| |
Michigan was home to various
Native Americans centuries before
colonization by Europeans. When the first
European explorers arrived, the most populous and
influential tribes were
Algonquian peoples—specifically,
the Ottawa, the
Anishnabe (called "Chippewa"
in French, after their language, "Ojibwe"), and the
Potawatomi. The Anishnabe,
whose numbers are estimated to have been between
25,000 and 35,000, were the most populous. Although
the Anishnabe were well-established in Michigan's
Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula, they
also inhabited northern Ontario, northern Wisconsin,
southern Manitoba, and northern and north-central
Minnesota. The Ottawa lived primarily south of the
Straits of Mackinac in northern and western
Michigan, while the Potawatomi were primarily in the
southwest. The three nations co-existed peacefully
as part of a loose confederation called the
Council of Three
Fires. Other First Nations people in Michigan,
in the south and east, were the
Mascouten, the Menominee,
the Miami, and the
Wyandot, who are better known
by their French name, "Huron".
1600s
French
voyageurs explored and
settled in Michigan in the 17th century. The first Europeans
to reach what later became Michigan were
Étienne Brûlé's expedition in
1622. The first European settlement was made in 1641 on the
site where Father (or Père, in French)
Jacques Marquette
established Sault
Sainte-Marie in 1668.
Saint-Ignace was
founded in 1671, and
Marquette in 1675. Together with
Sault Sainte-Marie,
they are the three oldest cities in Michigan. "The Soo"
(Sault Ste. Marie) has the distinction of being the oldest
city in both Michigan and Ontario. It
was split into two cities in 1818, a year after the
U.S.-Canada boundary in the Great Lakes was finally
established by the U.S.-UK Joint Border Commission.
In 1679,
Lord La Salle
of France directed the construction of the
Griffin, the first European
sailing vessel on the upper Great Lakes. That same year, La
Salle built Fort Miami at present-day
St. Joseph.
1700s
In 1701,
French explorer and army officer
Antoine de la Mothe
Cadillac founded Le Fort
Ponchartrain du Détroit or “Fort Ponchartrain on-the-Strait”
on the strait between Lakes St.
Clair and Erie, known as the
Detroit River. Cadillac had
convinced King Louis XIV's
chief minister,
Louis Phélypeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain, that a
permanent community there would strengthen French control
over the upper Great Lakes and repel
British aspirations.
The hundred
soldiers and workers who accompanied Cadillac built a fort
enclosing one arpent (about .85 acre,
the equivalent of just under 200 feet on a side) and named
it Fort Pontchartrain.
Cadillac's wife, Marie Thérèse,
soon moved to Detroit, becoming one of the first white women
to settle in the Michigan wilderness. The town quickly
became a major fur-trading and
shipping post. The “Église de Saint-Anne,” or Church of
Saint Ann, was founded the same year, and while the original
building does not survive, it remains an active congregation
today. At the same time, the French strengthened
Fort Michilimackinac at
the Straits of Mackinac
in order to better control their lucrative fur-trading
empire. By the mid-eighteenth century, the French had also
occupied forts at present-day
Niles and Sault
Ste. Marie. However, most of the rest of the region
remained unsettled by whites.
From 1660
to the end of French rule, Michigan (along with Wisconsin,
eastern Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, two-thirds of Georgia, and
small parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York,
Vermont, and Maine) was part of the Royal Province of
New France, administered from the
capital city of Québec. In 1759, following the
Battle of the
Plains of Abraham, in the
French and Indian War
(1754–1763), Québec City fell to British forces. Under the
1763 Treaty of Paris,
Michigan and the rest of New France passed to
Great Britain.
Detroit was
an important British supply center during the
American Revolutionary
War, but most of the inhabitants - almost all of them -
were either Aboriginal people or French Canadians. Because
of imprecise cartography and unclear language defining the
boundaries in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the British retained
control of Detroit and Michigan. When Quebec was split into
Lower and
Upper Canada in 1790, Michigan
was part of Kent County,
Upper Canada, and held its first democratic elections in
August 1792, to send delegates to the new provincial
parliament at Newark, (Now
Niagara-on-the-Lake).[9]
Under terms negotiated in the 1794 Jay
Treaty, Britain withdrew from Detroit and
Michilimackinac in 1796. However, questions remained over
the boundary for many years and the United States did not
have uncontested control of the Upper Peninsula and
Drummond Island until 1818
and 1847, respectively.
1800s
During the
War of 1812,
Michigan Territory
(effectively consisting of Detroit and the surrounding area)
was captured by the British and nominally returned to
Upper Canada until the
Treaty of Ghent, which
implemented the policy of "Status Quo Ante Bellum" or "Just
as Things Were Before the War." That meant Michigan stayed
American, and the agreement to establish a joint U.S.-UK
boundary commission also remained valid. Subsequent to the
findings of that commission in 1817, control of the Upper
Peninsula and of islands in the
St. Clair River delta was transferred from Ontario to
Michigan in 1818, and Drummond Island (to which the British
had moved their Michilimackinac army base) was transferred
in 1847.
The
population grew slowly until the opening of the
Erie Canal in 1825, which brought
a large influx of settlers. By the 1830s, Michigan had some
80,000 residents, which was more than enough to apply for
statehood. A state government was formed in 1836, although
Congressional recognition of the state languished because of
a boundary dispute with Ohio, with both sides claiming a 468
square mile (1,210 km²) strip of land that included the
newly incorporated city of Toledo
on Lake Erie and an area to the west then known as the "Great
Black Swamp." The dispute came to be called the
Toledo War, with Michigan and Ohio
militia maneuvering in the area but never coming to blows.
Ultimately, Congress awarded the "Toledo
Strip" to Ohio, and Michigan, having received the
western part of the
Upper Peninsula as a concession, formally entered the
Union on January 26,
1837.
Thought to
be useless at the time, the Upper Peninsula was soon
discovered to be a rich and important source of
lumber, iron, and
copper, which would become the state's
most sought-after natural resources.
Geologist Douglass Houghton
and land surveyor William
Austin Burt were among the first to document and
discover many of these resources, which led to a nation-wide
increase of interest in the state. Michigan lead the nation
in lumber production from 1850's to the 1880's.
Michigan
made a
significant contribution to the Union in the American
Civil War, sending over forty regiments of volunteers to the
Federal armies.
Michigan's
economy underwent a massive change at the turn of the 20th
century. The birth of the automotive industry, with
Henry Ford's first plant in the
Highland Park
enclave of Detroit, marked the
beginning of a new era in transportation. It was a
development that not only transformed Detroit and Michigan,
but permanently altered the socio-economic climate of the
United States and much of the world.
Grand Rapids, the
second-largest city in Michigan, is also a center of
automotive manufacturing. Since 1838, the city had also been
noted for its thriving furniture industry (which has since
declined substantially).
1900s to the present
In 1910
Michigan held its first primary election.
In 1920
Detroit’s WWJ begins commercial broadcasting of regular
programs, the first such radio station in the United States.
Detroit boomed through the 1950s, at
one point doubling its population in a decade. In the 1920s
some of the country's largest and most ornate skyscrapers
were built in the city. Housing shortages and racial tension
led to outward movement starting after World War II. After
the 1950s, with suburban sprawl prevalent across the
country, Detroit's population began to decline, and the rate
increased after further racial strife in the 1960s and high
crime rates in the 70s and 80s. Government programs such as
road-building often enabled the sprawl.
Since the
1970s, Michigan's industrial base has eroded as the auto
industry began to abandon the state's industrial parks in
favor of less expensive labor found overseas and in the
southern U.S. states. Nevertheless, with more than 10
million residents, Michigan continues to grow and remains a
large and influential state, ranking eighth in population
among the 50 states.
The
Detroit metropolitan area in the
southeast corner of the state remains the largest
metropolitan area in Michigan (roughly 50% of the population
resides there) and one of the 10 largest metro areas in the
country. The Grand Rapids/Holland/Muskegon
metro area on the west side of the state is the fastest
growing metro area in the state presently, with over 1.3
million residents as of 2006.
Metro Detroit's population is
growing, and Detroit's population is
still shrinking, though strong redevelopment in central part
of the cities, and a significant rise in population in the
southwest part of the city, is contributing to some
population inflow. A period of economic transition,
especially in manufacturing, has caused economic
difficulties in the region since the recession of 2001.
State
Index |
Information
|
Fast Facts
|
Geography
|
Government
|
Economy |
History
|
|
