by Tiya Miles
The content of Hull’s speech, as submitted by him to Thomas Jefferson, did not dwell on the Detroit area land cession. It did not have to, when the threat of extermination and removal was implicitly leveraged as context for the treaty negotiations. How broadly would the U.S. president interpret “hostile intentions” on the part of the gathered nations? Would agreement to the requested land sale insulate the tribes from deadly accusations of hostility? Certainly the gathered Native leaders must have thought so; they proved themselves unwilling to take the chance for the sake of their families. One Ojibwe leader who signed the treaty, and whose name is recorded as Pooquiboad in the proceedings, stated: “Our solemn determination is, never to raise the hatchet against the United States. We too well know the fatal consequences of it.”36 From the middle 1600s onward, indigenous people of the Great Lakes had fought valiantly and strategically for their homelands, autonomy, and relative positioning in a seemingly never-ending series of imperial wars. They knew the cost of losing in such battles, and many in the Ohio Valley had recently lost nearly all in the American revolutionary conflict and postwar campaigns of General Anthony Wayne. So William Hull was successful in achieving the Indian land cession desired by the president as well as propertied residents in Detroit. The negotiation that he viewed as utterly fair had been peppered with language steeped in threat.
The 1807 Treaty of Detroit is rarely mentioned in histories of Detroit, of Michigan, or of the Midwest, but it was critical to American officials’ plan for defending against British and Native aggression on the northern U.S. border and to Michigan territorial leaders’ hopes for fostering white settlement in the march toward statehood. This drawing of a broad boundary around the capital of Detroit and its environs set in place the pattern for the eventual relinquishment of most of what we now know as the state of Michigan by the early 1840s.37 The reduction of Native territorial sovereignty immediately around Detroit also had dire consequences for enslaved people who used indigenous spaces as routes of escape with the knowledge that slaveholders were unlikely to follow them there. The shrinkage of Native landholdings strengthened U.S. military positioning, flung the door wider for American settlement, and smoothed processes of surveillance and recapture for American slaveholders. A win for Governor Hull and U.S. settlers was a loss for Native people as well as for the enslaved.38
William Hull found that in Detroit success and setbacks followed one another like the tumbling waves of the lakes. While Native leaders had consented to sell hundreds of thousands of acres in the deciduous lands of southeastern Michigan, French Detroiters were resistant to the reassignment of land lots via government auction. The great fire and mass exodus from the immediate town site had left the settlement in disarray and thrown the ownership of private land, much of it purchased from Native people or allocated in the French colonial period, into confusion. The nearly sixty homeowners who used to live within the town walls had been displaced; farmers outside of the walls along the river worried about whether the United States would view their eighteenth-century claims as legitimate. Augustus Woodward had crafted a plan for the redesign of the town that was approved by Congress in 1806 but disliked by local residents, who objected, in part, to Woodward’s naming a main thoroughfare Woodward Avenue, after himself. (Woodward later denied this accusation, saying that he had named the street after the forests around Detroit. Only a portion of Woodward’s design, between Grand Circus and the river, was ever realized.)39 Governor Hull and Judge Woodward established a Land Board to hear residents’ claims and assign lots, then successively hired and lost three surveyors (then rehired the first) to plot out town lands. In addition to acreage within the town pickets that would be allotted to former residents who had lived there (at a small fee if lot sizes were larger than the originals), territorial leaders had gained permission from Congress to distribute by auction 10,000 acres north of the village to adult residents over the age of seventeen.40 Much of this new acreage had in the past been used as a commons by the townspeople, who shared the swath of cleared land surrounding the pickets for daily access and pasture land, and who likewise used the land of Hog Island (now Belle Isle Park) to let their livestock roam. U.S. officials in Washington saw this “quantity of vacant ground” around the walls as “valuable” federal land that could be sold. Detroiters complained in a formal memorial to Congress in 1808 and in a petition to the governor in 1811 about the loss of the public lands that had once been equitably shared by the community. Their petition specified that they wished to see the area “held by the inhabitants of the town forever as a commons.” In valuing communal use of the land, the descendants of Detroit’s oldest white settlers of the farming and working classes shared a view with Native people in the region diametrically opposed to the federal position that land should be sold for profit. The old settlers’ vociferous protests, rendered in French and in English, yielded no change in policy, however; the land would be divided and “liberally” sold, making lots available to newcomers, to British residents who had not even sworn allegiance to the United States, and, remarkably, to the “wives and slaves” of some former in-town homeowners. Some residents were dismayed and even offended, feeling that struggling farm families and working-class laborers lost the use of the commons unless they could meet the “humiliating conditions” of paying for it.41
George Winter, Pottawattamie Indians Crooked Creek Indiana, 1837. Winter sketched this scene of a Potawatomi community near Logansport, Indiana, in August 1837, prior to the group’s removal. Courtesy of Tippecanoe County Historical Association, Lafayette, Indiana.
The designation of land lots took decades to settle due to unceasing conflict. While American and British residents benefited from the new system, so too did individuals designated as their subordinates: current and former bondspeople. Among the recipients of deeds were several individuals described as “negro” or colored, including, Pomp (“a negro man”), Thomas Parker (“a negro . . . employed in the Hull family”), Pompey Abbott, Cato (“Dodemead’s Negro”), Harry and Hannah (“Dodemead’s negroes”), London and Mary (living at the Watsons’), Margrett (at the Voyers’ home), Susan and Nell (at Mrs. Abbott’s home), and Hannah (“Coate’s Negro”). Joseph Cooper, “a negro,” was noted as not having drawn a lot. This record of black land ownership demonstrates two interconnected, critically important facets of life for African American Detroiters in the early 1800s. They were eligible for in-town land and were hence treated as municipal residents on par with Anglo settlers. They were at the same time usually noted by first name only, designated by race, and attached by the use of possessive punctuation to white Detroiters. The Land Board record does not indicate whether these individuals were enslaved or free at the time. Some were certainly free by this period but particular individuals (like Pomp) appear as slaves in previous town records. Still others held an even more ambiguous status poised between slavery and freedom. Hannah, described as “Dodemead’s Negro” in the land records, had evaded John Dodemead’s claim to her in court in 1809. While John Dodemead had requested a writ of habeas corpus to hold Hannah, a “black woman,” and Thomas, a “Mulatto” boy (probably her son), several witnesses, including Elijah Brush and Solomon Sibley, testified that Dodemead had previously declared that the two “were not slaves of him or any other person.” Perhaps Dodemead had been involved with Hannah, had a child with her, and intended to free them before changing his mind. Since prominent witnesses were aware of his past declaration of the woman and child’s freedom, Dodemead was unable to retract it. Augustus Woodward decided in this case that Hannah and Thomas were “free persons” who must be “discharged out of the Custody of the Marshall of this territory and of Said John Dodemead.” The appearance of Dodemead’s name next to Hannah’s in the land grant entry suggests that black land recipients depended upon a connection with or patronage from past or present white owners and employers, regardless of how tangled or contentious such relationships might be. Another black woman, also named Hannah, may have had a mor
e constructive relationship with a patron, as she had the explicit help of Austin E. Wing, a Land Board official, in making her application. Significantly, Native people do not appear as designated by tribe or race in the Land Board lists.42 Mixed-race Native-French and Native-English town residents would be noted under their European surnames, and many other indigenous people had moved to different locations by the time these lots were assigned. The prominent Oneida woman trader, Sally (Sarah) Ainse, who had once owned a house and second lot in Detroit, had relocated to the Thames River in Upper Canada prior to the American assumption in 1787.43 And through the Treaty of 1807, most other free Native Detroiters had been red-lined, so to speak, outside the district through land cessions. While Governor Hull had made it a priority to build a stone Council House for trade and political meetings with the Indians in 1807, he did not wish to see those same Indians dwelling too near as neighbors.44
Even as the Native population within the town proper was dwindling, by 1810, rates of enslavement had also dropped dramatically in Detroit due to a bundle of factors. A number of black and Native bondspeople had been transported across the river by retreating British owners. The liquid international border, crossable by boat, was encouraging escape attempts. The ban on slavery legalized by the Northwest Ordinance made it more difficult to buy and sell human beings. In accordance with Judge Augustus Woodward’s decision in the Denison case, babies born to enslaved residents would now be free, and his decisions in the Pattinson and Elliott cases meant fugitives from Canada would also be treated as free people in Detroit. American Detroiters, such as the patrons in Richard Smyth’s tavern, began to connect slavery with a previous British colonial administration and supported black runaways as a means of distinguishing themselves from the British. But whether enslaved or free (a phrase containing a vast magnitude of difference), most of the black people in town were working for, living with, and viewed as possessions of white residents. As a result of this mix of multiple causes, the 1810 census enumerated forty-three “free colored” residents in Detroit Town proper and only four “slaves.” The tally for riverside suburbs totaled as follows: Cote du Nord-Est: six free colored; Cote de Poux: ten free colored and two slaves living within two slaveholding households; River Rouge: ten free colored and eight slaves living in two slaveholding households; Grand Marais: seven free colored and one slave; Grosse Pointe: three free colored and two slaves living in one slaveholding household. Several suburbs did not have residents listed in either of these categories. A tally of the census numbers indicates seventy-nine free people of color and seventeen enslaved people within a total population for the District of Detroit of 2,355.45 The 1810 census did not note the race of these enslaved individuals. The use of the term “Negro” so frequently in Land Board records suggests that most people within the categories of “free colored” and “slaves” were black or of mixed African descent. The population of enslaved Native Americans had dropped significantly since the 1790s, but several people categorized as “Panis” were still present into the first decades of the new century. The registry of Ste. Anne’s Church (which had lost its original site due to the fire and Woodward’s town plan that ran Jefferson Avenue straight through the burial ground) notes twenty-nine enslaved congregants between 1800 and 1810. Ten were black; fifteen were Native; one was “mulatto,” and three had no racial identifier noted.46 The term “mulatto” could indicate a person of mixed African descent of either white or indigenous parentage, and any of the non-identified individuals could have been indigenous.47 Even as the practice of slaveholding faded in the second decade of the American era, unfree indigenous people still outnumbered unfree blacks in Detroit.
Enslaved and free black residents in the town saw their position improved through a land allotment process that included them. But longtime French inhabitants were vocal critics of the American attempt to rebuild the old town through a regularized layout, the grid that now characterizes much of the Midwest. It seemed to them that newer arrivals, namely influential Americans, were being awarded the choicest lots along the river and closest to town. Elijah Brush was a case in point; he had procured the first available farmland east of town in 1807. In February of 1808, Elijah and his wife Adelaide sold a prize parcel to William Hull, who made a series of personal purchases from previous settlers, many of them French, between 1808 and 1811.48 But even as Governor Hull increased his wealth through land ownership and commissioned the first brick house in Detroit for his family, he operated in a state of constant conflict. Hull withdrew his previous support of Woodward’s newfangled town plan, and the two became political adversaries. Their argument over the black militia, which raged on from 1807 to 1811 and sparked Woodward’s testy missives to Hull’s superiors in Washington, contributed to the souring of their relationship. While Hull faced complaints from French residents and epistolary attacks from Woodward, he also contended with his wife’s anxiety about political tensions in Detroit. During one of William Hull’s trips to Washington in April of 1809, Sarah Hull wrote him a pointed letter that opened with the worrisome line: “My mind has been so agitated in thinking of the perplext situation you are placed in, that I find no relief but in writing. I shudder at the idea of you returning to Detroit, that never can be done with honour to yourself it is gone as much as if your commission was taken from you.” Sarah knew her husband was trapped. Detroiters did not like him, and federal officials were using him for their own political ends. “You have experienced enough of the treatment of this people already,” Sarah wrote of Detroit residents. And about government leaders in Washington, she warned: “the truth is they are the friends to Mr. Madison, not friend, to your character or interest.” Sarah wanted to see her husband “nominated to the senate” and perhaps dreamed of a life in relatively genteel Washington City. She resented influential politicians for not putting her husband forward, despite his sacrifice in traveling “through the wilderness” of the West and “render[ing] services to his country.” In large, dark lettering at the top of her final page, Sarah urged William to “Renounce all Politics Be Neuter.” In cautioning her husband to avoid political entanglement through a tactic of neutrality, Sarah went so far as to advise emigration: “if you cannot do this in America flee to some other part of the world, at least till a government arises that can estimate your talents and reward your virtue.” She concluded her sharp letter with the warm sentiment: “however disagreeable your situation is remember you have one friend that will devote her life to make you happy.”49 Sarah Hull’s missive was a Molotov cocktail of smart analysis and tough advice that recognized her husband’s tenuous position. Within a few short years, William Hull would wish that he had followed Sarah’s sage, if fiery, direction and left the leadership of Detroit to some luckier soul.
The Denisons on the Border
While Sarah and William Hull brooded over their unstable situation in Detroit, Hannah and Peter Denison had accomplished, by propulsion of unjust circumstances, just what Sarah Hull had recommended to her husband. The Denison family had moved to another country by crossing the river into Canada. In Sandwich, a town more modest than Detroit with “fifty log or frame houses built near the Old Huron Church, a small shipyard, two small wharves, and a small government warehouse,” the Denisons made a new home. Several former Detroiters loyal to the British Crown had reconvened there, sometimes referring to Sandwich as “South Detroit.”50 In Sandwich, the Denisons joined St. John’s Anglican Church, where they participated in the social and religious rites of baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Choosing a Protestant denomination after having lived in a Catholic town, the Denison parents soon formalized their commitment to the faith. In October of 1808, nearly a year to the day after their failed freedom suit in the Michigan Supreme Court, “Peter and Hannah Donnison Adults, free Negroes” were baptized at St. John’s. Elizabeth Denison, the couple’s eldest child who went by the nickname “Lisette,” served as sponsor for several Denison baptisms in the church. The merchant John Askin may have witnessed t
hese baptisms, as he and other slaveholders who had recently moved from Detroit were also members of the congregation.51
While the Denisons had full lives in the province of Upper Canada, they also became denizens of the border, expertly navigating the river that separated the United States from British Canada. They crossed and recrossed the strait by choice between 1807 and 1812, never once being caught and arrested as fugitive slaves. Catherine Tucker did not fight to retrieve the children, seeing, perhaps, a lost cause since the Denisons could readily run. Neither did William Hull dispatch men to find the black militia leader who had abruptly deserted his company. Hull may have felt, morally, that Peter’s flight was just, or recognized, pragmatically, that the Denisons had influential friends on both sides of the border. Peter Denison found work as a “Negro servant” in the household of former Detroit slaveholder and lawyer Angus Mackintosh.52 Although life would never be for the Denison family what it was for a free white family there, and although the differences of race and class still structured their lives (as indicated by the limited work options available to Peter), the Denisons were integrated into a tight-knit network of Detroit River People: white and black, slave-owners and slaves, old settlers and new Americans.