Before it was Montrose, the township was named Pewonigowink

The Flint River cuts Montrose Township almost exactly in half. That river is the reason the place had a much older name before “Montrose” ever appeared on a map. When the township organized in 1847, it wasn’t called Montrose at all. It was called Pewonigowink. The name is a Saginaw Chippewa word. It’s tied to a stretch of reservation land that reached into the township along the river.

That reservation came out of the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. Governor Lewis Cass met with Chippewa leaders, and the United States took in some six million acres of central Michigan. The treaty carved out several small reservations the Chippewa kept. A number of them were strung along the Flint River. The Pewonigowink reserve was one of them. The river name itself runs deep in Ojibwe. It points to the flint and stone the water was known for. That’s the same idea that gave the Flint River and the whole region its English name.

The Native name didn’t last long on the township. Pewonigowink Township was set up in 1847. Less than a year later, on January 15, 1848, the Michigan Legislature changed it to Montrose. That was a tidier, more English-sounding word for the growing settlement. The first white family here, the Ensigns, had arrived back in 1832. Seymour Ensign was a miller by trade. He came west from a town in New York that happened to also be called Genesee.

So the land carries layers. An Ojibwe word for flint-bottomed water. A treaty reservation. A township name worn for a single year. And finally Montrose. But the river that started it all still runs straight through the middle of town.