wintering as best they could, however, among their friends outside, the
inhabitants were gratified with the news that April 21, 1806, Congress had
authorized the Governor and judges to lay out a new town, build a
court-house and jail, dispose of ten thousand acres near, give former
owners and householders lots, convey lots to others and in general settle
all details therewith connected. It was not, however, until September 6,
1806, or four months after the date of the act, that the Governor and
judges held their first meeting. Interminable slowness seems to have been
their purpose; plans and counter-plans, change and repeated change in
surveys, their method. Lots were numbered and renumbered, streets laid
out on paper, obliterated and then laid out anew in new directions and
locations. Decisions were bandied about and referred from one person or
authority to another, and questions of ownership of lots, like a
shuttlecock, were tossed to and fro. Plans were prepared, approved, used
and then discarded. Every new difficulty and scheme seemed to give rise to
new and radically different lot outlines and numbers. Lots were
capriciously granted and as capriciously withdrawn. Without bond or books
of account, without method other than the method of not leaving any record
of what moneys were received or how expended, they did as they pleased. As
a result, for a year and a half after the fire there was not a single house
erected, and up to May, 1807, deeds had been given for only nineteen lots.
Meantime, the débris of the fire covered the site of the ancient village,
the blackened stone chimneys standing as monuments of the disaster and of
the incompetency or worse of those in authority.
The three judges and the Governor in themselves possessed all power,
legislative, executive, judicial. They made laws, built court-houses,
issued scrip, laid out streets and lots, gave away lots to churches,
schools, societies and individuals and were practically "Lords of the
Manor of Detroit." The adoption of laws from the original thirteen States,
which was all that they were authorized to do, became under their methods a
mere burlesque. A writer of that period openly charged, and exaggerated but
little in saying, that they would
"parade the laws of the original States before them on the
table, and cull letters from the laws of Maryland, syllables
from the laws of Virginia, words from the laws of New York,
sentences from the laws of Pennsylvania, verses from the laws
of Kentucky, and chapters from the laws of Connecticut."
It is due to one or two of those associated as judges during a part of this
régime, to say that Judge Woodward, who was in office for the entire
period, was very largely responsible for the conditions that existed. The
accession of General Cass as Governor, the establishing of the _Detroit
Gazette_, which exposed the proceedings, and the coming of new immigrants
finally secured sentiment and people sufficient to have a General Assembly.
And with freer discussion and elective methods, order began to reign after
twenty years of disorder.
In military matters Detroit has had an almost continuous series of
startling experiences. Indians, French, English, and Americans have all
struggled in and about the city. Blockhouses, stockades, forts, and cannon
have defended it. Stories of attacks, sieges, battles, massacres, and
conspiracies crowd its annals. The tramp of regiments, the challenge of
sentinels, the bugle-call, the drum-beat, and the war-whoop of the savage
were familiar sounds in its past.
Within two years after Fort Pontchartrain was erected, hostile Indians
surrounded the stockade, and at varying intervals during many subsequent
years the savages sought to dislodge the French and destroy their
fortifications. The French traders, however, soon demonstrated that they
were willing to deal more liberally than the English, and there can be no
doubt but that many Indians came to prefer French methods and manners, for
they finally united with the French during the French and Indian War in
attacking the English settlements. The victory of Wolfe at Quebec in 1759
and the consequent surrender of Detroit to the English did not please the
Indians, and before the final treaty of peace was signed, Pontiac, an
Ottawa chief, who had declared his intention to "stand in the path," formed
his conspiracy to overthrow all the English posts. He secured the
co-operation of a number of tribes and in May, 1763, prepared to strike at
Detroit. Fortunately, as has happened more than once in similar plots,
female sympathy and tenderness caused the revelation of his design. An
Indian maiden gave warning to Gladwin, then commanding at Detroit, who made
preparations to foil the conspirators. On the morning of May 7th, Pontiac
and a number of his warriors sought admission to the fort.
On arriving at the gateway,[4] Pontiac and his warriors were freely
admitted, but found the garrison under arms, the cannons loaded for
service and the inhabitants ready for battle. At a glance he foresaw the
certain failure of his scheme, and after being warned by Gladwin that his
plot had been discovered, he retired still protesting friendship. Within a
day or two afterwards he threw off all attempts at concealment, summoned
his warriors, massacred several persons on the island now known as Belle
Isle and commenced a siege which lasted for five weary months. During the
siege, the garrison was relieved several times by provisions and
ammunition from Niagara, and on July 29th, by the arrival of 280 soldiers
commanded by Captain Dalyell together with 20 rangers from New Hampshire
under Major Robert Rogers. Captain Dalyell now determined to "turn the
tables" by an attack on the Indians. Gladwin opposed the idea, but was
compelled to yield, and on July 31st 250 troops in three detachments
marched against the savages. Pontiac in some way was informed of the plan
and, ambushed on the border of Parents' Creek, afterwards called Bloody
Run, awaited the approach of the soldiers. As the latter reached a small
bridge that then crossed the stream not far from what is now the corner of
Jefferson Avenue and Adair Street, they heard the war-whoop of the Indians
and from every side bullets thinned their ranks. Dalyell and seventeen
others were killed, nearly forty soldiers wounded and several captured.
Within six hours after this ignominious failure, the rest were glad to be
within the shelter of the stockade.
The siege was then renewed with increased vigor until at last General Gage
of Boston determined to send a force large enough to subdue the Indians.
Accordingly, Colonel Bradstreet was put in command of a combined force of
100 friendly Indians, 900 Canadians, and a detachment of 219 Connecticut
militia in charge of the noted Israel Putnam. They came by water from
Albany and reached Detroit on August 26, 1764. Their bateaux and barges
blocked the river; the display of flags and force alarmed the Indians, and
made them yield before an army such as they had never seen before.
Meantime the war-clouds of the Revolution were gathering. The common
impression is that the war was fought in the East, around Boston and New
York. The important events that occurred at Detroit are usually ignored;
that, too, in spite of the fact that at no other point was so much use made
of the Indians by the English.
King George and his ministers evidently feared that, unless kept busy
defending their homes, the hardy settlers of Western Virginia and Tennessee
would aid their brother colonists in the East. In order to prevent them
from so doing, deliberate and pitiless plans were made to incite the
Indians against the western settlers. Indians were invited to Detroit from
as far west and south as Arkansas, and gathered here by thousands. They
were feasted, clothed and furnished with guns, scalping-knives, and
tomahawks. Blankets, shirts, scarlet cloth and other things were given.
The value of the requisitions for this post in a single year reached
hundreds of thousands of dollars. The writer has personally seen the
original record of the supplying of "sixteen gross of red-handled
scalping-knives." Fully equipped, they set forth on their forays, returning
with men, women, and children as prisoners, and with many scalps. The
expedition which perpetrated the "Massacre of Wyoming" was equipped at this
post, as was also the expedition of Captain Bird against Kentucky at a cost
of over $300,000. The writer has an original account book of that period
giving the names and pay per diem of the French who as guides and
interpreters accompanied the English and Indians on some of their raids.
The noted Daniel Boone was brought as a prisoner to Detroit after one of
these expeditions. After the return of each party the guns of the fort were
fired, the prisoners and scalps were counted and recorded, and again the
Indians were feasted and given presents.
It was during these days that Col. A.S. De Peyster was in command at
Detroit, but he was not in full sympathy with such savage warfare. It will
be remembered that it was to him that Burns, while in his sick-chamber,
dedicated his last poem, on "Life," beginning:
"My honored Colonel, deep I feel
Your interest in the poet's weal," etc.
De Peyster himself could turn a bit of society verse. On one occasion he
addressed the following lines to the wife of Lieutenant Pool England, then
at Detroit:
"Accept, fair Ann, I do beseech,
This tempting gift, a clingstone peach,
The finest fruit I culled from three,
Which you may safely take from me.
Should Pool request to share the favor,
Eat you the peach, give him the flavor;
Which surely he can't take amiss,
When 't is so heightened by your kiss."
The English officers then at Detroit did not have an easy life. There were
resident rebel Americans who made much trouble--some of whom were sent away
and others fined. American prisoners, too, were brought here. Some were
compelled to work in the streets, in ball and chain, and others were forced
to cut wood on Belle Isle.
[Illustration COL. ARENT SCHUYLER DE PEYSTER.]
At last Detroit and the West were yielded by treaty to the United States,
but on one pretext or another they were not actually surrendered until July
11, 1796. On that day Fort Lernoult for the first time displayed the Stars
and Stripes.[5]
[Illustration EVACUATION DAY TABLET ON FORT STREET ENTRANCE OF
POST-OFFICE.]
The animosities growing out of the Revolutionary War were not allayed by
the peace declarations. The Indians continued to hold allegiance to King
George, and frequently massacred Americans. British officials on various
occasions assumed such authority that at last there came a renewal of
strife and the War of 1812. Again Detroit became a focal point. Twelve
hundred troops from Ohio, under command of Governor Hull, were soon
marching hither to secure the safety of Detroit. Governor Hull's trunk,
containing military papers and plans of great value, which had been sent by
boat, was captured near Malden, Canada, by the British who had apparently
received the earliest announcement of the declaration of war. Governor Hull
arrived at Detroit July 5th, soon afterward crossed to Canada and issued a
proclamation, but a few days later returned without having accomplished any
results of value. On August 16th, without any reasonable excuse, and
without the firing of a single gun, he surrendered his entire force and all
of the territory under his control to General Brock. He was tried and found
guilty of cowardice, unofficer-like conduct and neglect of duty. In his
memoirs, Governor Hull, trying to defend himself, seeks to make Secretary
of War Eustis a fool or a traitor, Gen. H.A. Dearborn a knave, and Colonel
Cass a conspirator. Original letters and testimony, however, from President
Madison, ex-President Jefferson, and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams
show that Governor Hull was justly condemned. On September 29, 1813, as
the result of Commodore Perry's notable victory of September 10th, the
whole region was restored to American control.
[Illustration GENERAL GRANT'S HOME IN DETROIT.]
Detroit's interest in several local and subsequent wars was large, but the
unimportance of some and the well-known results of others make comment
thereon unnecessary.
[Illustration HURLBUT MEMORIAL GATE ENTRANCE TO WATER-WORKS PARK.]
While these varied historical events were taking place, the city was
steadily gathering to itself prestige and reputation. Its houses now excel
in number and beauty, its streets, wide and well paved, are edged with the
smoothest of stone walks and lined with elms, maples, and grassy lawns. The
distinctive buildings of the municipality, its court-houses, schools,
police stations, water-works, and engine houses are remarkable for their
excellent architecture and well-kept condition. The churches, by their
number and in their construction, indicate the possession of religious
desire and æsthetic taste. The manufacturing interests of Detroit are
varied. Its commercial representatives are found in almost every country,
and "Detroit" stoves, drugs, and chemicals are known in every clime. We
have numerous parks, but Belle Isle is indeed the priceless jewel in the
crown of Detroit: woods of green and waters of blue, art and nature, moving
waves and waving grass, stillness and activity, vistas and broad views,
beautiful flowers and lofty trees, the white sails of numerous vessels, and
the swift motions of great steamers all alike are combined in the
captivating beauties of this favored place.
Besides serving as a charm to drive away care, our beautiful river gives us
one of the greatest ports in the world. More tonnage passes annually
through "the Detroit" than in the same time enters and clears the combined
ports of London and Liverpool. During the season nearly four hundred
vessels pass daily, bearing more grain and minerals than traverse any other
stream in the world. The city is a central starting-point for reaching all
northern summer resorts, and more steamboat passengers arrive and depart
from our wharves than from any others on the Lakes. The stream that
attracted the earliest visitors attracts later ones as well. The river
never overflows and therefore is never a menace, but always a joy and
blessing. Yachts, sail-boats, barges, shells, ferries, steamers, and great
"whale-backs" fly and ply over it, and in the season it is a panorama of
beauty, gay with music, streamers, and happy _voyageurs_.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Under treaty stipulations negro and Indian slaves were held until
Michigan became a State. Detroit has always had to do with slavery
questions. Before the Civil War it was an important station on the
"Underground Railroad," and occasionally slaves were seized on our streets.
Some of the conspicuous leaders of the party that secured the abolition of
slavery lived at one time or another in Detroit. General Grant's home may
still be seen. United States Senator Zachariah Chandler of "blood-letting
letter" fame was one of our oldest merchants, and the notable
"fire-in-the-rear" editorial appeared in a local paper.
[4] The gateway was located on what is now the corner of Jefferson Avenue
and Griswold Street, and a bronze tablet there erected bears a
representation of an Indian warrior and the following inscription:
"This Tablet designates the site of one of the gateways of Fort
Detroit. The original stockade was known as Fort Pontchartrain
and was erected when the city was founded in 1701.
"Through the gateway here located Pontiac, the Ottawa chief,
with a band of Indians, passed on May seventh, 1763, intending
to surprise and massacre the garrison.
"The exposure of his plot on the previous day caused the defeat
of his plans and gave the English the supremacy in this region
until the close of the Revolutionary War."
[5] The Post-office on Fort Street, which occupies a portion of the site of
this fort, displays at its southerly entrance a tablet erected in 1896
which bears the following inscription:
"This Tablet designates the site of an
English Fort erected in 1778 by
Major R.B. Lernoult as a defense
against the Americans. It was subsequently
called Fort Shelby, in honor
of Gov. Isaac Shelby of Kentucky,
and was demolished in 1826.
The evacuation of this Fort by the
British at 12 o'clock noon, July 11th,
1796, was the closing act of the War
of Independence.
On that day the American Flag was
for the first time raised over this
soil, all of what was then known
as the Western Territory becoming
at that time part of the Federal Union."
[Illustration]
MACKINAC
"THE HOME OF THE GIANT FAIRIES"
BY SARA ANDREW SHAFER
At the northernmost point of the meeting of the waters of the mighty trio
of lakes which divide the States of the Middle West from the Dominion of
Canada, lies an archipelago in size and beauty like that of the
"Sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily that o'erlace the sea,
And laugh their pride when the light waves
whisper 'Greece.'"
An old writer says that there are two-and-thirty thousand of them, great
and small, clustered chiefly where Huron leans her head to meet those of
Michigan and Superior, "as if they were discussing some great matter."
Perhaps they are talking over the old days and the things and people they
knew long ago. Perhaps they speak of the morning when, according to an old
saga, the worshippers of the Rising Sun in February saw the Island like a
great turtle--_Nocchenemockenung_--rise slowly out of the water, to become
the home of the Giant Fairies of the Michsawgyegan, or Lake Country, and to
be a place of refuge for the vanished peoples, whose names are as the sound
of many waters for beauty and for harmony. Perhaps they tell of the wild,
free life of those roving, painted bands of fishers, trappers, and hunters
which make pictures of so much action and color against the ever-shifting
background of these seas and shores. Perhaps they tell of the coming of the
Black Robes in the days when the lilies of France had no fear of the lion
of England, and the eagle of the American Republic was as yet unthought of.
There are things enough of which the Lakes may speak as their waves lapse
on the beach of
"This precious stone set in a silver sea."
[Illustration OLD MISSION CHURCH (CIRCA), 1823, MACKINAC ISLAND.]
Occupying as it does, one of the most important strategic points in the new
world, it is not strange that the Island of Mackinac should have a rich and
varied history, and that in its earlier Indian-French form
"Michilimackinac was a word familiar in the cabinets of European monarchs
before it was known to people dwelling along the Atlantic." The name was
given not only to pioneer settlements on either side of the Straits, but
also to a vast province which reached as far south as the Ohio River and as
far west as the Red River of the North. The Straits are but a dozen miles
in width, and the Island but nine miles in circumference, but whether it be
frozen in the long clasp of "Peboan, the Winter," when the white, endless
snows are marked only by the dark accents of evergreens on islet and
mainland, over which the cold stars look down, or the Northern Lights flame
and fade; whether it be decked with the unspeakable splendors of its early
autumn, or rejoices with the sudden coming of its tardy summer, it is a
land whose beauty is indescribable, and whose spell is supreme.
The village numbers many thousand flitting folk in summer, but it has less
than eight hundred permanent residents. It lies along the perfect crescent
of a bay worn into the southeastern end of the Island, at the foot of the
cliffs, upon which the long lines of the fort stand sentinel, and is a
curious conglomeration of huge caravanserai, summer villa, shop,
fish-house, pier, half-French, half-Indian cottage, and church. Old days
and new meet over and over again in the little streets, where, in the soft
_patois_ of the _habitants_, in the names they bear, and in many of their
strongly marked faces, much of the Island's story is suggested. St. Ann's
is a true daughter of the first chapels built by the old heroes of the
Church. The Mission House tells of the earnest early efforts to teach the
tenets and virtues of Calvinism to the savages, made by the reverend
geographer, Morse, father of Morse of the electric telegraph, and Mr.
Ferry, whose son, born in the village, ably represented Michigan in the
Senate of the United States.
Where the fort garden now stands once stood the agency, then the centre of
the vast trade of the fur companies. Within its walls Henry Schoolcraft
wrote down the precious results of his studies in Indian dialect and
folk-lore, from which, as from a root, sprang the perfect flower of our one
native epic, _Hiawatha_. Not to have read _Hiawatha_ with the pine-spiced
winds of the north blowing upon the page, with the magnificent prospect of
the Straits before one's eyes, lifted while a page is turned, and with the
waves breaking into a thousand jewels against the rocks at one's feet, is
hardly to have read _Hiawatha_ at all.
The Fort is the successor of the feeble early posts set up by the pioneers
of France. The great propellers and the swift-winged yachts that throng the
summer waters are of a kindred with the birch canoe, most poetic of all
water craft--own brother to the violin by reason of the perfect beauty of
its lines, having in it
"All the mystery and magic"
of the woodland and the wood life. As of old, the deep wild roses and the
frail harebells cling to the cliffs; as of old, in the gorges hushed into
fragrant silence by pine and larch and hemlock, arbor-vitæ and juniper,
beech, and birch, the shy, delicate flora of the north finds shelter. As of
old, the winds try their strength against the splendid masonry of the
curious limestone formations for which the place is noted, the Arch Rock,
the Fairy Arch, the Chimney Rock, the Sugar Loaf, Scott's Cave, Skull Cave,
the Devil's Kitchen. Around each of these the legends cluster like bees
about a linden-tree in blossom, but how can they be forgiven whose crass
stupidity gave them these commonplace titles and who have lost for us their
Indian names?
[Illustration ARCH ROCK, MACKINAC ISLAND.]
In the days when New France "had two fountain heads, one in the cane brakes
of Louisiana, and the other in the snows of Canada," a charter was given by
Louis XIII. to the Hundred Association Company, which was thereby invested
with rights almost monarchical, together with injunctions to do all that
was possible for Holy Church which was consistent with the keeping of a
watchful eye upon such earthly advantages as might accrue from a monopoly
of the fur trade and the acquisition of new territory. It was in 1634,
under the governorship of Champlain, that Jean Nicolet, a fearless
explorer, well versed in woodcraft and in the speech of many aboriginal
tribes, was the first paleface to see the white cliffs of Mackinac, as he
was also the first to carry back to civilization tidings of a great new
sea, the Lac des Ilinese, or Michigan, which he had discovered. That he
perished by the capsizing of his canoe in the St. Lawrence River was a
great loss to the infant colonies to whom his sixteen years' experience in
frontier life would have been very valuable. The path he opened, was,
however, soon followed by others. The explorers and traders, Des
Grosselliers, Radisson, Perrot, and their fellows did for the world what
the Jesuits, the Recollets, and the Sulpicians did for the Church. It is in
the _Relations_ sent home by the priests that we learn what were the trials
overcome by those dauntless sons of "the sturdy North." Perhaps from no
country but France, and in no other years than the glittering, romantic,
covetous, daring, devoted years of the seventeenth century, could have come
adventurers so tireless and churchmen so selfless as these. To read their
simple, patient chronicles is to have new belief in man, new faith in the
Church Universal, "which is the blessed company of all faithful people,"
and to clasp hands across years and above creeds with those courageous
pioneers and with those humble saints.