CHAPTER XIII.

ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR CASS.

GENERAL CASS was made permanent Governor of Michigan Territory, and William Woodbridge, of Marietta, Ohio, was appointed Secretary. Mr. Atwater, who had left Detroit immediately after the surrender, never came back. The Judges retained their offices until the change in their tenure, created in 1823, by the act re-organizing the Territory.

The war had scattered the people, and the population had fallen away considerably. It was not until peace was finally declared that the country was entirely relieved from the ravages of the hostile Indians. While most of them had made peace, and behaved reasonably well, the Saginaw band of Kishkaukon was very troublesome. Murders and outrages were committed in the immediate neighborhood of Detroit, and within its corporate limits. The people, when they had a chance to reach the aggressors, followed them up vigorously. General Cass acted in these emergencies with great energy, and went out in person with the volunteers to chastise the marau

CHAP. XIII.]

PEACE WITH INDIANS.

377

ders. After the failure of the Mackinaw expedition, no further attempt was made in that quarter till the treaty of peace. Fort Gratiot, built at the place once occupied by Fort St. Joseph in the 17th century, was intended, like that, to control the passage to and from Lake Huron, as the northern Indians generally travelled in their canoes through the River St. Clair.

into

On the 22nd of July, 1814, Generals Harrison and Cass made a treaty at Greenville, between the United States and the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanoes and Senecas on the one side, and the Miamis, (known as the Miami Eel River and Weea tribes) and a portion of the Potawatamies, Ottawas, and Kickapoos, whereby it was agreed they should all make peace, and enter alliance with the United States, acknowledging their supremacy. On the 8th of September, 1815, Harrison, McArthur, and John Graham, made peace with all of those tribes, as well as with the Chippewas, residing in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. This was not signed by very many of the Chippewa or Ottawa chiefs. Okemos signed it as a chief of the Ottawas.

The treaty of peace with Great Britain did not put an immediate end to the bad feeling. This stipulated for the immediate restoration of all places captured, with all papers, public and private, and for determining, by commissioners, the boundary line in those waters where the position of islands or other difficulties made it

378

BORDER VEXATIONS.

[CHAP. XIII.

doubtful, and pledged each government to place the Indians where they were in 1811.

The British officers near Detroit paid no attention to the boundary lines, but pursued deserters into the United States, and on some occasions undertook to assert jurisdiction over American citizens on Grosse Ile and in American waters. An Indian was killed at Grosse Ile in the act of attempting to murder an American, and the commanding officer at Malden, Colonel James, directed an inquest, and offered a reward for the person who killed him. Governor Cass at once issued a proclamation enjoining the proper assertion and protection of American jurisdiction. Colonel Butler, commanding at Detroit, had also occasion to hold a sharp correspondence with Colonel James, concerning various infractions of right. In addition to other grievances, it was understood that Mackinaw was not likely to be surrendered, and that the Indians (which probably meant Dickson and the traders) meant to hold it. Malden was retained until such arrangements were made as ensured the delivery of Mackinaw. On the first of July, 1815, Malden was turned over to the British, and an American force sailed for Mackinaw, and took possession.

But the distance from headquarters, or some other cause, rendered some of the British officers in this region extremely insolent, and for a year or two there were continued aggressions. The American navy on Lake Erie had been dismantled,

CHAP. XIII.]

SEARCH OF LAKE VESSELS.

379

and the naval officers at Malden, in 1816, undertook to visit and search American vessels, under pretext of looking for deserters, thus renewing on the lakes the outrages which had led to the war. General Cass, on being informed of these insults, wrote a strong letter to the Malden officials, and laid the matter before the authorities at Washington, where no doubt the acts were repudiated, as they were not repeated, and were probably excesses of instructions and mere private impertinence. The intrigues with the Indians were kept up, both about Detroit and in the north, and American territory was used in that region for purposes very unfriendly to the United States. The trading companies paid no heed whatever to law or international obligations. It was not until two Indians were hung for murder at Detroit, instead of being as usual despatched in more summary fashion, that a full check was put to their outrages in that neighborhood.

The first necessity of the country was more people. No lands had been surveyed before the war, except the old private claims. In 1812, among other war legislation, an act was passed setting aside two millions of acres of land in Michigan, as bounty lands for soldiers. As soon as the war was over, and circumstances permitted, Mr. Tiffin, the Surveyor General, sent agents to Michigan to select a place for locating these lands. Their report was such as to induce him to commend the tranfer of bounty locations to some

380

REPORT ON BOUNTY LANDS.

[CHAP. XIII.

other part of the United States. They began on the boundary line between Ohio and Indiana, (which was the western limit of the lands surrendered to the United States by the Indian treaty of 1807,) and, following it north for fifty miles, they described the country as an unbroken series of tamarack swamps, bogs and sand-barrens, with not more than one acre in a hundred, and probably not one in a thousand, fit for cultivation. Mr. Tiffin communicated this evil report to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, Josiah Meigs, and he and the Secretary of War, Mr. Crawford, secured the repeal of so much of the law as applied to Michigan. They were stimulated by a second report of the surveyors, who found the country worse and worse as they proceeded. In April, 1816, the law was changed, and lands were granted, instead, in Illinois and Missouri.

This postponed settlements, but it saved Michigan from one of the most troublesome sources of litigation which has ever vexed any country. It was in that way a benefit. But the report of the surveyors is one of the unaccountable things of those days. Surveyors are usually good judges of land, and not likely to be deceived by the water standing on the surface of the ground, where the nature of the vegetation shows the soil cannot be marshy or sterile. A few instances have been found in our Territorial and State experiences, where surveyors made imaginary sketches of large tracts, and returned them as actual surveys, when