Fort Detroit
French explorer and soldier Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac originally built Fort Detroit in 1701, naming it Fort Pontchartrain. The French hoped to use the fort to build alliances with the Indians living in the Ohio valley in order to protect their interests in the region from British encroachment. The fort was built along the Detroit River at the gateway between Lake Erie and the western Great Lakes. It consisted of a small town surrounded by a stockade wall. Fort Detroit soon became a center of the fur trade between the French and local Indians.
The French surrendered the fort to the British in 1760 as a result of the French and Indian War. At this point the British named it Fort Detroit. The British reinforced the defenses around Detroit, making it even stronger. Indians attacked Fort Detroit during Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763, but they were not able to overcome its strong fortifications in spite of a five-month siege.
During the American Revolution, the British used Fort Detroit as a base to plan and launch Indian raids into the Ohio Country. Henry Hamilton, a man known for his policy of paying Indian allies for American scalps, was the fort's commander during the Revolution. In spite of the Treaty of Paris (1783), the British continued to occupy Fort Detroit even after the end of the war and encouraged growing tensions between the natives and American settlers.
The Americans eventually took over the fort in 1796. While Fort Detroit was under the control of General William Hull, the British briefly captured it once again during the War of 1812. Today, the modern city of Detroit, Michigan, is located where the fort once stood.
References and Suggested Reading
- Antal, Sandy. A Wampum Denied: Procter's War of 1812. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1997. - Available from Amazon.com
- Barr, Daniel P., ed. The Boundaries Between Us: Natives and Newcomers Along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest Territory, 1750-1850. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006. - Available from Amazon.com
- Bond, Beverley W., Jr. The Foundations of Ohio. Columbus, OH: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1941.
- Borneman, Walter R. 1812: The War that Forged a Nation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Dixon, David. Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. - Available from Amazon.com
- Dowd, Gregory Evans. War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations & the British Empire. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. - Available from Amazon.com
- Flavell, Julie, and Stephen Conway, eds. Britain and America go to War: The Impact of War and Warfare in Anglo-America, 1754-1815. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Foster, James. The Capitulation, or, A History of the Expedition Conducted by William Hull, Brigadier-General of the Northwestern Army by an Ohio Volunteer. Chillicothe, OH: James Barnes, 1812.
- Fowler, William M., Jr. Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763. New York: Walker & Company, 2005. - Available from Amazon.com
- Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. - Available from Amazon.com
- Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. - Available from Amazon.com
- Knepper, George. Ohio and Its People. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003. - Available from Amazon.com
- Nester, William R. The Frontier War for American Independence. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Nester, William R. The Great Frontier War: Britain, France, and the Imperial Struggle for North America, 1607-1755. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. - Available from Amazon.com
- O'Donnell, James H., III. Ohio's First Peoples. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Ricky, Donald B., ed. Encyclopedia of Ohio Indians. St. Clair Shores, MI: Somerset Publishers, Inc., 1998. - Available from Amazon.com
Time Periods
Citation
"Fort Detroit", Ohio History Central, July 1, 2005, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=704
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