USA > Michigan > A history of the northern peninsula of Michigan and its people, its mining, lumber and agricultural industries, Volume I > Part 21
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SURRENDER OF FORT TO THE ENGLISH
Reaching the vicinity of Detroit communications were exchanged by messenger between Major Rogers and the French commander, Bellistre,
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occasioning considerable delay and uneasiness to the small force of Eng- lish, in the presence of such strange and savage surroundings, until finally, on November 29th, the fort was surrendered and the English flag, for the first time, supplanted that of the French within the terri- tory now comprising the state of Michigan,
Rogers soon after proceeded to Michilimackinac to personally take charge of the post there, leaving Captain Campbell in charge at De- troit; but he found it impossible to make the trip at the late season either by water, or overland, and so he returned east, leaving Michili- mackinac, the Sault and Green bay, though formally ceded to the Brit- ish, still in the actual control and government of the French; and so it remained until the spring of 1761, when they, too, formally surrendered to the English, and the French withdrew permanently from their pos- sessions and claims in Michigan.
With the change in rulers and in government, the populace remained substantially unchanged. The fur trade passed to the English who em- ployed the French traders as their agents, and, content with that, there was no effort to promote English colonization; and apparenly a har- monious adjustment was accomplished.
But the Indians did not like the change. The English, with whom they could not associate, were no substitute for the French who had treated them like brothers; the French had been liberal in the bestowal of presents, a practice which the English did not indulge in to any ex- tent. Thus the dissatisfaction with the new English rulers, combined with the continued disgraceful, disreputable and immoral treatment ac- corded the Indians at the hands of the debauched French traders that remained and were employed by the English, wrought discontent in the hearts and minds of the savages, which grew and grew with the gradual realization that the coming of the white men meant the destruction of the game that furnished them their livelihood; and an unwarranted in- vasion of their rights to the country by reason of their first possession thereof. The discontent was not alone in any one part of the country, but had its inception in the east where the growth of white settlements was most noticeable, and therefore the rights of the Indians most per- ceptably invaded, and it spread throughout to the tribes about and be- yond the lakes.
Unfortunately, the spirit of revenge that dwelt with some of the remaining French found opportunity for exercise, by agitating, in the minds of the savages, their growing grievances against the English, un- til in the summer of 1761 the danger became so apparent that Captain Campbell, in command at Detroit. notified forts Pitt and Niagara thereof; but beyond this there were no serious outbreaks for the time. though the spirit of rebellion throughout the savage tribes was evidenced here and there by aets of barbarism perpetrated upon the whites.
Pontiae's conspiracy now ripened into war, and by his energy, shrewdness and ability he acquired and maintained the confidence of all the Algonquins and succeeded in effecting the most perfect organiza-
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tion which all Indian history affords. His conspiracy consisted in a plan to organize all the tribes into a combination to drive out the Eng- lish, and to maintain exclusively for the Indians the country northwest of the Ohio. To this end he sent his representatives to all the tribes north of the Ohio and into Canada and as far west as the Mississippi. This work was carried on so secretly and cautiously that not a word of it came to the ears of the English until the spring of 1762. The activities of that war were of short duration within the territory of which we write, but the great chief visited the Upper Peninsula in the building up of his plans, and gained considerable individual following from the tribes of this section who followed him to the contests below the straits, and all the frontier posts became endangered practically at one time. The English had only a small garrison at Fort St. Joseph, and that fort was quickly captured and its garrison sent to Detroit for exchange; while at Michilimackinac the massacre heretofore written of gave that post into the hands of the Chippewas. This horrible war continued with unrelenting savagery from the beginning of the siege of Detroit in May, 1763, until the summer of 1764, when it was fortunately ended by dip- lomatie measures adopted by the English, which resulted in a treaty acknowledging the king of England as sovereign of the territory in- volved. The future of this region was directly at stake, for had the con- spiracy succeeded, or had even a measure of success, it is probable this part of the disputed territory would have much longer remained in the domains of the red men. As it was, the term of the war, following the protracted French and Indian wars, and accompanied by its awful sav- agery, effected the holding back of settlements in, and the development of the natural resources of Michigan.
When the treaties had been duly signed with the several tribes, Eng- lish military officials were sent to again take command of the forts re- gained, and to Michilimackinac and Sault Ste. Marie came Captain Howard for that purpose, from which time those points remained at least formally in the possession of the English until their acquisition by the United States at the close of the Revolutionary war. With the com- ing of peace, English and Dutch traders followed in the footsteps of the French to reap the rich rewards offered by the fur trade; but employed the French coureurs de bois as their agents.
A controversy between the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company over the division of the territory was adjusted by an arrange- ment in the nature of a modern "trust," by placing the control of the two companies under one management; and all governmental restrictions such as the French had imposed upon the fur trade were removed, and free trade in furs was established.
The policy adopted by England in regard to the Indians was intended to extend to them pretty much the same freedom which they had origin- ally enjoyed, but to hold over them such supervising control as to prevent tribal wars; to allow to them the principal portion of the territory north and west of the Ohio as their hunting grounds, and to acquire from them
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for purposes of settlement only small portions of the vast domain that had so long been in controversy. In short, the English did not even dream of the possibility of any settlement being made in the interior of the country west of the Alleghanies, and they looked upon the lake re- gion as being principally valuable for its production of furs. As a con- sequence, little effort was made to colonize the territory that had been won by the English in the conflict of arms, first from the French and then from the Indians.
POSSIBILITIES OF THIS REGION NOT FORESEEN
It is not to be wondered at that the realities of the future of this country were so dimly foreseen by the government, when we remember the fact that at a considerably later date, and after the colonies had won their independence, the colonists of the Atlantic states still held the same view, as is best illustrated by a saying of Thomas Jefferson, as late as 1790, that "not in a thousand years will the country be thoroughly set- tled as far west as the Mississippi." In but slight degree did the people of those days anticipate the progress which the next fifty years had in store for the United States, when with a large measure of relief from the continuons warfare of the past the varied natural resources of this country, then already recognized, should be subjected to manipulation at the hands of Yankee ingenuity. And the same proneness to disbelieve what actually exists beyond one's vision is still found lurking to a consid- erable extent in many parts of our domain, and is illustrated by a re- cent incident at a state fair in Detroit, where the wonderful agricultural possibilities of the Upper Peninsula were aptly portrayed by a magnifi- cent display of fruits and vegetables, so exceptionally fine that it caught the eye, and occasioned remarks by all comers. One well dressed and well appearing person asked the attendant where the exhibit was grown, and on being informed that it was all from the Upper Peninsula, re- marked: "You can't make me believe these things grew way up there in the frozen north."
But, to return: The time had come for rapid progress, and the ae- tions of the settlers in this new world soon took a pace far in advance of the plans that were laid in the old; and, as in the business of to-day the plans studied out in the office are often enlarged upon by the engineers in the field, so the plans of the English to leave to the Indians the great areas of country north and west of the Ohio, were greatly infringed upon and modified by the colonizing engineers when they came in personal contact with the various natural advantageous features; and the result was, that notwithstanding the proclamation of the king, colonization stretched its reaching arms westward, and soon began to move with that resistless force that caused the man of the forest to move before it; and instead of a thousand years, it was scarcely half a hundred before the settlers had fairly covered the territory east of the Mississippi, and the redmen had mostly removed to the west thereof.
In 1765, Sir Guy Carlton became governor general of Canada, The
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Province of Quebec, then including Michigan, was peopled almost en- tirely with French. They were accustomed to the government of France and unfamiliar with that of England; were almost exclusively of the Catholic religion, and so, with the coming of the English governor, Carl- ton, the affairs of Canada were placed in the hands of the military and were not very satisfactory until the passage by parliament, in 1774, of the "Quebec act." This provided for a governor and council and also for the application of the criminal laws of England; the retention of the foriner laws of the province, as to other affairs; the establishment, by appointment of the crown, of local courts with both civil and criminal jurisdiction ; and granting the free exercise of religious belief to and the retention of church property by the inhabitants of the province. The aet also extended the boundaries of the province so as to include all the great lakes, and the country south thereof to the Ohio and west to the Mississippi river. Because of this latter clause opposition was en- gendered in the ranks of the followers of William Penn, who claimed for his colony a considerable territory within that sought to be given to Quebec ; and it also met with disapproval at the hands of the settlers in the seaboard colonies of the Atlantic coast, with whose western bound- aries the act came in conflict.
This act played an important part in the history of the then imme- diate future, and furnished one of the grounds of complaints in the con- fiet that led to the Declaration of Independence, and is referred to in that document in the following language, as, "abolishing the free sys- tem of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same arbitrary rule into these colonies." On the other hand the act was received with so much favor in Canada, where the French Catholic population were granted their most sacred privilege of maintaining their own religion and religious rights, that it may be said to be the knot that then engaged and has ever since held in loyalty to the crown the population of its Canadian province.
Although Michigan was then within the province of Quebec, and sub- jeet to her government, there was little occasion for laws, beyond those enforced by the military, as the colonists had not as yet assumed any great pretence in numbers.
Accurate figures may not be obtainable, but the best that can be ob- tained are from a census taken in Detroit in 1773, by a justice of the peace, wherein the population of the colony of Detroit was given as two hundred and ninety-eight men, two hundred and twenty-five women, one hundred and forty-two young men and women, five hundred and twenty- four children, ninety-three servants, and eighty-five slaves; and he gives the area of cultivated land at one thousand sixty-seven acres, or a trifle over a section and half; a fraction of the size of one of our present Upper Peninsula farms.
But a small settlement existed at Michilimackinac, and thereof we
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have found no enumeration. It was made up almost wholly, aside from the small garrison, of the traders and coureurs de bois, and they were of the character to be expected considering the environment from which they came and the lack of restraint with which they were here sur. rounded. While among them were to be found men who had come from refined and educated families, including in some instances those from families high in royal favor, they were for the most part of a far differ- ent cast, as, for instance, such as those heretofore spoken of who had in an early day been gathered from the prisons of France, brought to New France for a private colonizing purpose and, meeting with adverse con- ditions, had been compelled to subsist on an island in a wild state for a term of years, and were then given a measure of relief by being assisted by the French Government to engage in the Canadian fur trade. Such an element could not be expected to maintain a very high standard of morality and decency, and it is probable that in the colony at Michili- mackinac this element furnished a larger percentage of representatives than in that at Detroit, where a feeble attempt at permanent coloniza- tion and cultivation of the soil was being made; and yet, of the colony at Detroit, Governor Hamilton wrote rather disparagingly, in 1776, as follows: "The Canadians are mostly so illiterate that few can read and very few can sign their own names. The backwardness in the improvement of farming has probably been owing to the easy and lazy method of procuring the bare necessities. . The Strait is so plentifully stocked with a variety of fine fish that a few hours' amuse- ment may furnish several families, yet not one French family has got a seine. Hunting and fowling afford food to numbers who are nearly as lazy as the savages, who are rarely prompted to the chase till hunger pinches them. The soil is so good that great crops are raised by careless and very ignorant farmers. Yet there is no such thing, as yet, as a piece of land laid down for meadow, and the last winter, indeed, a remarkably severe one for this country, several of the cattle perished for want of fodder."
Thus it will be seen that, so far as white population and real civiliza- tion were concerned, Michigan really was but an insignificant quantity at the time the colonies of the east declared their independence. Al- though Michilimackinac had been third in the permanent settlements within the present territory of the United States, being ranked in earli- ness only by St. Augustine and Jamestown, her early settlers gave their attention to the attempted Christianizing of the savages and to the com- mercialism of the fur trade, making practically no effort at colonization except as an incident to one or the other of those objects.
In direct contrast to this, the colonies along the Atlantic encouraged immigration from Europe, and, recognizing the wonderful productive- ness of the soil, encouraged the development of agriculture, which carried with it, as natural accompaniments, that increase in trades, arts and commerce which caused the younger settlements of the Atlantic to grow rapidly in both population and wealth; so at the time of which we have
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just quoted conditions at Detroit and Michilimackinac, the colonies of the east were ready for independence, knowing that to gain it they must face and conquer by force of arms the most powerful country then on the face of the globe.
This territory was in English control and was the scene of English activity during the Revolutionary struggle, and while Cornwallis was engaging the colonial forces in Virginia, General Haldimand was busily fitting out an expedition which was sent forward from Detroit. This was made up of regulars under Captain Bird, of the Detroit Militia, un- der Joncaire, and a large body of Indians, also under Captain Bird. The savage excesses of the Indians in the scalping of the settlers were too much even for their military associates, and after terrible experi- ences of that nature in Kentucky, Captain Bird concluded to return to Detroit, but not, however, until the acts of the Indians had so exasper- ated the Kentuckians that they determined to cut off the retreat, which they did, and in the doing of this they succeeded in scattering the In- dian forces.
Captain Sinclair succeeded De Peyster at Michilimackinac and he was made lieutenant governor and also superintendent of Indian affairs for the province. It was on his arrival, in 1779, that the post was trans- ferred from the south side of the strait to the island. Without waiting for anthority from Governor Haldimand, he built the new fort on the island, but his report thereof was approved by that office, against the protests of residents of the settlement; and at his request the name of Michilimackinac was retained, and the fort was called "Fort Mackinac."
While Captain Patrick Sinelair was exercising his command at Mich- ilimackinac, which command also included Fort St. Joseph, an incident occurred that is properly mentioned in connection with the history of this locality. It should be remembered that after France had surren- dered this territory to England, and having been permitted by treaty to retain Louisiana, had transferred it to Spain, attempts had been made by dissatisfied Frenchmen to induce the Spanish to lay claim to the former French possessions on the lakes; with the appearance of the revolution against the English by the American colonies, the effort was renewed, and Spanish activity in this direction was somewhat feared by the English. Sinclair in 1780 made up an expedition of traders and Indians and sent them down the Mississippi to attack the Spanish, and at St. Louis the town was attacked, seven settlers killed and eighteen taken prisoners; these prisoners being sent back to Michilimackinac to work on the new fort.
While the affairs with Spain did not assume any great proportions, this attack was followed by a Spanish expedition being sent in January, 1781, against the post at St. Joseph, which was poorly defended and was captured with little effort. The English flag was hauled down and the flag of Spain floated for a brief time over St. Joseph's Island, though the Spanish government never claimed to be in governmental control. The severity of the climate, or other unknown cause, is responsible for their silent disappearance.
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While Colonel Clark was moving westward, De Peyster asked Sin- elair, of Fort Mackinac, to send to his assistance Indians from the upper lake regions, to join his forees at Detroit and to move eastward to meet Clark, but the Indians had heard of the strength and bravery of the colonists and consistently held aloof. leaving the British practically with their own forces to rely on, and with but little aid from the In- dians; though they succeeded in getting the Indians to lend some as- sistance of their own kind by harassing the frontier American settle- ments and murdering und seulping lone settlers whom they succeeded in surprising, or in meeting with superior numbers. The notorious John Brant and other prominent Indians assisted the English in the struggles of those revolutionary times, and the history of their rnids in Kentucky and upon other frontier settlements is mentioned, but not detailed in this connection, though closely associated with early Michi- gan history, for Brant's sister was the Indian wife of Sir William John- son.
News of the cessation of the war that established the independence of the colonies was slow to reach the frontier, compared to the speed with which such communications are made at this day, and as a conse- quence, though the English pretended to use all diligence then possible to notify their Indian allies, and to recall them from their raiding ex- peditions, numerous settlements were hideonsly raided by the blood- thirsty savages after peace had been declared.
It was in 1782 that peace came, with the close of the Revolutionary war, to lend to a portion of the Northwest territory an opportunity for that development, which the conditions of the preceding century would not permit. The wars between the savages, and those between the Eng. lish and the French, and between the settlers and the Indians, had kept the country in such a continuonsly turbulent condition that there was no inducement to general settlement, and ouly such Europeans ventured forth as the missionaries, who risked their lives in the cause of Chris- tinnity, and the traders, who took their lives into their own hands for the profit the trade afforded, or, as in many cases, from the pure love of the wild, adventurous life which the new world afforded them; so that no real settlements were made except at those few points where military posts were established. With the close of the war, time was still re- quired to adjust the many questions that naturally arose on the attain- ing by the colonies of the condition of independence. Michigan had been, during the Revolutionary period, a part of the Province of Que- bee, and within Michigan's boundaries was the center of the British operations in the west. The colonies along the Atlantic const had not theretofore established their western boundaries and some of them claimed, by virtue of their royal charters. that their territory ex- tended westward to the Pacific.
The work of adjustment was taken up by congress with the colonies, severally, with the result that by 1786 sutisfactory adjustments had been made with all of them, whereby the several boundaries had been
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determined, and the country to the west thereof was ceded to the general government. This apparently gave the general government control over most of the country west of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio, and fairly opened the way to settlement and to the establishment of new colonies. Strife between the English and the colonists seemed to be at an end and it was hoped the Indians would no longer be ineited to war, and would become generally pacific.
Somehow the settlers naturally first took to the fertile prairie lands to the south of the lake regions, in preference to the heavy timber lands of the lake states, and thus those lands to the south of us, which now comprise the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, received most of the early western emigrants and became populous, while Michilimackinac in the wooded sections of the north, which had in the earliest of pioneer days been the center of missionary, military and commercial activity, and had sent its emissaries and the needed supplies to the south, contin- ued to be one of the centers of the fur trade, which still remained the principal and ahnost sole industry of this northern territory. Another reason why the settlers turned largely to the south may be found in the faet that Michigan continued actually in the possession of the British, as hereinafter related, for fourteen years after the treaty of peace had been concluded, and Americans may have been loth to locate in a country where there was likely to arise a conflict of titles.
Although the general trend of settlement was to the sections .south of the lakes, as already mentioned, yet Michigan was not entirely over- looked, and some of those who Inter were prosperous and even wealthy citizens of Michigan had the foundations of their fortunes laid by pur- chases that were made from the Indians by men who had been brought from the east as captives and held in the "Yankee Prison" at Detroit, and who, on being released, at the elose of the war, either staid as per- manent settlers of Michigan, or went east and thereafter returned to take advantage of the natural opportunities which their season of enp- tivity had brought to their attention.
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