Walled Lake History

Native American Legends

​Unfortunately, most of Native American history in this region has been lost to the annals of antiquity. Most recounts of this time including these aboriginal peoples are from secondhand accounts that have been passed on for generations. It was said that the Native American burial ground was located close to their encampment which was between the present day Walled Lake Cemetery and the lakeshore. 

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Cornelius Austin was extremely friendly with the Native Americans at this site. Legend goes that the chief of the Native American tribe in this region had an agreement with Austin to build a wooden fence around their burial ground, signifying the importance of this site. In exchange for this work, the Native Americans would gift Austin with a fine horse. It has been said that the natives never produced the horse, so in effect, Austin never built the fence. This apparently did not create much, if any hostility between the two parties, as Austin states, “as neighbors, you could have none better.”

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According to the “Remarkable Wall of Stone,” the article that is mentioned in the History of Oakland County by Durant & Pierce, there was a wall of stone that was located on the original site of the Foster Farmhouse and the Banks farm during an excavation of the site. It was composed of loose stones running 20-30 rods or 330-495 feet. Near this site, there was a copper arrowhead measuring 6 inches as well as a ball of iron. The author of this article postulates that the arrowhead was not from the Native Americans that camped the area, but of a more ancient race. They believe that it must be from the race of humans that worked the copper mines of Lake Superior, as the more recent Native Americans did not utilize this type of arrowhead. This idea is beyond the scope of this study, and one would suggest further research on this topic. Unfortunately, these relics were “lost,” and additional testing cannot be performed. However, the current researchers will continue to attempt to recover these relics.

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Pressure Ridges

Honorable Joseph B. Moore regarding the ice near the collection of boulders on the northeastern shore:
 

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Justice Moore is likely referring to a natural phenomenon known as a pressure ridge. Cracks on top of ice are a common occurrence due to thermal expansion and contraction of the ice during weather fluctuations. If this crack fills with water and the process is repeated, the two sides will exert forces on each other, driving the ice superiorly onto itself. This will form ice chunks parallel to the crack that rest on top of the ice. Moore states that this formation became so large, the ice underneath was frozen and traversable. This is likely a bit of an exaggeration as this would be one large pressure ridge! This may be a crude representation of what occurred at the northeastern aspect of the lake with the accumulation of the large boulders, which some refer to as the "wall."

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Videos Describing the Phenomenon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYusdRCNTpc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBV9l_J466Q

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Prentice and King Love Triangle

There are many accounts of two mysterious men arriving in Walled Lake village with only their surnames known; Prentice and King. These men were originally from Maine and were fugitives of the law. Prentice fell in love with a prominent woman of the state and this woman could not choose between Prentice and her former lover. The two men, in hope of winning the heart of this “fair maiden,” engaged in a duel; King being Prentice’s accomplice. Prentice shot the man with a fatal blow, leaving him deceased. They decided to flee the state and Prentice’s mistress refused his offer to accompany him. The two arrived in Walled Lake sometime after in 1830. Here they began one of the first trading posts of the village, White Rock Trading Post, trading with local settlers and Native Americans. The pair became extremely friendly with the Native Americans, and again, Prentice’s love for women came to fruition. Prentice married a Chief Sheskone’s daughter, Wild Flower, and King married the other, Dawn. As tensions grew between Americans and Native Americans and lands started to be ceded to the government, the pair from Maine were accepted into the Native communities and left the village with their new wives, heading to other Native American encampments in the west. 

 

Unfortunately, after much research, much information relating to this anecdote cannot be verified. The true identity of the mysterious Prentice or King has never been established. There is no record of a “Chief Sheskone” or his daughters other than the non-verified accounts, beginning in the History of Oakland County Michigan by Durant & Pierce, and followed by The Story of a Village Community by Severance. 

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Gilbert W. Prentiss

What makes this investigation difficult is that Prentiss has multiple spellings; Prentice, Prentis, etc. Additionally, there was a large immigration of Prentiss’s to Maine, particularly in the early 1800’s. 

After thorough research, a man named Gilbert W. Prentiss was found in the records of Oakland County. He was located in the 1830 census of Walled Lake and was between 20 and 30 years of age. This means that he was somewhere born somewhere between 1800 and 1810. Land records also show that Gilbert W. Prentiss purchased land in Commerce Township on section 34 on May 5th, 1830 and again in section 31 on August 6th, 1830. 

 

An article the Byron Herald newspaper on July 30th, 1915 titled “The Early History of Cohoctah,” states the first settler of this township was Gilbert W. Prentiss, which was part of the newly established Livingston County. According to land records, Prentiss arrived in April 1833 and built a modest log cabin. From there, he resumed his fur trading with Native Americans while also engaging in trapping and hunting himself. For about a year, Prentiss thrived as a prominent trader, exchanging silver coins for the Native Americans' prized furs. However, suspicions gradually arose among the native people as they began to question the source of his grand wealth. Upon discovering that the silver coins he had been trading were counterfeit, they felt deeply betrayed by the deception. Outraged, they resolved to seek justice by killing Prentiss and burning his home. Sensing his exposure, Prentiss fled the township at the last moment, vanishing without a trace. When the Native Americans arrived at his cabin, they set it ablaze, ensuring he would never return to deceive them again.

 

The Cohoctah Township newspaper was the last record of Gilbert W. Prentiss. According to this article, he was an unscrupulous gentleman that did not care about deceiving his neighbor. This information combined with the Prentice myth of Walled Lake portray a man associated with trading to Native Americans, willing to move west at moment’s notice. It is unknown if Gilbert W. Prentiss is the same man as Prentice, but the timelines and similarities are seemingly connected. 

 

*More research is currently being done. Any information please email to walledlakemuseum@gmail.com

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The Ague

​Dr. James M Hoyt arrived in Walled Lake Village around May of 1840. His first few years of practicing, the community was going through what seemed to be some sort of epidemic, which they would call the “ague.” The sickness would begin to proliferate in the springtime when the climate would become warmer. It would be characterized by nausea, aches/pains, chills, and an undulating fever. H.O. Severance states that the fevers would be so significant, many villagers would wear summer clothes in the dead of winter. This sickness ran rampant through the community. So much so that it affected the harvesting and planting of crops to the point where there was a lull in local economy. Hoyt, along with other prominent professionals of the time, believed the ongoing sickness was caused by overturning vegetation in the swampy marshland, inevitably spreading toxins in the air. He believes that this is the reason the sickness would get worse during the spring months, when farming activities returned. Some even postulate that the reason Walter Hewitt returned to Detroit was due to this same mysterious ailment. 

 

In reality, this sickness was most likely malaria caused by the life cycle of the female Anopheles mosquito. Malaria symptoms include headache, chills, nausea, fatigue, malaise, body aches, and most notably: an undulating fever. This fever can create random bouts of intense fever, intense sweating, and chills. Laura Bien reports in an Ann Arbor Observer article regarding the ague afflicting the state, “Don’t go to Michigan, land of ills.” The disease was termed ague by the pioneers and is one of the oldest human plagues. A settler in Calhoun County in 1836 describes the ague, “crept over your system in streaks, faster and faster, and then colder and colder in succeeding undulations that coursed down your back.” It would make one shake so fiercely that dished rattled on shelves. There would be cycles that could last months of fever, sweat, and relief. 

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References:
1. Hilton, John. “Ague in Ann Arbor.” Ann Arbor Observer, 5 Mar. 2022, annarborobserver.com/ague-in-ann-arbor/. 

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First Murder
According to Story of a Village Community, a woman named Polly Wilson was the first person to be murdered in Walled Lake village. As Ms. Wilson was walking home on a Sunday night after church, she was shot by a man named Austin as she passed Dr. Hoyt’s barn. Polly Wilson was said to be an escort and work out of Mr. Humphrey’s. It is unknown who Mr. Humphrey is, however the text may be referring to James L. Humphrey, the successor merchant to Brown at the corner store. This story could not be validated through rigorous research. 

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Shoe Tree Murderer

The legend of the "Shoe Tree Murderer" originated from tales dating back to the early 1900s, where a man was said to have kidnapped and murdered children near the old Walled Lake Amusement Park. According to the story, after disposing the bodies, he threw small children's shoes into the branches of a specific tree on 13 Mile Road in Novi, and buried the children nearby. The story was intensified when antique children shoes were found strung in a tree near this area. The legend claimed that if visitors went to there at night, they could hear the cries of children echoing through the tall grass.

 

However, a Walled Lake library staff member clarified in 2005 that this story was a fabrication, likely inspired by campfire tales or a way for parents to scare children. The urban myth became intertwined with the real-life Oakland County Child Killer case from 1976-77, where a serial child abductor and murderer tragically took the lives of four children, with their bodies discovered in various locations including Livonia, Franklin Village, Troy, and Southfield—none from Walled Lake. Despite the lack of historical accuracy, the chilling legend persists in local folklore.

 

References:

1. “The Shoe Tree Legend of Michigan.” Mysterious Michigan, 31 July 2024, mysteriousmichigan.com/the-shoe-tree-legend-of-michigan. 

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Native American War/Romance Myths​

*This narrative, which seems to be two separate stories compiled into one, is assumedly an origin myth explaining the creation of the wall of Walled Lake. It alludes to the wall being the accumulation of large rocks near the northeastern shore, which is perhaps the origin of the connection of the Native Americans. However, there is no verifiable evidence that these accounts occurred and the actual link to the story has been lost.

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"The Legend goes that in that far, far past ~- before white men had appeared that an Indian tribe had settled along the northeast portion of Walled Lake's Shoreline. It was a peaceful and good life that they lived there until one day they looked across the south shore (which is now a Township Park). There, on the open-faced hill they saw an encampment of what they recognized to be unfriendly Indians who apparently had gained that foothold that very dawn.

 

Promptly, a ceremonial canoe was dispatched from each side and met halfway in the lake waters with their respective V.I.P.'s to see what was to be done about the matter. Each had a healthy and deserving respect for the other. It was agreed that the lake was to be divided into north and south halves and each was to respect the territory of each other.

 

Thereafter the path that encircled the lake still did. But different moccasins of a different tribe trod the north side and Stopped midway as did the same on the south side. Likewise the hunting territory followed the same pattern of adjustment off the lake. It became a lake divided by primitive peoples separated in tribal life and ways, but united, however, in keeping their respective pledges of truce. This sullen, but determined truce went on for about a year or so until something occurred to break the restraint of the northside tribesmen. For, in that past year the southside tribesmen had cunningly and steadily piled a wall of stone, just under the water's surface along a naturally shallow Sandbar of Walled Lake which was then located, and still is, a short ways distant from what was, until recently, the Walled Lake Amusement Park. Their intention was unmistakable. They planned to trap fish in the Spring of the year, especially those that spawned up into what is now an outlet to the Rouge River.

 

Abundance of fish often spelled life or death of a tribe. The northside Indians prepared for an onslaught and breaking of the truce when receding waters of the lake in summer revealed the projecting wall of stone. Great preparations were underway. The young men flexed their muscles, smeared warpaint on their bodies and leaped seemingly as high as flames they were dancing around. The old men looked stonily southward across the warm, moonlit waters. The women and children stood in the outer rim of the firelight watching the angry, leaping menfolk. At dawn, the scheduled time for attack, the southside tribesmen had broken camp and disappeared as suddenly as’ they had come. The whys and wherefores of their sudden departure will perhaps never be known. But, gone they were and the hopped up young warriors faced nothing but an abandoned camp.

 

Suddenly, they were said to have looked towards the wall of stones and as a one they leaped, jumped, and ran into the shallow waters towards the hated, built-up stone wall. Stones were hurled, rocks rolled away and by late afternoon work that had taken the southside tribesmen weeks to construct was toppled and rendered useless. Today, should one take a rowboat and go over this site one can see clearly underwater stones strewn along the shallow path of that Indian built stone wall. A herculean task that hate and cunning had directed and that hate and frustration at meeting no enemy had toppled.

 

There stands today, in Walled Lake, a most ancient tree which is called the Lone Oak under which that War Dance took place. And the very bark, old timers say, was charred from heat of that fire. It could verify this, if only it could talk. Otherwise, we must rely on this account as wafted through time itself from the lips of a knowing Indian grandmother to a listening little savage and from him to his offspring, who in turn perhaps confided it to theirs and finally someone told it at the Old Town Pump and so on down to us.

 

From the mists of time itself this legend has been wafted down to us. Perhaps it was told to someone by a grizzled old settler in the tap room of the Olde Pioneer Inn who, in turn, had heard it from the lips of a wrinkled and gnarled old Indian Squaw, who in turn ... and so on and so on through the many moons of the past as Indians counted time. Once, an incredible number of years ago when Walled Lake was simply a body of water Surrounded by miles and miles of complete wilderness the trees and vines and grasslands grew rampant and unkempt. They began to settle about where the present high "bluff" is on the eastern shoreline of Walled Lake. It doubtless served as a "Lookout" for them over the blue waters.

 

The legend has it that a beautiful Indian girl was stepping dutifully behind her intended husband as they gathered wild berries. Their young love was apparently one of those idyllic dream kind that the most ardent of poets would be hard put to describe. According to the legend those two were something to behold. Wherever he went her moccasin feet would follow. Then it happened. It was on an early summer's morning after gathering the berries that he, an ardent fisherman, was raising his Stone-tipped barbed spear to hurl at a fish in the clear water far down from the bluff on which he stood. Somehow his foot Slipped on a wet, dewy rock. He tumbled down the embankment and in his fall he suffered a broken neck. He died in her arms.

 

Legend further has it that she was inconsolable. Her family and many friends gathered around her and offered to do anything and all to alleviate her deep hurt and lamentations. The girl recalled how he had one day dreamed of building a stone barrier wall across that portion of the lake to retain the fish there as food for their little tribe. There was held a Council Meeting that very night.

 

The next morning and for many weeks afterward the tribe labored to accomplish this for her. It was, indeed, a labor of love and each rock symbolized ‘their intense grief for her loss and their determination to carry out the last wish of her departed lover. Today for all of us to see lies the now crumbled and scattered stone wall, if one were to take a rowboat offshore there and look about. Mute testimony from an incredible period of time of an Indian's unselfish dream for his love."​​​​​

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