Many of the British residents of Detroit removed to the Canadian side of the river and settled about Windsor, Sandwich, Lake St. Clair, and the Thames River.

These removals seemed for a time to threaten the extinction of Detroit as a town of importance. The population before the surrender was a little more than 2,200, which included 178 Negro and Indian slaves, but in a few months it dwindled to about 500. It was not until the renewed immigration from the East had been coming for several years that the population again reached 2,200, in 1805—the year of the great fire which completely erased Detroit from the map for a time.

At the time of the surrender the town proper contained 300 houses, and about two-thirds of the inhabitants were French. There were 12 small ships carrying the entire trade of the Upper Lakes. Up and down the shore for many miles were a series of windmills which ground most of the grain into flour and meal, and they gave the water front an appearance like that of a Dutch landscape.

It is a curious fact that in the Northwest Territory and at Detroit in particular the claim of authority of government has often been several jumps ahead of the fact. The ordinance of July 13, 1787, provided a government, and the following officers were appointed: Governor, Gen. Arthur St. Clair; judges, Samuel H. Parsons, James M. Varnum and John Cleves Symmes; secretary, Winthrop Sargent. It was not until nine years later that actual possession was taken of the seat of government at Detroit.

Gen. St. Clair, Governor of the Territory, did not arrive until Sept. 5, but Winthrop Sargent arrived earlier on the scene, and on Aug. 15, without any authority at all, he organized the County of Wayne, in honor of Gen. Wayne, and proclaimed that title over a vast area of the new Territory. This precipitate action made Gen. St. Clair very peevish, he having been in Pittsburgh at the time, and having plans and titles of his own in view. When he arrived in Detroit he reprimanded Sargent and asked the citizens what name they would prefer for their district, but the unanimous response was Wayne County," and the

Governor bowed to the popular will. In that year of 1796 the governing board consisted of the Governor and Judges Symmes, Turner and Putnam. Putnam soon resigned to become surveyor-general, and Joseph Gilman was appointed judge in his place. Next year Judge Turner resigned and he was succeeded by Return Jonathan Meigs. Gen. St. Clair remained in office until 1802 but Charles Willing Byrd, his secretary, who had succeeded Sargent, was acting Governor for a time.

CHAPTER XXI

DETROIT BECOMES AN INCORPORATED TOWN

A

TREATY is a solemn agreement between two nations. In drawing a treaty it is the mutual aim of the nations in conference to obtain all they can and to give as little as possible. All sorts of ruses and deceptions are employed to hoodwink one another. Because of that curious tendency in diplomacy certain nations have come to regard treaties as "pieces of paper" to serve only the purpose of the moment. In reality treaty making is comparable to the buying of a bill of groceries for the family. If the grocer foists damaged goods upon the purchaser or cheats in his weights and measures, or if the customer passes a bad check or bad money, all confidence and good will between the parties are destroyed.

John Jay negotiated the best treaty with Great Britain that it was possible to secure at the time, but when he consented to the stipulation that Americans should pay their honest debts to their British creditors and that the Government should use its power and influence to that end, the American people were infuriated. Jay was execrated everywhere and he was burned in effigy in the streets of Boston, New York and Philadelphia; but he came out of the affair with clean hands and continued his honorable record.

Our first treaty with Great Britain, signed Nov. 30, 1782, was a mere protocol, or tentative agreement. The second treaty, of January 20, 1783, merely agreed to an armistice. In the following September we made a more detailed treaty, but still the agreement did not open the way to real peace and good will between the nations. In 1794 we made a treaty of amity, commerce and navigation, which still lacked vital elements. In 1796 and 1798 we made two more treaties in explanation of the terms of the preceding agreements. In 1802 we made another for the payment of indemnities and settlement of debts. And

then for ten weary years the two nations sat glowering at one another with steadily rising anger until the mutual hatred flamed up in war.

But let us return to the little affairs of early Detroit. In 1798 the town acquired its first hand fire engine, which was a puny affair, and established a number of cisterns in different places to supply water for the engine. The money in circulation was mostly in the form of Spanish milled dollars. There was no fractional currency, and to supply this need people took their silver dollars to the blacksmith shops and chiseled them into halves and quarters and shillings as best they could. The carrying of these sharp-cornered fragments of metal with keen and ragged edges proved hard on the pockets of the people and when leather pockets were provided they were constantly lacerating their fingers when they reached for coin. Because of this the people petitioned for an issue of Government subsidiary coins to meet the common need. A grand jury in Detroit on May 10 declared the current money a nuisance, thus formalizing the public protest.

In June, 1798, came a new settler to Detroit who was to make important history in a few years and who was destined to promote the advancement of the general welfare more than any one man of his time, although he came only in the capacity of a humble parish priest to take charge of old Ste. Anne's Church and to supervise the Indian missions. This man was the Rev. Gabriel Richard, whose story will follow in its proper place.

In those days there was a large strip of country east of the present water works between Jefferson Avenue and the river where the ground was marshy, with here and there an island of solid land. It was termed the "grand marais," or great marsh. Here and there on the islands and on the solid ground farther north stood a settler's cabin. The people who had emigrated to Canada rather than remain in Detroit under American rule had done so at considerable personal sacrifice, and some of them felt that they were entitled to reparations. What they could not obtain by legal resort they decided to take by force. In July, 1798, a considerable number of them crossed the river by night

and raided many farm houses under pretense of looking for deserters from the British army. The Court of General Quarter Sessions ordered all such invaders to be seized and brought before it.

On the third Monday in December, 1798, Solomon Sibley was elected as a representative for Detroit and on the following January 15, 1799, Jacobus Visger and Chabert de Joncaire were also elected members of the general assembly of the Northwest Territory, the allotment for Wayne County being three members. The assembly began its first session at Cincinnati, February 4, 1799. In May, 1800, the Northwest Territory was divided and the Territory of Indiana was created. In September, 1800, the first Protestant missionary to the Indians of the West arrived in Detroit. He was the Rev. David Bacon, who had been sent here to look over the field and to report to an association of Congregational churches of Connecticut. Mr. Bacon made the journey on foot, was hospitably received and went back east. In the following year he returned to Detroit with his bride and for several months he taught a school for boys, and Mrs. Bacon, then 17 years old, a school for girls in the vicinity of the present intersection of Shelby and Larned streets. While they were here a son was born to them who became the celebrated Dr. Leonard Bacon, a clergyman. The Rev. Leonard Bacon came to Detroit in later years to dedicate the First Congregational Church edifice, which later became the home of the Detroit Journal.

The town of Detroit was incorporated in 1802 and government was established under a board of trustees. The charter was granted by the territorial government, which was then located at Chillicothe, O. Government was exercised by a board of trustees with the assistance of a secretary, an assessor, a collector of taxes and a village marshal who represented the police power of the community. This form of government continued under successive boards until 1805, when the Government at Washington imposed upon the people of Detroit the rule of the Governor and Judges, and appointed to these offices men from the East who had no knowledge of conditions at Detroit