[SIGNATURES OF THE CHIPPEWA CHIEFS WHO, IN 1781, DEEDED THE ISLAND TO KING GEORGE III. FROM "MACKINAC," BY JOHN R. BAILEY, M.D., BREVET LIEUT.-COL. U.S.V., BY WHOSE KIND PERMISSION THEY ARE HERE REPRODUCED.]

This event led to the abandonment of the southern fort and the establishment of one on the Island.[6]

"It is now certain," writes Schoolcraft in 1834, "that the occupancy of Old Michilimackinack—the Beekwutenong of the Indians—was kept up by the British until 1774; between that date and 1780 the flag was transferred ... the principal trade went with it, the Indian intercourse likewise. Some residents lingered a few years but the place was finally abandoned, and the site is now covered with loose sand."

By the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, the Island was ceded by Great Britain to the United States. Possession was, however, withheld on one pretext or another, until 1796.

[FORT MACKINAC, AND THE CANNON CAPTURED BY COMMODORE PERRY.]

When the second war with England began, it was natural that one of the first points to be attacked should be the fort so commandingly situated. Far from all base of supplies and all possibility of rapid communication, the oft-repeated appeals of General Hull for an effective garrison at this and other important points were totally disregarded in Washington. Only fifty-seven soldiers were in residence in Mackinac when the British forces, 1021 strong, landed before dawn on the 17th of July, 1812, on a point nearly opposite St. Ignace. By eleven o'clock Captain Roberts sent a flag of truce, and a demand of surrender to Lieutenant Porter Hanks, who had had "no intimation" that a war between the powers had been declared until that moment. After considering the futility of resistance, and a consultation with the American traders in the village, with the valor which was ever bettered by discretion, he capitulated.

In August, 1814, an attempt was made to retake the Island. A battle was fought near the scene of the British landing two years before, in which battle Major Holmes and twelve privates were killed, and many men were wounded or missing. The routed Americans, under Colonel Croghan, withdrew to their ships. The Island finally passed into the keeping of the United States in 1815.

Then followed the great days of the fur companies, when the place was astir with a life so gay and vivid that only to hear of it stirs the blood of the untamed savage which centuries of the repressions of civilization have not routed from our hearts. Hundreds of hardy, ill-paid engagés, hundreds of happy-go-lucky, hard-working voyageurs and coureurs des bois and hundreds of Indians crowded into the hundreds of tents set up along the beach; into the log-houses of the primitive village, and into the huge barracks of the company, which counted and weighed the rich peltries they had gathered, paying them in return the miserable wages which in dancing, gambling, drinking, fighting, feasting and sleeping, were spent long before the bateaux freighted with the poor necessities for the fast-coming winter were again rowed out toward the wilderness, the brave chansons of the oarsmen growing fainter and fainter as the boats passed steadily out of sight.

[REV. ELEAZAR WILLIAMS. REPRODUCED FROM LATIMER'S "SCRAP BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION," BY PERMISSION OF A.C. McCLURG & CO.]

An incident but little known connects the Island with one of the great mysteries of history,—the fate of the little son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. That the Dauphin did not die in the Temple, but had been secretly conveyed to America and had been placed among the Indians, was believed by persons whose opinions were entitled to respect; but that he might be found in the person of the Rev. Eleazar Williams, a half-breed missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church among the tribes about Green Bay, was a supposition stranger than any fiction. The story is too long to tell here,[7] but as it touches Mackinac at a single point, it must have a line in this chapter.