CHAPTER X.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ACTIVE AMERICAN SETTLE

MENT.

MICHIGAN had great good fortune in her second territorial governor. Lewis Cass, born in New Hampshire, had settled at Marietta at the age of seventeen, and had had abundant opportunity to become thoroughly acquainted with the Northwest and its people. He was a lawyer of exceptional ability; he had been in the legislature of Ohio when the mysterious conspiracy of Burr excited and alarmed the country, and had drawn and procured the passage of a law to reach and punish such conspiracies. Afterwards he had served as marshal of Ohio, on the appointment of Mr. Jefferson. On the breaking out of war with Great Britain, he had entered into military service, with the ambition and courage to make the aggressive campaign which the country had expected of Hull. His severe condemnation of that officer, in a letter to the war department, had attracted the attention of the country, and been generally accepted as conclusive of Hull's criminality. Afterwards he had taken part in the brilliant campaign of Harri

son, which ended in the destruction of the British army in western Canada, the killing of Tecumseh, and the ignominious flight of Proctor. He had then been assigned to the command at Detroit and became military governor of Michigan. The president could have made no appointment of civil governor more likely to be useful or acceptable to the people.

The territory was also fortunate in its secretary. This office was of great importance, as the secretary, in the absence of the governor, would become acting governor ex officio. William Woodbridge was selected for this place, like Cass a lawyer of prominence at Marietta. The two men were as different as possible: the governor, a man of the world, of robust health and active temperament, fond of politics and a natural leader; the secretary, more frail and of a retiring disposition, and never so happy as when busy at his quiet home among his books. On political questions the two were commonly found in opposition, but there were no unseemly disagreements during the long time they held offices so mutually related, and their official intercourse was always decorous and agreeable, though they were never specially intimate.

The number of French farms, particularly on the river Detroit, had been slowly increasing. Secretary Woodbridge has left us a picturesque description of their appearance from the river as he came up to take possession of his office: the

THE FUR TRADE IN MICHIGAN.

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row of long and narrow farms, with cultivation only in front; the houses of one story, most of them from ten to eighty years old and fashioned a little like the houses of the low Dutch about New York; and the moss-grown crucifixes everywhere on gates, barns, and houses, this was what appeared on either side the river.

But it was still to be said of Michigan that its few settlements were far on the frontier, and that its leading interest was that which gathered its harvests in the wilderness. John Jacob Astor had appeared in the fur trade a little before the war, and had negotiated with the British fur companies for the purchase of their interests on the American side of the boundary, but the war had broken up the arrangements, and after it was over Congress, in his interest, passed a law prohibiting foreign traders from prosecuting their enterprises within the limits of the United States. This law, as a retaliatory measure, was perfectly just, for the British companies, by their organization and the manner in which they had employed it in the capture of Mackinaw, had given ample demonstration that they were capable of performing the service of a military force, and that they constituted an everpresent danger to the settlements. It was evident, also, that their interests were opposed to the settlement of the country; and if this fact did not prompt them to foster an unfriendly feeling on the part of the Indians towards the Americans,

it would without doubt keep alive an influence against further cessions of land by the Indian tribes. The exclusion of British fur dealers from American territory was, therefore, justifiable on sound reasons of public policy; and Mr. Astor as the American Fur Company, with his headquarters on the island of Mackinaw, soon had the woods full of savage and half savage people, working in his interest and gathering for him the forest treasures that soon made him one of the great merchant princes of the world.

The fur trade, however, could neither colonize Michigan nor enrich it. It brought some money and some goods into the territory and assisted in giving a certain activity to business at the centres of trade. But the period immediately following the war was one of great depression and general stagnation in business, and the derangement of the currency was such that losses from that source were constant and unavoidable. Steady progress and prosperity were impossible while this state of things continued.

Michigan also needed to be better known. The country knew almost nothing of it, and the common belief was that there was a fine belt of territory on the eastern border, but that the interior was a vast swamp which might well be abandoned to fur-bearing animals and the trappers and huntThis belief was countenanced by the geographers of the day; for even Morse, who was con

ers.

TREATMENT OF INDIANS.

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These

sidered authority, gave it currency in the books which were made use of in colleges and schools. It was supported also by the reports of surveyors who were sent out by the general government, and who reported without much investigation what they supposed to be the fact. A notable instance is that of the party who were charged with the duty of making surveys for bounty lands for the soldiers who had served in the late war. surveyors professed to have made an examination of the country, beginning at the northern terminus of the boundary line between Ohio and Indiana and proceeding thence north fifty miles; and they reported finding only tamarack swamps, bogs, and sand barrens, with not one acre in a hundred fit for cultivation; a most astounding report, and quite impossible to have been honestly made, if they had examined the country as they professed to have done. But it was conclusive for the time, and the soldiers were sent farther west for their bounty lands, not probably to their advantage.

Other causes besides ignorance of the country were delaying its settlement. Many Indians were still in the territory, whose presence was disquieting, and the governor deemed it of high importance that, so far as should be found possible, consistently with justice, they should be removed to the distant west. They had, now, in two wars been employed by the British against the Americans, and they were regular pensioners on British