[4] Schuyler, _Colonial New York_, i. 431, 432.
[5] _Colonel Quary to the Lords of Trade, 16 June, 1703._
[6] _Cornbury to the Lords of Trade, 9 September, 1703._
[7] _Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, 28 February, 1700._
[9] Schuyler, _Colonial New York_, i. 488.
[11] _Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, 17 October, 1700._
[12] _Conference of Bellomont with the Indians, 26 August, 1700._
[13] _Journal of Bleeker and Schuyler on their visit to Onondaga, August, September, 1701._
[14] The foregoing chapter rests on numerous documents in the Public Record Office, Archives de la Marine, Archives Nationales, _N. Y. Colonial Documents_, vols. iv. v. ix., and the _Second and Third Series of the Correspondance Officielle_ at Ottawa.
Michilimackinac.--La Mothe-Cadillac: his Disputes with the Jesuits.--Opposing Views.--Plans of Cadillac: his Memorial to the Court; his Opponents.--Detroit founded. The New Company.--Detroit changes Hands.--Strange Act of the Five Nations.
In the few years of doubtful peace that preceded Queen Anne's War, an enterprise was begun, which, nowise in accord with the wishes and expectations of those engaged in it, was destined to produce as its last result an American city.
Antoine de La Mothe-Cadillac commanded at Michilimackinac, whither Frontenac had sent him in 1694. This old mission of the Jesuits, where they had gathered the remnants of the lake tribes dispersed by the Iroquois at the middle of the seventeenth century, now savored little of its apostolic beginnings. It was the centre of the western fur-trade and the favorite haunt of the _coureurs de bois_. Brandy and squaws abounded, and according to the Jesuit Carheil, the spot where Marquette had labored was now a witness of scenes the most unedifying.[15]
At Michilimackinac was seen a curious survival of Huron-Iroquois customs. The villages of the Hurons and Ottawas, which were side by side, separated only by a fence, were surrounded by a common enclosure of triple palisades, which, with the addition of loopholes for musketry, were precisely like those seen by Cartier at Hochelaga, and by Champlain in the Onondaga country. The dwellings which these defences enclosed were also after the old Huron-Iroquois pattern,--those long arched structures covered with bark which Brébeuf found by the shores of Matchedash Bay, and Jogues on the banks of the Mohawk. Besides the Indians, there was a French colony at the place, chiefly of fur-traders, lodged in log-cabins, roofed with cedar bark, and forming a street along the shore close to the palisaded villages of the Hurons and Ottawas. The fort, known as Fort Buade, stood at the head of the little bay.[16]