Michigan Native American History
Before the first French settlers arrived in the mid-1600s, Indigenous people lived in the area now known as Michigan for 10,000 years. At the time, more than 100,000 Indigenous people coalesced into nine groups throughout the Great Lakes area. The Iroquoian-speaking Wyandot (called the Hurons by the French) was the largest Michigan-area tribe at the time of European settlement. The Algonquian-speaking Ojibwe (or Chippewa), Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes banded together to form the Three Fires Confederacy.
Michigan’s Native American tribes initially traded furs with and aided the French against the British in the 1760s during the French and Indian Wars (also known as the Seven Years’ War). The French brought diseases that killed large groups of Indigenous people within a few years of their arrival.
Until the end of the 18th century, few American settlers inhabited the Michigan area—which remained the property of Indigenous people when Great Britain ceded Michigan to the United States in 1783. From 1795 through 1842, the United States government ceased Native American land in Michigan through a series of coerced treaties. Over five decades, Indigenous land was reduced from 57,900 square miles to just 32 square miles.
In the decade after the passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, most Native Americans in Michigan were forced to move west of the Mississippi River to Oklahoma and Kansas. Some relocated, compelled by the government’s insistence, or fled to Canada. Others—particularly the Potawatomi and Wyandot—refused and were forced off their land by the U.S. Army on a “Trail of Tears” similar to the deadly voyage made by Cherokees from the southeastern United States.
Some tribes remained in or returned to the Great Lakes area. Today, there are 12 federally-recognized tribes in Michigan.
Michigan Exploration and Colonial History
French explorer Samuel de Champlain became the first European to explore modern-day Michigan when he navigated the St. Lawrence River in 1603. Over the following three decades, he investigated and mapped much of the Great Lakes and Michigan.
Champlain’s explorations piqued French interest in establishing a fur trade in Michigan and converting Native Americans to Christianity. In 1620, French fur trader Étienne Brûlé was the first European to set foot on Michigan, descending from Canada to the state’s Upper Peninsula. Explorer and priest Jacques Marquette created the first permanent European settlement at Sault Ste. Marie in 1668. The French also established a mission at St. Ignace in 1671 and a fort in Detroit in 1701.
British Occupation to Statehood
Conflicts over control of the North American fur trade led to the Seven Years’ War between France and Great Britain. After losing the war in 1763, the French ceded its colonies east of the Mississippi River, including Michigan, to the British. Michigan remained under British control until the American colonists’ victory in the Revolutionary War.
On September 3, 1783, Michigan was granted to the United States in the Treaty of Paris as part of the Northwest Territory. In 1787, the United States Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance, which created a government for the Northwest Territory and established a process for admitting future states to the Union.
Despite the official cession of Michigan to the United States, most settlers and Native Americans living in Detroit favored the British, who continued to maintain control of the area. It wasn’t until a coalition of Native American tribes, known as the Western Confederacy, lost the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 that the British finally evacuated. In 1796, the new United States took control of Michigan.
In 1805, the Michigan Territory was separated from Indiana Territory, with Detroit as its capital. Supported by a booming fur trade in the early 19th century, the state’s population grew. American migrants came from New England and New York, supported by the creation of the Erie Canal, while Irish and Germans immigrated to escape European political unrest. In 1835, the state reached the barrier to statehood and held its first constitutional convention. Following a primarily bloodless battle over the Michigan-Ohio boundary known as the Toledo War, Michigan became the 26th state admitted to the Union on January 26, 1837.
