Compendium of history and biography of the city of Detroit and Wayne County, Michigan, Part 4

Author: Burton, Clarence Monroe, 1853-1932
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 858

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Realizing that starvation was his most powerful ally, Pontiac made every effort to pre- vent the sale of supplies to the besieged fort, by the French habitants. In this he was unsuc-

DETROIT AND WAYNE COUNTY

cessful. Meagre though sufficient stores were obtained from both sides of the river. As the siege continued, however, even these slender sources were threatened, and on May 21 it was decided to dispatch the Gladwin to Niagara to hasten forward relief. This done, a party from the fort searched the houses of the French settlers in quest of forage, but were success- ful only in a small way. Throughout June, the utmost anxiety prevailed inside the stock- ade, the danger of starvation becoming daily more imminent. On the last of the month the hearts of the garrison were overjoyed by the sight of a schooner which appeared in the river and later landed a force of half a hundred men, a supply of ammunition and one hundred and fifty barrels of provisions, thus temporarily relieving an almost untenable situation.

Early in July the French formed a company of militia, after refusing to join forces with Pontiac, and were equipped with muskets and ammunition by the English commandant. This was a severe blow to Pontiac and the infuriated Indians decided upon a bold attempt to cut off all sources of communication between their enemies and the forts at Niagara, by burning the "Gladwin" and her consort, a sloop named the "Beaver." Large rafts of blazing logs were set adrift above the moorings of the two boats, in hopes of thus setting them afire. The vessels slipped their cables in time to avoid the rafts and were then dis- patched to the Indian villages, where a lively fusillade was begun against the fragile wigwams. This method of bringing the fight into their own camp so terrified two of the tribes that they immediately sued for peace and effected treaties with Gladwin.

Lieutenant McDougall, who had been held prisoner since the early stages of the siege, eluded his captors and succeeded in making his way in safety to the gates of the fort. Cap- tain Campbell was less fortunate, however. During a sortie against a barricade held by the savages, a party of soldiers killed several of the Indians, whom they at once scalped. To pay for this indignity, Captain Campbell was securely bound and slowly hacked to pieces in the most shocking manner.

Toward the last of July a large body of reinforcements arrived under Captain Dalzell, who had been commissioned by General Amherst to put an end to the siege. Several can- non and ample supplies were brought under guard of the party, and with the stores thus replenished it became at once apparent to the commandant that he had but to remain quietly on guard within the stockade and tire out his antagonist in a waiting game. Captain Dal- zell, however, insisted in leading his men in a decisive attack against Pontiac's warriors, and would take no suggestions from the garrison officers. On July 31, he advanced against the Indian camp to the eastward of the fort, being supported by two bateaux, which were to open fire with swivels, from the river.

Disregarding suggestions that he should carefully deploy a skirmish line in advance and on the flanks of his main force, Dalzell marched his men in perfect order along the edge of the forest. Pontiac anticipated the attack and waited the British in ambush in the vicinity of Parent's creek, since known as Bloody Run. A narrow bridge extended across the lowland at this point, and it was there that the Indians poured a withering fire into the troops, who were completely surprised. Every tree and thicket became ablaze with death spitting fire. The English charged the bridge in a fruitless effort to dislodge the as yet unseen enemy. Dalzell was shot down and the soldiers were thrown into complete confusion, which would have ended in a disastrous rout save for the coolness of one Captain Rogers, who assumed command. He succeeded in effecting an orderly retreat to the house of Jacques Campau, where he made a stand until reinforced by a party from the fort. With a loss of fifty-nine men, killed and captured and a score or more of wounded, the detachment reached the fort late on the afternoon of the attack. Some chroniclers assert that the loss to the British in

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this battle of Bloody Run, was far in excess of the above number, and state that only ninety of the original two hundred and fifty regained the stockade.

Though the victory was a decided one for the Indians, Pontiac was made to realize, by the arrival of additional men and supplies, that his struggle against a people possessed of ap- parently limitless resources was a futile one. His lieutenants, the chiefs of the subsidiary tribes, had been successful in the planned destruction of the fort at Mackinac and those at other points, but he was forced to admit that he, the leader of the conspiracy and the originator of all the plans, had been outwitted. His was the humiliation of being the only chief to fail.

The autumn found the British in better condition to continue the siege than at any time since its origin, while the Indians were without permanent shelter and were lacking in am- munition and food for the winter's fighting. General Amherst had made a vigorous protest to the French authorities against the attitude of some of the habitants, and this resulted in the direction of a decisive communication to the French settlers forbidding the continuance of an attitude that might be construed as unfriendly to English interests. Though pos- sessed of every advantage for cutting off the fort from supplies and reinforcements, Pontiac found himself for some reason unable to accomplish this important detail of his plans. This and the failure of the French to afford material aid, finally induced the proud chief to bow to the inevitable and to sue for peace.

Gladwin would consent to but a temporary armistice, sufficient to enable him to secure definite orders from General Amherst. This was declared in October, and a letter indited by the commandant to his general during that month is of interest in relation to a report of con- ditions and a suggestion it contained. In part it reads: "The Indians have lost between eighty and ninety of their warriors, but if your excellency still intends to punish them for their barbarities it may easier be done, without any expense to the crown, by permitting a free sale of rum, which will destroy more effectually than fire and sword."

An attempt was made to relieve Gladwin, before winter set in, by the dispatching of Major Wilkins from Niagara, but the expedition met with disaster and was forced to return to await favorable weather for the voyage. It was not until the summer of 1764 that Colonel Bradstreet, with a body of troops, arrived from the east to succeed as commandant. Glad- win's truce virtually ended the war and his men were given, by its conditions, their first op- portunity of leaving the post in security, after a strenuous existence on short rations during a period of one hundred and fifty-three days.

Upon the termination of the Pontiac uprising in 1764, much of the gaiety character- istic of the days of the French regime and those of the early English occupation was re- sumed at the post. Here civilization met savagery. Reckless coureurs de bois and fantas- tically bedecked Indians exchanged the yields of the chase for whatever manufactured prod- ucts the settlement traders might offer. Land values advanced by leaps and bounds and their increase, together with the advantageous conditions prevailing for trade, fattened the purses of both the older inhabitants and the more recent acquisitions to the little colony.

Even at this time, however, furs formed the basis of all wealth. Heavily laden canoes were daily beached on the river's bank and the water front became the general center of a lively traffic in beaver pelts. But, as in the days of the French occupancy, the fur trade proved itself a menace to the healthful development of the settlement. The traders were ever on the alert to forestall any project which sought the further clearing of the forests. They looked with growing disfavor on the straggling advance of the line of scattered farms.

Settlement meant the spoliation of the trapping grounds. The protests of the traders found sympathetic ears among the manufacturers and tradesmen in England, for the latter

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were selfishly jealous of any colonial advancement which might result in the establishment of western institutions capable of becoming future competitors.

Beginning with John Bradstreet, the commandant who succeeded Gladwin as English chief of affairs, the promotion of individual interests characterized the policy of nearly every man in authority. The practice of fleecing the Indians out of their lands became so general that strict regulations were necessitated, making illegal the transfer of any lands save by treaty through the colonial government.

What was known as New York currency, the first money that came into circulation in Detroit, made its appearance in 1765, and not until that time did the practice of the payment of taxes and commercial obligations in pelts begin to be discontinued. As can be easily imagined, the change was not appreciated by the Indians, who were loath to accept the new medium of exchange. On account of this antipathy, trading was accomplished with no little difficulty, and the former unit of value, the beaver skin, threatened for a time to force its rival from the field.

On April 24, 1767, one Philip Dejean was commissioned as the first chief justice of De- troit. This appointment was necessitated by increasing complications in the business and social relations of the settlers, resulting from the increase in population and the growing im- portance of the colony. Unfortunately Dejean, who had left Montreal a bankrupt and had come to Detroit to recoup his fortunes, proved a ready accomplice in helping to perfect a rule of petty despotism in which succeeding commandants indulged. The appointment proved an unfortunate one for everyone who fell into his clutches. To Dejean was given the au- thority of draughting nearly all legal documents, conducting public sales and filling generally the duties of sheriff, notary and justice of the peace.

Since the establishment of the colony it had been constantly under military rule, and im- mediately following the signing of the treaty of Paris the settlers in the territory affected peti- tioned for the establishment of civil authority. Detroit, however, continued to be subject to the authority of the military commandants and their appointees, the control of affairs being thus largely shirked by the governor general of Canada, who was nominally in power.

In 1770 what was known as the Northwest Company initiated an aggressive policy of fur buying, in opposition to the old Hudson's Bay company, which had at that time enjoyed nearly one hundred years of almost complete monopoly of the fur business. Rival traders resorted to such lawlessness in inducing the various Indian tribes of the northwest to bring their peltries to their respective masters that only the happy merging of the rival companies averted serious trouble. Rum was offered lavishly as a successful inducement to the Indians, and the authorities either winked at the practice or were unable to prevent its continuance, according to the varying conditions in different parts of Canada. Major Bradstreet was forced to appeal to the Canadian governor for protection against the smuggling of spirits.

The smouldering jealousies of the commercial interests in England that had been in evi- dence since the establishment of the British at Detroit, but which were directed chiefly against the New England colonies, took definite form in 1774, when sufficient pressure was brought to bear on parliament, despite the efforts of some of England's wisest statesmen, to insure the passage of the Quebec act. This affected the entire territory west of New York and north of the Ohio river. It was evidently intended to prevent the settlement of the west- ern country, for it practically deprived every settler of the benefits of the English law, except in criminal cases.

The passage of this act was not the least of the grievances which a few years later drove the colonists to that rebellion which deprived the English crown of her most valuable

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possession and cost her more dearly than any other event in her history. In referring to the act, the Declaration of Independence says that the mother government has set aside "the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary govern- ment so as to render it an example and a fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies." Despite these measures, the wave of adventure drove the settlers stead- ily westward. They seemed to thrive on adverse circumstance, though no one perhaps real- ized that their coming was but the foreshadowing of the birth of a nation more powerful and far greater than the world had seen.

The policy adopted by the English home government relative to the administration of civil rights for the Detroit colony was, in a mild way, comparatively a replica of the general attitude manifest toward the American colonies as a whole. Short-sighted jealousy continued to characterize the treatment accorded those who sought the upbuilding of the frontier settle- ments and the fuller development of the rich natural resources even then known to exist in the territories. Obstinacy met obstinacy. The pioneers were roused to increased determina- tion. Faint murmers of protest, broached timidly at first, found ready ear. Soon it became apparent that the spirit rapidly rising in the Atlantic colonies was healthily incubating in the heart of the more remote wilderness. Under less thoroughly established social and political restrictions, the first evidence of a mild ferment of discontent was more readily discernible in the west, perhaps, than in the older and more substantially established commonwealths. Early in the '70s the king's representatives in the Northwest became aware of the impending menace and straightway plans were set on foot for the strengthening of the fort at Detroit.

At this time the middle west, that territory lying to the north and south of the Ohio river, west of its origin, was rapidly filling with a hardy admixture of the more adventurous of the Pennsylvanians and Virginians-a rough, fearless vanguard, such as has ever cut a pathway for civilization. The smoldering ruins of log cabins that had stood as lonely out- posts of the pioneer advance, and the pillaged villages of the Indians bore mute evidence of a warfare of extermination,-evidence of the resistance offered the white man's coming. Lust and greed and murder and torture stalked side by side through the forest-grim phantoms of destruction. The governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, placed an army in command of General Lewis and from Fort Pitt, at the present site of Pittsburg, frequent sorties were made against the Indians. Though the punishment thus inflicted was severe, it but tended to impress upon the savage mind a hatred for the colonists that only subsequent events were destined to fathom.

When, in 1775, England awoke to the fact that a struggle on the part of the colonies for their political rights and independence was inevitable, the strategic importance of the Detroit post, as well as the supremacy of the inland lakes, became of apparent value. De- troit afforded an ideal base from which to annoy the colonies from the rear and in the Indians, already in an inflammable state against the settlers, the British were quick to see a weapon at once merciless and effective. Whatever losses might be sustained by these ferocious allies would be a matter of little concern to the crown, while the damage they were able to accomplish would be that much clear gain. As an additional advantage, whatever atrocities might be committed could be easily condemned by a shocked and deeply horrified government that, pretending to wage only an honorable and civilized warfare, would find itself in a posi- tion to readily shift all responsibility. From the British point of view the conditions then existing in the west and at Detroit were ideal. They were rather impiously declared to be the direct result of an interposition of "Divine Providence." Vainly a few Englishmen pro- tested against the sullying of the British arms through association in the coming struggle with

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the tomahawk and scalping knife. In vain did the governor-general himself warn the gov- ernment that the Indians, once loosed, could not be restrained. But the "Divine Provi- dence" argument prevailed with the king. Three lieutenant governors were appointed-one for each of the posts at Detroit, Vincennes and Mackinac. Though much confusion attended these appointments and some difference of opinion is expressed as to the source of the au- thority under which the offices were created, it appears that the major functions of such ap- pointees included the distribution of gifts to the Indians and the exacting from them of loyalty to the British cause and service under arms in return. As the colonial secretary, the Earl of Dartmouth, who is generally credited with having made the appointments, failed to clearly define the exact status of the officials named, frequent clashes in authority resulted between the lieutenant governors and the military commandants at the three posts, much to the embarrassment of all the officials and the demoralization of discipline.

Captain Henry Hamilton, who received the appointment as lieutenant governor at Detroit, pounced upon the revenues of the post immediately after his arrival in 1775, and through a most notorious connivance with the unscrupulous Philip Dejean, so-called chief justice, he inaugurated a system of petty graft and plunder that outshone the flagrant acts of even the most dishonest of the earlier French commandants. The partnership between these two spoilers seems to have been happily consummated for their mutual advantage. Dejean in his legal capacity had jurisdiction over civil cases at Detroit and even went so far as to assume authority in criminal matters that ought properly to have been referred to the courts at Quebec. The pair became at once the terror of every citizen; no one was immune from their greed. The most unreasonable and extortionate fines were imposed as the result of convictions on the flimsiest of charges. Apparently neither of the conspirators was satisfied until the interests of his friends were furthered, those of his enemies tyrani- cally checked and the last shilling wrung from the unfortunate debtors who fell into his hands.

Bitter was the feeling of the colonists against Dejean; a petition bearing the signature of nearly every resident at Detroit was presented to the governor general, asking that the post be relieved of its chief justice, but no action was taken. Repeated demands for De- jean's removal from office and the filing of specific charges of extortion resulted finally, however, in a grand-jury investigation of affairs. This was held at Montreal in 1778. 'Eventually indictments were found against both Dejean and Hamilton, though neither of the culprits was ever brought to trial.

CHAPTER III.

Detroit's Position at Inception of Revolution-Hamilton's Execrable Policies-Indian Atroci- ties-Expeditions From Detroit During Revolution-Settlers Oppose Hamilton's Plans-Expedition of Indian Allies Under Girty-Attack on Detroit Planned by Americans-The Wyoming Valley Massacre-Expedition Under George Rogers Clark-Hamilton's Expedition from Detroit to Vincennes-Capitulation of Hamil- ton.

The moment the Revolution was in progress Detroit assumed much the same position, relative to the actual belligerents, that it had occupied during the previous struggle between the French and the British. As then, it served as a most important base for the distribu- tion of supplies and troops, but it was never the scene of a real encounter, although grave fears were entertained by the citizens, on more than one occasion, that the settlement and fort would be razed. Lieutenant Governor Hamilton made the most of every opportunity for galling the colonists, and, as arch demon in inciting the savages to almost untold atroc- ities, his activities were such as well to justify his selection for the purpose.

Thousands of barrels of rum and unlimited supplies of scalping knives were distrib- uted to the allies with a generosity unprecedented under the rule of former English offi- cials. Messengers were sent calling the more distant tribes to council at Detroit. Barbecues were held in the streets of the town and the Indians were made to see that the colonists were not only a wicked and dangerous people, who were conspiring against the "White Father," but who also sought to possess themselves of the land. It was pointed out that they would succeed unless the Indians came to the aid of their white brothers in a war of extermina- tion. Aside from numerous trinkets and gaudy baubles calculated to catch the savage fancy, rifles, powder and ball were presented promiscuously. Through his interpreters Hamilton even went so far as to attempt to duplicate the forms of savage mummery characteristic of the usual Indian ceremonials. He chanted war songs and drove knives or hatchets into various grotesque effigies representing the common enemies of the Indians and British.

All of Hamilton's flattery, however, was useless when he attempted to induce the natives to take the field against the settlers, unaccompanied by British soldiers and officers. Appar- ently no stratagem of which he was capable was sufficient to blind his allies to his real inten- tions. If his zeal was genuine, it was obvious, the Indians said, that he would want his own men to partake of the glories of the conflict. Daily the lieutenant governor was artfully drawn further and further into the meshes of an insatiable savage greed for presents and still more presents. Every endeavor to maintain the scheme of elaborate generosity which he had at first initiated but brought him into sharper conflict with Captain Lord, the mili- tary commander, who, as a result of frequent quarrels, was eventually transferred to Niagara. Captain Richard Beranger Lernoult succeeded Lord at the post.

Again agents were sent to make friends with remote tribes and so many Indians hastened to avail themselves of the free rum, muskets, ammunition, blankets and addi- tional gifts that Detroit soon became the Mecca toward which all trails led. But no one was inclined toward the hardships of the warpath so long as there was feasting and speechmaking to be accomplished and enjoyed. As much as two barrels of rum were

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required daily for the entertainment of England's guests, not to mention fattened oxen publicly roasted before the fort. Though this expense became the subject of repeated protests from the governor general, Hamilton seemed unable to obtain the desired results on a more conservative basis and the practice became chronic.

The first few war parties sent out from the fort were immediately successful. Each returned with numerous prisoners taken from captured settlements. Each was accorded a hilarious welcome. More oxen were roasted and additional rum was distributed as a fitting feature of the celebration and as a special reward to the victors. As the prisoners had to be sent to Montreal or Quebec for confinement and as the trouble and expense attending such disposition were considerable, the artful Hamilton hit upon an atrocious scheme of economy. He suggested heartlessly to his allies that scalps furnished excellent evidence of results accomplished by the faithful and could be handled much more conve- niently than prisoners. This suggestion gained the lieutenant governor the pseudonym of "Hair Buyer." To the unending shame of England it must be said that the practice of buying scalps, classified as having been taken from men, women and children and paid for accordingly, is a matter of actual record.

Many of the letters comprising Hamilton's correspondence with his superiors-letters received and preserved by them-contain invoices of bale after bale of scalps for which the savages were paid varying amounts from the exchequer of his Gracious Majesty the King. These letters make patent the fact that the "scalp buyer's" superiors were not only cognizant of but winked at and permitted these disgraceful dealings with the allies.

When Dr. Benjamin Franklin was pleading the American cause at the court of France, he submitted among other evidences of atrocious British practices characteristic of their conduct of the war, the following letter. The communication is purported to have been written by a British officer and to have been intercepted while in transmission to Hamilton at Detroit :

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Compendium of history and biography of the city of Detroit and Wayne County, Michigan, Part 4

Author: Burton, Clarence Monroe, 1853-1932 Publication date: 1909 Publisher: Chicago H. Taylor & Co. Number of Pages: 858

Author: Burton, Clarence Monroe, 1853-1932
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 858