USA > Michigan > Genesee County > History of Genesee County, Michigan, Her People, Industries and Institutions, Volume I > Part 4
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the name of France, was taken in 1671 at Sault Ste. Marie, accompanied by one of the most imposing ceremonies ever witnessed in that region. Here was gathered a motley array, representing all the types of New France : soldier, priest, trader and trapper, the picturesque coureur de bois, and the native red man. Church and state stood side by side. It was Father Allouez, mindful of his temporal as well as his spiritual master, who pro- nounced upon Louis XIV a panegyric the like of which was seldom heard by the sons of the forest. In large measure, it was this loyalty of the church that made possible the extension of trade, commerce and the temporal domain of the French crown over the magnificent reaches of the Great Lakes.
JACQUES MARQUETTE.
The first permanent Michigan settlement on waters tributary to the lower lakes was made by Father Jacques Marquette in 1671 at St. Ignace. He had spent the winter before on Mackinac island, with a band of Hurons, but in the summer they moved to the mainland. Here he built a chapel, where he ministered to the Indians until his great voyage of discovery with Louis Joliet in 1673. It was from this point in Michigan that this great soul set forth on a quest which was to give to the world its first real knowl- edge of the "Father of Waters." It was at this point, a few years later, that his bones were interred by the red natives whom he loved and who had learned to love him. It was in Michigan that he made the last great sacri- fice. The story of Marquette's death is thus told by the historian Ban- croft: "In sailing from Chicago to Mackinac during the following spring (1675), he entered a little river in Michigan. Erecting an altar, he said mass after the rites of the Catholic church; then begging the men who con- ducted his canoe to leave him alone for half an hour-
'In the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication.'
"At the end of half an hour they went to seek him, and he was no more. The good missionary, discoverer of a world, had fallen asleep on the margin of a stream that bears his name."
On September 1, 1909, the memory of Father Jacques Marquette was signally honored, by loving hands, in the unveiling of the Marquette statue on Mackinac island. On that occasion, Mr. Justice William R. Day, of the
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supreme court of the United States, paid this fitting eulogy: "Upon the statue which marks Wisconsin's tribute, in the old Hall of the House at Washington, are these words: 'Jacques Marquette, who with Louis Joliet discovered the Mississippi river at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, July 17, 1673.' 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: "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 breth- ren of the twentieth century have built a Marquette University in Milwau- kee, 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 achieve- ments, Marquette, at the time of his death, was only thirty-eight years old.
LA SALLE.
After Marquette, the greatest name among the explorers of the Great Lakes region is that of Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. He was a native of that Normandy which in early days bore William the Conqueror. Born at Rouen in 1643, he came to Canada about the time Marquette first visited Lake Superior. He had been educated by the Jesuits, with the intention- of becoming a priest in that order. But his tastes led him into business, and the discoveries of Marquette and Joliet filled his mind with visions of wealth to be acquired in the regions of the West. La Salle, like the rest, was deluded with the idea of reaching China and the South Sea by way of the Great Lakes. The point on the St. Lawrence where he held lands, named by him La Chine, commemorates this infatuation. La Chine was to be his base of operations. While making great plans for the immediate future in the prosecution of the fur trade, he studied the Indian languages and made journeys into the wilderness. In 1669 he sold out his interests at La Chine and made the first of his great expeditions westward.
Just ten years from that time occurred an event that is specially note- worthy in the career of La Salle-the voyage of the "Griffin," a boat built under orders of La Salle by Henri de Tonti, and the first that ever sailed the waters of the Great Lakes. On August 7, 1679, this little vessel, of
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forty-five tons burden, set sail from the mouth of Cayuga creek, just above Niagara Falls, and after a stormy voyage of about a month, during which it encountered heavy storms on Lake Huron, anchored in a sheltered bay at Pointe St. Ignace. A glimpse of the scene on her arrival is thus given by the historian Parkman: "And now her port was won, and she found her rest behind the point of St. Ignace of Michilimackinac, floating in that tran- quil cove where crystal waters cover, but cannot hide, the pebbly depths beneath. Before her rose the house and chapel of the Jesuits, enclosed with palisades; on the right the Huron village, with its bark cabins and its fence of tall pickets ; on the left the square, compact houses of the French traders; and, not far off, the clustered wigwams of an Ottawa village."
Presently La Salle proceeded to Green bay, Wisconsin, where an advance party of his men had collected a large store of furs. The "floating fort," as the Mackinac Indians called the "Griffin," was here loaded with furs, and on September 18 she set out, homeward bound, with her cargo. Whether she again encountered storms, like those she had met on Saginaw bay coming north, or whether she met her fate through some foul play of her crew, or of the Indians, no one knows. She was never heard of more. Thus perished the pioneer of the unnumbered thousands of gallant barks that, ere two centuries should roll away, were to whiten with the sails of a peaceful commerce all these mighty inland seas.
Varied and interesting were the adventures of La Salle after he left the "Griffin." The one that concerns us most is his famous "cross country" trip through southern Michigan, the first time, so far as the records show, that the southern peninsula of Michigan was ever crossed by Europeans.
La Salle had gone south from Green bay, exploring the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan around past the site of Chicago to the mouth of the St. Joseph river, in what is now Berrien county. There he and his men built a fort, which was the first post to be established within the limits of the lower peninsula. From there they ascended the St. Joseph river, to the present site of the city of South Bend, Indiana. They visited the present La Salle county, in Illinois, then the principal center of the Illinois Indians. La Salle then proposed to navigate the Mississippi, and it was to fit out his vessel, which he built near the site of the present Peoria, that he made the overland trip to Canada which took him across Michigan. This was in the spring of 1680.
We have the account from La Salle's "Journal." He speaks of passing through great meadows covered with rank grass, which they burned in order to deceive the hostile savages who followed them, as to their route. No
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doubt these meadows were the patches of beautiful prairie land so attractive to the early settlers of southwestern Michigan. Setting out from the mouth of the St. Joseph river, and taking a direct line for the Detroit river, La Salle and his men followed, as near as can be determined, the dividing ridge between the St. Joseph and Kalamazoo rivers, passing through the southern parts of Kalamazoo and Calhoun counties, across Prairie Ronde and Climax prairies, and thence through Jackson and Washtenaw counties, to the Huron river. Down this stream they floated to the borders of Wayne county, when, finding their way barred by fallen trees, they left their canoes and struck across the country directly to the Detroit river. In due time La Salle reached the point from which the "Griffin" had first set sail. For sixty-five days he had plodded laboriously through a wilderness which today can be crossed in a few hours; but at that time, this first trip across southern Michigan was one of the most remarkable experiences in the history of the peninsula.
The story is well known how La Salle, amid the gloomy forebodings of his men, the treachery of the savages, innumerable personal losses and humiliations, triumphed over almost insurmountable difficulties, explored the great valley of the Mississippi and at length reached its mouth on the gulf of Mexico. On April 9, 1682, amid great pomp and ceremony, the lilies of France were unfurled to the southern breezes beside the cross of the church, and in the name of his mighty sovereign, Louis XIV, La Salle took possession of the vast lands watered by the great river; to them, in honor of his royal master, he gave the name Louisiana. The pathetic story of the faithful Tonti, who clung to La Salle in all his wanderings, is one of the most stirring romances of any age or country; and the tragic story of La Salle's ending, basely done to death by friends whom he trusted, forms one of the saddest tales in the pioneer annals of the continent. Only forty-four years old at the time of his death in 1687, La Salle was one of the greatest men of his day. Michigan may well be proud to number him among the great souls connected with her early discovery and settlement.
RIVAL CENTERS OF INFLUENCE.
The two greatest centers of French influence in Michigan were Michili- mackinac and Detroit. Indeed, a strong rivalry existed between them for control of the fur trade. Michilimackinac, being the older, and situated at a point where the Indians had been wont for ages to congregate for hunt- ing and fishing and celebrating their religious rites, had the initial advan-
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tage. From the time Marquette founded the mission at St. Ignace, in 1671, this point became a mart of trade. A fort was built about 1680, to protect and foster this trade. One of its first commandants was the famous coureur de bois, Daniel Greysolon Du Lhut, whose meritorious services as a soldier and explorer the name of the city of Duluth, in Minnesota, commemorates. It was he who built old Fort St. Joseph on or near the site of Fort Gratiot, where is now the city of Port Huron. Another famous commandant in the earliest annals of Michilimackinac was Nicolas Perot, who succeeded Du Lhut. But better known to modern readers than either of these, is the great Cadillac, the founder of the "City of the Straits."
M. de la Motte Cadillac became commandant at Mackinac in 1694. In his time he declares the place to have been "one of the largest villages in all Canada," with a strong fort, and a garrison of two hundred soldiers. In some way, Cadillac had become convinced of the need of an equally strong fort on the Detroit river. He went to France, and succeeded in winning over to his view Count Ponchartrain, minister for the colonies. Almost immediately after his return to Canada, armed with the royal com- mission, he fitted out an expedition to Detroit, where he arrived on July 24, 1701. A fort was built and appropriately named in honor of the French minister, "Fort Ponchartrain." In a little volume entitled "Cadillac's Vil- lage," Mr. C. M. Burton, of Detroit, historiographer of that city, has written a comprehensive, accurate and very interesting account of this event.
Cadillac was not mistaken in choosing this site for a trading post. It was the site of an Indian village, Teuchsagrondie, a place much frequented by the neighboring tribes. Nor were Cadillac and his followers the first white men there. We have seen La Salle there in the spring of 1680. Still earlier, Father Hennepin, historian of the famous voyage of the "Griffin," and one of its passengers, wrote, as he passed this site: "Those who will one day have the happiness to possess this fertile and pleasant strait will be very much obliged to those who have shown them the way." Missionaries and coureurs de bois had been there before. Fathers Dolliers and Galinee, two Sulpitian priests, had passed through the strait in the spring of 1670. They record that they found on the future site of Detroit what they sup- posed was an Indian god, roughly carved in stone, which they piously broke in pieces with their axes and threw into the river. It is even probable that there was a French fort of very primitive sort at Detroit some years previous to 1701, a post of the coureurs de bois not recognized by the government. From statements in the New York colonial documents, it seems to have
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existed there as early as 1679. The place was probably never garrisoned by a regular military force until Cadillac came.
The importance of the post from a military point of view-while this was of some moment-was subordinate to its commercial consequence. The principal cause of establishing the post was to control the fur trade of the upper Great Lakes. This trade was placed at the outset under the control of a company of merchants and traders formed in 1701, known as the "Company of the Colony of Canada." A contract was drawn up which excluded all private individuals from trading in the country. In return, the company was to pay six thousand livres every year to the French king.
The heart of Cadillac was in his new venture at Detroit, and he became alienated from his old post at Michilimackinac. Trade rivalries led to some bitterness. The establishment of a mission at Detroit was a part of Cadillac's general plan. He aimed to gather all the Indians of the Great Lakes region around his new post and mission at Detroit. But Father Marest, one of the greatest of the successors of Marquette at St. Ignace, was determined that Michilimackinac should not lose its prestige and influence with the red men. Cadillac, notwithstanding, succeeded in persuading a great number of the Michigan Indians to come to Detroit. For many years the fur trade largely centered there. So desperate did the situation become at Mackinac that the mission was temporarily abandoned.
From that time until the close of the French regime in 1763, the history of Michigan was comparatively uneventful. The post at Mackinac was restored, but it was built on the south side of the straits, near the site of the present Mackinaw City. The restored mission was established some miles along the shore to the west, at L'Arbre Croche among the Ottawas. Many of the Indians who had gone with Cadillac returned to the straits of Mackinac after his departure from Detroit, in 1711. Yet Detroit continued to be the important center of the fur trade for the lower peninsula of Mich- igan. The first settlements in the present states south of the Great Lakes were made from Detroit. It was destined to be for many years the chief center of the fur trade for all the country now occupied by the states of Indiana and Illinois and portions of Ohio and Wisconsin.
MICHIGAN UNDER THE BRITISH.
In 1760, Michigan and the whole country which is now known as British America was lost to the French and came under the dominion of Great Britain. War broke out between the French and British colonies in
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North America in 1754, but the change did not seriously disturb the posts in the Great Lakes region until the year 1763. Detroit and Mackinac had received English garrisons in 1760, without resistance either from the French or the Indians. It was fondly believed by the English government, as well as by the American colonists in these parts, that this meant an era of peace and prosperity for the region of the Great Lakes. But the calm was of short duration. A storm was brewing in the breast of the great chief, Pontiac.
The treatment accorded the Indians by the British was very different from what they had been accustomed to receive from the French. The French always paid the Indians proper respect and deference. The British, on the contrary, began almost immediately to thrust them aside and to treat them as dependents and vagabonds. The British continually encroached on the Indian hunting grounds. Complaints began to be heard, which grew louder, stimulated no doubt by the active sympathy of the French traders on the borders of Michigan.
PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY.
The year of the treaty of Paris, 1763, was fixed upon by Pontiac for a supreme attempt to hurl back the tide of English conquest and settlement. "Pontiac," says Cooley, "was one of those rare characters among the Indians whose merits are so transcendent that, without the aid of adventitious cir- cumstances, they take by common consent the headship in peace and the leadership in war. In battle he had shown his courage; in council, his eloquence and his wisdom; he was wary in planning and indefatigable in execution; his patriotism was ardent and his ambition boundless and he was at this time in all the region between the headwaters of the Ohio and the distant Mississippi, the most conspicuous figure among the savage tribes, and the predestined leader in any undertaking which should enlist the gen- eral interest. Of the Ottawas he was the principal chief, and he made his home at their village opposite and a little above Detroit, with a summer residence in Lake St. Clair. But he was also chief of a loose confederacy of the Ottawas, Ojibways and Pottawatomies, and his influence extended far beyond those tribes, and placed him above rivalry in all the lake region and the valley of the Ohio." With the fires of discontent smouldering every- where, nothing was needed but the breath of his bold and daring spirit to blow them into flames.
Pontiac carefully laid his plans. A "Prophet" arose, who, like Peter
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the Hermit, preached a crusade against the enemies of his people and wrought up the savages to the highest pitch of excitement and enthusiasm. By every means, Pontiac worked upon the credulity of the Indians as to the weakness of the English and the power of the great French king, who, said Pontiac, had been asleep, but was now awaking for a terrible vengeance upon their common foes. With the savages banded together from the mouth of the Mississippi to the northern wilds of the Ottawas (for a war of extermination), Pontiac planned to strike at the same moment every English post from the Niagara to the straits of Mackinac.
Upon the unsuspecting garrison at Mackinac, the premeditated blow fell like a bolt of thunder from a clear sky. The capture of this indis- pensable post was entrusted by Pontiac to the Ojibway chieftain, Mih-neh- weh-na. The date set was June 4, the birthday of King George of Eng- land. The stratagem was worthy of Ulysses-a game of ball called by the Indians bagattiway, by means of which the Indians were enabled to assemble in the immediate vicinity of the fort to celebrate the King's birthday. According to the Ojibway historian, Warren, this game is played with a bat about four feet long, and a wooden ball. The bat terminates at one end in a circular curve, which is netted with leather strings, and forms a cavity where the ball is caught, carried and, if necessary, thrown with great force to treble the distance that it can be thrown by hand. Two posts are planted at the distance of about half a mile. Each party had its particular post, and the game consisted in carrying, or throwing, the ball in the bat to the post of the adversary. At the commencement of the game the two parties collected midway between the two posts. The ball was thrown up into the air and the competition for its possession began in earnest. It was the wildest game known among the Indians, played in full feathers and ornaments, and with the greatest excitement and vehemence. The great object was to get the ball. During the heat of the excitement no obstacle was allowed to stand in the way of getting at it. Should it fall over a high inclosure, the wall would be immediately surmounted, or torn down if need- ful, and the ball recovered. The game was well adapted to carry out the scheme of the Indians. During its progress they managed to send the ball over the stockade and into the fort. The soldiers were mostly off duty, it being a holiday, and were watching the game, when suddenly the fort was filled with savages, the war-whoop resounded, and grasping from under the blankets of the Indian women the shortened guns, tomahawks and knives. which they had concealed, the massacre commenced. In an incredibly short
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time the garrison were butchered, nearly to a man, and the post was in possession of the Indians.
Had not an Ojibway maiden's love for Major Gladwin, who commanded the fort at Detroit, led her to reveal to him Pontiac's secret plan, that post would probably have shared the fate that befell Mackinac. Pontiac's plan was to get all his warriors in readiness and have them distributed around the fort, while he, with sixty of his chiefs should enter the fort all armed with sawed-off rifles which could be concealed under their blankets. They were to come upon pretense of holding a council with Major Gladwin and to smoke the pipe of peace with the English. Gladwin was ready. When the chiefs were at length seated on the mats, Pontiac rose and, holding in his hand the belt of wampum with which he was to have given the signal of massacre, commenced a speech cunningly devised and full of flattery. He professed the most profound friendship for the English and declared he had come for the express purpose of smoking the pipe of peace. Once he seemed about to give the signal, when Gladwin made a sign with his hand and instantly there was the clash of arms without, the drums rolled a charge, and every man's hand was on his weapons. Pontiac was astounded. He caught the firm, unflinching look on Gladwin's face, and at length sat down in great perplexity.
Major Gladwin made a brief and pointed reply. He assured the chief that he should be treated as a friend so long as he deserved it, but the first attempt at treachery would be paid for in blood. The council broke up. The gates were opened and the baffled and disconcerted savage and his fol- lowers were suffered to depart. Pontiac plainly saw that his treachery was anticipated, but bore himself with most consummate tact. Withdrawing to his village, he took counsel with his chiefs.
Once more Pontiac tried diplomacy. On the morning of May 9, the common about the fort was thronged with a great concourse of Ojibways, Ottawas, Pottawatomies and Hurons. Soon the stately form of Pontiac was seen approaching the gate. The gate was closed. He demanded entrance. Gladwin replied that he could enter, but his followers must remain without. In a rage, Pontiac withdrew to where his swarming followers were lying flat on the ground just beyond gunshot range. Instantly the whole plain became dark with savages, running, whooping, screeching, and soon the scalp halloo told the bloody fate of the settlers outside the fort whom their fury could reach. Pontiac took no part personally in these out- rages, but rapidly completed plans for a protracted siege of the fort.
A direct attack on the fort, made shortly afterwards, was repulsed,
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and Gladwin seems to have felt that this would be the end. He was in need of provisions and thought that he could at least safely try negotiations. Pontiac instantly saw his opportunity; he assumed such an honest counten- ance and played the game with such tact that, while planning the deepest treachery, he succeeded in getting to his camp the person of Major Camp- bell, who, before Major Gladwin, had held command at the fort since the country had passed into the hands of the British. His life was to be made an equivalent for the surrender of the fort; from that lion's den Major Campbell never returned. In spite of Pontiac's efforts to protect him, he was a few days later treacherously murdered.
For weeks the siege continued. Both sides were in sore straits for provisions and both were looking for reinforcements. A force sent from Niagara to relieve the fort was cut to pieces on the way by the Indians, and the supplies captured. News was received of the massacre at Sandusky. A schooner sent out by Major Gladwin for supplies made a successful return, and heartened the little garrison with a welcome supply of men, arms and munitions, and with news of the treaty of peace between France and Eng- land, by which the Canadian possessions, including Detroit, were ceded to the latter. Pontiac refused to believe the news of the peace and persuaded his followers that it was a mere invention of the English in the fort to defeat them. He renewed the siege with vigor. But passage of time with- out achievement began to tell on the spirit of the savages. A portion of them began to grow weary. The siege began to drag.
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