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I IIIliIIll 11 11111111111111111 111111111111 i331ii31i31313ii311 11111111, IIIr i" 'I" ""?!!!!!!! ii ii!!!!!!1!IIUI UIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIB111 IIII1 YUIII IIIII ilYUYIIIIII O iillY II bYI I E IIIIUlrlULlllls lUlsld II811lrl1 iii!!!I!!1! i!!! iii 1!111!11!~! sl!lll!!~1!1!1!!1!1313111% 118111111 11-111 19%- JLallli I _r L_ 1 111111 Ii lli 111111111 81111 s I 1 111118 11 Illr 11nl!III Illrl 311 IIIIIIII sllllblllllllllllll1111111 IlllreaslrlarlIrllBII 111ls11111811~ IIIC iii iriiii Iis IIIIIII YIIIIIII[I IIIIIIIBIYIIIIIIIIIILIIIIIIIIIIII[III ~- I IIiiI Ils I II!!11: 1111111%1111&111111111181181111113Rl!I! i!! i!!!!!3 Il"llllllllaarlnlrllrlrlalalluar 11111 Y IlrulrI IIlilt!I!I!!I!!iI!l 1! -11111 IIII1111,11111 111 11111111lsl I I I I s I 11113 1 I I Y I IYIYIIIIYIII lieIU!E I!! II! I.IIVIi!! 16111111j11111111111IIIIIIIIIUIYIII111 IIIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIII IYIIIIIIIYIIIYII — II IIUIIEIII "' IIIIIIIIIIIYIIII ill' r IIIIIIIIICIIIIIII --- - ~ --- -y!!!!!l!elllllBI lrlll s111118 - --- ----— - ]1111313131131111 iini slcrenlllalsnms i3111111111111 111111111 rra IIIIIII1II1IIIII IlillillllllRIIII RI i IIUliliilni ii jljlrr Illlilillllliiini3illlll 1 iiilll IIIIUII lllnlulllllll IIIIII Illsllllllllllll PI 11111111111 11111111111 111111111111111111 11111111111111111 irllllllllll 111111111111 111111111 1111 1111 11111111111111111111 111111 11111 i iilliii illili ilili 11 11111131 1111131111?3311311!1 1[111!1!1!11113111!3II 111!!1111111 PIIIB llllllTllllllllllsll111 11111111 11111111111111 11111111111111111 11111111111111111111I 11111811111111111111111!1111!!!!11!1!!,?1!1!!,11111!1!!I!I!I!I!III!!L!I!I!!!IIIIII Siliii IPsii I~iiiigllSReallI JF'991aiaP"bB IIIISllrlalB IIIElllllllslllll II IIIlil 1 IIII el I GEORGE N. FULLER, A.M., Ph.D. H-ISTOIC MICHIGAN4 t HISTORIC MICHIGAN LAND OF THE GREAT LAKES Its Life, Resources, Industries, People, Politics, Government, Wars, Institutions, Achievements, the Press, Schools and Churches Legendary and Prehistoric Lore Edited by George N. Fuller, A.M. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Univ. of Mich.) Secretary of the Michigan Historical Commission and Secretary of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society VOLUME I. Published by National Historical Association, Inc. and Dedicated to the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society in Commemoration of Its Fiftieth Anniversary Al superior numerals appearing in context of this history indicate reference to the department of Note and Additional Readings, entered at end of the Volume. Preface THE papers contained in these volumes have been selected almost entirely from the publications of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society and the Michigan Historical Commission; partly with a view to acquaint the public more thoroughly with these sources of historical material; primarily because of their strong popular appeal. It has been the purpose of the publishers to gather a collection of "Readings" from these sources, of such nature as to make a fairly continuous narrative of Michigan history, which should appeal not only to the general public but to school children, in the grades as well as in the high schools. It may indeed surprise many that so continuous a story could be made in this way from these society and state publications. They are, in fact, a rich store of material all too little explored. The publishers hope that these readings may induce the public, and especially students in the schools, and prospective teachers in the Normal schools and colleges of Michigan, to read further in the Collections from which these papers are taken. The volumes of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections now number 39, with two index volumes; volume XXXIX contains a convenient "finding list." The University Series, published by the Michigan Historical Commission, numbers five volumes, with an index in each volume. The Michigan History Magazine, published quarterly by the Michigan Historical Commission, is now (I924) in its eighth volume. "When I look back upon the busiest period of my life, up to about the age of twelve years," writes a friend in a recent book, "I recall the ardent enthusiasm and tireless enterprise which characterized my existence. I recall how the exciting rivalries and stirring adventures of youth so crowded every day of my life that I scarcely had time to eat or sleep, to say nothing of time for reflection. The world to me was altogether external. I was too busy weighing, measuring and manipulating it to have a moment available for introspection or self-consciousness. One day, however, I chanced to pass through a room occupied by my sisters, wherein the numerous mirrors were so opposed as to reflect my life size figure from every angle. I stopped suddenly with a shock of surprise which I can never forget. For the first time in my life I felt self-conscious, and began to imagine how I appeared in the eyes of my friends and enemies." It is likely that every community has had some such experience of passing from a period of self-forgetfulness to one of self-consciousness. Up to the present time the people of Michigan have been so absorbed in exploiting the natural resources of the state that they have not had time for introspection and contemplation of the history the state has been making in these many years. In the years prior to the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, there was an increase of interest in history all over the country, of which Michigan had her share. In 1874 "The Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan" was organized, under an act passed by the state legislature the previous year. In I877 appeared the first of the series of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections published by this society, embodying a great variety of material-pioneer reminiscences, biographical sketches, memorials, papers read at meetings of the state and local historical societies, and important collections of documents both of public and private origin-making in all the present 39 volumes. In this year of 1924, the semi-centennial year of the organization of the society, it will be interesting to pass through this historical room, as it were, wherein the numerous mirrors are so opposed as to reflect the life of the state from almost every angle. Insofar as Historic Michigan may help to this end, and may lead to a wider, permanent and more intelligent interest in the history of the state, these volumes, it is felt, will have rendered a service. GEORGE N. FULLER. Lansing, Michigan, June I, I924. Table of Contents CHAPTER I-GEOGRAPHIC SETTING PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE GREAT LAKES REGION —PARKINS' HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF DETROIT-MICHIGAN HISTORICAL COMMISSION PUBLICATIONS -TOPOGRAPHIC AND GEOGRAPHIC FEATURES —MORAINES-WATERWAYS AND PORTAGES-FRENCH OCCUPATION-FORESTS-WILD GAME —EARLY FUR INDUSTRY ------- ----- --- ---------------- ------------- ---- 17-21 CHAPTER II-PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN ARCHEOLOGY OF MICHIGAN-INDIAN TRIBES-THE JESUIT RELATIONSHANDBOOK OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN-FIRST REFERENCE TO MICHIGANEARLY MAPS AND RECORDS-ORIGINAL INDIAN TRIBES-INDIAN TRIBAL WARFARE-COMING OF THE WHITE MAN-DECADENCE OF INDIAN STOCK-MOUND BUILDERS AND INDIAN POTTERY-INDIAN LAND CESSIONS-THE CHIPPEWA GROUP-ARCHEOLOGICAL REMAINS-PREHISTORIC COPPER MINING-SOUTHERN PENINSULA ARCHEOLOGY-EXPLORING OF EARTHWORKS-COPPER DEPOSITS AND ABORIGINAL COPPER WORKINGS-LANMAN HISTORY OF MICHIGAN -ARCHEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES-PRESERVATION OF ANTIQUITIES-SKELETAL REMAINS -------------------------- 22-42 CHAPTER III-MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD INDIANS OF MICHIGAN AND CESSION OF THEIR LANDS TO THE UNITED STATES BY TREATIES-PAPER BY GOVERNOR ALPHEUS PHELPS-FATHERS JOGUES AND RAYMBAULT-OJIBWAYS (OR CHIPPEWAS), OTTAWAS AND POTAWATOMIESMIAMI TRIBE-FORT AND JESUIT MISSION AT MOUTH OF THE ST. JOSEPH RIVER-THE HURONS OR WYANDOTS-MICHIGAN INDIANS WITH FRENCH IN WAR AGAINST ENGLAND AND WITH THE ENGLISH IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION-SIEGE OF DETROIT IN 1762-EARLY FRENCH CLAIMS-RIGHTS OF FOREIGN CLAIMANTS-EARLIEST OF INDIAN TREATIES-CAMPAIGN OF GENERAL WAYNE-TREATY OF GREENVILLE-A MOMENTOUS COUNCIL-TREATY OF NOVEMBER, 1807-CHIPPEWA CESSION OF 1819 —OTHER IMPORTANT LAND CESSIONS-INDIAN RESERVATIONS-RECORD OF VARIOUS INDIAN TREATIES —LAND GRANTS TO INDIVIDUALS-THE CAREY MISSION SCHOOL-MICHIGAN INDIANS OF PRESENT DAY-GENERAL HULL AND GENERAL LEWIS CASS —HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT-ROBERT STUART. --- —------------------------ ------------ 4 3-61 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER IV-INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE INCIDENTS IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF INDIAN JUSTICE-AN INDIAN FAMILY TRAGEDY-SHAMANISTIC CEREMONIES AMONG THE OJIBWAYS —OLD SHAMEN AND THEIR TREATMENT OF DISEASE-SCIENTIFIC USES FOR MICHIGAN FOLKLORE-THE LEGEND OF THE INDIAN SUMMER-THE LEGEND OF THE SHOQTING STAR-AN INDIAN IDYL —THE WHITE STONE CANOE _ --- —------ ---- 62-72 CHAPTER V-FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT EARLY FRENCH SETTLEMENTS IN MICHIGAN-THE FRENCH ADVENTURERSTHE FRENCH AS COLONISTS-THE FRENCH POLICY-RELATIONS WITH THE INDIAN TRIBES-CHAMPLAIN THE EXPLORER-FATHER MARQUETTE-POST AT MACKINAW-MINOR STATIONS-CARNIVAL AT SAULT STE. MARIE AS EARLY AS 1671-LASALLE SETTLEMENT AT MOUTH OF ST. JOSEPH RIVER-FORTS ST. JOSEPH AND FORT GRATIOT —TRADE WITH NORTHERN INDIANS-CADILLAC AND SETTLEMENT OF DETROIT-AN INDIAN SIEGE AT DETROIT-LAND GRANTS BY GOVERNOR GENERAL BEAUHARNOIS —BUILDINGS OF THE EARLY PERIODEARLY QUARRIES-EARLY AGRICULTURE-DETROIT AT TIME OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH WAR-MICHIGAN DURING THE REVOLUTION-DELEGATES TO THE ASSEMBLY OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY-MILITARY RULE UNDER FRENCH REGIME —EARLY PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES --- —- ------------ 73-82 CHAPTER VI-JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN THE LAKE SUPERIOR REGIONS DURING THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES-GEORGIAN BAY-FATHERS JOGUES AND RAYMBAULT-THE SAULT STE. MARIE-FATIIER MENARD AND THE FIRST REGULAR MISSION-FATHER GABRIEL DRUILLETTES-FATHER CLAUDE DABLON-FATHER JAMES MARQUETTE AND HIS WORK-OTHER EARLY MISSIONARIES-FATHER CLAUDE JEAN ALLOUEZ AND HIS EXPEDITIONS-FATHER LOUIS NICOLAS —FATHER LOUIS ANDRE-SURVEY OF EARLY JESUIT ACTIVITIES IN MICHIGAN-FATHER MARQUETTE AT MICHILIMACKINAC ---— 83-103 CHAPTER VII-CADILLAC CADILLAC THE FOUNDER OF DETROIT-RECORD OF HIS LIFE AND SERVICES ------ ---- 104-106 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix CHAPTER VIII-THE FUR TRADE THE EARLY FUR TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA-THE PIONEER INDUSTRY-THE ANIMALS THAT WERE HUNTED FOR THEIR FURS-BARTERING WITH THE INDIANS-TRADERS-A NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION THROUGH THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI-THE AMERICAN FUR COMPANY —PROFITS OF THE FUR TRADETHE HUDSON BAY COMPANY-THE NORTHWEST FUR COMPANY-MICHILIMACKINAC A FUR MART-JOHN JACOB ASTOR-MACKINAC ISLAND HEADQUARTERS OF THE AMERICAN FUR COMPANY-THE ASTOR HOUSE ON THE ISLAND — FUR-BEARING ANIMALS NOT BECOMING EXTINCT- ------------------— 107-117 CHAPTER IX-PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY THE SIEGE OF DETROIT-PONTIAC ARRIVES AT THE FORT-PONTIAC DEMANDS SURRENDER OF FORT-LAST DAYS OF PONTIAC-THE GLADWIN AND PONTIAC FABLE ---------— 1 --- —-----—. -. —~-. -118-121 CHAPTER X-INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY BOUNDARY LINES OF THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE TREATY OF 1782 -PAPERS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM-PRELIMINARY TREATY OF PEACE-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND RICHARD OSWALD-LINE OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1782 -DRAFT OF THE TREATY-TREATIES OF 1782 AND 1783 —JOHN JAY-FINAL TREATY OF PEACE SIGNED- -1 ---22 --- —--- -—. --- —--------------- 122-129 CHAPTER XI-THE OLD NORTHWEST THE GATEWAYS OF THE OLD NORTHWEST-FIRST FLATBOATS OF THE OHIO COMPANY-A NEW PERIOD IN THE HISTORY OF THE OLD NORTHWEST-THE OHIO GATEWAY-THE CUMBERLAND ROAD-THE MOHAWK VALLEY-OPENING OF THE ERIE CANAL —OLD NORTHWEST BECAME THE MIDDLE WEST-A NORTHWEST OF TWO SECTIONS-GROWTH OF INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT-ROADS AND CANALS-INFLUENCE AND SERVICE OF TWO GATEWAYS —THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 —. --- —-. —. --- ---------—. 130-140 x TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XII-INDIAN WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE ANTHONY WAYNE AND THE BATTLE OF FALLEN TIMBERS-DEFEAT OF HARMAR AND ST. CLAIR-INCOMING OF PIONEERS —INDIAN HOSTILITY —GENERAL JOSIAH HARMAR'S EXPEDITION-ST. CLAIR AND HIS ARMY ROUTED —WAYNE MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF —LEGION OF THE UNITED STATES-CHIEF JOSEPH BRANT-IMPORTANT INDIAN COUNCIL-COMMISSIONERS MAKE REPORT TO SECRETARY OF WAR-NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE INDIANS-MOVEMENTS OF GENERAL WAYNE AND HIS ARMY —FORT GREENVILLE-FORT DEFIANCE-THE BATTLE OF FALLEN TIMBERS-END OF INDIAN WARS OF THE EIGITEENTH CENTURY - __ --- —----------------------—. ---141-153 CHAPTER XIII-EARLY DETROIT SOCIAL LIFE OF THE FRENCH —ATTITUDE OF CADILLAC-ALPHONSE TONTYSTE. ANNE'S CHURCH-FIRST WHITE CHILD-EARLY STREETS AND HOUSES -FEW MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS —LIVE STOCK IN THE EARLY DAYS-HUNTING AND FISHING-A MILL ESTABLISHED —A BREWERY ERECTED-VILLAGES OF INDIANS-LAND TRANSFERS-FOOD AND CLOTHING-THE FIRST CHURCHTHE WAREHOUSE —TOBACCO SMOKING-DETROIT A NEUTRAL GROUND —INDIANS SETTLE AT DETROIT-THE FORT OR PALISADE —THE RIVER A NATURAL HIGHWAY-CADILLAC'S RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE-CHARLES RENAUD SIEUR DUBUISSON ASSUMES CHARGE OF THE POST-OLD FRENCH TRADITIONS-A CONTRACT OF MARRIAGE-A FRENCH DEED-THE EARLY COLONIZATION OF DETROIT-THE ORDER OF THE JESUIT-CONDITIONS, CUSTOMS AND MANNERSRECORD CONCERNING PIONEERS-EARLY SCHOOLS-OLD FRENCH SONGSAMUSEMENTS IN DETROIT IN COLONIAL DAYS-FORT SHELBY-VARIED HISTORICAL RECORDS -----—. ---- --------------—. —. 154-217 CHAPTER XIV-CREATION OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY PROVISIONS OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1787-THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY-THI INDIANA TERRITORY-NO ACCURATE MAPS-AN ALTERATION OF THE ORDINANCE-LEGISLATION ON BOUNDARIES-MICHIGAN BECAME PART OF INDIAN& TERRITORY-AGITATION FOR AN INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENT-. --- —. — 218-222 TABLE OF CONTENTS xi CHAPTER XV-MICHIGAN IN THE WAR OF I812 THE BATTLE OF BROWNSTOWN-WAR CHIEF TECUMSEH-BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE-CONGRESS DECLARES WAR AGAINST ENGLAND-EXPEDITION OF MAJOR VANHORNE-THE BATTLE AT BROWNSTOWN-THE BATTLE OF MONGUAGONBATTLE AND MASSACRE AT FRENCHTOWN --- —- ------------ -- 223-234 CHAPTER XVI-MICHIGAN TERRITORY, 1805-1837 GENERAL INFLUENCES IN THE SETTLEMENT OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY-FULLER'S Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan —EFFECTS OF WAR OF 1812-UNFAVORABLE REPORT ABOUT MICHIGAN LANDS-"INTERMINABLE SWAMP"-CASS EXPEDITION OF 1820-NEW SURVEYS-ACCOUNTS OF TRAVEL THROUGH MICHIGAN-FAVORABLE NEWSPAPER ARTICLES-JOHN FARMER'S MAPS AND GAZETTEERS-RUMORS OF INDIAN DEPREDATIONS-INDIAN TITLES TO MICHIGAN LANDS —THE BLACK HAWK WAR-NEW LAND OFFICES ESTABLISHE —NEW PERIOD IN THE SETTLEMENT OF WESTERN MICHIGAN-LEGAL PROTECTION TO THE SQUATTER-LAND SALES AND SPECULATIONS-IMPROVEMENTS IN TRANSPORTATION-RIVER AND CANAL IMPROVEMENTS —FIRST ROAD IMPROVEMENTS-EARLY STAGE LINES —THE CHICAGO ROAD-THE TERRITORIAL ROAD-AGITATION FOR RAILROADS-PONTIAC & DETROIT RAILWAY COMPANY-THE FIRST RAILROAD-DETROIT & ST. JOSEPH RAILROAD —ERIE & KALAMAZOO RAILROAD-GOVERNMENT OF THE TERRITORY-FIRST DELEGATE TO CONGRESS-AGITATION FOR STATEHOOD-COUNTY, TOWNSHIP AND VILLAGE GOVERNMENT-EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL ADVANTAGES-FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM-LOG SCHOOLHOUSES --- —--------------- 235-249 CHAPTER XVII-REPRESENTATIVE EARLY DETROITERS LEWIS CASS-REV. GABRIEL RICHARD-DR. DOUGLASS HOUGHTON -— 250-256 CHAPTER XVIII-EARLY MAPS SOME EARLY MAPS OF MICHIGAN-AMERICAN UNIVERSAL GEOGRAPHY-MAP OF THE NORTHWESTERN TERRITORY-MAP OF D'ANVILLE-MAP OF CAPTAIN THOMAS HUTCHINS-JOSEPH SCOTT MAP —ORIGINAL MICHIGAN TERRITORIAL BOUNDARIES-HULL THE FIRST TERRITORIAL GOVERNOR-FOUR ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICTS-CAREY'S GEOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL AND HISTORICAL MAP OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY-MAP OF DAVID H. BURR —TOURIST POCKET MAP OF MICHIGAN-OLDEST MAP OF MICHIGAN-THE P. E. JUDD MAP-THE RISDON MAP-FARMER'S MAP-J. CALVIN SMITH MAP-DOUGLASS HOUGHTON MAPS -------------—. --- —-—...... --- — 257-265 xI1 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XIX-BEGINNING OF STEAM NAVIGATION ON THE GREAT LAKES COMMERCE AND STEAM NAVIGATION-THE BIRCH BARK CANOE —FIRST PLANK BATEAU-DURHAM BOATS-EARLY SAILING VESSELS-THE "WALK-IN-THEWATER"-GROWTH OF STEAM SHIPPING-FIRST SCREW PROPELLER-DETROIT PROMINENT IN SHIP-BUILDING —WATERWAYS AND WATER ROUTES-THE ERIE CANAL-EARLY LAKE VESSELS ------- ------—. --- —-— 266-270 CHAPTER XX-INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW INDIAN CESSION OF 1819, MADE BY THE TREATY OF SAGINAW —EARLIER INDIAN TREATIES-TAW-CUM-E-GO-QUA-TESTIMONIES OF INDIANS AND OTHERS IN REGARD TO THE TREATY OF SAGINAW-THE TREATY SIGNED-REPORT OF GENERAL CASS-LAND EMBRACED IN TREATY-THE SAGINAW VALLEY-WORK OF THE PIONEERS. —_2 ---- ---------.-.. — 2 — 71-286 CHAPTER XXI-EARLY ROADS THE DETROIT-CHICAGO ROAD-EARLY STAGE LINES AND TAVERNS-STATE MILITARY ROAD FROM SAGINAW TO MACKINAC-HARRIET MARTINEAU'S Travels in and Around Michigan.._ — -—. --- —-— _.- - _287-291 CHAPTER XXII-PIONEER LIFE PIONEER FARMING-BLACKBIRDS AND CROWS-CORN GROWING-DIFFICULT PLOWING-GRUBBING-BEES, RAISINGS AND CORN HUSKINGS-HARVESTED TRIBULATION-"RAISINGS" AND "BEES" AMONG THE EARLY SETTLERS —EARLY LOG HOUSES-WHISKY AT RAISINGS-A TEMPERANCE INNOVATION-A LOGGING BEE-RAIL SPLITTING-USE OF OXEN-OLD BREAKING-UP PLOW-HUSKING BEES-THE OLD LOG HOUSE-WHAT THE PIONEERS ATE AND HOW THEY FARED-MICHIGAN FOOD AND COOKERY IN THE EARLY DAYS-THE FROLICS OF FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO —POEM OF THE DANCE-EARLY SOCIAL GAMESTHE FEVER AND AGUE-" MICHIGAN RASH" —MOSQUITOES —THE OLD PIONEERS' FOES-PIONEER WOMEN WHO FACED THE WILDERNESS IN DAUNTLESS FAITH -..-.....2-..-........... —.. —..... --- ——....... ------—. ---2 92-314 TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER XXIII-DETROIT I805-1837 DETROIT IN TERRITORIAL DAYS-THE FIRE OF 1805-A NEW CITY PLANNED -STREETS OF THE EARLY DAYS-FRONTIER CONDITIONS-ALL THE ATTRIBUTES OF A SEAPORT-MARCH OF PROGRESS —OPENING OF STEAM NAVIGATION -COMPETITION WITH OTHER LAKE PORTS-IMMIGRATION IN 1831-GROWTH IN THE '30S-NEW IMMIGRATION-REALI ESTATE TRANSACTIONS —THE CASS FARM-EARLY MERCHANDIZING-RAILROADS AND FERRIES —GROWTH OF MANUFACTURE AND COMMERCE-CIVIC IMPROVEMENTS-THE "GRAND SEWER" — FIRE PROTECTION-STREET LIGHTING-BUILDINGS AND POPULATION-THE NEGRO ELEMENT-FOREIGN-BORN CITIZENS-CULTURAL LIFE-SCHOOLS _ ----- - -----------------— U- -------- 315-324 CHAPTER XXIV-THE "BOY GOVERNOR" OF MICHIGAN MICHIGAN'S DEBT TO STEVENS T. MASON-SKETCH OF LIFE OF THE "BOY GOVERNOR" —THE TOLEDO WAR-ABLE ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNOR - —, — -----------—. --- —--- ---------------------— 2.- - 3 5-328 CHAPTER XXV-MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY AND THE TOLEDO WAR-AN INTERESTING BOUNDARY HISTORY-ANALYSIS OF THE SITUATION-CONGRESSIONAL AND LEGISLATIVE ACTION-STRUGGLE FOR STATEHOOD-A STATE CONSTITUTION DRAWNELECTION OF 1835-MILITARY ACTIVITIES IN CONNECTION WITH THE BOUNDARY CONTROVERSY-TOLEDO WAR FOUGHT QUIETLY AND WITHOUT LOSS OF LIFE -_ ---- ---- ------------------------ --- 329-335 CHAPTER XXVI-MICHIGAN'S FIRST UNITED STATES SENATORS Lucius LYON-JOHN NORVELL --- —-—. ----. --- —--— 3_ 336-340 CHAPTER XXVII-EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS EARLY CATHOLIC AUSPICES-A YOUNG LADIES' ACADEMY-A SCHOOL LAW PASSED-A "CATHOLEPISTEMIAD"-PROPOSED UNIVERSITY-SCHOOL LEGISLATION IN 1827-PERIOD OF EXPERIMENTATION-NEW UNIVERSITY AT DETROIT -ACADEMIES AND SEMINARIES-ADVANCE IN EDUCATIONAL PROVISIONSFIRST SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION-ORIGIN OF NAME OF STATE -THE LOG SCHOOLHOUSE ERA ---JOHN DAVIS PIERCE-ISAAC E. CRARY-_—. --- —---------- - -------- --------- -- ----- ---- ------------------- -..341-351 xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XXVIII-INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND THE FIVE MILLION DOLLAR LOAN INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS-PROVISIONS OF STATE ORGANIC LAW —ROADS, CANALS AND NAVIGABLE WATERS-MESSAGE OF GOVERNOR STEVENS-SLAUGHTER OF PUBLIC LANDS-AN EXHAUSTED TREASURY-DEBRIS OF AIRY CASTLESTHE FIVE MILLION DOLLAR LOAN. --- —------—. ---. --- —----. ---.- -—.-352-364 CHAPTER XXIX-WILD CAT BANKING THE WILD CAT BANKING SYSTEM OF MICHIGAN-AN EXCITING AND MEMORABLE EPOCH-THE BANK OF DETROIT-THE BANK OF MICHIGAN-NAMES OF BANKS ESTABLISHED PRIOR TO 1837-ERA OF SPECULATION-SPECIE PAYMENTS SUSPENDED-OUTCRY AGAINST CHARTERED BANKS-EARLY BANKING LEGISLATION-BANK COMMISSIONERS-MUSTER ROLL OF THE WILD CATSTHE BANK OF BREST-THE BANK OF CLINTON-THE LENAWEE COUNTY BANK -THE BANK OF SANDSTONE-THE BANK OF SINGAPORE-THE DETROIT CITY BANK-THE GENERAL BANKING LAW-RESULT OF THE EXPERIMENT OF FREE BANKING-THE LESSON NOT LOST ------------------------— 365-379 CHAPTER XXX-THE STATE CAPITOL THE NEW STATE CAPITOL-THE FIRST CAPITOL-MESSAGE OF GOVERNOR BALDWIN-BOARD OF STATE BUILDING COMMISSIONERS-CONTRACT FOR ERECTION OF THE CAPITOL-LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE-BUILDING COMPLETED AND DEDICATED —COST OF CONSTRUCTION-HOW LANSING BECAME THE CAPITAL,. ---.. -. —.. --- —-- -------- -- — 380-388 CHAPTER XXXI-THE BEAVER ISLAND MORMONS A MICHIGAN MONARCHY-JAMES J. STRANG AND THE MORMON KINGDOM OF BEAVER ISLAND-EARLY HISTORY OF KING STRANG —GENTILE AND MORMON WARFARE-END OF KING STRANG'S REIGN-MURDEROUS ASSAULT-THE FALLEN KINGDOM -. --- —---—. --- —--- -------- 389-397 a TABLE OF CONTENTS xv CHAPTER XXXII-THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN THE SEER-VERSES BY J. G. WHITTIER-THE UPPER PENINSULA, A SKETCH -THE RUGGED WILDERNESS-HARDY EXPLORERS AND PIONEERS-PREHISTORIC RACE-ANCIENT MINERS OF THE GREAT LAKES-FIRST WHITE TRADERS AND MISSIONARIES-ANCIENT INDIAN FEUD-LAND OF THE OJIBWAS —LONGFELLOW'S HIAWATHA-ETIENNE BRULE-EARLY EXPLORATIONS-FIRST MISSIONARIES-MACKINAW AND SAULT STE. MARIE-FATHER MARQUETTE-UNDER THREE FLAGS-FIRST LICENSED TRADER-GREAT FUR COMPANIES-DEVELOPMENT OF GREAT MINERAL RESOURCES-VERDICT FOR MICHIGAN-HOW THE UPPER PENINSULA BECAME A PART OF MICHIGAN-SOME INCIDENTS OF PIONEER LIFE IN THE UPPER PENINSULA-SNOW SHOEING-SQUATTERS-COLD QUARTERS-A PERILOUS ADVENTURE-PERILOUS NAVIGATION-GRAND PORTAGE-A WET ROOSTER-EXPLORING IN THE SNOW-SOME TALL TRAMPINGMINE SPECULATIONS-REMINISCENCES OF "OLD KEWEENAW"-THE PICTURED ROCKS-SAULT STE. MARIE AND THE CANAL FIFTY YEARS AGO- --— 398-452 CHAPTER XXXIII-HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES HISTORY AND MEANING OF THE COUNTY NAMES OF MICHIGAN-THE NAME MICHIGAN-MICHILIMACKINAC-BROWN COUNTY —CRAWFORD COUNTY-OAKLAND COUNTY-ST. CLAIR COUNTY-LENAWEE COUNTY-SAGINAW COUNTYSANILAC COUNTY-SHIAWASSEE COUNTY-WASHTENAW COUNTY-CHIPPENVA COUNTY-COUNTIES IN THE SOUTHWESTERF PART OF THE STATE-CASS COUNTY —IILLSDALE COUNTY-KALAMAZOO COUNTY-ST. JOSEPH COUNTYTWELVE COUNTIES LAID OFF-ALLEGAN COUNTY-ARENAC; COUNTY-CLINTON COUNTY-GLADWIN COUNTY-GRATIOT COUNTY-IONIA COUNTY-ISABELLA COUNTY-KENT COUNTY-MIDLAND COUNTY-MONTCALM COUNTYOCEANA COUNTY-OTTAWA COUNTY —LIVINGSTON COUNTY-GENESEE COUNTY -ALPENA COUNTY-ANTRIM COUNTY-CHARLEVOIX COUNTY-CHEBOYGAN COUNTY-CLARE COUNTY-CRAWFORD COUNTY —EMMET COUNTY-GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY-HURON COUNTY-IOSCO COUNTY-KALKASKA COUNTYLEELANAU COUNTY-LAKE COUNTY-MISSAUKEE COUNTY-MECOSTA COUNTY — MONTMORENCY COUNTY-MASON COUNTY-MANISTEE COUNTY-NEWAYGO COUNTY-OGEMAW COUNTY-OSCEOLA COUNTY-OSCODA COUNTY-PRESQUE ISLE COUNTY-ROSCOMMON COUNTY —TUSCOLA COUNTY-WEXFORD COUNTY — DELTA COtJNTY-MARQUETTE COUNTY-ONTONAGON COUNTY-SCHOOLCRAFT COUNTY-HOUGHTON COUNTY-MANITOU COUNTY-BAY COUNTYMUSKEGON COUNTY-KEWEENAW COUNTY-MENOMINEE COUNTY-BENZIE COUNTY-WASHINGTON COUNTY-BARAGA COUNTY-ISLE ROYALE COUNTY — ALGER AND IRON COUNTIES —DICKINSON COUNTY-GOGEBIC COUNTY --- —---- -......... --- —— _......... -----------------... _-...- 453-485 xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XXXIV-THE MEXICAN WAR MICHIGAN'S RECORD IN THE WAR WITH MIEXICO-ADDRESS OF COL. ISAAC D. TOLL ----—.. --- —------------- 486-492 CHAPTER XXXV-POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR MICHIGAN IN HER PIONEER PERIOD-EARLY SETTLEMENT IN BATTLE CREEK -PRIMITIVE OFFICIAL EQUIPMENT-GOVERNING A TOWNSHIP-OLD DEMOCRATIC AND WHIG PARTIES —ABSENCE OF PARTY SPIRIT-THE NEWSPAPER AND POLITICAL SPEAKER-ESSENCE OF A GOOD SPEECH-POLITICAL MEETINGS AT BATTLE CREEK-HUSTINGS A POLITICAL SCHOOL-POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1840, WITH INCIDENTS, ANECDOTES AND RECOfLECTIONS OF ITS DISTINGUISHED EDITORS AND ORATORS-GREAT WHIG VICTORY OF 1840 -"TIPPECANOE AND TYLER TOO" —SYSTEM OF FAULT-FINDING-FAMOUS POLITICAL CAMPAIGN -------.. — - -------—.-. ----493-504 CHAPTER XXXVI-THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN MICHIGAN BATTLE CREEK AS A STATION ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY —THE MAIN ROUTE AND SECOND ROUTE-STATION AT BATTLE CREEK-WORK CONDUCTED WITH GREATEST SECRECY-FAMOUS QUAKER SETTLEMENT NEAR CASSAPOLIS -AGENTS AT JACKSON-PASSWORDS-THE FIRST FUGITIVES-HUNDREDS OF INTERESTING INCIDENTS —THE CROSSWIIITE CASE --- —-------------- 505-512 CHAPTER XXXVII-THE CIVIL WAR THE DAYS OF FIFE AND DRUM-JOINT SESSION OF LEGISLATURE-MESSAGES OF GOVERNORS WISNER AND BLAIR —ADMINIS RATION OF GOVERNOR AUSTIN BLAIR-BOMBARDMENT OF FORT SUMTER-PATRIOTIC MEETING IN DETROIT -COLONEL ORLANDO B. WILCOX AND HIS COMMAND —SPECIAL SESSION OF MICHIGAN LEGISLATURE-STIMULATE ENLISTMENTS-PROGRESS OF RECRUITING-FALL ELECTIONS OF 1862-VARIOUS MICHIGAN REGIMENTS-THE LooMIS BATTERY OF LIGHT ARTILLERY-MICHIGAN INDIANS IN THE WAR-GENERAL GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER-OPERATIONS AT THE FRONT-THE FOURTH MICHIGAN CAVALRY-A CASE OF CANADIAN PIRACY-MICHIGAN SOLDIERS MUSTERED OUT-DETROIT CELEBRATION OF FINAL VICTORY-THE TWENTIETH MICHIGAN REGIMENT IN THE ASSAULT ON PETERSBURG-WAR TIMES IN THE COPPER MINES-DEVELOPMENT OF THE LAKE SUPERIOR REGION-. 513-540 I GEOGRAPHIC SETTING PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE GREAT LAKES REGION From Parkins' Historical Geography of Detroit, Michigan Historical Commission Publications, University Series, III, 4-12 THE Great Lakes region includes that irregular and somewhat indefinite area, on the eastern side of the Great Central Plain, that borders and includes the five Great Lakes of North America. It is not separated from the other parts of the Great Central Plain by any marked topographic feature. It is not in any way an isolated geographic unit; yet it is a unit. Its abundant resources make it one of the most important areas of the interior plain. Its chief importance perhaps lies in its position at the west entrances of the "gateways" to the Atlantic. Since the great markets for agricultural products are in eastern United States and Europe, this position makes a large part of the Great Central Plain naturally tributary to the Lakes region. During the long period that the merchants of Montreal and Quebec controlled the economic activities of the great interior of North America, the area tributary to the Great Lakes included most of the territory to the north of the Ohio and the Missouri rivers, and west to the Rocky Mountains. Today the Great Lakes region has for its sphere of commercial influence more than two-thirds of the Great Central Plain. Great as are the resources of the mines, the forests, and the fields, the Great Lakes region owes much of its importance to the Great Lakes themselves. There are few other regions of like area that can furnish such opportunities for inland transportation. From the lower end of Lake Michigan to the eastern terminus of Lake Erie there are nearly a thousand miles of unobstructed deep waterways. With the overcoming of the barrier at the rapids of the St. Mary's river and the falls at Niagara, six hundred miles more have been added. But transportation advantages on lakes are not to be reckoned by the lengths of the lakes. Innumerable cross routes multiply the above mileage many times. Besides the many hundred miles of deep waterway, there are many minor waterways suitable for smaller craft. These minor water courses were very important in the days when canoes were the chief carrying agent. In the northeastern part of North America, there is a great area of crystalline rocks, granites, gneisses, and schists. This is the socalled North American "shield," the "old land" of Canada. The southern portion of this area is called the Laurentian Highlands. Lake Superior lies partly within and partly on the border of the Highlands. The southern border of the "old land" skirts the northern shores of 1-2 18 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. From the southern part of Georgian Bay eastward the southern limit extends in an irregular line near the cities of Kingston, Ottawa, and Quebec; from Quebec eastward it makes the northern bluffs along the St. Lawrence river. To the south of this crystalline area, poor in agricultural possibilities because of its long winters and thin soils but rich in mineral deposits and waterpower, are younger sedimentary rocks. The younger rocks are chiefly sandstones, limestones, and shales. These sedimentary rocks in general are eroded much more easily than the crystallines, so that the region in which these formations dominate is nearly everywhere marked either by lake basins or lowlands. For example, a portion of the estuary of the St. Lawrence, the lower St. Lawrence valley, the Mohawk depression, Lake Ontario, the Ontario lowlands, Georgian Bay, North Channel, and Green Bay (as well as Lake Winnipeg) have all been carved in Ordovician limestones and shales. Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan owe their shape, position, and connections in large extent to the erosion of Silurian and Devonian limestones, shales, and dolomite. Many other topographic and geographic features about the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence seem to be related closely to the resistance some of the strata offer to erosion. The many islands in the lakes and rivers of the St. Lawrence system as well as the numerous falls and rapids are largely due to the more resistant formations. The Ottawa river with its numerous rapids and falls that made the canoe voyages along its course so tedious, difficult, and costly, runs for the larger part of its course over crystalline rocks. The waters at most of the rapids of the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario to Montreal flow over gneisses and schists and Cambrian sandstones. The Le Chine, just above Montreal, the rapids that barred (before the building of canals) any further passage of ocean vessels to the interior, are in Cambrian sandstones; so, too, are the rapids of St. Mary's river. The falls at Niagara, which so effectively separate Lake Ontario from the other Great Lakes, and the Niagara escarpment, over which most of the traffic of the Upper Lakes had to pass until the middle of the nineteenth century, are due to a thick layer of limestone (Niagara) overlying softer shales. The same Niagara limestone encircles the north shore of Lakes Huron and Michigan. It forms the backbone of the Saugeen (or Bruce) peninsula, that separates Lake Huron from Georgian bay. It no doubt is largely responsible for the line of islands along the north shore of Lake Huron, and to the west it forms the enclosing arms of Green bay.2 These topographic and geographic features have had their historic consequences. The Saugeen peninsula lengthened the canoe voyage from the mouth of the French river to Detroit by nearly one hundred miles. The numerous islands in northern Lake Huron made canoe voyages fairly safe across the deep waters of Lake Huron between the French river and the mouth of St. Mary's river. The many islands in the western part of Lake Erie are composed almost entirely of Niagara limestone. These islands made possible a trans-lake canoe route and shortened the distance for canoe voyages between the GEOGRAPHIC SETTING 19 mouth of the Detroit river and Sandusky bay. This trans-lake route was much used by the British and Indians in their raids against the whites on the Ohio. Some of these islands offered harbors of refuge to the vessels of the lakes in the early days of lake navigation when the vessels were small. Though the bed rock offers the conditions for differential erosion, it was mainly the waters and the ice of the glacial period that gave much of the land in northeastern North America its present topographical expression. In some sections erosion took place, in others deposition. The story of the work of the ice and water in the glacial period is oy story so well known that it needs no lengthy discussion here. The "old land" was swept bare of its residual soil, the accumulation of ages. At places in the "old land," where conditions were suitable, lake basins were gouged out. These lakes are numbered by the thousands it the Laurentian Highlands. Many are connected by rivers, making many nearly continuous water routes, suitable for canoes from the St. Lawrence basin to Hudson bay. In the region of the younger, sedimentary rocks, the work of the glacial ice was much more pronounced. The basins of most of the Great Lakes are partially, if not largely, the result of the erosive action of the ice upon the limestones and shales. The material eroded from the sedimentary rocks, combined with that from the "old land," was strewn here and there in a more or less systematic fashion, forming moraines, outwash plains, till plains, valley trains, and other features over the region to the south of the "old land," as far south, in general, as the Ohio and Missouri rivers. The most important of the moraines, the ones that have had the greatest geographic and historic significance, are the ones that make up the divide between the St. Lawrence and Mississippi river systems. As the ice during the retreat of the ice sheet withdrew to the north of this divide, the water resulting from the melting of the ice was ponded between the divide and the ice front, and temporary lakes were produced. The existence of such lakes explains the presence of most of the many sandy and gravelly lake ridges and lacustrine plains about the present lakes. 'At low places in the divide, outlets were found by the water and broad channels were caved. In these channels the headwaters of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi river systems lie so near to each other that only a short portage is necessary for canoes and small boats in going from one system to the other. In flood periods it is possible to pass from one system to the other without portaging. The most important of these portages are the Fox-Wisconsin portage, from the Fox river to the Wisconsin; the Chicago portage, from Chicago to the Des Plaines; the Fort Wayne portage, between the headwaters of the Maumee and the Wabash; and the Oneida-Mohawk portage, from Lake Oneida to the Mohawk river. Between Georgia bay and the lower St. Lawrence and between Georgian bay and Lake Ontario there are similar channels, due mostly to glacial action or erosion of the waters of the glacial period. The for 20 HISTORIC MICHIGAN mer is the Ottawa channel occupied by the French river, Lake Nipissing, and Ottawa river, the latter is the Trent river or Toronto channel occupied in part by Trent river. One cannot overestimate the important of these lakes, rivers, and channels in the history of the nations, savage and civilized, that have operated in and about these two great river systems. These channels were used by the Indians in their migrations, intertribal trade and wars, long before the white man reached the Great Lakes. They influenced the courses of the early French explorers in their search for the Western sea. For over two hundred years they were traversed by French, English, and American traders. Forts were built in them. The early settlers on their way to settle in the middle west followed them. They later built their wagon roads in them. Canals were dug along them. Today the railroads find along these water courses their easiest grades. During the French occupation of the Great Lakes region, the English fully recognized the advantage the French had in controlling these outlet channels. * * * If one considers the length of this river and its numerous branches he must say that by means of the St. Lawrence river and the lakes there is opened to his view such a scene of inland navigation as cannot be paralleled in any other part of the world.8 —.,.! i i14 Detroit, situated within the basin of the St. Lawrence, on one of the connecting waterways between two of the Great Lakes and not far from the eastern entrance to the Maumee-Wabash outlet channel, has been influenced profoundly during its development by these waterways. Its very existence during the first hundred years of its history was directly dependent upon these lakes, rivers, and portages. The French and English explorers found the basin of the St. Lawrence, and a part of the basin of the Mississippi, covered with a rich forest, With the exception of a few clearings about the various settlements in the basin of the St. Lawrence, these forests remained almost untouched until the coming of the American farmers. Though dense in places, these forests were in general open enough to allow free passage of man or beast. Paths through them, however, were few. If traveling from one part of the region to another the waterways generally were followed. Dawson says, "In the summer the voyageur's canoe and in winter the habitant's sleigh made the mesh of waterways available long before the settlers had time to build roads and bridges."' These forests had little direct influence on the development and history of the region up to the early part of the last century. They furnished timber for building purposes, but there were few people and hence few buildings. Vessels were built upon Lake Ontario and Lake Erie and the upper lakes, but they were small and few in number. Along the shores of the St. Lawrence, as along the New England coast, some timber was shipped to Europe, but the industry was small when compared to the development in later periods. Their chief importance during both French and English occupation of the Lakes region was indirect-they harbored a great variety of wild game. Sheltered in the depth of these great forests there were many fur-bearing animals, GEOGRAPHIC SETTING 21 such as the beaver, the otter, the mink, the fox, the raccoon, the bear, and others, that made the Great Lakes region desired by French, British, and American traders. The control of the rich harvests of furs of the Lakes region was undoubtedly the chief prize fought for by both French and British nations in the long struggle for supremacy in America. II PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN THE ARCHEOLOGY OF MICHIGAN By George R. Fox (Director, Edward K. Warren Foundation, and President of the Michigan State Archeological Society) NTHROPOLOGY, the science of mankind, has two distinct branches, ethnology and archeology. Ethnology has for its purpose the study of races, their relationships, their habits, customs and ways of life. Usually ethnology considers living representatives of the human family, although history likewise is drawn upon for information. Archeology studies mankind from the remains he has left behind. As generally practiced, it comprises the collection and study of objects picked up or otherwise secured from the sites of prehistoric and historic occupation-cities, villages, cemeteries and the like,-and out of the information derived from the articles and other evidence obtained, deducing the culture, racial relationships, and even something of whence the people came. In this broader sense archeology is a living science, reading the cultural state of mankind from the work of his hands, rather than from written or spoken testimony. By "archeology of Michigan" usually is meant the evidences of life in the region now included in the political division, Michigan, before the first white man appeared in the land; or nearly one hundred years after Columbus made his voyage. In defining anthropology and its branches, it is easy to set the confines; in practice these overlap; one is dependent on the other. Therefore, a study of Michigan archeology must of necessity contain much ethnological material. The knowledge of what tribes lived in the various portions of the land now included in the state is of importance for a correct understanding of many of the discoveries made in the archeological field. When the French first explored this territory, they found certain tribes occupying certain tracts, with every evidence that these Indians had resided there for considerable periods of time. Certain of these tribes continued to live in these same regions for many.years, sometimes centuries after their discovery. The Indian tribes, from the time first known to white man, properly belong to the ethnologist. By definition, all burials and other evidence discovered showing pre-French contact (or rather, the lack of it) are archeological material. Yet it is only fair to assume that the contents of a mound close to a village known to have been occupied by a certain tribe, or a refuse pit in proximity to the site of their town, was the work of these PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 23 Indians. In this manner the discoveries of the archeologist are a check on the ethnologist, and the ethnologist's conclusions assist the archeologist in correctly interpreting his finds. For this work the French reports, religious and secular, afford guidance of utmost importance. Comparison of one account with another gives a correct picture of the periods of which they were written. Probably the most valuable of these records are the Jesuit Relations, detailing the work of the Jesuit Fathers in their exploration of the country in their endeavors to Christianize the savages. As they resided for long periods of time with the Indian, they had ample opportunity to judge of his character, ability and accomplishments, and barring a natural religious bias, they give an excellent picture of the days before the white influence had demoralized the red man. Closely following the Relations in importance, are the travels and accounts of various explorers in the region; and later, reports from the workers in the commercial world of that day and place, in the fur trade. No longer is it necessary to consult the works as a whole. The essential portion of the seventy volumes of the Relations dealing with the Indian's methods of life, and much from the early voyagers, has been reproduced in two volumes, and a wealth of material, gleaned from thousands of volumes, manuscript and printed, and from maps, is made available in The Handbook of the American Indian, issued in two volumes as Bulletin 30 by the National Bureau of American Ethnology. No work more valuable for the archeologist, ethnologist, student of Indian life, and of primitive American sociology, than this work can be found. It bears the date I905, and consequently, in view of the host of archeologists and ethnologists at work today, and what they have discovered, it is not fully up to date. Some of its conclusions, based on the information then available, in the light of these new discoveries are to be revised. Co'nstant reference to this work will be made throughout this article. It was long after America's discovery, even many years later than the date of Cartier's discovery of the St. Lawrence, that the first hint of the Great Lakes appears on the maps of that period. It is by the delineation of these great bodies of fresh water that the land of Michigan can be localized. Earlier maps show a broad extensive region where the lakes were located. Otherwise it is almost a barren waste. In this region on very early maps appears the first reference to Michigan. On Mercator's map of the "Interior of New Spain,"' dated I569, appears the word Chilaga as designating a region to the west of Hochelaga (the old Indian town where now is Montreal). This same designation appears in the same relative position on Ortelius' "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,"2 I570. On Mercator's "Western Hemisphere"3 of 1587 it is placed still farther west, relatively, from Hochelaga. De Bry's map of I5964, "America Sive Novus Orbus," locates it in about the same place. On all maps showing this region the St. Lawrence is extended to the west, well past Hochelaga, then divided into two confluent streams, one coming from the north, the other flowing 24 HISTORIC MICHIGAN from the west. Chilaga is always in the area enclosed between the two. On Wytfliet's "Vtrivsque Hemispherii Delineatio,"5 I597, Chilaga is the only regional title appearing on the interior of the North American continent. Nine other names appear, all appellations of sea-coast regions, as "Florida," "Norumbega" and the like. Again this word appears on a map of the world, "Fasicculous Geographicus," dated I6o8, attributed to Matthias Quadus.6 Here, too, Chilaga is between the streams and west of Hochelaga. While one mapmaker may have copied from the map of a predecessor, and thus continued through the chain the use of "Chilaga," it does not seem probable. The cartographers alter names, introduce new ones, change their positions, seemingly pointing to the fact that new knowledge was being made available. Chilaga, however, was so well known, apparently, that its position is not altered. While it was so indefinite in its placement that it might have referred to almost any of the north central states, or the whole region, yet in this would be the present state of Michigan. It is possible that the word is derived from Hochelaga-properly Hochelayi,7 "at the place of the dam"-being the term minus "ho." Yet it may have a significance in archeology, for besides being the first designation of the region the word is undeniably of Indian origin. The land that is now Michigan was occupied by tribes of two great linguistic stocks, the Algonquinian and the Iroquoian. All the northern peninsula and four-fifths of the lower were inhabited by tribes of Algonquin affiliation, while but a small region in the extreme southeastern part, about the St. Clair river, Lake St. Clair, Detroit river and Lake Erie was inhabited by Iroquoian stock. As this about represents the areas occupied at the time the tribes first were known to white men, it is probable that in more ancient times the Algonquins held the entire area. At the time they were first visited the Indians of Iroquoian stock, here represented by the Hurons and allied tribes, were being pushed westward by the Neutrals; later by the Iroquois federation. At that time the Hurons had villages of permanence, indicating long occupancy, about Georgian bay and Lake Simcoe. Generalizations of this nature-that the Algonquins originally held the entire peninsula-are unsafe. Archeological evidence may be discovered, after a thorough exploration of the peninsulas, showing that the Iroquoian stocks were being driven back by the Algonquins who, at the time of their discovery, had hemmed in the Iroquois-speaking tribes on the west, north and east. If so, remains of Iroquois culture will be discovered in Michigan far to the west of the boundaries accepted at present, and will, if lacking evidence of contact with Europeans, indicate prehistoric occupation by these tribes. A map delineates possible tribal occupation of Michigan regions in prehistoric days. It should be borne in mind that of all the tribes listed, outside the Iroquois, certain stocks are so closely related that the members of one tribe understand with little difficulty the language PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 25 of the affiliated nation. It is as though dialectical variations had sprung up. Among those closely related, the languages of the Foxes, Sauks, Kickapoos and Shawnee show so little difference that students are inclined to place their separation as tribes at no very distant period. Of these the Kickapoos have had no real residence within the area of Michigan, although they jointly claimed ownership of a portion of it. A second very comprehensive group comprised the Potawatomies, Ottowas and Chippewas. Their legends say they separated at Mackinac Island. The Saulteurs are Chippewas. The tribe Mishinimaki is known to have been a large one and to have occupied the region about Michimilimackinac; it may have been a relative of the Chippewas. The probability is that it was rather more closely related to the Assegun and the Mascoutens. These three, two of them permanently, practically had disappeared before the French arrived. The Menominee and Noquets were either very close kindred or the same tribe with different names. The Menominee are credited with belonging to the major division of the Algonquin stock, along with the Sauk and Fox; yet an old Indian, Moses Ladd, a veteran of the Civil War, who spent some time with the writer at the latter's home, said that Chippewa was so very like his own tongue that he spoke and understood it without effort. The Miami and Wea (one of the Miami's sub-tribes) are in another division of the Algonquinian, allied to the Illinois although probably more closely connected with the Ojibway (Chippewa) division than the Fox-Sauk. The traditions of the Indians themselves place them territorially in prehistoric times about as given on Map B. The locations are based principally on information contained in the Handbook of the American Indiana. The Fox nation, although when first known by whites was along the Wolf river in Wisconsin, had its early home on the south shores of Lake Superior. The Chippewas at that time were north a'nd probably east of the lake. The Menominee have no traditions locating them elsewhere than where they were found, about the Menominee river in Wisconsin and Michigan. The Mischinimaki, according to Indiana history, were wiped out before I6oo, and the Assegun were so nearly obliterated that they were forced to unite with Mascoutens (also known as Mushkodainsug), and the two tribes were forced south and eventually westward around the end of Lake Michigan. The Sauks were reported to Champlain in I612 as living about Saginaw bay; the Potawatomi also are known to have lived in lower Michigan, having been driven to the Potawatomi Islands (Washington Island, Door County, Wisconsin) and Green bay only a few years before the French arrived. It is possible that the original home of the Miamis was about the mouth of the St. Joseph river, for the Handbook states that as late as 1711 their chief village was on this stream where now is the city of Niles. They also claim to have been the first settlers in the region 26 HISTORIC MICHIGAN about Detroit. Little Turtle, the famous Miami chief, said: "My fathers kindled the first fire at Detroit." Map C delineates the known historic ownership of Michigan by Indian tribes. Compare Map B with Map C. Instead of eleven tribal designations as in the former, there are but six. The holdings of about I67o-I700 are represented. The Foxes, the Sauks, as well as the Noquets, Asseguns, Mishinimaki and Mascoutens have disappeared from the state. Yet this map, even at this time, is not a fair representation of what had happened and was happening. For already the French were coaxing back under their protection tribes that had been driven away by the savage Iroquois or by fear of them. The case of the Hurons will point the movement that had been going on for a century. Originally a strong, virile and even intellectual race, in the period before the arrival of the French, they are known to have raided down through Iroquois territory in what is now New York state. This warfare-for the Iroquois retaliated-lasted fifty years. In I648-50, the Iroquois, after wintering in Huron land, made a sudden and surprise attack, and destroyed the Huron towns. The greater portion of the Hurons' men, women and children were killed, led away captive or perished of cold and starvation. Some escaped to neighboring tribes and others fled to the west, uniting with the Tionontati. In I649 the Iroquois sacked one of the Tionontati's chief towns and the rest of the people moved westward. After a brief stop at St. Joseph Island they continued on to Michimilimackinac; not safe here from Iroquois attack, they went farther westward still to the region about Green bay. Here they united with the Potawatomi, who before this, likewise had been driven from their homes in Michigan by the same fierce warriors, the Iroquois, and had found asylum in Wisconsin. From the bay they again moved westward, even reaching the Mississippi. On the banks of this stream they met the Sioux, another jealous tribe, and were turned back. Uniting now with the Ottowas, who likewise had been vanquished by the Iroquois, the rem-.nant of these tribes lived for a time at Chequamigon bay on Lake Superior. Gradually, under French protection, they drifted back to their old home places, or near them. Bands were found on Mackinac Island, which at this time was the resort also of Chippewas and Ottowas, and other bands on the Detroit river. These Huron-Tionontati about Lake St. Clair later moved up into the Saginaw region and after 1748 down into Ohio where the descendants of these two tribes with probably Ottowas, became known as Wyandots. However this name is reported to have been in use as early as 1721 or before.8 The history of the Hurons is a fair sample of the tribal life of other Indians of Michigan, save possibly the Menominees. All seemed to have made movements westward and then to have swung back. "Milling" (the cowboy term for a herd of cattle drifting restlessly about on itself in a circular manner) seems best to express this movement. Usually the line of movement of the tribes was north and west and back by south and east; in this manner the Potawatomi moved. Yet some did come south and pass west around the south end of Lake PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 27 Michigan. The emigration failed to settle matters. Band of scouts from the Iroquois marched boldly through the region. Arrogantly they visited the fires of allies and even enemy tribes and demanded what they wished. It was this inter-tribal warfare, coincident with the coming of the Whites to the Atlantic seaboard, that destroyed what vestiges of culture the races then inhabiting Michigan's territory may have had. Culture comes usually with cities and towns; it develops where men mass together. And the Hurons, in their original homes had advanced far. Their towns were palisaded; platforms and galleries were erected above in which were stored stones for throwing down on an enemy; "and with water to extinguish any fire which might be kindled against them," says Sagard. It is thus evident that they had learned cooperation in making war and in protecting themselves. It was about the time at which Sagard wrote, that the white man began to sell his red brother guns. These were crude weapons as compared with the modern rifle, yet they were models of efficiency in comparison with the bow and arrow of the savage. Before the introduction of guns warfare was much a matter of personal courage and physical prowess. The stone war clubs were ill-adapted for throwing; arrows were effective only at short range. With the introduction of the small iron ax, "the tomahawk," a weapon that could be thrown with precision at considerable distances, was made available. The Indian was not slow in learning to throw this sharp-edged tool which if it but touched made a dangerous wound, and the gun, which in those primitive days threw a slug several times as far as an arrow would carry. The Iroquois were fortunate. They were near the English and other colonies on the Atlantic. As early as I643 they already had obtained through the Dutch at New York 400 guns; and though the Indian with the bow and arrow could discharge eight or nine arrows while the arquebus was being fired once, of what avail the arrows when the enemy could keep out of arrow range and still deal death with every discharge? It was this coming of the white man with his more efficient weapons that wiped out the civilization of the Indian, such as it was. A man fleeing for his life cannot stop to rear great earthen structures, prepare pottery of fine design and shape, or carve and decorate his weapons and leave pictographs on great cliffs. His life is at stake and he becomes elemental. The thin layer of culture he may have acquired slips away. Even so important a thing as properly to bury his dead is neglected. No longer the huge mound, reared at a periodical inhumation, is built. New methods must be and are adopted. Thus it would be possible that all the ancient earth structures known in Michigan were the work of the early fathers of the tribes known to have lived here when the first feeble settlements were planted by Europeans along the sea coast. In a measure sedentary, with strong towns within their territorties, the Indian races of Michigan and the surrounding regions were 28 HISTORIC MICHIGAN developing. All in a few years their security was destroyed. And when the few feeble and degenerate descendants crept back under the sheltering arms of the secular and religious powers of the French, the incentive to progress for themselves had gone. A beaver hide would secure a better pot than the best Indian potter ever made, regarded from the standpoint of service. Why spend hours rubbing and polishing a pretty stone, and with painstaking care drilling it to hang about one's neck, When for another hide, shiny brass, bright colored glass beads, even silver ornaments could be secured? The primitive culture died when the first gun was fired in the woodlands of the St. Lawrence valley. No longer is it held that a race of "Mound Builders" reared the tumuli and laid out the fortifications or enclosures. If archeology has done nothing else, it at least has proven that these were built by the immediate and related predecessors of the Indian; he was the "mound-builder" who did the work. The evidence of many articles of European manufacture, even bones of the horse found in the mounds, proves this. In the museum of the Davenport Academy of Sciences at Davenport, Iowa, an entire case is devoted to articles taken from a mound near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hundreds of objects are displayed,-mirrors, watches, clocks, knives, a multitude of things manufactured by people other than the Indian. Also the early travelers describe the building of mounds and have pictured the process among certain Indian tribes. Map D9 gives the land cessions by the various Indian tribes as made to the United States Government. Its value to archeology lies in that these areas show the ownership of the lands as claimed and as admitted by all Indian tribes of the region. In a few instances claims overlapped; in general, the land was ceded by the tribe occupying it and to whom it belonged at the time. If a comparison shows that the same tribe, or allied tribes, were occupying it that were found there when the French pushed the first canoe into the region, and if further the regions as roughly set down as occupied by the tribes in prehistoric days are about the same, the evidence would be more than circumstantial that the tribes occupying the ground at the time it was ceded were the authors of at least some if not all antiquities that might be found in that region. The first land within the present state of Michigan ever ceded to the United States was that marked I on the map. This cession was made August 3, 1795, at Greenville, Ohio, and confirmed to the Government the island of Mackinac together with a small tract on the mainland south of the island, and another small area west, including the country about St. Ignace. The most remarkable feature of the cession was the voluntary gift, by the Chippewas, of Bois Blanc Island, with an acreage greater than the total of the other three. Twelve tribes and sub-tribes,-Wyandots, Delaware, Shawnee, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Miami, Eel River, Wea, Kickapoo, Piankishaw and Kaskaskia,-had a hand in the treaty. This cession proves nothing as to ownership; it merely is an indication of the importance of Mackinac Island as a trading post. PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 29 The next, the first real cession, is that marked 2. It was consummated November 17, I8o6, at Detroit. The ceding tribes were the Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandots and Potawatomi. Maps B and C show that these were the tribes (the Wyandots then being Hurons) who had occupied the region. The Miami, despite their claim, would seem to be eliminated. Tract 3, ceded September 29, I816 (at the foot of the rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie) was part of a larger tract mostly in Ohio, and signed away by the same tribes, excepting the Wyandots; which would seem to show that the latter had not settled any distance from the water fronts to the east. The area about Saginaw bay, Tract 4, came into possession of the United States by the treaty signed at Saginaw September 24, I819. This cession, rather than that of the land about Detroit, marks the beginning of the final removal of the Indians from the state. This treaty was concluded with the Chippewa alone; however other tribes, the Ottawa and the Potawatomi, claimed ownership, which passed by the cession of March 28, 1836. Here again, although Chippewas appear on neither Maps B or C as resident in this region, the linguistic group of the Algonquins to which they all belong (the Potawatomi, Chippewa and Ottawa) is the real owner. Yet from the fact that the Sauk were here in prehistoric days, mounds opened and bearing no evidence of the builders' contact with white men may be attributed to this tribe unless there is other and positive evidence. The next cession made, in point of time, was that marked II, at the Soo, and included the small tract of land bordering on St. Mary's river south of the falls. The Chippewas signed this cession June i6, I820, at the Soo; at Sault Ste. Marie they reserved to themselves in perpetuity the right to fish in the rapids, a right of which they still avail themselves. By the treaty of Chicago, signed August 29, 1821, all of southwestern Michigan (Tract 5) save that portion lying within the state southwest of the St. Joseph river, was taken from the Ottawa, Chippewa and Potawatomi, the "big three" in Michigan. Seven years later, September 20, I828, the Potawatomi gave up all the part reserved, (Tract 6) save a small area (Tract 7) roughly containing forty-nine sections, retained by the Indians because here were the two large Potawatomi villages, Topinabee's and Pokagon's. The Potawatomi alone signed this treaty, at the Carey Mission at Niles. Tract 7 was given up five years afterward, September 27, 1833, by the treaty of Chicago, which the Chippewa and Ottawa joined in signing. This eliminates the Miami, and the Wea, a cognate tribe which had left the territory about one hundred years before. It is the region of,all southwestern Michigan that offers the greatest archeological problems of the state, for there is historical evidence to show that many tribes passed through and lived there. It was into this region that the Mascoutens and the Assegut, whom they received into the tribe after their defeat in prehistoric days, were driven by their enemies, the 30 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Ottawa, according to Schoolcraft's record of Ottawa tradition. Here, too, resided the Foxes. "When first known to the French, the Fox were evidently living on the lower Michigan peninsula east of Lake Michigan."10 And it also is known that the Iroquois Federation were well acquainted with these lands, their scouts traveling all through them. While there is no direct evidence of their residence here, there are remains in the region, notably hill forts, that archeological research may prove to have belonged to the Iroquois. The largest area of Michigan land ever obtained from the Indians was that marked Tract No. 8. By a treaty signed at Washington, D. C., March 28, I836, the Chippewa and Ottawa gave up possession of all the northern and northwestern portion of the lower peninsula, extinguishing the last large Indian claim in that half of the state and all the eastern part of the northern peninsula. The portion of this cession located in the southern peninsula appears to have been occupied by many tribes, most of whom were destroyed by tribal enemies. There can be little doubt also that the Potawatomi once hunted through that region. Such archeological remains as are discovered there must be closely studied. The Chippewa probably have occupied nearly all the northern peninsula since historic times, except perhaps a small area held by the Noquets, about whom no reliable data are available; they mave have left remains in this eastern region ceded by the Treaty of Washington. A few months after the Chippewas had signed away a goodly portion of "the beautiful peninsula," the Menominees by a pact signed September 3, 1836, at Cedar Point (one mile west of Little Chute, Wisconsin, on the Fox river) surrendered their claim to their lands in Michigan, the tract marked 9. Six years after the Menominees passed over their heritage, the Chippewas (of the Mississippi and Lake Superior) gave up the last area in Michigan held by the Indian (Tract IO). By the treaty of La Pointe, October 4, 1842, the vast riches in the copper veins on Keweenaw peninsula and Isle Royale, and the great iron mines of Michigan and Wisconsin, passed into the hands of the United States. Save for the tradition that the Fox Indians had their original home on the south shores of Lake Superior, there is nothing to lead to a belief that antiquities here found are the work of other people than the Chippewa. And historically, as well as according to tradition, the Menominee always have occupied the region about the river bearing their name. Yet this evidence is not conclusive. For within their territory, especially along Green bay, the explorers for the Wisconsin archeological Society have found many mounds. The Menominee were never known to have built mounds; nor have they any traditions of interring their dead in tumuli. As the Iuron, the Ottawa, and other tribes fleeing before the conquering Iroquois found asylum among the tribes on Green bay, it is probable that they found shelter in the territory of the Menominee. If so, the mounds might be the work of the intruders during their stay in PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 31 the country. Those earthworks, studied by survey parties of the Wisconsin Archeological Survey, were mostly small and imperfect, a possible mark of hasty work. Consideration of these land cessions shows that practically all of Michigan, from the time of the coming of the French until the final trek of the Indian into the west, was in the hands of the Chippewa and linguistic cognates. This tribe was undisputed owner of the northern peninsula save for the small portion owned by the Menominee. Also we have found that in practically every treaty concerning Michigan lands signed by the Indians the Ottawas and Chippewas were represented. Their brothers, the Potawatomi, signed all save the treaty of 1836 at Washington; but one small portion (Tract 6), less than the whole of what is now Berrien County, appears to have been their own undisputed possession. The Wyandotes (Hurons) claimed ownership to the southeastern portion of the state, this jointly with the same three other tribes. It must therefore be concluded that the ownership of the state of Michigan was principally by Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi. The Menominee and the Wyandots claimed only what was their ancient heritage, as shown by the map of the prehistoric tribes. It is now almost impossible to determine the close relationships of the tribes which have become extinct. Of the two other principal linguistic groups which have occupied Michigan, the Foxes and Sauks, the Mascoutens and possibly the Winnebagoes never came back in sufficient numbers to gain a foothold. The Miami came, only to be driven away later. It is remarkable that nearly all the tribes mentioned place their original homes, by tradition, north of the Great Lakes and claim to have passed through Michigan on the way into the homes they occupied when first discovered by the whites. It apparently is part of the "milling" movement. Thus, in searching for archeological evidence in Michigan, where articles showing contact with white are found, the remains would seem to be attributable to the Chippewa group, unless in the extreme southeastern or southwestern parts, or in territory near the Menominee river. From the persistence of this group in Michigan, the Chippewas having already crowded in at the north and the Ottawas coming when the historic period begins, it is probable that many of the prehistoric remains were theirs. Evidence from historically known residence sites should be used as a check on articles from other points. There is yet to be discovered in Michigan any genuine antiquity, whether earthwork, weapon, tool, or ornament, that is far removed from the type of work found in mounds and on the surface of the soil, which articles are known to have been made by Indian tribes. Nothing has been found conclusively to show that any race or races preceded the Indian or his ancestors in occupation of this territory., And yet America, including Michigan, must have been the home of men for thousands of years. Evidence slowly is accumulating to prove that man in America was coeval with the mammoth. The ele 32 HISTORIC MICHIGAN phant mound of Wisconsin, now believed td have been a bear mound, first called attention to the possibility. When two elephant pipes were found in Iowa many years ago the cry immediately was raised that they were frauds. Yet evidence that the mammoth was a familiar beast to the primitive people of the land kept accumulating. The Lenape Stone" with the drawing of the mammoth, and the shell gorget found in Delaware with a mammoth" drawn upon it were further steps. Then from a spring in Oklahoma were taken, among other things, mammoth teeth and flint weapons; later finds at the Labreeda pitch pool near Los Angeles tend to support the contention that men and prehistoric animals lived in the same period. Just lately an engraved bone, with others, was found in a stalagmite in a cave in southwestern Missouri12 which bears a drawing of a mammoth, the third pictograph of this character found in America. Yet all these facts are but presumptive evidence. There remains to be found an arrow imbedded in a mammoth's bone, or the skeleton of aboriginal man in a natural position below the remains of a mammoth. The fact of man knowing the mammoth in America remains definitely to be proven. Mammoth remains in Michigan are common. In Berrien County alone there are records of at least twenty-eight such finds. Did the huge creature roam the Michigan forests and prairies before man arrived? Or was a primitive savage already here? So far no real search for such evidence has been made while digging up the bones of the mammoth. It well may be that such does not exist; and yet until hundreds of such finds of mammoth bones have been investigated, no one will know. So with Michigan archeological remains, students may theorize and believe that some of these at least date back thousands of years. It is yet to be proven. Of such remains Michigan has listed hundreds, and of these hundreds, inasmuch as but few of them have been reported upon or examined by experts, many may not be what they seem. In regard to mounds, Cyrus Thomas, under date of I894, in the twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, gives in Plate XX the "Distribution of the Mounds in the Eastern United States." The section applying to Michigan is reproduced in May E. Of these, many mounds there located are known to be non-existent. In the same report, page 519, Thomas himself says, "Those (mounds) at Beaver Island-(two are shown on his map)-are only the natural sand dunes or hills used occasionally, like those about the foot of Lake Huron, as burial places." It is quite probable that many such "mounds" reported for Michigan, are burial sites on hills and ridges, which when stumbled upon by the amateur investigator have been proclaimed as mounds. Thomas further states: "At Little Traverse bay, Beaver Islands, Mackinac straits, Sault Ste. Marie, Grand Island, Marquette, L'Anse, Houghton, Calumet, Ontonagon* * *, and in the neighborhood of every one of them, are still to be found traders, trappers, and hunters who have explored almost every mile of the territory, some of them PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 33 having spent fifty years in such work; and the statement is unanimous that nowhere about any of these places, nor along the shores of Lake Superior generally, are any mounds to be found. A few which have been reported are either the remains of old root houses, or else due tc natural causes. "It may be safely said that at none of the places where ancient Jesuit missions were located, in any part of the country included in the above limits, are any mounds, or other earthworks - using the term in its ordinary meaning and excluding those which are known to have been made in recent times, and of these there are but few."13 On his map he shows two mounds on Isle Royale. The writer is familiar with this island and has never seen or heard of a mound there. It further is probable that cornhills, especially when a group of a hundred or more are reported, are responsible for some reported "mounds." The antiquity described as a "cornhill" is indeed a small mound, but not in the sense of a sepulchre or tumulus. These "cornhills" usually are about a foot in height, and will be found scattered rather closely together over considerable areas. Sometimes in these plots only a few hills remain. They are five or six feet in diameter and round, and presumably were reared by the Indian for planting his grain; it is very easy to mistake them for genuine mounds. A case in point: The Record of Wisconsin Antiquities14 gives "Group of conical and oval mounds on the hill above the second lock, at Kaukauna." The writer was sent to investigate. These proved to be the remains of "garden beds and cornhills." In considering the archeology of Michigan, therefore, research probably will result in the discarding of many of the present records. For each one discarded, one or perhaps more new antiquities should be listed. Aside from prehistoric copper mining, the northern peninsula is lacking in the customary larger and more important remains. While Thomas says there are no ancient mounds there, he does cite three modern (?) ones. "There is a mound at Point Iroquois at the head of the Ste. Marie river, another at Mille Coquin and a third about twenty miles west of the last, which have been built by the Sioux or Chippewa."15 His authority for the latter statement is not given. The Chippewa were not builders of sepulchral mounds, according to Bushnell,'6 and, while the Sioux did raid into Wisconsin and Michigan, evidence of their residing as far east as the Soo long enough to erect burial mounds, is lacking. Apparently his authority is the statement, "An old Chippewa chief says there was a battle between that tribe and the Sioux a century ago, and that each erected a mound over its dead,"17 referring to two mounds at Rapid river, where an earthwork had been reported. There are two Rapid rivers in Michigan; one in the northern, the other in the southern peninsula. It is probably the former that is referred to. In regard to the northern peninsula, other archeologic information is meager and unsatisfactory. There are trails, village and camp sites, and many mining pits; aside from these we find no circular or square 1-3 34 HISTORIC MICHIGAN earthworks. Garden beds probably exist but no reports have been received. Of the mounds in the northern peninsula, there are six genuine, two doubtful, and six marked on Thomas' map (Map E) which probably have no existence. The two on Isle Royale, the three on the end of Keweenaw peninsula, and one of the three on the Ontonagon river probably are non-existent. Gilmanl8 says he saw one on Point Labarbe, near St. Ignace, and Thomas lists the other five, but says they are modern. The copper mining of the ancients will be considered later. This focuses archeologic attention on the southern peninsula; and especially on its southern and southeastern parts, where mounds, earthworks and garden beds are reported in considerable number. In 1921 the writer prepared three maps showing the location in the southern peninsula of mounds, garden beds, and enclosures. These are shown as maps E, F and G: The crosses stand for mounds or mound groups; there were I68 such located, estimated to record over 500 individual mounds. Of enclosures, fifty-nine were shown. A total of 227. Thomas in his map (see Map E) makes no discrimination between enclosures and mounds. By red dots indicating "mounds or mound groups," he located 237. The map made by Thomas is based on information received by the Smithsonian Institute and by its explorers in the field. Maps F, G and H were compiled from two sources; information from the annual reports of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, and from Harlan I. Smith's "Preliminary List of Sites of Aboriginal Remains in Michigan."19 The principal difference between Thomas' map and those of the writer is that Thomas shows many mounds in Jackson, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties, while none are shown in these divisions oh my maps. In Michigan at the beginning of I924, there were four counties in Michigan which had been surveyed archeologically with some thoroughness, and for which maps have been and are being prepared. These are Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Cass and Berrien. The work has been done by Fred Dustin for Saginaw, Edw. J. Stevens for Kalamazoo, Dana P. Smith for Cass County and the writer for Berrien County. There is thus very little information of value available; not enough to permit any general conclusion as to the tribes who were builders of the remains. Where mounds have been opened and reports made (and this in but a very few instances) the usual form has been "Bones found with ashes, a few arrows, and a broken kettle." When the excavator was a collector, or merely led by curiosity, exceptional articles were being searched for, and the things of value, which told the story, as the type of points, their shape and material, their locations in the mounds, the markings on the broken pottery, the shape, form and constituents of the beds (of earth, sand, ashes, etc.) of the mounds are unnoticed and unreported. When the work of exploring the earthworks is undertaken in a thorough and scientific manner, nearly all of these old mounds that can be found will have to be reopened and the contents studied anew. PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 35 So far no one appears to have made more than a surface study of the enclosures. Cross sections, excavations in various places, cleaning out the refuse pits, discovery of the cemetery, or cemeteries, will afford much valuable data as to who built the places, and when. Such work as Dr. S. A. Barrett, of the Milwaukee Public Museum, did at Aztalan in this great enclosure of Wisconsin should be duplicated on several of the enclosures here in Michigan. Through his work it now is known that the early inhabitants at Aztalan had cannibalistic tendencies; that they had a great fortress there, of logs set up on ends with square bastions; and that they apparently had contact with the extreme south, the Mississippi and Alabama regions. There can be little doubt that practically all the enclosures of Michigan were the sites of stockaded camps or villages. While the ridge is the most prominent feature and the first to attract attention, in nearly every case a ditch, either outside or inside, is part of the earthwork. When the villages of the Indians were first visited by the French, many towns were found to be protected by stockades. "Their villages are fortified with double palissadoes of very hard wood, which are as thick as one's thigh, and fifteen foot high, with little squares about the middle of the courtines." (Lahontan, (I), II., p. 6).2o Many other instances might be cited.21 Plates 4, 6, 8, 9 and I6 show seven such villages from drawings made by early explorers who visited them. These pictures show trunks of trees set up to form the stockade about the village; there is considerable space between stakes. Dr. Barrett verified this in the locations of the stake holes he found at Aztalan. The village of the Fox Indians on Little Lake Butte des Morts attacked by the French expedition from Green bay, is described as being enclosed with a triple row of stakes. The difficulty of setting such palisades deep enough in the ground so that an attacking enemy could not push them over, can be appreciated when the Indian's lack of efficient digging tools is considered. While the primitive prehistoric American may have had an instrument of doubtful efficiency which he used like a spade, it could not compare in any way with a modern shovel or spade. The hode to be dug for the stake must have been excavated by hand, which would limit its depth. This deficiency could be remedied by heaping up earth at the base of the stakes. This was doubly valuable; it supported the stockade and afforded a protecting rampart of some height above the general ground level of the village which, because of the open spaces between the upright logs, was open to the arrows of an attacking force. To make such an earthern rampart, a ditch was dug alongside the stockade, further assisting in the town's defense. Such a ditch can be seen in some of the pictures cited. It is thus to be inferred that the enclosures of Michigan were in all probability the sites of fortified towns or villages. As to what tribe built them, a thorough exploration only can determine. Garden beds are known to have been prepared beds for the primitive agriculturist's crops. At Berrien Springs in Berrien County, in 36 HISTORIC MICHIGAN pioneer days a tract of land over a thousand acres in extent, known as Wolf's prairie, was covered with garden beds. "Indications of former cornfields were plainly visible when the first settlers came."22 This would make it seem they were made by the Potawatomi; or less probably, the Miami. There is another possible maker. James Mooney and Cyrus Thomas write, "From this period, according to tradition, the Assegun and Mascoutens were confederates, and were driven farther southward in the peninsula (Michigan) after which they are lost to tradition, except as it attributes to them the well-known 'garden beds' of southwestern Michigan. Although this tradition stands to a large extent alone, it is possibly not wholly unsupported."23 This indirect evidence is far from conclusive; garden beds are found not only in southwestern Michigan, but in eastern and probably northern Michigan as well, and all over the state of Wisconsin. More than one tribe would seem to have used the method of preparing such beds for its agricultural products. In prehistoric times it would seem logical that the copper deposits of Keweenaw and Isle Royale were Michigan's treasures that made her known through all eastern America. Just how long copper had been known to man in America is a problem yet to be solved. From a study of the objects shaped by human hands from copper, the inference is justified that the prehistoric American was but entering upon the metal age. Some excellent axe-forms have been found, save that holes for insertion of handles had not yet been evolved. The advantage of the use of metal, even so soft as copper, must have been at once apparent to the tribes wherein one member had a copper axe. It would lead, if they knew the source of the metal, to a great demand for it. Probably the coming of the white man with his iron axe shifted the development into new channels. Certain it is that the deposits were known and in use at the time the Jesuits penetrated the region.24 Further, the copper deposits were known and continued to be visited well into the beginning of the nineteenth century. Chas. E. Brown, secretary of the Wisconsin Archeological Society, was told by an aged Chippewa whom he met in Northern Wisconsin, that the Indian remembered as a lad of going with his father to the copper regions on the Keweenaw peninsula after copper. Some of the earliest papers on Michigan archeology are concerned with the Isle Royale and Keweenaw aboriginal copper workings. It was in the 40's of the last century that attention began to be attracted to copper mining, and the discovery of the ancient pits followed immediately. The first extended and authoritative paper seems to have been "Ancient Mining on Lake Superior," issued in 1863 as the thirteenth Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge. Gillman's "The MoundBuilders and Platycneism in Michigan," in which the author devotes mnuch attention to the Isle Royale works, followed in 1873.25 Since then many other articles have appeared. One of the latest, if not the latest, is Wmi. P. F. Ferguson's "Michigan's Most Ancient Industry: The PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 37 Pre-historic Mines and Miners of Isle Royale," found in the JulyOctober, I923, issue of the Michigan History Magazine. For all the nearly-a-century of investigation, little more is known about the miners a'nd their methods than in the beginning. The problem of the hammers awaits a solution. On Keweenaw grooved stonemauls appear to have been used, in numbers so great that at one point they were used in stoning up a well. On Isle Royale the hammer used is an oval stone which is never grooved; a very few grooved mauls have been found. The discovery of these ancient workings was what first attracted public attention to the archeology of the state. From this time on, scientific publications and reminiscences of pioneers contain such material, more or less fragmentary in character. It is not difficult to agree with Thomas that it may safely be said that at none of the places where ancient Jesuit missions were located are there mounds or earthworks. Yet it is now known that there were mounds near by. Why these keen observers never mentioned them is not understood, unless the tribes with which they were working told them the mounds were made by themselves or their ancestors, and that the enclosures were the sites of former villages. The early settlers in the region of Michigan appear to have begun digging into the mounds at an early day. Josiah Priest, in his book published in I833,26 says, "On the river Huron, thirty miles from Detroit, and about eight miles from Lake St. Clair, are a number of small mounds, situated on a dry plain or bluff of the river. Sixteen baskets full of bones of a remarkable size were discovered in the earth while sinking a cellar on this plain for the missionary. Near the mouth of this river, (Huron) on the east bank, are ancient works, representing a fortress with walls of earth, thrown up similar to those of Indiana and Ohio." A further reference seemsito indicate that these mounds were opened in I795 and a report made to a society in the East. In 1839 James.H. Lanman issued his History of Michigan, the first work of the kind undertaken for the state. In regard to antiquities he is very brief, devoting less than half a page to such remains. He says: "It is somewhat remarkable that the State of Michigan is, to a great measure, destitute of these ancient works in the more complex forms. Mounds exist in different parts of the State, principally along the banks of the Detroit river, Lake St. Clair, and the' Grand river, besides appearances on the soil near Kalamazoo and the Grand river which resemble the remains of flower gardens. In Wisconsin, mounds are discovered in the shape of mammoths, elephants and turtles. The mounds which have been opened in Michigan are of a round form and they generally stand in lines. Bones have been dug from some of them. These mounds are similar to those which are found in connection with the larger works." Since that time only a small amount of accurate scientific investigation has been undertaken in Michigan, although there are many valuable reports of locations of antiquities scattered through the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections and the Smithsonian Reports. 38 HISTORIC MICHIGAN In addition to the archeological maps of certain counties now being made, as previously referred to, the Saginaw bay region was surveyed by Harlan I. Smith and the findings published in i9oI in the American Anthropologist. In addition, although in the list of archeological districts of the Mississippi, given by Cyrus Thomas,27 Michigan has no place, experts from the Bureau of Ethnology have done some work in the state. In I888 Mr. Gerard Fowke made a tour of the lake border of the United States from Detroit westward to Duluth. He made careful examinations in Michigan of ancient works and aboriginal remains at Detroit, Port Huron, Saginaw, in Ogemaw county, about Traverse bay, at Beaver Island, Mackinac Island and the mainland on both sides, Sault Ste. Marie, Marquette, Munising and Ontonagon. In the autumn of the same year Henry L. Reynolds collected map material in Michigan. In I889 James D. Middleton surveyed and platted certain ancient works in Michigan. In I892 W. H. Holmes visited the ancient copper mines of Isle Royale. In I922 Dr. W. B. Hinsdale, formerly Dean of the Homeopathic Medical School at the University of Michigan, was made head of a division of Michigan archeology in the University Museum of Zoology and Anthropology. Dr. Hinsdale, who has done mound exploration work, notably in the vicinity of Ann Arbor, and lectured extensively on Michigan archeology, devoted himself to collecting and classifying archeological records, as well as making a beginning in a museum display. In 1923 the University was offered a tract of land in Aetna township in Missaukee county, containing several enclosures and many mounds. Through the generosity of a friend of the University and the museum, funds were placed in Dr. Hinsdale's hands, and after a personal investigation of the antiquities, in which trip he was accompanied by Dr. Ruthven, Curator of the Museum of Zoology, the land and the earthworks were purchased. This becomes the first specimen in a laboratory of archeology for the state of Michigan; it is owned and will be preserved by the state. In the preservation of her antiquities Michigan is lax. In the state park on Mackinac Island some of the sites are preserved, and in the city of Kalamazoo a fine mound is one of the attractions of Bronson Park. There are but a few of the hundreds that are known to have existed here in Michigan. Probably over half have disappeared. No plot of garden beds is now known to exist in Michigan. Some of the enclosures have survived, and still more of the mounds. Every year the number becomes less. And with each disappearance there goes forever an opportunity to obtain knowledge of the builders and the ancient peoples of the state. In one respect Michigan archeology is being benefitted. Year by year the articles found on village sites and in mounds augment the collections, large and small, which are to be found in every county. The farmer as he works his fields is constantly finding points, stone axes, and other material. PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 39 A goodly share of the future knowledge of archeology of Michigan will be derived from systematic study of all of these collections; but especially of the smaller ones, the contents of which have been picked up on one site or in one region. So far there seems to have been made no attempt to study the aboriginal pottery of the state. As but few vessels have been found entire, this must be done by working on shards. The markings in particular should be classified. Also the methods of tempering the ware should be made known and if possible assigned to districts. In general the pottery of Michigan is crude, yet W. H. Holmes states28 "Occasional specimens from * * Michigan * fairly rival in all essential features, the best products of the southern states." He says that most of the pottery of the Northwest, which includes Michigan, can be assigned to the rouletted group; the characteristics are the use of a roulette and a patterned punch stamp. With his article are three reproductions of pottery found in Michigan. The largest, after Squier and Davis, has a flat bottom and is decorated with a conventionalized bird; an almost similar drawing of a bird was found on a pot recently discovered in Ohio by Dr. Mills. Flat-bottomed pots are very rare in Michigan, most having the rounded base. The copper implements found in Michigan are yet to be studied and compared. While Michigan was the source of the raw material, a comparatively small number of artifacts made from copper have been found within her borders. In Berrien county the writer knows of but two coppers being found, both spear points, excepting for many ornaments and weapons made from old kettles and sheet copper and brass picked up at Fort St. Joseph. While thousands of copper have been collected in Wisconsin, very few have been discovered, even in the northern peninsula in this state where the copper was mined. In a like manner the absence of weapons and ornaments made from hematite is in itself a fact of importance. Although the Handbook of American Indians says, under "Hematite," "An iron ore * * * found in great abundance in many parts of the country and in great abundance in the Iron Mountain district of Missouri and in the Marquette region of Michigan," there has as yet been reported only a very few objects made of this mineral found in Michigan; this despite the fact that nature held great stores of it in the Northern Peninsula. The absence of petroglyphs in Michigan is unusual. Rare is the state from Maine to California from which some such incised or painted pictures have not been reported. In Mallery's monograph on American pictographs published itn the tenth report of the Bureau of Ethnology, no such antiquity from Michigan is listed. Michigan also seems to lack spirit-stones. While the evidence of the use of an oddly shaped, or unusually placed, stone, to serve as an altar for the depositing of propitiatory gifts-must rest on evidence obtained from modem Indians, or pioneers who have seen the Indians making offerings to the spirit in the stone, there is reason to believe that in prehistoric days the same stone was held in the same veneration. In stone weapons, utensils and ornaments, Michigan is particularly 40 HISTORIC MICHIGAN rich. Among the weapons arrowheads, or "points" (including spears) occur in a variety of forms; practically every form catalogued by the Bureau of Ethnology has been found in the Wolverine State. "Blanks" oval-shaped, well-worked flints of unknown use, have been picked up singly and found in caches, as in other states. The larger hoe-shaped stones, also called "spades," seem to be unknown here. As these objects, other than the last, are indistinguishable between tribes, they are of slight use in attempting to solve archeological problems. Stone axes, ungrooved, or grooved in the various ways, and with blades fluted or otherwise ornamented may, from a study of regional types, prove of value to the science of archeology. In like manner celts, of which a great variety of forms and types have been found in Michigan, may assist in determining cultural areas. Little if any of this work has been done in America, and none in Michigan. Mortars and pestles, found all over the state, seem to have had no fixed pattern; the individual taste or the immediate needs of the maker determined the form, size and even shape. Pipes, in which the utilitarian is subordinated to the ornamental and ceremonial, tell not only of the use of tobacco, but also, as in the case of the many finely sculptured pipes found in Ohio, they record the artistic achievements of the makers. Exquisitely modeled birds, frogs and even human heads and forms, sometimes serve as the bowl; in others they ornament the front, side or stem of the pipe. Some remarkable forms of pipes have been found in Michigan; a monograph classifying these, and giving the areas where found would tell much concerning the ancient tribes who have occupied those territories. The terra cotta pipe, typically Iroquoian, when the records of its finding in Michigan are collected, may assist in throwing light on the penetration of this Federation or its allied tribes into the two peninsulas. Probably the greatest amount of information can be gained from the gathering, classification, and plotting of the regional distribution of ornaments, ceremonials and problematical implements. Bird-stones, tubes, crescents, pendants, boat-stones, and in particular banner-stones, may mark by their distribution the boundaries of co-existent nations, or point to a succession of cultures occupying the same place. Warren K. Moorehead has attempted such a classification for Eastern United States.29 The three maps he gives showing ten well specialized forms, place Michigan at or near the center of the region in which they are most common, save for the geniculate or L-shaped banner-stones. These, he shows, have just come into southern Michigan. Yet such are common to nearly all collections in the state seen by the writer. It is probable that a study of the tens of thousands of specimens of all types would materially change the present limits assigned to each. Pendants and gorgets often are found engraved; more often the lines are but geometrical forms. Sometimes figures and unusual designs appear. The Lenape Stone on which appears the drawing of a mammoth, is a pendant or gorget; the second engraving of this same creature is on a gorget of fulgur shell. The flat, smooth surface of PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 41 these objects seems to invite records. From such there is much information to be obtained. Shell ornaments and those of bone often are found on camp and village sites, and occasionally in graves and mounds. The friable nature of both, and their susceptibility to decay, make their antiquity, except in a few cases, a mafter of doubt. When found, articles made either of bone or of shell may mark a comparatively recent occupation of the site where discovered. The Indians of the region East of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio, are known as the "Forest Tribes." Their homeland was the vast primeval woodland that stretched from the Atlantic to the Father of Waters. Living in woodland, it would be expected that many if not most of their weapons, ornaments, and utensils would be of wood. Such is known to the case. Wooden war-clubs were made by nearly all tribes. Masks, buckets and other articles for personal use were easily and quickly constructed from wood. Such articles under normal conditions decay when abandoned; or when broken and tossed aside the pieces will not remain to be found centuries later by some one delving on the spot. Yet many wooden utensils of these ancient peoples may yet come to light. If dropped in water, and there sunk and covered, at some future day they may be found. Witness the wooden masks found in a prehistoric aboriginal canal in southern Florida. In a like manner, rivers and lakes which lie adjacent to prehistoric, and historic, village sites, may sometimes give up the secrets they have been holding. Skeletal remains, which have been found in vast numbers throughout the state and which have been studied almost from the beginning of an interest in archeology in Michigan, eventually may afford a clue which, in connection with information derived from the other remains, will tell the complete story of aboriginal and ancient occupation of Michigan. Henry Gillman30 gave much attention to what he deemed a peculiarity of the races once living on the peninsulas. He observed among the bone he studied many instances of the flattening of the tibia, known as platycnemism. This is now known among skeletons of American aborigines to be a general characteristic of these bones. "The humerus is rather flat, at times very much so; * * * * The femur is quite flat below the tuberosities. the tibia, often flat (platycnemic)."'1 In 1875 Gillman gives further results of his study of skeletal evidence remains from mounds and graves of Michigan. The interesting feature of this article is the number of skulls he found in Michigan which had a perforation through the top. He reports that this hole, while of rare occurrence among the skulls, was "apparently rudely bored, invariably in the top of the head, and made after death."32 So far as known, these are the only skulls thus perforated found in America. It will be seen from the foregoing resume that the information as to the archeology of Michigan is fragmentary.33 42 HISTORIC MICHIGAN A general conclusion as to Michigan's antiquities based on the few facts now known might be stated thus: No unknown race builded these remains; they were the work of the fathers, or relatives of the Indian tribes who were found in possession of the land when the first white explorer passed this way. III MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD THE INDIANS OF MICHIGAN AND THE CESSION OF THEIR LANDS TO THE UNITED STATES BY TREATIES Read in 1894 by Former Governor of Michigan, Alpheus Felch1 Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXVI, 274-297 T HE acquisition of the territory of a nation often forms the subject of the most thrilling and bloody chapter in its history. Its broad acres are the mother of its prosperity, the cultivation of them is the source of its physical and moral well-being. With the thousand blessings which surround us on every hand and call to us for thankful hearts we may well pause for a moment to inquire whence came the gift of this goodly heritage; through whose hands have the dominion and the ownership of these broad acres passed, and when and where and how have we become the possessors-and this is the subject of my brief paper. History tells us nothing of the territory or of the inhabitants of the country constituting the present State of Michigan until within a comparatively modern period, and tradition speaks in language vague and unreliable. In the autumn of 1641, two Jesuit priests, Fathers Jogues and Raymbault, made a visit to this portion of the country. They crossed the St. Mary's river and entered within our borders at the point where the waters of Lake Superior are poured over the falls from their immense reservoir. They were greeted on the shore by a concourse of not less than two thousand Indians, and to them they preached the gospel of the Christian religion. Neither history nor tradition gives us any account of earlier intercourse between civilized men of the white race and the red man of the forest within our borders. The stay of the Fathers was very brief and they returned to the field of their missionary labors in Canada. Michigan was at that time emphatically the home of the savage. Its wandering tribes had never heard of the arts or the sciences, or of the refinements or comforts of civilized life. The bold daring and cruelties of war were their glory and they had little taste for the softer feelings of humanity in which the civilized man delights. They were simply hunters and fishers and warriors. The aborigines of some other portions of America had made some progress towards civilization, but these had taken no step in that direction. The aborigines of Mexico had become cultivators of the soil and were skilled in some branches of the arts. The Cherokees of Georgia and the Iroquois of New York were settled in permanent habitations and obtained a comfortable livelihood in a great measure, by cultivating the soil. Not so with the dwellers here at the time of the visit of the Fathers in 44 HISTORIC MICHIGAN 1641. They were simply untutored savages, with all the superstition, ignorance, cruelty and degradation inseparable from purely savage life in the forest. There were at that time three tribes of Indians within the limits of the present State of Michigan, namely, the Ojibwas or Chippewas, the Ottawas and the Potawatomies. There was also a band or division of the Miami tribe of Indians which had a lodgment at the mouth of the St. Joseph river of Lake Michigan, and who were visited by Marquette as early as I675. A fort was built there by La Salle in 167,9, and subsequently a Mission was established by the Jesuits, but both have long since ceased to exist; and in 1715, the Indians, at the instigation of Cadillac, removed to the vicinity of Fort Wayne in Indiana. They never returned to Michigan and their tribe has never made claim to any lands within the borders of the state. The number of Indians within the limits of the State at the time of the first visit of white men, it is impossible even to approximate, but they were scattered very sparcely through the forest, without permanent habitations and depending on the chase and the natural productions of the earth for subsistence. One might have traveled for days in almost any direction without seeing an Indian. The point where the Fathers entered our territory was the place where the aborigines mostly congregated for the benefit of the fishing at the Sault, and at no other spot within our limits could so large a number have been found together. The Chippewas or Ojibwas, Ottawas and Potawatomies were of the Algonquin family of Indians and were kindred tribes. Their traditions recite that their fathers came long centuries agone, from the salt water of the Atlantic about the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and it seems almost certain that they were driven west by a more powerful enemy-probably the ancestors of the warlike Iroquois. The three tribes were originally together in their western home, but finally separated, more for the convenience of occupying different hunting grounds than for any other reason. Warren, the historian of the Ojibwas, says that the separation took place at the Sault de Ste. Marie. The friendly association of these three tribes is also mentioned by Parkman, who says they had long been banded together in a loose confederacy; and he designates the Ojibwas and Potawatomies as kindred and the Ottawas as their friends. In 1649, eight years after the visit of Jogues and Raymbault, another tribe was added to the Indians of Michigan. They were the Hurons or Wyandots. They did not belong to the Algonquin family but were a portion of a once powerful nation residing on the Georgian bay and the east shore of Lake Huron. Their origin is not known, but in their habits, in the permanence of their habitations, and their devotion to agricultural pursuits, they resemble the Iroquois, yet between the two peoples the most cruel and unquenchable hatred existed. It had just culminated in a bloody victory for the Iroquois, and the Huron nation at its old abiding place was utterly destroyed. The survivors of its people fled from their ancient home. A portion sought refuge on the borders of the Great Lakes and were well re MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 45 ceived by the three tribes of Algonquins in Michigan. They were pursued by the enmity of the Iroquois from the east and by the savage Dacotahs from the west and were compelled to escape from their first place of refuge which was near the west end of Lake Superior. They first went to Michilimackinac and afterwards to Detroit. They finally settled along the banks of the Detroit river and the west end of Lake Erie, and in still larger numbers at Sandusky in Ohio. It is manifest also that their people were dispersed broadly through the country in small bands or perhaps single families, generally making their resting place on the bank of some stream, and frequently the stream was made to bear the name of their nation. Thus we have had within the limits of our State no less than five streams known by the name of Huron river. The legislative council of the territory on the 17th of July, 1824, declared that the rivers and places bearing the name of Huron were so numerous as to lead to confusion, uncertainty and inconvenience, and by solemn act they changed the name of the Huron river of Lake St. Clair to that of Clinton, which name it now bears.2 Thus from 1649, when the Hurons or Wyandots settled within our borders, the aboriginal tribes who might claim rights in the possession of the country were increased to four in number, the Ojibwas or Chippewas, the Ottawas, the Potawatomies and the Hurons or Wyandots. These tribes usually acted together and in harmony. They fought with the French and against the English in the war which ended with the conquest of Canada on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. They were with the English and against the Americans in the war of the revolution. They were, with few exceptions, with the British in the war of 1812. They were actors in the bloody scenes of Wayne's campaigns in Ohio. They were at the memorable siege of Detroit in 1762 standing together as one solid band of brothers ready to execute the most desperate commands of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, and the most able and daring of warriors. With these four tribes in occupancy in the loose manner of Indian possession, we come to an inquiry into the history of the title to the lands within our State. Whence and how and when was it derived? From time immemorial the nation whose subjects have discovered a new country either uninhabited or with a sparce population of uncivilized natives, has claimed, as against other civilized nations at least, exclusive right of domain. Under this rule France first claimed title to an immense region in North America of which Michigan is a part. Under this claim and by virtue of a partial possession she held and governed it for one hundred and forty-eight years, from 1612 to 1760. From the last mentioned year until 1783 it was held and governed in like manner by Great Britain, when, by the treaty of peace at the close of the war of the revolution, it passed to the government of the United States. This was followed by a cession by Virginia and several other states to the general government of all claims to the northwestern territory. Thus the United States became the undisputed owner of all rights, jurisdictional and proprietary, theretofore acquired by the parties above named by virtue of discovery, conquest, possesson, or in any other manner with the single exception that the rights 46 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of individual owners under previous grant should be held sacred. These grants were made by both England and France, but they were few in number and all have since been confirmed by our government and the proper evidence of title given to the claimants. All rights of foreign claimants were thus early secured, but the aborigines of the country still roamed in the forests in pursuit of game and pushed their light canoes along the streams and occupied their temporary wigwams and lived the miserable life of the untutored savage. Had these no rights in the land where they and their fathers were born and had spent their lives? Could they be expelled by intruders without their consent and without compensation? These are questions which attracted the attention of the government at an early day. In 1789 the subject was very ably discussed by General Knox, then secretary of war, in a report made to President Washington, in which the policy of negotiation with the Indian tribes and of obtaining from them amicable cessions of lands by treaty was strongly urged. He refers to some action of congress under the confederation as implying a belief that by the treaty of peace of I783, the government was absolutely invested with the fee of all the Indian lands and a full and unqualified right to the same. But he combats this idea and insists that the Indians, being the prior occupants,' possess the right to the soil, and that it cannot be taken from them unless by their own free consent or by conquest in case of a just war. And this view of the subject being accepted by common consent, the practice has ever since prevailed of obtaining a cession of the Indian title by purchase and the payment of a stipulated compensation. The system of negotiation with the Indians as tribes or nations and making all purchases in public council where all could be heard, once adopted, has assumed vast importance in the economic progress of the nation. Vast tracts of land have thus been thrown open to settlement and private ownership, and sums of money, reckoned by the many millions, have been paid and still continue to be paid for them to the original possessors from the public treasury. The earliest of Indian treaties were sent by President Washington to the Senate May 25, 1789. and on the 17th of September following, no action upon them having been had by the Senate. he called attention to them by another message, expressing his opinion that ratification by the Senate was necessary to their validity. The matter was referred to a committee. who on the next day. reported that ratification was not necessary. No formal action on this report appears, but the custom of the approval of Indian treaties in the same manner as in the case of treaties with foreign nations, was silently adopted and has ever since prevailed. We will now refer to the several treaties by which the Indian title to the lands in Michigan passed to the United States. The first Indian treaty made by our government on the subject of land was made at Fort Stanwix in the State of New York with the Six Nations, or Iroquois, in October, 1784. This treaty defines the west limits of the lands of the Iroquois by a line nearly coincident MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 47 with the east line of Ohio and they yield to the United States all claim to the land west of it. The next treaty negotiated and the first making a cession of land in Michigan was made at Fort McIntosh, January 21, 1785, with the Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa nations. By the seventh article of this treaty there is "reserved to the sole use of the United States," the following: "The post of Detroit with a district beginning at the mouth of the Rosine (Raisin) on the west end of Lake Erie and running west six miles up the southern bank of said river, thence northerly and always six miles west of the strait until it strikes the Lake St. Clair." And by the eighth article "the post of Michilimackinac with its dependencies and twelve miles square about the same" are reserved in like manner. By treaty negotiated by General St. Clair at Fort Harmer on the 9th day of January, 1789, with the Wyandot, Delaware, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi and Sac nations, the above described concessions at Detroit and Michilimackinac are confirmed, and it is stated that the Wyandots having represented that they had two villages within their reservation along the Detroit river from which they could not conveniently remove, it is agreed that they shall not be disturbed in the possession of the same. From the date of the above treaties the public archives (American State Papers, Vol. V) are full of official reports of depredations, outrages and murders committed by the Indians in the northwest. The British forts, in violation of the treaty stipulations, had not yet been given up. It was manifest that the Indians were excited and urged on in their desperate acts by British officials who still remained in the country. The result was massacres without number and a hostile combination of different tribes which compelled Washington to call out the militia and to meet force with force. In March, 1793, Benjamin Lincoln, Beverly Randolph and Timothy Pickering, three of the most eminent men of their time, were appointed commissioners for negotiating a treaty with the Indians of the northwest. The council was to be held at Sandusky. The confederate tribes were holding a private council at the Rapids of the Maumee. Several delegations were sent by them to talk with the commissioners and discussions were had about restoring friendly relations and about the lands claimed by the several tribes. The commissioners urged the meeting of the council for negotiating a treaty, but the Indians continually procrastinated. The commissioners finally went to the mouth of the Detroit river and were there met by a delegation from the confederates, who delivered a speech and listened to the reply and arguments of the commissioners. They remained four weeks in communication with individual members of the confederation urging the meeting of the council for negotiating the promised treaty, but without avail. Finally, on the 16th day of August, 1793, they received an absolute refusal to treat at all and they departed for their homes. * '.r r Then followed the sad conflict which constitutes so exciting a chapter in the early history of the northwest and especially of Ohio. 48 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The repulse of the Indians at Fort Recovery, the gallant conduct which signalized the campaign of General Wayne and the splendid victory at the Maumee Rapids alone opened the way for ending the contest and restoring peace. The treaty of Greenville followed. It was negotiated by General Wayne as United States Commissioner with the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawatomies, Miamis, Eel Rivers, Weas, Kickapoos, Piankishaws and Kaskaskias, and was concluded on the third day of March, 1795. These were the confederate tribes which had allied themselves together in deadly hostility to the Americans and sought to expel them from the western country. By this treaty all hostilities were to cease and peace was to be prepetual. All prisoners were to be surrendered and ten Indian chiefs were to remain with the whites as hostages until this was done. A new line of boundary between the lands of the Indians and the United States in Ohio was established, enlarging the possessions of the latter; and several other tracts elsewhere within the territory claimed by different tribes were ceded. In the cessions thus made are included lands in Michigan described as follows: The post of Detroit and all the lands to the north, the west and the south of it of which the Indian title has been extinguished by gifts or grants to the French or English governments, and so much more land, to be annexed to the district of Detroit as shall be comprehended between the River Rosine (Raisin) on the south, Lake St. Clair on the north, and a line the general course whereof shall be six miles distant from the west end of Lake Erie and Detroit river. Also the post of Michilimackinac and all the land on the island on which the post stands and the main land adjacent of which the Indian title has been extinguished by gifts or grants to the French or English governments and a piece of land on the main to the north of the island to measure six miles on Lake Huron or the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and to extend three miles back from the water of the lake or strait; also the island of Bois Blanc, being an extra and voluntary gift of the Chippewa nation. The treaty of Greenville is one of the most important ever made with the Indian nations and the council at which it was made was one of the most imposing. The sachems and chiefs who were in attendance discussed very fully the subjects of the treaty. In the American State Papers, published under the authority of congress, will be found a report of the many speeches made by the chiefs, and few reports of discussions in deliberative assemblies or of debates in congress can be found that are more interesting. In this council the four great Indian nations of Michigan, the Wyandots, the Chippewas, the Ottawas, and the Potawatomies, were present by their several chiefs and valiant warriors and they constituted a prominent feature of the assemblage. New-corn, an aged Potawatomi chief, came with forty followers and was introduced to the council. "I come," he said, "on the good work of peace. I come from Iake Michigan. H-ad you seen me in former days you would have beheld a great and brave chief, but now MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 49 I am old and burdened with the weight of years. My nation consists of one thousand men who live at Detroit and between Detroit and Lake Michigan. Twenty-three chiefs of that nation are inferior to me in command." He asks to surrender the old medals won by his warriors and given by the British and to be furnished with General Washington's. "My young men will no longer listen to the former. They have thrown off the British and henceforth will view the Americans as their only friends." Nash-i-pi-nash-i-wish, a Chippewa chief, speaking for the Chippewas, Ottawas and Potawatomies, exclaims: "Look at your warriors around you and view ours. Does it not give you pleasure to see us all met together in brotherly love? I was not disposed to take up the hatchet against you; it was forced into my hands by the white people. I throw it into the middle of the deepest lake from whence no mortal can bring it back. Brother, I have thrown my hatchet into the bottomless lake from whence it will never return. I hope you will also throw yours so far that it may never again be found." A-goosh-a-way came, with a following of twenty-three Ottawas from the vicinity of Detroit, and Masass, a Chippewa chief, with twenty of his tribe. A question arose in the council as to the validity of the treaty ceding lands which was made at Fort Harmer on the Muskingum in 1789, and some of the Ottawas, Chippewas and Potawatomies denied any knowledge of it. But Masass arose and said that he was present at the making of the treaty and had it then in his hand to show them-that he had come for the sole purpose of exhibiting it. He presented a belt with nine white squares wrought in beads, and said: "This great calumet comes not from the little lake near us but from the great Lake Superior to the north, from whence our great chiefs and warriors come. When I returned from the treaty of Muskingum I repeated the substance of its proceedings to my nation. You therefore see that your words have gone a great ways, even to Lake Superior. Brother, I live at a great distance from you, but when you call a council I hear your voice immediately and I come without delay. You now see all your brothers around you. We are well acquainted with what we are now doing and what we have done heretofore. The white beads in this belt denote the number of large villages from the north who have heard your word." The commissioner settled the question as to the validity of the cession of lands by former treaties by saying that they had been twice pair for, by the treaty of Fort McIntosh and that of Muskingum, but nevertheless, such was the justice and liberality of the government that they would again make compensation for them. No further cession of land in Michigan was made during the twelve years which succeeded the treaty of Greenville in 1795. In the meantime the territory of Michigan was established and organized; a strong tide of immigration was setting in and the purchase of the Indian title became more and more a matter of national importance. In 1807 President Jefferson thought it desirable that the entire eastern half of Michigan should be released from the Indian title, and 14 50 HISTORIC MICHIGAN he commissioned General Hull, then governor of the territory, to negotiate a treaty for that purpose. A council was accordingly held by him at Detroit with the sachems, chiefs and warriors of the Chippewas, Ottawas, Wyandots and Potawatomies, which resulted in a treaty concluded on the 17th day of November, 1807. By this treaty the United States acquired the Indian title to that portion of Michigan which lies east of a line drawn north from the mouth of the AuGlaize river in Ohio to a point due west of the outlet of Lake Huron and thence northerly to White Rock on Lake Huron. This line follows the dividing line between the counties of Lenawee and Hillsdale, and thence through Jackson and Ingham, along the line between Shiawassee and Clinton counties to near the middle of the same, and thence by direct course to White Rock near the southeast corner of Huron county. The territory covered by this cession embraces the present counties of Monroe, Lenawee, Wayne, Washtenaw. Macomb, Oakland, Livingston. St. Clair, Lapeer and Genesee, and a portion of Jackson, Ingham, Shiawassee, Tuscola and Sanilac. It will be observed that the boundaries of this cession embrace the entire tract lying along the Detroit river and the west end of Lake Erie, which was ceded by the several treaties of Fort McIntosh, Fort Harmer or Muskingum and Greenville, thus making the fourth purchase of the Indian title thereto. Within its limits are also embraced the settlements of the Wyandots along the borders of the river and lake, a people who had made further advances than any of the other tribes towards the sedentary and industrial habits of civilized life. The Wyandots, although they had joined in the above mentioned treaties ceding their lands unconditionally, were evidently unwilling to relinquish the possession of them. By the treaty of Fort Harmer in 1789 they had obtained leave to continue in the occupancy of their two villages, Brownstown and Monguagon, and in 1809 they obtained on the petition of Walk-in-the-Water and other chiefs, an act of congress giving them the possession for fifty years,8 and again by treaty made with General Cass as commissioner at St. Mary's, September 20, 1818, they ceded all rights to this reservation, receiving instead a tract of 4,996 acres of land on the Huron river designated by sections, to be held by them as long as they and their descendants should continue to occupy the same. It does not definitely appear how long or to what extent they occupied these lands, but they finally removed from them and from Michigan, and joined their brother Wyandots in Ohio; and by treaty of March 17, 1842, the tribe relinquished to the United States their claim to these and all other lands in Michigan. The next imnortant cession of lands in this State was by treaty made with the Chippewas at Saginaw bv General Cass as commissioner on the 24th day of September. 1819. The land ceded is described as "beginning at a point in the present Indian boundary line which runs due north from the mouth of the Great AuGlaize river, six miles south of the place where the base line (so called) intersects the same; thence west sixty miles; thence in a direct line to the head of Thunder Bay river; thence down the same to the mouth and thence to the line established by the treaty MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 51 of Detroit of 1807 at White Rock on Lake Huron, and then by that ine to the place of beginning." This tract is bounded on the south by a line commencing in the meridian line six miles south of the north line of Jackson county and running west six miles to a point about four miles northeast of the present city of Kalamazoo, and thence northeasterly through the counties of Barry, Ionia, Montcalm and Isabella to the headwaters of Thunder Bay river in Montmorency county, and embracing all the land east of it not ceded by previous treaties. A treaty was made by General Cass with the Chippewa tribe at Sault de Ste. Marie, June 16, 1820. This treaty cedes a tract of land fronting on the St. Mary's river and extending from the Big Rock to the Little Rapids and running back far enough to include sixteen square miles of land. This land is alsQ included in the cession made by the Chippewas and Ottawas by the treaty of March 28, 1836, made at Washington. The next important treaty of cession was negotiated by General Cass and Solomon Sibley at Chicago with the Ottawas, Chippewas and Potawatomies and was concluded August 29, i82i. This cession covers that portion of the State which is bounded on the south by the south line thereof, on the north by Grand river, on the east by the west line of former cessions and on the west by Lake Michigan, excepting a small triangular parcel of land lying in the southwest corner of the state south of the St. Joseph river; and this tract was afterwards ceded by the Potawatomies by treaty made at the Carey Mission, which was on the same, September 20, 1828, and then again by them in conjunction with the Chippewas and Ottawas by treaty made at Chicago, September 27, 1833. These treaties cover the southwestern portion of the State and embrace the counties of Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph, Branch, Hillsdale, Van Buren and Allegan, and also a part of Ottawa, Kent, Barry, Kalamazoo, Calhoun and Jackson. This treaty was negotiated by Henry R. Schoolcraft as commissioner, with the Ottawa and Chippewa nations at Washington, March 28, 1836. This cession covers all the land in the lower peninsula which lies north of a line beginning at the mouth of the Grand river and following up that stream until it strikes the line of the land ceded by the treaty of Chicago of August 29, 1821, and thence by that line to Thunder bay in Lake Huron, and also all of the upper peninsula as far west as Chocolate river, and thence by way of the Escanaba river, Green bay and Lake Michigan to the place of beginning at the mouth of Grand river, together with all the islands in the waters surrounding the same not before ceded. This cession of March 28, 1836, covers an immense tract of country including all that portion of the southern peninsula which lies north of the Grand river on the west and Thunder bay on the east and all of the upper peninsula east of Chocolate river near Marquette and the Escanaba river, which flows into Green bay. The last of the more important of the original cessions of lands in 52 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Michigan was made by treaty with the Chippewa Indians of the Mississippi and Lake Superior negotiated by Robert Stuart at La Pointe, October 4, 1842. The land covered by this cession is situated in the upper peninsula and includes all that portion of the State of Michigan which lies west of the Chocolate and Escanaba rivers, being the western boundary of land ceded by the treaty of Washington of March 28, 1836, and extending to the line of Wisconsin. The above descriptions of the ceded lands follow the cessions as described in the several treaties, and it is believed that together they embrace the entire area of the State of Michigan. But from four of the larger of these tracts certain specified portions of tfie land are reserved by express words in favor of the Indians and were held by them as by their original title. These reservations covered large tracts of most valuable lands. They became subsequently the subject of negotiation between the United States and the Indians and were ceded by treaty as in former cases. We look now to these reservations with a view to the inquiry whether the Indian title to these also has been acquired by our government. I. The earliest of these reservations is found in the treaty of Detroit of November 17, 1807. They cover three miles square of land on the River Raisin at the mouth of the Macon, four sections on and near the River Rouge, three on Lake St. Clair and six sections which were to be afterwards located by the Indians with the approval of the president. Three of the sections reserved at the mouth of the Macon and three of the sections not located were subsequently, by treaty made at the foot of the Maumee Rapids, September 29, 1817, given to the rector of the Catholic Church of St. Anne of Detroit and the corporation of the College of Detroit, to each one-half, and by the treaty of St. Joseph of September I9, 1827, a cession was made of the four sections on and near the River Rouge and of the remainder of the reservation at the mouth of the Macon, except half a section which was given to the Potawatomi chief, Moran. The residue of these reservations is covered by the general terms of the cession made by the Potawatomies by treaty of the Tippecanoe river, October 27, 1832, and that made at Chicago, September 27, 1833. II. In the treaty negotiated by General Cass with the Chippewas at Saginaw, September 24, 1819, sixteen separate tracts of land in choice locations and amounting in the aggregate to more than one hundred thousand acres, were reserved to the Chippewas, but all of these tracts were subsequently ceded by the Indians to the United States by treaty made with Henry R. Schoolcraft as commissioner at Detroit, January 14, 1837. By the terms of this treaty said lands were to be surveyed and sold by the United States in the same manner as other public lands, the proceeds to be applied for certain specific purposes defined in said treaty and the balance to be invested in public stocks for the benefit of said Indians. III. By the treaty of Chicago with the Potawatomies, Ottawas MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 53 and Chippewas, made August 29, 1821, there are reserved for the use of the Indians five tracts of land differing in quantity from three to six miles square each. In 1827 (September 19) these lands, with the exception of a tract four miles square at the village of Not-a-wa-sepe, were ceded by the treaty to the United States by the Potawatomies and they received in exchange for the same ninety-nine sections of land lying in a body in Kalamazoo and St. Joseph counties. These lands were designated by sections and were to be held by the tribe upon the same terms on which Indian reservations are usually held. The object of this exchange is declared to be to consolidate some of the dispersed bands of the Potawatomi tribe in the territory of Michigan and to remove them from the settlements of the white people. By a treaty made at the Tippecanoe river, October 27, 1832, the Potawatomies ceded all their lands in Michigan south of Grand river excepting the reservation at Pokagon's village and that at Not-a-wasepe; and again by treaty made with the Chippewas, Ottawas and Potawatomies at Chicago, September 27, 1833, all their interests in the lands in Michigan south of Grand river are ceded. In this cession are included by express terms the above mentioned ninety-nine sections and the two reservations last above named, and also the tract of land in the southwest corner of the State south of the St. Joseph river. The territory claimed and occupied by the Potawatomi nation originally embraced all that portion of the State lying south of Grand river and extending from Lake Michigan to the waters which bound it on the east; and by the several treaties above mentioned their claim to the entire tract is surrendered. IV. By the treaty of Washington of March 28, 1836, with the Ottawa and Chippewa nations they reserve to themselves five separate tracts of land, containing a total of one hundred and forty-two thousand acres, to be held by the two tribes in common. There are also reserved for the separate use of the Chippewas living north of the Straits of Mackinac a large number of tracts including the islands in the lakes. After the making of this treaty the condition and the views of the Indians gradually changed; their tribal relations became relaxed; they were divided into small bands and were anxious to become the possessors of the lands by individual ownership rather than to share them in common with other members of their tribe. To accomplish this a new feature was introduced into the method of disposing of Indian reservations. With a view of acceding to this desire in a treaty made at La Pointe, September 30, 1854, the United States stipulated to set apart and withhold from sale certain tracts of land designated by townships and sections for the use of the Chippewas of Lake Superior. Six bands of the Indians are named as the beneficiaries and to each is assigned the portion of land set aside for its special benefit. From these lands every head of a family or single person over twentyone years of age at that time of the mixed bloods belonging to the Chippewas of Lake Superior was entitled to select from the portion 54 HISTORIC MICHIGAN assigned to his band eighty acres of land and to receive a title thereto by patent in the usual form. And by the third article of the treaty the president is authorized in his discretion to assign to any head of a family or single person over twenty-one years of age eighty acres of land for his or their separate use, and may, when he thinks proper so to do, issue patents therefor with such restrictions of the power of alienation as he may see fit to impose. And in consideration of these provisions and of money payments amounting to little less than half a million of dollars the cession is made to the United States of an extensive territory embracing the land above set aside and withheld from sale. Still further progress was made in the same direction by treaty with the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan made on the 31st day of July, 1855. By this treaty the United States withdraws from sale certain townships of the State of Michigan and assigns to each one of some twenty bands into which the Indians are divided, the particular townships in which its members may select land. The United States agrees to give to each Ottawa and Chippewa Indian, being the head of a family, eighty acres of land, to each single person over twenty-one years of age forty acres, to each family of orphan children under twenty-one years of age containing two or more persons, eighty acres and to each single orphan child under twenty-one years of age forty acres; and each beneficiary is to select his land in the tract reserved for the band to which he belonged. On such selection being made each was at liberty to go into possession of the land selected by him and was to receive a certificate therefor, but he could not assign his interest secured thereby. At the end of ten years he was entitled to receive a patent therefor in the usual form, but still the president might, in his discretion, order the patent to be issued at an earlier date or to be longer withheld when it was proved that the welfare of the holder of the certificate would be promoted thereby. The treaty also provides that the portion of the land so described and set apart which shall not be selected by the Indians within five years shall remain the property of the United States and may be sold like other public lands, except that the exclusive right to become purchasers within the next five years was reserved to the Indians. In consideration of these provisions of the treaty and the payment of $538,400 in manner therein specified, the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians release the United States from all liability on account of former treaty stipulations and receive them in lieu and satisfaction of all claims legal and equitable on the part of said Indians, jointly and severally, for land, money or other thing guaranteed to them or either of them by previous treaties. And by the fifth article of the treaty the tribal organization of said Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is dissolved, except so far as is necessary to carry out the provisions of said treaty; and all future matters of business are to be transacted not with the entire tribe, but with those only who are interested in the subject matter, and the Pavments which are to be in money by the terms of the treaty are to be paid not to the tribe as such, but to the individual Indians of these several bands per capita. MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 55 Two days after the making of this treaty another was made by the same commissioners with the Chippewa Indians of Saginaw and the bands of the Chippewas of Swan creek and Black river. These were bands of the Chippewa Indians, who appear to have occupied separate tracts in the reservations defined in the treaty of March 28, 1836. and are not among the bands named in the treaty of September 30, 1854, or that of July 31, 1855. By this treaty the government agrees to withhold from sale six townships of land in Isabella county and two townships near Saginaw bay and it gives to the individuals of these bands the right to locate within these defined limits substantially the same quantity of land, and under like terms and conditions as provided in the last mentioned treaty and with the same final result of a title in fee. In consideration of these provisions and of $220,000 agreed to be paid to them, the Indians cede to the United States all lands in Michigan theretofore owned by them as reservations and whether held in trust by the United States or otherwise; and they release and discharge the United States from all liability assumed in previous treaties. In 1859 a cession was made by treaty by a portion of the tribe residing in Kansas of all claim to the Chippewa reservations in Michigan, and by treaty made at Isabella, October 18, 1864, a similar cession was made by the Chippewas of Saginaw, Swan creek and Black river, they securing thereby the right of individuals to select lands in the unsold portion of the six townships withheld from sale in Isabella county and to receive patents therefor. The peculiar provisions of these several treaties with the Ottawa and Chippewa tribes mark an epoch in our negotiations with the aborigines. As in other cases these tribes cede their original title to all the lands in the immense region which was their home, but they do not divest themselves of all interest in the soil. Individual ownership is to take the place of the vague right of the wandering savage. The United States receives and holds the title, but in certain portions of the premises it is held in trust for the benefit of the Indians under conditions, which must be fulfilled. The title of the tribes is given up; the tribes themselves by the terms of the treaty, yield up their own tribal existence. A total change from savage to civilized life was in contemplation. It was a great change and the Indian could scarcely have realized how great it was. He could not by a single step pass from one condition to the other. The progress if successful, must be slow and often discouraging. In no prior Indian treaty is a similar provision found-no similar experiment had then been tried. Favored individuals had sometimes been made owners of land by treaty, but here the broader provision was for the benefit of all, and every individual of the tribes was invited to become a landowner. In most other cases the aborigines who ceded their lands were to find a new home in a region often unknown to them in the west; here they were to become proprietors of the soil where their whole lives had been spent. And this is the more noticeable as it is evident from previous treaties that a similar emigration by these Indians was contemplated by all parties prior to the making of the treaties of 1854 ad 1855. 56 HISTORIC MICHIGAN By some of the treaties referred to an unconditional title was given at once to the beneficiary; in others the power of alienation was withheld for a time until he could learn the value of his treasure and know how to guard it. In the former case the wily speculator too often managed to obtain the prize for a song and leave his victim a beggar; in the latter he has most frequently retained it as a home and a source of comfortable livelihood. The number of Indians in Michigan as reported in the census returns of 1890 was 6,991. They are widely scattered over the northern portion of the State, though the largest collections of them are found in Isabella county and at L'Anse and Baraga in Baraga county. The land withheld from sale by the United States for their benefit seems not yet all taken up, and the commissioner's report of 1891 shows 27,319 acres at that time subject to be located by the Indians agreeably to the treaty stipulations. Many of these Indians are industrious and efficient laborers and good citizens; most of them wear citizens dress and speak the English language, and are making fair progress in their new sphere of life. I have spoken of the provisions of these treaties giving land to the individual Indians to hold in severalty as an experiment. That the experiment did not prove a failure is manifest not only from its effect here but also from the subsequent sanction given to the principle involved by the government. By act of congress of February 8, 1887, the president is authorized to allot lands in severalty to the Indians on any reservation for their use made by treaty, or act of congress, or executive order, and this authority has been liberally exercised. It is recognized among the most efficient means of improving the condition of the Indian and leading him on to a life of civilization and in its influence it is second only to that of the schools for the education of Indian youths supported by the government in many portions of the country, one of which has recently been established at Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. The theory of purchase and sale of the Indian title to the lands is apparent from first to last in the treaties of cession. The consideration paid by the United States, at first small and inconsiderable, was gradually increased as cession followed cession and both buyer and seller better understood the value of the subject matter of the negotiation. A valuable consideration is specified in every such treaty, sometimes it is to be paid in installments; sometimes in coin; sometimes in goods, sometimes in provisions; sometimes in annual payments, running through many years; sometimes it is to go to their favorite chiefs; sometimes to their creditors in payment of their debts; sometimes to their half-breed relatives. The precise amount of money consideration given under the treaties above mentioned for the Indian title to the land within the boundaries of Michigan cannot readily be ascertained, but I am satisfied that it cannot be less than from two and a half to three millions of dollars, a princely sum for a priceless domain. But there are other provisions in these Indian treaties which are really of greater value than can be reckoned in dollars and cents. The Indians are to be furnished at the expense of the government MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 57 with interpreters, mechanics, farmers, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, cattle and agricultural implements. It furnishes the means for the support of missions and schools and sometimes for the physician's services. These are strong, practical and helpful aids, urging the savage on to a higher and better life and offering a vigorous arm to help him on the way. Apart from these cessions of the lands in Michigan to the United States, but incidental to the several negotiations on the subject, there are some other matters of too much interest to be passed without notice. The first of these cessions of lands in Michigan is found in the treaty negotiated by General Cass at Saginaw in 1819. Sixteen sections of land are given by this treaty to as many individuals, each to have one section. They are declared to be Indians by descent. By the treaty of Chicago of 1821 a grant is made to each of twenty-eight persons who are named and who are Indians by descent, amounting in the aggregate to twenty-three sections or 16,640 acres of land. By the treaty of 1832 made at the Tippecanoe river there is granted to each of seventy-six persons named a specified quantity of land amounting in all to eighty-four and a half sections or 54,080 acres, and patents are to be issued for the same. The treaty of Fond du Lac, made August 5, 1826, grants to each of a large number of halfbreeds one section of land, and they are to hold the title subject only to the restriction that they cannot convey the land without permission of the president. Forty-six persons are named as grantees, and the children of many of them, and in one instance the grandchildren who are not named, are to receive one section each. But the most noteworthy of these grants to individuals is that to each of fifty-eight persons, Indians by birth, who were then, or had been, scholars in the Carey mission school near the present site of Niles which was in charge of the Rev. Isaac McCoy. This grant was made by the treaty concluded on the Wabash, October 16, 1826, and gave to each of these scholars a quarter section of land, a little more than nine thousand acres in all. This mission was one of the most successful and flourishing of Indian missions. Mr. McCoy afterwards published an interesting history of it in which he gives an account of his efforts in obtaining this concession to his Indian pupils. He attended the council which resulted in the grant and he and his assistant selected and located the lands. The selections were judicious and the lands valuable, but he regrets to be compelled to add that before the contemplated emigration to the west took place, they sold their lands to white immigrants and, in many cases, spent the proceeds for food and raiment, doing nothing. The sufficiency of these cessions by treaty to convey a title in fee to the individual named was for some time doubted. In the cases whereby the treaty patents were required to be issued by the United States, I am not aware that any objection has ever been made to issuing them or to their validity when issued. But by the treaty of Saginaw of 1819, no direct words of grant are used. The words are "there shall be reserved for the use of" the person named, "and 58 HISTORIC MICHIGAN his heirs," the designated tract of land. The title to one of these tracts, a very valuable section on Flint river, which was thus "reserved" to Mokitchenoqua, a Chippewa half-breed girl, became the subject of much litigation, but it was finally decided by the supreme court of Michigan that the words were sufficient to convey the title and that the treaty being declared by the constitution to be the supreme law of the land no patent was necessary and the supreme court of the United States has held the same doctrine. We have seen that by the earlier Indian treaties cessions of land to individuals were not unfrequent, but gifts of money to individuals were almost entirely unknown until a later period of time. But the grant of such large and valuable tracts and the pertinacious urging, both by the Indians and the white people connected with them for still larger and more numerous cessions to individuals, finally became irksome, and the president directed that no more should be made. When the council met at Washington to negotiate the treaty of 1836 the Indian chiefs presented a list of persons to whom they desired such grants to be made with a designation of the land solicited for each. When Mr. Schoolcraft, the commissioner, announced to them that no such grants would be made they were greatly exasperated and could be pacified only by a substitute of money instead of land. The ninth article of.the treaty therefore gives the names of the individuals and the quantity of land which the Indians solicit for each. An appraised value is finally put upon each parcel, and this sum the United States agrees to pay. "The total amount so to be paid to these individuals was $48,148. Among the tracts of land in this list was a section on the Grand river which was solicited for the Indian family of Rix Robinson and which covered that portion of the present city of Grand Rapids which lies on the north side of Grand river. In the treaty it is stated that this land was estimated by good judges to be worth half a million of dollars, but the government agrees to pay for it instead, at the rate of thirty-six dollars an acre, or $23,040. This treaty also gives to the half-breeds the sum of $150,000, which is to be divided among them in a specified manner, and by the treaty of Detroit of January 14, 1837, $5,000 is to be paid to each of the principal chiefs named in an annexed schedule, and by a subsequent treaty of October 4, 1842, $15,000 is given to the half-breeds for distribution among them. In these and other instances which might readily be cited, the liberal and kindly spirit of the Indians in providing for their relatives and friends and the ready acquiescence of the government in acceding to their wishes are apparent. At the time of writing this paper (1894) a full century, lacking a single year, had passed since the treaty of Greenville was made. In that council the tribes of the great northwest, twelve in number, were represented and sanctioned the treaty. They claimed as theirs the great region of country now comprised in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. Where now are the people of these once powerful tribes? Most of them joined the great exodus to the west, and in their hunting grounds of olden time they are known no more. MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 59 The census of 1890 shows their number reduced in Indiana to seventysix persons, in Illinois to a single individual, and in Ohio not one remains. The four Michigan tribes were present and shared in the debates of that council and ceded a portion of their lands. Of these four tribes the subsequent history is very brief. The Wyandots left the State prior to 1842 to join their brother Wyandots in Ohio and have never returned. In I840 the exodus of the Potawatomi tribe to their new home in the west was completed, leaving only a little remnant, less than one hundred in number, who although they still remain in the State, have put away the habits and the life of the Indian. The associated tribes of Chippewas and Ottawas are still here, but although in 1855 they solemnly abandoned their tribal organization and became our fellow citizens, the care of the government over them has never ceased, and the Indian agent, its permanent official representative, is always here to look after their interests and to administer the bounties due them from the public treasury. The number of Indians now (1894) remaining in Michigan as compared with their number in other states cannot fail to attract attention. Of the forty-four organized states now constituting the Unio'n seven only have a larger number each within their borders and four of the seven are the new states in the west, which with a sparse population of whites, have lately been admitted into the Union. Of the remaining thirty-seven states, not only has no other one as many of the aborigines remaining as Michigan, but fourteen of them have not an Indian within their borders. The State of Michigan may well congratulate itself upon the uniformly friendly relations which have long existed between its citizens and its aboriginal inhabitants. None of the bloody battles of the Indian wars with the American forces was fought within her borders. The cruel massacres once so common in the frontier settlements were not experienced here. No Indian outbreak has disturbed our peace. No war cry has been heard and no threatened danger from them has called for the presence of American soldiers. Not a drop of blood shed in unseemly conflict has fallen on our soil within the memory of our oldest citizen. The few remnants of the native tribes who remain with us are encouraged and aided in their progress to a higher and better condition of civilization and prosperity. Under our constitution they are neither foreigners nor aliens, but our fellow citizens. They go to the polls as voters and are eligible to official positions. The law gives no benefit to the white man that it does not give to the red man. The same broad shield of protection is over both. The same causes which will secure success and prosperity and elevation of character to the one will secure them to the other. We cannot close this sketch without a brief word of reference to some of the worthy men who were prominent in the negotiation of these treaties and in shaping the Indian policy. From the organization of the territory in 1805 the governor was ex officio superintendent of Indian affairs within its limits and thus was brought into close relations with the several tribes and was frequently appointed commissioner to negotiate treaties with them. Thus 60 HISTORIC MICHIGAN General Hull in this capacity negotiated the important treaty of 1807. Prominent among the negotiators of these treaties was Lewis Cass. General Cass was a distinguished statesman who, in his long public life, did noble work for his state and the nation, but in the entire record of his services there is not a brighter chapter than that which relates to his connection with Indian affairs. During the whole time while governor of the territory, from 1813 to 1831, his duties as superintendent were most arduous, and it is said that he acted as commissioner in negotiating more treaties than any other individual. In 1814 we find him associated with General Harrison at the council of Greenville in the effort to pacify the Indians of the northwest whose aid was given to the British in the war of 1812, and his name is attached as commissioner to more than twenty important Indian treaties. These treaties secured the cession of the Indian title to an immense region of country in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. But they did far more than to secure title to lands. They were the adjustment of many a troublesome question between our nation and the powerful aborigines of the country, and secured peace and harmony where war and cruel slaughter seemed imminent. In his long intercourse with.the Indians, General Cass secured their fullest confidence and they regarded him as a friend to be trusted. His firmness and courage commanded their admiration; his sense of justice was always manifest, and his courtesy and forbearance in their intercourse with him bound them to him in the bonds of brotherhood. In 1820 an expedition to explore the vast region of country around the head waters of the upper lakes and the sources of the Mississippi was ordered by the government, at General Cass' suggestion, and was put in his charge. A journey of more than five thousand miles, chiefly in bark canoes, through a region hitherto almost entirely unknown to civilized man, gave a knowledge of the region and of its Indian inhabitants of much geographical importance and of great value to the government. The name of Henry R. Schoolcraft is intimately connected with the negotiations and treaties above referred to. The treaty negotiated by him at Washington in 1836 secured to the government an immense territory in northern Michigan. Mr. Schoolcraft accompanied General Cass in his excursion above mentioned, and indeed it may be truthfully said that his entire subsequent life was devoted to a study of the Indian character and history, and the promotion of the welfare of the red man. No man was more familiar with their habits or better understood their wishes or their aspirations or their peculiar condition, and no one more truly sympathized with them. In 1822 he was appointed Indian agent for their tribes in the region of the lakes and for many years resided in their midst, first at Sault Ste. Marie and afterwards at Mackinac, and in 1823 he married an educated halfbreed girl of the Chippewa tribe. Mr. Schoolcraft wrote and published many books all of which related to Indian affairs. His work on the history, condition and prospect of the Indian tribes, in five large quarto volumes, was prepared by him under the patronage of the government and published at public expense. Whatever criticism MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 61 may have been made on these works by more philosophical or more concise writers, they contain a large amount of valuable information, and their author has proved himself to our nation and to the Indians a judicious and efficient friend of both and an intelligent and valuable negotiator between them. He died at Washington in 1864. Robert Stuart, by whose negotiation the western portion of the Lake Superior country was obtained by the treaty of 1842, was a native of Scotland and came to America at the age of 22 years. In 1810 he connected himself with John Jacob Astor in the project of an immense fur trade with the Indians of North America and went out in the famous expedition which founded Astoria on the Pacific coast. In 1812 it became necessary to communicate with Mr. Astor in New York and Mr. Stuart, as the leader of the party of five, volunteered for the journey overland across the continent. They started in June, 1812, and arrived at St. Louis in May, 1813. In this journey, with its many incidents and hazardous adventures, they passed through a country where the only inhabitants were Indians and wild beasts. The many adventures of this long and perilous journey are graphically depicted by the pen of Washington Irving in his Astoria. The intercourse of this little band was confined for nearly a full year to the wild Indian tribes of the wilderness, and they experienced sometimes their kind but rude hospitality, and often their less agreeable traits of treachery and hostility. But Mr. Stuart, under all circumstances, displayed the qualities of a bold, judicious and successful hero and leader. Notwithstanding the failure of the business project at Astoria, Mr. Stuart never ceased to look to the fur trade as one which invited enterprise and promised rich remuneration. He then became connected with the American Fur Company and in 1819 took charge of its business as manager at Mackinac, and there he resided, acting in that capacity for fifteen years. He also received from President Harrison the appointment of Indian commissioner for all the tribes of the northwest. He removed to Detroit in 1834 and subsequently became treasurer of the State of Michigan. His association with the Indians of northern Michigan had been long continued and their intercourse familiar, and they never ceased to speak of him as their best friend. He died at Chicago, October 28, I848.5 IV INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE INCIDENTS IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF INDIAN JUSTICE By Gurdon S. Hubbard Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, III, I27-I29 Read February 5, 1880 ON the Manistee river of Lake Michigan lived an Indian chief who had a large family, one of the sons being notoriously wicked, and when intoxicated very provoking and quarrelsome. This Indian, in a drunken quarrel, was killed by a Canadian Indian who had married a girl belonging to the Manistee band of Ottawa Indians, and living with them. He was a fair hunter, and a good trapper, but very poor. His family at this time consisted of a wife and three or four children. Not having any means to satisfy the chief for the loss of his son, and knowing that his own life must pay the penalty, he proposed to his wife that he should surrender himself. To this she was opposed, and would 'not consent. He could have saved his life by abandoning his family and fleeing to his own tribe in Canada; but in that event one of his wife's brothers would be liable to be taken in his stead. There was no time to be lost, the burial of the dead was about to take place, that being over he would be sought after, and if found, put to death. Taking his wife's brother into consultation it was decided that he should depart secretly and go to the head waters of the Muskegon river in a secluded part of the country, and winter there, trapping fine furs, hoping to gain enough to satisfy the chief and family for the loss of their relative; giving to this brother a particular description of his hiding place and where he could be found when through the trapping season, with the promise of secrecy. Gathering what he could of traps alnd ammunition, he, with his family, departed at nightfall and made his way to his place of destination, with the understanding that if the chief, after search, should demand revenge of his wife's family he should be notified, when he would return and surrender himself. The old chief and his son in council, knowing that the slayer had no means of paying for the deceased, determined to kill him. After making diligent search, gaining no information of his whereabouts, they concluded he had fled with his family to his own tribe and relations in Canada. Finally they concluded to slay one of his wife's brothers, and so announced. The brothers had a consultation, and the younger, who knew where his brother-in-law was to be found, said, "Go to the chief and tell him I have gone to seek the man. If I find him I will bring himl; in default, I, bei'ng single, will give myself in his stead." lHe started on his long and (lifficult journey in the winter season, and on snow shoes. lie was a stranger to the country, with no land marks INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE 63 to direct him, except in general. After a long search he found the family. The winter had been one of unusually deep snow, the spring brought great floods of water inundating the country; he had been unsuccessful in his hunt, and had almost starved. The bears, in consequence of deep snow, had not left their dens, the martin and small game from the same cause could not get about, and all hope of saving his life by payment was abandoned. The young man returned in a small canoe and reported to the chief that he had found his brother-in-law who would return in the May moon and deliver himself up; this satisfied the chief. One evening it was announced in our camp that on the morrow an Indian would deliver himself up. Early in the morning the chief made preparations; the place selected was in a valley surrounded by sand hills on which we traders and the Indians assembled. The chief and his family were in the valley where all who were on the hills had a full view of them and the surroundings. It was a beautiful May morning, soon after sunrise we heard the monotonous beating of the Indian drum, and the voice of the Indian singing his death song; emerging from the lake beach he came in sight, his wife and children following in single file. He came near the chief, still singing, and- laid down his drum. His wife and children seated themselves, then, in a clear voice he said: "I in a drunken moment stabbed your son, provoked to it by his calling me an old woman and coward; I escaped to the marshes at the head of the Muskegon, hoping the Great Spirit would care for me and give me a good hunt that I might pay you for your lost son. I was not successful; here is the knife that killed your son, I desire to be killed by it, it is all I have to offer except my wife and children. I am done." The chief took the knife and handed it to his oldest son saying, "Kill him." The son took the knife, approached the culprit, put his hand upon his shoulder, made one or two motions to stab, and then drove the knife to the handle into his breast. Not a word was heard from the assembled Indians or the whites; not a sound but the songs of the birds; every eye was upon the noble Indian who stood without emotion looking upon his executioner. He received the blow calmly, nor did he shrink when it was given. For a few seconds he stood erect, the blood at every breath spurting from the wound, then his knees began to quiver, his eyes and face to lose expression, he fell upon the sand. All this time his wife and children sat motionless, gazing upon the husband and father, without a murmur or a sigh, till life was extinct; then throwing themselves upon his dead body, they gave way to such grief and lamentations as brought tears to the eyes of many, myself included. Turning to Mr. Des Champs I saw that he also was deeply affected. I said to him, "Why did you not save that noble man? A few blankets, shirts, and clothes would have satisfied them." "Oh! my boy," he said, "we should have done so, it was very wrong in us; what a scene we have passed through!" Still the mother and children were hanging to the body in intense grief; for fifteen or twenty minutes the chief and his family sat motion 64 HISTORIC MICHIGAN less, evidently feeling regret, when he rose and approaching the body, said in a trembling voice, "Woman, stop weeping! Your husband was a brave man, and like a brave he was not afraid to die in satisfaction for the life of my son, as the rules of our nation demand. We adopt you and your children to be in the place of my son; our lodges are open to you; live with us, we will treat you like our sons and daughters, you shall have our protection and love." "Gwy-uck" (that is right) was heard from many as the chief ended. I subsequently saw this mother and her children in their lodges. CERTAIN SHAMANISTIC CEREMONIES AMONG THE OJIBWAS By Harlan I. Smith Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXII, 461 IN the vicinity of Saginaw Bay and its tributaries there still exist small, isolated bands of Ojibwa Indians, many living upon their own land, somewhat as do the poorer classes of white farmers. They still retain some of their old customs, and although most of them are nominally Methodists, a surprisingly large number, on close acquaintance, reveal the fact that the influence and many of the old superstitions of the Mide still survive. These are overshadowed by white customs and Methodist teachings, except to him who penetrates into their innermost life as a friend, taking them as they are, and without attempting to change them. Naturally the younger individuals, mingling more with the whites and being educated at government or public schools, do not acquire the knowledge of the language, or, much less, the ancient ceremonies and folk-lore of their ancestors. From some of the older people and early settlers have been secured stray instances of shamanistic ceremonies practiced upon the sick. Disconnected as these may be, and premature as a description may seem, I have thought best to make them known, without waiting for further study, in order that they may be available to others.l Mr. Joseph Campau, a French fur trader, who settled in this region when it belonged to the Indians, told me that, about I84I, while living upon the Cass river, about ten miles above Saginaw, he was very sick with a severe pain for three or four days. At that time Mishegashing, an old shaman, whose son now lives in Isabella county, came from hear Tuscola. He brought a hollow bone about six inches long, the size of one's finger, and without administering any drug, or going through noticeable movements or singing, he pressed the bone against Mr. Campau's side and sucked through it very hard. He then showed him a piece of black material, resembling charcoal, which he claimed to have sucked out of him through the tube, and persuaded Mr. Campau that it had been the cause of the pain, which would soon cease. Mr. Campau at once felt better and soon recovered. He said he fully believed in the cure. In August, I869, from the old shaman, Katimshiwa, now professing INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE 65 to be a devout Methodist, I secured a bone tube, which he claimed was the one used for the removal of disease and pain. He was so sick and infirm as to be unable to talk much, and left me in doubt as to the exact way in which he employed the tube. Although undoubtedly it was used in the well-known way for sucking out the disease spirit, yet from his feeble attempts at explanation, and from what he told me on former visits, I am led to believe that he also had it for other mystic rites. This tube was deposited in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. Mr. Lemorandi, who is of Ojibwa and French origin, and who has lived and traded with the Indians for many years, told me the following: Nachchicome, who lived at the Poyganing Settlement between Saginaw and Bay City, was sick, and Saganima, a shaman of the Northern Peninsula, came to see him. After singing all around him, he went to the sick man and said: "I do not wonder you are sick. You have lost your soul and are about to die. A raven took your soul away from you. I can get it back." Saganima then went to the mystic wigwam he had made for the purpose, and went through his ceremonial formula of words. He then transformed himself into a hawk, and flew up and away after Nachchicome's soul. He soared over the middle of Lake Huron, where he saw the raven, darted upon him, and wrested the stolen soul from him. He put it in a small box so it could not escape, and carried it back to the mystic wigwam. Here he assumed his original form, then went to the now nearly expired Nachchicome saying, "I secured your soul." He then sang, and telling the sick man to open his mouth, blew in the lost soul, and Nachchicome was well again. Mr. Lemorandi is also authority for the following: When he was buying furs near Mt. Pleasant in the spring while the Indians were making maple sugar, Sinogemaw's squaw was very sick, and was going to die. They sent for Shawanasowa, an old shaman, who came in a canoe with Mr. Lemorandi and began his ceremony with singing and the use of various little charms. He then told them her soul was gone, that another shaman Nagaek had taken it, because he was angry. Shawanasowa was more powerful than Nagaek, and in the night went, by some superhuman power, several hundred miles to visit him. He obtained her soul, placed it in a small box for safety, and brought it back. He had the squaw open her mouth, and blew in the soul. She recovered and lived to be an old woman. Mrs. Eva Golson, the daughter of an early pioneer, told me that as late as in I866, when her mother was living at the mouth of the Cass river, and was sick with "chills and fever," she went for an Ojibwa shaman, after failing to get relief from her own people. When he came he refused to perform his ceremonies over her because she was a woman, and said his squaw doctored women, he cured men. He went for his squaw and returned in about two weeks, having waited for the time most favorable for the cure. Two squaws came with him. After bringing them he went away in his canoe, but returned for them when they were through. The old squaw began by covering her patient with 14 a 66 HISTORIC MICHIGAN many blankets. Then she made her a drink by boiling powdered "herbs, bark and roots." After part of this had been swallowed the remainder was placed under the blankets and left to steam, while the blankets were kept down tight. Then these blankets were removed, one by one, until about the usual bed covering remained. This occupied about four hours of the afternoon. She came next day, found her patient well, and, receiving her compensation, went her way. From Katimshiwa have also been obtained specimens of his medicines. SCIENTIFIC USES FOR MICHIGAN FOLK-LORE By Harlan I. Smith Michigan, Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXII, 459 THE Indian tribes of Michigan have a considerable literature, consisting of legends and myths which, since they had no written language, have been preserved by frequent repetition. As literature, these are not of the highest type, although probably better than is generally supposed. The scientific use of this material is not necessarily impaired by its lack of literary merit. The following tale, which is an example of this folk-lore, was collected in October, I894, at Peonagowink, an Ojibwa Indian community, situated on the west side of the Flint river in Saginaw county, Michigan. It was told in broken English by an old shaman, now an exhorter in the Indian Methodist church: "My ancestors told me that at one time eleven Ojibwas went on the warpath beyond the Rocky mountains. Their leader, when a young man, had been painted with black coal and, with other young men, had fasted from ten to twenty days, until they began to dream of what to do in life when they went to war. If a war party would be successful it should take the exact number of men indicated by the dream. This man had not been in the habit of dreaming. He led his party westward, fulfilling all the directions he had received in his dream until on a mountain they saw a nest surrounded by water, like an island. There they saw two birds as white as snow, which their leader told them not to harm. One of the party, lingering in the rear, foolishly attempted to shoot the birds with his bow and an arrow. Whenever he aimed at one of the birds it winked and the arrow was split by a slight stroke of lightning accompanied by a little thunder. The party went on. They saw black clouds gathering in the east and heard heavy thunder. The leader told his men to separate and stand under the large trees. The thunder approached rapidly and became terrific. The man who had attempted to shoot the birds was struck by lightning which left only his skin. The party was frightened and feared that they would be punished because that member of their party had done wrong in trying to kill the birds. The leader was successful in obtaining some scalps and returning home, at which time they had a dance." This tale is a curious combination of mythological and legendary INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE 67 characters and also contains unmistakable references to puberty rites. The narrator, although an old man, could not explain the story, which like all folk-lore, preserves ideas and traces of philosophy long forgotten by his people. The references to the thunder bird, the painting of the face and fasting when young, show that the same influence was present with his people as with people even as far west as British Columbia. There is folk-lore evidence showing a continous line of influence transferred from tribe to tribe from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the head waters of the Columbia. Michigan folk-lore is one of the links in this chain. The puberty rites illustrate the fact that religion and philosophy may be reconstructed to a certain extent, from survivals in the talcs told by people who have long since failed to understand their import. To a certain extent the earliest ethnological customs are recorded in these homely tales. In this case we have a clue to the great distance war parties traveled, the method of painting and fasting, a knowledge that the bow and arrow were carried by war parties, the taking of scalps, the social organization under a leader, and the dance. The narrator of this story did not believe it, although he did when young. His son does not know it, his grandchildren probably have never heard it. The two latter generations talk English. This is practically the case with all of the Indians of Michigan. When these old Indians die this mass of literature and its possibilities become extinct. Bibles and song books have been printed in which Indian words have been substituted for English, but we can hardly say that of the literature of the several Indian languages of Michigan, any has been recorded in the State for future study. The development of the state has been so rapid that these matters have been overlooked. There are yet a few old men living who can relate such material. A record of it by phonetic symbols retaining the original Indian is most desirable for the uses above suggested. The imminent danger of the entire loss of the material, however, pleads that it be recorded in any manner, however imperfect or fragmentary. The Indian who keenly feels that his race is doomed to extinction likes to leave such records behind him and may be easily persuaded in the matter. THE LEGEND OF THE INDIAN SUMMER By Mary E. Chamberlain Michigan Pioneer and Historical'Collections, XXXII, 392 HERE is a beautiful tradition of the Indians in the poet lore of that fast vanishing race relating to the coming of those marvelous days, the aftermath of the summer, which crown the year with a fair, fleeting glory, a dream-like beauty, evanescent and lovely beyond compare. The legend runs like this: High up in the heavens the Sun-god, he whose symbol is the white 68 HISTORIC MICHIGAN bird Wakeho~n, looked down upon the earth one day, smiling to see how well he had finished his labors of the year. Now the Sun-god is not the One-Ta-ren-ya-wa-go, Holder of the Heavens; no, he is only the Manito of the sun which, as we know, is the heart of the sky. He is fat and fair and lazy; then also he sometimes is very cross and out of temper, and at such times, sky, air, and water all feel his frowns. Often, however, he is good humored; and then it is that all things rejoice in his smiles. But looking down this day and seeing all so well done-all the grain ripened and gathered, all the fruit perfected and stored, the meadows lying tranquil, the forests still and peaceful, the game abundant, then it was that the Manito grew restive and bethought himself that he was much in need of a respite from such exceedingly good behavior-of which he sometimes grew very tired. He was not much given to thinking, because he was fat and lazy, but now he set himself to it to find some speedy way of indulging such mischievous pranks as he felt disposed. The better to help his meditations he filled and lighted his great calumet, his mighty peace-pipe, that should not have been smoked except in the council lodge, and so sat down to his musings. After a long time he hit upon a plan that filled him with glee. "Aha!" he cried, "I will get me up and away into the far, frozen Northland where my brother Peboan (the winter) reigns, and I will help him strip these forests, still these rivers, and send the icy blasts sweeping over the great lakes and waters, drifting the powdery snow through the villages and piling it high about the wigwams. I'll nip the hunter's fingers and make the old men cover over the coals and the women and children wail in the storm. It will be rare sport to see my brother Seegwan (the Spring) work till he sweats to repair my mischief-the lazy fellow!" After this, overcome by the labor of thinking out things for himself to which he was hot accustomed, and besides being still surfeited with the great feast of the Medway that was held but lately in the month of the Sturgeon when all the fruits and grains, the game and fish are most abundant and delicious, the lazy Sun-god failed to note the sly approach of Weeng, the Spirit of Sleep, who with his many hued pinions came fluttering softly in the air with a gentle, murmuring noise that in time stole away the senses of the Manito, and while not at all meaning to linger he yet drifted away into peaceful slumber. Then, as he thus slept, summer gaily tarried, flaunting her most vivid colors in the very face of the stupid Sun-god; the waters laughed softly, the winds murmured in gentle undertone, all things in nature conspiring together to laugh at and mock him, yet always so quietly as not to disturb his slumbers. While he dreams the smoke from his great peace-pipe fills the airyou see it resting on the far hills and craggy uplands in a purple haze, there in the still valleys, there on the quiet waters and over all the landscape like a shimmering veil. And not till his mighty calumet is smoked out to its very latest spark will the fat and lazy Manito awake. This then is the Indian Summer. INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE 69 THE LEGEND OF THE SHOOTING STAR-THE WAKENDENDAS. AN INDIAN IDYL Michigan Pioneers and Historical Collections, XXXII, 393 ROM the twilight skies a pale star looked down with wistful longing upon the beautiful, green earth. All about it its brother and sister stars were bright and happy and in bands sported together upon the measureless shining plain in which they lived, or collected thickly along the broad road which is the pathway of the ghosts2 in their journey to the far-off country of souls, the spi-men-kah,-wi-u, the fair land above. But this one star was alone in heaven and sorrowful with longing. It turned away from the soft light of the moon, when she walked forth adown the broad heavens, and shuddered when the sun, the bright Heart of the Sky, flung wide the gates for the beautiful Wabun, the Dawn-Maiden. 'Fairer under the light of the young moons or the bright shimmer of the sun seemed the lovely earth than all besides, and the still, green meadows, the cool, waving forests, the blue rivers softly flowing-all more blissful than the star-lodges yet in the sky. Every night, when twilight fell, the star looked for its image reflected in a tranquil lake, set round with tall rushes and mighty forest trees whose wide arms interlaced-seeing with envy the Namagoosh (trout) and the sly Kenozha (pickerel) leaping in the sunlight or flashing in the moonlight, hearing the Dainda (frog) calling among the reeds and rushes-watching the bright Wawatossa (fire fly) flitting through the darkness above the softly whispering water. Every night, there, the loon cried to the echo hiding on the shadowy strand-the whip-poor-will answering clear and sweet in the far distance; there the wild geese stretched their lazy flight across quiet waves-plover piped from the sedges-the owl hooted far off in the lonely forest. All through the long months of the moon while she walked the sky the star looked down upon that fair lake lying tranquil beneath it with waves flashing in soft undertone of happy secrets; it saw the coming of sweet blossoms in the bright Moon of Flowers (May) and how they crept close to the edge-saw the gentle fawns in the Month of Deer (July) come trooping down to drink of its cool- waters-looking, watching, until now in the gray Month of the Beaver (November) the star had grown worn and pale-breathing its life away in sighs of longing. Then it was that the great Master of Life, Ta-ren-ya-wa-go, Holder of the Heavens, saw with compassion and gave the star its wish because of his love which keeps all things within the circle of his arm. So, slowly-gently through the soft purple twilight, while Gushkewan, the Darkness, and his brother Weeng, the gentle Spirit of Sleep, hovered in the air, the star came drifting downward, floatingdrifting-falling from the wide shining plains of heaven, the fair land above. Through the forest a band of hunters came laden with game. 70 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Silently but quickly they traversed in unerring certainly the trackless solitudes. They knew that just beyond, not far away, the twinkling fires of their wigwams gleamed redly through the darkness, flaming upon the laughing children at play upon the smooth turf about the lodges, flashing from the glittering ornaments of the women as they moved about preparing the evening repast, shining redly upon the grave faces of sachems and braves as they sat smoking the calumet and listening to the voice of the Che-nee-ga-ha, the story teller, as he sings of their wars and their deeds of valor. All but one of the hunters hastened onward, seeing all this awaiting them at the end of their wearisome march; but he, the dreamer, the one who saw where there was naught, he, looking skyward, beheld a star falling swiftly through the darkness. All its paleness is gone now and it flames in ruddy splendor across the sky. "See," he cried, "it is the Wakendendas, the meteor!" Then they turned to look in wonder, and the wonder grew as the star flamed downward. Nearer, nearer it came until at length it rested upon the bosom of a sleeping lake; when, lo! straightway it blossomed forth an earth flower with slowly-unfolding silvery petals and heart of gold, lying rocked in blessed rest and peace upon the softly murmuring water that whispered of many tender secrets to it. Thus was born the beautiful O-kun-dun-mo-ge, the Water Lily. THE WHITE STONE CANOE Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXII, 315 THERE was once a very beautiful young girl, who died suddenly on the day she was to have been married to a handsome young man. He was also brave, but his heart was not proof against this loss. From the hour she was buried there was no more joy or peace for him. He went often to visit the spot where the women had buried her and sat musing there, when, it was thought by some of his friends, he would have done better to try to amuse himself in the chase, or by diverting his thoughts in the war-path. But war and hunting had both lost their charms for him. His heart was already dead within him. He pushed aside both his war-club and his bow and arrows. He had heard the old people say that there was a path that led to the land of souls, and he determined to follow it. He accordingly set out, one morning, after having completed his preparations for the journey. At first he hardly knew which way to go. He was guided only by the tradition that he must go south. For a while he could see no change in the face of the country. Forests, and hills, and valleys, and streams had the same looks which they wore in his native place. There was snow on the ground when he set out, and it was sometimes seen to be piled and matted on the thick trees and bushes. At length it began to diminish, and finally disappeared. The forest assumed a more cheerful appearance, the trees put forth their buds, and before he was aware of the completeness of the change he found himself stir INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE 71 rounded by spring. He had left behind him the land of snow and ice. The air became mild, the dark clouds of winter had rolled away from the sky; a pure field of blue was above him, and as he went he saw flowers beside his path, and heard the songs of birds. By these signs he knew that he was going the right way, for they agreed with the traditions of his tribe. At length he spied a path. It led him through a grove, then up a long and elevated ridge, on the very top of which he came to a lodge. At the door stood an old man with white hair, whose eyes, though deeply sunk, had a fiery brilliancy. He had a long robe of skins thrown loosely around his shoulders, and a staff in his hands. The young Chippewayan begat to tell his story; but the venerable chief arrested him before he had proceeded to speak ten words. "I have expected you," he replied, "and had just risen to bid you welcome to my abode. She, whom you seek, passed here but a few days since, and being fatigued with her journey, rested herself here. Enter my lodge and be seated, and I will then satisfy your enquiries, and give you directions for your journey from this point." Having done this, they both issued forth to the lodge door. "You see yonder gulf," said he, "and the wide-stretching blue plains beyond. It is the land of souls. You stand upon its borders, and my lodge is the gate of entrance. But you cannot take your body along. Leave it here with your bow and arrows, your bundle, and your dog. You will find them safe on your return." So saying, he re-entered the lodge, and the freed traveler bounded forward as if his feet had suddenly been endowed with the power of wings. But all things retained their natural colors and shapes. The woods and leaves, and streams and lakes, were only more bright and comely than he had ever witnessed. Animals bounded across his path with a freedom and a confidence which seemed to tell him there was no bloodshed here. Birds of beautiful plumage inhabited the groves and sported in the waters. There was but one thing in which he saw a very unusual effect. He noticed that his passage was not stopped by trees or other objects. He appeared to walk directly through them. They were, in fact, but the souls or shadows of material trees. He became sensible that he was in a land of shadows. When he had traveled half a day's journey through a country which was continually becoming more attractive, he came to the banks of a broad lake, in the center of which was a large and beautiful island. He found a canoe of shining white stone tied to the shore. He was now sure that he had come the right path, for the aged man had told him of this. There were also shining paddles. He immediately entered the canoe and took the paddles in his hands, when, to his joy and surprise, on turning round, he beheld the object of his search in another canoe, exactly its counterpart in every thing. She had exactly imitated his motions and they were side by side. They at once pushed out from shore and began to cross the lake. Its waves seemed to be rising and at a distance looked ready to swallow them up; but just as they entered the whitened edge of them they seemed to melt away, as if they were but the images of waves. But no sooner was one wreath of 72 HISTORIC MICHIGAN foam passed, than another, more threatening still, rose up. Thus they were in perpetual fear; and what added to it was the clearness of the water, through which they could see heaps of beings who had perished before, and whose bones lay strewn on the bottom of the lake. The Master of Life had, however, decreed to let them pass, for the actions of neither of them had been bad. But they saw many others struggling and sinking in the waves. Old men and young men, males and females of all ages and rank, were there; some passed, and some sank. It was only the little children whose canoes seemed to meet no waves. At length every difficulty was gone, as in a moment, and they both leaped out on the happy island. They felt that the very air was food. It strengthened and nourished them. They wandered together over the blissful fields, where everything was formed to please the eye and the ear. There were no tempests; there was no ice, no chilly winds; no one shivered for the want of warm clothes; no one suffered for hunger; no one mourned for the dead. They saw no graves. They heard of no wars. There was no hunting of animals; for the air itself was their food. Gladly would the young warrior have remained there forever, but he was obliged to go back for his body. He did hot see the Master of Life, but he heard his voice in a soft breeze; "Go back," said this voice, "to the land from whence you came. Your time has not yet come. The duties for which I made you and which you are to perform are not yet finished. Return to your people and accomplish the duties of a good man. You will be the ruler of your tribe for many days. The rules you must observe will be told you by my messenger who keeps the gate. When he surrenders back your body he will tell you what to do. Listen to him and you shall afterwards rejoin the spirit which you must now leave behind. She is accepted and will be ever here as young and as happy as she was when I first called her from the land of snows." When this voice ceased, the narrator awoke. It was the fancy work of a dream, and he was still in the bitter land of snows and hunger and tears.3 v FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT EARLY FRENCH SETTLEMENTS IN MICHIGAN By Judge James V. Campbell of the Michigan Supreme Court Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, II, 95-I04 I T would be difficult to say anything very new concerning the French discovery and settlement of Michigan. So many persons have devoted themselves to describing it that, while a few incidents are occasionally found which have thus far escaped the press, the most that can be done by anyone is to give a new shake to the kaleidoscope, and produce new combinations from the old materials. I shall attempt no more in performing the duty alotted to me.' The first thing which strikes most readers of colonial history is the difference between French and English colonies in their beginnings and in their later fortunes. And this difference is not in all respects easy to be accounted for, although some matters are quite obvious. A brief reference to some of the colonial antecedents will not be out of place. The discovery of America was followed by a great revival of the spirit of adventure, which very soon led to colonial enterprises in all parts of the world. Spain for a long time took the lead in these adventures, and set up colonies and factories extensively in America as well as elsewhere. No other power made a more respectable show upon the sea, and none had better soldiers or mariners. Her colonies were all dependent provinces, either governed by viceroys or by other despotic authorities, and the colonists had little if any advantage over their fellow-subjects in Spain. Their glory fluctuated with that of the mother country, and frightful abuses prevailed among them. When they became independent, about half a century ago, their governments, though popular in form, were for a long time no improvement on what preceded them, and even now they would not be deemed model republics. They have never paid that regard to private freedom and constitutional restraint which is necessary to prosperity. The despotism of numbers is quite as dangerous as that of single rulers. Despotism in some shape has never disappeared. The French adventurers preceded the English in effective work, although they were not far apart. At that time the French sailors were admirable mariners, and it is questionable whether, in spite of the great English captains of that day whose deeds have become famous, they did not on the whole surpass their island neighbors in the general quality of their seamanship. The principal adventurers were Normans, of the same stock with their English rivals and closely resembling them. While it is not easy in mixed blood to say which line predominates, we can readily perceive in the dashing spirit of 74 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the great sea-captains the same characteristics which a few centuries earlier sent the Norman ships and spread the Norman conquests over every part of the known western world. The Normans of France and England kept up their intercourse and retained similar ways long after the conquest; and even as late as the earlier years of Queen Elizabeth it was not thought unlikely that their governments might be made similar. The old custom of Normandy was so nearly that of England that the same commentators expounded both; and their maritime usages were practically identical. The French as colonists, in the proper sense of the term, were many years in advance of the English, and began with more sober aims. The English were very bold explorers, but most of them had far more of the spirit of buccaneering and freebooting, and far less humanity in dealing with the natives. Before any permanent English colonies were well established they became involved in domestic difficulties with the national government, having ceased to favor such enterprises or pay much regard to them; and their neglected infancy was one of the reasons why they at last became so independent of trans-Atlantic management as to outgrow it entirely. Between the beginnings of French colonization and the time when the English colonies began to increase, French institutions had been tending more and more towards centralization. At the time when the first settlements were made in Michigan, the absolutely personal government of Louis XIV. had become supreme, and was as active in this region-then known as New France-as it was in France itself. The king was also zealous in enforcing religious uniformity. While there was considerable jealousy between the two great clerical orders of the colony, the Jesuits and the Recollets, or Franciscans, they held between them substantial authority over all religious matters. For various reasons, both the religious and secular officials were opposed to the settlement of remote posts. A system of personal oversight was maintained over every man who came into the country, and there is no instance recorded, and probably none existed, where anyone ever settled down in the wilderness as a squatter or pioneer, and cleared a farm for himself. There were no farming settlements except under restricted and fixed regulations, and every one who went into the woods, licensed or unlicensed, went as a roving adventurer and not as a settler. The number of these roving people must at times have been not much, if any, less than that of the fixed inhabitants near the sea-shore. In this-contrary to our later experience-the Canadian colonists differed radically from the English. These, in the early days, seldom became hunters or trappers in any great numbers. Even after the cession of New York by the Dutch, the English exploring expeditions contained more Dutch than English rovers, and the Dutchmen were much more successful in dealing with the Indians, who got along very well with them and with the French, but not so well with Englishmen. The French policy was chiefly directed, so far as the back country was concerned, to managing and controlling the fur trade and its supplementary branch of a return barter with the Indians. All of FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT 75 this trade was a monopoly, confined to favored persons or companies, and at no time opened to general competition. As a matter of universal experience, such monopolies always raise up a formidable irregular trade; and in this region the persons concerned in the illicit business were those of the highest rank and importance, who generally managed to protect their own emissaries and associates, and procure for them sooner or later such advancement as was possible in the colony. The immigrants that came in considerable numbers from various parts of France, but chiefly from Normandy and the other northern and northwestern provinces, were to an unusual extent men of intelligence and enterprise. Men of all ranks and conditions swarmed inmostly those who were anxious to better their doubtful fortunes, and many who were uneasy under the restraints of the intolerable burdens on French industry. A great many veteran officers and soldiers were discharged or retired, and found it difficult to live in comfort upon their unprofitable estates. The policy of the country had made trade an honorable calling, and the impoverished noblesse who could not always obtain a footing in the companies, or a share in the legitimate trade of the country, found themselves in a measure compelled to resort to some kind of enterprise to procure a living. The result was that quite early in the colonial times the whole country was visited and explored by intelligent adventurers, whose knowledge of its condition, though for obvious reasons never officially published, enabled the subsequent explorers to proceed more boldly and directly in the line of their journeys. There was no Indian tribe to which many rovers of the lower classes had not joined themselves as adopted members. Many of these persons were not wanting in shrewdness, and they secured great influence. The retired officers seldom took up any intimate relationship with single tribes, but their sagacity and force of character made them acknowledged leaders of the white men, and gave them controlling influence among the Indians. They could at any time collect a formidable following for any enterprise they desired to attempt, and they were welcome guests among all the western tribes. Accordingly there is hardly any instance-if there is any-of any settlement, military, civil or religious, or of any expedition authorized by the government to explore the country, which had not been preceded by the visits of one or more of the distinguished adventurers, who did more than all others to extend the French power and reputation and maintain the French ascendency among the Indians. And it is greatly to their credit that nothing can be found in history so honorable in the mutual confidence and esteem between Indians and white men, as the relations of these brave and spirited chieftains with the tribes among which they moved. In spite of the desire which most of them no doubt felt of bettering their fortunes as quickly as possible, they retained the respect of the Indians by frankness and courtesy, and by the evidence they gave that personal greed seldom if ever destroyed their patriotism or their pride of character. Men lost no favor among these people by shrewdness in trading, if they did not forfeit their esteem in some other way. The way was readily opened 76 HISTORIC MICHIGAN for them whenever they chose to go, and it is very well known that the chief expeditions for exploring purposes were suggested by the reports of the advances of these wandering pioneers, of whom DuLuth is an illustrious example, who had either seen or heard of the remote regions and waters through which, with the same persistent faith which first led Columbus westward, a route was sought to the Indies as the only great good worth seeking. It is worthy of remark, however, that none of the great leaders of the wood-rangers was ever seduced into pursuing the fabulous and unsubstantial glory of the Indies to the better country with which they were familiar. Their counsel always urged the occupation of the territory that they knew; and the fortunes of this country would have been very different if the substance had been given up for the shadow. It seems almost incredible that for a hundred and fifty years the statesmen of both France and England not only refused to favor the occupation of the country which now forms the strength of the United States, but did all in their power to hinder it, and keep the wilderness unbroken. The condition of affairs rendered it impossible to make settlements without government sanction. We are therefore entirely in the dark concerning any fixed plans of rendezvous or resort of the woodrangers. It is probable they had such establishments here and there as temporary trading posts, and there are some reasons for supposing they had such resorts very early indeed on the island of Mackinac, and on Detroit river; but, whatever these may have been, they never took any permanent form, and were probably no more than temporary encampments. The chief significance of these earlier matters is found in the evident fact that the posts afterwards established were all located with a knowldege of localities and surroundings that could not have been obtained from any cursory examination, or from any information derived by the founders from investigations made at the time. The places chosen were manifestly chosen because their merits were already understood. The first French traveler of note supposed to have visited Michigan was Champlain.2 This cannot certainly be determined from his journals. Like some other old writers, he has been annotated by editors who have undertaken to fix the location of points which he mentions, according to their own geographical theories, when a different route would seem quite reconcilable with the same descriptions. It is well known that the same Indian names of tribal settlements and haunts are frequently found in different places. The French government on more than one occasion asserted that he passed the Detroit, and his maps show that he knew the connection of Lake Huron with Lake Erie. One of the missions which were results of his explorations was near the head of St. Clair river, on the east side of Lake Huron. But various reasons, chiefly connected with the first English conquest and the subsequent colonial troubles with the Five Nations, seem to have entirely diverted attention for many years from the Lake country. Here and there a chance reference is made, but there was no interest in it. Mississippians as well as traders from time to time visited the upper country; but after the Iroquois drove out the Hurons FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT 77 from their homes in Upper Canada, there was very little known intercourse with any part of what is now Michigan, until the missions were joined at Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac in i668. These missions, which were founded by men of celebrity, and which were maintained with some variations of locality longer than almost any others in the country, indicate very well the spirit of the time in regard to colonization. The Mississippians, who represented the views of a powerful party or interest, appear in the double capacity of explorers of distant regions, and of pastors of the Indians, whom they desired to keep separate from the Frenchmen who traversed the country. Their opposition to French settlements was no doubt due to their fears that the Indians would become demoralized by them; but they became valuable pioneers in exploring, and, whether first in the field or not, on which there is some dispute, they, beyond question, furnished much of the earliest reliable geographical knowledge preserved in the maps and relations of the period. Father Marquette, who was among the most eminent of those connected with our early history, took a prominent part in founding these missions. His death, at the mouth of the river named after him,3 and his burial in the chapel at St. Ignace, were events which will always keep his name prominent in our annals as one of the few distinguished men of those days who lived and died in our territory. As these were the first, so they were the only missions which preceded the important military and civil settlements during the French period. There were minor stations subsequently founded at L'Anse, L'Arbre Croche, and other points on Lake Michigan, but none that had any historical importance. The post at Mackinaw became almost immediately important for military purposes; as the villages of the principal Indian tribes of the north were gathered about the straits, which was the road for canoes coming and going in all quarters, no point was at first so central for the traders. Mackinaw became at once, and continued until Detroit was founded, the great center of Indian traffic. This made it necessary to have the government represented by skillful and brave officers, who might prevent tribal jealousies and disturbances, and cultivate relations with the tribes to secure their friendship and alliance. As early as i67i a great carnival was held at Sault Ste. Marie with the upper lake Indians, by St. Lusson, who was sent to the northwest to hunt for the South Sea, at the same time that LaSalle and others were started towards the Ohio. About this same time two of the intended companions of LaSalle, Dollier and Galinee, visited the neighborhood of Detroit, but made no stay and returned eastward through Canada. The next settlement, in point of time, was made in i679 by LaSalle, -at the mouth of St. Joseph's river. This was during the course of the expedition which set out from Niagara river in the Griffin, famous as the first sailing vessel that ever came westward. The traditions relate that LaSalle was urged by some of his companions to establish himself on Detroit river, but that his instructions would not permit it. As he immediately thereafter set up posts at the St. Joseph and on the 78 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Illinois river, which were regarded as valuable, it is probable that at the time of his passage the Indian settlements in the vicinity of Detroit were not as eligible for trading purposes as those near Lake Michigan. and the country was somewhat exposed to the incursions of the Iroquois. As he sent some of his men ahead of him to winter near Detroit, there must have been Indians and possibly Frenchmen in the country; but the strange habit of the early writers who described their own voyages, of making no mention whatever of important places on their route, prevents us from knowing whether their silence on this matter has any significance concerning the occupation. The fort on the St. Joseph was afterwards moved about twenty leagues up the river, and was there in Charlevoix' time, 1721. The next Michigan post erected by authority was a second fort St. Joseph, established by DuLuth near the later Fort Gratiot, in I686. The object of this was to intercept the emissaries of the English, who were anxious to open traffic with the Mackinaw and Lake Superior nations. The Dutch, while in possession of New York, had secured a considerable clandestine trade, but do not appear to have left home to seek it. The English began to covet it as soon as they became settled in that province. The ravaging of the Huron country, in the peninsula of Upper Canada, by the Iroquois, did not have the expected effect of giving the latter the control of the beaver traffic, which was the chief article of desire in New York. The northern Ottawas and Chippewas had control of the largest fur country which was accessible in that direction, and the posts near the southern end of Lake Michigan comnianded the remainder of the western business. The French posts in Michigan and westward left very little to be gathered by the New York traders, and they determined, as there was then peace between France and'England, to push forward their agencies and endeavor to deal with the western and northern Indians in their own country. The French government not only plainly asserted the title of France, but as plainly threatened to use all requisite force to expel intruders. Anticipating correctly that the English would attempt to make Lake Huron from the east without passing up Detroit river, DuLuth placed his fort at the outlet of the lake into the St. Clair river. About the same time an expedition was planned against the Senecas, and the chivalric Tonty, commanding LaSalle's forts of St. Louis and St. Joseph, of Lake Michigan, and LaDurantage, the veteran commander of Mackinaw, were employed to bring down the French and Indian auxiliaries to take part in the war. It so happened that the important expeditions sent out by Governor Doryan under Roseboom and Major McGregory, to open trade with the northern Indians, were intercepted and captured, the first on Lake Huron by LaDurantage, and the second on Lake Erie by the combined forces of Tonty, DuLuth and LaDurantage, which had made a junction at a post then existing for some purpose at or near the present city of Detroit, and gone down Lake Erie in company. As France and England were then at peace, and James II. was on remarkably good terms with the French king, the captured prisoners were after a time compelled by the Crown to be unwillingly given up by the Canadian governor; but the steps he FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT 79 had taken were such as to deter any further attempts of the English for several years. All the subsequent efforts made by the latter were indirect and intriguing. Various claims were set up under pretence of cessions from the Iroquois, but they were unfounded and futile. It was chiefly to prevent any further mischief and to secure more effectually the French supremacy, that LaMotte Cadillac, who had great influence over the savages, succeeded, after various plans urged by him had been shelved by hostile colonial intrigues, in getting permission from Count Pontchartrain to begin a settlement in Detroit; his purpose was from the beginning to make not only a military post, but also a civil establishment for trade and agriculture. He was more or less thwarted and opposed by the monopolists and by the Mackinaw missionaries, and was subjected to severe persecutions. He finally triumphed and obtained valuable privileges and the right of a seigneury. Craftsmen of all kinds were induced to settle in the town, and trade flourished. He succeeded in getting the Hurons and many of the Ottawas to leave Mackinaw and settle about Fort Pontchartrain. In spite of all the opposition he encountered from his greedy enemies in the colony, as well as the dangerous intrigues of the New York trading interests, his post was advancing rapidly in value and importance, when he was selected to become governor of the new province of Louisiana, which had been granted to Crozat and his associates, under a charter resembling that of the East India Company. Immediately after his removal Detroit was exposed to an Indian siege, instigated by the English emissaries, and conducted by the Mascoutins and Outagamies, the same people who made the last war on the whites in the territory of Michigan, under Black Hawk, a century and a quarter later. The tribes allied to the French came in with alacrity and defeated and almost annihilated the assailants, of whom a thousand were put to death. Unfortunately for the country the commanders who succeeded Cadillac for many years were narrow-minded and selfish, and not disposed to advance any interests beyond the lucrative traffic with the Indians for furs and peltries. It was not until I753 that any new grants were made to farmers, although twelve years earlier the French government had urged this policy. The colonial magnates and their subservient and interested subordinates had contrived to evade their duty until more wise chief officers were installed. The abuses practiced with impunity in these distant regions were very great, and never would have been submitted to if the population had not been purposely kept down to insignificant numbers. The Norman people were very apt to make things uncomfortable when they were numerous enough to have any power in their hands; and the extortions of some of the early officials were fully as annoying as less than a century before had turned Normandy upside-down under the riots of the Nu-pilds against the hard enactions of the policy of Cardinal Richelieu; only the lack of local self-government had rendered this brave people partially helpless against public abuses. In I734 the Governor General, Beauharnois, who had sincerely desired to build up the country, made a series of land grants upon 80 HISTORIC MICHIGAN easy conditions, requiring very moderate annual dues, and reserving the usual fines on sales. There were a few purely nominal burdens, never insisted on, never important, including certain reserves of mines, minerals and ship timber, and mill-service, if there should be a public mill. These annual dues were so trifling in amount as never to have been onerous, being payable mostly in grain, and the purely money dues being commutable. The town lots paid larger dues, which, however, were very light. The immediate effect of this policy, which appears to have been somewhat anticipated by settlements before made, by leave of some of the commanders, in the faith that it would be adopted by the Governor General, was to give quite an impetus to agriculture. Within the town of Detroit were many skilled artisans of various kinds, prominent among whom were workers in metal, including black and white smiths of all kinds, cutlers, lock-makers, gold and silver workers, and the like. The Indian market was good for all sorts of trinkets and implements. There were also excellent carpenters and masons. It has been overlooked by most persons that the buildings of the early period were often not only well, but handsomely built, of the best material. In describing houses conveyed by deeds in the town of Detroit, they are sometimes described as built piece per piece, which may have been in the ordinary style of log houses, but which, in the better class were timber or block-houses of smooth finish. These were usually either of oak or cedar, the latter of which was brought from a distance. The Huron church at Sandwich was built of very large timbers of white cedar, which never decayed. The very ancient French houses near Detroit, of the better class, were very generally of cedar. But there was a sawmill in the pine region, near Lake Huron or St. Clair river, at a very early day; dates are not preserved; but the pinery was well known before 1742, and the mill and the lumber are mentioned in a public report of the resources of the post in 1749. During the Pontiac war, one of the first massacres was of Sir Robert Davis and some companions who had gone thither. Quarries were also worked before 1749, and probably very much earlier, at Monguagon and Stony Island. In 1763 there were several lime-kilns within the present limits of Detroit, and not only stone foundations but stone buildings existed in the settlement. During the siege of Detroit, one stone building, which must have been quite old, was demolished for the sake of the stone to be used for other purposes. As Detroit was the only place where there were any land grants (except a small settlement at Sault Ste. Marie, in the latter days of French dominion). Most of our information concerning the doings of the French, aside from hunting and trading, are derived from that point. Agriculture was carried on profitably, and supplies were exported quite early from that settlement, consisting chiefly of corn and wheat, and possibly beans and peas. Cattle, horses and swine were raised in considerable numbers, but salt was so expensive that very little, FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT 81 if any, meat was salted for sale. Salt springs were known near Lake St. Clair and on the River Rouge, and some salt was boiled in both places, but not probably such as would have been available for packing. Farming was superficial and not thorough, although gardening and fruit raising appear to have been more cared for. The land required little manuring, and raised good crops for many years in succession with no special care. Apples and pears were good and abundant. Peaches also were, in 1796, spoken of by Mr. Weld as of great excellence. Little mention is made of the smaller fruits, but cherries and currants were undoubtedly raised in many of the homesteads. There were several wind mills and numerous water mills all along the river near Detroit, most of which were grist mills. The lack of roads made the streams serve as common highways, and these mills were very accessible. One of the important industries was fishing, and white fish formed a valuable element in the provision market, fresh or dried and smoked. Thev were not in the earlier times put up in brine as they are now, and a slight salting was sufficient when they were smoked. Sugar was often used with or instead of salt in thus curing them. During the French and English war, Detroit was the principal source of supplies to the French troops west of Lake Ontario, and furnished a large quota of men also. During this period the upper posts were not much involved in these affairs. It was supposed an attempt would be made by the English to capture Detroit, and the commander was instructed to defend it to the last extremity. It was thought, and probably with truth, that this could be done successfully. Accordingly when it was announced that the western posts were included in the capitulation of Montreal, Bellestre was naturally incredulous, and was with difficulty persuaded that such was the fact. Some criticism has been made of the alleged disloyalty of the French before and during the Pontiac war. Very few of them took any active part in that war, or encouraged its barbarities. As soon as definite news of the treaty of peace was received, they all, except some men of no standing, acquiesced in the change of government; and the French militia of Detroit, officered by French gentlemen who had commanded them before, were sent up to Mackinaw and elsewhere, and did duty at home in the English service, and acted with complete fidelity. It would not have been very much to their credit if they had been over-zealous before it was known that France would not be able to retain her old possessions; and the treaty was not officially known in Detroit until some months after the siege began. It was recognition by the French of their new allegiance that disconcerted Pontiac and destroyed his plans. As Michigan was entirely beyond the range of the revolted American colonies, there was very little known sympathy with the United States during the Revolution, although there were some indications of it. After the possession was secured by the United States, there was no disaffection among the French people. The first election of 1-4 82 HISTORIC MICHIGAN delegates to the Assembly of the Northwest Territory resulted in the choice, as one of them, of the Chevalier Chabert de Joncaire who had served with credit in both the French and the English forces, and he was useful and respected. The training and habits of the older settlers had given them no knowledge of municipal government, and this was the main cause of colonial weakness; and it was long before they learned to take their part in political business. The management of affairs during the whole French rule was chiefly military. There were in Detroit, and in some other posts, public notaries empowered to transact most of the conveyancing and probate business of the people. There were also some officials having political power during the French possession; but nothing very definite is known about this, and the business could not have been very important. Socially the French inhabitants were an admirable people. There were many families of gentle blood, and wealth and refinement. All, both gentle and simple, seem to have possessed a spirit of courtesy and urbanity which greatly endeared them to the Indians, who always preferred them to any other white race. They loved simple pleasures and social enjoyment; kept open house to all comers, and were usually frugal and industrious enough to meet their occasions, without any anxiety to pursue gain for its own sake. They were not, however, lacking in spirit or enterprise, and the whole country was traversed by their agents, and dotted with their trading houses. Their business ventures, even with our present facilities, would have been respectable, and were sometimes very bold and extensive. The Detroit merchants controlled most of the western traffic, and were known everywhere. Their earnestness in business was beyond doubt that of most merchants now. There was no protestant element before the British conquest of Canada, and the people were strongly attached to their churches, and the clergy were accomplished and influential. Several of the early missionaries and pastors were men of great learning and scholarly ambition. We are indebted to them for much of our knowledge of the Indians and their languages, and for a large share of the historical records which have been preserved. The people, though pious, were not bigoted, and their association with men of a different race and belief led to no difficulties. Many pleasant memories come freshly before us, of charming households and hospitable homes, of delightful summer and winter holidays and festivals, of bounteous gardens and orchards, of noisy crowds on the water and on shore, gathering in the silvery shoals of whitefish by daylight, and the glaring, blazing fires in the night-time; of long wedding trains in pony carts and caleches, and of cariole vans on the smooth ice of Detroit river and up the windings of the Rouge, worthy of the rhymes of a modern Pindar. But this is not the time or place to indulge in these reminiscences-and yet they are inseparable from the kindly and worthy people who first opened this land to culture, and whose memory should always be esteemed by those who have succeeded to their inheritance. VI JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES WHO LABORED IN THE LAKE SUPERIOR REGIONS DURING THE I7TH AND 18TH CENTURIES By Richard R. Elliott Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXIII 22-35 HE northern extremity of the lower peninsula of Michigan is watered by the Straits of Mackinac, which contains the island of that name. It includes Cheboygan, Emmet and Presque Isle counties. Across the straits is St. Ignace, which may be said to divide the waters of lakes Huron and Michigan. It is in the county of Michilimackinac, where commences the territory of the upper peninsula of Michigan. Lake Superior is reached by the river St. Mary. The approach to this stream, through which flow the surplus waters of the greatest fresh water sea in the world, is through the most charming water region in North America. It is doubtful if there exists any fresh water bay in America of such an extent as the Georgian bay. Its atmosphere of freshness is temperate, while its waters are so transparent that at a depth of 30 feet the white pebbles on its bottom are one of its beautiful features; while the finny tribes, as each may be startled by the shadow, are clearly defined, and whose phosphorescent sheen, as they dart to and fro, startle the beholder from the steamer's deck, as this paradise of Michigan's water region is traversed. This is the approach to the chilly and sterile region of Lake Superior, comprising the upper peninsula of the state of Michigan. It has memories of historic interest connected with the establishing of Christianity in this part of Michigan, 260 years ago. In 1641 the Jesuit missionary fathers, Isaac Jogtues and Charles Raymbault, who had served in Huronia, zealous to propagate Christianity among the Indian nations of northwestern Michigan, as now constituted, crossed in their bark canoe the romantic Georgian bay and ascended the stream flowing from the north into its waters and leading to Lake Superior, which they named in honor of the mother of our Savior, St. Mary. The Sault Ste. Marie, "Leap of the St. Mary," as named by the Jesuits, Fathers Jogues and Raymbault, is a historic locality in American Catholic annals. The standard of the Cross was raised here and the Chippewas were baptized by these Jesuit missionaries before Eliot had begun to preach to the unfortunate Massachusetts tribes at Nonatum. The river at the Sault is about a mile and a quarter wide, and the rapids or catract, whose bottom is formed by huge boulders, over which the overflow of the waters of the great fresh water sea, Lake Superior, leap and rush madly down to the level below, roaring and foaming 84 HISTORIC MICHIGAN for three-quarters of a mile, through a breadth of over i,ooo feet, creating an atmosphere of freshness which can be compared only to that of Niagara, where these same waters take their grandest leap on their way to the Atlantic. The scene is a wild one, while its natural features have changed but little, since the two missionary fathers gazed in wonder at the raging waters. But its surroundings at the present day are bewildering to the student of less than half a century ago. A system of lockage, the finest and most extensive in the world, with a double capacity, has been built by the American government, under the supervision of General Orlando M. Poe and General Weitzel, United States topographical engineers, on the American side, which permits the passage from the lower lakes into Lake Superior, and vice versa, of the largest freight steamers known in modern times, with cargoes of coal, etc., going up, and cargoes of flour, cereals, ore, metals, etc., going down. A similar system of lockage has been built on the Canadian side; while the most gigantic water power system known on the American continent is in progress. An international bridge spans the rapids over which extensive trains run constantly. The arrivals and clearances and aggregate annual tonnage exceed that of any commercial port in the world, while the value of the product carried is enormous. But the Chippewas and other tribes have gradually disappeared, and with them the populations of half-breeds of French and Indian stock. Fathers Jogues and Raymbault, hoping to return to evangelize the Chippewas, departed for Canada. The careers of both these holy missionaries were prematurely ended. After an interval of nearly twenty years the veteran of the Iroquoian missions, Rene Menard, opened the first regular mission on the soil of Michigan at Keweenaw bay in i66o. There is something sublime and grand, writes Dr. Shea, in the heroism of these early missionaries. Menard was destitute and alone, broken with age and toil. His head was whitened with years, his face scarred with wounds received in the streets of Cayuga, for he had been one of the first to bear the faith into central New York. Thoroughly inured to Indian life, with a knowledge of many Huron and Algonquin dialects, Rene Menard sought to conclude his life's labors among the Ottawas of Michigan. His journey from Montreal with the fleet of returning Ottawa canoes to the waters of Lake Superior was a long drawn Via Crucis, while its narration is painful to read. The brutal Ottawa chiefs, who made the venerable man of God toil without food or rest, paid no regard to his silvered head or to his wasted frame. But he finally reached Keweenaw, which was his "first station" in missionary work on Michigan soil; where, like his brethren in other fields of apostolic work, he sought out, reaffirmed in the faith, encouraged and consoled such Christian families as were domiciled in the Keweenaw district. His own account of his apostolate is discouraging and sad to read. But where this venerable soldier of the cross rendered up his soul to God, whether he died by violence or by starvation, is one of the unsolved problems in the missionary history of Michigan. JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 85 Succeeding Father Rene Menard was the venerable Father Gabriel Druillettes, who labored at or near Sault St. Marie for years, when he returned to Quebec and died there in April, I68I, at the age of 88. He was, quotes Dr. Shea, a man of 50 when he came; he suffered more than most of his companions, while his extreme zeal for the conversion of souls and the great talent God had given for languages made him one of our best missionaries. Charlevoix, after relating one of the miracles ascribed to him, says that God had rendered him powerful in word and work. Another celebrated Jesuit missionary who labored on Michigan soil was Father Claude Dablon, who had accompanied Father Druillettes on an expedition overland to Hudson's bay, who was next with Father Marquette on Lake Superior in I668, and who, after founding the mission of Sault Ste. Marie, became superior of all the missions in I670. In chronological order we now take up one of the most illustrious of the fathers of the Society of Jesus, of l'ancien regime, who labored on the soil of Michigan, James Marquette. In the sketch of the life of this distinguished missionary by Hon. Thomas Addis Emmet Weadock, M. C. from Michigan, which was read before the United States Catholic Historical Society of New York, and which has been printed in the annals of this society, he writes: His story is particularly interesting to the people of Michigan because: He established the first permanent settlement begun by Europeans in this state, Sault Ste. Marie, in I668. He was the first white man that trod the soil of the Island of Mackinac or the territory which is now known as the state of Iowa. He erected the first cabin and said the first mass in Chicago, and said the first mass in what is now the state of Illinois. He discovered the tidal rise and fall in Lake Michigan 150 years before it was noticed by another, and last, the greatest of all in a historic sense, he discovered the Father of Waters, the Mississippi. The city of Laon, capital of Picardy, was the birthplace of James Marquette, in the year I637. His family was among the first of the bourgeois class in his native city; while in the century succeeding, three of his name and kindred fought and bled for American independence under Lafayette. His mother, who was a La Salle, inculcated in his youthful mind that deep reverence for the Mother of God, which was always a feature in his religious life. At the age of I7 he joined the Society of Jesus; after the usual fourteen years' probation he was ordaited to the priesthood. In I666 he sailed for Canada and arrived at Quebec, September 20 of the same year. His vocation was that of a missionary, awaiting the order of the superior of the Jesuits at Quebec. He was in the prime of life, 31 years old. After two years' study of the Indian dialects at the College of Quebec, he was directed to prepare for the Ottawa mission in the far distant west. He had acquired a fair knowledge of the dialects of the Upper Lake Indian tribes. Father Marquette was sent to Sault Ste. Marie, where in I668 he founded the first permanent European settlement in Michigan, which was located where the city of that name now stands. In the following year he was joined by Father Claude 86 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Dablon, Society of Jesus. There were, it is stated, about 2,000 Indians of the Algonquin tribes in the vicinity, but this number may have been an exaggerated estimate. They were well disposed towards Christianity, but the missionaries used extreme caution in administering the Sacrament of Baptism. The chapel erected was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, as the rapids and the river had been given the name of the Mother of God by their brethren, Fathers Jogues and Raymbault, the former of whom had, as stated, met a martyr's death at the hands of the Mohawks, while the latter had been called to his eternal reward. From Sault Ste. Marie Father Marquette was transferred to Chequamegon, subsequently known as La Pointe du St. Esprit, which he reached after a month's journey, attended by dangers and hardships. He arrived in 1669. War was provoked two years later between the Hurons and the Ottawas, and the powerful and warlike nation of the Sioux. As a result, the two former nations, accompanied by Father Marquette, were forced to leave Chequamegon. A settlement was made at Point St. Ignace, where a chapel was built. This locality was on the coast at a point subsequently known as Michilimackinac and was the center of Catholic Indian missionary work as long as New France was under French control. It must not be confounded with the island of Mackinac, peopled by some of the Ottawas, which, after the British conquest, was fortified and garrisoned. But St. Ignace, which, as Father Marquette writes, was the central point between the three great lakes, was a bleak and cold locality. In winter the cold was intense, while the winds, now from Lake Huron, then from Lake Michigan, and worse than all, from Lake Superior, made the climate at times intensely cold. The cultivation of the soil was attended with poor results. But the finest fresh water fish in the world abounded, while at certain seasons of the year game was available. In i672 Father Marquette reported to the Father Superior at Quebec the prosperous state of his mission and expressed his readiness to leave and seek unknown nations to the South. The assurance was brought him that he was to go as a missionary to explore the Mississippi. Joliet, the royal hydrographer, was sent by the Intendant Talon as a scientific companion of the missionary. He arrived at St. Ignace on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, auspiciously, too, because Father Marquette had invoked her aid to obtain from God the favor of being able to visit the nations on the Mississippi. Preparations for the voyage were completed during the winter. Toward the latter part of May, 1673, Father Marquette and M. Joliet, with two bark canoes, five Indians and a supply of provisions, left St. Ignace, and began their journey, according to their plans, which had been outlined and mapped, to discover and explore the great river of the South the missionary had set his heart upon reaching. It does not fall within the purpose of this study to detail missionary work outside the boundaries of Michigan. The history of the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, by Father Marquette, has been faithfully related by the accomplished and painstaking Mr. Weadock. JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 87 For all that he has proposed he quotes acknowledged historical gospel. We shall, therefore, attempt to outline the melancholy ending of the career of Father Marquette, which occurred on Michigan soil after his return from his Mississippi voyage. He wished to die at Michilimackinac among his brethren with the rites of the Holy Church, so he set out on his return voyage via St. Joseph's river and the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. His strength gradually failed, but he calmly contemplated the end with Christian fervency. It was given to Father Marquette'to die on Michigan soil. If imports but little under what circumstances, or precisely where his young life was ended. His mortal remains were in time discovered by Father Gabriel Richard of Detroit, and the place marked. But these particulars, comparatively speaking, are of small import; the glorious renown of the missionary is a part of American history. In Detroit, a statue of the missionary and explorer adorns the facade of the City Hall, placed there by one of the purest minded gentlemen who had not had the blessing of living in the Catholic faith, but who was attracted by that magic which binds men of genius to each other, regardless of race or creed, to pay this tribute to Marquette, the late Bela Hubbard. So, also, another statue, by a celebrated artist, has been placed in the Capitol at Washington. It commemorates the memory of a priest, missionary and explorer, which the people of the states of the giant west decided to have placed there, but which the small souled pygmies whose narrow minds reject the freedom of religion, opposed under one pretext or another, until it happily fell to Mr. Weadock, to whose memoir we have been so much indebted for what we have written of Marquette, to have the wishes of the people of the west gratified. There is another monument to the young missionary and explorer, quite significantly placed in a locality equally suggestive; this is in the city of Marquette, queen city of Lake Superior, where a replica of Trentanova's statue at the Capitol at Washington has been erected in that city on the shores of Lake Superior, which perpetuates his name among the people of the state, where his young life was ended. In i676 Father Peter A. Bonneault and Henry A. Nouvel, Society of Jesus, labored at Sault Ste. Marie, while Father Philip Pierson, S. J., had succeeded Father Marquette in the care of the Christian Hurons at Michilimackinac. Claude Jean Allouez, S. J., "the Apostle of the Ottawas and the builder of the first Indian missions in Wisconsin," as his most recent biographer, Rev. Joseph Stephen La Boule, Professor in the Provincial Seminary of St. Francis de Sales, Milwaukee, designates him, was among the early Jesuit missionary Fathers who traversed the soil of Michigan. His labors, however, were more identified with the neighboring state of Wisconsin, but more particularly with that portion whose soil is bordered by the waters of Lake Superior. Father La' Boule writes: "I deem it a pleasure and a duty to my native state to survey the life of this remarkable man, and to trace, even though it be with unskilled eye, 'the footprints he has left behind him in the sands of time.'" 88 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Father Allouez was born in St. Didier, near Lyons, apparently in June, i622. His collegiate course is described by his biographer and his successful examination at.Puy, after which he prepared himself to become a priest, a Jesuit and a missionary. At the age of 17 he was received a member of the Society of Jesus, and after the usual probationary term of fourteen years he was ordained to the priesthood and assigned to duty in the Jesuit church of Rhodez, France. But his soul moved him to a more heroic career, and he sought to develop it in missionary work in New France. Father Rocette, Society of Jesus, his superior at Toulouse, wrote him March 3, i657, with permission to go to Canada and to join his brother Jesuits engaged in missionary work among the Indians. His qualities are thus noted. "He is possessed of a vigorous constitution, of a fine mind and disposition, of good judgment and great prudence. He is firm in purpose, proficient in literature and theology, and eminently fitted for missionary work." Here, then, writes his biographer, is a Frenchman of a mountainous Loire country type; a man of middle stature, of vigorous frame, yet graceful deportment; a man who is inured to exposure and toil, as he is trained in the science of spiritual perfection; capable of living contented in the huts of barbarians as well as moving with due tact in salons of refined French society. Such a man it is whom we presently see embarking on a project which, as Bancroft says, "has imperishably connected his name with the progress of discovery in the West," and which made him the apostle of the upper lake Indians. Father Allouez was invited to sail with M. D'Argenson, who had recently been appointed Governor of New France. Two lay brothers joined the party, and after a losng and stormy voyage Quebec was reached July II, i658. He soon after commenced a preparatory course of the study of the upper lake Indian dialects. While awaiting at the College of Quebec a favorable opportunity to reach the Ottawa mission, intelligence was received of the death of two distinguished Indian missionaries; first of Father Leonard Garreau, who met a terrible fate; second of Father Menard, his dear friend, to whom he had bade farewell on his departure from Three Rivers for the Lake Superior country in i66o. In May, i665, Father Allouez left the college to meet the Ottawa Indians, who annually came from the upper lakes to trade at Three Rivers. He was disappointed; he found them uncouth and brutal "beyond description." But this was not the worst, they were unfriendly. It was not without difficulty that he obtained an equivocal permission for himself and party, six in all, to accompany the Ottawas on their return journey to Michilimackinac, and then they were separated among 4po Indians. The route taken at that time for such parties was up the Ottawa river and by way of Lake Nipissing, with portages to the Georgian bay, and thence to Lake Huron. It was a journey of 500 or 6oo miles from Three Rivers, with many portages, across which had to be carried the canoes and effects of the travelers. It is difficult to describe the cruel treatment experienced at the hands of these brutal Indians during this long and tedious journey lasting over two months, by this devoted missionary; starvation, over-work, JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 89 and finally abandonment, after his canoe had been disabled, on a desolate shore. But Father Allouez had great faith in the Divine mercy; he survived the ordeal and won the admiration of the Ottawa chiefs. The flotilla finally arrived at Sault Ste. Marie, but did not tarry there, although the missionary would have been much gratified to have visited with the few Frenchmen then domiciled at the Sault. The fleet of canoes was carried over the portage and launched into the waters of the great lake, coasting along the south shore. It was great enjoyment for Father Allouez during all the rest of that month to witness the ever changing and wild scenery of the coast of Lake Superior. He rested at Keweenaw bay, where Menard had preached to the Ottawa Indians. Here were found two Christian Huron women, whom he says shone like brilliant stars in this darkness of paganism. No doubt, adds his biographer, he also said mass at this spot consecrated by his saintly brother missionary. On he went, still westward. He was now on what was to white men territory comparatively unexplored. His tone of correspondence becomes that of a keen observer. Game and fish are more abundant, and the quality, he tells us, is excellent. His attention is called to the presence of copper mines by the color of the water and the frequent discovery of copper in pieces of ten and twenty pounds on the shores. The Indians, continues his biographer, seemed to have improved their treatment of Father Allouez, which was now much better. A box in which he had put a number of devotional and other articles and which his Indian companions had stolen from him, was now restored to him. Henceforth the missionary and his effects were regarded as "manitous," dangerous to touch. His mind became more cheerful and he continues to describe the scenes about him on "the lake that is so stormy and yet so beautiful and so rich in delicious fish and shining metal," that he did not wonder the Indians worshiped it as a divinity and offered it sacrifice. The Indian fleet had now traversed a distance which Father La Boule estimated at 1,250 miles from Three Rivers, in their bark canoes, and were approaching their destination. They were greatly elated when in the distance they perceived a tongue of land jutting out into the stormy bay at the southwestern end of the lake. It was the sandspit so familiar to the Lake Superior Indians famed in their early myths and later history as Chequamegon Point. Father Allouez, continues his biographer, landed with the flotilla at the head of Chequamegon bay October i, 1665. Subsequently he located his mission, which he dedicated to the Holy Ghost, contiguous to the villages of the Huron and of the Ottawa nations; the location, in modern days, without wasting time in tracing its exact locality, may be said to be tributary to what is familiarly known as La Pointe, in the head waters of Lake Superior, or as described in the early annals, Fond du Lac. A chapel of bark and a "mission house" of the same material, of modest proportions, were soon constructed for Father Allouez. Then, after fervent appeals for heavenly assistance, he commenced his apostolic work. Like his saintly brethren in the cantons of the Iroquoian Confederacy, at a corresponding period, he found among the expatriated Hurons many 90 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Christian families whose faith he revived; whose marriages he validated; and whose children he baptized. This experience was vouchsafed to the holy missionary, in consolation for the drastic and crucial incidents of the journey of over 1,200 miles, in which he had been made to endure more than an ordinary white man's share, between Three Rivers and the head waters of Lake Superior. Soon, his biographer states, he taught the playful, tawny little girls and the future Indian braves to raise their hands to Heaven and to chant in melancholy but sweet tones the Pater and the Ave. From morning dawn to sunset the braves and the squaws, in great number, came to visit the "black robe" to be taught by him how to pray to the "Great Father." The example of the children soon had its effect upon the older Indians. The laxity of morals so common even among the children was now relieved by most edifying examples of purity; one of which Father Allouez mentions in his relations. Similar evidences of remarkable virtue in this connection is given in the diary of the missionary and are on record. Besides the little children baptized on New Year's day, I666, whom the mothers brought to the missionary as "a gift to the little Jesus," he baptized more than 400 infants and adults of the Huron tribes, during his stay at the bay. The Hurons were among the elite of the Indian nations of North America. They had been foremost during the seventeenth century in accepting Christianity. But their nation had been wiped out of existence in Huronia, by their hereditary foes, the warriors of the Iroquoian Confederacy; while their national autonomy for the time being was destroyed. Many prisoners, men, women and children, had been brought from Huronia to the Iroquoian cantons, where mothers mourned for sons, the flower of the youth of the Five Nations. The captives were adopted into the communities of the respective tribes. This new blood was much needed in the desolate families of the Iroquoian mothers. But this new blood was Christian, and thus was Christianity planted in the nations of the League, from the Mohawk to the shores of Lake Erie. We have here related another example of the tenacity of the faith planted in the hearts of the people of Huronia by the martyred brethren of Father Allouez. But this was mild work for this zealous apostle. Contiguous to the locality of the Hurons was the Pagan Ottawa canton, whose people Father Allouez determined to convert. He erected a birch bark chapel and mission house in the midst of their cabins. It was a bold, a heroic enterprise, inspired by confidence in the support of the Almighty Power. His biographer prefaces his experience by saying that the status of affairs found in the Ottawa village must have brought to his mind a picture of pandemonium. This he must have expected. But, in the description of no other Indian village does Father Allouez employ terms so expressive of abhorrence as he does in describing the moral condition of the Ottawas at Chequamegon Bay. The people recognized no sovereign master of Heaven and Earth; they worshiped the sun, the moon, the lakes and rivers, wild beasts, the elements, and demons. Father Allouez calls their canton a Babylon of libertinism and abomination. These people, the missionary states, are very little disposed to JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 91 receive the faith; because they are, more than all others, addicted to idolatry, polygamy, laxity of the marriage tie, and to general licentiousness which makes them cast aside all natural decorum. These were the first impressions conceived by the pure soul of Father Allouez. His later experience was more hopeful. Of the Potawatomies, the Outagamies and the Illinois tribes who came during the fishing season, he speaks more favorably: Great quantities of whitefish, trout and herring are caught here. The season begins in November and continues after the ice has been formed. Speaking of the Potawatomies, Father Allouez says, "they are the most docile to our Frenchmen and promising candidates for Christianity, their women are more modest than those of other Indian nations, while the men are kindly mannered. Father Allouez failed to make any progress among the Ottawas. Convinced that one missionary would be inadequate to combat so much opposition to Christianity, he turned his face homeward. But before commencing his return journey he courageously started for Lake Nepigon. This involved a journey going and coming of more than I,200 miles. But this great labor was well rewarded. He was received by the Nipissings with open arms. He revived their faith and restored the religious status of their family life. He remarks: "The fervent devotion of this people gave me sweet consolation and compensated abundantly for past hardships." The field, writes his biographer, had become too great for one missionary. Help was needed. In I667 Father Allouez returned to Quebec, where he arrived during the first days of August. 'The purpose of his visit was to urge the establishment of permanent missions at Chequamegon and tributary territory; to get assistance and requisites for mission chapels. He would take no rest after his long journey, and in a few days was ready to return with the Indian flotilla. Father Louis Nicolas, Society of Jesus, and one donne volunteered to return with. him, as also several French mechanics.1 But the Indians refused to take the latter with the missionary party. All the equipments for his chapels had to be left behind. Father Allouez returned to the scene of his missionary labors, where his biographer states he remained some years. Father Louis Nicolas, Society of Jesus, is described in the relations as "a strong, practical, 'every-day' man and a tireless worker." His progress was unsatisfactory and he became despondent. One day, it is stated, he told the Ottawas he was going to Sault Ste. Marie. They would not consent to this, admitted their past indifference and promised to amend their lives, and in fact made a serious effort to abolish polygamy, idolatry and superstition. In time many became fervent Christians. Father Allouez returned to Sault Ste. Marie in I669, and Father James Marquette took his place at Chequamegon bay. Dr. Shea says: Father Allouez was a fearless and devoted nlissionary; as a man of zeal and piety he is not inferior to any of his day; and his name is imperishably connected with the progress of discovery in the west. This is a very high tribute; for the days of Father Allouez were those of scholarly and scientific men; numbering saints, martyrs, explorers and heroes; such indeed were his contemporaries, his brethren of l'ancien regime of the society of Jesus 92 HISTORIC MICHIGAN in North America. After thirteen years more of missionary work in Western fields the heroic career of this saintly man was ended. Associated with him at times on Michigan soil was Father Louis Andre, Society of Jesus, of whom Father Arthur Jones, Society of Jesus, of St. Mary's College, Montreal, writes: Father Louis Andre was born in i623, and previous to his coming to New France he had entered the Society of Jesus as a member of the Province of Toulouse. As a Canadian missionary he was within the jurisdiction of the Province of France. Father Andre reached Quebec on the 7th of June, i669. But a short time elapsed before he was sent to the Western Missions, where Claude Allouez, James Marquette, Claude Dablon, together with the coadjutor Brother Louis Le Boesme, were already toiling in the Master's vineyard. Andre's year of apprenticeship to a missionary life was made probably in part at St. Ignace, Michilimackinac and at the Baie des Puants. The winter was probably passed at the former. Fathers Andre and Druillettes were at Sault Ste. Marie in the spring of i67o. To enable the reader, writes Father Jones, to form an adequate idea of the hardships endured by Father Andre, and to obtain a graphic account of his apostolic labors, the Jesuit Relations themselves should be consulted, as therein the facts are given, often in his own words. In i67i Father Andre was again at Michilimackinac; from this year until i68i he worked during all seasons for the conversion of the Western nations. In i682 he rested from his continuous labors at Michilimackinac, but only for a year. The following year he was again on his missionary tours. He was a successful missionary wherever he worked. This was his last year's work in the Western Missions. He was now in his sixtieth year. The father superior at Quebec deemed it advisable to give him a permanent rest, and he was accordingly recalled to Quebec. He was named professor of philosophy in the Jesuits's College, and performed other literary work until i69o; in the meantime he had compiled his Algonquin and Ottawa dictionary, and had written other philological treaties. But this literary work did not satisfy the nature or the ambition of Father Andre. He was a passionate hunter for human souls. No sportsman in the pursuit of the wild game of the forest was so ardent as he was to convert from paganism an Indian and to regenerate his soul with the Sacraments of the Church. He laid aside his literary labors and with the crucifix in hand labored among the Indian tribes in what is now the Province of Quebec, and with great success. It was not, however, until I715 that he was called to his eternal reward at the age of 92. Father Philip Pierson succeeded Father Marquette in the control of the two missions at Michilimackinac, where he is credited with building a new chapel in 1674. Other missionaries laboring at the same locality were in succession: Fathers Charles Albanel and Claude Aveneau. A few years later we find the names of Fathers Bailloquet and Nouvel. There were subsequently the names of Fathers James J. Marest, and the veteran Iroquoian Missionary, Father Stephen de Carheil, who at the close of the seventeenth century were in charge of the missions at Michili JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 93 mackiTac. This locality during the last decade of this same century had become a trading post of such importance that the government of New France maintained a small garrison under charge of a commandant and it was dignified with the name of post. Its locality was such that trading expeditions on the way to or from Montreal, Three Rivers or Quebec, going or coming by the route via the Ottawa river, etc., tarried at Michilimackinac. The Ottawas domiciled in the vicinity, particularly on the island of Mackinac, were successful hunters; they usually returned from their periodical expeditions to their hunting fields with valuable packs of furs, which, annually, earlier in the century, they had carried for sale and barter to Three Rivers; their flotillas of bark canoes were of considerable extent, the Indians numbering occasionally as many as 400. Gradually, however, the number of French traders annually coming to Michilimackinac had increased to such an extent that the Indians found it no longer necessary to make the long and toilsome journey to the St. Lawrence; they found a home market at Michilimackinac; this was before the garrisons and commandants were sent to this locality. Before the advent of the latter the missionaries controlled the Indians and had maintained stringent rules excluding the traffic in eau de vie among the Ottawas. Moreover, Christianity had been fairly well established, while morality and sobriety prevailed. There was peace and happiness in the Indian cabins. When, however, the commandants and soldiers came to the post from Canada, a great change succeeded; both officers and men became traders. Heretofore Michilimackinac had been the locality of missionary centers, over whose people the missionary fathers exercised a paternal control. Outside of the Indian population the commandants had properly controlled the soldiers and employees of the post. But the commandant, his officers, his soldiers and his employees had become traders with the Indians; the principal article of their traffic was eau de vie, dealt in at first sub rosa, but later on openly and in cabarets. The protests of the missionaries were without result; for Governor General Frontenac's ear was closed to any Jesuit's appeal. Finally the Jesuits appealed to the Court of France, and with success. The traffic in eau de vie at Michilimackinac was suppressed. But the mischief it had wrought to the bodies and souls of the Indians of the respective missions may be estimated in part only by the letter from Father Stephen de Carheil, himself of noble blood, a veteran of the Iroquoian missions, and one of the holiest of the Jesuit priests who had devoted their lives to the conversion to Christianity of the Indians of North America. At the time this letter was written Father de Carheil was superior of the missions centering at Michilimackinac; it was an expose of affairs which was addressed to de Callieres, Governor General of New France. Among other Jesuits who had been associated, with Father de Carheil were Fathers Nicholas Potier and John B. Charndon; subsequently the depopulation had become so great at Michilimackinac and at the Island of Mackinac that Father de Carheil, in I706, abandoned the mission, burned the chapels and mission houses and returned to Quebec. But the government induced Father J. Marest, Society of Jesus, to re 94 HISTORIC MICHIGAN store the missions at Michilimackinac; the Ottawas who had been drawn to Detroit by Cadillac became dissatisfied to a considerable extent and many of them, with their families, returned to their former homes on the Island of Mackinac and to Michilimackinac. The Jesuit mission of St. Ignatius at this locality was reopened. In 1721 Father Charlevoix, Society of Jesus, as an envoy of the King of France, visited Detroit and the missions on Michigan soil in the west. These finally devolved to the care of the Jesuit Fathers, M. Louis Le Franc and Peter du Jaunay, with headquarters at Michilimackinac. One of the out missions occasionally visited by the latter was at Arbre Croche. We find his name as a visitor to Detroit at the Huron Mission in 1765. Both of these venerable missionaries passed to their eternal reward soon after the latter year. The names of the Jesuit fathers who labored on the soil of Michigan between the years I64I and 178I, with chronological approximation, may be stated as follows: Isaac Jogues, Charles Raymbault, Gabriel X. Drouillettes, Henry Nouvel, Peter A. Bonneault, Anthony Silvy, Rene Menard, Louis Nicholas, John Enjalran, Charles Albanal, Peter Bailloquet, Claude Dablon, Louis Andre, Claude Allouez, John B. Lamorinie, James Marquette, Philip Pierson, John B. Charndon, Stephen De Carheil, Marin L. Le Franc, James J. Marest, Armand de La Richardie, Peter Du Jaunay, Peter Potier, who was the last of the illustrious twenty-four, one of whom was martyred, others of whom lived the lives of saints, and others whose names have become immortal in the history of America. To these names might be added that of Father Charlevoix, Society of Jesus, who spent some time while engaged in spiritual work in 172I at Detroit, and later in western Michigan; as also that of Francis Vaillant de Gueslis, Society of Jesus, who came with Cadillac in 1701, but who was promptly recalled by the father superior of the Jesuits at Quebec. In the acknowledged high class histories of North America great praise has been written by nonCatholic writers on these saintly and scholarly priests for their missionary work among the Indian nations, and for their intrepid and extensive explorations of the western, the northwestern and the southwestern regions, which they first explored and scientifically described. FATHER MARQUETTE AT MICHILIMACKINAC2 By Hon. Edwin 0. Wood, LL.D Michigan History Magazine, II, 125-142 HE name of Jacques Marquette is one that will ever be associated with the history of Mackinac. One of a family of six children, he was born June I, 1637, in the "celebrated old hill town" of Laon, France. He came of a family which was prominent in the history of Laon a century before the discovery of America by Columbus and apparently his father's home was one of wealth as well as of distinction. From his mother he inherited that strong religious nature and from his father those qualities of the soldier which made him the successful soldier of the Cross in the wilds of the New World. JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 95 Educated in the Jesuit College at Nancy he early yearned for the life of the missionary and when not yet thirty years of age found himself at Quebec, in I666. By physique he was fitted for the school rather than the Indian mission, and the extreme hardships of forest life were to limit his work to only nine years. Until I668 Marquette studied the Indian languages, under the instruction of Father Druillettes. In that year he was appointed to the Ottawa country where, we are told, he "founded a mission on the southern side of the Sault Ste. Marie, the earliest in what is now the state of Michigan. Here he was joined by Father Dablon, and in September, I669, Marquette was sent to La Pointe to take the place of Allouez, who had other work to do."8 Marquette himself tells the story of his work at La Pointe, in a letter to the superior of the missions,4 and most significant for his later work are his words about the Illinois Indians and his desire to establish a mission among them. It had already been planned that he should do so as soon as he could be relieved at La Pointe and he therefore learned all he could about those people from the Indians who came to La Pointe. He says:6 "With this purpose in view, the Outaouaks gave me a young man who had lately come from the Illinois, and he furnished me the rudiments of the language, during the leisure allowed me by the savages at La Pointe in the course of the winter. One can scarcely understand it, although it is somewhat like the Algonquin; still, I hope by the Grace of God, to understand and be understood, if God in his goodness lead me to that country." That Marquette had clearly in mind the intention to explore a "great river" of which he had heard as flowing through the country of the Illinois, appears from his statement6 that "when the Illinois come to La Pointe, they cross a great river which is nearly a league in width, flows from north to south, and to such a distance that the Illinois, who do not know what a canoe is, have not yet heard any mention of its mouth. * * * It is hard to believe that that great river discharges its waters in Virginia, and we think rather that it has its mouth in California. If the savages who promise to make me a canoe do not break their word to me, we shall explore this river as far as we can, with a Frenchman and this young man who was given me, who knows something of those languages and has a faculty for learning the others. We shall visit the Nations dwelling there, in order to open the passage to such of our Fathers as have been awaiting this good fortune for so long a time. This discovery will give us full knowledge either of the South Sea or of the Western Sea." Disturbances ampng the Indians at La Pointe were soon to end the Mission there and bring about the founding of a new Mission at Michilimackinac. The Sioux, the "Iroquois of the North" as they are called by Dablon who gives an account of these troubles,7 were at war with all nations "in consequence of a general league formed against themselves as against a common foe." The Ottawas and Hurons at La Pointe became embroiled with them during Marquette's stay there. Murders were committed on both sides. Both Ottawas and Hurons 96. HISTORIC MICHIGAN concluded it would be safer to move than to risk battle, and began to migrate the following spring, the Ottawas to Manitoulin Island, and the Hurons to "that famous Island of Missilimackinac, where we last winter began the Mission of St. Ignace." Dablon explains:8 "Their purpose was to repair to that land where they had already dwelt in times past, and which they have reason to prefer to many others because of its attractions and also because its climate seems to be utterly different from that of the surrounding regions. For the winter there is rather short, not beginning until long after Christmas, and ending toward the middle of March, at which season we have witnessed here the new birth of spring." In the same report Fatber Dablon sets forth at length the attractions of the Island for the Indians and its advantages for a Mission.' "It is situated exactly in the strait connecting the Lake of the Hurons and that of the Illinois (Michigan) and forms the key and the door, so to speak, for all the peoples of the South, as does the Sault for those of the North; for in these regions there are only those two passages by water for very many nations, who must seek one or the other of the two if they wish to visit the French settlements. This circumstance makes it very easy both to instruct these poor people when they pass, and to gain ready access to their countries." The Indians were attracted to the Island waters especially by the abundance of fish. They regarded the place as being in a peculiar sense the home of the fish. "This spot is the most noted in all these regions for its abundance of fish," says Dablon, "since in savage parlance, this is its native country. No other place, however it may abound in fish, is properly its abode, which is only in the neighborhood of Missilimackinac." Indeed these waters contained fish not common to all the region: "besides the fish common to all the other Nations there are here found three kinds of trout; one, the common kind; the second, larger, being three feet in length and one in width; and the third, monstrous, for no other word expresses it. Now, they are so abundant that one man will pierce with his javelin as many as forty or fifty, under the ice, in three hours' time." These advantages had attracted to the Island and its vicinity most of the Indians of the region excepting those who had been dispersed by fear of the Iroquois. The Indians now at Green Bay had formerly lived on the mainland to the south of the Island. A part of the Indians now at the Sault had occupied lands to the west in the vicinity of the present city of.St. Ignace; "and the rest," says the Relation, "also regard that region as their country for passing the winter, during which there are no fish at the Sault." Dablon tells us that "the Hurons lived for some years on the Island itself, taking refuge from the Iroquois. Four villages of the Ottawas had also lived in these regions. But especially those who bore the name of the Island and were called Missilimackinac, were so numerous that some of them still living declare that they constituted thirty villages, and that they all intrenched themselves in a fort a league and a half in circumference, when the Iroquois elated at gaining JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 97 a victory over three thousand men of that Nation, came and defeated them." The abundance of fish and the excellence of the soil for Indian corn strongly attracted the Indians, for whom these were the chief articles of food. The return of the tribes to the Island and vicinity was in a real sense a home-coming. The Indians, "seeing the apparent stability of the peace with the Iroquois, are turning their eyes toward so advantageous a location as this, with the intention of returning hither, each to his own country, in imitation of those who have already made such a beginning on the Islands of Lake Huron." This happy circumstance tended to concentrate the Indians and make the vicinity of Mackinac Island a convenient center for missionary work. "The Lake, by this means," says Dablon, "will be peopled with nations almost from one end to the other-which would be very desirable for facilitating the instruction of these tribes, as we would not be obliged, in that case, to go in quest of them two and three hundred leagues on these great lakes, with inconceivable danger on our part." As we have seen, Dablon specifically states that "we" began a mission Qn Mackinac Island "last winter"; that is, the winter which Marquette spent at La Pointe, i670-7I, since Dablon is writing it i671. He now explains again that "to promote the execution of the plan announced to us by a number of savages, to settle this country anew,some of them having already passed the winter here, hunting in the neighborhood,-we have also wintered here, in order to form plans for the Mission of Saint Ignace, whence it will be very easy to gain access to all the Missions of Lake Huron when the nations shall have returned each to its own district." We get a glimpse of the work of this Mission on the Island even before the arrival of Marquette. Says Dablon:10 "We consecrated this new Festival by the Baptism of five children, conferring it with all the ceremonies of the Church in our chapel. God makes use even of children for the salvation of children. In the case of one of those whom we baptized, no sooner had it been born, in the heart of the forests, than all the other children, although hardly able to speak, could find no end to their congratulations, and rejoiced with it, one telling it again and again that it would be baptized at Michilimackinac, as it really was." It the spring of i67I Marquette left La Pointe to follow his Indians. On the way he stopped at the Sault, where he spent a little time with his old instructor Druillettes, now in charge there. On leaving the Sault, Marquette went either to Mackinac Island or to Point St. Ignace. "It has been held by some historians," says Dr. Thwaites," "that St. Ignace Mission was always located upon the mainland, to the north of the Island, where is now the little city of St. Ignace, Michigan, which contains a monument erected on the supposed site of the old chapel. That the Mission was first upon the Island and probably within the present village of Mackinac, a careful reading of the Relations should convince any one. That it was afterward moved to the mainland, to the St. Ignace of today, there can be no reasonable doubt. It is reason1-5 98 HISTORIC MICHIGAN able to suppose that the removal took place in the year after Marquette's arrival. * * * Quite likely the island, at first resorted to because of its safety from attack by foes, was found too small for the villages and fields of the Indians who now centered here in large numbers; and, moreover, was found difficult of approach in time of summer storms, or when the ice was weak in spring and early winter. The long continuance of peace with the Iroquois removed for the time all danger from that quarter, and events proved that they had made their last attack upon the tribesmen of these far western waters." According to the same authority, "it was probably midsummer when Marquette and his Hurons, after slowly threading their way between the forest-clad islets which stud the northwest shore of Lake Huron, finally arrived at the Island of Michilimackinac." Referring to the Island in Marquette's day, Dr. Thwaites says:12 "Mackinac Island is a beauty spot today. * * * But in the days of good Father Marquette, Michilimackinac was indeed an early paradise. The sky hereabout was unusually clear; light breezes, wafting over the wide waters, brought relief in the warmest days; the air was freighted with the odor of the balsam; the Island was heavily wooded, chiefly with cedars, beeches, oaks, and maples, presenting a pleasing variety of form and color, when seen from the highest bluffs, which, rising over three hundred feet above the straits, gave to the missionary a farreaching view of land and water almost incomparable." "Eastward, but over the edge of the horizon, his Ottawa friends were encamped upon the Great Manitoulin Island, with Father Andre as their priestly counselor. Northeastward, a long and tortuous journey by canoe, but only fifty miles away i'n a bee-line over the tops of the trees, he could from his vantage-point almost see the Sault, where he had lately left Father Druillettes at his hopeless but beloved task. But to the west no doubt his eyes most often wandered. Over the waters of Lake Michigan he saw in fancy rise the land of the Winnebagoes, the Potawatomies, and the Mascoutins; the land where Father Allouez, whom he had succeeded at La Pointe, was still laboring for the salvation of the forest clans; the land where flowed the Mississippi, upon whose banks he hoped to discover new nations to whom might be told the fruitful story of the Cross." Dr. Shea does not seem to take the view of Marquette's sojourn on the island, though admitting that a mission was "already in a manner begun" on the Island the year before Marquette came. Curiously, he uses the word "Mackinaw" to cover Point St. Ignace. "Mackinaw," he says,13 "where they (the Hurons) now rested, was a point of land almost encompassed by wind-tossed lakes. Stationed in this new spot, Father Marquette's first care was to raise a chapel. Such was the origin of the Mission of St. Ignatius, or Michilimackinac, already in a manner begun the previous year by missionary labors on the island of that name." Winsor places Marquette in I67'1 "among the Hurons on the north shore of the Straits of Mackinac, where they had stopped in their flight, and here Marquette founded the Mission of St. Ignace." JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 99 Father Christian Le Clerq, a Recollet, writing about I69I, speaks of the Mission "of Michilimackinac Island";15 on which Dr. Shea comments: "The Mission was not on the Island but on the north shore," and cites Hennepin's "clear and explicit" statement about his arrival at "Missilimackinac" in I679, that "Missilimackinac is a point of land at the entrance and north side of the strait."'6 In the careful words of Judge Edward O. Brown:17 "It is impossible to tell with absolute certainty even on the closest investigation, whether it was on the Island of Mackinac, or on the mainland, known now as Point St. Ignace, that Father Marquette and his Indian flock first established themselves. It may have well been that the rendezvous was made on the island, but that it was intended from the first that the permanent settlement would be on the mainland, where communication with other points would not be at times altogether cut off by waters too stormy for the canoes, which were their only craft, to venture upon. In 1672, at all events, a settlement had been made at the present site of St. Ignace,-a chapel had been built surrounded by the cabins of the Indians, and the whole village enclosed within a stockade for better protection against enemies." We have no account of Marquette's work during his first year at Mackinac, but of his second year we possess detailed knowledge in a letter written by Marquette himself in 1672 to Father Dablon.l8 He makes no mention of having changed the location of an original Mission. It is clear from his letter that Marquette and his Mission were meeting with a promising degree of success. The Hurons "began last year (1671) a fort, enclosing all their cabins." They had come regularly to prayers and listened attentively to Marquette's instructions. "Having been obliged," he says,l9 "to go to St. Marie du Sault with Father Allouez last summer, the Hurons came to the chapel during my absence as regularly as if I had been there, the girls singing what prayers they knew. They counted the days of my absence, and constantly asked when I was to be back; I was absent only fourteen days, and on my arrival all assembled to chapel, some coming even from the fields, which are at a very considerable distance." In his opinion the minds of the Hurons at this Mission "are now more mild, tractable, and better disposed to received instructions, than in any other part." Nevertheless, he hints to his Father Superior the great ambition that lay closest to his heart; "I am ready, however," he says, "to leave it in the hands of another missionary, to go on your order to seek new nations toward the South Sea, who are still unknown to us, and to teach them of our great God whom they have hitherto not known." From the pen of a well-known writer20 on Mackinac we have the following graceful tribute to Marquette at this stage of his work when about to set out upon his great voyage of discovery. "One bright summer day we (the writer and her party) sailed to Point St. Ignace, where the little church, with its spire cross, keeps watch over the Indian village. Many points of this new continent of ours possess historic interest, but few of our busy people are aware 100 HISTORIC MICHIGAN that around Point St. Ignatius, in the Straits of Mackinac, cluster ancient traditions and legends worthy to be crystallized into enduring fame by the poet's pen and the painter's brush. When the stern Puritans were enforcing their doctrnes on the barren shores of New England, and protecting themselves carefully in little villages on the edge of the great wilderness, never dreaming of penetrating its depths, the French missionaries were following the courses of the western rivers, and planting the cross of Christ a thousand miles towards the setting sun. "In the year I670, the celebrated Pere Marquette, advancing westward through the wilderness, carrying the good tidings of salvation to the red men, entered the Straits of Mackinac through the western gateway, and beached his canoe at the old Indian town, on what was then called Iroquois Point. Here he planted the cross, and rested some days among the friendly Indians, who listened with curiosity to the tidings that a Savior was born for them afar off towards the rising sun,-a Savior who gave up His life on the cross that they might be saved, to meet him in the land of good spirits beyond the clouds. "The woods on both sides of the Straits, and the Islands lying between the gates, were filled at this time with Indian villages, for game was abundant, and the deep water around Fairy Island was called the 'home of the fishes.' Day after day the canoes assembled at Iroquois Point, and the young missionary saw his congregation grow, as, standing by the rude cross, he preached to them the glad tidings of great joy. "Encouraged by his success, Pere Marquette erected here a log chapel; and soon the sound of a little bell echoed through the forest, calling the new-made converts to their devotions. Earnestly devoted to his work, speaking no less than nine different Indian tongues, fiery in his eloquence and warm-hearted in his love, is it any wonder that Marquette became the idol of the red men who thronged his chapel, learned his prayers, and, kneeling on the beach, received the sacred symbol of salvation upon their dark foreheads in the sparkling waters of the beautiful Straits. "The next year, Marquette and his companions erected a college within the enclosure, the first institution of the kind west of New England. Here he gathered the children together, and instructed them in the truths of religion, hoping thus to reach the hearts of the fierce warriors, who, adorned with reeking scalps, assembled to hear the words of peace. "In 1672, while Marquette was thus engrossed with his dusky converts, he was called upon to join an expedition through the far West, in company with Joliet, another member of that self-sacrificing band of Jesuit missionaries whose adventures outshine the wildest pages of romance. Their object was to explore the course of the Mississippi river, then supposed to flow into the Gulf of California; and, with that implicit obedience which rules the Order, Marquette prepared to leave his resting place and move onward through the pathless forest. On a bright May morning, the boats containing the missionaries were started down the Straits towards the western gateway, accompanied by a JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 101 numerous flotilla of canoes filled with sorrowing Indians. It is recorded that Pere Marquette sat shading his eyes with his hand, looking back earnestly at the little chapel of St. Ignatius, which he was never more to see."2' "At the western gateway, Marquette arose in his canoe, and, extending his arms over the water, gave a parting benediction to the silent Indians, who sat motionless until the last boat had disappeared into Lake Michigan, and then returned sorrowing to their island homes." Marquette had been appointed by Father Dablon to accompany Louis Joliet, whom Talon, the Intendant of New France, had recommended to Governor Frontenac as "a suitable agent for the discovery of the Mississippi." Joliet, eight years younger than Marquette, was born at Quebec, the son of a wagon maker. He early resolved to be a priest, but became a fur-trader. We have seen him, in i669, on his journey to the copper mines of Lake Superior and on the Straits newly discovered by him between lakes Huron and Erie. He was a warm friend of the Jesuits. On December 8, i672, "the intrepid explorer beached his craft upon the strand of Point St. Ignace, and, embracing his priestly friend, placed within his eager hands the fateful message which was to link their names upon a page of history." The Relation says of this voyage that "they had frequently agreed upon it together."22 Joliet was at Michilimackinac all that winter, and together they sought all the information it was possible to obtain about the new countries they were to visit. Of these two friends at the Mission of St. Ignatius, Dr. Thwaites has given us a pleasing picture.23 "Marquette," he says, "was of a gentle, joyous disposition, ever looking upon the bright side of life, and burned with that zeal which has through all time inspired the martyrs of religious faith; to him no experiences could be distasteful that were endured for the glory of the church. Joliet appears likewise to have been imbued with youthful enthusiasm, and was strongly in sympathy with the aspirations of his missionary comrade; but, as a man of the world, he carefully calculated the means employed, and whereas Marquette sought merely to widen the realms of Christianity, he in his turn was mindful of fame and of official preferment in case the exploration were successful. Together, they completely represented the buoyant, vigorous spirit of their time-Marquette, the idealist, but thirty-six years of age; and Joliet, the man of affairs, aged twenty-eight." Were it our purpose to sketch the larger subject of western discovery and exploration, we would now follow these friends and their companions to the Mississippi, where, gazing rapturously upon the great river, Marquette experienced, as he says, "a joy that I cannot express."24 They explored the river to some distance below the mouth of the Arkansas, satisfying themselves that it emptied not into a western sea but into the Gulf of Mexico. In a little more than four months they had paddled their canoes over two thousand miles, met numerous strange tribes and mapped and described their dis'coveries. Joliet returned to Montreal, but on the way his canoe was upset, causing the loss of all 102 HISTORIC MICHIGAN his manuscripts of the voyage. This left Marquette to be practically the sole narrator and in the popular mind long the hero of the expedition. Marquette after recovering from a serious illness set out again, but in 1675, worn out with his great exertions, death overtook him while he was trying to reach his Mission at Michilimackinac. "Feeling the approach of death," says the writer above quoted,25 "the dying man's thoughts turned to his little chapel in the Straits, and he expressed a wish to rest under its walls, where the shadow of the cross he had raised might fall upon him. Loving hands carried him to the canoe, and all speed was made toward the Straits; but death overtook them, and the patient eyes closed without again beholding the beloved cross of St. Ignatius. They buried him on the banks of the river, which still bears his name; but when the Indians of the Straits heard of his last wishes, they assembled a vast fleet of canoes, and paddled swiftly down the lake after the body of their good father. On reaching the river, they inclosed the simple coffin in robes of choice furs and beadwork, and then, in solemn procession, they turned back toward the Straits, joined ever and anon by delegations from other tribes, all pressing to do honor to the holy man. As the flotilla entered the sunset gate, it was met by all the island Indians; and as they neared Point St. Ignatius, the missionaries in charge came down to the beach, clad in their vestments, and singing the funeral chant, while the coffin was silently borne ashore on the very spot which the good father's foot had first pressed five years before." It was not however until after many years that the document containing this information came to the knowledge of scholars. Over a century later, in 1821, Father Richard visited what he supposed to be the resting place of Marquette, on the northern shore of Lake Michigan, near Ludington, where Marquette had died in I675.26 Not until more than half a century after Richard's visit was Marquette's real resting place found. The story of this discovery is closely connected with the discussion about the situation of Marquette's chapel, whether on Mackinac Island or at Point St. Ignace. As told by Father Hedges in his book on Father Marquette:27 "Mr. Murray (of St. Ignace) being determined to add a large garden plot to his yard, began to clear away the trees and brushwood adjoining his home. When the work had been completed, there appeared, to his great astonishment, the outlines of a building foundation. Mr. Murray was a devout Catholic and knew the history of the region, and was fully cognizant of the traditions of St. Ignace concerning Marquette and the old Mission of St. Ignace. Divining that he had struck on some relic of importance connected with the old Mission, he sent for Father Jacker, and together they made a careful investigation. Both being satisfied that they had actually discovered the site of the old Mission, Mr. Murray, at Father Jacker's request, left the clearing undisturbed, till documents and information could be obtained from Montreal and elsewhere to fully establish their surmise as a fact; then was set on foot a systematic and scientific investigation, the outcome of which was to establish beyond a doubt the fact that they had not only JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 103 discovered the site of the old Mission of St. Ignace, but also Marquette's grave, the very box in which his bones had rested, and portions of the bones themselves. In course of time all that was found of Marquette's remains, save two portions of bone which belonged to ah arm which were given to Marquette College at Milwaukee and are there lovingly and piously preserved by the Jesuit Fathers, was interred in the very grave from which they were taken, and in the year 1882, the citizens of St. Ignace erected a modest monument to mark the spot." On September I, 1909, was unveiled the Marquette Statue on Mackinac Island. It is fitting to quote here the closing words of the address delivered by Mr. Justice William R. Day of the Supreme Court of the United States, on that occasion: "Upon the statue which marks Wisconsin's tribute, in the old Hall of the House at Washington, are inscribed these words: 'James Marquette, who with Louis Joliet discovered the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, July 17, I673.' Were we to write his epitaph today, we might take the simple words, which at his own request mark the last resting place of a great American, and write upon this enduring granite the summary of Marquette's life and character,'He was Faithful.'" In the words of Rev. T. J. Campbell, S. J.:28 "The name of Marquette will ever be venerated in America. You meet it everywhere. There is a city named after him, and a county, and a township, and a river, and several villages, in-Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas and Nebraska. His Jesuit brethren of the twentieth century have built a Marquette University in Milwaukee, which rejoices in the possession of some of the relics that were given to it when the grave was opened at Pointe St. Ignace." It would be well for the youth of today to ponder well the fact that with all his great achievements, Marquette, at the time of his death, was only thirty-eight years old.29 VII CADILLAC By Bert Klopfer ORD BACON, in his discourse on the marshaling of the degrees L of honor, gives first place to the founders of states and cities; and this honor we must accord to that outstanding Frenchman of the seventeenth century, Cadillac, who founded Detroit, declares Alfred Russell in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXIX.1 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries France was a great colonial power. The history of New France, or Canada, is replete with daring exploits, unequaled endurance, foresight and self-sacrificing effort on the part of the missionaries of the cross. After the capitulation of Montreal in 1763, when the flag of the lilies ceased to float in America except for a brief period later in Louisiana, the English province of Quebec was created by act of parliament of 1774. No Frenchmen or married or unmarried soldiers were to be transported to English colonies or Old England and none was to be molested for bearing arms. English law was not introduced until 1792 and French common law was not abolished in Michigan until I8Io. Cadillac was sent to Montreal as commandant in I694. He selected the site of Detroit as the best and most advantageous for the location of a town and Paris so commissioned him in I700. Peace made with the Iroquois, a route was established around Niagara Falls for journeys between Montreal and Detroit. La Salle had launched a vessel at Buffalo as early as I679 and Cadillac in an early report recommended the building of a canal around the falls, a project finally realized in the nineteenth century in the Welland canal. C. M. Burton states that Cadillac resided in Quebec a short time in I684; in Port Royal, Nova Scotia; on Mt. Desert Island, on the coast of Maine, and that he owned the site of Bar Harbor, the fashionable water place and summer resort of the present day. He left Lachine, near Montreal, June 5, I70o, came up the Ottawa river and reached French river, emptying into Lake Huron. He then sailed down the St. Clair river and Lake St. Clair to Belle Isle, in the Detroit river. His party was made up of a hundred whites, in 25 large boats, 26 by 6 feet, according to Mr. Russell, and laid the foundation of the post of Detroit, July 24, I701. It is said that Belle Isle reminded Cadillac of the island in the Seine where Paris was founded and that this led him to fix the site of the post here. Upon his arrival, after the celebration of mass, the banner of France was raised and possession taken in the name of Louis XIV. A contingent of Algonquins accompanied the party in canoes. King Louis and William III. of England were then at war and the British were negotiating with the Indians for the site of Detroit, but were outwitted by Cadillac. The post as laid out was CADILLAC 105 between Griswold, Wayne, West Larned and Jefferson and heavy palisades enclosed this strip of ground. A church was set up at the corner of Griswold and Jefferson. Cadillac made conveyances of lots on condition of occupancy and the payment of an annual sum for public revenue. A public windmill for the grinding of corn and wheat was built and certain exclusive rights of trading, blacksmithing, etc., were sold. The Campaus, Chenes, Chapatons and St. Aubins appeared among the list of grantees. The houses were made of split rails and stakes filled in with mortar and mud. Each proprietor cultivated about half an acre. The people were soldiers, farmers, mechanics and hunters. Cattle and horses were imported and so were liquors and in I706 a brewer was brought from Montreal to establish a brewery. In 17IO Cadillac received appointment as governor of Louisiana and left Detroit forever, but his impress will remain for all time. Cadillac is supposed to have been born in i66i in the province of Gascony, France, and to have been educated for the priesthood, but he entered the army at an early age and in i683 came to America. Arriving in Annapolis in Nova Scotia, he fell in with a privateersman and navigated the coast of the present United States and in i69i gave a report to French navigators of the dangers of Hellgate in New York harbor. He reported to Paris his opinions of the best method of attacking the British, much to the satisfaction of the king. He was created a lieutenant, married in Quebec in i687 and received a large grant of land along the Maine coast. In i693 he was advanced to captain in the army and ensign in the navy, enjoyed the confidence of Frontenac, governor of New France, and was appointed commandant at Mackinac, serving five years, during which he was constantly embroiled with the Jesuits, whom he disliked. Cadillac thought it necessary to furnish liquor to the soldiers and Indians, who would otherwise get it from the British. This view was opposed by the priests. In i698 he resigned his place in Mackinac, went to France to present his plan for founding Detroit and after fulfilling his mission there and serving the governorship of Louisiana, returned to France in I7I7 and was appointed governor of a post in France, which he retained until his death a short time later. C. M. Burton relates a visit to the birthplace of Cadillac in the winter of i906-7, in "Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collection," XXXVIII. The record of his marriage in Quebec in i687 to Marie Therese Guyon, gives his full name as Antoine de LaMothe de Cadillac, son of Jean de LaMothe and of Jeanne de Malenfant. It was in the neighborhood of Montauban that Cadillac was born and spent his early youth, a section imbued with the principles of religious freedom. Montauban is a very old city, founded in the twelfth century, and was one of the strongholds of the Albigeneses, the French Protestants. Notwithstanding its subjugation to the powers of the Catholic church, a few years before the birth of Cadillac, it contained a great following of religious reformers. In I904 a tablet was placed at the birthplace of the great Frenchman in the village of Saint Nico 106 HISTORIC MICHIGAN las de LaGrave. The house in which he was born is a one-story brick, now more than 500 years old. In 1907 the old home was the property of Louis Ayral, a Paris lawyer, and was occupied by his mother. Cadillac died in 1730 in Castelsarrasin, a town of about 8,o00 inhabitants, twelve miles from Montauban. He became governor of the place in 1722. The castle, which was his home there, was destroyed many years ago and its site is a public park. VIII THE FUR TRADE TIE EARLY FUR TRADE IN NORTH AMERICA By Rev. Meade C. Williams Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXV, 58-73 T is interesting to think of the progressive series of industries, as pertaining to the welfare of man, in connection with the vast stretches of land in our new America. And first of all came the hunting and trapping of the wild animals of the wilderness. As. Prof. Shaler has written, "With the first steps upward, and ever in increas ing measure as he mounts towards civilization, man becomes a spoiler." The flesh of the animal.served the aborigines of the forest for food, and their skins for clothing. But the Indians' operations of this kind were but a slight and insignificant prelude to what developed with the coming of the whites, particularly in our northern and western frontiers. With their advent the great fur trade began. The forests and the soil of these millions of acres were of importance only as being the lairs and roaming grounds of those fur-bearing creatures, large and small, which for nearly two centuries made a great element in the world's commerce. Only the slightest part of the immense captures was used for food, as the sole object sought was to obtain the skins of the animals. For these great companies organized and wrought and developed into well-nigh imperial power in the wilderness tracts. Following this era, the forests themselves, so long the homes of the animals and the scene of their slaughter, became a most valuable element in our western settlements by the development of the lumber trade, connecting with human habitations and a higher form of social life. Then the soil itself, which for centuries had been covered by the dense forests, served another end in the interest of man by its trees giving way to the plow. The last form of industrial development in connection with the land has to do with "the earth beneath." The fur-bearing animals to a great extent gone, the forests largely a thing of the past, the surface of the earth occupied and tilled, the enterprise of man delves below and brings up the long hidden treasures of ore, coal and oil, which prove such mighty factors in modern civilization. But the fur trade was the pioneer industry in North America. Its agents penetrated the primeval wilderness in the name of commerce, and in this sense were the precursors of civilization. They made distant and perilous journeys, and were often the first to reveal some solitary river or lake or new stretch of land. Their camps and petty forts became the outposts of colonizers, and to them is largely due the earlier opening to the civilized world of the unknown and inhospitable "regions beyond." The history of the fur trade is thus the 108 HISTORIC MICHIGAN history of exploration and occupation, with its own heroes and adventures and annals. By stimulating hunting and turning it into a sort of forest labor it served to create an industry among the Indians, though at the same time it diminished the animals upon which the tribes depended for subsistence and, most unfortunately, introduced among them the evil of ardent spirits. The countries of Europe, together with our seaboard states, were the market fields, and from the whole vast regions of our northwest, where now go the cargoes of grain and of ore, there then "went east," in the line of commerce, only the packs of peltry. It was largely the pressing question "wherewithal shall we be clothed," and how shall we adorn and bedeck our bodies, that sent the hardy trappers and the keen traders out into the great wildernesses, and which organized the great fur companies. Civilized society wanted caps, hats, muffs, robes, boas, capes, collars, gloves, coatlinings, cloaks, etc. As the early Indian, when he would build his canoe, went into the woods and stripped the birch tree of its bark, so to the animal denizens of the native wilds came man's imperious demand, stand and deliver! Give us your furry coverings! The bear, the beaver, the lynx, the fox, the buffalo, the seal, etc., must be waylaid and beaten and stripped, like the traveler in the parable going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, that their clothing may be transferred to other backs. In the enterprise of man the skins of wild animals thus became the luxury and the ornament, as well as the comfort of the fashionable and the wealthy. Valuable and luxuriously dressed skins were often the belonging of kings' houses, and took rank with their gems and jewels. How few, as they go gorgeously arrayed in their beautiful trappings of fur, stop to think of the tales of travel and adventure and toil and difficulty, and of cruelty, too, which might be recounted in connection with these soft, glossy, luxurious articles of adornment. They have come from hidden wildernesses, from Arctic seas, from lands of perpetual snow, from the jungles of Africa. What distances they have traveled, what hands they have passed through, what processes, what barterings, what marts of trade! And the skins of the poor doomed creatures have played a part in the pages of history, too, and their lairs and roaming grounds as national territory, have figured in negotiations and boundary lines, and in the jealousies and strifes, and sometimes in the wars of empires.l The animals that were hunted for their furs were principally the following: Beaver, marten, fox, lynx, mink, otter, badger, wolf, bear. buffalo, deer, muskrat, raccoon and skunk. They were taken in astonishingly large numbers. Sir Alexander Mackenzie.2 writing concerning the fur trade in the British possessions of the northwest, and speaking only for the one company which he represented (The Northwestern), reported for one year the number of furred animals taken as 182,ooo, of which 1o6,ooo were beavers. Of the choicer and favorite skins the beavers fell victims in the largest numbers. In one statement of fur collections for a single year in American territory, I saw the aggregate of beaver skins put at 200,000, the marten leading close THE FUR TRADE 109 at I30,000. The muskrat, however, the smaller but far less valuable animal, led all the others in the American collections, in the point of mere numbers. But the beaver always figured chief as a commodity in the fur business. And it is remarkable how that animal became associated with the early life of our western country. The industry, the thrift and the astonishing instinct, quite resembling the trained mechanical skill of man, which this little creature exhibited in the construction of his houses and dams and canals, ever made him an object of interest to the early Indians and to the white pioneer settlers. He has impressed his name upon the geography of our west to a large degree-Beaver river, Beaver dam, Beaver lake, Beaver islands, etc. The skins of the fur-bearing animals set the Indians up in business, so to speak. They would also sell wild rice, ready-made canoes, or canoe bark, gum and maple sugar, but it was the skins chiefly which made their stock in trade. The white traders, on the other hand, carried in their packs, and set forth in dazzling attraction before the eyes of these children of the forest, such varieties of goods as these: Guns, powder, bullets, tomahawks, knives, wampum, blankets, cloths, calico, ribbons, beads, looking-glasses, sashes, combs, finger rings, earbobs, playing-cards, kettles, beaver traps, muskrat traps, etc.3 The significance of the designation "traders" is seen when we think of this work conducted by campers in the forests and on the remote river banks, far beyond the confines of civilization and social customs, and outside the methods and system of what is known as business and commercial life. These men were not called merchants, or dealers even. But it was a commerce among Indians known as trading, in which animal skins were traded off in exchange for manufactured goods. It was a reproduction, in this sense, of the methods in vogue in the earliest and most primitive periods of human history, before money, as a medium of exchange, was known. It might have been difficult to tell which party was purchaser and which was seller. No money, either coin or banknote, seemed to pass away out in those wilderness markets. The Indian had none, and the white trader needed none for his operations. It was simply trading-that is, an interchange of commodities. The Indian by his hunting and trapping had his stock of skins which the white visitor wanted, and the visitor on the other hand, like a roving peddler, had a variety of commodities which the Indian wanted. Hence they just made a trade. While, no doubt, in the first stages this trading was conducted on no fixed system, and the white man overreached and defrauded the poor Indian, yet in time things got on a settled basis, and a regular schedule of values and equivalents was adjusted as between muskrats, beaver-skins, bearskins, etc., on the one side, and guns, calicoes, blankets, etc., on the other side. I find the following quotations: In the "twenties" of the last century, on the upper Mississippi where the muskrat was the unit or standard of value, the prevailing rates of exchange were: 110 HISTORIC MICHIGAN A 3-point blanket.............................................................. 50 m uskrats A 2$2-point blanket......................................................... 40 " A M ontreal gun.................................................................. Ioo " A beaver-trap...................................................................... 30 " A rat-trap.......................5................ 5 In other localities, the beaver was the unit of value, and Mr. Henry R. Schoolcraft thus reports the market prices in the neighborhood of the "Soo": A 3-point blanket.................................................. 2 beaverskins A N orthw est gun................................................. 4 " A beaver-trap............................................................ 2 A fathom (2 yds.) of superfine cloth 3 or 4 " A bag of flour................... 2 " Further market quotations he gave as follows in his book, A Narrative of an Expedition.Through the Upper Mississippi. A prime beaver (or plus as the French termed it) went in exchange for as much vermillion as would cover the point of a case-knife, and the same price was paid respectively for four charges of powder or four charges of shot or fifteen balls or two branches of wampum. A fine gun worth ten guineas, was sold to a chief for I20 pounds of beaver-say $480. A keg of rum was sold at thirty beavers, and he says the rum generally had chief place in their list of wants so that when they came together to trade the Indians would first and foremost lay out the furs they intended as purchase for their liquor. Thomas Biddle wrote thus in sad testimony: "So violent is the attachment of the Indians for whiskey that he who gives the most is sure to obtain the furs, and if anyone attempts to trade without it he is sure of losing ground with his rival." Of course, at times, and at certain trading posts nearer the centers of business, furs were also purchased for money and were bought by weight. In the copy volumes of the American Fur company's correspondence, now kept as relics in the John Jacob Astor hotel on Mackinac Island, I find the following quotations as given in 182o by Ramsey Crooks, the great manager of that company: "Beaver at four dollars (per lb.) is high, but rather than lose I would give that. Good rats (muskrats), twenty-five cents. Bears are worse than ever and ought not to cost more than two dollars and fifty cents for five. Cubs, one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents. Martens, seventy-five cents. Raccoon, thirty-seven and one-half cents. Fisher, one dollar. Lynx, one dollar and fifty cents to two dollars. Common wild-cat, thirty-three and one-third cents. Deer not over twenty-five cents per pound for those in season; their winter skins won't pay charges. Mink, twenty-five cents. Silver fox, four dollars. Very best otter not over four dollars." As an indication of the profits which sometimes attended the company's operations, Mr. Crooks reports in a letter from New York the next year that half the muskrats sold there at forty cents and the other half at forty-eight cents. There must have been just then a special THE FUR TRADE 111 demand for that class of skins which advanced the price, as in the following year, namely in 1822, we find them paying at Mackinac for muskrats thirty-five and thirty-seven and one-half cents. Of course, prices fluctuated, and in 1830 we find the prices at Mackinac had advanced to five dollars per pound for beaver, and the martens were bringing one dollar and twenty-five cents instead of seventy-five cents, as formerly, while muskrats had declined to twenty-two cents. The Indians at the earlier stages, at least, of the trade, had little thought of the value of furs. They hunted, not for sport, nor for commerce, but for food, subsisting on the flesh. The skins of the animals were secondary and the traders often bought them for a trifling consideration, made them into articles of commerce and sold them at valuations a hundredfold beyond the purchase price. As Colonel Whittlesy, once commandant at Fort Mackinac, said of that spot, "It was the neutral ground of the Indians who came from beyond the Mississippi to get goods, presents and whiskey, and the harvest ground of the white man who took furs for a penny and sold them to his brother or sister for a pound." (Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. I, p. 66.) I myself recall what I used to hear, when a young boy, of tales which tradition had brought down of the "tricks of trade" from early Indian times-that in selling cloth to these "babes of the wood," traders had been known to run the yard stick over both sides of the material and thus get double the number of yards out of each piece sold. Very likely this and many other such tales were caricatures and exaggerations. But at the same time there is too much reason'to believe that the poor Indian was an "easy mark" for the trader. Besides his ignorance of the value in which his commodities were held in the distant marts of trade, his simple and untutored mind made the victimizing still easier. I always think, with the deepest respect and admiration, of what is related of the Rev. Mr. Dougherty, a missionary among the Indians in the Grand Traverse region of Michigan, that when any of his people would go to Mackinac Island in the annual gatherings there for the annuities and for trade, he would go along and would pitch his tent among them during their stay, not only to guard their morals, but to protect and assist them in their dealings with the traders. (An interesting sketch of this missionary to the Indians in upper Michigan is given in Vol. XXXII of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections.) But it would be unfair to ignore the traders' side of this question or to forget, that after the fur commerce got into systematized and business-like forms, it was not all blackness and rascality by any means. General Lewis Cass, in a report to United States Senator Benton in 1828, said: "The average profits of the fur trade are not in proportion to the enterprise and skill required and the risk attending it." And he adds, "We believe it is generally conducted upon as fair principle as other branches of business in the United States, and we know many of the persons engaged in it who are honorable, intelligent men." John Jacob Astor called attention to the fact that the kind of blankets and other woven goods which they sold to the Indians could not be made in this country, but had to be imported from Eng 112 HISTORIC MICHIGAN land, and were articles which had to pay the heaviest tariff duty. And he said (writing in I829) that the American Fur company was employing a capital of one million dollars, and had not yet been able to declare a dividend. Of course, too, we must bear in mind the great cost necessarily incurred in conducting a business of this kind in distant wildernesses and under the conditions of those early days. From an official report written at St. Louis and made to General William Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs, I find it stated that while the goods exchanged (in face value) would give the trader a profit on the primary cost, say from 200 to 2,000 per cent, yet the real profits fell far short of even the minimum estimate, owing to the heavy expense. The trader, besides employing the hands necessary, in most instances has to have two or three times that number as protection to himself and his property. That this makes it necessary to sell at much higher rates while bringing no advantage to the trader. Then again loss by the bad debts of the Indians used to be urged by the fur companies-one firm in St. Louis, in I83I, reporting that for the seven years preceding, their credits to the Indians had amounted to $I36,768.62 of which they had been able in that time to collect but $83,498.74. It was said in reference to Indian debts in general, that what was collected was at great cost, and that a large margin must always be allowed for uncollectable ones. That credits due from Indians if not paid the first year were to be considered doubtful, and after the end of the second year desperate. Then further it used to be pointed out that a certain class of goods which they carried in stock were for gratuitous distribution to the Indians, such as: Flints, fire-steels, gun-worms, awls, needles, thimbles, thread, tobacco, etc. A minor consideration, but one which it may be interesting to think about, was that the value of certain of the.finer furs was made variable, and depressed on the market, by reason of the fickleness of fashion. That all the animals which have the most beautiful fur were not exterminated is due to the sudden and unaccountable changes of fashion. The demand ceasing for a while, and the animals spared, they had opportunity to recover their status as to numbers. It is said that the fashion of wearing the tall beaver hat beginning to change and the silk hat taking its place, thus greatly reducing the demand for beaver skins, had something to do with the declining fortunes of the American Fur company. Some trustworthy data of the early fur trade in the northwest and throughout the Lake Superior country are furnished us by Mr. Schoolcraft, at the time he was living at Sault Ste. Marie, about I830. He is speaking of the American Fur company and of the operators who went out annually from Mackinac island, which was the company's headquarters, into those great northern wildernesses. He says each clerk or factor, had his territory and post assigned before starting and no interference of one with another was allowed. That the goods were transported in boats to the posts on Lake Superior. The traders going farther, left their boats at the mouth of the principal rivers and THE FUR TRADE 113 divided the freight into separate portions which were then put into smaller canoes and managed by the boatmen with paddles and poles. When they reached the head of the river the goods were carried across the country to the next navigable stream or interior lake, and so on from stream to stream and lake to lake until they placed the trade on wintering grounds. In this way the most remote parts of the interior were penetrated, and every principal Indian village was supplied with a trader. Goods were thus pushed to the northwestern range of our national limits where they came into contact with the traders of the Hudson Bay company. The distance thus traversed in this toilsome manner from Mackinac island, carrying goods there and returning with furs, was estimated, he tells us, at nearly I,200 miles. While fur-trading in America was followed to some extent in the early days of the Dutch in New York, its magnitude of operations, its longer continuance, its relation to governments, to boundary lines and to civilization, and its romance withal, belong rather to the business as conducted in the western half of North America-more particularly in the northern and northwestern parts. From the earliest settlement of the French in Canada, the fur trade ranked as of first importance. "Beaver skins were the life of New France," it was said. But the greatest development of the fur-seeking enterprises on this continent was that of the famous Hudson Bay company-a company chartered in England by King Charles II in i670, for the purpose of importing furs and skins into Great Britain. The grant of territory given for their operations was construed to be all the immense tracts of land watered by streams flowing into Hudson's bay.. And with that was given them besides, the complete lordship and entire legislative power, judicial and executive, within those limits. This gigantic enterprise, conducted in far-away, uninhabited and almost unknown territory in regions of England's North American possessions, awakened the excitement, the enthusiasm, the spirit of daring and withal the spirit of commercial speculation among the people of that country. The poet Dryden, who flourished in that period, touched it off in the following lines: "Friend, once 'twas Fame that led thee forth To brave the Tropic Heat, the Frozen North, Late it was Gold, then Beauty was the spur; But now our Gallants venture but for Fur." In process of time the company acquired a fur trade territory more than half as large as all Europe, extending from the Arctic circle to the Red river oh the south, and west to the Pacific coast. While their territory was afterwards sold and transferred to the Dominion of Canada (in i869), yet the company, as a business corporation, has existed for fully two centuries and still continues its operations, and is perhaps the earliest link now left connecting business interests of today with the remote past. For more than a century the great company had flourished without much competition. Then a formidable rivalry developed. About 1787, 1-6 114 HISTORIC MICHIGAN after Canada had been wrested from France by England, the Northwest Fur company took shape, and became a very powerful organization; "The mighty Northwesters" its people were called. Washington Irving wrote of it in his Astoria: "It held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and boundless forests of the Canadas, almost equal to that of the East India company over the realms of the Orient." The principal partners resided in Montreal and Quebec, and constituted a commercial aristocracy, and in their relation to the various grades of the hundreds in their employ, the old feudal and fief idea seemed restored. Every year a delegation of these magnates would journey to their wilderness headquarters at Fort William, on the north shore of Lake Superior, where a conference was held with the inferior partners and agents from the various outlying trading posts. They traveled in large palatial canoes equipped with every convenience and luxury possible, taking with them their own cooks and bakers, and delicacies of every kind. With business they combined pleasure in their sojourn at Fort William, and in the halls of the council-house regaled themselves with banquets and revels. The Lake Superior fur trade, with its opulence and its commercial power, held in that day the position which the Lake Superior ore trade holds in the present day. They were the Fur Kings, as today we have the Copper Kings. Besides having the territory of the Canadas for its operations, the new company stretched its lines indefinitely to regions beyond and, as was inevitable, when reaching the border lands they clashed in trade jealousy with the Hudson's Bay company. The mutual strife and animosity were very bitter and long continued. Removed far beyond the reach of civilization, they were a law unto themselves, and deeds of violence and slaughter were common. The Northwest company in time extended its operations into United States territory. Indeed, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the whole of the fur trade in America, with the exception of that of the Russians in Alaska, was a British monopoly. The treaty of 1783, which secured the independence of the United States, was very tardily recognized by the British government as respects these Northern latitudes. British traders pretended to regard all this country as still in some sense belonging to the throne, or at least that the boundary question was an open one; and as the conflict of 1812 was approaching, they used to tell the Indians that that war would settle it. The war did settle it, but not as they imagined. Michilimackinac (or Mackinaw, in the abridged form of the name) had been a fur mart from the early days of the French occupation. This was continued by the English when, by their conquest of Canada, their flag waved over the Straits. Traders established themselves within the palisades of the fort enclosure to barter with the Indianscloth, beads, knives, powder and rum passing in exchange for the peltries brought in from the woods. With the removal of the fort from the mainland to the Island of Mackinac, in I780, the fur trade continued, though with the change from the custom which had prevailed before that, no longer were the traders allowed to have their business, TILE FUR TRADE 115 their homes, their church and their whole community life within the fort enclosure. They thus formed a settlement at the foot of the fort hill which developed into the village of Mackinac. The Mackinaw Fur company was formed, and later the Southwestern company took shape, both under British control. The spirit of American enterprise began to assert itself. John Jacob Astor, of New York, on a suggestion dropped by a chance fellow traveler on shipboard, had made a venture in Canadian peltries which proved very remunerative. This led to his embarking further into the business. It was not long before he secured a controlling interest in both of these companies. Besides conducting operations in the regions already familiar, Astor sought to establish an agency on the Pacific coast, a venturesome and unsuccessful enterprise, minutely described by Washington Irving in his Astoria. The competition of the British traders, particularly of the powerful Northwest company, was found wherever Astor turned. And the war of I8I2 naturally proved hnfortunate for his business schemes. But his prospects were vastly improved at the close of that war by anact of congress, which prohibited all British traders or companies operating in the United States. The Northwest company, which had been freely so doing, now found its establishment in those parts of little worth to its business. Astor went to Montreal and at almost his own price bought all their trading posts within the limits of the United States. Together with its posts, the Northwest company transferred many of its experienced agents, clerks, interpreters and boatmen. The rivalry between the two British companies having now ceased their old strife did not long continue. The Hudson Bay company and the Northwest settled their long-time feud by joining together, the latter giving up its name in that of the older association-the Hudson Bay company of two centuries ago. Astor now had a free course. The two companies, the Mackinaw and the Southwest, which he already controlled, were merged under the popular name of the American Fur company. The business of the company grew and assumed great proportions. It had its connections and dependencies throughout the regions of the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers as well as those nearer by. Mackinac Island was the company's headquarters of operation, and the little village took on an almost metropolitan character. It was a great mart of trade long before Chicago, Milwaukee or St. Paul had entered on their first beginnings, and vied with its contemporaries, Detroit and St. Louis. The capital and enterprise on the island pertained principally tQ the business of the company. They furnished employment to a great number of men, who, with their families, largely contributed to the life of the village. In the summer, when for several weeks the agents and voyageurs (or canoemen) and the engages of different kinds gathered if from the widely scattered hunting and trading grounds of the wilderness, they made, together with the local contingent employed the year through, a force of some twenty-five hundred men, all representing the work of the great organization. The company's warehouses, stores, offices and boat yards occupied much of the 116 HB$TO1IO MIoUIGAN town plat. The present summer rotci, the John Jacob Astor, was originally built for their business, fulrishing 9q4uers for the housing of their men, particularly at the great lWsWmr gatherings, and also ware-rooms where the peltries were weighed and packed and kept in storage. The American Fur company continued to flourish at Mackinac for a period of some twenty years. Mr. Robert Stuart, a well-known figure in the northwest during the first half of last century, was the resident partner and manager of the great business there, and was a leading citizen of the island for about seventeen years. In 1834 Mr. Astor sold his interest, and the business declined. At length the company withdrew entirely from the island, and for the remainder of its career was simply an agency for handling furs in New York. The old warehouses and other quarters of the company, once the scene of activity and bustle, stood only as mute witnesses to a former life, until removed or reconstructed and put to other uses. In the Astor House on the island there are two large copy-volumes of letters written from the company's office at Mackinac, and dating from a period the most flourishing in its history. These old books interest many of the summer guests today. Also belonging to the same hotel and preserved as relics, are an old-fashioned, high-legged desk at which one of the clerks used to work in the company's palmy days, and an old style scales or "balances" which was used in weighing the peltries as they were packed and bound for storage or for shipment. The fur trade in the earlier days, to which we have been confining our attention, was one of the chief lines of commercial enterprise in our country, having a commanding rank in the markets of the world, and was a more conspicuous feature than it is today when hundreds of other forms of commerce have arisen. But while it has lost that conspicuous position it once held, and we do not today hear so much of its operations, yet that does not mean it has declined. The fur business in America is still one of vast proportions, albeit many of its primitive features have passed away. Its earlier methods of operation, its work of exploration in frontier and virgin territory, the spirit of adventure and daring and romance which accompanied it, the wilderness life of the trappers and traders far beyond the limits of civilization, the voyageurs with their recklessness and gayety, and their boat songs floating on the air, the excitements, the dangers and the wild life -all these are things of the past. It is something more prosaic and more systematic, too, and is less seen and heard of in the immense network of business schemes today, as compared with the times when it ruled almost supreme. But as a line of business and commerce it flourishes and holds high rank. St. Louis was one of the earliest seats of the fur trade in the United States. Its business therein was established over one hundred years ago. That city has continued to be a seat of operations ever since and today holds first place in that line, and is reported as the largest primary fur market in the world. That is to say, to its market come VTE PttJ TRADE 117 furs direct from the trapping grounds of all North America, including Alaska. To it dealers and manufacturers and exporters gather from all parts of the United States to make their purchases, while buyers representing England, Germany, France, Russia and other foreign countries, either in person or by agents, also attend the great sales which are held there. The half dozen or more houses which conduct this immense business do it as commission agents, receiving the furs direct from the trapper, hunter or country dealer from all parts of the land. The St. Louis business had greatly increased in the last ten years, and one house alone is reported as now selling more furs in one month than all the fur companies of the early day when they made their slow canoe expeditions up the Missouri river, would collect and sell in a year's time. The pelts of almost all fur-bearing animals extant are to be seen in these depots, but especially those of American origin. Raccoon, mink, skunk, red, gray and cross fox, oppossum, wolf, lynx, marten, beaver, otter, muskrat, bear and wild-cat pelts are received daily in amounts that exceed a whole year's receipts of twenty years ago. The catch of beaver, bear and otter, however, is much smaller than in former years, more especially of beavers. The catch of bear, also, for several years past, has been affected by the large decline in price of that particular fur. It may be a surprise to many to learn that there has not been that decline by natural extinction in the numbers of these wild animals, that we might have supposed would result from the spread of civilization throughout our territory everywhere. A few of the fur-bearing animals that flourished extensively as late as- fifty years ago may have become practically extinct-such, especially, as the buffalo which had to live in the open, and could not hide or find protection against often ruthless and wasteful destruction, and whose tramping grounds were the large fertile ranges which human settlements required for the plow and as the site for cities. But, contrary to the prevailing impression, the fur-bearing animals in general, such as enumerated above, and which live in streams and in wooded recesses and in mountain fastnesses-these, as the experts tell us, and as the fur business reports would indicate, are not becoming extinct. IX PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY By Bert Klopfer ONE of the most engaging chapters in American history and in the annals of Michigan, particularly, is the siege of Detroit,' which is described graphically by J. T. Headley, in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Volume XXI, pp. 613-639. The conflict, which according to the writer, was a direct result of the victory of the British over French forces for control of the St. Lawrence river and surrounding territory, reached the climax when Captain Rogers, a native of New Hampshire, was sent to take possession of newly-won Detroit. Enroute to the territory, accompanied by 200 men aboard whaleboats, Captain Rogers2 was met by a deputation of Indians and their chief, Pontiac. Learning from the captain that the French had ceded all of Canada to the British, who now had undisputed sway over Detroit, Pontiac was sorely chagrined. Past associations with France had been pleasant and Pontiac anticipated cruelty for the Indians at the hands of Britain. Feigning a desire to make peace with the new victors, Pontiac endeavored to make friends with Rogers, and at the same time began plans to offset the growing influence and strength of the British forces. Although only chief of the Ottawas, Pontiac was acknowledged leader of all other tribes, and so in May, 1762, he sent messengers to surrounding tribes, summoning them to assemble on the banks of Ecorse river, a short distance from Detroit. Pontiac denounced the British vehemently, and after arousing the hatred of all the tribes, commanded them to sharpen their gun-barrels and prepare to fall upon the garrison at Detroit and massacre all of the British subjects. News that the Indians were grooming their weapons was brought to Gladwin, commander of the fort, but he regarded the information lightly, since peace had prevailed between the garrison and tribes for more than two years. The next day, however, when an Ojibwa girl, the sweetheart of Gladwin, called at the fort, the commander questioned her and the whole scheme of the Ottawa chief was unfolded. According to the author, the girl made Gladwin promise not to betray her secret, then she told him that the Indians would come to the fort to hold a council, at which time Pontiac planned to present Gladwin with a peace-belt of wampum. When he reversed the gift in his hand, that was the signal for the Indians to fall upon the English soldiers with the weapons that they had concealed beneath their blankets. The next dav when Pontiac arrived at the fort he was surprised to see the soldiers fully armed and when he questioned Gladwin PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY 119 regarding their appearances, he was informed that they had been drilling. The chief suspected that his conspiracy had been discovered, but went along with the presentation of the gift. Gladwin watched him closely for the signal to his troops and when the chieftain's hand was raised, Gladwin immediately called his forces and prevented an attack. Seeing that his plans failed, Pontiac returned to his camp with the Indians. The next day he applied again for admittance to the fort, and when the privilege was denied, he turned into a rage. Several British subjects were killed as a result and finally the savages opened fire on the garrison. Although repeated attempts were made by Major Gladwin to end the attack and make peace with Pontiac, every effort was repulsed. Two messengers, Major Campbell and Lieutenant McDougal, were held prisoners in the chieftain's camp and hundreds of atrocities and deaths resulted. Nearly all the forts which had been held by the British, with the exception of Detroit, had been taken by the Indians, and gloating over this success they held out at the besieged garrison for many months. On one occasion they attacked a ship that was bearing provisions and relief for the fort and took command of the vessel. They entered the harbor and when greeted by the British soldiers, opened fire and killed many men. Following that attack, according to Mr. Headley, they watched the river anxiously, and fired upon every vessel that attempted to aid the garrison. In the fall of the following year, Pontiac sent word to Gladwin that he had received the assistance of ooo Ojibwas, and if the commander did not surrender, the fort would be taken by storm. Gladwin returned a contemptuous reply, so the chieftain called a council of war. to which he invited all other tribes and the Canadians. Baffled at this scheme, the proud chieftain turned away, mortified but not humbled. Provisions sent to the garrison on previous vessels were running low and the soldiers and inhabitants were verging on despair, when finally a ship was fitted out from Niagara, and despite many hardships and attacks, reached the fort. One of the members of the crew was Captain Dalzell, who, according to Headley, "had won great renown as a partisan warrior with Putnam. He proposed next day a night surprise of Pontiac's encampment. This had been fixed just beyond Parent's creek-since called Bloody river-which was about a mile and a half from the fort. Gladwin opposed Dalzell's project for he had seen enough of Pontiac to doubt the success of any scheme based on taking that chieftain by surprise. He had much rather measure strength with him in the open field. Dalzell, however, persisted, and Gladwin, knowing his skill and bravery, finally gave a reluctant consent." After extreme cruelties and with neither side winning ground. Pontiac received word from Fort Chartes on the Mississippi which "at the same time filled his daring spirit with rage. and crushed his fondest hopes. It was a dispatch from the French commander at 120 HISTORIC MICHIGAN that post, telling him that he must no longer look for help from that quarter, as the French and the English had made peace." After that, Pontiac made his way to Maumee, where he made camp. Mr. Headley's account describes the little success the chieftain had in this section, and later, with a band of somewhat disheartened savages, he made his way down along the Mississippi still hoping that he could enlist the aid of France. All of the tribes along that great expanse of water received him joyously. "Everywhere," according to Headley, "the western wilderness was filled with ominous murmurings that betokened a rising storm. It was no common mind that planned this comprehensive scheme. which was not based on mere desire for war or plunder, but adopted as the only means of saving the red man from extermination. Years afterward Tecumseh conceived the same bold undertaking." In spite of his daring and bravery, the author's version of the last days of Pontiac finds him deserted and discouraged. forsaken by all except the savages for whom he had spent his life. The French refused to assist him in his bold project "and at last, yielding to inevitable fate, he bowed his haughty spirit and returned to Detroit and accepted the offers of peace." From that time until 1769 Pontiac played no part in history. Then he visited his old friend, St. Ange. at Fort St. Louis. While there he heard of a frolic which the Illinois Indians were having across the river and in spite of the pleadings of his friend, he attended it. His tragic death is described best in Mr. Headlev's words: "One day. excited bv the fumes of liquor, he entered the forest to perform some incantations, when he was followed stealthily by an Indian, who had been bribed with a barrel of whisky by an English trader to assassinate him. Creeping behind the unsuspecting chieftain, he buried his tomahawk in his head. The Illinois defended the act, and a terrible war followed. "Thus passed away this barbaric chieftain, who. had he occupied the same relative position in civilized life, with all its advantages of education. would have been one of the great men of the world. His body lav upon the spot where it had fallen until St. Anee sent to claim it and buried it with martial honors near his fort. No mound or tablet marked his burial place: but above it has since arisen St. Louis, the Queen city of the Northwest, and the palefaces, whom he hated so intensely, tread in thousands over the forgotten grave of the forest hero." THE GLADWIN AND PONTIAC FABLE The romance between Maior Gladwin and the Indian girls who is generally supposed to have disclosed Pontiac's conspiracy to Gladwin has attracted writers and historians for more than a century and a quarter, although, according to Henry A. Ford in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Volume X, pp. 104-106, there is no record of any incident in existing accounts. Despite persistent efforts, the commander's official records have PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY 121 never been uncovered. In a brief statement to his superior, however, dated one week after the attempt, Gladwin states only that he "was informed of Pontiac's plans" but no mention is made of the girl. Believing that it is a fable, Mr. Ford points out that no mention was made of his informant in a subsequent letter written by Gladwin from Detroit and that the author of "Pontiac Manuscript," a French priest, who gave minute accounts of the conspiracy, states that the Detroit commander was informed by a man of the Ottawa tribe. "But he does say further," adds Mr. Ford, "that the next day Pontiac sent four of his warriors from the Ottawa village to the Potawatomi town to seize an Ojibwa girl whom he suspected; that they took her before Gladwin but learned nothing from him to criminate her, and she was then taken back to Pontiac, who beat her severely with a kind of rachet or Indian ball club." No other contemporary letter, narrative or official report has yet been found attributing the betrayal of the plot to an Indian girl, Mr. Ford declares. He believes that the story was given reputable currency chiefly by Mr. Parkman, historian, who describes it with much detail in "The Conspiracy of Pontiac". He gives his immediate authority as Henry R. Schoolcraft, who rests his statement upon the tradition related to him by Henry Conner, son of the Moravian pioneer near Mt. Clemens. Other accounts are much later, but are in their origin altogether traditional. Mr. Ford adds "that in the total absence of any documentary evidence or contemporary statement it must be held that the story grew to its present proportions and brilliancy from the mere suspicions of Pontiac and his brutal punishment of the Indian girl." He places his greatest credence in the story told by Mrs. William Tucker, in her history of Michigan. who writes that a soldier at the fort named William Tucker, who during captivity among the Indians had been adopted into a tribe, learned the designs of Pontiac from his savage sister and disclosed them to Gladwin. This, he believes, is more reasonable and the "soldier's" sister may plausibly enough have been the woman scourged by the haughty Pontiac.4 x INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY THE BOUNDARY LINES OF THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE TREATY OF 1782.1 By Clarence M. Burton Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXVIII, I30-139 THINK it is not necessary to tell you that the foundation for the history of the Northwest territory lies largely in the unpublished documents in the British Museum and the Public Record Office in London. The American papers on the subject of the treaty of 1782 at the close of the Revolutionary war have been collected and printed by Mr. Sparks in twelve volumes of the diplomatic correspondence of the Revolution. They have recently, within the last few years, been reprinted and added to, in the Wharton collection. But the papers on the British side, with few exceptions, are still unpublished, and it is among those papers that I spent a good portion of my vacation while in the city of London. A few of them are in the British Museum, but nearly all are in the Public Record Office. I had some trouble in getting in there, but succeeded through the kindness of Mr. Carter, who represents our government in London, and made as many extracts as I could pertaining exclusively to Detroit and the Northwest. While the collection there extends to every part of the United States, I was particularly interested in our own state, in our own part of the country. The time permitted 'me this afternoon is so short that I can only refer to a few of these papers, and I refer to them for the purpose of showing how it came about that Michigan became a part of the United States. That at first sight might seem very simple to be determined, and yet I find it very difficult. I do not know now that I have found much that would lead to a complete determination of the reason for this form of our treaty. The first papers that attracted my attention I found in the British Museum. They consisted of some correspondence in French between the British government and the French government relating to the troubles that had arisen along the Ohio river, and in that matter Detroit took a very active interest about the year 1754. These papers finally ended in a proposition on the part of Great Britain to accept as the north boundary line the river that we call the Maumee, on which Toledo is situated, the country immediately south of this to be neutral ground. This was in 1754. If that boundary line had been established, if that agreement had been accepted by the two countries, Michigan would have remained French territory, and perhaps the war which immediately succeeded would not have taken place, and in all probability Canada would still have been a French possession. In the midst of these negotiations, they were terminated. I did not know at INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY 123 the time why, but I found in my searches a little book which I have now, evidently written by some member of the Privy Council, telling of the reasons for breaking off the negotiations, and for causing the war which terminated in I763.2 At the end of the war, the treaty of Paris gave to Great Britain all of Canada, and Canada at that time was supposed to include all of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, all of the land north and west of the Ohio river. The same year that this treaty was entered into, Great Britain established the province of Quebec. One of the peculiar matters connected with this establishment of the province of Quebec I shall refer to hereafter. Quebec, as established in 1763, was nearly a triangle. The south boundary line of the province extended from Lake Nipissing to the St. Lawrence river near Lake St. Francis. Michigan, all of the lower part of Canada, and all of the Ohio district, were entirely omitted; so that by the Proclamation of I763, no portion of that country was under any form of government whatever. This was likely to lead to trouble with Great Britain and with the people in Detroit, for Detroit was the most prominent and important place in the whole of that district. Within a few years after the establishment of the province of Quebec, a man by the name of Isenhart was murdered in Detroit by Michael Due', a Frenchman. Due' was arrested, testimony was taken here before Philip Dejean, our justice, and after his guilt was established, Due' was sent to Quebec for trial and execution. After he was convicted they sent him back to Montreal, so that he could be executed among his friends. The matter was brought before the Privy Council to determine under what law and by what right Due' was tried at all. They executed the poor fellow, and then made the inquiry afterwards. It was finally decided that they could try him under a special provision in the Mutiny act, but they had to acknowledge that at that time they absolutely had no control, by law, over our portion of the Northwest territory, and that the land where we are was subject to the king exclusively, and was not under any military authority except as he directed it. In 1774 the Quebec act was passed, and by that act the boundary lines of the province of Quebec were so enlarged as to include all of the Ohio country and all the land north of the Ohio river; so that from 1774 until the close of the Revolutionary war, Canada and the province of Quebec included all of the land on which we are situated as well as the present Canada, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Now, when we come to the treaty of peace, or the preliminary treaty of peace in 1782, the first thing that I found of interest was the fact that Franklin, who was then in Paris, was auite anxious that some effort should be made to close up the war. There never has been a moment from the time the war first started that efforts were not being made along some line to bring it to a conclusion, but it was the efforts of Mr. Franklin in the spring of 1782 that finally brought the parties together. The man who acted at that time for the British government was Richard Oswald. He was sent from London to Paris to represent his government, and to see if something could not be done with Mr. Franklin to negotiate a treaty. Those of you who have been in Paris 124 HISTORIC MICHIGAN will recollect that the house in which Mr. Franklin lived while there was not then within the city limits. It was in Passy, a little village some three or four miles distant, but now within the city limits. The place is now marked by a tablet a little above the heads of the passersby, on Singer street, indicating that Franklin lived there during the time of which I am speaking, 1782, and some time later. He was sick. He was unable at various times to leave his apartments at all, and much of the negotiations took place in his private rooms on Singer street in Passy. As I said before, the proceedings on the part of the American commissioners have all been published, but Mr. Oswald kept minutes of his own, and these, with few exceptions, have been printed. These and the papers that are connected with them, I had the pleasure of examining and abstracting, if I may use that term, during the past winter. I find that in April, 1782, Mr. Richard Oswalds returned to Paris, and that place was named as the city for settling up the affairs of the Revolutionary war, if it was possible, with Dr. Franklin.4 The principal point was the allowance of the independence of the United States, upon the restoration of Great Britain to the situation in which she was placed before the treaty of 1763. Of course you will see that the question that came before the commissioners at once was as to what constituted Canada, or what constituted the province of Quebec. I think that Great Britain made a blunder, and a serious blunder for herself. in establishing the province of Quebec within the restricted lines of Lake Nipissing, and the reason for making this line I believe was this: She had once before taken Canada from the French, and then restored it. She did not know but what she might again be called upon to restore Canada to France. But if she had to restore it, she proposed to restore only that portion of it that she considered to be Canada, that is the land lying north and east of the line from Lake Nipissing to the St. Lawrence river. She would maintain, if the time again came to surrender Canada to France, that all the land lying below that line was her possession, and not a part of the land that she had taken from France. Now she found that in order to be restored to the situation she occupied before I763, she must abandon the land lving below that line, and thereafter it would become part of the United States. So that one of the principal features of this new treaty was to be the restoration of Great Britain to the situation that was occupied by her before the treaty of 1763. The peculiar formation of the lines that marked the province of Quebec in the proclamation of 1763 attracted my attention, and I undertook to study out the reason for so shaping the province, and some years ago wrote out the reason that I have outlined. I did not know then that there were documents in existence to prove the truth of my theory. In July. 1763, Lord Egremont, secretary of state, reported to the Lords of Trade that the king approved of the formation of the new government of Canada, but that the limits had not been defined. The king thought that great inconvenience might arise if a large tract of land was left without being subject to the jurisdiction of some gov INTERNATIONAL BOUNDAY A 125 ernor and that it would be difficult to bring criminals and fugitives, who might take refuge in this country, to justice. He therefore thought it best to include in the commission for the governor of Canada, jurisdiction of all the Great Lakes, Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior, with all of the country as far north and west as the limits of the Hudson Bay Company and the Mississippi, and all lands ceded by the late treaty, unless the Lords of Trade should suggest a better distribution. On the 5th of August the Lords of Trade submitted their plan for the government of Quebec, a portion of which I will read, as follows: "We are apprehensive that, should this country be annexed to the government of Canada, a colour might be taken on some future occasion, for supposing that your Majesty's title to it had been taken its rise singly from the cessions made by France in the late treaty, whereas your Majesty's titles to the lakes and circumjacent territory, as well as sovereignty over the Indian tribes, particularly of the Six Nations, rests on a more solid and even a more equitable foundation; and perhaps nothing is more necessary than that just impressions on this subject should be carefully preserved in the minds of the savages, whose ideas might be blended and confounded if they should be brought to consider themselves under the government of Canada." Conformable to the report of the Lords of Trade, the king, on September i9th, said that he was pleased to lay aside the idea of including within the government of Canada, or any established colony, the lands that were reserved for the use of the Indians. He directed that the commission to be issued to James Murray comprehend that part of Canada lying on the north side of the St. Lawrence river which was included within the province of Quebec. The commission to James Murray as captain-general and governor of the province of Quebec which was issued November 14, I763, bounded the province on the south by a line drawn from the south end of Lake Nipissing to a point where the forty-fifth degree of north latitude crosses the St. Lawrence river-the westerly end of Lake St. Francis. In settling the line of the United States in 1782, it was very convenient for our commissioners to claim that the Lake Nipissing line was the northern boundary of the new government, for it gave to England all the lands she claimed to have won by the contest with France, and this line Great Britain could not well dispute. I found here a letter from Governor Haldimand, and it is interesting just at this point, because it gives his idea of the American army. "It is not the number of troops that Mr. Washington can spare from his army that is to be apprehended; it is their multitude of militia and men in arms ready to turn out at an hour's notice upon the show of a single regiment of Continental troops that will oppose the attempt, the facility of which has been fatally experienced." So Haldimand was writing to the home office that they must have peace because they could not contend against the militia of the United States. In the various interviews that Mr. Oswald reports, he says that Franklin and Laurens maintained that Canada, Nova Scotia, East Florida, Newfoundland and the West India Islands should still remain 126 HISTORIC MICHIGAN British colonies in the event of peace. Mr. Oswald reported that in all the conversations on this subject, no inclination was ever shown by the Americans to dispute the right of Great Britain to these colonies, and he adds, "Which, I own, I was very much surprised at, and had I been an American, acting in the same character as those commissioners, I would have held a different language to those of Great Britain, and would have plainly told them that for the sake of future peace of America, they must entirely quit possession of every part of that continent, so as the whole might be brought under the cover of one and the same political constitution, and so must include under the head of independence, to make it real and complete, all Nova Scotia, Canada, Newfoundland and East Florida. That this must have been granted if insisted upon, I think is past all doubt, considering the present unhappy situation of things." Well, he did not understand Mr. Franklin, because Franklin was sitting there day after day, doing a great deal of thinking and letting Mr. Oswald do the talking, and when it came to the time for Mr. Franklin to give forth his own ideas, they were very different from what Mr. Oswald thought they were. Franklin told Oswald on July 8th that there could be no solid peace while Canada remained an English possession. That was the first statement that Franklin made regarding his ideas of where the boundary line ought to be. A few days after this, the first draft of the treaty was made, and it was sent to London on July Io, 1782. The third article requires that the boundaries of Canada be confined to the lines given before the Quebec act of I774,6 "or even to a more contracted state." An additional number of articles were to be considered as advisable, the fourth one being the giving up by Great Britain of every part of Canada. Oswald had formerly suggested that the back lands of Canada-that is the Ohio lands-be set apart and sold for the benefit of the loyal sufferers; but now Franklin insisted that these back lands be ceded to the United States without any stipulation whatever as to their disposal. Many of the states had confiscated the lands and property of the loyalists, and there was an effort on the part of Oswald to get our new government to recognize these confiscations and repay them, or to sell the lands in the Ohio country and pay the loyalists from the sale of those lands. A set of instructions to Oswald was made on July 3Ist and sent over, but the article referring to this matter was afterwards stricken out, so that it does not appear in any of the printed proceedings. The portion that was stricken out reads as follows: "You will endeavor to make use of our reserve title to those ungranted lands which lie to the westward of the boundaries of the provinces as defined in the proclamations before mentioned in 1763, and to stipulate for the annexation of a portion of them to each province in lieu of what they shall restore to the refugee and loyalists, whose estates they have seized or confiscated." But Franklin refused to acknowledge any of those debts. He said that if any loyalists had suffered. they had suffered because they had been the ones who had instigated the war, and they must not be repaid, and he would not permit them to be repaid out of any lands that INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY 127 belonged to the United States; that if Great Britain herself wanted to repay them, he had no objection. In a conversation John Jay, who came from Spain and took part in these negotiations, told the British commissioner that England had taken great advantage of France in I763 in taking Canada from her and he did not propose that England should serve the United States in the same manner, and he, Jay, was not as favorable to peace as was Franklin. On the i8th of August, a few days later, Oswald wrote: "The commissioners here insist on their independence, and consequently on a cession of the whole territory, and the misfortune is that their demand must be complied with in order to avoid the worst consequences, either respecting them in particular, or the object of general pacification with the foreign states, as to which nothing can be done until the American independence is effected." He recites the situation in America; the garrisons of British troops at the mercy of the Americans, the situation of the loyalists, and the evacuations then taking place. In all these negotiations, there was a constant determination taken by Franklin to hold the territory in the west and on the north. Late in August, I782, the commissioners set about determining the boundary lines for the new government, which they fixed in the draft of the treaty so as to include in the United States that part of Canada which was added to it by act of parliament of I774." "If this is not granted there will be a good deal of difficulty in settling these boundaries between Canada and several of the states, especially on the western frontier, as the addition sweeps around behind them, and I make no doubt that a refusal would occasion a particular grudge, as a deprivation of an extent of valuable territory, the several provinces have always counted upon as their own, and only waiting to be settled and taken into their respective governments, according as their population increased and encouraged a further extension westward. I therefore suppose this demand will be granted, upon certain conditions." It seems that in the preceding April, Franklin had proposed that the back lands of Canada should be entirely given up to the United States, and that Great Britain should grant a sum of money to repay the losses of the sufferers in the war. He had also proposed that certain unsold lands in America should be disposed of for the benefit of the sufferers on both sides.7 Franklin had withdrawn this proposal and now refused to consent to it, although strongly urged by Oswald, who wrote, "I am afraid it will not be possible to bring him (Franklin) back to the proposition made in April last, though I shall try."8 The preliminary articles of peace were agreed upon by Oswald and Franklin and Jay, October 7, I782, and the northern boundary line of the United States extended from the east, westerly on the 45th degree of north latitude until the St. Lawrence river was reached, then to the easterly end of Lake Nipissing, and then straight to the source of the Mississippi. If you will remember that Lake Nipissing is opposite the northern end of Georgian bay, you will see that the line as laid down in this draft of the treaty would include within the United States all of the territory that is across the river from Detroit, all of the south 128 HIS3TORIC MICHIGAN erly portion of what formerly constituted Upper Canada. Mr. Franklin at this time wrote: "They want to bring their boundaries down to the Ohio, and to settle their loyalists in the Illinois country. We did not choose such neighbors." Mr. Franklin at this time was seventy-eight years of age, a very old man to put in such a responsible place. In October, Henry Strachey was sent over to assist Mr. Oswald, and in some ways I think Mr. Strachey was a sharper, brighter man than Mr. Oswald was, although Mr. Oswald was probably a very good man for the position. I think, however, that diplomatically, the representatives of the United States were the greater men. Henry Strachey was sent over to assist Oswald and particularly to aid him in fixing the boundary lines. The matter was thought to be of too great importance for one man and Lord Townshend, in introducing Strachey to Oswald, told him that Strachey would share the responsibility of fixing the boundaries with him. If any of you have ever had occasion to read the treaties of 1782 and 1783 carefully, you will find that in outlining the boundary line, one line was omitted. The draft that I found of this treaty I think is in the handwriting of John Jay, and certainly Mr. Jay as a lawyer ought to have been sufficiently conversant with real estate transfers to have drawn a proper deed; but one line is omitted, and that is the line extending from the south end of the St. Mary's river to Lake Superior, and that omission has been copied in every copy of the treaty that has since been made, so far as I have been able to ascertain. The map that was used on the occasion was a large wall map of Mitchell,' printed some years previous to I783. I got the original map that was used on that occasion, and on that I found a large, heavy red line drawn straight across the country from Lake Nipissing to near Lake St. Francis, and then along the St. Lawrence river, and westward from Lake Nipissing to the Mississippi. That was one line. The other line running as we now know the boundary, through the center of the lakes. I hunted for this map for several days, and finally found it in the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. On November 5, 1782, the commissioners nearly broke off all negotiations from quarreling about the boundary lines, and were about to quit when they concluded to try it once more, and went at it. A new draft of the treaty was made November 8th, on which the north boundary line was fixed at the forty-fifth degree of north latitude. That would run straight across the country through Alpena. If that line had been accepted, and it came very near being accepted at one time, the entire northern peninsula of Michigan, and all the land in the southern peninsula north of Alpena would have been British possessions, while the land across the river from us here at Detroit would have been part of the United States. When this draft was sent over to England, an alternative line was sent over with it, and the alternative line was the line that we know as the boundary line, along the lakes. In sending over this proposition, Strachey said that the draft of the treaty must be prepared in London, and the expressions contained in the treaty made as tight as possible, "for these Americans are the INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY 129 greatest quibblers I ever knew." The above draft of the treaty was handed to Richard Jackson, and he remarked on its margin, that it looked more like an ultimatum than a treaty, and in a letter of November 12, 1782, he wrote, "I am, however, free to say that so far as my judgment goes and ought to weigh, I am of the opinion in the cruel, almost hopeless, situation of this country, a treaty of peace ought to be made on the terms offered." On November 29, 1782, at eleven o'clock at night, Strachey writes that the terms of the treaty of peace have finally been agreed upon. "Now we are to be hanged or applauded for thus rescuing you from the American war. I am half dead with perpetual anxiety, and shall not be at ease till I see how the Great Men receive me. If this is not as good a Peace as was expected, I am confident that it is the best that could have been made." A few days later he writes, "The treaty is signed and sealed, and is now sent. God forbid that I should ever have a hand in another treaty." The final treaty of peace was signed at that time, and a few days later, on the 30th of January, I783, the treaty of peace on which it depended, that is the treaty between the other governments of Europe and England, was signed and the war was at an end. 1.7 XI THE OLD NORTHWEST THE GATEWAYS OF THE OLD NORTHWEST By Prof. Frederick L. Paxson' Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXVIIII, 139-148 W rHEN the first flatboats of the Ohio company, the "Mayflower"' T and the "Adventure Galley" floated down the river to Marietta in the spring of 1788, they began a new period in the history of the Old Northwest. Until their day the Indian shore had been closed to emigration from the East. But henceforth population was to flow along the highways from the Atlantic in increasing volume, until the history of the wilderness in the Old Northwest should become the history of a bygone era. The emigrants whom these boats carried came, in large measure, from New England. The company8 which sent them was the creation of New England enterprise. Yet with no hesitation they followed the old roads across Pennsylvania and its mountains to the waters of the Youghiogheny, whence flatboats could convey them by a devious course to their destination. This was the gateway of the Old Northwest, as it existed in the beginning of the period of American colonization, and it was one of the two gateways that controlled the course of development of this region so long as any gateway could exert an influence. The hand of nature had outlined the career of the lands embraced by the Ohio river, the Mississippi, and the lakes long before the advent of man in America. Between the East and West, river valleys indicated two easy routes and determined that these two routes should control the traveler. By the valley of the Mohawk gentle grades connected the Hudson river and the Lakes, and afforded the easiest of all routes for overland connection. Farther south a second route invited the colonial emigrant to climb the courses of the Susquehanna and Juniata, or else the Potomac, and from one headwaters or another to cross the short portage to the Conemaugh and Allegheny, or the Monongahela, or the Youghiogheny, the tributaries of the Ohio. As the Mohawk valley controlled the entry in the north, so the Forks of the Ohio, reached by these tributaries, controlled the southern approach to the Old Northwest, and between them they constitute the two gateways whose influence did much to determine the course of American history. The hand of nature had indeed constructed these two routes, but the influence of men had given them different values in the eighteenth century. The northern route, easier in its geographic conditions, was of little significance until after the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1788 it invited no traveler, for its easy course led through an Indian country still dangerous for white travel, and to a frontier coun THE OLD NORTHWEST 131 try which the bad faith of England still allowed to be covered by a long series of her hostile forts. It had to attraction for the Ohio company, and played second part as yet to the mere southern route across Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. The Ohio Gateway, thus used in the earlier period of Northwest settlement, opened upon the Ohio river along its course from Pittsburg, by Steubenville and Wheeling, to Marietta. At various points along this stretch pioneers reached its course, and gave their fortunes to the bosom of the stream. They approached it from the East by roads which had come into existence in the last phase of the colonial wars, and which had been followed even before the war of Independence had been begun. To one of the best known approaches, General Braddock had given his name in his disastrous campaign at Fort Duquesne. In I755 he had mobilized his regulars and colonial levies at Fort Cumberland on the Potomac, and had slowly introduced European warfare into the wilderness as he cut his way through the forest, across the mountains, to the Forks of the Ohio. He had failed to possess himself of the objective of his campaign, but he had cleared a new highway to the West. Three years later another general repeated, with greater success, the attempt upon the French. The campaign of Forbes followed a different line from that of Braddock. Instead of the valley of the Potomac, it advanced along the line of provincial roads which Pennsylvania had already marked through Lancaster, Harrisburg, Carlisle, and Bedford. At Bedford the beaten road ended, but here began a new military road which Forbes cut in his advance as he approached the French at their Ohio forts. With the end of the Indian wars, Great Britain did her best to confine her colonial people to the region east of the Alleghenies, but the call of the West was too loud to be resisted, and along these paths that armies had blazed before them there began to move an emigration that was to carry the life of the seaboard into the Ohio valley. The Indian tribes north of the Ohio, with their backing at the British frontier forts, managed to keep the Indian shore their own; but Kentucky developed, on the left bank of the river, a population that looked eagerly across to the north, and waited only for safety before it should invade the Northwest. Before the days of the memorable Ordinance of 1787, and the Ohio Land company, the roads across the mountains had been well worn. The narrow Indian trail had widened to admit the pack train; the pack mule had yielded to the Conestoga wagon as a vehicle of emigration; and the huge wheels of the wagons of the emigrants had beaten a wide and deep path which would lead as well to the Northwest as to the Kentucky whenever the Northwest should become habitable. The gateway had been wide open for a decade before Marietta was born as the first settlement of the new era on the northern shore. The gateway was open before the Indians allowed safe entry into the Old Northwest. For several years the settlements along the Muskingum, the Scioto, and the Miami lived in daily fear of the tribes never far away in the forests. A new government in the East was 132 HISTORIC MICHIGAN framed and inaugurated. And in time a hero of the revolution came to drive away the dangers that beset the population of the Ohio valley. "Mad Anthony" Wayne was smiled at when Washington gave into his hands the task of erecting a line of forts from Cincinnati to Toledo, or more accurately, from the Miami to the mouth of the Maumee. The task had failed under able predecessors, but now at Fallen Timbers the question was put and answered once for all, and in 1795 the treaty of Greenville4 marked the withdrawal of the dangerous Indians from the present state of Ohio. In England, in the same years, John Jay secured the surrender of the British forts from which aid and comfort, to say nothing of shirts and ammunition, had been constantly extended to the Indians of the Old Northwest. Peace in the Northwest meant a renewal of emigration on a scale never before seen. Ohio became a territory in I8oo, and a state in 1803; while in its enabling act the gateway upon which so much depended was not forgotten. The Cumberland road, agitated after i8oo00, and constructed between 1811 and I818, is concrete evidence of the impression made upon the emigrants by the gateway through which they had to pass. The conditions of pioneer life were harsh enough in their best form, but bad roads were almost unendurable. It was not by chance that many of the new westerners believed that their future lay with New Orleans and the Mississippi rather than with the tottering confederacy several weeks away across almost impassable hills. From their heeds came the overwhelming demand for the purchase of Louisiana, and for an easy turnpike to the East. The Cumberland road was at once the demand of the West and the response of the East. It was built after the English war, being done in time to carry a large part of that wave of population that passed across the mountains at the close of the war, and broke along the Lakes and the shores of the Mississippi. As years went by, the road increased in capacity and traffic. Its course was lined with villages and inns. And in the valley of the Ohio were the states of Ohio, and Indiana, and Illinois, whose life had been poured into them through this single gateway of the Old Northwest. The measure of the influence of this gateway upon the life that passed through it is to be found in the democratic society that sprang into existence in the northwest. The social equality and essential uniformity of condition here revealed, point to a common origin and a common route. In its constitutional and economic dema~nds the tributary area was a unit with a national spirit that was soon to make its impression upon the conduct of national affairs in the great struggle over internal improvements. An indirect influence of the gateway exists in the stimulus of this road to the construction of a rival thoroughfare along the route leading to the other gateway in the Mohawk valley. In the beginning, the Mohawk valley had no invitation for the western emigrant. It possessed the easiest of all grades, but it lay through hostile Indians to the British forts. Its day was of the future, and it lay waiting. Gouverneur Morris" had dreamed of the Mohawk route even in the revolution. He had imagined a waterway that should con THE OLD NORTHWEST 133 nect the Lakes and the Hudson. In later years he had seen great canals in Europe, and had come to believe that his dream was capable of accomplishment. In the beginning of the century he had fallen in with a movement looking to its realization; and before the war with England came, the demand for an Erie canal was under way. Ih the beginning Morris, in the end De Witt Clinton stood for the canal. New York was agitated and congress was approached. Just as the great emigration started west after the war, work was begun on this canal and by the middle of the twenties the work was done. The Cumberland road had been pouring its thousands into the Old Northwest for nearly a decade before the water was turned into the Erie canal at Buffalo and Albany. The very scheme of the canal had been stimulated by an emigration that might be detached from the Cumberland road for the benefit of New York. So at last, in 1825, the second gateway was opened.6 It was at the end of the season that the "Seneca Chief," with its gay decorations and its attendant honors, left Buffalo on its triumphal voyage from the waters of the Lakes to the Atlantic. The work was chiefly the labor of Clinton, and as governor of the state of New York he fittingly celebrated the completion of his task. A half of the Old Northwest lay dependent upon this second gateway and awaiting its opening. From the Cumberland road emigration poured into the Ohio side, but it had been easier to advance toward the Mississippi, and beyond, than to push inland, away from the river and toward the Lakes. The southern area was well settled and prosperous while the northern was still a wilderness. At the beginning of the English war, when Stephenson7 was working on his traveling engine in England, and Roosevelt8 was carrying his first steamboat down the Ohio from Pittsburg; when the old Indian shore had been turned into an active agricultural frontier; the shore of Erie and Michigan was little known, and its maps were nearly as crude as those of inner Africa. Northern Ohio and Indiana were unchartered wilderness when compared with the active farm lands of the Ohio shore. Even western New York, through which the Mohawk gateway was to be approached, was still a waste, and at Genesee Falls, where Rochester now stands, it is recorded that there was, in I8II, but a single house. It was this unused half of the Old Northwest that was waiting for its gate to open. Buffalo, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago were at the opening of the Erie canal either not in existence at all, or were little straggling villages where wild game ran at will and the Indians loitered about the streets. A new world came into existence with the opening of the Erie canal. The Cumberland road had carried the old East into the Northwest, but its capacity had been limited by the capacity of the vehicle that went along it. The conditions of emigration established by the packtrain, or even the Conestoga wagon, impressed a uniformity in simplicity upon all travel by this road. Its volume had been limited by the very width of the road itself. But the Erie canal was more safe and less primitive than its competing route. The canal boat moved through 134 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the waters of the canal with deliberation, indeed, but with security, and the sloop or steamboat carried the traveler over the waters of the lakes. There was no limit either in size or cost to the freight that could be shipped. There was no approachable limit to the volume of migration that might pass to the northern side. With easier communication came quicker development in population and wealth, so that the lake side of the Old Northwest soon caught up to the river side which had had a generation's start. In spite of the years between the two migrations and the difference in means, the two sections easily blended into one. The earlier side had been filled with a people driven west by the hard times following the war with England. New hard times in the thirties prepared the thousands who were to pass the northern gateway in the later time. And Michigan and Chicago are concrete evidence of the emigration now as southern Indiana and Illinois were of the emigration then. Significant changes in public attitude towards the gateways appeared in the later day. In I788 the Ohio company expedition had gone west by way of a southern and indirect route, taking it as the natural road. But when troops had to be sent from the Chesapeake to Chicago for the Black Hawk war in 1832, they were sent by a northern and indirect route, through the canal to Buffalo and by steamer to the head of Lake Michigan. The Erie gateway had by 1830 succeeded to the prominent place held in I818 by the Cumberland road. Through these two gateways the Old Northwest was peopled until it ceased to be the Old Northwest and became the Middle West. Upon the East they continued to exert their influence for several decades. The Cumberland road had encouraged New York to persevere with the Erie canal. The Erie canal impressed upon Pennsylvania the necessity to continue her competition by constructing her canal and portage railway system. The activity of Pennsylvania stirred Virginia and Maryland to renewed exertions, the former starting a Chesapeake and Ohio canal to increase the competition for the control of the gateways. While Maryland was late enough in entering the struggle to come armed with a new vehicle of transportation, and to begin work upon her Baltimore and Ohio railroad by I828. It is to be learned from the history of transportation in America that it was a desire for western business that started the great canals and roads and railroads which were to make union and nationality in America possible. The gateways inspired the East, but they created the West, and their dominant influence is seen in the whole ante bellum history of the Middle West. They gave rise to a Northwest of two sections, one depending upon Lake Erie and looking to the New York route, the other reaching out from the terminus of the Cumberland road. For some little time the two sections stood apart, but the logic of geography and experience prepared the way for the blending of the whole population. The influence of the gateways upon the Old Northwest comes to an end when there is to be found throughout the five states substantial economic and social uniformity. Intercourse between the Lakes and the Ohio had been difficult always, yet the necessity for such intercourse had given the occasion for THE OLD NORTHWEST 135 the first discovery of the country long before this present era begins. How old is the Indian knowledge of the portage paths, no one can say. The earliest of the French explorers found them, known and used them constantly. The river system dependent upon the Lakes, the Ohio, and the Mississippi interlock over the area of the Northwest, so that there are numerous places where the light canoe can be transferred from one system to the other with but a short carry. On the northern side the Cuyahoga, the Sandusky, the Maumee, and farther west, the St. Joseph, the Chicago and the Fox, extend far to the south with their branches. From- the south the rivers rise to meet them, the Muskingum, the Scioto, the Miami, and the Wabash, and the Illinois and Wisconsin. Between these rivers, pair for pair, portage paths were followed from time to time as hunting and trapping need suggested. But the routes were navigable only for the canoe. The Indian or the explorer, with his portable commissariat, could move freely over them, but they gave little comfort to the emigrant with family, stock, and even the most primitive of furniture. Yet the routes were valleys, and carried waterways, and no pioneer who had come into the Northwest through either of the gateways was at loss what to do. The southern gateway revealed federal activity in a great engineering work; the northern pointed to a still greater work carried to triumphant completion by a single state. The turnpike and canal were familiar to the population of the West, and were by them undertaken confidently and on a large scale at a time when eastern communities were reluctant and timid in their own improvement. So it was that a population was no sooner in the river side of the Northwest than it demanded a road to the East, and it was no sooner in both sides than it determined to provide for itself easy intercommunication along the portage paths, or from east to west, as might be wise or possible. The year i825 is as significant as any in marking the growth of local internal improvement in the Old Northwest. In this year the opening of the Erie canal gave permanent accommodation to the demands for eastern communication and left the activities of the West available for domestic exploitation. The father of the Erie canal was himself called into the service of the Northwest, and his advice, eagerly asked, was as readily given. The Fourth of July previous to the opening of his own canal came in a period of great activity for him in the Ohio country. On that day he formally began the excavation at Licking Summits that was to join the lake and the river by a canal along the valleys of the Cuyahoga and Scioto, connecting the villages of Cleveland and Portsmouth. A few days later he similarly celebrated the beginning of a second great system that was one day to turn the old Miami and Maumee portage into a through route between Toledo and Cincinnati. With the commencement of the Ohio and Miami canals, as these enterprises were designated, Ohio entered upon a vast career of domestic improvement. Not all of her schemes were ever remunerative or practical as commercial enterprises, but the state had responded fully to that overwhelming demand for transportation which was characteristic of the whole Northwest, and to which the tedious experi 136 HISTORIC MICHIGAN ences of original entry through the old and narrow gateways had given volume and insistence. On the very day that Governor Clinton was commencing the Ohio canal, another ceremony was taking place within the same state at St. Clairsville. Here, across the river and not far from Wheeling, where the Cumberland road had stopped in I818, the president and vice-president of the United States were giving formal recognition to the fact of resumption of construction. The Cumberland road was now to be continued, and to be extended under the name of the National road, across Ohio, through Columbus, across Indiana to Indianapolis, and was even to point the way through Vandalia to St. Louis before the railroad should overtake it, and bring its further building to an end. The whole Northwest was preparing to bind itself together by roads and canals in 1825. Every one of the old portage paths was to receive some recognition. The canals already begun were to satisfy the greatest needs of Ohio. The two rival portages by the Cuyahoga-Muskingum or the Sandusky-Scioto were blended in a compromise route that joined the Cuyahoga and Scioto and was eminently satisfactory to Cleveland. The Miami canal covered another much used route. In later years Sandusky, on a good harbor but left out of prosperity by the scheme of state canals, was to build the Mad river and Lake Erie railroad on her own account, and so enter the field of internal trade. Farther on, the federal government stepped in to aid Indiana in joining the Wabash and Maumee. Illinois turned her portage path into another canal. Wisconsin later joined the Fox and Wisconsin rivers in the same way. While Michigan, alone among the Northwest states in having no good portage within her borders, consoled herself in the first flush of her new dignity as a state, in I837,10 by ordering the construction of three parallel railroads across the lower peninsula, bringing herself nearly to ruin and bankruptcy thereby, but throwing light upon the enthusiasm for improvement which the Northwest had. With the completion of these routes of internal communication through the Old Northwest the direct influence of the gateways came to an end. They dominated in its history so long as travel was difficult and as the route by its nature determined in any wise the life that passed along it. But so soon as adequate means of transportation within the country, or between it and the East were ready for any passenger and any freight, so soon as population and wealth could flow through it freely and unrestrained, in any direction, the period closes. In point of time, the gateways of the Old Northwest are dominant in I788 and have not ceased to be important in I850. The significance of these gateways in the history of the Old Northwest is more than that of two routes of travel. A road may well do more then carry the passer-by. It may by its difficulty imprint upon him and his character, marks that will be long in passing. Whenever the capacity of the road is beneath the demand upon it, its imprint must become deeper and more permanent. Through the gateways at the Forks of the Ohio and the valley of the Mohawk, the Old Northwest THE OLD NORTHIWEST 137 came into existence. For two generations they continued to direct its increase. Among the elements of life in the resulting community may be found many concrete memorials of their period of control. Social democracy points not only to similar economic conditions, but to similar origin and experience; zeal in transportation is the direct result of distance and difficulty; liberal constitutional interpretation at once results from and is necessary to continued development. For an understanding of the uniformity which is the distinguishing feature of the Old Northwest these gateways and their history provide the key. THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 By Cyrus G. Luce, Governor of Michigan Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XI, I40o-44 THE fate of nations has frequently turned upon what at the time of the occurrence seemed to be events of trifling importance" And this is eminently true of the adoption of the Ordinance of 1787, for the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio. It applied only to the government of an uninhabited wilderness, where the Indian and wild beast roamed at will. No portion of its air was disturbed by the echo of the white man's tread. Yet, an ordinance for the future government of this wild waste has been, as the sequel proved, momentous and far reaching in its results. In these results it is scarcely excelled by the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, I776. When the forefathers bid defiance to the authority of the mother country, they seemed to entertain but an indefinite conception of what the future policy of a general government should be. The old patriots at that time were devoted lovers of freedom, of liberty and of education. They had fled across the broad Atlantic to escape oppression from onerous taxation, from interference with religious liberty, and sought the wild American shores, faced the dangers of the deep, of wild animals, and of a wilder and fiercer population of Indians, for the sake of the enjoyment of freedom and liberty. The British yoke oppressed them, and they risked their all in a heroic effort to escape its thralldom. But the basis upon which the effort rested was a common interest, and they fought together simply because they could more certainly protect their separate colonial existence. But the idea of a central consolidated government of superior power, clothed with authority to enforce its mandates, seems not to have been entertained or hardly conceived. The consolidating process was one of slow growth, for seventy-five years. Of course the embarrassment of the situation was forcibly realized during the Revolutionary war and long years after its close. At home and abroad people doubted the validity or value of paper issued by those colonies, who had simply entered into a confederation without recognizing the binding force and responsibility of a general government. This was painfully apparent in the valueless paper issued to prosecute the war of the Revolution. And the first or most 138 1HISTORIC MICHIGAN important step taken toward a recognition of the fact that the colonies had successfully fought their way to freedom and independence, and were tending towards consolidation as a nation, was the adoption of the memorable Ordinance of 1787. And while the journals of the early sessions of congress are incomplete, compared with the voluminous records now kept, we can see the process of reasoning which resulted in the adoption of this ordinance. This-o&rdinance contains within itself nearly all the fundamental principles upon which the government has stood the test of a hundred years. It was the vital and turning point in the early history of this nation. It laid broad and deep the foundation for strength, greatness, prosperity, liberty and education. And in taking the step towards a recognition of the principle which is now recognized by all of our people, north, south, east and west, that we are a nation, they commenced a struggle in our civilization that closed three-quarters of a century later at Appomattox. It was largely to establish this principle that the war of the Rebellion was fought, so that, in this respect, the adoption of the Ordinance of 1787 formed an important epoch in our history. In all things that relate to good government and the welfare of our people its importance can hardly be over estimated. Article III. declares that "general morality and knowledge, being necessary to the good of a government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." A hundred years ago, the men who framed and adopted this ordinance conceived the necessity of morality and education. as the underlying strength of a republic, and expressed it as forcibly and concisely as the most learned patriot of today can do. Again, they declared that "the inhabitants of said territory shall always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus. of a trial by jury, of a proportionate representation of the people in the legislature and of judicial proceedings according to the course of common law. No cruel or unjust punishment shall be inflicted, no man shall be deprived of his liberty. or his property, but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." That was good law, good patriotism and essential to the preservation of the freedom of the people and the enjoyment of civil liberty a hundred years ago, and is equally so today. The far seeing legislators of that period declared that no tax shall be imposed on lands the property of the United States, and in no case shall non-residents be taxed higher than residents. They seemed to have anticipated many of the conflicts which have from time to time arisen. many of the notions and purposes which have to some extent prevailed in later years and in a more advanced civilization. But the crowning elorv of the Ordinance of 1787 is contained in the sixth article. This has been often quoted and righteously revered by lovers of freedom everywhere. It reads. "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the partv shall have been duly convicted." The adoption of this one single provision has chanred the whole past, present and future of the empire. It has established freedom as THE OLD NORTHWEST 139 the corner-stone of American civilization. No wiser thoughts were ever coined into words or law than these. It was the turning point, and as it applied then to a trackless wilderness, it was possibly not regarded at the time of such vast importance as it afterwards proved to be. If the fathers had neglected to have placed this one single provision in the Ordinance of 1787, the whole character of our people, of our institutions, and everything pertaining to us in the past, present and future, would in all human probability, have been changed. And when we reflect upon the consequences, we are filled with admiration for the men who, struggling with difficulties untold, merging from the results of a terrific conflict, poor, in debt, grappling with an unsolved problem, could still scan the future so accurately as to perceive the propriety and necessity of this ordinance. In the territory to be more directly affected by its adoption there was no voice to be heard in its favor at that time, while now it embraces the great and prosperous states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan. Illinois and Wisconsin, with nearly one-fourth of the population of the whole republic; dotted with cities and villages, cultivated fields, comfortable farm houses, school houses and churches, and checkered throughout its length and breadth by railroads. This section furnishes the most productive grain fields of the world. And not only does this ordinance affect the people embraced within the territory over which it applied, but in its reflex influence it is extended away beyond. Doubtless if it had not been for this prohibitory ordinance, slavery, with its blighting influence, would have crossed the Ohio and entrenched itself in this territory dedicated forever to freedom and its blessings. It will be remembered that this territory had recently been ceded by the state of Virginia to the United States, and that the representatives of the old commonwealth participated in the adoption of the ordinance which provided for its government. And whatever we may think of the course afterwards pursued, of the devotion to slavery, of the hatred of universal freedom, of the enthrallment of a race, of the terrific and frantic efforts made to maintain the institution of slavery, of the states where it existed, yet we must honor their representatives of a hundred years ago for their participation in the adoption of a measure that finally gave freedom to the whole nation. It is true at that time there were neither slaves nor freemen in this territory, but while the result has far exceeded the brightest anticipations of the old patriots, yet they, with the eye of faith, could see the section devoted to freedom teeming with a busy and happy population. And whether we credit the adoption of the provision contained in the sixth article to the influence of Massachusetts and New York, or to a latent love of freedom entertained by the representatives from Delaware. North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia, I should fail to do justice to my own sentiments did I neglect to do honor to the representatives of these states where slavery then existed, did I fail to note the fact that each of these states cast its solid vote on the 13th day of Tuly, 1787, to make freedom, and not slavery, the law governing the Northwest Territory, 140 HISTORIC MICHIGAN And we must in justice honor the men who had the patriotism, though surrounded by slavery, to see and act for the best interests of posterity. And while in our hatred of slavery and in the strife of political conflict, and in the fiercer passions of war, we have thought hard thoughts and said severe things of the policy of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, we should never forget that their representatives had it in their power to have defeated the provision a hundred years ago, which has forever rendered this country a home of free men. XII INDIAN WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE ANTHONY WAYNE AND THE BATTLE OF FALLEN TIMBERS By C. M. Burton Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXI, 472-489 T HE scene opens with the defeat of Harmar and of St. Clair; the armies of the United States in full retreat before bands of Indian savages bearing the bleeding scalps of our dead soldiers, and encouraged by Great Britain and her troops garrisoned all over our northwest; our country in disgrace-humiliated to be defeated in fair battle by such a horde! The smoking ruins of a thousand homes gave evidence of the visits of the savages. The victory already achieved in defeating two armies gave them assurance of further success and emboldened them to reject all efforts to obtain a peace that would permit settlers to live upon the Ohio lands in comfort and security. This was the situation of affairs in I79I, when General Anthony Wayne was called from his southern home to return to his native state of Pennsylvania to there take upon himself the burden of collecting and disciplining an army which, under his skillful leadership, would give peace to our western pioneers and would teach England and the world that we were in fact, a nation. There is no doubt that England had, up to this time, refused to carry out the terms of the treaty of 1783, in hopes that the states would dissolve the partnership they had formed, and, as separate colonies, would quietly fall a prey to her superior forces. It was this fear, on the part of the states, that drove them to form the constitution of I789, and it was the new union formed under that constitution that must forever be disgraced, if it did not, by whipping her savage allies, teach England that the agreement she had made in 1783 must be carried out. The war of the Revolution was formally ended by the signing of the treaty of peace, at Paris, September 3, I783. By the terms of that treaty, the western limits of the United States were defined to include all the land south of the Great Lakes, and east of the Misssisippi river-all the land that before that time had been claimed as British territory, lying south of lakes Erie, Huron and Superior. Within these limits were several military posts that were then occupied by the soldiers of Great Britain, and it was agreed that they should soon be evacuated and the troops withdrawn. Repeated requests and demands for their abandonment were met with refusals or with postponements, until the people became impatient and exasperated, and in a mood for another war, to insist upon their rights. It was not alone that these frontier posts were garrisoned with British soldiers, 142 HISTORIC MICHIGAN but the efforts of the English government were constantly directed to foment trouble between the Indians and the American pioneers who were seeking homes in the lands north and west of the Ohio river. Within two years after the close of the Revolutionary war, an ordinance1 was passed by congress for the division of the lands north and west of the Ohio river into states, and for its government as a territory, until the different parts should be eligible to statehood. A second and more complete ordinance2 was enacted in 1787, and General Arthur St. Clair was appointed governor of the territory which now includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The most important place in this territory was Detroit, and a British garrison was in charge there, and another garrison was established at Mackinac. Disbanded American soldiers of the late war and pioneers of all descriptions were coming, with their families, over the Allegheny3 mountains, crossing the Ohio, crowding into the eastern and southern portion of the Northwest territory, seeking homes in the wilderness. The Indians seemed determined to prevent this incursion of immigrants, and they attacked and murdered the settlers wherever they found an opportunity. There can be no doubt that the Indians were furnished with arms and ammunition by the British soldiers, for they could obtain these supplies from no other quarters, and Detroit was the depot for their distribution, as it was the depot for the distribution of all goods donated and parceled out to the savages.4 Repeated attempts were made by our government to pacify the Indians and to make treaties with them which they would respect, but no sooner was a peace patched up than the persuasions of the British would cause the Indians to violate their obligations, and murders and conflagrations followed. An expedition under General Josiah Harmar, fitted out in I790, to punish the Indians and bring them to a proper sense of duty to their white neighbors, resulted in a total defeat of government soldiers in a battle near Fort Wayne, Indiana." In the following year Gen. Arthur St. Clair, who was governor of the Northwest territory, was directed to organize an army to revenge Harmar's defeat and teach the Indians that the white man was supreme. Again only disaster attended the expedition, and St. Clair and his army were completely routed, put to flight and many of the soldiers massacred." It was under these circumstances that Wayne was called upon to collect an army and undertake to accomplish what Harmar and St. Clair had failed in doing. In April, 1792, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army of the United States, and he was instructed to re-organize the army, which was now in great disorder. The re-organized army was termed the Legion of the United States, and was divided into four sub-legions, each under a brigadier general. These officers were James Wilkinson, Thomas Posey and Charles Scott. As both armies that had preceded him had been defeated from lack of proper discipline of the soldiers, Wayne determined that he would INDIANA WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE 143 not undertake the task until the legion should be properly drilled and disciplined. In June, 1792, he commenced the formation of his new army, by recruiting soldiers, for that purpose, at Pittsburgh.7 Many of the officers who were with Harmar or St. Clair were chosen to assist in the new expedition, and a good many of the common soldiers under Wayne participated in the defeat of one or the other of those unfortunate commanders. It was contemplated to organize an army of 5,I20 officers, noncommissioned officers and privates.8 The remnant of the regular army was very small, for the defeats of Harmar and St. Clair had greatly reduced it, and those who remained were so afraid of an expedition into the Indian country that they deserted at every opportunity. Wayne remained a long time at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, gathering troops and supplies and drilling the soldiers who were forming his new army. The post was so far advanced on the frontier that the soldiers were apprehensive of danger and frequently deserted.9 To such an extent was this desertion carried on that a reward was offered for the apprehension and return of every deserter, and the culprit on his conviction at court-martial was severely punished, usually by receiving a hundred lashes on his bare back, but in some instances deserters were shot to death. It is probable that the Legion would have advanced further into the Indian country before this time, but the efforts to conciliate the Indians were constantly being made and the advance of the army was delayed to await the termination of these efforts. If a satisfactory treaty of peace could be obtained there would be no need of ahi army in the West and it could be dispensed with, or used for other purposes. This sought-for treaty was the most important matter the government had on hand, in Indian affairs, and commissioners were sent out to various tribes, and the Indian chiefs were invited to attend the president at Philadelphia, or to meet in council at other places, within or near the Indian country, many times during the year I792. The most important Indian chief was Joseph Brant of.the Six Nations, and every effort was made to win him over to the cause of the Americans. In March, 1792, a deputation of Indian chiefs met President Washington in Philadelphia. They came at the invitation of Rev. Samuel Kirkland, and an effort was made to convince them of the desire of the United States to do justice to them, and to live in peace with them. These Indians returned to Buffalo Creek to meet a greater number of their own tribes, who there met in council in June.'0 Among the names of the commissioners or representatives to the Indians are to be found Timothy Pickering, John Francis Hamtramck, Rev. John Heckenvelder, Maj. Alexander Tournan'1 and Brig. Gen. Rufus Putnam. In his instructions to General Putnam on this occasion, Gen. Henry Knox, secretary of war, used the following words: "I cannot close these instructions without urging you to the highest possible exertions in bringing the war to a close, and of devising every proper means for that purpose. An Indian war is destructive of the interests of humanity, and an event from which neither dignity nor profit can 144 HISTORIC MICHIGAN be reaped. It has been imposed on the government by strong causes, which it could not control or prevent, and the sooner it is terminated the better."'2 Treaties of peace were entered into by various small bodies of Indians, but no general treaty could be obtained. It was made apparent that the Indians were entirely dissatisfied with any concession that permitted the whites on lands west of the Ohio river, and the establishment of that river as the boundary line was made a condition of peace. The Indians were unable to cope diplomatically with the agents and commissioners who were sent among them, and did not make known to the Americans just what their wishes were in this respect, and for that matter they would not faithfully observe any treaty that was made, for no treaty contained the provision for such a boundary line. The Americans knew the wishes of the Indians in this respect, but refused to discuss the matter with them.13 From all information that could be obtained, and gathered from every source, it appeared that the Indians were intent on carrying on war against the United States, and that no lasting peace could be obtained until the savages learned to respect the whites as their physical superior.4 In September, I792, Gen. Rufus Putnam entered into a treaty with several of the western tribes, at Vincennes, but that it was not entered into in good faith was made evident by an attack on a detachment of Kentucky mounted infantry, at Fort St. Clair, on the 5th of November following.s This treaty did not, in any manner, specify the boundary lines between the lands claimed by the Indians and those conceded to have been granted to the whites. The Six Nations, of which Brant was the principal chief, were on good terms with our government, and openly sought to persuade the western tribes to a new and lasting treaty. Brant, at the request of President Washington, went to a council of the western Indians, held at the Miami in the early part of I793. While it could not be expected that he would represent the United States on that occasion, he employed such arguments as he could to induce the Indians to enter into a treaty with the government. The council at the Miami consisted exclusively of Indians and their British and Canadian friends. No one represented the United States, but Brant proposed that delegates should be sent from that council to meet the commissioners appointed by Washington, who were to meet at Sandusky shortly after the termination of the Miami council. The commissioners appointed by Washington were Benjamin Lincoln, Beverly Randolph and Timothy Pickering. Randolph and Pickering went together to Niagara river, and there received a pressing invitation from Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe to accept the hospitalities of his home at Newark (now called Niagara), on the Canadian side of the river, until the arrival of the other commissioner, when they would together set out for Sandusky. At the same time they received a copy of a letter written by Col. Alexander McKee, British Indian agent at the Miami, to Maj. E. B. Littlehales, secretary to the lieutenant-governor. McKee, who was then at Detroit, said that the council INDIANA WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE 145 at the Miami would not take place till the end of May, and that the Indians could not end that council and repair to Sandusky until near the end of June, and that therefore the United States commissioners need not go to Sandusky until the middle of June.le General Lincoln, with James Dean, an interpreter, arrived at Newark, May 25. The commissioners were very careful of any movement that would in the least appear suspicious to the Indians. Wayne had proceeded with his army as far as Fort Washington, but they urged that he make no further progress at this time. They requested also that Wayne should not reinforce posts farther advanced than his present location. They sent William Wilson, an interpreter, to the Miami council, to accompany Capt. Hendrick Aupaumut, chief of the Stockbridge Indians, and gave the latter minute directions for sounding the tribes on their disposition to the whites. John Heckenwelder and Dr. McCoskry accompanied Hendricks as far as Detroit. The commissioners requested Governor Simcoe to permit some British officers to accompany them, and Captain Bunbury, of the Fifth regiment, and Lieutenant Givens were appointed for that purpose. Simcoe would not permit the commissioners to visit Detroit, though he allowed them to go as far as the mouth of the Detroit river. The commissioners were about to board the Dunmore, at Fort Erie, for the Detroit river, or for Sandusky, when they were met by a deputation of about fifty Indians, sent from the council at the Miami, to meet and talk with them in the presence of Governor Simcoe. There were several days' parley between the deputation and the commissioners, as the Indians insisted upon being informed regarding the movements of General Wayne, and also desired to know whether the commissioners were empowered to fix a permanent boundary line. Having received satisfactory answer to those questions, they returned to the Miami and promised to meet the commissioners at Sandusky.l7 The commissioners, in making their report to the secretary of war at this time, stated that Wayne was reported to have cut and cleared a road from Fort Washington into the Indian country, finally ending about six miles beyond Fort Jefferson; that at Fort Jefferson were accumulated large quantities of horses and cattle, guarded by a large body of soldiers. These preparations of Wayne, as they were only three days' journey from the Glaize, were very warlike and appeared threatening to the Indians, and the commissioners requested that further advance be stopped and that the extra troops and provisions be withdrawn, at least as far as Fort Jefferson. On the I4th of July the commissioners sailed from Fort Erie, and arriving at the mouth of the Detroit river on the 2Ist inst., took quarters with Capt. Matthew Elliott, who was an assistant in the British Indian department. Here they met a second deputation from the Miami council. The new deputies were provided with instructions in writing from the confederated Indians. The instructions stated that the former deputation which had met the commissioners at Niagara had not fully explained what the Indians demanded as their rights and the present instructions would fully supply the deficiency. At the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1-8 146 HISTORIC MICHIGAN I768,18 the Ohio river was fixed as the boundary between the whites and? IA-is.. The Indians now insisted upon the re-establishment of this fi TieV a thn & sc that the whites remove from the western (northern) side of the river. Te adry question now asked of the commissioners was whether they were authorized by the United States tfix. upon the Ohio river as the boundary line. It would have bee useless, or worse than useless, to attempt to conceal from the Indians the intention to claim lands west and north of the Ohio. Those lands had long been occupied by settlers, and cultivated farms and villages were dotted all along its eastern and southern border, and pioneers were every day pushing farther and farther into the interior. Either the Indians must gracefully submit to surrender their claims over this land, or they must be forcibly ejected. The answer of the commissioners recited, at some length, the former treaties with the various tribes and the considerations paid for the very lands now claimed by the Indians. They recited the utter impossibility of forcing the whites to abandon their possessions, and the injustice of the Indians in making such exactions. On the other hand, they proposed to compensate the Indians for territories taken, and to provide an annuity for their future support. The reply of the Americans was not entirely satisfactory to the Indians, but with another assertion of their rights to the lands north and west of the Ohio, they returned to the Miami council, requesting that the commissioners should await an answer from that place.l9 After waiting for some days, until August I3, without hearing from the Indians, the commissioners sent runners to the Miami council, to hasten action on the part of the Indians, and a few days later they received a deputation with a final answer declining to meet the commissioners at any place or to treat with them upon any terms, unless the Ohio river as a boundary line was first conceded. The reply of the Indians is quite long, and their side skillfully argued. They repeat the statement of the commissioners that many settlers are already west and north of the Ohio, and that the United States cannot well remove them and that, in order to have the rights to these lands conceded, the government will pay the Indians, and provide future annuities. In answer to these points the Indians say, "We hope we may be allowed to point out a mode by which your settlers may be easily removed, and peace thereby obtained. We know that these settlers are poor, or they would never have ventured to live in a country which has been in continual trouble ever since they crossed the Ohio. Divide, therefore, this large sum which you have offered us, among these people; give to each, also, a proportion of what you say you would give to us annually, over and above this very large sum of money, and we are persuaded they would most readily accept of it, in lieu of the lands you sold them. If you add, also, the great sums you must expend in raising and paying armies with a view to force us to yield you our country, you will certainly have more than sufficient for the purposes of repaying these settlers for all their labors and their improvements. You have talked to us about concessions. It appears INDIANA WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE 147 strange that you should expect any from us, who have only been defending our just rights against your invasions. We want peace. Restore to us our country, and we shall be enemies no longer."20 With the Indians in this disposition, it was unprofitable and useless to undertake further negotiations, and the commissioners, feeling that their summer's work was needlessly expended, started on their return to Philadelphia, August I7, I793. The commissioners held no meeting at Sandusky whatever-did not even go near that place. They met several delegations from the confederate Indians, but they did not meet the Indians in general convention, nor would the British commandant at Detroit permit them either to visit Detroit itself, or the Indians at Miami.21 Having thus followed the commissioners to the unsuccessful termination of their undertaking, we will turn to General Wayne and follow his footsteps. The effort of the government was always directed to the establishment of peace, without bloodshed, if possible. With this end in view, the negotiations with the Indians were constantly being carried on, but at the same time preparations were made to collect and discipline an army to be in the field, ready for action, if it should finally be determined that a bloodless peace could not be established. The formation of Wayne's army was very slow. As it moved along from place to place, through the Indian country, the soldiers were drilled in the system of Indian warfare they expected to encounter. Forts, consisting of blockhouses and entrenchments, were erected and garrisoned, roads cut and pathways opened for the furnishing of supplies as the army advanced. Leaving Pittsburgh some time in November or December, 1792, Wayne was encamped at Legionville on Christmas day.22 Here he remained until May 8, 1793, and on that day removed to Hobson's Choice.28 At this post he remained for some time, receiving new recruits and drilling those under his command; and keeping track, as much as possible, of the movements of the Indians and English as well as of our commissioners. The next stopping place is indicated in his orderly book as "Head Quarters near Fort Hamilton," and this point was reached October 9, I793. Although at all times since leaving Philadelphia there was danger of an attack from the savages at this encampment, the first preparations were made for receiving the Indians in force, and directions were accordingly made to prepare the camp for an emergency of this nature. The directions contained in the orderly book, under this date, are as follows: "Brig. Gen. Wilkinson will take command of the right wing of the Legion, composed of the Ist and 4th sub-legions. Brig. Gen. Posey will take the command of the left wing, composed of the 2d and 3d sub-legions. The following will be the standing order of the encampment (viz): 'When the heads of the columns arrive at the ground appointed for the encampment, the sub-legionary Quarter master will shew their respective positions. The square is to be immediately formed agreeable to the order of the 25th of August, for receiving the enemy front, flank and rear.24 The artillery officers will 148 HISTORIC MICHIGAN immediately trace out bastions and the whole line will cover themselves by throwing up breast works as heretofore practiced. The van and rear guards, flankers and dragoons will face out, from the order in which they marched and must sustain all attacks of the enemy, and cover the Legion whilst employed to fortify the camp. The picquet guard of the line will be immediately formed and furnished with axes and entrenching tools, and proceed under the conduct of the field officers of the day, to throw up four redoubts opposite the extreme angles of the encampment, at three hundred yards distance from those angles, should permit; otherwise, in the most favorable position. As soon as those works are completed, the troops will take post in the rear of their respective lines. The long roll will then beat to call in the light infantry and rifle corps. Those belonging to the front, flanks and rear, will each throw up a redoubt opposite the centre of their respective flanks, front and rear, at 300 yards distance from the lines and central between the extreme angle redoubt. The park of artillery and spare ammunition in the centre of the camp; the hospital and hospital stores in the rear of the van troop of dragoons, and the contractors in the rear of the hospital stores; the baggage in the rear of their respective stores.!" As the failure of the commissioners to make any satisfactory treaty with the Indians was now known to General Wayne. he had commenced the march that would only terminate upon his meeting the enemy's field. The outline and plan of march, above given, was that now employed in the daily movement of the army. The daily orders issued to govern the troops on their march indicate the serious situation of the country and the dangers that surrounded the army. "The Legion will march at IO o'clock this morning," is the order for October 9; "Should any accident happen, so as to stop any of the waggons, or pack horses, the others are to pass them immediately, so as not to break the line of march, nor shall any openings or intervals be let between the waggons, or pack horses, more than barely sufficient to move those waggons and pack horses to which accidents may have happened, and they must be immediately repaired or replaced, and moved on in front of the rear guard, nor shall any partial halt be made on any pretense whatever. The whole line will halt, when necessary, from the signal, which is the retreat. The noncommissioned officers and soldiers must always carry their bayonets fixed, the scabbards and fogs must be thrown away. Any soldier losing his bayonet shall forfeit one month's pay. * * * At all times every one must be on the guard. The neglect of one might result in the destruction of all." Every one of the orders indicated the perilous situation of the troops, and the possibility of an attack from an unseen foe at any moment. On the 14th of October, they reached the southwest branch of the Miami rivers Here the commander complimented Brigadier-General Posey and the officers in general for their good behavior during the rapid march they had made, and at the same time censured the want of harmony INDIANA WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE 149 and lack of proper subordination in a few of the Legion; "at this crisis, when they ought to unite as a band of brothers, to give effect to every order and operation tending to the security, honor and reputation of the Army." The Indians made an attack on the I6th inst., and the soldiers gave way and retreated, led by Daniel Davis, a private. Davis was at once tried by court-martial and ordered to be shot for his cowardice, but was subsequently pardoned by the commander, on condition that the dragoons should retrieve their character on the first opportunity. On the I7th of October, Lieutenant Lowery and Ensign Boyd, with a command of ninety men, and acting as a convoy for twenty-one wagons of supplies and military stores, were attacked near Fort St. Clair, and the officers above named, with thirteen others, were at once killed.26 On the 19th of October, two soldiers, Edward O'Bryan and Matthew Gill, were shot to death, having been convicted of sleeping at their posts, when on duty as sentries. The cold weather was now so far advanced that it was thought best to prepare for winter quarters, and the soldiers were at once set at the work of "hutting" and preparing proper defenses. Grounds were marked off and assigned to each wing and corps, for the purpose of "hutting" and the soldiers were set at work. The huts of noncommissioned officers and privates were to be fourteen feet in the clear and six to a company. The huts of the soldiers were to be first erected and then the officers should take all help they needed to complete their houses.27 On the I Ith of November, General Wilkinson was directed to march on the succeeding Wednesday to Fort Jefferson, with Majors William McMahon and John Mills, and with the companies of Captains William Kelsey, Thomas Pasture, Samuel Andrews, Zebulon Pike, Thomas Lewis, John Cook, Asa Hartshorn, Daniel Bradley, Isaac Guion, Jacob Slough, and William Preston. Twenty-four privates of the cavalry were directed to stay in camp, and the remainder were ordered to accompany General Wilkinson.28 The huts were completed and occupied by the troops on the I6th day of November, and the fort was formally named "Green Ville" on that day. Before the houses for the officers were built the fortifications were completed, consisting of a stockade around the encampment, with loopholes at intervals. The loopholes were so high that they could not be used or seen through from the outside, jnd within, around the entire stockade was a banquette, or elevation, made of earth, so high that the shortest men could fire through the loopholes with effect, "so as to take an enemy in the centre at twenty yards."29 Following the completion of this work, the officers' huts were prepared and everything was then ready for winter. The winter was not spent in idleness. There was a constant drilling of the soldiers and preparing them for the actual conflict to come, and instructing them in the methods of Indian warfare. A road was kept open to bring in supplies for the army, and convoys of food were constantly being brought in. A detachment of troops under Col. John 150 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Francis Hamtramck was sent forward to the site of St. Clair's defeat, and there a defense was built which was called Fort Recovery.30 After the fortifications here were completed, two companies of soldiers were kept in it and the remainder marched back to Fort Greenville, twenty-three miles. The general camp was maintained at Fort Greenville until July 27, I794, but in the interval troops were being constantly sent forward to Fort Recovery. On the I3th of May, Lieut. Edward D. Turner and Lieut. Robert Lee, with fifteen dragoons acting as an escort, attacked a body of Indians and put them to flight, capturing their packs, blankets, provisions and arms. Corporal Waters was killed. A few days later it became quite certain that the Indians would soon attack the post, and on the 27th of May, the following order was issued: "The commander-in-chief is confident that every officer and soldier will cheerfully exert himself upon this occasion, as from very recent corroborative intelligence, the enemy mean very shortly to afford the Legion an opportunity of trying their prowess in the field. Should they eventually realize that opportunity, the commander in chief fondly flatters himself that the enemy will have no cause to triumph from the interview.'"31 The expected attack of the Indians did not take place, but the men were prepared. Each person. was constantly on the outlook for a foe, and was prompted to shoot any Indian, be he a friend or an enemy, at sight. Nearly all of the Indians were unfriendly, but some, Choctaws or Chickasaws, were not included in that list, and to distinguish them from other tribes, they each wore a piece of yellow ribbon, tied to the topknot or tuft of hair, left on the crown of the head by way of ornament, or to serve as a trophy of war.A2 These Indians were not to be disturbed by the soldiers and a warning to that effect was given to the troops by general orders. The troops that remained at Fort Greenville were at work completing the fortifications at that place. On the 29th of June, Maj. William McMahon was sent forward to take charge of Fort Recovery, in command of the company of Capt. Thomas Lewis, and the residue of83 the company of Capt. Asa Hartshorn, making a detachment of ninety-five rifle men and fifty dragoons, acting as a convoy for provisions. As Major McMahon neared Fort Recovery on June 30, he was attacked by a large body of Indians and English.34 The battle commenced early in the morning and lasted all day. It was supposed that there were between I,5oo and 2,000 Indians engaged on this occasion. Of the Legion, twenty-two officers and men were killed and thirty were wounded. It was not ascertained how many Indians were disposed of, but probably a much larger number. Major McMahon, Captain Hartshorn and Lieut. Robert Craig were among the killed, and Capt. James Taylor and Lieut. William Darke among the wounded.83 The British watched every movement of Wayne as eagerly as did the Indians. The general impression was that war between the United States and England was not far off. Governor Simcoe informed his government that Brant was loyal to him and that the Indians had openly INDIANA WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE 151 declared themselves willing to obey his instructions. "The union of all of these powerful Indians," Simcoe wrote, "would be productive of the King's best interests." He requested that "the Indians be not now deserted by the British for, if they were, there would be no safety to British interests in America." On June 21 he wrote "General Wayne's army is advancing; I hope, but I am by no means confident, that the Indians will effectually oppose him. I intend to occupy Turtle Island, and to combine all the defenses of land batteries, gun boats and the shipping, to prevent, if possible, Gen. Wayne from obtaining any supplies from Presque Isle or elsewhere 'by that channel."3 A large detachment of mounted Kentucky troops arrived at Fort Greenville. They consisted of two brigades under Generals Todd and Barbee, the whole commanded by Major General Scott, and amounting to more than 1,500 men.87 On the 28th of July, Wayne started northward with such portions of his army as could be spared from garrison dity. Brig.-General Wilkinson had command of the right wing; Lieut.-Col. Commandant Hamtramck had charge of the left wing of the regular troops. The mounted volunteers under General Scott marched in seven columns in the rear. The first encampment was at Stillwater, twelve miles from Greenville, and the second at "Indian Encampment," near Fort Recovery,88 and here the army was increased by all the troops that could be spared from that fort. The next advance was ten miles, and a halt was made at Beaver swamp, or Beaver creek, a tributary of the Wabash. They were now in a country without roads, and the progress was necessarily slow on that account. A bridge seventy yards long had to be built across the swamp, and a road to the St. Mary's river, twelve miles, was cut and an encampment reached on that river on the ist of August. The troops were detained here long enough to erect a fortification, called Fort Randolph.39 Lieut. James Underhill was_ left in charge of a garrison of one hundred men at Fort Randolph, and the main army proceeded on its way, first passing down the St. Mary's river, one day's journey, and erecting another garrisoned post, which they called Fort Adams. It was the intention of Wayne to confuse the Indians, by making a feint in both the right and left of his advance, so that they could not be prepared to resist him. When the army had reached Fort Randolph, a soldier named Newman deserted and sought safety among the Indians on Au Glaize river.40 Newman told the Indians of Wayne's approach, and they fled from their houses, leaving their fields of corn untouched. From Fort Adams, Wayne suddenly turned his course to the northwest, and on the 7th of August reached the upper towns on Au Glaize river, finding them deserted. The following is a portion of the orders issued on August 8th: "Head Quarters Grand Glaize, 8 Aug. I794. "The commander-in-chief congratulates the Federal Army upon taking possession of the grand emporium of the hostile Indians of 152 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the west. The extensive and highly cultivated fields and gardens on the margin of these beautiful rivers, show that they were the work of many hands, and afford a pleasing prospect of bountiful supplies of grain on the troops progress towards the lakes." The pathway of the army was through a beautiful country. Vegetables of all kinds were in abundance. For miles they marched through great fields of corn along the river. If the soldiers were pleased with the prospects, and their surroundings, they were equally surprised at the thrift of the Indians. They hardly contemplated that savages would devote so much time and care to their gardens, as they found here. No Indians remained in any of their villages. All had fled before the intruders, and the army was permitted, unmolested, to take or destroy such portions of these fine fields as might be desired. Wayne feared that the natives were hovering around the pathway of the soldiers ready to shoot or pounce on anyone found outside their lines, and his fears were not groundless. The Indians had not abandoned the country for good; they left only to congregate and to make a desperate resistance to maintain their homes. At the confluence of the Miami (Maumee) and Au Glaize rivers, on the 9th of August, the commander-in-chief commenced the erection of a palisade, which was completed in eight days, and was named Fort Defiance.2 Still bearing in mind that the government desired to obtain a peaceful settlement with the Indians, without further bloodshed, the commandant sent Christopher Miller among the savages to see if terms of settlement could be arrived at. Miller had lived with the Indians many years, and was familiar with the country that the army was now passing through. He was also acquainted with the Indian language and with the habits of the people. It was a hazardous undertaking to send a white man, and an enemy, among them on such an errand at this time, but Miller undertook the work, and returned on the I6th with the information that if the army would remain ten days longer at Fort Defiance, a definite answer, peace or war, would be given.4' Wayne was impatient, and mistrusted the intention of the Indians in asking for delay, and resolved to push on and meet them before they were entirely prepared to receive him. By the time Miller returned, the army had proceeded nineteen miles from Fort Defiance,44 and that day, August I6, proceeded twelve miles, the next day it marched ten miles, and there, on the banks of the Maumee, on August 19, commenced the erection of a fort, which was called Camp Deposit, intended as a security for the heavy baggage of the troops. It was known that the army was in the midst of hostile Indians, and an attack might be expected at any minute. From Camp Deposit could be seen the British fort, Fort Miami, then under command of Maj. William Campbell of the British army.4 Undoubtedly the present troubles were augmented by the ammunition and encouragement given by the British to the Indians. The French, or Canadians, were generally on the side of the Indians also, for the two nations were always very friendly, but the material encouragement came entirely from the British. Neither the Indians nor the INDIANA WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE 153 French could have obtained sufficient arms and ammunition to have resisted the troops without aid from the British authorities. It is very probable that the Indians expected aid from the British soldiers in the coming conflict, and it is not uncertain that Wayne expected the same thing, and was prepared for it. Early in the morning of August 20, the army started along the banks of the Maumee, in the direction of the British fort. At ii o'clock, as the soldiers were passing through a space thickly covered with fallen timbers and high grass,46 an ideal battle ground for Indian tactics, they were attacked by the long looked for foe. The battle soon commenced in earnest. The foremost mounted troops retreated until the main body of the army was reached, and then reformed and charged upon the unseen and concealed foe. Soon the Indians broke and ran in all directions, and their retreat was marked by their dead bodies. There was no sound of artillery, no cannon's loud roar-but the sharp rifle report and puff of smoke from fallen tree or clump of tall grass gave evidence of an Indian, Frenchman or American, and the sharp yell of one in pain evidenced the good aim of the gunner. As the Canadians and Indians turned to run, the Americans followed closely after and pursued them for many miles. The gates of the British fort were shut and the British soldiers watched their allies shot down without offering any assistance or giving them any succor. Thus was fought the battle of Fallen Timbers, and thus ended the Indian wars of the eighteenth century; the last battle of the American Revolution. The result was satisfactory to the army, and the enthusiasm of the occasion is expressed in the orders of the day: "The commander-inchief takes this opportunity to congratulate the Federal Army upon the brilliant success in the action of the 20th inst. against the whole combined force of the hostile savages, aided by a body of militia of Detroit, and countenanced by the British garrison and post, close in their rear; beyond which the fugitives fled with disorder, precipitation and dismay, leaving their packs, provisions and plunder in their encampment in the rear of that post. The Indians, to all appearances, have totally abandoned their settlements, quite to the mouth of the river, and their villages and corn fields being consumed and destroyed in every direction. Even under the influence of the guns of Fort Miami, facts which must produce a conviction to the minds of the savages that the British have neither the power nor inclination to afford them that protection they have been taught to expect; that, on the contrary, a numerous garrison, well supplied with artillery, have been compelled to remain tacit spectators of the general conflagrations round them, and their flag displayed to the disgrace of the British, and to the honor of the American Arms."47 XIII EARLY DETROIT By C. M. Burton Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXIX, 225-239 ARLY Detroit! Not the history of early Detroit, but something of its people, their vocations, habits, hopes and fates. The social life of the French who were here from the foundation of the city in I70I, till the coming of the English in I760, has been usually stated to have been a continual round of pleasure and of merry-making; the lives of the people, a sort of Acadian simplicity, where the rule of the village priest was the law of the land and citizens vied with each other to see who could bear the palm for propriety in living and diligence in work. It is difficult to. determine how these ideas of the early French people came to be so deeply imbedded in our beliefs, but I am sure that they are entirely erroneous. Detroit, as established by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, covered only a small tract of land-not more than two acres, but it grew considerably under his management, and was nearly doubled in size before he left. Personally, Cadillac was agreeable enough with such of his colonists as agreed with him, but he could brook no interference with anyone who attempted to oppose his views, and he was, consequently, almost always in a quarrel with someone. These quarrels affected the entire settlement and put all the people "by the ears." His chief antagonists were the Jesuit priests. There were no Jesuits stationed at Detroit, but there were some at Mackinac (Michilimackinac), and that was near enough to cause the quarrels to annoy Detroit-for all the French were Catholics and many of them were adherents of the Jesuits. Then he had lots of trouble with the Company of the Colony of Canada, the great trading company that possessed the exclusive right to the trade of Detroit. The restrictions placed upon the number of beavers and other fur-bearing animals permitted to be killed at Detroit materially affected every hunter and trapper in the settlement, and necessarily disturbed trade and made the maintenance of a comfortable life uncertain and precarious. The quarrels of Cadillac with the company extended so far that he was arrested or summoned to Montreal to answer charges preferred against him. During his absence he, at first, put the charge of the place in the hands of his lieutenant, Alphonse Tonty, and a short time later Tonty was succeeded by a man named Bourgmont, but this man had a bad name to start with, and lived a life that even in those days was considered too immoral to be tolerated, and he was speedily induced to leave the settlement. He did not leave, however, until he had sold out EARLY DETROIT 155 all the powder and lead and firearms he could find to the Indians, and the citizens were afraid the savages would rise and exterminate them, as they were partly unarmed and wholly deficient in materials to properly protect themselves. Madam Cadillac and Madam Tonty came to Detroit in I702, and within a short time after their arrival there were a few other women who came here, either as wives of those who were already here or with the expectation of becoming wives. The absence of women, alone, would be sufficient to make the place uninviting to the French, for what would any community be without them? You all know that even Eden without Eve would be intolerable. There was an effort made by the French government to induce the soldiers to marry Indian women, but the scheme failed. Few Frenchmen would willingly take savages for wives when there might be an opportunity for each to obtain a wife from his own nation by waiting. Cadillac had his son with him, but there were no other children here during the first two or three years, and not young people enough to make up a social gathering for many years. The records of Ste. Anne's church previous to 1703 were destroyed by the fire of that year. We know that records were kept, for mention of them and of their destruction, is noted on the new record, which was commenced immediately after the fire. From other sources we ascertain that there was a child born to Madam Tonty, the first white child in the west, and that this child died in 1702 or 1703. We also know that there was a child born to Madam Cadillac before the church was burned. It is not probable that there were any other entries in this church record, unless they were connected with the savages. Pierre Roy may possibly have been married during this period, for his wife was an Indian, and his marriage was acknowledged by the priest, in later years, to have been a legal one, according to the forms of the church. The records in the new church, after 1703, show that of the children of French parents, two died in i707, four in 1709, and four in 1710; that in i704 there were three children born, one in 1705, five in I706, fourteen in 1707, twelve in 1708, nineteen in 1709, and nine in I710. There were three marriages in 1710, and none before that date. The people who came with Cadillac, and those who braved the dangers of a trip to this far western country in those early days, had passed the giddiness of youth and came as the working men and women of middle age. The streets of the little village were extremely narrow, not more than ten or fifteen feet in width, except perhaps Ste. Anne street, which I believe, was about twenty feet wide throughout most of its length, and about forty feet wide it front of the church. The houses were very close together-the lots were only from sixteen to twenty feet wide, with a depth of from twenty to twenty-six feet. The houses were built of.logs or young trees, eight or ten inches in diameter, driven into the ground and cut off six or seven feet above the earth. The roof was made of small logs flattened with an adz, put 156 HISTORIC MICHIGAN closely together and so arranged that in case of a conflagration the entire dwelling could be quickly covered with skins to hold water and prevent the spread of fire. The sides and roof were puttied up with mud or mortar. In one of Cadillac's early letters he states that down the river there is an island of limestone, and that the clay about the post is suitable for making good brick. In an inventory of goods in one of the houses in the fort, mention is made of a quantity of hair used for making mortar. I draw the inference from these, that they knew how to make brick and mortar, and a few brick of a rude workmanship were made and used for flooring in their cabins or houses. These floors were so expensive and valuable that they were inventoried in the household effects of their owners, and were especially mentioned in transfers of the properties. It also seems quite probable that they made and used mortar in filling the interstices of their rude log cabins. I am quite positive that they had no glass utensils of any kind. The mirror that was used for purposes of shaving and of the toilet was of tin, and the windows were of skins scraped as thin as possible. The nearest article to glass that I can find in any of the early records is a porcelain ring and some glass beads, but in two or three instances I found mention of tin mirrors, and I have two or three contracts to complete dwellings, where the contractor agrees to put in good skins for windows, and in one case of an exchange of properties, one party agreed to remove the old skins that had become thickened by action of the elements, and replace them with new, thin ones. There were few musical instruments at the place. A few tin horns, Ioo tin trumpets, probably brought here to sell to the Indians, for the citizens were too old to be amused by such toys. It is possible, however, that these horns and trumpets were sometimes used by coasters, on the hillside at the water's edge, for we may well believe that even the older people allowed themselves, sometimes, to indulge in this pastime, when the snow and frozen waters of the river and bay just below the post permitted it. I have no evidence that there were any skates here or that skating was indulged in. I do know that Jerome Martiac dit Sansquartier had a violin, and I presume it was frequently called into requisition in the long winter evenings-but where the people danced I do not know, unless they used the church or storehouse for that purpose-for their dwellings were so miserably small that little room could be found for such a purpose. Frenchmen, however, are noted for their vivacious temperament, and it is not hard to believe that there being a will they soon found a way, and that on many occasions they "chased the glowing hours with flying feet" to the music of Sansquartier's old violin. At an early day Cadillac brought three horses to the settlement, but two of them died, and the one remaining horse "Colon" was the only nag of which the settlement could boast when Cadillac left in 1711. The difficulty of getting horses and cattle here at this early day must EARLY DETROIT 157 have been very great, for it was impossible to bring them in the small boats they then possessed, and to bring them from Montreal all the way along the borders of Lakes Ontario and Erie, through the pathless forests, the tangled underbrush, the unknown wilderness, and among unfriendly Indians must have been great indeed, but cattle, swine and domestic fowls were brought here and thrived. I mentioned that Cadillac was ordered down to Montreal in I705, to answer charges preferred against him by the officers of the Company of the Colony of Canada. It was not until I706 that he returned to his home in Detroit, and the official report of the place at that time, as it appears in archives now in Paris, reads as follows: "The Sr. de la Mothe settled down there (at Detroit) again last summer, I706, with his whole family. There are now 270 persons there, among which numbers are twenty-five families. It is stated that more than a hundred other households have written to go up there in the summer on which we are about to enter (1707). "The Sr. de la Forest serves under him there and makes a good second in command. He has passed the thirty-two years that he has been in Canada either in the explorations of the Sr. de la Salle, or with the Sr. de Tonty, or in trading on his own account, or in the woods or by voyages. He is known and beloved by the savages. No one can manage them better. He is no less beloved by the French people because of his good nature and disinterestedness; but he is beginning to grow old and might be inclined to retire to Quebec. Some favor from Monseigneur might remove this idea. "The Sr. de la Mothe went through many troubles before he set out for Detroit; they did all they could to draw his men away; they refused him many things and raised many difficulties. The establishment of this post does not please everyone. "The Sr. de la Mothe surmounted all these obstacles by dint of heavy expenditures and by his steadfastness. The definite orders of Monseigneur received last year by the 'Hero' will encourage him, but similar orders are still required to strengthen this post against those who are evilly disposed towards it. "Those who come from the place or write about it, speak of it as a fine and fertile country. The hundred families who are to go up there next summer will push forward this affair. "This year the Sr. de la Mothe had horses and horned cattle taken there overland. There are already a large number of pigs there and a quantity of poultry. Still larger numbers are to be taken there this year, together with some sheep. Forty minots of wheat and other grains will be sown, and in three years at farthest this post will be formed and of some size. "The trade of Detroit with the Mississippi is beginning to be established. Frenchmen go to and fro and bring back piastres. This communication will secure to his majesty the possession of the whole interior of the great mainland of Canada, which will be a matter of some 158 HISTORIC MICHIGAN importance some day, in relation to the English and the savages, whom this post will overawe. "The Sr. de Tonty at Fort Frontenac, the Sr. Jonquaire with the Sonnontouans, and the younger Renaud at Missilimackinac, are great hindrances to the establishment of Detroit. It is pretended that they are at these posts by the order of their superiors; they are really taking the cream of the public and private trade there under false pretences. "It is for Monseigneur to avert the consequences of such posts. "The Sr. de la Mothe needs protection at Quebec and Montreal. The deputy's brother transacts the business of the Sr. de la Mothe at Quebec, and the latter left him his general power of attorney on his departure. He did not dare to fill in his name nor act under it before the 'Hero' arrived at Quebec, lest he should get himself into trouble with his superiors. "It is this deputy's brother who receives all the goods from Detroit at Quebec and sends the Sr. de la Mothe families and convoys with his orders. This agent stands in need of Monseigneur's protection to prevent him from being molested in matters so full of details. "In order to deter families from wishing to go up to Detroit, the idea is instilled into them that this post will not be kept up long and that it will have to be abandoned at an early date. The best way of undeceiving people on that point would be to raise that post to a permanent governorship, but without pay." Although Cadillac was unfortunate in the ownership of his horses, with his other live stock he fared better and at the time of his departure, in 1711, he possessed twenty-nine head of horned cattle, and his colonists had numbers of swine which they placed on the island (our Belle Isle park) for security from depredations of Indians and wolves. Indeed, at a very early day, in I702 or 1703, the placing of swine on the island had become so common that the island then bore the name of Ile au Cochon (hog island) though it then was known by another name, Ste. Marguerite. The absence of horses made the sleigh-riding and horse racing on the ice an impossibility, though if we could believe the modern ideas of these old French habitants, we can scarcely believe that they could have enjoyed life without these pleasures. Hunting was somewhat of a pleasure, but it was also a mode of getting a livelihood at this early day, and was indulged in by the men who could endure the fatigue of traveling through the woods and living out of doors, thinly clad and exposed to all the elements except warmth. Fishing must have been something of a pastime, for the river was full of fish, and they were only caught to be eaten at once. There was no way of exporting them, and, indeed, it would have been useless to make the attempt, for at Montreal and Quebec the river was as bountifully supplied as at Detroit, and no one would purchase or use salted fish when fresh ones could be had, almost for the asking. So here, fresh fish could be obtained summer or winter, and it is EARLY DETROIT 159 doubtful if any effort was made to preserve them beyond the needs of the day on which they were caught, for salt was very expensive, almost worth its weight in gold. Everyone fished, if he desired, and in the inventory of the effects of Cadillac's household, there are included I,050 large barbed fish hooks, showing that his family enjoyed that pleasure on occasions. It is probable that Cadillac himself, on most occasions, was dressed in the military costume of the period, as he was the commandant, and that he usually carried his sword. I do not believe that others in the community dressed in this fashion, unless possibly his lieutenant, Tonty, did so. Sword practice must have been one of the amusements of the better class of the soldiers or civilians, I believe, for I find that Cadillac owned eighteen swords, and as he could not have used these for himself alone, he must have loaned them to his friends in their hours of pleasure and relaxation. They did not fight Indians with swords, but with guns. At a very early day a mill was established at Detroit, propelled by the wind, to grind the corn and wheat of the colonists. It was doubtless a crude affair, but performed the work more satisfactorily than had been done before that time, when only hand work was employed. A brewery was erected within a short time after the founding of the place, and a professional brewer brought here in Cadillac's employ, but it is not very probable that much beer was manufactured or used, for the natives and the French were more addicted to brandy. The use of this article made its existence one of the curses of the country, and no boat came up from Montreal without a supply which was readily disposed of to the Indians. In the post itself and wherever Cadillac had actual control, its use was limited, for he required that all liquors should be deposited in the general store house in the village, and that they should be doled out to proper parties and used in limited quantities on the spot. I do not find that in the post itself he was ever annoyed by drunken French or natives. In spite of these restrictions some of the traders would smuggle the intoxicants into the woods and there sell them to the Indians who were always eager to imbibe. Around the little village, both above and below, were villages of Indians, brought here by invitation of Cadillac in 170i and 1702. They formed settlements, cultivated a little ground for their Indian corn, and the men spent their time in hunting and getting drunk when opportunity offered. They carried on war sometimes, but usually were quite docile. Individual Indians were troublesome when intoxicated, but the nations were usually friendly. They composed portions of many tribes. The French people always had to be prepared to resist an attack from them for they were treacherous and revengeful. The village priest, Father Constantin De l'Halle, and a soldier, LaRiviere, were killed by them in an uprising on the 6th of June, 1706, and in the summer of I7I2 the Fox Indians encamped on the hill, where now stands the Moffat building, and besieged the village for an entire season. Cadillac was supposed to be the owner of all the territory adjacent to 160 1HISTORIC MICHIGAN the post and obtained, in I704, authority to sell and convey such portions as he desired, to his colonists and soldiers. He made many conveyances-some seventy-five farms and as many, or more, village lots. He reported to Paris all sales made by himself, but where his grantees sold to other parties he did hot undertake to keep a record for the benefit of his home government, as the king could scarcely be interested in such matters. That these sales might be made a matter of record for the benefit of the parties in interest, he established a registry in I707, in which all of these conveyances were entered. This record is exceedingly interesting and contains not only the deeds of conveyance, but also the marriage contracts and inventories and many other papers of interest at that time; among other matters the testimony taken on the trial of a soldier for desertion, spoken of hereinafter. This record is only one of the many evidences that the post was progressing and that it was intended to be a permanent establishment. Cadillac did not exactly sell these lands, for the land itself had no value except as it was occupied and tilled, or as it was protected, if within the palisades. He gave the purchaser such land as might be agreed upon, to hold and use upon payment of certain small annual dues or rents. The purchaser could keep this land as long as he liked, if he improved it; if he did not improve it, it reverted to Cadillac and was sold by him to some other party who would take better care of it. If an owner sought to transfer his right to a third party this was done by executing the proper deed of conveyance and obtaining the consent of Cadillac. For this consent a "fine upon alienation" was paid, so that, in effect, the feudal system of France was transferred to Detroit. Garden patches of half an acre each, along the easterly side of the modern Randolph street, were allotted to the soldiers of the garrison, and these they were compelled to cultivate. Such of the citizens as desired could obtain larger tracts of land for farming purposes, a little further from the village limits, in such locations as would not interfere with the lands set apart for the Indians. Farming was precarious business, though, for the farmer did not dare to live on his possessions -he must live in the village for protection of himself and family, and he did not dare to leave exposed to Indian depredations anything that these wild sons of the forest could carry off-for the Indians were notorious thieves. When it came night all people were required to be within the palisades that surrounded the village, and the gates of the enclosure were shut and barred, and were only opened with the coming of the morning light. A sentry was always on duty at night, and his services were frequently needed. In the summer time the little houses were as comfortable as their compact condition and the narrow street would permit, but in winter they were more inhospitable and would now be considered almost uninhabitable. Stoves had not been invented, and it is very probable that many houses were utterly without means of making them warm. ~c.'" 0\ i:i to Ij* ;j prl W::::::r::~ P Cre O::::::' `::::::':;kp F * B.~..I~~::~:~::::::~:~ ~.~ , .~Bii'ibP,B::::::i::i:'::I::::' :~ ~:::::i;~, I r EARLY DETROIT 161 An Indian cabin without the fort was a long structure with an opening in the roof near the center of building. The fire was built directly under this opening and the smoke was supposed to ascend through it to the open air. The houses in the village were hot large enough for such a crude contrivance, and where there were no fireplaces, I think there was no way of heating the house in winter. In some of the houses there were fireplaces and in the inventory of Cadillac's household goods I find mention of twenty-six dozen fire beaters, ninety-four pairs of tongs, one pair of andirons weighing twenty pounds. There must have been some method devised to allow families to cook the victuals, and it may be that they arranged in communities and lived as one family, using their dwellings as apartments only. They did not bake bread, that is, there were public bake houses established and no baking was done at the private houses. This system became so fastened upon the French that they have not yet gotten over it in the older French settlements, and I was informed by a French citizen of Quebec, last summer, that only a very few of the French people in that city, ever undertake to bake bread for themselves; he said not a loaf of bread had ever been baked in his house to his knowledge. There was no lack of warm clothing for everyone, for furs and skins were in abundance, and they were probably used for all such household purpose. The interior of their dwellings, the walls were hung with skins, their beds were made of them, and their clothing consisted of them as far as possible, and as much as the season would permit. The beaver was taken as the unit of value in all their commercial transactions, and the flooding of the markets of the old world with the skins and furs of this and other animals had greatly decreased its value. Social laws were enacted in France to force the greater use of furshats were universally made of them, women were clothed in them on the streets of Paris and men wore muffs such as women alone use now, in order to extend the use of a material that was too common. The French government undertook to regulate the supply by prescribing the number of furs that the Company of the Colony of Canada could purchase and ship to Fratce, but the supply seemed inexhaustible. Thousands and thousands of skins were held in the warehouses and in the dwelling houses in Detroit, and as there was little sale for them the people used them for all sorts of purposes in order to get rid of them as profitably as possible. If the French woman dressed in the furs of the beaver, the bear, the elk, in western colonist fashion, she imitated her Parisian sister in coiffure of the period, for I find several instances of her use of the headdress, a rolle-I suppose the headdress that subsequently became known to the world by the name of Madam de Pompadour-you will recall that at this time Madam Maintenon ruled the Parisian social world, and that Madam de Pompadour came with the next reign of Louis XV. There were many other things of interest to the ladies of the village-such as caps, bonnets of the latest pattern, laces, etc. There were three buildings of a public nature in the post and all of 1-9 162 HISTORIC MICHIGAN them belonged to Cadillac himself. There were the church, the mill and the warehouse. The first church was erected in 170I and destroyed by fire two years later. We have no description of this building, but the one erected in its place is thus described in the records of the time, "a building used as a church, thirty-five feet long, twenty-four and a half feet wide, ten feet high, boarded entirely above with white oak joists in a good ridge, and below of beams with square joists, with its doors, windows, and shutters, and sash frames between, of twenty squares each, the whole closing with a key and surmounted with a heavy bell." The warehouse was thirty-seven and one-half feet long, twenty-two feet wide and eight feet high, boarded top and bottom with thick planks of oak. It contains a press for pressing furs, a counter, and three shelves for books. The mill was circular in form, thirty-four feet high and thirty feet eight inches in diameter. Apparently the patronage of the mill was not sufficient to warrant its being kept in order, for in 1711 the sail cloths are represented as worn out and worth nothing, and it ceased to be used a few years later. There was a large barn fifty feet long and twenty-seven feet wide, an ice house fifteen feet square, the bottom of which was fifteen feet deep in the ground and it extended six feet above the surface. While no mention of books is made in any inventory that I have so far found, I believe there were a number, for there were three shelves devoted to holding books in the public warehouse, and from Cadillac's writings we know that he was quite familiar with the Bible and with some of the French dramas of the period. Of writing paper they must have had a supply for the use of the commandant and his amanuensis, Grandmesnil, for his letters were very long, covering fifty and sixty, and some even as much as one hundred pages, and I have one containing one hundred and sixty pages. The ink used in writing these letters were made of copperas and nutgall, and they had a supply of two and one-quarter pounds-enough, with careful use, to last a century. To hold the ink in use, Cadillac had a lead inkstand weighing two and three-quarters pounds. Pens were plucked from the wild geese found everywhere in great abundance. Tobacco smoking was indulged in very generally by the Indians and Frenchmen. I do not know whether the tobacco was grown here or was grown further south and brought here in exchange for commodities more easily obtained in this region. Cadillac possessed many pipes for sale in his effects, some of them probably quite fancy. In this list I find "four large caluments of red stone, with their stems and plumes and stands to hold them." There was always one and sometimes two priests attendant at the church, the duty of one of them being particularly to look after the interests of the Indians about the village. There were, in 1711, undisposed of at the public storehouse, two and one-half dozen crucifixes and nineteen and one-half dozen rosaries, besides many articles in the nature EARLY DETROIT 163 of church paraphernalia, such as altar cloths, surplices, veils, small hand bells, etc. The church yard was quite large for so small a tract of land as was enclosed by the palisades, and the burying ground was near the church within what is now Griswold street, at its intersection with Jefferson avenue. Subsequently, and when the number of the dead had so increased that their dwelling room was too small, and another site had to be chosen, they took the parcel of ground at a later time occupied by Ste. Anne's church, bounded by Bates, Lamed, Randolph and Congress streets. There were no courts in Detroit, and the quarrels of the citizens were either settled by the parties themselves, by arbitration, or by the final reference to Cadillac. The commandant claimed the right of administering higher and lower justice and had, on two occasions, petitioned to be permitted to bear the title of Marquis or Baron of Detroit, with the judicial powers attached to either office. It is uncertain what his exact powers were, but he certainly exercised a controlling influence over the community. In military affairs the court martial was invoked, and in I708 several soldiers were tried, and one of them shot for desertion. In the more important criminal matters, recourse was had to the sovereign council of Quebec, and there were taken the initial steps for ascertaining and punishing the parties who undertook to burn Detroit in 1703. When Cadillac first set out from Montreal, early in the spring of I70I, he was accompanied by one hundred Frenchmen, of whom half were soldiers and half civilians, and one hundred Algonquin Indians. They took along sufficient food to last them six months, but immediately upon founding the post, the Indians began to flock to it and settle in the neighborhood, and Cadillac soon concluded that the task of supporting these savages the next winter would fall upon his shoulders. He made haste to send to all parts of the country to collect Indian corn for the winter supply, and the storehouse was filled sufficiently for necessary consumption. Detroit itself-the country about the post-had been for many years a sort of neutral ground, situated between the Iroquois Indians on the east and south, and the Algonquin tribes on the north. The result was that here the wild animals were permitted to increase and multiply without much danger of being killed by the Indians, and when the territory was now first occupied by the French, it was well filled with wild game. This offered food for the horde of Indians that came at Cadillac's invitation. Six thousand Indians settled at Detroit in the winter of 1701-I702, and while there might not have been an abundance of food for all, there was so great a supply that no great hardship was experienced. The French had brought some winter wheat with them and this was sown with good success, but the spring wheat which was sown in 1702 was not as profitable. From this time wheat and Indian corn and peas were raised in sufficient quantities for the use of the village, and it is 164 HISTORIC MICHIGAN very probable that there were many vegetables, for there were several herb houses in the village. Fresh meat was obtainable in certain seasons of the year, and salted meats could be had, for there were several barrels of salt in the place, and fish were in abundance always. All the people lived within the fort or palisade, though some of them had farms quite a distance from the village, which they worked on in the day time, and left them, on the approach of nightfall, to the tender mercies of the wild animals and savages. There was little need of any road along the river front, though very likely a pathway was formed which gradually became a road as the colonists needed one, and as the number of horses and cattle increased. The river was the natural highway and everyone knew how to use it. Boats were in abundance and were owned by everyone, but there were no large vessels. The "Griffin," built by LaSalle at Buffalo in the previous century, was the first and last large vessel launched by the French. There were some fairly good-sized boats that were equipped with sails, but the largest of these, of which I have any account, could hold only ten men. The boats that carried Cadillac on his first excursion were probably small and light, for they had to be carried on the shoulders of the voyageurs over the thirty-five portages on the Ottawa route, so that when his company descended Detroit river in those July days of I70T, their boats must have numbered as many as forty or fifty well filled with French and Indians, and the sight must have been grand, strange and imposing. In the founding of Detroit, Cadillac was not actuated by that desire so common in his day of converting the Indians and of making them useful members of society for the sake of church and religion, or for the salvation of their souls. He took a matter-of-fact view of the situation and worked steadily with the one object inview of making a permanent and useful settlement, that would not only be self sustaining, but would help to protect the country of his king from the encroachments of the English. To be sure his ideas appear to us now to have been very visionary and out of place in some ways, but not in everything. He desired to start his colony with fifty civilians and fifty soldiers. and he had this company when he first left Montreal in the spring of 1701. The following year he wished twenty-five families to be sent to him, and a portion, at least, of this number came. Then he wanted two hundred young men of different trades to be sent. Some came. but not as many as he desired. Now his desires began to enlarge and he wanted a school or seminary for the education of the Indians and the youths of the village. A house of the Ursuline nuns was to come next, and they were to open a hospital. The lands were to be cleared and cultivated; the Indians to be sent to school and instructed in the arts of husbandry; a standing army to be enlisted from the Indians. officered by the French and paid by the government. Detroit was soon to outstrip Quebec and Montreal in population. EARLY DETROIT 165 It has been stated many times by many writers that Cadillac was either irreligious or careless in the observance of his religious duties. I believe this is not a fact. His people were all religiously inclined. They were all Catholics, and Protestants or Huguenots were unknown. From a careful examination of Cadillac's own writings I am inclined to think that he was very liberal in his views, and that most of his people took their religious ideas from him. It would have taken a very little persuasion to have led him from the Church of Rome, and yet, possibly, the idea of leaving the church never entered his head. He despised and feared the Jesuits, and the causes of his dislike are repeated in many of his letters. He believed that they were politicians and not religious teachers, working for the good of their society and caring little for the Indians or for anyone or anything except their society. He would not permit them at Detroit, and no Jesuits were ever established here until very recently. He was quite as much attached to the religious order of Recollets as he was indisposed towards the Jesuits. Accompanying the first expedition was a Jesuit priest, Francois Vaillant, and a Recollet, Constantin De l'Halle. The former he drove away from the company as soon as a landing was made on that 24th day of July, I701, but the latter remained and ministered to the post until he was murdered by the Indians in I706. Cadillac was the friend of Father De l'Halle, and erected a church for him at once, as the palisades were put up, and when this church was destroyed by fire in I703, he permitted him to use another building which he owned and which was large and suitable for church purposes, and this use was continued as long as Cadillac remained here. Dominique de la Marche was the next priest, coming July I8, I706, and remaining until I709. I believe he came here partly for the purpose of learning the language of the neighboring native tribes, and that he gradually took up the care of some of them and labored in their midst. In November, I707, Father Cherubin Deniaux came to take charge of affairs at the fort, and both de la Marche and Deniaux officiated here until I709, when the former left and the latter remained several years. Between Father Deniaux and Cadillac there sprung up a strong friendship that was not severed by the departure of the latter in 1711. When Cadillac left the post in 1711, affairs were turned over to Charles Renaud sieur Dubuisson, who came to take charge, pending the arrival of de la Forest, who was designated as the successor to Cadillac. The troubles of the post were much increased by the arrival and actions of the new commandant who proceeded to turn things over and twist them about to his own liking, much to the discomfort of the citizens in general, and particularly to the friends of Cadillac. On the 24th day of August, I7II, Deniaux wrote a letter to Cadillac, who was then at Quebec, giving a description of the situation at Detroit, and in that letter the following paragraph occurs: "In fact sir, Detroit is all in commotion, both within and without, 166 HISTORIC MICHIGAN order and subordination, whether spiritual or civil, no longer exists, nor respect for authority, political or ecclesiastical. M. Dubuisson has had the fort cut into halves; has turned Madam out, and also the church, and consequently me with the six chief families here, namely, de Lorme, Parent, Mallet, Roy, Robert, and Campos. I have forgotten the surgeon, who is not less necessary than the interpreter. "It seems from the bearing this M. Dubuisson adopts toward us that he is infallible, invulnerable and invincible. I do not say more on this subject for if I were to tell you all, and to sketch the portrait of Detroit for you as it is, it is terrible, it would affright you. "As for me I no longer live there. I languish and suffer there beyond everything that could be imagined, seeing its desolation and being unable to go away from it. Yet God be praised for all things, since nothing happens to us in this life but by the will of adorable providence, and for our sanctification when we do not oppose its designs." OLD FRENCH TRADITIONS By Mrs. M. Carrie W. Hamlin, of Detroit Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, IV, 70-77 HE following incidents, like little waifs, have drifted down the current of the past into our family history.' I have gathered them, for time with its bird-like rapidity will soon sweep along with its wings these souvenirs of the courteous, generous Canadians who came to colonize our beautiful city. These glimpses into their domestic life become more valuable, as our knowledge of their manners and customs is limited. It is to be regretted that we are indebted to the pen of the Englishman for the few written records that we possess. They came as conquerors with but little sympathetic feeling for the vanquished, nor just comprehensiveness of the character of the gay, pleasure loving Canadian. They thought "nothing good could come out of Nazareth," especially when that Nazareth was so far removed from civilization, and in the wilds of a new country, peopled by the French, their hereditary foes. The old French pioneer clung with great tenacity to the traditions and customs of La Belle France; they were the link connecting him with the shores of his sunny home. The French language was spoken with all the purity and elegance of the time of Louis XIV. After the conquest it lost much of its purity, by the mingling of the two languages. It was the polite language of the upper class, English officers and their wives always speaking it fluently. No people piqued themselves more in pride of ancestry whenever there was any ground for it. Many of the first colonists belonged to the Ancienue Noblesse of France, retired officers and soldiers. Several of their descendants still preserve their name and tradition. The commandants of Fort Pontchartrain all belonged to distinguished families, EARLY DETROIT 167 and many bore historic names. I find in every branch of the Navarres, whether in Florida, Canada, New York, or Michigan, the tradition of a descendant from a king of France. It is probably too late to verify it, but I mention it to show as a legacy; these old traditions were handed down from generation to generation and can still be found in the remotest branches. An old custom in the pastimes of Canada, which still exists and has several times been revived in Detroit and Grosse Pointe even within late years, is la d' Ignolee. On New Year's eve a number of young men mask, go from house to house singing a peculiar song suitable for the occasion; the host and hostess bring out bundles of clothing, provisions, and sometimes money, and fill the cart of the minstrels. These contributions are afterwards distributed among the poor. The custom is traced to France, and by fragmentary history and tradition away back to the Druids, who administered law and a form of religion to the Celtic nations of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. The exchanging of presents was very universally followed, also the making of calls. The fair hostess always presented her rosy cheek to be saluted by the caller; the right of precedence was strictly observed, the oldest person always being first, and officers according to rank. The wives of English officers at first objected to the custom of being thus saluted, but soon adopted the style, though in trying to improve upon it, rather vulgarized it by kissing on the lips. The respect paid to the aged, to parents, and superiors was admirable. If we have made such wonderful advances on the primitive simplicity of our forefathers in some matters, the shadow of the just reproach which once fell on the Athenians of old may rest upon us; "we may know and approve of what is right but leave it to others to practice." New Year's morning every child knelt to receive its parents' blessing, and even when married hastened with husband and little ones to receive this coveted benediction. The children were always sent on this day to visit all their relations. On entering a room "Bon Jour, Monsieur," "Bon Jour, Madame," was the usual greeting of every French child to its parents. Children constantly seeing the respect and deference their parents paid to their elders, soon acquired that graceful courtesy and affability of manners which is so distinguishing a trait of the old French habitan. Mardi Gras evening was one of unusual mirth and enjoyment with the easy-going, fun-loving habitans. The tossing of pancakes (flannel cakes), or, as the French express it, virez les crepes, was an old custom handed down, and even today is still observed in my family. A large number of guests were invited to the house of one of the wealthier citizens, and all repaired to the spacious kitchen. The large, open fireplace with its huge hickory logs brilliantly illuminated the immense room, and rendered everything effective by its Rembrandt play of light and shade; revealing the gay, careless, insouciant faces, sparkling with life and vivacity, and whose 168 HISTORIC MICHIGAN piquant tongues kept pace with the flashing eye, the expressive gesture and the inimitable shrug of the shapely shoulder. Each guest in turn would take hold of the pan (la poele) with its long handle, while some one would pour in the thin batter, barely enough to cover the bottom of the pan. The art consisted in trying to turn the cake by tossing it as high as possible and bringing it down without injuring the perfection of its shape. A deft and skillful hand was required, and many were the ringing peals of laughter that greeted a failure. The cakes were piled up in pyramid shape, butter and maple sugar placed between each layer and-formed the central dish in the substantial supper which took place later. After supper dancing commenced, and at the first stroke of twelve all saluted the host and hostess, and took farewell of pleasure until Easter. Lent being more rigidly observed than now, sometimes at the mi-careme (mid Lent) tossing of pancakes and other festivities were indulged in for a brief few hours. Far remote from the old world, entirely dependent upon his neighbor for comfort, amusement, and sympathy, the old habitan became attached to his new home and invested everything with peculiar interest. Wherever we go we carry thp image of our early surroundings, and unconsciously a new place appeals to us by the resemblance it bears to this revered picture. The imagination, like a skillful diplomat, catches its clue from the heart and weaves its alluring network of magic enchantment; even inanimate objects contribute to this deception, for we remain attached to the down in which our prosperity has slumbered, and still more to the straw on which we counted the days of our adversity. To the old habitan the bell of his church had a charm of individuality; it was a sweet messenger summoning him from fields and woods. It was his faithful sentinel, giving him the first note of warning; joyful its triumphant peals swept across the blue waters, awakening the slumbering echoes of the primeval forests as it proclaimed a marriage. Tolling melancholy its suppressed, mournful notes, whispering to each heart its solemn words, "Another year has gone, memento mori." When a bell was presented to the church its christening ceremony was of peculiar interest. After vespers the bell was gracefully draped in silk and placed near the railing of the sanctuary, blessed and baptized, a godfather and godmother standing near, the latter generally exquisitely dressed in some handsome light silk, the same material and color as the drapery of the bell which she generally presented. On one occasion the honor of godmother devolved upon an ancestor of my family, Madame Dufrene, nee Godet de Marentette, and Monsieur Jacque Baby being godfather. It is a tradition still preserved in the family that her dress was of pink silk, consuming thirty yards, not much for these days, but sixty years ago was considered immense. The dress and the silk decorating the bell were afterwards given to the church for vestments. The distributing of small pieces of blessed bread at the Credo during EARLY DETROIT 169 high mass is one of the oldest customs, and to within a few years was practiced in Sandwich, Ontario. The bread was supplied by each family of the parish in turns, the cousins (a kind of small cake) was added on fete days; five loaves of bread and twenty-five cousins were the number used on great occasions. On solemn feasts, such as the national one of St. Jean Baptiste, La Fete Dieu (Corpus Christi), Easter, or Christmas, the bread was distributed by one of the ladies of the congregation, and was followed by the beadle bearing in a basket the small pieces of the cut bread. His dress consisted of a long blue coat, edged in red, three little capes, something like the coachman's cape of the present day, each little ruffle bound in gold. The lady thus honored was invited sometime before; she was also expected to take up the collection and was called la queteuse, acknowledging each offering by a sweeping courtesy, the perfection of which was attained by many an anxious hour of practice. This custom of blessing the bread and eating it in church commemorated the Agapes (love feasts) of the early Christians, and was also a symbol of the peace and unity that should reign among people that they were members of the same family. It is related that the same ancestor who had been godmother for the bell was selected on a grand feast day to be the "queteuse," and that she made a distinguished toilet on the eve of the feast and remained sitting in her chair in state all night so as to be ready in time the next morning. So the Canadian lady was not so far back of the English dame who on some great court levee had her hair arranged days before, and was consequently deprived of the luxury of sleep. The homes of the French habitans of the wealthier class, were generally of logs hewn square, the interstices chinked in with clay; the roof was of overlapping strips of bark, usually one story high, with a garret. Dormer windows were of more recent introduction and gave extra room. Ladders were always placed on the slanting roof to be used in case of fire. The ground floor was divided into four parts, La Grande Chambre (parlor), La Salle a Manger (dining room), Le Cabinet (sleeping room), and the kitchen. The chimney was in the center of the house and occupied the space of a room. An immense log reposed cosily on its andirons, and the bright, glowing fire gilded with its magic touch the grim brass dogs and polished fender. The Yule log was kept half burnt from Christmas to Christmas; fragments of it were thrown on the fire during a severe storm "to prevent the thunder from falling." The ceiling and walls of the garret were decorated with festoons of dried fruits, garlands of pumpkins, bags of savory and medicinal herbs, bunches of onions, and sprigs of garlic. The later was held in high esteem and was considered an infallible preventive in times of pestilence and cholera; people always carried it about them, used it freely in their food, and today many an old habitan still rubs her crust of bread with the fragrant herb. The furniture of those days was very simple, but it answered every requirement. In the bedroom a four-post bedstead on stilts, with a 170 10ISTORIC MICHIGAN deep valance of dimity, an immense feather-bed on a rope network, replaced later by wooden slats, huge, round bolster, large, square pillows, a gaily colored patch-quilt which was an ingenious record of all the dresses of the female friends. Sometimes a canopy from which dimity curtains hung, inclosed this unique bed; no carpet save small mats, one near the bed, and another at the door; a wardrobe of fine wood, painted a color to suit the taste, though some were of cherry with brass handles; a small dressing table with drawers and handles of brass or glass; a narrow mirror with a gilt frame and divided in two; sometimes a picture was put in the upper part; a trunk perfectly square and covered with horsehide or deer skin, and resplendent with shiny brass nails and handles. No fire in the bedroom, it being considered unhealthy. If the rosy hues that nestled on the Canadian's cheeks, and the many snows that rested on his head without diminishing his strength and vigor, be the result of this measure, we must admit the wisdom of the arrangement. The parlor floor was covered with mats, the usual number being eight, as they varied from one or two yards in length; they were woven by the Indian maidens from rushes and swamp grasses, and dyed; the instincts of the sex crept out in the artistic blending of the colors; the chairs were of whitewood, sometimes oak, the seats of rushes, the backs were very high, straight, and painted; they were frequently embellished with paintings of flowers and even landscapes, though with little pretensions to artistic merit. Curvature of the spine and rounded shoulders were unknown then, perhaps they owe their birth to the refined, luxurious taste of the modern sybarite; the sofas were square boxes that could be opened at night and answer the purpose of a bed; they were upholstered in straw aid chintz; in the center of the room was a cherry table in shape of a half-moon and covered with a flannel cover of red or blue. The ceilings were low, occasionally but rarely the walls were papered. It is related that a few favored ones had thus been able to add the charm of novelty to their houses; this so animated the ambition of a Canadian woman that she determined that if she could not purchase the coveted article ingenuity should supply it. Eveni in the wilds of a new world the instincts and aspirations of her race and sex still clung to her; taking a cat she dipped its paws in a pan of thick blueing and applied these novel and refractory brushes at intervals on her whitewashed walls. In the salle a manger (dining room) was hung the square clock, twelve by eighteen inches, of solid brass, the face being white, the pendulum and weights hanging down; a large, square table; the stove was (en murailer) in the wall; that is, half in the parlor and half in the dining room, the door being in the dining room, so that no dust or ashes from it could enter the best room. The kitchen was very spacious, clothes lines were always stretched across it on which the towels used for the dishes, etc., were dried. Neatness and order reigned supreme in these domiciles. The hearth was immense, the andirons were of iron, and thekettles the same. Adjoining the kitchen was the bakehouse (la boulangerie), the oven, EARLY DETROIT 171 built of brick, was generally plastered over with mortar; in the center of the floor was (la huche) a wooden trough, in which the bread was kneaded. The front door opened into the parlor, the latch was raised by means of a long strip of buckskin hanging outside. Whenever the inmates were out no one, not even an Indian, would enter; to do so being considered a breach of hospitality. The windows were separated in two, swinging open; the panes were very small and of poor glass; the center vent (shutters) were of plain wood, painted green, and fastened back with large hooks. During the winter the meats were kept salted, also the fish, as the ice was seldom broker. Game was very plentiful. Rum was much used, but the most universal and favorite beverage was a cordial called L'Eustrope-distilled peaches in rum. Water was brought from the river in buckets. They had large wells with hooks around the inside; from these were suspended the pails with cream and butter, and baskets of fresh meats, this well answering the purpose of an ice house. The clothes were taken to the river to be beaten with a mallet (la lessive). Moccasins and list-shoes were much worn. The spinning wheel was constantly used by the women; they made a sort of linseywoolsey which was the principal cloth used by the habitans for their dress; the making of straw hats was the principal occupation of the children and maidens during the winter evenings. The horses, better known as Canadian ponies, were degenerate scions of a fine stock descended from a cross between a noble stallion, caught wild on the prairies of Mexico, the breed half Spanish and half Arabian (having been introduced there by Hernando Cortes in his conquest of that country in I520, and brought here by the Indians in I750) and a splendid Norman mare brought to this country by General Braddock and taken from him at his defeat near Duquesne (Pittsburg) in I755. Ten years later Captain Morris mentions seeing this milkwhite steed in possession of the Indians. The habitans were passionately fond of racing on the ice, on the Rouge and up at the Grand Marais; the calashes were the summer carriages, consisting of a sort of one horse chaise, capable of holding two persons besides the driver, who sat perched upon a low seat with his feet dangling on the shafts. This vehicle had no springs, but the body was hung upon two broad leather straps which were secured behind by two iron rollers by which they were tightened when too loose. Plated harnesses were very much used by the ultra fashionable, some of them were made very cumbersome by being studded with a number of brass nails. The cariole resembled the body of the calash placed on runners; between the driver and the horse was the high dashboard that reached to the driver's breast. Persons belonging to the jeunesse doree of the day had this dashboard artistically carved, representing the beak of a bird; or some fanciful or grotesque design. The Canadians of old dearly loved a wedding, and kept up its festivi 172 HISTORIC MICHIGAN: - i~~~:.;-'1 "...a ties for several days. The marriage bans were published for three successive Sundays in church and formed the all-absorbing topic of conversation among the habitans, especially those living outside the fort, who, not having time to return to vespers, would bring thir meals with them. Nothing could be more picturesque than these groups, with the tall, shadowy, swaying trees, at whose feet the table cloths were spread and whose dazzling whiteness contrasted with the carpet of verdure. A marriage was a very serious thing, divorces were unknown. At the betrothal the marriage contract was signed by both parties and their relatives and friends. A copy of one of these contracts has been preserved in our family. I will give it in full, as it may be interesting to many to compare the old French mode with the present: (Translation) Contract of marriage between Monsieur Jean Baptiste Cicot and M'elle Angelique Poupart La Fleur, July 27, 1770, before Philip De Jean, Royal Notary, by act of law, residing in Detroit; were present, Monsieur Jean Baptiste Cicot, Merchant, eldest son of Monsieur Zacharie Cicot, also merchant, and of the dame Angelique Godfroy de Mauboeuf, his father and mother, natives of Detroit, on the one part; and the Sieur Joseph P. Poupart Le Fleur, also merchant, and Dame Agathe Reaume, residing in the same place, stipulating for the Demoiselle Angelique Poupart La Fleur, their daughter, accepting and of her own consent for herself and in her name of the other part, the said parties in the presence and by the advice and the counsels of the Sieurs and Dames, their parents, and having assembled their friends as follows: On the part of the aforesaid Sieur Jean Baptiste Cicot, the Sieur Zacharie Cicot, and Dames Angelique Godfroy de Mauboeuf, his father and mother; Pierre Chesne de Labutte, Major Jean Baptiste Chapoton, Jacque Godfroy de Mauboeuf, his uncles; Medar Gamelin, his brother-in-law; Ignace Boyer, and Jacque Gabriel Godfroy, his cousins; Dame Widow Trottier de Ruisseaux, his aunt; Charles Rivard, Antoine Gamelin, etc., on the part of the Demoiselle Angelique Poupart La Fleur; Sieur Joseph Poupart La Fleur, Dame Agathe Reaume, her father and mother; Mr. John Hay,2 her uncle; Jean Poupart, her grandfather; Nicholas La Salle and Hyacinthe Reaume, her great uncles; Charles Rivard, Pierre Barrois, Pierre des Comptes Labadie, Baptiste Reaume, her uncles; Duperon Baby, her cousin; Mesdames Hay and Barrois, her aunts; Sieurs Antoine and George and Madame Baby. Their friends and parents have made a convention and agreement of marriage as follows: That the said Sieur Joseph Poupart La Fleur and Dame Agatha Reaume have promised and do promise to give their daughter, Madamoiselle Angelique Poupart La Fleur to the said Monsieur Jean Baptiste Cicot, who promises to take her as his future and legitimate spouse by law of marriage, and to have the same solemnized in the face of our Holy Mother, the Church, and this as soon as can be done, or whenever one of the two parties shall demand of the other; they shall be the future espoused couple, one and common in their goods, movable and immovable, and their acquisitions according to the usages and customs of Paris, in express derogation of all other laws and customs contravening, appropriating to themselves the said Sieur and Demoiselle, future husband and wife, jointly and severally, the goods and dues to them appertaining, whatever they may consist of without there being any necessity of making a designation. The future husband has given and does give to the said Demoiselle, his future spouse, the sum of three thousand "livres tours," to be paid in one stated payment, to have and to take so soon as the dower shall become a lien upon all the goods of the future husband, which are hereby hypothecated to furnish and make available the same dower which the said future wife shall enjoy and become seized, without being held to make a demand in her own right in a court of justice. The aforesaid dower shall belong to the children who shall be born of the said marriage, and in default of children, in her own right to the future wife. Arriving at the dissolution of the same marriage by the decease of the aforesaid future husband, the said Demoiselle, future wife, shall have and shall take for her mar EARLY DETROIT 173 riage settlement the sum of two thousand livres tours. To her it shall be lawful, and to her children if there are any, and in default of children, to the next heirs, to accept or refuse a community of goods, and in the latter case the said Demoiselle, future wife, will take all that she brought to said marriage with her wardrobe, her jewels, her furnished apartments, as well as any goods that have fallen to her by inheritance. And in consideration of the sincere affection which the future husband and wife bear towards each other, they have made and do make by these presents to the survivor two free gifts, equal, mutual, and reciprocal of all their goods, furniture, acquits, gains, movable and immovable, and reciprocal be found to belong and appertain to the one first deceased; to enjoy at such decease all such sums and quantities as said goods may amount to, or consist of, and wherever they may be situated; and for making a registry at the clerk's office of the aforesaid city of Detroit, and wherever there may be any need, the said party have appointed their attorney general and special the bearer of these seals, giving him full power, thereby relinquishing and promising the things done and agreed on at Detroit in the hands of the Sieur Joseph Poupart La Fleur, seized and situated in the Fort, in the xear one thousand seven hundred and seventy, and the seventh day of June after mid-day; and the said future husband and wife, after reading the same, have signed with us also their relatives and friends. Signed, JEAN BAPTISTE CICOT, ANGELIQUE POUPART, JACINTH REAUME, PIERRE DESCOMPS LABADIE, PR. BARRON, DUPERON BABY, ANTOINE GAMELIN, CHAS. REAUME, JOHN HAY, BAP'TE CHAPOTON, GEO. ANTHON, JACQUE GODFROY. Signed, P. DE JEAN, Notaire. The health of the newly bethrothed couple was drunk in many a bumper. The marriage took place shortly afterward. This signing of names and stating profession on the marriage certificate and church register was a most usual custom; by it we are enabled to trace the relationship, and judge of the social position of the parties. As soon as the marriage ceremony was over, each one got into his cariole, calash, or berlin, according to the season, and headed by the newly wedded pair, formed a procession and passed along the principal streets, then racing up to the Grand Marais, on whose banks stood a long, one-story building with a stone chimney at each end, rudely furnished with chairs and tables. Sometimes dancing and the grand supper took place here, but more generally the feast took place at the home of the bride; she opened the ball with the most distinguished guest, the stately minuets and graceful cotillons, Fisher's hornpipe, and the Reel a Huit, concluding by filing into the dining room by twos. Their menu seems strange to us today. A spoon, knife and fork of silver were laid at each place; in earlier times knives were brought by each guest, either a spring one that could close and be carried in the pocket, or a dagger knife' suspended from the neck in a sheath of morocco or silk, sometimes in birch bark artistically embroidered by the ITdians. The handles were sometimes riveted with silver, and they were frequently made of mother of 174 HISTORIC MICHIGAN pearl for the ladies; the goblets were of silver, and many are still preserved in the old families. The coup d'appetit was passed around, brandy for the gentlemen, some mild cordial for the ladies; then followed the repast. Soup, poissons blanc (whitefish), poisson doree (pickerel), pike, roast pig, with its dressing of potatoes, blood pudding, partridges, wild turkey, ragouts, venison larded, pates of pommes de terre (potatoes), sagammite, a dish of porridge made of cracked corn, eaten with cream and maple sugar-this dish was mentioned by Charlevoix as early as I722 -praline was dried corn, pounded fine and mixed with maple sugar, also carried by the French voyageurs; galettes au beurre, crocquecignole (a sort of doughnut), omelette soufflee, floating islands, pears, apples, raspberries, grapes in summer. Coffee ended the feast. The charavari was then in vogue; whenever a widower or widow, somewhat advanced in years, married for the third time, a band of young men, masked, and dressed in the most barbarous manner, armed with every kind of instrument that could produce a howling, dismal sound, would assemble around the house of the unfortunate groom or bride, each trying with a zeal worthy of a better cause to extract the full measure of sound from his tin or iron instrument; it was a grand jubilee of discord; no police force-noise reigned supreme. The miserable recipient of this infernal serenade was obliged to capitulate by paying a certain sum of money which was given to the poor. The deeding away of the entire property by persons advanced in years to the eldest child was of frequent occurrence; a stipulation being made for the comfortable support of the aged couple during their life, and the having said a certain number of masses for the repose of their souls after death. An instance of this may be found in the American State Papers in the deed of Jacque Godfroy de Mauboeuf to his son Jacque Gabriel Godfroy, of the private claims, number 727 and 729 (farms lying between Twentieth and Twenty-first streets, in Detroit). Portions of this farm still belong to his descendants, five generations removed. COPY OF A FRENCH DEED RECORDED IN LIBER 1, PAGE 247, COUNTY RECORDS, AT DETROIT Recorded in my office 27th of March, 1798: PROVINCE OF UPPER CANADA, DETROIT, DISTRICT OF THE WEST. Before Francis Desruisseaux Bellecour, Notary, residing at Detroit, and the undersigned witnesses, was present Mr. Jacques Godfroy, Sen., residing at the southwest quarter of the Parish of St. Anne, of this district, who acknowledges by these presents to have of his free will granted, conveyed, transferred, and released, henceforth with guaranty against all troubles, gifts, dower, debts, hypothecations, evictions, alienations, and all other obstacles generally, of whatever sort, to Mr. Gabriel Godfroy, his son, living also in the above mentioned quarter and parish, now present and accepting, to enjoy in usufruct, during his natural life only, one acre of land in front, by forty in depth, seized and situate at the north of said River Detroit, bounded on the one side, upon the east-northeast, by land of Alexis Bienvanu, called Delisle, deceased, and on the west-southwest by that of said grantee; together with two slaves, seven oxen and cows, two horses, four hogs, a cart and trappings, a complete plough, two hatchets, two EARLY DETROIT 175 pickaxes, a complete harness, two furnished beds, a frying pan, a dozen plates, six silver spoons and forks, a silver goblet, and many other household articles, the said Jacques Godfroy desiring and intending that his said son Gabriel shall enjoy the said acre of land with its buildings, as well as the other articles above mentioned during his life as they say, without the power to either sell, encumber, or exchange the said property upon any pretext whatever, nor in any possible manner; and after the death of the said Mr. Gabriel Godfroy the said acre of land and the other property above named shall belong to the children of said Gabriel, to whom the said Jacques Godfroy, their grandfather, donates the whole, as well as a farm situate on the left in ascending the River Rouge, bounded on one side by Meniche Labady, and on the other by Toussaint Chesne, and in rear adjoining St. Cosme's land, to be divided between them equally, wishing that they and their heirs may enjoy and have the disposal of the same as they may choose immediately after the decease of their father; their said grandfather, the donor, transferring to them with this intent, all proprietary rights, appointments, equities, titles, actions, and all other claims, which he has or may possess in the said property hereby granted, and that they may be placed in full possession and seizin as may be effected by virtue of these presents: This donation and release thus made is conditioned that said Gabriel Godfroy, in return for the usufruct of said property, shall lodge, feed, attend, and furnish fire and light to said Mr. Jacques Godfroy, his father, so long as he shall live; shall treat him well, both in health and sickness, and in case of such sickness to give him such attendance as is suitable, and furnish all necessary nursing, and when it shall please God to dispose of him, to bury him decently and cause to be said fifty low masses for the repose of his soul, which the said Gabriel charges himself to execute punctually, for thus it is expressly agreed between the parties in good faith, promising, etc., obliging, etc. Done and executed at Detroit, in the province of Upper Canada, at the residence of said donor and grantee, the fifteenth day of June, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-five, in the forenoon; and the parties have signed and sealed after reading, in pursuance of the law. GODFROY, G. GODRFOY. In presence ofJEAN BAPTIST CICOT, CHABERT DE JONCAIRE, JACQUES GODFROY, JR. F. D. BELLECOUR. THE EARLY COLONIZATION OF DETROIT Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, I, 347-371 HAVE undertaken to occupy your attention with a subject in the details of which general history is very meager, namely, the character and habits of the first colonists of Michigan.8 From time to time many interesting items have been given to the public by noted citizens, including some "to the manor-born," but they are mostly of fugitive character, or are buried in the columns of old newspapers. To these materials, scanty as they are, I am aware that I can add but little that is valuable out of the stores of my own observation and research. Yet there are fields not wholly gleaned, and if I have discovered any new grains of truth, or can bind the scattered materials into ah acceptable sheaf, I may at least be excused from following, where others have so worthily led. Of the present generation how few appreciate the character of the 176 HISTORIC MICHIGAN people who laid the foundation of our beautiful city; who for more than half a century constituted the sole population of the Territory of the Lakes; and whose descendants whelmed in the overflowing tide of Anglo-Saxons still retain, to a good degree, their old tongue, and somewhat of their ancient customs. But these are undergoing a rapid change. They are destined, at no distant day, to be absorbed into the general element, and the peculiar features which characterized the French of the olden times will soon be utterly obliterated and forgotten. Without going into historical detail, which would lead into too wide a field, I propose to notice some facts of general application, and which will prepare us better to understand the character and customs of those who claim the honors of pioneers in the settlement of Michigan. The story of the settlement of Canada by the French is full of stirring incident, of marvelous adventure, of life amid deep forests and upon the vast rivers and inland oceans of our continent, almost as wild as that of their savage associates. It has been told nowhere with greater fidelity and graphic power than in the captivating pages of Parkman. English, and sometimes American, historians are not always just to the race who first peopled the territories of New France. They notice the complete subjection and willing obedience of the French emigre to the home government; his recognition of the Indian claims, and ready affiliation and sympathy with the savage tribes; and they compare with these unfavorably to the Frenchman-the energy, enterprise, and individual independence which brought to our Atlantic shores the New England emigrants; which led them to subdue the wilderness, and have impressed their character upon the inhabitants and fortune of these United States. The flourishing period of French colonization was that of the lonr and brilliant reign of Louis XIV. In the home country it was an age of corruption, of despotic arrogance in the high places of the kingdom, and of unwavering obedience on the part of those below. No successful clashing had occurred between the ruling and the ruled-between desrotism and liberty-such as conspired to drive the first English ernivrants-pilgrims from arbitrary power-to the wild shores of the New England in America. Here, thrown upon their unaided resources, all the energy of which the Anglo-Saxon nature is capable was called forth to enable them to establish a home in the wilderness. They struck at once tupon the source of an enduring prosperity-the culture of the soil. While New France was the cherished care of the Grand Monarque. it did not escape the corruptions of that court and age. The principles which lie at the base of successful colonization were little understood and ill-annlied. Glory and gain to France, not the permanence and good of the colony, were the objects sought. The French pioneer came with a purpose beyond which neither he nor his government looked. This was not, with some exceptions. to found permanent communities by the practice of agriculture and the arts, but to establish and extend EARLY DETROIT 177 the gainful traffic in peltries. The first French settlers were communities of fur-traders. To the profitable traffic in furs the religious zeal of the age added another motive, almost equally powerful-the Christianizing of the native population. This was an aim which, with all their religious fervor, did not inspire the emigrants to New England. Equally intolerant with the Catholic emigres, but without their enthusiasm, they gave feeble encouragement to missions among the heathen around them. In the eyes of most, the savages were a race of heretics, to whom was denied alike the consolations of the Christian faith and the benefits of civilization. The spirit of freedom is not always winged with charity. Strikingly in contrast was the conduct of their neighbors of Canada, in the genius to plan, and the courage and endurance to carry out, the most toilsome expeditions for founding missions in the wilderness. Though little remains of the missions established by the Jesuits, their long, unremitting, and solitary labors, and severe sufferings and martyrdoms, have written their names in glory. History has nothing brighter on her records than the deeds of these Christian heroes! "The order of the Jesuit, In rigid compact firmly knit," Is inseparably interwoven with the fortunes and fate of the French empire in America. Its character is well described in the following graphic lines, from "Teuchsa Grondie:" "A school of strictest self-denial; Obedient unto every trial; Invincible and calmly bold, A social problem to unfold; In vigils long; in rigid fast; Beneath the scourge in penance cast; With constant, never-failing zeal That all the woes of man can feel; With self-sustaining fervor blest, That long devotions well attest; With deep, enthusiastic glow, That blazes in the polar snow; With master policy refined, To rule the world of human kind; In closest league with royal state, Wide conquest to accelerate; With grasp of universal plan, Embracing every race of man; Such was the order, shrewdly sent, To seize the Western Continent." With such traits, unhappily, Jesuitism did not confine itself to the Christianizing of the Indians, but became intimately associated with the political fortunes of the country, for evil as well as good. In the genius of discovery, in establishing depots for trade and forts for protection, and in opening to the knowledge of civilized man a world vast and unknown, the French, too, were without a rival. The leading spirits in these enterprises would have been men of mark anywhere. With what a handful of men they invaded the savage wilderness! How 1-10 178 HISTORIC MICHIGAN indomitable their resolution! How judicious their selections of sites for forts and towns. How far-sighted the sagacity with which they secured to France, as they had reason to believe, a mighty empire in the new world. The great body of the colonists, it is true, were of the lower orders, uneducated in independence moral or political. Many came as soldiers, and were induced to remain as settlers. A few were from the gentry, -men who claimed an ancestry, and had names of which even yet their descendants are proud. No convicts were sent out, and there were no drones. All were accustomed to seek, and seldom failed to find, a living for themselves. The colonization of "The Detroit," or Straits of Lakes Erie and Huron, dates from the first year of the eighteenth century, nearly two centuries after the discoveries of Cartier, on the St. Lawrence, and a century after the founding of Quebec. The object of Sieur De Lamothe Cadillac, in the settlement of the Detroit, was not only to establish a military post which should overawe the natives, check the advance of the English and Dutch, and secure the Indian trade, but to found an agricultural community and obtain a permanent foothold upon the soil. It was a step further into the wilderness than any colony had yet ventured. It was in intrusion into the stronghold of savage tribes, many of whom were hostile to the French and in the interest of their enemies. It was within reach of the English settlements, with which an eager contest had commenced for the Indian trade of the lakes and the vast country to which these opened the gate. A varied fortune awaited the new colony. From the first there was strong opposition from political opponents of the measure and personal enemies of Cadillac, among whom the Jesuits were conspicuous, and those who were interested in the older settlements. Nor was it easy to distinguish between their allies and their foes in the numerous tribes whose villages crowded closely about the fort, and who beset the colony on all sides. No less than four times the destruction of the fort was the subject of conspiracies and machinations, urged on by rival interests, and for the first half century the security of the peasantry was too precarious to permit extensive or successful agriculture. Hardly had the settlers begun to feel secure in their possession, when, with the capitulation of Montreal (I760), followed the downfall of the empire of France in the new world, and the transfer, almost without warning to its inhabitants, of the sovereignty of Canada to its life-long enemy, the English. The lilies of France were never to float again triumphant o'er these waters. Thirty years later saw the flag of England lowered to the Stars and Stripes of its rebel colonies. In less than two decades more the cross of St. George resumed its sway over this region for a brief period, to be again, for the last time, succeeded by the triumphant banner of the new republic. Few people, and no portion of America, had in so brief a period experienced so many and singular reverses. None ever accommodated EARLY DETROIT 179 themselves more gracefully to the mutations of their fate. In their.own way they continued to prosper, and had lined the banks of the Detroit with pleasant homesteads. Little more than the third of a century has passed since the writer's first acquaintance with the region which, not many years before, the author of McFingal had described as "Where Detroit looks out amid the wood, Remote, beside the dreary solitude." Making my abode in the country, at some remove from the City of the Straits, then boasting its 5,000 inhabitants of many nationalities, I found myself amid a people mostly French, the descendants of those who had braved the dangers of the remote wilderness in following the fortunes of Cadillac. As yet the inroads of the Anglo-Saxon had but little disturbed the qliet river settlements; but a day of change had arrived which in a very short time was destined to destroy their old-time character. Since that day the Arcadian simplicity and content that had so long continued to prevail in spite of contending sovereignties has yielded rapidly to the restless energy of the invading Yankee; as did aforetime, to the conquerin- Briton the dream of French empire in the new world. While the colonists on the Detroit retained many of the characteristics of their countrymen in the old world, modifications necessarily took place in the adaptation to so different an abode. Taking possession of a vast wilderness. families neither gathered into hamlets as is the custom of the peasantry of France, nor did they seek an independent existence, like the backwoodsmen of New England stock; but their dwellings, each on its own farm. were in such close proximity as almost to constitute a continuous village for many miles of river shore. Originally motives of protection against the savages, and afterwards those of social intercourse, led to this near neighborhood. The original titles to these lands were variously derived. Of those below the city as far as the River Rouge (three miles), three are from grants of the Marquis du Ouesne, governor-general of Louisiana snd Canada, I740; ten from Marauis de la Jouuiere vested with like powers, I750. Ten others are from Indian deeds of gift. subsequent to the occupancy by the English-1770 to 178 —confirmed by the British commandant. Two of the French grants actually received confirmation of the king, although this was required by the Coutume de Paris, which was the law of the country. Permits to occupy were sometimes granted the French commandants. These gra'nts and rights of occupancy were confirmed by the United States government, early in the present century, through a commission. sitting at Detroit. and upon these patents were issued. The tracts thus confirmed vary in width from two to five arpents and were about eighty arpents in length. I have heard old inhabitants say they could shout to each other from their door steps. And this mode of telegraphic message, passing rapidly from house to house, served the purpose of modern methods, in case of apprehended danger, and even for social converse. 180 HISTORIC MICHIGAN An American backwoodsman thinks settlements crowd too close upon him-that he has tot elbow room enough, if a neighbor establishes himself within a mile of the spot which he has selected for his hearthstone. A Frenchman so situated would die of ennui. He must have facilities for regular and frequent intercourse with his neighbors; and, as roads are execrable in a new country, he best accomplishes his object by fixing his habitations upon the streams-highways that nature has created. The canoe is his carry-all; in it he and his family move easily, at all times, to and from even distant settlements. What glorious opportunities for the gratification of these desires was presented by those grand highways of the new world! From the water also came a large part of his food; for fishing and trapping were more favorite employments than agriculture. The object of the first settlers being the fur trade and Indian traffic, these lakes and rivers supplied a tatural channel through which those operations were conducted. It was along the chain of the mighty lakes and rivers of our continent that France sought to maintain her foothold in America by the erection of forts, at points widely separated, but selected with wonderful foresight. In the vicinity of, and under the protection of these, were the early settlements made. As this protection became less needed, as the Indian trade declined, or was further removed, the peasant farmers made more distant settlements. They retained, however, the practice of inhabiting only the banks of streams accessible from the Great Lakes. I know of no original French settlement which is not so situated. As a hunter the French settler had none of the renown of the American backwoodsman, but to his skill in trapping the great fur companies of Canada owed a large part of the smaller peltries that were so considerable a source of their revenues. Like the beaver and muskrat, the Canadian not unfrequently lived almost in the water of his favorite streams and marshes, and built his cabin in a spot which could lbe approached only by canoe. The dwellers in habitations so little superior in architecture and site to the houses which these ingenious little architects contrive for their accommodation, in their native marshes, and denoting so little higher degree of mental advancements, deserved the soubriquet bestowed upon them by the contemptuous Yankee, of "Muskrat Frenchmen." We have seen that the kind of enterprise which characterized the French emigrant was very different from that which marked the AngloSaxon settlers, which has converted the wilderness into fertile fields, and, almost in a single life-time, constituted this nation one of the formidable powers of the earth. After more than a century of settlement, the farms along the Straits exhibited only a narrow strip of cultivation. This rarely extended half a mile from the water's edge. From their doors the family had a view EARLY DETROIT 181 of the untrimmed forest, where the deer roamed, and wild beasts prowled, frequently to the very barn yards. Even this limited extent of field received very imperfect culture. It was almost never manured, and, so little was high culture understood or regarded, that instances are well known where farmers, whose manure heaps had accumulated to an inconvenient degree about their barns, adopted the most ready means of relief by carting the incumbrance on to the ice in winter. The offensive material was thus washed away, without further trouble, when the ice broke up in the spring. I declare, on undoubted authority, that in some cases even the barns were removed to avoid the piles that had accumulated. This limited agricultural improvement did not originate from the extreme subdivision of the land, for each proprietor possessed acres enough; though his farm, in its proportion of length to breadth, bore a resemblance to his pipe stem. As this great national interest flourished so little under the kind of encouragement bestowed by the French government, it may be curious to compare the terms by which grants of land were bestowed by the commandants, with the tenure by which, under the fostering care of the present government, each householder may secure a homestead. One runs in this wise: "The grantee was bound to pay a rent of fifteen livres a year in peltries to the Crown forever; to assist in planting a May-pole, on each May day, before the door of the Mansion house. He was forbidden to buy or sell articles of merchandise carried to or from Montreal, through servants, clerks or foreigners; to work at the business of a blacksmith; to sell brandy to the Indians, or to mortgage the land, without consent of the government. The Crown reserved all minerals and timber for military purposes. The grantor reserved the right of hunting rabbits, partridges, and pheasants. All the grain raised was to be ground at the manor windmill, where toll was to be given, according to the custom of Paris. On every sale of land a tax was levied, and the government reserved the right to take precedence of any buyer, at the price offered." In so many restrictions we see one reason why agriculture, as an independent pursuit, should not flourish. Having spoken so disparagingly of French agriculture, it is but just to observe that the Canadians were speedy to adopt the superior implements and modes of cultivation used by the Anglo-Saxon settlers; and the present generations see little difference between the tools and the methods belonging to the one or the other. But half a century ago the old methods were still practiced. The cart was the universal vehicle for farm and family use, wagons being unknown. The plow was of wood, except the share. Its long beam and handles extended ten or twelve feet, and it had a wooden mould-board. In front were two wheels, also of wood, of different sizes; a small one to run on the unplowed side, and a larger one in the furrow. There were neither chains nor whiffletree; oxen were fastened by a pole which had a hinged attachment to the beam. And very 182 HISTORIC MICHIGAN good though shallow plowing was performed by this rude but ingenious implement. Both oxen and horses were employed in the various operations. The harness was very simple, and constructed of withes or twisted raw-hide. No yoke was used, but a rope of the kind mentioned was passed around the oxen's horns, and they pushed with their heads. It was maintained, by those who employed this seemingly singular method, that it was the most natural and effective, and gave greater freedom of action to the cattle. Possibly scientific agriculturists of the present day may get a useful hint from the simple ideas of the olden times. The hoe was a very heavy iron implement, having a long shank. It was the same that was used by the Indians, after the introduction of iron among them. The latter never plowed and were ignorant of the method of laying out the field in parallel rows; hills of corn being planted without regard to regularity, though at tolerably uniform distances. And though the Frenchmen used the plow effectively, their ordinary mode of planting corn was precisely that of the Indians. The winter carry-all was a strong but narrow box, placed upon runners, which spread widely and were iron shod. Sometimes these were adorned with fancy heads. The thills, which were of hickory or ash, were so fixed as to spring outwardly, and when the horse was harnessed in, the ends were brought together and tied. The strain, consequently, prevented any rubbing against the horse's sides, and allowed a large liberty of action, which was of great service to their keen trotters and pacers. It was constructed for two persons only, although a seat for a third was sometimes placed in front. Horses were sometimes driven tandem. The traineau was of rougher construction, made for work, and the runners did not spread. For summer pleasure driving, a few had the caleche. It resembled the modern chaise, and had a movable folding top. The cart of which I have made mention is worthy of commemoration. It was the common vehicle for all classes, and even in the city, long after my arrival here, was almost the only kind of carriage. It was a light two-wheeled vehicle, of the ordinary cart construction, and the sides were protected by a low railing. The gentry sometimes had chairs placed within, but commonly all rode after a more primitive style, with a buffalo robe only for a seat. In this simple mode ladies were taken to church, to parties and calls, or carted over the mud, whenever the roads were in a condition unfitfor dainty feet. The stiff clay soil which prevailed along the only road was often almost impassable for pedestrians. There were no pavements, nor even that convenient western resource, plank walks. Nor was there a stone crossing nor a public hack in the city thirty years ago. Many were the curious scenes and many the laughable stories — "legend's store Of strange adventures, happened by" EARLY DETROIT 183 mud; the suffocation of dogs; the loss of shoes; the discomfiture of neat gallants, who ventured aid to the weaker sex in their rash attempt to cross a street. Even those who were so fortunate as to obtain the use of a cart did not always escape the danger or the fun, for sometimes the loosely made linchpin gave out, when the living cargo was unceremoniously dumped, of course, in the very deepest puddles. But such accidents in those days were a subject of mirth, rather than of chagrin. The French cart was an article of real convenience, and well adapted to the wants and tastes of the people and times. It was a legitimate descendant of the cart of Normandy, where, in recent times, I have been interested to see it in common use, of precisely similar construction. Among us its use is now almost confined to Canada, but now and then one may be seen on the American side, on its way to market, with fifty pounds of hay or a quarter cord of wood, drawn by a shag of a pony, whose back reaches scarcely above the thills, and a little weazenfaced Frenchman mounted on the top. The stock of the French farmer consisted almost exclusively of horses, that dwarfed, hardy race so well known as Canadian ponies. These roamed at large, beyond the inclosures, picking up an independent living by browsing. Even in the winter they seldom received any but a stolen aid from the barns or stacks of their owners. Each pony bore its master's initials, branded upon the shoulder, and was caught and broken to the bit as he happened to be wanted. Whether these horses were obtained originally from the Indians of the plains, or had any relationship with the Mexican mustang, seems not to be determined. They were peculiar to Canada. To some extent this mode of rearing horses has prevailed even down to the present times, in the towns adjacent to Detroit, where the French are still a large element in the population. They receive literally no care whatever, and roam in bands, scouring along the roads with the speed of liberty, and often making the night hideous with the uproar. The following lines from a manuscript poem by Hon. James V. Campbell (I hope his Honor will pardon the theft) thus well describes these nightly races through the town: "Unchecked, with flying leap and bound, The savage courser spurns the ground. No venturous horseman leads the ranks, No spur has galled their heaving flanks, No master's hand has grasped the mane, No champing jaw has known the rein; But in a countless host they press, Free as the storm, but riderless; Compact as when an army's tramp Bears down upon a foeman's camp; While the ground trembles, like the shore Where foaming lines of breakers roar 1" That the Detroit habitans of an early day were not altogether open to the reproach of being neglectful husbandmen, good evidence has come down to our own times in the fine orchards of apple, pear, and cherry trees that give beauty and value to nearly every farm. 184 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Our view of Canadian agriculture would be incomplete, indeed, without a particular notice of those old orchards which are so distinguishing a feature in the river landscape, and in which the Canadians showed such commendable enterprise. Though many of the farms so closely crowded along the river banks had orchards, comprising several hundreds of these fruit trees, and few were entirely destitute, it is singular that little is known of their history. In answer to inquiries, old people will tell that their ancestors obtained the trees from Montreal, to which place they were brought at a still earlier day from Normandy or Provence; but they have no knowledge when or from whence. The prevailing opinion is that the seeds were brought from France and planted as soon as the first permanent settlements were made on the Straits, about a century and a half ago. The present generation remembers well the days of their boyhood passed beneath the shade and in the enjoyment of the fruit of these trees, which, in their recollection, were even then of great size. Before further considering the mystery of their origin, the character of these orchards claims our attention. When we recognize that from the orchards on this river have emanated many noted kinds of apples, still extensively appreciated throughout the Northern States, it will be apparent that they contained no wild or common fruit. From here were disseminated the famous "Colville," both red and white; the "Detroit Red," Roseau of the French; the "Pomme de Neige," or Fameuse, the celebrated "Snow Apple," of America, all fruits that have established a wide reputation. Besides these are several not so well known-the gray apple, russets, noted for long keeping, pearmains, and others. Almost every orchard had one or more of these noted kinds. As cider fruit these apples maintained a reputation long after the influx of settlers from the Eastern states. In this respect they were considered to surpass the apples of New England, and to be second only to the celebrated New Jersey product. Forty years ago a few cider mills of the French construction were in existence. They were quite unique. The crusher was a large stone or wood cylinder, six to eight feet diameter and from six to ten inches thickness. It turned on a wooden axis, fastened to a center post, and was carried around by horse power. It ran in a trough, dug out of a large tree and put together by sections. The press consisted of a long wooden lever, acting upon a platform and held down by tackling. But the crowning glory of the French orchard was the pear tree. Nearly every homestead possessed one, some two or three, few exceeded a half dozen. Such was its wonderful size and productiveness that one specimen usually amply satisfied the wants of a family. These pear trees were and still are conspicuous objects in the river scenery, and for size, vigor and productiveness are truly remarkable. A bole six feet in girth, and of a height of sixty feet, are only common attainments. Many show a circumference of trunk of eight to nine feet, and rear their lofty heads seventy and sometimes eighty feet from the earth I They bear uniform crops; thirty to fifty bushels being often the EARLY DETROIT 185 annual product of a single tree. The fruit is of medium size, ripening about the end of August, and though as a table fruit superseded by many sorts which an improved horticulture has introduced, it still holds a fair rank, and in some respects is not surpassed, if equaled, by any. The flesh is crisp, juicy, sweet and spicy. For stewing and preserving it is quite unrivaled. Individual trees differ a little in their period of ripening aid in size and flavor of fruit, but the variety is well characterized. It is not a little remarkable that so little should be known of the history of a tree of such extraordinary character. The earliest travelers from whom we have published records, such as Charlevoix, Henry and Carver, make none, or only casual mention, and give no clue to their date and origin. The memory of the oldest inhabitant is only traditional in regard to them. Along the St. Lawrence and about Montreal, whence these trees are supposed by some to have been brought to Detroit, no specimens exist, and the orchards are few and inferior. In a hasty journey across Normandy I saw many fine large pear trees, but I looked in vain for any of the size or character which might be supposed to have originated the Detroit pear tree. The prevailing opinion, that the pear and apple trees of the Canadas originated from seeds brought from France, is founded on the supposition that nursery trees could not have withstood the long sea voyage of that period. Yet this opinion cannot be accepted without hesitation. It is a law well understood by fruit cultivators, that trees raised from the seed of these fruits tend to revert to their original wild state. They are, with rare exceptions, inferior to the cultivated varieties, and, besides, are of almost as many different sorts as the seeds which produce them. Neither the pear nor apple trees of the French orchards have the character of seedlings, and the fact that almost every orchard contained several trees of the same, and of noted kinds, militates against that supposition. On the other hand, it is improbable that they are seedlings raised here and grafted, for the art was then little practiced in America, and not at all among the Canadians. The Detroit pear tree is found also on the River Raisin, at Monroe, and, so far as I am informed, exists nowhere else in America. The trees on the latter stream were planted by the early settlers there maIny years after the colonization of the Straits. In 1786 Col. Francis Navarre, of Monroe, traveling on horseback from Detroit, carried in his hand six or more trees, which he planted on his farm. They attained large size and are still bearing immense crops. One of these is said to measure, at two feet from the ground, nine feet two inches in circumference, and at four feet separates into two branches, one of which is seven feet four inches and the other five feet in circumference. We have ample testimony to the great size of these giant pear trees half a century ago. I am informed by an old resident that in I812 or '13 he saw one cut down, which was in the way of a battery that was being built just above the city, and which measured nearly 186 HISTORIC MICHIGAN two feet in diameter of trunk. Such a growth could hardly have been acquired in less than a century. I know not by what fatality, but our old French pear trees seem destined to have no successors to their fame, as though unwilling to survive the Americanization of the race who matured and so long enjoyed their stately munificence. Appreciated by all, no one has thought of continuing the species, or else all attempts have failed. No young trees are to be found in the extensive plantations of the present century, which include so many vastly inferior. None of the nurseries contain it. It is even yet without a name in the dictionary of American fruit trees. Still, however, the pear trees flourish, in a green old age, while the apple orchards are fast disappearing, partly from natural decay, but more perhaps from neglect; while many are annually swept from existence by the relentless besom of modern improvement. The old pear tree belongs to Detroit and her old habitans, and will perish with them, and with their homesteads, which are so fast disappearing. Another half century will see the last of those magnificent trees-the pride of the French orchard, the mammoth of fruitsof which the world does not afford its equal. From the consideration which we have bestowed upon the agriculture of the early French settlers on the Detroit, we turn naturally to their homesteads. We often form some judgment of a people from the houses they live in. The better class of dwellings of the French habitans were of quite a substantial character, considered as mere timber structures. They were built of logs, squared and covered with clapboards, and the roofs shingled with cedar. They were of one or two stories, according to the need or ability of the owner, but were never ambitious. Generally they were one full story, the upper or half story being chiefly within the roof, which was high and lighted by small dormer windows, projecting on the front and rear sides. The entrance was in the center, and a hall ran from front to rear. A low and perfectly plain veranda was another usual feature. One of the oldest and most noted structures of this class was the "Cass house," which has been used by several of the territorial governors of Michigan, and exhibited many marks of the tomahawk and bullet, received during the Indian wars. It stood on the Cass farm, and was built of cedar logs, weather-boarded; about fifty feet front and one story in height, with steep roof. A heavy stone chimney rose out of the center. The position, when I first saw it, was very beautiful. It was upon the immediate bank of the river, here quite abrupt and high, and shadowed with trees. No wharf or building obstructed the view, which commanded many miles of the river channel and shores, and in the rear were smiling gardens and green slope, between which flowed the little river "Savoyard," since diverted into a covered sewer. This old mansion is still a comfortable dwelling, or dwellings, on Larned street. It stands but little removed from its old site, but in front and in rear are stony streets, thickly lined E]ARLY DETROIT 187 with houses. It is remote from the present border of the river, and its time-honored character is lost in new boards and white paint. Its age is probably not less than 150 years. Another old domicile of the times of French regime-the Lafferty house-stood half a mile below, and was torn down in i86i, to give place to structures better suited to the wants of modern tmes. It was erected in I747, and was, at the time of its destruction, in excellent preservation; the timbers heavy and solid, and the stone chimney exhibiting the large, open fire place which marked an age of hospitality and good cheer. The Knaggs house, another well-known mansion, was for several years my own residence. It consists of two parts; one a low structure of a single story, with an attic, and containing two rooms and a pantry. It is of unknown age, and, like the Cass house, bears marks of Indian outrages. The other portion is of comparatively modern date and consists of three considerable rooms, separated by a central hall. It has a second half story, with dormer windows, and also windows in the gables, and is throughout well finished. The front door is umbraged by a square portico, which had seats, and commanded a delightful lookout upon the river, in its immediate front. Both parts of the mansion are built of squared pine timbers, clapboarded. The newer portion had, when I took possession, a coat of paint, white in front, red in the rear. If there had ever been paint on the older portion it had long disappeared. The panes of glass throughout all the windows were a curiosity, being of a size entirely disused and no longer sold by dealers-six and a half by seven and a half inches. I will allude to another and one of the few French mansions in the city-the old "Campau house." It is built upon the foundations of the original dwelling burned down by the fire which consumed the entire city in i8o5. Though an interesting relic and a good specimen of its class, it belongs to the present century. It will give a good idea of the contrast between the old town and the new to state that the avenue of 120 feet wide upon which this house fronts corresponds here with the old St. Ann street, on which it formerly stood, but which, though the longest street of old Detroit, had a width of only thirty feet. Few such memorials of the "good old days" now remain in this vicinity; but on the Canada side of the channel comparatively little change has taken place in the appearance and condition of many old French homesteads. The village of Sandwich wears much of the old-time character, and a dreamy quiet pervades the place, worthy of Sleepy Hollow, and singularly in contrast with the bustling, wideawake activity which distinguishes most American villages. Most French dwellings had yards, fenced by pickets of red cedar. These were often ten or twelve feet in height, and were intended, and often served, as a stockade for protection during the troubles of the war times, as well as against wolves. Some of these defenses were standing along the river, between my 188 HISTORIC MICHIGAN house and the town, as late as I837, and consisted of very closely set, large and mostly round, posts, which were generally still sound. They were so deeply sunk that the ax was used rather than the spade, when their removal became expedient. Few, if any, of these posts can now be seen in this vicinity, but the stumps of many still remain as landmarks of a past age, below the soil, where the ax has left them. Another feature of the old settlements has disappeared-the windmills, which once marked every few miles of river shore-and were an animating part of its picturesque scenery. These institutions of primitive times were in full operation down to the stirring period of Yankee improvements, I836-37. Until then there were no flouring mills of any other description within many miles, though we have the authority of Judge Campbell for stating that a water-mill was built as early as 1734 on May's creek, below the city, and one on Mill or Conner's creek, above, and that, as late as I830, one was standing in ruins upon Bloody run, where it is crossed by Jefferson avenue. The wind-mills served sufficiently well all the needs of the French era; but with the advent of larger wants more capable structures were demanded. The neglected windmills fell to decay, and at the present time a few only survive in ruins. From these brief notices of the dwellings of the French landowners, it will, doubtless, and with truth, be concluded that the occupants lived in reasonable style and comfort, and that the personal appearance of our French progenitors corresponded to the simple and comfortable character of their homesteads. The gentleman's dress of the olden time, in winter, consisted of colored shirt, with vest and pantaloons, or leggings. A belt or sash held up the pants and over all was worn a capote, or heavy blanket coat, with a sack or loose cap attached; that was thrown back or over the head, as required. The latter extremity was bound with a colored handkerchief, while the lower was protected by shoepacs and sometimes moccasins. On dress occasions the sash was richly ornamented with beads, in the Indian fashion, and sometimes was of wampum. It was spread widely over the body, outside the coat, and tied behind, the ends hanging down two feet or more. In warm weather pantaloons were worn without vest, and were sustained by a belt, generally of leather. The feet were bare, and hats of straw completed the covering. The voyageurs, or boatmen, often wore shirts over the trowsers, made of leather, with ruffles in the bosom made of the same material. They had bright colored cloth caps which hung over on one side and terminated with a tassel. The dress of the women consisted of short gowns or habits, falling no lower than the knee, and showing the petticoats, which reached to the feet; and they had ample straw hats. For cold weather they had fur hats or bonnets. They received the fashions from Monteal, but the changes were so slight that probably less variation had occurred in a century than takes place in the costume of our moder EARLY DETROIT 189 belles in a single year. In fact, the costume I have described continued always unchanged, from the earliest period down to the time of my own personal observation. The straw hat maintains its repute even yet as a permanent and wholesome style abroad, its merits having given it a wide adoption; and it would be well if, in other particulars, the convenient fashions of our Canadian dames could be preserved. The French people continued to preserve, down to a very recent date, a good degree of their ancient character. There was much of the "beau monde" at the rival but neighborly cities of Detroit and Monroe, and a constant intercourse was kept up, until the preponderance of the former city and the overwhelming influx of foreigners. Amusements were of the social rather than literary kind, and the social virtues never shone more brightly among any people. Nor were these confined to their own kin, but were extended to the newly come, of whatever nationality. The old habitans of the better class still retain a vivid recollection of those happy days, and will tell that no people ever enjoyed life so keenly. During the winter-which comprised nearly half the year-the settlements on the Detroit and River Raisin were almost shut out from the eastern world. Vessels and river craft were all laid up; railroads were not in being; and travel to the nearest eastern cities was a long and painful journey. I have myself known Detroit to be without a New York mail for more than two weeks at a time, and have found it a week's journey, traveling by ordinary stage, day and night, through Canada to Buffalo. This was the season for French gayety and resource to display themselves. No aid from foreign sources was needed to make the winter pass pleasantly. And who could surpass the French for parties, balls, and merry-makings! At these were gathered, especially, the young of both sexes, who kept up, until a late hour in the morning, that fascinating amusement, of whose salutatory mazes a Frenchman never tires; and here were exchanged glances from those lustrous black eyes, so suited to brunette complexions, and which lighted up even the most ordinary face, like native diamonds sparkling through their rusty covering. And, indeed, the demoiselles were not to be despised for graces of face and figure; for though the men mostly had long, thin visages, scarcely in keeping with their fun-loving propensities, the girls were both plump and handsome. During the period of depression which followed the speculations of 1836, when a general stagnation and gloom overspread the whole land, there was no lack of French gayety. In the winter of 1841, when times were at their worst, this was manifested, even to an unusual degree, in numerous balls and other social gatherings. With a characteristic tinge of superstition the French considered this unusual gayety ominous of approaching war, or other calamity, and that they were impelled to it by some secret and uncontrollable impulse. Perhaps philosophy may find a more reasonable solution. I relate the fact only. Sundays, as in all Roman Catholic countries, were holidays, and 190 HISTORIC MICHIGAN were improved as such to a much greater extent among the Canadians of half or even quarter of a century ago than now among their descendants. Possibly they were spent quite as innocently, though more noise and hilarity prevailed. The parents and daughters of the family traveled to church in sober jog-trot style enough, in carts drawn by a single pony. But the young men went mounted on their nags, and returned in the grand style, racing, with whoop and hurrah! In the winter these races were exchanged for trotting matches on the ice, in their light home-made carryalls. Long and eager were the contests for superior speed and skill. No docks and piers then interfered with this winter use of the river, which was thus improved, from the very heart of the city down to and up the Rouge. Many noted trotters and pacers are still to be found among the keen, rugged breed of Canadian horses. The example has not been lost upon the bloods of the modern city, famous yet for fast nags-and fast men. A season of great excitement to the early settlers was that of the white-fishing, which was confined to the late fall months, commencing about the middle of October, and continuing until very cold weather. Seines only were used, and a feature in the river landscape, as numerous and almost as striking as the wind-mills, were the reels, the platforms and the fish-houses which pertained to the business. This season was looked forward to with great interest and pleasure, and was one of feasting and merriment, for the fish were as abundant and cheap as the flesh was admirable, and for cooking these, as well as most other natural products of river and forest, none could excel the French. Although few engaged in the business, for the market was limited, almost every farm front was available. And, truly, it was an interesting and inspiring spectacle-the boats leaving the shore with the nets coiled on the bow, as the men pulled up the stream, until, reaching the channel bank, the net was dropped and the boat pulled rapidly back to the land, the floats following in a graceful curved line, while often a song kept time to the oars; then, as both ends were drawn briskly in, to see the beautifully white and silvery bodies glancing through the water, and finally tossed, all glowing and active, on the beach.' White-fishing is still pursued on the river, but the old-fashioned reel is to be seen in but one place within the limits of the extended modern city-a place famous still for its fortunate ground-the Loranger farm. I cannot omit to mention a commendable trait in the French character-their early and sincere attachment to the United States and her republican institutions. To be known as a Frenchman was to be known as a patriot; and. in the times which tried men's souls-and few parts of our country had more varied and bitter experience-the Frenchman was always our reliable and active ally; cool and unflinching in danger; shrewd and watchful when caution was most needed. If a man was wanted for a dangerous enterprise, it was a Frenchman who was chosen. Few now survive of the old habitans who were interested and intelligent witnesses of General Hull's surrender of the fort of Detroit, and with it the whole territory of the Northwest, to the British arms; EARLY DETROIT 191 and the rapid succession of events has almost crowded out the recollection. But when I first came to reside here the feeling of indignation was still fresh and warm, though more than ten years had elapsed since that event. And it would have been a vain attempt to convince one of those who witnessed and entered into the scenes and feelings of those times that the act was one of mere timidity and weakness, and not of downright treason. Among the many interesting reminiscences of that period which have been collected and published in newspapers from time to time, by an honored citizen and friend (now, alas! departed, Judge Witherell), I am pleased to find honorable mention of Capt. Whittemore Knaggs, the patentee of the old farm to whose proprietorship I had the honor to succeed. As the record is illustrative of my theme. I make no apology for copying the following anecdote of my predecessor in the now peaceful homestead: "Captain Knaggs was a firm and unflinching patriot in times when patriotism was in demand, during the war of 1812. He was one of the Indian interpreters, spoke freely six or seven of their languages, besides the English and the French, and possessed great influence with several warlike tribes. On the surrender of Detroit to the enemy, he was, by the British commandant, ordered to leave the country, and did so, of course, but joined the first corps of our army that advanced towards the frontier. He acted as guide to the division tinder General Winchester, and was at the fatal and bloody defeat of our troops at the Raisin. The British Indians discovered him after the surrender and determined to kill him. There happened to be present among the enemy an Indian whom Knaggs had often befriended in former years. This Indian resolved to save him at every hazard, but the savages would not listen to him. They were not yet fully gorged with blood. Nothing daunted, however, the brave red warrior placed himself between Knaggs and his foes, and for some time kept them off. They pressed on, however, and, as a last resort, the brave fellow seized Knaggs around the waist, kept his own body between him and the enemy, and kept whirling around, and so prevented the oft repeated blows of the tomahawk and war-club from taking effect on the victim's head, until he succeeded in getting him in the midst of a number of horses that were harnessed together. Here they struck under at his legs, and over their backs at his head; he, however, avoided the blows till a British officer interposed and saved him. After escaping innumerable dangers and death from the white and red warriors, he departed this life in peace about 1827. "On the day of the surrender of this post, Knaggs' dwelling was sacked by the savages; his furniture hewed and hacked to pieces, and all that was valuable to Indians was carried off. Mrs. Knaggs had succeeded in saving a few blankets, and they had many wild ponies in the bush. During the year succeeding the surrender, in 18I2, and while Knaggs was yet absent, very many of our people, soldiers and citizens, were brought in as prisoners by the Indians from the frontiers of Ohio, etc. Poor creatures were they; some wounded, many sickly, and all nearly naked, bare-headed and bare 192 HISTORIC MICHIGAN footed, the personification of misery and want, compelled to follow their savage captors around the streets, and to sleep on the bare ground, in their smoky and filthy tents, or under the open sky. "The compassion of our citizens was deeply excited, and every effort was made in the power of a plundered and impoverished people to ransom the suffering captives. Mrs. Knaggs, among others, parted with horses, blankets and nearly everything that she had saved from the pillage of her home, to purchase the freedom of the prisoners. "The mother of Captain Knaggs. a lady eighty years of age, was compelled to ride from Monroe to Detroit on a traineau, on the ice, thinly clad, in the most severe winter weather. When asked why she did not freeze, she replied: 'My spunk kept me warm.'" I do not mean to say that there were no exceptions to patriotic conduct among the French. During the war of I812 there were some who were suspected, and not without reason, of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. These excused their conduct on the pretense of fear of the Indians, who, especially after the defeat of the Raisin, were patrolling the country in hostile bands, and committing many savage atrocities. James. a brother of Capt. Whittemore Knaggs, resided at the Raisin. Some of his neighbors were strongly suspected of favoring the British, if not of consorting with them and their Indian allies. Against these the indignation of James was aroused, and he did not hesitate at open accusation. A Mr. Lasselle was one of the supposed culprits. and though he declared that his adhesion to the enemy was only feigned, for the protection of his family, James Knaggs would by no means admit the justice of the plea. Meeting him some time after the massacre, Lasselle offered his hand, which Knaggs scornfully refused, saying: "I don't shake hands with traitors." Tames was at the battle of the Thames. He saw the shot fired by which Tecumseh was killed, and was one of the two Frenchmen who brought off Colonel Johnson. wounded, from the field. Among a people so circumstanced as were the early settlers on these straits, it may be imagined that schools did not receive a large degree of patronage. Few children learned to read or write, but the catechism was taught by the priests, and the pious art of telling their heads. At every few miles was to be seen the little chapel, surmounted by bell and cross, and sometimes a tin cock; and in the open space in front was often erected a tall wooden cross, which on Corpus Christi and other festival days was crowned with flowers, and became the goal of a lonz procession of the young people. But, though good Catholics. the Canadians were not bigots. Their religion was simple as their tastes. and suited the light-hearted gayety that was so prominent a characteristic. I speak in the past tense, because within the last quarter of a century many changes have taken place. mainly through the disturbing elements that have poured in around them. In spite of defective education, such is the native force of the French character that I have known among the present generation EARLY DETROIT 193 many a hard-working and successful farmer, and many an industrious and really accomplished mechanic, not one of whom could read or write. I should do injustice also to the merits of our old habitans, if the conclusion was left to be drawn from the above observations that neglect of education was universal. This was not the case. There were schools at Detroit, besides the Sunday schools, in the olden times; and the labors of good Father Richard in this direction were appreciated and are well remembered by many still living among us. The Very Rev. Gabriel Richard, for many years a priest in this community, had the entire respect, confidence and affection of the whole people, and was the first representative to congress from the territory of Michigan. At the commencement of the present century there were schools under his encouragement, if not due to his efforts, not only in the town of Detroit, but at Grand Marais, at Springwells and at the River Huron. At "Spring Hill," a mile below the town, Pere Richard had established not only an academy, but a printingpress. It was the first one that was set up in the territory/ and here was published the first book printed in the northwest. In regard to these schools, the following pertinent facts are gathered from a quaint memorial address by the Reverend Father of the then legislative authority of Michigan. It bears date of October I8, N. S., I8o8. We learn from it that "three of these schools are kept by the natives of the country, of whom two (sic), under the direction of the subscriber, have learned the first rudiments of the English and Latin languages, and some principles of algebra and geometry, so far as the measurement of the figures engraved on the tomb of the immortal Archimedes." Also, that in the academy at Detroit "there are better than thirty young girls who are taught, as at Spring Hill. reading, writing, arithmetic, knitting, sewing, spinning, etc. In these two schools there are already three dozen of spinning-wheels and one loom, on which four pieces of linen or woolen cloth have been made this last spring or summer." This is mentioned for the benefit of modern schools for young ladies, where the piano is so often thumped. It is pleasant to know that the ears of our neighbors of half a century ago were more agreeably entertained with the music of the spinningwheel. "At this same academy of Spring Hill," the memorialist goes on to say, "the number of the scholars has been augmented by four young Indians, headed by an old matron, their grandmother, of the Potawatomi tribe. Five or six more are expected to arrive every moment." We are also told that, "to encourage the young students by the allowment of pleasure and amusement," he had sent "orders to New York for a spinning machine of about one hundred spindles, an air pump, an electrical apparatus, etc.," and "a few colors for dying the stuffs already made or to be made in his academy." Take note of that, ye modern educators, who are in pursuit of sources of "pleasure and amusement" for the young people! 1-11 194 HISTORIC MICHIGAN As a further memento of those times I add, verbatim et literatim, the concluding appeal of the memorialist, asking that, "for the encouragement of Literature and useful Arts, to be taught in the same academies, one of the 4 Lotteries authorized by the Hon. Leg.' on the 9th of 7 ber, I8o6, may be left to the management of the subscriber, on conditions that may appear just and reasonable to the Board." A word about the language used by the French Canadian. It is generally believed that this has become so corrupted from the pure Parisian as to constitute a patois, so abominable as to be with difficulty understood by one skilled in the standard tongue of the academy. The truth is, this so-called patois is the old French tongue, continued almost unchanged, like the manners and habits of those who use it; while the language of cultivated France has undergone many modifications. It is satisfactory to find these observations upon the French character confirmed by an early authority. Charlevoix, who was at Quebec in I720, says: "The Creoles of Canada draw in with their native breath an air of Freedom, which renders them very agreeable in the commerce of life. And nowhere in the world is our language spoken in greater purity. There is not even the smallest foreign accent in their pronunciation." He describes them, also, as "gay and sprightly, rusticity being unknown, even in the remotest parts." I have alluded to one trait in which the French emigrants differed widely from the English and Spanish settlers in America-their friendliness towards the aboriginal inhabitants. This kindly disposition was appreciated by the Indians; so that the two races, whenever they fairly understood each other, lived in peace together. I am not aware that intermarriage was very frequent, or that this relationship was often entered into by the peasantry of this part of Canada. It was common enough at the remoter posts, down even to times within my personal knowledge. The Indian trader, whether Frenchman, Scotsman or Yankee, prompted partly by interest, usually took to himself an Indian wife. At such places as Mackinac and Sault Ste. Marie half-breeds were quite numerous, as they had been at Detroit at an earlier day. The class known as voyageurs-the coureurs des bois of the older times-had become, to a very considerable extent, of mixed blood. The licentious lawlessness of those wildwood rangers was not only well known, but was a subject of much complaint at a very early day. Certain it is, that in many points there was greater assimilation between the natives and the people from France than was the case with the immigrants from any other civilized country. In several excursions which I made between I836 and 1840, in the wilderness portion of Michigan. and along the large streams and channels, it was not uncommon to find the solitary lodge of a Frenchman, with his squaw wife, and sometimes two wives, and a troop of half-breed children. They lived more like Indians than white people, associated chiefly with them, and depended upon fishing. The class of men known as coureurs des bois, or voyageurs, was ex EARLY DETROIT 195 tinct at Detroit some time before my acquaintance began with the country and people. But at Mackinac and on Lake Superior these found somewhat of their old employment and retained a good deal of their ancient character. They manned the "Mackinac barge" and the canoes of the fur-traders that still plied along the northern waters of the Hudson Bay company. A wild-looking set were these rangers of the woods and waters! The weirdness was often enhanced by the dash of Indian blood. Picturesque, too, they were, in their red flannel or leather shirts, and cloth caps of some gay color, finished to a point, which hung over on one side with a depending tassel. They had a genuine love for this occupation, and muscles that seemed never to tire at the paddle and oar. From dawn to sunset. with only a short interval, and sometimes no midday rest, they would ply these implements, 6ausing the canoe or barge to fly through the water like a thing of life; but often contending against headwinds and gaining but little progress in a day's rowing. But how sweet was the rest, when a favoring breeze sprung up, enabling the little craft to carry sail. Then in came the oars, and down lopped each mother's son, and in a few minutes was in the enjoyment of a sound snooze. The morning and evening meal consisted, almost universally, and from choice, of bouillon, a soup made from beans, peas, or hulled corn, with a piece of pork boiled in it, and hard bread or sea-biscuits. To the northern voyageurs rations were generally served out of one quart or hulled corn and a half pint of bear's grease or oil, this being the daily and only food. The traveler Henry says (1776): "A bushel of hulled corn with two pounds of fat is reckoned to be a month's subsistence. No other allowance is made, of any kind, not even salt, and bread is never thought of. The difficulty which would belong to an attempt to reconcile any other men than Canadians to this fare seems to secure to them and their employees the monopoly of the fur trade." As late as the end of the last century Detroit was one of the principal depots for provisions and fitting out for the Indian trade; and here, particularly, the corn was prepared, hulled, boiled, and mixed with fat for the voyageurs. After supper pipes were lighted, and, seated on logs or squatted around the camp-fire, they chatted until bed-time. This came early and required little preparation. To wrap a blanket around the person, placing coat or shoe-pacs beneath the head, and a little greasy pillow -the only bed that was carried-constituted the whole ceremony; and speedy and sound was the sleep, beneath the watchful stars. The labor of the oar was relieved by songs, to which each stroke kept time, with added vigor. The poet Moore has well caught the spirit of the voyageur's melodious chant, in his "Boat-song upon the St. Lawrence." But to appreciate its wild sweetness one should listen to the melody, as it wings its way over the waters, softened by distance, yet every measured cadence falling distinct upon the air. These songs are usually half ballad or ditty, and love, of course, 196 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the main theme. They express the natural feelings of a people little governed by the restraints of civilization. Here is a specimen which I have preserved. The words were sung by one of our party, and all joined in the chorus: LA JEUNE SOPHIE La Jeune Sophie Chantait l'antre jour, Son echo lui repete, Que non pas d'amour N'est pas de bon jour. Je suis Jeune et belle, Je vieux me' engage' Un amant fidele, Je suis Jeune, etc. Mais ce vous etre belle, Ce n'est pas de jour; Ce n'est que vos yeaux Qui bris a'la chandelle Mais ce vous, etc. Unisons ensemble,Son cour et le mein,Pourquoi taut le defendre, Puis qu'il s'amaient bien? Unisons, etc. Point temps de badinage, Envers mon amant, Car il est jaloux: Tout lui port embrage. Point temps, etc. La Jeune Sophie Chantant l'autre jour, etc. (Repeat.) Sometimes the bon vivant is predominant as in the following rude song: Mon pere a fait bati maison. Ha, ha, ha, frit a l'huile, Sont trois charpentiers qui la'font, Fritaine, friton, fritou, poilon, Ha, ha, ha, frit a' l'huile, Frit au beurre a' l'ognon. Sont trois charpentiers qui la'font, Ha, ha, ha, frit a' l'huile, Qu' apporte tu dans ton giron? Fritaine, friton, fritou, poilon, Ha, ha, ha, frit a' l'huile. Qu' apporte tu dans ton giron? Ha, ha, ha, frit a' l'huile, C'est un pate' de trois pigeons, Fritaine, friton, fritou, poilon, Ha, ha, ha, frit a' l'huile. EARLY DETROIT 197 C'est un pate' de trois pigeons, Ha, ha, ha, frit a' l'huile, Assieds-toi et le mangeons, Fritaine, friton, fritou, poilon, Ha, ha, ha, frit a' l'huile, Frit au beurre a' l'ognon, etc., etc. These boat songs were often heard upon our river, and were very plaintive. In the calm of evening, when sounds are heard with greater distinctness and the harsher notes are toned down and absorbed in the prevailing melody, it was sweet, from my vine-mantled porch, to hear the blended sounds of song and oar, "By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep." To my half-dreaming fancy, at such time they have assumed a poetic, if not a supernatural character, wafting me into elf-land, on wings of linked sweetness. "Some Spirit of the air has waked the spring 'Tis now a seraph bold, with touch of fire, 'Tis now the brush of Fairy's frolic wing." At other times these sounds harmonize with scenes that are still more inspiring. Seldom have I witnessed a more animating spectacle than that of a large canoe belonging to the Hudson Bay company, manned by a dozen voyageurs-the company's agents seated in the center-propelled with magic velocity, as if instinct with life, every paddle keeping time to the chorus that rang far and wide over the waters. But times have changed, and with them have passed from our midst the voyageur and his song. French gaiety is rapidly ebbing into more sober channels. Even the priests have set their faces against balls and merrymakings! As I call up these reminiscences, with the same noble river in my view, I listen in vain for the melodies which were once the prelude to ma'ny joyous hours of early manhood. But instead, my ear is larumed by the shriek of the steam whistle and the laborious snort of the propeller. All announce that on these shores and waters the age of the practical, hardworking, money-getting Yankee is upon us, and that the careless, laughter-loving Frenchman's day is over. FORT SHELBY Recollections of old Fort Shelby and its surroundings, by Mrs. Samuel Zug, of Detroit, and read before the Detroit Pioneer society, September 27, 1872: While reading the reports of the Pioneer society, some scenes with which I was long since familiar have fixed themselves upon my mind very vividly, though surrounded by the mist of many years. Sad thoughts arise when we remember that many persons and places, that we then knew, we shall know no more forever, but still thoughts that we love to dwell upon. 198 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Though what I can tell may not in itself be of much interest or historic value, it may perhaps awaken more important reminiscences in the minds of others who, like myself, were born and bred in the little French town of Detroit, and who remember the time when it was a rare thing to meet anyone whom we did not know, not only those of the city (for it must be remembered that we boasted of being a city at a very early date), but also every Frenchman that we met in his little cart seated in his marche donc chair, or in his cariole, from Grosse Pointe to the River Ecorse. Within the last ten years many have died who possessed knowledge of great interest and value of the early history of our city, and it is much to be regretted that an effort was not sooner made to put on record facts that are now lost forever. Few remain whose recollections extend as far back in the history of our city as the year i826, and one of that remnant now ventures to give you what she can remember of old Fort Shelby and its surroundings. The ground on which was the fort and what was called the cantonment was given to the general government in i826, when Detroit ceased to be a military post. The fort, the center of which was near the intersection of Shelby and Fort streets, was an embankment said to have been thirty feet high, surrounded by a ditch and pickets. It was built by the British in I777. The cantonment, or barracks, were built in 1815, and were west of the fort, and composed of four rows of one-story log buildings, about three hundred feet long, arranged in a quadrangle. The center was used for the parade ground. The west row stood directly on the Cass line. The cantonment and the fort extended from that line to, I think, a little east of Shelby street, and from the south side of Fort street to a little north of Lafayette avenue. The entrance or gate of the fort was directly in front of the house now occupied by Mrs. McDonald on Fort street, and which was in the southwest part of the fort. This house has been somewhat altered, but its general appearance is the same, though we miss the four stately Lombardy poplars which stood like so many sentinels to guard the residence of their commanding officer. Besides this house there were two other smaller buildings and a very large root-house, which, if I remember correctly, was all that was within the embankment. The cantonment may have had more than one entrance, but the only one that I remember was in the southeast corner, near where Fort and Wayne streets intersect each other. As it is depicted upon my mind, the houses presented an unbroken wall. Some of the houses in the cantonment and in the fort, after they came into possession of the city, were rented by the corporation to individuals for residences. The officers' quarters in the cantonment were in the northeast and southwest corners, and were occupied, respectively, by Mr. E. P. Hastings and the Rev. N. M. Wells, known then as now as Parson Wells, and the officers' quarters in the fort by Mr. S. Gillet. The soldiers' quarters were occupied generally by poor families. About the middle of the east row was a long room, fitted up in quite a magnificent style, as we then thought, having on either side EARLY DETROIT 199 pillars and arches. This was called the Military hall. It had been used as a dancing hall and for court-martials, etc. I remember one Sunday attending an Episcopal service there, the Rev. Mr. Cadle officiating. How it happened I cannot tell, as their usual place of worship was in the old council house, on Jefferson avenue, where Firemen's hall now stands. This hall was afterwards purchased by the First Protestant society, and moved to the rear of their old yellow wooden church, on the corner of Woodward avenue and Lamed street, and used for a session room. It was afterwards moved again and used for a city court-room. It must have been as late as I830 when a part of the east row (I think the part that had been occupied by Mr. Hastings) was fitted up for the infant school, after the model of those under the patronage of Mrs. Bethune, and other benevolent women in New York, and Miss Lucina Williams, a sister of Mr. Harvey Williams (a gentleman well known in the early history of our state), was sent to New York to qualify herself for a teacher in that particular mode of instruction, then, I suppose, thought to be the royal road to learning; and there all the small children of the F. F. D.'s were sent to go through the routine of marching and singing their spelling lessons, and multiplication table, and even the profound science of astronomy, while in a closet just off the school-room was a little bed, where any of the poor little creatures who were overcome by sleep were carefully tucked away for a nap. Some of the families whose children were sent to the infant school lived where Christ's church now stands, and good Mr. Hasting's cart, the usual mode of conveyance in those days, was fitted up in bad weather with a cover, after the fashion of emigrant wagons, and was the vehicle in which the children were toted to school and back. Some straw was placed in the cart, a buffalo robe laid over the straw, then the children were packed in, to an incredible number, for old Thomas, Mr. Hastings' man, did not mind how far out of his way he went, and he was never known to refuse to take one more child for the want of room, for the capacity of those ancient vehicles was limitless, as was Thomas' patience. I remember a beautiful Sunday evening in the early spring of 1827, when an unusual number of people had been walking on the parapet, inquiring the reason, I was told that the next day they intended to begin taking it down. And sure enough, early on Monday appeared a gang of men, mostly Irish, with picks and shovels. The less laborious work of carting away the earth was left for the French, who were very glad of the work, for many who possessed that, to a Frenchman, most coveted treasure, a pony, found it necessary in order to make out a living for himself and family to find something to do besides hauling water for family use, which had heretofore been their chief reliance. The price for hauling water was from I2% to 25 cents a load, according to the weather. Two barrels were considered a load, and though the barrels might have been full when they left the river, as an old bag of coarse cloth was the only cover, and our streets were not at that time celebrated for their smoothness, by the 200 HISTORIC MICHIGAN time it reached its destination the quantity was very materially diminished. It may be supposed that water was not in those days used as freely as it is now. The leveling of the parapet was considered a great undertaking, and it was two or three years before it was entirely accomplished. Much of the earth taken from the fort was used to fill up the bank of the river, which was in some parts very shallow, and no doubt occasioned the severe malarial fevers that prevailed at certain seasons, and from which cause many useful lives were sacrificed. Well do I remember the consternation that was created by the caving in of a portion of the earth, and one poor man, "Old Kelly," being buried under it, and the haste with which his fellow workmen labored to extricate him. But when it was done life was extinct. It was several years later before the cantonment was all removed. Part of the buildings were torn down, and part detached and moved away, and no doubt some portions of them still stand in some parts of the city. Many persons may remember the chimneys that stood, like monuments, after the wood that surrounded them was taken away. And that brings to mind a gentleman now living in a neighboring town in our state, who, then an enterprising youth of about thirteen, took a contract to take down some of the chimneys at fifty cents apiece, and let out the job to some of his young companions at twentyfive cents; and, though the undertaking was rather hazardous, it was accomplished without accident, and the boys earned their own Fourth of July money, and enjoyed it much more than the boys in these days do twice the amount without labor or effort on their part to get it. A short distance south of the fort stood quite a large one-story wooden house, which I am told had been used by the commissary department, and was at that time occupied by Col. Edward Brooks, and a little south of that, standing by itself, was a stone magazine. Both of those buildings must have stood between Cass and Wayne streets, and between Fort and Congress. The old arsenal, which stood on the corner of Jefferson avenue and Wayne street, where Mr. Phelps' store now stands, will be remembered by all, though not the yard back of it, which I think must have extended to Larned street. Captain Perkins, the military storekeeper, kept this yard in most beautiful order. The piles of cannon balls, arranged in squares and triangles, at regular intervals, the clean walks and well-kept grass plots have made a lasting impression on my mind. And the cannon, looking so formidable, ready, as we children thought, to be used at any time, if the British should ever dare molest us; but, of course, there was little danger of that, for had we not whipped them twice? The house where Captain Perkins lived stood just below the arsenal, on Jefferson avenue. It was a small wooden house, and if the captain presided over the ordinance yard with precision, with no less exactness did Mrs. Perkins look after her front yard, which was noted for its profusion of fine flowers. Many years since, when the arsenal was built in Dearborn, and EARLY DETROIT 201 the military stores ordered there, this house was purchased by the late Col. Sheldon McKnight and moved to the north side of Fort street, between Wayne and Shelby. It has been many times altered, until finally all similitude to the original building was destroyed, by adding another story to its height. It is now occupied by Mr. Chittenden. Little remains of old Detroit. I can only remember St. Ann's church, Mrs. McDonald's house and the Campau homestead. If Father Richard should be permitted to visit the sphere of his early labors he would hardly know his church, for that has been remodeled once and again since his death. The house on Fort street, I am told, is soon to be taken down to give place to a stately edifice. And it is not to be expected that the "spirit of the age" will long permit the Campau house to stand a monument of the old regime. Why will not some public spirited individual or individuals present it to the Pioneer society for a hall, and to preserve any relics that they may collect? Perhaps I am an old fogy, but even at the risk of being thought anything so dreadful, I might say it is too bad to have every old landmark taken away. AMUSEMENTS IN DETROIT IN COLONIAL DAYS By Clarence M. Burton Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXVIII, 324-342 ON the 24th day of July in the year I70I, there landed, on the shore of the Detroit river, a company of soldiers and artisans, under the command of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac." This company consisted of fifty soldiers and fifty civilians comprising all the trades useful for a frontier settlement. Cadillac, the commandant, had been commissioned by the French government to locate a fort and village on the Detroit river at such a point as would command the waterway from Erie in the Great Lakes beyond, and he had chosen this as the spot for such a fort. From his starting point at Montreal he had been accompanied by a guard of one hundred Algonquin Indians, and as the forces neared the final stopping place, the number of Indians increased until a small army of them drew their light canoes upon the sandy beach and gave their assistance to the founding of a great city. On the progress up the Ottawa river from Montreal to Lake Nipissing, and thence across that lake to its outlet, French river, and down that river and through the Georgian bay to the final destination, troubles and disagreements arose among the soldiers and colonists, and some of them were on the point of deserting or returning to their homes. It was rumored among them that Cadillac would never pay them for their services; that he would not permit them to return to Montreal, or bring their families to Detroit. So a hundred rumors of the hardships that must sooner or later overtake them were passed around the camp to discourage their further progress or to prompt them to turn back before their work was accomplished. 202 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Before anything was done on the shores of the Detroit river, Cadillac called all of his people together, immediately upon their landing, and talked to them about these rumors of disaffection. He had been told that the leader and originator of these troubles was the Jesuit priest, Vaillant,6 who had been permitted, contrary to the wishes of Cadillac, to go with him to Montreal. He knew that this priest had been disappointed in not having the exclusive charge of the religious affairs of the company, for he had been allowed to come to Detroit only for the purpose of founding a mission among the Indians, while a Recollet priest, Nicolas Constantin de l'Halle,7 was selected as almoner to the settlement. When Cadillac made known to his people his knowledge of their discontent, and asked them for the causes of it, Vaillant, who was present, found that his schemes had been discovered, and he immediately started for the woods to escape the wrath of the commandant and the people. He proceeded at once to Mackinac and never afterwards appeared at Detroit. No Jesuit priest ever officiated at the place until within very recent times. The foundation for the Church of Ste. Anne was begun on the day of the first landing, and we may well believe that the chanting of church services was started at once, and has been continued without interruption since, for even during the trying times of 1763, when the place was besieged by Pontiac, religious services were punctually attended to. The early French and Canadian colonists were mostly uneducated farmers, voyageurs and coureurs de bois, who sought the great west because it gave them opportunities for employment with some hope of bettering their condition in life. The commandant was obliged to make a report of the transactions of the place sufficient to keep his superiors informed as to the situation of affairs, but further than these official reports, we have very little information regarding the daily life of the people. They wrote no letters to friends or relatives to tell them about the new country they had chosen for their homes. An occasional quarrel between parties reached the court at Quebec, but very little information can be derived from that source. The church records are very full and complete, but they are of such a nature that they give little information of the daily life of the community. The first Church of Ste. Anne that had been erected in I701 was destroyed by fire in 1703, and with it the church record for the two years was consumed. This record contained the entry of the birth of a child to the commandant and his wife, the first white child born in Detroit, or probably west of Montreal. There can be little doubt that the birth of this child was the occasion of great and prolonged hilarity on the part of the entire community, for not only was it the first birth, but it was the birth of a child to the first and most important family in the settlement. From this time.forward there are entries of marriages, births and deaths, each an occasion for mirth or sorrow, and the French people then, as now, permitted no occasion for mirth to escape them unnoticed. The newcomers brought guns and gun flints, powder and ball for EARLY DETROIT 203 hunting. In modern times, by custom brought down from the far away pioneer life, the one most skillful in using his gun at the annual tournament is awarded a prize for his ability. That this custom prevailed as far back as the beginning of our history, there can be little doubt, and at such trials of skill we may well assume that they engaged in all sorts of athletic sports, as running, wrestling, rowing, bowling and arrow shooting. The flint arrow heads that we sometimes, even now, find in the fields around the city were quite difficult to make, and we cannot believe that the Indians used them on ordinary occasions. These arrows were reserved for special occasions, such as shooting to show their skill, where the arrow could be found and returned to the sender. A bird on the wing could be killed or wounded with such an arrow, but there would be more difficulty in killing, or even seriously wounding, an animal of any considerable size. Twice during the first eleven years of Detroit's history, the place was besieged by the Indians, once in 1705, and again in I712, and on both occasions the savages sought to destroy the village by shooting arrows carrying balls of fire on the unprotected roofs of the houses. Both efforts failed because of the prompt action of the citizens and garrison in extinguishing the flames and in unroofing the houses. At the outset, the Indians did not have guns or powder. When they obtained guns, as they did within a few years, they were entirely dependent upon the French for powder and they could not conduct a war of any considerable length without the assistance of the French or Canadians. They became skillful marksmen, both with gun and bow, but no more skillful than the French. The white and red natives mixed together as one people. They sometimes intermarried, but aside from this, the early white men who were trappers, hunters and traders in the woods, lived with the savages on terms of perfect equality and their traits and habits of life became similar. The athletic sports were common to all natives, but there were some sports more peculiarly Indian in their character, such as rowing, swimming and arrow shooting. Then there was lacrosse, a game at first peculiarly Indian, but which was soon adopted by the white men. They had dances of various forms suited to various occasions, such as war dances, medicine dances and dances at funerals. In their camps in the woods, to pass away the long evenings, the men had stag dances, such as, in more modern times, were indulged in by the woodsmen in the lumber camps. The Canadian boatmen were noted for their boat songs, and the long pulls through the placid waters of Lake Nipissing and the Georgian bay were enlivened by the chorus of voices that kept time to the strokes of their oars and paddles. "Faintly as tolls the evening chime, 'Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time, Soon as the woods on the shore look dim, We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn, Row, brothers, rowl the stream runs fast, The rapids are near, and the daylight's past I" -Moor:s Canadian Boat Song. 204 HISTORIC MICHIGAN One hundred voices, rising and falling in unison, as they passed through the various rivers and lakes from Montreal to Detroit, gave notice to the savages that the march of civilization had begun. This crude music was a dreadful warning to them, if they had but understood it, that the ownership of the woods and streams, and control of the wilderness, was about to pass into other hands, but they did not comprehend. They welcomed the newcomers to a home, a settlement, a new colony in the West. The soldiers who came with Cadillac were Frenchmen who had entered the army in France and were therefore familiar with the soldier's life in the old country. This life was not one of seclusion, or of toil only, but was interspersed with all the hilarity and joy making that could be obtained in such a situation and in such a life. They undoubtedly played all the games that were common in the day, such as quoits, bowling in the narrow streets of the village, card playing and other similar indoor amusements in inclement weather. The houses of the first comers were very small and very crude. They were built of small logs set on end and driven into the ground far enough to make them stand firmly upright, and extending above the ground only six or seven feet, high enough to stand in. They were covered with skins, or with split rails, and then with grass or straw. The uprights were placed as closely together as possible and the interstices filled with clay or mud. They were seldom more than from twelve to eighteen feet in width and of about the same depth. There were no floors, except the earth beaten hard by many footsteps. No glass windows were in the place. The window openings were covered with the skin of some animal. This was translucent on most occasions, but the skin would thicken with age and exposure, and it was frequently necessary to scrape it thinner or stretch it more in order to admit any light. The only large buildings in the place were the warehouse and church, and here all of the assemblies were held for entertainments. During the year I70I there were no white women in the place, but the next year came Madam Cadillac, and with her came Madam Tonty, wife of Captain Alphonse de Tonty, and their children, and servants. From this time on, the wives of the former residents began to arrive, so that a full and complete community was soon here. There were many Indians, for Cadillac says that he fed six thousand mouths during the winter of I701-2 and there were men, women, boys, girls, servants, and all that goes to make up a colony. They all attended church on Sunday and holy days, and as there were soon two or three hundred people, it will be seen that it was necessary to have a large building for church purposes. The warehouse, also, was very large, for it contained not only all the food, utensils, clothing and other things brought up annually for the citizens and the savages, but also all the peltries and things that were collected to be sent down to Montreal in exchange. It was likely in this building that their indoor dances were held. They planted a May pole each year before the door of the commandant, EARLY DETROIT 205 and that occasion was also accompanied with dancing, but the kind of music they had is not mentioned. The soldiers did not act as soldiers in garrison, but as citizens. They were each allowed a small tract of land outside the village enclosure which they cultivated as gardens. Some of these patches along the east line of Randolph street can be readily traced, though more than two hundred years have passed since their original survey. Hunting and trapping, considered as amusements or pastimes with us, were the means of gaining a living in the time of the original colonists, so that they can scarcely be claimed in this list. Probably every man and boy in the settlement had his old flint lock blunderbuss, capable of making a telling effect at short distance. The owner was skilled in its use and seldom missed his mark. One of the chief employments in the village was the gunsmith, or armorer. Every youth, as well as every man, was skilled in the making of traps for catching wild animals of all kinds whose fur was good. Care was taken not to catch or kill out of season, for the woods were depleted rapidly enough without killing when the fur was worthless. There were no buffalo (or bison) in the immediate neighborhood of Detroit, but when the whites first settled here there was an abundance of deer, elk, bear, fox and smaller animals. Everyone fished when fish were in season, which was most of the year. The fish were eaten fresh and none were salted down or exported. The rivers and lakes were so full of fish that none could be sold, either here or at Montreal or Quebec, and it was useless to undertake to export or to preserve them. The fishing was by line and spear only. The Indians made spearheads of flint, shaped something like the arrow head, but larger and much heavier. Even as late as the coming of the Americans in 1796, it was reported that the French people had no seines, though there was abundance of use for them. After Cadillac left Detroit in I7II, an inventory was taken of the personal property owned by him, and in this list was an item for "I,050 large fishing hooks, barbed," thus showing the general use of this instrument in the colony. The great number of flint arrowheads and spears found in and around the village indicate the methods used by the savages in killing game and fish before the distribution of firearms and gun-powder among them. A large stock of gun flints and a supply of English muskets and French muskets was carried by the commandant in his storehouse. A great quantity of goods was sent up to Detroit annually for sale or distribution among the Indians, and in this supply are to be found some things evidently intended for their amusement. In one place we find "one hundred small trumpets," possible to permit the youthful Indian to blow on and make himself heard, as do the white youths of today. These trumpets may also have been used in sleighing or coasting parties on the ice and snow, or perhaps as signals in the woods, though the Indian whoop is generally supposed to have been sufficient for the latter purpose. As there was a drum in the settlement, these 206 HISTORIC MICHIGAN trumpets may have been used in connection with it to raise a crowd. The invoice included thirty-six pounds of medium-size black glass beads, seventy-six and three-fourths pounds of large black beads, eight and three-fourtlhs pounds of large green beads, streaked, thirtythree pounds of beads in strings of all colors. Evidently most of these articles were intended for sale to the Indians, as ornaments. for a piece of gay-colored cloth with a string of colored beads would set off the dusky maiden to advantage, and make her the belle of the camp. There were no glass windows or mirrors for many years. An item of thirteen dozen small tin mirrors indicates an article used by both whites and Indians in making their toilets and in shaving if the men of that day shaved at all. In the entire list there is nothing found to correspond with the modern razor, but in the list of property belonging to the Delisle family is included "one fine razor." Knives they had, shoemakers' knives, Flemish knives, woodcutters' knives, Siamese knives, large carving knives and other knives in abundance, but mention is made of only one razor. Some of the presents to the Indians show their propensity for display, such as "a fine shirt with ruffles" and a "red coat ornamented with imitation gold lace." Smoking was a pastime enjoyed by both French and Indians. Tobacco was either raised here or brought here by the Indians from the warmer territory to the south of Lake Erie. A kind of Indian tobacco was made from the bark of the willow tree. Quantities of tobacco were used and there were many pipes or calumets in the storehouse. Some of them were common, every-day affairs and some were elaborate and expensive. Some were simply called "calumets" while others were put down as "large calumets of red stone, with their stems and plumes and stands to hold them." The large ones might have beetn used at the great council fires where the Indian treaties were discussed and arrived at. Boats for use on the rivers and lakes could not be considered as instruments for amusement as at the present day, but as objects of necessity, for the only road in summer for all to travel was the waterway, and the only vehicle the canoe. These boats were made of the bark of trees, birch bark being preferable, or, for the larger boats, trunks of trees dug out or burned by slow fire. Great care had to be taken in all cases to see the work was perfect, for a boat which leaked was a great annoyance. In later years one of the great pastimes in the winter was racing on the ice, but not at this early time. The Indians had no horses in this part of the country. If there were any wild horses they were far to the south and west, and were at that time unknown in the vicinity of Detroit. Cadillac brought three horses to Detroit, but two of them died shortly after their arrival, and the only horse in the settlement in 171I was the third animal and was called "Colon". All of the work necessary to be done by animals was performed by this horse and four oxen, also owned by Cadillac, and a few other oxen owned by some of the colonists. EARLY DETROIT 207 In the immediate neighborhood of the village were several quite steep hills that might be utilized in the winter for coasting purposes, Ed perhaps Colon was employed to draw the coasters' sleds on the rer ice, or up these hills or on the commons where the underbrush w cleared. There were no roads and very few smooth places fit for, sleigh riding. This horse was occasionally used for horseback rid g, as there were two pairs of old rowels mentioned, useless for a other purpose than to urge on this solitary steed. There were several carts or wagons, but all hand-made and heavily built for 'carrying merchandise, not people. There were some other domestic animals, for notice is made that the hogs and cattle were placed on Ile Ste. Magdelaine,8 the original French name for Belle Isle, for safe keeping. The island, however, took the name of Ile au Cochons (Hog Island) during Cadillac's time. Perhaps the use of brandy, or eau-de-vie, as it was then called, could not be considered as an amusement, but it was an indulgence granted to the Canadians and French with only such restraints as they voluntarily threw around it. Its use was forbidden to the Indians. That is, efforts were continually being made by the priests and the government to prohibit the use by the savages, and Cadillac was inclined to carry out this restraint, but he said at the time that the use of a small quantity of brandy with every meal of fish was a necessity for the white man, and so the stuff was included in the soldiers' rations. Cadillac considered himself above the common rut of his colonists, and did not associate with them as with equals. He made grants to members of his own family of large tracts of land on the Detroit river, thousands of acres in extent, supposing that they would ultimately become seigneurs, or landed proprietors, living off the rents paid by their tenants for these lands. For himself, he desired the income of the village proper and the adjacent lands, with the title of Baron or Marquis of Detroit. He was disappointed in not obtaining this concession. He imposed a tax or annual rental, payable to himself, on every piece of land he granted to the settlers. There were a few of his companions with whom he was on familiar terms, as with the priests. Captain Tonty9 and the lieutenants, Chacornac10 and Dugue11. Their amusements were somewhat different from those indulged in by the "common herd" and we find in Cadillac's home "eighteen swords with handles," probably used for fencing. He was well educated and familiar with the dramatic writings of his country, but it cannot be determined that any theatre or work of that character was undertaken at Detroit, though there are several references in his letters to the drama. He proposed to found a school or college, at Detroit, to instruct his colonists and the Indians there assembled. He proposed to establish a hospital to be placed under the charge of the Hospitallers, a religious order of nuns, and he further asked permission to form the Indians in military companies and regiments, officered partly by themselves and in part by French soldiers. All of these proposals, so far in advance of his time, were frowned upon by the French government, and his requests were de 208 HISTORIC MICHIGAN nied. There was one system adopted by him that outlasted his command and which continued in force some years. When he first came to Detroit, he supposed the entire trade of the place belonged to him, but the Company of the Colony of Canada soon laid claim to it, and a lawsuit followed, which continued for some time, and finally resulted in his favor. After this final determination, he annually sold to all of his people who desired the right to sell goods to the Indians. These goods all came at one time in the fall of the year, and upon their arrival nearly every house in the village was filled with the new goods placed on exhibition and sale, to induce the Indians to exchange their furs for trinkets and cloths. This was a sort of annual fair that lasted three or four days at a time. At such times there collected at the place all the Indians in the neighborhood, and there were thousands of them, and a general good time was held as long as the fair lasted. The fair was abandoned in the time of the command of Tonty, who died in office in Detroit in 1727, for he sold the right of trading to some Montreal merchants and they would not permit local dealers to share in the trade. A great noise was made about the discontinuance of the fair and it may have been revived in later years. In 17I1, Cadillac was appointed governor of Louisiana, but did not leave Detroit for his new post until the following year. His immediate successor was Charles Regnault, Sieur Dubuisson, but he only retained the position a few months pending the arrival of De la Forest. During the first years of the settlement, the citizens were afraid of the Indians. Indeed, during the entire time of French, English and American occupation as late as 1832, when the Black Hawk war took place, the people living in the village were afraid of the uprising of the natives. The early French, however, became so accustomed to them, and to their ways of living, and so intimate with their home life, that they had considerable confidence in them. A very quiet and uneventful life they led for many years, though the troubles with the Indians in the early times, and the quarrels between the commandants and their Montreal creditors disturbed business to such an extent that many of the people moved back to the Eastern settlements, and the village decreased in size. The grants of farm lands that had been made by Cadillac in 1707 and 1708 were annulled by the government, and the titles all reverted to the king in 17i6. This discouraged the farmers, for they could not make improvements and build houses upon insecure titles, but in later years new grants were made to. actual settlers. Then began the revival. The farmers raised sufficient to maintain the settlements, but nothing was shipped down to Montreal. The traders purchased goods from below and sold them for furs, the chief commodity of exchange for a long time, but the orchards of apples yielded a larger supply of fruit than could be used at home, and cider began to be exported. In 1734, the Royal Notary, Navarre, came here to reside. He was EARLY DETROIT 209 next in importance to the commandant, and his coming gave new life to the society of the settlement. The second generation was now in control of affairs, and the number of young people in the village was greatly increased. With the years, the villagers had increased their worldly goods. They had horses and saddles, and a few French carts. A road was made along the river bank. Their houses were better constructed, and they lived better, and more independent. Most of the farmers lived on their farms part of the time, but retired to the village if the Indians threatened to trouble them. There was a garrison maintained at the post composed of people who were half soldiers and half artisans, for the soldier's pay was very small, and he eked out a subsistence by working at some trade, or as a gardener. Even in Cadillac's time there were musicians in the garrison, for we have an account of the trial and execution of a drummer in Cadillac's company, before they came to Detroit. Some of the older citizens of today remember at the dances of their childhood, one of the instruments used was a jews-harp. This instrument is no longer used for such purposes, but when it commenced to be employed is not recorded. In the absence of a better musical instrument, the flying feet might keep time to cleverly manipulated bone clappers. St. Saveur was the drummer of the garrison in 1748, and in addition to his duties of furnishing music to the townspeople, he announced the public meetings, public auction sales, and other public events, by beating his drum in the principal streets of the village. This duty of giving public notices was also sometimes performed by a public bell ringer. Notices of importance were given by this bell ringer proceeding through all the streets of the village calling out his news or notice. A written notice was also posted on the church door, though it is very probable that only a few citizens could either read or write. There is mention in the early church records of Jean Baptiste Roucoux, first chanter and teacher in the Christian school, and in the public library in Detroit is an old account book, kept about the year 1750, which contains a piece of music evidently written about that date by Roucoux, or by Etienne Dubois, for use in the church service. Dubois performed the dual services of chanter and sexton. It was in the fall of I760 that the English troops, under Major Robert Rogers,l2 took possession of the fort and village. What a change this must have been, and how excited the people were. The little community that had existed so completely within itself for nearly sixty years that it had scarcely known what was going on in the great world without, was, in a day, without the firing of a gun, with but the parley of a few hours, converted from the quiet French community into a hustling English settlement. For sixty years Detroit's closest neighbors were Mackinac, Vincennes and Kaskaskia. She was at peace with the world, for she was unknown to the world. Now all was changed-and changed almost without warning. Armed troops marched into the settlement and took control of the village. Sentinels were posted at night to watch for foes, where no one had 1.12 210 HISTORIC MICHIGAN thought of watching before. Sentinels were marching all day and all night along the banquette of the palisade. The Indian trade was no longer carried on by the French people, for the new traders-the English, Irish and Scotch-had usurped the business and the former citizens were driven to their farms for a living. It was not long, however, before a better feeling came between the Canadians and the English. The young and unmarried girls and women of the post soon became acquainted with the young soldiers in the garrison, and they were willing instructors and scholars in learning, each the language of the other. Every effort was made to conciliate the conquered Canadians, to make them feel at home with the master nation. The next year after the conquest (1761) Sir William Johnson paid a visit to Detroit, and his coming was followed by a period of entertainments that lasted until he left the settlement. Each day was filled with the work of seeing the French people and getting acquainted with them, and in meeting the Indians and talking to them, purchasing their friendship, which lasted only as long as they could see the benefit of the purchase price. Johnson kept a journal18 of his trip and we find this entry under the date of Sunday, September 6: "A very fine mornnig. This day I am to dine with Captain Campbell, who is also to give the ladies a ball that I may see them. They assembled at 8 o'clock at night to the number of about twenty. I opened the ball with Madamoiselle Curie-a fine girl. We danced until 5 o'clock the next morning." He had the name of the young lady wrong, but it was quite as near as he could be expected to get the peculiar French name "Cuillerier". This was Angelique Cuillerier, daughter of Antoine Cuillerier dit Beaubien. The baronet remained some time in the place, and was the subject of repeated entertainments. He writes that he took a ride before dinner towards Lake St. Clair. "The road runs along the river side which is thickly settled nine miles." "The French gentlemen and the two priests'who dined with us got very merry. Invited them all to a ball tomorrow night, which I am to give to the ladies." Here again he met the same young lady -evidently by appointment. He writes: "In the evening the ladies and gentlemen all assembled at my quarters, danced the whole night until seven o'clock in the morning, when all parted very much pleased and happy. Promised to write to Madamoiselle Curie as soon as possible, my sentiments; there never was so brilliant an assembly here before." A strenuous life Sir William led in these few weeks in Detroit, but a more strenuous time he would have led upon his return to his old home if his Indian wife (or housekeeper, as he calls her in his will), Molly Brant, had known of his doings at Detroit. It was well for her peace of mind, and well for his personal safety, that she was kept in ignorance, for it is said that she had an ungovernable temper and was a terror when her will was crossed. She was a sister of Joseph Brant, the great Iroquois chief, and was the mother of ten children by Sir William Johnson. Angelique, the little French girl EARLY DETROIT 211 who, with her pretty face, her jet-black hair, her bright eyes, her winning ways and her broken English, had won the heart of the baronet, but was not left long to pine for his absence. James Sterling, a young Scotchman, who had come with the garrison and who was the storekeeper in the post, soon became the instructor of the French damoiselle in the English language, while he received instructions in French from her. In I763 when Pontiac was conspiring to surprise and murder the garrison, Angelique learned of his plans, and told her lover, who, in turn, informed Major Gladwin, and the surprise, so cleverly planned, was prevented and the garrison saved. Sterling and Angelique were married shortly after this, and although they remained many years in Detroit, they were the steadfast friends of the colonies during the Revolutionary war. Both husband and wife suffered for our cause, and were driven from their Detroit home, never to return. The news of peace between France and England, in I763, was brought to Detroit in a very peculiar way. The village was besieged by the Indian Pontiac and his Hurons. So closely were the English confined within the palisades of the village that they did not dare open the gates or go beyond the portals. George McDougall, who had ventured to go to Pontiac, upon his assurances of personal protection, was a prisoner among the Indians. A letter was brought from Niagara to Major Gladwin, who was in command at Detroit, notifying him of the conclusion of peace between England and France. The bearer of this letter was killed by the Indians, and the note taken from him and given to Pontiac. The latter called upon McDougall to read it, and Pierre Chene Labutte interpreted it to the Indians. McDougall succeeded in keeping the paper, and on the night of June 2, 1763, he let another white prisoner take the letter and run with it from the Indian encampment to the fort. This messenger arrived entirely naked, bearing only the very welcome message of peace at three o'clock in the morning. Upon being admitted to the fort, his message was received and read and the account states that upon the following evening there was an instrumental concert to celebrate the arrival of the welcome news. Just a month later McDougall managed to escape from the Indians, and ran into the fort in much the same manner as the messenger who had escaped. Until the coming of the English in I760, the affairs of the village were mostly managed by the commandant, but Englishmen had little idea of vesting authority in a single individual. They wanted to be governed by the laws, not by individuals. They wanted trial by jury, not the will of the commandant. For the first few years they had enough to occupy their attention in maintaining a semblance of friendship with the Canadians and Indians, but occasionally some other trouble arose that they had to attend to. The place was in the Indian country, and was not subject to the laws of England except as the people applied these laws. Criminals from other places fled to Detroit to escape punishment. Several crimes of magnitude were committed at Mackinac and Detroit, and some 212 HISTORIC MICHIGAN executions for murder and stealing took place here. A man named Schindler was accused of selling base metal for silver, and was tried before the local justice and was acquitted by a jury chosen to try him, but the English governor, Hamilton, was so impressed with the man's guilt, that he ordered him drummed out of the settlement. There was, at that time, a quarrel between the governor and the lieutenant who was in command of the garrison, and the latter would not permit the drummer to beat his drum while passing through the citadel where the soldiers were. At the public execution or hanging of a man convicted of murder, the band of musicians from the garrison surrounded the scaffold and played airs suitable to such a solemn occasion. During the Revolutionary war, there were parties of Indians and white men constantly going from Detroit to seek out the settlements on the borders of the colonies, destroying the houses and making prisoners of or murdering the inhabitants. It is not recorded that any instruments of music were taken on these incursions, for their success depended upon their stealth, and a noise might betray their coming and prevent that unforeseen attack that they were desiring. The Indian warwhoop was practiced by both whites and reds, for signals as they required. The scalping of Indians by white men was quite as common as the scalping of the whites by the Indians. Major DePeyster, who was in command in Detroit during a part of this war, writes May 26, 1780: "Everything is quiet here except the constant noise of the war drum. All the seigneures are arrived at the instance of the Shawnees and Delawares. More Indians from all quarters than ever before known, and not a drop of rum." DePeyster was something of a poet and several short poems of his relate to his life at Mackinac, Detroit and Niagara. One poem is devoted to carioling or racing on the ice on the River Rouge. Everyone who had a horse was present. The festivities of the occasion were under the management of Guillaume LaMothe, a Frenchman who was an officer in the Indian department. A feast followed the race, which was enjoyed by the officers and their wives and guests. Much drinking was indulged in, and the party was hilarious. The poet, with unusual poet's license, had the wild bears and deer come from the woods and watch the pleasure seekers at their camp: "The goblet goes round, while sweet echoes repeating, The words which have passed through fair lady's lips; Wild deer (with projected long ears) leave off eating, And bears sit attentive, erect on their hips." "The fort gun proclaims when 'tis time for returning, Our pacers all eager at home to be fed; We leave all the fragments, and wood clove for burning, For those who may drive up sweet River Red." DePeyster, although the military commandant, was in truth, the civil commandant as well, for the lieutenant-governor, Hamilton,14 the civil governor, was a prisoner of war at Williamsburg, Virginia, when DePeyster came to Detroit. Hamilton had been governor of Detroit EARLY DETROIT 213 for some three years, when, in the fall of 1778, he concluded to go to Vincennes to drive the rebels from the Ohio country. He utterly failed of his purpose, and was captured by General George Rogers Clark in the early part of 1779. The French inhabitants of Detroit were never cordially friendly to the British and when the news of the capture of Hamilton reached the place, the French were so elated that they held a three days' feast of rejoicing and building of bonfires to show their pleasure. This was the report made at the time, though it can probably be taken cum grano sales. We have not sufficient data to tell just when William Forsyth came to Detroit, but we find him at an early date keeping a tavern or place of entertainment on Ste. Anne street in the old village. He owned a lot adjoining the citadel, on which he had erected a bowling alley and pleasure resort. Probably the building also had a billiard table, for we know there were such tables in the country. The lot was wanted by the government to extend its barracks, and Forsyth was compelled to move out, and petitioned Governor Haldimand for damages for the loss of his property. As the bowling alley was a desirable adjunct to the pleasure resorts of the place, it was opened in another locality. When the war of the revolution came to a close, it was agreed that Detroit should become a part of the United States, and should be vacated by British soldiers. But Great Britain thought that if she could hold on a few years, the states would quarrel among themselves, and she could repossess herself of the country because of their contentions. She was fooled in this, but nevertheless managed to retain possession of Detroit until I796. In the meantime, the place was governed by the law-makers of Canada, as if it belonged to that dominion. In 1791, Canada was divided into Upper and Lower Canada, and in the fall of I792, there was held in Detroit an election for members of the Provincial Parliament of Upper Canada. This parliament was divided into two houses, the upper, called the council, the members of which were appointed, and the lower, the assembly, the members of which were elected. In the upper house, there was one member from Detroit, Alexander Grant, known also as Commodore Grant, for he had charge of the entire navy on lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan during the revolution. The members elected to the lower house were William Macomb, uncle of our General Alexander Macomb, and David William Smith, who lived at Niagara. Smith attempted. at first, to gain his election as representing the county of Essex, but at this election he was defeated by Francois Baby. This election took place August 20, 1792, and after his defeat his friends put him up for election in the County of Kent, which included the village of Detroit. The election was held August 28, I792, and here he was successful. The letters I have from him were written before either election took place, and were indited upon the supposition, or expectation, that he would win at the Essex election. As this was the first and only election to parliament ever had at Detroit, the description Mr. Smith gives of what 214 HISTORIC MICHIGAN he expects will take place is quite interesting: "Perhaps I should have done better to have set up for one of the seats in Detroit, as I hear only of Mr. Macomb who is to be proposed; but I did not then know they would be entitled to vote; besides were I thrown out on the 20th, I might have a chance on the 28th. The French people can easily walk to the hustings, but my gentry will require some conveyance; if boats are necessary, you can hire them, and they must not want for beef or rum, let them have plenty-and in case of success, I leave it to you which you think will be best for my friends, a public dinner and the ladies a dance, either now or when I go up. If you think the moment the best time you will throw open Forsyth's tavern and call for the best he can supply. I trust you will feel very young on the occasion, in the dance, and I wish that Leith and you would push about the bottle to the promotion of the settlements on the Detroit. The more broken heads and bloody noses there are, the more election like, and in case of success (damn that if) let the white ribbon favors be plentifully distributed to the old, the young, the gay, the lame, the cripple and the blind. Half a score cord of wood piled hollow, with tar barrel in the middle, on the common, some powder and plenty of rum. I am sure you will preside over and do everything that is needful. As far as my circumstances will admit there must be no want, and I am sure you will have everything handsome and plentiful. Elliot, I am sure, will give you a large red flag to be hoisted on a pole near the bon-fire, and some blue colored tape may be sewed in large letters, 'ESSEX.' "Thus talked the woman to herself when she carried her eggs on her head to the market. She set them, she hatched them, she sold them for a crown apiece, and then down she fell, eggs and all." At another time he writes: "Have proper booths erected for my friends at the hustings; employ Forsyth to make a large plumb cake, with plenty of fruit, &c., and be sure let the wine be good and plenty. Let the peasants have a fiddle, some beverage and beef." Jean Baptiste Beaubien, one of the founders of Chicago, and a noted fiddler at every dance in the early years of that village, was born in Detroit, September 5, I787. He was a cousin of Angelique Cuillerier. The change of government finally came in I796, when the English left and the Americans came in. It was not an unexpected change, and yet it made such an impression on the Canadian citizens who left the place rather than submit to the American rule that they gave it the name of the "Exodus," a name by which it is familiarly known among their descendants even today. The newcomers were from New York and New England stock, and they brought with them some new ideas, amusements and holidays. Perhaps Christmas and the king's birthday were observed by the older residents, but now came the Fourth of Ttuly, and Thanksgiving day, with its pumpkin pies, cider, and doughnuts. If the roasting of new corn and potatoes was unknown in Detroit before this era, it certainly was not afterwards. Stoves were not invented in time to be of general use in Detroit EARLY DETROIT 215 until as late, or even later, than the Exodus. The family baking was not done at home, but at the public bakehouse, but every girl and boy was so familiar with the fireplace and uncovered fire that the roasting of corn and potatoes was no great novelty, though it was always a pleasure. Then what of the husking bee, and the privilege of the fortunate finder of the red ear of corn, who was permitted to kiss the girl of his choice-if he could catch her. Did that come from New England, or was it indigenous to the soil that could yield a corn crop? The hunting of nuts in the fall by groups of children or of grown folks could not have originated at that time, though it was doubtless engaged in, as it had been for a century before. Of wild grapes and berries of all varieties there was an abundance, and it did not need much of an education to instruct the young folks in the idea of having a crowd to do berrying and enjoy the fun, and every day was a picnic. There were probably few, if any, two-story buildings in the vicinity of Detroit before I796, but after that date they began to increase in numbers, and on the occasion of the erection of each new building there was the raising bee of neighbors accompanying the work with a boiled dinner for the crowd, and perhaps something a little stronger than water in the way of beverage. There was a harpsichord in the settlement some years prior to the opening of the new century. Just when this musical instrument was brought to Detroit is uncertain, but it was there long before the year 1799, for at that date it was represented to be in a dilapidated condition. It was the property of Dr. William Harpfy. Harpfy was a surgeon in the British garrison, and when the Exodus took place in 1796, he was moved to the new establishment at Malden, and he took his harpsichord with him. Among his most intimate friends at Detroit were John Askin and Commodore Alexander Grant. Grant had been commodore of the lakes during the Revolution and was, in I792, appointed one of the members of the executive council for Upper Canada-a life position. John Askin was an extensive trader at Detroit, and brother-in-law of Grant. Grant lived at Grosse Pointe and there had a castle well filled with young lady daughters. There were ten in all, of whom nine grew to womanhood, Therese (Mrs. Wright), Nellie, Archange (married Thomas Dickson), Phillis (married Alexander Duff), Isabella (married Mr. Gilkison), Nancy (married George Jacob), Elizabeth (married James Woods), Mary Julia (married Mr. Milles), and Jean Cameron (married William Richardson). The absence of any of the ten from the family circle could hardly be noticed, for the deficiency was filled by the cousins, daughters of John Askin. Of these cousins, frequent visitors at the Grant castle there were Adelaide Askin, afterwards the wife of Elijah Brush; Therese, who married Colonel Thomas McKee; Ellen, the wife of Richard Pattinson, and Archange, who became Mrs. Meredith, and removed to England with her husband, who was an officer in the British forces. 216 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The first record we have of this harpsichord is contained in a letter from Dr. Harpfy to his friend, John Askin. Harpfy was somewhat eccentric and quite voluble in his letter writing. This letter is dated October I7, I799, and after dilating on various other matters, he turns his attention to the subject of music, and says "Curse the music. I wish it was sold. I care not for what, as all my wants and wishes to attain are not worth the pains or trouble to my friends. You will favor me if it could be in any way disposed of." It seems that the subject of the sale of this instrument had been talked over on some previous occasion between Askin and Harpfy, for the latter again writes: "In looking over your letter of the 14th, I thank you for your very great kindness in regard to the harpsichord-but I am told it is a mere wreck-therefore, as I have mentioned before, I wish it sold." What more proper place for such a piece of furniture than the Castle of Commodore Grant, where it could receive the attention of so many young ladies. Harpfy and Askin concluded that the castle was in need of just such an article, and one day, when one of the commodore's boats was at Maiden, they slipped the instrument aboard and it was soon landed at Grosse Pointe. Then came the fun. It was so old and dilapidated that it was useless and in the way. No one wanted it. Only the old friendship existing between Grant and Harpfy prevented the former from casting the musical instrument into "outer darkness". Grant complained to the doctor and asked him to take the piece away from his home. Harpfy had occasion to visit Sandwich and wanted to cross the river and see Askin in Detroit, but the ferry was not running very regularly, and the doctor was not feeling very well-he had been sick and was now slowly recovering. Instead of visiting Askin, he wrote him a long letter on various matters, and as a postscript, touched on the subject of the instrument: "October 28th, 9 o'clock at night. I really am sorry that the harpsichord was put in Mr. Grant's boat, for he talks about it-Gods, how he talks about it." The joke had been carried too far and Grant would not overlook it, or allow it to proceed further. The instrument must be removed, and that at once. So Askin sent for it, and had it taken to one of his storehouses in the village, where it was taken care of. Askin lived on the front of his farm, not far from the intersection of Atwater and Randolph streets. Atwater street was the only highway to the country on the east side, and the well-to-do class of citizens lived in the neighborhood. Here Askin owned several buildings, and, besides, he had several houses and buildings in the village proper. The last we hear of the instrument that came so near being an instrument of discord is a note in a letter from Dr. Harpfy to Mr. Askin, dated November 5, I799, where he writes, "I thank you for your care of the harpsichord. I wish it could be sold." In 1799 there was an election held in Detroit for members of the legislature, that met at Chillicothe, and Solomon Sibley, then a young attorney at Detroit, was one of the candidates. Voting then was not by secret ballot, as now, but everyone gave the name of his candidate as he came up to vote. The voter's name was taken down, and his EARLY DETROIT 217 qualifications for suffrage were also frequently indicated. At the election referred to, some opponent of Judge Sibley kept such a record of the persons who voted for him and from this list I have taken a few names of persons whose descendants are still here. Antoine Dequindre, who was, at that time, the owner of the farm extending along the westerly line of Dequindre street, is thus mentioned, "Has given his creditors all he has; the farm on which he lives is the property of his wife." Christian Clemens, the founder and owner of Mount Clemens, "Has no property known." Ezra F. Freeman, then one of the principal lawyers in the place, "Has no property in the country." James Henry. an uncle of the late D. Farrand Henry. He was, at the time of his death, one of the wealthy citizens of the place, "Lives at Grosse Isle. Lately liberated from the Indians; lives on the estates of the late Macomb." Elijah Brush, the founder of the Brush family, and the owner of the Brush farm, "Lately arrived; has no property known." Sibley was elected over James May, and served in the legislature with Jacob Visger and Charles Francois Chabert de Joncaire. This brings us to the beginning of the second century of the life of our city. Its population had increased from the one hundred who came at the start to some eighteen hundred who lived in the place, and along the shore line on both sides of the river. Now we are well on in the third century of our existence. We look back upon these happy days and sigh as we remember that the simple life-the simple pleasures-and the simple folks of this long ago, are no longer with us, and cannot be found in the tumult of our great city. XIV CREATION OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY By William L. Jenks, M.A. Michigan History Magazine, II, 270-278 HE Ordinance of 1787 provided for the ultimate division of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio into not less than three nor more than five states. If into three, the north and south dividing lines were to extend from the Ohio river to the international boundary, the eastern dividing line to start at the mouth of the Great Miami river. If more than three states were created, an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan would form the northern boundary of three states, and the territory north of that line might at the option of congress be put into either one or two states. If the "three states" plan had been adopted the lower peninsula of Michigan would have been about equally divided between the eastern and central states, while the upper peninsula would have formed part of all three states. Eleven years after the adoption of the Ordinance, the population of the Northwest Territory was found to be upwards of five thousand, and, following the provisions of the Ordinance. a legislature was instituted, containing elected members, thus bringing all parts of the territory into intimate connection with the governing powers. In May, i8oo, congress passed an act dividing the territory into two parts, the dividing line starting at the Ohio river, opposite the mouth of the Kentucky river, thence passing northward to Fort Recovery, and from there north to the international boundary. The western part, which covered much the larger area, was named the Indiana territory, the eastern part retaining the original name. This dividing line did not quite agree with the line fixed by the Ordinance, being a little to the westward, but when the state of Ohio came to be created two years later, the Ordinance line was adopted as the livision line between Ohio and Indiana territory. In i8oo, and for some years afterward, there were no accurate maps of the Great Lakes and the surrounding region, and it was uncertain where the dividing line between the Northwest and Indiana territories struck the upper peninsula of Michigan, and whether the settlement at Mackinaw was on the east or the west of the line. In Tanuary, 1802, the legislature of the Northwest Territory adopted a resolution instructing their delegate in congress, Paul Fearing, to use his endeavors to have congress pass a law declaring the island of Michilimackinac and its adjacent settlements to be in and under the jurisdiction of the Northwest territory." Perhaps aroused by this action, in February, I802, a Grand Jury of Knox County. Indiana Territory, passed resolutions claiming the Island of Michilimackinac and its dependencies as an integral part of their territory, and these CREATION OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY 219 resolutions were presented to the house of representatives by Gov. Harrison.2 The matter was promptly referred to a special committee of the house, but the question soon became obsolete through the creation of the state of Ohio out of the southern part of the Northwest territory, and the attaching of both peninsulas to Indiana territory, and therefore no report was made by the committee, or further action taken. Governor St. Clair had not looked with favor upon the reduction of his territorial jurisdiction by the creating of Indiana territory, and some time before that event had worked out a plan of division which he hoped would prevent any action being taken in the creation of states.8 It seems most probable that in this he was largely actuated by apprehension lest if states were created his position and authority would be gone. Opposition to him and his political ideals had been increasing, but he was still in control, and influential. He was a strong Federalist, while many of the later comers into the territory were Democrats, to whom the Governor seemed an autocratic tyrant, and who not only wished to rid themselves of his offensive authority, but also wanted a state government which would be governed by officers elected by the people. In order to carry out St. Clair's idea, his friends in the territorial assembly passed an act, approved by him, December 21, I80o, giving the assent of the territory to an alteration of the Ordinance. It recited that it would be inconvenient and injurious to the interests of the citizens of the Northwest territory if it should be divided into states according to the Ordinance, as these states would be extremely unequal in territory and population, and the eastern state particularly would be too extensive for good government; and it enacted, that whenever congress should assent, the Ordinance should be so altered that the western of the three states provided for should be bounded on the east by the western boundary of lands granted to General George Rogers Clark, his officers and soldiers, and a line from there to the heard of Chicago river, up that stream to Lake Michigan, and thence due north to the international boundary. The middle state would have as its eastern boundary the Scioto river, from its mouth to the Indian boundary line fixed by the treaty of Greenville, thence to the southwest corner of the Connecticut Reserve, and from there due north to the international boundary.4 The eastern state would comprise the area between that line and Pennsylvania. It was expressly provided that it was not intended to affect the authority of congress to form one or two states north of the east and west line drawn through the southerly bend of Lake Michigan. This action, what the motive, was an ill-considered one. It aroused and accentuated the opposition to Governor St. Clair, and was the immediate cause of bringing about the very result which he so much deprecated. His enemies charged that the act was induced by him, and had as its sole purpose the indefinite retention of the territorial system, which meant government by an appointed governor with autocratic powers. 220 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The adoption of the act was carried in the legislative house by a vote of I2 affirmative to 8 negative votes. Included in the affirmative were three votes from Detroit-Joncaire, McDougall and Schieffelin.5 The fact that these Detroit votes were all in favor of St. Clair's scheme undoubtedly had considerable bearing upon the subsequent action of congress. They indicated that the sentiment of Wayne county was predominatingly Federalist, and in political sympathy with the governor. The eight negative votes included Massie, Morrow and Worthington, three very prominent, active and influential men in the opposition to St. Clair. A speedy and very unexpected result followed this legislative act. The legislative opponents entered a formal protest on the record, and began to stir up political sentiment against it. A committee was organized, petitions were actively circulated, and Thomas Worthington, later United States senator and governor of Ohio, was sent to Philadelphia where congress was in session, to obtain if possible the authority of congress to establish a state within the eastern boundary fixed by the Ordinance.6 In the meantime, Governor St. Clair had sent the act to Paul Fearing, delegate of the Northwest territory, who presented it to the house of representatives January 20, I802. On the same day Mr. W. B. Giles, a member from Virginia, an extreme anti-Federalist, stated to the house that he had petitions signed by more than I,ooo inhabitants of the territory against the law, whose only purpose was to perpetuate the office of governor and the territorial legislature.7 Worthington had naturally gone for assistance to Giles, as both Worthington and Massie were from Virginia, as were many others of the early settlers of Ohio; and Giles, a thorough-going Democrat, was strongly opposed to the Federalist St. Clair, and was the leader of the house of representatives, in which his party had a large majority. Seven days later, the house considered the matter, and by a nearly unanimous vote-8i to 5-refused the assent of congress to the act, even the Federalists feeling that it could not be defended. Not satisfied with this negative result, and stimulated by the protests and petitions pouring in, the opponents of Governor St. Clair and his friends determined to go further, take advantage of the evident friendly feeling in congress, and have a new state created. March 30, a report by Mr. Giles recommending the establishment of a new state was considered. The framer of this report evidently had in mind the political complexion of the people of Detroit and vicinity, and feared that they, together with the Federalists in Cincinnati and some other sections of the territory, might be sufficient in number to seriously embarrass the Democratic plans. The simple and effective way, therefore, was to leave them out of the new state. The report, accordingly, provided that the north line of the new state should be an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, until it intersected Lake Erie or the territorial line, and made no arrangement whatever for the people north of this proposed line.8 The following clay, the question of the northern boundary came before the house, and Mr. Fearing insisted that if the CREATION OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY 221 proposed north line were adopted, the resulting inconvenience to the section not incorporated in the new state would be very great, especially if this were attached to Indiana territory, as he understood was contemplated. Mr. Bayard of Delaware, a Federalist, and an able orator and statesman, followed by saying that the proposed division was manifestly unjust to the people north of the line. If attached to Indiana territory, they would be obliged to cross the new state and go a considerable distance further to reach their own seat of government. In addition, having reached, as part of the Northwest territory, the second grade of territorial government (with an elective assembly), this act would reduce them to the first grade, in which Indiana stood-government by governor and judges-a form extremely odious. He urged that it would be just and politic to include them in the new state, reserving the right to change the boundary later.9 Mr. Giles supported his report by saying that probably the section north of the line would be attached to Indiana-no great hardship; and that in any event it was not the fault of congress, but of the local situation. Mr. Bayard moved that the boundaries of the new state be made coterminous with those of the Northwest territory; but this was lost by a vote of 38 to I8. April 7, a bill based upon the foregoing report was considered by the house, and Mr. Fearing moved that the bill be so amended that all of the area east of the Indiana line should be included within the new state. This amendment was vigorously debated, it being contended, on one side, that the exclusion of the inhabitants north of the proposed line-about 3,000 in number-from the privileges of statehood, was both unconstitutional and inexpedient; and, on the other, that neither of these objections was well founded.l0 The constitutional objection was based upon the provision of the Ordinance which authorized the division of the Northwest territory into three, four or five states, and it was contended this did not permit the eastern division to be put part into a state and part into a territory. The eccentric John Randolph favored the amendment, chiefly because he wished to avoid the introduction of too many small states into the Union. The amendment was lost, by the small majority of four. The following day the bill was under discussion, and the attempt was again made to have the entire territory included in the new state; but this time the adverse majority increased to seventeen; the next day the bill, passed by a vote of 47 to 29, went to the senate, where after discussion and amendment it passed on April 28 by a majority of io; the amendments being accepted by the house, the bill was signed by the president, and became a law on April 30.11 The act, in its final form, provided that the part of the territory north of the state line should be attached to Indiana territory, subject, however, to the right of congress to make it subsequently a part of the new state by the act created. 222 HISTORIC MICHIGAN By this act all of what is now Michigan became a part of Indiana territory, whose seat of government was at St. Vincennes, on the Wabash-400 miles from Detroit by direct line, and many more by the ordinary route of travel. By the census of i8oo there were 3,2o6 persons in Wayne county and 55i at Mackinac, and all of these, with scarcely an exception, were decidedly opposed in politics to the party which had just carried through this legislation. This, no doubt, explains to a considerable degree, both why they were excluded from the new state, which was expected to strengthen the administration by sending to congress two senators and a representative, and why the matter was not submitted to the popular vote of the whole territory. The law went into effect, the state of Ohio was organized; and it sent to Washington as one of its senators, Thomas Worthington.12 As soon as the law became known, the people of Detroit and vicinity remonstrated against it with much warmth, and claimed the right of becoming a part of the new state and remaining so until their numbers should entitle them to a state government of their own. They claimed the exclusion was unconstitutional and oppressive, and declared they would not submit to it. The argument, however, soon began to be made that the law might, on the whole, result favorably for Detroit, because congress would soon see that it was necessary to establish a territorial government at Detroit; if that were done, there would be numerous offices to be filled, and naturally they would not be filled by critics and opponents of the administration. The energies of the protestants began to be turned toward the creation of an independent government for the people of Detroit and territory adjacent to them. XV MICHIGAN IN THE WAR OF I812 THE BATTLE OF BROWNSTOWN, I8I2 By Levi Bishop Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, VI, 464-466 OR several years at the opening of the present century, the war chief, Tecumseh, had made strenuous efforts to form a grand confederacy of Indian tribes with a view to make war on the United States.' His grounds were, as he alleged, that the Indians had been unjustly treated in transactions for the surrender of Indian lands. It may be true that wrongs had been done to his race, and yet it is believed that in imitation of the great Pontiac, he wished to arrest the advance of white settlers into the Indian country, and even drive them back to their original settlements east of the Alleghenies. Tecumseh had made much progress in forming his hostile confederacy, and ten or twelve tribes, some of which were very powerful, had united with it. The headquarters of the confederacy had been fixed at what was called "The Prophet's Town," which was also called Tippecanoe, on a branch of the Wabash river in Indiana, about seven miles north of what is now the city of Lafayette. In the spring of I8II, Tecumseh took a journey to the lower Mississippi and other parts of the south, in order to induce the southern Indians to join him, but on taking his departure, he strictly enjoined his brother, Lau-be-wasi-kaw, called the Prophet, to avoid all difficulty, and to keep the peace with the United States till he should return. In the forepart of the fall of 1811, Governor Harrison, who was aware of the hostile schemes of Tecumseh, advanced with about 800 regular troops and volunteers to Tippecanoe, where there were about one thousand Indian warriors assembled. The Indians ought not to have risked an engagement without the presence of their great leader, but contrary to the orders of Tecumseh, his brother the Prophet, before daylight on the morning of the 7th of November, 8I 1, directed an attack on General Harrison's army, and in the course of two hours the Indians suffered a total defeat with heavy loss. Had Tecumseh been at the head of his warriors at Tippecanoe, the battle of that name would not in all probability have taken place, or if it had been brought on and fought under his immediate command, the result might have been very different. The great chief soon returned from the south, to learn that all his long-laid plans and his dearest hopes had been blasted by the victory of Harrison. He at once saw that his future hopes, if he could still indulge any, lay not in attempting to form an independent confederacy of Indian tribes, but in joining the British authorities in 224 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Canada; and he accordingly in June, I812, went to Maiden, now called Amherstburg, at the mouth of the Detroit river, and allied himself with the British forces and authorities there. On the i8th of June, 1812, congress declared war against England, and Tecumseh entered at once upon the conflict. He was at Maiden with thirty or forty of his warriors when General Hull crossed over from Detroit to Canada in July, I812. At this time there was an assemblage of Indians at a place called Brownstown, in the territory of Michigan. These Indians were under the lead of a chief by the name of Walkin-the-water, from whom the first steamboat was probably named that ever plowed Lake Erie and the Detroit river in the year I8I8. These Indians were inclined to remain neutral in the approaching war, and they sent to Tecumseh at Malden to come over and attend a council which they were about to hold. Tecumseh indignantly refused the invitation and declared his alliance with the king of England. A few days later, in the forepart of August, General Hull received intelligence that a company of volunteers, under the command of Captain Henry Brush, was at or near the River Raisin, about forty miles southwesterly from Detroit, on their way from Ohio to Detroit with cattle and provisions for the army. Captain Brush informed the General that he needed an escort as he had learned that a party of Indians under Tecumseh had crossed from Maiden and were ready at Brownstown to intercept him on his way. This place, then called Brownstown, was a small hamlet or village, situated on Brownstown creek, so-called, where the creek was crossed by the main road leading from Detroit to Ohio. It was about one mile southwest from the present village of Gibralter, between one and two miles up the creek, about six miles from and nearly opposite Maiden, in Canada, and nearly five miles from Monguagon, and about twelve miles southwest from Detroit. I am thus particular in describing this place for the reason that historical writers are very apt to confound the battle of Brownstown with the battle of Monguagon, when they were entirely distinct engagements. General Hull, after some hesitation, consented that Major Van Home, who was to escort the mail to Ohio, should take about three hundred men with him, join the command of Captain Brush and escort the same from the River Raisin up to Detroit. Major Van Home accordingly started on the 4th of August and reached the River Ecorse about eight or nine miles below Detroit the same evening. The next day Captain McCullough, who belonged to a scouting party, was waylaid and killed by the Indians. Major Van Horne then marched forward and the next day, August 6th, when at or near the before mentioned hamlet of Brownstown, he was assailed by a party of British troops, and a large body of Indians commanded by Tecumseh in person. Neither Major Van Home, or the British officer, or Tecumseh was a man to tolerate any sort of boy's play, and for a short time there was hot and bloody work on both sides. As the Major was outnumbered, and in danger of being surrounded, MICHIGAN IN THE WAR OF 1812 225 he beat a retreat and retired back to the River Ecorse. Thus ended the short but sharp affair called the battle of Brownstown. The American loss was seventeen killed, among whom were five officers, and several wounded. The loss of the enemy is supposed to have been about the same. Tecumseh was a conspicuous leader in the engagement, and while the contest was highly creditable to all concerned, it was no doubt due in a great measure to his skill and valor, that Major Van Home lost the battle. In this affair also, Tecumseh manifested a spirit which evinced a determination to retrieve, if possible, the loss and disappointment he had sustained for his great confederacy in the ill-advised and disastrous battle of Tippecanoe. He was terribly in earnest in his hostile feeling against the United States, as is fully shown in his subsequent conduct at Monguagon, at Detroit, at Fort Meigs, at Sandusky, and at the Thames. Such is an account of the battle of Brownstown and of the two principal actors in it. THE BATTLE OF MONGUAGON By Levi Bishop Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, VI, 466-469 N the month of July, I812, while General Hull was in Canada, a company of volunteers, under Capt. Henry Brush, was sent from Ohio with provisions for the army at Detroit.2 Major Van Horne was sent down the river from Detroit to join and escort Captain Brush and his convey to Detroit. At the village of Brownstown, Major Van Home was met by a detachment of British troops and Indians, and defeated on the 6th of August, 18I2. I will now give an account of the battle of Monguagon, so called. On learning of the defeat of General Van Home at Brownstown, General Hull recrossed to Detroit from Canada, and in order to bring Captain Brush with his party and the provisions under his charge to Detroit, Colonel Miller, under whom were Majors Van Horne and Morrison, was ordered down the river with six hundred regulars. This detachment was directed to join Captain Brush, then at the River Raisin, and escort him to Detroit. Colonel Miller left Detroit and marched down the river with his command on the 8th of August, at that time, and on the site of the present village of Trenton, about fifteen miles below Detroit, and about five miles from Brownstown, was a place that was then called Monguagon. This place must then have been surrounded by an almost unbroken forest. At this place Major Muir of the British army had taken his position with the determination to dispute the advance of Colonel Miller. He had under his command about four hundred regulars and Canadian volunteers, and between two and three hundred Indians under the immediate leadership of Tecumseh. Major Muir had thrown up a breastwork of logs behind which his troops 1.13 226 HISTORIC MICHIGAN were partly protected, and the Indians were ranged on his left in the woods. On the 9th of August, as Colonel Miller was moving steadily forward, his advance guard, under Captain Snelling, sustained an attack from the British line. This opened the battle. The main body under Colonel Miller soon came up to the support of the advance guard, and the action became general. There was no faltering on either side, and there was what military men would call highly respectable fighting on the part of all concerned. The credit of the American and British soldiery was well sustained by Colonel Miller and Major Muir and the bravery of their troops respectively, while the scene was animated by the fiery and fearless spirit of Tecumseh. After the battle had raged for a spell, Colonel Miller ordered his whole line to advance, which order was gallantly obeyed, and when within a short distance of the enemy, the Americans delivered a well directed fire and then charged with the bayonet; the charge was successful. The enemy was dislodged from his line of works and driven from the field. Major Muir and his command hastened to their boats and recrossed to Malden; while the Indians under the lowering disappointment of their great leader, found safety in the forests of the neighborhood. The loss of the Americans was about twenty killed and about sixty wounded. The loss of the enemy was not known, but it must have been severe, and both Major Muir and Tecumseh were among the wounded. The valor of the Indian chief was so conspicuous in this action that he shortly after received a commission of brigadier general in the British army; he also received a red sash from the British commander, but history informs us that he was wholly indifferent to the tinsel and glitter of military uniform and parade. Major Antoine Dequindre, of Detroit, whom I well remember, and who is well remembered by many others now living, is said to have commanded a squadron of cavalry in this engagement; and his bravery and gallantry were conspicuous in charging the enemy and in driving him from the battle ground. Through the politeness of Senator Chandler I have obtained from the War Department at Washington the muster roll of Major Dequindre's company of fifty volunteers in the war of I8I2.3 This appears from the roll to have been a rifle company, so that if he commanded a squadron of cavalry at Monguagon, it must have been a special command for the occasion. The roll shows that three of his company were killed in that battle. The number of wounded is not given; and most of the company was surrendered by General Hull at Detroit one week later, on the i6th of August. In order to render full honor to whom honor is due, I will also state that in the year I841, the legislature of Michigan passed a resolution highly commendatory of the gallantry of Major Dequindre and the Michigan volunteers in the battle of Monguagon. I may also here state that among the officers and men on both sides in this battle were those who, while residing on the opposite sides of the river, had become acquainted and friendly with each other, MICHIGAN IN THE WAR OF 1812 227 but who were now engaged in deadly conflict simply because their two nationalities were at war; and we may therefore almost say"Not hate but glory made these chiefs contend, And each brave foe was in his soul a friend." And as it was before the war so it was after, when the neighbors on this side could again shake hands with their neighbors on the other side of the river in honest friendship. Detroit was surrendered by General Hull to General Brock on the I6th of August, I812, just one week after our victory at Monguagon. This surrender has been severely and no doubt justly censured, and still it is not much to be wondered at. General Hull was then in advanced age, the Indians in large numbers under Tecumseh were hovering about this devoted frontier town, ready to pounce upon it as a long coveted prey. It is not therefore very strange that the superannuated Hull should quail before veteran troops of England under a brave and skillful commander, and before the fearless and revengeful spirit of the renowned chief who was then in the full vigor of manhood. The real mistake may, perhaps, after all, be found to have been in placing such a man in such an exposed and difficult position and in the presence of such enemies. Tecumseh was a remarkable man in many respects. His knowledge of the country around Detroit was perfect, and when General Brock, before crossing the river from Sandwich, asked him in regard to it, he at once took a large piece of bark and placing stones on the four corners drew a map of the vicinity of Detroit, with its rivers, roads, hills, and swamps, as perfect as any that has since been produced. It is said that his hatred towards the whites was such that he would never allow his portrait to be taken. I understand that as a consequence, there is no likeness of him extant; this is to be regretted, and yet a good portrait of him might perhaps now be produced if the proper sketch could be obtained from which to work. It is a subject that is worthy the attention of the best artists; and in order to afford them the best materials extant I will give a description of his personal appearance from a history now in my possession. Tecumseh was nearly six feet in stature, with strong muscular frame, capable of great physical endurance. His head was of moderate size with a forehead full and high; his nose was slightly aquiline, teeth large and regular; his eyes black, penetrating and overhung with heavy brows, which increased the grave and severe expression of his countenance. He is represented by those who knew him to have been a remarkably fine business man, always plain but neat in his dress and of commanding personal appearance. When he spoke to his brethren of the great theme that animated all his actions, his fine countenance lighted up, his firm and erect figure trembled with deep emotion which his own stern dignity could with difficulty repress; every feature and gesture had its meaning, and his language flowed freely and tumultuously from the fountain of his soul. Such we believe to be a full and fair description of this celebrated son of the 228 HISTORIC MICHIGAN forest. We think a good likeness ought to be easily produced from it; we have thought at least the attempt might be made, and that a good likeness of Tecumseh will ere long adorn our galleries of art. Tecumseh and General Harrison were able military commanders, more especially for irregular and frontier warfare. Had the former not been accidentally absent when the battle of Tippecanoe was fought, he might, if he had allowed it to take place, have terminated his career there instead of at the Thames in i813. On the other hand, had the great chief commanded on the Wabash in i8i I, General Harrison might have closed a short but brilliant career at Tippecanoe instead of closing a long and remarkable life in the presidential mansion at Washington. Such in brief was the affair known as the battle of Monguagon.4 It is often spoken of by historians as the battle at or near Brownstown, and the two are often confounded, but they took place three days apart, and they were entirely distinct from each other. At Brownstown we were worsted by the enemy, but at Monguagon good fortune enabled us to write a short but brilliant chapter in American military annals. Since writing the above I have been furnished by the politeness of David E. Harbaugh, Esq., with the following copy of a letter written by the late Major Thomas Rowland of Detfoit, who was himself in the battle of the Thames, giving an account of the death and appearance of the celebrated Indian chief, Tecumseh: Arnoli's Mill, River Thames, October 9, i8I3 Tecumseh is certainly killed. I saw him with my own eyes. It was the first time I ever saw this celebrated chief. There was something so majestic, so dignified, and yet so mild in his countenance as he lay stretched on his back on the ground, where a few minutes before, he rallied his men to the fight, that while gazing on him with admiration and pity, I forgot he was a savage. He had such a countenance as I shall never forget. He had received a wound in the arm and had it bound up before he received the mortal wound. He did not appear to me to be as large a man as represented. I did not suppose his height exceeded five feet ten or twelve inches, but extremely well proportioned. The British say he compelled them to fight. BATTLE AND MASSACRE AT FRENCHTOWN, MICHIGAN, JANUARY, i8I3 By Rev. Thomas P. Dudley, One of the Survivors Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXII, 436-443 T HE following incidents relating to the march of a detachment of Kentucky troops under Colonel Lewis to Frenchtown, on the River Raisin, Michigan, January, I813; the battles of the i8th and 22d; the massacre of the prisoners and the march to Fort George, on the Niagara river, were written by the Rev. Thomas P. Dudley of Lexington, Kentucky, May 26, I870, and indorsed as follows:5 MICHIGAN IN THE WAR OF 1812 229 A. T. GOODMAN, Esq., Secretary Western Reserve Historical Society: DEAR SIR-I take pleasure in forwarding to your society an interesting and reliable narrative, by the Rev. Thomas P. Dudley of this city. Very truly yours, LESLIE COOMBS. Lexington, June I, I870. On the seventeenth day of January, 18I3, a detachment of five hundred and fifty men, under command of Col. William Lewis, with Col. John Allen and Majors Ben. Graves and George Madison, from the left wing of the Northwest army, was ordered to Frenchtown, on the River Raisin, where it was understood a large number of British had collected and were committing depredations on the inhabitants of that village. On the I7th at night the detachment encamped at the mouth of Swan creek, on the Maumee of the lake. On the i8th they took up the line of march, meeting a number of the inhabitants retreating to the American camp, opposite to where Fort Meigs was subsequently built. Our troops inquired whether the British had any artillery, to which the reply was, "They have two pieces about large enough to kill a mouse." They reached the River Raisin about three o'clock in the afternoon, and while crossing the river on the ice the British began firing their swivels, when the American troops were ordered to drop their knapsacks on the ice. Reaching the opposite shore, they raised a yell, some crowing like chicken cocks, some barking like dogs. and others calling, "Fire away with your mouse cannon again." The troops were disposed as follows: The right battalion commanded by Colonel Allen, the center by Major Madison, the left by Major Graves. The latter battalion was ordered to dislodge the enemy from the position occupied by them, "being the same occupied by the American troops in the battle of the twenty-second," during which the right and center were ordered to remain where they were, in the open field, until Major Graves' command should force the enemy to the woods. While Graves was driving the enemy, occasional balls from the woods opposite Colonel Allen's command wounded some of his men. Hence Colonel Allen ordered a partial retreat of 'some forty or fifty yards, so as to place his men out of reach of the Indian guns. Just as this order was accomplished we discovered from the firing that Major Graves had driven the enemy to the woods, when he was ordered to advance the right and center. Up to this time the fighting was done by Major Graves' battalion. So soon as the right and center reached the woods the fighting became general and most obstinate, the enemy resisting every inch of ground as they were compelled to fall back. During three hours the battle raged; the American detachment lost eleven killed and fifty-four wounded. About dusk Major Graves was sent by Colonel Lewis to stop the pursuit of the enemy, and direct the officers commanding the right and center, who had been hotly engaged in the conflict, and had killed many of the enemy, to return to Frenchtown, bearing the killed for interment and the wounded for treatment. Nothing of importance occurred until the morning of the 20th, 230 HISTORIC MICHIGAN when General Winchester,. with a command of two hundred men, under Colonel Wells, reached Frenchtown. Wells' command was ordered to encamp on the right of the detachment, who fought the battle of the i8th, and to fortify. The spies were out continually, and brought word on the 2Ist that the enemy were advancing in considerable force to make battle. On the 2Ist morning Wells asked leave to return to the camp, which he had recently left, for his baggage. General Winchester declined giving leave, informing Wells that we would certainly and very soon be attacked. In the afternoon Wells again applied for leave to return for his baggage. General Winchester again replied, "the spies bring intelligence that the enemy have reached Stony Creek, five miles from here. If you are disposed to leave your command in the immediate vicinity of the enemy, when a battle is certain, you can go." Wells left and went back. On the 22d, just as the reveille was arousing the troops (about daybreak), the first gun was fired. Major Graves had been up some hours, and had gone to the several companies of his battalion, and roused them. Upon the firing of the first gun he immediately left his quarters and ordered his men to stand to their arms. Very many bombs were discharged by the enemy, doing, however, very little execution, most of them bursting in the air, and the fighting became general along the line. the artillery of the enemy being directed mainly to the right of our lines. where Wells' command had no protection but a common rail fence, four or five rails high. Several of the Americans on that part of the line were killed and their fence knocked down by the cannon balls, when General Winchester ordered the right to fall back a few steps and re-form on the bank of the river, where they would have been protected from the enemy's guns. Unfortunately, however, that part of the line commenced retreating, and reaching Hull's old trace along the lane. on either side of which the grass was so high as to conceal the Indians. At this time Colonels Lewis and Allen, with a view of rallying the retreating party, took one hundred men from the stockade and endeavored to arrest their flight. Very many were killed and wounded. and others made prisoners, among the former Colonel Allen, Captains Simpson, Price, Edmondson, Mead, Dr. Irwin, Montgomery, Davis, Mcllvain and Patrick; and of the latter, General Winchester, Colonel Lewis, Major Overton, etc. The firing was still kept up by the enemy on those within the pickets, and returned with deadly effect. The Indians. after the retreat of the right wing, got around in the rear of the picketing, under the bank and on the same side of the river, where the battle was raging, and killed and wounded several of our men. It is believed that the entire number of killed and wounded within the pickets did not exceed one dozen; and the writer doubts very much whether, if the reinforcements had not come, those who fought the first battle, although their number had been depleted by sixty-five, would not have held their ground, at least until reinforcements could have come to their relief. Indeed it was very evident the British very much feared a reinforcement, from their hurry in removing the pris MICHIGAN IN THE WAR OF 1812 231 oners they had taken, from the south to the west of the battle ground, and in the direction of Fort Maiden, from which they sent a flag, accompanied by Dr. Overton, aid to General Winchester, demanding the surrender of the detachment, informing they had Generals Winchester and Lewis; and in the event of refusal to surrender, would not restrain their Indians. Major Graves being wounded, Major Madison was now left in command, who, when the summons to surrender came, repaired to the room in which Major Graves and several other wounded officers were, to consult with them as to the propriety of surrendering. It is proper here to state that our ammunition was nearly exhausted. It was finally determined to surrender, requiring of the enemy a solemn pledge for the security of the wounded. If this was not unhesitatingly given, determined to fight it out. But, oh the scene which now took place! The mortification at the thought of surrendering the Spartan band who had fought like heroes, the tears shed, the wringing of hands, the swelling of hearts-indeed the scene beggars description! Life seemed valueless. Our Madison replied to the summons, in substance, "We will not surrender without a guarantee for the safety of the wounded, and the return of side arms to the officers." (We did not intend to be dishonored.) The British officer haughtily responded: "Do you, sir, claim the right to dictate what terms I am to offer?" Major Madison replied, "No, but I intend to be understood as regards the only terms on which we will agree to surrender." Capt. William Elliott, who had charge of the Indians, it was agreed should be left with some men, whom it was said would afford ample protection until carryalls could be brought from Maiden to transport the prisoners there; but the sequel proved they were a faithless, cowardly set. The British were in quite a hurry, as were their Indian allies, to leave after the surrender. Pretty soon Captain Elliott came into the room where Major Graves. Captain Hickman, Captain Hart, and the writer of this (all wounded) were quartered. He recognized Captain Hart, with whom he had been a room-mate at Hart's father's in Lexington, Kentucky. Hart introduced him to the other officers, and after a short conversation in which he (Elliott) seemed quite restless and a good deal agitated (he, I apprehend, could have readily told why, as he could not have forgotten the humiliation he had contracted in deceiving Hart's family, pecuniarily). He proposed borrowing a horse, saddle and bridle for the purpose of going immediately to Maiden and hurrying on sleighs to remove the wounded, thence assuring Captain Hart especially of the hospitality of his house, and begging us not to feel uneasy; that we were in no danger; that he would leave three interpreters, who would be an ample protection to us. He obtained Major Graves' horse, saddle and bridle, and left, which was the last we saw of Captain Elliott. We shall presently see how Elliott's pledges were fulfilled. On the next morning, the morning of the massacre, between daybreak and sunrise, the Indians were seen approaching the houses 232 HISTORIC MICHIGAN sheltering the wounded. The house in which Major Graves, Captains Hart and Hickman and the writer were, had been occupied as a tavern. The Indians went into the cellar and rolled out many barrels, forced in their heads and began drinking and yelling. Pretty soon they came crowding into the room where we were, and in which there was a bureau, two beds, a chair or two and perhaps a small table. They forced the drawers of the bureau which were filled with towels, tablecloths, shirts, pillow slips, etc. About this time Major Graves and Captain Hart left the room. The Indians took the bed clothing, ripped open the bed tick, threw out the feathers; and apportioned the ticks to themselves. They took the overcoat, close bodied coat, hat and shoes from the writer. When they turned to leave the room, just as he turned the Indians tomahawked Captain Hickman in less than six feet from me. I went out onto a porch, next the street, when I heard voices in a room at a short distance. Went into the room where Captain Hart was engaged in conversation with the interpreter. He asked, "what do the Indians intend to do with us." The reply was, "they intend to kill you." Hart rejoined, "ask liberty of them for me to make a speech to them before they kill us." The interpreters replied, "they can't understand." "But," said Hart, "you can interpret for me." The interpreters replied, "If we undertook to interpret for you, they will as soon kill us as you." It was said, and I suppose truly, that Captain Hart subsequently contracted with an Indian warrior to take him to Amherstburg, giving him $600. The brave placed him on a horse and started. After going a short distance they met another company of Indians, when the one having charge of Hart spoke of his receiving the $600 to take Hart to Malden. The other Indians insisted on sharing the money, which was refused, when some altercation took place, resulting in the shooting of Hart off the horse by the Indian who received the money. A few minutes after leaving the room, where I had met Hart and the interpreters, and while standing in the snow eighteen inches deep, the Indians brought Captain Hickman out on the porch, stripped of clothing except a flannel shirt, and tossed him out on the snow within a few feet of me, after which he breathed once or twice and expired. While still standing in the yard, without coat, hat or shoes, Major Graves approached me in charge of an Indian and asked if I had been taken. I answered no. He proposed that I should go along with the Indian who had taken him. I replied "no, if you are safe I am satisfied." He passed on and I never saw him afterward. While standing in the snow two or three Indians approached me at different times, and I made signs that the ball I received was still in my shoulder. They shook their heads, leaving the impression that they designed a more horrid death for me. I felt that it would be a mercy to me if they would shoot me down at once, and put me out of my misery. About this time I placed my hand under my vest, and over the severe wound T had received, induced thereto by the cold, which increased my suffering. Another young warrior passed on and made signs that the ball had hardly struck and passed on, to which I nodded assent. He immediately took off a blanket capot (having two) and tied the sleeves MICHIGAN IN IN THE WAR OF 1812 233 around my shoulders and gave me a large red apple. The work of death on the prisoners being well nigh done and the houses fired, he started with me toward Detroit. After going a short distance he discovered my feet were suffering, being without shoes, and he having on two pairs of moccasins, pulled off the outer pair, and put them on my feet. Having reached Stony creek, five miles from the battle ground, where the British and Indians camped the night before the battle of the 22d of January, their camp fires were still burning, and many had stopped with their prisoners to warm. In a short time I discovered some commotion among them. An Indian tomahawked Ebenezer Blythe, of Lexington. Immediately the Indian who had taken me resumed his march, and soon overtook his father, whom I understood to be an old chief. They stopped by the roadside and directed me to a seat on a log and proceeded to Fpaint me. We reached Brownstown about sundown in the evening, when having a small ear of corn we placed it in the fire for a short time, and then made our supper on it. A blanket was spread on bark in front of the fire and T pointed to lie down. My captor finding my neck and shoulder so stiff that I could not get my head back, immediately took some of his plunder and placed under my head and covered me with a blanket. Many Indians, with several prisoners, came into the council house afterward, and they employed themselves dressing, in hoops, the scalps of our troops. There was the severest thunderstorm that night witnessed at that time of the year. The water ran under the blanket, and the ground being lower in the center around the fire, I awoke some time before day and found myself lying in the water, possibly two inches deep, got up and dried myself as well as I could. About daybreak they resumed their march toward Detroit, stopping on the way and painting me again. We reached Detroit about three o'clock in the afternoon, and as we passed along the street a number of women approached us and entreated the Indians not to kill me. Passing on we met two British officers on horse back, and stopped and chatted with the Indians, exulting with them in the victory, to.whom the women appealed in my behalf, but they paid no more regard to me than if I had been a dog. I passed the night with the Tndians at the house of a white woman in the city, who the next morning asked liberty to give me a cup of tea, with a loaf of bread and butter. In the afternoon the Indians paraded with their prisoners and the trophies, scalps, and marched to the fort. After remaining some time in the guard house where all the prisoners were surrendered but myself, my captors arose to leave with me. When we reached the door the guard stopped me, which seemed to excite the Indians considerably. Major Muir, commanding the fort, was immediately called for, and entered into a treaty for my release. It was said he gave as a ransom for me an old broken down pack horse and a kecg of whisky. My Indian captor took affectionate leave of me with a promise to see me again. Let me here say my Indian cantor exhibited more the principle of the man and the soldier than all the British T had been brought in contact with up to the time I met Major Muir. The next day the British officers, Hale and Watson, invited me to 234 HISTORIC MICHIGAN mess with them so long as I remained in the fort. Three or four days afterward, and the day before our officers, Winchester, Madison and Lewis, were to leave for the Niagara river, one of these officers accompanied me across the Detroit river to Sandwich. When passing to the hotel where they were, when I became opposite the dining room door, I saw Major Madison sitting down to supper. The temptation was so strong I entered the door, to the astonishment of the Major and other officers, who supposed I had been murdered with many other prisoners. I am constrained to acknowledge the great mercy of God in my preservation thus far. On the following morning, when arrangements were being made for transportation of officers to Fort George, but none for me, my heart felt like sinking within me at the thought of being left to the care of those I had no confidence whatever in. Providentially a Canadian lieutenant was listening and so soon as all, both British and American officers left the room, nobly came to me and said, "I have a good span of horses and a good carryall. You are welcome to a seat with me." I joyfully accepted his offer, and I hereby acknowledge that I met in his person a whole souled man and a soldier, through whose kindness, mainly, I reached Niagara river. When I was once more permitted to look on the much loved flag of my country, and paroled and put across the Niagara river on American soil, then, with all my suffering I felt that I could once more breathe freely. I have again to acknowledge the goodness of God in providing for reaching my home and friends, after traveling more than one thousand miles badly wounded, a half ounce ball buried in my shoulder. But I lived to be fully avenged upon the enemies of my country in the battle of the 8th of January, 1815, below New Orleans. I have omitted many minor incidents that were in this communication the writing of which has given great pain in my wounded shoulder.6 XVI MICHIGAN TERRITORY, I805-1837 GENERAL INFLUENCES IN THE SETTLEMENT OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY From Fuller's Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan, Michigan Historical Commission Publications, University Series, I, 49-94 ONE of the most important influences in the settlement of Michigan territory was the war of I812. Its effects were both good and ill; temporarily it was a serious drawback. Fear of the Indians practically depopulated the territory during the war, and the settlers returning found their homes in ruins.l The scarcity of money was a serious embarrassment both to business and to intending settlers; the general stagnation of business is said to have resembled that which followed the crisis of I837,2 The Detroit Gazette of August 9, 1822, contains a typical example of the many complaints against the continued scarcity of money and the low price of grain. On the other hand, one good effect of the war was to attract attention to Michigan through the prominent part taken by Detroit. It made evident the military need of better roads,3 and led directly to the first improvements connecting Detroit with the Ohio valley. Again, many soldiers from Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia who had fought on the Michigan frontier remained in the territory as settlers and wrote to friends in the East about the opportunities afforded;4 one of these was Lewis Cass, who as governor of Michigan territory from 1813 to 183I, used his great energies to promote its settlement.5 An indirect result of the war of I812 was the unfavorable report, widely circulated, about Michigan lands. Ir 1815 Edward Tiffin, surveyor general for the Northwest, reported to the national government that there "would not be more than one acre out of a hundred, if there would be one out of a thousand that would, in any case, admit of cultivation;" for, he said, "the intermediate space between the swamps and lakes, which is probably nearly one-half of the country, is, with a very few exceptions, a poor, barren, sandy land, on which scarcely any vegetation grows, except very small scrubby oaks.6 The purpose of the survey upon which this report was based was to promote the early disposition of the Michigan bounty lands authorized by congress for compensation to the soldiers of the war.7 The surveyors may have been influenced, at least indirectly, by the unfavorable report made by Monroe to Jefferson prior to the organization of the Northwest territory, who after reconnoitering in parts of the Northwest wrote: "A great part of the territory is miserably poor, especially that near the lakes Michigan and Erie. * * * The districts, therefore, within which these fall will never contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them to membership in the confederacy."8 As a result of the Tiffin report President Madison recommended to 236 HISTORIC MICHIGAN congress, that since the lands in Michigan were covered with swamps and lakes or were otherwise so unfit for cultivation that only a small proportion could be applied to the intended grants, other lands should be designated to take the place of Michigan's proportion of the military bounty lands;9 accordingly three-fourths of that amount were ordered to be surveyed in the rival state of Illinois.l0 The government's disfavor towards Michigan lands doubtless became widely known, as the newspapers of the day emphasized the doings of congress, and many eastern people were then specially anxious to know about the West. School geographies contained maps with the words "Interminable Swamp" across the interior of Michigan." Morse's Geography, which was considered an authority and was widely used, featured this idea until a late period.12 Morse's Traveler's Guide represented sand hills "extending into the interior as far as the dividing ridge * * * sometimes crowned with a few stunted trees, and a scanty vegetation, but generally bare, and thrown by the wind into a thousand fantastic shapes."13 The immediate effects upon settlement were of course unfavorable. The traveler, William Darby, writing from Detroit in August, I88, says that during more than a month in which he had been traveling between Geneva (New York) and Detroit, he had seen hundreds going west, but "not one in fifty with the intention of settling in Michigan territory."" For the time being the tide of immigration turned aside from Michigan with its "interminable swamp" and "sand hills" and favored Ohio, Indiana, and Illinbis. One of the earliest and strongest influences to counteract these reports was the Lewis Cass expedition of I820. Cass warmly criticised the Tiffin report, writing to the government that the lands of Michigan had been "grossly misrepresented."'5 Upon his motion new surveys were begun in the vicinity of Detroit in I816 and public sales were opened for the surveyed portion in I818. In the same year an exploring party apparently under his auspices dispelled illusions about the country back to Detroit.16 In I819 national aid was secured for an extended examination of the soil, minerals, and Indian conditions over a route of some five thousand miles through the interior, accomplished in 1820.17 The result gave to men vitally connected with the government of the territory and influential with the national government a firsthand knowledge of the region where the Tiffin surveyors were supposed to have worked, and impressed upon them more firmly a lesson of the war of 1812, the need of a national military road between Detroit and Chicago. Since the expedition was made partly under national auspices, its report had a semi-official character; the interest which it excited is indicated by the sale within thirty days of the entire edition of Schoolcraft's Summary Narrative published in i82I at Albany, which is said to have found its way to Europe.18 Accounts of travel through Michigan preceding Cass's expedition were on the whole too general to have much influence with settlers, yet there were some exceptions. Estwick Evans wrote in his Pedestrious Tour in 1818: "In traveling more than four thousand miles, in the western parts of the United States, I met no tract of MICHIGAN TERRITORY 237 country which, upon the whole, impressed my mind so favorably as the Michigan territory. * * The soil of the territory is generally fertile, and a considerable proportion of it is very rich."'9 Of "Travels" before 1837 the most important for the correction of false impressions about Michigan were those of McKenney, Hoffman, and Martineau. Some of the early guidebooks for travelers and settlers were very favorable to Michigan. An important one of these was by Samuel R. Brown, published at Auburn, New York, in 1817; in 1820 there appeared in London an anonymous Guide for English Emigrants to America obviously based upon it.20 Newspaper articles favorable to Michigan early found their way through the eastern press. For example, the New York Spectator is quoted in the Detroit Gazette of March 2I, 1823, as saying in regard to the belief that Michigan offered favorable opportunities to emigrants: "Perhaps no stronger argument can be urged in support of this belief than merely to state the fact that a barrel of potashes, flour, or other produce can be transported from Detroit to Buffalo with as little expense through Lake Erie as a like quantity can be transported by land in the western part of this state to the canal from places which lie twenty-five or thirty miles from the canal route.21 The motive which actuated at least some New York papers is seen in the following quotation from the Buffalo Journal (1825): When it is considered that all the fruits of that vast region are to reach the sea coast by Lake Erie and the New York canal (the junction of whose waters is formed in our village) and that the corresponding return of goods are to reach their destination by the same route, we may naturally be supposed to look with some degree of rapture on the present growth and increasing population of Michigan."22 By about I825 the effects of the Tiffin report in the East had begun to wane. That year is marked by the appearance of John Farmer's maps and gazetteers of Michigan, published at Detroit, which it is said had by 1830 reached a demand in the local markets of Boston, Providence, Hartford, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Erie, that could hardly be supplied.23 Many copies of the Detroit Gazette, founded at Detroit in 1817, had found their way to the East.24 Other counter-influences were letters from successful pioneers, published in eastern papers, reports made by settlers revisiting their old homes in the East, the circulars of land speculators, and not least the later reports of the United States surveyors and their personal interest in promoting settlement. New editions of Morse's Geography were favorable to Michigan.25 There is evidence in shipments of flour from Michigan to the East as early as I833, and in the increase of population shown by the censuses of 1830, 1834 and 1837, that by the date of Michigan's admission to the Union the popular opinion about her lands had been fairly reversed. Along with the unfavorable reports about lands had gone ill-tidings of the continued Indian depredations. The massacres at the River Raisin and at Fort Dearborn had impressed especially the minds of women and children, and in 1832 the Black Hawk war caused rumors 238 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of a possible invasion of Michigan and of a rising of the Indians.26 It would be true to human nature to suppose that these fears and desires would often cause the head of a family to hesitate about emigrating to Michigan; but in reality the spirit of the Michigan Indians was cowed by the American success in the recent war, and their ferocity had largely burned out. The Detroit Gazette attempted to allay fears by setting forth the groundlessness of the prevalent anticipations of renewed Indian hostilities.27 The relation of the national government with the Michigan Indians was complicated by several things: by their dissatisfaction with the treaty of I807, by their recent alliance with the British against the Americans, and by the belief of the Indians in the power and generosity of the British because of the continued distribution of large quantities of presents among them;28 in 1829 sixty tons of presents were distributed in which the Michigan Indians shared.29 This policy appears to have been followed as late as I839, in attempts to defeat the American treaties with the Indians.30 The situation required a government agent of great patience and tact who thoroughly understood the Indian character and who should have a genuine sympathetic interest. Lewis Cass possessed these qualifications in a marked degree, and in his capacity as Indian agent he rendered exceptional services to the settlement of Michigan, negotiating a score of treaties.3' The Indian title to the lower peninsula was with slight exceptions extinguished by four treaties, those of 1807, I819, 1821 and i836. The so-called treaty of Detroit (I807) ceded southeastern Michigan, west as far as the principal meridian and north as far as a line running from a point on the western boundary of the present Shiawassee county northeasterly to White Rock on Lake Huron.32 In I819 the treaty of Saginaw ceded a large part of central Michigan including the remainder of the Saginaw region and extending as far north as the headwaters of the Thunder Bay river.33 Practically all the land still remaining south of Grand river was ceded by the treaty of Chicago in I82I,34 and nearly all remaining north of it by the treaty of Washington in I836.85 In these treaties numerous small pieces of land were reserved to the Indian tribes and some grants were made to individuals of Indian descent.36 The reservations were ceded as settlement pressed upon them, and the tribal Indians were removed to western reservations about I840.87 The most serious check upon settlement due to the Indians since the war of I812 came from an uprising of the Sacs and Foxes under Black Hawk in 1832.38 The Indians had just passed over the Chicago trail homeward bound from Malden, where they had received their annual presents from the British, among other things arms and ammunition. The circumstances suggested to Michigan settlers that as a natural maneuver the Indians would retreat along the Chicago road into Canada for a safer base of operations, in which case there might be expected depredations along the road, and possibly an uprising of the Potawatomi. Memories of Indian horrors spread panic, especially among the women and children. Travel on the road fell off rapidly MICHIGAN TERRITORY 239 and intending settlers turned to Ohio.39 A letter from a militia leader written in 1832 from White Pigeon in St. Joseph county, says: "The injury done to this part of the territory by the exaggerated reports of danger from the hostile bands of Indians will not be cured for two years to come, and the unnecessary movements of our militia are calculated to spread far and near this alarm." Michigan militia were mustered at Niles but they did not leave Michigan; Black Hawk was defeated and captured by the United States troops before he reached Chicago, when the resistance of his followers collapsed.40 But the results of this outbreak for the settlement of Michigan were not wholly bad. Accounts of the "war" in newspapers, pamphlets, and books called attention to the country occupied by the Sac and Fox Indians westward from Michigan, and the summary way in which the national government demonstrated its control of the Indians gave to intending settlers renewed assurance-especially to foreigners, whose imaginations had exaggerated the danger from the Indians." The influence of the Black Hawk war is not easy to separate from that of the cholera epidemic of the same year. It was probably the cholera as much as fear of the Indians that checked travel on the Chicago road.42 A large part of the troops under Scott which were sent against Black Hawk died of cholera in and about Detroit; others, panic stricken, deserted; it is estimated that half of the entire force died.43 The ravages elsewhere in Michigan seem to have been equally severe. Many settlements established armed guards, allowing no one to pass in or out; fences were built across the roads from Detroit and travelers were halted at the point of the gun.44 A very important task of the national government in the interests of settlement, for which the extinction of Indian titles and the military protection of the frontier were preliminary, was the survey and sale of lands. Cass had accompanied his criticism of the Tiffin survey with urgent advice to the government for an immediate surveying of lands in the vicinity of Detroit and the establishing of a land office as soon as the surveys should advance far enough. A petition, circulated at his instance and signed by prominent men in the territory in i8iS, secured the government's attention, and public sales were opened in that year.45 By i8i8 two years of work on the new surveys had made practically all the land in the present eastern shore counties ready for the market;46 by 1821 more than two and a quarter millions of acres had been surveyed; and a decade later the survey was completed for about ten million acres of the seventeen and a half million that had been ceded to the government.47 As the surveys advanced and more land was ready for the market, new land offices were established; at Monroe in i823, at White Pigeon in i83i, at Kalamazoo in i834, and at Flint and Ionia in I836. The first represents a movement of population into the country of the Raisin river valley, the second out along the Chicago road, the third along the Territorial road, the fourth into the Saginaw valley, the fifth into the Grand river region.48 The opening of the land office at Kalamazoo in i834 marks the beginning of a new period in the settlement of western Michigan." 240 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The laws regulating the sales of land in Michigan before 1820 were not conducive to the best interests of settlement. The claims of the squatter were not only not recognized, but his land and improvements were legally liable to forfeiture.50 The settler of small means was at a decided disadvantage, since the lands were sold only in comparatively large parcels and at auction to the highest bidder. The fact that land could be bought on credit encouraged speculation, and the best land would tend to go into the hands of a few men of large actual or prospective means. The family man of small means with intention to settle was not likely to speculate even on credit, since his death or the deferment of payments for other reasons would forfeit both lands and improvements. He was more likely to wait his chance at the expiration of the given term of sale when the unsold lands would be put on the market at two dollars an acre, fifty cents at the time of entry and the balance in one, two and three years, with interest.51 In order to avoid the cost and difficulties of collecting arrears, to check speculation, to open the best land on equal terms to all, to avoid the poor man's having to forfeit lands for deferred payments and to enable him to buy in small parcels, the credit system was by act of congress (182o) to be discontinued;52 all lands were to be sold at $1.25 the acre, and in parcels as small as eighty acres. It still remained to give legal protection to the squatter. The squatter was the extreme advance guard of settlement whose services often took the keen edge from the hardships of later comers accustomed to the settled life of an old community. In a rude way, by a custom that had the effect of law, the squatters instituted a degree of self-protection. A settler who would disregard the right of a squatter to purchase his claim when it came on the market would soon find it unpleasant to stay in the community.53 But the speculator was not easily made amendable to this custom and often took advantage of his immunity to beat the squatter out of a home. Congressional attention to this abuse began effectively with the pre-emption act of I830.54 It would be expected, under the influence of the Erie canal, the acceleration of steam navigation on Lake Erie, and the survey of the Chicago road, that sales would rapidly increase from 1825 to I830. What took place was quite the opposite;55 the sales at the Detroit land office may be taken as typical. In 1820 there were sold at that office 2,860 acres; sales ran rapidly up from 7,444 acres in 1821 to 20,068 in I822; the increase continued until in 1825 they reached 92,332 acres. From this point there was a steady falling off until I830, when 70,44I acres were sold. But with a sudden impulse sales mounted in the following year to 217,943 acres. Then, probably under the influence of the Black Hawk war an dthe epidemics of cholera in 1832 and 1834, there was a gradual decline. But again, in I835 sales suddenly leaped to 405,33i acres, and in I836 to nearly one and a half million acres.56 In the year 1835-36 Michigan shared in a phenomenon of increased land sales that was national in extent. The largest total of sales was made in Michigan.57 This seems plausibly explained by the comparatively small amount of land remaining unsold in the older areas, MICHIGAN TERRITORY 241 and by the comparatively slight knowledge of lands farther west; also by the stage of Michigan's settlement, her lands being accessible with comparative ease and well enough known to be properly valued."8 There was undoubtedly a large element of speculation in these purchases even before 1835. According to an apparently authoritative account, speculation had reached only "a gentle breeze" in 1834, but increased "to a gale in 1835, to a storm in 1836, to a change of wind and an adverse tornado in I837."59 A serious financial crisis as a result of Jackson's financial policy appears to have been anticipated in Michigan as early as I833. "We regret to find," says the editor of the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, November 27, "that a general feeling of apprehension is felt and expressed by the city papers, of serious embarrassment in the money market." Other editorial protests and prophecies followed.60 But money, in bank notes,61 became as plentiful as "strawberries in June"62 and everybody continued to seem prosperous. Banks were chartered at all the principal centers of settlement and increased in number rapidly after the general banking law of I837.63 Under this law, which among other things provided "that whenever any person or persons, resident of this state, shall be desirous of establishing a bank, such person or persons shall be at liberty to meet without interruption, open books and subscribe to the capital stock of such bank," much unscrupulous swindling appears to have taken place. Many banks whose promoters had little or no intention of redeeming their notes were set up at points difficult to reach or to find; capital was often not paid in; notes were issued in gross excess; security was frequently poor, or not furnished; and the bank inspectors were imposed upon by all sorts of trickery.64 The crisis was precipitated in the East by the issue of Jackson's specie circular o'n July II, I836, and the effect was not long in reaching Michigan. The Detroit Daily Advertiser of October I5 observes that "the banks of Detroit do not discount the best paper which is offered. This has been the case for several months past." Public officers were authorized by the circular to receive only coin; bank notes therefore would not buy government land. But the real crisis came when Michigan banks in 1837 began to suspend specie payments65 and rapidly to fail. Bank notes became so valueless that in grim humor some investors who but a little while before were supposedly rich used them for wall paper.66 Land became a drug on the market and panic prices prevailed.67 The laboring and farming classes appear to have been the heaviest losers, not having the means to keep abreast of news regarding the condition of the banks.68 But the crisis was not an unmixed evil for settlement. The immense speculations and immigration of the period, stimulated by easy money, had brought great numbers of settlers before the crash came who still remained to aid the new state to recover from disaster, and to help build a prosperous commonwealth. Even more striking than land sales as illustrating the rate of settlement in Michigan are the very rapid changes that were made in the means of transportation, both from the East to Michigan and from the lake shores to the interior. A period within a dozen years witnessed 1-14 242 HISTORIC MICHIGAN a transformation from the birchbark canoe to steam navigation on the Great Lakes, and from the Indian trail to the railroad.69 While such changes were partly a cause of settlement they were largely the result of the demands of settlement, actual as well as prospective.70 The navigation of the Great Lakes by steam marked a new era in the settlement of Michigan. Significant was it that the first steamboat from Buffalo arrived at Detroit in I818, in the year of opening public land sales there. According to the Detroit Gazette for June 2 and 23, 1820, the usual time from Buffalo to Detroit was two and a half days and the fare fifteen dollars; the fare from Detroit to Mackinac was twenty dollars. The trip could be made from Boston to Detroit in fifteen days. The Gazette of May 8, I818, states the cost of transporting goods from Albany to Detroit as four dollars and a half per hundred weight. In I825-26 there came a sudden impulse apparently due to the opening of the Erie canal, when the number of steamers on Lake Erie increased from one to six.71 In I836 ninety steamers are said to have arrived at Detroit in May bearing settlers to Michigan and the West.72 The growth of steamboat travel may be measured by the number of passengers. The first trip of Walk-in-the-Water in I8i8 brought to Detroit twenty-nine passengers; the Superior, which took her place after she was wrecked in 1821, brought ninety-four passengers in 1822;78 in 1830 from April I to May I2 twenty-four hundred intending settlers were landed at Detroit;74 in the following year in one week in May steamboat arrivals numbered about two thousand.5 In 1834, in one day, October 7, there arrived at the same port nine hundred passengers.76 The growing importance of the region of the Great Lakes is reflected in tourist's guidebooks. It was about i830 apparently when the trip on the Great Lakes began to be considered worth while by tourists, but not until about 1837 do we find it very heartily recommended.77 Lake navigation was considerably hampered by the necessity of closing down for some four or five months in the winter.78 Usually boats began to arrive at Detroit from Buffalo the last of April or the first of May,79 and continued to arrive until late in November. The settlement of the western part of Michigan was much aided by the comparative ease of transportation afforded by lakes Huron and Michigan especially for household goods and heavy merchandise. Goods were landed at the river mouths and thence transported in canoes, pole boats, or small steamers up the rivers. Walk-in-the-Water in I819 took freight and passengers to Mackinac,80 a trip widely anticipated with much curiosity; the Gazette of May 14, 18I9, quotes from a New York paper: "The swift steamboat Walk-in-the-Water is intended to make a voyage, early in the summer, from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to Michilimackinac on Lake Huron, for the conveyance of company. The trip has so near a resemblance to the famous Argonautic expedition in the heroic ages of Greece, that expectation is quite alive on the subject. Many of our most distinguished citizens are said to have already engaged their passage for this splendid adventure." MICHIGAN TERRITORY 243 There was subsequently a considerable commerce by steam on the upper lakes.81 According to an editorial in the Detroit Journal and Courier of July I, I835, "a trip on the upper lakes at this season has become quite fashionable. The establishment of a regular line of first rate steam boats between Buffalo and Chicago affords a fine opportunity for travelers to visit the rich scenery so beautifully described by Cass, Schoolcraft and others."82 The opening of the Erie canal, completing an all-water route between Michigan and the Atlantic ocean, gave to lake navigation and to western settlement a new impulse. This canal was begun about the time that Walk-in-the-Water arrived at Detroit and opened to traffic seven years later.83 It is very probable that settlement was largely stimulated by anticipation of what this would mean.84 The significance of it for the settlement of Michigan was that it changed the direction of western emigration from the Ohio valley to the line of the canal and the Great Lakes.85 Michigan would therefore profit directly from the interception of many settlers who had originally planned to go farther west. Especially would this interception be favored by the national survey of the Chicago road about the same time. Transportation on the canal was comparatively cheap86 and great numbers of New England and New York pioneers who came to Michigan after 1825 speak of having used the canal boat to Buffalo. The favorite route overland from the East to Lake Erie was by way of the Mohawk and Genesee turnpike,87 from the terminus of which the traveler might take his choice of routes along either the northern or southern shores of Lake Erie. In both cases he would have to cross the many streams flowing into the lake from either side, and would be aided little by bridges.88 Swamps, if not numerous, were not scarce. Little improvement seems to have been made in the Canadian route since Sir William Johnson required in 176i thirty-nine full days to move a small body of troops in the most favorable season from Niagara to Detroit.89 General Hull, approaching from the other direction in 18I2, moved his troops but an average of four miles a day from the rapids of the Miami to Detroit.90 In the improvement of Michigan rivers and in attempts to build canals not very much was done before I837, but in the years immediately following, a very great number of such improvements were undertaken by the territorial and state governments of Michigan. That such elaborate attention should be given to canal and river navigation can be understood best in the light of the success of the Erie canal and of the difficulties attending land transportation before the days of the railroad.91 The first improvements of roads in Michigan were made by the national government for military purposes. The earliest of these naturally were made where the greatest need was felt. The war of 18I2 had taught the strategic importance of connecting Detroit with the Ohio valley; the first road established therefore, in i8i8, extended from Detroit through Monroe to the rapids of the Miami. The first line of stages began to run over this road shortly after the Erie canal was 244 HISTORIC MICHIGAN opened.92 By 1830 there was a continuous road, though of very primitive character, along the entire water front south of Lake Huron.93 The earliest road inland was that built over the Saginaw trail to connect Detroit with a point favorable for a military post among the Indians near the head of Saginaw bay. A road over this route was contemplated by Cass as early as I8I5.94 A stage line seems to have begun regular trips over it from Pontiac to Detroit in I826.95 The most important of the inland routes in this period was the Chicago road, which grew out of the military need of connecting the forts at Detroit and Chicago. This road in its service to settlement was practically an extension of the Erie canal and was to become a great axis of settlement in southern Michigan.96 The route chosen was marked out by the old trail which the Indians had beaten hard in their annual visits from the west to receive British presents at Malden.97 The road ran from Detroit in almost a direct line to Ypsilanti, and entering Lenawee and bending there due west, passed through Hillsdale and Branch in a southwestertnly direction to St. Joseph county, threaded the southern part of St. Joseph and Cass and left the territory through the southwestern corner of Berrien.98 The stage companies improved the roads enough to get their coaches through but it was not until after the Black Hawk war that serious work was done on it by the government as far west as Cass county.99 Harriet Martineau says of the road between Detroit and Ypsilanti in I836: "Juggernaut's car would have been 'broke to bits' on such a road"; beyond Jonesville in Hillsdale county it was "more deplorable than ever;"1oo occasionally all had to dismount and walk, and then "such hopping and jumping; such slipping and sliding; such looks of despair from the middle of a pond; such shifting of logs, and carrying of planks, and handing along the fallen trunks of trees." A writer in the Detroit Daily Advertiser of December 24, 1836, says of the Detroit end of the road: "The road from this to Ypsilanti looks at certain times as if it had been the route of a retreating army, so great is the number of wrecks of different kinds which it exhibits." The territorial government authorized several roads in this period, the most important of which was the "Territorial road," a name apparently given to distinguish it from the National turnpike. This was also early known as the St. Joseph's road, from the Indian trial through the Kalamazoo valley whose line it followed approximately.11 It was authorized in I829.102 Its supposed importance for settlement is indicated in a report made to Governor Cass by the commissioners who laid out its course in 1830: "To show that this must be the most important road in the territory, it is only necessary to state its course is direct from Detroit to the mouth of the St. Joseph, and the distance thirty miles less than by the Chicago road-that it passes near the center of the peninsula, through a rich tract of country, and no less than seven county centers, while the Chicago road takes a more circuitous route near the Indiana line, studiously avoiding county centers."108 A stage line appears to have been established in 1834 to connect with steamboats about to begin running from St. Joseph to MICHIGAN TERRITORY 245 Chicago; it was proposed to make the entire distance from Detroit to Chicago in five days.T04 The condition of the road at the close of this period apparently was not as good as that of the Chicago road, and apparently not as much traveled. Harriet Martineau, who passed along the Chicago road in going west from Detroit in June, 1836, intended to take the "upper road" returning, but received news at Chicago that it had been made impassable by the rains; she returned by the lakes, the rest of the party by the Chicago road.'05 The agitation in Michigan for railroads began surprisingly early and a number were chartered by the territorial government, a significant comment on the rate of settlement and the enterprise of the settlers. Stephenson's Rocket was still in the experimental stage in England,l10 and only a few miles of railroad had been built in the most enterprising sections of the eastern states. Articles on these railroads began to appear in the Detroit papers in 1830 and charters were from that time sought from the territorial government, in some instances doubtless by speculators for the purpose of encouraging the sale of lands along a proposed route, or at a proposed terminal. The charter of I830 to the Pontiac and Detroit Railway company is the oldest in the Northwest Territory.107 "We advise those capitalists," says the Detroit Courier of August 7, 1833, "who have been so grievously disappointed in consequence of not obtaining stock in the Utica and Schenectady railroad to bring hither their funds and forthwith take preliminary steps to invest the same in a railroad from Detroit to Chicago." An editorial in the same paper for October 30 comments on the rapidly increasing travel between Detroit and Ypsilanti and the bad condition of the wagon road as cogent reasons for a railway between those points. But before much had been done on that line, enterprising men of Adrian and Port Lawrence (Toledo) began active preparation for rail connections between Lake Erie and the navigable waters of Kalamazoo river. Immigration through Port Lawrence was increasing, and the idea of directing its course through Lenawee county as well as reducing the price of imports and giving an easier outlet for farm products, formed a powerful incentive to action. So bad was the road then existing between these points, it was said, that wagons would often plow to the box in the mud, from which the oxen could scarcely extricate them.'08 The first cars over this first railroad in Michigan were operated in 1836, by horse power; but the effect on the price of commodities was immediate; for example, Syracuse salt fell from fifteen dollars to nine dollars per barrel, and other heavy supplies in proportion.'09 In 1834 was surveyed the line of the Detroit and St. Joseph railroad, approximately along the line of the Territorial road.10 Undoubtedly the success of the Erie and Kalamazoo railroad from Adrian to Toledo, giving the interior an outlet in that direction and appearing to endanger the commercial interests of Detroit, did much to hasten the work on the St. Joseph road."l When it was taken over by the state in 1837, nearly one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars had been expended on it; for which there had been done thirteen miles of grading and most of 246 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the clearing and grubbing between Detroit and Ypsilanti.1l2 Contemporary appreciation of the importance of this road is shown by its completion to Ypsilanti in I836.113 To be sure, these first roads in Michigan were very primitivestrap-railed and operated by horse power. The first locomotive in 1837 on the Erie and Kalamazoo road between Adrian and Toledo was comparatively a toy;114 the train on this line appears to have been fairly typical. The first passenger coach, called the "Pleasure Car," was top-heavy and always jumping the track. Passenger trains had an engine and one coach, which carried about twenty persons. The seats were benches along the sides of the coach; the door was on the side; there were no steps, the coaches being low and accessible from the ground. Later on, double-decker coaches were introduced; the upper deck, for women, was furnished with sheepskin-covered seats, while the lower deck, for the men, had only wooden seats; these cars could carry sixteen passengers on each deck. The first engines were about twenty horse power, and six cars made a good-sized freight train; the freight cars held only about two tons. The first train crews consisted of a fireman and an engineer; the fuel was wood taken from the forests en route; water for the engine was procured from the ditches.ll1 A word should be said about the government of the territory as an influence on settlement, though not much can be said of it as an asset in this relation. The opportunity for abuses, practically with immunity, were abundant, the powers of the government being ill-defined and the officials distant from Washington with only themselves to report their conduct. Legislative, executive, and judicial powers were vested practically in the same persons, a small junto of four composed of the governor and three judges; rarely were they in agreement; many are the accounts of their frequent and bitter broils. Many were the protests from the people;11 it is said that the citizens of Detroit were so disgusted with this misrule that they refused to vote for councilmen after the first election in 80o6. Frequently the people expressed their indignation through grand juries."7 In I809 by this means they petitioned congress for a change in the form of government, asking for an elective legislature and a delegate to congress; but that body busily engaged with the foreign affairs preceding the war of 1812, gave little heed; not until the close of that conflict was a larger share in local government secured.118 The movement for a change in the form of the territorial government was strongly advocated in the Detroit Gazette with the purpose of "encouraging immigration, inducing settlement and developing the resources of the territory." The increased expense would be an investment sure of rich returns, argued "Cincinnatus" in that paper for November 2I, I8I7, advocating change to a form "more congenial to the principles and feeling of the American people." "The government of this territory, in its formation, is despotic-as it exists at present, it is anarchy," declared another."9 Governor Cass, thoroughly democratic, desired complete popular rule to be consummated for the territory as rapidly as the will of the people should permit;120 but the French, suffer MICHIGAN TERRITORY 247 ing from the ravages of war, hated nothing so much as taxes and had not the feeling for popular government characteristic of the "Yankee" immigrants. It was apparently the strength of their vote in i8i8 that defeated the attempt to effect a change to the second grade of territorial government.121 The territory first elected a delegate to congress in 1819, when it was provided that all white males who had resided in Michigan one year prior to the date of election and who paid a territorial or county tax might vote at the election.'22 The second important change was in 1823 when the legislative council was established, in the election of whose members the people were given a partial voice.'23 The complaints against the territorial officials published in the Detroit Gazette preceding this change make an almost continuous series of articles and editorials.'24 In fact, they are continuous from its founding in 1817. These writings quoted in the eastern papers were detrimental, to the immigration at least of those who were particular about living under good government. The New York Commercial Advertiser, quoted in the Detroit Gazette of December 27, 1822, declares that "Michigan is the worst governed state or territory in the Union if half is true that has been published in the last three or four years and never contradicted."125 In 1827 congress provided for the complete popular election of the legislative council, subject to a check by the governor's veto and to congressional approval.126 The territorial government thus inaugurated continued until the election of state officers in 1836. The agitation for a change to state government began actively about 1831. An editorial in the Detroit Gazette for October 8, 1824, had prophesied that in view of the present progress of settlement, Michigan would be eligible for statehood in 1826. But progress was not quite so rapid. The Detroit Free Press of September 8, 1831, forecast a sufficient population "in a year or so"; in 1832 a vote taken on the issue though favorable was small, and congress declined to consider it.127 As it i8i8 and 1823 the French-Canadians' fear of increase in taxes again furnished the strength of the negative vote.128 The small size of the favorable majority indicated probably less a lack of interest on the part of eastern settlers than the distraction of attention from it by the cholera epidemic and the rumors of Indian uprisings. Regarding the franchise it is worthy of note that for this occasion it was extended beyond the qualified electors to all males of age excepting Indians and negroes.129 Increasing numbers in 1833-34 again revived the agitation for statehood and symptoms appeared of the attitude Michigan was to take in the later conflict over admission. "Even if congress omits to act in the case," says the editor of the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, October 29, 1834, "and appear to decline admitting her into the Union as a boon, we shall probably soon have proof that she may demand it as a right."130 A census taken in 1834 revealed a population of 87,278.1'1 In 1835 a state constitution was adopted, a complete state government was elected, and Michigan claimed under the Ordinance of 1787 to be a state, awaiting only congressional action on its right to admission 248 HISTORIC MICHIGAN into the Union. The popular sentiment in favor of state government is reflected in the vote of six to one for the adoption of the new constitution in I835, and as settlement increased in 1835-36 mainly from New York and New England the sentiment for statehood brought from the older states grew stronger in Michigan. For over a year, however, Michigan continued to be technically a territory, at least not a state in the Union, though its people lived under the new constitution.132 The constitution adopted may fairly be taken to express the general feeling of the people regarding popular rights. Among other things it required that a voter must be a white male above twenty-one years of age, a citizen or resident in Michigan at the time of the adoption of the constitution and a resident of the state six months preceding the election.l33 The franchise was extended to all aliens then in Michigan, but a residence of five years was required of newcomers.l84 Alpheus White, a native of Ireland, appears to have been largely instrumental in getting an extension of the suffrage to aliens then residing in the territory.135 Settlers coming from the East to Michigan must have recognized in the laws of the territory much with which they were familiar, since by reason of the origin the laws they reflected as a whole the spirit of the East.136 A writer who has made a special study of this feature finds that they were derived in about equal proportions from Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Virginia.137 Punishment at the whipping post was derived from the laws of Vermont;188 as late as 1832 a public whipping of fifteen lashes on the bare back appears to have been administered in the public square of Monroe village.189 At the close of the period a movement for the abolition of imprisonment for debt had gained headway, of which the publication of Whittier's poem, "The Prisoner of Debt," in a Detroit paper, is a reflection; in I837 this relic was abolished by law.140 Of first rate importance to settlement were the provisions for county, township, and village government. The establishment of counties ran far ahead of settlement, it being the intention apparently to invite settlement and to avoid the difficulties that would attend the running of county lines after settlers should have located farms.4' In a rough way the rate of county organization may be taken to indicate the rate of settlement.142 Popular participation in county government was granted by congress in I825 when the qualified electors were authorized to choose all county officers except judges.148 The democratic character of local government was no small inducement to settlers, especially to the freedom-loving foreigner who came hither to enjoy what he could not obtain in the fatherland. In I825 congress gave to the governor and council of the territory the power to divide the counties into townships,14" and in the year i827 this power was extensively used.14" Township government sometimes preceded county government by a number of years, as in Grand Blanc township in Genesee county,"6 and Allegan township in Allegan county.147 The Michigan town meeting combined with the powers of the New England town meeting the organization of the New York county board."" MICHIGAN TERRITORY 249 The successive variations in the areas of the political townships has naturally much significance as an indication of settlement. The earliest of these townships were sometimes of great extent. Some of them included several counties, as the township of Greene, humorously famous among pioneers for its size.149 Frequently the first political township in a county was coterminous with the county, and this large township would be later subdivided along the lines of the government townships into political townships of varying areas.150 In the educational and cultural advantages offered by Michigan territory there was not much to invite settlers.15 The importance of this element as an inducement to settlers, however, should be duly appreciated. Many of the leading pioneers had been educated in eastern schools and colleges; and the universal respect for education is shown by the social status of the teacher, which was equal to that of the minister or physician. The influence of the devoted pioneer priests and preachers, like Father Gabriel Richard, John Monteith, and John D. Pierce, in elevating the general tone of social life must have been considerable.152 It was probably a general sentiment among intending emigrants that was reflected in an editorial of the Northwestern Journal of January 13, I830, commenting on the "multiplication of schools, of places of worship, of religious teachers, and the improvement of the moral habits of the people;" that "there are very many by whom a satisfactory answer to the questions 'can we educate our children there, and enjoy ourselves and secure to them the blessings of Sabbath instruction,' would be demanded before they would determine to emigrate." Though the foundations of Michigan's public school system, at least in practice, were laid after Michigan became a state, something was done by legislation in the earlier period. National land grants for schools provided a part of the financial basis both for primary and higher education.153 Governor Cass had the thorough-going New England sense of the importance of educating the masses as a basis for citizenship and did his utmost to promote schools.154 It is probable that his inspiration was back of the apparent awakening of interest in public education reflected in the legislation of 1827 providing for common schools in the townships.l55 However, the log schoolhouses built by the settlers, meagerly equipped, and probably frequently officered by schoolmasters of the type of Ichabod Crane, remained throughout this period the sole public educational advantage within reach of the vast majority of children.156 Academies appeared at Pontiac, Ann Arbor, and a few other centers of settlement.'57 The Ann Arbor Academy had a considerable reputation, drawing pupils from prominent families in Detroit.'58 Some slight beginnings that looked towards a university made their appearance.'59 Toward the end of the period there were formulated those plans of Isaac E. Crary and John D. Pierce which appearing first in spirit in the state constitution of 1835 were brought to practical realization by the earliest state legislation'6 and were to mean much for later settlement. XVII REPRESENTATIVE EARLY DETROITERS LEWIS CASS By Bert Klopfer - HE life of Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory and hero of the war of 1812, is an inspiration to every American familiar with the development of the Northwest. Cass was born in Exeter, N. H., October 9, I782.' He attended Phillips Exeter Academy seven years, and in October, 800o, his father, Major Cass, brought the family to Marietta, Ohio. The son studied law, and in the autumn of I802 received the first certificate of admission to the bar under the new Ohio administration. In 1804 he was elected prosecuting attorney of Muskingum county, and at the age of 22 his reputation was wide. In 1806 Cass was elected to the Ohio legislature, and in I807 was tendered the post of United States marshal. This he accepted and retained until after the outbreak of the war of 1812. This struggle changed a great portion of the life of Lewis Cass, whose zeal was largely concerned with counteracting the influence of the British over the Indians. On February 6, 1812, congress authorized the president to accept and organize certain voluntary military corps, and on April 10 he was authorized to require the executives of the several states and territories to take effectual measures to organize and equip their respective portions of IOO,OOO militia. Ohio's quota was divided into three regiments, Colonel Arthur in command of the First, Colonel Findlay in command of the Second, and Colonel Cass of the Third. On July 5 the army reached Detroit, a French-American village of I,ooo people. The entire population of the territory was about 5,000. Colonel Cass believed that incisive action would have brought the fall of Malden and made possible the conquest of upper Canada. With 280 men Cass fought the first battle and was hailed as the "Hero of Tarontee," but was mortified beyond expression at Hull's surrender of Detroit. In December, I812, Cass was appointed major-general of an Ohio militia, but was not yet exchanged and was prevented by his parole from entering into active service. For eighteen years he served as governor of Michigan Territory. His long journeys in this territory encountering grave dangers are never to be forgotten acts of heroism. Cass was tactful. He convinced the Indians that the Americans were their real friends and protectors. He had broad vision of educational needs. Intense loyalty to family, friends, territory, nation, was the outstanding element of his makeup. Indomitable courage was his. Woodbridge N. Ferris, governor of Michigan, in an address at the Perry Victory centennial celebration in Put-in-Bay, Ohio, in I913, said REPRESENTATIVE EARLY DETROITERS 251 with respect to Lewis Cass (Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections); "Lewis Cass was eminently democratic, and the doctrines he proclaimed would be considered genuinely progressive today. He believed in the rule of the people. He believed in putting the responsibility upon the citizens themselves. * * * His efforts to provide for education for all the people of the territory have borne fruit. The educational system of Michigan bears evidence of his handiwork." Lewis Cass was eminently democratic. He was high in the councils of the Democratic party; served his state and the nation as a United States senator; was secretary of war, secretary of state and minister to France. As governor of the state and territory, his services were of outstanding character, and because of the diverse character of his service, references to his work are necessarily made in other sections of this history. REV. GABRIEL RICHARD The early pioneer, whether civilian or clergyman in a new country, should always be an object of interest to the incoming generations, and in this respect the pioneer work, performed amidst great hazards and with matchless self-sacrifice, was performed by priests of the different orders of the Roman Catholic church, says J. A. Girardin, in a paper embodied in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, I. First came the Franciscans, then the indomitable Jesuits and the Sulpitians. The shores of New France, extending from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to that of Mexico was trodden first by the early missionaries of the Catholic church, and among those who left memorable heritage were Fathers Marquette, Allouez and Dablon, among the Jesuits; Father Hennepin among the Franciscans, and Father Gabriel Richard of at order of secular priests of St. Sulpice. The first named had invaded the wilderness more than a century before Gabriel Richard was born. Gabriel Richard was born at Saintes, in the Department of Charente-Inferieur, France, October 15, 1764, and was descended on the maternal side from the illustrious Bishop Bossuet, distinguished divine who lived during the reign of Louis XIV. He attended college, received a classical education and repaired to Losy, near Paris, in order to qualify himself for admission into the society of St. Sulpice, a congregation of secular priests devoted to the education of young men for the sanctuary. He was elevated to the priesthood in I79I during a period when France was violently agitated by the revolutionary spirit which was daily increasing in madness and fury threatening the destruction of state and church. Because of such condition the Abbe Emery, superior-general of the Sulpitians, with the approval of Rt. Rev. Dr. Carroll, bishop of Baltimore, determined to send some members of the society to the United States for the purpose of conducting an ecclesiastical seminary. Father Gabriel arrived June 24, I792, in Baltimore, and with him were Fathers Coquard, Matigon and Marechal. As St. Mary's seminary in Baltimore was not yet in efficient operation 252 HISTORIC MICHIGAN requiring a corps of professors, Father Richard was sent west to take charge of the Catholic parochial work in Illinois, at Prairie du Rocher, Kaskaskia, and neighboring country. In a letter to Bishop Carroll, dated January 24, I796, Father Richard stated that idleness, intemperance and debauchery reigned supreme at Kaskaskia, and that grave scandals were occasionally witnessed at Prairie du Rocher, although at the latter place his chief consolation was derived from five or six English families. The following year he was appointed to visit a number of places, including the congregation of a tribe of Indians named Cahokias, which possessed a handsome church erected by Rev. Mr. Leradoux, his predecessor. Missions had been established a hundred years before by the Jesuits, but with the recall of the Jesuit fathers, the Catholic population fell into lamentable indifference. Father Richard was sent to Detroit after having served the more western territory from December 14, 1792, to March 22, 1798. He arrived in Detroit in June accompanied by Rev. John Dilhet, also a Sulpitian missionary. He soon won the confidence of the Catholics of Detroit and vicinity, about i,8oo, most of French origin. His great aim, next to extending the kingdom of God on earth, was to promote love of learning and stimulate education. Austere in his habits, eating the simplest and coarsest food and wearing the coarsest and cheapest of cloth, Father Richard stirred his followers by his zeal and piety. He commanded the respect of Protestants as well as Catholics. About a year after going to Detroit, Father Richard visited the Catholic plantation on the island of Mackinac, twenty miles from the former Michilimackinac, and Point St. Ignace, describing the needs of that section, the appalling ignorance and religious indifference of the people and the large number of illegitimate children. For two months he taught the children catechism, recited prayers every evening in the church, and expounded Christian doctrine. He visited the Ottawas on the east side of Lake Michigan, but found only one baptized person out of i,300. In telling of conditions Father Richard bitterly excoriated the use of liquor, saying that English rum has destroyed more Indians than ever did the Spanish sword. He returned to Detroit in October after having touched St. Joseph island and Sault Ste. Marie. In i804, Father Richard, aided by Father Dilhet, opened a school for the education of young men for the ministry. The school was burned in i805. The same year, i804, a young ladies' academy was established at the head of which was placed Miss Elizabeth Lyons, Miss Angelique Campau, Miss Monique Labadie and Miss Williams. Father Richard brought into the territory the first printing press, securing it in Baltimore, and on August 31, I8o, issued the first newspaper west of the Allegheny mountains, called Essai du Michigan, or Impartial Observer, and the same year published the first prayer book. And every Sunday before vespers he would instruct the children in the catechism and explain the doctrines of the church. Whole hours were given to the instruction of his fellow-men. The town of Detroit was REPRESENTATIVE EARLY DETROITERS 253 visited by a disastrous fire on June II, 1805, when every house was destroyed together with the little church built by Father Bocque, a Franciscan missionary, in I750. For six years the congregation occupied a warehouse along the river belonging to Mr. Meldrum. Afterwards transfer was made to Springwells, to the house of Jacques Laselle, and later there issued the new St. Anne's church, the name of which was given by Father Bonaventure, who arrived here in 1722 on the anniversary feast of that saint. In I805, Father Richard and Dilhet were ordered to France by their ecclesiastical superior, but the trustees of the church being a factious set, a writ was issued against the former and his journey delayed. In I809 when the type and printing press were obtained in Baltimore, James M. Miller was brought, as the first printer, to Detroit. August 31 the Essai du Michigan made its appearance. The paper was suspended after awhile but later several religious books were printed in French and English, among them "La Journale du Chretien" in I8II, and a large book entitled "Epistle and Gospel for Sundays and Holidays in the Year," in 1812. The press was used to print deeds and other documents for the governor and judges of the territory, and when the English took possession of Detroit, in 1812, they had Gen. Brock's proclamation printed on it as it was the only printing establishment in the northwest. During the war of 1812 Father Richard made himself very obnoxious to the British and they made him a prisoner near Sandwich. During his captivity he persuaded many from torturing American prisoners who fell into the hands of the British upon the surrender of Gen. Hull. Upon his return to Detroit his first interest was the temporal needs of the people who were suffering from lack of food. His charity was untiring. Reconciliation having taken place between the church trustees and Father Richard, a collection of $500 was given him. Bishop Flaget was the ecclesiastic in charge of the Northwest Territory. On June 11, I818, just thirteen years after the destruction of the church, the cornerstone of the new St. Anne's church was laid. Due bills were issued t'nder his direction as a means of meeting the problem of finance. The rascality of a contractor in forging the name of Father Richard to between $700 and $8oo of these due bills, which were accepted by laborers and traders, set back the work of construction. Times were hard, the people impoverished. Then the fertile mind of the priest evolved the plan of constructing seines and selling the fish to raise the needed money to insure the construction of the church. The plan was successful and large quantities of fish were caught and shipped east. To Father Richard belongs the credit of importing from France the first piano and the first organ in Detroit. He left a number of musical compositions of his own inditement. In 1821 Father Marquette visited the vast territory under his charge, spent three weeks at Mackinac, coasted the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and visited the spot where Father Jacques Marquette died May 9, I675, which he marked with a cross. Father Richard was invited by the Potawatomi Indians 254 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of St. Joseph river to assist at the conclusion of the treaty between them and the governor of the northwest. He returned to Detroit via St. Louis, Bardstown, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, and in a letter to Archbishop Marechal, dated December 22, 1822, Father Richard reported there were only five churches or chapels in the northwest with a Catholic population of about 6,ooo whites and a certain number among the savage tribes of the region. In 1823, Father Richard was elected a delegate to represent the interests of Michigan in congress against Gen. John R. Williams and Maj. John Biddle. He was supported by his Protestant fellow-citizens. His seat was contested by Major Biddle on the ground that he had not been naturalized. A committee of the house was appointed to investigate but reported saying it was not necessary. Through the efforts of Father Richard appropriation hills were passed for the opening of several roads leading into Detroit, the Fort Gratiot road, Pontiac road, Grand river road and the great DetroitChicago road. Indians used him as petition bearer in requests to the president of the United States. Father Richard was re-nominated for congress against Austin E. Wing, but was defeated by six votes through the apathy of his own people, the French. They thought a clergyman had no business in legislative halls, yet nearly his entire salary went to the liquidation of the debt on St. Anne's church. Rev. Father Galitzin, a distinguished missionary of the period, remarked to Father Richard, according to the historical records: "When I heard of your election to congress I disapproved of it at once; but I have the honor to inform you that if you can manage to have a seat in congress all your life, you will do more good for religion with your salary than many other missionaries with all their zeal and preaching." In I832, the Asiatic cholera smote Detroit, yet Father Richard, debilitated and ill, remained at his post of duty, aiding the poor and afflicted and administering the consolation of religion. Informed of the seriousness of the attack upon his own body, he expressed willingness to die and expired with these words on his lips: "Now, 0 Lord, dost Thou dismiss Thy servant according to Thy word, in peace." He breathed his last September 13, 1832, at the age of 67 years, I months and 2 days, after a residence in Detroit of 34 years and 6 months. His long'life was devoted to God and mankind. Deep sorrow was felt by all classes in the community. His death was proclaimed a public calamity. The body was buried in the cemetery, but exumed after three years and re-interred in St. Anne's church, the church he passionately loved. DR. DOUGLASS HOUGHTON In 1830, Detroit, town of 4,000, had become an important post. Michigan lay on the very frontier of settlement in the old Northwest Territory. That year friends of science in Detroit applied to Dr. Amos Eaton, president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, of Troy, N. Y., tc recommend a person qualified to deliver a course of public REPRESENTATIVE EARLY DETROITERS 255 lectures on natural philosophy, chemistry, geology and mineralogy. Lucius Lyon, senator and later surveyor-general of the United States, personally delivered the request, and Dr. Eaton recommended his assistant, Douglass Houghton, then only 21 years old, to undertake this service. Young Houghton evidenced remarkable scientific attainments and possessed a dominating but lovable personality. He effected a great change in the intellectual life of Detroit. In I83I, Houghton was admitted to the practice of medicine and General Cass appointed him physician and botanist to the Henry R. Schoolcraft expedition to the sources of the Mississippi river. From 1832 to 1837 he practiced medicine in Detroit and built a large and remunerative practice, and in 1837 was appointed by Governor Stevens T. Mason state geologist. He became responsible for the first geologic survey. It is an interesting fact, as well as an evidence of Houghton's genius, says Rolland C. Allen (Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXIX), that as early as 1838 the survey had been organized on the plan that in the main essentials is followed to this day in Michigan, and which is approved by years of experience in other states. This plan provided for geological, topographical, zoological and botanical departments, each headed by a competent specialist, but all under the head of the state geologist. The state was very sparing in its allotment of money for the big work. A large part of the field work was finished by 1842. The incompleteness of the United States linear surveys delayed the Michigan survey very much. As the act of 1837 making provision for the state survey expired in 1842, leaving still a large territory in the upper peninsula unexplored, Dr. Houghton set about effecting a plan which he had previously conceived of connecting the linear surveys with the minute geological and mineralogical surveys of the country. The plan, approved by the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, was laid before congress in the winter of 1844. and its feasibility comprehended at once. Dr. Houghton removed all obstacles by offering to take the contract of running 4,000 miles of line at a price but little, if any, exceeding that which would have been paid for a single survey. Dr. Houghton was drowned in Lake Superior. near Eagle river, October I3, 1845. The published results of Houghton's survey are shown in seven annual reports to the legislature and a number of short communications relative to salt springs and specific conditions. Through negligence, the vast collection of notes, sketches, maps and manuscripts representing eight years of unremitting toil by Dr. Houghton and assistants was lost. Just how much he had accomplished will never be known, but fragmental reports preserved in the documents of the state senate and house show that he attained a fairly clear understanding of the succession and structure of the palezoic (secondary) rocks; had blocked out'the Michigan coal basis; understood in a measure the later history of the Great Lakes, and had traced the position of some of their former shore lines; had called attention to the importance of the deposits of gypsum, coal, peat, marl, clay, 256 HISTORIC MICHIGAN limestone, iron ore and copper; had discovered gold, and above all, had attained an understanding of the copper bearing rocks of Keweenaw Point, which was far in advance of his time. The influence of his report on the copper bearing rocks was a main factor not only in attracting capital to the copper country, but in hastening the construction of the first canal and locks around the falls of the St. Mary's river. Realizing the burdens of the people of the struggling commonwealth, Dr. Houghton addressed himself to an appraisal of the material resources of the state rather than to the pursuit of science for the sake of science alone. He died at the age of 36 on the field of fame, The memory of Dr. Houghton is preserved in the tame of Michigan's largest inland lake, one of its wealthiest counties, one of its most important towns, one of its most beautiful waterfalls, and one of its most imposing mountains. A monument in Elmwood cemetery, Detroit, and a cenotaph on the campus of the University were erected to his memory. A full length portrait was placed in the hall of representatives and a memorial window placed in St. Paul's church in Marquette. XVIII EARLY MAPS SOME EARLY MAPS OF MICHIGAN By William L. Jenks Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXVIII, 627-637 WITH the instruments of precision which modern science has furnished, it is not difficult today to explore a new section of the earth and make of it a map which will not only correctly delineate the section and its natural features, lakes and rivers, but will locate them with exactness upon the map of the world. Such instruments, however, and such maps, are of recent origin. Rome had a vast empire extending over a large part of the known world, but it possessed no maps as we know them, showing at a glance the relative location, shape and size of all parts of the earth. From the most ancient times travelers, explorers and merchants went into new and distant countries and returned to describe them and their peoples, but not until about the beginning of the fourteenth century was there any sketch even of the most traveled or most populous regions, which to the modern eye would seem a map. True, the Romans and others had their road maps, the sailors of the Mediterranean during the earlier middle ages their portolano, but careful surveys and charts were all unknown, although the compass known to the Chinese had been brought to the eastern shores of Africa in the fourth century, and knowledge of it had gradually filtered through, by way of the Arabs, to the Basques and Catalans in the twelfth century. The oldest existing specimen of scientific map making is the Carte Pisano, made about I300; and the Catalan map of 1375 shows an accurate knowledge of northwestern Africa, Spain and the Canaries, Madeiras and Azores. Beazley says in his Dawn of Modern Geography: "Good maps were as valuable for progress as good instruments, and the first true maps constitute an important chapter in the history of our civilization; they mark the essential transition in world-delineation from ancient to modern." It is evident that to enable the making of a correct map of any considerable part of the world there is needed the knowledge of latitude and longitude, and the means to ascertain those elements of any particular point. The terms themselves were first used by Ptolemy in the second century, in accordance with the belief that the known world was longer east and west than it was wide north and south. With this idea in mind he placed the first meridian, or the westernmost point from which to reckon distance eastward, in the Fortunatae or Canary Islands. When the new period of map making began the Spaniards adopted the 1-15 258 HISTORIC MICHIGAN same point, and in 1634 a congress of European mathematicians confirmed it at the west edge of Ferro, the most westerly of the Canaries, and all the early French maps of this country reckon the longitude from Ferro as the first or principal meridian. They compute it eastward around the entire circle, so that from that starting point and by that method Detroit would be in about 300 degrees. As English explorers became active they naturally took London as their first meridian, and America, when it became a nation, began to calculate from the meridian of Washington, but finally at the Geodetic Congress, held at Washington in I884, it was resolved to adopt the meridian of Greenwich as the universal first meridian, the representatives of France being the only important objectors. In examining the older maps these changes of the starting point must be kept in mind. Latitude was always reckoned from the same point and measured by the declination of the sun, but early instruments were crude, and it is rare to find in the old maps any point correctly placed either in longitude or latitude. Jedediah Morse, "the father of American Geography," and incidentally the father of Samuel F. B. Morse, the telegraph inventor, published in 1796 the third edition of his American Universal Geography, the first edition of which was published in I789. One of the reasons for this publication, as he tells us in the preface to the second edition, was that "To depend on foreigners partial, to a proverb, to their own country for an account of the divisions, rivers, productions, manufactures, navigation, commerce, literature, improvements, etc., of the American States, would certainly be a disgraceful blot upon our literary and national character." His endeavors to remove this blot were evicently highly appreciated by his compatriots as his work rapidly passed into numerous editions, and in the good work he was assisted and succeeded by his son, Sidney, who continued to issue good reliable "American" geographies until about the middle of the nineteenth century. The third edition of the American Universal Geography was the first to contain any map or description of the territory now included within the state of Michigan. It has a map of the "Northwestern Territory," and without desiring to do any injury to the first American geographer's reputation, I am warranted in saying that the people would have been safe in relying for some time longer upon the partial foreigners. In this map numerous rivers are shown in the western part of the state, four of which are named St. Joseph, Marame (Kalamazoo), Grand and Maticon (Muskegon). On the east side are shown Raisin river, River LaChine, Saw Pine river and Belle Chase river. The last two empty into Lake Huron some distance north of the entrance of St. Clair river, which itself is not named. Saginaw bay (as Saguenam) is placed considerably too far north and a large part of the interior of the peninsula from Saginaw bay north is taken up with an "extensive high plain." Lake Superior is difficult to recognize, filled with islands that do not exist, among them a large island with several smaller ones near, lying between Keweenaw Point and Isle Royal, and bearing the name of Phillipeaux Island. A copper mine is shown near Ontonagon. Fort EARLY MAPS 259 Detroit is located at about latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes north, and longitude 7 degrees 30 minutes west of Philadelphia, or 83 degrees 30 minutes west of London. Lake Michigan extends south to latitude 42 degrees 20 minutes. The French map of D'Anville, issued half a century before, in I746, as well as several others, was more accurate in the outlines of both peninsulas and the adjacent lakes. Morse, in the introduction to his first edition, expresses his obligations to Capt. Thomas Hutchins, geographer-general of the United States, but so far as this region is concerned he fails to avail himself of the assistance he might have had. Capt. Hutchins, born in New Jersey in I730, became an officer in a Colonial regiment and later in the British regular army, giving much attention to engineering. Prior to I770 he made many reconnoitering trips into what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and lower Michigan, and in 1778 published his Topographical Description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina, which was intended to accompany and explain his map issued at the same time, and including the country lying between 34 and 44 north latitude and 79 to 93 west longitude. In 1779 he resigned his position as officer and in 178I was appointed geographer to the United States of America, and held that position until his death in I789. His map was 35/4x42% inches, and is a very interesting and important one for the lower part of the state, comprehending that part south of a line drawn west from a point about thirty miles north of Port Huron. On the eastern side, below Detroit, appear several rivers. Lake St. Clair is pretty well delineated, and the several channels at the head of the lake shown; Clinton river is shown but not named. In St. Clair river both Fawn and Stag islands appear, not named, and the three rivers, now Belle, Pine and Black, in their proper locations, the first not being named, the second having the name River a Chines, and the last River au Sapine (Pine or Fir) with a sawmill indicated a short distance above the mouth. This last river appears in Morse's geography as Saw Pine river, and at a considerable distance from its actual location. Upon the western side of the peninsula appear St. Joseph river with the legend "full of islands and very rapid," Riviere Noire (Black river). Riviere Marame (Kalamazoo), with a large branch near the head called Riviere a la Matache, Riviere a la Barbue (Black river), Riviere a Raisin (Pigeon river). La Grande Riviere (Grand river) and Maticon (Muskegon) river. There is a road marked from Detroit to Fort St. Joseph, and these two legends are on the western and eastern sides of the peninsula. "From St. Joseph river along the eastern side of Lake Michigan the land bordering upon it consists chiefly of sandy ridges scarcely producing anything but pines, small oaks and cedars, but a few miles from the lake the soil and timber are extraordinarily good." "The land bordering on the western shore of Lake Huron is greatly inferior in quality to that on Lake Erie; it is mixed with sand and small stones and is principally covered with pines, birch and some small oaks, but at a little distance from the lake the soil is very luxuriant." 260 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The "father of American geography" might well have given some heed also to Joseph Scott, who published the first United States Gazetteer in I795, illustrated with nineteen maps. In his map of the United States the lower peninsula is more correctly delineated, and practically all the rivers emptying into Lake Michigan shown and named follow the French maps in this respect. Kalamazoo river appears as Marame. Between this and Grand river are two streams named, respectively, Barbe and Raisin rivers, representing the present Black and Pigeon rivers. Muskegon appears as Mastigon. White is unchanged. Beauvais probably represents the Au Sable river; St. Nicholas, the Pent Water, and Margurite, the Pere Marquette. The territory of Michigan was created by act of congress, January II, 1805, and comprised all that part of Indiana territory, lying north of a line drawn east from the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan, until it should intersect Lake Erie and east of a line drawn from the said southerly bend through the middle of said lake to its northern extremity, and thence due north to the northern boundary of the United States. It is not certain upon what information or map congress acted in fixing these boundaries, but certain it is that no two maps of that period agreed with respect to the location of the lower end of Lake Michigan, compared with Lake Erie. It would seem quite probable that the Hutchins' map was used, although that did not purport to show more than the lower end of Lake Michigan and of the lower peninsula. There were in existence at that time a number of maps prepared by English geographers, several based upon the reports and observations of Governor Pownall and several maps by Arrowsmith, a very painstaking and accurate geographer. These map makers differed quite largely in the shape of Lake Michigan, and in its description. In several of the maps the trend of the lake was either due north or extended somewhat westerly from the southern extremity. Others represented the northern extremity mutch more toward the east than it is in fact. Owing to this difference in maps the geographic description given in the act of congress proved difficult to locate and gave rise to many troubles. Governor Hull was appointed Governor of the new territory, and among his first official acts on July 3, 1805, was the division of the territory into four districts for administrative purposes: Erie, Detroit, Huron and Michilimackinac. For some reason he seems to have been averse to creating counties. The district of Michilimackinac was described as beginning: "At the most western and southern points of the Bay of Saguina and running thence westerly to the nearest part of the River Margurite; thence along the south bank thereof to Lake Michigan; thence due west to the middle thereof; thence with the lines of the Territory of Michigan to the center of Lake Huron; thence a straight line to the beginning." The "River Margurite" indicates the use of some map, perhaps Scott's, whose maker had mistakenly read the French Marquette as Marcgurite, and perpetuated the mistake in his map. Judge Woodward, in a letter to the secretary of the treasury, EARLY MAPS 261 January 4, I806, refers to the fact that the southern boundary of the territory was uncertain, and also that it was uncertain whether the northern extremity of Lake Michigan was at Green bay or midway between Green bay and the Straits of Mackinac. This uncertainty is reflected in the maps appearing for some years subsequently. After the surrender of Detroit to General Hull to the British, in I812, Judge Woodward, who had been one of the leading officials of the territory under American rule, remained in Detroit to protect the interests of American subjects, and on the 20th of August of that year received from Colonel Henry Procter, who was in charge of the British forces in possessiona letter desiring information as to the geographical limits of the territory. In his reply, bearing the same date, the Judge says: "The geographical limits of the territory of Michigan are designated by an act of congress. "The boundary commences at the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, and is drawn east from that point until it shall intersect Lake Erie. This line has never been actually run. It is therefore uncertain where it would intersect Lake Erie. I have a minute of an observation taken by a British gentleman which makes the latitude of the southern extremity of Lake Michigan a degree and a half south of Detroit. This would carry the line entirely south of Lake Erie." "I am in possession of some maps which so represent the country. On the contrary, I have seen other maps and have received many oral communications which represent the southern extremity of Lake Michigan as nearly west of Detroit. The American government has been taking measures to remove this ambiguity. "From the southern extremity of Lake Michigan the line was required to run through the middle of said lake to its northern extremity. It is uncertain whether the northern extremity of Lake Michigan is in Green bay, or at an intermediate point between Green bay and the Straits of Michilimackinac. "From the mouth of the River Miami to the head of the River Sinclair, at the embouchure, or outlet of Lake Huron, the country is settled, although in a very sparse manner, on a continued line without any settlements in the rear, every house forming, as it were, a double frpntier. There were formerly some families at the River St. Joseph, near the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, and the Island of Michilimackinac also had a few settlements." The Miami river referred to in this letter is what is now called the Maumee, and the River Sinclair, the River St. Clair. This uncertainty about the western boundary of the territory is indicated upon a map issued in I814 entitled, "The upper territories of the United States," contained in Carey's General Atlas, issued by M. Carey, of Philadelphia, and shows a straight line as the south boundary of the territory, extending from the southerly extremity of Lake Michigan, and striking the upper end of Lake Erie about twenty miles north of where Toledo is located. Lake Michigan appears to extend almost due north and south, and a line drawn in accordance with the boundaries fixed by 262 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the act of congress strikes the upper peninsula just north of the entrance of Green bay. Among the most prominent map publishers of the decade following were Carey & Lea, of Philadelphia, and they issued a series of atlases, the first one appearing in I817. The map of Michigan is entitled, Carey's Geographical, Statistical and Historical Map of Michigan Territory. French and German editions of this map were also current. The map does not indicate county lines but has upon the southeastern part of the territory the names of Monroe, Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties. The map contained in the edition of 1822 shows the conditions as they existed in I819. It indicates the westerly line of the Indian treaty made in that year, by which the Indians ceded land north of Grand river and east of a line running northeasterly to Thunder Bay river. This map indicates the west boundary of the territory as including all of Green bay, and a portion of what is now Wisconsin north of Milwaukee river, and striking Lake Superior a short distance west of Chocolate river. This is due to the fact that Lake Michigan is so shaped that a line drawn from its most southern point northwardly would intersect the shore of Wisconsin just above Milwaukee. In 1831 appeared a map of Michigan drawn and published by David H. Burr, who issued many maps and was for some years draughtsman of the house of representatives, and in that connection made several maps bearing upon the boundary line controversy between Ohio and Michigan. This map of I831 indicates all of the counties in Michigan, which at that time had been laid out; Michilimackinac county including all of the upper part of the southern peninsula and the southern part of the upper peninsula, the south line of the county being a line drawn diagonally from the corner of Gladwin and Isabella counties through Lake Michigan and Sturgeon bay, then turning northward until it reaches the upper end of Green bay, and then west, indicating the belief of the map maker that this was the southwesterly line of the territory. In 1833 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge issued a map of Michigan by which only the lower peninsula is indicated as being within the territory, while the entire northern peninsula is shown as being in the Northwest Territory. In I836 appeared the Tourist Pocket Map of Michigan, made by J. H. Young, and published by S. Augustus Mitchell, of Philadelphia, who published several maps and tourists' guides to Michigan and other western states. This map closely resembles the Burr map, the county line of Michilimackinac having the same location and direction, and the map being colored in a way to indicate the portion of Wisconsin included within this diagonal line to be within the territory of Michigan. There has been some controversy over the oldest map of the territory or state based upon actual surveys. In volume one of the Pioneer and Historical Collections it is stated that the oldest map was that made by Orange Risdon, a pioneer of Washtenaw county, and one who was a prominent surveyor of the early days. Farmer, in his History of Detroit, claims the credit for the first map as actually having been made by John Farmer, but it is stated in volume twenty-two of the Collec EARLY MAPS 263 tions that it was a matter of common rumor that Farmer used iniformation obtained while employed by Risdon to secure his map as the first published surveyed map. According to Farmer's own account, he came to Detroit in the spring of 1825, and by June of that year had his maiuscript map in the hands of the engravers. It seems, however, that neithei of these claimants is entitled to the credit, but that Philu E. Judd has the honor. The first legislative council of Michigan met in June, i824. On the I5th of that month a committee was appointed to procure a map of the territory of Michigan for the use of the members of the legislative coulncil. The following day the committee reported certain proposals from P. E. Judd for making said map, which were laid on the table. On June 17 the committee was empowered and instructed to contract with Mr. Judd for said map agreeably to the first proposition contained in his proposals, which motion was agreed to. The records do not indicate what this proposal was. July 23 Mr.,Lawrence presented the account of P. E. Judd for making a map of the territory, which was referred to the committee on claims, and on August 5 the claim fixed at $35 was included in the appropriation bill as passed. A copy of this map, drawn by Judd and engraved by J. 0. Lewis, is now in the State library, having been received from the State land office. It bears no date, but bears internal evidence of having been executed subsequent to 1822 and before I826. It includes the counties of Monroe, Lenawee, Washtenaw, Wayne, Macomb, Oakland, Shiawassee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac and Saginaw, which, together with Michilimackinac county, embraced the whole territory between i822 and 1826. Its title is, Map' of Michigan with Part of the Adjoining States, and the map is drawn upon a scale of twenty miles to an inch. Monroe and Lenawee counties extend far enough south to include about half of town io south. The entire upper peninsula apparently is given up to the Chippewas (Indians), while the Potawatomies and Ottawas occupy the western part of the lower peninsula. Mr. Judd died in September or October of I824, and his estate was probated in Wayne county. Included in the inventory of his estate were sixteen maps and plans, including a painted map of Michigan, and one not painted, and the original manuscript of a gazetteer of Michigan. There also appears among his assets a copper plate, which at that time was stated to be in the hands of J. 0. Lewis, a painter and engraver then living in Detroit, under a contract with relation to that and other engravings for Judd's Gazetteer. This plate was probably his map of Michigan. The death of Mr. Judd explains why his maps were not afterwards used, and the copy in the State library is the only one I have found any trace of. In I825 the council again needing for its purposes a map of the surveyed portion of the state, upon January 25 Mr. Lawrence offered a resolution that a committee of three be appointed to enquire into the expediency of presenting to each of the governors of the several states 264 HISTORIC MICHIGAN and territories in the United States one entire set or copy of the laws of this territory, and also a map of this territory. The resolution was adopted, and Messrs. Lawrence, Mack and Bunce were appointed such committee. January 31 Mr. Lawrence offered a resolution which was adopted that the judiciary committee be instructed to bring in a bill authorizing the governor to transmit a copy of the laws "and also one of Risdon's maps of the surveyed part of the Territory" to each governor of the other states and territories. February 3 Mr. Lawrence, as chairman of the judiciary committee, offered a resolution instead of a bill, that the governor be authorized to transmit to the other governors one set or copy of the laws, one copy of the journal of the council and one map of the territory, which resolution was adopted February 4. In the act making certain appropriations approved April 21, 1825, is found the item, "To Orange Risdon, for his map of the surveyed part of the territory (thirty-eight copies at eighteen shillings each) eightyfive dollars and fifty cents." This makes it reasonably conclusive that the map of Mr. Risdon antedated any map made by Mr. Farmer. The map itself is on a large scale, four miles to an inch, and shows all the counties, eleven in number, which had at that time been laid out except Michilimackinac county, no part of which had been surveyed. Monroe county extends far enough south to include part of what would be town Io south of the base line, the south line running some distance south of Toledo. All the counties lie east of the principal meridian, and several of them, Washtenaw, Shiawassee, Saginaw, Lapeer and St. Clair are not completely surveyed. There is a copy of this map in the library of C. M. Burton, and one in the Detroit Public library. The first public reference to Farmer's map appears from the records of the council to be on November 21, 1826, when the petition of John Farmer praying for additional remuneration for making a map of the territory of Michigan for the use of the legislative council was presented and referred to the committee on claims, and on December 6 this committee reported in favor of allowing out of the contingent fund sixty dollars, which was agreed to and that sum was included in the appropriation bill approved December 29, 1826. Farmer's History states that the first Farmer map was published in August, 1825, and that a second map was issued in 1826. This is probably an error, and but one map was issued which was copyrighted in I825 and actually published in I826. The Detroit Gazette in the early part of 1827 published an advertisement dated May i6, I825, offering for sale Farmer's map of Michigan, but I found no publication of any advertisement in 1825. There is, however, a publication in that year of a copyright notice dated August 30, I825, but it was a common practice to file such notice and title some time in advance of actual publication. After somewhat diligent search I have not been able to find any copy of this map except one in the Library of Congress. Farmer subsequently issued many editions as the surveyed part of EARLY MAPS 265 the territory increased, and they became and were for many years the standard maps of the state. Copies of the 1831 and subsequent editions are not uncommon, but it would be highly desirable if the state library could obtain a complete series, as they represent, in a graphic manner, the rapid and enduring growth of the state. In 1843 there was published a map of J. Calvin Smith, covering the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. This map is 20 by 21 inches in size drawn on a scale of eight miles to an inch, and shows the counties of Wayne, Monroe, Lenawee and Oakland fully surveyed and the counties of St. Clair, Sanilac, Lapeer, Saginaw, Shiawassee and Washtenaw partly surveyed, and a small part of the territory west of the meridian line surveyed but not laid out into counties. East of Indiana the south line of the territory runs about three miles south of Miami (Maumee) bay. It contains many places named which disappeared as the country was settled up and is an interesting and valuable map historically. This is the only map which I have seen which shows all of the lower peninsula divided into counties bearing the names as given by the legislature of 1840. Many of these names were of Indian origin and were changed by the legislature of 1843 so that they were in existence only for the period of three years. Douglass Houghton, while state geologist, began the making of a set of county maps, which if completed would have been very interesting and valuable, but after finishing several his death and the hard times following caused a discontinuance of the project. After this date maps of Michigan cease to be properly included within tthe scope of this article. XIX BEGINNING OF STEAM NAVIGATION ON THE GREAT LAKES COMMERCE AND STEAM NAVIGATION By Bert Klopfer OF more than passing interest is an article pertaining to Detroit and the Great Lakes, taken from Parkins' Historical Geography of Detroit, Michigan Historical Commission Publication, Universities,Series, Vol. III, pp. 203-252. Although the navigation of the waterways of the St. Lawrence river system by white men began long before the founding of Detroit, it was not until the latter city had been established that this line of work began in earnest. For many decades in the second century of its existence it was one of the most important cities in the lakes region. Each improvement in the carrying agent made possible an increase in the commerce of Detroit, but just how much cannot be determined. For one hundred and fifty to two hundreds years after the French landed on the shores of the lower St. Lawrence and built their first permanent settlement, the birch bark canoe was the chief carrying agent used, and for the first seventy-five years was almost the only means of conveyance for men and goods on the lakes and rivers of the interior of North America. At Detroit during the latter part of the French period Campbell tells us, "every farmer had his canoe and generally several." The birch bark canoe was used even as late as the early part of the nineteenth century. Crooks, the partner of Astor in the American Fur Company, frequently made the trip between Buffalo and Mackinac by canoe. Later on stronger boats than the canoe were built for use on the larger rivers. There were several types of these primitive craft, the pirogue, the bateau and the durham boat. According to Brodhead, the first large plank bateau was built in Montreal about 1671. It was two or three tons burden and was used to carry provisions from Lachine to Grenadier Island, a few leagues above the site of Ogdensburg, New York. It was the only boat used for many decades to carry the bulky articles between the head of LaChine Rapids and Kingston. The bateaux were also used by the French on the St. Lawrence above Montreal, on Lake Erie before sailing vessels were built, and on the Ohio river and its tributaries. All during the French period and the early part of the English period, bateaux on Lake Erie carried goods between Detroit and the portage at Niagara. After I8I2 durham boats, from which the keel boat of the Ohio BEGINNING OF STEAM NAVIGATION ON THE GREAT LAKES 267 and Mississippi rivers was copied, came into use. The prelude to the advent of the sailing vessel as a factor in the commerce of the Lakes was the building of two vessels by La Salle about i677 to i678. On Lake Ontario, however, it is said that within a few years many sailing vessels as adjuncts of the fur trade had been built. After taking possession of the Lakes region in 1763, the British built two vessels on the Lakes above the falls. Soon after i796 with the transfer of the posts to the Americans ships built in the United States shipyards began to appear. In i9oo the number of sailing vessels was 8I3 and their tonnage was 333,906. In 1822 the Superior was built to replace a former ship known as "The Walk-in-theWater". There was so little traffic at that early period that a dividend was paid the owners only after three years. The growth of steam shipping was slow. By I825, four boats were built. From i88i-1890, I,4i6 ships had been built. Since i890 there has been a decline in numbers, but an increase on the Great Lakes since i870. The first vessel on the Lakes equipped with a screw propeller was the Vandalia, sloop-rigged, of I50 tons, built on Lake Erie in I842. In 1843 the Hercules and the Sampson were constructed. These marked a great advance in steam navigation. With the increase in experience in building, and increase in traffic, came specialization in types. Today we have packet steamers, passenger steamers, ore vessels, coal vessels, tugs, sand-scows, oil vessels, ferryboats and car ferries, each built for a special line of traffic. By far the larger number of steamers on the Lakes are the "bulk-cargo" craft. This type is increasing in importance for the transportation of coal, iron, wheat and lumber. In ship-building Detroit has been, for as far back as there are available statistics, among the more important ports and customs districts of the Lakes. In i88o it was second among the Lake districts. Of late years Detroit has occupied a high rank in the building of steel steamers. With the settling of the Detroit region and Michigan by the Americans, Detroit became a western terminus for many sailing vessels and steamboat lines. Detroit and Buffalo were terminals for the more important steamer lines on the Lakes. In 1870 there were eight lines of steamers from Detroit to the various lake ports, and on many of the lines steamers left Detroit daily. In regard to waterways and water routes, the surface levels of the Great Lakes form a series of great steps, the highest step being Lake Superior, 6,032 feet above sea level. The Canadian government up to I9I2 had spent over $128,000,000 in all to improve the St. Lawrence river and the Canadian side of the Lakes. Many of the early French navigators experienced difficulties of navigation in the lower St. Lawrence and have left detailed accounts of the obstacles encountered. From Quebec to Montreal the navigator, before improvements were made, found even greater difficulties. The high tide at Quebec occasions so strong a current that a "boat of six oars," says Colden, "cannot make way against it." During the French period nothing was done to improve the navigation of the lower St. Lawrence. A canal at Coteau du Lac across a point that 268 HISTORIC MICHIGAN projects into Coteau Rapids was completed for traffic in 1781. The great difference in level between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario always has been, even after building the Welland canal, a serious obstacle to traffic between Detroit and Montreal or Quebec. The commerce of Detroit far into the nineteenth century was largely along the St. Lawrence river route. Andrews, in his report on the commerce of British colonies with the United States in 1852, shows the importance of the St. Lawrence at that date as an artery of commerce. With the increase of American settlers at Detroit after I796, the commercial relations of the city began to be deflected toward New England and New York. In I817 a regular line of packets and wagons was established between Detroit and New York. Work was begun on the Erie canal in I817. In 1825 the canal was opened for traffic. In the earlier periods of settlement in the Lakes region, when Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan had nearly all the people in the Old Northwest, most of the eastbound traffic of the Lakes was articles destined for the markets in the East. Government aid to the improvement of navigation on the Great Lakes dates from 1825, in which year money was appropriated for the improvement of the harbor at Erie. The most important and most expensive of the many improvements is the excavation of the canals about the falls of the St. Mary's river (at Sault Ste. Marie). The Great Lakes today are great and important water routes for inland commerce. From time to time, chiefly between 1830 and 1850, canals have been opened between the Lakes region and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. These canals have done much to develop some of the Lake cities, but no definite influence has been traceable on the growth of Detroit. An account of the wreck of Walk-in-the-Water, written by Mary A. Witherell Palmer for Michigan and Pioneer Historical Collections, Vol. IV, pp. 112-II5, will prove more than entertaining. The first steamboat built on the upper Lakes was named "Walk-in-the-Water," for a chief of the Wyandot Indians, who lived with his band about twelve miles below Detroit. She made her initial trip in August, I818. This was on a Wednesday. She arrived in Detroit on Monday morning, September 5, I818. Her arrival was hailed with delight and announced by the firing of one gun. It was on the return trip that the accident occurred. About 8 o'clock, finding it impossible to proceed further, the sailing master proposed running the boat into the Niagara river and anchoring, but the captain said it was so dark that she might strike a pier. The boat was run to a few miles of the pier, as the captain supposed. The boat plunged heavily at her anchorage. A leak was sprung and continued to increase. In the morning the captain sent for all passengers to come on board the deck. After drifting they found themselves about a mile above the lighthouse in a dismal plight. The deck of the Walk-in-the-Water was like that of sailing vessels of the present day. In continuation of this subject another chapter on Navigation of the Lakes from Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. VII, BEGINNING OF STEAM NAVIGATION ON THE GREAT LAKES 269 pp. 153-154, deals with the steamboat Superior supposed to have been lost in Lake Michigan on her passage to Green bay. The false rumor probably originated in the circumstance of her having touched at one of the islands to take in wood, at which time some Indian canoes passed at a distance. After leaving the mouth of the Detroit river, the storm increased, the captain with his accustomed prudence, put back and anchored. In this gale, during the heaviest part of which we were out, there were some of the best schooners that navigate these lakes lost. The Erie, Captain Peas, a fine vessel, well manned, a discreet and able captain, was capsized, nearly opposite Cleveland; her masts were cut away, when she righted, and drifted ashore, with fourteen passengers and crew all safe. Francis A. Dewey, of Cambridge, Michigan, in an article on the Marine of Lake Erie previous to the year 1829 which he has written for Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. IV, pp. 79-8I, tells of a tavern called the "Canal Coffee House", situated near the harbor in the village of Buffalo, New York, and which was owned by his father. He says that one of the pleasant pastimes of his leisure hours was to watch the staunch and trim built schooners as they departed from, or entered, the harbor of Buffalo. VMy father was the owner of a coasting vessel named the 'Niagara', and I took much pride in assisting to navigate this craft," he wrote. The first propeller to arrive in Detroit was the Vandalia, of 138 tons. She arrived in the year I843. The first ship on the Lakes was the Julia Palmer, of 300 tons. She was built at Buffalo in 1836. "I will not omit to mention a trim built vessel with black hull, painted ports, long raking masts and black yards. This was the successful United States revenue cutter 'Alexander J. Dallas'. She was built at Erie, Pennsylvania, in the year I8i6 and was commanded by Captain Keith," adds Mr. Dewey. In the autumn of 1826, in one of the occasional gales of Lake Erie, a Canadian schooner named Dauntless. of Walpole, ran into Buffalo harbor for safety. The marshal of the district was notified to arrest the captain for some misdemeanor. The captain gave orders to his men and the ship started to rock. The marshal gave the captain twenty-five dollars so that he would land him and the vessel pursued its course to the British possessions. One of the survivors tells of his first trip by steam to Lake Superior for Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. IV, pp. 67-68, thus: "My memory carries me back to the spring of 1845, and I have a vivid recollection of standing on Dorr & Webb's dock in Detroit early in that spring, watching the process of transforming a little tub of a sloop of about fifteen tons into a fore and aft called the 'Ocean.' "Some time in June the same firm that owned the 'Ocean' bought and fitted up the topsail schooner 'Merchant' of about seventy-five tons. I went on this ship as a porter and immediately began my duties as such. "We steamed up the lake and the first place we touched at was Copper Harbor, or Fort Wilkins. We accomplished our trip up the 270 HISTORIC MICHIGAN lake and started to return to the Sault, which we reached in safety. The first steamer that ever ploughed Lake Superior thus ended that memorable first trip by steam to mining regions. We found below the falls the steamer 'Baltimore,' which was either hauled over in the winter or early spring. The 'Napoleon' was also fitted up the next summer with engines. "So, you see that the Julia Palmer was not the first nor second, and I doubt the third, steamer on Lake Superior. We were fortunate to find a small top-sail schooner, the very last of the season, on which the most of us took passage for Detroit and civilization." XX INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW INDIAN CESSION OF I819, MADE BY THE TREATY OF SAGINAW By William L. Webber Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXVI, 517-534 EFORE America was discovered by any Christian nation, so far as authentic history gives record, the doctrine was firmly settled among all Christian nations that no one had any title or right to life or property except under and in accordance with the regulations made by some Christian nation. So that, if it should happen that an adventurous spirit, or a band of adventurous spirits, should find some portion of the earth's surface not before then discovered and taken possession of, under the authority of some Christian nation, the discoverers were at liberty to take possession of this territory thus discovered, and of all the uncivilized, savage and barbarous people over whom they could acquire control, and make such disposition of the territory, and of the people found there, as might accord with the views of the sovereign under whose auspices the discovery was made. It was in accord with this well settled doctrine-well settled among those who settled it for themselves-that the king and queen of Spain, under date of April 30, I492, gave to Christopher Columbus a commission "to discover and subdue some islands and continent in the ocean," and which commission, by its terms, conferred upon Columbus the power of absolute control over the country and the people discovered, subject only to the king and queen of Spain. The other Christiarn nations gave like commissions and authority, and under such commissions, or charters, the various portions of the continent were discovered, and the power to govern them and their people, when discovered, conferred. It does not seem to have occurred to any of those Christian nations that the people inhabiting the territory for unnumbered generations should be consulted or that they had any rights, which the powers issuing those commissions were bound to respect. The fact that with these commissions were sent out skilled warriors, armed with weapons against which the savages could not for a moment stand, was sufficient to ensure the success of the white man's claim, and so sure was the white man that he had the approval of divine providence, that among the early settlers of Massachusetts they made record, as a cause of congratulation and a mark of special divine guidance and oversight that the Almighty had, shortly before, sent a pestilence which practically exterminated some of the Indian tribes, so as to leave the country free for the occupancy of the white man. The only disputes arising concerning the occupancy of the country were between different Christian nations, but as the facilities for discovering and conquering far distant lands were limited, these disputes seem to have been settled harmoniously-that is, each 272 HISTORIC MICHIGAN recognized the right of the other to the possession of the territory first discovered, so that the discovery was made effectual by continued occupancy. While the territory northwest of the river Ohio was yet covered with native Indian tribes, with no communication from one part thereof to another, except by an occasional missionary or by the Indian runner, the war of the revolution was fought. In that war the English represented the established government, and the Indians naturally took part with the established government, as against its enemies. When the treaty of 1783 was made, by which Great Britain recognized the United States of America as an independent nation, and provided for a surrender to it of claims to territory, as agreed upon, it was but natural that the Indians should ally themselves to the British, and that they should fail to recognize the United States as a government having the right of control, so far as white men could have that right, over the territory of the Indian. Indiah affairs were very much unsettled, and what were termed Indian outrages were frequent. Perhaps it would be only fair to assume that the Indian considered that he was upon his own territory, and that he was only defending his own lands against forcible occupancy by those who were regarded by him as hostile. But the United States held to substantially the same views as the Christian nations of Europe had before them entertained and enforced-that the Indian has no right except such as the. white man sees fit to recognize, and if the white man sees fit to treat with the Indian, he will do it only as being an easier method of obtaining undisturbed possession, than to proceed to a war of extermination. General Anthony Wayne, having made a successful campaign against the Indians, and punished them to such an extent as to lead the Indians to recognize the United States as a proper authority to treat with, a treaty was made, dated August 3, 1795, between Anthony Wayne, representing the United States, and the following tribes of Indians, to wit: The Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawatomies, Miamies, Eel River, Wecas, Kickapoos, Piankashaws and Kaskaskias. This treaty was made at Greenville, in Ohio, then the headquarters of the army, and was a general treaty of peace. It was agreed that the Indians should surrender their prisoners to the headquarters of the army, and should leave hostages to secure the performance of their promises. By this treaty the Indians recognized the title of the United States to those lands lying east and south of a line which commenced on the south shore of Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river, and running thence southerly and westerly to a point on the Ohio river about half way between Cincinnati and Louisville. It will be remembered that it was not quite one hundred years ago when this treaty was made. I understand preparations are being made to celebrate the centennial anniversary of this treaty on the third day of August next, at Greenville, in Ohio, and it will be a memorable celebration. Consider where Greenville is located. Consider where this line from the mouth of the Cuyahoga to a point on the Ohio river, fifty miles above Louisville or thereabouts, is drawn, and INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 273 then think of the great Northwest from that line-all a wilderness. This treaty recognized the right of the Indians to all this great Northwest as still continuing, except so far as some small parcels might have been selected out as the sites for forts or military settlements. From time to time, as the whites pressed more and more into the wilderness, new treaties were made, and the Indians were called upon to relinquish additional portions of their territory. It was not until the treaty of November 17, I807, made by William Hull, governor of the territory of Michigan, for the United States on the one part, and the Ottawas, Chippewas, Wyandots and Potawatomies on the other hand, that any considerable portion of the territory of Michigan was ceded to the United States, and thus the Indian title extinguished. By this treaty, so much of what is now Michigan as lies north of the Maumee river up to the mouth of what was then called the Great Auglaise river, thence running due north upon what was afterwards adopted as the meridian line in Michigan, to a point about the north line of township seven north, thence running in a northeasterly direction to White Rock, at the southeast corner of Huron county, on Lake Huron, and thence to the center of the lake, and so down the lake to a point opposite the place of beginning, was ceded to the United States, but all the remainder of Michigan, with the exception of a small parcel at Mackinac, and one or two other places for military posts, still belonged to the Indians. The government, by treating with the Indians and taking from them a cession, recognized the Indian's right, so that we may fairly say the Indian had a right to assume that the United States recognized him as the owner of this land until he had parted with the title. When the war of I812 broke out the Indians of the Northwest, as was natural, again allied themselves to the British. Through the fur traders, the attachment of the Indians to the English, and through the system of making presents, which had been pursued in the interest of the fur trade, this alliance was strengthened. At the close of the war of 1812 a second treaty was made at Greenville between General Harrison and General Cass acting for the United States, and the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Senecas and Miamies, for the Indians. This, it may be observed, does not include the Potawatomies, the Ottawas, nor the Chippewas. By this treaty of I814 there was no land cession; it is merely a treaty of peace, by which the United States agrees to give peace to the Indians, and the Indians, thereafter, agree to fight for the United States against Great Britain. By a subsequent treaty, made between Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur as commissioners, dated September 29, 1817, the Wyandots, Senecas, Shawnees, Potawatomies, Ottawas and Chippewas of the Indians, a cession of land was made to the United States. The greater part of this cession, however, is outside the state of Michigan, the only cession in Michigan made by this treaty is so much as now constitutes the southern three-fourths of Hillsdale county. By a treaty made October 2, I8I8, the Indians relinquished their title to the state of Indiana. 1-16 274 HISTORIC MICHIGAN White settlements were crowding into the Indian territory to such an extent that it was desirable that there should be a still further cession of land by the Indians, in Michigan, and to that end negotiations were set on foot, and as had been usual in these cases, and as has been usual ever since, in like cases, influences were set at work among the Indian traders and among the Indian agents, to secure the consent of the Indians to this cession. There had been arrangements under previous treaties by which certain annuities were to be paid to the Indians, and it seems that through financial difficulties the government had been remiss in the payment of these annuities. John C. Calhoun was then secretary of war, and Lewis Cass, the commissioner, resident at Detroit. On September II, I819, General Cass writes to the secretary of war: "I shall leave here on Monday next to meet the Indians at Saginaw, and endeavor, agreeable to your instructions, to procure a cession of that valuable territory. * * * * It would be hopeless to expect a favorable result to the proposed treaty, unless the annuities previously due are discharged. Under those circumstances I have felt myself embarrassed and no course has been left me but to procure the amount of the Chippewa annuity upon my private responsibility. By the liberal conduct of the directors of the banks at this place I have succeeded in procuring that annuity in silver, and shall thus be able to comply with past engagements before I call upon the Indians to perform others. I trust the receipt of a draft will soon relieve me from the situation in which I am placed, and enable me to perform my promise to the bank." Before General Cass came to Saginaw, he sent others. There was an Indian trader located where the city of Flint now stands, named Jacob Smith. Mr. Joseph Campau, of Detroit, was an Indian trader, and he had in his employ Mr. Louis Campau, until lately a resident of Grand Rapids, as Indian trader. Louis Campau had been trading at Saginaw. The Indian chiefs moved about from time to time, and frequently visited Detroit, where their minds could be prepared for this coming request. In a trial which was had at Saginaw in I860, in a case between George M. Dewey and Rufus J. Hamilton as plaintiffs, and Joseph Campau and Alexander McFarlan as defendants, there were examined many witnesses-all, in fact, whether Indian, half-breed or French, who could be found anywhere in the country then living, who were present at the treaty of Saginaw, to settle a question in dispute as to the identity of a reserve in the treaty, called Taw-cum-e-go-qua. This trial continued some two weeks before a jury, and very many interesting incidents connected with the treaty and illustrative of the habits and manners of the Indians, and of the habits and manners of those who, by dealing between the Indians and the white men, sought to make profit out of both, were developed. The writer was one of the counsel employed in this case, and the following statements from the testimony of witnesses is taken from his own notes, kept by him, during the trial. The testimony of the Indians was given through sworn interpreters. Mr. Campau testified in English. I give these extracts from the testimony at considerable INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 275 length as matter having historical value. In this connection I desire to say that the secretaries who acted at the making of the treaty do not appear to have taken much pains to make the spelling of the Indian names correspond with the sound, in fact these names were all written by the secretaries, and the Indians touched the pen, and the cross followed the name. To illustrate what I say about Indian names: "Neome" is not found as signed to the treaty, and yet he was one of the principal chiefs; but we find "Reaume" signed to the treaty, doubtless intended for "Neome." So of "Okemos," in the treaty it is written "Okemans," and "Kish-kah-ko" is written "Kish-kau-kou." The treaty was signed with 114 Indian names, being the chiefs and warriors of the tribe. I now give extracts from the testimony, as follows: Kaw-ga-ge-zhic said: I was at the treaty with Gen. Cass. I was then a chief. Perhaps Neome told them to put my name down. I remember having touched a pen. I then lived far up above Mus-ca-dawain. I then knew Neome; he was my older brother; I knew his children. They all had their families at the treaty; they brought them to have a reserve made for them. I heard, while at the treaty, that lands were reserved for Neome's children. I heard Neome say, at the Council, to Gen. Cass, "Deny me not; grant my request that a reserve be made for my children." The children were present at the time; the children's mother brought them in; their father was also present; the children were brought before Cass. Their names were given. I do not know how many times the Indians met Gen. Cass in the big wigwam, but it was very often. The Indians were in groups talking together. The principal orator of the treaty was Neome. I only heard him speak once. I did not hear Kish-kah-ko make any speech. Kish-kah-ko went, in the night, to the tent, without the knowledge of the other Indians, to cede the land. Jacob Smith interpreted for Neome; and a good many others also acted. I knew Peter Riley and John Rileythey were half-breeds. There were about six sections of land reserved at Pe-wa-na-go-wink. I saw Taw-cum-e-go-qua married at Pe-wa-nago-wink a long time ago. Q. Who married her? A. Nobody but Mix-e-ne-ne (her father). I do not know whether Mix-e-ne-ne was a magistrate; he was not a priest. When Mix-e-ne-ne, Tone-an-dog-a-ne and Neome went into Gen. Cass's room and talked with him, they each stated to Smith what they wanted, and Smith interpreted it to Gen. Cass. The usual mode of marrying among the Indians was that the parties consented, then they went to live together as husband and wife. George Wain-je-ge-zhic said: I live in Isabella; I formerly lived at Nipissing. I remember the treaty made at this place by Gen. Cass. I was then about ten or twelve years old, about five feet high-nearly a man grown up. I knew Neome and Mix-e-ne-ne and other chiefs; knew their children. I knew Taw-cum-e-go-qua. Neome said, "I desire you that these, my children, may have land." He spoke to Gen. Cass. The children were then there at that time. I think I am now fifty years old. I remember there was a great reserve made at Mus 276 HISTORIC MICHIGAN ca-da-wain for the children, and one at Pe-wa-na-go-wink for the band. The treaty lasted a long time; maybe ten days or more. The Indians went into the big wigwam, I don't know how many times, and met Gen. Cass. I don't know the name of the principal orator at the treaty. I don't know how old I am; at the treaty I was about as high as I am now to where my chin is. I reckon my age by so many springs of the year. I do not know how old my oldest child is; I have grandchildren grown up; the oldest one is four or five feet high. Sa-gos-a-qua said: My full name is Sa-gos-a-qua; my father was Neome. I remember the treaty with Gen. Cass at this place. My father then lived at Pe-wa-na-go-wink. I had a sister Ah-won-non-oquod-a-qua; I had a brother O-jib-wock. Knew Mix-e-ne-ne. He had a child, Taw-cum-e-go-qua. My sister was larger than I; she had a child before the treaty. Myself and Taw-cum-e-go-qua were here at the treaty. While at the treaty I heard Neome speak about getting land for myself and my sister and Taw-cum-e-go-qua; this was at the council room where General Cass was. My father was talking to General Cass. I heard Neome say to General Cass, "I reserve land for my children at Mus-ca-da-wain." We then stood by the side of our father, and Gen. Cass was near us. I was about three feet high at the treaty, perhaps ten years old, but think I was older than Taw-cum-e-goqua; I was a little taller than she. Neome said, "I reserve these lands for my children." There was lands reserved for Neome's people also at Pe-wa-ta-go-wink. Cannot tell anything else. O-non-gush-ka-wa said: I was at the treaty. I was a boy large enough to hunt some. I knew Neome; he was the chief of our band; knew the other chiefs; knew their children; they had their families at the treaty. At the treaty I was told that Taw-cum-e-go-qua would have land. I heard Neome say so in the council room where Gen. Cass was. It was under a shelter made of boards where the council was held. I had no particular business at the treaty; my mother requested me to be present to hear what was going oh. Okemos was a witness. He said: I am 76 years old; have lived in Michigan 48 years; I knew Gen. Cass well. I was at the treaty of I8I9. I was at that time a chief of a certain band among the Ottawa tribe-a part of the band I was chief over were Chippewas. The treaty was signed at Saginaw, on the west side of the river, back of Mr. Campau's house, in a long shed. I signed the treaty as one of the Chippewa chiefs. At the time I signed the treaty my residence was at a place about six miles above Lansing, on the Red Cedar river. I was born in Michigan, near Pontiac, on an island in a lake. From that time to the time of the treaty I lived at Okemos City, near Lansing. I was 30 years old when I left the place where I was born. Min-e-to-gob-o-way, my mother's father, and Kob-e-ko-no-ka, my uncle, were my chiefs. The first named was a Chippewa Indian and the last named an Ottawa. They were no connection to each other. I was first a chief when I was 20 years old, and was about 50 at the time of the treaty. I knew Kawga-ge-zhic; he was at the treaty. He lived about six miles from the present village of Flint, at Tobosh's trading house; he was a chief at INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 277 that time. I know Noc-chic-o-me; he is acting as chief now; he is down the Saginaw river; he had two children at the time of the treaty, and lived at that time at the Big Rock, on the Shiawassee, called Chesaning. Ka-zhe-o-be-on-no-qua said: My husband's name is Antoine Peltie; I live at O-pin-con-ning; my husband is a Frenchman; I do not understand much French; my first husband's name was Archie Lyon; I am a half-breed; I do not know my age for certain, think it is 67 years; I was present at the treaty. I was present the day the treaty ended. They were writing, but they would not tell me what they were writing about. This was in the council room, put up with branches and forks, with a table in the center, where they took a vote about agreeing to the treaty. I have been to Maiden for presents. At the time of the treaty I was about I7 years of age. I belonged to Kish-kah-ko's band; I was born here. The treaty lasted nearly a month; they met very often, not all day, sometimes only in the morning; it is so long a time ago that I cannot tell how many times they met; it was nearly every day; Neome was there all the time; it lasted longer than ten days. Wah-ba-zence (Jacob Smith) had a tent and saw each other every day; he took not much part, he was not a great favorite with the Indians. I knew Neome's children at that time. Mix-e-ne-ne had one girl at that time, her name was Taw-cum-e-go-qua; her name was mentio'ned when Wahba-zence had her in the council to get land; people were writing at the same time. I saw Neome there, and Mix-e-ne-ne there, but not with his girl. Smith took her there. They put some new clothes on her, yet she showed in herself that she was full-blooded; she had calico for skirts, a long dress and pantalets, and smoked skin for moccasins. Neome's children were dressed the same way, and Smith took the whole of them forward to Gen. Cass and tried to get land for them and the boy; and the boy was taken forward, and Smith said: This is my boy. Noc-chic-o-me said: I live at Bah-wa-a-gin-ing. I am chief. I was at the treaty; I was a man grown. Mix-e-ne-ne and Neome and their families were there. Neome was then chief. (Witness then gives the names of their children and grandchildren.) I heard at the treaty that these children would have grants of land. I heard the Indian chiefs speak of it. It was in the place where the council was being held, not far from where the large building (court house) now is. There were individual reserves made at the treaty. There was one for John Riley near the mouth of the river, and one for Peter just below here on this side of the river, and one for James Riley on the other side of the river. There was another for Kaw-kaw-ish-ko, the Crow, opposite the island in the river below here. There were also some reserves at Flint river for the children I have spoken of. Gen. Cass was in the council room when they were talking about giving lands to these children. Kish-kah-ko was present and other chiefs. When the children were brought forward by Neome before Gen. Cass, and he asked land for them, Neome talked and the other chiefs consented that these children should have land. I knew the children after the treaty, as they come up, Taw-cum-e-go-qua a'nd the others. I am 60 years old. At the time of the treaty I think I was 20 years old. I came to the treaty because I was invited by the Indians to come with them. At that time 278 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Taw-cum-e-go-qua was about three feet high; she was old enough to run about; she was taken by the hand and brought to where Gen. Cass was. The Indians met Gen. Cass in the big wigwam every day, and Cass met them there. Cass wanted to talk with them about the surrender of their lands, and they were met ten times or more; they were a long time at it. Neome had a reserve made at Pe-wa-na-go-wink. I did not see Gen. Cass put his hands on the heads of the children; they sat on the other side of the table, by Neome. I was not then a chief, I took no part in the treaty; I was there to see and to hear. There were half-breeds there. John, James and Peter Riley were half-breeds. Do not know of any others that got land. There were many half-breeds there, and some of them were desirous of getting land, but I did not hear of their getting any. Louis Campau: I live at Grand Rapids, am 68 years old last August. I remember the treaty of I819. I then resided here. I had then resided here four years before the treaty. I was trading with the Indians. Joseph, one of the defendants, is my uncle. I had a trading house: this was opposite the lower end of the bayou; the house now there I built in 1822; it was farther up than my store was. I was at the treaty. I was then acquainted at Detroit. and about there. I used to spend summers in Detroit and winters here. T was here at the treaty. There was old Mr. Rilev. Connor, Beaufait. Knaggs, Godfrey. Whipple, Visger, Forsyth, Tucker. Hersev. and a half-breed named Walker, brought from Mon-a-gua-gon. I have seen the treaty and know the witnesses without looking at the treaty hook. If any of those are alive it must be Mr. Hersev; I heard this summer that he was alive: I saw him in 1836 in Chicago; we traded then together: I think he is the only one living. I was requested by Cass to come on ahead and make suitable provisions for a store-house and dining room and council room. etc. The most of the business was at Gen. Cass's office, goinh in and going out. There was a long table in the dining room, and the private council was held there-the office and the dining room were separated onlv bv a store-house. There were four log buildings all together end to end. These were six to eight rods from the room where the grand council room wqas. I think Cass arrived in the afternoon, and sent his apents for the Indians to gather next morning at ten o'clock: this was after all the denartments had got here-all the princinal officers had got here. The next morning they met at the council house. The first cnunci! was to let them know that he was sent by the great father lo make a treaty with them. that he wanted to buy their lamds. stating the points, and for them to -go back and smoke and think abolt it: thev then worked at private business for three or four davs. when he called them together again. After he had got the will of the principal chiefs there was much trouble to get the consent of all. At the second coulncil there was great difficulty, hard words: thev threatened General Cass amonr the rest. The obiect of the council after thev had ronsented to treat. was to state the terms on which he was authorized to treat. From the eecond to the third council was five or six davs. Thev stayed nine or ten days in all. The last council was to read the treatv to them. INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 279 it was read and interpreted to them. Harry Connor was the interpreter. I was present at the last council; went in the morning, and did not leave until they all left. I cannot tell everything that was done there for it is impossible to recollect them all. Tribal reservations were first made. Gen. Cass sat at the northeast corner of the shanty, the table was next to him, then a row of logs, and beyond that the Indianswomen, children and all. Then after the reservations for the tribes were made, the reservations were made for the half-breeds-first the Rileys, then a Campau, and then mentioned Mrs. Coutant: she was right opposite Gen. Cass, and Connor, whe'n reading the treaty, pointed her to the Indians as their relative, and when her name was said they responded as though pleased. After the treaty was read and approved by the Indians and signed by them, which was as soon as read, Gen. Cass ordered the money to be brought to the table; it was all in half dollars-for the payment. After the treaty was made, it was sundown, and the Indians all got drunk, and nothing could be said by anyone, and Gen. Cass gave the order to be off. The Crow was a good looking young fellow-looked like a half-breed; he had a little log house, a store-house and a hen house, and tried to imitate the whites as much as he could in cooking, etc. He had a tent he made himself. I knew LaParle, he was my hired man; he came around by water in my boat. I knew every one of the Riley boys; Peter was not here, John and Tames were; Jim was my clerk, and remained such until he was killed. I left here in the spring of 1826, and have lived at the Rapids ever since; the Riley I spoke of was the father of the three boys. I traded here till I826; I knew Neome and his hand after the treaty; knew him well; he traded with me as long as I sold here; knew Neome before the treaty from the time I came here in the spring of I8I5; knew his hunters; he never had any children that I know of: I paid no attention to any of them unless they were able to trade with me. Neome was very ignorant, but he was very good, honest and kind. I knew Ton-doga-ne well, as well as I did Neome; he was the second chief of Neome at the time, and afterwards head chief. I knew all the head men of the band who was a hunter; heard them after the treaty converse about the treaty, and Mix-e-ne-ne; also he used to trouble me. I understood the Chippewa language at that time; I was brought up with them from the time I was seven years old. I was 68 last August; I never was in the office; I was in the council room from the morning till the evening, and this is a statement of the facts as they took place before my eyes, as I saw them after the treaty was signed, and the goods and money distributed, and the Indians were all drunk. Cass and his party left before daylight next morning; the troops at about ten o'clock. The whole talk was previous to the day of the treaty. On the day of the treaty my attention was all taken up with my own business; I saw them when they left the day of the treaty and after that I had no talk with anybody; all that I have said was done before the last day of the treaty. I was a clerk of Toseph Camoau before the war. My memory is very good on this subiect. I think it has failed me much in many things. At the time of the treaty there was no Flint Village where Flint now is; where 280 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Neome lived was called Neome's Village. Where Flint now is was called Mus-ca-da-wain. The English called it Grand Traverse. Neome was a short, thick man, a little stooped at the time of the treaty; he must have been from forty-five to fifty-five years old. When we spoke of Flint Village in the early times we meant what the French called Lapeer. Don't know that Capt. Marsac was at the treaty or acted as interpreter; I knew his brother and his father; his father's name was Francis Marsac; I was here when Cass arrived; I was here five or six days when he got here; do n6t recollect of Marsac being with me any part of the way. Col. Beaufait started to come with me and came to near Royal Oak; do not recollect of Marsac being with me. There were none of my buildings but those occupied by the department, and there were no other buildings of mine here. The government had a number of men here to influence the Ihdians outside, but they were not sworn as interpreters. Nau-gun-nee said: I now live in Isabella; before lived in Nipissing. Before I lived in Nipissing I lived on the Shiawassee river. I remember the treaty made with Gen. Cass. The treaty was made just below this place.1 There were no houses there at that time. I was present at the treaty. Neome was my chief; his band lived at Pe-wa-na-go-wink, on the Flint river. There were other chiefs and head men in Neome's band. I knew Mix-a-ne-ne. They were at the treaty. There were four chiefs at that time; Neome and Pe-na-ze-ge-we-zhic were present at that treaty. There were no principal men of the band at that time; all moved like one mass with their chiefs. There were many present at the treaty-I cannot remember all their names. All those I have mentioned were at the treaty, and others with them; they all came with their families-there was no one left at home. Neome's family consisted of four persons. At the time of the treaty Mix-a-ne-ne had two children-Taw-cum-e-go-qua and Nah-tun-e-ge-zhic. At the time of the treaty Taw-cum-e-go-qua was about four feet high. Neome was my grandfather. I heard at the treaty who got land-that Taw-cum-e-goqua and others got land. The Indians did not know what to do in the case. Just before the treaty was concluded Jacob Smith came one night to Neome and suggested that a reservation should be made to the children, and gave four names, of which Taw-cum-ego-qua was one. After that suggestion was accepted by Gen. Cass, he suggested that the children should be brought forward to whom land was reserved that he should see them. The crowd made room for the children to come in, and the children came forward and their names were taken; the names were given in and Neome and Jacob Smith stood together and gave in Ah-won-non-wa-to-qua, Taw-cum-e-go-qua and the others. While Neome was here I did not lodge in the same tent, but the tent I was in was close to Neome's. While Smith and Neome were talking in the evening or in the tight at Neome's tent, Smith said to Neome it will be difficult to secure any place or future home for your children, and Noeme said "I know not what to do in the case," and Neome requested Smith to assist him in trying to get a reservation for his children, and Smith agreed. Smith said that reservation had been INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 281 made for the band generally, and it would be better for him to get a special reservation for his children. When the children came into the council room I was standing side of Neome; Gen. Cass was near by; I stood so near Neome because I had by past experience learned that the white man generally takes away what he bought of the Indians, and I was anxious to see what this would lead to in this treaty, and I thought it might be possible if this land were sold to the white man that he would take away the country, or that the Indians would be driven away from the country; I did not know how the white man sold ground or land, and I had a curiosity to see. I also stood by him for I was afraid and wanted to see what was done. After the treaty Taw-cum-e-go-qua lived at Pe-wa-na-go-wink, and at Flint, where the village now is. I knew her husband; they had children; their oldest boy was called in English, "James Nicholson;" have known him since I was a little boy. Taw-cum-e-go-qua and her husband were married and lived together till she died. I am fifty-four years old; I can't tell how high I was at the time of the treaty; I was large enough to catch fish along the river. The Indians had assembled here a long time before Gen. Cass came to hold the treaty. As soon as he came and the council commenced I went into the council all the time. Gen. Cass sat at one end of the council room. We camped all around here. Gen. Cass put his hands on the heads of the children when they were presented to him. They were before him just long enough to take down their names. Mix-a-ne-ne was my uncle; Neome was my grandfather. My father had five brothers. Wah-ba-zence (the Indian name for Jacob Smith) was a man who had no particular occupation at the treaty; he had been an Indian trader, but was not trading at the treaty. He then lived at Detroit. He resided at Flint, on both sides, and finally located himself in trading on this side of Flint river, at Flint. Wah-ba-zence was very friendly with Neome. The treaty took a long time because the Indians were unwilling to cede their lands; it was many days; do not know how many times the Indians met Gen. Cass in the wigwam-a good many times. White man always persevering to accomplish his object. There were more than ten meetings; they were summoned by Gen. Cass to talk about the surrender of their land the first time; then the second time for the same purpose, and the third and fourth, and the fifth and sixth, and so, ten times or more-all being for the same object. This treaty was signed on the 24th of September, i8i9. Gen. Cass reached Detroit and made report to the Secretary of War under date of September 3o, i8ig, in which he transmitted the treaty which he had made. He says in this letter of transmittal,'among other things: "The boundaries of the tract ceded may be easily traced upon any good map of the United States; but, owing to our ignorance of the topography of the interior of this territory, it may be eventually found, when the lines are run, that the southeastern2 corner of the tract ceded is in the possession of the Grand river Indians; if so, there will be no difficulty, and very little expense in quieting their claims. "That portion of the Chippewa Indians which owned this land have not made the necessary advances in civilization to appreciate the im 282 HISTORIC MICHIGAN portance of education for their youth. It was, therefore, hopeless to expect from them any reservation for this object, or to offer it as an inducement for a cession of their country. Some consideration more obvious in its effects, and more congenial to their habits, was necessary to insure a successful termination to the negotiation. "In acceding to the propositions which they made upon this subject, I endeavored to give such form to the stipulations on the part of the United States, for the payment of annuities, as would be permanently useful, and, at the same time, satisfactory to them. "Their own wishes unquestionably were, that the whole sum stipulated to be annually paid to them should be paid in specie. With the habitual improvidence of savages, they were anxious to receive what they could speedily dissipate in childish and useless purchases, at the expense of stipulations which would be permanently useful to them. "The opinions advanced in your letter of instructions of March 27, I819, respecting the injurious tendency of large annuities to the Indians are correct; and the effect of these annuities upon the Indians is stated with as much precision as they could be were they the result of daily intercourse with these unfortunate people. "Viewing the subject in this manner, I finally concluded to admit a stipulation conformable to their wishes, for an annuity of $1,000, but to secure the payment of whatever additional sum the government of the United States might think they ought to receive, in such manner as would be most useful to them. "A stipulation, therefore, was inserted that the United States should provide and support a blacksmith for them, and should furnish them with cattle, farming utensils, and persons to aid them in their agriculture. "The amount which shall be expended for those objects by the United States, the term during which this expense shall continue, and the mode in which it shall be applied, are left discretionary with the President. "In taking this course, I was influenced by the consideration that the negotiator of an Indian treaty is not always the best judge of the value of the purchase or of the amount which should be paid for it. Sometimes too much has been allowed, and at other times too little. He is not sent upon such a negotiation to ascertain the lowest possible sum for which the miserable remnant of those who once occupied our country are willing to treat, and to seize with avidity the occasion to purchase. Certain I am that both you and the President would censure me (and justly, too), were I governed in my intercourse with the Indians by such principles. The great moral debt which we owe them can only be discharged by patient forbearance and a rigid adherence to that system of improvement which we have adopted, and the effects of which are already felt in this quarter. "It is due to the Indians and myself to say that the sum which it was expected by us would be expended for the objects which I have mentioned is from $1,500 to $2,500 annually. But they distinctly understand that the amount of this expenditure is entirely discretionary with INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 283 the President. Of course the government can now apply such a sum to these objects as the value of the cession and the wants and population of the Indians may justify. Although I am firmly persuaded that it would be better for us and for these Indians that they should migrate to the country west of the Mississippi, or, at any rate, west of Lake Michigan, yet it was impossible to give effect to that part of your instructions which relates to this subject without hazarding the success of the negotiation. An indisposition to abandon the country so long occupied by their tribe, an heriditary enmity to many of the western Indians, and a suspicion of our motives are the prominent causes which, for the present, defeat this plan. When they are surrounded by our settlements, and brought into contact with our people, they will be more disposed to migrate. "In the meantime, we may teach them those useful arts which are connected with agriculture, and which will prepare them, by gradual progress, for the reception of such institutions as may be fitted for their character, customs and situation. "Reservations have been made for them to occupy; and I indulge the hope that they will appreciate the advantages which are now offered to them, and will aid, by their own efforts, the plans of improvement which have been adopted by the government. Reservations have also been made for a few half-breeds. It was absolutely necessary to our success that these should be admitted into the treaty. Being only reservations. and the fee of the land remaining in the United States, I trust that it will not be thought improper that I admitted them." Gen. Cass then proceeds in his report to speak of a supplemental article involving additional private grants which was acceded to by him at the treaty, but with the understanding that unless it should be npproved by the president and the senate the same might be annulled without prejudice to the treaty, at large. Pursuant to this authority the president and senate annulled this supplemental article. There were tribal reservations in this treaty in various locations, in some cases as small as 640 acres, and the highest running up to 40,000 acres in one tract, the whole aggregating more than ioo.ooo acres of land. where the Indians could have their villages and make their homes. until such time, as by subsequent treaty, these should be relinquished. They were, in the main. relinquished by a treaty made in I837, negotiated by Henry R. Schoolcraft. In the accounts which were rendered by Gen. Cass of his expenditures connected with the treaty at Saginaw we find one item for money disbursed by him in the purchase and distribution of provisions and expenses for persons to and from Saginaw, and for various presents, etc.. to the Indians at the treaty ground and subsequently in consequence of promises made to them at the treaty. and the consequent expense going to and coming from the treaty, $6.406.77. In another item it seems that he disbursed to Jacob Smith for his services and for the use of buildings at the Saginaw treaty, $Io4.00: also that he paid Tacob Smith for services during the summer in relation to the treaty at Saginaw, $500.oo, and that he paid Henry Connor, also 284 HISTORIC MICHIGAN an Indian interpreter, the sum of $80.00. It also appears that he paid Mr. Louis Campau the sum of $I,046.50 for many small items which seem to have been presented to the Indians-spades, shovels, scythes, rings, calico, tobacco, canoes, mats, cotton cloth and one gun delivered to an Indian and sundry other articles. To J. and A. Wendell, who were Indian traders, was paid the sum of $998.03/2 for various purchases-crosses, camp-blankets, handkerchiefs, etc., given to the Indians. He paid Joseph F. Marsac, whom many of the old settlers will remember as so long a resident at Lower Saginaw, $6I.oo for his services as interpreter at the Saginaw treaty-sixty-one days at $I.00 per day. He paid to John Riley for his services as interpreter, $244.00, and Peter Riley $300.00. It will be remembered that John and James and Peter Riley were three of the half-breeds who received special reservations of land at the treaty. There were many other disbursements, all of which demonstrates clearly the methods that were used to operate upon the minds of the Indians to secure their assent to the treaty. The land which was embraced in this treaty of I819, was about six millions of acres. Take a map of Michigan, find White Rock, on the shore of Lake Huron, at the southeast corner of Huron county, trace a line thence southwest to where the north side of township seven north intersects the meridian line, thence south to a point six miles south and twelve miles west of the northeast corner of Jackson county, thence run west about sixty miles to a point in Kalamazoo county, about four miles north from where the city of Kalamazoo now is located, thence run a little east of north to a point in Montmorency county, near the headwaters of Thunder Bay river, thence down the river to Alpena on the shore of Lake Huron, thence southeasterly in Lake Huron to the boundary line, and thence down the boundary line opposite the point of commencement, and you will have its boundary. It is difficult to imagine that the entire Saginaw valley, with the present site of the city of Lansing, and all other towns and cities were, until 1819, the property of the Indians, with no right, on the part of the white man, to settle within it. Where the city of Grand Rapids now stands, and all the territory south of the Grand river, and west of the line fixed by the treaty in I819, was ceded by the Indians by a treaty negotiated by Gen. Cass in 1821, and north of Grand river, including the site of the city of Muskegon, Ludington and Manistee, and all up the west shore, and around by the way of Old Mackinaw to Alpena, except a small site at Old Mackinaw ceded as a military post at an early date, was the property of the Indians until 1836. It was in 1831 that the French philosopher, De Tocqueville, visited the Saginaw valley. He was told by Major Biddle, the register of the land office, at Detroit, that he should not think of looking in that direction; he said, "Toward the northwest is the point where the current of immigration has least tended. About Pontiac and its neighborhood some pretty fair establishments have lately been commenced. But you must not think of fixing yourself further off; the country is covered by an almost impenetrable forest, which extends uninterruptedly INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 285 towards the northwest, full of nothing but wild beasts and India'ns. The United States proposes to open a way through it immediately, but the road is only just begun, and stops at Pontiac. I repeat, that there is nothing to be thought of in that quarter." DeTocqueville came, for he wanted to see nature in its primitive state; he crossed the Saginaw river, and landed at what is now the west bank of the river, in fact his landing was within a few rods of the site where the treaty held with Gen. Cass was signed, which was near where the present court house stands, a little south and a little east, say about the junction of Hamilton street with Cass street. Concerning Saginaw, DeTocqueville, writing in 1831, says: "In a few years these impenetrable forests will have fallen; the sons of civilization and industry will break the silence of the Saginaw; its echoes will cease; the banks will be imprisoned by quays; its current, which now flows on unnoticed and tranquil through a nameless waste, will be stemmed by the prows of vessels. More than a hundred miles sever the solitude from the great European settlements, and we are perhaps, the last travelers allowed to see its primitive grandeur." A few years later and Henry R. Schoolcraft, commissioner of Indian affairs, visited Grand Rapids in June, 1838. He proceeded from Detroit to Grand Rapids by going by steamer to Mackinac and thence to Chicago, and there he found a schooner for Grand river, where he had to wait some days for a conveyance to Grand Rapids, which, he says in his diary, gave him time to ramble about the neighborhood and to pick the early spring flowers in the valley. He then took the Washtenong, a small stern-wheel steamer, and by it was carried up to Grand Rapids, stopping by the way to land an emigrant English family from Canada, who had a log house in the woods for their occupancy. On reaching Grand Rapids he was invited by Mr. Louis Campau, the proprietor of the village, to take lodging with him. Concerning Grand Rapids, he says: "The fall of Grand river here creates an ample water power; the surrounding country is one of the most beautiful and fertile imaginable, and its rise to wealth and populousness must be a mere question of time, and that time hurried on by a speed that is astonishing. This generation will hardly be in their graves before it will have the growth and improvement which in other countries are the result of centuries." What DeTocqueville foresaw with reference to Saginaw; what Schoolcraft predicted for Grand Rapids, have been in fact, realized during the life of many of the members of this society, many of us here present, and some of us residents of the territory since the date of these prophecies. The marvelous development of the Northwest, including all the territory embraced in the ordinance of 1787, as indicated by tis sketch, is almost beyond comprehension. Instead of going from this country to Europe and Asia by the thousands yearly to visit the wonders of the old world, the marvel is that all Europe and Asia do not rush to the United States to see the marvelous developments of a single century. The story that cities like Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, to say nothing of the scores of other large cities 286 HISTORIC MICHIGAN within the territory, and the solid population of farmers, together with the thousands of miles of railway, would be builded and made as the work of a single century, would have taxed the imagination of the most enthusiastic as too great for credence, had this story been told by prophecy one hundred years ago. Had it been suggested to DeTocqueville, in 1831, that in sixty years the journey from Detroit to Saginaw could have been made in three hours, or to Schoolcraft, in 1838, that in less than sixty years the journey from Detroit to Grand Rapids could have been made in four hours, it would not have seemed possible.3 The pioneers have done their work rapidly and well; it is about finished, but they can lay aside their labors and rest in the full consciousness that their duty has been well done. XXI EARLY ROADS EARLY ROADS AND TRAVEL By Bert Klopfer T HE Detroit-Chicago road1 forms an important chapter in the development of Michigan, opening vast territory, giving stimulus to commerce and cementing more firmly the bonds which unite it with its neighboring states. An extract from an address by Father Gabriel Richard in congress, January 28, 1825, and from other records compiled by C. M. Burton, pointed out that such road would afford facilities for the transportation of munitions of war, provisions and troops to Chicago, Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, St. Peter's river, etc. Attention was called to the fact that on Lakes Erie, St. Clair, Huron and Michigan no less than I50 vessels were plying up and down on which whole families came at times with wagons, horses, sheep, cows, anxious to settle in that great wilderness into which no road led. An abstract of the address appears in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXI, the house committee of the whole being in session at the time to consider a bill authorizing the surveying and opening of a road from Detroit to Chicago. Up to that time the general land office had about ten surveyors employed in surveying public lands in Michigan. Governor Lewis Cass was strongly in favor of the project and it was suggested that he be in charge or at least have the appointment of the road commissioners and their assistants and that the governor would find plenty of men thoroughly acquainted with the various trails that would be supplanted by the road who would do the construction work for one dollar a day more satisfactorily than men appointed by the government at the pay of three dollars a day. The bill for the road passed the house February 2, I825, and the senate on March 2, 1825, and was signed by the president and became a law on the last day of the session of the eighteenth congress. Fuller's Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan asserts that the people of the section along the Chicago route in southern Michigan received its first appreciable impulse from the establishment of the Carey mission in Berrien county and from the survey of the Chicago road. The Carey mission, which was founded under auspices of the territorial government of Michigan, attracted attention especially from Indiana and Ohio. In the wake of the civil engineers came hunters, prospectors and homeseekers. Many squatters came as a matter of course. In I829 the first lands of the section came into the market. Cass and St. Joseph counties became an early issue. At first the mission was a sort of radiation point for the extension of the frontier. Fuller relates that a pioneer of 1828 starting on horseback from 288 2HISTORIC MICHIGAN Sandusky, Ohio, waded knee deep for miles through cottonwood swamp, breaking the ice for his horse as he went, and in two weeks was able to reach the mission without meeting the sign of a single habitation. The trail from Fort Wayne to the mission was rough and dangerous. The Chicago road was not surveyed until about the time the southwestern counties received their first settlers from Ohio and Indiana and the first immigrants threaded the primitive wilderness, forded streams, waded swamps and slept in the woods. Some use of water transportation was made especially for goods by way of the Straits of Mackinac and then inland by small boats up the St. Joseph river. About- i,830 mill irons, destined for a point in Branch county, were brought from Detroit in this way. Pioneersmen's cabins were started and opened as taverns. By I830 two stage coaches weekly were running from Detroit to the southwest over the Chicago road. By i835 daily stages were operated for improvements of the road, little more than a trail, were made by the federal government in i83I-32. This section experienced, in common with the rest of the territory, a temporary check to immigration from the Black Hawk war and the cholera epidemics of i832 and i834. Before the close of i834 there were more than 9,ooo people in the section; by i837, more than 25,O00. An article by B. O. Williams, of Owosso, dealing with the survey of the state military road from Saginaw to Mackinac, read before the State Pioneer society at its annual meeting in February, i878, and embodied in the records of Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, relates the incidents and details of a survey in which he, Lieut. Benjamin Pool, of the topographical engineers' corps of the United States army, and Frederick Riggs participated in i839. Lieutenant Pool's encampment was near the Indian village of the Tittabawassee river, called Ar-be-toh-wach-e-wan. The party consisted of the lieutenant in charge, interpreter and guide, a half-breed Indian chief by the name of Ash-ton-e-quet, but more generally known as MacCouse, or Young Bear. He spoke Indian, French and English with fluency and had been employed at the suggestion of Col. Henry Whiting, of Detroit, who was the government officer under whom Pool acted. A. F. Williams, brother of B. 0. Williams, and about ten other men, mostly French Canadians, made up the party, which had been engaged in the work about a month, running the line twenty miles. MacCouse was disheartened. B. 0. Williams was prevailed upon by Lieutenant Pool to give direction to the expedition and he made up a party of thirteen, with the consent of Colonel Whiting, and the old party as such was discharged. Mr. Williams and party immediately proceeded with the survey toward the upper forks, through dense pine and fir woods to within twenty miles of the Au Sable river. The Messrs. Williams were told by Indians and traders that they would find and have to cross within the first hundred miles extensive shaking marshes that extended great distances east and west, with small tamarack in places, and where a man could shake the marsh a considerable distance around. The work was hazardous. Mr. B. 0. Williams ran the line. Each tree within three feet of EARLY ROADS 289 the line was squared on three sides and the logs were generally removed so that the six packhorses could pass with their packs of 200 pounds. Each four rods the timber was carefully noted. The party used four tents and the provisions consisted of flour, beans, pork, coffee, sugar and dried apples. Some corn was brought for the horses. The mosquitoes and gnats were intolerable and the animals suffered terribly and the only protection was dense smoke and yet that was attended by danger. After proceeding thirty miles north of the upper forks it was found that it would be necessary to secure supplies, if possible, via Lake Huron and thence up the Au Sable river, then an unknown stream, and so the commissary and a helper were sent back to Saginaw on foot to take supplies in birch or other boats. A. F. Williams was the commissary. Sixteen days after the departure of the commissary, food supplies being very low, a forced march of some miles was made to the south bank of the Au Sable river and the party encamped. Hunting was of no avail as few signs of game were seen. Some fish were pierced by wooden spears but invariably escaped because there was no fishing tackle. Occasionally a spruce hen or grouse was killed. And one sick man of the party, Mr. Sawtell, recovering from a fever, had a sharply increased appetite by the time the party reached the river. Three days after reaching the river a council was held and it was decided that Lieutenant Pool, B. O. Williams and three other men should take a roughly fashioned boat and half rations and proceed down the river in search of Commissary Williams. Seven men were left in camp with altogether about four quarts of corn, two pounds of tallow candles, a little salt and six skeleton horses. Mr. Williams told Riggs to try to keep his party together until Sunday. At noon on Tuesday the party in search of the commissary left, paddled the entire day down the tortuous windings of the river, passed the rapids, saw two deer in the river and at night were halted at the head of an enormous raft of driftwood, covering entirely the surface of the stream. The searching party had discovered signs of Indians, where they had hacked trees years before, and found at the raft they had made a portage to carry things across. Exhausted, almost sullen, the party dropped to the ground without even making a fire and slept the first night. At daylight a rifle report disclosed that the commissary party had encamped nearby the night before. The latter had been thirteen days ascending the river and made many portages. Then came the return trip together. B. O. Williams and two men agreed to make the return by land along the river and took packs of flour and pork. This was in August and hot and dry. Mr. Williams became entangled in the cedar swamp that skirted the river, found water among the roots and slept without fire. Dough, mixed in the mouth of the sack, was wound around peeled sticks and baked before the fire. Those left at camp were on the point of starvation and a "Thank God," amid tears was all that was heard. It was agreed that the survey of the road should be abandoned and that the only way to Mackinaw was in forced marches. A raft was built and all the luggage placed 1-17 290 HISTORIC MICHIGAN thereon and shoved out into the river to float down and meet the ascending party. A northwesterly direction was taken mostly over high rolling land. A blind trail was found and within a week whortleberries of great size were seen. The trail was followed, increasing in size until it brought the party to an inland lake with wide beach. It was impossible to tell whether it was a bay or lake as neither end could be seen. If it was a bay of Lake Michigan the party would have to travel east to reach Mackinaw. If it were a bay of Lake Huron they would have to proceed west. Food supplies were dangerously low. There was no time to tarry. Prints of a canoe on the white sand beach, a dog's paws and the footsteps of an Indian supplied a clue. Within a few miles, cornfields appeared and so did two aged, tall Indians. When Mr. Williams and associates told them they were from Saw-gee-nong, they unbent, shook hands, showed them where to camp and made liberal provision of potatoes, corn, fish, and pumpkins and corn fodder for the horses. It was ascertained that the body of water was a lake, called Mish-sco-to-waga-mish, literally fire water or rum lake, and that the stream that had been followed was called by the same name and that this was the most easterly of the great inland lakes, upon the Cheboygan river. About the I2th of September, Mr. Williams and brother and Mr. Riggs recrossed to the main land, explored the other two lakes upon one of which was found a large Indian village with a neat Catholic church and bell, painting and crosses. This, the most westerly lake, was then called Cheboygan. On September 22, Mr. B. O. Williams was attacked with symptoms of cholera but secured Indians to take him back to Mackinaw and obtained medical treatment at the fort. This was during the second sweep of Asiatic cholera which proved very fatal to some tribes of Indians near Mackinaw on the upper peninsula. Lieutenant Pool and party ran the line back toward the Cheboygan river, crossing above Long lake, and in October discontinued the survey until the next year. In October, B. O. Williams returned to Detroit upon a lower lake schooner, making the run in thirty hours. Upon reaching home he found his family in mourning for the loss of father. Harriet Martineau's Travels in and Around Michigan in 1836 is an interesting recital, or a sort of series of anecdotes of interest, embodied in the Michigan History Magazine VII. Harriet Martineau was an English author of French Huguenot descent, born in I802 in Norwich, England. She was one of eight children. The family was poor and by the death of the father the children were left to shift for themselves, but Harriet's uncle, who was a man of culture and considerable means, took in charge her education and under his guidance she developed literary ability that led her to attempt to make a living with her pen. She traveled in America in 1834-36, which gave her material for her charming work, Society in America, published in London and Paris in 1837, the year of Michigan's admission to the Union. The trip through Michigan was made late in June and early July. Miss Martineau and party landed in Detroit June I3, I836. At the time she remarked about the influx of strangers into Detroit and the inadequacy of places of entertainment. Riding EARLY ROADS 291 to Ypsilanti, Miss Martineau spoke of the sturdy pioneers who underwent hardships of the worst type and faced starvation to find homes in the new land of Michigan. She spoke to a settler who bought land at one dollar an acre and who in the course of a year shot Ioo deer which he sold for three dollars apiece. Every other home at Tecumseh, she said, seemed to be a chair factory. The roads were terribly rough, in fact deplorable, and at places impassable, and the waters of the swamp splashed under the wheels, and the boughs of the trees crunched overhead. She said that Milton must have traveled in Michigan before he wrote the garden parts of "Paradise Lost". Niles at that time was a settlement on the St. Joseph river on the borders of a Potawatomi territory. Three years before Miss Martineau came it was a hamlet of three houses. A rope ferry was used to cross the St. Joseph river. Michigan City was on her itinerary. She passed on to Chicago. In her memoirs Miss Martineau discussed with keen comment the land speculation wave of those early days. Miss Martineau returned to Detroit from Chicago by boat and the writer observed that "this ship was the only place in America where I saw a prevalence of bad manners. None of us had ever before seen, in America, a disregard of women. The swearing was incessant; and the spitting such as to amaze my American companions as much as myself." This circuit of the lakes was a real feat of travel and Miss Martineau and party were warmly congratulated. XXII PIONEER LIFE PIONEER FARMING By A. C. Glidden Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XVIII, 418-42I PIONEER farming in our state is not so far away in the past but that many now in middle life have a more or less distinct remembrance of the vicissitudes attending it..1 Average soil was not of that anomalous character whose fertility kept springing up unbidden and constant and there were many surprises in store for the pioneer who came from New York or New England, prepared to practice those lessons of experience which the ruling opinions of their day had prescribed. The boundless egotism of some of these adventurous yeomen led them into many agricultural pitfalls and ludicrous disappointments. I have seen two bushels of wheat sown per acre, on a raw, unpropitious, sandy soil, with a grim determination on the part of the sower to teach the natives a practical lesson in farming. And I have seen the fuzzy product make futile attempts to form the semblance of a head-a sharp reminder that nature had some part to perform in the venture, and ought to have been consulted. There were those who insisted upon applying the rule for planting corn which a titillating couplet had clinched around their prejudices. It jingled thus: "One for the blackbird, one for the crow, One for the cutworm, and three to grow." But the appetites of blackbirds and crows had not yet become vitiated by civilization, and cutworms were not yet permanently domiciled, o that the hill of corn came up a tuft, turned pale as age advanced, yielded its quota of nubbins, and a large quantity of very excellent fodder. Corn planting was after the primitive style. The ground frequently was not harrowed, often marked out with a chain drawn back and forth, to indicate something near the relative distance apart which tradition had determined the corn rows to be. The advent of the marker, standing on its three long legs, so that stumps were no obstruction to its progress, was a long step toward that improvement in growing corn, which has not yet reached perfection altogether. Opinions differed widely as to the proper time to plant. But there was much labor expended before corn growing became possible. There was cutting brush, piling and burning logs, and then the breaking, for which all previous work was but preliminary. Holding a breaker drawn by seven yoke of oxen was no sinecure. It needed a quick judgment to decide on which side of a big oak grub PIONEER LIFE 293 the plow should go, to be most effective, and then a strong and stipple action to accomplish the purpose. Sometimes the coulter point of the plow would strike the center of a big oak root, split it, and march on triumphantly; but woe to him who made the rash attempt and failed. Upon this failure hinged multiplied catastrophes-the breaking of chains being the least. When the plow became stuck fast, and the impetus of the moving force was stopped, a second attempt was useless. Then came a tug at the handles to loosen the wedgeshape coulter, and all hands and sometimes the leading team were required to free the plow. This plow of itself will bear a short description. It was fearfully and wonderfully made. No Curtiss, Dodge or Cassady helped to fashion its curves and pitch. They were not manufactured by the carload at Albion or South Bend. From a thrifty growing white oak its beam was hewed. This had the quality both of length and strength. Its mould-board was a rough casting, massive, thick and strong. The pitch of the plow was the blacksmith's art, who made both coulter and share of steel. This share would cut through four or five inches of solid oak root, if the proper inclination and purchase were given the plow by the holder. There was a reason then for deep plowing which is not now available as an argument in its favor. The deeper the plow went in the ground the smaller were the roots of the grubs, and the easier they cut. The big A harrow with inch square teeth, drawn by two yoke of oxen, pulled out the loose grubs, and partially leveled the ground. Such new breaking was not generally fitted for the operation of a modern binder. There were roots sticking up which had to be cut when the ground was frozen to facilitate cradling the grain. After the very best job of breaking, a live grub would be left upon every square rod of ground. There is nothing now to compare with this pioneer grub. For fifty years or more its yearly growth had been burned off, and had sprouted again in the spring, which had taught it that sprouting was the natural thing to do, and never say "die". The enlargement at the surface about the tap root increased with each year's growth of sprouts, until the cap was formed, a foot or more in width, like an underground toadstool, although not so regular in shape. The whole under-surface of this cap was filled with dormant buds, that awoke into activity at once when the standing ones were cut or were burned away. Nature reasserted itself when the annual burnings had ceased, and the fittest stem survived and became the tree, or young oak, as we see them today, while the cap has rotted away. Plowing about these fast grubs was a part of pioneer farming which required some skill, and the exercise of a large amount of patience. A practical experience in plowing among fast stones was no preparation for that skillful maneuvering required here to keep the plow from grappling fast. There seemed no way of getting rid of the aboriginal stick-tights except to dig them out, but this job was easier to contemplate than to perform. The implement used for the purpose was no elegantly painted affair on wheels, with a spring seat and an umbrella. It weighed about eight pounds, and had to be swung with precision mixed with judgment to make it effective. A week's work at grubbing required the 294 HISTORIC MICHIGAN expenditure of sufficient strength and energy to perform a whole season's labor with modern appliances, and under present condition of soil. The grub-hoe has had its brief day of usefulness, but is now relegated to the unregretted oblivion of stone axes and arrow heads. The activities of farming were of a different nature in those pioneer days than we are accustomed to in the present. There was a short period between the advent of clover as a common crop for hay, and the mowing machine, when a scythe in the hands of immature strength, was an instrument of torture. The inherent desire for association among pioneer farmers was gratified by numerous bees and raisings and corn huskings. Here the almanac predictions for the weather were discussed; the effect which a short crop in the neighborhood would have upon the general markets; the durability of posts set with the top end down, with sage explanations of the philosophy which governed in the case, and diverse other extemporaneuos questions, the kernel of which was arrived at from the general average of opinion. The majority, however, were more interested in how to get a living than in how to farm it so that the soil should continue or increase its yield. The latter proposition did not assume any propositions of importance, until much of the land had begun a slow decadence of fertility. When this became a tangible truth, it had a tendency to sift out the mere livers from the real farmers; the former removing nearer the verge of civilization, and the latter beginning a serious survey of the situation. Those who remained and those who came into possession as second proprietors of the farms were the true pioneer farmers. Their efforts were purely experimental. The precedents established in other states were no sure guides to follow to win the greatest measure of success here. Their endeavors were principally failures; but from their unsuccessful attempts the farmer of today has learned much to fortify him against succeeding difficulties. We are reaping success where they harvested tribulation. May those who come after us gather richer harvests from the soil our fathers opened to the sun. "RAISINGS" AND "BEES" AMONG TIlE EARLY SETTLERS By A. D. P. Van Buren Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, V, 296-300. "THE HOOSIERS AND THE SUCKERS AND WOLVERINE FARMERS ALL KNOW THE RIGHT WAY TO CARRY UP THE CORNERS" AISINGS, logging-bees, husking-bees, quilting-bees and the many other occasions in which the word bee was used to indicate the gathering of the settlers to render gratuitous aids to some neighbor in need, originated in, and was confined to, new settlements. It was merely the voluntary union of the individual aid and strength of an entire community, to assist a settler in doing what he was unable to accomplish alone. Hence by bees the pioneers raised their houses and barns, did their PIONEER LIFE 295 logging, husked their corn, quilted their bed coverings, and enjoyed themselves in frolic and song with the girls in the evening. It was no slight task, in those days when log cabins were few and far between,.especially when they were from three to twenty miles apart, to go the rounds through the woods, to invite the neighbors to your raising or bee. It was a weary, foot-sore tramp, and often at the lone hour of midnight the latch-string would be pulled and the occupant informed that his aid would be needed the next day, at a raising-a weary tramp. But the cheering response you got at every cabin, "I'll be there to help you," sent you on your way rejoicing. Each settler was a minute man, and was ready at a moment's warning to yoke up his oxen, shoulder his ax, and start to assist his brother neighbor in need. At that early day people who lived twenty miles apart lived nearer together than many people do now who live in sight of each other. There are no distances like the unsocial and unneighborly distances. I think people of that time carried out the true Scriptural idea of "loving your neighbor as yourself." A man might have gone from "Jerusalem to Jericho" in our settlements and not have fallen among thieves; but if he had met with an accident and needed help, no one would have "passed by on the other side," but every settler would have acted the good Samaritan. Twenty miles to a neighbor? Yes, any one of the human race, any one that needed our help, or to whom we had an opportunity of doing good, was our neighbor. That is the neighbor spoken of in the tenth chapter of Luke. There was much more importance attached to Bible living forty years ago, and less noise made about Bible believing than now. Many of the first log houses were roofed with hay or grass. Then came the period of oak shakes for roofs; then oak shingles; and finally the present whitewood and pine shingle roofs. The logs were first laid up by notching in, leaving the rough ends sticking out at the corners, and when raised to the required height, they were laid in by degrees until they came to a peak at the top. This was called "cobbing up," because it was the style of a child's cob house. Shakes were put down in layers over these logs for a roof, and were held in their places by long poles laid across each layer and fastened by a peg or a withe at each end. This was the primitive style of log house architecture. Then followed the log with square corners, and rafters for laying down the roof. The floors were at first small-sized oak logs split in two, the flat side being hewed smooth; the pieces were laid round side down, and if necessary pinned at each end with oak pins. These floors were used until sawmills were erected and lumber could be procured. A stick chimney was laid up with a mixture of clay and sand for mortar, at one end of the house. This answered until brick could be obtained. The old brick fire-place was in use until the stove superseded it. The log house stood with the side to the road; a door on wooden hinges and with a wooden latch was in the center, with a window of two six-lighted seven-by-nine sashes, close by it, and a window of the same size in the opposite side of the house. Not a nail or particle 296 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of iron was in use in any part of the building, nor any sawed lumber. The glass was held in the sash by small wooden pegs. The logs had been cut eighteen by twenty-two feet for a common sized house and hauled to the spot; a neighbor may have assisted in the hauling. Potawatomies, the settler's country cousins, may be said to have been the main help in raising the first log houses in this part of the state. I know of an instance where but two white men were present at the raising, the rest being Indians. They lifted cheerfully and lustily in rolling up the logs. They also assisted much at raising in after years. Only let them know that-"Che-mo-ko-man raise wigwam, like Indian come help him," and you could count on their aid. The hands being all on the ground and everything ready, the settler superintended his own raising, or requested someone else to do, it. In either case the one who commanded the men was called the "boss". He was implicitly obeyed in all things. He gave the word and the work begun. The two side logs were laid securely in their places, and the two end logs were fitted to theirs. Four good ax-men -men who "knew how to carry up the corners"-were then selected and one placed at each of the four corners of the building to be erected. Their duty was to block off the tenons and fit their end of the log for its place. The logs were rolled up on two long skids by the united strength of the party, who pushed with hands and shoulders as long as they could, and when the log got too high for them to reach, they took stout poles with a crotch in one end, that were called "mooleys" and putting the crotches against the log they pushed it with many a "heave-o-heave" to its place on the building. Thus log after log was rolled up, and all the corners carried up true and secure, until the top log was in its place, the plates put on, the rafters erected, and the house was raised. Then some adventurous settler climbed to the top of the building; taking a bottle of whisky from his pocket, took a good "swig", swung the bottle around his head three times, threw it to the ground and named the building. Three cheers were given by the party and the raising was over. The old brown jug of whisky was passed about freely at the raisings and the bees, to all who wished to drink. Much care was necessary in regard to offering whisky to the Indians; they were inclined to drink too much. Sidney Sweet was the first man in our settlement who attempted to raise a building without the aid of whisky. He made two trials and failed. Some of the jolly settlers had declared he could not raise his barn without whisky. But he gave an extended invitation the third time, and appealed to the lovers of temperance throughout the entire region, including all Climax. It was the largest gathering I ever attended of the kind; the best men on Climax and the district east of it were there. The building went up with a will. Mr. Sweet treated his help each time to hot coffee, biscuits and doughnuts. This was a victory over the habit of having whisky at raisings. It gave encouragement to others. and soon it was as easy to raise a building without whisky as it had been with it. PIONEER LIFE 297 What an incalculable amount of valuable timber in this country has been cut down, logged up and burned to ashes l There appeared to be no help for it. It must be cleared off and room made for the plow. They could only save for their immediate use what saw-logs, railcuts, and fire-wood they wanted; they "logged up" and burnt the rest. In the timbered lands were found the largest trees and most of them, and there the hardest blows were given in making a clearing. A logging-bee was a good place to study the difference there is in men's knowing how to work, and to drive oxen. There was your man who never hitched to a log that his cattle could not draw, and he hitched to it in such a way that they could draw it to the best advantage. While another was continually hitching to the wrong log or to the wrong end of the log. Then there was the man who, whether he drove an old or young yoke of cattle, always drove a steer team. I saw such a one fail repeatedly to make his cattle start a log, when upon Jonathan Austin's taking the whip in his hand, the cattle sprang at the word "go", and fairly ran with the log to the heap. That was a little victory, and Austin got the cheers for it. There were good ox-drivers in those days, and there were those who never could learn to drive them well. Rail-splitting was connected with clearing up land, and came in for its share of hand labor. A beetle, iron wedges, gluts and an ax were the implements used in this work. Rail-splitting was a regular employment for a certain class of men in our early settlements. Pioneers and presidents have split rails. There used to be some merit though in the number of rails one could split in a day. To cut and split one hundred rails in a day was a day's work for a common hand; and two hundred for a good hand. The wages were one dollar a hundred, and board yourself; one-half dollar, and be boarded. The rail was mostly made from oak timber, and was eleven feet long. Conrad Eberstine was accustomed to say that he and Martin and Ephraim Van Buren had cut and split rails enough in Battle Creek township to fence off Calhoun county. They split in the winter of r837 fifteen thousand rails for Noah Crittenden. and eight thousand for Edward Smith. Remnants of some of the old rail fences of that day can yet be seen in some parts of the county, though dilapidated and fast going to decay. Many settlers followed breaking up as a regular vocation, during the season, as threshers follow theirs now. The turf on the prairies and plains was the toughest, and hence there was the hardest breaking. That on the oak openings yielded much more easily to the plow. The thicker the timber the softer the soil. Three yoke of cattle for the openings and four for the prairies and plains, was the team required in breaking up. Many of the first settlers broke up their lands with two yoke of oxen because they could get no more. After the underwood grew up in the openings, on account of the annual fires not burning it down, the "breaking-up team" consisted of six or seven yoke of oxen. according to the size and thickness of the "grubs" in the land to be plowed. The first plow used by some was the old "bull plow". This was all wood, save the share and coulter. 298 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Then came the large "Livingston county plow," imported from the East. Five dollars an acre was the old price for breaking-up. Long distances were traveled after the day's work was done, to carry the share- and coulter to the blacksmith's shop to get them sharpened. Many went six, seven, and sometimes ten miles, to a blacksmith's shop. The old breaking-up plow was an institution in its day, and required a strong arm "to hold it." A man might be able to "govern men and guide the state" who would make a "poor fist of it" in holding a breaking-up plow behind seven or eight yoke of oxen, moving on in all their united strength, among grubs and stones; and around stumps and trees. The driver had a task to do in managing his team and keeping the leaves, grass and debris from clogging up before the coulter. He moved back and forward along the whole line of his team, keeping each ox in its place, while with his long beech whip he touches up the laggard ox, or tips the haunches of the off wheel ox and the head, of the nigh one to "haw them in" while passing by a stump or tree. Then he cracks his whip over their heads, and the long team straighten out and bend down to their work, while the bows creaked in the yokes, the connecting chains tighten with a metallic ring, the gauged wheel rumbles and groans at the end of the plow-beam, the sharp projecting coulter cuts open the turf the proper depth, the broad share cleaves the bottom, and the furrow thus loosened, rises against the smooth, flaring mould-board that turns it over with a whirling, rippling sound. Husking-bees with the pioneers were not of the old "down east" kind, where the boys and girls both attended them. The settlers and their sons only attended. They were occasions of rare enjoyment besides being of value to the parties giving them. Sometimes the heap of corn would be divided into two parts or marked off into two parts, and parties chosen to husk against each other. This gave occasion to much strife and many a well contested race. Then again the time would be enlivened by someone singing a song. Those were the days of songs and song-singing. Another source of enjoyment at husking-bees was story-telling. This was a good occasion for cultivating the faculty of narration, and of imparting pleasure and information to others. As we had few books to tead, we related over what we had read, and thus became books to each other. THE OLD LOG HOUSE By L. D. Watkins Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXVI, 644-646 T HE old time log house was the typical modern house of the early settlers. Porch in front and huge rain-trough reaching along the entire end of the house. The latch-string served a double purpose-to open the door and to fasten it shut at night, or when desired. All that was necessary was to pull it through from the inside, and the great wooden latch did the rest. Hence, when the door was not fastened, was inaugurated the old saying, "The latchstring is out," PIONEER LIFE 299 These log houses were built just high enough for a bed to stand along the side of the chamber, and so near was the sleeper to the roof that he could easily touch the "shakes" (long shingles) with the hand without rising. Early settlers will remember the tremendous clatter of a rainstorm upon these "shakes," or the snow sifting through the roof, sometimes in such quantity that in the morning there would be an inch or two all over the chamber floor and bed. The only safe place to deposit our clothing was under the bed. It would be hard to make people realize the delight in making a toilet in a room the temperature of which is near zero, and the putting on of clothing filled with sifted snow. Still more vivid will be the recollection of the lower story with its great stick chimney built of split sticks laid up cob-house fashion, plastered with clay on both sides; a fire back was built of undressed field stones, against which a great log was placed, "the back log," with a smaller log in front, "the fore-stick." Between these smaller wood was piled. At night the remnants of the logs were covered with ashes to keep the fire over night. In the olden time, neighbors borrowed of each other in case their fire went out over night. This was before matches were invented. In one corner, pinned to the wall, was a ladder to climb to the chamber above. A partition was made across the end opposite the fire; this was again divided and one-half used for a bed-called a bed-sink-the other part for a pantry. The bed-sink referred to was simply a space in the board partition the length of the bed and was closed by curtains from the one main room. It was in this little space that there was often found the bedstead with one post only. This bedstead was a great puzzle to the uninitiated; letters to their old eastern homes often told how impossible it was to get furniture (in fact, there was none to sell or buy) and that they slept upon a bedstead having but one post. This was true. It was made by boring holes in the logs, at a suitable height for a bed, in a corner of the house, the side pieces were fitted, one end to these holes and the other to the straight post, making a one-post bedstead. The overhanging roof, making a rustic porch, was often omitted, though a luxury. There was still a lower story in the old log house, the only entrance to which was by a trap-door formed by sawing a section about three feet square from the floor, that was formed into a door which was made to swing upward by a strap or ring. A ladder instead of stairs gave access to the cellar bottom which was a square hole under the center of the house, far enough from the outer walls to be safe from caving, as there were no walls under the house or around the cellar. I In this cellar was stored the vegetables for winter, the housewife's crocks of butter, lard, jars of wild honey and fruit, and in one corer stood, high above all others, that king of kings, the old-time pork barrel. Even in the villages there was no such thing as a meat market known; but the pork barrel reigned supreme. From its briny depths came the crisp and savory accompaniment of every morning meal and dinner of baked beans and boiled vegetables. It seems to me that there was never a more delicious dish served than the buck 300 HISTORIC MICHIGAN wheat griddle-cakes, garnished with pork gravy, having the rich savory taste of the hickory nut, beech nut and sweet acorn which formed the fattening food from which the winter pork was made in pioneer days. WHAT THE PIONEERS ATE AND HOW THEY FARED-MICHIGAN FOOD AND COOKERY IN THE EARLY DAYS By A. D. P. Van Buren Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, V, 293-296 THE log house of the pioneer with its plain furnishing and its old-fashioned fireplace was a comfortable and cheerful abode. I am sorry that the old fireplace has gone out of use. It contributed much to the health and happiness of the old settler's home, much more than the modern stove does to our modern homes. The settler, after a hard day's work, seated with his family around his glowing ingle, with an abundance of wood in the corner, enjoyed the luxury of his magnificent fires. There is an art in building a good fire; it was cultivated to a great degree of perfection in the olden time. It appears to be one of the lost arts now, as the dull and cheerless stove has banished it from the household. It belonged to the old fireside, where it was kept in constant practice in laying down aright the backlog and fore-stick, and building thereon, with small wood, in so secure and artful a manner, that with a little kindling the fire could be started and give out the most heat and light to the household. For lights in the evening. if the fire was too dull, some fat was put in a saucer, a piece of pork was sometimes fried for that purpose, a rag was twisted for a wick and then coiled about in the grease, one end being left out on the edge of the saucer. This was lighted. Sometimes a button was tied up in a rag, the top part of which was twisted into a wick, and was put into the grease in the saucer and the end lighted. This was our evening taper. But beef and pork were often scarce. and tallow or grease of any kind could not be had. There were no pine trees in this region, hence pine knots could not be found. But in their stead we gathered the bark from the shagbark walnut tree, and when we needed light. pieces of this bark were thrown on the fire. This created a bright blaze that was nearly equal. and full as lasting, as that from the pine knots. The old iron crane. tricked off with its various sized pot-hooks and links of chain. swung from the jams at the will of the housewife, who hung on it the kettles containing the meal to be cooked for the family, and pushed it back over the fire where the kettles hung till the meal was prepared for the table. Pigs, chickens and spare-ribs were roasted splendidly by suspending them by a wire before the fire. The baking was mostly done in the old brick oven that was built in one side of the chimney, with a door opening into the room. The old iron covered bake kettle sat in the corner under the cupboard, and was used for the various baking purposes. Many will remember the much used "tin reflector" that was placed before the fire to bake PIONEER LIFE 301 bread and cakes, and how finely it baked the Pink-eye and Meshanic potatoes. The settler's daily fare, from a lack of abundance and variety in his larder, was necessarily frugal. The provision in store was wheat, corn, pork and potatoes. There was no fruit save the wild plums and the various berries that grew in the woods and lowlands. The bill of fare for the table was bread, pork and potatoes. Pork, as we have said, was often very scarce, families often going without meat, save the wild game they killed, for a whole season at a time. Salt was also often very scarce; at one time it was twenty-one dollars per barrel. Thomas Kewney's family went without a particle in their house for six months. We were told when we first came to this state that we would get the "Michigan appetite" after we had lived here a short time. We found this to be true. And when it did come, which was during the first year, it was ravenous. With this appetite pork and potatoes were dainties. We relished them, as such, for a good square meal; and when we got through with that, we had only to reverse the order and eat potatoes and pork for the richest dessert -such was the keenness and relishing power of our appetites. Mrs. Thomas Kewney and her daughter Ann, afterwards Mrs. Stevenson, came to visit us one afternoon. My mother was really puzzled to know what to get for supper, for we had no bread in the house, nor anything of which to make it; but like a good housewife she was fruitful in expedients. Looking over her store she found about two quarts of wheat, which she requested me to grind in the pepper-mill. This I did. She then took the unbolted flour, and of it made a shortcake for her company. We had an amusing time at table over our frugal repast. Tea, coffee, sugar and butter were rarely seen on the settler's table. An herb called the tea-weed, a kind of wild Bohea that grew in the woods, was used by some of the settlers. The leaves were steeped like our imported teas and the decoction was drunk. But it was soon abandoned when the green or black teas could be had again. Crust coffee, or a coffee made from wheat or other grains browned, was in common use for drink at table. Tea-pots were ransacked and old teagrounds were saved by the girls for the purpose of having their fortunes told by some of the older matrons, who knew something of the art of divination. The usual meal consisted of a platter of boiled potatoes, piled up steaming hot and placed on the center of the table; bread of Johnny-cake; perhaps some meat boiled or fried; and an article largely partaken of was a bowl of flour gravy, looking like starch and made something like it, of flour and water, with a little salt, and sometimes it was enriched by a little gravy from a piece of fried meat. This was the meal; and it was eaten and relished more than the sumptuous meals on many of our tables now-a-days. The table was, at any rate, swept of all the edibles on it. Nothing but the dishes was left after a meal. The dog, the pigs and the chickens fared slim. "Tell me what a people eat and I will tell you their morals." The old pioneer bill of fare was simple and wholesome, its morals can easily be deduced. What shall we say of the modern 302 HISTORIC MICHIGAN bill of fare? There have been various reasons adduced as to the cause of this appetite. To me there has ever been but one good cause, that is-hunger. We seldom got enough to eat, and hence were always hungry and ready to eat. "Quit eating while you are hungry," the health reformers say. We carried out the letter and spirit of this rule, and will vouch for its producing a splendid appetite. It was called the Michigan appetite, as though it was aboriginal and belonged to this state. Perhaps it did, and originated with the Indians. The first settlers may be said to have fared like the Indians for the first year or two after they pitched their tents here, and hence got their appetites and a little more; for, as the rude phrase had it, the pioneers were usually hungry enough to eat a "biled Indian." We had no cases of dyspepsia-our digestion was as sound as our sleep. The dyspepsia was with the rich and dainty dishes east. One Sabbath morning I was at home alone. The rest of the family had gone to hear Rev. Levi Vedder preach in the log school-house by Dea. Case's. Always hungry, as soon as I found myself alone I bethought me of getting something to eat. Luckily I found some flour, lard and salt. I was delighted and went to work to make a short-cake. I had seen my mother and sister make this cake often enough to have learned, as I thought, to make one myself. So, rolling up my sleeves, I went to work. I mixed up the flour and water awhile, then put in the "shortening" and added a little salt, and then kneaded and kneaded it with my fists till I considered it ready for the spider. But had you seen my hands! Didn't the dough Stick-stick-stick, To fingers and knuckles and palm; Stick-stick-stick, To palm and knuckles and fingers? It hung in strings from my hands, and just as I rolled out my cake and put it in the spider and placed that over some live coals to have the bottom bake, I heard a rap at the door. Frightened, and with the dough stringing from my hand, I opened the door, when Uriah Herson-a settler's son-presented himself with the accustomed "good morning," and offered me his gloved hand. I did not accept it, but rather confusedly excused myself by saying my hands were too doughy, as I had been mixing up feed for the chickens. He smiled and said he had come to see the young folks. I informed him they had all gone to attend meeting in the Dea. Case school-house. I, during this time, tried to fill up the gap in the door, that he might not see within. But just then I heard the yelp-yelp-yelp! of a chicken. Looking around I saw a two-thirds grown rooster with both feet stuck fast in the middle of my short-cake in the spider; the dough had softened by the heat and let his feet down to the bottom of the spider, and there he stood with extended wings, bill full of sticky dough, yelping away like murder. Uri glanced in at the fireplace and took in the vkhole situation. As I heard the first yelp, I told him the folks had just gone and he could soon overtake them. He said he guessed he would go to meeting also, and went off laughing at my chicken PIONEER LIFE 303 pie. He gone, I hastily turned to the spider, seized that chicken by his neck, and jerked him out of my short-cake, the middle part of it coming up with his feet. I pushed this down with one hand and pulling him out, ran to the door, and wringing him by the neck by way of revenge, threw him to the ground and went back to my poor shortcake. I took a case-knife and cut out the middle part that was spoiled, smoothed the rest into shape, and put it to baking again. As I went to the door to throw out the rejected dough, there was another act in this drama going on. The entire brood of hens and chickens were crowding around and over that rooster, picking the dough off his feet and legs. They had nearly gobbled him up. I drove them away in sheer pity for the poor thing. His feet and legs were bleeding, and as he got up to walk he hobbled awfully on his clumsy, half-baked feet. As I returned to the house the greedy, hungry brood immediately ran to him again, and chased him about the door-yard, picking at his legs and feet. Once more by the fireside, I watched the baking of the cake. The bottom done, I set up the spider for the top to bake. This done, I made a square meal on that short-cake. Appetite always keen, but now heightened as stolen apples are sweetest, I relished the cake exceedingly. There was none of it left to turn evidence against me. This adventure remained a secret for a long time. It finally got out. Uri, no doubt, found it too good to keep, and related it to some friend. I then gave to our family my entire transactions that Sunday morning-mixing up feed for chickens. THE FROLICS OF FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO By A. D. P. Van Buren Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, V, 304-309 LABOR is the price we pay for whatever is good in this life. The only true luxury we have is that which is produced by the result of needful toil. And that class, endeavoring to find true pleasure and happiness in this world without labor, is following a well-o'the-wisp that will cheat at last. Labor regulates life, promotes health, secures happiness, makes men honest and virtuous and keeps them so. The thefts, crimes and villainies of life are committed mostly by men who avoid work. All men labored in our new settlements. Hence we had so few bad men. The rule was, those who came here must work to support themselves. Few could, and none wished to, support anyone in idleness. The first cheat was the man who shirked labor, for as he did not work for a living, he must needs get it by stealing the products of somebody else's labor. There is no truer saying in our language than that, "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." And our language contains no truer saying than the converse of this-"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Work is only half the question. Rest and amusement is the other 304 HISTORIC MICHIGAN half. And this brings us to our subject-amusement among the early settlers. That mankind must have recreation of some kind is conceded. It seems to come as naturally as relaxation after labor, and you might as well attempt to argue away relaxation as a desire for amusements. It will come, you may put it off for a while, but it will eventually steal in, "like dozes in sermon time." There were no members of the early settlement who felt too indifferent or too dignified to attend the social parties that were held in the settlers' log houses. But what were these parties, you ask. I will tell you. In the first place, there was the quilting frolic; the girls attending in the afternoon, the boys coming in the evening. Then there was the frolic without the quilting, which the girls and boys attended in the evening. The sport in both of these parties was usually begun by the play of "snap and catch 'em," or some rhyming catch, as "Come, Philander, let's be a-marching, Everyone his true love searching;" with other plays following; the programme being varied to suit the company. These parties were often called "bussing bees," because the kiss so often stole in during the various acts of the play, while every play was sure to end with a kiss. The music in these frolics was all vocal, consisting of marches, songs, catches, or rhymes improvised for the occasion. Besides these, there was the frolic that began with the play and ended with the fiddle's "Putting life and mettle in their heels." As a usual thing all in the house were participants in these amusements. The old folks, or perhaps the dignified maiden aunt, would now and then be "snapped up," or judged to kiss, or be kissed by some young man or young lady, as the case might be. "Snapping up" meant the snapping -of the fingers, by a frolicker, at some of the company, and was a challenge for the person to chase and catch him or her. This brought out the swift-footed Mercuries or Atlantas to the arena, where one chased the other around a group standing in the center of the room. This often resulted in a well contested race, which was varied by all manner of subterfuge and art, in dodging and eluding the pursuer. The young lady, whether the capturer or captured, was always kissed. Sometimes an old settler "snapped up" his wife, or was "snapped up" by her, when we would have a race of an unusually amusing character. We said that all participated in these recreations. Those who lived in the village of Battle Creek knew but little of these frolics, unless they chanced to be at a settler's house on one of these occasions. There were also families who had no children, or none old enough to go into young company, and there were some who did not object to the plays, but did not like the dancing. They could tolerate Paginini, but not with his fiddle. We remember instances where the plays had gone on until the parents retired for the night, and then the PIONEER LIFE 305 fiddler who had "smuggled" in his "Cremona" opened his magical box and took out the "little wizard". Instantly a sensation of Terpsichorean delight seizes the frolickers. A few passes of the bow across the strings call out couple after couple to the floor, who bow gracefully to each other, as they take their position in two opposite lines across the room. In the meanwhile"In shirt of check and tallowed hair, The fiddler sits in his bullrush chair Like Moses' basket standing there On the brink of the Father Nile. "He feels his fiddle's slender neck, Picks out the notes with thumb and check, And times the tune with nod and beck, And thinks it a weary while. "All ready! Now he gives the call, Cries, 'Honor to the ladies!' all, The jolly tides of laughter fall And ebb in a happy smile. "'Begin!' D-o-w-n goes the bow on every string, 'First couple join right hands and swing!' As light as any blue-bird's wing, 'Swing once and half way round.' "Whirls Mary Martin, all in blueCalico gown and stockings new, And tinted eyes that tell you true, Dance all to the dancing sound. "She flits about big Moses Brown, Who holds her hands to keep her down, And thinks her hair a golden crown, And his heart turns over once! "His cheeks with Mary's breath are wet, It gives a second somerset, He means to win the maiden yet; Alas for the awkward duncel "Now the first pair dance apart, Then 'Forward six!' advance, retreat, Like midgets gay in Sun-beam street, 'Tis Money Musk in busy feet, And the Money Musk by heart I "'Three quarters 'round your partner swing,' 'Across the set!' the rafters ring, And boys and girls have taken wing, And have brought their roses out. 1-18 306 HISTORIC MICHIGAN "'Tis 'Forward six!' with rustic grace, Ah, rarer fun than 'swing to place ' Than golden clouds of old point lace, They bring the dance about. "Then clasping hands all-'Right and left 1' All swiftly weave the measure deft Across the room in loving weft, And the Money Musk is done. "Oh, dancers of the rustling busk. Good-night, sweethearts, 'tis growin' dusk, Good-night for aye to Money Musk, For the heavy march begun." The ox team, that was dignified with the name of "horned horses," carried the merry loads through the woods to the house of the settler who gave the party. We can recall instances where a prayer meeting was held in a log house one evening, and on the next evening a party was given in the same house. The same ones who composed the choir and sang "Old Hundred," "Come ye sinners, poor and needy," or, "Awake my soul to joyful lays," at the prayer meeting, led the next night at the party in"Come, Philander, let's be a-marching." Looking back upon these scenes from today's standpoint, we might feel inclined to be censorious and call them frivolous, silly recreations, if not morally wrong. Distance doesn't lend any enchantmeent to them. But we can look back upon the past and find a good many things done forty years ago that appear like nonsense to us now which were not so to the people of that day. They were harmless recreations, and under like circumstances would be so today. After the customary conversation and chitchat were over, the program for an evening party sometimes began in this way: A young man would ask a young lady to take his arm, and they would begin marching around the room; another couple, and another followed, till a full set were promenading two and two about the floor, each chiming in the catch which the first couple commenced singing as they took the floor: "We're all a-marching to Quebec; The drums are loudly beating, The Americans have gained the day, And the British are retreating; The wars are o'er, and we'll turn back To the place from whence we started; So open the ring and choose a couple in To relieve the broken hearted." Round and round the room they marched singing, till they came to "Open the ring and choose a couple in," when they took hold of each others' hands, fell hack and formed a PIONEER LIFE 307 circle around the entire room. Someone was then deputed to go into the ring and choose a partner from among those of the circle, at which all chimed in. "Green grow the rushes, 0! Kiss her quick and let her go! But don't you muss her ruffle,!" When the marching was over and the company felt inclined to change the play, they would take hold of hands and form a circle about the room. Then, by request, a young lady would step into the middle of the ring, when the company would sing: "There's a rose in the garden For you, young man, (repeat) Now pluck up courage and Pick it if you can." She then selects a partner from the circle, who walks into the ring with her, and all sing: "Green grow the rushes, 0, Kiss her quick and let her go," etc. He obeys and she goes out of the ring leaving him in alone. Then perhaps the rest would sing: "There he stands, that great big booby, Who he is I do not know, Who will take him for his beauty, Let her answer, yes or no." He then selects a young lady from the circle, they chant: "Green grow the rushes, 0," etc. He kisses her and goes out. Thus the play goes on until all of the girls are kissed out of the ring. At another time the frolickers marched two by two around the room, a young man standing in the center of the floor, while they promenaded about him and sang: "The miller he lived close by the mill, And the wheel went round without his will; With a hand in the hopper and one in the bag, As the wheel goes round he cries out, grab." At the word "grab" the young man in the ring seized hold of a young lady's arm, while her partner caught the arm of the young lady ahead of him, and her partner seized the arm of the young lady still ahead of him; thus they caught or stole each others' girls while hurriedly marching about the room, making a very lively and amusing confusion. When the change was made, perhaps some two or three times over, there was still an odd one left, who went into the ring, and the play began again, and was repeated as often as they desired. When the party wished something still livelier, "hurly-burly" 308 HISTORIC MICHIGAN never failed to awaken and amuse the dullest. In this, two went around and gave each one, secretly, something to do. For instance, this girl was to pull some young man's hair; another was to pull a nose or tweak an ear, or trip someone; such a young man was to measure off so many yards of tape, or make "a double-and-twisted lordy-massy" with some young lady, and so on to the end of the chapter. When all had been told what to do, the master of ceremonies cried out, "hurly-burly!" Everyone sprang to the floor and hastened to do as they had been instructed. This created a scene of a mixed and ludicrous character and was most properly named "hurly-burly." As we have said, the drones stayed east. None but the working bees came to this new hive of industry in the west. Hence the class of young men and young ladies were first in point of worth and industry. Old Gran'ther Morehouse, father to Aaron and Bradley Morehouse, was sometimes the musician at parties at my father's house when the violin was called into requisition. He was a fine old gentleman of the school of the first half of this century-tall and dignified in person, yet so affable and genial in manner that everybody liked him and felt at home in his presence. He was an old man then; his gray locks and wrinkled face indicated the grandfather; yet when he took the violin, there was all the graceful ease and skill in handling the bow for which he was celebrated in his younger days. He could yet evoke weird strains from his favorite instrument. 'Tis said he purchased his violin at Montreal in I8oo; that its trade mark was i6oo, and that it was made at Innspruck in the Tyrol, by Jacob Steiner, who learned his trade at Cremona in Italy. This instrument is now owned by Wm. Neale of Battle Creek. We knew nothing of the history of this violin then, but we knew that Gran'ther Morehouse could give "Zip Coon," "Money Musk," and all the favorite tunes of that day to the delight of everybody, on the instrument that he handled. Daniel Angell also "handled the fiddle and the bow" at these frolics. The Halladay boys-both "Mat" and "Cal"-were also much in vogue as fiddlers on these occasions. These parties were not only a source of amusement, but afforded an occasion for the young folks to get acquainted with each other. They were really a kind of social school to the young people in the settlement. We had no churches, and no preaching, save an occasional sermon in a settler's house, by some wandering minister; there were no newspapers, few books, no public lectures, or any public meetings for entertainment or instruction. There was a dearth of social and intellectual culture. These parties were the first phase of social entertainment and improvement. They were for that period highly enjoyable. All were neighbors and true friends-a community of first brotherhood or genuine Alphadelphians. There were no purseproud families. They all lived in log houses and were bound to each other by bonds made strong by continued acts of neighborly kindness. Pride of dress was in its healthy normal state. The "ten dollar boots" and the "hundred dollar bonnets" had not got into the new settlement; neither had "Mrs. Lofty, with her carriage, and dapple grays to draw PIONEER LIFE 309 it." Neither had Mrs. Grundy pulled the latch string at the door of a single log cabin in the settlement. She with all her kith and kin were east. Neither had the "fashions" got in among us. It was fashionable then to live within your means, and the best suit of clothes you could afford to wear was the fashionable one. People lived by the maxim: "Earn what you get and pay as you go." All classes worked for a living and thrived. Wealth and its handmaid, leisure, were not here to create distinctions. Aristocracy, which is said to be the offspring of wealth, was not in these regions. Yet in the true sense, every settler was an aristocrat-one of the true nobility, who had earned his title by useful toil in the noble school of labor. THE FEVER AND AGUE-"MICHIGAN RASH"-MoSQUITOES-THE OLD PIONEERS' FOES By A. D. P. Van Buren Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, V, 300-304 "And on every day there, as sure as day would break, Their neighbor 'Ager' came that way, inviting them to shake." W E could always tell when the ague was coming on, by the premonitory symptoms-the yawnings and stretchings; and if the person understood the complaint, he would look at his finger nails to see if they were turning blue. No disease foretold its coming by such unerring signs as the "fever'n ager." The adept could detect its approach before it got within ten rods of him. At first the yawns and stretchings stole upon you so naturally that for a time you felt good in giving way to them; but they were soon followed by cold sensations, that crept over your system in streaks, faster and faster, and grew colder and colder as in successive undulations they coursed down your back, till you felt like "a harp of a thousand strings," played upon by the icy fingers of old Hiems, whp increased the cold chills until his victim shook like an aspen leaf, and his teeth chattered in his jaws. There you laid shaking in the frigid ague region for an hour or so until you gradually stole back to a temperate zone. Then commenced the warm flashes over your system, which increased with heat as the former did with cold, until you reached the torrid region, where you lay in burning heat, racked with pain in your head and along your back for an hour or so, when you began by degrees to feel less heat and pain, until your hands grew moist, and you were relieved by a copious perspiration all over your body, and you got to your natural feeling again. Getting back to your normal condition, you felt relieved and happy, and as you went out of doors everything about you was pleasant and smiling, and you seemed to be walking in a brighter and happier world. This disease delighted in extremes; it reveled in antithesis-in torturing the victim with intensest cold, then with burning heat. Among the various reasons adduced as the cause of this complaint, was this: we got it during the miasmatic period, which began with our first attempt to subdue this wild region, and lasted until cultivation did away with the miasma. 310 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The ague was supposed to be the first disease to attack a man in a new country. At any rate the early settlers found it lying about idle, like the Indians. The latter, 'twas said, never had it; it seemed to have a penchant for a white man.2 I have often thought I would like to see an Indian have a genuine old settler's shake of the ague. If anything would tame him it would be that. It would shake all the whoop, if not all the Indian, out of him. The first question asked a settler, after he had been here a short time was: "Have you had the ague yet?" If answered in the negative, the reply would be, "Well, you will have it; everybody has it before they've been here long." As if the "fever'n ager" was the initiatory process to citizenship in this state. Anson Mapes and my brother Martin were the last ones in our settlement who had the fever and ague. They had escaped it so long that they began to boast that they would not have it at all. If it delayed it was to come with greater severity; for when they did have it, it almost shook them to death. When Martin was attacked he shook so that the dishes rattled on the shelves against the log wall. No one was ever supposed to die with the ague. It was not considered a sickness, but a sort of preface or prelude to disease. "He ain't sick, he's only got the ager," was a common expression among the settlers. With many it renovated the system and they had better health after it. The doctors could not ward it off or cure it. There was no quinine here then; in fact there was no remedy known — t was "A disease no hellebore could cure." The prevailing opinion was, that we must have it until we wore it out; and most of us did. There were various remedies tried, but none cured you. Some were simple, some whimsical and funny. Some would say, "when you feel a shake coming on, start and run; and thus run away from it." This remedy was tried; the ague always beat in such a race. Others would work right through the "shake," fever and all;8 but the next day "the shoe was on the other foot," they had all the work they wanted in attending to an extra shake and fever. I remember I once tried the following remedy, which was said to be a sure cure: I was to pare all my finger and toe nails, wrap the parings in tissue paper, then bore a hole in a maple tree, put in the nails and plug up the hole. I did this and distinctly remember that afterwards, I was put through the entire gamut of this disease"From Greenland's icy mountains, To India's burning strand," for four or five successive seasons. A decoction of "culver root" was used as a kind of cholagogue by many, but it did not cure the disease. The complaint had several phases. Some had it every day, some every other day. As it began with you, so it continued. It opened the account with you at such an hour on such a day, and then put in its appearance a little later every day or every other day, until your morning shake was changed to one at sunset or midnight. The cold sensation or shake increased in severity until it culminated in shaking PIONEER LIFE 311 the life nearly out of you; then by degrees the cold chills waxed and waned perceptibly less, until they left you. The "fits" came so regular that the settler made his calculations by them. His calendar was divided into well days and ague days. The minister made his appointments to preach so as to accommodate his "shakes". The justice of the peace entered the suit on his docket to avoid the sick day of the party, or his own. The constable watched the well day of the witness to get him into court; and the lawyer adjourned his case to avoid his ague day. The housewife regulated her affairs by it; she would do up her work, and sit and wait for the ague, as for a visitor to come. And the pioneer gallant went sparking on his well night, and then he sometimes found his Dulcinea sitting up with the "fever'n ager." It would seem that this complaint was about worn out or broken up by the old settlers, for the ague of today is no more like that of the olden time, than the old, broken down man is like the one in robust manhood. Among the troublesome enemies of the settler there was one that in the parlance of the day was called the Michigan rash. It was thus named because it was supposed to be indigenous to this part of the country. Some observing philanthropist has said that all the comfort a poor man took in this life was to scratch himself when he itched. According to that statement there was a happy period in the early settlement of this state, for the pioneers did a great deal of scratching. The settlers used much modesty in referring to this cutaneous disease, calling it a "breaking out," an "impurity of the blood," a "rash," and so on, while perhaps the person giving it those mild names was really putting into practice the old, peculiar manner of scratching that used to belong to something worse than a "rash" or "breaking out". An amusing incident came under the writer's observation during this period of unpleasantness in our pioneer life. A gentleman from New York was visiting some friends in our settlement, and noticing the children scratching a great deal, asked the lady of the house the cause of it. She replied: "They have a breaking out that is called the Michigan rash." To which he answered: "Oh, you call it the Michigan rash out here; but I see the children go through with the old motions as natural as life. Don't you think, madame, that brimstone and lard would cure it?" This fair hit amused the settler's wife, while it woke her to the real gist of the matter-that they were really enjoying the full benefit of the "seven year itch," under the modest title of Michigan rash. Whole families, whole neighborhoods, would have it at the same time. It was no respecter of person, party, sex or creed; it served everybody alike. It would break out in a school and go like mischief, from pupil to pupil, and from pupil to teacher. The small scholars would "dig it out" on the spot, while the larger ones would grin and bear it, till some convenient opportunity occurred. Young men and young ladies, when in company, like whist players, avoided showing their hands. Most people had this disease as they did the ague, until they wore it out. A lack of fruit and vegetables in our diet was supposed to have something to do with the cause of the "Michigan rash." 312 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Mosquitoes, like the subject we have just treated, are a cutaneous disease. They, with the ague, the "Michigan appetite," the "Michigan rash," and the Nilehenobbies, were found indigenous to this territory. It has been claimed by some authorities that the mosquitoes were created as pests, and sent here for the purpose of compelling the settler to drain and improve the swamps, lowlands and marshes. It is most certain that nothing has been formed in vain; and as we know of no other use for mosquitoes, this must be their mission among us here. They certainly were the most numerous and pestilent in the heavy timbered lands, dense swamps and thickets, where they remained in their leafy coverts during the day. But when "twilight let her curtain down," these little recluse imps would sally out from their fastnesses, and with a flourish of trumpets, call their vast hordes together; when ruthless as the Huns and Goths, they would bear down in a furious attack upon the nearest log fortress. Having learned their mode of warfare, the nature and time of their attacks, we were accustomed to fill old pans with chips, or some light material, and kindle a fire in them, both in front and rear of the house, or wherever there was a door or opening. These fires were kept smothered so as to produce the greatest volume of smoke. This was our only defense. Mosquito bars had not been invented then. Yet our enemies would frequently, in some bold onset, break through this wall of smoke and attack us in our cabins. The smudge was then removed into the house, where we would sit enveloped in its dense clouds, with eyes suffused with tears, patiently suffering anything that would rid us of these tormentors. I have seen the log house all quiet at the close of day, not a mosquito about; but as soon as we started a smudge, that was the signal for their attacks; they "smelt the battle afar off, and shouted among their trumpeters, ha-ha " Some of the settlers would not use the smudge on that account, alleging that you discovered yourself to them by it, and hence invited their attacks. I have often gone into reflection on the subject (in their absence) of this annoyance, musing over what discontent and unhappiness these pestiferous imps could createl Coleridge says: "Beneath the rose lurks many a thorn, That breeds disastrous woe; And so dost thou, remorseless corn, On Angelina's toe." Now here was a thorn, or a nettle, that not only lurked beneath the rose, but beneath every tree, bush, and covert around us; and it was a thorn that felt like business, and went about "breeding disastrous woe." "Don't mind them," says some novice, who had never made their acquaintance; "go to sleep and let them singl" Don't mind them? They like that. Go to sleep?. What odds to them? Couldn't they murder sleep? Did they mind your slaps? Despite your blows they would light on your face, nose, ears, or neck, tame as a spot of mud. Supposing you killed one. A hundred others rushed on over the dead body of their fallen comrade to avenge his death. PIONEER LIFE 313 So small a thing to create so much trouble and misery! How often, in the evening, after the smudge had been made, would we sit and fight these little tormentors, till tired, victimized and "Weary of life, we would fly to our couch, And fling it away in battle with these Turks." PIONEER WOMEN WHO FACED THE WILDERNESS IN DAUNTLESS FAITH By Mrs. Mary Donelson Shattuck Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXV, 684-688. r HERE would have been very few men to settle this new country had there not been an equal number of pioneer women of heroic, sterling character, brave of heart and self-sacrificing natures.' Our mothers left their homes among the New England hills, where they were born and reared to womanhood, to sever all home ties, kindred associations and loving relatives, starting out for, to them, a new and strange land, not knowing whether they could find an abiding place, coming by an overland route, with little money, a few household utensils and bedding, in a covered wagon, the mother and little children riding, the father and older boys traveling on foot, stopping at nightfall to light a campfire to cook a very frugal meal and rest for another day's journey on the morrow. And so day after day passed. Perhaps one day one of the little ones, less strong than the rest, maybe the flower and pet of the flock, is taken sick and finally succumbs to disease and death and the family stops by the wayside to place the dear one in an unknown grave in a strange land. It takes much heroism for them to take up their line of march again as they leave their little one behind. Much of the sunshine has gone out of their journey. Then comes the new experience of crossing Lake Erie in the boat and the terrible agonies of sea-sickness. Arriving in Detroit the husband and father secures the title to a piece of land. Again they board the covered wagon, coming through mud and mire, over crossways or no road at all, finding their way by means of blazed trees, and after days of fatigue and trials they find their land, their desired destination. They are not seeking gold, but homes, and more land that they may have their children near them. Pioneer men clear away the forest, build the rude log house and with the gun procure the game and varied meats to keep the wolf from the door. But it is the pioneer woman who made the home and kept the love light burning around the hearthstone, furnishing the sunshine of cheerfulness with the determination of making the best of their circumstances, believing in an over-ruling Providence, grit, gumption and good common sense. The women of those times were keepers of homes, not gadding about, turning on the searchlight in seeking some great mission. They were of a frugal, industrious sort, enduring with fortitude hardships and poverty, most of them thoroughly religious. It is not always well to look back and say that 314 HISTORIC MICHIGAN former times were better than these. People were more sociable and less aristocratic. There was more friendliness between families because they were more on a par with each other. How well I remember those women with placid countenance, quiet ways, their friendliness and helpfulness in case of sickness or death in any family. In those days the women were expected for love's sake to care for the sick and administer the herb tea, and home-made remedies. No trained nurses, who work for money, and our precious dead were not given into the hands of strangers, but loving, tender, sympathetic hands robed them for their last resting place. The women of our neighborhood were good cooks, though they did not have many conveniences, and such excellent bread as was made out of real flour, and, oh! the delicious, large cream biscuits baked in a tin oven, before the fire. They were none of the baking powder sort which are about as rich as sawdust and of such small dimensions that a real hungry man could make away with one at a mouthful. I well remember the first funeral I attended, that of the first wife of Henry Meade. She was buried in a large open field on a sandy knoll, not a friendly shade tree near, but quantities of wild flowers, of the purplish blue colors, and then known by the name of sun dials or Quaker bonnets. I presume they have a more esthetic name now. She left one little boy, Delos, and he stood with his hand in that of his father, looking down, crying, wondering what was to become of his mother, little realizing how much the going away of his mother would mean to him in after life. I gathered a gleam of warm comfort to my heart as I mingled my tears with his, that I was obeying the Scripture injunction, "Weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn." There are many heroic women whose names have never been blazoned to the world and of whose history no record has been kept, but they have reproduced their noble traits of character and their sterling worth in the lives of their children. Out of our neighborhood have gone lawyers, doctors, teachers, deacons, ministers and many good wives and mothers, together with first class citizens, all because these grand, heroic women had lived to make the world of ours better. All honor and a long remembrance to the pioneer women of t West.5 XXIII DETROIT I805-I837 DETROIT IN TERRITORIAL DAYS From Fuller's Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan. Mich. Hist. Cor. Publications, University Series, I, I22-153 ALL of Detroit that was material was swept away in the fire of t I805, and it began life anew practically with the beginning of Michigan as a territory; indeed, the coming of the hew territorial officials in that year marked the dawn of American settlement in Michigan.' From 1812 to 1815 the growth of the village was seriously interrupted by war,2 and thereafter it grew slowly until the land sales of I818 attracted the settlers who were to bring the needed stimulus to agriculture, trade, commerce and manufacture. For the future convenience and appearance of Detroit the fire of I805 was doubtless fortunate.3 Acting upon advice from congress, the governor and judges4 planned a new city in which the narrow streets of the old French village were superseded by wide ave'nues.5 As a result, though the plan was later somewhat modified,6 few cities in the United States have fairer streets than those of Detroit today. Thomas McKenney, author of Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, who visited Detroit in 1826, apparently did not wholly approve of the plan. "It looks pretty on paper," he admits, "but is fanciful; and resembles one of those octagonal spider webs which you have seen on a dewy morning.7 The citizens of Detroit would do well, in my opinion, and their posterity would thank them for it, were they to reduce the network of that plan to something more practical and regular."8 And his view seems to have been shared by the editor of the Gazette, who says that "everyone regretted the plan of our city" which notne but "a wild and eccentric mind" could have evolved.9 One objection urged seems to reflect the spirit of utilitarianism accompanying the tide of immigration; the plan involved "a great waste of ground," and it could not be enjoyed "by the present generation" because the beauty of the plan depended oi compactness of buildings. A more serious objection was urged in the memorial of Detroit citizens to congress in I829 which recited the confusion of titles resulting from deeds granted by the governor and judges covering the original streets.'0 In connection with this factor in the settlement of the city there should be mentioned a serious drawback due to the composition of the streets. The soil was formed of a finely divided clay which was mixed with a black loam, and when it was saturated, as it usually was in the spring and autumn, it made a mud so adhesive and deep as to put the streets almost out of service. The mud was so bad that it is said to have been often necessary to use a horse to get from one side of the 316 HISTORIC MICHIGAN street to the other;11 there were neither pavements nor crosswalks in this period. The only means of ingress or egress to Detroit by land was along a road passing near the shore, which for a large part of the year was scarcely less muddy than the city streets. By this road in I818 the mail was supposed to arrive once a week, but it was often delayed. The importance of the mails was one of the chief incentives to the improvement not only of this, but of all roads in the territory. Prompt mail service was a source of great concern to the local newspapers, which depended upon it for eastern and foreign news; and when the issue of the papers was held over, as it often was, an editorial explanation was pretty sure to appear expressing disappointment and urging the need of better roads for the mail service. It was more than a decade, however, before there was much improvement.12 The frontier character of life in Detroit in I818 is reflected in primitive conditions on every hand. Detroit was the center of a flourishing frontier fur trade; in ordinary merchant trade the common method of exchange was barter, and the unit of value was generally a pound weight of prime beaver-skin; accounts were kept in that currency,13 largely owing to the fact that the war had made money scarce. Prices were on the whole high, especially on articles imported from the eastern states. In a local paper we read, "Since the last war, a greater price has been continually paid in Detroit for flour, beef, pork, corn, etc., than is paid in any market in the United States."'4 Tea is said to have been $3 a pound.'5 The Gazette for January 22, I820, says: "As prices are in our market, a New England farmer of common industry and enterprise could purchase one or two good farms with the avails of h;e hbra ryardv and renetale patch. o ron^e yr.1 *XAvvur-j ui.J UJ.V T ^VtIUCf LU SV1. Vl. t t J t GLC There was as little manufacture as mercantile trade. The French way of living created little need for manufactures aside from a few simple articles of domestic use. A small quantity of leather was tanned, which was marketed mainly at Montreal; the Indians furnished mats, dressed deerskins, moccasins, baskets, brooms, and some 150,000 pounds of maple sugar annually.17 A few artisans made trinkets for the Indian trade.18 The lake commerce of Detroit in I818 may be measured by the shipping belonging to that port, which amounted to nearly a third of all the Lake Erie shipping owned in the United States.19 The exports for that year were sixfold greater than the imports. Together they amounted to less than $85,000. Imports amounted to about $15,00o. The relatively large export trade probably represents furs.20 Of public utilities there were few or none. Drinking water was carried from the river in pails and kept at the houses in barrels; these barrels of water were the sole protection against fire, and were supplied with handles to expedite their use against fire in case of need.2' By an ordinance of the board of trustees in x815 each householder or renter was to provide himself with a "wooden vessel" which should hold about twenty-five gallons of water, together with a pole strong enough to sustain it;22 but even this amount of protection seems not to have been DETROIT IN 1805-1837 317 taken seriously, if we may judge from the fact that Governor Cass was fined for violating the ordinance.28 The agitation for public water works reached the stage of first experiments about 1820.24 The health of the city was endangered by public nuisances which do not seem to have been early removed. In contemporary opinion they were associated with the excessive mortality of the epidemics of cholera in 1832 and i834. The "intolerable stench" from the "green stagnant pools" and "masses of putridity" dangerous to health is deplored by the Gazette of June 22, I82I;25 however, hot much public service could be expected from an annual city revenue of only a little over $250.28 Despite these primitive conditions William Darby, who had traveled extensively, perceived in Detroit in i8i8 "all the attributes of a seaport" with "all the interior features of a flourishing and cultivated community, as much so, equivalent to numbers, as any city in the United States;'127 and in the same year the traveler Estwich Evans conceived the situation of promising for a "large and elegant city."28 Leaders of public opinion at Detroit seem to have been conscious that the year i8i8 was opening a new era for the city and the territory, as appears in the articles commenting on the rapid settlement during that year.29 It is significant that a census was taken for that year by the Detroit Lyceum, whose members were leaders in the city; it was found that Detroit contained a population, not including the garrison, or I,040, with I42 dwelling houses.30 According to the same authority, fifty-one buildings were erected during i8i8. Significant of the new spirit is a mere list of the organizations formed in 1817-I8, mainly in the latter year.8' The new spirit of enterprise was an invitation to eastern laborers and mechanics. In the autumn of i8i9 masons and carpenters received from twelve shillings to $2.25 a day, and common laborers $i a day.32 In Philadelphia men were working on turnpikes for a shilling a day, while four or five thousand people were out of regular employment; harvest laborers were working for half of their former wages. In Detroit (i82i) masons are said to have been obliged to discontinue work for lack of brickmakers.88 At least a beginning was being made by organized labor; the Detroit Mechanics' Society, incorporated in i820, appears to have come into existence at least informally in 1818.84 The tendency of the French-Canadians to regard all "Yankee innovations" with suspicion stood not a little in the way of Detroit's material progress. The elder Antoine Beaubien, it is said, forcibly resisted the surveyors who outlined the opening of the city's main thoroughfare, Jefferson avenue, through his property.85 In I832 a committee of the common council reported that Joseph Campati refused to receive the sum assessed against him for damages due to the enlarging of Griswold street.8" A New York visitor who passed through Detroit in i834 says that the French were not disposed either to sell or improve their property. To quote his comment: "Many of the farms now cross the streets of Detroit at right angles at the upper end of the town, and of course, offer on either side a dozen building lots of great value. The original owners, however, persist in occupying them with 318 HISTORIC MICHIGAN their frail wood tenements and almost valueless improvements, notwithstanding large sums are continually offered for the merest slice in the world off the end of their long-tailed patrimonies."37 Recent writers offer the apology that the French had great provocation, in the manner in which their wishes were overridden;38 a contemporary accounts for their caution by their experience in having been so many times cheated.39 The city profited much by its position at the very door of the new territory. It became a rendezvous for settlers and a clearing-house of ideas about the interior. Frequently settlers who intended to go to the interior or further west to Wisconsin and Illinois made only tentative plans until they should reach Detroit, where many were induced to settle within its limits or in its vicinity. The reaction of the agricultural settlements was soon to become a positive and strong stimulus to settlement in the city, which in turn would put new life currents circulating through the rural districts.40 Compared with the earlier days the period beginning with the land sales and the opening of steam navigation on Lake Erie showed rapid progress; but imagination could easily overdraw the picture. It was not until 1822 that a second steamboat appeared on the lakes, which on its first arrival at Detroit brought only ninety-four passengers. The land sales attracted a considerable number of settlers; but there appears to be no proof for the frequent statement that there was a great inrush of settlers from the very beginning. There were many signs of an eastern element in the population, among which was the formation of the First Protestant Society in Detroit, with about a dozen members.41 City lots near the capitol building were quoted in January, 1824, as selling at $10.I, al.dl O11 aIAVdaILC 1 4 ILUlludrIU peA Lt1L was aIltitci4ici U uuring nhe next season.42 The city boundaries were extended48 and apparently a new interest in local government is expressed in the new city charter of 1824 creating a common council.44 By a census "recently taken" which appeared in the Gazette for January 2, 1824, Detroit had a population of 1,325, exclusive of the garrison. Some five hundred people were living outside in the immediate vicinity.45 With the opening of the Erie canal evidence of new life in the city increased more rapidly and a growing consciousness of competition with other lake ports, especially with Cleveland, appears.46 Fifty-eight new buildings were erected in 1825, of which nearly one-half were two stories high.47 McKenney, whose brief epitome of Detroit for 1826 has the authority of a competent eye witness, says that "Jefferson street" was pretty well built up in that year, also the first street from the river, and the three or four cross streets, but that houses were comparatively few and scattering back of Jefferson.48 He mentions thirty stores. Mail came three times a week.49 The territorial census of I827 records 380 heads of families in the city, of whose names at least half appear to be other than French.50 In that year a growing civic consciousness appears in the report of the committee of the common council to investigate and suggest improvements of the city, and their report probably furnishes a fair estimate of the most pressing needs at that DETROIT IN 1805-1837 319 time; of some dozen suggestions the first four, considered apparently the most important, concerned the removal of disease-breeding refuse from the margin of the river, a sewer, a new fire engine, and pavement for the principal streets.51 The stimulus to this action appears to have been a desire to utilize the recent federal grant of ten thousand acres of land from the adjacent military reservation, which is mentioned as making unnecessary a tax to carry out the proposed improvements. Still one gathers the impression of a rural, though thriving, waterside village. In the statement of occupations in the census of I827, 451 people were engaged in agriculture, 46 in manufacture and 5 in commerce. It is said that in I829 a little way up Jefferson avenue a common rail fence enclosed a fine clover field. Many of the houses on this principal street appear to have been still the little whitewashed tenements of the Canadian-French, palisaded as they originally were for defense against the Indians.62 Detroit felt the full force of the rising wave of immigration in 1831. A contemporary says, "The demand for stores and dwelling houses is unprecedented. We have not been prepared to meet the exigencies arising from so rapid an increase of our numbers, and almost every building that can be made to answer for a shelter is occupied and filled."53 Buildings were in process of erection in various parts of the city. This prosperity was somewhat checked in 1832 by the Black Hawk war54 and an epidemic of cholera, but the check proved temporary.55 An editorial in the Detroit Courier for August 7 of the following year congratulates the city on its freedom from cholera when so many places in the West were suffering. A much severer visitation afflicted the city in I834 when it is said to have lost a seventh of its population;56 yet the new buildings erected that year were of such number and quality "as to give the city an air of elegance which could hardly have been anticipated a year ago."57 It is recorded that the new white buildings on avenues twenty-five yards wide gave the place the appearance of a "city of yesterday."58 Detroit is said to have had in 1834, 477 dwellings and 64 stores and warehouses, some of which were four-story buildings.59 By the official census of 1834 the population was then a little less than five thousand.60 Mail came from the East daily by steamboat and daily mails were received from various points in the interior.61 A further awakening to consciousness of the needs of the growing city is shown in a report of the finance committee of the common council in which an effort is made to introduce some order into the corporation's financial affairs.62 Detroit shared fully in the extraordinarily rapid growth of the territory in I835-37.63 Early in I835 the land office was thronged with speculators and home seekers, and more land was bought at the Detroit office in that year than in any year of the territorial period.64 The hotels and lodging places of the city were not sufficient to accommodate the press of immigrants. In 1836 when lake navigation had yet scarcely opened, a city paper comments on the necessity of many immigrants' having to stay for a time on board the boats for lack of suitable quarters in the city.65 It was estimated by contemporaries that for the seven 320 HISTORIC MICHIGAN months of open navigation, with an average of six boats arriving daily, some 200,000 people came and went through the port." The official census of 1837 gives the city a permanent population of nearly ten thousand, with upwards of thirteen hundred dwellings and stores.67 Woodward avenue was beginning to rank among the first business streets. The city was more or less densely settled for a distance of about three-quarters of a mile back from the river and for a mile along the river front.68 The new immigration gave a strong stimulus to the business of the city. A Detroit paper says, "Our city has never evinced such decided proofs of prosperity and rapid growth as it has shown the present summer and autumn;"69 and says another, "Such is the ordinary bustle of business that we forget how much we are really bound by the cold and ice of winter."70 In the autumn of I836 the amount of business seems to have been about double that of the same season the year before.71 Business conditions at the beginning of 1837 may be judged from nearly four pages of advertisements in the Detroit Daily Advertiser for the second day of the new year. A complement to this was an increase in the price of city lots and the value of adjacent property. Lots at the lower end of Jefferson avenue are said to have sold in the winter of 1835 at $150 a foot,72 while in the following summer five lots fronting on Jefferson avenue sold at auction for between $285 and $292 per foot; a corner lot on Jefferson and Cass sold for $450 a foot.78 The rising value of property in the outskirts of the city is illustrated in the prices brought by the farms of Lewis Cass and Governor Porter. The Cass farm of about 500 acres bought nineteen years before for $12,ooo, and which when offered in TR for $36, non found nn hlbyer, is said to have sold for $I68.ooo in 1835.74 Two miles below the city on the Porter farm about seventy-five acres apparently brought nearly $20,000, though only $6,000 is said to have been paid two years before for the whole farm of 350 acres.76 The business of the city was temporarily somewhat checked by the flow of money to the interior for investment, but many buyers were able to take the larger outlook for the future of the city. It was emphasized by the press. "The rage for buying land subtracts from the business of the city," admits the Detroit Daily Advertiser,76 "but accelerates the settlement of the country-for the buying mania drives on the tide of immigration. When the retarding causes we have referred to shall be removed, our city must of necessity expand all its business operations with a rapidity which we have not yet witnessed." By the close of the territorial period, from one-half to two-thirds of Detroit's trade is said to have been with the interior.77 Many merchants in the new settlement made all their purchases in the city. Ten extensive forwarding and commission houses are mentioned by Blois and MacCabe. Prices, especially of flour, appear to have risen steadily from 1835 to 1837, but a falling off ensued then owing partly to the abundant harvests on the newly settled farms of the interior.7 As to the financial panic of 1837 and its disastrous effects upon Detroit, these have been described elsewhere in their relation to the territory as a whole.7 OLD CAPITOL AT DETROIT (Mich. Hist. Colls. XXX frontispiece) This building, 60x90 feet, was built in 1823-28 at a cost of $24,500. It was first used by the Legislative Council of the Territory May 5, ]1828, and last used by the State Legislature in the session which closed March 17, 1847. After 1848 it was used by the Detroit Board of Education for school purposes. Its classical design reflects a characteristic influence of the period. I DETROIT IN 1805-1837 321 The relation of Detroit to the interior appears in the fact that all of the principal roads of the territory led to it, from St. Joseph, Niles, Kalamazoo, from Grand Rapids and Saginaw, and from beyond Michigan in Illinois and Ohio. Stages were running on all these routes by I837; daily for Sandusky, Chicago, Flint and Fort Gratiot, and triweekly for St. Joseph by the territorial road. But the roads were tortuous, muddy, and full of the stumps of newly fallen trees. Their condition in the vicinity of Detroit appears in the following newspaper comment on the price of wood, "What a strange fact that in a city surrounded by forests the price of wood should be five, six and seven dollars a cord."80 Greater facility of transportation was beginning to be sought in railroads. By the close of the period charters had been granted to many railroad companies and strap-railroads were approaching completion from Detroit to Ypsilanti and Pontiac;81 but the day of tolerably efficient service from railroads was at least a decade away. The press of immigration emphasized the need of better ferry service between Detroit and the Canada shore.82 Many immigrants and their families were obliged to remain on the Canada side for days and at great expense before they could get passage across the river.83 A natural accompanimeht of the increase of trade was the new demand for labor, especially in activities related to building. The demand for mechanics in 1835 was greater than could be met.84. A daily paper notices the recent organization of the House Carpenters and Joiners' Beneficiary Society "to promote a good understanding between the employers and employed, to prevent and adjust disputes, to promote mechanical knowledge and to provide for those members and their families who may be reduced to want by sickness, accident or other unavoidable calamity."85 The new impulse to settlement is reflected also in the growth of manufacture and commerce. Nine "extensive" factories are mentioned by Blois, the largest of which employed each about twenty men; he mentions also two breweries, of which one is credited with being the largest west of Albany.86 The increase of lake navigation and commerce in these closing years of the period impressed a contemporary as "unparalled in the history of nations.87 The lake commerce, which in 1820 was accommodated by one side-wheeler, employed in 1836 thirty steamboats, some of them running to Milwaukee and Chicago; four hundred tons of freight are said to have been carried daily.88 The material prosperity of Detroit was not without some influence on civic improvements. Following the immigrations of 1826 a loan of $50,000 was made by the city council for that purpose.89 Their attention was given first to a plan for the sewerage of the city;90 in this year the "Grand Sewer" was built.91 Next, attention was turned to the water supply. In the spring of the same year a wag appealing to the members of the temperance society proclaims that "those whose principles forbid disguising water with brandy will be constrained to drink beer," unless something be done.92 A contemporary writer attributes the epidemic of 1834 to pollution of the supply of drinking water through mismanagement by the hydraulic company,93 after some agitation the 1-19 322 HISTORIC MICHIGAN question of public ownership of the water supply was decided favorably and the works of that company were purchased by the city for $25,500.94 A fire in 1837 which is said to have destroyed fifty-six buildings, led to the improvement of the fire department.95 The streets were poorly lighted and came in for much criticism by the press. The editor of the Detroit Journal and Courier ventured that a few more street lights such as the city had would produce total darkness,96 but little seems to have been done to improve them and the mud was as deep as ever; from a pioneer's diary it is learned that "the middle of the street is so constantly stirred up by the carts that it is a sea of mud so deep that the little French ponies often get set with almost an empty cart."97 Mr. Farmer says that one day in 1851 he counted fourteen teams stalled in the mud at one time. There were still few if any pavements or crosswalks; the growing needs of street traffic secured some attention from the council to the question of pavement.98 The presence of a new population is seen in the character of the city's buildings. The low, frail French-Canadian tenements with their unpainted fronts and moss covered roofs were quite lost among the larger dwellings and shops of the eastern settlers. "In the principal street, called the Jefferson avenue," writes the English author, Mrs. Jameson, about 1837, "there are rows of large and handsome brick houses; the others are generally wood, painted white, with bright green doors and windows. * * * There are some excellent shops in the town, a theater, and a great number of taverns and gaming houses."99 The shifting and unsettled character of the new population is reflected in Blois' description of stores and dwellings built on leased lanU in suLI1 a way a ty could e easily moved. it was a common sight, he says, to see one or more buildings removing from one part of the city to another.100 But the number of permanent buildings appears to have been fairly proportionate to the resident population. The American population of Detroit in 1837 was principally from New York and New England, as was also a large majority of the officials of both the city and territory throughout the territorial period.T0' There were a few from Virginia, of whom Judge Woodward was a strong influence in the early settlement of both city and territory.102 Of the states south of Michigan, Ohio furnished the larger number; many prominent citizens of eastern birth came to Michigan from Marietta, Ohio. The negro element in the population of the city was relatively small. In 1827 it comprised sixty-six free negroes.l0~ The I26 negroes given in the census of I830 were about half the whole number in the territory.104 The census figures of I834 give 138 "colored persons," but these figures were apparently affected by the negro riot in Detroit in I833 over the attempt to enforce the fugitive slave law, which caused many of the persecuted race to flee to Canada.105 There appear to have been no slaves owned by citizens at these dates, though the earlier census of I810 shows seventeen in the territory.106 Since the ordinance of 1787 was opposed to slavery in the territory, immigration formed a strong anti DETROIT IN 1805-1837 323 slavery sentiment in Detroit, which as a molder of public opinion in Michigan became a strong force in preparing for the crisis of I86o. The proportion of foreign born citizens in the population was small; the Germans apparently composed the largest European element. Among the eight churches of the city Blois mentions a Protestant church for Germans and a Catholic church for English, Irish and Germans.'07 MacCabe mentions a German church built by subscriptions from citizens of Detroit of all denominations.108 As early as 1853 the Germans appear to have been numerous enough to form a separate religious organization, said to have been ministered to by Pastor Schmidt of Ann Arbor, and it is probable that these earliest Detroit Germans came with the wave following the European revolutions of 1830, which brought the first Germans to Washtenaw county.l09 By 1835 their voting strength seems to have been sufficient to attract the attention of politicians; at least a city newspaper announces its intention "to detail to the public the maneuvers of the central committee to buy up our German fellow citizens.""0 The French-Canadians appear to have been still a numerous class, and their language seems to have been spoken in Detroit to a considerable extent in 1837. Yet they are said to have been fast amalgamating with the predominant immigrant population.1l In 1834 they apparently numbered less than one-sixth of the population of the city, "which was a much less proportion to the whole than we had anticipated," comments a city paper.112 Their voting strength was sufficient in I823 to elect their candidate for delegate to congress, Father Richard, against the combination of two eager and experienced politicians.l3 Though in general the culture of the city had to wait upon the task of subduing nature, it was not lacking'in some circles at least even at an early day. Detroit gained socially from being the capital city of the territory; the leaders of its society were born and educated in cultured sections of the eastern states. On his visit to Detroit in 1826 McKenney wrote, "The company at Major Biddle's last night was sufficient to satisfy me that although I have reached the confines of our population in this direction, I am yet in the circle of hospitable and polished life."1l4 Hoffman in 1833 found the city "remarkable for agreeableness and elegant hospitality."115 The society of Detroit appealed to Harriet Martineau on her visit in I836 as "very choice," and she ventures to say that it had been so since the old colonial days. She found every reason to think that "under its new dignities Detroit will become a more and more desirable place to live." "Some of its inferior society," she says, "is still very youthful"6-but the most enlightened society is, I believe, equal to any which is to be found in the United States.""1 This culture was reflected institutionally in many ways, as seen for example in the works of Blois and MacCabe, where much space is given to the theater, museum, public garden, newspapers, schools, churches, orphan asylums, and to societies of a literary, historical, scientific and moral character."l8 Blois mentions a public library containing 4,I00 volumes."l9 Of "chief interest to those who regard the diffu 324 HISTORIC MICHIGAN sion of useful knowledge as important to the preservation of good morals and of liberty," is a newspaper-mention of the lyceum and a course of lectures given by Mr. Houghton.-20The lyceum, founded in i8i8. was the forum of Detroit where the leading men of the city as well as amateurs discussed and debated topics of national interest not alone for the sharpening of wits but for the edification of the people. The programs and reports of these weekly occasions show a sense for the niceties of national questions that would surprise one who should expect to find the "back-woods" giving the predominant tone to the intellectual life of the city.12' Often the newspapers'22 of the city contained verbatim copies of important congressional speeches and presidential papers. Some historical interest was shown by the formation (i829) of a historical society the character of whose work is indicated by the volume of Historical and Scientific Sketches of Michigan published in 1834 at Detroit.'28 Governor Cass was long the president and chief promoter of this society.124 The schools, though on the whole they reflected the traditions of the eastern states, had obvious frontier limitations. The classical tradition was strong, but its expression was somewhat amusing, as represented by Judge Woodward, who is said to have been chiefly responsible for the system laid down and enacted into law in 1821 for the "Catholepistemiad."'125 Yet this institution was at least a glance in the direction of the future Universitty of Michigan; it was significant for the future that its first professors were a Scotch minister and a Catholic priest.12" The classified tradition is reflected also in the English Classical School which was started in i832. In I834 an interest in female education resulted in the founding of the Ladies' Seminary. Common school education in Detroit was distinctly frontier in character until the period of statehood. The Catholic schools have been mentioned above; the Protestant schools were quite as meager, and not free as were the Catholic schools.'27 Agitation for free schools is reflected in the city papers beginning about 1833, which is the date of a number of revivals due apparently to the stimulus of immigration.128 But it was not until Michigan adopted her first constitution that the sure foundation was laid for the practical application of the famous declaration in the ordinance of 1787, that "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."'29 XXIV THE "BOY GOVERNOR" OF MICHIGAN MICHIGAN'S DEBT TO STEVENS T. MASON By Lawton T. Hemans Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXV, 244-247 T HE'debt which a commonwealth owes to any individual must ever be a question difficult of determination. The world will ever owe a debt of gratitude to that army of men and women who, deterred by no obstacles, with faith in their convictions, with courage and intelligence, do their duty. The man who, in the full view of the multitude, directs the affairs of state, has no better claim to honor and distinction than the man who, in the lower walks of life, uncheered by the shouts of the people, does his duty. Duty should ever be the claim, and duty knows no path of pre-eminence or distinction. It is not given to men to measure, with any degree of certainty, the ultimate value of actions and events. The world has seen men who have walked the earth amid a blaze of glory but who, in death, have left nothing of value to the race; it has known others who have wrought in want and obscurity to leave an influence growing brighter and more potent with the passing years. The debt which the great state of Michigan owes to the boy governor is the debt due for duty faithfully performed in the sphere where circumstances called him, and according to the light which he had. Stevens Thomson Mason was born at Leesburg, Loudoun county, Virginia, on the 27th day of October, i8i I. He died in New York City, January 4, 1843. Between these narrow limits his life was lived -the greater part of it for the state of Michigan-and yet until now nowhere has there been made a record within the state of even the place of his birth, or an acknowledgement of gratitude for the services which he rendered. The reason for this is not difficult to find. It has its origin in the political animosity which was a part of his time, and which constrained political opponents to withhold the meed of praise while time held the memory of their contests. It is a matter of congratulation that those days are passing, and that the great state of Michigan is about to bestow a deserved tribute to his memory. It was the fortune of the boy governor to be born to the heritage of a good name, to have back of him a line of men who had achieved great things for their state and nation. George Mason, as the author of the "Bill of Rights" and the first constitution of Virginia, the friend of George Washington and Patrick Henry, left a name that is still large in the old commonwealth of Virginia. His son, the grandfather of the boy governor, had served 326 HEISTORIC MICHIGAN with distinction as the first United States senator from his state, and his own father, Gen. John T. Mason, had all the characteristics of his blood. When John T. Mason closed his college days at the historic college of William and Mary, he brought Elizabeth Moyer a bride to his Loudoun county home. Stevens T. was the first son of this union, and we may well imagine the scene which was enacted in the old manor house which still stands at Raspberry Plain, when the numerous army of kinsfolk gathered to bless in baptism the name of this infant son. But little more than three years of the boy's life were to be spent upon Virginia soil. Kentucky was then the land that beckoned to the ardent spirits of old Virginia, and thither John T. Mason and his family bent their way. Before I815, he had become one of the leading figures in the business and social life of the then famed city of Lexington. For a time fortune smiled upon his efforts and he soon held a high place in the legal profession, being connected in no small way with the financial life of the community, while many a broad acre of the charming blue grass country was his. In about 1820 he became associated with others in the iron business in the vicinity of Owingsville, Bath county. In a few years business depression and failing fortune swept away the greater part of his considerable estate. The education of Michigan's future first governor had not been neglected. At first by private tutor, and later as a student in Transylvania University, his time had been well employed, but with the closing days of the twenties the young lad left his books to become the helper in the family harness. As a grocer's clerk in the then village of Mt. Sterling, although but a lad, he learned some lessons that are not taught in books. Enio-gh has olreoar-y hbee'n;said n indicate tho+ i+t was financial adversity that turned the attention of Gen. John T. Mason towards a political appointment, and which brought him to the territory of Michigan. It was to repair, if possible, his shattered fortune that he left his office of secretary of the territory and journeyed to Mexico, after first obtaining the appointment for his son, who as yet lacked some weeks of his nineteenth year. The story of the opposition that was occasioned by the appointment has passed into history. It was to the credit of the young man that, under opposition, his conduct was such that he soon won the hearts and confidence of those who were his most vigorous opposers. It was the Toledo war, of course, which gave to the boy governor his first great popularity. Fortunately only the humorous side of that bloodless struggle now remains to us, but it was a far different matter in i835. It was an issue then in which there was the most tense and earnest feeling, and no one voiced that feeling in Michigan with more zeal and fervor than did Stevens T. Mason. So insistent did he become in championing the rights of his feeble territory that President Jackson, who had been his fast friend and supporter, was constrained to remove him, and appoint a more pliable gentleman, John Horner of Virginia, in his stead. Had a man of less energy and less insistence occupied the position of chief executive of the territory, we may well THE "BOY GOVERNOR" OF MICHIGAN 327 presume that Michigan would have been admitted without the upper peninsula as a territorial compensation for the wrong she suffered. As has been already shown, aside from the refining influence of a cultured home, the educational advantages of the young governor had not been extensive. His boyhood had been passed in a state where free schools and universal education were unknown, and yet one of the greatest services of the young man to the state of his adoption was to be in the cause of free schools. He appointed John D. Pierce to the important office of superintendent of public instruction and ably championed his every effort. There is scarce a message to the legislature in which he does not urge the need of universal education. Many of them are the expression of sentiments that might well adorn the walls of every schoolroom in the land. "If our country is ever to fall from her high position before the world, the cause will be found in the ignorance of the people; if she is to remain where she now stands, with her glory undimmed, educate every child in the land." Again he says: "As the friends of civil liberty it becomes our duty to provide for the education of the rising generation. To the intelligence of those who preceded us we are indebted for our admirable system of government, and it is only upon the intelligence of those who are to come after us that we can hope for the preservation and perpetuation of that system." And yet again: "Public opinion directs the course which our government pursues; and as long as the people are enlightened that direction will never be misgiven. It becomes then our imperious duty to secure to the state a general diffusion of knowledge. This can in no wise be so certainly effected as by the perfect organization of a uniform and liberal system of common schools. Your attention is therefore called to the effectuation of a perfect school system open to all classes as the surest basis of public happiness and prosperity." He once interposed his veto in a manner to save a considerable part of the present endowment of the University. It was an institution, even in its infancy, that was strong in his affections. Speaking of it in its days of want and poverty he once said: "With fostering care this (the University) will become the pride of the great west." This prophecy of the boy governor has long since become true, and although he had left to Michigan no other token of a watchful care, his efforts for the great University of Michigan should gain for him everlasting gratitude. In the establishment of our penitentiary system, when the doctrines of vengeance were still carried out in penal institutions, Governor Mason yet wrote into the records of the state: "Common humanity forbids that we should adopt the rigid system of solitary confinement without labor, for experience has shown that the imprisonment of the offender without occupation destroys the mental faculties and soon undermines the constitution." 328 HISTORIC MICHIGAN "The reformation of the morals of the corrupt and wicked, the enlightenment of the ignorant and the employment of the idly disposed are cardinal objects not to be overlooked in your system of discipline." Governor Mason early accepted the situation which gave to Michigan the upper peninsula, and with rare foresight, his first message asked for an appropriation for the construction of a ship canal around the falls of the river Sault Ste. Marie. Work was actually begun and stopped, only because of complications with the national government, and yet, many years later Henry Clay and many men of national prominence were declaiming against the expenditure, as being upon a work beyond the farthest limits of human habitation. The procession of black funnels that now steadily pass through this great waterway is a monument to the young man who blazed the way. It is not to his discredit to say that he sometimes made mistakes, but it is to his credit to say that such as he made were never the product of a vicious design. "Tom" Mason, as he was familiarly called, never arrogated to himself the possession of superior abilities. He was a young man of spirit and pleasing personality. Although fate took him to a distant state, his continuing affection and last thought was the land of his heart beside the great lakes of the north, and the great state of Michigan has done well to place his ashes where they will mingle with the soil of her metropolis, amid the familiar scenes of his fondest hopes and aspirations. XXV MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY AND THE TOLEDO WAR - -,:.4^?.'~!By Bert Klopfer EW, if any, states of the Union have so interesting a boundary history as has Michigan.1 The flags of three nations have flown over this region and the governors of five states and three territories have claimed the right to exercise jurisdiction therein. Northern and eastern boundaries were not definitely settled until after Michigan was a state. The southern line was contested, sharply, for thirty years, and established only after civil war was threatened. The western boundary also was contested with much persistency. The French were the first Europeans to discover the Great Lakes of North America, and until after 1763 held the country bordering upon those lakes. After the seven years' war England held this rich country for twenty years. In 1783 the United States obtained title to the cou'ntry by terms of the Treaty of Paris, but for some years the region did not pass into the hands of the general government. In 1787 all the country lying east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio river was organized as the Northwest Territory, and in I8oo two territories were carved out of the one. Indiana Territory included all the country west of a line running from the mouth of the Kentucky river to Fort Recovery, and thence due north, while the country east of that line was to retain the name of the Northwest territory. The Michigan country was thus divided, one part being included with Indiana, the other in the Northwest Territory. The eastern portion was organized as Wayne county of the Northwest Territory, and the inhabitants were indignant when the state of Ohio was organized and they were not included in it. Congress, however, attached it to ITdiana Territory, and in 1803 Governor Harrison created a new Wayne county, which included almost all of what is now Michigan. This became in two years the Territory of Michigan in spite of the objections of the Indiana people. The boundaries of this new territory were the international line between the United States and Canada on the north and east; on the west a line running through the center of Lake Michigan and thence due north to the international line; on the south a line "drawn east from the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan until it intersects Lake Erie." This southern line is the one to which Ohio objected and for which in later years the chivalry and patriotism of Michigan prepared to shed its blood. The enabling act for the formation of the state of Ohio provided that its northern boundary be a line running due east and west through to the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan. The ordinance of I787 seemed to describe this as the dividing line between the northern and 330 HISTO3IC MICHIGAN southern tier of states provided congress should decide to create five states out of the Northwest Territory. On the assertion of an old hunter that the southern extreme of Lake Michigan lay much further south than the maps showed, the Ohio convention, framing its first consituation, embodied in the document the boundaries described in the enabling act with the proviso: "If the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan should extend so far south that a line drawn due east from it should not intersect Lake Erie, or if it should intersect the said Lake Erie east of the mouth of the Miami river of the lakes then * * * with the assent of the congress of the United States the northern boundary of this state shall be established by, and extend to a direct line running from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the most northerly cape of the Miami bay," thence northeast to the territorial line and along that to the Pennsylvania line. The congressional committee on the admission of Ohio refused to consider the proviso because it depended upon an unsubstantiated statement and because it was not submitted as were other propositions of the convention. Congress admitted Ohio without the proviso. In i812 congress provided for a survey of the boundary, but Indian hostility and imminent war with Great Britain caused postponement of the project for three years. The survey of an engineer, Harris, operating under the surveyor-general of Ohio, was provocative of bitterness. It was claimed that Harris had found the southern extreme of Lake Michigan to be seven miles and more south of the most northern cape of Miami bay. Another surveyor, Fulton, ran the line. While Ohio and Michigan were discussing the Harris line, Indiana was admitted with a northern boundary line running east and west through a point ten miles north of the southern extreme of Lake Michigan, thus cutting off from Michigan Territory a strip ten miles wide and one hundred miles long. The act pass unchallenged. While a congressional committee was deciding that the northern boundary should be re-marked because the Harris line was not made strictly according to law, Ohio's assembly declared the Harris line to be the northern boundary of the state. Secretary Woolbridge, of Michigan Territory, communicated with John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, suggesting that the federal government adjust the contention. In congress a bill was introduced to ascertain the latitude of the southern extreme of Lake Michigan for the purpose of fixing the boundaries of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. In i831 the Ohio assembly petitioned congress for the "speedy and permanent establishment" of the dividing line. The legislative council of Michigan Territory authorized the governor to negotiate with Ohio cession of the territory in dispute east of the Maumee river and the acceptance by Michigan of the land west of said stream. The attempt was vain. By 1833 the situation was tense. Localism and the conception of state's rights virtually challenged the power of the federal government. The people of Michigan and Ohio assumed a formidable attitude. To give Ohio and Indiana a part of what had once been included in their territory, the Michigan people thought comparable to partitioning MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY 331 Poland among the European powers. Michigan called upon Virginia and other ceding states to insist, as grattors, upon the fulfillment of the contract of I787. On December I, I833, Lucius Lyon presented the first formal petition for the admission of Michigan. The attempt failed. When the Ohio boundary bill was introduced the delegates from Michigan wished to refer it to the judiciary committee instead of to the committee on territories. Michigan secured the committee, but Ohio the verdict. The committee reported a bill establishing the boundary as proposed in the Ohio constitution. Commercial and political forces were opposed to Michigan, and when the second attempt was made to secure permission to form a state, Michigan people determined to go on without permission. In January, 1835, the legislative council called a convention to meet the following May to form "for themselves a constitution and state government," according to the provisions of the ordinance of 1787. The senate again passed a bill fixing the boundary according to the Ohio constitution, but the measure failed in the house through the efforts of John Quincy Adams. The territorial council memorialized congress to submit the question to the supreme court and the governor was again authorized to name a commission to negotiate with Ohio and Indiana regarding their conflicting claims. The governor of Ohio replied, in a message to the legislature, that there was nothing to arbitrate and that a territorial body could have no authority anyway in the matter. On the advice of the governor the Ohio legislature passed an act declaring that all counties bordering on the northern boundary of the state of Ohio shall extend to and be bounded on the north by the line running from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the most northern cape of Maumee bay. The act adopted the Harris survey. Acting Governor Mason, of Michigan, issued orders to BrigadierGeneral Joseph W. Brown, of the Michigan militia, to prevent any attempt of Ohio officials to extend their jurisdiction within the limits of Michigan. Here was a territory, refused admission into the Union, preparing to form a state government by and of itself, and here was a state asking congress to fix one of its boundaries, declaring that boundary already fixed while the opposing territory was declaring that only the federal authorities had power in the case, and was preparing to defend its claim against all comers. President Jackson wavered but his silence was broken. The president sent letters to both governors stating the question had been referred to the attorney-general and bespeaking forebearance until a decision could be reached. On April 2, 1835, Governor Lucas, of Ohio, and staff, and those named to re-mark the Harris line, accompanied by General Bell and his troops, arrived at Perrysburg, a town just below the debatable ground. The day before Governor Mason, of Michigan, left Detroit for Monroe, a town just north of the debatable ground to which Gen. Brown and a force of volunteers had already been dispatched. In the meantime federal mediators arrived, Richard Rush and Benjamin C. 332 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Howard, reaching Toledo April 3. The elections passed quietly in the mooted territory, and the men elected under the Ohio act were beginning to assume office, while civil processes against them were issued in Michigan. Toledo was the cynosure of all eyes for it was in disputed territory. The boundary commission began to work and, reaching Tecumseh, was attacked by Michigan people. Governor Lucas called an extra session of the legislature and asked for a larger military force. Rush and Howard proposed that Ohio should be allowed to run the line; that the people should submit to the legal processes instituted by either state, but that the executive should continue the case from term to term until the whole question was solved by the federal judiciary. Governor Lucas was willing to abide by the recommendations, but Governor Mason, although willing to let the line be run, felt that concurrent jurisdiction was intolerable. The mediators, in despair, returned east. Ohio's assembly voted to abide by the proposals of Rush and Howard if the United States government would compel Michigan to do the same, and fearing this would not be done, passed an act regarding kidnappers and appropriated $300,000 for the purpose of extending jurisdiction up to the Harris line. Concurrent jurisdiction meant an unfriendly though bloodless combat in Toledo, referred to as "The Toledo War." The legislative council of Michigan refused to accept the suggestions of Rush and Howard and declared that the enforcement of the laws of Ohio north of the Fulton line would "involve a most serious violation of the laws of the United States." Mason was removed as territorial governor, and John S. Horner, of Virginia, named in his stead. On September 7, Ohio judges went to hold court in Toledo. Troops were mustered on both sides, the court was held at midnight and adjourned as Michigan troops came up. The troops were dismissed and the "war" was over. Ohio authorities desisted from attempts to exercise authority beyond their old boundaries and peacefully re-marked the coveted line. Civil processes were gradually dropped. In the same year, at Detroit, a constitution for the proposed state of Michigan was drawn. The bitterness of the struggle for admission was renewed in congress. Debating was long drawn and bitter. Recent approaches to civil war halted commercial transactions. There was an underlying political significance. The Whigs wished to give Ohio all she wanted, and the Democrats were afraid to act differently. Ohio was well courted. History was searched for examples of rights denied and powers usurped. It was a brilliant series of battles, two contested bills were united, and on June 15, 1836, the president approved an act to establish the northern boundary of Ohio and to admit Michigan into the Union. The conditions were that the people of the new state accept the boundaries specified in the act. Governor Lucas, of Ohio, felt the unwisdom of carrying out the state's intentions and civil war was equally distasteful to the people of Michigan, neighbors and friends. It was charged that Secretary of War Cass, formerly governor of Michigan Territory, had been using his office to further civil strife, and Michigan's interest in the dispute. MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY 333 In the fall of 1835 officers were elected in Michigan according to the constitution constructed. Stevens T. Mason was elected governor, but the president had sent on one, Horner, as acting governor of the territory. When congress opened, Lucius Lyon and John Norvell were in Washington ready to represent Michigan in the senate, and Isaac Crary was ready to take a seat in the lower house. The admission of Michigan became inextricably a partisan question. The conditional admission, after much debate, on June 15, I836, offered great hope. Congress prescribed the boundaries. It gave as the southern boundary, not the line running through the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, but one running from that point to the most northerly cape of the Maumee bay. But it added tremendously more. For the western line was run to not due north through Lake Michigan and up to the Canadian line, but was to leave Michigan at Green bay and run thence by a circuituous route to the point where the Canadian line last touches Lake Superior. By this arrangement four hundred square miles of territory was taken from the Michigan which congress had established in I805, and nine thousand square miles was added to it. At a convention called by the legislature in Ann Arbor in September of 1836, attended by 49 delegates, the terms of admission were rejected by a majority of seven votes, but the body voted to send delegates to Washington to aid the representatives of Michigan in enforcing their claims at the next session of congress. Political expediency and the possibility of sharing in the distribution of federal moneys seems to have entered largely into the discussions and newspaper warfare that followed. Democratic leaders demanded another convention. General John R. Williams and others urged the electors of the counties to choose delegates to another convention, and on December 14, 1836, a second convention was held in Ann Arbor, known as the "Frost-bitten Convention," and after deliberating two days, voted to assent to the terms of admission to the Union. The delegates averred that "Congress had no constitutional right to require the assent of the people to a change in boundary as a condition of admission, nevertheless since such assent was required, it was given 'as the interest and prosperity of the state will be greatly advanced by our immediate admission into the Union' and the people of the said state are solicitious to give her sister states and to the world unequivocal proof of her desire to promote the tranquility and harmony of the confederacy and to perpetuate the unity, liberty and prosperity of the country. A month of acrid debate followed in congress and it was decided that the second state convention of Michigan was legal and proper and its acts authoritative, and so on January 26, 1837, Michigan became in law a state, although she had functioned as one a year. Governor Mason himself urged accepting the act of the second convention although the political life of the territory-state for two years had been irregular. In 1838 the state legislature authorized the governor to consult leading jurists with respect to the old boundary dispute but opinions rendered were against Michigan, and Governor Barry, in his inaugural address in 1842, referred to the unprecedented success of 334 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the state which had been admitted "only after a surrender of a valuable portion of its territory." The claims of Michigan were set forth in I818, repeated and reaccentuated thereafter, and were, summarized: The ordinance of 1787 was a compact entered into by the United States, the ceding states and the people of the Northwest Territory. It could therefore be dissolved only by the common consent of the parties thereto. The southern boundary of the state was a line running east and west through the southerly extremity of Lake Michigan, based upon Article V of the ordinance of 1787 which describes the boundaries to be given the three states which are to be formed within the Northwest Territory and then provides that the boundaries of these states shall be subject, so far to be altered, that if congress shall hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to form one or two states in that part of said territory which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan. And whenever any of the said states shall have 60,ooo free inhabitants therein such state shall be admitted into the congress of the United States on an equal footing with the original states. 'When congress created the Territory of Michigan in 1805, this provision of the ordinance was so far carried into effect as to vest in the people of that region an inalienable right of admission into the Union as soon as they should number 60,ooo. To reduce later the number of people within the territory by fixing the southerly boundary farther north would be to retard progress toward state government: and that congress could not do lawfully, even had it the power, to change the boundary line. Ohio's position was definitely formulated, questioning the intent of the ordinance. The maps used in describing the boundary lines of the proposed states in the west show Lake Michigan as extendinti south to 4i degrees and 3o minutes north latitude instead of only A2 decrees and 20 minutes. Tn T8.36 the Michigan-Ohio boundary was fixed theoretically as set by Harris in 1817, re-marked bv the Ohio commissioners in T1835, and bv the federal land office in T837. The Ohio.ssemhlv in i806 provided for a commission to?ct with commissioners from Michigan in deciding the exact location of the line which divides the states. The Fulton line entered Lake Erie about ten miles south of the Harris line. Governor,ucas. of Ohio. in the spring of 1835. published a proclatmation boasting of a "million of Freemen" ready to defend Ohio's rights and stating that he would extend the jurisdiction of Ohio over the disputed territory if he had to "wade knee deer in blood." Governor Stevens T. Mason. in an order dated March T, 1835, to Gen. Brown. advises, "Keep Ohio in the wrong. Arrest on warrant if possible. and I need not add. that T expect vou to receive His Excellency, Gov. Lucas. as a citizen of Ohio, violating the laws of this territory." Jonathan Taylor, T. Patterson and Ttri Seelyv boundary commissioners of Ohio. in a renort to Governor TLucas from Perrvsburr, Mav T, i8g. relate that the3y were overtaken on the Sabbath, after having been spied upon MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY 335 during the entire time they were engaged in re-marking the line, by an armed force of 50 or 6o mell, and that Cols. Hawkins, Scott and Gould, Major Rice, Capt. Biggerstaff and Messrs. Ellsworth, Fletcher, Moale and Rickets were taken prisoners. They were taken to Tecumseh. The Ohioans did not fire a single shot. It is related by the Detroit Free Press (August, i885), that on September 7, I835, judges, ordered by Governor Lucas to hold court in the newly organized county named after him, under escort of an armed guard, "sneaked into Toledo at 3 o'clock in the morning, hunted up a school house, held court two minutes, and then ran for dear life back to Maumee." Other records, however, say the court session was held at midnight. J. Wilkie Moore stated that more than 200 men were under arms and that the advance on Toledo, then called Ashtabula, Michigan, occupied four days. The farming people en route enthusiastically received the soldiers as "fighting for Michigan" and supplied them with mush and milk, and the favors were returned by stealing pigs and chickens. Toledo at the time, piece de resistance, had a population of about I,500. A company of Ohio militia occupied the village. The opposing forces became personally acquainted. There were hio casualties but it is said as the result of some firing by rowdies not members of either "army," a Frenchman from the Maumee valley was shot, presumably because of an old grudge. About two weeks later, however, a naval "advance" was made, the steamer Argo stopping at Monroe. The court session in Toledo was held in a school that stood near Erie, on Washington. The clerk of the court, Horatio Conatit, wore a high stiff hat in which he kept the various papers for court purposes. It is said that on the midnight ride to the school Conant lost his hat. Two guards dismounted, felt their way back in the dark and recovered both the hat and the papers. The hat struck against a tree but Conant was too scared to know. William McNair, under sheriff of Lenawee county, in an official report to Governor Stevens T. Mason, relating to the arrest of the Ohio surveying party, stated that two were discharged for want of testimony, six gave bail to appear at next circuit court session, eight were brought to Tecumseh and delivered over to Charles Hewitt, Esq., and one, Col. Fletcher, refused to give bail, by order, he said, of Governor Lucas. Thus was the "Toledo War" fought, quietly and without loss of life or limb.2 XXVI MICHIGAN'S FIRST UNITED STATES SENATORS LucIus LYON1 By Bert Klopfer GEORGE H. WHITE, in a sketch of Lucius Lyon, one of the first senators from Michigan (Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XIII), provides the following data: Lucius Lyon, son of Asa and Sarah (Atwater) Lyon, and of a family of seven children, was born on a farm near Shelbourne Falls, about six miles from Burlington, in Chittenden county, Vermont, on February 26, 800o. His mother died when he was 13. Until he was about I8 he worked hard on the farm in the summer and attended school in winter. He was quick, active and resourceful and diligent, and possessed a retentive memory. At I8 he attended academy at Shelbourne Falls, and afterwards at Burlington. During portions of the time he taught a district school and obtained instructions in land surveying and practical engineering from John Johnson, of Burlington, a well known civil engineer. He remained in Johnson's office until he was 22 years old, and decided to seek his fortune in the west. He proceeded to Albany for. additional information, and traveled by boat on Lake Champlain to its head at Whitehall, thence by stage to Albany, thence by stage to Buffalo, and sailing vessel to Detroit. On arrival at Detroit-the passage was made possible by the loan of $2.50 from a newly found Masonic brother-Mr. Lyon entered upon duty as a teacher in a seminary of which Mr. Farmer was the principal. He had a letter of introduction to Governor Cass, and a lasting friendship sprung up. In 1823, severing teaching relations with Mr. Farmer's academy, Mr. Lyon formed a party and went into the woods to survey, under contract, a portion of Uncle Sam's domain. He continued surveying until I832, having been brought into the various parts of the lower peninsula of Michigan and into sections of Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. The winters were spent in Detroit. His knowledge of the topography and resources of the country brought constant demands upon his advice and counsel. He invested in well chosen lands suitable for town sites, and in the course of ten years became probably the wealthiest man in the territory. On a trip to Vermont, where he arrived June 24, I824, Mr. Lyon spent several weeks taking special instruction in scientific studies, one of which was geology. A strong friendship had by this time grown up between Mr. Lyon and Governor Cass and Henry R. Schoolcraft. Mr. Lyon was elected a delegate to Congress, defeating Mr. Wing, MICHIGAN'S FIRST UNITED STATES SENATORS 337 then a delegate and member of the Whig party. His election was undoubtedly brought about by his knowledge of the region, his aid extended those seeking home sites, and his uniform urbanity. Mr. Lyons held this office during 1833, 1834 and 1835, and ably advocated the rights of Michigan to the disputed territory that included Toledo. When he became convinced that Michigan would not be allowed what appeared to him to be her rightful boundary because the administration needed the votes of Ohio, and could only get them by having the boundary established as Ohio demanded, he was active in his endeavors to have Michigan accept the upper peninsula instead of the Toledo strip. His geological knowledge and minute inquiries fully satisfied him that it was not the sterile, valueless region which would be the yearly bill of expense that the opponents to it represented. In the convention that framed the state constitution, Lyon and Mr. Norvell, of Wayne, were among the leading spirits. There were eightyseven men comprising the convention. At the first meeting of the new legislature he and John S. Norvell were elected United States senators, Norvell for the long term, Lyon for the short. At the termination of his senatorial career he made a voyage across the ocean to the old world, a no light matter in those days. He brought back a portrait of Lafayette and presented it to the state of Michigan. In I843, at the request of residents of the Grand River district, he was nominated for Congress and elected. At the close of this term, President Polk, agreeing to urge removal of the office of surveyor-general from Cincinnati to Detroit because Lyon did not care to move from Michigan, nominated him to be surveyor-general of the United States, the nomination was confirmed and the office transferred. He occupied this federal post at the time of his death. Lucius Lyon spent large sums to introduce into Michigan the manufacture of beet sugar, new kinds of wheat and grasses, in improving sheep, and in the manufacture of salt. He spent ten thousand dollars in the boring of a salt well at Grand Rapids and the erection of salt works. Two large experimental farms were owned and operated by Mr. Lyon, at Schoolcraft and near Lyons. He was one of the original platters of Kalamazoo, and the platter of Schoolcraft, giving it the name of his friend. Lyon, Mr. White thought, was one of the original platters of Madison, Wisconsin. Surety on the official bond of a government employee, said to have been indebted to the government, Mr. Lyon lost heavily through this confidence being abused. Lands which he owned outside the state of Michigan were seized and sold on execution at ridiculously low prices and the blow was of such severity that Mr. Lyon never recovered from it. Mr. Lyon died in Detroit, September 24, 1851. He was about 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighed about 200 pounds, and was portly but not fleshy. His head and face were large, complexion light and florid, and hair light brown. His voice was kind, manners grave and dignified, and his habits were exemplary. In politics 1.20 338 HISTORIC MICHIGAN he was always a Democrat. He was religiously disposed. His parents were Episcopalians, and he was brought up in that faith and inclined strongly toward it until the last few years of his life, when he became a strong believer in the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg. Letters to his sister, Lucretia Lyon, also gathered in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXVII, disclose tender sentiment. JOHN NORVELL2 The history of Michigan would, of course, be incomplete without reference to the distinguished service of John Norvell and a history of the times in which Norvell played a commanding part has been supplied by his son, Colonel Freeman Norvell. This finds lodgement in the archives, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, III, comprising a paper read by Colonel Norvell at the annual meeting of the Michigan Pioneer Society, February 4, I88o. John Norvell was born in Garrard county, near Danville, Kentucky, December 21, I789. His father, Lipsocomb Norvell, was a Virginian and served during the Revolution as an officer of distinction, and lived past the age of go. John was his eighth child. On leaving the paternal roof he went to Danville, thence to Baltimore. While yet in Danville in 1804, Mr. Norvell received a letter from Thomas Jefferson advising him with respect to his future course and life work. Upon this advice he moved to Baltimore and learned the trade of printer, and at the same time studied law. He was admitted to the bar, but took to journalism and politics; was a friend and correspondent of James Madison, supporting him in the press and on the stump, and earnestly sustaining his measures in the war of 1812. He served in the battle of Bladensburg, and about I816 went to Philadelphia and became a leading Democratic editor of that city. He resided there sixteen years and married first, a daughter of Spencer Cone, a celebrated Baptist minister, by whom he had three sons. Subsequently he married Isabelle Hotchkiss, by whom he had ten children. Her iemory in Detroit, to which city they moved in 1832, remained fresh and lovely. In May, 1832, Mr. Norvell, wife, one daughter and three sons arrived in Detroit, having the appointment of postmaster from President Jackson, as the successor of James Abbott. He became one of the best known and most respected men. At that time George B. Porter was the governor of the territory, having succeeded General Cass in I831. Indian unfriendliness, the Michigan-Ohio boundary, contemplated organization of a state government and admission into the Union were the commanding problems of the day. The cholera epidemic of I832 cast gloom and desolation over the territory. There was doubt as to whether Michigan contained the necessary 6o,ooo inhabitants for statehood. The "Toledo War" was a menacing fact. On May ii, I835, a convention to form a state government was held in Detroit with seventy-three delegates, Norvell a delegate. Mr. Norvell was assigned to the chairmanship of the committees on elective MICHIGAN'S FIRST UNITED STATES SENATORS 339 franchise, on the Ohio boundary controversy, on expediency of daily prayer, on printing the records, on prohibition of slavery, on approval of the acts of the executive and legislative council, in relation to the disputed boundary and on the change from territorial to state government. In addition he was a member of the committee on accounts and expenditures and of the committee to revise and examine whether there were to be found defects or omissions in the constitution previous to its adoption. These duties and his confidential relations with the acting governor who at the time had not yet reached the age of legal manhood, gave Mr. Norvell great influence in the convention. Mr. Norvell denied the right or attempt of Ohio to establish the boundary as it sought, but also that congress had the right to change the compact of 1787 without the consent of Michigan. A state constitution was adopted, and John Norvell and Lucius Lyon were elected the first United States senators, and the first state election chose Isaac E. Crary as its member of congress. They asked the president to declare Michigan a member of the Union, but the petition was referred to congress. Congress agreed to admit Michigan as soon as a convention should be held for the acceptance of a large portion of the upper peninsula and the relinquishment of the southern strip that was claimed by Ohio. This was finally done in i837, and Michigan became a member of the Union. In September, i836, a convention was called in Ann Arbor, which rejected the provision or condition on the ground that it was beyond the power of congress to change what had been contracted for in the compact of 1787 forming the Northwest Territory. Norvell, though fully convinced of the justice of Michigan's claims, inclined to the viewpoint of expediency. He considered the relinquishment of the disputed territory no waiver of a right and held that congress had the right to make such a proposition but not a condition of admission. In December, 1836, another convention was held, in Detroit, and on the sole ground of expediency the alternative proposition was accepted. Michigan received the upper peninsula from the federal government, surrendered the southern strip of land to Ohio, and was admitted into the Union of states. The financial panic of I837 engrossed the attention of Mr. Norvell, then in the senate, and the various propositions for ameliorating conditions. He advocated a bankrupt act temporary in its life but intended to relieve from their liability the victims of the convulsion who would honestly give up all they had toward paying their creditors, relying upon this for present relief and upon specie payment for permanent cure. He believed that paper was paper and not coin, and that precious metals were the only proper or competent standards of value. The measures he espoused were adopted, the bankrupt act had but a short life, but specie payments were not suspended again until i862. Mr. Norvell's term of office as United States senator expired in i842, when he was succeeded by Augustus S. Porter. He resumed the practice of law and was subsequently elected to the state legislature. In i845, shortly after the inauguration of James Polk as president, 340 HISTORIC MICHIGAN he was appointed United States district attorney for Michigan. The Mexican war overshadowed almost all else. Norvell was a warm advocate of annexation, and three sons served in the Mexican war. Mr. Norvell was succeeded as district attorney ot the accession of Zachary Taylor to the presidency in 1849 by George C. Bates, and he died in I850 at his home in Hamtramck, near Detroit. In argument and conversation he was trenchant. For many years his home was the resort of the most distinguished in law, politics and statesmanship. XXVII EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS By Bert Klopfer T HE history of education in Michigan is concomitant with the strug1gles of the pioneers and their conquest of primitive forces.' Virtually the sole educational processes employed for many decades during the French control of Canada and what became the Northwest territory were advanced under Catholic auspices. But methods were, of course, primitive, and relatively little was done to systematize the instruction of children other than in matters of the catechism and elements of religion. The first impulse in the establishment of schools was given in 1798 by the arrival in Detroit of Rev. Gabriel Richard, of blessed memory, a French priest of advanced ideas and liberal education. Private schools were immediately started. In I804 one was opened for the education of young men for the ministry but destroyed the following year by a fire which swept the entire city. A young ladies' academy was started, mention of which is made elsewhere, and the students were instructed in Latin, geography, ecclesiastical history, church music and the practice of prayer. In Detroit more than thirty girls were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, knitting, sewing, spinning, etc., while another school numbered among its students several young Indians of the tribe of Potawatomi. At that early date Father Richard had anticipated industrial education for he sent orders to New York for a spinning machine of about ioo spindles, an air pump, electrical apparatus and dyestuffs for the coloring of things made at the academy he established. All this is related by Lucy M. Salmon, A. M., in a rich contribution to the history of education in Michigan, incorporated in Volume VIII of Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections. The author states that while the first territorial code was drawn in i805 it contains nothing with regard to schools but provision was made for the establishment of four lotteries "for the promotion of literature and the improvement of the city of Detroit." Vol. i, pp. 67-68, of Territorial Laws supplies the details. In i909 a school law was passed but probably never became effective and in i8I7 when the population of Detroit was about iIoo and of the entire territory about 6,500, the legislative council, or legislature, passed an act to establish a "Catholepistemiad," or university with thirteen professorships or "didaxiim". The professors were to be appointed by the governor and were to have power to establish colleges, academies, schools, libraries, museums, athenaeums, botanic gardens, laboratories. The revenue was to come by increasing the taxes 15 per cent plus four successive lotteries and I5 per cent of the prizes was to be deducted and added to the university fund. The honorarium, or compensation, for a course of lectures was not to 342 HISTORIO MICHIGAN exceed $15; classical instruction was to be provided for $io a quarter; ordinary instruction $6 a quarter. Judge Woodward presumably was the evolver of the plan and of the law enacted and the entire system was printed in the Detroit Gazette of January 22, I819. The general plan was known as the epistemic system. Epistemia means "a science" while the term "catholepistemiad" means university. Judge Woodward, for instance, considered "literature" as insusceptible of definition and so used the term "anthropoglossica" in its stead, embracing all the branches of human knowledge and of the sciences which have their common base in human language. To offer further illustration, the following are the chief branches of learning proposed for the university and the nearest familiar names adapted to the English language, for the language of the act was neither Greek, Latin nor English: I. Anthropoglossica......................................................................l..... iterature II. M athem atica......................................................................................................m athem atics III. Physiognostica.......................................................................natural history IV. Physiosophica............................................................. natural philosophy V. A stronom ia.............................................................................. astronom y V I. C hym ia................................................................................................................ ch em istry V II. Iatrica.........................................................................the medical sciences VIII. Economia................................ the economical sciences XIX. Ethica.......................................................................... the ethical sciences X. Polemitactica............................................................. military science X I. D iegetica...........................................................................the historical sciences XII. Ennoeica...................................................... the intellectual sciences XIII. Catholepistemia................-.................. universal science The measure provided an annual salary of $25 for the president, or "didactor," and for the payment of the professors the sum of $181.25 was voted. The presidency and six professorships were given to John Monteith, a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, and six professorships were given Father Gabriel Richard. Other statutes laid out curricula for primary schools, the use of texts; the establishment of the "First College of Michigania", the president and professors of which should be the president and professors of the university. Lucy Salmon holds that the pedantry of the Catholepistemiad act and accompanying legislation was sufficient to condemn it but underlying its objectionable forms are certain principles which have always characterized the educational system of Michigan. The measure was amended but was never presented the legislature. In 182T a bill was passed creating a university controlled by twenty-one trustees and this remained on the statute books until 1837. In 1825 a measure was carefully drawn providing for a university to be controlled by regents, holding their places at the will of the legislature. It is interesting to note that by a decision of the supreme court in I856 the continuity of three corporations, established in 1817, 1821 and 1836 was affirmed so that the present university is in a measure identical with the Catholepistemiad yet for twenty years the institution existed on paper only. EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS 343 In 1827 the legislature provided that every township containing fifty or more families should be furnished with a good schoolmaster to impart instruction in French, English, reading, writing, arithmetic and good manners. Any person teaching without a certificate was to forfeit not more than $200. Two years later the lawmakers provided for five school commissioners in each township. In 1833 the act was repealed, each township was divided into districts with three directors and five inspectors each, to be elected. Common schools and incorporated academies were made tax exempt and teachers were relieved of jury and military duty. Early education in the territory was necessarily shaped by political and social conditions. The first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory was in I668 at Sault Ste. Marie by Father Marquette. In 1701 Detroit was founded as a post by Cadillac and shortly after the commandant urged the establishment of a common school for the French and Indian children. For 130 years the history of education is a blank. As before stated, the only instruction was religious in character. Until after 1817 the French formed the larger part of the population and the instruction given was in private schools. possibly of a somewhat sectarian character. In I80o Rev. David Bacon and wife established a school in Detroit. Rev. John Monteith came to Michigan in I816 and worked with Father Richard in every educational project. The schools of those days were of logs and slabs served as seats. The desks were of boards on pins driven into the sides of the room. Monteith used for his blackboard a shallow box of dampened sand. Textbooks were anything but uniform and each child brought what he could. Occasionally the pay of teachers was in farm produce. Nearly all the schools were supported by voluntary contributions. The period from 1817 to 1837 was truly one of experimentation. The desire was general that a common school education should be available to all classes. Impetus was given the University act, public subscriptions were taken for the erection of a university building, or academy, and on September 26, 1837, just a month after the law was passed, the cornerstone of the new hall of the university in Detroit was laid by Hon. Augustus B. Woodward. The building was of brick, 24 by 50 feet and two stories high. John Monteith was named president of the university and Hugh M. Dickie teacher of Latin and Greek in the classical academy. After the academy a primary school was formed, conducted on what was known as the Lancasterian system, with Lemuel \Shattuck, of Albany, N. Y., in charge. The introduction of th~ System was looked upon as one of the signs of an approaching.tillemnnium. Statistics supplied by Mr. Shattuck showed that of the 123 pupils admitted, 23 had entered at one dollar a quarter, two at two dollars, one hundred and three at two dollars and a half and fifty-five at three dollars and a half, the average price being two dollars and sixty cents a quarter. Nothing was accomplished under the university legislation before 1836. A primary school at Monroe and one at Mackinaw were provided by law but no application had been made for either school. 344 HISTORIC MICHIGAN There was nothing accomplished outside Detroit. No lottery was established and no taxes for school purposes were levied. The classical academy was kept up as a part of the university until October, 1827, and in I83I the building was delivered to the directors of the common school. In November, 1837, the trustees permitted it to be leased or granted for a branch university. Some attention was paid, however, to female seminaries. Before Michigan became a state it had twelve incorporated academies, not all, however, ladies' schools. In these female academies the ordinary English branches were taught "with no additional charge for teaching geography with the use of globes and maps". Each pupil supplied her own stationery and "one load of wood during the cold season" or sometimes an extra charge of a shilling a month for fuel was made. Mixed schools were common and there were quite a few evening schools through the medium of which teachers eked out slender wages. Instruction in French by the "natural method" gained in popularity. An announcement was made by a Mr. Rowe, on July 23, 18I9, of his willingness to teach free of charge, children of the poorer classes and a bit later a Sunday school association was formed for such purpose. Women of Detroit formed a free school. Manual training found an entering wedge in a school in Ann Arbor, which supplied academical instruction and the pupils were expected to pay for their board in whole or in part by labor on a farm. The school flourished three years. The Mechanics' society was incorporated in I820, a building erected in Detroit and a day and evening school maintained, the evening school designed especially for those young men who had sufficient knowledge of the elementary subjects to enable them to pursue with advantage the higher branches considered essential for practical mechanics. In 1834 a normal training school, department of the Michigan high school in Detroit, was opened and another for women who wished to qualify as teachers, was established in Ypsilanti. Kindergartens, very crude, were started in 1830 and citizens of Detroit paid the expenses of a woman to a New York seminary to gain practical knowledge of the methods used and on her return, she opened a school in Detroit for children between the ages of one and a half and seven years. Similar schools were started at Mackinaw, Ann Arbor and probably at other places. A school was established in Detroit, religious in character, by joint arrangement of Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and Protestant Episcopal churches. Religious instruction was imparted but not sectarian. During the early history of the terrifdory, Catholics and Protestants worked together in all education-nl't atters. Institutions for higher education were established, liMJpLt in means, but endeavoring to grapple with the problem of ignoraiie. English branches, rhetoric, higher mathematics, surveying, navigation, natural philosophy, chemistry, French, the classics, and in some instances Spanish, German and Italian were taught. In 1836 the census of Detroit showed nearly 3,000 children of school age yet only 600 were scattered through the 14 schools of the city. In Ypsilanti a little later with a school population of 400, only 195 attended its four schools. These facts may EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS 345 be taken as a fair illustration of the fact that during the territorial period a large proportion of the children were not in school. At the first session of the legislature, the office of superintendent of public instruction was created and Rev. John D. Pierce was named to the position. Until this time the university and the schools, both primary and secondary, had been working independently of each other and without any fixed plan. This does not prove lack of interest. On the contrary, educational questions were constantly agitated. John D. Pierce, the first superintendent of public instruction, in an address delivered February 3, I875, and preserved as part of Michigan and Historical Collections, Vol. I, declared that to Governor Cass, who was executive of Michigan from T813 to 1831, more than any other man is the state indebted for its subsequent rapid development. A few rather salient features extracted from this address will aid the purposes of the chapter. The name of the state is derived from the Chippewa language, Mitchaw, great, and Sagiegan, lakes. Hence Michigan means the land of the great lakes. When Pierce came to Michigan in i831 the census, just taken, showed 32,000 inhabitants, including what is now the state of Wisconsin. Up to this time little had been done in the territory for schools. The legislative council had passed an act providing for school commissioners in each organized township but no provision was made for the support of schools except by rate bills. The schools were little else than private schools. In 1834 the population was 87,ooo. In May, 1835, a convention to adopt a state constitution was held in Detroit and in this the Michigan school 'system had its origin, with Gen. Isaac E. Crary the outstanding spokesman for public education. A report of the Prussian system made to the French minister of public instruction, was discussed with avidity by General Crary and Rev. Mr. Pierce; a bill was drawn up creating the office of state superintendent of instruction and the measure was enacted into law. Pierce, named the superintendent, was instructed to formulate a plan for the organization and support of primary schools; a university with branches, and for the disposition of university and primary school lands. The state was new, the people poor. Pierce went East and visited a number of distinguished educators and others including John A. Dix, Governor Marcy, President Humphrey, Governor Everett, President Day. Institutes and colleges were visited and a considerable amount of data and personal opinion was obtained and a system outlined, reported, and adopted by the legislature. Pierce stated that the apportionment to be derived from the income of the school funds operated as a stimulus to each and every school district. The amended constitution of I850 left the university free of all other institutions and normal and union schools have taken their separate places. Soon after the adoption of the school system, it was reviewed in the Michigan Gazetteer and pronounced superior to that of any other state and yet found in some measure defective. Even up to 1850 there was no law for the establishment of free 346 HISTORIC MICHIGAN schools, even for three months. Township inspection, not superintendence, was provided as a matter of economy for, as Dr. Pierce said, it was a question of doing what one was able to, not what he wished to do. But the University of Michigan came, becoming one of the greatest institutions of America, the pride of every Michigan resident. While the sixteenth section in every surveyed township was reserved from sale and given to the state in trust for the support of primary schools-equal to one-thirty-sixth of the whole, 75 sections or 48,000 acres to be selected, most of it from any part of the state, were given as a perpetual fund for the establishment and support of a university. Dr. Pierce, to whom was committed the task of devising plans for a state university, favored concentrating on one large institution rather than accord state support to a number of smaller institutions. The legislature had made provision for a board of regents; the regents had employed an architect; plans had been submitted for a building of elaborate design to cost more than a half million dollars, in 1838, and Pierce opposed the plan declaring that its adoption would seriously cripple the university fund. He contended that after all, a university does not consist of buildings but in the number and ability of its professors and its other appointments such as library, cabinets and works of art. The regents receded, and the present plan of the university was set in motion. The growth and development of the institution has been marked. Dr. Pierce in his report to the legislature in 1838 also took a firm stand for the adoption of free schools, free from the lowest to the highest, free from rate bills or tuition bills assuming that the "property of the state should be holden for every child in it." "There is no safety in debased ignorance," he observed. The leading men of the day were the fast friends of education. Desultory features of "The log schoolhouse era" are interestingly presented by A. D. P. Van Buren in Vol. XIV of Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, passing reference to which only can be made here. Mr. Van Buren describes, among other things, his first school (1838) on the territorial road that ran westward across Goguac prairie, Calhoun county-a one story, rude log structure, with cobbed up corners. Schoolroom furniture of the day was most primitive. Holes were bored into the logs, some three feet from the floor on the sides and west end of the room into which pegs were driven. Boards were secured on these pegs, slanting inward, for desks. Rough boards on wooden legs ran parallel to the desks for seats and slabs with shorter legs constituted the seats for smaller children. Cherry ruler and school roll were invariably on the teacher's table. Whip and penknife were also accoutrements of the schoolmaster. Reading, writing (using goose quill pens) and arithmetic were the basic studies. The pupils wrote twice a day. Spelling was phonetic in method and the beginners in spelling went from the simplest to the more complex words a la "b-a, ha; b-i, bi; b-o, bo;" on up to "i-n, in; c-o-m, corn; p-r-e, pre; h-e-n, hen; s-i, si; b-i-l, bil; i; t-y, ty-incomprehensibility." In arithmetic there was no particular les EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS 347 son. Each pupil mastered the rules as fast as he could and worked out his examples to teacher as best he could. In those days spelling "bees" were common and very popular. Webster's Elementary challenged the whole list of competitors for the prize. The spelling tournament supplied an intellectual test, or contest, for the entire community. Spelling bees were generally held on Friday evenings at the school. Each day's work for the teacher closed by calling the roll and ascertaining the rate bill and for determining the number of days the teacher was to board with each family which patronized the school. Van Buren declares that the old school texts were "our best friends and advisers." Books were scarce and there were committed to memory many excerpts for fear the coveted volumes would not be seen again. In those days the boy or girl with a taste for reading was in no danger from ambarrassment in the selection of literature. About all the story books then known were "Charlotte Temple," "The Children of the Abbey," "Alonzo and Melissa," "The Scottish Chiefs," "Thaddeus of Warsaw," "Robinson Crusoe," "Fairy Tales," "Arabian Night's Entertainment" and "Nursery Tales." The age of cheap books and magazines and children's journals had not yet set in. The period beginning in 1835 when slavery loomed large and so continued until the close of the Civil War, was prolific in great things and worth-while literature. It was this era in which Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Poe and Whittier became famous. Literary fame was won by N. P. Willis, George P. Morris. George D. Prentice, Charles Fonno Hoffman, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Albert G. Green, W. D. Gallagher and Albert Pike. Of the novelists there were William Gilmore Simms and Robert M. Baird. Historians included George Bancroft, Theodore D. Woolsey, Josiah Quincy, J. C. S. Abbott. The religious teachers of great influence included Theodore Parker, Mark Hopkins, Leonard Bacon, Frederick H. Hedge. Too, the hymns of Ray Palmer must be added. In oratory the period was rich, headed by S. S. Prentiss, Thomas F. Marshall, Rufus Choate and Caleb Cushing. In reform there were such outstanding characters as Alexander McDowell, Gerrit Smith, Alvan Stewart, Theodore Weld, Dr. Lyman Beecher, Lovejoy, Garrison and others. Great editors were Thurlow Weed, Horace Greeley, George D. Prentice, Henry J. Raymond and James Gordon Bennett. Hales' United States History: Scott's Life of Bonaparte and the Bible were to be found in well ordered homes that made a pretense to culture. An occasional Free Press or Advertiser, of Detroit, was eagerly read. The Philadelphia Evening Post was a delightful visitor. - The songs of the Revolution and of the war of I812 entered largely into the social life of the people, Mr. Van Buren relates, such as "The Dying Sergeant," "Perry's Victory," "James Bird," "Billy Burlow," "Will the Weaver" and other songs and ballads. Even the negro songs are numbered with the things of the past. Each settler's family had its own history, legends, stories and folklore and as there were few books and papers to read, the fathers and mothers related to their children the experiences of the past. 348 HISTORIC MICHIGAN To many the old schoolhouse was a sort of penal institution. Corporal punishment was in vogue everywhere. Much of the punishment inflicted was barbarous. For slight offenses boys were made to sit with girls, or the girls with boys. "Dunce caps" were used to punish indolence or a split quill or stick placed astride the ear or nose. Another mode of punishment compelled the pupil to stand on one foot, bend over so as to point and hold his finger to within an inch of a mark on the floor. The beech whip and cherry ferrule were indispensable instruments for inflicting bodily punishment. Sometimes the teacher would compress the fingers and thumb of the pupil's hand in his own and then strike at the ends of the finger with the ferrule-a torture worthy of the days of the Spanish Inquisition. Perhaps the thin edge of the ferrule would hit the bone in the hand and the pupil would shriek with pain, or if the pupil tried to shield his hand with his freed arm, the blow would descend on his head. Keeping the children in at recess or after school and frightening, by meats of threats, were other methods of correcting refractory pupils. Of course, nothing was known of the physical and mental causes of delinquency or retardation. Nothing was known of the part that enlarged tonsils, glands, errors of refraction, blood pressure and posture play in the bodily, nervous and mental life of the child. Mr. Van Buren, in his paper, says that he ever sought to impress on the mind of the pupil the great value of the Bible and the Christian religion and that the longer he taught the more he was impressed with the idea that "morals and manners should be taught the pupil with his other studies" and that no one has greater or better opportunities for molding the character of the young man than the teacher. Mr. Van Buren approached a position that today is being strongly and widely advocated. He said, in a thought-provoking peroration: "The education of the school should embrace the cultivation of the mind and the manners. Conduct constitutes the larger part of the man, but it receives the least part of the culture given by the school. "And as regards the Bible or religious instruction in our schools, a mere sense of the race values of the three nations, Hebrew, Greek and Roman, should decide the matter. They have not only entered largely into our civilization, but they constitute its basis and should form the basis of our education. Among the three great classics, the Bible. Homer and Virgil. the first is immeasurably superior in value to the other two. * * * "It is a matter of serious consideration with all thoughtful men as to what sort of society we shall ultimately have in states where the common schools have neither religious nor ethical teaching. Scholarship is valuable, character is above scholarship, but the Christian is the highest style of the man." JOHN D. PIERCE John Davis Pierce, Michigan's first superintendent of public instructio., and the first in the United States, was one of those elemental, EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS 349 pioneer characters upon which great states build their fortunes, said R. Clyde Ford, L. L. D., in an article on Pierce, embodied in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXV. John D. Pierce was born in I787, in New England, the son of a poor man. His father died when he was two years old, and the mother was forced by circumstances to give the baby over to the care of his grandfather, and to do this carried him on horseback from Chesterfield, New Hampshire, to Paxton, in Worcester county, Massachusetts. Until I807 the boy lived with his grandmother, a somber, sedate, staunch old royalist, and when he died the lad passed into the home of an uncle where he had a small and unwelcome place by an already overcrowded fireplace. In books John D. Pierce escaped the thralldom of his environment. He read every book he could buy or borrow. He underwent a serious religious change involving conversion, and with the $IOO inherited from his grandfather, in i8i8, entered Brown university, and was graduated four years later among the first eight in a class of thirtysix. For a year he was principal of an academy, studied theology at Princeton, was licensed to preach in the Congregational church, and in i825 became pastor of a church at Sangerfield, New York. The anti-Masonic wave occasioned by the sudden disappearance of William Morgan, who made himself obnoxious by writing a book pturporting to expose the secrets of Masotry, brought Pierce into conflict with his church, for he was a Mason. He triumphed, but resigned and accepted an appointment by the American Home Missionary society, and in i83I went to Michigan. Returning East for his family, he located in Marshall, and settled in a big log house which for a long time served as church, tavern and boarding house for the community. For a few years Mr. Pierce lived the life of a frontier preacher, riding horseback through the wilderness. He and his wife were attacked by the cholera in 1832, but survived, and nursed the sick and buried the dead. Educational affairs were chaotic. Pierce perceived the feasibility of a centralized public school system, and his friend, General Isaac E. Crary, has incorporated this plan in the new state constitution, and in I836 Pierce was made superintendent of public instruction. He was a stout champion of a state owned and controlled university. The school district was made the unit of the new system and was made respousible for the erection and equipment of all buildings and was enabled to levy a tax for its own support. The school district was followed by the township with its corporate board, as the next step. Pierce recommended provision for a library in each school district, and this became law. He worked upon and submitted plans for model school houses. The control of sections of land was taken from the townships and given the state, and the great university at Ant Arbor testifies to the wisdom and discretion and aggressiveness of Mr. Pierce. During his incumbency Mr. Pierce edited and published a magazine The Journal of Education, the first educational journal west of New England. When his term of office expired in 184i he returned to Marshall the work of the ministry. In i847 he became a member of 350 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the state legislature, and in 1850 was a member of the constitutional convention and succeeded in having a homestead exemption provision incorporated in the constitution. In 1853, because of failing health, he gave up ministerial work, moved to a farm, and later resided in Ypsi-.lanti. In 1867, when the law creating county superintendents of schools was enacted, he came forth from retirement and served two years as superintendent of the schools of Washtenaw county. In I880 he and Mrs. Pierce went to Massachusetts to reside with a daughter, and he died in that state, April 5, 1882. His body is buried in the cemetery at Marshall, among the scenes of his pioneer life. He possessed a giant mind, and like De Tocqueville, believed that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. ISAAC E. CRARY Isaac E. Crary, Michigan's first representative in congress and one of the founders of the school system, was of genuine Puritan stock from the Scotch border, the eldest child of Elisha and Nabby (Avery) Crary, and was born in Preston, New London county, Connecticut, October 2, 1804. There were two other boys, William G. and 0. E. Crary. In Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, V, it is stated that Mr. Crary was descended in the fourth line from Peter Crary, who came from Northumberland, England, in the reign of Charles I, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and that he was also descended in the same degree from Elder William Brewster, of the Mayflower. Crary's early life was on a farm and he was graduated from Washington (Trinity) college, read law with Henry W. Ellsworth, was admitted to the bar and practiced, and at the same time assisted George D. Prentice in editing the New England Weekly Review at Hartford, Connecticut. In 1833 Mr. Crary came to Michigan, settling in Marshall, Calhoun county, where he died in I854. He became a steadfast friend of John D. Pierce, and the two worked together for the development of the educational system of Michigan. General Crary went to the state convention of May, I835, in Detroit, and was made chairman of the committee on education. He drew up an article that became the law of the land, a provision for the maintenance of a state commissioner of education, or superintendent of public instruction, and proposed Pierce as the first incumbent. The constitution was adopted in 1835, Stevens T. Mason was elected governor and General Crary representative in congress. The result of the nomination and confirmation of Pierce as superintendent of public instruction was that he was asked to submit a plan for the organization and support of the common schools; a plan for a university with branches, and a plan for the disposition of the university and primary school lands. This he did. While in congress General Crary secured the passage of the act giving every sixteenth section of land to the state and not to the township, as was heretofore done. These sections thus donated to the townships in other states had been so managed as to be of little worth EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS 351 to the cause of education. The State University lands had been selected with such care that their minimum price had been fixed at $26 per acre, while other government lands could be had for $I.25 ail acre, but squatters desirous of these choice lands got pledges from their candidates that they would favor a law to let the University lands go for $1.25 an acre, and a bill was cunningly sprung on the legislature to that effect. Through the influence of Senator Hawkins, of Ann Arbor, and Dr. Fitch, of Detroit, Governor Stevens T. Mason was informed of the measure and vetoed the bill, and the rich heritage of lands was saved the University. The educational system adopted and the machinery in operation, schools were readily organized throughout the state. The university was opened in 1841.2 XXVIII INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND THE FIVE MILLION DOLLAR LOAN INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS By 0. C. Comstock Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, I, 46-48 Y the organic law of this state it was made the duty of the legislature, as soon as may be, to make provision by law for ascertaining the most proper objects of improvement in relation to "Roads, Canals, and Navigable Waters."" This provision of the constitution was so universally considered just and of prime importance, that the convention accepted at once, and almost without debate, the report of the committee on internal improvements, striking out but one unimportant word thereof. In obedince to this injunction, each successive legislature vied with the preceding in projecting works of internal improvement upon a scale of magnificence so enchanting that the utter inability of the infant state to carry them forward to completion seemed scarcely considered at all. In this particular, however, it was not at all singular, for many of the older states had entered upon the same career of improvement, and pursued the flattering image well nigh to their ruin. The accomplished first governor of this state, in his last annual communication to the legislature and the people, delivered in January, I839, used these words: "It affords me the highest gratification to renew my congratulations on the successful progress of our internal improvements. Each division of the system has been prosecuted with an energy and activity highly creditable to those to whom they are intrusted. The Central road is under contract as far as Jackson, being a distance of 78 miles from Detroit, and locations are now in progress as far as Kalamazoo, 140 miles from Detroit. By the agreement with the contractor, that portion of this road between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor should have been ready for the iron rails as early as the month of October, but for some cause is hot yet completed. On the Southern road a commendable energy has been evinced; 30 miles of this road-as far as Adrian-will be ready for laying the iron early in the ensuing spring. It is under contract as far as Hillsdale, and the engineers are completing the final locations on the third division as far as the village of Branch. The Saginaw and Clinton canals are in active progress; the sanie may be said of the Northern railroad, which has been placed under contract for clearing and grubbing from Port Huron to Lyons. The contract for the construction of the canal around the falls of the Sault Ste. Marie has been let, and the work itself will be commenced at an early day." In the same communication the governor gives the history of the INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT 353 $5,000,000 loan, connected closely, he says, with the internal improvements of the state. Its close connection with this subject became quite apparent very soon thereafter. A juster understanding of the bold and captivating schemes of traversing the state with parallel lines of railroads and canals will be had when we take into account the fact that our whole population was at that time consumers and not producers, and that four-fifths of our territory was an unbroken wilderness. True, we had youth and health and energy, but these could not be spared, no matter how they might rate in the markets of the world. Governor Woodbridge, who -succeeded Governor Mason, said, in just one year after the Mason message, that in 1840 he felt compelled to recommend to the early consideration of the legislature the propriety of an immemediate suspension or repeal of all the existing laws relative to our internal improvement system, except so much thereof as relates to the running of the cars upon the railroads already in use. At the very beginning of the session of 1840 the following resolution was offered in the senate: "Resolved, That the committee on internal improvements be instructed to inquire into the expediency of bringing in a bill to repeal the act to provide for the further construction of certain works of internal improvement. Approved April 30th, I839." But two senators dissented. I think the opinion was generally entertained that a disastrous bankruptcy of the state was exceedingly imminent, and that the rigid economy inaugurated at the period alone saved us from such a shameful result. At this time the state was giving aid and comfort to the Detroit and Pontiac, Jacksonburg and Palmyra, Marshall and Allegan, Northern, Southern and Central railroads, Sault Ste. Marie, Saginaw, Clinton and Kalamazoo canals, and the canal around the rapids of Grand river, building bridges and state roads, and making various and sundry improvements to our navigable streams. When nothing more was available for the $5,000,000 loan, came the slaughter of our public lands. Land warrants and land scrip became a legal tender between the contractor and the laborers upon our public works, and although they were subject to a great discount for cash, yet, as they could be used in the purchase of internal improvement lands, they did not utterly sink out of sight, and are worth, as I think, at this time, as much as our greenback currency. One improvement after another was cast off, until the Central and Southern railroads alone remained persistent beggers for aid from an exhausted treasury. The board of internal improvements in their last report to the legislature, December 7, I846, say that from December i, I845, to September 4, 1846, the gross receipts of the Central railroad were $239,663.75. After deducting running expenses, repairs, amount received from Michigan Central Railroad company and for old iron, we submit that the net earnings of this, our pet and best improvement, fully justified its sale. During the eight months preceding the sale of this road to the Michigan Central Railroad company the state was compelled to expend upon it no less a sum than $I43,314.59. A very intelligent committee of the senate reported in January, 1846, that the 1-21 354 HISTORIC MICHIGAN sum total of our expenditures upon the different works of internal improvements was about four and a half millions of dollars and 305,000 of the 500,000 acres of land granted by congress to this state in I841. When the legislature began to agitate the question of the sale of our public works, parties were numerous who desired to lease the Central and Southern railroads; but it was properly decided that the whole system of internal improvements by the state, for the purpose of revenue, was, at any rate, a fallacy, and that the sale of our two railroads was dictated by sound political economy and the exigencies of the state. Finally the Michigan Central Railroad company bought our elephant for $2,000,000, and not long after the Michigan Southern Railroad company bought the Southern road for $500,000. Here virtually ceased to exist all our works of internal improvement. Nothing but the debris of our airy castles remain, and they only to plague our recollections. THE FIVE MILLION DOLLAR LOAN Hemans' Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason, 423-444 NTIMATELY connected with the state's scheme of internal improvements, and perhaps more disastrous to Governor Mason's political reputation than any other connected with his administration were the incidents connected with the negotiation of the five million dollar loan authorized by the legislature in March, 1837. From the very first Governor Mason undertook with hesitancy the duties imposed by this act, for he realized better than anyone else the great responsibility incident to such an undertaking and his own lack of knowledge and experience requisite to its proper discharge. Had he foreseen the added difficulties of the task that were to be imposed by the financial stress under which the country was to labor, it is quite probable that he would have refused to assume the duties that were so foreign to his office, but these things were as imperfectly foreseen by the governor as by the great body of the people. Upon the opening of navigation in the spring of I837, Governor Mason repaired to New York to take up the negotiations of the loan. Inasmuch as a loan for $IOO,ooo authorized by the legislature of 1835,2 for the current expenses of the state government had been successfully negotiated by Mr. John Delafield, a prominent banker of New York, who was then acting as the agent of the state for the payment of the interest on the loan, Governor Mason quite naturally sought the assistance of Mr. Delafield in the negotiation of this larger responsibility. After some time spent among the capitalists of New York, the governor returned to Michigan satisfied that it would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to effect a sale of the state bonds under the then disturbed financial conditions of the country; but before returning he delegated to Mr. Delafield a general agency to correspond with capitalists both in this country and in Europe looking to the placing of the loan. The summer passed without the attainment of the desired end, and as political capital was being made out of the failure or delay, INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT 355 Governor Mason, in September, again repaired to New York to give his personal attention to the matter. He now learned from Mr. Delafield that, notwithstanding the most persistent effort upon his part, no portion of the loan had been placed, and that in his opinion under the then present financial conditions it could tot be negotiated unless the interest on the bonds was increased to six per cent and both interest and principal made payable in Europe. The governor was assured that, could these changes be made, Mr. James King of the highly respectable brokerage firm of Prime, Ward & King, who was about visiting Europe, would take charge of the loan and give personal attention to its negotiation, and that there would be little or no question as to a successful termination. Indeed, so sanguine was Mr. Delafield that the bcnds would find sale in London, that he offered, in the event of the law being changed to conform to his suggestion as to interest and place of payment, to advance to the state $I50,000 in anticipation of the amount realized upon the sale. Highly elated, the governor returned to Michigan, and in the excitement of the campaign, then raging, his report of the prospects of a successful issue was treated as equivalent to a consummation. Almost immediately on the reassembling of the legislature in the adjourned session of November 9, i837, a bill was introduced and promptly passed which received approval on the I5th, amending the act authorizing the five million dollar loan so that the interest might be six instead of five and one-half per cent, and providing payment in Europe as well as in the United States should the governor find it advantageous to so contract. The amendatory act further provided that, in case of the placing of the loan or any part of it in Europe, all benefit to be derived from difference of exchange should inure to the benefit of the state, that the bonds should be redeemable at the rate of $4.44 for every pound sterling of Great Britain or the guilder of Holland at the rate of forty cents each.3 The governor had determined that the bonds should not be negotiated for any considerable amount in advance of the need of the funds for the purposes of internal improvements and, still believing that there would now be little difficulty in selling the bonds as the work progressed, he caused bonds to the amount of $I,500,000 to be prepared and executed in conformity to the amended statute. Bonds to the amount of $500,000 were soon sold to Mr. Oliver Newberry, the veteran steamship builder of Detroit, at a premium of six per cent, while $ioooooo of the bonds were placed in the hands of Mr. Delafield.4 Of the latter bonds $300,000 par value were turned over to Messrs. Prime, Ward & King, and by them consigned to Baring Bros. Co., London, where together with certified copies of the law under which they were issued they were received in December.5 About the same time, in keeping with the understanding with Mr. Delafield and to relieve the exchange between Detroit and New York, drafts were drawn against him for the sum of $I50,000. Contrary to the expectations of the governor, Mr. Delafield met this draft not by an advance, but by a draft in like amount upon the Baring Bros. Co. of London. On February I2 the legislature, reflecting the public interest in the 356 HISTORIC MICHIGAN loan, by resolution requested information from the governor as to the state of the negotiations,6 which the governor supplied a few days later through a communication which exhibits the degree of assurance which he felt for the successful outcome of the transaction. Mentioning the fact that he had attempted to procure but $I,500,ooo, as sufficient for immediate needs, he said: "This sum, however, may be certainly calculated upon, and the legislature can safely appropriate to that amount. If the legislature of the present session should require it, I am confident the whole loan or any additional portion of it may readily be negotiated." Again on April 6th he communicated to the legislature the information that, he was advised, in the course of sixty days he would be able to draw from three to four hundred thousand dollars against the balance of the million of bonds then in the hands of Messrs. Prime, Ward & King.7 Notwithstanding the optimistic reports that the governor was receiving and from time to time transmitting to the legislature, he was unable to free himself from a feeling of distrust of his own ability for so exceptional a service. A man in the high position of executive of a state can hardly refuse to assume the duties that the legislature may see fit to impose upon him, even when they are of a nature foreign to the office; and for that reason the desires of the executive in that regard are quite generally respected, although in this instance they did not seem to avail. As the governor has been made to bear the responsibility for all the failures attending the subsequent tegotiations of the loan, it is perhaps just that his efforts to escape the imposing of the responsibility should be given. On March 22 the governor sent to the senate a message devoted to the subject, in which he said: "I am constrained by a sense of public duty to call the attention of the legislature to the importance of providing some proper agency for the management of the state loans already authorized or hereafter to be authorized by the state. At present the exclusive and unrestricted negotiation and management of loans as well as the sale of all exchange derived from that source is left to the discretion of the governor of the state. This is wrong in principle as it gives to the control of one individual millions of the public money without any corresponding check or responsibility. But in addition to this objection on the ground of principle, it will readily occur to you that the public interests demand that this important branch of our state policy, the management of its finances, should receive the undivided attention of a distinct department organized for that purpose. It is impossible for the executive to bestow that attention to the subject which its importance demands, without the neglect of other imperious duties. But whilst as an officer of the state, I am willing to discharge any duty imposed upon me by the public, I feel that it is due to myself that I should not incur the heavy responsibility of controlling the loans of the state when they can receive but a limited portion of my time and service. I would therefore earnestly recommend the creation of a board of loan commissioners, the members to be chosen by the legislature, to whom the negotiation and management of all loans shall be entrusted." A bill to provide for such a commission passed the house and with some amendments passed the senate, but was lost through house and INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT 357 senate failing to agree; thus the governor was forced to assume a responsibility not within the purview of his official duties and from which he had respectfully requested of the legislature that he might be relieved. To add to the difficulties of the situation, no sooner had the legislature adjourned than the governor received advice that the negotiations which had promised the sale of a million of bonds in London had been terminated by the Baring Bros. Co. discovering that there were certain ambiguities in the amended statute authorizing the loan. Their view of the law was, that while it was positive as to the payment of interest in Europe, the payment of the principal in Europe was to be inferred only by implication; they likewise professed to believe that the law in fixing the pound sterling at $4.44 had fixed the rate of exchange, so that while a premium of ten per cent would yield Michigan $4.88 per pound sterling, still the state would only be required to repay at the rate of $4.44. In vain the governor wrote them that the valuation of $4.44 upon the pound sterling had nothing whatever to do with the rate of exchange, but was only intended to stipulate the par value in American money of the pound sterling, the state still being chargeable with the exchange incident to the transmission of funds. In vain likewise were several other efforts to satisfy the cautious London bankers. It was finally found necessary to bring back the $300,000 of bonds and remit $150,000 to Baring Bros. Co., London, to cover the draft that had been made upon them for the advance in prospect of sale.9 While efforts continued for some months to interest the Rothschilds and others, they were to no purpose. The ambitious projects of internal improvement in many of the states were flooding the money centers of Europe with securities, at which, under the disturbed financial conditions of the country, financiers looked with anything but eager interest. Of the bonds taken by Oliver Newberry, a portion were placed upon the London market where they sold for ninety-five, and some as low as ninety-three cents on the dollar. It was soon evident that he would be unable to fulfill his contract. Indeed he was later compelled to seek the cancellation of his contract and return $300,000 of the $500,000 which his contract embraced. The legislature adjourned, on the 6th of April, with appropriations for the purposes of internal improvements payable from the proceeds of the loan of more than $I,ooo,ooo,l1 while provision had been made for a bond issue of $Ioo,ooo for the aid of the Allegan and Marshall Railroad'1 company, and a like issue for the Ypsilanti and Tecumseh Railroad company.12 Contracts had been let upon the various projects and contractors were busily engaged in the collection of materials and forces necessary for the work, while as yet there had been realized upon bonds actually sold the sum of $I6I,ooo.13 Another factor in the situation, as has been before stated, was to be found in the chaotic condition of the currency and pervading sense of financial disaster that soon possessed everyone from the banker to the settler in the new-made clearing. Everyone had his pockets filled with the bills of the "wild cat" banks which were of varying degrees of badness; specie was in the hands of the favored few, so that in the hands of the people generally there were hardly any funds that would discharge obligations in the East. Among the farmers, the merchants, and in financial and com 358 HISTORIC MICHIGAN mercial circles there was a general desire that the loan be negotiated as speedily as possible and that the proceeds be allowed to flow out to public relief through the channel of internal improvements or from institutions where for the time being it might be upon deposit. At the same time the situation was rendered more and more difficult by the spirit of partisan politics which infested it, and which impelled Democrats to yield to expediency and Whigs to charge every show of hesitancy and conservatism to inefficiency and failure. That many of these considerations had influence with the governor we may well presume; but the fact that the appropriations of the legislature had been already made and contracts let which would subject the state to heavy claims for damages if it was unable to perform together with the fact that if the loan was not negotiated it meant the disorganization of the whole system of internal improvements which had been deliberately adopted and well-nigh universally approved, was the decisive consideration with him. In the late days of April the governor, apprehensive from long delays that the European negotiations were to be fruitless, again repaired to New York in order, if possible, to bring matters in connection with the loan to a successful termination. Quite naturally again, the governor took up negotiations with Edward R. Biddle, one of that eminent family of which Major John Biddle, of Detroit. who had been the opposing candidate against Governor Mason in his first election, and Nicholas Biddle of both the Bank of the United States and the later United States Bank of Pennsylvania were also members. On May 8 a tentative contract was entered into between the governor and Mr. Edward R. Biddle, who represented himself and certain claimed capitalists of Philadelphia, for the entire loan at par. The sum of $80,000 was paid at the time of the execution of the contract, and the governor was hopeful that the matter was disposed of; but after some two weeks of waiting it was found necessary to surrender the contract in consequence of the inability of the contracting parties to meet the stipulated payments. Governor Mason was now brought into negotiations with the Morris Canal and Banking company, a corporation organized under the laws of New Jersey with banking office in the city of New York, of which Edward R. Biddle was president. To add piquancy to the story, the Morris Canal and Banking company has been sometimes compared to the "wild cat" banks with which the people of Michigan were sadly familiar, but no such comparison is warranted by the facts.t4 The Morris Canal and Banking company had been incorporated in I824 to construct a canal between the Passaic and Delaware rivers which was extnrled later to the Hudson river at Jersey City. This canal which was said to have cost the company $4,ooo,ooo,15 was at the time practically completed. In addition to it the company was the owner of many other valuable properties consisting of wharves, docks, farming and mineral lands."6 As was common with many other corporations of this character in that day, it was authorized to do a banking business in connection with its transportation activities. its additional capital stock for banking purposes being limited to $t,oooooo. Three years before this INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT 359 time the stock of this company had sold at a premium of fifty cents on the dollar;17 its circulation was practically at par;"' men of the highest character were upon its board of directors, among whom might be mentioned Washington Irving, of literary fame; Samuel L. Southard, twice secretary of the navy; Isaac HI. Williamson, for twelve years governor of New Jersey; and Garrett D. Wall, a United States senator from the same state; while associated with these men were such men as Edwin Lord, John Moss, James B. Morrey, Henry Yates and many others representing the first rank of professional, mercantile and banking circles of New York and Philadelphia. Its financial operations had been of an extensive character, it being then entrusted with the negotiatio'i of the internal improvement loan of the state of Indiana. The negotiations between Governor Mason and the Morris Canal and Banking company finally resulted in a contract between the parties under date of June I, i838. By the terms of this contract the company was to become the agent of the state for the sale of the whole issue. The principal and interest was made payable in New York, to which city the company was to guarantee the safe delivery of all funds derived from the sale of bonds in Europe or elsewhere. It likewise became the guarantor to the state that it should receive the par value of the aggregate amount of the bonds sold; that is, if in the sale of the bonds it was obliged to dispose of them at a less price than par, it was to make up to the state the deficiency between the price received and the par value. The sum of $1,300,0o0 of bonds was to be delivered to the company upon the execution of the contract, and it was in turn to pay $250,000 in cash to the state, and $i,050,000 was to be subject to its order. The remainder was to be paid in quarterly installments of $250,000 each, beginning with the first day of July, 1839, and to continue until the whole sum was paid, and that whether the company had sold the bonds or not. The bonds were to be delivered to the company as the installments became due, so that it would have in hand a million dollars of bonds in advance of actual payment, the company to have the right to take all the bonds and pay over the remainder of the five million dollars at any time upon a thirty-day written notice to the governor. In the event of sales at more than par the contracting parties were to divide equally all premiums up to five per cent, the company to take in addition all in excess of five per cent. For the execution of the contract, which was made irrevocable, the company was to receive a commission of two and a half per cent on the proceeds of sales, which was to be in lieu of all other expenses.19 It will be observed that by the terms of the contract $I,050,000 was immediately made subject to the state's order, in addition to the $250,000 of present payment. On June 4 a so-called supplementary agreement was made between the contracting parties.20 It provided that the company, having passed to the credit of the governor on the Michigan loan the sum of $I,300o0oo, the governor was to accept in payment of that sum the bills of the Morris Canal and Banking company and disburse them so far as the exigencies of the state might allow, These hills were to be received, $250,oo on August i next en 360 HISTORIC MICHIGAN suing, $Ioo,ooo on September I, and $Ioo,ooo on the first of each month thereafter. This has been generally treated by the governor's critics as an unlawful modification of the original contract which involved a material interest loss to the state;21 in fairness to the governor it should be said that it was his contention that it was not a modification or departure from the original contract, but was in fact a part of the original terms of sale, embraced in a separate memorandum because it related to the first payments which were to be made upon the amount passed to the credit of the state as fast as they could be prepared and issued.22 Unquestionably this contract violated the spirit even though it kept within the letter of the law. It had been clearly specified that the sale should be for at least par, while a commission of two and one-half per cent was in effect a sale at ninety-seven and a half cents, although the governor hoped and no doubt was given encouragement to believe that the bonds would be sold so that the state's share of the premiums would make up this deficiency. The justification for a sale at this figure and upon these conditions was, of course, the exigencies of the situation arising from the peculiar circumstances in which the state was placed and the then distressed condition of the money market, the details of which the governor subsequently submitted to the legislature. On the 8th of June, Governor Mason being about to start for Michigan, bills of the Morris Canal and Banking company to the amount of $II0,397.70, the same being $Io,397.70 of a balance due on the first payment of $250,000 and $Ioo,ooo as the August installment, were brought over from the company's banking house at Jersey City to the branch in New York City. Theodore Romeyn, of Detroit, having been in the city during the governor's negotiations with the company, although not under employment, had nevertheless interested himself in the business, to the extent of giving the governor his friendly counsel and advice. Now that the bills of the bank were ready for transfer, Mr. Romeyn, at the request of the governor, procured for him a small trunk for the purpose; and the trunk and its contents were the occasion of a mystery that supplied gossip for a generation, it is correspondingly proper that the facts surrounding the mystery be fully stated. The money as it was being prepared for shipment was not counted by the governor but was several times counted by the bank clerks, who stamped each bill upon the back in red as a protection against robbery on the journey to Detroit. The bills were then done into packages, with the amount of each package marked upon the band of the paper around it; and the various packages were then placed within the trunk, which was then locked and the key delivered to the governor who conveyed it to the Astor House where it was put in charge of the bookkeeper during the evening meal. Mr. Romeyn, having signified his intention to remain in his room for the evening, at the request of the governor, consented to take charge of the trunk until the governor, who was going out, should return. Returning about midnight the governor found the trunk safe in Mr. Romeyn's possession, it was then opened and several articles of Mr. Romeyn placed therein, after which it was removed to INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT 361 the room of the governor where several more articles were included and the trunk locked. Its subsequent journey is illustrative of travel in the olden days, and may well be given in the language of the governor himself, as detailed to a subsequent legislative committee of investigation.23 "On the next morning after receiving the trunk, I left New York on the six o'clock boat; the trunk was not out of my sight more than ten minutes, and then under the lock of my room until it was placed on board the Albany boat; when on the boat, I requested Mr. Romeyn to have it placed in the captain's office, having attached his name to the trunk. My reason for identifying the trunk with Mr. Romeyn, as well as my reason for requesting him to purchase it, was, that it was generally known I was negotiating a loan in New York, I might be followed for the purpose of stealing it on the road home. At Albany the trunk was kept in my room, and when I was out I had the key of my room in my possession. I was in Albany one evening, between that place and Utica, when it was under the lock of the baggage car. From Utica to Syracuse it was in front of the stage under the driver's seat. We left Utica about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and reached Syracuse at about one or two o'clock in the morning. At Syracuse it was not out of my keeping. From Syracuse to Oswego it was on the deck of the canal boat for about half a day. At Oswego for one afternoon it was under lock in my room. From Oswego to Niagara it was in the office of the captain of the boat for one night. From Niagara to Buffalo it was on the top of the railroad car and I rode on the outside in the night with it. At Buffalo it remained in my room under lock. On Lake Erie it was placed in the captain's office and delivered to me at Detroit. When I arrived home I took from the trunk the articles belonging to Mr. Romeyn and myself and delivered it to the treasurer. At no time on the journey was the trunk opened by me, nor could I at any time observe that the overcoat on the top had been moved. On opening the trunk at home, everything seemed to me as I had placed them. The package of ten thousand and three hundred and ninetyseven dollars was on top, as I had placed it, and was immediately delivered to the treasurer as part of the cash payment, counted by him and found to be correct." The trunk and its contents were then deposited in the vault of the Michigan State bank. Here a few days later the $Ioo,ooo of the August installment was counted and then the discovery was made that from the packages of fives, tens and twenties, bills had been extracted to the amount of $4,630. The bills were all replaced and a communication of the theft at once sent to the Morris Canal and Banking company. On the same day that the company received the governor's letter apprising it of the loss of the money, it received through the New York postoffice a package which enclosed all the abstracted bills save fifty dollars, the same being returned as mysteriously as it had been taken. The company subsequently remitted the bills returned and the governor paid the fifty dollars so that the theft resulted in no loss to the state. The incident soon became known and for many weeks furnished the news 362 HISTORIC MICHIGAN papers and the general public with a topic of conversation. Suspicions and speculations were rife and many an apocryphal tale in explanation of the various phases of the mystery became current, to be repeated in the recollections of the occasional pioneer after the lapse of half a century. The governor entertained suspicions as to who abstracted the bills, but to the committee of investigation of the succeeding legislature he refused to express them, saying, "I am unwilling to express my opinions or suspicions where no positive testimony exists." The whole subject of the loan now presented an added question for political agitation. The opposition press was loudly clamorous that all the details of the negotiations be given to the people; growing sarcastic and vituperative when the governor remained silent or said he would report his doings to the legislature when it should convene. The governor, made apprehensive for the safe delivery of the subsequent installments by his experience in guarding the first remittance from New York to Detroit and the theft of a large sum notwithstanding his vigilance; after counseling with his friends dispatched John Norton, Jr., cashier of the Michigan State Bank and fiscal agent of the legislature, to New York to effect a change in the method of remitting the various installments as they should fall due. The Morris Canal and Banking company considered that it was a valuable advantage to have its bills placed in circulation, but on July 14 a contract was entered into between the company and Mr. Norton whereby it was agreed that Mr. Norton should draw bills from Detroit upon the company payable at an average of not less than ninety days after the installments severally became due and payable. This contract was subsequently the occasion of much comment. It was claimed that it entailed a considerable loss to the state, although it was the assertion of the governor that "the installments and every draft was credited to the state at par on the very day each became due." Under this arrangement the various installments were remitted, giving to the Detroit banks the benefit of eastern exchange and eliminating the hazard incident to the shipment of the currency. It is evident from the governor's correspondence that he had full confidence that the Morris Canal and Banking company, in the discharge of its agency, would seek in every way to promote the interests of the state. He had faith that it would dispose of the bonds as was necessary to meet the various installments and that by such sales it would be able to realize sufficient premium to repay the two and one-half per cent commisson and thus make the bonds net par to the state. The governor seemed not to consider that the company would be principally desirous of making such disposition of its trust as would enable it to claim the two and one-half per cent, or $I25,000 commission in the shortest possible time, and that, too, with a disregard of the interests of the state, and yet this was the situation he was soon called upon to face. On the Ioth of November, Edward R. Biddle of the Morris Canal and Banking company communicated to the governor a gloomy prospect for Michigan securities, together with the information that it was now possible for the company to pass the whole amount of the loan to INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT 363 the credit of the state at par-less, of course, the two and one-half per cent commission-provided there was an immediate delivery of the residue of the bonds, the obligation of the Bank of the United States in Pennsylvania to be taken for three-fourths and the Morris Canal and Banking compa'ny for one-fourth of the aggregate amount of the bonds and for the payment upon the several installments when by the original contract they should become due. The governor's reply to this communication shows his keen disappointment. "It is with regret," said he, "I perceive that the state of the European market is such as to re'nder the sale of Michigan bonds a matter of hazard and doubt. My expectation under the contract with your institution was, to realize at least par for the stock, and it is with extreme disappointment that I have presented to me the probability of losing the two and one-half per cent commission which covers your charges. I still cling to the hope that an immediate sale may not be imperatively necessary." And then, evidently more because he was undecided as to the proper course to pursue than because he wished to shirk responsibility, he added, "But as the negotiation of this loan has been a most thankless and perplexing undertaking on my part, I feel unwilling to advise you in the premises." The company required no further intimation or advice to clearly see its duty to the state. Almost the return mail brought intelligence that the sale had been consummated; the governor being, at the same time, felicitated upon the advantageous deal that had been closed, while he was solemnly assured that "no small inducement for closing the sale" was that they thereby brought to the aid of the state all the security that could he derived from the capital of the Bank of the United States and the benefit that would accrue to it in its future financial transactions-the aid which in fact did come to the state waQ confined almost wholly to the lessons of loss and disaster that resultel from the association. The legislature assembled on January 8, 1839, a'nd the governor's message, as he had promised. went fully into the details of the lon-1 and the various transactions incident to it. While the message seeks to iustify the various transactions incident to the business, one reads in it a vein of disappointment and regret that he was unable to report a more satisfactory result from his efforts; but, knowing the rectitude of his own purposes and the fidelity with which he had striven to perform the duty intrusted to him, he asked of the legislature the appointment of a committee to investigate "all such matters as present an unfavorable aspect" to any portion of the legislative body; demanding for his own condutct the most regid inquiry. In accordance with this recommendation a ioint committee was appointed, consistincg of seven from the house and seven from the senate. In the main the gentlemen selected were the strong members of their respective bodies. The house members were comprised of five Whigs and two Democrats. while the senate membership was made up of four Democrats and three Whigs. The governor's political opponents were thus given a free hand in the investigation, with Daniel S. Bacon, the late Whig candidate for lieutenant-governor as chairman of the joint committee, and 364 HISTORIC MICHIGAN William Woodbridge and James Wright Gordon, who a year later became respectively governor and lieutenant-governor on the Whig ticket, among the members. On April 10, Hon. Daniel S. Bacon presented the report of the committee. It was an eminently fair and temperate statement of all the facts connected with the loan and its negotiation. The law providing for the loan had said it should be negotiated for at least par. The committee very properly said, "Your committee does not enquire if the compensation stipulated to be paid to the Morris Canal and Banking company was exorbitant, nor whether a sale of the bonds could have been made oyn more advantageous terms; they refer to the act of the legislature as their only rule of action." On the question of the substitution of drafts for the notes of the Morris Canal and Banking company they were likewise correct in reporting that they could not "discover the necessity or authority for such action." In relation to the abstraction of the bills the committee reported that it had called many witnesses and accumulated a large mass of testimony but that there was nothing in it "which would tend to identify the person guilty of the foul transaction before a judicial tribunal. It sleeps in the bosom of him who perpetrated the crime. It is due to Governor Mason and to the public to say, that no imputation whatever rests upon him." Theodore Romeyn was called as a witness before the committee, and in view of subsequent charges that grew out of the transaction, two statements of Mr. Romeyn became material. One was that he had read the governor's statement of the transaction and that it was true; and the second was, "I have never directly or indirectly drawn any money from the state for my own purposes, neither have I received from Governor Mason any accommodation or advances." This last statement has especial significance when read in connection with statements from the same gentleman made a little more than a year later when the exigencies of politics seemed to demand that the governor be ruthlessly assailed and his reputation blackened. With the full facts before the public, there were few who did not understand that the requirements of the law authorizing the loan had been exceeded; but the feeling was also quite as general that the terms obtained were perhaps as favorable as could have been expected under the circumstances. Not all members of the legislature coincided with the various steps that had been taken in the matter, but no one wished to assume the responsibility of rejecting what had been attempted or suggesting means of improvement so, by silence and inaction, they gave assent to what had been done.24 As the subsequent incidents in connection with the five million dollar loan followed the political revolution which turned the state and the administration of its affairs to Whig control, they may be better left to be told in connection with that event. XXIX WILD CAT BANKING THE WILD CAT BANKING SYSTEM OF MICHIGAN By H. M. Utley Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, V, 209-222 T HE lynx rufus (Guldenstaed), commonly known as the North American wild cat, is characterized by naturalists as implacably hostile to man, ferocious and cowardly. The early settlers in Michigan encountered another species of "wild cat", of somewhat similar characteristics. That name was given to a class of banks in this state and their issues, which, a little more than thirty years ago, led a career and brought about a state of things unparalleled in the history of banking institutions. It is almost impossible for those living at the present day, who had no actual experience in them, to appreciate the events of those times. No record of them has ever been written by anyone, so far as we have been able to discover. They formed an exciting and memorable epoch in the early history of the state. The men who mingled in them are fast passing away, and the personal reminiscences which would add interest to the historic record die with them. Yet it is not within the scope and limit of a single article to enter with great fullness or detail into the subject. Our present purpose is rather to give a general sketch of "wild cat times," following historical accuracy, so far as the facts given are concerned, to show the reader the nature of the financial operations which characterized those celebrated times. The first bank in what is now known as the state of Michigan was the Bank of Detroit, chartered by the general government in i8o6.1 The commercial interests of this region, at that early day, were not of that nature that they required any great amount of money. Detroit was a mere trading post on the outskirts of civilization, at which the hunter and trapper sought their supplies, and to which the Indian brought his furs and skins to be exchanged for beads, brass buttons, ammunition, and fire-water. No agricultural productions sought a market here. All the surrounding country was as nature made it. The population of the town did not exceed a few hundred, and none of the adjacent country was inhabited by white men. Under these circumstances it may be readily perceived that the little community which then occupied the site of this city would not have much use for that commodity which is requisite to the successful carrying on of a bank. Trade was carried on by what was familiarly known as "dicker"-the trapper exchanging his furs for provisions, and the "noble red man" was enabled to enjoy a week of bibulous hilarity on the proceeds of a season's hunt. The Bank of Detroit languished, and after a feeble and sickly 366 HISTORIC MICHIGAN existence of three years its charter was taken away by congress. That experience with banking seems to have satisfied the denizens of the town for many years thereafter. There was no attempt to renew the charter, and the people went on in their old way, bartering one species of merchandise for another, and using only gold and silver as a circulating medium. In the year of I818 the Bank of Michigan, located at Detroit, was chartered by the general government, with a capital of $Ioo,ooo. It commenced operations in the month of June of that year. Its capital was subsequently increased to $850,000. It pursued a long and honorable career, and in its day and generation enjoyed a wide confidence and esteem. From that time the settlement and development of the state proceeded rapidly, and banks were established in various places as fast as, or even faster, than the commercial interests of the community seemed to, require. Up to the year 1837, fifteen banks had been chartered in the state, with an aggregate capital of $7,000,000. The names of these banks, with their location, were as follows: Bank of Monroe, Monroe; Bank of Michigan, Detroit; Farmers and Mechanics' Bank of Michigan, Detroit; Bank of River Raisin, Monroe; Bank of Pontiac, Pontiac; Bank of Washtenaw, Ann Arbor; Michigan State Bank, Detroit; Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad Bank, Adrian; Bank of Tecumseh, Tecumseh; Bank of Macomb County, Mt. Clemens; Bank of Clinton, Clinton; Bank of St. Clair, St. Clair; Calhoun County Bank, Marshall; Bank of Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti; Bank of Constantine, Constantine. Several of these banks had branches in other towns than the location given above. They were chartered for definite periods, and the charters of all of them have expired by limitation, except that of the Bank of Macomb County, which does not expire until 1875. Its affairs are still undergoing investigation in the courts. All the others are now finally and forever extinct. The hostility of "Old Hickory" to the United States Bank is well known. He considered it a dangerous institution, and fought it with characteristic determination. He conquered; the bank was discontinued, its stock sold and paid into the United States treasury. The banks in the several states were thereupon designated as banks of deposit, and were used for collecting, transferring and disbursing the public revenues. There was then a surplus in the United States treasury, and after a long and exciting debate in congress, in the session of I835-6, it was determined to distribute this surplus among the several states in proportion to their representation in congress, to be deposited in the various banks for safe keeping. That was one of the wildest eras of speculation. Money was abundant, the coffers of the government were overflowing, the country was prosperous, and everybody seemed bent on making a fortune in some other than the orthodox way by hard knocks. This speculation begat wealth, wealth begat pride, and we have the very best authority for saying that "pride goeth before a fall." When the deposits from the government had been received the several banks throughout the state had abundant means on hand. WILD CAT BANKING 367 They, too, shared in the spirit of speculation which was rampant. As everybody else was bargaining and trafficking and getting rich, they determined to make the most of the means at their command. They therefore loaned out the money which had been deposited with them to the red-hot speculators who were buying government land, and were laying out and building cities in the wilderness, and were connecting them by railroads and canals. These loans were given on what was supposed to be good security, it generally being real estate taken at its speculative value, or city lots in cities where scarce a tree had been hewn down or a spade had penetrated the earth. But the reaction came all too soon. Hard times oppressed the country, the government had use for its money, and called upon the banks with which it had been deposited to return it again in coin. The banks had it not; they had loaned it out on security to speculators. The speculators had been unable to realize even their investments at the fancy prices at which they had been made. The security proved of little or no value, and the banks were sore distressed to meet their obligations to the government, since specie only would be received. In this cramped condition the banks, in order to save their existence, were compelled to proceed with the utmost caution. Specie payments were suspended. The banks called in their circulation as rapidly as they could, and refused to throw it out again, preferring to await a turn of events, and not endanger their lives by having a large irredeemable circulation out. The consequence was a scarcity of money, and business was greatly cramped thereby. A little while before there was a superfluity; now there was not enough to supply the necessary demands of business. The people were clamorous for relief. There was an outcry against the chartered banks as being moneyed corporations which only sought their own selfish ends, and had no regard for the welfare of the people. They were denounced as hostile to the spirit of our institutions. They were declared to be monopolies, while this free democratic government was never intended to foster monopolies. It was said that this is a free country, without privileged classes, and that conferring chartered banking privileges was favoring a few, while the many suffered. Everything else was free in this country, therefore banking should be free. About this time a general banking law had been passed in the state of New York, and numerous banks had gone into operation under it. But our legislators did not wisely wait to see the result of the operation of this law. If they had waited, the mortifying and deplorable events which followed would have been averted. An act entitled "An Act to organize and regulate Banking Associations" was passed by the legislature of the state, and approved March 15, I837. An act amendatory thereto was passed December 30 of the same year. By these acts the privileges and immunities usually conferred by separate charter on specified companies for banking purposes, were, without distinction, conferred upon any persons desirous of forming an association for transacting "banking business," by complying with the provisions of the act. As these acts were the 368 HISTORIC MICHIGAN ones under which the celebrated "wild cat banks" went into existence, and ran their brief and ignominious careers, a consideration of some of their more noted provisions and restrictions is necessary to an intelligent understanding of the subject. In the first place any person or persons, resident of the state, desirous of establishing a bank, were at liberty to meet, open books, and subscribe to the capital stock of such a bank. A majority of the subscribers authorized a call of a meeting for choosing officers. At this meeting nine directors were to be chosen by the stockholders, after all the preliminary provisions of the act had been complied with, and the directors were authorized to choose one of their number president. The stockholders were constituted a body corporate, subject to like general laws governing other corporations. A majority of the directors were to manage the affairs of the association. All the directors were required to be residents of the state, and at least five of them residents of the county where the business of the association was to be transacted. One-third part of the capital stock was required to be owned, subscribed and to continue to be held by residents of the county where the business was to be transacted (the county of Chippewa excepted). Before the bank could commence operations the stockholders were required to execute bonds and mortgages upon unincumbered real estate within the state, which was to be estimated at its true cash value by the treasurer, clerk, associate judges, and sheriff of the county, or a majority of them. They were also to take these bonds and mortgages in the name of the auditor general of the state for use of the state. These were to be held as collateral security for the final payment of all debts and liabilities of the association, and for the redemption of all its notes outstanding, and in circulation, after the liabilities of the directors and of the stockholders, and the fund accruing in pursuance of the act to create a fund for the benefit of the creditors of certain moneyed corporations, should have been found insufficient for the payment of the same. The banking capital of each association was to be not less than $5o,ooo, and not more than $300,ooo, divided into shares of $50 each. Before the bank could go into operation, the whole capital stock was required to be subscribed, and 30 per cent on each share paid in, in specie. Before an association commenced banking it was the duty of the bank commissioner, who was required by the association to visit the banking house, count the specie, and make such examinations into its affairs and condition as would satisfy him that the requirements of the act had been complied with in good faith; and, if he should be satisfied with regard to these facts, to make certificate of the same, and give public notice of it in the state paper, and in the county newspaper, and give a like certificate to the association. The directors, before entering upon the duties of their office, were required to take and subscribe an oath or affirmation that they would, once at least every three months, examine fully into the condition and operations of the bank, and write in a book kept for the purpose a true statement of its condition, and subscribe their names WILD CAT BANKING 369 to the same; and that they would faithfully perform all the duties of their offices, and faithfully report to the bank commissioner whenever they should discover any violation or abuse of privilege granted the association by the act. When the preliminary requisitons of the act had been complied with by the president, directors, and stockholders, they were to file a certificate in the office of the secretary of state, stating the name, location and amount of capital stock of the association, of which the secretary of state was required to give public notice. The amount of bills and notes issued or put in circulation as money, or the amount of loans and discounts at any time was never to exceed two-and-a-half times the amount of its capital stock then paid in and actually possessed. Provision was made for the appointment of three disinterested bank commissioners, whose duties were prescribed by law, and every association was prohibited from issuing any bill or note without the endorsement of a bank commissioner's name upon the back of the same, in his official capacity. Before he endorsed any bill or note he was required to examine the vault of the banking association and ascertain the amount of specie then on hand, and administer an oath to a majority of the directors to the effect that a certain amount named was on that day possessed in specie by the bank, and that it was the property of the bank, that it had been paid in by its stockholders toward the payment of their respective shares, or that the same had been received into legitimate business and not for any other purposes, and that it was intended to remain a part or whole of the capital of the association. Bank commissioners were required to visit the banking house of the association as often as once in three months, and at all other times when requested by the governor, or by any banking association in the state created by the provisions of the act or subject to the act to create a fund for the benefit of the creditors of certain moneyed corporations, and to institute such examination into the affairs of the institution, as was required by law. It was made the duty of the bank commissioners to require the association to renew or change the securities given, whenever the safety of the public might require. The books, papers and vaults of the association were to be always open to the inspection of the bank commissioners or committees appointed by the legislature. The rate upon loans and discounts was limited to 7 per cent per annum, in advance, and the denominations of notes and bills not to be under $i. The total amount of debts the association was allowed to owe, exclusive of property deposited in the bank, was never to exceed three times the amount of capital stock actually paid in and possessed. If the association became insolvent the directors, in the first place, were to be liable in their individual capacity to the full amount of all debts the association might owe; and afterward each stockholder was to be liable to the full amount of the debts of the association in like manner, it proportion to his amount of stock; and each stockholder was to be so liable for one year after the time 1-22 370 HISTORIC MICHIGAN he had transferred his stock in the association. The association was prohibited from holding real estate except in certain cases specified in the act; and likewise from trading in goods, wares and merchandise, except in cases specified. Every association was to pay its bills and notes when presented, or on refusing to pay on demand, it was made the duty of the cashier to record on the back of the same the date of the refusal, and attach his name thereto, in his official capacity, and if the same was not paid on demand within sixty days thereafter, with damages and Io per cent costs, the association was to be dissolved. Each stockholder was required to pay in at least 10 per cent in specie, on the capital stock, annually after it went into operation, until the whole stock was paid in, under penalty of forfeiting to the association the amount of stock he had already paid in, and the shares on which the payments had been made. Assignments of stock were to be valid only when made according to the rules prescribed. Assignments were not valid until the stockholder making the same had canceled all his debts and liabilities of whatever description to the association. All associations were prohibited from trading in stock of moneyed, or any other corporations, or to increase or reduce their capital stock without the consent of the legislature. The whole amount of loans or discounts made to directors or to any individual was not at any time to exceed one-sixth of the amount which it was entitled to issue. Every association was obliged to pay to the treasurer of the state for the use of the state one-half of one per cent of the amount of capital stock paid in, in semi-annual payments. No money was, however, to be drawn from this fund until the funds and liabilities of the directors and stockholders had failed and proved insufficient to pay all debts. Every director or officer guilty of any negligence and misfeasance in his office was declared to be guilty of felony, and subject to imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years. Associations incorporated under this act were to continue until the 4th of March, x857. Forty-nine associations went into operation after the passage of the act up to April 3d, I838, when an act of the legislature was approved suspending the provisions of the law as to the creation of any new associations, except to allow one association to be formed in the county of Chippewa. The following is a list of the banking associations organized under this act, with the amount of capital: MUSTER ROLL OF THE WILD CATS Name Location Capital Farmers' Bank of Homer...............Homer............... $00,000 Bank of Oakland............................. ontiac.....-................. 50,000 Bank of Utica...................tica.............. 50,000 Bank of Brest...........Brest...............................0000 Merchants' and Mechanics' Bank...... Monroe.................. I,000 Jackson County Bank................Jackson -...................100,0 WILD CAT BANKING 371 Name Lo< Bank of Marshall............................. Marshall Miller's Bank of Washtenaw..............Ann Arbo Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank........ Pontiac. Bank of Manchester................................ Mancheste Bank of Saline................................................ Saline....... Clinton Canal Bank.................... Pontiac.... Bank of Coldwater................................... Coldwater Bank of Lapeer........................................ Lapeer..... Grand River Bank.........................._Grand Raj Saginaw City Bank..................................Saginaw.. Detroit City Bank....................................Detroit..... St. Joseph County Bank...................... Centrevilli Farmers' Bank of Sharon....................... Sharon..... Lenawee County Bank..........................Palmyra.. Genesee County Bank............................Flint........... Farmers' Bank of Oakland.................Royal Oa Commonwealth Bank............................... Tecumseh Gibraltar Bank........................G.................... Gibraltar Commercial Bank of Michigan............St. Josepi B ank of N iles....................................................N iles.......... Bank of Singapore....................................... Singapore Bank of Allegan......................................... Allegan Bank of Auburn.......................................... Auburn Bank of Plymouth........................................Plymouth Goodrich Bank......................................... Goodrich cation............................. r........................... r...................... pids........................................................,.....................................................................................................................,...................................,e......................................................... i............................ h................................. I.. Mills.................... Capital 100,000 50,000 50,000 100,000 I00,000 I00,000 50,000 100,000 50,000 50,000 200,000 100,000 50,000 100,000 50,000 50,000 5o,ooo 50,000 100,000 50,000 I00,000 50,000 I00,000 50,000 100,000 150,000 100,000 I00,000 50,000 50,000 100,000 100,000 50,000 65,00ooo I 00,000 50,000 100,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 50,000 150,000 50,000.-I - Farmers' Bank of Genesee...................Flint.............. Huron River Bank.................................... psilanti... Bank of Shiawassee....................................... Owosso..... Bank of Kensington............................... Kensington Citizens' Bank of Michigan.................Ann Arbor Bank of Superior............................................. Superior,. Bank of Sandstone....................................... Barry.......... Merchants' Bank of Jackson..............Brooklyn.. Detroit and St. Joseph R. R. Bank... Jackson..... Exchange Bank.................................. Shiawassee Bank of Battle Creek................................... Battle Cree Farmers and Mechanics' Bank............Centreville Bank of Lake St. Clair..............................Belvidere.. Michigan Centre Bank.......................... Michigan ( Bank of White Pigeon................................. White Pige Branch County Bank..............................Bran..... Bank of Adrian.................................................. Adrian........ Chippewa County Bank............................ Sault Ste.........................].....k........................ Centre.............. on..................................................................bft............................................................................. Mi........................ ok......................................................,................................ Centre -------- -- eon.................................................................................. M arie................ The above makes a nominal aggregate capital of about $4,000,000. Add to this the nominal aggregate capital of the fifteen chartered banks, viz., $7,ooo,ooo, and it makes the nominal aggregate banking capital in the state, in the spring of 1838, not far from $I,ooo0,000. When we remember that the population of the entire state at that 372 HISTORIC MICHIGAN time was only about Ioo,ooo, or but little more than the present population of the city of Detroit, we may gather some idea of the extremity to which the banking mania carried the people. The extraordinary character of this rage for banking will still further appear when we add that the population of the state at that time was essentially agricultural and had practically but little use for money. The state was just being settled. Pioneers were hewing down its forests, breaking up its oak openings, and shaking their teeth loose with ague chills over its miasmatic marshes. They considered themselves as doing well if, by hard toil during the summer, they raised enough on their farms to keep their families and their cattle comfortably through the winter. They had little to sell and but little use for money. That there was no necessity and no profitable employment for such an extraordinary amount of banking capital it would seem ought to have been obvious to everyone. The amount of notes of these banks in circulation could not have been less than $300 for every man, woman and child in the state. While some bona fide banks were established, it was soon found that the law was taken advantage of by dishonest men to practice the grossest frauds and swindles. The law practically permitted these frauds, and the officers of the state, though striving honestly to do their duty, were powerless to prevent them. Banks were established in the most inaccessible places, which it was not likely the holders of bills could ever find, and hence the bank would not be asked to redeem the bills. The law required a certain amount of specie to be kept in the vaults of the bank, but this provision was evaded. The same specie served for exhibition for a dozen banks, at various intervals. The bonds and mortgages which were deposited were upon city lots in the woods, or on real estate at fictitious values. The notes of one wild-cat bank were held as capital by another wild-cat bank. They clandestinely put out a much larger circulation than the law allowed them. In these and a hundred other ways, they evaded the law, and practiced outrageous swindles upon the public. Incidents connected with the operations of these banking schemes properly form a part of this history. Brest was a magnificent city (on paper), situated at the mouth of Swan creek, about seven miles from Monroe. An excellently lithographed and beautifully colored map of the city represented it with broad avenues, lined with palatial residences and handsome grounds. The extended river front of the city had continuous lines of docks, above which towered, on either hand, lofty warehouses, filled with the merchandise of the world. The largest steamers were represented as sailing up past the city, whose docks were crowded with vessels of all descriptions, while the streets were thronged with busy life. The ruins of Ninevah or Baalbec are not more desolate now than are the ruins of Brest. The contemplative traveler standing there would never dream how great possibilities had been unrealized on that spot. That the wolves do not howl there today is because they have been circumvented by the civilization which drove them to the wilds of the north, and not because of any development on the part of Brest WILD CAT BANKING 373 itself, that would tend to keep them out. It is little less a wilderness now than it was forty years ago. But Brest had a bank, with a capital of $Ioo,ooo. It was a fair sample of a wild-cat bank, and an illustration of how its affairs were managed. It is also an illustration of many others. The law compelled the bank commissioners to make investigation into the affairs of the banks. Spies dogged the footsteps of the commissioners, and it was generally found out when they were to visit a bank for inspection. The affairs of that bank were put into favorable shape forthwith. On the 2d of August the commissioners examined the bank of Brest, and found that its principal resources consisted of loans on bonds. $I6,ooo; bank stock, $Io,ooo; specie, $I2,900. It appears that of the specie. $o0,5oo belonged to Lewis Godard, and had been received by the bank the day before examination and was drawn out the day after examination. The $I6,ooo loan on bond and mortgage was a loan to the trustees of the town of Brest, to secure which the bank received an assignment of the bonds executed by Lewis Godard for the sum of $35,400, and also of mortgages of II8 city lots in Brest. On the day after the examination, the directors assigned the bond and mortgage back to the trustees of Brest, having received nothing for the same. Seven days later an impromptu investigation of the affairs of the bank showed that the amount of specie on hand amounted to $138.80. while the whole amount of bills of the bank which were in circulation was $84,241. A few days after the investigation into the affairs of the Bank of Brest, the commissioners examined the Bank.of Clinton, and found specie on hand to the amount of $II,029.36. On the day succeedine the examination $.500oo of this specie was drawn from the bank by the cashier, brought to Detroit and paid over to Lewis Godard, being precisely the same specie that had done duty a few days before in the Bank of Brest. Thus the specie was carted about the country in advance of the commissioners. An examination into the affairs of the Lenawee County Bank showed the requisite of specie on hand. Suddenly descending upon the bank a few days later the total amount of cash in the bank was found to be $34.20. At the same time the circulation of the bills of the bank amounted to more than $20,000. The Bank of Sandstone, in Jackson county, had an extended circulation. A man whose name is withheld for the sake of his family and descendants, who are not to blame for his disreputable transactions. went to the Bank of Sandstone and effected a heavy loan. The security was of the same valuable character as that assigned to the trustees of the city of Brest, probably being on city lots of some imaginary city. With the wild cat monev raised in this loan he went through the state buying everything which he could convert. Horses, cattle, sheep. swine, produce of all kinds, farms and everything which could be turned into money he bought at the seller's price, paying for it in bills of the Bank of Sandstone. As very few persons knew where Barry, which was the seat of the Bank of Sandstone, was, or any good reason why the bills of its bank were not as good as those 374 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of any other, it may reasonably be supposed that he had very little trouble in disposing of them. Thus the bills of the Bank of Sandstone got into wide circulation, but the holders might as well have had so much brown wrapping-paper instead. Apropos to the plan of establishing banks at inaccessible places is the incident related by a gentleman of this city, who, in wild-cat days, was traveling through the woods of Shiawassee county. The country was very new, with only here and there a log cabin in the woods, surrounded by a littte clearing. The road had never been worked, and was principally indicated by "blazed" trees. Toward night of an early June day he came upon a fork in the road, and was uncertain which track to take. He had not gone far upon the one which he had chosen before he became satisfied that it was only a wood roadthat is, it had been used for hauling out wood or timber. But as the day was wearing late, and he had no time to retrace his steps, he determined to proceed in hope of reaching a human habitation in which to spend the night. He had not proceeded far, when in a little clearing before him there loomed up a large frame structure, across the front of which was the conspicuous sign, "Bank of Shiawassee." It was one of the wild-cats quartered in the native haunts of that animal, the depths of the forest. A gentleman in this city, in the way of business, became the unhappy possessor of $1,200 or $I,5oo in bills on the Bank of Brest, and it occurred to him that he would go down to the bank and get them redeemed. Accordingly he made a journey to Brest and brought up at the door of the bank, where he was received by the president in the politest manner possible. That officer invited him in and showed him every attention, cordially pressed him to dine with him and opened several bottles of wine, and set before him dishes to tempt an epicure. He conversed volubly on every subject,.except finance, and rather monopolized the conversation to himself. At length the Detroit man forced an opportunity to make known his errand to Brest. The affable officer lost none of his politeness, but regretted with great suavity the inability of the bank to redeem the bills just then. Some specie was daily expected, and it was unfortunate that he had not called a few days sooner, before there had been such a run on the bank. But it would be all right in a few days. The holder of the bills took his departure in the midst of a shower of apologies. He is the holder of some of the bills yet. No school-boy ever saw the name of Singapore on his map of Michigan. It was one of the magnificent cities of the days of which we write, and was located in Allegan county. Its bank enjoyed an extensive circulation and considerable popularity from the fact that most people supposed it to be in Asia. That was a happy thought in christening this particular wild cat to give it a name with an East India flavor. It inspired respect. The bank would not, by any means, have smelled so sweet by any other name. A gentleman who took the bills because of the mellifluous title of the bank relates a mournful story of how the aforesaid bank "busted" while he was traveling about in the western part of the state looking for Singapore. WILD CAT BANKING 375 The Detroit City Bank was started with a nominal capital of $200,000. It appears to have been organized in good faith, and had an actual capital of $6o,000 paid in, in specie. The best men in the city ventured their money in it, and some of them bitterly remember to this day the experience which they gathered in connection with it. It was to be the great head-center, the king of all the wild-cats. Being located at the commercial and political capital of the state, all the other banks were to do business through it. It kept accounts with all of them. But it had to succumb with the rest of them. Its affairs were conducted honestly and in good faith, but it was not managed with financial ability. Every cent of money which its shareholders put into it was lost. The law under which all these banks were organized had not been in operation long before it was found to be leading to disastrous results. Banks were springing up all over the state, in unheard of places, in the depths of the forest, in sawmills, in asheries, and in the pockets of dishonest men. The plain provisions of the law were successfully evaded. Fraud ran rampant. The greatest farce ever enacted on the financial stage was then before the public. The bank commissioners under the law were Alpheus Felch, Digby V. Bell and K. Prichette. They endeavored to do their duty honestly and faithfully, but the state was large, the swindlers were many, and the commissioners could not be everywhere and have their hands on all of them at the same time. The bank commissioners, in their annual report, dated January I8, 1839, give in detail the policy pursued by them and the results of their investigations into the condition of the affairs of the various banks. They say that a brief retrospect of the operation and consequences of the free banking system may not be unprofitable, and therefore they proceed as follows: "On the 15th of March, 1837, the act popularly entitled the general banking law, was passed, upon the plausible principle of introducing a free competition into what was considered a profitable branch of business, heretofore monopolized by a few favored corporations. In little more than one year 49 banks were organized, with a nominal capital of $3,915,000, and about 40 went into actual operation under its provisions. These institutions professed to have an actual and available capital of $I,745,ooo000-30 per centum of the nominal capital being presumed to have been paid in according to law, in gold and silver; they were authorized to issue and put in circulation bank bills to the sum of $4.362,500, being twice and a half the amount of capital paid in and possessed. The feature 6f the act which authorized banking under the suspension law, that is to say, giving the sanction of law to the issue of promises to pay, not liable to redemption in gold and silver on demand, gave an irresistible impulse to their career, by opening the door for the debtor to liquidate his liabilities by transferring to the public at large his indebtedness to individuals. The result is too well known, and it is believed that it is not too strong language to assert that no species of fraud and evasion of law which 376 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the ingenuity of dishonest corporations has ever devised, have not been practiced under this act. The loan of specie from established corporations became an ordinary traffic, and the same money set in motion a number of institutions. Specie certificates, verified by oath, were everywhere exhibited, although these very certificates had been cancelled at the moment of their creation by a draft for a similar amount; and yet such subterfuges were pertinaciously insisted upon as fair business transactions, sanctioned by custom and precedent. Stock notes were given for subscriptions to stock, and counted as specie, and thus not a cent of real capital existed, beyond the small sums paid in by the upright and unsuspecting farmer and mechanic, whose little savings and honest name were necessary to give confidence and credit. The notes of institutions thus constituted were spread abroad upon the community in every manner, and through every possible channel; property, produce, stock, farming utensils, everything which the people of the country were tempted by advancing prices to dispose of, were purchased and paid for in paper, which was known by the utterers to be absolutely valueless. Large amounts of notes were hypothecated for small advances, or loans of specie, to save appearances. Quantities of paper were drawn out by exchange checks; that is to say, checked out of the banks by individuals who had not a cent in bank, with no security beyond the verbal understanding that notes of other banks should be returned at some future time. Such are a few among the numberless frauds which were in hourly commission. Thus a law which was established upon principles well digested and approved, and hedged round with so much care, and guarded with so many provisions that few, it was supposed, would venture to bank under it, became, by the base dishonesty and gross cupidity of a few, who had control of the specie of the country, nothing less than a machine of fraud. "The singular spectacle was presented of the officers of the state seeking for banks in situations the most inaccessible and remote from trade, and finding at every step an increase of labor by the dishonesty of new and unknown organizations. Before they could be arrested the mischief was done; large issues were in circulation, and no adequate remedy for the evil. Gold and silver flew about the country with the celerity of magic; its sound was heard in the depths of the forest; yet, like the wind, one knew not whence it came or whither it was going. Such were a few of the difficulties against which the commissioners had to contend. The vigilance of a regiment of them would have been scarcely adequate against the host of bank emissaries who scoured the country to anticipate their coming, and the indefatigable spies who hung upon their path, to which may be added perjuries, familiar as dicers' oaths, to baffle investigation. "Painful and disgusting as the picture appears, it is neither colored nor overcharged, but falls short of the reality. "The result of the experiment of free banking in Michigan is that at a low estimate, near $I,ooo,ooo of the notes of insolvent banks are due and unavailable in the hands of individuals. WILD CAT BANKING 377 "It has been said, with some appearance of plausibility, that these banks have at least had the good effect of liquidating a large amount of debt. This may be true; but whose debts have they liquidated? Those of the crafty and the speculative-and by whom? Let every poor man from his little clearing and log hut in the woods make the emphatic response by holding up to view as the rewards of his labor a handful of promises to pay, which, for his purpose, are as valueless as a handful of dry leaves at his feet. Were this the extent of the evil the indomitable energy and spirit of our population, who have so manfully endured it, would redeem the injury. But when it is considered how much injury is inflicted at home by the sacrifice of many valuable farms, and the stain upon the credit of the state abroad, the remedy is neither so easy nor so obvious. When we reflect, too, that the laws are ineffective in punishing the successful swindler, and that the moral tone of society seems so far sunk as to surround and protect the dishonest and fraudulent with countenance and support, it imperatively demands that some legislative action should be had to enable the prompt and rigorous enforcement of the laws, and the making severe examples of the guilty, no matter how protected and countenanced. "The difficulties and embarrassments which have grown out of this state of things is exciting an endeavor in many who have become entangled in these institutions to avoid the liabilities they have incurred, and induces the perpetration of acts and subterfuges which, under other circumstances, they would have loathed and rejected with contempt. So far has this been carried that men, upon whose character and credit institutions had obtained confidence, have used every device to shift their responsibility, indifferent into whose hands or control the institution should fall, provided they themselves were indemnified-careless of the rights and interests of those who embarked in the enterprise, or received the bills on their faith and credit, so that the singular exhibition has been made of banks passing from hand to hand, like a species of merchandise, each successive purchaser less conscientious than the preceding, and resorting to the most desperate measures for reimbursement on his speculation." Upon this report the legislature promptly suspended the operation of the act so far as organizing other banks was concerned. But the evil had been accomplished. Worthless bank notes were in the hands of everyone. The chartered banks had at first refused to have anything to do with the bills of the other banks, whereat there was a public clamor raised which compelled them to receive such bills on deposit, and in the way of business. Thus the regular banks, which had been doing an honest and legitimate business, were engulfed in the ruin which followed. When it became apparent that banks were established for fraudulent purposes, many of them were enjoined. Others, which had been striving to do honestly, struggled along in the hope of being able to redeem their circulation, and the holders of notes, for a long time, had faith that they would be able to realize something on them. But at length the law, and all the banks with it, collapsed fatally and forever. 378 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The question of the constitutionality of the law was raised in the supreme court, and the law was decided unconstitutional at the January term, I844, on the ground that the constitution requires that each corporation created by the legislature must receive the direct assent of two-thirds of the members elected, and that it is not a fair compliance when the assent of two-thirds is given to a general statute establishing a system for the admission of voluntary associations to corporate privileges. The opinion of the court was read by Justice Whipple, who maintained that it was clearly the intention of the framers of the constitution to prohibit the legislature from passing a general law authorizing the erection of corporations. The law being thus declared unconstitutional, of course the personal liability of directors and stockholders under it fell to the ground, and all hope which the holders of bills may have had of realizing anything upon them vanished forever. The bills were only so much waste paper. Already every one of the banks had collapsed, and they had dragged down the chartered banks with them. There was never a more complete financial ruin. When all the banks had been swept out of existence there were bills afloat representing millions of dollars. Many of these were in the hands of bona fide holders, who lost heavily thereby. Many of the bills had never been in use, and were then given away promiscuously. Children used them to play with, and in the rural districts, where paper-hangings were scarce, people used them to paper their rooms. The bills were engraved by Rawdon, Wright & Hatch, in the best style of their art, and were printed on a good quality of paper (it is said, by the way, that the engravers and printers never got their pay), so that they made the walls of a log cabin look rather picturesque. They were scattered all over the state, thrown into old garrets, closets, and bookcases. During the war thousands of dollars of these bills were resurrected and taken South by our soldiers, who found that the people of the South preferred them to confederate money; in fact they were quite as valuable and superior in point of typographical appearance. Many a soldier was thus enabled to purchase luxuries which otherwise he would have been obliged to go without. Many of these bills are yet preserved by men who took them for their face value, to be shown as curiosities to their children, or to serve as reminders of those exciting times, which now they hardly know whether to regard as partaking most of the ludicrous or the mournful. Why the banks were called "wild cats" is not known. The bills of similar banks in New York state were known as "red dogs". Whether the two titles had any relation to each other we are unable to say. Very likely the name of "wild cats" was applied to them on some occasion as a jest, and it seemed so peculiarly appropriate that it stuck to them, and was generally adopted. One authority says that the name was first given to them by Oliver Newberry, at one time a leading merchant in this city. Some debtor brought in a parcel of these bills to pay up an account. Mr. Newberry refused to take them-said he would have nothing to do with that "wild cat stuff." Whether or not Mr. Newberry is entitled to the distinguished WILD CAT BANKING 379 honor of going down to posterity as having stood sponsor for this species of bank notes we do not attempt to determine. We give the story for what it is worth, only premising that having consulted numerous authorities upon the subject, we have found no other explanation, and only that offered in one instance. Looking over the field now it is hard to understand how men of ordinary wisdom and prudence were led into this wild scheme of universal banking. But they suffered intensely.for it. Individual and state credit were ruined. Michigan, which had just then been admitted into the Union, and was rapidly filling up with a stirring New England population, received a check to her immigration and to her commercial prosperity from which she did not recover for many years. But the lesson was not lost. Upon the ruins of that utterly prostrated credit she builded so wisely that now no state enjoys greater prosperity or has a more enviable reputation for financial soundness.2 XXX THE STATE CAPITOL THE NEW STATE CAPITOL By E. O. Grosvenor Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXI, 227-232 A BOUT thirty years ago the necessity for a new state capitol building for Michigan was felt and very generally acknowledged. The buildings then in use at Lansing were too small to accommodate the various state departments and offered very little security against fire. They consisted of the first capitol, which was erected in I847, and enlarged in I865, a frame building, containing the legislative halls, supreme court room, the state library and several offices; also a brick building on the center of capitol square, erected in 1853, in which the other state departments had their offices. These buildings being several blocks apart caused great inconvenience to the various departments whose intercourse with each other was constant, and it was generally acknowledged that greater security should be provided for the archives of the state, which were constantly increasing in value. Recognizing this necessity, Governor H. P. Baldwin, in his inaugural message to the legislature on January 4, 1871, urged upon that body that they should provide for the erection of a suitable capitol building. A bill "To provide for the erection of a new state capitol" was introduced in the senate on February 14, was passed by that body on February 28, and by the house of representatives on March 22, and approved by the governor and became a law on March 31. The act provided an appropriation of $I,2oo,o000 for the erection of the capitol; $30,000 for a building to accommodate the state offices, supreme court and state library during the erection of the capitol, and $Io,ooo for incidental expenses. It also provided for the appointment by the governor of three commissioners, to be known as the "board of state building commissioners," the governor to be an additional member ex-officio and president of the board; also that a secretary, not a member of the board, should be appointed. On April II, Governor Baldwin sent to the legislature the names of Ebenezer 0. Grosvenor of Jonesville, James Shearer of Bay City, and Alexander Chapoton of Detroit, to be the commissioners, and the hominations were confirmed by the legislature on joint ballot. The commissioners met in Lansing and qualified the following day. On May 8, E. O. Grosvenor was elected vice-president of the board, and oh May 16, Allen L. Bours of Lansing, was appointed secretary. The board as thus constituted continued until the completion of their duties eight years later, the only changes during that period being in the presidency of the board which was vested by law in the governor of the state; the work having been commenced tnder Governor H. P. Baldwin con THE STATE CAPITOL 381 tinued under Governor John J. Bagley, and concluded under Governor Charles M. Croswell. The first work of the commission was the erection of a building to be occupied by the state departments, the supreme court and the state library during the erection of the capitol building. The cost of this building, including all expenses incident to its construction, was $30,693.94, a small excess over the amount originally appropriated. This additional sum was incurred in providing greater security for the vault in the state treasurer's department, which was considered a matter of so great importance that a joint meeting of the building commissioners and state officers was held to consider it, and the improvement was unanimously agreed upon, the contractor agreeing to perform the work and to have his payment therefor contingent upon its allowance by the legislature. In response to an advertisement of the commissioners, soliciting competitive plans for the capitol, twenty-two sets of plans were submitted, which had been prepared by leading architects of Michigan and other states. They were generally very creditable.to their authors, and their consideration required the board to be in almost constant session for nearly a month-their evening sessions continuing frequently until midnight. Builders of experience and recognized ability were employed to assist the commissioners, not only in judging of the practicability of the plans, but also in estimating the cost of the building in accordance with the most approved designs. The state officers were invited to be present and to take part in considering the merits and adaptability of the plans under discussion. The examination of the plans was concluded on January 24, 1872, when a ballot was taken by the state officers and commissioners, which resulted in the unanimous choice on the first ballot of the plans of Architect Elijah E. Myers, then residing at Springfield, Ill. An agreement was subsequently entered into, by which Mr. Myers was appointed the architect and general superintendent of construction. On July 15, I872, the commissioners entered into a contract with N. Osburn & Co., practical building contractors of Rochester, N. Y., and Detroit, Mich., to construct and complete the capitol in accordance with the requirements of the plans and specifications, for the sum of $I,I44,057.20, leaving nearly $56,000 of the appropriation to cover the cost of any extras which might be deemed necessary in construction, as well as all expenses incident to the erection of the building, including the salary of the architect. The contract required the building to be completed by December i, I877. The contractors at once entered upon their work, which they pursued with commendable vigor, showing throughout its progress a disposition to faithfully live up to all the requirements of their contract. Several changes, adding to the beauty and utility of the building were agreed upon during its construction, the cost of which was provided for by special appropriations by the legislature. The most important of these were the substitution of stone for galvanized iron in the construction of the main cornice and belting courses, at a cost of 382 HISTORIC MICHIGAN $65,000; improvements in the approaches to the porticoes, and in the construction of the roof, which cost $330,000. The corner stone of the capitol was laid with appropriate ceremonies on October 2, I873. The building was completed and dedicated on the first day of January, I879, at which time addresses were made by ex-Governors Alpheus Felch, William L. Greenly, Austin Blair, Henry P. Baldwin and John J. Bagley. A letter was read from ex-Governor Robert McClelland, regretting his inability on account of impaired health, to be present. This was followed by the report of the state building commissioners and presentation of the completed edifice by Vice-President E. O. Grosvenor. Governor Charles M. Croswell then made an address, accepting the building in behalf of the state of Michigan. The several appropriations of the legislatures for the construction of the capitol, furnishing of legislative halls, improvement of grounds, etc., were as follows: For erection of buildings and current expenses........$I,2,ooooo.oo For steam heating and ventilation.................... 70,000.00 For stone cornice and balustrade..................... 65,o00.oo For changes in entrance approaches and roof.......... 30,000.00 For electrician work and other improvements.......... 25,000.00 For furniture, improvement of grounds, etc............ 40,000.00 Total amount at disposition of building commissioners...$,43o,ooo.oo Of this amount there was expended................... 1,427,743.78 Leaving of appropriations unexpended................ 2,256.22 The commissioners having fully completed the work assigned to them, made their final report to the governor on May 2I, 1879, upon which day the commission was dissolved. During the entire term of a little more than eight years from the organization of the commission until its dissolution, no regular monthly meeting was ever omitted, and special meetings were held whenever the interests of the state rendered them necessary, and a full board was always in attendance, to accomplish which the individual interests of the commissioners were often laid aside. The meetings were frequently continued until after midnight. Every matter coming before the board had its final disposition by a unanimous vote. The completed building is a great success in every particular; every portion of it is strictly fireproof. The vault in the state treasurer's department is so constructed that the most expert burglars could not penetrate it between the hours of closing business on one day and its resumption on the following day. The offices are all well lighted, the system of heating and ventilation is perfect, and a joint convention of the building commissioners and the state officers decided that the building is of sufficient magnitude to provide for all reasonable demands upon it for a century to come. The legislature of I879 adopted a joint resolution declaring that the THE STATE CAPITOL 383 people of the state of Michigan are justly proud of their new capitol building and thanking the honorable board of state building commissioners and their secretary who so watchfully and laboriously supervised its erection. The building contains, besides corridors, passages, closets and wash and cloak rooms, one hundred thirty-nine rooms, thirty-eight being in the basement, thirty-three in each of the first and second stories, twentyeight in the third and seven in the fourth story, besides the boiler and fuel rooms. There are two grand stairways, one being on each side of the rotunda, extending from the basement to the fourth story, also additional stairways in several parts of the building. The building, exclusive of porticos, is 345 feet in length by I9IY2 feet in depth at the center. The extreme height is 267 feet; the girth of the building is 1,520 feet, and it covers one and one-sixth acres. All the past governors of the state who were connected with the erection of the building and who took part in its dedication have since passed to their reward, as well as Commissioners Shearer and Chapoton, the one who now addresses you being the sole survivor of the commission. It was the unchangeable determination of the commission at its outset, and until its labors were fully completed, to carry out the instructions of the legislature, in providing for the erection of the building, to the letter, and that purpose was never changed. Each annual report showed how every dollar was expended, and explained in the fullest manner every transaction of the commission. The assurance that the people of the state fully appreciated and approved the entire work of the commissioners has been regarded by them as their greatest reward. In closing this brief review of the work of the commission during the construction of the capitol, I copy a paragraph from the report of the commission made at the dedication of the building, and also a copy of a document executed by N. Osburn & Co, contractors, on the completion of their contract and the acceptance of the building by the commission, which will give some slight idea of the business methods adopted and enforced in the discharge of their duties: "The commission has aimed to erect a capitol worthy of the dignity of the state, massive and elegant, void of all trivial ornamentation and pleasing in appearance, of enduring material, substantial in construction, and perfect in workmanship, and while earnestly endeavoring to accomplish this, that we have not been unmindful of the injunction of the legislature to make no expenditure exceeding the appropriation, is attested by the following instrument executed, by the contractors on the day of completion and acceptance of the building: "Received of the board of state building commissioners of the state of Michigan voucher No. 73, bearing even date herewith, for the sum of one hundred thirty-six thousand three hundred four and 70-Ioo ($I36,304.70) dollars, being in full settlement of all demands arising in any manner under a contract made on the I5th day' of July, A. D. 1872, with said board of state building commissioners for the erection and completion of a state capitol for said state, it being expressly 384 HISTORIC MICHIGAN agreed and understood that all demands for extra labor and materials as well as for all changes made in the work for the entire completion of the contract are adjusted." (Signed) N. OSBURN & CO. Lansing, Mich., September 26, I878. How LANSING BECAME THE CAPITAL By Frank E. Robson Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XI, 237-243 IT is the purpose of this paper to present a sketch of the incidents connected with the permanent location of the capital of the state at Lansing, and, as a sort of preface, I invite your attention to the provision in the constitution of 1835, under which the state was admitted into the Union, relating to the seat of government. Section nine of article twelve reads as follows: "The seat of government for this state shall be at Detroit, or at such other place or places as may be prescribed by law, until the year eighteen hundred and forty-seven, when it shall be permanently located by the legislature."1 The provision was adopted in this form only after considerable debate and parliamentary war, if it may be so called. It is evident that even at this time there was considerable jealousy in the interior villages at what was then known and still thrives under the name of the "Detroit influence;" hence an apparent determination on the part of the delegates from the interior villages to remove the seat of government from Detroit to one of the prominent interior towns; undoubtedly other influences were also at work, but the jealousy of Detroit's power seemed to be the moving cause. Ann Arbor made a strong effort for it; through its delegate, Mr. Mundy, so much of the report of the committee of the convention appointed to draft a constitution as related to the location of the seat of government, was referred to a special committee.2 On May 22, the next day after the resolution referring to a special committee passed, the president of the convention appointed as such committee: Edward Mundy, of Washtenaw; Jonathan D. Davis, of Wayne; Samuel Colbath, of Monroe; Benjamin B. Morris, of Pontiac; Townsend E. Gidley, of Jackson; Titus B. Willard, of Berrien, and Hezekiah G. Wells, of Kalamazoo." The preponderance of opinion in the committee was against Detroit; it may be that the Washtenaw chairman had his committee well in hand, for when the committee reported on the i6th of June, the report gave all possible advantage to Ann Arbor. Its substance was as follows: The seat of government shall be located at Ann Arbor, in the county of Washtenaw, until I845, in which year the legislature shall permanently locate the same." The consideration of the report was taken up late the next day. This was the signal for the "Detroit influence" to put on its armor. The report was but fairly before the house, when a Wayne delegate moved to adjourn; this was lost. Efforts then followed, on this and the next day, to strike out Ann Arbor and insert Detroit and other -9=99= -l- I I OLD CAPITOL AT LANSING THE STATE CAPITOL 385 places, all of which proved futile. As a sort of compromise, or in order to satisfy some critic, Mr. Mundy offered as an amendment to the report a proviso to the effect that, should the supervisors or other authorities of the county refuse the use of the court house to the legislature without rent, then the seat of government was to remain in Detroit until I840.4 Whatever may have been Mr. Mundy's intention, the proviso proved of no avail, for the motion was lost. Various other amendments were proposed, varying practically only in the time when the capital should be permanently located, all placing it temporarily in Detroit; the time when it should be permanently located ranging from 1839 to I849. Finally, delegate John S. Barry offered the form in which it appears in the constitution of 1835, above referred to, which was adopted. Thus for a time the question was disposed of, but, in fact, it was only a temporary suspension of hostilities, a breathing spell preparatory for the greater conflict to follow. As the year 1847 approached the outcry against the "Detroit influence" grew louder and more pronounced, and this influence evidently did not consist solely in the legitimate influence of strong minds over the weaker. It was tiecessarily true that there were a greater number of able men in Detroit than in any other community in the state. The late Levi Bishop, in a paper read before one of the early pioneer meetings, mentions the other influe'nces, some of which are not unknown to legislators of the present day. He says, "It was said that where important measures were pending before the legislature, the influence of the social circle and of ladies' society was brought to bear upon the members, and many will remember that the influence of 'quail parties,' and 'quiet suppers' was often alluded to as the principal motive for the passage of many important acts of legislation."5 The feeling that a more healthy political atmosphere was necessary, increased as the season of 1847 approached, and early in the session bills were presented in both senate and house providing for the location of the seat of government, also a supplemental, bill providing for the removal of the departments of the state government, and other necessary matters connected with the location of the capital. It would be tedious to give the details of the various motions, votes, references, reports and the action had upon them, hence I shall content myself with a short sketch of the progress of the house bill providing for the location, which was the one finally passed; at the same time!noting only the more prominent features connected with its passage, also noticing some incidents connected with the passage of the supplemental bill. The bill providing for the location was introduced January 6, and, as usual, read twice. It was first referred to the committee of the whole and then taken from that committee and referred to a special committee. Early in February the special committee reported a bill substantially the same as that passed, except that the place of location was left blank, and it contained a proviso that the county where located 1-23 386 HISTORIC MICHIGAN should provide for the necessary buildings and give them rent free to the state. This proviso was finally stricken off. While the committee were a unit as to the proposed form of the bill and its provisions they were divided as to the proper place of location, and as a sort of compromise reported the bill in blank, and upon this point presented three reports. The reports argued the necessity of removal from Detroit and seemed inclined to be in favor of Marshall, Calhoun county having presented to the legislature a proposition in substantial accord with the proviso as reported. Against the removal to Marshall it was urged that it was too far south, while the reply was that north of it was a "howling wilderness." In one of the reports it was urged, among other things, that if the capital remained at Detroit no poor man could become governor, as the salary (then $I,500) could not support him in the gay city, while it was sufficient to enable the poor but ambitious man to live in the simplicity of the interior villages. The bill to locate ran the usual course of important measures, and was many times before the house. The name of nearly every village in the interior was presented. Among them were Lyons, Byron, Saginaw, Eaton Rapids, Jackson, Marshall, Ann Arbor, Utica, Corunna, Battle Creek and of course Detroit was continually urged. At one time it was agreed by a vote of 30 to 28 to insert "Lyons in the county of Ionia," and a motion made ordering the bill engrossed and read a third time, but by a piece of parliamentary jugglery Lyons was stricken out and the bill was again before the house. It is probable that in this deadlock, for such it was, practically, many names were presented as a joke, for among others we find "Copper Harbor" proposed. One morning after a fall of snow, a member arose and moved to take up the bill, offering as a reason that it would undoubtedly slide easily that morning. Referring again to the paper of Mr. Bishop, he states that the proposition to fill the blank with "in the township of Lansing" was considered a great joke and received with much laughter. From other sources I learn that instead of its being a joke it was in fact a well laid scheme. brought about by a man from Kalamazoo, who had been instrumental in locating the lands of the Seymours and Townsends. He was a man who hung about the land office and had an interest in the lands located by these parties. It was through his efforts that the motion was made and passed in the house. It is undoubtedly true. however, that most of the members voted for the proposition, considering it simply in the light of a good joke to locate the capital in the woods. Immediately after the measure became somewhat assured he went to New York and urged the matter so strongly to the others interested, and placed in such glowing colors the immense fortunes to be made from their investments should the capital be located on, or adjoining their lands, that a powerful lobbv was engaged to boom the proposition to locate in Lansing township. Mr. Bishop says no debate was had upon the question, but it was put at once and carried, even members of the Wayne delegation voting for it. It was a sorry joke for them, however, as the bill was immediately sent to the senate. All the aspiring villages now became alarmed, and many of the delegates who had voted for the THE STATE CAPITOL 387 measure would gladly have recalled their votes. At once a powerful lobby surrounded the senate, and every county and village desiring the capital presented propositions for its location. Land, money and buildings were offered as inducements. It is probable that "quail parties" also flourished, although I find no mention of them in the records. Every known tactic was used to have the bill amended and then returned to the house in order that it might be killed off, but all of no avail, the bill passed the senate, was presented to the governor, and, receiving his signature, became a law. The measure came from the house on February 13 and was before the senate until March 9, when it passed. Almost the entire of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th of March were taken up with the measure, and on the 8th the senate took fifty-one votes upon the question in some form. The arguments used against its location in the township of Lansing, then truly a "howling wilderness," is quite neatly summarized by Mr. Bishop, to whom I am again indebted. "What, shall we take the capital from a large and beautiful city * * * and stick it down in the woods and mud on the banks of Grand river, amid choking miasma * * * * *, where the howl of wolves and the hissing of massaugas, and groans of bullfrogs resound to the hammer of the woodpecker and the solitary note of the nightingale?"6 Undoubtedly this is but a fair picture of the situation as it appeared to the legislator's mind. One disgusted member offered a new section to the supplemental bill above referred to, which reads as follows: "The sum of one hundred dollars is hereby appropriated out of the five mill tax to erect guide boards to direct the members of the next legislature to the seat of government of the state of Michigan, to be expended under the direction of the said commissioners."7 The bill also provided for an appropriation of ten thousand dollars with which to erect temporary buildings. This was evidently considered a piece of great extravagance by some, as a motion was made to amend the title by adding thereto, "and to absorb the building fund in temporary buildings, thereby preparing the way for taxing the people to erect permanent state buildings."8 The supplemental act provided for three commissioners to be appointed by the governor, to select a site, giving them the privilege of locating on school section i6, or accepting some proposition which might be offered to them, and locating on some other section in the township. The commissioners examined sections 5, 9, IO, 13, 20 and 21, and finally selected section i6. Various propositions were made to them, those of James Seymore. to locate on section 9, now the north part of the city, and that of the Townsends, to locate on section 21, now the south part of the city, were the most prominent. The most interesting reading is, perhaps the proposition of Mr. H. B. Lathrop, of Jackson. Speaking of the Townsend proposition he says, "One of the worst, in point of health, that could be adopted. You have dead water on each side of you, and agues and chill fevers would be as sure to the state officers and their assistants as would be their salaries."' Mr. Seymore's proposition was in renewal of one made to the leg 388 HISTORIC MICHIGAN islature and contains one phrase of prophecy which is worth considering here. Speaking of the Grand river valley, he says, "It will soon become one of the richest and most populous parts of the state."10 The report of the committee sets out fully their reasons for choosing section I6, and they seem worth repeating now. They say we "found it, in the main, an excellent section of land, exceedingly well timbered, and its soil of a very superior quality for the purpose of cultivation. * * * * Its center is very handsomely elevated above the river, and is nearly equidistant from the two water powers in sections q and 21, at which points it is probable that extensive improvements will be made and, at no distant day, thriving villages spring up."'1 The naming of the proposed village was the source of considerable snort in the legislature, and it was only after some contest that the name of Michigan was finally chosen. The bill, as it passed the house, contained the name of "Aloda," which was changed by the senate to "Michigan." Among the names presented in the house are: Houghton, B1lshridge, Harrison, Kinderhook, El Dorado. Thorbush, Huron, Marcellus. and the member who wanted sign boards erected, proposed Swedenborg. In the senate the names proposed were those of eminent men of the times or of the revolution: Franklin, Washington, Lafayette, Cass. Tvler. Fulton and Wright being some of those proposed. Frequently people are born with names not exactly to their liking as they grow older, or perhaps a whim of the parent provides one with a name that truly becomes burdensome to its owner. The village of "Michigan," we may suppose, became tired of its name and wanted a new one, for early in the session of I848,' the first session held at the new capital. bills were introduced in both senate and house to change the name of the village. The bills were introduced in Tanuarv. but it was not until April that the name was finally chosen. It would seem that so simple a matter as changing one's name otught not to cause any difficulty. but this inoffensive looking measure was the source of much trouble. The house wanted the name "Lansing," the senate wanted it "Okeema." and each amended the bill of the other to that effect., This brought conference committees who would not agree. The committees would report. be discharged and new ones appointed. Finally a committee was found which could agree and they reported the name "Algoma." This did not suit the members of the respective bodies, for we find several motions to strike out the name "Algoma" and insert others. Among these names were Glen. Lewis, Cass, Dallas. LaSalle. and Huron. One member proposed to burden the voung village with the name of Pewanogawink. a name at that time belonging to a township in Genesee county. After much reporting and voting the senate finally agreed to concur in the name proposed by the house, "Lansing," and April 3. 1848, the governor approved the act.12 XXXI THE BEAVER ISLAND MORMONS A MICHIGAN MONARCHY Sketch of James J. Strang and the Mormon Kingdom of Beaver Island Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XVIII, 628-638 ONE of the most singular episodes of western frontier history is that of the Mormon Kingdom which flourished for nearly ten years on Beaver Island, at the foot of Lake Michigan, and was overturned in I856 by the murder of its founder and the forcible dispersion of his followers.l Two gentlemen of Detroit have in the last few years, as leisure permitted and in a spirit of co-operation, gathered together considerable material, documentary and otherwise, relating to the Manitou monarchy, and this fact makes possible now a detailed narrative of the incidents attending its rise and fall. Mr. Henry A. Chaney,2 the reporter of the state supreme court, made Beaver Island the objective point of his vacation jaunt a few summers ago, and examined the relics of "King Strang's" reign and talked with a score of men who were active in the ranks of his retainers or his foes. The results of these observations and interviews were subsequently embodied in an entertaining paper which Mr. Chaney read to a local literary association, but which has never been published. This sketch was afterwards turned over by its author, with all his notes and a few pamphlets, to Charles K. Backus, the assistant commissioner of immigration of this state, who examined newspaper files and corresponded with men who were connected or came in contact with Strang or the sect which he led. With the information gathered from such a variety of sources Mr. Backus prepared the article upon "An American King" published some time since in Harper's Magazine. The story is worth telling with somewhat more of detail, and the writing of this letter has been preceded by a careful examination of the material still in the possession of Mr. Backus. The following facts as to the early history of King Strang are given in a manuscript biography prepared by one of his sons (Charles J. Strang, of Lansing, an entirely trustworthy man), from data furnished by his mother,3 with the addition of a few circumstances mentioned in a letter from a surviving sister, or recorded in the columns of old newspapers. James J. Strang was born in Scipio, New York, on March 2I, 1813, but his farmer-father, Clement Strang, removed to Hanover, Chautauqua county, in 1816, and he lived in that town until his manhood. He received only the ordinary education of a country school, followed by a short term at the Fredonia Academy, but he was an industrious student, carrying books with him to his work, prominent in the local debating clubs, and noted especially for the excellence of his memory. 390 HISTORIC MICHIGAN At twelve years of age he joined the Baptist church, and was for some time an active member. At twenty-one he commenced the study of law with borrowed books, and while working on a farm two years afterwards he was admitted to the bar, and was soon married to Miss Mary Perce, who lived with him, bearing him three children, until he adopted polygamy. After his marriage he practiced law at Mayville and at Ellington, edited a paper at Randolph, worked on a farm, traveled on various business errands, and lived a somewhat roving life. At one time taught school, and at another delivered temperance lectures; he also held for a short term the postmastership at Ellington. Finally in i843, he emigrated to Burlington, Racine county, Wisconsin, and there entered into a partnership as an attorney with Mr. C. P. Barnes. As a boy he is described as eccentric, self-confident and bright; as a young man he was energetic, glib tongued, and exceedingly anxious to make his name distinguished. In January, I844, some of the itinerant Mormon missionaries aroused his interest in their cause and persuaded him to visit Nauvoo, where he found Joseph Smith at the zenith of his career. Strang's conversion was prompt, and his promotion rapid. On February 25, I844, he was baptized into the communion of the Latter Day Saints; on March 3, he was made an Elder, and commenced at once his work in the Mormon ministry. In the following June, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered by the mob at Carthage, and Strang at once claimed to have been appointed the dead prophet's successor. The basis of his claim was afterward set forth by him in a small pamphlet (Gospel Tract No. IV., Voree, Wis., i848) entitled "The Diamond." It declares that "a letter of appointment," written by Joseph Smith at Nauvoo on June i8, and mailed there on June i9, came to Strang in the mail at Burlington, Wis., on July 9. In those times of irregular and slow postal service in the west these dates were not unnatural; their significance lies in the fact that the letter thus appeared to have been written some days before and received some days after the killing of the prophet. It was couched in the usual phraseology of the Mormon documents, a wordy imitation of the Scriptural style, and contained an account of a celestial vision in which his impending fate was apparently revealed to the writer, and he was told that to James J. Strang "shall the gathering of the people be, for he shall plant a stake of Zion in Wisconsin, and I will establish it." The original of this letter is still in existence, and has a postscript which does not appear on the printed version. This postscript asks for occasional reports of progress, from which it would seem as if "the stake of Zion" in Wisconsin was to be a branch of the church, and as if the letter did not refer to the prophetic succession. Evidently its suppression in the pamphlet was intentional. On the strength of this "appointment," which he declared had been foreshadowed to him in a vision at the exact hour of "the martyrdom of Joseph," Strang promptly and vigorously pushed his claims to the Mormon presidency, although hot even half a year had elapsed since his baptism. He was briefly conspicuous in the struggle that ended in THE BEAVER ISLAND MORMONS 391 the triumph of Brigham Young's personal force and shrewd strategy, but was speedily driven from the main field of the contest. Lieut. Gunnison in his History of the Mormons (chap v.), says: "The struggle for the Seer succession followed. Rigdot, as second in rank, claimed promotion; also, by former revelations, declared himself assigned to be their prophet. He called a meeting and proclaimed his position as head. James J. Strang contended for the place of Seer, and showed letters over the deceased prophet's signature, assuring him that he should be the successor in the event of Joseph's death. But the college of the twelve had other views, and by a vote on the subject they declared that definite instructions and the last will and testament of Joseph had been delivered to them in secret council. It revoked all former designations and devolved the choice upon them. Under the management of their sagacious chief they elected the Peter of the apostles, Brigham Young, to the responsible station. * * * This enthronement drove Rigdon with a party to Pennsylvania, where in a short time his influence vanished and the band dispersed. Strang founded a city on the prairies of Wisconsin, and had a numerous colony; he ultimately removed to Beaver Island, in Lake Michigan, and assumed the title of King of the Saints, where the small kingdom still exists. These bodies and their leaders were excommunicated by the great majority under their proper Seer, as was also William Smith, another competitor for the throne, and a party in Texas headed by Lyman Wight." In Strang's case excommunication was accompanied by the widespread circulation of pamphlet attacks upon his character. Of all the aspirants he was the only o'ne, save Brigham Young, who displayed any genuine qualities of leadership. Defeated at Nauvoo, he returned to Wisconsin, and, maintaining his prophetic claims in published letters and in sermons, gathered a body of followers with whom he founded the city of Voree, at what is now known as Spring Prairie, Wis. His disciples were there organized into a single community, owning all things in common and living as one family. They were called the Primitive Mormons, and the Voree Herald was established as their organ; from the same printing establishment was also issued a series of tracts setting forth the new Mormon doctrines. The sacred books of this sect were four in number, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's Book of Doctrines and Covenants, and the Book of the Law of the Lord, the latter having been translated by Strang from eighteen metallic plates, which he claimed to have miraculously discovered, and which he said were "written long previous to the Babylonish captivity." Strang performed several "miracles" of this sort, closely resembling those with which Smith so successfully bolstered up the original imposture. The community at Voree grew steadily under Strang's energetic leadership, but in 1846 he determined to plant a colony on the Lake Michigan archipelago, and in the following year he visited Beaver Island at the head of a prospecting party. In the face of the resistance of the few traders already in possession, and amid many hardships, 392 HISTORIC MICHIGAN they thoroughly explored it and decided to settle there. This is the largest of the many islands scattered thickly through the northeastern extremity of Lake Michigan, divided into three groups, known by the names of Manitou, Fox and Beaver, and organized into the county of Manitou by the state of Michigan. It is fifteen miles in length by six in width, contains several thousand acres of fertile and well watered lands, and has one of the finest natural harbors upon the chain of great lakes. These islands now contain an isolated community of small farmers, wood-cutters, traders and fishermen, are visited only irregtularly by passing vessels, and are chiefly known as valuable fishing stations. Thirty-five years ago they were sparsely inhabited by Ihdians and Indian traders, and were camped upon occasionally by fishing parties; but little or nothing else was known of them even at the principal lake ports. Strang believed that there he could establish his church on a secure temporal foundation, aid could escape that hostility of Gentile neighbors which had proved so fatal to Smith's settlements at the far West and Nauvoo. Convenient visions, duly communicated to the faithful for their edification and guidance, then ordered him not merely to gather his people at Voree, but to also take them to "a land amid wide waters and covered with large timber, with a deep, broad bay on one side of it." There was accordingly some emigration from Wisconsin to Beaver Island in 1847-8, but it acquired considerable proportions in I849-50, and in the latter year the headquarters of the Primitive Mormons were removed from Voree to the new village at Beaver Harbor, to which the name of St. James had been given in honor of its founder. The Voree Herald was then succeeded by the Northern Islander, an exceedingly creditable specimen of backwoods journalism. The communistic principle was abandoned, and the saints became the owners of their own homesteads. In July, i850, the government of the church was thoroughly reorganized "by the union of church and state," and the formation of a kingdom, with Strang as king. Precisely the nature of his claim to the royal title is thus stated by one of the most intelligent of his followers, Wingfield Watson, who still lives at Boyne, Charlevoix county, Michigan: "Mr. Strang did claim to be a king only to the Mormon people, and upon the same principles, and the same only, upon which Moses, Melchisedec, Elijah, Elisha, Noah, Enoch, Peter, Joseph Smith, and all the great and leading prophets of God claimed that office since the world began, namely, by an appointment by revelation and an ordination under the hands of angels; and as none of those persons ever proposed in any way to be king only to those who, after a proper investigation of his claims and character, chose to receive him as such, so it was with Mr. Strang. By virtue of this ordination he claimed to hold the conjoint, kingly, prophetic and apostolic office held by all the above mentioned personages." This adjustable claim of kingly authority amounted practically to this: Among his own people, and despite the occasional revolt of one or a few individuals, Strang was supreme and ruled them as he wished from first to last. They believed that obedience to his commands was THE BEAVER ISLAND MORMONS 393 a duty, and his missionaries did not hesitate to, at times, assert that "Strang's was the only valid government on earth." Their leader, however, carefully kept his monarchial pretensions for home consumption, and not only submitted to national and state authority, as required, but was shrewd in using the machinery of the civil law to advance his own ends as opportunity offered. The general domestic regulations of his kingdom are thus described in a manuscript prepared by his wife: "The discipline of the church in the matter of temperance and morals was very strict. The use of tea, coffee, and tobacco, as well as of liquors, was prohibited. The temperance laws of the state were strictly enforced with especially good effect among the fishermen and Indians. Polygamy was introduced during the winter and spring of 1849. At first it was talked of quietly and secretly among the leaders, and afterward publicly and openly among the people. It was not looked upon favorably, and there were never over twenty cases of plural marriages upon the islands. No man had more than three wives except Strang. His first wife left him in I851, two years after he married his second; in 1852 he married a third, and in 1855 two more. No man was permitted to take more than one wife unless he showed means and ability to give them abundant care and comforts. Prostitution and lewdness were discountenanced alike in both sexes, and it was as necessary for a man to be careful of his character and reputation as for a woman." The county and township officers required by law were elected as in other parts of the state, but those positions were not used by members of the Mormon church, except when required by circumstances. Of course, in dealing with those outside of the church it was necessary to resort to the civil law. By-laws for the kingdom were adopted and published, and every household possessed a copy. They were very strict in all that regulated society, morals, and religious observances, and absolute obedience was enjoined. The seventh day was set apart as the Sabbath, and every person physically able was commanded to attend church on that day. The saints were required to pay one-tenth of all they raised, earned, or received into the public fund, and the tithing was used for improvements, taking care of the poor, and paying state, county and township taxes. No other tax was levied. Schools were organized and flourished finely. A printing office of sufficient capacity to print all the papers, books, pamphlets, tracts, etc., needed for the church was maintained, and became a strong arm in the association. No betting or gaming was permitted, but the rules were very liberal in the matter of amusements. Many improvements were made upon the Beaver, while small settlements were planted on neighboring islands. A Mormon tabernacle was also built, and Strang's cabin was raised to the dignity of a frontier palace by the erection of two additions connected with the main building by covered ways. Between the Gentiles and the Mormons of lower Lake Michigan a warfare was waged fully as bitter as that which drove the disciples of Joseph Smith from Missouri to Illinois, and from the Mississippi to the valley of the great Salt Lake. For three years the traders at Beaver 394 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Island, and the Indians incited by the traders, endeavored by all means short of murder to check the Mormon immigration. Then the numerical strength changed to the side of the Saints, and they proceeded to retaliate vigorously. They soon succeeded, after first coming to an understanding with the Indians, in getting rid of most of the Gentiles, and were left practical possessors of the islands. Their relations with the fishermen and the settlers at Mackinac and neighboring points on the mainland never became friendly. Each party charged the other with gross crimes, and both, at every opportunity seized the weapons of the law to aid them in the conflict. Bloody collisions were not infrequent, and the feud finally became a murderous one. The Mormons were well provided with pistols and muskets, and were the proprietors of a small cannon; they also had boats of their own, and, more important still, their movements were guided by definite authority, and were dreaded and not despised. Some incidents will illustrate the unorganized enemies, and for the last half of King Strang's reign they were dreaded and not despised. Some incidents will illustrate the desperate nature of this border warfare. In I850 the fishermen planned a Fourth of July celebration at Beaver Island, which was to reach a patriotic climax in the forcible expulsion of the Mormons, but the firing of a national salute from a shotted cannon and the parade of armed Saints in large numbers brought that project to an inglorious termination. Somewhat later a Mormon constable attempted to arrest the Gentile brothers named Bennett, who had assaulted an elder of his church. They resisted and a fight ensued, in which one of them was instantly killed, and the other lost a hand, while the officer was seriously wounded. A year or two afterwards the Mormons elected the sheriff of the (new) county of Emmet, and he undertook to summon jurors from Pine River (now Charlevoix) on the mainland. The settlers there treated this as an attempt to abduct some of their number for malicious purposes, and drove the sheriff off by a fusilade from guns and pistols which badly wounded six of his posse. The mere dread of the anger caused by this deed sufficed to promptly scatter the Pine River settlers, and the faith of the fugitives in their own prudence was soon confirmed by the erection by the islanders upon a convenient spot of a lofty gallows bearing suggestive inscriptions addressed to "The murderers of Pine River." Minor collisions and affrays were of constant occurrence, while the Mormons were denounced as mere outlaws. On the other hand, Strang, in the Northern Islander and in his pamphlets, declared that his followers were a law-abiding and peaceable people, who were persecuted by gangs of drunken desperadoes, and were held responsible for offenses never committed, or for depredations which were, in fact the work of their noisiest accusers. He also wrote letters to papers in New York, Rochester, Detroit and Chicago, defending the Mormons with no little plausibility. Strang's literary attainments were of fair character. A paper of his upon "The Natural History of Beaver Island," which can be found in the ninth annual THE BEAVER ISLAND MORMONS 395 report of the Smithsonion Institution, is written in excellent English and with an easy style. As an especially strong point upon his side of the argument he pointed to the fact that although he and his followers were frequently arraigned in the courts on charges ranging from petty larceny to high treason, in no single case did conviction follow. A notable trial was that which took place in Detroit in the summer of 1851. In May of that year the United States authorities decided to proceed against Strang and his confederates for trespassing on the public lands, stealing timber, counterfeiting, mail robbing, etc. The armed steamer Michigan was placed under the orders of District Attorney George C. Bates, and, with a force of deputy marshals, sailed to Beaver Harbor. It was expected that the service of the warrants would be resisted or evaded by the Mormons, but all the accused promptly surrendered themselves, and a few of their chief men were taken to Detroit for trial. The testimony in the case was, however, taken at Beaver Island, before United States Commissioner W. D. Wilkins by agreement betweefn counsel, Col. A. T. McReynolds appearing with Strang himself for the defense. Over one hundred witnesses were examined, and the mass of evidence thus collected was submitted in the United States district court at Detroit, before Judge Ross Wilkins, in June, i85i. The court room was crowded, and the progress of the trial was watched with eager interest by the people of this city, and was reported at unusual length by its papers. Strang made an exceedingly effective speech to the jury, complaining bitterly of persecution and dramatically describing himself as a martyr to his religious convictions. The judge's charge was emphatic in cautioning the jury against yielding to sectarian prejudice, and the result was a verdict of acquittal. This decided triumph greatly strengthened Strang's hold upon the reverence of his followers and increased the general opinion of his capacity. In i852 the king became a legislator. The score of new counties of the northwestern quarter of the lower peninsula of Michigan formed at that time what was known as the Newaygo district. It was of immense extent, and its few centers of settlement were widely scattered. The result was that five legislative candidates were voted for, the Mormons solidly supporting Strang, who received a very decided plurality. An attempt was made to arrest him on some charge and thus keep him away from Lansing, but he used his privilege as a legislator to escape that snare. Next his seat was contested on constitutional and other grounds. He showed skill in the management of his own case in this instance, made a forcible speech before the house, and was admitted by a vote of forty-nine to eleven. In I854 he was re-elected, and this time he took his seat without resistance, thus serving two terms as a member of the state house of representatives. King Strang also dabbled in politics a little, co-operating in the main with Democrats, who were at that time in power in Michigan. "The Mormot vote" he controlled absolutely, and used it to secure advantages for his community and to make bargains that would help on his schemes of personal or church advancement. In one or two doubtful state contests the action of the 396 HISTORIC MICHIGAN islanders under his leadership became a matter of solicitude to party managers, and one or two trips were made to St. James on political errands by that now veteran negotiator, John H. Harmon. Strang did not lack for political ambition. While at Lansing he broached a scheme for subdividing Michigan which embodied a plan for the erection of a new Mormon territory. This, of course, received no encouragement, and then he applied to Robert McClelland, of Michigan, who was then secretary of the interior in the cabinet of President Pierce, for an appointment as governor of Utah, promising that his administration should be attended by the uprooting of Brighamite Mormonism in the Salt Lake valley. The end of King Strang's reign came in I856. Externally the affairs of the "kingdom" were then at their zenith, but serious internal troubles had arisen. Polygamy had proved a source of discontent, and gave excuse for revolt against Strang's rigid discipline in small matters. Jealousies also sprang up at times between him and the more intelligent of his disciples. Soon after the occupation of Beaver Island the most effective of his preachers, a strolling actor named George J. Adams, became insubordinate and was excommunicated. He failed in an attempt to organize a revolt and joined the Gentiles; he made several futile attempts to break up the new settlement, but finally gave up the contest. Later, the most capable of Strang's followers, an educated Baltimorean named Dr. H. D. McCulloch, became disaffected, and he successfully stimulated the hostility to the King both on Beaver Island and along the shore until it bore tragic fruit. Two men named Bedford and Wentworth had been subjected to public discipline. One of them had been severely whipped, and, as he believed, by Strang's orders, although this was denied. They were eager for revenge, and determined to kill the Mormon leader whenever it could be done with any hope of escaping the fury of his followers. The result was thus narrated in the columns of the Northern Islander of June 20, 1856: "MURDEROUS ASSAULT.-On Monday last the United States steamer Michigan entered this harbor at about one o'clock p. m. and was visited by the inhabitants promiscuously during the afternoon. About seven o'clock Capt. McBlair sent a messenger (Alex St. Barnard, the pilot) to Mr. Strang requesting him to visit him on board. Mr. Strang immediately accompanied the messenger, and just as they were stepping on the bridge leading to the pier, in front of F. Johnson & Co.'s store, two assassins approached in the rear, unobserved by either of them, and fired upon Mr. Strang with pistols. The first shot took effect upon the left side of the head, entering a little back of the top of the ear, and, rebounding, passed out near the top of the head. This shot, fired from a horse-pistol, brought him down, and he fell on the left side so that he saw the assassins as they fired the second and third shots from a revolver, both taking effect upon his person, one just below the temple, on the right side of the face, and lodged in the cheek bone, the other on the left side of the spine, near the tenth rib, followed the rib about two inches and a half and lodged. Mr. Strang recognized in the persons of the assassins Thomas Bedford and Alexander Wentworth. THE BEAVER ISLAND MORMONS 397 Wentworth had a revolver and Bedford a horse-pistol, with which he struck him over the head and face while lying on the ground. The assassins immediately fled on board the United States steamer, with pistols in hand, claiming her protection. The assault was committed in view of several of the officers and crew from the deck of the steamer, also of Dr. H. D. McCulloch, F. Johnson, and others, and no effort was made to stop it. Mr. Strang was taken up by a few friends and some of the officers of the boat and carried to the house of Messrs. Prindles, where the surgeon of the steamer made an examination of his wounds and declared recovery hopeless. Process was taken out for the apprehension of the assassins, and the sheriff of the county called on Captain McBlair for their delivery. The Captain refused to give them up, saying that he would take them to Mackinac and deliver them into the hands of the civil authorities of the state there. The steamer left the next day, carrying off all the persons supposed to be implicated in the affair, thus affording military protection to murderers and overthrowing the sovereignty of civil law." All the parties suspected of any share in the homicide were taken to Mackinac on the Michigan, and were there enthusiastically received by the people and speedily discharged from nominal custody. Strang was removed in a few days to Voree, where he died on July 9. He was buried at Spring Prairie, Wisconsin, and his family, which consisted of five wives and twelve children, lived in that neighborhood for a short time, but finally scattered. Shortly after his removal from St. James a mob of angry fishermen and others descended upon the Mormon settlement, burned the temple, sacked the "royal palace," and drove the subjects of the fallen monarch from the islands in hot haste. The dispersion of the Beaver Island Mormons was complete, and they have since ceased to profess any organized existence. At the time of the dispersal there were about 2,500 in the colony. The prophet had four wives, excluding his first. L. D. Hickey had three and all the other polygamous families two wives. The men (or their successors) who expelled the saints are still in possession of the fruits of conquest. They dwell in the abandoned homes, substantial cabins of hewn logs, vine-clad and surrounded by little gardens. The office of the Northern Islander has become a boarding house, and is now "the best hotel" in St. James. The island nomenclature alone preserves the traditions of the fallen kingdom.4 The village on Beaver Harbor is still St. James. The excellent road which leads into the interior is still the King's highway. The largest of the inland lakes is called Galilee, and a trout brook which winds through a ravine near the eastern shore is the Jordan. The Mormon tabernacle is a mere mound of charred ruins; Catholicism has become the dominant religion of the island, and is represented by a handsome chapel. XXXII THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN THE SEER By John G. Whittier Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, VII, i64 T HE following verses were written by J. G. Whittier on receiving an eagle's quill, when on a visit to Lake Superior in I846: I hear the far-off voyager's horn, I see the Yankee's trailHis foot on every mountain pass, On every stream his sail. He's whistling round St. Mary's Falls, Upon his loaded train; He's leaving on the Pictured Rocks His fresh tobacco stain. I see the mattock in the mine, The ax-stroke in the dell, The clamor from the Indian lodge, The Jesuit's chapel bell. I see the swarthy trappers come From Mississippi's springs; And war-chiefs with their painted brows, And crests of eagle wings. Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, The steamer smokes and raves; And city lots are staked for sale Above old Indian graves. Bv forest, lake and water-fall, I see the peddler's show; The mighty mingling with the mean, The lofty with the low. I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be,The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea. The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yet and warm; The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form; THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 399 Each rude and jostling fragment soon Its fitting place shall findThe raw materials of a State, Its muscle and its mind; And, westering still, the star which leads The new world in its train, Has tipped with fire the icy spears Of many a mountain chain. THE UPPER PENINSULA: A SKETCH By Joseph H. Steere Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXIX, 235-247 HISTORICAL incidents of the discovery, early occupation and settlement of a state, a portion of a state, or a locality, though comparatively unimportant from a national point of view, have always been deemed worthy to be treasured up for the remembrance of posterity, as an instructive and interesting study. Along that line of inquiry we invite attention to the upper peninsula of this state, a stretch of land extending between Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan, 318 miles in length east and west and varying in width north and south from 30 to I64 miles. It lies within the embrace of, and its shores are margined by, the three largest of the great fresh water seas so strangely grouped together in the heart of this continent. It was not originally a part of Michigan. How in an early day it came to be given to this state in compensation for the loss of a few townships on her southern border which were claimed by Ohio and taken with a strong hand, is another story, to be found in the annals of the bloodless Toledo war. Suffice it to state, upon that subject, that the people of the lower peninsula, though since somewhat reconciled, were then indignant over the compulsory exchange. They spoke very unkindly of the climate and resources of their recent acquisition, and publicly protested that they had been cheated and defrauded in a contention where might made right. In their published protests they declared that, even if the new territory had any value, which was questioned, yet "for a great portion of the year nature has separated the upper and lower peninsulas by impassable barriers, and there never can be any identity of interests or community of feeling between them." Even yet that sentiment is not entirely obliterated. To some extent the upper peninsula is yet a thing apart from the rest of the state; its climate and resources are different; it is not settled, cleared and subdued as lower Michigan is; as an entirety it is the newest, wildest and least developed portion of the state, and it still offers an opportunity for pioneer labor and adventure. Here and there, sparsely interspersed, we find cities and villages-civilized centers which certain industries have developed. Occasionally we see a farming community of some pretensions; now and then the lumbermen's camps and saw-mills, or a log cabin with its stump 400 HISTORIC MICHIGAN adorned clearing, where the hardy settler is trying to hew out a home in the forest; but those are small spots comparatively in the vast area of untamed wilderness. Only a short distance from a busy town, you may lose yourself in the dark sweep of the primeval forest, where the partridge nests, the deer range and the bear and lynx yet lurk in the thicket. In places, not many miles from fair-sized cities and villages, the hunter can hear, from his tent or cabin door, the evening silence broken by the lone howl of the wolf as he gives his rallying call down by the lake and later the full cry of the pack rings out as they pursue the wounded deer through the darkness of the night. That part of the state is yet called the "wilds of northern Michigan," and those living there today have a feeling that they are pioneers. Most of them were born elsewhere, and immigrated from more thickly settled sections of the South and East to that new and developing country, many not thinking to remain long, others to grow up with it. Civilization has not yet tamed the rugged wildness of its shores; nevertheless, that so-called newest portion of Michigan is in point of discovery the oldest. Before a white man ever stepped upon the lower peninsula, that part of our state was well known to Europeans. More than a century before the birth of this nation the lily of the Bourbons had floated over that peninsula and the sovereignty of France had been there declared. While Roger Williams, a refuee from Purit.n oppression. was still struggling to found his Rhode Island colony, "to be a shelter for persons oppressed of conscience." more than five years before Eliot, the New England missionary, had preached to the tribes of Indians dwelling within six miles of Boston harbor, the Jesuit Fathers had toiled along their westward way to those shores, and had erected their altars and preached the Christian faith to the two thousand savages dwelling by the Falls of St. Mary. Revealed in the true light of written history you can find, extending over a period of two and one-half centuries, a procession of hardy explorers and pioneers resorting to and laboring in that peninsula. They were of all degrees and stations in life. They went there searching for a pathway to China; they went in quest of adventure and conquest, of peltry and souls, fish, mineral, timber, health and land. To but enumerate all those historically worthy of mention would consume the evening in a recital of names as meager of detail as Homer's catalogue of the troops and ships which sailed against wind-swept Troy. or the Jewish genealogy in the Book of Chronicles. We can only mention here and there an era. an incident or an individual. To find the first pioneers of the Upper Peninsula we must go back of written history and, with the antiquarian, inquire into the young world's early dawn at a period long before the advent of the American Indian races, as known to the whites. There we learn of the prehistoric race which dwelt and delved on those shores-the ancfent miners of the Great Lakes, the vestiges of whose labors are of such magnitude that modern miners have paused in astonishment. The remains of the works of those ancient toilers in the mines extend for more than 150 miles along the copper-range in Houghton, Ontonagon THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 401 and Keweenaw counties and on Isle Royal. They worked with a system, intelligence and industry not characteristic of known savage tribes. From the enormous amount of work done, it is manifest that there was a large number of people, and that they worked through long ages. In their excavations, along the veins rich with native copper, are found the charcoal of their fires, the marks of their tools on the metal, thousands of stone hammers, chisels, rotten and crumbling but yet distinguishable skids and levers for raising masses of copper, bailing dishes and ladders. These to the antiquarian are rich legacies of the immemorial past. Today those rediscovered veins are supplying the copper markets of the world. No one of the existing tribes of Indians, or their known ancestors, worked these mines or knew of them. Who those ancient people were, whence they came or whither they went, are questions not yet satisfactorily answered even by those who are learned in such matters and who delight to trace the footprints of vanished peoples.' The first white traders and missionaries who visited the peninsula found it the home and huntifg-ground of the Chippewa or Ojibwa Indians, an intelligent, hardy and then powerful people; a scattered remnant of their descendants is yet surviving. Their history has several times been written by able historians, amongst whom are Henry R. Schoolcraft, long a resident of Michigan; and William W. Warren of St. Paul, a highly educated half-caste of the tribe, who wrote their history as he gathered it from the historical traditions told by their seers and aged men in the wigwams and around the camp fires. The Chippewas, too, were immigrants and pioneers, tracing their origin centuries back to the lower waters of the St. Lawrence river. Their early traditions tell that, many strings of lives before, they were led by a kindly spirit (which manifested itself in the form of a beautiful sea-shell rising from the water in the direction of the setting sun) to migrate from the shores of the great salt sea to the more pleasant land of the sweet-water seas. On the western border of the peninsula originated and was waged the ancient feud between the Sioux and Chippewas, continuing through three centuries, as fierce and bitter as the border wars of Scotland or the War of the Roses. Their villages extended from far east of Lake Nipissing to the west end of Lake Superior and beyond. Their names, legends and traditions encircle these shores and the region abounds in their mythology. That is Longfellow's land of the Ojibwas. In the realm of poetry, Hiawatha becomes one of Michigan's honored citizens. It was in Sault Ste. Marie that Bishop Baraga compiled his Otchipwa dictionary, from which it is said the poet obtained the Indian words scattered through his legends of Hiawatha. Those legends, taken largely from the folk lore tales and legends of the Chippewas, were gathered and translated by Henry R. Schoolcraft when he was located in the Upper Peninsula as Indian agent, and were first published in his "Algic Researches." The Tahquemenon river is the rushing Taquamenaw of the poet, on which Hiawatha launched the bark-canoe which he had 1-24 402 HISTORIC MICHIGAN such a strenuous time in building on its shore; and it was that river which Kwasind the strong man so energetically cleared "of its sunken logs and sand bars" so that Hiawatha could float down it "to the bay of Taquamenaw, to the waters of Pauwating," the Indian name for the Falls of St. Mary. It was on Lake Superior, "by the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining big sea water," that he stood to meet and welcome "the black-robed chief, the Prophet," and told him in language taken from an Indian speech preserved in the Jesuit Relations, how the lake was never so tranquil, and how the flavor of tobacco -was never so sweet and pleasant as "When you come so far to see me." Of the white explorers it has often been stated that religion was the grand inspiring motive which first gave those shores to the knowledge of our era. Unfortunately for the sentiment, that statement is but partially true. The zealous followers of Loyola were but a close second to the explorers and traders who went before. Being men of learning and scholarly tastes the missionaries kept careful journals and made reports to their superiors. They wrote truthfully and entertainingly of the journeys they made, the people they visited, and the characteristics of the countries through which they passed. But the first to go were the hardy and adventurous fur-traders, half trader, half explorer, brave, reckless men, fearing no misery or peril, pushing westward in quest of new tribes with which to trnffic, new countres to explore, searching ever for that mythical route to China, which they believed led that way. They were patient and daring, indomitable; risking everything, writing little or nothing; many of them, like the great men who lived before the time of Agamemnon, almost passing into oblivion because they had no Homer or Herodotus to immortalize their deeds. A few wrote something of their travels; others have scattered mention here and there in the Jesuit Relations and official reports from the colonies of New France. They reached the western lakes by the northern waterways, up the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, then by Lake Nipissing across to the French river and down it to Georgian Bay and thence west and north. Some of their names are well.known, others are seldom heard. As early as I616, before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, an adventurous voyager named Etienne Brule, one of Champlain's interpreters, returned to Quebec from the west after an absence of three years, and told of his journeyings to a great inland sea. He told of its size and location; gave a fabulous account of the deposits of mineral on its shores, and in confirmation produced an ingot of pure native copper he had found there. Some claim he was the first white man to see the western lakes, others that he did not get so far west but obtained his information and copper from tribes farther east.2 He was followed by Jean Nicolet, who (having first been sent by Champlain to live with the Algonquin Indians in order to learn their language) later journeyed by the Lake Nipissing route to that country and described it so well on his return in I635, that most writers feel safe in pronouncing him the first white, except possibly Brule, to set foot in Michigan. He first landed in this state at the Falls of St. Mary, and finding his THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 403 progress checked by them, turned back and went by Mackinac to Green Bay. From that time on, Lake Superior, the St. Mary's river and its Falls, the Straits of Mackinac and the upper peninsula were suggested on the maps of New France. Champlain named the falls Saut du Gaston in honor of a brother of Louis XIII. For a long time after, however, we find, as a convenient limitation to their vague knowledge of what lay beyond, the chartographers cut off the western extension of Lake Superior by the margin of their maps. In I64I Nicolet was followed by two missionaries who will be mentioned again. In 1658, the year in which Oliver Cromwell died, Radisson and Groseillier, two French traders, brothers-in-law, were exploring the upper lake region. They made two voyages to the northwest for trade and discovery. On one of their voyages in I66I, Father Menard accompanied them, being the first missionary to pass the Falls and reach Lake Superior. He was an aged man and in crossing a Wisconsin portage wandered into the woods and was lost. Radisson wrote and spoke English. He kept a journal of his travels and adventures in that language. His manuscripts were not published until 1885. They somehow fell into the hands of Samuel Pepys, of dairy fame, and later into the hands of London shop-keepers who were using them for waste paper when discovered by a collector named Rawlinson. The work is a most quaint, entertaining and simple narrative made more attractive by the peculiar spelling and odd, Chaucer English composition. His narrative enables us to trace him through the Georgian Bay, St. Mary's river, along the south shore of Lake Superior and to the Mississippi river. He describes the Pictured Rocks and asserts that he was the first Christian who ever saw them. He saw the Mississippi river eleven years before La Salle and fourteen years before Joliet and Marquette made their famous voyage down it. Radisson states that they visited pleasantly with the "wild men of ye Falls who had their, dwelling at ye coming in of a lake called Superior." He tells us that they built their boats and houses of the "Rind" of the trees. Some of his moral reflections are very curious. Speaking of their voyage on Lake Superior, he says: "Many of our wild men went to win ye shortest way to their nation and there were three and twenty boats, for we met with some on that lake that joined with us and came to keep company in hope to get knives of us, which they love better than we serve God, which should make us blush for shame." The first missionaries to visit the upper peninsula were Fathers Jogues and Raymbault, who landed at Sault Ste. Marie in I641, coming from the missions at the east of Georgian Bay; Nicolet and perhaps Brule preceded them. They wrote a full account of their voyage, gave the date of their visit, carefully describing the place and the people they met there, and made a map of the country which, unfortunately, has not come down to us. Raymbault died shortly after his return. A brother priest, reporting his death to their superior at Paris, tells of their going to this distant spot and touchingly states that Father Raym 404 HISTORIC MICHIGAN bault had greatly hoped from there to find a way across the wilderness to China, "but God diverted his path to Heaven." Father Isaac Jogues, on his return was captured by the cruel Iroquois, who scoffed at his attempts to teach them; made him a slave, traded and scourged him from village to village, subjected him to indignities and tortures, cut off his fingers and frightfully mutilated him in other ways. While in the hands of his savage masters, treated worse than their Indian dogs, in cold, hunger and loneliness and constant expectation of death, with no other opportunity to perform the missions to which he had devoted his life, as a last resort and solace to his misery he took possession of the country through which he wandered in the name of his Master by secretly carving the name of Jesus on the trees. He was finally purchased from the Iroquois by the Dutch of New York and returned to his people.8 In I665 Allouez founded the first Mission, on the shores of Lake Superior, and in I668 Father Marquette and Dablon established a mission at the Falls of St. Mary, built the first house, erected the first church, cleared and planted the first land and founded the first white settlement in what is now the state of Michigan. Two years later Marquette founded a mission at St. Ignace. It was from there he started on his famous voyage with Joliet to explore the Father of Waters and it was beneath the altar of the little chapel he built there that his savage followers and brother priests laid his weary bones to rest. Mackinaw and Sault Ste. Marie, lying at the east and south side of the upper peninsula, on the narrow waters connecting the great lakes. were known for nearly two centuries as the only gateways to the north and west beyond. They were the most important points in the whole Northwest. They were long believed to open the shortest route to China, the land of Prester John, which was supposed to lie not far away and which the early travelers were ever striving to reach. The places have been from time to time prominent in American history, commanding as they did the passage ways and commerce of the Great Lakes. In early days savage tribes fought each other for their control and civilized nations contended for the supremacy. While Father Marquette was planting his colony and erecting his chapel at St. Ignace he resided at Mackinac Island. In I67I he wrote of it as follows: "Missilimackinac is an island famous in these regions. is more than a league in diameter and elevated in some places by such high cliffs as to be seen more than twelve leagues off. It is situated in the strait forming the communication between Lakes Huron and Illinois (Michigan). It is the key and, as it were, the gateway for all tribes from the south. as the Sault is for those of the north, there being in this section of the country only those two passages by water, for a great number of nations have to go by one or the other to reach the French settlements." The flags of three civilized nations have floated over the peninsula as symbols of occupation and national authority. It has been truly said that the history of this nation exhibits three distinct and strongly THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 405 marked epochs. The first may be denominated the Romantic period, though that term would in a degree apply to each. It would extend through the French rule from the advent of whites till the end of the French and Indian war. It was the period of exploration and discovery, when the zealous missionaries and hardy fur traders first voyaged to the great center of the Indian tribes on the far-off shores of the northwestern lakes, when the cross was first planted there, and the boat song of the voyageurs first awakened the echoes of those shores and forests. In that period we find such well known characters as Marquette, La Salle, Joliet, Nicolet, Hennepin, Tonty, Duluth, Perrot, Allouez, Cadillac, Jogues, Raymbault, Dablon, Repentigny and many others, landing on and exploring the shores of the upper peninsula. I might call attention to the fact that Joliet left in the Sault a copy of his journal kept during his celebrated voyage of discovery with Marquette down the Mississippi. He made two copies and, on his way back, took the precaution to go up to the Sault and leave one with the Fathers there, that a record might be preserved should anything befall him while returning to Quebec. His fears were well founded. When near home, while descending the LaChine Rapids in the St. Lawrence, his canoe was capsized. He barely escaped drowning, and everything, including his copy of the journal, was lost. Unfortunately the copy left with the missionaries has never come to light. The second epoch was that of the British occupation, beginning at the close of the French and Indian war, when Rogers, the famous Ranger, led the British soldiers into Michigan, when garrisons of British troops were sent to Green Bay, Detroit, Mackinac and other points on the Great Lakes. It was a period more military and warlike. It included the Pontiac war, and ran down through the successive struggles of Indian, British and American for dominion, including the Revolutionary war and the War of I812. It was the period for licensed fur traders under military supervision, and of the great fur companies. Many men of ability and prominence operated along the peninsula in those days. Rogers, the Ranger, like Julius Caesar, was not only a fighter but a writer. He commanded at Mackinac for several years and fell into difficulties because of the lavishness with which he lived and bestowed the government funds on the neighboring tribes. He wrote three works entitled Rogers' Journal, A Concise Account of North America, and a tragedy called Pontiac. Col. De Peyster, the author of DePeyster's Miscellanies, was in command at Mackinac for a time. He was a New Yorker by birth, but was trained in the British army and on his retirement went to Scotland and was for a time in command of a military organization of which Burns was a member; and the poet immortalized him in one of his great poems. Dr. Jonathan Carver, the famous author of Carver's Travels, was a visitor and pioneer of the peninsula. He liked it so well that he bought it, obtaining a deed for it, along with what are now several western states, from the chiefs of the various nations he visited. The deed, although obtained before the Revolutionary war, by no authority of any government and for a few trinkets, has been urged several times before 406 HISTORIC MICHIGAN congress by Carver's heirs, as a claim for indemnity. It has been recorded in some of the counties of the upper peninsula and is an interesting document. The first licensed trader upon Lake Superior under English rule was Alexander Henry, who was one of the few survivors of the bloody massacre at old Fort Mackinac in I763. He wrote a most graphic and thrilling account of the massacre which has been often copied and quoted in more recent publications. On obtaining his license he first located at Sault Ste. Marie and went into partnership with one Cadotte, who had remained there in occupation of the old Repentigny fort, after the lord of the seignory left to fight for his king against the British in that war which lost Canada to France. Henry was a man of great energy, robust courage, ability and business enterprise. He organized a company and worked the copper mines of Ontonagon I25 years ago. The company was chartered in England as "A Company of Adventurers to work the copper mines of Lake Superior." They imported miners, built a sloop of forty tones at Point aux Pins to carry their men and supplies to the mines and did considerable work opening a mine; but the venture proved disastrous. Henry, however, was more successful in the fur trade, and is said to have amassed a fortune. The trade in those days was large. Henry tells that on a certain trip on the 'north shore in three days' trading he procured 12,o0o beaver skins, besides many otter and marten. He wrote a book entitled Henry's Travels, full of descriptions of that country and his adventures there. It is a plain, graphic and manifestly truthful narrative; written in excellent taste and fascinating in its details. In an important suit involving an historical question, it was cited and approved as an authority in the supreme court of the United States. The individual traders were soon supplanted by the great fur companies acting under royal charters,-the Northwest Fur Company, the X. Y. Company, the Hudson Bay Company and others. Their organizations were thorough, far-reaching and powerful. Their head men were lords of the lakes, with a large retinue of employes, ruling with a strong hand and living in semi-baronial style at Grand Portage, Mackinac, Sault Ste. Marie and other points of rendezvous. These passed away with the coming of the third epoch, the event of American control and influence. The American Fur Company, organized by John Jacob Astor, took their place with headquarters at Mackinac, and, with the hardy Vermonters whom he put in charge, an extensive and profitable business was done for many years, laying the foundation of the great Astor fortunes of today. The third epoch is the period of enterprise, of work, of commercial development and American activity. The attention of capital was called to the immense deposits of iron and copper to be found on the peninsula. Such eminent scientists as Dr. Houghton, Schoolcraft, Foster and Whitney, Whittlesey and Agassiz made their nature and value known to the world and a tide of fortune-seekers set that way. Between 1845 and i86o no fewer than Ii6 copper mining companies were formed and in operation and the activity in copper stocks was as THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 407 great then as today. Ontonagon, Houghton, Rockland, Hancock, Calumet and other cities grew up as the result of these mining enterprises. In 1846 came the exploiting of the iron mines, bringing Marquette, Ishpeming, Iron Mountain, Bessemer, Ironwood and other iron cities into existence, followed by the completion of the Sault canal in 1855 and the opening of Lake Superior to the world. In passing we must pause to pay tribute to one body of men, developed by the peculiarities of the fur trade and water transportation of the early days, who were the true pioneers of the commerce and settlement of that region. They have continued through all three of the epochs mentioned, almost to the present day, as a distinct class. They were with the first to come; they were the first to build homes, raise families and permanently settle there. I refer to the voyageurs, of the traders and merchants, the enlisted men and canoemen. Their history is one of patient toil, hardship and danger cheerfully borne. They brought all the supplies to the country in frail canoes along the entire chain of lakes to the head of Lake Superior and beyond. They carried over the tedious portages, built the trading posts, gathered and packed the furs. Largely French or half-breeds they were the heroes of the paddle and the portage, dwelling in the open air, sleeping under the stars, braving the storms and heat and cold, at home in the wilderness where night found them; cheerful, hardy, patient, given to music, keeping time with the stroke of the paddle as they sang their boat songs. A party of them has performed the incredible feat of crossing, in a single season, from the mouth of the Columbia to Sault Ste. Marie and returning. They and their avocation are gone from those shores, but their descendants are numerous there today and their fellows are yet paddling and portaging in the service of the great Hudson Bay Company, along the distant waterways of British America to our north; a lively, polite, jocular race, full of song and story of wild adventure, their history of romantic daring and hardship has a peculiar fascination. Their hopes and ambitions and bent of thought can best be portrayed in the statement of an aged voyageur, long past the three score and ten, who is spending his last days in his log cabin with his half-breed wife on the river bank, who once said: "I was a good man; I could carry over the portage, paddle, track, walk and sing with any man I ever saw. I was forty-one years in the service, and paddled many voyages from Montreal to the Red river and return; no portage was ever too long for me and no pack ever too large. Fifty songs could I sing; I have saved the lives of ten voyageurs; I have had twelve wives and six running dogs. I spent all my money in pleasure. I am old and poor now; were I young again I would spend my life the same way over; there is no life so happy as a voyageur's life." For this brief sketch no originality is claimed. It is but a fragmentary compilation of a little from the much which might be told; and now, in conclusion, as a matter of local coloring for the upper peninsula as well as general historical interest, let me tell of the first uplifting of the faith and authority of a civilized nation in the presence of the ancient races of America in the heart of our continent. 408 HISTORIC MICHIGAN In I670 the greed of imperialism and expansion had grown up in the minds of Louis XIV and his ministers. They proposed to spread the power and faith of France to the utmost confines of the new world, wherever they might be, and they themselves did not know. To that end trusty emissaries were sent through the west to invite a grand council of all known tribes to convene at Sault Ste. Marie, selected as the best known and most convenient spot. Nicolas Perrot, the famous traveler and trader whose book of adventure, including a full account of this event, lay unpublished in the archives of France for two hundred years, was sent to the nations of the south and west. The invitation reached the tribes of Lake Superior and was passed to the wandering hordes beyond. St. Lusson, a French officer of ability and renown, was delegated to represent the crown and journeyed to the Sault with a retinue of soldiers to properly impress the natives and to take possession of the country in the name of his king. This so-called Congress of Nations assembled in council at that place just 228 years ago on the I4th of June next. There were gathered together the brilliantly clad officers and soldiers of the veteran armies of France, the pale-faced delegates of the church with the classic breath of the cloister yet clinging to their robes, the hardy explorers and zealous weather-bronzed missionaries who had come before, the traders and their retinues of half-wild voyageurs, all mingling with the throng of envoys from the wild republics of the wilderness. The gathered assembly was led to a rise of ground adjacent to the Rapids, supposed to have been located where the hedge now passes west of the fountain at the canal park. A large cedar cross was planted on the top of the hill and blessed with all the ceremonies of the church. A cedar column was set beside it upon which was fastened the shield of France, marked with the lilies of the Bourbons, and beneath, on parchment, a proces-verbal declaratory of sovereignty. Stepping forward with drawn sword, St. Lusson lifted a sod of earth aloft three times and in a loud voice to which the assembly made proper response by cries "Long live the King," he proclaimed "In the name of the Most High, Most Mighty and Most Redoubtable Monarch Louis XIV, of the name, most Christian King of France and Navarre, we take possession of said place of St. Mary's of the Falls, as well as Lakes Huron, Superior, the Manitoulin Islands, and of all other countries, rivers, lakes and tributaries contiguous, as well discovered as to be discovered, which are bounded on the one side by the northern and western seas and on the other side by the south sea, including all its length and breadth," after which there was not much left of North America for the rest. Hymns were then chanted, songs sung, speeches made and feasting had, amidst great manifestations of joy and good will. Father Allouez, the pioneer missionary of Lake Superior, was present and made a rousing speech, which has been preserved, in which he strangely mingles the greatness of the King of Kings and the King of France. THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 409 One hundred eighty-one years later, when the hustling, keen-eyed Yankee contractors came from the East to construct the great ship canal around the St. Mary's Falls, they found in the line of their proposed operations a sandy knoll. Over it were scattered Indiali graves and on its crest stood, leaning, a large cedar cross, old, mossgrown 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. But business was business then and the contractors made short work of the Indian graves, the old cross and the hill it stood upon, and the locks of the great St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal now mark the spot. VERDICT FOR MICHIGAN. HOW THE UPPER PENINSULA BECAME A PART OF MICHIGAN By L. G. Stuart Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXVII, 390-403 I T may be said that Michigai won the upper peninsula by conquest.' She did not send her soldiers to the boreal regions to battle with the rocks and forest trees, but the bloodless Toledo war, with its famous march to the Ohio line and back again, gave to the Wolverine state a princely domain beyond the strait. In discussing the Ohio controversy, it is usual for loyal Michigan men and women to claim that Ohio was entirely wrong and Michigan wholly right. In the face of the eminent authorities who have written on the subject, it may seem presumptuous to take a different position or appear foolhardy and even unpatriotic not to fall in with the commonly accepted Michigan opinion. But the conclusion I have reached is, that while Michigan may have won her claim to the Toledo strip of territory before a technicality loving court, a court that would have looked for the letter of the law rather than the spirit, Ohio had rights which she could safely entrust to a jury a~nd with confidence await the verdict. Juries at times have a way of stretching the letter of the law, and even setting the law aside entirely in the interest of justice and what seems nearest right and equitable. That this is so, is one of the strongest and best features of the jury system. Ohio did demand a jury trial. It was not a jury of hardheaded, common sense business men or farmers, such as would be empaneled to adjust a fence line controversy of today, but congress was her jury. To a limited degree the jury was packed, as Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, all of them interested parties to the dispute, were represented upon it. Politics of the day entered more or less into the controversy and the slavery question was also involved. But after all, justice and what seemed nearest right were the guiding forces in the adjustment of the controversy and a verdict was rendered accordingly. If the verdict was not in exact accord with the law, it was the misfortune of the law to be so framed that its provisions could not be enforced without doing a manifest injustice to three great states and tiot materially benefiting 410 HISTORIC MICHIGAN one. But it will not be conceded that the law was not carried out to the letter and in its proper spirit. If the case of Michigan vs. Ohio, Indiana and Illinois (there were three defendants in the cause) were to be submitted to the wisdom of a learned court, it could be claimed that The Ordinance of I787 was not irrevocable, but an ordinary act of congress, subject to amendment and in fact it was amended. It was not a compact for there was only one party to it. If it were a compact, and if it were irrevocable, as it purported to be, the consent of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with their million and a half population, was "common consent" as against Michigan Territory with a population of 87,000, and would be sufficient for its change. The Ordinance was for the government of the Northwest Territory as a whole, and was for the benefit of the people generally, and, in its interpretation, the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number should apply-the greatest good to a twenty-to-one-majority-of-thepeople. The east and west line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan was not a true boundary, nor was it absolutely fixed and positive; it was indefinite and purposely so, that injustice might not be done to any of the states to be erected in the Northwest Territory. It was, and by some is still contended in behalf of Michigan, that the Ordinance of 1787 was unalterable. In such researches as I have been able to make I can find no other authority for this claim than the Ordinance itself and, under the circumstances, that can hardly be accepted. I have been unable to discover who conferred upon the continental congress an attribute so divine in its nature, as the power to make an immutable law. The continental congress was made up of delegates from the thirteen original states, and the old Articles of Confederation was the only binding tie. The nation was only half formed but it was manifestly going in the right direction toward union and unity. What to do with the vast domain beyond the mountains was one of the most serious problems of the day. Some of the states claimed it in whole or in part under the royal grants of "from sea to sea." Other states had no western claims and these looked with jealous eye upon any proposed or prospective extension of territory lest the states thus enlarged should acquire too great a power in the control of the government. Maryland suggested that the western country be made public domain, the common property of all the states, those having claims to any portion of it ceding to the general government with the understanding that sovereign states would in time be erected out of it. This was done, and as the tide of emigration had set in strongly toward the west, it became necessary to provide laws for its government. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson proposed a plan for the division of the public domain into ten future states with names that need not here be repeated. The Jefferson plan was rejected chiefly for the reason that it provided, among other things, for the extinction of slavery after I8oo in all the territory west, both north and south of the Ohio. In 1787 the Ordinance was presented by a committee made up of Edward Carrington THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 411 and Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, and Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, and it is supposed they followed the outlines of a draft made by Manasseh Cutler. The Journal of Congress shows that the Ordinance took the same course in its passage as any other law, that it was given a first reading and then tabled, that it was amended and changed, given its second and third reading and finally passed. Where or how or when it required its immutability does not appear; how it was made sacred from amendment or change for all time to come cannot be found. It was nothing more than an ordinary act of congress, and as such was as susceptible of change as any other act. It was not submitted to the people of the thirteen states for ratification. Purporting to be a "compact between the original states and the people and states in the said territory," it lacked the very first and most important principle of a compact. It had no party of the second part agreeing to it. It was not submitted to the western states or people either for acceptance or for ratification. Commending the Ordinance itself, Madison said that congress did it "without the least shadow of constitutional authority." In his Critical Period of American History, John Fiske says: "The articles of confederation had never contemplated an occasion for such a peculiar assertion of sovereignty." And he further says: "It was simply the thirteen states, through their delegates in congress, dealing with the unoccupied national domain as if it were the common land or folkland of a stupendous township." If the Ordinance were unalterable, sacred for all time to come, immutable, it would be equally so in all its provisions and parts and not in spots. One of the first acts of the first session of the first congress was to amend this Ordinance. The appointment of governor, secretary and judges was originally vested in congress, and this was changed to make them appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate. This was done "so as to adapt the same to the present constitution," which was adopted after the enactment of the Ordinance. At a later period the Ordinance was further changed by congress, at the request of the territorial council of Michigan, giving Michigan Territory greater rights of local self government than the Ordinance allowed. I have not had access to a wide range of authorities, but such as I have consulted, fail to show any foundation for the claim that the Ordinance was other than an ordinary act of congress, and as such subject to amendment and change as the wisdom of subsequent congreses might direct. But even had the Ordinance been unalterable, as claimed for it, we have the authority of Gen. Arthur St. Clair, president of the continental congress, which enacted the Ordinance, that the Ordinance, when doubtful, should be given a liberal construction. He was appointed the first governor of the Northwest Territory. The Ordinance, in section 5, provides that "The Governor and Judges, or a majority of them, shall adopt and publish in the district such laws of the original states, criminal and civil, as may be necessary and best suited to the circumstances of the district," etc. Gen. St. Clair was doubtful as to the exact meaning of this section, and asked the opinion of Judges 412 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Parsons and Varnum. In their opinion they hold that the Ordinance must be considered in the light of a compact between the United States and all the settlers, not to be altered without the consent of both parties. But "it (the section under consideration) was made pro bono publico, and therefore ought to be liberally expounded." Gen. St. Clair replied to this opinion, and in his letter said: "I agree with you, gentlemen, that the clause in question, and every other clause in the Ordinance, should receive a liberal construction, wherever they are the least doubtful; and as it in some measure partakes of the nature of a charter, is to be expounded favorably to the grantees." Not one section alone, it is submitted, but the entire Ordinance was enacted pro bono publico, and Gen. St. Clair, president of the legislative body that adopted it, would give any doubtful section a liberal construction. Article V of the Ordinance, upon which Michigan based her claims, is susceptible of more than one construction, but before discussing it, attention will be called to one more point in the Ordinance. It reads section 14, "The following articles shall be considered as articles of compact, between the original states and the people and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent." What does "common consent" mean? In the continental congress the vote of nine states was sufficient to carry an important measure. Did congress propose in the Ordinance to make "common consent" mean unanimous consent or the consent of a majority? Did it mean the consent of all the states to be erected out of the western country, or a majority of them; the consent of all the people living in the vast domain, or the larger portion of them? Ohio, Indiana and Illinois preceded Michigan in gaining statehood and at the time of the Ohio controversy, Michigan and Wisconsin constituted one territory. If the Ordinance were irrevocable, with its east and west line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan, without common consent, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were in favor of changing it, while Michigan alone was opposed to it. The inhabitants of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, numbering 1,438,389, by the census of I830, were in favor of the change, if the change were necessary, while Michigan's 31,639 inhabitants, under the same census, were against it. Michigan's population increased to 87,ooo in the ensuing four years, and had the other states remained stationary, which they did not, the question would be whether the will of i,438,389 inhabitants or that of 87,000 should constitute common consent within the meaning of the Ordinance; whether three states should rule or one territory. All the states that had western claims except Virginia, ceded their titles to the general government without conditions. Virginia stipulated in the original act of cession that the territory northwest of the Ohio should be divided into states not less than Ioo or more than 150 miles square. Congress adopted a resolution asking Virginia to change the condition relative to boundaries, as it "will be productive of many and great inconveniences. That by such a division of the country some of the new states will be deprived of the advantages of navigation, some will be improperly intersected by lakes, rivers and THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 413 mountains, and some will contain too great a proportion of barren, unimprovable land, and in consequence will not for many years, if ever, have a sufficient number of inhabitants to form a respectable government, and entitle them to a seat and voice in the federal council. And, whereas, in fixing the limits and dimensions of the new states, due attention ought to be paid to the natural boundaries and a variety of circumstances which will be pointed out by a more perfect knowledge of the counltry, so as to provide for the future growth and prosperity of each state, as well as for the accommodation and security of the first adventurers." The resolutions further stipulated that if Virginia amended her deed of cession the territory would be divided into not less than three nor more than five states. With assurances from the Virginia delegation that the change asked for would be made for the reasons given, congress proceeded to enact the Ordinance and a year later Virginia assented to it. Here we have congress acknowledging a lack of accurate knowledge of the geography of the western country, asking for changes in the cession to prevent "many and great inconveniences," and insisting that the "natural boundaries and a variety of other circumstances," which n more perfect knowledge of the country may reveal, ought to be concidered. Attention should also he )aid, it was declared, to navigation facilities, the course of rivers and of mountains. And yet we are asked to believe that congress, after making such a request as this, after confessing its ignorance of the geography, and after giving such cogent reasons why a change should be made, would deliberately mark an irrevocable boundarv for two states whose future existence was entirely contingent and left to the discretion of future congresses. In dividing the courntry for three states congress had data which was fairly accurate. The distances from the Pennsylvania line to the mouth of Great Miami. from the mouth of the Great Miami to the Wabash and from the Wabash to the Mississippi. were aonroximatelv known, and it was certain that lines drawn northward from the Great Miami and the Wabash, would divide the territory into three nearly equal parts, giving to each of the future states ample frontage on the lakes. But when it came to provide for the two contingent states which might be created "if congress shall hereafter find it expedient," the Ordinance is indefinite, suscentible of more than one construction, and it is reasonable to suppose that it was purposely so. It is manifest from the records that congress was solicitous for the welfare, prosperity and best interests of the future states in the northwest and wanted to give them all eonat advantages in navigation facilities and fertility of soil. The Ordinance, as a whole, as the judges said of one section of it. was eminentlv prn bono publico, and as Gen. St. Clair said, it should be given the most liberal construction. If the line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan was intended as a fixed boundary, not to be changed without common consent. what would be the positioni of two of the creat states to be created in this territory? Indiana and Illinois would have river frontages. but in the north their fate would be like that of Tantallus of old. They would be in sight of the cooling waters of Lake 414 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Michigan, but not a drop of it would be for their comfort and consolation. Their northern boundaries would just touch the shores of the great lake, but not a yard of the shore would be available for the building of piers or docks and the privileges of navigation would be denied them. In view of the request for a change in the Virginia deed of cession, it is inconceivable that congress should have intended or contemplated such a monstrosity. The line is not a fixed boundary, nor was it intended as such. The Ordinance does not say that the east and west line shall be the southern boundary for the contingent states, but that one or two states may be formed "in that part of said territory which lies north" of said line. This language is certainly susceptible of more than one construction and ought not, with hair-splitting arguments as to the meaning of the word "in," be held down to the narrow interpretation put upon it by Michigan. As Gen. St. Clair, president of the continental congress, said, "It should be given a liberal construction and should be expounded favorably to the grantees: It should be expounded favorably to a 20 to I majority of the grantees, in point of population, and a 3 to I majority of them, counting them as states." The east and west line, as described in the Ordinance, cannot be interpreted as a fixed and positive boundary. Such a line would have a starting place but no terminals. If it were a fixed boundary, the continental congress would have perpetrated a still greater monstrosity than depriving Illinois and Indiana of a lake frontage. It would have given Michigan the northeast corner of Ohio, separated from the mainland by a wide expanse of Lake Erie. In view of the request of Virginia that attention should be paid to the lakes, rivers and natural boundaries, we cannot believe that such a division of the territory was intended or contemplated. In regard to the Ohio-Michigan controversy, we find Ohio demanding the territory which included the outlet of one of her most important rivers, a river which had its rise and entire course within the state and which was necessary to her, or seemingly so, as a part of her extensive system of canals and internal improvements. Ohio's claim was valid under the reasons given by congress for asking a change in the Virginia cession, that attention be paid to the course of rivers and facilities for navigation, and the wording of Article V of the Ordinance is sufficiently indefinite to permit an interpretation favorable to Ohio. The admission of Ohio to statehood and the provisions in her constitution fixing the northern boundary might be cited as further support for the validity of Ohio's claim, also the priority of Ohio's exercise of jurisdiction over the territory in dispute, the Indian treaty made by Cass and McArthur, at Ft. Meigs, in I817, and the acts of congress fixing judicial circuits and districts, but these need not be dwelt upon now. But aside from the points of law involved in the controversy, there were facts and circumstances which would have weight and influence if submitted to a jury. When the Ordinance of I787 was enacted, this western country was a region unknown. It had not been accurately mapped nor even fully THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 415 explored. In laying out the boundaries for the future states, Mitchell's map of 1755 was used as a guide. This map was drafted when the northwest was still a French possession, and the Ordinance itself was enacted nine years before England surrendered the western posts. And yet Michigan demanded that an Ordinance confessedly enacted in geographical darkness should be held sacred, that a boundary description for two contingent states should be rigidly interpreted and inviolate which, if carried out, would deprive Indiana and Illinois of even a landing place on the lakes or room for the building of a pier or dock that the lake shipping could discharge their cargoes. The cause of the defendants would be half won before an intelligent jury with the exhibit of the two maps, one showing what the framers of the Ordinance thought was the situation, and the other showing what it proved to be. The conditions, circumstances and sentiments of the times must also be considered in connection with this controversy. It was before the era of railroads, transportation, especially of freights, was chiefly by water. A water front on ocean, lake or river, was thought of the most vital importance. What we would call a creek, if large enough to float a flat boat, was looked upon as a channel of commerce, and was valued accordingly. The Erie canal had been built, connecting the waters of the great lakes and the Hudson river. Many of the pioneers of Michigan and northern Ohio had come west by way of the canal and most of the west bound freight was shipped by that route. In these modern days of railroads, the Erie canal is of slight importance, but sixty years ago it was the great channel of commerce with a value to the state of New York of vast proportions and of corresponding value to the west, as it solved the problem of transportation. In I819, still supposing herself in safe possession of the Maumee bay, Ohio entered upon a canal building project as vast in its proportions and prospective value as the Erie canal. The waters of Lake Erie and of the Ohio river were to be connected by a canal and river improvement two hundred miles in length and costing several millions of dollars. The canal was to traverse the state and be the Ohio artery of commerce and trade, internal as well as with the outer world and the Maumee bay was to be its northern outlet. Much work was done and much money spent on this improvement before the controversy with Michigan became serious. One of the arguments advanced by Michigan why the Ordinance boundary should stand was that two railroads, chartered by the territorial council and partly constructed, would have to be given up unless Michigan could control the southern terminals oh the Maumee bay. Such an argument would be laughed at today, but it was the commonly accepted theory at that time. If Michigan wanted the Maumee bay as the terminal for a couple of cheap railroads, we can imagine how much more Ohio wanted it as the outlet for her canals, which were then nearing completion-not only wanted it but absolutely needed it. This consideration would have weight with a jury in arriving at a jury verdict. 416 HISTORIC MICHIGAN One of the Michigan railroads was the Erie and Kalamazoo, chartered in 1833, and the other was the Detroit and Maumee, chartered in 1835. The lateness of the dates of incorporation would lead to the suspicion that they were incorporated for the express purpose of establishing a claim to the southern territory. Six members of the constitutional convention, including the president, were among the incorporators of one or the other of these roads, and how many other members were interested as stockholders does not appear. This financial interest in the railroads, which, according to the theories of the day would have to be given up if the southern strip of country went to Ohio, may not have had anything to do with the controversy, but the coincidence may furnish food for reflection. Half a dozen men sufficiently influential to gain election to a constitutional convention, can make a great stir in a community in the name of principle, right, law and justice, even though nothing more important than their own personal interests are involved. When the Toledo war raged, it was a period of speculation, of paper city building and of castles in the air. The Maumee bay district was an ideal site for a city, as things were considered in those days, with Lake Erie in front and Ohio's magnificent canal system flowing in from the interior. Michigan wanted this town site. She wanted the control of Ohio's canals and to reap the benefits of Ohio's enterprise and public spirit. She was willing to take every advantage of the technicalities of the law to gain her point. Like Shylock, she demanded the pound of flesh which the law, strictly expounded, might have given her. Ostensibly Michigan mourned the loss of six hundred square miles of her territory, and the conclusion I have reached, treasonable as it may seem to a Michigan audience, is that her's were crocodile tears for all save the few square miles at the eastern end of the strip, just enough to properly cover the Maumee Bay. If it had been otherwise, she would have felt doubly bereaved and would have made twice the outcry against Indiana's claim, for Indiana asked for twice the territory that she might have a frontage on Lake Michigan. It is true, Michigan protested against Indiana's claim, but it was merely a matter of form, and at no stage did it assume a serious phase. Indiana had no extensive canal system with an outlet within the territory claimed. She had no prospectively valuable town sites in the district. None of the members of the constitutional convention were incorporators or stockholders in railroads projected into the ten mile Indiana strip. Michigan made a valiant struggle for the Toledo district (and the congressional iury, as juries often do, stretched the letter of the law in the interest of what seemed most like justice and right). As a compensation for its loss, congress gave Michigan the upper peninsula, a region then almost unknown, but of much greater area. That this was done as a compensation is clearly shown in the committee reports, and the debates in congress. The details of the adjustment were arranged in committee, and have not been handed down to us, but enough has been preserved to furnish the foundation for some conclusions. In the controversy, Michigan's strongest point was the letter of the THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 417 law. Next to this in importance was the relative dimensions of the states and particularly the necessity to the nation of having a strong state on the border. This idea is expressed in the following passage from the communication of- Lucius Lyon to the senate, June 4, I834: "The territory of Michigan, or the state that may be formed therein, must always remain, in a great measure insular, with respect to the other states, whatever may be the progress of emigration and settlement hereafter in the west and southwest. That state must always remain in a very exposed situation on the frontier, and for a long time to come must be in the immediate vicinity of a powerful and warlike tribe of Indians. Under these circumstances, a regard to a correct national policy and the right of Michigan to the protection of the general government, will suggest the propriety of strengthening as much as possible that state instead of adopting a measure which will tend so much to weaken it as the one now proposed. The horrid massacres and the scenes of blood and suffering exhibited there during the late war must still be fresh in the recollections of all and they admonish the government of the necessity of this course." This same idea was advanced as early as I820, when the first rumblings of the border controversy were heard, in a letter written by Secretary Woodbridge, and it was dwelt upon with greater emphasis in the communication by Lyon, Norvell and Crary to the senate judiciary committee in January, I836, the latter referring especially to the danger from a foreign foe. Ohio very naturally had a keen eye for weak spots in Michigan's line of argument, and it is possible that the suggestion came from Ohio that Michigan be given the upper peninsula. In a speech by Senator Ewing, of Ohio, December 2I, 1835, occurs the following passage: "What policy is there in giving the new state, when it shall be created, the jurisdiction over the disputed territory; is the territory of that state without it likely to be too small? or does it lack tnavigable communication? Neither. One hundred and seventy-seven thousand square miles, an extent equal to the three largest states in the Union, must be formed into no more than two states, and its eastern portion has advantages of navigation equaled by few states on the Atlantic sea board." As Michigan enlarged upon her exposed position on the border and the importance of making her a strong state, so Ohio elaborated upon the possibility of giving her strength in the northwest. It was a happy thought on the part of Ohio. It not only answered a Michigan argument, but it suggested a way out of the difficulty that ought to be satisfactory to all parties. The senate report of March I, I836, recommended the northern annex to Michigan and further suggests that unless this be done, Wisconsin, comprising all the territory northwest of Lake Michigan, when admitted, would be a state too large for the welfare of the nation, and that it could not be divided into two states without the consent of Virginia, which would be difficult to procure, because it would increase the power of the non-slave holding states. The recommendations of the committee were adopted, and when Michigan finally came into the Union in January, I837, the upper peninsula was a part 1-25 418 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of the state. She protested briefly at the change in her boundary lines, but her grief is now quite assuaged. From other sources than the documents and debates of congress, we may gain hints and suggestions, though not direct information, upon the details of the adjustment. The letters of Lucius Lyon throw some light upon the question. During December and January, I835-36, he wrote many letters to friends in Michigan, and the admission of the state was often his subject, as the subject of greatest interest. But not until February 4, I836, in a letter to Col. Daniel Goodwin, of Detroit, is any reference found to the proposed upper peninsula addition to Michigan's area. To Col. Goodwin he wrote: "I thank you for the suggestion contained in yours of the 23d ult., relative to an addition to the state of Michigan on the west, provided congress should break up our boundary on the south. The matter has been fully discussed here, and I have no doubt the committee will be willing to give us all the country west of Lake Michigan and north and east of the Menominee river of Green bay and the Montreal river of Lake Superior. If the southern boundary should be broken, I for one shall go in for all the country congress would give us in the west." Mr. Lyon, on February 21, wrote to Col. Andrew Mack, of Detroit, that the committee would report against Michigan's southern boundary, and that he had said to the committee if they are determined to break up the southern boundary, he would demand compensation beyond the straits; the committee was favorable to this proposition. He added that Mr. Norvell and Mr. Crary were opposed to this addition and would try to prevent it. February 25, he wrote to C. K. Green, describing the situation, and added: "I understand Mr. Norvell and Mr. Crary are opposed to any addition there in any event, but if we lose on the south, as I see we must, I should feel that I did not do my duty if I should neglect an opportunity to extend our boundary on the west." These letters and others indicate that Mr. Lyon, convinced that Michigan would lose on the south, was in favor of the northern addition and was doing all he could to gain it, not as a compromise, but as a compensation, not because the upper peninsula, as we call it today, was considered worth as much as the Ohio strip, but because it could be had for the asking, might some day be valuable and would at least give Michigan a more imposing appearance on the map. Mr. Norvell and Mr. Crary were both against it. They reflected the spirit of Michigan in general in demanding the Toledo strip or nothing. They must have realized that their case was hopeless, but if they went in for the compensatory damages the incorporators and stockholders in the two Michigan railroads would denounce them as traitors and accuse them of selling out Michigan's interests, as John Biddle, president of the constitutional convention, did Lucius Lyon. Therefore, they fell in with the popular opinion in Michigan, and of the Michigan delegation. Mr. Lyon was the only one who demanded compensation for the loss of the Toledo strip, and he is entitled to much of the credit for gaining the northern addition to Michigan Territory. THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 419 But before awarding him all the credit for this, we must consider other circumstances. Gen. Lewis Cass, for many years governor of Michigan territory, and at that time secretary of war in President Jackson's cabinet, was in Washington during Michigan's transition period. Michigan was his home, and was dear to him, and scarcely less dear was Ohio, the home of his younger years, and where many of his loved ones lived. He must have taken a deep interest in the proceedings, not only as a citizen but in his official capacity. When the controversy assumed an acute form, when Ohio and Michigan threatened a resort to arms, it must have caused him great uneasiness and anxiety. The honor of the administration of which he was a part was in a manner involved. And not only the administration but his personal honor was at stake. Gov. Mason, when arming for the Toledo fray, made a demand upon Col. Henry Whiting, in command of the government store at Detroit, for I,ooo stand of arms and 75,000 ball cartridge. The arms were given out without waiting to hear from the department at Washington, and this gave Gov. Lucas, of Ohio, occasion to accuse Gen. Cass of taking advantage of his official position to lend aid and encouragement to Michigan. The letters Gen. Cass wrote denying any responsibility for what had been done, and declaring that Col. Whiting had acted without orders and that what he had done had not been approved by the department, are preserved among the documents of congress and Ohio. We also have among the documents letters which Gen. Cass wrote to Michigan and also to Ohio friends urging that the difficulty in regard to the boundary be adjusted by peaceful methods and not by civil war. In one letter he writes: "The state of affairs in Michigan has given me great uneasiness, both as a public officer and as a private citizen." In another is this passage: "The state of affairs between Ohio and Michigan has assumed such an alarming aspect as to give great uneasiness to every one seriously attached to his country." Again he says: "There are reasons which will readily occur to you which render it improper for me to take any public part in this matter. I am doing all I can, however, in my private capacity as a mediator between the parties, and I have written to Michigan advising a course of forbearance so much more moderate than any which seems to have occurred to them, that I am apprehensive it may be supposed that I have abandoned opinions on this subject which I entertained and officially acted upon eighteen years ago." Obviously Gen. Cass could not, as he states, take a public part in the controversy, but as a private citizen he was active in adjusting the difficulty. The proposition to give Michigan, emanating possibly from Ohio, must have early reached his ears.- Gen. Cass had visited the northern country. He knew something of its nature and had heard something of its rich mineral resources. Henry R. Schoolcraft was then in Washington conducting an Indian treaty. He knew the northern country thoroughly, and from his Thirty Years Among the Indian Tribes, we learn that he appeared before the senate committee, upon invitation of Silas Wright, to describe the region, and he expressed the opinion that it will be "found of far greater value and importance 420 HISTORIC MICHIGAN to the state than the seven-mile strip surrendered." Lucius Lyon knew something of the northern district. He had visited portions of it as a surveyor and had undoubtedly heard of its mineral wealth, timber resources and of its rich fisheries, besides its capabilities for agriculture. Gen. Cass and Lucius Lyon were warm personal and political friends of long standing. Schoolcraft and Lyon were old friends, as we learn from the Lyon letters. Although there is no documentary evidence to substantiate the statement, it is reasonable to suppose that Gen. Cass and Mr. Lyon were in frequent consultation, and that Mr. Lyon acted very largely as Gen. Cass suggested. Both knew that Ohio's claim would be conceded by congress, and both knew that the upper peninsula could be had for the asking, and that it might some day be worth having, although its true value was known to few, if any, at that time. Mr. Schoolcraft gave them added detail as to its resources, and advised them that it was worth more that the Ohio claim. After exhausting every effort to secure the Ohio strip and convinced that it was lost to Michigan, Lucius Lyon "went in for all he could get on the north," as he expresses it in one of his letters. In this he was doubtless encouraged by Cass and Schoolcraft, especially by the former, who was anxious that the dispute should in some manner be adjusted as speedily as possible, and knew that Michigan would not regret the exchange of territory when she came to learn the true value of the area gained. Cass was behind the scenes and Lyon faced the music, championing a measure which would bring upon him the anger of his constituents at home. It took courage for him to do it, and he had the counsel and advise of Gen. Cass to give him strength. It may be asked why did not Gen. Cass influence Mr. Norvell and Mr. Crary in the same way. Mr. Norvell did not come to Michigan until I832, and Crary not until a year later, the latter settling at Marshall. Gen. Cass undoubtedly knew them both, but the acquaintance had not been of long standing, nor was it intimate, especially as Gen. Cass had been appointed secretary of war, in I83I, and had spent most of his time in Washington. Gen. Cass would naturally make Mr. Lyon his confidant and spokesman in matters relating to Michigan in which he could not personally appear, instead of either of the others who were comparatively strangers to Michigan and to him. Lyon would naturally go to Cass for advice and counsel, and knowing the relation that existed between them, it is not reasonable to suppose that if Cass had advised against the upper peninsula annex that Lyon would have followed the course he did. The pressure from Michigan was strong against the acceptance of anything that looked like a compromise, and Mr. Norvell and Mr. Crary bent before it, while Mr. Lyon, with Gen. Cass behind the scenes, and Henry R. Schoolcraft encouraging him, stood up against the blast and secured for Michigan that rich region beyond the straits, which Michigan would not part with today for several Toledo seven-mile strips. The Lyon letters referred to are the letters written by Lucius Lyon when in the senate, and afterward, and which he copied by hand or THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 421 letter press. Since his death, more than forty years ago, the letter books have been carefully preserved by his nephew, the Hon. George W. Thayer. Such of the letters as are of general interest have during the past year been copied, and furnish a valuable store of information relating to early political, general and local history, information which otherwise would have been lost. SOME INCIDENTS OF PIONEER LIFE IN THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN By John Harris Forster Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XVII, 332-345 T HE early history of that part of our state is full of names of distinguished explorers and geographers. Such men as La Salle, Marquette, Mesnard, Bayfield, Henry R. Schoolcraft, Cass and Houghton present an imposing array of adventurous spirits. We owe much to the enterprise of these brave and accomplished men. But of their hardy followers, of the humble men of the rank and file, of individual independent pioneer explorers, we do not hear so much. Yet they were important factors in all organized expeditions; as voyageurs, hunters and packers, they were an indispensable element of success. And the independent explorer and settler, who ventured into the forest alone, unaided by capital or advantageous circumstances, all deserve some recognition. Common men without the aid of whose brawn and sinew, sturdy bravery and enduring patience, the world would be much poorer if not bankrupt in time, find few to sing their praises, and they are generally too modest to become their own chroniclers. The writer, during a long period passed on the frontier became acquainted with many such men and was fortunate enough to secure their confidence. He found them for the most part shy and uncommunicative with strangers. The savage nature of their surroundings seemed to have promoted a degree of reticence not found in men in other places. The Indian is very reserved under the eye of the white man. But the bravest men are the most quiet, and this may be the true reason why they who have faced many perils and dangers in the wilderness are so hard to draw out. Their modesty does not permit them to see anything particularly meritorious in their deeds. Kit Carson, Jack Hays and other mountain rangers were among the mildest mannered men the writer ever met; yet in overcoming natural obstacles, in fighting savage beasts, in Indian forays, or on the disciplined battle field they displayed the highest bravery. But they were perhaps above the common level; inured to "dread alarms" from their youth up. The men of whom I am to speak though possessed of the same quality, were of an humbler type. Gathered around the glowing camp fire at night after a hard day's tramp, a cup of tea and a pipe would thaw them out and loose their tongues. Many "stirring incidents by flood and field" have then come to light, which, if they had been duly recorded would have formed some interesting chapters of pioneer days. 422 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The writer now regrets that he did not note them down on paper, for after the passage of years, memory becomes dim and uncertain in recollection. Much escapes the grasp altogether, like the morning mist. But he doubts if in those days and rude times he could successfully have played the role of an interviewer. The sight of pencil and paper would have closed every mouth like a clam shell and destroyed every vestige of sociability. Under this state of the case the Pioneer Society, Mr. President, may be deemed poorer or richer as you may find. But this much I beg to say, that if I had used more care, at an early day, in collecting material and preserving, I would be more able now to do my duty as a member of this historical society. In this paper the writer will do his best to jot down his recollections of persons and adventures, living and moving long ago, in the dark forests or on the wild shores of Lake Superior. He only hopes that the recital may not be condemned as too trifling for a hearing. The first character that I propose to introduce is Edouard Sansavaine an old voyageur familiarly known as old Edward. He came in his youth from old France and always spoke the English language brokenly. He was strong and compactly built, of medium height and possessed of great vitality and powers of endurance. He drifted down to Lake Superior in the year I810. He had spent some time on the shores of Hudson bay. The cold, and the floods in the rivers emptying into the bay, he described as something terrific. The short summers of that high latitude were excessively hot, the thermometor registering at noon I20 degrees. The sands under the burning rays of the sun became so hot as to blister his feet though protected by stout shoe-packs. Yet at a depth of three feet below the surface solid ice could always be found. When the writer last saw old Edward he was upwards of ninety years old, still strong and vigorous. On that occasion two men were trying to lift a barrel of whisky up a step at the entrance of a mining town saloon. Old Edward looking on at their futile efforts in disgust, pushed them aside, seized the barrel by the chimes and lifted it up into the doorway with apparent ease. His regular occupation at this time was fishing and conveying supplies to distant camps in his Mackinaw boat which he rowed and sailed alone. He had never been sick and even frequent indulgence in too much bad whisky seemed to have no bad effect upon his iron constitution. A thick mass of irongray hair, which he retained after the storms of many arctic winters, only impressed o'ne with the idea of immense strength. In one of his confidential moods old Edward told the writer how he once spent a winter down on the Brule river south of L'Anse. The time was in the year I812 during our war with Great Britain. A French trader and his squaw occupied a rude camp by that river, surrounded by dense forests. Old Edward was their servant. The preceding fall had been a poor one for trade. Rumors of war had excited the Indian tribes. The warriors had gone far away to join their British allies; the old men, women and children had removed further south among the rice lakes of Wisconsin. No corn or wild THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 423 rice had been stored for the winter use. Now the Indians were gone, an occasional supply of beaver tails would not be looked for. The trader's only resource was fish, found in the shallow Brule. These must be secured before they migrated, for the ice in the stream would freeze to the bottom. During the mild seasons small suckers from four to six inches long found a home in the Brule. These were secured by nets, a'nd old Edward diligently employed his time in the face of coming winter, in laying in a supply. The fish were packed in long troughs hewn out of solid logs. But it proved to be a poor year for fish, too. The supply fell short of the usual amount. Winter came on sooner than was expected, with great vigor. The cold was intense and the snow-fall exceeded that of former years. The three solitary people of that camp were snow-bound and isolated from all the rest of the world. Nothing but gloomy, lifeless forests all around and stretching far away! The absent hunters would bring in no juicy porcupine or fat beaver to replenish the larder. Fish was their sole supply of food. Upon frozen fish they lived more or less contentedly for awhile. But it appearing to the French trader that the supply was diminishing alarmingly fast he, as a measure of safety, put old Edward on a ration of two suckers a day. After a time he reduced him to a short ration of one of those small suckers per day. This was the closest gauge to starvation point attainable. But it was unendurable. Said old Edward, "I begin starve. I tink of noting but fish, fish, all the time. At night I dream about him. I wake up and oh, my stomac' feel so bad! I go crazee. I say, I moost have some of dem soockers or I die. I steal sly into the room where Frenchman and squaw sleep and keep fish so I can get him. I crawl to trough, tear out fish and eat him raw. The trader he see me. We make fight. I try kill him, but hees squaw she help him; so I was whip bad. But dat trader, I s'pose he 'fraid I -go crazee, so in morning he let me have plenty soockers. Den I got better and was content. But we were most like dead mens when spring come." SNOWSHOEING Snowshoeing at the present day is a fashionable amusement; and snowshoe clubs, including ladies and gentlemen, are quite the ton in Marquette and other northern cities. But snowshoeing in the olden time as the only means of locomotion on the deep snows, was quite a different thing. Under the most favorable circumstances when the snow was packed, or crusted over, walking was a laborious effort, although the gait was rapid and long journeys were made in a day. But upon new fallen, or wet snow, the labor was multiplied many fold, as the heavy shoes, sinking into the soft deposit, would become loaded and icy, entailing exhausting and irritating fatigue. Men were often compelled to stop and rest, and if the toes of the feet, as they were apt, from tightening of the thongs by wet, became sore, then traveling became absolute torture. Woe to the poor fellow who, thus afflicted, had to keep up with the more fortunate members of the party. Camp must 424 HISTORIC MICHIGAN be reached before night unless the unhappy one chose the alternative of laying out on the trail alone. Camps were made when the day's march was ended, preferably in some sheltered spot, under cedar or fir trees. The preparation consisted in scraping out the snow with snow shoes so as to reach the ground and make room for a fire and space for spreading the blankets of the party. Cedar or fir boughs were cut -and filled in for a bed. After a hearty supper and a pipe of "soul soothing tobacco," the sleep that followed on these extemporized beds was sound and snoreful. Perhaps on awakening at first gleam of morning light our travelers would find themselves buried in new-fallen snow. Thawing out and putting on moccasins and other toggery was a tedious task while stiffened and sore limbs offered no encouragement for further action. But the snow-whelmed woods, with the thermometer resting at io to 20 degrees below zero, was no place for laggards. Go ahead or perish was the only alternative. Winter traveling in the northern forests had this advantage over summer traveling. The thick underbrush and all fallen timber were buried under the snow, so that in a level country, a smooth, clean, park-like plain lay before you. In the absence of beaten roads or trails, snowshoeing was the only mode of locomotion in that new country. If you wished to visit a neighbor, go to the postoffice twenty miles distant, or undertake a longer journey, snowshoes were the only things available. The ordinary traveler, the doctor or the missionary, used the same common means in calls of mercy or business. The late Bishop Baraga, when a simple priest, though past his prime, used to travel about in this way, all through the upper peninsula, with an Indian retainer to pack his provisions and blankets. Many a cold night did this zealous man of God sleep out in the snow, freely enduring all of the hardships of the great wilderness. The Methodist minister, Reverend Pitzel,5 had youth on his side, but he was equally zealous in the cause of the Master, and undertook long journeys to preach the gospel to isolated Cornish miners. These two worthies often begged a night's entertainment in the cabin of the writer. In those times, to see a strange new face was like a benediction. For the time being, the stranger was recognized as an angel. One time it so happened that my ghostly friends rested with me on the same night. At the breakfast table whereat my people numbered ten or twelve, there was an evident commotion on the question as to which of the reverend gentlemen should say grace. My people were all Roman Catholics, therefore I decided that Father Baraga should ask the blessing. My Methodist friend was evidently grieved, but to comfort him, I whispered in his ear that as I was the only Protestant sinner present, he might pray for me! SQUATTERS In the early days of copper explorations there were not a few examiples of heroic pioneer struggles and adventures. Many so-called mineral locations were held for several years by squatters. Far back from the lake in the trackless woods, on the bank of some stream, he built his rude cabin of poles or shakes and covered it with birch THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 425 bark or cedar. During the deep snows of winter this cabin looked like a white mound with smoke issuing from the top. A rude bedstead made of poles and stakes driven in the ground, and deeply covered with thick, soft, gray moss and fragrant cedar occupied one corner of the small apartment. Some trap-rocks rolled together in a circle, in the middle of the room, formed the fireplace, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof, or spread itself throughout the hut as it listed, smoking the sole inmate a good bronze or ham color. In the ashes, like a light on a vestal altar, reposed a big iron pot, always holding a supply of simmering bean porridge. That vessel might be regarded as the household god-the charmed penate. In all weathers. night or day, when the heart was sad or the stomach urgent, that black. grimy pot was an unfailing source and resource of felicity. He who sang the praises of bean-porridge hot, nine days old, unconsciously nealed forth an anthem which remains the triumphant hymn of the backwoodsman. A rude table of shakes and a camp stool made of a big chin, split from a log, with one leg in it constituted the furnishing. A well-thumbed book or two composed the library. Current literature or even letters from the outside world were not thought of. The larder was stored with the resonant bean, some salt pork, flour. hard bread, tea, coffee, sugar and salt. Thus situated, with no human companionship, no work except cutting a little firewood, no recreation except an occasional snowshoe tramp, this hermit of the woods spent the livelong winter, eating and sleeping being his chief animal enjoyment. Unless very stupid, his social and intellectual nature would often cry out in solemn protest, but those silent woods sent back no answer. No one who has not been similarly situated can form any idea of the horrors of such an isolated life. Cowper well says of it: "For solitude, however some may rave. Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave. A sepulcher in which the living die." COLD QUARTERS At Wheel Kate Mountain, near Portage Lake, a small party of miners in 1846-47, passed the winter in a canvas tent. No habitation less suitable, could be devised for that climate; nor one more uncomfortable and unhealthy. The open fires built in front of the tent caused the snow that covered it deeply to melt, condense into an unwholesome vapor and, when the temperature fell at night, congeal into ice. In the course of time these miners found themselves living in an ice cave not unlike that of an Eskimo. One of these miners was severely injured in the head by a premature blast, in fact his eye was torn out so that it lay exposed upon his cheek. The nearest surgeon was fifty miles distant, and this poor wounded wretch had to walk that long distance through the cold and snow to obtain relief. He stopped with the writer over night, en route. 426 HISTORIC MICHIGAN A PERILOUS ADVENTURE A party from Ontonagon going to visit Eagle river, a distance of about eighty miles, to avoid the more difficult trail through the woods undertook the journey on the ice, which at that time covered Lake Superior. All went well until they came to some high perpendicular sandstone cliffs west of Grand Portage. Suddenly to their horror, the ice parted at the cliffs and began to move bodily out into the lake with them on it. They leaped over the rapidly widening crack and clung desperately to the shelving ice adhering to the cliffs. The fissure widened, and presently became a cold, dark stream. This on one side of them, the frowning rocks on the other. To scale those slippery precipitous heights became now a stern necessity. Their lives depended upon the success of their undertaking it. There was no other way out. Fortunately they had hatchets; with these, with infinite toil, they cut steps in the face of the cliffs and finally worked their way to the summit. After that experience they stuck to the woods. PERILOUS NAVIGATION One dreamy October day in the year I846, when the Indian summer was in full glory, the writer sailed in his Mackinaw boat down the shore of the great lake from Ontonagon eastward. A brisk southwest wind filled his sails and he sped along the coast rapidly, the while admiring the autumn-tinted woods banked up on the south-a world of brilliant foliage, without a single break in the continuous outline. Late in the afternoon the dreaded sandstone cliffs were reached. They presented a solid wall to the water, excepting where here and there a little stream poured over in a cascade. Now and then were seen short beaches where a boat could rest during calm weather. But the whole line of rocks for six or seven miles, constituted what is termed an ironbound coast. Woe to the vessel that should be driven upon them in a storm; nothing could withstand the thundering waves which hurled the spray to the very top of the cliffs and which, in course of time, had shaped them into many fantastic forms, eating holes and caverns into the very heart of them. We had nearly reached the eastern terminus of these red rocks, and while in sight of the long shingle beach at the Grand Portage, when the southwest wind suddenly died away and we were becalmed. Our men lowered the sails and took to the oars. Presently happening to look out upon the lake to the north, to our surprise and terror we saw a mile or two distant, the bosom of the water white with foam. The roaring wind and waves came rushing down upon us with great velocity. "Row for your lives" was the quick, sharp order, as the boat running before the gale, headed for the beach. Before the shore could be reached the waves were rolling high, and the wind lifting the water, covered us with spray. As the boat touched the land we all jumped into the surf and seizing her by the gunwales carried her up bodily beyond the reach of the raging sea. We sat down drenched and exhausted and thanked the Lord for our narrow escape from drowning. THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 427 We encamped upon the high sand dunes, and all that night the storm raged fearfully. This was a foretaste of the wild storms which swept over Lake Superior late in the fall and winter. GRAND PORTAGE This famous carrying place, well known in history, but now superseded by a ship canal, was two miles across, from lake to lake. The highest point on the line was about forty feet above water, or lake level. We dragged our Mackinaw boat over it by main strength, using wooden rollers to move her on. We launched her into a small creek which emptied into Portage lake. We then returned to the Lake Superior side and packed our camp equipage on our backs to the boat. A whole day was consumed in these operations, but in spite of fatigue, we loaded the boat and continued on in the night many miles down Portage lake before we went into camp. A WET ROOSTER The old explorer carrying on his back only actual necessaries, took to the woods with the confidence of an Indian, trusting that the storms of heaven would visit him lightly. At all events he took the chances, shelter tents and other impedimenta were out of the question. If storm came and beat upon his head he must submit, using such philosophy as he could command. The writer was once exploring among the rocky ridges found in the country south of Huron bay when, late one afternoon he heard the distant bellowing of thunder. Interested in his work he lingered too long in the rocky highlands. It grew dark rapidly and he hurried down to the low land, where he had left his pack of blankets and provisions, as it happened, under a cedar tree in a swamp. The dry cedar had been selected as good material for a camp fire. But by the time he got there the storm burst upon him in all its grandeur and wetness. He was speedily drenched to the skin. No fire could be built, no refreshments served. So unrolling his blankets, he wrapped them around him, as unlike a warrior taking his rest as possible, he sat him down on the ground with his back to the big cedar, and took in the situation. Mem. i. He was in for it (the swamp) for the night. Mem. 2. The night is dark enough to be felt, whither could he go. Mem. 3. The glare of the lightning among these trees, and the crashing of the thunder is somewhat awful to a lone matn. Mem. 4. The downpour of rain is a reminder of Noah's flood. Mem. 5. The swamp water is evidently rising and inundating his extremities. Mem. 6. What shall be done in and for this extremity? The Dryads answer, nothing, nothing, my saturated mortal, but sit it out till morning. The dawn of another day did not improve the situation. A barnyard fowl would, under no combination of unfavorable drenching, have looked more draggled and crestfallen than the writer. How he felt, "no tongue can tell," as they sometimes say on tombstones. He fortified his courage with raw pork and hardtack. Then he resolved to get 428 HISTORIO MICHIGAN out of this wilderness. The bright, sunny lake shore was only ten miles distant. He shouldered his wet pack, which weighed somewhat less than a ton, and started on a section line. Poets have sung often of the glorious effects of rain upon herbage. They talk of pearls in the grass, rubies in the hedge and diamonds sparkling everywhere in the morning sun. Now the dense underbrush of that obscure section line trail was literally loaded with water jewels. Every leaf and stem was just glittering with 'em. But they were not appreciated. Passing through these thickets evolved a continuous shower bath. More than this, pushing through the wet brush rubbed the moisture in. So that one became not only drenched, but parboiled, like a red lobster. Upon reaching the lake shore, after several hours' travel in the hot, steaming forest, the writer deliberately waded out into the lake and took a good honest bath without change of raiment. EXPLORING IN THE SNOW John Reid, a genial, but dry Scotchman, a good surveyor and sweet singer, and the writer, with a party of Frenchmen late in the fall of I846, were sent to explore certain tracts of supposed mineral land lying fifteen or twenty miles west of the mouth of Sturgeon river.6 Leaving our Mackinaw in Pike bay, we took to the woods, packs on backs, and in due time reached the tract to be examined. We built a wigwam of hemlock boughs and established camp. For several days Reid and I made a diligent survey of the ground, looking in vain for vein of mineral, or even an outcrop of trap-rock. The country was level, well wooded, doubtless good farming land, but the underlying rocks were covered by a deep drift of sand and clay. The tract was evidently not on the mineral range and it would be a loss of time to look for copper there. In short, the parties who had purchased the land, on the recommendation of certain honest explorers, had been sold. Before we had finished our survey, as it must be done thoroughly, so that there could be no mistake as to the value of the purchase, there was a heavy snowfafl of about two feet in one night. There was something preposterous as well as disagreeable in our prospecting in the snow, but the work had to be done, so that a map could be made, complete, otherwise new suspicions would arise. Our rude hut became a most uncomfortable abiding place. The big fire in front of it melted the snow on it, and the water ran down into it, soaking our beds and garments. As soon as possible we beat a retreat. In our haste we did not calculate time or distance and the consequence was, at night we brought up in a dense cedar swamp, so common in that country. To move on in the dark was impracticable. So the party camped in the snow with only our blankets for cover. During the night a thaw came on, and in the morning we found ourselves saturated with melting snow. Before moving, the blankets had to be dried before a huge fire of dry cedar trees; they could not be packed wet. At noon we again set out for the boat; walking in the sloshy snow was difficult and exhausting. In THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 429 a short time the writer gave out and fell behind. His heavy, wet cowhide boots had chafed his ankles to that degree that walking became absolute torture. He sat down on a log and after much trouble succeeded in removing his boots. He then bound his chafed feet in silk handkerchiefs, which he happened to have, then supplemented these bandages with strips of his blanket cut on purpose. Throwing his "Sacra bots," as the French say, over his shoulders, he resumed his march, following the trail made by the party. Them he only overtook at the boat. The Frenchmen were debating whether they should not leave him to his fate in the woods and, but for his friend John Reid, who combated the utterly selfish proposition, they would have sailed away without him. A few hours' boating brought the party to safe and comfortable quarters, where they were received by the late John R. Grout, a pioneer indeed, and one of the ablest engineers, practical explorers and geologists who ever visited the Lake Superior country and helped to build up the extensive copper works and interests that now distinguish that section of our wealthy state. SOME TALL TRAMPING Late in the fall of 1847, Mr. C. C. Douglass, one of the most noted pioneers of the Lake Superior country, assistant state geologist, explorer, miner and capitalist, who died in London, England, and the writer, started on an inspecting tour of the Ontonagon district. We took a birch bark canoe at the head of Torch lake, where the great Calumet copper mills now stand, and paddled down that lake through the connecting river into Portage lake, down that lake and river of the same name into Keweenaw bay, thence up that beautiful sheet of water to the Catholic mission.7 Here we hauled our canoe out and hid it in the bushes. Shouldering our packs we took to the woods. It was now about sundown but we followed an old trail through the pines and we hoped that the full moon would help us to find our way. We marched slowly and with some difficulty, keeping the trail in the obscure light, and about midnight we reached a clearing with two log houses reposing in the moonlight. A deep hush and stillness brooded over the place. Except ourselves there was not a living soul near. The place was utterly deserted. Finding the door of the principal house locked we pried open a window and burglariously obtained entrance. We found a large room swept and garnished, with a good cook stove, table, chairs and a nice wide bed neatly made up and ready for occupancy. We found candles, struck a light, built a fire in the stove and proceeded to cook supper, ample material for which we found in the store room. We enjoyed our supper thoroughly and went to bed with no compunction as to our burglarious proceedings. This we set down as an abandoned location. We found that considerable mining for copper had been done here. A trap knob, standing out in an otherwise level country was the foundation of the mine. Of course it was a mistake. A little geological knowledge would have 430 HISTORIC MICHIGAN prevented the undertaking at first. This knob was far removed from the mineral range. But at that early day miners groped much in the dark. Much money was expended uselessly from want of knowledge and experience. This property had evidently been recently abandoned without the removal of furniture, tools and supplies. It was left to rot or be stolen as the case might be. Many another mining enterprise has shared a similar fate since that day. After carefully washing the dishes and closing the window, we resumed our march. We traveled all day leisurely, through a pleasant wooded country enjoying the perfect October day. The fallen leaves formed a soft footing for our moccasins. But we paid the penalty of our dilatoriousness; at night we brought up in the inevitable cedar swamp, failing to reach our destination, the Douglass mine. We lay down by our fire, but about midnight, the north wind began to sigh in the trees and the snow to fall. In the morning we were covered deeply with the "beautiful" but we shook it off and started on. We reached the mine within ten minutes-all night so near and yet so far. We tarried two days at the mine and at daylight of the third day we began our return march. There was no time to lose; winter was near and we had much to do. We took to a section or town line, which led directly east to the mission, thirty-five miles distant; there was no trail. We started out On a dog trot and kept it up all day. Reaching Sturgeon river, we built a raft of cedar logs and ferried across. On again, first one leading, then the other, for the blazed line was at times difficult to keep. Some time after dark we would hear the welcome sound of barking dogs and presently we came to the Indian village. We secured comfortable quarters with a white friend. We went to bed in due time, but the writer found that he could not sleep. The long, rapid march had strained the muscles and tendons of his legs to such a degree that his limbs seemed on fire. He arose, sought the smooth sand beach on the bay shore and walked for an hour, thus gradually soothing his overtaxed members. Next day with canoe and on shore, we accomplished fifty-three miles, halting for the night at Eagle river. That night it was decided that we would leave the country. The last boat of the season was soon to sail from Copper harbor. Time short! Pressing! The writer found it necessary to retrace his steps a distance of sixteen miles. He started at 3 p. m. and trotted the whole distance on a trail in the wet snow, in moccasins, up hills and down, He slept in an abandoned cabin over night, without fire or blankets and wrapped in some filthy castoff mining clothes. At daylight next morning he returned to Eagle river, took breakfast there and loading all of his worldly effects on his back, started for Eagle harbor. There he learned that the steamboat Julia Palmer8 had sailed from Copper harbor but would touch at Lac La Belle on the opposite side of the point. By another strong pull he might catch this forlorn hope vessel. Away over the range he went, following obscure trails, and bruising his feet on the sharp rocks. To THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 431 his infinite joy about sunset, mounting a high knob, he beheld far off and below him, the Julia Palmer lying quietly in the offing. The next morning we sailed away toward the Sault on her; one hundred or more happy men, who had been buried in the northern wilderness for two years, for the most part rich only in experience. MINE SPECULATIONS In these days of rapid transit, telegraphs and telephones, a retrospective view of primitive times in the mines, as far back as 1846, occasions many curious reflections. Mining stocks were even then held as valuable chattels. So whenever an important discovery of mineral in some new lode or working mine was made, there was apt to be a great stir among interested parties. If possible, the discovery was kept a profound secret by the local management, from not only the residents of the district but from mine owners in Boston, New York and Detroit. Mining stocks were considered as being of more importance than the mine itself, for a boom in stocks put money in the purse while the slow waiting for profits from the actual output of the mine might never be realized. Mine work in those early days was in a great measure tentative. It was an "infant industry" without the backing of a protective tariff. After the lapse of nearly fifty years, with most successful results, it is still recognized as an "infant industry" supported by a high tariff. As before stated, keeping a discovery a dark secret, the minds of the few enlightened ones were scheming how to reach the stockholders in the remote east. There was no other way but by personal visitation. So some trusty member of the party in the conspiracy was chosen for that purpose. In the dark hours of night he prepared his outfit, and accompanied by one follower, he departed before daybreak, seeking the land of civilization on his snow-shoes. At least 300 miles of wilderness had to be traversed before a railroad could be reached. Severe cold and deep snows could not dampen his ardor. Vision of untold wealth, the fruition of successful stock speculations, lured him on and on. If first in the market he generally made a good thing of it. He was perfectly willing to make money out of his dearest friend. Sentiment does not generally bother stock speculators. All is fair in war. But there are reverses in war under the best generals. The clandestine way in which our speculator left the mine where every one is known and where one is speedily missed, excited suspicion and inquiry. The truth was soon known. A second party took to the woods by another route and out-traveled our speculator, thus forestalling the market. When he, in a leisurely way entered Detroit, great was his surprise to find himself circumvented, and one dare not even contemplate his profanity as he met the well-known individual whom he had left at his desk at the mine. But the whole affair was regarded as a good joke in mining circles. The more legitimate and praiseworthy business of entering lands at the government office was, in those early days, a serious matter. The 432 HISTORIC MICHIGAN land office was at the extreme end of the mineral district, in fact far beyond it and business centers at Sault Ste. Marie. This place was several hundred miles distant from the copper mines. To reach it the traveler had to follow for the most part the winding shores of Lake Superior, with limitless ice on one hand and a trackless, snow-whelmed forest on the other. Yet this long, tedious and dangerous journey had to be undertaken by the man who wished to secure I6o acres of land. It goes without saying that our common country owes much to the hardihood and bravery of our pioneers all along the line. But his day is passed. Perhaps in the "better civilization" now prevailing, he will not be missed. Yet a philosopher may well question whether this new civilization will breed better men, more true, patriotic and self-sacrificing than those who have passed, or are passing off the stage of human activity. We call the roll of the venerable silver-haired men and women who used to sanctify, by their presence, these annual pioneer meetings and how few there be who answer to their names! REMINISCENCES OF "OLD KEWEENAW" By Mrs. W. A. Childs Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXX, 150-I55 N the year 1836 Michigan claimed jurisdiction over a strip of land also claimed by Ohio, but congress agreed to admit Michigan to the Union upon condition that she relinquish her claim to the disputed territory and accept a larger tract of country in the upper peninsula. Included in this area was the land lying north of Torch lake, known as Keweenaw Point, Isle Royale and several smaller islands. The word Keweenaw being derived from the Indian word "Ki-wi-wee-noning," meaning the place where the portage ends, or the canoe is carried back to the lake. Burdened thus by what was considered worthless territory, Michigan, on January 26, 1837, became the thirteenth state9 of the Union. Shall anyone say that thirteen is an unlucky number? Seven years later the government sent a farmer, a carpenter, and a blacksmith to the Indian reservation on Keweenaw bay. Their mission was not simply to teach the Indians how to work, but also to instruct them how to live as white people live. Dr. Douglas Houghton, state geologist of Michigan, made the first scientific examination of the country in I84I. His explorations and his life were suddenly ended by the swamping of his canoe in the lake near Eagle river. October 13, I845, the first Protestant missionary was settled at Kewawenon mission, about three miles up the shore from L'Anse. At this time the Rev. W. H. Brockway was superintendent of the Indian mission of Lake Superior. He it was who sent the Rev. Pitezel to take charge of the mission at L'Anse in I844. This reverend gentleman was a personal friend of my father's family, and always made our home THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 433 his headquarters when making visits as presiding elder to different towns at least ten years later. I, as a small child, have heard him many times tell of his experiences on land and water. The life of a pioneer in a wild country is far from being monotonous. He is continually coming in contact with extremes. His life is not all made up of thorns, nor of clouds and storms. Often it is the case that in new and unsettled portions of the country the travels atid labors of the missionary form an important link in its after history, and unless the missionary makes the record, it is not likely to be made by others. Much of the history of our state has been gleaned from the writings of Mr. Pitezel. The Cliff mine was the first to begin operations. Three years were spe'nt in developing it with discouraging results. At the end of that time the mine changed hands, and under control of new owners proved to be very rich in copper and silver, and eventually paid $7,000,000 in dividends. To make money was the object which induced most of the pioneers to forego the blessings of home in a better land, and endure the privations of the wilderness. Many of the miners had families in distant lands, some across the seas, whose society they had not enjoyed for years. The influences which surrounded them tended to harden them. Ma'ny abandoned themselves to drinking and gambling; vice and wickedness prevailed, yet under the rough exterior were some noble minds and generous hearts. These people of the long ago in their attire were odd specimens of humanity; flannel shirts, mackinaw coats, and shoepacks were full-dress for a long time. Frequently a man had no coat at all, and if cold added a few more shirts. I recall the costume of one man who was commonly called the dude of the place. His favorite shirt was blue flannel, heavily embroidered in silks of different colors on bosom and collar, his trousers white duck-for comfort worn over heavy ones of flannel-held at the waist by a red sash, on his feet he wore top boots; on his head a stovepipe hat. I assure you, he dresses quite differently now as one of the wealthy men of the iron country. We received mail in those days sometimes twice in a winter, brought overland from Green Bay on dogtrain, which would also carry the provisions and blankets of the carrier, he walking on snow shoes. The train or sled was constructed very much like the toboggan of the present day, the provisions, blankets and mail bags being lashed fast to the bottom with strong cord. Sometimes three dogs would perform the service of hauling this mail train. In i844 adventurers began to pour into the country from eastern states. Mining operations commenced at various places along the shore on Keweenaw Point. Copper Harbor was the central point of excitement for all. The shore was lined with the tents of prospectors and miners, and Mr. D. D. Brockway, whom we have before mentioned as the blacksmith sent by the government to Kewawenon, hoping to better his fortunes, removed with his family to Copper Harbor, his only means of transportation being an open boat. The wind blew a gale, the lake 1-26 434 HISTORIC MICHIGAN was all agitation, and our friends were forced to land and dry themselves and their goods by a log fire before they could sleep. This same year Mr. Brockway and his Indian voyagers barely escaped death when bringing a boat load of potatoes from L'Anse. At a later time he had a long boat and a smaller one filled with hay he had cut at Agate Harbor; a bridge uniting the boats was also piled high with hay; a sudden squall drove them helpless to the rocky shore, but providentially the great waves lifted them onto a large flat rock and receding left them there; they were now in danger of loosing the boats, but succeeded in making them fast to a tall tree, after which they walked home to the joy of the family who had counted them lost. Fort Wilkins, named for Major Wilkins, who figured conspicuously in the war with the Indians at the siege of Detroit, was built in I844-45. Two companies of soldiers arrived in 1845 on an old propeller which had been brought over the portage at the Sault the year previous. The soldiers remained two years, and were then sent to participate in the war with Mexico. In the rear of the Fort, a hundred or two yards distant, in a gloomy wood of birch and fir, is the burying place of the fort. The marks of many graves can be seen among the trees, which of course have sprung up since. Some graves have been opened and the bones removed to more desirable quarters, but they have no historical association connected with them, Copper Harbor was a government reservation, but when it became apparent there was no need of a fort, most of the land was put upon the market. Mr. Brockway got his by pre-emption claim, and on this land stood the town of Copper Harbor. Not far from the Harbor is Brockway mountain standing guard over the dark waters below, with a few stunted trees thinly clothing its nakedness. Behind it stretches away a long train of inferior hills, all of which have in their day witnessed the passage of noble ships, and there is not an echo on either that has not answered to the crack of rifle or scream of whistle. It was very hard to get material and supplies for want of transportation, though there were several vessels, and in this year a second steamer was put into service, the Julia Palmer; this steamer one year later encountered a terrific storm, being blown all over Lake Superior, but finally, after three weeks, came into port to the surprise of everyone. Many of the pioneers of the whole country were on board; one gentleman found steps being taken to administer his estate. The first steamer on the great lake was the Independence, and we are told it was built for trading with England, but as she could make but four miles an hour, and a whole cargo of coal would take her only half way across the Atlantic, she was strengthened and improved to run six miles an hour, and put on Lake Superior. One lady says she still remembers the little tub with her one mast, her piratical blackness, and, oh! her awful rolling. Supplies of every kind were procured in the fall to last till navigation should open. Sometimes the last boats would be wrecked, or sometimes encounter storms, making it necessary to throw provisions THE UPPER PENINSULA OP MICHIGAN 435 overboard, pork and ham even being used for fuel to make steam to propel the boat. There was necessarily considerable suffering before winter passed and the white sail was again seen in the distance, which brought a fresh supply from below. One year the potatoes had been consumed, flour nearly gone, fish could not be gotten because of the great thickness of the ice, game taken from the woods was inadequate, and many of the miners were almost reduced to starvation. One man more resourceful than some made a small mill in which he ground the corn that should have been fed to the chickens. This meal was made into mush three times a day and given to the children to eat with molasses. When the Sault canal was opened in 1855 it put Copper Harbor on what was the highway between New York and Minnesota. These were days of long distances, slow going freight and no refrigeration. There was little butter and less milk, but what matter when the palate was not accustomed to taste of these. As the number of the boats increased so did the comforts of the people. Fresh meats and apples were among the luxuries that found their way into the home of the pioneer. In autumn, when cold enough to carry meat without too great danger of spoiling, it was an amusing sight to see steamers come into port with the carcasses of sheep and sides of beef hanging from upper and lower decks. These were sold in halves or quarters, cut into suitable shape for cooking and carefully packed in snow to be used as occasion demanded. Apples were so rare that they could only be indulged in by the few who were considered affluent. I recall that one particular barrel found its way into a house at Copper Harbor. One evening quite a number of friends had gathered for social intercourse, and as a treat a large plate of apples was brought out. One little girl sat quietly by and saw the apples passed to one and another of the older people, and thinking how lovely when one of these bright red apples would be given her. Finally the looked for moment arrived and she was invited to take one. With eyes glowing bright and cheeks rosy'she took one. She was then asked to take another, which she innocently did. Then asked to take another, and another till her little lap was full, her eyes dancing with pleasure, and cheeks outshining those of the apples. Finally she heard a snicker go around the room and realized she had been made the butt of the company. Burning with shame she settled back into the corner of the old lounge on which she sat, and the apples, one by one, rolled to the floor. It is needless to say she ate no apples that night, nor could she be persuaded to touch another that whole long winter. Woman has been found to bear her share of the toil, privations and dangers connected with the struggles of the pioneer. She finds herself environed by sights and sounds to her entirely new, and strange. She may be surrounded by few of her own language and manner of life; perhaps she is alone, except the members of her own family. At first it seems most romantic, and there is a peculiar charm about it all, but the spell is at last broken and the scene begins to wear an aspect of 436 HISTORIC MICHIGAN monotony. Her body is in the forest, but her mind is with loved ones far away. Her domestic cares are onerous and trying, and if everything else differs about her, she must have her home regulated as much as possible after the old sort. She is expected to be nurse, cook, housekeeper, seamstress and governess, while a man thinks he does well if he is a specialist in one line. After everything is in order she takes up knitting or sewing as a respite from more active toil. Now Indians came to the door, and without knocking, open it and walk in. The men usually seat themselves on chairs or benches, while the squaws, with their papooses, sit on the floor. The men are sure to be smoking tobacco or kinnikinic, and for a time it is puff and spit. All this time the odor from the dirty blankets and steaming moccasins is nearly smothering the lady of the house. After a while the head man of the tribe, more important than the others, begins to talk in Indian and succeeds in making her understand that they came for pork or bread, and that they must have it, too. In sympathy with the hungry, and sometimes fearing for her life she gives them what may be left from the last baking, and they are sent away only to return in a few weeks for more. At certain seasons of the year they have been known to bring offerings of game or fish, and by unmistakable signs let it be known that anything would be acceptable in return. Once an Indian-one who had the name of being a nice, clean Indian -brought to a certain housewife a mocock of maple sugar, containing perhaps ten pounds, which he wished to exchange for flour. This she was willing to do; then came the question of what to put it in for transportation. She had nothing that could be spared. He evidently had, for off came his shirt, into it went the flour, and away went the Indian with a happy farewell. On another occasion, having grown tired of salt pork-the only meat she had eaten for months-she asked the Indians if they could not bring her something from the forest. They expressed themselves willing to try, and in a few days returned bringing a beaver's tail. The first lighthouse was built at Copper Harbor, about Ioo feet from where the one on Hayes Point now stands. It was built of rock in the form of a circular tower, seventy feet high. The second on Manito, a facsimile of the first. By the erection of these lights a great benefit was conferred on mariners and the traveling public generally. Prior to the erection of these lights the only beacon was a globe lamp sent out in a yawl boat and placed upon a lone rock in the channel, to give notice of impending danger. One man by the name of Smith was among the first to take charge of the light oh Manito. It is said that he, one day in June, i856, rowed out to welcome the first boat of spring, after a long and dreary winter On the island, and to learn something of the outside world. Among other things he was told that Buchanan had been elected to the presidency the previous November. Have you ever thought, in your protected modern home, what it must have been to have lived far away from the heart of things? How one's ideas of even the necessities change under stress! THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 437 We do not like to look back on the past as a better period than the present, but certainly there were no strikes or lockouts, no new women or social problems, no women's clubs. THE PICTURED ROCKS Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, VII, 156-I60 T HE Pictured Rock, of which almost fabulous accounts are given by travelers, are about a hundred and ten miles west of Sault Ste. Marie. Here also are to be seen the Cascade Falls and the Arched Rock, both objects of great interest. The Amphitheatre, Miners' Castle, Chapel, Grand Portal, and Sail Rock, are also points of great picturesque beauty, which require to be seen to be justly appreciated. We give an extract from Foster and Whitney's Report of the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District: The range of cliffs to which the name of the Pictured Rocks has been given, may be regarded as among the most striking and beautiful features of the scenery of the Northwest, and are well worthy the attention of the artist, the lover of the grand and beautiful, and the observer of geological phenomena. Although occasionally visited by travelers, a full and accurate description of this extraordinary locality has not as yet been communicated to the public. The pictured rocks may be described, in general terms, as a series of sandstone bluffs extending along the shore of Lake Superior for about five miles and rising, in most places, vertically from the water, without any beach at the base, to a height varying from fifty to nearly two hundred feet. Were they simply a line of cliffs, they might not, so far as relates to height or extent, be worthy of a rank among great natural curiosities, although such an assemblage of rocky strata, washed by the waves of the Great Lakes, would not, under any circumstances, be destitute of grandeur. To the voyager coasting along their base in his frail canoe they would, at all times, be an object of dread; the recoil of the surf, the rockbound coast, affording for miles to place of refuge; the lowering sky, the rising wind-all these would excite his apprehension, and induce him to ply a vigorous oar until the dreaded wall was passed. But in the Pictured Rocks there are two features which communicate to the scenery a wonderful and almost unique character. These are, first, the curious manner in which the cliffs have been excavated and worn away by the action of the lake, which for centuries has dashed an ocean-like surf against their base; and, second, the equally curious manner in which large portions of the surface have been colored by bands of brilliant hues. It is from the latter circumstance that the name by which these cliffs are known to the American traveler is derived; while that applied to them by the French voyageurs, Les Portails,~1 is derived from the former, and by far the most striking, peculiarity. The term, Pictured Rocks, has been it use for a great length of time, but when it was first applied we have been unable to discover. The 438 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Indian name applied to these cliffs, according to our voyageurs, is Schknee-archilisdleung, or "The end of the rocks," which seems to refer to the fact that, in descending the lake, after having passed them, no more rocks are seen along the shore. Our voyageurs had many legends to relate of the pranks of the Menni-boujou in these caverns; and in answer to our inquiries, seemed disposed to fabricate stories without end of the achievements of this Indian deity. We will describe the most interesting points in the series, proceeding from west to east. On leaving Grand Island harbor, high cliffs are seen to the east, which form the commencement of the series of rocky promontories, which rise vertically from the water to the heighth of from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five feet, covered with a dense canopy of foliage. Occasionally a small cascade may be seen falling from the verge to the base in an unbroken curve, or gliding down the inclined face of the cliff in a sheet of white foam. The rocks at this point begin to assume fantastic shapes; but it is not until having reached Miners' river that their striking peculiarities are observed. Here the coast makes an abrupt turn to the eastward, and, just at the point where the rocks break off and the friendly sand beach begins, is seen one of the grandest works of nature in her rock-built architecture. We gave it the name of "Miners' Castle," from its singular resemblance to the turreted entrance and arched portal of some old castle-for instance, that of Dumbarton. The height of the advancing mass, in which the form of the Gothic gateway may be recognized is about seventy feet, while that of the main wall forming the background is about one hundred and forty. The appearance of the openings at the base changes rapidly with each change in the position of the spectator. On taking a position a little farther to the right of that occupied by the sketcher, the central opening appears more distinctly flanked on either side by two lateral passages, making the resemblance to an artificial work more striking. A little farther east Miners' river enters the lake close under the brow of the cliff, which here sinks down and gives place to a sand bank nearly a third of a mile in extent. The river is so narrow that it requires no little skill on the part of the voyageur to enter its mouth when a heavy sea is rolling in from the north. On the right bank, a sandy drift plain, covered with Norway and Bauksian pine, spreads out, affording good camping ground-the only place of refuge to the voyager until he reaches Chapel river, five miles distant, if we except a small sand beach about midway between the two points, where, in case of necessity, a boat may be beached. Beyond the sand beach of Miners' river, the cliffs attain an altitude of one hundred and seventy-three feet, and maintain a nearly uniform height for a considerable distance. Here one of those cascades of which we have before spoken is seen foaming down the rock. The cliffs do not form straight lines, but rather arcs of circles, the space between the projecting points having been worn out in symmetrical curves, some of which are of large dimensions. To one of the THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 439 grandest and most regularly formed we have gave the name of The Amphitheater. Looking to the west, another projecting point, its base worn into cave-like forms, and a portion of the concave surface of the intervening space are seen. It is in this last mentioned portion of the series that the phenomena of colors are most beautifully and conspicuously displayed. These cannot be illustrated by a mere crayon sketch, but would require, to reproduce the natural effect, an elaborate drawing oh a large scale, in which the various combinations of color should be carefully represented. These colors do not by any means cover the whole surface of the cliff even where they are most conspicuously displayed, but are confined to certain portions of the cliffs in the vicinity of the Amphitheatre; the great mass of the surface presenting the natural, light-yellow, or raw sienna color of the rock. The colors are also limited in their vertical range, rarely extending more than thirty or forty feet above the water, or a quarter or a third of the vertical height of the cliff. The prevailing tints consist of deep brown, yellow, and gray-burnt sienna and French gray predominating. There are also bright blues aid greens, though less frequent. All of the tints are fresh, brilliant, and distinct, and harmonize admirably with one another, which, taken in connection with the grandeur of the arched and covered surfaces on which they are laid, and the deep and pure green of the water which heaves and swells at the base, and the rich foliage which waves above, produce an effect truly wonderful. They are not scattered indiscriminately over the surface of the rock, but are arranged in vertical and parallel bands, extending to the water's edge. The mode of their production is undoubtedly as follows: Between the bands or strata of thick-bedded sandstone there are thin seams of shaly materials, which are more or less charged with the metallic oxides, iron largely predominating, with here and there a trace of copper. As the surface-water permeates through the porous strata it comes in contact with these shaly bands, and, oozing out from the exposed edges, trickles down the face of the cliffs, and leaves behind a sediment, colored according to the oxide which is contained in the band in which it originated. It cannot, however, be denied that there are some peculiarities which it is difficult to explain by any hypothesis. On first examining the pictured rocks, we were forcibly struck with the brilliancy and beauty of the colors, and wondered why some of our predecessors, in their descriptions, had hardly adverted to what we regarded as their most characteristic feature. At a subsequent visit we were surprised to find that the effect of the colors was much less striking than before; they seemed faded out, leaving only traces of their former brilliancy, so that the traveler might regard this as an unimportant feature in the scenery. It is difficult to account for this change, but it may be due to the dryness or the humidity of the season. If the colors are produced by the percolation of the water through the strata, taking up and depositing the colored sediments, as before suggested, it is evident that a long period of drouth would cut off the supply of moisture, and the colors, being no longer renewed, would fade, and 440 HISTORIC MICHIGAN finally disappear. This explanation seems reasonable, for at the time of our second visit the beds of the streams on the summit of the tableland, were dry. It is a curious fact that the colors are so firmly attached to the surface that they are very little affected by rains or the dashing of the surf, since they were, in numerous instances, observed extending in all their freshness to the very water's edge. Proceeding to the eastward of the Amphitheatre, we find the cliffs scooped out into caverns and grotesque openings, of the most striking and beautiful variety of forms. In some places huge blocks of sandstone have become dislodged and accumulated at the base of the cliff; where they are ground up and the fragments borne away by the ceaseless action of the surf. To a striking group of detached blocks the name "Sail Rock" has been given, from its striking resemblance to the jib and mainsail of a sloop when spread-so much so, that when viewed from a distance, with a full glare of light upon it, while the cliff in the rear is left in the shade, the illusion is perfect. The height of the block is about forty feet. Masses of rock are frequently dislodged from the cliff, if we may judge from the freshness of the fracture and the appearance of the trees involved in the descent. The rapidity with which this undermining process is carried on, at many points, will be readily appreciated when we consider that the cliffs do not form a single unbroken line of wall; but, on the contrary, they present numerous salient angles to the full force of the waves. A projecting corner is undermined until the superincumbent weight becomes too great, the overhanging mass cracks, and aided perhaps by the power of frost, gradually becomes loosened, and finally topples with a crash into the lake. The same general arched and broken line of cliffs borders the coast for a mile to the eastward of Sail Rock, where the most imposing feature in the series is reached. This is the Grand Portal-Le Grand Portail of the voyageurs. The general disposition of the arched openings which traverse this great quadrilateral mass may, perhaps, be made intelligible without the aid of a ground plan. The main body of the structure consists of a vast mass of a rectilinear shape, projecting out into the lake about six hundred feet, and presenting a front of three hundred or four hundred feet, and rising to a height of about two hundred feet. An entrance has been excavated from one side to the other, opening out into large vaulted passages, which communicate with the great dome, some three hundred feet from the front of the cliff. The Grand Portal which opens out on the lake, is of magnificent dimensions, being about one hundred feet in height, and one hundred and sixty-eight feet broad at the water level. The distance from the verge of the cliff over the arch to the water is one hundred and thirty-three feet, leaving thirty-three feet for the thickness of the rock above the arch itself. The extreme height of the cliff is about fifty feet more, making in all one hundred and eighty-three feet. It is impossible by any arrangement of words, or by any combination of colors, to convey an adequate idea of this wonderful scene. The vast dimensions of the cavern, the vaulted THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 441 passages, the varied effects of the light as it streams through the great arch and falls on the different objects, the deep emerald green of the water, the unvarying swell of the lake keeping up a succession of musical echoes, the reverberations of one's own voice coming back with startling effect, all these must be seen, and heard, and felt, to be fully appreciated. Beyond the Grand Portal the cliffs gradually diminish in height, and the general trend of the coast is more to the southeast; hence the rock, being less exposed to the force of the waves, bears fewer marks of their destructive action. The entrance to Chapel river is at the most easterly extremity of a sandy beach which extends for a quarter of a mile, and affords a convenient landing place, while the drift-terrace, elevated about thirty feet above the lake level, being an open pine plain, affords excellent camping ground, and is the most central and convenient spot for the traveler to pitch his tent while he examines the most interesting localities in the series which occur in this vicinity-to wit, the Grand Portal and the Chapel. The Chapel-La Chap'elle of the voyageurs-if not the grandest, is among the most grotesque, of Nature's architecture here displayed. Unlike the excavations before described, which occur at the water's edge, this has been made in the rock at a height of thirty or forty feet above the lake. The interior consists of a vaulted apartment, which has not inaptly received the name it bears. An arched roof of sandstone, from ten to twenty feet in thickness, rests on four gigantic columns of rocks, so as to leave a vaulted apartment of irregular shape, about forty feet in diameter, and about the same in height. The columns consist of finely stratified rock, and have been worn into curious shapes. At the base of o'ne of them an arched cavity or niche has been cut, to which access is had by a flight of steps formed by the projecting strata. The disposition of the whole is such as to resemble very much the pulpit of a church; since there is overhead an arched canopy, and in front an opening out toward the vaulted interior of the Chapel, with a flat tubular mass in front, rising to a convenient height for a desk, while on the right is ah isolated block, which not inaply represents an altar; so that if the whole had been adapted expressly for a place of worship, and fashioned by the hand of man, it could hardly have been arranged more appropriately. It is hardly possible to describe the singular and unique effect of this extraordinary structure; it is truly a temple of nature-"a house not made with hands." On the west side, and in close proximity, Chapel river enters the lake precipitating itself over a rocky ledge ten or fifteen feet in-height. (At this fall, according to immemorial usage among the voyageurs in ascending the lake, the mangeurs de lard, who make their first trip, receive baptism; which consists in giving them a severe ducking-a ceremony somewhat similar to that practiced on greenhorns when crossing the line). It is surprising to see how little the action of the stream has worn away the rocks which form its bed. There appears to have been hardly 442 HISTORIC MICHIGAN any recession of the cascade, and the rocky bed has been excavated only a foot or two since the stream assumed its present direction. It seems therefore impossible that the river could have had any influence in excavating the Chapel itself, but its excavation must be referred to a period when the waters of the lake stood at a higher level. Near the Grand Portal the cliffs are covered, in places, with an efflorescence of sulphate of lime, in delicate crystallization; this substance not only incrusts the walls, but is found deposited on the moss which lines them, forming singular and interesting specimens, which, however, cannot be transported without losing their beauty. At the same place we found numerous traces of organic life in the form of obscure fucoidal markings, which seem to be the impressions of plants, similar to those described by Prof. Hall as occurring in the Potsdam sandstone of New York. These were first noticed at this place by Dr. Locke, in I847. SAULT STE. MARIE AND THE CANAL FIFTY YEARS AGO By Hon. Peter White Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXV, 345-358 N April, 1849, I was and had been for a couple of years, living at the Island of Mackinac, then in many ways relatively a much more important place than it is now. There was a depot of the American Fur company there, as there was at the Sault. I do not know which of the two was really the more important. So the business of Mackinac island dealt very largely with the skins of wild animals. I had a position in a mercantile establishment, which gave me leisure in winter to go to school. Hon. Edward Kanter, afterward of Detroit, and a very well known man, was my employer, and I liked my place very much indeed. But with the coming of this particular spring, I849, there was a good deal of excitement in the air over an expedition overland to California, and another one which was being fitted out under Mr. Robert Graveraet, to go to the so-called "Iron Mountains" of Lake Superior. I received the following letter from Mr. James M. Kelley, an early resident of Marquette, who is now an old man spending his declining years in Tiburon, Cal., who was one of the party sent out from Worcester, Mass, to make the first iron manufactured in this region. "Just fifty-seven years ago today (July 4, 1905) I was passing the Pictured Rocks on the schooner 'Fur Trader' (Captain Ripley) on my way to the Carp river. As I wandered through the Golden Gate park today, the memory of that old time on Lake Superior, and the scenes and incidents accompanying it, came to my mind with force and distinctness. "In I848 Robert Graveraet came to Worcester, Mass., with specimens of iron ore from Lake Superior," he continues. "Washburn's Wire Works tested it and drew wire from the bloom, reporting that it was equal in quality to wire drawn from the best refined iron. THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 443 A company was incorporated, named the Marquette Iron company, with the Hon. William A. Draper president. "At that time we were building a fine residence for Draper in Worcester. Mr. Upham, the foreman on the building, was asked by Mr. Draper to go to the Carp river, Lake Superior, and to take charge of the building department for the company. Upham at that time had just been elected to office as alderman of Worcester, and about that time was married to a young wife, so he concluded that he could not leave, and recommended me for the position. I signed an agreement with the company May 30, i849, for one year. "Our machinery, etc., was shipped by canal to Buffalo, N. Y., and soon afterward Mr. Coer, machinist; Mr. Gates, engineer; Mr. Harlow, manager; Edward Clark, agent, and myself started by rail to Albany, N. Y. From Albany to Buffalo we made very slow progress, as the line was owned by several companies (with no through tickets or checks), and a miserable strap rail on stringers had to serve for part of the way. We had to change cars, buy tickets, re-check baggage to the next town a number of times. At Canandaigua we had to stay over night, as there was no train west until the next morning. Finally we reached Buffalo. From Buffalo to Detroit we had a pleasant passage on the splendid steamer 'Illinois.' "At Detroit we had to wait for our machinery. Detroit at that time was threatened with a visitation of cholera, so we went up to Sault Ste. Marie. After we had fought mosquitoes for several weeks the supplies, machinery, etc., arrived. Shelden McKnight, the freight agent, had them transported over the portage (there was no canal then, only a dry ditch). We then chartered the schooner 'Fur Trader' to take us to the Carp river, Lake Superior, and we had a very pleasant voyage up the lake. On July 4, while passing Pictured Rocks, we celebrated with the aid of a barrel of old rye (located at the break of the quarter deck, with the coffee pot and tin cup handy). We had a jolly good time. We sailed past the Carp river about a mile, I think, and landed near a rock, afterward called Ripley's rock. The shore was good and we landed everything supplies, boilers and engines, portable sawmill and machinery. "We were met here by a party of young men who had come up from Mackinac in a Mackinac boat, a most welcome addition to our party; they were, Peter White, Wayne Graverett, James Chapman, Henry Davenport, John Mann and Dr. Rogers. "We were now in the wilderness. The nearest white men were a few men at the Jackson iron mine, about a dozen miles back from the shore. The next nearest were the missionaries at L'Anse, about eighty miles distant, and Mr. Williams and family at Grand island, about forty miles east. We made the location where the city of Marquette now stands, but that is another story. Before closing let me recall a remark I heard one day at the Soo, during our long stay there on the trip up. I asked our landlord what the means of support of the Soo people was. He replied, 'In summer we skin strangers, and in winter we skin one another."'" 444 HISTORIC MICHIGAN The copper excitement began some time earlier, and there had been as early as I846, some exploration and mining for silver lead not far from where Marquette now is. But now the iron excitement was something new. It had been long known by the Indians and others that there was copper in the Lake Superior country, very accessible and very pure. Just why the miners delayed so long in going after it is hard to say. But somehow the Mexican war, the first foreign difficulty in many a long year, and the discovery of gold in California seem to have operated to wake up adventurous spirits everywhere. Eighteen hundred forty-nine was a great year for the American explorer. The '49er of Lake Superior has often clasped hands with the '4qer of California, and indeed the men of one of these districts often sought the other extreme of the country to continue their work. The late John H. Forster of Portage Lake was a California pioneer of '49. Mr. Robert Graveraet, who captained the proposed expedition to the Lake Superior region, was a man of remarkable strength, energy and commanding character, and I was advised by prominent citizens of Mackinac, like Mr. Samuel K. Haring, collector of the port, that the iron mountain country was likely to afford a fine opening for an energetic young man. Mr. Haring had always been very friendly in his attitude toward me, and his advice influenced me a great deal. It reoired a good deal of faith, for Mr. Kanter was paying me thirty-five dollars a month, with board, and the coveted school privilege, and I was to have only twelve dollars a month and board, for a year with the expedition. Nevertheless I joined willingly and although I was only eighteen I was as heavily bearded as a mature man. Our trip up the lake and river from Mackinac to the Sault was a tedious and difficult one.ll We were in the old steamer "Tecumseh," a side-wheeler, and a mere pigmy compared with the steamers which now pvl the lakes. It took us eight days to make the trip, as the ice was only just beginning to break up, and side-wheelers always made poor work of ice. A railroad in this country had never been thought of, indeed, railroads were then in their infancy in the United States. Railroads in America are only about as old as I am. There were then only about I,600 people in the whole northern peninsula, perhaps a thousand if we leave out the settlements at Mackinac straits. I have no means of knowing how many Indians there were. Those who came to Mackinac numbered about Io,ooo each year, but they came from south of the straits as well as north, and from as far away as the islands in Green bay. They were migratory in their habits, ranging far and wide in search of game, fish and furs. There were, of course, a few Indian trails, but none of them led to the iron mountains of Lake Superior. The water route, I might say the icewater route, was all there was for us. The trip on the St. Mary's river, with all its remarkable beauty, is, of course, entirely familiar to all who were present at the "Soo "celebration. But beautiful as the river now is, it has changed immensely both for the better and for the worse since I first saw it. It has THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 445 changed for the better, since it seems that the wbrld was created for man, and man has tow subdued, changed and possessed this stream for his residence, his solace, his recreation and his commerce. This was before the days of lights, dredges, buoys, ranges, and channel improvements. I doubt if a draught of over ten or twelve feet could have been successfully brought up to the foot of the rapids at that day. But the river has also changed for the worse, as its perfectly wooded banks were then absolutely unspoiled by the ax or devastating fire. The forest was unbroken, enormous, beautiful in the extreme. The river was leaping with fish, and the woods full of deer, bear, and small game. The beaver were everywhere. I do not remember all the stops we made, but the sailor's encampment was one of them. When we reached the Sault we found also a place very few here would recognize, though many old landmarks existed here not so many years ago. The rapids were the same as to the central fall, but the canals, and buildings have very much altered the appearance of things, and the Hay lake cut, especially down by the little rapids, almost more than all. There were few wharves and almost no shipping. My recollection of the Canadian side is that only five or six small buildings made any show on the river. On the American side was old Fort Brady, by the water's edge, a few houses on the river bank below it, but the principal part of the town above it. There was one wide street starting from the fort grounds, and several very narrow little streets running out of it, as in all French towns. There may have been 500 people all told. Many were French, some were half-breeds, some were Americans, some were the resident Indians. As early as the first Jesuit explorers it was noted that the Sault Indians were not migratory like the others. Some stayed all the year around as fish could always be caught in the rapids, and it was a sort of neutral zone. The houses were mostly small and low. I do not remember who the commander of the post was, unless it was Lieutenant Russell or Captain Clark. The garrison could hardly number more than fifty men besides officers. I remember that there was a Baptist mission station here then, presided over by a clergyman whom every one called Father Bingham. I knew the family afterward quite well and nice people they were. One daughter was named Angeline, afterward she became the wife of Hon. Thomas D. Gilbert. I think he was at one time mayor of Grand Rapids. I know he was a regent of the university. His widow, an estimable lady, still lives in Grand Rapids. Captain Sam Moody, one of our own party, thought so much of Miss Bingham that when he found a beautiful lake near Ishpeming, that he wanted to christen, he called it Lake Angeline after her, and "thereby hangs a tale." The ore under Lake Angeline proved so much more valuable than the water in it, that there is no lake there now. There were several stores at the Sault then, and we purchased here the outfit for our expedition. For our prospective voyage on Lake Superior we had a Mackinaw boat between thirty-five and forty feet 446 HISTORIC MICHIGAN long, which had to be hauled and poled about a mile of rapids, near the shore. My recollection is that it took about three hours up past the swift water. Among those residing here then, with whom I was or became acquainted, was John Tallman Whiting, afterward of Detroit. Here he had charge of the warehouse and dock belonging to Sheldon McKnight, a warehouse and vesselman, who owned in his time many steamers, among which were the "London," "Baltimore," "General Taylor," "Illinois," "Pewabic," "Meteor" and several more. Mr. Whiting was a most intelligent and agreeable man and was long my correspondent and friend. The agent of the American Fur company at the Sault was an autocrat named John R. Livingston, as Judge Abbot was at Mackinac. There were two hotels in those days at the Sault. The Van Anden an the Chippewa. Smith, who for many years kept the Chippewa, bought the Van Anden and was proprietor for a long time. The Chippewa house that some of you remember was not the original Chippewa house. That building burned down. Then Van Anden, who kept the Van Anden house, desiring to remove to Ontonagon to keep a new hotel there called the Bigelow, sold out his hotel to Smith, the landlord of the old Chippewa, who immediately rechristened it the Chippewa. When we say there was no canal, we ought to add that there was then on the Canadian side of the rapids a very small Liliputian lock, where it may still be seen. It was said to belong to the American Fur company. It does not remind one of the present canal locks very much, but then Peter Cooper's locomotive with a barrel for a water tank does not look much like a modern mogul, but it is the same thing nevertheless. The number of real vessels, not counting craft like our own, then sailing the waters of Lake Superior, was very small, and none of them measured over 200 tons burthen. As they had not been built on the big lake, you may wonder how they got over there. They were hauled over on wooden ways, very much as houses are now moved, with rollers and windlasses. "The Julia Palmer," a sidewheeler, and the "Independence," a propeller, came over the portage that way. The "Napoleon" was first a sail vessel, but metamorphosed into a propeller. It was said that in a heavy sea she would dip water with her smoke-pipe and thus put out the fires. The side-wheelers "Sam Ward" and "Baltimore" and propellers "Manhattan," "General Taylor," "Peninsula" andsseveral more were brought over the portage in the same way. A Parisian Frenchman, once a passenger on the "Baltimore" when she was making very slow progress up the lake against a heavy head wind, walked out on deck just before dark at night, had a look at the Pictured Rocks, and was much pleased with the view. In the morning before breakfast, he came out on deck again and the panorama astonished him, he exclaimed, "Wat ees dis beautiful sight you have here?" He was told, "You are looking at Pictured Rocks." He exclaimed, "Wat a great countree! Before you go to bed you walk on de deck you have grand view de Picture Rock, den you go THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 447 to bed-you sleep all night-de steamer is go ahead all de time-you come out on de deck in de morning, you see de Picture Rock again. What big country you got and how many Picture Rock?" No one told him that the steamer, finding that she could make no headway against the wind and the waves, had run back to Whitefish point during the night, and that he was now looking at the same rock pictures he had seen the previous evening! Lake Superior was uncharted and only poorly lighted, and navigation was therefore quite as dangerous, or more so, for these steam-craft of moderate power, as for our Mackinaw boat. A merchant citizen of the Sault, named Peter B. Barbeau, a very prominent man, an old settler, met a stranger from off a boat lying at the dock. The stranger says to him, "I take it that you live in this place?" "Yes, sir, I do." "Well, then I would like to ask you how this town got its curious name, Sault Ste. Mary?" "That, sir," replied Mr. Barbeau, "is a corruption. The town was originally named after a lady called Susan Marie, and by mispronunciation it has become Soo Ste. Mary." According to my recollection I was back in the Sault twice after the first visit, before the canal was opened. Once I came down by lake taking a steamer passage to reach here. On the second occasion I came down with Hon. Abner Sherman on land office business. We wanted to enter some land at the United States land office which was then at the Sault. We walked all the way, and the journey was one of enormous difficulty and hardship, and a good deal of danger. It took nine days, I wish I had time to tell you incidents of the trip. The distance now from the Sault to Marquette by railroad is almost an air line, and is about 153 miles, but we could not take any such direct route; we had to follow the shore all the way. Fording the streams like the Au Train was very dangerous, and once came near costing me my life. While skirting the great Taquamenon swamp was another heart-breaking task. We would be in the water up to our waists for miles, but we lived through it nevertheless. Such were things before the canal was built. The different appearances then in the town, shore and vessels were not more marked than the difference between our dress then and now. We hardly ever wore coats, but hickory shirts in summer and flannel shirts in winter, and occasionally we had blanket coats, with capote, but more usually if we were cold we put on one or more shirts. Most housekeepers of today would be greatly surprised at the thickness and beauty of the five-point blankets, one to each adult. Such a blanket was nearly as stiff as a board and wonderfully warm. When pay-time came, besides the blankets enough money was distributed to make either eighteen or twenty-two dollars to every Indian man, woman or child. I do not remember whether the Indians were ever paid at the Sault, but I have seen io,ooo or I2,000 paid at one time at Mackinac, and the whole beach full of wigwams for miles. The inhabitants were very willing to have them with their attendant drawbacks, as it made trade. But all the northwest furs came down 448 HISTORIC MICHIGAN this way by flotilla from Fort William. Before the canal came, the Lake Superior country was the land of romance, but otherwise closed except to the limited traffic we have mentioned. But commerce was both the key that opened it, and the result of the opening. Enterprising as were the great French explorers, no trade but that of fur was important to their eyes. It was to their interest as they saw it to keep the country wild, a fur-bearing country. The canoe and the bateaux were big enough for them. They never thought of displacing the Indians by large settlements. But when the lumbermen, the miner, the heavy freighter came, the canal became a necessity, but from our present standpoint its original projectors would have been satisfied with small things. How would a lock one hundred feet long strike you now? Yet such a lock was actually planned, indeed actually determined upon by some persons in authority at a time not far from the achievement of statehood. What surprise would now be felt to hear that the United States government ever opposed the canal! Yet soldiers from Fort Mackinac actually chased away the first laborers employed by the state to dig the canal, because they were trespassing, and had entered without permission on a military reservation. The state and national authorities were at cross purposes for some time. And who would be supposed more alive to the uses of a canal, and more intent to see that one should be built, once for all, and sufficient for all future demands than the vessel men? Yet the vessel men would have been satisfied with a much smaller canal than the one actually built. I have in my possession a copy of a letter written by Captain Eber B. Ward, long acknowledged grand mogul of all vessel interests, the heaviest proprietor of lake shipping in his day. "Detroit, January 29, I853. "Hon. Wm. A. Burt, Member H. of R., Lansing, Mich.: "Dear Sir-The deep anxiety I feel in common with the rest of the community for the early completion of the Sault Ste. Marie canal induces me to write to you on the subject. I fear the defeat of our long cherished hopes. The legislature, in their anxiety to prevent undue speculation by those who would be disposed to contract to do the work are in great danger of going to the opposite extreme, and make such requirements as will deter competent men from taking the contract for the land. The size proposed by the senate bill, 350 by seventy feet locks, is entirely too large for the locks. The crooked, narrow, shallow and rocky channels in the St. Mary's river will forever deter the largest class of steamers from navigating these waters. Aside from the impediments in the two Lake Georges,l2 there are several places where the channel is very narrow, with but eleven feet of water clear of rocks, and the channels too crooked for the large class of steamers to pass in safety. This I regard as a conclusive argument against making the locks so large as is contemplated. "I do not believe there is the least necessity for making the locks over 260 feet in the clear and sixty feet wide, as no vessel of larger dimensions that could pass such locks can be used there with safety without an expenditure of a very large sum of money in excavating THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 449 rock at various points along the river, a work that is not likely to be undertaken during the present century. The value of wild lands may be estimated by ascertaining the amount actually realized by the state for the large grants that have heretofore been made for the purposes of improvement when ho taxes were collected until the lands were sold to settlers, I think it will be difficult to find a value of twenty-five cents per acre for all such grants made to this state. A well organized company might make the lands worth seventy-five cents per acre, provided they were not taxed while held by the company. I have no doubt that the small sized canal required by the act making the grant of land would cost $525,000, or seventy cents per acre. Add eight cents per acre for interest during the construction of the work and fifteen cents per acre for selection and location brings it to ninety-three cents per acre, a price at which any quantity can now be located without any risk of loss and with much greater chances of making desirable selections. If the legislature will appoint a committee who shall act with the governor to make the best contract for the state they can, holding them responsible for a faithful discharge of their duties, I feel confident we shall succeed in securing the great object of our wishes. But if this bill should materially restrict the governor in his powers, I think we have good reason to fear that the most vital interests of the state will be delayed for years to come. "Hoping for a favorable issue to this absorbing question, I remain, "Truly yours, "E. B. WARD." In his letter he protested most vigorously, but fortunately in vain, against building the canal locks over 260 feet long. The lock was actually made 350 feet long, but 260 feet would have allowed the passage of the longest vessel he then had, and he did not foresee the demand for anything bigger. But what really dictated his letter was the fear that if a lock 350 feet long were begun, it would never be finished. There was the vast land-grant of course, but Captain Ward had so little faith in the value of the granted lands, that he estimated their selling value at only twenty-five cents an acre. He thought they would sell for enough to build a canal lock 260 feet long, not one of 350 feet. Captain Ward died, as it seemed to some of us, only a few yesterdays ago, and doubtless lived to change his mind. But with our present knowledge of the ores that have been dug, the timber cut and the crops shipped from Lake Superior districts, his fears were as erroneous as his land valuation. Two reflex influences are here to be noted. The canal made the ore trade and the ore trade made the canal. Without a canal ore could not be shipped at all. With a small shallow canal the finished product of the smelter seemed a more reasonable freight than the ore. But still the ore trade began, and the tonnage of all sorts speedily outstripped the capacity of the canal. It was enlarged and enlarged again, so that a trade which employed at first vessels of two or three hundred tons burthen, is now rapidly tending to be monopolized by carriers of 8,000 to Io,ooo tons capacity, each with a consort, so that one engine might pull to Cleveland, Ashtabula, or 1-27 450 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Erie I6,000 to i8,000 tons of ore. In 1855 it was estimated that 30,000 tons of freight passed the canal. In I88I the tonnage had grown to I,567,ooo tons. In I886, the enlarged locks carried 6,4II,000 tons. In I9OI, the second enlargement open 230 days, carried over 25,oo00,000 tons, three times the commerce of the Suez canal, and six times that of Kiel. My thesis is this: The opening of the Sault canal has been of the largest benefit to the whole United States of any single happening in its commercial or industrial history. In widely reaching effect it is comparable with the Declaration of Independence, because every state in the Union has benefitted by it. A long water-haul is so enormously cheaper than a rail-haul, that the ability to ship large cargoes direct from Lake Superior ports, 1,200 to 1,500 miles, or even across the seas has transformed the United States and changed her position among the nations. The gain of the northwest now finds an eastern or foreign market with surprising ease. Flour goes direct from Duluth to Liverpool. Many fields and millions of acres are now under plow in Dakota and the Canadian northwest, as the result of the canal. Bread is cheaper in Massachusetts than would be otherwise possible, and thus the canal helps the happiness of the laboring man. The lumber of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and of Oregon and Washington has passed or is passing the canal. Without this transport it would be impossible that the American people could be so comfortably housed, or that American timber could have been sold abroad for our national wealth and supremacy. The copper of Michigan is the purest in the world. It is usable for results not attempted with the product of other mines or other regions. It is sold all over the world, after passing the canal. It carries the telegraph, the telephone, the electric railway everywhere. It is used in all the arts. The age of electricity is due to the canal. The iron of Michigan, the ores of unexampled purity have passed and are passing the canal. Before this movement began the iron industry of America chiefly engaged with the lean Pennsylvania ores was having a terrible struggle for existence. The Lake Superior ores are rich and varied enough to mix with the Pennsylvania ores, and have saved the iron and steel industry of Pennsylvania, and so of America. The iron industry has the key of the commercial supremacy of the world. Before the canal we were dependent on the British Isles. Now we can undersell the world. The canal made Pittsburgh the great city that it is today, it made cheap rails and possible railways, it made cheap tools, cheap wire and has fenced the woodless prairies, cheap nails and implements of all kinds. It has sent our rifles, shovels, hammers, weapons, bridges, rails all over the world. The American iron-clad is the child of the canal. Kitchener went to Khartoum with the freight of the canal. Carnegie builds libraries and rewards heroic virtue with the fruits of a business impossible without the canal. The coal of the south returns by the THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 451 canal to temper our winters and drive our engines. Population is the child of the canal, industry another, comfort another, education and philanthropy twins of the canal, agriculture, manufactures, transportationi, world intercourse, commercial supremacy, and the world's peace are the offerings of the canal. The canal has reduced the price of steel rails from one hundred and fifty dollars a ton to twenty-six dollars, and occasionally even less. King iron used to reign from an English throne, now his throne is in America. We are now the great creditor nation, and as such have the greatest possible influence in the peace of the world. On the word of a bishop of the English church, I assert that the United States has now the greatest power for world peace of any nation, or that any nation ever had. Our power is largely the result of this canal. If any one knows of anything bigger ift the history of civilization I should be glad to hear of it. What was the Colossus of Rhodes? What are the Great Pyramids? Where are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? The biggest thing on earth is known by its results, and the biggest thing is the Sault canal. But bigger than anything created is the Creator, and larger than anything conceived of is the mind that conceived it. Who that celebrates this mighty triumph can forget the men who dreamed it and the men who made it? Governor Mason had it in his mind, but failed to bring it to pass. A great thought is next in honor to a great deed. Let us not forget him here. General Weitzel, who built the first enlarged lock, was the officer who took possession of captured Richmond. Poe, whose name adorns the largest lock, was famous on many a stricken field. Both wrought themselves as well as their names into these locks, and both were capable of more. If men, whose genius made these locks, and those whose interests and ability urged on expanded and used them were named together, it would prove that peace is greater than war, that commerce is the handmaid of peace, and if the men of the twentieth century outstrip those of the nineteenth who wrought this wonder, the race of giants must return. Let me give you a few figures, and only a few, to show how the production of pig-iron increased in the United States after this canal came into being. For instance in i855, the total of pig-iron in the United States was 700,I59 gross tons. In i864 it increased to 1,014,282; I872, 2,548,963 tons; i879, 2,741,583 tons; i88o, 3,835,I9I tons; i886, 5,683,329 tons; i889, 7,603,642 tons; 1893, II,773,934 tons; i9oi, I5,878,354 tons; I902, I7,821,307; 1903, i8,009,262 tons. It is estimated, based upon the returns to this date, that the total production of pig-iron in the United States for I905 will exceed 22,000,000 gross tons. The totat of pig-iron in Great Britain in i904 was 8,562,658 gross tous. It is an interesting commentary to be able to state as a fact that one single company in the United States, viz., the United States Steel Corporation, produced in the year i904 a greater steel tonnage than was made in the whole of Great Britain. The total amount of steel produced by the United Steel Corporation 452 HISTORIC MICHIGAN last year was 9,167,960 tons out of a total in the United -States of I4,422,0II tons. Great Britain's total production was in 1904, 5,I34,10I toins of steel, a little over half as much as the United States Steel Corporation product and a little over one-third of the whole United States product. That shows the great advantage that this country has in the manufacture of iron and steel since the entire steel-making capacity of the United States Steel Corporation is exclusively from Lake Superior ores. Last year the United States produced more pig-iron than Great Britain and Germany combined. There are plenty more very interesting figures for us to contemplate, but I fear I will tire you and so forbear. The increased mileage in railroads in the United States since 1855 is astonishing and worthy of comment, but time forbids. But I cannot close without pointing out the fact that the freedom of the canal is almost greater in its influence than the canal. This great waterway is free to the British flag as to our own, as are all the canals of the United States government. The Canadians themselves have been as generous in allowing us the free use of their canal on the other shore at all times and under all circumstances as we could possibly desire them to be. They have set us an example of liberality of good will that we must always profit by and be just as generous in return. This then, as we hinted, is Lake Superior's Declaration of Independence. This vast land locked sea with all its tributaries is free, and its freedom means these infinite results. And we who have seen its development and have worked the forests and mines which have chiefly made its commerce, may pause in wonder that so few and so feeble a people living under so cold a sky should have been permitted to share so largely in changing the seat of empire, and enlarging the happiness of the world.ls XXXII HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES HISTORY AND MEANING OF THE COUNTY NAMES OF MICHIGAN By William L. Jenks Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXVIII, 439-478 Mark! how all things swerve From their known course, or vanish like a dream; Another language speaks from coast to coast; Only perchance some melancholy stream And some indignant hills old names preserve, When laws, and creeds, and peoples all are lost! -Wordsworth. PRESERVATION of the origin and meaning of local names is a matter of considerable historic importance, and some knowledge of their history and significance should stimulate interest in the investigation and study of local history.1 In the original giving of names to places, localities, or territorial subdivisions, Americans in general have fallen far short of their opportunities, especially is that true in sections where the Indians had roamed, or the stately Spaniard ruled, or the lively Frenchman traveled or traded. It was the Indiant habit to attach a fittingly descriptive name to every prominent natural object, river, mountain, island, and most of these names converted or transcribed into the language of the invader, English, French, or Spanish, were sonorous, euphonious words, which would have made admirable permanent names. Schoolcraft, whose influence upon Michigan local names was important, gave much thought to this subject, and says, "The sonorousness and appropriate character of the Indian names has often been admired. In so rapidly settling a country as the West where the areas occupied so far outran the capacity to provide original names, the inconvenient repetition of old and time-honored names of Europe might be often avoided by appeal to the various Indian vocabularies." The county names of Michigan present a subject both interesting and difficult. Owing to the fact that the county making power-governor, legislative council, or legislature-has in no instance when laying out and naming a county, seen fit to indicate its motive in assigning a certain name to a county or the historical significance of such name, it is frequently difficult and sometimes impossible to determine with certainty the origin of their names. When the name is of Indian origin, the meaning is frequently doubtful, due to the difficulty in reproducing in Engli'sh letters the sounds uttered by the Indians, and when the word comes through the French, this difficulty is increased. In repeating a word to an Indian for translation, a slight difference 454 HISTORIC MICHIGAN in sound might indicate an entirely different meaning from the one belonging to the original word. This is the probable explanation of the widely differing meanings which we shall see given to the Indian names of some of the counties. The word Michigan first appears as applied to land area in the proceedings of the first session of the eighth congress in February, I804, culminating in the act of January II, I805, in the second session of the same congress, establishing the territory of Michigan, to include the present lower peninsula-but extended southward to a line drawn due east from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan-and that part of the upper peninsula east of Mackinac. Prior to that, in 1784, a committee of the congress of the confederation, of which Jefferson was chairman, had reported a plan for the government of the Northwestern Territory, and its ultimate division into ten states. One of these was to be tamed Michigania, to extend westward from Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. Fortunately this report was not adopted, as our lower peninsula was to be a state with the cumbersome, if appropriate, name, Cherronesus, a Greek word meaning peninsula. The name "Michigan" applied to the territory and state unquestionably was taken from the Lake Michigan, and that itself emerged in its present form after many vicissitudes, and as the survival of many names and differing forms. The first reference which I have found to the lake is in the Jesuit Relations of 1640. Nicollet, who was probbly the first white man to pass over the waters of Lake Michigan, made in I634 a journey to the "People of the Sea,"-La Nation des Puantsand upon his return gave an account of the tribes he met, and waters he passed over to Le Jeune, who in his Relation of I640 attempted to give a general description, which though somewhat confused, clearly enough identifies Lake Michigan under the description of "the second fresh water sea," upon whose shores dwelt the Maroumine (Menominees) and the Ounipigon (Winnebagos). The latter, he says, were called by some of the French la Nation des Punas, Pere Ragueneau, who was then among the Hurons at the lower end of Georgian bay, in the Relation of I648, after speaking of Le Mer douce (Lake Huron), says: "At the extremity farthest from us it communicates with two other lakes which are still larger." And again he refers to "A third lake which we call the Lake of the, Puants, it extends between the south and the west, but more toward the west, and is almost equal in size to our Mer douce."8 The first map to show a body of water at all corresponding to Lake Michigan, was that of Sanson, made in I650, showing the Strait of Mackinac and an opening at the west into an undefined body of water called Lac des Puans. This name was soon after appropriated to the Baye des Puans, which subsequently became Green bay. The map of Du Creux, or Creuxius, of I660, clearly indicates the lower peninsula and the lake on the west, and calls the latter, Magnus Lacus Algonouinorum seu Lacus Foetium, the last word having the same meaning as Puans. Allouez, one of the Jesuit fathers, in his journal of I666, refers to "Las des Illimouek, (probably a mistake for Illiniouek, found HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 455 elsewhere in the journal), a large lake which had not before come to our knowledge, adjoining the Lake of the Hurons and that of the Puants toward the east and south."4 In the Relation of I670, the same father who had not before beeh upon the lake, but spoke from hearsay, speaks of his going from the Sault, to the Potawatomies and passing over the Lake "des Ileaouers, unknown till then and much smaller than Lake Huron."5 Later in the same Relation, reference is made to the "Lake of the Illinioues, which is called Machihiganing."6 The map accompanying the Jesuit Relation of I670-71 shows the northern part of Lake Michigan under the name Lac des Illinois. This Relation speaks of the "Lake called Michiganons, to which the Illinois have given their name."7 The map itself is remarkably accurate so far as Lake Superior is concerned, but does not attempt to give anything but the extreme northern part of Lake Michigan, and that not with accuracy. Joliet's map of I674, while showing the entire lake for the first time, is not at all accurate in its outlines, and calls the lake "Lac des Illinois ou Missihigatin." In another map the author of which is not known. but.which appears to have been made shortly after the man of Toliet, Lake Michigan appears as "Michiganong ou des Illinois." Marquette's map of I673-74, which showed only the west shore of Lake Michigan. calls the lake "Lac des Illinois," while Thevenot's map of i68I, which he published as Marcuette's calls it "Lac de Michigami ou Illinois." A map ascribed to Franauelin, dated 1682, calls the lake "Michioanong ou le Grand Lac des Illinois dit Daunhin." Franquelin's man of 1684, much the most complete and accurate map of the Great L akes up to that date, shows the lake under the name of "Lac des Tllinois." while his man of i688 calls it "Lac des Illinois ou Michiganay." Duluth in a letter from "Mischilmakinac," written in April. 168A, refers to perverse Indians "who have in the past assassinated us at Lake Superior and in Mischigane."8 A man by Coronelli of I688 hears the name for Lake Michigan, "Lago Illinois TO Michigami," and for Lake Huron, "L. Hurons, Algonkins, Michigange." Denonville, governor of Canada, in a Memoir of i688, says that La Salle navigated Lake Huron and thence through that of "the Illinois or Missigans."9 Ratudin's map of I68c has "Lac des Illinois ou' Missiganin." In a Memoir by Cadillac, written probablv about I607, he describes the country where he has been during the three years nast and in his first reference to this lake calls it "Lac Michigan ou Illinois," but during the remainder of the article always calls it Lac Michigan.10 The Del'Isle"1 map of 1703 calls Lake Michigan "Lac des Illinois," and to Lake Huron gives the name "Lac Huron ou Michigane," which is followed in the map of Seutteri of 1730. Nicholas Perrot, who spent the years from I665 to I600 amone the Tndians of the Great Lakes, in his Memoir upon the Customs and Man-,ers of the Savages, in giving an account of the warfare between the Tronoois and the Hurons, says that after the serious defeat of the latter in I649, they went after a time to Huron Island at the mouth of Green bay, and the following year, upon hearing of the approach of a large band of Iroquois, withdrew "au Mechingan" where they constructed a 456 HISTORIC MICHIGAN strong fort. From the connection it would seem he meant by this term the district adjacent to the northwestern part of Lake Michigan.'2 In I698 Hennepin published his New Discovery, which included an abridgement of the discoveries of Joliet in I674. This latter refers to "The River of St. Lewis, which hath its source near Missichiganen,"'1 clearly meaning Lake Michigan. La Potherie, who was himself in New France during the latter part of the seventeenth century, in his history, in speaking of the Potawatomies, who were located in the region of Green bay, says, "Their families are scattered to the right and to the left along the Mecheygan."" In the Jesuit Relation of 1712, Pere Marest, a Jesuit priest who had spent some time in Illinois with the Indians, speaking of his return in 1711 to Mackinac, says, "We sailed the whole length of Lake Michigan which is named on the maps Lake Illinois without any reason since there are no Illinois who dwell in its vicinity.""' Gallinee's map of I670, while not disclosing any knowledge of Lake Michigan, and a very inaccurate knowledge of the western shore of Lake Huron, has the latter lake much larger than the reality, under the name "Michigane ou Mer Douce des Hurons." The original map made by Gallinee, which was deposited in the Department of the Marine at Paris, has disappeared; but three direct copies are known to exist, and these disagree as to whether the final "e" in Mlichigane is accented. There are some confirmatory facts to indicate that it should be accented, the Franquelin map of I688 and the Del'Isle map of 1703, indicating this. The written account by Gallinee of his journey upon which the map was based, does not, however, indicate the "e" to be accented. In the description of the journey, which was from Niagara river, up through Lake Erie, the straits and Lake Huron. Gallinee says, "We entered the largest lake in all America, called the Fresh Water Sea of the Hurons, or in Algonkin, Michigane,"'l thus indicating the latter word to be the translation of Mer or Sea. which is substantially the translation of the name found on the mao of Creuxius, "Magnus Lacus Algonquinorum," for Lake Michigan. Moll. in his map of 1720, has Lake Michigan named "Illinese Lake or Michigan." and Lake Huron, "Huron Lake, or Michigan." The name Michigan became finally estahblished as the name of this lake by the time of the mans of Del'Isle in 1730, of Bellin in 1744, D'Anville I746, and of Mitchell 1755. It seems to be reasonably clear that the meaning of the word is the Great Lake. although the real derivation is somewhat uncertain, the first part of the word, "michi" certainly meaning great, or large, and is the same as Missi in Mississippi, Mississaga. and other names. Blackbird in his Historv of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan savs "The word Michigan is an Indian name which we pronounce Mi-chi-gum, and simply means monstrous lake." Schoolcraft derives the word from "mitchaw" great, and "Sagiegan" lake, but this seems unlikely as it is not common to find an Indian comoound word so greatly contracted as would be necessary to reduce Mitchaw-Sagiegan to Michigan. The famous Ordinance of 1787 providing a government for the HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 457 Northwest Territory authorized the governor to "Proceed from time to time as circumstances may require, to lay out the parts of the district in which the Indian titles shall have been extinguished, into counties and townships." By an amendment in I789, the secretary was authorized to act in the absence of the governor from the territory. Gen. Arthur St. Clair was duly appointed the first governor and Major Winthrop Sargent, the secretary. At this time, although by the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain, the international boundary line put Michigan within the United States, the British still remained in actual occupation of the posts at Detroit and Mackinac, and the Indians who occupied-in their way-the surrounding country, were mainly friendly to them and hostile to the Americans. Some years of desultory warfare with the Indians followed, including the disastrous expedition of General St. Clair in 1791, and it was not until General Wayne-the Mad Anthony Wayne of the Revolution -was put in charge, that matters took a different complexion. In 1794, he led a campaign against the Indians and by the battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20th, and the subsequent destruction of their corn fields and villages, impressed upon the Indian mind that the United States was at last a force to be reckoned with. The treaty of Greenville, made August 3, 1795, by General Wayne with the Wyandots, Ottawas, Chippewas. Potawatomies and eight other Indian tribes, was really the first which the Indians had any intention of observing. By this treaty, the Indians, while ceding their rights to a considerable territory which is now a part of Ohio and Indiana, received in turn from the United States an acknowledgment of their rights to hunt over and occupy (with the proviso that the Indians should sell onlv to the United States) practically all the remainder of the Northwest Territory. From this remainder, however. there was excepted a strip of land six miles deep extending from Raisin river to Lake St. Clair: (thus including Detroit) and a small area at Mackinac Island and vicinity, to which the Indians ceded all their rights. In the meantime, the British. by the Tay treaty of 1794, had agreed to surrender the posts of Detroit and Mackinac on or before June I, 1796. and on June 2nd, I796, orders were given by Lord Dorchester, governor-general of Canada, to surrender them. General Wavne. after making the treaty of Greenville. left General Wilkinson in command and went to Philadelphia, where he was received with great enthusiasm. thanked by congress, appointed to receive the western posts held by the Br;tish. left Philadelphia in July, 1796, and reached Detroit August 13th, I796. 1776. Governor St. Clair was temporarily absent from his territory. The active and vigilant secretary hastened in to see the country how for the first time coming under his de facto as well as de lure jurisdiction. He arrived at Detroit in July, the British soldiers left the fort July tIth, and the Americans took formal possession. Local officers were necessary to afford visible evidence of the change of authority. A county to include the surrendered territory and its civilized occupants was the only means of securing this. The secretary consulted with 458 HISTORIC MICHIGAN some of the leading citizens of the community, then containing in the general district, about 2,500 souls. For a name, what so appropriate as that of the conquering hero then in their midst, and on the 15th day of August, 1796, two days after the general's arrival, Secretary Sargent-acting governor-instituted the county of Wayne. Its limits were extensive, and included the lower peninsula, a large section in the northern part of Ohio and Indiana, a strip along the west shore of Lake Michigan, (for the purpose of including the settlement of Green bay), which would include a small part of Illinois, the east part of Wisconsin, and the east part of the present upper peninsula. These limits were reduced by creation of the state of Ohio in I802, ahd again changed by Governor Harrison of Indiana Territory, January 14, 1803. The act establishing the Territory of Michigan was passed January II, I805, to take effect June 30th of the same year, and Gen. William Hull, then of considerable Revolutionary fame, but now chiefly remembered for his inglorious surrender of Detroit in I812, was appointed the first governor. He arrived at his seat of duties July I, and one of his first official acts on July 3rd, was to constitute the parts of the territory in which the Indian titles had been extinguished, one county, but ho did not indicate whether or not this county should retain the name of Wayne. Later apparently, in the same day, he divided the entire territory into four Districts for the execution of process and other civil purpose, Detroit, Erie. Huron, and Michilimackinac, and proceeded to appoint various officers for the districts, and the county of Wayne virtually ceased to exist, until it was re-established by Governor Cass in I8I5. Although the western expansion had already begun, Michigan lay outside the line of usual western travel, and the government was slow in starting the public surveys; even the so-called private claims of the occupants along the rivers, and Lake St. Clair were not surveyed until I81i. In order to facilitate the opening up and settlement of the territory. and in accordance with the policy adopted by the United States, a treaty was made November 17, I807, by Governor Hull, acting for the United States, and the Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot and Potawatomi tribes of Indians; they, ceding and granting all their rights, except as to certain small reservations, to that part of the state lying east of a line running along the west side of what is now Lenawee and Shiawassee counties, and from about the center of the west line of the last county, northeasterly to White Rock on Lake Huron, a point well known to the Indians. and early voyageurs. Schoolcraft in his Travels of 1820, speaks of "White Rock, ah enormous detached mass of transition limestone standing in the lake at the distance of half a mile from the shore. This is an object looked upon as a kind of milestone by the vova!reurs and is known to all canoe and boat travelers of the region. The White Rock is an obiect which had attracted the early notice of the Indians who are the first to observe the non-conformities in the appearances of the country, and it continues to be one of the places at which offerings are made.""7 I815, Governor Hull was removed in 1813 and Lewis Cass ap HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 459 pointed in his stead. Governor Cass was a strong believer in popular institutions, and began the institution of counties within the territory, November 21, 1815, by establishing the county of Wayne to include all of the territory to which the Indian title had been extinguished, thus forever repealing the district system of Hull. 1817. In 1817 President Monroe18 made the first presidential tour to the west. It was the era of good feeling, party animosity which had been so much in evidence during the preceding administrations, had largely died away. The President went to New England where he was cordially received; then westward to Buffalo, from there by boat to Detroit, where he arrived August 13, 1817, and remained five days, a period of great glorification for the small city then of about 3,000 inhabitants. Upon leaving he went southward through Ohio and back to Washington.19 There had been an early settlement, mainly of French, on the Raisin river, and this had grown somewhat, and with the additional population along the shore of Lake Erie, furnished-sufficient justification to Governor Cass to perform an act of gracious hospitality to his visiting superior, and on July 14, 1817, it anticipation of the coming visit, and in honor of the visitor, he established the county of Monroe, out of Wayne county, with limits extending from its present northerly boundary to the southern boundary of the territory-then understood to be far enough south to include Toledo-and westwardly to the Indian boundary line-the present west line of Lenawee county.20 I818. The Moravians under the leadership of Zeisberger, driven from Ohio, had made a settlement in 1782 upon Clinton river-then called the Huron —ear the present Mt. Clemens, which they called New Gnadenhutten. Upon their withdrawal in 1786, their improvements were sold, and settlers began to come in slowly, and together with the early French settlers along the shores of Lake and River St. Clair, they comprised by this time probably between 700 and 800 people. This number, together with the distance from Detroit, induced Governor Cass to act, and on January 15, I818, he issued his proclamation: "Whereas, petition has been presented to me signed by a number of the inhabitants of this territory, requesting that a new county may be laid out therein; "Now therefore, believing that the establishment of such county will be conducive to the public interest and to individual convenience, I do, by virtue of the authority in me vested, by the ordinance of congress passed the I3th day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven * * * lay out that part of the said territory included within the following boundaries * * * into a separate county to be called the County of Macomb."21 The boundary of the county included all that part of the land contained within the Indian treaty of 1807, lying north of the base line, so-called, which is the dividing line between Macomb and Wayne couhties. He gave the name to the county in honor of his friend General Alexander McComb of the United States army, who was born in Detroit, April 3, 1782. Having entered the regular army he was general 460 HISTORIC MICHIGAN at the important battle of Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, and by his handling of the situation there and subsequently, won great credit, and received a medal from congress. From 1815 to 1821, he was in command of the military district of Detroit, and in 1835, was made commander-in-chief of the United States army, and died at Washington, June 25, 1841. The limits of the county were reduced in I819 by the setting off of Oakland county, and still further reduced in 1820, by the creation of St. Clair county, leaving it substantially its present boundary, which was finally fixed as at present, in I832. During this same year, I818, by act passed April i8th, congress authorized the establishment of the state of Illinois with its north boundary, latitude 42~ 30' N. and attached the remainder of the old Northwest Territory to the Territory of Michigan. This added to the former area the remainder of the upper peninsula, and the present state of Wisconsin and part of Minnesota. The people of Illinois adopted their constitution August 26th, and on October 26th, Governor Cass, in order to provide some form of local government for the large region now under his charge, and having in mind that there were within it three settlements of white people, one at Mackinac, one at Green Bay, and one at Prairie du Chien, established three counties. Michilimackinac. Brown and Crawford.22 The first included all of the lower peninsula of Michigan north of the base line and west of the Indian treaty line of I8o7, the eastern part of the upper peninsula and all of the western part north of the height of land between the rivers running into Lake Superior and those running into Lake Michigan, the peninsula east of Green Bay, and all the northern part of Minnesota. The second included the eastern part of Wisconsin and that part of the utner peninsula of Michigan directly north of this and south of Mich;limackinac county. The third covered the western part of Wisconsin. and was bounded on the north by Michilimackinac county. Altholzrh the Indian title to practically all this area had not been extinguished. there was sufficient settlement to justify this action. The name Michilimackinac is first found in the Jesuit Relation of x660-70, where reference is made to "A large island named Michilimackinac. celebrated among the savages.""' The name was later applied to the entire locality, including the island and adjacent parts of both itiner and lower peninsula, and the snelling sometimes varied. The Tndian form of the word as represented by English letters, would seem to he Mishinimakinong. In reproducing this the French dronned the "h" sound from the first syllable and changed the "n" to "I," Missilimwckinack. There are several explanations of the meaning of the word. The one having the best, and most reasonable authority is that it is derived from the name given by the Ottawas and Chippewas in memory of a small indenendent tribe. Mishinimaki, who in ancient times occuried the island and were confederated with them, and whose spirits still roam the island and dwell in caves. The last syllable, the Indian "ong" or "ak," means "place of." hence the whole word has the meaning "nlace of the Mishinimaki.'24 Blois' Gazetteer of Michikan of i838 gives substantially the same derivation and the meaning "place of giant HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 401 fairies." (2) Schoolcraft's meaning is "place of turtle spirits, or rock spirits."25 It seems doubtful if the word has any relation to the meaning turtle, as is often claimed, it being probable that the idea came from the resemblance of the word for turtle-Mikenauk-to Mackinac. Out of more than sixty different forms or ways of spelling the word found in the early writers, only two cases-and both of those in English writers-occur in which the latter part of the word gives the syllable "mik" instead of "mak." Other meanings given to the word are "Dancing or fairy spirits." Dr. William Jones of the Field Museum, translates it, "Place of the big wounded or lame person."26 The legal name of this county is uncertain. I find no formal action by the legislature changing the original full name Michilimackinac, which is found in use as late as 1842, but from early as I8I9, the name has been spelled in legislative proceedings, with bewildering inconsistency, Mackinaw, and Mackinac; of late years the latter form has been the one uniformly used. The pronunciation, however, is the same whether spelled with final "c" or "w." Brown county was named for Major-General Jacob Brown, at that time in command of the northern division of the United States army, who although he had had no previous military training, was one of the few American generals, who, during the war of I812, really showed evidence of military ability. It was said of him, "No enterprise utndertaken by him ever failed." For his services, he received a medal from congress and was made brigadier-general in the regular army, and was commander-in-chief of the army from 1821 to his death in I828. This county included but a small part of what is now Michigan, and upon the establishment of Wisconsin as a territory and state, was reduced in area until it is now a county of ordinary size at the head of Green bay. Crawford county took its name from Fort Crawford, located near the site of Prairie du Chien, which in turn was named for William H. Crawford, a prominent politician, at the time secretary of the treasury, who became United States senator from Georgia in 1807; in I8I3 minister to France, and in I816 secretary of the treasury under Madison, and although a candidate for nomination to presidency against Monroe, was retained by him as secretary during his entire term, and in 1824, as candidate for president received' forty-one electoral votes. He then retired, on account of ill health, from federal public life and died in I834. This county had the same experience as Brown county in reduction of area, and is now a county of ordinary size in the southwestern part of Wisconsin with Prairie du Chien as county seat. I819. In I8I8 a company had been formed to purchase lands upon the upper part of the Huron river of Lake St. Clair-now Clinton river-and on January 12, I819, Governor Cass issued his proclamation, reciting that a request had been made for the setting off of a new county, and believing that a compliance with such request would have a tendency to increase the population, he laid out a new county, carving it from Macomb, and called it Oakland.27 Its limits included the present county, and also Livingston, the east part of Ingham, and part 462 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of Shiawassee, and Genesee counties. In spite of this large area, by the census of the following year, I820, it had a population of but 330. It was gradually reduced in size by the formation of new counties, until in I835 it was left in its present form. The name was taken from the numerous oak openings in that section, and was a very appropriate descriptive name. Bela Hubbard, in his Memorials of a Half Century, speaks of the character of the "openings" as that of "a majestic orchard of oaks and hickories varied by small prairies, grassy lawns and clear lakes." The governor of the Territory of Michigan was by law the superintendent of Indian affairs within its limits and in 18I9 Governor Cass, who had acted for the government in prior treaties with the Indians to the complete satisfaction of all parties, negotiated with the Chippewas at Saginaw a treaty, by which they relinquished claims to about six million acres of land in the lower peninsula. This left free for settlement and development a large portion of the central part of the state north of Thunder bay river. On March 28, I820, Governor Cass, acting upon a petition presented to him in the summer of 18i9, by the inhabitants of Macomb county living along the upper end of Lake St. Clair and St. Clair river, issued his proclamation setting off and naming the county of St. Clair. It was created from the county of Macomb, reducing that county to substantially its present limits, and included a large part of what is now Sanilac county as well as Lapeer, Genesee and Shiawassee counties. The name was undoubtedly given to it because of the fact that there was a township of that name, first laid out by Governor Cass in January, i8IS, as a part of Wayne county at the request of the court of general quarter sessions of the peace of that county, the township beginning at Huron (now Clinton) river and extending in a narrow strip along the water to Lake Huron, and in April of the same year, after the creation of the county of Macomb the governor again laid out the township of St. Clair, this time beginning at the mouth of Swan creek and including all of that county north of that line, so that when the new county of St. Clair came to be laid out and named, the name of the township which included all the area of the new county was used. The name of the original township may have been taken from the lake and river of that name along which the township extended, or fron General Arthur St. Clair, the first governor of the Northwest Territory. Before the division of that territory through the creation of Ohio as a state there were the townships in what is now Michigan, of Sargent and St. Clair. The name if taken from the lake is in its present form, a hybrid. In August 12, I679, LaSalle and his company, on their memorable trip from the Niagara river in the "Griffin", entered Lake St. Clair, and as that happened to be the festal day of Santa Clara, or, in the French form, Sainte Claire, he gave her name to the lake. If it were properly Anglicized, the name would appear as Saint Clare, (in Moll's map of the Northwest of 1720, the name appears in this form), but as early as the maps of Mitchell and Evans, in 1755, the lake appears under the name spelled as now. HISTOBY IN COUNTY NAMES 483 Prior to LaSalle, the lake had had many names. Gallinee, in his account of his trip up through the lake and river in I670, says, "We entered a small lake ten leagues long, and almost as wide, called by M. Sanson, Lac des Eaux Salees (or salt waters), but we saw no indication of salt in this lake." M. Gallinee must have relied upon his memory which was slightly at fault, as the name upon the Sanson map of I656 is Lac des Eaux de Mer, while Joliet's map of I674 calls it Lac des Eaux Salees. It is probable that this name was a French transla: tion of the Neutral or Iroquois name of the lake, Otsiketa, or Tsiketo, which means salt, and may have been derived from the presence of salt springs near the present line between Macomb and St. Clair counties. About 1765 Patrick Sinclair, then captain, built the fort called Fort Sinclair, for the British, just south of where Pine river empties into the River St. Clair, Captain Sinclair obtained for the British government from the Indians their rights to a large tract, said to be about 4,000 acres, and subsequently obtained for himself the rights of the crown. He left the locality in 1768 to return to England, coming back in 1779 as lieutenant-governor and commandant at Fort Mackinac then on the southern peninsula, and Meldrum & Park, merchants of Sandwich and Detroit are said to have obtained his rights and subsequently made proof of possession and obtained patents from the United States to four private claims upon part of which the city of St. Clair is located. From the resemblance of the names, and the location of Fort Sinclair upon the river, considerable confusion has arisen, and in the early part of the last century, it was not uncommon to find the name of the lake and river spelled "Sinclair," and the inference adopted that they were named from the British officer. Even so well informed a person on our early history as the late Judge Campbell, in the supreme court opinion which he wrote in the case of Osborne vs. Lindow, 78 Mich. 606, speaks erroneously of the original name of the township of St. Clair as being Sinclair. It was not until 1827 that the legislative council established the township of Sinclair, which included a part of the former township of St. Clair. 1822. By the census of 1820, the entire Territory of Michigan had within the present limits of the state less than 9,000 population, but hopes were high and preparations were made to take care of the newcomers certain to flock in when the fine quality of its public lands were known. The surveys of the public lands in the territory began in I8I8, the price at first being $2.00 per acre. In 1820 the government reduced the price of its lands to $I.25 an acre. Additional treaties were made with the Indians in I821, s6 that all their rights south of Grand river, with the exception of a small area in Berrien county, were ceded to the United States. On June 21, I82I, Governor Cass wrote to the secretary of the treasury, "There is a prospect of an immediate and considerable accession to the population of this territory." The attention of these immigrants seemed to be directed to the country upon the Saginaw Bay and river, and the governor urged the speedy survey and offering for sale of that section.28 In order to have matters in readiness for the expected increase of population, on September Io, 464 HISTORIC MICHIGAN 1822, Governor Cass established six new counties, Lapeer, Lenawee, Saginaw, Sanilac, Shiawassee, and Washtenaw, which, together with the older counties, included all the area within the Indian treaty of I807, and a considerable tract on the northwest in addition. Governor Cass during his long public life had a large experience with and wide knowledge of the Indians, and of their language and characteristics, and collected many of their traditions. He published a number of articles upon them, and the giving of Indian names to our counties was begun and furthered by him. Of the six names, five were of Indian origin. Lapeer29 county, as laid out, included a good part of the present Genesee county, and tie river now known as Flint, had a large part of its course in the county. The Indian name of this stream was Pe-wan-a-go-wing, (which was also the name of an Indian village upon it,) meaning flint, or flint stones. Louis Campau, who lived in the Saginaw valley as Indian trader from I815 to 1826, says that when they called it Flint they meant what the French called Lapeer, in other words, La Pierre. The governor, in naming the county, took the most prominent natural feature in it, in this case the river, and gave the French instead of the Indian or English name. Lenawee30 is of Indian derivation, either from the Delaware "Leno," meaning man, or in the Shawnee form, "Lenawai," having the same general meaning, though sometimes limited to the meaning Indian. In an article in 1826, in the North American Review, Gov. Cass says that "Lenee" is used by the Delawares in a restricted sense to mean man, but its more general and proper meaning is male. In the original proclamation, and in all the territorial laws, the word is spelled "Lenawe," but on Michigan becoming a state, another "e" was added in legislative enactments relating to the county, making the word take its present form. Saginaw county took its name from the river and bay of that name, and there is some difference of opinion as to its meaning. The earliest map showing the bay, of unknown origin, although ascribed to Franquelin, of date probably about 1682, gives it the name Baye de Sikonam. The Franquelin map of 1684 shows the bay with no name, but near the head of a river, emptying into the bay, the words, Portage de Sakinam. The Franquelin map of I688 shows the bay named Baye de Saginnam. Hennepin's map of I697 has it Bay Sakinam, while Mitchell's map of I755 calls it Saguinam Bay. The most commonly accepted derivation and meaning is from the Chippewa Sak-e-nong,place of the Sacs,-having reference to a tradition that before the white man came, a tribe of Sacs lived near the mouth of Saginaw river, who were frequently at war with their neighbors on the north and south, who finally agreed to co-operate against them, and practically annihilated the tribe. The French, at least as early as I686, called all the southeastern part of Michigan, from Saginaw Bay to Lake Erie, the Saguinam country.8" Haines, and some others, refer it to Chippewa words meaning at the mouth, or pouring out at the mouth, the word Sak, meaning outlet or opening of a river.8 Sanglac, according to Wyandot traditions, was the name of a chief, HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 485 who took an active part in the early wars between the Iroquois and Wyandots. Governor Cass had preserved many of these traditions in his manuscripts, and in I83I, Henry Whiting, then a major in the army of the United States, and stationed for many years in Detroit, published a poem entitled "Sanillac," based upon the hints found in these manuscripts. The poem treats of the love of Sanillac and Wona, an Indian maid living with her father upon Mackinac Island, and of Sanillac's adventures in warring upon the Mingoes (the name given to the Iroquois by other tribes), the hereditary foes of the Wyandots, and the finale, after describing a sanguinary battle between the Mingoes and Wyandots, in which the Mingoes are victorious, leaves the fate of Sanillac and his Indian bride uncertain. The county as originally laid out included Huron and Tuscola counties. Shiawassee county was named for the river which extended through the county and divided it nearly equally, as the county was originally laid out. Its original size was reduced by parts going subsequently into the counties of Livingston and Genesee. Kelton derives the name from words meaning "the river twists about," and this is certainly a more accurate description of the river than the meaning sometimes ascribed to it, straight ahead or "straight running river," and is the one generally accepted within the county itself. The Indian name for Grand river in its Chippewa form was Washtenong, and with the addition of sebee "river" meant the river that is far off, i. e., extends far off, far in the interior, it being the longest river in the state. The French as was customary with them, took the Indian word and translated it into their own language, using the word nearest in meaning, and called it Grand river. The valley of the Grand river had a considerable Indian population, and before the government survey, the Indians generally called the region west of Detroit district, "Wash-ten-ong," and when Governor Cass laid out this new county just west of Wayne county, he appropriated the general name to this specific territory, and called it Washtenaw, although the name then ceased to have any proper local application. The county as originally laid out included the present county and parts of Iugham, Jackson and Shiawassee counties. After the creation of the six counties, there was a lull for a short time. In 1824 Michigan came under an advanced form of territorial government by election of a legislative council of nine members. The Erie canal was opened in 1825, and the tide of western travel and settlement was flowing in, the government surveyors were busily at work laying off the public domain into townships and sections. The national turnpikes from Detroit to Chicago. Toledo, Fort Gratiot and Saginaw, were authorized by congress in 1826. The county of Michilimackinac still embraced a large part of the lower peninsula and most of the upper. The government had estahlished an agency for the lake tribes of Indians and in 1822 Henry R. Schoolcraft was appointed agent. He took up his residence at the autlt which was also the site of Fort Brady, and a settlement of some importance was established. Petition was made to the council in 1824 to establish a new county to be called "Chippewa" to include the settle1-28 466 HISTORIC MICHIGAN ment of Sault Ste. Marie but this was denied. However two years later on, December 26, I826, the council established this county. 1826. Chippewa to include the settlement, and extending westward to the Mississippi river. The name was taken from the Chippewa or Ojibwa Indians, the largest of the Algonquin tribes, and who had from immemorial times dwelt around Lake Superior and also spread over the lower peninsula. They were closely related to the Ottawas and Potawatomies, their rights to the land within Michigan were acknowledged by the United States, and they were parties to practically all the important treaties by which lands in Michigan were ceded from 1795 to 1842. The naming of the county for them was very appropriate. The form Chippewa is an adaptation of Ojibwa, which means "to roast till puckered up," referring to the puckered seam on their moccasins, or, as stated by Warren, referring to the custom of these Indians to torture by fire their captured enemies;33 other meanings ascribed to the word are, "he who wears puckered shoes;" also "he surmounts obstacles." Although the public surveys were not completed in the southwestern part of the state by 1829, the Indian title to the extreme southwest corner not having been completely extinguished until the treaty of Chicago in 1833, the legislative council took time by the forelock and prepared for the future growth already beginning, and on October 29, 1829, set off twelve counties which included all the land west of the principal meridian, and south of the fifth township north of the base line, except what is now Allegan county. These twelve counties were named, Jackson, Barry, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Eaton, Ingham, Van Buren, Hillsdale, Kalamazoo, and St. Joseph. It would not require much knowledge of political history to determine the political affiliations of a legislative body, which would name eight of its new counties after the Democratic president, Andrew Jackson, his vicepresident, John C. Calhoun, his postmaster general, William T. Barry, his secretary of navy, John Branch, his attorney-general, John M. Berrien, his secretary of war, John H. Eaton, his secretary of the treasury, Samuel D. Ingham, and his secretary of state, Martin Van Buren. It is to be regretted that men of so little permanent national or state reputation as most of these, should be so commemorated, when LaSalle, Joliet, Champlain. Cadillac and Frontenac among the French, and representative leaders in the English part of our history, as well as desirable and appropriate Indian names, remain unused. H. R. Schoolcraft was at this time a member of the legislative council and upon his motion a few days after these counties were named a committee was appointed to prepare a list of names proper for use in naming territorial subdivisions. Being made chairman of this committee, he brought in a considerable list, and at least ten of his suggestions were used by the council. Cass county was named in honor of Michigan's most eminent citizen, who spent fifty-six years in public life, and filled all the positions to which he was entrusted in such a manner as to reflect the greatest credit upon the territory and state, as well as himself. A student, HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 487 lawyer, executive, diplomat, and statesman, his statue most worthily occupies one of the niches assigned to this state in the Hall of Statuary at Washington, and the county commemorating his name has reason to congratulate itself. Hillsdale county has a descriptive name, and is fairly appropriate, the surface being rolling, originally well timbered, and the combination in the name of the hills and dales is a pleasing one. At one time a petition was sent to a legislative council to change the name to Washington, but to no effect. 1829. Kalamazoo county was named for the river, which at that time bore the name Ke-Kala-mazoo, which is seen in the early "Farmer" maps of Michigan; the Indian form of the word was probably Ke-Kena-ma-zoo. In a memorandum found in the Haldimand papers of about 1770 showing the roads from Detroit to the Illinois, this river is called Reccanamazoo, but this is probably a misprint of the "R" for "K." The early French maps and English ones in the early part of the nineteenth century, show this river under the name of Marameg, or slightly varying forms. Its meaning is Great Cat Fish, or possibly has the same derivation as Merrimac, and may mean in that case "rapid," which would be quite appropriate. The meaning of the Indian word, Kekenamazoo, is variously interpreted, bright sparkling water, boiling kettle (from the eddying waters), boiling water, beautiful water, and stones like otters. W. S. George says the name signifies the mirage or reflecting river. Schoolcraft says it means stones seen in the water which from reflection look like otters. Verwyst says, it is a corruption of Kikanamazoo, "it smokes." St. Joseph county took its name from the river running through it, and the river in turn was so called in honor of the patron saint of New France, who had been so designated by formal religious ceremony at Ouebec in 1624. The name given to the river by LaSalle, who first exnlored that vicinity, in 1679, was the river of the Miamies, because of finding that tribe in the vicinity. The name seems to have been changed to St. Joseph at or about the time of the establishing the Jesuit mission on the river at or near the present city of Niles about 1689. The name itself was a favorite one, several forts and missions receiving that name by the French. The census of the territory in I830, showed a total population within the limits of the present state, of 31,639, an increase of more than three. hundred per cent. during the decade. Wayne county led with 6,781, with Oakland second, 4,911, and Washtenaw following, 4,042, while Van Buren bravely ended the list with a total of five. Several of the counties laid out in 1820 do not appear at all in the census, although St. Joseph appears with 1,313 population. On March 2, I83I, all the remainder of the state south of Town 13 north, was laid off into twelve counties and named Allegan. Arenac, Clinton, Gladwin, Gratiot, Ionia, Isabella, Kent, Midland, Montcalm. Oceana, and Ottawa.34 Cass was still governor at this time. although he shortly afterward resigned to become secretary of war, and H. R. Schoolcraft was a member of the legislative council. 468 HISTORIC MICHIGAN 1831. Allegan: The meaning of this name which is one of those suggested by Schoolcraft is not entirely certain. It seems probable that it was named from the ancient Indian tribe whose name was sometimes spelled Allegans. Colden in his map accompanying the edition of his History of the Five Nations, published in 1742, shows the "Alleghens" occupying the country at the head waters of the Ohio. The opinion has been expressed that the last syllable "gan" is the Algonquin termination meaning lake, but this seems very doubtful. Arenac: This county has had a checkered career. Laid out in 1831, in I857 it was incorporated into the newly formed Bay county. In 1883 it was re-established with its present limits. The name was manufactured by Schoolcraft in accordance with a system which he developed more fully somewhat later. The syllable "ac" is derived from "auk," or "akke," which means land or earth, giving the idea of locality, and Arenac is compounded from the Latin "arena," sandthe derived meaning of place of combat comes from the fact that such places are sanded-and "ac," and therefore means sandy place. Clinton county was named in honor of DeWitt Clinton, through whose efforts the Erie canal had been built, which was of great effect upon the fortunes of Michigan, and who had died in 1828. This was not the first act by which Michigan had publicly expressed its appreciation of Governor Clinton's work. In 1824, the legislative council changed to Clinton the name of the river running through Macomb county and entering Lake St. Clair, and which prior to that time had borne the name of Huron river, and also established the township of Clinton in Macomb county. Gladwin county was named in honor of Major Henry Gladwin, who was in command of the fort at Detroit during its memorable siege by Pontiac in I763-64, and who for his gallant defense was promoted to lieutenant-colonel. He afterwards served with distinction upon the British 'side during the Revolutionary war. - Gratiot county was named for Charles Gratiot, who as captain, and engineer, built in 1814 Fort Gratiot, at the head of St. Clair river. He was born in 1788, was graduated from West Point, and from second lieutenant in I8o6, rose through intermediate positions to be brevet brigadier-general in 1828, his rise evidently due to his ability, having served with distinction in the war of 1812. He was inspector of West Point Academy from 1828 to I838, and in the latter year was dismissed from the service by the president for failing to properly account for public moneys in his hands. He died in 1855. lonia county was so named for the ancient Greek district on the west shore of Asia Minor which included a number of flourishing cities. which for several centuries were famous for their commerce, wealth, high civilization and social development. Isabella county took its name (proposed by Schoolcraft) from Queen Isabella of Spain under whose favoring auspices Columbus undertook his voyages in 1492. A tradition seems to have grown up which finds expression in Gannett's Bulletin The Origin of Certain Place Names, that this county was named from Isabella, the daughter of John M. Hurst (or Hursh), the first white child born in the county. That is HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 409 clearly a mistake. The county was laid out and named in 1831. At that time it was wholly unsettled, the western part being still within the Indian limits,-the Indian title not being extinguished until the treaty of 1836. The county was not organized until I859, and Mr. Hurst did not move into the county until I855. Kent county was named in honor of James Kent, who was then, at the age of sixty-eight, in the height of his reputation as commentator and expounder of the principles of American law. The fourth and last volume of his Commentaries, which have formed through edition after edition the basis of instruction for law students, and the source of legal decisions to this day, was published the preceding year, 1830, and the growing territory conferred honor upon itself by appropriating this name to a county destined to contain one of its largest and most flourishing cities. In the controversy over the south line of the state in I836-37, Chancellor Kent was employed by the state as counsel to determine whether Michigan had any rights which could be enforced in the courts. Midland is a descriptive geographical name and appropriate to the location of this county, as it is very nearly in the center of the lower peninsula. Montcalm: In the French and English warfare upon this continent, no person engaged in it cut a more attractive figure, or was more calculated to appeal to American sympathies in his ability, courage, devotion to duty, and final unhappy end, than Marquis de Montcalm, whose defeat and death in September, 1759, was the virtual end of the conflict, and a notable name in the history of the continent is commemorated in this county. Oceana county has a somewhat fanciful name given to it because bordering upon the large fresh water sea or ocean. It had a rather peculiar career. As originally laid out and named it all lay south of Town 13 north of the base line. In 1840, the name was retained but applied to an almost entirely different territory lying on the shore of Lake Michigan, and mostly north of its former north line, its former territory being absorbed into the counties of Kent, Newaygo, and Mecosta. Ottawa county was named for the tribe of Indians who had for a long time been the most numerous in the northern and western part of the lower peninsula. The meaning of the name is generally said to be trading or traders, but the more likely derivation and meaning seems to be as follows: Champlain described this people as occupying the peninsula jutting into Georgian Bay from the south and called them Cheveux Releves, from their method of dressing their hair. The Hurons called them Ondatahouats, from "ondata," "wood" or "forest," thus meaning "people of the forest." Laverdiere, the accomplished editor of Champlain's Works, says, "From the word ondatahouat is formed the word ontaouat, or Ottawa, the name by which all the upper Algonquins were afterward designated," and in fact all the early French maps designate and locate under the name "Outaouacs," all the tribes who were subsequently known as Chippewas, Ottawas, and other related tribes. The Iroquois name of Lake Huron was Ottawawa. 470 HISTORIC MICHIGAN 1833. In March, 1833, the county of Livingston was formed by taking parts of Washtenaw, Oakland and Shiawassee counties and named in honor of Edward Livingston, then secretary of state, who had had an unusual career in that having been trained in New York as a lawyer under the common law, and successful, after a financial failure -through dishonesty of an employe-he transferred his activities at the age of forty to New Orleans, in 1804, where the civil law was in force, and made even a greater success there, framing their codes, still largely in use, and being sent to represent the state in congress as senator, and then appointed by Jackson as secretary of state, and subsequently minister to France. 1835. The settlement of the Saginaw valley had grown quite rapidly, the government had built a road from Detroit to Saginaw, the timber wealth and the agricultural value of the section having been discovered. A settlement had been made at the present location of Flint, and in March, 1835, in response to demand, the county of Genesee was formed from parts of Saginaw, Lapeer, and Shiawassee counties, and named from the part of New York from which many of its settlers had come. The word itself is derived from the Seneca Je-nis-hi-yeh, meaning beautiful valley. The bill to lay out the county provided it with the name of Grand Blanc but before its final passage it was changed. The state had taken a census in I834 to determine whether it had the necessary population to entitle it to statehood under the act of congress and found a total population of 87,273, and again in 1837, finding at the latter date 175,998, a gain of more than 0oo per cent. in three years. In 1840 the national census showed a population of 2I2,267, an increase during the decade of more than 700 per cent. This decade had seen a marvelous change. Michigan had become a state with its present boundaries, after years of struggle in congress, and even a miniature war with Ohio. The great wave of land speculation which had swept over the country reached its greatest height in the territory of Michigan. In I830 there were within the territory two public land offices and during the year there were sold 147,061 acres of the public domain. As the wave rose, and the land buyers became more numerous, and more insistent, three more offices were opened and the land sold increased to 1,817,247 acres in 1835 and in 1836 to 4,189,823 acres, nearly a million more acres than was sold in any other state or territory that year. When the fever broke, the tide ebbed even more rapidly than it had risen, and in I839, less than 150,ooo acres were sold in Michigan. When the legislature met in 1840, many changes had taken place since the last county had been set off and named. The United States surveys of the lower peninsula had been nearly completed. The Indian title bad been completely extinguished by the treaty of 1836, and Douglass Houghton, the first state geologist who in his second annual report made to the legislature of 1839, had recommended that the remainder of the lower peninsula be subdivided into counties as it would help facilitate his work in the making of topographical as well as geological HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 471 maps. He repeated this recommendation to the legislature of i840, and this time he was listened to. Twenty-eight new counties were laid out and named, making for the first time a complete subdivision of the lower peninsular Of these twenty-eight names, all but one were of Indian origin, and it is probable that Henry R. Schoolcraft had much to do with the selection of these names. Born in Albany coutty, N. Y. in I793, he was graduated from Union college, and made a special study of chemistry and mineralogy. He was appointed geologist to the expedition made by Governor Cass in I820, to explore the regions around the head waters of the Mississippi and published in 182I an account of the expedition. In I822 he was appointed Indian agent for the Indians of the Great Lakes, was stationed at the Sault, and thus became definitely identified with Michigan. He was a member of the legislative council from i828 to 1832, and negotiated with the Indians the treaty of 1836, by which the northwestern part of the lower peninsula and the eastern part of the upper were ceded to the United States. He published many books relating to the Indians, their character, language, religions, etc., and undoubtedly possessed more knowledge of those matters than any other man of his time. His writings, however, are in general poorly arranged, diffuse, and contain much repetition. He gave considerable attention to the idea of providing names of Indian origin for political subdivisions and places, and in I829 he prepared for the legislative council a list containing a number of names of Indian origin, and in 1838 sent to Governor Mason a plan for a system of Indian names, which the governor communicated to the legislature.,, At this time, Houghton, the state geologist, committed to him the topic of Indian terminology, and the bestowal of new names from the aboriginal vocabulary. He worked out quite a complete plan by which taking the Indian roots and terminations, and with the necessary consonants for euphony, and varying the combinations, he could produce a large number of words of pleasing sound, of descriptive character. This principle as we shall see, he used in several of the Michigan names. The names selected by the legislature in i840 evidently did not all meet with popular approval, and when the legislature of I843 met, it changed the names of sixteen counties.3" Five of the new names were of Irish origin and it is one of the traditions that these names were due to Charles O'Malley, popularly known as "The Irish Dragon," in joking reference to Lever's tale published in i84I, and widely read, "Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon." The story runs that the Michigan O'Malley being in the legislature and having a quarrel with Schoolcraft, took his revenge by having all these changes made. But this story does not fit in with the facts, the changes all being made by the legislature of I843, and O'Malley, who lived at Mackinac, did not become a member of the legislature until I846, and of the changes made several were to names of distinctly Schoolcraft origin. The changes, however, were for the most part not desirable ones, but the contrary. Indian names, generally those of chiefs who were connected with the early history of the state, were changed and names of to local 472 HISTORIC MICHIGAN significance substituted. In considering the names of these counties, I have taken them in the alphabetical order of their present names. I840. Alcona county was first named Negwegon. The latter was the name of a well known Chippewa chief who was a firm friend of the Americans in their conflict with the British terminating in the war of 1812. He was a fine type of the race,. —over six feet high, muscular, courageous, and of strong intellect. He was known also as Wing or Little Wing, the translation of his name. Alcona was undoubtedly a word manufactured according to the Schoolcraft formula in which "al" is the Arabic for "the." "Co" is the root of a word meaning plain or prairie. "Na" is a termination meaning "excellence;" hence the entire word has the meaning "the fine or excellent plain." Alpena county was originally named Anamickee. The latter name was that of a Chippewa Chief who signed the treaty of I826 negotiated by Schoolcraft, and was a peculiarly appropriate name for this county. The word means thunder, and the county as laid out included the entire shore of Thunder bay. The name of the bay was the English translation of the French "Anse du Tonnere," which appears as early as the map of Franquelin in I688, and which was probably so-called from the Indian name, the locality being one much frequented by them, the Indians believing that it was peculiarly subject to thunder storms. Schoolcraft in his Travels of I820, refers to this belief and says, "What has been so often reiterated as to the highly electrified state of the atmosphere at this bay seems to have no foundation in truth; there is nothing in the appearance of the surrounding country-in the proximity of mountains-or the currents of the atmosphere to justify a belief that the air contains a surcharge of the electric fluid. In no place does the coast attain a sufficient altitude to allow us to suppose that it can exert any sensible influence upon the clouds nor is it known that any mineral exhalations are given out in this vicinity as has been suggested, capable of conducting towards a state of electrical irritability in the atmosphere." The retention of the original name would have preserved this historical tradition, and been preferable to the rather meaningless name which was substituted. Alpena was a word manufactured by Schoolcraft from the Arabic "al" meaning "the," and either "pinai," meaning "partridge," or "penaissee," meaning "bird." In one place in his writings he himself gives the latter word as the one entering into the combination,88 the name Alpena therefore meaning the bird country, but the former seems more probable, and the word therefore means the partridge or partridge country. 1840. Antrim county was originally named Meegisee. The latter was the name of a Chippewa chief who signed the treaties of I82I and I826, the later of which was negotiated in behalf of the United States by Schoolcraft, ahd the meaning of the word is "eagle." The present name was one of the five Irish names to which reference has been made, and is taken from that of a county in the northeastern part of Ireland. The name as it appears printed in the act of 1843, is Antim, and is only one of the evidences of careless proof reading found in the HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 473 Act, as several other names are misspelled by omission or change of a letter. It is difficult to properly characterize such a substitution as this and several others; while some of the Indian names as originally given were not particularly euphonious or pleasing, they all were more or less appropriate, while with scarce an exception the substituted names were chosen without any reference to locality, historical connection, or general appropriateness. Charlevoix county had as its original name Keshkauko, who was a leading chief of the Saginaw Chippewas and as such signed the Indian treaty of I819. He was a noted character in his day, of a tyrannical, overbearing disposition, little disposed to recognize any system of court or legal procedure. He was finally tried and convicted at Detroit of being accessory to the murder of another Indian in January, I826, and avoided suffering the penalty of the law by taking poison conveyed to him by one of his wives. The present name was given in honor of Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix, the French Jesuit missionary, traveler and historian. Born in I682, he came to Canada in I705, and made extensive travels up the St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi in 1721, and wrote during the following year his important History of New France, which, however, was not published until twenty years later. Cheboygan county, laid out and named in 1840, was extended in I853, to take in Wyandotte county, which was also laid out in 1840, immediately south of the former county, but was never organized, and lost its identity as stated above. It seems a pity that this latter name was not preserved in some county, as the Indians whose name it bears were an important element of our aboriginal population. The nameWyandotte-is a corruption from Wendat, the name by which the Hurons who occupied the region in Canada around the foot of Georgian bay called themselves. They occupied this region at the time of the coming of Champlain in 1615 and were closely related in language and descent to the Iroquois, but were even then at deadly enmity with them. Lacking, however, the fierce and persistent fighting qualities of the latter, they were defeated and nearly exterminated in I649. A portion of them fled to the Island of St. Joseph, then to Michilimackinac, then to Manitoulin Island, then, still pursued by the Iroquois, to Green bay, then about 1657, a few leagues further west, to the Potawatomies, and a few months later still farther west to the Mississippi. From there, menaced by the Sioux in I66o, they came to the region of Black river, Wisconsin, a little later joined the Ottawas at Chequamegon bay, and about I670, moved back to St. Ignace, and not long after, down to Detroit, Sandwich and Sandusky, where they lived under the protection of the French and became known as Wyandots, uniting with the Chippewas, Ottawas and other Indians in their treaties with the United States. Cheboygan county is named from the river of the same name and has had nearly as many meanings ascribed to it'as it has letters. Haines says it is derived from "chi" (abbreviation of Kitchi), meaning great, and "poygan," pipe.89 But another derivation giving the same meaning 474 HISTORIC MICHIGAN and more in consonance with the French form of the name of the river, is "Kichibwagan."40 Verwyst derives it from "ji-bai-gan," a perforated object, hence a pipe. Another derivation is from Chab-we-gan, place of ore, which is neither appropriate nor probable. Hatheway, referring to Sheboygan, Wis., derives the name from Shab-wa-way-kin, which expresses the tradition of a great noise coming under ground from Lake Superior being heard at this river.41 This, however, seems doubtful, as the Wisconsin name is probably the same word as the Michigan, although the first letter is "S" instead of "C," and this meaning could not be applicable to both places, and as a rule the Indian names had more or less close applicability to the location. Schoolcraft derives the name from a combination meaning a river or water pass from lake to lake, which would be extremely appropriate for the Michigan river, but not for the Wisconsin one.42 Still another derivation is from Zeebwa-gan, "cane," or "hollow bone." There is one derivation which should not be omitted, on the authority of Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi. An old chief who had several daughters, but no son, upon being congratulated upon the arrival of another daughter, ejaculated with the greatest disgust, "She-boy-gin" and strode from the place. And when a town sprang up there it was called by common consent "Sheboygan." Clare county had as its original name Kaykakee. The latter word is Chippewa, meaning "pigeon hawk," and was the name of a chief from the Sault referred to in the Treaty of 1826. Clare was another of the Irish names substituted in 1843, and was taken from a county in the western part of Ireland. Crawford county, which must not be confounded with the Crawford county of i8i8, was originally named Shawono, from a noted Chippewa chief who lived many years at the Sault, was doubtless personally known to Schoolcraft and who in behalf of his people signed several of the treaties with the United States, or possibly from a Potawatomi chief of the same name who was a party to several of the Indian treaties with the United States. The word Shawono means southerner, and the same word is found in the name applied by others-not themselves -to the tribe known as Shawnees. To the legislature of 1843 which made these changes in the names, there was presented a memorial by Jonathan Lamb, of Washtenaw county, praying that if changes in name were made, one of the counties should receive the name of Crawford, and the petition was granted.48 The former Crawford county, by the act of congress establishing the territory of Wisconsin in 1834, had ceased to be a part of Michigan, and whether the new county was intended to restore the same name or to perpetuate the name of Colonel William Crawford, who was captured by the Indians and burned at the stake near Upper Sandusky in 1782, is now rather difficult to determine. The original petition has not been preserved, but evidence based upon family tradition seems to render it reasonably certain that Mr. Lamb's desire was to commemorate the Colonel Crawford of tragic fate. Emmet county, still another of the changes to Irish names, was originally named Tonedagana for an Ottawa chief who was evidently HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 475 well known and of some importance as he signed several of the treaties with the United States affecting lands in Michigan. In the treaties his name is always followed by the words "the dog" as if they were the translation, but doubt is now thrown upon that meaning. The name Emmet was given in honor of the Irish patriot Robert Emmet. Grand Traverse county was in 1840 named Omeena, the change to the present name being made in I85I44 and I853,45 the first act being defective in leaving a small unattached and unorganized territory, as Omeena county, and this mistake was remedied at the following session, when the remainder of the county was merged into Grand Traverse. The Indian name means either "the point beyond" and would have reference to the narrow peninsula jutting up into Grand Traverse Bay, or as Verwyst says, a corruption of "ominau," "he gives to him." Grand Traverse county takes its name from the bay upon which it borders, which itself was so named from the fact that the early French voyageurs who always traveled in canoes and were compelled to coast the shores on any large body of water, when they passed along the east shore of Lake Michigan, found two considerable indentations of the coast line, which under ordinary conditions they were accustomed to cross from headland to headland, the smaller crossing they called "la petite traverse," the larger, about nine miles across, they called "la grande traverse," or the long crossing, and this name was transferred to the bay. The Indian name of the bay was Gitchi Wekwetong, which means "large bay." Huron county was so named for the lake bordering on the north, east and west, and the lake in turn was so called because the Jesuit fathers found the Indians whom they called Hurons, living on the east and south of the lake around Georgian Bay. These Indians called themselves Wendat, and the explanation of the word "Huron" is given in the Relation of Le Jeune, the Jesuit of I639. He says that about forty years before that, some of this tribe arriving at a French settlement, some soldier or sailor seeing them for the first time, and some of them wearing their hair in ridges which made their heads look like those of boars-hures-led them to call them Hurons,46 and the name has clung to them ever since. Champlain first gave the name Lac des Hurons to the part which he saw, which was in reality Georgian bay, but the name in time became attached to the entire lake. losco county was first named Kanotin. The latter name was that of an Ottawa chief referred to in the treaty of 1836, as living in the Grand River district. His name may be derived from the Chippewa word meaning "wind," and it is difficult to see any reason for discarding this pleasing, euphonious name. Iosco was apparently a favorite name with Schoolcraft. In 1838 he published "Iosco," or the "Vale of Norma," a poem of about fourteen printed pages reminiscent of his boyhood home in Albany county, N. Y., and in 1839 he published Algic Researches, consisting of translations and adaptations of Indian tales, and among them is one entitled "Iosco," or a "Visit to the Sun and Moon," a tale from the Ottawa, said to have been related by Chusco, an Ottawa chief. It relates the travels and adventures of five young Indian men-the eldest of whom bears the name losco-and a 476 HISTORIC MICHIGAN young boy. In the "Myth of Hiawatha," published in 1856, and which contains many of the same tales and legends found in Algic Researches, appears this one, and in this version the boy bears the name Ioscoda. In one place in his writings he says losco means water of light,47 but in another he analyzes it into parts of three words meaning "to be," "father," and "plain,"48 a meaningless combination. Kalkaska county was originally named Wabassee. The latter was the name of a Potawatomi chief who signed the treaty of 1821, and the word itself means "swan." Kalkaska was spelled in the act of 1843, Kalcasca, and in its present form looks like a "sure enough" Indian word, and if it is really that, its probable derivation is from the Chippewa and means "burned over." It is, however, possible that it is a Schoolcraft manufactured word, but if so, I have not discovered its formula. Leelanau county had its name suggested by Schoolcraft in I829 and in his Algic Researches is found "Leelinau, an Ojibwa tale," the story of an Indian maid living along the south shore of Lake Superior near Grand Sable, and in one of his volumes he gives the word as meaning "Delight of life."49 This tale is also repeated in "Myth of Hiawatha," and in that version the heroine says, "From her baby name of Neenizu, my dear life, she was called Leelinau." Lake county was first named Aishcum. The latter name was that of a well known Potawatomi chief who was a party to all the treaties with the United States in behalf of his people from i818 to 1836, his name being spelled in seven different ways, this fact illustrating the difficulty of identifying some of the old Indian names, as each individual in transcribing them might use a different combination in English or French in the endeavor to represent the original sound. The word in Chippewa would mean increasing, more and more, going farther. The name Lake is peculiarly inappropriate to this county as it is an inland county, and contains but few lakes and none of any size. Missaukee county was named for an Ottawa chief, who signed the treaties of i83i and I833. The meaning of the word is somewhat uncertain, Verwyst saying that it is a corruption of Missisaging, meaning at large mouth of river. Another derivation is from Mississauga, an Indian tribe at one time living at the northern end of Georgian bay, the word meaning people of wide mouth river. Mecosta county takes its name from that of a Potawatomi chief who signed the treaty of i836; the word is said to mean "bear cub." The county as originally laid out was larger than at present, including a part of what had been Oceana county, and the four townships which now form the northwest part of Montcalm county. Montmorency county was originally named Cheonoquet for a Chippewa chief who was a party to the Indian treaties of 1807, i815, 1825, and I837, his name meaning Big Cloud. It is uncertain whom the name Montmorency was intended to commemorate, and there does not seem to be any one of that name of sufficient prominence in American or Michigan history to justify this action. It is possible some legislator of I843 thought this a fine, high sounding name, preferable to any HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 477 Indian name, however melodious or full of meaning. There was a Duke of Montmorency, High Admiral of France, who, in I620, bought the lieutenant-generalship of Canada and a few years later sold it again without ever having set foot on this continent. There was also a de Laval-Montmorency or Montmorency-Laval, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Canada, an energetic, faithful churchman, who made great efforts to prevent the giving of ardent spirits to the Indians, and who for many years during his bishopric, from I658 to 1684, exerted a very powerful influence in New France. If a French name were to be chosen, it is unfortunate that the name of some one of the early active energetic explorers, rulers, or military men who came in personal contact with this lake region was not used. Mason county was originally named Notipekago. The latter was the Indian name of Pere Marquette river, and the county was appropriately named after its most prominent natural feature. The meaning of the Indian name was "River with heads on sticks," referring to a tradition that at an early period a band of Indians encamped at the mouth of the river was nearly exterminated by some Potawatomies and their heads cut off and placed on sticks. The present name was to commemorate Stevens T. Mason, the first governor of the state, who came originally from Virginia, was appointed secretary of the territory by President Jackson in July, 1831, when only twenty years of age, and became acting governor by the resignation of Gov. Cass to become secretary of war. He rapidly overcame the prejudices against him. acquired popularity and a firm stand in the hearts of the people of Michigan, and was elected by them governor in 1835. Manistee county took its name from the river which flows through it and empties into Lake Michigan within its borders. The word is Indian and various meanings have been ascribed to it. Among others are Vermillion river, Lost river, Island in the river. Mr. B. M. Cutcheon, in an address at Manistee, said that one meaning given to the word was "river with islands," which would not be appropriate. and that another and more poetic one was "spirit of the woods." Still another interpretation is "river at whose mouth there are islands." It does not seem that this or similar meanings could be correct, as it does not at all correspond with the fact. Another meaning is, the river with white bushes on the banks, referring to the white poplar trees found there. The name is thought to be in origin identical with Manistique in the upper peninsula. Charlevoix gives the name of the latter river as La Manistie. (Verwyst savs that Manistique is from Manistigweia, meaning crooked river). Early maps and references have the same name for the Manistee and Manistique rivers. The Franquelin map of T684 has what appears to be this river, bearing the name Aramoni. His map of I688 has if as La Manistre. Bellin's map, 1744, calls it Riviere d'oula manities, while Mitchell's map of 1755 shows this river as Manistie, but the one in the upper peninsula as Oulemaniti. Schoolcraft in his Travels of 1820, called this river Manistie. Blois' Gazeteer of Michigan, published in 1838, gives the name Monetee to both rivers. This word probably is derived from "onumunitig" or 478 HISTORIC MICHIGAN "oulaman," meaning ochre or red powder, which the Indians used in decoration and face painting. In one of the early English maps of the upper peninsula a river is shown apparently to represent the Manistique river, and is called Red Clay river. Newaygo county was probably named for a Chippewa chief who signed the Saginaw treaty of I819. Some authorities give the meaning of the word as "much water," while another gives it as meaning "wing." O emaw county takes its name from the Chippewa word for "chief." One of the leading Saginaw chiefs for many years, and who signed the treaty of I8I9, was called Ogemaw-ki-keto, chief or head speaker. Osceola county was originally named Unwattin. The latter was the name of an Ottawa chief, as such a one is referred to in the treaty of I836. Why such a name taken from an Indian chief of Michigan should be changed to Osceola, the name of a Seminole chief from Florida, even though the latter had a national prominence and his unfortunate experience with the whites and unhappy death in 1838 were then fresh in the mind, is difficult to see. The name Osceola is said by some authorities to mean "black drink." "Black Drink halloer"c0 is an allusion to the long-drawn outcry given by the attendant at certain ceremonies while each man in turn is drinking, by others, the "risng sun." Oscoda county has a name of Schoolcraft manufacture, meaning "pebbly prairie" from "os," for "ossin," stone or pebble, and "coda" from "muskoda," "prairie."" Otsego county was at first named Okkuddo. The earlier name is said to mean "sickly," but no chief or prominent person of that name is known. The present name was taken from Otsego county and lake in New York. This would be a Mohawk Iroquois word meaning "clear water." Another meaning is said to be "welcome water."52 or "place where meetings are held." Schoolcraft says the first part of the word denotes a "body of water," hence "lake," and the term "ego" means "beautiful," hence "beautiful lake."58 Presque Isle county was so named from the narrow peninsulapresque isle-juttingf out into Lake Huron toward the southern end of the county, and which was a well known feature to the early canoe travelers under that name. Schoolcraft speaks of it in his Travels of 1820, as a place where by portaging 200 yards they saved a distance of six or eight miles. Roscommon county was another of the Irish changes of i843, from Mikenauk, the name the county first bore, and certainly not a change for the better. Mikenauk was an Ottawa chief. his name meaning "turtle," who is referred to in the Indian treaty of I836, as a chief of the first class. Roscommon is a county in the central part of Ireland. Tuscola county bears in its name evidence of Schoolcraft's handiwork. The meaning is not absolutely certain as in one place Schoolcraft gives the word with the meaning, "warrior prairie,"54 and in another he derives it from words or roots meaning "level lands.""5 HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 479 Wexford county was originally named Kautawabet, and is the last of the Irish changes. The original name was that of a chief of some prominence from Sandy Lake, referred to by Schoolcraft several times in his Personal Memoirs, and who signed the treaty of 1825, his name signifying "broken tooth." Wexford is the name of a county in the southeastern part of Ireland. I843. The changes in county names was not the only county legislation had at the session of I843. The upper peninsula was coming into prominence and Michigan began to feel that perhaps it had not made so bad a bargain in accepting the upper peninsula as a solace for the strip from Ohio and Indiana, to which it was properly entitled. By the Indian treaty of 1842, the last of the Indian claims within the state-except certain reservations-were ceded. Something began to be known of the mineral wealth along Lake Superior. Douglass Houghton, the first state geologist, had in 1840 turned his attention to the upper peninsula and in his report to the legislature of 1841, he gave the first authentic and trustworthy report about the copper bearing rock of Lake Superior, and very shortly after prospectors and speculators began to flock there. The years of 184I-2-3 were in general years of very hard times. The speculative fever which had been so prevalent had died down. The legislatures of those years were called upon to pass numerous acts extending the time for collecting taxes, and other measures for the relief of debtors. The upper peninsula however felt little of this. The United States government at first did not sell the land, but issued licenses to mine, but people were rushing in, mining companies were being chartered and organized, and on March 9, I843. an act was approved greatly reducing the limits of the old counties of Chippewa and Michilimackinac, and dividing the rest of the upper peninsula into four counties, Delta, Marquette, Ontonagon, and Schoolcraft. Delta county, as originally laid out, included not only the present county of that name, but also Menominee and part of Dickinson, Marquette, and Iron counties, giving it the shape of an isosceles triangle; in.other words, the form of the Greek letter Delta, which thus explains its name. The present form of the county, which has been greatly changed from the original, gives no indication of the appropriateness of the name when originally given. Marquette county was named for Father Jacques Marquette, the Pere Marquette of the river in the lower peninsula, and a character who deserves to be commemorated in Michigan, as he is so closely connected with its early history. In I668, at the age of thirty-one, he undertook to plant a mission among the Chippewas at the Sault. After a short time there and at LaPointe, he established in I67I his mission at St. Ignace where the Hurons and Ottawas had come. In May, 1673, in company with Joliet, he left under the authority of Colbert, the chief authority over the colonies of France, and of Frontenac, the governor and intendant of New France, to go to seek the great river at the westward, and on June 17th, they entered the Mississippi river and the "father of waters" was made known to the civilized world. Returning 480 HISTORIC MICHIGAN to Green bay, and the following year to the south end of Lake Michigan, he passed there the winter of I674-75, and with rapidly failing health left in the spring of 1675 for St. Ignace, but death overtook him as he was coasting the eastern shore of Lake Michigan near the mouth of a small river, afterwards named for him, and on May i8th, at the age of thirty-eight, he passed away, a victim to his unwearied efforts to introduce the light of his religion to the Indians. There seems to be some authority for claiming that his death occurred near the mouth of the Aux Becs Scies river, instead of the Pere Marquette, but the latter from an early date had upon the maps the name of Marquette's river.50 Ontonagon county was originally much larger than at present, and also included Isle Royale. It took its name from the river of the same name, emptying into Lake Superior. The Jesuit map of Lake Superior of I670 shows the mouth of the river with the name Nantounagon. Various derivations and meanings are given for the name. One that it is derived from Nundnorgan, "hunting river." Another meaning is "lost dish," from Nindonogan. Verwyst says it is derived from Nandonagon, meaning "place where game is shot by guess;" another derivation is from a Chippewa word meaning "fishing place." i843. Schoolcraft county was named in honor of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who was a resident of the state from 1820 to 1842, and whose name will be forever associated with the researches in all matters connected with the Indians of the United States, and of whom I have spoken in connection with the counties laid out in I840. 1845. Houghton county was established in 1845 and named in honor of Dotglass Houghton, first state geologist of Michigan, and a man of great influence in and of great value to the state. Although he died at the untimely age of thirty-six.67 he had done more than any other man except Cass and Schoolcraft to bring to the knowledge of the world the great resources and many advantages of Michigan. He came to Michigan a young man, in 1829, and immediately found favor in Detroit, and at once began to take an active part in intellectual movements. It was practically entirely due to him that the state geological department was established, and fortunately for the state he was made the first incumbent of the office in I838. Energetic, enthusiastic, scientific and practical. he was at different times mayor of Detroit, president of its school board, president of a bank. president of the Michigan State Historical Society. It was an act of simple justice for the state to recognize his value while living, and to perpetuate his memory by attaching his name to a county famous the world over for its mineral wealth. I85S. The legislature of 1855 established the county of Manitou, consisting of the Manitou Islands, the Beaver Islands, and the Fox Islands, giving to the county the name of the lower islands, Manitou. At that time James J. Strang,"8 the Mormon "king" of Beaver Islands, was a member of the house of representatives from Newaygo county, to which all the Grand Traverse region was then attached, Beaver Island, his stronghold, having a population of nearly 2,0oo, which gave him great political strength in his district. Several petitions were pre HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 481 seated to this legislature praying that these islands be detached from Emmet county to which they then belonged, and the committee to which the matter was referred, after stating "that a feeling of deep distrust and repugnance approaching warlike hostility exists between different classes of people inhabiting the islands and the mainland in that part of the state," "respectfully but earnestly" recommended that a separate town and county organization be given to the Beaver and Fox Islands. In the bill, however, which was reported, the Manitou Islands were added, and the name of the new county reported by the committee as Beaver county, was, upon motion of Strang himself, changed to Manitou. Strang's death the following year, by murder, and the rapid dispersal of his followers, soon removed the necessity of a county organization, and after being for some years attached to other counties, it was finally disorganized in I895, and Manitou and Fox Islands incorporated into Leelanau county and the Beaver Islands into Charlevoix county. The name itself is an Algonquin word, meaning Spirit, but it refers rather to the mysterious and unknown powers of life and of the universe. Tradition is that many years ago two powerful tribes, one from the upper peninsula and one from the lower peninsula north of Grand river, were at war. The northern band attacked and as they supposed annihilated the others and then retired to these islands. There were, however, seven survivors, who at night followed, attacked them while asleep, and destroyed nearly all, and then escaped without being seen. The few survivors thought this an act of the spirits, hence called the island Manitou. I857. In 1855 the people below Saginaw on the Saginaw river attempted in vain to have a new county set off to include them. At the legislative session of 1857, however, they succeeded in having an act passed taking territory from Saginaw, Arenac, and Midland counties, and organizing it into Bay county, but providing that the act should be submitted before going into effect to the voters of the three counties. When the vote was held, it was defeated, if the entire vote of the whole counties was counted, but approved if only that part of each of the counties within the limtis of the new county was counted. The question found its way to the supreme court in 1858, and was decided in favor of the new county,59 which took its name from its encircling the head of the Bay of Saginaw. Its sponsors were ambitious as it had a population of only 3,I64 in I86o, but they were justified by the rapid subsequent growth. I859. Muskegon county was established in I859, and was composed of territory taken from Ottawa and Oceana counties. It took its name from the important river running through it, and emptying into Lake Michigan. The name has passed through several variations. Upon the Franquelin map of I684, the river appears under the name of Riviere des Iroquois, and in the Mitchell map of 1755, as Maticou river. The first act of the legislature in which the name appears was one of I837, organizing the township of Maskego. The name subsequently appears it official proceedings, as Maskegon, Muskego, and finally Muskegon. The word undoubtedly is Chippewa and means "swamp" 1-29 482 HISTORIC MICHIGAN or "marsh," although one authority says it means "tamarack." Verwyst says it is a corruption of Mashkigong, at or to a swamp. I86I. Keweenaw county was laid out in I86I, and was taken from Houghton county and included the Manitou Islands of Lake Superior and Isle Royale. The earliest form of this word is found in the Jesuit map of Lake Superior of I670, Kiouchounaning. The Franquelin map of I688 has it Kiaonan. Mitchell's map, Quieounan, most of the English maps of the eighteenth century following the spelling of Franquelin. Charlevoix's map has Ricanan. The generally accepted derivation is from Ki-wi-wai-ni-ning, meaning a portage or place where a portage is made. Another version is place where portage ends or the canoe is carried back. Haines says it is probably corrupted from Newgwenan, "back again," or from Kewaywenon, "going out and coming back around the point." I86I. Menominee county was laid out by the legislature in I861, as Bleeker county, but at the following session, in I863, was changed to its present name. The explanation is that one Anson Bangs, who owned property in what is now Menominee county, then a part of Delta county, but who lived in Marinette county, Wis., was in Lansing during the legislative session of 1861, and for private purposes of his own, without consulting the people who would be affected, obtained the passage of an act to create the county of Bleeker. The name, as seems not unusual in legislative action in regard to counties, e. g., Antim, Ontonojon, Reskkauko, Raykakee, and others, was misspelled, as the Dutch name for which this was intended is spelled "Bleecker." Mr. Bangs had married a Miss Bleecker, whose family probably came from Albany, N. Y., there being a distinguished family of that name located there, and he evidently desired to perpetuate his wife's family name. The people of the new county were so opposed to this action, however, that they refused to organize under it, but waited until the next session in 1863, and then send down Hon. E. S. Ingalls, and had the name changed, and a few other amendments made, and then completed the organization. The present name was taken from the Menominee river, which in turn derives its name from the Menominee Indians, who lived in that vicinity for over two centuries, before their final removal to a reservation in 1850. They were an Algonquin nation, related to the Chippewa, and the word is derived from menomin, meaning "good grain," the Chippewa name of the wild rice which grew and thrived in that vicinity and was their chief vegetable food. 1863. At the same session of I863, the county of Benzie was established, being taken from the lower part of Leelanau county. The derivation of this name is somewhat uncertain. One explanation is that it is a corruption of Betsey, the popular name of the river which runs through the county. The word "Betsey," however, is itself a corruption of the French name of the river, Riviere Aux Bec Scies, which means the "river of the saw bill" or "Merganser duck," and is the translation by the early French travelers of the Indian name of the stream, Uns-zig-o-ze-bee, which has the same meaning. Another and HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 483 more probable explanation is that it is derived from Benzonia, which was settled in 1858, and was the first county seat. This village was settled by a colony from Ohio, and one of its purposes was to found an institution of learning, which was subsequently carried out. The name Benzonia has been stated to be composed of two Hebrew words meaning "Sons of Light," or by another interpretation, "Sons of Life," and by still another, "Sons of Toil." But Professor Craig of the University of Michigan, says that it is most improbable that the word is derived from the Hebrew, and if it were, it could not have any one of the above meanings. If, therefore, the name was given in the belief it had such meaning, it seems probable that the scholarship was faulty. The county name might have been given as a contraction of the name of this village, the largest settlement in the county, or possibly as a combination of the first syllable of the village Ben, with the last syllable of the river, thus making Benzie. I867. In 1867 the legislature laid out a new county, which it named Washington. To do this it took that part of Marquette county lying west of Range 26, and one mile in width in Range 26, to include the city of Ishpeming. This action in forcibly depriving Marquette of a considerable part of its valuable mining property, naturally did not meet the approval of the people of Marquette, and legal proceedings were promptly taken, which resulted in a decision by the supreme court in People vs. Maynard, 15 Mich. 463, that the act was unconstitutional for the reason that it made provision for but one township, and as a board of supervisors was necessary to enable a county to exist, and a board could not consist of one man, the act must fall, and thus the state of Michigan probably lost forever its opportunity to have a county named for the Father of his Country. I875. Baraga county was established in 1875, its territory being mainly taken from Houghton county, and was named in honor of Bishop Frederick Baraga,6~ the great Indian Apostle of the Northwest. Born in Austria in 1797, he came to America in 1830, immediately began the study of the Ottawa language, and in May, 183i, arrived at L'Arbre Croche, the site of a Jesuit Mission, then nearly a century old. After spending two years there he went to Grand Rapids, then was for some years at La Pointe on Lake Superior. and in 1843, went to L'Anse where he labored faithfully and zealously for ten years, and in the meantime composed a Chippewa grammar and dictionary. He was made bishop in 1857, and died in I868. The state performed a simple duty in thus commemorating his name. Isle Rovale Island, which had been attached first to Ontonagon county, when it was established in 1843, then in 1845 to Houghton, and in I86I to Keweenaw county, was by the legislature of 1875 made an independent county under the same name. After a precarious existence of sixteen years, it was in i8qI disorganized and attached to Keweenaw county. The Jesuit map of I670 shows the island properly located, and of approximately the right dimensions, the whole map furnishing evidences of great care and thoroughness in. its preparation, and much more accurate than any of its successors for more than a century. 484 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Upon this map the island is named Minong. In the Relation of i669, Pere Dablon describes the "Island which is most famous for copper and is called Minong. It is large, and is fully 25 leagues long: it is distant seven leagues from the mainland.""' The Franquelin maps of 1684 and I688 show it with substantial correctness and with the same name. The first map which I have seen showing the island under its exact present name is that of Mitchell of I755. A Bowen map of I747 giving it as Isle Royale. Many -of the English maps of the eighteenth century show two islands, one Isle Royale in the proper location, and another which they call Isle Phillipeaux, generally as lying between Isle Royale and Keweenaw Point, though sometimes it is north or east of Isle Royale; and in the treaty of 1783, the international boundary line runs "northward of the isles Royale and Phillipeau."e2 Carver, writing in 1766, speaks of the Isle Royale. The word Minong is said to mean "great island." Another explanation being that it means an "Island which is intersected in passing from one point to another." 1885. The legislature of i885 laid out two new counties. Alger, which was taken from Schoolcraft county, and Iron, which was taken mostly from Marquette county and partly from Menominee. In 1891 its boundaries were changed to its present form by taking more from Marquette county, and surrendering some to the new county of Dickinson. Alger county was named for Russell A. Alger, then governor of the state, who subsequently was secretary of war under President McKinley, and United States senator, an upright, capable, honorable citizen, and official, to whom great injustice has been done, but who was known to the people of Michigan, and appreciated and honored by them. Iron county was named because of its iron deposits, which, although known to exist for some years, had first been adequately explored in 1880, and numerous mines had been opened at the time of this action, and is an appropriately descriptive term. I887. In 1887, the legislature laid out two more counties in the upper peninsula, with the idea of reducing to normal size the very large counties still existing there. Gogebic county was formed from the southern part of Ontonagon county, and was named for the Gogebic iron district in which iron had been known to exist for many years, but which had been so far from railroad transportation that it had remained entirely undeveloped until a very few years before the county organization. It seems probable that the word is really the same as the name of the lake which lies partly in this county and partly in Ontonagon county. The name of this lake is Agogebic, which is variously translated. Peter White says it means "smooth rock." Foster and Whitney in their report on the geology of the Lake Superior district, translate it "little fish." Haines thinks it means "rocky" or "rocky shore." Another derivation is from Gugwageebic, "place of diving," while others are from Gogeebing. "dividing lake," and again, "a body of water hanging on high." One authority gives the word as meaning "root under which the porcupine hides," or "nest of the porcupines," or that possibly it may come from Gagogebec, a free translation of which is HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 485 "porcupine lake." In view of the fact that in Chippewa the syllable "bic" means "rock," it seems probable that the meaning connected with rock is the correct one. Baraga in his dictionary give "ajibik," meaning "rock." At the same session, Luce county was laid out, taken from Chippewa and Mackinac counties and named in honor of Cyrus G. Luce,63 then governor of the state, who died in I905, at the age of eighty years. A man of sturdy practical sense, excellent judgment, and devoted to the interest of the people, he had served his state in many capacities, as member of both house and senate, governor, and president of the state board of agriculture. I891. The legislature of I891 was that rara avis in Michigan, a Democratic body. Finding it desirable to establish a new county in the upper peninsula, it took part of Menominee, Iron and Marquette counties and established a county which it named Dickinson county in honor of Don M. Dickinson, who had long been a favorite son of Democracy in the state, was postmaster-general in Cleveland's first cabinet, and has been for many years a leading citizen of Detroit, and an able and eminent lawyer. I have not spoken of counties formed while Michigan was a territory, which included area not within the present limits of the state, as Iowa county, laid out in 1834, and others. There are at present eighty-three counties in the state,64 of which thirty-two have names of Indian origin, twenty-nine are named for individuals, sixteen take their names from natural objects, rivers, etc., and six have names intended to be of a descriptive character. During the history of the state four counties have been laid out and after a more or less fitful career have disappeared: Washington, Wyandotte, Manitou and Isle Royale. The secretary of the Northwest Territory laid out and named one county, Governor Cass named eleven counties. Governor Cass and his legislative council twenty-seven counties, and the legislature of the state forty-eight counties.65 XXXIV THE MEXICAN WAR MICHIGAN'S RECORD IN THE WAR WITH MEXICO Address of Col. Isaac D. Toll, of Fawn River, Mich., at the Veteran Reunion in Detroit, June 19th, 1878-Colonel Toll commanded Company E, Fifteenth United States Infantry Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, II, I71-177 STANDING here in the presence of actors in fields the military annals of which reflect so much lustre upon the American name, in a city whose foundations were laid amid great peril and privation; a city justly proud of its commercial and financial standing and its municipal credit; whose sons, sprung from hardy ancestors, converted the frontier post into the gem of the peninsula, among the foremost of American cities-sons who have exhibited the gallantry and patriotism due to the lessons of their forefathers wherever the country's banner was unfurled against foes, foreign or domestic; in such a place, before such an array, while honored in being deemed worthy to address you, I confess my inability to meet the just requirements of the occasion. I will not enter specifically upon the causes of the event we have assembled this day to commemorate-an event grand and majestic in all its proportions, which, considering the obstacles overcome, successes accomplished, and mighty results which have followed, forms one of the greatest triumphs on record; one for which history has, perhaps, no superior. A less degree of wrongs and outrages upon the persons and property of our people, if unredressed, committed by powers other than Mexico, would have been considered sufficient ground for hostilities. As the effect of a single act, witness the thrill of indignation that pervaded the land at the seizure of Koszta, of patriotic emotion on his release by the memorable determination of Capt. Ingraham. In addition to acts of violence demanding redress, even a hearing was refused to our ambassador, and he was turned away with insultour territory invaded, and the blood of our citizens shed upon our own soil. Congress declared with but two negative votes in the senate, and fourteen in the house, that war existed by the act of the Republic of Mexico, at the same time making provisions for its energetic prosecution. With such unanimity on record are you to be flippantly told that it was an unprovoked war, or one engendered in the interest of any section, or any system of labor? If the wish of those desirous of the extension of slavery was the motive for thought, expression, or action, it was a deduction not german to the premises, the government being accountable for the unavoidable protection of violated rights, but not responsible for collateral objects THE MEXICAN WAR 487 of the adherents of any peculiar dogma. Such an unwarrantable charge is a libel upon the commonwealth-a libel upon the brave men of Michigan and their coadjutors, who went forth to do, and die if need be, for love of country-country from shore to shore. The institutions of the grand galaxy of states won by your toils bore no fruit save that of the tree of freedom, deeply rooted in the soil of untold millions, the motives of men to the contrary notwithstanding. I cannot do less that here give an outline of the record of our state in the war with Mexico, however imperfectly. In May, i846, our governor was notified by the war department of the United States to enroll a regiment of volunteers, to be held in readiness for service whenever demanded. At his summons thirteen independent volunteer companies, eleven of infantry and two of cavalry, at once fell into line. Of the infantry four companies were from this city, bearing the honored names of Montgomery, Lafayette, Scott and Brady upon their banners. Of the remainder Monroe tendered two, Lenawee county three, St. Clair, Berrien and Hillsdale each one, and Wayne county an additional company. Of these, alone, the veteran Bradys were accepted and ordered into service. In addition to them ten companies, making the First Regiment of Michigan Volunteers, springing from various parts of the state, but embodying to a great degree the material of which the first volunteers was formed, were not called for until October following. This regiment was soon in readiness and proceeded to the seat of war. In the region of the tropics, impatient for the farther advance which was denied them, subject to the severe diseases of an enervating and unhealthy climate, doing vigilant duty in guarding the avenues of approach-in keeping open the communications, in overawing a hostile population-in the suppression of the "Vulture-plumed guerrilla, ever on The stoop for his expectant prey"that gallant regiment evinced, in all the trials of that harassing warfare, the fidelity and devotion which has ever characterized the patriot soldier of the "Amcenam Peninsulam." Our state also claims the credit which attached to the memorable achievements of Company K, Third Dragoons, and Companies A, E and G, of the Fifteenth Regiment of United States Infantry. We find the dragoons, in addition to severe work in guarding specie-bearing trains over roads infested by guerrillas, engaged at Paso de Ovej as, where they drove the marauders to their mountain fastness. These mounted men being comparatively few, their duties as videttes, escorts to trains, conveying dispatches, reconnoitering-in fine, doing all the work of the invading army, requiring great celerity, besides being pitted against the far more numerous and active cavalry of the enemy, well mounted and accoutered-can hardly be described. Selected as guard at headquarters for their fine military bearing and efficiency, the deadly field of Churubusco attested that the honor was well deservqd. Their leader-our honored president, with the blood of the inmmortal Jackson in his veins, himself a countryman of the men who 488 HISTORIC MICHIGAN made Fontenoy a watchword for all time-was desperately wounded in the memorable charge over the causeway leading to the city upon the gate of San Antonio. His lieutenants, hereditary heroes alsoone bearing the name of, and a nephew of, the compeer of Scott, who, on the Niagara frontier, exhibited to the world that the British bayonet was not invincible-he was, as well as the son of our chieftain, in the Toledo war, one of Michigan's. worthies-the other the son of one of Detroit's most honored citizens, with a brother on the staff of the general-in-chief; another brother a captain in the First Michigan Volunteers, himself at El Molino del Rey wounded. There, too, in the fore, was Isaac Gibson, our worthy secretary. With such leaders, what must have been the rank and file? "There groom fought like noble, Squire like knight, As fearlessly and well." Ah! there all were noble; valor knows no degree, for with the iron arm, under the jacket of the private, oft beats the heart of a Sir Philip Sydney. Of the infantry companies recruited in this state, two, A and E, forming the right and center of the Fifteenth Regiment, also Company G, distinguished at the National Bridge, I must give more than mere mention. The two former, like indeed the whole army, were reduced to one-third of their original number by the remarkable changes of temperature, and the privations to which they were exposed. At Contreras, on the g9th of August, 1847, over the pedegral, confronting Valencia with his vastly preponderating numbers, under a heavy artillery fire; at night, on picket guard in a cold rain of a temperature over 7,000 feet above the sea; on the morning of the 20th, ere dawn, in line, to the assault, thence in pursuit, with but a few moments rest at San Angelos, haversacks emptied the day before, twelve miles to the sanguinary field of Churubusco, Scott himself looking the very genius of war, massive, grey, like William of Deloraine"Never did mightier man or horse, Stem a tempestuous torrent's force," giving words of cheer, as the exhausted men filed rapidly by him at Coyoacan, whence he directed the battles; then to the attack against five times their number well posted; Company E, its captain wounded, its first lieutenant killed while encouraging the men, its first sergeant mortally wounded, its color-bearer shot down grimly clinging to the staff, which had to be removed by force; one-half of its rank and file disabled. Company A, the other Michigan company, headed by the gallant Beach, also suffering severe loss, devotedly maintained the reputation of the state which it worthily represented. The loved Morgan, the generous and intrepid colonel of the regiment, whose voice, with that of the hero Shields, was heard above the roll of conflict, was struck down, and Mills, of Iowa, the major, emulous of fame, joining the dragoons in the pursuit in the force, gave up his life at THE MEXICAN WAR 489 St. Antonio's gate. There, too, the adjutant, the chivalrous Brodhead, killed at Chantilly in the war for the Union, was conspicuous for cool courage. Again, at El Molino del Rey, as a supporting force; then at Chepultepec, classic as the summer palace of Montezuma, whose terrace gives a view unsurpassed in the wide world, the tattered ensign planted on its summit among the very first, and simultaneously with that of the New York regiment. There the veteran Howard in command, the Fifteenth was ordered to keep watch and guard, in recognition of their gallant services and those of that regiment. As well and as bravely, Company G, the remaining one of the three from Michigan, under Winans, of Monroe, at Paso Ovejas, on the Ioth of August, met and repulsed a heavy guerrilla force, while on the I2th, at the National Bridge, famed for its massive architecture, and the strength as well as the commanding beauty of its surroundings, its captain transferred to command of the left wing; it was led by the accomplished Wilkins, seconded by Doyle, and drove superior forces, protected as they were by bastion, tower and wall, following the foe beyond the fastnesses which crowned the scene of their exploits, and three days afterwards renewing their brilliant successes on the hills beyond, which commanded the communications. At the protracted and severe siege of Puebla, even our sick left at the hospital were heroes, as was evinced by the gallant conduct of Lieutenant Merrifield. It would be most grateful to call to mind the eminent services of others, some appointed from this state to other organizations not so especially our own, and many from long association almost belonging to us. Among the former were Hoffman and VanBuren, who both fell in action, the latter in warfare on western wilds; Norvell, Wilcox and Lamed-it would be invidious, however, to attempt to particularize. This city, a favorite post of the army, had for years prior to I846 been at times the station, I might say, the home, of men who have been among the most distinguished in the profession of arms, and who have afforded proud pages in the history of the country. Here the name of Riley, the conqueror of Contreras, was a household word. Here, too, the veteran Brady, nearly an octogenarian, impatient of inaction, fretted and fumed at not being ordered to the front in answer to his demands in satisfaction to his never cooling "Douglass blood". What recollections, Mr. President, does the event we have met to commemorate call forth! It is remarkable that the retrospect of such scenes should appeal to the higher sensibilities of our nature-whether we consider the forces, their leaders from the commander-in-chief down-the country, distance, obstacles, dispatch, success-success culminating in such vast material results-the practice which developed the giants in the colossal war-a school which has given presidents, patriots, chieftains, so skilled for attack and defense, who must command respect for their abilities, however directed, or under whatever flag? There, Northern and Southern fought as one, and together sympathized over the loss of fallen comrades. We read of the battles of the clouds, of the pyramids, the passage of rivers, bridges, mountains, but what eye ever rested upon a more imposing array in natural 490 HISTORIC MICHIGAN and artificial life, whoever contemplated a scene more absorbing "to him who had no friend or brother there," than the majestic mountains which looked down upon the lofty hills which encircled city, lake and plain in that ethereal sky where man, "enamored of distress," made echo responsive to echo, with the sulphurous din of the g9th and 20th of August, 1847? You are told these successes were achieved over a degenerate people. Were they ever wanting in spirit to resist invasion? Do not the physical aspects of the higher lands of central and northern Mexico exhibit a conformation such as ever has been fertile in the production of a brave and liberty-loving population? Freeing themselves from the conquerors, overthrowing a kingly government of their own erection, reforming their organic law in the interest of toleration and freedom, these things exhibit no degeneracy. If you felt not the "Stern joy which warriors feel In foemen worthy of their steel," your appreciation of the prowess of your adversaries will not be diminished when you call to mind how the lilies of France, under Forey, went down under the walls of Puebla, reinforced as he was by 35,000 men, his vanguard of 4,000 under Berthier, surprised and half destroyed, Tampico and Jalapa evacuated, and the French general obliged to call for more troops. They were not despicable foes, animated by a common religion, fighting in defense of, and in sight of, their capital, their troops well disciplined, provisioned and armed, their officers well instructed, Chepultepec their military college, 'where the cadets as powder monkeys, though scarcely in their teens, under the plunging shot on the I3th of September, evinced a patriotic love for their Alma Mater, and were compelled to give sufficient security to keep the peace, not being responsible, owing to their tender age. Their teachers became their bondsmen. Your achievements were not the work of a day; centuries ago was the foundation laid, and step by step from Runnymede to the downfall of the Stuarts, and the abnegation of divine right, the mission of the Mayflower, Calvert, Lexington, Lake Erie, New Orleans, here at home on the Detroit, the River Raisin-the brilliant daring of DeQuindre at Monguagon, supported by his riflemen of sterling French stock, driving all before him-all culminating in your record, and, what was the deserved eulogium of a most able military critic, that Michigan furnished in the great Civil war the "best cavalry and the tallest infantry in the world 1" Well may that eulogy have been pronounced, when we speak the name of Custerl You have seen the fruit borne by the encouragement of independent military companies, forming not the nucleus, but mostly the body of your regiment of volunteers. The Brady Guards giving the lieutenant-colonel of that regiment, our own Williams, also the leader of Company K, Third Dragoons, both heroes of two wars. The Scott Guards giving us the stalwart Greusel, now of Iowa, who, with the gallant colonel and major of your volunteers, was also in the Civil THE MEXICAN WAR 491 war. There are others I might recall, McConnell, Comstock, Beach, Wilkins, Titus, Stockton and Reuhle, but these are given to illustrate. It would exhaust your patience to listen to the names of all those of our band of 1,500 who gave the benefit of their experience to their country. Let our state then encourage the military art by suitable enactments. Let it foster the nation's cheap defense, a well disciplined militia, supported in part by the communications of those liable under the law to do military duty. Let us exalt the military art individually and collectively. Let us be prepared for those emergencies which experience has shown within a comparatively short period may suddenly arise without scarcely a defender for property, corporate or private. "There is no peace;" as long as selfishness, error and passion exist, so long will the profession of arms be required. Gallant men, when we reflect upon the number of survivors whom time, disease and shot have spared, upon the immeasurable wealth you have added to the country; those western acquisitions, the potential forces of which were given to cement our Union, whose weight was thrown into the scale when weight was needed-to be told that some of those who aided in these resources, who gave blood, and toil, and home for the common good-have so foully erred that there is no pardon for them, and they and you alike are to be denied a small measure of the gratitude of a nation, thus aggrandized by your united efforts; that, although by solemn enactment the ban has been removed, and they have been restored to common and equal rights with you; the sting remains, the release was only for the ear, not to the hope: "We, the immaculate, are better than thou! Depart!" Our answer is: "Under which king, Bezonian?" Not under the ensign of Washington, that flower of manhood and Christian chivalry; not under the flag of Lincoln, the magnanimous, clasping the banner of the nineteenth century with the sunlight of its amenities illuminating its great folds, exhibiting in characters of living light its motto, "Charity to all, malice toward none." I will not believe that justice, before it is too late, will be denied. I will still have trust that the persistent efforts of honorable delegates, supported as they will be by the honest impulses of the American heart, already instructed by many resolutions of state legislatures, will be potent to effect the ends of a thorough equity. Fellow veterans: Those who fell by disease or battle are not forgotten. Though no annual procession of tribute-bearing pilgrims may decorate their sod with offerings of affection, today we strew the immortelles of memory over their graves. Though no sculptured stone may record their virtues, an exalted patriotism, the crowning excellence, the civilized earth is their monument, the pedregal of Contreras, the garitas of San Antonio, Belen and Cosme, the Puente Nacional, the historic cypresses, arching the ascent of the "Collegio Militar," the West Point of Mexico, centuries old when Cortez conquered, "waving over them their green leaves," mute witnesses of their valor as of their rest-all point to "stranger's eye, the graves of those that cannot die." 492 HISTORIC MICHIGAN New York, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, among other states, have inscribed upon granite their appreciation of the services of those of their respective commonwealths, who, more than a generation ago, went with you to common fields. May our own proud Michigan follow their example; then may her patriot sons point with more significance to her motto, "Tuebor." Then may our youth, emulous of a fame most exalted, as the bulwark of constitutional liberty, with heaving breast draw in the lesson of patriotism more fully, as together the marbles of the wars of 1846 and i86i, speak-"sic itur ad astra." Long is the list of comrades gone before, In recollection fond, in history's lore They are recorded, And their influence bright will gladden all Until the light of setting sun be cast, In mild effulgence on the last.1 XXXV POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR MICHIGAN IN HER PIONEER POLITICS By A. D. P. Van Buren Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XVII, 238-247 HAVE often gone into reflection on the subject of politics; as to what it was, and as to its effect on man, and on the masses. It is not an uninteresting study. The dictionary defines it as the science of government, and politician-one versed in that science. But this does not give one a clear idea of the subject. It is the meaning out of the dictionary, where we find politics and politician defined in man's action, that we want. And when we say that as thus defined it is the principle that controls man's political action, although a good general definition, it does not give the meaning of politics in the various party forms that it assumes. In the proper use of politics we see the good citizen, the patriot; in its abuse we see the partisan, or demagogue. Again, we see in men that political fealty that gives to party what belongs to mankind. And we see, also, that fealty which gives to the party-leaders what belongs to the party. The first develops the partisan, the second, the demagogue. But again, our early politics, like ancient Gaul, was divided into three parts. And each division was different from the other. For instance, as to the question how does politics affect man, the answer would be, that depends on the kind he has. For when applied to a large class of our people it made Democrats of them; when applied to another large class it made Whigs of them; and when applied to another and smaller class, it made liberty men or Abolitionists of them. Consequently to get a clear understanding of the politics of the old days we must understand the political principles that then governed the Democrat, the Whig, and the Abolitionist. Stated briefly, the first was for free trade, anti-bank, and ignored the slavery question. The second was for protection, in favor of banks and was neutral on slavery. The third-anti-slavery. Thus we have given the kind of politics that Michigan started with and that has influenced and shaped her political career; says one of our pioneers, "I remember the time when there were no signs of any politics about the early settlement in Battle Creek, that is, in the partisan sense of that word." The pioneers did not begin their political existence here as voters, till after their homes were established. When there were enough settlers in a certain region, a township was organized, and, when enough townships were created, a county was organized, each township and county having a distinct civil existence. And the settlers went about the organization of a township, and the election of township officers, as they did in rearing their log cabins, schoolhouses 494 HISTORIC MICHIGAN and churches. It was an important matter, and they gave it their best thought and attention, with an honest endeavor to subserve the public interest. The township being organized, it was divided into school and road districts, and suitable officers were elected in each. Let us for a moment, look at the primitive official equipment of a township by its first election. And let us take that of Comstock, Kalamazoo county, at its organization in I834. It was-officered as follows; one supervisor, one township clerk, three assessors, one collector, three highway commissioners, three school commissioners, five school inspectors, six overseers of highways and fence viewers, three directors of the poor, three constables, and three pound masters. Here, among other things, we notice the especial attention that was required to be given to schools and highways, by the ample number of officers elected for that purpose. These are two very important factors in our civilization. After our ancestors created the township, that school of self-government, and provided for a system of voting which would give the freest and most unbiased expression of the popular will, they then established "the common school, that sheet anchor of the old ship of state," as Mr. Chauncey Depew calls it. And we cannot give the early settlers too much credit for it. And also in regard to roads, they early gave their attention to them. The road is a physical sign or symbol by which you will best understand any age or people. If they have no roads they are savages. The emigrants who, in the old days, first left Detroit, took a rough road westward, that led to a rude settlement in the woods. Beyond this they found a mere indistinct wagon track that led to a log cabin among the trees; from the cabin they followed a foot-path that led to a log barn, and from that a squirrel track that went up a tree. All beyond this was an unreclaimed wilderness, in possession of the red man, with no roads, all trackless, save that it was meandered by interminable Indian trails and deer paths. The road then is a creation of man and a type of civilized society. It was something then of an important matter for a set of men to assume the sworn responsibilities of governing a township, and to faithfully discharge the duties of their offices. As that staunch pioneer, Warren B. Shephard,1 before taking the oath as one of Battle Creek's first township officers, said: "It may hot require us to be deeply versed in statecraft in order to govern a township, but I think we should have some townshipcraft in order to well and faithfully perform our duties; consequently, I move that as we are in a new country, struggling hard to make a beginning, and as this is hew business in which we can all do better when we know better, therefore, I move that instead of taking the severe formal oath of 'swearing in' to office, we 'swow in' for the first year, and do the best we can at that. and swear in the next year." So. as the story goes, they all "swowed" into office the first year. Now the environment of the township meeting of those early days was certainly conducive to a free, unbiased vote. The settlers had at heart the interest of the common weal and, for a while at least, no partisan influence was felt at town meetings. But after the township and county organizations were got thoroughly POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 495 in hand, and the territory became a state, and the whole political machinery of the young commonwealth set going, then we began to see and feel the party man's influence, the partisan's or demagogue's manipulations. The old Democrat and Whig parties started Michigan in politics. They at least controlled by turns her political interest up to 1852, when the old Whig party after her memorable defeat in the presidential campaign, went out of history. At the time Michigan was ushered from her territorial nonage into her full statehood. Stevens T. Mason was governor, Isaac E. Crary2 represented in the lower house at Washington, and Lucius Lvon in the senate: and Martin VanBuren was president. The Detroit Free Press was the organ of the Democratic party, the Detroit Advertiser the organ of the Whig party. Each newspaper did much in sustaining the cause of its own party. They were ably edited and were about the only political papers that reached the people in the various parts of the state. They were weeklies, and in the settlements in the central and western parts of the state, only an occasional copy found its way to the settler's home. A few years later better roads and facilities for conveying news, brought the weekly Free Press and Advertiser regularly to the people in the interior of the state. We have spoken of the absence of party spirit at the early elections. To show that this was only of short duration, we give the following instance: At the annual township election in Battle Creek in the soring of 1838, the Democrats on and about Goguac prairie met at Warren B. Shepvard's home iust south of the village, and there equinped themselves with stout hickory canes or sticks, some four feet long. before going into the village. Here they were marshaled two abreast, some seventy or eighty in number, and put under command of my brother, Martin VanBuren, as captain. His father being cousin of the president, and he of the same name, made his position as captain of a company of Democrats more appropriate. Being ioined by other Democrats. similarly equipped, they presented a formidable array to their political foes as they marched into town. This election had brought out the Whigs in their full strength. They were on the alert and ready for the onset at the polls; and none was more so than that formidable old Whig, Leonard Starkweather, for short called "old Stark." He was n brother of the well known pioneer, Erastus Starkweather of Plymouth, Mich.. and of the noted lawyer. Samuel Starkweather of Cooperstown, N. Y. He, being an incorrigible Whig, could not tolerate the idea of this long file of Democrats marching to the polls in such a defiant array, and, made more especially obnoxious to him by their carrying hickory canes, that emblem of Democracy of the Old Hickory stamp which he detested. Hence as the column advanced toward the polls, he grew furious, and swore they should hot vote in that way, it was an insult to every Whig present. So he made a bold charge upon their ranks in order to throw them into confusion, seizing Henry Eberstine, a young Democrat, he pulled him from the ranks. Upon this, Enhraim Van Buren caught "old Stark" by the coat collar and jerked him loose from Eberstine, exclaiming as he did so-"Old Stark, let us 496 HISTORIC MICHIGAN alone! We are going to the polls in ranks, and vote just as we are. Now keep quiet, and don't molest us again, or you will make us defend ourselves, which may not be as well for you." But the redoubtable old Whig politician was furious with rage, and laid about him right and left with his fists, till some cooler headed Whigs gathered about him, and after awhile, got him out of the excited crowd, and kept him from further interrupting the Democrats voting in the order they had designed. This was the first illustration of party spirit that I had ever witnessed. It is said that the sun went down on "Old Stark's" wrath that day, and that he awoke the next morning as mad as ever. A few days after this event an old Democrat told him that if he wished to succeed in politics he must vote with them. He exclaimed, "What, I join you? Sooner than vote the Democratic ticket, I would crawl -on my hands and knees from Battle Creek to Detroit, and be struck by lightning every other mile." At this time the newspaper and the political speaker constituted a power for each party, and were the means of keeping their adherents informed on all the political issues and topics of the day. The speaker having the advantage of getting first what the party organs had to say and then personally harranguing the people on the questions at issue in the coming election. They were accustomed to look to him as political leader and counselor, for he was not only the party's orator but oracle as well. And when did public speaker ever have such listeners? Listeners who gave him an appreciation that was inspiration itself: and an applause that stimulated him to put forth his best efforts. Webster says that eloquence must exist in the man, in the occasion. Well, here was the occasion in that enthusiastic, appreciative gathering, that put the man at his best, and if there was any eloquence in him it was sure to be brought out. Says an old stump speaker of that day, "When I ascended the platform, the upturned faces of the enthusiastic crowd before me fired me for the occasion; there is where I got my inspiration. That was the day for spontaneous eloquence." The notice given out for a political speech at that time was the signal for a rally of Whigs and Democrats. For every Whig and Democrat had a personal interest in the orator of his own party, and in the discussion of his subject. There was a fealty to party leaders that was true to all the demands made upon it, and he was ever in close sympathy with the masses of the party. He always addressed his adherents in an off-hand speech and manner, that seemed born of the occasion, and carried them by an unstudied, inherent force; and, as this was before the day of stenographic reporting, the speech did not get into print, and the only way for the people to get it was at the hustings, where it was delivered. Newspapers gave outlines of these speeches, and ringing editorials on the party issues, and were of great aid to the party's cause, but the party leader or stump-speaker was the direct and controlling force in the Democratic and Whig days of fifty years ago. But "today the newspaper has turned the orator into an essayist. and usually a dull one at that." There is such a glory to see one's speech in print that, as John Burroughs would have it, the thought of POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 497 the hustings causes the speaker to break out all over with a sort of literary rash that nothing will assuage but some newspaper or journalistic enterprise, which will give the speech with which he is surcharged a chance "to be seen and heard of men." Now, the essence of a good speech upon ordinary occasions is its adaptation to the tone and spirit of its surroundings-its sympathetic touch with its hearers-the indescribable magnetism born of time, place and circumstance, and personality, the charm of utterance, the inspiration of the hour. These characterized the speaker and the speaking of the old days. The speaker nowadays cannot address himself to his audience, he must harangue Christendom through the next morning's papers; he is incumbered all the time with the thought of how and what he says will be made to read in the papers, and what will be said of it. But, in the old times we refer to, we got the speech fresh, animated from the lips of the speaker, in all the power of argument and impassioned eloquence. We got the speech from the man and not from the manuscript. A great difference that, as the Scotch have it, especially where the script hampers the man. What a change between the now and then of our political3 meetings! It is difficult for a person of today to conceive of the degree of enthusiasm that pervaded a political gathering in Michigan fifty years ago. Was ever such attention, appreciation and admiration given a political orator? Was ever, we repeat, a public gathering so gifted as listeners? With listeners so alive to every good thing in a speech, and so ready to give merited applause to a speaker? The day abounded in listeners. And as genuine oratory depends upon the ear and appreciation of the auditors, it was an age of genuine oratory. Today the reverse of this is largely true. There is a dearth of enthusiastic listeners, hence we have but little genuine political oratory. For although the present age may be said to abound in public speakers, there is that something lacking in the hearers, to fire the speaker's logic, or set his eloquence aflame. The reason for this is obvious, as in any public gathering or convention of our people today, every other man is surcharged with a speech of his own or has a manuscript one sticking out of his pocket. Consequently where there are so many people who are impressed with the idea that they have a special mission to publicly deliver to their fellow men, there are very few interested listeners; in such a case you cannot tell people anything. My earliest recollections of political meetings in Michigan are connected with those held in Battle Creek in the last part of the "thirties." Edward Bradley, Isaac E. Crary and Thomas B. Church of Marshall, were the political orators at the Democratic gatherings referred to. Bradley's popularity as a political speaker was unbounded. I can see him now familiarly mingling among the Democrats at their meetings, taking seat with them before the speaking began, and as one of them, talking freely on the subjects incident to the occasion. I used to think that here was where Bradley got his power with the masses. That he became so thoroughly identified with his surroundings that when he was called to the rostrum, his speech took its thought, its tone and 1.30 498 HISTORIC MICHIGAN color so much from his environments that it was just what the occasion called for, and the applause that greeted him as he ascended the platform, and the plaudits given him by an animated crowd during his speech, were.the natural recognition, the full meed of reward for his oratorical triumph. Nature had endowed Bradley with the rare gift of eloquent speech. Probably no political speaker of his dayin the west surpassed him in his power over a public assemblage at the hustings. People went to the meeting because Bradley was to speak. Let it be far or near, time and distance did not hinder them; nor could they hear him too often, nothing staled his infinite variety. In our reminiscences of the bench and bar of Calhoun county, in volume eleven of these collections, we have given a fuller sketch of Bradley as a lawyer and orator. I remember hearing Isaac E. Crary and Thomas B. Church address a crowd of Democrats at Battle Creek sometime in 1838. I was a boy then; and as I recall myself sitting on the rough-board seats in Capt. John Marvin's new store building listening to Hon. Isaac E. Crary's speech, I seem to sit like a young Paul getting instruction from a Gamaliel. It was not only fortunate for Michigan that she had an Isaac E. Crary to found (with his co-worker Rev. J. D. Pierce) her admirable school system, to represent him in congress, to fit her for her statehood and for her splendid future career; but it was also fortunate for the people of the state that they had so wise and able a statesman to instruct them in their first political duties, on their first party issues, thus making them more useful citizens and more intelligent voters. There was not a particle of the partisan in Isaac E. Crary. If he erred in his political course it was an error of his judgment and not of intention. That he was a politician is true. But whether discussing party principles at the hustings, or national affairs in legislative council, he was the same candid, able counselor, in the one case as in the other. He was foremost among our early statesmen in discovering the wants of the new state, and his master hand is seen not only in its full and thorough ogranization, but in the establishment of those institutions that have made it a great and prosperous commonwealth. Thomas B. Church was then a young man reading law in the office of Gordon & Woodruff, in Marshall. But he knew then how to make a good political speech. Mr. Church presented his theme in such a manner as to fix the attention of his hearers on the start. He had the power at least to hold their attention while he by forcible argument and illustration, and occasional sallies of wit, discussed the bank question, tariff, and whatever issue was before the people at the time. Mr. Crary had discussed the same subjects in his speech. There was a local Whig politician by the name of Gillespie, who lived at Verona, two miles north of Battle Creek, and who, being a little deaf, had taken a seat near Mr. Church as he began his speech. The speaker in describing that type of politician termed office-seeker, exclaimed-"you will find them everywhere, they are the 'hanger-ons' in the political camp, the 'fawning Uriah Heeps' at elections, and when elected became POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 499 the barnacles on our body politic," and at the same time pointing with his finger here and there at the crowd by way of general expression, he chanced to point toward Gillespie, who, taking it in high dudgeon, exclaimed-"Quite too personal, Mr. Church, quite too personal, sir!" Mr. Church aware that the wounded bird always flutters, mildly replied: "My reference was to office-seekers in general, when I said 'here is one, and there is one'; but if in thus pointing I have hit a real office-seeker, I am not to blame for it. If the coat fits, put it on." The old Whig politician was much nettled by Mr. Church's caustic remark, but kept on taking notes till the speech was finished. And no doubt answered it the next time he addressed a Whig gathering during that campaign. What I have said of the Democratic orators in regard to character to an open, fair discussion of the issues of the day, will apply as well to the Whig orators of that time. It was always a pleasure to listen to Hons. James Wright Gordon and Henry W. Taylor, leading Whig orators of Marshall, as well as to Horace Mower, and Marsh Giddings, promine'nt Whig orators of Kalamazoo. We have given, as said before, sketches of the Democratic and Whig speakers of Marshall, and Kalamazoo, in volume eleven of these collections. In these early political meetings the Democratic and Whig voters of the state got their first political lessons; their first instruction and training in regard to the duties incumbent on the citizens as electors in a young state. The hustings were a sort of political school where the politics of the day were discussed for the benefit of the citizen. They were very popular and the two old parties, Whig and Democrat, were noble old foes, for each found in the other a foeman worthy of its steel. The rivalry existing between them was always sufficient to call out the full party strength, and put each one at its best. They differed in their creeds on the tariff, national bank, and other issues of the time. The general influence arising from party opposition, watchfulness, and scrutiny of each other's movements, resulted in good to the government. Review the political history of this state, from governor down to pathmaster, for the first thirty years of its existence, and you will find a history that not only reads well, but one in which every citizen of the state can take a just and honorable pride. We are in no sense extenuating the sins of the old political parties in Michigan; there was evil enough in our politics then, but there was less of it, and both state and national politics were less complicated. And in our young state there was an apparent endeavor on the part of both party leaders, and parties to subserve the best interest of the common weal. I have spoken of the husting as a kind of political training school, that its influence was to inform, instruct and make more intelligent citizens and voters. The old Judean leaders instructed their followers in this way. The Greek orators enlightened the masses on all public and political affairs, and fitted them for their duties as citizens, at their public gatherings. Our politics, as said, in the past, were much simpler, not mixed up with so many political isms, and schism, with so many various labor and moral issues, 500 HISTORIC MICHIGAN making a political campaign now a much more laborious, intricate, and difficult business, as regards informing and enlightening the people in its issues. For while we have really but two parties today, Republican and Democrat, yet there are half a dozen of what we call party "offshoots," "suckers" to the main party stems, from which they draw their strength and get their growth, thus weakening the main stalks, while they themselves never attain maturity, nor amount to anything but a useless growth, as far as party purpose is concerned. Thus the two old parties stand today, hedged in, assailed and weakened by so many difficulties, while their following is measurably diminished or divided up among these would-be parties, who assume more or less of their principles, thus complicating party issues and discussions, and lessening the old party interest and enthusiasm among the people. And as regards the old "stump speaker," "Othello's occupation is gone"-to the modern editor. THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF I840, WITH INCIDENTS, ANECDOTES, AND RECOLLECTIONS OF ITS DISTINGUISHED EDITORS AND ORATORS, NORTH AND SOUTH By A. D. P. Van Buren Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, X, 8-13 HE following is the admirable paper read at the pioneer reunion at Augusta by A. D. P. Van Buren, August 9, I886. It was prepared at the request of the State Historical Society. All who remember that campaign will recognize how faithful is the presentation Mr. Van Buren has given: Mr. President, Pioneers and Fellow Citizens: The early settlers in this state fought their great battle in the wilderness, during the first pioneer decade. At the close of that decade was fought one of the greatest political battles known in the history of American politics. This battle resulted in the great Whig victory of 1840. This campaign was distinguished by a masterly coup d'etat of the Whigs, that enabled them to get into power once more. The controlling thought of the Whig leaders at the outset was to secure an available candidate for the presidency. Availability in a presidential leader was the inspiring motive of the party. Here a great difficulty met them. Henry Clay-the "gallant Harry of the west"-the undisputed head of the Whig party, must be disposed of. If nominated he could not be elected. The time had come with him, as it had in previous years with William H. Crawford, "his very eminence had become fatal to him; he was formidable to all candidates, and all combined against him." Hence the gallant old Whig leader, by some strange mixture of Whig "algebra and alchemy," was disposed of. For, in the nominating convention, Gen. Scott got I6 votes, Henry Clay o9, and Gen. Harrison 148. From the beginning of this campaign a bitter political contest was POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 501 expected-the severest known in our country. The previous success of Gen. Jackson had taught the Whig leaders that the military element not only gave eclat to his cause, but gave it an impetus that nothing else could. Consequently in selecting "General" William Henry Harrison an "odor of gunpowder" would constitute an attraction to rally the masses; and, in the smoke of the coming battle, the enemy would not be able to discover that their nominee did not have the civil qualifications, nor the brilliant military fame, that Gen. Jackson possessed. But, should they be able to discern this weakness, the statesmanship of John Tyler, the nominee for vice-president, would, by association and reflection, cast its glamour over their leader, and they would work tup and reproduce his war record so as to dazzle the American peonle with the military fame of their presidential nominee. On the other side, Mr. Van Buren's late administration had been very acceptable to his party, and he was renominated with the full assurance of a re-election by the people. The old Whig and Democratic parties at that time were in the zenith of their political power and prestige. Noble old foes, they had met to decide on this chosen battlefield whether a Whig or Democratic president should be at the head of our national affairs for the next four years. Never was a name chosen for a political battle cry with such a magnetic power to electrify and arouse the masses, as the Whig shibboleth of "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." It had the rallying power of "Old Fritz," on the Prussian soldiers, or "Vive l'Enpereur," in Napoleon's day on the French people. This battle cry was first happily introduced in song by Gen. Louis Grinier, who wrote most of the Whig songs for this campaign. It was, you remember, in the famous song beginning: "Oh what has caused this great commotion-motion, motion, our country through? It is the ball that's rolling on For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, for Tippecanoe and Tyler too; And with them we'll beat little Van Van, Va'n-Van. Oh, he's a used up man, And with them we'll beat little Van." This song was sung throughout the land. Its liquid notes rolled off the tongues of the singers into the hearts of the people. A very learned and a very wise man has said, "Let me make my country's ballads and I care not who makes her laws." Here the making and the singing of Whig ballads made a president of the United States and the lawmakers of the land. If the Whig orators were inspired for the occasion, and carried the multitude by the irresistible power of their eloquence, Apollo himself seemed to have given the Whig poets and singers the captivating power of song that carried everything before it. Never before had the people been so influenced by the songs of a political campaign. Ossian E. Dodge of Boston, the celebrated singer, was hired to make a tour of the country and sinz at the Whig meetings. He came into Michigan with Frank Granger of New York, and sang at a mass meeting in Marshall. In addition to this, Mr. Van Buren and 502 HISTORIC MICHIGAN the Democratic party had two powerful influences against them, each strong in itself, but truly powerful when united. One was the entire Whig party acting as a determined body, the other was "the large league of suspended banks, headed by the bank of the United States," which was desperately in earnest to beat back the Democrats and get a national charter. The surest way to do this was to elect a Whig president. Money, in political campaigns as well as in war, must furnish the sinews of strength. By mutual support the banks were able to pass their notes as money, and not being subject to redemption, it could be furnished without constraint. Consequently the whole interest of this great moneyed power was directed against the Democratic party. The press was bought, the debtors were intimidated, and the business pursuits coerced, while the poor man was flattered and cajoled by promises of better times, of speedy reaction in labor which would give him $2 a day and plenty of work. This constituted the soul of Whig stock-promises of higher wages and better times. Then they began a system of fault-finding with, and charging of political crimes against, the Democratic party. The spirit of grumbling and fault-finding inspired both Whig orator and poet. And they always ended their complaint against the Democrats with glowing promises that were addressed to all business pursuits and personal interests of the community. They shouted and sung higher wages to the laboring man. "Two dollars a day and roast beef," and a hundred other like phrases, calculated to catch the ear, move the heart, and fire the passions of the masses. They harangued the people and made them believe that Mr. Van Buren's re-election would be the downfal lof all prices, the stagnation of all trade, the destruction of all labor, and the ruin of all industries. The phrases given out by Whig speakers in congress were caught up and re-echoed by the editor and stump-speaker, and made the inspiring theme of song for the hustings. The newspapers in all the trading districts kept the people stirred up with such advertisements as these: "The subscriber will pay six dollars a barrel for flour if Harrison is elected, and three dollars if Van Buren is. The subscriber will pay five dollars a hundred for pork if Harrison is elected, and two dollars and a half if Van Buren is." And so on through the whole catalogue of marketable articles, and through the different kinds of labor. And these advertisements were signed bv responsible men, large dealers in the articles mentioned, who were able to fix the market for them. Thus the business, the prosperity, the pecuniary interests, and the hopes of the laboring man were all to bud and blossom and yield abundant fruit in the political El Dorado that was to be inaugurated if Harrison was elected. No inducements were spared to influence the passions and the imaginations of men. The Democrats taunted the Vhigs with their nominees's having lived in a "log cabin" and drinking hard cider as a beverage. The Whigs seizing the words, adroitly put them to their own use, and gave them a talismanic power in the campaign that the "little magician" was not able to withstand. Immediately the terms "log cabin," "hard cider" and "coon skins" were taken as symbols of the party, and to express its identification with the poorest POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 503 and humblest of the people. Then began the monster processions and parades. An old campaigner of that time exclaims, "Oh, it were worth five years of peaceful life to. have witnessed the scenes that were then enacted!" Log cabins, as if by the power of magic, sprung up in the crowded marts of the great cities, in the large towns, and in all the small hamlets and cross-roads throughout the country. Each rough cabin was ornamented with coon-skins like the frontier hut, while the cider barrel, with the gourd dipper in it, was free to all who wished to drink. These rude cabins, thus furnished, were the tabernacles to which all the people were invited to come. They were the headquarters of "Whiggery;" each cabin being a recruiting offiec where the young and old were treated to hard cider, sworn into service and joined the crusade against the Democracy. It was by these public gatherings that the ranks of the Whigs were increased, and their doctrines spread over the land. The Whig orators and their singers went from place to place like modern revivalists, in Moody and Sankey style, trying to convert Democratic sinners from the errors of their ways over to the pure doctrines of Whiggery. Log cabins on wheels drawn by ten or fifteen yokes of oxen, that were tricked off with ribbons, Whig banners and gewgaws, and canoes on wheels ornamented it a similar manner, were a picturesque part of the processions. The great orators, the Websters, Clays, Prentisses, McDuffies, the Corwins and Ewings addressed the great mass meetings, while the lesser ones harangued the people in the small towns and at the gatherings in the rural districts. The power was practically in the hands of the politicians, and it can truthfully be said that the campaign of I840 produced more politics to the acre than any ten years before or since in the history of this country. For this campaign was the greatest thing that American I)olitics ever did. At Dayton, Ohio, a Whig gathering covered ten acres of actual measurement, and the people, like Xerxes's army, were too numerous to be counted. A Whig flag floated over almost every house in the city, and every flag denoted free access to the building over which it waved. A rough estimate of the gathering put it at from go,ooo to Ioo,ooo people. Gen. William Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate, was there and addressed this mass of enthusiastic Whigs. The south, chagrined because Clay was not nominated for president, entered slowly into the campaign, but eventually threw her whole power into it. The political oratory of that day accomplished ten-fold more than does the stump speaking of today. There were but few newspapers then, and the influence of the orators was supreme when compared with what it is in these times. This famous political campaign, like those of other presidential elections, had its comic side. And should some of our ambitious authors study the newspapers of those times a mass of genuine wit and humor could be collected. The eloquent and brilliant speeches, the songs that accompanied them, the jokes, the travesties, anecdotes and satire, would fill volumes. At the head of the Whig journalism of that day was Thurlow Weed, the Warwick of American politics. As editor of the Albany Journal 504 HISTORIC MICHIGAN he exerted a powerful influence in this campaign, and the great Whig victory was largely due to him. He had, in Edwin Croswell, Democratic editor of the Albany Argus, a foeman worthy of his steel. Albany at that time was the center of New York journalism. Gen. James Watson Webb was the Roland of the Whig press in New York city, and did good work for the Whig cause as editor of the Courier and Enquirer. But he found his Oliver in Moses Y. Beach, Democratic editor of the New York Sun. And the General also found, that, after his duel with Beach, he was lamed in one leg for life. William Cullen Bryant was at this time an able, reliable Democratic editor of the New York Evening Post; while James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, was then as ever after, a trimmer and espoused any party's cause out of which he could make the most money. But to Horace Greeley must be assigned the post of honor in making the Whig songs the most effectual weapon in the presidential campaign of I840. In that year he started, in Albany, the Log Cabin (fit suggestion to starting them all over the land), to aid in the election of Harrison and Tyler, and threw such force and variety into it that it ran into an immense circulation, and became the basis of the Tribune, established in I84I. A file of the old Log Cabin with its Whig editorials, speeches and songs, would be choice reading now as giving a good political history of that period. Greeley's followers sung themselves hoarse for"Tippecanoe and Tyler too." And the Van Burenites shouted for their favorite in the famous ditty, beginning"When this old hat was new Van Burei was the man, &c." "Living men," says a writer of that time, "who saw those days," will not forget the monster parades of the Whigs after the Maine election, when they chorused the popular refrain opening and ending"Oh! have you heard the news from Maine, Maine, Maine." But, as we have stated, it was by political oratory and song that this campaign was made successful. Newspapers being few, the people relied on the stump speaker as their oracle and leader. He was the Moses to conduct them to the promised political inheritance. And they gathered at the hustings about the speaker's stand to hear him deliver the political law and commandments, as the children of Israel did in the tabernacle to hear the law read to them. There were then no shorthand reporters to write down the speech as fast as it was delivered, no telegraph wires to send it to the press two thousand miles away to be put in type the next two hours, and no lightning express trains to scatter one hundred thousand copies of it, in the next twenty-four hours, from Maine to California. That wonderful feat was reserved for these days in which the editor has usurped the place of the public speaker.4 XXXVI THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN MICHIGAN BATTLE CREEK AS A STATION ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY By Charles E. Barnes Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXVIII, 279-284 HERE is an institution now known only in history as the Underground Railway.1 This society, or system, as it should be more properly called, came into existence in I840 in the midst of the famous Harrison campaign, and was organized by Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati, a Quaker. It was a league of men, almost all of whom were Quakers, who organized a system for spiriting away and conducting runaway slaves from Kentucky, Tennessee and other slave states, through to Canada. These men were enthusiastic Abolitionists, who devoted their time to watching for fleeing bondsmen, ferried them in rowboats in the nighttime over the Ohio river, and then started them to the first Underground Railway station, thence from station to station until they arrived in Detroit, where they were ferried over the river in rowboats to Canada-and freedom. The workings of the Underground Railway were a great mystery to the people because of the secret manner in which everything was conducted. Slaves strangely disappeared and nothing was heard of them until reported to have been seen in Canada. None of the methods was known to the public. These slaves were conducted from the Ohio river to Canada as if shot through a hollow tube. This imaginary explanation of how the fugitives reached Canada is what gave origin to the name "Underground Railway." The main route, known as the Central Michigan line, passed through Battle Creek. There was another route through Michigan via Adrian. Mrs. Laura Haviland had charge of the latter line. She resided either at Adrian or Tecumseh, and conducted a school for colored girls. The station at Battle Creek was one of the most prominent centers of the work in Michigan, and was in charge of that famous old Quaker, Erastus Hussey,2 who spent his time and money freely in assisting the colored people to Canada. There was no graft in those days. The work was done because of a love for mankind, and a sense of duty from a moral purpose. Like all Quakers, he would not recognize laws that sanctioned slavery-they were manmade laws; he obeyed only Divine laws. During the existence of the Underground Railway, which was continued from I840 to the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln, Mr. Hussey secreted and fed over I,ooo colored persons, and then sent them through to the next station, which was at Marshall.8 Realizing that the history of this institution, particularly of the work in Battle Creek, was of more than local importance, and should 506 IHISTORIC MMIHIGAN be preserved, the writer visited Mr. Hussey in May, 1885, and made a record of his story, which is reproduced in his own words: "One day in I840, when I was in Detroit on a business trip, a man by the name of John Cross, from Indiana, called at my house in Battle Creek and inquired for me. He was very anxious to see me, but would not tell even my wife what he wanted. My wife sent for Benjamin Richard, who worked for Jonathan Hart, but neither would he confide the object of his visit to him, and so departed. I was in Detroit three or four days. After my return home I received a letter from Cross. He wrote me that he was establishing a route from Kentucky and Ohio to Canada through which escaped slaves could be conducted without molestation and wanted me to take charge of the station in Battle Creek. This was the first time that I had ever heard of the Underground Railway. I preserved Cross's letter for many years as a relic, but it is now lost. This is how I commenced to keep the station here. At that time there was only five anti-slavery men in Battle Creek besides myself: Silas Dodge, who afterward moved to Vineland, N, J. Abel Densmore, who died in Rochester, N. Y.; Henry Willis, Theron H. Chadwick and a colored man by the name of Samuel Strauther. The colored Masonic lodge was named after himStrauther lodge No. 3. Other anti-slavery men came afterward to this place among them Dr. S. B. Thayer and Henry J. Cushman, who built the old flouring mill opposite Hart's mill. He was an earnest worker. He moved to Plainwell. There was Charley Cowles, a young man who was studying medicine with Drs. Cox and Campbell. Also that good worker, Dr. E. A. Atlee, and his son-in-law, Samuel S. Nichols, in Jonathan Hart's store. In Battle Creek township were Harris, William McCullom, Edwin Gore and Herman Cowles; in Penfield, David Boughton, and in Emmett, Elder Phelps. "Our work was conducted with the greatest secrecy. After crossing the Ohio river the fugitives separated, but came together on the main line and were conducted through Indiana and Michigan. Stations were established every fifteen or sixteen miles. The slaves were secreted in the woods, barns and cellars during the daytime and carried through in the night. All traveling was done in the dark. The stationkeepers received no pay. The work was done gratuitously and without price. It was all out of sympathy for the escaped slaves and from principle. We were working for humanity. When I first accepted the agency I lived in a wooden building on the present site of the Werstein & Halladay block (now Larkin-Reynolds-Boos block) opposite the Williams house (now Clifton house). Before the present block was built the old building was occupied as a livery stable by J. L. Reade, and before him by Parcel Brinkerhoff as a second-hand store. There was the Underground Railway station. This building was constructed by August'P. Rawson in 1836 or 1837. and when I bought it, it was occupied as a cabinet shop by John Caldwell, our village marshal, father of James T. Caldwell, the undertaker. I repaired the building and occupied the front as a store and used the upstairs and the rear lower end for my dwelling. Here I secreted the runaway slaves. After the Union block was built, just adjoining THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN MICHIGAN 507 this building on the west (the first brick block erected in Battle Creek) I frequently secreted them there. In 1855 I moved to my new home on the present site of the Seventh Day Adventist College. It was reported that the cellar under this house was built with secret places expressly for the purpose of hiding the fugitives. This was not strictly true. I will guarantee, however, that if any slaves were secreted there that they were never captured. We did not assist as many of them as formerly, because a shorter-route had been opened through Ohio, by way of Sandusky and thence to Fort Malden and Amherstburg. "I can't tell about the stations in Indiana. The route came into Michigan to the famous Quaker settlement near Cassapolis. The leader was that good old Quaker, Zachariah Shugart,4 also Stephen Bogue and Joel East. At Cassapolis, Parker Osborn was the agent. The next station was Schoolcraft, in charge of Dr. Nathan Thomas. Then came Climax, with the station a little ways out of the village. I think the man there was called William Gardner. Battle Creek came next. Jabez S. Finch was the agent at Marshall and was a gentleman with plenty of means and stood high in the community and the first nominee on the Liberty ticket for governor. Of course, he was not elected, but we always thereafter called him governor. Then came Albion and Edwin M. Jqhnson. I have forgotten the name of the agent at Parma, but I think that it was Townsend E. Gidiey.5 He was not strictly identified with the Liberty party, but always rendered assistance in furthering the escape of the slaves. "At Jackson were three agents: Lonson Wilcox, Norman Allen and one that I cannot remember. In the large places we had more than one man, so that if one chanced to be out of town another could be found. At Michigan Center, Abel F. Fitch6 was the man. He was one of the men involved in litigation many years ago with the Michigan Central railroad. I have forgotten the name of the agent at Leoni, also the one at Grass Lake. At Francisco was Francisco himself who was a good worker. At Dexter we had Samuel W. Dexter and his sons. At Scio was a prominent man-Theodore Foster, father of Seymour Foster of Lansing. At Ann Arbor was Guy Beckely, editor of the Signal of Liberty, the organ of the Liberty party. who published the paper in connection with Theodore Foster. At Geddes, was John Geddes, after whom the town was named, and who built a large flouring mill there. He was an uncle of Albert H. Geddes of this city. I can tell the names of the agents at Ypsilanti or Plymouth. At the former place the route branched, leaving the Michigan Central for Plymouth. Sometimes they went to Plymouth from Ann Arbor. From Plymouth they followed the River Rouge to Swartsburg, then to Detroit.7 The principal man in Detroit was Horace Hallock, also Silas M. Holmes and Samuel Zug. They were men who could be relied upon. "We had passwords, the one commonly used being: 'Can you give shelter and protection to one or more persons?' This was addressed to the agent by the person or persons looking for a place of safety. I usually drove the fugitives through to Marshall myself, 508 HISTORIC MICHIGAN in the night, but often got someone to go with me. Isaac Mott, then a boy, worked for me, and used to frequently take the slaves through. Sometimes others went. I used my own horse and buggy. "It was just four weeks after John Cross had appointed me agent that the first fugitives came. They were two men, William Coleman and Stephen Wood. These men came through under fictitious names and always retained them. This the fugitives frequently did. While Coleman and Wood were yet secreted at my house Levi Coffin, the originator of the Underground Railway, and John Beard, a Quaker minister came through on the route. They were a committee appointed by the Quakers of Indiana to visit the colored people of Canada and to learn how they were succeeding, and to ascertain what assistance they were in need of. They went home on the other route, and so I did not see them on their return. Coffin was acquainted with Wood, and Beard with Coleman. The two colored men, when they saw their old friends, were overcome with joy. By the way, I never met John Cross until eight years afterward, at the great Free-Soil convention at Buffalo. Some of the slaves were frightened upon their arrival, while others were full of courage and joy. From one to four usually came along together. At one time forty-five came down upon us in a bunch. It was when the Kentucky slave owners made a raid upon the slaves at the famous Quaker settlement in Cass county. One night a man by the name of Richard Dillingham came to my house and informed me that there would be forty-five fugitives and nine guards here in two hours. What to do I did not know. My wife was sick in bed. I met Abel Densmore, then Silas W. Dodge and Samuel Strauther, and we talked the matter over. We had to act quickly. Lester Buckley owned a small unoccupied dwelling house on the rear of the lot where J. M. Caldwell's block now stands (the present site of J. M. Jacobs' clothing store). Buckley was a Whig, but sympathized with us. He said that we could have the use of the building. There happened to be a stove in the house. I got some wood and then went over to Elijah T. Mott's mill, on the site of the present Titus & Hicks flouring mill, and he gave me sixty pounds of flour. Silas Dodge went to a grocery store and bought some potatoes and Densmore got some pork. We heard them coming over the West Main street bridge. Everybody had heard of their coming and every man, woman and child in the city was upon the street and it looked as if a circus was coming to town. It was a lovely moonlight night. There were nine white men with them who acted as guards. Ahead of them rode Zach Shugart, the old Quaker, with his broad-rimmed white hat and mounted upon a fine horse-he always had good horses. He met me in front of my house and shook hands with me. I told him of my arrangements. He took off his white hat and with a military air and voice said, 'Right about face!' They all about-faced and marched down to the house and took possession. The nine white men stopped at the hotel and our friends cared for their horses. The darkies cooked their own supper of bread, potatoes and pork, and as they were very hungry they relished it keenly. The next morning the majority of them went on to Canada, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN MICHIGAN 509 but a few remained, who became honored citizens and well-known. Among them were William Casey, Perry Sanford, Joseph Skipworth and Thomas Henderson. "I expected every day to be arrested, but I escaped all legal proceedings. Once, word came that thirty armed men were on their way to capture the slaves in Battle Creek. Dr. Thayer and myself had 500 bills printed, stating that we were prepared to meet them, and I advised them to stay away. Many persons condemned me for this and I made enemies. Dr. Mofflitt said that it was treason against the government. I sent the bills along the railroad by an express messenger by the name of Nichols, who was in sympathy with us. He threw the bills off at every station. At Niles he met the party of southerners on the train coming east. They read the bills and turned back. The Quaker station in Cass county and the ones at Schoolcraft and Battle Creek were well known throughout the south as the headquarters for many escaped slaves and the names of the men who kept the stations were equally well known. "I could tell hundreds of interesting incidents. One day a slave woman who had been here about a week was assisting my wife with her work when a party of slaves drove up. Among the number was a daughter whom she had not seen in ten years. The recognition was mutual and the meeting a very affecting sight. One slave with his wife and two children were overtaken by the slave catchers in Indiana. The fugitive put up a hot fight with the southerners while his wife and children escaped to the woods. In the fight the negro was shot in the leg. The men brought him back to the hotel, and while they were eating their dinner they left him in charge of the landlord's young son. The little fellow whispered to the darkey, 'Uncle, do you think that you can run? If so, the woods are only forty yards away. You had better run.' And he did, although badly wounded in the leg. When the slave catchers came out from dinner and found that the fugitive had escaped they were furious and their rage knew no bounds. The little boy looked very meek and said that he was not strong enough to stop such a great, big man. The slave overtook his family at Schoolcraft and they came on here together. He was suffering severely from his wound, but I hustled him and his family through to Canada. "There had been a barber working here for some time by the name of Jim Logan. He was a dandy sort of a fellow. One day a fugitive and his wife came to my house for shelter. He had been a slave of Wade Hampton, and so we called him by that name. Hampton worked about here for three days. One day while we were at dinner Jim Logan came walking in. The colored woman gave a shriek, jumped from the table and almost fainted away. She and Jim had been engaged to be married in Kentucky, but not having heard from him in two years she married Wade Hampton. I could fill a book with incidents." 510 HISTORIC MICHIGAN THE CROSSWHITE CASE By William W. Hobart Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXVIII, 257-259 LITTLE over sixty years ago, Marshall, Michigan, was and had been for years an important station on the Underground Railroad, that mysterious abolition organization by whose aid many thousands of negro slaves achieved liberty "before the war". For those times, the Abolitionists were comparatively strong in and about both Battle Creek and Marshall. I recall to mind that such a man as Erastus Hussey8 and Jabez Fitch9 were open and avowed Abolitionists, Fitch being the Liberty party's candidate for governor in several state campaigns. For several years, some of these fleeing slaves would drop off at Marshall, and finding employment and not being disturbed, would acquire holdings on the outskirts of the town until they formed quite a settlement, which was known to the unregenerate as "Nigger Town." To this negro settlement, about I845, I think, there came Adam Crosswhite and his family, consisting of his wife and three or four children. Several of the children attended the district school. I know that the oldest son attended the same school that I did. I was a lusty lad of thirteen years and he was two or three years older. I remember that I struck quite an intimacy with young Crosswhite, who confided to me under a pledge of secrecy that he and his family were fugitives from slavery in Kentucky, and having reached Marshall on the "Underground" on their way to Canada and certain freedom, had stopped off for a few days at the negro settlement, where finding some old Kentucky friends, and being offered employment, they concluded to locate. The denizens of the settlement appeared always to be apprehensive as to their safety, as young Crosswhite told me several times that suspicious looking white men had been loitering about "Nigger Town," but as they disappeared and nothing came of their spying, confidence was measurably restored. One of the characters that infested Marshall in those days was an old darkey that, from his vocation, we boys called "Old Auction Bell." As I remember, he was about six feet tall and lame and rode an old under-sized Indian pony. When mounted he cut a most ridiculous figure, with his height increased by the tallest stove-pipe hat that he could get hold of, and his feet just clearing the ground. His business was to ride through the streets of the town and announce auction sales or "wondoos" as he called them. Mounted on his faithful steed, he rode ringing a dinner bell, at the same time yelling at the top of his voice, "Auction Bell! Auction Bell! Auction Bell!" until reaching a convenient corner he would stop and announce to the atmosphere or to anyone who might be listening, that at such and such a place Mr. Blank would offer for sale to the highest bidder, the followingand here would follow a description of the articles to be sold, clothed all in the rich imagery of the Ethiopian imagination. Early one morning in the fall of I846, if my memory serves me THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN MICHIGAN 511 right, shortly after I had risen, I heard the old darkey's bell and he yelling in evident fear and excitement, "Auction Bell! Auction Bell!! Auction Bell!!!" We were about sitting down to breakfast. My father said "What in the world can be the matter with old Auction Bell? It's too early for one of his 'wondoos'." So we went out to ascertain. As he came opposite to us the old Auction Bell reined his pony and poured forth the wildest and weirdest story that it has ever been my fortune to listen to. I am only sorry that my memory does not serve to render it in his own vernacular. The upshot of it all was that "The slave-catchers from Kentucky had made a descent upon the negro settlement, and backed by Deputy United States Marshal Harvey Dixon, had drawn pistols, knocked down negroes, shot at others, wounding some, kicked in doors and had seized the whole Crosswhite family and were preparing to take them back to slavery." The old fellow fairly frothed at the mouth during the recital of his lurid tale. At the breakfast table, I asked my father if he was going out to the negro settlement to see the excitement. He replied "No," that he was the justice of the peace, and as such, a committing magistrate, and if Auction Bell's story was half true, warrants would be applied for, and that he should go directly to his office and directed me to go to school and avoid all scenes of excitement. But what healthy, fearless and adventurous fourteen-year-old boy could resist such a "call of the wild"? As soon as I could slip away unobserved, I made a bee-line for the negro settlement, and there found excitement enough and to spare. Aside from the "Hoi Polloi" there were many of Marshall's most substantial citizens, among them O. C. Comstock, Charles T. Gorham, I think George Ingersoll and Lansing Kingsbury and others whose names have escaped me. The slave-hunters still had the Crosswhite family in duress, but were surrounded by an angry and excited crowd, which was not chary in expressing its opinion or its threats. The central and most important figure was Frank Troutman, a young Kentucky lawyer, who was the agent and the nephew of the owner of the Crosswhites, and possibly a relation of the fugitives, as their name was certainly no misnomer. Troutman was a tall, handsome Kentuckian of twenty-five or thirty years. With him were three or four fellows of the type made familiar to us later by Mrs. Stowe in her description of Legree and the slave-catchers who chased Eliza across the Ohio; low-browed, truculent looking hombres. Amidst all the excitement, Troutman never lost his head. When any of the better class of citizens came to expostulate with him, telling him that in view of the excitement and the passion aroused, it would be suicidal for him to attempt to remove the fugitives, he would take their names and ask them if they threatened him with violence if he attempted to remove his property. This of course they disclaimed, but called his attention to the threat and demonstrations of irresponsible parties over whom they claimed to have no control. By the time the county officers arrived with warrants issued for exhibiting weapons in a rude and threatening manner, assault and battery, breaking into houses and various other offenses, 512 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Troutman has his notebook pretty well filled with the names of substantial citizens, and what they had said to him under excitement, and this book was a very important factor in securing a verdict for the plaintiff in the case of Giltner vs. Gorham et al., in the United States District Court for the state of Michigan. When the slavecatchers were arrested and removed, the Crosswhites were left practically unguarded and free, and the Abolitionists lost no time in getting them on the Underground Railroad and running them into Canada. Whenever I could, I attended my father's court when he was examining Troutman and his men for violations of Michigan law when attempting to get the Crosswhites. They were held for trial before the higher court, notwithstanding that in those days my father was a sound Jacksonian Democrat, though in i86o he voted for Abraham Lincoln. In I865 in reading the debates of the last Congressional Record on the last fugitive slave law, passed in 1849 or '50, I was intensely amused to find my Democratic father denounced by a fireeating southern congressman as a Michigan Abolitionist Justice of the Peace for holding Troutman and his cohorts for trial under the Michigan law. The Crosswhite case was simply one of the feverish indications of that inevitable conflict between the north and south which culminated in the election of Lincoln, the great Civil war, the expenditure of oceans of blood and millions of treasure and the freeing of the slaves.10 L Sn' ~:rr '~ ,, rr3" " a:' i -- U-fi te,, %:~~,r: *~*lr *n: 4 r .iC111 -~Ti — \)I: '~ -a, - _ -1..,, I*, A 1 FIRST RAILROAD TRAIN IN THE \VEST DETROIT 200 YEARS AGO LAYING CORNER STONE-PRESENT STATE CAPITOL ONE-LEGGED CIVIL WAR VETERANS PLAYING CROQUET BIRTHPLACE OF REPUBLICAN PARTY AT JACKSON TYPICAL IMPROVED LOG CABIN OF EARLY DAYS XXXVII THE CIVIL WAR THE DAYS OF FIFE AND DRUM By Charles Moore Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXVIII, 437-453 // T N January, i86i, as the members of the Michigan legislature made I their slow way by stage-coach and sledge through the snows to Lansing, every senator and representative felt the responsibility imposed upon him by the fact that treason and rebellion in the south were threatening the very existence of the Union. This sense of responsibility became one of determination when, on talking among themselves, the members found that from the mines of Lake Superior to the oakopenings of Kalamazoo, and from "Saginaw's tall whispering pines" to the sandy shores of Lake Michigan, the sentiment of the people was that secession was treason, and that treason meant war. A feeling of intense solemnity came over the assemblage gathered in the little church-like wooden capitol' when the senate and house met in joint session to hear the messages of the outgoing and incoming governors. "We believe," said Moses Wisher, "that the founders of our government designed it to be perpetual, and we cannot consent to have one star obliterated from our flag. For upwards of thirty years this question of the right of a state to secede has been agitated. It is time it was settled. We ought not to leave it to our children to look after." So saying he left the governor's chair for the camp, and two years later in southern swamps Colonel Wisner sealed his convictions with his life. Interest became anxiety when the tall, gaunt figure of the governor-elect, Austin Blair, stepped forward. This anxiety gave way to lively satisfaction when he declared with emphasis, "The federal government has the power to defend itself, and I do not doubt that that power will be exercised to the utmost. It is a question of war that the seceding states have to look in the face." He recommended that the whole military power of the state be proffered to the president for the purpose of maintaining the Union, a suggestion to which the legislature quickly responded by the joint resolution of February 2, which declared further that consession or compromise was not to be offered to traitors. Austin Blair, now entering upon four years of trying service, was born in Tompkins county, New York, February 8, i8i8, and was graduated at Union College. Coming to Michigan when twenty-two years old, and making his home at Jackson, he gained a state reputation on the stump as a supporter of Henry Clay. A member of the state house of representatives for two terms, he went into the Free Soil party in i848, and was prominent at the organization of the Republican party 1.31 514 HISTORIC MICHIGAN six years later. He headed the Michigan delegation in the Chicago convention which nominated Lincoln, and, with William M. Evarts and Carl Schurz, made up the trio called on to congratulate the convention on its work. During his service as governor he was destined to become one of the most efficient of that illustrious band of "war governors," which included also Andrews of Massachusetts, Buckingham of Connecticut, Morgan of New York, Curtih of Pennsylvania, Dennison of Ohio, Morton of Indiana, and Kirkwood of Iowa-the men who stayed Lincoln's hands during the life and death struggle of the Republic.2 The military power so freely offered to the president was not formidable. Twenty-eight independent companies, without regimental formation, uniformed at their own expense, only partially equipped, but well armed, made up the Michigan militia. Feeble indeed they seemed in the face of such an emergency; but they served a valuable purpose as the nucleus for the earlier regiments; and when compared to the militia of other western states the Michigan companies were in superior condition.s During the month of January, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana followed the lead of South Carolina in attempting to leave the Union. When Texas joined them on February I, delegates from all the seceding states met at Montgomery on February 4 to organize the Southern Confederacy. The state of Virginia, anxious to tread the middle path of compromise, asked the states to send delegates to a convention called at Washington for February 4, the object being to secure harmony by "giving to the people of the slave-holding states adequate guarantees for the security of their rights." Michigan and four other northern states refused to send delegates to this "peace congress," but when the representatives from the twenty-two states represented began their debates, it seemed advisable to strengthen the number of friends of freedom in that body. Accordingly Senator Chandler wrote to Governor Blair: "Ohio, Indiana, and Rhode Island are caving in, and there is danger of Illinois; and now they beg us for God's sake to come to their rescue, and save the Republican party from rupture. I hope you will send stiff-backed men or none." Then in a postscript Chandler wrote the sentiment that has become historic: "Some of the manufacturing states think a fight would be awful. Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush."4 The Michigan legislature refused to endorse the peace congress even to the extent of commissioning the two senators as delegates. Mr. Chandler's letter, although a private one, quickly found its way into the columns of the Detroit Free Press, then edited by Wilber F. Story, afterwards editor of the Chicago Times, and always a bitter opponent of the war; and Senator Powell of Kentucky was the first of the long line of senators to call Mr. Chandler to account for eagerness to precipitate a struggle. In reply Chandler told the senate exactly where his state stood. "The people of Michigan," he said, "are opposed to all compromises. They do not believe that any compromise is necessary. They are prepared to stand by the constitution of the United States as it is, to stand by the govern THE CIVIL WAR 515 ment as it is; aye, sir, to stand by it to blood, if necessary!" From this position there was never the slightest swerving on the part of any one who in any way represented the state. There was, however, a strong demand on the legislature for the repeal of the personal liberty laws of April 13, I855, which in contravention of the national statutes gave fugitive slaves the right of habeas corpus and a trial by jury, the state paying the costs of the defense. Justice Campbell of the supreme court held that these laws were so repugnant to the national statutes as "to subject the state to the imputation of nullification." Justice Christiancy coincided with the views of his colleague, and Chief Justice Martin went so far as to say that "the difference between nullification and secession is not so very wide that we can with justice condemn the one, if we ourselves are guilty of the other."5 A public meeting held in Detroit on January 28, with Mayor C. H. Buhl in the chair, and C. C. Trowbridge, United States Judge Ross Wilkins and D. Bethune Duffield among the speakers, called for the repeal of the personal liberty laws; for a return to the Missouri compromise line, in order to settle forever the question of slavery; for the cessation of kidnapping,6 and for no further interference with slavery in the south or in the District of Columbia. With this ineffective meeting the Cass idea expired in Michigan. When the news of the bombardment of Fort Sumter reached Detroit on Saturday evening, April 13, I86I, the excitement found vent in a public meeting at which Charles I. Walker, the recently defeated Democratic candidate for supreme judge, and George V. N. Lothrop, now dead, a leader in the Democratic party, were among the speakers. These men expressly stated that while their views on the national questions had not changed, the fact of war made it imperative for the people to sustain the government, right or wrong. Vigorous speeches were made by prominent Republicans, and resolutions were adopted pledging the lives and fortunes "of the citizens of Detroit in defense of the Union." That this was no idle boast was attested by the sound of fife and drum calling recruits to the armories of the Detroit Light Guard and the Scott Guards, and the raising of $50,ooo by subscription to be placed in the governor's hands for the purpose of equipping troops. On Sunday at Ann Arbor a great public meeting was held and the formation of a University company was begun; the scholars of the State Normal school at Ypsilanti also began to raise a company, and the Detroit German Turners and the Fire Department commenced enlistments. The railroads and the steamboat companies immediately offered free transportation for troops. The hotel owners ran up the Stars and Stripes, in order to put to the test of loyalty of all stranger guests under their roofs, and the wholesale and retail houses, the railway stations and the public buildings flung out the joyous flag. The city seemed decked for a holiday. On April I6 Governor Blair hurried to Detroit to meet the state military board. It was necessary to have one hundred thousand dollars to arm and equip the regiment President Lincoln had called from Michigan. The state treasury had been emptied by theft; but in the emergency, John Owen, a wealthy ship owner of Detroit, who had been 516 HISTORIC MICHIGAN appointed treasurer in the place of the defaulter, pledged his personal credit for half the necessary sum, and other citizens subscribed the remainder. Thus provided with funds, Governor Blair issued a call for ten companies. Detroit, Jackson, Coldwater, Manchester, Ann Arbor, Burr Oak, Ypsilanti and Marshall responded by sending their militia companies to Fort Wayne, where the first Michigan Infantry of three months' men was organized, with Orlando B. Wilcox, a Detroit lawyer, as colonel. On May I3, a week earlier than the call required, the regiment, thoroughly equipped and armed with new minnie rifles, was on its way to Washington. On the i5th, Colonel Wilcox had the honor of reporting to General Scott the arrival at the capital of the first western regiment. The proud colonel afterwards marched his command to the White House, where President Lincoln made the Michigan boys supremely happy by praising their promptness and soldierly appearance. When asked where he would camp, Colonel Wilcox quickly replied, "Across the river." Now the Potomac was the Rubicon of '6i. To cross Long bridge was held to be the invasion of the sacred South and General Scott believed that he had no authority to order troops to invade a state. So for eight days the First remained in Washington. In the meantime ardent Union men like Senators Chandler and Wade labored to have General Scott's scruples removed by private consultations with members of the supreme court.7 It was urged that the act of retrocession, by which Virginia took back the territory on the south bank of the Potomac, originally included within the District of Columbia, was unconstitutional, and that for the defense of the national capital General Scott had ample authority to order troops to General Lee's home at Arlington and to the city of Alexandria, both places being legally under the jurisdiction of the United States. Soothed into acquiescence by these apparent sophistries, General Scott gave the necessary orders, and on the night of May 23 the men of the First Michigan, on their way to Alexandria, were the first Union troops to put foot on the soil of the south. General Heintzelman, commanding the second column and destined for Arlington, followed Colonel Wilcox's command, and at the same time a third column under Colonel Ellsworth embarked for Alexandria. Arriving at the old town Colonel Ellsworth, with a single company, proceeded to the Marshall house to haul down the rebel flag that had been flaunting in full view of the capitol of the nation. On his way down the stairs with the flag over his arm the daring zouave was shot and killed by the proprietor of the house. That shot was the signal for a tremendous uprising at the North. Colonel Wilcox arrived in Alexandria just after Ellsworth fell, and the zouaves reported for duty with the Michigan troops. In Fairfax street about forty rebel soldiers rushed from a large building to escape, but fearing canister from Rickett's battery, Captain Ball advanced and surrendered his sword. The building from which the rebels came bore the sign "Price, Birch & Co., Dealers in Slaves;" and as a recognition of the promptness the Coldwater company had displayed in responding to a command to act as skirmishers, it was assigned quarters in the slave shop. Seeing in the slave pen a negro about eighteen years THE CIVIL WAR 517 old, who, as it transpired, had been sold recently and was held to be called for, Orderly-Sergeant Charles P. Lincoln hunted until he found the key of the huge padlock by which the grated iron door to the enclosure was fastened; then, in company with William H. Bryan, Smith W. Fisk and Benjamin Archer, Sergeant Lincoln proceeded to release the half-starved and thoroughly frightened negro. The boy became an auxiliary member of the Coldwater company, and when his owner came to the camp on Shooters' Hill to claim him, Colonel Wilcox, having at that time no authority to detain a slave, told the slave-holder that he might take his property if he could find it. The search began under such a shower of missiles that the slave catcher was only too glad to beat a hasty retreat. George C. Smith, as the negro called himself, fought with the Coldwater company at Bull Run, and afterwards became a member of the first colored regiment recruited in Michigan. He was the first slave freed by the Union arms and who remained free.8 The war was begun for the preservation of the Union, but the abolition of slavery became a logical sequence of the Rebellion. When the Michigan legislature assembled in special session in January, 1862, Governor Blair's message called for the destruction of the i'nstitution of slavery, and the legislature supported him by a joint resolution advocating the emancipation of all slaves. The legislature also sent to congress a vigorously worded memorial demanding the energetic prosecution of the war and the confiscation of rebel property. Within seven mo'nths from the first call Michigan sent forward I6,475 men, besides thirteen companies attached to regiments from other states. By July, I862, 27.000 men,or 6,ooo more than their state's quota, had been enlisted, and five infantry regiments and three batteries were then being recruited in various parts of the state. Then came the news of the disastrous failure of the Peninsula campaign. In the swamps of Virginia, Michigan's sons died by the score, but all to no purpose. They had gone south to fight the rebels, not to be consumed by fevers. Now that McClellan had shown no disposition to fight, recruiting came to a standstill. In order to arouse the people, a public meeting gathered July 15 on Campus Martius, in Detroit, to devise means to stimulate enlistments. Help came in disguise. While the speaking was in progress a mob rushed from the narrow streets that converge at the Campus, and with stones and clubs dispersed the meeting. That rebel sympathizers and refugees from Canada should lead a mob in an American city set the state on fire with indignation. Another and larger meeting was held with the venerable General Cass as chairman. Enlisting began with vigor, and whenever a lull came wealthy citizens9 stimulated the enrollment by promising to pay ten dollars to each man who would enlist from their respective wards. So sharp was the change in state sentiment, brought about by Detroit's determined stand, that not only were the five regiments completed, but within thirty days eight others were on their way to the front. Wayne county's answer to the mob was the Twenty-fourth Infantry, one thousand and thirty strong, under Colonel Henry Morrow. Assigned to the Iron Brigade of the Army 518 HISTORIC MICHIGAN of the Potomac, the Michigan boys, fresh from the farm, the workshop and the store, with uniforms new and trappings bright, were received in sullen silence by the Wisconsin and Indiana regiments of the famous brigade; but in the baptism of fire at Fredericksburg the recruits became veterans, winning high praise from General Doubleday, and at Gettysburg's slaughter the Twenty-fourth was as near iron as flesh and blood can be.10 In many towns throughout the state where recruiting was going on the life of the place was brightened by the bugle call. Soldiers drilled in the streets, using the picket fences as breastworks, and, in their eagerness to annihilate the imaginary foe, snapping the hammers of their guns on the capless tipples in a way to put their undisciplined officers into a towering passion. The women organized societies to scrape lint, make bandages and havelocks and pack boxes of food and clothing for the sanitary commission to dispose of in hospital and southern prisons. In the afternoon dress parade on the public square was the feature of the day for townspeople as well as for soldiers, and in the evening there would be a social gathering to raise money for some war charity, or a dance at which none but the wearers of brass buttons could expect favors from bright eyes. On the nights when hews came of victories, the most accessible street comer would be piled high with pine dry goods boxes and the great pyramid surmounted by a tar barrel. As the huge structure became a mass of flame fire balls of wicking soaked in naphtha were hurled up and down the streets, making ellipses of flame. After taps the provost guard made the round of the town to gather in the stragglers, and quiet reigned till reveille. In the fall elections of I862 the opponents of the war, aided by those who were dissatisfied by the slowness of the administration, taking advantage of mistakes, delays and defeats, of the burdensome taxation, and of the dreaded draft, returned a Democratic majority of ten to the national house of representatives. Michigan's neighbors, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, joined with New York and Pennsylvania in giving majorities against the Republicans. In Michigan Senator Chandler was a candidate for re-election, and that fact made him a target for the opposition. Both his "blood letting" letter and a vigorous speech in the senate, in which he unsparingly pointed out McClellan's shortcomings and demanded that he be removed from command of the Army of the Potomac, were brought up against him. Like some prophet of old, with energy expressed in every movement of his great frame, and with flashing eyes, Chandler went from one end of the state to the other proclaiming: "There are now but two classes of menpatriots and traitors. Between these two you must choose. A man might as well cast himself into the gulf that separated Dives from Lazarus as to stand out in this hour of trial!" As the result of this stirring campaign Governor Blair was re-elected, five of the six members of congress returned were Republicans, and the opposition, although it combined on Hon. James F. Foy, a Republican member of the legislature, and a man of the highest ability and patriotism, was unable to defeat Mr. Chandler. On the floor of the senate Mr. Chandler was a radical of the radicals. He upheld General Fremont's THE CIVIL WAR 519 Missouri proclamation freeing the slaves belonging to persons engaged in rebellion, and was deeply disappointed at the action of the administration in modifying that order. He introduced a bill to confiscate the property of the rebels, and was galled at its defeat. He strenuously opposed Mr. Seward's policy of giving up to England the Confederate commissioners, Mason and Slidell. Yet, unlike several of his intimate friends, Mr. Chandler had the highest respect for President Lincoln and the sincerest faith in his unflinching loyalty. As for Mr. Stanton, the crossed bayonets at the door of that irascible but loyal secretary were no bar to the Michigan senator. He stalked between the surprised sentries, stormed at the secretary until he had got what he had come for, and then left. Sustaining such relations as these to both the radicals and the administration, Senator Chandler was fitted to carry out a series of negotiations which formed, perhaps, his great single service to his country. When the question of Mr. Lincoln's re-election came up there was a considerable element in the party which believed that "the imbecile and vacillating policy of the present administration in the conduct of the war, being just weak enough to waste its men and means to provoke the enemy, but not strong enough to conquer the rebellion * * call in thunder tones upon the lovers of justice and their country to come to the rescue of the imperiled nationality and the cause of universal and impartial freedom, threatened with betrayal and overthrow." Among those who so thought were Wendell Phillips, B. Gratz Brown, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and James Redpath, all of whom signed the call for the Cleveland convention, at which John C. Freemont was nominated for president. Resigning his command, General Fremont bitterly denounced President Lincoln and prepared to make a vigorous canvass. To add to the misfortunes of the administration, Secretary Chase unexpectedly resigned the treasury portfolio; those strenuous opponents of slavery, Senator Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis, issued a manifesto opposing Lincoln's reconstruction policy; and Early's Shenandoah raid and the heavy but apparently useless fighting of Grant and Sherman caused the national cause to seem well-nigh hopeless. Moreover, George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate against Mr. Lincoln, still had his warm admirers who reegarded him as a martyr to the president's ambitions. Going first to Senator Wade, Mr. Chandler secured from that warhorse the concession that if Montgomery Blair (whom the radicals regarded as President Lincoln's evil adviser) should be dismissed from the Cabinet he would no longer despair of more aggressive action on Mr. Lincoln's part. From the president Mr. Chandler obtained assurances that a new postmaster-general would be installed in Mr. Blair's place; then going to Mr. Davis at Baltimore with Lincoln's promise, he, too, agreed to withdraw his opposition. The hardest part of the work, however, was to secure the withdrawal of the Fremont ticket, but that also Mr. Chandler accomplished." On reporting his success to President Lincoln the latter promptly requested Mr. Blair's resignation, and it was immediately forthcoming. Union successes in the field came in time to aid in bringing about the second election of 520 E0ISTORIC MICHIGAN Mr. Lincoln, but Chandler's work was of the greatest service at a time when he, almost alone among the politicians, was Lincoln's friend. Among the two thousand regiments that made up the Union army during the Rebellion, the Fifth Michigan stood fourth among infantry regiments in respect to the number of men who were killed in action or who died of wounds received while fighting, the Sixteenth stood eighth, the Twenty-seventh stood nineteenth, the Second stood twentieth, the Eighth stood twenty-second, the Seventh stood thirtysecond. All of these regiments are in the list of the forty-five infantry regiments that lost in killed more than two hundred men. The Fifth, organized at Fort Wayne, was made up of companies from Detroit, Mt. Clemens, East Saginaw, Owosso, Saginaw, Brighton, St. Clair, Pontiac and Port Huron. Mustered into the service of the United States in August, i86i, in September it left for Virginia under the command of Colonel Henry D. Ferry. With bands playing and flags flying gaily, the regiment marched to the steamer; but the silk banner borne so proudly at the head of the regiment was soon to have its gold fringe torn and its silk folds shot away, piece by piece, as soldier after soldier snatched the standard from the hands of falling color-bearer and bore it into the thick of the fight. Ten men lost their lives in defending that flag before peace gave rest to its tatters. For some months previous to the outbreak of the war, the martial zeal of the people of the beautiful little town of Coldwater had found vent in the Loomis battery of light artillery, and when Sumter fell this command immediately asked to be received into the service. After the usual hesitation the government accepted its services, and the battery of six gleaming brass six-pounders started for West Virginia, under the command of Col. Cyrus 0. Loomis. After Rich Mountain the battery gave up its old brass guns for ten-pound Parrotts sent by General McClellan as a reward for driving the enemy from a position he had supposed impregnable. Sometimes the battery was divided; one captain would take a gun on board a steamer for work along the rivers; another captain would mount his cannon on a flat car, protect it with a screen of iron, and go dodging up and down the railroads about Nashville. The battle of Perryville was opened and closed by the Loomis battery. In the thickest of the fight the Colonel was holding the enemy in check to permit the withdrawal of other regiments, orders came to spike his guns and retreat, but such was Colonel Loomis' fondness for his cannon that he decided to go with them. So he fought on in spite of orders, and after repelling five charges and losing eighteen men and thirty-three horses, he brought out every one of his guns. In an artillery duel at Murfreesboro, Colonel Loomis, "the envy of all artillerists" as a New York Herald correspondent called him, in rapid succession dismounted five of the enemy's guns and drove a second battery off the field. At Chickamauga, Lieutenant Van Pelt commanded the battery now famous throughout the Army of the West, and even by the enemy deemed invincible. Soldiers felt sure that where those stern black rifled guns were at work the line could not be broken. Van Pelt loved his guns, and as the enemy rushed upon the Federal line he poured canister into their ranks and coolly watched for a good place to THE CIVIL WAR 521 plant another shot; but his men dropped fast, his horses were shot down and the enemy pressed in hordes too great for even those swiftlyhandled guns to subdue; the supporting infantry was gone, almost alone Van Pelt, sword in hand, stood by his cannon. "Scoundrels," he cried, "don't you dare lay hands on those guns;" and as he spoke he fell dead, and the on-rushing enemy bore away five of the six cannon. At Mission Ridge, when the Union Army captured all but four of the eighty-six guns in Bragg's artillery, three of the Loomis cannon were among the number, and the other two were recovered at Atlanta.l2 The Indians, who have been with us in every fight from the beginning of Michigan's history, had their place also in the Rebellion albeit a very small place.13 Attached to Colonel DeLand's First Michigan Sharpshooters was a company of civilized Indians who won fame at Spottsylvania. On that bloody 9th of May, 1863, the Federal line, advancing with a cheer, met the charging enemy in a dense thicket of pines, and in the hand-to-hand struggle that followed, the Union forces were slowly forced back. On a little rise of ground the Fourteenth New York battery, supported by the Second and Twenty-seventh Michigan Infantry and the First Michigan Sharpshooters, was doing its best to hold the ground. Every now and then the Confederates would fight their way up to the battery and lay hold on the cannon to turn them upon the Union forces, but to touch one of those guns meant instant death at the hands of the sharpshooters. In this desperate encounter, the little band of Indians was commanded by Lieutenant Graverat of Little Traverse, an educated half-breed. Under a perfect storm of lead their numbers seemed to melt away, but there was no sign of faltering. Sheltered behind trees, they poured volley after volley at the zealous foe, and above the din of battle their war-whoop rang out with every volley. At dusk the ammunition gave out, but with the others the Indians rushed forward at the shout of "Give 'em steel, boys!" from the twice wounded, but still plucky Colonel DeLand. When darkness came to end the bloody day, Lieutenant Graverat was among the one hundred and seventeen wounded sharpshooters, and a few months later he died of his wounds.14 On the day before the battle of Bull Run, George Armstrong Custer, fresh from West Point, reported at Washington for duty, and was sent by General Scott with dispatches for General McDowell. It is not written how the young Monroe officer fought in that battle, but it is recorded that he ran with the others. By chance he was assigned to the staff of General Philip Kearney, at officer superlatively brave but outrageously strict; and Custer gave to Kearney the sincerest flattery of imitation, not only in his virtues, but also in his failings. When regular army officers were no longer allowed to serve on the staffs of men holding volunteer commissions, Custer returned to the Second Cavalry. One day in May. i862, General McClellan, resplendent in speckless blue and dazzling buttons, sent his still more gorgeous staff officers to find the young fellow whose reconnoissance at Bottom Ridge on the Chickahominy established the fact that the enemy's pickets could be cut off. When at last Custer was found he appeared before his general a veritable male Cinderella, dirty, muddy, his coat creased 522 HISTORIC MICHIGAN from being slept in, his trousers ragged from hard riding, his cap discolored by rain and sun. McClellan, pleased at the boy's story, took Custer on his staff. "I felt that I could have died for him," said Custer, and never after would he admit that McClellan had a fault. At his home in Monroe, Captain Custer grieved over McClellan's retirement, and as he heard of the defeats of Burnside he prayed, "Give us back our old General!" Then the exacting Pleasanton called him a third time to staff duty. At Aldie, Gen. Gregg struck the advance of Stuart's cavalry and drove them back till Stuart could gather his forces for an overwhelming charge. On came the yelling line of rebel cavalry, while the shells from Stuart's well planted batteries shrieked on their deadly way. Before the cloud of dust that marked the onset fled the Second New York. Then through the Union lines dashed Kilpatrick and Doughty and Custer, whose long curls flowed from beneath a broad-brimmed plantation straw hat. High above his yellow curls he flashed a long, straight Toledo blade, a prize of battle taken from a rebel who could not live up to the motto written in Spanish on its face-"Draw me not without cause, sheathe me not without honor." Setting spurs to Black Harry and shouting "Come on, boys, Come on!" Captain Custer made for the enemy. In an instant Kilpatrick and Doughty were beside him. In those short moments of ecstacy, Custer did not know that Kilpatrick was down and that Doughty had tasted death. Straight through the enemy he rode, fighting as he went a duel with a single pursuer, whose dead body dropped from his horse in the quiet rear of the terrible fighting. Then back through the panic-stricken enemy, his straw hat a disguise, rode Custer to join his own men. Four days later, when Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac, he made no change in his administration, but asked that Farnsworth, Custer and Merrit be made brigade generals, and it was done. To crown his joy, Custer was appointed to command the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, in which was the Seventh Cavalry, the command of which Governor Blair had refused to give him, probably because he was so fond of McClellan. Hated by the men over whose heads he had been jumped, and despised for his dandified appearance, Custer at twenty-four took command of his brigade, and on the first night established a discipline which combined the rigidity of Kearney with the severity of Pleasanton. Next day they started for Gettysburg. It was on the second day of the great fight that Kilpatrick ordered Custer to attack Stuart's Cavalry. Captain Thompson of the Sixth Michigan was expecting to command the attack, when the general said carelessly, "I'll lead you this time, boys." Away dashed Company A in the wake of the broad white hat and the yellow curls. The Michigan boys found the enemy too many for them. Thompson fell with a mortal wound. Custer's horse was shot dead and as he struggled to his feet young Churchill first shot the man who would have killed the General, and then mounted Custer on his own horse, and carried him back to his men. On the next day Custer, finding the cavalry battle with Wade Hampton going against him, had but one available regiment, the First Michigan Cavalry. The rebels, who had just repulsed THE CIVIL WAR 523 the stubborn Seventh, outnumbered the First by five to one. At a mad gallop the First, under Colonel Town, rode down the front rank of the enemy. The long, heavy, rebel column stood its ground for but a moment. The flashing sabres mowed down Wade Hampton's men till the flower of Stuart's cavalry turned and ran. "I challenge the annals of warfare to produce a more brilliant or a more successful charge of cavalry," wrote Custer in a report that studiously omits the fact that he himself led the charge. That was a glorious day for Monroe, when Custer, with his long locks clipped so that he was no more "the boy General with the golden curls," stood up in his brigadier-general's uniform and was married to the daughter of Judge Daniel S. Bacon, the beautiful and stately girl who was henceforth to share his lot in camp and barrack and afterwards to perpetuate the memory of his deeds in the volumes which have been read by so many thousands. The army was no place for women, said those who shook their heads at her going, but because of her presence the Michigan brigade were better soldiers and better men. When Grant came east, he put all the cavalry under an infantry division commander, Philip Henry Sheridan, who had begun his career with Governor Blair's commission as colonel of the Second Michigan Infantry. At the Wilderness, Custer, with the Michigan Brigade, was again at work on his old enemy, Stuart. Colonel Alger and Major Kidd, with the Fifth and Sixth Michigan, were holding the Confederate cavalry back, and the Union forces were then within four miles of Richmond. While the first Michigan was charging the enemy a Confederate General with his staff rode up in full view of the Fifth, and one of the soldiers fired at the party. "You shoot too low and to the left, Tom," said John A. Huff, who had been one of Berdan's sharpshooters. "I can fetch that man, Colonel," he added. "Try him," said Colonel Alger. Huff fired, and as the officer fell, he coolly remarked, "There's a spread eagle for you." He had killed General J. E. B. Stuart, the greatest of Confederate cavalry leaders. In the Shenandoah Valley on the beautiful 8th day of October, I864, Custer, a division commander now, rode out in front of his lines in full view of the enemy. His yellow hair once more flowed over his shoulders, a broad sailor collar, a streaming scarlet tie, and a velvet jacket, well-nigh covered with gold braid, made him a dazzling spectacle as he gracefully doffed his sombrero to salute his gallant foe. The attention was meant for Rosser who had been Custer's class-mate and rival at West Point. "You see that officer?" said Rosser to one of his staff, "that's Custer, the Yanks are so proud of, and I intend to give him the best whipping today he ever got Lsee if I don't." The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Custer, at the head of the Third Division, was bearing down upon him. Rosser's artillery helped him drive back the Michigan boys, till the Union guns in turn broke the force of the enemy's onslaught. Then there was fair battle. Rosser vainly tried to meet Custer's sabres with powder; his men turned and fled and for twenty-six miles to Mount Jackson there was a clear track for what'came to be known as the "Woodstock Races." So General Custer became a Major-General, and by way of celebrating, in 524 HISTORIC MICHIGAN February of 1865, he followed Early from Staunton to Waynesboro, seventeen miles, through mud and rain and whipped him and Rosser unmercifully. Appomattox found Custer next to Sheridan, the most brilliant cavalry officer in the army, and the Confederate General Kershaw asked the privilege of surrendering his sword to him as "one of the best cavalry officers this or any other country ever produced." On the final review'5 at Washington, when Custer's unruly horse bore him indecorously past the reviewing stand, the excited multitude, fearing for the life of a soldier whom rebel bullets could not harm, gave a tremendous shout of joy as the General, his horse calmed, rode gravely back to pass the stand a second time and to receive the garlands of flowers prepared for the conquerors of peace.1 To the Fourth Michigan Cavalry belongs an honor unique in the history of war. On May 7, I865, Lieutenant-Colonel B. D. Pritchard was ordered to picket the Ocumulgee river for the purpose of preventing the escape of Jefferson Davis. By hard marching and by passing themselves off as a Confederate force the Fourth got on the track of the fugitives, and on the night of the Ixth discovered and surrounded a camp in a pine forest near Abbeville, South Carolina. At dawn the regiment closed in upon the encampment, and after a dash the surprise and capture were so complete that the weapons at the sides of the slumberers were untouched. Before the command could ascertain whom they had secured, a tall person, robed in a woman's waterproof cloak and having a shawl wrapped about the head, started to go through the lines, but was promptly stopped. The soldiers removed the disguise to find that they had secured the president of the fallen Confederacy. Mrs. Davis and their four children, Postmaster-General Reegan, Miss Howell, a sister of Mrs. Davis, and Mr. Davis's military staff were also captured. In due time the prisoners were turned over to the regular authorities and the Michigan regiment divided with the First Wisconsin, which was near by at the time of the capture, the $Ioo,ooo offered by the government for the arrest of Mr. Davis. During the dark days of the rebellion Canada was the refuge, if not the asylum, of marauders who served the Confederacy to the best of their ability. In November, I863, Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, notified the state department that he had been informed by the governor-general of Canada of a plot to seize several lake steamers, capture the man-of-war Michigan and release the Confederate prisoners confined on Johnson's Island near Sandusky. At this time six companies of infantry and a battery of artillery. stationed near Detroit. were relied on for protection against Canadian aggressions. Arms and ammunition were kept in readiness for use by the citizens and armed steam tugs patrolled the river. Indeed, the rumors of plots to burn the chief American cities kept the people of Detroit in a state of constant apprehension. Month after month passed, however, without any overt acts on the part of the Canadian contingent. On the i9th of September, I864, the little steamer Philo Parsons left her dock at Detroit on her usual trip to Sandusky. At the Canadian towns of Sandwich and Amherstburg about thirty men came aboard. When about five miles from Sandusky three men stepped up to the clerk of the THE CIVIL WAR 525 steamer, Mr. Ashley, and threatened to shoot him if he resisted them. Having easily gotten possession of the boat, the captors ran alongside the little steamer Island Queen, which they captured, with twenty-five United States soldiers. After transferring her passengers and crew to the Parsons the captors set the Queen adrift and left her to sink. Instead of steering for Johnson's Island, however, the pirates put a Confederate flag at half mast, landed the passengers on American territory, talked about running into Grosse Isle to rob Mr. Ives, the Detroit banker, and finally looted the boat, smashed the piano and deserted the craft at Sandwich. Bennett G. Burley, one of the leaders of the raid, was proved to a master in the Confederate navy, and when he was arrested and brought before the court at Toronto on an application for extradition, Jefferson Davis, in a manifesto dated December 24, 1864, assumed full responsibility for the attempt as a legitimate act of war. Lieutenant-Colonel Hill, commanding the District of Michigan, had full knowledge of the plot obtained from a former Confederate soldier who was to be one of the party, and the captain of the Michigan was warned. Inasmuch as the Confederate agent at Windsor at the time was ho less a personage than Colonel Jacob Thompson, secretary of the interior in Buchanan's cabinet, it was thought best to allow the plot to ripen so as to get a case against the British government for harboring traitors and conspirators. Through the efforts of United States District Attorney Alfred Russell, Burley was extradited and was tried at Port Clinton, Ohio, for robbery, which charge had to be made instead of piracy, because the lakes were not then included in the high seas.17 The court charged that Burley's deed was an act of war and the jury disagreed, and before a new trial could be had Burley's friends helped him to break jail and escape to his native Scotland. On July 4, I866, the last of the Michigan soldiers having been mustered out during the previous month, the regiments assembled at Detroit. Down the broad avenue they marched with Generals Wilcox and Custer, Ord, Williams and Casey at their head. Thinned and broken ranks they were, and tattered were the flags they bore so proudly now for the last time. They day had come when the regiments were to deliver to the state the standards in whose defense they had left their dead nearest the enemy at Bull Run; the flags that they had borne through the toilsome peninsular campaign under McClellan, with Banks in the Shenandoah, with Grant at Shiloh, with Butler at New Orleans; the flags that stubbornly met Pickett's charge at Gettysburg and that bravely faced disaster at Chickamauga;8 that fought their way inch by inch through the Wilderness, and marched with Sherman to the sea; the flags that were the first to snap defiance on the deadly ramparts of Petersburg and that waved in rejoicing at the surrender of Appomattox. The city streets, spanned by triumphal arches; the gaily decorated houses, the stores and public buildings, the roar of cannon and the shouts of the immense crowd told of the joy that the war was ended. The returning columns massed themselves in Campus Martius, that well named center of Michigan's civic life. There Bishop McCroskey gave thanks to God "whom it has pleased His Almighty hand to put down all sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion, and to restore 526 HISTORIC MICHIGAN to this nation the blessing of peace." Then General Wilcox recalled the valor of the Michigan boys in blue, saying. "At Alexandria we dictated terms to the rebels in the shortest proclamation of war, which was printed by men detailed from the ranks. We lent independent companies of sharpshooters to New York, Illinois, and the United States; and some of the cavalry, impatient to get into the service, rode off to Missouri and there took the name of Merrill Horse. The charge of the Seventeenth at South Mountain; the recapture of cannon by the Fourth at Williamsport (cannon that had been lost at Bull Run); the passage of the Seventh at Fredericksburg, led by a drummer boy; the repulse of John Morgan's cavalry by the Twenty-fifth at Green river, with Colonel Moore's immortal words, "The Fourth of July is not the day to entertain a proposition to surrender;" the emphatic westernism of Colonel Innis at Laverque, "We don't surrender much;" and the achievements of our cavalry under Custer in the east and under Minty and Pritchard in the west, culminating in the capture of Jeff Davis, the head center of the rebellion-all these and many other feats of war give us name and fame abroad.l9 As the regiments, one by one, marched past the speaker's stand they delivered the blood-stained colors to the representative of the state, and white-robed maidens crowned the flags with garlands of flowers. Then Governor Crapo, accepting the sacred emblems, exclaimed: "They are our flags and yours. How rich the treasure! They will not be forgotten nor their history left unwritten. Their stories will be as household words and the minds of those who come after us will dwell upon the thoughts of manly endeavor, of staunch endurance, of illustrious achievement which their silent eloquence will ever suggest." When the sun went down that day the soldiers had broken the last tie that bound them to the army. Henceforth they were no more warriors, but citizens; and the tramp of the little remnant of regulars, as they marched off to Fort Wayne, sounded war's taps. THE TWENTIETH MICHIGAN REGIMENT IN THE ASSAULT ON PETERSBURG, JULY, i864 By Gen. Byron M. Cutcheon Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXX, 127-139 HE assault upon the Confederate works in front of Petersburg, Va., July 30, I864, commonly designated "the Battle of the Crater," was one of the most notable events of the campaign of 1864 of the Army of the Potomac. The actual assault was limited to the North Army Corps, composed of four divisions, commanded respectively by Generals Ledlie20 of New York, Potter2' of New York, Willcox22 of Michigan and Ferrero28 of New York. The fourth division was composed wholly of colored troops. Gen. O. B. Willcox's division included six Michigan regiments-the 17th Michigan, provost guard at division headquarters; the 8th and 27th in Hartranft's24 ist brigade and the ist Sharpshooters, 2nd infantry and 20th infantry in Humphrey's 2nd THE CIVIL WAR 527 brigade. Col. William Humphrey25 of the 2nd Michigan infantry was acting brigadier-general. The writer28 was at the time colonel, commanding the 2oth Michigan, and writes from the standpoint of an eyewitness of the events, but has refreshed and supplemented his memory by careful study of both Union and Confederate records. No battle of the war has given rise to more controversy than this. The assaults of our army upon the Confederate lines around Petersburg, June I6th, I7th and I8th, having failed, General Grant now determined to reduce Petersburg by siege. The siege operations, however, were combined with, and from time to time supplemented by, field movements upon both flanks of the army, and upon both sides of James river. But whatever else was doing, the siege of Petersburg went steadily on without cessation, without relaxation until the final breakup came, in the early days of April, 1865, and with the fall of Petersburg came the speedy collapse of the Rebellion. The purpose of this paper is to make record of the part taken by the 20th Michigan in the siege up to the close of the "Battle of the Crater,"27 July 30, I864. On the morning of June g9th the regiment was withdrawn from the extreme front line, within 150 yards of the enemy's works, to which point they had advanced on the evening of the I8th, and was encamped in the belt of woods near which Fort Morton was afterwards built. On June 20th, at o0 p. m., the regiment moved, with the rest of Wilcox's division, to the vicinity of the "Hare House," on the right of our line near the Appomattox, where it remained until the morning of June 24th, when it was relieved by troops of the Ioth Army Corps, and moved back and took position in the trenches, a little to the left of the place occupied on the night of the I8th, with our right resting on the "Suffolk road" or "Baxter road." On our left of this road, and directly in our front in the rebel line, was a two-gun battery, known to us then as the "Suffolk road battery," and by the Confederates known as "Davidson's battery."28 It was distant from the right of our regiment about I80 yards. Our picket line was advanced beyond a small water course called "Taylor's creek," and both the picket and the main lines were so close to the enemy's line as to be within almost point-blank range, and few days passed that some one in the Brigade was not killed or wounded. This life soon became monotonous, and the men were so accustomed to the danger that they exposed themselves recklessly. Several were killed while attempting to secure a small piece of ice from an ice well, near the Suffolk road. Our regiment lay along the crest of a narrow ridge which sloped to the rear, and in this rear-ward slope the men dug cellars or "dugouts" and over these excavations pitched their shelter tents. Convenient "covered ways" led from the breastworks back to the quarters. In these "dugouts," muddy in rainy weather and dirty at all times, with no means of bathing or washing clothes, and very scanty supply of water for drinking, toilet or cooking purposes, the regiment lived from the 24th of June until the night of the 25th of July, when it was again withdrawn from the front line. At daylight of the 26th the Brigade was moved to the rear, and camped in the open field back of the belt of woods, near where the 528 HISTORIC MICHIGAN sharpshooters made their gallant charge on the I7th of June. But we were not to remain long here, for on the 27th we marched about two and one-half miles to the left and rear, and took post near the Norfolk railroad, the headwaters of Blackwater creek. Here we remained on outpost duty until the evening of July 29th, when just as we were anticipating a quiet night's rest, orders came to break camp, and at nine o'clock we were on our way back to the front to take part in the bloody assault at "the Crater," July 30th. It was near 1 o'clock when we reached the plain south of the belt of woods and north of the "Avery House," and we were ordered to bivouac until called. Our brigade at this time consisted of the Ist Michigan Sharpshooters, the 2nd Michigan Infantry, the 20th Michigan, the 5oth Pennsylvania, the 46th New York, and the 24th New York Cavalry (dismounted). The night was warm, the sky was clear, and the men spread their blankets on the ground, and laid down in line as the regiment had halted. Some slept, no doubt, but many did not. Troops were moving all about us, and artillery was rumbling along, going into position for the next day's battle, before the day should dawn and disclose their presence. After midnight the company cooks were directed to go to the rear and make coffee for the men, and have it ready to serve before daylight. Details were made from the regiment to report at division headquarters with axes, picks and spades, to act as pioneers. As soon as the first flush of daylight began to appear in the east the men were roused and coffee was served. Then they silently fell into ranks to move to the front. The line of our works in front of Fort Morton, where our brigade had fought on the evening of the i8th of June, was pushed up nearer to the Confederate works than at any other point, and thus part of the line was commonly spoken of among our men as "the horseshoe." Directly in front of "the horseshoe" and opposite to Fort Morton, upon a swell of ground rising some 35 or 40 feet above the valley of Taylor's creek, was a Confederate fort mounting four cannon, and occupied by Pegram's battery,29 supported by two battalions of South Carolina infantry. The fort formed a salient in the Confederate line, known as "Elliott's Salient," and was pushed out beyond the general line of their works. We who had occupied "the horseshoe" during the month of July were well aware that a tunnel or mine had been run from the west bank of Taylor's creek, inside our breastworks, to and under this fort. The work had been commenced soon after we occupied that position, June I8th, and it was common to speak of it as "the mined fort." The length of the tunnel was about 500 feet. At the inner end two lateral tunnels or chambers had been constructed, and the whole was charged with about 8,000 pounds of gunpowder, in eight magazines, extending north and south, a distance of 75 feet under the face of the fort where the gun platforms were placed. When we reached our bivouac on the night of the 29th, Colonel Cutcheon, commanding, was notified that the mine was to be fired at daybreak, and that our brigade was to form part of the storming column. It was about 3 o'clock a. m. July 30th when the men were roused; coffee was served and details for special service as pioneers were sent off; knapsacks were piled and left under THE CIVIL WAR 529 guard, and at a little before 4 o'clock the head of Humphrey's brigade, following Hartranft's, entered the zigzag "covered way" leading down to the front a point on the left of Fort Morton. The other two white divisions of the 9th Corps-Ledlie's and Potter's-had preceded Wilcox, and were forming for the assault in the narrow meadow, in the valley of Taylor's creek. The covered way was densely gorged with troops, and it was impossible for our division to advance until the others were out of our way. Ledlie's division-(the first), was formed to the left, and Potter's (2nd) to the right of the mined fort. Ferrero's colored division (4th) was massed in the belt of woods back of Fort Morton, about a quarter of a mile in our rear. Such was the disposition of the troops at 4 o'clock, when the mine was to have been sprung. The dawn was brightening and the slight mist of the night disappearing, so that we could already make out the enemy's works, when the moment came for the explosion; but we waited in vain; no explosion came. Then followed three-quarters of an hour-which seemed hours-of the most intense and anxious waiting. The fuse had been lighted at the proper time, but it had gone out at a point within the tunnel where it had been spliced. After waiting long enough to make sure that the fuse had failed, volunteers were called for to enter the mine and relight it. Two men of the 48th Pennsylvania volunteered and at about half past four relighted the fuse. The sun was just rising above the horizon, and the garrison of the mined fort and along the rebel works could be seen moving about, and their bugles were sounding the reveille. The morning was cloudless, and a deep, ominous stillness reigned over the scene. Yet within less than half a mile of the mined fort lay not less than 45,000 men, ready to spring up in a moment and move to the assault. It was just 4:45 when the explosion came, and our brigade still lay in the covered way, filling it from the creek back to the entrance near Fort Morton. The First Sharpshooters were at the head of the brigade, then came the 2nd Infantry, and then the 2oth Michigan. From the position we occupied-about 225 yards from the mined fort-we had a perfect view of the explosion. First there came a shock and tremor of the earth, and a deep trembling and rumbling like an earthquake; then a heaving and lifting of the fort and of the hill upon which it stood; then a monstrous tongue of flame shot fully two hundred feet into the air, followed by a vast volume of white smoke, like the discharge of an enormous cannon, then a great spout or fountain of red earth sprang into the air to a great height, mingled with men and guns, timbers and planks, and every kind of debris, all descending, spreading, whirling, scattering and falling with great concussions to the earth once more. It was a grand and terrible spectacle, such as none of us *had ever seen before, or will ever see again. More than 250 men of the garrison were involved in the destruction. Then a vast cloud of dust and smoke settled over the hill and hid it from our sight. Scarcely had the great fountains of earth settled back when our batteries opened from nearly a hundred guns upon every point of the rebel line from which an artillery fire was likely to come. The entire 123 530 HISTORIC MICHIGAN Confederate line seemed stunned at first, and to awaken slowly to the situation. Most of General Lee's army was absent on the north side of the James river, Hoke',s30 Bushrod Johnson's3' and Mahone's divisions holding the lines south of Petersburg, Hoke's division to the left, Johnson in the center extending as far as the Jerusalem plank road, and Mahone's extending from that point to the river above the town. Before the dust of the explosion had drifted away, Ledlie's (first) division climbed out of our breastworks and advanced in columns up the slope to the breach made by the mine. The "crater" formed by the explosion was about 120 feet long, 60 feet wide, and from 15 to 30 feet deep in the middle. This pit was surrounded on all sides by immense piles of red clay which had been thrown up by the explosion and had fallen for many yards around. In some places huge blocks of this clay containing many cubic yards each, gave evidence of the titanic force which had lifted them from the solid earth. Beyond the crater, in front and to the right and left, the ground was cut up by "bombproof" traverses, covered ways, ditches and excavations of all sorts, sizes and directions, until it had become a veritable labyrinth, over which it was physically impossible to move troops in any orderly formation. We saw Ledlie's troops go forward. They went up in column of fours. They were good troops, of proved valor on many a well-fought field. There were six regiments from Massachusetts, two from New York, two from Pennsylvania, and one from Maryland. In climbing out of our breastwork-which was head-high-and in getting through the abatis they were somewhat disordered, and in running up the slope to the rebel works the lines opened out and organizations became more or less mingled, but no more than often happens in such a charge. These eleven regiments in three small brigades, numbering perhaps three thousand men, poured directly into the crater and its immediate surroundings, and thereby became broken up and inextricably mingled and confused from the very start. General Ledlie with his staff-or most of them-remained inside our own breastworks. Just before the 20th Michigan advanced, somewhere from 7:30 to 8 a. m., the writer saw General Ledlie and a part of his staff, behind our breastworks near the Baxter road. None of his division was in sight from that point. The brigade and regimental commanders of Ledlie's division sought in vain to reform their troops, and to advance them to the crest, about five hundred yards beyond the crater. At one time, between eight and nine o'clock, a few hundred of them were formed in line on the open slope beyond, but only to be driven back in confusion. But to go back to the assault. At about 5:30 a. m. Potter's gallant division, of fourteen regiments, all but three from New England, went over our works to the right of the crater, and, sweeping forward up the slope, seized the Confederate works for a distance of 200 or 250 yards on the north of the mined fort, as far as a shallow ravine which came down through the rebel line at that point. On a slight rise of ground beyond this ravine was posted Wright's Confederate battery of four guns which enfiladed Potter's line, doing fearful execution. On THE CIVIL WAR 531 some parts of this line the rebels held one side of the breastwork, while our men held the other. One regiment of Potter's division (the 2nd IU. S.) advanced on the right of the ravine to within a few yards of Wright's battery, but were so enfiladed and raked by the guns of General Ranisom's32 Confederate brigade, further to the right, that it was impossible for them to take the battery or hold their position. By six o'clock the Confederates had recovered somewhat from their first surprise and paralysis, and began to concentrate a heavy and destructive fire of both artillery and musketry upon the breach. When Ledlie's division advanced to the crater, Wilcox's moved forward and took its place immediately in the rear of our breastworks, Hartranft's first brigade being in the first line, and our (Humphrey's) second brigade in the second line. Here we lay until nearly eight o'clock in column of regiments closed in mass. The second brigade then consisted of seven regiments under command of Colonel William Humphrey,-the Ist Michigan Sharpshooters, the 2nd Michigan Infantry, the 20oth Michigan, the 46th New York, the 5oth Penn., the 6oth Ohio, and the 24th New York Cavalry (dismounted). The brigade was divided into two wings or colum'ns. The right wing consisted of the three Michigan regiments in the order named. This wing was to attack the breastwork immediately on our left of the crater. The left wing consisted of the other four regiments in two lines,-the 46th New York and the 50th Penn. in the first line, and the 6oth Ohio, and the 24th New York Cavalry in the supporting line. This column was to go over the breastwork on the left of the "Horse-shoe" and assault and carry the two-gun rebel battery (Davidson's) on the Suffolk (or Baxter) road, and seize the rest of the line, from that road up to the point taken by the right wing. The attack was well planned and promised immediate success. Hartranft's brigade had charged soon after the advance of Ledlie's division, but receiving a severe fire from the Suffolk road battery, had obliqued to the right, and instead of taking the line on the left of the crater, as intended, it only increased the gorge and confusion in and about the crater. There was no more gallant soldier than General John F. Hartranft, and no braver men than those he commanded. The failure to take the line, in this insta'nce, was not for want of a good commander or of gallantry and discipline on the part of the troops. Now followed a long delay while efforts were made to get the five brigades already up to re-form and charge to the crest, but without success. At about 7:30 a. m. Ferrero's division of colored troops was brought forward with orders to form beyond the crater and advance to the crest. Our brigade was still lying in column of regiments behind our breastworks awaiting the order to advance, when the black division poured past in column of fours. They were all closed up, moved with alacrity and seemed full of enthusiasm. They went up on the run under a pretty sharp fire, stringing out somewhat as they ran. They also obliqued to the right 532 HISTORIC MICHIGAN and passed over the edge of the crater and out of our sight beyond. The time had now come for our brigade to go in, as all the rest of the corps had already advanced. No sooner had the last regiment of the black troops passed out than the order came, "Forward, Second Brigade." Colonel William Humphrey was commanding the brigade and Colonel Cutcheon the 20th regiment, with Maj. C. B. Grant33 second in command. The three Michigan regiments moved out promptly, the Sharpshooters on the right, the 2nd in the center, and the 20th on the left. The guide was right, and our regiment was ordered to keep closed up on the 2nd. No sooner had the 2nd cleared the breastwork than the order was given, "Forward, Twentieth!" Every man was in his place, and instantly they climbed over the breastwork, and as they struggled through the abatis a blast of canister from the two-gun battery swept through the line, leaving several of the men dead or lying upon the field; but the remnant pushed forward through a storm of bullets without flinching, until after a hard run of about two hundred yards they threw themselves upon the rebel breastworks some seventy-five or a hundred yards to the left of the crater. Meanwhile the other two Michigan regiments had obliqued to the right to gain protection from the contour of the ground, and disappeared from our view behind and beyond the crater. Our regiment numbered only about II5 guns when it started, and perhaps Ioo reached the rebel works. We were the extreme left regiment that reached that line that day. The regiment captured some thirty or forty of the enemy, including two commissioned officers, whom we sent to the rear. One of these officers was mortally wounded just outside his own line by a bullet from his own side. About this time the officers of the colored troops had succeeded in forming a considerable part of them beyond the crater, and started to put to the crest, but a brigade of Confederates sprang up from a shallow ravine which extended in an oblique direction across our right front. It was Malone's old brigade of Virginia regiments, and they fell upon the right flank of the colored troops with extreme fury and energy. Many of their white officers fell at the first onset, and the black division quickly gave back, carrying with them some regiments of Potter's division, which had formed beyond the rebel works for a charge to the crest of the ridge. The stampede continued in a confused mass back to our own breastworks, sweeping along hundreds upon hundreds, both black and white. It was during this stampede that General Hartranft, the ranking officer present at the crater, ordered the 20th Michigan up to the left of the fort to assist in checking the panic. Accordingly the regiment or what was left of them passed along the trench and into the left part of the fort, which had not been entirely destroyed, where they assisted as best they could in arresting the stampede. Here we came in touch with the other Michigan regiments of our division, or rather the men of those regiments, for all organization was pretty effectually lost. Here they remained through the remainder of that horrible day, or until about two o'clock p. m., when, pursuant to orders received by General Hartranft from General Burnside,84 the greater part of them THE CIVIL WAR 533 with ammunition exhausted, withdrew to our own lines, from which we had advanced in the morning. The day had been fearfully hot, the men lying on the red earth beneath the blazing noon-day sun without the slightest shelter and without water or food since the night before. The men of the 20th and of the other Michigan regiments participated in repelling several charges by which the enemy attempted to retake the crater, but it was as individuals rather than as organizations. The crater had become a veritable slaughter pen, packed as it was with the disorganized remnants of four divisions. It was at about I2:30 as stated by General Hartranft in his official report, that orders from General Burnside came into the crater that the troops should withdraw to our own lines, but the officers present with the troops in the crater were to use their own judgment as to the time and manner of withdrawing. This order was delivered to General Hartranft, who called together a few of the officers near him, including Brig. General S. C. Griffin35 and Colonel Cutcheon (who was the senior officer of the 2nd brigade present), to confer in regard to the execution of the order. It was decided to hold on until dark if practicable, in order to prevent the heavy loss of life which would be inevitable in a withdrawal by daylight, and steps were taken to cut a trench or small covered way back to a depression in front of our breastworks. But we were without tools or sand bags for the work, and worst of all, without a supply of ammunition. After this consultation-some time between one and two o'clockColonel Cutcheon, at the instance of General Hartranft, undertook to run the gauntlet back to our works to secure the much needed supply of ammunition, tools and sand bags. But before the brigade or division commanders could be found, or anything effective could be done, the final rebel charge was made upon the crater, and General Hartranft gave the orders to withdraw, which was done in much haste and necessary disorder. So ended this most promising but most disastrous attempt. Whatever may be said of other commands, it can be truly said of the Michigan iegiments that they behaved with their customary gallantry, and none of them performed its duty more worthily than the 20th regiment. Out of its small number six were killed, twenty-seven wounded and nineteen missing-total, fifty-three-almost fifty per cent. of the number that started on the charge. Many hundreds, of all our divisions, scattered through the surroundings of the crater did not receive the order to withdraw, and did not know of the withdrawal of their comrades., Soon after the rebels regained possession of the crater and these became prisoners. Among them were Lieutenant Barnard and the Color Guard of the 20th regiment. The story of the part taken by the four left regiments of the brigade can be told in a few words, in the language of the official report of Colonel Humphrey commanding the brigade, as follows: "At eight o'clock the three regiments on the right of the line charged across the fields as directed, taking the pits in their front and men by whom they were occupied. These were the three Michigan regiments. After clearing the pits the 46th New York hesitated, lost 534 HISTORIC MICHIGAN connection with the regiment on its right, broke and crowded through and carried with it the regiment on its left (the 5oth Penn.) to the road (the Baxter road). These regiments were afterwards put in the pits forming our front line, where they remained to this time (Aug. 4, I864). The regiments that reached the enemy's works (the Michigan regiments) helped hold those works against three assaults of the enemy, and were among the last to obey the order to retire at 2:30 p. m." General 0. B. Wilcox, in his official report, makes substantially the same statement, but is even more severe in his condemnation of the troops that broke. The battle of the Crater proved one of the most disastrous affairs of the whole war, and its effect was most depressing upon the army and the country. General Meade,3 commanding the army of the Potomac, asked for a Court of Inquiry, which was ordered and met at headquarters of the Second Corps, Aug. 6, and continued its session until Sept. 9. The court was composed of Gen. W. S. Hancock,87 Gen. R. B. Ayres38 and Gen. Nelson A. Miles39-all named by General Meade. As a result Gen. Burnside was relieved of his command, and did not return to active duty; General Ledlie was transferred to another field, and served no more with the Army of the Potomac. Other officers were visited with more or less censure, because they did not accompany their troops. A congressional committee on "The conduct of the War" also investigated and made a lengthy report on the disaster. It is proper here to say that the conduct of the Michigan regiments and of the 20th Michigan in particular was entirely satisfactory to their division brigade and regimental commanders. The assault did not fail by reason of want of courage or sacrifice on the part of the men. There was a superabundance of sacrifice. The 9th Corps lost in killed 50 officers and 423 enlisted men; wounded I24 officers and 1,522 enlisted men, missing 79 officers and 1,277 enlisted men. Many of these reported "missing" afterwards proved to be killed or wounded, making a total loss to our Corps of 3,475. These were the figures of the official reports immediately after the battle. The corrected figures increased the number of killed and wounded and reduced the number of the missing. General A. A. Humphrey, who was General Meade's Chief of Staff, places the loss of the 9th Corps at 3,500, being vastly greater than the entire American loss by land and sea, in the whole Spanish-American war. Michigan men and Michigan commanders bore so important a part in this assault that it seems quite proper that a record should be made thereof in this Historical Society. The length of this paper forbids the discussion of the causes of the failure, except as they are manifest in the foregoing history. WAR TIMES IN TIE COPPER MINES By John Iarris Forster Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XVIII, 375-382 HIRTY years have elapsed since the first gun was fired upon Fort Sumter. To a whole generation the war on the Union is only a matter of history. To those who participated in it on the battlefield, in THE CIVIL WAR 535 the hospitals, or in homes of sorrow and desolation, time is kindly casting a mist over the deep tragedy, softening its outlines and making more prominent the great fact that while God punishes nations for their sins, He is not slow to forgive them when they turn to righteousness. Since the accursed blot of slavery has been washed out of our national escutcheon by the precious tears and blood of patriotic men and women, our beloved and united country has prospered beyond measure. When doubt became a certainty and a war upon the Union was determined, the people of those days were terribly shaken; horror and dismay filled all hearts. The union-loving north was stirred to its very depths; the north frontier settlements, as well as the older settled portions of the land, were alike deeply affected. In extreme northern Michigan, far from the "sutilny south," in the copper and iron mines of Lake Superior, there were found, at the beginning of the war, a few feeble and struggling colonies composed of merchants, miners, artisans and laborers. Braving the isolation of a savage wilderness and the extremes of cold common to those high latitudes, these people had engaged hopefully and bravely in the development of mining industries. But slow progress had been made and most of the enterprises in hand were in the experimental stages of adventure. The copper mines of Portage Lake, in Houghton county, especially, were just struggling into existence and had no certain footing. Great fears were entertained that a prolonged war, begun with financial troubles and a general upheaval of society, would utterly destroy mine industries. The trials and tribulations which those industries subsequently endured almost justified the prophecies of evil. But a kind providence, in the end, dissipated all the dark clouds and granted a degree of prosperity wholly unexpected. As the war progressed the demand for the product of our mines, copper, became so great that mining was stimulated beyond all precedent. The other mines increased their forces to the utmost capacity, while explorations for the discovery of new deposits of mineral, the opening of new mines, became the engrossing business of the time. Population rapidly increased and the work of building towns, making roads and clearing the forests, planting machinery, erecting stamp mills and extending commercial intercourse with the outside world engaged our attention. In the earlier days the price of copper rated low, twelve to thirteen cents per pound, hardly a remunerative return for investments made in that remote wilderness region, when supplies and provisions were necessarily dear. Before the close of the war copper ingots ran up to fifty cents per pound. That extraordinary price caused great prosperity. With these preliminary remarks the writer now begs to give a description of the social and moral condition of the mining people of Portage Lake (of Portage, as it was called) during the great rebellion. Two hundred and eighty miles beyond the Sault, or six hundred and 536 HISTORIC MICHIGAN fifty miles northwest of Detroit, following the line of lakes and rivers was situated Portage Lake, which lake afforded access to the heart of the mining region. This lake resembles an estuary from the ocean, and is like a wide river, nineteen miles long, filling a remarkable geological trough traversing the trap range at right angles to the formation. It forms a spacious and safe harbor. On its shores, at the time of which I write, two hamlets, since grown into the cities of Houghton and Hancock, were struggling into life, while back from the lake, on the elevated plateaus, were to be seen the rude mining camps, half hidden in the primeval woods. The only way in which Portage could be reached was by water, and for nearly six months each year that way was closed by ice. There were no wagon or other roads leading out of the country. Three hundred miles of unbroken wilderness intervened between these isolated settlements and the more settled portions of the states, where wagon roads and railroads were common. The only paths through the forests were obscure Indian trails. These were followed by dog trains, carrying fortnightly mails and by exigent travelers on snow-shoes. Practically, the mining people were shut up in their snowbound homes, left to their own resources. Mining supplies, provisions and merchandise sufficient for six months' consumption were brought in necessarily before the close of navigation. There was no remedy for any shortage in these supplies. Sometimes, by accidents in navigation, some necessary supplies failed to be delivered and there was consequently much privation, if not actual suffering. Thus situated our mining people had to rely upon themselves for social pleasures and entertainment. The leading people, mine managers, merchants, surgeons and artisans, were mostly Americans, a mere handful in the mass. They had migrated from the eastern cities, and brought with them the culture and refinement acquired there. Their families seemed much out of place in those rude settlements. But those families of women and children exerted a wholesome influence, enlivening society and improving the moral atmosphere. These people accommodated themselves to the trying situation admirably. The exacting formalities and etiquette deemed so necessary elsewhere found no advocates on this remote frontier. These few families met in society like brothers and sisters. Their dwelling places were small and rudely built and furnished, but they furnished ample room for generous conviviality and hospitality. The ladies, laying aside their silks and laces, appeared at evening parties in neat muslin growns, while the gentlemen, with still greater freedom, joined in the country dances, arrayed in all the glory of moccasins, red sashes and flowing shirtsleeves of blue or red flannel. Doctor F., the Hon. S. L. S.40 and the writer once had the honor of dancing the horn-pipe, for the belt, before an appreciative bevy of fair lady judges. During the long, dark, dreary winter evenings of that north land, dancing and card playing were the only recreations. People came miles through the snow drifts and the intense cold for the sake of society; and they all enjoyed themselves right heartily. Their resources being so limited, they made the most of them. THE CIVIL WAR 537 The great bulk of the population was made up of miners and laborers, of many nationalities-some newly imported having no special regard for America or Americans. As a class they were rude and turbulent, much addicted to beer and whisky. These people were constantly at war among themselves. A Cornishman could not abide an Irishman, and vice versa. So long as these rival factions contended with each other the rest of the community were not seriously disturbed, but rather enjoyed the scrimmage, but as the war on the Union progressed, insubordination against legitimate authority became the rule. The laws had but little restraining effect. The handful of Americans in authority were often placed in a critical and dangerous position, and it was impossible to call upon outside aid in case of need. The winter of i861-62 was a most trying one. As was the case elsewhere, the dread certainty of a long and bloody war, unsettled business and left good men in doubt and fear. Bad men were encouraged to lawlessness and placed themselves in threatening attitudes. As the close of navigation in the fall of I86I drew near great difficulty was experienced in providing adequate supplies for the mines. Indeed there was a shortage in many things, except whisky, which, under the circumstances should not have been imported at all. That fiery liquid was the cause of untold troubles-fighting, maiming and manslaughter. It was said indeed that the number of barrels of whisky brought in exceeded that of flour. Credit was greatly shaken in eastern markets and the old banking system was destroyed. Greenbacks had not yet appeared; gold and silver were not available. The mining supplies and, indeed, all merchandise, had been obtained on long credits. The copper shipments in the spring were relied upon to meet all obligations. A credit of several hundred thousand dollars was necessary to carry the community through the winter. It had also been the custom to ship currency by the last boats of the season into the country for monthly payments to miners and contractors. This currency, permeating the whole district, kept business going. But, there being no currency or coin available, we entered into winter without a dollar in the safe. The people at the mines were fed and clothed from the mine stores but there was no money. Ere long there was a clamor for money. Credits for beer and whisky had to be met and outside of the mines, in the towns, the merchants and other business men were pinched because there was no pay day at the mines, which, in those days, were the sole fountains of wealth or income. Strikes soon followed and the state of affairs was critical in the extreme. The looting of storehouses, the burning of stamp mills and engine houses was threatened, while work in the mines dragged slowly along, or was suspended. Finally a remedy on the currency question was suggested and adopted. The mines went to making paper money on their own account. The necessity seemed to justify a measure not strictly lawful. Promises to pay in the shape of neatly engraved bills, of the denominations of five and ten dollars, were sent out from Boston. These bills were signed by the clerk and agent of the mines and paid out to the men. 538 HISTORIC MICHIGAN They became good currency throughout the mining region. The writer has not forgotten what an onerous task it was every pay day to sign his name to four or five thousand shin-plasters. Long after the emergency had passed and greenbacks had become common, the mines continued to issue their own currency, and the practice had become common all through the mining region of copper and iron. Nor was the practice discontinued until the law officers intervened. This mine currency was finally redeemed at the chief offices in the east. It helped to tide over a great difficulty. During the war the general government under the plea of self-defense and self-preservation may have done some questionable acts as did our more humble mining corporations. The demoralizing effect of the war during the earlier periods was observable even in the remote mining districts. There was the impression that the country was ruined; that a broken and dissevered Union would ultimately become a fact. The foreign portion of our mining populace were seriously affected; their conduct became restless, insolent and aggressive. They refused to work steadily; they drank deeper than ever and their fighting propensities became ferocious. They seemed to delight in all kinds of lawlessness. Perhaps they entertained the idea that they were soon to become masters of the country through the weakness of the American government. Be that as it may, brutal outrages for a time prevailed. The most peaceful and unoffending were waylaid, assaulted and so cruelly treated that many died. Lawabiding men armed themselves with revolvers and constantly stood at guard. It was dangerous to go out at night. There was nearly a reign of terror. At the mines the officers organized a secret military society, and in some closed upper room they were frequently drilled in the manual of arms. Before the close of navigation, as a precautionary measure, we had had fifty muskets sent to us, which were secretly stored. At the mine, under the management of the writer, a portion of the men finally became utterly lawless and regardless of their own interests, they for some reason only known to themselves, threatened to burn the stamp mill and destroy the inmates. They actually made a demonstration one Sunday evening, but the superintendent of the mill was prepared for them. IIe barricaded the doors and windows; he provided his force of twenty men and boys with missiles in the shape of selected copper rock; he got up steam and attached the hose to the boilers, proposing to treat his assailants with copious discharges of hot water and steam. The rioters warned by the writer, of the ample preparations made for their reception, failed to attack the mill. This recreant conduct deprived the superintendent of the pleasure of testing the merits of his hot water defensive appliances. But times fails me to give other examples of the riotous conduct of those besotted men. The uncomfortable winter of I86i-62 in the mines will never be forgotten by those peaceful citizens who were cooped up there and had to face the music nolens volens. In the third year of the war labor became very scarce. Business THE CIVIL WAR 539 was very active, and mining was greatly stimulated by the demand for copper at the ordnance department, and men drifted away into the army. Every call for soldiers was speedily responded to. The older mines were running full force while many new mining enterprises had been undertaken. High wages failed to entice men to the mines. In desperation mine managers sent to Europe for miners. Their agents found them in Sweden. Ninety thousand dollars were subscribed by the several mining companies, to cover the cost of the importation. These foreigners came under contract; they were guaranteed liberal wages, a'nd after they had paid back, in labor, in monthly installments, the cost of their transportation to this country, they would be free to do as they pleased. Arrived at the mines unexpectedly most of these miners refused to go to work for the companies which had been to the great expense of bringing them to this country. They could not be made to work. They boldly and defiantly resisted all efforts to make them fulfill their written contracts. They were now in America, where they had desired to be, and that was enough for them. Of course the mining companies lost most of the money invested in this disastrous immigration venture. A few Swedes went to work and became good citizens. They were the van-guard of the Scandanavian immigration, which has in later years added many thousand to the populatio'n of Michigan. Good, industrious, intelligent people most of them are. It was evident that a majority of the miners imported at the time referred to were of the baser sort-the scum of cities and discharged soldiers. But, after all, they were made available by the mining community. At that time there was a call for two companies of men for the army. Tempted by a bounty of three hundred dollars each, our obdurate Swedes were induced to enlist. They were marched to the front, but whether they ever became food for "villainous gunpowder" the writer never had the pleasure of knowing. During the season of navigation the fast passenger steamers brought the mails and newspapers regularly. Each steamer day was anxiously looked for; news from the seat of war was in demand. All good citizens were elated or depressed as the news was good or bad. On one occasion, about mid-summer, there was a terrible commotion. The good steamer "Northern Light" came steaming up the lake with flags flying and whistle blowing continuously. As she passed the stamp mills they too began to blow their whistles furiously; the tug boats and steamers in port joined in the hubbub. The townspeople on the shores of the lake, the miners back on the hills, alarmed by the unusual noise, all rushed for the docks. The shores were black with hurrying people. As the "Northern Light" neared the dock, Captain Spaulding, waving his hat, shouted "A great Union victory-Vicksburg has fallen." The answering shout that went up from that excited crowd made the very hills tremble. Captain Spaulding was the hero of the hour. General Grant could hardly have received a greater ovation. Snow-bound and ice-bound was this isolated community when the news reached them that the beloved Lincoln had been basely assas 540 EHISTORIC MICHIGAN sinated.4" Horror and grief took possession of every heart. There were cries of vengeance mingled with their sorrow. A public meeting was called. In response a vast crowd assembled in the snow in front of the Douglass house, and public speakers gave expression to the universal feeling of sorrow and dismay that the occasion called forth. During the progress of the war the necessity for a better mode of inter-communication with our fellow citizens in the states south of us became very pressing. Dog trains must give way to wagons and coaches. It was determined to build a wagon road from Keweenaw Point, to the settlements on the south, in Wisconsin. This road was to be used especially in the winter time. Should there be a pressing demand for copper during the ice embargo, the government could supply its needs by this important road. Congress took a favorable view of the measure and made a valuable grant of land to be used in the construction of the road. The road was laid out and placed under contract for construction. It was used one or two winters by stage lines and some freight was hauled over it into the mines. But no copper was ever hauled out. The road was long, circuitous and poor. In fact it was a failure for the purposes intended. The individuals who obtained the land grant were about the only ones benefited. More direct communication by railroads soon caused the great military road to be forgotten by those who had expended so much eloquence upon its initiation. At the close of the war of the Union, the mines were in a flourishing condition. Great progress had been made. The forests were cleared, new mines opened, new discoveries made, while the old mines had attained a sure footing and prosperous condition. Villages sprang up and grew amazingly, in population, wealth and refinement. High schools and churches occupied prominent positions on the upland terraces overlooking Portage Lake. Far out in the country, splendid wagon roads were made to reach thriving inland settlements and the hitherto silent primeval forests gave way to the advance of civilization. The output of copper had exceeded the most sanguine expectations, and the entire community was growing rich out of the product of the proved valuable mines. Thus it is seen that the war, instead of bringing ruin and disaster as was at first anticipated, to those new, struggling, mining communities of the Lake Superior region, was the cause of rapid development and great prosperity.42 Notes and Additional Readings GEOGRAPHIC SETTING 1. Hunt's Merchants' Mag., LVIII, 109. 2. Guide Book No. 5; Can. Geol. Survey, 1913, 76; Atlas, Vol. II, Wis. Geol. Survey, 1877, plate IV; Prof. Pope, 71, U. S. Geol. Survey, plate I. 3. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist. of State of New York, V, 727. 4. S. E. Dawson, North America, I, 49 (Sanford's Compendium). 5. For additional reading see: Physical, Industrial and Sectional Geography of Michigan. Kalamazoo, 1914. The best extended account of the subject. Suggestive Outline in Geography for the Schools of Michigan. By R. D. Calkins, Bulletin No. 22, 1907, State Department of Public Instruction, Lansing. Primary Lessons in the Geography of Michigan. By Hubert M. Skinner. Chicago, Crosby and Co., 1905. Dodge's Geography of Michigan. By Mark S. W. Jefferson. New York, Rand McNally and Co., 1910. Material for Geography of Michigan. By Mark S. W. Jefferson. Ypsilanti, 1906. Reprinted from Normal College News. Note on the Expansion of Michigan. By Mark S. W. Jefferson. In Fourth Report of the Michigan Academy of Science. Some Geographic Influences in the Settlement of Michigan and in the Distribution of Its Population. By George J. Miller. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, XLV, No. 5. Geography of Michigan. By C. T. McFarlane. N. Y., Amer. Book Co., 1898. II PREHISTORIC MAN IN MICHIGAN 1. See map 8, p. 376, in Part 1, 14th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, plate XLVI. 2. Ibid, map 9, p. 380. Plate XLVII. 3. Ibid, map 11, p. 388. Plate XLIX. 4. Ibid, map op. p. 383. Plate L. 5. Ibid, map 12, p. 396. Plate LI. 6. Ibid, map 15, p. 408. Plate LIV. 7. J. B. N. Hewitt, "Hochelaga," in Handbook of American Indians, part 1, p. 555. 8. P. 756, "Tionontati," in Handbook, part 2. 9. Based on map in "Indian Land Cessions in the United States," 18th Annual Rep., Bur. of Amer. Ethnology. 10. Page 12, "Native Village and Village Sites east of the Mississippi," in Bulletin 69, Bur. of Amer. Ethnology. 11. Pages 380-381, in National Museum Report, 1896. 12. "Did the Indian Know the Mastodon?" by J. L. B. Taylor, in Natural History, XXI, 1921, 591-597. 13. "Mound Explorations," 519, 12th Annual Rep., Bur. of Amer. Ethnology, 1890-91. 14. Page 363, in The Wisconsin Archeologist, V, Nos. 3 and 4. 15. Page 518, in "Mound Explorations," 12th Ann. Rep., Bur. Amer. Ethnology, 1890 -91. 16. Pages 29, 30, 31 in "Native Cemeteries and Forms of Burial East of the Mississippi." Bulletin 71, Bur. of Amer. Ethnology. 17. Twelfth Ann. Report, 1890-91, Bur. Amer. Ethnology, p. 518. 18. Smithsonian Report, 1873, "Mound Builders, etc.," 381. 19. Publication 1, Biological Series. Michigan Geological and Biological Survey, 67-89. 20. Bulletin 69, Bur. Amer. Ethnology, "Native Villages, etc.," 26. 21. Ibid, plates at back, 4, 6, 8, 9, 16. 22. Berrien County Directory and History, 1871, 281. 23. Handbook of American Indians, 811. 24. "Ancient Copper Workers on Isle Royale," by George R. Fox, in The Wisconsin Archeologist, July, 1911, 76 ff. 25. Smithsonian Report, 1873, 384-390. 26. Josiah Priest, American Antiquities and Discoveries in the West (1833) 280. 27. Fifth Ann. Rep., Bur. of Amer. Ethnology, 10 and 11. 28. Twentieth Ann. Rep., Bur. of Amer. Ethnology, "Aboriginal Pottery of Eastern United States," 22. 29. See maps, op. p. 256, in Stone Ornarents of the American Indian, by Warren K. Morehead, 1917. 30. "Mound Builders and Platycnemism in Michigan," in Smithsonian Report, 1873. 31. Article on "Anatomy," p. 55, Handbook of American Indians. 32. Gilman, "Certain Characteristics Pertaining to Ancient Man in Michigan," Smithsonian Report, 1875, 234-245. 33. For additional readings see: Prehistoric and Modern Copper Mines of Lake Superior. By Samuel L. Smith.-M. P. H.C., XXXIX, 137-151. The Antiquities of Michigan, Their Value and Impending Loss. By Harlan I. Smith, American Museum of Natural History, New York.-M. P. H. C., XXXI, 238-252. Evidences of Prehistoric Man on Lake Superior. By John T. Reeder.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 110-118. The Mound Builders and Their Work in Michigan. By Henry H. Riley.-M. P. H. C., III; 41-48. A Minor Mystery of Michigan Archeology. By George R. Fox.-Mich. Hist. Mag., IV, 583 -587. The Mound Builders in Michigan. By Henry Gillman.-M. P. H. C., II, 40-52. Ancient Garden Beds of Michigan. By Bela Hubbard.-M. P. H. C., II, 21-35. Saginaw County as a Center of Aboriginal Population. By Fred Dustin.-M. P. H. C., XXXIX, 251-260. Mounds and Mound Builders of the Saginaw Valley. By W. R. McCormick.-M. P. H. C., IV, 379-383. The Rabbit River Mounds and Circles. By H. D. Post.-M. P. H. C., III, 296-298. ii HISTORIC MICHIGAN III MICHIGAN INDIANS OF THE HISTORIC PERIOD 1. Governor of Michigan in 1846, U. S. Senator 1847-53, and nearly 88 years of age at the writing of this article (1894). 2. The Huron rivers were: A. The river running through Detroit, first called the Huron and afterward the Savoyard. It is now lost to sight and its old channel is used for a covered sewer. B. The present Clinton river, passing through Pontiac. C. The Cass river called in the Saginaw treaty of 1819, "The River Huron which empties into the Saginaw river," afterward called the Cass river. D. The present Huron river flowing through Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and into Lake Erie. E. The Huron river of the upper peninsula which flows into Lake Superior at or near Huron Bay, above L'Anse. It still bears the name. There was still another river known as the Huron which flowed into Lake Superior near the west end of it or near the place where the Hurons first settled, but it is probable that it is on the Wisconsin side of the line. Judge Campbell, in an article published in the Magazine of Western History, in the November number, 1887, alludes to the confusion occasioned by the multiplicity of Huron rivers, and he names three as the source of the trouble, namely: the Clinton and the Savoyard, each once known as the Huron, and the river still called by that name and running into Lake Erie. It is evident that the act of the territorial council above referred to escaped his notice and that he was not aware of the existence of the above mentioned Huron river which flows into Lake Superior, or that the river now known as the Cass ever bore the name of Huron. But neither the restrictive act of the old territorial council nor the confusion of names which gave rise to it has been able to banish the name of Huron from the topography of Michigan. Apart from the noble ocean-like lake that bounds it on the east Michigan has a county, a city and three townships under corporate organizations, each bearing the name of Huron. We have also within the borders of the state a Huron range of mountains, a Huron Bay and two Huron rivers; and the name of Huron is borne by many a favorite street in our cities and villages. The name itself, moreover, has a history which has a tinge of the romantic. It is a word that belonged to no primitive Indian language. It is a name never adopted by any Indian nation. It came from the French. Tradition says that in their first interview with this tribe the appearance of the savages seemed to them so ludicrous that with a shout of derision they applied to them the opprobrious term which they ever afterwards used as the name of the tribe. That portion of the tribe which settled at and near Sandusky were fortunate enough to resume and retain the true name of their tribe, or rather one of the several forms of that name, and were ever after known as Wyandots. The portion of the tribe which, as we have seen, made their temporary abiding places at various points in Michigan, were here known as Hurons, but at their final resting place near the mouth of the Detroit river they also resumed their original name and were known as Wyandots, thus bequeathing their spurious name of Huron to the places of their temporary residence, but in their latter days and in their treaty stipulations bearing their aboriginal name of Wyandot. 3. The petition referred to signed by "Maera or Walk-in-the-Water" and seven others was dated February 5, 1812, and was sent by the president to congress on the 28th of the same month. In it they set forth that they have peaceably cultivated the land they lived on from time immemorial. They allege that they have built valuable houses and improvements on the land and have learned the use of the plough, etc., and they pray for a title which shall prevent their being dispossessed at the end of fifty years as provided by the act of congress. These representations as to the improvement of the land, I believe to be correct. I was on the ground in 1833 and there yet remained evidences of the cultivation of the land. A comfortable house, said to have been the residence of the chief, Walk-in-the-Water. was still standing. It was near the bank of the Detroit river, a short distance below the site of the present village of Trenton. I recollect that there was at Brownstone an orchard of well grown apple trees which were reputed to have been set out by the Indians and I was recently told by one familiar with that region, that an old apple tree is now occasionally found among the forest trees which have grown up since the Indians departed. The tract of 4,996 acres of land which was assigned to the Wyandots in 1818 to occupy as long as they pleased and which was their last resting place in Michigan, is situated on both sides of the Huron river near Flat Rock and in the present township of Huron, Wayne county. 4. Stockton vs. Williams, I Doug. Rep., 506; U. S. vs. Clark, 9 Peters Rep., 168. 5. For additional readings see: Indians of the Great Lakes Region. In Parkins' Historical Geography of Detroit, Mich. Hist. Comm. Publications, University Series, III, 12-19. The Michigan Indians. By Melvin D. Osband.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 697-709. Indians of the Grand River Valley. By Dwight Goss.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 172-190. Our Forerunners: Something about a Vanished People. By A. D. P. VanBuren.-M. P. H. C., XVIII, 600-605. The Potawatomies. By Hon. A. B. Copley. -M. P. H. C., XIV, 256-267. Chief Pokagon and His Book. By Fred Dustin.-Mich. Hist. Mag., VI, 565-572. Indian Reminiscences of Calhoun and Kalamazoo Counties. By A. D. P. VanBuren.M. P. H. C., X, 147-174. A work that every student of Indian life should have is the Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, in two volumes, which can be secured at a nominal price ($3.00) from the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C. Numerous articles on various aspects of Indian life in different parts of the state may be found in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections by use of the Index volumes, under "Indians." IV INDIAN CUSTOMS, LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE 1. Read before the Section of Anthropology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the 45th meeting, Buffalo, 1896. NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS iii 2. The milky way. 3. For additional readings see: Indian Legends of Northern Michigan. By John C. Wright.-Mich. Hist. Mag., II, 81-89. The Allegory of Winter and Summer.-M. P. H. C., XXXII, 313. Wanishish-Eynn.-M. P. H. C., XXXII, 316. Wa-wa-be-zo-win. —M. P. H. C., XXXII, 318. The Legend of Me-nah-sa-gor-ning. By Samuel M. Leggett.-Mich. Hist. Mag., V, 356 -363. The Invasion of the Saginaw Valley. By Harlan I. Smith.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 642 -644. Algic Researches. By Henry R. Schoolcraft. N. Y., Harpers, 1839. The Indian Fairy Book, From the Original Legends. By Florence Choate and Elizabeth Curtis. N. Y., Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1916. Legends of Michigan and the Old Northwest. By Flavius J. Littlejohn. Allegan, Mich., 1875. The Crooked Tree. Indian Legends of Northern Michigan. By John C. Wright. Harbor Springs, Mich., privately printed, 1917. Echoes of the Forest. By William Edgar Brown. Boston, Badger, 1918. Legendary Lore of Mackinac. By Lorena M. Page. Cleveland, published privately, 1901. Myths and Legends of the Mackinacs and the Lake Region. By Grace F. Kane. Cincinnati, Editor Pub. Co., 1897. V FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT 1. Read before the Mich. Pion. Society, Feb. 6, 1878. 2. Jean Nicolet, not Champlain, was probably the first white man to have come within view of any part of what is now Michigan. In 1634 Champlain, then governor of Canada, sent Nicolet on a voyage to find a route to the South Sea and the people of China, and to extend the French fur trade. In a birch-bark canoe, accompanied by Huron Indians, Nicolet went from Three Rivers, Canada, to Green Bay, Wis., following the route by the Ottawa trail to Georgian Bay, the Sault, and lakes Huron and Michigan. Judge Campbell is quite right in questioning Champlain's priority. 3. Near Ludington, Michigan. VI JESUIT MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 1. A donne, at the period under consideration, was a pious young celibate attached to a Jesuit mission, who performed menial duties and filled the part of acolyte in religious ceremonies. 2. A chapter printed in advance of the publication of Mr. Wood's Historic Mackinac (Macmillan Co., N. Y.) 3. Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, 199. 4. Jesuit Relations, LIV, 169, 195. 5. Ibid, LIV, 187. 6. Ibid, LIV, 189, 191. 7. Ibid, LV, 169, 173. 8. Ibid, LV, 173. 9. Ibid, LV, 157-167. 10. Ibid, LV, 167. 11. Thwaites, Father Marquette, 105. 12. Ibid, 107-109. 13. Shea, Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 61. 14. Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, 202. 15. Shea's edition, II, 105. 16. Shea's edition of Hennepin's Description de la Louisiane, 97. 17. Brown, Two Missionary Priests at Mackinac, 11. See also Shea's discussion, in the Catholic World for March, 1877, pp. 273-274; also Marquette's letter in Jesuit Relations, LVII, 249. 18. Jesuit Relations, LVII, 249 ff. 19. Shea's translation, Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 62. 20. Constance Fenimore Woolson, "Fairy Island," in Putnam's Magazine, July, 1870, 63-64. 21. This is an error, according to Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, p. 244. Speaking of the return of Marquette and Joliet, he says: "Leaving Marquette at Mackinac, in much need of rest, for he had been greviously ill on the return trip, Joliet passed on to the Sault Ste. Marie." 22. Jesuit Relations, LVIII, 95. For Joliet and his relations to Marquette, see Shea's edition of Charlevoix, N. Y., 1900, III, 179 n. 23. Thwaites, Father Marquette, 138. See Dablon's appreciation of Joliet, Jesuit Relations, LIX, 89. 24. For Marquette's journal of his first voyage, see Jesuit Relations, LIX, 87-163; Shea, Discovery of the Mississippi, 3-52; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXI, 467-488. For the unfinished journal of his second voyage, together with Dablon's account, see Jesuit Relations, LIX, 165-211; Shea, Discovery of the Mississippi, 53-66; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXI, 488-494. Parkman gives a clear and appreciative account in La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, 60-82. For an interesting phase of these explorations see a paper by L. G. Weld, Joliet and Marquette in Iowa. Mr. George A. Baker, Secretary of the Northern Indiana Historical Society, has contributed an important geographical paper on The St. Joseph-Kankakee Portage. Its location and use by Marquette, La Salle and the French voyageurs. 25. Woolson, op. cit., p. 64. See Dablon's account in Jesuit Relations, LIX, 193-205. 26. Walter March, p. 22, note. 27. Hedges, Father Marquette, 88-90. For details, see Father Jacker's long and excellent account, showing the great care used in the resarches for identification; it is contained in Shea's "Romance and Reality of the Death of Father Marquette and the Recent Discovery of the Remains," Catholic World, March, 1877, 276-281. Compare Mr. Murray's letter, in Hedge's Father Marquette, 98-107. See also the contribution by the Rev. George Duffield, in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., II, 134-145. 28. See Father Dablon's fine tribute in Jesuit Relations, LIX, 207; also that of the Rev. T. J. Campbell, S. J., in Pioneer Priests of America, III, 182. For several good sketches in addition to the references in this chapter, see C. I. Walker "Father Marquette and the Early Jesuits of Michigan," in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., VIII, 368 if, and an article entitled, "F. James Marquette, S. J.," in Catholic World for February, 1873, 688 -702. 29. For additional readings see: The Jesuits in Michigan. By John E. Day. -M. P. H. C., XXXII, 405-409. Father Marquette and the Early Jesuits of iv HISTORIC MICHIGAN Michigan. By C. I. Walker.-M. P. H. C., VIII, 368-392. Pere Marquette, the Missionary Explorer. By Hon. Thomas A. E. Weadock, M. C.-M. P. H. C., XXI, 447-467. Early French Missions on the Saginaw. By Fred Carlisle.-M. P. H. C., XXII, 244-246. Fort St. Joseph-The Mission, Trading Post and Fort, Located About One Mile South of Niles, Michigan. By L. H. Beeson.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 179-186. Two Early Missionaries to the Indians. By Rt. Rev. Mgr. Frank A. O'Brien, LL.D.-M. P. H. C., XXXIX, 219-239. Claude Jean Allouez, S. J. (1613-1689). By John A. Lemmer.-Mich. Hist. Mag., II, 781 -794. VII CADILLAC 1. This article rewritten from the following papers: Cadillac, by Alfred Russell, read before the Michigan Society, Sons of American Revolution, at Detroit April 15, 1901-Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXIX, pp. 318-321; A Visit to the Home of Cadillac, by C. M. Burton, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 105-109. 2. For additional readings see: The Cadillac Papers.-M. P. H. C., XXXIII, 36-715, and XXXIV, 11-302. These papers are from the Burton Historical Collection, now a part of the Detroit Public Library. In each volume of these documents there is a table of contents. Vol. XXXIII has for frontispiece a reproduction from the Detroit Art Museum of the painting presented to Detroit by the French Republic, representing Louis XIV delivering to Cadillac the ordinance and grant for the foundation of the city of Detroit. VIII THE FUR TRADE 1. Charles T. Harvey, of Toronto, Canada, general agent for the building of the Sault canal, in his reminiscences, quotes Missionary MacDougall as follows: The practice of the Hudson Bay company was to select indigent, hardy Scotch lads and send them to the vast wilds of northern Canada to become expert trappers and, by encouraging them to marry Indian wives and raise families, to attach them to certain localities or districts for life, where they proved most valuable retainers or semiofficial agents in training the native Indians to rely upon catching furs and dealing with the company for subsistence. One of the rules of the fur company was that their high grade trappers, like himself, were to sign enlistment papers for a term of five years at a head office of the district before a chief factor. If, during that term, they left their districts without permission they were liable to be apprehended and forcibly sent back with heavy fines imposed for neglect of their vocation. When the time of enlistment came near the close of a successful term they were treated with special attention by the post officers, their families were invited to come with them and trade freely; jollity, feasting and drinking were in order until renewal of enlistment papers were signed and a new five years' life of exposure and hardship entered upon. In dealing with the company no money was used. The unit of value was a beaver skin of average quality. A certain number of various inferior skins, like muskrats and rabbits were worth a beaver skin. On the other hand, a silver grey fox pelt was worth so many beavers, and so on. The representative emblem or check for a beaver skin was a peculiar water-marked goose quill made in London which could not be counterfeited in that country. Hence, when a trapper's furs were brought to the post, inspected and tallied off, he received so many goose quills. These he took to the company's stores where he could exchange them for ammunition, clothing, food supplies or fancy articles of merchandise, as he chose. In case he did not come annually he could send his furs, which were credited to him on account against articles bartered for. 2. He was one of the partners in the Northwest Fur company sent to Detroit in 1784 with goods on condition of his pushing into the interior or Indian territory. After "the severest struggle" known they were given a share of trade in 1787. He was sent to explore the northwest and discovered and named Mackenzie river. He was the first man to cross the Rocky Mountains and reached the Pacific coast June, 1793. He accumulated considerable wealth in the fur trade and wrote a book on his voyages, which he dedicated to George III. He started a rival fur company which was absorbed by the Hudson Bay company. He became a member of the Canadian parliament. In 1812 he married a Miss Mackenzie and moved to Scotland where he died on his way from his Avoch home to Edinburgh, March 11, 1820. 3. William P. Moore, of Brandt, Mich., writes as follows: My grandfather was James Pearson, a fur trader and clerk for the Hudson Bay company in the seventeenth century. He worked twelve years for twelve dollars a month. He was a native of the Orkney Islands and of Scotch descent. His headquarters were at Winnipeg, where he traded powder and shot and rum and such commodities as were usually kept in an Indian store. He bought and carried his furs all the way from the Rocky Mountains to Montreal. In the fall and winter he had to fish and hunt for his living. Twice a week the company furnished him flour enough to make a pot-pie. His bread was the liver of the game he caught, and he had to depend on his traps for his breakfast. He said he had sometimes to put seven meals into one. The Indians were victims to the influence of liquor, and he said when the braves got drunk the squaws would steal their knives and guns; when the squaws got drunk the Indians would watch them. In the spring the furs were put up in eighty-pound packs and put in bark canoes and carried down the rivers or lakes until they came to rapids and then they had to be carried or portaged as they call it, on their backs to the next deep water. They used a tumpline or strap across their foreheads fastened to the packs on their backs. He said when the Frenchmen would carry only one pack he could take two at one time. He traveled through Michigan, or Mushigan as he called it, for he did not like the country because it was so low and wet. 4. For additional readings see: The Michigan Fur Trade. By Ida Amanda Johnson.-Mich. Hist. Comm. Publications, Univ. Ser., V, 1-177. Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of a Merchant Voyageur in the Savage Territories of Northern America Leaving Montreal the 28th of May 1783 (to 1820). By Jean Baptist Perrault. Edited with Introduction and Notes NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS v by John Sharpless Fox.-M. P. H. C., XXXVII, 508-619. Letters on the Fur Trade 1833. By William Johnston.-M. P. H. C., XXXVII, 132-207. Plans to Prevent the English from Trading with the Indians. (Letter from M. Beauharnois and Giles Hocquart to Superior officer). M. P. H. C., XXXIV, 70-72. The Indians and the Trading Posts in the Northwest of Barry County, Michigan. By Charles A. Weissert.-M. P. H. C., XXXVIII, 654-672. Jean Baptiste Parrisien. (Noted Indian trader and voyageur of the Grand River Valley).-M. P. H. C., XXXIX, 429-432. William Burnett. (Pioneer American Trader of the St. Joseph Valley). By Edward S. Kelley.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 85-95. French, and Indian Footprints at Three Rivers on the St. Joseph. By Blanche M. Haines, M.D.-M. P. H. C., XXXVIII, 386 -397. IX PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY 1. This chapter prepared from the following: Pontiac, or the Siege of Detroit, by J. T. Headley, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXI, pp. 613-639, and The Gladwin and Pontiac Fable, by Henry A. Ford, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. X, pp. 104-106. 2. Major Robert Rogers was a native of New Hampshire. He commanded the Rogers' Rangers composed of half hunters and half woodsmen. They were independent and choose their own methods of warfare but they were always mentioned with honor. Yet he was tried by courtmartial for treason in attempting to deliver Fort Michilimackinac to the Spaniards. He went to Algiers and fought there in two battles. 'At the beginning of the Revolutionary war he offered his services, but was distrusted, and entered the British army, receiving a colonel's commission. In 1778 he was prescribed and banished under acts of New Hampshire, and the remainder of his career is not positively known. 3. This Ojibwa maiden, Catherine, did not reveal the plot, but Angelique Cuillerier Beaubien, afterwards the wife of James Stirling, a lieutenant and surveyor at the Ford.-See Mr. Burton's version, Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVI, 423. 4. For additional readings see: The Pontiac Manuscript. Probably authentic. Francis Parkman, who used it in his History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac says of it: "The manuscript appears to have been elaborately written and from a rough journal kept during the progress of the events which it describes."-M. P. H. C., VIII, 266-339. Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Siege of Detroit. (Statements made by eye-witnesses. Used by Parkman).-M. P. H. C., VIII, 340-364. The Indian Chief Pontiac and the Siege of Detroit. (From McKenney's Tour of the Lakes).-M. P. H. C., VI, 504-512. The Gladwin Manuscripts. By Charles Moore.-M. P. H. C., XXVII, 605-680. An Incident in the Capture of Mackinaw. (Related by an eye-witness).-M. P. H. C., XIII, 499-501. The Adventures of Alexander Henry. By Stanley Newton.-Mich. Hist. Mag., VI, 558 -564. 1-33 INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY 1. Read at midwinter meeting of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, Ann Arbor, Dec., 1907. 2. This book is entitled, "The Conduct of the Ministry Impartially Examined," and was published in London in 1756. 3. Mr. Oswald was a Scotchman of some property both in Scotland and America, and on account of his possessions in the latter country, had been consulted by the government during the war. Franklin liked him very much and spoke of him as being an old man who had "nothing at heart but the good of mankind, and putting a stop to mischief." Franklin in France, by E. E. Hale and E. E. Hale, Jr., II, 77-78. 4. At a cabinet council, held April 27, 1782, "it was proposed to represent to his majesty that it would be well for Mr. Oswald to return to Dr. Franklin and acquaint him that it is agreed to treat for a general peace and at Paris, and that the principal points in contemplation are, the allowing of American independence, on condition that England be put into the same situation that she was left in by the peace of 1763. Franklin wrote Adams that he supposed this meant "being put again in possession of the islands France has taken from her. This seems to me a proposition of selling to us a thing that is already our own and making France pay the price they are pleased to ask for it." 5. From 1763 to the passing of the Quebec act, 1774, Canada occupied only a small part of the present Canada, and was included within the bounds of the St. John river on the east and a line drawn from the head of the St. John river through Lake St. John to the south end of Lake Nipissing, from this point, crossing the St. Lawrence river and Lake Champlain, in 45 degrees north latitude, passing along the highlands which divide the rivers that empty into the River St. Lawrence from those which flow south and southeast, and along the north coast of the Bay des Chaleurs and the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosieres, and from thence crossing the mouth of the River St. Lawrence at the west end of the Island of Anticosti, terminating at the St. John river. See Canadian Archives, 1906, p. 120. 6. By the Quebec act the province was greatly added to its limits reaching from the Ohio on the south, the Mississippi on the west and the Hudson Bay on the north, including all the Northwest territory and the Hudson Bay district as well as the present eastern Canada. See Quelec Act, 1774, Canadian Archives, 1906. 7. These unsold lands were those claimed as crown lands in New York and elsewhere, considered as the private property of the crown. 8. This was a point upon which the American commissioners finally, November 28, 1782, compromised by agreeing "that congress should recommend to the legislatures of the several states an amnesty and the restitution of all confiscated property." These articles were signed on the 30th of November. 9. Mitchell's map. See Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVI, 52. XI THE OLD NORTHWEST 1. Paper read at the third midwinter meet vi HISTORIC MICHIGAN ing of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, Ann Arbor, Dec., 1907. 2. The "Mayflower" which was first called the "Union Galley" was built at Simrall's Ferry and was launched April 2, 1787. With Capt. Jonathan Devol it began the journey which ended on April 7, at the mouth of the Muskingum river where Marietta was founded. 3. The "Ohio Company of Associates" was organized at the "Bunch of Grapes" tavern, Boston, on March 1, 1786, and was composed of some of the best known men of the nation. Its prime mover was Gen. Rufus Putnam, who had charge of the first band of emigrants (forty-eight people) which made its way down the Ohio in the spring of 1788. During the first year 132 men came to the settlement. History of Ohio by Ryan, 34-35; Washington County and Early Settlements of Ohio, by L. W. Andrews, XXXVII, 18. 4. Grenville (Greenville). See rev. ed. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XX, 410-419. 5. Sparks in his Life of Gouverneur Morris, I, 497-498, gives Morris the credit of having conceived the idea of the Erie canal as early as 1777. In 1795 he made quite a study of the Caledonian canal while traveling in Scotland. In a letter written in January, 1801, he speaks of the cost of carrying vessels from London through Hudson river into Lake Erie and up to 1804 spoke of tapping Lake Erie. Stephen Van Rensselaer gave Morris credit of being father of the canal. Morris was chairman of the canal commissioners from March, 1810, until his death, Nov. 6, 1816. 6. Erie Canal was first opened on Oct. 26, 1825. See XVII, 198, rev. ed., Mich. Pion. Hist. Colls. 7. George Stephenson, 1781-1848, perfected the engine until on Sept. 27, 1825, the first railway train carried by a locomotive traveled with passengers and goods over the Stockton and Darlington Railway. 8. Nicholas J. Roosevelt made this trip on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in 1811 with his wife. This first steamboat was built at Pittsburgh in 1810 under the supervision of Mr. Roosevelt who was instructed as to its building by Robert Fulton. It was 116 feet long, 20 feet beam engine, 36-inch cylinder and was called the "New Orleans." In September, 1811 they commenced the journey, reaching New Orleans without serious accident. The Steamboat Voyage on the Western Waters, by J. H. B. Latrobe, Maryland Hist. Soc. Fund Publication No. 6. 9. On July 4, 1825, work was begun at Licking Summit on the great Ohio canal. 10. In 1837 Michigan started the Southern and Havre Branch railroad, the Central or Detroit and St. Joseph railroad, the Northern railroad. 11. Read at the annual meeting of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1887. XII INDIAN WAR AND THE TREATY OF GREENVILLE 1. Ordinance of 1785. 2. Ordinance of 1787 is printed in Vol. 1 Compiled Laws of Michigan. 3. The English were disposed to insist that the boundary line claimed by the Indians (the Ohio river) should be conceded by the United States, and that the security of these lands should be guaranteed to them. Canadian Archives, 1890, p. 193. 4. Quantities of presents were sent to De troit every year for distribution among the Indians. In 1794, after all presents were distributed, there remained, among other materials, 46 guns, 1,100 pounds of powder, 2,000 gun flints, and 100 tomahawks. (Mich. Pion. and Hlist. Colls., XII, 146). There is evidence all through these reports of the encouragement the English were giving to the Indians. There can be no doubt that this was official encouragement, and not merely that of private individuals. See the following, same volume, p. 111, in April, 1794: "Governor Simcoe, with his suite, set out from hence [Detroit], for the Miamis Rapids, as did Col. McKee, Capt. Elliott, Lieut. Selby, and McKee, and a few days after the "Ottawa," Capt. Cowan, sailed for the mouth of the Ottawa [Maumee?] river, with three companies of the 24th and a party of Artillery, to join them. "I understand forts are to be built between the Rapids and the Glacis. These preparations have put all the Indians here in great spirits." (See p. 123, the British were afraid and said that Wayne would at once attack Detroit). Also pp. 148, 162, 166. 5. Stille's Life of Wayne, 318. 6. Stille's Life of Wayne, 319. This battle was fought Nov. 4, 1791, in Mercer county, Ohio, near the Wabash river. Howe's Hist. Ohio, II, 490; ed. 1891; St. Clair's narrative. 7. Wayne was in Philadelphia, in May, 1792, and the first entry in his orderly books is dated at that place May 24, 1792; the first entry at Pittsburgh is dated July 3, 1792. 8. The plan for organization of the army in 1792 is given in American State Papers (Gales and Seaton edition), XII, 40. 9. Orderly Book Mss. Pittsburgh Aug. '9, 1792: "Deserters having become very prevalent among our troops, at this place, particularly upon the last appearance, or rather apprehension of danger, that some men (for they are unworthy of the name of soldiers), have lost in every sense of honor and duty as to desert their posts as sentries, by which treacherous, base and cowardly conduct the lives and safety of their brave companions and worthy citizens were committed to savage fury." 10. American State Papers, XII, 229. Buffalo creek is at Buffalo, New York. 11. Was killed by the Indians. Ibid, 243. 12. American State Papers, XII, 236. 13. Ibid, 243, 245. Joseph Brant wrote to the secretary of war as follows, in July, 1792: "Ther, are gv'at numbers of Indians collected, and from their councils seem determined upon a new boundary line. In short they are all sensible that what has hitherto been done is unfair, and I am of the opinion peace will not be easily established, without relinquishing part of your claim." See report of Corn Planter, Dec. 8, 1792, Ibid, 337. 14. American State Papers, report of Reuben Reynolds, XII, 244. 15. See Adair's report in American State Papers, XII, 335. 16. American State Papers, XII, 344. The British authorities complain that Pickering was violent in his language, and attempted to create a feeling between the United States and England that was likely to lead to war. (Canadian Archives, 1891, p. 20). John Askin, an extensive trader in Detroit, on Feb. 22. 1793, submitted to Gov. Simcoe a plan for carrying on the Indian trade with the Indians at the Rapids (of the Maumee) and to the westward thereof, so that the indians would NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS vii remain in possession of their lands and would not desert them and thus allow them to be occupied by their enemies (the Americans). His plan was to build stockaded posts all over the country west of the Rapids, and station 24 soldiers in each post. All traders should be examined by Col. McKee, who was in command at Fort Miami, and if found suitable and proper persons, should be admitted to an equal share of the Indian trade. The most important suggestion of Mr. Askin was that the British government would thus soon be in actual and armed possession of all the northern part of Ohio and all lands to the west of the Rapids. Askin was a great schemer to obtain lands from the Indians. He purchased 3,000,000 acres in the northern part of Ohio, including part of the present city of Cleveland. (See A Chapter in the History of Cleveland, published by the writer hereof in 1895). He also undertook to purchase the entire state of Michigan in 1795. See "A Frustrated Land Grab, in the Inlander, Ann Arbor, 1893. fHis letters and writings are in the library of the writer hereof and are very voluminous and interesting. 17. The Indian tribes represented at the Miami were, the Five Nations, Wyandotes, Shawnees, Delawares, Munsees, Miamies, Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawatomies, Mingoes, Cherokees, and Nantikokies. American State Papers, XII, 350. (The Iroquois were sometimes called the Five Nations and sometimes the Six Nations). Extract from a letter of John Askin dated at Detroit, June 24, 1793: "There is some Quakers and other men here waiting ye arrival of ye three American Ccmmissioners from Niagara to go with them to ye Indian Council to be held at Sandusky. My private opinion is that no peace between the Americans and Indians will take place, for imprudently some American troops are said to be advancing in ye mean time. If so I should not think the Commissioners safe. You know the disposition of Indians." Even at this early day the inhabitants were preparing to change their allegiance from the English to the American government or else remove from Detroit to the southern side of the river. The same letter contains the following item on that subject: "The Commodore's family" (Commodore Alexander Grant, then president of the Upper Canadian Parliament, in session at Niagara) "are well. He is now at Niagara executing laws which, I fear, is not long to effect this side of the water, if I may judge from appearances, as his Excellency, Governor Simcoe, seems to wish to withdraw the inhabitants from this side. However many are possessed of such property, as will not admit of their removing, let their inclinations be what it will." 18. The treaty of Fort Stanwix (afterwards Fort Schuyler) was made by Sir William Johnson, Nov. 5, 1768. See Proceedings of Commissioners of Indian Affairs, by Franklin B. Hough, I, 45. Stone's Life of Sir William Johnson, II, 308. Extract from a letter of John Askin dated at Detroit, July 9, 1793: "The only news in this quarter is the Indians being assembled near Sandusky to treat with the American Commissioners who have been long since at Niagara and who, I really believe, will not come farther, or if they did that it would not answer any purpose, for what they want, the Indians will never agree to. However, I believe they would consent to a new line if the latter would let them have near ye Miami towns." 19. The Indians at first told the commissioners to return to Washington, and tell him that the Ohio must be fixed as the boundary line, but they repented of their hasty action, and told them to wait for further information from their council. American State Papers, XII, 354. Extract from a letter of John Askin dated at Detroit, Sept. 20, 1793: "We have had Commissioners from Congress to treat with the Indians for peace, but they have not been able to perform it, so they have returned and we must expect their army this fall for already there are some deserters coming in. I was myself a month at the Indian council at the foot of the Rapids Ottaway (Maumee) river on business for my employers." 20. American State Papers, XII, 356. 21. The commissioners requested Henry Ford, Captain of the Dunmore, to take them to the Miami, but he replied that he could neither take them there nor to Detroit. In April, 1794, Simcoe had the fort built at Miami, and three companies of troops went there. American State Papers, XII, 480. War between United States and England inevitable. American State Papers, XII, 480. 22. The orderly books of Gen. Wayne are in manuscript, unpublished. Some are missing, but references will be made to those I have, by date. The army was at Pittsburg, Nov. 17, 1792, and the records are missing from that date till April 11, 1793. See American State Papers, XII, 337. Legionville is 22 miles south of Pittsburg and was named because the army was organized as a Legion. The Treaty of Greenville, p. 60. 23. Hobson's Choice was situated on the Ohio river, between the village of Cincinnati and Mill Creek. It was so named because no other suitable location could be found. Howe, II, 28. 24. See Spencer's Narrative; also Collot, Travels. 25. There were three rivers in Ohio bearing the name of Miami; one, now called the Maumee, in the northern part, on which Toledo is built, emptying into Lake Erie; one, east of Cincinnati, and the third, a short distance west of that city, and both flowing into the Ohio. The Miami here referred to was called the Great Miami, and is the third one above enumerated. Wayne's letter to the secretary of war states that this spot was reached on the 13th, and that he could proceed no further on account of lack of provisions. American State Papers, XII, 361. 26. Burnett s Notes, 160. This disaster was very pleasing to the British, when they heard of it, and Dundas.wrote that should Wayne's campaign be unsuccessful, he hoped the Americans would open their eyes to the advantage of a final treaty, with the Muskingum as a boundary; see Canadian Archives, Q. 280, p. 16. 27. Orderly Book, Nov. 6, 1793. 28. Ibid, Nov. 11, 1793. 29. Ibid, Nov. 26, 1793. 30. In Mercer county on the banks of the Wabash (Howe's Ohio, II, 494). John Francis Hamtramck was born at Quebec August 16, 1756, and died at Detroit, April 11, 1803. He was the son of Charles David Hamtramck and Marie Ann (Bertin) Hamtramck. (See Centennial Celebration of Evacuation of Detroit, p. 126). viii 'F111 HISTORIC MICHIGAN 31. Orderly Book, May 27, 1794. 32. Ibid, June 28, 1794. 33. Ibid, June 28, 1794. 34. Howe's Ohio, II, 495. Treaty of Greenville, 67; Burnett's Notes on the Northwest, 161. 35. Major McMahon must have been a giant; he was 6 feet, 6 inches tall and was a famous Indian fighter (Howe, II, 496). See letter of General Wayne in Penn. Mag. of Hist. and Biog., XII, 327. For letters relative to battle of June 30, 1794, see Penn. Mag., XII, 367. 36. Ms. letter of Gov. Simcoe, extract to be found in Canadian Archives, Q. 280-1, p. 178. 37. Western Adventure, 181; also Treaty of Greenville, 68. 38. Journal of Lieut. Boyer, 1. 39. See Boyer's Journal. This Post is called Fort Randolph, in the Orderly book, but on the map is given as Fort St. Mary, and Girty's Town. While at this place, on August 3, a falling tree struck and nearly killed Gen. Wayne. (Boyer, 4). 40. Treaty of Greenville, 69. When the news of the advance of Gen. Wayne was brought to Gov. Simcoe, he wrote to Dundas that he hoped the Indians could successfully oppose him. (Canadian Archives, 1891, Q. 280, p. 178). 41. Boyer, 5. 42. Howe, II, 545 (There was an abundance of apple and peach trees along both rivers at this time). 43. Boyer, 6. 44. Ibid, 6. 45. Major William Campbell was in the 24th Regiment. 46. Howe, III, 393. 47. Orderly Book, August 23, 1794. The official report of this battle is in American State Papers, XII, 492. Thirty-five were killed, ninety-eight wounded on the American side. The number of Indians could not be ascertained. 48. For additional reading see: Text of the Treaty of Greenville, M. P. H. C., XX, 410-419. XIII DETROIT, 1701-1805 1. Read before the Wayne County Pioneer Society in 1878. 2. Appointed in 1764 one of Sir Win. Johnson's sub-agents, and acted as lieutenant governor from 1784 to 1785. 3. Read before the Detroit Pioneer Society, May 2, 1872. 4. The arpent is a measure of length, as well as area; it is a square, the side of which is 192 feet, 3 inches. 5. Read at the annual meeting of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, June, 1909. 6. See Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXIII. 7. Ibid, XXXIII, 246. 8. Ibid, rev. ed. XVIII, 646-8, also Index. 9. Captain Alphonse de Tonty, a younger brother of Henry de Tonty, who later became commandant at Detroit. 10. Chacornac, Francois Augustin, Baron de Joannes, chevalier and captain on half-pay. Born 1684. Buried Dec. 30, 1754, at Quebec. (Tanguay). 11. Dugue, a lieutenant on half-pay, highly esteemed by Cadillac. 12. Robert Rogers. See letters on French and Indian War and English Conquest of Canada, XIX, rev. ed. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls. 13. This journal is published in the second volume of Stone's Life of Sir William Johnson, 429. 14. See Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., IX, 489. 15. For additional readings see: Fort Pontchartrain Du Detroit-1701-1710 -Under Cadillac. By C. M. Burton.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 240-317. Sketches of French Commandants of Detroit from 1701 to 1760. By C. M. Burton.-M. P. H. C., XXXIV, 303-340. Early Detroit. By C. I. Walker.-M. P. H. C., VIII, 415-443. Old Detroit.-M. P. H. C., I, 346-347. Olden Times in Detroit.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 559-573. Revolutionary Days, or Detroit in 1796. By Silas Farmer.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 190-200. Some of the Benefits that Accrued to Detroit from the Devastating Fire of 1805. By C. M. Burton.-M. P. H. C., XXII, 431-433. Detroit. Sketches of Its Early History and Leading Political Historical Events. By Robert E. Roberts.-M. P. H. C., V, 530-536. The Last of the Barons. By Richard R. Elliott.-M. P. H. C., XXI, 494-500. Historical Detroit. By Henry A. Ford.M. P. H. C., X, 88-97. XIV CREATION OF MICHIGAN TERRITORY 1. St. Clair Papers, II, 546. 2. Annals of Congress, 7th Cong., 1st Sess. 3. St. Clair Papers, I, 215. 4. Laws of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio, III (Ed. Chillicothe, 1802), chapter XVIII, 130-132. 5. St. Clair Papers, I, 224. 6. Ibid, I, 238. 7. Annals of Congress, 7th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 427. 8. Ibid, p. 1097 ff. 9. Ibid. pp. 1120-1121. 10. Ibid, pp. 1155-1156. 11. In a pamphlet written by Worthington in 1802, addressed to the citizens of the Northwest Territory opposed to the alteration of the boundaries of the state as established by congress, he charges that every gentleman of the Federalist party present voted against the bill. 12. For additional readings see: The Beginnings of Territorial Government in Michigan. (Manuscripts in the Department of State, at Washington, D. C., with Introduction). By Charles Moore.-M. P. H. C., XXXI, 510-612. XV MICHIGAN IN THE WAR OF 1812 1. Address delivered at Trenton, Michigan, Aug. 9, 1876. 2. Read before the Wayne County Pioneer Society in August, 1876. 3. For the correspondence and roll, see Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., V, 553-557. 4. There seems to be some little doubt as to where the battle of Monguagon was really fought, though I can entertain no doubt that it was at Trenton. Since the foregoing sketch was written and on the 28th day of August, 1876, I held a conversation with the Hon. A. D. Fraser on the subject. Mr. Fraser was employed as attorney for the men belonging to NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS ix Major Dequindre's company to obtain for them what was due to them from the government. He understood from them, and Major Dequindre himself told Mr. Fraser that the battle took place a little below and near Trenton, and nearly opposite Slocum's Island. It was said in former years that Major Dequindre drove some of the enemy from the battlefield over onto Slocum's Island. Many years ago Mr. Fraser was returning from Monroe to Detroit on the old Territorial road, with the late Judge Solomon Sibley who lived in Detroit in the year 1812, and knew all about the battle at the time it took place. When they arrived at the place near Trenton, and near Slocum's Island, Judge Sibley pointed out to Mr. Fraser the site of the battle in that locality, and pointed out to him the place and positions of the opposing forces, and where Col. Miller stood and also the place occupied by Major Muir and the chief Tecumseh and his braves; also where some of the men and officers fell. I give the above in addition to the historical accounts showing that the battle took place at the present village of Trenton. I think there can be no reasonable doubt that Trenton was the place. 5. From the Western Reserve Historical Society, Historical and Archaeological Tracts, No. 1. 6. For additional readings see: Indian Massacres of the War of 1812.-M. P. H. C., VIII, 642-652. Letter of Col. Proctor to Maj. Gen. Sheaffe. -M. P. H. C., XV, 227-229. Papers and Orderly Books of Brigadier General James Winchester. (Compiled and Arranged by C. M. Burton).-M. P. H. C., XXXI, 253-313. A Report and Petition in Behalf of the Sufferers of the War.-M. P. H. C., 1, 587 -589. The Perry Victory Centennial Celebration. By George Whitfield Parker.-M. P. H. C., XXXIX, 263-269. The River Raisin Massacre and Dedication of Monuments. By Josephine D. Elmer.-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 200-236. Documents Relative to the War of 1812 and British Occupancy of Detroit.-M. P. H. C., VIII, 620-669. How Gen. Brock's Proclamation Was Preserved.-M. P. H. C., VII, 122. XVI MICHIGAN TERRITORY 1805-1837 1. W. L. G. Smith, Life and Times of Lewis Cass, 107; Journal of the Legislative Council, 1826, p. 6; American State Papers: Military Affairs, I, 510; Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, April 4, 1832, giving a report of a select committee of congress on the losses of Michigan during the war. 2. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 381. 3. News of the battle of Tippecanoe on the Wabash just before the outbreak of the war, November 7, 1811, was not received at Detroit until a month later. American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, 780. 4. F. J. Turner, "The Colonization of the West, 1820-1830," in American Historical Review, XI, 307; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXIII, 482. - 5. A. C. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (Boston, 1891), 127-129; J. H. Lanman, Michigan, 236. 6. American State Papers: Public Lands, III, 164-165. 7. Statutes at Large, I, 728-730. For the relation of Cass to this survey, see McLaughlin, Lewis Cass, 94-95; A. C. McLaughlin, "The Influence of Governor Cass on the Development of the Northwest," in American Historical Association, Papers, III, 315; T. M. Cooley, Michigan (Boston, 1885), 193. For newspaper characterization of the Tiffin report, see an editorial in the Detroit Gazette for July 24, 1818. 8. J. Monroe, Writings (S. M. Hamilton, ed.-New York, 1898), I, 117. 9. Special message of February 6, 1816. 10. Statutes at Large, III, 332. 11. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 381; XXII, 542.. 12. Cooley, Michigan, 192-193. 13. J. Morse, Traveller's Guide (New Haven, 1826), 169. 14. W. Darby, A Tour from the City of New York to Detroit in the Michigan Territory... 1818 (New York, 1819), 200. 15. McLaughlin, "Influence of Cass on the Development of the Northwest," 347. 16. See an article in the Detroit Gazette for July 18, 1823, referring to the exploration of 1818 in the rear of Detroit, attributing the enterprise largely to the interest of Cass. 17. Smith, Life and Times of Lewis Cass, contains much of the preliminary correspondence with Calhoun, then secretary of war, about the expedition. The official journal of the expedition kept by James Duane Doty, secretary of the territorial legislature of Michigan, is contained in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIII, 163 et seq. See also Henry R. Schoolcraft's Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820 (Albany, 1821). Good brief accounts may be found in McLaughlin's Lewis Cass, 115-119; J. V. Campbell, Outlines of the Political History of Michigan (Detroit, 1876), 400-404; W. T. Young, Sketch of the Life and Public Services of General Lewis Cass (Detroit, 1852), 85-88; Detroit Gazette, May 26, 1820. 18. Outlines of the Life and Character of General Lewis Cass (Albany, 1848), 24. 19. E. Evans, Pedestrious Tour, 119, quoted from R. G. Thwaites, Early Western Travels (Cleveland, 1904-1907), VIII, 220. Evans' work was published at Concord, New Hampshire, in 1819. 20. The English Guide gives to Ohio thirty-five pages, to Indiana nineteen, to Michigan ten, and to Illinois nine. Compare pages 688, 689, 694 respectively with pages 155, 156 -157, and 165 in S. R. Brown, The Western Gazetteer (Auburn, 1817). See also J. Melish's A Geographical Description of the United States (Philadelphia, 1818), 137, where the climate is described as "temperate and healthy" and the soil "generally rich and fertile." The ignorance of the interior is revealed by the statement that "in the center, the land is high, from whence there is a descent in all directions"; and an equal poverty of knowledge is revealed in the articles in the Detroit Gazette prior to 1820, which, while they try to favor the lands, are limited in descriptive matter to those close to the eastern shore. See for another instance the numbers of November 21, 1817, May 7 and 14, November 26, and December 3, 1819. 21. See other quotations in the Detroit Gazette for May 4, 1821; June 7, 1822; July 18, 1823, and September 19, 1823. 22. Quoted in the Detroit Gazette, September 20, 1825. 23. S. Farmer, History of Detroit and x HISTORIC MICHIGAN Michigan (Detroit, 1890), I, 335, 698. There is a photograph of the John Farmer map of 1826 in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls, XXXVIII, opposite p. 636. A little while before appeared Orange Risdon's map, a copy of which is in the same volume, opposite p. 635. Risdon published much of his data, obtained by travel in the territory in 1823, in several eastern newspapers, according to the Detroit Gazette, January 16, 1824. Another map of about this time was made by Philu E. Judd, of which a copy is in the same volume opposite p. 634. The making of these maps is indicative of the new impulse to immigration which came about the time of the opening of the Erie canal. 24. Other Detroit newspapers of the period were the Michigan Herald, the Courier, the Journal and Courier, the Northwestern Journal, the Free Press, the Daily Advertiser, and the Journal and Michigan Advertiser. For a list of Michigan newspapers for this period with critical comment see Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 670-677. An account of the Detroit Gazette is given on pp. 671-672. The issue of the Detroit Gazette for November 21, 1823, states that six copies are sent weekly to subscribers in Washington. 25. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., IV, 480 -481. 26. Ibid. 27. See editorial for April 3, 1818, also a good general description of the character and condition of the Indians of eastern Michigan, by a contemporary, in the Gazette, February 8, 1822. For relations of the settlers and the Indians, see Harriet Martineau, Society in America, I, 329; II, 25. Detroit Gazette, May 29, 1818, June 11, 1819; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 655-658; report of the surveyors of the Chicago road, Detroit Gazette, March 18 and 25, 1825. For the civil status of the Indian and his relation to the states of the Union, see decisions cited in T. Donaldson's Public Domain (Washington, 1881), 240. 28. See a statement by Cass to the secretary of war, October 21, 1820, in Schoolcraft's Summary Narrative, 280. The Indians are represented as generally friendly, but less so as the point of contact with the British is approached. See accounts of their visits to Malden in the Detroit Gazette, November 21, 1823; August 2, 1825. The latter contains a long editorial on the policy of the British. 29. McLaughlin, "Influence of Cass on the Development of the Northwest," 323. 30. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass, 108, 110. 31. Smith, Life and Times of Lewis Cass, 128-130; American State Papers; Indian Affairs, II, 224; Schoolcraft, Summary Narrative, 79-80; R. B. Ross and G. B. Catlin, Landmarks of Detroit (Detroit, 1898); L. M. Mathews, Expansion of New England (Boston, 1909), 231; Bureau of American Ethnology, Eighteenth Annual Report, pt. 2, passim. 32. Ibid, 674. Prior to this time there had been in the hands of the government only a narrow strip six miles wide along the water front, extending from the Raisin to the vicinity of Lake St. Clair, which was ceded in 1795. Ibid, 654. 33. The southern boundary of the cession extended west from the prime meridian to the vicinity of Kalamazoo. Bureau of American Ethnology, Eighteenth Annual Report, pt. 2, p. 698. 34. Ibid, 702. 35. Ibid, 756. For the principal minor treaties affecting the lower peninsula, see ibid, 699, 740, 764, and the American State Papers: Indian Affairs, II, 72, 131, 677. The former contains colored plates showing the areas of the different cessions. There is a fairly accurate map showing the four larger cessions in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXVI, opposite p. 275. 36. Bureau of American Ethnology, Eighteenth Annual Report, pt. 2, p. 702; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXVI, 291. 37. See report of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs, on the removal of the Indians from Michigan, in Michigan Joint Document (1841), No. 1, pp. 61-86. The question of removal was advocated by Isaac McCoy, of the Baptist mission near Niles, from the time white settlement began to encroach upon the mission. See his statement of the motives of removal in his History of the Baptist Indian Missions (Washington, 1840), 265, 321, 323. See also an article by Lewis Cass on removal of Indians, in the North American Review for January, 1830 (XXX, 62-121). 38. There is a brief, judicial account of the Black Hawk war in Magazine of Western History, 5. 39. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., VI, 239; XVIII, 606; XXX, 456. H. P. Collins, A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of Branch County, Michigan (Chicago, 1906), 27, 29. 40. Ibid, I, 234, 235. 41. H. F. Thomas, History of Allegan County (Chicago, 1907), 31. 42. Collins, History of Branch County, 30. There was a repetition of the epidemic in 1834, making a combination of influences that was felt even after 1835. These epidemics spread westward from Asia, reaching Michigan through Canada. 43. Campbell, Political History of Michigan, 440. 44. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXVIII, 169; Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 49; Ross and Catlin, Landmarks of Detroit, 380-382; Detroit Free Press, July 19, 1832. 45. Smith, Life and Times of Lewis Cass, 113; McLaughlin, "Influence of Cass on the Development of the Northwest," 318; McLaughlin, Lewis Cass, 96. For phases of the land question prior to 1818, see American State Papers: Public Lands, I, 248, 267-269, 282. 46. For brief descriptions of the rectangular system of survey in Michigan, see Tackabury's Atlas, 6-7; Blois, Gazetteer, 65-70. Besides its obvious importance in enabling settlers to locate their lands, this system had significance for local government. The base line in Michigan follows along the northern boundary of Wayne county due west and forms the boundary between counties throughout its entire length. At distances of twenty-four miles on each side, other parallels form similar boundaries throughout most of their length. Eastern and western county boundaries are formed by meridians running at right angles, in many cases making counties almost exact squares. Similarly, parallels and meridians divide the counties into squares of six miles on a side, forming "goveinment townships," which in most cases have become units for township governments. This result was secured by the policy of following the township lines in establishing the original areas for township government, however unequal these areas, which makes easier the use of the organization of township government to measure, NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xi in a general way, comparative rates of settlement in different areas. 47. American State Papers: Public Lands, III, 533; Historical and Scientific Sketches of Michigan (Detroit, 1834), 165. The field notes of the surveyors, deposited at Lansing in 1857 upon the completion of the survey of Michigan, are of first importance for early physiographic conditions. 48. For jurisdiction see Blois, Gazetteer, 71-73; Detroit Gazette, July 18, 1823; Risdon's map of Michigan (1825). 49. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XVIII, 612. 50. Magazine of Western History, VI, 397. 51. Donaldson, Public Domain, 203-205; History of Oakland County (Philadelphia, 1876), 130; Detroit Gazette, May 8, 1818. 52. Statutes at Large, III, 566. See a monograph by Emerich, on "The Credit System and the Public Domain," in Vanderbilt Southern Historical Society, Publications, No. 2, quoted by Mr. Turner in "The Colonization of the West," in American Historical Review, XI, 313, n. 2. The Detroit Gazette of September 24, 1819, hints at a condition which may have stimulated the repeal of the credit system. A writer, signing himself "Franklin," suggests that the immense indebtedness of the people of the west to the government for the land, due to the credit system, may form cause for separation from the Union to escape the debt; especially if the people are shown that the original states had no right to the land, and that the west is eminently fitted for independence. 53. Mich. Pion. and Hist., Coils., VI, 424; L. H. Glover, A Twentieth Century History of Cass County, Michigan (Chicago, 1906), 107. 54. Donaldson, Public Domain, 214, 215. There is a brief treatment of "The national preemption system," in Magazine of Western History, VI, 396-399. 55. The amounts of sale for the whole territory from 1830-1834 were: 1831: 252,211.44 acres; 1832: 316,081.89 acres; 1833: 447,780.17 acres; 1834: 351,951.32 acres. (American State Papers: Public Lands, VI, 628; VII, 329-330). The Detroit Gazette of June 20, 1826, attributes the falling off in amount of purchases in 1826 to hard times in the East, which made it difficult for intending emigrants to convert their produce and property into ready money. A retardation of immigration due to this cause was anticipated in the same paper May 23, 1826. 56. Blois, Gazetteer, 74; J. P. MacCabe, Directory of the City of Detroit (Detroit, 1837), 86. The amount of sales given by Blois for 1833 is obviously a typographical error. 57. Donaldson, Public Domain, 215, 216; R. Adams "Agriculture in Michigan," in Michigan political Science Association, Publications, III, 173. 58. Ibid. 59. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., IV, 174. 60. For example, the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, April 9, 1834; the Detroit Journal and Courier, September 12, 1835. 61. See description of the "financial zoology" of the time-wild cat, red dog, etc.Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., I, 190; and History of Hillsdale County (Philadelphia, 1880), 41. 62. See Harriet Martineau's experience, June, 1836, in Society in America, I, 327. 63. Session Laws, 1838, p. 24. 64. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXXVIII, 160. See also Ibid, XXXII, 254; Magazine of Western History, III, 202; Cooley, Michigan, 268-269; Ross and Catlin, Landmarks of Detroit, 439. 65. H. M. Utley and B. M. Cutcheon, Michigan as Province, Territory and State (New York, 1906), III, 88. 66. According to tradition, Louis Campau of Grand Rapids papered the cupola of his house with them saying: "If you won't circulate, you shall stay still." Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXX, 294. See also Ibid, XXII, 547. 67. Ibid, XXXVIII, 368-369; History of Hillsdale County (Philadelphia, 1879), 42. 68. Michigan as Province, Territory and State, III, 105; Cooley, Michigan, 272-273. 69. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., IX, 165. 70. There is a good general survey of the early improvements of transportation in Michigan in R. Adams, "Agriculture in Michigan," in Michigan Political Science Association, Publications, III, 177-183. The Detroit Gazette of April 9, 1824, laments the small interest in road building, affirming that roads are improved only where absolutely necessary, and only enough there to make them barely passable. For use of the canoe on Michigan waters see Magazine of Western lHistory, XI, 389, 390; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils, III, 125. See J. L. Ringwalt, Development of Transportation Systems in the United States (Philadelphia, 1888), 5-15 for the early systems of water transportation. For the French Canadian pony cart and ox team see Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils, I, 383-384; XXII, 487; Magazine of Western History, VI, 391. 71. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 909. Another account gives three for 1827. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXXV, 273. There is a good treatment of navigation on Lake Erie before 1829 in ibid., IV, 79. 72. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 909. 73. Ibid. 74. Detroit Journal, May 12, 1830, quoted in Michigan Political Science Association, Publications, IV, 521. 75. Detroit Free Press, May 19, 1831, quoted in Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 335. 76. Ibid. 77. E. Channing and M. T. Lansing, Story of the Great Lakes (New York, 1909), 268. 78. Ibid, 268, 271; Detroit Daily Advertiser, December 20, 1836. 79. Detroit Gazette, May 12, 1820; May 18, 1821; April 4, 1823; April 2, 1824. 80. Campbell, Political History of Michigan, 400. 81. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXI, 336. For boats on Lake Michigan see the Detroit Gazette of August 29, 1817, which announces the intended departure of the schooner Hercules for Mackinac and Chicago. The same paper for May 18, 1821, says that fourteen schooners recently left Detroit laden with merchandise and produce for Michilimackinac and ports on Lake Michigan. The Northwestern Journal, December 2, 1829, records a trip made by the schooner Detroit from Chicago to Detroit in twenty-three days. The first steamboat trip on Lake Michigan was one to Green Bay in 1830, mentioned in the Northwestern Journal for July 14, 1830. See also Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XII, 317; XXX, 573 et seq.; Collin, History of Branch County, 34; xii 3Ll HISTORIC MICHIGAN Turner, "The colonization of the West," in American Historical Review, XI, 312. 82. Harriet Martineau, however, made the trip from Chicago to Buffalo in June, 1836, in the sailing vessel, Milwaukee, which she says was the only sailing vessel available. See Society in America, II, 2. 83. Channing and Lansing, Story of the Great Lakes, 251-265. The Detroit Gazette for August 16, 1817, quoting from the Albany Daily Advertiser, notes that work is progressing on the Erie canal-"The Grand Western Canal." Five hundred men are reported at work. 84. T. E. Wing, History of Monroe County, Michigan (New York, 1890), 200. 85. Collin, History of Branch County, 33. The effect of the greater capacity of the canal and lake transportation was such that the northern route had taken precedence over the southern by about 1832, as shown by the transportation of troops for the Black Hawk war. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXXVIII, 145. 86. Turner "The Colonization of the West," in American Historical Review, XI, 312. 87. Ibid., XI, 311. In Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 591-592, is given a good brief discussion of early routes from the East to the central West. See also ibid., XXXVIII, 142. 88. Magazine of Western History, II, 578 -580. 89. Ibid., 579. Compare a trip made by lumber wagon in 1835. F. Ellis, History of Livingston County (Philadelphia, 1880), 138. 90. Magazine of Western History, II, 580. 91. The completion of the Erie canal set other states to making canals often when there was little chance of successful operation. (Ringwalt, Early Transportation, 45, 46). The Detroit Gazette of February 4, 1835, gives an account of a public meeting in Detroit to consider the project of a canal "from Cranberry Marsh or some other eligible point." The same paper for June 12, 1827, gives a long report of a town meeting held at Dexter, in Washtenaw county, to consider the prospect for a canal from Detroit to Lake Michigan. The attention of congress was called to that project in 1830 by Hon. John Biddle, according to the Northwestern Journal of February 10, 1830. See Governor Mason's message in Michigan House Journal, 1837, p. 12, for routes recommended for canals in Michigan; for the Saginaw canal, Michigan House Documents (1837), No. 9, p. 17; for the Clinton and Kalamazoo canal, ibid., (G), 68. 92. Wing, History of Monroe County, 137. See Cass's letter to the war department in American State Papers: Miscellaneous, II, 596; also the Detroit Gazette of January 30, 1818, urging a national road between Detroit and Sandusky. The condition of travel on that route in 1818 is described from personal observation, by Estwick Evans, in Thwaites, Early Western Travels, VIII, 209. The position of the first road is shown on the Risdon map of 1825 as running from one to three miles from the shore. Apparently its improvement was very slow; Monroe citizens complained in 1822 that it was almost impassable for wagons even in good weather on account of logs, stumps, and deep holes, and in fall and spring almost impassable on horseback. (Detroit Gazette, April 18, 1822). See Cass's description of its condition in 1826; (ibid., January 31, 1826). The stage line started that year appears to have been soon obliged to discontinue (ibid., August 15, 1826). It had carried passengers from Detroit to Ohio since February apparently at the rate of four cents a mile (ibid., February 7, 1826). Another stage line, carrying passengers at six and a fourth cents a mile, between Detroit and Monroe, seems to have begun immediately on the failure of the old one (ibid., August 22, 1826). 93. Northwestern Journal, January 6, 1830. Three stages a week appear to have been running between Detroit and Mt. Clemens by 1834. Detroit Journal and NMichigan Advertiser, March 26. 94. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 925. 95. Michigan Herald, April 5, 1826. A number of stage lines were started that year, apparently indicating the impulse to immigration given by the Erie canal. See the Detroit Gazette of that year for February 7, April 4, and May 23. 96. Collin, History of Branch County, 25, 42. For the services of Lewis Cass and Father Gabriel Richard in behalf of this improvement, see Mich., Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 37; VI, 238; XXI, 440; Statutes at Large, IV, 135; editorial comment in the Detroit Gazette of May 14, 1824. 97. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., VIII, 195; Collin, History of Branch County, 35. 98. Michigan Herald, June 14, 1825; Detroit Gazette, December 13, 1825; Risdon's map of Michigan (1825); Farmer's map of Michigan (1835). For the condition of the road at different times see Northwestern Journal, January 6, May 20, 1830; Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, March 30, 1831, October 26, 1831; Detroit Free Press, November 3, 1831; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 48; II, 389. See also items and advertisements in the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser for March 30, May 11, and June 1, 1831. The rate of passenger transportation appears to have been four cents a mile. 99. Glover, History of Cass County, 166. 100. Society in America, I, 318, 322, 325, 326. 101. See Risdon's map, (1825). 102. Territorial Laws, II, 744. 103. The Northwestern Journal, April 21, 1830. See also a description of the advantages along its route, in the same paper for May 5, 1830. These notices undoubtedly helped to attract attention to the settlement of the Kalamazoo valley. 104. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, June 4, 1834. 105. Society in America, II, 2. Mr. Lew Allen Chase has made a judicious selection of material to illustrate the larger features of the roads, travel, and traffic in Michigan during the territorial period in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXXVIII, 593. See Session Laws, 1835-1836, pp. 90-102, for some sixty roads authorized by the legislature. 106. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 132. 107. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 893; Mich. Territorial Laws, III, 844. 108. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 493, 499. 109. Ibid., 492. The financial stress following 1837 hopelessly bankrupted the road, and in 1848 it was leased in perpetuity to the Michigan Southern Railroad company. 110. Michigan House Documents, 1837, No. 9, p. 2; and No. 9 (D), pp. 29, 31. See description of the route in the Detroit Journal NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xiii and Courier, July 8, 1835. This was the beginning of the later Michigan Central railroad. 111. See editorials in the Detroit Daily Advertiser of July 26, August 12, and November 28, 1836. 112. Michigan House Documents, 1837, No. 9, p. 9. See for the projected system of internal improvements, Session Laws, 1837, pp. 130-133; House Journal, 1837, pp. 11-14, 114; House Documents, 1837, No. 9, p. 1. For an expression of the popular sentiment see constitutional sanction in Michigan Legislative Manual, 1837, p. 45, Art. 13, sec. 3. 113. For an account of the festivities celebrating the arrival of the first train at Ypsilanti, see Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXV, 394. A copy of the invitation issued by the commission of internal improvements to Mr. Ball to "take a seat in the cars" on this first trip is contained in ibid, XXXVIII, 101. For the Southern railroad from Monroe westward on the line of the later Michigan Southern railroad, see Michigan House Documents, 1837, No. 9, pp. 4-7; for the Northern railroad, see ibid., pp. 13-16. 114. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 232, 236; Farmer, History of Detroit, 1, 893. 115. Descriptions adapted from Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 495-496. See Michigan House Documents, 1837, No. 9, (A), pp. 14-15, for a description of the process of building one of these primitive roads. A picture of the first train over the road from Detroit to Dearborn is given in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., IV, 516, and of the Erie and Kalamazoo train in ibid., XXXVIII, opposite 494. 116. Ross and Catlin, Landmarks of Detroit, 283. 117. Ibid., 288, 290-291. 118. Ibid., 289. 119. October 28. See also the Detroit Gazette of 1817 for October 10, November 28, December 5, 12, 26, and January 2, 1818, for a series of articles on the misrule of the Governor and Judges, signed "Rousseau." A writer in the issue of December 19, 1817, regrets the influence such writings must have on immigration. In the issue for January 13, 1818, a strong editorial sets forth the advantages of the second grade of territorial government. 120. Journal of the Legislative Council, 1824, p. 8; ibid., 1826, pp. 5-6. 121. Detroit, Gazette, October 2, 1818; Campbell, Political History of Michigan, 391; Smith, Life and Times of Lewis Cass, 113. 122. Statutes at Large, III, 482; Detroit Gazette, May 28, 1919. 123. Statutes at Large, III, 769. 124. The editorials first became trenchant in 1820. See a criticism of the editorial Silence on Abuses, in the Gazette for August 11, 1820, followed August 25 by an editorial demand that an account be made by the treasurer of the territory, of the expenditure of public money during the last five years. 125. Judge Woodward was the center of the attack on the Judges; see the severe and specific arraignment in the Gazette for November 1 and 8, 1822; he published his defense in eastern papers, which led the Gazette to say that he appeared more desirous of being thought clean at Washington than in Michigan. 126. Statutes at Large, IV, 200. The Detroit Gazette of June 18, 1824, contains very favorable comment on the recent work of the legislative council, publishing from this time forth the proceedings and laws of the council and the speeches of the governor. 127. Detroit Free Press, October 18, 1832; Detroit Courier, March 13, 1833; Ross and Catlin, Landmarks of Detroit, 376. 128. Detroit Free Press, October 11, 1832; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXII, 484; XXVIII, 171. 129. Campbell, Political History of Michigan, 435. 130. See other editorial discussions in the same paper for November 5, 12, 19, 26, December 4, etc., 1934, and frequently from then forward. 131. Blois, Gazette, 150. 132. There is a good brief analysis of the constitution of 1835 in Cooley's Michigan, 299 -303; also in Michigan as Province, Territory and State, 43-53. The issue of the admission of Michigan afforded an instructive expression of state rights in the West, taking some time to settle because of being compromised with the slavery question, the admission of Arkansas, and the boundary controversy with Ohio. A good brief digest of the legislation of 1835 -37 bearing upon the settlement and development of Michigan, is contained in ibid., III, 69, 77-89. See also the two volumes of Session Laws, 1835-1836, and 1837. 133. Michigan Legislative Manual, 1837, p. 30. 134. Michigan Political Association, Publications, I, 130; a number of newspaper articles appeared in 1836 bearing on the right of foreign immigrants to vote. See the Detroit Journal and Courier, July 1, 1935. 135. Michigan Biographies (Lansing, 1888), 685. 136. In some cases the intent of congress to restrict the legislation of the Governor and Judges to such as could be found on the statute books of the states, was frustrated by an ingenious patchwork method of piercing together sentences and phrases from those laws; this was one of the abuses complained of. 137. E. W. Bemis, Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest (John Hopkins University studies, 1st ser., 5-Baltimore, 1883), 10. At the close of most of the territorial laws is a statement of the source from which they are derived, usually naming merely the state. 138. Mathews, Expansion of New England, 223. 139. Wing, History of Monroe County, 140; punishment by whipping was abolished in the territory by statute in 1831. Territorial Laws, III, 904. 140. Session Laws, 1837, p. 299. However, Chief Justice Fletcher, in the work known from its compiler as "Fletcher's Code," embodied the old law, and the new one was reenacted in 1839. Session Laws, 1839, p. 76. 141. Territorial Laws, II, 798-800; Detroit Gazette, editorial of September 13, 1822. 142. A very brief study of the expansion of Michigan based on county organization has been made by Mr. Mark W. Jefferson in Report of the Michigan Academy of Science, 1902, pp. 88-91. See plates in Farmer's History of Detroit, I, 119, 120. Another and more extended study of this subject has been made by Mr. William Henry Hathaway, "County Organization in Michigan," Mich. Hist. Magazine, II, 573-629. For the establishment of the first counties, and their unequal areas, see W. L. Jenks, in Mich. Pion. and Hist, xiv HISTORIC MICHIGAN Colls., XXXVIII, 447; also Territorial Laws, I, 121, 122, 323, 325, 327, 328; II, 295. 143. Statutes at Large, IV, 80; for legislation affecting the establishment of county seats, see Territorial Laws, III, 840; Session Laws, 1835-36, p. 81; ibid., 1837, pp. 268-287. 144. Lanman, Michigan, 228. 145. Territorial Laws, II, 477. See comments of the Detroit Gazette of March 6, 1827, on the proceedings of the legislative council regarding township government. Their opinion of the importance of the subject is attested by the time given to it, greater than to any other measure since the organization of the council. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., III, 434. 146. Ibid., III, 434. 147. Ibid., XVII, 558. 148. Mathews, Expansion of New England, 236, quoting E. W. Bemis, Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, 14-17; cf. Territorial Laws, II, 317, 640. See the discussion in the Detroit Gazette, February 27, 1827, for contemporary opinion as to the respective merits of the New England and New York plans of township1 government. The Michigan Herald of January 17, 1827, states that a majority of citizens prefer the New York system of township government because cheaper and more convenient; the same paper for February 28, 1827, contains an article against the New York plan. 149. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., X, 63; Territorial Laws, II, 787. For the very large townships in northern counties see ibid., II, 480-481. 150. As a small political area organized on petition of the people for township government, the township indexes population on a smaller scale than does the county; hence it is supplementary as a measure of settlement within the counties. The name, date, position, size, and boundaries of a township may tell much. The date and position of the first townships organized in a county are quite certain evidence of how the population was distributed; and the rate of township organization is fairly dependable as a means of contrasting the larger features of settlement within the counties. The names and boundaries of townships may often give a clue to the motive of settlement, and to the sources of the population; but caution must be used in basing judgment upon the relative areas of townships; relative size, area for area, is likely to be very misleading, and should be compared with other evidence. Small townships naturally give the impression of density of population; and the large ones, of sparseness; but a township diagram of any county for any census will invariably give evidence that this relativity of area is not of itself a safe guide to relative density of population. Townships have varied in size for sundry reasons-physiographic, ethnic, economic, social; various other conditions have influenced feeling about who should be included in the townships. 151. Mich., Pion. and Hist., Colls., VII, 36-51. 152. J. D. Hoyt and R. C. Ford, John D. Pierce, Founder of the Michigan School System (Ypsilanti, 1905), 40-41, 44-46. 153. A. C. McLaughlin, History of Higher Education in Michigan, 17, 18; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., VII, 19. 154. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass, 123, citing Journal of the Legislative Council, 1826, p. 5-6. 155. Territorial Laws, II, 472; see also ibid., III, 1012, 1377. A brief review of Territorial school legislation in Michigan is given in Michigan Joint Documents, 1880, pp. 307 -309; and of the organization of the territorial school system in Hoyt and Ford, John D. Pierce, 47-52. 156. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 429. See the sketch of a typical pioneer school of about this time at Ypsilanti, probably of the better type, "Annual report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1880," in Michigan Joint Documents, 1880, pp. 306-307. The visitation was made in 1839 by the editor of an eastern school paper, The Common School Assistant, in whose columns for September of that year appeared his report-good teachers, but poor ventilation, bad desks and seats, windows poor, ceilings low, and the settlers unwilling to have any change made. 157. Territorial Laws, III, 849, 879, 881, 975, 992, 1069, 1120, 1205, 1379. 158. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 400. 159. Territorial Laws, I, 879; II, 104; McLaughlin, Higher Education in Michigan, 29 -31; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., VII, 37; B. A. Hinsdale and I. N. Demmon, History of the University of Michigan, passim; Michigan Joint Documents, 1880, pp. 353-355, 358, 360 -363. 160. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 38; V, 184-187; McLaughlin, Higher Education in Michigan, 34-35; Michigan Legislative Manual, 1837, pp. 43, 44, Art. 10, sec. 2, 3. Hoyt and Ford, John D. Pierce, 79-87; Michigan Joint Documents, 1880, pp. 309-313. XVII REPRESENTATIVE EARLY DETROITERS Chapter prepared from the following biographical sketches: Lewis Cass, Michigan's Hero of the War of 1812, by Woodbridge N. Ferris, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol XXXIX, pp. 270-274; Life and Times of Rev. Gabriel Richard, by J. A. Girardin, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. 1, pp. 481-495; Dr. Douglass Houghton, by Rolland C. Allen, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 127-134. XIX BEGINNINGS OF STEAM NAVIGATION ON THE GREAT LAKES 1. For additional reading see: Memoir of Capt. Samuel Ward, with a Sketch of the Early Commerce of the Upper Lakes. By William L. Bancroft.-M. P. H. C., XXII, 354-361. XX INDIAN TREATY OF SAGINAW 1. This testimony was being taken in the old court house on the same city where the present Saginaw court house stands. 2. Probably a misprint for "southwestern." 3. For additional readings see: The Treaty of Saginaw in the Year 1819. By Ephraim S. Williams.-M. P. H. C., VII, 262-267. The Treaty of Saginaw, 1819. By Fred Dustin.-Mich. Hist. Mag., IV, 243-278. Lewis Cass and the Saginaw Treaty of 1819. By Henry E. Naegely.-Mich. Hist. Mag., III, 610-616, NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xv A Certificate or Statement Made by Chippewa Chiefs, Signers of the Treaty of 1819. By Ephraim S. Williams.-M. P. H. C., VII, 140-144. XXI EARLY ROADS Rewritten from an address by Father Gabriel Richard in Congress, January 28, 1825, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXI, pp. 440-443; Settlement Along the Chicago Road in Southern Michigan, by George M. Fuller in Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan, pp. 252-257; Pioneer Life in Michigan, by B. 0. Williams, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. II, pp. 462 -470; Harriet Martineau's Travels in and Around Michigan, Michigan History Magazine, Vol. VII, 49-99. XXII PIONEER LIFE 1. A paper read at the Galesburg Farmers' Institute, January, 1887, and at the annual meeting of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, June 4, 1891. 2. Since writing this, Mrs. Dr. L. W. Lovell, of Climax, informs me that she has seen an Indian have the ague, which shook him as it did the white man. Stephen Elred (Mrs. L's brother) assured me that he had seen one Indian dog shake with the ague. It is a fact worth recording that, for a large part of the first pioneer decade, the fever and ague were almost the only disease or sickness that afflicted the settlers. There was what was called the shaking ague, the dumb ague (the ague and fever without the shake), and the chill fever that came later. These were all the dangerous complaints in the early settlements. The other more dangerous diseases came in later years. 3. I knew one man who, when he felt the "symptoms," seized his gun and put for the woods and did thus often "break the chill." 4. For additional readings see: Across Michigan Territory Sixty Years Ago. [1834]. By Enos Goodrich.-M. P. H. C., XXVI, 228-235. A Trip from Rome to Mackinaw in Territorial Days, with Powder and Clothing for Soldiers at the Ford. [1833]. By Harvey Haynes.-M. P. H. C., XIII, 520-525. The Journey of Ionia's First Settlers. [1833]. By Mrs. Prudence Tower.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 145-147. From New England to Lake Superior. [1854]. By Lt. Gov. O. W. Robinson.-M. P. H. C., XXXII, 387-391. A Trip from Detroit to the Saginaw Valley Over Fifty Years Ago. [1832]. By Wm. R. McCormick.-M. P. H. C., VII, 271-277. For numerous additional readings to and through Michigan in pioneer days, see M. P. H. C., XXXIX, 508, under "Journeys." The Bark-Covered House, or Pioneer Life in Michigan. By William Nowlin.-M. P. H. C., IV, 480-541. Our Pioneer Debating Society. By Enos Goodrich.-M. P. H. C., XI, 263-265. Pioneer and Aborigine. By Calvin J. Thorpe.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 467-478. A Sketch of Pioneer Life Among the Indians. By Mrs. Catherine Calkins Brunson.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 161-163. Indian and Pioneer Life. By Mrs. Minnie B. Waite.-M. P. H. C., XXXVIII, 318-321. A Pioneer Incident. By W. R. McCormick. -M. P. H. C., IV, 376-379. Forty Years Ago. By Elizabeth H. Pilcher. M. P. H. C., V, 80-89. Story of Another Pioneer. By C. B. Stebbins.-M. P. H. C., V, 135-137. Recollections of Pioneer Life. By Former Governor Josiah W. Begole.-M. P. H. C., V, 339-344. Reminiscences of Pioneer Life in Michigan. By R. C. Crawford.-M. P. H. C., IV, 41-53. A Pioneer Sketch.-By W. R. McCormick.M. P. H. C., IV, 364-373. Sketch of Early Pioneer Life. By Sherman Stevens.-M. P. H. C., VII, 93-98. Recollections of Pioneer Life in Michigan. By Alfred L. Driggs.-M. P. H. C., X, 57 -60. Pioneer Recollections. By James H. Lawrence.-M. P. H. C., XVIII, 360-373. Recollections and Lessons of Pioneer Boyhood. By Edward W. Barber.-M. P. H. C., XXXI, 178-227. Reminiscences of Kalamazoo. By Jesse Turner.-M. P. H. C., XVIII, 570-588. Numerous other reminiscences may be found by consulting the index volumes of the Collections under the names of the counties. Our Grandmothers. By Mrs. Alice Cooper Kellogg.-M. P. H. C., XXXVIII, 575-580. Miss Emily Ward, Commonly Known as Aunt Emily. By Mrs. George N. Jones.-M. P. H. C., XXXVIII, 581-589. (See also 21: 367-370). Some Distinguished Women of Michigan. By Helen V. Walker.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 585-590. A Quarter of a Century of Teaching. By A. D. P. Van Buren.-M. P. H. C., XIV, 24 -32. Log Cabin Times and Log Cabin People. By Gen. B. M. Cutcheon.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 610-621. Early Schools and Pioneer Life. By J. M. Norton.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 107-110. The Passing of the Pioneers. By Edward W. Barber.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 425-437. The Past and the Present. By Edward W. Barber.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 624. The Pioneer and His Work. By Melvin D. Osband.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 709-717. Laura Smith Haviland. By Mrs. Caroline R. Humphrey.-Mich. Hist. Mag., V, 173-185. XXIII 1. The new government began on the second day of July, 1805, A. S. P., P. L., I, 247. 2. A muster roll of 1812 (Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., V, 553), and a tax-roll for the same year (Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., IV, 409), shows the population to have been still mainly French, and the figures in the enumeration for 1818, 1110, probably represent mainly the same element (Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 346). The United States census figures for 1810 giving Detroit a population of 2,227 are said (Gazette, January 29, 1819), to have represented the "District of Detroit," a district greater than the area of Wayne county in 1819. See extracts from articles by B. F. H. Witherell about conditions in Detroit at the close of the war, in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XIII, 503-507. The Journal and Michigan Advertiser, for August 6, 1834, has an article on "Detroit in 1815-1816," giving a minute description of the situation and character of individual houses and stores. The xvi HISTORIC MICHIGAN Fort and its surroundings are described in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., I, 368-371. 3. C. M. Burton, "Some Benefits that accrued to Detroit from the devastating fire of 1805," Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXII, 431-436. The new governor, William Hull, immediately upon his arrival opened a sale of land to the former inhabitants of the village. The sales which were made by auction with no payments required down, are said to have brought an average of four cents per square foot. A. S. P., P. L., I, 248. See Farmer's History of Detroit, I, 26-31, for a detailed discussion of the functioning of the Governor and Judges as a land board. 4. The official title of the new government. 5. Territorial Laws, I, 283, September 13, 1806. It is said to have been modeled upon that of the city of Washington whither the seat of government had been recently removed, and for which the real author of the new plan, Judge Woodward, had a great admiration. Two of the principal avenues of the present city are reminiscent of Judge Woodward and of President Jefferson, his patron, both of whom were Virginians. Woodward had practiced law in Washington since 1795, and was there when that city was laid out. The plan of Washington is said to be reminiscent of our early friendly relations with France, being patterned after the "spider-web" plan of Versailles. Landmarks, 273. An article in the Gazette for July 18, 1823, speaks of the city as having been laid out on the plan of Philadelphia. 6. By Abijah Hull, a surveyor, and relative of Governor Hull. Landmarks, 273. 7. The Greely map of (1810) shows eight principal streets radiating at regular angles from a central square. The three streets leading west from the square are crossed at a little distance from the shore by a street parallel to it. 8. McKenney, Tour to the Lakes, 141. 9. Gazette, August 22, 1826. 10. Journal of the Proceedings of the Common Council (1824-1843), 190, 404. 11. Mich., Pion. and Hist. Coils., IV, 471. For street legislation by the Governor and Judges see Territorial Laws, I, 286, 289. See also Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the City of Detroit, 11-12. 12. For example of later complaints see the Gazette, March 12, 1824. For the state of this road at that time see Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 412, 496, 501. Cf. Brown, Western Gazetteer, 166-168. The isolation of Detroit in the winter is reflected in an advertisement by Joseph Fairbanks (Gazette, January 1, 1819) who "will keep in the winter a good span of horses and sleigh which he will hire to parties on reasonable terms. He intends to make two or three journeys to Buffalo this winter if a sufficient number of passengers can be obtained to remunerate him." 13. Landmarks, 431. 14. Gazette, July 30, 1819. July 17, the best flour quoted at $8 per barrel, and prime pork at from $21 to $24 per barrel. Winter quotations in 1832 (Gazette, December 19), placed best flour at $5 to $5.25 per barrel, and prime pork at from $8 to $9 per barrel. Schedules of prices appear in the Gazette, corrected weekly, for a great variety of articles. 15. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 800. 16. One turkey would buy one acre of land. Other items are given. An "Act regulating the Assize of Bread" (Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the City of Detroit, March 25, 1816), appears to have been still in force, fixing the price of bread according to a sliding scale based on the price of flour. The maximum and minimum prices of flour per hundred weight are assumed at $8 and $3; when at $8, the weight of the loaf is to be 3 lbs., 6 ozs., for 25 cents; when at $3, the price is to be 12%2 cents for a loaf of 3 lbs., 10 ozs. See also a long act regulating the markets, Ibid., November 20, 1816. 17. Estwich Evans, an eye witness of trade conditions at Detroit in 1818, gives a very good description of them in Thwaites' Early Western Travels, VIII, 221. The gradual increase of early trade may be estimated by following the additions to the advertising pages in the Gazette (1817-1830), where detailed price lists of articles for sale are given by leading stores. 18. Gazette, July 30, 1819. The same paper for April 3, 1818, advertises that a mill is ready for the manufacture of flour and lumber on Tremble's creek five miles above Detroit. 19. This was 849 tons out of a total of 2,334 tons. Gazette, January 29, 1819. 20. Most of the exports, excepting cider, apples, salt and fish, appear to have been sent principally to the garrisons at Mackinac, Green Bay and Chicago. The imports were derived mainly from Ohio and New York. The elementary nature of this commerce may be judged from an abstract of the principal articles of domestic produce entered and cleared coastwise, at the port during 1818. Gazette, January 29, 1819. See also the "Port of Detroit" in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 470; also a sketch of Detroit's marine interests prior to 1837 in Landmarks, 560-563. 21. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., IV, 466; XVIII, 462. 22. Proceedings of the Board of Trustees, December 4, 1815, p. 4. A supplementary act, February 25, 1819, provided a primitive fire company, Ibid., 40. See other Territorial fire legislation in Territorial Laws, II, 348, 349; III, 842. 23. Ibid., 16. See also lists of fines, Ibid., 43, 49, 58, 64, etc., also "History of the Old Fire Department" in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., IV, 410-419. 24. Landmarks, 446-448; and "The Detroit Water Works" in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., IV, 466-471. The latter is an anonymous contribution to the Detroit Post and Tribune for December 15, 1i77, but, if accurate, it is a very clear statement of early conditions. 25. In 1820 a tax of 500 days' labor was levied "for the purpose of removing the nuisance on the border of the Detroit river," a nuisance which apparently polluted the drinking water. Proceedings of the Board of Trustees, 54. See Territorial Laws, III, 901, 902, 940, for other legislation regarding public nuisances. 26. Report of the treasurer of the corporation of the city for the year ending May 10, 1819, as given in the Gazette for May 21, 1819. 27. Darby, Tour of the West, 190. 28. Thwaites, Early Western Travels, VIII, 215. 29. For example, Gazette, October 16, 1818. 30. Report of a committee of members of the Detroit Lyceum to that body, in the Gazette for January 29, 1819. The figures are said to be for an area of three-fourth of a square mile. The public buildings, about ten, were all of brick or stone, the government NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xvii.. XVll storehouse was a three-story building. Stores, shops and public buildings together numbered 131. 31. The Protestant Society, Bible Society, Moral and Humane Society, Sunday School Association, Library Company of the City of Detroit, Mechanical Society, Agricultural Society, The Lyceum, Bank of Michigan. 32. Gazette, September 17, 1819. Women received for housework from $6 to $8 per month. 33. Ibid., October 12, 1821. According to a report unanimously adopted by a committee of the common council in February, 1827, the winter season afforded little employment. It was recommended that the city provide work on public improvements until the opening of navigation should bring a return of the usual business activity. Journal of the Proceedings of the Common Council (1824-43), 49. 34. Territorial Laws, I, 794. The names of members are there given. See a notice of the society's meeting in the Gazette, July 17, 1818. 35. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXI, 500. 36. Journal of the Proceedings of the Common Council (1824-43), 219. The damages were assessed at $2,160. 37. Hoffman, A Winter in the West, I, 120-121. 38. Landmarks, 284. 39. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 485. 40. As quoted above, high prices were used as an argument to encourage the immigration of farmers. It was argued that Ohio farmers made a good profit on stock even after paying the cost of transportation. In 1818, 1,042 beef cattle and 1,435 hogs were supplied to Detroit from Ohio. Gazette, January 29, 1819. See also an editorial of January 22, 1819. Efforts were made also to stimulate the French farmers; see, for instance, the French portion of the Gazette for August 22, 1817. 41. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 420 -422. The constitution of this society is there given, with about twenty signatures. By 1825 it seems to have had forty-nine members. Ibid., I, 423. 42. Gazette, January 2, 1824. 43. Territorial Laws, II, 221. For other extensions of the boundary in the Territorial period see Ibid., I, 283, 535, 875; II, 339, 480, 913. 44. Ibid., II, 221. Interesting features to settlers were the provisions regarding the franchise and the powers of the council, especially over taxation. Voters must be freemen of the city having the qualification of electors of members of the Territorial legislature; they must have resided in the city one year next preceding the election, and be residents of the city at the time of the election. For provisions existing since the establishment of the government under the board of trustees in 1815, see Proceedings of the Board of Trustees, Acts of October 24, sec. 6, and May 3, 1821, sec. 1; also Territorial Laws, I, 314. The freemen of the city had direct control over taxation. A tax on the real and personal estate of all freemen within the city could be levied by the majority vote of the freemen assembled at a meeting called pursuant to notice by the mayor or recorder with the advice and consent of any two of the aldermen. Ibid., II, 226. For later additions and modifications see Ibid., II, 347, 349, 640; III, 1048, 1122. Apparently non-residents could not be so taxed. The question of the legality of taxing their property came up in 1832 over the raising of money to defray expenses incurred by the city during the epidemic of cholera. Jo- nal of the Proceedings of the Common Co'!mcil (1824 -43), 223. Other powers granted to the Council by the Act of 1824 are specified in Territorial Laws, II, 223, and supplementary powers in Ibid., II, 342, 345, 348, 570; III, 935, 938. 939, 1123, 1269, 1422. The mayor, recorder and the five aldermen were required to be freeholders. Ibid., II, 221. The recorder, clerk and treasurer were to be appointed by the mayor and five aldermen or by a majority of them. By an act of 1827 seven aldermen were to be elected and all ministerial officers were to be appointed and removed only by the common council. Ibid., II, 571. For characteristics of the government established in 1806, see Ibid., IV. 3. The first city charter was granted in 1802. The civil history of Detroit as viewed by a competent contemporary (Major John Biddle) is printed in a series of articles in the Detroit Daily Advertiser, 1836, for June 14, 16, 18 and 23. 45. The article is entitled "A View of Detroit." According to this, there were 300 buildings, of which 155 were dwellings. Nearly half were two stories high, and some three stories. A number were of brick and stone. See an interesting note on the Detroit of 1824 in "Incidents of Pioneer Life in Clinton County." Mich. Pion, and Hist. Colls., I, 149. 46. For example, the editor of the Michigan Herald (November 22, 1825), undertakes to correct alleged misrepresentations of Detroit made by the editor of the Cleveland Herald. The issue of the same paper for October 18, 1825, compares conditions at Detroit with those at Buffalo, and Portland on Sandusky Bay. 47. Lanman, History of Michigan, 231. A summary of conditions in the city in 1825 is given in a memorial of the citizens to the territorial legislature; see the Michigan Herald, August 9, 1825. At the election of city officers April 4, 1825, 115 votes were cast, but the number of votes at succeeding elections makes it appear hardly representative of the voting population. Journal of the Proceedings of the Common Council (1824-1843), 18 -19; 217 votes were cast the next year. Ibid., 28-29. The names are given in each; a large proportion are French. 48. McKenney, Tour to the Lakes, 141. See also Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., IV, 89-94. 49. Gazette, February 7, 1826. 50. Census of Michigan, 1884, I, p. xlviii. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XII, next to page 461. See also for this period "Detroit in 1827 and Later on," in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXV, 272-283. 51. March 12, 1827. Journal of the Proceedings of the Common Council (1824-43), 50 -52. 52. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXX, 448. 53. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, June 15, 1831. The same paper for July 13, 1831, copies from Bicknell's Philadelphia Register long extracts from a letter dated June 2 describing Detroit in that year. See the reminiscent sketch by an eye witness of conditions in 1831 in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 395-398; XXI, 496. 54. Magazine of Western History, V, 33, 36; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., VI, 239; XVIII, 606. xviii HISTORIC MICHIGAN 55. It is said that of the two hundred persons attacked, about one-half died. Landmarks, 380. For general conditions in that year see "Detroit in the year 1832," Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXVIII, 163-171. 56. Ibid., 382. It is said that for some time the city was quarantined and a rigid guard kept to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. Deaths became so frequent that the tolling of the church bells was discontinued in order that the living might get sleep. Landmarks, 381. 57. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, October 1, 1834. 58. Hoffman, A Winter in the WVcst, I, 111-113. 59. MacCabe's Directory of Detroit (1837), 37, reporting the census of 1834. 60. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, April 9, 1834. 61. Ibid., June 18, 1834, contains an official notice of the arrival and departure of mails. Mails were received daily from points on the Chicago road, and weekly from Oakland, Macomb and St. Clair counties. A southern mail was received tri-weekly. 62. Journal of the Proceedings of the Common Council (1824-43), 258. This contains an abstract of the receipts and expenditures of the corporation between January 1, 1825 and March 1834. 63. For useful illustrative reminiscent sketches of Detroit in these years see Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., IV, 449-456; X, 97 -101; XXXI, 490-509. Brief biographical sketches giving a fair view of the personal element in Detroit's growth at this time appear in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXVIII, 585-638. 64. The amount of land sold at the Detroit land office from the beginning of the cash system in 1820 to November 1836 is given in MacCabe's Directory of Detroit (1837). The climax of big sales came after 1820 periodically, in 1825, 1830 and 1835. 65. Detroit Daily Free Press, March 23, 1836. 66. MacCabe, Directory of Detroit (1837), 36, Blois's Gazetteer, 278. 67. 9,763. MacCabe. Directory of Detroit (1837), 37. He gives in a list of "streets, lanes and allies" (pp. 40-42) some eighty streets. Blois gives only eight principal streets. 68. Blois, Gazetteer, 271. 69. Detroit Journal and Courier, September 19, 1835. 70. Detroit Daily Free Press, January 20, 1836. 71. Detroit Daily Advertiser, September 6, 1836. The 27 new stores opened that spring all appeared to be doing a prosperous business; see business directory of the city in the same paper for June 11, 1836, apparently confined to the subscribers of the paper. 72. Detroit Daily Free Press, December 25, 1835. 73. Michigan Political Science Association, Publications, IV, 523. Detroit Free Press, June 17, 1836. 74. Detroit Journal and Courier, July 15, 1835. 75. Ibid. 76. June 11, 1836. 77. Blois' Gazetteer, 277. Cf. MacCabe, Directory of Detroit, 35-36. The city was well situated for this trade, being the capital and chief port of the territory for commerce with the eastern states. The fur trade declined as the territory became settled, and was comparatively unimportant by the close of this period. Blois' Gazetteer, 275. 78. Free Press, December 23, 1835, quotes flour at $6.25 per bbl. In Farmer's History of Detroit, I, 800, the price of flour is given for 1837 as $11 and $16; for 1838, $8; for 1842, $2.25. 79. See above, Chapter II. 80. Daily Advertiser, December 24, 1836. 81. MacCabe, Directory of Detroit (1837), 36; Blois, Gazetteer, 278. 82. A ferry boat propelled by horse-power was introduced in 1825, and a steam ferry in 1830, but they fell short of the need. 83. Free. Press, March 24, 1836. That paper says a new ferry was then building. The issue of March 28 hails the "glorious news for Detroit" that apparent progress is being made on the Canadian bill to incorporate a railroad company to build from some Canadian point west to the Detroit River. The issue for April 2 gives the debates on the bill in the Canadian legislature. 84. Free Press, December 23, 1835. 85. Ibid., April 26, 1836. The society appears to have been incorporated in 1838. Session Laws (1838), 242. The Detroit Union Society of Carpenters and Joiners was incorporated in 1848. Session Laws (1848), 234. 86. Blois, Gazetteer, 275. 87. MacCabe, Directory of Detroit, 35. 88. Ibid., 36. 89. Detroit Journal and Courier, November 17, 1835. 90. Proceedings of the Common Council, March 9, 1836. 91. Landmarks, 485. Before this the creek known as the Savoyard had been used as an open drain, and is said to have been usually so full of filth as to be a menace to health. The new sewer following the line of this creek was built underground at a cost of $22,607. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 8-9, 60. 92. Free Press, March 26, 1836. The Detroit Journal and Courier, July 22, 1835, records that there is hardly a case of sickness, which is attributed to the cool weather and the efforts of the city to remove nuisances. Harriet Martineau saw at breakfast in Detroit on a June morning in 1836 "the healthiest set of faces that I had beheld since I left England." Society in America, I, 312. 93. Free Press, April 28, 1836. 94. Ibid., May 23, Blois mentions a new "hydraulic establishment" in process of construction, to cost $100,000. Gazetteer, 272. 95. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., IV, 413. A city fire department was incorporated in 1840. Session Laws (1840), 13. 96. July 29, 1835. The character of the lamps used appears in an ordinance of April 29, 1835. Journal of the Proceedings of the Common Council (1824-43), 322. The City of Detroit Gas Company was incorporated in 1849. Session Laws (1849), 82. 97. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 191. For the universal use long made of the Canadian pony cart, see the Magazine of Western History, IV, 745-747, and Campbell's Outlines, 420-421. They are said to have gone out of general use when the streets began to be paved. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XIII, 492. For street legislation by the Governor and Judges, see Territorial Laws, I, 286, 289. See also Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the City of Detroit, 11-12, NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xix 98. Harriet Martineau, who was in Detroit in 1836, speaks of wooden planks laid on the grass to form the pavement" in the outskirts of the city, and says that plans were being made to try the "block-wood" pavement, of which trial had been made in a part of Broadway, New York. Curiously enough, she makes no mention of Detroit's mud. Society in America, I, 313. 99. Mrs. Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles, (Lond., 1837), II, 82-83. 100. Gazetteer, 273. 101. Farmer, History of Detroit, II; Michigan Biographies and Representative Men, passim. 102. 1805-23. Landmarks, 273. 103. Census of Michigan, 1884, I, 48. The semi-official report of the committee of the Detroit Lyceum in 1819 gives seventy "free people of color" for that year. Gazette, January 29, 1819. 104. United States Census (1830), 153. 105. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, September 10, 1834. Blois mentions a church for "colored persons," Gazetteer, 274. 106. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 345. See also Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 415 -417. 107. Gazetteer, 274. 108. Directory of Detroit, 1837. A wooden building 50x35 feet. 109. See "Our German Immigrations," Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXVI, 255. 110. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, January 14, 1835. 111. Gazetteer, 279. 112. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, April 9, 1834. In a population of 4,973, the French numbered 801. Some accounts of the large French landowners about 1837 is given by a contemporary in "The Last of the Barons," Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXI, 499. Some forty-seven are mentioned. 113. Landmarks, 361-362. See comment on the election by a writer in the Gazette for October 17, 1823, to the effect that the election was no evidence of "religious toleration in Michigan," since Father Richard was supported only by his own sect. The Patriot war of 1837 is said to have caused the immigration of Canadians to Detroit, but apparently not in large numbers. For this event in relation to Detroit, see Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., II, 573-579. It does not appear that distinctively French or English ideas made any permanent impression upon the fundamental laws of either city or territory. 114. Tour to the Lakes, 113' 115. A Winter in the West, I, 120. 116. Traits of this youthfulness appear in a contemporary's description of scenes on an election day of about that time. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 190-191. 117. Society in America, I, 314-315. 118. Gazetteer, 274-276; MacCabe, Directory of Detroit, 30-32. An act for the encouragement of literature and the improvement of the city of Detroit was one of the first acts of the Governor and Judges, September 9, 1805. Territorial Laws, I, 67. The sum of $20,000 for the purpose was to be raised by four successive lotteries. 119. Gazetteer, 277. See lists of books for sale by Sheldon and Reed (publishers of the Gazette), at the Gazette office at various times, the first appearing July 25 and September 26, 1817. The Library of the City of Detroit was incorporated in 1817. Territorial Laws, I, 310. Its meetings are frequently mentioned in the Gazette. 120. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, December 29, 1830. 121. See, for instance, an early account of debates and a forecast of speakers for a month in the Gazette of February 27, 1818. The constitution of the lyceum is given serially in the Gazette for May 8, May 22, June 5, and July 31, 1818. A literary association known as The Young Men's Society, formed in 1833, supplemented the lyceum. See Detroit Young Men's Society, Reports (Detroit, 1876). The Detroit Courier for February 20, 1833, contains the introductory address of the president (F. Sawyer, Jr.) stating purposes and plans, also the by-laws and standing rules which help to explain its scope and character. The same paper (November 20, 1833) laments the "inactivity" and "deplorable condition" of the society. Apparently it took on new life in 1836, when it was incorporated. Session Laws (1835-36), 165. See also Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XII, 361-375. 122. Blois mentions three dailies, four weeklies, one religious weekly, and one monthly devoted to education. Gazetteer, 274. 123. The preface of' the volume gives an account of the intended work of the society. The contributions are addresses delivered at its meetings. 124. MacCabe's Directory of Detroit (1837), on p. 32, says, "We are not apprized of much activity among its members at present." This was after Cass' removal to Washington. 125. Territorial Laws, I, 879-882. The initial project was launched in 1817. 126. John Monteith and Father Richard. The Gazette for January 29, 1818, contains the advertisement of a Classical Academy to be opened on February 2 next, signed by "John Monteith, President of the University." 127. See an article by a former superintendent of public instruction on "Traditions and Reminiscences of the Public Schools of Detroit," in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 450. The Gazette, April 30, 1819, gives a report on the condition of education in the "primary school" at Detroit. There were 170 children in school in the city in 1818, according to the, Gazette of January 29, 1819. 128. In 1834, out of 1,496 children between 5 and 20 years of age, 801 were in school. An editorial in the Detroit Courier, April 9, attributes this to the lack of free schools, and urges a change. See also an editorial in the same paper for August 19, 1835. Detroit was early excepted from the operation of the general school laws. Territorial Laws, II, 776; see also Ibid., III, 1238. 129. For additional readings see: Detroit in 1814. By B. F. H. Witherell.M. P. H. C., XIII, 503-507. Detroit in 1815-16. By Samuel Zug.-M. P. H. C., I, 496-501. Detroit in 1819. By Charles C. Trowbridge. — M. P. H. C., IV, 471-479. Childhood's Recollections of -Detroit [1824]. By Mrs. E. M. S. Stuart.-M. P. H. C., XVIII, 458-465. Detroit, Past and Present: in Relation to Its Social and Physical Condition. [1820-1874]. By Charles C. Trowbridge.-M. P. H. C., I, 371-385. Detroit Three Score Years ago. [1821-2]. By Ephraim S. Williams.-M. P. H. C., X, 84-87. Detroit in 1824. By "Philotas," in Detroit XXI HISTORIC MICHIGAN Gazette, March 12, 1824.-M. P. H. C., XII, 595-599. Detroit Half a Century Ago (Interesting letters written from and about Detroit in 1827 by Thomas L. McKenney).-M. P. H. C., IV, 89-94. Detroit in 1827 and Later On. By General Friend Palmer.-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 272-283. Fifty Years Ago (1829). By Colonel Henry Raymond.-M. P. H. C., 100-101. Detroit in the Year 1832. By C. M. Burton.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 163-171. Bygones of Detroit [1832-6]. By George C. Bates.-M. P. H. C., XXII, 305-404. Reminiscences of Detroit [1835]. By Mrs. Julia Talbot Smith.-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 682 -683. Reminiscences of Detroit [1835-7]. By Col. William Phelps.-M. P. H. C., IV, 459-465. Early Recollections [1837]. By Elias S. Woodman.-M. P. H. C., XVIII, 455-458. Detroit in 1837: What the City's Oldest Directory Discloses. By Moses F. Dickinson. -M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 585-589. Detroit Nearly Five Decades Ago [1837].M. P. H. C., X, 102-104. XXIV THE "BOY GOVERNOR" OF MICHIGAN 1. For additional readings see: The Portrait of Governor Mason. By David E. Hineman.-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 238-243. Mason Lineage and Arms. By Jane Griffith Keyes.-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 605-609. Removal of Governor Mason's Remains. By Lawton T. Hemans.-M. P. tH. C., XXXV, 32-43. Chapters from the Autobiography of an Octogenerian (Miss Emily V. Mason).-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 248-258. Character of Michigan's Boy Governor. Heman's Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason. Mich. Hist. Con. Publications, Biog. Ser., I, 88-89. XXV MICHIGAN-OHIO BOUNDARY 1. This chapter rewritten from the articles Southern and Western Boundaries of Michigan, by Anna May Soule, M.L., Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXVII, pp. 346-378; Toledo War Song, by Rev. Riley C. Crawford, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. VI, pp. 60 -61. 2. For additional readings see: The Boundaries of Michigan. By Prof. Claude S. Larzelere.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 1 -27. The Michigan-Ohio Boundary Line. By Frank E. Robson.-M. P. H. C., XI, 216-227. The Boundary Dispute with Ohio, and the Constitution of 1835. Hemans' Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason. Mich. Hist. Con. Publications, Biog. Ser., I, 107-177. The Michigan-Indiana Boundary. By Anna May Soule, M. I.-M. P. H. C., XXVII, 341 -345. XXVI MICIIIGAN'S FIRST UNITED STATES SENATORS 1. A sketch of,ucius Lyon. One of the First Senators from Michigan, by George H. White, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XIII, pp. 325-333. 2. The History and Times of the Hon. John Norvell, as Connected with the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan. By Col. Freeman Norvell, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collection, Vol. III, pp. 140 148. XXVII EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS 1. Articles used in the preparation of this chapter: The Log School House Era, by A. D. P. VanBuren, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XIV, pp. 293-297, 306-316; Education in Michigan During the Territorial Period, by Lucy M. Salmon, A.M., Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. VII, pp. 36-51; Origin and Progress of the Michigan School System, by John D. Pierce, first superintendent of public instruction, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol I, pp. 37-45; Life and Work of John D. Pierce, by R. Clyde Ford, LL. D., Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. XXXV, pp. 295-304; Hon. Isaac E. Crary, Our First Representative in Congress, and One of the Founders of Our School System, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Vol. V, 382-384. 2. For additional readings see: The Pioneers of Michigan-Their Devotion to Educational Interests. Historically Illustrated. By Flavius J. Littlejohn.-M. P. H. C.. II, 126-132. History of the Land Grants for Education in Michigan. By George W. Knight, PH. D. — M. P. H. C., VII, 17-35. Our Union School-The People's CollegeThe Development of Our Second Pioneer Decade. By A. D. P. Van Buren.-M. P. H. C., XVIII, 561-570. Early Schools of Kalamazoo. By Mrs. John Den Blyker.-M. P. H. C., XXXVIII, 522 -534. The Schools of Ottawa County. By E. B. Fairfield, Jr.-M. P. H. C., IX, 321-326. The First Schools in Holland, Ottawa County. By Rev. Christian Van Der Veen.-M. P. H. C., IX, 326-328. Discussion of the Life and Work of John D. Pierce. By Wales C. Martindale.-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 304-308. Rev, John D. Pierce. By Dr. 0. C. Comstock.-M. P. H. C., V, 184-187. Hon. Isaac E. Crary. By Dr. 0. C. Comstock.-M. P. H. C., XIV, 280-283. Sketches, Reminiscences, etc. [Isaac E. Crary]. By A. D. P. Van Buren.-M. P. H. C., XI, 273-274. XXVIII INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND THE FIVE MILLION DOLLAR LOAN 1. Read before the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, February 3, 1875. 2. Passed November 14, 1835. 3. Act No. 1, Public Acts of 1838. 4. House Journal, 1838, p. 188. 5. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., VII, 145. 6. House Journal, 1838, pp. 165-188. 7. Ibid. pp. 472-473. 8. Senate Journal, 1838, p. 275. 9. House Documents, 1838, No. 44. 10. Public Acts, 1838, pp. 154-190. 11. Ibid., 252. 12. Ibid., 259. NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xxi 13. House Documents, 1838, No. 44, p. 18. 14. Michigan as Province, Territory and State, III, 134. 15. House Documents, 1841, No. 18, p. 7. 16. Ibid., p. 10. 17. Encyc. Americana, XVI, "Wall Street." 18. Bicknell's Bank Note List, June 1, 1837. 19. House Documents, 1839, No. 44, p. 7. 20. Ibid., p. 11. 21. Ibid., 1841, No. 18, p. 61; Michigan as Province, Territory and State, III, 185. 22. Mason-Romeyn pamphlets (Burton Historical Coils.) 23. House Documents, 1839, No. 44, p. 27. 24. For additional readings see: The Five Million Dollar Loan. By John T. Blois.-M. P. H. C., VII, 145-146. Internal Improvements and the $5,000,000 Loan.:Heman's Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason. Mich. Hist. Com. Publications, Biog. Ser., I, 389-444. Federal Land Grants for Internal Improvements in the State of Michigan. By A. N. Bliss, A.M.-M. P. H. C., VII, 52-68. XXIX WILD CAT BANKING 1. The Bank of Detroit was organized under an act passed by the Governor of Judges of Michigan Territory September 19, 1806. This act was not approved by congress and the bank was forced to suspend business and wind up its affairs. 2. For additional readings on banks and banking see: Early Banks and Banking in Michigan. By Governor Alpheus Felch.-M. P. H. C., II, 111 -124. The First Bank in Michigan. By William L. Jenks.-In Mich. Hist. Mag., I, 41-62. The Old Bank of Michigan. By Friend Palmer.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 410-423. Wild Cat Banking. Hemans' Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason. Mich. Hist. Com. Publications, Biog. Ser., I, 362-388. Early Banks and Bankers of Macomb County. (Incidents of the "wild cat" period). By L. M. Miller.-M. P. 'H. C., V, 471-484. Exchange Bank of Shiawassee. By Andrew Huggins.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 511-513. The Great Financial Convulsion of 1893-4. By L. D. Watkins.-M. P. H. C., XXVIII, 410-411. XXX THE STATE CAPITOL 1. Statutes, 1838, p. 43. 2. Journal of Convention, 42. 3. Ibid., 50. 4. Ibid., 190-191. 5. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., I, 511, et seq. 6. Ibid. 7. House Journal, 1847, p. 454. 8. Ibid., p. 455. 9. Joint Documents, 1848. Report of commissioners. 10. Ibid. 11. Report of commissioners. 12. For additional readings see: Michigan's Old State Capitol Succumbs to the Flames.-M. P. H. C., VI, 290-292. Recollections. [Removal of State Capitol from Detroit]. By Hon. Levi.Bishop.-M. P. H. C., I, 511-517. Removal of the State Capitol from Detroit. By A. L. Williams.-M. P. H. C., VIII, 130 -135. Locating the State Capitol at Lansing. By Hon. Enos Goodrich.-M. P. H. C., VIII, 121 -130. Driving the First Stake for the Capitol at Lansing. By Rev. F. A. Blades.-M. P. H. C., XXXIII, 10-22. XXXI THE BEAVER ISLAND MORMONS 1. From the New York Times, September 3, 1882, furnished by Charles J. Strang. 2. Died in Detroit, Mich., June 14, 1894. 3. Charles J. Strang's mother was Elvira Eliza Field. She married James J. Strang July 13, 1849, Charles being her eldest son. After Strang's death she married John Baker and in 1873 moved to Lake county, Michigan. She was one of the four polygamous wives of King Strang. 4. For additional readings see: A Short History of the Beaver Islands.M. P. H. C., XXXII, 176-179. History of the Grand Traverse Region. (Incidents in the relations of Grand Traverse Settlers with the Beaver Island Mormons). By Dr. M. L. Leech.-M. P. H. C., XXXII, 98 -133. The Beaver Island Prophet. By George C. Bates.-M. P. H. C., XXXII, 225-235. Tales and Traditions of Northern Michigan. -M. P. H. C., XVIII, 623-626. The Murder of King Strang.-M. P. H. C., XVIII, 626-627. The Moses of the Mormons. By Henry E. Legler.-M. P. H. C., XXXII, 188-194. XXXII THE UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN 1. See Cyrus Thomas' "Problems of the Ohio Mounds" in the publication of the Bureau of Ethnology; also Handbook of American Indians article on "The Mound-builders." That all the aborigines of America, except the Esquimaux, are of common origin seems to be established. Lake Superior, either by reason of glacial drift or from mining by the Indians seems to have furnished the copper supply of prehistoric America. 2. See Brule and the Discovery of the West, by C. W. Butterfield. 3. Subsequently he was retaken and tortured to death by the Iroquois. 4. Paper read before the Michigan Political Science Association at a meeting held in Grand Rapids April 3 and 4, 1896. 5. Reverend Pitzel is probably the Rev. John H. Pitezel (or Petezell) who entered the Missionary field in 1836. In August, 1849, he made a report from the Sault Ste. Marie of the Indian school conditions of the missions at the Sault and Kewawenon. See Executive Documents, 31st Cong., 1st sess., no. 5, p. 1155, also History of Protestantism in Michigan, by Pilcher, 451. 6. Flows northeast into the southwestern part of Portage Lake. 7. The Catholics located a mission among the Chippewa Indians at the southwest end of Keeweenaw Bay and the Rev. Frederick Baraga was placed in charge. In the report to the Indian Agent in 1849, the school contained thirty pure blooded Indians studying spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic and geography. The Methodist mission under the xxii HISTORIC MICHIGAN Rev. J. H. Pitezel was on the opposite side of the bay. See Executive Documents, 31st Cong., 1st sess., no. 5, p. 1149. 8. This steamboat of 300 tons burthen, was built at Buffalo in 1836, and was formerly a sailing ship. It was lost on Lake Superior in 1847. 9. Counting from the original thirteen. 10. Le Portail is a French term, signifying the principal entrance of a church, a portal, and this name was given to the Pictured Rocks by the voyageur evidently in allusion to the arched entrances which constitute the most characteristic feature. Le Grand Portail is the great archway, or grand portal. 11. Captain Eber Ward, of St. Clair, relates, in the Detroit Free Press, August 2, 1905, the following experiences in 1846, sixty years ago, while acting as clerk of the "Independence," or as it was called "a six-mile boat," which plied the Lakes: "She could make six miles an hour pretty well, and, one day, when we had some special coal on board, she made seven miles an hour all day. That was considered wonderful at the time then, but think of the boats we have now I Some of them make eighteen or twenty miles an hour and, when the turbine engine is perfected, I expect to see them making twentyfive miles an hour, or more, without any trouble. "There were two steamers running from Detroit to the Soo, the Detroit and the Ben Franklin. Both were small side-wheelers, about three-hundred-ton boats, and they suffered like the other small ships from the fact that the business increased so rapidly that they could not take care of it, and other arrangements for shipping had to be made. The boats used to carry supplies to prospectors and surveyors as far as the Portage, and then the freight was carried over land, a distance of about a mile, to the foot of Lake Superior in little horse cars. I can remember at that time that they used to take ore from the Cliff Copper mine in barrels and ship it in a yawl-boat to a point from which they could send it east to be smelted. "A sport that was always popular at the Soo was shooting the rapids. The only Vessel that ever undertook this was the Uncle Tom, a schooner of about one hundred twenty tons burden. She started down the lake with about a ten-mile breeze and went on through the rapids. In just a little while she ran into a bowlder and knocked off her forefoot, but nobody was hurt that I remember. I believe she was the only vessel that ever attempted the trick. "The Indians were very skillful with their canoes in the rapids, but once a yawl-boat, with a party of nine on board, tried to make the run. A sailor in the boat struck his oar against a rock and turned the boat about so that she filled and sunk, and seven of the party were drowned. "Even sixty years ago life was pleasant at the Soo. There was a hotel kept by a man by the name of Van Anden, I believe. The houses were all built either of log or frameno brick ones. There was a great deal of social life, and everybody seemed tQ enjoy themselves. The lock was not dreamed of then, of course, but nobody can appreciate more fully the importance of its construction and the significance of the celebration than some of us who remember the Soo sixty years ago." 12. The two expansions, Ste. Mary's river so-called. 13. For additional readings see: How the Upper Peninsula Was Added. Hermans' Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason, Mich. Hist. Con. Publications, Biog. Ser., I, 195-200. Michigan's Land Boundary. (MithiganWisconsin). By George H. Cannon.-M. P. H. C., XXXVIII, 163-168. Lake Superior Country. By John H. Forster. -M. P. H. C., VIII, 136-145. Early Settlement of the Copper Regions of Lake Superior. By John Harris Forster.M. P. H. C., VII, 181-193. Old Keweenaw. By Joseph A. Ten Broeck. -M. P. H. C., XXX, 139-149. Historical Address. (Marquette Iron region). By S. P. Ely.-M. P. H. C., VII, 165-173. A Mere Sketch of Iron Money in the Upper Peninsula. By Peter White.-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 283-295. The Sault Canal. (From a Bulletin concerning the semi-centennial celebration of the opening of the Saint Mary's Canal).-M. P. H. C., XXXV, 342-344. Our Western Boundary. By George H. Cannon.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 244-261. The Southern and Western Boundaries of Michigan. By Anna May Soule, M.L.,-M. P. H. C,, XXVII, 378-389. Peter White as Man and as Citizen (1830 -1908). By Levi L. Barbour.-M. P. H. C., XXXVII, 620-639. XXXIII HISTORY IN COUNTY NAMES 1. Read at the annual meeting of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, June, 1910. 2. Jesuit Relations, XVIII, 231. 3. Ibid., XXXIII, 61, 151. 4. Ibid., LI, 27. 5. Ibid., LIV, 198. 6. Ibid., 221. 7. Ibid., LV, 101. 8. Wis. Hist. Coils., XVI, 116. 9. New York Col. Doc., IX, 383. 10. Wis. Hist. Coils., XVI, 351. 11. This man's name was usually written Guillaume Delisle. 12. Wis. Hist. Colls., XVI, 12. 13. Hennepin (Thwaites edition), II, 623. 14. Wis. Hist. Colls., XVI, 8. 15. Jesuit Relations, LXVI, 283. 16. Ontario lIist. Soc., IV, 69. 17. This rock is now considerably reduced in size, rising only about four feet above the water and is about twelve feet square in area. 18. Monroe's visit to Detroit-In honor of the occasion the city was illuminated at night The bill for lighting was paid by the city and amounted to $23.26. The ball was given at Ben Woodworth's hotel and subscriptions to it were $8.00. 19. Waldo, President Monroe's Tour of 1817, p. 234. Farmer, History of Detroit, I, 103. 20. Territorial Laws, II, 792. 21. Ibid., 792. 22. Ibid., I, 325, 327. 23. Jesuit Relations, LIV, 201. 24. Bailey, Mackinac, 36. Blackbird, 19. 25. Blois, 323. 26. Eth. Bull., no. 30. 27. Territorial Laws, I, 328. 28. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVI, 442. NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xxiii 29. The map of 1831 gives the name Lapier. 30. See Act of 1829. 31. New York Col. Docs., IX, 293. 32. Eth. Bull. no. 30, II. 33. Minnesota Hist. Coils., V, 82. 34. Territorial Laws, III, 871. 35. State Laws of Michigan, 1840, p. 196. 36. Schoolcraft's Personal Memoirs, 585. 37. Acts of Mich. Leg., 1843, p. 145. 38. American Archives, V, 624. 39. Handbook of American Indians, 717. 40. J. M. Peck in his New Guide for Emigrants to the West, 2nd edition, 1837, p. 337, says "Seventy miles from Milwaukee is Shabwi-wi-a-gan." 41. Wis. Hist. Coll., I. 42. Dis. of Sources of Miss. Riv., 195. 43. House Journal, 1843. 44. S. L. 1851, p. 172. 45. Ibid., 1853, p. 43. 46. Jesuit Relations, XVI, 231. 47. American Archives, III, 509. 48. Ibid., V, 624. 49. Ibid., III, 509. 50. Eth. Bull. no. 30, pt. 2, p. 159. 51. American Archives, III, 609. 52. Ibid., V, 624. 53. Ibid., IV, 384. 54. Ibid., III, 509. 55. Ibid., V, 624. 56. Marquette's burial place, see Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., II, 134; XVIII, 502; XXVIII, 408. 57. Drowned October 13, 1845. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXII, 662. 58. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XVIII, 628-638; XXXII, 180-235. 59. People vs. Burns, 5 Mich. 114. 60. See sketch in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXVI, 534. 61. Jesuit Relations, LIV, 159. 62. "The existence of such an Island as Isle -Phillippeaux or any other which can answer the idea of its situation, has not I apprehend been yet satisfactorily ascertained by any person who has been on this lake." See Mich. Pion. and Hist. Coils., XXIV, 508-9; XXVI, 631. 63. Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXV, 43-53. 64. Chief references used in this study: Haines, E. M., The American Indian; Schoolcraft, H. R., Narrative Journal of Travel, 1820; Schoolcraft, H. R., American Archives, 6 vol.; Kelton, D. H., Indian Names of Places Near the Great Lakes; Hathaway, Joshua, Wis. Hist. Coils., I; Witherell, B. F. H., Wis. Hist. Coils., II; Verwyst, Chrysostom, Wis. Hist. Coils., XII; Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls.; Perrot, Nicholas, Memoire, Tailhan Ed.; Foster and Whitney, Report on Geology and Topography, pt. 2, Wash., 1851; Handbook of American Indian, Bureau of Eth. Bull. no. 30; Legler, H. E., Origin and Meaning of Wisconsin Place-Names; Indian Treaties, Wash., 1904; Gannett, Henry, Origin of Certain Place Names in United States, Geological Survey, Bulletin, 258; Stennett, W. H., Hist. and Origin of Place Names; Kellogg, Louise Phelps, Original Boundaries and Names of Wisconsin Counties. 65. For additional readings see: County Organization in Michigan. By William H. Hathaway.-Mich. Hist. Mag., II, 573-629. Place Names in the Upper Peninsula. By Rev. William F. Gagnieur, S. J.-Mich. Hist. Mag., III, 412-419. Indian Place Names in the Upper Peninsula and Their Interpretation. By Rev. William Gagnieur, S. J.-Mich. Hist. Mag., II, 526 -555. XXXIV THE MEXICAN WAR 1. For additional reading see: Political Controversy in Michigan Over the Mexican War. Streeter's Political Parties in Michigan. Mich. Hist. Com. Publications, Univ. Ser., IV, 83-112. XXXV POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR 1. Warren B. Shephard went first to Emmett township and later to Battle Creek where he became the first school teacher in 1834. History of Calhoun County. 2. Isaac E. Crary was born October 2, 1804, at Preston, Conn., and came to Marshall in 1833. In 1835 he was elected a member of the constitutional convention. He was a member of the state legislature in 1842 and 1846, and first superintendent of public instruction in the state. He died May 8, 1854. 3. What we have said on the decline of oratory, here in Vol. XI of the Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., we consider as part of the history of the times; and the decline is due we think to the change in the condition of our state and national affairs, and to the change in the condition of the press and the people. 4. For additional readings see: Michigan in Our National Politics. By A. D. P. Van Buren.-M. P. H. C., XVII, 247 -272. Michigan in the Presidential Campaign of 1856. By A. D. P. Van Buren.-M. P. H. C., XVII, 272-295. Political Parties in Michigan. By Floyd B. Streeter. Mich. Hist. Com. Publications, Univ. Ser., IV. XXXVI THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN MICHIGAN 1. Read at a meeting of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society held at Albion, January, 1909. 2. See sketch of Erastus Hussey in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XIV, 79. 3. See "Marshall Men and Marshall Measures" in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 220-279. 4. These Quakers had made a settlement at Young's Prairie, had established a school and were prospering. A few Kentucky fugitive slaves had made their homes among them and were highly respected. See story of "Raid in Michigan" in Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, 366-373. 5. Townsend E. Gidley. See Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XIV, 402. 6. It was Abel F. Fitch who was involved in the railroad conspiracy case and died during the trial. 7. In Detroit a society was formed to aid the refugees. Among the most active were Alanson Sheley, Horace Hallock, Samuel Zug and the Rev. C. C. Foote. They purchased a tract of land ten miles from Windsor and parceled it into farms of ten to fifteen acres each. These were given to refuges, many of xxiv HISTORIC MICHIGAN whose descendants are still living in Windsor. Detroit Tribune, December 27, 1889, Obituary of Samuel Zug. 8. See sketch in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XIV, 79. 9. Deacon Jabez S. Fitch built the Presbyterian church at Marshall. See sketch, Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., II, 239. 10. For additional readings see: Slavery in Detroit. By J. A. Girardin.M. P. H. C., I, 415-417. Papers Relative to the Subject of Slavery in the Northwest, 1709-1805.-M. P. H. C., XII, 511-522. Negro Riot in Detroit in 1833. Hemans' Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason. Mich. Hist. Con. Publications, Biog. Ser. I, 94-97. The Story of Emancipation. By Edward W. Barber.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 575-608. Michigan Members of the 38th Congress, Whose Influence Contributed to the Passage of the 13th Amendment. By Edward W. Barber.-M. P. H. C., XXIX, 592-604. A Memorial of Zachariah Chandler. By Judge H. G. Wells.-M. P. H. C., III, 139 -140. Recollections of Zachariah Chandler. By 0. E. McCutcheon.-Mich. Hist. Mag., V, 140 -149. Public. Life of Zachariah Chandler, 1851 -1875. By Wilmer C. Harris, Ph.D.-Mich. Hist. Com. Publications, Univ. Ser., II. Anti-Slavery Movement in Michigan and the Organization of the Liberty Party. Streeter's Political Parties in Michigan, Mich. Hist. Con. Publications, Univ. Ser., IV, 43-64. XXXVII THE CIVIL WAR 1. The seat of government was removed from Detroit to Lansing in 1847. The new location was an almost unbroken wilderness. 2. After the war Mr. Blair was for six years a representative in congress, where he was distinguished for industry and for an inflexible integrity all too rare at that time. A born statesman, Mr. Blair was lacking in that political sagacity which furnishes the soil necessary to the continued growth of statesmanship. He left the Republican party to support Greeley in 1872; and although afterwards he returned to the party which he had helped to found, the day of his service was over. Mr. Blair died August, 1894, after twenty years of private life, during which he was held in the highest respect by the people of Michigan. His death was made the subject of a proclamation by Governor Rich; and the secretary of state, Rev. Washington Gardner, delivered the eloquent funeral oration. See Jackson Citizen, August 9, 1894. 3. General John Robertson's Brief Military History of Michigan, 4. "Less forcible but not less weighty," says von Hoist, "was Bingham's declaration." Constitutional History of the United States, 1857-61, p. 435. 5. Detroit Tribune, February 11, 1861. 6. The Fugitive Slave law was so effective that the loss by reason of runaway slaves was less than that on strayed horses. H. R. Report No. 91, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., p. 7. 7. Letter from Col. Wilcox, in the possession of the author. 8. The above facts are set forth by Colonel Lincoln in a letter to the author. Colonel Lincoln has a copy of a letter from Smith, who returned to Coldwater when the war ended, and remained there until 1867. Subsequently he drifted back to Washington, where he joined the Charles Sumner Post, G. A. R. In 1887 he applied for a pension, which was granted while Colonel Lincoln was deputy commissioner of pensions. In December, 1890, he died at No. 2716 Poplar street, West Washington, D. C. 9. Among those who made such contributions were Captain E. B. Ward, Frederick Buhl, Henry P. Baldwin and John J. Bagley. 10. 0. B. Curtis' History of the Twentyfourth Michigan Infantry and Gen. John Robertson's address at the Michigan Semi-Centennial. 11. The Post and Tribune's Life of Chandler gives many details of these negotiations, and the author has letters from ex-Governor D. H. Jerome and Hon. E. O. Grosvenor, who were in New York at the time of Mr. Chandler's interviews with Fremont. On March 4, 1889, General Fremont told the author that confidence in Chandler's patriotism and political shrewdness induced him to withdraw his name. There was a bitter feud between Freniont and the Blairs, and Lincoln's promise had its effect on the Pathfinder. This explanation of Blair's resignation is not generally known. See Morse's Life of Lincoln. 12. Two of these guns now adorn the grounds of the state capitol at Lansing. 13. In 1890 there were nearly 6,000 Indians in Michigan; 1,000 near Sault Ste. Marie, 2,000 near the Straits of Mackinac; 1,000 in Mason and Oceana counties; 400 near Saginaw Bay; 500 in Isabella county, and the remainder in the southwestern portion of the state. They lived in settlements of from 50 to 100 persons, used the Indian language exclusively in their intercourse with each other and were to a very large degree isolated from the whites. There were two schools for Indian children maintained by the Catholic church and supported in part by the government. Besides these was the government school near Mt. Pleasant, with a farm of 320 acres and an attendance (1894) of 150 pupils; it was opened January 3, 1893. -MSS. Report of Superintendent Spencer to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, September 30, 1894. 14. Mr. Gil R. Osmun, afterwards secretary of state, was often sent to the trenches with orders for Colonel DeLand, and on one occasion he took an order from Sheridan to stop all firing. The Indians alone disobeyed the orders. They had come to fight and wheneve: a rebel head showed itself they fired at it. At last they were told that such action wculd cause Colonel DeLand to be shot for disobedience, and then only they ceased. 15. Nicholay and Hay's Life of Lincoln. 16. On the beautiful Sabbath morning of June 25, 1876, Custer, at the head of the Seventh United States Cavalry, rode into the valley of the Little Big Horn in Dakota, as the advance of the force that was to "snuff out" Sitting Bull. With characteristic rashness he planned to fight the battle unaided by Generals Terry and Gibbon, who were to join him next day. Riding ahead with his brother, Captain Tom Custer, and with his favorite officers, Cook and Keough, as his eyes caught sight of the Indian tepees, he exclaimed: "Custer's luck, the biggest Indian village on the continent I" So it was and thrice as large as he thought. Away he dashed with his command, only to become hopelessly entangled in NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS xxv ambushes backed by swarms of Indians. Reno, on whom he had counted to make an attack on the flank, failed through cowardice or incapacity, and Custer, with his brave men, was cut to pieces. So complete was the slaughter that only the Indians could tell the story. See Captain Cook's article in Harper's Magazine, LXXXI. 17. The McMillan bill, which was passed by the 51st Congress, extended the criminal jurisdiction of the United States over the Great Lakes and their connecting waters. In the Alaska Pirate's case Mr. Justice Field decided that the Great Lakes were the high seas; but there were strong dissenting opinions. 18. Two flags borne by the 22nd Michigan at Chickamauga were lost under circumstances of great bravery, and were recaptured at the fall of Richmond. In July, 1894, through the efforts of Senator McMillan, these flags were restored to the state. See Senate Reports, 53 Cong., 2nd sess. 19. The record of Michigan sailors is very incomplete. The state is credited with 598 enlistments. It is a noteworthy fact, however, that William Gouin, of Detroit, enlisted at Boston, Mass., January 1, 1862, and served on board of the Ohio and the Kearsarge, and died June 27, 1864, in the hospital at Cherburg, France, from wounds received during the engagement between the Kearsarge and the Alabama. On the Union side his was the only life lost as the result of that engagement. Fred Walden, also of Detroit, under the alias of John Pope, enlisted on board the Kearsarge at Cadiz, Spain, January 26, 1864, as a coal heaver, and was in the memorial engagement. He was discharged November 30, 1864, and is now a resident of Redford, Michigan. The Kearsarge was wrecked while under the command of Oscar F. Heyerman, who entered the naval academy from Michigan November 29, 1861. 20. James Hewitt Ledlie, born in New York. Appointed Major 3 N. Y. Art. 22 May, 1861; It. col. Sept. 1861; col. Dec., 1861; brig. gen., 1862; resigned 23 Jan., 1865; died 15 Aug., 1882. 21. Horatio Potter, Jr., was born in New York, and was made 2d lieut. 7 N. Y. artillery 20 Dec., 1862, promoted to a captaincy 1865, was brevet-major for gallant and meritorious service before Petersburg, Va. At the close of the war he joined the regular army and died while acting as regimental adjutant 25 July, 1874. 22. Orlando Boliver Willcox, born in Michigan. Cadet Military Academy July, 1843; 2 It., 1847; 1 It., 1850; resigned 1857; col. 1 Mich. inft. 1 May, 1861; brig. gen. 2 July, 1861; bvt. maj. gen. 1864 for distinguished and gallant service in actions crossing the Rapidan, Va.; hon. mustered out 15 Jan., 1866; col. inf., 1866; bvt. brig. gen. for gallant and meritorious service in the battle of Spottsylvania, C. H. Va.; maj. gen. for gallant and meritorious service in the capture of Petersburg, Va.; awarded medal of honor 2 March, 1895, for most distinguished gallantry at battle of Bull Run, Va., 2 July, 1861, where he led repeated charges of 1 Michigan infantry and 11 New York infantry until he was wounded and taken prisoner while colonel of 1 Michigan Infantry commanding brigade. 23. Edward Ferrero born in Spain, col. 51 N. Y. inf. 14 Oct., 1861; brig. gen. 10 Sept., 1862; brig. gen. vols. 6 May, 1863; bvt. maj. gen. 2 Dec., 1864, for meritorious service in the campaign before Richmond and Petersburg, Va.; hon. mustered out 24 Aug., 1865; died 11 Dec., 1899. 24. John Frederic Hartranft, born in Penn.; col. 4 Pa. inf., 1861; brig. gen. 12 May, 1864; bvt. maj. gen. 25 March, 1865, for conspicuous gallantry in repulsing and driving back the enemy from Fort Stedman, Va.; hon. mustered out 15 Jan., 1866; awarded medal of honor 21 Aug., 1886, for services at Bull Run 21 July, 1861, when his regiment marched to the rear to be mustered out; died Oct. 17, 1889. 25. William Humphrey was born in New York; capt. 2 Michigan inf. 25 April, 1861; col. 16 Feb., 1863; bvt. brig. gen. 1 Aug., 1864, for conspicuous and gallant service both as regimental and brigade commander throughout the campaign; honorably mustered out 30 Sept., 1864; died 15 Jan., 1899. 26. Byron M. Cutcheon was born in New Hampshire and first entered the service as 2d Lieut. of the 20th Michigan Infantry, July 15, 1862; he was promoted to captain, Lieutenant-colonel, and became a brigadier-general 13th March, 1865, earning this honor for conspicuous gallantry at the battles of Wilderness and Spottsylvania, Va. He was distinguished especially by bravery before Petersburg, Va., and awarded a medal for honor 29th June, 1891, for distinguished gallantry in a charge on a house occupied by the enemy at Horseshoe Bend, Ky., 10 May, 1863. He resigned March 6, 1865. His present home is at Grand Rapids, Mich. 27. Situated near Petersburg. 28. Henry B. Davidson was born in Tennessee and served in the 1st Tenn. inf. from June, 1846, to May, 1847. Went to West Pcint 1 July, 1848; was made brevet 2 lieut. 1 July, 1853, and rose by successive stages until he was a captain, 13 May, 1861, when he wvas dropped from the United States rolls and became a brigadier general in the Confederate war, serving from 1861 to 1865. 29. John Pegram was born in Virginia, cadet M. A., July, 1850; bvt. 2 it. 1 dragoons, 1 July, 1854; 2 It., March, 1855; 1 It., 1857; reg. adjt., Sept., 1857; resigned 10 May, 1861; maj. gen. Confederate army from 1861 to 1865; killed Feb. 6; 1865, at the battle of Hatcher's Run, Va. 30. John F. Hoke, born in North Carolina, made 1 It. inf. 8 March, 1847; capt. 27 June, 1847; honorably mustered out 25 July, 1848; colonel 23 N. C. Vols. C. S. A. war, 1861 to 1865. 31. Bushrod Rust Johnson, born in Ohio, cadet M. A., 1 July, 1836; 2 It. 1 July, 1840; 1 It. 29 Feb., 1844; resigned 22 Oct., 1847; maj. gen. C. S. A. war, 1861 to 1865; died Sept. 7, 1880. 32. Robert Ransom was born in North Carolina and became a cadet in the military academy Sept., 1846; was made brevet 2 It. July, 1850; 1 It. and then capt. in Jan., 1861. He resigned May 24, 1861 and became a major general in the Confederate service from 1861 to 1865; died Jan. 14, 1892. 33. Claudius B. Grant was born in Lebanon, Main, Oct. 25, 1835; graduated from the University of Michigan in 1859; was made capt. in the 20th Michigan Infantry, 1862; rose by promotion until mustered out as colonel in 1865. He studied law, and became a law partner of Gov. Alpheus Felch. He represented his district in the legislature, and was xxvi HISTORIC MICHIGAN elected and re-elected to the office of supreme court justice. 34. Ambrose Everett Burnside was born in Indiana and was a cadet at the military academy July 1, 1843, was brevet lieutenant in 1847 and rose to the colonelcy of a Rhode Island regiment in 1861. He was mustered out Aug. 2, 1861, but again re-entered the service as brig. general Aug. 6, 1861; he was promoted to major general March 18, 1862. Congress passed a resolution of thanks to him and his officers and men for their good conduct and soldierly endurance. He resigned April 15, 1865 and died Sept. 13, 1881. 35. Simon Goodell Griffin was born in New Hampshire, Capt, 2 N. H. Inf. June 1, 1861; resd. Oct. 31, 1861; It. col., 1861; col., 1862; brig. gen. May 12, 1864; bvt. maj. gen. 2 April, 1865, for gallant and meritorious conduct in the assault on Fort Sedgwick, Va.; honorably mustered out Aug. 24, 1865; died Jan. 14, 1902. 36. George Gordon Meade was born in Spain. Cadet M. A. Sept 1, 1831; 2 It., 1835; 1 It., 1851; capt., 1856; maj., 1862; brig. gen., 1861; maj. gen., Nov. 29, 1862; maj. gen., 1864; bvt. 1 It., 23 Sept., 1846, for gallant conduct at Monterey, Mexico. Under resolution of congress: "That the thanks of Congress are due to Maj. Gen. George G. Meade and the officers and soldiers of the Army of the Potomac for the skill and heroic valor which at Gettysburg repulsed, defeated, and drove back, broken and dispirited, beyond the Rappahannock, the veteran army of the rebellion." Died. Nov. 6, 1872. 37. Winfield Scott Hancock, born in Pennsylvania, served in a Pa. regiment as lieutenant, captain and major; made brig. gen., 1861, maj. gen., 1862, given a brevet lieutenancy Aug. 20, 1847 for gallant and meritorious service in Mexican war; maj. gen. for gallant and meritorious service at battle of Spottsylvania, Va. Congress passed a joint resolution in his honor. lie died Feb. 9, 1886. 38. Romeyn Beck Ayers was born in New York and was a cadet in the Military Academy in 1843. Promoted to a lieutenancy, 1847; made capt. and afterwards major for conspicuous service at Gettysburg; It. col. for gallant and meritorious service in the battle of the Wilderness; col. for bravery at the battle at Weldon; brig. gen., 1864, for the same at Five Forks; maj. gen., 1865, for conspicuous gallantry in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Jericho Mills. Bethesda Church Petersburg, Globe Tavern or Weldon and for faithful service in the campaign; died Dec. 4, 1888. 39. Nelson Appleton Miles was born in Mass.; It. 1861; It. col. N. Y. Inf., 1862; col. Sept., 1862; brig. gen., 1864; maj. gen., Oct. 21, 1865; made bvt. maj. gen. 25 Aug., 1864, for distinguished service at the battle of Ream's Station, Va.; hon. mustered out Sept. 1, 1866; col. 40 inf. July 28, 1866; brig. gen. 1800; maj. gen, 1890; It. gen., 1900; received honors for gallant and meritorious service in the battle of Chancellorsville and Spottsylvania and awarded a medal of honor for distinction at the former. He was severely wounded while colonel of the 61 N. Y. Vols., and was retired Aug. 8, 1903. 40. Probably Samuel L. Smith, formerly of the Upper Peninsula. 41. April 15, 1865. 42. For additional readings see: Pioneer Memories of the War Days of 1861 -1865. By Robert Campbell.-M. P. H. C., XXX, 567-572. The Michigan Thirteenth. By Col. Michael Shoemaker.-M. P. H. C., IV, 133-168. Narrative of the Capture of Capt. Michael Shoemaker.-M. P. H. C., III, 166-188. The Trial and Execution of the Lincoln Conspirators. By Judge R. A. Watts.-Mich. Hist. Mag., VI, 81-110. The Woman's Relief Corps as a Pioneer. By Mrs. Franc L. Adams.-Mich. Hist. Mag., IV., 575-582. Recollections of Civil War Conditions in the Copper Country. By O. W. Robinson.Mich. Hist. Mag., III, 598-609. Civil War Letters. By Washington Gardner.-Mich. Hist. Mag., II, 3-18. I 4 I I [S)