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The legend book this valley can claim by authorship — not by subject — is the published work of Simon Pokagon (c. 1830 – January 28, 1899), son of Chief Leopold Pokagon, born near Bertrand in the Pokagon Band's own country, which includes this valley and this ground. His bibliography, taken from the Library of Michigan's author record, from C. H. Buechner's The Pokagons (Indiana Historical Society Publications, vol. 10, no. 5, 1933, bibliography pp. 339–340, full text at archive.org), and from Olive Patricia Dickason's “Chief Simon Pokagon: 'The Indian Longfellow',” Indiana Magazine of History, stands as follows. The novel: O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-i-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods), published by C. H. Engle at Hartford, Michigan — the year prints in conflict and is not merged: Buechner's bibliography and the standard reference record give 1899, the year of Pokagon's death, while Dickason cites the 1901 edition, whose appendix (pp. 221–255) was arranged by the publisher; Dickason records the work as in type but unpublished when Pokagon died. The modern scholarly edition is Michigan State University Press, 2011, Ogimawkwe Mitigwaki (Queen of the Woods), ISBN 9780870139871, edited with analysis by John N. Low, Philip J. Deloria, Margaret Noodin and Kiara M. Vigil. The birch-bark booklets, all printed by Engle at Hartford on birch bark, are four: The Red Man's Rebuke (1893, written for the World's Columbian Exposition; also titled The Red Man's Greeting; Project Gutenberg eBook #66563; the Elkhart Public Library's copy note counts thirty or fewer copies in public libraries); Algonquin Legends of Paw Paw Lake (1900, posthumous); Algonquin Legends of South Haven (1900, posthumous); and The Pottawatamie Book of Genesis: Legend of the Creation of Man (1901, posthumous). The Pokagon Band's archives re-acquired all four booklets in 2016, and Blaire Morseau's edition, As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon's Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts (Michigan State University Press, 2023), is the current scholarly frame; Topash-Caldwell's account in Michigan History (July/August 2018) and Kelly Wisecup's study in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 117.4 (December 2023) carry the booklets' material record. The periodical pieces on Dickason's list: “The Future of the Red Man,” Forum XXIII (August 1897), 698–708; “Indian Superstitions and Legends,” Forum XXV (July 1898), 618–629; “The Massacre of Fort Dearborn at Chicago,” Harper's Monthly 98 (March 1899), 649–656; “The Pottawatomies in the War of 1812,” Arena XXVI (July 1901), 48–55, posthumous; “Mating of Geese,” Arena XVI (July 1896), 245–248; with further pieces in the Chicago Inter-Ocean, Review of Reviews and The Chautauquan. Authorship itself was long questioned — critics, including some Potawatomi, suggested the publisher's wife, Sarah Engle, as ghostwriter; a holograph letter of 1898 in Pokagon's hand, donated by John Low and announced by the Chicago History Museum on July 26, 2024, supports his own authorship. Two verdicts close the row. First, the title the checklist carried, “The Red Man's Book of Sports and Games,” is not in Pokagon's bibliography: searches of the catalogues and scholarship above return no such work by him — the sports-and-games text the searches surface is Charles Eastman's boyhood writing — and the title is printed as a misattribution, dispelled, not as a lost book. Second, this ground's share is stated exactly: Pokagon's country includes the St. Joseph valley, but no legend in his published work is seated at Osceola or Penn Township, and no Osceola-specific legend seat is claimed for him without a record.
Sources: Library of Michigan, Simon Pokagon author page; C. H. Buechner, The Pokagons (1933), archive.org full text; Olive Patricia Dickason, “Chief Simon Pokagon: 'The Indian Longfellow',” Indiana Magazine of History (ScholarWorks, Indiana University); Michigan State University Press, Ogimawkwe Mitigwaki (2011) and As Sacred to Us (2023); Topash-Caldwell, Michigan History, July/August 2018; Kelly Wisecup, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 117.4 (2023); Chicago History Museum release, July 26, 2024; Project Gutenberg eBook #66563. All read November 2026.