"A Lair Of Wild Beasts"
Benjamin Franklin, who was in London in 1760 as agent of the
Pennsylvania Assembly, gave the British ministers some wholesome advice
on the terms of the peace that should be made with France. The St.
Lawrence and the Great Lakes regions, he said, must be retained by
England at all costs. Moreover, the Mississippi Valley must be taken, in
order to provide for the growing populations of the seaboard colonies
suitable lands in the interior, and so keep them engaged in agriculture.
Otherwise these populations would turn to manufacturing, and the
industries of the mother country would suffer.
The treaty of peace, three years later, brought the settlement which
Franklin suggested. The vast American back country, with its inviting
rivers and lakes, its shaded hills, and its sunny prairies, became
English territory. The English people had, however, only the vaguest
notion of the extent, appearance, and resources of their new possession.
Even the officials who drew the treaty were as ignorant of the country
as of middle Africa. Prior to the outbreak of the war no widely known
English writer had tried to describe it; and the absorbing French books
of Lahontan, Hennepin, and Charlevoix had reached but a small circle.
The prolonged conflict in America naturally stimulated interest in the
new country. The place-names of the upper Ohio became household words,
and enterprising publishers put out not only translations of the French
writers but compilations by Englishmen designed, in true journalistic
fashion, to meet the demands of the hour for information.
These publications displayed amazing misconceptions of the lands
described. They neither estimated aright the number and strength of the
French settlements nor dispelled the idea that the western country was
of little value. Even the most brilliant Englishman of the day, Dr.
Samuel Johnson, an ardent defender of the treaty of 1763, wrote that the
large tracts of America added by the war to the British dominions were
"only the barren parts of the continent, the refuse of the earlier
adventurers, which the French, who came last, had taken only as better
than nothing." As late indeed as 1789, William Knox, long
Under-Secretary for the Colonies, declared that Americans could not
settle the western territory "for ages," and that the region must be
given up to barbarism like the plains of Asia, with a population as
unstable as the Scythians and Tartars. But the shortsightedness of these
distant critics can be forgiven when one recalls that Franklin himself,
while conjuring up a splendid vision of the western valleys teeming with
a thriving population, supposed that the dream would not be realized for
"some centuries." None of these observers dreamt that the territories
transferred in 1763 would have within seventy-five years a population
almost equal to that of Great Britain.
The ink with which the Treaty of Paris was signed was hardly dry before
the King and his ministers were confronted with the task of providing
government for the new possessions and of solving problems of land
tenure and trade. Still more imperative were measures to conciliate the
Indians; for already Pontiac's rebellion had been in progress four
months, and the entire back country was aflame. It must be confessed
that a continental wilderness swarming with murderous savages was an
inheritance whose aspect was by no means altogether pleasing to the
English mind.
The easiest solution of the difficulty was to let things take their
course. Let seaboard populations spread at will over the new lands; let
them carry on trade in their own way, and make whatever arrangements
with the native tribes they desire. Colonies such as Virginia and New
York, which had extensive western claims, would have been glad to see
this plan adopted. Strong objections, however, were raised. Colonies
which had no western claims feared the effects of the advantages which
their more fortunate neighbors would enjoy. Men who had invested heavily
in lands lying west of the mountains felt that their returns would be
diminished and delayed if the back country were thrown open to settlers.
Some people thought that the Indians had a moral right to protection
against wholesale white invasion of their hunting-grounds, and many
considered it expedient, at all events, to offer such protection.
After all, however, it was the King and his ministers who had it in
their power to settle the question; and from their point of view it was
desirable to keep the western territories as much as possible apart from
the older colonies, and to regulate, with farsighted policy, their
settlement and trade. Eventually, it was believed, the territories would
be cut into new colonies; and experience with the seaboard dependencies
was already such as to suggest the desirability of having the future
settlements more completely under government control from the beginning.
After due consideration, King George and his ministers made known their
policy on October 7, 1763, in a comprehensive proclamation. The first
subject dealt with was government. Four new provinces--"Quebec, East
Florida, West Florida, and Grenada" ¹--were set up in the ceded
territories, and their populations were guaranteed all the rights and
privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants of the older colonies. The
Mississippi Valley, however, was included in no one of these provinces;
and, curiously, there was no provision whatever for the government of
the French settlements lying within it. The number and size of these
settlements were underestimated, and apparently it was supposed that all
the habitants and soldiers would avail themselves of their privilege of
withdrawing from the ceded territories.
¹ The Proclamation of 1763 drew the boundaries of "four distinct and
separate governments." Grenada was to include the island of that name,
together with the Grenadines, Dominico, St. Vincent, and Tobago. The
Floridas lay south of the bounds of Georgia and east of the Mississippi
River. The Apalachicola River was to be the dividing line between East
and West Florida. Quebec included the modern province of that name and
that part of Ontario lying north of a line drawn from Lake Nipissing to
the point where the forty-fifth parallel intersects the St. Lawrence
River.
The disposition made of the great rectangular area bounded by the
Alleghanies, the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the Gulf, was fairly
startling. With fine disregard of the chartered claims of the seaboard
colonies and of the rights of pioneers already settled on frontier
farms, the whole was erected into an Indian reserve. No "loving subject"
might purchase land or settle in the territory without special license;
present residents should "forthwith remove themselves"; trade should be
carried on only by permit and under close surveillance; officers were to
be stationed among the tribes to preserve friendly relations and to
apprehend fugitives from colonial justice.
The objects of this drastic scheme were never clearly stated. Franklin
believed that the main purpose was to conciliate the Indians. Washington
agreed with him. Later historians have generally thought that what the
English Government had chiefly in mind was to limit the bounds of the
seaboard colonies, with a view to preserving imperial control over
colonial affairs. Very likely both of these motives weighed heavily in
the decision. At all events, Lord Hillsborough, who presided over the
meetings of the Lords of Trade when the proclamation was discussed,
subsequently wrote that the "capital object" of the Government's policy
was to confine the colonies so that they should be kept in easy reach of
British trade and of the authority necessary to keep them in due
subordination to the mother country, and he added that the extension of
the fur trade depended "entirely upon the Indians being undisturbed in
the possession of their hunting-grounds." ¹
¹ But as Lord Hillsborough had just taken office and adopted bodily a
policy formulated by his predecessor, he is none too good an authority.
See Alvord's Mississippi Valley in British Politics, vol. I, pp. 203-4.
It does not follow that the King and his advisers intended that the
territory should be kept forever intact as a forest preserve. They seem
to have contemplated that, from time to time, cessions would be secured
from the Indians and tracts would be opened for settlement. But every
move was to be made in accordance with plans formulated or authorized in
England. The restrictive policy won by no means universal assent in the
mother country. The Whigs generally opposed it, and Burke thundered
against it as "an attempt to keep as a lair of wild beasts that earth
which God, by an express charter, has given to the children of men."
In America there was a disposition to take the proclamation lightly as
being a mere sop to the Indians. But wherever it was regarded seriously,
it was hotly resented. After passing through an arduous war, the
colonists were ready to enter upon a new expansive era. The western
territories were theirs by charter, by settlement, and by conquest. The
Indian population, they believed, belonged to the unprogressive and
unproductive peoples of the earth. Every acre of fertile soil in America
called to the thrifty agriculturist; every westward flowing river
invited to trade and settlement--as well, therefore, seek to keep back
the ocean with a broom as to stop by mere decree the tide of
homeseekers. Some of the colonies made honest attempts to compel the
removal of settlers from the reserved lands beyond their borders, and
Pennsylvania went so far as to decree the death penalty for all who
should refuse to remove. But the law was never enforced.
The news of the cession of the eastern bank of the Mississippi to the
English brought consternation to the two or three thousand French people
living in the settlements of the Kaskaskia, Illinois, and Wabash
regions. The transfer of the western bank to Spain did not become known
promptly, and for months the habitants supposed that by taking up their
abode on the opposite side of the stream they would continue under their
own flag. Many of them crossed the Mississippi to find new abodes even
after it was announced that the land had passed to Spain.
From first to last these settlements on the Mississippi, the Wabash, and
the Illinois had remained, in French hands, mere sprawling villages. The
largest of them, Kaskaskia, may have contained in its most flourishing
days two thousand people, many of them voyageurs, coureurs-de-bois,
converted Indians, and transients of one sort or another. In 1765 there
were not above seventy permanent families. Few of the towns, indeed,
attained a population of more than two or three hundred. All French
colonial enterprise had been based on the assumption that settlers would
be few. The trader preferred it so, because settlements meant
restrictions upon his traffic. The Jesuit was of the same mind, because
such settlements broke up his mission field. The Government at Paris
forbade the emigration of the one class of people that cared to
emigrate, the Huguenots.
Though some of the settlements had picturesque sites and others drew
distinction from their fortifications, in general they presented a drab
appearance. There were usually two or three long, narrow streets, with
no paving, and often knee-deep with mud. The houses were built on either
side, at intervals sufficient to give space for yards and garden plots,
each homestead being enclosed with a crude picket fence. Wood and thatch
were the commonest building materials, although stone was sometimes
used; and the houses were regularly one story high, with large
vine-covered verandas. Land was abundant and cheap. Every enterprising
settler had a plot for himself, and as a rule one large field, or more,
was held for use in common. In these, the operations of ploughing,
sowing, and reaping were carefully regulated by public ordinance.
Occasionally a village drew some distinction from the proximity of a
large, well-managed estate, such as that of the opulent M. Beauvais of
Kaskaskia, in whose mill and brewery more than eighty slaves were
employed.
Agriculture was carried on somewhat extensively, and it is recorded
that, in the year 1746 alone, when there was a shortage of foodstuffs at
New Orleans, the Illinois settlers were able to send thither "upward of
eight hundred thousand weight of flour." Hunting and trading, however,
continued to be the principal occupations; and the sugar, indigo,
cotton, and other luxuries which the people were able to import directly
from Europe were paid for mainly with consignments of furs, hides,
tallow, and beeswax. Money was practically unknown in the settlements,
so that domestic trade likewise took the form of simple barter. Periods
of industry and prosperity alternated with periods of depression, and
the easy-going habitants--"farmers, hunters, traders by turn, with a
strong admixture of unprogressive Indian blood"--tended always to
relapse into utter indolence.
Some of these French towns, however, were seats of culture; and none was
wholly barren of diversions. Kaskaskia had a Jesuit college and likewise
a monastery. Cahokia had a school for Indian youth. Fort Chartres, we
are gravely told, was "the center of life and fashion in the West." If
everyday existence was humdrum, the villagers had always the opportunity
for voluble conversation "each from his own balcony"; and there were
scores of Church festivals, not to mention birthdays, visits of
travelers or neighbors, and homecomings of hunters and traders, which
invited to festivity. Balls and dances and other merrymakings at which
the whole village assembled supplied the wants of a people proverbially
fond of amusement. Indeed, French civilization in the Mississippi and
Illinois country was by no means without charm.
Kaskaskia, in the wonderfully fertile "American Bottom," maintained its
existence, in spite of the cession to the English, as did also Vincennes
farther east on the Wabash. Fort Chartres, a stout fortification whose
walls were more than two feet thick, remained the seat of the principal
garrison, and some traces of French occupancy survived on the Illinois.
Cahokia was deserted, save for the splendid mission-farm of St. Sulpice,
with its thirty slaves, its herd of cattle, and its mill, which the
fathers before returning to France sold to a thrifty Frenchman not
averse to becoming an English subject. A few posts were abandoned
altogether. Some of the departing inhabitants went back to France; some
followed the French commandant, Neyon de Villiers, down the river to New
Orleans; many gathered up their possessions, even to the frames and
clapboards of their houses, and took refuge in the new towns which
sprang up on the western bank. One of these new settlements was Ste.
Geneviève, strategically located near the lead mines from which the
entire region had long drawn its supplies of shot. Another, which was
destined to greater importance, was St. Louis, established as a trading
post on the richly wooded bluffs opposite Cahokia by Pierre Laclède in
1764.
Associated with Laclède in his fur-trading operations at the new post
was a lithe young man named Pierre Chouteau. In 1846--eighty-two years
afterwards--Francis Parkman sat on the spacious veranda of Pierre
Chouteau's country house near the city of St. Louis and heard from the
lips of the venerable merchant stories of Pontiac, Saint-Ange, Croghan,
and all the western worthies, red and white, of two full generations.
"Not all the magic of a dream," the historian remarks, "nor the
enchantments of an Arabian tale, could outmatch the waking realities
which were to rise upon the vision of Pierre Chouteau. Where, in his
youth, he had climbed the woody bluff, and looked abroad on prairies
dotted with bison, he saw, with the dim eye of his old age, the land
darkened for many a furlong with the clustered roofs of the western
metropolis. For the silence of the wilderness, he heard the clang and
turmoil of human labor, the din of congregated thousands; and where the
great river rolls down through the forest, in lonely grandeur, he saw
the waters lashed into foam beneath the prows of panting steamboats,
flocking to the broad levee."
Pontiac's war long kept the English from taking actual possession of the
western country. Meanwhile Saint-Ange, commanding the remnant of the
French garrison at Fort Chartres, resisted as best he could the demands
of the redskins for assistance against their common enemy and hoped
daily for the appearance of an English force to relieve him of his
difficult position. In the spring of 1764 an English officer, Major
Loftus, with a body of troops lately employed in planting English
authority in "East Florida" and "West Florida," set out from New Orleans
to take possession of the up-river settlements. A few miles above the
mouth of the Red, however, the boats were fired on, without warning,
from both banks of the stream, and many of the men were killed or
wounded. The expedition retreated down the river with all possible
speed. This display of faintheartedness won the keen ridicule of the
French, and the Governor, D'Abadie, with mock magnanimity, offered an
escort of French soldiery to protect the party on its way back to
Pensacola! Within a few months a second attempt was projected, but news
of the bad temper of the Indians caused the leader, Captain Pittman, to
turn back after reaching New Orleans.
Baffled in this direction, the new commander-in-chief, General Gage,
resolved to accomplish the desired end by an expedition from Fort Pitt.
Pontiac, however, was known to be still plotting vengeance at that time,
and it seemed advisable to break the way for the proposed expedition by
a special mission to placate the Indians. For this delicate task Sir
William Johnson selected a trader of long experience and of good
standing among the western tribes, George Croghan. Notwithstanding many
mishaps, the plan was carried out. With two boats and a considerable
party of soldiers and friendly Delawares, Croghan left Fort Pitt in May,
1765. As he descended the Ohio he carefully plotted the river's windings
and wrote out an interesting description of the fauna and flora
observed. All went well until he reached the mouth of the Wabash. There
the party was set upon by a band of Kickapoos, who killed half a dozen
of his men. Fluent apologies were at once offered. They had made the
attack, they explained, only because the French had reported that the
Indians with Croghan's band were Cherokees, the Kickapoos' most deadly
enemies. Now that their mistake was apparent, the artful emissaries
declared, their regret was indeed deep.
All of this was sheer pretense, and Croghan and his surviving followers
were kept under close guard and were carried along with the Kickapoo
band up the Wabash to Vincennes, where the trader encountered old Indian
friends who soundly rebuked the captors for their inhospitality. Croghan
knew the Indian nature too well to attempt to thwart the plans of his
"hosts." Accordingly he went on with the band to the upper Wabash post
Ouiatanon, where he received deputation after deputation from the
neighboring tribes, smoked pipes of peace, made speeches, and shook
hands with greasy warriors by the score. Here came a messenger from
Saint-Ange asking him to proceed to Fort Chartres. Here, also, Pontiac
met him, and, after being assured that the English had no intention of
enslaving the natives, declared that he would no longer stand in the
conquerors' path. Though in unexpected manner, Croghan's mission was
accomplished, and, with many evidences of favor from the natives, he
went on to Detroit and thence to Niagara, where he reported to Johnson
that the situation in the West was ripe for the establishment of English
sovereignty.
There was no reason for further delay, and Captain Thomas Sterling was
dispatched with a hundred Highland veterans to take over the
settlements. Descending the Ohio from Fort Pitt, the expedition reached
Fort Chartres just as the frosty air began to presage the coming of
winter. On October 10, 1765,--more than two and a half years after the
signing of the Treaty of Paris,--Saint-Ange made the long-desired
transfer of authority. General Gage's high-sounding proclamation was
read, the British flag was run up, and Sterling's red-coated soldiery
established itself in the citadel. In due time small detachments were
sent to Vincennes and other posts; and the triumph of the British power
over Frenchman and Indian was complete. Saint-Ange retired with his
little garrison to St. Louis, where, until the arrival of a Spanish
lieutenant-governor in 1770, he acted by common consent as chief
magistrate.
The creoles who passed under the English flag suffered little from the
change. Their property and trading interests were not molested, and the
English commandants made no effort to displace the old laws and usages.
Documents were written and records were kept in French as well as
English. The village priest and the notary retained their accustomed
places of paternal authority. The old idyllic life went on. Population
increased but little; barter, hunting, and trapping still furnished the
means of a simple subsistence; and with music, dancing, and holiday
festivities the light-hearted populace managed to crowd more pleasure
into a year than the average English frontiersman got in a lifetime.
For a year or two after the European pacification of 1763 Indian
disturbances held back the flood of settlers preparing to enter, through
the Alleghany passes, the upper valleys of the westward flowing rivers.
Neither Indian depredations nor proclamations of kings, however, could
long interpose an effectual restraint. The supreme object of the
settlers was to obtain land. Formerly there was land enough for all
along the coasts or in the nearer uplands. But population, as Franklin
computed, was doubling in twenty-five years; vacant areas had already
been occupied; and desirable lands had been gathered into great
speculative holdings. Newcomers were consequently forced to cross the
mountains--and not only newcomers, but all residents who were still
land-hungry and ambitious to better their condition.
To such the appeal of the great West was irresistible. The English
Government might indeed regard the region as a "barren waste" or a
"profitless wilderness," but not so the Scotch-Irish, Huguenot, and
Palatine homeseekers who poured by the thousands through the Chesapeake
and Delaware ports. Pushing past the settled seaboard country, these
rugged men of adventure plunged joyously into the forest depths and
became no less the founders of the coming nation than were the Pilgrims
and the Cavaliers.
Ahead of the home-builder, however, went the speculator. It has been
remarked that "from the time when Joliet and La Salle first found their
way into the heart of the great West up to the present day when far-off
Alaska is in the throes of development, 'big business' has been engaged
in western speculation." ¹ In pre-revolutionary days this speculation
took the form of procuring, by grant or purchase, large tracts of
western land which were to be sold and colonized at a profit. Franklin
was interested in a number of such projects. Washington, the Lees, and a
number of other prominent Virginians were connected with an enterprise
which absorbed the old Ohio Company; and in 1770 Washington, piloted by
Croghan, visited the Ohio country with a view to the discovery of
desirable areas. Eventually he acquired western holdings amounting to
thirty-three thousand acres, with a water-front of sixteen miles on the
Ohio and of forty miles on the Great Kanawha.
¹ Alvord, Mississippi Valley in British Politics, vol. I, p.86.
In 1773 a company promoted by Samuel Wharton, Benjamin Franklin, William
Johnson, and a London banker, Thomas Walpole, secured the grant of two
and a half million acres between the Alleghanies and the Ohio, which was
to be the seat of a colony called Vandalia. This departure from the
policy laid down in the Proclamation of 1763 was made reluctantly, but
with a view to giving a definite western limit to the seaboard
provinces. The Government's purpose was fully understood in America, and
the project was warmly opposed, especially by Virginia, the chartered
claimant of the territory. The early outbreak of the Revolutionary War
wrecked the project, and nothing ever came of it--or indeed of any
colonization proposal contemporary with it. By and large, the building
of the West was to be the work, not of colonizing companies or other
corporate interests, but of individual homeseekers, moving into the new
country on their own responsibility and settling where and when their
own interests and inclinations led.