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| ISBN-13: | 9781613730690 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 327,490 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Detroit
(A Biography)
By Scott Martelle
Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2014 Scott MartelleAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61374-884-8
CHAPTER 1
A DIFFICULT CHILDHOOD
Detroit is, in many ways, the result of a planned birth. The details of the day, July 24, 1701, a Thursday, are lost to time, but it was the peak of summer, so it may well have been one of those sultry afternoons on the Great Lakes when the sky washes white with haze. Or maybe mugginess had settled in, with thunderheads billowing majestically on the updrafts. What is certain is that given the personal drive of Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, not even a drenching summer downpour would have kept him from beaching his canoe on the north bank of the Detroit River that day, the culmination of more than two years of lobbying and preparations.
Cadillac, a magistrate's son from southwest France's mid-Pyrenees region, had been in the Americas since 1683. An officer in the French navy with strong connections in the court of Louis XIV, Cadillac had made himself something of an expert on the geography of present-day New England and the Great Lakes. His knowledge won him an appointment in 1694 as commandant of the frontier fort at Michillimackinac, which gave him military authority over the trading post and lands surrounding the Straits of Mackinac — where Lakes Michigan and Huron come together at the five-mile gap between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. Cadillac's mission there was to provide security for French fur traders, roust English interlopers, and try to bring the local tribes — mostly Chippewa — under French rule while maintaining peace with the ferocious Iroquois confederacy to the east.
The best way to win the loyalty of the local tribes, Cadillac thought, was to establish tribal villages near the fort where they would be easier to monitor and trade with, and where they could be offered medical treatment, "for there is nothing more urgent for gaining their friendship than the care taken of them in their illnesses." And Cadillac believed — he was French, after all — that love might be part of the answer. "It would be absolutely necessary also to allow the soldiers and Canadians to marry the savage maidens when they have been instructed in religion and know the French language, which they will learn all the more eagerly (provided we labor carefully to that end) because they always prefer a Frenchman for a husband to any savage whatever." The shape of the idea was drawn from history. "Marriages of this kind will strengthen the friendship of these tribes, as the alliances of the Romans perpetuated peace with the Sabines through the intervention of the women."
Cadillac's plan appalled the Jesuit missionaries in Quebec and at Fort Michillimackinac, as did his advocacy of trading furs for alcohol with the natives. But he was sure about his strategy. He also realized that the thin, rocky soil around the post at Michillimackinac was poor for farming, which made it harder to persuade the native tribes to settle into villages. And given how far west into the Great Lakes the post was established, it was ineffective at monitoring who was moving along the main travel routes.
Cadillac rolled the problem around in his mind and reasoned that the French would have better luck if they abandoned the post at Mackinac and moved the garrison south to the much narrower and more easily defended river that drained the upper lakes into Lake Erie. And he knew just the spot, a bend in the narrows where the river flowed temporarily from east to west, making the northern bank a perfect place to monitor traffic, control passage, and keep the British from moving in on French trade with the native tribes.
In 1699, Cadillac asked to be relieved of his command so he could return to Quebec, then sail for Paris to make his proposal to his patron — Louis Phélypeaux, le comte de Pontchartrain, and chancellor of France — and, through him, to King Louis XIV. Both men saw the logic in Cadillac's plan and, over the bitter objections of the Jesuits, Louis XIV approved the new settlement.
Cadillac made the return trip across the Atlantic, stopped in Montreal to put his expedition together, and on June 7, 1701, struck out with twenty-five large canoes bearing fifty blue-coated French soldiers, another fifty settlers (assorted artisans), two priests (one a Jesuit missionary, the other a Franciscan Recollet chaplain), and enough supplies to last two months. They paddled up the Rivière des Outaouais — Ottawa River, which separates the present Quebec and Ontario provinces — nearly to its source, then portaged westward to Lake Nipissing, then down the pine-shrouded Rivière des Français — French River — to Georgian Bay, the northeastern lobe of Lake Huron. It was a long, difficult route, but necessary to avoid the escarpment at Niagara, which created the massive waterfalls and gorge on the river that drained Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. (Cadillac, in fact, dreamed of a day when French engineers would build a canal around the falls, something businessman William Hamilton Merritt finally did in 1824.) As difficult as the trek was, the route through Lake Nipissing was something of an early explorers' highway, which the bulk of the French fur traders, soldiers, and priests followed to get to the northern reaches of the Great Lakes.
Instead of continuing west from Georgian Bay along the established trade route, Cadillac and his party paddled southwest until they reached the Saint Clair River, then followed the shore of Lake Saint Clair into the straits. They maneuvered past a large island, about two and a half miles long (eventually named Belle Isle, it is the largest island park in the nation) then, a few hundred yards downstream, drifted to the north, where they beached the canoes. Cadillac, in letters to his superiors, described his landing site as a meadow rimmed by fruit trees leading into a dense forest of walnut, white and red oak, ash, and cottonwoods, all entwined with thick vines that provided cover for turkey, pheasant, and quail. Deer grazed at the edges and nibbled on fallen apples, plums, and other fruits, the streams and the river itself teemed with fish, and the reeds along the bank hid flocks of swans, geese, and ducks. But it was the open space that drew Cadillac's closest interest. "There the hand of the pitiless mower has never shorn the juicy grass on which bisons of enormous height and size fatten." Cadillac likely was overselling a bit in his reports back to his patrons, but not by much — his group killed both a deer and a bear the first day.
With the harsh winter only a few months away, Cadillac wasted no time turning the meadow into a frontier outpost. He ordered the band of soldiers and settlers to craft a storage building, then a stockade around it, on the first rise of land. It was a modest but effective enclosure of sharpened fifteen-foot-high oak trunks driven four to five feet into the ground. Within those walls, beneath present-day Hart Plaza and nearby buildings roughly at the feet of Griswold and Shelby streets, the settlers built grass-roofed log houses and barracks. Over time, more buildings were added outside the stockade, and more settlers arrived — including Cadillac's wife, who would give birth to the first child in the settlement.
Cadillac named the place Fort Pontchartrain, after his boss, but it didn't have the immediate effect of pacification that Cadillac had hoped. Two groups from regional tribes — the Ottawas and the Miamis — did settle near the fort. But it was an uneasy existence, marked by petty jealousies, including the belief by the Ottawas that the Miamis were getting better treatment and trading terms from the French.
In 1703, a disgruntled Ottawa set one of the external storage buildings on fire. The flames spread to the adjacent fort, heavily damaging part of the wall, the church, the homes of Cadillac (burning many of his papers) and one of his top lieutenants, and the House of the Recollets (home of the Franciscan priests).
To assuage the angry French, other Ottawas helped them rebuild, but the peace was short-lived. In 1706, while Cadillac was away, the dog of the officer he left in charge, a man named Bourgmont, bit an Ottawa tribesman, who in response beat the dog, which led Bourgmont to beat the tribesman, killing him. The Ottawas took their revenge by ambushing a group of six Miamis, killing five, and also taking hostage Father Nicholas Constantine del Halle while he was walking in his garden outside the fort. The Recollet priest was released a short time later, but just as he reached the gate, a musket-toting Ottawa fired a single shot and killed him. Bourgmont ordered the fort sealed, aligned his soldiers in the battlements, and told them to open fire. Some thirty Ottawas fell dead. The French settlers knew they could not live by hunting and trading alone and began establishing private farms outside the stockade on long, narrow plots — three hundred to nine hundred feet wide — stretching northward from the river. Those early farms form the skeleton for present-day Detroit. Saint Antoine Street marks the edge of the original Saint Antoine family land grant and farm, as do Beaubien, Rivard, Chene, Moran, and other streets that begin at or near the river and run perpendicular, at a cant slightly west of north. Other, smaller farms similarly stretched back from the Rivière Parent, a large stream flowing southward into the Detroit River near the west end of Belle Isle, a stream long since buried by urban development.
In a sense, three hundred years ago the rivers and navigable streams were the roads joining the farms, and the Detroit River was the major thoroughfare. The houses were built close to the water's edge, and behind them invariably stood an orchard, after which came the cleared fields for corn, wheat, and other staples. It was an inefficient design; the layout was adopted for safety. Each farmer would have plenty of land to tend to, andspace to grow crops. But their houses would be close enough together that they could easily reach each other in the event of emergency, from health troubles to raids by the natives.
Where land ownership is involved, squabbles soon follow, and the early years of Detroit were no different. For half a century claims and counterclaims were made over property rights, and even Cadillac's initial land grant from Louis XIV came under challenge in a legal battle that lasted long after his death in 1730. (He left Detroit in 1710 to govern the new Louisiana territories, but returned to France in 1717 under a cloud concerning his management of the colony, which included violent showdowns with Natchez tribesmen. A rather intemperate man, upon his arrival in France, Cadillac was thrown into the Bastille for five months for harsh comments about his overlords in letters and official reports.) And, of course, the native tribes, who were there first, were given no say.
The early houses were drawn from the rough-hewn frontier, walled with oak or cedar logs beneath roofs of thatch or grass. Until 1750 or so, when the first brick kilns were built in Detroit, stones for the chimneys were brought in from Stony and Monguagon Islands, barren outcroppings downriver near Lake Erie. Over time the stockade itself was enlarged to incorporate the new houses, numbering around one hundred by mid-century.
During the first couple of decades, Detroit remained a mixed, though strictly segregated, settlement (a legacy that continues, though in decidedly less formal arrangements). The French had their safe houses within the stockade. Their farms and orchards were outside, where the local natives also settled. In 1705, several hundred Native Americans inhabited encampments on both sides of the river, all invited by Cadillac — and all seeking some protection from the Iroquois tribes to the east. Thirty Hurons lived in wigwams just outside the stockade, and a Potawatomi village arose farther to the west. Ottawas and Hurons also settled across the river, in what became present-day Windsor.
Still, Detroit remained a frontier outpost, and by mid-century had only grown to around twenty-five hundred settlers. The population began dwindling after silk hats replaced beaver hats as the high fashion in Paris and London, cutting demand and prices for beaver pelts and collapsing the fur trade, in what would become a familiar pattern for Detroit.
War between the royal houses of England and France was something of a national pastime for each, and the rivalry extended to the New World. The Seven Years' War began in 1754 in Europe and quickly spread across the Atlantic, pitting the French and their tribal allies against the British and their tribal allies in what became known as the French and Indian War — in essence, America's first involvement in a world war. And it was a war of marked atrocities: the targeting of settlers, the paying of bounties by both the French and English to scalp-bearing Native Americans, and a "scorched-earth" policy toward overrun settlements, leaving nothing in their wakes but ashes.
Detroit, as a distant settlement, remained outside most of the fray. In fact, displaced French fighters from captured forts eventually made their way to Detroit, which became the base for eastward sorties. Still, there was some fighting in the area, and one notable attack planned by Iroquois warriors was thwarted when a tipster let the French garrison at Detroit know what was coming.
But the British were winning more of those fights than the French, and in 1763 the fighting ended with the Treaty of Paris, which assigned to England all of France's claims east of the Mississippi. By then Detroit had long been in British hands, with the first British troops displacing the French garrison on November 29, 1760, granting the vanquished safe passage to Philadelphia, and on to France. As they left, the French promised their allies among the native tribes that they would return. But it was a hollow — and unfulfilled — promise, something to which Detroiters would become accustomed.
CHAPTER 2THE BRITISH DEOADES
The outpost the British took over on the banks of the Detroit River was a rough-hewn frontier garrison measuring one hundred toises wide by sixty toises deep — about 213 yards by 127 yards, or a little bigger than five football fields. The stockade held four streets running east-west, or parallel to the river, with Saint Louis closest, then Saint Anne, Saint Jacques, and Saint Joseph, all cut north-south by two unnamed alleys. The compact settlement contained the commandant's lodgings, the munitions building, a small church, and a few dozen houses. "The fort is very large and in good repair; there are two bastions toward the water and a large bastion toward the inland," Capt. Donald Campbell, the first British commandant of Detroit, wrote in a 1771 report to his superiors.
The point of the bastion is a cavalier of wood, on which there are mounted the three pounders [light cannons] and the three small mortars, or coehorns. The palisades are in good repair. There is scaffolding around the whole, which is floored only toward the land for want of plank; it is by way of a banquette. There are seventy or eighty houses in the forest; laid out in regular streets. The country is inhabited ten miles on each side of the river and is a most beautiful country. The river here is about nine hundred yards over and very deep. Around the whole village, just within the palisades, was a road which was called the "Chemin de Ronde."
The British, more militarily focused than the French, upgraded the fort and replaced the French ten-foot pickets with fifteen-footers and over the next few years would continue to tinker with and expand the fort.
Detroit's main function was as a military outpost, but it was established to foment trade, particularly in pelts, from beaver to buffalo. Fur trapping was an individualistic business, and even after demand collapsed for hat-caliber beaver pelts, the river was plied by swift-moving and brightly painted canoes paddled by native trappers as well as the French frontiersmen, who would beach and sleep under their dugouts at night.
By the time the English took over, trade with the native tribes had evolved from a system through which French fur traders gathered pelts (mainly beaver) to ship to Europe into a regular conduit of European goods to the Native Americans, who developed a key dependency on outposts like Detroit. In the early going, metal ax heads, to replace the natives' stone ones, were in high demand. But eventually the most yearned-for European staple was gunpowder. The tribesmen had learned to repair their guns and make their own ammunition, but they lacked the equipment and material to make gunpowder.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Detroit by Scott Martelle. Copyright © 2014 Scott Martelle. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
1 A Difficult Childhood 1
2 The British Decades 9
Detroiters I The Morans 19
3 Detroit and the Canal of Riches 25
4 The Civil War and Racial Flashpoints 35
5 Detroit Turns Industrial 53
Detroiters II Michael Farrell 63
6 The Auto Era 69
7 A Great Migration 85
8 The Roaring Twenties 95
9 Great Depression 113
10 The Black Legion 127
11 Housing and the Racial Divide 133
12 The War Years 139
13 The 1943 Riot 147
14 The Postwar Boom 159
15 Race in the Fifties 171
Detroiters III Henry Russell Jr. 181
16 Death of the Covenants 187
Detroiters IV The Baloks 199
17 The Oil Embargo 205
Detroiters V John Thompson 215
18 When the Jobs Go Away 225
Detroiters VI Shelley 237
19 Pittsburgh, a Different Case 243
20 An Epilogue 251
Acknowledgments 259
Selected Bibliography 261
Notes 267
Index 281