Project Scroll Research Note 2026-47: Chief White Pigeon's run, its earliest telling yet found in 1908, and the monument unveiled on 11 August 1909 by the Alba Columba Club

The monument to Chief White Pigeon (Wahbememe) at White Pigeon, Michigan, says that he "about 1830 gave his life to save the settlement at this place," and the story told with it has him run from Detroit to warn the settlers and die of the effort. The accounts of his grave written before 1908 that we have found do not tell that story. The village paper in 1839 described the grave "on a small eminence about one mile west of the village," which "The Indians were accustomed to regard ... with much veneration"; the county history of 1877 said the chief "died before any white man ever lived on the prairie"; a county biography of 1889 told of the trees planted on the grave; and a Kansas paper of 1890 printed a different tradition, of a Miami chief who died in 1812. The earliest telling of the run yet found is the minute of the St. Joseph County Pioneer Society's meeting of 11 June 1908, which named a committee to mark the grave of the chief "who acted as a flying messenger and saved the lives of the white settlers from massacre." The village paper, quoted in the county history of 1911, dates the unveiling to Wednesday, 11 August 1909, and puts the crowd at about seven thousand; the state marker of 1988 says 10 August and four thousand. The monument was the work of the Alba Columba Club, a White Pigeon women's club. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-47, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-47/.