A Look at History
Cass Cliff Commemorates Forgotten Hero of Early Michigan
BY FRANK STRAUS

This original Cass monument was in Bill Doyle's yard, which is Barry and Betty BeDour's yard now. It was moved in the 1950s across the road, with the original bronze plaque placed on the new monument. (Photograph courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

Many visitors to Mackinac Island's East Bluff see a dignified, super-sized historical marker commemorating a man named "Lewis Cass." The marker, which is almost as large as a small highway billboard, lists Lewis Cass's many offices and honors, and is topped with a bas-relief bronze portrait of a slightly obese man wearing a pre-Civil War neck cravat.

The "Cass Cliff" monument, on Huron Road adjacent to the trail leading to Anne's Tablet, was unveiled in 1915 by Governor Woodbridge Ferris. As General Cass had died in 1866, many of the men and women present at the unveiling would have known personally who Cass was, and what he had accomplished. Almost a century later, however, these memories have faded from view.

Let us go back, then, to Detroit in August 1812. A panicked American field commander, who has just learned of the fall of Fort Mackinac to the north, surrenders all of the U.S. troops under his command, including the young Lewis Cass and his regiment. In those days, surrendered officers were required, by the laws of war, to hand over their swords to the victors. Cass, who is a colonel and has the right to carry a sword, is infuriated at the news. A muscular, burly man, he draws his sword and breaks it over his knee so the British cannot have it.

Fast-forward to Washington, D.C., in 1813. The young republic is engaged in a desperate struggle to win back Michigan Territory from the British and Canadians. Cass and his fellow officers have been exchanged and are no longer prisoners of war. President James Madison hears of the colonel who broke his sword rather than surrendering it. Delighted at the news, Madison promotes the youth to the rank of general and appoints him military governor of Michigan. After the American victory on Lake Erie, Cass returns to Detroit in triumph.

Move forward again to Detroit in 1815 and the years following. While the overall outcome of the War of 1812 was a draw, the war's end gives the American civil government a new opportunity to extend its authority over Michigan Territory (including Mackinac Island) and to expel British-controlled fur traders from the upper Great Lakes. As the territorial governor, Cass is a key figure in this effort. Working in cooperation with the U.S. Army stationed in Detroit and at Fort Mackinac, Cass enforces a new federal law that bars British, Canadians, and French-Canadians from legally visiting American Indians and trading with them for furs. Only U.S. citizens are allowed to participate in this lucrative trade.

Forward again to 1820 on Mackinac Island's Market Street. The "American Fur Company" - note the name, "American" - is Mackinac Island's largest employer. Their shops, warehouses, and dormitories line the street, some of them so sturdily built they would still be standing almost two centuries later. The American Fur Company likes Governor Cass, who is on an inspection tour of the northern edge of his Territory. As he visits Mackinac Island, the fur company treats him with all the hospitality that a frontier village complex can provide. The company and its employees and contractors re-supply Governor Cass and his flotilla of exploration canoes for the next stages of their expedition, northward to Sault Ste. Marie and then westward out onto the southern shore of Lake Superior.

Paddling alongside the northern shore of the Upper Peninsula, the Cass expedition is covering territory that has been carefully mapped but which is largely unknown to science. The young geologist Henry Rose Schoolcraft is part of a group of researchers accompanying the party. Cass and Schoolcraft find the sandstone bluffs of Munising and the copper chunks of the Keweenaw, but Schoolcraft finds the Chippewa more interesting than the rocks. With Cass as his first patron, Schoolcraft begins his career as an Indian agent and gatherer of Mackinac-area folklore.

Plunging westward in the summer of 1820 into the wetlands of northern Minnesota, Governor Cass's goal is to find the true source of the Mississippi. His surveyors get confused among the maze of watercourses that seem to ooze slowly in all directions. Cass and his party identify a large blue lake, which appears to be the great river's headwaters. Cass is wrong; the true source, Lake Itasca, will be discovered in 1832 by Schoolcraft. The false source, a much larger lake, will bear the name of Cass Lake in honor of the explorer-governor.

Cass's exploration has not only shown the flag on the extreme northern border of the United States, but has added to scientific and scholarly knowledge. Cass has one foot in the world of the American frontier, with its self-conscious toughness and bravery, and the other in the world of the New England prep school, Phillips Exeter, where he took his early schooling. The frontier governor, who has a high and somewhat unexpected love of learning, has led the foundation of one of the first universities in what is to become the American Midwest. In 1820, the new University of Michigan is already three years old.

Spin the arrow of time forward 11 more years to 1831. Cass, who has been territorial governor of Michigan for 18 years, can see a time in the near future when this work will be done. Southern Lower Michigan is beginning its transition from frontier fur territory to a place of land settlement and agriculture. The fledgling University of Michigan will soon mark this transition by moving out from the frontier fur village of Detroit onto its own campus in a new town called "Ann Arbor." Soon Michigan will be a state of its own and its voters will be electing their own governor, rather than accepting a territorial governor chosen by the President.

Cass is viewed with great favor in Washington for his role in keeping the peace, defending the nation's northern frontier, and laying a foundation for farmland settlement. In 1831, President Jackson offers to Cass the job of Secretary of War in his Cabinet.

Many of these achievements of Lewis Cass are marked on the plaque that is bolted to the Cass Cliff monument on Mackinac Island's East Bluff. In next week's newspaper, this column will describe the remainder of Cass's notable Michigan career.