NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES
3 3433 08182293 8
HISTORY
OF
MICHIGAN
BY
CHARLES MOORE
ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME I
CHICAGO
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
1915
TO NEW YORK
PUBLIC LI3?vARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILOEN FOUNDATIONS
R IQQe L
To the Memory of
ALICE WILLIAMS MERRIAM MOORE:
Ever loyal to the hills and coasts of her native
Massachusetts, she also came to love and
keenly to enjoy the region of the Great Lakes.
PREFACE
The story of Michigan froin the earliest times to the present
day is told in these pages. There are gaps in the narration. Also
some portions receive too extended consideration in proportion to
the space bestowed on other topics of equal or perhaps greater
importance. Again the authority for many statements is either
inadequately stated or is omitted altogether. Every canon dear to
the heart of the historical scholar of today has been either broken
or ignored. In short, there is no fault herein that the author does
not recognize and acknowledge.
And yet this history of Michigan represents many months, and
sometimes many years, of research on special subjects — joyous
months or years. One such experience involved a morning spent
with the kindly Francis Parkman ; weeks of reading his precious
manuscripts in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society
and the Harvard Library ; four years of searching in the Library of
Congress for a clew to the personality of Henry Gladwin ; corres-
pondence with no fewer than four branches of the Gladwin family
in England : a rich reward in portraits and manuscripts, and a sheaf
of friendships becoming more precious with the years. It is not
without deep sympathy that the record is here made of that gentle
Oxford scholar, an architect of rare attainments, who so worthily,
bore the Gladwin name and courage into the great conflict now being
waged for human liberty, and who in October, 1914, made the
great sacrifice before Calais.
So this book has come to be the gathering together of separate
but related studies pursued during many years of a life reasonably
active in other directions. Some of the chapters were written dur-
ing hours snatched from daily newspaper work, for publishers who
failed in business after accepting the manuscript ; others have been
printed wholly or partly in magazines or as monographs, and in their
present form represent the results of criticism'. The second chapter
on the folk-lore of the Indians was prepared in collaboration with
one whose hand has stopped writing.
V
vi PREFACE
Papers, both published and in manuscript, prepared by many
persons have been drawn on freely ; but never intentionally without
acknowledgment. And to the specific acknowledgments should
be added some appreciation of the great body of historical material
gathered and made accessible by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical
Society and by Mr. Clarence M. Burton. Indeed, for a number of
years the two names were synonymous. It is a pleasure to reflect
that the largest gift, even when counted in terms of money, ever
made to a Michigan municipality is represented by the historical
library presented to the City of Detroit by Mr. Burton.
From what is here written it will be seen that this book has been
largely a growth. I am sure that some readers — probably the small
minority who turn back to a preface — will read between the lines
the tale of happy hours spent and of pleasant friendships made
during the years of preparation.
Ch.\rles Moore.
Detroit, July, 1915.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
The Mound Builders, the Garden Beds, and the Ancient
Miners
The Indians: their origin, migrations, and battles I
A century of conflict along the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers 3
The builders of the Ohio Mounds 4
Michigan Indian mounds 7
The Garden Beds of Western Michigan 8
Copper used by the Indians 11
Ancient Miners of Lake Superior 12
Copper divinities of the Indians 16
The Ontonagon Copper Bowlder 17
Removal of the Copper Bowlder to Washington 19
CHAPTER II
Indian Folk-Lore Attaching to Michigan Localities
The fairy Island of Mackinac 22
Indian fables relating to Mackinac 22
St. Mary's River 24
The Manitou's Tree 24
The Story of Mashquashakwong 25
A Chippewa Legend of Sault Saint Marie 27
The Pictured Rocks 29
Indian mythology 30
Indian beliefs concerning copper 31
The veneration of animals 32
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
Champlain and the Early French Explorations
Explorations of Cartier 34
Champlain 35
The conflict between the Hurons and the Iroquois 36
Attempts to find the Northwest Passage 37
Stephen Brule 37
John Nicolet 38
Nicolet's voyage through the Straits of Mackinac 41
Death of Nicolet 43
CHAPTETl IV
The Explorers of Lake Superior
Raymbault and Jogues at St. Mary's Falls 44
Radisson and Groseilliers 45
A long drawn-out controversy 46
The real discoverers of the Mississippi River 49
Radisson's description of Lake Superior 51
Radisson and Groseilliers, founders of the Hudson Bay
Company 54
CHAPTER V
Missionaries and Missions
The missionary purpose 55
Father Rene Alenard 5^
The Ottawa Mission 59
Death of Menard in the woods 63
Father Claude Jean Allouez 64
Lake Superior copper 65
Father James Marquette 68
Marquette and Joliet discover the Mississippi River 69
Marquette founds the Illinois Mission 69
Death of Marquette 7^
Joliet reports the discovery of the Mississippi at Quebec. ... 75
The character of the Jesuit missionaries 76
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER VI
Louis XIV and New France; Proclamation at Sault Saint
Marie and La Salle's Voyage
St. Simon's memoirs IJ
Louis XIV as a protector of New France 78
Talon, the Intendant 79
Peopling New France 80
Discovery as a royal purpose 80
St. Lusson takes possession of the Northwest 80
La Salle 82
The building of the Griffon 83
Father Louis Hennepin 84
The naming of Lake St. Clair 85
Tonty of the Iron-Hand 85
The first and last voyage of the Griffon 87
The conflict between France and England 89
CHAPTER VII
The Founding of Detroit
Du Lhut in the Detroit region 91
Cadillac 92
Michilimackinac 93
The strategic importance of the Detroit River 94
Count Pontchartrain 97
Detroit founded 99
The Cadillac establishment 100
The vicissitudes of Detroit 103
Alphonse de Tonty 105
The Fox War 106
The Governors of Detroit no
CHAPTER VIII
The English Gain Possession of the Northwest
English advances from Virginia 115
The Braddock expedition 116
George Washington and Henry Gladwin 116
The passing of New France 117
Rogers receives the surrender at Detroit 118
The career of Robert Rogers 118
X CONTENTS
The meeting between Rogers and Pontiac 120
Sir AN'illiam Johnson and Alajor Gladwin at Detroit 121
Character of Pontiac 123
The Pontiac Conspiracy 125
The attitude of the French settlers 128
Successes of the Pontiac conspiracy 134
Fort Sandusky 1 34
Fort Miami 135
Fort St. Joseph 135
The inassacre at Michilimackinac 136
The Battle of Bloody Run 137
Pontiac raises the siege of Detroit 142
Death of Pontiac 144
CHAPTER IX
Carver's Travels; Rogers axd Sinclair at Michilimackinac
Jonathan Carver 145
Carver at the Falls of St. Anthony 146
Carver's description of Lake Huron 148
Lord Shelbourne's colonial ])olicy 150
The unhappy career of Robert Rogers 152
The Quebec Act 154
Patrick Sinclair 155
CHAPTER X
Beginnings of the Revolution in the West
Henry Hamilton, Lieutenant Governor at Detroit 160
Social Detroit 161
The administration of justice 162
The Revolution annoimced 163
Daniel Boone 164
The Girtys 165
The Northwest tribes during the Revolution 168
George Rogers Clark 172
The capture of Vincennes 173
IMajor Arent Schuyler de Peyster 174
Charles de Langlade 175
Fort Lernault 179
The result of Clark's conquest 183
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER XI
Border Warfare During the Revolution
Death of Sir William Johnson 192
Frederick Haldimand 193
The building of Fort Lernaiilt at Detroit 194
British and Indian raids 196
The Spanish capture Fort St. Joseph 199
De Peyster at Detroit 201
The Moravians 204
The murder of Colonel Crawford 210
CHAPTER XII
Marking National Boundaries
The American advance 214
S])anish pretensions along the Mississippi 215
The Treaty of 1783 with England 216
The boundary of the Great Lakes 218
The influence of the fur-trade on boundaries 219
Surrender of the Northwest Posts demanded 221
Haldimand declines to surrender the Posts 222
Vessels on the Great Lakes 224
Brant's influence over the Indians 229
Lord Dorchester defines the British attitude 231
Washington's ideas concerning the Northwest 233
Henry Hamilton at Quebec 234
Death of Haldimand 235
CHAPTER XIII
American Government in the Northwest
Colonial claims to the Northwestern territory 236
Maryland forces the States to relinquish their claims 236
Revolutionary veterans propose to settle the Ohio country. .237
Gen. Rufus Putnam 238
Slavery 239
The Ohio Company 240
The Ordinance of 1787 242
The Territory' Northwest of the Ohio 244
Governor Arthur St. Clair 245
Winthrop Sargent 246
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIV
Michigan Posts Surrendered by the British
Indian treaties ^4°
Report of Capt. Gother Mann on Northwest Posts 249
The Harmar defeat 250
The St. Clair defeat 252
President Washington receives the news from St. Clair 254
A fruitless council 255
Gen. Anthony Wayne 255
The Battle of Fallen Timbers 256
The Jay Treaty 258
Detroit surrendered 260
Col. John Francis liamtramck 261
Death of W^iyne 264
CHAPTER XV
Michigan Becomes a Political Unit
A Congressional conspiracy to obtain Michigan lands 266
A Detroit election 268
The County of Wayne 270
Governor William Hull 271
Judge Augustus Brevoort Woodward 274
Peter Audrain 276
Woodward's plans of Detroit and Ypsilanti 277
British interference 281
Fugitive slaves from Canada 284
Official salaries 205
The Bank of Michigan 286
Squabbles of the Governor and Judges 288
Conditions in Michigan Territory 293
CHAPTER XVI
Michigan in the War of 1812
Sharing the fur-trade 294
Fort Maiden 295
Tecumseh 295
CONTENTS xiii
General Hull 297
The invasion of Canada 299
The capture of Mackinac 300
General Brock 304
The surrender of Detroit 3°^
Gen. William Henry Harrison 310
The massacre of the River Rasin 311
Perry's Victory and the Battle of the Thames 315
Mackinac defies recapture 315
CHAPTER XVn
Lewis Cass Founds a Commonwealth
Lewis Cass 3^7
Father Gabriel Richard 3^9
Rev. John Monteith 321
The University of Michigania 321
The Detroit Gazette 323
The first steamboat 325
Michigan represented in Congress 326
The Cass expedition to Upper Michigan 327
Judicial changes 33^
Pioneer conditions 332
The founding of Ypsilanti 335
The Saginaw region 335
Solomon Sibley 33"
Progress 337
CHAPTER XVHI
The Toledo War
Greatest Michigan 33^
Lucius Lyon 343
Stevens Thompson Mason 345
Admission into the Union 343
Isaac E. Crary 347
Slavery 35°
Boundaries 353
Land speculation 354
Wild cat banking 359
xiv CONTEXTS
CHAPTER XIX
Struggles of a Lusty Young State
]VIichigan as a member of the Union 360
The Upper Peninsula 361
Clearing the land 362 .
Agriculture ' 364
Commerce 365
Railroad building 365
War vessels on the Great Lakes 371
The U. S. S. Michigan 372
Religion 374
The Erie Canal 378
The ^lormon Colony 380
King Strang 380
CHAPTER XX
Thf, Rise and Declixe of the Fur Trade
Indian trails 382
Indian commerce 382
Contact between Indian and trader 384
The beaver 386
Trading companies 387
American attempts to regulate the fur-trade 387
John Jacob Astor 389
Ramsey Crooks 389
Robert Stuart 390
Rix Robinson and other traders 391
Indian cessions 394
Grand Rapids as an Indian trading-post 397
CHAPTER XXI
Political Events Leading to the Formation of the Republican
Party
Cass as Minister to France 399
Rising popularity 400
Slavery 401
Cass as a Presidential candidate 402
The Kentucky Raid 403
Zachariah Chandler appears 405
CONTEXTS XV
Political maneuvers 406
Joseph Warren 408
Alpheus S. Williams 408
"Under the Oaks" 409
Formation of the Republican party 409
William A. Howard 412
Chandler succeeds Cass in the Senate 413
Cass resigns the office of Secretary of State 415
CHAPTER XXH
Michigan in the War of Secession
Governor Moses Wisner leaves for the front 416
Austin Blair, the War Governor 417
Remote location of Lansing 418
Senator Chandler's "blood-letting" letter 420
A looted treasury 421
War 421
Gen. Orlando B. Willcox 422
Gen. Alpheus Starkey Williams 424
\Mndsor as a rebel headquarters 426
Opposition to Senator Chandler 429
Politics in the Legislature 431
Lincoln and Chandler 432
The Loomis Battery 433
The Indians in the Rebellion 434
Gen. George Armstrong Custer 436
The capture of JelTerson Davis 440
The Philo Parsons raid 44i
The return of the Michigan troops 442
CHAPTER XXni
The Development of the L'Pper Peninsula
Dr. Douglass Houghton 446
Copper 450
The Cliff Mine 452
Edwin J. Hulbert discovers the Calumet and Hecia vein. . .455
Alexander Agassiz 465
William Alvin Burt 46/
xvi CONTENTS
The discovery of iron-ore 468
The Jackson Mine 469
Peter White 471
The St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal 473
Improving the waterways 480
Lake commerce 482
Linking the Upper and the Lower Peninsulas 482
CHAPTER XXIV
The University of Michigan
The University, a dominating force in the community 484
The semi-centennial 485
President Henry Phillips Tappan 485
Gifts to the University 489
The Faculty 491
The University in the War of Secession 492
President Tappan dismissed 493
President Erastus Otis Haven 496
Financial difficulties 499
The admission of women 501
Some radical changes 5°3
President James Burrell Angell 504
Judge Thomas ]\lclntyre Cooley 509
CHAPTER XXV
Cle;aring the Forests
Early sawmills 5 ' 6
Lumbering on the Grand River 517
Upper Peninsula lumbering 5 '8
Lumber prices 518
David Ward 519
Saginaw \'alley Lumbermen 5- ^
Francis Palms 5--
Lumber barons 5-8
Forest fires of 1871 528
The great fires of 1881 53°
CONTENTS xvii
CHAPTER XXVI
The Holland Immigration and the Beginning of Grand Rapids
Conditions in Holland 533
The new Pilgrims 535
Recruits 53^
Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte 537
Jannes \an de Luyster 537
The Holland swarms 53^
The first settlers of Grand Rapids 538
Louis Campau 539
Bishop Frederick Baraga 540
Beginnings of furniture manufacture 541
Grand Rapids as a center of wholesale trade 543
CHAPTER XXVH
Political Affairs from 1865 to 1897
The State debt 544
Death of Lewis Cass 545
The rise of Western Michigan 54^
Senator Thomas W. Ferry 546
The Detroit Free Press 547
William A. Howard 548
Jacob M. Howard 549
John J. Bagley 556
Charles M. Crosswell 558
The Greenback Party 558
Death of Senator Chandler 559
David H. Jerome 564
The first Republican defeat 564
Russell A. Alger 565
George Van Ness Lothrop 566
Michigan's semi-centennial 569
Cyrus G. Luce 569
Edwin B. Winans 57°
The Miner Law 57i
General Alger a Presidential candidate 571
John T. Rich 572
Semi-centennial of the birth of the Republican Party 574
Michigan in Congress 575
xviii CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXVni
The Reign of Hazen S. Pingree
The power of corporations 577
Mr. Pingree as Mayor of Detroit 578
The "potato-patch idea" 578
A long fight 579
The Atkinson Bill 580
A State Tax Commission 581
Primary elections 582
Municipal ownership 583
State finances 5^4
The "military-clothing scandal" 585
CHAPTER XXIX
The Political Succession
Political leadership 5^8
Michigan in the Senate 590
Thomas W'itherell Palmer 590
Julius C. Burrows 591
James IMcMillan 593
Development of the District of Columbia 595
The Senate Park Commission 596
President Taft's tribute 596
CHAPTER XXX
The Cuban War
Cuba '. 59»
Cass and the annexation of Cuba 59^
Russell A. Alger, Secretary of War 599
Col. Frank J. Hecker 600
Gen. William R. Shafter 600
The Michigan National Guard 601
Service of the Michigan regiments 602
The Michigan Naval Reserves 603
The fight of the Yosemite 604
CONTENTS xix
CHAPTER XXXI
The Michigan of Today
Flourishing cities 606
Population 606
River and harbor improvements 606
Common-school education 607
Farms 607
Randolph Rogers 609
Julius Rolshoven 609
Gari Melchers 609
Dr. ^^'illiam Beaumont's great discovery 609
Thomas A. Edison 610
Retrospect 612
Michigan Chronology 615
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Garden Beds at Prairie Ronde 6
Ancient Garden Beds Western Michigan 9
The Ontonagon Copper Boulder When Discovered. 14
The Ontonagon Copper Boulder in the National Museum. ... 16
The St. Mary's River and Falls 23
Map 32
Louis Joliet 55
Father James Marquette 59
Trentanove's Statue of Marquette in the National Capitol. ... 64
Sleeping Bear Point, Where Marquette Died 70
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle 81
The Building of the Griffon, from a painting by F. D. Millet 91
The First St. Anne's Church, Detroit 94
The Cadillac or Cass House, Detroit 97
Fort Pontchartrain in 1708 100
French Pear Trees, Detroit River 103
Cadillac Receiving the Charter of Detroit from Louis XIV.. 107
Fort Pontchartrain at Detroit, 1701, from the collection of
Clarence M. Burton no
An Indian of Today, from a photograph by Miss Frances
Underwood Johnston 112
Detroit in 1763, From Bellin's Atlas of 1764 120
Residence of Joseph Campau, Detroit 128
Gen. Henry Gladwin, from a painting by John Holland in the
possession of Richard Gladwin Turbutt in Ogston Hall,
Derbyshire 1 37
English Map of St. Mary's River and the Straits of Mackinac 149
Boundaries Under the Quebec Act, from the Mich. P. & H.
Col 151
Tablet on the Federal Building, Detroit, Marking Site of Fort
Lernoult 161
Henry Hamilton, Lieut. Governor of Detroit, from a miniature
in the Howard College Library 168
XXI
xxii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
George Rogers Clark 175
Arent Schuyler de Peyster 182
Gen. Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester) 195
Detroit in 1796 218
Thomas Jefferson's Proposed Division of the Northwest Terri-
tory 234
Gen. Arthur St. Clair 238
Map of Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne Campaigns 245
Old Hamtramck House, from a painting by Robert Hopkin. . . 250
Gen. Anthony Wayne 253
Detroit at the Time of American Occupation, 1796 256
William Hull 266
Signature of Peter Audrain 272
Woodward Plan of Detroit, Made in 1807 273
Note of William Hull to President Jefferson and Jefferson's
Endorsement Thereon, from the State Department Mss. . 279
Michigan Territory in 1805 285
Monument Erected by the State of Michigan as a Memorial
of the River Raisin Massacre 292
The Fort at Detroit Surrendered by General Hull 297
The Perry Victory Memorial at Put-In-Bay 301
The Labadie House 304
French House With Picket Fence 306
Chart of the Mouth of the Detroit River, Showing the Loca-
tion of Fort Maiden (now Amherstburg), Built in 1796. . . 309
The Navarre House, River Raisin 311
Home of Lewis Cass, Detroit 316
Michigan Territory in 1834 (including Toledo strip) 320
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft 324
Birthplace of Lewis Cass, at Exeter, N. H 329
Stevens Thompson Mason, First Governor of Michigan 335
Fort Harmar, Built in 1785 337
The Old State Capitol 34°
Sault Ste. Marie in 1854, from the collection of Judge J. H.
Steere 34-
The Second Election in Detroit, from a painting in the Detroit
Museum of Art 344
John D. Pierce, First Superintendent of Public Instruction . . . 345
Gov. Stevens T. Mason, from a portrait in the capitol at Lan-
sing 347
Michigan Central Railroad in 1837 , 348
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii
Sault Ste. Marie in 1850, Showing the Railway Around the
Falls 351
Rufus Putnam 252
Manasseh Cutler 2^4
Old City Hall, Detroit 359
The City of Kalamazoo in 1832 361
A Typical Michigan Landscape 363
Detroit as Seen From the Old Water Tower 365
The U. S. S. Michigan, Now the Wolverine 367
St. Anne's Church 369
King Strang's Castle 373
Portrait of King Strang 375
North West Company Blockhouse at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario 378
Old Bateau-Lock of North West Fur Company at Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario 380
Mission Church and Blockhouse at Fort Brady, Sault Ste. Ma-
rie, from the collection of Judge J. H. Steere 383
Robert Stuart 385
Map Showing Indian Treaties Covering Michigan, 1796 to 1842 387
St. Mary's Falls Indians Fishing, from the collection of Judge
J. H. Steere 390
Ramsay Crooks 391
Tablet at Jackson Marking the Birthplace of the Republican
Party 397
Lewis Cass 402
Zachariah Chandler 407
Austin Blair 414
A Michigan Regiment Oft for the Front (Campus Martius,
Detroit) 417
Gen. Alpheus S. Williams : 420
James F. Joy 424
Lewis Cass Addressing Three Months Michigan Troops at D. &
M. R. R. Depot on Their Return From the Front. (Lewis
Cass in White Clothes) 425
Statue of Gen. George Armstrong Custer 430
Typical Lake Freighter 443
Dr. Douglass Houghton 446
Edwin J. Hulbert, Discoverer of the Calumet and Hecla Cop-
per Mine 45°
Tug With Tow on the Great Lakes 452
Unloading an Ore Carrier of Eleven Thousand Tons in Three
Hours 455
xxiv ■ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
St. Mary's Canal Celebration of 1905. Thirteen \'essels in the
Poe Lock 458
Semi-Centennial at Sault Ste. Marie 460
The First or State Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, 1855 461
"Judge Steere's Island" in St. Clary's River, Showing the Cut
Made for the Vessel Channel 462
The Jackson Iron Mines 464
Package Freighters About 1870 465
Peter White, of the Upper Peninsula 467
Gen. Orlando M. Poe, U. S. A 469
A Lake Freighter of 1905 in the Poe Lock 472
A Break in the Locks 474
Machinery That Unloads the Largest Vessels in Less Than
Three Hours 477
Crossing the Straits of Mackinac in Winter 478
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 480
Michigan University Tablet in Alumni Hall 486
Henry Philip Tappan 494
Thomas Mclntyre Cooley 498
James Burrill Angell 508
Site of Present City Hall, Saginaw, in 1849 520
The Pingree Monument, Detroit 5/6
Thomas Witherell Palmer 585
James McMillan 588
James McMillan Fountain, in McMillan Park, Washington,
D. C 590
Julius C. Burrows 59^
The Last Indian Encampment at Sault Ste. Marie, on the Site
of Old Port Brady, 1905 604
William Livingstone 607
INDEX
Abbott, Edward, Lieut. Gov., 139,
161 ; was sent to St. Vincennes, 152
Abbott & Finchley's storehouse plun-
dered and burned, 519
Abercrombie, defeat of at Ticon-
deroga, 115; fight at Ticonderoga,
'74 .
Abolitionists, 397
Acadians, 170
Ada. site of old trading post, 388
.\dams, Charles K., 500
.\dams, John, 207, J09
Adams, John Q., supports Michigan's
admission as state, 346
Adrian College, 637
Adrian railroad terminus, 364
Ad-valorem ta.xation of railroad,
telephone, telegraph and express
companies, 576
Ad-valorem taxation of railroads,
581
Agassiz, Alexander, 462 ; in JNIichi-
gan, 457; as superintendent of the
Calumet and Hecla Mines, 459
Agricultural College of iMichigan,
486
Agriculture, work of the Hollanders,
534: statistics, 603
Aikman, Earl H., 930
Aikman, Samuel O., 929
Aitken. David D., 1520
Aitken, John E. 918
Albemarle Count)-, Virginia. 169
Albion College, 638
Alcona County, 639
Alger County, 641
Alger, Francis R., 1S87
Alger, Frederick M.. iioS
Alger. Gen. Russell .\., 434. 54i. S^^f
683 ; elected governor. 561 ; candi-
date for presidential nomination.
567; Secretarv of War, 595
Alger, Russell A., Jr., 687
Algonquin, wide application of name.
33
Allegan County. 634
,-\llegan County Hollanders, 532
Alleghany, the, 163
Allen, Ebenezer. 262
Allen, Ethan, 189
Allen, Kullancl C, 1719
Alluuez. 1-ather Claude Jean, 21, 78,
160 ; work of, 02; finds copper, 63
Alma College, 641
Almy, John, 468
.■\ipeua County, 637
Alpena lumber business, 512
Amboy, Lansing & Traverse Bay
Railroad, 413
Amcel. Henry B., 1032
American armies in Cuba, 595
.■\merican cause, 170; desertion of,
163; in Northwest, favored by
British incapacity, 188
American civil government estab-
lished, 171
.\merican claims to the Great Lakes,
180
American Fur Company, 282, 360,
382, 630
.\mericans, 163, 171, 176, 180; de-
tested Simon Girty, 162 ; conquer
Illinois country for Virginia, 170;
reported in possession of Montreal,
172; embittered against Hamilton,
175; French favoraljle to, 179
Amherst, Sir Jefifrcy, succeeds Earl
of Loudoun. 115; orders Major
Gladwin to Detroit, 116
Amherstliurg, 255, 290, 310. 628
A Michigan Regiment off for the
Front, Campus Martins, Detroit
(view), 417
Ammerman. Charles R.. 1259
Ancient Garden Beds, Western Mich-
igan, 9
Ancient miners, 5. 449, 453
Anderson, John, 268
Anderson, John W.. 1928
Anderson. William H., 2127
Andre. 78
Andrews, Floyd E., 1863
Andrus. Charles A., 2204
Andrus. Roy. 1107
Angell. .'\lexis C, 2290
Angell. President James Burrill. 479,
500, 503, 639, 1539; on Woodward
plan for university, 318; retires,
502; portrait, 508
Animals venerated by Indians, 30
INDEX
Ann Arbor, 331, 416, 417, 484; con-
vention of 1836, 349
Annjs, Levi C, 1950
Anti-slavery party in Michigan, 401 ;
organized at Grand Rapids. 403
Antrim County, 638
Appleby, Benjamin G., 1859
Appleton, Wisconsin, 166
Arenac County, 641
Arkansas, 176
Armstrong, Edwin E.. 1061
Armstrong, Henry I., 1955
Armstrong. John, 237
Armstrong. Robert B.. 1653
Arnold, .Ubert A., 1809
Art in Michigan, 605
Arthur, Clay M., 2160
Articles of Confederation, 185
Articles of War read by Hamilton,
176
Ashburton Treaty, 394
Ashman, Samuel, assists in removing
Ontonagon Boulder, 15
Askin. John, 262
Assembly of Virginia, 169
Astor, 312
Astor, John J., 290. 294, 388; fur
trader, 382
Asylum for the insane at Traverse
City, 640
Atcheson, Alice E., 2138
Atchcson. Norman S., 2138
Atkins, Albert W., 843
Atkinson Bill. 576, 581
Atkinson. John, 575
Atwater, Reuben, 277
Atwood. Theron W., 877
Audrain, Peter, 258; 264, 272, 629
Auglaize, Wayne at, 249
Augustin, 172
Au Sable River, 522
Austin. Charles. 1120
Austin. James S.. 1330
Auten. Isaac B., 873
Automobile industry at Detroit, 601
Avery, Lincoln, 922
Avery, Newell. 1371
Avery, Sewell L., 1281
Avery, Waldo A., 1280
Babcock, Flovd B.. 1017
Baby, M.. 135
Backus. Charles K.. 426
Bacon, Daniel, 317
Bacon, Daniel S., 433
Bacon, Leonard, 317
Bacon. Marshall J.. 349
Bad Axe. 526
Bad.gley, Dennis, 1265
Badglev. Forrest C, 1265
Badgley, Verne W.. 881
Bagley, John J.. Governor. 552. 639,
1154; reelected, 553
Baglev, John N., 1157
Bagshaw, David E., 1884
Bailey, Charles H., 1269
Bailey. Edwin H., 1501
Bailey, Francis, 534
Bailev, John W.. 1794
Bailey. Philip E., 1581 ,
Baker, Christina G., 1008
Baker, Eldon E., 1309
Baker, Frank D., 1493
Baker. George W., 1007
Baker, Samuel W., 1601
Ba'.birnie, James F., 1391
Baldwin. Augustus C, 553
Baldwin. George A., 665
Baldwin, Harry T., 2043
Baldwin, Henry P., 470, 586, 639;
leader of state senate during war,
412; administration as governor,
541
Ball, E. Morris. 53S
■ Ball, John, 2001
Bancroft. 79: as to Marquette's dis-
coveries, 67
Bank, first in Michigan, 283
Bank of Detroit, 283, 350; chartered,
630
Bank of Michigan, 632; incorporated,
632
Bank of Saline, 353
Bank of Sandstone, 353
Bank of Shiawassee, 353
Banking, legislature provides free
banking. 352; wild-cat finance of
territorial period, 350
Bannow, John C, 1038
Baptist church in 1837, 369
Baraga County, 640
Baraga, Father Frederick, Indian
missionary, 536; missionary labors,
537 ; consecrated Bishop, 537
Barber. Edward W., 1331
Barber, Henry J., 1865
Barbour. James. 305
Barbour, William T., 1452
Barcus. William W.. 1C77
Barie. William, 2021
Barker, Perry, 2080
Barnard, Edward N., 2252
Barnard, James H., 2006
Barnes. Orlando F.. 2232
Barnes, Orlando M., 425, 554. 2231
Barney, Ariel N., 465
Barr. Robert, 553
Barry County, 634
Barry, John S., in struggle for finan-
cial freedom. 354
Bartak. Anthony W., 1880
Basse Guyenne, France. 172
Bates, Charles W., 2216
Bates, Frederick, sketch. of, 276
Bates, George C, 18, 447
Bates, George G., 1630
INDEX
Bates, George W., 1323
Bates, Judge, 269
Bates, Thomas T., 1628
Batson, William, 2149
Battle. Creek, 602
Battle Creek College, 640
Battle of Fallen Timbers. 250
Battle of Lake George, 188
Battle of the Thames, 310
Battle of Tippecanoe, 291
Battle-ship Maine, 595
Batts, Herman M.. 1238
Bayard, Eve, 171
Bay City Times, 819
Bay County, 637
Beach, Emmett L., 2267
Beakes, Hiram J., 425
Beal, Junius E., 1967
Beal, Rice A., 560
Bean, Lieutenant, 136
Beaubien, Charles, appeared at De-
troit, 160
Beaumont, John \V., 1805
Beaumont, William, 606
Beaver, 217
Beaver Creek, Pennsylvania, Ottawas
at, 166
Beaver Island, 374
Beaver Islands, as Indian burial
place, 5
Beaver, The, 381 ; built at Detroit,
216
Beavers, folk lore of, 27
Beck, Ira A., iSoS
Beckton, Joseph H., 753
Beeknian, William M.. 1141
Beese, Arthur J., 2206
Begole, Charles M., 1351
Begole, Josiah W., 572 ; elected Gov-
ernor, 560
Behnke, Herman W., 2079
Behrendt, Henry, 1589
Belcher, Charles N., 1774
Bellaire, Indian mounds near, S
Belle Isle, 205
Bellestre, M.. French commandant at
Detroit, 116
Bellville, Lloyd L., 185 1
Bender. I-'rederick P., 744
Benedict, Frederick J.. 749
Bennett, Catherine, 7S4
Bennett, James R., 783
Benson, John C, 1320
Benton, 345
Benzie County, 638
Benzonia College, 641
Berg, Oscar. 1405
Berkey. Julius. 539
Berkey, Julius, furniture manufac-
turer, 539
Berkey, William A., S.^9
Berrien County, 634
uest, Herbert M., 1529
Best, Julius J., 826
Bethlehem, Sloravians at, 198
Biddle, Alaj. John, 332, 634
Bielman, Charles F., 1437
Bienville, Chevalier Coloron de, de-
scends the Allegheny, 113
Bierkanip, August H., 1031
Bigelow, Charles A., 1885
Bigelow, Nolton, 894
Big Knives, 170
Billings, Alfred D., 2172
Binkle, Henry, 853
Bingham, 403, 404
Bingham, Kinsley S., abolitionist, 401,
408, 637; nominated Governor, 404;
death of, 547
Bird, Captain, 190 ; expedition to Ken-
tucky, 191
Bird. J'ohn E., 2058
Bird. William G., 1487
Birney, James G., a resident of Michi-
gan, 401
Bissell, Theodore E., 2132
Black, John L.. 964
"Black Republican Bible," 545
Black River, 449
Black Swamp, 290
Black Swamp military road. 322
Blackhawk war, 634
Plain. Alexander W.. 2005
Blair. Austin. 405. 408, 416, 479, 542;
as war governor, 411 ; sketch of,
412; calls for ten companies, 417;
reelected, 423 ; farewell message,
540; supports Greeley, $44'- 3s dem-
ocratic candidate for governor, 552
Blair, Austin (portrait), 414
Blair, Charles A.. 571. 2276
Blair. Frank W.. 1147
Blair's message of 1862. 421
Blair. Prevost, 171
Blennerhassett, Harman, 314
Bliss, Aaron T., 572. governor, 642
Blodgett. Warren K., 44
Blom. Alfred W., 2284
Bloodv Run. the battle of, 138
Blue Licks, battle of, 204
Blue Jacket, 250
Board of charities and corrections,
639
Boehringer. Albert G., 705
Boehringer Brothers, 705
Boehringer, Rudolph G., 705
Boelio, Charles L.. 1655
Bois Blanc. British post at, 255
Bois Blanc Island. 82
Boise. James R.. 487
Bolke. Seine. 532
Bolton. Colonel, 175
Bolton. James R., 2099
Bond. Lewis, 268
XXVUl
INDEX
Boone, Daniel, i6o; found by Beau-
bien and men. 160; endured cap-
tivity five months, 161
Boonsborough, Boone's escape from,
161
Boos, Valentine S., 1552
Bope, William T., 830
Border warfare in Ohio country,
ifco; during the Revolution, 188
Borgess, Bishop, 371
Bornman, John. 1397
Hosier, Anthony O., 2144
Bostock. George D., 2031
Boston Bay, Colonial legends of, 20
Botanical survey, 358
Boundaries, 248
Boundaries of Michigan, 336
Boundaries under the Quebec Act
(map), 151
Boundary claims in statehood ques-
ti<jn, 343 . , ^
Bouquet, Col. Henry, with Gen.
Forbes, 115; saved Fort Pitt, 142
Bousfield. Alfred E., 1701
Bowers, Varnum J., 2162
Bowman. Captain, at Cahokia. 171
Bowman, Edward J., 2205
Bowman, Major. 170, 178
Boynton, A. G.. 553
Boynton. Charles L., 598
Braddock. Gen. Edward. 114; death
of. 114; defeat, 169. 171, 173
Bradford Lake. 519
Bradstreet, Colonel. 140
Bradstreet, General, captures Fort
I-'rontenac, 115
Brady, George X., 1105
Brady, Samuel. 447
Brady. Thomas, 194
Branch County, 634
Branch, Harry J., 1305
Brandt. Christopher E., 1312
Branstrom, William J., 927
Brant. Col. John, 221, 248, 299; in
England, 221
Brashead, 180
Brawn. Dewitt C, 802
Breboeuf, 38; laments death of Brule.
36
Brehm. Lieutenant. 138
Brennan, John, 1095
Brennan. John L., 985
Brewer, Addison, 518, 521
Bridgman, Charles T., 1005
Bridgman, George W., 1959
Brinen, William, 1414
Brinen. William J.. 1414
British. 163; flag lowered at Detroit.
. 141 ; select tools for border war-
fare, 163 ; reward Indians with
land, 164; Wyandots partisans of.
167; posts. T70: post of Kaskaskia.
secret order to attack, 170; fur-
nish rum to Indians, 172; com-
manders not able, 174; interests,
177; captives, 180; control over fur
trade, 220; fail to aid Indians
against Wayne, 251
British and Indian confederacy at
Detroit, 186
British and American trade across
Great Lakes boundaries, 216
British and American treaty of 1796,
252
British men-of-war on Lake Erie,
291
British America, 165
British Museum, 44
Broaker. James D., 882
Brock, General Isaac, 299 ; at Fort
Maiden, 300; demands surrender
of Detroit, 300
Brocke, Alfred. 1403
Brodhead. Col. Daniel, 183 and foot-
note. 200; expedition, 183
Bronson (Kalamazoo), 339
Broock. Max, 1549
Brooke. Flavins L., 2152
Brooks. John W., 470
Broomfield. Archibald, 1621
Brown County, 632
Brown, E. Laken. explores garden
beds, 8
Brown. Gen, Jacob, 319
Brown, Gen. Joseph W., 334
Brown, George A., 2177
Brown, George F., 1538
Brown, Henry H., 447
Brown, Herman D.. 1173
Brown, John, execution of. 409
Brown. Lieutenant, 136, 137
Brown. William B., 1983
Brown. William R., 1829
Browne, Burton F., 161 1
Browne, Clarence M., 1901
Browne. Richard II., 1812
Brownstown. 298
Brule. Stephen. 601, 614, 615, 616;
explorations of. 32; discoverer of
Lake Superior, 32 ; with Cham-
plain, 34; in Huron country, 34;
first white man in Western New
York, 34; descends the Susque-
hanna, 35 ; on Lake Superior, 35 ;
pilots the British at Quebec, 36;
murdered by Hurons, 36
Brunnow. Doctor Francis. 485. 4S7
Brush. Brock E., 940
Brush. Elijah, 265, 268, 294, 300
Bryant. Milton D., 1603
Buchanan, lames. 1090
Buck, L:)aniel W., 669
Buck. Mary E.. (571
Buel. Alexander W., 1727
Buhl, Christian H.. 415, 541
Buhl, Frederick, 541
INDEX
Building of the Griffon, 91
Bunce. John L.. 599
Burdick, Austin p., 1907
Burger, }iliss S. E., first woman stu-
dent at university, 497
Burgoyne expedition, 172, 173
Burgoyne beaten at Saratoga, 174
Burkart, John L., 1778
Burkhardt. Wilham M., 1034
Burkheiser. Alartin N., 1231
Burleson, Willard M., 1342
Burley, Bennett G., confederate
raider, captured and tried. 437
Burncll. Byron E., 1479
Burnham, Daniel H., 593
Burns, John, 599
Burr Oak, 417
Burrows, Julius C., 571, 2248; po-
litical career, 587
Burrows, Julius C. (portrait), 591
Burt. William A., scientist and iron
miner, 462
Burtless, Benjamin F., 1726
Burton, Clarence M., 86, 256; his
writings on Cadillac, 90
Burton, Theodore E., 473
Bush, J. Leighton, 2217
Bush, Matthew, 970
Butler, General. 244
Butler, Jefferson, 2177
Butler, Louisa C, 2179
Butterfield, Consul Wilshire, 36, 162,
205
Butterfield, Roger W., 991
Butterworth, Samuel D., 1709
Buttler, Samuel F., 537
Cadillac, 620; sketch of, 90; Gov-
ernor at Alackinac, 91 ; troubles
of, at Detroit. 99: appointed Gov-
ernor of Louisiana. 103 ; death of.
103, 172, 622; family of, ici ;
founds Detroit, 621
Cadillac, Madame, comes to Detroit,
loi
Cadillac or Cass House, Detroit, 97
Cadillac Receiving the Charter of
Detroit from Louis XIV (view),
107
Cadillac's town, 166
Cadot's fort, 145
Cady, Burt D.. 952
Cady. William B., 728
Cahokia. 169, 170, 176
Caldwell, Edward A., 1767
Caldwell, George B., 2242
Caldwell, Lieutenant. 162
Caldwell, Robert. 1617
Calhoun County. 634
Calhoun County. Oklahoma, 166
Calhoun. John C. 13. 322
Calkins, William F., 1637
Calumet and Hecla copper vein dis-
covered, 638
Calumet and Hecla Mine, 29
Calumet Mining Company, 456
Calumet Mining district, 456
Calumet No. 4 Shaft, 451
Cameron. William A.. 2255
Campaign of 1778, 191
Campaign of 1780, 196
Campau. Antoine. 386
Campau. Daniel J.. 954
Campau family at Grand Rapids, 535
Campau. Francis D.. 1494
Campau, Louis, 386, 534, 535, 537
Campbell, Alexander i\I., 993
Campbell, Capt. Donald, attends
council, 131 ; in command of De-
troit, 118; refuses to make any
terms with savages, 132; killed,
Campbell. Donald J., 1743
Campbell. Harvey Jones, 1946
Campbell, Henry Colin, 44
Campbell, Henry M.. 502, 1043
Campbell. Howard L., 1588
Campbell, Jay A., 792
Campbell, James V.. 415, 507, 1040
Campbell. John. 916
Campbell, Judge, 83; on Detroit
plan, 273
Campbell, Milo D., 1965
Campbell, William, 251, 571
Canada, 164. 172: number of Hurons
in, 167: DePeyster came to, 171;
Lord Dorchester, father of, 224;
General Brock's preparations for
war of 1812, 299; refuge of Con-
federates. 437
Canadian Fisheries Commission. 504
Canadian slaves escape to Micliigan,
281
Canadians, Langlade rendered serv-
ice to, 174; did not support Bur-
goyne at Saratoga, 174
Canal building, and Michigan boun-
daries. 338
Canal round St. Mary's Falls. 636
Canal system from Lake Erie to
Ohio River. 338
Canal traffic at Sault Ste. Marie. 473
Canals, planned by state, 361
Canard River bridge, 299
Cannon, Joseph G.. 571
Capital, location of. 412
Capitol at Detroit. 633
Capitol, cornerstone laid, 639
Capitol, in 1861. 413
Carey, Annie, 1832
Carey. James. 1831
"Carey'' (Niles). 535
Carheil, Father, priest at Mackinac,
lOI
INDEX
Cariole, winter vehicle in Cass's ad-
ministration, 321
Carl, Perry R. L., 1573
Carleton, 189
Carleton, Augustus C, 1993
Carleton, Sir Guy, governor-general
of Cnnada, 156, 172, 175, 221, 223
Carleton, Sir Guy (portrait), 195
Carleton, Will, 605
Carlisle, Albert B., 926
Carlton, Baxter L., 87S
Carp Lake Mine, 454
Carpenter, Warren S., 2282
Carpenter, William L., 1173
Carr, T. S., 464
Carroll, Frank H., 1017
Carroll. Stephen H., 1239
Carroll, Thomas F., 943
Carver, Jonathan, arrived at Boston
in October, 1768, 146: at Detroit,
146; died a pauper, in 1780, 147;
made a tour of England's newly
acquired possessions, 143 ; made
observations of Thunder Bay, 145 ;
noted presence of copper, 145 ;
reaches Sault Ste. Marie, 145; went
to England in 1769, 147
Carver, Oscar P.. 1644
Carter. Charles C, 1251
Carter, George M., 1259
Carter, Georg<? W., 1322
Carter. John C., 368
Carter, Philander L., 803
Carter, Warren E., 988
Cartier, James, 613; on the St. Law-
rence, 22. finds the Hurons, 167
Carton, Augustus C, 1993
Carton. John J.. 1301
Cary, Samuel, 554
Casey, General, 438
Cass County, 634 ; its fugitive slave
case, 398
Cass, Lewis. 294, 300. 303, 422, 441,
535. 536. 561 ; explorations of Lake
Superior, 13; routs British and In-
dians at River Canard. 295; "the
hero of Ta-ron-tee." 295 : at the
Thames. 310; appointed Governor
of Michigan. 311; founds a com-
monwealth. 313; sketch of, 313;
opposes Burr conspiracy, 314;
plans a college, 317; fosters a
newspaper, 319; urges exploration
of Lake Superior regions, 322; ex-
plores Lake Superior region, 323 ;
dealings, with Indians, 326; be-
comes Secretary of War, 333 ; and
Webster, 394; returns to Michi-
gan. 394; basis of popularity. 395;
elected to U. S. Senate, 395 ; nom-
inated for president. 396; posi-
tion on slavery, 396; defeated for
president, 400 ; returns to Senate,
400; position at outbreak of war,
410; death of, 541; statue of, 542;
burial place, 555 ; dominance in
Michigan politics, 584; on acqui-
sition of Cuba, 594; motto for
Michigan. 609; appointed governor
of Michigan Territory, 630; expe-
dition to the Mississippi, 632
Cass, Lewis, addressing three
months' Michigan troops (view),
Cass, Lewis (portrait), 402
Cassopolis, slave case, 399
Castel Sarraisin, 172
Catawbas, 164
Catholepistemia, or University of
Michigania, 317
Catholic church in Michigan, 370
Catholic Indian schools in the North-
west. 370
Catholics blessed by priest, 176
Caulkins, Horace J., 1092
Cavanagli. Howard W., 1078
Cavanaugh, Martin J., 1819
Cavelier, Robert, Sieur de la Salle, 81
Cayuga, 164
Celebration of half-century of state-
hood, 565
Celoron. Peter Joseph, Governor at
Detroit. 108, 622
Central Alichigan Normal School,
642
Central Michigan Sanatorium for the
Treatment of Tuberculosis, 643
Central Railroad, 362
Cession of western claims, 185
Chabert. Colonel. 265
Chacornacle. Cadillac's lieutenant, 97
Chaffee, Guy W., 1679
Chaffee, Liala C, 1680
Chambers Brothers, 2013
Chambers, Michael, 2013
Champlain, Samuel, 47, 164, 167, 601,
616, 613; explorations of, 32; his
search for Northwest passage, 32 ;
discovers Lake Huron. 34; in bat-
tles against the Iroquois, 34;
repudiates Brule, 36; employs
Nicolet. 37; character of, 40; death
of, 40
Chandler, Zachariali. 400, 401. 403. 418,
423, 541, 542, 543, 562; speech at
Jackson. 404; the recognized leader
of the Republicans. 408; sketch of.
409 : on John Brown raid, 409 ; on
Michigan's position in war, 415; re-
election of, 423 ; a radical leader,
427 ; respect for President Lincoln,
427; great services in aiding re-
nomination of Lincoln, 428; de-
feated for senate, 553 ; stand for
sound money, 554; return to senate,
555 ; opposes amnesty for Jeflferson
INDEX
XXXI
Davis, 555; deatli of, 556; Senator
Hoar's estimate, 556; political
cliaracter. 556 ; leadership, 584
Chandler, Zachariah (portrait), 407
Chapell, Carl D., 1481
Chapin, Andrew B., 1720
Chapman, Isaac O., 701
Chapoton, Henry O., 1047
Chapoton, Oliver, 1045
Chappien, Louis, first settler at Me-
nominee, 513
Charlevoix, (>22
Charlevoix County, 639
Chart of the mouth of the Detroit
River (map), 309
Chase, Braton S., 1436
Chatelle, Edward J., igpo
Cheboygan, 518
Cheboygan County, 634
ChcQuamegon Bay, 52
Chcquaniagon Point, Potawatonii
tribe at, 165
Cheroi<ees, 164, 169, 183
Cherry Valley, 189
Cherubin, Father, 104
Chesterfield, 179
Chevallicr, Louis, 194
Che\allier, M., 196
Chicago, 165. 333
Chirkasaws, 184
Chief Noonday, 536
Chipman, Harry F., 1058
Cliipman, John Logan, 572, 1058
Cliippewa County, 633
Chippewa Portage Company at Sault
Ste. Marie, 470
Chippewas, 164, 166, 173, 371, 392;
legend of Sault Ste. Marie, 25 ;
origin of name and tribe, 165; re-
proacii Pontiac, 135; endorse Pon-
tiac's message, 139; attend council
at Detroit, 161
Chittenden, Alpheus W.. 421
Chittenden, William J., 11 32
Chivers, Roy W., 1282
Cliivers. William H., 1281
Choctaws, 184
Choteau, Auguste, 193
Chruart, Medard, Sieur des Groseil-
Hers, sketch of, 45, 616
Christian home, De Peyster's, 171
Christiancy, Isaac P., 408, 586; elected
U. S. Senator, 553; resigns seat in
Senate, 555 .
Christopher, Charles PL, 1262
Chrouch, Roy M., 923
Church and schools in Holland set-
tlements. 533
Churches in 1837, 369
Churcliill, Judson N., 2120
Cilley, Ithiel J., 1075
Cimmerer. John A., 1876
Cincinnati. 162, 242, 246; arrival of
St. Clair's army, 247
Cities and villages in 1837, 368
Civil war, Michigan in, 411; volun-
teer companies, 416; Micliigan sol-
diers, 422 ; southern sympathizers,
422; opposition to conduct of, 426;
Indian volunteers, 431 ; confed-
erates in Canada, 437; review of
troops at Detroit, 438; Hollanders
in. 53.?; General Shafter, 596
Clatlin, Fuller, 2015
Claire County, 639
Clapperton, George, 2165
Clark, Alice E., 2138
Clark, Andrew, 1548
Clark, Charles L., 1442
Clark, Edward, 466
Clarlc, Ernest C, l'?26
Clark, George Rogers, i6g, 170, 175,
176, 183, 184, 185, 1S7, 188, 200,
204, 226, 229, 271 ; ordered salute to
Colonies, 17S; feared, 180; conduct
toward French villages, 184: In-
dian relations, 184; confidence
Western people in, 185 ; capture of
Hamilton, igo ; northwestern cam-
paign. 626; plans the capture of
Detroit. 627
Clark. Jolm G., 834
Clark, John P., 2136
Clark, Lewis, the "George Harris" of
L'ncle Tom's Cabin, 404
Clark. Sidney B., 1526
Clarke. Francis D., 2267
Clay, Henry, 399; on Michigan state-
hood. 345
Clements, William L., 1699
Cliff Mine, 447, 454; first to yield
pure copper, 446
Clift, M. William, 1503
Climax, mounds near, 5
Clinton and Kalamazoo Canal, 362
Clinton County, 635
Clinton Rixer, formerly known as
The Huron, 5
Clippert, George H., 1824
Clute, William K., 869
Cobb, J. T.. maps, garden beds, 8
Cocker, Benjamin F., 500
Cody, Alvin N., 2121
Coeducation at the University, 496,
497
Cogshall. Bfla. 761
Colby Bill. 578
Cold water, 417, 429, 639
Coldwatcr Company at Alexandria,
4r8
Cole, Henry S., 1642
Cole, Henry T., 860
College of Detroit, public lands for,
Collins, Frederick J., 1660
INDEX
Colonies, France in alliance with, 179
Colonists, Canadians no heart in
struggle against, 174
Colony of Virginia, 171, 180
Colwell, Charles B., 1336
Colwell, Mary L., 1337
Comfort, Benjamin F., 750
Commissioners of internal improve-
ments, 361
Company of New France, 615
Compromise Measures of 1850, Cass'
part in, 400
Comstocl<, Charles C. 1345
Comstock, C. O., 538
Comstock, O. C„ 399
Conger, Omar D., 571, 587
Congleton. Harold F„ 1535
Congregational church in 1837, 369
Congress, 167: no relief expected
from, 160; created Indian depart-
ment, 163
Congressmen from Michigan, 571
Connell, P. J., 2062
Connery, William S., 2070
Connesedaga, council at, 172
Connolly, William F., 1477
Connor, Richard, 317
Connor, Rowland, 859
Conolly, Doctor, 162; militia, 163
Constitutional Convention, 634
Constitutional Convention of 1835,
343
Continental army, 180
Convention at Jackson, 404
Cook, Charles I.. 2260
Cook, George W., 1318
Cooley, Mortimer E., 599, 2233
Cooley, Judge Thomas I., 381 ; on
Detroit plan, 274. 487; sketch of,
505; as a law lecturer, 507; as
judge and law writer, 507; con-
nection with railroads, 509; mem-
ber of first Interstate Commerce
Commission, 509: death of, 510;
review of his work, 510
Cooley, Thomas Mclntyre (por-
trait), 498
Cooper, Adrian F., 816
Cooper, John T., 1370
Copper, 636
Copper boulder, 29
Copper deposits of Lake Superior, 10
Copper, first accounts of, 35
Copper found by Jesuits, 63
Copper industry, extent of, 461
Copper in Upper Peninsula, 445
Copper mines of Lake Superior, 11
Copper Mining pioneer enterprise,
445
Copper mines, solution of "riddle" of
Ancient Miners, 453
Copper used by Indians, 10
Corbin, James, 1485
Corbishley, Charles, 1097
Corey, Melroy A., 832
Corkins, John C, 875
Cork-pine, 517
Cornelius, Harold C, 967
Cornell, Aaron, 747
Corn- Planter, 221
Cornwall, John, 1334
Corporations, opposition to, 573
Corporations, taxation bills, 576
Coryell, Charles, 712
Cosendai, Albert F., 1910
Cotharin, Benjamin F., 1222
Cotharin, Elnora A., 1223
Cotter, John R., 713
Coutencinau, Jean, convicted of rob-
bery, 159
Couzens, James, 609
Covell, Lyman T., 1374
Covcll, Mark B., 1369
Cowles, Edwin D., 797
Cowles, b'rederick M., 1386
Cowley, Lambert B., 1184
Cowley, Oscar G., 857
Cox, Edgar J., 907
Coyle, Michael C, 1793
Craig, James, Jr., 1966
Cramton, Louis C, 21 12
Cranage, Julia P., 2214
Cranage, Samuel P., 2214
Cranage, Thomas, 2212
Crane, Lloyd, 2148
Crane, William E., 2148
Crapo, Henry H., Governor, 439, 541.
Crapo, Stanford T., 1460
Crary, Isaac E., 343,480, 503, 634
Crawford County, 632, 635
Crawford County, Ohio, battle in,
^03
Crawford. William, 201, 203, 272;
expedition, 201 ; burned at stake,
Crees, 43; Carver met a party ot, 144
Creque, Lydia, 2024
Cresline, 203
Croghan, George, 109; Colonel, 311;
308, footnote; explorer and trader,
113; negotiated peace between
Pontiac and the English, 142
Crooks. Ramsay, 384, 388
Crooks, Ramsay (portrait), 391
Cross. Charles B., 1396
Crossing the Straits of Mackmac ni
Winter (view), 478
Crosswhite, Adam, 398
Crosswhite slave case, second trial,
400
Croswell, Charles M., 426, 5S4
Crowe, Fred M.. 936
Cruzat. Francisco. 194
Cuba and Spain, 594
INDEX
Cuban war, 594 ; early relations of
island to U. S., 594 ; the Yoseniite's
record, 599
Cudvvorth, Linn M., 1930
Cuillerier, Mile., may have revealed
Pontiac plot, 127
Cuillerier, M., Indians hold council
at house of, 131
Cummins, Daniel, 757
Cummins, Martin, 757
Cunningham, Charles S., 1533
Cunningham, James V., 1968
Cunningham, General Walter, U. S.
mineral agent, 17
Curry, Volney M., 2087
Cushing, Frank Hamilton on Indian
origins, 4
Custer, Gen. George Armstrong,
Statue of (view), 430
Custer, George A., 438; record as a
soldier, 432; a brigadier general
at Gettysburg, 433 ; in the Shenan-
doah Valley, 434; a major-general,
434: massacre (footnote), 435
Cutcheon, Byron M., S7^
Cutler, Mannasseh, 235, 237
Cutler, Manasseh (portrait), 354
Cuyler, Lieutenant, 133
Dablon, Father Claude, 65, 78; re-
ceives copper from Indians, 13;
records discovery of Mississippi, 12
d'Aigremont, report of, on Detroit,
98
Daly, John H., 794
Dalzell, Captain, 136; aide-de-camp
to General Amherst, 13S
Dalziel, Murray, 119S
Danaher, James E., 1038
Dane, Nathan, 236
Darling, Harry J., 1276
Davers, Sir Robert, murder of, 130
Davidson, Otto C, 2196
Davies, William, 847
Davis, James N., 1593 ^ ,
Davis, Jefiferson, captured by Fourth
Michigan Cavalry, 435; l"s dis-
guise, 436
Davis, Nathan G., 1823
Dean, E. C, 589
Dean, Henrv S., 1161
Dearborn, Major General Henry at
1 1 ull court martial, 303
Debantier, Albert A., 1021
de Bellerive, St. Ange, 192; gave
Pontiac burial, 142
De Boer, William, 1525
De Butts, Henry, 254
de Caen. William, 615
Declaration of Independence in the
Pennsylvania Gazette of July 24.
1776, 160
De Golia, F. H., 1125
Dellart, Frank K., 890
Del-lart, John IL, 89a
Dejean, Philippe, justice of the peace
at Detroit, 159; and Hamilton in-
dicted for murder, 160; captured,
179
de Joncaire, Charles Chabert, 264
de Kalb, Baron, 184
De Lancey, Governor of New York,
114
DeLand, Charles J., 1171
DeLand, Colonel Victor, 431
De la Verendrye, 47
Delawares, 163; attend council at'
Detroit, 161 ; adopt George Girty,
162
de Levis, Chevalier, 173
Delta County, 638
Dcmery, Michael, 2034
Deming, Clara, 889
Deniing, Daniel P., 886
Democratic party, successes in the
'70s, 553; ascendant 1841-54, 563;
leadership of G. V. N. Lothrop, 563
Democratic state platform of 1863,
427
Denby, Edwin (footnote) 503, 572,
1033
Denison, Arthur C, 2279
Dennis, Elmore, 1069
Denslow, J. F., 1423
DePeyster, Major Arent Schuyler,
162, 172, 173, 182, 196, 20r, 205, 228,
633 ; the commandant at Michili-
mackinac, 155; Major Arent
Schuyler, career of, 171 ; holds
council at I'Arbre Croche, 174;
views on Crawford massacre, 203;
death of, 228; at Mackinac, 625;
assumes command at Detroit, 626
DePeyster, A. S. (portrait), 185
DePeyster, Johannes, 171
DePeyster, Mrs., 171
de Repentigny, M., 166
de Rocheblave, M., taken prisoner,
167
de Steuben, Baron, 214
Detloff, Richard, 2220
Detroit, 180, 183, 196. 215, 220, 417,
581, 601, 623, 624, 631; foundation
of, 8g ; established and named
Fort Pontchartrain, 9.3; domestic
animals at, 102; succession of Gov-
ernors at, 104; surrendered to
British, 118; siege of by Pontiac,
121 ; contains upwards of one hun-
dred houses. 146 ; grand council
held at, 161 ; McKee, Elliott &
Girty escape to, 163; council at,
164; founded, 165; Ottawas at,
166; Hurons at, 167; held by the
British, 169; United States treaty
with Ottawas at. 167; Hurons con-
INDEX
spire to destroy, 167 ; expedition
under Hamilton, 174; militia ter-
rorized by Clark, 180; as British
post, 185 ; importance of expedi-
tion against, 187 ; expedition
against never undertaken, 187 ;
fortification by Lernoult, 190;
Lernoult in charge, igo; fort on
Federal Building site, 190; De
Peyster in command, 196; object
of General Irvine's campaign, 200;
furnishes aid against Sandusky ex-
pedition, 201 ; German settlers of
the Revolution, 205 ; release of
American captives, 205 ; untouched
by American Revolutionary expe-
ditions, 207; not to be surrendered
to America, 212; building of the
Beaver, 216; merchants protest re-
striction on navigation of Great
Lakes, 216; vital relations to Brit-
ish fur trade. 217; traders' losses
by British control of Great Lakes
navigation, 219; in Washington's
plan for trade route to Philadel-
phia. 227; Indians cede lands, 241 ;
condition of Fort Lernoult, site for
new post, 242 ; Americans demand
surrender, 254; surrender of, 254;
conditions in 1796, 255; at the time
of American occupation, 1796, 256;
inhabitants in 1796, 257; arrival of
General Wayne, 258; described by
Wayne, 259 ; at time of surrender,
1796, 260; first territorial election,
265; land speculation, 266; at time
of Governor Hull's arrival, 267;
fire of 1805, 268. 269; plan of new
town in 1805, 272; origin of plan,
273 ; best planned city next to
Washington, 275 ; merit of plan,
275 ; clash of British and Ameri-
cans over a deserter. 278 ; threat-
ened attack from Canada over
fugitive slaves, 281 ; cost of living
in territorial period. 281 ; first
courthouse, 284 ; hcad{iuarters for
the fur traders. 290; Hull's sur-
render. 290 ; strategic value de-
stroyed by Fort Maiden. 291 ;
movements of Hull's army. 294;
during British investment under
Brock. 301 ; scene at surrender of,
302 ; consequences of surrender,
304; civil government after sur-
render, 305: churches in 1815, 315;
early schools, 316; first newspaper,
316; first publishers and book-
sellers, wares advertised by early
merchants, 319; visit of President
i^Ionroe, .^19: first steamboat, 321;
Chicago highway, 322 ; immigration
in 1825, 328 ; and St. Joseph, 355 ;
and Milwaukee, 355 ; center for
radiating turnpikes, 364; newspa-
pers on slavery, 403 ; as capital,
412 ( footnote) ; meeting for repeal
of Personal Liberty laws, 415; at
fall of Sumter, 416; statue of Gen-
eral Williams, 421 ; Campus Mar-
tins meeting of 1862, 422; Confed-
erate invasions from Canada, 437;
review of Micliigan veterans in
1866, 438; Confederate incursions
from Canada, 441 ; men in devel-
opment of copper mines, 447; capi-
talists plan railroad to Lake Su-
perior, 476; gives observatory to
University, 485; sawmills, 5x2; in
1836, 516; home of first eleven U.
S. Senators, 542; under Mayor
Pingree, 573; Pingree potato
sclieme. 574; public utilities, 579;
first stale capitol, 586; car works,
589; citizens un the Yosemite, 600;
as commercial and civic center,
601 ; founded, 621 ; surrendered to
the L'. S., 629; incorporated, 629;
burned, 630; Hull surrenders, 630;
three hundredth birthday, 642 ; and
St. Joseph Railroad, 362
Detroit City Railway, 573
Detroit College, 640
Detroit College of Medicine, 641
Detroit Female Seminary, 637
Detroit free Press, 319; as political
organ, 552
Detroit Gacette, 631 ; founded, 319
Detroit in 1763, from Bellin's Atlas
of 1764 (map), 120
Detroit, in 1837 (view), 365
Detroit Land District, 360
Detroit, Old City Hall (view), 359
Detroit region, 89
Detroit River, 360; British posts on,
261 ; Hurons come to, 166
Detroit River Tunnel opened. 643
Detroit, Second Election In (view),
344.
Detroit Young Men's Society, 442
Devantier, Albert A.. 1021
Development of a pioneer community,
De Vierville, 174
de Villiere. Neyon, 162, 166
DeVore, James A.. 769
Dewey. Merritt O.. 1328
Dexter. Samuel, 537
Diamond. George, 971
Dickerson, George 'VV., 919
Dickie. Samuel. 821
Dickinson County, 641
Dickinson, Don M., 576, 668; ap-
pointed Postmaster General, 561
Dickinson. Julian G., I268
Diekema, Gerrit J.. 529. 2292
INDEX
XXXV
Dicskau, defeated and captured by
Joluison, 115
Diggins, Carrie, 2102
Diggini, Fred A., 2101
Dinwiddle, Governor of Virginia, in-
quires purposes of French, 113
Dionne, N. E., quoted, 44
Diploma system in University of
^liclligan, 499
Dixon, William, 1441
Dobbs, Governor of North Carolina,
114
Dodds, Alexander, 1759
Dodge, Frank L., 1S95
Dodge, William T., 1296 •
Doe, Calvin W., 1585
Domestic animals of Michigan, 358
Donaldson, John M., iioo
Donnelb', John C, 2216
Donovan, Robert, 1143
D'Ooge, Martin L., 501, 502
Dorchester, Lord (Sir Guy Carlton),
224 (footnote); alarmed at Amer-
ican aggression on frontier, 241
Dorcmus, Frank E., 572
Dort, Josiah D., 1355 ,
Doty, Frank L., 7S8
Doty, James D., 323
Douglas, C. C, 454
Douglas, Capt. D. B., 323
Douglas, Silas H., 485
Doyle, Michael J., 2256
Doyle, William, 257
Drcsciier, Harry I., 1595
Dresser, Edward, 1596
Dreuillettes, Fayher, 78
Driggs, Frederick E., 1407
Druillettes. 47
Drummond's Island, 220
Drummond's Island, trading post,
312
Dubuisson reptls Indian attacks on
Detroit, 104
Dubusson, Lieutenant Governor, 184
Duff, John, 173
Duffield, D. Bethune, 415, 563
Duffield. Henry M., 598
Dugue, Cadillac's lieutenant, 97
Du Taunay, Father, 133
Duke, Lieutenant, 137
Du Lhut. 620; establishes fort on St.
Clair River, 89
Dumfries, 171
Duniont. Simon Francois, Sieur Saint
Lusson, 78
Dunliar, Erastus L.. 804
Duncan, Harriet S.. 1179
Duncan, Henry, 1 177
Duncan. James A. P., 1507
Dundas. Arthur, 987
Dunham, Major L.. 11 17
Dunmore, Lord, 163
Dunmore, sloop-of-war. 171
Dunmore war, 164; conclusion of,
164
Dunn, 169
Durand, Charles R., 1252
Durantaye, 89
Dutch, Indians obtain firearms from,
162
Dutchman's Point, 215
Dwyer, Jermiah, 682
Eagle River copper discoveries, 447
Ealy & Company, 1888
Ealy, J. M., 1889
Ealy, Milton D., 1889
Eastern Asylum for the Insane, 640
Easton, Treaty of, 162
Eaton County, 635
Eaton, F'rederick L., 599
Eaton, George, 589
Eaton, Homer M., 2106
Eberle, Carl, 11 69
Eddv. Florence T.. 664
Eddy, Frank W., 663
Edison, Thomas A., life in Michigan,
606
Education, per capita expenditure,
603
Edwards, Allen F., 1119
■ Edwards. Edward E., 1956
Edwards, Presca I., 950
Edwards, William H., 1434
Eighth Michigan Regiment, 429
Eisen, Adolpli, 1047
Elbert, J. Nicholson, 447
Eldred. Caleb, 534
Eldred, Julius, 445 ; removes Onto-
nagon Boulder from Lake Supe-
rior, 15
Election reforms, 566
Elections of 1862, 423
Elections, primary practices, 578
Elections ( sec under dates in Michi-
gan chronology) 630
Eliot, Charles W., 459
Elligood, Lieutenant Colonel, 184
Elliott. Captain, 255, 307
Elliott, Matthew, Pennsylvania
trader, 163
Elliott, Susan H., 1175
Elliott, William H., 11 74
Ellis, Adolphus A., 1057
Ellis, Ellsworth S., 17O5
h'llis. Elmer J., 1199
Ellsworth, Colonel, 418
Ellsworth. Henry L., 537
Elton. Thomas j.. 1582
Emliarrass River. Vigo reaches, 177
Emerson Mill, 512
Emery, John G.. Jr., 1118
Emmer, Joseph, 1533
Emmet County, 637
England, 177; keeping up warfare
along the rear of the Colonies, 169;
INDEX
DePeyster sent to, 171 ; and Amer-
ica agree to limit naval forces on
Great Lakes 306
England, Colonel Christopher, 254,
^57, 9" 3
English, George E., S41
English, William F., 1997
English, 16s, 170; wanted support of
the Langlades, 173; conflict of with
French, 87; obtains from In-
dians riglit to settle south of the
Ohio, 113; medals given to Indians
by, 163; Iroquois fight on side of,
164; Sauks surrender flags and
medals of, 166; relations with In-
dians, 185; attitude of toward In-
dians,' 379 ; map of St. Mary's
River and the Straits of Mackinac,
149; possessions in West, character
of, 224; settlers more industrious
than tlie French, 157
English-speaking people, DePeyster
the first, 171
English traders, character of, 88
Episcopal' Church in 1837, 369
Equal taxation issue, 576
Erd, Harry S., 1885
Erd Motor Company, 1884
Eirdlitz, Frank, 2279
Erie, 215
Erie Canal, 601; completion of, 328;
traffic, 372
Erie, Fort, 171
Erie and Kalamazoo, 355
Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad. 636
Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad Com-
pany, 364
Etherington, Captain George, taken
to Montreal by tlie Ottawas, 134;
at Michilimackinac, 173; seized by
Chippewas, 134
Ethnology, Bureau of, as to Indian
mounds in Michigan, 7
Eustis, George, 599
Evans, George J., 2181
Evans, Herbert H., 2182
Evans, William T., 1444
Everett. Philo M., 464, 465
Extinguishment of Indian title to
Michigan lands, 326
Eymer. Herman H., 2035
Fallen Timbers, 272; Battle of, 250
Falls of St. Anthony, discovered by
Father Louis Hennepin, 144
Falls of the Ohio the fort at. 171
Farmers and Mechanics Bank of
Pontiac, 353
Farnsworth, William, 514
Farr. Fred A., 740
Farrand, Jacob S., 1415
Farrand. Jacob S.. Jr., 1422
Farrand. William R., 1421
Feige, Ernest, 2067
Feige, Henry, 2067
Felch, Alphcus, 350, 425, 469, 546, 636
Feldher, Anthony, 1052
Fellows, Grant, 1948
Fenton, William M., 541
Fenvvick. Bishop, 370
Ferguson, James E., 1813
Fernstrum. Frank G., 2281
Fcrrin. Charles S., 1030
Ferris, Woodbridge N., 2278
Ferris, Woodbridge S., governor, 643
Ferry, elected U. S. Senator, 544
Ferry. Dexter M., 11 13
Ferry, Dexter M., Jr., 11 15
Ferry, Henry D., 429
Ferry, Thomas W., 312, 542, 639
Ferry, William M., 389
Fifield, John W., 1837
Fifth Michigan Regiment, 434; rec-
ord of, 429
Fiftietli anniversary of birth the Re-
publican party, 570
Finance, organization of a bank of
issue, 282 ; wild ideas in 1807, 283
I;inlay, Alexander G., 1555
Finucan, Thomas G., 1358
Firearms used by Champlain, 35
Fires of 1871, 524
First iron made from Lake Superior
ore, 465
First Legislative Council, 633
First Michigan Cavalry, 433
First Michigan Infantry, first from
west at Washington, 417
First Michigan Regiment, 434
First Michigan Sharpshooters, 431
First newspaper west of Alleghany
Mountains, 316
First railroads. 385
First St. Anne's Church. Detroit, 94
First steamboat navigating the lakes,
,364
First white settlement in the pres-
ent State of Michigan, 601
Fish, George W., 543
Fisher. William J., 1020
Fisheries, 602; in 1837, 360; of Up-
per Peninsula, 357
Fitzgerald, Lucius G.. 2159
Fitzgerald, Thomas, 543
Fitzgerald. William B., 731
Fletcher, Richard H., 720
Flint. 426, 602
Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad. 522
Foley, John S., 2293
Folsom, Edward G., 1048
Forbes, General John, cuts road from
Philadelphia to the Ohio, 115
Ford, Georgina B., 1830
Ford, Henry. 608
Ford, Howard R.. 1853'
Ford, Whitman D., 1830
INDEX
XXXVll
Fordney, Joseph W., 572
Foreign population, 603
Forest fires, 524; in 1881, 526
Forests, clearing the, 512
Fork tribe, 166
Forman, Ricliard C, 962
Forsyth, Edward, 2218
Fort at Detroit, 259
Fort Brady, 471
Fort Chartres, 193
Fort Defiance, 249
Fort Duquesne, 162
Fort Frontenac, captured by Brad-
street, IIS
Fort Gage, 169
Fort George, 170
Fort Gratiot, 322. ^3^, 360
Fort Harmar, 239
Fort Harmar (view), 337
Fort Harrison, 305
Fort Laurens, 191
Fort Lernoult, 19O, 242, 255
Fort Mackinac, 312; building of, 192
Fort Maiden, 290, 293, 313; British
attempt seizure of deserter, 278;
Americans invest. 295; Hull aban-
dons attack, 298; deserted. 310;
efifect of Perry's operations, 310;
returned to British, 312
Fort Mcintosh, 191
Fort Meigs, Proctor's attack on Har-
rison. 308
Fort ]\Iiami, surrender of, 254
Fort Patrick Henry, 180
Fort Pitt, 187
Fort Pontchartrain at Detroit, 1701,
no; in 1708, 100
Fort Recovery, 249
Fort Sandusky captured, 132
Fort Shelby, 321
Fort Stanwix treaty, 221
Fort Stephenson on the Sandusky,
308
Fort St. Joseph, treachery planned
3t, 133; abandoned, 311
Fort Sumter, news reaches Detroit,
416
Fort Washington, 242, 244, 248
Fort 'Wayne, 243, 305
Fort Wilkins, 445
Fort 'William Henry. 115
Foss, Edgar B.. 1816
Foster, John W.. 502
Foster, 'Wilder D., 403
Foster & Whitney's report on copper
mines, 12
Fourth Michigan Cavalry captures
Jefferson Davis, 43 .S ; rewarded for
capture of Jefiferson Davis, 437
Fox, Jesse W.. 1608
Foxes, 174; make war on Detroit,
104; population of. 166
Frame, Charles H., 858
France and England, definitive treaty
between reaches Detroit. 134
France came to terms with England
in 1763, 149; Clark learns of alli-
ance with Colonies, 170; in Revo-
lution, 207 ; position in treaty of
1783, 208
Franklin. Benjamin. 172, 207, 209;
postmaster General of the Colonies,
114
Franklin County, Kansas, 165
Frantz, Charles H., 704
Frazier, John 'V., 2148
Free banking act, 635
Free-Democratic party at Grand Rap-
ids, 403
Free Democrats withdraw a party
ticket, 404
Freeland. Willard H., 907
Freeman, Alice. 501
Freer. Charles L., 60S
Free Soil party, 397
Freight and passenger rates in 1837,
372
Freimann. Tohn G., 208s
Fremont, Joseph, 745
Fremont voters, 570
French and Indian war, 623 ; begin-
ning of. 114
French, 162 ; colonial ideas of, 87 ;
drive English from Pittsburgh,
114: friendly with Indians in Pon-
tine war. 131 ; in sympathy with the
■Virginians. 160; medals given to
Indians by, 163; establish Indian
settlements. 164: Potawatomi tribe
allies of. 16s; battle near Apple-
ton, Wisconsin, 166; found the
Ottawas, 166; towns, 170; inilitia
formed l3y Clark at Kaskaskia, 171 ;
supremacy, Langlade fights for,
173; with Clark, 177; militia gath-
ered. 177; at 'Vincennes. 179; gov-
ernment in Illinois county after
1763. 193; at Detroit. 268; popula-
tion in 1837, ,371 ; relations with
Indians. 379; inhabitants, of Up-
per Peninsula, 441 ; influence, wan-
ing of in Michigan, s6S
French House Cview), 306
French, Irving C, 1659
French Pear Trees, Detroit River
(view'). 103
French River, 176
Frenchtown. 294
French trading companies, 77
Friend, Frank L., 1676
Frieseke. Frederick C, 605
Frieze, Henry S.. 487. soo : as act-
ing president of University of
Michigan. 409
Frobisher, Benjamin. 213. 217
Frobisher, Joseph, 213
INDEX
Frontenac, y2, 615, 619
Frontier, inlluence on civilized men,
379
Frost-bitten convention, 349
Frost, Joseph i\I., 1375
Fruit farms of Southwestern Michi-
gan, 602
Frutchey, Joseph, 898
Fugitive slave case in Michigan, 397
Fugitive Slave Law, 400 ; on trial at
Detroit, 399
Furniture, beginning of manufacture
at Grand Rapids, 537; manufac-
ture, early days of. 538
Furs and skins as .measures of value,
381
Fiir Trade, 216; progress of British
in, 213; advantage of British in
American territory, 217; British
control in 1807, 220- value of In-
dians to, 225; results of surrender
of British posts, 260; British op-
pose American share in, 290 ; quar-
ters at Saginaw, 331 ; in Michigan,
its influence on settlement and
civilization, 382; individual traders,
384
Fur traders of the Northwest fear
American aggression, 213
Fyfe, Richard H., 1827
Gaffney, F. O., 1995
Gaffney, William. 2071
Gage, General, appointed Major
Rogers commandant at Fort Mich-
ilimackinac. 148
Gage, brig, largest boat on the lakes
up to 17S0, 154
Gallagher, Morton, 829
Gallagher, \\'illiam H., 1082
Gallup, George B., 1257
Galpin. Harris E., 1283
Galster. John L. A., 1898
Ganschow. Arthur Vv'., 1903
Garden Beds at Prairie Ronde
(view). 6
Garden beds, location of, in Michi-
gan, 7; disappearance of, 10
Gardner, Cornelius. 574. 59S
Gardner, Washington, 569, 572, 2225
Garfield, Charles W., 2255
Garrison, Charles M., 525
Gauss, Charles E., 2219
Gay, Charlie, 1693
Gay, George W., 1770
Gay. William H., 1770
Gaylord, Frank B., 599
Gemmer, Albert E.. 1028
Genesee County, 635
Geological and mineralosical survey,
358
Geological Survey established, 635
George, Bernard C, 1505
Georgian Bay, Hurons dwelling south
of, 167; Langlade at, 174; Ottawas
along shores of, 166
Germain, Lord George, 175
German folk lore similar to Indian,
29
Germans in 1837, 371
Gibault, Father, 167, 170, 192
Gibbard, Xelson E., 1703
Gibson, Colonel John, 183. 200
Gibson, Robert A., 1190
Gibson, William A., 1186
Gilbert. Harvey, 732
Gilbert, Henry C, 392
Gilbert, John O., 974
Gilbert, Thomas D., 525
Gile, William L., 1064
Gillard, Joseph R., 977
Gillcn, Michael L., 21S3
Gillett, Hezekiah M., 1109
Gillis, Charles H., 1557
Gilpin, Henry D.. 634
Girardin, J. .\., 315
Girty boys, career and character of,
162
Girty, George, 162
Girty. James, 162
Girty, Simon, interpreter, 162, 203,
261
Gist trafficked with the savages, 113
Gittins. C. E., 1951
Gladwin County, 637
Gladwin, Gen. Henry, 137; makes
chart of Lake Erie. ilO; sketch of,
ri8. arrives at Detroit, 118; with
General Braddock, 114; returns
from England. 121 ; holds Potta-
watomie prisoners. 132; reads to
French articles of peace, 135 ; hope-
ful of ultimate success, 138; grants
a truce to Pontiac, 139 ; left for
New York, 140; returned to Eng-
land in 1764, 140 : settled upon a
small paternal estate, 140; died on
June 22, 1791, 141
Gladwin, schooner, 153; eludes Pon-
tiac's canoes, 132; landed a force
of fifty men with provisions and
ammunition. 134: attack on, 138
Glasgow, Cassius L., 1798
Gleason, William J., 1570
Gnadenliutten, ig8, 199
Goddard, Frank H., 1227
Godfrey, Gabriel, 330
Godfroy. Richard. .386
Goes. August. 1868
Goetz. John B.. 1890
Gogebic County, 569, 641
"Golden age" of Michigan lumber-
ing. 512
Goodenow. Charles N., 2064
Goodrich. G. G.. 1940
Goodrich. Reuben, 1913
INDEX
Good roads, 603
Goodrich, Krank R., 1916
Gordon, George H., 772
Gorman, Charles C, 399
Gorman, Frank E., 1715
Gonin, Charles, 126; meets embassy
of peace, 131
Government surveys, 360
Gow, James, 1670
Grain crops, 360
Graley, Joseph A., 782
Gram, Andrew, 2257
Grand Haven, 355, 388, 534 ; found-
ing of, 389; lumber mills, 513
Grand Portage, Carver arrived, 144
Grand Portage of Lake Superior,
British retain command, 261
Grand Rapids, 362, 534. 581, 602;
built on Robinson lands, 389;
scenes at Indian payments, 392 ;
as Indian trading center, 393;
organization of anti-slavery polit-
ical club, 403; and Indiana, 522;
beginnings of. 529; settlement of,
534; Father Baraga at, 536; first
furniture industry, 537 ; founding
wholesale furniture trade, 539 ;
municipal ownership. 579.
Grand Rapids Medical College, 642
Grand River, };^i: Indian mounds
near, 7; in Ontario, 164; in Mich-
igan, 165 ; canal at Rapids, 339 ;
district, 360 ; improvement, 362 ;
cession of lands north of, 389;
lumbering, 513; government sur-
veys, 537
Grand Sables, 49
Grand Traverse County, 636
Grandville, 537
Grant, Captain, 136, 138
Grant, Claudius B., 501, 2295
Grant. George, 1685
Gratiot County, 637
Gravereat, Lieut. Robert J., 431, 466
Gray, Asa, sketch of (footnote), 484
Gray, Captain. 136
Gray, George D., 1224
Gray, William, 599
Gray. William J., 1492
Grayling. 519
Greatest Michigan. 337
Great Lake Hurons. Champlain's al-
liance with, 33
Great Lakes, folk lore of, 20; ques-
tion of free navigation, 215; ore
traffic. 475
Great Sea! of Michigan, 609
Greeley. Horace, suggests name "Re-
publican." 405
Green. Albert B.. 221S
Greenback party. 560; first appear-
ance, 554
Green Bay. 166; Potawatomi tribe
driven to, 165; Senecas settled
near, 164
Greeson, William A., 1586
Greenville, 249
Greenville, Treaty of, 165, 251
Greenwald, John P., 1085
Gregg, James H., 1410
Gregory, Wright, 2051
Greilick, Clarence L., 1791
GrenoUe, companion of Brule, 35
Gres, Francis H., S69
Gress, Frederick W., 826
Grieve, William R., 703
Griffin. John 276
Griffon, building of. 80; loss of, 85;
wreck of, 87
Grillct. Francis F., 1663
Grindstone City, 526
Grisvvold, Leavitt S., 1592
Griswold, Secretary, on Detroit life,
281
Griswold, Stanley, 268, 269 276,
Groseilliers, 22; and Radisson ex-
plore Lake Superior, 618
Grosfield. Anthony F., 1149
Grosse He, 82
Grosse Pointe, Indians at, 105
Grosvenor, Ebenezer O., 426, 429
Grout, John R.. 454
Grove. William E., 1384
Grylls. H. J. Maxwell. I4SS
Guerin. Jean. Menard's companion,
61
Gugel. George F., 1945
Gugel, Paul L., 1944
Gustin, Wilbert H., 819
Guthe, Karl E., iioo
Haarer. John W., 1716
Haberkorn. C. H., 659
Haberkorn. Cliristian H.. Jr., 660
Haberkorn. H. Roy, 1.392
Hackley. Charles H.. 605, 1935
Haehnle, Casper, 1246
Hachnle, Casper II. 1870
Haehnle. Mary. 1870
Hagen. William A., 1282
Haggerson, George H., 2287
Haggerty. John S., 1445
Haigh. Henry A.. 1933
Haldimand Bay, 192
Haldimand. Sir Frederick, 63, IIS,
192. 201. 204. 205. 212. 214. 221, 228,
624, 628 ; governor-general of Can-
ada, 155; birth, 156; as a soldier,
156; career of, 1S9, 228; the eco-
nomical. 164: anxious to preserve
the fur trade for England. 212 ;
refuses to surrender American
posts. 214
Hall. Clare J., 1065 "
Hall. DeVere, not
Hall. Harry G.. 1980
xl
INDEX
Hall, Louis C, 1182
Hall, Rav A., 1102
Hall, Willis E.. 920
Ham, Alplionso, 539
Hamilton, 160, 169, 174, 185, 190, 216;
was sent to Detroit, 152; appointed
lieutenant-governor at Detroit, 157;
ottered to pay Boone's ransom,
161; gives Indians feast, 164; con-
gratulates Indians, 163; Lieutenant
Governor of Detroit, 168; council,
169; expedition to recover Illinois
country, 174; preparing expedition
to recapture Vincennes, 174; as-
sembled soldiers at Detroit, 175;
Vigo before, 177; in irons, 179;
surrenders, 179; a prisoner, 180,
185; complains of dungeon, 184;
as governor of Bermuda, 227;
reaches Detroit, 626
Hamilton, Edward L., 572
Hamilton, Herbert H., 1130
Hamlin. Augustus, 370
Hammell, James F., 1713
Hammen, Theodore, 925
Hammond, Colonel, claims Ontona-
gon Boulder, 17
Hammond, George, 220
Hamtramck House, Old (view), 250
Hamtramck, John Francis, 244, 254,
629; sketch of, 257
Hanbury, Thomas, secures charter
for Ohio Company, 113
Handbook of American Indians, 38
Hand, Edward, 200; Continental gen-
eral. 163
Handy, Sherman T., 1987
Hanna, David K.. 738
Hanna, Oscar J. R.. 1275
Hannan, William W., 1424
Hanson, John D. S., 1093
Hardin, Colonel, 242
Hardwood timber in Lower Penin-
sula. 523
Hargreaves. George, Jr., 1945
Harley, Alvin E.. 1532
Harmar, General, 239, 242 ; cam-
paign of 1790, 243
Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne Cam-
paigns (map), 256
Harness-making, 637
Harnisch, Otto, 1922
Harrington, Jode, 1284
Harrison, 31 T
Harrison, William H., 265-266, 291,
313; placed in command of west-
ern armies, 306; captures Ft.
Maiden, battle of the Thames, 310
Hartman, G. J.. 1393
Hartness. James F., 1243
Hartson, (i)scar S.. 1334
Harvey, Charles M., 448
Harvey. Charles T., 470, 473
Harwood, John, 1845
Hastings, Eurotas P., 537
Hatch, Reuben. 2129
Hatcher, William A.^ 976
Hauser, Charles A., 935
Haven, Doctor (footnote), 499
Haven, Erastus O., 487 ; sketch of,
492 ; inaugural address, 493 ; re-
signs. 496
Havens, Edwin R.. 1850
Haver Branch Railroad, 362
Hawlcy, Royal A., 1592
Hay, Jehu. 184, 227, 228; in Detroit,
627: Indian-fighter, 135; Indian
agent, 162; sent by Hamilton to
Vincennes, 176; shares Hamilton's
dungeon. 179
Hay. John. 571
Hayden, Charles H., 1732
Hayes, Clarence B., 947
Haynes, Frank J., 968
Hays. James H., 2022
Havs. John, 445, 446, 447
Heavcnrich, Max, 1787
Hecker, Colonel, member of first
Panama Canal Commission, 596
Hecker, Frank J., 1484; in Cuban war,
595 . ■ r
Heckewelder. 199 ; mvestigations ot
Mount Clemens mounds, 5, 198
Hecla Mine, 456
Hecla Mine pays its first dividend,
461
Hecla Mining Company, 456, 457
Mecox, Clyde W., 1857
Heflteran. George, 1648
Heflferan, Thomas, 1647
Helm, Captain, 177, 179, 180; sur-
renders Vincennes, 176
Henderson Company, 169
Henderson, Col. Richard. 169
Henderson. Thomas J., 1483
Hendrie. Strathearn, 599
Henes. John, 2289
Hennepin, Father Louis, 80, 194,620;
sketch of, 82
Henry, Albert M., 1072
Henry, Alexander, mining operations
all along Ontonagon River, 13
Henry. Governor, plan of conquest
laid before. 170
Henry, James, 268
Henry, Patrick, 169
Herrig, Peter, 2025
Herrington, Willet J., 2167
Hewes, Ara B.. 1950
Hewett, John B., 2200
Hewlett, Ray L., 1221
Heverman. Charles F.. 1055
Hicks, Bvron P.. 790
Hicks, Walter R., 2285
Hicks. William F., 661
Higbee, Clark E.. 1378 ■
INDEX
xli
Higginson, Maj. Henry L., 459
Hilding & Hilding, 1083
Hilding Brothers, 1083
Hilding. Charles V.. 1083
Hilding, John W., 1084
Hill, William H., 2060
Hillsd.ilc, 355
Hillsdale College, 637
Hillsdale County, 634
Hindsale, B. A.', 489
Hine, Frank W., 1489
Hine, Louis, 719
Hinman, Edward C, 1499
Hinman, Spencer D., 979
History of Michigan, in brief retro-
spect, 601
Hitchcock, Charles W., 799
Hobart, Anna M., 1183
Hobart, Henrv H., 1183
Hobbs, W. Scott, S33 '
Hodge, Frederick Webb, 167
Hodges, Charles C, 699
Hodges, Harriet P., 701
Hodges, Henry C, 1207
Hoertz, William C, 1527
Hoey, William T., 1920
Hogadone, Charles E., 1084
Hogarth, William, 1176
Holden, James S., 1136
Holdcn, Lawson C, 2194
Holden, William H., 1263
Holland founded, 531 ; fire of 1871,
525; City of, 534
Holland Immigration, 529; rehgious
and economic causes of, 529
Holland settlements, 529
Hollanders, in Allegan County, 532
HoIIoway. Sainucl, 534
Holmes, Ann S., 742
Holmes, Clarence E.. 1706
Holmes. Ensign, killed. 133
Holt. Frank, 1432
Holt, Frederick H., 1274
Holtzman, Wellington H., 900
Hood, Thomas, 1825
Hope College, 533, 5.U, 639
Hopkins, Charles C, 1940
Hopkinson, William D., 1591
Horner, John S., 344
Horr, Roswell G.. 571
Horst, Commander of the Gladwin,
killed, i.^S
Hosken, Harry E., 1051
Hosken, John H., 1051
Hosking, James, 1985
Hosmer, George S.. 147s
Houghten. Arthur T.. 1031
Houghton County. 636
Houghton, Douglass, 358, 601 ; first
report, 635 ; a commonwealth
builder in Michigan, 441 ; work and
influence, 442: death of, 444; re-
sults of explorations, 444
Houghton, Douglass (portrait), 446
Houghton. Jacob. 4O3
Houran, Mary. 1147
Houran, Michael E., 1145
Houton. John H., 1978
Hovey, Horatio N., 1266
Howard, Jacob M., 405, 408, 542 ;
career of, 545; Attorney General of
Michigan, 547 ; in United States
Senate, 547; in drafting of Thir-
teenth Amendment, 547 ; influence
on reconstruction legislation, 549;
re-elected to the Senate, 549; per-
sonal life, 550; radical republican,
550; persiinal characteristics, 551
Howard, William A., 542, 554; sketch
of, 407; part in Kansas movement,
407 ; career of, 544 : report on
Kansas troubles, 545 ; in Congress,
546
II owe, Eugene L., 1704
Howell, Hirain R., 2179
Hoyt, Jesse, 1093
Hoyt Library, 1093
Hubbard. Bela. 442; quoted as to In-
dian mounds. 7: researches con-
cerning garden beds. 8; his "Memo-
rials of Half a Century," 10, 49
Hubbard, Duncan B., 1028
Hubbell, Jay A., 571
Hudson Bay, 171
Hudson Bay Company, 43, 52
Huebner, William H., 1163
Hugg, Joseph E.. 996
Huggett. George. 1699
Hughes, I). Darwin. 544
Hughes. William. 2066
Hulbert. Edwin J., as to workings of
ancient miners. 11; discovers work
of ancient miners. 19; sketch of,
447; last years (footnote). 456
Hulbert. Edwin J. (portrait), 450
Hulbert, John 447
Hulbert land purchases, 454
Hulbert Mining Company, 456
Hull, Carlisle P., 1815
Hull, S. Eugene. 15 10
Hull, William, first governor, arrives,
267; sketch of, 269; on Detroit
plan, 273 : note of, 279 : proposes
bank of issue, 282 : and Judge
Woodward, 284; appointment a
mistake, 284: military measures of
continued by Woodward, 288; in
command of American forces near
Detroit, 293 ; ■ timid and disheart-
ened, 296; abandons attack on Fort
Maiden, 298; at surrender, 302;
court martialed, 303 ; incompetence
of, 304
Hull, William (portrait), 266
Hulst, Henry, 662
Humboldt Mine, 454
xlii
INDEX
Hume, Thomas, 1938
Hummrich, Charles H., loio
Humphrey. Watts S., 1683
Hunsaker. Walter J.. 1872
Hurd. Jarvis, 399
Hurlhut, Chauncey, 447
Hurley. Patrick, 717
Huron City, fire of 1881, 526
Huron County, 638; fire of 1871, 525
Huron Islands, 51
Huron Lake, 165
Huron River, 165; Wyandots retain
area on the. 167
Hurons, 164, 166; origin of name, 33;
attend council at Detroit, 161 ; ori-
gin and history of, 167
Huss, followers of, igS
Hussey, C. G., 445
Hussey, Erastus, 398, 399, 405
Husted. John T.. 994
Hutchings. Frank W.. 1266
Hutchins, Harry B., 867
Hutchins, Jere C. 1241
Illinois, 176
Illinois country, spies sent into, 169
Illinois River, 164
Illini)is settlements, 184
Illinois, the, 170. 174
Immigration in early '30s, 350
Indian-meal, 179
Indian of To-day, An (portrait),
112
Indian treaty of 1S36, 389
Indian treaty of 1855. 392
Indian war, 1790-1795, 162
Inthans, 171, 172, 179; first inhabi-
tants of Michigan, i ; origin and
migrations, 2 ; agriculture, 2 ; bat-
tles of, along the St. Clair and De-
troit rivers, 3 ; Cherokees, probable
builders of Ohio mounds, 4; use of
copper by, 13; folk lore, 20; lan-
guages, subtleties of, 37; Feast of
the Dead, 42; surprised settlers on
Kentucky River, 160; refused to
give Boone up. 161 ; take Girty fam-
ily as prisoners, 162; dialects, 162;
Hamilton takes medals from, 163;
hunting-grounds. 163; eloquence.
163; give up attacking the settle-
ment, 161 : respected Boone. 161 ;
children, English put axe into hands
of, 164; answer Hamilton, 164; at
Hamilton's council. 167; British
posts amidst tribes. hostile to Amer-
icans. 170; Clark feared the, 170; for
Burgoyne expedition, 172; did not
support Burgoyne at Saratoga. 174;
with Hamilton. 176; seize Vigo,
177: Shawanese. 184: under in-
fluence of British at Detroit. 185 ;
Six Nations, 18S; trade with, 185;
British leaders of, 189; western
desert British cause, 190, hostili-
ties around Fort Pitt, 200; depend-
ent on British. 207; and Britisli fur
trade, 213; British allies on Amer-
ican soil. 221: council of Six Na-
tions and Lake Tribes in 1786, 222;
warn Americans not to cross Ohio,
222 ; theory of monarchy over the
West, 225 ; cede lands at Detroit
and Michilimackinac, 241 ; Miami
campaign, 242; hostilities on Ohio
frontier, 242; commissioners to
treat with. 248; demand Ohio River
as boundary. 24S; make treaty of
Greenville. 251 ; a murder at De-
troit, 280: as British allies in war
of 1812, 285; plan attack on North-
west posts, 291 ; own Michigan
lands in 1815, 314; of the Sault
refuse treaty, 323 ; confidence in
Governor Cass, 326: title to Mich-
igan lands extinguished, 326; rela-
tions with early settlers, 330; title
to lands, 356; population in 1837,
371; trails and trade routes. 377;
character of affected by intercourse
with different nations. 379; stand-
ards of value, 381 ; treaties cover-
ing Micliigan Map. 387; of West-
ern Michigan, cede lands, 389: pay-
ments events in the early history
of Grand Rapids, 392; good debt-
ors, 393 : articles of commerce, 393 ;
part in civil war, 431 ; mission-
aries, 536; on Grand River, mis-
sions among, 535 ; population, 602 ;
present copper to Champlain, 614:
trading-house svstem abolished,
633.
Industrial House for Girls at Adrian,
640
Industrial party, 566
Industrial (Reform) School for
Boys, 642
Industries of the pioneers. 334
Ingham County, 635
Insane asylum at Kalamazoo, 637
Insane asylum for criminals at
Ionia, 640
Insurance department organized, 639
Internal improvements. 353. 361. 363;
part of national system of trans-
portation, 364
Ionia County, 635
Iosco County, 637
Ippel, Julius W.. 1906
Irish. E. M., 598
Iron County. 641
Iron mines. 466
Iron ore shipments. 637: first ship-
ment. 466 ; discovery of, 463 ; dis-
covered in Marquette County, 635;
INDEX
xliii
to Pennsylvania coal fields, 4(K;
shipments from Menominee Range,
641
Iron smelting, 466
Iron wood, 569
Iroquois, 164, 166, 167; origin of
name, 35 ; defeat Hurons with
Champlain, 35; friendly with the
English, 138; driven from Onta-
rio, 165
Irvine plans attack on Detroit, 200
Irvine. William, 200
Irwin, Arthnr J., 1045
Irwin, Tliomas C, 1502
Isabella Connty, 638
Isbell, Edward I., 1273
Isbell, Sidney M., 1201
Island Lake encampment, 580
Island of St. Joseph, 260
Isle Royale, copper mines of, 10
Ives, William, 463
Jackson, 417
Jackson convention resolutions, 405
Jackson County, 634
Jackson County Bank, 353
Jackson, Ednumd D., 10S6
Jackson, Hugh J., 2007
Jackson Iron Mines, 464
Jackson Iron Mines (view), 464
Jackson, John L., 1864
Jackson, Lansing & Saginaw Rail-
road, 521, 522
Jackson, political convention of 1854,
404
Jackson, semi-centciinial of Repub-
lican party, =70
Jacobs, mate of the Gladwin, 138
Jahnke, Ernst, 1159
James McMillan Fountain (view),
590
James River, Hamilton's march to,
as captive, 179
Jamestown, Virginia, 23
Jamet, Lieutenant, killed liy Chippe-
was, 134
January, William L., 963
Tarman, Nathan, 1661
Jay. John. 207-209
Jay's Treaty, 254
Jefferson, Thomas, 163, i(5g, 170, 179,
187-220 ; letter to General Wash-
ington, 183; letter to George Rog-
ers Clark, 183; project for the
capture of Detroit, 1S3 ; on Ham-
ilton's imprisonment, 1S4; letter of
October 25, 1780, to Washington,
185; letter to Washington, 186;
plan of government for northwest,
232; proposed Division of the
Northwest Territory (map), 234;
plan for Ordinance of 1787, 236;
Woodward's admiration of, 270
Jellis, Josepli, 1325
Jenison, Alice C., 1391
Jenison, Nelson F., 13S9
Jenks, Bela W., 981
Jenks, Charles C. 1924
Jenks, Frank D., 870
Jenks, Jeremiah, 8.i5
Jenks. Robert M.. 855
Jenks, William L., 2219
Jenks. W. S., 871
Jennings. Charles G., 1473
Jeiuiings, Edward, 447
Jennings, Roy W., 1528
Jensen, Frank A., 1367
Jerome, David H., 426-587; elected
governor, 560
Jesuit fathers, 165; come to Canada,
61?; return to Canada, 616
Jesuit Missionaries find copper, 13
Jesuit relations, 53
Jogues, Isaac, at Sault Ste. Marie,
22, 42, 165; captured, 617
Johnson, 311
Johnson, Adrian C, 2050
Johnson, A. J., 1013
Johnson, Albin, 1598
Johnson, Carl A.. 2063
Johnson, Clark M., 1336
Johnson, Guy, 189
Johnson, Guy ;\I., 1606
Jolmson, John, 223, 243
Johnson, John B., 2050
Johnson, John H., 1831
Johnson, John of Sault Ste. Marie,
Ji^4
Johnson, Matthew, selected for the
Illinois country, 152
Johnson. Mrs.. 386
Johnson. Richard M., 310
■Johnson, Stephen O., 1215
Johnson, Sir John, 189
Johnson, Sir William, 115, 165, 622:
Indian agent in the Mohawk coun-
try, 115; accompanies Jilajor Glad-
win to Detroit, 118; career and
death, 188; at Detroit, 624; ordi-
nance, 236
Johnson's Island, 368 ; plot to free
prisoners, 432
Joliet, Louis, 55, 619 ; discovers Mis-
sissippi River, 67; sketch of, 67;
reports discovery of Mississippi,
72 ; sent to Lake Superior to dis-
cover copper, 78
Joncaire, Captain, French comman-
dant on the Ohio, 114
Joncaire, Chal)ert, 26S
Jones, De Garmo, 586
Jones, Elisha, 501
Jones, Gabriel John. 169
Jones, James J., 1784
Jones. John F., 1975
Jones, Lewis H., 775
xliv
INDEX
Jones, Richard, 1921
Jones, Robert, 262
Jones, \\ illiam T., 1600
Joslyn, Lee E., 872
Joy, Henry B., 652
Joy, James F., 470, 541, 649; war
leader in House, 412; opposes
Chandler, 424; last political appear-
ance, 559
Joy, James F. (portrait), 424
Joy, Richard P., 651
"Judge Steere's Island" (view), 462
Judkins, J. Byron, 680
Kalamazoo. 339, 426, 534; garden
beds near, 8; first railroad, 355;
Land District, 360
Kalamazoo in 1832 (view), 361
Kalamazoo College, 637
Kalamazoo County, 634
Kalamazoo River improvement pro-
posed, 362: trading post, 388
Kalamazoo State Hospital, 636
Kalkaska County, 639
Kallendar, trader, 113
Kane, Robert \\'.. 1604
Kansas troubles, 400
Karpus, George W., 2133
Karshner. Clyde F.. 1597
Kaskaskia, 169, 176, 180, 184; Clark
terrifies inhabitants at, 170; Vigo
at, 177
Kaskaskia Indian murdered Pontiac,
'42
Kavanaugh, William P., 1769
Kay, E. Earl, 889
Kay, Edward G., 889
Kay, William J., 793
Kean. John J., 2041
Keebler. J. George. 1789
Keelcr, Conrad, 1026
Keeley, James J., 1300
Keeling. Ralph T.. 1015
Kelly, John F., 1362
Kemp, John N.. 2016
Kennebec, 164
Kennedy. George N., 781
Kent County. 388. 635
Kentucky. 207 ; opened to settlers,
169: Clark ordered to defend. 170
Kentucky. County of. 169
Kersten. Edwin. 1896
Keweenaw Bay. 51, 618
Keweenaw Bay Canal, 475
Keweenaw County, 638
Keweenaw Point, 445
Keyes. Leslie W., 1633
Kilapous. 184
King, James, 463
King, Louis B., 1832
King, Mabel B., 1509
King, Robert W.. 1832
King, Eufus, 232, 236
King of France, the old father of the
Indians, 171
Kinnane, John E.. 2221
Kinne. Edward D., 784
Kinnell, Joseph, 734
Kinnell, Lillie J.. 735
Kinney. Henry J.. 733
Kinsey. William H., 1519
Kirby. Frank E.. 595. 1472
Kirby, Stephen R.. 1470
Kirk, British Admiral captures Que-
bec. 36
Kirkby. Elmer. 801
Kirschman. Robert H., 1554
Kirtland. C. \\'., 1279
Klise. Albert B., 2019
Klumpp, William C, 2251
Klumpp, Wm. F. J., 2252
Knapp, Mark S., 1359
Knapp. Samuel O., discovers work of
ancient miners, 12
Knappen. Loyal E.. 2268
Knight. Stephen H., 1724
Kniskern. Philip W., 141 1
Krause, Oscar R., 1878
Knhn, Franz C. 1957
Kuhn, John, 1024
Kurntz. Richard F., 1236
L'Anse. 54: Indian settlement. 537
L'Arbre (Troche. 166, 174; Catholic
schools. 370; Indian mission, 536
Labadie House (view), 304
La Bay, Fort, Jonathan Carver ar-
rives at, 144
Labor strikes in 1894, 569
Lacey, Edward S., 571
La (iorne. Chevalier St. Luc la, 174;
defeated at Niagara, 115
Ladd, Sanford W.. 1440
La Forest. 80. 81. 104
La Framboise, Madame, 388
La Framboise, Monsieur and Mad-
ame, 386
LaFrance, Fred, 2189
La Hontan, on Detroit River, 89
Laing. John B.. 752
La Jaunay. Father, missionary at
Michilimackinac, 133
Lake Champlain, 35
Lake commerce in 1905, 475
Lake County. 639
Lake Erie. Hamilton traverses, 176
Lake Fannie Hoe. 445
Lake Freighter. 443
Lake Freighter of 1905 (view), 472
Lake Huron, discoverer of, 34
Lake Indians. 171, 173; called to
council. 172
Lake Marine disasters. 476
Lake Michigan, 164, 166 ; discovered,
616
Lake Ontario discovered by Brule, 34
INDEX
dv
Lake, Robert, 1734
Lake St. Clair, 83
Lake Simcoe, Huron location near,
34
Lake Superior, 170, 173, 180; Folk
lore of, 22\ first accounts of, 35;
first map of, 36; as seen by expedi-
tion of 1820, 325; first American
vessel on, 470; first steamer on,
470; fleet in 1846, 470
Lake Transportation, 364; introduc-
tion of steamboats, 321
Lake Winnipeg, 214
Lalemant, Jerome, 54 ; compares In-
dian languages to Latin and Greek,
il
Lampman, Frank R., 13 19
Landon, Herbert W., 20g8
Land offices in 1837, 360
Land Sales in 1830, 360
Land speculation. 266
Lands of Lower Peninsula, charac-
ter of, 357, 358
Langlade. Augustin, allegiance to
Great Britain, 173
Langlade, Charles de, 172, 386; dis-
patched by Celoron to dislodge
English traders, 113; at Braddock's
defeat. 114; at fall of Quebec, 116;
in Pofitiac war, 134; a leader of
Indians, 172: character and career
of, 172; on St. Lawrence. 172; or-
dered to annoy rebels, 172; alle-
giance to Great Britain, 173
Lanman, Charles H., 328
Lansing, 581, 602; in war times, 412;
selected as capital, 413 (footnote) ;
fire of 1871, 525
Lapeer County, 633; fire of i88r, 526
La Pointe, 537 ; Marquette at, 66
Larsen, Louis, 1837
La Salle, Rene Robert Cavelier, sieur
de, 47, 78, 80, 194, 617, 620; voyage
of, in Griffon, 82; arrives in Can-
ada, 618
Last Indian Encampment at Sault
Ste Marie, Fort Brady (view), 604
Lathrop. Kirke, 1793
Laut, Agnes C, as to Radisson ex-
ploration 44
Law, financial trouble of, 109
Lawrence, Charles A., 2039
Law School of LTniversity of Mich-
igan, 507
Lawson, Edward M., 200S
Lawson, Norman B., 171 1
Lawyers, prominent at Detroit. 563
Le Caron, Father, 34
Le Due, 174
Lee, Francis J., 1861
Lee, Gilbert W.. 1080
Lee, John F., 973
Lee, Russell A., 1673
Leelanau County, 638
Letts, James P., 2158
Leever, Fred O., 805
Le Favour, Gen. Heber, 440
Le Fevre, George L., 1718
Lefevre, Peter P., 371
Legislature, advocates emancipation
of slaves, 421
Legislature of 1S61, 411
Legislature of 1891, 566
Legrand, Gabriel, 159
Le Grand Sable, 325
Leibrand, Gottlob C, 1961
Leidy, Clarence F., 1602
Leidy, Paul A., 942
Leisen, Louis J., 2263
Lejeune, Victor J., 1991
Leland, Henry M., 1447
Leland, Wilfred C, 1983
Le Alercier tells of copper boulder, 29
Lemke, Alexander M., 1200
Le Moyne, Charles, 108
Lenawee County, 633
L'Enfant, Peter Charles, writings of,
45 ; part in Detroit plan, 274
Leonard, Frank E., 1382
Leonard, Orvice R., 1776
Lernoult, Capt. Richard B., 175, 19a,
196 : stationed at Detroit, 162
Le Shambre, Louis, 330
Leslie, Lieutenant. 134
Leszczynski, Joseph J., 765
■Leverenz, Louis, 1250
Lewis Cass's Birthplace (view), 329
Lewis Cass Home (view), 316
Lewis, Charles, 1297
Lewis, Charles B. ("M Quad"), 553
Lewis, Elizabeth H.. 1299
Lewis, George E., 1235
Lewis, Rollie L., 1656
Lichtenau, 198
Liggett School, 640
Lightner, Clarence A., 502
Liguest. Pierre Laclede, 193
Lillie, Charles H., 1081
Lincoln, Benjamin. 248
Lincoln, Charles P., 418
Linn. Col. William, 171
Lintot. Captain. 186
Lipinski, Alexander. 718
Liquor, sale of to Indians, 98
Liquor traffic, local option, 566
Litchfield, Byron .\., 771
Literature in Michigan, 605
Little Bear, 280
Little Turtle. 250; at Treaty of
Greenville. 252
Livingstone Channel. 475
Livingstone County. 634
Livingstone. Robert, determines to
seize the Detroit region, 92
Livingstone, William, 607
Local option law, 566
xh
INDEX
Lochhead, Oscar F.. 787
Lockwood, Stephen A., 902
Lockwood, T. W., 425
Loder, Benjamin F., I2ig
Loeser, Hugo C, 941
Logan, 162
Lombard, James A., 2037
London, 174
Longfellow, his folk lore tales of
Mackinac Island, 22
Longiieuil, French commandant at
Detroit, 167
Loomis Battery of light artillery, rec-
ord of, 429
Loomis, Cyrus O., 429
Loomis, Emma G., 1104
Loomis. Peter B., 1102
Loree, Richard J., 773
Lothrop, Cyrus E., 597, 599
Lothrop, George Van 2Sless, 416, 544,
561; sketch of, 562; eminence in
Michigan bar, 562; opponent of Re-
publican party, 564
Loud, George A., 2293
Loudoun, Earl of, attempted to cap-
ture Louisburg. 115
Louis XIV grants charter for De-
troit, 96; relations of, to New
I-'rance. 75
Louisville, 171
Lowe, Nathan C, 1286
Lower Peninsula, physical character-
istics, 357
Lowery, Edward P., 2075
Luby, Thomas L., 912
Luce County, 641
Luce. Cyrus G., 561, 565; elected gov-
ernor, 561 ; administration, 566
Ludington, 522
Luetjoliann, John C. 1556
Lumber business from 1865 to 1893,
522
Lumbering, 512-528. 601 ; early in-
dustry along the St. Clair, 277 ; Up-
per Peninsula. 513; at Grand River.
513; at Alennminee. 513; at Spring
Lake, 513; at Marinette, 514; im-
proved tools in, 515; operations of
David Ward. 521 ; on headwaters
of Au Sable and Manistee rivers,
521; on the Manistee River, 522;
hardwood timber, 522; financial ups
and downs, 522; railroads, 522;
panic of 1893. 523 ; "golden age" of,
524; forest fires, 524
Lumbermen on Grand River, 513
Lumber woods of L^pper Peninsula,
356
Lussiere. La Mothe de. So
Luton. George. 1840
Lyman, Edward S., 1377
Lyon, Lucius, 338, 343, 441, 444. 537.
634; territorial delegate, 339; sketch
of, 341
Lyons, 339
Lyons, George W., 2150
Lyster, Henry F., 2238
Lyster, Henry L.. 2241
Lyster, \\ illiam N.. 2236
Maccodabinese, William, 370
MacGarwin, James, vs. James Wil-
son. 280
Mack, Colonel, 301
Mackay, Angus G., 1571
MacKenzie, Robert G., 1821
Mackenzie, Wellie S., 2044
Mackinac. 171, 260, 312, 323, 360, 606,
609. 629, 630, folk lore of, 20;
during early years of Revolution,
171 ; to be retained by British, 212;
paroled garrison goes to Detroit,
296; capture of, 296, 386; fall of,
result of. 299; in War of 1812, 311 ;
historic importance of, 312; in 1818,
394 ; massacre at, 624.
Mackinac Company, 290
Mackinac Indians, 622
Mackinac Island, 642; Indians at, 66;
national and state park, 312; com-
missioners of. 312; headqiiarters of
American Fur Company, 384 ; fort
on, 626
Mackinac steam ferry, 478
Mackinac. Straits of, discovered, 39
MacKinnon. Hector D., 1013
MacKinnon. John D., loii
MacMillan. Neal. 1631
Macomb County, 632
Macomb. Gen. Alexander, 319
Magel, pilmore J., 2088
Mailer, John P., 1242
Main, brederick W., 1181
Main. John T., 1181
Maine. 164
Maines, Harrison W., 2083
Maino. Christopher K., 1306
Maino. George T., 1249
Maino, Harry, 1248
Maiden. 255
Maloney, \Villiam H., 1229
Malow. William P.. 1958
Alanchester, 417
Manclicster, William C, 1285
Alandell, Henry A.. 1405
Mange. David G.. 1844
Manistee. 525; trading-posts. 386;
lumbering, 522
Manistee County. 637; fire of 1871,
5-'5
Manitou, 173
Manitoulin Islands. 166
Manitoulins. 166
Mann. Capt. Gother. 242
Mann. Charles H., 854
INDEX
xlvii
Manwaring, J. G. R., 1456
Manufactories in 1837, 368
Map, 32
Mapes, Carl E., 1994
Maras, 172
Marietta, 239
Marinette, founding of, 514
Markey, Daniel P., 1463
Markliam, Clarence K., 1176
Marquette County, 636
Alarquette, Father James, 59, 65, 601,
619; hears of Mississippi River, 66;
death of, 68; at Green Bay Mission,
67; a portrait of, 67; with Joliet
discovers Mississippi River, 67;
statues of, 69; burial of, 71; mis-
sion, 166; arrives in Canada, 618.
Marquette, first Catholic Bishop of,
537; beginning of, 466
Marquette Iron Company, 466
Mars, Thomas, 570
Marsac, Daniel, 535
Marsac, Octavius A., 730
Marsh, Charles W., 997
Marshall, 398, 417
Marston, George A., 798
Martin. James B., 1614
Martindale, Frederick C, 1074
Martius. Campus, 422
Maryland, 229
Mascoutins make war on Detroit,
104
Mason County, 637
Mason, Arthur C, 21 13
Mason, George, 170
Alason, George D., 1785
Mason, John T.. 341, 634
Mason, Gov. Stevens T.. 334, 343.
353, 442, 468, 634 ; in conflict with
Ohio, 334; deposed, 336; sketch of,
341
Mason, Stevens T. (portrait), 33s
Mason. William FL, 119S
Alassigiash, chief of the Chippewa
nation, 153
Matavit, Father, 171
Mather. Frank FL. 1324
Mathews, F.dwin F., 1671
Mattawan River, 34
Matthews, George A., 1514
Matzen, Charles G., 1097
Maumee, Hamilton at, 176
May, Charles S., 426
May. Gustavus. 1366
Alaybury. William C, 572
Maynard, Qeacon Ezra, 331
McAlvay, Aaron V., 2276
AicArthur. General, 296, 303
McArthur, G. Elmer, 2131
McCaren, James, 884
McCarthy, Mrs., daughter of Peter
Audrain, 301
McClelland, Robert, 562; "Free-Soil
AicClelland," 401
McColl. James, 2128
AlcColl. Jay R.. 1457
McCormick, John N., 2291
McCoy, Isaac, 535; at Carey station,
536
McCreery, teuton R., ^2153
McCron. William J., 1912
INIcCulloch, Fl. D., 376
McDonald, hVancis T., 1986
McDonald, Harry, 2054
McDonald, John A., 710
McDonell. John, 349
McDougall, Captain, pleads for
peace, 132
McDougall. George, 268
McDougall. Lieut. George, attends
council, 131 ; escape to the fort,
135
Mci^ate, Robert, looi
McGann, F'rancis T., 1049
McGill, James, 216
McGuffin, John G., 797
McGurrin, William T., 598
McHugh, Philip A., 1082
Mcintosh, Gen. Lachlin, 191, 200
McKee. Alexander, 162, 163, 196, 241,
249. 251 ; Kentucky expedition, 197;
farm at the Falls of the Miami,
250
McKcighan, David W., 201 1
AlcKenna, Oscar W., 1491
McKim, Charles F., 593
McKinstry, David C, 349, 586
McKnight. Sheldon, 470
McLaughlin. John A., 900
McLean, Angus, 1053
McLean. Mark. 1245
McMeekin. James \\'., 1536
McMillan. Herman I., 2201
Mc.\lillan. James, 312, 561, 692 ; as
railroad builder, 478; first politi-
cal mention, 560; political career,
584; sketch of, 587; in U. S. Sen-
ate, 5.'^9; as chairman of the Com-
mittee on the District of Colum-
bia, 591 : Pres. Taft's estimate of
work of improvement at Washing-
ton, 592
McMillan, James (portrait), 588
McMillan, James. Fountain (view),
590
McMillan Park, 592
McMillan, Philip H., 694
McMillan. William. 92, 589
}ilcMcirran. Henry, 1559
Mc.Mullen, Bartlett H., 961
McNabb, John, 1037
McNiel, Melvin L., 915
McPherson, Alexander, 1477
McPherson, William, 571
:\lcQuillan, Mary W.. 2173
xlviii
INDEX
McVean, James J., 2045
Meads, Alfred, 17
Mecosta County, 638
ISleech, Frederick J., 2096
Mehlman, August, 599
Meigs, Return Jonathan, 240, 314
Melchers. Gari, painter, 605
Meldrum, Charles H., 1009
Meldrum, George, 268
]\Iellen, Henrv, 463
Mellen, Hugh R., 1680
Meilen, R. S., 463
Mellish, Charles F., 1412
Meloche, Madame, 126
Meloche. M., Captain McDougall and
Captain Campbell sent under guard
to house of, 132
Melze. August C, 1918
Menard, Father Rene, 22; sketch of,
54; on Lake Superior, 54; first
martyr of the Ottawa Mission, 54;
begins church among the Ottawas,
57
Menominee County, 638
Menominee Indians, 174; made pris-
oners of the British force, 144
Menominee, lumber center, 513
Meredith, Howard G., 786
Merc Uouce, name given to Lake
Huron, 34
Merrill, Charles, 516; 586
Merrill Family of Saginaw, The. ugi
Merrill. Herbert W., 1194
Merrill, William, 1193
Metcalf, Abraham T., 1801
Mexican war, 636
Mianiis, 160, 167
Miami towns, destruction of. 204
Michigan, early settlements in, in;
Chippewas sold lands in. 165 ;
Southern. Potawatomi tribe in.
165; Sauks, Potawatomi and Fork
tribe driven from, 166; Otta-
was and Chippewas in, 167;
Spain's part in, 194; claimed by
Spain in 1782, 195: Moravian set-
tlements, 199 ; claims of Massa-
chusetts. 229 : Posts, surrendered
by the English, 241 : early land
speculation. 262; plot for biiying
lower peninsula, 262: a political
unit, 262; an entity before con-
gress, 263; becomes county of
Wayne. 266; in general assembly
of Xortbvvest Territory, 268; plan
of territorial government. 277;
high cost of living in territory.
281 ; old territorial bank, 283 ; first
territorial and state capitol. 284:
in the war of 181 2, 290; restored
to U. S. by Perry's victory. 310:
Cass appointed governor, 313;
grants to soldiers of war of 1812,
314; lands returned to public do-
main, 314; territorial university,
317; first newspaper, 319; rapid
immigration beginning in 1825,
328; pioneer experiences in home
making, 328; exploring Lake Su-
perior region in 1820, 322 ; land
surveys, 326; beginning of self-
government, 327; territorial dele-
gates, 332 ; progress under Goy.
Cass, 3is ; the Toledo war, 334 ;
acquires Upper Peninsula by To-
ledo war, 336; its successive
lioundaries. 336; first salt wells,
339 : first state officers, 343 ; state-
hood movement, 343 ; state offi-
cials denied admission to con-
gress. 345 ; admitted to union, 349 ;
in boom period of '30s, 349; wild-
cat banking, 350; provides for inter-
nal improvements, 353 ; experience
in railroad building, 355 ; a state,
356; surveys of, 358; wild animals,
358; as a salt state, 360; internal
improvement fund, 363; manufac-
turing statistics in 1837, 368; suc-
cessive Catholic jurisdictions. 369;
foreign elements in 1837, 371 ; pop-
ulation in 1810 and 1837, 371 ;
routes of communication with east,
372 ; part in anti-slavery move-
ment, 39O; the anti-slavery party,
401 ; claim as birthplace of Repub-
lican party, 405; election of U. S.
senator in 1857, 408; in War of
Secession, 411; state capital, 412;
militia in 1861. 413; sends no dele-
gate to "Peace Congress" of 1861.
415; sends first western regiment
to Washington, 417; troops first
to cross Potomac, 418; leaders in
civil war, 419 et seq; in war
times, 422; opposition to Lincoln
administration. 426; review of
troops after war, 438; flags. 440;
sailors, in civil war (footnote),
440 ; soldiers in civil war ( foot-
note), 440; resources of, 441 ; early
scientists. 442 ; iron industry, 463 ;
most important public improve-
ment, 475 : waterways in trust for
the nation. 476: closer political and
commercial relations between L'p-
per and Lower Peninsu'as, 478; tlie
University, 479; statutes, compiled
by Judge Cooley, 506; lumber in-
dustry, 512 et seq: lumber barons
from New England, 524; western
settlements, 524 : forest fire of
1881, 526; Hollanders settle in
west. ^29; debt in 1865. 540: politi-
cal affairs, 1865-1897, 540: election
nf U. S. Senator in 1871, 542;
INDEX
xlix
Democratic party in control 1841-
1854, $6^ : bonded debt paid, 565 ;
semi-centennial of statehood, 565;
first merit for educational system,
566; legislature of 1891, 566; dis-
trict system of choosing presiden-
tial electors, 56" ; finances in 1893,
568; labor strikes, 569; representa-
tives in congress, 571 ; Pingree ad-
ministration, S7^'■ state finances,
580; political retrospect, 584; first
capilol in Detroit, 586; in the Cu-
ban war, 594 : preparation for the
Cuban war, 597 ; quota for Cuban
war, 598 ; of today, 601 ; shore
line, 602; in art, 605; literature,
605 ; motto en Great Seal, 609 ;
first permanent settlement in, 619 i
slaves in, 630; in Civil war, 638;
state capitol completed, 640
Michigan Agricultural College, 6,3"
Michigan Asylum for Insane Crimi-
nals, 641
Michigan Car Company, 589
Michigan Cavalry Brigade. 433
Michigan Central, 355 ; in operation
to Ypsilanti, 362; sold, 636; opened
to Chicago, 636
Michigan Central Railroad in 1837
(view), 348
Michigan Chronology, 611 et seq
Michigan College of Mines, 641
Michigan Employment Institution
for the Blind, 642
Michigan Farm Colony for Epilep-
tics, 643
Michigan Home for Feeble Minded
and Epileptic, 642
Michigan men in cabinet positions,
56-'.
Michigan Military Academy. 640
Michigan name changed to the Wol-
verine, 368
!\Iichigan National Guard in 1898,
597
Alichigan Naval Reserves in Cuban
War, 599 ^
Michigan Pioneer and Historical So-
ciety organized, 640
Michigan Railroad Commission or-
ganized, 643
Michigan Reserves, 507
Michigan Soldiers' Home, 641
Michigan Soldiers' Taljlet at Univer-
sity (view"), 486
MichiQan Southern Railroad opened
to Chicago, 636
Michigan Territory, Hull's adminis-
tration, 286; situation preceding
1812, described by Woodward, 289;
reoccupied by British, 290; in 1815,
V4 ^ „
Michigan Territory, T805 (map), 285
Michigan Territory in 1834 (t^p)!
320
Michilimackinac, 165, 172, 173, 215,
220. 226, 231, 258; strategic point
for fur trade, 89 ; Langlade leads
flotilla from, 174; arrival of Pat-
rick Sinclair, 192; importance in
British fur trade, 214; Indians
cede land, 241; Sinclair's fort, 242;
inhabitants address British com-
mandant; surrender to Americans,
257 ; headquarters for fur traders,
290
Michilimackinac County, 632
Michilimackinac Indians, 171
.Midland, 517
.Midland County, 636
Mihlethaler, Darius, 989
Milezewski, Martin, 2180
"Military Board steal," 581
Military land in Northwest Terri-
tory, 231
Military road through Black Swamp,
Millar, Frank E., 1578
Millard, Orson, 2173
Miller, Jolm. in battle of Detroit, 301
Aliller, Jolin L., 1480
Miller, Lieutenant Colonel, 299
Miller. Sidney D.. 1122
Miller. Sidney T., 1124
Miller. William A. C, 1109
Millis, Frank L., 880
Mills, among the pioneers, 330
Mills. De H.. 2176
Mills, Edward P., 1368
Milwaukee, 174; Potawatomi tribe at,
i6s
Miner Act, 567
Miner Law, 567, 642
Mineral development in Upper Pe-
ninsula, 441
Minerals of L'pper Peninsula, 357
Mingoes. 163
Mining development, 601
Minty, R. H. G.. 440
Mironiuk. Hubert, 1278
Missaukee County, 633
Mississaguas or Chippewas murdered
Sinclair's servant, 153
Mississippi River, 163. 164, 170; Lake
Indians on botli sides, 171 : navi-
gation of. 252; known to Allouez,
6$ : results of the discovery of, 74
Mississippi valley, under Spanish
control, 194
Missouri, 176
IMissouri Compromise repealed, 403
Mitchell. Frank A., 1583
Mitts. Sylvanus S.. IT94
Mohawk. 164; attend council at De-
troit, i6r
^lohawk Valley, 189
1
INDEX
Money and banking in '30s, 350; in
Michigan territory, 282
Money, forms of, among Indians,
381
Mongaugon, 299
Monighan, reveals Pontiac plot to
Capt. Canipliell, 127
Monroe, 233, J94 306; plan for Ordi-
nance of 17S7, 236; honored by
Gen. Custer, 433 ; achievements,
433
Monroe County. 362, 631
Monroe. Edward R., 735
Montcalm, capture of, 115; captures
Fort William Henry, 115; at Fort
George, 173
Montcalm County. 636
Monteith. John T., 317
Monteith. Thomas \V., 939
Montgomery. General. conducted
siege of Montreal, 157
Montmorency County, 635
Montour, trader, 113
Montreal, 32. 172; recovered by Brit-
ish, 172; surrender of, 173; Haldi-
mand in command at, 189
Monument erected by the state of
Michigan as a memorial of the
River Raisin Massacre (view), 292
Moon, Darius B., 1717
Moore, i6g
Moore, Allyn K., 2125
Moore, Andrew L., 796
Moore, Charles, 2296
Moore. Charles E., 1385
Moore, Franklin. 470
Moore, George, 1226
Moore. Josepli B.. 1735
Moore, J. H.. 1087
Moore, William A., 13 13
Moore. William V.. 1316
Moravian brotherhood. 198
Moravian Indians. 197
Moravian massacre in Ohio, 199, 204;
importance of, 200
Moravian missionaries, 317
Morden. Charles B., 755
Morden. Esli T., 1924
Morden. Marshall R.. 1923
Morehouse, Harmon E., 1220
Morgan. Birnie J., 1640
Morgan, George, agent, 163
Morgan. Theron B.. 1642
Morgan's Forty. 404
Morgans. William H., 2134
Mormon Colony , 374 ; on Beaver
Island, 374
Morrice. Francis G., 1616
Morrice, William G., 1615
Morris. Chester E., 1596
Morris. George S.. 501
Morris, messenger from Governor
Jefferson, 180
Morris, William H., 2018
Morrow, Henrj' M., 422
Morrow, Maj. Gen. Henry A., 440
Morton, Edward G., 426
Morton, Henry E., 1451
Morton, J. Stanlev, 1953
Mott. Charles S., 1817
Mouet de Maras, 172
Mouet. Pierre, 172
Mound-builders, the, 4, 29
^Mountain, William W., 1867
Mount Clemens, igg, 362, 317
Mount Desert, Cadillac at, 90
Moutons. appeared at Detroit, 160
Moynes. James A., 1839
Muir. Major, 299
Municipal ownership of public utili-
ties, advocated by Gov. Pingree,
579
Munroe, Thomas, 861
Munroe. William, 861
Munshaw. Glen R., 1295
Murphy, John F., 11 16
Murphy, Michael J., 965
Murphy, Timothy J., 1512
Murray. Daniel E., 789
Murray. Marl T., 1707
Murray, Michael F., 121 1
Muskegon. 534
Muskegon County, 638
Muskegon trading-posts, 386
Muskingum massacre of Moravians,
199
Musselman, Amos S., 1542
Mustard, James H., 1805
Xaegely, Henry E., 1560
Nank, William F., 1050
Xash. Willard J., 1981
Xation of the Fork, 165
Naval forces on Great Lakes, 367
Navarre, Francis, 268
Navarre House. 307, 308
Navarre House, River Raisin (view).
Navigable rivers, 602
Navigation on Lake Erie. 632 ; first
steamboat on Lake Michigan, 632;
first steamboat on the upper lakes,
632
Neal. Max E.. 1584
Xecslev. Frederick P., 1317
Xeill. E. D.. 44
Nelson Brothers Company, 1919
Nelson, Clarence A.. 1920
Nelson, Clinton J., 1920
Nelson. Harry B., 1919
Nelson. P. Fred. 1395
Nettleton. James B., 1454
Neuter Nation, 166; allies of the Iro-
quois. 165
Neville, Captain, Virginian comman-
dant. 163
INDEX
Neville, John, 200
Newall, John W., 1350
New Amsterdam, 171
Newaygo County, 636
Newherry, John S., 571, 589, 673
Newberry, John S. II, 675
Newberry, Truman H., 597, 599
New England Emigrants Aid So-
ciety, 407
New France, development of, 76
New Gnadenhutten, 317
New Orleans, 180
Newport (Marine City), 516
Newton, Mary, 162
New York, Central, 164; Iroquois
reservations in, 164
New York City, De Peyster was born,
171
Neyeon, M., French commandant at
Fort Chartres, 139
Niagara, 32, 215; Governor Shirley's
expedition against. 115; Colonel
Bolton at. 175
Niagara Falls, age of, 3
Niagara, Fort, trips to, for supplies
and ammunition, 138
NichoUs, George A., 1310
Nichols, George E., 2267
Nichols, John C, 1381
Nichols, John T., 1781
Nicolet, John, 165, 601 ; sketch of, 38;
reaches Fox River, 40 ; meets Green
Bay Indians, 39; passes through
Straits of Mackinac, 39 ; family of,
41 ; death of, 41 ; exploration, 616
Niedzielski, Peter, 718
Niles, 194, 535
Nipissing, Lake, 174
Noble, Charles W., 479
Noble, Herbert W., 1144
Nolan, John E., 1009
Nolan. Thomas. 278
Noonday, Chief, 536
Norman Fishermen, 613
Norse tales, similarity of, with Indian
folk lore, 26
North Dakota, 165
Northern Railroad, 3C2
Northern State Normal School, 642
Northwest, Girty brothers" part in
history of, 162; news of conquest
spread through, 171 ; Clark's con-
quest of, 180 ; peace delayed after
1783, 205; conditions after Revolu-
tion, 207 ; settlement of national
boundaries, 207 ; boundary propos-
als of 1783, 211; British refuse to
surrender posts, 214: Ohio River
proposed as Indian boundary, 223 ;
colonial claims in. 229; American
government in, 229 ; logical outlet
of trade through St. Lawrence,
226; plan for division into states.
232; St. Clair's expedition, 244; St.
Clair's defeat, 246; diplomatic ef-
forts for adjustment of British and
American differences, 252; surren-
der of posts and fur trade, 260;
early politics, 266; English traders
after 17O3, 381
North-West Company, 214, 216, 220,
260, 382, 468; controlling influence
in Great Lakes region, 213
North West passage, struggles to find,
36
Northwest Territory, land ordmance,
233; the Ohio Co.'s purchase, 235;
government of, 235; law for the
sale of lands, 237 ; officers of, 237 ;
breaks up into political divisions,
263 : divided. 266 ; ordinance. 627
Northwestern boundary of Michigan,
356
Northwestern posts, list of (foot-
note). 220; Jefferson's negotiations
for surrender of. 220; effect of
British refusal to surrender, 224
Norvell. John. 343, 442, 468, 634, 1287
Norvell, Walter G., 1290
Norway pine, 517
Nouvel, Father, 71
Nufer, James J.. 1453
Oakland County. 632
Oakland County Bank, 352
O'Brien, Edward J.. 1674
O'Brien. Thomas J., 571, 2292
O'Dell's Mill, 399
Odle. Russell B.. 2049
O'Donnell. James. 570. 572, 2294
Ogemaw County, 635 ; fire of 1881,
526
Ohio Company, 233. 236; land grant,
237; Boston meeting of directors,
238: first settlement, 238
Ohio country, Washington's plan for
penetrating Allegheny barrier. 226
Ohio frontier. Indian hostilities. 242
Ohio. Indian mounds in. 4
Ohio Land Company. 622
Ohio region, rapid settlement from
East. 225
Ohio River. 170, 171, 175; as Indian
boundarv, 223 ; southern boundary,
248
Ohio 'Valley, Wyandots in, 167
Ohio, Wyandots settle in. 167
Oiibwas, 114. 165
O'Keefe. Thomas B., 1723
Oklahoma, Pntawatomi tribe in, 166
Old Northwest a national heritage,
229
Old State Capitol (view), 340
Oliver, Dwight I.. 1014
Olivet College. 637
Olmsted. Frederick L.. 593
Hi
INDEX
OIney, Edward. 500
Olson. Raymond G., 1406
Oneida, 164
OXeil. Charles H., 2161
O'Neil, Charles P., loSg
Onondagas, 164
Ontario, 164; Iroquois driven from,
165 ; Hurons at, 167 ; DePeyster
crosses the, 171 ; ship-of-war, 171
Ontonagon, 451
Ontonagon Boulder. 445
Ontonagon Copper Bouider, 13 ; when
discovered, 14; in the National
Museum, 16
Ontonagon Copper Boulder in Na-
tional Museum (view), i6
Ontonagon Copper Boulders, 63
Ontonagon copper, region of, 29
Ontonagon County, 636
Oosting, Jacob, 1401
O. Post, 170
Oppenheimer. Harry E., 1892
Orchards, early. 36a
Ord. General, 438; government min-
eral agent, 17
Ordinance of 1787, 229, 230, 235 ; a
political growth. 236
Ore-carrier (view), 455
Ore traffic, 476
Oriskany, i8g
Orontony, chief of Hurons, 167;
death of, 167
Orr, Benjamin. 1244
Orr, Herbert P.. 1815
Osborn, Chase S., governor, 643, 2294
Osborn, Josiah, 399
Osborne, Dorhnd C, 1664
Osceola County, 639
Oscoda County, 635
Ostrander, Russell C, 2277
Oswegatchie, 215
Oswego. 215: the key to Canada, 212
Otsego County, 640
Otsego Lake. 519, 522
Ottawa County, fire of 1871, 525
Ottawa mission. 535
Ottawa River, the. 174
Ottawa River Road, 34
Ottawas, 114. 153. 164-166. 172. 174.
371. 392; allies of the French. 166;
in Huron plot to destroy Detroit,
167 ; formerl}- Algonquins. 33 ;
friends of Langlade. 134; and Chip-
pewas divided the country. 144; at-
tend council at Detroit, 161 ; origin
of and history, 166
Ottaway, Elmer J., 957
Otto, Herbert A., 2130
Otto, Walter E.. 1849
Outagamies. folk lore of, 27
Ow-en, Arthur E.. 1773
Owen. John. 416. 470
Owosso, 413
Oxford University, 44
Page, Lorin ^L. 2001
Palmer, A. B., 487
Palmer, Edward L., 1148
Palmer, Thomas W., 480, 560; esti-
mate of Doctor Angell (footnote),
504; address, 542; sketch of, 586;
elected to U. S. Senate, 587
Palmer, Thomas W. (portrait), 585
Palms. Charles L., 676
Palms, Francis, 516, 518; lumberman,
5-'4
Palmer, Frank A., 1158
Palmer. Frank E.. 1247
Panic of 1893, 5^3. 573
Parent's Creek, afterwards called
Bloody Run, 138; Pontiac's camp
near, 134
Park. Cecil E., 1819
Parker, Burton, 1426
Parker, Dayton, 1428
Parker, Delos L.. 599
Parker, George \V., 1777
Parker, Hugh W., 2186
Parker, Jesse O., 930
Parker. Walter P., 599
Parkhill, James, 2069
Parkman, 86
Parmeter, Edward L., 8og
Parr. Will W.. 2142
Parris, Charles T., 896
Parris, George W., 896
Parrish, Charles A.. 1160
Parsons. Samuel Holden, 235, 237 ;
sketch of, 240
Patch, Charles. 1618
Pattengill, Albert H., 501
Pattengill, Henry R.. 2052
Patterson. Charles H., 2210
Patterson, John H., 801
Patterson, Richard. 262
Patterson, Samuel J.. 1023
Patton. John. Jr.. political career, 587
Paul, James Kirk, founder of On-
tonagon, T7
Pauli, Frank M., 1234
Paully, Ensign, 139; escapes from In-
dians, 133
Pealer, R. R . 2229
Pear trees at Detroit, 267
Pearsall, Perley W., 2102
Pearson, Richard, 763
Peck, Cecil C, 2047
Peck. George, 1092
Peck, George W., 427, 553
Peck, Oscar W., 911
Peck, William, 1652
Peckham, Ralph P., 2086
Pehrson, John, 1071
Pelletier, Louis J., T911
Peltier. Mr., eye-witness of the mas-
sacre at Bloody Run. 126
Pengelly. John B.. 1518
Pensacola. 179, 189
INDEX
liii
Pennsylvania, Ottawas in, 166; Mc-
Kee a native of, 163
Pennsylvanians, 162
People vs. Salem, 563
Pepin, Francis, 330
Pepper, Samuel D., 1852
Pepys, Samuel, obtains Radisson's
manuscripts, 44
Pcrkett, Louis F., 1609
Perkins. Roy C, 2166
Perrigo, George A., 945
Perrigo, Hayes, 947
Perrot, Nicholas, 74, 619; arranges
meeting of Indians at Sault Ste.
Marie, 78
Perry, 311
Perry, George R., go8
Perry, Oliver H., 310
Perry's Victory Memorial (view),
301
Person, Rollin H., 1872
Personal Liberty laws of 1855, effort
to repeal, 415
Persson, Gustof A., 846
Petermann, John P., 598
Peters, Charles H., Sr., 1203
Peters, Edwin C. 2228
Peters, Elmer N., 1738
Pettit, Charles E., 1393
Peshtigo, ^25
Phelan, John M., 822
Phelps, Earl F., 1599
Philypeaux, Count de Pontchartram,
sketch of, 93
Piatt. Sevmour. 2040
Pickering. Timothy, 232, 248
Pictured rocks, 27, 50, 325, 356
Pierce, Charles S., 1768
Pierce, Henry R., 1503
Pierce. John D., 480, 503
Pierce, John D. (portrait), 345
Piercon, Father, 71
Pike. Abram, 393
Pingree, Hazen S., reign of, 573 ;
elected mayor of Detroit, 573; po-
tato scheme of, 574; exaugural mes-
sage, 575 : taxation of corporations,
577 ; primary elections, 578 ; direct
election of U. S. senators. 579; mu-
nicipal ownership, 579; accomplish-
ments of administration, 58i_: re-
views administration, 582; estimate
of career, 583
Pioneer settler, tvpical experience,
3^8
Pirogue, in early transport, 321
Piqua, 173
Pitcher, Zina. 442. 480
Pitt, Fort. 169. 170; conference at. 165
Pitt. William, replaced Loudoun with
Sir Jeffrey Amherst and James
Wolfe, I It
Pittsburgli, 200, 207; headquarters of
Girty boys, 162
Plains of Abraham, 45; the battle of
the, 173
Plan of Detroit, origin, 273
Pleasant, Point, Indian defeat at, 163
Plymouth, Pilgrims at, 33
Pocock, William H., 1330
Poe, Gen. Orlando M. (portrait), 469
Poe Lock, 471
Pokorny, Emil C, 2010
Point Au Fer, 215
Political affairs, 584; from 1865 to
1S97, 540; the Pingree administra-
tion. 573
Political campaign of 1848, 397
Political development in Northwest
Territory, 266
Politics, popular election of U. S.
senators, 579; primary election
abuses, 578; (see election results in
Michigan Chronology), 6.^0
Poison, William, 2145
Pontcliartrain, Count de, gives Cadil-
lac letter of introduction to Fron-
tenac, 90; befriends Cadillac, 102
Pontiac, 166, 333 ; chief of tlie Otta-
was, 114; met by Major Rogers,
118; a friend to the French. 121;
smokes pipe of peace with Captain
Campbell, 129; warriors tomahawk
and scalped the English, 129; res-
cues emliassy of peace, 131 ; tells
English officers to leave the coun-
try to secure peace,, 131 ; attends
mass, 134; imitates credit certifi-
cates issued by Gladwin, 134 : sends
summons to Gladwin to surrender,
134; refuses to return Capt. Camp-
bell and Lieut. McDougall. 134;
conspiracy against the English. 121 ;
appeals to tlie French for aid, 138;
sues for peace, 139; conspiracy of,
141, 1S9, 624; plans, 141; gave up,
142; made peace with the English
.\ug. 17, 1765. 142; murdered. 142,
625
Pontiac war. 165, 194
Pontiac and Detroit Railroad Com-
pany, 355
Pontiac State Hospital for tlie Insane,
640
Popular election of U. S. senators,
579
Population classification, 602
Population in 1810 and 1837, 371
Population of 'Michigan increase from
1815 to 1S24, 326
Porcupine Mountains, 356
Portage Lake, 51 ; Hulbert's explora-
tions of, 451
Porter, A. S.. 3.^9
Porter, Augustus S., 395, 635
liv
INDEX
Porter, Edward W., 725
Porter, George B., 343, 634
Porter, George F., 470
Porter, Moses, 254
Port Hope, 526
Port Huron, 362, 518; home of Edi-
son, 606
Port Pitt, 200
Post-roads in Michigan, 632
Pottawatomies, 114, 165, 166, 167, 196,
392; folk lore, 26; attend council
at Detroit, 161 ; history of, 165 ;
population of, 165-166; trading post
at St. Joseph, 194; mission, 535
Potter, Allen, 553
Potter, Horace E., 1003
Potter, William W., 768
Pouchot, French commander at Fort
Niagara, 115
Poulin. Joseph L., 1992
Pourre. Don Eugenio, 194
Power, Albert L., 1678
Power. Mary P., 1679
Power, John, 2199
Powers, Joseph D., 1136
Powers, Walter S., 1562
Powers, William T., furniture manu-
facturer at Grand Rapids, 538
Prairie du Chien, 193; Carver found
300 Indian families, 144
Prairie Ronde, 339
Pratt, Charles G., 1841
Pratt, Fred. H.. 1942
Pratt, Judge, 426
Pratt, Leverett A., 818
Presbyterian Church in 1837, 368
Prescott, Elliott D., 1685
Presque Isle, 260
Presque Isle County, 6,TO
Presser. William H., 1217
Prevost, Sir George, 299
Price. Lawrence, 1307
Prichard, B. D., 435
Prideaux, General, captures Fort
Niagara, 115
Priest, George W., 2116
Primary election laws urged by Pin-
gree, 578; results of. 578
Primary schools established, 632
Prince. Jacob. 1676
Principal meridian of Michigan. 360
Print Society of Boston publishes
Radissnn Manuscripts, 44
Pritchard. 436
Proclamation of 1763. 150
Proclor, 308. 310; British commander
at Detroit. 304; treachery of. 307
Proliibition amendment defeated, 561
Prohibition party, 561
Prohibitionists cast their largest vote,
566
Prohibitory liquor law, 636
Prophet, 291
Pro-slavery party in Kansas, 406
Protestant services in early Detroit,
Protestant Society in Detroit, 632
Prouty, A. T., maps, garden beds, 8
Pryce, George, 44
Puants, Bay of, Green Bay termed by
the French, 144
Public utilities in cities, 579
Pudrith, Christopher E., 2182
Purcell, Miles J., 1212
Put-in-Bay naval battle, 310
Putnam. Charles M., 1 135
Putnam, Israel, with William John-
son, lis
Putnam, Rufus, 230, 231, 233, 235, 239,
240
Putnam, Rufus (portrait), 352
Pyle, Adam, 1446
Quaker Line of underground rail-
roads, 398
Quakers in Cass county, 398
Quebec Act, 150
Quebec, 171 ; captured by English,
36, IIS; surrender of, 173; Lang-
lade at, 173; battles about, 174
Queen Marinette, 514
Qurete, Pierre, 174
Quick, Paul A., 1431
Quinby. William E., 552
Quinlan, Carlos C, 2272
Quinlan. Thomas, 1626
Quinlan, Walter T., 1577
Quinlan, William T., 2273
Raab, John D., 2065
Radisson, Peter Esprit, 22, 45, 617;
explorations of, 43 ; at Sault Ste.
Marie, 48; on Lake Superior, 49
Rafter, Thomas, 992
Railroads, to Toledo, 338; begun by
state, 3SS ; early progress of, 355 ;
through Black Swamp, 35s ; con-
struction under state, 362 ; private
charters, 363 ; state surveys of
routes, 36s ; to Lansing, 413 ; at
Sault Ste. Alarie, 470; connecting
Detroit and Lake Superior, 476;
work of Judge Cooley, 509 ; to
lumber districts, 521 ; to northern
Michigan, 522 ; in timber districts,
523 ; municipal aid to, 541 ; bond
issues case, S63 ; with special privi-
leges. 568; strike of 1894, 569; tax
proposals. 570 ; taxation. 575 ; re-
peal of special charters, S77, S.Si
Raisinville, victory of Kentuckians,
306
Ramoth, Charles P., 785
Ramsdell, Lewis S., is6s
Ramsdell. Oscar L.. 1669
Ramsdell, Robert R., 1763
INDEX
Iv
Ramsdell, Thomas J., 1762
Ranck, Samuel H., 694
Randall. Herbert E., 1547
Randall, Robert, 263
Randolph, Beverly, 24S
Rankin, Francis H., 1498
Ransom, Albert E., iggi
Ransom, Henry C, 1575
Rapids of the Miami, British garri-
son, 249
Raquet, Jacob, 1786
Rasey, John G., 1835
Ratlibun, Frank M., 1687
Rathbun, Stephen J., 1690
Ratlier, Arthur, 1866
Raudabaugh, Richard, 1714
Rauschenberger, Jacob, 958
Raymbault, Charles, 22, 165 ; at Sault
Ste. Marie, 42
Ravvlinson, Richard, obtains RadiS-
son manuscripts, 44
Recollect, John B., 386
Recollect missions, 614
Red Jacket, 221
Red Jacket Village, 456
Reece, Albert O., 1225
Reindl, Wolfgang, 2259
Reis, Joseph, 901
Reitter, Christian, 2000
Reitter, Frederick J., 2000
Religion at Ypsilanti, 331
Repentigny, Count, receives grant at
Sault Ste. Marie, III; suit of, to
estabhsh land claims, lii
Republican party, events leading to
formation of, 394 ; organized at
Jackson, 404 ; first official use of
name, 405; Jacob H. Howard at
organization. 547; grounds of op-
position to its rule, 564; conven-
tion of 1880, 559; reverses, 560;
convention in i8go, 566 ; Fremont
voters, 570; semi-centennial, 570;
speakers, 571
Residence of Joseph Campau, De-
troit, 12S
Resources of Michigan, 357
Revolution. 163, 164. 165, 166; West-
ern Border war, 162: population of
Hurons during, 167; able British
commanders not frequent in, 174
Revolutionary soldiers, land grants
to, 230
Reynolds, 257
Reynolds, James A., 1169
Reynolds, John C, 1813
Reynolds, Mary H., 1 189
Reynolds. Wiley R., 1186
Reze. Father Frederick, 370; first
Bishop of Detroit. 370
Rice. Ephriam D.. 1507
Rich. John T.. 566. 572, 573, 2277;
candidate for governor in 1880,
560; elected governor, 567; re-
moves elective state olBcers, 568;
retires from governor's office, 569
Richard, Father Gabriel, 332, 629;
sketch of, 315; in Congress, 333;
comes to Detroit, 629
Richardi, Henry, 21 18
Richardie, h'ather de la, superior of
Huron Mission at Detroit, 109
Richardson, George B., 2139
Richardson. Josiah C, 1347
Riclielieu, 40; forms the company of
Tlie Hundred Associates, 38
Richmond. Rebecca L., 11 13
Richmond, William A., 11 10
Richter, Emil P. W., 1894
RiclUer, Henry J., 2152
Richer, Otto L., 951
Right of search after war of 1812,
.S94
Riker, Jolm D., 1026
Rimmele, Leo J.. 1862
Riopelle. Joseph H.. 1891
Rites of Indian folk lore, 21
Rivers, as trade routes, 377
River and harbor improvements, 602
River Raisin, skirmish at, 298; Col.
Miller defeats British and Indians,
299; battle and massacre, 307, 308;
River Raisin monument, 642
Rivers, Clinton. Indian forts near, 3;
St. Clair. Indian battles along, 3
Roach, William R., 1469
Road appropriations, 333
Roads, turnpikes, constructed during
territorial period, 364
Roberts. Rolla W., 1636
Robertson, Captain, murder of, 130
Roliertson, Colin G., 739
Robertson, David, 262
Robertson. E. A.. 1931
Robertson. William, 262
Robeval, 613
Robinson, Eugene, 1399
Robinson, Frank S., 1401
Robinson, Rix, 386. 391, 46S; career
as fur trader. 386 ; prominence in
state affairs. 389
Robinson. Samuel. 21 10
Rocheblave, M., did not suspect at-
tack, 170; captive, 171; lieutenant
go.vernor of Kaskaskia. 184
Rockwell. E. S., 464
Rodgers. Alexander. 1467
Rogers, Frank F., igog
Rogers, Fred A., 1736
Rogers, Lieut. Tohn, cousin of Clark,
'77
Rogers, Lincoln, 1469
Rogers. Randolph, sculptor, 605
Rogers, Robert, 624 ; receives sur-
render of Detroit, 116; ordered by
.Amherst to take possession of up-
Ivi
INDEX
per posts, Ii6; Tecumseh met, 141 ;
governor at time of Carver's visit,
144; career of, 147
Roller, Louis A., 1540
Rolshoven, Julius, painter, 605
Roman Catholics in 1837, 369
Roosevelt, President, 570
Root. John M., 1402
Root, Eliza C, 1403
Roscommon County, 640
"Rose-Douglas troubles" at Univer-
sity (footnote), 502
Ross, John Q., 1408
Rosso, Howard. 2076
Round, Henry W., 1635
Round, Richard W., 1634
Route of immigration, 372
Rowlev, Charles G., 1303
Ruff. John F.. 966
Rulison, John G., 1353
Rumer, Edward C, 1973
Rumer, James P., 1091
Russel Family of Detroit, 688
Russel, George B., 688
Russel. George H., 1127
Russel, Henry, 6gi
Russel, Walter S., 1354
Russell, James, 2253
Rust, Alony, 518
Rust, Amasa, 518
Rust, David, 518
Ryan, Albert P., 924
Ryan, Thomas J., 1025
Ryckman. Albert H.. 1873
Ryerson, Edward J., 1218
Ryerson, Martin, 386
Ryno, C. M., 1774
Ryno, W., 1774
Sabrevois, Governor at Detroit, 106
Sackville. Fort. 117
Sagard, Gabriel, writings of, 35
Saginaw Bay. 161, 360; Indian
mounds near, 7
Saginaw Canal, 362
Saginaw. Ottawas settle at, 166; ori-
gin of name of, 166; early fur
trading center, 331 ; about l8;o,
517; fire of 1871, 525
Saginaw in 1849 (view), 520
Saginaw region, fine forests in '50s,
517
Saginaw County, 633
Saginaw Valley. 602 ; first steam saw-
mill. 512: as lumber center, 524
Saginaw Valley Medical College, 642
Saguina, Ottawa chief, 104
St. Anne Church, 332; Detroit, 339,
632; public lands for, 318
St. Anne's Church (view), 369
St. Clair, 586
St. Clair County, 633
St. Clair, Arthur, 241, 258, 311, 628;
governor of Xorthuest Territory,
237 ; leader of the Pennsylvanians,
162; sketch of. 239; placed in com-
mand, 244; defeat, 246
St. Clair River, Ss, 166, 360; tres-
passing on the timbered lands, 277
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 593
St. Ignace, 166, 619. O21 ; established,
66; Louisiana, La Salle at, 84;
burning of the mission at, 167
St. James, 374
St. Joseph, 161, 165, 192, 339, 362;
Spanish expedition of 1781, 194;
trading post, 194
St. Joseph County, 634
St. Joseph harbor, 339
St. Joseph River, 85, 166, 194; im-
provement, 362
St. Joseph's Island, 290
St. Lawrence, 174; F'rench establish
Indian settlements on. 164; Hurons
found on, 167; DePeyster's trip up
the, 171
St. Lawrence River Indians, 172, 174
St. Leger, Lieut. Col. Barry, 175, 214-
219
St. Louis. 176, 207; Vigo at, 177;
British expedition of 1778, 193
St. Martin, Alexis, 606
St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal. 79, 362,
448, 468, 476; celebration, 471;
commerce, 473
St. Mary's Canal Company lands. 450
St. Mary's Canal (view), 458
St. Mary's Canal bonds, 540; celebra-
tion, 471 ; commerce, 473
St. Mary's Falls (view), 390
St. Mary's River. 609; bridge over,
478 : improved channel, 475
St. Mary's River and Falls, 23
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Detroit,
St. Simon, memoirs of, 75
St. Vincennes, 167. 183
Salaries of state officers, 569
Salem, 198, 199
Salmon, Archibald, 537
Salt. 524 ; first attains commercial
importance in Michigan, 638
Salt springs, 360
Salt wells, first, 339; discovery of,
637
Sanborn, \\ illiam. 871
Sanderson. Asa T., 1874
Sandusky. 161. 190, 199; Hurons at.
167 ; expedition, 201 ; settlement,
204
Sandwich, town of. iii; Hurons at,
167
Sanilac County, 633, 636
Sap-pine. 517
Saratoga. Battle of, 174; northern
victory of, 170
INDEX
Ivii
Sargent, W'inthrop, secretary of
Northwest Territory, 237, 258;
sketch of, 240
Sassaba, 323
Sauks, 165, 167, 174; origin of, 166
bank Ste. Marie, 43. 174, 311, 337,
386, 601, Gog, 618. 623, 629, 633;
first shown on map, 3(3 ; ceremony
of taking possession at, 78; monu-
ment at, 79; French grant of, ill;
Potawaiomi tribe at, 165 ; Chippe-
wa domiciled at, 165 ; folk lore of,
20; in 178S, 242, ^22; council with
Indians in 1820, ^,2^; land ceded by
Indians for fort, 325; beginning of,
470; railroad opened to, 641
Sault Ste. Alarie (views), 383, 460,
461
Sault Ste. Marie, Bateau-Lock of
North West Fur Company (view),
380
Sault Ste. Marie Canal Company, 518
Sault Ste. Marie in 1854 (view), 342
Sault Ste. Marie in 1850 (view), 351
iault Ste. Aiarie mission house, 619
Sault St. Marie, North West Com-
pany Blockhouse (view), 378
Savidge, Hunter, 513
Savignon, Indian boy taken to France,
M
Sawmills along St. Clair River, 512;
first, 512; statistics, 512
Sawyer, Alvah L., 2191
Sawyer, Andrew J., Jr., 778
Sawyer, Andrew J., Sr., 776
Sawyer, Joseph F.. 1522
Sawyer, Thomas P., 2033
Schalk, Frederick J., 707
Scheidler, Joseph, 2042
Schenkellierg, Casper M. B., 829
Scheurmann, F'rnnk B., 723
Sclieurmann, Richard, y2i
Schieffelin, Jonathan, 262
Schlosser, Fnsign, seized by Potta-
watomies, 133
Schmidt, Louis F., 2107
Schmied, Louis. 2109
Schneider, Albert R., 1939
Schnorbach, Philip P., 1422
Schonbrunn, ig8
School lor Deaf, Dumb and Blind at
Flint. 637
School for the Blind at Lansing, 640
School funds of Michigan, 565
School sections, 360
Schoolcraft. 339
Schoolcraft County, 636
Schoolcraft. Henry R., 322, 3S5, 442:
as to garden beds, 8; visits On-
tonagon Boulder, 15; married, 165;
Expedition, 442
Schoolcraft. Henry R. (portrait), 324
Schools, 603 ; early efforts to estab-
lish, 316; public lands for, 318; of
territorial period, ii2; state educa-
tional system gets first reward of
merit, 560
Schriver, James, 2209
Schroeder, Mary M., 1403
Schroeder, John, 1402
Schulte. Peter, 1228
Schurtz, Perry, 1137
Schurz, Carl, first editor Detroit
Post, 543
Schust, Henry, 827
Schuyler, Peter, 171
Scioto Purchase, 237
Scotland, 171
Scott, Capt. -Amos, 456
Scott, George G., 1723
bcranton, Benjamin H., 1035
Scripps, James E., 570
Scully. John W., 978
Searle, \\ ill Z., 1692
Second Michigan Regiment, 429
Second National Bank of Detroit, 541
Secord, Lewis F., 1244
Seeley, John F., S65
Seeley, T. D., 2085
Seeman, Joseph, 1204
Senate of 1863, 426
Senecas, 164 ; attend council at De-
troit, t6i ; adopt Simon Girty, 162
Senter, John, 451
Session of southern states, 414
Sessions, Clarence W., 656
Settlers of ■30s, character of, 350
Settlement of lands north of Grand
River, 391
Seven Years war, 164
Seventh Cavalry Regiment, 433
Seventh Micliigan Regiment, 429
Severens, Henry F"., 2296
Seybold, George A., 1278
Shafter, William R., in Cuban war,
596
Shanahan, Lisle, 2107
Shank, John R., 2104
Shannon. Fern L., 1725
Shaw, 461
Shaw, Charles D., Jr., 1883
.Shaw, Quincy A., 457
Shawanese, 163, 183; band of, accom-
panied Beaubien on a raid, 160;
adopt James Girty, 162
Shawanese prophet, 291
Shawnese towns, Kentuckians' expe-
dition, igi
Shea, John, 1164
Shekel!. John E., 1349
Shelburne, Lord. 209 ; presented a
plan for three colonies, 147
Shelby, William R., 2123
Sheldon, Allen. 541
Sheridan, Philip H., Colonel of the
Second Michigan, 434
Iviii
INDEX
Sherman, Edwin P., 2036
Sherman, John, 407
Sherwood, Charles G., 1619
Sherwood, Mott E., 1217
Shiawassee County, 633, 635
Shields, Edmund C., 1763
Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts,
114
Ship-canal around the Falls of St.
Mary, 46S, 470
Ship Canal at the Sault Ste. Marie,
637
Shove, John \\ ., 1294
Shurly, Burt R.. 1455
Siberia of Michigan, 357
Sibley, A-\aron, 21 51
Sibley, Solomon, 264, 265, 321, 332
Sieland, Carl, 850
Sills, John E., 1004
Simonson, Monroe V., 904
Simpson, William, 181S0
Sinclair, Malcolm C, 1893
Sinclair, Patrick, 192, 217, 228, 626,
627; was born, 152; at the capture
of Montreal, 152; at Detroit in
1767, 152; was sent to Michilimack-
inac, 152; made improvements on
the St. Clair at his own expense,
153: obtained from Indians a deed
to tract of land, 153: commissioned
as lieutenant-giivernor of the post
of Michilimackinac, 154; arrived
in New York August i, 1775, 154;
returned to England, 154; reached
America in the fall of 1777, 154;
returned to Lybster, 154; arrived at
Fort Mackinac, 155; expedition
against Spanish settlements and
Illinois posts, 193
•Sinclair's Fort. 260
Sioux, 42, 166. 167, 173; Chippewa at
war with, 165
Sisman, Andrew C, 2003
Six Nations, 172, 175
Sixteenth Michigan Regiment, 429
Sixth Michigan Regiment, 434
Skecls.. Rufus F"., 1694
Skinner, Elizabeth. 1824
Skinner, Harry, 93
Slafter, David G.. 2141
Slater, Leonard, Indian missionary,
536
Slater ( Prairievillc ), 536
Slavery question and iSlichigan state-
hood, 346; Jefferson's plan to
abolish in northwest. 2^,2 : prohib-
ited in Northwest Territory, 236:
struggle strange to modern ideas.
396; traffic on underground railroad
through Michigan. 398; settlements,
raid on, 399 ; abolition a sequence
of war. 421 ; Jacob M. Howard's
part in 13th amendment. 548
Slave ships, right of search, 394
Slaves in Michigan, 288
Sleeper, Albert E., 2072
Sleeping Bear Point, where Mar-
quette died (view), 70
Sligh. Charles R., 2155
Sly, Homer, 1904
Smart, John V\ ., 1789
Smedlcy, Charles O., 2184
Smith, Bradford, 1270
Smitli, Charles W'., 2192
Smith. Chillion L.. 1657
Smith, Clement M.. 1928
Smitli. Fkigcne F.. 1604
Smith, FHnt P., 1S54
Smith, Franc A., 1855
Smith, F'rank H., 922
Smith, Frederick B., 1271
Smith. Fred L., 1056
Smith, George A., 1632
Smith. George C, first slave freed by
the Union arms, 419
Smith, Gerrit, anti-slaverv agitator,
518
Smith, Hal H., 1177
Smith, Henry H.. n66
Smith, Herbert W., 905
Smith. John, Jr., 1152
Smith. Maynard D.. 672
Smith, Peter. 518
Smith, S. L., on ancient copper min-
ing.. 11
Smith. Samuel W., 572, 1961
Smith, Watson R., 1312
Smith, Willard A., 1649
Smith, William A., 571, 1978
Smith. William J., 1803
Smnlenski. John J., 1836
Smurthwaite. Thomas. 2190
Snelling. ,?oi, 302: at River Raisin,
300
Snow. Albert E., 1S99
Snyder, Albert C.. 2168
Society of Jesus on Mackinac Island,
20
Sojourner Truth, 641
Solar compass. 463
Sommers Brothers Manufacturing
Company. 2032
Sommers. Charles F.. 2032
Sommers. Frank F., 2032
Sommers. Sylvester A.. 2032
Sonner, George F.. 1952
Sorbonne decides against sale of
liquor at Mackinac, 98
Sound-money issues. 554
.'Northern Railroad, route of, 362
Southern sympatliizers at Detroit,
422
Sowers. Rosslyn L.. 2204
Spain. 207; part in Michigan affairs,
194; interests in trentv of 1783. 208
Spangler. Allen D.. 1856
INDEX
lix
Spanish along Mississippi prejudiced
the Indians against the Enghsh, 160
Spanish-American war (see Cuban
war)
Spanisli claims in northwest in 1782,
'95
Spanish give presents to Sauks, 166
Spanish non-combatant, Vigo a, 177
Spanish war issue bonds, 580
Sparks, Wilham, 779
Spaulding, Eugene O., 851
Spaulding, John M., 1076
Spaulding, OHver L., 440, 572
Speculative towns, 350
Sperlicli, Herman, 2076
Sperhcli, \\ illiam C, 2077
Springwells, 294, 301
Stacy, Consider A., 506
Standart, Robert W., 1236
Standish, Frederick D., 599, 892
Stark, John K., 2140
Stark, John, with William Johnson.
115
Stark, William J., 1361
Starret, Thomas C, 1142
State Agricultural Society, 358
State Banking Department, 641
State banking law declared unconsti-
tutional, 635
State Bank of Michigan, 635
State Board of Pardons, 641
State-built railroads, 355
State capital removal, 581
State debts, 354 ; finances, 580 ; Mili-
tary Board steal, 581
State House of Correction and Re-
formatory, 640
State House of Correction at Mar-
quette, 641
State government, beginnings of, 334
State institutions under Gov. Pingree,
580
State Normal College at Ypsilanti,
636
State public school for neglected chil-
dren, 639
State prison located at Jacksonburg,
63s
State Reform School at Lansing, 637
State Sanatorium, for Treatment of
Tuberculosis, 643
State Tax Commission. 577, 582
Statehood movement, ,^43 ; question in
congress, 345; rejected by congress,
344; semi-centennial of, 565
.Steamboats, 321
Steere, Joseph H. (footnote). 79, 468,
1721
Steketee, Jan, 532
.Stephens, Albert L., 709
Stephens, Henry, 708
Stephenson, Orlando M.. T.=;79
Sterling. James, lover of Mile. Cuil-
lerier. 127; takes service under
Gladwin, 135
Sterner, Edwin, 2214
Steubenville, 201
Stevens, Frederic B,, 1150
Stevens, Mark B., 125S
Stevens, Mark W., 2081
Stewart, Duncan D., 2043
Stewart, Earl R., 1060
Stewart, Hugh A., 1337
Stewart, Louis E., 181 1
Stewart, Nathaniel H., 2056
Stiles, Harry H., 119O
Stockbridgc, Francis B., 560, 587
Stocking, William, 554
Stolz, George W., 1875
Stone, Dwight T., 1348
Stone, John W., 571, 1710
Stone, Ralph, 1435
Storrs, Frank, 1705
Story, Wilbur E., 415
Stoughton, William L., 440
Stowe. Ernest A., 2169
Strang, James J., 374; sketch of, 374
Strang, King (portrait), 375
Strang's Castle (view), 373
Strelow, Albert, 1170
StrifHer, George A,, 1821
Stringham, Joseph S., 1807
Strong, Edwin B., 1552
Stuart. Charles E., 398, 408, 543 ;
anti-slavery leader, 401
Stuart, J. E. B., killed by Michigan
sharpshooter, 434
Stuart, L. G., 338
Stuart, Robert, 388
Stuart. Robert (portrait), 385
Sturgis, Russell, 2S2, 283
Sturtevant, Fleman B., 933
Sugar beets, raised by Lucius Lyon,
339
Sugar Camp, Hamilton reaches, 178
Sugar Island, 82
Suite, 44
Sumner, Charles, friendship with
Cass, 394
Superintendent of Indian Trade, 382
Superior, Lake, 165
Supreme Court, 637
Surgery, work of Dr, Beaumont at
Mackinac, 606
Susquehanna, 162
Susquehaima River, exploration of
by Brule, 35
Sutherland, Frank G., 1327
Sutherland, Jaljez G., 553
Swan. Edwin F., 1541
Swan. Frederica V., 1542
Swan. Henry H.. 2293
Swantek. Charles M., 743
Sweet. Edwin F., 572
Swift. Charles M.. goo
Swirsky, Frederick, 1430
Ix
INDEX
Switzer, George O., 1576
Symes, George W., 1925
Symmes. Jolin Cleves, 237
Symons, John \\'., 1646
Systematic development in Michigan
begun, 601
Tablet at Jackson (view), 397
Tablet on the Federal Building, De-
troit, marking Site of Fort Ler-
noult, 161
Talon, intendant, 72; strikes to make
nev.- France prosperous, 76
Tappan, Henry P., sketch of, 480;
address after Fort Sumter. 488;
dismissed, 489; later career 491
Tappan. Henry P. (portrait), 494
Tappey, Ernest T., 1066
Tarte, Charles E.. 1066
Tausend, Albert W., 1854
Tax commissioners, state board cre-
ated, 576
Taxation, equalization of burdens,
575 ; of corporations, 573 ; propos-
als of Governor Rich. 569; revision
advocated by Governor Winans,
567
Taylor. Edwin C., 1433
Taylor. Harry F., 1039
Taylor. Paul G., 1999
Taylor. Thomas B., 1237
Taylor, William W., 1517
Taylor, Zachary, 397. 305
Teal Lake iron ore discovery, 463
Tecumseh, 252, 291. 299; an apt pu-
pil. 141 : helped to defend Detroit.
141 ; aided French in defeat of
British under Braddock, 141 ; not
at l)attle of Tippecanoe. 293; prom-
ises from Brock, 300; campaign in
Ohio country. 305: death of, 310
Telegraph line from Owosso to Lan-
sing, 413
Temperance Societies. 370
Tennessee, the. 164, 170
Territorial laws, 631
Territorial government reorganized.
327
Territory of Michigan created, 267.
630 '
Territorinl officials ask higher sala-
ries. 281
Thatcher. Frank E.. 1482
Thatcher. Julius E., 1772
The Fish, an Indian, 162
The Fork. 172
The fort at Detroit surrendered by
General Hull (map), 297
The Michigan, during the War of
Secession. 368; first iron vessel
built for the Ignited States Navy,
■567; man-of-war. 437
"The People of the Fire," 166
The Traders. theOttawas known as,
166
The Wolverine, 368
Three Rivers. 172; foundation of, 38
Thirlby. Benjamin. 2093
Thirlby. Thomas W., 2095
Thomas. Caesar, 1399
Thomas, Charles E., 654
Thomas. Clayton J., 1546
Thomas. Cyrus, on origin of Indian
mounds, 5
Thomas. David E., 1970
"Thomas" (Grand Rapids), 535
Thomas. Hiram R., 1476
Thomas. Lillie H., 1547
Thomas, Maria A., 1971
Thomas Mission, 536
Thompson. Captain, 433
Thompson. Charles D., 1820
Thompson. Colonel Jacob, 438
Thompso^i. George, 959
Thompson, George W., 1062
Thompson. Herbert A., 2144
Thompson. Sir Charles, recommend-
ed Patrick Sinclair for appoint-
ment in Pennsylvania or New
York. 154
Thompson. Stephen D., 1739
Thompson, William G., 560
Thornton. W. K.. 637
Thorpe. George W., 1167
Thwaites, R. G., 86; on Radisson's
explorations. 44
Ticonderoga. Abercronibie's fight at,
174
Tietze. Christian P.. 1963
Tinney, Michael, 8i8
Tittaliawassee River, 519
Tobacco's Son. 178
Todd. Albert S., 944
Todd, Col. John, 171
Toledo war, 334; ended. 336
Tonty, Alphonse de, in command at
Detroit. 103
Tonty, Henry de. 80. 89; sketch of,
82 : governor at Detroit, 106
Tonty, Madame de, lOi
Topographical survey, 358
Towles. Colonel. 184, 185
Town growth. 3,30
Townsend. Charles E., 571, 587. 695
Towsley, Glenn G.. 1534
Tracy, trader, death of, 134
Trade routes in the northwest. 227
Traders cheated the Indians, 157
Trading post at Menominee, 514
Trading posts among Indians in 1810,
382
Traffic of Great Lakes up to 1837, 366
Transylvania. 169
Transportation. 33S, 355. 468, 603,
602; facilities of the early 19th
century. 321 : Black Swamp road.
INDEX
322; new era after completion of
Erie canal, 328; state railroads and
canals, 361 (see also Railroads, Ca-
nals, etc.), 362: on Great Lakes up
to 1837, 364: routes to Michigan in
1837 : freight and passenger rates,
372; changes of a half century, 475
Transportation on Great Lakes in
'60s (view), 452
Travis, De Hull N., 1517
Treadgold, Albert N., 1869
Treaties of Versailles, 143; of 1783,
182, 20S; of Fort Harmar, 241; of
Fort Mcintosh, 241 ; of Green-
ville, 251; of Ghent, 312, 394: of
Fort Meigs, 322; of 1855 with the
Ottawas and Chippewas, 392
Treaty for Fort Meigs, 318
Trembley, Henry G., 221 1
Trentanove, his statues of Mar-
quette, 69
Trentanove's Statue of Marquette in
the National Capitol (view), 64
Tripp. R-obert D., 1780
Trnmbley, Joseph A., 1866
Trotter, Colonel, 242
Trotter, Alelvin E., 1680
Trowbridge, Charles C, 323, 415,
442: gathers details of the siege of
Detroit, 126
Trunk Line Highway System. 603
Tupper. Benjamin, 233
Tupper. Frederick h'.. 1338
Tupper, Virgil L., 999
Turkey Creek Bridge skirmish, 296
Turnbull, Robert, 910
Turnliull, George, Captain of the 2nd
Battalion of the 6oth Regiment,
153; commandant of the town of
Detroit, 146
Turner, Aaron Beaman. 403. 1344
Turner, James M., 1530
Turner, James N., 56(3
Turner, Jerome E., 2207
Turner, John, 162
Turner. Roy J., 1846
Turner. Sophie S.. 1532
Turner. Willard J.. 2146
Turnpike roads in Michigan of terri-
torial period. 364
Turtle Mountains, 165
Tuscarora. 164
Tuscola County, 636
Twenty-fourth Infantry, 422
Twenty-seventh Michigan Regiment,
429
Two Mountains, 171
Tyler, Frank E.. 1784
Tyler. Moses Coit. 500
Typical Michigan Landscape (view),
363
L'llrich, Paul J.. 2074
L'mlor. William H., 1624
L'nderground Railroad in Cass Coun-
ty. 398
"Lender the Oaks" convention, 404
L'nderwood. Merritt W., 1622
L'nited Indian Nations, council of,
222
L'nited States, Chippewa population
in, 165; Chippewa treaty of 1815,
165 ; Ottawas refuse to submit to
treaty, 166 ; Potawatomi treaty
with, in 1815, 165; number of Hu-
rons in, 167
L'niversity of Michigan, 479, 631,
(>33' original plan of; date of
founding, 318; semi-centennial,
479; medical department, 480: un-
der President Tappan, 483 ; in
1852, 484; observatory, 485; fac-
ulty prior to Tappan administra-
tion, 486; school fine arts, 487;
during Civil war, 488; Dr. Tap-
pan's dismissal, 489; regents 1858-
63 (footnote), 491; E. O. Haven
as president, 492 : financial straits
in 1864, 495 ; aided by state tax,
496; medical department, 496; ho-
meopathic instruction, 496; coedu-
cation, 496, 497 ; women admitted
as students, 499; diploma system,
499; under Pres. Angell, 500; nota-
ble teachers, .=ioo; alumnae in
\\'ellesley College faculty, 501 ;
chemical laboratory deficit, 502 ;
improvements in past 30 years, 502;
work of Judge Cooley, 505; Law
Scliool. 507; established, 635; law
department. 637
L^niversity of Michigania, 317
Upham, Warren, 45; on Radisson's
explorations, 44: Upper Lakes, na-
val control of, 173; Upper Louisi-
ana delivered to Spain, 193 ; L'p-
per Ohio, American activities in
1 781, 200
L'pper Peninsula, 602 ; exploration in
1S20, ;^22 ; a fruit of Toledo war,
336; as unknown land in 1837. 349;
in 1837. 356: development of, 441;
survey of. 444 ; discovery of iron
ore, 463 ; railroads to Lower Penin-
sula, 47S
Upper Sandusky. 190, 197; battle of,
202
Xj. S. Fisheries Commission (foot-
note). 505
U. S. S. Michigan, The Wolverine
(view), 367
Valliant, Father, Cadillac's chaplain
at Detroit, 97
Van Buren County, 63.S ; first to em-
ploy local option, 566
Ixii
INDEX
Van Biiren, Martin, at Hull court
martial, 303
Van Cortlandt, Philip, 171
Van de Luyster, James, 532, 533
Vandercook. George A., 1218
Vandercook, Roy C, 1355
Van der Meulen, Cornelius, 53J ;
characterized, 533
Van Dyke, Rudolph, 1842
Van Home, defeated at River Raisin,
298 ^
Van Kleeck, James, 726
Van Pelt, Lieutenant, 431
Van Raalte, Albertus C, 525. 529;
leads Hollanders to Michigan, 531 ;
characterized, 533
Van Rooy, R. G., 730
Van Sice, William H., 1551
Van Wickle. Frank W., 1365
Varney, Almon C, 1257
Varnum, James M., 237; sketch of,
240
Vaudreuil, Marquis, 173; orders sur-
render of Detroit, 116
Vauglian, Victor C, 1549
Veit, William, 2136
Venn, Ernest, 21 11
Verandrier discovers garden beds, 8
Vergennes, 207
Vettcr, \\ illiam B., 2105
Viall, John C. 2187
Vignau, Nicholas, protege of Cham-
plain. 34
Vigo. Francis. Clark's helper, 176
Villeneuve, Daniel, 172
Vimont, 40
Vincennes, 162, 169, 170. 177, 179, 197,
207, 226; Hamilton approaches, 176;
Clark's success at, 179; Clark at,
180
Vincent, Alon?o, 1902
Vincent, Shadrach N., 916
Virginia, i6g, 171, 180; Clark an-
nounced conquest to. 171 ; estab-
lishes County of Illinois. 171
Virginians build fort near Pittsburgh.
114: were tampering with the sav-
ages. 160; on the Ohio ordered
murdered. 176; with Clark, 177;
side of boundary dispute, 162;
claim to northwest, 229; cession of
western lands, 232
Vivier, Gideon, 1833
Vivier, Walter S., 1834
Vogtmann, Jnhn A., 714
von Schlegell. Arthur, 1948
von Zinzendorf. Count. 198
Voorhees. J. Martin, 2024
Vriesland, 532
Wabash, i6s. 177. 180; Hamilton at.
176
Wabash "'coast," 170
Waganaski, Ottawas at, 166
Wagener. Pierre O., lOiS
Wagner, Carl A., 1847
Wagner, George N.. 1363
Wait, Stephen E., 657
Waite, Betsey H., 2165
Waite, Weston W., 2164
Walbridge, David S., presides at
Jackson convention, 404
Walden, Fred, 440
Walker, Bryant. 679
Walker, Charles I., 416, 205, 507
Walker, Frank B., 1506
Walker, Henry L., 1294
Walker, Henry N., 485, 1290
Walker, Hiram, 1260
\\'alker, J. Harrington, 1262
Walker. Louis C. 1439
Walker. William T., 1346
Walk-in-thc-Water, steamboat, 321
Wallower, .\llan B., 1969
Walpole Island, Ottawas at, 166;
Chippewas and Ottawas on, 166
Walsh. Joseph, 1984
Walsh. Joseph, 1254
^\■alter, F'dward L., 501
Walton, Joseph, 2048
Ward, David, lumberman, career of,
515; autobiography, 515; death of,
524
W ard. Eber B„ 465, 515
Ward, Horace Z., 2078
Ward, James C. i960
Ward. Lyman M.. 2163
Ward. M. Thomas, 1054
Ward, Nellie C, 2164
Ward. Samuel, 516
Ware. William E., 1745
Warner, Gov. Fred M.. 471. 643. 1448
War of 1812. 630; Chippewas took
part in, 165 : Ottawas in. 166 ; Hull's
movements around Detroit, 294;
first blood of. 296; western coun-
try rises in arms. 305; American
victory at Monroe, 306; battle of
River Raisin, 307; Fort Meigs;
Croghan's defense of Ft. Stephen-
son, 308: Perry's fleet: results of
battle on Lake Erie; Battle of the
Thames. 310
War of Secession. University of
Michigan in, 488; Senator Howard
as drafter of 13th amendment, 548,
638
War of the Revolution ended in the
Northwest, 204
War times in Michigan, 422
War vessels on Great Lakes, re-
stricted bv international agreement.
366
INDEX
Ixii
Warr, Wilbur E., 1766
Warren, Byron E., 2246
Warren, Charles B., 722
Warren, Homer, 113S
Warren, Joseph, 405; editor of De-
troit Tribune, 403
Warren, Samuel N., 2243
Washburn, I'rederick A., 1744
Washburne, Albert T., 2100
Washington, Col. George, log
Washington, General, 180; inter-
viewed Captain Joncaire, 114; at
Fort Necessity, 114; with Gen.
Forbes, 115; President, 226; favors
western grants for soldiers, 231 ; at
news of St. Clair's defeat, 247
Washtenaw County. 633
Wasmund, Leberecht, 1858
Wason, J, J., 725
Waters, Luke, 1126
Watkins, Erwin C. 1753
Watkhis, Roy M., 1757
Watson, Hamilton, 1908
Watson, James C, 487, 501
Watson, John, 1458
Way, Elmer J., 1971
Wayne, Anthony, 628 ; placed in com-
mand ; sketch of, 248; campaign,
248; advances upon Indians, 249;
General at Detroit, 258; death of,
260
Wayne. Anthony (portrait), 253
Wayne, county of, 258, 629, 631 ;
boundaries, 258; representatives in
territorial assembly, 264; in 1802,
266
Weadock, George W., 2012
Weadock, Lewis J., 754
Weaver, Alfred J., 2063
Webb, Rowland F., 2059
Weber. Walter H., 1639
Wedgewood. Llewellyn G., 1698
Weeks, Aaron, 468
Weeks, Monfort D., 811
W^eiss, Fred J., 2227
Welcome, Levi R., 1150
Wellemeyer, William A., 1972
Wells, Dudley M., 1949
Wells, John W.. 2272
Wells, William C, 1002
Wendt, Anna M.. 1214
Wendt, Charles R.. 1213
Wenzel, Ernst, 1900
Werneken, Frank S., 1096
West, George M., 1379
Westendorf. Donald R., 1036
Western Border war of the Revolu-
tion, 163
Western country, situation in, 226
Western Michigan, asserts political
power. S42
Western State Normal School, 643
Western settlement, exposed state of,
,185
Westover, Jonathan G., 1737
Westra, Nicholas J., 1496
Wetmorc, Charles H., 2115
Wetzel, Bernard C, 1052
Wexford County, 639
Whalen, William, Sr., 1197
Whipping-post at Detroit market, 634
Whipple, Charles W., 349
Whitaker, William I., 1495
White, Agnes B., 2122
White, Amos O., 1926
\Vhite, .Andrew D., 487
White Eyes, Captain, 197; a Dela-
ware chief, appeared at Detroit,
160
White Fish, 42
White, George J., 2122
White, H. Kirk, 928
White, Perry E.. 21 19
White. Peter, 471: sketch of, 466;
erects statute to Marquette, 69
White, Peter (portrait), 467
White Pigeon, mounds near, 7
\\ hitehall. 174. 175
Whitehead, James T., 1377
Whiteley, EJizabeth, 1748
Whiteley, John, 1748
Whiting, Henry, 442
Whiting, J. L.."447
Whiting, J. Tallman, 451
Whitney, Charles, 262
Whitney, David, Jr., 716
Whitney, George L., 836
Whittlesey, Matthew B., 1408
Wickes, Anna, 11 29
Wickes, Harry D., 1129
Wickes, William J., 1128
Wicks, Kirk E., 2084
Wickham, Burt, i486
Wickware, Henry S., 736
Widdicomb, George, furniture manu-
facturer, 538
Wild animals of Michigan, 358
Wild game and fruits, 358
Wiley, Ann, or Nancy, 159
Wiley, Michael, 2173
Wilkes, Gilbert M., 597, 599
Wilkins, Ross, 349, 415
Wilkins, sketch of (footnote), 416
Wilkinson, Ellsworth E., 2197
Willard. George, 1565
Willcox, General Orlando B., 417,
438, 440, 637 ; tribute to Michigan
soldiers, 439; record in civil war,
421
Wi'liam, Gershom M., 2278
Williams. General Alpheus S., 403,
4,^8, 541, 553; placed in command
at Kaskaskia, 171; sketch of; rec-
ord in civil war, 419
Ixi
INDEX
Williams. General Alpheus S. (por-
trait). 425
Williams. Charles D., 2276
Williams. Frances M., 808
Williams. Harvey, 512
Williams, Thomas H.. 806
Williams. William C, 1404
Williamsburg. 180; Clark's prison-
ers journey to, 179
\v'illiamson, Gen. David, 199, 201,
203
Willing, the flat-boat, 180; Clark on
the. 180
Willis, Henry, 355
Willitts, Edwin. 571
Willson, George C., 1467
Willson. James C, 1465
Willson, Mortimer, 925
Wilson. Ellen E., 1345
Wilson, Earl E., 2031
Wilson Family in Genesee County.
2026
Wi'son, Farwell A., 2029
Wilson, Frank W., 1383
Wilson, Guy M., 1333
Wilson. Isaac R.. 1233
Wilson, Nahum X., 1740
Wilson. Samuel A., 1742
Wilson. William 11., 1742
Winans. Edwm B., 572; elected gov-
ernor. 566
Winchell. Alexander, 487, 500
Winchester, Gen. Enoch W., 306, 538
Winkler, John F., 1184
Winnebagoes, 174
Winship, John T., 1733
Winsor. Justin. 79
Wisconsin. 174
Wiselogel, William F., 1623
Wisner, Gov. Moses. 408, 637; sketch
of (footnote), 411; on coeduca-
tion, 497
Witherell. Judge James. 284. 586,
<?34.
Withington. Julia B.. 815
Withington. William H.. 813
Withington. Winthrop. 1227
W'ochholz. Henry R., 823
Wolcott. Alexander, 323
Wolcott, William C, 13H
Wolf, Daniel \'., 1007
Wolf. Frederick H.. 1067
Wolfe, James, at Quebec. 115; Lang-
lade's plan to cut off. 173
Wolfson. Victor H., 1044
Wolverine. The. 471
Woman suffrage rejected, 643
Wood. Edwin O.. 1474
Wood, J. Jay, 1976
Wood. John, 1073
Woodbridge, Senator William, 332 ;
report on Ontonagon Boulder, 15;
congressional delegate; sketch of,
321 : on Cass' popularity, 395
\\'oodtield, Thomas. 1335
Woodford. George A.. 2264
Woodruff's grove, 330
Woodward, Augustus B.. sketch of,
270
\\ oodward, Henry D., 1843
Woodward. Judge. 269 ; describes
situation in Michigan territory to
War of 1812. 289
Woodward, Plan of Detroit, made in
1807, 274; reputed author of De-
troit plan. 274; on trade conditions,
283 ; president of bank. 283 ; a phi-
losopher, 284; arraigns Hull, 286;
adviser and aid to Col. Proctor
after surrender of Detroit. 305;
plans university. 317; achievements
of. 319; unpopular at Detroit; as a
scientist ; 327. footnote ; buys
French claim at Ypsilanti, 331
^\■oodworth. Paul, 838
Wooll. Elmer E.. 1845
\\'oolman. Hugh. 758
Worcester. General. 172
Wright. Carl C. 949
Wright. Lester A., 2082
Wright. Prof. G. Frederick, investi-
gations of into Indian origins. 3
Wright. William W., 1339
\\'yandots. 166. 178; Hurons known
as, 167; summoned by Pontiac, 131
Wyandotte County, Kansas, Wyan-
dots remove to, 167
Wykes, Roger L. 2089
Wyllys. Major. 24^
Wynicoop. B. M.. 821
Wyss, John G.. 1006
Wythe. George, 170
Yaple. George L.. 561
Vatzek. Herman F., 1240
Yokom. George E.. 932
York. Toronto. 299. .304
Yosemite. The. Michigan men on, 599
Young, George H., 2046
Young. Walter D., 727
Ypma. Marten A.. 532
Ypsilanti, 276, 362, 416, 417, 512;
name of, .^31 : a hard town, 335 ; il-
lustrates evolution of a Michigafi
town, ^^o
Yuill. William R., 2085
999
Zander. Louis W.
Zeeland, 532
Zeigin. Daniel M
Zeisberger.David.
Zemke. Max. S48
Zemke. Otto. 848
Zipp. George T., 1666
Zoological survey, 35S
1 164
197. ig8, 199
History of Michigan
CHAPTER I
THE MOUND BUILDERS, THE GARDEN BEDS, AND THE
ANCIENT MINERS
The Indians were the first inhabitants of the territory now
included within the State of Michigan. They fished its waters,
gathered berries and hunted game in its forests, tiUed its prairies
and worked its mines of copper. During uncounted generations,
probably for thousands of years, the red men possessed the land.
Whence they came and through what changes they passed are being
revealed gradually by the archaeologist and the ethnologist ; but prob-
ably some questions of interest and importance will always remain
beyond settlement.
It is now believed that all the Indians who ever dwelt on the
Western Continent belong to a single race separate from all other
races of the world. In bodily structure, in language, and in their
political system the Indians of North and South America reveal a
common origin. Before the coming of the whites they never pro-
gressed beyond the stone age, save in Peru, where they attained
some knowledge of the use of metals. They were acquainted with
iron only in its meteoric state. In their pottery, weaving, and tan-
ning of skins there was uniformity throughout the continent, although
some tribes were more advanced than others. The palaces of Peru
were largely the imaginations of historians ; the pueblos of New
Mexico are not essentially different from the long bark-houses for
twenty families built by the Iroquois.
The Indian social organization and mode of government was a
military democracy based on communism. No Indians ever held a
title to land in fee simple. Their methods of reckoning blood-rela-
tionship through the mother are at once so characteristic, so compli-
cated and so uniform that they could not have arisen from accident.
Vol. I— 1
1
2 HISTORY OF AIICHIGAN
From this fact and other kindred facts it is inferred that the ancestors
of the American Indian were also the ancestors of the Asiatic nations
speaking the Dravidian language, as do the Tamils of India ; ^ and
that the separation from the common stock took place before Aryan
civilization spread over India and Europe. The exodus from Asia
took place by way of Behring Strait and the Aleutian Islands;
although it is not beyond probability that some may have been driven
to our western coasts by the same ocean currents that within the past!
century have carried hither forty-one Japanese wrecks, no fewer than
twenty-nine of which had living crews.
At the mouth of the Columbia River the Indians found their
American paradise, from which region they were forced in swarms
.by the increase in population. Mainly, they followed up the rivers
because of the fish, and especially the abundant salmon. The forests
furnished game, the kamash was used for flour, there was edible moss
on the pine trees, and the country afforded nuts and berries in pro-
fusion.
One path was up the Columbia and Fraser to the headwaters of
either the Saskatchewan or the Missouri, whence they spread to the
region of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. Another and
broader trail led by the south fork of the Columbia or the Snake
River to the south, ending only at Patagonia. Four great divisions
appeared. First the Algonquins. who made their w^ay north to the
Great Lakes, then pressed south into the Mississippi Valley and
finally reached Tennessee and the Atlantic seaboard as far south
as the Carolinas ; next the Siou.x or Dakotah, including the Winne-
bagoes, Mandans and Iroquois, who reached the Mississippi River
by way of the Platte River ; third, the Pawnees, who spread along
the Arkansas ; and, fourthly, the Shoshones, who, also starting along
the Platte, penetrated to Texas and Lower California.
It was the village Indians of New Mexico and Arizona who
developed Indian corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tobacco and cotton,
those great staples in the life of the red men. The village Indians
made mounds for the burial of their dead, for defense, or to express
religious ideas. Gradually their structures, like the products of the
fields, worked north ; but their builders, whether from climatic rea-
sons or because of unequal strife with their more formidable foes
from the far Xorth, retired from the combat, and the whole north-
1 The number of people speaking the Dravidian languages in igoi was
over fifty-seven millions.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 3
ern portion of the country came to be a region devastated by con-
tinual Indian wars.
The date of the first coming of the Indians was at least as early
as the oldest monuments of Egypt or Babylonia ; and it is not improlD-
able that the passage was made at the time of the glacial epoch.
Geologists have found that the Horseshoe Fall at Niagara was at
the mouth of the river about the time of the building of the Great
Pyramids; at the whirlpool when Israel was entering Egypt, and
two-thirds of the way down to the rapids at the birth of Christ. -
In the days of tradition, the Indian nation known as the Lenni
Lenape dwelt in the region called Shinaki, the land of the fir-trees,
north of Lake Superior. From this country they set out on their
migrations to the southeast, and after some years of wandering they
encountered the tribes possessing the region of the Great Lakes.
These eastern tribes were the Talligewi (or Alligewi) ; they were
remarkal)lv tall and stout; they had many towns in a fertile country;
they built fortifications consisting of walls of earth faced with a
deep ditch ; and they buried their dead in flat mounds. ^
When the Lenape reached the region between Lake Huron and
Lake Erie they sent messengers to the Alligewi, asking permission to
settle in their neighborhood. This request was refused ; but they
were promised an unmolested passage through the country to regions
further south. When the Lenape began to cross the St. Clair and
Detroit rivers, the Alligewi became alarmed at the thousands who
were pouring into their country. So they made a furious attack
upon those who had crossed over, and threatened all with destruc-
tion. Entirely unprepared for such treachery, the Lenape retired
to hold a council of war. At this juncture the Mengiwe, or Hurons.
- The origin, development and dispersion of the Indians as above stated
has not been accepted by scientists generally. For example, it is not generally
admitted that one can go back beyond the close of the glacial period, say
ten thousand years ; and conservative students hesitate to accept evidence of
a greater antiquity. The theories outlined are those which offer a plausible
explanation. See Encyclopedia Britannica article on "Indians, North Ameri-
can," and "Handbook of American Indians," article on "Archaeology." See
also "The Origin and Antiquity of Man." by G. Frederick \\'right, Oberlin,
1912; and "Records of the Past," Vols. V and VII, Washington. 1906 and
1908.
^ Heckewelder conjectures that one of these fortifications was located on
Lake Ste. Claire, near the mouth of the Clinton River. When he visited it
in 1776, the land was owned by Mr. Tucker. Another series of fortifications
was east of Sandusky, six or eight miles from Lake Erie.
4 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
joined forces with the Lenape, on condition that the land, when con-
quered, should be divided between the two nations.
For a hundred years or more the struggle continued. Great bat-
tles were fought. The slain Alligewi by hundreds were buried in
mounds near their intrenchments. The fighting was done mainly
by the Lenape, the Hurons drawing back when attacks on the in-
trenchments were made. No quarter was given on either side ; and
at last the Alligewi, finding their nation threatened with destruction,
fled to the south never to return. Then to the Httrons fell the region
of the Great Lakes, while the Lenape took possession of the lands
further south, finally reaching the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and
Chesapeake Bay.
The term Alligewi is preserved in the name Allegheny, while the
alternative term Talligewi is identified with the Cherokees, who have
a tradition that originally they dwelt in the Ohio region and built the
mounds found there.
Until very recently the theory has prevailed among American
archaeologists that the builders of the mounds in the region between
the Great Lakes and the Ohio River were a people of a higher cul-
ture than the Indians whom the white discoverers found there. The
belief was that the Mound Builders, as they were called, were over-
run by incoming hordes of Indians and finally the race became
extinct, leaving the mounds as their only memorial. Possibly the
Mexicans and the Gulf Indians were survivals of this older race.
Investigations of the mounds themselves have shown these theories
to be erroneous. The articles found in the earliest mounds indicate
that their builders were no further advanced in civilization than the
tribes w'hom the whites found in possession of the land; and the
opinion of archaeologists now is that the Mound Builders were the
ancestors of the Indians known to history. Many of the mounds
were built one or two centuries before the appearance of white men,
as it proved by the trees which have grown from them ; but there is
no conclusive evidence of the great antiquity of the mounds them-
selves or of unusual culture on the part of their builders.*
* The author recalls a meeting of the Washington Anthropological Society
at which the late Frank HamiUon Gushing, of the American Bureau of
Ethnolog>-, vigorously maintained the thesis that the Mound Builders were
the immediate ancestors of the Indians, and by way of illustration he deftly
made stone arrow-heads, filling the room with pieces of flying stone. His
theories were warmly combatted by a number of the professors of the Smith-
sonian Institution ; and while the weight of argument seemed with Gushing,
the weight of numbers was certainly against him. The meeting was subse-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 5
Probably the most ancient of the Ohio mounds were built by the
Cherokees during the period when they were known as Talligewi ;
and later the Shawanees constructed stone graves, mounds and other
works connected therewith. The comparatively few mounds in
Michigan probably had more recent origin. In Ogemaw County,
near the Rifle River Bridge, on the state road leading from West
Branch to Lake Huron, are five '"Indian forts," as they are popularly
called. One of these forts, situated about a mile north of the bridge,
is nearly circular in form, with a circumference of about one thou-
sand feet, and a diameter of 280 feet north and south and 310 feet
east and west. It has five openings or gates, there is a wall from one
to three feet in height, and a ditch from three to four feet deep. The
forts resemble closelv those built bv the Iroquois in the State of New
York ; and it is quite possible that the fortifications which Hecke-
welder found on the Clinton River " near Mount Clemens may have
been erected by the Iroquois during their long stmggle with the
Hurons.'' Near Bellaire, in Antrim County, there are two small
mounds with walls four feet high and a diameter of about twenty feet.
When examined each mound was found to contain a single skeleton
in a sitting posture, the feet extended. Near by were a number of
holes, probably old caches. So too the sand dunes on Beaver Island
in Lake Michigan were used as burial places.'
The French traders and missionaries, who were the first white
men to explore the Lake Superior region, found no mounds or earth-
works ; but there are in the L'pper Peninsula unmistakable evidences
of the work of prehistoric Indians, familiarly known as "The Ancient
Miners." Scattered over the Lower Peninsula were small mounds.
Near Climax, St. Joseph County, was an excavated ring inclosing
quent to tlie publication by Cyrus Thomas of "The Problem of the Ohio
Mounds" and "The Circular, Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio,"
both of which monographs were published by the Bureau of Ethnology in 1889.
See also Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, edited by F. W.
Hodge, 1912, article on "Mound Builders."
'' The Clinton River was formerly called the Huron, the latter name
being used until after the Revolution, The present name is used, so as to
avoid confusion with the Huron River, which empties into Lake Erie, near ths
mouth of the Detroit.
" The site of these works has been under cultivation for half a century.
It consisted of a nearly circular embankment four or five feet high, with
diameters of ,•550 and 400 feet respectively. There were three gateways, and
a wide ditch on the outside. Numerous burial mounds were near by. each
containing a single skeleton. See Bela Hubbard's Memorials of Half a Cen-
tury, 1887, p. 203.
' Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1894, pp. 516-519.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 7
an acre and a half, which, when discovered, was overgrown with
forest trees. On the banks of the Grand River, three miles south of
Grand Rapids, there was as late as 1874 a group of mounds the
largest of which had a diameter of 100 feet and a height of 15 feet;
close by were two regular, conical mounds of nearly e(|ual size, and
around them was a cluster of seventeen smaller mounds varying
from eight to two feet in height. The larger mounds contained no
skeletons ; the smaller ones contained one skeleton each, together
with copper axes and needles, arrow and spear heads, marine shells,
pipes and pots. On the prairie near White Pigeon was a large mound
said to contain the remains of a Pottawatomie chief, who, tradition
said was buried there a century before the com.ing of the whites ; and
the members of the tribe came by thousands each year to pay tributes
of respect to his grave, until the remnant of that powerful nation
was removed to Kansas in 1841.*
Bela Hubbard relates that when he came to Detroit in 1835. many
evidences existed of aboriginal occupation. It was hardly possible
to dig a cellar or level a hillock without throwing out some memorial
of the red races. Mingled with the half-decayed bones were pipes
and other utensils of stone, broken pottery, ornaments of silver and
copper, wampum-beads of curious workmanship, the arrow and toma-
hawk of the savage, and the figured cross of the missionary. To
unearth a human skeleton was a common occurrence. Skeletons
were thrown out by spade or plow, and sometimes were seen protrud-
ing from the soil, wdiere the action of the waves had broken into the
land.9
The map published by the Bureau of Ethnology shows many
groups of mounds scattered throughout the Lower Peninsula south
of a line running west from Saginaw Bay ; also along the Lake Huron
shore to Alpena. There is an extensive group near Grand
Traverse Bay ; and small groups on Keeweenaw Point, on Isle Royale,
and at Ontonagon. None of the Michigan mounds, however, raise
peculiar questions of ethnology or history.
The early settlers in Michigan found near the St. Joseph and
Kalamazoo rivers in Cass, St. Joseph, Kalamazoo and Calhoun
counties the outlines of extensive gardens covering from twenty to
a hundred acres. Such gardens seem to have been confined to the
region now embraced in the states of Michigan and Wisconsin. In
our state they appeared in various fanciful shapes, but always the
8 Bela Hubbard, Memorials of Half a Century, p. 208.
' Ibid., p. 220. As to the great Indian population of the Saginaw Valley,
see Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXXIX.
8 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
designs showed order and symmetry. From the Indians the settlers
could learn nothing concerning the beds, which were totally different
from the remains of the Indian cornfields that represent the rude,
uncivilized and indolent nature of those red men known to the whites.
Indian agriculture, as observed by the early settlers, consisted of
little more than dropping a seed into the earth and then allowing
nature to raise the crop.'"
The garden-beds, on the contrary, are elaborate and extensive ;
and the trees growing over them set their origin back at least two
centuries. The problem of their origin has received little attention
from ethnologists ; and today it belongs among the questions reserved
for investigation and discussion.^! Unfortunately the gardens have
disappeared from the face of the earth, and it is to be feared that
no more attention will be paid to them by scientists.
In 1748, Verandrier found in Southwestern Michigan "large
tracts of land free from wood, many of which are everywhere cov-
ered with furrows, as if they had formerly been ploughed and sown ;"
and in 1827 Schoolcraft declared that "the garden-beds, and not the
mounds, form the most prominent, and by far the most striking and
characteristic antiquarian monuments of this district of country."
The beds occupied the most fertile of the prairie land and burr
oak plains. They consisted of raised patches of ground separated
by sunken paths and were generally arranged in plats or blocks of
parallel beds, varying in dimensions from five to sixteen feet in
width, in length from twelve to more than one hundred feet, and in
height from six to eighteen inches. The evidence seems conclusive
that they were laid out and fashioned with a skill, order and sym-
metry which distinguished them from the ordinary works of agri-
culture ; and they included certain features belonging to no recognized
system of agricultural art.
Bela Hubbard divides the garden-beds into eight classes accord-
ing to their various shapes, and gives diagrams of each class.
Mr. Hubbard quotes Henry Little and E. Taken Brown to the effect
that in 1831 garden-beds were very numerous on the plains where
the City of Kalamazoo now stands. On the farm of J. T. Cobb, in
section 7, Town of Schoolcraft, beds were numerous so late as i860.
One of the most elaborate of all the beds was found at Kalamazoo
and was platted by Mr. Little and A. T. Prouty of Kalamazoo. It
consisted of a circle, with a diameter of fifty feet, and in general
1" Michigan Gazetteer, 183S, pp. 173-7.
" Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnologj-, i8q4, p. 550.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 9
fomi represented a hub with twenty-four spokes, each about twenty-
five feet in length.
In discussing the origin of these garden-beds, Mr. Hubbard says,
"Were these vegetable gardens ? To answer this question, we must
proceed according to the doctrine of probabilities. All opinions seem
to agree that these relics denote some form of cultivation, and that
they are different from those left Ijy the field culture of any known
From Mch. P. & H. Col., Vol. II
Anciext Garden Beds, Western ]\Iichigan
tribes of Indians, Nor do we find any similar remains in connection
with the works of the Mound Builders, , . , These extensive
indications of ancient culture necessarily imply a settled and popu-
lous comnumity. We are led therefore to look for other evidences
of the number and character of the people who made them. But
here an extraordinary fact presents itself: such evidences are almost
wanting! The testimony of nearly everyone whom I have con-
sulted — men who were among the first among the white race to
break up the sod that for ages had consecrated these old garden-
lands — agrees in the fact that almost none of the usual aboriginal
relics were found ; no pottery, no spear and arrow-heads ; no imple-
10 HISTORY OF ^IICHIGAN
ments of stone ; not even the omnipresent pipe. Tinnuli or Ijurial
mounds of the red man are not uncommon, though not numerous in
Western Michigan, but have no recognized association with the
garden race." ^^
In \\'isconsin the garden-beds are found superposed on the animal
mounds, which form the especial feature of the ethnology of that
state. This shows that the people who built them htid predecessors.
The date of the abandonment of the garden-beds of Alichigan may be
fixed approximately by the fact that in 1837 Schoolcraft cut from
above one such bed a tree that had been growing since 1502.
In 1885, when Mr. Hubbard visited for the last time the region
of the garden-beds, he discovered near the Town of Schoolcraft four
or five beds that could be traced distinctly for from ten to fifteen
feet ; the remainder of their lengths, perhaps twenty feet, had been
obliterated by cultivation. From Prairie Ronde, from the plains of
St. Joseph and from Kalamazoo County all traces of the old beds
had disappeared. In vain some of the farmers undertook to protect
the relics of the past. Time, the white grub, swine and cattle all
united in the work of destruction ; and the secret of the garden-beds
of Michigan appears to have perished with the people who laid them
out.
Before the discovery of America, copper taken from the deposits
of the Lake Superior region had come into general use among the
Indians north of Alexico. The copper used by the Indians consisted
largely of float pieces found among the debris deposited over a large
area south of the lakes by the sheets of glacial ice that swept from
the north across the fully exposed surface of the copper-bearing rocks
of the Upper Peninsula. The Indians knew nothing of iron except
in its meteoric form or in ores ; smelting was an unknown art ; and
while some of the more advanced tribes used silver and gold, copper
was the universal metal.
On Isle Royale and on the Keeweenaw Peninsula the Indians
fotmd copper in masses and bits distributed in more or less compact
bodies of eruptive rock ; and the mining operations consisted in re-
1= "IMemorials of Half a Century," by Bela Hubbard, 18S7. Mr. Hub-
bard came to Micbigan in 1835 and settled in Springwells, now a part of
Detroit. His book, to which frequent references are made in these pages,
is one of the choicest works of hterature ever produced in Michigan. He
writes as a lover of nature and an investigator of both the usual and the
unusual ; he had a fine curiosity and abundant leisure ; and often he shows
the soul of a poet.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN il
moving the superficial earth and debris and in breaking up the rock
with stone sledges and by applying heat in order to free the masses
of metal from the rock. Generally the excavations were not deep,
being merely pits ; but at times tunneling was resorted to. In McCar-
gole's Cave, on Isle Royale, nearly a square mile of surface had been
worked over, and over a large part of the area are pits connecting
one with another.
Not all of the cojiper used by the Indians was taken by them from
the Lake Superior region. During the glacial age the copper-bearing
rocks of this section were swept by the under surfaces of the great
ice-sheets, and thus many masses and bits of the metal were carried
southward over Alichigan, \^'isconsin and Minnesota and even
farther south. There is evidence, however, that the Upper Penin-
sula was the summer resort of thotisands of red miners, who, made
annual pilgrimages to its deposits of copper, and not infrequently
deposited their surplus takings in caches, to be taken down the lake
at a more propitious time. Not only were the various native tribes
thus supplied with the metal from the lake region, but probably there
was traffic with Mexico, where metallurgic art was in an advanced
stage, and where the red metal was in great demand. ^^
While there are hundreds of mines of shallow dimensions, four
of the workings of the Ancient Miners may be classed as remarkable.
The first was at the opening of the Winthrop mine,^-* where a large
deposit of pulverulent green-carbonate of copper was found. This
deposit doubtless represented a cache ; the green carbonate being due
to the decomposition of nuggets derived from that extensive chain
of pits known to the explorers of the Northwest, Hartford, Mandan
Bluff and Iron City mines as "ancient diggings." The drift of sand
covering the surface of the transverse veins of Keeweenaw Point to
the south of the bluff of greenstone was too heavy to allow the Indian
miners to work them.''''
'3 Handbook of Am. Indians (1912) p. 343; 864. See Handbook also for
bibliography. S. L. Smith's article on "Ancient and Modern Copper Mining
in the Lake Superior Region," Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XXIX, is an excel-
lent summary written by a man who himself was among the early modern
miners.
" Sec. 26, T. 58, R. 31. ■
''See "'Calumet Conglomerate; an exploration and discovery made by
Edwin J. Hulbert. 1854-1864; a series of letters originally published in the
Ontonagon Miner in the year 1S93." This is a most reinarkable pamphlet.
It contains a minute account of the discovery of the Calumet and Hecla
Mine, but so scattered and often incoherent are the references, that they
must be pieced together like a puzzle. There is also a list of the early
12 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
The second great work of the Ancient Miners was discovered near
the Ontonagon River. During the winter of 1847-48 Mr. Samuel
O. Knapp, the agent of the Minnesota Mine,i'^ observed on the pres-
ent location of that mine a curious depression in the soil, caused, as
he conjectured, by the disintegration of a vein. Following up these
indications, he came upon a cavern, the home of several porcupines.
On clearing out the rubbish, he found many stone hammers ; and at
a depth of eighteen feet, he came upon a mass of native copper ten
feet long, three feet wide, and nearly two feet thick. 1^ Its weight
was more than six tons. This mass was found resting upon billets
of oak supported by sleepers of the same wood. There were three
courses of billets and two courses of sleepers. The wood had lost
all its consistency, so that a knife blade penetrated it as easily as if
it had been peat ; but the earth packed about the copper gave that a
firm support. By means of the cobwork the miners had raised the
mass about five feet, or something less than one-quarter of the way
to the mouth of the pit. The marks of fire used to detach the copper
from the rock showed that the early miners were acquainted with
a process used with effect by their successors. This fragment had
been pounded until every projection was broken ofT and then had been
left, when and for what reason are still unknown. From similar
pits on the same location came ten cart-loads of ancient hammers,
one of which weighed 39' j pounds and was fitted with two grooves
for a double handle. There were also found a copper gad, a copper
chisel with a socket in which were the remains of a copper handle,
and fragments of wooden bailing-bowls. At the Mesnard Mine, in
1862, was found an 18-ton bowlder that the "Ancient ISIiners" had
moved forty-eight feet from its original bed.
mincTS of Lake Superior and much collateral information. Whenever Mr.
Hulbert strays beyond the limits of things within his own knowledge, he is
grossly inaccurate; but nevertheless he gives the traditions of the country
and points the way to much that is of interest. The pamphlet is his vindica-
tion, and as such it should be read in connection with the "Letters and
Recollections of Alexander Agassiz," 1913. We shall have occasion to refer
to Mr. Hulbert's pamphlet in later chapters.
16 Sec. 12, T. 50, R. 39; location No. 98 of U. S. permits to mine for
metals and minerals.
1' Foster & Whitney's Report. House Ex. Doc. 69, 31st Congress, i.st Ses.,
p. 159. A cut and a full description of this find is given by Colonel Whittlesey
in his article on Ancient Copper Mining in Lake Superior Region, Smith-
sonian Contributions to Knowledge, XIIL See also MacLean, Mound
Builders, p. 76, 1904. Hulbert says that the discoverer of this mass was
Albert Hughes.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 13
Less than two miles from the rich outcrop of the Minnesota lode,
was discovered the celebrated mass of copper now preserved in the
National Museum at Washington.
During the seventeenth century the Jesuit missionaries and the
French explorers, penetrating the wilderness about Lake Superior,
found among the most treasured possessions of the Indians pieces
of copper weighing from ten to twenty pounds. Often these frag-
ments of copper were regarded as household gods, which from an
indefinite past had been transmitted from generation to generation.
Tradition also told of large masses of copper situated at several
points along the shores of the great lake, whose shifting sands often
covered up the bowlders for years at a time, thus causing the super-
stitious savages to declare that their offended deities had disappeared
for a season. 1*
In 1667 a piece of copper weighing a hundred pounds was brought
to Father Dablon. "The savages," he reports, i» "do not all agree as
to the place whence this copper was derived. Some say it came from
where the [Ontonagon] river begins; others say close to the lake;
and others from the forks and along the eastern bank." Whether
the Dablon fragment was a float piece of copper, or whether it was
a portion broken from the great rock, it is impossible to say. The
reference of the Jesuit father, however, makes it evident that at the
time when he wrote, the Indians were familiar with the copper region
along the Ontonagon, on the west bank of the west fork of which
river the great bowlder lay when discovered by white men.
So far as authentic records go, the first white man to visit the
Ontonagon bowlder was Alexander Henry, an English adventurer,
and he saw it to his cost. In 1819 Gen. Lewis Cass made the first
explorations of the Lake Superior region that were undertaken by
this Government. His party ascended the Ontonagon River for
thirty miles to visit the mass of copper whose existence, says Cass,
had long been known. "Common report," he writes to John C. Cal-
houn, Secretary of War, "has greatly magnified the quantity, though
enough remains, even after a rigid examination, to render it a miner-
alogical curiosity. Instead of being a mass of pure copper, it is
rather copper embedded in a hard rock, and the weight probably does
not exceed five tons, of which the rock is much the larger part. It
was impossible to procure any specimens, for such was its hardness
1* Journal du Voyage du Pere Claude AUouez, Relation de la Nouvelle
France, en I'Annee 1667. Sagard, p. 589. Voyages of Pierre Esprit Radisson,
Third Voyage.
IS Relation of 1670.
pj«{ll rj^
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 15
that our chisels broke hke glass. I intend to send some Indians in
the spring to procure the necessary specimens. As I understand the
nature of the substance, we can now furnish them with such tools as
will effect the object. I shall, on their return, send you such speci-
mens as you may wish to retain for the Government or to distribute
as cabinet specimens to the various literary institutions of the
country." -"
Henry R. Schoolcraft, a member of the Cass expedition, says that
the bowlder was found on the edge of the river, directly opposite an
island and at the foot of a lofty clay blulT, the face of which appears
at a former time to have slipped into the river, carrying with it
detached blocks and rounded masses of granite, hornblende, and
other rock, and with them the mass of copper in question. "Henry,
who visited it in 1776, estimates its weight at five tons; but, after
examining it with scrupulous attention, I do not think the weight of
metallic copper in the rock exceeds 2,200 pounds. The quantity may,
however, have been much diminished since its first discoven'. and the
marks of chisels and axes upon it. with the broken tools lying around,
prove that portions have been cut ofl: and carried- away." -^
The partv sent by Cass cut about thirty cords of wood, which they
placed about the bowlder, and then set fire to the pile. \\'hen the
copper was well heated, they dashed water upon it, but the only
result was to detach pieces of quartz rock adhering to the native cop-
per. The partv, having become disheartened, left the country, having
moved the rock four or five feet from the bank of the river; nor did
the Barbeau party, who went from Sault Ste. Marie two years later,
have any better success. It so happened, however, that Joseph Spen-
cer, a member of the Cass expedition, told the story of the copper
rock to Julius Eldred, a hardware merchant of Detroit ; and for
sixteen years this enterprising man schemed and planned how he
might succeed where others had failed.^- Mr. Eldred's object in
transporting it to the lower lakes was to exhibit it for money in the
various cities of the Last. It was a curiosity. As Senator Wood-
bridge said, it was "a snlendid snecimen of the mineral wealth of the
'Far West.' "
In 1S41 Eldred arranged with Samuel Ashman, of Sault Ste.
20 Smith, W. L. G. Life and Times of Lewis Cass. New York, 1856, p.
133. Cass never saw the rock, as lie himself says in Senate Report 260, 28th
Congress, ist session.
21 Narrative Journal of Travels through the Nortliwestern Regions of the
LTnited States, etc. Albany. 182 1. pp. 175-178.
=-John Jones, Jr., in the New York Weekly Herald. October 28, 1843.
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 17
Marie, to act as his interpreter m the purchase of the copper rock
from the Chippewa Indians, on whose land it was situated. Obtain-
ing a trade license from Mr. Ord, the Government agent, the two
men set out for the mouth of the Ontonagon, where they met the
chiefs and concluded the purchase for $150, of which sum $45 was
paid in cash at the time, and the remainder was paid in goods two
years later. The party then proceeded about twenty-six miles up the
river, climbed the high hill which intervened between the main stream
and that point on the fork where the rock was situated, and raised it
on skids. More than this they could not do ; nor did they have greater
success the following summer. In 1843 Eldred started from Detroit
with wheels and castings for a portable railway and car; and to
protect his property rights, he secured from Gen. Walter Cunning-
ham, the United States mineral agent, a permit to occupy for mining
purposes the section of land on which the bowlder stood. Arriving
at the rock, Eldred was surprised and chagrined to find it in pos-.
session of a party of Wisconsin miners under the direction of Colonel
Hammond, who had located the land under a permit made directly
by the Secretary of War to Turner and Snyder, and by their agent
transferred to Hammond. The only thing to do was to buy the rock
again, and this Eldred did, paying for it $1,365.
It took a week for the party of ivventy-one persons to get the rock
up the 50-foot hill near the river; then they cut timbers and made a
stout wooden railway track, placed the rock on the car, and moved it
with capstan and chains as houses are moved. For four miles and a
half, over hills 600 feet high, through valleys and deep ravines;
through thick forests where the path had to be cut ; through tangled
underbrush, the home of pestiferous mosquitos, this railway was
laid and the copper bowlder was transported ; and when at last the
rock was lowered to the main stream, nature smiled on the labors of
the workmen by sending a freshet to carry their heavily laden boat
over the lower rapids and down to the lake.^s
While arranging transportation to Sault Ste. Marie, Eldred was
confronted by an order from the Secretary of War to General Cun-
23 Jones' letter in New York. Herald. I have carefully examined the
statements made by Mr. Alfred Meads in the Ontonagon Miner of June 22,
189s, assigning to James Kirk Paul, the founder of the Town of Ontonagon,
the credit of bringing down the rock. Undoubtedly Captain Paul was in the
party, but the proof is conclusive that all work was done under the direction
of Mr. Eldred. The story of James K. Paul taking out the rock appears in
Hulbert's "Calumet Conglomerate." The Hulbert statement represents the
local tradition and is substantially incorrect.
Vol. 1—2
18 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
ningham directing liim to seize tlie copper rock for transportation to
Washington. "The persons claiming the rock have no right to it,"
says Secretary Porter, "but justice and equity would require that
they be amply compensated for the trouble and expense of its removal
from its position on the Ontonagon to the lake ; and for this purpose
General C. will examine into their accounts and allow them the costs,
compensating them fully and fairl)- therefor, the sum, however, not
to exceed $700. ... If they set up a claim for the ownership
of the article itself, that is not admitted or recognized, and their
redress, if they have any, will be an application to Congress." -■*
The sum mentioned by the Secretary being manifestly too small to
compensate Mr. Eldred "fully and fairly," General Cunningham
allowed the latter to transport the rock to Detroit, and promised that
if the curiosity was ordered to \\'ashington, Eldred should be placed
in charge of it. On October 11, 1843, the bowlder was landed in
Detroit -■'' and placed on exhibition ; and among those who embraced
the opportunity to visit it was Henry R. Schoolcraft, who renewed
an acquaintance with the copper monarch, formed twenty-three years
before.-'^ After less than a month of uninterrupted possession,
United States District Attorney George C. Bates informed Mr.
Eldred that the revenue cutter Erie was waiting at Detroit to receive
the rock for transportation to the capital ; and on November 9th the
bowlder started on its long journey,^'' by way of Buffalo, the Erie
Canal, and New York City, to Georgetown, District of Columbia.
Mr. Eldred accompanied it as far as New York, and met it at George-
town with a dray, by which it was hauled to the quartermaster's
bureau of the War Department and deposited in the yard, where it
remained until some time subsequent to 1855,-^ when it was removed
to the Smithsonian Institution.
Mr. Eldred now appealed to Congress for redress; and William
Woodbridge, of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Committee on
Public Lands, made an exhaustive report on the subject. By an act
approved January 26, 1847, the Secretary of War was authorized
''to allow and settle upon just and equitable terms the accounts of
-■' War Department MSS. Letters Cunningham to Porter, August 28,
1843 ; Maynadier to Porter, September 27, 1843. and Porter's indorsement.
25 Farmer's History of Detroit and Michigan, calendar of dates.
-'' Schoolcraft. The American Indians, Rochester, 1851.
-' Treasury Department MSS. Letters from Secretary Spencer to Cap-
tain Knapp, September 29, 1843; Knapp to Spencer, November 11, 1843;
Captain Heintzelman's receipt. November 11, 1843.
28 Roberts' Sketches of Detroit, 1855.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 19
Julius Eldred and sons for their time -■' and expenses in purchasing
and reinoving the mass of native copper coninionl)- called the copper
rock." The sum thus paid was $5,664.98.
A fourth work of the Ancient Miners, a cache located near the
southeast corner of section 14, town 56 north of range 33 west,
was discovered hv Edwin J. Hulbert, in 1S65. In form it was a
circular bowl-shaped depression with a diameter of about seventy
feet. Above it was an enormous hemlock tree, and a black birch
which, on being cut, showed nearlv two hundred wood rings. Under
the mold in this pit about twenty tons of green carbonate of copper
was found ; and that it was a cache is proved by the fact that no
implements for extracting copper were found therein. The chief
interest in this pit lies in the fact, as will appear later, that it was
located directly over the vein of the Calumet and Hecla copper mine,
for many years the largest copper producer in the world. 3"
The conclusion of the whole matter would seem to be that the
Mound Builders were Indians, who were grouped in villages, who
cultivated extensive tracts of land sometimes arranged in elaborate
gardens ; who threw up earthworks for defense against their enemies,
and located their fortifications at strategic points near protecting
streams ; who mined copper in the Lake Superior region during the
summer months, and cached their surplus stock when winter overtook
them ; and who were much superior to the wandering tribes which
occupied the countr}' at the time of its discovery by the whites. This
solution, while it robs the Mound Builders of the element of mystery,
leaves unsolved many of the most interesting questions as to their
origin, the successive stages of their development, and the causes
which led to their disappearance from their ancient haunts.
2s In Senate Report 260, 28th Congress, ist Ses., Mr. Eldred relates his
trials and final success. The existence of the report was developed from
the communications which were kindly furnished me by Gen. F. C. Ainsworth,
when chief of the Record and Pension Division of the War Department;
Capt. C. T. Shoemaker, chief of the Revenue-Cutter Service, and Hon.
T. Strobo Farrow, Auditor of the Treasury for the War Department. The
story of the Ontonagon Bowlder is to be found in the publications of the
Smithsonian Institution, National Report for 189S, where I have discussed the
evidence leading to the above conclusions. Almost every statement has been
challenged, but there is contemporary documentary proof for each one.
2" "Calumet Conglomerate," p. 39.
CHAPTER II
INDIAN FOLK-LORE ATTACHING TO MICHIGAN
LOCALITIES
There are among the nations of the earth races which never
outgrow their infancy. Old in years, or as men count time, they
are, but the imminent behef in things supernatural, the credulity, the
simplicity — each an attribute of youth and ignorance — are at once
their inheritance and their legacy. Such a people were the Indian
tribes of North America, and in at least one half-enchanted locality
they have left most manifest traces ; traces so almost tangible that
on a summer afternoon or an autumn evening the eager imagination
deludes the attentive ear with hearing a moccasined footfall in the
pine-needled paths of Mackinac Island or a guttural whisper by
the leaping rapids of the Sault Ste. Marie. The country of the
Great Lakes is the region best beloved of the Indian and the home
of his Manitous ; spots from which neither subtle French, determined
English, nor triumphing American could drive him, save in the last
extremity. And if, as Boston Bay colonial legends tell, the shade of
the last British governor stands wringing his hands in impotent dis-
comfiture on the anniversary of the night when British power died
in New England, how much more does the still errant fancy people
cliflf and beach and forest with copper-colored shades departing in
anguish inexpressible. There are summer days on Lake Superior
when one readily dreams oneself into the charm of a region unex-
celled in its own way ; the afternoon-country of purpling water and
misty headland ; the morning-land, fresh and splendid with sweep of
wind and rush of water over vast, wide spaces of miles ; where sea
and mountain are wedded, and the air, like the potent tonic it is,
even in memory goes to one's head !
Where the blues of Lake Huron melt into the purple-greens of
Lake Michigan in the waters of the Straits, lies the Island of Mack-
inac. Indian and voyageur, coureur de bo'is and black-robed
fathers of the Society of Jesus have made sanctuary there ; and it
has borne the standards of three great peoples: the Lily, the Lion,
and the Eagle. Approaching it from the south one sees first the
20
HISTORY OF .MICHIGAN 21
beach and behind it the steep slopes covered still with pine and hem-
lock. Sheer heights of rock rise from the water; heights arched
over like the gateway of a giant or towering in steep crags and
stairways. Indian folk-lore is well set here, and the Indians called
it Michilimackinac. — the Island of the Great Tnrtle. They believed
that the Alanitou in the shape of an immense turtle rose from the
depths of the water and made the land after his own image. He was
called Manabosho and was a most variable deity, half-evil and half-
good, but wholly powerful.
Another fable repeated by Father Allouez of the Society of
Jesus in one of his letters, says that this island was the home and
native place of Michabous, "the maker of a new world'' as the name
signifies, and the creator of all the earth. ^ He was also called
Ouisaketchak, the Great Hare, and in this spot he loved best to live,
hunting and fishing, in freedom and idleness. One day after long
fishing he threw himself down upon his bed of pine-boughs and be-
gan to watch a sjuder industriously spreading her web. The Mani-
tou at once conceived a thought. "Shall an insect catch its prey, and
Ouisaketchak fish for naught?" So the ingenious god forthwith
made a fish net on the plan of the spider's web, to the great good of
all Indian tribes succeeding.
The most wonderful natural formation of the island is a giant
arch of rocks of which it is told that when the Manitou had called
into existence the island and given it over to the spirits of air and
water with the proviso that it was to be the abode of peace and rest
he determined that there only the children of earth should worship
him and for their entrance planned the great arched gateway. Near
it was to be his wigwam, and to the spot came the tallest hemlocks
ofifering themselves for tent-poles, balsam-firs strewed themselves
for scented carpets, and the birch-tree unsheathed her creamy sheets
of bark and covered the tent. Here year by year came the canoes
across the lake, to be drawn up upon the pebbly beach while
their occupants entered through the great gateway, laden with the
skins of bear and beaver, which they laid before the wigwam of
their unseen divinity and received his blessing in added strength,
vigor and skill in hunting. And when after many years the Mani-
tou departed never to return, the wigwam was turned to stone and
remains a great cone unto this day.
1 Letter from Father Allouez, Thwaites' "Jesuit Relations," Vol. LIV. p.
198. The name is also written Manabozho, Manabush, Michabou, Minabosho,
Missibizi and Nanibozhu. He was the Algonquin deity Great Hare.
22 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Later the island was the home of giant fairies who Hved in
the caves of the rocks and built the great stair called by their name.
They rode through the waters on the backs of the great sturgeon,
and danced nightly on the wide plateau where the fort was after-
wards built and now stands. But one night the revel outlasted the
darkness, and with the first sun-ray rang out upon that stillness the
morning gun from La Salle's ship the Griffin (1679) ; first ship to
enter the lakes. Shrieks and execrations broke from the belated
Ruckwudjinunies and they vanished into their caves never to emerge
again.
The legend of Osseo and the Evening Star, told by Long-
fellow, is located on Mackinac Island, and the totem of the tribe to
which Osseo belonged was a turtle.
Twenty-five miles of water across the Straits brings one to the
stately St. Mary's River. Never had explorers grander highway
than that travelled by Jogues and Raymbault, ]\Ienard and Radisson
and Groseilliers to reach the long sought Big Sea water — the Lake
Superior. But long centuries before the eager Frenchmen, came
Manabosho the mighty Manitou, hastening up the river. As with
the speed of wind and wave he came rushing against the steady curr
rent, he tripped over an embankment of earth, which in his fury he
tore away until nothing remained. Hurrying on he came to another
similar obstacle, but this in the excitement of the beaver-chase he
only tore and trampled into huge fragments and went on, leaving
the pieces lying there with the waters boiling around them as they
do to this day — forming the Neebish Rapids.
On the Candian bank of the river stand the low chain of Lauren-
tian hills over which the loving feet of the geologist have passed and
repassed, treading reverently, they tell us, the oldest land in the
world. Around gracious curves, turning and winding among green
islands, one beauty after another opens to charmed eyes until far
ahead the tossing foam shows where the sharp-toothed rocks torment
with cruel fangs the noble current — the Sault Ste. ^larie.
On a hill not far from the rapids there stood for many years
until 1822 a tree known as the Manitou's tree. It was a mountain-
ash of great size, and it first made itself known as the home of a
deity by a sound like the beating of an Indian war-drum, which came
from it on still and cloudless summer days. No Indian passed the
spot without depositing an offering of green twigs or leaves, and
when the upper part of the tree decayed the stump was still ven-
erated, until at last a road was cut over the spot, and the then im-
mense mound of offerings was scattered and destroyed. The Indians
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
23
living there at the time acquiesced in the proceeding with all an In-
dian's belief in fatalism : — the IManitou had departed : it was to be,
and the whites were simply the instruments of Fate.
The story of Mashqua-sha-kwong is a good example of the In-
dian fashion of accounting for the existence of tangible, things by a
mysterious origin, and heard without the beautiful accompaniment —
the constant call and murmur of water which breaks one's speech
by day and one's dreams by night — it is this : Alashqua-sha-kwong
went a-hunting daily, but returning one night he found his two lonely
., .^^^-^iym
" -^^o,
--"%
-^^^
From the coUecUoii ui ,i, li. srrer
.,.__ .,x^ .«f., -., •—>..»-
The St. Mary's River and Falls
little sons lamenting their mother's absence, as they told him they did
every day. Going out slyly he saw after some search his squaw in
apparently loving talk with another brave, and in rage he killed both
man and woman with a single blow. He dragged the bodies to his
lodge and buried them in a hole dug under the fireplace. He told
his sons that he must go away lest he should be killed for the deed
he had done and they must further his escape, to the sky. He gave
to the eldest boy a little bird which he was to cook for his young
brother at the fire kindled over the place where their unworthy
mother was buried ; and he added a small leather bag, an owl, a
beaver's tooth, a bone and a dry coal. "When I am gone," he said,
"those who will come will ask for me and for your mother. Tell
24 HISTORY OF IMICHIGAN
them I am hunting and that you care for your brother by cooking his
food. This will satisfy them for the time and when they go, escape.
Carry your brother on your back in the leather bag, and every night
when you make your journey's camp place the coal on the ground
and a fire will be given you. Farewell."
No sooner was Mashquashakwong gone than a man entered the
lodge, then another and another until ten came in all. All hap-
pened as their father had said, and when the boy said that his mother
had gone for wood the men went to look outside for her, while the
children escaped. But finding no one the men returned, and going to
the fireplace saw the untasted bird. Suspicious, they dug where the
fresh earth showed under the ashes, and found the bodies. Full of
wrath at the death of their kinsfolk they followed the trail of Alash-
quashakwong whom they suspected, and travelling speedily they
overtook him, but he passed into a hollow tree, climbed up it and
so into the sky, his home, but even there his pursuers followed him.
But the spirit of the mother, loosed from the body by being unburied,
followed her children and at noontide as the boys rested they heard
the roll of thunder from above, where their father fought his ene-
mies. At night they camped, laid the coal upon the ground and a
blazing fire sprang up. Every night, as they journeyed south this
happened and there would fall from the sky a raccoon or rabbit
which they dressed, cooked and ate. But the mother-spirit still an-
grily pursued, and from above the father's voice was heard encour-
aging them to flee faster. At last, when almost overtaken, "Throw
away the owl,"' cried the voice, and at once there grew up a great
forest of thorns behind them, which the spirit could hardly penetrate,
while the boys fled on. The next day the spirit still pursued, but as
its body had been torn away by thorns nothing was left but the
head. With threats to kill them this head still followed on. "Cast
behind you the beaver tooth," called the father's voice ; and this is
why the country to the north of St. Marj^s River is filled to this time
with marshes and lakes where dwell the beaver. On went pursued
and pursuers, and as the children cast behind them the tooth it be-
came the ridge of hills we see on the north shore of these straits. At
the straits by the rapids, the children met their father, who had been
killed by his enemies and now appeared in the form of a red-headed
woodpecker. "Here my children," said he, "here comes your grand-
father who will carry you safely over the rapids." They looked and
saw an Oshuggay, or large bird, which took them over, perched on
his back. On the other side walked a stately crane, who took them
under his protection. Meanwhile the furious spirit-mother had
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 25
crossed the marsh and surmounted the hills, and now with false sto-
ries and tears begged the Oshuggay to carry her over also. But the
Oshuggay knew her to be a wicked woman, yet because of weariness
at her pleadings he promised to carry her over if she would get
upon the hollow of his neck and not touch his head. This she
promised, but he felt her in curiosity touch his head, and instantly
he dashed her to pieces on the rocks. The small fish instantly ate the
fragments of her skull and became large whitefish — the king of lake
fish. "This fish," said the Oshuggay, "shall be abundant for all time
and feed forever the Indian and his descendants." As for the boys,
they grew and flourished; one became an oshuggay and another a
crane, and to them came a revelation of a divine Manitou who
preached love and peace. But by and by the Oshuggays and Cranes
quarreled, and the Cranes went south and became the Shawnee tribe.
An old Chippewa chief at the Sault told this legend in 1810.
There was once a man who came from nowhere ; he had no father
or mother, and he wandered about the earth he knew not where.
By and by he threw himself down to sleep and awoke to hear a
tiny voice calling him. He found that it came from a little creature,
smaller than a field mouse. "My son," it said, "take me up and bind
me to your body, and never let me be apart from you. So only shall
good befall." He put the little creature in a belt which he tied
about his body and went on his way. Presently he came to a village.
Now there were in this village lodges on either side of a roadway,
but on one side the lodges were empty, but the others were full of
people. These people were kindly though curious. The king's son,
the Mudjekewis, made a friend of him, and the king gave him his
daughter to wife. These people (who seem not all hunian) passed
their time in sports and play. At last they asked him to join the ice
test. He was to lie naked with them upon the ice and each was to
see how long he could endure the test. But on disrobing our wan-
derer kept on the magic belt. At first his companions jeered at him,
saying, "He will soon give up," but finally they became quiet. In
the morning they were frozen stiff, but he felt a warmth from the
belt. He took up the bodies of the young men who had perished,
but they became dead buffalo calves in his hands. As he reached the
village two living men came into the deserted lodge in place of the
dead half-human ones, and the people were sorry, but the good
Mudjekewis rejoiced.
The next test was that of speed. As he ran he saw that his
competitor was a bear and not a man. He strained every nerve, and
reached the winning-post first. As the bear came up, the good Mud-
26 HISTORY OF .MICHIGAN
jekewis killed him with his club, and then turned to those who stood
by and who had wished his death and began to fell them one by one.
As they dropped they turned into animals of all sorts, and more
living ones appeared in the deserted lodges — a sort of backward
metempsychosis. Still the villagers grumbled. They thought the
frost-test not fair, and he promised to repeat it. But in throwing off
his clothes he undid the charmed belt and fell asleep. In the morning
he was frozen stiff'. Then the villagers rejoiced and tore the body
limb from limb, and divided it up to be eaten, for they were canni-
bals. But the Mudjekewis mourned, and his sister, the wanderer's
wife, would not be comforted. As she wept in the night she heard a
cry. She searched and found in her dead husband's belt the tiny
hairless mouse. The little creature would shake itself and increase
in size. So it alternately shook itself and grew until it was as large
as a good sized dog. when it ran off. To and fro it went, searching
for its dead master's bones, and toiling to bring them together. At
last all were found save one heel bone and this had been sent to the
place where the two sisters were staying. One petted the pretty dog,
I)Ut the other was surly and kept gnawing the bone. Springing at
her the dog seized it, and laid the recovered bone with the others.
Then he gave a long how! and the bones came close together. An-
other howl and they knit in one. Still one more howl brought the
sinews and another the flesh.- Then the wanderer arose and stretch-
ing himself as from sleep exclaimed, "Hy kow ! I shall be too late for
the trial."
"Ah," said the dog, "you chose to disobey me ! Now I will show
you what I am." He shook himself as before and with every shake
grew more "enormous in size until he was taller than the tallest trees.
His legs were thick with clumsy feet, great teeth sprang from his
mouth and a long snout from his head. There was no hair ujjon his
body save a tuft at the end of his tail. "Here," he said, "I give
you my gift. Animals, not men, shall be men's food henceforth.
Animals shall not prey on man, but man on them. Thus shall it be
forever." One would like to know what became of the sujjernatural
prehistoric beast, but the tale vouchsafes no further information.
Above the Sault the river finds peace again imtil the waters of
Lake Superior broaden in sight. Here also are traces of Micha-
boris or ^lanabosho. The Pottawatomies told their children that
the beavers had made the Great Lake and that once when the Mani-
^ Suggestion here is of the Xorse tale ot Baldur, parts of whose body
were searched for by Freya.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 27
tou chased a beaver, he crossed with one single step a bay eight
leagues wide, probably White Fish Bay. From such a pursuer what
could the beavers do but flee in a body to another lake, and thence by
devious rivers and streams to Hudson's Bay, with intent to journey
thence to still more distant countries. But the water was bitter
(salt) and the beavers losing heart separated and spread themselves
out among all the lakes and rivers of this country. "And this,"
naively remarks the good priest in his Relation, "is why there are
no beavers in France."
Skirting the south shore of Lake Superior we come to the Pic-
tured Rocks ; those marvelous cliffs rising from the water in some
places to the height of 250 feet. Upon the face of the rocks mineral
exudations have laid bands and blotches of contrasting and vivid
color that with no strong effort of the imaginative eye show strange
landscapes and weird figures, which truly must have told their own
stories to the superstitious savage. And as the waters of the lake
have slowly lowered their level during successive centuries, they have
carved and gnawed in the soft sandstone arches and caverns through
which the lowest whisper of wave or wind, or the flutter of bird-
wings echoes like the mutter of thunder. These honeycombed rocks
stretch along the shore, inaccessible for miles, and woe betide the
boat caught here even in the transient fury of a summer tempest ;
for its sure fate is to be dashed in pieces. To see these rocks, in the
light of a hazy August afternoon, with forest fires sending up the
smoke of their incantations all about the nearer lakeshore, while
one's boat lies idly on the glassy water, is to see in them what the
vanished braves saw : the fitting home of the mightiest gods. Here
lived, as the Indian believed, they who were masters of human life;
whom no man could see or approach, save through a vision vouch-
safed in sleep. When a hunter was about to set forth on an expe-
dition he would eat nothing for four or five days, that sleeping in
this weakened state he might see in his dreams a deity favorable to
the chase and by him perchance be given a sight of stag or bear fore-
telling the game he should be so fortunate as to secure. When the
men were at the chase the little children were made to fast and sleep
that they in turn might be given the inner sight and tell how fathers
and brothers fared.
A legend of the Outagamies, noticeable because of its likeness to
Christian belief, relates that the great-grandfather of the Indian race
came from the sky and told to h'ls descendants the glory of one Great
Spirit bv whom all lesser gods were created. He told them also that
he should at his death return into the sky to live forever, and that
28 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
his body would also disappear, which last was verified when friends
went to seek it after burial and could not find it. Father Allouez,
repeating this incident, adds in conclusion that "God was pleased to
make use of these fables to the present salvation of their savage
souls."
Not so morally or spiritually useful, however, is the quite pagan
tale of Wa-wabezoin, which is the legend of a household divided
against itself. Once on these rocky headlands lived an old woman
and her son, her son's wife, their child, and a little orphaned boy
whom they were bringing up. Every evening when the son came
from hunting he would bring to his wife dainties — a moose's lip or a
bear's kidney. These with truly feminine power of exasperation she
would cook very crisp so that her teeth in eating them might make
a sound to be heard to the envy of others. Finally the mother-in-
law had no more patience — were there no dainties for her? So one
day she told her daughter-in-law to leave her little son with the boy
and come out with her. On the shore of the lake where rocks over-
hung the water was a tree with a swing which she had made. She
fastened a piece of leather about her own body and began with evi-
dent satisfaction to swing, going over the precipice at every impetus.
Then the daughter was allowed her turn, but when the swing was in
full play the old woman cut the cords, and the daughter dropped into
the lake.
Then this wicked creature went home, put on her daughter's
clothing and counterfeited her cares and duties. The child cried,
missing the usual nourishment, and when the hunter came home, he
gave the coveted morsels to his supposed wife, and though he
missed his mother said nothing. Still the baby cried and the orphan
boy became suspicious. He told the man his fears, and the man
painted his face black and placed his spear upside down in the earth,
praying the Great Spirit to send thunder and rain that his wife's
body might rise to the surface of the water. Now when the wife
was cast into the lake she was drawn under by a water-tiger, who
took her to his lodge, and whenever she left it he fastened about her
body his long tail by which he made her return to him. One day
when the boy and the motherless baby played on the lake shore, the
former saw a gull flying toward him. It touched the beach and be-
came a woman in whom he recognized the lost wife. She had a glit-
tering belt about her body which was the tail of the water-tiger, and
taking her child in her arms she nursed him and spoke lovingly to
him. Then she said to the boy, "When he cries bring him here again
that I may nurse him." So the boy told these things to the father,
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 29
and again they were all upon the shore. Soon the gull with the
long shiny chain came once more and took her human form. Then
the father stepped forth from his hiding place and boldly struck
with his spear at the shiny links of the chain. Then was the wife
free and they joyously returned to their lodge. But when the old
woman saw them come, she flew out of the lodge in shape as a
bird and was never seen again. ^
The stray lumps and nuggets of pure copper which had been car-
ried by some means from unknown deposits into the lake and were
now and then seen through the clear water as they lay upon the bot-
tom, many feet below were wondered at and worshipped by the
Indians as pertaining to the Manitou. These pieces were in many
cases reverently preserved, wrapped in cloths, for several genera-
tions. Le Mercier tells -^ of a copper boulder which projected above
the waters from the lake and which afterwards disappeared, having
been covered by sand or broken away. At this the Indians feared,
believing that the divinity had chosen to withdraw his favor from
them in displeasure. Yet behind this there lies a still dimmer past.
Before the coming of the red men whose descendants we know, there
lived other Indians none of whose myths have come down to us.
Nothing has been spoken or recorded to tell us of the likeness or life
of those who worked the great copper-mines successfully centuries
before the white men came. The savages whom the French found
lived and died in ignorance that such deposits existed. That they did
exist we know by the revealings of these latter years : that there were
those who worked them we know by the 'tools of stone, the wedges,
hammers, and baskets. In the days of the Mound Builders these pre-
historic men placed great boulders of copper upon skids raised high
in successive tiers from the floor of the mines; they were buried
deep when found at last beneath the silt and debris of many years.
They it was who cached lumps of copper where no other copper can
be found for miles around, and oddly enough in one instance hid
their hoard just above where years later was found underground the
richest vein of copper ever discovered : directly over the deep simk
wealth of what is now the Calumet and Hecla mine.
W'hat flat pieces of copper the red men found scattered up and
down Keweenaw Point and along the Ontonagon River they cher-
^ The analogy of this tale to that of the Fersaben Merman at once sug-
gests itself, and in both instances it is mother love which brings back the
wife. There are many fairy tales in the German which turn on the motif
of the changed form of the captive.
* "Relation" of 1667.
30 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
ished and worshipped, some faint strange sense perhaps telling them
of the alien and rich mineral which men of our own time have tacitly
admired. Stone images were also objects of worship. Galinee,
when, with Dollier in 1670, he was the first to voyage up the Straits,^
encountered an idol of stone on the bank of the Detroit River, which
idol he broke to pieces and cast into the water in righteous anger to
find such pagan worship disfiguring so fair a land !
Stone images were also set up on the banks of Lake Huron by
him who wrestled with Mondanin, the spirit of the Indian-corn, and
a most magnanimous deed it was that a man shbuld worship those
who had tried to slay him. The legend tells us that after the wrestle
he was weary and lay down to rest. From his sleep he was wakened
by a voice which said, "Let us take his heart," "How shall we take
it," "Put your hand into his mouth," and the wrestler felt fingers at
his throat. He bit off the fingers and dealt a mighty blow in the
dark and heard no sound, but in the morning he found the wampuin
beads where the bitten fingers had lain, and going to his canoe on
the lake-border he found moored beside it one of stone in which
sat two figures of Ruckmujimines also turned to stone with the
marks of his blow upon them and minus the fingers. These he
forgivingly set adrift and did homage to. Before such as these, on
rocky hilltops and into the waters (for the great lakes were wor-
shipped as divinities par excellence) were placed and thrown offer-
ings of bows and arrows, tobacco, roots and skins.
Animals, especially the bear, were venerated as the possible tem-
porary dwellings of deities who loved to take varying shapes, and
would seem to have been both ubiquitous and inquisitive, since the
Indian felt himself always in the presence and hearing of unseen
spirits. It is curious also to notice here the trait which they shared
with the Italians and Chinese, who never praise but always de-
preciate their own families and belongings lest the envious gods,
overhearing, take sudden vengeance. There are other legends for
which we have not space. Some of them are fables of flowers and
animals belonging to this region : and are at once dainty, ingenious
and humorous to a marked degree. Yet as we leave this land
which is as that of the lotus-eaters, "where it is always afternoon,"
one word more of the Manabosho. This tale is one of a last strug-
gle, and is nearly identical with one told among the Mic-macs of
Nova Scotia as a discomfiture endured by their deity, Glooscap.
Manabosho, that active and contradictory deity, half god and
5 Thwaites' "Jesuit Relations," Vol. L, p. 320.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 31
half devil, waged war against and finally conquered all the sor-
cerers, witches, devils, imps, cannibals, goblins and dark spirits
he could lay his enterprising hands upon, and thought his work
done. Unhappily for his peace, he complacently mentioned this fact
to a woman whom he one day met, but she much upset him by
replying: "Not so, Master, there is still one whom neither you or
any other has or can conquer while time lasts." "And who is he ?"
said the master crestfallen but still ready for fight. "Nosis" (the
grandchild), she answered, "the mighty Nosis." Now Nosis, the
baby, sat peacefully upon the floor, happy with a bit of sugar. To
him Manabosho called sweetly and bade him come to him. Twice he
called powerfully and compellingly, making his voice as the voice
of a bird, but the baby only looked calmly at the mighty magician
and moved not. Then Manabosho commanded sternly, but Nosis
gazed vacantly into space. He raved and raged, and the baby whim-
pered but came not. Then did Manabosho utter awful spells, dire
threats, terrible incantations, and the baby blinked cheerfully — and
sat still ! So Manabosho made a gesture of despair and went his way
defeated, and the one who had vanquished him basked in the happy
sunshine and went "Goo-goo." And ever since, when baby says
"goo-goo" we know that he is remembering how he conquered the
gfreat and terrible Manabosho.
CHAPTER III
CHAMPLAIX, AND THE EARLY FRENCH
EXPLORATIONS
Stephen Brule was the first white man whose name can be asso-
ciated with Michigan ; and even in his case the evidence is purely
circumstantial. His career of exploration, however, is so remark-
able, and his wanderings are known to have taken him so far in
other directions that it may be presumed that he penetrated also to
Lake Superior. In any event his career so well epitomizes the his-
tory of French discovery along the St. Lawrence that it serves the
purpose of leading the reader along the historic pathway.
I" 1535. James Cartier, a native of St. Malo, in France, sailed up
the St. Lawrence to an Indian village on an island called by the
natives Hochelaga and by him named Mont Royale, the present site
of Montreal. From the Indians Cartier learned of the Ottawa River,
coming from the north ; possibly also of Lakes Ontario, Erie and
Huron; and certainly of deposits of copper. Other expeditions fol-
lowed, but it was not until sixty-eight years later, in 1603, that the
establishment of French settlements began with the advent of Samuel
Champlain. the founder of New France.
Born at Brouage, in 1567, Champlain was trained in the royal
navy. As commander of a vessel he visited the West Indies, reach-
ing Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and also the Isthmus of Panama,
where he conceived the idea of a ship canal. He was thirty-six years
old when he made the first of his ten voyages to America ; and his
commission called upon him to make exact researches and explora-
tions, while his companions were to establish traffic rel .ions. During
that year of 1603, Champlain reached the Island of Hochelaga, only
to find that the Huron Indians, w^ho occupied it during the days of
Cartier, had been driven back into tb^ interior by the hostile Iro-
quois. From scattered bands of moiii, ned of Niagara and
of the Great Lakes : and like Car ' ' deit 1 the idea of reach-
ing China through the Northweste(.< , deit), the journey being,
as he estimated, one of from five to seven hundred miles. Meantime
his two ships had been filled with rich furs purchased from the
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 33
Indians so that the voyage was a financial success. In 1608, Cham-
plain returned to New France as lieutenant governor, bringing with
him men and stores for a colony. He selected Quebec as the site for
his town and there passed the winter.
Champlain was an empire-builder, rather than a trader. His
object was to explore the continent, to discover a pathway to Asia,
and to secure that route to France by planting colonies and forts. In
order to accomplish his purposes the friendship and cooperation of
the Indians were essential. The fur country, on which he relied for
the support necessary to his undertakings, was in the possession of
tribes with whom the Iroquois were at war. Therefore he cast his
lot with the enemies of the Iroquois. The choice was as unfortunate
as it was inevitable. By his alliance with the Hurons, the Algon-
quins and the Montagnais, he espoused a cause doomed to defeat,
because of the superior courage, resources and situation of the Iro-
quois. Not only so, but unwittingly he committed New France for
all time to the losing side ; and the growth and development of French
power in America was hampered and restrained by a daring, adven-
turous and skillful foe, which came to be supplied by English traders
with the materials for warfare, at prices so much below those of the
French that even the Hurons themselves w-ere attracted to the rival
markets. "■
It was in 1609, two years after the founding of the first English
settlement at Jamestown, and eleven years before the landing of
the Pilgrims at Plymouth, that Champlain lent the effective aid of
his arquebus to a band of Algonquins engaged with a hundred Iro-
quois, on the banks of Lake Champlain, at a point probably near
Port Henry, New York. The event is commemorated by a monu-
ment erected 300 years later, under the auspices of the French
government.- The advantage obtained by the use of fire-arms for
the first time was never repeated; and in time the final success of
the Iroquois was due largely to the fact that they had more English
muskets than the Hurons had French guns.
^ The name Hurons was given to the nation in derision on account of
their manner of wearing their liair — hke boars. "Quelle hures!" exclaimed
the French ; and hence, according to Charlevoix, came the name. The Algon-
quins at this time were a tribe living on and near the Ottawa; later they
were known as the Ottawas. The name Algonquin came to be applied to
many tribes speaking the same language. The Montagnais occupied the ter-
ritory between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. Iroquois is also a term
originated by the French. They were the Five Nations, and had their villages
in the central portion of the present State of New York.
= The monument is visible from the Lake Champlain steamers.
Vol. I— 3
34 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
With Champlain on this expedition was Brule, then a lad of some
seventeen years. He was born in Champigny about 1592, but nothing
further of his origin is known. By an arrangement made between
Champlain and the Algonquin chief, Iroquet, Brule spent the winter
of 1610-11 with the Hurons near Lake Simcoe; and, at the same
time, an Indian boy, named by the French, Savignon, returned to
France with Champlain. The following June the two lads were
returned, each to his own people. Brule had learned the Huron
language and was prepared to begin his career as interpreter, explorer
and promoter of French trade with the savages.^ Nevertheless he
added to his Indian lore by spending four more years with his newly
made forest friends, accompanied by another of Champlain's young
men, Nicholas Vignau by name.
In 1615, the Hurons and Algonquins planned a great expedition
against the Iroquois. They were to attack the Onondagas, who lived
in the heart of the present New York State ; and 2,500
Indians were to form the attacking force. The journey of
800 miles was to be made up the Ottawa to the lands of the
Algonquins, thence by the Mattawan River to and across Lake
Nipissing, then down the French River to Lake Huron and so to
the country of the Hurons, who were then dwelling near Lake Sim-
coe. Champlain and Brule accompanied them ; and in that year of
1615 they were the first white men to look ofif over the dancing waters
of Lake Huron, in that portion of the lake now known as Georgian
Bay but called by Champlain Mere Douce, the fresh water sea.
Father LeCaron with twelve other Frenchmen preceded them to
Lake Simcoe.
The Huron country was to be the rendezvous ; but the Indians
were, as usual, slow in assembling. Champlain went from village to
village, some of which contained as many as two hundred large
cabins. Brule was sent ahead with a party of Hurons to bring up
the Indian tribes, allies of the Hurons, who lived to the southward
of the Onondagas, probably on the upper waters of the Susque-
hanna. Thus Brule became the discoverer of Lake Ontario, which
he crossed at the mouth of the Niagara ; while Champlain and his
force crossed at the foot of the lake, near the present city of Kings-
ton. Brule was the first white man to traverse Western New York,
six years after the Dutch had sailed up the Hudson. Owing to the
failure of the allies to arrive in time, the expedition was a failure,
' Champlain in his "Voyages" does not mention Brule by name, but
there is no doubt as to whom he meant.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 35
Champlain's fire-arms being ineffective against the palisades of the
Iroquois, and that worthy being so badly wounded by an arrow that
he had to be carried back in a litter. Sore in spirit was Champlain,
and his disappointment was made more bitter by the fact that
although he heard from the Indians tales of a great sea which he
took to be the western ocean, but which was really Lake Superior,
they feared to conduct him thither. "If ever," he says, "a person was
sorely disappointed it was myself, since I had been waiting to see,
this year, the North Sea, which during many preceding years I had
been seeking for with great toil and eli'ort, through many fatigues
and risks of life." *
Brule spent the winter of 1615-16 with the tribes on the Susque-
hanna, which river he followed to the sea, thus marking him as the
first explorer of Pennsylvania. On his return he narrowly escaped
torture at the hands of the Iroquois, and after an absence of three
years once more appeared at Quebec, only to return forthwith to the
Huron country. The mystery of the North Sea was still to be
solved. In 1621 Brule and a companion, Grenolle, started for the
north to discover that body of water about which Champlain heard
in 1603 — the lake which emptied itself into Lake Huron by rapids
a league in width. When these rapids are passed "one sees no more
land on either side, but only a sea so large that they have never seen
the end of it nor heard that anyone else has." He was to find also
that mine of copper of which Champlain was told. These vague
and obscure references of 1603 ^""^ the first accounts of Lake Superior
and its afterwards famous copper mines.
To the historian-priest Sagard,-'"' Brule gave a description of his
travels. 'The interpreter Brule," says Sagard, "assured us that
beyond the Mere Douce (Lake Huron) there was another very large
lake which empties into it by a waterfall, which has been called the
Saut de Gaston, of a width of almost two leagues, which lake and the
Mere Douce have in length almost thirty days journey by canoe,
according to the account of the savages; but according to this inter-
preter's account, they are 400 leagues in length." There
is small doubt that in 1623 Brule added to his other discoveries that
of Lake Superior. But the victory was a barren one. The sea was
of fresh water, and it had an end. It was not the ocean ; it did not
* Champlain's "Voyages," Prince Society edition, 1878-8J.
^ Gabriel Sagard, a Franciscan, came to Canada in 1623, and the same
year he visited the Hurons. He wrote in 1632.
36 HISTORY OF :\IICHIGAN
lead to China.'' Lake Superior and Sault Ste. Marie appear for the
first time on Champlain's map of 1632, which was drawn three years
before that date; but that searcher for the Northwest Passage was
convinced of the futiHty of his hopes of finding the western ocean
by the Lake Superior route.
Of Brule himself not much more is to be said. When, in 1629,
the British Admiral Kirk for the second time attacked Quebec,
Brule acted as the pilot of his fleet; and when Champlain and the
other French captives were sent to France, he returned to the
Huron country. In 1633, the year after New France was restored
to the French, Brule was clubbed to death by the Hurons, and his
flesh furnished a feast for his former friends. Whether the treat-
ment he received at the hands of Champlain excused him for desert-
ing the country he had served so long and with so little reward, and
whether some act of his own led the Hurons to put him to death,
are matters of speculation." It is to be assumed that the Indians
did not question his bravery, else they would not have feasted upon
him. Champlain for his part hastened to inform the Hurons hold-
ing back from the St. Lawrence fur-markets that Brule was no longer
regarded as a Frenchman, because he had gone over to the English ;
therefore no reprisals would be taken on account of his murder.^
Indeed Brule's only mourner seems to have been the Jesuit priest
Breboeuf, who relates, "I saw also the place where poor Etienne
Brule had been barbarously and treacherously murdered."
In the year 1618 there appeared in New France John Nicolet, a
blonde-haired, long-faced, blue-eyed Norman youth from Cherbourg,
whose excellent disposition and good memory caused the Jesuit
Vimont to have great hopes of him.^ The son of a pious carrier
between Paris and the sea-coast town of his birth, the youth was
trained in the faith so thoroughly that savage life never was able to
swerve him from the path of virtue, rectitude and allegiance. The
boy's imagination probably had been stirred by his father's recital
' For a full discussion of Brule's claims as to the discovery of Lake
Superior see "Brule's Discoveries and Explorations," by Consul Willshire
Butterfield, Cleveland, 1898. Also Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,
Vols. V, VII, VIII, X, XIV. It is incredible that Brule did not discover the
great lake ; but it is unfortunate that the evidence is so largely circumstantial.
' Champlain says that Brule was depraved. Sagard believes he was mur-
dered for revenge. See Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, \'ol. V, p. 291.
8 Lejeune Relation of 1633.
'Vimont, Relation of 1643. For a detailed account of the life of Nicolet
see "Jean Nicolet et le Canada de son Temps, 1618-1642," par L'Abbe Auguste
Gosselin; Quebec, 1905.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 37
of the news he had heard at Paris of Champlain's arrival in Honfleur
and his appeal to the merchants to engage in the profitable fur-trade
between France and the New World. Father LeCaron, who had
lived among the Hurons and had returned with Champlain, pre-
sented the opportunity offered to the church of saving souls from
perdition. The need was great for young men to go among the
Indians, to learn their language and their customs, to the end of
bringing to savages the advantages of civilization and also inducing
them to take their furs to French markets on the St. Lawrence.
Nicolet, one of a family of seven, could well be spared for the good
work, and eagerly he adopted his vocation. He belongs to the best
type of those Frenchmen who sought America for the purpose of
making a home in a new country.
After a journey of twelve or fifteen days from the trading-post
of Three Rivers, Nicolet arrived at Allumette Island in the Ottawa,
where his instruction was to begin. He was assigned to an Indian
family, and became a child of the house, enjoying the seasons of
plenty, suffering when food ran short. He hunted and fished for
his living, and meantime pursued the main object of his sojourn, the
study of the language of the savages. Jerome Lalemant i" has testi-
fied that the Indian language has all the niceties of the Greek and
the Latin ; and modern investigators have found that the most subtle
shades of thought were expressed by an inflection. Brule, in spite
of his long association with the Hurons, was often perplexed by
illusive distinctions. Nicolet proved an apt student.
After spending two years with the Algonquins. Nicolet had
attained such familiarity with their customs and had won their con-
fidence to such an extent that he was sent to the Iroquois with a
deputation to negotiate a treaty of peace. Next he visited the Indians
living about Lake Nipissing. The company of merchants whom
Nicolet served was composed of Rouen and St. Malo traders who,
through the good offices of Champlain, held the exclusive right to
the fur-trade of the St. Lawrence Valley on condition that they would
pay the administration charges, both civil and ecclesiastical, of the
colony, and also furnish each year a certain number of colonists and
provide for the defense of the new settlers. Many of the members
being Huguenots, there was no strong desire to propagate the Catholic
1" Lalemant Relation of 1660. The idea that the Indian languages are
meager and lack words to convey abstract ideas is as common as it is false.
The vocabularies are rich and the grammatical structure is systematic and
intricate. In each language there are no fewer than two thousand stem-
words. See "Handbook of American Indians," Vol. I, p. 757.
38 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
religion ; and all being merchants the profits as computed in France
were their first concern. Champlain's personality was the only thing
that saved the colony from extinction. Attached to the Rouen com-
pany as he was, Nicolet nevertheless deplored their lack of zeal for
the advancement of the colony, but like Champlain he remained faith-
ful to his ideals ; and when in 1627 Richelieu formed the company
of the Hundred Associates he yielded to the new order. When
Quebec was surrendered to the English, in 1629, he betook himself
to the Huron country, where he remained imtil the return of Cham-
plain. Perhaps his greatest service was rendered during the three
years of uncertainty when he aided in keeping the Hurons friendly
to France amid times of failing markets and meagre supplies. Only
the Algonquins appeared at the English markets.
In 1634, Nicolet came into a portion of his reward by being
appointed clerk and interpreter for the Company of One Hundred
Associates. In pursuance of his duties he was commissioned to
undertake an expedition to the "Tribes of the Lake" for the pur-
pose of making peace between them and the Hurons, thus opening
the western fur-markets to French companies. Thus the first white
man to see any portion of Michigan, Brule, went as an explorer in
the personal service of Champlain ; while the second explorer under-
took a mission of trade, also at the instance of Champlain. From
the founder of New France, Nicolet carried messages to the Hurons
requiring them to furnish ambassadors commissioned to make peace
with the western tribes. Nor was this peace to be merely a matter
of sentiment. It meant that the road between the western nations
and the St. Lawrence markets would be cleared for the passage of
the distant Indians, between whom and the French the intervening
tribes were accustomed to act as middlemen, thereby obtaining a con-
siderable profit.
On July 4, 1634, Nicolet assisted at the foundation of Three
Rivers, half-way between Quebec and Montreal. The town speedily
became the seat of a prosperous fur-market and the home of many a
trader and explorer, among them Nicolet himself. Three days later,
amid the shouts of the Frenchmen and the noise of the cannon
mounted on the new fort, Nicolet set out with the Jesuit Fathers Bre-
bceuf and Daniel, who were destined for the Huron mission ; and the
three Normans doubtless beguiled the toilsome journey by tales of
their native country. The colossal Breboeuf , capable of enduring any
hardship, has left the record that Nicolet shared the labors of the jour-
ney with the most robust of the red-men. At Allumette Isle they
parted, the missionaries taking the direct road to the Huron country ;
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 39
and Nicolet making the circuit through the territory of his old friends,
the Nipissings. On reaching the Huron towns, Nicolet presented
the desires of Champlain ; there were feasts and dances, and exchange
of presents, and all the other preliminaries to so important a project.
The result was all that could be desired, and at the end Nicolet with
seven savages set out for the western country.
They paddled north along the shores of Georgian Bay to the
river by which the greatest of lakes empties itself into Lake Huron,
thence up that island-strewn stream to the rapids, where they found
a small Indian village. After a few days of rest they dropped down
the stream, and at the mouth of the river turned their prows west
in waters never before traversed by white men. Passing through
the Straits of Mackinac to Lake Michigan, they entered the Bay des
Noquets and in time came to Green Bay and disembarked in the
country of the Folle-Avoine (Winnebagoes), the people of the wild-
rice, so called from the abundance of that plant in rivers which
empty into the bay. The Indians whom he had met on the way
spoke an Algonquin dialect, and Nicolet had been able both to
understand them and also to make himself understood by them ; but
the Winnebagoes had a different language, and communication was
difficult. Soon the news of his arrival spread from village to village.
He sent out messengers proclaiming his errand of peace.
Champlain still cherished the idea of finding a passage to China,
perhaps to the south of Lake Superior ; and Nicolet had brought
from Quebec a gorgeous robe of Chinese damask, embroidered with
flowers and birds of all kinds, hoping to encounter among the west-
ern tribes people from Asia. On reaching the first of the Winnebago
towns, Nicolet arrayed in his fine garments advanced, discharging
his pistols. "The women and children were badly scared at seeing
a man carrying thunder in his two hands," says Vimont.^i The
same chronicler relates that the gathering of Indians numbered four
or five thousand, and that each of the chiefs gave a feast at which
no fewer than a hundred and twenty beavers were served.
Nicolet embraced the occasion to propose a treaty of peace. In
glowing terms he painted the beauties of the St. Lawrence Valley
and the advantages that would be derived by the Winnebagoes from
a regular trade with the colonists. He showed the necessity of being
on friendly terms with the Indians who were friends of the French.
To all of this talk his listeners were agreeable, and peace was con-
cluded. Instead of returning at once and leaving his new friends to
find their way down the Ottawa, Nicolet determined to spend the
" Relation of 1640.
40 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
winter in their country, and personally conduct them, the next
summer. Probably he feared the treachery of the Indians through
whose countries the Winnebagoes would have to pass, as he had
abundant reason to do. Possibly, too, he was human enough to desire
the glory of heading the expedition which his diplomatic skill had
made possible. He improved the time of his stay by ascending the
Fox River, and coasting along Lake Winnebago, penetrating to the
site of the present City of Oshkosh. He came upon a village of
Mascoutins, and doubtless he encountered the soft-mannered Miamis
and the rough Kickapoos. Possibly he reached the Wisconsin
River and thus entered the \'alley of the Mississippi. At any rate,
he told A'imont that he was within three days journey of the sea.
Why he did not pursue his way can only be conjectured. Probably
he did not know at the time how near he was, not to the sea, but to
the Mississippi ; or he may have learned of his nearness from the
Indians whom he met on his return journey. Such an explanation
best comports with Nicolet's character; he was not one to turn
back before reaching his goal.
In July or August of 1635, Nicolet arrived at Three Rivers and
then hastened to Quebec to lay before Champlain the results of his
embassy and the tale of his discoveries. The governor-general
thereupon renewed his commission as clerk and interpreter, signing
it with his own hand. On the same day (August 15), Champlain
wrote to Cardinal Richelieu a most enthusiastic letter, telling of the
peace that had been established among all the tribes hostile to the
Iroquois, and asking for enough soldiers to maintain the French
authoritv built up by him during thirty years of privation and fre-
quent risk of life. Easily the English could be opposed, he wrote,
French commerce could be increased, and the boon of true religion
could be bestowed on numberless people.
On Christmas day of that same year Champlain died at Quebec.
He left among the savages a memory of honorable dealing and the
highest integrity and morality. In the wilderness he founded and
established a state, the possibilities and potentialities of which are
now just on the point of realization. Every year that passes adds
lustre to his name and increases his fame, and the fame of those
his servants whom he led or sent for the discovery of new countries.
As clerk for the company, Nicolet led a busy hfe at Three Rivers.
He was the devoted friend of the Jesuits, he kept the savages in
order by fair and honorable dealing, and in all ways he strove to
advance the interests of his country and his religion. Again he was
sent as an ambassador to treat with the Iroquois for peace; and
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 41
while successful in securing the release of two captives, he came back
with the answer that the Iroquois were ready to make peace with
the French but not with their Indian allies, the Hurons, Algonquins
and Montagnais — a condition which the new governor Montmagny,
following the precedents set by Champlain, refused to accept. In
1641, Nicolet assumed for a time the duties of chief clerk of the
company at Quebec. While enjoying the religious and social satis-
factions of the capital, he was suddenly recalled to Three Rivers by
the news that the Algonquins had captured a member of a tribe
allied with the Iroquois and were about to torture their victim over
a slow fire. The French at Three Rivers, appalled at the thought of
the consequences to New France of such an act of cruelty, hurriedly
sent for Nicolet as the one man capable of averting the catastrophe.
On October 27, in the midst of a tempest he set out ; the cold was
intense, and already ice was forming on the rivers. It was dark
when they embarked for Sillery, where they were to spend the night.
A gust of wind upset the boat. In the darkness nothing could be
distinguished. "Chavigny," cried Nicolet to his companion, "save
yourself. You can swim ; I cannot. I go to my God. To you I com-
mend my wife and my daughter." So perished Jean Nicolet, giving
his life for his country. The annals of the Northwest bear the
record of no whiter soul.'-
1= Nicolet married at Tliree Rivers, October 22, 1637, Margaret Couillard,
daughter of William and Williametta (Herbert) Couillard, a girl under twelve
years of age, a goddaughter of Champlain and a granddaughter of Louis
Herbert, whom the great governor-general styled "the first head of a family
in the country who lived on the products of his farm." At the time of
his marriage Nicolet gave to his bride 2,000 livres, together with his furni-
ture and real estate whether in France or New France. There was a son
who died soon after birth, and a daughter, Margurite, who was educated
at the Ursuline school and at the age of fourteen years married Jean-Baptiste
Le Gardeur de Repentigny. Their son Augustin Le Gardeur de Courtemanche
was a worthy contemporary of Nicholas Perrot, and a credit to his grand-
father. The widow, four years after Nicolet's death, married Nicholas
Macard. She was then twenty years old. They had numerous offspring ;
she is said to have died in 1725 ; if so she lived to be nearly or quite a hundred.
Of Nicolet's brothers, the Abbe Gilles Nicolet. came to New France in 1635
and returned in 1647 ; Pierre came in 1640 and was the guardian of Mar-
gurite. Perhaps also Euphrasie-Madeline of Cherbourg who came to Quebec
was his sister.
Happily the Indian was rescued on the very niglit set for his torture.
After the death of Nicolet, word was sent that the victim was to be saved at
any price. The price was a large one ; but the advantage to the colony was
great. The fact that Nicolet could not swim is not unusual. The author
personally knew a Cape Cod life saving crew, seven of whom perished in
attempting a rescue. None could swim.
CHAPTER IV
THE EXPLORERS OF LAKE SUPERIOR
Six years (1641) after the adventurous voyage of Nicolet, the
two priests, Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues, accepted an invi-
tation to accompany a party of Algonquins on their return to their
homes at the falls in the outlet of the upper lake. The fathers had
watched with intense interest the celebration of the Feast of the
Dead as it was celebrated in the country of the Nipissings, north of
the Huron country. They noted the many nations that formed their
canoes in line so as to sweep up to the landing-place in imposing
fashion ; and the scramble of the young men for pelts and hatchets
and beads thrown into the water to test their diving abilities. They
admired the rich furs of beaver, otter, moose, wild-cats and deer
which the visiting nations presented to the givers of the feast in order
to dry the tears shed for departed ones ; and the fathers themselves
gave presents, not for consolation for the dead, but in the hope of
securing for the living the joys of eternal life. They were pleased
with the "ballet danced by forty persons," and with the trials the
visitors made to climb a greased pole. Their curiosity was excited
by the election of chiefs and by the rich presents made by the suc-
cessful candidates, amounting in value, as the fathers estimated, to
forty or fifty thousand francs ; and they looked with awe on the cere-
mony of placing the bones of the dead in a long cabin richly fur-
nished, after the names of the distinguished ones had been bestowed
on the young men, who were expected to emulate the liravery of the
departed.
About the end of September they started with their hosts from
the mission house of Sainte Marie, and after the seventeen days
of navigation reached the place then known as the Sault. Scat-
tered over the sand plateau beside the rush of waters were the huts
of some two thousand Ojibwas and other Algonquins, allured thither
by the whitefish that had their home in pools behind the foam-
making rocks. There they heard of many other sedentary nations
who had never known Europeans — among others of the Sioux, who
lived eighteen days journey towards the northwest, and who fought
42
HISTORY OF AIICHIGAN 43
with the Crees. WiUingly the curious savages listened to the new
doctrines of the black-gowns ; and even invited them to take up
their abode in that country. The lack of laborers in the mission
field, however, was such that the fathers could hold out hopes
indeed, but could make no promises. As the ice began to form
the missionaries set out on their return journey — Raymbault going
to a speedy death at Quebec, ^ and Jogues unwittingly entering
the path that five years later led to martyrdom on the banks of the
Mohawk. They left behind them only the name Ste. Marie, calling
the place of their sojourn, as well as the falls and the river, after
the mission whence they came.
We come now to the explorations of two Frenchmen, Chouart
and Radisson, whose adventures have formed a bone of conten-
tion among western historical writers during the quarter of the
century since the Prince Society of Boston published, in 1885,
"Radisson's Voyages." The book was printed from manuscripts
prepared for the edification of Charles II of England in order to
induce him to charter "the Governor and Company of Adventurers
of England trading into Hudson Bay," better known as the Hudson
Bay Company. The object of the writing was attained ; the com-
pany was chartered in 1670, with Prince Rupert at its head; and
today its trading stations are dotted over an immense region stretch-
ing from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the boundaries of
the United States to the Arctic Ocean, excluding Canada proper
and Alaska.
Radisson himself was a person of much humor and no one could
be more amused than probably he would be if he could read the
ingenious expositions of the paths he trod in the wilderness. Some
writers appropriate for him the credit of the discovery of the upper
Mississippi ; while others look upon him as the pathfinder par excel-
lence to all the Northwest. There are others, however, who while
recounting the great results that have come from the wanderings
of the two brothers-in-law, still regard them as renegades and as
traitors to France ; also as inaccurate in their statements and bent
^ For a detailed description of the Feast of the Dead see Jesuit Relations,
Vol. XXIII, Relation of 1642. Raymbault was born in 1602. In 1640 he was
at Three Rivers ; then he was a missionary to the Nipissings ; and on October
22, 1642, he died from overwork (Jes. Rel. Vol. XI, p. 279). Jogues was
born at Orleans in 1607; he came to Canada in 1636 and entered the Huron
missions ; he was captured by the Iroquois in 1642 and escaped to the Dutch ;
he was again taken in 1646 and was tortured to death in the Mohawk
country.
44 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
only on their own commercial success. There are good arguments
in support of both contentions.^
The Radisson papers, having served their purpose at court,
became a portion of the collections of Samuel Pepys, known to fame
as a diarist. In 1703 Pepys' manuscripts were sold for waste paper,
from which fate they were saved by the collector, Richard Rawlin-
son, about 1749; nearly a century later a portion of the Radisson
papers came into the possession of the Bodleian Library at Oxford
and the British Museum ; and in 1885 thev were published by the
Prince Society of Boston, with an introduction by Gideon D. Scull
of London.^
-A. C. Laut, in "Pathfinders of the West" (1904) devotes 190 pages to
Radisson's explorations and adventures. She writes with unbounded en-
thusiasm, but refuses to be drawn into controversies as to dates. This is her
chronology : 1652-4, Radisson's capture by the Iroquois, escape and return to
New France; 1657-8, Radisson's sojourn at the Onondaga Mission; 1658-60,
Radisson and Chouart make their first journey to the Upper Lakes; 1661-4,
Radisson and Chouart make their second journey to the Upper Lakes. This
also is the chronology of N. E. Dionne, professor of Canadian arch;cology
in Laval University, in his work entitled "Chouart et Radisson" (Quebec,
1910), and of Suite and George Bryce and E. D. Neill, all authorities. On
the contrary, Henry Colin Campbell (Am. Hist. Rev. Jan. 1896; also Park-
man Club pub.. No. 2, and Wis. Hist. Soc. 1896) identifies Radisson and
Cliouart as the two Frenchmen mentioned in the Jesuit Relations as having
returned in 1856, after a two years' stay in the upper country. Warren
L^pham, secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society, follows Mr. Campbell
in the theory that the first journey was made in 1655-6 and the second in
1659-60. The late R. G. Thwaites evidently did not give particular attention
to the subject, since he can be quoted on both sides. I confess that, after
some fifteen years of discussion, the fewer difiiculties seem to lie in taking
Radisson's own order. It is less ditticult to account for the idle years between
Radisson's return to Canada in 1654 and his Onondaga journey in 1657 (dur-
ing which time he married) than it is to suppose that between his first and
second journey he turned aside to pursue a footless missionary expedition.
Wlien once the Lake Superior air got into his blood, he is not likely to have
turned aside for a purely philanthropic task in a country that offered no
financial inducements nor yet any chance for explorations. From the day
he came under the influence of Chouart he ceased to be a boy and became
a man bent on his own advancement. Nor do I place much reliance on the
identifications of Radisson's various encampments. If he reached the
Mississippi, he did not realize the fact, nor did his explorations add either
to the geographic or the trade knowledge of that region. His thoughts were
fixed on the north, where lucrative trade was possible ; and this country he
exploited with ardor and success.
3 Only 250 copies of this publication were printed; one of which came
into the possession of the writer about twenty years ago, through the courtesy
of Warren K. Blodgett, Esq., of Cambridge, Mass.
HISTORY OF AIICHIGAN 45
Radisson wrote ostensibly in English ; but the ordinary English
of that day was not clear, and the English of a French sailor and
traveler, gained probably while he was a youth, naturally is obscure
and difficult.* Moreover, Radisson wrote primarily to produce
an effect ; and if he kept notes, as undoubtedly he did, in transcrib-
ing them probably he added whatever a fertile imagination, together
with any information obtained from the savages, might suggest.^
Certainly he frequently mixed dates.
Medard Chouart, sieur des Groseilliers, as he came to call him-
self, was born in Touraine, France; in 1641, when he was a boy of
fifteen or sixteen, he came to New France and became a lay-helper
(donne) at the Huron missions, where he spent ten years in learn-
ing the language and customs of the savages. He became familiar
with the country and the tribes from the Ottawa to Lake Huron and
from Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario. He must have known Nicolet,
the most famous explorer of that time, who was making his home
at Three Rivers, where Groseilliers established headquarters in
1647, when he embarked in business on his own account. At Quebec
he married Helene Martin, a daughter of that Abraham Martin who
gave name to the Plains of Abraham, where Montcalm and Wolfe
fell in 1759, more than a century later.
On May 24, 1651, Peter Esprit Radisson arrived at Quebec,
having come with his family to settle at Three Rivers. In 1653,
Radisson's widowed sister, Marguerite, married Groseilliers, who
had then been a widower for two years. These alliances established
the two families as among the landed proprietors of the colony and_
gave them a secure position."
^ Peter Radisson's style is at least as' lucid as that of another French
Peter, who wrote in personal English of the City of Washington more than a
century later — Peter Charles L'Enfant.
^ Mr. Warren Upham after extended research has reached the conclu-
sion that the two Frenchmen, on their first journey, crossed from Green
Bay to the Mississippi, then paddled up the river for eight days to the
vicinity of Winona and thence to Prairie Island, a few miles above Red
Wing, where they made headquarters. Mr. Upham, however, believes that
not much thanks or praise can be awarded to them for being the earliest
Europeans on the upper Mississippi River; for they failed to discern the
geographic significance of the great river, and designedly concealed from their
countrymen, so far as possible, all knowledge of their travels. See his
"Groseilliers and Radisson, the first white men in Minnesota— 1655-6 and
1659-60, and their discovery of the Upper Mississippi River" (Wis. His. Pub.,
Vol. X, pt. II).
""Chouart et Radisson," by N. E. Dionne, Quebec (1910).
46 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Young Radisson was not present at the marriage; in 1652, while
carelessly wandering in the outskirts of Three Rivers, he was cap-
tured by an Iroquois war party, and was taken to their country,
where he was tortured cruelly and afterwards adopted by an Indian
family. He escaped to the Dutch at Albany, was sent to Holland,
and by way of France returned to Three Rivers in 1654. In two
years he had learned by hard experience the language and customs
of the savages. Evidently savage life had attractions for him ;
because in 1657 he was one of the party to establish the ill-fated
Onondaga mission. Having escaped the threatened slaughter of
the missionary party, he returned to Three Rivers the next year.
There he found his brother-in-law, who had returned during the
previous year from a successful trip to the Huron country for furs.
At this time, Groseilliers was about thirty-three years old, and prob-
ably Radisson was ten years his junior.
The man found the boy at once adventurous, inured to hard-
ships and resourceful in times of danger — in short, just the person
he was looking for to penetrate the northern wilderness where the
largest profits lay, and where the fur-trade monopoly had not yet
obtained a foothold. Groseilliers was an independent trader, taking
chances in selling his furs, and his success lay in opening new mar-
kets. Radisson was filled with delight at the prospect of combined
exploration and profit. "I longed to see myself in a boat," he writes.
The authorities were then planning an expedition to new countries
and the two adventurers obtained places in the company. About
the middle of June, 1658, they set out with a party of returning
savages ; and after various vicissitudes found themselves the only
ones to persevere, all the others, more than thirty in number, having
turned back while yet on the Ottawa.
The journey was perfectly familiar to Groseilliers; for he had
been in the Huron country since he was a boy ; but to Radisson the
experience was a novel one. The hard journey up the Ottawa, with
its thirty or more portages and its many rapids where the canoe
had to be pushed up-stream by the waders; the diet of berries and
of soup made from moss scraped from the rocks ; the rare adven-
ture of killing bears for food; and especially the fact that their
faces were set towards lands unknown to white men — all these
elements combined to give interest and zest to hard experiences.
They passed through Lake Nipissing, where food was abundant;
paddled easily down the French River ; took the southerly course
along the shores of Georgian Bay amid the ten thousand islands
each more beautiful than the others ; past the site of the Huron
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 47
mission, ruined since the great destruction of 1649; stayed a time
at the Manitoulin Islands; and then crossed througli the Straits of
Mactcinac to Green Bay, the home of their red fellow voyagers.
Here they assisted in the obsequies due to the Indians slain on the
journey; and they also had the good fortune to lead their savage
friends in a successful attack on an Iroquois war party, with the
result that for the time being they were accorded favor and distinc-
tion in the Indian camps akin to that shown to Nicolet fourteen
years prior.
Whither did the two adventurers go during the next two years?
Did they reach the Mississippi: did they go to the Gulf of Mexico;
were they gone three years or two? If we take Radisson at his
word all three things happened. If we believe o;ie of his most
ardent admirers, "here was a man whose discoveries were second
only to those of Columbus, and whose explorations were more far-
ranging and important than those of Champlain and La Salle and
De la Verendrye put together." And yet this same writer claims that
the missionaries maintained a conspiracy of silence against Radisson
and his explorations." Perhaps the best explanation is Radisson's
own ; he says that because they had not reached Hudson Bay, their
main objective, they determined to tell no one about their explora-
tions. Yet the writer of the Relation of 1659-60 states that one of
the fathers (probably Dreuillettes) met at Quebec in 1660 two
Frenchmen who had just arrived from the upper countries, and
who have been identified as Radisson and Groseilliers. The adven-
turers told him that they passed the winter on the shores of Lake
Superior, where they were fortunate enough to baptize two hundred
children of the Algonquin nation. These children, they said, were
the victims of disease and famine, and forty went straight to heaven,
dying soon after baptism. They also said that they saw, six days
journey beyond Lake Superior to the southwest, remnants of the
Hurons and of the Tobacco Nation, who had been compelled by the
Iroquois to forsake their native land and bury themselves so deep
in the forests that they could not be found by their enemies. "These
poor people fleeing and pushing their way over mountains and lakes,
through vast unknown forests, fortunately encountered a beautiful
river, large, wide, deep and worthy of comparison with the St.
Lawrence. On its banks they found the great nation of the Alimiwec,
who gave them a very kind reception. They also visited another
warlike nation which with its bows and arrows rendered itself as
' A. C. Laut, "Pathfinders of the West," pp. 84, 85.
48 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
redoubtable among the upper Algonquins as the Iroquois were among
the lower. As wood was scant}', the Indians of that country made
fire with coal from the earth and covered their cabins with skins.
They lived in fear of the Iroquois, who came in search of them for
a distance of five hundred to six hundred leagues. "If the Iroiiuois
go thither," says the writer of the Relation, "why shall not we also?"
This contemporarv record supplies the date of Radisson's first jour-
ney to the Northwest, a date that is confirmed by the journal of the
Jesuits for August, 1660, which mentions Groseilliers as having
arrived from Lake Superior with sixty canoes loaded with furs
valued at 200,000 livres. Furs to the value of 50,000 livres were
left at Montreal, and another portion was left at Three Rivers.
In August, J 66 1, Groseilliers and Radisson, having eluded the
vigilance of the governor, D'Avaugour, who had demanded the
right to send two of his servants with them and to share the profits,
started on a second northern journey, with the object of exploring
tlie rich fur country between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay. In
Radisson's narrative of this trip we find the first descriptions of
any portion of the present State of Michigan. Having reached the
mouth of the St. Mary's River, they ascended it until, as Radisson
relates, "We came after to a rapid that makes the separation of the
lake of the hurrons, that we calls Superior, or upper, for that ye
wild-men hold it to be longer and broader, besides a great many
islands, which maks appeare in a bigger extent. This rapid was
formerly the dwelling of those with whom wee weare, and conse-
quently we must not aske them if they knew where they have layed.
Wee made cottages (camps) at our advantages, and found the truth
of what those men had often (said), that if once we could come
to that place we should make good cheare of a fish that they call
Assickmack, which signifyeth a white fish. The bear, the castors
(beavers), and the Oriniack (moose) showed themselves often,
but to their cost ; indeed it was to us like a terrestrial paradise — after
so long fasting, after so great paines yt we have taken (to) finde
ourselves so well bv choosing our dyet, and resting when we had
a mind to it ; 'tis here that we must fast with pleasure a sweet bitt.
We doe not aske for a good sauce ; its better to have it naturally —
it is the way to distinguish the sweet from the bitter." *
The season was so far spent that the voyageurs were forced to
leave their paradise and its whitefish to "the cursed Iroquoits ;" yet
they were impelled "to give thanks to the river, to the earth, to the
8 Radisson's Voyages, p. 187.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 49
woods and to the rocks that stayes the fish." They paddled along
the southern shore of Lake Sufjerior; on the banks of the streams
they found pieces of copper, some of which weighed as much as a
hvmdred pounds; and the Indians pointed out a great hill of that
metal, but deterred the explorers from proving the truth of the
story by saying that even larger deposits lay beyond."
They skirted coasts that nature had made pleasant alike "to the
eye, the spirit and the belly," until they came to those remarkable
plains of shifting sand early named the Grand Sables. "As we
went along we saw banckes of sand so high that one of our wild-
men went upp for curiositie ; being there, did show no more than
a crow. That place is most dangerous when there is any storme,
being no landing place so long as the sandy banckes are under
water; and when the wind blowes, that sand doth rise by a strange
kind of whirlings that are able to choake the passengers. One day
you will see 50 small mountains att one side ; and the next day, if the
wind changes, on the other side. This putts me in mind of the
great and vast wilderness of Turkey land, as the Turques makes
their pilgrimages." ^^
Pursuing their course they "came to a remarquable place. Its
a banke of Rocks that the wild men made a sacrifice to ; they calls
it Nanitouckfinagoit, which signifies the likeness of the devil. They
fling much tobacco and other things in veneration. It is a thing most
incredible that the lake should be so boisterous that the waves should
have the strength to doe what I have to say by this my discours : first,
that it's so high and soe deepe yt it's impossible to claime up to the
point. There comes many sorte of birds yt makes there nest here,
the goilants, which is a white sea-bird of the bignesse of a pigeon,
which makes me believe what ye wildmen told me concerning the
sea to be neare directly to ye point. ^^ It's like a great Portall by
reason of the beating of the waves. The lower part of that open-
ing is as big as a tower, and grows bigger in going up. There is, I
believe, six acres of land. Above it a ship of 500 tuns could passe
by, soe bigg is the arch. I gave it the name of the portall of St.
^ For mention of Lake Superior copper in the Jesuit Relations, see Vol.
XL, p. 219; L, p. 265; LI, p. 65; LIV, pp. 65, 153; LV, pp. 99, 103.
1" For a description of the Grand Sables see Bela Hubbard's "Memorials
of a Half-Century," chapter on "Lake Superior in 1840." The dangerous
navigation which Radisson noted still makes voyagers shun this coast ; and
it is very little known. In 1891 the writer coasted along the shores in the
Revenue Cutter Fessenden, and obtained a fairly good view.
"Gulls are plentiful throughout the lakes.
\'oi. 1—4
50 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Peter, because my name is so called, and that I was the first Chris-
tian that ever saw it. There is in place caves very deept, caused by
the same violence. We must look to ourselves and take time with
our small boats. The coast of rocks is 5 or 6 leagues, and there
scarce a place to putt a boat in assurance from the waves. When
the lake is agitated the waves goeth in these concavities with force
and make a most horrible noise, most like the shooting of great
guns."
It is strange that in so extended a description of the Pictured
Rocks, Radisson has omitted all notice of the one feature that gives
to them their present name — the brilliant colors produced on the
surface of the rocks by the exuding of mineral paints.^-
1- The Pictured Rocks are simplj' the highest development of phenomena
characteristic of the shores for many miles on either side of Marquette. Mr.
Hubbard says (Memorials of a Half-Century), "The cliffs here rise into
a mural precipice, springing perpendicularly from the deep waters to the
height of from 80 to 250 feet; and for the distance of fifteen miles, except
in one or two places, are destitute of a beach upon which even a canoe
maj' be landed. So dangerous is the coast that vessels all give it a wide
berth, passing at too great distance for accurate view. The predominant
color is gray, sometimes light, often dark and rusty, and stained by oxides of
iron and copper, with which the materials are charged. The great diversity
of hues that give so beautiful and variegated an appearance to large portions
of the surface, and from which the cliffs derive their name, are owing to
the oxides which have filtered through the porous stone in watery solutions
and left their stains upon the surface. Too extravagant an idea could
scarcely be conveyed of the exceeding brilliance of the coloring. These
cliffs present indubitable evidence that the lake once washed them at a
height many feet above its present level. And as the strata are of differing
degrees of hardness, they have been worn by the waves into a variety of
forms. An immense angular projection of the cliff, known to voyageurs as
'La Portaille,' exhibits on its three sides arches of this construction, one
of which springs to a height of about 150 feet. The openings form pas-
sages into a great cavern, or more properly a vestibule, the roof of which
is beyond the reach of our longest oars, and which conducts through
the entire projecting mass, — a distance of not less than 500 feet. Entering
with our boat into this natural rock-built hall, its yawning caverns and over-
hanging walls strike a sudden a.we into the soul. Echo gives back the voice
in loud reverberations, and the discharge of a musket produces a roar like a
clap of thunder.
"Among the characteristic features, none is more extraordinary than one
to which the French voyageurs have appropriately given the name of 'La
Chapelle.' This rock was originally part of the solid cliff, of which the greater
portion has been swept away, causing a valley about half a mile in breadth,
through which a considerable stream enters the lake, falling over the rocks
in a sheet of foam. Close by, reared upon the rocky platform, about twenty
feet above the lake, and conspicuous from its isolation, stands the chapel. It
consists of a tabular mass of sandstone, raised upon five columns, whose
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 51
Coming to what are now known as the Huron Islands, ^^
Radisson looked upon their beauties and because "there be 3 in
triangle," he called them "of ye Trinity." Waiting for fair weather,
the Frenchmen sailed across Keweenaw Bay to the mouth of Port-
age River, and were surprised to find there meadows squared and
smooth as a board, the work of the beavers, which industrious ani-
mals had cut the trees and flooded many a square mile of territory.
The explorers broke through the beaver-dams, and at last came to
"a trembling ground" over which they dragged their boats. "The
ground became trembling by this means ; the castors drowning great
soyles with dead water, herein grows mosse which is 2 foot thick
or there abouts, and when you think to goe safe and dry, if you
take not good care you sink downe to your head or to the middle of
your body. When you are out of one hole you find yourself in
another. This 1 Speake by experience, for I myself have bin catched
often. But the wild men warned me, which saved me ; that is, that
when the mosse should break under, I should cast my whole body
into the water on sudaine — I must with my hands hold the mosse,
and go like a frogg, then to draw my boat after me. There was no
danger."
Gloomy Portage Lake passed, they came to the portage, where
is now the government ship-canal. There they found the way "well
beaten because of the comers and goers, who by making that passage
shortens their passage by 8 days by tourning about the point that
goes very farr in that great lake ; that is to say, 5 to come to the point
and 3 for to come to the landing of that place of carriage." They
were told that a league from the end of Keweenaw Point was an
island all of copper, and that from this island, when one was "minded
to thwart it in a faire and calme weather, beginning from sun rising
to sun sett, they come to a great island [Isle Royale] from which
they come the next morning to firme lande on the other side."
capitals swell into a uniform arch and support the ceiling or dome of the
edifice. Its whole height is fifty-six feet. The pillars are somewhat irregular
in form and position ; including their bases, they are about twenty-five feet in
height, and from four to six feet diameter in the swell. Regular proportions
are not altogether preserved, for in most of them the central portion has the
smallest diameter, like an hour-glass. Two uphold the front, and from
these the arch springs to the height of thirty feet, allowing to the roof a
thickness of five or six feet. The span of this arch is thirty-two feet, as
viewed from the water, in which diFection the spectator looks completely
through the temple into the woodland beyond."
12 There are seven or eight of these islands, although they may well
appear as only three, owing to the smallness of the others. Under a bright
sun the western cliffs look like a walled city.
52 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Pursuing their westward way, the two Frenchmen reached
Chequaniegon Bay and wintered among the tribes gathered from
the four points of the compass to dwell for a season beside the
abundant fisheries of the greatest of lakes. From the east came
the nations of the Sault, to regale themselves with "sturgeons of a
vast bigness, and Picts of seaven foot long."' From the west the
Sioux appeared, each warrior accompanied by his two wives bearing
oats and corn, garments of buffalo-fur and "white castor" skins ;
and following the first embassy came a deputation of young men
with "incredible pomp" that reminded Radisson of the entrance of
the Polanders into Paris, "save that they had not so many Jewells,
but instead of them they had so many feathers." From the south
came old friends from Green Bay, whom they had met during their
first voyage, and who now gave them warm greetings. Best of all,
from the north came the Christinos (Crees), who filled the willing
ears of the Frenchmen with tales of the immense riches in furs of
the lands about Hudson Bay.
Undaunted by perils from starvation and illness, from accidents,
from the treachery of Indians, the two ad\'enturers pushed farther
into unknown countries than any Frenchmen had done before them.
> -
Before the spring of 1663 they had mastered the commercial possi-
bilities of the entire region between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay.
If they did not actually reach the latter waters, at least they came
within striking distance of them, and, what was far better for their
own purposes, they established traffic relations with the savages,
taking furs throughout a vast region richer than any known to New
France. When they reached the St. Lawrence in the summer of
1663, they ijrought down with them furs to the value of $300,000.
Of this fortune the governor, D'Argenson, exacted various fines for
unlicensed trading until the explorers had for their own share the
equivalent of less than twenty thousand dollars. This piece of short-
sighted folly eventually cost the French government many times the
amount of the extortion in vain attempts to defend their possessions;
while at the same time it lost to that country the services of the hardi-
est adventurers and the keenest traders New France ever knew, and
threw them into the arms of their rivals, the English, who are enjoy-
ing to this day the profits from the labors of Radisson and Gro-
seilliers in founding the Hudson Bay Company. 1*
'^ When and where Groseilliers and Radisson died is not definitely known.
From the Hudson Bay Company the latter drew a pension until 1710; he was
a poor man, as was also Groseilliers when he retired in 1684.
CHAPTER V
MISSIONARIES AND MISSIONS
It is difficult for us who belong to a commercial age to realize
that the men who first passed over the waters and through the
woody solitudes of the now sovereign State of Michigan were not
creatures of myth and tradition straying like shadows through the
dawn of history. Now and again perhaps the summer pleasure-
seeker drifting over the waters of river or lake in morning mist
or dim twilight hears in fancy the dip of a paddle as some eager
explorer hurries on his northward way; or sees in the midday hush
of the forest on Superior's shore the flutter of a black-robe among
the silver birches. And then at night, ensconsed in his own sophisto-
cated log-cabin, he may take from his shelves the volumes of Jesuit
Relations, in which there is opened to us the very words in which
the "black-robes" themselves have recorded their wanderings and
discoveries, their achievements and their pitiful failures. Dropping
the book, he gazes into the glowing embers in the broad fire-place ;
the whole chronicle springs into vivid life, and before his vision
now strides the crafty and dauntless explorer, adventurer and
trader and again moves the brave and gentle priest of whom it may
be written, as Plutarch said of Homer: "Born at los amid violets,
as the word typifies, he was dead at Smyrna in the bitterness of
sacrificial myrrh, which the name implies." Born and trained in
the supreme days of French power and glory, amid scenes where
art brings nature to contribute to the highest of man's pleasures,
they sought an arduous life, the perils of lonely travel amid scenes
absolutely devoid of human interest, chances of death by slow tor-
ture at the hands of savages, all to serve a Master whose rewards
were not of this world.
To all who shall read this chapter this greeting comes : try first
of all to put yourself into the mood to understand the aims and pur-
poses of these men who for conscience sake did the rough work of
the pioneer in the lands you now enjoy. Among them are beguil-
ing personalities, which appeal to our sense of romance and devotion
as we read of their lives of bravery, daring and self-sacrifice. At
53
54 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
least give them credit for sincerity, and admit that of such is the
kingdom of Heaven.
The distinction of having been the first white man positively
known to have coasted along the shores of Lake Superior belongs to
Father Rene Menard. The recital of his life and death in the
"Jesuit Relations" shows at its best the temper of the men who under-
took to instill in the minds of the Indians a knowledge of Christ and
his kingdom ; and also shows the difficulties with which they had
to deal, difficulties arising from both man and nature. Because
the experience of Father Menard is typical his career merits
extended examination.
Rene Menard was born in Paris, September 5, 1605, and at the
age of nineteen became a Jesuit novice. He studied at Paris, La
Fleche, Bourges and Rouen ; and spent six or seven years as an
instructor at Orleans and Moulins. In 1640, at the age of thirty-
five, he came to Canada, and after a year of experience in the
Huron country began missionary work in the country of the Nipis-
sings, near Georgian Bay. After the destruction of the Huron mis-
sions in 1649, he lived at Three Rivers as superior of the mission ; he
spent two years among the Iroquois, fleeing with his brethren when
the disastrous ending of that mission came in 1658.
In August, 1660, he accompanied a party of returning Ottawas
on their way from Montreal to Lake Superior ; that winter he spent
on the shores of the upper lake somewhere between the present city
of Marquette and Portage Entry, possibly at the foot of Keweenaw
Bay, near the present site of L'Anse. In the spring of 1661 he felt
called to go to the succor of some Hurons, whom the Iroquois had
driven to the headwaters of the Black River in Wisconsin. Making
his slow way westward, he left the lake in August and perished in
the wilderness, the first martyr of the Ottawa mission. The story
of his wanderings is told by Father Jerome Lalement in the Rela-
tions of 1662-3.1
"We are going," says the Relation, "to witness the lonely death,
in the depths of the woods, five hundred leagues from Quebec, of a
poor missionary worn out with apostolic labors, in which he had
grown gray, and full of years and infirmities. He was spent with
^A sketch of Menard is in Jesuit Relations, Vol. XVIII, p. 256; for a
more extended account of his life and last journey there is H. C. Campbell's
Parkman Club paper (Milwaukee). The scene of Menard's winter habita-
tion was not far from the site of the Huron Mountain Club ; and while this
account was in preparation the writer was spending the days on Menard's
trail.
By cuurtesy of Chicago Historical Society
Louis Joliet
56 HISTORY OF AEICHIGAN
an arduous and toilsome journey ; all dripping with sweat and blood ;
exposed to rapacious animals, hunger, and every hardship ; and, in
accordance with his own desires, and even in fulfillment of his own
prophecy, imitated in his death the forsaken condition of Saint
Francis Xavier, whose zeal he has imitated to the letter during his
lifetime. I refer to Father Rene Menard, who for more than
twenty years labored in those rude missions where, at length, — •
losing his way in the woods, wliile going in search of the lost sheep,
- — he had the happiness to finish his apostleship with the loss of his
strength, his health, and his life."
Father Menard and eight Frenchmen, setting out from Three
Rivers on the 2Sth of August, 1660, with the returning Ottawas,
reached the latter's country on October 15, Saint Theresa's day,
"after enduring unspeakable hardships, ill treatment from their boat-
men, who were titterly inhuman, and an extreme scantiness of pro-
visions. As a result, the Father could scarcely drag himself along,
for he was, besides, of a delicate constitution and spent with toil;
but, as a man can still go on a good distance after growing weary,
he had spirit enough left to gain his hosts' quarters. Le Brochet
('the Pike'), the head of this family,- — proud, extremely vicious, and
possessing four or five wives, — treated the poor Father badly, and
finally forced him to leave and make himself a hut out of fir-branches.
For food their only dish was a paltry fish, cooked in clear water, to be
divided among the four or five of their party ; and this, too, was
a charitable oft'ering made by the savages, one Frenchman awaiting
the return of the fishermen's canoes, as poor beggars wait for alms at
church doors. Moss growing on the rocks often served them in
place of a good meal ; they would put a handful of it into their
kettle, which would thicken the water ever so little, forming a kind
of foam or slime, like that of snails, and feeding their imagina-
tions more than their bodies. Fish-bones, carefully saved when
fish were plenty, also served to beguile their hunger in time of
need. There was nothing, even to pounded bones, which those poor
starvelings did not turn to some account. Many kinds of wood,
too, furnished them food. The bark of the oak, birch, linden, or
white-wood, and that of other trees, when well cooked and pounded,
and then put into the water in which fish had been boiled, or else
mixed with fish-oil, made excellent stews. They ate acorns with
more relish and greater pleasure than attended the eating of chest-
nuts in Europe ; yet even of those they did not have their fill. Thus
passed the first w-inter."
In the spring and summer they eked out a living with less difficulty,
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 57
killing from time to time ducks, bustards, or pigeons, which fur-
nished them dehghtful banquets ; while raspberries and other similar
small fruits served them as choice refreshments. Corn and bread
were entirely unknown.
"There is in that country a certain plant (wild rice), four feet or
thereabouts in height, which grows in marshy places. A little before
it ears the savages go in their canoes and bind the stalks of these
plants in clusters, which they separate from one another by as nuich
space as is needed for the passage of a canoe when they return to
gather the grain. Harvest time having come, they guide their canoes
through the little alleys which they have opened across this grain-
field, and, bending down the clustered masses over their boats, strip
them of their grain. When a canoe is full, they go and empty it
on the shore into a ditch dug by the water's edge. Then they tread
the grain and stir it about long enough to free it entirely of hulls ;
after which they dry it, and finally put it into bark-chests for keeping.
This grain much resembles oats, when it is raw ; but, on being cooked
in water it swells more than any European grain.
"While Father Menard was wintering with the Ottawas he began
a church among those barbarians — very small, indeed, but very
precious, since it cost him much exertion and many tears. So, too,
it seemed to be composed only of the predestined, the great part of
whom were the little dying children whom he was obliged to baptize
by stealth, because their relatives hid them whenever he visited the
cabins, being under the old superstition of the Hurons that baptism
made them die. Among the adults there were two old men whom
grace had fitted for Christianity — one through a mortal illness, which
robbed him of the life of the body soon after he had received that
of the soul. He breatlied his last after making public profession of
the faith, and preaching by his example to his relatives, who, by mock-
ing at him and his prayers, gave him an opportunity to show proofs
of a piety that was very strong, although but recently rooted. The
other old man was enlightened through his blindness ; never, perhaps,
would he have perceived the brightness of the faith had his eyes been
open to earthlv objects. This poor bliiid man the Father came just
in time to enlighten and open heaven's doors to him, when he already
had one foot in hell. He died some time after his baptism, blessing
God for the favors which he had shown him at the end of his days,
and which, during his lifetime of nearly a hundred years, he had done
so little to deserve. There were also some good women who swelled
the membership of this solitary church ; among others a widow
christened Anne at her baptism, who passes for a saint among those
58 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
people, although they know not what sanctity is. After the Father
prepared her to receive the most holy sacrament of the altar, she
ceased to lead a barbarian life among barbarians. Alone and on her
knees, while all the family are indulging in filthy conversation, she
says her prayers, continuing this holy exercise of devotion to the
admiration of our Frenchmen, who have found her in later years as
fervent as on the first day. Moreover, setting an example never seen
among those people, wholly given over as they are to lechery, she has
voluntarily consecrated the rest of her widowhood to chastity, amid
the unceasing abominations wherewith those infamous wretches glory
in constantly defiling themselves.
"Those are the fruits of Father Menard's labors, small indeed in
appearance, but very great when we consider the high courage, earn-
est zeal, and stout heart called for in enduring such severe hardships
and going so far for so small results. In fact, they cannot be called
small, and could not, even did they involve only the saving of one
soul.
"Except these elect, the Father found nothing but opposition to
the faith among those barbarians, owing to their great brutality
and infamous polygamy. His small hope of converting these people,
immersed as they are in all sorts of vice, made him decide to under-
take a fresh journey of a hundred leagues, to instruct to a nation of
poor Hurons whom the Iroquois caused to flee to the very end of
that part of the world. Among them were many old-time Chris-
tians, who eagerly asked for the Father, and promised him that, upon
his arrival in their country, all the rest of their countrymen would
embrace the faith. But before setting out the Father begged three
young Frenchmen of his company to go first and reconnoiter the
situation, for the purpose of giving presents to the elders, and assur-
ing them for him that he would go and instruct them as soon as
they sent him an escort. These three Frenchmen, after many hard-
ships, finally reached this poor nation in its death agony, and entering
the people's cabins, found naught but skeletons, in such a state of
weakness as to be unable to move or stand. Therefore, they deemed
it inexpedient to ofl^er the presents they had brought from the Father,
seeing no likelihood of his going to visit them very soon without
running the risk of dying of hunger. So they dispatclied their busi-
ness with these poor starvelings, and took leave of them with the
promise that it should not be the Father's fault if they were not
instructed.
''On their return they told the Father how little likely it was that
a poor old man, broken in health, feeble and without provisions, as
From a painting at St. .Mary's (.'niict'L-, Montreal, supposed to be a contemporary portrait
Father James Marquette
60 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
he was, could undertake such a journey. But it was vain for them
to put before his eyes the difficulties of the route. 'God calls me
thither, and I must go, although it should cost me my life. Saint
Francis Xavier,' he told them, "who seemed so necessary to the world
for the conversion of souls, met his death in the act of effecting an
entrance into China ; and should I, who am good for nothing, refuse
to obey the voice of my God, who calls me to the relief of poor
Christians and catechumens so long bereft of a pastor? No. no, I
cannot, under the pretext of keeping life in the body of a paltry
creature like myself, suffer souls to perish. Is one to serve God and
aid his fellow man only when there is nothing to endure and no
risk to one's life? Here is the fairest opportunity to show angels
and men that I love my Creator more than the life which I hold at
his hands; and would you have me let it slip by? Should we ever
have been redeemed if our Master had not [^referred obedience to
his Father, in the matter of our salvation, rather than his own life?'
"Some Hurons, who had come to trade with the Ottawas, offered
the Father their services as escort. He chose one of the French-
men, an amorer, to accompany him, and for provision, he took a
bag of dried sturgeon and a little smoked meat, which he had for a
long time been saving for this intended journey. His last farewell
to the other Frenchmen, whom he left behind, was in these prophetic
terms : 'Farewell, my dear children.' he said to them while embrac-
ing them tenderly ; 'and it is the final farewell that I bid you in this
world, since you will not see me again. I pray the Divine goodness
that we may be reimited in heaven.'
"So he started on June 13, 1661, nine months after his arrival in
the Ottawa country. But the poor Hurons, lightly laden although
they were, soon lost courage, their strength failing them for lack
of food. They left the Father, telling him that they were going in
all haste to their village to notify the elders that he was 0:1 the way,
and to send strong young men to fetch him. The Father waited near
a lake for about two weeks in expectation of this aid : but as his pro-
visions were falling short, he decided to set out with his companion,
making use of a little canoe found in the bushes. About the loth
of August, the poor Father, while following his companion, went
astray. At the end of a somewhat arduous portage past a rapid,
his companion looked behind to see if he were following; he searched
for him, called to him, and fired as manv as five musket-shots to
guide him back into the right path ; but in vain. Therefore he decided
to push forward as rapidly as possible to the Huron village, in order
to hire some men. at whatever price, to go in search of the Father.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 61
But unfortunately he himself lost his way, passing by the village
without knowing it. He did not arrive there until two days after the
Father had lost his way. And then what was a poor man to do who
knew not one word of the Huron tongue ? Nevertheless, as charity
and necessity are not without eloquence, he managed so well with
gestures and tears as to make the people understand that the Father
was lost. He promised a young man various French wares as an
inducement to go and search for him, which this fellow at first
feigned to do, and started out ; but scarcely had two hours elapsed
when, behold, my j-oung man was back again, calling out : 'To arms,
to arms! I have just met the enemy.' At this cry the pity before
felt for the Father vanished, as well as the inclination to go and
search for him.
"Nor can we determine precisely the time or the day of his death.
His traveling companion thinks it was near the Assumption of the
Virgin, as he says the Father had with him a piece of smoked flesh
about as long and as wide as one's hand, which could have kept him
alive two or three days. Some time afterward, a savage found the
Father's bag, but would not admit having found his body, fearing
lest he should be accused of killing him — an accusation perhaps only
too well founded, since those barbarians do not scruple to cut a
man's throat when they meet him alone in the woods, hoping to cap-
ture some booty. And, as a matter of fact, there have been seen
in a cabin the remnants of some furnishings used in his chapel.
"Whatever may have been the nature of his death, we doubt not
that it was God's will to use it as a means for crowning a life of
fifty-seven years, the greater part of which he spent in the Huron,
Algonquin, and Iroquois missions, having fitted himself by a laljor
of holy perseverance to teach those three different peoples in their
three several languages."
Father Menard's companion, Jean Guerin, for twenty years was
one of the Jesuit domestics. He was a man of eminent virtue, and
a verv ardent zeal for the saving of souls. Indeed, after attending
the fathers among the Iroquois, Hurons, and Algonquins, amid great
dangers and severe hardships, finally, having been assigned as com-
panion to Father Menard, he met his death, "followed the good
Father to heaven after following him so far on earth. For as soon
as he learned of his death, he thought of nothing but quitting the
Outaouax, in order to go in search of the Father's body ; but God
had other plans for him and constituted him the missionary-in-chief
of that poor church which could not enjoy its pastor's ministrations.
For he there conferred baptism on more than two hundred children.
62 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
whom he soon afterward sent to heaven, in order to crown the
Father with a beautiful diadem of those httle predestined ones, for
whose salvation and in quest of whom he died." The next spring
he set out on a journey with some Frenchmen ; and the rain forced
them to land, and make a house of their canoe, by inverting it over
them. While they crouched beneath it a musket was accidentally
discharged, instantly killing him. The Relation, in speaking of his
virtues, says that so reserved was he with women that he would not
look them in the face. When he tried to persuade his companions to
follow his example, they answered him laughingly, "If we all did as
you do we would soon be completely plundered of the little we pos-
sess." And among the Iroquois, when they asked women if they had
not seen him, they would say, "We saw him, but he did not see us;
for he does not look at us when he meets us." His humility was
quite extraordinary. On one occasion he offered himself as public
executioner in Canadas, that he might become an object of abhor-
rence to every one by reason of that office. And one thing prevented
him from pressing for admission to the Society of the Jesuits was
the fear lest the cassock he would wear might cause him to be
esteemed more highly than he deserved.
It was given to Father Claude Jean Allouez to take up the work
of this "great and painful mission." How great it proved may be
known from the fact that this "second Xavier" is believed to have
instructed no fewer tlian one hundred tliousand savages and to have
ba])tised more than ten thousand. Born at St. Didier on June 6,
1622, he came to Canada at the age of thirty-six and served for
seven years in the St. Lawrence settlements before he went, in August,
1665, to minister to the scattered tribes comprising the Ottawa mis-
sion. For twenty-five years he labored in the mission fields, which
comprised the present states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and
Indiana, and at the age of sixty-seven went to his reward.
From his own journal, as given in the Relation of 1666-67, we
learn that he started on his northern journey on the 8th of August,
1665, in company with six Frenchmen and more than four hundred
savages. The red men were hostile from the beginning, because
they believed that baptism caused their children to die — not an unnat-
ural supposition seeing that the fathers were most anxious to save
the little ones whose end was near. Forsaken in a strange land, the
good father persisted in pushing on, and often the Indians took pity
on him and to save his life gave aid and succor. Often he lived on
moss scraped from trees, and once he was forced to eat the meat of
a stag that had been dead four or five days. Hunger made him take
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 63
his share, "but my mouth had a putrid taste until the next day." He
often succumbed under heavy burdens carried over the iiortage, and
the Indians would laugh and mock him, saying that they must call a
child to carry him and his burdens ; and then they would be so moved
by his plight that they would carry his chapel or some other burden.
About the beginning of September they came to the Sault. "The
river is pleasing," he writes, "not only on account of the islands
intercepting its course and the great bays bordering it, but because
of the fishing and hunting, which are excellent there." Embarking
on the upper lake, he gave to it the name of Lake Tracy, "in recog-
nition of indebtedness to him on the part of the people of those
regions ;"' but the name did not stick. There he found fish "abundant
and the water so clear and pure that objects can be seen to the depth
of six fathoms." The savages revered the lake as a divinity and
offered it sacrifices, whether on account of its size or because of its
goodness in furnishing fish for the sustenance of all those tribes, in
default of game, which was scarce in the neighborhood. \.
"One often finds at the bottom of the water pieces of pure copper ^
of ten or twenty pounds weight. I have several times seen such
pieces," he says, "in the savages' hands ; and since they are super-
stitious, they keep them as so many divinities, or as presents which
the gods dwelling beneath the water have given them, and on which
their welfare is to depend. For this reason they preserve these
pieces of copper wrapped up among their most precious possessions.
Some have kept them for more than fifty years ; others have had them
in their families from time immemorial, and cherish them as house-
hold gods. For some time there had been a sort of great rock all of
copper, the point of which projected from the water ; this gave passers
by the opportunity to go and cut pieces from it. When, however, I
passed the spot nothing was seen of it : and I think that the storms — -
which are here very frequent and like those of the sea — have covered
the rock with sand. Our savages tried to persuade me that it was a
divinity who had disappeared for some reason which they do not
state." This was evidently the copper boulder in the Ontonagon
River, and the savages did not make the detour necessary to pass it.
"This lake," he continues, "is the resort of twelve or fifteen dis-
tinct nations — coming some from the north, others from the south
and still others from the west ; and they all betake themselves either
to the best parts of the shore for fishing, or to the islands which are
scattered in great numbers all over the lake. These peoples' motive
in repairing hither is partly to obtain food by fishing and partly to
transact their petty trading with one another when they meet. But
Trentanove's Statue of Marquette in the National Capitol
(Replicas are at Mackinac Island and Marquette)
HISTORY OF AIICHIGAN 65
God's purpose was to facilitate the proclaiming of the Gospel to
wandering and vagrant tribes." The entire month of September
was spent in coasting along the southern shores of Lake Tracy ; and
finding himself alone with the Frenchmen he was able to say mass
for the first time since leaving Three Rivers. All his discomforts
were washed away by finding two children to baptise. He crossed
the bay named for Saint Theresa by Father Menard, some remnants
of whose labors he found in the persons of two Christian women
who had kept the faith and who shone like two stars in the darkness
of that infidelity. But here again the devil, who had dogged his
footsteps all the way, sought to confound him by the loss of his writ-
ings prepared for the service of converts : once these precious papers
were wrecked in the rapids ; again they were left behind at a portage ;
and then they fell into the hands of an Indian sorcerer — a man with
six wives and of a dissolute life. This man returned them to the
father, who feared them as demons who would cause him to lose his
life if he dared to touch them.
On October ist they came to Chequamegon Bay, whither their
ardent desires had been so long directed. There they found seden-
tary Indians to the number of 800 men bearing arms, gathered from
seven different nations, living in peace and mingling one with another.
There he built a chapel and entered upon the functions of the Chris-
tian religion. Thus was founded the mission of La Pointe d'Esprit.
During his frequent missionary journeys he came upon the wan-
dering Sioux, who told him of their home towards the great river
"Messepi," of their prairies abounding in game of all kinds, of their
fields of tobacco, and of a still more remote tribe beyond whose
home the earth is cut off by a great lake whose waters are ill-smell-
ing like the sea. After two years of wandering and teaching,
Allouez returned to Quebec on the 3d day of August, 1667; yet so
great was his zeal that after but forty-eight hours of civilization he
plunged again into the wilderness. His importunate appeals for
laborers to enter fields white for the harvest called into service
Father James Marquette, who in 1668 established himself at Sault
Ste. Marie, and there began a permanent mission that became the
first white settlement within the present borders of Michigan. When
Allouez was called to Green Bay in 1669, Marquette moved on to
La Pointe d'Esprit, leaving in his place at the Sault Father Claude
Dablon.
To Marquette at La Pointe came the Illinois Indians from the
south, who excited his imagination to as great an extent as the Chris-
tines from the north had excited the imaginations of Groseilliers and
Vol. 1—5
66 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Radisson, and with a correspondingly momentous result. "When
the Illinois come to La Pointe," says Marquette, "they pass a great
river almost a league in breadth. It flows from north to south, and
so far that the Illinois, who know not the use of the canoe, have
never so much as heard of the mouth." An Illinois youth who
acted as instructor in language to Marquette told the priest that he
had seen Indians from the south who were loaded down with glass
beads, thus proving that they had trafficked with the whites. That
the great river emptied itself in Virginia seemed to Marquette
improbable ; he was inclined to believe that its mouth was in Cali-
fornia. At any rate he was determined to secure the company of
a white companion, and, w-ith his Indian boy as interpreter, to navi-
gate the river as far as possible, to visit the nations who lived along
its banks in order to prepare the way for the fathers of the Church,
and to obtain a perfect knowledge of the sea either to the south or
to the west.
Before starting on the journey that was to make immortal his
name and that of his companion, Alarquette all unwittingly must
needs prepare the place of his burial. It so happened that in the
dispersion of the Hurons by the Iroquois, a remnant of the Tobacco
Nation dwelling south of Georgian Bay had taken refuge first on
the Island of Michilimackinac, celebrated for its fishing. After a
stay scarcely longer than that of a modern tourist, the Indians fled
from their relentless pursuers first to Green Bay and then to La
Pointe, where they dwelt in peace for several years, until by chance
they incurred the hostility of the Sioux. That most chivalrous
nation first returned to Marquette the images he had given them,
and then began a vigorous warfare on the Algonquins. In the prog-
ress of hostilities the prisoners were burned so freely as to carry
consternation to the dispirited Indians, who quickly abandoned their
homes and well-tilled fields and, returning to the Straits of Alackinac,
established themeslves on the north side of that passage. To his
new mission Marquette — for he had followed his fleeing flock — gave
the name of St. Ignace, and so the place is known to this day. There
the Indians filled his chapel every day, singing praises to God with
such devotion as to move even the French coiireurs de bois who
congregated at this gateway of Indian travel ; and there the zealous
father inspired in his savage converts a degree of affection that all
too soon found its last manifestation in the weird journey to discover
his body and with wild grief to bring it back to sepulchre beneath
the chapel in which he had so patiently instructed them.
Setting out from St. Ignace on May 17, 1673. Marquette, ac-
HISTORY OF -MICHIGAN 67
companied by Louis Joliet, whom Talon had sent as his companion,
pushed their canoes across the northern end of Lake Michigan to
the mission at Green Bay, thence up the Fox, across Lake Winne-
bago, and by portage to the Wisconsin, down which stream they
floated until on June 17th their light canoes were caught and whirled
along by the on-rushing Mississippi, thus accomplishing a discovery
that, in the words of Bancroft, "changed the destiny of nations." At
the mouth of the Arkansas they turned about, being persuaded that
the river flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. The return was by way
of the Illinois River and Lake Michigan. Marquette rested at his
mission of St. Ignace, leaving Joliet - to descend to Quebec with the
news of the complete success of their enterprise.
Assigned to the Green Bay mission, Marquette felt the conversion
of southern Indians so heavily on his conscience that he secured per-
mission to return to them ; and in the winter of 1674 he built and
furnished a bark chapel in the town of the Kaskaskias. The seeds
of disease were in his system, however, and he was seized with a
longing to die among his brethren and his devoted flock at St. Ignace.
After leaving the Illinois, Marquette set out on his return, coasting
along the western shores of the lake of the Illinois. But his strength
was so rapidly diminishing that his two men despaired of being able
to bring him alive to the end of their journey. Indeed, he became
so feeble and exhausted that he was unable to move himself, and
had to be handled and carried about like a child. Meanwhile, he
preserved in that condition an admirable equanimity, resignation,
joy, and gentleness. ^
"Eight days before his death he was thoughtful enough to pre-
- Louis Joliet was born at Quebec in September, 1645; he was therefore
twenty-eight years old when he made his voyage of discovery. He was
brought up in the Jesuit schools and took minor orders ; he spent a year in
France ; and in 1669 he and Jean Pere were sent by Talon on a quest for the
copper mines of Lake Superior, but they were not successful. He married
in 1675 Claire Frangoise Bissot and was the father of seven children. In
1679 he made a voyage to Hudson Bay. The Island of .^nticosti, with its
fisheries was granted to him for his discoveries and he was appointed
hydrographer for the King. The English invasion of 1690 caused him severe
losses so that he died in poverty about 1700. See Jesuit Relations, Vol. L,
p. 324-
3 There is no absolutely authentic portrait of .Marquette, but in 1896,
Donald Guthrie McNab obtained at Montreal a portrait which bore date
1669 and the legend "Marquette de la Confrerie de Jesus." Marquette was
born June i, 1637 ; and at the date of the portrait would have been 32 years
old. The portrait shows a most attractive face— quite unlike the one in the
statue. See Thwaites' Jesuit Relations, Vol. LXXI. p. 400.
68 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
pare the holy water for use during the rest of his ilhiess, in his agony,
and at his burial ; and he instructed his companions how it should
be used. The evening before his death, which was a Friday, he
told them, very joyously, that it would take place on the morrow.
He conversed with them during the whole day as to what would
need to be done for his burial : about the manner in which they
should inter him ; how they should erect a cross over his grave. He
even went so far as to counsel them, three hours before he expired,
that as soon as he was dead, they should take the little hand-bell of
his chapel, and sound it while he was being put under ground. He
spoke of all these things with so great tranquillity and presence of
mind that one might have supposed that he was concerned with the
death and funeral of some other person, and not with his own.
"Thus did he converse with them as they made their way upon
the lake until, having perceived a river, on the shore of which stood
an eminence that he deemed well suited to be the place of his inter-
ment, he told them that that was the place of his last repose. They
wished, however, to proceed farther, as the weather was favorable,
and the day was not far advanced ; Ijut God raised a contrary wind,
which compelled them to return, and enter the river which the father
had pointed out. They accordingly brought him to the land, lighted
a little fire for him, and prepared for him a wretched cabin of bark.
They laid him down therein, in the least uncomfortable way that
they could.
"He gave them the last instructions, thanked them for all the
charities which they had exercised in his behalf during the whole
journey, and entreated pardon for the trouble that he had given
them. He charged them to ask pardon for him also, from all our
fathers and brethren who live in the country of the Ottawas. Then
he undertook to prepare them for the sacrament of penance, which
he administered to them for the last time. He gave them also a
paper on which he had written all his faults since his own last confes-
sion, that they might place it in the hands of the father superior,
that the latter might be enabled to pray to God for him in a more
special manner. Finally, he promised not to forget them in Para-
dise. And, as he was very considerate, knowing that they were much
fatigued with the hardships of the preceding days, he bade them go
and take a little repose. He assured them that his hour was not
yet so very near, and that he would awaken them when the time
should come — as, in fact, two or three hours afterward he did sum-
mon them, being ready to enter into the agony.
"They drew near to him, and he embraced them once again.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 69
while they burst into tears at his feet. Then he asked for holy
water and his reliquary; and having himself removed his cruciiix,
which he carried always suspended round his neck, he placed it in
the hands of one of his companions, begging him to hold it before
his eyes. Then, feeling that he had but a short time to live, he made
a last effort, clasped his hands, and, with a steadv and fond look
upon his crucifix, he uttered aloud his profession of faith, and gave
thanks to the Divine Majesty for the great favor which he had
accorded him of dying in the Society, of dying in it as a missionar}'
of Jesus Christ, and, above all, of dying in it, as he had always prayed,
in a wretched cabin in the midst of. the forests and bereft of all human
succor."
He had prayed his companions to put him in mind, when they
should see him expire, to repeat frequently the names of Jesus and
Mary, if he could not himself do so. They did as they were bidden ;
and, when they believed him to be near his end, one of them called
aloud, "Jesus, Mary !" The dying man repeated the words, distinctly,
several times ; and as if, at these sacred names, something presented
itself to him, he suddenly raised his eyes above his crucifix, holding
them riveted on that object, which he appeared to regard with
pleasure. And so, with a countenance beaming and all aglow, he
expired without any struggle, and so gently that it might have been
regarded as a pleasant sleep.
His companions carried him devoutlv to burial, ringing the little
bell as he had bidden them ; and planted a large cross near to his
grave, as a sign to passers-by."*
"God did not permit that a deposit so precious should remain in
the midst of the forest, unhonored and forgotten. The savages
named Kiskakons, who have been making public profession of
Christianity for nearly ten years, and who were instructed by Father
Marquette when he lived at the point of St. Esprit, carried on their
winter's hunting in the vicinitv of the lake of the Illinois. As they
were returning in the spring, they passed near the grave of their good
■• Marquette died on May ig, 1675, on Sleeping Bear Point, near Lud-
ington. When the chapel at St. Ignace was burned in 1705 the fact that
Marquette was buried underneath its altar apparently was forgotten. In.
1877, two centuries after Marquette's death. Father Jacker made a success-
ful search for the bones of the missionary. A small monument now marks
the spot. Wisconsin has placed iri the Capitol at Washington a statue of
Marquette by Trentanove, and replicas of this statue have been erected on
Mackinac Island and at Marquette, largely tlirough the efforts and gifts of
the late Peter White. There is also a statue on the Detroit city hall, by
John M. Donaldson. See Mich. P. and H. Col., Vols. XXVIII, XXI, XXX.
'i
',■ -' -t
z
■yj
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 71
father, whom they tenderly loved; and (lod also put it into their
hearts to remove his bones and bring them to our church at the mis-
sion of St. Ignace, where those savages make their abode.
"They resolved to act in regard to the father as they are wont
to do toward those whom they respect. Accordingly, they opened
the grave, and uncovered the body; and, although the flesh and
internal organs were all dried up, they found it entire, so that not
even the skin was in any way injured. This did not prevent them
from proceeding to dissect it, as is their custom. They cleansed
the bones and exposed them to the sun to dry ; then, carefully laying
them in a box of birch-bark, they set out for St. Ignace. There
were nearly thirty canoes which formed that funeral procession
There were also a goodly number of Iroquois, who united with our
Algonquin savages to lend more honor to the ceremonial. When they
drew near our house. Father Nouvel, who is its superior, with Father
Piercon, went out to meet them, accompanied by the Frenchmen
and savages who were there ; and having halted the procession, he
put the usual questions to them, to make sure that it was really the
father's body which they were bringing. Before conveying it to
land, they intoned the De Profundis in the presence of the thirty
canoes, which were still on the shore. After that the body was car-
ried to the church. It remained exposed under the pall all that day,
which was Whitsun-Monday, the 8th of June [1677] ; and on the
morrow, after having rendered to it all the funeral rites, it was low-
ered into a small vault in the middle of the church, where it rests as
the Guardian .\ngel of our Ottawa missions. The savages often come
to pray over his tomb."
"Father Jacques Marquette, of the Province of Champagne, died
at the age of thirty-eight years, of which twenty-one were passed in
the Society — namely, twelve in France and nine in Canada. He was
sent to the missions of the upper Algonquins, and labored therein
with the zeal that might be expected from a man who had proposed
to himself St. Francis Xavier as the model of his life and death.
He resembled the great saint, not only in the variety of barbarian
languages which he mastered, but also by the range of his zeal,
which made him carry the faith to the ends of this new world, and
nearly 800 leagues from here into the forests, where the name of
Jesus Christ had never been proclaimed.
"He always entreated God that he might end his life in these
laborious missions, and that, like his dear St. Xavier, he might die
in the midst of the woods, bereft of everything. We might say
much of the rare virtues of this noble missionary ; of his zeal, which
72 HISTORY OF AIICHIGAX
prompted him to carry the faith so far, and proclaim the gospel to
so many peoples who were unknown to us ; of his gentleness, which
rendered him beloved by all, and made him all things to all men —
a Frenchman with the French, a Huron with the Hurons. an Algon-
quin with the Algonquins ; of the childlike candor with which he
disclosed his heart to his superiors, and even to all kinds of per-
sons, with an ingenuousness which won all hearts ; of his angelic
chastity; and of his uninterrupted union with God.
"But that which apparently predominated was a devotion, alto-
gether rare and singular, to the blessed \'irgin, and particularly
toward the mystery of her immaculate conception. It was a pleasure
to hear him speak or preach on that subject. All his conversations
and letters contained something about the blessed \'irgin Immacu-
late — for so he always called her. From the age of nine years, he
fasted every Saturday; and from his tenderest youth began to say
the little office of the conception, inspiring every one with the same
devotion. Some months before his death, he said every day with
his two men a little corona of the immaculate conception which he
had devised.
"So tender a devotion toward the mother of God merited some
singular grace : and she accorded him the favor that he had always
requested — to die on a Saturday. His companions never doubted
that she appeared to him at the hour of his death, when, after pro-
nouncing the names of Jesus and Mary, he suddenly raised his eyes
above his crucifix, holding them fixed on an object which he regarded
with extreme pleasure, and a joy that showed itself upon his features ;
and they had, at that time, the impression that he had rendered up
his soul into the hands of his good Mother."
After a short stay at Sault Ste. Marie, Joliet set out for Quebec
to report the discovery of the Mississippi. Unfortunately his canoe
capsized at the Sault St. Louis near Montreal, and he lost all his
papers, including "a very exact chart of these new countries ;" nor
has the copy he left with the fathers at Sault Ste. Marie been found.
However, he told his story with much exactness and circumstance.
"Two years ago," writes Father Dablon from Quebec in August,
1674, "Monsieur the Count de Frontenac, our governor, and Mon-
sieur Talon, then our intendant, decided that it was important to
undertake the discovery of the southern sea, after having accom-
plished that of the northern ; and, above all, to ascertain into what
sea falls the great river, about which the savages relate so much, and
which is over five hundred leagues from them, beyond the Outaouacs.
For this purpose they could not have selected a person endowed with
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 73
better qualities than is Sieur Juliet, wlio has traveled much in that
region, and has acquitted himself in this task with all the ability that
could be desired. On arriving at the Outaouac country he joined
Father Marcjuette, who had long premeditated that undertaking, for
they had frequently agreed upon it together. They set out accord-
ingly, with five other Frenchmen, about the beginning of June, 1673,
to enter countries wherein no European had ever set foot."
From Green Bay, as Joliet related, they voyaged nearly sixty
leagues upon a small river (the Fox) running southwesterly; they
found a short portage that enabled them to pass from that river to
another (the Wisconsin), which flowed from the northwest.
Embarking upon that stream, they traveled forty leagues, and "on
June 15, at 42 J/ degrees of latitude, successfully entered that famous
river called by the savages Mississippi — as one might say 'the Great
River,' because it is, in fact, the most important of all the rivers in
this country. It comes from a great distance northward, according
to the savages. It is a noble stream, and is usually a quarter of a
league wide. Its width is still greater at the places where it is inter-
rupted by islands — which, however, are very few. Its depth is as
much as ten fathoms of water, and it flows very gently until it
receives the discharge of another great river (the Missouri), which
comes from the west and northwest at about the thirty-eighth degree
of latitude. Then, swollen with that volume of water, it becomes
very rapid ; and its current has so much force that in ascending it
only four or five leagues (eight or ten miles) a day can be accom-
plished."
Joliet told about the nations of savages whom they encountered,
about the dress and occupations of the people, the agriculture, soil,
climate, and game. From the reports of the savages they believed
that they were nearing European settlements ; they thereupon took
council together and decided that they should not take the chances
of being captured by the Spaniards, but rather should return and
make know-n their discovery. They felt this was the wise thing to do
since they had determined by their calculations of latitude that the
river "flowed into the Gulf of Mexico — that is Florida," and not
into the \"ermilion Sea (California), as they had hoped would be
the case; for then they would have found the long sought way to
Japan and China.
Father Dablon counts among the results attained the entrance
to numerous docile people? disposed to receive the faith ; the prospect
of reaching the western ocean by way of the Missouri ; the possi-
bility of building a canal between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers,
74 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
whereby an easy navigfition would be opened between Lake Erie and
the Gulf of Mexico ; the possibihty of colonies in the fertile lands of
the new country ; the feasibility of creating a fine harbor and making
a settlement on the rich prairies at the mouth of the river which they
called the Saint Louis, now known as the Chicago.
Here, then, was the real discovery of the Mississippi, determined
upon by Government and planned by missionary and explorer who
accomplished the intended result and reported their findings with
such exactness that others readily followed where they had led the
way.
It is not possible to read the contemporary accounts of Menard
and Marquette and men like them without feeling the sincerity
and single-mindedness which characterized their labors and their
lives. It is sad indeed to think of the seemingly useless sacrifices
which they made to civilize a race not at that time capable of civili-
zation. The Indian of the Northwest was the product of many
conditions which arose from his own manner of life. The changes
which came to him during the first century after the advent of the
white men were not of their making, but rather were due to wars
among the tribes. These wars between the Iroquois and the less
powerful tribes the French tried to prevent, often at the sacrifice of
life: they strove also to teach the Indians agriculture, and to help
them in times of the pestilence so common among the tribes. But
warfare and indolence and vice were the rule among the savages and
there was no help in them.
CHAPTER VI
LOUIS XI\" AND NEW FRANCE— THE PROCLAMATION
AT SAULT STE. AIARIE AND LA SALLE'S VOYAGE
From the rude writings of the adventurous fur-traders and the
pious pages of the black-robed fathers, we turn to the memoirs of
Saint Simon whose searching but not unsympathetic pen has re-
corded alike the ambitions and the foibles of that brilliant court
which comprised the men and the women, the princes and the cour-
tiers, on whom New France depended for its very existence. Louis
the XI\', the Grand Monarch of France, had just been released,
by the death of Mazarin, from the leading strings which had ham-
pered him during the long years of his minority. Royal even in
his pleasures and his vices, he who never learned to rule himself
aspired to rule the world. No detail was too small to engage his
small mind ; and no scheme was too large to exceed his boundless
ambitions. To him New France was a fresh page of the world's
unfolding story, whereon he was to write the record of his con-
quests.
Neither superstitious Indian under the domination of the medi-
cine-man, nor devoted missionary seeking to snatch dying souls
from eternal torment, feared the devil more thoroughly than did
Louis the king. The faith that animated New France was no dif-
ferent from that which worked upon the fears of the head of the
state. New England especially and the Atlantic colonies in general
might grow and wax strong by reason of the personal initiative
of settlers striving to build up their own separate and individual
commonwealths, but it was in the mind of the king that New
France lived and moved and had its being. Mission and convent
and seminary, trade and traffic, as well as govenmient, were but
the express manifestation of the monarch. He was the ruler of
savages as well as of Frenchmen ; it was against him that the Iro-
quois fought ; his were the rich furs, taken on the frozen plains of
Hudson Bay or along the rivers flowing into the Ohio and the
Mississippi ; and to him, or to those acting for him in granting
privileges or lands in the new world, allegiance was due.
75
76 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Louis XR' had many sins seeking penance, and, moreover,
he was ambitious to rule the church as well as the state; therefore
he took a personal interest in the missionary enterprises of the
Jesuits, whom by preference he consulted in religious matters. His
minister Colbert, sagacious, honest and capable, was bent on extend-
ing the French power in the new world, a project in which he was
seconded by Count Pontchartrain, an upright man, and an able coun-
selor, who had the confidence of the king as fully as any man in a
court in which suspicion and intrigue played a large, often a con-
trolling part. How the policy of the king was regarded in Xew
France is best known from a chapter in the Relation of 1666-7,
in which also is summed up the conditions, prospects and hopes of
the colony.
"Since the King," the chronicler writes, "had the kindness to
extend his protection over this country, by sending hither the regi-
ment of Carignan-Salieres, we have witnessed a notable change in
the appearance of Canada. It is no longer that forbidding and frost-
bound land formerly painted in unfavorable colors, but a veritable
New France — not only in the salubrity of its climate and fertility
of its soil, but in the other conveniences of life. The Iroquois used
to keep us so closely confined that we did not even dare till the lands
that were under the cannon of the forts. But now the fear of his
majesty's arms has filled these barbarians with alarm and compelled
them to seek our friendship. Monsieur de Tracy has gone to carry
the King these good tidings, after having made at the same time
both peace and war, and opened to the Iroquois nations the door of
the Gospel. He has left the country in charge of Monsieur de
Courcelles, who, having made himself feared by the Iroquois,
through the expeditions which he led into their country, will hold
those barbarians — whether with their consent, or by force — to the
terms of the treaty which they came hither to obtain.
"In view of these facts, the first thought of Monsieur Talon,
Intendant for the King, was to exert himself with tireless activity
to seek out the means to render New France prosperous. He did
this both by making trial of all that it can produce, and by estab-
lishing commerce and forming business relations, not only with
France, but also with the Antilles, ^ladeira, and other countries
in Europe as well as America. Fisheries of all kinds are in opera-
tion, the rivers being very rich in salmon, brill, perch, sturgeon,
herring and cod, the sale of which in France is profitable. The
seal-fishery furnishes the whole country with oil, and yields a
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 77
surplus that is sent to France and the Antilles. The white-whale
fishery yields oils of higher grade for manufacturing purposes."
Talon was directing a careful search for mines which appeared
to be numerous and rich : he caused the felling of all kinds of timber;
he started the manufacture of staves for export, and of masts,
samples of which he sent to La Rochelle for use in the navy ; and
he also gave his attention to wood suitable for ship-building, trial
of which he made by the building of a bark which was found very
serviceable, and of a large vessel which was then ready to be
latmched.
The troops contributed greatly to the development of the
country and helped to open it up, especially on the Richelieu River,
where the forts recently erected were surrounded by fields covered
with fine grain. Two things materially aided the plans : villages
were built in the neighborhood of Quebec, as much to fortify it
by peopling its vicinity as to receive families which had come from
France. To these families were assigned lands already brought
under cultivation, some of which were covered with grain, to serve
as a first store for the settlers' sustenance. Secondly, the settling
both of officers, who unite themselves with the country by marriage,
and secured fine grants, which they cultivated ; and also of soldiers,
who found good matches and became scattered in all directions.
"We cannot omit without extreme ingratitude," continues the
writer, "the acknowledgment due not only to his Majesty's minister,
but to the Gentlemen of the General Company of the West Indies.
By their care and liberality they have contributed greatly to this
country's present flourishing condition, and to the planting of the
missions, which, throughout this 'Relation,' will be seen extending
to the distance of more than 500 leagues from here, and for whose
maintenance these Gentlemen spare no expense. We have this
year seen eleven vessels, laden with all sorts of wares, anchored
in the roadstead of Quebec. We have seen land taken up by many
workmen, and also by girls, who people our colony and add to the
number of our fields. Flocks of sheep meet our eyes, and many
horses, which thrive finely in this country and render it great service.
And the accomplishment of all this at his Majesty's expense obliges
us to acknowledge all the results of his royal kindness, by vows
and prayers which we constantly address to Heaven and with which
our churches re-echo, for the welfare of his sacred person. To him
alone is due the whole glory of having put this country in such
a condition that, if the course of events in the future correspond to
that of the past two years, we shall fail to recognize Canada, and
78 HISTORY OF AIICHIGAN
shall see our forests, which have already greatly receded, changing
into towns and provinces which may some day be not unlike those
of France."
In pursuance of his policy of discovery. Talon in 1686 had sent
Louis Joliet to Lake Superior to discover the deposits of copper
whence the Indians derived their supplies. Joliet was unsuccessful
in his quest for copper, but on his return he ventured on a new
route to the St. Lawrence. Instead of going up the French River,
across Lake Nipissing and down the Ottawa, he passed through
the straits that join Lakes Huron and Erie; and on his way he met
La Salle, who had been in the Ohio country. To that explorer
Joliet explained the ease with which a ship might make a voyage
from the lower to the upper lakes, thus opening a large and profitable
commerce in furs. La Salle determined to seize the opportunity
to meet and traffic with the Indians in their own country, thereby
avoiding the dangers and losses incident to the arduous journey by
the Ottawa route. For this purpose he would build an armed vessel
that could defy the Iroquois, and at the same time carry the cargoes
of many canoes. Immediately he set about his task.
Meantime, Talon proposed to confirm the title of Louis XIV
to the Northwest by taking formal possession of the country.
For months the indefatigable Perrot had been working among
the savages throughout the west and the north ; arranging for a
"congress of nations" to be held at Sault Ste. Marie. On the ap-
pointed day. June 14, 1671. the banks of the river beside the rapids
were covered with the wigwams of the ever-curious Indians. Into
the midst of the assembly strode the representative of the king,
Simon Francois Dumont. Sieur Saint Lusson, accompanied by the
King's explorer Louis Joliet, the King's messenger Nicolas Perrot,
and the King's priests Fathers Allouez, Dablon, Druillettes and
Andre.
A cedar post bearing the arms of France was planted firmly
on the summit of a knoll back from the margin of the river, and
in sonorous phrase Saint Lusson, in the name and by the power
of his majesty King Louis XI\', took possession of and assumed
authority over all those lands from the North Sea (Hudson Bay)
to the seas of the south and the west, in particular of Saint Mary's
Falls, the Manitoulin Islands, and of all their countries, rivers,
lakes and tributaries contiguous, as well discovered as to be dis-
covered, which are bounded on the one side, by the northern and
western seas and on the other side by the south sea, including all
HISTORY OF ^[ICHIGAN 79
its length and breadth, after which there was not much left of North
America for other nations.
Hymns were chanted, songs were sung and as a matter of course
there was feasting and dances for the Indians. Father Allouez
took pains to impress upon the assembly the power and might of
the monarch of France, at whose behest all these ceremonies were
conducted, whose favor was to be sought and whose anger was to
be feared even to the limits of the wilderness.'
Nearly two centuries later, when the contractors came to con-
struct the ship canal around the St. Mary's Falls, they found in
the line of their proposed operations a sandy knoll. Over it were
scattered Indian graves and on its crest stood a large cedar cross,
old, moss-grown and crumbling to decay. No living person could
tell the date or circumstance of its erection. It was the local
Indian tradition that it had been renewed and maintained, through
passing generations, on the very spot where the first whites who
came amongst them planted it. The contractors made short work
of the Indian graves, the old cross and the hill it stood upon, and
the locks of the Saint Mary's Falls Ship Canal now mark the
spot.-
The times were now propitious for an enterprise wdiich should
open the Great Lakes throughout their entire extent to the com-
merce of the world. The fragile canoe should give place to the stout
ship ; that ship should be armed so as to be able to defy the Iroquois ;
and all the uncertainty of Indian visits to the trading-posts of the
St. Lawrence should be at an end. No more should the Ottawa
Indians be able to exact tribute from the savages who passed
through their country ; the day of ambush and sudden death should
be ended. More than this the discovery of Marquette and Joliet
1 Wisconsin Hist. Col., Vol. XI. p. 26, gives the proces verbal; see also
Winsor's "Cartier to Frontenac;" Bancroft's "History of the United States;"
Moore's "North-West Under Three Flags."
The monument at Sault Ste. Marie bears this inscription : "Beside these
rapids, June 14, 1671, Daumont de Lusson, Nicholas Perrot, Louis Joliet and
Fathers Dablon, Druillettes, .'Mlouez and Andre claimed possession of all
the lands from the seas of the north and west to the South Sea, for Louis
XIV of France. In 1763 the lake region was ceded to England as a portion
of Canada, and at the close of the Revolution, Saint Mary's River became
part of the national boundaries. In 1797, the Northwest Fur Company built
a bateau-canal and lock on the Canadian bank. In 1820, Lewis Cass, gov-
ernor of ^lichigan Territory, here established the authority of the United
States from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River."— Moor^'j, "The Saint
Mary's Falls Canal," p. 7.
2 Judge Joseph H. Steere in Michigan P. and H. Col., Vol. 39.
80 HISTORY OF .MICHIGAN
should be utilized commercially by extending a chain of French
posts down the Alississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, thus making two
outlets by which the rich furs of the interior might reach European
markets. Such was the dream of Talon, such the vision held before
the French capitalists who were to furnish the money, and such
the spirit that animated the pioneer ship-builder of the upper lakes,
Rene Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle.
La Salle was born at Rouen, France, in November, 1643; h^
came to Canada in 1666; his brother Jean Cavelier was a Sulpitian
priest, and the Sulpitians, then seigniors of Montreal, granted to
La Salle a seigniory near the Lachine Rapids, where he established
a trading-post. He started in 1669 on a quest for the ^lississippi,
hoping to find a route to China. With him went Galinee and Dollier
de Casson, both Sulpitians. At the head of Lake Ontario they met
Joliet returning from Lake Superior by way of the Detroit River.
There La Salle and the priests parted company. Between 1669
and 1674, La Salle was the first to explore the upper Ohio; in the
year last mentioned he went to France with letters of recommenda-
tion from his friend b'rontenac, the governor of New France. From
Louis XI\' he obtained a grant of land at Fort Frontenac, new
Kingston, where he established a prosperous colony of French and
friendly Iro(|uois Indians, who devoted themselves to both trade
and agriculture. In 1678 he received royal permission to make
western explorations and establish posts on the route to Mexico.
His schemes were so ambitious as to include the formation of a new
empire in which he should have vice-regal powers.
On January 26, 1679, the keel for La Salle's vessel, the Griffon,
was laid on the banks of the Niagara River at a point between the
Falls and the present city of Buffalo ; the exact site is a matter of
conjecture, but a boulder, suitably inscribed, marking the sup-
posed spot may be seen at the railroad station named La Salle.
Already La Salle had a brigantine of ten tons on Lake Ontario,
so he was not unused to the difficulties of construction. Henry de
Tonty, La Mothe de Lussiere, La Forest and Father Hennepin
were La Salle's lieutenants in the task of building: the cordage and
tackle came from Montreal, and there were frequent journeys back
and forth by the various members of the party. About the first
of August the Griffon, aided by a "shore-breeze" at the end of a tow-
line, overcame the rapids and entered Lake Erie. Tonty, with five
men, was sent to Detroit to meet an advance party of fourteen
Frenchmen who had been despatched to apprise the Indians of the
coming of the vessel. August 11, 1679, the Griffon, a well-rigged
HISTORY OF ^kllCHIGAN 81
vessel of about forty-five tons entered the Detroit River. La Salle
had placed as the figurehead of his little ship the figure of a griffin,
a symbol chosen from the coat of arms of his friend and supporter,
Count Frontenac ; and it was his boast that he would yet make the
Griffon fly above the crows, meaning that in his purpose of trade and
exploration he would not allow himself to be thwarted by the
Jesuits, who were the natural enemies of all traders with the Indians.
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
(An imaginary portrait)
At Montreal his creditors, urged on by his commercial rivals, were
already in possession of his estate; but before him were riches in
beaver-skins, and beneath his feet was the staunch vessel whose
single voyage should bring him profits sufficient to pay every debt
and yet leave him fortune enough to pursue his schemes of ex-
ploration.
La Salle was intensely ambitious, straightforward in all his deal-
ings, and reserved in the expression of his feelings. He had great
confidence in himself and he inspired confidence ; and on the other
hand he had little patience with the timid or vacillating among his
followers, and on occasion he could be keenly sarcastic. Such
Vol. 1- 6
82 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
men are apt to arouse enmities that hinder and often thwart the
fuIfiUment of their plans. La Salle, as events proved, was no excep-
tion to the rule.
The Recollect priest who made one of the company on the
expedition. Father Louis Hennepin had so strong a desire to see
new lands that he was continually being lured to give up the good
things of this life which he so dearly enjoyed. While his fellow
monks were supposed to be doing penance for their sins. Father
Hennepin would steal away to some secluded spot to pour over
the Relations sent back to France from the "five hundred convents
of Recollects scattered over two and twenty provinces in America."
Also he would hide behind the doors of Dunkirk inns to listen to
the talk of the seamen. "The smoke of tobacco," he writes, "was
disagreeable to me and created pains in my stomach, while I was thus
intent upon giving ear to their relations ; yet, nevertheless, I was
very attentive to the accounts they gave of their encounters by land
and sea, the peril they had gone through, and all the accidents which
befell them in their long voyage. This occupation was so agreeable
to me that I have spent whole days and nights at it without eating."
The good father's exaggerations are quite natural in a traveler, who
must be entertaining if he would find a publisher.
If we may believe Hennepin's dramatic account, it was at the
battle of Senefif, where Prince Conde and William of Orange
heaped the ground with 20,000 corpses that Father Hennepin
(who was ministering to the dying), received the long-hoped-for
orders to proceed to Rochelle to take passage for America. On the
same vessel with Hennepin were La Salle and his faithful friend,
Henry de Tonty, the son of the famous financier whose name the
word "tontine" preserves for us.^
The Griffon, borne along by her two great square-sails, laid her
course between Bois Blanc Island and Sugar Island. Passing the
low-lying Grosse He and the clay bluffs of the mainland, this
3 Henry de Tonty, the son of a Neapolitan banker, was born about 1650;
he became a cadet and rose to the rank of captain in the French army. In
1667 he met La Salle in Paris and the friendship that began then lasted till
La Salle's death. He superintended the building of the Griffon, and after-
wards held the little Fort St. Louis for his captain. In 1688 he risked his
life to go down the Mississippi to find La Salle, only to find that the latter
had been murdered. Until 1700 he maintained the position on the river;
but neglect and hostility at Quebec forced him to retire to Iberville's colony
at Biloxi, where he was most helpful until in 1704 he died of yellow fever,
leaving a record of loyalty, intrepidity and endurance unsurpassed in the
annals of New France.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 83
pioneer of the mighty fleets of our own day came to the present
site of Detroit. Father Hennepin, moved with the beauty of the
scene, would have given over all thoughts of further exploration in
order to stay and enjoy the delights of what seemed to him an earthly
paradise. He urged upon La Salle the advantages of a settlement
at some point on the strait. The white-fish were excellent, he said ;
and a post there would keep the Iroquois in check. The father
e.xplains that his real reason for wishing to remain was in order "to
preach the gospel to those ignorant nations." La Salle, however,
cut short all such ideas by the icy remark that considering the great
passion he had a few months before for the discovery of a new-
country, his present proposal was unaccountable.
As the Griffon rounded the headland near the present town of
Sandwich, a canoe, shooting out from the rushes that fringe the
shore, glided alongside the ship. An iron hand clutched the low
bulwarks and Tonty ■* sprang on board. On the 12th of August the
Grififon, skirting the shores of Belle Isle, glided out upon the sur-
face of a small and shallow lake. It was Sainte Claire's day, and
Father Hennepin suggested that her name be given to that beautiful
and tranquil stretch of water. So the name of Ste. Claire, after
several intermediate changes in spelling, has come down to us
through the centuries." Crossing the twenty miles of lake. Pilot
Lucas saw before him vast stretches of rushes, among which the
waters from the river above sought the lake through many a wind-
ing channel. After sounding one passage after another sufficient
depth of water was found and the Griffon pursued her course up
the St. Clair River. The way into Lake Huron was blocked by a
strong northwest wind ; and it was not until August 23d, after
a voyage of twelve days from Lake Erie, that the vessel, hauled
* He was known as Tonty of the Iron Hand because he had lost one
of his hands and used an iron hook in its place.
'i Lake Ste. Claire was called by the Iroquois "Otsi-Keta," according to
Hennepin; Campbell says the Indians called it Kandekie and Ceanatchio.
Sainte Claire for whom Hennepin called the lake founded the order of
Franciscan nuns known as "Poor Claires." She was the beautiful daughter
of a wealthy Roman noble, and while still a girl asked advice of St. Francis
one Palm Sunday when she was attending church with her family. St.
Francis, by way of answer, cut off her beautiful hair, and over her costly
attire he threw the penitential robes of his own order. She broke away
from her family and entered the convent of San Damiano, which she saved
from ravage by the Saracens. In 1212 she founded the Clarisses, and she is
said to have founded many other orders, including the Recolletes, to which
Hennepin belonged. In Rome she dwelt between the Pantheon and the
Baths of Agrippa.
84 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
from the shore by a dozen men, and aided by a brisk southerly
breeze, overcame the rapids and entered the great lake which Cham-
plain had discovered more than half a century before. Then the
ship's company sang Te Deum "to return thanks to the Almighty
for their happy navigation."
On the 24th the Griffon crossed Saginaw Bay ; then for two
days she was becalmed among the rocky islands of Thunder Bay.
On the fourth day there came a violent storm ; the main-yard and
topmast were lowered, and then the crew fell on their knees in
prayer. Hennepin says that La Salle gave up hope, and began to
prepare for death with the others — all excepting Pilot Lucas, whom,
"we could never force to pray ; and he did nothing all that while
but curse and swear against M. La Salle, who, as he said, had
brought him thither to make him perish in a nasty lake, and lose
the glory he had acquired by his long and happy navigations on the
ocean." Fate spared Pilot Lucas for the time being. Hennepin
vowed an altar to St. Anthony of Padua, and promised to set it up
in the far-distant Louisiana. This fact, he believed, helped the vessel
to weather the storm.
The tempest died away as quickly as it arose, and soon the turtle-
shaped island of Michilimackinac stood out in the clear air, a sentinel
guarding the harbor of St. Ignace. Next day the anchors dropped
into the clear waters of the harbor, and lay plainly visible on the
white bottom of the lake. From the five guns on the Griffon's decks
boomed a salute, which was taken up and tossed to and from island
cliff to pine-tipped cape. The sound of the guns brought crowds
of Indians from their bark huts, French traders from their cabins,
and two or three black-robed priests from the little mission-house.
La Salle, finely dressed, and wearing a scarlet cloak richly trimmed
with gold braid, landed with his men, and all repaired to the little
chapel in the Ottawa Milage, to give thanks for a safe voyage. The
Ottawas in their canoes accompanied the new-comers back to the
ship, surrounding the "big canoe," as they called the Griffon, and
heaping the vessel's deck with the white-fish and trout pleasing to
Father Hennepin. The next day, when La Salle visited the pali-
saded town of the Hurons, these Indians greeted him with a salute
of musketry, the Europeans having told them that was the highest
form of compliment.
Of .the fifteen men whom La Salle had sent before him to buy
furs for the return voyage of the Griffon, four were found at St.
Ignace. They had squandered their goods, and had wasted the
proceeds in riotous living. Two others had escaped to Sault Ste.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 85
Marie, whither La Salle sent Tonty to fetch them. The leader, how-
ever, sailed before his lieutenant returned. Perplexed and annoyed
by the hostile feelings that his jealous crew had aroused among the
suspicious Indians, he was led to push on, in order to get his cargo
before his enemies could tamper with the tribes of the Illinois.
At Green Bay he found a friend in an old Pottawatomie chief,
whose admiration for Count Frontenac was extended to La Salle.
Here also he found a cargo of furs gathered by the few faithful
ones of his advance party. Elated at his success, and believing him-
self now certain to secure the means of continuing his explorations.
La Salle placed his pilot Lucas in command of the Griffon for the
return voyage, giving him five picked men for a crew. He himself,
with Hennepin and fourteen others, embarked in four canoes and
steered southward.
No sooner were La Salle's canoes fairly out into the lake than a
sudden September storm came down upon them; and it w-as hot
until morning that the tempest-tossed voyagers came safe to land.
They skirted the ]\Iichigan shore as far as the St. Joseph River,
where they waited twenty days for Tonty. He brought no tidings
of the Griffon, and it was several months before La Salle became
certain that the same storm which had so nearly proved his own
destruction had sent to the bottom his little vessel and all the high
hopes that depended upon it. To this day no trace of the Griffon
has been found ; and while many theories as to the cause of her loss
have been discussed, there is no ground to believe that it w^as
due to any but natural causes. Thus disastrously ended the only
voyage of the first vessel on the Upper Lakes.
La Salle, with Tonty, Hennepin, and his followers, made his slow
way south until they came to the Illinois River. There he began to
build a new vessel in which to voyage down that river to its junc-
tion with the Mississippi. The Griffon was to bring the anchors
and rigging for the new vessel ; but so certain was La Salle that his
vessel had been lost that, with a courage that marks him as one of
the greatest of explorers, undertook a winter journey back over
the thousand miles that lay between the Illinois and Fort Frontenac,
in order to obtain the necessary supplies. Hennepin was sent on
a voyage of discovery down the Illinois, while Tonty was left in
charge of their newly built little fort Crevecceur. There La Salle
took a few companions and began his perilous March journey
through half-frozen swamps and across deep rivers, where his way
was constantly endangered by hostile Indians. Reaching his fort at
the mouth of the St. Joseph River, and there learning beyond doubt
86 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
that the Griffon had been wrecked, the Httle party struck across
Michigan. Through dense woods where the thorns tore their
clothes into strips and cut their hands and faces, for three days
they made their slow way. Then came stretches of prairie bordered
by groves of oak, the home of the deer, bear and wild turkey.
These "oak openings" were at this time the battle-ground for a
half-dozen tribes of Indians, no one tribe being able to hold a land
so rich in game and with so fertile a soil. A two-days' journey
brought them to marshes, through which they waded painfully for
long days, with hostile Indians on their track, so they dared not light
a fire at night. Once they took off their water-soaked clothes, and
rolling themselves in their blankets, lay down to sleep on a dry
knoll. In the morning they were forced to make a fire to thaw out
their frozen garments, and the smoke quickly betrayed their pres-
ence to a band of Illinois ; but when the Indians found that La
Salle's party were not Iroquois, they suffered the white men to
go in peace.
Ten days out from St. Joseph, they reached the Detroit River,
within' a few miles of those islands whence, seven months before,
they had looked out with such confidence upon the future. La Salle
lost no time in pushing on to Fort Frontenac, where he arrived after
a journey in all of sixty-five days. Having failed in his first
attempts, he set out on a second expedition in 1681, going directly
to the Mississippi, which he descended to the Gulf of Mexico, tak-
ing possession of the entire territory for the King, in whose honor he
named the region (April 9, 1682) Louisiana. In December of that
year he built Fort St. Louis on "Starv^ed Rock," near Utica, Illinois.
The following year he returned to France to seek again royal favor,
the recall of Frontenac and the wiles of his enemies having made
such a course necessarj'. The King was gracious, and he returned
in 1684 with a large expedition, but was unsuccessful in his attempts
to find the mouth of the Mississippi. On March 19, 1687, he was
murdered by his own men."
The career of La Salle is one of the more striking examples of
the pioneer failures with which the history of the Northwest
abounds. If the explorer had to struggle only with the wilder-
ness, his conquests would have been secure ; but in the great majority
of cases the lack of reasonable support from the fickle government
^ See Parkman's "La Salle"; Thwaites' "Jesuit Relations." Vol. L\'II,
p. 315. Mr. C. M. Burton has secured copies of the papers in the French
archives relating to La Salle, and is arranging for the publication of them
through the Michigan Historical Commission.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 87
and the active jealousy and enmity of those who themselves had not
the courage to venture beyond the limits of the trading-post were the
undoing of the brave and devoted explorers.
The wreck of the Gritloii brought to a disastrous end the attempt
to conduct lake transportation on a large scale ; and it was many
years before another sail vessel made a wake on those broad waters.
Another great change followed closely upon La Salle's defeat. The
Upper Peninsula, the tirst portion of Michigan territory to be ex-
plored and settled, was destined to revert to the wilderness as the
tide of development turned to the south.
A conflict between the French and English for the possession
of North America was inevitable. Along the Atlantic seaboard
colonies of English settlers had established their homes and laid the
foundations of institutions representing the greatest degree of free-
dom then known. These institutions were original in the sense that
they sprang from new conditions of life and developed in an atmos-
phere of revolt against the governmental restrictions of the parent
country. At all events they were rooted deep in the soil of a new
land that represented freedom dearly purchased by privation and
peril and homesickness, by the sundering of the dearest relations
known to the human heart, and all the sweeter because of the
great price paid. As was to be foreseen, the flood of immigration
could not always be held in check by the mountains that hemmed
the colonies on the west. Sooner or later it was bound to break
through into the rich interior.
The French, on the other hand, found themselves in a cold
country, difficult to cultivate, with harbors closed during half the
year, dependent for its prosperity upon the precarious fur-trade, and
subject to frequent incursions by the most powerful Indian con-
federacy known in historv^the Six Nations, or the Iroquois, who
lived within striking distance of every portion of the French
dominions, and who were at bottom friendly to the English from
whom they obtained supplies and war-materials. Moreover, Canada
having no internal commerce, French development was hampered
by the state monopolies which checked private initiative and made
impossible the creation of a stable society formed of prosperous
merchants, manufacturers and artisans such as was to be found
among the English.
In the conflicts which marked the first half of the eighteenth
century, the English colonists were the aggressors; and it was not
until the middle of the century that the British Government took up
the cause of their colonies. Had the English colonies been bound
88 HISTORY OF .MICHIGAN
together by a central government the period of conquest would not
have stretched itself over a half century. In this particular the
French had the advantage of unity of action, even though con-
tinuity of action was often disturbed by the varying policies of the
succession administrations at Quebec. The fact that the English
sold goods to the Indians a third cheaper than the French could
sell played a large part in drawing the western tribes to British
trading-posts whenever and wherever they were established in the
western country. No conscientious scruples deterred the English
from supplying the Indians with all the rum they had furs to pay
for ; whereas the French, through their missionaries and by govern-
mental decree exercised some regard for the morals of the savages
they were bent on converting as well as trading with.
CHAPTER All
THE FOUNDING OF DETROIT
In 1686 in order to check British advances Du Lhut was sent
with fifty soldiers to the Detroit region to build Fort St. Joseph, at
the head of the St. Clair River, near the present site of Port Huron ;
and the next year Flenry de Tonty came across Southern Michigan
from his station in the Illinois country to the Detroit River, where
he met his cousin Du Lhut from the St. Clair, and La Forest and
Durantaye from Alichilimackinac, all going to assist Frontenac in
chastising the Iroquois. On the way down Lake Huron, the French
party captured thirty Englishmen sent by Governor Dongan, of New
York, to seize Michilimackinac; and a second English party,
despatched to reinforce the first, was taken on Lake Erie. For four-
teen years Fort St. Joseph was maintained as a meeting place at
which to hold conferences with various tribes of Indians in the
Detroit country. AI. de Longueil in his reports speaks of "my fort at
Detroit" being garrisoned by a small body of French. The object
of his negotiations was to induce the Indians to take the war-path
against the English on the Ohio, to extirpate "that scum" and to
pillage their goods. La Hontan, who passed up the Detroit in the
September of 1687, locates Fort Joseph on his map of that year.
This fort, or earthwork, built by Du Lhut at the foot of Lake Huron,
was officially known as the Fort at Detroit years before the founda-
tion of the city that now bears the name once given to the entire
strait between lakes Erie and Huron. Probably, however, instead
of being maintained as a permanent post. Fort St. Joseph was the
headquarters for detachments sent out to hold the English in check.
This would account for the fact that La Hontan, on his larger map,
marks it as an abandoned post.'
In 1694, Michilimackinac was the strategic point for the fur
trade ; and with a view to strengthen the French hold on that traffic
Frontenac sent thither Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, whom Shea,
1 Louisiana Collections, p. 69; N. Y. Collections, Colonial Manuscripts,
Vol. IX, p. 704.
89
90 HISTORY OF MICHIGA*N.
the historian of the Catholic Church in colonial days, characterizes
as chimerical, grasping, overbearing, regarding religion as a means
to be used for the purposes of government or as an element of trade.
This is all true, but it is not all the truth.
Cadillac was the son of Jean de la Mothe, seigneur de Cadillac,
de Launay, de Semontel, a counsellor of the parliament of Toulouse,
and his mother was Jeanne de Malenfant; at an early age he entered
the French army ; he was well educated, and was ever able to hold
his own in an argument or in repartee. In 1683, when about twenty-
two years old, he came to America and settled at Port Roval. He
sailed the .'Atlantic coasts with the French privateerman Frani;ois
Guyon, whose niece, Marie Therese Guyon, he married on June 25,
1687, when she lacked two months of being sixteen years old.- The
year following his marriage he received from the authorities at
Quebec a grant of land in the present State of Maine, 23,000 acres
in exent, and also the island of Mount Desert, where Frenchman's
Bay and the Cadillac Trail (cut by the late Dr. Weir ^Mitchell) still
keep alive the fact of his ownership. P'or a time he lived on the
island. The King confirmed the grant in 1689, and the State of
Massachusetts about 1787 recognized the rights of his granddaughter
to all that portion of the island which had not previously been dis-
posed of by the state. ^
Cadillac took part in the abortive attempt of the French to cap-
ture New York in 1689 and was carried to France on one of the
battleships when the attack failed. At court he made friends ; but
in the meantime (i6go) the English under Sir William Phips had
captured Port Royal and burned the town, thus reducing Cadillac to
poverty. In 1690 he returned to Canada bearing a letter from Count
de Pontchartrain, Minister of the Finances, recommending him to
Frontenac, governor at Quebec, as "a gentleman of Arcadia whose
habitation had been ruined by the Fnglish, and suggesting that he
be employed in such manner as he might be found useful." To
make bad matters worse the ship that was conveying Cadillac's wife
and the remainder of his goods from Port Royal to Quebec was cap-
tured by a privateer out of Boston. However, Cadillac was made a
= "Sketch of the Life of .\ntoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Founder of
Detroit" (1895); "Cadillac's Village; or Detroit under Cadillac, with list
of property owners and a history of the settlement, 1701-1710" (1896); "In
the Footsteps of Cadillac" (1899), all by Clarence j\l. Burton.
3 The authorities are the extensive Cadillac correspondence obtained in
France by Clarence M. Burton, and published in translation in the Mich.
P. & H. Col. Vols. XXXIII and XXXIV.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
91
lieutenant of the troops of the colony ; and the family was reunited.
In 1692 he was again in France, this time called hy the King to give
information as to the New England coast prejjaratory to an attack
planned but never executed. In 1693 and the following year he
acted as Frontenac's secretary, and in 1694 the governor sent him to
Michilimackinac as captain and commandant.''
When he reached his new post Cadillac was already under the
ban of the Jesuits. During the winter of 1693, while a member of
the circle that Frontenac had gathered about him at Quebec, he had
joined the ofificers who, to beguile the long winter evenings, arranged
some theatricals. One of the plays presented was Moliere's "Tar-
tuffe," in which the vices of falsehood, lust, greed and ambition are
From a mural painting by FrLunis ]►. Miilei, in Iljo Clevi-ljind Trust
Building the Griffon
satirized in the person of a priest. The storm of objurgation that
began in France extended even to Michilimackinac, and Cadillac
on reaching his new station found that the Jesuits at that post had
set the ofificers against their commandant. He promply imprisoned
the insubordinate ones ; but while he established his own authority,
his action resulted on the part of the Jesuits in an intense opposition
to him and his plans.
Cadillac had gone to Michilimackinat to stop the intrigues of
the Iroquois ; and to this end he resorted to measures which even the
savages were at no loss to understand. The Iroquois had invited
the Lake Indians to a council at Detroit, and on learning of this
■» Clarence AI. Burton has spent much time in France and in this country
endeavoring to piece together the story of Cadillac's life. See his sketch
of the Life of Antoine de la Cadillac, Detroit, 1895, and subsequent pam-
phlets.
92 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
meeting he took drastic measures to counteract the scheme. One
evening seven Iroquois prisoners were brought to the post. As the
party landed upon the beach, the French, acting under orders, stabbed
two of the Iroquois. The Hurons promptly defended the others,
but finally were prevailed upon to give a chief into the hands of the
whites, who at once sent to the Ottawas an invitation to drink the
broth of an Iroquois. The victim was first tied to a stake, then
tortured by burning with a gunbarrel heated red-hot, and was finally
cut in pieces and eaten by the assembled Indians. Again four Iro-
quois prisoners taken in battle by parties sent out by Cadillac, were
burned alive in order to stir up strife between them and the Lake
Indians; and Cadillac promised that "if they bring any prisoners to
me, I can assure you their fate will be no sweeter than that of the
others." But Cadillac was unable to keep his allies from being tam-
pered with while on their way back from the fur-markets at Mon-
treal. The Iroquois were making friends of the Detroit Indians,
and the only remedy was war. By selling all he possessed and giving
credit to his Indians, he succeeded in getting the Chief Omaske to
take the war-path with a strong party of braves. So vigorous was
the chase that , forty Iroquois, in order to escape their pursuers,
jumped into a river and were drowned, thirty scalps and as many
prisoners were taken, and four or five hundred beaver-skins, which
the Iroquois intended to exchange for English goods, were seized as
booty. This success put a stop to Iroquois advances for the time
being.-'
To Cadillac it was clear that the place to check the advance of
the Iroquois was not at Michilimackinac, but on the River Detroit,
because through that narrow strait all travel and commerce must
pass on their way between the lower and the upper lakes. Moreover,
the New York governor, Robert Livingstone, had already determined
to ruin the French fur-trade by seizing and holding the Detroit
region. In order to persuade his superiors of the absolute necessity
of occupying that strategic position, and equally sure that he saw
a fine opening to make a fortune, Cadillac went to Quebec and there
explained his ideas to Callieres, the governor, and Champigny, the
intendant. Cadillac laid great stress on the social and moral ref-
ormation he proposed to effect by teaching the natives to speak the
French language. Yet he was on record as believing that the only
fruits of the Jesuit missions consisted in the baptism of infants who
5 X. Y. Col. Doc. Vol. IX. p. 648. Parkman's "Half Century of Conflict,"
Vol. I, chapter 2.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 93
died before reaching the age of reason ; and that while the Jesuits
were ostensibly employed in the labor of saving souls, still he charged
that they found ample time to enrich their order by traffic in furs.
Hence he met the open and pow-erful opposition of the intendant,
Champigny, who voiced the sentiment of his friends the Jesuits wdien
he argued that if the savages were to be saved they must be kept as
far as possible from the vices of civilization.''
Unable to persuade the authorities at Quebec, Cadillac carried his
case to France and presented the argument to Count de Pontchar-
train, then chancellor of France under Louis XIV. With all the
eloquence at his command he urged upon his friend, the minister,
the absolute necessity for a permanent post, with its garrison, its
traders, its schools, and its tribes of friendly Indians, all working
together for the advancement of France and the confusion of her
enemies, the Iroquois and the English.
That Cadillac was able to win the favor of the minister is proved
by the fact that he named the post at Detroit Fort Pontchartrain,
and so it was known for many years. It is doubtful, however, if that
modest gentleman ever appreciated the honor done him. Certainly
it would have lieen a satisfaction to him in the days of quiet which
he deliberately interposed between life and death if he could have
known that in one of the great cities of America his portrait would
have a place in its council chamber and that his name would be a
household word."
Philypeaux, Count de Pontchartrain, had been for ten years con-
troller of finances when, in September, 1699, the King (urged thereto
by Madame de Maintenon) persuaded him to accept the office of
chancellor and keeper of the seals of France, an office which he ac-
cepted much against his will. As controller-general he had power to
advance or remove men as ]\rme. Maintenon wished, because ''it was
with him that the King ordinarily worked, and he therefore had the
principal interest." Saint Simon has left us this picture of him.s
"He was a very small man, thin, well set-up in his little figure,
with a countenance from which the fires of his mind sparked inces-
« Cadillac Papers, ^lich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XXXIV. The voluminous
discussion is there given.
' Hotel Pontchartrain in Detroit was so named in 1908 by William C.
McMillan, one of its owners, at the joint suggestion of Mr. Harry Skinner
and the writer.
s "Memoirs of the Due de Saint Simon in the Times of Louis XIV and
the Regency." Translated and abridged by Katherine Prescott Wormeley,
Boston 1889. Vol. I. o. 178.
The First St. Anne's Church, Detroit
(Burned in 1703)
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 95
santly, and kept even more than its promises. Never was there such
promptitude of comprehension, such hghtness and charm of con-
versation, such neatness and quickness of repartee, such faciHty
and soHdity of work, such rapid perception of men, and such clever-
ness in getting hold of them. His nicety was remarkable, and ex-
tended to everything, and throughout all his gallantry, which lasted
in his soul to the very end, much piety and goodness, and I must
add equity, both before and after his career in the finances, and even
during his administration of them, as much as they allowed to exist.
His wife was a woman of great sense, wise, solid and enlightened
in conduct, equable, consistent, unafifected, with nothing bourgeois
about her but her appearance: liberal, free with her gifts, and in the
art of imagining and executing fetes noble, magnificent to the highest
point, and with it all an admirable and orderly manager. No one,
and this is surprising, knew the Court or people of the world better
than she. or had, ami her husband also, more graces and charms of
mind. Shfe was of great use to liini both in counsel and conduct ;
and he had the sense to know this and profit by it. Their union was
always intimate. What they gave to the poor is incredible. Mme.
de Pontchartrain always had her eyes and hands open to their needs;
and she was always in quest of persons reduced to poverty, gentle-
men and young women in need, girls in danger, seeking to draw them
from peril and suffering, marrying or finding places for some, giving
pensions to others, and all with the utmost secrecy. She was a stout
woman, very ugly, of an ignoble and coarse ugliness, who sometimes
showed temper, which slie controlled as best she could." One shall
search in vain the voluminous pages of this prince of memoir-writers
to find another couple to whom so much and such unstinted praise is
given. Assuredly Detroit is most happy in its patron.
The skeptical minister inquired of Cadillac how a post at the
Detroit would keep the Indians from resorting to the English. The
wily Cadillac replied that, although the will to go to the English and
deal in the cheapest markets would still be present, yet "each savage,
one with another, kills per year fifty or sixty beavers, and, as he is
neighbor to the Frenchman, frequently borrows of him, paying in
proportion to the returns by the chase. With what little remains to
him the Indian is compelled to make purchases for his family. Thus
he finds himself unable to go to the English, because his remaining
goods are not worth carrying so far. * * * Another reason is
that if! frequenting the French he receives many caresses ; they are
too cunning to allow his furs to escape, especially when they succeed
in making him eat and drink with them.''
96 HISTORY OF -MICHIGAN
Cadillac's persistency was not displeasing to Count Pontchartrain
or to Louis XIV. The fact that little money from the royal treasury
was asked for doubtless made Cadillac's path an easier one ; but there
can be no doubt that the commander's energy, his uncompromising
nature, and his well known mastery over the conditions of frontier
life won for him support in his plans, while court friendships gained
for him unusual concessions in the way of trade and land. Cadillac
understood that he was to have control of the trade at Detroit, but
it turned out that the Company of the Colony also controlled the
traffic at that post ; and this fact was one of several causes of disaster.
Although Cadillac himself appears to have been a stockholder in the
company, his interests as proprietor were opposed to those of the
company ; because the organization was bent on keeping the north-
west a fur-preserve, and they feared ( not without good reason ) that
it was Cadillac's intention to form a strong colony of settlers at De-
troit, and to make that town a rival of Quebec, Three Rivers and
Montreal. To Count Pontchartrain he wrote that the only way to get
along with the Jesuits was, "First, to let them do as they please;
secondly, to do as they please; and thirdly, to say nothing of what
they do." Then he adds: "If I let the Jesuits do as they please,
the savages will not establish themselves ; if I do as they would
desire, it will be necessary to abandon this post ; and if I say nothing
of what they do, it will only be necessary for me to pursue my
present course." "Thirty Hurons," he says, "arrived from Michili-
mackinac on the 28th of June (1703). There remained only about
twenty-five. Father Carheil, who is missionary there, remains
always firm. I hope this autumn to pluck the last feather out of his
wing; and I am persuaded that this obstinate old priest will die in his
parish without a single parishioner to bury him.'' That is a high
and just tribute to the zeal and long-suffering of the old missionary,
who saw his flock lured away by the brandy and the vices at the new
fort. He labored on until 1705, with Father Aveneau from St.
Joseph, whence also the Indians had been lured to Detroit. Then
the two, finding themselves without parishioners burned their chapel
under which rested the bones of IMarquette, and departed for
Quebec.
The King promised to Cadillac protection against the Jesuits ;
enough money and men to carry out his enterprise, and a tract
of land fifteen arpents (acres) square, "wherever on the Detroit
the new fort should be located." Thus equipped he set sail for
America. On June 2, 1701, he left i^Iontreal with fifty soldiers and
an equal number of Frenchmen. Alphonse de Tonty, a brother of
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
97
La Salle's companion, was Cadillac's captain ; for lieutenants he had
M. Dugue and M. Chacornacle and for chaplain he took with him
Father Valliant, a Jesuit. Taking the old route of Indians and
traders, in order to avoid the Iroquois, the party paddled up the
Ottawa River, made the thirty portages to Lake Nipissing, thence to
Georgian Bay and by Lake Huron down to the Detroit. Arriving
on the 24th day of July, Cadillac set about making a stockade of
wooden pickets, with bastions at the four angles. Inside the palisade
From a photograph in (he poss'-ssion of i^J-^orge X. Brad\'
Cadillac or Cass House*
stake-houses were built. The chapel, begun on the feast-day of
Saint Anne, July 26, was named in her honor, and this name the
* Built at Detroit, Mich., in 1703 by M. Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac,
founder of Detroit, for the chief of the Huron Indians, by order of Count
Pontchartrain, French colonial minister of marine. It was occupied by Huron
chiefs until 1740, after which it was bought by Jacques St. Martin, an inter-
preter, in 1750, and occupied by him during the Pontiac war of 1763, when it
received many bullet marks. Subsequent to 1763 it was occupied by Dr.
George C. Anthon. surgeon-general of the British army, and some of his
gifted sons were born there. It was bought by William Macomb, a Scotch
merchant, in 1781, and his son, Alexander Macomb, who died a major-general
commanding the United States army, was born in this house on April 3, 1782.
It was the headquarters of United States officers in 1814. Bought by Gen.
Lewis Cass, territorial governor. The building was moved from the river
bank about 1835 to Nos. 164-166 West Larried Street.' This house, which
stood in Detroit for 179 years, was demohshed in August, 1882, to rnake
way for improvements.
Vol. 1— 7
98 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
successive churches have kept to this day. The httle settlement
that sprang up aljout Fort Pontchartrain was generally spoken of as
Detroit.
Cadillac was full of schemes for the development of his colony,
a copper-mine on Lake Huron ; silk-culture among the mulberry
trees of Lake Erie ; a uniformed Indian militia ; a seminary to teach
the French language to the savages ; and for grants of lands to
settlers. He spoke of himself as one whom "God had raised up
to be another Aloses to go and deliver the Indians from captivity;
or rather, as Caleb, to bring them back to the lands of their fathers.
* * * Meanwhile, Montreal (the Jesuits) plays the part of
Pharaoh ; he cannot see this emigration without trembling, and
he arms himself to destroy it."
The opposition of the Jesuits to the sale of brandy to the Indians
especially angered Cadillac. They took the matter to the King, and
Louis XIV in 1694, referred to the Sorbonne for decision of the
question of allowing French brandy to be shipped to Michilimacki-
nac. The decision of the council- w-as against the sale, and the
traffic was forbidden. Thus, the Northwest became dry territory in
theory, but the commandment was at no pains to enforce the order.
"A drink of brandy after the repast," he maintained, "seems neces-
sary to cook the bilious meats and the crudities which they leave in
the stomach." Cadillac knew unless he had liquor to sell the savages
he might as well abandon the post ; the Indians would go to the
English at Albany where goods were cheap and rum was unlimited.
To give up Detroit never entered into Cadillac's plans ; but while
unwilling to prohibit entirely the sale of liquor he did enforce re-
strictions so rigid that his action was the cause of complaint against
him. In the report of ]\I. d'Aigrement, who inspected Detroit in
1708, it is mentioned as one of the grievances of the savages against
Cadillac, that "in order to prevent disturbances which would arise
from the excessive use of brandy, he causes it all to be put into the
storehouse, and sold at the rate of 20 francs a quart. Those
who will have it, French as well as Indians, are obliged to go to the
storehouse to drink, and each can obtain, at one time, only the
twenty-fourth part of a quart. It is certain that the savages can-
not become intoxicated on that quantity. The price is high, and as
they can get brandy only each in his turn, it sometimes happens that
the savages are obliged to return home without a taste of this
beverage, and they seem ready to kill themselves with disappoint-
ment."
M. d'Aigrement, spent nineteen July days at Detroit. He re-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 99
ported that he found that Cadillac was unpopular with both the sav-
ages and the colonists. Parent, the blacksmith, complained that he
had to pay annually 600 francs and two casks of ale for the privilege
of working at his trade ; and besides he was compelled to keep all
Cadillac's horses (one in all) shod. Pinet, the gunsmith, was re-
quired to repair twelve guns each month, besides paying 300 francs
a year. The people grumbled because Cadillac took as grist toll an
eighth instead of the customary fourteenth part, although it was
admitted that the cost of the mill had been excessive. Of the 350
roods of valuable land, Cadillac owned 157, while the French owned
the forty-six, and the Hurons held 150; moreover the commandant
required the soldiers and savages to break his land, and make it
ready for planting. Inside the fort the people owned twenty-nine
small log-houses thatched with grass. Of the sixty-three settlers,
thirty-four were traders, and the only profitable articles of traffic
were ammunition and brandy, the English being able to undersell
the French in all other commodities. Cadillac himself bought for
4 francs a quart of brandy that he sold for 20 francs ; he charged
2 francs and 10 sous a front rood for grounds within the palisades,
and a double price for corner lots. Besides, each trader paid an
annual tax of 10 francs for the privilege of dealing with the Indians.
Such complaints should have been dismissed with the mere state-
ment of them, if indeed even that were deemed necessary: and so
they would have been had not the person who reported them been
sent for the ptn-pose of finding or making trouble.
"The soil is poor,'" continues d'Aigrement, "and is full of water;
it is fitted to raise Indian corn and nothing else ; the cider made
from the native apples is as bitter as gall ; and the grasshoppers
eat all the garden plants so that they have to be planted two or three
times over." "On the whole,'' says the investigator, "the post was
a mistake, and it should be abandoned." ■'
Had Cadillac been a man of less directness and more tact in
dealing with his subordinates, he might have avoided some of the
difficulties that encompassed him from the first. As it was, his
project was no sooner started than treachery manifested itself.
First Father Vaillant started a mutiny among the troops by trying
to persuade them to return to Quebec. Cadillac learned of the
attempt and dro\e the father into the woods. Next Tonty and La
Forest intrigued with the Jesuits at Michilimackinac to start a rival
post ; but here again the founder of the colony was warned in time
3 Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XXXIII, p. 422.
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 101
Tonty evidently became ashamed of his part in the atTair ; although
he never was true to Cadillac, of whom he appeared to be jealous.
The Jesuits had a basis for their opposition. Every portion of
Cadillac's plan for the colony at Detroit was in oi)position to their
interests. They were entirely correct in saying that he regarded
religion as merely a means to an end. Again the success of Detroit,
where an enemy would be in absolute control, meant the decay of
Michilimackinac where they were all powerful. To them a colony
meant the corruption of the savages whom they were bent on con-
verting, and who were best reached when not under the influence
of wheedling traders bent on making capital out of their necessities
and ever ready to exchange brandy for furs.
In spite of these discouragements Detroit thrived. Cadillac was
successful in drawing the Indians from Michilimackinac ; so that
Father Carheil, an earnest and devoted priest, could do no better
than to burn the chapel imder which rested the bones of ^larquette,
lest it should fall into sacrilegious hands. Then he retired from the
deserted field. No fewer than six thousand savages set up their
wigwams near the stockade: seed was planted and fisheries were
set up to make the people self-sustaining, and then, to give to the
plice an air of permanency, Cadillac's wife with Madame de Tonty
set out in August, 1701, and after passing the winter at Fort Fron-
tenac (Kingston) they reached Detroit in the spring of the follow-
ing year. Their arrival gave joy alike to whites and Indians.
With the coming of Madame Cadillac family life at Detroit
begins. She gave to her husband thirteen children. The eldest
child, Judith, became a pensioner in a convent of Ursuline nuns;
the third child, Antoine, at the age of nine years, accompanied his
father to Detroit ; the second son, James, came with his mother, in
1702; and six of their children were born in Detroit between the
years 1702 and 1710, and were baptised in Saint Anne's Church.
In 1703 a fire within the stockade burned the church, the houses
of the priest, of Cadillac and of de Tonty. Cadillac asserts that
he saved the warehouse of the Company of the Colony, together
with the King's ammunition at the expense of his own property ;
and he strongly intimated that the fire was the work of an enemy
turned incendiary. This may well have been true for in those days
every man seemed to be an enemy to every other, and the whole
trade system was one of fraud and corruption generally. It was
Cadillac's misfortune that one of the company clerks whom he
caught in stealing was related to the Governor-General \'au(lrcuil,
and others had powerful connections in Quebec.
102 HISTORY OF .MICHIGAN
Just as things seemed at their worst a cheering letter came from
Count de Pontchartrain, who now proved himself indeed a friend in
need. Cadillac was at Quebec trying to make headway with the
authorities when he received the most welcome intelligence that he
was still in favor at court. The Company of the Colony was ordered
to surrender to him the trade at Detroit, although he was not per-
mitted to traffic beyond the region tributary to his post. He was
to have a market made for his furs ; and of the beaver-skins which
the company was required to accept from the traders each year one-
tenth was alloted to Cadillac. Other furs he might supply in any
quantity. "With all this assistance," writes Pontchartrain, "and any
other just and reasonable request you may make, which his majesty
will grant you, he hopes you will succeed in realizing the outline
you have given of this post. From this success you may expect
favors from his majesty proportioned to the service you render ;
and you may count on my contributing on my part to procuring
them for you as far as I can. I am explaining the intentions of his
majesty on this subject definitely to Messrs. Vaudreuil and Beau-
harnois and to the directors of the company, so that in future you
may find no more obstacles in this ])ost. I am convinced that on
your side you will act like a man of honor, and will give no ground
for complaint against your conduct, especially regards the beaver
skins, the trade in which you will confine to the said sum of 15.000
or 20,000 livres. Matters being thus ordered, you will have no more
contests with the Jesuits, nor with anyone."
He returned jubilant. During the next five years he took to
Detroit domestic animals including the horse Colin that became a
constituent portion of the population : all kinds of grains and seeds,
fruit-trees in boxes, tools for carpentry and joinery, axes and locks,
materials for building a windmill costing 1. 000 pistoles, a barge, the
iron work for the fort ; he built a fort with eight bastions, lodging
places for the troops, a church, a warehouse, a powder magazine,
a pigeon-house, an ice house and a brewerv' for beer. A hundred
Canadians were brought to work in transporting materials, besides
the workmen and soldiers, who were paid 30 sous per day when they
worked. He remained only four years after commencing this
undertaking.
This good fortune did not last long. Pontchartrain had already
become tired of the troublesome life at court, and after the death of
his wife he determined to take the then unheard of step of resign-
ing. Although he continued in office until 1714 he was no longer
able to assist Cadillac as he had done. The latter was now encom-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
103
passed by enemies, and his very success at Detroit made them the
more eager for his overthrow. The end came in 1 710. when he
was driven from Detroit ; his property was seized by his successor
and akhough he was assured that he would be recompensed for it
he never secured payment for the 125,000 hvres worth of goods
shown by the inventory made by his wife after his departure.
In order to mitigate the severity of royal disfavor, Cadillac re-
ceived the governorship of Loui-siana, and repaired to his new post
in 1 7 13. There he remained four years. On returning to France
From Bela Hubbard's "Memoriais of a Half Century"
French Pk.ar Trees, Detroit River
during the John Law liubble excitement, he gave to the optimistic
promoters of that scheme such matter of fact statements in regard
to the conditions in Louisiana that they had him thrown into the
Bastile, whence he emerged on February 6, 171S. He was appointed
governor of Castelsarrazin in France, and in that quiet office he
died October 18, 1730.
Alphonse de Tonty was in command at Detroit in 1704-5, while
Cadillac was absent from his post. Unfortunately Alphonse was
quite unlike his elder brother, Henry, who was so loyal to La Salle.
Alphonse was disloyal to Cadillac, who had left his lieutenant in
charge of affairs while he himself was under arrest at Quebec.
Not only did he sell undue amounts of powder to the Indians, but
he was also discovered in secret and treacherous correspondence
with Cadillac's enemies. On this account he also was called to
104 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Quebec, leaving in his stead Stephen \'enyard, sieur de Bourgmont,
who thought discretion the better part of valor, and before Cadillac's
return betook himself to the woods in company with some soldiers
of the garrison and a notorious woman named Tichenet. Only one
of the deserters was captured; but he was convicted and shot.
Bourgmont lived to do good service among the Indians of New
Mexico in 1720.10
Officially Cadillac's successor was Francois de la Forest ; but he
was old and ill, and therefore sent Charles Regnault, sieur Dubisson
to take his place temporarily. He was appointed on September 13,
1710, and promptly entered into the possession of all of Cadillac's
possessions.
Two years after Cadillac departed from Detroit, a thousand and
more Mascoutins and Foxes from west of Green Bay appeared to
establish themselves there. Mascoutins were deadly enemies of the
Hurons. The Ottawas were away on their winter hunt and so weak
was the garrison that, for the time being, Dubuisson the command-
ant, was forced to endure the insolence of the new-comers. They
killed his pigeons, stole his goods, and began to fortify, a camp near
the fort. Dubuisson sent messengers to scour the woods for his
absent allies : also he pulled down the Church of St. Anne, outside
the palisades, lest it should afford a shelter for attacking Indians.
Dubuisson related in his official report that the hunting parties
returned about the middle of May. The two swivels were mounted
on logs and provided with slugs of iron made by the fort black-
smith; Father Cherubin held himself ready to give a general absolu-
tion and to assist the wounded. Then Dubuisson himself mounted
the bastion and watched for the expected help. Soon his eager eyes
beheld a movement among the budding trees at the back of the long
farms, and from the thick coverts rushed the savages— Illinois,
Missouris, Osages, Pottawatomies, Sacs and Menominees— with the
Ottawa Chief Saguina (Saginaw) at their head. Running, yelping,
waving their tribal emblems, the red host made for the Huron
Village, but were turned to the fort by the stay-at-homes, who
pointed to the fires in the enemy's camp, crying, "They are burning
the women of your village, Saguina, and your wife is among them.
Hasten to our father's fort ; he has ever had pity on you, and now
you should be willing to die for him."
The allies ran to the fort to hold council with the commandant,
saying : "Father, last year you drew from the fires our flesh, which
10 Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XXXIII, p. 307; Margry Papers, Vol. VI.
HISTORY OF -MICHIGAN 105
the Ottagamies were about to roast and eat. Now we bring you
our bodies and make you master of them. Care for our women
and children, and if we die throw a blade of grass upon our bones
to protect them from the flies. And now give us something to eat
and tobacco to smoke; we have come from afar and have neither
powder or balls to fight with." For nineteen days the interlopers
were kept under fire. Their kindred coming to join them were taken
in the woods, and first were made targets of and then were burned
for sport ; if brave or squaw ventured to the river for water, death
was almost certain; if they dug holes to escape the fire of the be-
siegers, the latter fired down on them from high towers.
One morning the French saw the palisades of their enemies hung
with scarlet blankets, while twelve other such sanguinary emblems
flew from standards set up within the enclosure. "There," the
Mascoutins called to the fort, "are the signals of the English King."
The Pottawatomie chief, however, answered that the English were
the enemies of prayer, so that the Master of Life chastises them ;
and that their only power was in the liquor which they gave to the
Indians to poison them. Then followed unavailing parleys ; the allies
became discouraged and threatened to go away. The foe, they said,
are braver than any other people; it is useless to fight them. The
French, also, began to talk of escaping to Michilimackinac ; but
Dubuisson put heart into all of them. Deserters told that in the
beleagured palisades over sixty women and children had died of
hunger and thirst, and that their bodies were without burial.
Then, with one of those unexpected changes of front char-
acteristic of Indian warfare, one dark and rainy night the enemy
slipped away to Grosse Pointe, where, after four days of fighting,
the end came. Of the 300 braves behind the improvised defenses,
not more than one-third escaped. The women and children were
spared ; but the men were reserved for the sport of their conquerors,
who killed three or four each day. So the first siege of Detroit
ended in a bloody victory for the garrison, and the annihilation of
the Foxes and Mascoutins. The victory cost the French treasury
about three thousand livres ; and one-eighth of this sum was re-
quired to pay for the blankets, leggings and shirts that formed the
final equipment of the eight principal Indian allies on their journey
to the happy hunting-grounds."
11 The dead were buried in land at the southwest corner of Fort and
Griswold streets; a tablet on the Moffat Block marks the spot.
106 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
La Forest died in Quebec, October i6, 1714; he had been one
of Cadillac's lieutenants in the founding of Detroit and in the
Course of years by trading and by marriage he had become wealthy.
In 1679 La Salle had left him in charge of Fort Frontenac, when
he sailed for the upper lakes. La Forest appears to have been a
forceful, loyal and enterprising friend to Frontenac. He was the
companion of the elder Tonty at Fort St. Louis in the Illinois
country; and in 1684 he secured the restoration to himself as agent
of La Salle's post, which had been confiscated by the government.
Before he joined Cadillac he and Tonty were in the enjoyment of
the privilege of sending annually to Montreal two canoes for pur-
poses of trade. In short he was an influential man in New France,
and it is not surprising that he and Cadillac developed marked
differences of opinion as to the conduct of affairs at Fort Pont-
chartrain.
From 17 14 to 171 7 Detroit had for commandant James Charles
Sabrevois, sieur de Bleury, a man in his early fifties. Twenty-eight
years before Cadillac had picked a quarrel with him in a Quebec
boarding house, and had hit him with a candlestick, wounding him
severely. In his quarter-century service he had given a good ac-
count of himself in service against the Iroquois; he came to Detroit
with the e.xpectation of being allowed to trade with the Indians,
but in this he was disappointed after making expensive prepara-
tions. Probably he was not sorry to be replaced by Tonty, who
arrived on July 3, 1717-
Tonty was now fifty-eight years old ; for the second time he was
a bridegroom and he was the third husband of the bride, who was
ten years his junior. She follow'ed her husband to Detroit and got
into trouble with the authorities by taking three canoe-loads of goods
instead of but two. Tonty's hopes and expectations were not
realized. It cost him heavily to complete the work his predecessor
had begun on the decaying fort ; but he did the job thoroughly. In
order to escape the importunities of his creditors he farmed out the
trade of the post ; and this made him unpopular with the people,
who had been enjoying if not freedom at least license in trafficking
with the savages. The Indians, also, were dissatisfied when on
coming to the annual fair they found but two stores at which to
deal, and no competition, so that they were forced to take the prices
made by the traders. As a culmination of these troubles, Tonty
was removed in 1727, by the new Governor Beauharnois, whom
From a painting by F. LeQucsiie. I'resented to the City ui Detioil by ihe L'rencli Republic, 1902
Cadillac Receiving the Charter of Detroit from Louis XIV.
108 HISTORY OF MICHIGAX
he had gone to Quebec to welcome. Returning to Detroit he died
of a broken heart on November lo, and was buried in that city.^^
On the death of Tonty, John Baptist de St. Ours, sieur Des-
chaillons (who had fought against the Fox Indians and had com-
manded St. Josephs in 1719) was sent to take command at Detroit;
but he decHned the appointment, although he appears to have come
to the fort in 1728. The next name is that of Louis Henry Des-
champs, sieur de Boishebert; and the dates 1730 to 1733 ^^^ ^^^ there
is to say ; nor can much be said of Ives Jacques Hughes Peau, sieur
de Livaudiere, who occupied the succeeding three years in the
command of some seventeen soldiers and eighty militia. From
1736 to 1739 Detroit had a popular ruler in the person of Nicholas
Joseph Desnoyelles, whose appointment was rejected by the King;
whereupon he joined de la \'erandrye in his western explorations.
Next came a grandson of Charles Le IMoyne, a name famous
in Canadian annals, all of whose ten sons left their names firmly
fixed in the history of that country. Peter James Payan de Xoyan
was the son of Charles Le ^loyne's daughter, Catharine ; he saw
serv'ice under his uncle, Bienville, the governor of Louisiana, and
his Detroit assignment dated from 1738 and he served from the
following year until 1742, when he received the usual reward of
such service by being promoted to the post of major and governor
of Montreal.
The next in order is the name of Peter Joseph Celoron. sieur de
Blainville, who became known in the history of the Northwest as
the French commander who reasserted the territorial claims of
France by burying along the Ohio River plates bearing the legend
to the effect that "in 1749, in the reign of Louis XV, Iving of
France, we Celoron. commanding a detachment sent by the Marquis
de la Galissoniere, commandant-general of New France, to estab-
lish peace in some villages in these cantons, have buried this plate
at [here is inserted the location and date] as a monument of re-
newed possession that we have taken of the said Ohio River," and
more to like effect. He was commandant at Michilimackinac from
1734 to 1740; and was stationed at Detroit in 1742. Two years
^2 Among the list of Detroit commandanls appear the names of Louis
de la Porte, sieur de Louvigny and Frangois Marie Picote de Belestre. The
former had been superseded by Cadillac in command at Michilimackinac,
and saw service against the Iroquois (1700) and the Fox Indians (1716).
Belestre was an officer at Detroit and his family was with him. He died at
the post October 9, 1729. Neither ever acted as commandant. See "Detroit
Rulers," by C. M. Burton. Mich. P. & H. Col.. Vol. XXXIII, p. 316.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 109
later he was ordered to Niagara where he served during the Old
French War, being twice sent to Detroit on special duty. After
his expedition to the Ohio he again came to Detroit as commandant
and in 1753 he was removed on charges, preferred by the Marquis
de Jonquiere, of having failed to keep the Indians loyal to France.
During his stay the town received a large number of colonists, many
of whom brought their families. ^^
Paul Joseph Le Aloyne, commandant from 1743 to 1748, was
a grandson of the great Charles ; and he was followed by James
Peter Daneau, sieur de Muy, whose only deed worth recording in
the ten years of his stay was his pious death in 1758. John Baptist
Henry Beranger, second in command, succeeded, and he ruled the
town until the advent of the last of the French commandants,
Franqois J\larie Picote, sieur de Belestre, a man whose amiable
disposition enabled him to play an important part in promoting
the transition from French to English rule in the western country.
He was about forty years old when he came to Detroit ; he was
born in Alontreal and at an early age entered the army. In 1747
he was stationed at St. Joseph, and he accompanied Celoron to the
Ohio two years later; and in 1755 he commanded a party at Brad-
dock's defeat. He was captured by the Virginians in 1757 and
was brought before Col. George Washington and George Croghan ;
but he appears to have escaped to lead other bands of Indians
against the British.
In 1721 the collapse of Law's schemes of administering the
financial and commercial affairs of France sent to America many
ruined Frenchmen, not a few of whom found refuge at Detroit.
Among the new-comers were the Chapoton, Goyon, and Lauderoute
families. In 1730 Robert Navarre, in whose veins, as was believed,
ran royal blood, established himself as royal notary and subdelegate
of the intendant of New France, being the first civil magistrate to
e.xercise his office within the present boundaries of the Northwest.
In 1755, a number of Arcadians banished by the English came with
Gabriel seeking the Beautiful River, and several of their number
remained.
For the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Detroit's his-
tory is best found in the account-books of Father de la Richardie,
superior of the Huron mission at Detroit. Under the good father's
able direction the garrison was reduced to dependence on the enter-
ic For a list of these accessions see Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XXXIII,
P- 33^-
110
HISTORY OF :^IICHIGAN
prising mission. Wlien a cow was wanted to furnish an Indian
barbecue, it was supplied by the mission farmer on Bois Blanc
Island, who held his fertile acres on the condition that he should
furnish firewood, chickens, lard and suet to the good fathers, and
also give to the mission half the produce of the farm. The black-
smith worked on shares ; the mission storekeeper stipplied the com-
L^^.M-^
--^I^L^^i
From the collection of Clarence il. liur.un
Fort Poxtchartrain at Detroit, 1701
mandant at the fort with his canoe and his wines ; and the small
traders replenished their stocks of wampum-beads, vermilion, knives,
powder and ball at the mission store, where the lay-brother, La
Tour, was in charge. Thus Father de la Richardie became the first
wholesab merchant at Detroit. On his books masses are charged
along with vermilion, chemises de femme, the wheat and wampum.
The superior of the Huron mission also dealt in real estate, both
within and outside of the palisades ; and it was due to him that the
Hurons gave up their valuable possessions on the northern borders
of the growing town, and removed their long houses to the mission
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN m
domain of Father de la Richardie, across the river, where the Town
of Sandwich now stands.^''
Aside from Detroit the only settlements in the present State of
Michigan were St. Joseph, Alichilimackinac and Sault Ste. IMarie;
but none of them was more than a trading-post. In order to thwart
the movements the English were making unceasingly to win over the
Indian nations of the North, Count Repentigny, a native of Canada
and an ensign in the French army, was sent, about 1751, to Sault Ste.
Marie, with orders to build a palisade fort to stop the Indians on
their way to the English posts ; and to seize the presents and to
intercept the connnerce that passed between the Upper Lake savages
and the English. Land was to be cleared, Indian-corn planted, and
stock supplied, all at the expense of Repentigny and his partner,
Capt. Louis De Bonne. In return for their services they re-
ceived, October 18, 1750, a grant "in perpetuity by title of feof and
seigniory" of six leagues along the portage with a depth of six
leagues. During the four years of his stay, the young count reared
a small fort, cleared and planted a few acres, built three or four log
huts for his men, and for stock brought thither seven head of cattle
and two horses. But the young feudal lord preferred the army to
the wilderness. At the battle of Sillery, in 1760, he fought by the
side of his partner De Bonne in the vain attempt to recapture Quebec
from the English. It was De Bonne's last fight ; and when England
won the French possessions in the new world, Repentigny, refus-
ing the most pressing oiTers from the British governor to return to
his northern seignory and cast his lot with the conquerors, left his
native country first to fight the Indians in Newfoundland, and
finally to become a major-general and the governor of Senegal, in
which office he died in 1786. Meantime in 1762 the Indians burned
his fort, and the lands once more became the hunting and fishing
grounds of the Indians, and so continued for half a century.'"'
French traders and woodrangers establisherl themselves in little
communities throughout the Northwest, oljtaining supplies from
Quebec and Alontreal, or from the nearer post of Detroit. Little by
little the initiative of the government relaxed, and the individual
trader became the controlling force. At Detroit the French inhabi-
n These account books are in the Burton Library; they liave been pub-
lished in Thwaites' edition of the Jesuit Relations.
15 See U. S. Supreme Court Reports, 8 Wall., Louise Pauline de Gardeur
de Repentigny et al.
112
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
tants intermarried scarcely at all with the Indians ; generally family
pride held back the thrifty Frenchman from open alliances with
Indian maidens ; but in the remote settlements there was no such
hesitation. There Frenchman and Indian slept in the same hut, ate
out of the same dish, and shot with the same gun, both actually and
metaphorically.
1^ «
^^^ ^!—
IH^j^Hig^
An Indian of Today
CHAPTER VIII
THE ENGLISH GAIN POSSESSION OF THE NORTHWEST
Detroit was founded by Cadillac in order to protect French
trade from the English living in the Colony of New York, but it
was not from the Hudson River settlements whence came the en-
croachments which really threatened French dominion. Strangely
enough, the Iroquois, who were always friendly with the English
and hostile to the French and their red allies, in later days formed
a buffer between the British and the French ; while the real attack
came from Virginia, through the Pittsburgh gateway. Moreover,
the real cause of trouble was not primarily the Indian trade, but
rather the desire on the part of the Virginians to make for them-
selves homes along the Ohio, although there as elsewhere the trader
was in advance of the settler.
In 1748 a group of Virginia planters, aided by Thomas Hanbury,
a London merchant, secured from the Crown a charter for the Ohio
Company, for the purpose of controlling lands along the Ohio from
the Monongahela to the Kanawha. Before they could begin the
work of colonization, the Chevalier Celoron de Bienville with
200 French soldiers descended the Allegheny, expelled the English
traders and reasserted the claims of France to all territory drained
by the Ohio. The Virginians sent explorers and traders over the
mountains to win the Indian occupants of the country. Gist,
Croghan. Montour and Kallendar trafficked with the savages in the
interest of the English.
In 1752 the English obtained from the Indians the right to settle
south of the Ohio. When news of this invasion was brought to
Detroit, then a town of 500 whites, the French commander,
Celoron, dispatched Charles de Langlade with his Ottawas from
Michilimackinac to dislodge the English traders ; and Duquesne
advanced by way of Lake Erie, building forts along his path to the
Allegheny River. Governor Dinwiddie dispatched his adjutant-
general to inquire the purposes of the French ; for he claimed that
the Ohio was within the chartered limits of Virginia. The gov-
ernor's messenger was a youth of twenty-one, who had already seen
Vol. 1—8
113
114 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
three yearS' service in the colonial militia. But Maj. George
Washington got little satisfaction from his long tramp through the
wilderness to interview Captain Joncaire. Thereupon the Virginians
built a fort near the present site of Pittsburgh, and the French drove
out the English and burned their stockade. '
In 1754 Washington, at the head of a force of Virginia militia,
fell upon a French detachment, killed the commander and nine men ;
later at Fort Necessity he was forced to retire, after an engage-
ment of nine hours. This was the beginning of the French and
Indian war, which raged for nine years and reached more than half-
way around the globe.
From the settlement of Jamestown, in 1607, England had left
to the Colonists the task of protecting themselves against the savages
and the French. Now the mother country found it necessary to
step in to save the western empire which she had bestowed by
charter on the men who were to win it. A thousand British veterans
were sent to America under the command of Edward Braddock,
gallant soldier and convivial gentleman. Never before had the
new world seen so fine a military array. At Alexandra, in Virginia,
General Braddock called into council Governors Dinwiddle of Vir-
ginia, Shirley of Massachusetts, De Lancey of New York, and
Dobbs of North Carolina, together with Benjamin Franklin, then
the postmaster general of the Colonies. Two youths found places
with Braddock — George Washington, then twenty-three years old,
and Henry Gladwin, two years Washington's senior. On that July
day in 1755, when the British soldiers went down before Charles
de Langlade's painted Ojibwas from Mackinac, both youths learned
lessons in backwoods fighting that were to stand them in good stead.
Washington learned that the best military training of Europe could
not cope with the tactics of the backwoodsmen. Gladwin learned
that prudence, watchfulness and endurance were the qualities needed
to win against the savages.
There was one other apt pupil in that school — the principal
chief of the Ottawas, Pontiac, who was then forty-three years old,
who had come from Detroit with a band of braves, and whose
leadership among the confederated tribes of Ottawas, Ojibwas and
Pottawatomies was even then being established.
In that battle Washington seemed to bear a charmed life; four
bullets pierced his coat and two horses were shot under him. On
the death of Braddock the management of the retreat fell on him.
1 In "The Northwest under Three Flags" (N. Y.. 1900), I have traced the
English advances over the mountains to the Ohio Valley.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 115
Ha\ing read the funeral service over his dead general, he returned
to his home and saw no further active service during the war.
Gladwin was wounded and his name was misspelled in the dis-
patches.
After Eraddock's defeat came a long series of British disasters.
William Johnson, the all powerful Indian agent in the Alohawk
country, led a force of New Englanders (Israel Putnam and John
Stark among them) against Crown Point, defeated and captured
Dieskau, and won a title ; but Governor Shirley's expedition against
Niagara was a failure, and everywhere along the English border
from the Great Lakes to the Ohio the French and Indian bands,
with tomahawk and scalping-knife were busy as never before. The
brave and intrepid Montcalm swooped down on Oswego and de-
stroyed the post. This put new spirit into the fickle Indians, who
were of one mind with the band from Lake Superior, who, when
they looked into the eyes of the little French commander "saw the
greatness of the pine-tree and the fire of the eagle." The new
English commander, the Earl of Loudoun, made an abortive at-
tempt to capture Louisburg; and Montcalm captured Fort \\'illiam
Henry on Lake George, where in spite of his efforts his Indian
allies committed one of the most shocking massacres in the annals
of American warfare.
Then the change came. William Pitt, a wonder among war
ministers, replaced the incompetent Loudoun with the seasoned
soldier, Sir Jeftrey Amherst, and the youthful James Wolfe, who
had a genius for war animating the frailest of bodies. The end
of British reverses came with Abercrombie's disastrous defeat at
Ticonderoga. Amherst captured Louisburg, and thus gained com-
mand of the entrance to the St. Lawrence; Bradstreet captured
La Salle's old post. Fort Frontenac, thus gaining command of the
Great Lakes and cutting ofif Fort Niagara and the Ohio country;
General John Forbes, with George Washington and Col. Flenry
Bouquet, cut a road from Philadelphia to the forks of the Ohio
and reached that river to find a deserted military post; General
Prideaux and Sir William Johnson and Colonel Haldimand captured
Fort Niagara, defeating La Corne and his Indians from Detroit
and Sault Ste. Marie, who had gone to the aid of the French com-
mander, Pouchot ; and Amherst assailed Ticonderoga. The end of
the great drama came with the capture of Quebec on September
12, 1759, when both Wolfe and Montcalm fell on the Plains of
Abraham.
New France was henceforth nothing but a page in the world's
116 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
history. Montreal yielded in due time, and it only remained for
the English to take possession of the country they had captured.
Charles de Langlade, who had fought with desperate valor, gathered
his Indians and returned to Michilimackinac, resolved to acknowl-
edge the authority of the conquerors.
On May 28, 1760, General Amherst ordered Maj. Henry Gladwin
from New York, by way of Fort Pitt, to relieve Niagara. He was
to leave 150 men at Presque Isle (Erie), where he was to throw up
an intrenchment. On his way across Lake Erie, Gladwin made a
chart of the coast. On September 9, \'audreuil announced to the
Beaujou at Michilimackinac the capitulation of Montreal, and on
October 18 Monckton wrote to Bouquet that Amherst had ordered
Maj. Robert Rogers to Michilimackinac to take possession of the
upper posts. With Rogers went Captain Campbell with a detach-
ment to garrison Detroit.
Far from the scene of hostilities the little colony at Detroit
continued in its accustomed ways, regardless of coming charges.
On November 29, 1760, Maj. Robert Rogers drew up his two com-
panies of Rangers and his little detachment of Royal Americans
on the commons under the guns of Fort Pontchartrain, to await the
reply of the surprised French commandant, M. Bellestre, to the
letter of the Marquis Vaudreuil, in which he commanded the sur-
render of Detroit to the British.
Robert Rogers,- the leader of the English forces on this delicate
mission, was the most famous Indian fighter of his day. Born in
the Scotch-Irish settlement of Londonderry, New Hampshire, in
1727, he began his career as a scout in the Merrimac Valley when
he was but nineteen years old, and at the time of his arrival at
Detroit he had been in the King's service fourteen years. Tall even
for one of his race, he wore a close-fitting jacket, a warm cap,
coarse woolen small-clothes, leggings and moccasins. A hatchet
was thrust into his belt, a powder-horn hung at his side, a long,
keen hunting knife and a musket completed his armament; and a
blanket and a knapsack filled with bread and raw salt pork, together
with a flask of spirits, made up his outfit. He could make either an
Indian or a Frenchman understand his meaning, although his edu-
cation in schools was meager; he knew every sign of the forest,
every wile of his foes, and repeatedly his bravery and coolness
- James Rogers, the father, came from Monteloney. Ireland, and settled
first at Londonderry and afterward at Dunbarton. In 1753 Robert was a
member of the company led by his townsman, Capt. John Gofife, the great-
great-grandfather of the writer.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 117
brought him safely through the most critical situations. He lifted
a scalp with as little compunction as did any Indian, and counted it
successful warfare to creep into an Indian encampment by night
to set fire to the lodges, and to make his escape by the light of the
flames, with the scream of the surprised savages rejoicing his ears.
At the village of St. Francis his force put to death 200 Indian war-
riors who had no fewer than 600 scalps adorning their wigwams
when they were attacked.
In the French and Indian war he had served as the captain of
a company which had for second-lieutenant John Stark, afterwards
of Revolutionary fame ; and he was employed mainly along the
Hudson River and on Lakes George and Champlain. In 1756 he
made thirteen different scouting expeditions, capturing prisoners
and provisions, burning villages, killing cattle, and in other ways
repeating the deeds of border warfare then familiar to the Scotch-
Irish both in Europe and America. He records no instance in
which he spared aught that fell into his hands, except that he some-
times deferred the disposal of captured brandy. Withal he was a
man of much humor; and he gave to the army the saying, "We
pay our debts as Rogers paid the debt of the English nation." The
phrase had its origin in his remark to two drunken soldiers who
were quarreling as to the ability of Great Britain to pay her national
debt, that he would pay one-half and a friend of his would pay the
other half.
In 1756 Rogers was summoned to Boston, was commissioned a
major, and was put in command of an independent company to be
paid by the king instead of by the Colony of New Hampshire; and
eventually his force was increased to nine companies. In all his
depredations he simply obeyed to the letter his orders from Major-
General Shirley.^
On his way to Detroit Rogers and his Rangers had been stopped
at a place near the present site of Cleveland by an embassy from
the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, who demanded by what right the English
had entered his country.* When the defeat of the French seemed
assured, the prudent Pontiac had gone with the other chiefs from
the Detroit to the recently surrendered Fort Pitt to learn how the
» "Life and Exploits of Robert Rogers, the Ranger" by Joseph B.
Walker; Boston, 1885. Mr. Walker relates that on one occasion Rogers de-
ceived a party of pursuing Indians by reversing his snowshoes. A moun-
tain at the south end of Lake George bears his name.
■* Pontiac was the head of a confederacy of Ottawas, O jib was, and Pot-
tawatomies. At this time he was about fifty years old.
118 HISTORY OF J^IICHIGAN
Indians were likely to fare under British rule. The British com-
mandant gax'e assurance that the rivers would run with rum, that
presents from the great king would be without limit, and that the
markets would be the cheapest ever known. These and many other
fair promises so reassured Pontiac that he spread the good news
far and wide among the Indians, and when Rogers appeared the
chief was disposed to give him hospitable welcome. Rogers con-
firmed all that had been said at Fort Pitt ; and night after night, as
Ranger and Indian sat by the campfire and smoked the pipe of peace
after the day's march, Rogers told Pontiac how the English main-
tained discipline in their forces, erected defenses and handled their
armies in battle ; also how cloth was made and iron forged, and
what multitudes of white men lived in great cities over seas. All
these things Pontiac pondered in his mind and in due time made use
of them.-*
Rogers admired Pontiac to the extent of making him the hero
of a tragedy which he started to write.'' Moreover, the shrewd
Indian fighter knew that with Pontiac and the Ottawas on his side,
the French commandant must speedily yield. M. Bellestre made his
surrender most humiliating for himself. On reading the letter he
ran up on the flagstaff of the fort an effigy of Rogers' head, on
which a crow, supposed to represent the French, was engaged at
scratching at the brains of his foe. But Pontiac's Indians had made
known to the savages at the fort the true condition of affairs, and
when the French commandant found himself deserted by his Indian
allies, he gave the reluctant order to lower the flag of France, which
for more than half a century had floated over Fort Pontchartrain.
In its place the red cross of St. George was flung to the brisk Novem-
ber breeze, and amid the hoarse cheers of Rangers and provincials
came the yelps of the fickle savages, who jeered at their former
friends, whom they now called cowards.
It was too late in the season for Major Rogers to reach ]\Iichili-
mackinac, so that the occupation of that post was delayed until the
following year. Capt. Donald Campbell of the Royal Americans
was left in command of Detroit. The following August Major
Gladwin came with Sir \\'illiam Johnson.
Henry Gladwin was born in 1730.' The first record of him is
^ Roger.s' Journal, Hough's Edition.
" The Ca.xton Club of Chicago has published this work in a de luxe
edition.
" From a printed slip furnished by the late Richard Henry Goodwin
Gladwin, of Hinchleywood, Derbj-shire.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 119
found in the British army lists for 1753, in which he appears as a
lieutenant of the Forty-eighth Foot (advanced from second-lieuten-
ant, Irish, half-pay). From the Gentleman's Magazine of 1775
we learn that Gladwin was a subaltern in Colonel Dunbar's regi-
ment at the time of the Braddock defeat at Little Meadows; that he
showed bravery on that occasion is proved by the fact that he was
among the eight wounded subalterns of his regiment, five of his
fellow lieutenants having been killed. His name is spelled "Gland-
win" in the report, but is correctly spelled in General Braddock's
orderly book, as reprinted in "Lowdermilk's History of Cumber-
land."' It was during this campaign that Gladwin came under notice
of Lieutenant-Colonel Gage, with whom he sustained most friendly
relations in after years.** It would be interesting to know if a per-
sonal acquaintance was formed between Gladwin and Washing-
ton, but continued search fails to give the slightest information on
the subject.'' On July 30, 1761, Major Walters writes to Bouquet
that Sir William Johnson and Major Gladwin are at Niagara on
their way to Detroit, with 300 light infantry; and on August 11 the
party reached Presq' Isle. General Amherst reported his action to
the secretary of war, in a letter dated August 13, 1761, as follows :
"I have sent a detachment of three hundred men to the Upper
Lakes under command of Capt. Gladwin of Gage's, and I have
judged it for the good of his majesty's service to appoint Captain
Gladwin to act as major during this expedition, for which I have
given him commission, that I hope his majesty will approve of."
Captain Campbell reports (August 17) to Bouquet the arrival
at Detroit of Sir William Johnson and Major Gladwin, and enlarges
on the unstinted hospitality that marked the visit. Sir William was
convinced that the Indian conspiracy against the English was uni-
versal, a fact that Amherst doubted. It also appears from the
correspondence that a Mr. Theis had built at Niagara a schooner
drawing seven feet of water and carrying six guns, to be com-
manded by Lietitenant Robertson ; and a sloop to carry ten guns.
In the festivities and negotiations Gladwin had no part. An
>* See letter, Gladwin to Gage, in The Gladwin Manuscripts, by Charles
Moore. Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. 27.
" I am under obligations to the late Col. VViUi.nm Ludlow, military at-
tache. Embassy of the United States, London, England, who at tlie request
of Senator James McMillan, obtained' copies of every mention of General
Gladwin on file in the British War Oftice. The request made by Colonel
Ludlow was complied with through the courtesy of the Marquis of Lands-
downe, secretary of state for war; Sir Ralph Thompson and Sir .Arthur
Haliburton. Copies of entire correspondence now in my possession.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 121
attack of fever and ague confined him to his quarters ; and it was
not until October 12 that he had recovered sufficiently to return. i"
After leaving Detroit, Gladwin sailed for England, and on March 30,
1762, he married Frances, the daughter of the Rev. John Beridge.
Mrs. Gladwin's portrait shows that in middle life she was a hand-
some woman. At first glance the portrait would be taken for a pic-
ture of Alartha \\'ashington. That at the age of eighteen she must
have been a beautiful bride is -quite evident, and one can readily
believe that it was with no little reluctance on both sides that soon
after the marriage the bridegroom again set his face towards the
American wilderness. Perhaps it was by way of a wedding present
that Gladwin was offered a majority in Bouquet's regiment of Royal
Americans, but he declined the proffer, because he preferred to take
his chances in the regular British army.
In July, 1762, the Indians learned with satisfaction that England
was at war with Spain, and soon the report spread far and wide that
'the French and Spanish were to retake Quebec and all Canada.
Here at last was the chance for which the savages had been waiting.
With the help of the French they could drive out the English, and
once more receive solicitous attention from both nations. At this
juncture Maj. Henry Gladwin appeared at Detroit, with orders to
establish posts on Lake Superior and to exercise general super-
vision over the northwestern establishments. Captain Campbell
remained as second in command ; and the esteem in which he was
held by both the French and the Indians was a decided help to
Gladwin.
Pontiac has a well defined place in the history of this country.
The temporary success of his great conspiracy against the English
and his tragic death by the hand of an assassin ; and especially the
fact that he embodied in his own person the most formidable protest
against the encroachments of the whites on the hunting grounds
of the red men, have combined to make him the heroic figure in
northwestern history during the years between the surrender of
Canada to the English and the War of the Revolution. Moreover,
the genius of Parkman has made it certain that the name of Pontiac
will never cease to be remembered among English speaking people
on this continent.
What changes might have taken place in the development of the
Northwest had Pontiac's conspiracy been successful can only be
surmised. That he was foiled in his great purpose and after many
10 Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XIX, p. 116.
122 HISTORY OF .MICHIGAN
minor successes was compelled in the end to acknowledge defeat
was due to the unexampled intrepidity, carefulness and soldierly
training of one man. The sagacity of Henry Gladwin and his suc-
cess in withstanding the long siege of Detroit mark him as one of
the very few great Indian fighters in our history. And yet when one
inquires as to Gladwin's history before or after the siege of Detroit,
one finds even on the pages of Parkman nothing but a misspelled
name.
"In the year of 1762," according to Capt. Jonathan Carver,ii
"in the month of July it rained on the town of Detroit and the parts
adjacent, a sulphurous water of the color and consistence of ink;
some of which, being collected into bottles and wrote with, appeared
perfectly intelligible on the paper, and answered every purpose of
that useful liquid. Soon after, the Indian wars already spoken of
broke out in these parts. I mean not to say that this incident was
ominous of them, notwithstanding it is well known that innumerable
well-attested instances of extraordinary phenomena happening be-
fore extraordinary events have been recorded in almost every age
by historians of veracity ; I only relate the circumstances as a fact
of which I was informed by many persons of undoubted probity,
and leave my readers, as I have hitherto done, to draw their own
conclusions from it.
"Pontiac was an enterprising chief or head-warrior of the
Miamas. During the late war between the English and the French,
he had been a steady friend to the latter, and continued his in-
veteracy to the former, even after peace had been concluded be-
tween these two nations. Unwilling to put an end to the depre-
dations he had been so long engaged in, he collected an army of
confederate Indians, with an intention to renew war. However, in-
stead of openly attacking the English settlements, he laid a scheme
for taking by surprise those forts on the extremities which they had
lately gained possession of.
"To get into his hands Detroit, a place of greater consequence
and much better guarded, required great resolution, and more con-
summate art. He, of course, took the management of this expedition
on himself, and drew near it with the principal body of his troops.
He was, however, prevented from carrying his designs into execu-
tion by an apparently trivial and unforeseen circumstances. On
such does the late of mighty Empires frequently depend!
1' Carver's Travels. Many editions of this book have been printed. The
copy I have used was one taken from a southern plantation house during
the War of Secession. It is an English print but the title page has disappeared.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 123
"The town of Detroit, when Pontiac formed his plan was gar-
risoned by about three hundred men, commanded by Major Glad-
wyn, a gallant officer. As at that time every appearance of war was
at an end, and the Indians seemed to be on a friendly footing, Pon-
tiac approached the fort, without exciting any suspicions in the
breast of the governor or the inhabitants. He encamped at a little
distance from it, and sent to let the commandant know that he was
come to trade; and being desirous of brightening the chain of peace
between the English and his nation, desired that he and his chiefs
be admitted to hold a council with him. The governor still unsus-
picious, and not in the least doubting the sincerity of the Indians,
granted their general's recjuest, and fixed on the next morning for
their reception.
"The evening of that day, an Indian woman, who had been em-
ployed by Major Gladwyn, to make him a pair of Indian shoes,
out of curious elk-skin, brought them home. The Alajor was so
pleased with them, that, intending these as a present for a friend,
he ordered her to take the remainder back, and make it into others
for himself. He then directed his servants to pay her for those
she had done, and dismissed her. The woman went to the door
that led to the street, but no further; she there loitered about as
if she had not finished the business on which she came. A servant
at length observed her, and asked her why she staid there ; she gave
him, however, no answer.
"Some short time after, the governor himself saw her; and en-
quired of his servant what occasioned her stay. Not being able to
get a satisfactory answer, he ordered the woman to be called in.
When she came into his presence he desired to know what was the
reason of her loitering about, and not hastening home before the
gates v^'ere shut, that she might complete in due time the work he
had given her to do. She told him after much hesitation, that as
he had always behaved with great goodness toward her, she was
unwilling to take away the remainder of the skin, becaust he put
so great a value upon it ; and yet had not been able to prevail upon
herself to tell him so. He then asked her, why she was more reluc-
tant to do so now, than she had been when she made the former pair.
With increased reluctance she answered, that she never should be
able to bring them back.
"His curiosity being now excited, he insisted on her disclosing
to him the secret that seemed to be struggling in her bosom for utter-
ance. At last, on receiving a promise that the intelligence she was
about to give him should not turn to her prejudice, and that if it
124 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
appeared to be beneficial she should be rewarded for it, she in-
formed him, that at the council to be held with the Indians the fol-
lowing day, Pontiac and his chiefs intended to murder him ; and,
after having massacred the garrison and inhabitants, to plunder
the town. That for this purpose all the chiefs who were to be ad-
mitted into the council-room had cut their guns short, so they could
conceal them under their blankets; with which, at a signal given by
their general, on delivering the belt, they were all to rise up, and
instantly fire on him and his attendants. Having efl^ected this, they
were immediately to rush into the town, where they would find
themselves supported by a great number of their warriors, that were
to come into it during the sitting of the council, under pretense of
trading, but privately armed in the same manner. Having gained
from the woman every necessary particular relative to the plot,
and also the means by which she acquired a knowledge of them,
he dismissed her with injunctions of secrecy, and a promise of ful-
filling on his part with [nmctuality the engagements he had entered
into. ■•
"The intelligence the governor had just received, gave him great
uneasiness ; and he immediately consulted the officer who \vas next
to him in command on the subject. But that gentleman considering
the information as a story invented for some artful purposes, advised
him to pay no attention to it. This conclusion, however, had hap-
pily no weight on him. He thought it prudent to conclude it to be
true, till he was convinced that it was not so; and therefore, with-
out revealing his suspicions to any other person, he took every need-
ful precaution that the time would admit of. He walked round the
fort during the whole night, and saw himself that every sentinel
was on duty, and every weapon of defence in proper order.
"As he traversed the ramparts which lay nearest to the Indian
camp, he heard them in high festivity, and, little imagining their
plot wa^ discovered, probably pleasing themselves with the antici-
pation of their success. As soon as the morning dawned, he ordered
all the garrison under arms ; and then imparting his apprehensions
to a few of the principal officers, gave them such directions as he
thought necessary. At the same time he sent round to all the traders,
to inform them, that as it was expected a great number of Indians
would enter the town that day, who might be inclined to plunder,
he decided they would have their arms ready, and repel every at-
tempt of that kind.
"About ten o'clock, Pontiac and his chiefs arrived ; and were
conducted to the council-chamber, where the governor and his prin-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 125
cipal officers, each with pistols in their beUs, awaited his arrival. As
the Indians passed on, they could not help observing that a greater
number of troops than usual were drawn up on the parade, or
marching about. No sooner were they entered, and seated on the
skins prepared for them, than Pontiac asked the governor on what
occasion his young men, meaning the soldiers, were thus drawn up,
and parading the streets. He received for answer, that it was only
intended to keep them perfect in their exercise.
"The Indian chief-warrior now began his speech, which con-
tained the strongest professions of friendship and good-will towards
the English; and when he came to the delivery of the belt of wam-
pum, the particular mode of which, according to the woman's infor-
mation, was to be the signal for his chiefs to fire, the governor and
all his attendants drew their swords half way out of their scab-
bards; and the soldiers at the same instant made a clattering with
their arms before the doors, which had been purposely left open.
Pontiac, though one of the boldest of men, immediately turned pale,
and trembled ; .and instead of giving the belt in the manner proposed,
delivered it according to the usual way. His chiefs who had impa-
tiently expected the signal, looked at each other with astonishment,
but continued quiet waiting the result.
"The governor in his turn made a speech ; but instead of
thanking the great warrior for the professions of friendship
he had just uttered, he accused him of being a traitor. He
told him that the English, who knew every thing, were convinced
of his treachery and villainous designs ; and as a proof that they
were well acquainted with his most secret thoughts and intentions,
he stepped towards the Indian chief that sat nearest to him, and
drawing aside his blanket discovered the shortened firelock. This
entirely disconcerted the Indians, and frustrated their design.
"He then continued to tell them, that as he had given his word
at the time they desired an audience, that their persons should be
safe, he would hold his promise inviolable, though they so little
deserved it. However he advised them to make the best of their
way out of the fort, lest his young men, on being acquainted with
their treacherous purposes, should cut every one of them to pieces.
"Pontiac endeavored to contradict the accusation, and to make
excuses for his suspicious conduct; but the governor satisfied of
the falsity of his protestations, would not listen to him. The In-
dians immediately left the fort, but instead of being sensible of
the governor's generous behavior, they threw oiif the mask, and the
next day made a regular attack upon it.
126 HISTORY OF MICHIGAX
"Major Gladwyn has not escaped censure for his mistaken
lenity ; for probably had he kept a few of the principal chiefs pris-
oners, whilst he had them in his power, he might have been able to
bring the whole confederacy to terms, and have prevented a war.
But he atoned for this oversight, by the gallant defence he made
for more than a year, amidst a variety of discouragements."
^^'hether or nor Carver is correct in his report of the details of
the discovery of Pontiac's plot no other version seems likely to be
believed. Parkman adopted the story in the first edition of his
"Conspiracy of Pontiac;" and reluctantly cast doubts upon it in
later editions. Today the legend of the girl and the moccasins is
printed in children's books on American history and Stanley has
painted it with much detail. Yet the story was never believed in
Detroit. Charles C. Trowbridge, who, in 1855, assisted Parkman to
gather from the lips of persons present at the siege, the details
remembered by them has this to say of the tale.'-
"You and 1, Mr. President, were v.'ell acquainted with ;\Ir.
Peltier, the grandfather of the late Chief Justice Whipple, with
Mr. Charles Gouin, our near neighbor; Madame Meloche, a resident
at Parent's Creek ; with Jacques Parent, of Connor's Creek, and
Gabriel St. Aubin, of Sandwich. These were eye-witnesses of the
massacre [at Bloody Run], Mr. Peltier was lying upon the roof of
his father's cottage, looking over its ridge upon this horrid spectacle,
and Mrs. Meloche was a young bride, living with her father-in-law
upon the bank of the creek, and but a few hundred yards from the
bridge upon which so many brave men met an inglorious death.
"Tt was my happy privilege, just forty years ago to take from
the lips of each of these persons, while yet in full possession of their
memories, such of the principal incidents of the siege of the fort
at Detroit as were most vividly recollected by them. Their relations,
■=.\(ldre.';s by Charles C. Trowbridge, May. 1864, Mich. P. & H. Col.,
Vo\. I. p. 372. The president of the Historical Society of Michigan was
Hon. B. F. H. Witherell, the grandfather of the late Senator Thomas W.
Palmer. Of the persons mentioned by Mr. Trowbridge, Madame Meloche
was the widow of Jean Baptiste Meloche, who owned a gristmill on the
present site of the Michigan Stove Works; both she and her husband were
natives of Detroit and she was twenty-two \'ears old at the time of the siege.
Charles Gouin was the son of Thomas Gouin, a trader, who was well
acquainted with Pontiac. Jaques Parent was a descendant of Joseph Parent,
who came to Detroit with Cadillac under a three-years contract to work
at his trades of toolmaker and brewer. Gabriel St. Aubin was a descendant
of Jean Casse, dit St. Aubin, who died in 1759, having lived more than a
centurv.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 127
just as they were then taken, with a lead pencil, have, as you are
aware, been presented to your society, together with a literal copy
in ink, covering about fifty pages of foolscap, in order to ensure
their better preservation.
"Whoever reads the thrilling account of this conspiracy by Park-
man, will find that having compared these relations with each other,
and with masses of documents preserved in the archives of England
and France, this gifted author has accepted them as genuine, and
has made free use of them in his narrative. Parkman's book is
undoubtedly the best border history of our country ever written.
Every library, certainly every western library, ought to possess it.
Its style is very like that of the gifted Prescott, and in many parts
quite as graphic.
"Assuming these narratives of Meloche and others here alluded
to, to be in accordance with facts, it would seem that in order to
'vindicate the truth of history' we should be obliged to lessen the
romance of one important incident. Parkman says the designs of
Pontiac were communicated to Major Gladwin, the commandant of
the fort, by a beautiful dark-eyed daughter of the forest, named
Catherine, who had won the Major's affections. Parent says that
Pontiac told him this was done by 'an old squaw' of that name, who
communicated, not with Gladwin, but with some Pawnee servant
woman in the fort ; and that he sent two young men to bring her to
his tent, where he gave her a severe beating with his crosse, a stick
used by the Indians in playing ball."
The fact is that the conspiracy was in the wind. Madame Gouin
surmised that treachery was imminent when she observed the In-
dians filing off the end of their musket-barrels. Whether Mile.
Cuillerier revealed the plot to her lover, James Sterling, as Mr.
Clarence M. Burton believes, or whether the faithful Indian Moni-
ghan told his friend. Captain Campbell, as the "Pontiac Manuscript"
states ; in any event we cannot rely on the story told in "Carver's
Travels." Yet we are not of those who cast discredit on that work,
in so far as it professes to be a relation of what that traveler states
he saw. His description of Indian life and customs he seems to
have taken from whatever source contained material that coincided
with his own observations.
Let us now return to our story. Late in the afternoon of
that 7th of May, four warriors returned '^ bringing with them
!•' The Journal of Pontiac's Conspiracy, 176,^. Published by Clarence
Munroe Burton, under the auspices of the Michigan Society of Colonial Wars.
Edited by M. Agnes Burton. Translated from the original French by C.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 129
an old squaw, saying that she had given false information.
Gladwin declared that she had never given any kind of advice.
When they insisted that he name the author of what he had heard
in regard to a plot, he simply replied that it was one of themselves,
whose name he promised never to reveal. Whereupon, they carried
the old woman to camp. Then Pontiac gave her three strokes with
a stick on the head, which laid her flat on the ground, and the whole
nation assembled around her, and called "Kill her! Kill her!"
The next day, Sunday, Pontiac and several chiefs paddled across
the river to smoke the pipe of peace, with the officers of the fort.
Gladwin refused to go near them; but Captain Campbell, desirous
to pacify the Indians, smoked the peace-pipe with them outside the
fort, and returned with the message that next day all the Indians
would settle everything to the satisfaction of the English, after
which the Indians would immediately disperse.
At lo o'clock next morning the soldiers counted on the river
fifty-six canoes each carrying seven or eight Indians. When the
warriors approached the fort they found the gates fast barred
against them. An interpreter met them with the message that not
above sixty Indians might enter. Whereupon the enraged Pontiac
in peremptory manner bade the interpreter say to Gladwin that if
all the Indians had not free access to the fort, none of them would
enter it. "Tell him,'' said the angry chief, "that he may stay in his
fort, and that I will keep the country."
Pontiac strode to his canoe, and paddled for the Ottawa village.
His followers, knowing that the fight was on, ran to the house of
an Englishwoman and her two sons, whom they tomahawked and
scalped. Another party paddled swiftly to Isle au Cochon, where
they first killed twenty-four of the King's bullocks, then put to
death an old English sergeant. i*
Clyde Ford, December, 1910. There are also translations in Schoolcraft and
in the Mich. P. & H. Collections. The original manuscript is in possession
of Mr. Burton. The authorship of the Diary is not definitely known ; but
Mr. Burton's contention that it was kept by Robert Navarre seems to be
entirely probable. He came to Detroit in 1743; he acted as interpreter for
the Indians as well as notary first for the French and afterwards for the
English ; he had access to the Fort during the siege and must have known
everything that took place. Moreover, the handwriting of the Diary is simi-
lar to that of Navarre.
1^ .Afterwards, the Canadians buried the mutilated corpse; but on return-
ing to the spot, so tradition relates, they were surprised to see an arm protrud-
ing from the grave. Thrice the dirt was heaped above the body, and thrice
the arm raised itself above the ground, until the mound was sprinkled with
130 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Next the Indians sent to Gladwin a Frenchman to report the
murder of Sir Robert Davers, Captain Robertson, and a boat's crew
of six persons, who had been sent to the St. Clair Flats to sound
a passage for one of the schooners bound to Alichilimackinac. This
information removed all lingering doubts that the Indians were
determined to wipe out the English at Detroit.
Pontiac ordered the squaws to change the camp to the western
bank, aliove the fort. That night Pontiac himself, bedecked with
war-paint, leaped into the center of the ring and flourishing his toma-
hawk, began to chant record of his valorous deeds. One by one the
listening braves, catching the contagion were drawn into the ring,
until at last every savage was dancing the war-dance.
Gladwin, pacing the wide street that encircled the buildings of
the fort just within the pickets, looked the situation in the face.
Burning arrows might set fire to the fourscore wooden buildings
within the palisades; the church was particularly exposed, unless,
indeed, the superstitious Indians should hearken to the French, who
had threatened the vengeance of the Great Spirit if the Indians
should attempt to destroy the house of God. Two six-pounders, a
three-pounder, and the mortars composing the batter)' of the fort
were of little avail against an enemy that fought singly and from
behind trees ; but an English head above the pickets of an English
body at a port-hole was the sure lodgment for an Indian bullet. The
garrison was made up of one hundred and twenty-two soldiers and
eight officers, together with about forty fur-traders and their as-
sistants. These traders would fight to save their lives, but were
inclined to the French rather than to the English. Between this
little garrison and the thousand savages was a single row of pali-
sades made by planting logs close together so that they could stand
twenty-five feet above ground. Block-houses at the angles and at
the gates afforded additional protection. The river gave an abund-
ant water-supply ; a schooner and a sloop, both armed, might be
relied on to keep open the line of communication with Niagara,
whence Alajor Walters would send supplies. Success would mean
promotion ; the torture-stake the penalty of failure.
On the low bluff far up the river, Gladwin's anxious eye at dawn
discovered the lodges of Pontiac's Ottawas, who, under the cover
of the night, had paddled around the head of the island and noise-
lessly established themselves above the line of French farm-houses.
holy water; then the perturbed spirit left the body in peace, never since
disturbed.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 131
This meant a siege. A pattering of bullets against the block-house
announced the beginning of hostilities.
During the morning a party of Wyandottes, summoned by Pon-
tiac to a council, stopped at the fort. Fortified by English rum, they
went to the meeting, promising that they would appease the Ottawas
and dissuade them from further hostilities. Then came French set-
tlers, bringing chiefs of the Ottawas, Wyandottes, Chippewas, and
Pottawatomies, who told Gladwin that almost all the French had
gathered at the house of the trader, M. Cuillerier, where the Indians
were to hold their council. They assured Gladwin that if he would
allow Captain Campbell and another officer to go to the council, it
would not be hard to persuade the Indians to make peace. Both the
French and the Indians promised to see that the popular old captain
and his comjianion returned to safety that very night. Gladwin,
having little hope of turning Pontiac from his purposes, was reluc-
tant to intrust Captain Campbell to their hands; but the captain,
relying on the friendship that had existed between him and the
savages no less than on the promises of the French, urged to be
allowed to attend the council. Gladwin reluctantly consented be-
cause of the necessity of getting into the fort a supply of corn,
flour, and bear"s grease. Captain Campbell and Lieutenant Mc-
Dougall went off with high hopes, and Gladwin, under cover of the
darkness gathered provisions from the French settlers across the
river.
The embassy of peace were met by M. Gouin, who first urged
and then begged them not to trust their lives to the now excited
Indians. The appeal was in vain. Almost immediately they were
set upon by a crowd of Indians, but were rescued by Pontiac him-
self. They found the room filled with French and Indians; in the
center of the group sat M. Cuillerier, who kept his seat when the
officers entered and remained covered during the conference. When
bread was passed, he ate one piece to show the Indians, as he said,
diat it was not poisoned. Pontiac, addressing himself to AI. Cuil-
lerier, craftily said that he looked upon the Frenchman as his father
come to life, and as the commandant at Detroit until the arrival of
M. Bellestre, the former French commandant. Then Pontiac, turn-
ing to the British officers, told them plainly that to secure peace,
the English must leave the country under escort and without arms
or baggage. Thereupon AI. Cuillerier shook Lieutenant Mc-
Dougall's hand, saying, "Aly friend, this is my work ; rejoice that
I have obtained such good terms for you. I thought Pontiac would
be much harder."
132 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Captain McDougall made a short but earnest plea for peace.
Then he waited for the usual grunt of approval. For the space of
an hour there was unbroken silence. Then Captain Campbell, de-
jected by evident failure, arose to retrace his steps to the fort.
"My father," said Pontiac, "will sleep tonight in the lodge of his
red children." In spite of all promises, the two Englishmen were
sent under guard to the house of M. Meloche. They were not
immediately put to death because Gladwin held several Pottawat-
omie prisoners, and Pontiac feared that if the commandant should
retaliate on his hostages, that tribe would leave him without the
support. 1°
The terms proposed to Captain Campbell were offered next day
to Gladwin, and the French urged him to escape while he might ;
but he absolutely refused to make any terms with savages, and his
soldiers caught his spirit. He wrote confidently to General Am-
herst, that he would hold out until succor should come. The
schooner Gladwin, which bore the despatch, eluded Pontiac's
canoes ; and when the chief reported his failure to M. Cuillerier, the
Frenchman jeered at him because five canoes withdrew at the death
of a single Pottawatomie.
One by one the results of Pontiac's plotting transpired. On
May 22d news came of the capture of Fort Sandusky. At the
inquiry Ensign Paully related that on May i6th his sentry called
him to speak with some Indians in the party ; he allowed seven to
enter the fort and gave them tobacco. Soon one of the seven raised
his head as a signal, whereupon the two sitting next the officer
15 Of all the prominent French settlers at Detroit, Cuillerier {dit Beau-
bien) was the only one who openly sided with Pontiac, although the French
traders naturally favored any movement that would restore their waning
supremacy. Angelique Cuillerier, who afterwards married James Sterling,
was friendly to the English, perhaps because of natural perversity, perhaps
because of the attention that had been paid her by Sir William Johnson.
She may have been the one who betrayed the plot. At any rate, she is the
only person whose name is connected with the disclosure who could lay
claim either to youth or good looks. It seems to be necessary, in order not
to thwart the romance of history, to have a handsome female for a heroine ;
and she certainly must have looked the part, however improbable the surmise.
George McDougall was the owner of Isle au Cochon (Belle Isle) ; after
the siege he married Marie Francoise Navarre, daughter of Detroit's notary
and the founder of a family which numbers many descendants in Detroit
today. During the Revolution McDougall served until 17S0, when he
resigned, owing to ill health. He sold his commission to Patrick Sinclair,
the builder of Fort Mackinac, and died April 8, 1780; his son John Robert
McDougall- married .\rchange Campau.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 133
seized and bound him and hurried him from the room. He passed
his sentry dead in the gateway, and saw lying about the corpses of
his little garrison. His sergeant was killed in the garden where he
had been planting; the merchants were dead, their stores were plun-
dered. The Indians spared Paully and took him to their camp at
Detroit, where he was adopted as the husband of a widowed squaw,
from whose toils he finally escaped to his friends in the fort.
On May iSlh, Ensign Holmes, who commanded the garrison at
Fort Miami, on the Maumee, was told by a Frenchman that Detroit
had been attacked, whereupon the ensign called in his men and set
them at work making cartridges. Three days later Holmes's In-
dian servant besought him to bleed one of her friends, who lay ill
in a cabin outside the stockade. On his errand of mercy he was
shot dead. The terrified garrison of nine were only too glad to
surrender at the command of two Frenchmen, Pontiac's messengers,
who were on their way to the Illinois to get a commandant for
Detroit.
On May 2Sth, at Fort St. Joseph, seventeen Pottawatomies came
into Ensign Schlosser's room on the pretence of holding a council.
A Frenchman, who had heard that treachery was planned, rushed
in to give the alarm, whereupon Ensign Schlosser was seized, ten
of the garrison were killed, and the other three with the command-
ant were made prisoners. They were afterwards brought to De-
troit and exchanged.
On the 29th the bateaux from Niagara appeared. And the
garrison looked forward to the end of their tedious siege. As the
boats came nearer, the English saw with dismay that Indians were
the masters of the craft. When the foremost bateau came oppo-
site the schooner Gladwin, two soldiers in her made the motion to
change rowing places. Quickly they seized the Indians and threw
them overboard. One Indian carried his assailant with him and
in the struggle both were drowned. Another soldier struck the
remaining Indian over the head with an oar and killed him. Under
the fire of sixty savages on the shore the three Englishmen escaped
to the vessel with their prize, which contained eight barrels of most
acceptable pork and flour. Of the ten bateaux that had set out from
Niagara under Lieutenant Cuyler, eight had been captured and
the force had been completely routed by an Indian surprise and
night attack at the mouth of Detroit.
Then came Father La Jaunay, missionary at Michilimackinac,
to tell that on June 2d, the Chippewas living near the fort assem-
bled for their usual game of ball. They played from morning till
134 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
noon. Captain George Etherington and Lieutenant Leslie were
watching the sport when suddenly the ball was struck over the
stockade. A dozen Indians rushed through the gate to get it.
Before the dazed sentry could recover, the captain and lieutenant
were seized and hurried off ; the Indians within the fort had received
from the squaws stationed there hatchets hidden under their blan-
kets; in an instant Lieutenant Jamet, fifteen soldiers, and a trader
named Tracy were killed, five others were reserved for a like fate,
and the remainder of the garrison were made prisoners. Had it
not been for the powerful influence of Charles de Langlade and
his friends the Ottawas, all the English must have perished; as it
was, Captain Etherington and Lieutenant Leslie, with fourteen men,
were held until ]uly i8th, when they were taken to Montreal by the
Ottawas.
On Sunday, the 26th of June, Pontiac attended mass in the
French chapel in Sandwich. When the services were over, the
chief selected three of the chairs in which the French had been
carried to church, and, making the owners his chairmen, he made a
search for provisions. He imitated the credit certificates issued by
Gladwin and gave in payment for cattle billets signed by his mark,
the picture of a coon. The provisions were transported to Pontiac's
camp near Parent's Creek, and in due time the billets were re-
deemed. The next day Pontiac sent summons to surrender,
saying that 900 Indians were on their way from Michilimackinac,
and if Gladwin waited till those Indians arrived he would not be
answerable for the consequences. Gladwin replied that until Cap-
tain Campbell and Lieutenant McDougall were returned, Pontiac
need not trouble to send messages to the fort. Pontiac answered
that he had too much regard for his distinguished captives to send
them back ; because the kettle was on the fire for the entire garrison,
and in case they were returned he should have to boil them with
the rest.
On Jime 30th. the Gladwin returning from Niagara landed a force
of fifty men, together with provisions and needed ammunition. For
two months Detroit had sustained a siege conducted by Pontiac in
person, while fort after fort had fallen before the savages. As
the Indians returned from their successes elsewhere they were more
and more eager for the overthrow of the one fort that hitherto had
baffled all their efforts. Pontiac now threatened to force the French
to take up arms against the English. During the siege, however,
copies of the definitive treaty between France and England had
reached Detroit; and, on July 4th, Gladwin assembled the French
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 135
inhabitants and read to them the articles of peace. Also he sent a
copy across the river to the priest. Thereupon forty Frenchmen,
with James SterHng as leader, took service under Gladwin. On
this same day a party from the fort made a sortie for the purpose
of bringing in some powder and lead from the house of M. Baby,
who had taken refuge in the fort. Lieutenant Hay, an old Indian-
fighter, commanded the force, and in his exultation over driving
oft an attacking party, he tore the scalp from the head of a wounded
Indian and shook his trophy in the face of his enemies. It hap-
pened that the one of the savages killed was the son of a Chippewa
chief ; and as soon as the tribe heard of their disaster they went to
Pontiac to reproach him for being the cause of their ills, saying
that he was very brave in taking a loaf of bread or a beef from a
Frenchman who made no resistance, but it was the Chippewas who
had all the men killed and wounded every day. Therefore, they
said, they intended to take from him what he had been saving.
Lieutenant McDougall had already made his escape to the fort;
but they went to Meloche's house, where Captain Campbell was
confined. They stripped him, carried him to their camp, killed him,
took out his heart and ate it, cut off his head, and divided his body
into small pieces. Such was the end of a brave soldier, esteemed,
loved and sincerely mourned in the army, from General Amherst
and Colonel Bouquet down to the privates who served under him.
At midnight on July loth, a great fire-raft, built by the French
and Indians, made for the two vessels anchored in the stream; but
the alert crews had anticipated their danger and were prepared for
it. The vessels were anchored by two cables, and as the flaming
pile approached, they slipped one cable and easily swung out of
the way of the enemy.
On the evening of the 30th of July, Captain Dalzell, aide-de-
camp to General Amherst, arrived with detachment sent under his
command ; and being fully persuaded that Pontiac would soon
abandon his design, insisted with Major Gladwin that the Indians
might easily be surprised in their camp, totally routed and driven
out of the settlement.!® It was thereupon determined, that Cap-
tain Dalzell should march out with 247 men. "Accordingly they
marched about half an hour after two in the morning, two deep,
along the great road by the river side, two boats along the river
up shore, with a patterare in each, with orders to keep up with the
16 The Universal Magazine for October, 1763 (London). This is the
official report made by Sir Jeffery Amherst, which arrived at St. James's,
October 14. It is dated New York, September 3.
136 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
line of march, cover the retreat, and take off the killed and wounded.
About a mile and a half from the fort the troops had orders to
form into platoons, and, if attacked in the front, to fire by street-
firings. They then advanced and, in about a mile further, the ad-
vanced-guard commanded by Lieutenant Brown of the Fifty-fifth
Regiment, had been fired upon so close to the enemy's breast-works
and cover that the fire being very heavy, not only killed and wounded
some of his party, but reached the main body, which put the whole
into a little confusion; but they soon recovered their order and
gave the enemy, or rather their works, it being very dark, a dis-
charge or two from the front commanded by Captain Gray. At
the same time the rear, commanded by Captain Grant, was fired
upon from a house and some fences, about twenty yards on his
left; on which he ordered his own and Captain Hopkins' companies
to face to the left, and give a full fire that way. After which,
it appearing that the enemy gave way everywhere, Captain Dalzell
sent orders to Captain Grant, to take possession of the houses and
fences, which he immediately did, and found in one of the houses,
two men who told him the enemy had been there long, and were
well apprised of our design. Captain Grant then asked them their
numbers: They said about three hundred; and that they intended
as soon as they had attacked the English in the front, to get between
them and the fort ; which Captain Grant told Captain Dalzell, who
came to him when the firing was over. And in about an hour after
he came to him again, and told Captain Grant he was to retire, and
ordered him to march in the front, and post himself in an orchard.
He then marched, and about half a mile further on his retreat, he
had some shots fired on his flank ; but got possession of the orchard
which was well fenced; and just as he got there he heard a warm
firing in the rear, having at the same time, a firing on his own post
from the fences and corn-fields behind it. Lieutenant McDougall,
who acted as adjutant to the detachment, came up to him, Captain
Grant, and told him that Captain Dalzell was killed and Captain
Gray very much wounded, on making a push on the enemy, and
forcing them out of a strong breast-work of cord-wood, and an
intrenchment which they had taken possession of; and that the
command then devolved upon him. Lieutenant Bean immediately
came up and told him that Captain Rogers had desired him to tell
Captain Grant that he had taken possession of a house and that he
had better retire with what numbers he had as he. Captain Rogers,
could not get off without the boats to cover him, he being hard
pushed by the enemy from the enclosures behind him, some of which
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 137
scoured the road through which he must retire. Captain Grant
then sent Ensign PauH with twenty men back to attack a party of
the enemy which annoyed his own post a little, and galled those
who were joining him, from the place where Captain Dalzell was
l''|-Ulll .1 lJ.UUaliti UJ ,)uli;i liMllutHl. Ill Ii.i.^.^i 1
liichard Gladwin Turbutt, OgsUjii HaJl. Derbj^h rtj
General Henry Gladwin
killed, and Captain Gray, Lieutenants Brown and Duke were
wounded ; which Ensign Pauli did and killed some of the enemy in
their flight. Captain Grant at the same time detached all the
men he could get and took possession of the inclosures, barns,
fences, etc., leading from his own post to the fort, which post he
reinforced with the officers and men as they came up. Thinking
the retreat then secured, the different parties were ordered to cover
one another successively until the whole had joined. But Captain
Rogers not finding it right to risque the loss of more men, he
chosed to wait for the armed boats, one of which appeared soon,
138 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
commanded by Lieutenant Brehm, whom Captain Grant had com-
manded to go and cover Captain Rogers' retreat, who was in the
next house. Lieutenant Brehm, accordingly, went and fired several
shots at the enemy; Lieutenant Abbott, with the other boat, want-
ing ammunition went down with Captain Gray; Lieutenant Brown
and some wounded men returned also, which Captain Grant sup-
poses the enemy seeing, did not wait her arrival, but retired on
Lieutenant Brehm's firing, and gave Capt. Rogers with the rear
an opportunity to come off. So that the whole, from the different
posts joined without any confusion and marched to the fort in good
order, covered by the armed boats on the water-side and by par-
ties on the country-side, in view of the enemy who had all joined
and were much stronger than at the beginning of the affair as was
afterwards told us by some prisoners, that made their escape;
many having joined them from the other side the river and other
places. The whole arrived at the fort about 8 o'clock, commanded
by Captain Grant, whose able and skilful retreat was highly com-
mended."
This victory of Bloody Run, as Parent's Creek was ever after-
wards called, restored the waning fortunes of Pontiac. Yet never
since the siege began was Major Gladwin more hopeful of ultimate
success. The Indians, powerless against the palisades, again turned
their attention to the vessel that kept open the food communication
with the settlers across the river and made occasional trips to Fort
Niagara for supplies and ammunition. From one of these latter
voyages the Gladwin was returning on the night of September 4th,
when, the wind failing, she anchored nine miles below the fort, hav-
ing on board her commander, Horst ; her mate, Jacobs, and a crew
of ten men. Six Iroquois, supposed to be friendly with the English,
had been landed that morning, and to their brethren was probably
due the night attack made by a large force of Indians, whose canoes
dropped so silently down the river that a single cannon-shot and one
volley of musketry were all the welcome that could be given them.
Horst fell in the first onslaught, and Jacobs, seeing that hope ^s^as
gone, gave command to blow up the vessel. At the word some
Wyandottes, who knew the meaning of the command, gave warning
to their companions, and all made a dash overboard, swimming to
be clear of destruction. Jacobs, no less astonished than gratified
at the effect of his words, had no further trouble. Six of the
sailors received medals for bravery.
Pontiac now appealed to the French in the Illinois country for
aid. "Since our father, Mr. Bellestre departed," he wrote, the In-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 139
dians had no news, nor did any letters come to the French, but the
English alone received letters. The English say incessantly that
since the French and Spaniards have been overthrown, they own all
the country. When our father, Mr. Bellestre, was going off from
hence, he told us "My children the English today overthrow your
father; as long as they have the upper hand ye will not have what
ye stand in need of; but this will not last! We pray our father at
Illinois to take pity on us and say. These poor children are willing
to raise me up ! Why do we that which we are doing today ? It is
because we are unwilling that the English should possess these lands ;
this is what causeth thy children to rise up and strike everywhere."
This message was indorsed by the Chippewas and by the French
inhabitants at Detroit ; the latter complained that they were obliged to
submit to Indian exactions. M. Neyeon, the French commandant
at Fort Chartres on the Alississippi, replied that "the great day
had come at last wherein it had pleased the Master of Life to
command the Great King of France and him of England to make
peace between them, sorry to see the blood spilled so long." So
these kings had ordered all their chiefs and warriors to bury the
hatchet. He promised that when this was done the Indians would
see the road free, the lakes and rivers imstopped, and ammunition
and merchandise would abound in their villages; their women and
children would be cloaked; they would go to dances and festivals,
not cumbered with heavy clothes, but with skirts, blankets and rib-
bons. "Forget them, my dear children," he commanded, "all evil
talks. Leave off from spilling the blood of your brethren, the Eng-
lish. Our hearts are now but one ; you cannot, at present, strike the
one without having the other for an enemy also."
This message was dated on September 27th. Its contents dashed
Pontiac's hopes and on October 12th he sued most submissively for
peace. Gladwin, being in need of flour, granted a truce, but made
no promise, saying that General Amherst alone had power to par-
don. To Amherst the commandant wrote that it would be good
policy to leave matters open until the spring, when the Indians would
be so reduced for want of powder there would be no danger that
they would break out again, "provided some examples are made of
our good friends, the French, who set them on." Gladwin then
adds, "No advantage can be gained by prosecuting the war, owing
to the difficulty of catching them (the Indians). Add to this the
expense of such a war. If continued, the ruin of our entire peltrv
trade must follow, and the loss of a prodigious consumption of our
merchandise. It will be the means of their retiring, which will re-
140 HISTORY OF IVIICHIGAN
inforce other nations on the Mississippi, whom they will push
against us, and make them our enemies forever. Consequently it
will render it extremely difficult to pass that country, and especially
as the French have promised to supply them with everything they
want.
'"They have lost between eighty and ninety of their best war-
riors; but if your excellency still intends to punish them for their
barbarities, it may be easier done, without expense to the crown,
by permitting a free sale of rum, which will destroy them more
effectually than fire and sword. But on the contrary if you intend
to accommodate matters in spring, which I hope you will for the
above reasons, it may be necessary to send up Sir William Johnson."
Colonel Bradstreet, the hero of Fort Frontenac, led the great
force which confirmed the British power in the Lake country.
Bradstreet's expedition got no further than Sandusky, but a detach-
ment reached Detroit late in August, 1764, and on the last day of
that month Colonel Gladwin left for New York.
Gladwin on being relieved in 1764 returned to England. Ten
years later we run across him, settled upon a small paternal estate,
indulging in farming and rural amusements. Gladly he would have
gone back into the army, but had no money to buy a commission
befitting his previous rank, nor yet friends in power to obtain one
without purchase." He died in Stubbing, near Chesterfield, on
'" He stayed at home much, because he could not afford to entertain.
Nevertheless he went to London and was presented to King George III, to
whom he spoke, as he flatters himself, rather as an honest man than a courtier.
Yet what a king could not conquer, the bright eyes of the beautiful Duchess
of Devonshire (Fox's Duchess) subdued. During the autumn of 1777, Glad-
win was gallant enough to tell her grace that "the duke saluted better than
any of the officers of the Derbyshire militia, though he had but just learnt.'
"Colonel Gladwin," she adds, "is a charming man ; he is brave as his sword
and has the true soldier's spirit which you (the Countess Spencer) like so
much. For at this instant he is persuaded that he could conquer America
with the Derbyshire militia. He served in America in the last war and was in
several dangerous situations, out of which he extricated himself with great
courage and conduct. He is very passionate, and a great disciplinarian."
While the duchess regarded Gladwin as charming when he was praising her
husband's command, he never lost his character as a martinet — the least lover-
like of men.
Mrs. Gladwin survived her husband twenty-six years, and died at the age
of seventy-four. In middle life she was a beautiful woman of the matronly
type. Gladwin's eldest son died in 1844, leaving one daughter. From Glad-
win's daughter, Frances, descended Capt. Richard Henry Goodwin Gladwin,
who died a few years ago. With him I had a pleasant correspondence during
the two or three years before he died. From the second daughter, Dorothy,
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 141
June 22, 1791, and on the memorial tablet in Wingerwort Church,
you may read that "His courage was conspicuous ; and his memor-
able defense of Fort Detroit against the attack of the Indians will
long be recorded in the annals of a grateful country." It was not
until four years after Gladwin's death (1796) that the British flag
was lowered at Detroit.
The conspiracy of Pontiac was the most formidable Indian up-
rising ever executed by the red men ; and Pontiac himself was the
ablest of Indian organizers, with the possible exception of Tecum-
seh, who proved an apt pupil of the master. He was born in 1620,
or thereabouts, on the banks of the Maumee near the mouth of the
Auglaize; his father probably was an Ottawa chief and his mother
a Chippewa. He was a trained fighter. In 1846 he helped to de-
fend Detroit against the incursions of the northern tribes; in 1755
he again aided the French when they inflicted such a disastrous
defeat upon the British under Braddock ; when he met Capt. Robert
Rogers on the present site of Cleveland he knew that the English
had conquered the French, but he hoped for a change in the situa-
tion, and it was the reports of French aggressiveness that led him
to take action. He never believed that the Indians single-handed
were able to withstand the whites ; but naturally he preferred the
French trader to the English settler. The English were too matter-
of-fact, too hard at driving a bargain, too exacting as to payments,
and they held themselves too much aloof from the Indians, whom
they despised. He never acknowledged the English king as his
"father," although reluctantly he would allow the term "uncle."
When he heard that France proposed a reconquest of America the
time seemed to him ripe to secure for the tribes the lands between
the Great Lakes and the Ohio, to be maintained as an Indian hunt-
ing-ground — an idea that prevailed in Indian and British diplomacy
even to the Treaty of Ghent. Pontiac's plans included the seizure
descended the late Rev. Henry Gladwin Jebb, a most gentle and accomplished
scholar and antiquarian, whose repeated invitations to visit the home and
haunts of the Gladwins, I never had the opportunity to accept. From Mary,
the third daughter, descended R. de Uphaugh, Esq., of Hollingburn, Kent,
through whom I came to an acquaintance with the descendants of the hero
of the Pontiac war. While this book is in press news comes of the death in
action before Calais in October, 1914, of Lieut. Gladwyn, Maurice Revell
Turbutt, of the Oxen and Bucks Light Infantry. He was a graduate of Har-
row and Magdalene College. Oxford ; an architect of taste and ability, and a
man actively interested in good works. On both his paternal and maternal
sides he was a descendant of Henry Gladwin.
142 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
of Detroit, St. Joseph, Michilimackinac, Quiatenon (on the Wa-
bash), the Miami (Fort Wayne), Sandusky and Forts Niagara,
Preque Isle (Erie), Le Boeuf, Venango and Pitt. At all but two
of these points Pontiac's plan was carried out. Henry Bouquet
saved Fort Pitt by the stubbornly contested and bloody battle of
Bushy Run ; while Henry Gladwin successfully withstood the strate-
gems and attacks of Pontiac himself at Detroit. Pontiac gave up
only when he became convinced that he could hope for no support
from the French. He even made an attempt to incite the Mississippi
tribes to revolt: and when failure again met him he reluctantly. made
peace with the English at Detroit on August 17, 1765, George
Croghan being the negotiator. Four years later he was murdered
by a Kaskaskia Indian, after a drunken carousal. His friend, St.
Ange de Bellerive, gave him burial near the new town of St. Louis,
and long since his dust has mingled with that of Frenchman and
Spaniard, Englishman and American.^*
1' In the Parkman Papers I have found five different accounts of Pontiac's
death. Immediately after tlie news spread all kinds of stories began to be
circulated in letters and in eastern newspapers. The Parkman papers in the
Massachusetts Historical Society rooms are now available to students ; those
in the Harvard Library continue to be available.
CHAPTER IX
CARVER'S TRAVELS ; ROGERS AND SINCLAIR AT
MICHILIMACKINAC
No sooner was the war between France and England concluded
by the Treaty of \'ersailles of 1763, than Jonathan Carver, a resident
of Montague, Massachusetts, who had been a captain in that war,
determined to make a tour of England's newly acquired possessions
in order, as he says, to acquaint the British Government with the
true state of the dominions they had now become possessed of.
According to Carver, the French had purposely put forth false in-
formation in regard to the Northwest; and he says, as one proof
of his assertions, that although the French constantly maintained a
vessel of considerable size on Lake Superior, their maps of that
lake were very incorrect; and he says further that he himself
observed "part of the hulk of a very large vessel, burnt to the
water's edge, just at the opening from the Straits of St. Mary's
into the lake." If this statement is true, all knowledge of the first
vessel that sailed the upper lakes has been lost.
Like all his predecessors for more than a century and half.
Carver hoped and expected to find the northwest passage to the
Pacific, "whereby information might be conveyed to China and the
English settlement in the East Indies with greater expedition than a
tedious voyage by the Cape of Good Hope or the Straits of Magellan
would allow." Moreover he looked forward to the time when
"mighty Kingdoms will emerge from these wildernesses and stately
palaces and solemn temples, with gilded spires reaching to the skies,
supplant the Indian huts, whose only decorations are the barbarous
trophies of their vanquished enemies."
In the June of 1766 Carver set out from Boston and proceeded
by way of Albany and Niagara to Alichilimackinac (Mackinaw
City) where he found a strongly stockaded fort usually defended by
a garrison of a hundred men ; and about thirty houses, including
those of the governor and the commissary. A few traders made
their headquarters there.
143
144 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
The governor, or commandant, at the time of Carver's visit was
Major Robert Rogers, who gave him a letter of credit, drawn on
EngHsh and Canadian traders doing business in the Mississippi
Valley, calling for a supply of presents suitable for Indian chiefs.
Setting out on September 3d, with the traders, in fifteen days he
accomplished the journey to Fort La Bay, situated at the southern
extremity of the waters termed by the French the Bay of Puants,
but by the English, Green Bay, because of the early advent of
summer verdure in that region. There he found a stockade which
at the time of the Pontiac war was garrisoned by an officer and
thirty men. At that time Menominee Indians made prisoners of the
British force and since then there had been no garrison; as a con-
sequence the stockade was going to pieces. The Ottawas and
Chippewas had divided the country between them, the former taking
the region east of a line drawn from the southern end of Lake
Michigan to Michilimackinac; and the Chippewas taking the lands to
the west. On meeting at the trading post each tribe camped on its
own side of the line.
From Green Bay Carver proceeded to the Mississippi, and at
Prairie du Chien he found about three hundred Indian families well
housed after the manner of the tribes. "The town," he says, "is a
great mart where all the adjacent tribes, and even those who inhabit
the remote branches of the Mississippi annually assemble about the
latter end of May, bringing with them furs to dispose of to the
traders." Yet with the craft of the Indian they held a great
council to determine whether they would sell to the traders or
whether they would take their goods to market in Louisiana or at
Michilimackinac. Thus early appear combinations in restraint of
trade !
Carver made his way to the Falls of St. Anthony, discovered
and named more than three-quarters of a century previously by
Father Louis Hennepin ; and he spent the winter among friendly
Indians in the upper Mississippi region. At the end of July, 1767,
he arrived at the Grand Portage, on the northwest shore of Lake
Superior. Here the traders from Michilimackinac were accustomed
to carry their canoes and baggage nine miles till they came to a
number of small lakes, leading to the sources of the Mississippi ; and
here Carver met a large party of Crees who had come to meet the
traders, on their way to the Northwest. The struggle of the
Michilimackinac traders was to keep the Indians from going to the
Hudson Bay Company posts on the shores of that water; and such
was the length and difficulty of the northern journey that they were
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 145
able seriously to encroach upon the territories of the great monoply.
Having failed to obtain from the traders goods with which to make
friends with the Indians, Carver set out on his return journey and
about the ist of October reached Sault Ste. Marie, where he found a
small post or fort at the foot of the rapids, on the right bank. The
fort was known as Cadot's, from its proprietor, a French Canadian
trader. Carver had noted the presence of copper along the shores
of Lake Superior; he had heard of Alexander Henry's attempt at
mining and he laid the failure of the adventure to the distracted con-
dition of the country rather than to the real cause — a mistake as to
both place and method. Carver thought it would be easy to handle
the copper in canoes through St. Mary's River to St. Joseph's Island
at the mouth of the stream; thence it might be put on board
larger vessels and taken to Niagara Falls, where one more portage
would be necessary in order to convey the product to Quebec. He
expressed himself satisfied that Lake Superior copper could enter
European markets as cheaply as copper from any other country.
The trout and white fish also engaged the traveler's attention; and
he anticipated that a considerable trade would be developed in cured
fish. He reached Michilimackinac in November and passed the
winter there.
On the way down the lakes in June, 1768, Carver made observa-
tions of Thunder Bay, so called by reason of the lightnings that play
about its rocky shores — lightnings which, he opines, must be the
result from the attraction of the electrical particles by an uncommon
amount of sulphurous matter or some mineral contained in the
adjacent hills. He speaks also of "Saganamn Bay about eighty
miles in length and eighteen or twenty miles broad." He comments
on a reported periodic change in lake levels amounting to about
three feet, the time between periods being seven and a half years.
He returned in the "Gladwin" schooner, a vessel of about eighty
tons burthen. In Lake St. Claire, the party left the ship, and pro-
ceeded in boats to Detroit. This lake is about ninety miles in cir-
cumference, he says, and by the way of Huron River (St. Clair)
which runs from the south corner of Lake Huron, receives the
waters of the three great lakes, Superior, Michigan and Huron.
Its form is rather round, and in some places it is deep enough for
the navigation of large vessels, but towards the middle of it there
is a bar of sand, which prevents those that are loaded from passing
over it. Such as are in ballast only may find water sufficient to
carry them quite through; the cargoes, however, of such as are
Vol. I— 10
146 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
freighted must be taken out, and after being transported across
the bar in boats, re-shipped again.
"The river," says Carver, "that runs from Lake Ste. Claire to
Lake Erie (or rather the Straight, for thus it might be termed
from the name) is called Detroit, which is in French, the Straight.
It runs nearly south, has a gentle current, and depth of water suffi-
cient for ships of considerable burthen. The Town of Detroit is
situated on the western banks of this river, about nine miles below
Lake Ste. Claire.
"Almost opposite on the eastern shore, is the village of the
ancient Hurons ; a missionary of the order of Carthusian Friars,
by permission of the bishop of Canada, resides among them.
"The banks of the Detroit River, both above and below these
towns are covered with settlements that extend more than twenty
miles; the country being exceedingly fruitful, and proper for the
cultivation of wheat, Indian corn, oats and peas. It has also many
spots of fine pasturage ; but as the inhabitants, who are chiefly
French that submitted to the English government, after the con-
quesF of these parts by General Amherst, are more attentive to
Indian trade than to farming, it is but badly cultivated.
"The town of Detroit contains upwards of one hundred houses.
The streets are somewhat regular, and have a range of very con-
venient and handsome barracks, with a spacious parade at the south
end. On the west side lies the King's garden, belonging to the
governor, which is very well laid out and kept in order. The forti-
fications of the town consist of a strong stockade, made of round
piles, fixed firmly in the ground, and lined with palisades. These
are defended by some small bastions, on which are mounted a few
indifferent cannon of an inconsiderable size, just sufficient for its
defence against the Indians, or an enemy not provided with artillery.
"The garrison, in time of peace, consists of two hundred men,
commanded by a field officer who acts as chief magistrate under the
governor of Canada. Mr. Turnbull, captain of the 6oth regiment, or
Royal American, was commandant when I happened to be there.
This gentleman was deservedly esteemed and respected, both by the
inhabitants and traders, for the propriety of his conduct."
It was during his stay at Detroit that Carver heard the details
of the Pontiac conspiracy which have been adverted to in the
previous chapter. From Detroit he proceeded across Lakes Erie
and Ontario and thence to Boston, where he arrived in October,
1768, having been gone a year and five months and having journeyed
about seven thousand miles according to his own calculation.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 147
Thence he went in 1769 to London, where he was well received,
on the whole. His expenses were paid, although it was admitted
that Robert Rogers at Michilimackinac exceeded his authority in
employing him. He was the first traveller in the Northwest during
the British occupancy, and he made England acquainted with its
resources. In England he married a second time without going
through the formality of the divorce from the wife he left in
Montague; and there was a daughter by each marriage. His
American wife died in Brandon, Vermont, in 1802, having survived
her husband during twenty-two years. He died a pauper, in 1780.1
Carver explored the country north and west of Lake Superior,
the region which more than a century before Radisson had made
known to both France and England. There remained the Illinois
country between the lakes and Ohio. As Carter points out ~ Canada
on the north end of the French possessions and New Orleans on
the extreme south contained the bulk of the population. There
were small trading posts at Vincennes on the Wabash, at St. Joseph
near Lake Michigan, and important settlements numbering about two
thousand people, along the eastern bank of the Mississippi in the
present State of Illinois. The largest town in all the western
region was Detroit. By secret treaty France had divested herself
of the territory west of -the Mississippi before coming to terms with
England in 1763; but it was mainly with New Orleans that the
Illinois settlements maintained trade relations.
Various schemes for English colonies in the Northwest were laid
before the British Board of Trade, and on October i, 1767, Lord
Shelbourne presented to the Lords of Trade a plan for three colonies,
one centering at Detroit, another near the mouth of the Ohio, and
the third near the mouth of the Illinois River. The Government
hoped in this way to reduce expenses, which were to be shifted to
the new proprietors, of whom there were to be 100 for each colony,
and each proprietor was to receive 20,000 acres of land to sell to
settlers. Before these schemes could be perfected the antagonisms
between the crown and the colonies had broken out, and all such
matters were held in abeyance.
We may well follow through the strange career of Major
Rogers. His dealings with Pontiac, both at the time of the sur-
1 "Jonathan Carver ; Additional Data" ; by John Thomas Lee. Wisconsin
Historical Society Proceedings for 1912, p. 87.
-"Great Britain and the Illinois Country"; by Charles Edwin Carter;
Washington, 1910.
148 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
render of Detroit and at the battle of Bloody Run, where he saved
the remnant of Dalzell's force were the last creditable acts of his
life. Some time about 1761 he had married at Portsmouth, N. H.,
Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Arthur Brown, rector of St. Johns
Church in that town; and between 1762 and 1765 he dealt largely
in real estate, buying some properties and securing others by virtue
of his military services. Among his possessions was 3,000 acres in
Southern Vermont, conveyed to him as "a reduced officer" by
Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire. To his father-in-law
he conveyed 500 acres in Rumford (now Concord), N. H., together
with three negro and one Indian slaves. The real estate descended
to his grandchildren. In 1778 his wife obtained from the Legisla-
ture of New Hampshire a divorce, on the ground of desertion and
infidelity; she subsequently married a Captain Roach, noted for
picturesque blasphemy and hard drinking, and after a sad life
went to her recompense in 181 2. In 1765 Rogers went to England,
where he published his "Journals" and his "Concise Account of
North-America," both of which volumes had a large sale.^
On June 10, 1766, General Gage, at the king's command, but
entirely against his own will, appointed Major Rogers commandant
at Michilimackinac, much to the disgust of Sir William Johnson.
Rogers was made subordinate to the commandant at Detroit, and a
commissary was appointed to take charge of the stores at his post.
Both Gage and Johnson had found him spoiled by flattery, unduly
ambitious, dishonest and a liar. At Michilimackinac he secretly
engaged in Indian trade, he incurred expenses without authority
(such as employing Jonathan Carver to make explorations) and he
quarrelled with his subordinates. Finally, growing desperate, he
first tried to have his post made independent and then, failing that,
he plotted to rob the traders and the king and turn the post over to
the Spanish on the Mississippi. Sent to Montreal in irons, in Septem-
ber, 1768, to be tried for high treason he escaped conviction, and
went to England. There he became the lion of the town, was
entertained by the nobility and was permitted to kiss the king's
hand. The arrears of his salary were paid and he was reimbursed
^ "Journals of Major Robert Rogers" ; containing an account of several
excursions he made under the generals who commanded upon the Continent
of North America during the late war. etc. London; printed for the author
and sold by J. Millen, 1765. American edition edited by Dr. F. B. Hough;
published at Albany, 1883 ; contains an introduction and official papers.
"A Concise Account of North America"; containing a description of the
several British Colonies on that continent, etc. London ; printed for the
author and sold by J. Millen, 1765.
n
English Map of St. Mart's River and the Straits of Mackinac
150 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
for all his expenses. His modesty was such that he asked merely
to be made a baronet with a grant of £600 a year and a majority
in the army. Having failed to obtain these rewards he shook the
dust of England from his feet and returned to America in July,
1777, as a major on half-pay. The Pennsylvania Committee of
Safety, had him arrested as a British spy, but released him on
parole. He broke his parole by offering his services to General
Gage; then he returned to Hanover, New Hampshire, where he
endeavored to obtain a commission to secure a land-grant for Dart-
mouth College. He left Hanover without paying his tavern bill;
and from Medford, Massachusetts, he wrote to Washington, offer-
ing his services, which offer was declined. Xew Hampshire recom-
mended his arrest ; but he escaped to the British and commanded a
company at Mamaronec, New York, where his force was routed by
the Americans. He was proscribed by New Hampshire in 1778;
he returned to England, where he died in 1800, after twenty-two
years of disreputable life.^
The Quebec Act, passed by Parliament to take effect in October,
1774, was a much more popular piece of legislation than the
authors of the Declaration of Independence suspected when they
named that act as one of the grievances which should arouse the
antagonism of the Canadians and impel them to make common
cause with their brethren in the Colonies. As a matter of fact
the Quebec Act as administered was popular with the French, who
formed the great body of settlers in Canada; because it preserved
to them their customs, and to a habitan custom was more than law.
The Proclamation of 1763 had left the Northwest, Hke Ma-
homed's coffin, somewhere in the air. None of the English legis-
lators knew definitely whether Detroit was located in Quebec or in
Louisiana, or whether it occupied a limbo between the two. They
were certain, however, that the region abounded in bears. The
Quebec Act extended that province to the Mississippi on the west
* Joseph B. Walker, the chronicler and apologist of Rogers, ventures the
opinion that when the historian gives place to the novelist and the poet,
Rogers desperate achievements will render as romantic the borders of Lake
George as have the daring deeds of Rob Roy McGregor, rehearsed by Wal-
ter Scott, made enchanting the shores of Loch Lomond. The writer coin-
cides with :\Ir. Walker ; during the past summer he heard the tale of Rogers
exploits told on a Lake George steamer; and now comes the Caxton Club
of Chicago with a de luxe edition of "Ponteach; or the Savages of Amer-
ica, a tragedy; London; printed for the author and sold by J. Millen, 1776,"
the club being instigated so to do by Prof. C. W. Alvord, of the history
department of the L'niversity of Illinois.
5=^^
From the Mich. P. & H. Col.
Boundaries under the Quebec Act
152 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
and the Ohio on the south. Canada was to be ruled by a governor
and council. George III also appointed a lieutenant-governor to
have civil control in each of the four departments into which the
western country was divided ; and the lieutenant-governor was to be
superintendent of Indian affairs at his post.
The appointments were made in April, 1775; and the selections
were dictated more by influence than by ability, a criticism that con-
tinues to apply when such opportunities present themselves even to
this day. For the Illinois country Matthew Johnson was selected ;
Edward Abbott was sent to St. Vincennes, Patrick Sinclair to
Michilimackinac and Henry Hamilton to Detroit. Incidentally we
shall have something to do with the first two of this quartette ; but
our main interest is centered in Sinclair and Hamilton.
Patrick Sinclair was born in 1746, at Lybster, in Caithness, Scot-
land, of good family. He received a fair education; in July, 1758,
he entered the British army by the purchase of a commission as
ensign in the Black Watch Regiment of Highlanders. He saw
service in the West Indies, New York City and Oswego ; and as a
lieutenant he served under General Amherst at the capture of Mon-
treal. From 1763 to 1769, if we can rely on his own account, he
served in the naval department on the Great Lakes ; and we are cer-
tain that he was in Detroit in 1767, when the merchants of that town
presented to him a silver bowl "in remembrance," so the inscription
reads, "of the encouragement experienced upon all occasions by the
merchants in the Indian countries from Capt. Patrick Sinclair of the
Naval Department, not as a reward for his services, but a public
testimony of their gratitude this is presented instead of a more
adequate acknowledgment which his disinterested disposition ren-
ders unpracticable. Dated 23rd September, 1767." The merchants
of Mackinac emulated their Detroit rivals by presenting a punch-
bowl to the British master of lake transportation.
Sinclair's duties were to maintain and provision the boats, see
to their arming and protection against the Indians, and so dispose
the shipping as to serve the various garrisons, and also Indian
traders and merchants, who of necessity depended upon these boats
to bring in their goods and carry out their furs.^ The boats then
in use consisted of canoes, batteaux, snows, sloops and schooners.
^ The nearest modern approach to Patrick Sinclair in his official capacity
is to be found in Hon. William Livingstone, of Detroit, for many y«;ars
president of the Lake Carriers' Association, which organization represents
the vessel owners of the Great Lakes in their deahngs with the Government,
the crews and the shippers.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 153
The birch-bark canoe had large carrying capacity in proportion to
its weight and was adapted to the carriage of persons but not
freight. The batteau, a Hght boat worked with oars, long in pro-
portion to its breadth and wider in the middle than at the ends,
was adapted for carrying freight, and was used between the posts
in transporting both freight and passengers. The snow had two
masts and was rigged much like a brig. The schooner Gladwin,
famous for her successful attempt in bringing aid to the besieged
Detroit garrison was of eighty tons burden. Up to 1780, the largest
boat on the lakes was the brig Gage of 154 tons, built in 1774.
Sinclair states that he was the only person who had ever ex-
plored the navigation of the lakes for vessels of burden "by taking
exact soundings of them and the rivers and straits which join them
with the bearings of the headlands, islands, bays, etc." In 1764
Sinclair erected a small fort south of the mouth of the Pine River in
the present St. Clair County ; the buildings consisted of two bar-
racks, one for sailors and one for soldiers ; two block-houses for
cannon and small arms, and a wharf for drawing out and careening
vessels, all enclosed within a stockade. This post, about midway
between lakes Huron and St. Clair, enabled him to control the
river as regards the Indians, and also furnished a place for trade
with them. This establishment was ordered and approved by
Colonel Bradstreet when he came to Detroit in August, 1764.
Sinclair got along with the Indians very satisfactorily; however,
in 1767, the Chippewas or Mississaguas murdered his servant and
the murderers were apprehended and sent to Albany for trial but
were finally released, greatly to his indignation. In 1767 the opera-
tion of boats on the lakes was delivered to private contractors, and
Sinclair's duties and official position terminated ; but it required
some time to close out his affairs, and he did not return to England
until the spring of 1768. He had made the improvements on the
St. Clair mainly at his own expense, and in March, 1769, he applied
to General Gage, then commanding the British forces in America,
to be reimbursed for his outlays of £200. Gage replied that the
Government had not ordered the construction and therefore Sin-
clair could do with the improvements what he saw fit. Sinclair had
obtained from the Indians a deed to a tract of land upon the St.
Clair. This deed was dated July 27. 1768, and was signed by Mas-
sigiash and Ottawa, chiefs of the Chippewa nation, in the presence
of fifteen Indians of that nation and of George Turnbull, captain
of the Second Battalion of the Sixtieth Regiment. The land is
described as being "on the northwest side of the River Huron,
154 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
between Lake Huron and Lake Sinclair, being one mile above the
mouth of a small river commonly called Pine River and ending
one mile and a half below the mouth of said Pine River." The
consideration stated is "the love and regard we bear for our friend
Lieutenant Patrick Sinclair and for the love and esteem the whole
of our said nation has for him, for the many charitable acts he has
done for us, our wives and children."
Deeds from the Indians, except under special license and through
certain officials, were invalid. This deed, therefore, although exe-
cuted with considerable formality, and in the presence of the
highest British officials in the vicinity, did not operate to convey
any legal title and this was recognized by Sinclair himself in 1774,
in a petition to the Government to be reimbursed for his expendi-
tures on the property. These lands marked on the east side of
Michigan the southern line of the great pine section of the lower
peninsula. During the period of his station at Detroit, Sinclair used
the fort, buildings and pinery.
In May, 1771, Sinclair applied to the Earl of Hillsborough for
the grant of a house at Detroit belonging to the crown, in lieu of his
buildings at Pine River; the matter was referred to General Gage
and nothing came of the petition. He was promoted to captain in
1773; then he was retired and returned to Lybster. No sooner
was he at home than he began his efforts to get back into the service.
Sir Charles Thompson, a friend of the king, wrote Lord Dartmouth
recommending him for appointment in Pennsylvania or New York.
On April 7, 1775, he was commissioned by King George III, "as
lieutenant-governor and superintendent of the post of Missilli-
mackinac." His seat of operations was to be Fort Mackinac, while
his post, Michilimackinac, included the territory of all the Indians
who came to that point to trade.
Anxious to arrive at his post of duty promptly, Sinclair sailed
for Baltimore, where he arrived July 26, 1775, and reached New
York August i. On August 4, the Provincial Congress of New
York, then in session, thought it unwise to permit him to go to his
post, lest he prejudice the Indians against the Colonies. He
was taken in custody and sent on parole to Long Island, where
he remained until the following March, when, upon his application
to be permitted to retire to Europe, the Continental Congress granted
his petition and he returned to England that summer.
He reached America in the fall of 1777, landing at Philadelphia,
whither he went with letters to Sir William Howe. He spent the
winter with Lord Howe and when the English fleet left for England
HISTORY OF MICHIGAX ; 155
in May, 1778, Captain Sinclair went as far as Halifax. It was
not until June, 1779, that he arrived at Quebec and was ready to
present himself and his commission to the governor and receive his
instructions. At this time Sir Frederick Haldimand was the gov-
ernor general.
Haldimand did not relish the idea of Sinclair's exercising mili-
tary as well as civil powers, and so put him oft' on various pretences
for over a month — in the meantime writing to DePeyster, the com-
mandant at MichiHmackinac, that he intended to delay Sinclair until
the ships' arrival from England in mid-summer, hoping perhaps
to receive by then some authority to reduce or negative the instruc-
tions in Lord Germaine's letter. The ships arrived, but nothing
came to favor his wishes ; he thereupon wrote to England, com-
menting upon the union of the civil and military authority in one
person, but the reply received the following year made plain that
the action of the government in this respect was fully considered
and would not be altered.
In the meantime Haldimand issued a set of instructions for Sin-
clair in which, disobeying the express terms of Lord Germaine's
letter, he authorized Sinclair to act as commandant only until a
senior officer of the garrison stationed there should arrive; and he
impressed upon him that only such senior officer had power over
the troops to be sent beyond garrison limits ; and in addition the
perquisites attached to the commander of the post were to go to
the officer.
These instructions proved distasteful to Sinclair who addressed
a spirited remonstrance to the governor. Sinclair proposed to return
to England rather than occupy a position which might be humiliat-
ing; but in the end the matter was compromised, the instructions
were modified, and it was represented to him that an early oppor-
tunity would be given to purchase a commission which would enti-
tle him to outrank anyone who would be sent to the garrison.
With these assurances he left Quebec the last of August, 1779,
for his post, and arrived at Fort Mackinac, October 4. 1770. probably
by way of the Ottawa River, four and one-half years after the
date of his commission. He had crossed the ocean three times;
and while until this date he had not been able to exercise any author-
ity under his commission, he drew his annual salary of £200 with
due punctuality. Three days after his arrival. Major DePeyster
left for Detroit.^
" "Patrick Sinclair ; Builder of Fort Mackinac" ; by W. L. Jenks, in
Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. 39. Mr. Jenks has discovered much of interest and
156 • HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Frederick Haldimand who, in 1778, succeeded Sir Guy Carleton
as governor-general of Canada, was born in Switzerland in 1718,
and therefore was sixty years old when he came to administer the
delicate and complicated affairs of that country. His training as a
soldier had been long and arduous ; he served in Sardinia, Russia
and Holland before entering the British service in 1754; and during
the Seven Years war he was wounded at Ticonderoga and partici-
pated in the capture of Montreal. After making an excellent
record as an administrator in Florida and New York, he was pro-
moted to the Canadian post where his good sense and fine abilities,
combined with much agreeableness of manner and no little social
adaptability, w-on for him a considerable place in the history of that
country. At the same time he found favor with the home govern-
ment. He will appear often during the next decade. Such were
the conditions in the Northwest when the American Revolution
began to make itself felt west of the Alleghenies.
value in regard to the career of Sinclair, and I have followed his painstaking
and accurate account.
CHAPTER X
BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTION IN THE WEST
Henry Hamilton was appointed by King George the Third,
through the favor of the Earl of Dartmouth, lieutenant-governor and
superintendent at Detroit. He reached his new station November 9,
1775, his journey having been interrupted by the siege of Montreal
then being conducted by the Americans under General Montgomery.
Hamilton disguised as a Canadian passed through Montgomery's
lines and after four days of travel in a wooden canoe, and "unpro-
vided with everything," he reached a point of safety, and thereafter
travelled in a manner more in keeping with the dignity of an officer
of the king. Even in November Detroit seemed a paradise to the
new lieutenant-governor. The harvests had been abundant ; the
woods in their autumn garb appealed to him; and no other climate
he had ever known was so agreeable. The shingled houses of the
settlers, each backed by a bounteous orchard and flanked by barns
and stables making a continuous row, smiled a welcome to the
traveller as he sailed up the river. From the clear depths of the
stream a few hours of amusement with the line would draw enough
fish to furnish several families ; and so fertile was the land, he
reported, that even the careless and very ignorant French farmers
raised great crops of wheat, corn, barley and buckwheat. The
whites numbered 1,500. The English settlers, more industrious
and more enterprising than the French, were rapidly absorbing the
traffic, were building vessels to navigate the lakes, and were stocking
the farms with cattle, horses and sheep.
The traders, he found, cheated the Indians by false weights and
measures, by debasing the silver trinkets with copper, and by other
artifices so persistently resorted to as to lead to disputes, quarrels,
and murders. On arriving at Detroit an Indian hunting party
would trade perhaps a third of their peltries for fine clothes,
ammunition, paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then a keg of brandy
would be purchased ; arms and clubs were taken away and hidden,
and the orgy would begin, all the Indians in the neighborhood being
called in. Some were assigned to stay sober to prevent the drunken
157
158 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
ones from killing one another ; yet sometimes as many as five
Indians were killed in one night. When the keg was empty, brandy
was brought by the kettleful and ladled out with large wooden
spoons : and this was kept up until the last skin had been disposed
of. Then dejected and maimed and with nothing but their ammuni-
tion and tobacco saved, they would start down the river to hunt in
the Ohio country, and begin again the same round of alternating
toil and debauchery.
The village occupied about two acres and was surrounded by
a stockade made of saplings about fifteen feet long, imbedded deeply
in the ground, and extending above its surface about twelve
feet. The streets were ten or twelve feet wide with the exception
of the principal one, Ste. Anne Street, which was about twenty feet
wide. The people attended church and pony-races on Sunday.
Constant qttarrels and law-suits were indulged in. Quebec was a
long distance away, and it took a long time to settle a quarrel
through the courts ; therefore, a simpler method of procedure gen-
erally obtained. When a dispute arose between two parties they
chose three arbitrators; the award of the arbitrators was enforced
by the citizens ; and the person who refused to abide by the de-
termination of the arbitrators, was not permitted to engage in trade,
nor was he trusted or associated with by the other citizens. This
method was employed by the English after 1760, until the estab-
lishment of courts, near the end of the British rule. The French
people got along well with the Indians, but they were usually pre-
pared for treachery.
The farms in the neighborhood of the village were all owned
and cultivated by the Canadians, most of whom owned houses
within the palisades or could remove to the village for protection
whenever the savages became warlike. Each farmer cultivated only
a few acres of land, and raised but little more than was necessary
to support himself and his family. The village was small in pro-
portion to the number of farmers, so that there was little opportunity
to sell the farm products, and there was no inducement to do good
farming.
The exportation of furs was the only business that brought an
income to the settlement from abroad. The farmers were also
hunters and trappers, and most of them bought furs from the
Indians and sold them to the traders in the post. The traders
brought from Montreal powder and lead, brandy and beads, fancy
dress goods, and ornaments to please the Indians. These were
placed on sale or exchanged for furs.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 159
The British monopolized the trade in furs, and the French
were driven either to live on their farms, or to join the Indians
in the chase. They cultivated small patches of ground during the
summer season, but they left everything to the care of the women
and younger children as soon as the hunting season began. Even
during the summer, a large portion of the farm work was done by
the women, while the men spent their time fishing with the Indians,
with whom they were on terms of intimacy.
At the outbreak of the Revolution there were few British soldiers
stationed at Detroit. There was no fort, but a citadel was located
near the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Wayne Street. This
citadel consisted of a parade ground with barracks capable of hold-
ing two or three hundred soldiers.
Detroit was the depot for the distribution of the great stores
of goods that were annually sent up for the Indians by the British
Government. There were clothing, cheap blankets of bright colors,
knives, scarlet cloth, ruffled shirts, laced hats and similar articles.
When the Indians came to the council the squaws would strip them
of their clothing in order that they might appear destitute, and
thus be able to make demands for new clothing. The drafts drawn
by the commandant for these supplies during the year ending
September, 1781, were equivalent to $714,510.
In addition probably larger quantities of goods were sent to the
merchants, and by them sold to the people and Indians. The Gov-
ernment furnished to the Indians as little rum as possible, but the
traders were willing to sell all they could buy. Rum was a necessity
to the Indians, and they would get it in any way possible.
The traders formed a "rum trust," agreeing to place all the
rum in one store, and employ clerks to dispose of it, the avails being
divided among the members of the trust. If another person brought
rum into the district they shipped liquor to the place where the
rival was established and undersold the intruder. After a time, how-
ever, dissatisfaction broke out, and the trust was dissolved.
Two justices of peace were appointed in Detroit, Philippe Dejean
and Gabriel Legrand. In 1777, a storehouse belonging to Abbott
& Finchley was plundered and burned, and a Frenchman named
Jean Coutencinau and a negress named Ann Wiley, or Nancy
Wiley, were brought before Dejean for trial charged with the crime.
After a jury trial they were acquitted on the charge of arson, but
convicted of robbery. The justice exceeded his powers even in
trying the parties for the offenses charged, btit after the convic-
tion both were sentenced to be hanged. He could get no one
160 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
to act as hangman until Hamilton promised the woman he would
pardon her if she would act as executioner for the man. Couten-
cinau was hanged, and the woman was liberated. This act and the
hanging of a man named Ellers, in 1775, aroused the citizens, and
they complained to Montreal. A grand jury there indicted both
Hamilton and Dejean for murder, and a warrant was issued for
their arrest.
Echoes from the conflict that was going on along the seaboard
reached Detroit from time to time. There were rumors that the Vir-
ginians were tampering with the savages ; but the new lieutenant-
governor expressed himself as being confident that he could
protect the whole Indian country from the inroads of the colonists.
The French generally were in sympathy with the Virginians ; some
were secretly in communication with Fort Pitt ; and moreover, the
Spanish along the Mississippi lost no opportunity to prejudice the
Indians against the English, hoping to divert the fur-trade to their
own posts.
One day in the latter part of August, 1776, Captain White Eyes,
a Delaware chief, and Moutons, an Indian educated in Virginia,
appeared at Detroit with a letter and a belt from the agent of the
Virginia Congress, soliciting the confederacy of Western Indians
to go to a conference at Pittsburgh. Hamilton cut their belts in
the presence of the assembled savages, and sent the messengers out
of the settlement. The visitors, however, had brought with them a
copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette of July 24, 1776, containing the
Declaration of Independence. So the birth of the new nation was
announced at the capital of the Northwest !
During the next two years there was border warfare in the Ohio
country; and on April 5, 1778, Charles Beaubien appeared at Detroit
with Daniel Boone and a score of other Kentucky settlers. Start-
ing from the Miamis early in February, Beaubien prevailed upon a
band of Shawanese to accompany them on a raid up the Kentucky
River, where they were so fortunate as to find Boone and twenty-
six of his men making salt at the salt-lick near their fort. The
Indians so surprised the settlers that, without the loss of a single
man, they brought the party oft'; but the cautious savages refused
to attempt the fort. Boone told Hamilton that because of the
Indians the settlers had been unable to sow grain, and by June
there would be no food in Kentucky ; nor was relief to be expected
from Congress. "Their dilemma," says Hamilton, "will probably
induce them to trust to the savages, who have shown so much
humanity to their prisoners, and come to this place before winter."
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
161
Boone, then forty-four years old, had passed his hfe in the forest,
and his bravery and knowledge of woodcraft had won for him the
respect of the Indians no less than of the pioneers. Hamilton
offered to pay for Boone's ransom, but the Indian family that had
adopted him refused to give him up. For five months he endured
captivity; but on learning that a large force was to attack Boons-
H'-^r-'
.[' i:Miw'.cL:j::i.'JuiiiLVCW£kSi:\.1
Tablet on the Federal Building, Detroit, Marking Site of
Fort Lernoult
borough he eluded his captors, and in five days travelled i6o miles,
having eaten but one meal during his entire journey. His escape
caused the Indians to give up their purpose of attacking the settle-
ment.
In June, 1778, a grand council was held at Detroit. Chippewas
from Saginaw Bay, Hurons from Sandusky, and Potawatomies
from St. Joseph ; Mohawks, Delawares, and Senecas, eager for rum
and presents ; Ottawas and Hurons from the villages across the
river, all came at the call of Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton, who by
this time had learned to dance the war-dance, to chant the war-song,
and to handle the wampum-belts. Lieut.-Gov. Edward Abbott from
162 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Vincennes also was present, having slipped away to Detroit, so that
the Indians should not find him without a supply of gifts when
they returned from their winter hunt; and there were the Indian
agents Hay and AIcKee ; and Captain Lernoult and Lieutenant Cald-
well, of the king's regiment stationed at Detroit; and eight inter-
preters, among whom was Simon Girty, lately escaped from Fort
Pitt.
Girty and McKee were now just beginning their notorious career
as partisans. For twenty-five years or more the brothers Simon,
James, and George Girty, together with Alexander McKee, played a
conspicuous part in the history of the Northwest. The Americans
knew and detested Simon Girty; but there were redeeming traits
about McKee. Major De Peyster associated with him on terms of
intimacy, but he would have no social intercourse with the Girtys.
Simon Girty came from Ireland before 1/37; he made his home
on the banks of the Susquehanna and engaged in Indian trade.
Marrying Mary Newton at Fort Duquesne, his second son, Simon,
was born in 1741, James was born two years later, and George in
1745. In 1 75 1 the elder Girty was killed in a drunken revel by an
Indian known as The Fish, who in turn was slain by John Turner,
and as a reward the latter received the hand of the widaw.^ In
1756, when the entire family were taken prisoners by the Indians
and the French under Neyon de Villiere, Turner, as the slayer of
The Fish, was put to death by torture, in the presence of his family.
After repeatedly witnessing the most revolting cruelties practised
on prisoners, the family was separated, Simon being adopted by the
Senecas, James by the Shawanese, and George by the Delawares ;
but in 1759 they were reunited at the surrender of prisoners after
the treaty of Easton. As opportunity offered, the Girty boys put
to use their understanding of Indian dialects, acting as interpreters,
traders, or hunters, their headquarters being at Pittsburgh. Simon,
finding Doctor Conolly a congenial spirit, espoused Virginia's side
of the boundary dispute, and was arrested on some charge, at the
instance of Arthur St. Clair, the leader of the Pennsylvanians.
\\"hen Lord Dunmore reached Pittsburgh he made Simon Girty one
of his scouts, and Girty it was who received from Logan the cele-
1 "History of the Girtys" ; being a concise account of the Girty Brothers,
Thomas, Simon, James and George, and of their half-brother, James Turner;
also of the part taken by them in the Lord Dunmore's war, in the Western
Border war of the Revolution and in the Indian war, 1790-1795. By Consul
Wilshire Butterfield, Cincinnati ; Robert Clarke & Co., 1890.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 163
brated message which Thomas Jefferson made popular as a speci-
men of Indian eloquence.
After the Dunmore war, Girty was a second-lieutenant in
Conolly's militia, until the outbreak of the Revolution drove out
both Dunmore and Conolly. Congress having created an Indian
department, Girty was employed as an interpreter by the agent,
George Morgan, and in that capacity probably was present at the
conference held at Fort Pitt, on July 6, 1775, when the Virginian
commandant. Captain Neville, secured the promise of Mingoes,
Delawares and Shawanese that they would remain neutral, pro-
vided their rights, both to the sovereignty and to the lands of their
country, were not invaded by either the Americans or the British.
Girty lost his place as interpreter ; but the Continental general, Ed-
ward Hand, on taking possession of Fort Pitt, early in 1777, com-
missioned him a second-lieutenant and employed him actively among
the Indians. Girty's loyalty was suspected, although his work was
efficient. In 1778 he came under the influence of .\lexander McKee,
who had been Sir William Johnson's deputy during the two years
prior to the superintendent's death in 1774. McKee was a native
of Pennsylvania, a trader of wealth and position; but possibly
because of his position as crown deputy, suspicion attached to him,
and he had been placed on parole by General Hand. Joined with
McKee was another Pennsylvania trader, Matthew Elliott, an Irish-
man by birth, who was on such friendly terms with the Shawanese
that they made him their messenger to Lord Dunmore when they
sued for peace after their defeat at Point Pleasant. On the 2Sth
of March, 1778, just as General Hand was about to send a force
to arrest him, McKee together with Elliott, Girty, and a few
others, escaped to Detroit. Their desertion from the American
cause carried consternation throughout the frontier regions, from
the Alleghany to the Mississippi. The British could not have selected
three more effective tools for their purposes of border warfare.
The council was opened with prayers; Hamilton congratulated
the assembled Indians on their success in their raids, on the number
of their prisoners, and the far greater number of scalps. They had
driven the rebels from the Indian hunting-grounds, and had forced
them to the coast, where they had fallen into the hands of the king's
troops. He announced the appointment of Haldimand, "well known
through that country as the chief warrior at New York, a brave
officer, a wise man, esteemed by all who knew him." He took from
the Indians the silver medals given to them by the French, and
hung about their necks those furnished by the English; and in the
164 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
name of the king he put the axe into the hands of his Indian chil-
dren, "in order to drive the rebels from their land, while his ships-
of-war and armies cleared them from the sea."
The Indians made answer after their own fashion that they
would consider the matters in their councils. Forced to be satisfied
with this answer, Hamilton covered the council-fire, and invited his
guests to partake of one of those riotous feasts the cost of which
wrung the heart of the economical Haldimand.
The names of the tribes summoned by Hamilton to the council
at Detroit well indicate the fact that a great change had come over
the Indian world during the century and three-quarters since Cham-
plain espoused the losing cause of the Hurons against the Iroquois.
The Iroquois federation known to the white men (for there were
several others previously) was formed about 1570, some thirty
years subsequent to the beginning of the Huron confederation.
Originally the Iroquois consisted of the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida,
Seneca, Onondaga and (after 1722) Tuscarora tribes. Having
obtained firearms from the Dutch, they extended their conquests
from their own territory in Central New York to the Ottawa on the
north, and to the Tennessee on the southwest, and from the Kenne-
bec in Maine to the Illinois River and Lake Michigan. Even the
regions of the Mississippi were not altogether safe from their in-
cursions ; and yet at no time did their warriors number more than
5,000. On the north they were stopped by the Chippewas and on
the south by the Cherokees and the Catawbas. During the Seven
Years war the Iroquois fought on the side of the English, although
several small settlements of Mohawks and Onondagas established
by the French on the St. Lawrence, remained friendly to the latter
nation.
At the beginning of the Revolution the league of the Iroquois
as a body voted to take no part in the struggle, but allowed each
tribe to decide for itself which cause it would espouse. The Oneida
and about half of the Tuscarora favored the Americans. The
Mohawks and Cayugas received as their reward for their loyalty
to the British lands on the Grand River in Ontario, where they
now reside. Other Iroquois tribes occupy reservations in New
York, while the Senecas are settled near Green Bay. It is probable
that at no time before the Revolution did the whole number of
Iroquois exceed 16,000 persons, their greatest population having
been attained about 1685 ; whereas they now number over sixteen
thousand one hundred, of whom 10,500 are settled in Canada and
5,300 in New York.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 165
The Chippewa (so called from the puckered-up seam on their
moccasins) ranged along both shores of Lakes Huron and Superior
and westward to the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota. Originally
they came from the North, and when they reached Michilimackinac
in their migrations the Ottawas and the Potawatomies separated
themselves from the main body. Nicolet probably, and after him
Raymbaut and Jogues certainly, found the Chippewa domiciled at
Sault Ste. Marie and at war with the Sioux. During the early por-
tion of the eighteenth century the Chippewa (then generally known
as Ojibwa) drove the Iroquois from Ontario and possessed the
land. Henry R. Schoolcraft, who married a Chippewa maiden, re-
garded the warriors of this tribe second only to the Foxes in phy-
sique. They were bi-ave and determined in war and friendly in times
of peace. At the time of the Pontiac war they numbered about
twenty-five thousand ; but during the Revolution their numbers had
diminished to about fifteen thousand. They took part in all the
border wars, including the War of 1812; but since their treaty with
the United States in 1815 they have remained peaceful. In 1836
the Chippewas sold their lands in the southern portion of Michigan
and removed to Franklin County, Kansas : but there are still more
than three thousand in this state, while the whole number is upwards
of thirty-two thousand, about equally divided between the United
States and British America.
The Potawatomi tribe (people of the place of the fire), together
with the Sauks and the Nation of the Fork, occupied the lower
peninsula of Michigan until they were driven to the Green Bay
region by the Neuter Nation, allies of the Iroquois, while the last
named confederacy was winning its ascendancy. The Jesuit fathers
encountered them at Sault Ste. Marie (1642), at Chequamagon Point
(1667) and at Green Bay (1670). About the time Detroit was
founded (1701) they were living on the present sites of Milwaukee,
Chicago and St. Joseph; at the time of the Pontiac war (1763)
they were spreading down to the Wabash and eastward over South-
ern Michigan. At the beginning of the nineteenth century they
encompassed the head of Lake Michigan from Milwaukee around
to the Grand River in Michigan; they had fifty villages, among the
largest being on the St. Joseph and the Huron rivers. They were
faithful allies first of the French and then of the English; they
participated in the Treaty of Greenville in 1796, but 1812 found
them again on the British side, where they staid until their treaty
with the United States in 181 5. At the outbreak of the Revolution
the Potawatomi numbered about 2,250; there are now about 2,700,
166 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
most of whom live in Oklahoma, fewer than one hundred being
domiciled in Calhoun County, while about 175 dwell with the
Chippewa and Ottawa on Walpole Island in St. Clair River.
The Sauks were the earliest inhabitants of the lower peninsula
of Michigan, and their name is preserved in the word Saginaw (the
countr>' of the Sauk). Originally they were of "The People of the
Fire." AUouez found them the most savage people he had met ;
he called them vagabonds of the forest, and said they would kill
a Frenchman if they caught him alone, because they objected to
his beard. It is probable that the Sauks, the Potawatomi and
the Fork tribe all were driven from Michigan by the Neuter Na-
tion, and were kept in the Green Bay region by the Iroquois, who
took up the quarrels of their allies. In 1671 the Sauk were drawn
into warfare with the Sioux and were nearly annihilated. In 1733
Sieur de \'illiers the younger and M. de Repentigny were killed
by the Sauks, and their deaths were avenged by the elder de \'illiers,
at the present site of Appleton, Wisconsin, in a battle wliich cost
the French fifteen killed and wounded, while their allies, the Otta-
wa and Chippewa, lost a like number. During the Revolution the
Sauk frequented St. Louis, where they were received with presents
by the Spanish, who readily exchanged their own flags and medals
for the English ones surrendered by the Indians. Today there are
about one thousand Sauk and Foxes, or less than half their number
at the time of the Revolution.
The Ottawas were known to the Indian world as "The Traders,"
as their name signifies. They dealt in furs, tobacco, herbs, corn-
meal and sunflower-oil. The French found them along the shores
of Georgian Bay and on the Manitoulin islands. The Iroquois drove
them up against the Sioux and the Sioux hurled them back to the
Manitoulins, whence they departed to join the Hurons at Mar-
quette's Mission at St. Ignace. When this mission was broken up
by the founding of Cadillac's town the Hurons came to the Detroit
River, while a portion of the Ottawas settled at Saginaw, where
some of the Potawatomi were dwelling. They stayed only three
or four years, and then made an abiding place at Waganaski
(L'Arbre Croche) near the foot of Lake Michigan, and gradually
spread south to the St. Joseph River. Another portion dwelt with
the Hurons (now called Wyandots) in the territory from Detroit
south to Beaver Creek, in Pennsylvania. Pontiac was of the Otta-
wa, and they were in all the border wars, including the War of
1812. That portion of the tribe which refused to submit to the
United States found lodgment on Walpole Island with the Chippe-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 167
wa and Potavvatomi. The last United States treaty made with the
Ottawa in Michigan was signed at Detroit on July 31, 1855. There
are now about fifty-six hundred Ottawas and Chippewas in Michi-
gan.
The Hurons (so called by the French on account of their bristling
hair) were found by Cartier on the St. Lawrence, but in Champlain's
time they were dwelling south of Georgian Bay. Their dispersion
by the Iroquois and their wanderings have already been noted.
After the burning of the mission at St. Ignace in 1702, some of
the Hurons removed to Sandusky, others to Detroit, and still others
to Sandwich, Ontario. In 1745 their war chief, Orontony, or
Nicholas, at Sandusky, conspired to destroy Detroit and the other
upper posts, and enlisted in his conspiracy Ottawa, Potawatomi,
Fox, Sioux, Sauk, Shawnee, Miami and other tribes. The plot
was disclosed by a Huron woman to Longueuil, the French com-
mandant at Detroit, who at once notified the other posts and so
nipped the conspiracy in the bud. Orontony died in 1748 and the
allies fell apart. About this time the Hurons came to be known
as Wyandots, and notwithstanding their small numbers they became
the leading tribe in the Ohio \'alley. They were active partisans
of the British throughout the border wars. After the peace of
181 5 they settled in Ohio and Michigan, but four years later they
sold a large portion of their Michigan lands, retaining only a small
area on the Huron River, where they remained until their removal
to Wyandotte County, Kansas, in 1842. During the Revolution
the Hurons numbered about fifteen hundred; and there are now
in Canada and the United States about one-half that number. 2
The more astute among the Indians at Hamilton's council must
have understood the nature of the man with whom they had to deal.
He was not naturally a leader ; but he was a dispenser of presents,
ammunition and rum, and as such was entitled to consideration if
not respect.
The returning Indians disappeared before an express arrived
from the Illinois country, saying that a party of rebels, in number
about three hundred, having taken prisoner M. de Rocheblave, the
commander at Fort Gage, had laid him in irons and had exacted
from the inhabitants an oath of allegiance to the Congress. Also
the express announced that a detachment had been sent to Cahokia ;
and that "one Gibault, a French priest, had his horse ready saddled
= "Handbook of American Indians," edited by Frederick Webb Hodge;
Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 30.
Miniature in Hoffard CoUefe Library
Henry Hamilton, Lt. Governor of Detroit
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 169
to go to St. Vincennes to receive the submission of the inhabitants
in the name of the rebels."
Governor Hamilton's warlike spirit took fire. He had been
forced to yield to the councils of his superiors in opposition to his
plan to reduce Fort Pitt; but to have a band of rebels invade his
own territory, lay one of his commandants in irons and confine him
in a pig-pen was too much for his British blood.
The conclusion of the Dunmore War, in 1774, again opened
Kentucky to settlers, who begun to flock to that region and to take
up lands purchased from the Cherokees by Col. Richard Hen-
derson. ^ The Henderson Company set up courts, gave laws, organ-
ized a militia — and began a proprietary government known as the
Colony of Transylvania. Among the younger men who had been
drawn into the war was George Rogers Clark, then about twenty-
two years old. He was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, two
years before Braddock's defeat, and from his earliest youth had
been known by Thomas Jefferson. When the Henderson Company
showed its power by attempting to raise rentals, the people elected
Clark and Gabriel John Jones members of the Assembly of \'ir-
ginia. That body had adjourned before the new representatives
completed their long journey through the mountains ; but Clark had
a message for the new governor, Patrick Henry, who was bent on
extending the authority of Virginia throughout the lands included
within her chartered boundaries.
To the governor, whom Clark found on a sick-bed, the young
adventurer expressed the earnest hope that the Virginians of the
tide-water would not leave their brothers beyond the mountains
to be cut off by prowling savages led by renegade whites. The
governor was quite ready to espouse the cause of the Kentuckians,
and the two men secured from the reluctant council a grant of
powder for the protection of the frontiers. When the assembly
convened, Clark and Jones were admitted, and before the session
ended they succeeded in having created the County of Kentucky,
thus putting an end to the Colony of Transylvania.
On his return, Clark saw what was apparent to all his fellows ;
that as long as the British held Detroit, Kaskaskia, Vincennes and
the connecting forts, so long would England be able to keep up
an effective warfare along the rear of the Colonies. Therefore, he
sent Moore and Dunn into the Illinois country as spies. Armed
^ Documentary History of Dunmore's War, 1774, compiled from the
Draper manuscript in tlie library of tlie Wisconsin Historical Society. Edited
by R. G. Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg ; Madison, 1905.
I
170 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
with their report he again presented himself before Governor Henry,
and on December lo, 1777, he laid before him a plan of conquest
that should balance in the south the great northern victory of Sara-
toga, over which the whole country was rejoicing. Governor Henry
called in George Wythe, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson,
and with their influential aid Clark obtained two sets of orders —
one public, ordering him to defend Kentucky; the other secret,
ordering an attack on the British post of Kaskaskia. Clothed with
this authority, with £1,200 in depreciated paper, and an order on the
commandant at Fort Pitt for ammunition and boats, Clark set
forth.
On his way down the Ohio he learned of the alliance between
France and the Colonies; and this information served him in good
stead when he came to deal with the French towns on the Mississippi.
From John Duff and a party of hunters whom he met near the
mouth of the Tennessee, Clark learned that M. Rocheblave had no
apprehensions of an attack against the strong British posts of the
Illinois, located in the midst of powerful Indian tribes hostile to the
Americans. The audacity of Clark's plan secured its success.
Approaching Kaskaskia on the evening of July 4, 1778, Clark sent
a portion of his command across the river to the town, while he
himself, at the head of a handful of troops, walked quietly in at
the open postern gate of Fort Gage. He completely terrified the
inhabitants, and then, having led them to expect another expulsion
like that of the Acadians, he assured them that Americans "dis-
dained to make war on helpless innocence" ; and that it was simply
to protect their own wives and children that they had "penetrated
to this stronghold of British and Indian barbarity." When the
people of Kaskaskia learned that neither their lives nor their prop-
erty were at stake they offered to go with Major Bowman to inform
their relatives and friends at Cahokia of the good tidings. The
unex:pected coming of the "Big Knives" brought forth huzzas for
freedom and for the Americans ; and thus, without the shedding of
a drop of blood, the Illinois country was conquered for Virginia.
Vincennes now remained. Clark's force was not sufficient to
hold the towns he had taken, and at any moment the Indians, led
by the English, might cut him oft' from his base. At this juncture.
Father Gibault, a priest whose parish extended from Lake Superior
to the Ohio, offered to undertake to convert the people of the Wa-
bash "coast"' to the American cause. His proposition was accepted
by Clark and was faithfully carried out by the priest. Electing a
commandant, the people of O. Post (as \'incennes was commonly
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 171
called) ran up over the fort the flag of Virginia. To the surprised
Indians they explained that their old father the King of France was
come to life again, and wished them to make peace with the Ameri-
cans. Clark formed a French militia company at Kaskaskia; placed
Captain \\'illiams in command of the fort; continued Captain Bow-
man at Cahokia; and sent Col. William Linn to build at the Falls of
the Ohio the fort that has become the City of Louisville. Then he
announced his conquest to Virginia and accompanied his message
with the captive Rocheblave. In October, 1778, Mrginia acknowl-
edged her responsibility by establishing the County of Illinois,
embracing all the chartered limits of the Colony of Virginia west
of the Ohio River. Col. John Todd was made lieutenant-colonel of
the county, and American civil government was established. The
news of these conquests quickly spread through the Northwest.
Let us turn now to Mackinac to see how that post had fared
during the early years of the Revolution. Major Arent Schuyler De
Peyster of the king's regiment of foot set out from Quebec in the
May of 1774, with a commission not only to take command of the
post, but also to manage affairs pertaining to the Lake Indians,
comprising sixteen or more tribes on both sides of the Mississippi,
from the Ohio even to Hudson Bay. DePeyster was born in New
York Citv on June 27, 1736; his baptism was attended by his two
uncles. Philip \'an Cortlandt and Peter Schuyler, and by his aunt,
Eve Bayard; and he traced his lineage back to that Johannes De
Peyster who came to New Amsterdam in 1633. As a second son,
the youth was destined for the army, and was sent to England
for his preliminary training. Entering the service in the year of
Braddock's defeat, in 1768 he came with his regiment to Canada.
Of commanding stature and soldier-like appearance, he possessed
an affability of manner that endeared him to his fellow-officers,
and also gave him an vmusual control over the savages.
Mrs. DePeyster accompanied her husband to JNIackinac ; she
was a daughter of Prevost Blair, of Dumfries, Scotland ; and their
voyage forms the theme of one of his poems, by courtesy so called.
The trip up the St. Lawrence was in an open bateau, they crossed
the Ontario in the ship-of-war Ontario, and at Fort Erie they
embarked on the sloop-of-war Dunmore, which carried them to
their destination. For six years this couple were the first English-
speaking people to exemplify at a northern post the blessings of a
Christian home.
On June 27, 1776, the Michilimackinac Indians received through
Father Matavit, the priest of the Two Mountains, strings of wam-
172 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
pum from St. Lawrence River tribes, who announced that Montreal
was in possession of the Americans and asked aid to prevent the
Indians from being driven out of Canada. Major DePeyster, how-
ever, told them to look after their hunting until they heard from
Sir Guy Carleton. Next a messenger came from the Six Nations,
calling the Lake Indians to a council at Connesedaga ; and then
DePeyster found traders bearing passes signed by General Wor-
cester and Benjamin Franklin, stipulating that they should furnish
no supplies to Michilimackinac. Then he bestirred himself ; and on
July 4, 1776, he placed Charles de Langlade in charge of a force of
savages and Canadian volunteers, with orders "to report to the
commander of the king's troops in the neighborhood of Montreal ;
to annoy the rebels wherever he might meet diem, and in every-
thing to conduct himself with his usual prudence and moderation."
Montreal having been recovered by the British, and the Indians not
being prepared to spend the winter, Carleton gave them presents,
and sent them home with orders to return in the spring if wanted.
Langlade remained on the St. Lawrence during the winter, and
returned north in February with an order to bring back 200 chosen
Indians for the Burgoyne expedition. He had no difficulty in finding
Indians ready for the fray ; his difficulty was "to prevent the whole
country from going down." Presents, medals, gorgets, and espe-
cially the rum furnished by the British were a foretaste of the
plunder that would be theirs after victory.
As a leader of Indians, Charles de Langlade deserves attention.
His great-grandfather, Pierre Mouet was the landlord of Maras and
was known as Mouet de Maras. He was born of a family located
in Castel Sarraisin, in Basse Guyenne, France, where Cadillac died.
In 1668 he settled at Three Rivers, then an influential trading-post.
The eldest son, Pierre, emulated the father; he was an ensign in
the army ; and also he had seven children. The sixth child, Augustin,
born in 1703, was the first to bear the name of Sieur de Langlade.
He made headquarters at Michilimackinac, where he married the
widow of Daniel Villeneuve, the sister of the principal chief of the
Ottawas, a warrior known as The Fork. In May, 1729, Charles
Michel de Langlade was born and baptized. From Father Du
Jaunay, Langlade learned to read and write; he was familiar with
Indian manners and customs from earliest youth. In 1734, when
the French sought the aid of the Upper Lake savages in their war
against the English traders north of the Ohio, The Fork refused
to take up the hatchet unless he might carry with him his grandson,
Charles, then five vears old. The bov was to bring luck to the
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 173
expedition. The father sent his son with the injunction never to
dishonor a brave name. The expedition was only too successful.
What share of the success was due to the youthful warrior cannot
now be estimated, but the Indians came to look upon young Langlade
as one on whom a great Manitou smiled ; and from that day his
influence over the savages exceeded that of any other white man.
Moreover, he was careful never to do anything to diminish his
prestige.
Langlade distinguished himself at Piqua and also at Braddock's
defeat, where he led the Lake Indians in the ambush and surprise
that routed the British regulars. In 1757 Langlade joined Mont-
calm at the capture of Fort George, where his services were recog-
nized by Vaudreuil, who made him second officer at Michilimackinac.
In June, 1759, Langlade led his band to Quebec where he sug-
gested a plan for cutting off Wolfe. M. de Levis was not quick
enough to act upon the Canadian's suggestions; had it been other-
wise the battle on the Plains of Abraham might not have been
fought, although the end would have been the same. Then even
fortune favored the English. As it was Langlade fought through
the decisive battle at Quebec, where two of his brothers were killed ;
then, mortified by what he called the cowardly surrender of Quebec,
he once more set his face northward. In April, 1760, having been
commissioned as a lieutenant he fought with the Chevalier de Levis
for Montreal and French supremacy in America. On September
9th, Langlade received from Vaudreuil the announcement of the
surrender of Montreal, coupled with the hope of a meeting in
France. Langlade's interests, however, kept him in America. Capt.
George Etherington, who commanded at Michilimackinac in 1761,
administered to both Augustin and Charles de Langlade the oath
of allegiance to Great Britain. Langlade was a broad-minded,
enterprising man. He had fought his fight and had been whipped.
He was ready to acknowledge the victor. On the other hand the
English wanted the support of the Langlades. Charles, the Indian,
was made superintendent for Green Bay, and also commander of
the militia — a trust he never dishonored. The massacre at Michili-
mackinac, in 1763, might have been averted had his warnings been
heeded, but when they were not he did what he could to save those
who were not butchered in the first onslaught.
When DePeyster was called upon for a band of Lake Indians to
accompany the Burgoyne expedition, he ordered an ox for the
barbecue, opened the rum-casks, and served out ammunition to the
bloody Sioux from the regions west of Lake Superior, the Chip-
174 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
pewas of Sault Ste. ]\Iarie, the Sauks and Foxes of the Ilhnois, the
Winiiebagoes and Menominees of Wisconsin, and the Ottawas of
lower Michigan. In the spring of 17/6, the iiotilla started from
Michilimackinac with Langlade in the lead. It was a brave array
that made its way to Georgian Bay, up the French River, across
Lake Nipissing, down the Ottawa to the St. Lawrence, and thence
to the present town of Whitehall. There the Lake troop joined
the St. Lawrence Indians under the command of Langlade's friend,
the Chevalier St. Luc la Corne, who had won fame in Abercrombie's
disastrous fight at Ticonderoga, and had survived the battles about
Quebec. He was destined later to render the Canadians important
service as a legislative councillor. Burgoyne, ignominiously beaten
at Saratoga, October 14, 1777, charged his failure to the lack of
support given by the Canadians and Indians. He was not altogether
wrong. The Canadians had no heart in the struggle against the
Colonists. They preferred to stay at home and let England fight
her battles. And when Burgoyne told the Indians that he would
allow neither scalps nor plunder, he took away from the savages
all incentive to fight. Le Due summed up the matter in the sentence :
"General Burgoyne is a brave man ; but he is as heavy as a German."
In 1778 when DePeyster learned that Hamilton was preparing
an expedition to recapture \^incennes, he summoned the Indians to
a council at I'Arbre Croche. But the red men sulked in 'their wig-
wams at Milwaukee, in spite of Pierre Oueret's belts and De \'ier-
ville's entreaties. Then Charles de Langlade appeared, and going
from village to village, at each town he called the Indians to a dog-
feast. He would tear the quivering heart from the animal, affix it'
to a stake set at the doorway of each lodge, and then passing around
the lodge at every door would taste the dog heart, meanwhile chant-
ing the war-song. The Indians sprang to the dance, and next day
took their way to I'Arbre Croche and the British council.
While these matters were transpiring at the head of the lakes
Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton at Detroit was preparing his expedi-
tion to recover the Illinois country. Hamilton has been criticized for
acting without authority in undertaking an important expedition
without the express orders from Quebec, as well as for barbarity
in organizing savage warfare. Yet he undertook to carry out the
general desires of those in power in London and all he did met
with their approval. Perhaps if he had been an abler man he might
have been more successful; but really able British commanders were
not frequent in the Revolution. Like all administrators far from the
central authority, Hamilton suflered because of ill-balanced appro-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
175
priations. The salaries were insufficient to command officials of
ability; and at the same time rank extravagance prevailed in the
matter of furnishing Indian supplies. Moreover there was a division
of authority that led to inefficiency. The naval control of the
Upper Lakes was committed to Colonel Bolton at Niagara, and the
troops at Detroit were under the command of the senior military
officer; so that Hamilton, although bred in the army, was forced to
ask rather than command the support of the naval and military
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forces. If Colonel Lernoult had not been a man of much good sense
things would have been much worse than they were. Sir Guy
Carleton nominally controlled the region from Quebec to the Ohio ;
but Lord George Germain issued directly from Whitehall orders to
Lieut.-Col. Barry St. Leger who dealt with the Six Nations ; and
also to Hamilton, who called the Indian councils at Detroit and sent
out parties of the savages against the frontiers of Virginia and
Pennsylvania. Hamilton issued a proclamation inviting "loyal
subjects" to join the king's forces, and offered pay and land bounties.
When this proclamation was found upon the dead bodies of parti-
sans, naturally the Americans were embittered against him.
It was the October of 1778 when Hamilton assembled regulars,
176 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
volunteers and Indians on the common at Detroit. The Articles of
War were read and the oath of allegiance was renewed; then the
venerable priest gave his blessing to the Catholics present, con-
ditioned on their strict adherence to their oath. "The subsequent
behavior of these people," says Hamilton, "has occasioned my
recalling this circumstance."
Before the flotilla had reached Lake Erie the wind, suddenly
shifting to the north, brought a flurry of snow and fringed the
shores with ice. In a hard rain-storm they made the traverse of
Lake Erie to the Miami (now the Maumee), and landed on an
oozy beach, where they spent the night without tent or fire. The
force consisted of 114 whites and about sixty Indians. They made
their way to the headwaters of the Wabash, down which stream
they floated amid the running ice. Seventy-one days out from
Detroit, as they were approaching \'incennes, Hamilton sent Major
Jehu Hay in advance, and to him, on December 17th, Captain Helm
surrendered the fort, with its two iron three-poimders and a small
stock of ammunition. The gate had no lock and the squalid bar-
racks were without a well of water. Captain Helm had no force to
support him and he could do nothing but surrender. Clark had
never seen Fort Vincennes.
Hamilton now considered whether he should complete his work
by recapturing Kaskaskia and Cahokia ; but he wisely decided to let
well enough alone. So he repaired the fort, called the fickle French
to renew their allegiance and sent of? war-parties to waylay and
murder the Virginians on the Ohio. Hamilton's force had been
increased by accessions of Indians to 500 persons, and he had not
supplies for a more extended campaign. On the contrary he was
forced to send some of his Indians to hunt. Also the spring freshets
were at hand, and soon \incennes would be cut off from the Illi-
nois posts by miles of overflowed lands. These flooded lands were
the defense of both the Illinois and of \'incennes. Unfortunately
for Hamilton he had to deal with men who made obstacles their
weapons.
George Rogers Clark we already know something about. For a
helper he had Francis Vigo, a Sardinian who had early enlisted as a
private in a Spanish regiment, and was sent to New Orleans. Pro-
curing an honorable discharge, he engaged in the fur-trade on the
Arkansas, and after St. Louis was founded he removed to that
post and became a prosperous trader on the Missouri. Vigo went to
Clark at Kaskaskia and offered of his means and influence to
advance the cause of liberty as represented by the Americans. Clark
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 177
gladly accepted the offer and sent Vigo to Vincennes with supplies
for Captain Helm. Accompanied by a single servant Vigo set out
with a pack of goods, but on reaching the River Embarrass he was
seized by Indians, his goods were stolen, and as a prisoner he was
taken before Hamilton. As a Spanish non-combatant Vigo was not
subject to capture. Hamilton having some suspicions of his errand,
exacted a promise that he would do nothing injurious to British
interests "on his way to St. Louis." This Vigo kept to the letter of
his promise. He went directly to St. Louis and thence to Kaskaskia
where he laid before Clark the information that led to his cam-
paign against Hamilton.
■ Vigo's report confirmed Clark in his belief that either he must
capture Hamilton or else Hamilton would take him. He decided upon
one of those desperate chances that in war almost invariably suc-
ceed. First equipping a flatboat with supplies, he sent it around
to the Wabash, with forty-six men under the command of his cousin,
Lieut. John Rogers. Also he gathered a force of French militia
to eke out his own scanty numbers. Altogether he had 170 men
when he set out February 5th, to capture a British command in a
rebuilt fort armed with cannon, supplied for a siege, and with a
garrison equal at least to half the number of the besiegers. Strik-
ing north to reach the St. Louis trail, Clark's men made their slow
way, with the rain pelting their faces and soaking their clothes, and
the mud often knee-deep. At night Clark cheered their drooping
spirits by feasts of buffal6-meat and other game shot during the day,
and by songs and war-dances after the Indian fashion. Twelve
days out they came to the Embarrass River. The country was under
water, excepting a small hillock where they passed the night without
food or fire.
Next day they heard Hamilton's morning gun ; men were sent
to find boats ; and after spending a day and a night in the water they
returned to report that no dry land could be discovered. For two
days they were without food of any kind, but on the third day they
killed a deer ; two more days followed without provisions ; but
Clark's good-nature and tact kept the French from turning back and
the Virginians from being discouraged. The morning and evening
guns at Fort Sackville, as Hamilton called the fort, came over the
waters ; and still the rains descended and the floods increased. On
the 2 1 St of February things had come to a serious pass. Realizing
that all depended on his own courage and fortitude, he immediately
took a handful of powder and smeared his face after the manner
of the Indians. It was the signal for the onslaught, and when he
178 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
plunged into the flood the others followed. He struck up a back-
woods song and that too was taken up ; and before the song was
suftened to die out all reached Sugar Camp and a half acre of dry
land. Next morning at sunrise they again dashed into the waters ;
but this time instead of a song there was a stern command to Major
Bowman to shoot the first who turned back. The water was waist-
high ; and when Clark lost his footing he ordered canoes to ply
back and forth, supporting the men till all had come safely to land.
Then they captured a canoeful of squaws with a quarter of a buflfalo,
corn, tallow and kettles. While the strong ones walked their weaker
brothers up and down the shore in order to restore circulation,
broth was made and the hungry were fed. Then the sun came out
to dry the soaked clothing, and put heart into the men. In sight
stood Fort Sackville.
Then Clark captured some duck-hunters, from whom he learned
that Hamilton had no thought of attack, and that the French and
the Indians in the town were well disposed towards the Virginians.
Clark sent to the people of Vincennes a message saying that he pro-
posed to take the town that night ; he warned friendly ones to keep
in their houses, and advised the adherents of the British to seek the
fort, to join "the hair-buyer general" and to fight like men. The
French took the hint and stayed at home. No news of Clark's
approach was given to Hamilton, and the first patter of bullets
against the palisades was thought to be the usual friendly salute
from a party of savages returning from the hunt. Having stolen up
to good positions behind houses, ditches, and the banks of the river,
Clark's men kept up an intermittent fire throughout the night of the
23d, wounding six of the garrison. The cannon balls from the fort
flew over the heads of the Virginians, doing no damage. When
daylight came, Clark's riflemen picked off the gunners as they
served the cannon. At 9 in the morning Clark sent a peremptory
demand for the surrender of the fort. "If I am obliged to storm,"
says Clark, "you may depend on such treatment as is justly due a
murderer." These strong words expressed mildly the feelings of
the Virginians toward those who had employed Indians to murder
settlers. Virginians might massacre savages for revenge but they
never employed Indians against the British ; and Clark had refused
the offer of the Tobacco's Son and his warriors to take part in the
assault of Fort Sackville.
Hamilton found his men ready "to stick by him as the shirt to
his back" ; therefore he replied that he was "not disposed to be awed
into any action unworthy of a British subject"; but in the afternoon
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 179
the two commanders arranged a meeting at the log-church near the
fort. Hamilton was willing to retire with his garrison to Pensacola ;
Clark insisted on unconditional surrender, saying that his men were
eager to avenge the murder of their relatives and friends, and that
nothing less than immediate surrender would satisfy them. As for
himself, Clark said that he knew that the greater part of the Indian
partisans from Detroit were in the fort, and he wanted an excuse
either to put them to death or otherwise treat them as he saw fit.
The choice, therefore, was between massacre and surrender at dis-
cretion. While the parley was in progress, Clark's men had cap-
tured some fifteen or sixteen Indians. He made them sing their
death-song and had them tomahawked one by one, by way of warn-
ing. On consultation with his officers, Clark was led to modify
his demands ; and late that night articles of capitulation were signed.
At lo o'clock on the morning of February 25th, the garrison
marched out with fixed bayonets. The colors not having been
hoisted that morning, Hamilton was spared the himiiliation of haul-
ing them down. Hamilton made the best of a bad situation. The
French at Vincennes were favorable to the Americans because
France was in alliance with the Colonies ; and there was some pros-
pect that the French rule might be reestablished. Hamilton could
rely only on the few regulars whom he had brought with him. The
fickle Indians were always on the side of the winners.
Having taken possession of the fort, Clark ordered a salute of
thirteen guns in honor of the Colonies. Then Captain Helm brought
in Justice Dejean, captured with a party from Detroit, and an
abundance of stores and clothing. On March 8th, the prisoners,
twenty-seven in number, began their journey to Williamsburg, a
distance of 1,200 miles. Hamilton, used to all the comforts of
life, found the crowded boat, the lack of shelter from the rain, the
long day at the oars, the scanty allowance of bear's flesh and
Indian-meal, and the long march to the James River, a source of
bitter misery. On June 15th, the captives were met at Chesterfield
with an order from Governor Thomas Jefiferson to take Hamilton in
irons to Williamsburg. Arriving there, hungry, thirsty, in wet
clothes, the British lieutenant-governor from Detroit stood at the
door of the executive palace while the mob gathered to escort him
to jail. Justice Dejean also was in fetters, and the two were thrust
into a narrow cell already occupied by five drunken criminals. On
August 31st, Major Hay and the other prisoners arrived, and the
officers were made to share Hamilton's "dungeon."
Gratified, but not elated, by his success at Vincennes, Clark now
180 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
sat down to count the cost of continuing his expedition to Detroit,
where, as he learned, there were but eighty men in the garrison, and
the people were well disposed towards the Americans. At this
juncture the flat-boat Willing appeared, coming up the Wabash
with the reinforcements and supplies from Kaskaskia. On board
was Morris, a messenger from Governor Jeiiferson, who sent
assurance that more troops would be forthcoming from Virginia.
Clark appointed a rendezvous at Vincennes in July, preparatory to
a dash for Detroit. In anticipation of this new venture he first
terrorized the Detroit militia, then he gave them boats, arms and
provisions. He told them that he was anxious to restore them to
the families from whom they had been torn, and afterwards he sent
them home to spread the news of the kindly disposition of the \'irgin-
ians. Next he gave the Indians to understand that if they were dis-
posed to keep the peace, they would fare the better for so doing ; but
if they did not behave themselves they would suffer for their mi.s-
conduct. This method of procedure caused Clark to be feared from
New Orleans to Lake Superior. Lieutenant Brashead was made
commandant of the fort (renamed Fort Patrick Henry) and Cap-
tain Helm was placed in charge of civil affairs. Then Clark em-
barked on the Willing and started for Kaskaskia.
The conquest of the Northwest by George Rogers Clark, acting
under the authority of the Colony of Virginia, became the basis
of the American claims to the Great Lakes as a national boundary
when the Treaty of 1783 came to be negotiated. The question nat-
urally arises, first, as to the permanent character of Clark's occu-
pation ; and, secondly, as to why he did not press forward to cap-
ture Detroit. It should be understood that Clark was dependent on
the resources as well as the troops that Virginia could furnish,
and Virginia had much to do in supplying her quota for the Con-
tinental army. Moreover, Governor Jefferson was forced to rely
upon General Washington, and to establish some kind of coopera-
tion with the Continental forces. Again, the question of Hamilton
being held as a prisoner by Virginia, and so not subject to exchange
for British captives, came up as a matter of dift'erence between the
two Virginians. What shape these questions took is best known
from the correspondence.
On January 29, 1780, Governor Jefferson wrote from Williams-
burg to Gen. George Rogers Clark : "We shall use all our endeavours
to furnish your men with necessary clothing, but long experience
renders it proper to warn you that our supplies will be precarious.
You cannot therefore be too attentive to the providing them in your
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 181
own quarter as far as skins will enable you to do it. In short, I must
confide in you to take such care of the men under you as an eco-
nomical householder would of his own family, doing everything
within himself as far as he can, and calling for as few supplies as
possible. The less you depend for supplies from this quarter the
less will you be disappointed by those impediments which distances
and a precarious foreign commerce throw in the way. For these
reasons it will be eligible to withdraw as many of your men as you
can from the west side of the Ohio, leaving only so many as may
be necessary for keeping the Illinois settlements in spirits and for
their real defence. We must faithfully attend to their protection,
but we must accommodate our measures for doing this to our
means. Perhaps this idea may render doubtful the expediency of
employing your men in building a fort at Kaskaskia. Such fort
might perhaps be necessary for the settlers to withdraw into in
time of danger. But might it not also render a surprise the more
dangerous by giving the enemy a means of holding a settlement
which otherwise they could only distress by a sudden visit and be
obliged to abandon. Of this you must be ultimately the judge.
"We approve very much of a mild conduct toward the inhabit-
ants of the French villages. It would be well to be introducing our
laws to their knowledge and to impress them strongly with the ad-
vantage of a free government. The training their militia and getting
it into subordination to proper officers should be particularly at-
tended to. We wish them to consider us as brothers and to
participate with us the benefits of our rights and laws. We would
have you cultivate peace and cordial friendship with the several
tribes of Indians (the Shawanese excepted). Endeavour that those
who are in friendship with us live in peace also with one another.
Against those who are our enemies let loose the friendly tribes.
The Kikapous should be encouraged against the hostile tribes of
Chickasaws and Choctaws and the others against the Shawanese.
With the latter be cautious of the terms of peace you admit. An
evacuation of their country and removal utterly out of interference
with us would be the most satisfactory.
"Ammunition should be furnished gratis to those warriors who
go actually on exhibitions against the hostile tribes. As to the
English, notwithstanding their base example we wish not to ex-
pose them to the inhumanity of a savage enemy. Let this reproach
remain on them. But for ourselves we would not have our national
character tarnished with such a practice. If indeed they strike the
Indians these will have a natural right to punish the agressors and
182
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
with none to hinder them. It will then be no act of ours. But to
invite them to a participation of the war is what we would avoid by
all possible means.
"If the English would admit them to trade and by that means get
those wants supplied which we cannot supply I should think it
might, provided they require from them no terms of departing from
their neutrality. If they will not permit this I think the Indians
might be urged to break off all correspondence with them, to forbid
Arext Schuyler DePeyster
their emmisaries from coming among them and to send them to you
if they disregarded the prohibition. It would be well to communi-
cate honestly to them our present want of those articles necessary
for them, and our inability to get them, to encourage them to strug-
gle with the difficulties as we do till peace, when they may be
confidently assured we will spare nothing to put their trade on a
comfortable and just footing. In the meantime we must endeavour
to furnish them with ammunition to provide skins to clothe them-
selves. With a disposition to do them every friendly office and
to gain their love we would yet wish to avoid their visits. Except
those who come with Captain Lintol we have found them very hard
to please, expensive and troublesome and they are moreover ex-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 183
posed to danger in passing our western countries. It will be well
therefore (especially during the war) to waive their visits in as
inoffensive a way as possible.
"In a letter to you on the 1st instant I supposed you would in
the ensuing summer engage either in the Shawanese war or against
Detroit, leaving the choice of these and all other objects to yourself.
I must also 'refer to you whether it will be best to build the fort at
the mouth of Ohio before you begin your campaign or after you
shall have ended it Perhaps indeed the delays of obtaining leave
from the Cherokees or of making a purchase from them may
oblige you to postpone it till the fall."
That Governor Jefferson had the project of the capture of De-
troit firmly fixed in his mind is shown by a letter to General Wash-
ington, dated February lo, 1780, in which he says: "It is possible
that you may have heard in the course of the past summer an expe-
dition was meditated by Colo : Clarke against Detroit, that he had
proceeded so far as to rendezvous a considerable body of Indians,
I believe four or five thousand,^ at St. Vincennes : but being dis-
appointed in the number of whites he expected and not choosing to
rely principally on the Indians was obliged to decline it. We have
a tolerable prospect of reenforcing him this Spring to the number
which he thinks sufficient for the enterprise. We have informed
him of this and left him to decide between this object and that of
giving vigorous chastisement to those tribes of Indians whose eter-
nal hostilities have proved them incapable of living on friendly
terms with us. It is our opinion his inclination will lead him
to determine on the former.
"The reason I am laying before your Excellency this matter is
that it has been intimated to me that Colo : Broadhead ^ is meditat-
ing a similar expedition. I wished therefore to make you ac-
quainted with what we had in contemplation. The enterprising
& energetic genius of Clarke is not altogether unknown to you.
You also know (what I am a stranger to) the abilities of Broadhead
& the particular force with which you will be able to arm him for
such an expedition. We wish the most hopeful means should be
used for removing so uneasy a thorn from our side. As yourself
alone are acquainted with all the circumstances necessary for well
informed decision, I am to ask the favour of your Excellency
^ This number is over estimated.
^ Col. Daniel Brodhead, of the Eighth Pennsylvania, commandant at Fort
Pitt, who was succeeded in 1781 by Col. John Gibson.
184 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
if you think Broadhead's undertaking it most likely to produce
success, that you will be so kind as to intimate to us to divert Clarke
to the other object which is also important to this State. It will
of course have wait with you in forming your determination, that
our prospect of strengthening Clarke's hands sufficiently is not ab-
solutely certain. It may be necessary, perhaps, to inform you that
these two officers cannot act together, which excluded the hopes
of ensuring success by a joint expedition."
Hamilton complained bitterly of being confined in a "dungeon";
and Washington endeavored to have him exchanged ; but Governor
Jefferson was obdurate. The case against Hamilton is summed up
in Jefferson's letter from Richmond of September 26, 1780. "I
was honored yesterday with your favor of the 5th instant on the
subject of prisoners and particularly Lt. Gov'r Hamilton. You are
not unapprised of the influence of this officer with the Indians, his
activity & embittered zeal against us. You also perhaps know how
precarious is our tenure of the Illinois country and how critical is
the situation of the new counties on the Ohio. These circumstances
determined us to detain Gov'r Hamilton & Maj'r Hay within our
power when we delivered up the other prisoners. On a later repre-
sentation from the people of Kentucky, by a person sent here from
that country, & expressions of what they had reason to apprehend
from these two prisoners in the event of their liberation, we as-
sured them they would not be parted with though we were giving
up our other prisoners. Lt. Colo : Dubusson, an aid to Baron de
Kalb lately came here on his parole with an offer from Lt. Rawdon,
to exchange him for Hamilton. Colo : Towles is now here with a
like proposition for himself, from Gen'l Phillips, very strongly urged
by the General. These and other overtures do not lessen our opinion
of the importance of retaining him ; and they have been, and will be,
uniformly rejected. Should the settlement, indeed, of a cartel be-
come impracticable, without the consent of the States to submit
their separate prisoners to its obligation, we will give up these two
prisoners, as we would anything rather than be an obstacle to a
general good. But no other circumstances would I believe extract
them from us. These two gentlemen with a Lt. Colo : Elligood,
are the only separate prisoners we have retained, & the last only
on his own request and not because we set any store by him. There
is, indeed, a Lt. Gov'r Rocheblave of Kaskaskia, who has broken
his parole and gone to N. York, whom we must shortly trouble your
Excellency to demand for us as soon as we can forward to you the
proper documents. Since the 40 prisoners sent to Winchester, as
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 185
mentioned in my letter of the 9th ult"o, about 150 more have been
sent thither, some of them taken by us at sea, others sent on by
Gen'l Gates.
"The exposed & weak state of our western settlements and the
danger to which they are subject from the Xorthern Indians acting
under the influence of the British Post at Detroit render it necessary
for us to keep from five to eight hundred men on duty for their
defence. This is a great and perpetual expense. Could that post
be reduced and retained it would cover all the States to the South
East of it. We have long meditated the attempt under the direction
of Colo : Clarke, but the expense would be so great that whenever
we have wished to take it up, the circumstance has obliged us to
decline it. Two ditterent estimates make it amount to two millions
of pounds, present money. We could furnish the men, provisions
and every necessary except powder had we the money or could the
demand from us be so far supplied from other quarters as to leave
it in our power to apply such a sum to that purpose, and when once
done it would save annual expenditures to a great amount. When
I speak of furnishing the men I mean they should be militia, such
being the popularity of Colo : Clarke & the confidence of the Western
people in him that he could raise the requisite number at any time.
\\'e therefore beg leave to refer this matter to yourself to determine
whether such an enterprise would not be for the general good, &
if you think it would to authorize it at the general expence: This
is become the more reasonable, if, as I understand, the ratification
of the confederation has been rested on our cession of a part of our
western claim, a cession which (speaking my private opinion) I
verily believe will be agreed to if the quantity demanded is not un-
reasonably great. Should this proposition be approved of it should
immediately be made known to us as the season is now coming on
at which some of the preparations must be made. The time of exe-
cution I think should be at the time of the breaking up of the ice
in the Wabash & before the lakes open. The interval I am told is
considerable."
Hamilton remained a prisoner for nineteen months, at the end
of which time Governor Jefferson relented, as appears from his
letter of October 25, 1780, to Washington, in which he says: "I
take the liberty of enclosing to you letters from Governor Hamilton
for N. York. On some representations received of Colo: Towles
that an indulgence to Govenior Hamilton and his companions to go
to New York on parole would produce the happiest effect on the
situation of our officers in long Island we have given him and
186 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Maj'r Hay, and some of the same party at Winchester, leave to go
there on parole. The two former go by water, the latter by land."
By the end of 1780, matters on the frontier seemed to demand
that the expedition against Detroit be undertaken. Reporting the
intentions of Virginia, Jefferson again wrote to Washington in De-
cember, 1780: "I had the honor of writing to your Excellency on
the subject of an expedition contemplated by this State against the
British post at Detroit and of receiving your answer of Oct : lOth.
Since the date of my letter the face of things has so far changed
as to leave it no longer optional in us to attempt or decline the expe-
dition, but compels us to decide in the affirmative and to begin
our preparations immediately. The army the enemy at present
have in the south, the reenforcements still expected there, and their
determination to direct their future exertions to that quarter, are
not unknown to you. The regular force proposed on our part to
counteract those exertions is such, either from the real or sup-
posed inability of this State, as by no means to allow a hope that
it may be ineffectual. It is therefore to be expected that the scene
of war will be either within otir country or very early advanced to
it, and that our principal dependence is to be the militia, for which
reason it becomes incumbent to keep as great a proportion of our
people as possible, free to act in that quarter.
"In the meantime a combination is forming in the westward
which, if not diverted, will call thither a principal and most valuable
part of our militia. From intelligence received we have reason to
expect that a confederacy of British & Indians to the amount of
2,000 men is formed the purpose of spreading destruction and dismay
through the whole extent of our frontier in the ensuing spring.
Should this take place we shall certainly lose in the South the aids
of militia beyond the blue ridge besides the inhabitants who must
fall a sacrifice in the course of the savage irraptions. There seems
to be but one method of preventing this, which is to give the western
enemy employment in their own country. The regular force Colo :
Clarke already has, with a proper draught from the militia beyond
the Allegany & that of three or four of our most northern countries,
will be adequate to the reduction of fort Detroit in the opinion of
Colo: Clarke, and he assigns the most probable reasons for that
opinion. We have therefore determined to undertake & commit it to
his direction. \\'hether the expence of the enterprise shall be at
continental or state expence we will leave to be decided hereafter by
Congress, in whose justice we can confide as to the determination.
In the meantime we only ask the loan of such necessaries as, being
HISTORY OF :\IICHIGAN 187
already at Fort Pitt, will save time and an immense expence of
transportation. These are: 4 field pieces, 6 pounders; 3,000 balls
suited to them ; one mortar ; 3,000 shells suited to it ; 2 ht'z ; Grape
shot; necessary implements and furniture for the above; 1,000
spades; 200 pick axes; i traveling forge; some boats, ready made,
should we not have enough prepared in time ; some Ship carpenter's
tools.
"These articles shall either be identically or specifically returned;
should we prove successful it is not improbable they may be where
Congress would choose to keep them. I am therefore to solicit your
Excellency's order to the commandant at Fort Pitt for the above
articles which shall not be called for until everything is in readiness,
after which there can be no danger of their being wanted for the post
at which they are: Indeed there are few of the articles essential for
the defence of the post. I hope your Excellency will think yourself
justified in lending us this aid without awaiting the eft'ect of an ap-
plication elsewhere as such a delay would render the undertaking
abortive by postponing it to the breaking up of the ice in the lake.
Independent of the favourable effects which a successful enterprise
against Detroit must produce to the United States in general by
keeping in c[uiet the frontier of the northern ones, and leaving our
western militia at liberty to aid those of the South, we think of like
friendly Office performed by us to the States whenever desired, &
almost to the absolute exhausture of our own magazines, gave well
founded hopes that we may be accomodated on this occasion. The
supplies of military Stores which have been furnished by us to Fort
Pitt itself, to the Northern army, and most of all to the Southern,
are not altogether unknown to you. I am the more urgent for an im-
mediate order because Colo: Clarke awaits here your Excellency's
answer by the express, tho his presence in the Western country to
make preparations for the expedition is so very necessary if you
enable him to undertake it. To the above I must add a request to
you to send for us to Pittsburg persons proper to work the mortars
&c. as Colo : Clarke has none such, nor is there one in this State
They shall be in the pay of this State from the time they leave you.
Any money necessary for their journey shall be repaid at Pittsburg
without fail by the 1st of March."
^\'hile it was a disappointment to both Clark and Jefferson that
the expedition against Detroit was never undertaken, the results
were the same as they would have been had the whole Northwest
been occupied. What arms failed to do, diplomacy accomplished,
and at no expense.
CHAPTER XI
BORDER WARFARE DURING THEf REVOLUTJON
The fortunes of war certainly favored the Northwest in the
matter of British leaders and generals. Especially fortunate for
the American cause was the death of Sir William Johnson, which
occurred on July ii, 1774, almost a year before the outbreak of
the Revolution. Johnson exercised an influence over the Indians
that was based less on his official position than on his personal
character. He was born in Smithtown, County Meath, Ireland, in
171 5; his father, a country gentleman, educated him for a com-
mercial career; and in 1738 he came to the Mohawk \'alley to
manage lands of his uncle, Admiral Sir Peter Warren. He settled
about twenty-five miles west of the present City of Schenectady,
opened trade with the Indians, and by virtue of his instinctive
knowledge of and sympathy with Indian nature, he obtained a
large influence over the savages. His name was potent every-
where throughout the Indian world. With the Six Nations,
among whom he dwelt, his influence had as few bounds as are con-
sistent with Indian nature; and the more distant tribes respected
and feared him. He was fifty-nine years old at the time of his death,
and already his manner of life had sapped his vigor; but had he
lived the allotted span of life the prestige of his name and the
persuasiveness of his forest diplomacy would have made him the
dictator of the Northwest. George Rogers Clark's game of pussy-
wants-a-corner could not have succeeded if there had been any-
where in that region a British leader at once capable and vigorous.
As it was, the British cause sufl:"ered defeat everywhere, excepting
in the French settlements on the St. Lawrence, where inertia rather
than patriotism kept the Canadians loyal.
Sir William Johnson was a sachem of the Alohawk tribe and a
life member of the governor's council. He had defeated the French
and Indians at the Battle of Lake George in 1755, receiving for his
success the thanks of Parliament and the title of baronet. From
1756 until his death he was "the sole superintendent of the Six Na-
188
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 189
tions and other northern Indians." In 1859 he was in command of
the force that captured Niagara; and in 1763 he kept the Iroquois
from engaging in the Pontiac Conspiracy. Indeed he then saw that
troubles with the Indians were brewing, but was not able to convince
his superiors of the fact. When he died he was succeeded in the
baronetcy by his son Sir John Johnson, who had been knighted in
1765; while his nephew, Guy Johnson, succeeded liim as superin-
tendent of Indian affairs. The son became the leader of provincial
forces at Oriskany, at Cherry Valley and in the Mohawk Valley ;
and the nephew fought on the British side during the Revolution;
but neither of them was masterful enough to ' become organizers
and leaders.
Frederick Haldimand, who ruled the Northwest after the recall
of Sir Guy Carleton, had attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in
the Swiss Guards. In 1756 he began his service in America as the
British commandant at Philadelphia ; next he went to Albany as
colonel of the Royal Americans; in 1758 he was in the repulse of
Abercrombie by Montcalm at Fort Edward ; and during the next
year he repelled the attack of St. Luc la Corne and his Indians. In
1760, when the French surrendered ]Montreal, Haldimand there took
command; in 1767 he was made a brigadier-general and ordered to
Pensacola, and having put that post in condition, he received the
reward of a transfer to New York.^ There the tea-troubles found
him ; and when he was importuned to call out the troops to suppress
rioting he refused to use the militia without a civil magistrate at
their head. The people of New York, however, broke into his house,
demolished his furniture, and looted his stables.
Then Haldimand was made a major-general and sent to the West
Indies, whence he was called to succeed Carleton at Quebec.
Reaching his new post on June 30, 1778, he carried on negotiations
with Ethan Allen for a reunion of Vermont with the crown of
England ; and he was active in seating tories on crown-lands in
Canada. It was fortunate for the United States and for the people
of the frontiers that Haldimand contented himself with administer-
ing his government; a more ambitious officer, or an Englishman of
vigor and initiative, might have driven the Americans from the
1 Pensacola consisted of a stockade fort, a few straggling houses and a
governor's house. Haldimand widened the streets so as to give a free circu-
lation of air, and made other sanitary improvements, by which he reduced
sickness and banished death during the ensuing summer, though the mercury
stood at 114 degrees. — Pittman's "Present State of English Settlements on
the Mississippi."
190 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Wabash and the lUinois, and thus forced the British boundary back
to the Ohio.- He was quite satisfied to let the border war drag on,
without urging his subordinates to activity, his great concern being
that the expenses of feeding and clothing the Indians were enor-
mously out of proportion to the results attained.
Haldimand despaired of being able to prevent the western In-
dians from deserting the British cause, so active were the American
emissaries, and such was the effect on the savages of Clark's cap-
ture of Hamilton ; and he foresaw that Detroit must share the fate
of Vincennes, in case Clark were to advance with a considerable
force.
Capt. Richard Beringer Lernoult was left in charge of both civil
and military aftairs at Detroit when Hamilton started on his expedi-
tion to the Wabash. The captain acquitted himself so acceptably
that on being ordered to Niagara after two years of service at De-
troit, he was promoted to a majority. From the interpreter Isadora
Chene, Lernoult learned of Hamilton's disaster a month after Vin-
cennes was captured. "This most unlucky shake," as the captain
called it, "with the approach of so large a party of Virginians ad-
vancing towards St. Duskie, has greatly damped the spirits of the
Indians." Detroit needed more than a palisade, for it was expected
the Americans would bring cannon with them, and in that case the
town would be at their mercy. Therefore Captain Lernoult set
about building a fort on the rise of ground back of the town, the
site now occupied by the Federal Building. Captain Bird, an as-
sistant engineer, traced a square on the hill and added half-bastions
— not a satisfactory piece of work, he himself admitted;^ but the
best that could be done in the hurry of the occasion. From Novem-
ber, 1778, to the following February, Bird pressed on the work;
but when spring came he turned over to Lieutenant Du Vernett the
task of completing Fort Lernoult and joined himself to a band of
Indians going on the warpath. Possibly he had been stirred by
Clark's message that he was glad to hear the British were making
new works at Detroit, "as it saves the Americans some expenses in
building." He collected at Upper Sandusky a force of about two
° See Brymner's Introduction to the Canadian Archives, 1S87, and Smith's
"Bouquet E.xpedition" for details of Haldimand's life. There is an excellent
hfe of Haldimand by Jean N. Mcllwaith in the Canadian Statesmen Series.
His correspondence and diary have been published in the Michigan Pioneer
and Historical Collections, Vol. X.
3 Bird to Brigadier-General Powell, August 13, 1782. — Haldimand Papers
in Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. X.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 191
hundred savages, chiefly Shawnese, but when news came that the
Kentuckians * had attacked the Shawnese towns, burned houses,
carried off horses, and wounded five or six Indians " the expedition
came to an end. This action on the part of the Shawnese, the bravest
and most revengeful of all the Western Indians, was characteristic ;
a rumor running through the forest, or the report of an ambush
planned by the whites, threw them into such consternation that
months of feasting and idleness were necessary to work them up to
the fighting pitch.
During the spring of 1778 a small force of regulars from Fort
Pitt had built Fort Mcintosh on the site now occupied by the city
of Beaver, Pennsylvania ; and that autumn Gen. Lachlin Mcintosh
had advanced to the banks of the Upper Muskingum, called the
Tuscarawas, where he had built, near the present site of Bolivar,
Fort Laurens, named for the President of Congress. In the spring
the Indians stole the fort horses, took the bells from the harness and
jangled them along a wood-path. Of the sixteen men who were
lured out to bring in the horses, fourteen were killed. That evening
847 savages in war-paint and feathers marched across the prairie
exultingly celebrating their victory. Then they disappeared ; and
Colonel Gibson, thinking the occasion opportune for sending the
invalids to Fort Pitt, started a dozen sick men under an escort of
fifteen soldiers. Of this party only four escaped an ambush laid
within two miles of the fort. A few days later, as General Mcin-
tosh was coming up with a relief of 700 men, the pack-horses took
fright at the welcoming salute from the fort and carried the pro-
visions off into the woods, and they were not recovered. That
autumn the garrison retreated and Fort Laurens disappeared from
the American map."
Bird led a party of 150 whites and 1,000 Indians to Kentucky,
where he captured two small stockades on the Licking, and then
retreated to Detroit. The Kentuckians, enraged at so defiant an
onset hurried up the Ohio and struck across to Pickaway, where they
battered the palisades with a three-pounder and scattered the
* Bird to Lernoult, June 9, 1779. — Haldimand Papers.
5 This was the raid of John Bowman, Logan. Harrod, and others, against
Chilhcothe. In the end the Kentuckians were defeated. See Roosevelt's
"Winning of the West," Vol. II, p. 97.
" Doddridge's "Settlement and Indian Wars of Virginia and Pennsylvania"
(Albany, 1867), p. 244 et seq.
192 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Indians, driving them into the forests." Then quiet came for a
season.
We turn now to MichiHmackinac, where the arrival of Patrick
Sinclair has already been reported. Before reaching his station,
Sinclair had landed on the turtle-shaped island, fabled abode of
fairies and manitous. There, it seemed to Sinclair, was a natural
site for fort and trading-post. With him to see was to decide, and
to decide was to act. Without waiting for the governor's sanction,
he built a blockhouse to command Haldimand Bay, as he named the
harbor ; and Quebec furnished carpenters and supplies. All through
the winter of 1779-80 work was pushed on wharf and stockade;
four acres were cleared for the fort, and preparations were made
for burning limestone. Haldimand expressed his desire that the
post continue to bear the name of Michilimackinac, and that the fort
be styled Fort Mackinac. "I have never known any advantage re-
sult," he says, "from changing the names of places long inhabited
by the same people." *
Before Captain Sinclair had been a month in his command he
heard of Father Gibault, who had been at Michilimackinac on a mis-
sion, Sinclair says, from General Carleton and the Bishop of
Queoec , cut against whom, even though he was "an individual of the
Sacred and respectable Clergy." the captain proposed to direct the
Indians. He was particularly offended that Gibault styled himself
vicar-general of the Illinois, and he sought to "blast any remains of
reputation which the wretch may have been able to preserve among
scoundrels almost as worthless as himself." He sought to send a
band of Indians down the Mississippi to act against the Spanish
settlements, in conjunction with General Campbell's proposed attack
on New Orleans and the lower towns. Nor did he forget the post of
St. Joseph. That "nest of tares he proposed to sweep clean" for
the reception of the American general — a mixture of metaphors
more Irish than Scotch. ^
In October, 1765, St. Ange de Bellerive surrendered Fort Char-
'' Theodore Roosevelt, in Vol. II of his "Winning of the West," gives a
graphic account of this inroad, basing his narrative on the Durrett, Bradford
and McAffee manuscripts.
* The Sinclair-Haldimand correspondence is given in Vols. IX and X of
the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections.
^ From 1768 to 1775 Father Gibault, as vicar-general of the Illinois coun-
try, extended his ministrations to MichiHmackinac; his Jesuit predecessor,
Father M. L. Lefranc. having been the last settled priest at the post. From
1761 till 1S30 no priest was stationed there. See list of priests in Kelton's
"Annals of Mackinac Island." p. 45.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 193
tres and withdrew to the territory yielded by France to Spain by the
secret treaty of November 3, 1762. He was virtually at the head of
an independent government composed of himself as commandant,
M. Lefebre as judge, and Joseph Labusciere as notary, all of whom
had come from the Illinois country. The French on the English side
of the Mississippi were so well satisfied with this St. Louis govern-
ment that when Captain Sterling died, the people at Fort Chartres
appealed to St. Ange to settle their disputes until a new commandant
should arrive. Thus it happened that a French-Canadian ruled over
both English and Spanish territory. So well did the old man fulfill
his trust that in 1767, when the Spanish captain, Rios, and twenty-
five men came to St. Louis, they built their fort, St. Charles, fourteen
miles up the river. It was not until May 20, 1770, that St. Ange
delivered possession of Upper Louisiana to Captain Piernas, and
soon afterwards Gibault celebrated at St. Louis the first baptism
under the Spanish flag. Under the rule of Spanish commanders,
the French town of St. Louis continued steadily to grow, notwith-
standing the death, on June 20, 1778, of its founder, Pierre Laclede
Liguest. He was succeeded in business by his chief clerk, Auguste
Choteau, who became the great trader of the Missouri. 1°
Haldimand had small faith in Sinclair's expedition. Notwith-
standing, in May, 1780, a band of 750 traders, servants, and Indians
started down the Mississippi to attack the Spanish settlements and
the Illinois posts. At Prairie du Chien, they captured boats loaded
with provisions ; and from the lead mines they brought away seven-
teen Spanish and American prisoners. Twenty Canadian volun-
teers from Michilimackinac and a few traders attacked the defence-
less town of St. Louis, but as soon as the Spaniards began to defend
themselves, the Sauks and Foxes under M. Calve fell back, thereby
making the Indians suspicious of treachery; and M. Ducharme and
other traders and leadminers followed. Sinclair reports that in the
attray sixty-eight on the Spanish side were killed; but only seven
persons are actually known to have been killed at St. Louis. The
afl:air gets its entire importance because reverberations of this raid,
rolling through the diplomatic caverns of Europe, made a great noise
and had important effects, when the Treaty of 1783 came to be ne-
gotiated. Sinclair took back with him seven prisoners to work on his
new fort on Mackinac Island ; but his superior never gave him more
credit than was his just due. In fact, Haldimand was too much of
lop. L. Billon's "Annals of St. Louis under the French and Spanish
Dominations," St. Louis, 1886.
Vol. 1— 1 3
194 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
a trained soldier to have respect for civilians who by favor had
reached positions of power to which their previous mihtary rank
and training did not entitle them.
The part Spain played in Michigan affairs is now to be related.
From the days of La Salle and the pious Hennepin, in 1679, there
had been a trading-post called St. Joseph, on the river of that
name, near the present city of Niles. Just where the first post was
located is not altogether certain. La Salle used the route of the
St. Joseph River on his way to and from the Mississippi ; and grad-
ually a small settlement was made there. The probable spot has
recently been marked by a boulder suitably inscribed. Being on the
line of travel to the Mississippi, St. Joseph was too important to be
abandoned altogether. After the peace of 1763, England placed a
small garrison at the post, but after its capture during the Pontiac
war it was not re-established, although it continued to be occupied
as a trading-post among the Pottawatomies, the leading trader, Louis
Chevallier, being the King's representative in the district.ii In
October, 1777, Thomas Brady, Clark's commandant at Cahokia,
made raid on the place and seized some merchandise ; but on his re-
treat he and his party were captured. In 1780 St. Joseph contained
eight houses and seven shanties, and the entire population con-
sisted of forty-five French persons and four Pawnee slaves. 1-
'When Spain declared war against England in 1779, she seized
the English posts of Natchez, Baton Rouge, and Mobile ; and these
stations together with St. Louis, gave her control of the Mississippi
Valley. If Spain could estabhsh herself in the Northwest, she would
then be in a position to secure the Lake country, or at least to have
something to trade with England for Gibraltar, a strategic point in
her own territory she had always wanted. In January, 1781, Don
Francisco Cruzat ' ^ the Spanish commander and lieutenant-governor
of the western parts and districts of Illinois, sent Don Eugenio
Pourre, Don Carlos Tayon, and the interpreter Don Luis Cheval-
lier,!* ^yith a force of Indians to make a winter journey of 400 miles
to capture deserted St. Joseph. The intrepid Spaniards as they toiled
northward gathered Indian adherents. On their return they re-
ported that they made prisoners of the few English found at the post.
11 Petition of Chevallier, October 9, 1780. — Haldimand Papers.
12 Census of St. Joseph, in the letter of C. Anise, dated St. Joseph, June 30,
1780. — Haldimand Papers.
13 Edward G. Mason, in the Magazine of American History, for May, 1886.
i* In June, 1780, a detachment of Canadians and Indians removed the
white people from St. Joseph to Michilimackinac.
HISTORY OF :kIICHIGAN
195
There were no English and probably no French, save perhaps a few
trappers. "Don Eugenio Purre took possession, in the name of the
king, of that place and its dependencies, and of the river of the
Illinois; in consequence whereof," says the Spanish report,^^ "the
standard of his Majesty was there displayed during the whole time.
He took the English flag and delivered it on his arrival at St. Louis
to Don Francisco Cruzat, the commandant of that post." The
General Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester)
report of this expedition appeared in the Madrid Gazette of ilarch
12, 1782, at a time to disturb the discussions of France, Spain, Eng-
land and America as to the question of boundaries. It served as a
basis of Spain's demand that the line be drawn so as to give her
the territory now included within the states of Mississippi, Alabama,
a part of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, a large part of Ohio, and all
of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The American com-
missioners contended for, and ultimately obtained, the Mississippi
as our western boundary ; but this despatch had much to do with the
1^ Wharton's Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United
States, Vol. V, p. 363.
196 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
combination between France and Spain to obtain the Northwest for
the latter nation.
In October, 1779, De Peyster relieved Lernoult at Detroit. De
Peyster in his first report to Haldimand was able to announce the
surprise and capture of Colonel Rogers' party, on their way from the
falls of the Ohio to Fort Pitt, by the Girtys and Elliott with their
Shawnese band — "a stroke that must greatly disconcert the rebels
at Pittsburg."!® -j-q Captain McKee,i" at the Shawnese towns, De
Peyster wrote begging the discovery and return of a woman named
Peggy West and her young daughter Nancy, both of whom had been
taken a year before near Fort Pitt, when the father was killed, and
the mother and two daughters were separated. "If sir, it be possible
to find the mother and the other sister," writes the commandant, "I
will not spare expense ; please therefore to employ some active
people to go in search of them, assuring the Indians of a good price,
and my grateful acknowledgement." One of the girls had been
brought to Detroit, where she had found a friend and protector in
Mrs. DePeyster. The motherly Scotchwoman had been touched by
the child's ill plight, and was moved to find her mother and sister.
The plan of campaign for 1780 provided for a Detroit force to
clear the valley of the Miami to the Ohio, while Sinclair's Upper
Lake Indians were "amusing Mr. Clark at the falls." M. Chevallier,
who had returned to St. Joseph, reported that the Pottawatomies
were ready to take the warpath. At this juncture there spread from
St. Lotiis through the Indian country the report that "Ireland had
revolted ; Jamaica had been captured by Count D'Estaing ; New York
was blockaded by the French and Americans; the 'Prince of Mon-
facon' was in the St. Lawrence for the siege of Quebec ; Natchez,
Mobile, and Pensacola had been taken by M. Galvez, governor of
New Orleans ; and the United States had sent Colonel Clark to es-
tablish a stone fort at the entrance of the Ohio River and another at
Cahokia." ^^ All this the Pottawatomies heard on their way to Vin-
1* DePeyster to Haldimand, November i, 1779.
1" McKee was called captain, but he had no rank. He had been in the
Indian service for twenty-two years, and Lord Dunmore offered him a com-
mission in a provincial battalion to be raised near Pittsburgh; but the com-
missions were intercepted by the Americans. — De Peyster to Haldimand,
March 10, 17S0.
^s Mr. Papin, trader at St. Louis, to Mr. Reilhe, his comrade at Michili-
mackinac, March 23, 1780. In this letter "the United States" is first mentioned
in Northwestern correspondence.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 197
cennes, and thereupon the greater number of them turned back ; ^^
and those who did go on found that but twenty-three Virginians
occupied the post. The Delawares and Shawnese, however, daily
sent into Detroit scalps and prisoners. They had a great field to act
upon; for a thousand families, in order to shun the oppression of
Congress, report said, had gone to Kentucky to settle.
In September, 1781, McKee in company with a detachment of
Butler's Rangers and Brant's Mingo band, made a descent into Ken-
tucky ; but when the Indians learned that Clark was unlikely to dis-
turb their towns that year, they refused to advance to the falls of the
OhiOj^i^ and contented themselves with petty warfare. McKee's
helper Elliott told him that the jMoravian Indians were secretly
sending intelligence to Fort Pitt and endeavoring to bring the Ameri-
cans down upon the British. Therefore, he fell upon these peace-
loving folk and forced them to find new homes at Upper Sandusky.
Six of their teachers went with them, the principal one of whom
appeared to McKee to be "a Jesuitical old man, and, if I am not mis-
taken, employed by the enemy, though he denies it." -^ McKee
thought that the Moravian Indians would not be friends to the Eng-
lish so long as their white teachers remained with them.-"
DePeyster examined the Moravian teachers at Detroit. Captain
Pipe, a Delaware, not only spoke a good word for the prisoners, but
also deposited fourteen scalps as a token of his sincerity, calling
attention to the fresh meat (prisoners) he had sent to prepare his
way. DePeyster closely questioned the teachers, who denied having
given any information. -^ The Moravians were not strictly truthful
in their professions of innocence. On March 14, 1778, their leader,
Zeisberger, had sent to Colonel Morgan at Fort Pitt a message from
Captain White Eyes (the same who had announced at Detroit the
independence of the United States) giving the Americans informa-
tion that the Wyandots were on the warpath. He also enclosed cop-
ies of Hamilton's proclamations — the one inviting loyal subjects of
1=' Chevallier to , April 30, 1780. DePeyster to Haldimand. May 17.
17S0.
-0 "Haldimand Papers," Captain Thompson to DePeyster. September 26,
17S1.
-1 "Haldimand Papers." McKee to DePeyster, September 26, 1781.
~- Haldimand was deeply chagrined over the failure of this expedition,
for he had hoped to destroy Clark's activity. He bitterly reproaches the
Indians, though he admits that they acted as was their custom; and he laments
the useless expense of clothing and feeding such thankless allies. — Haldimand
to , November i, 1781.
23 "Haldimand Papers," minutes of Council of November 9, 1781.
198 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Great Britain to repair to Detroit, and the other promising safe
escort to such as might desire to "change the hardships experienced
under their present masters for security and freedom under their
lawful sovereign.'' The proclamations were accompanied by a mani-
festo signed by eight refugees who, with their families, had sought
shelter at Detroit. White Eyes reported that he had just returned
from that post, whither Colonel Morgan had sent him, and that
nothing was to be apprehended from that quarter. 'T observed,"
says this shrewd Indian, "that the governor wants to restore peace
by making war, but I don't see that he is strong enough to do that."
Unquestionably the Moravians did all they dared to do in warning
the Americans ; they were settled in war's pathway, and they were
made to suffer from both sides.^-" Had they accepted the invitation
of Colonel Brodhead, who, in 1781, urged them to return to Fort
Pitt, two frontier tragedies would have been spared.
The followers of John Huss, driven from Bohemia and Aloravia,
early in the eighteenth century, had found a friend in the pious Count
von Zinzendorf, the young son of a Saxon minister of state. --' On
his estates the Moravian brotherhood was organized; and in 1741
Zinzendorf, having been banished from Saxony, came to America
and founded the ^Moravian Church at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Successful far beyond other missions, the Moravian churches pushed
into the wilderness ; and in 1768 they founded in the Tuscarawas and
Muskingum valleys Schonbrunn (the shining spring), Lichtenau (the
pasture of light), Salem (peace), and Gnadenhutten (the tents of
grace), surrounding their huts and rude chapels with smiling fields
of com. Being opposed to war, these Christian Indians were objects
of suspicion by both the English and the Americans.
Part of this story David Zeisberger told to DePeyster. The lit-
tle old missionary, his face seamed by the cares of frontier life, but
still smiling and cheerful by reason of inward content, stood before
his accuser and made answer for himself and his companions,
Sensemann and Edwards. The defiant Heckewelder pleaded his own
cause. The missionaries made a favorable impression not only on
DePeyster, but also on the townspeople generally. Although he
could not speak their language, Father "Peter Simple, the priest,
offered them the hospitalities of the place ; McKee and Elliott paid
them a visit ; Protestant merchants brought children to be baptized,
and some sought them for the marriage ceremony, a formality often
-"' The originals of this correspondence are in the State Department MSS.
-^ Moore's "Northwest Under Three Flags,'' p. 264.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 199
of necessity postponed until just such an opportunity should occur to
legalize an arrangement already entered into. Returning to San-
dusky they spent a bitter winter with their little flock ; but in March,
1782, the teachers and their families were ordered to Detroit, and
were established on Chippewa lands along the banks of the Clinton
River, near the southwest corner of the present city of Mount
Clemens. There they founded another Gnadenhutten. Supported
by provisions from the King's stores, the little band of nineteen per-
sons was increased to half a hundred, all dwelling in well-built
houses. With the end of the Revolution and the death of the Chip-
pewa chief who had ottered them hospitality, the Moravian converts
were driven from their retreat by the heathen nations ; and on April
20, 1786, they gathered for the last time before taking to the boats
for the Cuyahoga, whence, they returned to the banks of the Thames,
not far from the spot where Tecumseh met his fate in the War of
l8l2.2«
Scarcely had the Moravians reached their Michigan home than
they learned of the terrible massacre of their brothers on the Muskin-
gum.-' Starvation having threatened the Sandusky settlement, a
band of the Moravian exiles returned to the towns of Salem and
Gnadenhutten to gather the corn that had been left in the fields
during the winter. In March, 1782, a band of eighty or ninety
Americans under Col. David Williamson surrounded the unsuspect-
ing corn-gatherers, captured them, voted to put them to death, and in
cold blood massacred ninety-six young men, old men, women and
children. In reporting the massacre of the Moravian Indians, De
Peyster would not pretend to say how it would operate when the
Indians had overcome the consternation this unparalleled cruelty
had thrown them in ; "they daily bring me provisions and beg of me
to observe they give aid to their enemies, who acknowledge to have
received kind treatment ; and I am bold to say that, except in cases
where prisoners have been too weak to march, few people have suf-
-^ Capt. Henry A. Ford, in "Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections,"
Vol. X, p. 107. Zeisberger died at Goshen, in the Tuscarawas Valley, in 1801,
at the age of eighty-eight. Heckewelder died at Bethlehem, in 1823, at the
age of eighty. Of all the colony at Gnadenhutten, Richard Connor remained
behind. Born in Ireland, he came to Maryland, married a white girl who
had been a Shawanese prisoner; in 1774 the two had gone to the Moravian
towns in search of their captive son, and there they became attached to these
peaceful people and went with them to the Clinton, or Huron, as the river was
then called. The family has continued in Mt. Clemens and Detroit to this
day.
-' "Haldimand Papers," DePeyster to Haldimand, May 13, 1782.
200 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
fered, and we have had many instances of the Indians having carried
the sick for several days." Next to the capture of Hamilton, the
massacre of the Moravian Indians proved to be the most important
event in the Northwest during the Revolution ; for that slaughter
found its consequences in the Crawford campaign.
At the outbreak of the Revolution Fort Pitt was occupied by John
Neville, with a force of Virginia militia; in 1778 Neville was suc-
ceeded by Brig.-Gen. Edward Hand, and the post came into the pos-
session of the United States. After Hand came Mcintosh, who in
turn was succeeded by Colonel Brodhead, under whom, in April,
1 78 1, the Delaware villages on the Muskingum were laid waste. The
old territorial quarrels over the site of Fort Pitt now broke out
afresh, and a dispute between Colonel Brodhead and his successor,
Colonel Gibson, added fuel to the flame ; so that the post was in a
state of anarchy when, in October, 1781, the Scotch-Irish general,
William Irvine, of Carlisle, with the Second Brigade of the Penn-
sylvania line, appeared. General Irvine built a substantial fort and
provided for the small post at Wheeling. Pittsburgh in those days,
was the center of turbulence and disorder; and the Scotch-Irish liv-
ing thereabouts were much better at massacring Indians, than they
were at regular warfare under proper officers. As a result, there
were more Indian forays into the neighborhood of Fort Pitt, and
more disastrous expeditions from that post, than happened on the
Kentucky frontier. The Indians had respect for Clark, but they had
no reason to fear the commandants at Fort Pitt, whose only successes
had consisted in burning deserted Indian towns.
General Irvine having reached the conclusion that the best way to
defend the frontier was an attack on Detroit, went to Philadelphia to
lay the matter before Congress and Washington. He left in com-
mand that Col. John Gibson who put into English Logan's mes-
sage to Lord Dunmore.2^
On General Irvine's return in March, 1782, the Revolution was
28 Butterfield's "Crawford's Campaign," p. 33. Gibson was born at Lan-
caster, Pennsylvania, May 23, 1740; he was an excellent classical scholar for
his day; at eighteen he was in Forbes's expedition for the recovery of Fort
Pitt ; after the French and Indian war he was a trader at that post ; he was
captured by the Indians, was adopted by a squaw, and was made acquainted
with Indian manners, customs and language; he escaped in time to enter
the Dunmore expedition of 1774; he served in the New York and New
Jersey campaigns as commander of a Virginia regiment ; he was a member
of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1790; was secretary of
Indiana from 1800 till that territory became a state; and on April 10, 1822,
he died at his daughter's home, on Braddock Field.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 201
at an end; but Indian raids continued unabated, and at Fort Pitt
there was talk of an irruption into Ohio and the formation of an
independent state. To put a stop to both of these disturbances an
expedition against Sandusky ^9 made rendezvous near the present
site of Steubenville, in May, 1782, and on the 25th began its
march of 150 miles, with a force of 480 men, organized into eighteen
companies under officers selected by the men. For commander the
soldiers elected William Crawford, by five majority over General
Williamson, the leader of the ninety men who, during the previous
March, had massacred the Moravian Indians. Crawford and Wash-
ington had been playmates; they fought together at Braddock's
defeat, Crawford surveyed Washington's lands on the Ohio, and in
1770 acted as the latter's host and guide in the journey down to the
mouth of the Great Kanawha. In the Revolution the two were to-
gether on Long Island, in crossing the Deleware, and at Trenton and
Princeton.
No sooner had the Americans crossed the Ohio than the Indian
scouts learned from a deserter that a force of 1,000 men was ad-
vancing on the Sandusky towns. Immediately the chiefs despatched
a runner to demand both ammunition and a detachment of men from
Detroit. DePeyster was not slow to comply. On May 15th, he
called together the chiefs of the Wyandots, Pottawatomies, Chippe-
was, and Ottawas, and, on presenting the warbelts from the Six
Nations and the Shawanese, Delawares and Mingoes, he urged them
to join their brothers of the South in repelling the advance of the
white men, "for it is your villages the Indians are coming against."
DePeyster apologized for the fact that the strings were dry, ex-
plaining that such had been the desire of their brethren, who feared
that if rum were given the savages they would "continue drunk in
the streets," and not go to war. "Father!" reproachfully cried a
Huron chief, "I arise to tell you that I want 'water' to sharpen your
axe, and I shall sing the war song although one-half of my people are
already killed by the enemy."
Haldimand was not alarmed for the safety of Detroit, and was
opposed to yielding to the demands of the Six Nations and Delawares
for an expedition to reduce Fort Pitt ; but he gave cordial sanction
to the Sandusky expedition. "I hope," he wrote to De Peyster,
"that the melancholy event at Muskingtun will rouse the Indians to
2' Mr. Butterfield takes pains to prove that the Crawford expedition was
against Sandusky, and not against the Moravian remnant, as Heckewelder,
Hildreth, and others have asserted. See his "Crawford's Campaign," p. 78.
202 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
a firm and vigorous opposition and resentment at Sandusky, or
wherever they shall meet the enemy * * * j depend upon your
exerting your utmost efforts and abilities as well to convince the
Indians of the indispensable necessity there is for their resisting this
shock with unanimity and firmness (their future existence as a
people depending on it) as in taking every possible precaution for
the security of your post, in which I am persuaded I shall not be
disappointed." ^^ Mounting a body of Rangers under the command
of Captain Caldwell, DePeyster sent them, together with McKee and
a number of Canadians, to support the savages.
Crawford's force, on June 4th, proceeded to Upper Sandusky,
where the leader called a council of war, at which it was decided to
continue the advance during that afternoon. If the Indians were
not encountered the army was to return. Meanwhile the scouts
found an Indian trace, but did not discover the impassable swamp
that flanked it. The scouts met the Indians running towards the
advancing force, and immediately fell back slowly before the on-com-
ing savages, sending a mounted messenger to warn the general.
Highly elated at the prospect of battle, the men ran forward. From
a grove in which the little band of Delawares endeavored to make a
stand, Crawford dislodged them; and when they attempted to gain
the right of the army. Major Leet gallantly prevented. .\t this junc-
ture the Wyandots appeared, and the Delawares slipped around to at-
tack the Americans in the rear. At nightfall Crawford saw the
Indians withdraw; and all the night through the Americans and the
savages lay on their arms behind great fires built to guard against a
night attack. At daylight the battle was renewed. The Indians were
concealed in the tall prairie grass, the Delawares on the south and
the W^yandots on the north. Although many of his men were over-
come by heat, Crawford was preparing for an attack in force, when
suddenly the squadron of Rangers from Detroit appeared on the
field. Attack now was changed to defence; and while the officers
were deliberating a band of 200 Shawanese swept up from the south.
Retreat became imperative. The dead were buried and fires built
over their graves ; the wounded were placed on horses, and at dark
the force moved. The savages, uncertain whether the movement was
an advance or retreat, did not attack promptly; and although in the
confusion some of the Americans rode into the swamp, yet at day-
break the little army, now 300 in number, had regained Upper San-
30 "Haldimand Papers." DePeyster's letter of ]May 14, 1782, and cor-
respondence following.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 203
dusky. Colonel Crawford was missing. The command devolved on
Williamson and that officer organized the retreat. On the 6th a
stand was made in the present Crawford County, and in the midst of
a rain-storm an attack of the savages was repelled ; and on the site
of the present town of Crestline the Indians ceased the pursuit. On
June 17 the force reached the Ohio, whence they had set out with
high hopes twenty-three days before.
At the beginning of the retreat, Colonel Crawford having missed
his son John, his son-in-law Major Harrison, and his nephews Major
Rose and William Crawford, halted to wait until they should come
up. The army having passed without them, his wearied horse was
unequal to the task of overtaking the fugitives, and in company with
Doctor Knight and others he pushed on. The next day they met
Capt. Josh Biggs and Lieutenant Ashley, with whom they made
camp; but on the nth of June Crawford and Knight were captured
by a band of Delawares, Biggs and Ashley making their escape only
to be killed the next day. Taken to the nearby camp of the savages,
they found there nine prisoners. The two officers were handed over
to the Delaware chiefs, Captain Pipe and Wingennud. Knight was
reserved for the torture-fire of a neighboring town, but made his
escape. For Crawford a stake fifteen feet high was driven into the
ground, and about it a fire of hickory wood was laid in a circle some
six yards from the post. By way of preparation the remaining
prisoners were sent off to be tomahawked by squaws and boys.
Colonel Crawford was stripped naked, and the savages beat him with
sticks. Next his tormentors fastened him to the stake by a short
rope, and began to fire powder into his bruised body. From the cor-
don of flames squaws snatched coals and hot ashes to throw at him,
until, in his agony, he walked round and round the stake on a path-
way of fire.
Among the spectators stood Simon Girty, who had often been a
guest at Crawford's on the Ohio. Crawford begged him to shoot and
end the terrible agony; but the renegade made taunting answer, "1
have no gun." For three hours the torture continued. Then the
friend and companion of the commander-in-chief of the American
armies, fell on his face ; an Indian quickly rushed in and scalped him,
and a squaw threw burning coals on his mutilated head. Stung into
life again, he once more arose and started around the deadly post.
But his end was at hand. The exhausted body dropped into the
flames.
DePeyster looked upon the torture of Crawford and the massacre
of prisoners as retaliation on nearly the same body of troops that
204 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
perpetuated the slaughter of the Christian Indians, and that had sim-
ilar intentions upon Sandusky.^i Haldimand, deeply shocked by the
report DePeyster sent of the torture of Crawford, had "not a doubt
that every possible argument was used to prevent that unhappy event,
and that it alone proceeded from the massacre of the Moravian In-
dians, a circumstance that will not extenuate the guilt in the eyes of
Congress. When you see a fit occasion, express in the proper terms
the concern I feel at having followed so base an example, and the ab-
horrence I have had throughout the war at acts of cruelty, which, un-
til this instance, they have so humanely avoided." The correspond-
ence between Haldimand and DePeyster shows that these officers of
the King were sincerely impressed by the twin horrors that marked
the last year of the Revolution in the Northwest; and they put their
ideas into orders directed to the Indians.
In June news came to Detroit that peace was likely to follow the
cessation of arms which had taken place. On August 15th DePey-
ster despatched an express to Captain Caldwell and to Brant and
McKee, operating on the Ohio, ordering them to cease from offensive
work, although news had come that another expedition was fitting
out at Fort JMcIntosh and at Wheeling, "under the command of the
blood-thirsty Colonel Williamson, who so much distinguished him-
self in the massacre of the Christian Indians." The messenger, how-
ever, was too late to reach Captain Caldwell. On August 15th that
officer, with thirty picked Rangers and about two hundred Lake In-
dians, besides some Delawares and Shawanese, made an unsuccessful
attack on Bryan's Station, in Kentucky, ending in the battle of Blue
Licks, at which ill-advised encounter Clark's county lieutenant of the
Illinois, Col. John Todd, and seventy of his command were
killed, with a loss to their enemy of a single Ranger and six Indians !
The terrible slaughter of Blue Licks (occasioned by Maj. Hugh
McCarrj' usurping leadership in spite of Boone's advice to await re-
inforcements), brought Clark once more to the command; and on
November loth his mounted riflemen, 1,050 strong, struck the Miami
towns, burning crops, capturing prisoners, recapturing whites, and
destroying the establishments of the British traders. With this at-
tack the War of the Revolution ended in the Northwest.22
31 "Haldimand Papers." DePeyster to Haldimand, June 23 and August
18, 1782.
3= "Haldimand Papers." DePeyster to McKee, August 6, 1782. DePeyster
to Brigadier-General Powell, August 27th.
For an account of the battle of Blue Licks, see Roosevelt's "Winning of
the West," Vol. II, p. 207.
In a paper prepared for the Wisconsin Historical Society, and printed in
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 205
The war between England and America was indeed ended ; but
for the Northwest the peace that had come to the Atlantic coast was
long years in the future. DePeyster, looking the situation squarely
in the face, wrote to Haldimand : "I have a very difficult card to play
at this post and its dependencies, which differs widely from the situ-
ation of affairs at Michilimackinac, Niagara, and others in the upper
district of Canada. It is evident that the back settlers will continue
to make war upon the Shawanese, Delawares, and Wyandots, even
after a truce shall be agreed to betwixt Great Britain and her revolted
colonies. In which case, while we continue to support the Indians
with troops (which they are calling loud for), or only with arms, am-
munition, and necessaries, we shall incur the odium of encouragine
incursions into the back settlements — for it is evident that when the
Indians are on foot, occasioned by the constant alarms they receive
from the enemies entering their country, they will occasionally enter
the settlements, and bring off prisoners and scalps — so that while in
alliance with a people we are bound to support, a defensive war will,
in spite of human prudence, almost always terminate in an offensive
one."
The war was over. From Detroit DePeyster sent to the lower
country such of the captives as wished to leave; but there were Ger-
mans who had settled with their families near Detroit or on the
present Belle Isle ; there were also women whose children were with
the "Michigan Pioneer and Historical Reports," Vol. Ill, the late Judge
Charles I. Walker, of Detroit, was the first one to call the attention of his-
torians to the valuable documents at Quebec, as sources of Northwestern
history during the Revolutionary period ; he made as careful study of these
documents as circumstances would permit, and this led to the publication of
considerable portions of the "Bouquet and Haldimand Papers" by the Mich-
igan Pioneer and Historical Society. Judge Walker made a valuable col-
lection of publications relating to the Northwest, and when failing eyesight
forced him to give up his own studies, he generously placed his collection
in the Detroit Public Library. Dr. W. J. Poole's chapter on "The \\'est" from
1763 to 1783, in volume VI of the "Narrative and Critical Hi^ory of Amer-
ica," and Andrew McFarland Davis's chapter on "The Indians and the
Border Warfare of the Revolution" in the same volume, are valuable not
alone in themselves, but also for their references to other writings. Of all
writers on Western history, the most untiring searcher for truth amid the
multitude of legends and traditions was Mr. Consul Willshire Butterfield,
who was born in Oswego County, New York in 1824, and who for fifty
years pursued his inquiries into the history of the Ohio Valley. He died in
South Omaha, Nebraska, in October, 1899. His biography of George Rogers
Clark appeared after his death.
206 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
the Indians. The women and children DePeyster "fixed in decent
houses, where they will be taken care of without being of the least
expense to government," ^^ and he did all he could do to bring peace
to the distracted country.
2' "Haidimand Papers." DePeyster to Powell, August 27, 1782.
CHAPTER XII
MARKING NATIONAL BOUNDARIES
The end of the Revolution found Kentucky firmly occupied by a
considerable body of settlers. Pittsburgh was held by the Ameri-
cans ; the eastern bank of the Mississippi was in possession of the
Virginians, but the inhabitants were French, and the Spanish held
the growing town of St. Louis. Thanks to Clark's intrepidity the
Virginians still occupied Vincennes ; but no attempt was made to
reach Detroit, the real capital of the Northwest. The Indians
hunted between the Great Lakes and the Ohio; and they were de-
pendent on the British for supplies of ammunition and rum ; for the
Americans were settlers rather than traders, and there was small
market for furs among them, whereas the British were supplying
the European markets with that commodity.
During the Revolution France, smarting under the conquest of
Canada, had aided the Americans, in the hope, perhaps, that in the
final adjustments she might recover some of her lost territory. Spain
also was opposed to England and she hoped to gain something she
could trade for Gibraltar. Moreover Spain had dreams of estab-
lishing along the Mississippi a great colonial possession. Her
minister, Florida Blanca, sought to make the Gulf of Mexico a
Spanish lake and to acquire the exclusive navigation of the Missis-
sippi River. These plans and purposes, which now seem so pre-
posterous, were firmly held by the Spaniards for many years and
often proved embarrassing to the new nation. It is to the credit of
the French minister. Vergennes, that while he did not openly oppose
the ambitions of Spain, he sought by every means in his power to
further the plans of the United States to acquire a compact territory
suited to defense against England and Spain. None of the three
desired to see a strong nation grow up on the western continent.
Such was the condition of affairs when Benjamin Franklin, John
Jay and John Adams began the peace negotiations at Versailles.
During the war Franklin had successfully negotiated loans in
France for the benefit of the Colonies, and had also brought about the
French alliance which amounted to the recognition of the new nation.
207
208 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
John Jay was minister to Spain, where he had been treated with such
scant courtesy as to send him away in an angry mood. John Adams
had been sent abroad to treat for peace; and for sufficent reasons
Congress had added FrankHn and Jay to the mission. ^
Besides the recognition of the independence of the United
States, as a first consideration, Congress claimed a participation
in the Newfoundland fisheries, the free navigation of the
Mississippi, and the boundaries of the Great Lakes on the north
and the Mississippi on the west. These demands were after-
wards modified. Vergennes was willing to give to the new nation
room and the opportunity to grow; but he was not in favor of the
American idea of making a conquest of Canada, much as he desired
to humiliate his rival. He strongly favored the project to confine
the boundaries to the Ohio, leaving to England all of Canada as it
existed under the Quebec Act of 1774. \'ergennes had agreed, as
the price of Spain's help against England, to make no peace that
did not involve the surrender of Gibraltar; and to leave Spain free
to exact from the United States a renunciation of the navigation of
the Mississippi, and of the entire Northwest from the St. Lawrence
to the Alleghanies.
Spain, in order to protect her interests in the Philippines and
in the hope of recovering Gibraltar, gave to France for the use of the
United States a million francs, to encourage the colonies in their
struggle against England ; but when the Colonies became a nation,
Spain immediately began to consider the danger to her own North
American possessions that would result from building up a strong
government east of the Mississippi. Frederick the Great of Prussia
was willing to aid .\merica up to the point of getting into a war
with England ; in Russia Catharine II, welcomed the war as an
opportunity to build a neutral commerce, but she had no sympathy
with the object of the Americans to form a new nation; and the
same state of affairs prevailed also in the Netherlands.
After the surrender at Yorktown, the House of Commons on
March 4, 1782, voted to consider as enemies to the king and coun-
^ See the introduction of Wharton's "Diplomatic Correspondence of the
United States" and John Jay's chapter on the peace negotiations in Winsor's
"Narrative and Critical History of America," Vol. VII. Since this chapter
was in type, an admirable pamphlet on "The West in the Diplomacy of the
American Revolution," by P. C. Phillips, has appeared. Mr. Phillips'
researches among the French archives have established the fact of the friend-
Imess of Vergennes and the grasping ambitions of Spain, combined with a
lack of decision which always made her efforts ineffectual.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 209
try those who should attempt the further prosecution of the war with
America; and Lord North gave way to Rockingham, whose cabinet
was made up largely of the friends of this country, including Fox
and Burke. The peace negotiations were conducted mainly by Lord
Shelburne, first as the colonial secretary and afterwards as the
leader of the ministry. Shelburne finally became persuaded that it
was for the best interests of England herself to give to the United
States such rights and boundaries as would insure the development
of a prosperous nation with which Great Britain might trade on fair
terms. He was led to these conclusions not only by Jay and Adams
and Franklin, but also by the attitude of Vergennes.
Franklin's knowledge, his experience, and his adroit address,
enabled him to perform services such as no other American could
have rendered. He undertook to deal separately and secretly with
Shelburne, proposing to give compensation to the tories in return
for the cession of Canada; but as negotiations progressed he was
inclined to lay much stress on the instruction to consult France, and
it was with reluctance that he yielded to his colleagues when they
concluded that the time had come to arrange matters first with
England.
John Adams was so lacking in the spirit of accommodation that
he never could have accomplished all that Franklin secured; and
yet his persistency enabled him to obtain much. Adams' rough ag-
gressiveness caused the French minister Luzerne to have Congress
associate with him as peace commissioners Franklin, Jay, Laurens,
and Thomas Jefi^erson — a division of responsibility entirely agree-
able to Adams. While Franklin and Jay were spending the better
part of the year 1782 in negotiations with Oswald, the British repre-
sentative, Adams successfully negotiated a treaty with Holland;
and, fresh from this diplomatic triumph, in October he arrived in
Paris to give to Jay full support. He had no particular liking for
France hence it violated no feelings on his part to come to terms
with England.
Franklin and Oswald, the British commissioner, tried to arrive at
a basis for negotiations. John Jay was accomplishing nothing in
Spain. Franklin called him to Paris. Jay was familiar with the
usages of society and was a strenuous American. From his advent in
Paris till the signing of the preliminary articles of peace. Jay worked
incessantly for five long months, bearing the brunt of the negotia-
tions. He dared to disregard the instruction of Congress to deal
only with the consent of France, insisted on making the acknowl-
edgement of independence a prerequisite to negotiations, stood out
210 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
for the widest possible boundaries, the most ample rights to the
fisheries, and the navigation of the Mississippi. He persuaded Shel-
burne that it was for the interest of England to make a treaty that
would be not only just but also conciliatory. He had concurrence
of both Adams, who had but a month's part in the negotiations, and
Franklin. "Our worthy friend, Mr. Jay" writes Adams, "returns to
his country like a bee to his hive, with both legs loaded with merit
and honor."
The European fear of wide American boundaries was natural.
The loss of the fur trade, the diversion of the product of the mines
of New Mexico, and the use of the fisheries as a commercial and
naval training school, impelled France and Spain to set the Al-
leghanies as the barrier which the Americans should not be allowed
to cross. In order to accomplish their purpose, these two nations
secretly sought the participation of England. Thereupon, Jay sent
Vaughan, an intimate friend of Shelbume, to London with the draft
of a treaty comprising boundaries, the navigation of the Mississippi
and the fisheries. England was anxious to keep the Ohio country as
a place of settling the loyalists, or of compensating them for their
losses by the sale of the lands. On this point Shelbume was not
strenuous. He was decided on the payment of debts owed to British
merchants by Americans, and the reestablishment of the tories in
their privileges and properties. On the first point there was no dis-
pute ; on the second, the commissioners were powerless to do more
than to agree that Congress would recommend such action to the
several states, which alone had the jurisdiction over matters of inter-
nal policy.
Oswald found that Jay's clear-cut ^ and definite demands must be
met, because Franklin was determined to support his colleagues at
every point. Jay's experience in Spain had aroused in him a resent-
ment towards that nation ; and he had no particularly friendly feel-
ing for France. Jay was in sympathy with the best political thought
of England, but was not in sympathy with the government. Os-
wald found him polite, easy, well informed, but decidedly inde-
pendent; and was disappointed in meeting such decided ideas so
firmly held. In the end, however, the British negotiator came under
Jay's infiuence, and became an earnest advocate with Shelburne and
Townshend of Jay's views.
2 Adams to Barclay, quoted in George Pellew's "John Jay, American
Statesmen Scries," p. 228.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 211
In the correspondence ^ that passed between Oswald and his
principals it appears that when the treaty of 1763 was proposed as a
basis of negotiation, Jay maintained that Great Britain had then
treated France with too Httle consideration. Oswald replied that it
ill became an American to object to the enforced surrender of
Canada, by means of which cession the American frontiers were pro-
tected from incursions of savages instigated by France. Jay retorted
that the colonies were then a part of the British domain, and were
therefore to be protected in common with other portions of the
realm. Jay now proposed the cession of ail that portion of Canada
newly included in the Quebec Act of 1774 — that is, all the territory
west of the Ottawa River and south of the lands of the Hudson
Bay Company. The back lands, he said, were already occupied in
part by the Americans, who were pushing over the mountains into
that fertile territory. For England to retain the Ohio country
would simply be to invite trouble. Oswald, Jay argued, was anxious
over the honorable withdrawal of the British garrisons at New York
and Charleston ; let England use these troops to conquer New Or-
leans, the Spanish post at the mouth of the Mississippi ; the United
States would prefer England to Spain as a neighbor ; then with the
free navigation of the great river. Great Britain would be able to
control the two outlets of the back lands — New Orleans and Quebec.
This reasoning seemed good to Oswald, and he urged Jay's sugges-
tions on his government. Authentic maps and information in regard
to the Ohio •* were not available in Paris, and so the line of the
Great Lakes was agreed to.
The American commissioners offered a choice between the line
passing through the middle of the Great Lakes, or the forty-fifth
degree of latitude, which latter line would have left in Canada Lake
Superior, Minnesota, and the northern half of Michigan, while it
would have given to the United States the province of Ontario and
all of Lakes Erie and Ontario. The more rational line was chosen
and marked on Mitchell's map. The two nations divided the naviga-
<* Copies of this correspondence, known as the "Landsdowne Papers," are
in the Library of Congress and also in the State Department.
* See Oswald's letters of August 8. September 2, and October 2, 1782.
Also the letters in regard to Canada in Vol. VIII of Wharton's "Diplomatic
Correspondence of the Revolution," and "The International Boundary Line of
Michigan," by Anna May Soule, in "Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collec-
tions." Vol. XXVI.
Fifteen years ago I first consulted the "Landsdowne Papers," which had
never before been used ; nor, so far as I can learn, has any other writer
given due consideration to this theory of Jay's.
212 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
tion privileges and parted their respective territories along tlie Grand
Portage from Lake Superior to the sources of the Mississippi, then a
main travelled road to the northern fur markets. Vergennes, ap-
parently upheld the Spanish claims not alone at Paris, but also at
London, and even at Philadelphia ; and he argued that the country
between the Alleghanies and the Ohio should be maintained as Indian
territory, under the control of Spain, and that Canada should reach
south to the Ohio. Possibly England preferred to give up to the
United States territory which she might hope to regain, rather than
to yield Spain what she would have to pay for by other and more
important surrenders elsewhere. The treaty was agreed to on
November 30, 1782, with the provision that the peace should become
effectual when England had come to terms with France and Spain.
In the British Parliament, Fox and North combined to drive
Shelburne out of power for making such a treaty, and the new min-
istry sent Hartley to Paris to "perfect and establish the peace, friend-
ship and good understanding so happily commenced by the pro-
visional articles ;" and after intermittent negotiations these same pro-
visional articles were adopted on September 3, 1783, as the definitive
treaty between England and America. In Congress the negotiators
were praised for their achievement, but were blamed for not con-
sulting France.
In 1782 Haldimand, having received orders from Shelburne to
discourage hostile measures by the Indians, and to draw them from
the frontiers, instructed the commanders under him to carry out
those orders; but to Townshend he wrote that the safety of the Pro-
vince of Canada depended on the way in which the Indians should
be managed. "Foreseeing the possibility of the Americans becoming
an independent powerful people and retaliating severely upon them,
they reproach us with their ruin." So long as the Six Nations re-
mained faithful, Oswego, the key to Canada, was in security; but
even the neutrality of those tribes would cause the gravest apprehen-
sion. On the friendship of the western Indians depended the safety
of the trade and posts at Detroit and in the vicinity ; so that the
expense attending the Indian alliance, although enormous, must be
borne. That was no time to retrench.^ Two days later, Haldimand
urged upon Townshend the absolute necessity that Niagara and Os-
wego be annexed to Canada. He had no thought of the surrender
of Detroit and ^Mackinac.
Naturally Haldimand was anxious to preserve the fur trade for
5 Haldimand to Townshend, October 23. 1782.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 213
England. On the conclusion of the peace of 1783 between Great
Britain and the United States, the fur traders of the Northwest
feared that the Americans would gain possession of the extensive
and lucrative business which had fallen into British hands when the
French surrendered Canada. For five years after the English took
possession of Montreal the traders of the Northwest were mostly
Frenchmen, without concert of action, and therefore with precarious
profits. In 1765 the first English trader made his slow way along the
shores of Lake Superior to the Grand Portage, on the northwestern
shore of that lake, and thence westward to Lake La Pluye. There
the Indians, incensed at being kept so long waiting for supplies of
ammunition, rum and trinkets, appropriated the trader's supplies
without giving him the customary return of peltries. A year later
the same trader met the same fate at the same hands ; but the third
year perseverance met its proverbial sticcess, and the Indians, con-
tenting themselves with a heavy toll, allowed the trader to proceed
to Lake Winnipeg.
In 1769 Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, whose base of supplies
was the Montreal firm of Todd & McGill, also suffered disaster
among the rapacious Indians about Rainy Lake. However, they
had gone into the trading business too deeply to get out. In order
to protect their venture they made a strong combination with the
other traders who had gone into the northwest country and by
1774 supplies were received by the Indians so regularly that not
only were the old stations occupied, but also a number of new posts
unknown to the French were established. The success of the
Frobishers drew many adventurers into the field, who so de-
moralized business that the cautious Montreal firms no longer were
willing to supply outfits; and by the end of the year 1782 only
twelve traders were left in the field.
When the Frobishers learned the terms of the definitive treaty
they set about combining all the British interests, with the view
of crushing out competition on the part of English adventurers
and also of protecting British trade from threatened encroachments
on the part of Americans. This step was dictated by ordinary
prudence, because the new boundary line was believed to give the
Americans the whole route from the Grand Portage to the Lake of
the \\'oods ; and, as well, the posts of Detroit and Michilimackinac,
on which the traders were dependent for provisions. The old con-
nection among the traders was made stronger, and from this time
on the North-West Company became the controlling influence in
the country bordering upon the Great Lakes.
214 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
The first eflforts of the company were directed to the discovery
of a new route to Lake Winnipeg, so that a line of communication
wholly in Canadian territory might be maintained. In June, 1783,
Edward Umfreville and Venance St. Germain, both of whom were
able to speak the language of the Indians, set out with an exploring
party of six Canadians to find such a passage. In return for this
discovery, if it should be made, the company asked for a monopoly
of the Indian trade for ten years ; but this request Governor-Gen-
eral Haldimand did not feel at liberty to grant. He had other
plans which would delay at least for a time the necessity of finding
a substitute for the Grand Portage.
The trade carried on by the North-West Company was well
worthy of high consideration on the part of the government. In
1780 it was worth to England £200,000 '■ in the value of furs brought
to her markets, without counting the profits on the manufactures
sent into the wilderness. A canoe-load was made up of drygoods to
the amount of £300 first sterling cost in England, and 200 gallons
of rum and wine, worth £30, to which charges a profit of 50 per
cent were added at Montreal. The cost of transportation to Michili-
mackinac was £160, and to the Grand Portage £90 more. Between
Montreal and the Grand Portage a canoe carried four tons of
freight; but beyond the latter place a ton and a half was allotted
to a canoe manned by five Canadians. No fewer than five hundred
men were employed in this trade, one-half of the number covering
the country from the mouth of the Ohio northward and westward
around Lakes Superior and Huron. Supplies of provisions were
taken at Michilimackinac ; but in part the traders were expected
to live off the country, and many and severe were the hardships
endured before winter quarters were reached and all the bitterness
forgotten in the long nights of feasting which Washington Irving
has so graphically described in the early chapters of "Astoria."
Such was the condition of afi^airs when, in July, 1783, General
Washington wrote to General Haldimand asking him to receive
the Baron de Steuben to make provision for the surrender of the
eight posts within the newly-acquired territory of the United States.
The interview was conducted with all the politeness consistent with
a flat refusal on the part of Haldimand either to give up the posts
or even to allow Steuben to visit them without explicit orders from
his majesty. This policy he maintained throughout his term, and
when he left office he wrote to his successor, Brigadier-General St.
' Report of Charles Grant. "Canadian Archives," 1888.
HI-STORY OF MICHIGAN 215
Leger: "Different attempts having been made by the American
states to get possession of the posts of the upper country, in conse-
quence of the treaty of peace, I have thought it my duty uniformly
to oppose the same, until his majesty's orders for that purpose
shall be received, and my conduct upon that occasion having been
approved, I have only to recommend to you a strict attention to the
same." ''
In refusing to surrender the northwestern posts without ex-
plicit orders, Haldimand undoubtedly acted the part of a prudent
oiificial ; and his action saved the North-West Company from the
interruption of their lucrative traffic. There was another action of
Haldimand's, undertaken for the very laudable purpose of shutting
the Americans out of the fur trade, which worked great hardship
to the traders without any apparent advantage.
In a memorandum submitted to the Right Honorable Lord Sid-
ney by General Haldimand in 1785, the latter says: "The naviga-
tion of these lakes by the king's vessels only is an object so nearly
connected with the entire preservation of the fur trade, that I have
withstood various applications for building and navigating private
vessels and boats upon the lakes. The rivers and outlets from them
to the American states are so numerous that no precautions which
could be taken, in that case, would be effectual in preventing a great
part of the furs from going directly into the American states, and
there is but little doubt that traders will carry their commodities
to the best market, whatever may be the consequences ; indeed, sev-
eral instances have already occurred since the peace of their smug-
gling even from Montreal over Lake Champlain into the states,
notwithstanding the vigilance of the civil and military officers.
What then would be the case upon the remote lakes may easily be
conceived. I would, therefore, recommend by all means that a
sufficient number of the king's vessels be kept upon the lakes, and
all other craft whate\er prohibited, not only from the foregoing
reaspns, but in all events to preserve a superiority upon the waters
of that country.
"Having from motives of economy reduced the Marine De-
partment perhaps in some degree below the establishment that may
be found necessary for purposes of transport, such arrangements
' "Canadian Archives," 1890, XXXII. The posts were Detroit, Michili-
mackinac, Erie, Niagara, Oswego, Oswegatchie, Point Au Per and Dutchman's
Point. Governor Clinton of New York requested the surrender of Niagara,
and Haldimand declined on May 10, 1784; and Secretary Knox sent Lieut. -
Col. William Hull to Haldimand in July, 1784, and was again refused.
216 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
should be made as will leave the merchants no room to complain,
which I find they are inclined to do as a pretext for their application
to navigate in their own vessels, for though some trivial neglects
might have happened in the course of the war, they cannot occur
in times of peace." *
In 1784 Haldimand gave the Xorth-West Company permission
to build at Detroit a small vessel for use on Lake Superior. This
vessel, measuring thirty-four feet keel, thirteen feet beam, and four
feet depth of hold, was built at an expense of £1,843, 13s and 2d,
York currency, and was christened the Beaver. \\'hen. in the
spring of 1785, an attempt was made to get her up the rapids of the
St. Mar>''s River the project proved a failure, and this under the
regulations prohibiting private vessels on the lakes. Haldimand
returned to London to enjoy a long round of pleasure at balls and
the card-table, and also to feel keenly that monarchies as well as
republics have a way of forgetting the services of their servants
who have ceased to be useful.'' But he left in command in Canada
Barry St. Leger, who was only too ready to accept the situation
established by his more brilliant predecessor.
Against the prohibition of private .vessels trading on the lakes
the North-West Company and the merchants of Detroit made vig-
orous protest. James McGill, who was one of the owners of the
sixteen shares of the company, addressed to Lieutenant-Governor
Henr\' Hamilton a letter which throws a great deal of light on the
fur trade. He estimates the value of this trade in 1785 at £180,000,
of which amotmt £100,000 value is within the botmdaries of the
United States as defined by the treaty. The object of the govern-
ment in attempting to keep the Americans from this trade is, the
company admits, a most laudable one; but this object would best
be subserved by allowing the merchants to have small decked vessels
in which to transport supplies and furs. There was no danger,
Mr. McGill argued, that the Americans would invade Canadian
territory, for they were not used to navigating small streams in
birch-bark canoes, and spending severe Canadian winters among
the Indians.
As for the fur trade lying within the American lines, that too
must continue to be controlled largely by the British, because the
people of the United States consume only deerskins, with some
beaver and raccoons, every other article being sent to the London
8 "Canadian Archives," 1S90. p. 65.
^ Haldimand's Diary, "Canadian Archives," 1889. Vol. XXVIII. — No. 3 — 13.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 217
market, whence also must come the manufactures exchanged for
furs. The cost of carriage both ways through Albany being greater
than through Montreal, the English would continue to hold the
trade by underselling their American competitors. Even should the
United States prohibit, under pain of confiscation, British subjects
trading in the Indian country, Mr. McGill professed not the least
doubt that the English merchants at Detroit would all turn Amer-
icans and carry on an illicit business across the border. A newly
acquired patriotism would never be allowed to stand in the way
of financial gain. Events proved that he was substantially correct
in his prophecies.
On the other hand, with a few vessels at their command, the com-
pany could be morally certain of having goods in the market by
June and July, and their importations from England could be
imported the same year, which would "save leakage, embezzlement
and waste of property, besides interest of money, which you know is
a dreadful moth if once allowed to get to any head." At the time
of Mr. McGill's writing the company had 130 bateau-loads of goods
on Lake Erie awaiting shipment ; and he urged that the four king's
ships be commanded to make two trips each to Detroit with mer-
chants' goods, and that the three or four small private vessels also
on Lake Erie be permitted to take cargoes for the benefit of their
owners and under the command or inspection of a king's officer.
Unless such permission be granted, Mr. McGill expressed a fear
that the traders would get dispirited and careless, and might even
go to the extent of wishing for a change of government in hopes
of being bettered, although, he patriotically remarks, "they will
certainly be much worse; but such were their sufferings last year,
with the untoward prospects for the present one, that I fear few
goods will be ordered for the ensuing, or houses of any reputation
here found to execute them until this defect is remedied."
A week later than the date of Mr. McGill's letter, Benjamin
Frobisher wrote an appealing letter to the Hon. Hugh Finlay for
transmission to the lieutenant-governor. It appears that in order
completely to clear the lakes of private vessels, Lieutenant-Governor
Sinclair had ordered down all the craft on Lake Superior, so that
the company was compelled to fall back on canoe service, at a
great expense. Lieutenant-Governor Hay had allowed the Beaver
to make one trip in order to fill up the absolutely empty granaries
at St. Mary's, so that the canoes would have provisions for the
return voyage, and Frobisher desired authority to use the Beaver
ltlV£R
From tho collection of Clarence if. Burton
Detroit in 1796
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 219
regularly to transport provisions for the company, instead of laying
her up at Detroit.
The McGill and Frobisher letters were transmitted by Hamilton
to Brigadier-General St. Leger, with the indorsement: "I am sorry
to give you repeated trouble on this occasion ; but as it is not in my
power to give any determinate answer to these demands, they must
wait with patience the result of the minister's mandates, which
may relieve them from their present state of uncertainty." Hamil-
ton adds that he thinks the request as to the Beaver very reasonable,
and that he hopes the ultimatum from England may arrive in time
for the next year's business.
Hamilton's indorsement covered also a petition signed by twenty-
one firms of Detroit traders, Alex. De Win, Macomb, Meldrum &
Park and James Abbott among the number. The Detroit men were
so frank in their expressions as to leave no doubt about their mean-
ing. They declared that because private vessels had been prohibited
from navigating the lakes, and because the service of transporting
merchandise must be performed in the king's vessels, when not
wanted for transporting troops, provisions, and stores (which ves-
sels were not adequate to the needs of the merchants, even if no
government service were required of them), the merchants of De-
troit had year after year suffered unheard-of losses, and now had
but too much reason to apprehend the total ruin of their affairs,
an event that would cause disaster as well in England as throughout
Canada. The interest charges on property detained at the eastern
end of Lake Erie for the want of a sufficient number of the king's
vessels to transport it had for several years amounted annually
to upwards of £3,700; and, although the king's vessels had made
several trips up to July 10, not a pound of the merchandise stored
during the previous autumn had arrived at Detroit. Again, over one
thousand packs of furs and peltries that otherwise would have come
to Detroit had been diverted to New Orleans and the French mar-
ket ; also fifty of the bateaux which were too long detained at
Detroit during the previous autumn had been frozen up before reach-
ing their destination, and the traders had returned empty-handed.
To these appeals Brigadier-General St. Leger turned a deaf
ear, in so far as recommending any increase in the merchant marine
or any relaxation of the rules requiring peltries to be transported
in the king's ships. He did promise to do what he could to hasten
the shipment of goods ; but to Lord Sidney in England and to the
merchants trading to the upper country he professed himself fully
satisfied with the rules made by General Haldimand. For ten years
220 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
more the English held the posts, and when Detroit and Michili-
mackinac were surrendered in 1796, the North-West Company
transferred their headquarters to Drummond's Island in the St.
Mary's River, where the ruins of their roads and buildings remain
to this day.
That the British were able to control the fur trade even after
the advent of the Americans is made evident by a letter addressed
to Secretary Madison by Chief Justice Woodward of Michigan Ter-
ritory, and dated in 1807. "From the ocean all the way to these
settlements," writes the judge, "there is a continued line of improve-
ments following without deviation the line of navigation. It is
seldom more than forty miles in breadth, but its length is at least
fifteen hundred miles. These settlements are pleasant, fertile, and
even opulent. They present along the whole line an activity little
realized in the United States. The commerce in furs, which has
been carried on in one channel for two centuries, is the cause of this
phenomenon. * * * This commerce belongs to another nation.
The Americans have never been able to succeed in it, though the
most desirable part of it belongs to their own territory and the
whole of it passes along their line."
On the arrival of George Hammond, the first minister of Great
Britain to the United States, Secretary Jefferson called his attention
to the seventh article of the definitive treaty of peace, wherein it
was stipulated that "his Britannic Majesty should, with all con-
venient speed, withdraw all his armies, garrisons, and fleets from the
said United States, and from every post, place, and harbor within
the same." Hammond rejoined that the posts were held because of
the failure of the United States to secure the restitution of all con-
fiscated estates, rights and properties belonging to British subjects.
Mr. Jefferson replied that the states had acted in a spirit of concilia-
tion towards British subjects, and that the treaty simply bound Con-
gress to recommend such a course, that body having no authority
to compel the states so to act. In any event, Jefferson argued, Great
Britain was not justified in exercising jurisdiction over the country
and inhabitants in the vicinity of the posts, and in excluding citizens
of the United States from navigation "even on our side of the middle
line of the rivers and lakes established as a boundary between the
two nations," and thus "intercepting us entirely from the commerce
of furs with Indian nations to the northward, a commerce which has
ever been of great importance to the United States, not only for its
intrinsic value, but as it was a means of cherishing peace with those
Indians and of superseding the necessity of that expensive warfare
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 221
we have been obliged to carry on with them dnring the time those
posts have been in other hands." '"
HaUhniand's apprehensions as to the results that must follow
from the transfer of the sovereignty of the Indian country from
England to the United States were justified. England had neglected
to provide for her Indian allies. Haldimand undertook to repair this
neglect by seating the Mohawks on the Grand River, that flows into
Lake Erie some forty miles above the Falls of Niagara; but such
a solution was partial and unsatisfactory. On October 22, 1784,
the treaty of Fort Stanwix was negotiated with the Six Nations;
and although young Red Jacket was opposed to the surrender of
lands. Corn-planter threw the weight of age and experience in favor
of the Americans. While this treaty was being negotiated, Brant,
the great chief of the Six Nations, was in Quebec to secure title
to the British grant of 1,200 square miles on the Grand River; and
when he learned of the negotiations he visited the western and Lake
Indians to form a confederacy for the protection of the Indian lands
as far south as the Ohio. The inception of this plan seems to have
been entirely with Brant; its support came from England, not
quickly, or as a matter of high official policy, but slowly, increasingly,
and by the action of subordinates on the ground. ^^ Brant went to
England to obtain compensation for losses incurred by the Mo-
hawks in their support of the British during the Revolution. Ar-
riving in England in December, 1785, Brant received a flattering
welcome. With many of the officers he was already acquainted;
and king, queen, and prince, statesman and wit, men of fashion
and ladies of quality, all feted him. Declining to kiss the hand of
George III, he professed willingness to perform such homage to
the queen. When at a masked ball a Turkish diplomat attempted
to feel of the texture of his painted nose, supposed to be false. Brant
indulged his native Indian humor by giving vent to a war-whoop
that curdled the blood in the dancers and sent them fleeing before
his tomahawk. He was met by De Peyster ; he was dined by Burke,
Fox and Sheridan; the Prince of Wales showed him the sights;
Haldimand did him honor in army circles; and Sir Guy Carleton,
then on the point of returning to America, did not fail to cultivate
the lion of the town, whose roar he was afterwards to invoke for
1" "American State Papers," Foreign Relations, Vol. I, p. iSi. Jefferson to
Hammond, November 29, 1791.
11 Stone's "Life of Joseph Brant" gives the best connected account of the
intrigues and negotiations from the treaty of 1783 to 1790. It is to be read
in connection with the correspondence in the "Haldimand Papers."
222 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
purposes of state. Returning to this country in December,
1786, Brant called the chiefs of the Six Nations and of the western
and Lake Indians to counciL^^
In November of 1786, the United Indian Nations gathered for
their first confederated council in the Huron village near the head
of Lake Erie. The purpose was to prepare an address to their
"brethren of the thirteen United States of America." This address
declares the disappointment of the Indians ; they had hoped for a
lasting friendship between themselves and their "oldest brethren" ;
they now gave notice that in future no council would be held legal
unless the entire confederacy gave its assent ; and that they were
ready to make a lasting treaty of peace, and for that purpose would
meet the American commissioners in the spring, "to bury in oblivion
the mischief that had happened, and speak to each other in the
style of friendship." There was but one condition. "Brothers,"
says the message, "we again request of you, in the most earnest
manner, that you will order your surveyor and others that march
on lands, to cease from crossing the Ohio until we shall have spoken
to you ; because the mischief that has recently happened has always
originated in that quarter. We shall likewise preserve our people
from going over until that time."
Such was the ultimatum. Then came this warning: "Brothers,
it will be owing to your arrogance if this laudable plan which we
so earnestly wish for is not carried into execution. In that case
the result will be very precarious, and if fresh ruptures ensue,
we are sure we will be able to exculpate ourselves, and most as-
suredly, with our united force, be obliged to defend those immuni-
ties which the Great Spirit has been pleased to give us ; and if we
should then be reduced to misfortune, the world will pity us, when
they think of the amicable proposals we made to prevent the effusion
of unnecessary blood." ^^
That speech was the work of Captain Brant. With the same
plain speaking he used towards the Americans. Brant told the king's
representative that it was the devotion of the Indians to the cause
of the British that had made the Americans their .enemies ; and
that while the British were enjoying the blessings of peace the In-
dians were still involved in hostilities. Therefore, Brant on behalf
^- Moore's "Northwest Under Three Flags," p. 300.
^3 Indian Speech to the Congress of the United States, "Michigan Pioneer
and Historical Collections," Vol. XI, p. 467. The tribes represented were the
Six Nations, Hurons, Delawares, Shawanese. Ottawas, Chippewas, Potta-
watomies, Cherokees, Wabash Confederates, and Miamis.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 223
of the confederacy, demanded from "the great representative of the
king, now arrived on this continent," an answer to the question
whether the EngHsh would support them in their demand for the
Ohio as a boundary. The vital question was referred to Lord
Dorchester.i^
While he was in England, Brant had attempted to learn from the
colonial secretary. Lord Sidney, whether Great Britain would sup-
port the Indians in making war on the Americans. Lord Sidney
evaded the question; and his example was followed by Sir Guy
Carleton (now Lord Dorchester), who had arrived at Quebec on
November 23, 1786, to resume the office of governor of Canada.
Major Matthews, on his way to take command at Detroit, wrote to
Brant from Niagara that the British, so far from intending to sur-
render the posts, were, on the contrary, strengthening them, and
would hold them so long as the Indians were ready to prevent the
Americans from coming against them. Lord Dorchester, wrote
the major, was sorrj^ that the Six Nations had promised to aid
the Americans because some of their people encroach and make
depredations upon parts of the Indian country; but they must see
it is his lordship's intention to defend the posts ; and while these
are preserved, the Indians must find great security therefrom." i'
Entirely satisfactory to the English commanders was the result
of Brant's efforts to unite the Indians in a demand for the Ohio
boundary. Sir John Johnson, the British superintendent of Indian
affairs, expressed this satisfaction in a letter to Brant, in the course
of which this significant passage occurrs: "Do not suft'er an idea
to hold a place in your mind that it will be for your interests to
sit still and see the Americans attempt the posts. It is for your
sakes chiefly, if not entirely, that we hold them. If you become
indifferent about them, they may perhaps be given up ; what security
would you then have? You would be left at the mercy of a people
whose blood calls for revenge; whereas by supporting them you
encourage us to hold them, and encourage the new settlements, al-
ready considerable, and every day increasing by numbers coming
in, who find they can't live in the states. Many thousands are pre-
paring to come in. This increase of his Majesty's subjects will
serve as a protection for you, should the subjects of the states,
^^ McKee's Report, "Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections." Vol. XI,
p. 471.
i» Stone's "Life of Joseph Brant,'" Vol. II, p. 270. Matthews to Brant, May
29, 1787.
224 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
by endeavoring to make further encroachments on you, disturb
your quiet." i"
Had the British surrendered the northwestern posts, as pro-
vided in the treaty of 1783, the Indians would have been dependent
on the Americans for those markets which were the surest means of
obtaining and maintaining peace. By holding the posts in order
to protect the fur trade and to secure the claims of the loyalists,
England forced the United States into 'Indian wars that cost the
lives of thousands of our people and long held back immigration
and settlement.
Lord Dorchester found additional reason ^' for the retention
of the posts in the fact that the United States as a nation was still
an experiment ; that there were many elements of disunion, and
great differences of opinion as to whether the new Government
should be a monarchy or a republic ; and that France and Spain
were watching every opportunity to strengthen and increase their
influence and territory in North America.
Lord Dorchester's position was delicate. The English posses-
sions in America were but isolated towns and posts loosely held
together by the fur trade. ^^ The great majority of the people were
French, without ambition or initiative. Out of these unpromising
elements Lord Dorchester succeeded in laying the foundations
on which Canada is built. Champlain was the father of New France.
Lord Dorchester became the father of Canada. '^ To the loyalists
'" Stone's "Life of Joseph Brant," Vol. II, p. 268.
1" Dorchester to Sydney, January 16. April 10. 1787; October 14, 1788;
and .A-pril 11, 1789. — "Canadian Archives," 1890. Under the head of "Relations
with the United States after the Peace of 1783," Mr. Brymner has grouped
these letters.
IS Professor Andrew C. McLaughlin's paper on "Western Posts and
British Debts," in the American Historical Society Report for 1894.
^■' Lord Dorchester, the third son of Gen. Sir Guy Carleton, of Newry,
County Down, Ireland, was born in 1724; he served in Flanders, and was
wounded at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. He was quartermaster-general
in Wolfe's expedition against Quebec, and was wounded twice in the opera-
tions about that city. .\ fourth wound was received at the capture of
Havana. His success in driving the Americans from Canada should have
been rewarded by the command of the expedition led by Burgoyne. As
Governor of Canada he won the reputation of "having the cleanest hands
of any person ever entrusted with public money." As commander of the
British forces in New York, he managed the withdrawal of the English
troops. He was one of Wolfe's executors and legatees. In 1786 he was
raised to the peerage as Baron Dorchester. For a sketch of his life, see
The English Political Magazine for 1782, page 351 ; and Kingsford's "History
of Canada," Vol. V, p. 191.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 225
driven from the United States he extended every opportunity to
make settlements in Canada. While advocating the Quebec Act
before the House of Commons, he stated that the Indians regarded
the country between the Ohio and the Great Lakes as their own
territory, within which no European monarch had rights. It is not
strange, therefore, to find him supporting this position maintained
in opposition to the United States by Brant. This theory of Indian
monarchy had been asserted against the French and English at
the outbreak of the French and Indian war, and against the English
and Americans at the beginning of the Revolution ; but it never was
acquiesced in by the whites. Indeed, the Indians themselves had
repudiated it repeatedly by placing themselves under the protection
of France or of England. Moreover, the treaty of 1783 left Dor-
chester no right to interfere beyond the line of the British posses-
sions ; although as a practical ruler he doubtless felt himself bound
to take advantage of any circumstances that would aid England
to regain the western country, in case the settlers should incline to
seek an alliance with Spain in order to gain an outlet for their
products.
To aid Lord Dorchester, an emissary was sent from England to
the northwestern country 20 as a spy. The observations of this "cool
and temperate man" proved conclusively that England acted de-
liberately in supporting the Indians while they carried on the
warfare against the armies of the United States. The Indians
were but a part of the fur trade, which was to be maintained at
every cost. Therefore, the savages should be protected in their
hunting grounds. Dorchester apprehended that the United States
meant to take the posts by force, and he was prepared to repel war
by war.21
Making headquarters at Detroit, the British emissary made sys-
tematic reports to Dorchester. The emigration to Kentucky and
the Ohio regions he declared to exceed the bounds of credibility.
"The enterprising people of New England, checked in their com-
mercial pursuits, turn with wonderful facility to this tempting
though remote country, and without being deterred by the danger
or prevented by the difficulty of finding means of subsistence for
themselves and families until they can form an establishment in
those distant settlements, they travel in hordes to the Southwest,
=" Brymner identifies this agent as Maj. George Beckwith, but the facts
concerning him are obscure. — See "Canadian Archives," 1890, p. XI, et seq.
-1 Dorchester to Sir John Johnson, December 11, 1786; Dorchester to
Sidney, January 16, 1787. — See "Canadian Archives," 1890.
226 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
threatening the weak Spanish provinces with early hostilities."
Colonel Sherman, of Connecticut, was preparing to cross the Missis-
sippi and establish a post at the mouth of the Missouri. The Ken-
tuckians were forcing the free navigation of the Mississippi, and
plans were maturing to reach the Michilimackinac fur trade by way
of Lake Michigan. All these schemes were being prosecuted without
regard to Congress, a body as yet too feeble to exercise authority
over any part of the western country. 22
The situation in the western country had become critical. Sep-
arated from the Atlantic seaboard by a difficult range of mountains,
the Northwest was still in possession of numerous bands of hostile
Indians fed and clothed by Great Britain. On the north the outlet
for the fur trade was by the St. Lawrence. On the west the Ken-
tucky and Illinois countries must find an outlet for their trade
by way of the Mississippi. The navigation of that stream was in
control of the Spanish, who wera using this advantage to alienate
the western people. President Washington, himself a large owner of
Ohio lands, more closely than any other man then living had been
identified with the beginnings of western conquest. Five years be-
fore the outbreak of the Revolution, Washington had urged upon
Governor Thomas Johnson of Maryland the necessity of an en-
larged plan for reaching the Ohio, "as a means of becoming the
channel of conveyance of the extensive and valuable trade of a
rising empire." -^ Before resigning his commission as commander-
in-chief. Washington made a tour of Western New York, in company
with Governor Clinton, and the two made a joint purchase of 6,000
acres ; for he rightly apprehended that "the Yorkers will delay
notime to remove every obstacle in the way of other communication,
so soon as the posts of Oswego and Niagara are surrendered." ^*
In 1784, Washington spent a month riding through the Ohio coun-
try to examine the routes for penetrating the mountains. -•' Re-
turning from his horseback journey of nearly seven hundred
-- In October, 1786, Clark led a feeble expedition against the Indians in
the neighborhood of Vincennes, the people of which place had written to
him that they considered themselves British subjects. Clark placed a garri-
son in fort ; but his own habits had now become so bad that he had no
control over his men, and both Virginia and Congress were compelled to
repudiate his action in seizing property belonging to a Spanish trader. — See
English's "Life of George Rogers Clark," Vol. II. p. 796.
23 House of Representatives Report No. 228, Nineteenth Congress, first
session.
"* Washington's will.
25 Henry Adams' "Life of Albert Gallatin,'' p. 57.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 227
miles, Washington laid before Governor Harrison of Virginia a
great scheme for bringing the trade from Detroit and the West to
tidewater by way of Fort Pitt and the Potomac, a route more than a
hundred miles shorter than that by way of Philadelphia, and 300
miles shorter than the Albany route.^" Calling Harrison's attention
to the fact that "the flanks and rear" of the United States were pos-
sessed by Spain and England, he argued that unless shorter and
easier channels were made for the trade of the West, "the stream
of commerce will glide gently down the Mississippi" ; while by
opening these new communications, all parts of the Union would
be cemented together by common interests. Opening the eastern
water communications to the Ohio, and the Ohio to Lake Erie, was
Washington's method to "draw not only the produce of the western
settlers, but also the peltry and fur trade of the lakes to our posts:
thus adding an immense increase to our exports, and binding these
people to us by a chain which can never be broken." ^^
In 1782 Henry Hamilton was appointed lieutenant-governor at
Quebec and his fellow prisoner, Jehu Hay, was sent to Detroit.
Hamilton's sufferings in his Virginia "dungeon'' excited a great
amount of sympathy for him, both in England and among the tories
in America. The position in which he now found himself, however,
exceeded his abilities and after a year at Quebec, the government
notified him that there was no further need of his services. His
friends succeeded, to use his phrase, "in forging for him on the
public anvil" an appointment as governor of Bermuda, where his
name is still perpetuated in the capital city of those islands. Tradi-
tion in Bermuda has it that he was a homely man, of quiet, unpre-
tentious habits, not given to display or ostentation. -^ After four
years of service there he was transferred to the governorship of
Dominica, where in 1796 he died with public esteem and honors. ^^
-" Pickell's "History of the Potomac Compnny," p. 174.
-' Marshall's "Life of Washington," Vol. V, p. 14.
28 For this bit of tradition, extant in the family of Chief-Justice Leonard,
of Hamilton, Bermuda, as well as for copies of Hamilton's letters and the
records of his governorship, I am under obligations to Mrs. Mary K. Bos-
worth Smith. In a letter to Lieutenant Jacob Schieffelin of New York (the
original of which was presented to the Hamilton Library in 1897 by a son
of Henry Hamilton Schieffelin), the governor says: "Everything at this
place goes on very harmoniously; and tho' I had a strong desire to
have remained in Canada, and had many valuable acquaintances there whom
I highly esteem, yet I think my lot is cast in a fair ground, and am satisfied."
Hamilton was the fourth son of Gustavus Frederick, seventh Viscount Boyne.
2" There is a short obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1796.
228 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Haldimand was not willing to see so faithful and efficient an
officer as De Peyster placed under a half-pay lieutenant like Hay.
Accordingly the commander-in-chief detained Detroit's new lieu-
tenant-governor until he secured DePeyster's promotion and trans-
fer to Niagara. Hay reached his new station in the July of 1784,
much broken in health and spirits; and after a year of peaceful
occupation of the governor's palace, on August 2, 1785, he was
carried thence to his grave.^o In September, 1785, DePeyster
returned to England with his regiment, and eventually settled in
Scotland, in the town of Dumfries. When the Napoleonic wars
made it necessary to embody the militia to defend Great Britain's
coasts, Colonel DePeyster became commander of the Dumfries
Gentlemen Volunteers. In the columns of the local paper he essayed
a combat in verse, only to be badly worsted by one of his own
soldiers — Robert Bums.^i In November, 1822, an accident brought
him to his death, at the ripe age of eighty-six years. ^2 In November,
1784, Haldimand sailed for London, where he was well received by
Lord Sidney, and was presented to the king and queen ; he was made
a Knight of the Bath ; ^^ and as Sir Frederick Haldimand he died
in May, 1791, at his birthplace, Yverdon, Switzerland, leaving an
ample fortune to his nephew and his nieces.^'' On March 17, 1785,
Patrick Sinclair was released from Newgate Prison, in London,
on payment of the Mackinac bills protested by Haldimand. ^^
3* Ford's "Moravian Settlements at Mt. Clemens," "Michigan Pioneer and
Historical Collections," Vol. X, p. 107.
31 See "Burns's Poem on Life," addressed to Colonel DePeyster.
3- DePeyster's "Miscellanies," p. CLXXI.
33 Haldimand's Diary, "Canadian Archives," 1S89, p. 145.
3* "Canadian Archives," 1889, p. 25.
35 Haldimand's Diary, "Canadian Archives," 1889, p. 147; Sinclair to
Haldimand, "Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections," Vol. XI, p. 458.
CHAPTER XIII
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE NORTITWEST
While George Rogers Clark was engaged in capturing the Eng-
lish posts along the east bank of the Mississippi and on the Wabash
and while the British were leading scalping parties of Indians from
Detroit and Michilimackinac on raids against the \''irginians who
had settled in the Kentucky region, the Congress of the Confedera-
tion was discussing the ownership of the Western lands. Virginia
claimed them by virtue of Clark's conquest ; New York claimed them
by reason of the treaties with the Iroquois, or Six Nations, by whom
the other tribes had been conquered ; Connecticut and Massachusetts
had claims based on their original charters, which granted indefinite
western boundaries. Massachusetts claimed the lower portion of
Michigan, Wisconsin and a part of Minnesota ; while portions of
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois would fall to the lot of Connecticut.
Maryland maintained that the western lands belonged not to
any individual colony, i but were the common possession of the new
nation ; and she refused to come into the Confederation until the
new states made cession of the lands they claimed. As a result the
Old Northwest, or the territory northwest of the Ohio, came to be
recognized as a national heritage, subject only to certain reservations
of lands in Eastern Ohio, which went to Connecticut; and certain
others along the Ohio River, which were the compensation ^^irginia
granted to Clark and his soldiers.
Much discussion has arisen over the credit due to particular
individuals for the ideas embodied in the justly famous Ordinance
' Maryland fought through nearly the whole of the Revolution not only
as a sovereign, but as an unconfederated state. She was an ally, not a mem-
ber of the Confederation. It was not until March i, 1781, when an arrange-
ment of western lands satisfactory to her was made that Maryland entered
the Confederation as the thirteenth and last state. See "Maryland" by Wil-
liam Hand Browne, American Commonwealths, p. 286 ; also Herbert B.
Adams' "Maryland's Influence upon the Land Cessions to the United States,''
Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science, second series ; and
B. A. Hinsdale's "Old Northwest."
229
230 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
of 1787. It would appear, however, that these ideas were proposed
by various men during the years that the plan of government was
under discussion as, more or less, an academic question ; and that
the immediate incentive to the passage of the ordinance was the
appearance in New York of representatives of a company of New
England veterans of the Revolution, who stood ready to purchase a
considerable number of acres of western lands, provided a satis-
factory government should be provided by Congress. -
On May 7, 1783, officers of the Continental line of the army,
to the number of 2S8, addressed a petition to the President and
the delegates of the United States in Congress assembled. The
petition shows that on September 20, 1776, and at various
later dates. Congress enacted that the officers and soldiers of the
American Anny who should continue in service vnitil the establish-
ment of peace, would be entitled to grants of land according to
their several grades. These petitioning officers had selected a certain
tract of land south of Lake Erie, west of Pennsylvania and north of
the Ohio River, not claimed as the jjroperty of, or within the juris-
diction of, any particular state. The land they conceived to be "of
such extent and cjuality as to induce Congress to mark it out as
suitable to form a district government or colony of the United States,
to be admitted, in due time, one of the Confederated States of
America." Therefore, the petitioners prayed Congress "to procure
those lands from the natives (Indians), and agreed to procure the
location and survey of the lands to which they were entitled and of
such other lands in the district as other officers and soldiers might
wish to take up." They also asked that provision be made for a
"further grant of lands to such of the army as wish to become ad-
venturers in the new government, in such quantities and on such
conditions of settlement and purchase, for public securities, as Con-
gress shall judge most for the interest of the intended government
and render it of lasting consequence to the American Empire."
This petition, probably prepared by Gen. Rufus Putnam, then
of New Windsor, Connecticut, was sent to Washington, together
with a personal letter from Putnam, who stated that none of the
petitioners would think of going to Philadelphia to urge the con-
- The succinct discussion of the legislative history of the Ordinance of
1787 is to be found in Frederick D. Stone's pamphlet. See also J. D. Barrett's
"Evolution of the Ordinance of 1887"; J. M. Merriam's '"Legislative History
of the Ordinance" (American A.ntiquarian Society Proceedings. Vol. V).
Dr. W. F. Poole waxed vituperative over the subject, and many others have
brought their imaginations to bear upon the matter.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 231
sideration of the matter ; but that they had left the petition with him
to lay before Congress, and therefore, he was putting it into Wash-
ington's hands and asking his patronage. Putnam requested Wash-
ington to urge Congress to provide for the defense of the territory
in case of war with Great Britain or Spain ; to secure the allegiance
of the Indians by furnishing them with necessities in exchange for
furs, especially guns for hunting and blankets ; to place garrisons at
Oswego, Niagara, Michilimackinac and the Illinois; and to open
communication between the Ohio and Lake Erie as a means of
supplying Detroit and the lake posts in case of war. Putnam esti-
mated that provisions might be sent to Detroit cheaper by the
Muskingum or Scioto routes than by Albany and the Mohawk;
and he proposed that a line of forts, twenty miles apart, be built
along the route, each post to be garrisoned by a company of soldiers.
The protection such a chain of posts would give to the entire border
would be full compensation for the cost. Moreover, adequate de-
fense meant the sale of lands to settlers, and therefore the estab-
lishment of the posts was good economy.
The tract suggested contained seventeen and a half million acres,
or 756 townships six miles square. In each township lands were to
be set aside for the Support of the ministry and schools. The peti-
tioners were entitled to 2,000,000 acres by virtue of their army
services, without requirements as to settlement ; they expected Con-
gress to grant 8,000,000 acres additional (on the New York basis
of settlement with soldiers), on condition that the lands be settled;
and that the remaining 7,000,000 be reserved for exclusive pur-
chase by soldiers, using public securities at a given price. No action
was taken on the petition.
In April, 1784, Putnam again wrote to Washington that either
Congress should open the western lands or else the old soldiers
would settle elsewhere. He was also concerned over the deprecia-
tion in the certificates the soldiers had received in settlement of their
accounts, which had sunk to three and six pence on the pound,
but which would double in vafue if made receivable for Ohio lands.
The reason why Putnam appealed directly to Washington was that
Massachusetts was trying to sell her lands in Maine, and New York
was making inducements for New Englanders to take up her vacant
lands, therefore he could expect no hope from the delegations ^ from
those states.
Washington exerted his influence on behalf of the petition.
■' For copies of the petition and correspondence, see "The Memoirs of
Rufus Eutnam," by Rowena Buell; Boston, 1903.
232 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
"Every member with whom I conversed," he writes, "acquiesced in
the reasonableness of the petition — all yielded, or seemed to yield,
to the policy of it, but plead the want of cession of the land — this is
made and accepted and yet matters remain in statu quo." Washing-
ton inclosed a hand-bill offering his own Ohio lands and showed that
he too had western interests.
In 1784, Virginia ceded to the United States her right to the
western territories. Jefferson presented to Congress a plan for the
temporary government of the western territory. It provided for
the government of the territory when the lands shall have been pur-
chased of the Indian inhabitants and offered for sale by the United
States. The territory was divided into ten states, and each one was
authorized to adopt the constitution of any of the original states for
its temporary government, subject to such amendments as a legisla-
ture might suggest. Each state could send a member to Congress,
with the right of debating, but not of voting, and upon gaining a
population of 20,000 was to be admitted into the Union under a
permanent constitution, and to full representation in Congress
when its population should equal that of the least numerous of the
original states. The states established should forever remain a
part of the United States, and they should be subject to the Articles
of Confederation the same as the original states and obliged to
pay their share of the Federal debt.
In Jefferson's report the following clause was to be a part of
the compact: "That after the year 1800 of the Christian era there
shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the
said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty."
The clause was stricken out by Congress. This ordinance remained
in force until it was repealed by the final clause of the Ordinance of
1787.
On March 8, 1785, Timothy Pickering wrote to Rufus King
in Congress, protesting against the admission of slavery into the
western territory. In the same letter he said : "There is no pro-
vision made for ministers of the Gospel, nor even for schools and
academies, though after the admission of slavery it was right to
say nothing about Christianity." On receipt of this letter King
offered the following resolution : "That there shall be neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude in any of the States described in the
resolves of Congress of the 23rd of April, 1784, otherwise than in
punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been personally
guilty, and that this regulation shall be an article of compact, and
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN ' 23.3
remain a fundamental principle of the constitutions between the
thirteen original States and each of the States described in the said
resolve of the 23rd of April, 1784."
The resolution was referred to a committee of which King was
chairman. Their report went back to Jefferson's proposition of
1784, prohibiting slavery after the year of 1800. It was to be con-
sidered on the 14th of April, but a land ordinance was then being
framed by Grayson, who wrote to Madison that King would re-
serve his resolution prohibiting slavery in the new states until the
land ordinance was passed. King's resolution received no further
attention. The land ordinance resen'ed the central section of each
township for the support of schools, and the one north of it for
the support of religion, but as the act passed the provision for the
support of religion was omitted.
In 1786 a committee was appointed to report a temporary govern-
ment for the new states, in which the persons and rights of settlers
would be protected, in place of permitting the citizens to select the
constitution and laws of one of the older states. Monroe, chairman
of the committee, recommended a redivision of the territory as
soon as the consent of the individual states that ceded it had been
obtained. It proposed that Congress should appoint a governor, a
council of five members, and a secretary for the territories or states.
It also provided for a court of five members, who should have com-
mon-law and chancery jurisdiction, and an existing code of laws
was to be adopted to suit the occasion. When a population of a
.certain size was reached by a state, a house of representatives was
to be chosen to act with the governor and council. The plan pre-
sented was a mere outline, and it was recommitted. Before it was
completed, petitions were received from the inhabitants of the
western territory, praying for the establishment of a government
that would make provision for both criminal and civil justice. A
new ordinance, following Monroe's plan, was reported to Congress
on September 21, 1786.
In January, 1786, Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper, two
of the signers of the petition to Congress asking for a grant of
land in 1783, issued a card in a newspaper inviting Massachusetts
soldiers entitled to land in the western territory to meet and organize
The Ohio Company, to form a settlement in the Ohio country. The
meeting was held on March ist, and articles of agreement were
entered into. One provided for "the purchase of lands in some one
of the proposed states northwesterly of the River Ohio, as soon as
those lands are surveyed and exposed for sale by the commissioners
From Mich. P & H. Col., Vol. XXX,
Thomas Jefferson's Proposed Division of the Northwest
Territory.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 235
of Congress, according to the ordinance passed the 20th of May,
17S5, or on any other plan that may be adopted by Congress not less
advantageous to the company." It was found that under the land
ordinance of May 20, 1785, it would not be possible for the company
to purchase a compact body of land, and the price asked by Congress
was considered too high. To overcome these difficulties, on March
8, 1787, a committee composed of Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons,
Gen. Rufus Putnam, and the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, was appointed
to make application to Congress "for a private purchase of land."
Parsons, on the 9th of May, presented his memorial. Before
it was acted upon, however, he returned to Connecticut. Then it
was agreed that Cutler should act as agent for the company in
place of Parsons. On July 5th he arrived in New York, and on the
6th he says: "At 11 o'clock I was introduced to a number of
members on the floor of the Congress chamber in the City Hall by
Colonel Carrington, member from Virginia. Delivered my petition
for purchasing lands for the Ohio Company, and proposed terms
and conditions of purchase. A committee was appointed to agree
on terms of negotiation and report to Congress."
The ordinance committee made its report on July nth. The bill
was read a second time on the 12th and a third time on the 13th,
when it finally passed.-' This was the great ordinance. It provided
that the territory northwest of the Ohio River while under tempo-
rary government should be one district, to be divided into two
when found necessary. It provided also for the distribution of
estates of residents and non-residents dying intestate, a widow to
receive one-third of the personal estate and a life-interest in one-
third of the real estate, the remainder being equally divided between
the children or their heirs. From Johnson's report was taken the
proposition of appointing a governor, council, secretary and court,
nearly the same language being used in defining their duties. A
house of representatives was also to be chosen when the popula-
tion of a district reached 5,000. A delegate to Congress, with
the right of debating but not of voting, as proposed by Jefferson
and Monroe, was conceded to the territories until admitted to full
representation.
The ordinance was to be considered as a compact between the
original states and the people and states in the territory, and forever
to remain unalterable unless by common consent. This idea was
taken from Jefferson's report of 1784. The first and second articles
*J. D. Stone's "Ordinance of 1787."
236 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
secured to the people civil and religious liberty, trial by jury, and the
benefit of the writ of habeas corpus. No law should ever have
force in the territory that should interfere or affect private con-
tracts or engagements previously formed. The third declared that
religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good govern-
ment and the happiness of mankind, and schools and the means of
education should forever be encouraged. Good faith should be
observed towards the Indians. The fourth article contained a pro-
vision securing the free navigation of the waters leading into the
Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. The fifth provided for the
division of the territory into not less than three nor more than
five states. When a state contained 60,000 free inhabitants its.
delegates were to be admitted into Congress on an equal footing
with those of the original states. The sixth article forever pro-
hibiting slavery in the territorv- was added on the second reading of
the bill.
Nathan Dane wrote to Rufus King, then in Philadelphia, July
16, 1787: "We have been employed about several objects, the
principal of which have been the act (Ordinance) enclosed and the
Ohio purchase ; the former is completed and the latter will probably
be completed tomorrow. The Ohio Company appeared to purchase
a large tract of the Federal lands — about six or seven millions of
acres — and we wanted to abolish the old system and get a belter one
for the government of the country, and we finally found it necessary
to adopt the best system we could get. All agreed finally to the
enclosed plan except A. Yates. When I drew the ordinance (which
passed, a few words excepted, as I originally formed it), I had no
idea the states would agree to the sixth article prohibiting slavery, as
oniy Massachusetts of the Eastern States was present, and therefore
omitted it in the draft; but finding the House favorably disposed
on this subject, after we had completed the other parts, I moved
the article, which was agreed to without opposition. We are in a
fair way to fix the terms of our Ohio sale, etc. We have been upon
it three days steadily. The magnitude of the purchase makes us
very cautious about the terms of it, and the security necessary to
insure the perfonnance of it."
"The ordinance," says Mr. Stone, "was a political growth. Step
by step its development can be traced in the proceedings of Con-
gress. Monroe's plan, imperfect as it was in form when reported,
provided for a more advanced state of civilization than Jefferson's,
and in some respects was an improvement on it. Johnson's ordi-
nance was an elaboration of Monroe's plan. The Ordinance of 1787
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 237
contained the most important features of each, together with sug-
gestions that had been made from time to time, and what could
be found in the constitutions and laws of the states. There is no
necessity of going outside of Congressional circles to account for
Its production or passage. It was formed in an era of constitution-
making. The separation of the colonies from the mother-country
had made the people familiar with the principles of civil liberty.
Between 1776 and 1787 every one of the States, with the exception
of Connecticut and Rhode Island, had formed new constitutions for
their government. There was hardly a man in public life who had
not assisted in some way in their adoption, and who was not familiar
with their principles. Hundreds of essays on government were
made public by the newspapers or in pamphlet form. The political
atmosphere was impregnated with the subject, and it is doubtful if
there ever was a time when the people of a country were more
familiar with the principles of government than were the inhabitants
of the United States in 1787. To announce what at any other time
might be looked upon as an original thought. appeared only to echo
an axiom. The discussion brought forth legitimate results, and
while Congress was creating the Ordinance of 1787, the representa-
tives of the States, assembled in another city, were engaged in
the formation of the Federal Constitution."
The passage of the ordinance having been accomplished. Doctor
Cutler turned his attention to a law for the sale of lands. There
was little difficulty in securing a favorable actfon, for the ordinance
had been based on the land scheme. In order to carry the project
through Congress, however, it was expedient to parcel out the
offices. The governorship was promised to Gen. Arthur St. Clair,
the president of Congress, and Maj. Winthrop Sargent was slated
for secretary. Ten days later the land-contract measure was
adopted, but because its provisions were not satisfactory, Doctor
Cutler threatened to leave New York. Again he was successful, and
on July 27th he found himself the possessor of a grant of 1,500,0x30
acres of land, one-half for the Ohio Company, and one-half for a
private speculation, which became known as the Scioto Purchase.
Congress retired three and a half millions of outstanding script, and
reduced the public debt by that amount.
Congress elected officers of the new territory, October 5th :
Arthur St. Clair, governor; James M. Varnum, Samuel Holden
Parsons, and John Armstrong, judges ; and Winthrop Sargent,
secretary; subsequently John Cleves Symmes took the place of Mr.
238
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Armstrong, who declined the appointment.-^ August 2qth, Doctor
Cutler met the directors of the Ohio Company at the "Bunch of
Grapes" tavern in Boston to report that he had made a contract
with the board of treasury for a million dollars' worth of lands at
a net price of 75 cents an acre ; that the lands were to be located
on the Ohio, between the Seven Ranges platted under the direction
of Congress and the \'irginia lands ; that lands had been reserved
by the government for school and college purposes, according to the
General Arthur St. Clair
Massachusetts plan : and that bounty-lands might be located within
the tract. The next day the plat of a city on the Muskingum was
settled upon, and proposals for sawmill and cornmill sites were
invited from prospective settlers."
» In July, 1789, the first Congress of the United States gave its sanction
to the new government.
*"Life of Reverend Manasseh Cutler." Vol. I, p. 321.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 239
"It would g-ive you pain and me no pleasure," writes Rufus Put-
nam, "to detail our march over the mountains, or our delays on
account of bad weather, or other misfortunes." Ship carpenters
from Danvers, Massachusetts, were sent ahead ; but when, on the
14th of February, 1778, the main party from New England arrived
at the Youghiogheny they found no boats and no materials to build
any, the sawmill frozen up and smallpox prevailing. On April ist
the party embarked, and seven days later they landed on the banl<s
of the Muskingum in the forty-five ton galley Adventure (afterward
rechristened the Mayflower), the Adelphia, a three-ton ferry, and
three log canoes. The garrison from Fort Harmar on the western
bank of the river welcomed the home-makers. Lands were cleared;
a hundred acres were planted with corn ; the site was selected for
the town thirty feet above the Muskingum, on the eastern side of
that stream at its junction with the Ohio, where once the Mound
Builders had an arrow factory. The name Marietta was chosen
as a compliment to Marie Antoinette, the gracious friend of the
Colonies.
On the gth of July Governor St. Clair arrived at the capital.
It was a great day for the new colony. The Revolutionary veteran,
General Harmar, and his handful of soldiers from the fort were
drawn up in line; Rufus Putnam, surveyor, engineer and soldier,
was there with Judge Varnum. Gov. Arthur St. Clair was accom-
panied by Judge Parsons and Secretary Sargent. They advanced
to the Campus Martins, where the secretary read the ordinance and
the commissions of the officers, and the governor made an address.
Governor St. Clair was born in Caithness, of an ancient Scotch
family ; the early death of his father had left him to the care of
his mother, and after a course of study at the University of Edin-
burgh and a short indenture as a student of medicine, at the age of
twenty-three, he was commissioned an ensign in the Royal Ameri-
cans, along with Henry Bouquet and Haldimand. He was with
General Amherst at the siege of Louisburg; on the Plains of Abra-
ham, he caught up the colors from the hand of their dying de-
fender and bore them where the battle raged fiercest. After the
war he married in Boston Phoebe Bayard, the niece of Gov. James
Bowdoin.'
St. Clair purchased in the Ligonier Valley a large estate to add
to the lands he had located under the king's grant, and there settled.
" The Louisa St. Clair Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolu-
tion in Detroit is named for Mrs. St. Clair; and the Pitts family is among
the descendants of Bowdoin.
240 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
He became a state surveyor, a justice of the court of quarter-
sessions, a member of the proprietary, and afterwards recorder of
deeds, clerk of the orphans' court, and prothonotary. At the out-
break of the Revolution, St. Clair acted as secretary at the Indian
council at F"ort Pitt, and engaged between four and five hundred
young men for an expedition against Detroit, but was told that
Arnold would soon capture Quebec, and Detroit would fall with the
capital, so the expedition would be unnecessary. In December, 1775,
President Hancock instructed him to raise a regiment and start for
Quebec ; he arrived in time to co\er Arnold's retreat. Elected a
brigadier by Congress, St. Clair joined Washington on his retreat
through New Jersey, and until the close of the Revolution was an
active, faithful and brilliant commander. Returning to civil life
impoverished, he was chosen to the Continental Congress, over the
last session of which he presided.
Winthrop Sargent was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts ; he
graduated from Harvard College, served through the Revolution
as captain of artillery and as major on staff duty. He surveyed one
of the Seven Ranges laid out in 1786 by order of Congress. Judge
Samuel Holden Parsons was a Harvard graduate, and had seen dis-
tinguished service in the Revolution, rising to the grade of major-
general. Unfortunately he was drowned the next year at the rapids
of the Big Beaver. James M. \'arnum was a brigadier-general at
twenty-eight, a member of the Continental Congress at thirty-one,
and a judge at thirty-nine, and was one of the directors of the
company during the remaining six months of his life. Rufus Put-
nam succeeded \"arnum, serving until 1796, when he was made
surveyor-general, and was succeeded by Joseph Gillman, of Point
Harmar. Parsons was succeeded by George Turner, who resigned
in 1796, Return lonathan Meigs succeeding him. No other changes
were made before Ohio became a state.
CHAPTER XIV
MICHIGAN POSTS SURRENDERED BY THE ENGLISH
In January, 1789, Governor St. Clair negotiated with the Indians
the treaty of Fort Harmar, by which the Lake Indians ratified the
treaty of Fort JMcIntosh of 1785, by the terms of which the Indians
kept the countr>' south of Lake Erie, from the Cuyahoga to the
Miami, the Indians retaining the right of hunting throughout the
entire country north of the Ohio, and the Americans reserving sites
for trading posts within the Indian reservatipn. The lands along the
west bank of the Detroit, and a tract twelve miles square at Michili-
mackinac were granted to the Americans. A copy of this treaty
having fallen into Lord Dorchester's hands, he immediately com-
municated its provisions to Lord Sidney, with the information that
those Indian nations not parties to the treaty "seem now determined
to remove and prevent all American settlements northwest of the
Ohio." A party of ^^'abash and Miami Indians appeared at Detroit
to present the war-pipe to the commanding officer, but were pre-
vented by McKee, who convinced the chiefs of the impropriety of
such action. 1
Dorchester viewed with apprehension the efforts of St. Clair and
Congress to gain control over the Indians. Particularly he was
annoyed by the gathering of a large body of troops on the Ohio.
"The pretence to the public," he wrote to Sidney, "is to repel the
Indians ; but those who must know better and see that an Indian
war does not require so great a force, nor that very large propor-
tion of artillery, are given to understand that part of these forces
are to take possession of the frontier, as settled by treaty, to seize
the posts and secure the fur trade ; a more secret motive, perhaps.
is to reduce the state governments and crush all internal opposition."
Dorchester admitted that Detroit could be defended only against
Indians, and must depend on their fidelity, together with that of the
militia, and on the ability of the commandant ; and that Michili-
mackinac could keep out only Indians. -
1 "Haldimand Papers." Dorchester to Sidney, June .25, 1789.
- "Haldimand Papers." Dorchester to Sidney, March 8, 1790.
Vol.1 —16
241
242 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Ihe British had no intention of yielding the posts immediately ;
but in preparation for ultimate surrender, Capt. Gother Mann, of
the Royal Engineers, made a tour of the lakes during 1788, for the
purpose of an examination of forts and channels. At Detroit he
found Fort Lernoult in a fair state of repair, the inhabitants having
furnished the pickets for a new palisade about the town ; the navy
yard, being beyond the defenses, was hopelessly open to attack.
He selected as the site for the new post a location opposite Bois
Blanc, whence the guns could command the channels on either side
of that island. Sinclair's fort on the Island of Michilimackinac he
found on too extensive a scale for defense against the Indians, and
"far too little against cannon, and most of that ill-judged." At
Sault Ste. Marie the lands on the American side of the line were the
better; but for business purposes there was room enough on the
eastern shore : and, besides, the whitefish resorted to that bank, and
the fish-packing business was already extensive. Further, he recom-
mended vessels of fifty tons for the navigation of the upper lakes,
that limit being fixed because of the bars at the mouth of the St.
Clair River and the rapids at the head of that stream ; and he advised
against the practice of building flat-bottomed vessels for lake navi-
gation. ^
In June, 1790, infonnation came to Detroit that the Indians on
the Ohio had burned a white prisoner. That same month eight
Americans who had escaped from the Indians, and in September
thirteen prisoners brought to Detroit by the Ohio raiders, were sent
back to Fort Pitt by the British.* So aggressive had these Indian
attacks become that President Washington decided upon strong
measures. A call was made on Kentucky for 1,000 and on Pennsyl-
vania for 500 militia to join the regulars at Fort Washington on the
present site of Cincinnati. During the latter part of September,
1790, the militia came in — old and infirm men and even boys, substi-
tutes, many of whom had never fired a gun. They brought guns
without locks and barrels without stocks. There were the disputes
as to who should command the Kentuckians, but these were calmed
by placing the popular Colonel Trotter over the Kentuckians and
giving to Colonel Hardin the command of all the militia. On the
3d of October the march to the Miami villages began. General
Harmar seems not to have been negligent, but the pack-horses
3 "Gother Mann to Dorchester," December 6, 1788. Mich. P. S: H. Col.,
Vol. XII. p. 35-
* "Haldimand Papers." Dorchester to Grenville, June 21 and September
25, 1790.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 243
escaped, and general inefficiency begot demoralization. The only
reliable force was the little band of 320 regulars ^ of whom the
militia were jealous." On October 13th a captured Shawanese
Indian reported that the savages were nowhere in force; thereupon
Colonel Hardin was sent with 600 hundred light troops to the Miami
villages on the present site of Fort Wayne to surprise the Indians.
He found only deserted and still burning towns. Colonel Trotter,
with a small force, was sent out for a three days' scout, but he
returned the first evening. Then Hardin, having obtained permis-
sion to discover the enemy, proceeded carelessly. Suddenly he came
upon a party of savages; the militia broke and fled at the first fire.
The regulars stood their ground, and twenty-four of them, with
the nine militiamen, were killed. Of the retreating militia some
never stopped until they had crossed the Ohio River." The army
burned the houses in five villages and corn to the amount of 20,000
bushels and then began its homeward march. General Harmar
detached 400 choice men to return to the burned villages in the hope
of finding some Indians. Major Wyllys was absolutely unable to
control the militia, who ran ofif in pursuit of small parties of the
enemy and left the brave major and his band of regulars to meet
death at the hands of Little Turtle's band. The best of the militia
and of the regulars were now killed, and nothing was left but to
struggle homeward. Probably not more than one hundred and fifty
Indians were engaged in the rout of an army of 1,453 men.^ Harmar
called the expedition a success, but naturally the Indians were
encouraged to renewed aggressions on the white settlements along
the Ohio.
In a letter to Brant dated February 22, 1791, Sir John Johnson
writes that he and Lord Dorchester held that "the Americans had no
claim to that part of the country beyond the line established in 1765,
at Fort Stanwix, between the Indians and the governors and agents
of all the provinces interested, and including the sales made since
" "American State Papers, Military Affairs," Vol. I, Proceedings of the
Court of Inquiry on General Harmar.
^"Perkins' Western Annals" (Cincinnati, 1846), p. 342.
' Lieutenant Armstrong says that Hardin ran with tlie militia. Hardin
was personally a brave man, but was not a good officer.
* Testimony of Lieutenant Denny. It appears from a letter to Brant,
quoted by Smith ("Life of Joseph Brant," Vol. II, p. 294), that the Indian
loss was between fifteen and twenty. The Americans lost three regular and
ten mihtia officers, and about five hundred men. Little Turtle was a Miami
chief, about thirty-eight years old at this time. He was the leader of the
Indian force. Blue Jacket, a Shawnee chief, was joint commander.
244 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
the war." Not being able to afford the Indians assistance in arms,
Johnson thought the British should offer their mediation to bring
about peace on terms just and honorable." Lord Dorchester told a
deputation of Indians that the King of England had never given
away the Indian lands, because he never possessed them; that the
posts would be retained only until England and America could adjust
their differences, and that although the Indians had the friendship
and good-will of the English, the latter could not embark in war,
but only could defend themselves if attacked. ^'^
Chagrined and humiliated by Harmar's failure, Washington
called Governor St. Clair to Philadelphia, placed him in command
of an army to be organized for a new expedition, and, after
impressing upon him the peril of ambush and surprise, sent him
against the hostile tribes. On March 3, 1791, Congress authorized
the formation of the Second Regiment of Infantry and gave the
President the power to enlist not more than two thousand men for
six months, thus providing for an army of 4,128 non-commissioned
officers and privates. A portion of this force was needed for gar-
rison duty at Venango and Forts Harmar, Washington, Knox and
Steuben ; with the remainder General St. Clair was ordered to march
to the site of the Miami towns and there establish himself. General
St. Clair being absent on recrviiting duty, the command devolved on
Major Hamtramck. October 4th the advance movement began
under the command of General Butler. It was an army "picked up
and recruited from the off-scourings of large towns and cities ;
enervated by idleness, debaucheries, and every species of vice; it
was impossible they could have been made competent to the arduous
duties of Indian warfare." ^1 The powder was bad, and "the mili-
tary stores were sent on in the most infamous order " All these
matters so worried St. Clair that he was worn out at the beginning
of the campaign.
On October 8, when twenty-four miles from Fort \\'ashington,
the flank guards fired unsuccessfully upon an Indian ; four days
later they killed another savage and secured a quantity of peltry and
^ Stone's "Life of Joseph Brant," Vol. II, p. 297.
^^ Stone's "Life of Joseph Brant," Vol. IT, p. 299.
'■> Diary of Col. Winthrop Sargent, adjutant general of the United States
army during the campaign of 1791. Colonel Sargent's diary was printed in
1851 in an edition of forty-six copies, with two plates, for George Wymberley-
Jones. The diary was then in the possession of Winthrop Sargent, of Phila-
delphia, a grandson of Colonel Sargent. The above quotations are made
from the copy presented to Peter Force by Mr. Wymberley-Jones, and now
in the Library of Congress.
TOCMDLi
roTHE GLnizE. \70 MILLS
OtnlZC TO COL n^l^LLi 4-0
roRT )ml JErFLR60N
Q if- 1
COLONEL OFFICL RLCORDS
PflOt ^^^
Map of Harmer, St. Clair and Wayne Campaigns
246 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
four or five horses. By the 17th but one day's rations and one day's
allowance of liquor remained and the forage was nearly exhausted.
The militia were discontended and insubordinate, and, as the tenns
of their enlistment were about to expire, they were beginning to
prepare to go home. Heavy rains and snow flurries added to the
discomfort. The troops were put first upon half rations and after-
wards upon quarter rations of bread, and 350 pack-horses with a
company of riflemen were sent back for supplies. On the 23d three
soldiers were executed, one for shooting an officer and two for
desertion.
On November 3d, the anny having proceeded ninety-seven miles
from Cincinnati, camp was made "on a very handsome piece of
rising ground." The army was in two lines, with four pieces of
artillery in the center of each : Faulkner's company of riflemen upon
the right flank with one troop of horse, and another troop of horse
on the left. The militia encamped across the stream, 300 yards
away. A chain of sentinels around the camp, at a distance of fifty
paces apart, constituted the principal security against surprise. At
midnight a small force sent out to prevent the horses from being
stolen was driven in by the Indians, but no report was made to head-
quarters. Occasional shots exchanged during the night led St. Clair
to keep the men under arms, and on the morning of the 4th the
army was turned out earlier than usual. A half hour before sunrise
came the Indian yell, like "an infinitude of horse-bells," followed by
an attack on the militia. The levies made no defense, but indulged
in "a most ignominious flight." Dashing into the camp of the regu-
lars, the militia threw the forming battalions into confusion; the
fugitives even passed through the second line and were checked only
by the Indians completely surrounding the camp. The Indians
seemed determined to enter the camp, but the array of fixed
Taayonets cooled their ardor and they dropped behind logs and bushes,
and at a distance of seventy yards began to pour a deadly fire into
the closed ranks of the soldiers. Probably' there were 1,500 Indians,
while St. Clair's total army, aside from the militia of 1,380, not
more than 1,080 — and those raw and undisciplined troops — were
available for battle. For two hours men who never, before had fired
even a blank cartridge stood up against the unseen foe. Butler's
Battalion charged with spirit, and "the artillery, if not well ser^•ed,
was bravely fought, every officer and more than two-thirds of the
men being killed or wounded. The Second Regiment made three
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 247
charges, until but two officers were left alive, and one of the two
was wounded. 1-
The savages rushed on the artillery, and twice gained the camp,
plundering the tents and scalping the dead and dying; but both
times they were driven back. The loss of officers demoralized the
men, so that they huddled together and became targets for the
savages, and neither threats nor entreaties cotild restore order. St.
Clair, cool and brave in disaster, ordered a retreat. The Indian
mania for plunder permitted a remnant to live to tell the tale of
disaster. Officers and men threw away arms, ammunition and
accoutrements in their flight, and that evening the gates of Fort
Jefiferson, twenty-nine miles from the battlefield, opened to the
fugitives. On the 8th, what was left of the army reached
Cincinnati. 1^
Three months after St. Clair's defeat. Colonel Sargent visited
the battlefield. Although twenty inches of snow covered the ground,
at every tread of his horse's feet dead and mangled bodies were
brought to view ; every twig and bush was cut down by bullets, and
the trees were riddled by Indian shot, while the fire of the troops,
even of the artillery, appeared to have been inefl^ective. So far as
possible, the mutilated bodies were suitably buried in the frozen
ground ; and several tons of iron work was recovered, but the
artillery had disappeared.
The news of St. Clair's defeat reached the President one
December day while he was at dinner. The messenger would give
his despatches only to the commander-in-chief ; the President read
their purport, then quietly returned to the table and afterwards
1- The regulars and levies lost of men and non-commissioned officers 550
killed and 200 wounded; of officers, 31 killed and 24 wounded, out of 95.
The militia had 29 officers and 290 men ; their loss was 4 officers killed and S
wounded, 38 men killed and 29 wounded, besides 14 camp men killed and 13
wounded. The Indians, led by Blue Jacket and Little Turtle, numbered
1,500, of whom but 30 were killed.
1^ See "Causes of the Failure of the E.xpedition against the Indians, in
1791, under the Command of General St. Clair," American State Papers,
Vol. I, "Military Affairs," p. 63. Mr. Fitzsimons, after an inquiry by the
House of Representatives, reported the causes of failure to be: Delays in
furnishing material, mismanagement and neglect in the quartermaster's and
contractor's departments, lateness of the season, and want of discipline and
experience of the troops. St. Clair was completely exonerated, "as his con-
duct in all the preparatory arrangements was marked with peculiar ability
and zeal, so his conduct during the action furnished strong testimonies of his
coolness and intrepidity." See report of Mr. Giles, Second Congress, second
session.
248 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
went through the reception appointed for the evening; and, after
all was over, Washington poured forth a torrent of rage and
passion. On this occasion he swore. But he determined that St.
Clair should not be prejudiced, but should have justice.^^
Washington now selected for general of the army Anthony-
Wayne, the grandson of a Yorkshireman who had removed first
to County Wicklow, in Ireland (where he fought gallantly at the
battle of the Boyne), and then had come with the Scotch-Irish to
settle in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Wayne inherited from his
Indian-fighting father a love of arms. Entering the Revolutionary
service as a colonel in the Pennsylvania line, Wayne and St. Clair
were fellow officers in the unsuccessful Canada expedition. At
Brandywine, Germantown, Moimiouth and Stony Point, Wayne led
his Pennsylvania troops with gallantry ; and after Yorktown he won
a major-general's commission in Greene's campaign in Georgia,
from which state he was sent to Congress. His credentials were
not approved by the House of Representatives, and in April, 1792,
at the end of his unsuccessful contest for a seat in the House,
Washington appointed him to command the army. Wayne's task
was to retrieve the failure of St. Clair. The first necessity was
to get into shape the enlarged army that Congress had authorized
for the campaign. In Alay, 1793, Wayne with his legion made
camp at Fort Washington, and there kept up the daily drills while
awaiting the results of the council being held with the Indians, at
the mouth of the Detroit River.
Washington early in 1793 appointed as commissioners to treat
with the Lake Indians Gen. Benjamin Lincoln of Massachusetts,
who had been Secretary of War; Beverly Randolph, of Virginia;
and Col. Timothy Pickering, then Postmaster-General, and shortly
afterwards Secretary of War. After a private council with the
British agents Colonel Brant,'' on behalf of the confederated
Indians, sent to the commissioners an ultimatum stating that the
southern boundary of the Indian lands must be the Ohio River. To
this the commissioners made reply that it was impossible to fix the
■* Irving's "Life of George Washington," Vol. V, p. 103. Ex-President
Taft tells a story from John Adams' Diary to the effect that Washington, on
one occasion, visited a committee of Congress with John Jay ; but when the
members of the committee insisted on doing all the talking, he left in a huff,
saying as he went, "I'll be d d if I ever come to Congress again !" "This
incident," said Mr. Taft, "shows that Washington was far from being the
steel-plate engraving wliich, as Robert IngersoU used to say, history had
made him out."
15 "Canadian Archives." Brant to Colonel McKee, May 17, 1793.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN '249
Ohio as the boundary, and that the negotiation was therefore at an
end.^'' The western nations informed Sinicoe that the Americans
insisted on keeping the whole Indian country, and in payment
offered money, which was useless to Indians. "We expect," they
said,^" "to be forced again to defend ourselves and our country,
and we look up to the great God, who is a witness of all that passes
here, for His pity and His help." McKee professed that he did all
he could to bring about a better result ; and that the western Indians
would not agree with the Six Nations, but insisted on the (Jliio
boundary. "The nations that have not sold," he says, "will enjoy
without dispute the lands belonging to them; these will form an
extensive barrier between the British and American territory.
Although I have used no influence to prevent a peace, which would
have afforded me gratification, I expect to be blamed by the male\o-
lent." i«
In September Secretary Knox wrote to Wayne : "Every offer
has been made to obtain peace by milder terms than the sword, but
the eft'orts have failed under circumstances that leave us nothing
to expect but war." The Indians had stipulated for the Ohio
boundary line, and that was an impossibility. Wayne replied from
Camp Hobson's Choice: "I will advance tomorrow with the force
I have." On October 13th the army encamped on a branch of the
Miami eighty miles north of Cincinnati, a spot to which Wayne
gave the name Greenville, in honor of his commander and friend
in the South Carolina campaign. There he passed the winter, send-
ing forward a detachment to build Fort Recovery upon St. Clair's
old battlefield.
Secretary Knox instructed Wayne that if it should be found
necessary to dislodge the British garrison in Governor Simcoe's
fort at the Rapids of the Miami, he was authorized in the name
of the President to do so. On the 30th of June, 1794, a force of
riflemen was attacked suddenly under the guns of Fort Recovery,
but the savages were beaten off. Wayne's army, on August Sth,
advanced to the Auglaize to find that the Indians had abandoned
their settlements and towns. Thus Wayne gained possession of
"the grand emporium of the hostile Indians of the West," with its
very extensive and well cultivated fields and gardens. At the
confluence of the two rivers, Wayne set a strong stockade fort
bastioned with four good block-houses and called it Fort Defiance.
i« "Canadian Archives," 1891, p. 54.
1- Ibid., 1891, p. 55-
18 Ibid., 1891, p. SS.
250 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Thence he sent to the Delaware*, Shawanese, Alianiis, and Wyan-
dottes and their allies an offer of a lasting peace, which "should
restore them to their lands and villages and preserve their helpless
and distressed women and children from hunger and famine."
Wayne's offer met an evasive response. On August 20th the
Indians, assembled near the British post on McKee's farm at the
Falls of the ]Miami. met the American army. The ground was
covered with fallen timber, which gave the Indians a great ad-
vantage; and the savages attempted to turn the American flank.
::- %' ':<:l
m
1^'
Friii .: by Robert Hopkin
Old H.\mtu.\mck House
Wayne ordered his front line to charge with trailed arms, to arouse
the Indians from their coverts at the point of the bayonet, and to
deliver a close and well-directed tire on their backs, followed by a
brisk charge, so as not to let them load again. So sharp was this
attack and so precipitate the retreat of the savages that the detach-
ments sent to turn the flanks of the Indians could not catch up
with their comrades.
The Battle of Fallen Timbers is one of the most notable vic-
tories in the annals of border warfare : and the result placed
Wayne's name among the few successful Indian lighters in Amer-
ican history. The Indians were led by Little Turtle and Blue
Jacket, who had won success against both Harmar and St. Clair.
Little Turtle, however, fought Wayne against his own better judg-
ment. He had watched the thoroughness of that general's prepara-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 251
tions, the deliberation with which he moved, and the care he took
to prevent surprise. In vain, however, were his counsels to make
peace with "the chief who never sleeps."
For the benefit of the Britisli garrison Wayne burned the stand-
ing corn, and the farm buildings of the British Indian agent,
Alexander McKee, "the principal stimulator of the war now existing
between the United States and the savages," as Wayne characterized
him. The British commandant, Maj. William Campbell, protested
against Wayne encamping "almost within reach of the guns of
this fort;" to which he replied that his "fullest and most satisfactory
answer was announced to you from the muzzle of my small-arms
yesterday morning in the action against the hordes of savages in
the vicinity of your post, which terminated gloriously for the
Americans ; but had it continued until the Indians, etc., were drove
under the influence of the post and guns you mention, they wotild
not much have impeded the progress of the victorious army under
my command ; as no such post was established at the commencement
of the present war between the Indians and the United States."
After Wayne had ordered the British commandant to withdraw
from that post, the American army, its purpose accomplished, began
its return march.
General Wayne retired to Greenville. There he was visited by
chiefs and warriors, to whom he explained that the United States,
having conquered Great Britain, were entitled to the possession
of the Lake posts ; and that the new nation was anxious to make
peace with the Indians, to protect them in the possession of abundant
hunting-grounds and to compensate them for the lands needed by
the white settlers. The ludians, who had lost a number of their
most warlike chiefs, were incensed at the action of the British,
both in closing Fort Miamis to them at the time of their great
defeat, and also in not coming to their aid with the soldiers from
Detroit, as McKee and the other agents had promised. In the midst
of these negotiations a copy of the Jay Treaty arrived, and when
the Indians found that in that docimient a date was fixed for the
surrender of the posts they no longer hesitated. On August 3,
179s, General Wayne announced that he had concluded "a permanent
peace" with the ten great nations dwelling within the Northwest ;
and nothing now remained but to await the day set for the delivery
of the posts. 18
1° The full proceedings of the Treaty of Greenville are given in Jacob
Burnet's "Notes on the Early Settlement of the N'orthwestern Territory"
(Cincinnati, 1847), Chapters IX to XII.
252 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Little Turtle, waiting for the other chiefs to sign the treaty,
walked up to make his signature, exclaiming, 'T am the last to
sign : I will be the last to break this treaty." The Americans had
good cause to remember and be thankful for his determination.
In 1797 he visited the Great Father at Philadelphia. There \\'ash-
ington presented him to Count A'olney and General Kosciusko, and
the latter gave him a pair of his own pistols beautifully mounted
with silver. Tecumseh failed to draw him into the Indian uprisings
that marked the beginnings of the War of 1812; he died at Fort
Wayne, on July 14, 1812, at the age of sixty years. His name
( Meshekunnoghuoh ) , with as many variations as are credited to
Shakespeare, is to be found on the treaties made at Greenville,
Fort Wayne and \'incennes, the latter made in 1809.
While General Wayne was preparing for his campaign against
the Indians, the Chief Justice of the United States was in London
as a special envoy from President Washington to compose the
differences between the two countries. There were aggravations on
both sides. The French Revolution was shaking every government
in the civilized world, and in the United States a party espoused
the cause of France. England had joined Austria, Russia, Spain
and Sardinia in a war with France, and in her efforts to crush her
rival seized American ships trading to French ports. Eleven years
had elapsed since the treaty of 1783, and still the posts were not
surrendered. On the other hand the states were preventing the
collection of debts owed to English merchants.
The treaty provided that the British spoliations on American
commerce, the debts due to English creditors and for any reason
not collectable in the couns, and the damages due England on
account of depredations of French cruisers fitted out in the United
States, were to be settled by commissions ; the negroes carried
away by the British in 1783 were not to be paid for; the North-
western posts were to be surrendered on or before June i, 1797, ^'^*-
there was to be free intercourse across the border, and free naviga-
tion of the Mississippi ; the duties on goods were to be uniform
with those paid at the sea-coast ports of entry ; all ambiguities in the
boundaries were to be removed by a commission of survey. This
treaty was ratified by the Senate, and the House, on April 30,
1796, agreed to the appropriation required to carry out its provisions,
in spite of the opposition of Madison and Gallatin.-"
"'> For a discussion of the treaty, see Dr. James B. Angell's article on the
"Diplomacy of the United States" in Vol. VII of "The Narrative and Critical
History of the United States": also William Jay's "Life of John Jay" (New
York, 1833), Vol. I, p. 322 et seq.
254 HISTORY OF :^IICHIGAX
Xo sooner had the ratifications of Jay's Treaty been exchanged
than, on May 27th, General A\'ilkinson, in command of Wayne's
army at Greenville, sent his aide-de-camp. Captain Schaumburg,
to Colonel England at Detroit to demand the surrender of the posts
under his command. Colonel England regretted that a lack of
orders from Lord Dorchester would prevent him from complying
with General Wilkinson's request, and the condition of the new
post at the mouth of the Detroit was not sufficiently advanced to
enable him to name a date for evacuation. -^
In June, 1796, Captain Lewis, despatched from Philadelphia on
the day that the Senate took final action on the Jay Treaty, presented
to Lord Dorchester a demand for the surrender of the Northwest
posts, and this time the long delayed orders were given.
Captain Lewis brought to Secretary McHenry the British com-
mander-in-chief's orders addressed to the officers commanding the
guard left for the protection of the works and buildings at Forts
Miami, Detroit and Michilimackinac 22 and commanding each to
vacate his post "to such officer belonging to the forces of the L'nited
States as shall produce this authority to you for that purpose, who
will precede the troops destined to garrison it by one day, in order
that he may have time to view the nature and condition of the works
and buildings." Congratulating the President on "the event which
adds a large tract of country and wide resources to the territory of
the United States," the secretary immediately despatched a special
messenger to put General Wayne in possession of the documents.
The orders for the surrender of Fort Miami and of Detroit
were sent from General Wilkinson at Greenville to Lieutenant-
Colonel Hamtramck, at Camp Deposit. Sending Capt. Henr>' De
Butts to Detroit to purchase a vessel, Hamtramck himself, on June
nth, "actually displayed the American stripes at Fort Miami and
embarked the same day with about four hundred men for Detroit." -^
Captain Moses Porter,^* despatched by Hamtramck with a
detachment of artiller>' and infantn,', comprising sixty-five men,
embarked at the mouth of the Maumee in a schooner of fifty tons
burden and in a dozen bateaux. Entering the Detroit River on
the nth of July. 1796, they found clustered about the new British
21 "Mich. P. and H. Coll.," "V^ol. XII, p. 220.
=- State Department MSS.. Adjutant General George Beckvvith's letter of
June 2, 1796.
23 American Telegraph. August 24, 1796. Letter of Gen. James Wilkinson
to the secretary of war. dated Greenville. July 16, 1796.
21 "American Pioneer." Vol. II. p. 394- Hamtramck to Wilkinson.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 255
post at Amherstburg about twenty houses, in all stages of com-
pletion. The region was called the District of Maiden, and the
place was known as "the new British post and town near the
Island of Bois Blanc." The most considerable establishment be-
longed to the Indian agent. Captain Elliott ; the lands, comprising
2,000 acres, were cultivated in a manner that would not have been
"thought meanly of even in England ;" the house, standing about
two hundred yards from the river, commanded a view of Lake
Erie. At the edge of the water stood the council-house. On Bois
Blanc were encamped hundreds of Indians. As the flotilla came
within four miles of Detroit the houses became numerous. Sailing
up to the wooden wharf, the detachment disembarked and marched
up one of the narrow-unpaved streets, with its footway of squared
logs laid transversely : thence through one of the two gates on the
water side of the strong stockade, and through the town and up the
slope to Fort Lernoult, with its bastioned comers from which the
cannon had been removed to supply the new post at Maiden.-^
As the troops passed up the streets crowds of bare-footed French-
men greeted them, and dark-eyed French girls gazed demurely from
under the wide brims of their straw hats, anxious to discover
whether the homespun-clad newcomers were fitted to take the
place of the gorgeous-hued soldiers and sailors whom the fate of
war had relegated to the mouth of the river. Old squaws leading
their daughters leered at the soldiers ; chiefs and warriors of many
tribes, hideous in their paint and more hideous in the wounds
received in drunken orgies, moved about with what dignity they
could command, or sat in the sun smoking their stone pipes, waiting
for General Wabang (General To-morrow) to distribute the presents
he was ever promising and never bestowing.
At noon ^6 the last of Colonel England's troops made their way
to the ramparts. The Americans ran up the Stars and Stripes, and
a cheer went up from the little band of United States soldiers.
Standing among the crowd that watched the change of flags was
-5 Moore's "Northwest Under Three Flags," p. zy^i-
=" CoUimbian Sentinel, Boston. August 24. 1796; extract from a letter of
Capt. Henry de Butts to the secretary of war, dated Detroit, July 14th : "It
is with great pleasure I do myself the honor of announcing to you that on
the iith instant, about noon, the flag of the United States was displayed on
the ramparts of Detroit, a few minutes after the works were evacuated by
Colonel England and the British troops under his command, and with addi-
tional satisfaction I inform you that the exchange was effected with much
propriety and harmony by both parties."
Detroit in 1796.
A. Fort Ponchartrain.
B. Powder Magazine.
C. King's Pabct.
D. Guard House.
E. Jail.
. F. Catholic Church.
~ G, Fire itirted burning the
town June XI, iSos.
H. Birth place of Rev. l^on-
ard Bacon, DX)., of New
, Haven, Conn.
I •••••- PtescDCStnets,
I
From I ho Clarence M. Burton Collection
Detroit at the Time of American Occup-\tion, 1796
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 257
Reynolds,-" who lived to see and to rejoice in the day, sixteen years
distant, when the flag of England again for a few months waved
over that town and people. Detroit was a small part English, the
greater part French ; its relationships of every kind — social, com-
mercial, religious — were essentially un-American.
On July lOth fifty-eight of the merchants, traders and inhabitants
of Michilimackinac united in an address to the retiring British
commandant, Maj. William Doyle, commending him for the im-
partial manner in which he had supported and protected the trade
of that place, and for the "invariable propriety" with which he had
acted as magistrate. He replied acknowledging for himself and his
officers the uniform support they had always experienced from the
signers of the address, and wishing every prosperity to the Canadian
fur-trade.-^ The actual evacuation of the post took place early in
August.-^ Colonel England was a very stout man and after his
return to his own country his size attracted the attention of the
Prince of Wales, who inquired the name of the fat officer. When
told that he was Colonel England, the Prince remarked that he
thought he must be Great Britain, at least.
Col. John Francis Hamtramck, with his command arrived at
Detroit on the 13th of July. Hamtramck was born in Canada and
was one of some seven hundred American sympathizers who crossed
the border to join the Revolutionary forces. Entering the army
at the age of twenty-one, he won a captaincy during the war; on
the organization of the First Regiment of Infantry he was appointed
a lieutenant-colonel by W'ashington in 1790, and as colonel he was
with both St. Clair and Wayne in their Indian campaigns, having
command of the left wing of the army at the battle of Fallen
Timbers. At Detroit he entered at once into the spirit of the
situation, and became popular both with his command and with
the towns-people. With his wife he occupied a comfortable house
in the town, and until his death in 1803, at the early age of forty-
=' 1812; "The War and Its Moral," by William CoflSn (Montreal, 1864),
.p. 196. Reynolds was born in Detroit in 1781 ; his father was the British com-
missary. To Coffin, who visited him at his home in Maiden in 1863, he said:
"I saw the British flag hauled down from the flag-staflf of Detroit at noon,
nth July, 1796. I saw it again hoisted by Brock, at noon of Sunday. i6th
/Lugust, 1812."
-s Quebec Gazette, A^igust 25, 1796. A similar address, datedjuly 6th, was
made to Colonel England by the people of Detroit, and was replied to by him.
^s* Albany Gazette, September 30, 1796: "A letter from Detroit. August
15th, says that Michilimackinac is evacuated by the British, and will in the
coming two weeks be occupied by our troops."
Vol. 1—17
258 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
eight years, he enjoyed a popularity that has kept his memory green
to this day .3"
On August 13th General Wayne reached Detroit to find that
before his coming and without orders from Congress, the secretary
of the Northwest Territory, Winthrop Sargent, had visited Detroit
and erected the County of Wayne. In the absence from the Terri-
tory of Governor St. Clair, Sargent, as acting governor, had started
for the North, and on August 15th had drawn the boundaries
of \\ ayne County, from the present site of Cleveland, south to
Fort Laurens, thence westward through Fort Wayne and the
Chicago portage, thence north through the sources of the streams
flowing westerly into Lake Michigan, to the national boundary-line
north of Lake Superior. Making Peter Audrain prothonotar}' at
Detroit, Sargent continued his way to Michilimackinac, where he
established the civil authority of the Government. St. Clair con-
tented himself by intimating surprise that he had been forestalled
in making the journey to the northern limits of his government. ^^
General Wayne was flattered by his reception on the part of
both the garrison and the inhabitants of Detroit. He was met by
the chiefs and warriors of numerous tribes of Indians, who wel-
comed their "father" by volleys of musketry, yells, shakes of the
^".Albany Gazette, September 9, 1796. The birthplace of Hamtramck is
unknown. He was born .-Xugust 14, 1754, and died .^pril 11, 1803, leaving an
estate valued at $2,138.47, which descended to his widow, Rebecca Hamtramck.
His home was above the old City of Detroit, in the suburb afterwards known
as Hamtramck. His body was buried in St. Anne's Cemetery, then occupying
the block on Jefferson Avenue, bounded by JefTerson Avenue, Larned, Shelby,
and Griswold streets, whence it fras removed in 1817 to the new St. Anne's
grounds on Congress Street, and in 1866 was removed a second time to Mount
Elliott Cemetery. The stone erected by the officers of his command bears
record that, "true patriotism and a zealous attachment to rational liberty,
joined to a laudable ambition, led him into military service at an early period
of his life. He was a soldier before he was a man; he was an active partici-
pator in all the dangers, difficulties, and honors of the Revolutionary war;
and his heroism and uniform good conduct procured him the attentions and
personal thanks of the immortal Washington. The United Stales in him has
lost a valuable officer and a good citizen, and society a useful and pleasant
member: to his family the loss is incalculable; and his friends will never for-
get the memorj- of Hamtramck." — See "Michigan Pioneer and Historical Col-
lections." Vol. XHI, p. 493; and an address, on the occasion of marking the
grave of Col. John Francis Hamtramck. at Mount Elliott Cemetery. Detroit,
Michigan, by the Sons of the American Revolution. October 18. 1877. deliv-
ered by Mr. R. Storrs Willis.
21 "St. Clair's Papers." St. Clair to James Ross, September 6, 1796;
St. Clair to Roger Wolcott, -August 30, 1796.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 259
hand, and other demonstrations of joy, "agreeably to the customs
and usages of those hardy sons of this wilderness." He found
much to admire in a town that had "formerly filled an interesting
place in history." "Here, in the centre of the wilderness of the
West," he writes, "you see ships or large vessels of war and mer-
chantmen lying at the wharves or sailing up and down a pleasant
river of about one mile wide, as if passing and repassing to and from
the ocean. The town itself is a crowded mass of frame or wooden
buildings, generally from one to two and a half stories high, many of
them well finished and furnished, and inhabited by people of almost
all nations. There are a number of wealthy and well-informed mer-
chants and gentlemen, and elegant, fashionable and well-bred women.
The streets are so narrow as scarely to admit two carriages to pass
each other. The whole place is surrounded with high pickets, with
bastions at proper distances, which are endowed with artillery;
within the pickets is also a kind of citadel, which serves for barracks,
stores, and for part of the troops. You enter the town by one main
street, which runs parallel with the river and has a gate at each
end, defended by a block-house ; these gates are shut every night at
sunset, and are not opened again until sunrise, in order to protect
the citizens and their property from insult or injury by drunken,
disorderly, or hostile Indians. At particular seasons large bodies
of Indians assemble at this place. Upon my arrival I found about
twelve hundred, whom we have been obliged to feed from principles
of humanity as well as policy at this crisis. In the daytime these
Indians appear to be perfectly domesticated, and pass and repass
along the streets in common with the white inhabitants, but regu-
larly retire at retreat-beating without aversion, from long habit.
It is probable that this precaution of clearing the town of the
savages and closing the gates originated from the attempt made by
the Indians to destroy the garrison and place in the year 1763, under
the conduct of the famous chief Pontiac.
"The fort, which has been built since, stands upon an eminence
in the rear of the town and citadel, and commands both, as well
as all the country in its vicinity. It's a regular earthen work,
consisting of four half-bastions with twenty-four platforms and
embrasures suited to heavy artillery, with barracks, bomb-proofs,
stores, etc., surrounded by a wide, deep ditch, with pickets set
perpendicular in the bottom, and a fraise projecting from the beam
of the parapet over the ditch. The whole is encompassed by an
abatis, but now generally in a state of ruin, from the efifect of time
onlv. and not from any wanton destruction ; on the contrary, every
260 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
precaution was used to prevent any injury or damage to the works
or buildings. In fact, all the works and buildings on the American
side of the line of demarcation have been surrendered up by the
several British commandants to the troops of the United States,
agreeably to treaty, and in the most decent, polite, and accommodat-
ing manner, in virtue of the arrangements previously made with
Lord Dorchester.
"This event must afford the highest pleasure and satisfaction to
every friend of government and good order, and in particular to
that great and first of men, the President of the United States,
and I trust it will produce a conviction to the world that the measures
he has uniformly pursued to attain this desirable end were founded
in wisdom, and that the best interests of his country have been
secured by that unshaken firmness, patriotism, and virtue for which
he is universally and justly admired and celebrated; a few Demo-
crats excepted." ^-
General Wayne remained at Detroit until November 17th, when
he set sail for Presque Isle. His gout returned in violent form, and
it was with difficulty that he was transferred to the block-house.
There he remained under the ministrations of Capt. Russell Bissell
and Dr. George Balfour until, on December 15th, death came. A
log block-house, copied from the one Wayne himself had built
there in 1790, marks the spot where he was laid to rest; his remains,
however, were removed in 1809 to the churchyard of St. David's,
at Radnor, Pennsylvania. ^-'^
The surrender of the posts by no means involved the surrender
of the fur-trade. Mackinac was an important station of the North-
west Company of Montreal, and several independent traders were
there ; but on the surrender of Sinclair's Fort the British established
themselves near by, on the Island of St. Joseph, between Lakes
Huron and Superior; and although a number of American traders
came to take the vacant places, the intelligence, the trade connec-
tions, and the capital of an Astor were necessary before competition
with the Montreal merchants could become effective.^* Detroit at
the time of the surrender contained upward of twelve hundred
^- Pennsylvania Historical Society's collections of Wayne MSS. ; Gen.
Anthony Wayne to Isaac Wayne; Detroit, September 10, 1796.
33 Stille's "Life of Wayne," p. 344.
"* For the romantic side of the fur trade at Mackinac, see Constance Feni-
more Woolson's novel, "Anne"; the most charming stories of the lake region
are contained in Miss Woolson's "Castle Nowhere: Lake-country Sketches,"
New York, Harper & Brothers.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 261
people ; but many of the traders removed to the new British post
at the mouth of the river, and many of those who remained hesitated
to become American citizens.
Simon Girty, as an employee of the British Indian Department,
continued to urge the savages to withstand the encroachments of the
Americans on the territory north of the Ohio. Girty continued to
be employed as the King's interpreter ; he had family troubles caused
by his drunkenness; he lived through the War of 1812, but by
reason of blindness he could take no part in the struggle and on
February iS, 1818, he died in the arms of his wife and was buried
on his farm in Maiden. ^^
The British retained command of the Grand Portage of Lake
Superior, and of the Ottawa River route to and from the upper
country ; their new fort at Maiden and the block-house on Bois
Blanc Island commanded the channels of the Detroit River.
2= Butterfield's "Hi.story of the Girtys," p. 322.
CHAPTER XV
MICHIGAN BECOMES A POLITICAL UNIT
The Northwest posts having been surrendered to the Lnited
States, a very large amount of land came into the possession of the
Government. Those were the days of speculation in western lands ;
and quite naturally the opportunity to secure a considerable tract
between Lakes Alichigan and Huron for speculative purposes was
not to be neglected. Ebenezer Allen and Charles Whitney, of \'er-
mont, and Robert Randall, of Philadelphia, arranged with the John
Askins, senior and junior, Jonathan Schieffelin, William and David'
Robertson, Robert Jones, and Richard Patterson, of Detroit, to
obtain from the United States by purchase all the lands now
embraced in the lower peninsula of Michigan. They were prepared
to pay in money from half a million to a million dollars, and they
would take it upon themselves to quiet the Indian title. In order to
smooth the way of the purchase in Congress, they formed a stock-
company, with forty-one shares, five for the Detroit parties, twelve
for the three promoters, and the remainder for members of Con-
gress, who might take their shares in cash, if they so desired. The
scheme was clumsy and the easterners were stupid in handling the
congressional end of it. Consequently the attempt to corn.ipt mem-
bers of Congress was not taken seriously. At the time the countrj'
had no name, the title "Michigan" being of later date.
Whitney first sounded Daniel Buck, a member from his own
State of ^^ermont, one of the most prominent citizens of that com-
monwealth ; next he approached Theodore Sedgwick, of Massa-
chusetts, who had been a member of the Continental Congress and
who had served in the United States Congress from the organiza-
tion of that body. He was afterwards a United States senator
and when he died in 1813 he was a justice of the IMassachusetts
Supreme Court. Among the southern members whom he sought
to interest was William Branch Giles, of Mrginia, also a member
of Congress from its beginning and afterwards a senator. Either
the promoters saw nothing wrong with the scheme, or else they
were ill-acquainted with human nature. At any rate, the members
262
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 263
approached put their heads together to expose and defeat the plot;
and in so doing they established one of the precedents of the
National House of Representatives. ^
During the first session of the Fourth Congress, on December 28,
1795, information having been given to the House by William
Smith, of South Carolina. William V. Murray, of Maryland, and
William B. Giles, of Virginia, that a person of the name of Robert
Randall had made to them certain overtures to obtain their sup-
port to a memorial intended to be presented by Randall on behalf
of himself and others for the grant of a tract of land containing
eighteen or twenty million acres bordering on Lakes Erie, Michigan
and Huron, for which support the said members were promised to
receive a consideration or emolument in lands or money; and the
House having regarded the information as contempt to, and a
breach of the privileges of that body, in an unwarrantable attempt
to corrupt the integrity of its members, the speaker was ordered
to issue his warrant directing the sergeant-at-arms to take Randall
into custody. Then Daniel Buck, of Vermont, announced that
Charles Whitney had made similar overtures to him; and there-
upon the arrest of Whitney was directed. On January 4th, Randall
and Whitney were arraigned and were interrogated by the speaker,
with the result that Randall, by a vote of 78 to 17, was adjudged
guilty of "a high contempt of this House and a breech of privilege."
On January 7th, Whitney's case was taken up and he was dis-
charged by a vote of 52 to 30. On the 13th. Randall petitioned to
be released, and the House so ordered. Whitney's case was dis-
tinguished from Randall's, because Whitney had made his offer to
a member who had not yet taken his seat. In the discussion of
this first case of attempted bribery of members of the House, it
was decided that the body had an inherent right to protect itself,
and that the speaker's warrant was sufficient to take the prisoner
from the hands of the city marshal, who had him in charge. Thus
Alichigan as an entity, even before being named, came to figure
in the National Legislature.
The Northwest Territory began to break up into political divi-
sions soon after the surrender of the frontier posts by the British
in 1796. Five thousand inhabitants were required as a preliminary
to the establishment of a representative government: and by 1798
that number had been attained. The first General Assembly con-
1 See "Plot for Obtaining the Lower Peninsula." by J. V. Campbell,
Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. VIII, p. 406; Biographical Congressional Directory;
and Hines' "Parliamentary Precedents.''
264 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
vened at Cincinnati, September 24, 1799; among the twenty-two
members of the House of Representatives, Michigan (Wayne
County) was represented by Charles Chabert de Joncaire and Solo-
mon Sibley. James May was elected to the. first General Assembly,
but before that body convened a second delegate was assigned to
Wayne County and a new election was held. Peter Audrain, the
prothonotary of Wayne County, has left a circumstantial account
of this second election.
The candidates were Chabert, \'isgar, Wiswell. Louison Beau-
fait, and I. Marie Beaubien. The polls opened at 11 o'clock on the
morning of January 14, 1799, at the house of John Dodemead.
Before reading the proclamation the sheriff called into private con-
sultation Justices Ernest and McNiff and three lawyers, Messrs.
Brush, Freeman and Powers. Vattell's Law of Nations was sent
for, and on being consulted by the learned legal gentlemen, "the
election was proclaimed opened" and Air. Beaufait stepped up to
cast the first vote. Being asked for whom he voted, he replied.
"For James May and Louis Beaufait, my son." He was told that
he could not vote for Mr. May, because the latter had gone to
Cincinnati to contest the first election ; and that his vote for Beau-
fait would be accepted on condition that he substituted another
name for that of May. Thereupon Mr. Beaufait "left the room,
apparently much hurt." Alessrs. Voyez and Girardin met the same
fate; and when the latter demanded a written certificate of refusal
the request was denied as unnecessary. At i o'clock the election was
adjourned until 3. after fourteen May votes had been refused. The
inhabitants at River Rouge sent word by Joseph Cisna that they
were coming up to vote for May and Wiswell, and when "Old
Cisna" was told about the situation "he was amazingly displeased
with the sheriff and judges."
The next day the polls were opened about 10 o'clock, but few
people attended owing to the rainy weather, which had prevailed
for five days. The roads were too bad to allow the people from
River Raisin to come to vote ; but the people from the Rouge came
in a flock and voted for Wiswell and Chabert, as did Captains
Marsac apd Rivard. During the afternoon the judges announced
that Beaufait and Chabert were not eligible because they had not
resided in the district three years; but that Visgar and Wiswell
were eligible. As a matter of fact, Wiswell, ahhough American-
born, owned no real property in the district, while Visgar had
property, was an American, but had taken the oath of allegiance
to Great Britain. It appears that when Governor St. Clair ordered
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 265
verbal votes to be taken he thought "to guard the poor ignorant
Canadians from deception and ensure them the noble privilege of
freely giving their votes for whomever they should prefer;" but
the judges took it upon themselves to rule on the eligibility of can-
didates before the vote was taken. Evidently Vattell has much to
answer for.
Before the polls closed Justice McNiff came out and advised
the friends of Wiswell to go in search of votes for him; otherwise
he would be defeated, as the Frenchmen were ahead. So Old
Cisna went about for votes and brought in a few, having offered
$ioo for ten votes. When the election closed there was difficulty
in determining the result ; because Colonel Chabert having been
informed that he was ineligible for lack of sufficient years of resi-
dence, told the judges that he would contend no longer and would
not serve. Wiswell also had informed the judges that he declined
to be a candidate. Wiswell and Visgar, however, were declared
elected; whereupon Visgar told the judge and sheriff that he would
not go with Wiswell, and demanded to know which candidate was
the highest in number of votes. On being told that Colonel Chabert
was, Visgar said that he would go with Chabert, who on being
interrogated declared that he was willing to go with Wiswell. The
judges, however, declined to give Chabert a certificate. "They
called for wine and thus the business ended." In the end, Wiswell
did not qualify, but Chabert went to Cincinnati and served with
Solomon Sibley, although what right the latter had to a seat does
not appear.2
Having reached Cincinnati, the Wayne County representatives
found that in the council of five members, four were from Ohio
counties, and the other represented Vincennes. William Henry
2 Peter Audrain's letter is given in full in Utley and Cutcheon's "Michi-
gan as a Province, Territory and State, the Twenty-fourth Member of the
Federal Union;" 1706. Solomon Sibley and Elijah Brush, the earliest mem-
bers of the bar in Michigan, came from Ohio. Judge Sibley came from
Marietta. His wife, whom he married after coming to Detroit, was a
daughter of Col. Ebenezer Sproat, of Middleboro, ^Pass., and a grand-
daughter of Commodore Abraham Whipple, the first American to obtain
naval success over British ships. Judge Sibley was appointed a member of
the Council of the Northwest Territory ; he was twice elected a delegate to
Congress and was a judge of the Supreme Court of the territory. Judge
James V. Campbell says that "he was one of the wisest and ablest men that
ever lived in Michigan." His numerous descendants are not unworthy of
the name. Colonel Brush became territorial attorney-general and a colonel
of militia.
266
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Harrison was chosen by the Assembly to represent the Territory
in Congress.
By these changes in government leaven was added to the meal ;
politics began to have their effect in the Northwest, shaping the
development of its institutions and adding zest to the life of its
people. Hence came the clash of individual ambitions, the struggles
of parties, the evolution of political principles and the development
of a highly organized and thoroughly democratic government.
There was no accumulated wealth, no endowed institutions, no
William Hill
organized culture : the units in this social structure were moving
with the rapidity of molecules in matter, and out of the turmoil
came great men as leaders of movements profoundly affecting the
entire country. These creative forces acting through individuals
to form a democracy in the truest sense of the word make the
Old Northwest a subject of study at once fascinating, engrossing
and labor-rewarding.
On jMay 7, 1800, the Northwest Territory was divided. The
line of division ran through the center of the lower peninsula of
Michigan to the Straits of Mackinac, thereby placing the western
half in the Territory of Indiana. Detroit continued in the North-
west Territory until 1802, when the State of Ohio was created and
all of Michigan became the County of \\'ayne of the Territory of
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 267
Indiana. Three years later, in spite of the protests of Indiana, the
Territory of Michigan was created.
WilHam Hull, selected by President Jefiferson, to be the first gov-
ernor of the new Territory of Michigan, reached the eastern borders
of his dominions on the ist day of July, 1805. xA.s the little schooner
that carried him and his fortunes made its way up the island-strewn
river towards the century-old town of Detroit, the Governor's e.xpect-
ant gaze was greeted by the sight of a single row of low white farm
houses, with sharply pitched roofs pierced by small dormer windows.
About the houses were great pear trees, the like of which are to be
found nowhere else and whose very origin is unknown : and orchards
of Lombardy apples whose fame was to spread throughout the
country. High fences of round cedar posts guarded the farms from
the cattle and especially from the droves of squealing French ponies
that dashed up and down the narrow road leading along the river
bank; these picket fences also served as a sort of a fortification in
the case of Indian attacks, and often proved a defense not to be
despised.
So near together were the houses that neighbors could call from
porch to porch ; but the farms, although only from two to five acres
wide, stretched far, back into the boundless forest. The neatness
of the whitewashed fences and dwellings must have accorded well
with the New England ideas of Governor Hull ; but his Puritan soul
doubtless revolted from the moss-grown crucifixes on barn and gate-
post, and the shrines of the Virgin by the roadside. The points of
land that here and there jutted out into the river were adorned as
well as made useful by picturesque windmills, whose great sails
swung lazily around on the summer wind.^
3 Bela Hubbard in "Memorials of a Half -Century" (New York, 1887),
says that as late as 1835 "several windmills gave animation to the picture,
as their white arms swayed in the breeze that seldom fails to ripple these
waters, like the pinions of some huge birds.'' These mills were of timber, the
lower story being filled in and encased in stone. The manor windmill to
which in early days the settler was required to carry his grist fell into disuse
and in time disappeared. Orchards often embracing several hundred cherry,
pear, and apple trees gave beauty and value to nearly every farm. The French
said that their ancestors obtained fruit trees from Montreal, to which place
they were brought from Normandy or Provence, but beyond that their tradi-
tions did not extend. Mr. Hubbard, an authority on trees, thinks that the
seeds had been brought from France and had been planted about the time the
town was founded. Among the apples that originated at Detroit are the
snow-apple, the Calville both red and white, and the Detroit Red. once well
known. There were also gray-apples, russets and pearmains, surpassing the
Newfoundland apples and second only to those of New Jersey for cider
268 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
The French farmers Hving along both the American and the
Canadian banks were, as Governor Hull soon found out, at one with
their surroundings. The broad river which flowed past their doors
not only furnished a plenteous harvest for their nets and a con-
venient means of communication with town and church; but it was
also to them the world's highway. Its opalescent waters, coming
from the rich fur regions of the North, which furnished the staple of
commerce, flowed round about the high mountain of Montreal, where
their market was ; and on under the clitls of Quebec, whence the
ships' sailed to I'rance.
What the governor expected to see was a compact town, well forti-
fied against incursions of Indians, and surrounded by pleasant fields.
He anticipated the greeting of a joyous people coming from happy
homes to welcome the representative of free government. What his
wondering eyes did behold was a mass of blackened embers where
once a town had been, and a broad common covered with tents and
booths. From these improvised dwellings came a crowd of thin-
faced, bronzed, bare-footed men clad in colored shirts, and trousers
held at the waist by a leather belt.'* With them came a troop of
plump and handsome black-eyed French girls, their short gowns, or
habits, falling over long, gaily-figured petticoats, and their faces pro-
tected from the July suns by broad-brimmed straw hats of home
manufacture. From the days of Cadillac till about 1850 there was
little, if any, change in the style of clothing worn by the French people
of Detroit ; and a garment was fashionable until worn out.
On disembarking with his fellow New Englander, Stanley Gris-
purposes. So large and productive were the pear trees that one tree usually
sufficed for an entire family. The writer remembers a number of these pear
trees that survived as late as 1880. The origin of these trees is a mystery,
such trees are not to be found on the lower St. Lawrence or in Normandy.
* A congratulatory address on his appointment as governor was pre-
sented to him by Francis Navarre, John Anderson and Lewis Bond, repre-
senting the citizens of Sargent Township, and by James Henry. Elijah Brush,
George McDougall, Chabert Joncaire and George Meldrum, representing the
citizens of Detroit. To these addresses the Governor made reply that he
looked to contributions by citizens of the states for the relief of the sufTerers
from the fire and to a liberal land policy on the part of the Federal Govern-
ment; and he congratulated the people on the opportunity to secure a "judi-
cious and enlarged plan to be adopted in erecting a city on the desolated
ground, the sight of which is so afflicting at the present moment." He
assured them of civil and religious liberty, of the right of trial by jury and
the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus. — "Territorial Government, in Michi-
gan," State Dept. MSS. edited by Charles Moore, Mich. P. & H., Col. Vol.
XXIV, p. 526.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 269
wold, the Territorial Secretary, Governor Hull was met by Judge
Woodward, who had arrived from Washington on the pre\'ious day ;
and by Judge Bates, who had been acting as Government land com-
missioner and was located in Detroit. A temporary lodging was
found for the new officials, but so crowded were the accommodations
that it was more than a week before the Governor found quarters
for the winter in the small house of a farmer, a mile above the
ruins. ^
The origin of the fire which completely destroyed Detroit remains
a mystery. Governor Hull wrote to Secretary Madison that common
report said the lumber dealers had burned the town in order to force
up the price of their stocks, and that color was given to this idea
by the unusual fact that contracts had been made at the mills for all
the lumber that couW be sawed during the season. In truth, the won-
der is that Cadillac's town had not been burned long before. Its
streets were lanes ; its wooden houses were crowded together in order
that they might be surrounded by the palisades; and, a fire once
started, the buildings burned so quickly that the people were able to
save only a part of their property, by rushing with it into the con-
venient river and there sinking it.
In so far as could be foreseen the appointment of William Hull
as governor of Michigan Territory was an excellent one. Among the
younger officers of the Revolutionary army none was more highly
esteemed than Colonel Hull. A graduate of Yale, he entered the
army in 1775 at the age of twenty-two, as the captain of a Connecticut
regiment; he witnessed the evacuation of Boston bv the British: he
was wounded at White Plains; on the day after the Battle of Trenton
he was promoted by General Washington for bravery ; he endured
the bitterness of Valley Forge ; for conspicuous gallantry at Stony
Point he received the thanks of General Wayne, of General Washing-
ton, and of Congress; ''for his judicious arrangements in the plan of
operations and intrepidity and valor in execution" in an attack on
the enemy at Morrissina he had been again thanked in general orders
by Washington and also by Congress. After the war he found
political favor in the Massachusetts community in which he lived,
and at the time Jefi^erson called him to be governor of Michigan he
was judge of the Court of Common Pleas. At the age of fifty-one,
5 William Hull was born in Derby, Conn., June 24, 1753; he graduated
at Yale College in 1772 and was admitted to the bar in 1775. He died at
Newton, Mass., November 29, 1825. For a detailed statement of his Revolu-
tionary services, see his defense before the court-martial in "Report of the
Trial of Brig. General William Hull," New York, 1814.
270 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
with large experience both of military and of civil life, Governor
Hull seemed to be the man of all others wisely to shape the fortunes
of the wilderness Territory and to win respect and confidence for the
Government. Such, however, was far from being the case.
Quite the most important figure in the history of Michigan during
territorial days was the chief justice, Augustus Brevoort Woodward.
When the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia convened for its
first session in the half-finished Capitol, on March 23, 1801, W'ood-
ward was among the lawyers who presented themselves. Unusually
tall, slender, with sallow complexion, and with something of the air
of the scholar. Air. Woodward was attired in a manner to attract
attention. A swallow-tail coat of blue with brass buttons, a buff
waistcoat, widely open to allow the protrusion of a mass of ruffles,
a flamboyant red cravat, and a plentiful head of hair fresh from the
loving ministrations of the first tonsorial artist of "the metropolis of
the United States," all combined to produce a striking figure.
Woodward was born in Philadelphia, and in 1795 he was living in
Rockbridge, X'irginia, where he had worked out a plan for an execu-
tive council to advise with the President of the United States; and
his paper on this subject is now reckoned as one of the first discus-
sions of the President's Cabinet, a body not then evolved. Shortly
thereafter, he first met Jefferson at Monticello, and began a friendship
that lasted for more than a quarter of a century. In 1797 Wood-
ward crossed the mountains to locate himself in the then thriving
town of Alexandria, from which vantage ground he could contem-
plate the opportunities offered by the proprietors of lands in the
Federal City. He purchased lots in Washington, on which he gave
a deed of trust for the entire purchase price of $25,000. On the
records he is described as a resident of Greenbrier County, Virginia,
which might or might not have been the case.
He loved the Federal City, and to her service he brought a
voluminously stored mind, an education broad and liberal for that
day and generation, and a pen at once trenchant, good tempered, and
indefatigable. He was a master of English, could quote the Latin
poets, understood the structure of the Greek language and was famil-
iar with the writings of the French philosophers of his day. In
statesmanship he was a disciple of Bentham ; he believed in tearing;
down old abuses in order to build new and enduring structures on
the broad foundation of the greatest good to the greatest number.
For Thomas Jefferson he had a veneration akin to idolatry, and lan-
guage was all too poor to afford words adequate to the reverence he
felt for the Sage of Monticello.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 271
In a series of eight papers on "The Government of the Territory
of the District of Columbia," Mr. Woodward proclaimed himself as
belonging neither with the party that shouted for the repeal of that
clause in the Constitution which gave Congress exclusive jurisdiction
over "the ten miles square," nor yet was he willing to be numbered
with those who stood ready to be deprived of all the rights of citizen-
ship. He favored excluding the individual states from legislation
over the district, but he contended vigorously for a distinct repre-
sentation in the Federal councils, and for a local government ener-
getic and free. Small wonder is it that Woodward, the law'yer, the
real estate dealer, and the pleader for the liberties of the people was
elected to a seat in the iirst council of the City of Washington. His
prolific pen gave vent to his feelings of joy and responsibility; and
with an address to the electors of Washington, published in the
National Intelligencer of June 14, 1802, he entered upon his public
career. From the frequency with which his name appears in the
early court reports it may be inferred that he enjoyed his full share
of the legal business of the city.
On his appointment as one of the judges of Michigan Territory,
Woodward closed out his various real estate speculations in Washing-
ton by conveying the properties to the men who had endorsed his
notes. W'e may imagine Judge Woodward, his commission safely
bestowed in saddlebags large enough to hold all his temporal belong-
ings, setting out on a fine May morning for his new sphere of useful-
ness. Jogging along Braddock's Road, past the old house of the
Cresaps, he would cross the Alleghanies possibly in company w-ith
settlers and their cattle, dogs and slaves, bound for the blue-grass
regions of Kentucky ; or with a less numerous body of New England-
ers coming by the Forbes road through Pennsylvania to cast their
lot with friends and relatives who had planted on the banks of the
Muskingum the colony of freemen that two years before had become
the State of Ohio. Resting at hospitable Pittsburgh, once a Mrginia
town under the domination of Lord Dunmore and his tool. Doctor
Conolly, the judge would part company with the settlers bound for
the rich regions on the banks of Ohio, and set his face northward
towards the lake country. Even here the Virginia judge could have
the proud satisfaction of knowing that although New York and Con-
necticut and Massachusetts had given up to the nation their shadowy
claims to the region northwest of the Ohio, it was the conquest of
the Virginian, George Rogers Clark, that planted the flag of Congress
in British territory, with the result of drawing the boundaries of the
new nation through the Great Lakes instead of through the Ohio
272 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
River. Passing near to the place that witnessed the torture of Wash-
ington's friend and playmate Crawford (the tragedy that marked
the end of the Revolution in the Northwest), Judge Woodward
probably visited Fallen Timbers, the battlefield on which Mad
Anthony Wayne broke the power of the British-paid Indians and
forced the surrender of the northwest posts nine years before.
Woodward arrived but one day before the Governor.
On reaching Detroit, Governor Hull found that the citizens "had
laid out a new town nearly on a similar plan with the old one, and
had included the common, which they claimed under a grant from the
y ^
Signature of Peter Audrain
French government, and having used it as a common pasture since
the settlement of the country." The people represented the necessity
of haste in order to provide shelters before winter; but when they
were assured of prompt action they gave way. A plan was imme-
diately prepared and a surveyor was set at work in laying out the
streets, squares, and lots. The principal part of the grounds embraced
in the plan unquestionably belonged to the United States ; but many
of the lots in the old town were cut up by the streets, thus necessitat-
ing an exchange for lots belonging to the Government. Other lots
were to be sold to settlers. Governor Hull counted on the approval
of Congress to this arrangement because it would attain two objects:
First, a town or city laid out on a regular plan ; and secondly, the
accommodation of those people who had suffered by the fire. He
also anticipated a third advantage in the increased value of the Gov-
ernment's lots."
« Stale Dept. MSS. printed in Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XXVII; Hull to
Madison, August 3, 1805. It is evident that at first matters went smoothly,
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
273
From the original in the Library of Congress
Woodward Plan of Detroit, ^Iade in 1807
The origin of the plan of Detroit has been the subject of much
speculation and no little misunderstanding. Governor Hull under-
took to transmit the plan to Washington for the approval of Con-
gress. He spoke of it as having the approval of the legislative body,
because Hull reports that he received great assistance from "the talents, zeal
and industry of Judge Woodward," while he patronizingly says that Judge
Bates is a young man of good understanding, great purity of mind, and wants
nothing but experience to render him eminently useful.
Vol. 1—18
274 HISTOUY OF MICHIGAN
and to this da}' it is known officially as "The Governor and Judges
Plan of Detroit." Like all city plans which provide for a distant
future, it was subject to ridicule by those whose vision did not extend
beyond the immediate present; and especially was it maligned by
travelers who contrasted the meager present with the glorified future
shadowed forth in broad avenues, streets radiating from common
centers, numerous small parks and open spaces, and public squares
for large gatherings of people in war or in peace. Judge Campbell,
writing in 1876, says: "Doubtless the chief justice had already
drawn in imagination the curious plan which his sanguine fancy,
looking forward seven or eight centuries, saw filled out with the
completest city ever devised. Less than half a century saw more
than three-fold its space completely built, but the symmetrical scheme
was not as fair in other eyes as in his own. Colonel McKenney, in
his 'Tour to the Lakes,' aptly describes it as representing a spider's
web with all its lines arranged with reference to a principal center.
The affection of its author for his device was extreme, and his pride
in it excessive; and much of the trouble that afterwards arose and
had its influence on the peace of the Territory came from the want of
respect among his colleagues for this darling child of his genius,
which was shorn of its fair proportions and dislocated." '^ And Judge
Cooley, ten years later, says that "to some extent it (the plan) was
modeled upon that of the national capital, and although he suc-
ceeded in securing its adoption, it was the subject of much contem-
poraneous ridicule, not only for what seemed to the people its
whimsical character, but also for its magnificent distances. The
plan was ridiculed while it was tolerated, but it was not strictly
adhered to, and the departures from it, from time to time, annoyed
its author and were a frequent incitement to ill temper and contro-
versy." *
Although as the subject of ridicule the plan is always ascribed
to Woodward, its authorship is often misunderstood and even ques-
tioned by those who now approve it. It is generally believed and
frequently stated that Detroit was actually planned by L'Enfant,
after he planned the City of Washington. In a letter to Joseph
Watson, dated January 26, 181 1, Woodward states that on July 5,
1805, he had "the honor to be appointed by the Governor, in concur-
rence with one of the judges, a committee to take into consideration
matters that might arise relative to the town, and report an opinion
thereon to the Governor and Judges. "In obedience to their direc-
' "Outlines of the Political History of Michigan," p. 241.
* "Michigan," American Commonwealth's Series; Boston, 1905, p. 154.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 275
tions," he says, "I had the honor to report a mode of laying out the
town, which, being taken into consideration, was adopted, and that
with the vote of the Governor. ... In December, 1808, during
my absence, the Governor introduced a report containing the follow-
ing expressions — 'it should be considered as having arisen from his
devotion to his darling child, the plan of the City of Detroit. It is
deeply to be regretted that he ever had influence sufficient to have
brought that plan into existence.' " ^
From the correspondence it appears that the mode of laying out
Detroit originated with Judge Woodward, while the actual work was
done by a hired surveyor; also that during his incumbency in office
he fought valiantly to maintain the integrity of the plan, which was
often attacked and sometimes mutilated out of malice towards him,
as well as through the natural propensity of mankind to despoil what
they cannot understand. Nor are his historians without a certain
sympathy with the common view. Indeed, it is only within a decade
that the immense service Woodward did for Detroit in maintaining
the chief elements of his plan is coming to be appreciated. It is
now generally acknowledged that, next to Washington, Detroit is
the best planned city in the United States, in so far as the center of
the city is concerned. Had the Woodward plan been adhered to in
laying out the additional subdivisions no qualification of the fore-
going statement would be necessary.
The distinguished merit of the plan makes its source a matter of
interest. Judge Woodward's acquaintance with Washington civic
affairs has been adverted to. The L'Enfant plan for tlie capital city
had been accepted eight years before Woodward's arrival in Wash-
ington, and printed copies of the plan had been scattered broadcast
through this country and Europe in order to secure purchasers for
Washington lots. Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution;
Law, a wealthy Englishman ; and a Holland syndicate, were among
the speculators attracted by the L'Enfant plan. Woodward may
have conceived the idea that on a smaller scale the same thing would
happen in Detroit. At any rate he himself became an operator both
in city real estate and also in suburban properties. Such an attitude
on his part is not inconsistent with the larger fact that his versatile
mind led him to take the higher view of his opportunities and duties.
The plan of the national capital devised for the creation of a city
where none then existed, a plan approved by Washington and Jefifer-
son, commended itself to his judgment and taste ; and he saw in
" Copy of MSS. letter in possession of the writer.
276 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
the abuse of the ignorant and the spiteful only a repetition of what
L'Enfant himself was then enduring at the hands of citizen, traveler
and government. This view is supported by the fact that when he
and his partners came to lay out the town of Ypsilanti '-" they gave
four great squares for public parks, and so arranged the main north
and south thoroughfares as to give a symmetrical axis to their crea-
tion. In any event, as L'Enfant perceived and adopted for Wash-
ington the great merits contained in the plans of Paris prepared by
the architects of Louis XI\\ but not realized until long after our
capital was laid out.^i so Judge Woodward recognized the high quali-
ties in L'Enfant's then despised plan, adopted them for Detroit and
to the end of his stay fought to maintain them and carry them out.
Not the least of his many great services to Michigan is his service on
behalf of his plan for Detroit.
The other judges, Frederick Bates and John Griffin, both from
Virginia, were not especially useful. Judge Bates might have had a
career in Michigan had he found the work congenial. During the
year of his incumbency he did much to promote good order and to
allay ill-feeling among his colleagues. From Michigan he went to
St. Louis as Secretary of the Louisiana Territory, and when he died
in 1825 he was Governor of Missouri. His departure left the Michi-
gan government without a balance wheel. >- Judge Griffin was a mis-
chief-maker given to intrigue ; he usually acted with Judge Wood-
ward, and the two made the law suit their will, which was usually
the will of the latter. Stanley Griswold, the Territorial Secretary,
was a Connecticut politician, having, been in turn a preacher and an
^o The people of the new town sent a delegation to Woodward to get
hiin to choose a more commonplace name, or to allow them to retain the
appellation of Woodruff's Grove. But he had named the town in honor of
Prince Demitrius Ypsilanti, hero of the Greek Rebellion, and would not listen
to them. In 1822 Lucius Lyon bought the town from Woodward for $2,300.
11 This statement is based on studies carried on by the writer during
several years.
12 Frederick Bates was born in Belmont, Va., June 23, 1777, the son of a
Quaker, Thomas Fleming Bates. He began the study of law as the apprentice
to a court clerk. In 1795 he entered the quartermaster's department of the
army, and afterwards became a storekeeper in Detroit, studying law in his
spare hours. Jefferson and Madison were friends of his father and so he was
appointed a judge. On a visit to Washington to report on land titles he was
sent to St. Louis as Secretary of the new Territory of Louisiana, which
office he held until Missouri became a state in 1820. He was elected the
second Governor and died in office August 21, 1825. His younger brother,
Edward Bates, was Lincoln's Secretary of the Interior. — "Michigan Biog-
raphies."
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 277
editor. He served for three years and was succeeded by a better
man, or at least a better Secretary, Reuben Atwater of Vermont.
Under the form of government then provided for the territories,
the governor and the three judges acted as the legislature, being
limited in their enactments theoretically by the laws already in force
in some one of the states, and practically by the extent of the terri-
torial law library, which in the case of Michigan "embraced the
statutes of but four states and those four the ones least applicable
to a frontier territory." The laws adopted, says Judge Campbell,
were judicious and well drawn.
It so happened that Governor Hull had stopped at Albany to take
the oath of office before Vice President George Clinton; and on his
arrival at Detroit had administered the oath to Judge Woodward and
Judge Bates. The careful Madison, to whom Governor Hull reported
these facts, made endorsement that the Vice President not being
empowered to administer oaths, all the oaths were informal ; but
this lack of judicial succession was never again adverted to.
The Legislature promptly provided for courts of justice, for a
militia, and for raising by lotteries $20,000 to be expended on the
promotion of literature and the improvement of the City of Detroit.
All able-bodied male inhabitants between the ages of fifteen and fifty
were enrolled in the militia and each was required "to provide him-
self with a good musket or fusee, a sufficient knapsack and bayonet
and two square flints." So strenuous, not to say fussy, was the new
governor on the subject of drills that he laid the foundation of an
unpopularity that increased from month to month.
In several matters pertaining to the interests of the Territory,
Governor Hull exercised a wise discretion. When Granger, a mill
owner on the St. Clair River, made complaint to President Jefferson
that his lands were being invaded by both British and American tim-
ber-thieves. Governor Hull was ordered to issue a proclamation for-
bidding trespassing on the timbered lands along the St. 'Clair. This
he did, but on September 1 1 he addressed to the State Department a
remonstrance, in which he urged that boards had already advanced
$4 to $5 a thousand, that timber could be obtained only from the
British or in the St. Clair country, and that consequently the course
of the Government was working distress among the poor people at
Detroit who had been sufferers from the fire. Governor Hull also
argued very justly that inasmuch as the Indian titles to the timber
lands had never been acquired by the Government, no person could
have a legal right to them, and consequently trespass must be a vio-
lation of the laws of the United States, and not an offense against
278 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
private rights. Governor Hull's position was legally a sound one ;
but for thirty years certain of the St. Clair lands had been under
improvement, and for nearly a century saw mills had been in opera-
tion in that country.
The remonstrance having met the usual fate of communications
sent to Washington, Governor Hull, being at the capital during the
following December, addressed a brief note to the Secretary of State,
asking if, for the reasons before stated, the President did not think it
expedient to take action in the timber matter. Madison evidently
took this note to a cabinet meeting ; for on the bottom of the scrap
of paper the same hand that penned the Declaration of Independence
wrote these words, extending the aid of the Government to the
sufferers by the Detroit fire:
"It was our joint opinion that, although it would not do to lay
open the public timber to all persons indiscriminately, yet that the
calamity which happened at Detroit rendered it proper that the public
should permit the poorer sufferers to get timber from their lands,
and that it should be left to the discretion of Governor Hull to grant
the special licenses. Th. J."
While Governor Hull was in Washington, officers from Fort
Maiden, the British headquarters at the mouth of the river, attempted
to apprehend and take back a deserter from that post. The story,
as written to Secretary Aladison by the acting governor, Stanley
Griswold, relates that on Sunday, December 8, Thomas Nolan, a
deputy marshal, while going to the River Rouge, six miles below
Detroit, was met on the river by a party of British soldiers, who
held him to search his boat for deserters. After some words, the
boats went their dift'erent ways, and Nolan landed at Weaver's
Tavern, on the Rouge, for breakfast. There he found Captain Muir
and Lieutenant Lundee, from Fort Maiden.
W'hile the partv were breakfasting a sentry stationed by the
officers reported a canoe in sight. Captain Muir ordered his boat
manned and dispatched a soldier to intercept it. During the bustle
a man named IMorrison arrived at the tavern, was recognized by some
of the British as a deserter, and was taken into custody. Now Cap-
tain Muir was a good deal of a bully, and the fashion in which he and
his soldiers conducted themselves on American soil aroused the ire
of ]\Iarshal Nolan, who, calling the citizens of the United States to
his assistance, after a struggle in which arms were displayed, res-
cued Morrison and took him to Detroit. The British officers fol-
lowed not far behind, and on reaching the town went to Fort Shelby
with their grievance. There they found Captain Brevoort and
^k^(-'<^ ^>c-c«-?-7 iji^C^--*^ ay ^'t^<^^^^^^ ^-*-»-r ^>-co^ <^^</ ;#xAr*^
l/ f. ff^ n4^^S jA^r^-^c3 p^^yy^r^Jt ft*^ /i-<t*v**-^ ■J'tc^^c^^-^ l2 ci-^ ,"tW^i*r/iT>T~i. /tCc**- ti'^ J-*^ /-t*;?" ^ rX^rx^
0^f
From the State Department MSS.
Note of William Hull to President Jefferson, and Jefferson's
Endorsement Thereon.
280 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Lieutenant Hanks quite ready to give aid in apprehending a deserter,
by way of courtesy to fellow officers. The servants of the United
States officers going from house to house through the little town,
late in the evening, located Morrison in the dwelling of Conrad Seek.
Thereupon, Captain Muir and Lieutenant Lundee broke into Seek's
house, and seized the deserter. The people were prepared for them,
and a general scuffle ensued. The British officers flourished their
swords and pistols. Captain Brevoort stood by and swore at the
citizens, and Lieutenant Hanks, with uplifted stick, threatened to
strike any man who dared to lay hands on a British officer. Several
shots were fired, and Captain Muir fired a bullet into his own leg; but
neither the prowess of the British nor the curses and threats of
their American allies availed to rescue Morrison, who, securely
guarded, was removed to the house of a Mr. Smythe. There another
crowd assembled, and when Lieutenant Hanks threatened to bring
a detachment of troops from the fort and Governor Hull's impetu-
ous son menaced the mob with the assurance that he would have
the artillery "blow the parcel of rascals to perdition," the people
promptly gathered in both British and American officers. Next
morning the offenders having been brought before the magistrates,
charged with a violent breach of the peace, the British officers were
held in the sum of one thousand dollars each to appear at the
September term of the general court. The three Americans were
also put under bail to appear at the same time. England might
search American vessels on the high seas ; but her officers should
not be allowed to break into American homes. Even Major Camp-
bell, the commandant at Maiden, felt himself called upon promptly
to disavow the action of his officers, although he insisted that the
reports of the affair had been exaggerated. The officers were duly
convicted ; but, the international bearings of the affair having been
adjusted by Major Campbell's disavowal, the fines were made trifling
in amount. Thus the dignity of the United States was upheld, and
at the same time, an olive branch was extended to our neighbors.
Equal tact was shown in dealing with an Indian trouble which
happened a year later. Michome. or Little Bear, a prominent chief
of the Chippewa nation, having murdered a member of his own
tribe at Detroit, was promptly arrested and put in prison. He
justified his action by saying that, being the head of the nation, and
by its laws and customs having all power invested in him, he con-
ceived that he had done only his duty in despatching an Indian who
had murdered a number of the tribe, and who had twice tried to
poison Michome himself. After killing the Indian, Michome had
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 281
gone straight to Governor Hull and reported the act, whereupon
the Governor, fearing the displeasure of the Huron River and St.
Clair Indians, wrote to President Jefferson asking for a pardon in
case the chief should be convicted of murder. The pardon was
sent, but before it arrived, Michonie was acquitted.
During the summer of 1806 the people of Detroit dropped their
business for a time to prepare for a defense against a threatened
attack from Canada. Much irritability arose on both sides of the
border, because of the fact that slaves left their British masters
and sought freedom in Michigan. ^\'hen the owners applied to the
Government for the apprehension and return of their property.
Governor Hull did not consider himself authorized to comply with
the request, although he was willing to use all his authority to deliver
the slaves that came from other states. When the British masters
applied to the courts, they again met refusal to interfere. The excite-
ment, however, soon died out.
The Michigan officials were early met by the great disparity
between their incomes and their expenditures. "In no part of the
United States or Europe where I have resided," writes Governor
Hull in his first letter to Secretary Madison, "is the expense of
living so great as at this place. It will be for Congress to judge
whether it will not be expedient to increase the salaries of their
officers. The Secretary is strongly inclined to resign immediately
but I have persuaded him to remain until the next session of Con-
gress." Si.x months later, Secretary Griswold, then acting as gov-
ernor in the absence of General Hull, gives a highly colored picture
of Detroit life. "It is reduced to a certainty," he says, "that tliis
government cannot proceed without some additional pecuniary
aid from Congress. Its seat is established at a place which combines
all the disadvantages of an old and new settlement, without one of
the advantages of either. Luxury, the relic of British fortunes
formerly squandered here, and of a once flourishing commerce, con-
tinues its empire, tho' I am happy to think it is on the decline.
Fashion, ceremony and expense are great, far beyond the present
abilities of the inhabitants. We are in the neighborhood of a proud,
rich and showy government, which has frequent intercourse with
us through characters of wealth and distinction. Our compensa-
tions are scanty for the most retired internal situations, where house-
rent and provisions are cheap and expensive company is not known,
as was the case at the seat of the government of the Northwestern
Territory, in the year 1787, by the ordinance of which date our
salaries are regulated. Imagine to yourself a man expending the
282 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
little savings he had been able to make in fitting out and removing
his family a thousand miles, and finding himself compelled to pay
for rent and the necessaries of life more than he would be obliged
to pay in the most expensive city of the United States, or of the
world ; with the extraordinary duties and expenses of chief magis-
trate, devolved on him for eight months out of twelve ; of com-
mander-in-chief of a militia which is relied on for efl:'ective defense;
and of superintendent of Indian affairs to numerous and powerful
nations, whose chiefs are frequently at his house, — and imagine this
man receiving but $750 per annum." ^^
These piteous appeals for larger salaries were treated at Wash-
ington as such communications are treated to this day. As a rule
the first thing is to get an appointment and the next is to secure an
increase in salary. Yet with the officeholders in Michigan Territory
as in other sections of the country, the Jefferson rule held good, —
"Few die and none resign." The opportunities for gain in a new
territory, however, vvere not altogether wanting; and shortly after
their advent Governor Hull and Judge Woodward made arrange-
ments with Russell Sturgis and other Boston capitalists literally to
make money, through the organization of a bank of issue. Currency
was scarce in this isolated community, and trade was conducted
mainly by barter. The advent of the English had driven out the
Spanish and French coin, and when the United States came into
possession the sources of money supply were the payments made to
the garrison and the meager salaries paid to the governor, the judges
and territorial secretary, together with the coin brought in by the
traders of the American Fur Company, who were the bankers of
the forest. When coin was scarce the company filled the gap with
issues of its own due-bills in small denominations. Governor Hull
proposed a bank chartered for thirty years, with a capital of
$400,000; but to Judge Woodward's expansive mind these figures
seemed grossly inadequate, and so he had the time extended to one
hundred and one years and the capital increased to a million dollars.
For a century thereafter no bank established in Michigan exceeded
the capital of this first financial institution, which was intended to
provide for the wants of a city of a thousand people and a territory
within whose borders there were not more than three thousand inhab-
itants.
It was necessary for Congress to approve the charter and in this
12 Woodward in his letter to Proctor says that the governor received
£450 sterling; the judges i2~o; and the secretary £225, which would make the
salaries about $2,250, $1,350 and $1,125 respectively.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 283
connection Judge Woodward's letter to Madison throws considerable
light on the trade conditions of the country, besides exhibiting some
of those wild ideas of finance which in these later days have found
many adherents. "From the ocean all the way to these settlements,"
writes the judge, "there is a continued line of improvements fol-
lowing without deviation the line of navigation. It is seldom more
than forty miles in breadth; but its length is at least 1,500 miles.
These settlements are pleasant, fertile and even opulent. They
present along the whole line an activity little realized in the United
States. The commerce in furs, which has been carried on in one
channel for two centuries, is the cause of this phenomenon. The
measures of Bonaparte have just in a great degree cut off the English
from the continental market for furs. The Chinese have also laid
restrictions on this commerce. At present (1807) there is a shock
felt along the whole line which I have described ; and which paralyzes
even in this country. . . . The commerce belongs to another
nation. The Americans have never been able to succeed in it, though
the most desirable part of it belongs to their own territory, and the
whole of it passes along their line."
It was Judge Woodward's expressed opinion that inasmuch as
"the quantity of notes and bills would always be regulated by the
people according to their needs, the amount of capital is unimpor-
tant." On a paid up capital of $19,000 in guineas, 10 per cent of
which was provided by the territory, 5 by the citizens and 85 by
the Bostonians, the bank began business in an $8,000 building
provided with iron doors and a cashier brought all the way from
Boston. Judge Woodward was president, and on him and Cashier
Flannigan devolved the onerous work of signing the bills. When
$165,000 in currency had been so signed, the Boston managers
departed eastward with it and marketed their crop at a discount of
from 10 to 25 per cent. These issues were repeated until notes to
the amount of $400,000 were outstanding. The first $5 bill pre-
sented for payment was refused, and $500 in notes bought in Albany
were also at first declined, but were afterwards paid to save a com-
plete collapse of the bank. Russell Sturgis and his friends had
unloaded their stock, and now Governor Hull became completely
convinced that the bank was a swindle. But Mr. Dexter, another
Boston financier, stepped into the breach, and as proprietor of the
Bank of Detroit increased the issue to $1,500,000, all but $12,000
being put upon the eastern markets, with the result that people who
had never before heard of Detroit now learned to their cost that
there was such a city.
284 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
All this time the bank had been doing business without having
had its charter approved b\- Congress, a matter which led to an
investigation. Judge Woodward, with his helper, Judge Griffin,
stood by the bank; while Governor Hull and Judge Witherell (who
had succeeded Judge Bates when the latter was transferred to Mis-
souri) were opposed to its continuance. During Judge Woodward's
absence in Washington, a bill was passed by the Legislative Council
to punish the circulation of illegal bank bills, and the Bank of Detroit
came to an end. Inasmuch as the institution received no deposits
and discounted no bills, the closing worked little harm within the
Territory, although it gave Michigan a bad name in the East. For
the next ten years the people got on without a bank.'*
Congress by act of April 21, 1806, authorized the governor and
judges to lay out a town, including the old town of Detroit and
10,000 acres adjacent, to settle all private claims for lots and to
convey a lot 50 by 100 feet to every person over seventeen years old
who either owned or inhabited a house at the time of the fire. The
remaining land was to be sold to build a courthouse and jail. The
courthouse, located at the head of Griswold street, was built many
years later and became first the territorial and then the state capital.
When the seat of government was removed to Lansing the building
was used for school purposes; it was burned, a new structure was
built, and now the space is used as a small park. The following
year Congress provided the means of quieting titles derived from
French and English grants or from occupancy to lands outside of
Detroit and in the other portions of the territory.
It has been the custom to regard Governor Hull as the victim of
Judge Woodward's keenness and eccentricity. The fact is that when
he came to Detroit the Governor had already outlived his usefulness.
His appointment was a mistake, his reappointment was a blunder
and his later selection at Washington for a military command, not-
withstanding his record in the governorship, was a crime against
ordinarv intelligence. On the other hand. Judge Woodward was
a philosopher according to the standards of his day; during his
leisure hours he wrote a treatise on "The Substance of the Sim"
which was published in Philadelphia in 1809; and he urged upon
^Madison the desirability of opening intercourse with the Chinese
government. He went to Washington frequently, and never entirely
I* Prior to the \\'ar of 1812 the currency was Spanish and Portugese gold
and French silver, which merchants kept in nail kegs under their counters.
There was no fear of burglars because there was no place where a burglar
could find safety.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
283
lost touch with the world of science and politics. He despised the
Governor, whose mind lumbered along, who was notoriously and
absurdly fearful of Indian attacks and who blustered when he
should have acted. By virtue of his office, which gave him the
From Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XXX
MicHiG.^N Territory, 1805
appointment of all officials, the Governor formed a party of consid-
erable size. His failures, therefore, were due to his own character,
or the want of character; whereas the projects of the highest class
which Judge Woodward formed sprang from his own fertile mind
and were carried out, in spite of opposition, by the sheer force of his
286 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
persistency and the inherent merit of his ideas; too often his eccen-
tricities have been allowed to obscure or to minimize the benefits
derived from his service in Michigan. The only effective way in
which Judge Woodward could check Governor Hull was by refusing
to attend meetings of the legislative board, a device frequently
resorted to in these later days and known as "breaking a quorum."
On July 23, 1810, the Governor gave notice that he would be in
attendance at tiie council chamber that day "in a legislative char-
acter," and that the meeting would be open to the public. To this
notification the Judge made answer in the shape of an arraignment
of the Governor. Allowing for the temper of the writer, the letter
still is a lucid and searching presentation of the situation. "The
ordinance of 1787," says Judge \\'oodward, "which by the act of
the nth day of January, 1805, is made a rule of government in this
Territory, confers a plain and simple power on the governor and
judges. They, or a majority of them, shall adopt laws from the
original states. They are not made a body, they have no speaker;
there is no definition of a quorum. The majority required is not a
majority of those present, but a majority of the whole. Three sig-
natures, therefore, or the assent in some shape of three persons
becomes indispensable, under the ordinance, to any provision which
is intended to have the obligation of a law. Regulations sanctioned
by three members of this government have all the force of laws
unless disapproved by Congress, when reported to them. A regu-
lation signed by your Excellency alone, and bearing date on the 9th
day of November, 1808, institutes indeed very dififerent provisions.
If this is a law binding on the inhabitants and government of this
Territory, the form of government given by the ordinance is essen-
tially changed. It may, indeed be improved, but the question will
still remain, and it is a question all important under a republican
form of government, 'has the change been made by competent author-
ity? and does not the creature in this instance arrogate the power
which alone belongs to the creator ?' This question at length assumed
a judicial shape, and in the action brought by James MacGarwin
against James Wilson, in the Supreme Court of this Territory, in
which judgment was rendered on the 5th day of October, 1809, in
favor of the defendant in error, the principle became definitely set-
tled, as far as the authorities of this government are competent to
settle it. By this adjudication the sanction of three members of this
government is considered requisite to a law. Any writing without
this is conceived to be merely a bill, or proposal of a law, and there-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 287
fore not binding on the courts of justice; and, strictly speaking, not
subject to be disapproved by Congress, even if reported to them.
"This adjudication of the Supreme Court has excited in your
Excellency a storm of indignation, as extraordinary as the conse-
quences have been singular. A calumnious and inflammatory proc-
lamation is issued on the 19th day of October, 1809; a proclamation
which is calumnious because it states matters which are not facts,
and inflammatory because it makes the undersigned in particular, as
the presiding judge of the Supreme Court, the object of your indig-
nation.
"The proclamation of your Excellency proceeds to state that the
ofiicers of the government, in consequence of this adjudication, hesi-
tate whether to obey your bills. You wish to relieve them from any
further doubts on that subject, by informing them that any other con-
struction of the ordinance than that made by your Excellency is an
absurdity ; and therefore calling upon all good citizens to be firm and
uniform in obeying your bills, and requiring the civil, and even the
military authorities of the country, to carry them into effect.
"In consequence of this very singular, and in an American govern-
ment, unprecedented stile of proceeding, the minds of our good citi-
zens have been confused. Some of the justices of the peace, knowing
that if the decision of the Supreme Court in any case really be errone-
ous, you have no authority to reverse it, have disregarded your proc-
lamation. Others on the contrary, who derive higher fees from your
bills than from the established laws, continue to act under them.
Citizens are from time to time incarcerated by the magistrates ap-
pointed by you, and obeying your proclamation and bills; and as
continually are released from their imprisonment by writ of habeas
corpus issued, when applied for, from the Supreme Court and the
judges. Two magistrates appointed by you, and composing an infe-
rior court, have refused to admit to record the last will and testa-
ment of the late collector of the port of Michilimackinac, devolving
it on an ofiicer commissioned under one of your bills ; and the execu-
tors have been compelled to seek a remedy by writ of mandamus.
"The refusal of your Excellency to attend with the judges in a
legislative capacity for four months preceding your change in the
mode of passing laws, your precipitate adjournment of the late meet-
ing of the Governor and Judges almost as soon as they were assem-
bled, your violent proclamation, your present unusual notice to the
inhabitants of an opportunity to make applications, and the facility
with which it is well known an executive magistrate, having a variety
of small employments to bestow, may create a turbulent and clamor-
288 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
ous band of adherents, bearing down both pubHc sentiment and the
tribunals of justice, all indicate the necessity of caution against what
you are now attempting; and which, if successful, would amount to
a literal subversion of the judicial authority of this government.
"Your late report as a committee inquiring into your own con-
duct in the executive department, and which abounds with so many
personalities to the other members of the government, is, perhaps,
as little to be justified as the extraordinary proclamation.
"The false alarms respecting hostilities with the savage tribes
under your superintendency ; besides the great and useless expense
occasioned to the general government, and your appropriation of the
territorial resources to that object on your sole authority, and in
direct violation of our laws ; have given rise to two inconveniences
to this country, which it is conceived the legislative power, as it
exists, would be competent to redress. The first of these is your
embodying the runaway slaves belonging to the inhabitants of the
adjacent province of his Britannic majesty into a military com-
pany, appointing a negro officer to command them, and supplying
them with arms belonging to the United States. The supplying
those slaves with the public arms has been thought to have been
done without the sanction of the proper authority, but if it should
be doubtful, the legitimacy, or the policy, of embodying negroes as
militia, and particularly the runaway slaves of gentlemen living
under the government of his Britannic majesty in this vicinity, held
under the laws of that country, and the very irregular mode adopted
by your Excellency of appointing the officers to command them, are
matters of greater certainty. The peculiar state of this Territory on
the great subject of slavery ought to render the legislative power
particularly vigilant over such a train of unwarranted transactions.
"The second inconvenience is more serious. It is your ordering
the inhabitants of the country to cut picquets, transport them from
the country, dig trenches, plant picquets in them, mount nocturnal
guards, etc. etc. without their being called out in quality of militia
in actual service, and, of course, without being put under pay. A
power of this description, it is believed, has never heretofore been
exercised in any part of the United States ; and the same authority
which passes the law relative to the militia was perhaps competent to
make inquiry into its execution.
"These, Sir, are public questions, and in order to suppress inves-
tigation of them you have no right to indulge in any asperities to the
members of what have been termed the Legislative Board. When
assembled they are on a footing of equality ; and though you are
entitled, from dignity of office, as well as from being first named,
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 289
to preside at their deliberations, yet if your conduct is unworthy, or
you indulge in an improper demeanor toward those who differ with
you in sentiment, it is perhaps in their power to interpose an effectual
check.
"When I recollect the nocturnal attack made upon the domicile
of the late Secretary of this government, the pardon recently held
out by your Excellency for a different offense, and that the judges
of the Supreme Court are now proscribed by a proclamation of
the Executive magistrate, and the civil and military authorities
arrayed to defeat their judgments, I conceive that it amounts to an
attempt to subvert this government by force ; and that it is my duty
to present to it what I trust will not be unbecoming, but which will
certainly be a firm opposition.
"1 therefore return you this answer to your requisition of attend-
ing you in, what you have termed, your legislative character; and
which you subscribe with the appellation of 'President of the Legis-
lative Board.' I will not act with you in that capacity until your
proclamation, bearing date on the nineteenth day of October, 1809,
be annulled ; or until unequivocal evidence be otherwise manifested
that it is not to be attended with further obedience on the part of
either the civil or military authorities you therein call upon, and more
especially the latter.
"The form of government which you are now acting under is
not that instituted by the ordinance and acts of Congress ; but a dif-
ferent one, instituted by your act of the ninth day of November,
1809. I do not consider myself a member of the latter, and I dare
not give you my aid in carrying it into execution. When you return
to the previous and legitimate coiirse of government, I shall attend
you; and, as heretofore, shall cheerfully sign my name to any law
which meets the approbation of others, whether it receives my vote
or not. I except, at all times, the first section of your second bill,
punishing treason against the Territory of Michigan with death; a
provision of this kind operating to punish one of my fellow citizens
with death, for perhaps an imaginary crime, the Territory possessing
no sovereignty."
On the whole this letter of Judge Woodward accurately describes
the situation existing in Michigan Territory up to the time of the
War of 1812. While the judge had his failings, his respect for the
organic law and for the dignity of both his own and the governor's
office forbade him to be a party to the subversion of law by the
arbitrary action of the executive. In this he was clearly right, and
his statement of his position is eminently respectful.
CHAPTER XVI
MICHIGAN IX THE WAR OF 1812
With the exception of the battle of New Orleans, fought after
the treaty of peace with England was signed, the incidents of the
War of 1812 on land furnish instructive rather than agreeable read-
ing for good Americans. Yet the rout of the United States forces
at Bladensburg, the burning of the Capitol, and the sack of the
White House, humiliating as were those events, involved onl\' a
dash and a retreat. The surrender of Detroit by Hull and the reoc-
cupation of Michigan Territory by the British, coming at the very
beginning of the war, aroused the entire nation in much the same
way that Bull Run did in 1861 ; and in the case of Detroit there
was the added disgrace that for the first time the borders of this
country were contracted.
With the utmost reluctance the government of Great Britain
had admitted the Americans to a share in the fur trade. The posts
of Detroit and Michilimackinac were important chiefly because they
were the headquarters for the fur traders in their dealings with the
Indians. Both were strategic points, commanding the important
lake passages ; and on giving them up the English had established
two others located so as to dominate the posts surrendered. The
Mackinac Company, which had been operating at Michilimackinac,
sold its station to John Jacob Astor and others, and established the
seat of its trade on St. Joseph's Island, near the mouth of St. Mary's
River; and the cross of St. George, having been hauled down at
Detroit, was speedily raised again over Fort Maiden, near the town
of Amherstburg. Not only did Fort Maiden command the narrows
of the Detroit River near its mouth, but it also threatened the only
line of land communication between Detroit and the American
settlements in Ohio and Indiana, whence came both troops and sup-
plies. Between the headwaters of the Ohio and Lake Erie was the
Black Swamp, a barrier at all times difficult, and in the rainy season
well nigh impassable for any considerable force. A comparatively
small party from Fort Maiden, by planning the time and place of
attack, could easily cross the river and overcome a large force of
290
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 291
Americans scattered along the narrow and arduous line of advance
from Lake Erie to Detroit. Moreover, the British had on Lake
Erie, six or seven armed vessels, and the Americans had none.i As
early as July 5, 1809, General William Henry Harrison pointed out
to Secretary of War Eustis that the building of Fort Maiden had
destroyed absolutely the strategic importance of Detroit; and that
St. Joseph might easily dominate Mackinac. In case of war, there-
fore, the capture of Fort Maiden, as Harrison showed, was indis-
pensable to American success in retaining possession of Michigan.
Holding the dominating situations, the British exerted them-
selves to win the Indians to their side — not a difficult task. Among
the lake Indians a plot had been formed along the lines of the con-
spiracy of Pontiac. Early in 1806 a prophet arose among the
Shawanese, announcing that the Great Spirit had sent him to reform
the manners and customs of the red men and to bring about a return
to the ways of their fathers, who dwelt in joy and happiness. Little
honored in his own country and among his own people, the Prophet
(as he was called) had the fame of his miracles spread through-
out Michigan and even to the Mississippi, his apostle being his
brother, Tecumseh, an Indian of great cunning, of untiring energy
and of undoubted bravery. Making Pontiac his model, Tecumseh
plotted with the three tribes that had once supported the Ottawa
chief, for the surprise of Petroit, Mackinac, Fort Wayne and
Chicago. The British, keeping themselves well informed as to the
progress of the discontent among the Indians, supplied the savages
with arms and ammunition. Colonel Cluss, the commandant at
Fort ^Maiden, reports that in 1810 he served 6,000 Indians with
presents, and gave out over seventy thousand rations ; and Tecumseh
acknowledged to General Harrison that the English were urging
the Indians to war on the Americans, "even as a boy calls to one
dog to set him to fight with another." The uprising culminated
November 7, 181 1, in the battle of Tippecanoe, fought on the banks
of that river. The Indians made an early morning attack on a camp
of 800 regulars, Kentucky volunteers and Indiana militia under
General Harrison, and were defeated with heavy loss. Harrison
came out of the battle with immense popularity among the soldiers,
but many of his officers were so jealous of his success that, unfor-
tunately, his usefulness was impaired; and later, in the selection of
generals for the War of 1812, his name was passed over for the time
1 On his journey to Washington in 1811, Governor Hull accepted the
hospitality of the captain of a British vessel to convey him from Detroit
across Lake Erie. — Aurora.
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 293
being. Tecumseh was not with the Indians when the battle of Tip-
pecanoe was fought ; but the result of it taught him that his only
hope of recovering for his people the fertile lands of the Ohio Valley
lay in an alliai\ce with the English. Fortunately for his purposes,
war came to open hostilities between the British and the Americans,
and Tecumseh lost no time in allying himself with the forces at Fort
Maiden.
In February, 1812, Governor Hull was called to Washington by
the threatened war. When President Madison offered to place him
in charge of the military operations centering at Detroit, he urged
that he was too old for such work, and that he preferred to retain
his position as governor. He advised the President to place a suffi-
cient naval force on the lower lakes ; but he thought that the upper
lakes could be controlled by the armed brig Adams, then building
at Detroit. There being no officer of the regular army who could be
intrusted with the command on the lakes, Governor Hull reluct-
antly became the fifth brigadier-general. In common with his fellow
generals, he had never been in the regular service, and had never
commanded a regim.ent in the field.
On June 30, General Hull had reached the Maumee River with
a force consisting of three regiments of Ohio militia under the
command of Colonels McArthur, Findlay and Cass; a troop of Ohio
dragoons, and the Fourth regiment of United States Infantry,
veterans of Tippecanoe; in all about sixteen hundred men. Four
days before, he had received from Secretary of War Eustis a dis-
patch saying that circumstances had recently occurred which ren-
dered it necessary for him to pursue his march with all possible
expedition, and that the highest confidence was reposed in his dis-
cretion, zeal and perseverance. With his little army Hull had con-
quered the Black Swamp, and now was within an easy distance of
Detroit. In order to spare his worn-out pack horses, he hired the
schooner Cuyahoga to carry his own and his officers' baggage, the
hospital stores and the entrenching tools of the army. Captain Hull,
who was his father's aide-de-camp, carelessly sent with the other
baggage a trunk containing the General's commission, his instruc-
tions from the War Department and the army muster-rolls. With
a cheerful optimism. General Hull believed that the schooner would
be allowed to pass unmolested up the narrow channel under the guns
of Fort Maiden — a fort that he had gathered an army to reduce.
On the 2d of July, as the Cuyahoga attempted to run the batteries,
a shot dropped across her bow brought her to, and a prize crew
from the British armed vessel Hunter was put on board.
294 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Meanwhile the army had advanced to Frenchtown, now Monroe,
on the River Raisin, and there at 2 o'clock on the morning of June
26th, Hull received from the hands of Charles Shaler a dispatch
stating that war had been declared. This dispatch, dated on the
same day with the one urging haste to Detroit, had been put by mis-
take into the Detroit mail, and the Postmaster General had instructed
Postmaster Walworth of Cleveland to forward it by express ; Mr.
Walworth hazarded opening the Detroit pouch to take it out, and
hired Mr. Shaler to make the wilderness journey to overtake the
army. On reading the dispatch. General Hull called a council of
officers; and, acting on their decision, at dawn the army started for
Detroit. Before beginning his march, Hull learned that the Cuya-
hoga had been captured; and thus he knew that the British had
earlier information than he had of the declaration of war. As a
matter of fact, John Jacob Astor, who was largely engaged in the
fur trade, had procured from Secretary Gallatin treasury orders for
collectors of customs along the Great Lakes to receive and hold any
furs that might be brought to them by Astor's agents; and the mer-
chant's expresses spread the war news through Canada, so that
Colonel St. George at Maiden was two days ahead of Hull in getting
the important information.
When the army arrived at Springwells, below Detroit, on July
5, and the soldiers saw the British at work on the other shore, they
burned to invade Canada ; but General Hull, greatly to the chagrin
of his officers, decided that his orders would not permit him to
cross the river. Having received from Secretary Eustis discretion-
ary orders to move on Fort Maiden, Hull waited six days and then,
on the evening of the nth, he sent a fleet of canoes and bateaux
down to Springwells. The British, expecting that the Americans
would cross there, deserted their new fortifications opposite Detroit,
■ and prepared to repel the invaders. But when darkness dropped
down on the black river, the boats were towed up to Bloody Run,
where Pontiac had made his stand thirty-nine years before ; and
there at dawn on Sunday morning, July 12, the Michigan militia
under Colonel Elijah Brush, the regulars and the ardent Ohio vol-
unteers were ferried across the half-mile of water, 400 at a time.
Not a British soldier opposed their landing, and when Colonel Cass
ran up the stars and stripes, the cheers of the assembled French
Canadians rang clear with those of the invaders. The Americans
were highly elated. Colonel Cass wrote and General Hull signed
and published a stirring proclamation, promising civil liberty and all
the blessings of freedom to the Canadians who should remain in
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 295
their homes and offer no resistance to the Americans. At the same
time they were warned that "No white man fomid fighting at the
side of an Indian would be taken prisoner; instant destruction would
be his lot." This proclamation caused the Canadian militia to melt
away; some joined the Americans, but the majority returned to their
homes.
Success now depended on quick and vigorous action against Fort
Maiden. The woods were full of savages who were in the pay of
the British, but who would quickly disperse if the Americans should
be successful. Colonel Cass, with 208 men, pushing on down the
River Detroit, found that the bridge at River Canard was held by
the Indians under Tecumseh and a regiment of Canadian militia.
Marching up the little stream Cass discovered a ford, and about
sunset made a spirited attack. The British and Indians ran to the
tune of Yankee Doodle played by the American drummer; and
although reinforced, they were unable to withstand the impetuous
invaders. At nightfall, Cass gave up the pursuit, and sent back to
Hull asking permission to hold the bridge. The timid general refused
the request, saying that he would not be prepared to take Fort Mai-
den until his heavy cannon were ready, and that the bridge was too
near the enemy to be held by a small detachment. Cass, although
sorely disappointed at Hull's decision, had reason to be satisfied with
the day's events. He had fought the first fight of the new war for
independence ; and, the news quickly spreading through the country,
he was hailed as "the hero of Ta-ron-tee" (the Indian name of River
Canard), and the foundation of his military fame was laid.
Fort Maiden was a fortification best defended from the outside,^
and Colonel St. George had made preparations to move out in case
he should be attacked by a superior force. Captain Muir com-
manded about two hundred British regulars; and there were for
garrison only about fifty Newfoundland Fencibles and thirty artil-
lerymen. Had Hull followed up Cass's success, he would have met
with no determined opposition ; but, as it was, his delays gave the
enemy the needed time to strengthen the fortifications, increase the
garrison, win over the wavering Indians, and so command the
American line of supplies.
The Ohio militia were an independent lot of men, and Hull's
error in judgment made the troops suspect that their commander
might be a coward ; an idea strengthened when he left his army to
2 The remains of the fort may still be seen at Amherstburg. It was a
simple earthwork.
296 HISTORY OF AIICHIGAN
spend four days at Detroit. On July 24th, General ]\IcArthur, being
in command during Hull's absence, determined to make an effort to
capture Fort Maiden ; but the time for that had gone by. The
passage across River Canard was guarded by a strong force covered
by the guns of the Queen Charlotte, and the Indians were laying
ambushes for small parties of Americans that might venture out.
On the 25th, in a skirmish with a party of Indians near Turkey
Creek Bridge, six Americans under Major Denney were killed, and
there the first blood of the War of 1812 was shed.
The officers and men of Hull's army now were persuaded that
their commander did not mean to fight, and that he was personally
timid. Hull himself was disheartened and discouraged by the fail-
ure of the Government to give him that support which he deemed
essential not only to success but even to enable him to hold Detroit,
isolated as it was from the states. A fleet on the lakes and active
operations at Niagara seemed to him necessities, but no measures
had been taken to build vessels ; and he could expect no assistance
from General Dearborn at Niagara, for that officer was being
cajoled by Sir George Prevost into suspending hostilities for the
time being, thus allowing the concentration of troops at Detroit.^
To Hull in his despondency came the paroled garrison from
Mackinac. Early in July the British commandant at St. Joseph's,
Captain Roberts, had received from General Isaac Brock orders to
capture Mackinac, and to call to his assistance the Indians and the
employes of the Northwest Fur Company, who would naturally be
only too ready to strike a blow at their rivals in trade. On July 16
the motley flotilla set out. There were British regulars and Canadian
militia in their bateaux ; about seven hundred Sioux, Ottawa, Win-
nebago and Chippewa Indians skimming the smooth lake in their
bark canoes, and the fur company's brig Caledonia, well loaded
with supplies, — a brave array to capture half a hundred men, who
formed the garrison at Mackinac. Half way on their course, the
British secured Captain Dousman, sent by Lieutenant Hanks to find
out the disposition of his enemies. Dousman was paroled and sent
back to the island to warn the citizens not to go to the fort under
pain of massacre, but to gather on the west side of the island, where
they would be protected by a British gjuard. At dawn on July 17,
the British force disembarked at the spot still known as the British
Landing; the Indians dispersed themselves among the thick woods,
^ This is made plain in Prevost's correspondence, "Canadian Archives,"
1893-
The Fort at Detroit Surrendered by General Hull
298 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
while the British occupied the high lands commanding the fort, and
there planted a heavy gun just captured from the Americans. The
first intimation Lieutenant Hanks had that war existed came to him
after the British had landed, and, with their savage allies, were in
possession of the island. Doctor Day, disregarding Dousman's
warning not to give information to the fort, had rushed to Lieuten-
ant Hanks with the news ; but it was too late to make a stand, and
surrender was the only alternative. Had a gun been fired, the sav-
ages could not have been held in check ; as it was, private property
received protection, and the prisoners who desired to leave Mackinac
were sent on parole to Detroit.
Into the ears of the timid and vacillating general the Mackinac
prisoners poured the tale of the hordes of Indians and voyageurs who
were already preparing to swoop down on Detroit. Hull gave vent
to his fears in a letter to the secretary of war, a document that
speedily fell into the hands of the enemy.* The next day Hull
reluctantly sent 200 of the Ohio militia under Major Van Home to
the River Raisin to meet a supply train despatched by Governor
Meigs of Ohio. A band of Indians under Tecumseh, crossing from
Fort Maiden, lay in wait for the Americans near the River Ecorse;
and when the advance guard lost their way while wandering around
a cornfield, a dozen Indians fired from ambush, killed Captain
McCullough, and bore away his scalp. Half an hour later, near the
village of Brownstown, Indians concealed in woods and cornfields
poured in upon the Americans a fire that threw their ranks into
confusion and caused a hurried, disorderly retreat, with a loss of
seventeen killed. The most serious part of the affair, as events
proved, was the capture of the mail; for the Ohio soldiers had
written freely to their friends at home of Hull's indecision and
cowardice, and these letters fell into the hands of the enemy, giving
him information which led to the bold policy he afterwards adopted. ^
So mutinous were the men that Hull was forced to hold a council
of war ; but when this council decided to fight and orders were given
for an advance movement on Fort Maiden, hope revived and cheer-
fulness was manifest throughout the camp. Joy was turned to sad-
ness, however, when the same evening Hull, having heard of Gen-
eral Brock's advance with a large body of regulars and Indians,
gave orders to retreat across the river to Detroit.
■* "Canadian Archives," 1893, p. 69.
' "Canadian Archives," 1893, p. 72. Prevost to Bathurst ; "It will be
seen by Hull's intercepted letter how much that officer's hopes of conquering
Upper Canada are diminished."
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 299
Major-General Isaac Brock, lieutenant-governor of Canada, was
the animating spirit in the affairs of that province. While Governor
General Sir George Prevost scouted the idea of war, Brock made
preparations for it. He knew of the declaration of war five days
before Hull did, and he immediately ordered the attack on Mackinac,
and began to strengthen Fort Maiden. Establishing his own head-
quarters at Fort George on the Niagara frontier, he called to him
about eight hundred militia and a force of Indians under the cele-
brated John Brant. Then he returned to York (now Toronto) and
convened the Legislature in special session. The members of that
body were despondent ; they knew that 500 of the Canadian militia
had joined Hull, that the Norfolk militia had refused to take up arms
against their American kinsmen, and that the Indians of Grand
River had decided to remain neutral. Then, too, a leading Canadian
newspaper came out boldly in favor of the American cause. Fearing
so timid a Legislature, Brock iirst obtained the vote of supplies, and
then prorogued the Commons without getting authority to declare
martial law or to suspend the habeas corpus. He decided that he
would take those steps on his own responsibility when need should
arise.
The fall of Mackinac speedily changed the Canadian temper,
and the energetic Brock soon found a goodly support. Having had
news on July 20th of Hull's invasion of Canada, and learning that
General Dearborn had consented to make no move to cross the
Niagara, Brock turned his attention to the operations at Detroit, as
he was privileged to do, inasmuch as Dearborn's armistice did not
extend to Hull's command. With the upper lake savages threat-
ening his rear, and General Brock ready to strike his line of com-
munication. General Hull was compelled to order retreat so that
his forces might not be cut off from their base of supplies in Ohio.
To keep the line of communication open Lieutenant Colonel
Miller, with 200 men, was sent to the River Raisin. Arousing the
enthusiasm of the militia by calling on them to avenge the defeat of
Van Home, and by promising the regulars another victory to match
that of Tippecanoe, Miller started off down the river. On a sultry
Sabbath afternoon as the troops neared Monguagon, their advance
was met by a deadly fire from the ambushed British under Major
Muir, and the Indians under Tecumseh. But the Americans were
not to be stampeded ; Colonel Miller led the charge ; the British broke,
and in their confusion, Canadian militia and Indians began killing one
another. Muir rallied his men, but seeing the battle going against
him, he and his command fled to their boats, and made for Fort
300 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Maiden. The Indians fought longest, but when the hot-blooded
Snelling, his long red hair streaming behind him, led the cavalry
against them, the savages ran like deer, leaving forty of their dead
on the field. Colonel Miller, injured in battle by a fall from his
horse, was unable to advance in person to the Raisin ; but Colonel
Cass, who learned of the situation while on his way to Miller, asked
Hull's permission to succeed the injured commander. Hull's answer
was a peremptory order for the force to return to Detroit. There-
upon Cass, Findlay, Taylor, with Colonel Elijah Brush of the Michi-
gan militia, took it upon themselves to send a letter to Governor
Meigs urging him to come to Detroit with reinforcements and sup-
plies in order to avoid a capitulation and the attendant disgrace.
Meanwhile General Brock had arrived at Fort Maiden. He
immediately won the respect and cooperation of Tecumseh, and
aroused the enthusiasm of a thousand savages by telling them he had
come to drive the Americans from the Indian hunting grounds north
of the Ohio ; and he restored to favor the Canadian militia whom
Hull in his retreat had deserted. Arraying his volunteers in the scar-
let coats of the regulars," he deceived the Americans as to the size
of his force ; also he had Proctor write to Mackinac ordering the
descent of not more than five thousand Indians, and managed to
have the letter intercepted by the Americans. Having completely
scared Hull, Brock now proceeded to capture his prey." He threw
up batteries to command Detroit, and Hull refused to allow his
officers to disturb the enemy's operations, although the fort had
twenty-eight heavy guns, while the enemy had but two eighteen-
pounders. On August 15, General Brock wrote to Hull : "The force
at my disposal authorized me to require of you the surrender of
Detroit ; it is far from my inclination to join in a war of extermina-
tion, but you must be aware that the numerous bodies of Indians who
have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond mv control
the moment the contest commences."
After waiting two hours, the messengers returned with the
''The Americans thought that Brock did this for purposes of deceit; but
as a matter of fact the mihtia were ununiformed, while there was a plenty
of regular uniforms among the supplies sent from England. The result was
the same as if the act had been premeditated.
'State Department MSS. Woodward to Gallatin, September 7, 1812:
"As a military operation this enterprise was conducted, on the part of the
British Gener.\l, with a degree of genius, judgment, energy and cour-
age reflecting the highest luster on his personal character and presenting in
every point of view a contrast the most complete to that of the American
General."
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
301
answer that Hull was prepared to fight, a reply that gave the Ameri-
can troops great joy. Snelling begged for a hundred men to go
over and spike the enemy's guns, but again Hull refused; nor
would he allow guns to be mounted where they .should command
the landing of the enemy. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the British
opened a brisk fire, which the fort returned with spirit. Colonel
Mack, of the Michigan militia, ordered John Miller, a volunteer, to
cut down an old French pear tree that stood in the way of the fort's
Designed by J. 11. FrefillaudLT and A. li. .Scyumur, Jr.. .
The Perry's \'ictory Memorial at Put-in-Bay
guns. Seizing an ax, Miller attacked the tree and was chopping
vigorously when a ball from over the river completed his work.
"Send us another, John Bull," he cried, "you can cut faster than I
can!
The fort was filled with soldiers, citizens, women and children
from the town ; and many of the inhabitants fled to Springwells,
where they were huddled in root-cellars dug in a long ravine. Among
the fugitives was Mrs. McCarthy, the daughter of the Territorial
Secretary, Peter Audrain, whose neat, particular little handwriting
and quaint expressions, still preserved among the State Department
documents at Washington, seem to bring that clerkly character into
acquaintance with the reader of his pages. Mrs. McCarthy, made
ill by the foul air of the root-cellar, was carried to a neighboring
302 HISTORY OF ^IICHIGAN
house, which was already crowded with women. ^ Securing places
for her mother and children below stairs, she mounted to the upper
floor where until midnight she listened to the shrieking shells and
worried lest each particular one should kill her father or her hus-
band in the fort. From an upper window next morning she looked
out on a scene of rare beauty. It was Sunday, the i6th day of
August; the sky was deep blue and cloudless; a gentle breeze from
Lake Erie cooled the air; the stately river with its bands of varied
greens made its steady way between low banks on which the quiet
camps gave no promise of what an hour was to bring forth. Gazing
across the rippling waters, she saw the red-coats file down the bank
and take places in the boats. Then, under cover of the Queen Char-
lotte and two other armed vessels, the soldiers were rowed quickly
to the American shore. It was like a pantomime.
Turning expectantly to the fort, she saw a great bustle, but no
soldiers forming on the esplanade. Finally a, cannon was placed at
the west gate, and a detachment of soldiers came forward to support
it; silently a regiment of militia stationed themselves behind the
white picket fences along the way by which the British must pass;
a mile below the fort the British, having landed, were enjoying an
undisturbed breakfast. Next she saw a flag of truce start from the
fort on its way to General Brock's headquarters; then one of that
general's aides galloped to the fort. He, too, carried a white flag.
He returned and the British troops began their march along the
river road leading to the fort, where Captain Snelling stood, lighted
match in hand, ready to pour grape into the ranks of the coming
foe. The ambushed militia covered the path of advance. Just as
Snelling was about to fire, the match was struck from his hands by
an officer who pointed out to the enraged gunner tlie white flag of
surrender waving over the fort. As Captain Barton flung out that
signal of Detroit's disgrace, men swore, officers broke their swords,
and indignant women shed bitter tears.
While all this was taking place. General Hull was seated on an
old tent in a completely sheltered portion of the fort. A shell from
one of the enemy's guns had killed four men, and according to
Major Jessup,' the General was so much alarmed by the casualfy that
he did not know what he was about. The tobacco juice, falling from
his mouth upon his jacket, had smeared his cheeks, making a sad
8 Shelden's "Early History of Michigan."
9 "Hull's Trial," p. 93.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 303
spectacle of him. For the past two days he had been in a state of
agitation ; but when the surrender was accomphshed he became
calm and composed. The change was due, undoubtedly, to his firm
belief, as expressed to Major Munson, that he "had done what under
all circumstances was proper, and had saved Detroit and the Terri-
tory from the horrors of an Indian massacre. "lo
On Monday, August 17, General Brock and his staff in full
uniform appeared at the fort, where they received a salute from a
brass cannon marked : "Taken at Saratoga on the nth of October,
1777." The salute was echoed by Dixon's battery, giving thanks
that the invasion of Canada had been repelled, and by the guns of
the Queen Charlotte, as she plowed her way up the now undisputed
waters and dropped anchor in front of the conquered town. Hull
was sent to his own house, under a British guard; the Michigan
militia were paroled and allowed to disperse; the Ohio volunteers
were sent home by way of Cleveland ; and the. regulars, with General
Hull, were subsequently sent to Montreal, whence Hull was allowed
to proceed to Boston to answer the charges brought against him
by the Government. Without shedding a drop of English blood,
Brock secured 2,500 prisoners and twenty-five pieces of ordnance,
besides ammunition and stores which were of the utmost use to
him; also he captured the new brig Adams, which, as the Detroit,
was afterwards used to advantage against Perry's fleet. This he
accomplished with a force of 700 troops and 600 Indians. ^ 1
Colonel Cass (who, with Colonel McArthur, had been included
in the surrender) hastened to Washington, where he presented the
case against General Hull with all the energy and eft'ectiveness of
an ardent young American who keenly felt the disgrace in which
he was forced-to bear an unwilling part. The storm of indignation
which swept over the country finally resulted in the court-martial,
held at Albany beginning January 3, 1814, with Major General
Henry Dearborn as president and Martin Van Buren as special
judge-advocate. After a session of three months, General Hull
was found not guilty of treason, but guilty of cowardice, neglect of
duty and unofficer-like conduct. The sentence of the court was that
he be shot to death ; but in consideration of his Revolutionary serv-
ices he was recommended to the mercy of the President of the
United States, and President Madison ordered him to retire to his
farm at Newton, Massachusetts. There for twelve years he lived
If "Hull's Defense," p. 87.
^1 "Canadian Archives," 1893, p. 71.
304
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
in obscurity scarcely disturbed by the "vindications"' that he sent
out in his own justification.
Hull was clearly incompetent for the work assigned to him ; he
did not grasp the situation as Harrison had grasped it on his first
visit to Detroit in 1803; he did not fully appreciate the fact that so
long as the British held Fort Maiden the Americans were at the
mercy of their enemies. Had Hull followed up the success of Cass
at River Canard, he would have captured the fort and then could
have confined the British vessels to Lake Erie, thus keeping posses-
I'l Twenty-foutth Street, Detroit
The Lauadie House
sion of the upper country. Besides, he was personally a coward ;
and to his fears of an Indian massacre at Detroit were due the sub-
secjuent atrocities at Frenchtown and on the Raisin. To get the true
measure of Hull, one has but to stand beside his predecessors in
command — the French Dubuisson and the English Gladwin — each
of whom looked Indian massacres in the face and by bravery averted
that horror. Making all due allowance for the undoubted inefficiency
of the Government, Hull is still to be blamed for not using the oppor-
tunities given him; and so weak was his character that even if every-
thing he had asked had been supplied, still he must have failed.
General Brock having assured the people of Michigan that their
lives, property and religious observances would be respected, left
Detroit in the hands of Colonel Proctor, and returned to York to
receive the ovations due the savior of the province, as well as the
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 305
more substantial rewards of a baronetcy conferred by the Prince
Regent.i2
General Brock left to Colonel Proctor the task of carrying out
his promises. In his perplexity, Proctor turned to Judge Woodward,
the sole remaining representative of the American Government,
for advice and aid. The request was made with great hesitation
on Proctor's part, and was accepted with equal reluctance on the
part of Woodward.i* Both, however, recognized the necessity of
some such arrangement ; Proctor, because unless order were main-
tained and the revenue laws enforced, his government would lose
in duties about six or eight times the cost of supporting the officials ;
Woodward, because of the desirability of continuing American laws
until the Territory should be restored to the United States ; and also
because the position of secretary, which Proctor assigned to him,
enabled him to "intercede for his suffering countrymen, to save their
lives and persons from the victorious and insulting savage, to pre-
serve the remnants of their little properties from pillage, and to aid
in the means of departing those who will go to find the .standard
of their country where her power is not yet diminished and her
glory is untarnished."
As a result of the understanding arrived at between Proctor and
Woodward, the civil officers who remained continued to exercise
the functions of their offices; the courts of justice were held as
usual, i"* and Colonel Proctor reserved to himself the right to make
laws. The customs and imposts were collected according to the laws
of the United States.
Tecumseh, the leader of the savages, whose presence with the
British had so unmanned Hull, now saw his opportunity to drive
the whites from the country north of the Ohio : and having stirred
the blood of the warriors, he joined with Proctor to reduce Fort
Wayne, at the head of the Maumee, and Fort Harrison on the
Wabash, where Captain Zachary Taylor was in command. Both
attacks were repulsed. The whole western country was rising to
the struggle for its life; Governor James Barbour wrote to Monroe
1- Brock fell at the battle of Lundy's Lane in October, 1812, and his loss
proved serious to the British.
13 State Department MSS., Proctor to Brock and Woodward to Albert
Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury.
1* The session of Supreme Court was adjourned to meet in December,
at the house of George Meldrum. Joseph Campau sued Oliver Williams,
Joseph Farewell and Amos Lee for $3,000, the writ being issued September i,
1812.
Vol. 1—20
306 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
that the disgrace of Hull's surrender had thoroughly aroused the
people of Virginia ; and John Graham wrote that the Kentuckians
were burning to recapture a post surrendered by a coward and a
traitor.
At this juncture William Henry Harrison, Governor of the
Indiana Territory, was looked upon throughout the country as
the one man to retrieve the disgrace that had been put upon the
United States ;'■'' and by the end of August, 1812, he was in the
field with a commission as brevet major-general of Kentucky militia.
The autumn rains, however, made the Black Swamp impassable
and he could not make a forward movement until the next year.
French House with Picket Fence
Meantime, the thirty-three families of Americans in the little town
of Raisinville (now Monroe) were suffering seriously from incur-
sions by the British and Indians, on their way between Detroit
and Amherstburg; and in order to save the town from threatened
destruction, Colonel Lewis with 700 Kentuckians marched thither
about the middle of January, 1813. The place was occupied by a
small force of British and Indians who had the advantage of a
howitzer and of the fortifications formed by the thick picket-fences
enclosing the orchards and gardens of the settlers. On January
18, Lewis' force crossed the frozen river in the face of a sharp
fire, leaped the fences, and drove the enemy into the woods. The
news of the victory, sent back to General Winchester commanding
the advance of Harrison's army, set his men in a ferment, so eager
^5 This statement is amply proved by the letters to Monroe from Henry
Clay, James Barbour, John Graham and President Madison; see "Calendar
of the Correspondence of James Monroe," Department of State, 1893.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 307
were they to push on to recapture Detroit. Winchester brought
only 300 Kentuckians to the support of Lewis, and in his confidence
he made his headquarters at the Navarre House, half a mile from
his troops. On the 19th, Winchester was told that 3,000 British
and Indians were on their way from Maiden to attack him ; but
Jacques la Salle, a resident of Frenchtown, and a man in the pay
of the British, scouted the idea ; and although Joseph Bardeaux
and the Navarres gave ample warning. La Salle's counsel prevailed.
Three hours before dawn on the morning of the 22d, the crack
of muskets, the whiz of canister and shriek of shells preceded a
furious charge of British regulars and a stealthy dash of painted
savages. Bravely the Americans fought ; often they tried to rally
behind houses and fences ; the British pressed them in front ; the
Indians attacked flanks and rear. The British did not seek to
capture their foes, for Proctor had arranged with the savages that
death should be the only portion. One hundred brave Kentuckians
were shot down in a narrow lane and scalped ; a retreating party
was surrounded and only their leader escaped death and the scalping
knife. The little force of Majors Graves and Madison, fortified by
a heavy fence of pickets, alone was able to withstand the foe. .\t
10 o'clock Proctor, unable to dislodge these Kentucky sharpshooters,
withdrew his force, and himself took a flag of truce to tiiem. With
him was Major Overton of General Winchester's stalY, who bore
an order from the captured commander for the immediate surrender
of the two majors. This order, as it afterwards proved. Proctor
had obtained by deceit. Madison held out until he got Proctor's
personal pledge that the sick and wounded should be cared for,
and all prisoners guarded against the savages. On the way to
Fort Maiden, however. Proctor treated the Indians to a debauch
at Stony Creek, while he and his soldiers pushed on across the
river, leaving the drunken savages to work their will. By way of
keeping his pledge of protection he had left Captain Elliott and a
few men to watch over the wounded ; but Elliott, on entering the
room where the wounded Major Graves and Captains Hickman,
Hart and Dudley were confined, recognized in Hart a person whose
room he had shared as a guest in one of the old Kentucky homes.
Having deceived the Hart family in a money matter, Elliott pre-
ferred other company; so he mounted Major Graves' horse and rode
away leaving a town full of helpless men utterly without protection.
Next morning the drunken Indians came back. Hart, who paid
one of them $600 to take him to Fort Maiden, was shot dead on
the way. Hickman was tossed out of the window into the deep
308 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
snow and left to die. Many of the wounded were killed in their
beds. Some were burned in the houses, and when they tried to
crawl out were scalped and thrown back into the flames ; those
who could walk were started for Fort Maiden, and when one fell
by the way he was tomahawked, and his scalp was taken to be sold to
the British. "Thus," said Judge Campbell to the remnant of the
veterans of the War of 1812, gathered at Monroe on July 4th, 1872,
"thus was carried out the pledge of the infamous leader, who lacked
nothing but courage and some faint glimmerings of fidelity to make
him a fit companion for his drunken butchers. He finished his
wolfish work by ordering the inhaljitants to Detroit, in the depth
of a hard winter, and the ways of the desolate hamlet were left
encumbered by the unburied dead."
For these triumphs Proctor was made a brigadier-general : but
the new war-cry, "Remember the River Raisin !" was soon to be
his undoing.
General Harrison, alarmed liv Winchester's forward movement,
hastened after him ; but before he could come up with the advance
forces he heard of the irretrievable defeat, and then the January
storms caused delays. Meanwhile, the elated Proctor gathered
1,500 Indians and in May attacked Harrison at Fort Meigs, on the
Maumee, but was driven off, and retired to Maiden disheartened.
Urged by Tecumseh, however. Proctor, in August, attacked Fort
Stephenson, on the Sandusky, a stockade commanded by Major
Croghan, who would yield to the commands of neither Harrison,
his superior officer, nor Proctor, his enemy, to surrender his post.
Looking massacre squarely in the face, Croghan determined that
by the time the British got the fort there should be no one left
for the Indians to scalp. The reward of daring bravery was his.
Aided by the Kentucky sharpshooters and a masked gun, placed so
as to rake an attacking party, Croghan, at an expense of one man
killed and seven wounded, caused a British loss of 120."' The
Indians waited in a ravine until the battle in the field had brought
defeat to the British ; then they prudently refused to take part.
During these days of varied success and failure on land, Com-
'^ "It will be not the least of General Proctor's mortifications to find
that he .was baffled by a youth who has just passed his twenty-first year.
George Croghan is a hero worthy of his gallant uncle, George Rogers
Clark." — Maj. Gen. Wm. H. Harrison's Report, Niles' Register, September,
1813. Croghan was with Jackson at the battle of New Orleans, of which
city he subsequently became postmaster. Later he was made Inspector-
General of the United States Army.
179 f,
PLMOF PflFTOF THE LtiTfiKnCL OF THt STR/Uli
FRon LflKL CffiE l£/JD;«g to DETROIT SHOWIHO
THE ^ITUATiOHi fOR ^U'LOINOi ORDERED TO BL CRLCTLD.
Chart of the Mouth of the Detroit River, Showing the
Location of Fort Malden (now Amhersteurg), Built in
1796.
The Livingstone Channel for vessels bound down row occupies the waters between Isle Aux Bois
Blanc and Grosse Isle; the Lime-Kiln Cut for up-bound vessels was made in the. Cauadiaji CTjannel
between the Bois Blanc and Amherstburg. Both channels were constructed by the United States.
310 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
modore Oliver Hazard Perry had been gathering and building a
fleet at Erie ; and by the end of August, 1813, the British Commodore
Leo on Lake Ontario and Commodore Barclay on Lake Erie both
felt that naval battles for the mastery of the lower and the upper
lakes were imminent. By shutting off supplies for Amherstburg,
Perry had reduced the garrison of Fort Maiden to a condition of
dire distress ; and in a letter to the home government, Prevost
acknowledges the critical situation in which American supremacy
on Lake Erie would place Upper Canada. On the loth of Septem-
der, 1813, Perry, who was then less than twenty-nine years old,
with a fleet of nine vessels (most of which he had built out of green
timber and had lifted on rafts over the shallows of Erie harbor)
fought near Put-in-Bay the British fleet of six vessels, that were
his match in respect to guns and men. That night he sent to
Harrison the laconic message, "'We have met the enemy and they
are ours."
The naval battle of Put-in-Bay virtually restored Michigan to
the United States, and the work left for Harrison was soon accom-
plished. On September 27, Perry ferried the American army across
to Amherstburg, where the soldiers landed to find Fort Maiden
deserted ; Proctor had fled an hour before. The cowardly English-
man had promised Tecumseh that he would surely make a stand on
the Thames, and on October 3d, the two armies met near that river.
Harrison, accompanied by Commodore Perry and General Cass,
directed the battle, and at the first onset, the 800 British, greeted
by the cry, '"Remember the River Raisin!" gave way before the
American cavalry, and surrendered as fast as they could throw
down their arms. Proctor escaped in his carriage. Afterwards,
a court-martial having found him guilty of misconduct but not of
cowardice, the Prince Regent reprimanded the court for mistaken
leniency, and Proctor, like Hull, was retired in disgrace.^'
In the midst of the fight Tecumseh was killed by a bullet fired
by one of a party led by Col. Richard M. Johnson, and for years
the query, "Who killed Tecumseh?" was one of the country's
" The best treatment of the War of 1812 is to be found in Henry Adams'
history of the United States. Mr. Adams ascribes to Harrison blunders only
less glaring than those committed by Hull ; but Perry receives the praise
which belongs to him for having achieved a signal victory by personal
bravery, skill and judgment. The Battle of the Thames, Mr. Adams thinks,
was really won by Johnson's skill and determination. The Tilden Club's
monograph on this battle is interesting for its illustrations and for the per-
sonal accounts of the men engaged.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
311
conundrums. The battle of the Thames was notable at least for
the Americans who took part in it. Perry, who died six years later,
left a name illustrious in the history of the United States navy;
Harrison became President and Johnson Vice President of the
United States, and Cass was immediately appointed Governor of
Michigan, and afterwards became Secretary of War, minister to
France, a presidential candidate, and finally Secretary of State.
In July, 1814, a squadron of five vessels under Commander
Arthur St. Clair, with 750 men commanded by Colonel Croghan,
The Navarre House, River Raisin
the hero of Fort Stephenson, sailed for Fort St. Joseph, but they
found it abandoned. A small force broke up the British fur trading
post at Sault Ste. Marie, and then the whole party sailed for
Mackinac, which was still in possession of the British. Having
effected an entrance on the island, the Americans were met by a
heavy fire from McDonalFs batteries, and from behind every tree
an Indian was ready with rifle and scalping knife. Unsuccessful
in their attempt, the Americans retreated to their boats, and early
in August the squadron sailed for Detroit, leaving the Tigress
and Scorpion to cut oi¥ supplies intended for the garrison. This
duty they were accomplishing when, one dark night, a large party
of British and Indians under Lieutenant Bulger boarded the Tigress
and quickly overpowered the thirty men on board. Next day
Lieutenant Bulger kept the American colors flying, and his crew
312 HISTORY OF :MICHIGAN
hidden ; and when at nightfall the unsuspecting Scorpion came up
and dropped anchor near her consort, it was easy work to capture
that vessel.
The Treaty of Ghent having been concluded on December 24,
1814, on July 15 of the following year Fort Maiden was surrendered
to the British ; and on July 18 Mackinac was given over to the
Americans under Col. Anthony Butler.^^ Mr. Astor immedi-
ately re-established there the headquarters of his fur trade.
The British, meanwhile, had withdrawn to Drummond's Island,
at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, where they established
an extensive post, the ruins of which are still visible.
With the surrender of Mackinac, the flag of England floated
for the last time over any portion of the territory of the United
States within the boundaries established by the treaty that ended
the War of the Revolution. In after years (March 3, 1875)
Congress recognized the historic importance of Mackinac, and
crowned the legislative labors of Senator Thomas W. Ferry (a
native of the island) by setting apart a portion of the military reser-
vation as a national park. In 1895, President Cleveland determined
that the military post on the island should be abandoned. There-
upon, Senator James McMillan secured the legislation necessary to
have the Government holdings turned over to the State of Michigan
for park purposes. ^^
18 Butler to Dallas, War Department MSS.
''■'■> The Mackinac Island State Park comprises old Fort Mackinac, with
35 buildings; the military reservation of 104 acres, and the old National
Park of 911 acres. The park is managed by a board of commissioners con-
sisting (1915) of Leo M. Butzel of Detroit, Ira A. Adams of Bellaire, Harry
Coleman of Pontiac, Alfred O. Joplin of Marquette, and E. O. Wood of
Flint. The island is one of the most frequented summer resorts in the United
States.
CHAPTER X\'II
LEWIS CASS FOUNDS A COAIjMONWEALTH
That was a fortunate day for Michigan when, after the Battle
of the Thames, General William Henry Harrison made Capt.
Lewis Cass of the Ohio Militia military governor of Michigan.
From October 29, 1813, to December 24, 1828, for a period of
fifteen years of vital importance to this commonwealth, Lewis Cass
from the governor's chair directed and controlled those formative
forces which gave Michigan the high position she has occupied in the
union of the states. Indeed his beneficent work extended through-
out the entire Northwest ; and the great region from the Lakes to
the Mississippi felt the eft'ects of the well-directed efiforts of this
enlightened commonwealth builder. No governor has had such
great opportunities as Cass had, and none has left so great an impress
on our institutions. Most appropriately, therefore, the State of
Michigan has placed in Statuary Hall in the national capitol a worthy
statue by Daniel Chester French to commemorate Lewis Cass as the
first citizen of Michigan.
Born at Exeter, New Hampshire, on October 9, 1782, his mother
held him, a boy of six years, at a window and pointed out to him
the bonfires that were blazing in the streets and told him that by the
action of his native state the adoption of the Constitution of the
L^nited States was assured. He lived to see the LTnion made per-
manent beyond all peril, as the result of the War of Secession; and
when he died at his home in Detroit, on June 17, 1866, in the
eighty-fourth year of his age, he could say with Simeon of old,
"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace."
Jonathan Cass, his father, had been a soldier throughout the
Revolution, and had again taken up arms to fight under
Gen. Anthonv Wayne against the Indians who, instigated by British
agents, were preventing the United States from taking possession of
the Northwest. During these latter years young Cass was a student
at Phillips Exeter Academy, then as now an institution noted for
sound learning and the best training in the fundamentals of educa-
tion. There he had for a fellow student Daniel Webster, with whom
313
314 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
he afterwards saw service in the United States Senate. After
teaching for a short time in Wihnington, Delaware, where his father
was then stationed, he went with his family to Marietta, Ohio, where
he studied law in the office of Return Jonathan Meigs, afterwards
governor of that state, and his was the first certificate of admission
to the bar granted by the State of Ohio. He began practice in
Zanesville, where his father was a large landowner, and married, in
1806, Elizabeth Spencer, the daughter of a Revolutionary general.
At the age of twenty-four he was a member of the Legislature.
The young lawyer and his Virginia wife made strong friends
easily, and during the first summer of their married life many of
their leisure hours were spent at the island home of Harman Blenner-
hassett, where the conversation was wont to drift from literature
and philosophy to the fascinations and genius of Aaron Burr, whose
schemes of treason were so soon to make him the serpent of the
Blennerhassett paradise. Cass himself, as a member of the Ohio
Legislature, made the first public attack on Burr and his conspiracy
to seize Louisiana ; and it was in this way that he became acquainted
with President Jefferson, by whom he was appointed United States
iTiarshal, an office which he held when the breaking out of the War of
1812 called him to Michigan.
When, in 181 5, Cass with his family came to Michigan to enter
upon his duties as civil governor, under appointment by President
Madison, the Territory had a white population of some five or six
thousand people, spread along the waterways. The war had left
them destitute : for it had broken up the fur trade, on which the
people depended to obtain the necessaries of life. There was not
in the Territory a road worthy of the name, nor was there a bridge
across any of the rivers ; there was neither a Protestant church, a
schoolhouse, a courthouse, nor a jail. The Indian title to the lands
had not been acquired by the Government, and consequently there
was no room for settlers. Indeed, the official reports showed that
Michigan lands were absolutely valueless.
Congress having appropriated 2,000,000 acres in Michigan Terri-
tory for soldiers of the W^ar of 1812, on November 30, 1815, Sur-
veyor-General Edward Tiffin reported to Land Commissioner Meigs
that the surveyors found it impossible to accomplish their task until
the country should be frozen so as to bear man and beast. They
further reported that the whole 2,000,000 acres would not be worth
the expense of the survey, the country being made up of "low, w^et
land with a very thick grow^th of underbrush, intermixed with very
bad marshes. In many places that part which may be called dry
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 315
land was composed of little, short sand hills, forming a kind of deep
hasin, the bottoms of many of which were composed of marshes.
Taking the country altogether there would not be more
than one acre in a hundred, if there were one in a thousand, that
would in any case admit of cultivation." Acting on this information,
Congress restored the Michigan lands to the public domain and gave
to the soldiers others on which the reports were more favorable.
Thus it happened that the Michigan lands, instead of falling into
the hands of speculators, were reserved for actual settlers ; and that
the report of the surveyors, which seemed so discouraging to Michi-
gan's prospects, in the long run proved a benefit.
Detroit, although without a Protestant church, was not without
religious services for Protestants as well as Catholics. Father
Gabriel Richard had been sent to Detroit in 1798. It was not until
the coming of Cass, however, that the zeal and intelligence of this
remarkable man came to be one of the dominating forces in Michi-
gan. J. A. Girardin, who had the advantage of a personal acquain-
tance with his subject, has left us a graphic sketch of this inde-
fatigable apostle of the church militant. Born at Saintes, France,
October 15, 1764, Gabriel Richard was a descendant, on his mother's
side, of the silver-tongued Bishop Bossuet. To his complete classical
education was added a theological course at the seminaries' of Augers
and Losy, where he was fitted to join the Society of St. Sulpice, a
congregation of secular priests devoted to the education of young
men for the ministry. The outbreak of the French Revolution hav-
ing precluded work of that character in France, he was sent across
the ocean (1792) to assist the Rt. Rev. Bishop Carroll in estab-
lishing a theological seminary at Baltimore. The pressing needs of
the missionary field, however, called Father Richard to the Illinois
country, where he labored for the six years before he was sent to
the more important charge of the congregations in Michigan. '^
On beginning work in Detroit, Father Richard found both religion
and education at a low ebb. Austere in his habits, simple even to
meanness in his dress and manner of life, he was nevertheless
courteous and affable to all with whom he came in contact; and by
his patience, integrity and zeal he soon won the thorough respect of
the community. In the pulpit he was a terror to the evil doers in
his congregation, for he insisted on a standard of virtue quite antag-
onistic to that in vogue among the French population at Detroit,
who were easy-going if left to themselves, but stubbornly rebellious
1 Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. I, p. 481. See also sketch by T. A. E. Weadock,
Vol. XXI, p. 431 ; and Vol. XIII, p. 489-
316
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
when interfered with. Liquor and toljacco were to him twin abom-
inations ; but by his congregation they were counted among the neces-
sities of life ; and the sharp practices that were a part of their stock
in trade were held in detestation by Father Richard, who himself
was the soul of honor. Too impetuous to use tact, he was con-
tinuously at variance with his own people, who seemed to take
delight in trying to thwart every means he initiated for their improve-
ment and advantage.
As one would be led to expect from his early training, the estab-
lishment of schools was one of the first objects of his work. In
The Home of Lewis C.\ss, Detroit
1804 he opened a ladies" seminary, whose four teachers he had pre-
pared for their work. On August 31, 1809, he published an issue of
the Essai du Michigan, or Im/^artial Observer, the first newspaper
west of the Alleghany mountains, printing it on a press brought
by him from Baltimore. As is usual the paper was a failure finan-
cially ; but the press was used to good advantage in printing prayer-
books, catechisms and other works of religious instruction. To
Father Richard belongs also the credit of having introduced the first
organ in Detroit; and he composed music for use in his religious
services.
When he was not absent on his missionary journeys to Mackinac,
Sault Ste. Marie, or Green Bay, it was the custom for the Protestant
people of Detroit to gather at the Council House at noon on Sunday
to listen to a sermon delivered in broken but effective English by
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 317
Father Richard. "Although sensible of my incapacity," he modestly
wrote to Bishop Carroll, "as there was no English speaking minister
here of any denomination, 1 thought it might be of some utility to
take possession of the ground." Confining his discourses to the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity, Father Richard ministered so
acceptably that it was not until 1816 that the Protestants called a
minister of their own faith in the person of John Monteith.-
The coming of Monteith gave to Cass another powerful agent in
his task of commonwealth-luiilding. A native of Gettysburg, Penn-
sylvania ; a graduate of Jefferson College and Princeton Seminary,
Monteith, at the age of twentv-eight, declined a life of professorial
ease "to introduce the gospel in the Territory of Michigan." as his
call phrased it ! Arriving at Detroit, he was met at the wharf by
Father Richard, who gave the newcomer a hearty welcome ; and
on the following Sabbath clergyman and priest each alternately
attended the services of the other.
The time had now come to carry into execution the long-consid-
ered plan of the Governor to found a college. Judge Woodward,
repressed but by no means extinguished by the interval of the British
possession (during which he had acted as Proctor's secretary and,
with Father Richard, had done much to mitigate the sad plight of
the inhal)itants), was at hand to supply the scheme and nomen-
clature of the budding institution; and on September g, 1817, the
Territorial Legislature chartered the Catholepistemia, or University
of Michigania. Much sport has been made — and with reason — over
the ridiculously pedantic forms of speech used by Judge Woodward ;
but the original plan was characterized by remarkable breadth. The
- Monteith was not the first Protestant minister in Michigan. TIic Con-
necticut Evangelical Magazine for 1801 contains a letter from Rev. Daniel
Bacon (father of the celebrated Dr. Leonard Bacon, who was born in
Detroit, February 19, 1802) in which he says that he preached at Detroit
on Sunday mornings and at the River Rouge in the afternoons, and that he
found the people generally more attentive to the word than was common in
the East. He taught school, learned the Chippewa language and made fre-
quent missionary journeys to Mackinac. He remained at Detroit until 1804.
Farmer relates several interesting anecdotes of Bacon's stay in Michigan.
Also a band of Moravian missionaries who had been brought to Detroit in
1782 on the false charge of having aided the Americans in the Revolution,
were allowed by the commandant, Col. DePeyster. to establish themselves
with their Indian converts on the Clinton River, near the present site of Mt.
Clemens. The settlement, called New Gnadenhutten, was continued imtil 1786,
when tlie missionaries were paid $200 for their improvements and were
ordered away. The Connor family of Mt. Clemens obtained title to lands
through Richard Connor, who remained.
318 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
university was to be what it has so fully become under the wise guid-
ance of President Angell — the fostering mother of the lower schools.
Its president and professors were empowered "to establish colleges,
academies, schools, libraries, museums, athenreums, botanic gardens,
laboratories, and other useful literary and scientific institutions con-
sonant with the laws of the United States of America and of Michi-
gan." Instruction was to be free to those unable to pay the small
fees exacted; and fifteen per cent of the taxes as well as fifteen per
cent of the proceeds of four lotteries were to be set apart for the
support of the university. In 1804 Congress had provided that a
township should be set apart for the support of a seminary in each
of the three divisions into which Indiana Territory was to be divided;
and Cass, going straight from the discussion of plans for the new
university to negotiate the Treaty of Fort Meigs, obtained from the
Ottawas and Pottawatomies a grant of six sections of land to be
divided betw-een St. Anne's Church and the College of Detroit.
These original grants were doubled by Congress in 1826, and from
them the university has derived substantial support.
The didaxia of Catholepistemania in the Catholepistemiad was
held by Mr. Monteith ; and the didaxia of Anthropoglossica fell to
the lot of Father Richard. Each held six professorships, and
Mr. Monteith acted as president of the university. At the close of
the year the president received from the treasurer of the Territory
as his salary in full the munificent sum of $80. Father Richard
drew $78, at the rate of $12.50 a year for each professorship. Nar-
row as was the actual performance, yet broad was the foundation of
Michigan University; and the sense of religious freedom and of com-
prehensiveness of plan bequeathed by the founders was their most
precious gift to later generations of university builders. Thus did
Michigan obey what President Angell calls "that sublime imperative"
in the Ordinance of 1787 : "Religion, morality and knowledge being
necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
The original plan of the University, drawn up by Judge Wood-
ward, is now in the library of that institution. In 1887, a century
after the passage of the ordinance which is the charter of the North-
west, the University of Michigan celebrated its semi-centennial,
although under the decisions of the Supreme Court its origin was in
181 7, and thus it might have added another twenty years. Looking
back over the years, President Angell said of the Woodward plan
that "whatever criticisms may be made upon the scheme, it certainly
showed in its author a remarkably broad conception of the range
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 319
which should be given to education liere, a conception, it may be
believed, which was never lost from sight, and which doubtless made
easy the acceptance twenty years later of the large plans of educa-
tional organization that were then readily adopted." ^
To have laid broad and deep the foundations of a great univer-
sity, to have helped the people of Detroit to live peaceably under
the English domination, and to have drawn the plan of Detroit are
achievements which should ever be remembered with gratitude by
the people of Michigan. It is time to put aside such childish things
as a nomenclature which, prevalent in its day, now seems absurd ; it
is time also to forget the eccentricities of a man of real genius in
order to give to Judge Woodward the place to which he is justly
entitled in the history of Michigan.
Another of the means of education that Governor Cass took it
upon himself to foster was the newspaper. In the summer of 1817
Messrs. Sheldon and Reed were induced to start the Detroit Gazette,
from which journal the Detroit Free Press is lineally descended.
The publishers were also booksellers, and in the columns of their
first issue they invited the reading public to buy from them "Thad-
deus of Warsaw," Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," the "Life of
Franklin," Byron's and Scott's poems, Rollin's Ancient History,
"Peregrine Pickle," and Blair's Lectures ; and those who could not
afi^ord to own books might borrow them from Rev. John Monteith,
who had charge of the library started by a joint-stock company.
Enterprising merchants advertised dressed and undressed calicoes,
book-muslins, linoes, janes, ginghams, velvets and silks. The most
numerous advertisers, however, were the sellers of Wahatomaka
whiskey, brandy and wines, a fact that accounts for the editorial
complaints of "a widespread propensity to steal and secrete all sorts
of property," and of the useless condition of the building that served
as a jail.
On August 13, 1817, Detroit was thrown into a state of intense
excitement by the unexpected announcement that President James
Monroe, who had been making a tour along the northern boundary,
was at the mouth of the Detroit River, and, in company with Gov-
ernor Cass and Generals Brown and Macomb,'* would shortly arrive
'"The Semi-Centennial of the Organization of the University of Michi-
gan," Ann Arhor, 1888.
* Gen. Jacob Brown commanded the United States army from 1815 to
1828, and was succeeded by Gen. Alexander Macomb, who was in command
until 1841. Macomb was born in Detroit, and his statue by Adolph A.
Weinman stands on Washington Avenue.
X
z
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 321
in the city. A committee of citizens, with Judge Solomon Sibley at
their head, met the presidential party at the River Ecorse, where
they disembarked from their barges. Fort Shelby fired the presi-
dential salute of thirteen guns as the procession passed through the
streets, and that night the city was illuminated at a public expense
of $23.26. A review of the troops, the presentation of a sword
voted to General Macomb by the Legislature of New York, and a
grand ball at the Steamboat Hotel were the features of the occasion.
The President spent five days in Detroit, and on leaving the citizens
gave him a carriage and a pair of horses.
In the early days of Governor Cass's administration the winter
vehicle was the cariole, in which it was a common thing to make a
trip on the frozen river to Monroe or to the St. Clair, and even
Buffalo could at times be reached along the ice-bound shores of Lake
Erie. In summer there was the pirogue, a huge wooden canoe
carrying three or four passengers besides a crew of half a dozen
men ; the birch-bark canoe tliat would hold twelve persons with their
tents and provisions ; and a few schooners of from fifty to sixty
tons burthen that confined their navigation to the months of June,
July and August. On August 27, 1818, eleven years after Fulton's
Clermont, the Walk-in-the-Water fired her one gun and steamed
up to the Bates Street dock at Detroit. This tiny steamboat was as
great a wonder in its day as La Salle's Grifl^on had been a century
and a quarter before. The Indians thought she was drawn by stur-
geons ; and in truth her passage from Buffalo to Lake Erie had to be
expedited by a "horned breeze" consisting of twenty yokes of oxen.
Citizens armed with long cedar poles assisted her departure from
the dock when the wind blew across the river ; and at the lake ports
she received freight and passengers from lighters, because there was
not sufficient depth of water to float her over the bars at the mouths
of the rivers. On her second voyage she was run ashore near
Buffalo in a storm and the waves made short work of her; but her
place was soon supplied by stauncher craft.
In 1819 Congress, having authorized the taxable citizens of Michi-
gan to send a delegate to the National Legislature, William Wood-
bridge, the Territorial secretary, was elected. The choice was a
natural one. At the request of the citizens, Mr. Woodbridge had
been delegated to satisfy Congress that, although the War of 1812
had left the territory too poor to take upon itself the financial bur-
dens incident to state goyernmcnt, still the population of Michigan
entitled her to a representative at Washington ; and he had ably suc-
ceeded in accomplishing his task. Mr. Woodbridge was born in
322 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
Norwich, Connecticut, and, like Cass, he was the son of a Revolu-
tionary soldier who had found in Marietta a home for his growing
family. As a member of the Ohio Legislature, he drew up and
defended resolutions endorsing the war measures of President Madi-
son ; and it was on Governor Cass's suggestion to Madison that
Woodbridge was offered the unsought for appointment as territorial
secretary.5 Mr. and Mrs. Woodbridge — the latter a daughter of
Hon. John Trumbull, the author of the then celebrated poem,
"McFingal"- — were a decided acquisition to Detroit society; and in
public esteem and favor, as in official position, the Secretary stood
second only to the Governor. By dint of untiring work, Mr. Wood-
bridge induced Congress to undertake the task of building through
the Black Swamp the military road which President Jefferson had
projected in 1806, and for which Governor Cass had obtained title
to the Indian lands by the Treaty of Fort Meigs, a treaty that gave
to the United States 4,000,000 acres, including nearly all the Indian
lands in Ohio, besides portions of those in Indiana and Michigan.
It is quite possible that Mr. Woodbridge's zeal for the road was
quickened by the fact that his mother, who was the first white woman
to brave the journey through the Black Swamp, was compelled to
spend several nights on the way with the trunk of a fallen tree for
a bed. He also secured the passage of bills authorizing the building
of roads to Chicago and to Fort Gratiot, at the foot of Lake Huron,
both of these measures being of the very greatest importance to the
development of the Territory.
On going to Washington to attend the first session of the Fif-
teenth Congress, Mr. Woodbridge took with him a memorial from
Governor Cass, urging upon the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun,
the expediency and even the necessity of sending an exploring party
to the Lake Superior regions, all knowledge of which country had
disappeared with Marquette, La Hontan and the other explorers of
the earliest days. It was important, also, to learn the disposition of
the Indians and by treaties to secure lands for military posts and
settlements at Sault Ste. Marie and Chicago. Mr. Calhoun, at first
reluctant to incur the expense, finally yielded, and in May, 1820, the
expedition embarked on Lake St. Clair." In the party were Henry
R. Schoolcraft, whose works on Indian manners, customs and his-
5 "Charles Lanman's Memoir of William Woodbridge."
6 The narrative of this trip is given in Smith's Life of Lewis Cass. See
also "Lewis Cass," by Andrew C. McLaughlin, BcTston, 1897- With the judg-
ment of a trained historian and the pen of a forceful writer Professor
McLaughlin has produced a most interesting life of Cass.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 323
tory still hold a place among the records of scientific explorations ;
also James D. Doty and Charles C. Trowbridge, Capt. D. B. Douglas,
a West Point professor of engineering; Dr. Alexander Wolcott, and
Lieut. Evans Mackey. Ten French voyageurs were taken to manage
the canoes ; ten soldiers to act as escort, ten Ottawa, Chippewa
and Shawnee Indians as hunters, and two interpreters.
After fourteen tedious days Mackinac came in sight. Here the
party, increased to sixty-four persons, took a new start and pro-
ceeded up the St. Mary's River to the Sault, where camp was made.
The stars and stripes were run up over the Governor's tent, and the
Indians were invited to council. The chiefs, resplendent with medals,
given to them by their friends the British, came to the council per-
fectly imperturbable, and smoked the peace-pipe simply by way of
acknowledging that they were willing to hear what was to be said.
Governor Cass w?as to negotiate for only a small territory to be used
as a military post ; but the Indians, pretending not to recall their
grants of the same lands to the French and English, were reluctant
to conclude a treaty. ''We fear that our young men could not be
kept from killing the cattle and hogs," they said, more as a threat
than as a statement of fact. "Give yourself no uneasiness as to
that," responded the Governor. "So sure as that rising sun will
set beyond yonder hills, so sure will a military garrison be sent to
this place." But the chiefs would hear of no cession, and Sassaba,
when it came his turn to speak, stepped forth in the scarlet uniform
and epaulets of a British brigadier. Grasping his war-lance, he
drove it into the ground, for an instant left the shaft quivering as
with anger, then snatched it again and strode from the tent, kicking
aside the presents that had been laid before him. The council
broke up in confusion. The Indians, running to their camp across
the narrow ravine, hoisted a British flag. Ordering his soldiers
under arms, Cass himself, unarmed and accompanied only by an
interpreter, started for the Indian camp. Going straight to Sassaba's
lodge, over which the flag was flying, the Governor tore down the
cross of St. George and stamped it in the dirt. To the surprised
and cowed chief he said : "No one shall hoist that insulting flag on
American soil. The United States are the friends of the red man
and will deal justly by him; hut two national flags cannot fly in
friendship over the same territory." So saying, he picked the dis-
graced flag from the sand and carried it to his own tent. No sooner
had the Governor returned than the excited Indians cleared their
lodges of women and children, and their long canoes quickly black-
ened the foaming river. The soldiers stood ready to meet the
I1kx\kv Rowe Schoolcraft
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 325
expected attack. Suddenly the Indians put off their hostile attitude.
Promptly the soldiers were dismissed. That night the Indians ceded
four square miles for the fort, reserving only the perpetual right to
fish in the rapids, a privilege they enjoy to this day.'''
Having completed the portage around the falls, the expedition
took its way through the broad bays that open into Lake Superior.
Along the shores to the west the hills were covered with Norway
pines, birch, spruce and hemlock ; beneath their canoes the bottom
of the lake, twenty or thirty feet below, could be plainly seen
through the clear water. Finally the long stretches of gravel beach
ended abruptly in steep cliffs, over which thick fogs seemed to hang.
A nearer approach showed that what appeared fog was a cloud of
sa.nd caught up by the wind that swept over the great stretches of
barren dunes named by the French voyageurs ''Le Grand Sable."
Mr. Bela Hubbard, in describing a visit he made to this place in
1840, says s that "on ascending these steep and wasting cliffs a scene
opens to the view which has no parallel except in the great deserts.
For an extent of many miles nothing is visible but a waste of sand ;
not under the form of a monotonous plain, Ijut rising into lofty cones,
sweeping into graceful curves, hurled into hollows and spread into
long-extended valleys. . . . The desert surface might be
likened to an angry ocean, only that the undulations are far more
vast, and the wave crests more lofty than the billows of the sea
in its wildest commotion. Looking upward from one of these
immense basins, where only the sand-wave meets the sky, the
beholder is impressed with a sublimity of a novel kind, unmixed
with the terror which attends a storm upon the Alps or on the
ocean."
Twelve miles to the west the expedition came to the now famous
Pictured Rocks, cliffs rising in some places for two hundred and fifty
feet straight from the water. On their broad surface nature has
painted in vivid colors forms which to the imaginative eye represent
animals and plants, waterfalls and many-spired cathedrals. These
colors, exuded from the soft rocks, run down the face of the cliff's and
often cover thousands of feet of surface. The waters of the great
lake, as they dropped foot by foot to their present level, carved out
" Ralph D. Williams, in his "Honorable Peter White," says that Mrs. John
Johnston, a full-blooded Chippewa, persuaded the Indians that it would be
for their interest to side with the .A.iTiericans. She was a remarkable woman
in many ways, and was a great help to her husband, a fur-trader living at
Sault Ste. Marie.
8 "Memorials of Half a Century."
326 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
of the soft stone enormous caverns through wliich, as Cass wrote,
"even the shght motion of the waves sweeps with the noise of dis-
tant thunder, and dies upon the ear as it rolls forward in the dark
recesses inaccessible to human observation. Resting in a frail canoe,
upon the limpid waters, we seemed almost suspended in air, so
pellucid is the element on which we floated." In places the work was
so exquisitely done that even the round columns which support the
arches was provided with capitals, and in one instance for half a mile
there was an entablature with its projecting cornice. A few years
ago the Grand Portal succumbed to the action of the waves and fell
into Lake Superior.
Crossing over to the Mississippi, Governor Cass returned to
Detroit by way of Chicago. He was gone four months and traveled
over four thousand miles, often sleeping under the stars and not
infrequently sharing the supper of those Indians in whose camp the
party could find a welcome. In dealing with the Indians, Governor
Cass observed certain rules that made him exceptionally successful.
He never showed fear, never violated a promise, and he refused
absolutely to negotiate treaties by the aid of liquors. His method
was to have the Indians surrender their lands in consideration of
annual gifts of food and clothing from the Government. He urged
that the coming of the whites having driven the Indians to seek more
remote hunting places, it was but right that in return the Govern-
ment should make a recompense adequate to the privileges enjoyed.
By these means Governor Cass soon became so popular with the
Indians that he was called upon to negotiate treaty after treaty and
eventually he secured the lands now included in the great states that
border on the northern lakes.
The extinguishment of the Indian title to the Michigan lands pre-
pared the way for government surveys. Two straight lines were
drawn through the center of the Territory, north and south, east and
west. The north and south line was known as the principal meridian,
and the east and west one the base line. The Territory was then
surveved into townships six miles square, which in turn were divided
into sections a mile square. Into these townships and sections immi-
grants from the East slowly made their way, and here and there ir.
the interior of Michigan a log cabin was placed in the center of a
clearing or beside the clear waters of some lake well filled with fish.
The settlers found the lands better than the reports had led them to
believe, and this fact they were not slow in communicating to their
friends in the East.
So numerous had the population of Michigan become during the
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 327
twelve years succeeding the War of 1812 that in June, 1824, Gov-
ernor Cass was able to deliver his annual message to the Legislative
Council, a body of nine members appointed by the President, from
among eighteen persons chosen by the people of the Territory. This
was the beginning of self-government in Michigan. By the new
arrangement the old Legislature, made up of the three judges and
the governor, was abandoned. Judge Witherell was reappointed to
the bench. Judge Griffin declined a reappointment, and Judge Wood-
ward was dropped. Three times Woodward had been a candidate
for the office of Territorial Delegate in Congress, but each time he
was defeated. His defeats still further soured his temper, and his
tall, lean form, clothed in a nut-brown suit, was by no means welcome
among the Americans of Detroit. When he failed to be reappointed
to the bench, he repaired to his former home, and in his poverty
kept company with his old friend, L'Enfant, then vainly importuning
Congress to pay him for the plan of Washington, which was ridi-
culed equally with Woodward's plat of Detroit. President Monroe
relieved the judge from his distress by appointing him to the United
States district bench in the newly acquired Territory of Florida.
There he died in 1827, and the place of his burial is unknown.''
" One other achievement of Judge Woodward is interesting rather than
valuable. On August 16, 1813, he despatched to Jefferson the outlines of his
magnum opus, which had occupied the greater part of his attention through
life. What was done in relation to the science of chemistry in France between
1782 and 1787, he proposed to do for all human knowledge. The essential
improvements then imparted to a particular science consisted in exact arrange-
ment and classification. The judge confesses that when, in 1788, he first took
up the subject he was unacquainted with the French achievement; but he
"was conversant with that other grand example of arrangement and classi-
fication which had distinguished that age — the Linnean System in botany."
He did not complete his system until 1795, ten years after the death of
Linnaeus ; and since that date he had revised, but never altered it. So that
when he came to Washington in 1797, he must have had all knowledge within
his grasp. In his researches he collected almost every arrangement that had
been attempted either in ancient or in modern times, not omitting the one
Jefferson made use of in the classification of the books in his library. The
principle of this latter arrangement was the same as that of D'Alembert as
displayed in the grand encyclopedia. That in its turn is derived from Lord
Verulam. From Greek radices Judge Woodward developed naturally all the
paraphernalia of a complete schematization of knowledge; and inasmuch as
he believed that the grand results of his system would be realized only after
his death, he had in mind the founding of the American National Institute,
an institution not unlike the present Smithsonian Institution for the diiYusion
of useful knowledge.
We of today laugh at Judge Woodward's system of universal science,
328 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 opened communication
between the East and the West, and that year the steamers Pioneer,
Henry Clay and Superior began to land in Detroit as many as three
hundred passengers a week. Towns sprang up all over the territory,
and in spite of chills and fever, Michigan rang with the merry sound
of the settler's ax. Among the immigrants who came in 1830 was
Charles H. Lannian, one of Michigan's historians, who brought his
bride from New York State to make a home in' the wilderness.
Theirs were typical experiences. Selecting at the Government land
office at Detroit a well-watered tract of eighty acres and paying
$100, Mr. Lanman bought a tent and some cooking utensils, and
hiring a rough wagon, a pair of horses and a driver, started for his
new home.. The road was only a trail through the forest, and
sometimes it seemed as if Hercules himself must have failed to pull
the wagon wheels out of the mire. A strange bridal trip indeed
was that on which the bride found it most to her convenience to
trudge beside her husband through the forest. After four toilsome
days home was found, the tent was set up, the driver was sent back,
and pioneer life was begun. It was a farm of beautiful possibilities,
with its heavy timber, its little oak-opening and its delightful stretch
of prairie, through which ran a crystal stream. The first work was
to build a log cabin, and when this was completed the moving-in was
celebrated with a berry-pie, "the first regular, civilized pie that the
family had tasted for months." The house was a model of comfort.
One room below answered for a parlor, bedroom and kitchen ; and
above there was a sunny attic reached by a ladder. The tiny win-
dows were glazed with white cotton instead of glass ; and the great
ornament of the house was the big fireplace. In one corner stood
a hickory bedstead ; there were several stools, and on a convenient
shelf was the family library, consisting of a Bible and several old
school-books.
While the husband was chopping in the woods, squirrels came
to chirp to the wife at her work, and the pewees and the robins bore
her company ; and on her expeditions in search of hickory nuts, wild
grapes and the hiding-places of bees, the larks and the blackbirds,
but old John Adams thought it worthy of kindly acknowledgement; and
Madison gave some heed to it. In terminology, it was no worse than Jeremy
Bentham's systems, and Bentham revolutionized English institutions. Jeffer-
son, too, in the same draft of an ordinance in which he planted the seed of
perpetual freedom for the Northwest Territory, gave to the proposed states
such names as Metropotamia. Polypotamia, and Michigania. The writer
found the original of Woodward's scheme in the Library of Congress.
HISTORY OF AIICHIGAN
329
the pigeons, the bhie-jays and the wood-peckers flitted in and out
along her pathway. Visitors came but seldom, and sometimes the
letter written to the old New York home would wait a month before
it could be sent to the postoffice. Their play was to hunt for bear
or deer; their fresh meat was game, and the regular supplies were
^.
Birthplace of Lewis Cass at Exeter, N. H.
bought of an Indian trader. The first winter's work showed six
acres cleared ; the wood was piled up to wait until a market should
appear, and the logs were left where they fell. Being without a
plough, the farmer with his hoe worked the rich forest soil in pref-
erence to the harsh, grassy prairie ; and he planted it all in corn.
By the middle of summer there were a dozen settlers within a
radius of four or five miles ; and one of these was a sort of a doctor,
while another was able to do blacksmithing. So a little community,
330 HISTORY OF ^MICHIGAN
mutually helpful, sprang up. That autumn Detroit was called on to
furnish a plough and team, and the next crop of corn, potatoes and
wheat yielded a thousandfold. Then a barn and a vegetable garden
were added ; and there was the constant hammering at the old trees
which had to be subdued. Before long the news came that saw
mills and grist mills were to be built on the stream, three miles below
the farm. That meant a market for the accumulations of logs and
a ready sale for wheat and corn ; and the money thus produced
would be used to buy a yoke of oxen, a pair of horses, a wagon,
pigs and poultry. The mills, too, meant a postoffice with a weekly
mail ; they meant more settlers, the organization of a township,
local elections, a school and a church. At the end of fifteen years
of struggle and toil, Mr. Lanman found himself the independent
possessor of a good farm across whose broad acres came the music
of the church bells and the noise of the railroad trains. Then it was
time to build a frame house. i"'
The Indians were frequent visitors at the homes of the settlers;
and the sons of the forest were friendly enough, save only when
under the influence of white man's whiskey. They brought venison,
turkeys and berries to exchange for flour, corn and potatoes. A
venison ham was sold for 25 cents and the Indian expected $1 for
pointing out the tree in which the bees had made a hive. The Indians
also made maple sugar, and the product had a ready sale, until it
was noised abroad that for medicinal purposes the papooses were
washed in the sap.
The evolution of the town is well illustrated by the history of
Ypsilanti. Until the year 1809 the Indians held imdisputed posses-
sion of the interior of the territory. Then came Gabriel Godfrey,
Francis Pepin and Louis Le Shambre to the banks of the Huron to
establish a trading-post, where furs could be exchanged for liquor
and merchandise.il Gradually the Indians receded westward in
search of more plenteous hunting grounds ; and in the spring of 1823
a little band of settlers coming by way of Lake Erie in flatboats
poled their way up the winding Huron River and settled at Wood-
ruff's Grove. Those were busy days for the pioneers. Long before
daylight the sound of the two corn-mills was heard through the
1" The romances by Caroline Mathilda (Stansbury) Kirkland, who came
with her husband to settle near Pinckney, are still regarded as belonging to
the literature of the West. See Barrett Wendell's "American Literature;"
also Mich, P. & H. Col., Vol. XXXIX, for a sketch of Mrs. Kirkland and
selections from her works.
11 "The Past of Ypsilanti," by Rev. L. G. Foster, 1855.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 331
settlement. These mills had been made by burning a hole in the top
of a sound oak stump, then, after scraping the hole clean from coals,
a stick about six feet long and eight inches in diameter was rounded
at one end and hung by a spring pole directly over the stump. In
such a mill a man could pound a peck of dry corn in half an hour,
and often for weeks together the food of the settlers was confined
to game, cornbread and potatoes.
In 1825, Judge Woodward, whose scent for speculation was
always keen, joined with others in buying up the French claim to
the 2,500 acres of land which President Madison had patented to
Godfrey and his partners. They laid out a town, and the judge,
once more indulging his propensity for hard words, against the pro-
tests of the people, insisted that the place should be called Ypsilanti,
in honor of the Greek hero, the fame of whose recent exploits against
the Turks was then stirring the admiration of Americans. Ypsilanti
was known as a hard town. The first public prayer was offered in
1824 by Deacon Ezra Maynard, who was on his way to settle farther
up the Huron, where Ann Arbor now stands ; and for several years
afterwards no resident of the town could pray publicly. Even as
late as 1829 the people were without a church or a schoolhouse and
the Sabbath was given over to revelry and drunkenness, the favorite
Sunday sport being pitching quoits on the river bank. Finally, how-
ever, the moral sense of the people awakened, and after what was
called a "grand time," during which the missionary was chased out
of town, a temperance society was formed, and from thenceforth
virtue began to get the upper hand. That the progress was slow
may be inferred by the fact that the Rev. William Jones started his
missionary work in October, 1829, by preaching from the text:
"Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you
the Kingdom :" and early the next year he ended his labors by a dis-
course on the command, "Up, get ye out of this place, for the Lord
will destroy it."
The Saginaw region long continued to be an Indian headquarters
and a station of the American Fur Company was established there.
As late as 1834 Saginaw could boast of only one tavern, and that one
had but a single bedroom. Two rows of cots were placed in the
attic, and when there were women among the guests they went first
to bed. When the company's little sloop Savage brought supplies
from Detroit, the blufif old customs officer would repair on board
and after a visit to the cabin would come up, smacking his lips, to
give the requisite permission to land the goods. The same night a
tap at his back door would be followed by the appearance of several
332 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
demijohns containing the finest quahties of Hquors. To the credit
of the official it should be said that when the "leading families" of
Saginaw gave their dancing parties they were always at liberty
to send around after a demijohn, just as they would send for "Uncle
Jimmy"' Cronk to trudge thirty miles through the woods to fiddle for
the dancing.
The schools that sprang up during the territorial period were
"kept" in log houses with oil paper for window-glass and slabs with
peg legs for seats. Desks were made by driving pins in the walls
and placing planks upon them, and the blackboard was a shallow
box of damp sand. In a new country the people considered that
there was little need to know much about fractions, and they made
geography instead of studying it. The teacher "boarded around"
and was paid from $4 to $14 a month, and where money was not
plenty he took his pay in farm produce. The teacher was his own
janitor, and when his patrons brought wood unfit for their own use,
he compelled the boys among his scholars to saw and split it during
the recess. '-
Following William Woodbridge in Congress came Solomon Sib-
ley, another of those rare New Englanders who had been filtered
through Ohio to Michigan; and he in turn was succeeded (1825-
1827) by Father Richard, who was put forward and supported prin-
cipally by the Protestants. The good priest had found himself
deeply in debt by reason of the heavy expenses incurred by building
that one of the churches of St. Anne which is best known to the pres-
ent generation. Following the fashion of the times, Father Richard
had issued scrip in payment for building expenses ; and a rascally
contractor had stolen the type from which the due-bills were printed,
and before the fraud was discovered had put into circulation several
hundred dollars of counterfeit bills. The genuine issues and many
of the fraudulent ones were redeemed ; but the burden of debt rested
so hard on the priest that he gladly embraced the opportunity to
apply a Congressman's salary to the liquidation of his church's debts
• — a more pious disposition of such moneys than was or is common.
His chief competitor, Maj. John Biddle, contested the election on
the ground that Father Richard was not a citizen of the United
States : but the House Committee on Elections argued away the
objection in a report which shows that even at that early day this
committee had developed a high degree of ingenuity in accomplish-
es "Education During the Territorial Period,'' by Lucy L. Salmon. Mich.
P. & H. Col., Vol. VII, p. 36.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 333
ing its predetermined purposes. In Congress Father Richard was
the Indian's friend ; and he also succeeded in completing the work
begun by Woodbridge in securing appropriations for the Fort Gra-
tiot, Pontiac, Grand River and Chicago roads, which were destined
to open the country to settlers. Narrowly defeated for reelection
by his own countrymen, he resumed his pastoral labors with all his
old zeal. While missionary to the sick and the dying during the
cholera scourge of 1832, he contracted the disease which had attacked
one-half the population and had put the other half to rout. Fighting
to the last, he died with the words of Simeon on his lips. From
the founding of St. Mary's Mission nearly two centuries before,
Michigan had never known a choicer spirit or a truer martyr than
Father Gabriel Richard.
In 183 1, President Andrew Jackson called General Cass to become
Secretary of War. On taking office in 1813, Governor Cass found
the "whole population prostrated at the feet of the relentless sav-
ages ;" the people were gathered along the waterways ; the Territory
was compelled to import provisions ; the people were governed from
Washington; and the means of communication with the outside
world were few. During the fifteen years that Cass was gov-
ernor, the lands had been fairly purchased from the Indians and
opened to 26,505 free settlers ; self-government had been encouraged ;
seven regular steamers carried to Buffalo exports of whitefish, cider,
apples, flour and tobacco ; and Michigan was almost ready to take her
place among the states.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BEGINNINGS OF STATE GOVERNMENT
Early in April, 1835, the youthful Governor Mason of the Terri-
tory of Michigan, was in actual possession of Toledo. General
Joseph W. Brown with about eight hundred militia occupied the
city, and was in readiness to execute the ardent Governor's com-
mands. Meanwhile the aged Governor Lucas of Ohio, supported
by the public sentiment of the million of people over whom he
ruled, and aided by a force of some six hundred men armed with
muskets, clubs and rifles, was proceeding to establish in Michigan
Territory the Countv of Lucas, Ohio, with Toledo as the county
seat. This action on Ohio's part was in direct violation of the
Ordinance of 1787, which marks the boundary by a line drawn
easterly from the foot of Lake Michigan. The claim of our south-
ern neighbor, as Judge Campbell has shown, was without other
foundation than the fact that Ohio desired, and meant to grasp, a
strip of land about six miles wide, extending along her northern
border.
\\'hen the Legislature of Ohio passed an act extending the juris-
diction of that state over the territory in dispute, the Michigan
Legislature promptly provided fine and imprisonment as the reward
of any person who should attempt to exercise any official func-
tions within the Territory of Michigan, save under authority from
that Territory or from the United States. As against Ohio, Michi-
gan had an undoubted right to the territory in dispute ; but Congress
claimed and exercised the right to run the boundary lines within
the Northwest Territory as it might see fit.^
When the Ohio surveyors began to run the new line, a Michigan
under-sherifl:' with his posse arrested a number of the party. The
others escaped to Governor Lucas at Fort Miami, reporting that
their missing comrades were killed by General Brown and the
Michigan militia. Thereupon Governor Lucas sent a wild message
to President Jackson. Governor Mason, having been called on
1 "Abridgement of Debates in Congress," 1836-7.
334
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
335
for a statement, reported that the total loss consisted in hats and
clothing left behind in the flight of the Ohio commissioners. This
piece of executive levity set the tune for the entire Toledo war, which
was conducted throughout on the comic opera model. Major Stick-
ney, an Ohio captive, had to he tied to his horse to get him to jail ;
Stevens Thompson Mason, First Governor of Michigan
and his son. Two Stickney, was slightly punctured by an officer's
jack-knife. A very pious Ohio justice of the peace fled to the
woods to escape the Michigan officers, and the story spread that
the robin red-breasts came and fed him. This so-called miracle
helped Ohio's case among the people ; and the stabbing of Two-
Stickney — for the matter appeared thus serious at Washington —
convinced President Jackson that the time had come to curb his
336 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
impetuous young creation, the Governor of Michigan. Accordingly,
Mason was deposed. At the same time Governor Lucas was com-
manded not to attempt to exercise jurisdiction over the disputed
strip until Congress had acted in the premises. Yet at 3 o'clock on
Monday morning, September 7, 1835. a little party of judges
sneaked into a Toledo schoolhouse, held court for two minutes,
and then disappeared again, in the darkness.
Having thus been outwitted, Governor Mason and General
Brown wisely decided that they could not fight miracles. Congress
and the President. Accordingly they withdrew their forces in
good order. The enemy, however, was expecting no such bloodless
victory. Cautiously the Ohio troops advanced to the magazine of
their foes, otherwise known as Piatt Card's barn. In order to
prepare the way for a storming party, a volley of musketry was
poured into the defenses. A charge was ordered by General Stick-
ney and the brave Buckeyes rushed into the barn to find — a dying
horse. So the Toledo war was ended without the loss of human
life; but for ten years the memory of the struggle was kept alive
in Michigan by the "claim of Lewis E. Bailey for a horse lost in
the service of the State, in defending the supremacy of the laws."
In 1846 the Legislature paid Bailey $50 and ten years' interest,
thus wiping out the last vestige of the boundary war.
The Toledo war has always been treated in Michigan with much
levity, and the impression prevails that the state was unjustly, not
to say wantonly, deprived of the Ohio strip in order to further
the interests of the Democratic party in securing the vote of that
state. Also that Michigan received as a poor recompense the
Upper Peninsula, then thought by giver and taker alike to be
worthless, but, as results proved, a real acquisition. Mr. Larzelere.
in tracing the successive boundaries of Michigan - has shown
that according to Jefferson's plan of 1784 the territory now
embraced in Michigan was divided among five of the nine states
to be created. The Ordinance of 1787 reduced the possible maxi-
mum to five, and the area now Alichigan was divided by a north
and south line running through the middle. This north and south
line was retained in the division of the Northwest Territory in 1800;
but in 1802, on the admission of Ohio as a state, all of the remainder
of the Northwest became the Territory of Indiana. The Terri-
tory of Michigan, as established by the Act of January 11, 1805,
included a strip along the borders of Ohio and Indiana and the
= "The Boundaries of Michigan," by Professor Claude S. Larzelere, Mich.
P. & H. Col. Vol. XXX.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
337
eastern end of the Upper Peninsula, Saulte Ste. Marie being
recognized as pertaining to Michigan ; and these boundaries per-
sisted when Ilhnois Territory was established in 1809; but when
Illinois was admitted to the Union in 1816, that state was permitted
to have a port on Lake Michigan, and the Indiana strip was shced
off the Territory of Michigan, with the acquiescense of the people
of the Territory. Two years later Michigan Territory was extended
to embrace all remaining old Northwest Territory north of the Ohio.
Indiana and Illinois lines, and west ,of Lake Huron ; and at this
Fort Harmar, Built in 1785
time the central portion of the Upper Peninsula, which for the past
two years had been unattached (being a "no-man's land") was added
to Michigan Territory.
In 1834, "greatest Michigan" embraced all territory owned by
the United States from Lake Huron to the Missouri and White
Earth Rivers and from the State of Missouri to the British bound-
ary, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the eastern portion
of the Dakotas.
Admittedly the Ohio boundary was indefinite. Accurate sur-
veys made in 1834 showed that a line drawn due east from the
southern end of Lake Michigan would run south t>f Maumee Bay.
The prize contended for was the promising Town of Toledo. The
people of Ohio desired that town, and they argued their case with
338 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
the United States Government, Michigan being still a Territory
and subject to Government jurisdiction. The people of Michigan
Territory stood on their technical rights under the Ordinance of
1787, which drew the line from the southern extremity of Lake
Michigan, although no one then knew where that line would strike
Lake Erie. The idea was to give all states access to the Great
Lakes, in so far as might be ; and such was the treatment accorded
to Indiana.
It has remained for Mr. Stuart to discuss the personal equation.*
Mr. Stuart argues that this controversy began before the days of
railroads, when the canal was looked upon as the great means of
transportation ; and that in 1819 Ohio, supposing herself to be in pos-
session of Maumee Bay, had entered upon a canal-building project
as vast in its proportions and prospects as the Erie Canal. Lake
Erie was to be connected with the Ohio River by a canal system two
hundred miles in length and involving an expense of several million
dollars. Michigan's representatives were by no means averse to
taking advantage of her technical position in order to secure con-
trol over one terminus of the Ohio canals, and they argued that
already the Territory had chartered two railroads to enter Toledo,
and construction work had begun.'* Six members of the Michigan
Constitutional Convention, including the president of that body,
were among the incorporators of one or the other of the roads, — a
fact not without interest. It was an era of speculation and the prize
of the Toledo town-site was prospectively of great value. What-
ever may have been the motives that actuated the representatives
of Ohio on the one hand and of Michigan on the other, or of the
committees and members of Congress who finally decided the mat-
ter, must always be a matter of surmise and speculation to the cur-
ious. The fact remains that in the end Congress acted justly. As
for the compensation given by adding the Upper Peninsula, that
matter must be regarded as a means taken by Lucius Lyon, the able
lieutenant of Secretary of War Lewis Cass, to sugar-coat the bitter
pill ^Michigan was compelled to swallow. As Mr. Larzelere has
shown, the eastern end of the peninsula had always been treated
as a portion of Michigan — Sault Ste. Marie had been a dependency
of Detroit in matters commercial and judicial. The remainder of
the territory could not well be separated from the eastern portion ;
^ MSS. in possession of the author: "How Michigan Won the Upper
Peninsula," by L. G. Stuart.
* The Erie and Kalamazoo chartered in 1833; and the Detroit and
Maumee, chartered in 1835.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 339
and Congress followed only natural boundaries when the division
was made. It is, however, a credit to General Cass' political tact
and astuteness that he was not drawn into the controversy and
that he was able, through Mr. Lyon's sagacity, to make it appear that
Michigan had retreated in good order. It may be presumed also,
that the knowledge General Cass had obtained as to the resources
of the Lake Superior region made the trade seem to him much
more valuable than it could possibly appear to the thwarted men
who were speculating in railroads. "S'et wdiile we admit that Con-
gress dealt justly with Ohio, we cannot be particularly grateful that
Michigan was compensated by the gift, of territory she already pos-
sessed, which in the very nature of things could not be taken from
her. 5
In 1833 Lucius Lyon was elected by the Democrats as the ter-
ritorial delegate in Congress from the district comprising the lower
tier of counties, and he was a member of the first Constitutional Con-
vention. He was an extensive speculator in towai-sites, his holdings
being considerable ones in Milwaukee and Madison, Ypsilanti, Kala-
mazoo, Bronson. Prairie Ronde, Schoolcraft (which he named for
his friend), St. Joseph and Lyons. He had a survey of St. Joseph
harbor made at his own expense and secured a Government appro-
priation for its improvement ; he was a farmer on a large scale,
raising, among other crops, sugar beets. He began the canal around
the rapids of the Grand River and in 1841 sunk the first salt wells
in the state near that city, in which enterprise he lost $40,000. In
1835 he was the unanimous choice of the Legislature as one of
the two first United States Senators from Michigan and served
the term of six years, being succeeded by A. S. Porter, a Whig,
whom Mr. Lyon was one of the first to congratulate on his election.
In 1837 he was one of the first regents of the University, but
resigned after a service of two years on account of business engage-
ments. In 1843 he was elected to Congress from the Grand Rapids
district. President Polk appointed him Surveyor General of the
Northwest Territory and had the law changed so as to remove the
5 "Letters of Lucius Lyon," Mich. P. & H. Col. Vol. XXVIL See also
"The Southern and Western Boundaries of Michigan" and "The Michigan-'
Indiana Boundary," by Hannah May Soule, M. L., and "Verdict for Michi-
gan," by L. G. Stuart, in the same volume. The Lyon letters, secured and ar-
ranged for publication by Mr. Stuart contain fascinating glimpses of life in
'Washington, Detroit, Grand Rapids, the interior of Michigan, and various
portions of the Northwest. Mr. Lyon was a social favorite at the Capital;
he had a keen eye for beautiful women, and enjoyed numerous flirtations;
but he never married.
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The building stood at tlie head of Griswold Street, Detroit, on
the site now occupied by a statue of Governor Mason.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 341
headquarters to Detroit in order to allow Mr. Lyon to accept the
position. When a constituent urged him to vote against the Inde-
pendent Treasury bill on the ground tliat it would injure all owners
of land, Mr. Lyon among the number, he replied, "Suppose it should.
I hope our patriotism is not confined wholly to our pocketbooks." *'
Mr. Lyon was born near Burlington, Vt., February 20, 1800,
and died in Detroit, September 25, 185 1. No man in Michigan-
crowded more into a comparatively short life. To him public place
meant simply opportunity for work ; he was a firm friend, a good
politician, a man of the highest integrity, and an eminently useful
citizen. Had he been an orator probably he would have left a great
name. As it is, only those who take the pains to become acquainted
with his actual work will ever know how much of a debt the state
owes to him.'^
Stevens Thompson Mason, at the time he was retired to private
life for steadfastly maintaining the rights of the Territory, was only
twenty-four years old. In 1831 he had succeeded his father. General
John T. Mason, the territorial secretary, and when General Cass
was called to the Cabinet in August, 1831, he became the acting
governor. At the date of the succession to the position of secre-
tary. Mason was not of age ; and his advent to office was opposed
by a public meeting ; but before the connnittee could wait on him he
had received his commission and had qualified. The objections to
Mason were his youth and a pleasing address that was supposed to
indicate a lack of force. The citizens carried their case to the Pres-
ident and the leading papers of the country discussed the appoint-
ment adversely.'* The Senate, however, confirmed the nomination.
Mason by that time having reached his majority. By the death of
" He gave to the state the picture of Lafayette, a copy by a Washington
artist of the portrait which the French artist Ary Scheffer gave to the
United States and which hangs in the House of Representatives at Wash-
ington. Mr. Lyon's copy is in the State Senate.
' See "Life of Lucius Lyon," by Hon. George W. Thayer, Mich. P. & H.
Col. Vol. XXIV. Mr. Thayer was a nephew of Lyon; he was nine years
younger than his uncle and represented Flint in the Legislature in 1863-4.
8 See "Niles Register" for August 13, 1831. Mason was named for his
grandfather, a colonel in the Revolutionary army and a United States senator
from Virginia. Flis uncle, William T. Barry, was Postmaster General in
Jackson's cabinet. Mason was born in Virginia in 1812. From October 30,
1831, until January i, 183S, he was practically the governor of Michigan; and
probably he was the youngest man who ever held the gubernatorial office,
either territorial or state, in this country. After his retirement he removed
to New York City, where he practiced law until his early death, January 4,
1843.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 343
Governor George B. Porter, who was aniiOng the victims of the
cholera scourge of 1843, Mason was elevated to the governor's chair,
where he was kept by disagreements, between the President and the
Senate, as to Mr. Porter's successor. In the Toledo war the Gov-
ernor had the support of both the Legislative Council and the people;
and he returned to Detroit something of a martyr and not a little of
a political saint.
While the Toledo war, so-called, was in progress, Michigan
had entered upon the devious and turbulent wa3's that were even-
tually to lead into the Union. On January 26, 1835, the Territorial
Legislature passed an act to enable the people of Michigan to form
a constitution and a state government. This was clearly within the
power of that body ; since the Territory had within its limits 87,273
free inhabitants, and the number required for statehood by the laws
of the United States was only 60,000. The convention met at
Detroit May 11, and besides framing a constitution, provided that
the election for state officers, members of the Legislature and a rep-
resentative in Congress should be held on the first Monday of the
following October. When the appointed day came the constitution
was adopted ; Stevens T. Mason, with the laurels of the bloodless
Toledo war still fresh upon his youthful brow, was elected the first
governor of the state. Isaac E. Crary ^ was chosen representative
in Congress ; and, when the Legislature met in November, Lucius
Lyon and John Norvell were selected as United States senators.
Congress, however, was by no means ready to admit the presump-
tuous young commonwealth that had defied the general government
by naming in its constitution boundaries which that body had
declared the state should not have. Whatever Jackson and his Cab-
inet personally may have thought as to the justice of Michigan's
boundary claims, the vote of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois in the
approaching presidential election was too important to be lost.
Therefore, the administration ignored the proceedings looking to
« General Crary, while a member of the House undertook to criticise
General WiUiam Henry Harrison's mihtary abihties, and alluded to himself
as a "militia general on a peace establishment." He was followed by Tom
Corwin who pictured "the gentleman from Michigan, mounted on his cropped-
eared. bushy tailed mare, with sickle hams," riding to muster, and when a
cloud obscured the sun, taking refuge in the grocery, and having slaughtered
the watermelons, drinking whiskey from the rinds, as the Scandinavian
heroes of old drank wine from the skulls of their enemies in Odin's Halls.
Years afterwards Corwin repented of this burst of sarcasm, which had caused
John Quincy Adams to refer to the victim as "the late Gen. Crary," and
which eventually drove a really able man from public life.
344
HISTORY OF [MICHIGAN
statehood, and John S. Horner was sent out to act as Territorial
Governor.'" Arriving but ten days before the election was to take
place, Horner played into the hands of his enemies by issuing par-
dons to those persons in Monroe and Lenawee counties who had
been arrested because of undue activity in supporting Ohio's claims,
and especially by sending to Governor Lucas pardons in blank to
From a paiiiting in the Detroit, ilu»cuiu ui Ait
The Second Election in Detroit
be used for similar purposes. The new state officers being of an
aggressive turn of mind, there was no room in Michigan for Gov-
ernor Horner. Having reported to Washington that "there never
was a government in Christendom with such officers, civil and mili-
tary, and filled with such doctrines, as Michigan," Horner was made
to run the gauntlet of public opinion through the state as he journeyed
westward and proceeded to establish his seat of government beyond
Lake Michigan. There he exercised jurisdiction over the territory
10 Lyon, in a letter to Horner suggested that he go straight to Green
Baj-, instead of stopping in Detroit.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
345
included in the present states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and
the Dakotas, the section preserving the title of the Territory of
Michigan until the following May (1836), when Congress created
the Territory of Wisconsin.
On reaching Washington the Michigan senators and the repre-
sentatives found the doors of Congress fast barred against them.
John D. Pierce, First Superintendent of Public Instruction
Benton, who reported the Senate bill for the admission of the state,
also favored the resolution to permit the senators elect to enjoy the
courtesy of the floor, urging that when any one brought to him a
letter of introduction from a prominent personage, he always invited
the visitor to take a seat while he read the letter. Clay and Cal-
houn, however, both opposed the resolution on the ground that to
allow Mr. Lyon and Mr. Norvell to enter the Senate even as spec-
tators would be to acknowledge the statehood of Michigan. Clay
346 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
also tried in vain to have the suffrage limited to the free white male
inhabitants, so as to prevent the importation of aliens for voting
purposes. Wright of New York, however, succeeded in having the
admission bill amended so as to provide that the assent of the boun-
daries proposed by Congress should be given, not by the Legislature,
whose members were already committed, but by a convention to be
called for the purpose. Benton's bill proposed to give in place of
the Ohio strip the territory lying between Lake Superior and the
Straits of Mackinaw, so that Michigan should have as strong and
defensible a frontier as possible ; and in this shape the bill passed
the Senate, April 2, 1836, by a vote of twenty-four to eighteen.ii
In the House the act met an opposition involving a new ques-
tion. What this contention was is best stated in the language
employed by Bouldin of Virginia, who said that if there was any
intention on the part of the House to restrain, limit or shackle the
South in respect to the extension of slavery, then it made little differ-
ence if Michigan were kept out of the Union. He apprehended no
such action, however, and was assured that if Michigan were admit-
ted as a free state there would be no opposition to the accompanying
bill to admit Arkansas as a slave state.
The one steadfast supporter for Michigan's claims for admission
with the boundaries as proposed by the state, was John Quincy
Adams, the chairman of the select committee to whom the bill was
at first referred. This committee, he said, had investigated the mat-
ter, with the result that six out of the seven members had found the
Michigan boundary claims absolutely just. He admitted, however,
that the votes were against him. The nineteen Ohio members, the
seven from Indiana and the three from Illinois made common cause
to despoil Michigan of the territory which would be added to those
states by the proposed action of Congress. Besides these twenty-
nine interested votes, Adams counted thirty-five others "operated
on by other considerations," in other words, by their views on the
slavery question. The House having made up its mind what it
wanted to do, proceeded to override all opposition. It refused to
send the bill to the select committee which had previously considered
it; because, as was gravely stated by the Ohio members, that com-
mittee was prejudiced ; afterwards a memorial from the Michigan
Legislature was refused a reading: and finally on June 13, 1836, by
a vote of 153 to 45, the conditional admission act was passed.
^' Congressional Globe.
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From a portrait In the Capitol at Lausiiig
Governor Stevens T. Mason.
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 349
Immediately afterwards Arkansas was brought into the Union to
offset the accession of free territory.' -
Although it was in June that Congress offered terms to Michigan,
yet such was the indignation of the people over the treatment received,
that not until December 14 was the convention called at Ann Arbor
to give the required assent to the new boundaries. Nor would action
have been taken thus early but for the fact that a presidential elec-_
tion was at hand ; and, moreover, the state was threatened with a
loss of nearly half a million dollars, her share of the receipts from
the sale of public lands. Accordingly, Judge Ross Wilkins, David
C. McKinstry, Charles W. Whipple, Marshall J. Bacon and John
McDonell, all prominent citizens and members of the first conven-
tion, took it upon themselves to call the assemblage which, because
of its meager attendance and hasty work, has since been known as
"the frost-bitten convention." The boundary proposed by Congress
was accepted; and that Ijody in turn recognized the latest conven-
tion as representing the state. Accordingly on January 26, 1837,
Michigan, after having lived under a state government for nearly
fourteen months, was admitted into the Union.
The new territory taken in exchange for the Ohio strip contained
unknown possibilities. From the earliest times copper had been
found there; but thus far every attempt to work the deposits had
resulted in failure. Its riches in iron were unknown and its wealth
in timber could not then be appreciated. So little was known about
the bleak and inaccessible Upper Peninsula that in 1844, eight years
after the northwestern boundaries of the state were fixed, Senator
Clayton reported a bill to make such changes in the lines as were
necessitated by discovery of the real sources of the Menominee and
Montreal rivers.' ^
While political matters were thus exciting, Michigan had been
enjoying one of those short periods apparently of over-powering
prosperity that must be paid for by long years of weary work.
Thousands of acres of land were to be had from the Government
for $1.25 an acre; and these lands included "oak openings," rolling
prairies dotted with crystal lakes and fringed with forests of great
i^Von Hoist says that although the slavery question was in the whole
debate, it was a very subordinate element. The stubbornness of the opposi-
tion, he thinks, was due to the fact that both Arkansas and Michigan would
vote for the Democratic candidate in the approaching election. — "Constitu-
tional. History of the U. S.," 1828-46, p. 143. He means that the anti-slavery
sentiment was weak.
13 Sen. Report No. 70, 28th Cong., ist Ses. This boundary is not yet
"settled." A commission is considering it.
350 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
prospective value. The settlers from the East who trudged beside
the cloth-covered wagons brought some money, great facility at
bargaining, and a large degree of intelligence." They were thor-
ough-going Americans, and ^Michigan was their Eldorado. All night
long they would stand in line before the door of the Government
land offices at Detroit, ^klonroe, or Bronson (Kalamazoo), eager
to make entry of some valuable piece of land on which to build a
home; and so plentiful was the paper money in which payments
were made that the land offices gathered it in great bags. Every
cross-roads had a hotel and a bank ; and the walls of these institu-
tions were papered with well-engraved maps of city plats, showing
courthouses, warehouses, piers, steamers coming and going, and
all the concomitants of a great city. The actual sites were occupied
by a few shingle huts built among burned stumps ; but in imagination
the settlers saw every improvement which the pictures called for;
and city lots, covered as yet with virgin forests and sometimes, alas,
with the deep waters of Lake Huron or Lake Michigan, sold at
fifty and a hundred times what they had cost a few weeks before at
Government sale.
With money plentiful there was no dearth of buyers; and
nowhere in the land was there more money of its kind than there
was in Michigan. Samuel Hooper, in his history of state banking
in Massachusetts, has shown how even in that old, conservative com-
monwealth banks were organized and operated on paper and wmd ;
and it is not to be wondered that in a new and enterprising com-
munit)' like Michigan the spirit of speculation ran riot to such
an extent as to make the experience of this state a national warn-
ing. Alpheus Felch, afterwards governor and senator in Congress,
has given a brief but very instructive history i= of the wild-cat bank-
ing fostered by laws passed by the Legislature of which he was a
member. The brief and inglorious career of the first Bank of
Detroit has already been adverted to. Eight other banks were
chartered by the territorial authorities; and before the state was
a year old nine more had been called into legal existence.
By the end of the year 1836 the financial affairs of the whole
country were in a state bordering on chaos. Specie that was sadly
needed at home had been sent abroad to pay for imports unprece-
dented in amount, and its place was supplied with bank bills sup-
1* Judge Cooky asserts that an immigration which has for its object
to establish homes and to better the fortunes of the immigrants is quite as
worthy as that which seeks refuge from oppression.
15 S2d Congress, 2d Ses. Ex. Doc 38, pt. i.
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
ported ostensibly by real-estate mortgages, stocks and a limited
reserve in silver and gold. When the crash came the Legislature
attempted to avert disaster by providing for free banking. At the
session in January, 1837, a law was passed to authorize twelve free
holders in any county to organize a bank with a capital of from
fifty thousand to three hundred thousand dollars, thirty per centum
of the capital to be paid in specie before the bank could begin opera-
tions. The bank authorities were also required to furnish securi-
ties (to be approved by the county treasurer and clerk) to the auditor
RUFUS Pl'txam
general of the state, for the redemption of the bank's notes and the
payment of its debts. This seeming short-cut through the black
swamp of debt to the oak-opening of prosperity was hailed with
almost universal delight.
In principle the law had many excellent features. In practice
it was found sadly deficient. Specie being difficult to obtain, its
place was often supplied by "specie certificates," which were nothing
nrore than receipts given by firms or individuals who claimed to hold
actual money on deposit. Inasmuch as certain persons and firms
made a business of issuing these certificates, a small amount of
actual money answered for the foundation of a considerable num-
ber of banks. The Oakland County Bank, for example, was organ-
ized on a specie certificate for $10,000 and specie to the amount of
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 353
$5,000, which was borrowed from another bank and paid in three
times so as to make up the required $15,000. The Bank of Saline
borrowed a specie certificate for $15,000, which was returned as
soon as the bank was organized. The Farmers and Mechanics Bank
of Pontiac borrowed actual coin, and sent it back as soon as the
banking commissioners had counted it. There was no trouble about
obtaining real-estate mortgages based on fictitious values, to deposit
with the auditor general; but to obtain the actual cash for the com-
missioners to count on their periodical rounds of examination was
somewhat more difficult. Here again ingenuity, combined with the
convenient blindness of the examining officials, overcame all obstacles.
As Governor Felch says, gold and silver never before circulated so
freely or traveled so rapidly ; and if the same well-filled boxes or
bags were found in several banks in succession, some official at each
was ready to swear that the bona fide ownership was vested in the
present possessor. Sometimes the coin passed the commissioner by
rapid transit on the road ; sometimes it was transported by night ;
sometimes, arriving late, it was handed in at the back door of the
banking house while the examination was in progress.
The worst is to follow. The Bank of Sandstone never had even
borrowed specie ; the Bank of Shiawassee had outstanding $22,261
in notes and but seven coppers in its safe ; and the Jackson County
Bank, with an indebtedness of $70,000, exhibited boxes in which a
layer of silver dollars covered the real contents of glass and nails.
Notwithstanding frequent relieving acts, no fewer than forty-two
banks went into liquidation before December, 1839, leaving but
seven in existence ; and not one of the seven is now in operation.
The community, meantime, had not less than a million dollars in
absolutely worthless bills ; but a rough sort of partial relief came
to the owners of land when the Supreme Court declared the bank-
ing law unconstitutional and the mortgages invalid. i"
Nor was the state itself slower than its citizens. In 1837 the
Legislature authorized Governor Mason to negotiate a loan of
$5,000,000 at six per centum interest, the proceeds to be spent on
internal improvements. The times were unfavorable; and Governor
Mason, being unable to place the bonds at par, arranged with the
Morris Canal and Banking Company of New York City to act as
the agents of the state, on a commission of 2 J/2 per cent. Bonds to
the value of $1,362,000 were sold and the proceeds were paid into
1^ The present excellent state banking law, drawn on the lines of the
National Bank Act, was handled in the Legislature of 18S7 by Hon. C. J.
Monroe, and was ratified by the people at the ensuing election.
Vol. I— JS L
354
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
the State Treasury, the remainder being turned over to the United
States Bank of Pennsylvania, which institution guaranteed to take
one-fourth of the amount. The bank, however, failed and the state
received full payment for but $1,387,000 worth of the bonds; partial
payments were made on many of the others. Default having been
made in the interest payments, the Legislature, by the act of Feb-
ruary 27, 1842, provided for a commission to ascertain how much
money the state had received for bonds ; to add 6 per cent interest
to July, 1841, to deduct for the loss to the state by reason of the
■;:%■
M.\NASSEH Cutler
failure of the bank to keep its agreement, and to issue new bonds on
that basis. Under this law nearly all the original bonds were sur-
rendered for new ones at the rate of $302.73 for each $1,000. This
adjustment involved a loss of credit for the state ; but this loss was
only temporary. The lesson, however, was thoroughly learned ;
and Michigan ultimately worked itself out of debt and so remained
until the Spanish War.^"
The long struggle for financial freedom was carried on during
the administrations of John S. Barry, a man whose prudence and
thrift, in spite of his bluff ways, so endeared him to the people that
after having served them as governor for two terms, from 1843 to
1' See "The Repudiation of State Debts," by W. A. Scott, p. 163.
■ • HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 355
1845, he was recalled to office in 1849. It is said that Governor
Barry carried his economies to such an extent that he personally
mowed the Capitol grounds and sold the hay to add to the funds for
the payment of the state debts.
On the strength of the loan the state pledged its credit for
$100,000 to each of two railroads and gave $20,000 to another. Of
these roads the Pontiac and Detroit Railroad Company had been
chartered in 1830, nine months after Stephenson's "Rocket" made
its first successful trip in England, and before there was a mile of
railroad track in use in America. In 1836 the Erie and Kalamazoo
road was opened through the Black Swamp. The construction of
this road was not expensive; from the neighboring forests came
long timbers to form the heavy mud-sills ; across these the ties,
notched to receive oak stringers, were spiked. On the stringers a
thin, narrow rail of iron was fastened so loosely that when the
cars passed over it the weight of the train would frequently curl
up the iron and send a "snake-head" through the bottom of the car.
Horses pulled the first cars on this road, but on January 20, 18377"
the "Adrian," the third locomotive sent west of the Alleghanies, was
put on the Toledo and Adrian route, with the result of saving two
days' time to Chicago travelers. The rival of the Erie and Kala-
mazoo (now a part of the great Lake Shore and Michigan South-
ern) was the Detroit and St. Joseph, which soon came to be known
as the Michigan Central. 'While the Central was awaiting iron for
the section between Detroit and Dearborn, one of the Commission-
ers of Internal Improvements who lived in Monroe and was inter-
ested in the Southern road, intercepted the schooner bearing the
rails from Buffalo and ordered the iron thrown overboard in seven
feet of water at the mouth of the Raisin. Henry Willis, who had
charge of the track-laying on the Central, learned of the trick, and
had the iron fished up by night and put in place before the Monroe
Commissioner knew it was gone. In the face of many discourage-
ments the Central was pushed through to Kalamazoo in 1846, and
the Southern to Hillsdale ; but in that year the Legislature was glad
to retire from railroad building and to accept from a stock company
the offer of $2,000,000 for the former and $500,000 for the latter
road. In May, 1852, the tracks of the Central and the Southern
were laid across the Chicago boundary within a few hours of each
other, and in 1858 the Detroit and Milwaukee road ran its first train
into Grand Haven.
CHAPTER XIX
STRUGGLES OF A LUSTY YOUNG STATE
On January 26, 1837, Michigan, after many vicissitudes, found
herself a member of the Union of the States with boundaries as
established by the act of Congress approved June 15 of 1836. The
boundaries as laid down in the act were quite irregular, and the
northwestern boundary had not been surveyed. The estimated
area of the state was 96,844 square miles, of which 36,324 square
miles were the waters of the Great Lakes. About twenty-five thou-
sand square miles had been surveyed. This was considerably less
than half the state. In about two-thirds of the Upper Peninsula
the Indian title had not been extinguished. Indeed concerning that
portion of the state very little information was to be had, and that
little was not interesting. It was inhabited almost exclusively by
Indians in a wild, uncivilized state, who were visited by traders to
obtain furs. What little knowledge the traders had, they kept to
themselves. It was known, however, from reports of travelers that
the eastern portion from the head of the peninsula to the Pictured
Rocks was undulating, rising gradually from Lakes Michigan and
Superior to the interior ; that the Porcupine Mountains formed the
dividing ridge separating the waters tributary to Lake Superior from
those flowing into Lake Michigan. Many parts, it was reported,
displaved little else than the "development of sublime scenery.
Almost entirely unfrequented by man (or by beast, except more
obnoxious species), some portions appear like a dreary deserted
solitude, surrounded by all the frightful terrors incident to such
northern latitudes." 1 The greater part of the peninsula was said
to be covered with immense forests, principally of white and yellow
pine, with a mixture of hard woods. There were millions of acres
of pine lands of a superior quality, extending from the St. Mary's
River to the Ontonagon and Montreal rivers.
1 "Gazetteer of the State of Michigan," by John T. Blois, Detroit, 1838.
A full leather bound copy of this work was given by the author to Jacob M.
Howard, from whom it passed to Judge Henry H. Swan, who gave it to the
writer in 1905.
356
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN . 357
This peninsula was sometimes called "the Siberia of Michigan."
It was thought probable that it would never be noted for its agricul-
tural products, or immediately for the density of its population !
The fisheries, indeed, were destined to be of importance ; the fish
were excellent in quality and the supply was inexhaustible. As for
the mineral resources, they were practically unknown. From the
earliest discoveries of the region by the French, it had enjoyed the
reputation of a probable mineral district, although ignorance of its
geological structure had prevented the enterprising experiments for
working its mines from producing any available profit. Iron, copper
and lead were supposed to exist there. Indications of these metals
were found in the vast quantities of iron-sand upon the coast, iron
pyrites found in the interior and upon some of the rivers, and the
masses of native copper discovered upon the Ontonagon. The fur
trade and fisheries were the only present productive sources of profit,
and the fur trade was on the decline. The climate opposed the
greatest obstacle to vegetation, although it was decidedly favorable
to health. Summer began and tenuinated suddenly, and winter
departed or came often without the intervention of spring or autumn.
In fact, the latter seasons seemed scarcely to be known.
That portion of the Lower Peninsula north of the line passing east
and west through the middle of Saginaw Bay was as little known as
the Upper Peninsula, but in the southern section forests and groves,
luxuriant prairies, crystal lakes, and limpid rivulets, were so fre-
quently and happily blended together "as to confer additional charms
to the high finish of a landscape whose beauty is probably unrivaled
by any section of the country." "It should not be forgotten," says
one chronicler, "that during the long period from the discovery of
Michigan to the time of its survey, it was characterized as an internal
morass, or a sandy waste, and that the older geographies gave cir-
culation to similar representations. It is said even some of the first
attempts to survey it were abandoned for like reasons, but as it was
surveyed and brought into market, its superior excellence gave it
a reputation of one of the best agricultural regions of the western
countn,'." The land in the surveyed portion was divided into
"opens" and "timbered-opens." The treeless opens were covered
with a thick grass sward, and although it required no labor to pre-
pare the way for the plow, it did require the strength of three or
four yokes of oxen to break up the hard turf for the first time.
Afterwards, it was cultivated with the same ease as the older lands.
The farmer without capital was advised to choose the timbered land
where the universal practice was to cut down and burn the trees.
358 , HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
When the timber was thus destroyed, the land was ready to be
sowed without any plowing, and required only a team to finish the
work. The price for clearing timbered land was from ten to twelve
dollars an acre, so that the poor man with his oxen or a single team
of horses could accomplish more on the timbered than on the open
land.
Where so much ignorance existed as to the resources of the
state, it was quite natural that the Legislature should take means to
dispel the ignorance. x-\ccordingly, $29,000 was appropriated for
surveys, $3,000 being granted for the first year, the amount increas-
ing gradually to $12,000 a year for the fourth year. The survey
was to include four departments — first, the geological and mineral-
ogical; second, zoological; third, botanical; and fourth, topographi-
cal, all under the control of Dr. Douglass Houghton, assisted by a
geographer, a botanist, and a topographer, with their helpers.
Of the numerous wild animals inhabiting the forests and plains,
there were the wolverine, "black in color and of a shy, voracious and
mischievous disposition ;" black bears, which collected once in about
three years on the northern shores of Lake Huron and pushed their
course southwesterly across St. Mary's River in hundreds and even
thousands ; and the gray, prairie and black wolf, all of which were
too plentiful for the convenience of farmers. Elk and moose were
numerous in the unsettled portions of the state ; red deer were found
in great numbers in every portion, and reindeer prevailed in the
eastern portion of the upper peninsula. The flesh and especially the
tongue of the reindeer was considered a great delicacy. The fox
and marten were found in great numbers, together with gophers,
squirrels and rabbits. The domestic animals were generally of an
inferior quality. The French or Indian pony had long been the fav-
orite beast of burden. Mules were rare, but oxen were in great
demand for agricultural labor, since nothing short of their strength
and firmness would answer to prepare the stiff, rigid soil for farming.
There were few sheep. A state agricultural society had been organ-
ized with branches in many of the counties, for the introduction
and propagation of a superior breed of horses, sheep, swine and
neat cattle. The partridge, quail, woodcock, grouse or prairie hen,
wild turkey, pigeon and snipe were abundant, as were also aquatic
fowls of all kinds. The sportsman found plenty of duck, not fewer
than one hundred thousand having been observed to pass over one
field of view near Detroit within an hour. Wild bees were plentiful
and the hunting and gathering of their honey made a profitable
employment by those experienced in the business. Cranberries
r
iwm.
Fmiii ii arawiiifi in the presenl City Hall
Old City Hall Which Stood on Cadillac Square
(Torn Down November 22, 1872.)
360 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
were plentiful in the marshes; and ever)- kind of wild fruit found
elsewhere grew in abundance and was of a superior quality.
Along the Detroit and St. Clair rivers were orchards of apples,
pears, peaches and quinces, together with various kinds of plums
and cherries. Oats were the best crop raised, but corn and wheat
were scarcely inferior. Salt springs were known to exist in Wash-
tenaw, Monroe, Macomb, Kent and Saginaw counties, but no scien-
tific tests of their value, or successful efforts to improve them, had
been realized. It may be said, however, that the great quantities
of salt produced in Michigan of late years are produced in regions
unsuspected in 1836.2
The total value of the fish in the lakes and straits taken during
the season of 1837 was estimated at one hundred and twenty-five
thousand dollars, of which one-fourth were consumed within the
state, one-half were shipped to Ohio and the remainder to New York
and Pennsylvania. The fisheries were at Mackinac, on the south-
eastern portion of Lake Superior, and at Saginaw Bay and Fort
Gratiot. The American. Fur Company employed French, Indians
and half-breeds in their fisheries, and handled about one-half the
annual product.
Government surveys were in progress throughout the state ; the
principal meridian of Michigan by which all the Government sur-
veys were made was a line running due north from Defiance, Ohio,
and the base, line crossed it fifty-four miles north of the southern
boundary of the state, thus fomiing the northern boundary of the
counties from Wayne to Van Buren. There were five land offices,
with headquarters at Detroit, Monroe, Kalamazoo, Saginaw and on
the Grand River. In 1836 the Detroit Land District disposed of
1,475,000 acres valued at $1,845,000; the Kalamazoo Land District
disposed of 1,600,000 acres, valued at over $2,000,000; the Grand
River District disposed of $714,000 worth of land during the year
beginning with September, 1836. During that year. Government
lands in Michigan were sold to the amount of 4,200,000 acres valued
at $5,200,000. The sales were greater in Michigan than in Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, or any other state or territory. By the act of
Congress of June 23, 1836, section numbered 16 of every surveyed
township was granted to the state for school purposes ; seventy-two
sections, equal to two townships of land, were granted to the
2 In 1876, after sixteen years of production, Michigan became the leading
salt producer in the United States, and now this state and New York vacillate
in holding first place. The production now is in the Ludington-Manistee
district and along the Detroit and St. Clair rivers.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 361
support of a university, and five sections to be selected and located
under the direction of the Legislature were granted for the erection
and completion of public buildings in the state ; all salt springs within
the state not exceeding twelve, with six sections of land adjoining,
were granted for the use of the state. Five per cent of the net
proceeds of the sale of public lands lying within the state and sold
by the Government after the first day of July, 1836, was appropri-
ated for public roads or canals, as the Legislature might direct.
Tlia faiyin fU the ttfl rjcbt Wft: -<ha nstiJ&ncfi of Tnrs Ekc-n.-joi^, pv Town iili<J «ie <rf
<lio jodgw! of limA'uurt TI» ^Wn S\ ihn lefi no*. tKcimiwi b_v Hw lii ,rr. Cn the fxbetaa
1<^V in thp dWntKt, i« u loi; <«1A! <iiw1ij>ir>l l>y UHjIiallidl. Port. J. Al>i->i' m-- uiwn li« horwi «iwer»
bi? vlHi Jn-li.'o Rtwitif^ii. " serosa tia firttV ' htfier Mwrill Is cumiitti nn h» rrttie black ponv from a
The City of Kalamazoo in 1832
To carry out the public improvements necessary to the develop-
ment of the state, the Michigan Legislature had at its session in
March, 1837, appointed a board of commissioners of internal improve-
ments, who were constituted supervisors and overseers of all public
works belonging to the state, and who had the care and superintend-
ence of all railroads, canals and other state improvements. This board
was authorized to survey three railroad routes across the lower
peninsula; also to survey the Clinton and Kalamazoo Canal, the
Saginaw or Northern Canal, the Havre Branch Railroad and the
St. Mary's Canal, together with the Grand, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph
rivers. The board was authorized to purchase the railroad and im-
provements of any incorporated company where the same had been
infringed upon by the location and construction of state works.
During 1837 nearly sixty thousand dollars was expended in surveys,
extending over two thousand miles.
362 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
The Southern Raih-oad superseded the Alaumee railroad route;
the road was to begin at the navigable waters of the River Raisin
and to extend to New Buffalo. The road was to be 183 miles long,
was to cost $1,500,000, of which sum $450,000 was already appro-
priated. The Havre Branch Railroad was a short road of thirteen
miles in Monroe County. The Central, or Detroit and St. Joseph
Railroad began at Detroit and terminated at the village of St. Joseph.
A private company had been chartered in 183 1 and work was in
progress, when in 1837 the state purchased the property and charter-
rights of the company ; $1 17,000 had been expended ; the section from
Detroit to Ypsilanti was completed, and cars began running in Jan-
uary, 1838. The cost of constructing this portion of the road, includ-
ing the purchase of locomotives and cars and the erection of depot
buildings, was about four hundred thousand dollars, and the esti-
mated cost of the entire road was a little less than two million dollars,
of which sum $750,000 was appropriated. The total receipts for
five months were about $43,000 ; four locomotives, five passengers
and ten freight cars were in operation, and the facilities of the road
were taxed to the utmost. Six thousand passengers had been car-
ried over the road up to May 24, 1837. The Northern Railroad
was to begin at Port Huron and to terminate at Grand Rapids ; it
was to form a connecting link in the contemplated Great Western
Railroad from Boston through Massachusetts, New York, Upper
Canada, Michigan and Wisconsin to the Mississippi River; the esti-
mated cost of the road was $1,300,000, and $110,000 were appropri-
ated. The Clinton and Kalamazoo Canal was to begin at Mount
Clemens and terminate at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, thus
connecting Lakes St. Clair and Michigan. The canal was to cost
about sixteen thousand dollars a mile, and the entire expense was
estimated at $2,250,000, of which $245,000 was appropriated. The
Saginaw or North Canal was to connect the Saginaw and Grand
rivers. The St. Mary's Canal was to provide a passage around the
falls at an estimated cost of $112,000, and $50,000 was appropriated.
About sixty-seven thousand dollars was to be expended on the
improvement of Grand River, and $30,000 was appropriated. ^ The
Kalamazoo River was to be improved from its mouth to the \'illage
of Kalamazoo, and the St. Joseph River from St. Joseph to Union
City.
3 This project has been revived from time to time, enough money having
been spent on it to have built a canal across the state ; but still the Grand
River is not navigated.
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
363
To carry on the projected state improvements, the Legislature
prepared a fund known as the internal improvement fund, which
was not to exceed five million dollars. The governor was author-
ized to negotiate a loan, with interest at 6 per cent, redeemable at
the pleasure of the state after twenty-five years. The certificates
of stocks or bonds were directed to be made, signed by the governor,
countersigned by the secretary of state, and drawn in favor of and
endorsed by the auditor-general. These were then made transfera-
ble to and bv the governor who was authorized to sell them at not
A Tvpic.\L Michigan Landscape
less than par value, the faith of the state being pledged to the pay-
ment of the loans. For the extinguishment of the debt thus created
a sinking fund was established, and into this fund were to be paid
the proceeds of all canals and railroads constructed by the state, the
interest on all loans to be made by the state from the internal im-
provement fund, together with the dividends arising from the bank
stock owned, or to be acquired by the state. The internal improve-
ment fund up to the first of January, 1838, amounted to $623,000,
of which $286,000 was derived from surjjlus revenues, $151,000 from
5 per cent of the sale of public lands, and $180,000 from the state
loan. The amount expended was $415,000, leaving an unexpended
balance of $208,000.
Beside the internal improvements carried on by the state, there
were various railroad and canal projects owned by private corpora-
364 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
tions. No fewer than twenty-four such private corporations were
chartered to build railroads in Michigan. Most of these were paper
corporations, but a few were actually engaged in construction work
and where such was the case the state loaned to the corporations
various sums. Of these projects the most promising was the Erie
& Kalamazoo Railroad Company, which had finished a line from
Toledo to Adrian, a distance of thirty-three miles, and had begun
operations in October, 1836. .This company expended $257,000 up
to December 31, 1837. The earnings of the road were $55,000, and
the expense, $14,000, leaving profits of $41,000, or about 16 per cent
on the whole cost of the road, engines, property and fixtures.
The five principal turnpike roads in Michigan were constructed
by the authority of the general Government previous to the admission
of the state into the Union. They were six rods wide and originally
were well constructed ; all began at Detroit and we now have them
as the great thoroughfares of the city — Fort Street, Michigan,
Grand River, Woodward and Gratiot avenues.
Looking back on this extensive sy.-;tem of improvements and
remembering how the projects came to grief, the ideas now seem
chimerical ; but in 1836, the people of Michigan conceived their
state as possessing a most eligible situation with respect to the
principal markets of New York, Philadelphia and New Orleans.
With New York there was already direct communication through
the Erie Canal. The contemplated improvement through Wisconsin,
uniting the Fox and Wisconsin rivers ; through Illinois, uniting Lake
Michigan with the Illinois River by canal ; and through Indiana, con-
necting the waters of Lake Michigan with the Wabash River, were
calculated to open direct channels through the western portion of
the state to New Orleans. The canal then being constructed to unite
Lake Erie with the \\'abash through Ohio and to Indiana, and the
railroads and canals made and making from Lake Erie to the Ohio
River through the State of Ohio were expected to furnish avenues
to the southwestern markets; the improvements being made from
Cleveland to Pittsburgh through Ohio, and the railroads being built
from Erie to Philadelphia through Pennsylvania were counted upon
to open new markets in the latter state; while the Great Western
Railroad would give Michigan an expeditious route to the New
England markets.
Then, too, the lake transportation was already fast increasing.
The first steamboat navigating the lakes, named the Walk-In-The-
Water, was built in 181 8, when the total tonnage on Lake Erie was
o
in
R
•2.
SO
o
O
o
o
o
o
O
o
<
?3
366 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
about one thousand tons. Up to the ist of October, 1836. this ton-
nage had increased to 24,000 tons, suppHed by forty-five steamboats,
two ships, seven brigs, one bark, forty-seven sloops, 144 schooners,
and ten schooner-scows. The Detroit district had seventeen steam-
boats, three brigs, forty-seven schooners and tliirty-seven sloops.
The largest boat constructed upon the lakes up to 1838 was the
Illinois, of 755 tons, built at Detroit. From 1795 to the beginning
of the \\'ar of 1812, the supplies for the garrison at Detroit, and
goods for traffic in the fur trade constituted almost the entire com-
merce, but after the war trade began to increase. Trade was
carried on with Ohio, Pennsylvania and Xew 'S'ork, those states
sending salt, pork, beef, flour, corn, butter, cheese, lard and whiskey,
which articles were exchanged for furs, cider, apples, fish. Furs
were transported to Buffalo, Albany and the New York markets
but the amount of the trade was never stated. In 1818 Detroit
imported 3,500 barrels of flour, 2,800 barrels of salt and 1,900
barrels of whiskey; 1,000 head of beef cattle and 1,400 fat hogs
were exported, principally to the military stations of Lakes Huron
and Michigan. European goods came from New York City, and
there was a large amount of smuggling from Canada. The steam-
boats burned wood, consuming on an average 150 cords for a
round trip from the Lake Erie ports to Detroit. It was estimated
that the steamboats btirned 150,000 cords during 1837, at a cost
of $250,000. About one thousand persons were emplo}'ed in con-
ducting steamboat navigation ; a captain received from six hun-
dred dollars to one thousand dollars a year, an engineer from fifty
dollars to ninety dollars a month, and a deck-hand from ten dollars
to fifteen dollars a month.
In August, 1816, the Secretary of State proposed to the English
Government that the naval force to be maintained upon the Great
Lakes bv Great Britain and the L'nited States be limited, and on
April 28, 1817, the British Minister, acting for the Prince Regent,
agreed that war vessels on the Great Lakes be confined to one
vessel on Lake Ontario, not exceeding one hundred tons burthen
and armed with one 18-pound cannon: on the Upper Lakes, not
exceeding two vessels of like burden and armed with like force ;
and on Lake Champlain one vessel. All other armed vessels were
to be dismantled and no other vessels at war "shall there be built
or armed." The agreement was to remain in force for six months
after either party should express a desire of annulling it. On April
29th Richard Rush, acting Secretary of State, wrote to Charles
Bagot. the British ^^linister, expressing the satisfaction of the Presi-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
367
dent that the Prince Regent had acceded to the proposition of the
United States. This exchange of letters contains the standing
agreement between Great Britain and the United States which has
been in force for nearly a century to the great advantage of both
countries. At times it has been necessary to modify the agreement,
but for many years the only vessel of war maintained in the Upper
Lakes was the United States steamer Michigan, and even that
^mw^^^^^^m
sfy^^xi
^S'^jifM
luE U. S. S. Michigan, Now nui Wulvekixe
vessel has now been transferred to the Naval Reserves, and no war
vessel as such is maintained by either country. The revenue-cutters
carry each a single gun for the purpose of firing salutes and main-
taining the revenue laws. The Naval Reserves of the various states
have at their disposal obsolete war vessels for use as practice ships.
The Michigan was the first iron vessel built for the United
States Navy. She was constructed at Pittsburgh in sections and
these sections were takep to Erie, where the ship was completed
and launched in 1844. She was rated a first-class, side-wheel
steamer, bark-rig. Her length was 167 feet, her tonnage 582, and
368 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
she was to carry a crew of eighty-five men. Her first battery was
two 8-inch guns and four 32-pound carronades. The British Min-
ister, on July 23, 1844, filed a protest as to armament and tonnage.
In the correspondence between the Secretary of State, Mr. Calhoun,
the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Mason, and the British Minister,
Mr. Packenham, it was agreed that the changed conditions since
1817 called for a revision of the agreement; and later the armament
of the Alichigan was changed to one i8-pounder. She started on
her first cruise under the command of Commander William Inman.
During the \\'ar of Secession she was under the command of Com-
mander John C. Carter and did good service in recruiting and
protecting the lake borders from attempted raids and the transpor-
tation of arms from Canada by Confederate agents. She guarded
Johnson's Island, where a great number of Confederate prisoners
were held, and for this purpose her battery was increased to one
30-pounder, five 20-pounders, two light i2-pounders and six
24-pounders ; and she had a rating of 685 tons. After the close of
the war, the Michigan was repaired and her battery was reduced
to eight howitzers.*
Manufactories were in an incipient condition, and were carried
on no further than the immediate wants of the settlers absolutely
required. One hundred and fourteen grist mills, 433 saw mills,
twenty-three carding machines, twelve cloth-dressing shops, one glass
manufactory and sixteen distilleries were known to exist in the
state. Detroit and Monroe were the only cities, and there were
twenty-three incorporated villages.
I'he Presbyterian Church was composed of a synod and five
* On June 17, 1905, the name of the Michigan was changed to the Wol-
verine, in order that a new first class battleship might be called the ilichigan;
and later the \yolverine became the training ship for the naval militia of
Pennsylvania. In 1898 the w'ooden gunboat Yantic was transferred to the
naval militia of Michigan and is stationed at Hancock; in 1906 the schooner
Gopher, formerly the Fern, was turned over to the Minnesota Xaval Militia
and is stationed at Duluth; the other war vessels on the Lakes under the
control of the naval militia are the Don Juan De Austria at Detroit, the
Hawk at Buffalo, the Sandoval at Rochester, the Dorothea at Cleveland, the
Essex at Toledo and the Isia De Luzon at Chicago. A special arrangement
covering the naval militia training ships has been reached by the state depart-
ment with the British Ambassador in Washington. The following public docu-
ments will give the history of the naval forces on the Lakes: 26th Cong., 1st
Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 163; 37th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Rpt. 4; 52 Cong., 2d Sess., S.
Ex. Doc. 9; 55th Cong., 2d., Sen. Rpt. 449; 56th Cong., ist, H. Doc. 471. For
much of this information, I am indebted to Charles W. Stewart, Superin-
tendent of Library and Naval War Records, Na\'y Department, Washmgton.
HISTORY OF ]\IICHIGAX
369
presbyteries; there were sixt_v-four churches, thirty-four ministers
and 3,300 communicants. The Baptists had three associations with
seventy-eight churches, fifty ministers and 3,200 communicants;
the Episcopahans had one diocese embracing the State of Michigan
and the Territory of Wisconsin ; within the state were nineteen
St. Anne's Church. (Corner Larned and Bates Streets, Detroit;
etched by W. F. Dow, 1881.)
clergymen, inckiding the bishop, ten churches, twenty congregations
and less than five hundred communicants. The Congregationalists
were united with the Presbyterians. There were a few scattering
congregations of Lutheran, Dutch Reform, Seceders, Convenanters,
Christians, Unitarians and Universalists. The Roman Catholics
had one diocese, a bishop, thirty priests and about twenty thousand
communicants, 3,000 of whom were Indians, 8,000 English, German
and American, and the remainder French.
Michigan was successively under the jurisdiction of French,
Vol. 1—2 4
370 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
English and Canadian bishops of the Roman Catholic Church until
the establishment of the see of Baltimore in 1789. As new sees
were erected it came under the jurisdiction, first of Bardstown,
Kentucky, and next of Cincinnati. Bishop Fenwick, who was conse-
crated Bishop of the Diocese of Cincinnati in 1823, came to Michigan
a year later and was surprised to find flourishing schools for whites
and Indians at ^Mackinac and L'Arbre Croche. At the latter place
were found two Indian youths, William Maccodabinese and Au-
gustus Hamlin, who were so well fitted for university life that the
good bishop immediately sent them to pursue their studies at the
University of the Propaganda in Rome. There they made friends
with a young priest. Father Frederick Reze, afterwards the first
Bishop of Detroit. Young Maccodabinese studied for the priesthood,
but died before he could be ordained. Hamlin returned to his tribe
as a civil engineer. Bishop Fenwick, finding the working of his
diocese so great that it required six months to make a visitation,
urged that Michigan be set off as a separate see, and that Father
Gabriel Richard should be appointed bishop. Five other bishops
united in the request. Rome, however, was of the opinion that
the creation of sees had gone on too fast in the new country, and
suggested that when the time came to select a bishop three names
be presented instead of one. This method was afterwards adopted
and is still observed.
With a view of obtaining voluntary missionaries to assist him
in his arduous labors, Bishop Fenwick went to Rome and in Janu-
ary, 1827, returned with the young Hanoverian priest. Father Reze,
who became chancellor and vicar general. Before coming to
America, Father Reze organized in 1828 the Leopoldine Society
to aid American missionaries. The dues were a penny a month,
similar to those of the French society for the propagation of the
faith. The income of the society amounted to between $15,000 and
$25,000 a year, most of which was distributed by Father Reze, who
also secured $1,000 a year from the United States Government
toward the maintenance of Catholic Indian schools in the Northwest.
From the French Society came $14,000 per year, which with the
income from the Leopoldine Society enabled the Detroit Diocese to
build such buildings as St. Anne's and Trinity churches. On his
second pastoral visit to L'Arbre Croche in 1828 the bishop was met
by a total-abstinence society of forty-two members in regalia, twenty
years before the beginning of Father Mathews' temperance work
in America. Father Richard died before he could be made a bishop.
Bishop Fenwick died in 1832 of cholera and Father Reze was made
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 371
bishop of the new diocese, which extended from Lakes Huron and
Erie to the Mississippi River and from the Hudson Bay country to
the mouth of the Maumee River. In 1837, worn out by his labors,
Bishop Reze resigned, but his resignation was not accepted and he
was called to Rome to explain. His mind had already begun to
give way and he was retired, although he lived for more than thirty
years as Bishop of Detroit. He returned in 1849 and died in Detroit
in 1 87 1. He was succeeded by Rev. Peter Paul Lefevre, who served
until 1869 and was succeeded by Bishop Borgess, who succeeded to
the title of bishop in 1871, the title in the meantime having been
bishop-administrator.5
In 1810 Michigan had a population of 4,528, the males exceeding
the females by about one thousand ; there were 120 free blacks, and
twenty-four slaves. In 1837 the population had increased to
175,000. There were only 379 colored and twenty-seven Indians
taxed. The remaining Indians consisted chiefly of Chippewas,
Ottawas and Menominees, of whom the Chippewas were by far the
most numerous. The Chippewas lived in the northern portion of
the Lower Peninsula, and in the Upper Peninsula ; the Ottawas
lived in the Lower Peninsula ; all subsisted by hunting, fishing and
the fur trade. They manufactured maple sugar in considerable
quantities, and exchanged it and peltries for blankets and the uten-
sils they needed. The total number of Indians in the state was 7,914,
of whom 3,000 were in the Upper Peninsula. The French popula-
tion, amounting to ten or twelve thousand, for the most part retained
ancient customs and manners, and but slowly adapted themselves to
American ideas. Of foreigners, the Germans were the most numer-
ous. Of the native American citizens many came from Pennsyl-
vania. Ohio and New Jersey, and a few from Virginia, but the
greater portion, amounting to two-thirds of the entire white popula-
tion, came from New England and Western New York. Those from
New York State often traced their origin back to New England, and
it may be said that the general character of the institutions and the
formative principles operative in the state were essentially those of
New England. The immigrants were mostly young or of middle age.
Many of them were wealthy or at least were in independent circum-
stances, having sold their lands in the east. There were very few
who did not own a farm. Tenants were rarely to be found and in-
digence and pauperism were comparatively unknown. The popula-
tion of Michigan therefore was essentially homogeneous, the ma-
= See "The Detroit Diocese," by Rt. Rev. Mgr. Frank A. O'Brien, LL.D,,
Mich. P. & H. Col., Vol. XI, p. 9.
372 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
jority having the same religion, habits, manners and customs. No
state could show greater enterprise in the matter of public improve-
ments, nor could any boast a superior system of public education. A
farm of forty acres of Government land cost $ioo; a section of 640
acres cost $800; an eastern farmer might sell his small farm in the
East for a sum that vi'ould purchase a dozen Michigan farms of a
superior quality of land. He could then look forward to developing
a handsome property and his family in a few years might become
independent without difficulty.
The Erie Canal and the Lakes furnished the principal channel of
immigration to Michigan. There was a stage route from Buffalo
via Cleveland and Sandusky to Detroit, the distance was 374 miles
and the fare in the winter season was usually $35. On the Erie
Canal about three thousand boats were in operation ; a boat left
Albany for Buffalo almost every hour, and the packet boats moved
at the rate of four miles an hour. The price of passage in the packet,
including meals, was 4 cents a mile, or $14.52 from Albany to Buf-
falo. On the line boat, the fare was ij^ cents a mile for passage,
including meals. Families were frequently taken for much less than
this. The terms for freight depended upon the season of navigation,
and the amount of business to be done. The maximum for shipping
light goods from Albany to Buffalo was 75 cents, for heavy goods
$1, and furniture 75 cents per hundred weight. By a special con-
tract, more moderate terms were secured. The Lake Erie steam-
boats in the year 1836 carried about two hundred thousand persons.
The steamboats left Buffalo morning and evening. The price of a
cabin passage from Buffalo to Cleveland was ?fi, from Bufl'alo to
Sault Ste. Marie, $12, to Chicago, Green Bay and St. Joseph, §20,
and from Buffalo to Detroit, SB. Freight from Buffalo to Detroit on
steamers was 38 cents per hundred weight for heavy goods and
50 cents for light goods, 50 cents for barrels, bulk or furniture.
The stage fare from Detroit to Marshall was $7.50 and to Chi-
cago $21.
Such in brief were the conditions faced by that great exodus of
young men and maidens who came from the banks of Penobscot,
the Kennebec and the Merrimac, from the hill towns of New
Hampshire and Vermont, from the industrial centers of Massa-
chusetts and Connecticut, and from the only less fertile lands of
Western New York to make for themselves homes beyond the
Great Lakes.
While the mainland was being occupied by settlers from the
East, on one of the islands of Lake Michigan a kingdom had its
2:
GO
n
'. »?iWf»y«a!
•&=!*Ji-?53Si
374 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
rise and fall. In Alay, 1847, James Jesse Strang, with four of his
followers, landed on Beaver Island, to establish a Mormon colony.
Being inhospitably received by the few resident traders and fisher-
men, the visitors slept under hemlock boughs and ate beechnuts and
wild leeks; but before winter five Mormon families had found
permanent lodgment. By 1850 the island had a population of nearly
two thousand Mormons, and the building of the Town of St. James
began. Schools for the children and debating clubs for the men ;
a well equipped printing ofifice from which was issued the Xorthern
Islander; a large tabernacle; a saw mill and good roads and docks,
all bespoke both enterprise and thrift. The people were forbidden
to use tea, coffee, tobacco or liquor ; on Saturday every person was
compelled to attend church, and corporal punishment was inflicted,
even on adults, for the violation of the minute rules of the new
religion. The women wore the short skirts and the baggy trousers
known as "bloomers." Polygamy was practised in about twenty
families ; and in all cases excepting that of the leader the number
of wives was limited to three ; Strang himself had five. The religion
which held this community together was given to the people in "The
Book of the Law of the Lord, consisting of an inspired translation
of some of the most important parts of the Law given to Moses, and
very few additional commandments, with brief notes and references.
Printed by command of the King, at the Royal Press, St. James."
Strang, the son of a Cayuga County, New York, farmer, was
born in 1813; as a boy he was an omnivorous reader and a great
talker, and in early manhood he lectured on temperance, taught
school, practiced law at Mayville and edited a paper at Randolph, in
his native state. Coming under the influence of Mormonism, he
was baptised and ordained an elder by Joseph Smith, at Nauvoo,
in 1844; and when, a few months later, Smith was murdered by
the mob that stormed the Carthage jail, Strang produced what pur-
ported to be an autograph letter from the founder of Mormonism,
giving to the saint of five months standing the command to "plant
a stake of Zion" in Wisconsin. Excommunicated from the Mormon
church for the forgery, Strang set up a colony at Spring Prairie,
where he had "revelations" and, after the example of Smith, found
in the banks of the White River the miraculously preserved record
of a tribe of Israel which inhabited that region during the remote
centuries. By "inspiration" he was enabled to translate the cabalis-
tic characters and to establish himself as their prophet, priest and
king. The Wisconsin colony grew steadily until (1846) Strang
•decided that the Michigan island offered a better field for the up-
Portrait of King Strang
376 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
building of the kingdom. Besides making friends with the Indian
remnant, Strang was able to convince the United States authorities
at Detroit, before whom he was brought in 1851, that his people
were not land-pirates, mail-robbers, trespassers on the public domain,
and traitors setting up a monarchical government, but were "perse-
cuted for righteousness' sake." So the king returned to his realms
to contribute to the reports of the Smithsonian Institution articles
on natural historj', and to write defences of his people for the
eastern newspapers.*'
Among Strang's disciples was Dr. H. D. McCulloch, an edu-
cated physician from Baltimore, who had been an army surgeon,
but had lost social position at home by vicious habits. Not being
able to overcome his fondness for liquor, McCulloch was deposed
from his churchly office. Accordingly he organized a revolution.
On June 16, 1856, as Strang was on his way to the United States
Steamer Michigan, to pay his royal respects to his friends the offi-
cers, he was shot by Thomas Bedford and Aleck Wentworth, two
Mormons who had been righteously.disciplined. Taken to his former
home in Spring Prairie, he died in the arms of his lawful wife, who
had been faithfully awaiting the return of her misguided sf>ouse.
After his death, the Mormons were driven from their homes by men
from the mainland ; the printing office was sacked, the tabernacle
was burned, and the kingdom fell."
° In 1853 Strang was elected to the State Legislature, where he e.xercised
great influence by reason of his ability, courage and geniality. See Mich.
P. & H. Col., IX, 107; XXI, 285; XXVI, 233; XVIII, 628.
' Charles K. Backus in Harper's Monthly, Vol. LXIV, p. 559.
CHAPTER XX
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE FUR TRADE IN
MICHIGAN
The fur trade was the controlling factor in the conquest and
settlement of Michigan. From the voyage of Jean Xicolet in 1634,
during almost two centuries the fur trade furnished both the motive
for, and the location of, such settlements as were made within the
region of the Great Lakes. The fur trade determined the character
and degree of the civilization; it marked the roads to be traversed,
it tixed townsites, and especially it determined the occupation and
the dwelling places of the Indians.
Long before the coming of the whites the North American
continent was traversed by Indian trails and trade routes ; for the
Indian tribes were traders; and their commerce, one tribe with
another, developed middlemen and other characteristics which we
are wont to regard as belonging to the civilized state. Often the
Indian followed the tracks of the wild animals in their annual
migrations, or in their search for water or salt licks ; and in some
cases, such as the routes from the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes
and thence to Hudson Bay, the trails were nearly a thousand miles
long ; and there were trails which practically traversed the length
and breadth of the continent.
The trader found the rivers his easiest road ; but in war times
they were also the most dangerous, and supplemental routes had
to be discovered. The constant use of these trails and portages dur-
ing many centuries so packed the soil that in places the routes may
still be traced by depressions in the ground, and by the absence of or
difference in the vegetation. The Indians used furs both as ordinary
clothing and also as a means of showing their importance and
wealth. The tribes of the Ottawa River had an established trade
with those of Hudson Bay and it was this commerce that Radisson
and Groseilliers traced to its source. As a rule, however, the prod-
ucts of the chase were not primarily articles of commerce. Copper,
jade, obsidian, soapstone, mica, paint stones and shells for wampum
were the chief articles of traffic; and since the supply of native
copper came mainly from Lake Superior, the tribes of that region
had an abundant source of wealth.
377
378
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
For uncounted ages before the coming of the white man, the
valley of the Mississippi was a vast mart of trade. Its numerous
waterways and easy portages placed the region in touch with every
portion of the continent, so that in prehistoric days the Middle West
attained among the aborigines the same commercial pre-eminence
which it is now coming to attain in the modern world. The
mounds of this section give up to the explorer dentalium shells from
North West Compaxv Blockhouse at Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario
Restored and Vsed as a Residence by Francis H. ClerBue..l9 00
the Pacific, obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, copper from Lake
Superior, pipes of stone from Canada and Minnesota and numerous
objects from the Atlantic coast.
The white man brought domestic animals and guns to make
transportation easier and the land more productive. He also created
a demand for furs and thereby increased the area over which the
Indian gathered peltries, until the Iroquois sought booty as well as
revenge throughout the entire Northwest.
It is assumed, often unconsciously, that the Indians were a
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN 379
simple-minded folk, who were constantly cheated by the traders
and became a prey to the vices of civilization, especially to the
devastating power successively of the brandy of the French, the
rum of the English and the whisky of the American. The life of
the frontier is always steeped in vice and degradation. Even among
themselves the Scotch-Irish on the frontiers have exemplified the
reversion to savagery so characteristic of humanity whenever the
restraints of custom and environment are removed. The mining
and lumber camps of modern times have been the scenes of organ-
ized debauchery which would quite put to blush the ancient customs,
bad as they were. The practice of inducing Indians to barter lands
for strong drink prevailed in Michigan so long as Indians had lands
to barter. In every frontier community a considerable number of
people are engaged in getting by fair means or foul the possessions
of those who really labor. The Indian came in contact with this
class, and often was made to suffer in consequence.
The Indian has been extolled as generous and liberal, brave and
enduring, discreet, stoical, grateful and full of innocent credulity
On the other hand he is defamed as licentious, lazy, boastful, glut-
tonous, improvident, intemperate in all things, filthy, obscene, thiev-
ish, vindictive, arrogant, hypocritical and treacherous. He was all
of these things. In short, he was what his circumstances and con-
ditions made him. It is, therefore, useless to impugn either the
white man or the red man. Each acted as he would act today if
the world should be turned back a century or more — or as each
does act when the same conditions prevail on the frontier or when
old conditions are temporarily revived by a breakdown of the
restraints of civilization.
Among the French on the frontier the Indian was recognized
as a fellow-creature, to be associated with as well as worked with.
The French missionary had a sincere regard for the Indian's soul.
The French trader lived with the Indian's daughter, and had no
scruple about the matter of marriage when a priest came to per-
form the ceremony. 1 Marriages between the English and the
Indians occurred oftener than is commonly supposed, but often
there were scruples against a religious ceremony. The English of
New England looked upon the Indian as a heathen to be exter-
minated. They sought lands to cultivate, not furs in barter. Their
clergy as a rule were not seeking red converts, although the fiction
1 "Handbook of American Indians;" articles on Commerce, Indian
Trails, Fur Trade, Trading Posts, French Influence, etc.
Old Bateau-Lock of North West Fur Company at Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario
Discovered by Judge J. H. Steere; Restored by Francis H. Clergue
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN . 381
is that Harvard, Dartmouth and WiUiam and Mary colleges were
founded to educate Indian youth. In the same way Judge Cooley
maintains that Michigan University was really founded on an Indian
grant. And yet, in spite of Indian aloofness, the English and Amer-
ican consciences have been concerned to lift the savages to a highe 
