Water Street Historic Block

Andrew Jameson

Elmwood, the 1827 home of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who collected stories of Indians in the area that formed the basis of Longfellow's famous poem "Hiawatha."

Three of the earliest and most significant houses in Upper Peninsula history are here.

The surviving portion of an important early fur trader, the JOHN JOHNSTON HOUSE, is a simple dormered cottage. Irish-born Johnston (1762-1828) arrived here in the early 1790s and married the daughter of a powerful Ojibwa leader. Quickly he became knowledgeable about the region, a key source of information for trappers, Indians, and explorers. He sided with the British, helping them take the American fort on Mackinac Island in 1812. In retaliation, American troops burned Johnston's house in 1815. This is the house he built to replace it in 1822. It is restored with furnishings from the era. It was made with an unusual French log design.

The BISHOP BARAGA HOUSE is the small, two-story house built by the famous missionary and "Snowshoe Priest" when the Upper Peninsula's Roman Catholic diocese was in Sault Ste. Marie, before he moved it to Marquette in 1864. The Baraga House is still mothballed.

ELMWOOD, the Federal-style headquarters of U.S. Indian Agent HENRY ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT, is where he collected materials for his books of Ojibwa legends that Longfellow drew upon for his wildly popular narrative poem Hiawatha. Elmwood's main house and connecting wings formed the center of Native American affairs for the Upper Great Lakes from 1827, when it was finished, until 1833, when the Indian Agency was moved to Mackinac Island.

The energetic, opinionated Schoolcraft, an explorer, scholar, administrator, and self-promoter, was a key figure in Michigan's territorial era. To help assess the area's possibilities and advise on negotiating treaties with Indians, he went on expeditions as far as the headwaters of the Mississippi

Here in Sault Ste. Marie, Schoolcraft met and married Jane Johnston, the bright, pretty daughter of the area's most important fur trader and his Ojibwe wife. Jane passed along the legends and stories that became the basis of Hiawatha. Despite Schoolcraft's status in literature and Michigan history, he's no local favorite. "He lied like a trooper," said the late Yvonne Hogue-Peer, Native American genealogist, granddaughter of chiefs (she was also descended from 17th-century Scottish immigrants and recent Hungarian immigrants), and past vice-president of the Chippewa County Historical Society. "He was self-taught. He had an inferiority complex. And he was out to impress. He made up a lot. Neither white nor Indian historians here like him because they don't know what to believe. He could have been an outstanding ethnologist because he had so much material to work with."

It's widely agreed that Schoolcraft's credibility was affected by his dislike of native people and his desire to moralize about their lack of ambition. Native Americans weren't allowed inside his mansion. When his wife's relations had to spend the night, according to oral tradition corroborated by physical evidence, they stayed in a pit dug under the house. Jane's considerable abilities as a storyteller and cultural interpreter went unacknowledged. (Schoolcraft himself was an anthropologist who did no field work.) Schoolcraft was no kinder to others. Eager to hog the limelight, he misled the young botanist who went along on his expedition and wanted to write a joint account of the trip. He belittled George Catlin, the early painter of Native American cultures. And he publicly humiliated Father Baraga.

Schoolcraft designed Elmwood as a grand mansion for his residence and office. On its original site in a grove of spruces, it faced the river. Its elegant elliptical windows and fanlights can be seen if you walk around to the back. "Nothing matched it in the whole territory of Michigan," says retired Lake Superior State University history professor Bob Money, who worked for decades to research, save, and move the house. "Schoolcraft always had his eye on greatness. He had to have a house larger than his father-in-law's."

Now Schoolcraft's office can be seen by the public. It has been recreated with furniture, geology specimens, and Native American artifacts that approximate what local historians believe could have been in his Indian Agency.
The veranda was a hundred feet long. The house and its furnishings were elegant beyond anything else on the Upper Great Lakes. Elmwood was the center of social life in Sault Ste. Marie when winter cut off the village and Fort Brady from the world. The long winters help account for Schoolcraft's prodigious literary output here.
Later Charles Harvey stayed at Elmwood when he was superintending the first locks' construction. Then a lumber baron bought Elmwood from the federal government and remodeled it beyond recognition into a Queen Anne mansion, full of picturesque gables and chimneys.

The KEMP INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM in a very small office building has displays about industries in the American Sault from the 1890s into the 1960s. By then all were gone: Kemp Coal, the logging company, the woolen mill, a carbide plant near the powerhouse, and the Soo Line, formerly the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic. Early on, the DSS&A was dubbed "the flour train" because it hauled so much flour from North America's milling center at Minneapolis. Its backers planned the northern route to avoid the very expensive costs of shipping through Chicago. An 1888 train of 102 cars had roughly 20 railcars bound for Boston, 20 for New York, and 24 for London and Glasgow.
The Chippewa County Historical Society would appreciate any kind of donation—especially big ones!—to make up the matching portion of any grants that might come its way in these difficult times.

Note: Special performances take place weekdays in summer, from Engineers Day (last Saturday in June) through Labor Day. Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Dave Stanaway sings songs about the Johnstons, the fur trade, and voyageurs. Monday through Friday at 2 p.m. three actors portray John Johnston, his wife, or daughtor.

The houses are on Water Street just west of the Valley Camp and George Kemp marina. Water Street parallels Portage, a block to the north. From Portage, take Bingham or Johnston to Water. Open from June 15 through Labor Day, Mon-Sat 10-5, Sun noon to 5. No fee. Donations greatly appreciated. (906) 635-7082. Wheelchair-accessible: downstairs of Johnston House. Schoolcraft office in process.

Return to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

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