Part 2: Characters for The End of Eden

The story of Chief White Pigeon (Wahbememe) provides an interesting and useful insight into the Potawatomi people and their leadership up to 1830. Wahbememe and many of the other Potawatomi chiefs were middle-aged men who had been involved in Tecumseh’s Rebellion in 1811 and The War of 1812. These chiefs were neither young nor naive. The advance of white settlers was something that the Potawatomi chiefs knew was unstoppable. Experience in war and travel throughout the Midwest and Canada had created a group of middle-aged chiefs who had seen how white settlers absorbed and divided up land for farming. They had seen other tribes driven west from states to the east. They knew very well how their land would be swallowed up and were trying to prepare the best way possible.

Since Wahbememe was a signer of The Treaty of Greenville in 1795, it can be assumed that he was middle-aged man and most likely in his 50’s at the time of his death around 1830. He also was involved with Tecumseh in Tecumseh’s Rebellion around 1811 and fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. Military records from the War of 1812 also indicate that Wahbememe was an important Potawatomi chief and leader. He was also a recognized leader of a village, because his unoccupied village was destroyed by American soldiers.

When I researched other Potawatomi chiefs living in villages in southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana, many of these leaders of the Potawatomi people at the time of Wahbememe’s sacrifice were also middle-aged men who had experienced war and fighting in the War of 1812 and Tecumseh’s Rebellion. I chose to focus on several chiefs because of their relevance to the story that I wanted to tell. Those chiefs were Metea, Leopold Pokagon, Menominee and Shipshewana. From the many Potawatomi leaders in the area, those characters were chosen to tell the story in The End of Eden for a variety of reasons.

Chief Metea as a character is particularly intriguing. His intellect, education and experience was so complete that he could speak flawless English and was a skilled orator. From my research, his intellect, leadership skills and oratory skills made for the perfect motivation to have Metea murdered. Metea died following “accidentally” drinking poison that he supposedly mistook for whiskey. If you have read Metea’s eloquent speeches, it quickly becomes apparent that he was a true leader of the Potawatomi who would be difficult to control and especially remove. If anyone out there truly believes that Metea mistook poison for whiskey, I have a sweet bridge for sale up at Mackinaw City. I used my belief that Metea was murdered in the screenplay.

Chief White Pigeon and the other Potawatomi leaders were making the best deals and terms in treaties to stay within their reservations and assimilate with white settlers in the treaties made before 1830. The land that would become the city of White Pigeon was ceded to the government by Wahbememe and other chiefs in the Treaty of 1826 in order to build a government road from Detroit to Chicago. They knew that this road would bring white settlers to the area, and it definitely did just that.

One of the first white settlers to the White Pigeon prairie was Leonard Cutler and his family. Leonard had fought in The War of 1812 and wished to return to the White Pigeon prairie to live. On the family’s trip, Leonard became deathly ill and was saved by the Potawatomi when he arrived. It’s a telling statement on the goodwill of the Potawatomi people that they saved the life of one of the first white settlers to their former lands despite him being a former soldier. This bit of actual history serves as the beginning of the story. In my screenplay, Leonard is not only seeking a new home but is distancing himself from the lure of whiskey because of severe alcoholism. He is saved by Wahbememe himself, Leonard offers to teach Wahbememe and the Potawatomi to use the white man’s agriculture.

I know some may feel this is an insult to a thousand years or more of successful agriculture by the Potawatomi people. That might be true if Leonard hadn’t brought a new and state of the art farm implement for the late 1820’s: the cast iron plow. The iron plow was a huge advancement in agriculture. It allowed for a much more rapid advancement of settlers into the west. A farmer using a cast iron plow in the 1820’s was using state of the art machinery. Soils could be plowed and planted that could never have been tilled before. This is yet another reason that the Potawatomi people faced a sudden influx of settlers in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Wahbememe and the other leaders of the Potawatomi would have definitely been intrigued by the cast iron plow and interested in using every advantage possible to live upon their new reservations.

There is a protagonist priest character, Father Stephen Baden. Father Baden ran the Catholic mission at Niles and sought converts to Catholicism throughout the Potawatomi nation. Chief Leopold Pokagon and Chief Menominee were both converts to Catholicism. Leopold Pokagon and the Potawatomi at Niles used the Catholic mission to successfully sue the government to avoid removal west in the 1830’s. Chief Menominee converted to Catholicism and abided by every treaty he signed as a leader to resist removal. Despite Menominee’s conversion to Catholicism and desire to live on his reservation, federal Indian Agents obtained fraudulently signed treaties that ceded his reservation. Menominee was loaded upon a prison wagon at gunpoint for his trip on The Trail of Death west of the Mississippi River.

I’ve thought about changing the priest character to Father Benjamin M. Petit. Although it wouldn’t be as historically accurate, Father Petit sacrificed his health and his life by accompanying the Potawatomi on the “Trail of Death”. If there is a rewrite, he will most likely take the place of Father Baden as the priest character.

Coming up with the antagonist or “bad guys” didn’t take much historical research. The main antagonist is John Shields Tipton. At a young age, John Tipton’s father and uncle (mother’s brother) were killed by the Cherokee in Tennessee. His second wife’s father, Captain Spier Spencer, was killed fighting Indians in The Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 where Tipton was also a soldier. In addition, even Tipton’s ancestors proclaim that he “was a born Indian hater” and that he “pursued Indian war parties in his early days and lamented in his writings when they escaped”. In his role as a federal Indian Agent, his ancestors state that Tipton “may have at times taken monetary advantage of his position as commissioner of Indian affairs through land dealings and the appointment of friends and relatives to lucrative jobs, he was neither better nor worse than those who served at the time”.

Since Tipton’s father, uncle and father-in-law were all killed fighting Indians and possibly some of them being Potawatomi, any rational person would conclude that a person such as Tipton could not possibly deal impartially as an Indian Agent and that Tipton would be automatically disqualified from such a government position. After securing the job of federal Indian Agent, Tipton served an important role in government efforts to remove the Potawatomi people. He also participated in escorting about 900 Potawatomi people at gunpoint from Indiana to the Mississippi River in 1838 on the “Trail of Death”. His ancestors don’t seem to mention that fact anywhere that I can locate. John Tipton became an easy choice for the number one bad guy of the bunch.

You may wonder how the government could have a character with such contradictory motivations as John Tipton had with the Potawatomi people. Michigan territorial Governor Lewis Cass displayed identical contradictory motives with the Potawatomi people. While Cass negotiated treaties with the Potawatomi that seemed to allow the Potawatomi to live upon their reservations, he also believed firmly in removal of all Indians to lands across the Mississippi River while leading the Potawatomi people to believe otherwise. Lewis Cass was central to implementing the removal policies of president Andrew Jackson. Cass also ran unsuccessfully for president and was pro-slavery utilizing the “Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty”.

Another bad guy/antagonist is Abel C. Pepper. Pepper serves the role in the screenplay as Tipton’s willing lieutenant. In history, Pepper became an Indian Agent too. He followed orders and did everything possible to obtain signed treaties, including bribes, fraud and through the use of whiskey. Pepper also participated in rounding up the Potawatomi people at gunpoint on more than one occasion and lead the Potawatomi people at gunpoint on The Trail of Death. Including him as another antagonist/bad guy was certainly a pleasure.

There are also Potawatomi characters who work in my screenplay as bad guys/antagonists. Pierre Moreau was a French man who married a Potawatomi woman and became a “chief” at the Nottawaseppi reservation. His son, Sauauquette serves as another antagonist. Sauauquette was involved in trading away the Nottawaseppi reservation and is claimed to have boasted of the great sale he had made of the reservation-land owned by the Great Spirit, and that for two quarts of whiskey he would sell the same again should opportunity occur. I could find no known livings relatives of Pierre Moreau or Sauauquette within the Potawatomi people. Sauauquette was murdered before removal west for trading away Potawatomi lands. His grave is on the St. Joseph River in Mendon at a location that I hope to visit one day.

There are also other minor characters based on actual historical characters. Almost all the characters used to tell the story are based on actual characters and events in history. The lives of actual characters and events served to tell the story in The End of Eden. Men who had fought in war less than 20 years earlier come together in the late 1820’s in Michigan. Potawatomi chiefs and people faced an influx of settlers who would rapidly change their landscapes and lives. The history of these characters provided more than enough material for a movie and more than a story about why Wahbememe heroically sacrificed his life for his friends.

Screenplay available as a pdf file at: http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h

More to come...