MICHIGAN

Remote from eastern settlement, Michigan was initially set off as part of the Indiana Territory in 1796. In 1805 Congress established the Michigan Territory, which included all of present-day Wisconsin and part of what became Minnesota in addition to the two peninsulas that constitute what became the state of Michigan. The territory remained a sparsely populated hinterland into the 1820s, with a diverse collection of British and French-Canadian fur traders, Métis, and various Indian peoples, but few American settlers. Popular perceptions of the territory as an impenetrable swamp in the south and a sterile, rocky wilderness in the north offered little incentive to potential settlers compared to the favorable soils, greater accessibility, and milder climates of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Not until the introduction of steamships into the Great Lakes in 1818 and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 did any substantial American migration penetrate the isolated peninsulas.

In 1810 Michigan's Anglo population of 4,762 was concentrated in and around Detroit and outposts in Michilimackinac and Sault Sainte Marie in the Upper Peninsula. Founded by the French in the early eighteenth century, these military and trading posts passed to the British following the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). The British ceded their Old Northwest claims in 1783, although French Canadian and British traders continued to operate in the Territory. Detroit and Michilimackinac played significant strategic roles in the Seven Years' War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. At the onset of the War of 1812, the British seized Michilimackinac and Detroit, but these victories proved temporary. Following its recapture in 1813, Detroit served as an important base for the American invasion of Canada. The Treaty of Ghent in 1815 firmly established the boundaries of Michigan, and the trickle of settlement into the territory slowly expanded. Yet growth remained gradual, and in 1820 census takers still counted only 8,896 non-Indians in the entire territory. By 1830 that number had grown to a mere 31,639—a population that paled in comparison to the nearly one million inhabitants of Ohio to the south and east.

Unlike Ohio, however, Odawa (Ottawa), Ojibwa (Chippewa), and Potawatomi villages populated both peninsulas, with approximately fourteen thousand Indians living in the Lower Peninsula and two to three thousand in the Upper Peninsula in 1830. Their presence posed a significant barrier to the spread of white settlement outside of Detroit, making landcession treaties with the various bands a preeminent concern of Michigan's early leaders. One of Michigan's most vigorous boosters was Lewis Cass, territorial governor for thirteen of the sixteen years between 1813 and 1829. Cass directed the acquisition of approximately two-thirds of the Lower Peninsula via treaties with the Odawa and Ojibwa in 1819 and 1821 and engineered the funding and building of a government road that finally connected Michigan with Ohio in 1827. Cass's tireless efforts to erase the negative image of Michigan encouraged the spread of settlements across the southern Lower Peninsula, but it was not until 1836 and 1842 that the remainder of the new state was transferred from Indian control, following which American settlers began to populate the northern wilderness.

See alsoAmerican Indians: American Indian Removal; Erie Canal; Fur and Pelt Trade; Ghent, Treaty of; Northwest; Pontiac's War .

bibliography

Gilpin, Alec R. The Territory of Michigan (1805–1837). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970.

Lewis, Kenneth R. West to Far Michigan: Settling the Lower Peninsula, 1815–1860. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002.

Russell, Nelson Vance. The British Régime in Michigan and the Old Northwest, 1760–1796. Northfield, Minn.: Carleton College, 1939.

Bradley J. Gills