USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Vol. I > Part 3
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Gibraltar, on the Detroit River about four miles below Trenton, marks the northern exposure of the Water-line group. At this point the lower rock series come to the surface in the bed of the creek near its mouth. The stone is described as "a somewhat absorbent, crystalline dolomite, of gray color and laminated structure, in layers, from one to two feet thick." Stone of this quality has also been quarried on the lower end of Grosse Ile.
Near Flatrock the Huron River runs over ledges of the Water-lime forma- tion. Here the stone is a hard, drab-colored dolomite, crystalline in texture, with flinty concretions and containing but few fossils. The deposits here are too far below the surface to be profitably quarried.
During the period of French rule, the inhabitants of Detroit obtained stone from the deposits about Trenton and Gibraltar for chimneys to their log houses. Farmer's "History of Detroit" (p. 367) says that by 1763 limekilns had been established and a few stone buildings had been erected inside the stockade. In 1870 some workmen, engaged in digging a trench for a water main on Jeffer- son Avenue, unearthed an old stone fireplace with its iron crane for holding kettles still fast in the stone work. It was found about four or five feet below the surface and was supposed to have been the fireplace in a cellar kitchen of a house within the fort.
IRON ORE
Dr. Douglas Houghton, in his first report as state geologist, submitted to Governor Mason in 1838, says: "At a distance of six or seven miles northwest of Detroit, and in the County of Wayne, bog (iron) ore occurs at intervals over an extent of several hundred aeres, but I have not been able to examine it with sufficient care to determine its extent ; I think, however, there can be little doubt but it exists in sufficient quantities to be turned to practical account."
Subsequent surveys located the richest of these deposits in Greenfield Town- ship and near the southern border of Livonia Township. By analysis the ore
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was found to contain nearly seventy-four per cent of peroxide of iron, but it does not appear that any attempt was ever made to give the deposits a com- mercial value.
CLAY, PEAT AND MARL
Clay suitable for brickmaking has been found at several points in the county. The first briekyards in the county were established in what is now Springwells Township. They were operating on an extensive scale at the time Michigan was admitted into the Union in 1837, and are mentioned in the early reports of the state geologist as obtaining their supply of raw material "from the blue clay beds in the drift."
Doctor Houghton, in his early reports as state geologist, also speaks of two brickyards in operation on the South Branch of the River Rouge near Schwarzburg, where clay of a fine quality was found along the river bank in a stratum ranging from two to four feet in thickness.
Just west of Northville, in Plymouth Township, is a deposit of clay of fine texture that has been utilized for the manufacture of bricks and earthenware. In Section 27 of the same township there is a bed of fine clay covering an area of eighty acres or more.
At Flat Rock, on the Huron River, there is an extensive deposit of blue clay, but it contains so much lime that all attempts to use it for brickmaking have been unsuccessful. Farther up the river both the blue and yellow clays are of a better character. Fifty years ago or more a brickyard was in successful operation near the mouth of Woods' Creek, in the southeast corner of Van Buren Township.
Peat was discovered at a comparatively early date in the marsh lands of what are now Brownstown, Ecorse, Greenfield, Hamtramck and Huron town- ships, but little or no use has been made of the deposits. The only bed of shell marl mentioned in the Michigan Geological Reports is near the center of Plymouth Township (Section 22). Overlying the marl is a bed of peat, which, like those above mentioned, has never been used. Gravel and sand, suitable for concrete work and building purposes, are found at various places in the county.
THE GLACIAL EPOCH
Far back in the geologie past, about the close of the Tertiary period, came the Pleistocene or "Ice Age," during which all the central part of North America was covered with a vast sheet of iee, which extended westward to the Rocky Mountains. This glacier was formed in the northern part of the con- tinent by successive falls of snow. The weight added by each snowfall aided in compressing the mass below into a solid body of ice. As the temperature rose the entire glacier began to move slowly southward, carrying with it great bowlders, clays, soils, etc., to be deposited in regions far distant from the places where they were taken.
As the huge mass of ice moved slowly along, the bowlders and other hard substances at the bottom of the glacier left scratches or stria upon the bed rocks, and from these scorings the geologist has been able to determine the course of the glacier. At various places in the territory once covered by the great central glacier the striæ have been noted upon the rocks, indicating the general direction traveled by the glacier to have been toward the southeast,
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into a latitude where the rays of the sun began to melt the ice. With the disappearance of the ice, the solid materials carried by the glacier were deposited upon the bed rocks or preglacial soil in the form of drift.
Where the drift was deposited in a ridge at the edge of the glacier, the slight elevation is called a "lateral moraine." The ridge formed where two glaciers, or two sections of a great glacier moving in slightly different directions, came together is known as a "medial moraine." The ridge which marks the point where the last of the ice was dissolved is called a "terminal moraine." There is no doubt that some of the ridges in Wayne County were formed by glacial action. These ridges are either lateral or medial moraines, the terminal moraines of the great central glacier being found farther southward, in the states of Indiana and Ohio.
How long the glacial epoch lasted, or how long since it occurred, is largely a matter of conjecture. Some geologists estimate the duration of the "Ice Age" as half a million years, and that the last of the ice disappeared more than a thousand centuries ago. At the close of the glacial period the surface of the earth, over which the glacier had passed, was void of either vegetable or animal life. Gradually the frost and rains leveled the surface, the heat of the sun warmed the chilled earth, the winds carried the seeds of plants and deposited them upon the soil and life in its primitive forms made its appearance.
SOILS
Wayne County, in common with all the Lower Peninsula, is covered with glacial drift. Soil formed of drift material, being composed of a great variety of mineral constituents, usually has all the chemical requirements of a fertile soil. Exceptions to this rule are seen in places where the assorting of drift materials, by floods or atmospheric action, is sometimes carried to such a degree as to destroy fertility. A bed of clay, sand or gravel is not a soil, but a mixture of all three constitutes a soil that will produce vegetation.
Originally, about two-thirds of the county were heavily timbered with beech, basswood, black walnut, elm, hickory, oak and a few other varieties of trees, with some chestnut on the sandy ridges in Dearborn and Van Buren townships. The remaining third consisted of small plains called "oak open- ings," a fine description of which is found in J. Fennimore Cooper's novel of that name.
In the timbered portions the soil is composed chiefly of clay, sand and loams, silex forming an important ingredient, and the clay usually contains a large percentage of lime, which adds to the fertility. Soil of this character, through- out the southern portion of the Lower Peninsula, is well adapted to horticulture and many fine orchards and vineyards have been planted in this section of the state. The soil in the oak openings is generally sandy and less productive, but by careful cultivation it can be made to produce fair crops. In recent years, by a liberal application of commercial fertilizers, the farmers of Wayne County have been able to produce an abundance of vegetables of all sorts and of excellent quality.
CLIMATE
Like that of most of the cities in the Great Lake region, the climate of Detroit is modified by the adjacent bodies of water. Records of the United States Weather Bureau show that the average mean temperature for twenty-
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five years, for the period from May to September, inclusive, never exceeded 72º Fahrenheit, while the mean winter temperature was 26°, the coldest weather occurring in February. The mean annual temperature therefore varies but little from that of other cities in the same latitude.
Observations have shown that, when the entire year is taken into con- sideration, the proportion of clear days to cloudy ones is about two to one, though in the summer and autumn months the proportion of clear days to cloudy is approximately five to one. The average yearly rainfall at Detroit is about forty inches. Usually June is the month of greatest precipitation (aver- age nearly four inches) and the least rainfall occurs in the months of Decem- ber and February.
M. de Bougainville, who visited Detroit in 1757, wrote: "The atmosphere is of great beauty and serenity. It is a magnificent climate, having almost no cold weather and only a little snow. The cattle stay in the fields all winter and find their living there."
No doubt the principal reason why Bougainville and other early travelers noticed so little snow is that the open surface of the Great Lakes has a tendency to increase the temperature and the snow often melts as fast as it falls. The snowfall was probably much heavier than these early visitors realized. The winter of 1779-80 was one of the most severe on record. Snow covered the ground practically all winter, the cold was intense and in the spring the bodies of horses and cattle were found by scores in the woods, where they had perished from exposure and starvation. The winter of 1785-86 was also one of extreme cold and deep snow. As late as March 1, 1786, the snow was four feet in places where it had not been disturbed. In Lake St. Clair the ice was three feet thick a mile from the shore and did not disappear until May. About the middle of April, 1821, eight inehes of snow fell, and on May 1, 1824, the snow was a foot deep.
As the great lumbering interests eut off the pine forests, the destruction of the timber wielded an influence upon the climate, which has become more variable than formerly, though heavy snows still occur occasionally. About the middle of January, 1877, a snow storm caused the suspension of railway traffic for several days. At noon on April 6, 1886, a snow storm commenced and by midnight the snow was two feet deep on the level. The high wind blew the snow into drifts and all street cars stopped running until late the next day.
As a rule, the autumns .in Detroit are the most delightful and enjoyable seasons of the year. There is but little rainfall and the "Indian Summer" frequently extends into the latter part of November.
THE NAME "DETROIT"
No fewer than six names have been bestowed upon the site of Detroit and the white settlement there established. Early Indian tribes ealled the place Yon- do-ti-ga, meaning a "Great Village." Other tribes gave it the name of Wa-we-a-tun-ong, which meant "Crooked Way," or "Circuitons Approach," on account of the great bend in the river between Lake St. Clair and Fighting Island. Another Indian name was Tsych-sa-ron-dia, which also refers to the bend in the river. In the Colonial Archives of New York State, this name is found spelled in various ways, the most frequent of which is Tenchsa Grondie. The Huron Indians called the place Ka-ron-ta-en, "The Coast of the Straits."
Such were the names conferred by the natives. When Cadillac founded his
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settlement here in 1701, it was at first called Fort Pontehartrain, in honor of Count Pontchartrain, then the French minister of marine. Early French ex- plorers and travelers designated all the waters connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie-the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River-as Détroit, that is "the strait." So the settlement at Fort Pontchartrain was christened Detroit, from which is derived its popular sobriquet of the "City of the Straits."
CHAPTER II PREHISTORIC DETROIT
THEORIES REGARDING THE FIRST INHABITANTS THE MOUND BUILDERS-WAYNE COUNTY MOUNDS-WHO WERE THE MOUND BUILDERS-THE INDIANS- TRIBAL DISTRIBUTION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-THE CHIPPEWA -TIIE IROQUOIS-THE IIURON-THE MASCOUTEN-THE MIAMI-TIIE OTTAWA -- THE POTTAWATOMI-SAC AND FOX CONFEDERACY-THE WINNEBAGO-MINOR TRIBES- REGION INHABITED BY EACH -- THEIR IMPORTANCE IN HISTORY-SOCIAL ORGANIZATION-TRADITIONS, ETC.
Before the white man the Indian; before the Indian, who? The question is more easily asked than answered. Owing to various theories advanced, the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants of Central North America is veiled in obscurity. A number of writers-men who made a special study of the subject -among whom were Prescott and Schoolcraft, have asserted their belief that the first occupants of the continent were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. They support their theory with interesting and ingenious arguments to show that it was not impossible for them to have come from Asia, either by being drifted across the Pacific Ocean or by way of Behring's Strait and thence south- ward into what are now the United States and Mexico. Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, was an advocate of this theory. An old document found in the French Archives, written by him, sets forth the reasons for his belief that the Indians were of Hebrew origin.
THE MOUND BUILDERS
The first white settlements along the Atlantic coast were made in the early part of the Seventeenth Century. Almost a century and a half elapsed after these settlements were founded, before evidences were discovered to show that the interior had once been peopled by a peculiar race. Says one of the reports of the United States Bureau of Ethnology :
"During a period beginning some time after the close of the Ice Age and ending with the coming of the white man-or only a few generations before- the central part of North America was inhabited by a people who had emerged to some extent from the darkness of savagery, had acquired certain domestic arts, and practiced some well-defined lines of industry. The location and boun- daries inhabited by them are fairly well marked by the mounds and earthworks they erected."
The center of this aneient civilization-if such it may be called-appears to have been in the present State of Ohio. From the relics left by these early people archaeologists have given them the name of "Mound Builders." Most of the mounds so far discovered are conical in shape and when explored have generally been found to contain skeletons. For this reason they have been desig-
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nated as burial mounds. Others are in the form of truncated pyramids-that is, square or rectangular at the base and flattened on the top. The mounds of this class are usually much higher than the burial mounds and are supposed to have been lookouts or signal stations. Here and there are to be seen well-defined lines of earthworks, indicating that they had been used for defensive purposes against invading enemies. In a few instances, the discovery of a large mound, surrounded by an embankment, outside of which are a number of smaller mounds, has given rise to the theory that such places were centers of religious worship or sacrifice.
Cyrus Thomas, of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, has divided the region once inhabited by the Mound Builders into eight districts, in each of which there are certain characteristics not common to the others. The location of these districts can be fairly well determined by their names, to wit: 1. The Dacotah ; 2. The Huron-Iroquois; 3. The Illinois; 4. The Ohio; 5. The Ap- palachian ; 6. The Tennessee; 7. The Arkansas; 8. The Gulf District.
The second of these districts-the Huron-Iroquois-embraces the country once inhabited by the Huron and Iroquois Indians. It includes the greater part of the State of New York, a strip across the northern part of Ohio, the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and extends northward into Canada. Through- out this district burial mounds are numerous, a few fortifications have been noted and "hut rings," or foundations of ancient dwellings, are plentiful.
WAYNE COUNTY MOUNDS
A few miles down the Detroit River from the City of Detroit, in Spring- wells Township, was once a group of mounds, circular or oval in form, with two parallel embankments about four feet high leading eastward, toward the Detroit River. Henry Gillman, at one time a curator of the Detroit Scientific Society and later librarian of the Detroit Public Library, wrote a description of these mounds, which was published in the report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1873. He says :
"One of the most interesting works of this region, and which, till a few years ago, formed a member of a numerous series of mounds in the immediate vicinity, is the tumulus which I have named 'The Great Mound of the River Rouge.' This, in many respects, remarkable work is situated on the eastern bank of the River Rouge, a tributary of the Detroit, and near the point of junction of the former with the latter river, or about four and a half miles from the City Hall of Detroit.
"The size, shape and well-defined outlines of the monument could hardly fail to attract the attention of even the superficial observer and impress him as to its being the work of man. With a height of 20 feet, it must originally have measured 300 feet in length by 200 in width, but large quantities of sand have been removed from time to time, greatly reducing its proportions and scatter- ing or destroying relics. The smaller mounds, extending from the Great Mound to the eastward, have long since been removed, so has the greater number of smaller mounds which one stood immediately below the southern city limits. Those which remain are rapidly disappearing, being used for building sand.
"The relics exhumed from the Great Mound (which has not even yet been thoroughly explored) consist of stone implements, such as axes, scrapers, chisels, arrow heads and knives; fragments of pottery of a great variety of patterns,
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including the favorite cord pattern ; and the bones of man, generally much de- cayed and exhibiting other indications of antiquity.
"About three-fourths of a mile north and eastward of the Great Rouge Mound, and a few hundred feet westward of Fort Wayne, being over one-third of a mile from the Detroit River, oceurs the monument which I have named "The Great Circular Mound.' Eleven skeletons were here exhumed, with a large number of burial vases; stone implements in great variety and superior work- manship, consisting of axes, spears, arrow heads, chisels, drillers and sinkers; pipes, ornaments of shell and stone; also a peculiar implement of unknown use formed from an antler, and two articles made of copper, one the remains of a necklace, consisting of a number of beads, and the other a needle several inches in length."
WHO WERE THIEY
Who were the 'Mound Builders? Various authors have written upon the subject and nearly every one has a theory as to their origin. Some maintain that they first established their civilization in the Ohio Valley, whence they worked their way gradually southward into Mexico and Central America, where the white man found their descendants in the Aztee Indians. Others, with argu- ments equally logical and plausible, contend that the Monnd Builders originated in the South and migrated northward to the country about the Great Lakes, where their further progress was checked by hostile tribes. Practically all the early writers were agreed upon one thing, however, and that was that the Mound Builders were a very ancient race. The principal reasons for this view were that the Indians had no traditions concerning many of the relies, and upon many of the mounds and earthworks, when first discovered, were trees several feet in diameter, indicating that the relics were of great antiquity. Regarding the antiquity of the mounds in Wayne County, Mr. Gillman, in the article already referred to, says :
"Indian tradition says that the mounds were built in ancient times by a people of whom they (the Indians) know nothing, and for whom they have no name; that the mounds were occupied by the Turtle Indians and subsequently by the Wyandottes, but were constructed long before their time. * * *
That these people are identical with the race whose monuments of various deserip- tions are found in such remarkable abundance to the westward and southward, through Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, even to the gulf of Mexico, admits now of no question ; a raee whose eraniologieal development and evidently advanced civilization apparently separate it from the North American Indian and ally it to the ancient Brazilian type."
Among the earliest writers on the subject of the Mound Builders were Squier and Davis, who about the middle of the Nineteenth Century published a work entitled, "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." Between the years 1845 and 1848 these two investigators opened over two hundred mounds. Fol- lowing the lead of Squier and Davis, other investigators supported their theory that the Mound Builders, who once inhabited the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, were of a different race from the Indians found here by the white man.
In more recent years archeologists, who have made extensive research among the mounds, are practically a unit in the conclusion that the Mound Builder was nothing more than the ancestor, more or less remote, of the Indian.
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THE INDIANS
When Christopher Columbus made his first voyage to the Western Hemis- phere in 1492, he believed that he had reached the goal of his long cherished ambitions and that the country where he landed was the eastern shore of Asia. Early European explorers in America, entertaining a similar belief, thought the country was India and gave to the race of copper colored people they found here the name of "Indians." Later explorations disclosed the fact that Colum- bus had really discovered a continent hitherto unknown to the civilized nations of the world. The error in geography was correeted, but the name given by the first adventurers to the natives still remains.
Probably more pages have been written relating to the Indian tribes of North America than on any other one subject connected with American history. To the student of history there is a peculiar fascination in the story of these savage tribes-their legends, traditions, wars and eustoms-that makes the topie always one of surpassing interest, and no history of Detroit and its environs would be complete without some account of the tribes that inhabited the country before the advent of the white man.
TRIBAL DISTRIBUTION
The North American Indians are divided into several groups or families, each of which is distinguished by eertain physical and linguistie characteristics. Eaeh of these groups is subdivided into tribes and each tribe is ruled over by a chief. At the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, when the first Europeans began their explorations in America, they found the various leading Indian families distributed over the continent as follows :
In the far north were the Eskimo, a people that have never played any con- spieuous part in history. These Indians still inhabit the country about the Arctic Circle, where some of them have been oeeasionally employed as guides to polar expeditions, which has been about their only association with the white raee.
The Algonquian family, the most powerful and numerous of all the Indian groups, occupied a great triangle, roughly bounded by the Atlantic coast from Labrador to Cape Hatteras and by lines drawn from those two points to the western end of Lake Superior. Within this triangle lived the Delaware, Shawnee, Miami, Pottawatomi, Chippewa, Ottawa, Sac, Fox, Huron, Winnebago and other powerful tribes, which yielded slowly to the advance of the superior race.
Almost in the very heart of the Algonquian triangle-along the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River and the shores of Lake Ontario- lived the Iroquoian group, the principal tribes of which were the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneea.
South of the Algonquian country and extending from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast was the domain of the Muskhogean family. The leading tribes of this group were the Cherokee, Chiekasaw, Choctaw and Creek. The Indians of this group were among the most intelligent, as well as the most aggressive and warlike, of all the North American tribes.
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