Local blogger Mark Maynard has a fascinating interview with local historian Matthew Siegfried about Ypsilanti's indigenous past and the burial site found on the city's Water Street property.
Excerpt:
"It’s important to emphasize that these groups had, and made, their own history. We know, for instance, that smallpox decimated the local Potawatomie villages 1752. And, in 1787, the disease struck the Wyandot villages. And another epidemic in 1813 further weakened an already hard hit population.
And the groups around Ypsilanti would have been active in the defining events of that era. They debated how to use the rivalries between the French, English, and later Americans, to protect and further their own interests. The Wyandot were particularly divided over these questions."
Read the rest
here. It's pretty amazing stuff.
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