The Fluid Frontier: Blacks and the Detroit River Region: A Focus on Henry Bibb

© Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadienne d’études américaines 30, no. 2, 2000 The Fluid Frontier: Blacks and the Detroit River Region A Focus on Henry Bibb Afua Cooper The French named the body of water that connects the upper Great Lakes to the lower ones “the detroit,” meaning “strait.” As a main artery of the Great Lakes and the river system of that region, the Detroit River has come to exert a crucial influence on the land and people on both its banks and adjacent areas. From earliest times, this river served as a natural border between the various First Nations groups that first settled the region, including the Fox, the Ojibway, the Pottowatami , and the Ottawa, and the Europeans who came later.1 The first Europeans , the French, who settled and traded in the area under the lead of Lamothe Cadillac, founded the town of Detroit in 1701. This was on the side that would eventually become “American.” Soon, another settlement was established on the south bank of the river, the side that would become “Canadian.” Under the French regime, both sides were considered units of the same polity, the colony of New France.2 In 1760 New France fell to Britain. The British, however, maintained the political integrity of the Detroit River district,3 and the north and south banks continued to be governed as one administrative unit. This arrangement was to be short-lived. Following the American victory in the Revolutionary War, the negotiators of the 1783 Peace of Paris handed over the vast area west of the Detroit River and south to the Ohio River to the Americans. An international boundary line dividing American lands from those of the British was drawn down the middle of the Detroit River and through all of the Great Lakes (Cowan 91).4 Though the British managed to hold on to Detroit until 1796, an important provision of Jay’s Treaty of 1794 ensured that the Americans would be able to maintain their title to the southern and western lands as outlined in the Treaty of Paris (Bemis 287–88). Of course, this notion of “British” and “American” lands is Eurocentric and reflective of the settler concept of North American history. The First Nations of the Great Lakes region were not part of the various treaty-makings, and therefore did not see these treaties as legitimate. When the First Nations of the area began to feel the impact of Canadian Review of American Studies 30 (2000) 130 the Paris and Jay’s treaties, they voiced their outrage at British betrayal. The Six Nations, for example, complained that the British ceding of Aboriginal lands to the Americans “was an act of treachery and cruelty that only Christians could be capable of”(White 408). The Pan-Indian confederacy , started by Tecumseh, and the various Indian–American wars were all efforts made by the First Nations to regain their lands. The new international boundary, and ratification of Jay’s Treaty, shattered the historical, political, and administrative unity of the district. The north bank of the river became American, the south bank British. The south bank was in the future province of Upper Canada. During 1796, the year Jay’s Treaty was ratified, and for some time after, hundreds of British subjects crossed the river onto the Canadian side. The British Detroiters established a new capital at Sandwich, present-day Windsor, which became the capital of the Western District of Upper Canada. Upper Canada would later be renamed Canada West, then Ontario.5 Sandwich was not really a new town. Under French rule, a number of colonists and farmers had settled in Sandwich and established it as a village of importance. With the arrival of the British Detroiters, however, the Upper Canadian government purchased a vast tract of land from the Huron, Ottawa, Pottowatami, and Chippewa First Nations and established the new (read, British) town of Sandwich (Lajeunesse 205–6). Here they built a courthouse, a jail, and a land registry office. Lots were given out, and the settlers began to build houses. Soon a Protestant church was constructed. William Dummer Powell was named the first Judge of Sandwich and Upper...