(soft guitar music) - In the late 18th century, in the 1770s specifically, Michilimackinac was a transshipment point.

It's a center of the Great Lakes fur trade.

People coming from really all over the Great Lakes watershed, indigenous people, Europeans gathering here to trade with one another to transship goods, so to transfer from one canoe to another.

But it was also a diplomatic center and a military center, which became increasingly important as the American Revolution went on.

So that's kinda Michilimackinac in a nutshell.

Michigan as a whole, very few European settlements apart from here at Michilimackinac, down at Detroit, up at Sioux St.

Marie over at St.

Joseph for what's now Niles.

Many, many more indigenous communities throughout the state, mostly Anishinaabe.

So the Odawa, the Ojibwa, and the Potawatomi.

Those people were largely trading with the Europeans, sometimes fighting alongside them, sometimes fighting against them.

But everyone ended up being involved in the revolution in some way.

Michilimackinac, Michigan in general, they do have a role to play in the revolution.

People from this community, people from Detroit, people from Sioux St.

Marie and St.

Joseph, they took part in the war, either by going off to other places and taking up arms and actually fighting, or just by reacting.

You know, they got news out here just like we do, it just took a little while longer.

But those people were very aware of events in other places, and they responded to them, they reacted to them, and they participated in them.

So, we don't often think about Michigan being part of the American Revolution, but it absolutely was, and in many ways, it shaped the state as we know it today.