GATEWAYS OF THE GREAT LAKES
The Great Lakes are entered from the outer world by a series of
natural gateways extending from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the
westernmost end of Lake Superior. With a shrewd instinct the savages
selected these spots as the centres for their forest trails and as the
crossing places over which they could carry their boats from river to
lake and lake to river. At these points the French and English erected
stockades and forts around which gathered small settlements. Americans,
entering at the beginning of the nineteenth century into possession
of the country, built there the towns and cities which to-day command
the commerce of the Great Lakes. With the founding of these cities the
period of permanent occupation begins.
The French approached the Great Lakes from Quebec and Montreal. Because
of Iroquois hostility they avoided the southern route by Niagara and
along Lake Erie, and ascended instead the Ottawa River, crossed Lake
Nipissing, and passed through Georgian Bay into Lake Huron. At Sault
Ste. Marie and Mackinac they built their missions and trading posts.
Here Marquette and Joliet heard tales of the great river to the south
and the rich copper country to the west, and from these centres the
French explorers started on their expeditions into Wisconsin, Illinois,
and Indiana. Before the English had explored more than a narrow strip
of seaboard the French were travelling up the Fox-Wisconsin rivers
to the Mississippi, or by way of the Chicago and Illinois rivers to
the southern country. Returning parties often proceeded by way of the
Kankakee River to the St. Joseph, or by the Wabash and the Maumee to
Toledo on Lake Erie.
Frontenac saw the importance of occupying the strategic points on the
lakes. He himself went up the St. Lawrence River and planted on the
site of Kingston the fort that bore his name. He encouraged La Salle to
build a trading post at Niagara, and did all in his power to gain Lake
Erie and Lake Ontario for the French. Gradually the French succeeded in
making their way eastward. They occupied the strait of Detroit, and
built forts at Sandusky, Presque Isle (Erie), Niagara, Oswego, and
Toronto. The English seized these forts and planted many more. When
the Americans in their turn took possession, and Wayne’s treaty of
Greenville gave, in 1796, some assurance of safety in the region, they
sent out not only soldiers but colonists and settlers. Their story is
the tale of the beginning of our modern civilization.
In the early days of the American Revolution, Congress suggested to
the states that they should cede their claims to lands west of the
Allegheny to the central government; but many years elapsed before
the United States gained from the eastern states these cessions. Of
all the states Connecticut had the best claim; in making its cession
it reserved a triangular bit of country on the southern shore of Lake
Erie, west of Pennsylvania, which was known as the Western Reserve.
Before long a Connecticut land company bought three million acres in
this tract at forty cents an acre, and in the spring of 1796 Moses
Cleveland with fifty associates set out to plant on the shores of Lake
Erie the colony of New Connecticut. They decided to found their first
settlement at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which was the terminus
of several trails, notably that which led to Akron, Ohio, and south to
Marietta. At this spot, on the 22d of July, 1796, they began to build
their houses, where stands to-day the city of Cleveland, and so rapid
was the growth of this region that in four years’ time there were
thirty-two settlements within the limits of the Connecticut Reserve.
Massachusetts ceded to the United States her claims to lands west of
Pennsylvania, but retained her right to lands in what is now western
New York. In 1788 she sold to a company of New Yorkers a large part of
these lands, including the Genesee Valley. At this time there was but
one white man’s cabin between Oswego and Fort Niagara. The falls of
the Genesee attracted settlers, because there they could build mills
for grinding corn and sawing lumber. Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, with
three other Maryland gentlemen, purchased in 1802 one hundred acres at
this point, including the site of this mill, and laid out a village,
opening the sale of lots in 1811. He moved to his land in 1818, the
little village was named after him, and before many years became a
prosperous town.
Buffalo was founded by Joseph Ellicott, brother of the first
surveyor-general of the United States. He laid out the town on the plan
of Washington city, with broad, radiating avenues, and gave to them
Dutch names, as Vollenhoven and Schimmelpennick, calling the village
New Amsterdam. When the town was incorporated in 1810, the inhabitants
renamed it Buffalo, according to the old Indian name for the creek
which makes into the lake at this point. The prosperity of Buffalo and
Rochester, and of Oswego, which was incorporated as a village in 1828,
was assured by the building of the Erie Canal system in 1825.
In spite of her hundred years of history Detroit began life anew under
American rule. In 1805 the town caught fire, and within four hours the
old French settlement was gone. Of two hundred buildings within the
stockade, only one was left standing. The newly elected officers of
Ohio Territory reached Detroit the day after the fire to find the town
wiped out, and in a few years the American Detroit was laid out and
built up on the favorite plan of the city of Washington.
The western lakes had been the first to be approached by Frenchmen
coming from the north; they were the last to be settled by Americans
coming from the Atlantic seaboard. But when their importance came to be
recognized their cities sprang up with amazing rapidity. By the treaty
of Greenville the Indians ceded to the white men, along with other
territory, “one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the
Checagau River.” This spot had always been a centre for Indian tribes
and for fur trade. In 1821 Governor Cass bought from the Indians this
part of Illinois and the state of Michigan. Trade with the Indians
attracted a few settlers to Chicago during the next few years, and in
1833 twenty-eight electors met and chose trustees to administer public
affairs. They established a free ferry across the river, reconstructed
and strengthened the log jail, and built for twelve dollars an estray
pen for lost animals, and thus the town of Chicago began. Four years
later it became an organized municipality with a population of four
thousand. It was the centre of one of the land-booms which collapsed in
the panic of 1837, and suffered for many years thereafter a succession
of disasters. Floods swept the low ground on which the town was built,
which has since been elevated; cholera, droughts, and financial panics
came upon her but were unable to conquer. From the great fire of 1871
Chicago rose once more to justify the opportunities of her location and
to become the leading city of the Great Lakes.
[Illustration: Map: “Gateways of the lakes” showing major cities along
the shores of the five Great Lakes, including Duluth, Milwaukee,
Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Toronto, Buffalo, Rochester, and
Kingston]
The Black Hawk War opened up in 1832 the southern part of Wisconsin.
Land along the Milwaukee River was purchased by the Indians, and in
1835 the first white owners began their homes. In the summer of 1836
there was a rush of immigration. Sixty buildings were put up in the
seven months, and more would have been erected if lumber could have
been obtained. Streets were graded, ferries established, and on July
14 the first number of the first newspaper of Milwaukee issued a call
to “all good men and true” to assemble and petition the governor to
appoint officers of law for the township. That winter seven hundred
people stayed in the town, and three years later the canal from Rock
River to Milwaukee made the town an eastern gateway for the trade of
the new territory of Wisconsin, which was at that time notably wealthy
in furs. In 1846 the town became a city.
Through the entire struggle for possession of the Great Lakes,
Mackinac and Sault Ste. Marie had kept their positions as trading
centres and points for military defence. No permanent settlement
was made west of these posts for many years. Nearly two centuries
before the city of Duluth was founded, Daniel Greyselon Du Luth was
leader of an expedition organized by French merchants of Quebec and
Montreal to trade with the Indians. In the course of his dealings
with the tribes he held an important conference at the head of the
lake, where a trading post was later established on land now a part
of the city of Superior, Wisconsin, opposite the city of Duluth. This
trading station was owned by the Northwestern Fur Company, and was an
important meeting-place for white men and Indians. In 1826, on his
second western trip, Governor Lewis Cass concluded at this Minnesota
outpost a treaty with the Indians, giving to the United States the
right to explore and carry away any minerals that might be found in the
country bordering on the lake. To gain this important concession the
commissioners determined to do all they could to impress the tribes
with the power and majesty of the United States’ representatives. In
barges from which the Stars and Stripes were gayly flying, and to the
tune of “Hail Columbia,” played by a military band, the treaty-makers
sailed into the harbor amid the shouts and cheers of the Indians on the
shore. The treaty was signed, and later agreements also made on this
spot gave to the government the remainder of the country. By 1850 there
were permanent settlers at the head of the lake as well as lumbermen
all along the St. Croix River. Congress appropriated in 1854 money to
build a road to connect Lake Superior by the St. Croix Valley with the
Mississippi River. The settlers at Superior, Wisconsin, were bitter
rivals of those at Duluth. In order to be sure to get the road they
cut a road southward from Superior to meet it and bring it out on the
Wisconsin side of the St. Louis River. In this way Superior got the
start of Duluth, but the latter was incorporated in 1857, and became
before many years a prosperous city.
By the middle of the nineteenth century Duluth, the most remote
gateway of the Great Lakes, had begun its history as a town. In 1825
Henry Clay, speaking on the bill to grant lands for the building of
the Soo Canal, had mentioned these great waterways as “beyond the
furthest bounds of civilization,--if not in the moon.” Six years later
Edward Everett enunciated the principle of the future, declaring that
“intercourse between the mighty interior West and the seacoast is
the great principle of our commercial prosperity.” The cities of the
Great Lakes--Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and
Duluth--recognized their opportunity to become the connecting links
in this inevitable chain of intercourse. Their sites were strategic,
but they had much to do to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing
commerce. Their citizens were alert and eager to fulfil these demands.
Buffalo gained her position as the terminus of the Erie Canal because
public-spirited citizens gave bonds that her harbor should be improved.
Every city spent large sums in constructing and improving her natural
facilities. The fresh needs of every new decade have been met, and
to-day the lake system is on the eve of even greater achievements.
These cities have a background of which they may well be proud,--a
background of men who, in pioneer times of hardship and poverty, were
men of prescience, of courage, and of action. To-day the six cities
have a population of nearly four million people. United by their common
bond of harborage on the Great Lakes, but situated in six states of the
Union, these cities and their smaller neighbors are taking a prominent
part in the nation. Men of vision and of energy still walk their
streets, planning and guiding their present and future. Their sites
are being beautified and improved; their social and economic problems
are being solved; and they are keeping themselves fit gateways for the
prosperous states they represent on the great inland seas of North
America.