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2. The Michigan Frontier
- University of Michigan Press
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20 2 } The Michigan Frontier The frontier settlement first seen by Stevens T. Mason in 1830 was the seat of government of the Michigan Territory. Michigan achieved territorial status under legislation signed by President Thomas Jefferson on January 11, 1805. Detroit was founded in 1701 by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a French explorer and colonial administrator. Much farther to the north, Sault Ste. Marie was an even older city, the area around the falls of the St. Marys River having been visited by French explorers and missionaries. Of course, several tribes of indigenous Americans, including the Ojibway (Chippewa), Potawatomie, and Ottawa, long predated the Europeans. The French era in Michigan essentially ended in 1759, when General Louis Montcalm was defeated by British general James Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec. In the next year, the French formally surrendered Detroit, ending roughly 150 years of French rule in Michigan. The British, in turn, were ousted by the victorious Americans in the Revolutionary War, although the British were slow to take their departure. The lucrative fur trade and the strategic location of their forts were highly prized. Michigan was destined to be one of the “not less than three nor more than five” states to be created out of the Northwest Territory, under the Ordinance of 1787. By the time Stevens T. Mason was born, the first state (Ohio) had been created out of this region. Detroit was designated the capital of the Michigan Territory because it was where most of the people lived. Its French-speaking population was, for the most part, poor and apathetic about both schooling and the democratic institutions later settlers would so enthusiastically embrace. The French settlers seemed to have acquired the morals and deportment of the Indians, writes James Z. Schwartz, not intending it as a compliment. The The Michigan Frontier 21 Yankees who streamed into Michigan in the 1820s were horrified at what they found. The borrowing of Indian customs had been common among Michigan’s French habitants, many of whom seemed to be more barbarous than civilized. The French dressed like Indians, hunted like Indians, spoke the Indian language and in some cases had even married Indians and produced mixed-race children. Yankees condemned this hybridization, asserting that the blurring of racial and cultural boundaries had transformed even the purebred French into savages . Indeed, New Englanders expressed alarm that their French neighbors seemed to have more in common with Indians than with their fellow whites. In other ways as well, the French seemed to have taken on Indian traits and blurred the boundary between civilization and savagery. Anglo settlers condemned the French for being nearly as economically backward as were the Indians. Rather than creating a vibrant agricultural economy, the French, like Indians, seemed content to earn their living from the fur trade. The French refused to adopt modern farming techniques and relied instead on antiquated methods developed by their ancestors.1 Another writer is equally blunt: “Yankee attitudes toward the French habitants were more straightforwardly negative than those toward Native Americans and this for several reasons. While the Indians came by their lack of civilization naturally, the French were ostensibly civilized Europeans who had allowed themselves to fall into a state of barbarism and thus culpable for their failings.”2 Around the time of the great fire of 1805, Detroit may have had seven hundred inhabitants. The city was a garrison town, under first the British and then the Americans, which gave it considerable importance in the far-off federal capital. Ironically, it was a French priest, Father Gabriel Richard, who did much to civilize the frontier post, first in education and later with a printing press: “In 1806, he opened a school for girls. The next year, he established a school at Springwells, three miles south of town, primarily for Native American children . By 1808, he reported that he had eight schools operating in the area and petitioned for a school building. Then he went east and brought back an organ, a piano, a printing press, and a printer to publish bilingual textbooks of his own selection.”3 Richard published the territory’s first newspaper and, along with the Reverend John Monteith and Judge Augustus Woodward, was among the founders of the University of Michigan. [3.235.139.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:28 GMT) 22 the boy governor The two clerics and Woodward were farsighted. They put purpose into the noble language of the Northwest Ordinance...