| Hwy 20 runs south from Windsor, slicing through the industrial
region that edges the Detroit River, whose murky waters form the border
with the US. The enmity of the Americans prompted the British to build a
fort here, close to the mouth of the Detroit River at AMHERSTBURG in
1796, but it proved difficult to supply and they were forced to abandon
the stockade during the War of 1812. Reoccupied after the war, the
British made half-hearted attempts to improve the fort's defences, but
it probably would have been abandoned had it not been for the Upper
Canada Rebellion of 1837. In a panic, the colonial powers rebuilt what
was now called Fort Malden and garrisoned it with four hundred soldiers,
stationed here to counter the efforts of the insurgents and their
American sympathizers. The last troops left in 1859 and the fort was
handed over to the province, which turned it into a lunatic asylum.
Renovated, the early nineteenth-century ditches and corner bastions of
Fort Malden (May-Dec daily 10am-5pm; Jan-April call for hours on tel
519/736-5416; $2.75) are now easy to pick out - a sequence of grassy
defensive lines surrounding the excavated foundations of several
buildings and a single-storey brick barracks of 1819. The interior of
the barracks, complete with British army uniforms, is deceptively neat
and trim for, as the guides explain, conditions were appallingly squalid.
Across from the barracks, the asylum's old laundry and bakery has been
turned into an interpretive centre with intriguing accounts of the
various episodes of the fort's history, including the War of 1812 and
the Rebellion of 1837. Original artefacts are few and far between, but
it's here you'll find the powder horn of the Shawnee chief and staunch
British ally, Tecumseh, one of the most formidable and renowned of the
region's leaders. Born in what is now Ohio in 1769, Tecumseh spent the
better part of his life struggling to keep the American settlers from
spreading west into Shawnee territory. To this end he allied himself to
the British, who were, he felt, less of a territorial threat, and
managed by the sheer force of his personality to hold together an
aboriginal army of some size. He was killed in the War of 1812 at
Moraviantown and his army promptly collapsed.
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