The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada
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Title: The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada
Author: Francis Parkman
Release date: March 24, 2012 [eBook #39253]
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note: The original publication has been replicated
faithfully except as shown in the TRANSCRIBER'S AMENDMENTS at the end of
the text. This etext presumes a mono-spaced font on the user's device,
such as Courier New. Words in italics are indicated like _this_. But the
publisher also wanted to emphasize names in sentences already italicized,
so he printed them in the regular font which is indicated here with: _The
pirates then went to +Hispaniola+._ Obscured letters in the original
publication are indicated with {?}. Superscripts are indicated like this:
S^ta Maria. The FOOTNOTES: section is located near the end of the text.
[oe] represents the oe ligature.
There are two volumes in this etext: VOL. I and VOL. II.
Author: Francis Parkman (1823-1893).
* * * * *
THE
CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC
AND THE
INDIAN WAR
AFTER
THE CONQUEST OF CANADA.
VOL. I.
TO
JARED SPARKS, LL.D.,
PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED
AS A TESTIMONIAL OF HIGH PERSONAL REGARD,
AND A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT
FOR HIS DISTINGUISHED SERVICES TO
AMERICAN HISTORY.
Preface
TO THE SIXTH EDITION.
I chose the subject of this book as affording better opportunities than
any other portion of American history for portraying forest life and the
Indian character; and I have never seen reason to change this opinion. In
the nineteen years that have passed since the first edition was published,
a considerable amount of additional material has come to light. This has
been carefully collected, and is incorporated in the present edition. The
most interesting portion of this new material has been supplied by the
Bouquet and Haldimand Papers, added some years ago to the manuscript
collections of the British Museum. Among them are several hundred letters
from officers engaged in the Pontiac war, some official, others personal
and familiar, affording very curious illustrations of the events of the
day and of the characters of those engaged in them. Among the facts which
they bring to light, some are sufficiently startling; as, for example, the
proposal of the Commander-in-Chief to infect the hostile tribes with the
small-pox, and that of a distinguished subordinate officer to take revenge
on the Indians by permitting an unrestricted sale of rum.
The two volumes of the present edition have been made uniform with those
of the series "France and England in North America." I hope to continue
that series to the period of the extinction of French power on this
continent. "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" will then form a sequel; and its
introductory chapters will be, in a certain sense, a summary of what has
preceded. This will involve some repetition in the beginning of the book,
but I have nevertheless thought it best to let it remain as originally
written.
BOSTON, 16 September, 1870.
Preface
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The conquest of Canada was an event of momentous consequence in American
history. It changed the political aspect of the continent, prepared a way
for the independence of the British colonies, rescued the vast tracts of
the interior from the rule of military despotism, and gave them,
eventually, to the keeping of an ordered democracy. Yet to the red natives
of the soil its results were wholly disastrous. Could the French have
maintained their ground, the ruin of the Indian tribes might long have
been postponed; but the victory of Quebec was the signal of their swift
decline. Thenceforth they were destined to melt and vanish before the
advancing waves of Anglo-American power, which now rolled westward
unchecked and unopposed. They saw the danger, and, led by a great and
daring champion, struggled fiercely to avert it. The history of that
epoch, crowded as it is with scenes of tragic interest, with marvels of
suffering and vicissitude, of heroism and endurance, has been, as yet,
unwritten, buried in the archives of governments, or among the obscurer
records of private adventure. To rescue it from oblivion is the object of
the following work. It aims to portray the American forest and the
American Indian at the period when both received their final doom.
It is evident that other study than that of the closet is indispensable to
success in such an attempt. Habits of early reading had greatly aided to
prepare me for the task; but necessary knowledge of a more practical kind
has been supplied by the indulgence of a strong natural taste, which, at
various intervals, led me to the wild regions of the north and west. Here,
by the camp-fire, or in the canoe, I gained familiar acquaintance with the
men and scenery of the wilderness. In 1846, I visited various primitive
tribes of the Rocky Mountains, and was, for a time, domesticated in a
village of the western Dahcotah, on the high plains between Mount Laramie
and the range of the Medicine Bow.
The most troublesome part of the task was the collection of the necessary
documents. These consisted of letters, journals, reports, and despatches,
scattered among numerous public offices, and private families, in Europe
and America. When brought together, they amounted to about three thousand
four hundred manuscript pages. Contemporary newspapers, magazines, and
pamphlets have also been examined, and careful search made for every book
which, directly or indirectly, might throw light upon the subject. I have
visited the sites of all the principal events recorded in the narrative,
and gathered such local traditions as seemed worthy of confidence.
I am indebted to the liberality of Hon. Lewis Cass for a curious
collection of papers relating to the siege of Detroit by the Indians.
Other important contributions have been obtained from the state paper
offices of London and Paris, from the archives of New York, Pennsylvania,
and other states, and from the manuscript collections of several
historical societies. The late William L. Stone, Esq., commenced an
elaborate biography of Sir William Johnson, which it is much to be
lamented he did not live to complete. By the kindness of Mrs. Stone, I was
permitted to copy from his extensive collection of documents such portions
as would serve the purposes of the following History.
To President Sparks of Harvard University, General Whiting, U. S. A.,
Brantz Mayer, Esq., of Baltimore, Francis J. Fisher, Esq., of
Philadelphia, and Rev. George E. Ellis, of Charlestown, I beg to return a
warm acknowledgment for counsel and assistance. Mr. Benjamin Perley Poore
and Mr. Henry Stevens procured copies of valuable documents from the
archives of Paris and London. Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq., Dr. Elwyn, of
Philadelphia, Dr. O'Callaghan, of Albany, George H. Moore, Esq., of New
York, Lyman C. Draper, Esq., of Philadelphia, Judge Law, of Vincennes, and
many others, have kindly contributed materials to the work. Nor can I
withhold an expression of thanks to the aid so freely rendered in the dull
task of proof-reading and correction.
The crude and promiscuous mass of materials presented an aspect by no
means inviting. The field of the history was uncultured and unreclaimed,
and the labor that awaited me was like that of the border settler, who,
before he builds his rugged dwelling, must fell the forest-trees, burn the
undergrowth, clear the ground, and hew the fallen trunks to due
proportion.
Several obstacles have retarded the progress of the work. Of these, one of
the most considerable was the condition of my sight. For about three
years, the light of day was insupportable, and every attempt at reading or
writing completely debarred. Under these circumstances, the task of
sifting the materials and composing the work was begun and finished. The
papers were repeatedly read aloud by an amanuensis, copious notes and
extracts were made, and the narrative written down from my dictation. This
process, though extremely slow and laborious, was not without its
advantages; and I am well convinced that the authorities have been even
more minutely examined, more scrupulously collated, and more thoroughly
digested, than they would have been under ordinary circumstances.
In order to escape the tedious circumlocution, which, from the nature of
the subject, could not otherwise have been avoided, the name English is
applied, throughout the volume, to the British American colonists, as well
as to the people of the mother country. The necessity is somewhat to be
regretted, since, even at an early period, clear distinctions were visible
between the offshoot and the parent stock.
BOSTON, August 1, 1851.
Contents of Vol. I.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.--INDIAN TRIBES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
_General Characteristics.--Tribal Divisions.--Mode of Government.--
Social Harmony.--The Totem.--Classification of Tribes.--The Iroquois.--
Their Position and Character.--Their Political Organization.--
Traditions of their Confederacy.--Their Myths and Legends.--Their
Eloquence and Sagacity.--Arts.--Agriculture.--Their Dwellings,
Villages, and Forts.--Their Winter Life.--The War Path.--Festivals and
Pastimes.--Pride of the Iroquois.--The Hurons or Wyandots.--Their
Customs and Character.--Their Dispersion.--The Neutral Nation. Its
Fate.--The Eries and Andastes.--Triumphs of the Confederacy.--The
Adoption of Prisoners.--The Tuscaroras.--Superiority of the Iroquois
Race.--The Algonquins.--The Lenni Lenape.--Their changing Fortunes.--
The Shawanoes.--The Miamis and the Illinois.--The Ojibwas,
Pottawattamies, and Ottawas.--The Sacs and Foxes.--The Menomonies and
Knisteneaux.--Customs of the Northern Algonquins.--Their Summer and
Winter Life.--Legends of the Algonquins.--Religious Faith of the
Indians.--The Indian Character.--Its Inconsistencies.--Its Ruling
Passions.--Pride.--Hero-worship.--Coldness, Jealousy, Suspicion.--
Self-control.--Intellectual Traits.--Inflexibility.--Generous
Qualities._ 15
CHAPTER II.
1663-1763.
FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN AMERICA.
_Contrast of French and English Colonies.--Feudalism in Canada.--
Priests and Monks.--Puritanism and Democracy in New England.--French
Life in Canada.--Military Strength of Canada.--Religious Zeal.--
Missions.--The Jesuits.--Brebeuf and Lallemant.--Martyrdom of Jogues.--
Results of the Missions.--French Explorers.--La Salle.--His Plan of
Discovery.--His Sufferings.--His Heroism.--He discovers the Mouth of
the Mississippi.--Louisiana.--France in the West.--Growth of English
Colonies.--Approaching Collision._ 46
CHAPTER III.
1608-1763.
THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, AND THE INDIANS.
_Champlain defeats the Iroquois.--The Iroquois Wars.--Misery of
Canada.--Expedition of Frontenac.--Success of the French.--French
Influence in the West.--La Verandrye.--The English Fur-trade.--
Protestant and Romish Missions.--The English and the Iroquois.--Policy
of the French.--The Frenchman in the Wigwam.--Coureurs des Bois.--The
White Savage.--The English Fur-trader.--William Penn and his
Eulogists.--The Indians and the Quakers.--Injustice of Penn's
Successors.--The Walking Purchase.--Speech of Canassatego.--Removal of
the Delawares.--Intrusion of Settlers.--Success of French Intrigues.--
Father Picquet.--Sir William Johnson.--Position of Parties._ 59
CHAPTER IV.
1700-1755.
COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES.
_The Puritan and the Canadian.--Fort Frederic.--Acadia.--The French on
the Ohio.--Mission of Washington.--Trent driven from the Ohio.--Death
of Jumonville.--Skirmish at the Great Meadows.--Alarm of the Indians.--
Congress at Albany.--French and English Diplomacy.--Braddock and
Dieskau.--Naval Engagement.--The War in Europe and America.--Braddock
in Virginia.--March of his Army.--Beaujeu at Fort du Quesne.--
Ambuscade at the Monongahela.--Rout of Braddock.--Its Consequences.--
Acadia, Niagara, and Crown Point.--Battle of Lake George.--Prosecution
of the War.--Oswego.--Fort William Henry.--Storming of Ticonderoga.--
State of Canada.--Plans for its Reduction.--Progress of the English
Arms.--Wolfe before Quebec.--Assault at Montmorenci.--Heroism of
Wolfe.--The Heights of Abraham.--Battle of Quebec.--Death of Wolfe.--
Death of Montcalm.--Surrender of Quebec.--Fall of Canada._ 79
CHAPTER V.
1755-1763.
THE WILDERNESS AND ITS TENANTS AT THE CLOSE OF THE FRENCH WAR.
_Sufferings of the Frontier.--Treaties with the Western Tribes.--
Christian Frederic Post.--The Iroquois.--The remote Tribes.--The
Forest.--Indian Population.--Condition of the Tribes.--Onondaga.--The
Delawares and neighboring Tribes.--Their Habits and Condition.--The
Shawanoes, Miamis, Illinois, and Wyandots.--English Settlements.--
Forest Thoroughfares.--Fur-traders.--Their Habits and Character.--The
Forest Traveller.--The French at the Illinois.--Military Life in the
Forest.--The Savage and the European.--Hunters and Trappers.--
Civilization and Barbarism._ 111
CHAPTER VI.
1760.
THE ENGLISH TAKE POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN POSTS.
_The victorious Armies at Montreal.--Major Robert Rogers.--His
Expedition up the Lakes.--His Meeting with Pontiac.--Ambitious Views
of Pontiac.--He befriends the English.--The English take Possession of
Detroit.--Of other French Posts.--British Power Predominant in the
West._ 124
CHAPTER VII.
1760-1763.
ANGER OF THE INDIANS.--THE CONSPIRACY.
_Discontent of the Tribes.--Impolitic Course of the English.--
Disorders of the Fur-trade.--Military Insolence.--Intrusion of
Settlers.--French Intrigue.--The Delaware Prophet.--An abortive Plot.--
Pontiac's Conspiracy.--Character of Pontiac.--Gloomy Prospects of the
Indian Race.--Designs of Pontiac.--His War Messengers.--Tribes engaged
in the Conspiracy.--Dissimulation of the Indians.--The War-belt among
the Miamis._ 131
CHAPTER VIII.
1763.
INDIAN PREPARATION.
_The Indians as a military People.--Their inefficient Organization.--
Their insubordinate Spirit.--Their Improvidence.--Policy of the Indian
Leaders.--Difficulties of Forest Warfare.--Defenceless Condition of
the Colonies.--The Peace of Paris.--Royal Proclamation.--The
War-chief. His Fasts and Vigils.--The War-feast.--The War-dance.--
Departure of the Warriors.--The Bursting of the Storm._ 145
CHAPTER IX.
1763, April.
THE COUNCIL AT THE RIVER ECORCES.
_Pontiac musters his Warriors.--They assemble at the River Ecorces.--
The Council.--Speech of Pontiac.--Allegory of the Delaware.--The
Council dissolves.--Calumet Dance at Detroit.--Plan to surprise the
Garrison._ 151
CHAPTER X.
1763, May.
DETROIT.
_Strange Phenomenon.--Origin and History of Detroit.--Its Condition in
1763.--Character of its Inhabitants.--French Life at Detroit.--The
Fort and Garrison.--Pontiac at Isle a la Peche.--Suspicious Conduct of
the Indians.--Catharine, the Ojibwa Girl.--She reveals the Plot.--
Precautions of the Commandant.--A Night of Anxiety._ 159
CHAPTER XI.
1763.
TREACHERY OF PONTIAC.
_The Morning of the Council.--Pontiac enters the Port.--Address and
Courage of the Commandant.--The Plot defeated.--The Chiefs suffered to
escape.--Indian Idea of Honor.--Pontiac again visits the Fort.--False
Alarm.--Pontiac throws off the Mask.--Ferocity of his Warriors.--The
Ottawas cross the River.--Fate of Davers and Robertson.--General
Attack.--A Truce.--Major Campbell's Embassy.--He is made Prisoner by
Pontiac._ 169
CHAPTER XII.
1763.
PONTIAC AT THE SIEGE OF DETROIT.
_The Christian Wyandots join Pontiac.--Peril of the Garrison.--Indian
Courage--The English threatened with Famine.--Pontiac's Council with
the French.--His Speech.--He exacts Provision from the French.--He
appoints Commissaries.--He issues Promissory Notes.--His Acuteness and
Sagacity.--His Authority over his Followers.--His Magnanimity._ 183
CHAPTER XIII.
1763.
ROUT OF CUYLER'S DETACHMENT.--FATE OF THE FOREST GARRISONS.
_Re-enforcement sent to Detroit.--Attack on the Schooner.--Relief at
Hand.--Disappointment of the Garrison.--Escape of Prisoners.--Cuyler's
Defeat.--Indian Debauch.--Fate of the Captives.--Capture of Fort
Sandusky.--Strength of the Besiegers.--Capture of Fort St. Joseph.--
Capture of Fort Michillimackinac.--Capture of Fort Ouatanon.--Capture
of Fort Miami.--Defence of Fort Presqu' Isle.--Its Capture._ 195
CHAPTER XIV.
1763.
THE INDIANS CONTINUE TO BLOCKADE DETROIT.
_Attack on the Armed Vessel.--News of the Treaty of Paris.--Pontiac
summons the Garrison.--Council at the Ottawa Camp.--Disappointment of
Pontiac.--He is joined by the Coureurs de Bois.--Sortie of the
Garrison.--Death of Major Campbell.--Attack on Pontiac's Camp.--Fire
Rafts.--The Wyandots and Pottawattamies beg for Peace._ 214
CHAPTER XV.
1763.
THE FIGHT OF BLOODY BRIDGE.
_Dalzell's Detachment.--Dalzell reaches Detroit.--Stratagem of the
Wyandots.--Night Attack on Pontiac's Camp.--Indian Ambuscade.--Retreat
of the English.--Terror of Dalzell's Troops.--Death of Dalzell.--
Defence of Campau's House.--Grant conducts the Retreat.--Exultation of
the Indians.--Defence of the Schooner Gladwyn._ 226
CHAPTER XVI.
1763.
MICHILLIMACKINAC.
_The Voyager on the Lakes.--Michillimackinac in 1763.--Green Bay and
Ste. Marie.--The Northern Wilderness.--Tribes of the Lakes.--
Adventures of a Trader.--Speech of Minavavana.--Arrival of English
Troops.--Disposition of the Indians.--The Ojibwa War-chief.--
Ambassador from Pontiac.--Sinister Designs of the Ojibwas.--Warnings
of Danger.--Wawatam.--Eve of the Massacre._ 238
CHAPTER XVII.
1763.
THE MASSACRE.
_The King's Birthday.--Heedlessness of the Garrison.--Indian
Ball-play.--The Stratagem.--Slaughter of the Soldiers.--Escape of
Alexander Henry.--His appalling Situation.--His Hiding-place
discovered.--Survivors of the Massacre.--Plan of retaking the Fort.--
Adventures of Henry.--Unexpected Behavior of the Ottawas.--They take
Possession of the Fort.--Their Council with the Ojibwas.--Henry and
his Fellow-prisoners.--He is rescued by Wawatam.--Cannibalism.--Panic
among the Conquerors.--They retire to Mackinaw.--The Island of
Mackinaw.--Indian Carouse.--Famine among the Indians.--They disperse
to their Wintering Grounds.--Green Bay. The neighboring Tribes.--
Gorell. His Address and Prudence.--He conciliates the Indians.--He
abandons Green Bay.--The English driven from the Upper Lakes._ 249
List of Illustrations.
Forts and Settlements in America, 1763 A. D. 12
Fort and Settlements of Detroit, A. D. 1763 161
[Illustration: FORTS AND SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA, 1763 A. D.]
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.--INDIAN TRIBES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
The Indian is a true child of the forest and the desert. The wastes and
solitudes of nature are his congenial home. His haughty mind is imbued
with the spirit of the wilderness, and the light of civilization falls on
him with a blighting power. His unruly pride and untamed freedom are in
harmony with the lonely mountains, cataracts, and rivers among which he
dwells; and primitive America, with her savage scenery and savage men,
opens to the imagination a boundless world, unmatched in wild sublimity.
The Indians east of the Mississippi may be divided into several great
families, each distinguished by a radical peculiarity of language. In
their moral and intellectual, their social and political state, these
various families exhibit strong shades of distinction; but, before
pointing them out, I shall indicate a few prominent characteristics,
which, faintly or distinctly, mark the whole in common.
All are alike a race of hunters, sustaining life wholly, or in part, by
the fruits of the chase. Each family is split into tribes; and these
tribes, by the exigencies of the hunter life, are again divided into
sub-tribes, bands, or villages, often scattered far asunder, over a wide
extent of wilderness. Unhappily for the strength and harmony of the Indian
race, each tribe is prone to regard itself, not as the member of a great
whole, but as a sovereign and independent nation, often arrogating to
itself an importance superior to all the rest of mankind;[1] and the
warrior whose petty horde might muster a few scores of half-starved
fighting men, strikes his hand upon his heart, and exclaims, in all the
pride of patriotism, "I am a _Menomone_."
In an Indian community, each man is his own master. He abhors restraint,
and owns no other authority than his own capricious will; and yet this
wild notion of liberty is not inconsistent with certain gradations of rank
and influence. Each tribe has its sachem, or civil chief, whose office is
in a manner hereditary, and, among many, though by no means among all
tribes, descends in the female line; so that the brother of the incumbent,
or the son of his sister, and not his own son, is the rightful successor
to his dignities.[2] If, however, in the opinion of the old men and
subordinate chiefs, the heir should be disqualified for the exercise of
the office by cowardice, incapacity, or any defect of character, they do
not scruple to discard him, and elect another in his place, usually fixing
their choice on one of his relatives. The office of the sachem is no
enviable one. He has neither laws to administer nor power to enforce his
commands. His counsellors are the inferior chiefs and principal men of the
tribe; and he never sets himself in opposition to the popular will, which
is the sovereign power of these savage democracies. His province is to
advise, and not to dictate; but, should he be a man of energy, talent, and
address, and especially should he be supported by numerous relatives and
friends, he may often acquire no small measure of respect and power. A
clear distinction is drawn between the civil and military authority,
though both are often united in the same person. The functions of
war-chief may, for the most part, be exercised by any one whose prowess
and reputation are sufficient to induce the young men to follow him to
battle; and he may, whenever he thinks proper, raise a band of volunteers,
and go out against the common enemy.
We might imagine that a society so loosely framed would soon resolve
itself into anarchy; yet this is not the case, and an Indian village is
singularly free from wranglings and petty strife. Several causes conspire
to this result. The necessities of the hunter life, preventing the
accumulation of large communities, make more stringent organization
needless; while a species of self-control, inculcated from childhood upon
every individual, enforced by a sentiment of dignity and manhood, and
greatly aided by the peculiar temperament of the race, tends strongly to
the promotion of harmony. Though he owns no law, the Indian is inflexible
in his adherence to ancient usages and customs; and the principle of
hero-worship, which belongs to his nature, inspires him with deep respect
for the sages and captains of his tribe. The very rudeness of his
condition, and the absence of the passions which wealth, luxury, and the
other incidents of civilization engender, are favorable to internal
harmony; and to the same cause must likewise be ascribed too many of his
virtues, which would quickly vanish, were he elevated from his savage
state.
A peculiar social institution exists among the Indians, very curious in
its character; and though I am not prepared to say that it may be traced
through all the tribes east of the Mississippi, yet its prevalence is so
general, and its influence on political relations so important, as to
claim especial attention. Indian communities, independently of their local
distribution into tribes, bands, and villages, are composed of several
distinct clans. Each clan has its emblem, consisting of the figure of some
bird, beast, or reptile; and each is distinguished by the name of the
animal which it thus bears as its device; as, for example, the clan of the
Wolf, the Deer, the Otter, or the Hawk. In the language of the Algonquins,
these emblems are known by the name of _Totems_.[3] The members of the
same clan, being connected, or supposed to be so, by ties of kindred, more
or less remote, are prohibited from intermarriage. Thus Wolf cannot marry
Wolf; but he may, if he chooses, take a wife from the clan of Hawks, or
any other clan but his own. It follows that when this prohibition is
rigidly observed, no single clan can live apart from the rest; but the
whole must be mingled together, and in every family the husband and wife
must be of different clans.
To different totems attach different degrees of rank and dignity; and
those of the Bear, the Tortoise, and the Wolf are among the first in
honor. Each man is proud of his badge, jealously asserting its claims to
respect; and the members of the same clan, though they may, perhaps, speak
different dialects, and dwell far asunder, are yet bound together by the
closest ties of fraternity. If a man is killed, every member of the clan
feels called upon to avenge him; and the wayfarer, the hunter, or the
warrior is sure of a cordial welcome in the distant lodge of the clansman
whose face perhaps he has never seen. It may be added that certain
privileges, highly prized as hereditary rights, sometimes reside in
particular clans; such as that of furnishing a sachem to the tribe, or of
performing certain religious ceremonies or magic rites.
The Indians east of the Mississippi may be divided into three great
families: the Iroquois, the Algonquin, and the Mobilian, each speaking a
language of its own, varied by numerous dialectic forms. To these families
must be added a few stragglers from the great western race of the
Dahcotah, besides several distinct tribes of the south, each of which has
been regarded as speaking a tongue peculiar to itself.[4] The Mobilian
group embraces the motley confederacy of the Creeks, the crafty Choctaws,
and the stanch and warlike Chickasaws. Of these, and of the distinct
tribes dwelling in their vicinity, or within their limits, I shall only
observe that they offer, with many modifications, and under different
aspects, the same essential features which mark the Iroquois and the
Algonquins, the two great families of the north.[5] The latter, who were
the conspicuous actors in the events of the ensuing narrative, demand a
closer attention.
THE IROQUOIS FAMILY.
Foremost in war, foremost in eloquence, foremost in their savage arts of
policy, stood the fierce people called by themselves the _Hodenosaunee_,
and by the French the _Iroquois_, a name which has since been applied to
the entire family of which they formed the dominant member.[6] They
extended their conquests and their depredations from Quebec to the
Carolinas, and from the western prairies to the forests of Maine.[7] On
the south, they forced tribute from the subjugated Delawares, and pierced
the mountain fastnesses of the Cherokees with incessant forays.[8] On the
north, they uprooted the ancient settlements of the Wyandots; on the west
they exterminated the Eries and the Andastes, and spread havoc and dismay
among the tribes of the Illinois; and on the east, the Indians of New
England fled at the first peal of the Mohawk war-cry. Nor was it the
Indian race alone who quailed before their ferocious valor. All Canada
shook with the fury of their onset; the people fled to the forts for
refuge; the blood-besmeared conquerors roamed like wolves among the
burning settlements, and the colony trembled on the brink of ruin.
The Iroquois in some measure owed their triumphs to the position of their
country; for they dwelt within the present limits of the State of New
York, whence several great rivers and the inland oceans of the northern
lakes opened ready thoroughfares to their roving warriors through all the
adjacent wilderness. But the true fountain of their success is to be
sought in their own inherent energies, wrought to the most effective
action under a political fabric well suited to the Indian life; in their
mental and moral organization; in their insatiable ambition and restless
ferocity.
In their scheme of government, as in their social customs and religious
observances, the Iroquois displayed, in full symmetry and matured
strength, the same characteristics which in other tribes are found
distorted, withered, decayed to the root, or, perhaps, faintly visible in
an imperfect germ. They consisted of five tribes or nations--the Mohawks,
the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, to whom a sixth,
the Tuscaroras, was afterwards added.[9] To each of these tribes belonged
an organization of its own. Each had several sachems, who, with the
subordinate chiefs and principal men, regulated all its internal affairs;
but, when foreign powers were to be treated with, or matters involving the
whole confederacy required deliberation, all the sachems of the several
tribes convened in general assembly at the great council-house, in the
Valley of Onondaga. Here ambassadors were received, alliances were
adjusted, and all subjects of general interest discussed with exemplary
harmony.[10] The order of debate was prescribed by time-honored customs;
and, in the fiercest heat of controversy, the assembly maintained its
self-control.
But the main stay of Iroquois polity was the system of _totemship_. It was
this which gave the structure its elastic strength; and but for this, a
mere confederacy of jealous and warlike tribes must soon have been rent
asunder by shocks from without or discord from within. At some early
period, the Iroquois probably formed an individual nation; for the whole
people, irrespective of their separation into tribes, consisted of eight
totemic clans; and the members of each clan, to what nation soever they
belonged, were mutually bound to one another by those close ties of
fraternity which mark this singular institution. Thus the five nations of
the confederacy were laced together by an eight-fold band; and to this
hour their slender remnants cling to one another with invincible tenacity.
It was no small security to the liberties of the Iroquois--liberties which
they valued beyond any other possession--that by the Indian custom of
descent in the female line, which among them was more rigidly adhered to
than elsewhere, the office of the sachem must pass, not to his son, but to
his brother, his sister's son, or some yet remoter kinsman. His power was
constantly deflected into the collateral branches of his family; and thus
one of the strongest temptations of ambition was cut off.[11] The Iroquois
had no laws; but they had ancient customs which took the place of laws.
Each man, or rather, each clan, was the avenger of its own wrongs; but the
manner of the retaliation was fixed by established usage. The tribal
sachems, and even the great council at Onondaga, had no power to compel
the execution of their decrees; yet they were looked up to with a respect
which the soldier's bayonet or the sheriff's staff would never have
commanded; and it is highly to the honor of the Indian character that they
could exert so great an authority where there was nothing to enforce it
but the weight of moral power.[12]
The origin of the Iroquois is lost in hopeless obscurity. That they came
from the west; that they came from the north; that they sprang from the
soil of New York, are the testimonies of three conflicting traditions, all
equally worthless as aids to historic inquiry.[13] It is at the era of
their confederacy--the event to which the five tribes owed all their
greatness and power, and to which we need assign no remoter date than that
of a century before the first arrival of the Dutch in New York--that faint
rays of light begin to pierce the gloom, and the chaotic traditions of the
earlier epoch mould themselves into forms more palpable and distinct.
Taounyawatha, the God of the Waters--such is the belief of the
Iroquois--descended to the earth to instruct his favorite people in the
arts of savage life; and when he saw how they were tormented by giants,
monsters, and evil spirits, he urged the divided tribes, for the common
defence, to band themselves together in an everlasting league. While the
injunction was as yet unfulfilled, the sacred messenger was recalled to
the Great Spirit; but, before his departure, he promised that another
should appear, empowered to instruct the people in all that pertained to
their confederation. And accordingly, as a band of Mohawk warriors was
threading the funereal labyrinth of an ancient pine forest, they heard,
amid its blackest depths, a hoarse voice chanting in measured cadence;
and, following the sound, they saw, seated among the trees, a monster so
hideous, that they stood benumbed with terror. His features were wild and
frightful. He was encompassed by hissing rattlesnakes, which, Medusa-like,
hung writhing from his head; and on the ground around him were strewn
implements of incantation, and magic vessels formed of human skulls.
Recovering from their amazement, the warriors could perceive that in the
mystic words of the chant, which he still poured forth, were couched the
laws and principles of the destined confederacy. The tradition further
declares that the monster, being surrounded and captured, was presently
transformed to human shape, that he became a chief of transcendent wisdom
and prowess, and to the day of his death ruled the councils of the now
united tribes. To this hour the presiding sachem of the council at
Onondaga inherits from him the honored name of Atotarho.[14]
The traditional epoch which preceded the auspicious event of the
confederacy, though wrapped in clouds and darkness, and defying historic
scrutiny, has yet a character and meaning of its own. The gloom is peopled
thick with phantoms; with monsters and prodigies, shapes of wild enormity,
yet offering, in the Teutonic strength of their conception, the evidence
of a robustness of mind unparalleled among tribes of a different lineage.
In these evil days, the scattered and divided Iroquois were beset with
every form of peril and disaster. Giants, cased in armor of stone,
descended on them from the mountains of the north. Huge beasts trampled
down their forests like fields of grass. Human heads, with streaming hair
and glaring eyeballs, shot through the air like meteors, shedding
pestilence and death throughout the land. A great horned serpent rose from
Lake Ontario; and only the thunder-bolts of the skies could stay his
ravages, and drive him back to his native deeps. The skeletons of men,
victims of some monster of the forest, were seen swimming in the Lake of
Teungktoo; and around the Seneca village on the Hill of Genundewah, a
two-headed serpent coiled himself, of size so monstrous that the wretched
people were unable to ascend his scaly sides, and perished in multitudes
by his pestilential breath. Mortally wounded at length by the magic arrow
of a child, he rolled down the steep, sweeping away the forest with his
writhings, and plunging into the lake below, where he lashed the black
waters till they boiled with blood and foam, and at length, exhausted
with his agony, sank, and perished at the bottom. Under the Falls of
Niagara dwelt the Spirit of the Thunder, with his brood of giant sons; and
the Iroquois trembled in their villages when, amid the blackening shadows
of the storm, they heard his deep shout roll along the firmament.
The energy of fancy, whence these barbarous creations drew their birth,
displayed itself, at a later period, in that peculiar eloquence which the
wild democracy of the Iroquois tended to call forth, and to which the
mountain and the forest, the torrent and the storm, lent their stores of
noble imagery. That to this imaginative vigor was joined mental power of a
different stamp, is witnessed by the caustic irony of Garangula and
Sagoyewatha, and no less by the subtle policy, sagacious as it was
treacherous, which marked the dealings of the Iroquois with surrounding
tribes.[15]
With all this mental superiority, the arts of life among them had not
emerged from their primitive rudeness; and their coarse pottery, their
spear and arrow heads of stone, were in no way superior to those of many
other tribes. Their agriculture deserves a higher praise. In 1696, the
invading army of Count Frontenac found the maize fields extending a league
and a half or two leagues from their villages; and, in 1779, the troops of
General Sullivan were filled with amazement at their abundant stores of
corn, beans, and squashes, and at the old apple orchards which grew around
their settlements.
Their dwellings and works of defence were far from contemptible, either in
their dimensions or in their structure; and though by the several attacks
of the French, and especially by the invasion of De Nonville, in 1687,
and of Frontenac, nine years later, their fortified towns were levelled to
the earth, never again to reappear; yet, in the works of Champlain and
other early writers we find abundant evidence of their pristine condition.
Along the banks of the Mohawk, among the hills and hollows of Onondaga, in
the forests of Oneida and Cayuga, on the romantic shores of Seneca Lake
and the rich borders of the Genesee, surrounded by waving maize fields,
and encircled from afar by the green margin of the forest, stood the
ancient strongholds of the confederacy. The clustering dwellings were
encompassed by palisades, in single, double, or triple rows, pierced with
loopholes, furnished with platforms within, for the convenience of the
defenders, with magazines of stones to hurl upon the heads of the enemy,
and with water conductors to extinguish any fire which might be kindled
from without.[16]
The area which these defences enclosed was often several acres in extent,
and the dwellings, ranged in order within, were sometimes more than a
hundred feet in length. Posts, firmly driven into the ground, with an
intervening framework of poles, formed the basis of the structure; and its
sides and arched roof were closely covered with layers of elm bark. Each
of the larger dwellings contained several distinct families, whose
separate fires were built along the central space, while compartments on
each side, like the stalls of a stable, afforded some degree of privacy.
Here, rude couches were prepared, and bear and deer skins spread; while
above, the ripened ears of maize, suspended in rows, formed a golden
tapestry.[17]
In the long evenings of midwinter, when in the wilderness without the
trees cracked with biting cold, and the forest paths were clogged with
snow, then, around the lodge-fires of the Iroquois, warriors, squaws, and
restless naked children were clustered in social groups, each dark face
brightening in the fickle fire-light, while, with jest and laugh, the pipe
passed round from hand to hand. Perhaps some shrivelled old warrior, the
story-teller of the tribe, recounted to attentive ears the deeds of
ancient heroism, legends of spirits and monsters, or tales of witches and
vampires--superstitions not less rife among this all-believing race, than
among the nations of the transatlantic world.
The life of the Iroquois, though void of those multiplying phases which
vary the routine of civilized existence, was one of sharp excitement and
sudden contrast. The chase, the warpath, the dance, the festival, the game
of hazard, the race of political ambition, all had their votaries. When
the assembled sachems had resolved on war against some foreign tribe, and
when, from their great council-house of bark, in the Valley of Onondaga,
their messengers had gone forth to invite the warriors to arms, then from
east to west, through the farthest bounds of the confederacy, a thousand
warlike hearts caught up the summons. With fasting and praying, and
consulting dreams and omens, with invoking the war-god, and dancing the
war-dance, the warriors sought to insure the triumph of their arms, and
then, their rites concluded, they began their stealthy progress through
the devious pathways of the forest. For days and weeks, in anxious
expectation, the villagers awaited the result. And now, as evening closed,
a shrill, wild cry, pealing from afar, over the darkening forest,
proclaimed the return of the victorious warriors. The village was alive
with sudden commotion, and snatching sticks and stones, knives and
hatchets, men, women, and children, yelling like fiends let loose, swarmed
out of the narrow portal, to visit upon the captives a foretaste of the
deadlier torments in store for them. The black arches of the forest glowed
with the fires of death, and with brandished torch and firebrand the
frenzied multitude closed around their victim. The pen shrinks to write,
the heart sickens to conceive, the fierceness of his agony, yet still,
amid the din of his tormentors, rose his clear voice of scorn and
defiance. The work was done, the blackened trunk was flung to the dogs,
and, with clamorous shouts and hootings, the murderers sought to drive
away the spirit of their victim.[18]
The Iroquois reckoned these barbarities among their most exquisite
enjoyments, and yet they had other sources of pleasure, which made up in
frequency and in innocence what they lacked in intensity. Each passing
season had its feasts and dances, often mingling religion with social
pastime. The young had their frolics and merry-makings, and the old had
their no less frequent councils, where conversation and laughter
alternated with grave deliberations for the public weal. There were also
stated periods marked by the recurrence of momentous ceremonies, in which
the whole community took part--the mystic sacrifice of the dogs, the
orgies of the dream feast, and the loathsome festival of the exhumation of
the dead. Yet in the intervals of war and hunting, these resources would
often fail; and, while the women were toiling in the cornfields, the lazy
warriors beguiled the hours with smoking or sleeping, with gambling or
gallantry.[19]
If we seek for a single trait preeminently characteristic of the Iroquois,
we shall find it in that boundless pride which impelled them to style
themselves, not inaptly as regards their own race, "the men surpassing all
others."[20] "Must I," exclaimed one of their great warriors, as he fell
wounded among a crowd of Algonquins,--"must I, who have made the whole
earth tremble, now die by the hands of children?" Their power kept pace
with their pride. Their war-parties roamed over half America, and their
name was a terror from the Atlantic to the Mississippi; but, when we ask
the numerical strength of the dreaded confederacy, when we discover that,
in the days of their greatest triumphs, their united cantons could not
have mustered four thousand warriors, we stand amazed at the folly and
dissension which left so vast a region the prey of a handful of bold
marauders. Of the cities and villages now so thickly scattered over the
lost domain of the Iroquois, a single one might boast a more numerous
population than all the five united tribes.[21]
From this remarkable people, who with all the ferocity of their race
blended heroic virtues and marked endowments of intellect, I pass to other
members of the same great family, whose different fortunes may perhaps be
ascribed rather to the force of circumstance, than to any intrinsic
inferiority.
The peninsula between the Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario was occupied by
two distinct peoples, speaking dialects of the Iroquois tongue. The Hurons
or Wyandots, including the tribe called by the French the Dionondadies, or
Tobacco Nation,[22] dwelt among the forests which bordered the eastern
shores of the fresh-water sea, to which they have left their name; while
the Neutral Nation, so called from their neutrality in the war between the
Hurons and the Five Nations, inhabited the northern shores of Lake Erie,
and even extended their eastern flank across the strait of Niagara.
The population of the Hurons has been variously stated at from ten
thousand to thirty thousand souls, but probably did not exceed the former
estimate. The Franciscans and the Jesuits were early among them, and from
their descriptions it is apparent that, in legends and superstitions,
manners and habits, religious observances and social customs, they were
closely assimilated to their brethren of the Five Nations. Their capacious
dwellings of bark, and their palisaded forts, seemed copied after the same
model.[23] Like the Five Nations, they were divided into tribes, and
cross-divided into totemic clans; and, as with them, the office of sachem
descended in the female line. The same crude materials of a political
fabric were to be found in both; but, unlike the Iroquois, the Wyandots
had not as yet wrought them into a system, and woven them into a
harmonious whole.
Like the Five Nations, the Wyandots were in some measure an agricultural
people; they bartered the surplus products of their maize fields to
surrounding tribes, usually receiving fish in exchange; and this traffic
was so considerable, that the Jesuits styled their country the Granary of
the Algonquins.[24]
Their prosperity was rudely broken by the hostilities of the Five Nations;
for though the conflicting parties were not ill matched in point of
numbers, yet the united counsels and ferocious energies of the confederacy
swept all before them. In the year 1649, in the depth of winter, their
warriors invaded the country of the Wyandots, stormed their largest
villages, and involved all within in indiscriminate slaughter.[25] The
survivors fled in panic terror, and the whole nation was broken and
dispersed.
Some found refuge among the French of Canada, where, at the village of
Lorette, near Quebec, their descendants still remain; others were
incorporated with their conquerors; while others again fled northward,
beyond Lake Superior, and sought an asylum among the wastes which bordered
on the north-eastern bands of the Dahcotah. Driven back by those fierce
bison-hunters, they next established themselves about the outlet of Lake
Superior, and the shores and islands in the northern parts of Lake Huron.
Thence, about the year 1680, they descended to Detroit, where they formed
a permanent settlement, and where, by their superior valor, capacity, and
address, they soon acquired an ascendency over the surrounding Algonquins.
The ruin of the Neutral Nation followed close on that of the Wyandots, to
whom, according to Jesuit authority, they bore an exact resemblance in
character and manners.[26] The Senecas soon found means to pick a quarrel
with them; they were assailed by all the strength of the insatiable
confederacy, and within a few years their destruction as a nation was
complete.
South of Lake Erie dwelt two members of the Iroquois family. The Andastes
built their fortified villages along the valley of the Lower Susquehanna;
while the Erigas, or Eries, occupied the borders of the lake which still
retains their name. Of these two nations little is known, for the Jesuits
had no missions among them, and few traces of them survive beyond their
names and the record of their destruction. The war with the Wyandots was
scarcely over, when the Five Nations turned their arms against their Erie
brethren.
In the year 1655, using their canoes as scaling ladders, they stormed the
Erie stronghold, leaped down like tigers among the defenders, and
butchered them without mercy.[27] The greater part of the nation was
involved in the massacre, and the remnant was incorporated with the
conquerors, or with other tribes, to which they fled for refuge. The ruin
of the Andastes came next in turn; but this brave people fought for twenty
years against their inexorable assailants, and their destruction was not
consummated until the year 1672, when they shared the fate of the
rest.[28]
Thus, within less than a quarter of a century, four nations, the most
brave and powerful of the North American savages, sank before the arms of
the confederates. Nor did their triumphs end here. Within the same short
space they subdued their southern neighbors the Lenape,[29] the leading
members of the Algonquin family, and expelled the Ottawas, a numerous
people of the same lineage, from the borders of the river which bears
their name. In the north, the west, and the south, their conquests
embraced every adjacent tribe; and meanwhile their war parties were
harassing the French of Canada with reiterated inroads, and yelling the
war-whoop under the walls of Quebec.
They were the worst of conquerors. Inordinate pride, the lust of blood and
dominion, were the mainsprings of their warfare; and their victories were
strained with every excess of savage passion. That their triumphs must
have cost them dear; that, in spite of their cautious tactics, these
multiplied conflicts must have greatly abridged their strength, would
appear inevitable. Their losses were, in fact, considerable; but every
breach was repaired by means of a practice to which they, in common with
other tribes, constantly adhered. When their vengeance was glutted by the
sacrifice of a sufficient number of captives, they spared the lives of the
remainder, and adopted them as members of their confederated tribes,
separating wives from husbands, and children from parents, and
distributing them among different villages, in order that old ties and
associations might be more completely broken up. This policy is said to
have been designated among them by a name which signifies "flesh cut into
pieces and scattered among the tribes."
In the years 1714-15, the confederacy received a great accession of
strength. Southwards, about the headwaters of the rivers Neuse and Tar,
and separated from their kindred tribes by intervening Algonquin
communities, dwelt the Tuscaroras, a warlike people belonging to the
generic stock of the Iroquois. The wrongs inflicted by white settlers, and
their own undistinguishing vengeance, involved them in a war with the
colonists, which resulted in their defeat and expulsion. They emigrated to
the Five Nations, whose allies they had been in former wars with southern
tribes, and who now gladly received them, admitting them as a sixth
nation, into their confederacy.
It is a remark of Gallatin, that, in their career of conquest, the Five
Nations encountered more stubborn resistance from the tribes of their own
family, than from those of a different lineage. In truth, all the scions
of this warlike stock seem endued with singular vitality and force, and
among them we must seek for the best type of the Indian character. Few
tribes could match them in prowess, constancy, moral energy, or
intellectual vigor. The Jesuits remarked that they were more intelligent,
yet less tractable, than other savages; and Charlevoix observes that,
though the Algonquins were readily converted, they made but fickle
proselytes; while the Hurons, though not easily won over to the church,
were far more faithful in their adherence.[30] Of this tribe, the Hurons
or Wyandots, a candid and experienced observer declares, that of all the
Indians with whom he was conversant, they alone held it disgraceful to
turn from the face of an enemy when the fortunes of the fight were
adverse.[31]
Besides these inherent qualities, the tribes of the Iroquois race derived
great advantages from their superior social organization. They were all,
more or less, tillers of the soil, and were thus enabled to concentrate a
more numerous population than the scattered tribes who live by the chase
alone. In their well-peopled and well-constructed villages, they dwelt
together the greater part of the year; and thence the religious rites and
social and political usages, which elsewhere existed only in the germ,
attained among them a full development. Yet these advantages were not
without alloy, and the Jesuits were not slow to remark that the stationary
and thriving Iroquois were more loose in their observance of social ties,
than the wandering and starving savages of the north.[32]
THE ALGONQUIN FAMILY.
Except the detached nation of the Tuscaroras, and a few smaller tribes
adhering to them, the Iroquois family was confined to the region south of
the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the peninsula east of Lake Huron. They
formed, as it were, an island in the vast expanse of Algonquin population,
extending from Hudson's Bay on the north to the Carolinas on the south;
from the Atlantic on the east to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg on the
west. They were Algonquins who greeted Jacques Cartier, as his ships
ascended the St. Lawrence. The first British colonists found savages of
the same race hunting and fishing along the coasts and inlets of Virginia;
and it was the daughter of an Algonquin chief who interceded with her
father for the life of the adventurous Englishman. They were Algonquins
who, under Sassacus the Pequot, and Philip of Mount Hope, waged war
against the Puritans of New England; who dwelt at Penacook, under the rule
of the great magician, Passaconaway, and trembled before the evil spirits
of the White Hills; and who sang _aves_ and told their beads in the forest
chapel of Father Rasles, by the banks of the Kennebec. They were
Algonquins who, under the great tree at Kensington, made the covenant of
peace with William Penn; and when French Jesuits and fur-traders explored
the Wabash and the Ohio, they found their valleys tenanted by the same
far-extended race. At the present day, the traveller, perchance, may find
them pitching their bark lodges along the beach at Mackinaw, spearing fish
among the rapids of St. Mary's, or skimming the waves of Lake Superior in
their birch canoes.
Of all the members of the Algonquin family, those called by the English
the Delawares, by the French the Loups, and by themselves Lenni Lenape, or
Original Men, hold the first claim to attention; for their traditions
declare them to be the parent stem whence other Algonquin tribes have
sprung. The latter recognized the claim, and, at all solemn councils,
accorded to the ancestral tribe the title of Grandfather.[33]
The first European colonists found the conical lodges of the Lenape
clustered in frequent groups about the waters of the Delaware and its
tributary streams, within the present limits of New Jersey, and Eastern
Pennsylvania. The nation was separated into three divisions, and three
sachems formed a triumvirate, who, with the council of old men, regulated
all its affairs.[34] They were, in some small measure, an agricultural
people; but fishing and the chase were their chief dependence, and through
a great part of the year they were scattered abroad, among forests and
streams, in search of sustenance.
When William Penn held his far-famed council with the sachems of the
Lenape, he extended the hand of brotherhood to a people as unwarlike in
their habits as his own pacific followers. This is by no means to be
ascribed to any inborn love of peace. The Lenape were then in a state of
degrading vassalage to the Five Nations, who, that they might drain to the
dregs the cup of humiliation, had forced them to assume the name of Women,
and forego the use of arms.[35] Dwelling under the shadow of the
tyrannical confederacy, they were long unable to wipe out the blot; but at
length, pushed from their ancient seats by the encroachments of white men,
and removed westward, partially beyond the reach of their conquerors,
their native spirit began to revive, and they assumed a tone of defiance.
During the Old French War they resumed the use of arms, and while the Five
Nations fought for the English, they espoused the cause of France. At the
opening of the Revolution, they boldly asserted their freedom from the
yoke of their conquerors; and a few years after, the Five Nations
confessed, at a public council, that the Lenape were no longer women, but
men.[36] Ever since that period, they have stood in high repute for
bravery, generosity, and all the savage virtues; and the settlers of the
frontier have often found, to their cost, that the _women_ of the Iroquois
have been transformed into a race of formidable warriors. At the present
day, the small remnant settled beyond the Mississippi are among the
bravest marauders of the west. Their war-parties pierce the farthest wilds
of the Rocky Mountains; and the prairie traveller may sometimes meet the
Delaware warrior returning from a successful foray, a gaudy handkerchief
bound about his brows, his snake locks fluttering in the wind, and his
rifle resting across his saddle-bow, while the tarnished and begrimed
equipments of his half-wild horse bear witness that the rider has waylaid
and plundered some Mexican cavalier.
Adjacent to the Lenape, and associated with them in some of the most
notable passages of their history, dwelt the Shawanoes, the Chaouanons of
the French, a tribe of bold, roving, and adventurous spirit. Their
eccentric wanderings, their sudden appearances and disappearances, perplex
the antiquary, and defy research; but from various scattered notices, we
may gather that at an early period they occupied the valley of the Ohio;
that, becoming embroiled with the Five Nations, they shared the defeat of
the Andastes, and about the year 1672 fled to escape destruction. Some
found an asylum in the country of the Lenape, where they lived tenants at
will of the Five Nations; others sought refuge in the Carolinas and
Florida, where, true to their native instincts, they soon came to blows
with the owners of the soil. Again, turning northwards, they formed new
settlements in the valley of the Ohio, where they were now suffered to
dwell in peace, and where, at a later period, they were joined by such of
their brethren as had found refuge among the Lenape.[37]
Of the tribes which, single and detached, or cohering in loose
confederacies, dwelt within the limits of Lower Canada, Acadia, and New
England, it is needless to speak; for they offered no distinctive traits
demanding notice. Passing the country of the Lenape and the Shawanoes, and
descending the Ohio, the traveller would have found its valley chiefly
occupied by two nations, the Miamis or Twightwees, on the Wabash and its
branches, and the Illinois, who dwelt in the neighborhood of the river to
which they have given their name, while portions of them extended beyond
the Mississippi. Though never subjugated, as were the Lenape, both the
Miamis and the Illinois were reduced to the last extremity by the
repeated attacks of the Five Nations; and the Illinois, in particular,
suffered so much by these and other wars, that the population of ten or
twelve thousand, ascribed to them by the early French writers, had
dwindled, during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, to a few
small villages.[38] According to Marest, they were a people sunk in sloth
and licentiousness; but that priestly father had suffered much at their
hands, and viewed them with a jaundiced eye. Their agriculture was not
contemptible; they had permanent dwellings as well as portable lodges; and
though wandering through many months of the year among their broad
prairies and forests, there were seasons when their whole population was
gathered, with feastings and merry-making, within the limits of their
villages.
Turning his course northward, traversing Lakes Michigan and Superior, and
skirting the western margin of Lake Huron, the voyager would have found
the solitudes of the wild waste around him broken by scattered lodges of
the Ojibwas, Pottawattamies, and Ottawas. About the bays and rivers west
of Lake Michigan, he would have seen the Sacs, the Foxes, and the
Menomonies; and penetrating the frozen wilderness of the north, he would
have been welcomed by the rude hospitality of the wandering Crees or
Knisteneaux.
The Ojibwas, with their kindred, the Pottawattamies, and their friends the
Ottawas,--the latter of whom were fugitives from the eastward, whence they
had fled from the wrath of the Iroquois,--were banded into a sort of
confederacy.[39] They were closely allied in blood, language, manners and
character. The Ojibwas, by far the most numerous of the three, occupied
the basin of Lake Superior, and extensive adjacent regions. In their
boundaries, the career of Iroquois conquest found at length a check. The
fugitive Wyandots sought refuge in the Ojibwa hunting-grounds; and
tradition relates that, at the outlet of Lake Superior, an Iroquois
war-party once encountered a disastrous repulse.
In their mode of life, they were far more rude than the Iroquois, or even
the southern Algonquin tribes. The totemic system is found among them in
its most imperfect state. The original clans have become broken into
fragments, and indefinitely multiplied; and many of the ancient customs of
the institution are but loosely regarded. Agriculture is little known,
and, through summer and winter, they range the wilderness with restless
wandering, now gorged to repletion, and now perishing with want. In the
calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes out his birch canoe upon
the great inland ocean of the north; and, as he gazes down into the
pellucid depths, he seems like one balanced between earth and sky. The
watchful fish-hawk circles above his head; and below, farther than his
line will reach, he sees the trout glide shadowy and silent over the
glimmering pebbles. The little islands on the verge of the horizon seem
now starting into spires, now melting from the sight, now shaping
themselves into a thousand fantastic forms, with the strange mirage of the
waters; and he fancies that the evil spirits of the lake lie basking their
serpent forms on those unhallowed shores. Again, he explores the watery
labyrinths where the stream sweeps among pine-tufted islands, or runs,
black and deep, beneath the shadows of moss-bearded firs; or he drags his
canoe upon the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles on the
grass-plat, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs away the
sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment.
But when winter descends upon the north, sealing up the fountains,
fettering the streams, and turning the green-robed forests to shivering
nakedness, then, bearing their frail dwellings on their backs, the Ojibwa
family wander forth into the wilderness, cheered only on their dreary
track by the whistling of the north wind, and the hungry howl of wolves.
By the banks of some frozen stream, women and children, men and dogs, lie
crouched together around the fire. They spread their benumbed fingers over
the embers, while the wind shrieks through the fir-trees like the gale
through the rigging of a frigate, and the narrow concave of the wigwam
sparkles with the frost-work of their congealed breath. In vain they beat
the magic drum, and call upon their guardian manitoes;--the wary moose
keeps aloof, the bear lies close in his hollow tree, and famine stares
them in the face. And now the hunter can fight no more against the nipping
cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and stark, with haggard cheek and
shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw,
the famished wildcat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his
limbs. Such harsh schooling is thrown away on the incorrigible mind of the
northern Algonquin. He lives in misery, as his fathers lived before him.
Still, in the brief hour of plenty he forgets the season of want; and
still the sleet and the snow descend upon his houseless head.[40]
I have thus passed in brief review the more prominent of the Algonquin
tribes; those whose struggles and sufferings form the theme of the ensuing
History. In speaking of the Iroquois, some of the distinctive
peculiarities of the Algonquins have already been hinted at. It must be
admitted that, in moral stability and intellectual vigor, they are
inferior to the former; though some of the most conspicuous offspring of
the wilderness, Metacom, Tecumseh, and Pontiac himself, owned their blood
and language.
The fireside stories of every primitive people are faithful reflections of
the form and coloring of the national mind; and it is no proof of sound
philosophy to turn with contempt from the study of a fairy tale. The
legendary lore of the Iroquois, black as the midnight forests, awful in
its gloomy strength, is but another manifestation of that spirit of
mastery which uprooted whole tribes from the earth, and deluged the
wilderness with blood. The traditionary tales of the Algonquins wear a
different aspect. The credulous circle around an Ojibwa lodge-fire
listened to wild recitals of necromancy and witchcraft--men transformed to
beasts, and beasts transformed to men, animated trees, and birds who spoke
with human tongue. They heard of malignant sorcerers dwelling among the
lonely islands of spell-bound lakes; of grisly _weendigoes_, and bloodless
_geebi_; of evil _manitoes_ lurking in the dens and fastnesses of the
woods; of pygmy champions, diminutive in stature but mighty in soul, who,
by the potency of charm and talisman, subdued the direst monsters of the
waste; and of heroes, who, not by downright force and open onset, but by
subtle strategy, tricks, or magic art, achieved marvellous triumphs over
the brute force of their assailants. Sometimes the tale will breathe a
different spirit, and tell of orphan children abandoned in the heart of a
hideous wilderness, beset with fiends and cannibals. Some enamored maiden,
scornful of earthly suitors, plights her troth to the graceful manito of
the grove; or bright aerial beings, dwellers of the sky, descend to
tantalize the gaze of mortals with evanescent forms of loveliness.
The mighty giant, the God of the Thunder, who made his home among the
caverns, beneath the cataract of Niagara, was a characteristic conception
of Iroquois imagination. The Algonquins held a simpler faith, and
maintained that the thunder was a bird who built his nest on the pinnacle
of towering mountains. Two daring boys once scaled the height, and thrust
sticks into the eyes of the portentous nestlings; which hereupon flashed
forth such wrathful scintillations, that the sticks were shivered to
atoms.[41]
The religious belief of the Algonquins--and the remark holds good, not of
the Algonquins only, but of all the hunting tribes of America--is a cloudy
bewilderment, where we seek in vain for system or coherency. Among a
primitive and savage people, there were no poets to vivify its images, and
no priests to give distinctness and harmony to its rites and symbols. To
the Indian mind, all nature was instinct with deity. A spirit was embodied
in every mountain, lake, and cataract; every bird, beast, or reptile,
every tree, shrub, or grass-blade, was endued with mystic influence; yet
this untutored pantheism did not exclude the conception of certain
divinities, of incongruous and ever shifting attributes. The sun, too, was
a god, and the moon was a goddess. Conflicting powers of good and evil
divided the universe: but if, before the arrival of Europeans, the Indian
recognized the existence of one, almighty, self-existent Being, the Great
Spirit, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, the belief was so vague and dubious
as scarcely to deserve the name. His perceptions of moral good and evil
were perplexed and shadowy; and the belief in a state of future reward and
punishment was by no means universal.[42]
Of the Indian character, much has been written foolishly, and credulously
believed. By the rhapsodies of poets, the cant of sentimentalists, and the
extravagance of some who should have known better, a counterfeit image has
been tricked out, which might seek in vain for its likeness through every
corner of the habitable earth; an image bearing no more resemblance to its
original, than the monarch of the tragedy and the hero of the epic poem
bear to their living prototypes in the palace and the camp. The shadows of
his wilderness home, and the darker mantle of his own inscrutable reserve,
have made the Indian warrior a wonder and a mystery. Yet to the eye of
rational observation there is nothing unintelligible in him. He is full,
it is true, of contradiction. He deems himself the centre of greatness and
renown; his pride is proof against the fiercest torments of fire and
steel; and yet the same man would beg for a dram of whiskey, or pick up a
crust of bread thrown to him like a dog, from the tent door of the
traveller. At one moment, he is wary and cautious to the verge of
cowardice; at the next, he abandons himself to a very insanity of
recklessness; and the habitual self-restraint which throws an impenetrable
veil over emotion is joined to the unbridled passions of a madman or a
beast.
Such inconsistencies, strange as they seem in our eyes, when viewed under
a novel aspect, are but the ordinary incidents of humanity. The qualities
of the mind are not uniform in their action through all the relations of
life. With different men, and different races of men, pride, valor,
prudence, have different forms of manifestation, and where in one instance
they lie dormant, in another they are keenly awake. The conjunction of
greatness and littleness, meanness and pride, is older than the days of
the patriarchs; and such antiquated phenomena, displayed under a new form
in the unreflecting, undisciplined mind of a savage, call for no special
wonder, but should rather be classed with the other enigmas of the
fathomless human heart. The dissecting knife of a Rochefoucault might lay
bare matters of no less curious observation in the breast of every man.
Nature has stamped the Indian with a hard and stern physiognomy. Ambition,
revenge, envy, jealousy, are his ruling passions; and his cold temperament
is little exposed to those effeminate vices which are the bane of milder
races. With him revenge is an overpowering instinct; nay, more, it is a
point of honor and a duty. His pride sets all language at defiance. He
loathes the thought of coercion; and few of his race have ever stooped to
discharge a menial office. A wild love of liberty, an utter intolerance of
control, lie at the basis of his character, and fire his whole existence.
Yet, in spite of this haughty independence, he is a devout
hero-worshipper; and high achievement in war or policy touches a chord to
which his nature never fails to respond. He looks up with admiring
reverence to the sages and heroes of his tribe; and it is this principle,
joined to the respect for age springing from the patriarchal element in
his social system, which, beyond all others, contributes union and harmony
to the erratic members of an Indian community. With him the love of glory
kindles into a burning passion; and to allay its cravings, he will dare
cold and famine, fire, tempest, torture, and death itself.
These generous traits are overcast by much that is dark, cold, and
sinister, by sleepless distrust, and rankling jealousy. Treacherous
himself, he is always suspicious of treachery in others. Brave as he
is,--and few of mankind are braver,--he will vent his passion by a secret
stab rather than an open blow. His warfare is full of ambuscade and
stratagem; and he never rushes into battle with that joyous
self-abandonment, with which the warriors of the Gothic races flung
themselves into the ranks of their enemies. In his feasts and his
drinking bouts we find none of that robust and full-toned mirth, which
reigned at the rude carousals of our barbaric ancestry. He is never jovial
in his cups, and maudlin sorrow or maniacal rage is the sole result of his
potations.
Over all emotion he throws the veil of an iron self-control, originating
in a peculiar form of pride, and fostered by rigorous discipline from
childhood upward. He is trained to conceal passion, and not to subdue it.
The inscrutable warrior is aptly imaged by the hackneyed figure of a
volcano covered with snow; and no man can say when or where the wildfire
will burst forth. This shallow self-mastery serves to give dignity to
public deliberation, and harmony to social life. Wrangling and quarrel are
strangers to an Indian dwelling; and while an assembly of the ancient
Gauls was garrulous as a convocation of magpies, a Roman senate might have
taken a lesson from the grave solemnity of an Indian council. In the midst
of his family and friends, he hides affections, by nature none of the most
tender, under a mask of icy coldness; and in the torturing fires of his
enemy, the haughty sufferer maintains to the last his look of grim
defiance.
His intellect is as peculiar as his moral organization. Among all savages,
the powers of perception preponderate over those of reason and analysis;
but this is more especially the case with the Indian. An acute judge of
character, at least of such parts of it as his experience enables him to
comprehend; keen to a proverb in all exercises of war and the chase, he
seldom traces effects to their causes, or follows out actions to their
remote results. Though a close observer of external nature, he no sooner
attempts to account for her phenomena than he involves himself in the most
ridiculous absurdities; and quite content with these puerilities, he has
not the least desire to push his inquiries further. His curiosity,
abundantly active within its own narrow circle, is dead to all things
else; and to attempt rousing it from its torpor is but a bootless task. He
seldom takes cognizance of general or abstract ideas; and his language has
scarcely the power to express them, except through the medium of figures
drawn from the external world, and often highly picturesque and forcible.
The absence of reflection makes him grossly improvident, and unfits him
for pursuing any complicated scheme of war or policy.
Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft and melting, at once plastic
and feeble. Some races, like some metals, combine the greatest flexibility
with the greatest strength. But the Indian is hewn out of a rock. You can
rarely change the form without destruction of the substance. Races of
inferior energy have possessed a power of expansion and assimilation to
which he is a stranger; and it is this fixed and rigid quality which has
proved his ruin. He will not learn the arts of civilization, and he and
his forest must perish together. The stern, unchanging features of his
mind excite our admiration from their very immutability; and we look with
deep interest on the fate of this irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the
child who will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged mother. And our
interest increases when we discern in the unhappy wanderer the germs of
heroic virtues mingled among his vices,--a hand bountiful to bestow as it
is rapacious to seize, and even in extremest famine, imparting its last
morsel to a fellow-sufferer; a heart which, strong in friendship as in
hate, thinks it not too much to lay down life for its chosen comrade; a
soul true to its own idea of honor, and burning with an unquenchable
thirst for greatness and renown.
The imprisoned lion in the showman's cage differs not more widely from the
lord of the desert, than the beggarly frequenter of frontier garrisons and
dramshops differs from the proud denizen of the woods. It is in his native
wilds alone that the Indian must be seen and studied. Thus to depict him
is the aim of the ensuing History; and if, from the shades of rock and
forest, the savage features should look too grimly forth, it is because
the clouds of a tempestuous war have cast upon the picture their murky
shadows and lurid fires.
CHAPTER II.
1608-1763.
FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN AMERICA.
The American colonies of France and England grew up to maturity under
widely different auspices. Canada, the offspring of Church and State,
nursed from infancy in the lap of power, its puny strength fed with
artificial stimulants, its movements guided by rule and discipline, its
limbs trained to martial exercise, languished, in spite of all, from the
lack of vital sap and energy. The colonies of England, outcast and
neglected, but strong in native vigor and self-confiding courage, grew yet
more strong with conflict and with striving, and developed the rugged
proportions and unwieldy strength of a youthful giant.
In the valley of the St. Lawrence, and along the coasts of the Atlantic,
adverse principles contended for the mastery. Feudalism stood arrayed
against Democracy; Popery against Protestantism; the sword against the
ploughshare. The priest, the soldier, and the noble, ruled in Canada. The
ignorant, light-hearted Canadian peasant knew nothing and cared nothing
about popular rights and civil liberties. Born to obey, he lived in
contented submission, without the wish or the capacity for self-rule.
Power, centered in the heart of the system, left the masses inert. The
settlements along the margin of the St. Lawrence were like a camp, where
an army lay at rest, ready for the march or the battle, and where war and
adventure, not trade and tillage, seemed the chief aims of life. The lords
of the soil were petty nobles, for the most part soldiers, or the sons of
soldiers, proud and ostentatious, thriftless and poor; and the people were
their vassals. Over every cluster of small white houses glittered the
sacred emblem of the cross. The church, the convent, and the roadside
shrine were seen at every turn; and in the towns and villages, one met
each moment the black robe of the Jesuit, the gray garb of the Recollet,
and the formal habit of the Ursuline nun. The names of saints, St. Joseph,
St. Ignatius, St. Francis, were perpetuated in the capes, rivers, and
islands, the forts and villages of the land; and with every day, crowds
of simple worshippers knelt in adoration before the countless altars of
the Roman faith.
If we search the world for the sharpest contrast to the spiritual and
temporal vassalage of Canada, we shall find it among her immediate
neighbors, the Puritans of New England, where the spirit of non-conformity
was sublimed to a fiery essence, and where the love of liberty and the
hatred of power burned with sevenfold heat. The English colonist, with
thoughtful brow and limbs hardened with toil; calling no man master, yet
bowing reverently to the law which he himself had made; patient and
laborious, and seeking for the solid comforts rather than the ornaments of
life; no lover of war, yet, if need were, fighting with a stubborn,
indomitable courage, and then bending once more with steadfast energy to
his farm, or his merchandise,--such a man might well be deemed the very
pith and marrow of a commonwealth.
In every quality of efficiency and strength, the Canadian fell miserably
below his rival; but in all that pleases the eye and interests the
imagination, he far surpassed him. Buoyant and gay, like his ancestry of
France, he made the frozen wilderness ring with merriment, answered the
surly howling of the pine forest with peals of laughter, and warmed with
revelry the groaning ice of the St. Lawrence. Careless and thoughtless, he
lived happy in the midst of poverty, content if he could but gain the
means to fill his tobacco-pouch, and decorate the cap of his mistress with
a ribbon. The example of a beggared nobility, who, proud and penniless,
could only assert their rank by idleness and ostentation, was not lost
upon him. A rightful heir to French bravery and French restlessness, he
had an eager love of wandering and adventure; and this propensity found
ample scope in the service of the fur-trade, the engrossing occupation and
chief source of income to the colony. When the priest of St. Ann's had
shrived him of his sins; when, after the parting carousal, he embarked
with his comrades in the deep-laden canoe; when their oars kept time to
the measured cadence of their song, and the blue, sunny bosom of the
Ottawa opened before them; when their frail bark quivered among the milky
foam and black rocks of the rapid; and when, around their camp-fire, they
wasted half the night with jests and laughter,--then the Canadian was in
his element. His footsteps explored the farthest hiding-places of the
wilderness. In the evening dance, his red cap mingled with the scalp-locks
and feathers of the Indian braves; or, stretched on a bear-skin by the
side of his dusky mistress, he watched the gambols of his hybrid
offspring, in happy oblivion of the partner whom he left unnumbered
leagues behind.
The fur-trade engendered a peculiar class of restless bush-rangers, more
akin to Indians than to white men. Those who had once felt the
fascinations of the forest were unfitted ever after for a life of quiet
labor; and with this spirit the whole colony was infected. From this
cause, no less than from occasional wars with the English, and repeated
attacks of the Iroquois, the agriculture of the country was sunk to a low
ebb; while feudal exactions, a ruinous system of monopoly, and the
intermeddlings of arbitrary power, cramped every branch of industry.[43]
Yet, by the zeal of priests and the daring enterprise of soldiers and
explorers, Canada, though sapless and infirm, spread forts and missions
through all the western wilderness. Feebly rooted in the soil, she thrust
out branches which overshadowed half America; a magnificent object to the
eye, but one which the first whirlwind would prostrate in the dust.
Such excursive enterprise was alien to the genius of the British colonies.
Daring activity was rife among them, but it did not aim at the founding of
military outposts and forest missions. By the force of energetic industry,
their population swelled with an unheard-of rapidity, their wealth
increased in a yet greater ratio, and their promise of future greatness
opened with every advancing year. But it was a greatness rather of peace
than of war. The free institutions, the independence of authority, which
were the source of their increase, were adverse to that unity of counsel
and promptitude of action which are the soul of war. It was far otherwise
with their military rival. France had her Canadian forces well in hand.
They had but one will, and that was the will of a mistress. Now here, now
there, in sharp and rapid onset, they could assail the cumbrous masses and
unwieldy strength of their antagonists, as the king-bird attacks the
eagle, or the sword-fish the whale. Between two such combatants the strife
must needs be a long one.
Canada was a true child of the Church, baptized in infancy and faithful to
the last. Champlain, the founder of Quebec, a man of noble spirit, a
statesman and a soldier, was deeply imbued with fervid piety. "The saving
of a soul," he would often say, "is worth more than the conquest of an
empire;"[44] and to forward the work of conversion, he brought with him
four Franciscan monks from France. At a later period, the task of
colonization would have been abandoned, but for the hope of casting the
pure light of the faith over the gloomy wastes of heathendom.[45] All
France was filled with the zeal of proselytism. Men and women of exalted
rank lent their countenance to the holy work. From many an altar daily
petitions were offered for the well-being of the mission; and in the Holy
House of Mont-Martre, a nun lay prostrate day and night before the shrine,
praying for the conversion of Canada.[46] In one convent, thirty nuns
offered themselves for the labors of the wilderness; and priests flocked
in crowds to the colony.[47] The powers of darkness took alarm; and when a
ship, freighted with the apostles of the faith, was tempest-tost upon her
voyage, the storm was ascribed to the malice of demons, trembling for the
safety of their ancient empire.
The general enthusiasm was not without its fruits. The Church could pay
back with usury all that she received of aid and encouragement from the
temporal power; and the ambition of Richelieu could not have devised a
more efficient enginery for the accomplishment of its schemes, than that
supplied by the zeal of the devoted propagandists. The priest and the
soldier went hand in hand; and the cross and the _fleur de lis_ were
planted side by side.
Foremost among the envoys of the faith were the members of that mighty
order, who, in another hemisphere, had already done so much to turn back
the advancing tide of religious freedom, and strengthen the arm of Rome.
To the Jesuits was assigned, for many years, the entire charge of the
Canadian missions, to the exclusion of the Franciscans, early laborers in
the same barren field. Inspired with a self-devoting zeal to snatch souls
from perdition, and win new empires to the cross; casting from them every
hope of earthly pleasure or earthly aggrandizement, the Jesuit fathers
buried themselves in deserts, facing death with the courage of heroes, and
enduring torments with the constancy of martyrs. Their story is replete
with marvels--miracles of patient suffering and daring enterprise. They
were the pioneers of Northern America.[48] We see them among the frozen
forests of Acadia, struggling on snowshoes, with some wandering Algonquin
horde, or crouching in the crowded hunting-lodge, half stifled in the
smoky den, and battling with troops of famished dogs for the last morsel
of sustenance. Again we see the black-robed priest wading among the white
rapids of the Ottawa, toiling with his savage comrades to drag the canoe
against the headlong water. Again, radiant in the vestments of his
priestly office, he administers the sacramental bread to kneeling crowds
of plumed and painted proselytes in the forests of the Hurons; or, bearing
his life in his hand, carries his sacred mission into the strongholds of
the Iroquois, like one who invades unarmed a den of angry tigers. Jesuit
explorers traced the St. Lawrence to its source, and said masses among the
solitudes of Lake Superior, where the boldest fur-trader scarcely dared to
follow. They planted missions at St. Mary's and at Michillimackinac; and
one of their fraternity, the illustrious Marquette, discovered the
Mississippi, and opened a new theatre to the boundless ambition of France.
The path of the missionary was a thorny and a bloody one; and a life of
weary apostleship was often crowned with a frightful martyrdom. Jean de
Brebeuf and Gabriel Lallemant preached the faith among the villages of the
Hurons, when their terror-stricken flock were overwhelmed by an irruption
of the Iroquois. The missionaries might have fled; but, true to their
sacred function, they remained behind to aid the wounded and baptize the
dying. Both were made captive, and both were doomed to the fiery torture.
Brebeuf, a veteran soldier of the cross, met his fate with an undaunted
composure, which amazed his murderers. With unflinching constancy he
endured torments too horrible to be recorded, and died calmly as a martyr
of the early church, or a war-chief of the Mohawks.
The slender frame of Lallemant, a man younger in years and gentle in
spirit, was enveloped in blazing savin-bark. Again and again the fire was
extinguished; again and again it was kindled afresh; and with such
fiendish ingenuity were his torments protracted, that he lingered for
seventeen hours before death came to his relief.[49]
Isaac Jogues, taken captive by the Iroquois, was led from canton to
canton, and village to village, enduring fresh torments and indignities at
every stage of his progress.[50] Men, women, and children vied with each
other in ingenious malignity. Redeemed, at length, by the humane exertions
of a Dutch officer, he repaired to France, where his disfigured person and
mutilated hands told the story of his sufferings. But the promptings of a
sleepless conscience urged him to return and complete the work he had
begun; to illumine the moral darkness upon which, during the months of his
disastrous captivity, he fondly hoped that he had thrown some rays of
light. Once more he bent his footsteps towards the scene of his living
martyrdom, saddened with a deep presentiment that he was advancing to his
death. Nor were his forebodings untrue. In a village of the Mohawks, the
blow of a tomahawk closed his mission and his life.
Such intrepid self-devotion may well call forth our highest admiration;
but when we seek for the results of these toils and sacrifices, we shall
seek in vain. Patience and zeal were thrown away upon lethargic minds and
stubborn hearts. The reports of the Jesuits, it is true, display a copious
list of conversions; but the zealous fathers reckoned the number of
conversions by the number of baptisms; and, as Le Clercq observes, with no
less truth than candor, an Indian would be baptized ten times a day for a
pint of brandy or a pound of tobacco. Neither can more flattering
conclusions be drawn from the alacrity which they showed to adorn their
persons with crucifixes and medals. The glitter of the trinkets pleased
the fancy of the warrior; and, with the emblem of man's salvation pendent
from his neck, he was often at heart as thorough a heathen as when he wore
in its place a necklace made of the dried forefingers of his enemies. At
the present day, with the exception of a few insignificant bands of
converted Indians in Lower Canada, not a vestige of early Jesuit influence
can be found among the tribes. The seed was sown upon a rock.[51]
While the church was reaping but a scanty harvest, the labors of the
missionaries were fruitful of profit to the monarch of France. The Jesuit
led the van of French colonization; and at Detroit, Michillimackinac, St.
Mary's, Green Bay, and other outposts of the west, the establishment of a
mission was the precursor of military occupancy. In other respects no
less, the labors of the wandering missionaries advanced the welfare of the
colony. Sagacious and keen of sight, with faculties stimulated by zeal and
sharpened by peril, they made faithful report of the temper and movements
of the distant tribes among whom they were distributed. The influence
which they often gained was exerted in behalf of the government under
whose auspices their missions were carried on; and they strenuously
labored to win over the tribes to the French alliance, and alienate them
from the heretic English. In all things they approved themselves the
stanch and steadfast auxiliaries of the imperial power; and the Marquis du
Quesne observed of the missionary Picquet, that in his single person he
was worth ten regiments.[52]
Among the English colonies, the pioneers of civilization were for the most
part rude, yet vigorous men, impelled to enterprise by native
restlessness, or lured by the hope of gain. Their range was limited, and
seldom extended far beyond the outskirts of the settlements. With Canada
it was far otherwise. There was no energy in the bulk of her people. The
court and the army supplied the mainsprings of her vital action, and the
hands which planted the lilies of France in the heart of the wilderness
had never guided the ploughshare or wielded the spade. The love of
adventure, the ambition of new discovery, the hope of military
advancement, urged men of place and culture to embark on bold and
comprehensive enterprise. Many a gallant gentleman, many a nobleman of
France, trod the black mould and oozy mosses of the forest with feet that
had pressed the carpets of Versailles. They whose youth had passed in
camps and courts grew gray among the wigwams of savages; and the lives of
Castine, Joncaire, and Priber[53] are invested with all the interest of
romance.
Conspicuous in the annals of Canada stands the memorable name of Robert
Cavelier de La Salle, the man who, beyond all his compeers, contributed to
expand the boundary of French empire in the west. La Salle commanded at
Fort Frontenac, erected near the outlet of Lake Ontario, on its northern
shore, and then forming the most advanced military outpost of the colony.
Here he dwelt among Indians, and half-breeds, traders, voyageurs,
bush-rangers, and Franciscan monks, ruling his little empire with absolute
sway, enforcing respect by his energy, but offending many by his rigor.
Here he brooded upon the grand design which had long engaged his thoughts.
He had resolved to complete the achievement of Father Marquette, to trace
the unknown Mississippi to its mouth, to plant the standard of his king in
the newly-discovered regions, and found colonies which should make good
the sovereignty of France from the Frozen Ocean to Mexico. Ten years of
his early life had passed, it is said, in connection with the Jesuits, and
his strong mind had hardened to iron under the discipline of that
relentless school. To a sound judgment, and a penetrating sagacity, he
joined a boundless enterprise and an adamantine constancy of purpose. But
his nature was stern and austere; he was prone to rule by fear rather than
by love; he took counsel of no man, and chilled all who approached him by
his cold reserve.
At the close of the year 1678, his preparations were complete, and he
despatched his attendants to the banks of the river Niagara, whither he
soon followed in person. Here he began a little fort of palisades, and was
the first military tenant of a spot destined to momentous consequence in
future wars. Two leagues above the cataract, on the eastern bank of the
river, he built the first vessel which ever explored the waters of the
upper lakes.[54] Her name was the Griffin, and her burden was forty-five
tons. On the seventh of August, 1679, she began her adventurous voyage
amid the speechless wonder of the Indians, who stood amazed, alike at the
unwonted size of the wooden canoe, at the flash and roar of the cannon
from her decks, and at the carved figure of a griffin, which sat crouched
upon her prow. She bore on her course along the virgin waters of Lake
Erie, through the beautiful windings of the Detroit, and among the
restless billows of Lake Huron, where a furious tempest had well nigh
ingulphed her. La Salle pursued his voyage along Lake Michigan in birch
canoes, and after protracted suffering from famine and exposure reached
its southern extremity on the eighteenth of October.[55]
He led his followers to the banks of the river now called the St. Joseph.
Here, again, he built a fort; and here, in after years, the Jesuits placed
a mission and the government a garrison. Thence he pushed on into the
unknown region of the Illinois; and now dangers and difficulties began to
thicken about him. Indians threatened hostility; his men lost heart,
clamored, grew mutinous, and repeatedly deserted; and worse than all,
nothing was heard of the vessel which had been sent back to Canada for
necessary supplies. Weeks wore on, and doubt ripened into certainty. She
had foundered among the storms of these wilderness oceans; and her loss
seemed to involve the ruin of the enterprise, since it was vain to
proceed farther without the expected supplies. In this disastrous crisis,
La Salle embraced a resolution characteristic of his intrepid temper.
Leaving his men in charge of a subordinate at a fort which he had built on
the river Illinois, he turned his face again towards Canada. He traversed
on foot more than a thousand miles of frozen forest, crossing rivers,
toiling through snow-drifts, wading ice-encumbered swamps, sustaining life
by the fruits of the chase, and threatened day and night by lurking
enemies. He gained his destination, but it was only to encounter a fresh
storm of calamities. His enemies had been busy in his absence; a malicious
report had gone abroad that he was dead; his creditors had seized his
property; and the stores on which he most relied had been wrecked at sea,
or lost among the rapids of the St. Lawrence. Still he battled against
adversity with his wonted vigor, and in Count Frontenac, the governor of
the province,--a spirit kindred to his own,--he found a firm friend. Every
difficulty gave way before him; and with fresh supplies of men, stores,
and ammunition, he again embarked for the Illinois. Rounding the vast
circuit of the lakes, he reached the mouth of the St. Joseph, and hastened
with anxious speed to the fort where he had left his followers. The place
was empty. Not a man remained. Terrified, despondent, mutinous, and
embroiled in Indian wars, they had fled to seek peace and safety, he knew
not whither.
Once more the dauntless discoverer turned back towards Canada. Once more
he stood before Count Frontenac, and once more bent all his resources and
all his credit to gain means for the prosecution of his enterprise. He
succeeded. With his little flotilla of canoes, he left his fort, at the
outlet of Lake Ontario, and slowly retraced those interminable waters, and
lines of forest-bounded shore, which had grown drearily familiar to his
eyes. Fate at length seemed tired of the conflict with so stubborn an
adversary. All went prosperously with the voyagers. They passed the lakes
in safety, crossed the rough portage to the waters of the Illinois,
followed its winding channel, and descended the turbid eddies of the
Mississippi, received with various welcome by the scattered tribes who
dwelt along its banks. Now the waters grew bitter to the taste; now the
trampling of the surf was heard; and now the broad ocean opened upon their
sight, and their goal was won. On the ninth of April, 1682, with his
followers under arms, amid the firing of musketry, the chanting of the _Te
Deum_, and shouts of "Vive le roi," La Salle took formal possession of the
vast valley of the Mississippi, in the name of Louis the Great, King of
France and Navarre.[56]
The first stage of his enterprise was accomplished, but labors no less
arduous remained behind. Repairing to the court of France, he was welcomed
with richly merited favor, and soon set sail for the mouth of the
Mississippi, with a squadron of vessels freighted with men and material
for the projected colony. But the folly and obstinacy of a jealous naval
commander blighted his fairest hopes. The squadron missed the mouth of the
river; and the wreck of one of the vessels, and the desertion of the
commander, completed the ruin of the expedition. La Salle landed with a
band of half-famished followers on the coast of Texas; and, while he was
toiling with untired energy for their relief, a few vindictive miscreants
conspired against him, and a shot from a traitor's musket closed the
career of the iron-hearted discoverer.
It was left with another to complete the enterprise on which he had staked
his life; and, in the year 1699, Lemoine d'Iberville planted the germ
whence sprang the colony of Louisiana.[57]
Years passed on. In spite of a vicious plan of government, in spite of the
bursting of the memorable Mississippi bubble, the new colony grew in
wealth and strength. And now it remained for France to unite the two
extremities of her broad American domain, to extend forts and settlements
across the fertile solitudes between the valley of the St. Lawrence and
the mouth of the Mississippi, and intrench herself among the forests which
lie west of the Alleghanies, before the swelling tide of British
colonization could overflow those mountain barriers. At the middle of the
eighteenth century, her great project was fast advancing towards
completion. The lakes and streams, the thoroughfares of the wilderness,
were seized and guarded by a series of posts distributed with admirable
skill. A fort on the strait of Niagara commanded the great entrance to the
whole interior country. Another at Detroit controlled the passage from
Lake Erie to the north. Another at St. Mary's debarred all hostile access
to Lake Superior. Another at Michillimackinac secured the mouth of Lake
Michigan. A post at Green Bay, and one at St. Joseph, guarded the two
routes to the Mississippi, by way of the rivers Wisconsin and Illinois;
while two posts on the Wabash, and one on the Maumee, made France the
mistress of the great trading highway from Lake Erie to the Ohio. At
Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and elsewhere in the Illinois, little French
settlements had sprung up; and as the canoe of the voyager descended the
Mississippi, he saw, at rare intervals, along its swampy margin, a few
small stockade forts, half buried amid the redundancy of forest
vegetation, until, as he approached Natchez, the dwellings of the
_habitans_ of Louisiana began to appear.
The forest posts of France were not exclusively of a military character.
Adjacent to most of them, one would have found a little cluster of
Canadian dwellings, whose tenants lived under the protection of the
garrison, and obeyed the arbitrary will of the commandant; an authority
which, however, was seldom exerted in a despotic spirit. In these detached
settlements, there was no principle of increase. The character of the
people, and of the government which ruled them, were alike unfavorable to
it. Agriculture was neglected for the more congenial pursuits of the
fur-trade, and the restless, roving Canadians, scattered abroad on their
wild vocation, allied themselves to Indian women, and filled the woods
with a mongrel race of bush-rangers.
Thus far secure in the west, France next essayed to gain foothold upon the
sources of the Ohio; and about the year 1748, the sagacious Count
Galissonniere proposed to bring over ten thousand peasants from France,
and plant them in the valley of that beautiful river, and on the borders
of the lakes.[58] But while at Quebec, in the Castle of St. Louis,
soldiers and statesmen were revolving schemes like this, the slowly-moving
power of England bore on with silent progress from the east. Already the
British settlements were creeping along the valley of the Mohawk, and
ascending the eastern slopes of the Alleghanies. Forests crashing to the
axe, dark spires of smoke ascending from autumnal fires, were heralds of
the advancing host; and while, on one side of the mountains, Celeron de
Bienville was burying plates of lead, engraved with the arms of France,
the ploughs and axes of Virginian woodsmen were enforcing a surer title on
the other. The adverse powers were drawing near. The hour of collision was
at hand.
CHAPTER III.
1608-1763.
THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, AND THE INDIANS.
The French colonists of Canada held, from the beginning, a peculiar
intimacy of relation with the Indian tribes. With the English colonists it
was far otherwise; and the difference sprang from several causes. The
fur-trade was the life of Canada; agriculture and commerce were the chief
sources of wealth to the British provinces. The Romish zealots of Canada
burned for the conversion of the heathen; their heretic rivals were fired
with no such ardor. And finally while the ambition of France grasped at
empire over the farthest deserts of the west, the steady industry of the
English colonists was contented to cultivate and improve a narrow strip of
seaboard. Thus it happened that the farmer of Massachusetts and the
Virginian planter were conversant with only a few bordering tribes, while
the priests and emissaries of France were roaming the prairies with the
buffalo-hunting Pawnees, or lodging in the winter cabins of the Dahcotah;
and swarms of savages, whose uncouth names were strange to English ears,
descended yearly from the north, to bring their beaver and otter skins to
the market of Montreal.
The position of Canada invited intercourse with the interior, and
eminently favored her schemes of commerce and policy. The river St.
Lawrence, and the chain of the great lakes, opened a vast extent of inland
navigation; while their tributary streams, interlocking with the branches
of the Mississippi, afforded ready access to that mighty river, and gave
the restless voyager free range over half the continent. But these
advantages were well nigh neutralized. Nature opened the way, but a
watchful and terrible enemy guarded the portal. The forests south of Lake
Ontario gave harborage to the five tribes of the Iroquois, implacable foes
of Canada. They waylaid her trading parties, routed her soldiers, murdered
her missionaries, and spread havoc and woe through all her settlements.
It was an evil hour for Canada, when, on the twenty-eighth of May,
1609,[59] Samuel de Champlain, impelled by his own adventurous spirit,
departed from the hamlet of Quebec to follow a war-party of Algonquins
against their hated enemy, the Iroquois. Ascending the Sorel, and passing
the rapids at Chambly, he embarked on the lake which bears his name, and
with two French attendants, steered southward, with his savage associates,
toward the rocky promontory of Ticonderoga. They moved with all the
precaution of Indian warfare, when, at length, as night was closing in,
they descried a band of the Iroquois in their large canoes of elm bark
approaching through the gloom. Wild yells from either side announced the
mutual discovery. The Iroquois hastened to the shore, and all night long
the forest resounded with their discordant war-songs and fierce whoops of
defiance. Day dawned, and the fight began. Bounding from tree to tree, the
Iroquois pressed forward to the attack, but when Champlain advanced from
among the Algonquins, and stood full in sight before them, with his
strange attire, his shining breastplate, and features unlike their
own,--when they saw the flash of his arquebuse, and beheld two of their
chiefs fall dead,--they could not contain their terror, but fled for
shelter into the depths of the wood. The Algonquins pursued, slaying many
in the flight, and the victory was complete.
Such was the first collision between the white men and the Iroquois, and
Champlain flattered himself that the latter had learned for the future to
respect the arms of France. He was fatally deceived. The Iroquois
recovered from their terrors, but they never forgave the injury, and yet
it would be unjust to charge upon Champlain the origin of the desolating
wars which were soon to scourge the colony. The Indians of Canada, friends
and neighbors of the French, had long been harassed by inroads of the
fierce confederates, and under any circumstances the French must soon have
become parties to the quarrel.
Whatever may have been its origin, the war was fruitful of misery to the
youthful colony. The passes were beset by ambushed war-parties. The routes
between Quebec and Montreal were watched with tiger-like vigilance.
Bloodthirsty warriors prowled about the outskirts of the settlements.
Again and again the miserable people, driven within the palisades of their
forts, looked forth upon wasted harvests and blazing roofs. The Island of
Montreal was swept with fire and steel. The fur-trade was interrupted,
since for months together all communication was cut off with the friendly
tribes of the west. Agriculture was checked; the fields lay fallow, and
frequent famine was the necessary result.[60] The name of the Iroquois
became a by-word of horror through the colony, and to the suffering
Canadians they seemed troops of incarnate fiends. Revolting rites and
monstrous superstitions were imputed to them; and, among the rest, it was
currently believed that they cherished the custom of immolating young
children, burning them, and drinking the ashes mixed with water to
increase their bravery.[61] Yet the wildest imaginations could scarcely
exceed the truth. At the attack of Montreal, they placed infants over the
embers, and forced the wretched mothers to turn the spit;[62] and those
who fell within their clutches endured torments too hideous for
description. Their ferocity was equalled only by their courage and
address.
At intervals, the afflicted colony found respite from its sufferings; and,
through the efforts of the Jesuits, fair hopes began to rise of
propitiating the terrible foe. At one time, the influence of the priests
availed so far, that under their auspices a French colony was formed in
the very heart of the Iroquois country; but the settlers were soon forced
to a precipitate flight, and the war broke out afresh.[63] The French, on
their part, were not idle; they faced their assailants with characteristic
gallantry. Courcelles, Tracy, De la Barre, and De Nonville invaded by
turns, with various success, the forest haunts of the confederates; and at
length, in the year 1696, the veteran Count Frontenac marched upon their
cantons with all the force of Canada. Stemming the surges of La Chine,
gliding through the romantic channels of the Thousand Islands, and over
the glimmering surface of Lake Ontario, and trailing in long array up the
current of the Oswego, they disembarked on the margin of the Lake of
Onondaga; and, startling the woodland echoes with the clangor of their
trumpets, urged their march through the mazes of the forest. Never had
those solitudes beheld so strange a pageantry. The Indian allies, naked to
the waist and horribly painted, adorned with streaming scalp-locks and
fluttering plumes, stole crouching among the thickets, or peered with
lynx-eyed vision through the labyrinths of foliage. Scouts and
forest-rangers scoured the woods in front and flank of the marching
columns--men trained among the hardships of the fur-trade, thin, sinewy,
and strong, arrayed in wild costume of beaded moccason, scarlet leggin,
and frock of buck-skin, fantastically garnished with many-colored
embroidery of porcupine. Then came the levies of the colony, in gray
capotes and gaudy sashes, and the trained battalions from old France in
cuirass and head-piece, veterans of European wars. Plumed cavaliers were
there, who had followed the standards of Conde or Turenne, and who, even
in the depths of a wilderness, scorned to lay aside the martial foppery
which bedecked the camp and court of Louis the Magnificent. The stern
commander was borne along upon a litter in the midst, his locks bleached
with years, but his eye kindling with the quenchless fire which, like a
furnace, burned hottest when its fuel was almost spent. Thus, beneath the
sepulchral arches of the forest, through tangled thickets, and over
prostrate trunks, the aged nobleman advanced to wreak his vengeance upon
empty wigwams and deserted maize-fields.[64]
Even the fierce courage of the Iroquois began to quail before these
repeated attacks, while the gradual growth of the colony, and the arrival
of troops from France, at length convinced them that they could not
destroy Canada. With the opening of the eighteenth century, their rancor
showed signs of abating; and in the year 1726, by dint of skilful
intrigue, the French succeeded in establishing a permanent military post
at the important pass of Niagara, within the limits of the
confederacy.[65] Meanwhile, in spite of every obstacle, the power of
France had rapidly extended its boundaries in the west. French influence
diffused itself through a thousand channels, among distant tribes,
hostile, for the most part, to the domineering Iroquois. Forts,
mission-houses, and armed trading stations secured the principal passes.
Traders, and _coureurs de bois_ pushed their adventurous traffic into the
wildest deserts; and French guns and hatchets, French beads and cloth,
French tobacco and brandy, were known from where the stunted Esquimaux
burrowed in their snow caves, to where the Camanches scoured the plains of
the south with their banditti cavalry. Still this far-extended commerce
continued to advance westward. In 1738, La Verandrye essayed to reach
those mysterious mountains which, as the Indians alleged, lay beyond the
arid deserts of the Missouri and the Saskatchawan. Indian hostility
defeated his enterprise, but not before he had struck far out into these
unknown wilds, and formed a line of trading posts, one of which, Fort de
la Reine, was planted on the Assinniboin, a hundred leagues beyond Lake
Winnipeg. At that early period, France left her footsteps upon the dreary
wastes which even now have no other tenants than the Indian buffalo-hunter
or the roving trapper.
The fur-trade of the English colonists opposed but feeble rivalry to that
of their hereditary foes. At an early period, favored by the friendship of
the Iroquois, they attempted to open a traffic with the Algonquin tribes
of the great lakes; and in the year 1687, Major McGregory ascended with a
boat-load of goods to Lake Huron, where his appearance excited great
commotion, and where he was seized and imprisoned by the French.[66] From
this time forward, the English fur-trade languished, until the year 1725,
when Governor Burnet, of New York, established a post on Lake Ontario, at
the mouth of the river Oswego; whither, lured by the cheapness and
excellence of the English goods, crowds of savages soon congregated from
every side, to the unspeakable annoyance of the French.[67] Meanwhile, a
considerable commerce was springing up with the Cherokees and other tribes
of the south; and during the first half of the century, the people of
Pennsylvania began to cross the Alleghanies, and carry on a lucrative
traffic with the tribes of the Ohio. In 1749, La Jonquiere, the Governor
of Canada, learned, to his great indignation, that several English traders
had reached Sandusky, and were exerting a bad influence upon the Indians
of that quarter;[68] and two years later, he caused four of the intruders
to be seized near the Ohio, and sent prisoners to Canada.[69]
These early efforts of the English, considerable as they were, can ill
bear comparison with the vast extent of the French interior commerce. In
respect also to missionary enterprise, and the political influence
resulting from it, the French had every advantage over rivals whose zeal
for conversion was neither kindled by fanaticism nor fostered by an
ambitious government. Eliot labored within call of Boston, while the
heroic Brebeuf faced the ghastly perils of the western wilderness; and the
wanderings of Brainerd sink into insignificance compared with those of the
devoted Rasles. Yet, in judging the relative merits of the Romish and
Protestant missionaries, it must not be forgotten that while the former
contented themselves with sprinkling a few drops of water on the forehead
of the proselyte, the latter sought to wean him from his barbarism and
penetrate his savage heart with the truths of Christianity.
In respect, also, to direct political influence, the advantage was wholly
on the side of France. The English colonies, broken into separate
governments, were incapable of exercising a vigorous and consistent Indian
policy; and the measures of one government often clashed with those of
another. Even in the separate provinces, the popular nature of the
constitution and the quarrels of governors and assemblies were unfavorable
to efficient action; and this was more especially the case in the province
of New York, where the vicinity of the Iroquois rendered strenuous yet
prudent measures of the utmost importance. The powerful confederates,
hating the French with bitter enmity, naturally inclined to the English
alliance; and a proper treatment would have secured their firm and lasting
friendship. But, at the early periods of her history, the assembly of New
York was made up in great measure of narrow-minded men, more eager to
consult their own petty interests than to pursue any far-sighted scheme of
public welfare.[70] Other causes conspired to injure the British interest
in this quarter. The annual present sent from England to the Iroquois was
often embezzled by corrupt governors or their favorites.[71] The proud
chiefs were disgusted by the cold and haughty bearing of the English
officials, and a pernicious custom prevailed of conducting Indian
negotiations through the medium of the fur-traders, a class of men held in
contempt by the Iroquois, and known among them by the significant title of
"rum carriers."[72] In short, through all the counsels of the province
Indian affairs were grossly and madly neglected.[73]
With more or less emphasis, the same remark holds true of all the other
English colonies.[74] With those of France, it was far otherwise; and this
difference between the rival powers was naturally incident to their
different forms of government, and different conditions of development.
France labored with eager diligence to conciliate the Indians and win them
to espouse her cause. Her agents were busy in every village, studying the
language of the inmates, complying with their usages, flattering their
prejudices, caressing them, cajoling them, and whispering friendly
warnings in their ears against the wicked designs of the English. When a
party of Indian chiefs visited a French fort, they were greeted with the
firing of cannon and rolling of drums; they were regaled at the tables of
the officers, and bribed with medals and decorations, scarlet uniforms and
French flags. Far wiser than their rivals, the French never ruffled the
self-complacent dignity of their guests, never insulted their religious
notions, nor ridiculed their ancient customs. They met the savage half
way, and showed an abundant readiness to mould their own features after
his likeness.[75] Count Frontenac himself, plumed and painted like an
Indian chief, danced the war-dance and yelled the war-song at the
camp-fires of his delighted allies. It would have been well had the French
been less exact in their imitations, for at times they copied their model
with infamous fidelity, and fell into excesses scarcely credible but for
the concurrent testimony of their own writers. Frontenac caused an
Iroquois prisoner to be burnt alive to strike terror into his countrymen;
and Louvigny, French commandant at Michillimackinac, in 1695, tortured an
Iroquois ambassador to death, that he might break off a negotiation
between that people and the Wyandots.[76] Nor are these the only
well-attested instances of such execrable inhumanity. But if the French
were guilty of these cruelties against their Indian enemies, they were no
less guilty of unworthy compliance with the demands of their Indian
friends, in cases where Christianity and civilization would have dictated
a prompt refusal. Even Montcalm stained his bright name by abandoning the
hapless defenders of Oswego and William Henry to the tender mercies of an
Indian mob.
In general, however, the Indian policy of the French cannot be charged
with obsequiousness. Complaisance was tempered with dignity. At an early
period, they discerned the peculiarities of the native character, and
clearly saw that while on the one hand it was necessary to avoid giving
offence, it was not less necessary on the other to assume a bold demeanor
and a show of power; to caress with one hand, and grasp a drawn sword
with the other.[77] Every crime against a Frenchman was promptly chastised
by the sharp agency of military law; while among the English, the offender
could only be reached through the medium of the civil courts, whose
delays, uncertainties and evasions excited the wonder and provoked the
contempt of the Indians.
It was by observance of the course indicated above, that the French were
enabled to maintain themselves in small detached posts, far aloof from the
parent colony, and environed by barbarous tribes where an English garrison
would have been cut off in a twelvemonth. They professed to hold these
posts, not in their own right, but purely through the grace and
condescension of the surrounding savages; and by this conciliating
assurance they sought to make good their position, until, with their
growing strength, conciliation should no more be needed.
In its efforts to win the friendship and alliance of the Indian tribes,
the French government found every advantage in the peculiar character of
its subjects--that pliant and plastic temper which forms so marked a
contrast to the stubborn spirit of the Englishman. From the beginning, the
French showed a tendency to amalgamate with the forest tribes. "The
manners of the savages," writes the Baron La Hontan, "are perfectly
agreeable to my palate;" and many a restless adventurer of high or low
degree might have echoed the words of the erratic soldier. At first, great
hopes were entertained that, by the mingling of French and Indians, the
latter would be won over to civilization and the church; but the effect
was precisely the reverse; for, as Charlevoix observes, the savages did
not become French, but the French became savages. Hundreds betook
themselves to the forest, never more to return. These outflowings of
French civilization were merged in the waste of barbarism, as a river is
lost in the sands of the desert. The wandering Frenchman chose a wife or a
concubine among his Indian friends; and, in a few generations, scarcely a
tribe of the west was free from an infusion of Celtic blood. The French
empire in America could exhibit among its subjects every shade of color
from white to red, every gradation of culture from the highest
civilization of Paris to the rudest barbarism of the wigwam.
The fur-trade engendered a peculiar class of men, known by the appropriate
name of bush-rangers, or _coureurs de bois_, half-civilized vagrants,
whose chief vocation was conducting the canoes of the traders along the
lakes and rivers of the interior; many of them, however, shaking loose
every tie of blood and kindred, identified themselves with the Indians,
and sank into utter barbarism. In many a squalid camp among the plains and
forests of the west, the traveller would have encountered men owning the
blood and speaking the language of France, yet, in their swarthy visages
and barbarous costume, seeming more akin to those with whom they had cast
their lot. The renegade of civilization caught the habits and imbibed the
prejudices of his chosen associates. He loved to decorate his long hair
with eagle feathers, to make his face hideous with vermilion, ochre, and
soot, and to adorn his greasy hunting-frock with horse-hair fringes. His
dwelling, if he had one, was a wigwam. He lounged on a bear-skin while his
squaw boiled his venison and lighted his pipe. In hunting, in dancing, in
singing, in taking a scalp, he rivalled the genuine Indian. His mind was
tinctured with the superstitions of the forest. He had faith in the magic
drum of the conjuror; he was not sure that a thunder cloud could not be
frightened away by whistling at it through the wing bone of an eagle; he
carried the tail of a rattlesnake in his bullet pouch by way of amulet;
and he placed implicit trust in his dreams. This class of men is not yet
extinct. In the cheerless wilds beyond the northern lakes, or among the
mountain solitudes of the distant west, they may still be found, unchanged
in life and character since the day when Louis the Great claimed
sovereignty over this desert empire.
The borders of the English colonies displayed no such phenomena of
mingling races; for here a thorny and impracticable barrier divided the
white man from the red. The English fur-traders, and the rude men in their
employ, showed it is true an ample alacrity to fling off the restraints of
civilization; but though they became barbarians, they did not become
Indians; and scorn on the one side and hatred on the other still marked
the intercourse of the hostile races. With the settlers of the frontier it
was much the same. Rude, fierce and contemptuous, they daily encroached
upon the hunting-grounds of the Indians, and then paid them for the injury
with curses and threats. Thus the native population shrank back from
before the English, as from before an advancing pestilence; while, on the
other hand, in the very heart of Canada, Indian communities sprang up,
cherished by the government, and favored by the easy-tempered people. At
Lorette, at Caughnawaga, at St. Francis, and elsewhere within the
province, large bands were gathered together, consisting in part of
fugitives from the borders of the hated English, and aiding in time of war
to swell the forces of the French in repeated forays against the
settlements of New York and New England.
There was one of the English provinces marked out from among the rest by
the peculiar character of its founders, and by the course of conduct which
was there pursued towards the Indian tribes. William Penn, his mind warmed
with a broad philanthropy, and enlightened by liberal views of human
government and human rights, planted on the banks of the Delaware the
colony which, vivified by the principles it embodied, grew into the great
commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Penn's treatment of the Indians was equally
prudent and humane, and its results were of high advantage to the colony;
but these results have been exaggerated, and the treatment which produced
them made the theme of inordinate praise. It required no great benevolence
to urge the Quakers to deal kindly with their savage neighbors. They were
bound in common sense to propitiate them; since, by incurring their
resentment, they would involve themselves in the dilemma of submitting
their necks to the tomahawk, or wielding the carnal weapon, in glaring
defiance of their pacific principles. In paying the Indians for the lands
which his colonists occupied,--a piece of justice which has been greeted
with a general clamor of applause,--Penn, as he himself confesses, acted
on the prudent counsel of Compton, Bishop of London.[78] Nor is there any
truth in the representations of Raynal and other eulogists of the Quaker
legislator, who hold him up to the world as the only European who ever
acquired Indian lands by purchase, instead of seizing them by fraud or
violence. The example of purchase had been set fifty years before by the
Puritans of New England; and several of the other colonies had more
recently pursued the same just and prudent course.[79]
With regard to the alleged results of the pacific conduct of the Quakers,
our admiration will diminish on closely viewing the circumstances of the
case. The position of the colony was a most fortunate one. Had the Quakers
planted their colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence, or among the
warlike tribes of New England, their shaking of hands and assurances of
tender regard would not long have availed to save them from the
visitations of the scalping-knife. But the Delawares, the people on whose
territory they had settled, were like themselves debarred the use of arms.
The Iroquois had conquered them, disarmed them, and forced them to adopt
the opprobrious name of _women_. The humble Delawares were but too happy
to receive the hand extended to them, and dwell in friendship with their
pacific neighbors; since to have lifted the hatchet would have brought
upon their heads the vengeance of their conquerors, whose good will Penn
had taken pains to secure.[80]
The sons of Penn, his successors in the proprietorship of the province,
did not evince the same kindly feeling towards the Indians which had
distinguished their father. Earnest to acquire new lands, they commenced
through their agents a series of unjust measures, which gradually
alienated the Indians, and, after a peace of seventy years, produced a
disastrous rupture. The Quaker population of the colony sympathized in the
kindness which its founder had cherished towards the benighted race. This
feeling was strengthened by years of friendly intercourse; and except
where private interest was concerned, the Quakers made good their
reiterated professions of attachment. Kindness to the Indian was the glory
of their sect. As years wore on, this feeling was wonderfully reenforced
by the influence of party spirit. The time arrived when, alienated by
English encroachment on the one hand and French seduction on the other,
the Indians began to assume a threatening attitude towards the province;
and many voices urged the necessity of a resort to arms. This measure,
repugnant alike to their pacific principles and to their love of the
Indians, was strenuously opposed by the Quakers. Their affection for the
injured race was now inflamed into a sort of benevolent fanaticism. The
more rabid of the sect would scarcely confess that an Indian could ever do
wrong. In their view, he was always sinned against, always the innocent
victim of injury and abuse; and in the days of the final rupture, when the
woods were full of furious war-parties, and the German and Irish settlers
on the frontier were butchered by hundreds; when the western sky was
darkened with the smoke of burning settlements, and the wretched fugitives
were flying in crowds across the Susquehanna, a large party among the
Quaker, secure by their Philadelphia firesides, could not see the
necessity of waging even a defensive war against their favorite
people.[81]
The encroachments on the part of the proprietors, which have been alluded
to above, and which many of the Quakers viewed with disapproval, consisted
in the fraudulent interpretation of Indian deeds of conveyance, and in the
granting out of lands without any conveyance at all. The most notorious of
these transactions, and the one most lamentable in its results, was
commenced in the year 1737, and was known by the name of the _walking
purchase_. An old, forgotten deed was raked out of the dust of the
previous century; a deed which was in itself of doubtful validity, and
which had been virtually cancelled by a subsequent agreement. On this
rotten title the proprietors laid claim to a valuable tract of land on the
right bank of the Delaware. Its western boundary was to be defined by a
line drawn from a certain point on Neshaminey Creek, in a north-westerly
direction, as far as a man could walk in a day and a half. From the end of
the walk, a line drawn eastward to the river Delaware was to form the
northern limit of the purchase. The proprietors sought out the most active
men who could be heard of, and put them in training for the walk; at the
same time laying out a smooth road along the intended course, that no
obstructions might mar their speed. By this means an incredible distance
was accomplished within the limited time. And now it only remained to
adjust the northern boundary. Instead of running the line directly to the
Delaware, according to the evident meaning of the deed, the proprietors
inclined it so far to the north as to form an acute angle with the river,
and enclose many hundred thousand acres of valuable land, which would
otherwise have remained in the hands of the Indians.[82] The land thus
obtained lay in the Forks of the Delaware, above Easton, and was then
occupied by a powerful branch of the Delawares, who, to their amazement,
now heard the summons to quit for ever their populous village and fields
of half-grown maize. In rage and distress they refused to obey, and the
proprietors were in a perplexing dilemma. Force was necessary; but a
Quaker legislature would never consent to fight, and especially to fight
against Indians. An expedient was hit upon, at once safe and effectual.
The Iroquois were sent for. A deputation of their chiefs appeared at
Philadelphia, and having been well bribed, and deceived by false accounts
of the transaction, they consented to remove the refractory Delawares. The
delinquents were summoned before their conquerors, and the Iroquois
orator, Canassatego, a man of tall stature and imposing presence,[83]
looking with a grim countenance on his cowering auditors, addressed them
in the following words:--
"You ought to be taken by the hair of the head and shaken soundly till you
recover your senses. You don't know what you are doing. Our brother
Onas's[84] cause is very just. On the other hand, your cause is bad, and
you are bent to break the chain of friendship. How came you to take upon
you to sell land at all? We conquered you; we made women of you; you know
you are women, and can no more sell land than women. This land you claim
is gone down your throats; you have been furnished with clothes, meat, and
drink, by the goods paid you for it, and now you want it again, like
children as you are. What makes you sell land in the dark? Did you ever
tell us you had sold this land? Did we ever receive any part, even the
value of a pipe-shank, from you for it? We charge you to remove instantly;
we don't give you the liberty to think about it. You are women. Take the
advice of a wise man and remove immediately. You may return to the other
side of Delaware, where you came from; but we do not know whether,
considering how you have demeaned yourselves, you will be permitted to
live there; or whether you have not swallowed that land down your throats
as well as the land on this side. We therefore assign you two places to
go, either to Wyoming or Shamokin. We shall then have you more under our
eye, and shall see how you behave. Don't deliberate, but take this belt of
wampum, and go at once."[85]
The unhappy Delawares dared not disobey. They left their ancient homes,
and removed, as they had been ordered, to the Susquehanna, where some
settled at Shamokin, and some at Wyoming.[86] From an early period, the
Indians had been annoyed by the unlicensed intrusion of settlers upon
their lands, and, in 1728, they had bitterly complained of the wrong.[87]
The evil continued to increase. Many families, chiefly German and Irish,
began to cross the Susquehanna and build their cabins along the valleys of
the Juniata and its tributary waters. The Delawares sent frequent
remonstrances from their new abodes, and the Iroquois themselves made
angry complaints, declaring that the lands of the Juniata were theirs by
right of conquest, and that they had given them to their cousins, the
Delawares, for hunting-grounds. Some efforts at redress were made; but the
remedy proved ineffectual, and the discontent of the Indians increased
with every year. The Shawanoes, with many of the Delawares, removed
westward, where for a time they would be safe from intrusion; and by the
middle of the century, the Delaware tribe was separated into two
divisions, one of which remained upon the Susquehanna, while the other, in
conjunction with the Shawanoes, dwelt on the waters of the Alleghany and
the Muskingum.
But now the French began to push their advanced posts into the valley of
the Ohio. Unhappily for the English interest, they found the irritated
minds of the Indians in a state which favored their efforts at seduction,
and held forth a flattering promise that tribes so long faithful to the
English might soon be won over to the cause of France.
While the English interests wore so inauspicious an aspect in this
quarter, their prospects were not much better among the Iroquois. Since
the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, these powerful tribes had so far forgotten
their old malevolence against the French, that the latter were enabled to
bring all their machinery of conciliation to bear upon them. They turned
the opportunity to such good account, as not only to smooth away the
asperity of the ancient grudge, but also to rouse in the minds of their
former foes a growing jealousy against the English. Several accidental
circumstances did much to aggravate this feeling. The Iroquois were in the
habit of sending out frequent war-parties against their enemies, the
Cherokees and Catawbas, who dwelt near the borders of Carolina and
Virginia; and in these forays the invaders often became so seriously
embroiled with the white settlers, that sharp frays took place, and an
open war seemed likely to ensue.[88]
It was with great difficulty that the irritation caused by these untoward
accidents was allayed; and even then enough remained in the neglect of
governments, the insults of traders, and the haughty bearing of officials,
to disgust the proud confederates with their English allies. In the war of
1745, they yielded but cold and doubtful aid; and fears were entertained
of their final estrangement.[89] This result became still more imminent,
when, in the year 1749, the French priest Picquet established his mission
of La Presentation on the St. Lawrence, at the site of Ogdensburg.[90]
This pious father, like the martial churchmen of an earlier day, deemed it
no scandal to gird on earthly armor against the enemies of the faith. He
built a fort and founded a settlement; he mustered the Indians about him
from far and near, organized their governments, and marshalled their
war-parties. From the crenelled walls of his mission-house the warlike
apostle could look forth upon a military colony of his own creating, upon
farms and clearings, white Canadian cabins, and the bark lodges of Indian
hordes which he had gathered under his protecting wing. A chief object of
the settlement was to form a barrier against the English; but the purpose
dearest to the missionary's heart was to gain over the Iroquois to the
side of France; and in this he succeeded so well, that, as a writer of
good authority declares, the number of their warriors within the circle of
his influence surpassed the whole remaining force of the confederacy.[91]
Thoughtful men in the English colonies saw with anxiety the growing
defection of the Iroquois, and dreaded lest, in the event of a war with
France, her ancient foes might now be found her friends. But in this
ominous conjuncture, one strong influence was at work to bind the
confederates to their old alliance; and this influence was wielded by a
man so remarkable in his character, and so conspicuous an actor in the
scenes of the ensuing history, as to demand at least some passing notice.
About the year 1734, in consequence it is said of the hapless issue of a
love affair, William Johnson, a young Irishman, came over to America at
the age of nineteen, where he assumed the charge of an extensive tract of
wild land in the province of New York, belonging to his uncle, Admiral Sir
Peter Warren. Settling in the valley of the Mohawk, he carried on a
prosperous traffic with the Indians; and while he rapidly rose to wealth,
he gained, at the same time, an extraordinary influence over the
neighboring Iroquois. As his resources increased, he built two mansions in
the valley, known respectively by the names of Johnson Castle and Johnson
Hall, the latter of which, a well-constructed building of wood and stone,
is still standing in the village of Johnstown. Johnson Castle was situated
at some distance higher up the river. Both were fortified against attack,
and the latter was surrounded with cabins built for the reception of the
Indians, who often came in crowds to visit the proprietor, invading his
dwelling at all unseasonable hours, loitering in the doorways, spreading
their blankets in the passages, and infecting the air with the fumes of
stale tobacco.
Johnson supplied the place of his former love by a young Dutch damsel, who
bore him several children; and, in justice to them, he married her upon
her death-bed. Soon afterwards he found another favorite in the person of
Molly Brant, sister of the celebrated Mohawk war-chief, whose black eyes
and laughing face caught his fancy, as, fluttering with ribbons, she
galloped past him at a muster of the Tryon county militia.
Johnson's importance became so conspicuous, that when the French war broke
out in 1755, he was made a major-general; and, soon after, the colonial
troops under his command gained the battle of Lake George against the
French forces of Baron Dieskau. For this success, for which however he was
entitled to little credit, he was raised to the rank of baronet, and
rewarded with a gift of five thousand pounds from the king. About this
time, he was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern
tribes, a station in which he did signal service to the country. In 1759,
when General Prideaux was killed by the bursting of a cohorn in the
trenches before Niagara, Johnson succeeded to his command, routed the
French in another pitched battle, and soon raised the red cross of England
on the ramparts of the fort. After the peace of 1763, he lived for many
years at Johnson Hall, constantly enriched by the increasing value of his
vast estate, and surrounded by a hardy Highland tenantry, devoted to his
interests; but when the tempest which had long been brewing seemed at
length about to break, and signs of a speedy rupture with the mother
country thickened with every day, he stood wavering in an agony of
indecision, divided between his loyalty to the sovereign who was the
source of all his honors, and his reluctance to become the agent of a
murderous Indian warfare against his countrymen and friends. His final
resolution was never taken. In the summer of 1774, he was attacked with a
sudden illness, and died within a few hours, in the sixtieth year of his
age, hurried to his grave by mental distress, or, as many believed, by the
act of his own hand.
Nature had well fitted him for the position in which his propitious stars
had cast his lot. His person was tall, erect, and strong; his features
grave and manly. His direct and upright dealings, his courage, eloquence,
and address, were sure passports to favor in Indian eyes. He had a
singular facility of adaptation. In the camp, or at the council-board, in
spite of his defective education, he bore himself as became his station;
but at home he was seen drinking flip and smoking tobacco with the Dutch
boors, his neighbors, and talking of improvements or the price of
beaver-skins; while in the Indian villages he would feast on dog's flesh,
dance with the warriors, and harangue his attentive auditors with all the
dignity of an Iroquois sachem. His temper was genial; he encouraged rustic
sports, and was respected and beloved alike by whites and Indians.
His good qualities, however, were alloyed with serious defects. His mind
was as coarse as it was vigorous; he was vain of his rank and influence,
and being quite free from any scruple of delicacy, he lost no opportunity
of proclaiming them. His nature was eager and ambitious; and in pushing
his own way, he was never distinguished by an anxious solicitude for the
rights of others.[92]
At the time of which we speak, his fortunes had not reached their zenith;
yet his influence was great; and during the war of 1745, when he held the
chief control of Indian affairs in New York, it was exercised in a manner
most beneficial to the province. After the peace of Aix la Chapelle, in
1748, finding his measures ill supported, he threw up his office in
disgust. Still his mere personal influence sufficed to embarrass the
intrigues of the busy priest at La Presentation; and a few years later,
when the public exigency demanded his utmost efforts, he resumed, under
better auspices, the official management of Indian affairs.
And now, when the blindest could see that between the rival claimants to
the soil of America nothing was left but the arbitration of the sword, no
man friendly to the cause of England could observe without alarm how
France had strengthened herself in Indian alliances. The Iroquois, it is
true, had not quite gone over to her side; nor had the Delawares wholly
forgotten their ancient league with William Penn. The Miamis, too, in the
valley of the Ohio, had lately taken umbrage at the conduct of the French,
and betrayed a leaning to the side of England, while several tribes of the
south showed a similar disposition. But, with few and slight exceptions,
the numerous tribes of the great lakes and the Mississippi, besides a host
of domiciliated savages in Canada itself, stood ready at the bidding of
France to grind their tomahawks and turn loose their ravenous war-parties;
while the British colonists had too much reason to fear that even those
tribes which seemed most friendly to their cause, and which formed the
sole barrier of their unprotected borders, might, at the first sound of
the war-whoop, be found in arms against them.
CHAPTER IV.
1700-1755.
COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES.
The people of the northern English colonies had learned to regard their
Canadian neighbors with the bitterest enmity. With them, the very name of
Canada called up horrible recollections and ghastly images: the midnight
massacre of Schenectady, and the desolation of many a New England hamlet;
blazing dwellings and reeking scalps; and children snatched from their
mothers' arms, to be immured in convents and trained up in the
abominations of Popery. To the sons of the Puritans, their enemy was
doubly odious. They hated him as a Frenchman, and they hated him as a
Papist. Hitherto he had waged his murderous warfare from a distance,
wasting their settlements with rapid onsets, fierce and transient as a
summer storm; but now, with enterprising audacity, he was intrenching
himself on their very borders. The English hunter, in the lonely
wilderness of Vermont, as by the warm glow of sunset he piled the spruce
boughs for his woodland bed, started as a deep, low sound struck faintly
on his ear, the evening gun of Fort Frederic, booming over lake and
forest. The erection of this fort, better known among the English as Crown
Point, was a piece of daring encroachment which justly kindled resentment
in the northern colonies. But it was not here that the immediate occasion
of a final rupture was to arise. By an article of the treaty of Utrecht,
confirmed by that of Aix la Chapelle, Acadia had been ceded to England;
but scarcely was the latter treaty signed, when debates sprang up touching
the limits of the ceded province. Commissioners were named on either side
to adjust the disputed boundary; but the claims of the rival powers proved
utterly irreconcilable, and all negotiation was fruitless.[93] Meantime,
the French and English forces in Acadia began to assume a belligerent
attitude, and indulge their ill blood in mutual aggression and
reprisal.[94] But while this game was played on the coasts of the
Atlantic, interests of far greater moment were at stake in the west.
The people of the middle colonies, placed by their local position beyond
reach of the French, had heard with great composure of the sufferings of
their New England brethren, and felt little concern at a danger so
doubtful and remote. There were those among them, however, who with
greater foresight had been quick to perceive the ambitious projects of the
rival nation; and, as early as 1716, Spotswood, governor of Virginia, had
urged the expediency of securing the valley of the Ohio by a series of
forts and settlements.[95] His proposal was coldly received, and his plan
fell to the ground. The time at length was come when the danger was
approaching too near to be slighted longer. In 1748, an association,
called the Ohio Company, was formed with the view of making settlements in
the region beyond the Alleghanies; and two years later, Gist, the
company's surveyor, to the great disgust of the Indians, carried chain and
compass down the Ohio as far as the falls at Louisville.[96] But so
dilatory were the English, that before any effectual steps were taken,
their agile enemies appeared upon the scene.
In the spring of 1753, the middle provinces were startled at the tidings
that French troops had crossed Lake Erie, fortified themselves at the
point of Presqu' Isle, and pushed forward to the northern branches of the
Ohio.[97] Upon this, Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, resolved to despatch
a message requiring their removal from territories which he claimed as
belonging to the British crown; and looking about him for the person best
qualified to act as messenger, he made choice of George Washington, a
young man twenty-one years of age, adjutant general of the Virginian
militia.
Washington departed on his mission, crossed the mountains, descended to
the bleak and leafless valley of the Ohio, and thence continued his
journey up the banks of the Alleghany until the fourth of December. On
that day he reached Venango, an Indian town on the Alleghany, at the
mouth of French Creek. Here was the advanced post of the French; and
here, among the Indian log cabins and huts of bark, he saw their flag
flying above the house of an English trader, whom the military intruders
had unceremoniously ejected. They gave the young envoy a hospitable
reception,[98] and referred him to the commanding officer, whose
headquarters were at Le B[oe]uf, a fort which they had just built on
French Creek, some distance above Venango. Thither Washington repaired,
and on his arrival was received with stately courtesy by the officer,
Legardeur de St. Pierre, whom he describes as an elderly gentleman of
very soldier-like appearance. To the message of Dinwiddie, St. Pierre
replied that he would forward it to the governor general of Canada; but
that, in the mean time, his orders were to hold possession of the
country, and this he should do to the best of his ability. With this
answer Washington, through all the rigors of the midwinter forest,
retraced his steps, with one attendant, to the English borders.
With the first opening of spring, a newly raised company of Virginian
backwoodsmen, under Captain Trent, hastened across the mountains, and
began to build a fort at the confluence of the Monongahela and Alleghany,
where Pittsburg now stands; when suddenly they found themselves invested
by a host of French and Indians, who, with sixty bateaux and three hundred
canoes, had descended from Le B[oe]uf and Venango.[99] The English were
ordered to evacuate the spot; and, being quite unable to resist, they
obeyed the summons, and withdrew in great discomfiture towards Virginia.
Meanwhile Washington, with another party of backwoodsmen, was advancing
from the borders; and, hearing of Trent's disaster, he resolved to fortify
himself on the Monongahela, and hold his ground, if possible, until fresh
troops could arrive to support him. The French sent out a scouting party
under M. Jumonville, with the design, probably, of watching his movements;
but, on a dark and stormy night, Washington surprised them, as they lay
lurking in a rocky glen not far from his camp, killed the officer, and
captured the whole detachment.[100] Learning that the French, enraged by
this reverse, were about to attack him in great force, he thought it
prudent to fall back, and retired accordingly to a spot called the Great
Meadows, where he had before thrown up a slight intrenchment. Here he
found himself assailed by nine hundred French and Indians, commanded by a
brother of the slain Jumonville. From eleven in the morning till eight at
night, the backwoodsmen, who were half famished from the failure of their
stores, maintained a stubborn defence, some fighting within the
intrenchment, and some on the plain without. In the evening, the French
sounded a parley, and offered terms. They were accepted, and on the
following day Washington and his men retired across the mountains, leaving
the disputed territory in the hands of the French.[101]
While the rival nations were beginning to quarrel for a prize which
belonged to neither of them, the unhappy Indians saw, with alarm and
amazement, their lands becoming a bone of contention between rapacious
strangers. The first appearance of the French on the Ohio excited the
wildest fears in the tribes of that quarter, among whom were those who,
disgusted by the encroachments of the Pennsylvanians, had fled to these
remote retreats to escape the intrusions of the white men. Scarcely was
their fancied asylum gained, when they saw themselves invaded by a host of
armed men from Canada. Thus placed between two fires, they knew not which
way to turn. There was no union in their counsels, and they seemed like a
mob of bewildered children. Their native jealousy was roused to its utmost
pitch. Many of them thought that the two white nations had conspired to
destroy them, and then divide their lands. "You and the French," said one
of them, a few years afterwards, to an English emissary, "are like the two
edges of a pair of shears, and we are the cloth which is cut to pieces
between them."[102]
The French labored hard to conciliate them, plying them with gifts and
flatteries,[103] and proclaiming themselves their champions against the
English. At first, these arts seemed in vain, but their effect soon began
to declare itself; and this effect was greatly increased by a singular
piece of infatuation on the part of the proprietors of Pennsylvania.
During the summer of 1754, delegates of the several provinces met at
Albany, to concert measures of defence in the war which now seemed
inevitable. It was at this meeting that the memorable plan of a union of
the colonies was brought forward; a plan, the fate of which was curious
and significant, for the crown rejected it as giving too much power to the
people, and the people as giving too much power to the crown.[104] A
council was also held with the Iroquois, and though they were found but
lukewarm in their attachment to the English, a treaty of friendship and
alliance was concluded with their deputies.[105] It would have been well
if the matter had ended here; but, with ill-timed rapacity, the
proprietary agents of Pennsylvania took advantage of this great assemblage
of sachems to procure from them the grant of extensive tracts, including
the lands inhabited by the very tribes whom the French were at that moment
striving to seduce.[106] When they heard that, without their consent,
their conquerors and tyrants, the Iroquois, had sold the soil from beneath
their feet, their indignation was extreme; and, convinced that there was
no limit to English encroachment, many of them from that hour became fast
allies of the French.
The courts of London and Versailles still maintained a diplomatic
intercourse, both protesting their earnest wish that their conflicting
claims might be adjusted by friendly negotiation; but while each
disclaimed the intention of hostility, both were hastening to prepare for
war. Early in 1755, an English fleet sailed from Cork, having on board two
regiments destined for Virginia, and commanded by General Braddock; and
soon after, a French fleet put to sea from the port of Brest, freighted
with munitions of war and a strong body of troops under Baron Dieskau, an
officer who had distinguished himself in the campaigns of Marshal Saxe.
The English fleet gained its destination, and landed its troops in safety.
The French were less fortunate. Two of their ships, the Lys and the
Alcide, became involved in the fogs of the banks of Newfoundland; and when
the weather cleared, they found themselves under the guns of a superior
British force, belonging to the squadron of Admiral Boscawen, sent out for
the express purpose of intercepting them. "Are we at peace or war?"
demanded the French commander. A broadside from the Englishman soon solved
his doubts, and after a stout resistance the French struck their
colors.[107] News of the capture caused great excitement in England, but
the conduct of the aggressors was generally approved; and under pretence
that the French had begun the war by their alleged encroachments in
America, orders were issued for a general attack upon their marine. So
successful were the British cruisers, that, before the end of the year,
three hundred French vessels and nearly eight thousand sailors were
captured and brought into port.[108] The French, unable to retort in kind,
raised an outcry of indignation, and Mirepoix their ambassador withdrew
from the court of London.
Thus began that memorable war which, kindling among the forests of
America, scattered its fires over the kingdoms of Europe, and the sultry
empire of the Great Mogul; the war made glorious by the heroic death of
Wolfe, the victories of Frederic, and the exploits of Clive; the war which
controlled the destinies of America, and was first in the chain of events
which led on to her Revolution with all its vast and undeveloped
consequences. On the old battle-ground of Europe, the contest bore the
same familiar features of violence and horror which had marked the strife
of former generations--fields ploughed by the cannon ball, and walls
shattered by the exploding mine, sacked towns and blazing suburbs, the
lamentations of women, and the license of a maddened soldiery. But in
America, war assumed a new and striking aspect. A wilderness was its
sublime arena. Army met army under the shadows of primeval woods; their
cannon resounded over wastes unknown to civilized man. And before the
hostile powers could join in battle, endless forests must be traversed,
and morasses passed, and everywhere the axe of the pioneer must hew a path
for the bayonet of the soldier.
Before the declaration of war, and before the breaking off of negotiations
between the courts of France and England, the English ministry formed the
plan of assailing the French in America on all sides at once, and
repelling them, by one bold push, from all their encroachments.[109] A
provincial army was to advance upon Acadia, a second was to attack Crown
Point, and a third Niagara; while the two regiments which had lately
arrived in Virginia under General Braddock, aided by a strong body of
provincials, were to dislodge the French from their newly-built fort of Du
Quesne. To Braddock was assigned the chief command of all the British
forces in America; and a person worse fitted for the office could scarcely
have been found. His experience had been ample, and none could doubt his
courage; but he was profligate, arrogant, perverse, and a bigot to
military rules.[110] On his first arrival in Virginia, he called together
the governors of the several provinces, in order to explain his
instructions and adjust the details of the projected operations. These
arrangements complete, Braddock advanced to the borders of Virginia, and
formed his camp at Fort Cumberland, where he spent several weeks in
training the raw backwoodsmen, who joined him, into such discipline as
they seemed capable of; in collecting horses and wagons, which could only
be had with the utmost difficulty; in railing at the contractors, who
scandalously cheated him; and in venting his spleen by copious abuse of
the country and the people. All at length was ready, and early in June,
1755, the army left civilization behind, and struck into the broad
wilderness as a squadron puts out to sea.
It was no easy task to force their way over that rugged ground, covered
with an unbroken growth of forest; and the difficulty was increased by the
needless load of baggage which encumbered their march. The crash of
falling trees resounded in the front, where a hundred axemen labored with
ceaseless toil to hew a passage for the army.[111] The horses strained
their utmost strength to drag the ponderous wagons over roots and stumps,
through gullies and quagmires; and the regular troops were daunted by the
depth and gloom of the forest which hedged them in on either hand, and
closed its leafy arches above their heads. So tedious was their progress,
that, by the advice of Washington, twelve hundred chosen men moved on in
advance with the lighter baggage and artillery, leaving the rest of the
army to follow, by slower stages, with the heavy wagons. On the eighth of
July, the advanced body reached the Monongahela, at a point not far
distant from Fort du Quesne. The rocky and impracticable ground on the
eastern side debarred their passage, and the general resolved to cross the
river in search of a smoother path, and recross it a few miles lower down,
in order to gain the fort. The first passage was easily made, and the
troops moved, in glittering array, down the western margin of the water,
rejoicing that their goal was well nigh reached, and the hour of their
expected triumph close at hand.
Scouts and Indian runners had brought the tidings of Braddock's
approach to the French at Fort du Quesne. Their dismay was great, and
Contrec[oe]ur, the commander, thought only of retreat; when Beaujeu, a
captain in the garrison, made the bold proposal of leading out a party
of French and Indians to waylay the English in the woods, and harass or
interrupt their march. The offer was accepted, and Beaujeu hastened to
the Indian camps.
Around the fort and beneath the adjacent forest were the bark lodges of
savage hordes, whom the French had mustered from far and near; Ojibwas and
Ottawas, Hurons and Caughnawagas, Abenakis and Delawares. Beaujeu called
the warriors together, flung a hatchet on the ground before them, and
invited them to follow him out to battle; but the boldest stood aghast at
the peril, and none would accept the challenge. A second interview took
place with no better success; but the Frenchman was resolved to carry his
point. "I am determined to go," he exclaimed. "What, will you suffer your
father to go alone?"[112] His daring proved contagious. The warriors
hesitated no longer; and when, on the morning of the ninth of July, a
scout ran in with the news that the English army was but a few miles
distant, the Indian camps were at once astir with the turmoil of
preparation. Chiefs harangued their yelling followers, braves bedaubed
themselves with war-paint, smeared themselves with grease, hung feathers
in their scalp-locks, and whooped and stamped till they had wrought
themselves into a delirium of valor.
That morning, James Smith, an English prisoner recently captured on the
frontier of Pennsylvania, stood on the rampart, and saw the half-frenzied
multitude thronging about the gateway, where kegs of bullets and gunpowder
were broken open, that each might help himself at will.[113] Then band
after band hastened away towards the forest, followed and supported by
nearly two hundred and fifty French and Canadians, commanded by Beaujeu.
There were the Ottawas, led on, it is said, by the remarkable man whose
name stands on the title-page of this history; there were the Hurons of
Lorette under their chief, whom the French called Athanase,[114] and many
more, all keen as hounds on the scent of blood. At about nine miles from
the fort, they reached a spot where the narrow road descended to the river
through deep and gloomy woods, and where two ravines, concealed by trees
and bushes, seemed formed by nature for an ambuscade. Beaujeu well knew
the ground; and it was here that he had resolved to fight; but he and his
followers were well nigh too late; for as they neared the ravines, the
woods were resounding with the roll of the British drums.
It was past noon of a day brightened with the clear sunlight of an
American midsummer, when the forces of Braddock began, for a second time,
to cross the Monongahela, at the fording-place, which to this day bears
the name of their ill-fated leader. The scarlet columns of the British
regulars, complete in martial appointment, the rude backwoodsmen with
shouldered rifles, the trains of artillery and the white-topped wagons,
moved on in long procession through the shallow current, and slowly
mounted the opposing bank.[115] Men were there whose names have become
historic: Gage, who, twenty years later, saw his routed battalions recoil
in disorder from before the breastwork on Bunker Hill; Gates, the future
conqueror of Burgoyne; and one destined to a higher fame,--George
Washington, a boy in years, a man in calm thought and self-ruling wisdom.
With steady and well ordered march, the troops advanced into the great
labyrinth of woods which shadowed the eastern borders of the river. Rank
after rank vanished from sight. The forest swallowed them up, and the
silence of the wilderness sank down once more on the shores and waters of
the Monongahela.
Several engineers and guides and six light horsemen led the way; a body of
grenadiers under Gage was close behind, and the army followed in such
order as the rough ground would permit, along a narrow road, twelve feet
wide, tunnelled through the dense and matted foliage. There were flanking
parties on either side, but no scouts to scour the woods in front, and
with an insane confidence Braddock pressed on to meet his fate. The van
had passed the low grounds that bordered the river, and were now ascending
a gently rising ground, where, on either hand, hidden by thick trees, by
tangled undergrowth and rank grasses, lay the two fatal ravines. Suddenly,
Gordon, an engineer in advance, saw the French and Indians bounding
forward through the forest and along the narrow track, Beaujeu leading
them on, dressed in a fringed hunting-shirt, and wearing a silver gorget
on his breast. He stopped, turned, and waved his hat, and his French
followers, crowding across the road, opened a murderous fire upon the head
of the British column, while, screeching their war-cries, the Indians
thronged into the ravines, or crouched behind rocks and trees on both
flanks of the advancing troops. The astonished grenadiers returned the
fire, and returned it with good effect; for a random shot struck down the
brave Beaujeu, and the courage of the assailants was staggered by his
fall. Dumas, second in command, rallied them to the attack; and while he,
with the French and Canadians, made good the pass in front, the Indians
from their lurking places opened a deadly fire on the right and left. In a
few moments, all was confusion. The advance guard fell back on the main
body, and every trace of subordination vanished. The fire soon extended
along the whole length of the army, from front to rear. Scarce an enemy
could be seen, though the forest resounded with their yells; though every
bush and tree was alive with incessant flashes; though the lead flew like
a hailstorm, and the men went down by scores. The regular troops seemed
bereft of their senses. They huddled together in the road like flocks of
sheep; and happy did he think himself who could wedge his way into the
midst of the crowd, and place a barrier of human flesh between his life
and the shot of the ambushed marksmen. Many were seen eagerly loading
their muskets, and then firing them into the air, or shooting their own
comrades in the insanity of their terror. The officers, for the most part,
displayed a conspicuous gallantry; but threats and commands were wasted
alike on the panic-stricken multitude. It is said that at the outset
Braddock showed signs of fear; but he soon recovered his wonted
intrepidity. Five horses were shot under him, and five times he mounted
afresh.[116] He stormed and shouted, and, while the Virginians were
fighting to good purpose, each man behind a tree, like the Indians
themselves, he ordered them with furious menace to form in platoons, where
the fire of the enemy mowed them down like grass. At length, a mortal shot
silenced him, and two provincials bore him off the field. Washington rode
through the tumult calm and undaunted. Two horses were killed under him,
and four bullets pierced his clothes;[117] but his hour was not come, and
he escaped without a wound. Gates was shot through the body, and Gage also
was severely wounded. Of eighty-six officers, only twenty-three remained
unhurt; and of twelve hundred soldiers who crossed the Monongahela, more
than seven hundred were killed and wounded. None suffered more severely
than the Virginians, who had displayed throughout a degree of courage and
steadiness which put the cowardice of the regulars to shame. The havoc
among them was terrible, for of their whole number scarcely one-fifth left
the field alive.[118]
The slaughter lasted three hours; when, at length, the survivors, as if
impelled by a general impulse, rushed tumultuously from the place of
carnage, and with dastardly precipitation fled across the Monongahela. The
enemy did not pursue beyond the river, flocking back to the field to
collect the plunder, and gather a rich harvest of scalps. The routed
troops pursued their flight until they met the rear division of the army,
under Colonel Dunbar; and even then their senseless terrors did not abate.
Dunbar's soldiers caught the infection. Cannon, baggage, provisions and
wagons were destroyed, and all fled together, eager to escape from the
shadows of those awful woods, whose horrors haunted their imagination.
They passed the defenceless settlements of the border, and hurried on to
Philadelphia, leaving the unhappy people to defend themselves as they
might against the tomahawk and scalping-knife.
The calamities of this disgraceful rout did not cease with the loss of a
few hundred soldiers on the field of battle; for it brought upon the
provinces all the miseries of an Indian war. Those among the tribes who
had thus far stood neutral, wavering between the French and English, now
hesitated no longer. Many of them had been disgusted by the contemptuous
behavior of Braddock. All had learned to despise the courage of the
English, and to regard their own prowess with unbounded complacency. It is
not in Indian nature to stand quiet in the midst of war; and the defeat of
Braddock was a signal for the western savages to snatch their tomahawks
and assail the English settlements with one accord, murdering and
pillaging with ruthless fury, and turning the frontier of Pennsylvania and
Virginia into one wide scene of havoc and desolation.
The three remaining expeditions which the British ministry had planned for
that year's campaign were attended with various results. Acadia was
quickly reduced by the forces of Colonel Monkton; but the glories of this
easy victory were tarnished by an act of cruelty. Seven thousand of the
unfortunate people, refusing to take the prescribed oath of allegiance,
were seized by the conquerors, torn from their homes, placed on shipboard
like cargoes of negro slaves, and transported to the British
provinces.[119] The expedition against Niagara was a total failure, for
the troops did not even reach their destination. The movement against
Crown Point met with no better success, as regards the main object of the
enterprise. Owing to the lateness of the season, and other causes, the
troops proceeded no farther than Lake George; but the attempt was marked
by a feat of arms, which, in that day of failures, was greeted, both in
England and America, as a signal victory.
General Johnson, afterwards Sir William Johnson, had been charged with the
conduct of the Crown Point expedition; and his little army, a rude
assemblage of hunters and farmers from New York and New England, officers
and men alike ignorant of war, lay encamped at the southern extremity of
Lake George. Here, while they languidly pursued their preparations, their
active enemy anticipated them. Baron Dieskau, who, with a body of troops,
had reached Quebec in the squadron which sailed from Brest in the spring,
had intended to take forcible possession of the English fort of Oswego,
erected upon ground claimed by the French as a part of Canada. Learning
Johnson's movements, he changed his plan, crossed Lake Champlain, made a
circuit by way of Wood Creek, and gained the rear of the English army,
with a force of about two thousand French and Indians. At midnight, on the
seventh of September, the tidings reached Johnson that the army of the
French baron was but a few miles distant from his camp. A council of war
was called, and the resolution formed of detaching a thousand men to
reconnoitre. "If they are to be killed," said Hendrick, the Mohawk chief,
"they are too many; if they are to fight, they are too few." His
remonstrance was unheeded; and the brave old savage, unable from age and
corpulence to fight on foot, mounted his horse, and joined the English
detachment with two hundred of his warriors. At sunrise, the party defiled
from the camp, and entering the forest disappeared from the eyes of their
comrades.
Those who remained behind labored with all the energy of alarm to fortify
their unprotected camp. An hour elapsed, when from the distance was heard
a sudden explosion of musketry. The excited soldiers suspended their work
to listen. A rattling fire succeeded, deadened among the woods, but
growing louder and nearer, till none could doubt that their comrades had
met the French, and were defeated.
This was indeed the case. Marching through thick woods, by the narrow and
newly-cut road which led along the valley southward from Lake George,
Williams, the English commander, had led his men full into an ambuscade,
where all Dieskau's army lay in wait to receive them. From the woods on
both sides rose an appalling shout, followed by a storm of bullets.
Williams was soon shot down; Hendrick shared his fate; many officers fell,
and the road was strewn with dead and wounded soldiers. The English gave
way at once. Had they been regular troops, the result would have been
worse; but every man was a woodsman and a hunter. Some retired in bodies
along the road; while the greater part spread themselves through the
forest, opposing a wide front to the enemy, fighting stubbornly as they
retreated, and shooting back at the French from behind every tree or bush
that could afford a cover. The Canadians and Indians pressed them closely,
darting, with shrill cries, from tree to tree, while Dieskau's regulars,
with steadier advance, bore all before them. Far and wide through the
forest rang shout and shriek and Indian whoop, mingled with the deadly
rattle of guns. Retreating and pursuing, the combatants passed northward
towards the English camp, leaving the ground behind them strewn with dead
and dying.
A fresh detachment from the camp came in aid of the English, and the
pursuit was checked. Yet the retreating men were not the less rejoiced
when they could discern, between the brown columns of the woods, the
mountains and waters of Lake George, with the white tents of their
encampments on its shore. The French followed no farther. The blast of
their trumpets was heard recalling their scattered men for a final attack.
During the absence of Williams's detachment, the main body of the army had
covered the front of their camp with a breastwork,--if that name can be
applied to a row of logs,--behind which the marksmen lay flat on their
faces. This preparation was not yet complete, when the defeated troops
appeared issuing from the woods. Breathless and perturbed, they entered
the camp, and lay down with the rest; and the army waited the attack in a
frame of mind which boded ill for the result. Soon, at the edge of the
woods which bordered the open space in front, painted Indians were seen,
and bayonets glittered among the foliage, shining, in the homely
comparison of a New-England soldier, like a row of icicles on a January
morning. The French regulars marched in column to the edge of the
clearing, and formed in line, confronting the English at the distance of a
hundred and fifty yards. Their complete order, their white uniforms and
bristling bayonets, were a new and startling sight to the eyes of
Johnson's rustic soldiers, who raised but a feeble cheer in answer to the
shouts of their enemies. Happily, Dieskau made no assault. The regulars
opened a distant fire of musketry, throwing volley after volley against
the English, while the Canadians and Indians, dispersing through the
morasses on each flank of the camp, fired sharply, under cover of the
trees and bushes. In the rear, the English were protected by the lake; but
on the three remaining sides, they were hedged in by the flash and smoke
of musketry.
The fire of the French had little effect. The English recovered from their
first surprise, and every moment their confidence rose higher and their
shouts grew louder. Levelling their long hunting guns with cool precision,
they returned a fire which thinned the ranks of the French, and galled
them beyond endurance. Two cannon were soon brought to bear upon the
morasses which sheltered the Canadians and Indians; and though the pieces
were served with little skill, the assailants were so terrified by the
crashing of the balls among the trunks and branches, that they gave way at
once. Dieskau still persisted in the attack. From noon until past four
o'clock, the firing was scarcely abated, when at length the French, who
had suffered extremely, showed signs of wavering. At this, with a general
shout, the English broke from their camp, and rushed upon their enemies,
striking them down with the buts of their guns, and driving them through
the woods like deer. Dieskau was taken prisoner, dangerously wounded, and
leaning for support against the stump of a tree. The slaughter would have
been great, had not the English general recalled the pursuers, and
suffered the French to continue their flight unmolested. Fresh disasters
still awaited the fugitives; for, as they approached the scene of that
morning's ambuscade, they were greeted by a volley of musketry. Two
companies of New York and New Hampshire rangers, who had come out from
Fort Edward as a scouting party, had lain in wait to receive them. Favored
by the darkness of the woods,--for night was now approaching,--they made
so sudden and vigorous an attack, that the French, though far superior in
number, were totally routed and dispersed.[120]
This memorable conflict has cast its dark associations over one of the
most beautiful spots in America. Near the scene of the evening fight, a
pool, half overgrown by weeds and water lilies, and darkened by the
surrounding forest, is pointed out to the tourist, and he is told that
beneath its stagnant waters lie the bones of three hundred Frenchmen, deep
buried in mud and slime.
The war thus begun was prosecuted for five succeeding years with the full
energy of both nations. The period was one of suffering and anxiety to the
colonists, who, knowing the full extent of their danger, spared no
exertion to avert it. In the year 1758, Lord Abercrombie, who then
commanded in America, had at his disposal a force amounting to fifty
thousand men, of whom the greater part were provincials.[121] The
operations of the war embraced a wide extent of country, from Cape Breton
and Nova Scotia to the sources of the Ohio; but nowhere was the contest so
actively carried on as in the neighborhood of Lake George, the waters of
which, joined with those of Lake Champlain, formed the main avenue of
communication between Canada and the British provinces. Lake George is
more than thirty miles long, but of width so slight that it seems like
some broad and placid river, enclosed between ranges of lofty mountains;
now contracting into narrows, dotted with islands and shadowed by cliffs
and crags, now spreading into a clear and open expanse. It had long been
known to the French. The Jesuit Isaac Jogues, bound on a fatal mission to
the ferocious Mohawks, had reached its banks on the eve of Corpus Christi
Day, and named it Lac St. Sacrement. Its solitude was now rudely invaded.
Armies passed and repassed upon its tranquil bosom. At its northern point
the French planted their stronghold of Ticonderoga; at its southern stood
the English fort William Henry, while the mountains and waters between
were a scene of ceaseless ambuscades, surprises, and forest skirmishing.
Through summer and winter, the crack of rifles and the cries of men gave
no rest to their echoes; and at this day, on the field of many a forgotten
fight, are dug up rusty tomahawks, corroded bullets, and human bones, to
attest the struggles of the past.
The earlier years of the war were unpropitious to the English, whose
commanders displayed no great degree of vigor or ability. In the summer of
1756, the French general Montcalm advanced upon Oswego, took it, and
levelled it to the ground. In August of the following year, he struck a
heavier blow. Passing Lake George with a force of eight thousand men,
including about two thousand Indians, gathered from the farthest parts of
Canada, he laid siege to Fort William Henry, close to the spot where
Dieskau had been defeated two years before. Planting his batteries against
it, he beat down its ramparts and dismounted its guns, until the garrison,
after a brave defence, were forced to capitulate. They marched out with
the honors of war; but scarcely had they done so, when Montcalm's Indians
assailed them, cutting down and scalping them without mercy. Those who
escaped came in to Fort Edward with exaggerated accounts of the horrors
from which they had fled, and a general terror was spread through the
country. The inhabitants were mustered from all parts to repel the advance
of Montcalm; but the French general, satisfied with what he had done,
repassed Lake George, and retired behind the walls of Ticonderoga.
In the year 1758, the war began to assume a different aspect, for Pitt was
at the head of the government. Sir Jeffrey Amherst laid siege to the
strong fortress of Louisburg, and at length reduced it; while in the
south, General Forbes marched against Fort du Quesne, and, more fortunate
than his predecessor, Braddock, drove the French from that important
point. Another successful stroke was the destruction of Fort Frontenac,
which was taken by a provincial army under Colonel Bradstreet. These
achievements were counterbalanced by a great disaster. Lord Abercrombie,
with an army of sixteen thousand men, advanced to the head of Lake George,
the place made memorable by Dieskau's defeat and the loss of Fort William
Henry. On a brilliant July morning, he embarked his whole force for an
attack on Ticonderoga. Many of those present have recorded with admiration
the beauty of the spectacle, the lines of boats filled with troops
stretching far down the lake, the flashing of oars, the glitter of
weapons, and the music ringing back from crags and rocks, or dying in
mellowed strains among the distant mountains. At night, the army landed,
and, driving in the French outposts, marched through the woods towards
Ticonderoga. One of their columns, losing its way in the forest, fell in
with a body of the retreating French; and in the conflict that ensued,
Lord Howe, the favorite of the army, was shot dead. On the eighth of July,
they prepared to storm the lines which Montcalm had drawn across the
peninsula in front of the fortress. Advancing to the attack, they saw
before them a breastwork of uncommon height and thickness. The French army
were drawn up behind it, their heads alone visible, as they levelled their
muskets against the assailants, while, for a hundred yards in front of the
work, the ground was covered with felled trees, with sharpened branches
pointing outward. The signal of assault was given. In vain the
Highlanders, screaming with rage, hewed with their broadswords among the
branches, struggling to get at the enemy. In vain the English, with their
deep-toned shout, rushed on in heavy columns. A tempest of musket-balls
met them, and Montcalm's cannon swept the whole ground with terrible
carnage. A few officers and men forced their way through the branches,
passed the ditch, climbed the breastwork, and, leaping among the enemy,
were instantly bayonetted. The English fought four hours with determined
valor, but the position of the French was impregnable; and at length,
having lost two thousand of their number, the army drew off, leaving many
of their dead scattered upon the field. A sudden panic seized the defeated
troops. They rushed in haste to their boats, and, though no pursuit was
attempted, they did not regain their composure until Lake George was
between them and the enemy. The fatal lines of Ticonderoga were not soon
forgotten in the provinces; and marbles in Westminster Abbey preserve the
memory of those who fell on that disastrous day.
This repulse, far from depressing the energies of the British commanders,
seemed to stimulate them to new exertion; and the campaign of the next
year, 1759, had for its object the immediate and total reduction of
Canada. This unhappy country was full of misery and disorder. Peculation
and every kind of corruption prevailed among its civil and military
chiefs, a reckless licentiousness was increasing among the people, and a
general famine seemed impending, for the population had of late years been
drained away for military service, and the fields were left untilled. In
spite of their sufferings, the Canadians, strong in rooted antipathy to
the English, and highly excited by their priests, resolved on fighting to
the last. Prayers were offered up in the churches, masses said, and
penances enjoined, to avert the wrath of God from the colony, while every
thing was done for its defence which the energies of a great and patriotic
leader could effect.
By the plan of this summer's campaign, Canada was to be assailed on
three sides at once. Upon the west, General Prideaux was to attack
Niagara; upon the south, General Amherst was to advance upon Ticonderoga
and Crown Point; while upon the east, General Wolfe was to besiege
Quebec; and each of these armies, having accomplished its particular
object, was directed to push forward, if possible, until all three had
united in the heart of Canada. In pursuance of the plan, General
Prideaux moved up Lake Ontario and invested Niagara. This post was one
of the greatest importance. Its capture would cut off the French from
the whole interior country, and they therefore made every effort to
raise the siege. An army of seventeen hundred French and Indians,
collected at the distant garrisons of Detroit, Presqu' Isle, Le B[oe]uf,
and Venango, suddenly appeared before Niagara.[122] Sir William Johnson
was now in command of the English, Prideaux having been killed by the
bursting of a cohorn. Advancing in order of battle, he met the French,
charged, routed, and pursued them for five miles through the woods. This
success was soon followed by the surrender of the fort.
In the mean time, Sir Jeffrey Amherst had crossed Lake George, and
appeared before Ticonderoga; upon which the French blew up their works,
and retired down Lake Champlain to Crown Point. Retreating from this
position also, on the approach of the English army, they collected all
their forces, amounting to little more than three thousand men, at Isle
Aux Noix, where they intrenched themselves, and prepared to resist the
farther progress of the invaders. The lateness of the season prevented
Amherst from carrying out the plan of advancing into Canada, and compelled
him to go into winter-quarters at Crown Point. The same cause had withheld
Prideaux's army from descending the St. Lawrence.
While the outposts of Canada were thus successfully attacked, a blow was
struck at a more vital part. Early in June, General Wolfe sailed up the
St. Lawrence with a force of eight thousand men, and formed his camp
immediately below Quebec, on the Island of Orleans.[123] From thence he
could discern, at a single glance, how arduous was the task before him.
Piles of lofty cliffs rose with sheer ascent on the northern border of the
river; and from their summits the boasted citadel of Canada looked down in
proud security, with its churches and convents of stone, its ramparts,
bastions, and batteries; while over them all, from the brink of the
precipice, towered the massive walls of the Castle of St. Louis. Above,
for many a league, the bank was guarded by an unbroken range of steep
acclivities. Below, the River St. Charles, flowing into the St. Lawrence,
washed the base of the rocky promontory on which the city stood. Lower yet
lay an army of fourteen thousand men, under an able and renowned
commander, the Marquis of Montcalm. His front was covered by intrenchments
and batteries, which lined the bank of the St. Lawrence; his right wing
rested on the city and the St. Charles; his left, on the cascade and deep
gulf of Montmorenci; and thick forests extended along his rear. Opposite
Quebec rose the high promontory of Point Levi; and the St. Lawrence,
contracted to less than a mile in width, flowed between, with deep and
powerful current. To a chief of less resolute temper, it might well have
seemed that art and nature were in league to thwart his enterprise; but a
mind like that of Wolfe could only have seen in this majestic combination
of forest and cataract, mountain and river, a fitting theatre for the
great drama about to be enacted there.
Yet nature did not seem to have formed the young English general for the
conduct of a doubtful and almost desperate enterprise. His person was
slight, and his features by no means of a martial cast. His feeble
constitution had been undermined by years of protracted and painful
disease.[124] His kind and genial disposition seemed better fitted for the
quiet of domestic life than for the stern duties of military command; but
to these gentler traits he joined a high enthusiasm, and an unconquerable
spirit of daring and endurance, which made him the idol of his soldiers,
and bore his slender frame through every hardship and exposure.
The work before him demanded all his courage. How to invest the city, or
even bring the army of Montcalm to action, was a problem which might have
perplexed a Hannibal. A French fleet lay in the river above, and the
precipices along the northern bank were guarded at every accessible point
by sentinels and outposts. Wolfe would have crossed the Montmorenci by its
upper ford, and attacked the French army on its left and rear; but the
plan was thwarted by the nature of the ground and the vigilance of his
adversaries. Thus baffled at every other point, he formed the bold design
of storming Montcalm's position in front; and on the afternoon of the
thirty-first of July, a strong body of troops was embarked in boats, and,
covered by a furious cannonade from the English ships and batteries,
landed on the beach just above the mouth of the Montmorenci. The
grenadiers and Royal Americans were the first on shore, and their
ill-timed impetuosity proved the ruin of the plan. Without waiting to
receive their orders or form their ranks, they ran, pell-mell, across the
level ground, and with loud shouts began, each man for himself, to scale
the heights which rose in front, crested with intrenchments and bristling
with hostile arms. The French at the top threw volley after volley among
the hot-headed assailants. The slopes were soon covered with the fallen;
and at that instant a storm, which had long been threatening, burst with
sudden fury, drenched the combatants on both sides with a deluge of rain,
extinguished for a moment the fire of the French, and at the same time
made the steeps so slippery that the grenadiers fell repeatedly in their
vain attempts to climb. Night was coming on with double darkness. The
retreat was sounded, and, as the English re-embarked, troops of Indians
came whooping down the heights, and hovered about their rear, to murder
the stragglers and the wounded; while exulting cries of _Vive le roi_,
from the crowded summits, proclaimed the triumph of the enemy.
With bitter agony of mind, Wolfe beheld the headlong folly of his men, and
saw more than four hundred of the flower of his army fall a useless
sacrifice.[125] The anxieties of the siege had told severely upon his
slender constitution; and not long after this disaster, he felt the first
symptoms of a fever, which soon confined him to his couch. Still his mind
never wavered from its purpose; and it was while lying helpless in the
chamber of a Canadian house, where he had fixed his headquarters, that he
embraced the plan of the enterprise which robbed him of life, and gave him
immortal fame.
This plan had been first proposed during the height of Wolfe's illness, at
a council of his subordinate generals, Monkton, Townshend, and Murray. It
was resolved to divide the little army; and, while one portion remained
before Quebec to alarm the enemy by false attacks, and distract their
attention from the scene of actual operation, the other was to pass above
the town, land under cover of darkness on the northern shore, climb the
guarded heights, gain the plains above, and force Montcalm to quit his
vantage-ground, and perhaps to offer battle. The scheme was daring even to
rashness; but its audacity was the secret of its success.
Early in September, a crowd of ships and transports, under Admiral Holmes,
passed the city under the hot fire of its batteries; while the troops
designed for the expedition, amounting to scarcely five thousand, marched
upward along the southern bank, beyond reach of the cannonade. All were
then embarked; and on the evening of the twelfth, Holmes's fleet, with the
troops on board, lay safe at anchor in the river, several leagues above
the town. These operations had not failed to awaken the suspicions of
Montcalm; and he had detached M. Bougainville to watch the movements of
the English, and prevent their landing on the northern shore.
The eventful night of the twelfth was clear and calm, with no light but
that of the stars. Within two hours before daybreak, thirty boats, crowded
with sixteen hundred soldiers, cast off from the vessels, and floated
downward, in perfect order, with the current of the ebb tide. To the
boundless joy of the army, Wolfe's malady had abated, and he was able to
command in person. His ruined health, the gloomy prospects of the siege,
and the disaster at Montmorenci, had oppressed him with the deepest
melancholy, but never impaired for a moment the promptness of his
decisions, or the impetuous energy of his action.[126] He sat in the stern
of one of the boats, pale and weak, but borne up to a calm height of
resolution. Every order had been given, every arrangement made, and it
only remained to face the issue. The ebbing tide sufficed to bear the
boats along, and nothing broke the silence of the night but the gurgling
of the river, and the low voice of Wolfe, as he repeated to the officers
about him the stanzas of Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," which had
recently appeared and which he had just received from England. Perhaps, as
he uttered those strangely appropriate words,--
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"
the shadows of his own approaching fate stole with mournful prophecy
across his mind. "Gentlemen," he said, as he closed his recital, "I would
rather have written those lines than take Quebec tomorrow."[127]
As they approached the landing-place, the boats edged closer in towards
the northern shore, and the woody precipices rose high on their left, like
a wall of undistinguished blackness.
_"Qui vive?"_ shouted a French sentinel, from out the impervious gloom.
_"La France!"_ answered a captain of Fraser's Highlanders, from the
foremost boat.
_"A quel regiment?"_ demanded the soldier.
_"De la Reine!"_ promptly replied the Highland captain, who chanced to
know that the regiment so designated formed part of Bougainville's
command. As boats were frequently passing down the river with supplies for
the garrison, and as a convoy from Bougainville was expected that very
night, the sentinel was deceived, and allowed the English to proceed.
A few moments after, they were challenged again, and this time they could
discern the soldier running close down to the water's edge, as if all his
suspicions were aroused; but the skilful replies of the Highlander once
more saved the party from discovery.[128]
They reached the landing-place in safety,--an indentation in the shore,
about a league above the city, and now bearing the name of Wolfe's Cove.
Here a narrow path led up the face of the heights, and a French guard was
posted at the top to defend the pass. By the force of the current, the
foremost boats, including that which carried Wolfe himself, were borne a
little below the spot. The general was one of the first on shore. He
looked upward at the rugged heights which towered above him in the gloom.
"You can try it," he coolly observed to an officer near him; "but I don't
think you'll get up."[129]
At the point where the Highlanders landed, one of their captains, Donald
Macdonald, apparently the same whose presence of mind had just saved the
enterprise from ruin, was climbing in advance of his men, when he was
challenged by a sentinel. He replied in French, by declaring that he had
been sent to relieve the guard, and ordering the soldier to withdraw.[130]
Before the latter was undeceived, a crowd of Highlanders were close at
hand, while the steeps below were thronged with eager climbers, dragging
themselves up by trees, roots, and bushes.[131] The guard turned out, and
made a brief though brave resistance. In a moment, they were cut to
pieces, dispersed, or made prisoners; while men after men came swarming up
the height, and quickly formed upon the plains above. Meanwhile, the
vessels had dropped downward with the current, and anchored opposite the
landing-place. The remaining troops were disembarked, and, with the dawn
of day, the whole were brought in safety to the shore.
The sun rose, and, from the ramparts of Quebec, the astonished people saw
the Plains of Abraham glittering with arms, and the dark-red lines of the
English forming in array of battle. Breathless messengers had borne the
evil tidings to Montcalm, and far a
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