From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:
This post could also be titled, The Myths We Tell Our Children. The other day, I attended a sporting event for one of my granddaughters. As I was sitting there, a grandmother was explaining to her young grandson the history of The Great Black Swamp, and in particular Stryker, Ohio. Grandma breathlessly explained how the French “settled” the Stryker area. In her mind, local history began and ended with white people. Sadly, this view of history is all too common, especially in white monocultures such as rural northwest Ohio.
As Grandma regaled her grandson with stories of early French settlers, I snickered, thinking, Native Americans sure would find this history interesting. You see, long before white Europeans arrived on the scene, Iroquois, Wyandot, Hopewell, and Ottawa people roamed the forests, swamps, and waterways of northwest Ohio. While it is certainly true that the French established and platted the town of Stryker, that doesn’t mean that they were the first people to walk/inhabit the land. They weren’t.