The Territory of Michigan was an organized incorporated territory of the United States from the remnant of Wayne County of the Northwest Territory that existed from June 30, 1805, until January 26, 1837, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Michigan. Detroit was the territorial capital.
The earliest European explorers of Michigan saw it mostly as a place to control the fur trade. Small military forces, Jesuit missions to Native American tribes, and isolated settlements of trappers and traders accounted for most of the non-native inhabitants of what would become Michigan.
After the arrival of Europeans, the area was first under French and then British control. The first Jesuit mission, in 1668 at Sault Saint Marie, led to the establishment of further outposts at St. Ignace (where a mission began work in 1671) and Detroit, first occupied in 1701 by the garrison of Fort de Buade in St. Ignace, under the leadership of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. His troops erected Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit and the Sainte-Anne-de-Détroit church. As part of New France, the upper Great Lakes had first been governed from Michilimackinac, then Detroit; this was essentially a military regime that reported to the governor-general at Quebec. Its role was to supply the needs of the fur traders and discourage any settlements not directly supportive of that effort. After the surrender of Montreal in 1760, British troops under Robert Rogers occupied Detroit and its dependent posts. In 1763, Pontiac's Rebellion saw the fall of Fort Michilimackinac to the northern tribes and a lengthy siege of Fort Detroit. The siege was lifted in 1764, and Detroit was ruled under a British lieutenant-governor thereafter.
Following the Quebec Act of 1774, Michigan was governed during the American Revolution as part of the Province of Quebec. Although the 1783 Treaty of Paris gave the fledgling United States a claim to the territory, British policy was to hold on to Detroit and its dependencies at all costs. In 1784, Baron von Steuben was sent to Canada by the Congress of the Confederation in a diplomatic capacity to address the question of Detroit and the Great Lakes, but Governor of Quebec Frederick Haldimand refused to provide a passport, and negotiations collapsed before they had begun. Starting in 1784, the British administered their Michigan holdings as part of the District of Hesse; in 1791 the Province of Quebec was split into Lower Canada (today's Province of Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario), and the districts of Upper Canada were renamed the next year, with the Hesse District designated as the Western District.
In addition to the British remaining in the region, several states held competing claims on the territory. In 1779, Virginia established Illinois County with boundaries that encompassed all of the land east of the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River, and west of the Appalachian Mountains. For all practical purposes, however, the county government never exercised actual control beyond an area limited to a few old French settlements along the major rivers. The overwhelming majority of the northwestern lands were controlled by the native tribes. New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts also claimed portions of the Great Lakes region but were even less able to enforce their pretensions, given Britain's control of the Great Lakes and the hostility of the tribes.
Virginia surrendered its claim to lands north and west of the Ohio River effective March 1, 1784. On the same day the findings were reported of a congressional committee on the western lands which had been chaired by Thomas Jefferson since the previous October. Jefferson's recommendations became the basis for the Land Ordinance of 1784, which established that new states equal in all respects to the founding thirteen would be erected in the territory, that they would forever be a part of the United States, and that their governments would be republican in form. The Land Ordinance of 1785 established a procedure for land sales in the territory. However, the Ohio River remained an effective boundary between the United States and the northwest tribes for a few more years.
The other states with claims in the northwest eventually followed Virginia's example, and in 1787 the Congress of the Confederation enacted the Northwest Ordinance which created the Northwest Territory. The first settlement under the Northwest Ordinance was at Marietta (Ohio) in 1788.
The region that became Michigan was initially unorganized territory and essentially remained under British control; that did not stop Arthur St. Clair, the first governor of the Northwest Territory, from establishing a structure of government for the area, if only on paper. Knox County was established on June 20, 1790, with boundaries that included the western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and roughly the middle third of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In 1792, the boundaries of Hamilton County were expanded to include the eastern portions of Michigan not included in Knox County.
American claims to Michigan were frustrated by Britain's refusal to evacuate the forts at Detroit, Mackinac and elsewhere. Britain's tacit support for the northwest tribes during the Northwest Indian War was dependent on Detroit remaining out of American hands. But the position of the British and their allies in the northwest deteriorated after the signing of Jay's Treaty and the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, and after negotiations the British evacuated Detroit on July 11, 1796. The United States had finally established a presence in Michigan. Fort Mackinac was turned over soon after, but Drummond Island remained as part of Canada until 1828.
By proclamation of acting governor and territorial secretary Winthrop Sargent, the "first" Wayne County was established from Knox and Hamilton counties on August 15, 1796, and included most of the area that later became the Michigan Territory, as well as portions of what are now Ohio and Indiana.
In 1800, the western half of the Lower Peninsula and most of the Upper Peninsula were attached to the Indiana Territory when it was established as a separate government from the Northwest Territory. Wayne County was thereby reduced to the remainder of the two peninsulas and continued under the government of the Northwest Territory. St. Clair County, another Indiana Territory county, was also expanded to include the western portion of the Upper Peninsula and a small sliver of the Lower Peninsula along the shore of Lake Michigan.
When Ohio was admitted as a state in early 1803, the eastern half of Michigan was incorporated into the Indiana Territory. One of the first acts taken that year by the Indiana government under William Henry Harrison was to reorganize Wayne County under Indiana law, adding territory from Knox and St. Clair counties to encompass all the Lower Peninsula, much of the Upper Peninsula, and those portions of today's Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin that drained into Lake Michigan. In many respects, the change from the government of the Northwest Territory to that of the Indiana Territory had little effect on Wayne County's limited operations. By Governor Harrison's proclamation of January 11, 1803, the courts of Wayne County—common pleas, orphans, and quarter sessions—kept their organization under the new territorial government, with almost identical composition.
But the logistics of government went from difficult to almost impossible, with the mail between Detroit and the capital at Vincennes being routed at one point through Warren in northeastern Ohio. The deciding factor may have come when an election was called by Harrison for September 11, 1804, to decide whether Indiana Territory (which by this time was responsible for the settlements in Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois, as well as the newly acquired District of Louisiana) should progress to the second stage of territorial government. But word failed to reach Detroit until after the date had passed, and the settlers of Michigan petitioned Congress in December 1804, asking that Wayne County be set as an independent territory.