Green Bay, in the North West Territory, where we were destined, is commonly reckoned the end of the world. It is not even imagined, by the vulgar, that there is any place, or any human being, or any thing with which mortals may have to do, beyond it. Besides, the way is long—the seas dangerous and ever liable to sudden and disastrous storms—the shores uninhabited, or tenanted only here and there by the inhospitable savage. Latitude and longitude and clime were all to be changed, and changed too by a long stretch—not long perhaps to such a voyager as Captain Cook, or Captain Parry; but yet long and dubious, and in no small degree romantic, to one, who had never been accustomed to the wilder regions of the new world. To go up among the Indians, the savages of the wilderness! and be their guest, far from the territories of civilized man! Who has not listened in the nursery to the tales of Indian wars, of the tomahawk and scalping knife, of the midnight massacre and burning of villages and towns; of the mother butchered with her infant in her arms; of the grey head, and man in full vigour of life, slaughtered together; and a train of tender captives, driven away to glut the vengeance of the savage, by the endurance of every imaginable torture;—until the story has thrilled his blood with horror, and he refused to be left in his bed, till his nurse, who had frightened him, had sung him to sleep? And although he may have stood corrected in his maturer years, and entertained less horrible notions of the savage, still he can never altogether efface his first impressions. The poetry of his feelings often overpowers his judgment, and he not only anticipates much from the sight of a savage in his native regions and costume; but he involuntarily shrinks from the peculiar, rigid, and stern aspect of his countenance; shudders at the thought of what may possibly be working in his soul; and calculates a thousand imaginable results of an interview, which perchance has placed him in the power of such an unsocial and awful being. There stands before him a naked man, with visage painted horrible, whose every muscle demonstrates his custom to exertion and fatigue, who knows not how to smile; who never sleeps, or wakes, but that a weapon of death is girded to his side, or borne in his hand; who is a creature of passion, and inflexible in his purpose, when once resolved; who conceals his thoughts beneath his imperturbable countenance; who never betrays his emotions, however deep and strong they are;—who can be indifferent in such society? But we must not anticipate the scenes to come.
Having made the reader already so much acquainted with Lake Erie, we will not detain him long upon a sea familiar to his thoughts. It may be remarked, that the surface of this lake is five hundred and seventy-five feet above high water on the Hudson river at Albany, the Eastern termination of the Erie canal. The rapids and Falls of Niagara, the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and the general descent of these waters to the ocean, make the difference.
About the 20th of July, 1830, we embarked at Buffalo in the steam-packet, Superior, for Detroit, and made the passage in two days, skirting the southern shore, and touching at the principal ports, without remarkable incident, except an unpleasant encounter with an army of musquitoes in the bay of Sandusky, which were taken on board at the port of the same name, in lieu of passengers left behind; and whose audaciousness, ferocity, and blood-thirstiness, were enough to make one out of temper with the place; and which, notwithstanding all attempts to ward off their assaults, inflicted upon us many deep and annoying impressions.
Lake Erie is unchequered by islands, till we begin to approach its western regions; where, instead of an open sea, the beautiful and curving shores of the main land, and of the insular territories, covered as they generally are with unbroken forests, and opening channels and bays in every direction, lend a vision of enchantment, rarely equalled, to the eye of the passenger, borne along upon the bosom of the deep. It presents the aspects of nature, in all her chasteness, untouched, inviolate; and when the wind is lulled, and the face of the waters becomes a sea of glass, it is nature’s holiest sabbath; and seems to forbid the approach and trespass of the dashing engine, which rushes forward in fury and envy of the scene; while the passenger, wrought to ecstacy in contemplation of the novel exhibition, shrinks back within himself involuntarily, as if in fear of some sudden retribution from above, for the daring violation of this sacred retreat of nature’s repose. In a mood like this, the stranger enters the river of Detroit, almost level with its banks, fancies he hears the thunders of old Maldon, (a British fort on the Canada side at the mouth of the river), gazes at the mean and sordid huts of the unambitious French, (for however unexpected the announcement, there are no people in the world more distant from ambition, than the French of Canada),—admires the lightness and celerity, which characterize the movements of the Indian canoe, filled with copper-coloured faces and uncovered heads, and darting up and down and across the stream, in obedience to the paddles, which enter the water so still and with so little apparent effort, as scarcely to disturb the surface;—and soon finds himself laid in the docks of a busy and flourishing port, presenting handsome streets and handsome steeples, itself the ancient seat of Indian war and Indian romance, identified and connected with a history like romance.
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY OF DETROIT, &c.
Detroit has long been regarded as the limit of civilization towards the north-west—and to tell truth, there is even yet but little of the character of civilization beyond it. As may be seen from the map, it rests upon the west side of the strait, or river, which connects Lake Huron with Lake Erie; about ten miles below that small extension of the strait, called Lake St. Clair; and twenty miles above the north shore of Lake Erie, towards its western extremity. This town, or commercial port, is dignified with the name, and enjoys the chartered rights, of a city; although its population at present does not exceed three thousand. The banks of the river above and below the city are lined with a French population, descendants of the first European traders among the Indians, in that quarter; and extending from Lake Erie to Lake St. Clair, increasing in density, as they approach the town, and averaging perhaps one hundred per mile.
The city of Detroit dates its history from July 1701. At that time M. de la Motte Cadillac, with one hundred men, and a Jesuit, carrying with them every thing necessary for the commencement and support of the establishment meditated, reached this place. “How numerous and diversified,” says a public literary document, “are the incidents compressed within the history of this settlement! No place in the United States presents such a series of events, interesting in themselves, and permanently affecting, as they occurred, its progress and prosperity. Five times its flag has changed—three different sovereignties have claimed its allegiance, and since it has been held by the United States, its government has been thrice transferred. Twice it has been besieged by the Indians, once captured in war, and once burned to the ground.”
It should be observed, that the French trading ports, on the Upper Lakes, preceded the settlement of Detroit by nearly fifty years; that as early as 1673 they had descended the Mississippi, as far as the Arkanses; and that in 1679 Robert de la Sale penetrated through the Delta of the Mississippi, and saw its waters mingle with the Gulf of Mexico. Then was the interesting and vast conception formed and matured, of establishing a cordon of posts from Quebec, by way of the Upper Lakes and the Mississippi, to the Mexican seas—an enterprise, which, considering the age and the obstacles, both physical and moral, may proudly take rank with any thing done in later days.
What child, whose vernacular tongue is English, has not listened to Indian story with an intensity of interest, which he can never cease to cherish; and with expectation of something new and newer still, from the wildness and fierceness of savage enterprise? Where is the man, however grave with philosophy and bowed with the weight of years, however accustomed to things prodigious, whose ear will not bend to the promise of him, who announces an untold page of Indian warfare? He who is read in the strifes of civilized nations, can easily anticipate the modes and the results, even of Napoleon’s campaigns. But he who follows the track of the savage, thirsting for blood, expects some new development of stratagem and cruelty, at every turn.
Like Tecumseh, whose name signifies a tiger crouching for his prey, a man great in council and in war; and who bore the commission of chief of the Indian forces, in the British army in the late war;—like him, the Ottawa chieftain, of the middle of the last century, gave demonstration of a spirit, which in other circumstances, might have left him a name, not inferior to Alexander, or Cesar, or Napoleon. It is sufficient to say, that in 1763, a time of profound peace, Pontiac had attained such influence and supremacy over all the Indian tribes, spread over those extensive regions, as to have united them in a grand confederacy for the instantaneous extinction of all the European posts along a thousand miles of frontier; and that he actually succeeded, so far as to cut off, almost simultaneously, nine out of twelve of these military establishments. The surprise of Michillimackinack, one of these stations, is narrated in the following manner, by the document above quoted: