Introduction to Detroit in the 18th Century

Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit 1760

In November of 1760, the vital fur trading hub known at the time as Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit was captured from the French by British forces during the course of the Seven Years War, or as it's commonly referred to in the United States, the French and Indian War. The British would've encountered a fledgling mercantile settlement as historian and author Tiya Miles put it, Rue St. Jacques was home to merchant houses, a bakery, private homes, a church, a storehouse, military barracks and more. Past the fortifications themselves along the banks of the straits sat Indigenous settlements of the Huron, Potowatomi and Ottawa peoples. French farmers had established a string of homes and farms along a bend in the river which they referred to as "the little coast". In 1760, Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit stood as a fortified French town surrounded by indigenous settlement and farmland, to the north of the settlement there were indigenous hunting grounds based in thick forested areas.1 The settlement was relatively isolated in terms of being close to any major urban centers. Detroit at this time was a primarily mercantile settlement being at a strategic location for the fur trade in the Great Lakes. During the French rule of the town, French voyageurs employed both free and enslaved laborers to aid in processing and packing furs received as imports. 2 Early on in the mid-18th century Detroit acted as a sort of connecting point for the Great Lakes frontier region as well as the major urban centers on the east coast of the continent. This mesh of different peoples was vital to the early development of an identity for the fledgling town.

Slavery and the Fur Trade

The settlement of Detroit was home to several different communities of people. What could be observed of Detroit in the 18th century were the many and fashions of these different groups. French, English, Algonquian, Iroqouian, all common dialects which would have been observed in this period.3  Men in powdered wigs and waistcoats of the European style worked alongside Indigenous Anishinaabeg traders and French merchants in order to preserve the flow of furs from the West to the East. Following the British take over of Detroit, labor practices which made up the economic core of the settlement began to shift. Concerningly, slavery was gaining even more traction in this fur trading town. Enslaved Africans were increasingly brought from the colony of New York.4 Slavery had always existed in Detroit, though under different models. The French tended to prioritize Indigenous enslaved laborers over enslaved Africans. It was far more common across New France for indigenous laborers to be used as slaves. This model shifted slightly as the British took control of the settlement in 1760 and British officers began to take enslaved Africans West with them to Detroit. 

British Administration 

The British after taking control of Detroit did not permit a civilian government to form at the settlement. Instead, the military took up direct control of all governing affairs. Officers such as Town-Major Norman McLeod who acted in this capacity during the Revolution, served as the military leader of the community.5 Detroit still remained primarily made up of French and Indigenous residents even under the British. The town was made up of nearly two thousand different residents as British officers and merchants began to arrive from the more populous colonies to the East. The British seemed to prefer a more hands off approach in terms of administration. Detroit was a hub of different communities and the British knew that the settlement would not be a primarily anglicized outpost. The British would only become more heavily involved militarily during the American War of Independence, in which they would use the town as a prison camp along with a staging ground for intensive raids along the frontier. 

¹Miles, Tiya. The dawn of detroit: A chronicle of slavery and freedom in the city of the Straits. New York: The New Press, 2019.

² Ibid 23

³ Ibid 26

⁴ Ibid 29

⁵ McLeod, Norman, 1777-1778, accessed Septermber 25, 2024, https://wayne.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/wayne-open/id/17730/rec/17.