Numasepee

Numasepee, “river of sturgeon,” flows east across southern Michigan to Lake Erie. French settlers called it the River Raisin after the wild grapes growing along its banks. Potawatomi and Wyandot people used portages connecting its upper waters to the Grand and Kalamazoo rivers, which flow west towards Lake Michigan. The river was a canoe route for Indigenous travellers and later French Canadian voyageurs.

French Canadian settlers established Frenchtown along the river in the 1780s, laying out narrow farms with frontage on the water. During the War of 1812, British and Indigenous forces defeated American troops there in January 1813. After the surrender, some of Britain's Indigenous allies killed wounded prisoners left behind, an event that gave rise to the American rallying cry “Remember the Raisin.”