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.