Missing History, Broken Promises, and Steps Toward Healing

Chronicling the 1900 Burt Lake Burnout

By Anna Faller | June 1, 2024

On a gloomy morning in 1900, members of the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians watched in horror as their homes and belongings burned before they were driven off their ancestral land.

This event is known as the Burt Lake Burnout, and if you were raised in northern Michigan you might not have heard of it—until now. Almost 125 years later, the band is still here—in fact, they never left—and they’re telling their story in the newly-published book A Cloud Over the Land.

“To have people know and believe [our history] is the type of healing we all need,” says Deborah Richmond, historian for the Burt Lake Band. “It’s not an uplifting story and it doesn’t have a happy ending, but it’s very important history.”

The Burnout

The “Tip of the Mitt” region of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula that spans from Alpena to Antrim counties was first inhabited by indigenous peoples as far back as 10,000 years ago. By the mid-1600s, the area was home to multiple bands, most of them Ottawa and Chippewa nations, who employed the Inland Waterway (that’s a 40-mile system connecting a few smaller rivers to Lake Huron) for essential transport and trade.

The United States government, though, was also interested in northern Michigan land as an asset for the Federal Treasury, and in treaties established in 1836 and 1855 respectively, offered certain preservations for native communities coupled with infrastructure (educational services, healthcare, resources, etc.) in exchange for the cessation of more than 13,000,000 acres of their land.

The Burt Lake Band, known historically as the Cheboiganing Band, was one of the first indigenous groups to make the region their year-round home, and by the mid-1800s, had established a 375-acre community called Indian Village on the western shores of Burt Lake. This site was established as part of the former agreement, aka the Treaty of Washington, and placed in trust to the Michigan governor as reservation property with indefinite access for tribal members to hunt, fish, and gather.

Enter: local banker and land spectator, John McGinn. With the turn of the 20th century looming, industry and tourism were on the rise in the Tip of the Mitt, and McGinn was eyeing the Burt Lake area for vacation and residential development. Per Richmond, part of his business also involved buying tax liens on eligible properties, which, in the eyes of the local township, also included Indian Village.

So, McGinn laid his claim to the reservation and, armed with a judge-approved eviction notice, arrived at the settlement on October 15, 1900, to force its occupants out.

To do this, McGinn, accompanied by then-sheriff Fred Ming and his deputies, roused the band’s 19 families from their cabins with just a few possessions each, doused everything in kerosene—including most of their furniture and their food stores for the upcoming winter—and set it all on fire.

“Those poor people had to watch their lives burn to the ground with no options as to where else to go,” Richmond says. “How they got through that winter, I’ll never know.”

A Cloud Over the Land

It’s here that the band’s just-released history, A Cloud Over the Land, picks up. Written by former Burt Lake Band historian and “northern Michigan myth-buster,” Richard Wiles, this short but densely-packed account chronicles the long-hidden history of the Burt Lake Band and their ongoing plight for recognition.

Wiles’ journey with the band goes back to the 1970s, when he, then a history teacher, was approached by a colleague and Burt Lake Band member who told him about the tribe’s painful past.

“That was almost 50 years ago, and it’s stuck in my mind since then,” he notes. “I just started doing more and more research [on the band and their history]—I really dug into it.” The book’s creation, he tells us, took about a year to complete and involved hours of sifting through digitized articles and countless boxes of tribal documents to ensure his information matched up.

As for the book’s intended audience? White people, mostly, Wiles notes—in particular, those with ties to Michigan whose history lessons skipped the Burnout. “Schools didn’t teach about this,” he says. “In fact, it was sort of a dirty little secret, so the book is a way to get the story out there for people to know what actually happened.”

Per Richmond, the book has also served as the push many band members needed to seek their own healing.

“Every family feels [the Burnout] differently, because it was something that was never made right,” she explains. She says telling their story is a step toward the band breaking free of the lingering cloud of pain and resentment. “So much of our focus as a people has surrounded the Burnout. Now that people are listening, we can finally process it as a tribe,” she adds.

Broken Promises

Nevertheless, the Burt Lake Band is still feeling the Burnout’s effects a century later.

The issue at the core of the Burnout surrounded Indian Village’s owner(s), and further, whether property taxes could and should be implemented. Per the Burt Lake Band’s understanding, that land was theirs in perpetuity—having been promised to them by the government—and therefore, was exempt from taxation. However, they’d also re-purchased it; which meant the subsequent lien looked valid.

This loss of the tribe’s ancestral land, a catastrophic event on its own, intensified in the 1930s, when the U.S. government established a roster of federally recognized tribes, for which possessing a certain amount of ancestral land was a prerequisite. Consequently, the Burt Lake Band lost their title, as they had no way of proving that their land was theirs, and with it a host of federal resources, like funding, healthcare, and housing allowances.

They have yet to get those things back, though that hasn’t curbed their quest for reaffirmation.

In fact, the band has been jumping through bureaucratic hoops for decades, including enacting several lawsuits, navigating new government offices, and even patiently waiting through an 18-year bill proposal cycle (helmed by former congressman Bart Stupak).

Their latest endeavor, an ongoing legal suit with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), began in 2005 after their request for reaffiliation that year was rejected. The next step, says Richmond, is restarting that process, though details for that are still in the works.

“It’s almost like we’ve been forgotten about,” she says. “That recognition is the first step—to enter the conversation with us.”

Moving Forward

The publication of A Cloud Over the Land is just the beginning of that conversation, as it has garnered widespread enthusiasm from both local bookshops and historical institutions.

“The buzz has been even better than we expected! People want to hear about it and are excited. It’s such a great feeling to report back to the tribe,” Richmond says.

The book's proceeds have also opened the door to several overdue community projects, including updates to the tribe’s headquarters in Brutus, as well as supporting construction on a new community center, where reviving traditional crafts and cooking is high on the preservation docket.

“Telling our story is so important to moving forward. As a people, it’s our time to stop staying hidden,” adds Richmond. “Everyone should know this piece of history.”

For more information on the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, or to buy a copy of A Cloud Over the Land, head to burtlakeband.org.