who had money of the Detroit Bank which he was so anxious to unload that he offered it to Ten Eyck at a large reduction. Ten Eyck had some doubts as to the security for the redemption of the money but saw a chance to "sandbag" the bank officials of Detroit, so he bought the money and presented it at the bank for redemption.

Flannigan offered him some nice new bills in place of the old ones but Uncle Coon stood out for a redemption in real money according to the promise on the face of the notes. Flannigan at first refused.

"What! you refuse to keep the pledge of the bank to the public?" asked Ten Eyck sternly.

"No, we do not refuse; we offer you perfectly good money for it."

“But I want silver money and if I don't get it the reputation of this bank's money is going to be questioned.'

The cashier asked for time, called in the other officials and a few hours later enough of the rare silver money was scraped together to redeem Ten Eyck's bills. Thus Uncle Coon made a good profit and on the strength of the reputation made by the redemption the bank issued another bale of currency bills. Soon after, in 1807, Congress disapproved the territorial banking act and the bank went out of business and its bills became practically worthless.

Judge Woodward came to Detroit on a salary of $1,200 a year and left a few years later a man of large wealth for that time. Although president of the bank, he held but one share of stock.

When he left Detroit in 1825, on being legislated out of office, he advertised a plat of 200 feet front on Jefferson Avenue with a large storehouse on it; 750 acres of land now on the site of Ypsilanti; 320 acres of land on Woodward Avenue on the Six-Mile Road, where he planned the founding of a town to be termed Woodwardville, and 18 farms of 53 acres each adjoining the city. He held this property at a valuation of $100,000.

In April, 1808, James Witherell succeeded Judge Bates in Detroit under appointment by President Jefferson. He came to

Detroit from Connecticut. For many reasons the rule of the Governor and Judges was very unpopular with the people.

In 1809 Fr. Gabriel Richard brought the first printing press to Detroit and printed the first newspaper, but only one issue was printed so far as is known. Still, it was a beginning of publicity through the press. Up to that time citizens who had criticisms to make against the government would write long letters to eastern papers and perhaps a month later copies of the papers would appear in Detroit and the rulers of the city would fume and storm at the criticisms.

One citizen named John Gentle found a more effective and immediate resort for publicity. Gentle wrote in a sarcastic vein and held the government up to ridicule. He kept a bulletin board nailed to the front of his house and there he would post his written attacks on the rulers. Emissaries of the Governor and Judges tore away the lampoons and after that Gentle would stand guard over his bulletins. Crowds would gather and the person nearest the bulletin board would read the accusations aloud and the bystanders would applaud each telling thrust. At night Gentle would take his bulletin indoors and post it again and again until the whole town would be well informed as to his personal opinions of the government of the Governor and Judges.

CHAPTER XXVI

TECUMSEH BECOMES A BRITISH ALLY

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ESIDENTS of Detroit and Michigan Territory gradually accumulated a long list of complaints against their gov

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ernment, which they found neither responsive nor responsible to the people. The Governor and Judges themselves were divided into factions. Congress had not been fortunate in some of its western appointments. It had picked first Harmar and then St. Clair to subdue the western Indians and both had led their commands of inexperienced men into death traps. Gen. Hull was appointed Governor on his former honorable record, but even in middle life he was a man who seemed to be suffering from senile decay. Apparently the old Revolutionary soldier had lost his energy and his nerve, although he retained his ideas of personal thrift.

Judge Woodward was his superior in intellect and education, and, soon discovering the fact, he began to oppose his superior officer and to try to take the reins of government out of his hands. Gov. Hull had appointed a friend named John Whipple as his Indian interpreter. Whipple was a party to a case which came before the court and Judge Woodward ruled against him. Whipple went about the town denouncing Judge Woodward as a rascal who employed favoritism and spite in his rulings. The judge had him arrested and tried before himself and two justices of the peace. Whipple was found guilty of slander and fined $50. Gov. Hull promptly remitted the fine. This act led to another public denunciation.

On September 26, 1809, a mass meeting of citizens assembled to draw up a petition asking Congress for a change in the form of government. They asked that the Territory be given two small representative bodies to make laws and three justices who would be bound to enforce the laws. They also asked for representation in Congress by a territorial delegate. Judge

Woodward, George Hoffman, James Henry, Solomon Sibley, and James May were the leaders in this movement, and they were all men of intelligence and high standing in the community.

Gov. Hull tried to organize a counter movement, but without notable success. The public petition was presented before Congress in February, 1810, but at that time the attention of the Federal Government was concentrated on the relations with the government of Great Britain and a series of flagrant acts against the peace and dignity of the United States which presently led to the War of 1812. The petty wrangling and disputation between the people of Detroit and the Governor went on until the war became an absorbing interest.

Meanwhile another Indian outbreak was menacing the peace of the Territory. Pontiac was dead, but another notable Indian leader was rising to power. This new leader was Tecumseh, head chief of the Shawnee Indians. Tecumseh lived on Mad River, near the present site of Springfield, O. He was, like Pontiac, a man of average size but of extraordinary ability. He was patriotic, brave, dignified and humane, but an uncompromising enemy to the Americans, not because they were Americans but because they were pressing their settlements steadily into the Indian country and showing not the slightest respect for Indian ownership. He allied himself with the British interests because he regarded the British as the historical friends of the western Indians and the natural enemy of the Americans. With the backing of British influence Tecumseh hoped to check the American advance.

Tecumseh had a brother, named Elkswatawah, who was a sort of fanatical medicine man and seer. Because of his psychic peculiarities he was regarded with unusual respect by the Indians, who styled him "The Prophet." Tecumseh employed his rare gifts of oratory and argument, and the Prophet his visions. Together they succeeded in organizing several western tribes for resistance to the American invasion. For a time the only land obtained by the Treaty of Greenville with the Indians was a little patch of Michigan Territory centering at Detroit and extending from Lake St. Clair to the River Raisin, and a similar

strip of six miles facing on the Straits of Mackinac, together with the islands of Mackinac and Bois Blanc, in the Straits. Gov. Hull had added to this a cession of land fronting on the Maumee River and Bay, but the Indians had made other treaty cessions to both French and English residents and there was much confusion as to titles.

Tecumseh's plan involved the capture of Detroit, Ft. Dearborn (on the site of Chicago), Ft. Wayne, Ind., Vincennes, Ind., and St. Louis, which had become a United States possession through the Louisiana Purchase. His name in the Shawnee language signified "Springing Panther," probably because of his singularly lithe figure and active habit. Tecumseh's Indian runners called successive delegations to his home on Mad River, and occasionally a body of them would come to Ft. Malden, at Amherstburg, to confer with the British.

There was no love lost between the British and the Americans. The enmities of the late war were still nursed and kept alive. The British had an added grievance in the chartering of a new fur company headed by John Jacob Astor which was eating into the business of the Hudson's Bay Company, and creating a strong rivalry. Astor was a man of remarkable energy and enterprise. He had a prosperous trading post at Mackinac Island, and his buyers penetrated far into the West. In 1808 he had ships on the Pacific Coast gathering furs and he was delivering his goods to foreign markets. In 1810 he founded the settlement of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River. This settlement was destined to figure prominently in the later claim of the United States to the Oregon country.

It was this rivalry in the fur trade which led the British at Malden to encourage Tecumseh and the Indians in their conspiracy. Walk-in-the-Water, chief of the Wyandottes, who now had villages near the mouth of Detroit River, came to Gov. Hull and demanded that the American settlers in his vicinity be removed and that they be kept from further encroachments into Indian territory. Already there were settlements. near the mouth of the Maumee River, at the Raisin River, on the site of Monroe, at the mouth of the Huron River, at Ecorse,