The Nottawa Indian Cemetery: A Forgotten Hilltop on the Isabella Reservation

Off a dirt stretch of Denver Road, west of Mt. Pleasant near Rosebush, there is a hill in the middle of open country. No church stands beside it. No iron fence rings it. Just mature trees on a low rise, wind turbines turning far off on the horizon, and a hand-lettered wooden sign at the edge that reads Nottawa Indian Cemetery — established 1892, with the Ziibiwing Center named beneath it.

Walk up the hill and you start to see them: a handful of headstones still standing, many more stones tipped and half-swallowed by the sod, and across roughly an acre or two, shallow indentations in the grass where graves were never marked with stone at all. The wind moves through the bare trees the whole time you're there. It is one of the quietest, most overlooked historic places in this part of Michigan — and one of the most important.

Walking the grounds of the Nottawa Indian Cemetery — watch the full visit above.

The marker at the edge of the cemetery on Denver Road, naming the Ziibiwing Center as steward.

Whose burial ground is this?

The cemetery — and the township around it — carry the name of Chief Nottawa, an Ojibwe (Chippewa) leader who lived in this area from 1781 to 1881. Nottawa Township was named for him, and the burial ground sits only about half a mile west of the site of his former home. So the rumor you'll hear locally — that a Nottawa leader lived nearby and that's how the cemetery came to be — turns out to be rooted in real history.

This whole township lies inside the boundaries of the Isabella Indian Reservation, one of Michigan's earliest, established in 1855. The people buried on this hill were the Anishinaabe families of that reservation community in the decades after — part of the wider story of the Native American tribes who shaped Michigan's history and heritage — and the cemetery itself was formally established, per its marker, in 1892. Today it is cared for under the Ziibiwing Center, the cultural center of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan in Mt. Pleasant.

The names on the hill

The historic death records for Nottawa Township list burials here under family names that still echo through the Saginaw Chippewa community today — names like Shawbush, Pego, Shawagan, Okemos, Solomon, Peters, and Moses. These were the families of the reservation: farmers, parents, elders, and far too many children lost to the pneumonia and influenza that swept through these communities around the turn of the century.

Daniel Jones — died April 17, 1909, age 86.

One of the clearest stones still standing belongs to Daniel Jones, who died April 17, 1909, at age 86 — meaning he was born around 1822, before Michigan was even a state. An English surname like Jones on a stone in an Indian cemetery can look out of place at first glance. It isn't. By the late 1800s, many Anishinaabe families on the Isabella Reservation carried English surnames alongside their relatives named Shawbush and Shawagan — and the township death records show a Jones family burying their own here, including an infant laid to rest in the Nottawa Cemetery in 1902. Daniel Jones wasn't an outsider on this hill. He was part of the community it was built for.

The stones we could read

Most of the markers here are either sunk below the grass or worn smooth, and much of the ground holds graves that were never given a stone at all. Rather than reprint an old transcription, we are recording only the stones we have found and read with our own eyes, on our own visits — and we will keep adding to this list as we return and confirm each one.

The stone of Wm. Chippewa — "July 4, 1908, aged 59 years."

Another stone, nearly reclaimed by the earth — its name still faintly legible.

Beyond the standing markers, the soft depressions scattered across the hill are graves with no stone at all. We count them here too, even without names — because someone rests in each one. One feature stands apart from the rest: a single low mound, thick with grass, raised where everything else has settled and sunk. We've found no record of it, but standing over it, it has the look of a grave built up rather than worn down — a small rise someone meant to last.

Why it's also called the Redman and Cullimore Cemetery

If you go looking for this place in old county records, you'll find it under more than one name. Genealogists have long recorded it as the Redman Cemetery, and older documents call it the Cullimore Cemetery — the land was set aside from a parcel held by George Cullimore, a Union veteran. The Redman name is more than a genealogist's footnote, too: pull up historic aerial imagery and USGS topographic maps of this section of Nottawa Township going back to the 1950s, and the hill is labeled, in print, as Redman Cemetery. Three names, one hill. Knowing all of them matters if you ever try to trace an ancestor who was buried here, because the record might be filed under any of the three.

Visiting respectfully

The cemetery is open and you can walk the land. If you go, go gently. Many of the people here have no standing stone — the soft depressions in the grass are unmarked graves, and they deserve the same care as the marble ones. Don't lean on or scrub the stones, don't move anything, and take only photographs. This is a living sacred site to the Saginaw Chippewa, not a curiosity.

If you're in the area

The cemetery sits on a quiet stretch of Nottawa Township, with Rosebush, Weidman, and Beal City the nearest towns and Mt. Pleasant a short drive to the south. If the history here moves you, the most fitting next stop is the Ziibiwing Center in Mt. Pleasant — the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan's cultural center and museum, and the institution that cares for this burial ground. Its galleries tell the longer story of the Anishinaabe people of this region: the same community whose names are carved into the stones on this hill.

It's worth making a day of mid-Michigan's Native and pioneer heritage while you're out here. There are other nearly-lost burial grounds and old Indian trails within a short drive across Isabella and Gratiot Counties — several are linked at the bottom of this page.

Why a place like this is worth remembering

It would be easy for a hill like this to disappear entirely. The stones are sinking, the names are fading, and there's nothing along the road to tell you what you're passing. But this is exactly the kind of Michigan history that matters most — the local, the specific, the nearly-lost. The Nottawa Indian Cemetery is the physical record of a community that lived, farmed, raised children, and buried its elders on this land for generations. Documenting it, carefully and respectfully, is one small way of making sure that record outlasts the weather.

One more name, carried to another grave

There's a thread worth following off this hill. One of the stones here belongs to a man whose family name was simply Chippewa — William Chippewa, gone on the Fourth of July, 1908. A short way south, in neighboring Gratiot County, another stone reads "William Gruett, Chippewa Indian." Two men of the same era and the same corner of Michigan, both carrying the Chippewa name to their graves.

Billy Gruett was a half-Chippewa boy who, at sixteen, began carrying the mail alone along an ancient Indian trail through bear- and wolf-ridden wilderness — twice a week, for eight years, swimming his horse across rivers with the mailbag held above the current. He lived from 1834 to 1915, and we wrote his story down so it wouldn't sink quietly into the ground the way the stones on this hill are. It's the same heritage that rests in this cemetery, told through one remarkable life.

Billy Gruett & The Witness Tree

The true story of Michigan's first mail carrier — a half-Chippewa boy who rode an ancient Indian trail through trackless wilderness at sixteen, twice a week for eight years, before the Pony Express ever existed.

📖 FREE PREVIEW Chapters 1–5 · Instant PDF

Want the complete story? Get the full eBook instantly:

GET FULL EBOOK — $14.99 PayPal · Venmo · Credit Card · Instant Download

Frequently asked questions

More Michigan & Native heritage from Private Lands Wildlife