Michigan : a history of governments

Preface

The changes of sovereign as well as of subordinate jurisdiction have been greater in Michigan than in any other part of the American Union. France, Great Britain, and the United States have successively had dominion over it, and under the United States it was part of the Northwest Territory and of the Territory of Indiana before it became the Territory of Michigan. As Michigan Territory it passed through all the grades of subordinate jurisdiction, and the circumstances attending its admission to the Union made its history at that period quite unique. Altogether it seemed appropriate that in the series of American Commonwealths the history of Michigan should be sketched as a history of governments ; but this would be incomplete without a summary view of the relations of States to the Union at the time Michigan was received into it, or without some

VI

PREFACE.

notice of the remarkable changes which have been going on since that time, and which have so greatly affected constitutional questions and the political habits of mind and tendencies of the American people. It was also thought proper to present the financial history of the State with some fullness, because it was believed to inculcate a lesson of more than local importance. But no attempt has been made to give the annals of the State as a substitute for other histories, nor, with the field so well occupied as it now is with J udge Campbell’s Political History, was any such attempt thought desirable.

Chapter I. Michigan Is Explored, And Missions And Trading Posts Established

It was between the great lakes that the western currents of French and English colonization, starting from distant points upon the St. Lawrence and along the Atlantic, after a century and a half of unfriendly rivalry, with occasional bloody and devastating wars, met at last and blended in a peaceful and prosperous commonwealth.

Europe was dazzled by the discovery of a new world, and every maritime nation hastened to share with Spain the fame to be won in adventurous exploration. But in colonization Spain was long without a rival. Attracted by the amazing wealth of tropical production, but far more by the inexhaustible mines of precious metals of which fame brought such wondrous reports from the interior, that country was not long in seizing l

MICHIGAN.

and occupying the Antilles and the mainland from Mexico to Peru, and the Spanish crown could boast possessions in America of which Rome would have been proud in the height of her supremacy. Portugal, a little later, had obtained a foothold in Brazil ; but it was some time before any people or any ruler in Northern Europe appeared to take in the full significance of American discovery, or seemed to appreciate the great fact that a vast and fertile continent, whose possibilities for humanity were beyond calculation, was now offered for the acceptance of European civilization. For more than a century after the discovery by Columbus, the attention of the people of England was so far absorbed by the polemical controversies and the bitter political contests attendant upon a change in the state religion, that the mysterious continent across the ocean excited only occasional and transitory interest. And France, which then, in rivalry with England, was preparing to contest the claim of Spain to the leadership of the world, contented herself for a long time with a lion’s share in the harvests which hardy fishermen were gathering on the banks of Newfoundland, and with voyages of adventure and exploration upon the bay and the river St. Lawrence, through which it was hoped there might be found an avenue for trade with the Indies. Roberval and Jacques Cartier attempted a colony at Cape Roque in 1542, but it failed to

THE FRENCH IN CANADA.

take root ; La Roche with forty transported convicts made a like attempt on Sable Island in 1598, but took off five years later all whom death had not already removed ; and De Monts, in 1604, made a settlement on an island near the mouth of the St. Croix, which the next year he abandoned for Port Royal, and Port Royal in its turn was abandoned in 1607 when the fur monopoly, which had been granted to De Monts, was taken away. It was Samuel de Champlain who was the father of New France ; and by him, at Quebec, the first permanent settlement was made the year following the planting of the English colony at Jamestown. Other points were soon occupied, of which Montreal was the most important.

The primary objects of French adventure in Canada were profitable trade with the savages and their conversion to the true faith of Christ. Every company of adventurers had its priests, and the eagerness of the trader for gain was more than equaled by the self-sacrificing zeal of the missionary of the cross. Champlain himself was a sincere and devoted son of the Church ; and while he endeavored to foster and advance the fur trade, he gave his best energies to establishing and maintaining missions among the Indians, and to protecting against their enemies the tribes which submitted to his guidance, and tacitly acknowledged the French supremacy. In 1615 he visited the shore of Lake Huron, where for the

MICHIGAN .

powerful tribe of that name he established a mission of the Recollets, intended by him for a centre of French influence, and of hostility to the Iroquois Confederacy, which he had early encountered in battle near the lake afterwards named for him.

The history of New France from this time to the end of the seventeenth century is a history of one long struggle with the Dutch and English at Albany and New York for the good will and trade of the Indians, in which the Iroquois in general antagonized the French, and the Hurons, with the Algonquin tribes, were their firm friends and supporters. But the French were unable to protect their allies against the proud and fierce confederacy, and the Hurons were driven from their ancient home and took up their abode at Michilimackinac, where they were joined by the Ottawas. But at Michilimackinac they were again assailed by their old enemies, and fled in terror before them to the country beyond Lake Superior, only to come there into conflict with the Illinois, who drove them on to the Mississippi. But there they encountered the Sioux, an enemy not less fierce or formidable than the Iroquois, and finding neither peace nor safety elsewhere, they returned to the Straits of Michilimackinac, and there, in 1671, Father Jacques Marquette founded a mission for them.

The Jesuits took early possession of the mis-

THE POLICY OF THE JESUITS.

sions in New France, and members of that order devoted themselves to the conversion of the Indians with a zeal that spared no endeavor and no artifice, shrank from no privation, quailed before no danger, and was fully in accord with the religious spirit of the day, which could persecute to the death, or submit to martyrdom at the hands of others, with undoubting confidence in either case that Heaven approved the cruelty or the sacrifice. But nothing in the policy of the order favored colonization from Europe ; the fathers had come into the wilderness as apostles to the Indians, and it was no part of their mission to people America from France. On the contrary, their mission was to bring the religion of the cross to the people by whom America was already possessed. New colonies must bring with them the vices of civilized life ; and the savage nature would be quite certain to add these to such as already belonged to it. A French settlement must, therefore, to some extent be inimical to the suecess of a mission ; and in so far as the colonists failed to observe the sacred precepts of the religion they professed, their proximity would tend to bring religion into contempt in savage eyes, and greatly to increase the labors and perplexities of religious teachers.

But the policy of the fur traders was scarcely less unfriendly to colonization than was that of the Jesuits. Monopolies in the fur trade were

MICHIGAN.

granted from the very first, and though conditions were attached to the grants which required the settlement of colonists within territory indicated, it was not to be expected that attention would be given to the conditions any farther than it should be compelled. The grants were made and received for the profit of the grantees, and as their gains were to be gathered in the wilderness, their interest was to preserve the forests, not to destroy them. The conditions for colonization never had more than nominal fulfillment until settlement began in earnest upon the rock of Quebec. Even then the earnestness was but partial, for most of those who were brought over came for hire, and not in pursuance of any deliberate choice to exchange their native country for a home in the new world. Finding everything in New France given over to monopoly, these men either became irregular traders, or took up a roving and lawless life among the Indians, constituting that peculiar class of men known as coureurs de bois , whose ambition was fully satisfied if by gun and trap they were able to provide for the limited wants of a life of careless indolence. In 1637, when Richelieu was at the head of affairs, an effort was made in the direction of colonization which seemed to promise great results. Previous grants of monopoly were annulled, and a company of a hundred associates was formed, with Richelieu at its head, to which was granted a perma-

SCHEMES FOR COLONIZATION.

nent monopoly of the trade in furs, skins, and leather, and a monopoly for fifteen years of the whole colonial trade, by land and sea, with the exception of the cod and whale fisheries, which were left free. The scope of the grant embraced the whole of New France, from Florida to the Arctic circle, and on its part the company undertook to convey to New France within the next year two or three hundred men of various trades, and before the year 1643 to increase the number to four thousand, lodging and supporting them for three years, and then giving them for their maintenance lands ready for cultivation. In another age and under other circumstances this undertaking might have borne fruit; but bigotry was then dominant and unrelenting in France, and it would neither tolerate a heretic at home, nor permit him to become the means of extending the glory and power of his native land in the distant wilderness. Every settler was, therefore, required to be a Catholic, and for every settlement at least three ecclesiastics must be provided. The scheme was doomed by its very conditions, for the French nature is little disposed to expatriation, and the class of the people to whom persecution had made emigration a temptation was vigorously excluded from the offer the associates were permitted to make. The company was not prosperous, and in 1663 it was dissolved.

But the dissolution of this company did not

MICHIGAN.

result in freedom to trade. The next year the French West India Company was formed, to which a monopoly still more extensive was granted ; but this also was not prosperous, and in 1674 its privileges, with some reservations, were surrendered. Other grants of monopoly followed in succession, the last expiring in 1731; and while they had the effect to prevent immigration and settlement, they also tended to paralyze trade of every sort, to check enterprise, and to incline the lower classes to prefer a life of slothful ease and independence in the woods to one of unprofitable service for the monopolists.

Had trade been free there would still have been serious impediments to settlement in New France. Among the chief of these was the complicated despotism of the government. No English colony had anything similar, and none would have tolerated it. First of its officers was the governor-general, usually a man of noble birth, and nominally the king’s immediate representative. Then there was the intendant, who was the king’s spy upon the governor-general, possessed of large independent judicial powers, and expected to report fully and frequently, as well as secretly, to the minister. He judged all the king’s causes, and might create inferior courts. Commonly, the governor-general and the intendant were at loggerheads, and their correspondence with the minister was burdened with mutual complaints.

ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNMENT.

There was also a Superior Council, composed of the governor-general, the intendant, and the bishop, which constituted the legislative authority. The Council had an attorney -general, a secretary, and attendant officers, but many times the disputes of the governor and the intendant in regard to their respective powers and privileges made the meetings a scene of disorder, or prevented their being held. The Jesuits were also a power in the colony, which, in the pursuit of its policy, bent its will to no other except when compelled by a necessity which was known to be irresistible. And the king of France wanted no self-government in America. When Frontenac in 1672 assembled the people of Quebec, administered the oath of allegiance, prescribed for them a form of municipal government, and reported the facts to the king, the minister, Colbert, responded : “Your assembling the inhabitants to take the oath of fidelity, and your division of them into three estates, may have had a good effect for the moment ; but it is well for you to observe that you are always to follow, in the government of Canada, the forms in use here ; and since our kings have long regarded it as good for their service not to convoke the states of the kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish insensibly this ancient usage, you on your part should very rarely, or, to speak more correctly, never give a corporate form to the inhabitants of Canada. You should even, as the

MICHIGAN.

colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the syndic who presents petitions in the name of the inhabitants ; for it is well that each should speak for himself and none for all.” 1 It was not by such a policy that a power was to be created in New France which could compete successfully in the long race for wealth and power with the English colonies. The matchless skill and prowess of Frontenac for a time made New France preeminent in Indian councils, and humbled and half annihilated the Iroquois Confederacy ; but Frontenac in 1698 rested from his long struggles with Iroquois and with Jesuit, and he had no successor who was equal to his responsibilities, or worthy to wear his honors.

Before the opening of the eighteenth century the shores of the great lakes had been well explored by the fur traders and the priests, and important stations had been established, which were at once missions and trading posts. So early as 1641 the Jesuit fathers Raymbault and Jogues had visited the Sault St. Marie and had established a mission there for the Chippewas, but the sickness and death of Raymbault caused its early abandonment. The position was too important to permit of its being permanently given up, and Father Marquette was sent there in the spring of 1668, and renewing the mission, he founded there the first permanent settlement in Michigan. This

1 Parkman’s Frontenac, p. 20.

FATHER MARQUETTE.

illustrious man had come to Canada in 1666, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, to devote his life to mission work, and had received with enthusiasm the order to repair to the upper lakes. In the following year he was joined at the Sault by Father Dablon, to whom he left the work at that place, while he repaired to a new field of labor with the Hurons, then west of Lake Superior. When in 1670 the Hurons fled before their new enemies the Sioux, Father Marquette cast his lot with them, and in the following year gathered them about him at the Straits of Michilimackinac. Michilimackinac, he says, “ is the key, and, as it were, the gate, for all the tribes from the south, as the Sault is for those of the north, there being in this section of the country only these two passages by water; for a great number of nations have to go by one or other of these channels in order to reach the French settlements. This presents a peculiarly favorable opportunity, both for instructing those who pass here, and also for obtaining easy access and conveyance to their places of abode.” He adds further that the place is “ ‘ the home of the fishes.’ Elsewhere, although they exist in large numbers, it is not properly their 4 home,’ which is in the neighborhood of Michilimackinac. It is this attraction which has heretofore drawn to a point so advantageous the greater part of the savages in this country, driven away by fear of the Iroquois.”

MICHIGAN.

The mission now established by Father Marquette was located on the north side of the Straits, and was named by him for St. Ignatius. The Hurons and Ottawas, as well as fragments of other tribes, had villages in the vicinity ; and in administering to their wants and baptizing their children Father Marquette and his associate, Nouvel, found, as he informs us, “ consolation which God sends us, which makes us esteem our life more happy as it is more wretched.”

But attractive as were to him the place and the duty, Father Marquette was fired with zeal for more dangerous and venturesome missions, and was ready, as he writes Father Dablon, to leave his charge in the hands of another missionary, in order to seek new nations towards the South Sea, and to become their teacher. Accordingly, when Joliet was sent out to explore the Mississippi, Marquette had orders to accompany him, and he expresses himself as “ enraptured at this good news,” which put him under the “ happy necessity ” of exposing his life for the salvation of the nations on the Mississippi, and particularly for the Illinois, who had entreated him when on Lake Superior “to carry the word of God to their country.”

The parties started on their mission of exploration May IT, 1673, and proceeding by way of Green Bay, and the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, in a month had reached the Mississippi, which they

DEATH OF MARQUETTE.

followed as far down as the Arkansas. Returning they ascended the Illinois, crossed to Lake Michigan at the site of what is now Chicago, and then coasted the western shore of that lake to Green Bay, which they reached in September. Here they separated, and Joliet returned to Quebec. In the fall of the following year Marquette started to fulfill his desire to establish a mission among the Illinois, but his health failed him, and he spent the winter upon the Chicago River. In the spring he proceeded to his destination and began his labors, but continuing to grow feeble in health, and fearing that his end was approaching, he sorrowfully turned his face again to the north, in the hope that his strength might be sufficient to enable him once more to reach the mission he had founded at Michilimackinac, and to worship in the midst of his converts in the chapel of St. Ignatius. But the will of Providence was otherwise. Coasting along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, he landed for brief rest and for worship near the mouth of the river which has since been named for him, and there, after a few hours’ delay and almost without warning, he passed peacefully and quietly to his eternal rest. He was buried on the spot by his sorrowful companions, but two years later a party of his Indian converts removed the body to the place of repose he would have chosen for himself, beneath the chapel which overlooked the Straits of Michilimackinac.

MICHIGAN.

From the time of the founding of the mission on the Straits, that place became a point of resort for the fur traders of Quebec and Montreal, and a point of competition with the English located on the shores of Hudson Bay, and the merchants at Albany. It is not known when Michilimackinac became a military post ; we have incidental mention of it by travelers from time to time ; La Salle, in the Griffon, the first vessel to plough the waters above Niagara, passed it in 1679, and in 1688 Baron La Hontan visited and described it. La Motte Cadillac was here in command of the post in 1695, and he says of it that “ this village is one of the largest in all Canada.” The garrison consisted of about two hundred men, and savages to the number of six or seven thousand souls lived in the vicinity, by whom sufficient corn was produced for both the French and themselves. But the capture of the Hudson Bay stations by the French in 1697, and the founding of Detroit in 1701, deprived Michilimackinac of much of its importance, and in 1706 the Jesuits who were stationed there, discouraged by the opposition at Detroit, burned down their chapel and their school building, and took up their departure for Quebec. A few traders and many Indians continued to reside there, and Father Marest soon came to care for their spiritual needs, and remained there until the post was reestablished, but on the south side of the Straits, in 1714.

EARLY SETTLEMENTS.

The importance of the Sault St. Marie was greatly diminished by the mission of Michilimackinac, but the Chippewas, a fierce and warlike people, had a village there, and the French government deemed it the suitable point for convening a Congress of Nations in the summer of 1671. Great numbers of Indians came, from the St. Lawrence on the one side to the Mississippi on the other, and even, it is said, from so far down as the Red River, to form or to strengthen a friendship with the French. A post was planted marked with the lilies of France, and the assembled nations were assured that they were now under French protection.

These were the settlements which preceded Detroit. A fort was also built by La Salle at the mouth of the St. Joseph, on Lake Michigan, in 1679, but there was no European settlement about it, and its importance as compared with Michilimackinac was small. A fort at the outlet of Lake Huron was built by Du Lhut in 1686, and named by him St. Joseph. It was constructed to command the passage from Lake Erie to the upper lakes, and its value for this purpose was evident, but with no settlement about it its maintenance would have been troublesome and expensive, and it was abandoned two years after its construction. The founding of Detroit soon rendered any other post on the passage of little or no importance.

MICHIGAN .

Chapter II. Detroit Is Founded, And At Length Sur- Rendered To England

The pathway for Indian traffic and missionary enterprise from Quebec and Montreal was by way of the Ottawa and French rivers to the Georgian Bay, and thence to Michilimackinac, St. Marie, and other stations. The existence of the connecting strait between lakes Huron and Erie must have been known to the French at an early day, but it is not certain that any one of that nation passed through it prior to the expedition made by Joliet, under the command of the intendant Talon, to discover and explore the copper mines of Lake Superior, of which rumors were prevalent. Indeed, that Joliet passed through this strait is only matter of plausible conjecture, for he left no record of this part of his journey ; but on his return from his unsuccessful search for mineral wealth in 1669, he encountered, near the head of Lake Ontario, La Salle and the Sulpitian fathers Dollier and Galinde, who had started on their journey of exploration for a passage to the South Sea, and the information he imparted to

LA SALLE'S PARTY DIVIDES.

them respecting the upper lake country and the spiritual wants of the Indians of that region so fired the zeal of the worthy fathers that, in spite of the remonstrances of La Salle, they determined to part with him and take their course to the upper lakes by way of Lake Erie. The separation took place at the end of September, 1669, but they did not cross Lake Ontario until the following spring, and they arrived at the Sault St. Marie on May 25, 1670, having landed on or near the site of Detroit on the way up, and seized and destroyed with iconoclastic fury and indignation a stone idol which they found there, and whose remains they threw into the middle of the river, that it “might never be heard of again.” At the Sault they were received with frigid reserve by the Jesuits, who plainly gave them to understand they were not wanted there, and they returned in discouragement by way of the Ottawa. A crude map made by Galinde and a minute journal of their travels were the valuable results of the expedition, and the importance of Detroit was from this time known to the colonial authorities. It seems probable, also, that at times it was temporarily occupied as a military post. But it was soon to receive more attention, and become a post of first importance, for Antoine de la Motte Cadillac, a man of mark and ability, now appears upon the scene.

We first hear of Cadillac in America in the

MICHIGAN.

year 1687, when he was married at Quebec, being then in the thirtieth year of his age. Two years afterwards he went to France, and returned with a large grant of lands, with manorial rights, on the shores of Maine. He was subsequently employed in positions of importance in the naval and military service of the king, and was so highly esteemed for his judgment and his knowledge of colonial affairs that, in 1692, at the request of Count Pontchartrain, he was sent to France by the governor -general, to give advice respecting the military affairs of the province in its dealings with New York and New England. In the fall of 1694 he was appointed to the command of Michilimackinac, where he remained for five years. Surveying the field of French trade and influence from that remote post, Cadillac had become convinced that Detroit, rather than any of the upper stations, was the point from which the fur trade could best be controlled, and where the friendly Indians could most conveniently be concentrated for the mutual protection of themselves and their French allies. Impressed with this view, he again went to France in 1700, determined, if possible, to obtain the necessary authority as well as the necessary assistance for the establishment of a settlement at Detroit. In a long interview with Count Pontchartrain he presented very fully the advantages of Detroit, its supreme importance as a military and trading post, the excellence of

LA MOTTE CADILLAC.

the soil about it, and the desirability of planting in that country an agricultural colony. The sagacious minister was so impressed with his earnestness, and with the reasons assigned, that the desired permission was cordially given, and Cadillac returned to Canada early in 1701, bearing a grant from the king of a tract of land fifteen arpents square, “ wherever on the Detroit the new fort should be established,” and with assurance of military and other assistance. Making brief pause at Quebec he pushed on to Montreal, where he completed his arrangements for the new undertaking. Fifty soldiers and fifty Canadian traders and artisans were secured by him, and with these in canoes, well supplied with the essentials to a new settlement in the woods, he started from La Chine at the beginning of June. The younger Tonty was commander of the military force, a R^collet priest accompanied the party as chaplain, and a Jesuit as missionary to the Indians. The old route by the Ottawa and Lake Huron was followed, and the boats were drawn up on the shore at the point of destination, on July 24th. A stockade fort was immediately constructed which, in honor of the minister, was named Fort Pontchartrain, and log houses thatched with grass soon went up, in which the settlers found shelter and a home.

At this time the solitude of the vast forests of Michigan was unbroken by the sound of the wood-

MICHIGAN.

man’s axe. The great oaks, hickories, walnuts, and maples towered secure in majestic grandeur, and in all the region of the pine there was audible as yet neither promise nor prophecy of the rich harvest which the lumberman of another day was to reap. In the openings of Southern Michigan, which Nature had decked with more than royal adornments, the elk and the deer found abundant pasturage, and the bear fed on mast and tracked the honey bee to his secret store. The beaver was still building dams in the forest watercourses, and the buffalo fed on the prairies and frequented the abundant salt licks. Choice fish were abundant, but undisturbed, in the lakes and streams of the interior. The iron of Lake Superior was still unknown, and the wealth of its copper was but a rumor, of which the copper ornaments sometimes displayed by the Indian women furnished the only confirmation. The Indian population of the southern peninsula of Michigan was not great ; the terror of the Iroquois had made their enemies seek safety in the distance. Around the trading posts and missions, or within easy reach, they had gathered, and many of them under Jesuit teaching had become nominally Christian. But their conversion had scarcely made them less savage and brutal than before ; it had not changed their nature, and they could torture the prisoners taken in battle or by treachery, and on great occasions devour their flesh as a stimulant to cour-