BORDERS OF CHANGE....

CHANGING BORDERS OF PRESENT-DAY MICHIGAN

On the eve of the American Revolution the region then called Canada stretched along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes and thrust a deep wedge down into the heart of the continent between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. ...roughly they (Canadian borders) included what are now the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba, the present states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, and parts of Pennsylvania and New York.1

1763 Map of Eastern North America – From www.canadiana.org

1774 Map of Eastern North America – Also From canadiana.org

The North American continent as largely an unknown wilderness, to European eyes [was] as remote as the moon…. [as written in 1957!]. The English colonies were still confined between the Allegheny mountain chain and the Atlantic, a ribbon of settlement two thousand miles long and at most a tenth as wide. 2

The colonies in America were penned in* by design and the size of their “pen” was formalized by the Proclamation of 1763. It was an effort to thwart expansion on the frontier – and the formation of frontier settlements that couldn’t be protected from clashes with Indians. Pontiac’s Rebellion was a cautionary tale for the British powers that be.

However, forays into the frontier merely whetted the appetite of those feeling the “push” of the increasingly crowded Eastern seaboard and the “pull” of the Ohio Valley and other fertile (albeit Indian) lands. In the mind of the colonials, though, weren’t those prime lands their reward for defeating the French?

1 THE PATH OF DESTINY, Thomas H. Raddall, Copyright 1957
2 Ibid


CURRENT EVENTS - POLITICAL COMMENTARY – *Found By Googling “penned in”: Shinbone (Not related to above subject matter)