T HUS, then, as told in the first chapter, Michigan was potentially born as an American Commonwealth. We say potentially because it was to be thirteen long years before it would be actually transferred to the de facto jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United States, and nine years more before it would assume a separate and distinct identity under its own name and with its own boundaries. And there was yet to be a long and tedious struggle before it would be decided whether it belonged to the United States or to one or more of the individual states. At the date of the Treaty of Peace, Michigan, so far as white people were concerned, consisted of one French village, Detroit, (to which had been added a few dozen Scotch and Irish in the twenty years of British occupancy,) protected by a small fort called by the English Fort Lernoult; another small fort and hamlet on the island of Mackinac; (or Michilimackinac), and a still less important fort and trading post at Sault Ste. Marie, in modern years called in railroad nomenclature "The Soo." All the rest and remainder was unbroken wilderness, inhabited by a few thousands of Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandot and and Pottawatamie Indians, and subject to occasional incursions by the Wyandots, Delawares and Shawanees on the south, and sometimes of the Hurons on the north and east.* 1 *The Wyandots and Hurons were of the same stock, the Ouendats. Those who removed to the peninsula of Michigan seem to be known as Wyandots. Those who remained in Canada, as Hurons. At and after the making of the Treaty of Peace, the Northwest, of which Michigan was part and parcel, was covered by three distinct classes of claims. 1. The claim of the aboriginal tribes, as the original claimants and occupants of the soil from time immemorial. This title had to be reckoned with at the peril of savage warfare and with the alternative of the tomahawk and the scalping knife. 2. The claim of the United States, as the conquering and treaty-making power. 3. The claim of the individual states, in virtue of their ancient colonial charters. Virginia claimed the whole northwest to the Mississippi under her colonial charter of 1609, which gave her a front on the Atlantic 200 miles north and 200 miles south from Point Comfort, "and all that space and circuit of land lying from the sea-coast of the precinct aforesaid up into the land, throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest." It will be readily seen that under this charter she could claim almost anything between the two oceans, north of Cape Fear river. Next, New York by virtue of a treaty with the six nations of New York Indians, laid claim to all the country the said Indians had overrun, south to the Cumberland mountains, and west to the Mississippi; but it is very questionable whether Michigan could be brought within her claim, and it never became a practical question. Connecticut claimed by virtue of her colonial charter, which extended her western limit "to the South Sea." Under this old charter Connecticut claimed a belt of territory extending west from the west line of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi and north and south from parallel 41 to 42 2′ north latitude. This included nearly all that part of Michigan south of the second tier of counties as now organized. And finally, Massachusetts had a colonial charter extending on the Atlantic border from the Connecticut limit of 42 2′ to a point "three English myles to the northward of said river called Monomack alias Merrymack" and "throughout the mayne landes there from the Atlantic and Western sea and ocean on the east part to the South Sea on the west parte." This would have carried the projected north line of the Massachusetts claim, if extended due west, to about the north line of Oakland county, or near the latitude of Port Huron and Grand Rapids. The task of the Congress of the Confederation was to unite as many of these claims as possible in the hands of the United States. The first and most important thing to be done was to secure cessions from each of the individual states having claims on the western lands. In doing this aid came in a most unexpected way. It is necessary to premise that by the "ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND PERPETUAL UNION," it was provided that the said Articles should not become operative and binding until ratified by each of the thirteen states. On February 22, 1779, Delaware, the twelfth state, ratified, leaving Maryland only yet to ratify in order to complete the Confederation. |