tucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia who had fought on the Michigan frontier remained in the Territory as settlers and wrote to friends in the East about the opportunities afforded; one of these was Lewis Cass, who as governor of Michigan Territory from 1813 to 1831 used his great energies to promote its settlement.5

An indirect result of the War of 1812 was the unfavorable report, widely circulated, about Michigan lands. In 1815 Edward Tiffin, surveyor general for the Northwest, reported to the National Government that there "would not be more than one acre out of a hundred, if there would be one out of a thousand that would, in any case, admit of cultivation;" for, he said, "the intermediate space between the swamps and lakes, which is probably nearly one half of the country, is, with a very few exceptions, a poor barren, sandy land, on which scarcely any vegetation grows, except very small scrubby oaks." The The purpose of the survey upon which this report was based was to promote the early disposition of the Michigan bounty lands authorized by Congress for compensation to the soldiers of the war." The surveyors may have been influenced, at least in4. F. J. Turner, "The colonization of the West, 1820-1830," in American Historical Review, XI, 307; Mich. Hist. Colls., XXIII, 482.

5. A. C. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (Boston, 1891), 127-129; J. H. Lanman, Michigan, 236.

6. American State Papers: Public Lands, III, 164-165. 7. Statutes at Large, I, 728-730. For the relation of Cass to this survey, see McLaughlin, Lewis Cass, 94-95; A. C. McLaughlin, "The Influence of Governor Cass on the Development of the Northwest" in American Historical Association, Papers, III, 315; T. M. Cooley, Michigan (Boston, 1885), 193. For newspaper characterization of the Tiffin report, see an editorial in the Detroit Gazette for July 24, 1818.

directly, by the unfavorable report made by Monroe to Jefferson prior to the organization of the Northwest Territory, who after reconnoitering in parts of the Northwest wrote: "A great part of the Territory is miserably poor, especially that near the Lakes Michigan and Erie. The districts, therefore, within which these fall will never contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them to membership in the confederacy."

As a result of the Tiffin report President Madison recommended to Congress, that since the lands in Michigan were covered with swamps and lakes or were otherwise so unfit for cultivation that only a small proportion could be applied to the intended grants, other lands should be designated to take the place of Michigan's proportion of the military bounty lands;' accordingly, three-fourths of that amount were ordered to be surveyed in the rival state of Illinois. 10 The Government's disfavor towards Michigan lands doubtless became widely known, as the newspapers of the day emphasized the doings of Congress, and many eastern people were then specially anxious to know about the West. School geographies contained maps with the words "Interminable Swamp" across the interior of Michigan." Morse's Geography, which was considered an authority and was widely used, featured this idea. until a late period. 12 Morse's Traveller's Guide repre8. J. Monroe, Writings (S. M. Hamilton, ed. New York, 1898) I, 117.

9. Special message of February 6, 1816.

10. Statutes at Large, III, 332.

sented sand hills "extending into the interior as far as the dividing ridge sometimes crowned with a

few stunted trees, and a scanty vegetation, but generally bare, and thrown by the wind into a thousand fantastic shapes."13

The immediate effects upon settlement were of course unfavorable. The traveler William Darby, writing from Detroit in August, 1818, says that during more. than a month in which he had been traveling between Geneva (New York) and Detroit, he had seen hundreds going west, but "not one in fifty with the intention of settling in Michigan Territory."14 For the time being the tide of immigration turned aside from Michigan with its "interminable swamp" and "sand hills" and favored Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

One of the earliest and strongest influences to counteract these reports was the Lewis Cass expedition of 1820. Cass warmly critised the Tiffin report, writing to the Government that the lands of Michigan had been "grossly misrepresented"15 Upon his motion new surveys were begun in the vicinity of Detroit in 1816 and public sales were opened for the surveyed portion in 1818. In the same year an exploring party apparently under his auspices dispelled illusions about the country back of Detroit. 16 In 1819 national aid was secured for an extended examination of the soil, minerals, and In13. J. Morse, Traveller's Guide (New Haven, 1826), 169. 14. W. Darby, A Tour from the City of New-York to Detroit in the Michigan Territory. 1818 (New York, 1819), 200. 15. McLaughlin, "Influence of Cass on the Development of the Northwest," 347.

16. See an article in the Detroit Gazette for July 18, 1823, referring to the exploration of 1818 in the rear of Detroit, attributing the enterprise largely to the interest of Cass.

dian conditions over a route of some five thousand miles through the interior, accomplished in 1820.17 The result gave to men vitally connected with the government of the Territory and influential with the National Government a first-hand knowledge of the region where the Tiffin surveyors were supposed to have worked, and impressed upon them more firmly a lesson of the War of 1812, the need of a national military road between Detroit and Chicago. Since the expedition was made partly under national auspices, its report had a semiofficial character; the interest which it excited is indicated by the sale within thirty days of the entire edition of Schoolcraft's Summary Narrative published in 1821 at Albany, which is said to have found its way to Europe.18

Accounts of travel through Michigan preceding Cass's expedition were on the whole too general to have much influence with settlers, yet there were some exceptions. Estwick Evans wrote in his Pedestrious Tour in 1818: "In travelling more than four thousand 17. Smith, Life and Times of Lewis Cass, contains much of the

preliminary correspondence with Calhoun, then secretary of war, about the expedition. The official journal of the expedition kept by James Duane Doty, secretary of the Territorial legislature of Michigan, is contained in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIII, 163 et seq. See also Henry R. Schoolcraft's Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820 (Albany, 1821). Good brief accounts may be found in McLaughlin's Lewis Cass, 115-119; J. V. Campbell, Outlines of the Political History of Michigan (Detroit, 1876), 400-404; W. T. Young, Sketch of the Life and Public Services of General Lewis Cass (Detroit, 1852), 85-88; Detroit Gazette, May 26, 1820.

18. Outlines of the Life and Character of General Lewis Cass (Albany, 1848), 24.

miles, in the western parts of the United States, I met no tract of country which, upon the whole, impressed my mind so favorably as the Michigan Territory. The soil of the territory is generally fertile, and a considerable proportion of it is very rich."19 Of "Travels" before 1837 the most important for the correction of false impressions about Michigan were those of McKenney, Hoffman, and Martineau. Some of the early guidebooks for travelers and settlers were very favorable to Michigan. An important one of these was by Samuel R. Brown, published at Auburn, New York, in 1817; in 1820 there appeared in London an anonymous Guide for English emigrants to America obviously based upon it. 20

Newspaper articles favorable to Michigan early found their way through the eastern press. For example, the 19. E. Evans, Pedestrious Tour, 119, quoted from R. G. Thwaites, Early Western Travels (Cleveland, 1904-1907), VIII, 220. Evans' work was published at Concord, New Hampshire, in 1819.

20. The English Guide gives to Ohio thirty-five pages, to Indiana nineteen, to Michigan ten, and to Illinois nine. Compare pages 688, 689, 694 respectively with pages 155, 156-157, and 165 in S. R. Brown, The Western Gazetteer (Auburn, 1817). See also J. Melish's A Geographical description of the United States (Philadelphia, 1818), 137, where the climate is described as "temperate and healthy" and the soil "generally rich and fertile." The ignorance of the interior is revealed by the statement that "in the center, the land is high, from whence there is a descent in all directions;" and an equal poverty of knowledge is revealed in the articles in the Detroit Gazette prior to 1820, which, while they try to favor the lands, are limited in descriptive matter to those close to the castern shore. See for another instance the numbers of November 21, 1817, May 7 and 14, November 26, and December 3, 1819.