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Updated: June 26, 2025
In the meanwhile I had given up my room, and slept on a truckle-bed in the corner of the studio, where, as I read myself to sleep at night, and when I awoke in the morning, that now useless bulk, the Genius of Muskegon, was ever present to my eyes.
Saginaw birlers, Flat River drivers, woodsmen from the forests of Lower Canada, bully boys out of the Muskegon waters, peavey men from Au Sable, white-water dare-devils from the rapids of the Menominee all were there to do him honor, him in whom they had learned to see the supreme qualities of their calling.
"Come all ye sons of freedom throughout old Michigan, Come all ye gallant lumbermen, list to a shanty man. On the banks of the Muskegon, where the rapid waters flow, OH! we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go." Here was the bold unabashed front of the pioneer, here was absolute certainty in the superiority of his calling, absolute scorn of all others.
Our Muskegon builders he pronounced a pack of cormorants; and the congenial subject, together with my knowledge of architectural terms, the theory of strains, and the prices of materials in the States, formed a strong bond of union between what might have been otherwise an ill-assorted pair, and led my grandfather to pronounce me, with emphasis, "a real intalligent kind of a cheild."
Orde, brusque in his desire to hurry through an affair of minor importance, rubbed the man the wrong way. "I reckon I've some rights on this river," Captain Simpson concluded the argument, "and I ain't agoin' to be bulldozed out of them." The excursionists, typical "trippers" from Redding, Holland, Monrovia and Muskegon, cheered this sentiment and jeered at Orde. Orde nodded briefly.
Scarce less funereal was the rest of my experience in Muskegon, where, nevertheless, I lingered, visiting my father's circle, for some days. It was in piety to him I lingered; and I might have spared myself the pain. His memory was already quite gone out. For his sake, indeed, I was made welcome; and for mine the conversation rolled awhile with laborious effort on the virtues of the deceased.
"Where th' blazes did ye learn so much of loggin'? I log th' way me father logged, an' I'm not to be taught by a high-banker from th' Muskegon!" Never would he acknowledge the wrong nor promise the improvement, but both were there, and both he and FitzPatrick knew it. The Rough Red chafed frightfully, but in a way his hands were tied.
All the Indians of Arbor Croche used only to stay there during the summer time, to plant their corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. When perfectly dry, they would then beat them with a flail and pick all the cobs out. The grain was then winnowed and put into sacks. Joe River, Black River, Grand River, or Muskegon River, there to trap and hunt all winter, and make sugar in the spring.
By surveyors' lines it was hardly more than sixty miles from Pete Williams' clearing to the Joe Davis camp on the Muskegon. "But practically," said Pete, "Joe and I are a thousand miles apart. White men, as a rule, don't undertake to cross this wilderness. The only one I know who has tried it is old Bill Hance; he can tell you all about it."
Night had fallen over the Genius of Muskegon before the issue of my theoretic eloquence was stayed, nor did I separate from my new friend without an appointment for the morrow. I was, indeed, greatly taken with this first view of my countryman, and continued, on further acquaintance, to be interested, amused, and attracted by him in about equal proportions.
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