Charley Kaw-baw-gam's long life was brought to a close about 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon, when the old chief passed peacefully away at St. Mary's hospital at Marquette, where he had been lying ill for the past couple of months.
        Charley was one of the best known figures in Marquette, and he enjoyed this distinction from the first day when white men began to frequent the spot where the city was to grow.
        Charley's reputation was not local alone.  He was known throughout the upper peninsula and even below the straits his name and fame were familiar to many people.
        He was an excellent type of the original owners of the soil, and an unusually creditable speciman.  He was a full blooded Chippewa and a chief by blood.  What is more he was a good Indian, and he lived a good life, according to his lights.

       Kaw-baw-gam was also remarked upon time and again for his great age.  It is believed that he was over 100 years old at the time of his death.
        In 1849 when Peter White first landed on the shores of Iron bay it is well known that the first Indian to greet him and the party of which he was a member was the same chieftain.  In the same year 1849, Mr. White, in carrying on a conversation in Chippewa with Charley asked him, for the sake of having something to say, "How old are you, Bawgam?"   Charley replying said:  "I am fifty.  I spent twenty at the Soo; twenty years on the Tonquomenon bay and ten years on the Canadian side."  If Charley spoke the truth on that occasion he was about 103 years of age when he died, and there was no reason to doubt that this was the case.  The Indians of his day were a notoriously long lived race and Charley was a find Indian physically, strong, tireless and healthy.  Furthermore his countenance was that of a patriarch.
        Seeing Kaw-baw-gam, and perchance talking to him has always been one of the inevitable experiences for visitors to Marquette.  He has been accessible at Presque Isle for the past twenty years, and during that time hundreds of curious eyes have beheld him in his last home.

        He was always an interesting man to see, if only to look upon.  Intercourse with him was always difficult first on account of his limited knowledge of English, later on account of his failing mental powers, but there was always a great charm in beholding his tall, absolutely straight and strangely spare form prowling around his cabin home at Presque Isle or busied with the little tasks for which he had the inclination and strength.  His face, too, was always worthy of study.  Seared and lined to a degree, it expressed Indian refinement and it always seemed that such a face could only have developed on a man who had somewhere, in some state of repression or immature development, a refined, noble and upright soul.  It expressed more spiritually and fineness than is common to the Indian type and confirmed all beholders in the belief that Charley was no ordinary Indian.
        Kaw-baw-gam is survived by no children, but Charlotte, his faithful wife of fifty-four years that are recorded, still lives, but she is helpless and stone blind.  This Charlotte welcomed Peter White and his friends that beautiful May morning in '49 when they first landed on the shore of the bay where Marquette was destined to grow.

        Charley's early history is largely unknown.  His own account of the first fifty years of his life is given above.  How far is correct is impossible to say.  It appears certain that he had been living here for some time before Mr. White met him, but just how long he had been in the neighborhood is not known, nor is the date when he united his fortunes with those of his wife, Charlotte.  After '49, however, there is a pretty good record of Charley's life.
        He lived continuously in Marquette. It '49 he was tall, strong, straight, resourceful and brave, a typical Indian of the best class.  He lived by hunting and fishing.  In the early years he supplied the companies with fresh fish and meat.  Up to the time he moved to Presque Isle, about twenty years ago, he lived with the exception of a couple of years he spent somewhere down in the Chocolay valley, on the site of the present South Shore freight depot.

It was about twenty years ago when he settled down at Presque Isle in a cabin built for him by Peter White and Alfred Kidder.  Up to that time he spoke little English, and intercourse with him had to be in Chippewa.  He picked up English as Presque Isle, and finally came to have a fairly large vocabulary, which he increased from year to year.  However, at no stage was Charley a fluent speaker of English, and he always used Chippewa when he could.  Charley had no children who survived.  The little Indian tykes whom Marquette people were accustomed to see in his train were not relatives of his, but it is believed that he was firmly convinced that they were his grandchildren.

        For many years past Kaw-baw-gam was a public charge.  He had no friends or relatives to work for him.  He had an allowance from the county most of the time that he was not able to support himself, and this was eked out by contributions from a couple of old residents of the city.   Peter White has always had a warm place in his heart for Charley, and has been one of the links that has bound  Mr. White to his early days in Marquette.  And, besides, Kaw-baw-gam has always had much of his regard and admiration for his own personal worth.  To Kaw-baw-gam, Mr. White has been a great chief whom he was always ready to consult and honor and come to in hour of need.  It is needless to say that Kaw-baw-gam's passing is greatly regretted by his benefactor.

        Mr. White gives the following account of his first meeting with Kaw-baw-gam and the hospitality the chief dispensed on that occasion, it being taken from an address which Mr. White delivered before the Y.M.C.A. at Marquette in 1889:

        "On the 18th day of May next will occur the fortieth anniversary of a lovely a morning as charming a day as the month of May ever produced in any country.
        "On that morning as early as 6 o'clock when not a ripple disturbed, the glass like surface of Lake Superior, a large Mackinaw boat might have been seen rapidly approaching what is now known as "South Marquette."
        "The craft had ten occupants.  It would have been fair to describe them as three men and seven hearty, healthy boys. The seven were the oresman and they were pulling with a will-long strong, deep, regular strokes, that, made the boat show what the sailors call a "bore in her teeth" for these boys had been told that morning when breaking camp at 4 o'clock at Shot Point, that their destination was in sigh, and if they did as well as they sometimes did that a landing would be made inside of two hours,  that the long trip--nine days of coasting would be ended, and the new Eldorado would be reached--and it was accomplished."
        "The time which your patience will allot me to read this paper will not.  I fear, permit me to name, particularlize this party, and I will briefly say that I believe they are all, says one, dead.  As the boat struck the beach a tall powerful, swarthy individual, with an aboriginal face and form, who seemed to be about forty-five or fifty years old, greeted the party with a cheer and hearty welcome, and seizing the boat's painter, assisted  the crew to land the boat high and dry in about one minute of time."
         Then he was introduced to Charley Kaw-baw-gam.

       "He conducted the party to his huge, cedar bar wigwam with gable ends, only with one ceiling or upper floor.  There was a large, opening (perhaps a yard square) in the center of the ridge for the purpose of a chimney, or rather 'smoke escape' which also furnished light, in lieu of windows.   The center structure was covered, roof and sides, with cedar bark.  The door was hung from the top with a piece of duck that had served its time as a boat sail.  The newly arrived party took their first breakfast in that house--boiled and fried whitefish, unequalled potatoes, fried venison and good coffee and bread.   In those primitive days butter was unknown.   Charley's wife, Charlotte, was a bright intelligent looking woman who made everything neat and clean in and about her house.  Charlotte was a born princess.  Her father was the king of the tribe.  His place was four or five hundred feet distant from her present home.  He was the great chief 'MadjeGeeshick' 'Moving Day'.  Charlie, too, was  a prince.   His father was a chief of the Sault Ste. Marie band of Chippewas.  His name was 'Shau-Wa-No.' sometimes called 'Shau-Wo-No-Nodin'  'South Wind.'   So you see that this party was at once royally entertained."
        "Let us disgress from the thread of my story here to tell you that  John Logan Chapman, a lawyer of distinction, son of a learned judge of the supreme court of Michigan, himself for many years and many times re-elected judge of the superior court of Detroit, an now a re-elected member of congress from the first district of Michigan; wooed, won and married Lizette, a daughter of Chief Shau-Wa-No and sister of Charles Kaw-baw-gam."
        "The landing place where the party landed near Kaw-baw-gam's dwelling was called 'The Jackson Landing.'   There were two small log houses there and perhaps nice or ten birch bark wigwams all occupied by "Lo, the Poor Indian. There was a small clearing not to exceed five acres and beyond that a dense almost impenetrable thicket or forest was found on every side.   The whole lake front from Light House Point nearly to the mouth of Carp river, was one mass of foliage that overhung the water and in some places immersed itself in the water.   It was a whole, the most beautiful day I ever beheld.  There is not other place on the South Shore of Lake Superior as handsome as was Marquette Bay at this time."

(Lake Superior Journal, Sault Ste. Marie, MI, January, 1903)