Detroit: A Motor City History

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INTRODUCTION

The history of the city of Detroit begins with the landing of Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac on July 24, 1701, at the site of the present-day City-County Building at Woodward and Jefferson Avenues. A historical marker to that effect is on display in the lobby of that building. The presence of the French predates that event and is the subject of much conjecture.

In all probability the first white men to set foot on Michigan soil were the coureur de bois, or woodsmen. This hardy breed of Canadian traveled the various water routes by canoe, exploring the interior of Canada and North America and trading with American Indians for furs. In the late fifteenth century, they were trading with the Indians in the valley of the St. Lawrence River and had established friendly relations with the tribes they met around the Great Lakes, the Mississippi Valley, and the Missouri River—all the way to the Rocky Mountains. The coureur de bois kept no records or journals of their travels, as their occupation was the quick acquisition of furs. However, there is an oral tradition that has been handed down through the generations. These early men maintained good relations with the Indians and often married their women. There is every reason to believe that they passed through the strait and may even have landed on the site of the city of Detroit.

One of the earliest explorers of the region around the Great Lakes and whose work there is an accurate record of is Samuel Champlain. He founded Quebec in 1608, laid the foundations of Montreal, and discovered the lake in upstate New York that bears his name in 1611. The following year he ascended the Grand River as far as Lake Huron and may have passed through Detroit and Lake Erie, but it is not certain that he did so. What is certain is that his work facilitated the establishment of French posts in the Northwest.

In the early part of the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries from Quebec and Montreal were living among the Indian tribes who resided along the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. Of this work there is also an accurate record with the facts of their settlement at Sault Ste. Marie and the exploration of the western coast of the state being well known. There is also mention of Jesuits visiting an Ottawa village on Parent Creek, which is within the confines of Elmwood Cemetery, in 1610.

On May 12, 1678, Louis XIV, King of France, commissioned Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, to find a port for his ships in the Gulf of Mexico and discover the western parts of New France. Near Niagara, he proceeded to build a sailing vessel, named the Griffon, to explore the Lakes and find a way to reach and descend the Mississippi River. The expedition launched in August 1679 and carried La Salle, Louis Hennepin, a Recollet priest, and 30 men. They sailed through the Detroit River and around the Lakes to the entrance of Green Bay. Writing one of the first accounts to be published of the Detroit, Hennepin penned the following description: The islands are the finest in the world. The strait is finer than Niagara, being one league broad excepting that part which forms the lake we have called Lake Ste. Claire. A large village of Huron Indians called Teuchsa Grondie occupied the bank of the river. The village had been visited by the Jesuit missionaries and coureur de bois, but no settlement had been attempted.¹

The further establishment of French posts, especially at Fort Michilimackinac, and the control of the fur trade led directly to the founding of Detroit. Cadillac, in command at Michilimackinac during the 1690s, sought a more suitable location for control of this valuable commodity, and his selection of Detroit as that location was done with much forethought.

No fewer than six names have been given to the site of Detroit and the French settlement. Early Indian tribes called the place Yon-do-te-ga, meaning great village. Others gave it the name Wa-we-a-tun-ong, meaning crooked way, because of the great bend in the river between Lake St. Clair and Fighting Island. Another was Tsych-sa-ron-dia, which also refers to the bend. The Huron Indians called it Ka-ron-ta-en, the coast of the straits. Cadillac first called the settlement Fort Ponchartrain, in honor of the French minister of marine. French explorers and travelers called all the waters connecting Lake Huron to Lake Erie, Detroit, the strait. From this beginning, the city of Detroit has evolved into a multi-cultural metropolis that has seen its share of adversities and triumphs. Its history is a fascinating story of the people who made and re-made the city of the strait.

No writer works in a vacuum and this one is no exception. I am fortunate in that I have chosen a profession which deals with the preservation of history—librarian and archivist—and have the opportunity to work in a repository that maintains the documentary history of Detroit and Michigan. The Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library is truly a treasure to be enjoyed by all. The works cited in this narrative and all of the illustrations come from that collection.

It is said that behind every successful man stands a wife—and a surprised mother-in-law. If I am in any way successful, it is due to the continuing support and love of my wife, Kathleen, who has had to live with Detroit and Detroiters these past 12 years.

1. THE FOUNDING OF DETROIT

On June 5, 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac set out from Montreal, Canada, with 100 French-Canadians and 100 Algonquin Indians in 25 large canoes to establish a new French settlement along the lower Great Lakes. With Cadillac was his eight-year-old son, Antoine, second-in-command Alphonse de Tonty, 2 lieutenants, 2 priests, 50 soldiers, and 50 voyageurs and settlers. From Montreal, the group paddled up the Ottawa River across to Lake Nipissing, then across the lake and down the French and Pickerel Rivers to Georgian Bay and across the bay to Lake Huron. Following the eastern shoreline, the flotilla moved through Lake St. Claire and down the Detroit River to Grosse Isle. Toward dusk on July 23, they made camp on Grosse Isle after a trip of approximately 600 miles with 30 portages.

The following morning they came back up stream to search out the best possible site for a fortified town. Cadillac noticed that the narrowest point of the river was faced on each side by a bluff about 40 feet high. With the calculating eye of a soldier, he noted that the bluff on the western side ended abruptly in a small hill and around the foot of this hill ran a small river. A better defensive position chosen, the French landed, climbed the bluff, and claimed the land in the name of King Louis XIV.

After a brief prayer of thanks for a safe arrival, the group started clearing the land, felling trees for the stockade fence and shelter. The trees cut for the fort walls were 6 to 8 inches in diameter and 12 to 15 feet in length. They were set on end in a trench approximately 4 feet deep. The fort would eventually occupy a square arpent of ground—192.75 feet on each side or nearly 1 acre. A deep ditch was dug along each wall to further improve the fort’s defenses. No record of the amount of work completed each day has survived, but it is known that the first building erected within the fort was a church, and the work had progressed far enough for the church to be named on July 26, two days after landing, St. Anne’s Day. The houses were constructed by setting logs on end in a trench. Each house was consequently one story high, with walls just over 6 feet tall and roofed with thatch. By September 1, the enclosure was complete. Cadillac named the fort in honor of the French minister of marine, Count Ponchartrain. It was known as Fort Ponchartrain du Detroit, later shortened to, simply, Detroit.

THE COURT AT VERSAILLES. In this painting by Femand Le Quesne, King Louis XIV presents the ordinance for the founding of Detroit to Antoine Cadillac.

THE LANDING OF CADILLAC. An artist’s rendering of the landing of Cadillac illustrates the type of bateaux used for river transportation.

In a letter dated October 5, 1701, Cadillac described the land surrounding the fort:

The banks are so many vast meadows where the freshness of these beautiful streams keep the grass always green. These same meadows are fringed with long and broad avenues of fruit trees, young and old [which] droop down under the weight and multitude of their fruit. In this soil so fertile, the ambitious vine forms a thick roof with its broad leaves and its heavy clusters over the head of whatever it twines around. Under these vast avenues you may see assembling in hundreds the shy stag and the timid hind with the bounding roebuck, to pick up eagerly the apples and plums with which the ground is paved. It is there that the turkey hen calls back her numerous brood and leads them to gather the grapes. The golden pheasant, the quail, the partridge, the woodcock, the teeming turtle-dove swarm in the woods and cover the open country intersected and broken by groves of full-grown forest trees.

The woods are of six kinds—walnut, white oaks, red, ash, ivy, white wood trees and cottonwood trees. They are as straight as arrows, without knots and almost without branches except near the top. It is from these branches that the fearless eagle looks steadily at the sun.

JULY 24, 1701. Cadillac sets foot on land at Detroit in this rather fanciful rendition. His men are in regular canoes and an Indian warrior waits to greet him.

The fish there are fed and laved in sparkling and pellucid waters. There are such large numbers of swans that the rushes among which they are massed might be taken for lilies. The gabbling goose, the duck, the teal and the bustard are so common there that they only move aside long enough to allow the boat to pass.¹

Cadillac’s plan of establishing a new trading post began to take shape. By late fall, approximately 6,000 Indians lived in the vicinity of the fort. A Huron village below the fort and a larger village containing four tribes of Ottawas above the fort were established on land granted to them by the commandant. Although the Indians could get a better price for their furs from the English at Hudsons’ Bay, they were treated with respect by the French. As the word of the new settlement spread among the upper Lakes tribes, more of them came to Detroit to trade. In the spring of 1702, Madame Cadillac and Madame Tonty, wives of the two French leaders, arrived in Detroit. They were the first white women to live in the town.

For the next four years, Detroit remained at peace with the Indians. The thriving settlement continued to grow slowly as more French settlers arrived. But friction between Cadillac and the Jesuits and Cadillac and the fur traders in Montreal resulted in his arrest and trial in Quebec for theft and mismanagement. In his absence, Lieutenant Bourgmont, acting commandant, interfered in a quarrel between some Ottawa and Miami Indians. He ordered his men to fire on the Ottawas and several were killed. As the Ottawas Indians fled, they passed the garden of Father Del le Halle, near St. Anne’s Church, and stopped long enough to kill him. The priest became