Antoine Cadillac
In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a 43-year-old French army
officer, established a French settlement at the waterway between lakes
St. Claire and Erie.
Cadillac had convinced King Louis XIV's chief minister, Count
Pontchartrain, that a permanent community at this strategic location
would strengthen French control over the upper Great Lakes and repel
British advances. So Cadillac built Fort Pontchartrain. It was not
enough to keep the British away.
The French lost the fort in the French and Indian War. The British,
who now occupied the region, kept the French names, even though they
didn't understand them. That is why the city is called Detroit,
meaning "the straits," and the waterway (which is, in fact, a strait)
is curiously named the Detroit River.
Had the French been victorious, perhaps the future Motor City would
have been named for Cadillac.
Instead, Cadillac is a small town in Northern Michigan known primarily
as an exporter of Christmas trees.
Cadillac's association with Detroit did not end there, however. When
Henry Martyn Leland founded an automobile company in 1904, he named it
the Cadillac Motor Car Company in honor of the city's founder.
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