Indigenous Chippewa Land Use and Michigan Land Redemption: Ionia County Letter Connecting an 1849 Property Claim to an Earlier Native Maple-Sugar Landscape

Chippewa Native American Land Redemption

Manuscript & Autographs

YMichigan land redemption letter documenting the recovery of an 80-acre Ionia County tract from an 1847 sale and the administrative process through which surveyed land passed through Michigan’s developing system of private ownership. Writing from Detroit to the state Auditor General, C. B. Young tenders payment, applies a credit already held by the office, requests a redemption certificate in the name of Moses Wooden, and asks that additional information be supplied from the state’s land books. The precisely identified tract is particularly notable: when federal surveyor Lucius Lyon surveyed the township in 1830 and 1831, he recorded “extensive Indian sugar-establishments” on Sections 29 and 30, placing documented Indigenous maple-sugar production on the same section subsequently described in Young’s redemption request.

Young, C. B. Detroit, November 25, 1849. Autograph letter signed. One page, 7½ x 9½ inches, with integral address leaf. Young writes to the Auditor General at Lansing, “I enclose you $3.00 to redeem the following land from the sale of 1847,” identifying the property by its federal survey coordinates as “Ionia Co E ½ of NE ¼ sec 29-5-N-5-W 80 acres.” He requests that the “Redemption Certificate” be issued in the name of Moses Wooden, notes that a return previously received from the Auditor General placed the required redemption payment at $3.68, and instructs the office to apply an 82-cent credit already standing in his account. He additionally asks that an enclosed form be completed according to the state’s books and promises to pay any further charges.

The integral address leaf is directed to the Auditor General at Lansing and retains a circular Detroit postmark, “PAID” handstamp, manuscript address and docketing, red wax seal remnant, and red “5” postal rate marking. Together with Young’s references to the Auditor General’s earlier return, account credit, redemption certificate, and official land books, the letter preserves in unusually compact form the paperwork and accounting involved in recovering a specific Michigan parcel following an earlier land sale. The letter reads in full:

“Auditor General
Dr Sir

I enclose you $3.00 to
redeem the following land from the sale
of 1847
Ionia Co E ½ of NE ¼ sec 29-5-N-5-W 80 acres
Redemption certificate in name of
Moses Wooden for C.B.Y.
I have the returns from your Office Stating that
it will require to redeem  $3.68
I send $3.00 and you have .82
cents to my credit which apply

I also would like to have the [following, deleted]
inclosed filled up with the returns
as appears upon your books, if
any charges I will pay them

Yours respectfully
C B Young
Detroit Nov 25th 1849.”

The property was the east half of the northeast quarter of Section 29, Township 5 North, Range 5 West, in present-day Danby Township. The tract belonged to territory ceded to the United States by the Chippewa under the Treaty of Saginaw in 1819 and subsequently subjected to the federal rectangular survey. During his 1830–1831 subdivision of the township, surveyor Lucius Lyon recorded “extensive Indian sugar-establishments” on Sections 29 and 30. Young’s letter therefore permits an unusually precise juxtaposition: within approximately two decades, a section recorded by a federal surveyor as containing Indigenous maple-sugar production appears in state correspondence as an eighty-acre surveyed commodity, identified by section, township, and range and recoverable through a calculated cash payment, account credit, and official certificate.

The document is valuable less as evidence for the original transfer of the land than for what followed: the administrative machinery by which nineteenth-century Michigan maintained and transferred property after survey and settlement. Young’s $3 payment, 82-cent credit, request for a certificate, and reliance upon the Auditor General’s books reduce an eighty-acre landscape to a series of coordinates, accounts, and official instruments, while the earlier survey record preserves evidence of a different relationship to the same section of land.Mailing folds; light toning; minor wear and loss at the seal opening; writing and postal markings remain legible. Overall good condition. A precisely located record connecting Michigan land administration and redemption with the earlier documented Indigenous use of the same surveyed landscape.

Item #23860

Price: $785.00