In 1978, in commemoration of the bicentennial of the American Revolutionary War, Dr. David Armour and Keith Widder wroteAt the Crossroads, Michilimackinac During the American Revolution. Published by the Mackinac Island State Park Commission, this important work provides a thorough and well-written examination of that important chapter in Mackinac history when the fur trade and military community of the Straits of Mackinac moved from the mainland to Mackinac Island. InBeyond Pontiac’s Shadow, Michilimackinac and the Anglo-Indian War of 1763, Dr. Widder provides readers with a greater context and deeper understanding of the British period at Michilimackinac by examining...

On June 2, 1763, while playing a game of baggatiway, a party of Ojibwe warriors from Mackinac Island and Cheboygan attacked Fort Michilimackinac and captured it from the British. The Ojibwe triumph over the heavily armed garrison may have been the most significant hour in thepays d’en hautduring the eighteenth century. Visitors to the reconstructed fort and historians alike have been so taken with the apparent simplicity and finality of this dramatic incident that they have been unable to see it as more than just an episode in what is often called Pontiac’s War. Alexander Henry’s eyewitness account...

In late September or early October 1760, Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade brought news of the capitulation of Montreal to Michilimackinac. By the time Langlade arrived, Captain Louis Liénard de Beaujeu de Villemonde had vacated his command of the fort. Having no intention to surrender his post to a British officer, Beaujeu led his garrison of French troops from Michilimackinac toward the Illinois country.¹ Beaujeu took with him the authority of “Onontio,”² the governor general of Canada, who had become the French “father” to Indians living in the Michilimackinac borderland. The departure of the official French presence at Michilimackinac did not...

A complex web of relationships wove together the fabric of the fur-trade society at Michilimackinac. French-Canadians living at Michilimackinac maintained close ties with family and business associates in Montreal and Quebec and formed connections with Native people throughout thepays d’en haut, especially the Odawa and the Ojibwe. Indian women married Canadian men, who traded in the interior, drawing their husbands into their kinship and trade networks. As a result, Canadian traders doing business at L’Arbre Croche, the Grand River (Michigan), Fort St. Joseph, Sault Ste. Marie, La Baye, Chagouamigon, Kaministiquia, the Mississippi River, and points farther west brought their...

The story of Michilimackinac after the British conquest of Canada in 1760 is the saga of Indians, British, French-Canadians, and métis struggling to build an enduring peace and a viable fur trade based upon trust. Before British officials could establish their authority permanently at Detroit and Michilimackinac they had to earn trust. But trust, the essential ingredient required to make trade and peace possible, proved elusive and was tossed about by waves of fear, intrigue, and changing market conditions. Trust, or the lack of it, shaped and reshaped the relationships between Native people and Europeans from the time they first...

Captain Henry Balfour took possession of the French forts at Michilimackinac, La Baye, and St. Joseph in autumn 1761, thereby incorporating the Michilimackinac borderland into the British Atlantic World. When Balfour reached Michilimackinac on September 28, 1761, he met British traders, who together generated mistrust, uncertainty, and anxiety among people reeling from the effects of a long war that had not yet been formerly ended by treaty. Balfour, Lieutenants Dietrich Brehm and William Leslye, and Ensigns James Gorrell and Francis Schlösser, along with traders Alexander Henry, Henry Bostwick, James Stanley Goddard, and Ezekiel Solomon, all of whom had arrived only...

With the dawn of 1762, Native people and Canadians in the Michilimackinac borderland faced the unenviable task of adapting to the presence of assertive British traders, officers, and soldiers who had recently entered their homeland. Although the Canadians had sworn oaths of allegiance to King George III, many chafed under what they perceived to be a British yoke of oppression. Some Canadians and many Indians harbored hope that when a final peace treaty was signed in Europe, the upper country and the rest of Canada would be restored to the French king. The cessation of hostilities in September 1760 did...

Upon their arrival in September 1761, British soldiers and traders set about disrupting the lives of the residents of Fort Michilimackinac by reshaping the appearance of the community and introducing new ways. Most noticeably, officers and enlisted men transformed the southeast quadrant of the fort into a military district when they moved into houses, located along the Rue de la Babillarde, formerly occupied by Canadians. English traders, including Ezekiel Solomon, Henry Bostwick, and Alexander Henry, also took up residence in the fort, bringing with them their own material cultural and sense of social hierarchy. These men put in place the...

On the sultry morning of Thursday, June 2, 1763, all hell broke loose at Fort Michilimackinac when warriors from local Ojibwe villages brought death and destruction to British soldiers and traders. After receiving war belts from Pontiac, the Michilimackinac Ojibwe, along with the Ojibwe from Cheboygan, rose up against the British garrison, intending to drive them from the Straits of Mackinac. Ojibwe warriors began what appeared to be an innocent game of baggatiway, which led to a vicious assault on the troops. Before quiet returned, one officer, fifteen rank and file, and one English trader lay dead. The remaining troops...

The turmoil stirred up by the Ojibwe at Michilimackinac and other acts of violence in the West motivated General Jeffery Amherst, Sir William Johnson, General Thomas Gage, and George Croghan to reflect upon the war and articulate policies to guide future actions in the upper country. As they set forth their views, it soon became evident that each understood the causes of the upheaval differently. After Amherst returned to England in November 1763, Johnson and Gage, who succeeded Amherst as acting commander in chief, formulated policies that enabled British soldiers and traders to reestablish, strengthen, and extend British authority and...

Reoccupying Fort Michilimackinac formed a key element in British strategy for restoring peace and the fur trade in the upper country. Before redcoats could come back to the fort, Sir William Johnson, General Thomas Gage, and Lieutenant Colonel Henry Gladwin worked through many challenges and uncertainties during the first eight months of 1764. The Michilimackinac borderland remained relatively calm in early 1764 primarily because intelligence gathering identified potential conflict, enabling Gladwin, the commandant at Detroit, and Indian leaders to defuse tensions among the people in thepays d’en haut. Rumors of Indians planning to renew hostilities at Detroit or to...

Upon arrival at Fort Michilimackinac on September 22, 1764, Captain William Howard and two companies of the Seventeenth Regiment of Foot assumed responsibility for reestablishing British presence and authority in thepays d’en hautand for overseeing the restoration of the fur trade. Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet’s instructions to Howard painted the Canadians as implacable enemies who should be deported. To Howard’s surprise, the Canadians welcomed him, setting in motion a process that began to change the dynamics between French and British at Michilimackinac. Howard learned that the Canadians were indispensable to British efforts to exercise authority among the Indians...

In late 1764, Captain William Howard picked up the work begun by Lieutenant James Gorrell at La Baye in 1762–63. The alliances negotiated by Gorrell with the Wisconsin Indians played a vital role in maintaining peace throughout the Michilimackinac borderland before and after the attack at Fort Michilimackinac on June 2, 1763. In order for that peace to continue, however, traders had to go to live among the Native people and exchange their goods for Indian-produced furs. When Canadian and British traders went west again in 1765, they reinforced existing, and formed new, relationships with Indians, métis, and Interior...