Mackinac State Historic Parks
Mackinac Island, Michigan
ISBN-0911872-05-1
Private
BRITISH 60th FOOT ROYAL AMERICANS
Copyright © 1960 by The Fort Mackinac Division Press
Printed in the United States of America by Harlo Printing Co., Detroit Michigan
Third Printing, 1969 15,000 copies
Fourth Printing, 1974 15,000 copies
Fifth Printing, 1984 10,000 copies
Sixth Printing, 1993 5,000 copies
Seventh Printing, 2001 3,000 soft cover—1,500 hard bound
Introduction
On September 28, 1761, a year after France’s vast North American empire had been surrendered to the British at Montreal, Canada, the flag of Great Britain was raised over Fort Michilimackinac, far to the west at what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan. A force under Major Robert Rogers, leader of the almost legendary Rogers’ Rangers, had reached Detroit in 1760 and had taken control of that post, but the coming of winter had compelled the British to wait until the following year to take over the other French outposts in the upper Great Lakes.
Although Major Rogers later was to serve as commanding officer at Michilimackinac, the red-coated troops who marched into the little stockaded fort on the south shore of the straits connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan were commanded by Captain Henry Balfour. He found that the French garrison had departed for the west months before, leaving the fort in charge of Charles Langlade, a native of the area who had fought brilliantly on the French side during the French and Indian War. Balfour was greeted by several enterprising Englishmen who had gotten a head start in the race to gain control of the lucrative fur trade which for so long had been monopolized by French traders at Michilimackinac.
After accepting the fort’s formal surrender and before leaving for the west, Balfour detailed a small force from the famous Royal American or 60th Regiment to remain as the garrison. Two years later, during the great Indian uprising of 1763, fierce Chippewa warriors massacred over half of the soldiers and temporarily drove the British out. But within a year they returned in greater numbers, and from then until 1781, when it was abandoned for a new, more easily defended post on Mackinac Island, Fort Michilimackinac was one of the key links in the chain of military and trading posts which Great Britain maintained on the western frontier of its American colonies.