The American Revolution Comes to the Northwest

The Quebec Act of 1774, which marked the beginning of civil government in the Old Northwest, saw Henry Hamilton presiding as Lieutenant Governor in the new capitol of Detroit.  Detroit, at that time was  a town of 1500 English-speaking white settlers.

The beginning of the America Revolution produced no immediate effect in the Northwest territory.  There was really nothing these frontier folk could do to help the colonies fighting on the East coast, until the English changed their minds.  The British decided to ravage the trans-Allegheny country, which made the new western territory an important theater in the war.

The British used the Indians, without regard for humanity, as their one great resource in the west.  The Redcoats put a price on every white scalp - men, women or child all paid the same.  The wilderness became a scene of bloody ambushes paid for by the British.  Wives who went out to milk the cow never were seen again, men who went to gather wood for winter were scalped and left to rot in the forest.  The frontier settlers were not the least responsible for the revolt of the colonies, in fact, they were non-combative.  They were killed because they lived on America soil. 

The responsibility goes to King George and his government.  The Earl of Suffolk wrote, "God and nature has put into our hands the knife to scalp and the tomahawk to torture them into unconditional submission".  In Detroit, Lt. Governor Hamilton, after opening a meeting with prayer, told the assembled Chippewa, Hurons, Mohawks and Potawatomi that it was their "duty" to decimate the white rebels.  Even if the settlers had "submitted" what good would it have done to the Revolution on the East Coast?

It was at this time that the news arrived in Detroit from Illinois, that a band of rebels led by one George Rogers Clark, had overtaken the settlement of Kaskaskia, thrown the commander into irons and required the population to take an oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress.  The settlement of Cahokia near St. Louis, was next, and rumor ran that a French priest was riding to Vincennes to take that settlement for the rebels as well.  The Revolution had come to the Old Northwest.

Next time...George Rogers Clark
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On February 7, 1964,  Pam Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York's Kennedy Airport–and "Beatlemania" arrives. It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before.  You know the rest!