Dawn of Detroit

by Tiya Miles

  108. Ekberg discusses this blurred status of Indian slaves in French households; see Stealing, 45.

  109. Trudel, Canada’s Forgotten, 140.

  2: The War for Liberty (1774–1783)

  1. The name of Ann Wyley has been recorded a number of ways in primary and secondary sources. She has been called Ann and Anne, as well as Nancy. Her last name has been spelled Wyley or Wiley. Jean Contencineau’s name has likewise been recorded with numerous spellings: Contancinau, Coutencineau. I am using the spelling from the Detroit trial record, March 1776. “Record of criminal trial in 1776, Detroit, ss,” reprinted in Charles H. Lanman, History of Michigan, Civil and Topographical in a Compendious Form: with a View of Surrounding Lakes (New York: E. French, 1839), 133–35. (Lanman offers as citation: “This record was found in the possession of Judge May. He knew the jury who tried the case.”) This trial record is also reprinted in Detroit in the Revolution, File: 2, Box: Works Detroit History 1760, Burton Papers (MS/Burton C.M.), Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, 61–62.

  2. The Detroit River is often described as a “highway” of commerce in the region. See, for instance, Denver Brunsman, “Introduction,” in Brunsman and Stone, eds., Revolutionary Detroit, 3–22, 5.

  3. This by-decade breakdown of the enslaved population is the result of our (Tiya Miles and Michelle Cassidy’s) analysis of the Ste. Anne’s Church records in which notations about “Panis,” “Negro,” and “Mulatto” slaves consistently appear. Our numbers are approximate because the Ste. Anne records do not offer a comprehensive count of all slaves in Detroit, some of whom were not involved in the church. In addition, these records include a number of entries about slaves for whom no racial designation is given. We have noted these people in a category labeled “unknown” in our count. The racial “unknowns” for the 1760s totaled thirteen people; the “unknowns” in the 1700s totaled four people. More than likely, the majority of these individuals were “Panis.” In the ratio for the 1760s to which this note corresponds, I have combined the number of blacks (three) with the number of “Mulattos” (two) to arrive at the total of five reported, even though the term “mulatto” could be used to designate persons of black and Indian ancestry as well as of black and white ancestry. Michelle Cassidy, a graduate student in the History Department at the University of Michigan, counted the number of entries in the Ste. Anne records and broke them down by decade, race, and gender. St. Anne Records, Bentley Historical Library, 86966mf 534c, 535c, 536c, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Used by permission of the Detroit Catholic Diocese.

  4. “The Story of Jean Contancinau: Testimony,” translated in Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, 57–58, Burton Papers, DPL. (Clarence Burton includes as citation: “The papers here collected are from the Haldimand collection, and Lanman’s History of Michigan. The testimony, such as it is, is in French in the old Detroit registry,” 56.

  5. Burton, “Detroit in the Revolution” (booklet), 25.

  6. Lanman, 134. “The Story of Jean Contancinau: Testimony,” translated in Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, 58, Burton Papers, DPL. After the French and Indian War, Detroit operated under British martial law. The Quebec Act, passed in October 7, 1774 (the same year these thefts took place), brought civil rule to Michigan through a hybrid approach of French civil law and British criminal law. William Renwick Riddell, Michigan Under British Rule: Law and Law Courts, 1760–1796 (Lansing: Michigan Historical Society, 1926), 19–20. The stolen purse was green: “The Story of Jean Contancinau: Testimony,” translated in Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, 59, Burton Papers, DPL.

  7. For an analysis of the role of clothing in colonial transculturation processes, see Sophie White, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). For a discussion of the use of clothing to challenge caste and assert creativity and adornment in slave communities, see Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Barbara Heath describes enslaved people’s use of material objects such as buttons and buckles to change the appearance of substandard clothing distributed by owners: Barbara Heath, “Materiality, Race, and Slavery: How Archaeology Contributes to Dialogues at Historic Sites,” unpublished paper, National Council on Public History, Nashville, TN, April 2015.

  8. “Record of criminal trial in 1776, Detroit, ss,” reprinted in Charles H. Lanman, History of Michigan, 133.

  9. Besides establishing the boundaries of Canada and declaring the application of British law to the former French territory, the Quebec Act of 1774 protected the right of French settlers to maintain their property and the right of Catholics to practice their faith. Lanman, History of Michigan, 132–33. The Quebec Act provided for the first civil government in Detroit, with the king slated to appoint “a governor, lieutenant-governor, or commander-in-chief, and a council.” Farmer, History of Detroit, 84. Of these possibilities, Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, was the only official assigned. He became the supervisor of Philip Dejean, who was already serving as notary and justice of the peace in the town. Dejean had been appointed by military officers Captain Turnbull and Major Bayard, in 1767. In 1768 a public election (the structure of which is unclear) confirmed his role as “judge and justice of the district of Detroit.” Burton, “Detroit in the Revolution” (booklet), 20.

  10. Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, 108, 48, Burton Papers, DPL; Burton, “Detroit in the Revolution” (booklet), 20.

  11. Lanman, History of Michigan, 132.

  12. Ann is first called “Anne” in this testimony and then “Nancy.”

  13. Second declaration of Prisoners, Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, 294, Burton Papers, DPL.

  14. Cenette, Chatelain and C Enfant did not appear in the 1768 or 1779 Detroit censuses; however, a Mrs. Chatlain is listed for 1779. A Joseph L’Enfant appears in the 1779 Detroit census as the owner of two slaves. Donna Valley Russell, ed., Michigan Censuses 1710–1830: Under the French, British, and Americans (Detroit: Detroit Society for Genealogical Research, Inc., 1982), 42.

  15. “Record of criminal trial in 1776, Detroit, ss,” reprinted in Charles H. Lanman, History of Michigan, 133. “The Story of Jean Contancinau: The Verdict,” Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, 60, 61, Burton Papers, DPL.

  16. “The Story of Jean Contancinau: The Judgment,” Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, 62, Burton Papers, DPL.

  17. Presentment against Philip Dejean, Canadian Archives, Series B. Vol. 225, p. 501, reprinted in “Detroit in the Revolution,” File 2, 69, Burton Papers, DPL. William Renwick Riddell, The First Judge of Detroit and His Court (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1915), 9.

  18. Secondary sources disagree about Wyley’s ultimate fate, and primary sources exist only in piecemeal fashion. The Detroit legal historian and judge William Riddell states that she was not put to death; Riddell, The First Judge of Detroit, 9. Detroit historian Clarence Burton also states that she was not executed in a description of the case that includes transcripts of the court record; see Clarence Burton, “Detroit in the Revolution” (booklet), File 2, 69, Burton Papers, DPL. Burton discusses the case similarly in: Clarence Burton “Building of Detroit-People,” Works Detroit History 1701, MS/Burton, C.M., Burton Historical Collection, DPL, 10; also see Clarence Burton, “Detroit Under British Rule,” Works Detroit History 1760, MS/Burton, C.M. Burton, Historical Collection, DPL, 26. In contrast, Detroit historian Silas Farmer states that Wyley was executed, see: Farmer, History of Detroit, 173–174, 957. For other accounts of this case, see: Poremba, Detroit, 50 (who calls this the first burglary in Detroit); Kneip, “Slavery in Early Detroit,” 27–28; Errin T. Stegich, “Liberty Hangs at Detroit: The Trial and Execution of Jean Contencineau,” in Denver Brunsman and Joel Stone, eds., Revolutionary Detroit: 67–72.

  19. Rashauna Johnson, Slavery’s Metropolis: Unfree Labor in New Orleans During the Age of Revolutions
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 147.

  20. Mr. Thomas William to P. Dejean, August 5, 1778, Detroit, William Papers, Burton Historical Collection, DPL.

  21. Tiya Miles, “Taking Leave, Making Lives: Creative Quests for Freedom in Early Black and Native America,” in Gabrielle Tayac, ed., IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2009), 146–49. Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 37.

  22. John Bell Moran, The Moran Family: 200 Years in Detroit (Detroit: Alved of Detroit, 1949), 28.

  23. The Royal Proclamation (October 7, 1763): “established the Allegheny Mountains as a formal boundary line between American colonial settlements and the western Indians’ hunting grounds and forbade all future private purchases of land from the Indians, reserving that privilege to the Crown.” However, many settlers ultimately ignored the act, which was difficult to enforce from afar. Quoted from Jon William Parmenter, “Pontiac’s War: Forging New Links in the Anglo-Iroquois Covenant Chain, 1758–1766,” Ethnohistory 44:4 (Autumn 1997): 617–54, 629. Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 21.

  24. George L. Cornell, “American Indians at Wawiiatanong: An Early American History of Indigenous Peoples at Detroit,” in John H. Hartig, Honoring Our Detroit River: Caring for Our Home (Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Institute of Science, 2003), 20.

  25. Ste. Anne’s Records, BHL.

  26. Quoted in Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit, 1701–1838 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 120; Farmer, History of Detroit, 472–73.

  27. Farmer, History of Detroit, 837.

  28. Quoted in David McCullough, 1776 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 135; McCullough, 135–37.

  29. To Alex and William Macomb, June 22, 1775, Letterbooks of Phyn and Ellice, merchants, at Schenectady, New York, 1767–76 (Buffalo Historical Society-BHS Microfilm Publication No. 1), Vol. 3. David A. Armour and Keith R. Widder, At the Crossroads: Michilimackinac During the American Revolution (Mackinac Island, MI: Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1978), 1; Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2008), 229.

  30. John H. Hartig, “Introduction,” in Hartig, ed., Honoring Our Detroit River, 1–8, 6.

  31. Quoted in Isabelle E. Swan, The Deep Roots: A History of Gross Ile, Michigan to July 6, 1876 (Grosse Ile, MI: Grosse Ile Historical Society, 1977), 20, 21.

  32. Swan, Deep Roots, 14, 23.

  33. Harris, Shadow of Slavery, 11.

  34. Phrasing by Karen Marrero, “On the Edge of the West: The Roots and Routes of Detroit’s Urban Eighteenth Century,” in Jay Gitlin and Adam Arenson, eds., Frontier Cities: Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 66–86.

  35. Catherine Cangany, Frontier Seaport: Detroit’s Transformation into an Atlantic Entrepot (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 3.

  36. Swan, Deep Roots, 13–15, 23; Old Deed “Grosse Ile,” LMS / Macomb Family Papers, July 6 1776, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, MI; A. Macomb quoted in Swan, Deep Roots, 21; Macomb military account: Milo M. Quaife, “When Detroit Invaded Kentucky,” Filson Club History Quarterly 1:2 (January 1927): 53–67, 55.

  37. Swan, Deep Roots, 14, 24–26. Size of farm: Record Book of Macomb Estate, Macomb Family Papers, R2:1796, BHC, DPL.

  38. Ste. Anne’s Records, BHL. James May to Wm Macomb, Jan 12 1790, Alexander Fraser Papers, Detroit Public Library.

  39. David M. Katzman, “Black Slavery in Michigan,” American Studies 11:2 (Fall 1970), 60.

  40. Quoted in Swan, Deep Roots, 17.

  41. Quoted in Armour and Widder, Crossroads, 51. De Peyster kinship link: Armour and Widder, Crossroads, 51.

  42. Calloway, American Revolution, 29–32, 36, 39, 43–44, 46; Armour & Widder, Crossroads, 51.

  43. Donald Lee, “Clark and Lernoult: Reduction by Expansion,” in Brunsman and Stone, eds., Revolutionary Detroit, 73–77, 75; Quaife, “When Detroit Invaded Kentucky,” 1927.

  44. Lee, “Clark and Lernoult,” in Brunsman and Stone, eds., Revolutionary Detroit, 75; Thomas Jefferson to George Rogers Clark, Dec. 25, 1780, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Julian P. Boyd. ed., Vol. 4 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), 234–37.

  45. Proclamation by George R. Clark, December 24, 1778, translated in Jerry Lewis, “Red and Black Slaves in the Illinois Territory,” in Terry Straus and Grant P. Arndt, eds., Native Chicago (Chicago: Albatross Publishers, 1998), 82–86.

  46. Americans were not the first to racialize Indians as Clark does in this example. British officers in Pontiac’s war also used racial terms, such as “copperheaded” and “black,” to indicate Native people.

  47. In her illuminating study of the racial term “red,” Nancy Shoemaker shows how Native people in the East had their own meanings for color terms (such as red being associated with war) long before “red” came to be associated with Indianness. Both Europeans and American Indians began to adopt the racial term “red,” in different ways and for different reasons, in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Clark’s negative use of the term in the Illinois document, meant to emphasize slave caste, is not a usage that Native Americans would have willingly adopted. Nancy Shoemaker, “How Indians Got to Be Red,” The American Historical Review 102 (June 1997): 624–44. Frederick E. Hoxie, “Introduction,” in Frederick E. Hoxie, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert, eds., Native Americans and the Early Republic (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), ix. James Sterling to John Sterling, October 6, 1763, Sterling Letter Book.

  48. Clark, Proclamation, in Lewis, trans., “Red and Black Slaves.” Slave resistance during the war: Benjamin Quarles, “The Revolutionary War as a Black Declaration of Independence,” in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 283, 290, 291; Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 51–52.

  49. Calloway, American Revolution, 22.

  50. Quaife, “When Detroit Invaded Kentucky,” 55.

  51. Captain Bird to Major Arent S. De Peyster, June 11, 1780, transcribed in Quaife, “When Detroit Invaded Kentucky,” 62–63.

  52. Captain Bird to Wm Lee, a Negroe free, 1784, MS Bird Papers, Detroit Public Library.

  53. Silver, Savage Neighbors, 250–51; Armour & Widder, Crossroads, 94; Brunsman, “Introduction,” in Brunsman and Stone, eds., Revolutionary Detroit, 12. Brett Rushforth notes the importance of slaves as “tokens” of alliance between indigenous groups and the French; Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance, 220–21.

  54. Judy Jacobson, Detroit River Connections: Historiographical and Biographical Sketches of the Eastern Great Lakes Border Region (Baltimore: Clearfield Company, 1994), 17.

  55. Statement by Captain John Dunkin, quoted in Maude Ward Lafferty, “Destruction of Ruddle’s and Martin’s Forts in the Revolutionary War,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 54:189 (October 1956): 15; Lafferty, “Destruction,” 26.

  56. “Petition of Agnes La Force,” Haldimand Papers, MPHC, XIX, 494. Also quoted in Kneip, “Slavery in Early Detroit,” 32–33.

  57. Quaife, “When Detroit Invaded Kentucky,” 3, 4; Lafferty, “Destruction,” 26; Kneip, “Slavery in Detroit,” 32; “List of Slaves formerly the property of Mrs. Agnes Le Force now in possession of,” transcribed in Quaife, 66–67. “Slave Captives at Ruddell’s and Martin’s Forts,” www.frontierfolk.net/ramsha_research/captives3html; Accessed July 28, 2016. Jacques Duperon Baby: Riddell, Michigan Under British Rule, 52–53.

  58. Calloway, American Revolution, 54.

  59. Quoted in Clarence Burton, “Detroit in the Revolution” (Booklet—1906 Address to the S
ons of the American Revolution) Works Printed Treaty of 1782 Miscellaneous Printed Material, Burton Papers, MS/Burton C. M., Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, 26; Clarence Burton, Detroit in the Revolution, File: 2, Box: Works Detroit History 1760, Burton Papers, MS/Burton, C. M., Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, p. 2 typescript/137 handwritten. Riddell, Michigan Under British Rule, 50.

  60. Burton, Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, p. 3 typescript/110 handwritten.

  61. “Advertisement,” transcribed in Burton, “Detroit in the Revolution,” Booklet 22, BHC, DPL.

  62. To Sir from Most Humble Servant, Sept. 21, 1777, Quebec, transcribed in John Almon and Thomas Pownall, The Remembrance of Impartial Repository of Public Events, Vol. 6 (London: J Almon, 1778), 188–89; also transcribed in Burton, Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, pp. 11–12 handwritten.

  63. Stegich, “Liberty Hangs,” 68; Burton, Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, p. 1 typescript / 108 handwritten; Clarence Burton, “Building of Detroit-People,” Works Detroit History 1701, MS/Burton, C. M., BHC, DPL, 10, 11; Clarence Burton, “Detroit Under British Rule,” Works Detroit History 1760, MS/Burton, C. M., BHC, DPL, 26; Armour and Widder, Crossroads, 94; William Renwick Riddell, The First Judge at Detroit and His Court (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1915), 30. Hair buying: Silver, Savage Neighbors, 250–51; Burton, Detroit in the Revolution, File 2, p. 1 typescript / 108 handwritten.

  64. Gifts: Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage, 2006), 102.

  65. Russell, ed., Michigan Censuses, 1782 Census, 49–56; Katzman, “Black Slavery in Michigan,” 60; Calloway, American Revolution, 54, 61.

  66. Quoted in Armour and Widder, Crossroads, 135, 136, 117, 135.

  67. The John Askin Papers Volume I: 1747–1795, Milo M. Quaife., ed. (Detroit: Detroit Library Commission, 1928), 68.

  68. Askin Papers Vol. I, 94.