laws tended to counteract them in the interests of the actual settlers. The scarcity of a medium of exchange for some years after the War of 1812, which was a handicap on the transference of properties, was partially remedied by the chartering of banks in the Territory.

The early reports which reached the East about Michigan were conflicting, but on the whole they reacted favorably. Edward Tiffin's report in 1815 created lasting prejudice in many minds; but the later United States surveys did much to offset it, and travelers like McKenney, Evans, and Hoffman gave through the press favorable views of the new Territory. Makers of schoolbooks and guidebooks revised their works in the light of later knowledge. Settlers returning to the East on business, or to visit, or to bring out their relatives, gave their views. Letters increased in number with the volume of immigration and the improvement of post roads. Many of these "letters from the West" were published in eastern newspapers. Speculators circulated by the many thousands glowing praises of Michigan lands. Michigan newspapers, especially the Detroit papers, beginning with the Detroit Gazette in 1817, set forth Michigan's advantages to settlers.

The improvements made in transportation in this period, though they advanced little beyond the statutes authorizing them were, by anticipation, a stimulus of first importance to settlement. The most important were the national military roads extending along the entire water front southward from Fort Gratiot and branching into the interior from all the important centers of population on this shore road.

The Chicago Road is the key to the earliest inland settlements outside those in Oakland, which were influenced by the Saginaw Road. The most important road authorized by the Territorial government in this period was that through the Kalamazoo Valley, the importance of which for settlement was only second to that of the Chicago Road. There were small beginnings in national harbor improvement, and preparations were active for canals and railroads. Steam navigation on the Great Lakes and the opening of the Erie Canal were strong stimuli to immigration, though the masses of immigrants in this period appear to have come overland.

Of the external influences causing immigration none were more potent than those causes which stimulated foreign immigration, especially economic pressure in Ireland and the European revolutions of 1830.

One constant disabling factor to settlers was the prevalence of malarial diseases, especially the "ague and fever," caused by the mosquitoes which infested all parts of the Territory. The Black Hawk War of 1832 and the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1834 affected settlement seriously and widely, but temporarily.

In the character of the population there was both a check and a stimulus. There were, besides the immigrants from the eastern states of the Union, the FrenchCanadians and a sprinkling of English, Irish, Scotch and Germans. The data is wanting with which to determine the proportion of the foreign-born in the total population, but it was small. Excepting the French-Canadians, it first became appreciable after

the revolutions of 1830 in Europe. There was of course a larger proportion who were of foreign descent. Combining results from the study of Washtenaw County with those obtained from the more general data given for the several settlement areas, it is apparently safe to say of the native element that excepting in the southwestern counties an overwhelming majority had their last place of residence in western New York; also that of these a very large proportion were born in the New England States, principally in Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The main agents determining the sources of population were the position of the Territory almost directly west of Canada, New York and New England, the comparative ease of transportation from the East, the appeal made by the physical and economic character of Michigan to the East rather than to the South, the economic and political pressure in the eastern states and abroad, and the southern barrier of competing lands in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Forces tending to amalgamate the native and foreign elements were, in the first place, the great preponderance of the Americans in number; but equally efficient was the economic fact of the necessity of a common struggle for a livelihood under conditions which fostered a democratic appreciation of the worth of the individual.

The presence of the Indians had its good and its bad features. As agricultural settlers the Indians were a negligible quantity in the population, but they were a factor to be reckoned with in their relations with settlers. The Indian could be helpful to the settler

as a guide or temporary aid in getting supplies, or he could be annoying; and he was more likely to be the latter when in liquor or when influenced by hostile traders. The Indian villages called attention to choice spots, though the reservations were on the whole a source of delay to the settler.

The hospitality of the Michigan French-Canadians was a welcome aid to the first American immigrants, but the prejudices and the thriftlessness of these original settlers held back from enterprising methods. much of the best land along the streams near the southeastern shore. The business ability of the younger settlers from New York and New England was a strong stimulus. There was a notable absence of social and religious eccentrics, and in general the moral tone of the settlers was high, inviting desirable elements of population from the older centers.

The chief motives that guided settlers in choosing locations for settlement are clear, but a very long and careful scrutiny would be needed to determine except roughly the physiographic preferences that influenced people from particular states or countries. The com pact settlements of the French-Canadians were made at the river mouths, for ease of communication, of defense, of food supply and of trade. Race affiliation doubtless played a part. These people kept quite away from the interior. For their purposes there was more land along shore than they needed. The only Frenchmen in the interior were the occasional Indian traders or the agents of the American Fur Company.

Foreign elements other than the Canadian-French seem to have been most numerous in Detroit and the

shore villages. Germans had begun to gather in the vicinity of Ann Arbor, and in less numbers at other points in the interior. English settlers appeared at White Pigeon and at various points on the Chicago Road. There were Scotch in northwestern Macomb County. The high land of Bruce Township may have had upon the Scotch settlers an influence similar to that reported about the effect which the New England aspect of Romeo and Vermontville had upon their New England settlers. A Scotch settlement or other settlement, as in the case of the Canadian-French, had a natural affinity for settlers from the same nation, section or State. The power of this influence to direct later settlement appears not to have been strong in places where superior economic advantages conflicted with it. The influences of previous occupation are obvious in farming and lumbering, and to some extent in the village industries and trades; but men of great diversity of previous occupations engaged in farming.

The main agents affecting distribution of population were the relative position and excellence of the various physical and economic advantages: water power, drainage, springs of mineral and drinking water, lakes, trails, fertile soils, openings and forests. Later conditions were the roads and the presence of older settlements. Not least were the reports favorable or unfavorable about lands, the healthfulness of the climate, and the operations of speculators.

The rate and distribution of settlement is roughly indicated by the organization of counties. Before the beginning of public land sales in Detroit in 1818 only three counties had sufficient people to warrant organiza