Okemos: The Chief Who Stayed
Near Lansing, Michigan
The suburb east of Lansing carries the name of a real man: Chief Okemos, a Chippewa leader who led a band of Ojibwa people along the Red Cedar River. White settlers arrived in eighteen thirty-nine. One of them, Freeman Bray, platted the town and named it Hamilton.
The name did not stick. As Okemos and his people conducted active trade with the settlers through the eighteen forties, the community came to be known by the chief's name instead. In the years that followed, the federal government pushed his people toward reservations, and Okemos died in the eighteen fifties.
Today the town that carries his name is one of the most prosperous suburbs in mid-Michigan.
