This is Amy Wagenaar from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan history moment. The year was 1900. The place Burt Lake in northern Michigan. The site, a Native American Odawa community. A county sheriff and his deputies went from cabin to cabin with cans of kerosene, setting one cabin after another ablaze and burning out the residents. Why this atrocity? The story goes back to the Treaty of Washington in 1836, in which Odawa and Ojibwe tribes in Michigan ceded more than 13 million acres of land to the federal government. The tribes, however, retained reservations in Michigan because of treaty complexities and attempts by settlers to defraud the tribes. Some native bands began buying land in their own reservations. The Burnt Lake Odawa settled on what became known as Indian Point. They at first paid taxes on the land, but then stopped because they believed the taxes were unnecessary. As the Odawa understood it, the land was theirs under treaty rights and therefore not taxable. During the 1890s, the township supervisor placed the land on the tax rolls without the tribe's knowledge. John McGinn, a Sheboygan businessman and timber speculator, took note of valuable trees on the Indian Point property and bought up Odawa land for back taxes. In 1898, he obtained a writ of assistance to evict the Odawa. Negotiations began, but McGinn grew frustrated with the lack of progress. On October 15, 1900, he took action. County Sheriff Frederick Ming and several deputies surprised the Odawa and ordered them to leave. The community's young men were away at work, so the sheriff and deputies encountered only women, children and elderly men. They ordered the Odawa to take only what they could carry with them. Then they moved from cabin to cabin, pouring kerosene on the floors and setting them ablaze. They spared only the Catholic mission church. Michigan Governor Hazen Pingree was outraged. In December 1900, he introduced a bill in the state legislature to compensate the Odawa for their lost property. But the governor's term expired at the end of the month, and the legislature never took up the bill. The Odawa filed suit to regain their lands, but in 1917, a judge ruled against them. In 1986, the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians gained tribal recognition from the state of Michigan. Their fight for federal recognition continues today. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by michiganhistorymagazine.org.