Free Here Comes Trouble by Michael Moore Page B

spring of 1836.
    Six days later they arrived in the teeming metropolis of Buffalo. There were people everywhere and so many shops that you could stock up for a year by spending just one day in what was already one of America’s largest cities. There was so much activity and commotion, Pemberton encouraged everyone to stay close and keep an eye on their belongings. The Erie Canal had opened in the last decade, and this had brought many settlers and businesses to Buffalo, which was now called “the gateway to the Great Lakes.” The canal, which stretched from the Hudson River in eastern New York, now made it possible to ship goods and people from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the rivers of the West, including the Mississippi River. Silas could not believe the claims made on the posters around town: L EAVE B UFFALO TODAY —A RRIVE D ETROIT TOMORROW! They advertised new, large-capacity steamships that could literally whisk you out of New York and have you in the Western Territories by sundown the next day. That just did not seem possible.
    The Moores and Pembertons paid eight dollars apiece and got on the first boat in the morning, one of four ships that left every day between April and November. The following day, they arrived in Detroit. Silas and Richard went to the land office to see about purchasing property near Detroit. They were told they could buy the land on a plot called the “Grand Circus” for thirty-five dollars. But when the men went to check out the land, they found it swampy and unsuitable for farming. Instead, they bought, sight unseen, a large parcel near a lake about fifty miles north of Detroit—“the far, far wilderness,” they were told—in a place near “Lapeer” (derived from the French word for “flint”).
    The Moores and Pembertons took a stagecoach to Pontiac, where they purchased oxen and continued on to Lapeer County. Less than eight years prior, there were no white people in the county. Now there were already a few hundred, but not many in the area near the land purchased by Silas Moore. There were at least three hundred Indians living nearby. When Silas arrived, he was greeted by the chief of the Neppessing band of the Chippewa Indians. Silas explained how he had purchased some land a couple miles away. The chief and his men, familiar with the white man and his concept for “owning land,” showed them the place they were looking for: Lake Neppessing. The chief and his tribe lived on the western side of the lake. There he took Silas to his plot of land. The chief then brought Moore to his village to welcome him. After a while, Silas decided to move to the east end of Lake Neppessing. The idea of living across the lake from three hundred Indians did not seem to worry the Moores.
    These early settlers decided to call their village “Elba,” after the island in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Italy, where Napoleon had been exiled some twenty years prior. But to these settlers, who valued knowledge and education and taught themselves to read the classics, they also knew Elba as the island in Greek mythology that had been visited by the Argonauts in their search for Circe (Medea had sent them on this journey). To reference the classics like this was not unusual for people from the New England states, where schooling was considered a necessity. Ignorance was frowned upon, and to come to a new territory that had not a single school seemed quite appalling to them (neither the French nor the British thought it necessary to build schools in Detroit or the rest of the territory). But once the Erie Canal opened and brought New Yorkers to Michigan (where they named their settlements “Rochester” and “Troy” and “Utica” after their beloved hometowns in New York), they also brought certain New England sensibilities with them: town-hall democracy, a strong work ethic, and a belief that a “liberal education” was vital to a civilized society. In the oxcarts and in the steamer