Miles, Tiya
The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits
The New Press (New York)
2017
OUR SYNOPSIS: Tiya Miles argues, “Detroit was formed not only by the labor of enslaved people on indigenous lands, but also, and as importantly, by what those enslaved people came to signify for the identity of the city. It was ultimately through the dauntless acts of fugitive slaves, and the changing ideas about slavery held by free residents of the working and political classes, that Detroiters began to perceive themselves as distinctly American.” (1) She utilizes the personal papers of enslavers, legal records, church documents, financial records, and more to piece together histories of freedom and slavery in Detroit. She shows that chattel slavery, the fur trade, and eventually the Underground Railroad joined together in this place, complicating each of these narratives.
BIG QUESTIONS:
How do slavery and settler colonialism interrelate in Detroit histories?
What role did lakes and waterways play in the development of the Detroit area?
To what extent is a borderland approach useful for analyzing Detroit across space and time?
FEATURE QUOTES:
“There is currently no historical marker acknowledging slavery in Detroit—revealing that people were bought, sold, and held as property there. And yet, for more than a century spanning French, British, and American rule, Detroit was a place that saw unconscionable bondage, elicited inventive bids for freedom, and shaped lives not devoid of heroism. Where the human-made buildings and memorial plaques have long gone or never existed, the river that first called to Native hunters and French adventurers remains. The waters still flow between the lakes, narrowing at the earthen bend where Detroit City rises into the clear and open atmosphere. The strait stood as witness to all that transpired in this place. We can rely on that river now as a road to history, even as residents in the past rowed across it to survive.” (244)
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