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At the turn of the eighteenth century, Indigenous nations designated Detroit as a “common bowl” and a crucial nexus where they shared resources, made compromises, and coexisted. As the century unfolded, Detroit continued as a polyglot community in the face of expanding Euro-American settlement. The region became a highly charged space where the rituals of political negotiation grew in importance alongside a constant threat of violence. British political and economic systems continued to operate long after the end of the American Revolution, creating a shared cultural border at the end of the eighteenth century that would endure even as the American Empire reestablished rule on the north side of the river. Both Anishinaabe and Wyandot people set aside land for future occupation of their people, re-creating another transnational space in the region. A hundred years later, issues of race, economic development, political partisanship, and overlapping national claims continued to resonate as the city commemorated and mythologized its origins. This book considers how larger watershed occasions impacted the Detroit region and how, in turn, the unique particularities of local custom impacted regional and national trade and politics and the very nature of how the city continues to view its past.

French-Indigenous families were a central force in shaping Detroit’s history. Detroit’s Hidden Channels: The Power of French-Indigenous Families in the Eighteenth Century examines the role of these kinship networks in Detroit’s development as a site of singular political and economic importance in the continental interior. Situated where Anishinaabe, Wendat, Myaamia, and later French communities were established and where the system of waterways linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico narrowed, Detroit’s location was its primary attribute. While the French state viewed Detroit as a decaying site of illegal activities, the influence of the French-Indigenous networks grew as members diverted imperial resources to bolster an alternative configuration of power relations that crossed Indigenous and Euro-American nations. Women furthered commerce by navigating a multitude of gender norms of their nations, allowing them to defy the state that sought to control them by holding them to European ideals of womanhood. By the mid-eighteenth century, French-Indigenous families had become so powerful, incoming British traders and imperial officials courted their favor. These families would maintain that power as the British imperial presence splintered on the eve of the American Revolution.