“The Hole…”

A traditional woodsman’s bedroll rests against a red cedar trunk. A round ball’s hole, shot clean through a stout grape vine, adds a new narrative. As the boiling cloud of white stench drifted over the sedge grass of the big swamp, the 18th-century adventure of that overcast November day took an unexpected turn. The hole was just the beginning of the tale. Old Northwest Territory, a ways east of the River Raisin’s headwaters, in the late 1790s…