Our children want homes. Shall we sell from under them the spot where they spread their blankets? We have not called you here. We smoke with you the pipe of peace."

There one sees the brave, dignified realization of an intelligent barbarian of the inevitable trend of events and of the helplessness of himself and his people to prevent their spoliation by a conquering civilized race of overwhelming numbers. The treaty took away the lands of several important tribes who ceded it because they knew the white men were bound to take it in any case. The pitiful compensation was better than nothing. The Indian knew his case was hopeless and felt forced to the acceptance of Dr. Franklin's maxim: "There never was a good war, nor a bad peace," while the white man had adopted Josiah Quincy's declaration: "Peaceably if we can; forcibly if

we must.'

A slender claim of justification might be pleaded from the fact that the northern half of this ceded territory had once. been the possession of the Sac and Fox Indians and had long ago been wrested from them by a combination of the Chippewas and Ottawas, but civilized people are supposed to recognize the right of legal possession even in conquered territory after a certain period of undisturbed possession. The first proposal of Gen. Cass had prejudiced the council at the very beginning because it had unwittingly exposed the ultimate intentions of the white man's Government.

Even after the treaties had been signed there were certain complications to be dealt with. Most of the traders had secured from the Indians cessions of considerable tracts of land and they held written deeds signed with the totems of the resident chiefs which gave them color of earlier title. It took many years to iron the wrinkles out of these complicated titles. The early maps of Wayne and several other counties are well marked with the boundaries of "private claims" and in the lack of any survey many of these overlapped. When the Indians saw their lands were bound to be lost to them they made private cessions of land to hundreds of applicants who employed money, presents and whisky in their negotiations.

In 1821 Gen. Cass and Solomon Sibley secured from the Indians south of Grand River nearly all the lands of the Ottawas and Pottawatomies in southern Michigan. In the following year the counties of Washtenaw, Lenawee, Lapeer, Sanilac, Saginaw and Shiawassee were laid out and a line of stages was installed on the Gratiot Road between Detroit and Mt. Clemens.

I

CHAPTER L

DETROIT IN 1818

N 1818 there was not a mile of improved public road in the
Territory of Michigan. Transportation was chiefly over

trails which were not available for wagons, so produce and other supplies which did not come from a distance by water were mostly carried on horses fitted with pack saddles. The soldiers of the war had cut a military trail through the Black Swamp from Ohio and a road was presently built from Detroit to Vistula, now Toledo, and on to Sandusky.

When Congress proposed a grant of 2,000,000 acres to soldiers of the late war, in quarter-sections of 160 acres each, the surveyor-general made so discouraging a report concerning Michigan lands that the allotments were made elsewhere, 1,500,000 acres in Illinois and 500,000 acres in Missouri. Thus it came about that territories far to the westward of Michigan became states earlier.

But lands in southern Michigan were surveyed and sales begun to settlers in 1818. The southern border of the State was as yet undetermined. While the ordinance creating the Northwest Territory had specified the boundary on a line running due east from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan it was found that this would shut Indiana away from lake navigation altogether, so a strip that had been allotted to Michigan was granted to Indiana, giving her a port on Lake Michigan, just as a strip of New York territory had been given to Pennsylvania that she might have the port of Erie. There still remained a disputed strip between Michigan and Ohio which was destined to cause prolonged wrangling between the states and to bring them to the verge of actual warfare.

What is now the Woodward Avenue Road between Detroit and Pontiac then had no existence beyond the Seven Mile Road, for beyond that point was a great bog or marsh reaching almost

to the present site of Royal Oak. But Oakland County lay beyond with its lakes and hills luring adventurous settlers. The only passable trail for reaching it was via the Gratiot Avenue Road to the Clinton River and then a trail running northward on the eastern side of the marsh.

Enterprising Detroiters organized what was known as the Pontiac Company, which purchased a tract of land which is now occupied by the city of Pontiac. On this they built a flouring mill, a sawmill and a building for a general store in 1819. A large delegation of the leading citizens went to the new settlement, which was named Pontiac, to celebrate the founding. Among them was Gen. Cass, who was still Governor of the Territory; Judge Woodward, Solomon Sibley, Daniel LeRoy, Stephen Mack, Austin E. Wing, D. C. McKinstry, Henry J. Hunt, Abraham Edwards, Shubael A. Conant, Alexander Macomb, Archibald Darrow, Stephen Mack, Andrew G. Whiting, and others of the most prominent men of the Territory. After a big dinner with plenty of liquid refreshments, the celebration merged into a hilarious frolic in which sedate men conducted themselves after the fashion of schoolboys.

One after another of the party was put through the hopper of the gristmill which had been elevated on stanchions and the miller would declare the quality of the flour. Some who came through were characterized as bran, some as middlings, but when Gen. Cass' portly frame came through the miller pronounced the Governor to be superfine flour. Those who tried to run away from the ordeal were caught and tried and various penalties and forfeits were inflicted upon them. Col. Mack, rigged out like an Indian chief, acted as judge.

On the way home some of the men were still in a hilarious mood. They passed the log cabin of a French pioneer and offered him liquid refreshment, but as the Frenchman already had more than enough he refused. Thereupon he was tried for insubordination and sentenced to be hanged: "until you are dead, dead, dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul," said the judge, as solemn as an owl.