The Ice Flow

By Red Sox Steve

Up to the start of the 17th century, indigenous people in Michigan were largely interacting with other indigenous people when dealing outside their own tribe. Just after the turn of the century, French explorers who had arrived in the area were the first European contacts made by the indigenous tribes. Stated French aims in the region were to create a colony and find a westward route to the Far East. In 1603, a French expedition travelled into the St. Lawrence River, and by 1608, Samuel de Champlain, a member of that expedition founded Quebec City. "Habitation de Quebec" of "New France" would serve as a fur trading outpost in order to build relations with the natives. From here, military alliances were soon forged with Algonquin and Huron nations - the region's furs were traded by the Indians in exchange for metals, guns, alcohol and clothing.

In 1610, de Champlain's protege, Étienne Brülé, left the Quebec settlement and was sent to live among Algonquins and then Hurons, ultimately learning Iroquois culture and gaining acceptance among indigenous tribes. Brülé continued going west, following the St. Lawrence and ended up at the northern end of Georgian Bay; he was the first European to see Lake Huron within a few years of his arrival in Quebec.

Starting in 1621, Brülé began another expedition into the Great Lakes, this time going west along Lake Huron's northern shore. When he reached the Manitoulin (between Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay), he came across copper deposits, so valuable to local tribes for centuries, and moved through Sault Sainte Marie and the St. Marys River, becoming the first European to enter Lake Superior. A dispute over the St. Lawrence Valley with British explorers led to Quebec falling under British control for a year in 1628, and Brule was killed at the age of 41 in 1633 when he fell out of favor with Huron tribes.

Before the end of the 17th century, the fur trade ran along a 3,000 mile route with one terminus in Montreal and extending through northern Michigan, controlled by French interests in the region. Although its roots are in the incidental trading of animal pelts among fishermen, fur trading grew considerably through the 17th century. French traders Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers explored north and west beyond Lake Superior, expanding both the possibilities for profit and control of territory in the region. Furthermore, explorers Robert de LaSalle and Jacques Marquette claimed much of the Great Lakes and Ohio and Mississippi River valleys as French territory. By 1671, the competing English Hudson Bay Company had also become an important company in the fur trade, and as a result, French interests were under threat.

In 1673, the French constructed Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario and in 1679, had built a ship named Le Griffon, a 45 ton warship and the first sailing ship in the Great Lakes to buttress their interests in the region. In 1694, New France's governor, Louis de Buade Comte de Frontenac, appointed local filibuster, explorer, trapper, mariner and alcohol and fur trader Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, to manage St. Ignace, a fort on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. With a 1701 charter from Louis XIV, Cadillac founded a trading post much further south in Michigan called Fort Ponchartrain du Detroit, at the end of the Detroit River and the present-day site of Detroit, Michigan.

The Detroit River had already been named by the French, its meaning arising from the French Rivierie du Detroit ("River of the Strait") after it was explored in the late 1670s. On July 24, 1701, Cadillac arrived in Detroit with 100 soldiers, missionaries, and colonists from Montreal, founding Fort Pontchartrain on a location now bordered by Larned Street, Griswold Street, and the Civic Center in downtown Detroit. The fort was named in honor of Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, minister of the French colonies; settlement around the fort by the Algonquins (who were sympathetic to the French) was promoted, especially due to tensions with Iroquois. Cadillac, because he was allegedly trading with the British, was removed by Ponchartrain, later appointed governor of French Louisiana in 1710, and was briefly imprisoned in the Bastille prison due to the influence of his numerous enemies in Quebec and Paris.

The subsequent decades saw Indian tribal conflict precipitate around the fort. In 1706, Ottawas attacked the Miami tribe who then sought refuge in the fort. Around 30 Ottawas were killed, and in retaliation for the initial attack, Miami indians attacked an Ottawa village. Because the fort's commander, Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont (Cadillac was away), was criticized after a priest and French sergeant were killed, he and a few of his soldiers deserted their service. In 1712, Cadillac was replaced by Charles Regnault, Sieur Dubuisson, and when the Fox tribe heard of the leadership change, they attacked the fort along with the Sac and Mascoutens.

When the attack came, French sympathetic Ottawa and Huron tribes were not in the area, however assistance arrived from Jean Baptiste Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, commander of the French settlement at Kekionga (present day Fort Wayne, Indiana). After Dubuisson sent messages to Ottawa and Huron tribes hastening their arrival, the Fox were trapped and fled to Windmill Point (now Grosse Pointe). After four days of fighting the Fox surrendered to their attackers, one term of which was the release of families of the warriors - after the Fox were disarmed, however, the French killed all the Fox present in an event now known around Grosse Pointe as the Fox Indian Massacre.

In Europe in the mid-18th century, the Seven Years War pitted Britain and Prussia against numerous other nations, including France. The fact that the British and the French opposed each other on one the other side of the Atlantic was not lost on the colonies, resulting in what is known as the French and Indian War. In 1760, Fort Detroit was turned over to the British Army's Rogers' Rangers, just after French surrender at Montreal. By 1763, the Treaty of Paris had been signed ending the Seven Years War, and across the Atlantic, the French lost all their American colonies to the British. After the British took over the fort and economic control of the colonies, their primary interest in Michigan was fur trading, and settlement by whites was not specifically promoted by the new colonial power. As a result, there were only a few hundred white settlers in the area.

Due to concern that the British would try to punish native populations who had aligned with French interests, Ottawa war chief Pontiac called about 500 warriors from Ottawa, Ojibwa, Potawatomi and Huron tribes to a meeting in what is now Lincoln Park, Michigan in April 1763. There, they planned to attack British held Fort Detroit. Initial attempts to infiltrate the fort were rebuffed by the British, however by May, natives began a series of attacks to break British resistance. Although there were successful raids by Pontiac's warriors, their supply of gunpowder was limited and reinforcements reached the fort within months. By October, the Indian attackers had lost much zeal - winter was coming and the possibility of French assistance was not materializing. Pontiac sent a message of peace to the fort's general and withdrew the Ottawa from Detroit.

During the American Revolution, Fort Detroit's main contribution to the effort was to arm native populations, who would attack American settlements to the southeast. By late 1778, interim British Captain Richard Lernoult began construction on a new fortress, just to the south of Fort Detroit called Fort Lernoult. The American Revolution ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, and Michigan became part of the new country, the United States of America. The region encompassing present day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota became known as the "Northwest Territory" until Ohio was admitted to the Union as a state in 1803. Under the 1794 Jay Treaty between the Americans and British, Forts Detroit and Lernoult along with the surrounding settlement were finally surrendered by the British.