and sixpence. Ten beaver-skins were given for a stroud blanket, eight for a white blanket, two for a pound of powder, one for a pound of shot or ball, twenty for a gun, two for an axe of one pound weight, and one for a knife. The notes and coin of Quebec were sometimes seen at the lake posts, but not in sufficient quantity to be relied on for a uniform currency.

CONDITION AFTER THE SURRENDER OF THE POSTS.

It was a long time after this fertile but uncultivated territory came into the possession of the United States before its character was materially changed. The Canadian French continued to form the principal part of its population. The interior of the country was but little known except by the Indians and the traders, who explored it in the pursuit of furs. As the effect of transferring the jurisdiction from France to England had been little more than to change the garrisons from French to English, and to give to the Hudson's Bay Company a monopoly of the fur-trade, so its surrender to the United States produced but little alteration in its general features. As the Indian title was not fully extinguished, no lands were brought into market, and, consequently, the settlements proceeded but very slowly.

In the division of the Northwestern Territory, what is now the State of Michigan constituted a single county, which received the name of Wayne. It sent one representative to the Legislature of the Northwestern Territory, which was held at Chilicothe. A Court of Common Pleas was organized for the county, and the general court of the whole territory sometimes met at Detroit. No roads had as yet been constructed through the interior, nor were there any settlements except on the frontiers. The habits of the people were essentially military, and but little attention was paid to agriculture except by the French peasantry. In winter they drove their carrioles over the ice with their Canadian ponies that were of Norman stock, many of which are now to be seen in this country; and in summer they employed small wooden carts, well adapted to the state of the roads, for the carriage of their goods-vehicles that are still used.

The county continued to send a representative to the General Assembly of the Northwestern Territory at Chilicothe until 1800, when Indiana was erected into a separate territory; and two years afterward it was annexed to this new-formed territory, and remained under its jurisdiction until 1805. In the month of January of that year it was erected into a separate territory, and William Hull was appointed the first governor. The system of government was somewhat peculiar, the executive power being confided in the governor, the judicial in three judges, who were authorized to "adopt and publish" laws suited to the territory, and not incompatible with the ordinance of 1787, and the legislative power was exercised by the two jointly. On the 25th of July of that year the territory was divided into three districts, namely, Erie, Huron, and Michilimackinac, for each of which a court was established, to be held by one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the territory, with exclusive jurisdiction in criminal matters, and also in all civil cases above the sum of twenty dollars, those below this sum being cognizable by justices of the peace. A few years afterward it was divided into counties, in each of which was organized a county court. The laws thus introduced were, as might be expected, crude and ill-digested, as is abundantly attested by the records of the courts at that period, which are still preserved.

General Hull, when he arrived at Detroit to assume his official duties as governor of the territory, found the town in ruins, it having been destroyed

by fire. Whether this disaster had been occasioned by accident or design was not known. However this may have been, as the town was very compact, covering only two acres of ground, and the materials were of the most combustible nature, it was soon entirely consumed, and the unfortunate inhabitants were obliged to encamp in the open fields, almost destitute of food and shelter. Still they were not discouraged, and soon commenced rebuilding their houses on the same site. The General Government also took their case into consideration, and an act of Congress was passed, granting to the sufferers the site of the old town of Detroit, and ten thousand acres of land adjoining it.

A judiciary system was now adopted, and the territorial militia were organized. In October of the same year a report was made to Congress of the condition of the territory, and in May of the following year a code of laws was adopted similar to those of the original States. This code was signed by Governor Hull, Augustus B. Woodward, and Frederick Bates, judges of the territory, and was called the "Woodward Code." The bounds of the territorial government, as then established, embraced all the country on the American side of the Detroit river, east of a north and south line drawn through the centre of Lake Michigan.

The Indian land-claims had been partially extinguished previous to this period. By the treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785, and that of Fort Harmar in 1787, extensive cessions had either been made or confirmed, and in the year 1807 the Indian titles to several tracts became entirely extinct.

In consequence of the settlements which had been made under the French and English Governments, some confusion sprang up in regard to the titles to valuable tracts that were claimed by different individuals under the French laws. Congress accordingly passed an act establishing a board of Commissioners to examine and settle these conflicting claims; and in 1807 another act was passed, confirming to a certain extent the titles of all such as had been in possession of the lands then occupied by them from the year 1796, when the territory was surrendered, down to the date of that act. Other acts were subsequently passed, extending the same conditions to the settlements on the upper lakes.

In addition to their settlements along the shores of the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, and the lake of the latter name, where there was a continued line of cottages, with farms adjoining, containing orchards of pear and apple trees, planted, probably, in the reign of Louis XIV., and the old posts on the island of Mackinaw, at Ste. Marie and at St. Joseph, the French colonists had a line of cabins on the river Raisin, where the city of Monroe (then called Frenchtown) now stands. The interior of the country was but little known except by those who were engaged in the fur-trade, and these were interested in representing it in as unfavorable a light as possible. The Indian titles to the land had been but partially extinguished, and no portion of the public domain had yet been brought into market. But few American settlers had therefore ventured into this region, though the adjoining State of Ohio had already acquired a considerable population.

The distance of this territory also, and the unsettled state of affairs along the western borders of the lakes, necessarily prevented immigration. On the opposite shore there was a jealous foreign power, and the interior of the country was occupied by different savage tribes. The territory, too, had but just emerged from an Indian war, and another was evidently preparing. This third Indian confederacy was not only countenanced by the English, but directly instigated by them. The motives which led to it, and

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the means employed to bring it about, were the same as had proved successful in exciting the former insurrections under Pontiac and the Little Turtle. The old story was revived, that the Americans were about to drive the Indians from their lands that they might occupy them themselves. The chief projectors of this savage league were Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet.

The warlike leader of the enterprise was Tecumseh, while the Prophet, whose Indian name was Elkswatawa, was to operate on the minds of the savages by means of superstition, and to excite in them a spirit of fanaticism still more to inflame their natural ferocity.

The disaffection of these tribes was certainly what might have been expected. They saw a new power encroaching upon the inheritance that had been handed down to them from their ancestors, introducing their hated cultivation upon their soil, and rudely disturbing the graves of their dead. It was not difficult, therefore, to unite them in one last desperate struggle to resist this aggressive and threatening power.

Their titles had been only very partially extinguished, and they complained, that where this had been done, the treaties had been unfairly conducted; that the Indians had been deceived; that they were in a state of intoxication at the time they signed away their lands, and that, even under these circumstances, only a part of the tribes had given their consent. The dissatisfaction thus existing among them was artfully fomented by the agents of the Northwest Company, who foresaw that if the Americans were permitted to occupy this country they would be cut off from a valuable portion of their trade; while the English Government, which had ceded away this extensive tract without any very definite notions of its importance or extent, looked with complacency on any attempts made by the savages to retain it in their hands. An overreaching spirit had doubtless actuated many of the pioneer settlers of the West, and wrongs had been inflicted upon the Indians which required correction. Taking advantage of this, the traders, and the English generally, were indefatigable in sowing the seeds of discontent among the savage tribes; and it was contended that they should hold the undisturbed possession of the Northwestern Territory, without surrendering the right of pre-emption to the United States.

The Prophet commenced his mission among the tribes in 1806. Taking advantage of the superstitious notions of the Indians, he told them that the Great Spirit had appeared to him in a dream, and appointed him his agent upon the earth; and that, as such, his own tribe, the Shawanese, being the oldest tribe of the West, he was commanded to direct them to form a general confederacy against the United States. He had been instructed also, he said, to proclaim to the red men that it was the will of the Great Spirit that they should throw away the arts of civilization, return to their skins for clothing, and to their bows and war-clubs for arms, renounce the intoxicating drinks of the white men for pure water, and, in a word, resume all the customs of their ancestors. The Americans, he said, had driven the Indians from the seacoast, and were now preparing to push them into the lakes, so that they had no alternative but to make a stand where they were, and drive back these insatiable intruders to the other side of the Alleghany Mountains.

The plan of this league was in many respects similar to that formed by Pontiac. Tecumseh's intention was to surprise the posts of Detroit, Fort Wayne, Chicago, St. Louis, and Vincennes, and to unite all the tribes from the borders of New York to the banks of the Mississippi.

As early as the year 1807, the Shawanese chief and his brother, the Pro

phet, were actively engaged in sending their emissaries, with presents and war-belts, to the most distant tribes, to induce them to join in the confederacy; and when the comet appeared in 1811, the latter artfully turned it to account, by practising on the superstitions of the savages. Thus the fame and the influence of the Prophet spread rapidly among the tribes of the Northwest.

On the 4th of May, a special mission, consisting of deputies from the Ottawas, was sent to a distant post upon the borders of Lake Superior, and a grand council being there assembled, it was addressed by Le Marquoit, or Trout. He told the Indians that he had been sent by the messenger and representative of the Great Spirit, and that he was commissioned to deliver to them a speech from the "first man whom God had created, said to be in the Shawanese country."

He then informed them what were the instructions of the Great Spirit in the succeeding address: "I am the father of the English, of the French, of the Spaniards, and of the Indians. I created the first man, who was the common father of all these people as well as of yourselves, and it is through him, whom I have awaked from his long sleep, that I now address you. But the Americans I did not make. They are not my children, but the children of the Evil Spirit. They grew from the scum of the great water when it was troubled by the Evil Spirit, and the froth was driven into the woods by a strong east wind. They are numerous, but I hate them. My children, you must not speak of this talk to the whites; it must be hidden from them. I am now on the earth, sent by the Great Spirit to instruct you. Each village must send me two or more principal chiefs, to represent you, that you may be taught. The bearer of this talk must point out to you the path to my wigwam. I could not come myself to L'Arbre Croche, because the world is changed from what it was. It is broken and leans down, and as it declines the Chippewas and all beyond will fall off and die; therefore, you must come to see me and be instructed. Those villages which do not listen to this talk will be cut off from the face of the earth."

It was by such means that the savages were roused to attack the frontier settlements of the West, and afterward to unite with the English in their war with the United States. In consequence of these menacing movements of the Indians, it was considered advisable to construct a stockade around the town of Detroit for its defence. The population was as yet small. There had been, indeed, up to that time but little to encourage the settlement of the country. The land had not been offered for sale, and a great portion of Western New York was still unoccupied: not a single steamer navigated the lakes, nor had any roads been made into the interior.

Nor was the neighborhood of Detroit without symptoms of Indian disaffection. In September, 1809, a special council of the Hurons was called near Brownstown, and, at the instigation of their principal chief, Walk-inthe-Water, they freely spoke of their grievances to Governor Hull. The speech addressed by this chief to the governor, setting forth the title of his tribe to a large tract of territory near the mouth of the Detroit river, which was claimed by the United States under the treaty of Greenville, shows how much dissatisfied they were with this treaty, and with the encroachments of the Americans upon their soil. In the midst of all these evidences of discontent on the part of the Indians, Michigan remained in a comparatively defenceless state. There were at this time in the whole territory but nine settlements of any importance; nor was the character of the population at these points such that it could be expected to oppose any very active resistance in the conflict which seemed to be approaching.

These settlements were situated on the rivers Miami and Raisin, on the Huron of Lake Erie, on the Ecorce, Rouge, and Detroit rivers, on the Huron of St. Clair, the St. Clair river, and the island of Mackinaw; and, in addition to these, there was here and there a group of huts belonging to the French fur-traders. The villages upon the Maumee, the Raisin, and the Huron of Lake Erie contained a population of about thirteen hundred; the post of Detroit and the settlements on the rivers Rouge and Ecorce and on the Huron of St. Clair numbered two thousand two hundred; the island of Mackinaw, with the small detached log-houses, about a thousand; Detroit was garrisoned by ninety-four men, and Mackinaw by seventy-nine. Thus the entire population of the State was only about four thousand eight hundred, four-fifths of whom were Canadian French, and the remainder chiefly Americans, with a few English and Scotch.

As there was no longer any doubt of the hostile intentions of the savages, it was deemed prudent to present a memorial to Congress, setting forth the defenceless condition of the territory and praying for aid from that body. Accordingly, on the 27th of December, 1811, such a petition was drawn up, signed by the principal inhabitants of Detroit, and forwarded to Washington.

The joint efforts of Tecumseh and the Prophet were successful in drawing a large body of Indians, probably not less than eight hundred, from the shores of Lake Superior to the station of the latter at Tippecanoe, though it is supposed that one-third of their number died of want and hardship on the way. Their plans were now nearly ripe for action, and parties of the Ottawas, the Miamis, the Chippewas, the Wyandots, the Mississagies, the Shawanese, and the Winnebagoes were to be seen with their bodies painted for war, and again seizing the hatchet.

The first hostile demonstrations were made against the French settlements, where bands of strange warriors made their appearance, armed for battle, and painted in the most hideous manner, with feathers stuck in their hair, and strings of bears' claws about their necks, entering the houses by force, taking whatever they chose, and wantonly destroying with their tomahawks the beehives in the gardens of the settlers. Near the banks of the Kalamazoo, in the county of the same name, a smith's forge had been set up, where hatchets and knives were made for the approaching contest: and at no great distance from it, in a retired spot, surrounded by a dense forest, the Indian women, with their children, had collected, for the purpose of raising corn to furnish a supply of food for the warriors.

Still more flagrant acts of aggression were perpetrated in the State of Indiana, where numerous murders were committed, and horses and other property stolen. It had been for some time noticed that the savages were collecting about the Prophet's station, apparently with no friendly design. A conference was therefore held, in which it was insisted that these hordes should be made to return to their homes, that the property which had been stolen from the Americans should be restored, and that the murderers should be given up.

Tecumseh, on his part, denied that any league, such as was complained of, had been formed, and protested that he and his brother had no other object in collecting the tribes together but to strengthen the amicable relations between them, and to improve their moral condition. In regard to the murderers of the whites, who were alleged to have taken refuge among his tribe, he denied that they were there, saying, at the same time, that even if they were they ought to be forgiven, as he had forgiven the whites who had murdered his own people in Illinois.