History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests / compiled from the official records of the county, the newspapers and data of personal interviews, under the editorial supervision of Thaddeus D. Seeley.

HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY

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"Oakland county is not barren of traditional or legendary events of
deep interest to the historian, and to her people. When the Jesuit fathers
and French fur traders first visited this region of the country, and following them the very early pioneers, they found many evidences of a
prior occupation by a semi-civilization, in the tillage of the soil by unknown and extinct agriculturists of a very remote period. Many rude
agricultural implements have been found in the clearing and tillage of
the land and by excavations; thus demonstrating theoretically that the
country had been previously occupied by a people who were well versed
in the knowledge of practical agriculture, and who subsisted by cultivating the soil, by mining, in pursuit of game of the forests, and the fish of
the lakes and rivers.
"The very early surveyors in pursuit of their calling, and the pioneer
in exploring this region for a favorable location for his homestead, found
large areas which, evidently, had been tilled in hoed crops, judging from
the regular and well defined rows of hills for corn and vegetables, upon
which were then growing the largest oaks and other trees of the forests.
By an actual computation of the yearly growth of these trees, the occupation of this region by those people must have been centuries before the
discovery of this continent.
"The traditions were that corn, beans and other grains and vegetables
were raised upon these aboriginal fields; that they had sustained a
numerous population, who were proficient in the arts of rude manufacturing of cloths, pottery and copper utensils, silver and copper ornaments,
stone axes, hammers, mortars and pestles, flint arrow heads, graining and
skinning knives, many of which have been found during the early explorations of the missionaries and traders and since by the first settlements of the pioneers of the county.
"At what period those people occupied the county is difficult even
to approximate a date. Yet from the modified barbarism which is indicated by works left by a pre-historic race, there can be no other conclusion than that this county has been occupied by a race long since extinct,
who were undoubtedly connected with the early civilization of Europe.
CONTACT WITH KNOWN TRIBES
"In the early explorations of the Great Lakes by the French, commencing in I534-5, they found the descendants of the Algonquin tribes of
Indians occupying the country to the north and west of Detroit, with
whom they held social and commercial intercourse, yet but little of the
French and early Indian history has been preserved. It is known that the
fur traders made their annual visits to this region, through the rivers
Huron, Rouge, Raisin and Clinton, for the purpose of bartering with
the Indians for furs and skins.
"But little has been preserved of the Indian history, or of the French
nomadic occupation. One Micheau, a French and Indian trader, who
died about the time of the first settlement of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, at the advanced age of one hundred and fifteen or one hundred and sixteen years, relates that one of the traditions of the tribes was
that a sanguinary conflict occurred between the Foxes and Chippewas,