Dawn of Detroit

by Tiya Miles

  69. Detroit move: Cangany, Frontier Seaport, 31; Jacobson, Detroit River, 32. Barthe lot: “Actual Survey of the Narrows betwixt the Lake Erie and Sinclair,” by P. McNiff, reproduced in Dunnigan, Frontier Metropolis, 62; Jacobson, Detroit River, 34. Sterling as representative: Armour and Widder, Crossroads, 75. Askin’s setbacks: Jacobson, Detroit River, 32.

  70. Charlotte: Armour & Widder, Crossroads, 37. Pompey and Jupiter: “Sale of Negro Slaves,” Askin Papers, Vol. I, 58–59. Toon: Askin Papers, Vol I, 55.

  71. John Askin to Jean Baptiste Barthe, June 8, 1778, Askin Papers, Vol. I, 118. Pomp and crew: John Askin to Jean Baptiste Barthe, May 18, 1778, Askin Papers, Vol. I, 91–94. Askin says about this crew, “I have given all three their provisions, and rum, up to June 1, and have paid them their wages for the same time.” This line may indicate that Pomp received some pay for his work, although Askin owned him and any pay would have been less than what the others received. More likely, as the sentence syntactically separates “provisions, and rum” from “wages,” it can be read as differentiating these categories in a way that would not include Pompey as a recipient of wages.

  72. Sale of Indian: John Askin to Jean Baptiste Barthe, June 8, 1778, Askin Papers, Vol. I, 119. Pretty Panis: John Askin to Mr. Beausoleil, May 18, 1778, Askin Papers, Vol. I, 97–98. Shoes and gown: John Askin to Todd and McGill at Montreal, May 28, 1778, Askin Papers, Vol. I, 101–102; Jacobson, Detroit River, 31–32. Fancy girls: Edward E. Baptist, “‘Cuffy,’ ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men’: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States,” American Historical Review 106:5 (December 2001): 1619–50. For more on fancy girls, see also Sharony Green, Remember Me to Miss Louisa: Hidden Black-White Intimacies in Antebellum America (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2015); Sharony Green, “‘Mr. Ballard, I Am Compelled to Write Again’: Beyond Bedrooms and Brothels, a Fancy Girl Speaks,” Black Women, Gender & Families 5:1 (Spring 2011): 17–40.

  73. Askin Papers, Vol. I, 135. Sherene H. Razack, “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 15:2 (2000): 91–130, 93.

  74. Melissa R. Luberti, “Caught in the Revolution: The Moravians in Detroit,” in Brunsman and Stone, eds., Revolutionary Detroit, 102–105, 102. Sympathy and complicity: Henry A. Ford, “History of the Moravian Settlement,” also titled “The Old Moravian Mission at Mt. Clemens,” Michigan Historical Collections, Vol. 10, 107–115, 110. Spies: Greg Dowd writes that the Moravians passed along information about an intended attack on Fort Laurens, Dowd, Spirited, 84–85. Taciturn: quoted in Ford, “Moravian Settlement,” 1. Flames: quoted in Dowd, Spirited, 84. This insight about Zeisberger’s reasoning comes from Greg Dowd’s analysis. For more on the Moravians in the Midwest, see John Heckewelder, A Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians (Philadelphia, PA: McCarty & Davis, 1820).

  75. Luberti, “Caught,” 102–103. Mulatto: Moravian Diary, Oct 18, 1776, translation by Del Moyer.

  76. Rev. David Zeisberger quoted in Ford, Moravian Settlement,” 110.

  77. The attack took place in March of 1782: Luberti, “Caught,” 103; Calloway, American Revolution, 39; Dowd, Spirited, 86; Silver, Savage Neighbors, 265–67. Treatment at Detroit: David Zeisberger, Diary of David Zeisberger: A Moravian Missionary among the Indians of Ohio, Vol. I, Eugene F. Bliss, ed. (Cincinnati: Robert Clark & Co., 1885), 111–12.

  78. Diary of Zeisberger, Vol. 1, May, June 1783, 146, 154.

  3: The Wild Northwest (1783–1803)

  1. 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. Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 42–44, 51.

  2. Edward Countryman, The American Revolution (1985; Revised Edition, New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 228.

  3. Report, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Chafe, Mr. Howell, Temporary Government of Western Country Delivered March [ ]1784, MS/Jefferson Papers, BHC, DPL. The ordinance of 1784, drafted by a committee led by Jefferson, was viewed to be inadequate in part because it gave too much political authority to settlers in the territorial period. Jefferson was out of the country in 1787 when the new ordinance was written. Denis Duffey, “The Northwest Ordinance as a Constitutional Document,” Columbia Law Review 95:4 (May 1995): 929–68, 935–37. Other members of Jefferson’s 1784 committee included Samuel Chase and David Howell. In 1787, Peter Dane, a delegate from Massachusetts, introduced the slavery article for inclusion in the final text. Peter Onuf has argued that southerners could accept the slavery exception in the Northwest because they expected to benefit economically through commercial exchange with the region as it grew. Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 46–49, 110–11.

  4. Northwest Ordinance (1787), www.ourdocuments.gov. Accessed May 5, 2015.

  5. Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History,” Journal of American History (December 2010): 703–734, on prison labor see 717–23.

  6. David G. Chardavoyne, “The Northwest Ordinance and Michigan’s Territorial Heritage,” in Paul Finkelman and Martin J. Hershock, eds., The History of Michigan Law (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006), 20.

  7. Allison Mileo Gorsuch, “Midwest Territorial Courts and the Development of American Citizenship, 1810–1840” (Ph.D. diss., 2013), 40. Duffey, “Northwest Ordinance,” 933–34.

  8. “Foundational document”: Duffey, “Northwest Ordinance,” 949. I am borrowing language from Lisa Lowe when I describe slavery and colonialism as “braided.” Lowe points to “settler colonialism as the condition for African slavery in the Americas.” Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 37–38.

  9. Paul Finkelman, “Evading the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois,” Journal of the Early Republic 9:1 (Spring 1989): 21–51, 22.

  10. Jefferson to Clark, Dec. 25, 1780, Jefferson Papers, Vol. 4, 237.

  11. 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. The Paris Peace Treaty of September 30, 1783, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, avalon.law.yale.edu. Accessed May 5, 2015. William Renwick Riddell, “Notes on Great Britain and Canada with Respect to the Negro,” Journal of Negro History 13:2 (April 1928): 185–98, 186.

  12. Russell, ed., Michigan Censuses, 1782 Census, 49–56; Katzman, “Black Slavery in Michigan,” 60. William Macomb re Sale of Two Negro Slaves, Macomb Family Papers, BHC, DPL.

  13. Heidi Bohaker, “Reading Anishinaabe Identities: Meaning and Metaphor in Nindoodem Pictographs,” Ethnohistory 57:1 (Winter 2010): 11–33, 18.

  14. Sale of Negro Man Pompey, Copy of Deed Furnished by W.W. Backus of Detroit, “Reports of Counties, Etc.,” MPHC, Vol. VI, 417.

  15. James Mackelm to John Askin, September 4, 1801, Askin Correspondence, John Askin Papers, Folder 1800, BHC, DPL; James Mackelm to John Askin, September 20, 1801, Askin Correspondence, John Askin Papers, Folder 1800, BHC, DPL. Campau Family Papers, MS/Campau, 1715–1928 (delivery orders: Oct. 1791, Sept. 1792, Jan. 1796, Dec. 1797, Jan. 1804) BHC, DPL.

  16. Calloway, American Revolution, 23.

  17. It can be convincingly argued that these lands were not Great Britain’s to cede. For a critical discussion of British claims to possessing Native lands in the Canadian borderland region dating back to 1668, see Adam Gaudry, “Fantasies of Sovereignty: Deconstructing British and Canadian Claims to Ownership of the Historic-Northwest,” NAIS: Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association 3:1 (2016): 46–74. Gov. Arthur St
. Clair as slaveholder: Lehman, Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 12.

  18. David R. Farrell, “Askin (Erskine), John,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, 2, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-11901-ephp?id_nbr=2242. Accessed Oct. 12, 2012. For more on Belle Isle see Janet Anderson, Island in the City: Belle Isle, Detroit’s Beautiful Island, Companion Book to an Exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum, 2001, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Michael Rodriguez and Thomas Featherstone, Detroit’s Belle Isle: Island Park Gem (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2003). Taylor, Divided Ground, 10.

  19. Riddell, Michigan Under British Rule, 22, 26.

  20. Farmer, History of Detroit, 84; David Lee Poremba, ed., Detroit in Its World Setting: A Three Hundred Year Chronology, 1701–2001 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 61, 62, 63, 346. D W Smith to John Askin, June 25, 1793, Askin Papers, Vol. II, 476–77.

  21. Ste. Anne’s Records. This marriage also linked Grant to John Askin, as it was Askin’s sister-in-law who became Grant’s wife. Farrell, “Askin,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 3.

  22. Bill of Sale Josiah Cutten, Askin Papers, Vol. I, 284–87, 410–411.

  23. Harrow Family File, “The King’s Vessels,” 29, 36 (1786), BHC, DPL.

  24. Alexander Harrow Papers, Journal and Letter Book, typescript, D5 1791–1800, MS/Harrow, BHC, DPL. Stinson argues astutely that slave labor shored up white masculinity and class status in westward settlements where the idealized gentility of white life was difficult to reproduce and maintain. Stinson, “Black Bondspeople,” 17, 18 (unpublished version, cited by permission).

  25. John Askin Estate Inventory - Detroit 1787, Jan. 1, 1787, John Askin Papers, BHC, DPL. Pompey does not appear in this inventory.

  26. Ste. Anne’s Records, 1785, BHL, UM.

  27. Alexander Coventry, Memoirs of an Emigrant The Journal of Alexander Coventry, M.D.; in Scotland, the United States and Canada during the period 1783–1831, Vol. I (Albany: The Albany Institute of Art and History, 1978), 1797, p. 859; quoted in Emily Macgillivray and Tiya Miles, “‘She Has Lived in Fashion’: A Native Woman Trader’s Household in the Detroit River Region,” accepted for eds., Karen Marrero and Andrew Sturtevant, A Place in Common: Telling Histories of Early Detroit (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, in progress); Ainse’s household: Macgillivray and Miles, “‘She Has Lived in Fashion.’” Ainse’s spouse Montour and relocation to Detroit: Taylor, Divided Ground, 397, 399. Emily Macgillivray, “Indigenous Trading Women of the Borderland Great Lakes, 1740–1845” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2017).

  28. Askin Papers, Vol. I, 193.

  29. Margaret Paulee, captured by the Shawnee warrior White Bark, described Blue Jacket’s Detroit home and slaves in two accounts; quoted in John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 5; Blue Jacket’s father-in-law was Jacques Baby, p. 53. For more on Paulee, see John H. Moore, “A Captive of the Shawnees, 1779–1784,” West Virginia History 23:4 (July 1962): 287–96.

  30. Excerpts from Fragments of an Account Book at the Fort Malden Museum Amherstburg, Ontario, May 27, 1784, cited in Macgillivray and Miles, “‘She Has Lived in Fashion.’” Ainse’s business in Detroit: Taylor, Divided Ground, 399. Ainse’s male partner in Detroit: Macgillivray, “Indigenous Trading Women.”

  31. Macgillivray, “Indigenous Trading Women.” Macgillivray and Miles, “‘She Has Lived in Fashion’”; Emily Macgillivray generously shared her findings about Ainse’s familial ties to Moravians in the Detroit area.

  32. Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, Sept. 1782, p. 111; Oct. 5, 1783, 166; Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 2, Sept. 27, 1796, p. 458; Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, June 14, 1784, pp. 194–95; 1782, p.106; 1784, p. 205; Nov. 16, 1785, p. 249.

  33. Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, 1782, p. 117; Feb. 26, 1784, p. 183; Ford “History of the Moravian Settlement” / “Old Moravian Mission,” 110, 113; Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, Feb. 22, 1784, p. 183; Feb. 12, 1784, p. 182.

  34. Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, Feb. 13, 1784, p. 182.

  35. Taylor, Divided Ground, 136. Harrow Papers, Journal and Letterbook, March 15, 1799, BHC, DPL.

  36. “Matthew Elliott Essex County,” (Toronto: York University, Harriet Tubman Institute, 2012), 1, 3, 4. For more on Elliott’s use of slave and indentured labor, see Reginald Horsman, Matthew Elliott, British Indian Agent (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964), 9, 29, 49.

  37. Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 2, 1791, p. 232. Diary of the Indian Congregation at Fairfield in Upper Canada, 1801, January 25, 1801, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA, translated for Tiya Miles by Del-Louise Moyer. Diary of the Indian Congregation in Salem, Petquottink in Lake Erie, 1790–91, May 5, 1791, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA, translated for Tiya Miles by Del-Louise Moyer, 2014.

  38. Meldrum: Cangany, Frontier Seaport, 29. Land: “The Tucker Story,” Highlights from the Harrison Township Historical Commission’s First Educational Presentation: The Legacy of William Tucker,” April 27, 1994. Land and Virginia slaves as the Denisons: Robert F. Eldredge, Past and Present of Macomb County, Michigan (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1905), 626–27. Location on river: Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, Oct. 1, 1784, p. 203. Bride and slaves: “Tucker, William, House,” MI State Historic Preservation Objects, www.mcgi.state.mi.us/hso/sites/9541.htm. Accessed January 16, 2013.

  39. Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, Aug. 9, 1783, p. 160; vol. 2, Sun July 29, 1791, p. 186, Sun Aug. 7, 1791, p. 206.

  40. Denison et al v. Catherine Tucker, in William Wirt Blume, ed., Transactions of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Michigan, 1805–1814, Vol. II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1935), 133–136. Isabella E. Swan, Lisette (Grosse Ile, MI: Published by the Author, 1965), 4.

  41. Swan, Lisette, 3.

  42. No record that I was able to identify indicates Hannah Denison’s place of birth. Because she was moved through French and Indian circles, it seems likely that she was born in or obtained from Montreal or Quebec, where most slaves in northern New France were held. Within these two cities, Marcel Trudel found a fairly even number of black slaves, who made up 35.9 percent and 39.5 percent of the populations, respectively. Trudel, Canada’s Forgotten, 257.

  43. Swan, Lisette, 4 note 6. Mark McPherson, “Lisette’s Legacy of Slavery” (second of a five part series), Michigan Chronicle, February 3, 1999. File B/Negroes—Forth, Elizabeth Denison, Reading Room, DPL. Elizabeth Denison Forth’s Elmwood Cemetery record gives her birth place as Virginia. This is likely an error dating back to county histories that said William Tucker brought a slave family with him from Virginia. This cemetery record also states that Forth died at age 114, another likely error. R. C. Simpson, To Whom It May Concern, Elmwood Cemetery, File B/Negroes—Forth, Elizabeth Denison, Reading Room, DPL.

  44. “The Dennison DNA Project,” http://www.johnbrobb.com/JBR-DEN-1.htm. Accessed September 13, 2016. “Denniston/Dennison/Denison Homepage,” http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vadennison. Accessed September 13, 2016.

  45. Mark McPherson, “Lisette’s Legacy of Slavery,” (second of a five part series) Michigan Chronicle, February 3, 1999. File B/Negroes—Forth, Elizabeth Denison, Reading Room, DPL.

  46. Harrow Papers, Journal and Letter Book, June 24, 1798, BHC, DPL.

  47. Chippewa use and defense of land: Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, 1782, pp. 91, 122, 184; Nov. 1784, p. 207; Jan. 1785, p. 217; Jan. 1786, p. 256; Ford, “Moravian Settlement,” 6.

  48. Winter and famine: Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, 1784, pp. 183, 203, 211; 1787, p. 353, 1788, p. 451; 1789, p. 47. Pestilence: Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 1, 1789, pp. 57–58.

  49. Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 2, 1791, p. 217; Nov. 1793, pp. 329–31.

  50. Dowd, Spirited, 113.

  51. New era and empire creation quotations: Calloway, American Revolution, xv.

  52. Quoted from title of Karl S. Hele, ed., Lines Drawn upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Lauri
er University Press, 2008).

  53. Zeisberger Diary, Vol. 2, 1796, p. 461.

  54. The Jay Treaty, November 19, 1794, The Avalon Project, Avalon.aw.yale.edu, Article 2.

  55. The Jay Treaty, November 19, 1794, The Avalon Project, Avalon.aw.yale.edu, Article 2. Gorsuch, “Midwest Territorial Courts,” 15, 25, 34.

  56. Martha S. Jones, “Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York,” Law and History Review 29:4, Law, Slavery, and Justice: A Special Issue (November 2011): 1031–60, 1034.

  57. Christopher Phillips, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 6, 10. Phillips locates his slaveholding ancestors in Kentucky.

  58. 1773 Detroit Census, September 22, 1773, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collection, 1876–1886, Vol. 9 (Lansing: Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan), 649; Russell, ed., Michigan Censuses, 1782, 49–56, 1796, 59–67; Ste. Anne’s Records, BHC.

  59. Christian Crouch establishes this point about the racial makeup of slaves changing in Detroit with the influx of Anglo settlers. Christian Crouch, “The Black City: African and Indian Exchange in Pontiac’s Detroit,” revision of Christian Crouch, “The Black City: Detroit and the Northeast Borderlands through African Eyes in the Era of ‘Pontiac’s War,’” paper presented at The War Called Pontiac’s conference, Philadelphia, April 2013, cited by permission of the author, 2, 29. Marcel Trudel’s sums for the number of slaves held in Detroit are larger than mine overall. In a chart that breaks down the number of slaves in the province of Quebec (the borders of which changed over time) by city, he lists for Detroit 523 Indian slaves and 127 black slaves for a total of 650 slaves; Trudel, Canada’s Forgotten, 83, 75. Unfortunately, his incredibly instructive chart does not indicate exactly which sources he drew from to arrive at these totals for Detroit. My highest total for the enslaved population in Detroit is closer to 300. I attribute this variance to a number of factors. First, Trudel looks at a time span of 1629–1834, Second, he includes a wide range of French Canadian archival documents that I did not review. He counted each mention of a slave in these documents to arrive at a total number of 4,200 slaves in Quebec and the subsequent town breakdown. Third, Detroit’s general population numbers shift depending upon what boundaries are drawn (inside the fort walls, or inside as well as outside; on one side of the river, or on both sides), making stable and transparent enumeration a challenge. While I did keep a running count of the number of enslaved people who appeared in Detroit-based slaveholders’ manuscript records, I did not add these numbers to my totals. I relied on Ste. Anne’s Church records and census records as the main sources for my sums and used them to corroborate each other. The numbers on the Ste. Anne’s register ran very close to the census numbers. Adding the church, census, and manuscript record numbers together would have brought me to an overall figure closer to Trudel’s at 600, but I strove to avoid double counting in a situation in which many enslaved people went unnamed. Readers may therefore take my figures as conservative estimates. For additional sources that offer population figures for Detroit’s enslaved, see David M. Katzman, “Black Slavery in Michigan,” Midcontinent American Studies Journal 11: 2 (fall 1970): 56–66, 62, 65. William Renwick Riddell, “The Slave in Upper Canada,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 14:2 (August 1923): 249–278, 251, note 10.