Encyclopedia Of Detroit
Founding of Detroit
The site that was to become the city of Detroit was established on July 24, 1701 by Antoine de la mothe Cadillac, a French military leader and trader. Cadillac had traveled widely in New France and the western Great Lakes and was the commander of Fort Michilimackinac at the junction of Lakes Huron and Michigan.
In 1698, Cadillac returned to France to petition King Louis XIV for authorization to establish a French outpost along “le détroit” (the strait), the waterway connecting Lakes Erie and Huron. In 1700, Cadillac successfully persuaded the king’s minister of marine, Jérôme Phélypeaux Comte de Pontchartrain, to authorize an expedition to establish not a post, but a settlement. Cadillac hoped to forestall British attempts to occupy a nearby area, as well as start a colony that could survive on the rich soil and fur trapping opportunities of the region.
Cadillac’s entourage of soldiers, missionaries and colonists set out from Montreal on June 5, 1701. The expedition traveled by way of the Ottawa River, through Lake Nipissing, out down French River into Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and finally the Detroit River, stopping for the night on Grosse Ile on July 23rd.
The next day the flotilla of 25 boats returned upstream. They chose the narrowest part of the river, on a high point of the north shore, unfettered by any island and thereby easy to defend, as the site for Fort Pontchartrain, in honor of the French marine minister who approved their trip. The full name, Fort Pontchartrain du détroit, gave Detroit its name. Two days later, on July 26, Saint Anne’s Day, they begin building a chapel named in her honor, the first Ste. Anne’s Church. By September the first women arrived, Madame Cadillac and Madame Tonty, the wife of Cadillac’s first lieutenant.
Cadillac had the authority to appropriate and grant land to settlers. Beginning in 1707, he awarded farms that extended two or three miles inland and were laid out with narrow river frontage. These uniquely designed plots were known as “ribbon farms” some of whose boundaries are identified today by streets named for the original settlers.
Native Americans were encouraged to settle around the fort for mutual protection and to facilitate the fur trade. Cadillac even promoted intermarriage between French men and Native American women. However, the mix of tribes was not always peaceful and growth of the settlement was stunted by Cadillac’s unpopularity. When he was made governor of Louisiana in 1710 the attention of his sponsor, Pontchartrain, waned.
During the next 50 years, Detroit remained a small frontier settlement made up of soldiers, artisans, trappers, hunters, farmers and traders with an economy centered on fur trade and farming. The entire village, including the stockade, streets and buildings, occupied an area of only one city block, bordered by the present-day streets of Griswold, Fort, Shelby and Larned and was known as Fort Detroit, beginning in 1751. Detroit remained a French settlement until a British takeover in 1760, following the French and Indian War.
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