The weapons used in war were like those used in the hunt. Though the Indians were brave they delighted to fight from behind trees, to creep through the tall grass and fall upon their enemy unawares, or to wait for him in ambush. The dead and wounded were scalped. Captive men were generally put to death with torture; but captive women and children were usually adopted into the tribe.

INDIAN WARS IN VIRGINIA.—The first Europeans who came to our shores were looked on by the Indians as superior beings, as men from the clouds. But before the settlers arrived this veneration was dispelled, and hostility took its place. Thus the founders of Jamestown had scarcely touched land when they were attacked. But Smith brought about an alliance with the Powhatan, and till after his death there was peace.

Then (1622), under the lead of Opekan'kano, an attack was made along the whole line of settlements in Virginia, and in one day more than three hundred whites were massacred, their houses burned, and much property destroyed. The blow was a terrible one; but the colonists rallied and waged such a war against the enemy that for more than twenty years there was no great uprising.

But in 1644 Opekankano (then an old and grizzled warrior) again led forth his tribes, and in two days killed several hundred whites. Once more the settlers rallied, swept the Indian country, captured Opekankano, and drew a boundary across which no Indian could come without permission. If he did, he might be shot on sight. [10]

EARLY INDIAN WARS IN NEW ENGLAND.—In New England the experience of the early settlers was much the same. Murders by the Pequot Indians having become unendurable, a little fleet was sent (1686) against them. Block Island was ravaged, and Pequots on the mainland were killed and their corn destroyed. Sassacus, sachem of the Pequots, thereupon sought to join the Narragansetts with him in an attempt to drive the English from the country; but Roger Williams persuaded the Narragansetts to form an alliance with the English, and the Pequots began the war alone. In the winter (1636-37) the Connecticut River settlements were attacked, several men killed, and two girls carried off.

DESTRUCTION OF THE PEQUOTS.—In May, 1637, a force of seventy-seven colonists from Connecticut and Massachusetts, led by John Mason and John Underhill, marched to the Pequot village in what is now the southeast corner of Connecticut. Some Mohicans and Narragansetts went along; but when they came in sight of the village, they refused to join in the attack. The village was a cluster of wigwams surrounded by a stockade, with two narrow openings for entrance. While some of the English guarded them, the rest attacked the stockade, flung torches over it, and set the wigwams on fire. Of the four hundred or more Indians in the village, but five escaped.



KING PHILIP'S WAR.—For thirty-eight years the memory of the destruction of the Pequots kept peace in New England. Then Philip, a chief of the Wampanoags, took the warpath (1675) and, joined by the Nipmucks and Narragansetts, sought to drive the white men from New England. The war began in Rhode Island, but spread into Massachusetts, where town after town was attacked, and men, women, and children massacred. Roused to fury by these deeds, a little band of men from Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut in the dead of winter stormed the great swamp fortress of the Narragansetts, destroyed a thousand Indians, and burned the wigwams and winter supply of corn. The power of the Narragansetts was broken; but the war went on, and before midsummer (1676) twenty villages had been attacked by the Nipmucks. But they, too, were doomed; their fighting strength was destroyed in two victories by the colonists. In August Philip was shot in a swamp. These victories ended the war in the south, but it broke out almost immediately in the northeast, and raged till the summer of 1678.

During these three years of war New England suffered terribly. Twelve towns had been utterly destroyed, forty had been partly burned, and a thousand men, besides scores of women and children, had perished. As for the New England Indians, their power was gone forever. [11]

INDIAN WARS IN NEW NETHERLAND.—The Dutch in New Netherland were on friendly terms with the Iroquois, to whom they sold fire-arms; but the Tappans, Raritans, and other Algonquin tribes round about New Amsterdam were enemies of the Iroquois, and with these the Dutch had several wars. One (1641) was brought on by Governor Kieft's attempt to tax the Indians; another (1643-45) by the slaughter, one night, of more than a hundred Indians who had asked the Dutch for shelter from their Mohawk enemies. Many Dutch farmers were murdered, and a great Indian stronghold in Connecticut was stormed one winter night and seven hundred Indians killed. [12] After ten years of peace the Indians rose again, killed men in the streets of New Amsterdam, and harried Staten Island; and again, after an outbreak at Esopus, there were several years of war (1658-64).

IN NORTH CAROLINA some Algonquin tribes conspired with the Tuscarora tribe of Iroquois to drive the white men from the country, and began horrid massacres (1711). Help came from South Carolina, and the Tuscaroras were badly beaten. But the war was renewed next year, and then another force of white men and Indians from South Carolina stormed the Tuscaroras' fort and broke their power. The Tuscaroras migrated to New York and were admitted to the great Iroquois confederacy of the Five Nations, which thenceforth was known as the Six Nations. [13]

IN SOUTH CAROLINA.—Among the Indians who marched to the relief of North Carolina were men of the Yam'assee tribe. That they should turn against the people of South Carolina was not to be expected. But the Spaniards at St. Augustine bought them with gifts, and, joined by Creeks, Cherokees, and others, they began (in 1715) a war which lasted nearly a year and cost the lives of four hundred white men. They, too, in the end were beaten, and the Yamassees fled to Florida.

The story of these Indian wars has been told not because they were wars, but because they were the beginnings of that long and desperate struggle of the Indian with the white man which continued down almost to our own time. The march of the white man across the continent has been contested by the Indian at every step, and to-day there is not a state in the Union whose soil has not at some time been reddened by the blood of both.

WHAT WE OWE TO THE INDIAN.—The contact of the two races has greatly influenced our language, literature, and customs. Five and twenty of our states, and hundreds of counties, cities, mountains, rivers, lakes, and bays, bear names derived from Indian languages. Chipmunk and coyote, moose, opossum, raccoon, skunk, woodchuck, tarpon, are all of Indian origin. We still use such expressions as Indian summer, Indian file, Indian corn; bury the hatchet, smoke the pipe of peace. To the Indians we owe the canoe, the snowshoe, the toboggan, lacrosse. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn in hills, just as it is planted to-day, and long before the white man came, the Indians ate hominy, mush, and succotash, planted pumpkins and squashes, and made maple sugar.

SUMMARY

1. The Indians were divided into tribes, and the tribes into clans.

2. Each tribe had its own language or dialect, and usually lived by itself.

3. Members of a clan traced descent from some common imaginary ancestor, usually an animal. The civil head of a clan was the sachem; the military heads were the chiefs.

4. As the clans were united into tribes, so the tribes were in some places joined in confederacies.

5. The chief occupations of Indian men were hunting and waging war.

6. Their ways of life varied greatly with the locality in which they lived: as in the wooded regions of the East or on the great plains of the West; in the cold country of the North or in the warmer South.

7. The growth of white settlements, crowding back the Indians, led to several notable wars in early colonial times, in all of which the Indians were beaten:— In Virginia: uprisings in 1622 and in 1644; border war in 1676. In New England: Pequot War, 1636-37; King Philip's War, 1675-78. In New Netherland: several wars with Algonquin tribes. In North Carolina: Algonquin-Tuscarora uprising, 1711-13. In South Carolina: Yamassee uprising, 1715-16.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Read Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. I, pp. 85-94, 141-146.

[2] The sign or emblem of this ancestor, called the totem, was often painted on the clothing, or tattooed on the body. On the northwest coast, it was carved on a tall pole, made of a tree trunk, which was set up before the dwelling.

[3] Scientists have grouped the North American tribes into fifty or more distinct families or groups, each consisting of tribes whose languages were probably developed from a common tongue. East of the Mississippi most of the land was occupied by three groups: (1) Between the Tennessee River and the Gulf of Mexico lived the Muskho'gees (or Maskoki), including the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes. (2) The Iroquois (ir-o-kwoi'), Cherokee', and related tribes occupied a large area surrounding Lakes Erie and Ontario, and smaller areas in the southern Appalachians and south of the lower James River. (3) The Algonquins and related tribes occupied most of the country around Lakes Superior and Michigan, most of the Ohio valley, and the Atlantic seaboard north of the James River, besides much of Canada.

[4] Read Fiske's Discovery of America, vol. I, pp. 72-78.

[5] The manner of drying was called "jerking." Jerked meat would keep for months and was cooked as needed. Sometimes it was pounded between stones and mixed with fat, and was then called pemmican.

[6] Fire for cooking and warming was started by pressing a pointed stick against a piece of wood and turning the stick around rapidly. Sometimes this was done by twirling it between the palms of the hands, sometimes by wrapping the string of a little bow around the stick and moving the bow back and forth as if fiddling. The revolving stick would form a fine dust which the heat caused by friction would set on fire.

[7] A game of football is thus described: "Likewise they have the exercise of football, in which they only forcibly encounter with the foot to carry the ball the one from the other, and spurn it to the goal with a kind of dexterity and swift footmanship which is the honor of it. But they never strike up one another's heels, as we do, not accounting that praiseworthy to purchase a goal by such an advantage."

[8] One who was with Smith in Virginia has left us this account of what took place when the Powhatan was crowned (p. 42): "In a fair plain field they made a fire before which (we were) sitting upon a mat (when) suddenly amongst the woods was heard ... a hideous noise and shouting. Then presently ... thirty young women came out of the woods ... their bodies painted some white, some red, some black, some particolor, but all differing. Their leader had a fair pair of buck's horns on her head, and an otter's skin at her girdle, and another at her arm, a quiver of arrows at her back, a bow and arrows in her hand. The next had in her hand a sword, another a club ... all horned alike.... These fiends with most hellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, cast themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dancing.... Having spent near one hour on this masquerade, as they entered in like manner they departed."

[9] Read Longfellow's Hiawatha.

[10] Thirty-one years later another outbreak occurred, and for months burning and scalping went on along the border, till the Indians were beaten by the men under Nathaniel Bacon (p. 94).

[11] Read Fiske's Beginnings of New England, pp. 128-133, 211-226, 235-236.

[12] Read Fiske's Dutch and Quaker Colonies, Vol. I, pp. 177-180, 183-188.

[13] Read Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II, pp. 298-304.



CHAPTER IX

THE FRENCH IN AMERICA

While English, Dutch, and Swedes were settling on the Atlantic seaboard of North America, the French took possession of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. Though the attempt of Cartier to plant a colony on the St. Lawrence failed (p. 30), the French never lost interest in that part of the world, and new attempts were made to plant colonies.



THE FRENCH IN NOVA SCOTIA.—All failed till De Monts (d'mawng) and Champlain (sham-plan') [1] came over in 1604 with two shiploads of colonists. Some landed on the shore of what is now Nova Scotia and founded Port Royal. The others, led by De Monts, explored the Bay of Fundy, and on an island at the mouth of a river planted a colony called St. Croix. The name St. Croix (croy) in time was given to the river which is now part of the eastern boundary of Maine. One winter in that climate was enough, and in the spring (1605) the coast from Maine to Massachusetts was explored in search of a better site for the colony. None suited, and, returning to St. Croix, De Monts moved the settlers to Port Royal.

QUEBEC FOUNDED.—This too was abandoned for a time, and in 1607 the colonists were back in France. Champlain, however, longed to be again in the New World, and soon persuaded De Monts once more to attempt colonization. In 1608, therefore, Champlain with two ships sailed up the St. Lawrence and founded Quebec. Here, as was so often the case, the first winter was a struggle for life; when spring came, only eight of the colonists were alive. But help soon reached them, and France at last had secured a permanent foothold in America. The drainage basin of the St. Lawrence was called New France (or Canada); the lands near Port Royal became another French colony, called Acadia.

EXPLORATION OF NEW FRANCE.—Champlain at once made friends with the Indians, and in 1609 went with a party of Hurons to help fight their enemies, the Iroquois Indians who dwelt in central New York. [2] The way was up the St. Lawrence and up a branch of that river to the lake which now bears the name of Champlain. On its western shore the expected fight took place, and a victory, due to the fire-arms of Champlain and his companions, was won for the Hurons. [3] Later Champlain explored the Ottawa River, saw the waters of Lake Huron, and crossed Lake Ontario. But the real work of French discovery and exploration in the interior was done by Catholic priests and missionaries.

THE CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES.—With crucifixes and portable altars strapped on their backs, these brave men pushed boldly into the Indian country. Guided by the Indians, they walked through the dense forests, paddled in birch-bark canoes, and penetrated a wilderness where no white man had ever been. They built little chapels of bark near the Indian villages, and labored hard to convert the red men to Christianity. It was no easy task. Often and often their lives were in danger. Some were drowned. Some were burned at the stake. Others were tomahawked. But neither cold nor hunger, nor the dangers and hardships of life in the wilderness, could turn the priests from their good work. One of them toiled for ten years among the Indians on the Niagara River and the shores of Lake Huron; two others reached the outlet of Lake Superior; a fourth paddled in a canoe along its south shore.



THE KING'S MAIDENS.—For fifty years after the founding of Quebec few settlers came to Canada. Then the French king sent over each year a hundred or more young women who were to become wives of the settlers. [4] Besides encouraging farming, the government tried to induce the men to engage in cod fishing and whaling; but the only business that really nourished in Canada was trading with the Indians for furs.

THE FUR TRADE.—Each year a great fair was held outside the stockade of Montreal, to which hundreds of Indians came from the far western lakes. They brought canoe loads of beaver skins and furs of small animals, and exchanged them for bright-colored cloth, beads, blankets, kettles, and knives.



This great trade was a monopoly. Its profits could not be enjoyed by everybody. Numbers of hardy young men, therefore, took to the woods and traded with the Indians far beyond the reach of the king's officers. By so doing these wood rangers (coureurs de bois), as they were called, became outlaws, and if caught, might be flogged and branded with a hot iron. They built trading posts at many places in the West, and often married Indian women, which went a long way to make the Indians friends of the French. [5]

THE MISSISSIPPI.—When the priests and traders reached the country about Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, they heard from the Indians of a great river called the Mississippi—that is, "Big Water" or "Father of Waters." Might not this, it was asked, be the long-sought northwest passage to the Indies? In hopes that it was, Father Marquette (mar-ket'), a priest who had founded a mission on the Strait of Mackinac (mack'i-naw) between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and Joliet (zho-le-a'), a trapper and soldier, were sent to find the river and follow it to the sea.



They started in the spring of 1673 with five companions in two canoes. Their way was from the Strait of Mackinac to Green Bay in Wisconsin, up the Fox River, across a portage to the Wisconsin River, and down this to the Mississippi, on whose waters they floated and paddled to a place probably below the mouth of the Arkansas. There the travelers stopped, and turned back toward Canada, convinced that the great river [6] must flow not to the Pacific, but to the Gulf of Mexico.



LA SALLE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, 1682.—The voyage of Marquette and Joliet was of the greatest importance to France. Yet the only man who seems to have been fully awake to its importance was La Salle. If the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, a new and boundless Indian trade lay open to Frenchmen. But did it flow into the Gulf? That was a question La Salle proposed to settle; but three heroic attempts were made, and two failures, which to other men would have been disheartening, were endured, before he passed down the river to its mouth in 1682. [7]

LOUISIANA.—Standing on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, La Salle put up a rude cross, nailed to it the arms of France, and, in the name of the French king, Louis XIV, took formal possession of all the region drained by the Mississippi and its branches. He named the country Louisiana.

La Salle knew little of the extent of the region he thus added to the possessions of France in the New World. But the claim was valid, and Louisiana stretched from the unknown sources of the Ohio River and the Appalachian Mountains on the east, to the unknown Rocky Mountains on the west, and from the watershed of the Great Lakes on the north, to the Gulf of Mexico on the south.

LA SALLE ATTEMPTS TO OCCUPY LOUISIANA, 1682.—But the great work La Salle had planned was yet to be done. Louisiana had to be occupied.

A fort was needed far up the valley of the Mississippi to overawe the Indians and secure the fur trade. Hurrying back to the Illinois River, La Salle, in December, 1682, on the top of a steep cliff, built a stockade and named it Fort St. Louis.

A fort and city also needed to be built at the mouth of the Mississippi to keep out the Spaniards and afford a place whence furs floated down the river might be shipped to France. This required the aid of the king. Hurrying to Paris, La Salle persuaded Louis XIV to help him, and was sent back with four ships to found the city.

LA SALLE IN TEXAS, 1684.—But the little fleet missed the mouth of the river and reached the coast of Texas. There the men landed and built Fort St. Louis of Texas. Well knowing that he had passed the river, La Salle left some men at the fort, and with the rest started on foot to find the Mississippi—but never reached it. He was murdered on the way by his own men.



Of the men left in Texas the Indians killed some, and the Spaniards killed or captured the rest, and the plans of this great explorer failed utterly. [8]

BILOXI.—La Salle's scheme of founding a city near the mouth of the Mississippi, however, was carried out by other men. Fear that the English would seize the mouth of the river led the French to act, and in 1699 a gallant soldier named Iberville (e-ber-veel') built a small stockade and planted a colony at Bilox'i on the coast of what is now Mississippi.

NEW ORLEANS FOUNDED.—During fifteen years and more the little colony, which was soon moved from Biloxi to the vicinity of Mobile (map, p. 134), struggled on as best it could; then steps were taken to plant a settlement on the banks of the Mississippi, and (1718) Bienville (be-an-veel') laid the foundation of a city he called New Orleans.

SUMMARY

1. After many failures, a French colony was planted at Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) in 1601; but this was abandoned for a time, and the first permanent French colony was planted by Champlain at Quebec in 1608.

2. From these settlements grew up the two French colonies called Acadia and New France or Canada.

3. New France was explored by Champlain, and by many brave priests.

4. Marquette and Joliet reached the Mississippi and explored it from the Wisconsin to the Arkansas (1673).

5. Their unfinished work was taken up by La Salle, who went down the Mississippi to the Gulf (1682), and formally claimed for France all the region drained by the river and its tributaries—a vast area which he called Louisiana.

6. Occupation of the Mississippi valley by the French followed; forts and trading posts were built, and in 1718 New Orleans was founded.



FOOTNOTES

[1] Samuel de Champlain (born in 1567) had been a captain in the royal navy, and had visited the West Indies, Mexico, and the Isthmus of Panama, across which he suggested a canal should be cut. In 1603 he was offered a command in a company of adventurers to New France. On this voyage Champlain went up the St. Lawrence to the site of the Indian town called Hochelaga by Cartier (p. 30); but the village had disappeared. Returning to France, he joined the party of De Monts (1604).

[2] The year 1609 is important in our history. Then it was that Champlain fought the Iroquois; that the second Virginia charter was granted; and that Hudson's expedition gave the Dutch a claim to territory in the New World.

[3] The fight with the Iroquois took place not far from Ticonderoga. When the two parties approached, Champlain advanced and fired his musket. The woods rang with the report, and a chief fell dead. "There arose," says Champlain," a yell like a thunderclap and the air was full of arrows." But when another and another gun shot came from the bushes, the Iroquois broke and fled like deer. The victory was won; but it made the Iroquois the lasting enemies of the French. Read Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, pp. 310-324.

[4] About 1000 came in eight years. When married, they received each "an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money." Read Parkman's Old Regime in Canada, pp. 219-225.

[5] The fur trade, which was the life blood of Canada, is finely described in Parkman's Old Regime in Canada, pp. 302-315.

[6] Marquette named the river Immaculate Conception. He noted the abundance of fish in its waters, the broad prairies on which grazed herds of buffalo, and the flocks of wild turkeys in the woods. On his way home he ascended the Illinois River, and crossed to Lake Michigan, passing over the site where Chicago now stands. Read Mary Hartwell Catherwood's Heroes of the Middle West; also Parkman's La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, pp. 48-71; and Hart's American History as told by Contemporaries, Vol. I, pp. 136-140.

[7] In the first attempt he left Fort Frontenac, coasted along the north shore of Lake Ontario, crossed over and went up the Niagara River, and around the Falls to Lake Erie. There he built a vessel called the Griffin, which was sailed through the lakes to the northern part of Lake Michigan (1679). Thence he went in canoes along the shore of Lake Michigan to the river St. Joseph, where he built a fort (Fort St. Joseph), and then pushed on to the Illinois River and (near the present city of Peoria) built another called Fort Crvecoeur (crav'ker). There he left Henri de Tonty in charge of a party to build another ship, and went back to Canada.

When he returned to the Illinois in 1680, on his second trip, Crvecoeur was in ruins, and Tonty and his men gone. In hope of finding them La Salle went down the Illinois to the Mississippi, but he turned back and passed the winter on the river St. Joseph. (Read Parkman's description of the great town of the Illinois and its capture by the Iroquois, in La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, pp. 205-215.)

From the St. Joseph, after another trip to Canada, La Salle (with Tonty) started westward for the third time (late in 1681), crossed the lake to where Chicago now is, went down the Illinois and the Mississippi, and in April, 1682, floated out on the waters of the Gulf.

On his first expedition La Salle was accompanied by Father Hennepin, whom he sent down the Illinois and up the Mississippi. But the Sioux (soo) Indians captured Father Hennepin, and took him up the Mississippi to the falls which he named St. Anthony, now in the city of Minneapolis.

[8] Read Parkman's La Salle, pp. 275-288, 350-355, 396-405.



CHAPTER X

WARS WITH THE FRENCH

KING WILLIAM'S WAR.—When James II was driven from his throne (p. 93), he fled to France. His quarrel with King William was taken up by Louis XIV, and in 1689 war began between France and England. The strife thus started in the Old World soon spread to the New, and during eight years the frontier of New England and New York was the scene of French and Indian raids, massacres, and burning towns.



THE FRONTIER.—The frontier of English settlement consisted of a string of little towns close to the coast in Maine and New Hampshire, and some sixty miles back from the coast in Massachusetts; of a second string of towns up the Connecticut valley to central Massachusetts; and of a third up the Hudson to the Mohawk and up the Mohawk to Schenec'tady. Most of Maine and New Hampshire, all of what is now Vermont, and all New York north and west of the Mohawk was a wilderness pierced by streams which afforded the French and Indians easy ways of reaching the English frontier.

The French frontier consisted of a few fishing towns scattered along the shores of Acadia (what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and eastern Maine), arid a few settlements along the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac, just where the river leaves Lake Ontario.

Between these frontiers in Maine and New Hampshire were the Abenaki (ab- nahk'ee) Indians, close allies of the French and bitter enemies of the English; and in New York the Iroquois, allies of the English and enemies of the French since the day in 1609 when Champlain defeated them (p. 115). [1]

THE FRENCH ATTACK THE ENGLISH FRONTIER.—The governor of New France was Count Frontenac, a man of action, keen, fiery, and daring, a splendid executive, an able commander, and well called the Father of New France. Gathering his Frenchmen and Indians as quickly as possible, Frontenac formed three war parties on the St. Lawrence in the winter of 1689-90: that at Montreal was to march against Albany; that at Three Rivers was to ravage the frontier of New Hampshire, and that at Quebec the frontier of Maine. The Montreal party was ready first, and made its way on snowshoes to the little palisaded village of Schenectady, passed through the open gates [2] in a blinding storm of snow, and in the darkness of night massacred threescore men, women, and children, took captive as many more, and left the place in ashes.



The second war party of French and Indians left the St. Lawrence in January, 1690, spent three months struggling through the wilderness, and in March fell upon the village of Salmon Falls, laid it in ashes, ravaged the farms near by, massacred some thirty men, women, and children, and carried off some fifty prisoners. This deed done, the party hurried eastward and fell in with the third party, from Quebec. The two then attacked and captured Fort Loyal (where Portland now stands), and massacred or captured most of the inhabitants.

END OF KING WILLIAM'S WAR.—Smarting under the attacks of the French and Indians, New England struck back. Its fleet, with a few hundred militia under William Phips, captured and pillaged Port Royal, and for a time held Acadia. A little army of troops from Connecticut and New York marched against Montreal, and a fleet and army under Phips sailed for Quebec. But the one went no farther than Lake Champlain, and Phips, after failing in an attack on Quebec, returned to Boston. [3]

For seven years more the French and Indians ravaged the frontier [4] before the treaty of Ryswick (riz'wick) put an end to the war in 1697.

QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.—In the short interval of peace which followed, the French made a settlement at Biloxi, as we have seen, and founded Detroit (1701). In Europe the French king (Louis XIV) placed his grandson on the throne of Spain and, on the death of James II, recognized James's young son as King James III of England. For this, war was declared by England in 1701. The struggle which followed was known abroad as the War of the Spanish Succession, but in our country as Queen Anne's War. [5]

Again the frontier from Maine to Massachusetts was the scene of Indian raids and massacres. Haverhill was laid waste a second time, [6] and Deerfield in the Connecticut valley was burned.

THE ATTACK ON DEERFIELD was a typical Indian raid. The village, consisting of forty-one houses strung along a road, stood on the extreme northwestern frontier of Massachusetts. In the center of the place was a square wooden meetinghouse which, with some of the houses, was surrounded by a stockade eight feet high flanked on two corners by blockhouses. [7] Late in February, 1704, a band of French and Indians from Canada reached the town, hid in the woods two miles away, and just before dawn moved quietly across the frozen snow, rushed into the village, and, raising the warwhoop, beat in the house doors with ax and hatchet. A few of the wretched inmates escaped half-clad to the next village, but nine and forty men, women, and children were massacred, and one hundred more were led away captives. [8]

END OF QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.—As the war went on, the English colonists twice attacked Port Royal in vain, but on the third attack in 1710 the place was captured. This time the English took permanent possession and renamed it Annapolis in honor of the queen. To Acadia was given the name Nova Scotia. Encouraged by the success at Port Royal, the greatest fleet ever seen, up to that time, in American waters was sent against Quebec, and an army of twenty-three hundred men marched by way of Lake Champlain to attack Montreal.

But the fleet, having lost nine ships and a thousand men in the fog at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, returned to Boston, and the commander of the army, hearing of this, marched back to Albany. When peace was made by the treaty of Utrecht (u'trekt) in 1713, France was forced to give up to Great Britain [9] Acadia, Newfoundland, and all claim to the territory drained by the rivers that flow into Hudson Bay (map, p. 131).

THE FRENCH BUILD FORTS IN LOUISIANA.—Thirty-one years now passed before France and Great Britain were again at war, and in this period France took armed possession of the Mississippi valley, constructed a chain of forts from New Orleans to the Ohio, and built Forts Niagara and Crown Point.

This meant that the French were determined to keep the British out of Louisiana and New France and confine them to the seacoast. But the French were also determined to regain Acadia, and on the island of Cape Breton they built Louisburg, the strongest fortress in America. [10]

KING GEORGE'S WAR.—Such was the state of affairs when in 1744 Great Britain and France again went to war. As George II was then king of Great Britain, the colonists called the strife King George's War. The French now rushed down on Nova Scotia and attacked Annapolis. It seemed as if the whole of Nova Scotia would be conquered; but instead the people of New England sent out a fleet and army and captured Louisburg. [11]



When peace was made (1748), after two years more of fighting, Great Britain gave Louisburg back to France.

THE FRENCH IN THE OHIO VALLEY.—The war ended and no territory lost, the French at once laid plans to shut the British out of the Ohio valley, which France claimed because the Ohio River and its tributaries flowed into the Mississippi. In 1749, therefore, a party of Frenchmen under Cloron (sa-lo-rawng') were sent to take formal possession of that region. [12]



THE BURIED PLATES.—Paddling up the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, these men carried their canoes around Niagara Falls, coasted along Lake Erie to a place near Chautauqua Lake, and going overland to the lake went down its outlet to the Allegheny River. There the men were drawn up, the French king was proclaimed owner of all the region drained by the Ohio, and a lead plate was buried at the foot of a tree. The inscription on the plate declared that the Ohio and all the streams that entered it and the land on both sides of them belonged to France.

The party then passed down the Allegheny to the Ohio, and down the Ohio to the Miami, burying plates from time to time. [13]

THE FRENCH FORTS.—Formal possession having been taken, the next step of the French was to build a log fort at Presque Isle (on Lake Erie where the city of Erie now is), and also Forts Le Boeuf and Venango, on a branch of the Allegheny.

THE OHIO COMPANY.—But the English colonists likewise claimed the Mississippi valley, by virtue of the old "sea to sea" grants, and the same year that Cloron came down the Allegheny, they also prepared to take possession of the Ohio valley in a much more serious way. The French were burying plates and about to build forts; the English were about to plant towns and make settlements.

Already in Pennsylvania and Virginia population was pushing rapidly westward. Already English traders crossed the mountains and with their goods packed on horses followed the trails down the Ohio valley, going from village to village of the Indians and exchanging their wares for furs.



Convinced that the westward movement of trade and population was favorable for a speculation in land, some prominent men in Virginia [14] formed the Ohio Company, and obtained from the British king a grant of five hundred thousand acres in the Ohio valley on condition that within seven years a hundred families should be settled on it and a fort built and garrisoned.

GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE ALARMED—When, therefore, Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia heard that the French were building forts on the Allegheny, he became greatly alarmed, and sent a messenger to demand their withdrawal. But the envoy, becoming frightened, soon turned back. Clearly a man was wanted, and Dinwiddie selected George Washington, [15] a young man of twenty-one and an officer in the Virginia militia.

WASHINGTON'S FIRST PUBLIC SERVICE.—Washington was to find out the whereabouts of the French, proceed to the French post, deliver a letter to the officer in command, and demand an answer. He was also to find out how many forts the French had built, how far apart they were, how well garrisoned, and whether they were likely to be supported from Quebec.



Having received these instructions, Washington made his way in the depth of winter to Fort Le Boeuf, delivered the governor's letter, and brought back the refusal of the French officer to withdraw. [16]

FORT DUQUESNE (1754)—Dinwiddie now realized that the French held the Allegheny, and that if they were to be shut out of the Ohio valley, something had to be done at once. He therefore sent a party of backwoodsmen to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio (where Pittsburg now is). While they were at work, the French came down the Allegheny, captured the half-built fort, and in place of it erected a larger one which they named Duquesne (doo-kan').

GREAT MEADOWS.—Meantime Washington had been sent with some soldiers to Wills Creek in western Maryland. When he heard of the capture of the fort, he started westward, cutting a road for wagons and cannon as he went, and camped for a time at Great Meadows, in southwestern Pennsylvania. There, one night, he received word from Half King, a friendly Indian encamped with his band six miles away, that a French force was hidden near at hand. Washington with some forty men set off at once for the Indian camp, and reached it at daylight. A plan of attack was agreed on, and the march begun. On Washington's approach, the French flew to arms, and a sharp fight ensued in which the French commander Jumonville [17] and nine of his men were killed.

FORT NECESSITY.—At Great Meadows Washington now threw up an intrenchment called Fort Necessity. Some more men having reached him, he left a few at the fort and went on westward again. But he had not gone far when word came that the French were coming to avenge the death of Jumonville. Washington therefore fell back to the fort, where he was attacked and on July 4, 1754, was forced to surrender, but was allowed to return to Virginia with his men.

All previous wars between France and England had begun in the Old World, but now a great struggle had begun in the New.

SUMMARY

1. When William and Mary became king and queen of England, war with France followed. In the colonies this was called King William's War (1689-97).

2. The French from Canada ravaged the New England frontier and burned Schenectady in New York. The English colonists captured Port Royal, but failed to take Montreal and Quebec.

3. After four years of peace (1697-1701), war between France and England was renewed. This was called Queen Anne's War (1701-13).

4. The great event of the war was the conquest of Acadia. Port Royal was named Annapolis; Acadia was called Nova Scotia.

5. Thirty-one years of peace followed. During this time the French occupied the Mississippi valley, and built the fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island.

6. During King George's War (1744-48), Louisburg was captured, but it was returned by the treaty of peace.

7. France now proceeded to occupy the Ohio valley, and built forts on a branch of the Allegheny.

8. The British also claimed the Ohio valley, and started to build a fort on the site of Pittsburg, but were driven off by the French.

9. Troops under George Washington, on their way toward the fort, defeated a small French force, but were themselves captured by the French at Fort Necessity (July 4, 1754).

FOOTNOTES

[1] It was only a few years after this defeat that the Dutch planted their trading posts on the upper Hudson. They made friends of the Iroquois, and when the English succeeded the Dutch, they followed the same wise policy, encouraged the old hatred of the Indians for the French, and inspired more than one of their raids into Canada. The Iroquois thus became a barrier against the French and prevented them from coming down the Hudson and so cutting off New England from the Middle Colonies.

[2] The inhabitants, mostly Dutch, had been advised to be on their guard, but they laughed at the advice, kept their gates open, and, it is said, at one of them put two snow men as mock sentinels.

[3] It was expected that the plunder of Quebec would pay the cost of the expedition. Failure added to the debt of Massachusetts, and forced the colony to issue paper money or "bills of credit." This was the first time such money was issued by any of the colonies. (For picture of a bill of credit, see p. 204.)

[4] They captured, plundered, and burned York, were beaten in an attack on Wells, burned houses and tomahawked a hundred people at Durham, and burned the farmhouses near Haverhill.

[5] Queen Mary died in 1694, and King William in 1702. The crown then passed to Anne, sister of Mary. The war, therefore, was fought mostly during her reign.

[6] Read Whittier's poem Pentucket, and his account in prose called The Border War of 1708.

[7] Formidable as was the fort, the snow of a severe winter had been suffered to pile in drifts against the stockade till in places it nearly reached the top, so that the stockade was no longer an obstacle to the French and Indians.

[8] Read Parkman's Half-Century of Conflict, Vol. I, pp. 52-66.

[9] Ever since the accession of King James I (1603) England and Scotland had been under the same king, but otherwise had been independent, each having its own Parliament. Now, in Queen Anne's reign, the two countries were united (1707) and made the one country of Great Britain, with one Parliament.

[10] It was during these years of peace that Georgia was planted. The Spaniards at St. Augustine considered this an intrusion into their territory, and protested vigorously when Oglethorpe established a line of military posts from the Altamaha to the St. Johns River. When word came that Great Britain and Spain were at war, Oglethorpe, aided by British ships, (1740) attacked St. Augustine. He failed to capture the city, and the Spaniards (1742) invaded Georgia. Oglethorpe, though greatly outnumbered, made a gallant defense, forced the Spaniards to withdraw, and (1743) a second time attacked St. Augustine, but failed to take it.

[11] The expedition was undertaken without authority from the king. The army was a body of raw recruits from the farms, the shops, lumber camps, and fishing villages. The commander—Pepperell—was chosen because of his popularity, and knew no more about attacking a fortress than the humblest man in the ranks. Of cannon suitable to reduce a fortress the army had none. Nevertheless, by dint of hard work and good luck, and largely by means of many cannon captured from the French, the garrison was forced to surrender. Read Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair, Part ii, Chap. vii; also Chaps. viii and ix.

[12] Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 20-34, for a comparison of the French and English colonies in America.

[13] One of these plates was soon found by the Indians and sent to the governor of Pennsylvania. Two more in recent years were found projecting from the banks of the Ohio by boys while bathing or at play.

[14] Among the members of the company were Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, and two brothers of George Washington.

[15] George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at Bridges Creek, in Virginia. At fourteen he thought seriously of going to sea, but became a surveyor, and at sixteen was sent to survey part of the vast estate of Lord Fairfax which lay beyond the Blue Ridge. He lived the life of a frontiersman, slept in tents, in cabins, in the open, and did his work so well that he was made a public surveyor. This position gave him steady occupation for three years, and a knowledge of woodcraft and men that stood him in good stead in time to come. When he was nineteen, his brother Lawrence procured him an appointment as an adjutant general of Virginia with the rank of major, a post he held in October, 1753, when Dinwiddie sent him, accompanied by a famous frontiersman, Christopher Gist, to find the French.

[16] On the way home Washington left his men in charge of the horses and baggage, put on Indian walking dress, and with Christopher Gist set off by the nearest way through the woods on foot. "The following day," says Washington, in his account of the journey, "just after we had passed a place called Murdering town, ... we fell in with a party of French Indians, who had lain in wait for us. One of them fired at Mr. Gist or me, not fifteen steps off, but fortunately missed." The next day they came to a river. "There was no way of getting over but on a raft, ... but before we were half over we were jammed in the ice.... I put out my setting pole to try and stop the raft that the ice might pass by, when the rapidity of the stream threw it with such force against the pole, that it jerked me out into ten feet of water, but I fortunately saved myself by catching hold of one of the raft logs." They were forced to swim to an island, and next day crossed on the ice. Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 132-136.

[17] The French claimed that Jumonville was the bearer of a dispatch from the commander at the Ohio, that after the Virginians fired twice he made a sign that he was the bearer of a letter, that the firing ceased, that they gathered about him and while he was reading killed him and his companions. Jumonville's death has therefore been called an "assassination" by French writers. The story rested on false statements made by Indians friendly to the French. In reality, there is ample proof that Jumonville made no attempt to deliver any message to Washington.



CHAPTER XI

THE FRENCH DRIVEN FROM AMERICA

THE SITUATION IN 1754.—The French were now in armed possession of the Ohio valley. Their chain of forts bounded the British colonies from Lake Champlain to Fort Duquesne. Unless they were dislodged, all hope of colonial expansion westward was ended. To dislodge them meant war, and the certainty of war led to a serious attempt to unite the colonies.

By order of the Lords of Trade, a convention of delegates from the colonies [1] was held at Albany to secure by treaty and presents the friendship of the Six Nations of Indians; it would not do to let those powerful tribes go over to the French in the coming war. After treating with the Indians, the convention proceeded to consider the question whether all the colonies could not be united for defense and for the protection of their interests.



FRANKLIN'S PLAN OF UNION.—One of the delegates was Benjamin Franklin. In his newspaper, the Philadelphia Gazette, he had urged union, and he had put this device [2] at the top of an account of the capture of the Ohio fort (afterward Duquesne) by the French. At the convention he submitted a plan of union calling for a president general and a grand council of representatives from the colonies to meet each year. They were to make treaties with the Indians, regulate the affairs of the colonies as a whole, levy taxes, build forts, and raise armies. The convention adopted the plan, but both the colonial legislatures and the Lords of Trade in London rejected it. [3]



THE FIVE POINTS OF ATTACK.—The French held five strongholds, which shut the British out of New France and Louisiana, and threatened the English colonies.

1. Louisburg threatened New England and Nova Scotia.

2. Quebec controlled the St. Lawrence.

3. Crown Point (and later Ticonderoga), on Lake Champlain, guarded the water route to New York and threatened the Hudson valley.

4. Niagara guarded the portage between Lakes Ontario and Erie, and threatened New York on the west.

5. Fort Duquesne controlled the Ohio and threatened Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The plan of the British was to strengthen their hold on Nova Scotia (Acadia), and to attack three of the French strongholds—Crown Point, Niagara, and Fort Duquesne—at the same time.

ACADIA.—Late in May, 1755, therefore, an expedition set sail from Boston, made its way up the Bay of Fundy, captured the French forts at the head of that bay, reduced all Acadia to British rule, and tendered the oath of allegiance to the French Acadians. This they refused to take, whereupon they were driven on board ships at the point of the bayonet and carried off and distributed among the colonies. [4]



CROWN POINT.—The army against Crown Point, composed of troops from the four New England colonies and New York, gathered at Albany, and Forts in northern New York, under command of William Johnson [5] marched to the head of Lake George, where it beat the French under Dieskau (dees'kou), and built Fort William Henry; but it did not reach Crown Point.

NIAGARA.—A third army, under General Shirley of Massachusetts, likewise set out from Albany, and pushing across New York reached Oswego, when all thought of attacking Niagara was abandoned. News had come of the crushing defeat of Braddock.

BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.—Under the belief that neither colonial officers nor colonial troops were of much account, the mother country at the opening of the war sent over Edward Braddock, one of her best officers, and two regiments of regulars. Brad-dock came to Virginia, appointed Washington one of his aids, and having gathered some provincial troops, set off from Fort Cumberland in Maryland for Fort Duquesne. The country to be traversed was a wilderness. No road led through the woods, so the troops were forced to cut one as they went slowly westward (map, p. 144).

On July 9, 1755, when some eight miles from Fort Duquesne, those in the van suddenly beheld what seemed to be an Indian coming toward them, but was really a French officer with a band of French and Indians at his back. The moment he saw the British he stopped and waved his hat in the air, whereupon his followers disappeared in the bushes and opened fire. The British returned the fire and stood their ground manfully, but as they could not see their foe, while their scarlet coats afforded a fine target, they were shot down by scores, lost heart, huddled together, and when at last Brad-dock was forced to order a retreat, broke and fled. [6]

Braddock was wounded just as the retreat began, and died as the army was hurrying back to Fort Cumberland, and lest the Indians should find his grave, he was buried in the road, and all traces of the grave were obliterated by the troops and wagons passing over it. From Fort Cumberland the British marched to Philadelphia, and the whole frontier was left to the mercy of the French and Indians.

FRENCH VICTORIES.—War parties were sent out from Fort Duquesne in every direction, settlement after settlement was sacked, and before November the Indians were burning, plundering, massacring, scalping within eighty miles of Philadelphia. During the two following years (1756-57), the French were all energy and activity, and the British were hard pressed. [7] Oswego and Fort William Henry were captured, [8] and the New York frontier was ravaged by the French.

BRITISH VICTORIES (1758).—And now the tide turned. William Pitt, one of the great Englishmen of his day, was placed at the head of public affairs in Great Britain, and devoted himself with all his energy to the conduct of the war. He chose better commanders, infused enthusiasm into men and officers alike, and the result was a series of victories. A fleet of frigates and battleships, with an army of ten thousand men, captured Louisburg. Three thousand provincials in open boats crossed Lake Ontario, took Fort Frontenac, and thus cut communication between Quebec and the Ohio. A third expedition, under Forbes and Washington, marched slowly across Pennsylvania, to find Fort Duquesne in ruins and the French gone. [9]



VICTORIES OF 1759.—Two of the five strongholds (Louisburg and Fort Duquesne) were now under the British flag, and the next year (1759) the three others met a like fate. An expedition under Prideaux (prid'o) and Sir William Johnson captured Fort Niagara; an army under Amherst took Ticonderoga and Crown Point; and a fleet and army led by Wolfe, a young officer distinguished at Louisburg, took Quebec.

QUEBEC, 1759.—The victory at Quebec was the greatest of the war. The fortress was the strongest in America, and stood on the crest of a high cliff which rose from the waters of the St. Lawrence. The French commander, Montcalm, was a brave and able soldier. But one night in September, 1759, the British general, Wolfe, led his army up the steep cliff west of the city, and in the morning formed in battle array on the Plains of Abraham. A great battle followed. Both Wolfe and Montcalm were killed; but the British won, and Quebec has ever since been under their flag. Montreal fell the next year (1760), and Canada was conquered. [10]



SPAIN CEDES FLORIDA TO GREAT BRITAIN.—In the spring of 1761, France made proposals of peace; but while the negotiation was under way, Spain allied herself with France, and was soon dragged into the war. The British thereupon captured Havana and Manila (1762), and thus became for a short time masters of Cuba and the Philippines. A few weeks later preliminary articles of peace were signed (November, 1762), and the final (or definitive) treaty in 1763. Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain in return for Cuba. News of the capture of the Philippines was not received till after the preliminary treaty was signed; the islands were therefore returned without any equivalent. [11]

THE FRENCH QUIT AMERICA.—By the treaties of 1762 and 1763 France withdrew from America.

To Great Britain were ceded (1) all of New France (or Canada), Cape Breton Island, and all the near-by islands save two small ones near Newfoundland, and (2) all of Louisiana east of the Mississippi save the city of New Orleans and a little territory above and below the city.



To recompense Spain for her loss in the war, France ceded to her New Orleans and the neighboring territory, and all of Louisiana west of the Mississippi.

THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC.—The acquisition of New France made it necessary for Great Britain to provide for its government. To do this she drew a line about the part inhabited by whites, and established the province of Quebec. The south boundary of the new province should be carefully observed, for it became the northern boundary of New York and New England.

THE PROCLAMATION LINE.—The proclamation which created the province of Quebec also drew a line "beyond the sources of the rivers which flow into the Atlantic from the west and northwest": beyond this line no governor of any of the colonies was to grant land. This meant that the king cut off the claims to western lands set forth in the charters of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia. The territory so cut off was for the present to be reserved for the Indians.

THE PROVINCES OF EAST AND WEST FLORIDA.—The proclamation of 1763 also created two other provinces. One called East Florida was so much of the present state of Florida as lies east of the Apalachicola River. West Florida was all the territory received from Spain west of the Apalachicola. [12]

To Georgia was annexed the territory between the St. Marys River, the proclamation line, and the Altamaha.

THE FRONTIER.—British settlements did not yet reach the Allegheny Mountains. In New York they extended a short distance up the Mohawk River. In Pennsylvania the little town of Bedford, in Maryland Fort Cumberland, and in Virginia the Allegheny Mountains marked the frontier (p. 144).

THE WILDERNESS ROUTES AND FORTS.—Through the wilderness lying beyond the frontier ran several lines of forts intended to protect routes of communication. Thus in New York the route up the Mohawk to Oneida Lake and down Oswego River to Lake Ontario was protected by Forts Stanwix, Brewerton, and Oswego. From Fort Oswego the route continued by water to Fort Niagara at the mouth of the river of that name, then along the Niagara River and by Lake Erie to Presque Isle, then by land to Fort Le Boeuf, then by river to Fort Pitt.



From Fort Pitt two roads led back to the frontier. One leading to the Potomac valley was that cut from Fort Cumberland by Braddock (in 1755) and known as Braddock's Road. The other to Bedford on the Pennsylvania frontier was cut by General Forbes (in 1758).

Along the shores of the Great Lakes were a few forts built by the French and now held by the British. These were Sandusky, Detroit, Mackinaw, and St. Joseph.



PONTIAC'S WAR.—Between this chain of forts and the Mississippi River, in the region given up by France, lived many tribes of Indians, old friends of the French and bitter enemies of the British. The old enmity was kept aflame by the French Canadians, who still carried on the fur trade with the Indians. [13]

When, therefore, Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas, in 1762 sent out among the Indian nations ambassadors with the war belt of wampum, and tomahawks stained red in token of war, the tribes everywhere responded to the call. [14] From the Ohio and its tributaries to the upper lakes, and southward to the mouth of the Mississippi, they banded against the British, and early in 1763, led by Pontiac, swept down on the frontier forts. Detroit was attacked, Presque Isle was captured, Le Boeuf and Venango were burned to the ground, Fort Pitt was besieged, and the frontier of Pennsylvania laid waste. Of fourteen posts from Mackinaw to Oswego, all but four were taken by the Indians. It seemed that not a settler would be left west of the Susquehanna; but a little army under Colonel Bouquet beat the Indians, cleared the Pennsylvania frontier, and relieved Fort Pitt in 1763; another army in 1764 passed along the lake shore to Detroit and quieted the Indians in that region, while Bouquet (1764) invaded the Ohio country, forced the tribes to submit, and released two hundred white prisoners.

SUMMARY

1. The war which followed the defeat of Washington is known as the French and Indian War.

2. Fearing that the French Acadians in Nova Scotia would become troublesome, the British dispersed them among the colonies.

3. The strongholds of the French were Louisburg, Quebec, Crown Point, Niagara, and Fort Duquesne.

4. The first expedition against Fort Duquesne ended in Braddock's defeat; expeditions against other strongholds came to naught, and during the early years of the war the French carried everything before them.

5. But when Pitt rose to power in England, the tide turned: Louisburg and Fort Duquesne were captured (in 1758); Niagara, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Quebec were taken (in 1759); and Montreal fell in 1760.

6. Spain now joined in the war, whereupon Great Britain seized Cuba and the Philippines.

7. Peace was made in 1762-63: the conquests from Spain were restored to her, but Florida was ceded to Great Britain; and France gave up her possessions in North America.

8. Canada, Cape Breton, and all Louisiana east of the Mississippi, save New Orleans and vicinity, went to Great Britain.

9. New Orleans and Louisiana west of the Mississippi went to Spain.

10. Great Britain then established the new provinces of Quebec and East and West Florida, and drew the Proclamation Line.

11. A great Indian uprising, known as Pontiac's War, followed the peace, but was quickly put down.

FOOTNOTES

[1] New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were the only colonies represented.

[2] There was an old superstition that if a snake were cut into pieces and the pieces allowed to touch, they would join and the snake would not die. Franklin meant that unless the separate colonies joined they would be conquered.

[3] Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the youngest son in a family of seventeen children. He went to work in his father's candle shop when ten years old. He was fond of reading, and by saving what little money he could secure, bought a few books and read them thoroughly. When twelve, he was bound apprentice to a brother who was a printer. At seventeen he ran away to Philadelphia, where he found work in a printing office, and in 1729 owned a newspaper of his own, which soon became the best and most entertaining in the colonies. His most famous publication is Poor Richard's Almanac. To this day the proverbs and common sense sayings of Poor Richard are constantly quoted. Franklin was a good citizen: he took part in the founding of the first public library in Philadelphia, the formation of the first fire engine company, and the organization of the first militia, and he persuaded the authorities to light and pave streets and to establish a night watch. He is regarded as the founder of the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin was also a man of science. He discovered that lightning is electricity, invented the lightning rod, and wrote many scientific papers. He served in the legislature of Pennsylvania, and was made postmaster general for the colonies. All these things occurred before 1754.

[4] About six thousand were carried off. Nowhere were they welcome. Some who were taken to Boston made their way to Canada. Such as reached South Carolina and Georgia were given leave to return; but seven little boatloads were stopped at Boston. Others reached Louisiana, where their descendants still live. A few succeeded in returning to Acadia. Do not fail to read Longfellow's poem Evangeline, a beautiful story founded on this removal of the Acadians. Was it necessary to remove the Acadians? Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 234-241, 256-266, 276- 284; read also "The Old French War," Part ii, Chap, viii, in Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair.

[5] William Johnson was born in Ireland in 1715, and came to America in 1738 to take charge of his uncle's property in the Mohawk valley. He settled about twenty miles west of Schenectady, and engaged in the Indian trade. He dealt honestly with the Indians, learned their language, attended their feasts, and, tomahawk in hand, danced their dances in Indian dress. He even took as his wife a sister of Brant, a Mohawk chief. So great was his influence with the Indians that in 1746 he was made Commissary of New York for Indian Affairs. In 1750 he was made a member of the provincial Council, went to the Albany convention in 1754, and later was appointed a major general. After the expedition against Crown Point he was knighted and made Superintendent of Indian Affairs in North America. He died in 1774.

[6] It is sometimes said that Braddock fell into an ambuscade. This is a mistake. He was surprised because he did not send scouts ahead of his army; but the Indians were not in ambush. Braddock would not permit the troops to fight in Indian fashion from behind trees and bushes, but forced his men to form in platoons. A part of the regulars who tried to fight behind trees Braddock beat with his sword and forced into line. Some Virginians who sought shelter behind a huge fallen tree were mistaken for the enemy and fired on. In the fight and after it Washington was most prominent. Twice a horse was shot under him. Four bullets passed through his clothes. When the retreat began, he rallied the fugitives, and brought off the wounded Braddock.

[7] War between France and Great Britain was declared in May, 1756. In Europe it was known as the Seven Years' War; in America as the French and Indian. On the side of France were Russia and Austria. On the side of Great Britain was Frederick the Great of Prussia. The fighting went on not only in America, but in the West Indies, on the European Continent, in the Mediterranean, and in India.

[8] When the colonial troops surrendered Fort William Henry, the French commander, Montcalm, agreed that they should return to their homes in safety. But the Indians, maddened by liquor, massacred a large number, and carried off some six hundred prisoners. Montcalm finally secured the release of some four hundred. Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans treats of the war about Lake George.

[9] Instead of using the road cut by Braddock, Forbes chose another route, (map, p. 144), and spent much time in road making. Late in September he was still fifty miles from Fort Duquesne, and decided to go into winter quarters. But the French attacked Forbes and were beaten; and from some prisoners Forbes learned that the garrison at Fort Duquesne was weak. A picked force of men, with Washington and his Virginians in the lead, then hurried forward, and reached the fort to find it abandoned. A new stockade was built near by, and named Fort Pitt, and the place was named Pittsburg.

[10] Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. II, pp. 280-297. The fall of Quebec is treated in fiction in Gilbert Parker's Seats of the Mighty.

[11] When Manila was captured, all private property was saved from plunder by the promise of a ransom of 1,000,000. One half was paid in money, and the rest in bills on the Spanish treasury. Spain never paid these bills.

[12] The north boundary was the parallel of 31; but in 1764 West Florida was enlarged, and the north boundary became the parallel of latitude that passes through the mouth of the Yazoo River.

[13] They told the Indians that the British would soon be driven out, and that the Mississippi River and Canada would again be in French hands; that the British were trying to destroy the Indian race, and for this purpose were building forts and making settlements.

[14] Read Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac; Kirk Munroe's At War with Pontiac.



CHAPTER XII

THE QUARREL WITH THE MOTHER COUNTRY

The French and Indian War gave the colonists valuable training as soldiers, freed them from the danger of attack by their French neighbors, and so made them less dependent on Great Britain for protection. But the mother country took no account of this, and at once began to do things which in ten years' time drove the colonies into rebellion.

CAUSES OF THE QUARREL.—We are often told that taxation without representation was the cause of the Revolution. It was indeed one cause, and a very important one, but not the only one by any means. The causes of the Revolution, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, were many, and arose chiefly from an attempt of the mother country to (1) enforce the laws concerning trade, (2) quarter royal troops in the colonies, [1] and (3) support the troops by taxes imposed without consent of the colonies.

THE TRADE LAWS were enacted by Parliament between 1650 and 1764 for the purpose of giving Great Britain a monopoly of colonial trade. By their provisions—

1. No goods were to be carried from any port in Europe to America unless first landed in England.

2. Many articles of colonial production, as tobacco, cotton, silk, indigo, furs, rice, sugar, could not be sent to any country save England; but lumber, salt fish, and provisions could be sent also to France, Spain, or other foreign countries.

3. To help English wool manufacture, the colonists were forbidden to send their woolen goods or hats to any country whatever, or even from colony to colony.

4. To help English iron manufacture, the colonists were forbidden to make steel.

5. To help the British West Indies, a heavy duty was laid (in 1733) on sugar or molasses imported from any other than a British possession.

SMUGGLING.—Had these laws been rigidly enforced they would have been severe indeed, but they could not be rigidly enforced. They were openly violated, and smuggling became so common in every colony [2] that the cost of collecting the revenue was much more than the amount gathered.

This smuggling the British government now determined to end. Accordingly, in 1764, the colonies were ordered to stop all unlawful trade, naval vessels were stationed off the coast to seize smugglers, and new courts, called vice-admiralty courts, were set up in which smugglers when caught were to be tried without a jury. [3]

A STANDING ARMY.—It was further proposed to send over ten thousand regular soldiers to defend the colonies against the Indians and against any attack that might be made by France or Spain. The colonists objected to the troops on the ground that they had not asked for soldiers and did not need any.



THE STAMP ACT.—As the cost of keeping the troops would be very great, it was decided to raise part of the money needed by a stamp tax which Parliament enacted in 1765. The Stamp Act applied not only to the thirteen colonies, but also to Canada, Florida, and the West Indies, and was to take effect on and after November 1, 1765. [4]

1. Every piece of vellum or paper on which was written any legal document for use in any court was to be charged with a stamp duty of from three pence to ten pounds.

2. Many kinds of documents not used in court, and newspapers, almanacs, etc., were to be written or printed only on stamped paper made in England and sold at prices fixed by law.

The money raised by the stamp tax was not to be taken to Great Britain, but was to be spent in the colonies in the purchase of food and supplies for the troops.

THE COLONIES DENY THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENT TO TAX THEM.—But the colonists cared not for what use the money was intended. "No taxation without representation," was their cry. They cast no votes for a member of Parliament; therefore, they said, they were not represented in Parliament. Not being represented, they could not be taxed by Parliament, because taxes could lawfully be laid on them only by their chosen representatives. [5]

In the opinion of the British people the colonists were represented in Parliament. British subjects in America, it was held, were just as much represented in the House of Commons as were the people of Manchester or Birmingham, neither of which sent a member to the House. Each member of the House represented not merely the few men who elected him, but all the subjects of the British crown everywhere. [6]

THE COLONIES RESIST.—Resistance to the Stamp Act began in Virginia, where the House of Burgesses passed a set of resolutions written by Patrick Henry. [7] In substance they declared that the colonists were British subjects and were not bound to obey any law taxing them without the consent of their own legislatures.



Massachusetts came next with a call for a congress of delegates from the colonies, to meet at New York in October.

THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS, 1765.—Nine of the colonies sent delegates, and after a session of twenty days the representatives of six signed a declaration of rights and grievances.

The declaration of rights set forth that a British subject could not be taxed unless he was represented in the legislature that imposed the tax; that Americans were not represented in Parliament; and that therefore the stamp tax was an attack on the rights of Englishmen and the liberty of self-government. The grievances complained of were trial without jury, restrictions on trade, taxation without representation, and especially the stamp tax.

THE STAMP DISTRIBUTERS.—In August, 1765, the names of the men in America chosen to be the distributers or sellers of the stamps and stamped paper were made public, and then the people began to act. Demands were made that the distributers should resign. When they refused, the people rose and by force compelled them to resign, and riots occurred in the chief seaboard towns from New Hampshire to Maryland. At Boston the people broke into the house of the lieutenant governor and destroyed his fine library and papers.



On November 1, 1765, the Stamp Act went into force, but not a stamp or a piece of stamped paper could be had in any of the thirteen colonies. Some of the newspapers ceased to be printed, the last issues appearing with black borders, death's heads, and obituary notices. But soon all were regularly issued without stamps, and even the courts disregarded the law. [8]



THE STAMP ACT REPEALED, 1766.—Meantime the merchants had been signing agreements not to import, and the people not to buy, any British goods for some months to come. American trade with the mother country was thus cut off, thousands of workmen in Great Britain were thrown out of employment, and Parliament was beset with petitions from British merchants praying for a repeal of the stamp tax. To enforce the act without bloodshed was impossible. In March, 1766, therefore, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. [9] But at the same time it enacted another, known as the Declaratory Act, in which it declared that it had power to "legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever."

THE TOWNSHEND ACTS, 1767.—In their joy over the repeal of the Stamp Act, the colonists gave no heed to the Declaratory Act. But the very next year Charles Townshend, then minister of finance, persuaded Parliament to pass several laws since known as the Townshend Acts. One of these forbade the legislature of New York to pass any more laws until it had made provision for the royal troops quartered in New York city. Another laid taxes on all paints, paper, tea, and certain other articles imported into the colonies. [10]

THE COLONIES AGAIN RESIST.—None of the new taxes were heavy, but again the case was one of taxation without representation, so the legislature of Massachusetts sent a letter to the other colonial legislatures asking them to unite and consult for the protection of their rights. This letter gave so great offense to the mother country that Massachusetts was ordered to rescind her act, and the governors of the other colonies to see that no notice was taken of it. [11] And now the royal troops for the defense of the colonies began to arrive. But Massachusetts, North Carolina, and South Carolina refused to find them quarters, and for such refusal the legislature of North Carolina was dissolved.



THE BOSTON MASSACRE.—At Boston the troops were received with every mark of hatred and disgust, and for three years were subjected to every sort of insult and indignity, which they repaid in kind. The troops led riotous lives, raced horses on Sunday on the Common, played "Yankee Doodle" before the church doors, and more than once exchanged blows with the citizens. In one encounter the troops fired on the crowd, killing five and wounding six. This was the famous "Boston Massacre," and produced over all the land a deep impression. [12]

TOWNSHEND ACTS REPEALED, 1770.—Once more the resistance of the colonies— chiefly through refusing to buy British goods—was successful, and Parliament took off all the Townshend taxes except that on tea. This import tax of three pence a pound on tea was retained in order that the right of Parliament to tax the colonies might be asserted. But the colonists stood firm; they refused to buy tea shipped from Great Britain, but smuggled it from Holland. [13]

TEA TAX JUGGLE.—By 1773 the refusal to buy tea from the mother country was severely felt by the East India Company, which had brought far more tea to Great Britain than it could dispose of. Parliament then removed the export duty of twelve pence a pound which had formerly been paid in Great Britain on all tea shipped to the colonies. Thus after paying the three- pence tax at the American customhouses, the tea could be sold nine pence a pound cheaper than before.

THE TEA NOT ALLOWED TO BE SOLD.—The East India Company now quickly selected agents in the chief seaports of the colonies, and sent shiploads of tea consigned to them for sale. [14] But the colonists were tempted by cheap tea; they were determined that Parliament would not tax them. They therefore forced the agents to resign their commissions, and when the tea ships arrived, took possession of them. At Philadelphia the ships were sent back to London. At Charleston the tea was landed and stored for three years and then seized and sold by the state of South Carolina. At Annapolis the people forced the owner of a tea ship to go on board and set fire to his ship; vessel and cargo were thus consumed. At Boston the people wished the tea sent back to London, and when the authorities refused to allow this, a party of men disguised as Indians boarded the ships and threw the tea into the water. [15]



THE INTOLERABLE ACTS.—Parliament now determined to punish the colonies, and for this purpose enacted five laws called by the colonists the Intolerable Acts:—

1. The port of Boston was shut to trade and commerce till the colony should pay for the tea destroyed.

2. The charter of Massachusetts was altered.

3. Persons who were accused of murder done in executing the laws might be taken for trial to another colony or to Great Britain.

4. The quartering of troops on the people was authorized.

5. The boundaries of the province of Quebec were extended to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. As Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia claimed parts of this territory, they regarded the Quebec Act as another act of tyranny. [16]

THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.—Because of the passage of these laws, a Congress suggested by Virginia and called by Massachusetts met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia in September, 1774, and issued a declaration of rights and grievances, a petition to the king, and addresses to the people of Great Britain, to the people of Canada, and to the people of the colonies. It also called a second Congress to meet on May 10, 1775, and take action on the result of the petition to the king.

SUMMARY

1. After the French and Indian War Great Britain determined to enforce the laws of trade.

2. It also decided that the colonies should bear a part of the cost of their defense, and for this purpose a stamp tax was levied.

3. The right of Parliament to levy such a tax was denied by the colonists on the ground that they were not represented in Parliament.

4. The attempt to enforce the tax led to resistance, and a congress of the colonies (1765) issued a declaration of rights and grievances.

5. The tax was repealed in 1766, but Parliament at the same time asserted its right to tax.

6. The Townshend Acts (1767) tried to raise a revenue by import duties on goods brought into the colonies. At the same time the arrival of the troops for defense of the colonies caused new trouble; in Boston the people and the troops came to blows (1770).

7. The refusal of the colonists to buy the taxed articles led to the repeal of all the taxes except that on tea (1770).

8. The colonists still refused to buy taxed tea, whereupon Parliament enabled the East India Company to send over tea for sale at a lower price than before.

9. The tea was not allowed to be sold. In Boston it was destroyed.

10. As a punishment Parliament enacted the five Intolerable Acts.

11. The First Continental Congress (1774) thereupon petitioned for redress, and called a second Congress to meet the next year.

FOOTNOTES

[1] That is, compel the colonists to furnish quarters—rooms or houses— for the troops to live in. Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 439-440.

[2] In order to detect and seize smugglers the crown had resorted to "writs of assistance." The law required that every ship bringing goods to America should come to some established port and that her cargo should be reported at the customhouse. Instead, the smugglers would secretly land goods elsewhere. If a customs officer suspected this, he could go to court and ask for a search warrant, stating the goods for which he was to seek and the place to be searched. But this would give the smugglers warning and they could remove the goods. What the officers wanted was a general warrant good for any goods in any place. This writ of assistance, as it was called, was common in England, and was issued in the colonies about 1754. In 1760 King George II died, and all writs issued in his name expired. In 1761, therefore, application was made to the Superior Court of Massachusetts for a new writ of assistance to run in the name of King George III. Sixty merchants opposed the issue, and James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher appeared for the merchants. The speech of Otis was a famous plea, sometimes called the beginning of colonial resistance; but the court granted the writ.

[3] These acts are complained of in the Declaration of Independence. The king is blamed "For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world," that is, enforcing the trade laws; again, "He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people," that is to say, the vice-admiralty judges and naval officers sworn to act as customhouse officers and seize smugglers. In doing this duty these officers did "harass our people."

[4] While the Stamp Act was under debate in Parliament, Colonel Barr, who fought under Wolfe at Louisburg, opposed it. A member had spoken of the colonists as "children planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence, and protected by our arms." "They planted by your care!" said Barr. "No, your oppression planted them in America. Nourished by your indulgence! They grew up by your neglect of them. They protected by your arms! These Sons of Liberty have nobly taken up arms in your defense." The words "Sons of Liberty" were at once seized on, and used in our country to designate the opponents of the stamp tax. Read "The Stamp Act" in Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair.

[5] The colonists did not deny the right of Parliament to regulate the trade of the whole British Empire, and to lay "external taxes"—customs duties—for the purpose of regulating trade. But this stamp tax was an "internal tax" for the purpose of raising revenue.

[6] Parliament was divided then, as now, into two houses—the Lords, consisting of nobles and clergy, and the Commons, consisting then of two members elected by each county and two elected by each of certain towns. Some change was made in the list of towns thus represented in Parliament before the sixteenth century, but no change had been made since, though many of them had lost all or most of their population. Thus Old Sarum had become a green mound; its population had all drifted away to Salisbury. A member of the Commons, so the story runs, once said: "I am the member from Ludgesshall. I am also the population of Ludgesshall. When the sheriff's writ comes, I announce the election, attend the poll, deposit my vote for myself, sign the return, and here I am." When a town disappeared, the landowner of the soil on which it once stood appointed the two members. Such towns were called "rotten boroughs," "pocket boroughs," "nomination boroughs."

[7] Patrick Henry was born in Virginia in 1736. As a youth he was dull and indolent and gave no sign of coming greatness. After two failures as a storekeeper and one as a farmer he turned in desperation to law, read a few books, and with difficulty passed the examination necessary for admittance to the bar. Henry had now found his true vocation. Business came to him, and one day in 1763 he argued the weak (but popular) side of a case with such eloquence that he carried court and jury with him, and it is said was carried out of the courthouse on the shoulders of the people. He was now famous, and in 1765 was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses to represent the county in which he had lived, just in time to take part in the proceedings on the Stamp Act. His part was to move the resolutions and support them in a fiery and eloquent speech, of which one passage has been preserved. Recalling the fate of tyrants of other times, he exclaimed, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—." "Treason! treason!" shouted the Speaker. "Treason! treason!" shouted the members. To which Henry answered, "and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

[8] In Canada and the West Indies the stamp tax was not resisted, and there stamps were used.

[9] When Parliament was considering the repeal, Benjamin Franklin, then in London as agent for Pennsylvania and other colonies, was called before a committee and examined as to the state of colonial affairs; read his answers in Hart's American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. II, pp. 407-411. Pitt in a great speech declared, "The kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the colonies, because they are unrepresented in Parliament. I rejoice that America has resisted." Edmund Burke, one of the greatest of Irish orators, took the same view.

[10] In the Declaration of Independence the king is charged with giving his assent to acts of Parliament "For suspending our own legislatures," and "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us," and "For imposing taxes on us without our consent."

[11] For refusing to obey, the legislature of Massachusetts was dissolved, as were the assemblies of Maryland and Georgia for having approved it, and that of New York for refusing supplies to the royal troops, and that of Virginia for complaining of the treatment of New York. Read Fiske's American Revolution, Vol. I, pp. 28-36, 39-52.