Michigan's Struggle for Statehood

The British officially turned over Fort Detroit to the United States and evacuated on July 11, 1796. At noon, the Union Jack was lowered and the American flag was raised. Michigan was officially part of the United States under control of Territorial Governor Arthur St. Clair.  

On July 13th, United States Colonel John Hamtramck arrived with 400 soldiers to secure the Detroit command. Detroit consisted of a wharf, a fort, and a citadel of about 100 houses, shops, taverns, and Ste. Anne's Church. Ribbon farms extended on both sides of Detroit from the St. Clair River up stream to the Rouge River downstream.

The first United States Federal Census in the Michigan Territory was in 1800. Detroit's numbers were so small that they were lumped in with Wayne County's numbers. It was estimated that 500 people lived within the stockade with another 2,100 living on nearby farms. 

In 1810, the first Michigan Territorial census counted 770 people living in Detroit while the rest of Michigan territory showed a population of 4,762. With a combined population over 5,000, Michigan was entitled to three seats on the Northwest Territory's legislature. By 1815, Detroit was incorporated as the City of Detroit with its own governing board.

Population growth was slow in Michigan because the Surveyor-General of the United States issued a faulty land report based on flawed and incomplete information that the territory was nothing but lakes, swamps, and sandy land. Most settlers hoping to homestead farmland out West opted to follow the Ohio River water highway to Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The erroneous account delayed Michigan's development.

The inaugural trip of the steamship Walk in the Water, named after a Wyandot tribal chief, left from Buffalo, New York for its destination of Detroit, Michigan in 1818. This marked the beginning of regular steam service carrying passengers and goods between the East and Detroit. Steamship travel on Lake Erie opened up Michigan and the Great Lakes area for farming, timber, and mining interests from New York City. 

The 1820 census showed Detroit's population to be 1,442 while Michigan's population grew to 8,927. Government-funded post roads were built radiating from Detroit helping to develop small towns and farming communities inland. On a public safety note, City Fathers erected a public whipping post near the intersection of Woodward and Jefferson avenues to discourage petty crime and drunkeness. It remained in use until 1831. As a result of the Greek War for Independence, 1822 saw a huge influx of Greek immigrants to the Detroit area.

Travelers headed to Buffalo, New York.

The United States' second wave of immigration consisted mostly of Irish and Germans. Many of these newcomers constructed the Erie Canal between 1817 to 1825. The Irish with horses and mules dug 363 miles of canal while German stonemasons engineered bridges and built thirty-six locks that raised freight boats and other canal traffic 565 feet in elevation from east to west. When the canal opened on October 26, 1825, it set off a land boom in Michigan and Detroit until 1837.

The 1830 census of the Michigan Territory counted 85,000 people which qualified Michigan for statehood. There was a delay because of the Toledo Strip dispute with Ohio in 1835. This was the original Buckeye/Wolverine rivalry. The so-called Great Toledo War was a stalemate settled with ink rather than blood.

Michigan was admitted to the Union on the condition that the Ohio boundary be accepted. Ohio got the Toledo Strip and Michigan got the entire Upper Peninsula with some of the most gorgeous and extensive lakefront property in the United States. Statehood was granted in 1837. 

Michigan soon adopted its state seal and motto designed by Lewis Cass in 1835. The bald eagle symbolizes the United States, while the elk and the moose holding a shield symbolize Michigan, with the Latin word "Tuebor" meaning "I will defend." The state's motto is "Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice" (If you are looking for a beautiful peninsula, look around you), all on a field of dark blue.

Erie Canal Populates the Great Lakes Region

Michigan Native American Treaties--Paradise Lost

Civilization comes to the Great Lakes?

Thousands of years before the first Europeans set foot in the New World, indigenous tribes were living in migratory groups and large settlements thoughout what became the continental United States. Competition for land and natural resources in America began long before the white man arrived. Great Lakes tribes were feeling pressure from the Iroquios Confederation to the east and the Sioux Nation to the west. 

The Ottawa, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Wyandot (Huron), and Potawatomi settled near Fort Detroit in the eighteenth century and allied themselves with the French first, and then the English, as the Great Lakes area became a pawn of international politics in the French and Indian War against the British. There was much Native American blood shed on both sides depending on a tribe's loyalies. In 1783, Great Britain ceded the Michigan Territory to the nascent United States. 

During the nineteenth century, the Erie Canal opened up the Michigan Territory to settlers with a lust for land. The lucrative fur trade declined due to overtrapping and changing European fashion trends. Michigan pioneers wanted farmland and saw the local Indians as an obstacle, but to legally assume ownership of Indian ancestral land, governmental treaties were written to relinquish tribal claims to the land. 

Tribal leaders received cash, European goods including farming implements, clothing, barrels of whiskey, and empty promises. Once a treaty was signed, duly witnessed, and blessed by the Jesuits, the land was opened to lumbermen, farmers, surveyors, and land speculators from the East. The new American government failed to live up to the terms of its own treaties or its obligations to displaced indigenous peoples.

Pioneer farm in Monroe County.

Early Michigan settlers preferred the tillable fertile areas in the southern half of the Michigan Territory, but once the North was assayed, mining concerns from the East were interested in copper, iron ore, and limestone extraction. It was only a matter of time before the government put pressure on Northern Michigan tribes to cede their land holdings too.

Michigan Native American Treaties with the United States

*Treaty Name         Date     Area of Concern

Greenville              1795    The Detroit area north and south along the Detroit River.

Detroit                   1807    Much of Southeast Michigan.

Maumee                1817    Most of today’s Hillsdale County.

Saginaw                1819    Alpena-Lansing and areas east.

Sault Ste. Marie   1820    Eastern Chippewa County in U.P.

Chicago I              1821   Southwest equivalent in size to Detroit treaty of 1807.  

                                
Carey Mission      1828   Most of today’s Berrian County in the Southwest corner of Michigan. 

        
Chicago II            1833   In today’s Berrian County.

Washington         1836  Western half of northern lower peninsula of Michigan and the upper peninsula east of and including Alger and Delta Counties. 

Cedar Point         1836  Today’s Menominee County and part of Delta County.

La Point               1842  The upper peninsula west of Alger County and Delta Country.                                            

* Special thank you to Randall Schaetzl of Michigan State University

Ottawa War Chief Pontiac 

Erie Canal Opens Michigan to Settlement