CHIPPEWA COUNTY HISTORY
Historic Michigan (Land of the Great Lakes)
A history of the upper peninsula of Michigan ...
By George Newman Fuller 1873-1957

(Page 44-47) - It is impossible to record the names of the first permanent settlers of a community such as Chippewa county, which has its roots buried in the dim past, when no thought of preserving the records of the villages concerned the inhabitants. Though the settlement at the Sault is one of the earliest in this section of the country, the fur trade was not one to encourage permanent settlement on the lands in this vicinity, and the white men who frequented this part of the Upper Peninsula did so only insofar as the demands of their trade brought them here. Agents in charge of the trading posts at the Sault were often changed, and even their names have disappeared.

There are some few, however, whose efforts in promoting the development of this section of the Upper Peninsula have gone into history, among them being Chevalier de Repentigny, who, with Captain de Bonne was granted a tract of land six leagues square bordering the river at Sault Ste. Marie in 1750. This grant of 214,000 acres of land was the largest grant within the limits of Michigan. De Bonne remained at Quebec, but De Repentigny came to the grant in 11751, and the following year erected a fort and three other buildings within a palisade one hundred feet square. The west wall of the palisade was about fifty feet east of the present Brady street at Sault Ste. Marie and the north wall was coincidental with the line of Water street. A bull and three cows, some heifers, yoke of oxen, and a horse and a marc were brought to this place by Repentigny and were the first livestock in the present Chippewa county. All the trees within gun range of the fort were cut down, and a clearing outside the palisade was placed under cultivation by Jean Cadotte, the pioneer farmer of Chippewa county. The proprietor remained at the Sault until 1755, superintending the erection of needed buildings and the improvement of the land, but when Quebec became the object of the British attack in 1762, De Repentigny gathered about him as many Frenchmen in this section of the country as he could and went to aid in the defense of New France against the English assaults. The seignory at Sault Ste. Marie was left in charge of Jean Baptiste Cadotte, above named, and was operated by him until the coming of the British. The Cadotte family continued to occupy the land, however, for many years afterward, and the question of legal title to the tract they occupied brought up a legal tangle that is one of the famous pieces of litigation in Michigan's legal history. The lung occupancy of the Cadotte family, however, worked to win them the title, it was decided by the courts. Although De Repentigny was allowed tenure of his estate provided that he pledge allegiance to the English cause, he returned to France and asked for promotion in the military service, in which his family had long been prominent.

The part played by the garrulous Alexander Henry with the development of the new country has already been discussed in part. Henry, after casting about for some time in this section of the country and after making a trip to the Canadian capital, returned to Montreal to find his goods gone. He formed a partner- ship with Jean Baptiste Cadotte, named above as a tenant on the Repentigny estate, and the two engaged in the fur trade with the Indians with their headquarters at Sault Ste. Marie.

Jean Rapliste Cadotte was the son of Cadieux who came to the Sault with St. Lusson in 1671. when France formally claimed this country as part of New France. At the time of his appointment by Repentigny he held a virtual monopoly of the fur trade in the Chippewa villages of Lake Superior. He married the daughter of a Saulteur chief by both the Indian and Christian ceremonies, and his two sons. Jean and Michel, were prominent characters in the fur trade during the time of the Northwest company. The father continued to reside at the Sault until 1803. when he died.

Jonathan Carver was another prominent Knglisliman to come to the rapids of the St. Mary's river, mentioning the place in his journal at the time- In 1833, sixty-seven years after the deed was given, the heirs of Carver filed in the courthouse on Mackinac island an instrument executed by two chiefs of the Naudowessie Indians deeding a tract of land between the falls of St. Anthony and the Chippewa river on the Mississippi river, a part of which land is now occupied by the city of St. Paul. Carver was an earnest searcher for the fabled northwest passage and traveled some seven thousand miles through the northwest looking for such a waterway. With valuable charts and journal, he returned to New York and from there took passage to London, where he was refused permission to publish his book. He died in that city, penniless and heartbroken.

Though the fur trade at the Sault during the regime of the Hudson's Bay company was not inconsiderable, it was not until the organization of the Northwest Fur company that Sault Ste. Marie assumed an aspect of considerable importance in connection with this trade. The assembling point was located at Grand fort age and the outgoing peltries and the incoming supplies came through Sault Ste. Marie. The company's warehouses were located on the south bank of the river, and the portage was also located on the south side. When it became apparent that the English would at last be required to give Up their western posts to American troops, the Northwest company moved its warehouses to the north side of the river, where a canal, lock, and sawmill were built in 1797. The canal was about a half mile long, and the lock was thirty-eight feet long with a lift of nine feet. Apparently the lock was little used, for scarcely any mention is made of it in the early record* alter the end of the century. It was destroyed by American troops in 1814, and subsequently uncovered and rebuilt as a historic reminder of the extensive commerce enjoyed by Sault Ste. Marie in those early days.

With the village deserted by the Northwest Fur company, Sault Ste. Marie fell into decline that continued for some time. Among the few traders who remained here and were not affiliated with the large fur companies was John Johnston, who was born in 1763. near Coleraine, Antrim county, Ireland, and came to Canada in 1792. He was the son of 3 surveyor and civil engineer who planned and executed the water works at Belfast, and his mother was the sister of Mary, the wife of Bishop Saurin. of Dromore, and also sister of the attorney general of Ireland. In the same year in which he arrived in Canada, Johnston determined to visit Sault Ste. Mane and made his journey thither by way of the Ottawa, Nipissing, and French rivers and Georgian bay. He selected La Pointe as the site for his trading post and there entered upon his work of fur trader. Within a short time after settling here, he sought the daughter of an Indian chief as his wife, but the father advised him to wait until he had made another trip to civilized parts of the country in order that Johnston might be certain that he wanted the Indian girl and not a white girl for his wife. Upon his return from England and Ireland whither he had made an extended visit, Johnston married the girl, and to this union were born three sons and four daughters, as follows: Jane, who married Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in 1823: Louis, who was serving on the Queen Charlotte when that vessel was captured by Commodore Ferry; George; Eliza, who was born in 1823, and never married; a third daughter who married Reverend Murray, of Buffalo in 1833 and died in January, 1878; Maria, the fourth daughter, who married James Laurence Schoolcraft; and John McDouall Johnston. William and John became interpreters in the United States service and lived out their lives at the Sault.

Johnston continued to reside at the Sault, where he developed a trade among the Indians of the south shore of Lake Superior that marked him as one of the influential men of this section of the state. Johnston espoused the cause of the British at the time of the War of 1812, and raised a hundred men for service with the English against Mackinac island. The Americans at that post set out to intercept Johnston, and failing in this, they continued on to the Sault and destroyed his property and that of other British sympathizers. Johnston later attempted to secure compensation for his losses but failed in the effort, the British failing to recognize his services in their behalf. He served as justice of the peace in 1812. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who married Jane Johnston in 1823, was born at Watervliet, New York, March 28. 1793, entered Union college in 1808, and in 1817-18 made a tour of the mining regions of the West and upon his return to the East wrote a treatise on lead mining in Missouri. In 1820. he was a member of the party of exploration to the copper country of Lake Superior and the Upper Mississippi and subsequently served as a United States commissioner in the treaty negotiations. He was appointed Indian agent at the Sault in 1822, and was married the following year. From 1828 to 1832. he served in the Territorial Legislature of Michigan, and during that time, he was the prime mover in founding the Historic and Algid societies at Detroit. His lectures on the Indians won him a medal from the French Institute, and in 1834, be headed an expedition to the Upper Mississippi region, an account of which was published in 1834. He directed the negotiations which brought lo the United States approximately 16,000,000 acres of land. He visited Europe in 1842, traveled through West Virginia, Ohio, and Canada in 1843, and in 1845 collected the material on the Six Nations that was published under the name of Notes on the Iroquois. His statistics and works On the Indian tribes were published in six volumes under authority from Congress at a cost of about $650,000. He married a Miss Howard, of South Carolina, in 1847 and died in 1864.

James I-. Schoolcraft, brother of Henry R., was born at Vernon, New York, and came to the Saulte a few years after the advent of his brother to this region. He started a store here about 1825, married Anna Maria Johnston in 1836, and was killed at the Johnston homestead in 1846 by Lieutenant Tilden of Fort Brady. Mrs. Schoolcraft married Rev. O. Taylor, an Episcopalian minister, and died at Pontiac in 1856.

John McDouall Johnston, son of John, was born at the Sault, October. 12, 1816. received a Scanty education in the garrison school, and attended the mission school at Mackinac island in 1827. In 1829, he was sent to a school in Lewis county. New York, and was in attendance there some twenty months. He returned to the Sault in 1831, became a United States interpreter for Schoolcraft in the following year, and in this capacity was present at some of the most important treaty negotiations in this part of the country. He married twenty-year-old Justine Picjuette, of Sault Ste. Marie, September 20. 1842. She was a descendant of the Piquette and Defoe families whose arrival at the Sault antedated that of John Johnston. The children born to this union were as follows: Spencer N.: Emma M.; Charlotte J.; Eliza S.; James L.; McD.: Louis H.; Henry G.; William Meddaugh; and Arch W.

Peter P. Barbeau was also one of the earliest settlers and fur traders of Sault Ste. Marie of whom we have any record, and his name was a familiar one to men throughout the Upper Peninsula.