Signed on September, 1817, the Treaty of Fort Meigs ceded 4.6 million acres of Indigenous land to the United States, setting aside 1,920 acres for “the corporation of the college at Detroit”–the fledgling University of Michigan.
This was just the beginning of U-M’s complex history with Michigan’s Native American communities. The 1817 Project research team will present four snapshots of their research into this history, spanning over 200 years, from a re-examination of U-M’s origins to a 1971 lawsuit claiming U-M had broken the treaty and a study of broader patterns of Native American student enrollment.