Chapter 18 - Wyandotte Wyandotte City Website Ken Munson, Wyandotte, Images of America The Detroit River has shaped the history of Wyandotte, one of the Downriver communities along its banks, as distinctively as the other Downriver communities. Wyandotte is located about 11 miles south of Detroit, with Southgate defining its western boundary, Lincoln Park the northwest boundary, Riverview the southern parameter, and Ecorse the northern boundary. Wyandotte lies across the Detroit River from LaSalle, Ontario. A pioneering industrial and an ethnically diverse city, according to 2010 Federal Census figures Wyandotte has a population of 25,883 people. Maguagua, the First Wyandot Village The villages of the Native American tribe called the Wyandot hugged the banks of the Detroit River like fog mists decades before the area became Ecorse Township and later the village and city of Wyandotte. The story of Wyandotte is intertwined with a Native American tribe called the Wyandot or Wendat, part of the Huron nation originating in the Georgian Bay region of Canada. The Wyandot and the French had coexisted since the 16th Century, and the Wyandot had adopted many of the French customs, including building wooden frame houses.1 About 1732, the Wyandot established a village that they called Maguagua on the present day site of Wyandotte, its center closely paralleling Biddle Avenue between Oak Street and Eureka Road. The village was situated on the high banks of the Detroit River untouched by marshy wetlands, and featuring sandy loam soil good for farming. The Detroit River provided clean water and good fishing, and also made an easy canoe highway to Canada for the Wyandotte who wanted to visit their friends and relatives in their village in the Amherstburg region of Canada. Dense forests covered the land surrounding the Detroit River which sheltered animals and provided good hunting for the Indians. The Wyandot built large wood-frame houses called longhouses that they covered with sheets of bark. A single longhouse could measure 150 feet long and shelter an entire clan of up to 60 people. In some areas the Wyandot built log cabins for homes. George Clark, publishing his Recollections in Michigan Pioneer Collections, wrote that Wyandotte was an Indian village with a number of houses, small orchards, and corn fields. He said that several families lived in the houses, after arriving from other states and that Wyandotte was a noted crossing and landing place for the Indians, with their trails branching off into the country. He reported that his family rented a house for a few years and then moved into a house which stood on the brink of the river, just below the present shipyard. The house was a hewed log one, standing between present day Plum and Grove Streets, and it was “said to have belonged to Blue Jacket.” 2 The Wyandot called their village Maguagua which the local French, farming their ribbon farms, translated to Monguagon. Wyandot Chief Walk-in-the-Water, whose totem sign was the turtle, lived in an immense lodge outside Maquaqua on what is now the west side of Biddle Avenue. Wyandot canoes paddled the Detroit River as a trade highway to the fort at Detroit and an administrative highway to conduct their government and political affairs in their main village at Gibraltar, which served as the Council House headquarters and a site for International Council Fires. Many Wyandot villages had reinforced walls or palisades around them for protection from enemies including their traditional Iroquois enemies, but Maquaqua did not have a wall or palisades around it. The Detroit River highway didn’t bring their long standing Iroquois enemies to the unpalisaded village of Maquaqua, but the River did bring increasing numbers of white farmers seeking land and new lives. After unwillingly-because of treaty obligations- fighting with the Potawatomi against the English, the Wyandot Indians traded with the white farmers and lived peacefully alongside them. French, British, and American settlements overflowed onto Indian lands and in 1818, the Wyandotte signed a treaty with the United States government ceding their lands along the Detroit River. The United States government negotiated a treaty with 1 W.C. Butterfield in An Historical Account of the Expedition against Sandusky under Col. William Crawford wrote that “of all the savage allies of Great Britain in the West, the Wyandots were the most powerful. This arose not so much number of their warriors, as from their superior intelligence. Their long association with the French at Detroit, and, after that post fell into the possession of Great Britain, with its later occupants, had advanced them in many respects over the surrounding nations.” ______ Butterfield, C. W. An Historical Account of the Expedition Against Sandusky Under Col. William Crawford In 1782. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co, 1873. print. (164-5) 2 Recollections, George Clark, Michigan Historical Collections, Volume I. the Wyandot, giving them lands on the Huron River near Flat Rock. The relentless westward advance of the whites continued, causing the Wyandot to move to Ohio, Kansas, and finally to Indian Territory, later to become the state of Oklahoma.3 Tradition has it that after the Wyandot left their village white settlers coming into the area used their empty log cabins. When John Clark, a New York merchant, and his family came to Wyandot village in 1818, he and his family moved into a vacant log cabin standing between modern Plum and Grove Streets, near the Detroit River. Chief Blue Jacket had supposedly lived in the cabin.4 Before Ecorse Became a Township and Wyandotte a Village, the Land Lured New Settlers Before Ecorse became a township and Wyandotte a village, the prospect of affordable land lured a steady stream of setters, many from New England and New York to Michigan Territory. Many of them were veterans of the War of 1812, claiming lands the United States government had awarded them for their service. Others were farmers in search of farm land. All of them bought land that the Wyandot had sold to the government. This virgin farm land at reasonable prices attracted new settlers like the clear Detroit River attracted sparkling sunlight reflections and fish. Three advertisements in the Detroit Gazette reveal the variety and amount of land for sale. The Detroit Gazette of August 1, 1817, advertised: For Sale One Section, No.555, of most excellent land on Grosse Isle, on the west side of the island. George McDougall, Agent for David S. McComb August 1, 1817 In 1820, to offset unfavorable reports about the suitability of Michigan Territory for settlement Lewis Cass, Michigan Territorial Governor, created an expedition of 42 men to survey the western part of Michigan Territory. The composition of the Lewis Cass Expedition revealed that the people involved were as diverse as the Michigan Territory resources that the Lewis Cass Expedition enumerated. Besides well know men like captain David Bates Douglass, Henry Schoolcraft, James Doty, Dr. Alexander Wolcott, Jr. and Charles C. Trowbridge, expedition members included Roy, a Frenchman, serving as a pilot on Lake Superior; Baptiste, a soldier serving as a cook; ten Canadian voyageurs who managed the canoes; ten United States soldiers serving as an escort; and ten Native Americans serving as hunters. The Cass Survey reported Michigan land rich in natural resources, suitable for farming and crisscrossed with convenient waterways for transportation. Steamships traversed Lake Erie, land offices opened Downriver and new federal roads opened up Michigan Territory to settlement.5 A July 6, 1820, notice advised the public that a land agency office has been opened at the office of the Surveyor of the Michigan Territory in the City of Detroit for the purchase, sale, or 3 Wyandot Indian Fact Sheet; Wyandot History. http://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/timeline/1534- 1842/ 4 Edwina De Windt. Proudly We Record. Wyandotte Rotary Club, 1955 5 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Volume XIII, 1895. exchange of lands public or private lying within this territory, the western districts of New York or Upper Canada, or the adjacent parts of the state of Ohio. Maps of the public lands with an accurate description of the soil and situation will be kept for examination; also a register or private lands, with plans of the same, offered for sale or exchange. Maps, charts, and plans, deeds, mortgages, and other articles of conveyance executed with accuracy and on short notice; also bills of sale of vessels, charter parties, protests, bills of lading, manifests, and shipping papers. Ball & Petit Detroit, July 6, 1820 The January 3, 1826 issue of the Detroit Gazette carried this advertisement: By virtue of an order of the Board of Trustees of the University of Michigan will be sold at Public auction, at the Council House in the City of Detroit, on Monday the 9th Day of January next, at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, a valuable tract of land situated on the River Detroit, at Maguagon, and adjoining the residence of Major Truax. The local situation of this tract renders it extremely valuable, fronting nearly four miles on the River, and the National Road passing directly across it. It is well worthy the attention of purchases. The terms of sale will be made known on the day of sale. John Hunt Thomas Rowland P. Lecuyer H.J. Hunt Detroit December 19, 1825 Ecorse Becomes a Township One of the original nine townships that the Michigan Territorial Legislature created by the act of April 12, 1827, Ecorse Township took its name from the Ecorse or Bark River, named by the French settlers for the birch bark that the Native Americans used to make their canoes and bark wigwams.6 The Wyandot village situated on the site of what is now Wyandotte served as a communication and trade crossroad for the Native Americans, with trails leading in various directions like the spokes of a trading and social wheel.