Michigan Territory

The Territory of Michigan was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from June 30, 1805, until January 26, 1837, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Michigan. Detroit was the territorial capital.

The earliest European explorers of Michigan saw it mostly as a place to control the fur trade. Small military forces, Jesuit missions to Native American tribes, and isolated settlements of trappers and traders accounted for most of the non-native inhabitants of what would become Michigan.

After the arrival of Europeans, the area that became the Michigan Territory was first under French and then British control. The first Jesuit mission, in 1668 at Sault Saint Marie, led to the establishment of further outposts at St. Ignace (where a mission began work in 1671) and Detroit, first occupied in 1701 by the garrison of the former Fort de Buade under the leadership of Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac. Soon after their arrival, his troops erected Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit and a church dedicated to Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. As part of New France, the upper Great Lakes had first been governed from Michilimackinac, then Detroit; this was essentially a military regime that reported to the governor-general at Quebec. Its role was to supply the needs of the fur traders and discourage any settlements not directly supportive of that effort. After the surrender of Montreal in 1760, British troops under Robert Rogers occupied Detroit and its dependent posts. In 1763, Pontiac's Rebellion saw the fall of Fort Michilimackinac to the northern tribes, and a lengthy siege of Fort Detroit. The siege was lifted in 1764, and rule under a British lieutenant-governor at Detroit followed soon thereafter.

Due to the Quebec Act of 1774, Michigan was governed during the Revolution as part of the Province of Quebec. Although the 1783 Treaty of Paris gave the fledgling United States a claim to what is now Michigan, British policy was to hold on to Detroit and its dependencies at all costs. In 1784, Baron von Steuben would be sent to Canada by the Congress of the Confederation in a diplomatic capacity to address the question of Detroit and the Great Lakes, but Frederick Haldimand, the Governor of Quebec, refused to provide a passport, and negotiations collapsed before they had begun. Starting in 1784, the British administered their Michigan holdings as part of the District of Hesse along with what is now Western Ontario; in 1791 the Province of Quebec was split into Lower Canada (today's Province of Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario), and the districts of Upper Canada were renamed the next year, with the Hesse District designated as the Western District.

In addition to the British remaining in the region, several states also held competing claims on the future state of Michigan. In 1779, Virginia established Illinois County with boundaries that encompassed all of the land east of the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachian Mountains. For all practical purposes, however, the county government never exercised actual control beyond an area limited to a few old French settlements along the major rivers. The overwhelming majority of the northwestern lands were controlled by the native tribes. New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts also claimed portions of what was to become Michigan, but were even less able to enforce their pretensions, given Britain's control of the Great Lakes and the hostility of the tribes.

Virginia surrendered its claim to lands north and west of the Ohio River effective March 1, 1784. Coincidentally (or not), this was the same day that the findings of a Congressional committee on the western lands, chaired by Thomas Jefferson since the previous October, were reported. Jefferson's recommendations became the basis for the Land Ordinance of 1784, which established that new states equal in all respects to the founding thirteen would be erected in the territory, that they would forever be a part of the United States, and that their governments would be republican in form. The Land Ordinance of 1785 would go further by establishing a procedure for land sales in the new territory. However, the Ohio River remained an effective boundary between the United States and the Northwest tribes for a few more years.

The other states with claims in the Northwest eventually followed Virginia's example, and in 1787, the Congress of the Confederation enacted the Northwest Ordinance, which created the Northwest Territory. The first settlement under the Northwest Ordinance was at Marietta (Ohio) in 1788.

The region that became Michigan was initially unorganized territory and essentially remained under British control; that did not stop Arthur St. Clair, the first Governor of the Northwest Territory, from establishing a structure of government for the area, if only on paper. Knox County was established on June 20, 1790 with boundaries that included the western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and roughly the middle third of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In 1792, the boundaries of Hamilton County were expanded to include the eastern portions of Michigan not included in Knox County.