find a McDonald or Scoville on the Batavia, NY census in either 1810 or 1820. Margaret and Abijah Scoville were certainly Methodists. The name Scoville also appears as Scovil, Scovile, Schoville.

(Incidentally, in 1840 a Jeremiah Scoville appears as a landowner of Section 33 in Fort Gratiot, St. Clair County. He also appears in the 1834 Michigan census and later appears as a Port Huron tavern keeper. I have no evidence of his being a relation to Margaret.)

And Where Did the Twain Met?

As far as when John Riley and Margaret McDonald Scoville met, I cannot find evidence of Abijah and Margaret Scoville in Michigan before the 1850 census, nor do I know where John Riley lived after 1836. 

When Michigan became a state, land previously awarded to or owned by Native Americans was 'bought back' -- and the Native Americans were removed to reservations in north-western Michigan. 

There are different stories about what happened to John Riley at this time. The county and state histories published in the late 1800s are mostly based on oral histories. John may have returned to his people on the Thames River in Ontario. He may have died in 1842 or 1851. He may have had his "chief" status removed and returned to live with Americans. Another source says he is buried in Sarnia, Ontario.

A website by Native Americans states that John Riley was a Methodist and there is evidence that he had Methodist friends.

Somehow, John Riley and Margaret McDonald met as Methodists, and for some reason, John gave Margaret his bible. Considering the time and place, and the differences between them, and how relations between men and women were so constricted in those days, their mutual faith had to be what drew them into association. My mother-in-law was told that the bible was very old when Margaret received it. According to her note, the bible has been in the family for 181 years. That means the book was likely printed about 200 years ago.


Addendum:
As of August 2019, the John Riley New Testament is in the hands of the Port Huron Museums on a permanent loan. Gary and I meet with the museum director Victoria and manager of community engagement Andrew Kercher and members of the Blue Water Indigenous Alliance.  Andrew confirmed that the book was published by the American Bible Society shortly after its inception, perhaps around 1820.

The book will be on display at the museum and eventually become part of the display for an Indigenous history museum in the future.