kindness and good neighborhood, and that the English and Indians must
live in love as long as the sun gave light; which done, another made a
speech to the Indians, in the name of all the sachamakers or kings;
first, to tell them what was done; next, to charge and command them to
love the Christians, and particularly to live in peace with me and the
people under my government; that many governors had been in the river;
but that no governor had come himself to live and stay here before;
and having now such an one, who had treated them well, they should
never do him or his any wrong; at every sentence of which they
shouted, and said Amen in their way....
We have agreed, that in all differences between us, six of each side
shall end the matter. Do not abuse them, but let them have justice,
and you win them.
[1] Letter from Penn to the Free Society of Traders, dated Aug.
16, 1683.
III
THE REALITY OF PENN'S TREATY
(1682)
BY GEORGE E. ELLIS[1]
There has been much discussion of late years concerning the far-famed
Treaty of Penn with the Indians. A circumstance, which has all the
interest both of fact and of poetry, was confirmed by such unbroken
testimony of tradition that history seemed to have innumerable records
of it in the hearts and memories of each generation. But as there
appears no document or parchment of such criteria as to satisfy all
inquiries, historical skepticism has ventured upon the absurd length
of calling in question the fact of the treaty. The Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, with commendable zeal, has bestowed much labor upon
the questions connected with the treaty, and the results which have
been attained can scarcely fail to satisfy a candid inquirer. All
claim to a peculiar distinction for William Penn, on account of the
singularity of his just proceedings in this matter is candidly waived,
because the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English had previously dealt
thus justly with the natives. It is in comparison with Pizarro and
Cortés that the colonists of all other nations in America appear to an
advantage; but the fame of William Penn stands, and ever will stand,
preeminent for unexceptionable justice and peace in his relations with
the natives.
Penn had several meetings for conference and treaties with the
Indians, besides those which he held for the purchase of lands. But
unbroken and reverently cherished tradition, beyond all possibility of
contradition, has designated one great treaty held under a large
elm-tree, at Shackamaxon (now Kensington)[2], a treaty which Voltaire
justly characterizes as "never sworn to, and never broken." In Penn's
Letter to the Free Society of Traders, dated August 16, 1683, he
refers to his conferences with the Indians. Two deeds, conveying land
to him, are on record, both of which bear an earlier date than this
letter; namely, June 23d and July 14th of the same year. He had
designed to make a purchase in May; but having been called off to a
conference with Lord Baltimore, he postponed the business till June.
The "Great Treaty" was doubtless unconnected with the purchase of
land, and was simply a treaty of amity and friendship, in confirmation
of one previously held, by Penn's direction, by Markham, on the same
spot; that being a place which the Indians were wont to use for this
purpose. It is probable that the treaty was held on the last of
November, 1682; that the Delawares, the Mingos, and other Susquehanna
tribes formed a large assembly on the occasion; that written minutes
of the conference were made, and were in possession of Governor
Gordon, who states nine conditions as belonging to them in 1728, but
are now lost; and that the substance of the treaty is given in Penn's
Letter to the Free Traders. These results are satisfactory, and are
sufficient corroborated by known facts and documents. The Great
Treaty, being distinct from a land purchase, is significantly
distinguished in history and tradition.
The inventions of romance and imagination could scarcely gather round
this engaging incident attractions surpassing in its own simple and
impressive interest. Doubtless Clarkson has given a fair
representation of it, if we merely disconnect from his account the
statement that the Indians were armed, and all that confounds the
treaty of friendship with the purchase of lands. Penn wore a sky-blue
sash of silk around his waist, as the most simple badge. The pledges
there given were to hold their sanctity "while the creeks and rivers
run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure."
While the whites preserved in written records the memory of such
covenants, the Indians had their methods for perpetuating in safe
channels their own relations. They cherished in grateful regard, they
repeated to their children and to the whites, the terms of the Great
Treaty. The Delawares called William Penn _Miquon_, in their own
language, though they seem to have adopted the name given him by the
Iroquois, _Onas_; both which terms signify a quill or pen. Benjamin
West's picture of the treaty is too imaginative for a historical
piece. He makes Penn of a figure and aspect which would become twice
the years that had passed over his head. The elm-tree was spared in
the war of the American Revolution, when there was distress for
firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel
beneath it for protection. It was prostrated by the wind on the night
of Saturday, March 3, 1810. It was of gigantic size, and the circles
around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries. A piece
of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where
it is properly commemorated. A marble monument, with suitable
inscription was "placed by the Penn Society A.D. 1827 to mark the site
of the Great Elm Tree."
[1] Mr. Ellis was a Unitarian clergyman, long pastor of a church
at Charlestown, Mass.
[2] Kensington is now a part of Philadelphia, being the northeastern
section. It lies on the Delaware River, about two miles distant
from the City Hall, and is a center of the ship-building industry.
THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT
(1682)
BY ALEXANDER JOHNSTON[1]
In December, 1686, the Hartford authorities were called upon to
measure their strength again with their old antagonist. Andros had
landed at Boston, commissioned as governor of all New England, and
bent on abrogating the charters. Following Dudley's lead, he wrote to
Treat, suggesting that by this time the trial of the writs had
certainly gone against the colony; and that the authorities would do
much to commend the colony to his majesty's good pleasure by entering
a formal surrender of the charter. The colony authorities were
possibly as well versed in the law of the case as Andros, and they
took good care to do nothing of the sort; and, as the event showed,
they thus saved the charter.
The assembly met as usual in October, 1687; but their records show
that they were in profound doubt and distress. Andros was with them,
accompanied by some sixty regular soldiers, to enforce his demand for
the charter. It is certain that he did not get it, tho the records, as
usual, are cautious enough to give no reason why. Tradition is
responsible for the story of the charter oak. The assembly had met the
royal governor in the meeting-house; the demand for the charter had
been made; and the assembly had exhausted the resources of language to
show to Andros how dear it was to them, and how impossible it was to
give it up. Andros was immovable; he had watched that charter with
longing eyes from the banks of the Hudson, and he had no intention of
giving up his object now that the king had put him in power on the
banks of the Connecticut.
Toward evening the case had become desperate. The little democracy was
at last driven into a corner, where its old policy seemed no longer
available; it must resist openly, or make a formal surrender of its
charter. Just as the lights were lighted, the legal authorities
yielded so far as to order the precious document to be brought in and
laid on the table before the eyes of Andros. Then came a little more
debate. Suddenly the lights were blown out; Captain Wadsworth, of
Hartford, carried off the charter, and hid it in a hollow oak-tree on
the estate of the Wyllyses, just across the "riveret;" and when the
lights were relighted the colony was no longer able to comply with
Andros's demand for a surrender.
Altho the account of the affair is traditional, it is difficult to
see any good grounds for impeaching it on that account. It supplies,
in the simplest and most natural manner, a blank in the Hartford
proceedings of Andros which would otherwise be quite unaccountable.
His plain purpose was to force Connecticut into a position where she
must either surrender the charter or resist openly. He failed: the
charter never was in his possession; and the official records assign
no reason for his failure. The colony was too prudent, and Andros too
proud to put the true reason on record. Tradition supplies the gap
with an exactness which proves itself.
Having done all that men could do, Treat and his associates bowed for
the time to superior force. Andros was allowed to read his commission,
and Treat, Fitz-John and Wait Winthrop, and John Allyn received
appointments as members of his council for New England. John Allyn
made what the governor doubtless considered to be the closing record
for all time. But it is noteworthy that the record was so written as
to flatter Andros's vanity, while it really put in terms a declaration
of over-powering force, on which the commonwealth finally succeeded in
saving her charter from invalidation, it is as follows:
"At a General Court at Hartford, October 31st, 1887, his excellency,
Sir Edmund Andross, knight and Captain General and Governor of His
Majesty's territories and dominions in New England, by order of His
Majesty James the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, and
Ireland, the 31st of October, 1687, took into his hands the
government of the colony of Connecticut, it being by His Majesty
annexed to Massachusetts and other colonies under his excellency's
government.
"FINIS."
The government was destined to last far longer than either the governor
or his government. But, while it lasted, Andros's government was
bitterly hated, and with good reason. The reasons are more peculiarly
appropriate to the history of Massachusetts, where they were felt more
keenly than in Connecticut; but even in Connecticut, poor as was the
field for plunder, and distant as it was from the "ring" which
surrounded Andros, the exactions of the new system were wellnigh
intolerable to a people whose annual expense of government had been
carefully kept down to the lowest limits, so that, says Bancroft, they
"did not exceed four thousand dollars; and the wages of the chief
justice were ten shillings a day while on service."...
April, 1689, came at last. The people of Boston, at the first news of
the English Revolution, clapped Andros into custody. May 9, the old
Connecticut authorities quietly resumed their functions, and called the
assembly together for the following month. William and Mary were
proclaimed with great favor. Not a word was said about the
disappearance or reapeparance of the charter; but the charter
government was put into full effect again, as if Andros had never
interrupted it. An address was sent to the king, asking that the
charter be no further interfered with; but operations under it went on
as before. No decided action was taken by the home government for some
years, except that its appointment of the New York governor, Fletcher,
to the command of the Connecticut militia, implied a decision that the
Connecticut charter had been superseded.
Late in 1693 Fitz-John Winthrop was sent to England as agent to obtain
a confirmation of the charter. He secured an emphatic legal opinion
from Attorney General Somers, backed by those of Treby and Ward, that
the charter was entirely valid, Treby's concurrent opinion taking this
shape: "I am of the same opinion, and, as this matter is stated, there
is no ground of doubt." The basis of the opinion was that the charter
had been granted under the great seal; that it had not been surrendered
under the common seal of the colony, nor had any judgment of record
been entered against it; that its operation had merely been interfered
with by overpowering force; that the charter therefore remained valid;
and that the peaceable submission of the colony to Andros was merely an
illegal suspension of lawful authority. In other words, the passive
attitude of the colonial government had disarmed Andros so far as to
stop the legal proceedings necessary to forfeit the charter; and then
prompt action, at the critical moment, secured all that could be
secured under the circumstances. William was willing enough to retain
all possible fruits of James's tyranny, as he showed by enforcing the
forfeiture of the Massachusetts charter; but the law in this case was
too plain, and he ratified the lawyers' opinion in April, 1694. The
charter had escaped its enemies at last, and its escape is a monument
of one of the advantages of a real democracy.
[1] From Johnston's "History of Connecticut." By permission of,
and by arrangement with, the authorized publishers, Houghton,
Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1887, by Alexander Johnston.
THE COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA
(1699)
BY CHARLES E.T. GAYARRE[1]
On February 27, 1699, Iberville and Bienville reached the Mississippi.
When they approached its mouth they were struck with the gloomy
magnificence of the sight. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was
to be seen but reeds which rose five or six feet above the waters in
which they bathed their roots. They waved mournfully under the blast of
the sharp wind of the north, shivering in its icy grasp, as it tumbled,
rolled, and gambolled on the pliant surface. Multitudes of birds of
strange appearance, with their elongated shapes so lean that they
looked like metamorphosed ghosts, clothed in plumage, screamed in the
air, as if they were scared of one another. There was something
agonizing in their shrieks that was in harmony with the desolation of
the place. On every side of the vessel, monsters of the deep and huge
alligators heaved themselves up heavily from their native or favorite
element, and, floating lazily on the turbid waters, seemed to gaze at
the intruders....
It was a relief for the adventurers when, after having toiled up the
river for ten days, they at last arrived at the village of the
Bayagoulas. There they found a letter of Tonty to La Salle, dated in
1685. The letter, or rather that "speaking bark" as the Indians called
it, had been preserved with great reverence. Tonty, having been
informed that La Salle was coming with a fleet from France to settle a
colony on the banks of the Mississippi, had not hesitated to set off
from the northern lakes, with twenty Canadians and thirty Indians, and
to come down to the Balize to meet his friend, who had failed to make
out the mouth of the Mississippi, and had been landed by Beaujeu on the
shores of Texas. After having waited for some time, and ignorant of
what had happened, Tonty, with the same indifference to fatigues and
dangers of an appalling nature, retraced his way back, leaving a letter
to La Salle to inform him of his disappointment. Is there not something
extremely romantic in the characters of the men of that epoch? Here is
Tonty undertaking, with the most heroic unconcern, a journey of nearly
three thousand miles, through such difficulties as it is easy for us to
imagine, and leaving a letter to La Salle, as a proof of his visit, in
the same way that one would, in these degenerate days of effeminacy,
leave a card at a neighbor's house.
The French extended their explorations up to the mouth of the Red
River. On their return the two brothers separated when they arrived at
Bayou Manchac. Bienville was ordered to go down the river to the French
fleet, to give information of what they had seen and heard. Iberville
went through Bayou Manchac to those lakes which are known under the
names of Pontchartrain and Maurepas. Louisiana had been named from a
king: was it not in keeping that those lakes should be called after
ministers?
From the Bay of St. Louis, Ibervile returned to his fleet, where, after
consultation, he determined to make a settlement at the Bay of Biloxi.
On the east side, at the mouth of the bay, as it were, there is a
slight swelling of the shore, about four acres square, sloping gently
to the woods in the background, and on the bay. Thus this position was
fortified by nature, and the French skilfully availed themselves of
these advantages. The weakest point, which was on the side of the
forest, they strengthened with more care than the rest, by connecting
with a strong intrenchment the two ravines, which ran to the bay in a
parallel line to each other. The fort was constructed with four
bastions, and was armed with twelve pieces of artillery....
A few huts having been erected round the fort, the settlers began to
clear the land, in order to bring it into cultivation. Iberville having
furnished them with all the necessary provisions, utensils, and other
supplies, prepared to sail for France.... As the country had been
ordered to be explored, Sauvolle availed himself of that circumstance
to refresh the minds of his men by the excitement of an expedition into
the interior of the continent. He therefore hastened to dispatch most
of them with Bienville, who, with a chief of the Bayagoulas for his
guide, went to visit the Colapissas. They inhabited the northern shore
of Lake Pontchartrain, and their domains embraced the sites now
occupied by Lewisburg, Mandeville, and Fontainebleau....
Ibervile had been gone for several months, and the year was drawing to
a close without any tidings of him. A deeper gloom had settled over the
little colony at Biloxi, when, on December 7th, some signal-guns were
heard at sea, and the grateful sound came booming over the waters,
spreading joy in every breast.... It was Iberville returning with the
news that, on his representations, Sauvolle had been appointed by the
King governor of Louisiana; Bienville, lieutenant-governor; and
Boisbriant, commander of the fort at Biloxi, with the grade of major.
Iberville, having been informed by Bienville of the attempt of the
English to make a settlement on the banks of the Mississippi, and of
the manner in which it had been foiled, resolved to take precautionary
measures against the repetition of any similar attempt. Without loss of
time he departed with Bienville, on January 16, 1700, and running up
the river, he constructed a small fort, on the first solid ground which
he met, and which is said to have been at a distance of fifty-four
miles from its mouth.
When so engaged the two brothers one day saw a canoe rapidly sweeping
down the river and approaching the spot where they stood. It was
occupied by eight men, six of whom were rowers, the seventh was the
steersman, and the eighth, from his appearance, was evidently of a
superior order to that of his companions, and the commander of the
party. Well may it be imagined what greeting the stranger received,
when leaping on shore he made himself known as the Chevalier de Tonty,
who had again heard of the establishment of a colony in Louisiana, and
who, for the second time, had come to see if there was any truth in the
report. With what emotion did Therville and Bienville fold in their
arms the faithful companion and friend of La Salle, of whom they had
heard so many wonderful tales from the Indians, to whom he was so well
known under the name of "Iron Hand!" With what admiration they looked
at his person, and with what increasing interest they listened to his
long recitals of what he had done and had seen on that broad continent,
the threshold of which they had hardly passed!
After having rested three days at the fort, the indefatigable Tonty
reascended the Mississippi, with Ibervile and Bienvile, and finally
parted with them at Natchez. Iberville was so much pleased with that
part of the bank of the river where now exists the city of Natchez that
he marked it down as a most eligible spot for a town, of which he drew
the plan, and which he called Rosalie, after the maiden name of the
Countess Pontchartrain, the wife of the chancellor. He then returned to
the new fort he was erecting on the Mississippi, and Bienville went to
explore the country of the Yatasses, of the Natchitoehes, and of the
Ouachitas. What romance can be more agreeable to the imagination than
to accompany Iberville and Bienville in their wild explorations, and to
compare the state of the country in their time with what it is in our
days?...
After these explorations Iberville departed again for France, to
solicit additional assistance from the government, and left Bienville
in command of the new fort on the Mississippi. It was very hard for the
two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, to be thus separated, when they
stood so much in need of each other's countenance, to breast the
difficulties that sprung up around them with a luxuriance which they
seemed to borrow from the vegetation of the country. The distance
between the Mississippi and Biloxi was not so easily overcome in those
days as in ours, and the means which the two brothers had of communing
together were very scanty and uncertain.
Sauvolle died August 22, 1701, and Louisiana remained under the sole
charge of Bienville, who, tho very young, was fully equal to meet that
emergency, by the maturity of his mind and by his other qualifications.
He had hardly consigned his brother to the tomb when Iberville returned
with two ships of the line and a brig laden with troops and provisions.
According to Iberville's orders, and in conformity with the King's
instructions, Bienville left Boisbriant, his cousin, with twenty men,
at the old fort of Biloxi, and transported the principal seat of the
colony to the western side of the river Mobile, not far from the spot
where now stands the city of Mobile. Near the mouth of that river there
is an island, which the French had called Massacre Island from the
great quantity of human bones which they found bleaching on its shores.
It was evident that there some awful tragedy had been acted; but
Tradition, when interrogated, laid her choppy fingers upon her skinny
lips, and answered not....
The year 1703 slowly rolled by and gave way to 1704. Still, nothing was
heard from the parent country. There seemed to be an impassable barrier
between the old and the new continent. The milk which flowed from the
motherly breast of France could no longer reach the parched lips of her
new-born infant; and famine began to pinch the colonists, who scattered
themselves all along the coast, to live by fishing. They were reduced
to the veriest extremity of misery, and despair had settled in every
bosom, in spite of the encouragements of Bienville, who displayed the
most manly fortitude amid all the trials to which he was subjected....
Iberville had not been able to redeem his pledge to the poor colonists,
but he sent his brother Chateaugué in his place, at the imminent risk
of being captured by the English, who occupied, at that time, most of
the avenues of the Gulf of Mexico. He was not the man to spare either
himself or his family in cases of emergency, and his heroic soul was
inured to such sacrifices. Grateful the colonists were for this act of
devotedness, and they resumed the occupation of their tenements which
they had abandoned in search of food. The aspect of things was suddenly
changed; abundance and hope reappeared in the land, whose population
was increased by the arrival of seventeen persons, who came, under the
guidance of Chateaugue, with the intention of making a permanent
settlement, and who had provided themselves with all the implements of
husbandry.