CHAPTER XVII

GATEWAYS OF THE GREAT LAKES

The Great Lakes are entered from the outer world by a series of natural gateways extending from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the westernmost end of Lake Superior. With a shrewd instinct the savages selected these spots as the centres for their forest trails and as the crossing places over which they could carry their boats from river to lake and lake to river. At these points the French and English erected stockades and forts around which gathered small settlements. Americans, entering at the beginning of the nineteenth century into possession of the country, built there the towns and cities which to-day command the commerce of the Great Lakes. With the founding of these cities the period of permanent occupation begins.

The French approached the Great Lakes from Quebec and Montreal. Because of Iroquois hostility they avoided the southern route by Niagara and along Lake Erie, and ascended instead the Ottawa River, crossed Lake Nipissing, and passed through Georgian Bay into Lake Huron. At Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac they built their missions and trading posts. Here Marquette and Joliet heard tales of the great river to the south and the rich copper country to the west, and from these centres the French explorers started on their expeditions into Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Before the English had explored more than a narrow strip of seaboard the French were travelling up the Fox-Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi, or by way of the Chicago and Illinois rivers to the southern country. Returning parties often proceeded by way of the Kankakee River to the St. Joseph, or by the Wabash and the Maumee to Toledo on Lake Erie.

Frontenac saw the importance of occupying the strategic points on the lakes. He himself went up the St. Lawrence River and planted on the site of Kingston the fort that bore his name. He encouraged La Salle to build a trading post at Niagara, and did all in his power to gain Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for the French. Gradually the French succeeded in making their way eastward. They occupied the strait of Detroit, and built forts at Sandusky, Presque Isle (Erie), Niagara, Oswego, and Toronto. The English seized these forts and planted many more. When the Americans in their turn took possession, and Wayne’s treaty of Greenville gave, in 1796, some assurance of safety in the region, they sent out not only soldiers but colonists and settlers. Their story is the tale of the beginning of our modern civilization.

In the early days of the American Revolution, Congress suggested to the states that they should cede their claims to lands west of the Allegheny to the central government; but many years elapsed before the United States gained from the eastern states these cessions. Of all the states Connecticut had the best claim; in making its cession it reserved a triangular bit of country on the southern shore of Lake Erie, west of Pennsylvania, which was known as the Western Reserve. Before long a Connecticut land company bought three million acres in this tract at forty cents an acre, and in the spring of 1796 Moses Cleveland with fifty associates set out to plant on the shores of Lake Erie the colony of New Connecticut. They decided to found their first settlement at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which was the terminus of several trails, notably that which led to Akron, Ohio, and south to Marietta. At this spot, on the 22d of July, 1796, they began to build their houses, where stands to-day the city of Cleveland, and so rapid was the growth of this region that in four years’ time there were thirty-two settlements within the limits of the Connecticut Reserve.

Massachusetts ceded to the United States her claims to lands west of Pennsylvania, but retained her right to lands in what is now western New York. In 1788 she sold to a company of New Yorkers a large part of these lands, including the Genesee Valley. At this time there was but one white man’s cabin between Oswego and Fort Niagara. The falls of the Genesee attracted settlers, because there they could build mills for grinding corn and sawing lumber. Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, with three other Maryland gentlemen, purchased in 1802 one hundred acres at this point, including the site of this mill, and laid out a village, opening the sale of lots in 1811. He moved to his land in 1818, the little village was named after him, and before many years became a prosperous town.

Buffalo was founded by Joseph Ellicott, brother of the first surveyor-general of the United States. He laid out the town on the plan of Washington city, with broad, radiating avenues, and gave to them Dutch names, as Vollenhoven and Schimmelpennick, calling the village New Amsterdam. When the town was incorporated in 1810, the inhabitants renamed it Buffalo, according to the old Indian name for the creek which makes into the lake at this point. The prosperity of Buffalo and Rochester, and of Oswego, which was incorporated as a village in 1828, was assured by the building of the Erie Canal system in 1825.

In spite of her hundred years of history Detroit began life anew under American rule. In 1805 the town caught fire, and within four hours the old French settlement was gone. Of two hundred buildings within the stockade, only one was left standing. The newly elected officers of Ohio Territory reached Detroit the day after the fire to find the town wiped out, and in a few years the American Detroit was laid out and built up on the favorite plan of the city of Washington.

The western lakes had been the first to be approached by Frenchmen coming from the north; they were the last to be settled by Americans coming from the Atlantic seaboard. But when their importance came to be recognized their cities sprang up with amazing rapidity. By the treaty of Greenville the Indians ceded to the white men, along with other territory, “one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the Checagau River.” This spot had always been a centre for Indian tribes and for fur trade. In 1821 Governor Cass bought from the Indians this part of Illinois and the state of Michigan. Trade with the Indians attracted a few settlers to Chicago during the next few years, and in 1833 twenty-eight electors met and chose trustees to administer public affairs. They established a free ferry across the river, reconstructed and strengthened the log jail, and built for twelve dollars an estray pen for lost animals, and thus the town of Chicago began. Four years later it became an organized municipality with a population of four thousand. It was the centre of one of the land-booms which collapsed in the panic of 1837, and suffered for many years thereafter a succession of disasters. Floods swept the low ground on which the town was built, which has since been elevated; cholera, droughts, and financial panics came upon her but were unable to conquer. From the great fire of 1871 Chicago rose once more to justify the opportunities of her location and to become the leading city of the Great Lakes.

[Illustration: Map: “Gateways of the lakes” showing major cities along the shores of the five Great Lakes, including Duluth, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Toronto, Buffalo, Rochester, and Kingston]

The Black Hawk War opened up in 1832 the southern part of Wisconsin. Land along the Milwaukee River was purchased by the Indians, and in 1835 the first white owners began their homes. In the summer of 1836 there was a rush of immigration. Sixty buildings were put up in the seven months, and more would have been erected if lumber could have been obtained. Streets were graded, ferries established, and on July 14 the first number of the first newspaper of Milwaukee issued a call to “all good men and true” to assemble and petition the governor to appoint officers of law for the township. That winter seven hundred people stayed in the town, and three years later the canal from Rock River to Milwaukee made the town an eastern gateway for the trade of the new territory of Wisconsin, which was at that time notably wealthy in furs. In 1846 the town became a city.

Through the entire struggle for possession of the Great Lakes, Mackinac and Sault Ste. Marie had kept their positions as trading centres and points for military defence. No permanent settlement was made west of these posts for many years. Nearly two centuries before the city of Duluth was founded, Daniel Greyselon Du Luth was leader of an expedition organized by French merchants of Quebec and Montreal to trade with the Indians. In the course of his dealings with the tribes he held an important conference at the head of the lake, where a trading post was later established on land now a part of the city of Superior, Wisconsin, opposite the city of Duluth. This trading station was owned by the Northwestern Fur Company, and was an important meeting-place for white men and Indians. In 1826, on his second western trip, Governor Lewis Cass concluded at this Minnesota outpost a treaty with the Indians, giving to the United States the right to explore and carry away any minerals that might be found in the country bordering on the lake. To gain this important concession the commissioners determined to do all they could to impress the tribes with the power and majesty of the United States’ representatives. In barges from which the Stars and Stripes were gayly flying, and to the tune of “Hail Columbia,” played by a military band, the treaty-makers sailed into the harbor amid the shouts and cheers of the Indians on the shore. The treaty was signed, and later agreements also made on this spot gave to the government the remainder of the country. By 1850 there were permanent settlers at the head of the lake as well as lumbermen all along the St. Croix River. Congress appropriated in 1854 money to build a road to connect Lake Superior by the St. Croix Valley with the Mississippi River. The settlers at Superior, Wisconsin, were bitter rivals of those at Duluth. In order to be sure to get the road they cut a road southward from Superior to meet it and bring it out on the Wisconsin side of the St. Louis River. In this way Superior got the start of Duluth, but the latter was incorporated in 1857, and became before many years a prosperous city.

By the middle of the nineteenth century Duluth, the most remote gateway of the Great Lakes, had begun its history as a town. In 1825 Henry Clay, speaking on the bill to grant lands for the building of the Soo Canal, had mentioned these great waterways as “beyond the furthest bounds of civilization,--if not in the moon.” Six years later Edward Everett enunciated the principle of the future, declaring that “intercourse between the mighty interior West and the seacoast is the great principle of our commercial prosperity.” The cities of the Great Lakes--Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Duluth--recognized their opportunity to become the connecting links in this inevitable chain of intercourse. Their sites were strategic, but they had much to do to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing commerce. Their citizens were alert and eager to fulfil these demands. Buffalo gained her position as the terminus of the Erie Canal because public-spirited citizens gave bonds that her harbor should be improved. Every city spent large sums in constructing and improving her natural facilities. The fresh needs of every new decade have been met, and to-day the lake system is on the eve of even greater achievements.

These cities have a background of which they may well be proud,--a background of men who, in pioneer times of hardship and poverty, were men of prescience, of courage, and of action. To-day the six cities have a population of nearly four million people. United by their common bond of harborage on the Great Lakes, but situated in six states of the Union, these cities and their smaller neighbors are taking a prominent part in the nation. Men of vision and of energy still walk their streets, planning and guiding their present and future. Their sites are being beautified and improved; their social and economic problems are being solved; and they are keeping themselves fit gateways for the prosperous states they represent on the great inland seas of North America.