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DETROIT IN 1838 BY HENRY A. FORD
A salt lick was found somewhere in the back country, from which the Indians returned, "having boiled a good lot of excellent salt, which is just the thing for them, salt being here a scarce thing. " In the spring of 1783 "some Indian brethren went to- the mouth of the river to help block out his house for a white man, who wishes to settle there and invited them "the first note, we believe, of civilized settlement in Macomb county, elsewhere than at New Gnadenhutten. As before hinted, visits of Detroiters to the mission were frequent.
December 19, 1785, some of the Indian brethren went "to lay out and make a new and straight road to Detroit. " This, when finished, became the famous "Moravian road, " the first wagonway made in the interior of Michigan: It was "twenty three and one half miles from Our town to Detroit, straight through the bush. "
The annals of the four years at New Gnadenhutten are comparatively uneventful. The winter of 1783-4 was terribly severe. The "gentle people" from Detroit who visited the station January 10th, "simply to see our town. " reported "that by the thermometer it has not been so cold for twenty eight years as it is now, it being seven degrees lower than in the whole time. " On the 24th, Zeisberger makes entry: ''This week it snowed several days in succession, and the snow was now three feet deep, so that it was hard to get firewood. " And a few days later: "It has snowed nearly every day. and the snow gets ever deeper. Our Indian brethren, about whom we are most anxious and distressed, have many of them, nothing more to eat. No one had thought there would be such a winter. Old settlers in Detroit say that as long as they have lived there the snow has never been so deep.
DETROIT MICHIGAN
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