A Private Edition Distributed by University Series, III THE MICHIGAN HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1918 ON PREFACE N July 24, 1701, a fleet of some two dozen canoes carrying Frenchmen and Indians, entered the De-¦ troit River on a mission that was to introduce civilization into the Great Lakes region nearly one hundred years in advance of British-American progress from the Atlantic seaboard. One hundred persons-fifty uniformed soldiers, some twenty farmers, artisans, and traders, the remainder a few women and children1had come to plant an outpost of French power and influence in the wilderness about the Great Lakes. Forty-nine days before, they had left the head of the LaChine Rapids near Montreal. Fearing to give umbrage to the ever watchful Iroquois about the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, they had chosen the "Northern Route." Up the Ottawa they toiled, against the swift currents, around the many rapids, and thence by lakes, and rivers, with many portages, they reached Georgian Bay and later Lake Huron. After a voyage of over seven hundred miles they entered the "Strait,"-"Détroit," in the language of the French. Down this they swept, passing many islands, and on across Lake St. Clair to the upper course of the Detroit River. They selected a commanding site for their fort on the right bank of the river, for this post was to control the traffic of the Upper Lakes. Grain and seed 1. Magazine of Western History, II, 55 (Griffin). с 405944 and tools were brought, for these settlers were to found a colony which should be a permanent nucleus of French power and influence in the Lakes region. The colony thus established was the beginning of the present Detroit. There are few other cities in America that have taken so long and so prominent a part in the history and development of the sections in which they are situated. Detroit was fifty-three years old when the British began their fort at Pittsburg, hundreds of miles in advance of civilization. It was ninety-five years old when Moses Cleveland laid out the city that bears his name on Lake Erie. Detroit celebrated its centenary in the year that the Holland Land Company plotted the city of Buffalo at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. The first log cabin in Indianapolis was not erected until 118 years after the French began the city on the "Straits." And Detroit had been making history 129 years when the Illinois Board of Land Commissioners surveyed the site of Chicago, the great metropolis of the interior.2 Detroit was founded as an outpost of French power, and a center for French commerce in the Great Lakes region. Its position near the crossing of the French and British lines of advance into the interior gave it a prominent place in the long struggle between these two nations for supremacy in America. Victories at Duquesne and Quebec made the British supreme, and Detroit came under their control. In the Indian revolt of 1763, against the assumption of the control of the Great Lakes by the British, Detroit was considered 2. Magazine of Western History, II, 571 (Griffin). PREFACE the seat of British power and was called upon to withstand the attacks of the major part of the Indian forces. During the Revolutionary War, it was an outfitting point from which British and Indian expeditions were dispatched to harass the American settlers in the Ohio Valley. Several attempts were made by the Americans to organize expeditions against Detroit. Its isolation was a chief factor in preventing any definite action. According to the terms of the Treaty of Peace of 1783, Detroit, with the other trading posts of the Lakes, was ceded to the United States, but the importance of these posts to the furmerchants of Montreal was undoubtedly the reason for their retention by the British for thirteen years. Their final delivery to the United States in 1796 came only after a second treaty had been made and Wayne's victory seemed to have stripped the British of their Indian allies. The general policy, however, which actuated the retention of the posts was not abandoned by the British until after the War of 1812. In the War of 1812, Detroit was the chief center of the control of the Indians and of the fur trade of the Upper Lakes. It was, therefore, the center of the struggle between American and British forces. Surrendered to the British in 1813, it was reoccupied by the troops of the United States the following year. Under both French and British influence Detroit was merely a military and trading post. For one hundred years its growth was retarded. The real development did not begin until the early part of the nineteenth century when the American frontier began to envelop it, and it became an integral part of the |