HOW THE PIRATES HELPED IRELAND

Evening Star, Issue 22276, 29 February 1936, Page 28

HOW THE PIRATES HELPED IRELAND

Off the north-west corner of Michigan lies—lreland (says the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). Snuggled near the northernmost section of Lake Michigan is a portion of the auld sod which fortunately for its integrity has been only slightly invaded by tourists. Beaver Island, third only to Detroit and Mackinac as Michigan’s oldest settlements, is something that novelists and others interested in American folk lore will discover sooner or later.

Legends!—the island is full of them. It was there that the Indians, in one of the great decisive -tribal wars, made a last stand at the portage. Islanders, unknowing, point out arrow pits used 600 years ago as evidence that the World War’s trenches were nothing new in combat.

“ Sure.” says Martin Gallagher, one of the island’s many fishermen, “ the red men fought a mighty fight here. In the oldest trees you’ll find arrows. I think ’twas the Iroquois who won—the history books must say. Sometimes our young ones go out and dig the arrows out of the sand, but it is silliness, that’s what it is. For everyone has boxes full of those. And it is nothing to that other war that was here.” And the war to which he refers is one that history books don’t mention. It was back in the days before the Mormons began their westward swing to Salt Lake-and Utah. It was when Joseph Smith left the leadership of the Mormons undecided. A faction went with James Strang, who had a vision of an empire in the Great Lakes. The others went on westward to gain historic attention with Brigham Young. But the branch which went_ to Beaver Island to follow James (King) Strang’s idea of establishing a kingdom in this land of freedom have been overlooked by historians. It was there that they settled, built the roads which still bear their names, “The King’s Highway,” and gave to the island lakes the Mormon names that persist. The legends, to carry time onward, say that a boat of Irish fishermen from Mackinac was pirated and its three occupants turned adrift. One of the boatload got back to Mackinac; his name was Boyle, and it was he who wrote back to the old island messages of fine islands in the Great Lakes where fish thrived and food was plentiful. Opportunely his letter arrived while the potato, famine was on in Ireland, and the immigrants came and through him moved on to the Beaver. “ Historians and novelists might find in that era much with which to spin an unusual episode in American history, but there still are other things on the island of equal significance. The Irish who settled there have been there for generations. Many have never been off the island.