Affairs intellectual force. I want you to also know shes one of the nicest people you will ever get to meet. In addition to that she is an author, University Teachers ad public historian. She has two prizewinning works of afro afroamerican and natie american instead. The ties that bind us to open afro cherokee family and slavery of freedom. Published in 2005. Next the house on the diamond hill published in 2010. She follows those works for the study of race and gender in southern ghost stories titled tales from a haunted south. Published in 2015. She is also a writer of fiction, academic articles on indigenous womens history and feminist essays. Her debut novel is cherokee ros rose. The novel was named and publishers week weekly pick [laughing] is particularly as well. You should pick it up. In 2015. And selected for her books all of georgia should read. She teaches at the university of michigan as you heard in the departments of american culture, afroamerican african studies, history, native american studies and womens studies. She is a 2011 Macarthur Foundation fellow. [applause] her current work on slavery in detroit was supported by an Mellon Foundation fellowship. In that Research Result in a book were here tonight to launch to discuss and learn about and celebrate, the dawn of detroit a chronicle of slavery and freedom in the city of the straits. So please welcome again doctor tiya miles. [applause] im going to sit in the moment. Ms. Jones tells me this is my thrill for the evening. So i must listen to what has instructed me to do. I have to tell you how thrilled i am to beer and how happy i am, how warm this space is. I cant imagine a better place for the launch of this book and im so grateful to ms. Janet jones and my colleague stephen ward for inviting me to do this. Im also grateful for you for coming out to discuss this history with being all of us and to learn more about the city of detroit. So i think that where id like to begin is actually with telling you how i came to doing this project. We can talk about what we collectively think history and hisses like this would ultimately going back to the 1700s, watch they need for contemporary life and how they can to asset in trying to solve the problem of social division today. Let me tell you how i came to this project. I am from cincinnati, ohio, and i grew up with a strong identity as being the granddaughter of a woman who came up through the great migration of cincinnati, and also lived close to the ohio river as a child in my growing up years. I associated that river with freedom and with that allimportant line between slavery and freedom. You can stand at the banks and you can see kentucky. Just like you instead of the banks are at the Detroit River and see canada, that was meaningful for me growing up, the idea that i grew up in a free state. So time past, things happened and i accepted a position at university of michigan back in 2002. When i got here i had sort of relearned the place of the midwest because its not the same as ohio. They are close, connected, we share a border but this is a different kind of place. One of the reasons why its so unique is again because of that international border. One of the ways i began to explore this place was with my students, spatial in my africanamerican studies courses and im truly touched some of them are here today, graduate from years ago. It warms my heart they are here. One of the things we did was go on local history tours, put on by africanamerican groups such as africanamerican culture and historical museum, which is our county back in ann arbor. A tour that really stuck with me, focus on the underground railroad. I learned for the first time just how active southeastern son michigan has been in the underground railroad and began to recognize some important sites not just there but in our town of ann arbor. And got to the historical museum. I hope youll go if youve never been there, and also go to the Detroit Historical museum again. Im sure youve been there. At that museum had the underground railroad exhibitor it was small but enough to get our imaginations going. So students and i in that year, this was around 2009 i think, we did research, the projects and thats what open the door for me into local history, its what got me interested in what has taken place in this area regarding the underground railroad. Thats why started with the underground railroad. I was doing research on women in particular, and a woman named laura who was from, raised in that area. While i was reading her memoir and when i saw she kept pointing to the loss of michigan and the very proud way, the laws of michigan were against slavery, but i started to get some of those lost of michigan that she was talking about. She is long gone and was a wonderful activist. A white woman quaker who fought for black freedom of thought for black equality, she was correct that in the state of michigan there was support for insulate people who were trying to get their freedom in the years before the civil war. But one thing she didnt actually mentioned in her memoir was that previous michigan laws had made slavery possible, had actually tacitly indirectly sanctioned slavery. The underground railroad was my door into discovering that before the railroad, there was slavery in michigan. Once i realized that i thought that was the store and need to tell because there was not enough information. I grew up in ohio and did no think about it and ive been teaching at the university for a handful of years and did know anything about it. I really felt that the absence of this knowledge was disrespectful to our ancestors, disrespectful to our forebears and the people who came even before the abolitionists, and certainly before us, who lived allies of great suffering and great sorrow, but through it all were heroic, who pushed for the freedom, who banded together and did incredible things. So once i started down this path i had the good fortune of being able to apply for a program at the university of michigan at ann arbor which allowed me to work with students on a project. I applied for the project and we got the money. I was able to bring some students, to hide them and went to work. We decided to see what we could uncover, primary sources, on history of slavery in detroit. We spent a lot of time in the Detroit Public Library which has an incredible collection of primary source material. We spent time in the brittany library in ann arbor, when the students with some ontario, wonderful, she would go home on a vacation during the school year and should hit the archives in ontario and find out more information for us about our project. We spent about two years collecting information, seeing what we could find and also part of the process was translating some of that information. Because some of it was in french, some of it was in german. Part of that process was transcribing some information because some of these older documents in that fancy cursive, its impossible to read. I had a magnifying glass out, you know, to be able to see what is that it says. So it took us two years just gave get to the point where we could say we have a sense of the enslaved population. We have a sense of the numbers were talking about. We have a list of the people who just owned enslaved people get where the scent the jobs they were doing. At that point i realized even though itd taken us quite a long while to find the material and even though the primary sources, the records that existed were actually very few and far between, that there was enough material to tell a story about the enslaved people who are actually built this city. So from that point on i started working on trying to piece together that story here i felt like it really was dealing with breadcrumbs because its a little bit here and a little mentioned there, and name here. There were very few full and complete stories. Thats partly because we just dont have the same kind of records here that we have on slavery in the south, for instance. In the Southern States, scholars rely quite a lot of slave narrative. The life stories of enslaved people that theyre able to write in a published after the escape, or that a little about her, please. I will try to, sir. Maybe i will stand up and maybe that will help. So i was saying that in the Southern States scholars rely quite a lot on slave narrative. That is, the stories of enslaved people that they were able to write and have published after the escape. Or that they were able to tell the interviewers who were working for the federal government. But here in detroit we dont have slave narrative. We dont have personal stories. We barely have mention of enslaved people in the record. Thats in part because it wasnt the same kind of governmental infrastructure here. This used to be a military fort town. It didnt have a court for a very long time even. Its also because of the great fire of 1805 which wiped out the whole town, which meant the loss of many records. Piecing this together was looking with breadcrumbs, and illustration at times but in the end i felt that there was enough to at least create a composite picture of the lives of enslaved people. So im going to tell just a little bit about what some of these individuals did and what the mice were like as far as we were able to determine it, and i want to share a few of the findings that are included with included with. I think we would write about the time they will tell me we need to shift into q a. One of the most important things that became clear to us as we were doing this research was that the first insulate people in the city, in this state and actually in many places in this country were not africanamerican. But rather they were native american. When we talk the slavery in detroit were talking first about an enslaved indigenous population. And within that were talking especially about women. Native american women made up the largest population of enslaved people here in detroit. They came from multiple nations. Some of them were miami, some of them were fox. There were women who had been captured from other tribal nations, oftentimes at a distance but not always and were traded sometimes by other native American People and then finally traded into the hands of the european center. First the french, then the british. And then actually a few americans were Still Holding native american enslaved people into the early 1800s. Thats i think the most important and biggest thing we discovered on our Research Team was that slavery in detroit, i they kind of slavery that they endured was abominable. I think you can probably anticipate what im about to say. Enslaved native american women were put into european households and they did domestic work, and they were also the victims of sexual slavery. We are familiar with this in the u. S. We know at this point africanamerican women were sexually assaulted and abused. As the regular course of their experience. And to our research in detroit we discovered native american women were, too, and that, in fact, some of these merchants and traders in detroit, some of the richest ones would make specific purchase orders asking for native women. Now, the name they use, the truth is used for a native american insulate person was poni panis. And scholars have tried to work out where that term came from. A colonial historian has come up with a very good theory which is that this term probably is the collecting of various different native American Tribal names, especially panis. So every native american native enslaved person was not panis but came to be used for all native enslaved people here in detroit. Some of these merchants would write letters to one another between here, mackinac island, for instance, and they would say i need to pretty panis. They would say the ages of the girls they wanted. That kind of language is an indicator that these young girls were wanted for more than just cleaning up the kitchen, right . This was a very distressing fine for us in the we really need to recognize and look at, especially given the continuing vulnerability and invisibility oftentimes of indigenous girls and young women. We also found in addition to native american women africanamerican men are black d buy them. He wanted to bring black men with him to detroit. Its an indication he felt he couldnt really set up shop and launch its business and make a a success at it without black men. Over overtime James Stirling wae to buy a few black men, and his comments in his records about them, some of them, language, indigenous language. He even commented they were better workers in the white men that he was paying which is part of his life he preferred them. So black men were actually the Railroad Cars that were carrying those, that may display so successful, im talking about their bodies. Talking about their muscles. That was the motor for the distribution. Think about the fur trade, we hear about the fur trade. We recognize that it was the hunting that mandate of diva, the trade of the deeper, and then the shipment of those beaver to the east for east coast and also across the ocean, places like france and england. We recognize that was a major fuel of a worldwide, global industry. But until my students and i did this research i did know that black men did a lot of the labor of packing those furs, carrying those for, moving those across the water in canoes, and in some of the really efficient minded merchants here in detroit, once they had their enslaved black man who the first to places like new york, and the weather turned cold, they would rent these men or that their friends borrow these men over the winter, and then when the river thought and it got warm and they could come back, the enslavement would be asked, thats a wrong word, would be compelled to bring the goods that were exchanged for the first back here to detroit. Black men and native american men were also skilled both men. They were on these great lakes all the time with these for. And sometimes the wealthiest merchants such as john would say i cant spare my man, a black man for this job. I need him on my boat. But when it came time for him to be on those ships, his rations were less than those white men being paid to do that work. Enslaved black men died working the great lakes. Which really are inland seas. They have been described that way. When youre on them, at least to me they feel that way. Those were dangerous waters. These men were out there doing this work, not because they wanted to and not because they made a cent. There were separate from the family families doing this work. One story that stands out to me is a story of an enslaved black family owned by a wealthy detroit merchant named james may james may was a judge. He was someone who was actually very instrumental, who went to the university of michigan, and he kept one of his black man on his boat and he kept his black mans wife back at home working in his household. They were not importing up to him to name, but they were out in these roles and is a terrible shipwreck and the black man owned by may was killed in the wreck. May then wrote to his friend, john, and percy said he was distressed because you lost this valuable man. He didnt talk much about the brother. Hes thinking about this valuable piece of human property that is gone. And then he says but now that the man is gone, the black woman wont do any work. She just lays around crying. So this is a terrible story, but to this story we see, we get a glimpse of a black family, a a black family that loved one another, that cared for one another, that is distressed and falls apart when one of their loved ones is taken by the waters. So when james may black woman as he refers to or cant work because shes in morning, he gets this wonderful idea, maybe if i buy her son from my friend and bring her son into my household that will cheer her up. We get another indication of how this family has been split and divided. James may try to get the sun, but his friend says sorry, im keeping this black boy for myself here one more snippet before i conclude. And that is a rare look at the experience of a native American Woman who is enslaved in detroit. This is very difficult to get it because we just dont have the material. We just dont have the records, especially on native women. When we do have the material they come from Saint Anns Church. Saint anns church, very old, its the second oldest parish in the country, and im grateful to them for letting me see the records. I just had to say when i first told him what the topic was, at the archives, they were receptive but also said youre not going to find anything about slaves in these records. Well [laughing] not only were their enslaved people all up and down those records, the priest owned slaves. So going back to the story about a native American Woman coming out of the Saint Anns Church records, we dont know her name. Thats common in these records. We dont know her age. We dont get any kind of a sense of who she was as a person because the record keepers were not interested in that. But we do know she was enslaved and she was pregnant, and then she was imprisoned inside the fort. There was a debate, some conflicts over who was going to get that may be. Two men inside the fort were both saying the baby should come to them. Now, they were not saying Something Like this is my child, i want the child because i want to free that baby. They were just saying the panis should come to me. So turns out the master gunsmith of the fort one in that conflict, and he is going to get to have possession of this little infant. And what happened to the woman . We dont know. I have thought about this, thought about her many a night, about her being pregnant, enslaved, probably although the records dont tell is probably the victim of sexual exploitation, giving birth in the cell and then seeing her child taken away by one of these two european men in the fort who wanted to possess that child. But Saint Anns Church records are full of details of the deaths and of the burials of quote panis infant, panis children, little babies being born right here in detroit, enslaved native mothers and died before the even had a chance at life. Many of the stories was very upset to discover, very upsetting to discover and they are distressing for me to recount. I can see in your eyes its distressing for you to hear them. I want to tell you one of the things that has been important for me and that was important for the students in doing this work is that all those people whose stories have told you but even when we dont know