The Valley Of The Ohio
Almost at the moment in 1749 when British ships were lying at anchor in
Halifax harbor and sending to shore hundreds of boatloads of dazed and
expectant settlers for the new colony, there had set out from Montreal,
in the interests of France, an expedition with designs so far-reaching
that we wonder still at the stupendous issues involved in efforts which
seem so petty. The purpose of France was now to make good her claim to
the whole vast West. It was a picturesque company which pushed its
canoes from the shore at Lachine on the 15th of June, six days before
the British squadron reached Halifax. There was a procession of
twenty-three great birchbark canoes well filled, for in them were more
than two hundred men, at least ten in each canoe, together with the
necessary impedimenta for a long journey. There were twenty soldiers in
uniform, a hundred and eighty Canadians skilled in paddling and in
carrying canoes and freight over the portages, a band of Indians, and
fourteen officers with Céloron de Blainville at their head.
The acting Governor of Canada at this time was a dwarf in physique, but
a giant in intellect, the brilliant naval officer, the Marquis de la
Galissonière, destined later to inflict upon the English in the
Mediterranean the naval defeat which caused the execution of Admiral
Byng as a coward. This remarkable man--planning, like his predecessor
Frontenac, on a scale suited to world politics--saw that the peace of
1748 settled nothing, that in the balance now was the whole future of
North America, and that victory would be to the alert and the strong. He
chose Céloron, the most capable of the hardy young Canadian noblesse
whom he had at hand, a man accustomed to the life of the forest, and
sent with him this large party to assert against the English the right
of France to the valley of the Ohio. The English were now to be shut out
definitely from advancing westward and to be confined to the strip of
territory lying between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany Mountains,
a little more than that strip fifty miles wide talked about in Quebec as
the maximum concession of France, but still not very much according to
the ideas of the English, and even this not secure if France should ever
grow strong enough to crowd them out.
At no time do we find more vivid the contrast in type between the two
nations. Before a concrete fact the British take action. When they gave
up Louisbourg they built Halifax. Their traders had pressed into the
Ohio country, not directed under any grandiose idea of empire, but
simply as individuals, to trade and reap for themselves what profit they
could. When they were checked and menaced by the French, they saw that
something must be done. How they did it we shall see presently. It was
the weakness of the English colonies that they could not unite to work
out a great plan. If Virginia took steps to advance westward,
Pennsylvania was jealous lest lands which she desired should go to a
rival colony. France, on the other hand, had complete unity of design.
Céloron spoke in the name of the King of France and he spoke in terms
uncompromising enough. "The Ohio," said the King of France through his
agent, "belongs to me." It is a French river. The lands bordering upon
it are "my lands." The English intruders are foreign robbers and not one
of them is to be left in the western country: "I will not endure the
English on my land." The Indians, dwelling in that region, are "my
children."
Scattered over the vast region about the Great Lakes were a good many
French. At the lower end of Lake Ontario stood Fort Frontenac, a menace
to the colony of New York, as the dwellers in the British post of Oswego
on the opposite shore of the lake well knew. We have already seen that
the French held a fort at Niagara guarding the route leading farther
west to Lake Erie and to regions beyond Lake Erie, by way of the Ohio or
the upper lakes, to the Mississippi. Near the mouth of the Mississippi,
New Orleans was now becoming a considerable town with a governor
independent of the governor at Quebec. Along the Mississippi at
strategic points stretching northward beyond the mouth of the Missouri
were a few French settlements, ragged enough and with a shiftless
population of fur traders and farmers, but adequate to assert France's
possession of that mighty highway. The weak point in France's position
was in her connection of the Mississippi with the St. Lawrence by way of
the Ohio. This was the place of danger, for here English rivalry was
strongest, and it was to cure this weakness that Céloron was now sent
forth.
Céloron moved toilsomely over the portage which led past the great
cataract of Niagara and launched his canoes on Lake Erie. From its south
shore, during seven days of heart-breaking labor, the party dragged the
canoes and supplies through dense forest and over steep hills until they
reached Chautauqua Lake, the waters of which flow into the Allegheny
River and by it to the Ohio. For many weary days they went with the
current, stopping at Indian villages, treating with the savages, who
were sometimes awed and sometimes menacing. They warned the Indians to
have no dealings with the scheming English who would "infallibly prove
to be robbers," and asserted as boldly as Céloron dared the lordship of
the King of France and his love for his forest children. Céloron
realized that he was on an historic mission. At several points on the
Ohio, with great ceremony, he buried leaden plates, as La Vérendrye had
done a few years earlier in the far West, bearing an inscription
declaring that, in the name of the King of France, he took possession of
the country. On trees over these memorials of lead he nailed the arms of
France, stamped on sheets of tin. Since that day at least three of the
plates have been found.
Céloron's expedition went well enough. He advanced as far west on the
Ohio as the mouth of the Great Miami River, then up that river, and by
difficult portages back to Lake Erie. It was a remarkable journey; but
in the late autumn he was back again in Montreal, not sure that he had
achieved much. The natives of the country were, he thought, hostile to
France and devoted to the English who had long traded with them. This
opinion was in truth erroneous, for, when the time of testing came, the
Indians of the West fought on the side of France. Montcalm had many
hundreds of them under his banner. The expedition meant the definite and
final throwing down of the gauntlet by France. With all due ceremony she
had declared that the Ohio country was hers and that there she would
allow no English to dwell.
Legardeur de Saint-Pierre could hardly have known, when he left the hard
region of the Saskatchewan in 1752, that a year later he would be sent
to protect another set of outposts of France in the West. In 1753 we
find him in command of the French forces in the Ohio country. Céloron
had been sent to Detroit. If Saint-Pierre had played his part feebly on
the Saskatchewan, he was now made for a brief period one of the central
figures in the opening act of a world drama. It is with a touch of
emotion that we see on the stage, as the opponent of this not great
Frenchman, the momentous figure of George Washington.
The fight for North America was now rapidly approaching its final phase
in the struggle which we know as the Seven Years' War. During forty
years, commissioners of the two nations had been trying to reach some
agreement as to boundaries. Each side, however, made impossible demands.
France claimed all the lands drained by the St. Lawrence and the Great
Lakes and by the Mississippi and its tributaries--a claim which, if made
good, would have carried her into the very heart of the colony of New
York and would have given her also the mastery of the Ohio and the
regions beyond. Britain claimed all the lands ever occupied by the
Iroquois Indians, who had been recognized as British subjects by the
Treaty of Utrecht. As those Indians had overrun regions north of the St.
Lawrence, the British thus would become masters of a good part of
Canada. Neither side was prepared for reasonable compromise. The sword
was to be the final arbiter.
Events moved rapidly towards war. In 1753 Duquesne, the new Governor of
Canada, sent more than a thousand men to build Fort Le Bœuf, on upper
waters flowing to the Ohio and within easy reach of support by way of
Lake Erie. In the next year the French were swarming in the Ohio Valley,
stirring up the Indians against the English and confident of success.
They jeered at the divisions among the English and believed their own
unity so strong that they could master the colonies one by one. The two
colonies most affected were Pennsylvania and Virginia, either of them
quite ready to see its own citizens advance into the Ohio country and
possess the land, but neither of them willing to unite with the other in
effective military action to protect the frontier.
It is at this crisis that there appears for the first time in history
George Washington of Virginia. In December, 1753, in the dead of winter,
he made a long, toilsome journey from Virginia to the north through snow
and rain, by difficult forest trails, over two ranges of mountains,
across streams sometimes frozen, sometimes dangerous from treacherous
thaws. On the way he heard gossip from the Indians about the designs of
the French. They boasted that they would come in numbers like the sands
of the seashore; that the natives would be no more an obstacle to them
than the flies and mosquitoes, which indeed they resembled; and that not
the breadth of a finger-nail of land belonged to the Indians. Washington
was told by one of the French that "it was their absolute design to take
possession of the Ohio and, by------, they would do it!" It was no
matter that the French were outnumbered two to one by the English, for
the English were dilatory and ineffective.
In the end, Washington arrived at Fort Le Bœuf and presented a letter
from Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, pointing out that
the British could not permit an armed force from Canada to invade their
territory of the Ohio and requiring that the French should leave the
country at once. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to whom this firm demand was
delivered, "an elderly gentleman," says Washington, with "much the air
of a soldier" gave, of course, a polite answer in the manner of his
nation, but he intended, he said, to remain where he was as long as he
had instructions so to do. Washington kept his eyes open and made
careful observations of the plan of the fort, the number of men, and
also of the canoes, of which he noted that there were more than two
hundred ready and many others building. The French tried to entice away
his Indians and he says, "I cannot say that ever in my life I suffered
so much anxiety." On the journey back he nearly perished when he fell
into an ice-cold stream and was obliged to spend the night on a tiny
island in frozen clothing. He brought comfort as cold to the waiting
Dinwiddie.
The French meanwhile were always a little ahead of the English in their
planning. Early in April, 1754, a French force of five or six hundred
men from Canada, which had set out while Quebec was still in the icy
grip of winter, reached the upper waters of the Ohio. They attacked and
destroyed a fort which the English had begun at the forks where now
stands Pittsburgh, and, in its place, began a formidable one, called
Fort Duquesne after the Governor of Canada. In vain was Washington sent
with a few hundred men to take possession of this fort and to assert the
claim of the English to the land. He fell in with a French scouting
party under young Coulon de Jumonville, killed its leader and nine
others, and took more than a score of prisoners--warfare bloody enough
in a time of supposed peace. But the French were now on the Ohio in
greater numbers than the English. At a spot known as the Great Meadows,
where Washington had hastily thrown up defenses, which he called Fort
Necessity, he was forced to surrender, but was allowed to lead his force
back to Virginia, defeated in the first military adventure of his
career. The French took the view that his killing of the young officer
Jumonville was assassination, since no state of war existed, and raised
a fierce clamor that Washington was a murderer--a strange contrast to
his relations with France in the years to come.
What astonishes us in regard to these events is that Britain and France
long remained nominally at peace while they were carrying on active
hostilities in America and sending from Europe armies to fight. There
were various reasons for this hesitation about plunging formally into
war. Each side wished to delay until sure of its alliances in Europe.
During the war ending in 1748 France had fought with Frederick of
Prussia against Austria, and Britain had been Austria's ally. The war
had been chiefly a land war, but France had been beaten on the sea. Now
Britain and Prussia were drawing together and, if France fought them, it
must be with Austria as an ally. Such an alliance offered France but
slight advantage. Austria, an inland power, could not help France
against an adversary whose strength was on the sea; she could not aid
the designs of France in America or in India, where the capable French
leader Dupleix was in a fair way to build up a mighty oriental empire.
Nor had France anything to gain in Europe from an Austrian alliance. The
shoe was on the other foot. The supreme passion of Maria Theresa who
ruled Austria was to recover the province of Silesia which had been
seized in 1740 by Prussia and held--held to this day. Austria could do
little for France but France could do much for Austria. So Austria
worked for this alliance. It is a story of intrigue. Usually in France
the King carried on negotiations with foreign countries only through his
ministers, who knew the real interests of France. Now the astute
Austrian statesman, Kaunitz, went past the ministers of Louis XV to
Louis himself. This was the heyday of Madame de Pompadour, the King's
mistress. Maria Theresa condescended to intrigue with this woman whom in
her heart she despised. There is still much mystery in the affair. The
King was flattered into thinking that personally he was swaying the
affairs of Europe and took delight in deceiving his ministers and
working behind their backs. While events in America were making war
between France and Britain inevitable, France was being tied to an ally
who could give her little aid. She must spend herself to fight Austria's
battles on the land, while her real interests required that she should
build up her fleet to fight on the sea the great adversary across the
English Channel.
The destiny of North America might, indeed, well have been other than it
is. A France strong on the sea, able to bring across to America great
forces, might have held, at any rate, her place on the St. Lawrence and
occupied the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. We can hardly
doubt that the English colonies, united by a common deadly peril, could
have held against France most of the Atlantic coast. But she might well
have divided with them North America; and today the lands north of the
Ohio and westward beyond the Ohio to the Pacific Ocean might have been
French. The two nations on the brink of war in 1754 were playing for
mighty stakes; and victory was to the power which had control of the
sea. France had a great army, Britain a great fleet. In this contrast
lay wrapped the secret of the future of North America.
As the crisis drew near the vital thought about the future of America
was found, not in America, but in Europe. The English colonies were so
accustomed to distrust each other that, when Virginia grew excited about
French designs on the Ohio, Pennsylvania or North Carolina was as likely
as not to say that it was the French who were in the right and a stupid,
or excitable, or conceited, colonial governor who was in the wrong. In
Paris and London, on the other hand, there were no illusions about
affairs in America. In both capitals it was realized that a grim fight
was on. During the winter of 1754-55 extensive preparations were being
made on both sides. France equipped an army under Baron Dieskau to go to
Canada; Britain equipped one under General Braddock to go to Virginia.
Each nation asked the other why it was sending troops to America and
each gave the assurance of benevolent designs. But in the spring of 1755
a British fleet under Admiral Boscawen put to sea with instructions to
capture any French vessels bound for North America. At the same time the
two armies were on the way across the Atlantic. Dieskau went to Canada,
Braddock to Virginia, each instructed to attack the other side, while in
the meantime ambassadors at the two courts gave bland assurances that
their only thought was to preserve peace.
The English colonists showed a political blindness that amounted to
imbecility. Albany was the central point from which the dangers on all
sides might best be surveyed. Here came together in the summer of 1754
delegates from seven of the colonies to consider the common peril. The
French were busy in winning, as they did, the support of the many Indian
tribes of the West; and the old allies of the English, the Iroquois,
were nervous for their own safety. The delegates to Albany, tied and
bound by instructions from their Assemblies, had to listen to plain
words from the savages. The one Englishman who, in dealing with the
Indians, had tact and skill equal to that of Frontenac of old, was an
Irishman, Sir William Johnson. To him the Iroquois made indignant
protests that the English were as ready as the French to rob them of
their lands. If we find a bear in a tree, they said, some one will
spring up to claim that the tree belongs to him and keep us from
shooting the bear. The French, they added, are at least men who are
prepared to fight; you weak and unprepared English are like women and
any day the French may turn you out. Benjamin Franklin told the
delegates that they must unite to meet a common enemy. Unite, however,
they would not. No one of them would surrender to a central body any
authority through which the power of the King over them might be
increased. The Congress--the word is full of omen for the future--failed
to bring about the much-needed union.
In February, 1755, Braddock arrived in Virginia with his army, and early
in May he was on his march across the mountains with regulars, militia,
and Indians, to the number of nearly fifteen hundred men, to attack Fort
Duquesne and to rid the Ohio Valley of the French. He knew little of
forest warfare with its use of Indian scouts, its ambushes, its fighting
from the cover of trees. On the 9th of July, on the Monongahela River,
near Fort Duquesne, in a struggle in the forest against French and
Indians he was defeated and killed. George Washington was in the fight
and had to report to Dinwiddie the dismal record of what had happened.
The frontier was aflame; and nearly all the Indians of the West, seeing
the rising star, went over to the French. The power of France was, for
the time, supreme in the heart of the continent. At that moment even far
away in the lone land about the Saskatchewan, the English trader,
Hendry, had to admit that the French knew better than the English how to
attract the support of the savage tribes.
Meanwhile Dieskau had arrived at Quebec. In the colony of New York Sir
William Johnson, the rough and cheery Irishman, much loved of the
Iroquois, was gathering forces to attack Canada. Early in July, 1755,
Johnson had more than three thousand provincial troops at Albany, a
motley horde of embattled farmers, most of them with no uniforms,
dressed in their own homespun, carrying their own muskets, electing
their own officers, and altogether, from the strict soldier's point of
view, a rabble rather than an army. To meet this force and destroy it if
he could, Dieskau took to the French fort at Crown Point, on Lake
Champlain, and southward from there to Ticonderoga at the head of this
lake, some three thousand five hundred men, including his French
regulars, some Canadians and Indians. Johnson's force lay at Fort
George, later Fort William Henry, the most southerly point on Lake
George. The names, given by Johnson himself, show how the dull
Hanoverian kings and their offspring were held in honor by the Irish
diplomat who was looking for favors at court. The two armies met on the
shores of Lake George early in September and there was an all-day fight.
Each side lost some two hundred men. Among those who perished on the
French side was Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who had escaped all the
perils of the western wilderness to meet his fate in this border
struggle. The honors of the day seem to have been with Johnson, for the
French were driven off and Dieskau himself, badly wounded, was taken
prisoner. That Johnson had great difficulty in keeping his savages from
burning alive and then boiling and eating Dieskau and smoking his flesh
in their pipes, in revenge for some of their chiefs killed in the fight,
shows what an alliance with Indians meant.
There was small gain to the English from Johnson's success. He was too
cautious to advance towards Canada; and, as winter came on, he broke up
his camp and sent his men to their homes. The colonies had no permanent
military equipment. Each autumn their forces were dissolved to be
reorganized again in the following spring, a lame method of waging war.
For three years longer in the valley of the Ohio, as elsewhere, the star
of France remained in the ascendant. It began to decline only when,
farther east, on the Atlantic, superior forces sent out from England
were able to check the French. During the summer of 1758, while Wolfe
and Boscawen were pounding the walls of Louisbourg, seven thousand
troops led by General Forbes, Colonel George Washington, and Colonel
Henry Bouquet, pushed their way through the wilds beyond the Alleghanies
and took possession of the Ohio. The French destroyed Fort Duquesne and
fled. On the 25th of November the English occupied the place and named
it "Pitts-Bourgh" in honor of their great war minister.