Detroit

Variant name of place

Tertroit

Geographic position

42.3314° N, 83.0458° W

Event

Occom's First Mission to the Oneidas.

Sources

http://detroithistorical.org/learn/timeline-detroit/french-detroit-1700-1760; Hamilton, Milton. Sir William Johnson: Colonial American, 1715-1763. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1976. Geo coordinates at https://www.google.com/#q=geographic+coordinates+of+detroit.

General note

Detroit, the most populous city in Michigan, is located in the southeast corner of the state. It sits on the southwestern shore of Lake St. Clair, with the Detroit River running through it. Originally inhabited by the early Mound Builder peoples, the area attracted the French who built a series of forts at strategic locations in North America to keep the British from moving west out of New England and to establish a monopoly on trade with the Native peoples. The area known as "le detroit" or the straits, where the river narrows, became a major French post, close to the surrounding Great Lakes and connecting waterways. In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac got permission to establish Fort Ponchartrain there and offered protection and trading opportunities to the Huron, Miami, Ottawa and Chippewa Tribes, who built villages around the fort. French priests also used the fort as a base for converting Indians to Catholicism. European settlers also flooded in; by 1765, Detroit was the largest city between Montreal and New Orleans and rich in furs for trading. During the French and Indian War, British troops captured Montreal from the French and pushed west to take Fort Ponchartrain, which they renamed Fort Detroit. Many of the surrounding Indian tribes transferred allegience to the British, but were continually stirred up by the French, who had retreated to the Mississippi valley, and by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), the powerful Indian confederacy. In 1761, General William Johnson, British superindendant of Indian Affairs, was deputed by General Amherst, the military leader of the war, to make several trips to Detroit, bringing gifts and medals to the Indians in the area. For these trips, Johnson journeyed by boat; thus, Occom mentions the Detroit river, on which Johnson travelled. With the conclusion of the war in 1763, Indians in the area around Detroit feared the loss of French protection and British incursion west of the Appalachian Mountains. Led by Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa Tribe, many Indians in Ohio Country attacked Fort Detroit, but could not hold it because the French could not resupply them with ammunition. This attack is considered the beginning of Pontiac's Rebellion; soon the Senecas, the westernmost Haudenosaunee, and the Delaware and Shawnee Tribes also attacked British settlements in western Pennsylvania. Though Pontiac surrendered to the British in 1766 and the rebellion was quashed, letters from Jacob Johnson to Wheelock and Thomas Huntington's journal, both dated 1769, indicate the danger to Wheelock's potential missionaries because of the ongoing tensions between the British and the western Indians, occasioned by hostilities originating from Indians in the area around Detroit under French influence.