Peculiarities of American Cities

by Willard W. Glazier

In 1701, La Motte Cadillac founded Detroit. He erected a military fort on the site of the future city, which he named after his French patron, Pontchartrain. It was surrounded by a strong stockade of wooden pickets, with bastions at each angle. A few log huts with thatched roofs of straw and grass were built within the enclosure, and as the number of settlers increased the stockade was enlarged, until it included about a hundred houses closely crowded together. The streets were very narrow, with the exception of a wide carriage road or boulevard which encircled the town just within the palisades. The object of the establishment of this military post was to aid in securing to the French the large fur trade of the northwest, and it was also a point from whence the early Jesuit fathers extended their missionary labors.

The little military colony was the centre of the settlement, and the Canadian dwellings were scattered up and down the banks above and below the fort for miles. The river almost washed the foot of the stockade—Woodbridge street being at that time the margin of the water—and three large Indian villages were within the limits of the settlement. Below the fort were the lodges of the Pottawattomies, on the eastern shore dwelt the Wyandots, and higher up Pontiac and the Ottawas had pitched their wigwams.

Fort Pontchartrain remained in the possession of the French until 1760, when, by the fall of Quebec, it fell into the hands of the British, and was surrendered to Major Robert Rogers on the twelfth of September. The Red Cross of St. George now supplanted the Fleur-de-lis of France, and the change to British rule was ill relished by the surrounding Indian tribes, who had been the firm friends and allies of the French. The well known Pontiac conspiracy grew out of this change of administration, and a general massacre of the whites was determined upon. Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, was the leading spirit of the bloody plot, and so well laid were his plans that ten out of the thirteen posts which were simultaneously attacked fell before their savage onsets. The post at Detroit, at that time under command of Major Gladwyn, was only saved through the timely betrayal of Pontiac's plot, by Catherine, a beautiful Ojibway girl, who dwelt in the village of the Pottawattomies, and who had become much attached to Major Gladwyn, of the Fort. The day before the intended massacre she brought him a pair of moccasins which she had made for him, and then revealed the intended surprise of Pontiac. The garrison and occupants of the fort were supported by two small vessels, the Beaver and the Gladwyn, which lay anchored in the river.

On the morning of May sixth, 1763, a large flotilla of birch canoes, filled with warriors lying flat on their faces, crossed the river above the Port, landing just beyond the banks of Bloody Run, or Parent's Creek, as it was then called. About ten o'clock, sixty chiefs, with Pontiac at their head, marched to the Port and demanded admittance. It was granted, but all preparation was made on the part of Gladwyn to repel the first sign of treachery. Every soldier was armed to the teeth, and the eagle eye of Gladwyn watched every movement of Pontiac, as that brave made a speech of mock friendship. When the savages discovered the failure of their plans, their disappointed rage knew no bounds, and after passing out of the gates of the Fort, their mad thirst for blood was only glutted by massacres of isolated families, and the tomahawk and scalping knife sealed the doom of many an unhappy victim who that day crossed the path of Pontiac's warriors.

From this hour Detroit was in a state of siege, and for eleven long months the siege continued. Bravely the little band at the Fort held out until reinforcements arrived—Captain Dalzell, with a force of three hundred regulars, coming to their aid. A few days afterwards—at two o'clock on the morning of July thirty-first—an attack was made on the Indians, who were stationed along the banks of Parent's Creek, about a mile and a half from the Fort. The troops neared the narrow, wooden bridge which spanned the creek, when suddenly, in the gloom of night, the Indian war-whoop burst on their ears, and a blaze of leaden death followed. Captain Dalzell rushed to the front across the bridge, leading his men forward, but their foes were not to be seen.

Bewildered in the gloom, the English troops were obliged to fall back to the fort and wait for daylight before renewing the attack. Hundreds of Indians lay in ambuscade along the river, whither the soldiers were obliged to pass on their way to the Fort, and the creek ran red with their blood. The waters of the little stream, after this crimson baptism, were re-christened with the name of Bloody Run. The survivors entered the Fort next morning with a loss of seventy killed and forty wounded.

During the war of the Revolution, Detroit was subjected to greater annoyance from Indian tribes than before, but this was the only way in which the war affected it. Through the treaty of Greenville, made by General Wayne with the red men, in August, 1795, Detroit and all the region of the northwest became the property of the United States, and in 1796 Captain Porter, from General Wayne's army, took possession of the post, and flung to the breeze the first American banner that ever floated over the soil of the Peninsular State.

"Pontiac's Grate" was the eastern entrance to the town, and occupies the site of the old United States Court House. In 1763, a rude chapel stood on the north side of St. Ann street—nearly in the middle of the present Jefferson avenue—while opposite was a large military garden, in the centre of which stood a block house, where all the councils with the Indians were held. These were the only public buildings in the town.

The "Pontiac Tree," behind which many a soldier took shelter on the night of the bloody battle at Parent's Creek, and whose bark is fabled to have been thickly pierced with bullets, stood as an old landmark for years, on the site of the ancient field of conflict, and many a stirring legend is told of it.

On June eleventh, 1805—just five months after Michigan was organized as a territory—Detroit was laid in ruins by a wholesale conflagration, which left only two houses unharmed. An act of Congress was passed for her relief, and thus, through baptisms of fire and blood, and through tribulation, has she arisen to her present proud estate. The stranger landing on these shores now is struck with the handsome general appearance of the city—its clean, wide streets, varying in width from fifty to two hundred feet—its elegant business blocks and pervading air of enterprise. The ground on which the city stands rises gradually from the river to an elevation of thirty or forty feet, thus affording both a commanding prospect and excellent drainage. Detroit is an authorized port of entry, and is about seven miles distant from Lake St. Clair and eighteen miles from Lake Erie. Ship and boat building has been an extensive branch of business here, and in 1859 there were nine steam saw mills located in the city, sawing forty million feet of lumber annually. There are also works for smelting copper ore two miles below the city, or rather within that suburban portion of the city known as Hamtramck.