=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE=
Footnotes have been placed at the end of their respective chapters.
A
HISTORY OF CANADA
1763-1812
BY
SIR C. P. LUCAS, K.C.M.G., C.B.
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1909
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
PREFACE
My warm thanks are due to Mr. C. T. Atkinson, M.A., of Exeter
College, Oxford, who most kindly read through the proofs of the
chapter on the War of American Independence and made some valuable
corrections; and also to Mr. C. Atchley, I.S.O., Librarian of the
Colonial Office, who has given me constant help. Two recent and
most valuable books have greatly facilitated the study of Canadian
history since 1763, viz., _Documents relating to the Constitutional
History of Canada, 1759-91_, selected and edited with notes
by Messrs. Shortt and Doughty, and _Canadian Constitutional
Development_, by Messrs. Egerton and Grant. I want to express my
grateful acknowledgements of the help which these books have given
to me.
C. P. LUCAS.
_December, 1908._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763, AND PONTIAC’S WAR 1
CHAPTER II
CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE QUEBEC
ACT 30
CHAPTER III
THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 90
CHAPTER IV
THE TREATY OF 1783 AND THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS 208
CHAPTER V
LORD DORCHESTER AND THE CANADA ACT OF 1791 236
CHAPTER VI
SIR JAMES CRAIG 298
APPENDIX I
TREATY OF PARIS, 1783 321
APPENDIX II
THE BOUNDARY LINE OF CANADA 327
LIST OF MAPS
1. MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763 _To face_ p. 1
2. CANADA UNDER THE QUEBEC ACT ” 81
*3. PLAN OF THE CITY AND ENVIRONS OF QUEBEC ” 112
4. MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE BORDER WARS ” 145
*5. A MAP OF THE COUNTRY IN WHICH THE ARMY UNDER
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL BURGOYNE ACTED IN THE
CAMPAIGN OF 1777 ” 161
6. THE TWO CANADAS UNDER THE CONSTITUTIONAL
ACT OF 1791 ” 257
7. MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE BOUNDARY OF CANADA ” 321
8. MAP OF EASTERN CANADA AND PART OF THE UNITED
STATES _End of book._
*Reproductions of contemporary maps.
[Illustration:
_to face page 1_
=CANADA=
by the
Proclamation of =1763=
From a map of 1776, in the Colonial Office Library
B. V. Barbishire, Oxford, 1908
]
HISTORY OF CANADA, 1763-1812
CHAPTER I
THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763, AND PONTIAC’S WAR
[Sidenote: The Peace of Paris.]
On the 10th of February, 1763, the Peace of Paris was signed
between Great Britain, France, and Spain. Under its provisions
all North America, east of the Mississippi, which had been owned
or claimed by France, was, with the exception of the city of New
Orleans, transferred to Great Britain, the navigation of the
Mississippi being thrown open to the subjects of both Powers. The
English also received Florida from Spain, in return for Havana
given back to its old owners. Under a treaty secretly concluded in
November, 1762, when the preliminaries of the general treaty were
signed, Spain took over from France New Orleans and Louisiana west
of the Mississippi, the actual transfer being completed in 1769.
Thus France lost all hold on the North American continent, while
retaining various West Indian islands, and fishing rights on part
of the Newfoundland coast, which were supplemented by possession of
the two adjacent islets of St. Pierre and Miquelon.
[Sidenote: The Proclamation of 1763.]
In the autumn of the year 1763, on the 7th of October, King George
III issued a proclamation constituting ‘within the countries
and islands, ceded and confirmed to us by the said treaty, four
distinct and separate governments, styled and called by the names
of Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada’. Of these
four governments, the first alone requires special notice. The
government of Grenada was in the West Indies, and the governments
of East and West Florida, excluding a debatable strip of territory
which was annexed to the State of Georgia, were co-extensive with
the new province which had been acquired from Spain.
[Sidenote: Boundaries of the government of Quebec.]
The limits assigned by the proclamation to the government of Quebec
were as follows: north of the St. Lawrence, the new province was
‘bounded on the Labrador coast by the river St. John, and from
thence by a line drawn from the head of that river, through the
Lake St. John, to the south end of the Lake Nipissim’. The river
St. John flows into the St. Lawrence over against the western
end of the island of Anticosti; Lake St. John is the lake out of
which the Saguenay takes its course; Lake Nipissim or Nipissing is
connected by French river with Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. The
line in question, therefore, was drawn due south-west from Lake
St. John parallel to the St. Lawrence.[1] From the southern end of
Lake Nipissim the line, according to the terms of the proclamation,
crossed the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain in 45 degrees of north
latitude. In other words, it was drawn due south-east, to the
west of and parallel to the Ottawa river, until it struck the St.
Lawrence, where the 45th parallel of north latitude meets that
river at the foot of the Long Sault Rapids. It then followed the
45th parallel eastward across the outlet of Lake Champlain, and
subsequently, diverging to the north-east, was carried ‘along
the highlands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into
the said river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the sea’.
Further east it skirted ‘the north coast of the Baye des Chaleurs
and the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosieres’, which
last named cape is at the extreme end of the Gaspé peninsula. The
line then again crossed the St. Lawrence by the western end of the
island of Anticosti, and joined the river St. John.
Thus, south of the St. Lawrence, the boundary of the province
of Quebec was, roughly speaking, much the same as it is at the
present day. Its westernmost limit was also not far different, the
Ottawa river being in the main the existing boundary between the
provinces of Ontario and Quebec. On the north and north-east, on
the other hand, the government of Quebec in 1763 covered a smaller
area than is now the case. ‘To the end that the open and free
fishery of our subjects may be extended to and carried on upon the
coast of Labrador and the adjacent islands,’ ran the terms of the
proclamation, ‘we have thought fit, with the advice of our said
Privy Council, to put all that coast from the river St. John’s
to Hudson’s Straits, together with the islands of Anticosti and
Madelaine, and all other smaller islands lying upon the said coast,
under the care and inspection of our Governor of Newfoundland.’ To
the government of Nova Scotia were annexed the conquered islands of
St. Jean or St. John’s, now Prince Edward Island, and Isle Royale
or Cape Breton, ‘with the lesser islands adjacent thereto.’
[Sidenote: Encouragement of military and naval settlers.]
[Sidenote: Provision for a legislature and for the administration
of justice.]
It was greatly desired to encourage British settlement in North
America, and special regard was had in this respect to the
soldiers and sailors who in North American lands and waters had
deserved so well of their country. Accordingly the proclamation
contained a special provision for grants of land, within the
old and the new colonies alike, to retired officers of the army
who had served in North America during the late war; to private
soldiers who had been disbanded in and were actually living in
North America; and to retired officers of the navy who had served
in North America ‘at the times of the reduction of Louisbourg and
Quebec’. It was thought also by the Lords of Trade that confidence
and encouragement would be given to intending settlers, if at the
outset they were publicly notified of the form of government under
which they would live. Hence the proclamation provided, as regards
the new colonies, ‘that so soon as the state and circumstances of
the said colonies will admit thereof,’ the governors ‘shall, with
the advice and consent of the members of our Council, summon and
call General Assemblies within the said governments respectively,
in such manner and form as is used and directed in those colonies
and provinces in America which are under our immediate government’.
The governors, councils, and representatives of the people, when
duly constituted, were empowered to make laws for the public
peace, welfare, and good government of the colonies, provided that
such laws should be ‘as near as may be agreeable to the laws of
England, and under such regulations and restrictions as are used
in other colonies.’ Pending the constitution of the legislatures,
the inhabitants and settlers were to enjoy the benefit of the laws
of England, and the governors were empowered, with the advice of
their councils, to establish courts of justice, to hear and decide
civil and criminal cases alike, in accordance as far as possible
with the laws of England, a right of appeal being given in civil
cases to the Privy Council in England. It was not stated in the
proclamation, but it was embodied in the governors’ instructions,
that until General Assemblies could be constituted, the governors,
with the advice of their councils, were to make rules and
regulations for peace, order, and good government, all matters
being reserved ‘that shall any ways tend to affect the life, limb,
or liberty of the subject, or to the imposing any duties or taxes’.
[Sidenote: The Western territories.]
In June, 1762, James Murray, then military governor of the district
of Quebec, and subsequently the first civil governor of the
province, wrote that it was impossible to ascertain exactly what
part of North America the French styled Canada. In the previous
March General Gage, then military governor of Montreal, had written
that he could not discover ‘that the limits betwixt Louisiana and
Canada were distinctly described, so as to be publicly known’,
but that from the trade which Canadians had carried on under the
authority of their governors, he judged ‘not only the lakes, which
are indisputable, but the whole course of the Mississippi from its
heads to its junction with the Illinois, to have been comprehended
by the French in the government of Canada’. In June, 1763, the
Lords of Trade, when in obedience to the Royal commands they were
considering the terms and the scope of the coming proclamation,
reported that ‘Canada, as possessed and claimed by the French,
consisted of an immense tract of country including as well the
whole lands to the westward indefinitely which was the subject of
their Indian trade, as all that country from the southern bank of
the river St. Lawrence, where they carried on their encroachments’.
After the Peace of Paris had been signed, the King, through Lord
Egremont, who had succeeded Chatham as Secretary of State for
the southern department, referred the whole subject of his new
colonial possessions to the Lords of Trade. In doing so he called
special attention to the necessity of keeping peace among the North
American Indians--a subject which was shortly to be illustrated by
Pontiac’s war--and to this end he laid stress upon the desirability
of protecting their persons, their property, and their privileges,
and ‘most cautiously guarding against any invasion or occupation
of their hunting lands, the possession of which is to be acquired
by fair purchase only’. The Lords of Trade recommended adoption
of ‘the general proposition of leaving a large tract of country
round the Great Lakes as an Indian country, open to trade, but
not to grants and settlements; the limits of such territory will
be sufficiently ascertained by the bounds to be given to the
governors of Canada and Florida on the north and south, and the
Mississippi on the west; and by the strict directions to be given
to Your Majesty’s several governors of your ancient colonies for
preventing their making any new grants of lands beyond certain
fixed limits to be laid down in the instructions for that purpose’.
Egremont answered that the King demurred to leaving so large a
tract of land without a civil jurisdiction and open, as being
derelict, to possible foreign intrusion; and that, in His opinion,
the commission of the Governor of Canada should include ‘all the
lakes, viz. Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior’, and ‘all
the country as far north and west as the limits of the Hudson’s
Bay Company and the Mississippi’. At the same time He cordially
concurred in not permitting grants of lands or settlements in these
regions, which should be ‘for the present left unsettled, for the
Indian tribes to hunt in, but open to a free trade for all the
colonies’. The Lords of Trade were not convinced. They deprecated
annexing this western territory to any colony, and particularly to
Canada, on three grounds: The first was that annexation to Canada
might imply that the British title to these lands was the result
of the late treaty and of the cession of Canada, whereas it rested
on antecedent rights, and it was important not to let the Indians
form a wrong impression on this head by being brought under the
government of the old French province. The second ground was that,
if the Indian territory was annexed to one particular province and
subjected to its laws, that province would have an undue advantage
over the other provinces or colonies in respect to the Indian
trade, which it was the intention of the Crown to leave open as
far as possible to all British subjects. The third objection to
annexing the territory to Canada was that the laws of the province
could not be enforced except by means of garrisons established at
different posts throughout the area, which would necessitate either
that the Governor of Canada should always be commander-in-chief
of the forces in North America, or that there should be constant
friction between the civil governor and the military commanders.
This reasoning prevailed, and the lands which it was contemplated
to reserve for the use of the Indians were not annexed to any
particular colony or assigned to any one colonial government.
[Sidenote: Provisions for the protection of the Indians.]
With this great area, covering the present province of Ontario
and the north central states of the American Republic, the
Royal proclamation dealt as follows: ‘Whereas it is just and
reasonable, and essential to our interest, and the security of
our colonies, that the several nations or tribes of Indians, with
whom we are connected, and who live under our protection, should
not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of
our dominions and territories as, not having been ceded to or
purchased by us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their
hunting grounds ... we do further declare it to be our Royal will
and pleasure, for the present as aforesaid, to reserve under our
sovereignty, protection, and dominion, for the use of the said
Indians, all the lands and territories not included within the
limits of our said three new governments, or within the limits of
the territory granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, as also all
the lands and territories lying to the westward of the sources of
the rivers which fall into the sea from the west and north-west
as aforesaid; and we do hereby strictly forbid, on pain of our
displeasure, all our loving subjects from making any purchases or
settlements whatever, or taking possession of any of the lands
above reserved, without our especial leave and licence for that
purpose first obtained.’
Thus North America, outside the recognized limits of the old or
new colonies, was for the time being constituted a great native
reserve; and even within the limits of the colonies it was provided
‘that no private person do presume to make any purchase from the
said Indians of any lands reserved to the said Indians within
those parts of our colonies where we have thought proper to allow
settlement: but that, if at any time any of the said Indians
should be inclined to dispose of the said lands, the same shall
be purchased only for us, in our name, at some public meeting or
assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that purpose by the
governor or commander-in-chief of our colony respectively within
which they shall lie’. Trade with the Indians was to be free and
open to all British subjects, but the traders were to take out
licences, and, while no fees were to be charged for such licences,
the traders were to give security that they would observe any
regulations laid down for the benefit of the trade.[2]
[Sidenote: Difficulties of the situation.]
It is impossible to study the correspondence which preceded the
Proclamation of 1763, without recognizing that those who framed
it were anxious to frame a just and liberal policy, but its terms
bear witness to the almost insuperable difficulties which attend
the acquisition of a great borderland of colonization, difficulties
which in a few years’ time were largely responsible for the
American War of Independence. How to administer a new domain with
equity and sound judgement; how to give to new subjects, acquired
by conquest, the privileges enjoyed by the old colonies; how to
reconcile the claims of the old colonies, whose inland borders had
never been demarcated, with the undoubted rights of native races;
how to promote trade and settlement without depriving the Indians
of their heritage;--such were the problems which the British
Government was called upon to face and if possible to solve. The
proclamation was in a few years’ time followed up by the Quebec
Act of 1774, in connexion with which more will be said as to these
thorny questions. In the meantime, even before the proclamation had
been issued, the English had on their hands what was perhaps the
most dangerous and widespread native rising which ever threatened
their race in the New World.
[Sidenote: French policy in North America.]
The great French scheme for a North American dominion depended upon
securing control of the waterways and control of the natives. Even
before the dawn of the eighteenth century, Count Frontenac among
governors, La Salle among pioneers, saw clearly the importance
of gaining the West and the ways to the West; and they realized
that, in order to attain that object, the narrows on the inland
waters, and the portages from one lake or river to another, must
be commanded; that the Indians who were hostile to France must be
subdued, and that the larger number of red men, who liked French
ways and French leadership, must be given permanent evidence of the
value of French protection and the strength of French statesmanship.
[Sidenote: The French posts in the West.]
Along the line of lakes and rivers in course of years French
forts were placed. Fort Frontenac, first founded in 1673 by the
great French governor whose name it bore, guarded, on the site
of the present city of Kingston, the outlet of the St. Lawrence
from Lake Ontario. Fort Niagara, begun by La Salle in the winter
of 1678-9, on the eastern bank of the Niagara river, near its
entrance into Lake Ontario, covered the portage from that lake
to Lake Erie. Fort Detroit, dating from the first years of the
eighteenth century, stood by the river which carries the waters of
Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair into Lake Erie. Its founder was La
Mothe Cadillac. The post at Michillimackinac was at the entrance of
Lake Michigan. From Lake Erie to the Ohio were two lines of forts.
The main line began with Presque Isle on the southern shore of the
lake, and ended with Fort Duquesne, afterwards renamed Pittsburg,
the intermediate posts being Fort Le Bœuf at the head of French
Creek, and Venango where that stream joins the Alleghany. Further
west, past the intermediate fort of Sandusky, which stood on the
southern shore of Lake Erie, there was a second series of outposts,
of which we hear little in the course of the Seven Years’ War. The
Maumee river flows into the south-western end of Lake Erie, and on
it, at a point where there was a portage to the Wabash river, was
constructed Fort Miami, on or near the site of the later American
Fort Wayne. On the Wabash, which joins the Ohio not very far above
the confluence of the latter river with the Mississippi, were
two French posts, Fort Ouatanon and, lower down its course, Fort
Vincennes. On the central Mississippi the chief nucleus of French
trade and influence was Fort Chartres. It stood on the eastern
bank of the river, eighty to ninety miles above the confluence
of the Ohio, and but a few miles north of the point where the
Kaskaskia river flows into the Mississippi. On the Kaskaskia, among
the Illinois Indians, there was a French outpost, and settlement
fringed the eastern side of the Mississippi northwards to Fort
Chartres. Above that fort there was a road running north on the
same side to Cahokia, a little below and on the opposite side
to the confluence of the Missouri; and in 1763 a French settler
crossed the Mississippi, and opened a store on the site of the
present city of St. Louis. The posts on the Mississippi were, both
for trading and for political purposes, connected with Louisiana
rather than with Canada; and, though the Peace of Paris had ceded
to Great Britain the soil on which they stood, the French had not
been disturbed by any assertion of British sovereignty prior to the
war which is associated with the name of the Indian chief Pontiac.
[Sidenote: The rising of Pontiac.]
[Sidenote: Its special characteristics.]
The rising which Pontiac headed came too late for the Indians to be
permanently successful. In any case it could have had, eventually,
but one ending, the overthrow of the red men: but, while it lasted,
it seriously delayed the consolidation of English authority over
the West. After most wars of conquest there supervene minor wars
or rebellions, waves of the receding tide when high-water is past,
disturbances due to local mismanagement and local discontent; but
the Indian war, which began in 1763, had special characteristics.
In the first place, the rising was entirely a native revolt. No
doubt it was fomented by malcontent French traders and settlers,
disseminating tales of English iniquities and raising hopes of a
French revival; but very few Frenchmen were to be found in the
fighting line; the warriors were red men, not white. In the second
place it was a rising of the Western Indians, of the tribes who
had not known in any measure the strength of the English, and who
had known, more as friends than as subjects, the guidance and the
spirit of the French. Of the Six Nations, the Senecas alone, the
westernmost members of the Iroquois Confederacy, joined in the
struggle, and the centre of disturbance was further west. In the
third place the rising was more carefully planned, the conception
was more statesmanlike, the action was more organized, than has
usually been the case among savage races. There was unity of plan
and harmony in action, which betokened leadership of no ordinary
kind. The leader was the Ottawa chief Pontiac.
[Sidenote: Indian suspicions of the English.]
‘When the Indian nations saw the French power, as it were,
annihilated in North America, they began to imagine that they ought
to have made greater and earlier efforts in their favour. The
Indians had not been for a long time so jealous of them as they
were of us. The French seemed more intent on trade than settlement.
Finding themselves infinitely weaker than the English, they
supplied, as well as they could, the place of strength by policy,
and paid a much more flattering and systematic attention to the
Indians than we had ever done. Our superiority in this war rendered
our regard to this people still less, which had always been too
little.’[3] The Indians were frightened too, says the same writer,
by the English possession of the chains of forts: ‘they beheld
in every little garrison the germ of a future colony.’ Ripe for
revolt, and never yet subdued, as their countrymen further east had
been, they found a strong man of their own race to lead them, and
tried conclusions with the dominant white race in North America.
[Sidenote: Rogers’ mission to Detroit.]
In the autumn of 1760, after the capitulation of Montreal, General
Amherst sent Major Robert Rogers, the New Hampshire Ranger, to
receive the submission of the French forts on the further lakes. On
the 13th of September Rogers embarked at Montreal with two hundred
of his men: he made his way up the St. Lawrence, and coasted the
northern shore of Lake Ontario, noting, as he went, that Toronto,
where the French had held Fort Rouillé, was ‘a most convenient
place for a factory, and that from thence we may very easily settle
the north side of Lake Erie’.[4] He crossed the upper end of Lake
Ontario to Fort Niagara, already in British possession; and, having
taken up supplies, carried his whale boats round the falls and
launched them on Lake Erie. Along the southern side of that lake
he went forward to Presque Isle, where Bouquet was in command of
the English garrison; and, leaving his men, he went himself down by
Fort le Bœuf, the French Creek river, and Venango to Fort Pitt,
or Pittsburg, as Fort Duquesne had been renamed by John Forbes in
honour of Chatham. His instructions were to carry dispatches to
General Monckton at Pittsburg, and to take orders from him for a
further advance. Returning to Presque Isle at the end of October,
he went westward along Lake Erie, making for Detroit. No English
force had yet been in evidence so far to the West. On the 7th of
November he encamped on the southern shore of Lake Erie, at a point
near the site of the present city of Cleveland, and there he was
met by a party of Ottawa Indians ‘just arrived from Detroit’.[5]
[Sidenote: His meeting with Pontiac.]
[Sidenote: Surrender of Detroit to the English.]
They came, as Rogers tells us in another book,[6] on an embassy
from Pontiac, and were immediately followed by that chief
himself. Pontiac’s personality seems to have impressed the white
backwoodsman, though he had seen and known all sorts and conditions
of North American Indians. ‘I had several conferences with him,’
he writes, ‘in which he discovered great strength of judgement and
a thirst after knowledge.’ Pontiac took up the position of being
‘King and Lord of the country’, and challenged Rogers and his men
as intruders into his land; but he intimated that he would be
prepared to live peaceably with the English, as a subordinate not
a conquered potentate; and the result of the meeting was that the
Rangers were supplied with fresh provisions and were escorted in
safety on their way, instead of being obstructed and attacked, as
had been contemplated, at the entrance of the Detroit river. On the
12th of November Rogers set out again; on the 19th he sent on an
officer in advance with a letter to Belêtre, the French commander
at Detroit, informing him of the capitulation of Montreal and
calling upon him to deliver up the fort. On the 29th of November
the English force landed half a mile below the fort, and on the
same day the French garrison laid down their arms. Seven hundred
Indians were present; and, when they saw the French colours hauled
down and the English flag take their place, unstable as water and
ever siding at the moment with the stronger party, they shouted
that ‘they would always for the future fight for a nation thus
favoured by Him that made the world’.[7]
[Sidenote: Detroit.]
There were at the time, Rogers tells us,[8] about 2,500
French Canadians settled in the neighbourhood of Detroit. The
dwelling-houses, near 300 in number, extended on both sides of the
river for about eight miles. The land was good for grazing and for
agriculture, and there was a ‘very large and lucrative’ trade with
the Indians.
[Sidenote: Return of Rogers.]
[Sidenote: Michillimackinac occupied by the English.]
Having sent the French garrison down to Philadelphia, and
established an English garrison in its place, Rogers sent a small
party to take over Fort Miami on the Maumee river, and set out
himself with another detachment for Michillimackinac. But it was
now the middle of December; floating ice made navigation of Lake
Huron dangerous; after a vain attempt to reach Michillimackinac he
returned to Detroit on the 21st of December; and, marching overland
to the Ohio and to Philadelphia, he finally reached New York on the
14th of February, 1761. In the autumn of that year a detachment of
Royal Americans took possession of Michillimackinac.
[Sidenote: Indian discontent.]
Throughout 1761 and 1762 the discontent of the Indians increased;
they saw the English officers and soldiers in their midst in
strength and pride; they listened to the tales of the French
voyageurs; they remembered French friendship and address, and
contrasted it with the grasping rudeness of the English trader or
colonist; a native prophet rose up to call the red men back to
savagery, as the one road to salvation; and influenced at once by
superstition and by the present fear of losing their lands, the
tribes of the West made ready to fight.
[Sidenote: The fort at Detroit.]
[Sidenote: Major Gladwin.]
For months the call to war had secretly been passing from tribe
to tribe, and from village to village; and on the 27th of April,
1763, Pontiac held a council of Indians at the little river Ecorces
some miles to the south of Detroit, at which it was determined
to attack the fort. Fort Detroit stood on the western side of
the Detroit river, which runs from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie,
at about five miles distance from the former lake and a little
over twenty miles from Lake Erie. The river is at its narrowest
point more than half a mile wide, and, as already stated, Canadian
settlement fringed both banks. The fort, which stood a little
back from the bank of the river, consisted of a square enclosure
surrounded by a wooden palisade, with bastions and block-houses
also of wood, and within the palisade was a small town with
barracks, council house, and church. The garrison consisted of
about 120 soldiers belonging to the 39th Regiment; and, in addition
to the ordinary Canadian residents within the town, there were some
40 fur-traders present at the time, most of whom were French. The
commander was a determined man, Major Gladwin, who, under Braddock
on the Monongahela river, had seen the worst of Indian fighting.
Before April ended Gladwin reported to Amherst that there was
danger of an Indian outbreak; and, when the crisis came, warned
either by Indians or by Canadians, he was prepared for it. For
some, at any rate, of the Canadians at Detroit, though they had no
love for the English, and though Pontiac was moving in the name of
the French king, were men of substance and had something to lose.
They were therefore not inclined to side with the red men against
the white, or to lend themselves to extermination of the English
garrison.
[Sidenote: Pontiac’s attempt to surprise the garrison.]
[Sidenote: The fort openly attacked.]
On the 1st of May Pontiac and forty of his men came into the
fort on an outwardly friendly visit, and took stock of the ways
of attack and the means of defence. Then a few days passed in
preparing for the blow. A party of 60 warriors were once more to
gain admittance, hiding under their blankets guns whose barrels
had been filed down for the purpose of concealment: they were to
hold a council with the English officers, and at a given signal
to shoot them down. The 7th of May was the day fixed for the deed,
but Gladwin was forewarned and forearmed. The Indian chiefs were
admitted to the fort, and attended the council; but they found
the garrison under arms, and their plot discovered. Both sides
dissembled, and the Indians were allowed to leave, disconcerted,
but saved for further mischief. On the 9th of May they again
applied to be admitted to the fort, but this time were refused,
and open warfare began. Two or three English, who were outside
the palisade at the time, were murdered, and on the 10th, for six
hours, the savages attacked the fort with no success.
[Sidenote: Siege of Detroit.]
There was little danger that Detroit would be taken by assault,
but there was danger of the garrison being starved out. Gladwin,
therefore, tried negotiation with Pontiac, and using French
Canadians as intermediaries, sent two English officers with them to
the Indian camp. The two Englishmen, one of them Captain Campbell,
an old officer of high character and repute, were kept as captives,
and Campbell was subsequently murdered. The surrender of the fort
was then demanded by Pontiac, a demand which was at once refused;
and against the wishes of his officers Gladwin determined to
hold the post at all costs. Supplies were brought in by night by
friendly Canadians, and all immediate danger of starvation passed
away.
[Sidenote: British convoy cut off.]
Amherst, the commander-in-chief, far away at New York, had not
yet learnt of the peril of Detroit or of the nature and extent
of the Indian rising, but in the ordinary course in the month
of May supplies were being sent up for the western garrisons.
The convoy intended for Detroit left Niagara on the 13th of that
month, in charge of Lieutenant Cuyler with 96 men. Coasting along
the northern shore of Lake Erie, Cuyler, towards the end of the
month, reached a point near the outlet of the Detroit river,
and there drew up his boats on the shore. Before an encampment
could be formed the Indians broke in upon the English, who fled
panic-stricken to the boats; only two boats escaped, and between
50 and 60 men out of the total number of 96 were killed or taken.
The survivors, Cuyler himself among them, made their way across
the lake to Fort Sandusky, only to find that it had been burnt to
the ground, thence to Presque Isle, which was shortly to share the
fate of Sandusky, and eventually to Niagara. The prisoners were
carried off by their Indian captors, up the Detroit river; two
escaped to the fort to tell the tale of disaster, but the majority
were butchered with all the nameless tortures which North American
savages could devise.
[Sidenote: Destruction of the Western outposts by the Indians.]
[Sidenote: They take Michillimackinac.]
While Detroit was being besieged, at other points in the West
one disaster followed another. Isolated from each other, weakly
garrisoned, commanded, in some instances, by officers of
insufficient experience or wanting in determination, the forts
fell fast. On the 16th of May Sandusky was blotted out; on the
25th Fort St. Joseph, at the south-eastern end of Lake Michigan,
was taken; and on the 27th Fort Miami, on the Maumee river. Fort
Ouatanon on the Wabash was taken on the 1st of June; and on the
4th of that month the Ojibwa Indians overpowered the garrison
of Michillimackinac, second in importance to Detroit. Captain
Etherington, the commander at Michillimackinac, knew nothing of
what was passing elsewhere, though he had been warned of coming
danger, and he lost the fort through an Indian stratagem. The
English were invited outside the palisades to see an Indian game of
ball; and, while the onlookers were off their guard, and the gates
of the fort stood open, the players turned into warriors; some of
the garrison and of the English traders were murdered, and the rest
were made prisoners. The massacre, however, was not wholesale.
Native jealousy gave protectors to the English survivors in a
tribe of Ottawas who dwelt near: a French Jesuit priest used every
effort to save their lives; and eventually the survivors, among
whom was Etherington, were, with the garrison of a neighbouring and
subordinate post at Green Bay, sent down in safety to Montreal by
the route of the Ottawa river.
[Sidenote: Fort Pitt isolated.]
Next came the turn of the forts which connected Lake Erie with
the Ohio. On the 15th of June Presque Isle was attacked; on the
17th it surrendered. It was a strong fort, and in the opinion of
Bouquet--a competent judge--its commander, Ensign Christie, showed
little stubbornness in defence. Fort le Bœuf fell on the 18th,
Venango about the same date, and communication between the lakes
and Fort Pitt was thus cut off. Fort Pitt itself was threatened by
the Indians, and towards the end of July openly attacked, while
on Forbes’ and Bouquet’s old route from that fort to Bedford in
Pennsylvania, Fort Ligonier was also at an earlier date assailed,
though fortunately without success.
[Sidenote: Dalyell sent to the relief of Detroit.]
[Sidenote: The fight at Parents Creek.]
[Sidenote: Death of Dalyell.]
Amherst now realized the gravity of the crisis, and his first care
was the relief of Detroit. A force of 280 men, commanded by Captain
Dalyell, one of his aides de camp, and including Robert Rogers
with 20 Rangers, was sent up from Niagara, ascended on the 29th of
July the Detroit river by night, and reached the fort in safety.
Long experience in North American warfare had taught the lesson
which Wolfe always preached, that the English should, whenever and
wherever it was possible, take the offensive. Accordingly Dalyell
urged Gladwin, against the latter’s better judgement, to allow him
to attack Pontiac at once; and before daybreak, on the morning
of the 31st, he led out about 250 men for the purpose. Less than
two miles north-east of the fort, a little stream, then known as
Parents Creek and after the fight as Bloody Run, ran into the
main river; and beyond it was Pontiac’s encampment, which Dalyell
proposed to surprise. Unfortunately the Indians were fully informed
of the intended movement, and there ensued one more of the many
disasters which marked the onward path of the white men in North
America. The night was dark: the English advance took them among
enclosures and farm buildings, which gave the Indians cover. As
the leading soldiers were crossing the creek they were attacked
by invisible foes; and, when compelled to retreat, the force was
beset on all sides and ran the risk of being cut off from the
fort. Dalyell[9] was shot dead; and, before the fort was reached,
the English had lost one-fourth of their whole number in killed
and wounded. The survivors owed their safety to the steadiness of
the officers, to the fact that Rogers and his men seized and held
a farmhouse to cover the retreat, and to the co-operation of two
armed boats, which moved up and down the river parallel to the
advance and retreat, bringing off the dead and wounded, and pouring
a fire from the flank among the Indians.
Pontiac had achieved a notable success, but Detroit remained safe,
and meanwhile in another quarter the tide set against the Indian
cause.
[Sidenote: Fort Pitt.]
After General Forbes, in the late autumn of 1758, had taken Fort
Duquesne, a new English fort, Fort Pitt, was in the following year
built by General Stanwix upon the site of the French stronghold.
The place was, as it had always been, the key of the Ohio valley,
and on the maintenance of the fort depended at once the safety of
the borderlands of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the possibility
of extending trade among the Indian tribes of the Ohio. In July,
1763, Fort Pitt was in a critical position. The posts which
connected it with Lake Erie had been destroyed: the road which
Forbes had cut through Pennsylvania on his memorable march was
obstructed by Indians; and the outlying post along it, Fort
Ligonier, about fifty-five miles east of Fort Pitt, was, like Fort
Pitt itself, in a state of siege. The Indians were, as in the dark
days after Braddock’s disaster, harrying the outlying homesteads
and settlements, and once more the colonies were exhibiting to
the full their incapacity for self-defence, or rather, the
indifference of the residents in the towns to the safety of their
fellows who lived in the backwoods.
[Sidenote: The route to Fort Pitt.]
Forbes’ road to Fort Pitt ran for nearly 100 miles from Bedford
or Raestown, as it had earlier been called, in a direction rather
north of west, across the Alleghany Mountains and the Laurel Hills.
The intermediate post, Fort Ligonier, stood at a place which had
been known in Forbes’ time as Loyalhannon, rather nearer to Bedford
than to Fort Pitt. Bedford itself was about thirty miles north of
Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek, which Braddock had selected for the
starting-point of his more southerly march. It marked the limit of
settlement, and 100 miles separated it from the town of Carlisle,
which lay due east, in the direction of the long-settled parts of
Pennsylvania.
[Sidenote: Insecurity of the frontier.]
[Sidenote: Difficulties with the Pennsylvanian legislature.]
There was no security in the year 1763 for the dwellers between
Bedford and Carlisle: ‘Every tree is become an Indian for the
terrified inhabitants,’ wrote Bouquet to Amherst from Carlisle
on the 29th of June.[10] Pennsylvania raised 700 men to protect
the farmers while gathering their harvest, but no representations
of Amherst would induce the cross-grained Legislature to place
them under his command, to allow them to be used for offensive
purposes, or even for garrison duty. The very few regular troops
in the country were therefore required to hold the forts, as well
as to carry out any expedition which the commander-in-chief might
think necessary. A letter from one of Amherst’s officers, Colonel
Robertson, written to Bouquet on the 19th of April, 1763, relates
how all the arguments addressed to the Quaker-ridden government had
been in vain, concluding with the words ‘I never saw any man so
determined in the right as these people are in their absurdly wrong
resolve’;[11] and in his answer Bouquet speaks bitterly of being
‘utterly abandoned by the very people I am ordered to protect’.[11]
[Sidenote: Henry Bouquet.]
Henry Bouquet had reason to be bitter. He had rendered invaluable
service to Pennsylvania and Virginia, when under Forbes he had
driven the French from the Ohio valley. The colonies concerned
had been backward then, they were now more wrong-headed than
ever, and this at a time when the English army in America was
sadly attenuated in numbers. All depended upon one or two men,
principally upon Bouquet himself. Born in Canton Berne, he was
one of the Swiss officers who were given commissions in the Royal
American Regiment, the ancestors of the King’s Royal Rifles,
another being Captain Ecuyer, who was at this time commander at
Fort Pitt. Bouquet was now in his forty-fourth year, a resolute,
high-minded man, a tried soldier, and second to none in knowledge
of American border fighting. In the spring of 1763 he was at
Philadelphia, when Amherst, still holding supreme command in North
America, ordered him to march to the relief of Fort Pitt, while
Dalyell was sent along the lakes to bring succour to Detroit.
At the end of June Bouquet was at Carlisle, collecting troops,
transport, and provisions for his expedition; on the 3rd of July
he heard the bad news of the loss of the forts at Presque Isle, Le
Bœuf, and Venango; on the 25th of July he reached Bedford.
[Sidenote: He marches to the relief of Fort Pitt.]
He had a difficult and dangerous task before him. The rough road
through the forest and over the mountains had been broken up by
bad weather in the previous winter, and the temporary bridges had
been swept away. His fighting men did not exceed 500, Highlanders
of the 42nd and 77th Regiments, and Royal Americans. The force
was far too small for the enterprise, and the commander wrote of
the disadvantage which he suffered from want of men used to the
woods, noting that the Highlanders invariably lost themselves when
employed as scouts, and that he was therefore compelled to try and
secure 30 woodsmen for scouting purposes.[12]
[Sidenote: The fight at Edgehill.]
On the 2nd of August he reached Fort Ligonier, and there, as on
the former expedition, he left his heavy transport, moving forward
on the 4th with his little army on a march of over fifty miles to
Fort Pitt. On that day he advanced twelve miles. On the 5th of
August he intended to reach a stream known as Bushy Creek or Bushy
Run, nineteen miles distant. Seventeen miles had been passed by
midday in the hot summer weather, when at one o’clock, at a place
which in his dispatch he called Edgehill, the advanced guard was
attacked by Indians. The attack increased in severity, the flanks
of the force and the convoy in the rear were threatened, the troops
were drawn back to protect the convoy, and circling round it they
held the enemy at bay till nightfall, when they were forced to
encamp where they stood, having lost 60 men in killed and wounded,
and, worst of all, being in total want of water. Bravely Bouquet
wrote to Amherst that night, but the terms of the dispatch told his
anxiety for the morrow. At daybreak the Indians fell again upon
the wearied, thirsty ring of troops: for some hours the fight went
on, and a repetition of Braddock’s overthrow seemed inevitable.
At length Bouquet tried a stratagem. Drawing back the two front
companies of the circle, he pretended to cover their retreat with
a scanty line, and lured the Indians on in mass, impatient of
victorious butchery. Just as they were breaking the circle, the
men who had been brought back and had unperceived crept round in
the woods, gave a point blank fire at close quarters into the
yelling crowd, and followed it with the bayonet. Falling back,
the Indians came under similar fire and a similar charge from two
other companies who waited them in ambush, and leaving the ground
strewn with corpses the red men broke and fled. Litters were then
made for the wounded: such provisions as could not be carried were
destroyed; and at length the sorely tried English reached the
stream of Bushy Run. Even there the enemy attempted to molest them,
but were easily dispersed by the light infantry.
[Sidenote: Victory of the English and relief of Fort Pitt.]
The victory had been won, but hardly won. The casualties in the
two days’ fighting numbered 115. That the whole force was not
exterminated was due to the extraordinary steadiness of the troops,
notably the Highlanders, and to the resolute self-possession of
their leader. ‘Never found my head so clear as that day,’ wrote
Bouquet to a friend some weeks later, ‘and such ready and cheerful
compliance to all the necessary orders.’[13] On the 10th of August
the expedition reached Fort Pitt without further fighting, and
relieved the garrison, whose defence of the post had merited the
efforts made for their rescue.
[Sidenote: Importance of Bouquet’s victory.]
Bouquet’s battles at Edgehill were small in the number of troops
employed, and were fought far away in the American backwoods. They
attracted little notice in England--to judge from Horace Walpole’s
contemptuous reference to ‘half a dozen battles in miniature with
the Indians in America’;[14] but none the less they were of vital
importance. Attacking with every advantage on their side, with
superiority of numbers, in summer heat, among their own woods,
the Indians had been signally defeated, and among the dead were
some of their best fighting chiefs. In Bouquet’s words, ‘the most
warlike of the savage tribes have lost their boasted claim of
being invincible in the woods;’[15] and he continued to urge the
necessity of reinforcements in order to follow up the blow and
carry the warfare into the enemy’s country. But the colonies did
not answer, the war dragged on, and at the beginning of October
Bouquet had the mortification of hearing of a British reverse at
Niagara.
[Sidenote: British reverse at Niagara.]
[Sidenote: Ending of the siege of Detroit.]
[Sidenote: Amherst succeeded by Gage.]
The date was the 14th of September, and the Indians concerned
were the Senecas, who alone among the Six Nations took part in
Pontiac’s rising. A small escort convoying empty wagons from the
landing above the falls to the fort below was attacked and cut
off; and two companies sent to their rescue from the lower landing
were ambushed at the same spot, the ‘Devil’s Hole’, where the path
ran by the precipice below the falls. Over 80 men were killed,
including all the officers, and 20 men alone remained unhurt. Nor
was this the end of disasters on the lakes. In November a strong
force from Niagara, destined for Detroit, started along Lake Erie
in a fleet of boats; a storm came on: the fleet was wrecked: many
lives were lost: and the shattered remnant gave up the expedition
and returned to Niagara. Detroit, however, was now safe. When
October came, various causes induced the Indians to desist from
the siege. The approach of winter warned them to scatter in search
of food: the news of Bouquet’s victory had due effect, and so had
information of the coming expedition from Niagara, which had not
yet miscarried. Most of all, Pontiac learnt by letter from the
French commander at Fort Chartres that no help could be expected
from France. Accordingly, in the middle of October, Pontiac’s
allies made a truce with Gladwin, which enabled the latter to
replenish his slender stock of supplies; at the end of the month
Pontiac himself made overtures of peace: and the month of November
found the long-beleaguered fort comparatively free of foes. In
that same month Amherst returned to England, being succeeded as
commander-in-chief by General Gage, who had been Governor of
Montreal.
[Sidenote: Plan of campaign for 1764.]
Before Amherst left he had planned a campaign for the coming year.
Colonel Bradstreet was to take a strong force along the line of the
lakes, and harry the recalcitrant Indians to the south and west
of that route, as far as they could be reached, while Bouquet was
to advance from Fort Pitt into the centre of the Ohio valley, and
bring to terms the Delawares and kindred tribes, who had infested
the borders of the southern colonies.
[Sidenote: Bradstreet.]
Colonel John Bradstreet had gained high repute by his
well-conceived and well-executed capture of Fort Frontenac in the
year 1758--a feat which earned warm commendation from Wolfe. He
was regarded as among the best of the colonial officers, and as
well fitted to carry war actively and aggressively into the enemy’s
country. In this he conspicuously failed: he proved himself to be
a vain and headstrong man, and was found wanting when left to act
far from head quarters upon his own responsibility. In June, 1764,
he started from Albany, and made his way by the old route of the
Mohawk river and Oswego to Fort Niagara, encamping at Niagara in
July. His force seems to have eventually numbered nearly 2,000
men, one half of whom consisted of levies from New York and New
England, in addition to 300 Canadians. The latter were included in
the expedition in order to disabuse the minds of the Indians of any
idea that they were being supported by the French population of
North America.
[Sidenote: Indian conference at Niagara.]
Before the troops left Niagara, a great conference of Indians was
held there by Sir William Johnson, who arrived early in July.
From all parts they came, except Pontiac’s own following and the
Delawares and Shawanoes of the Ohio valley. Even the Senecas were
induced by threats to make an appearance, delivered up a handful of
prisoners, bound themselves over to keep peace with the English in
future, and ceded in perpetuity to the Crown a strip of land four
miles wide on both sides of the Niagara river. About a month passed
in councils and speeches; on the 6th of August Johnson went back to
Oswego, and on the 8th Bradstreet went on his way.
[Sidenote: Bradstreet’s abortive expedition.]
His instructions were explicit, to advance into the Indian
territory, and, co-operating with Bouquet’s movements, to reduce
the tribes to submission by presence in force. Those instructions
he did not carry out. Near Presque Isle, on the 12th of August,
he was met by Indians who purported to be delegates from the
Delawares and Shawanoes: and, accepting their assurances, he
engaged not to attack them for twenty-five days when, on his
return from Detroit, they were to meet him at Sandusky, hand over
prisoners, and conclude a final peace. He went on to Sandusky a few
days later, where messengers of the Wyandots met him with similar
protestations, and were bidden to follow him to Detroit, and there
make a treaty. He then embarked for Detroit, leaving the hostile
tribes unmolested and his work unaccomplished. From Sandusky he had
sent an officer, Captain Morris, with orders to ascend the Maumee
river to Fort Miami, no longer garrisoned, and thence to pass on to
the Illinois country. Morris started on his mission, came across
Pontiac on the Maumee, found war not peace, and, barely escaping
with his life, reached Detroit on the 17th of September, when
Bradstreet had already come and gone.
Towards the end of August Bradstreet reached Detroit. He held a
council of Indians, at which the Sandusky Wyandots were present,
and, having proclaimed in some sort British supremacy, thought he
had put an end to the war. The substantive effect of his expedition
was that he released Gladwin and his men, placing a new garrison
in the fort, and sent a detachment to re-occupy the posts at
Michillimackinac, Green Bay, and Sault St. Marie. He then retraced
his steps to Sandusky. Here the Delawares, with whom he had made a
provisional treaty at Presque Isle, were to meet him and complete
their submission; and here he realized that Indian diplomacy had
been cleverer than his own. Only a few emissaries came to the
meeting-place with excuses for further delay, and meanwhile he
received a message from General Gage strongly disapproving his
action and ordering an immediate advance against the tribes, whom
he had represented as brought to submission. He made no advance,
loitered a while where he was, and finally came back to Niagara at
the beginning of November after a disastrous storm on Lake Erie, a
discredited commander, with a disappointed following.
[Sidenote: Bouquet’s operations.]
If Bradstreet had any excuse for failure, it was that he did not
know the temper of the Western Indians, and had not before his eyes
perpetual evidence of their ferocity and their guile. Bouquet knew
them well, and great was his indignation at the other commander’s
ignorance or folly. After the relief of Fort Pitt in the preceding
autumn he had gone back to Philadelphia, and throughout the spring
and summer of 1764 was busy with preparations for a new campaign.
On the 18th of September he was back at Fort Pitt, ready for
a westward advance, with a strong force suitable for the work
which lay before him. He had with him 500 regulars, mostly the
seasoned men who had fought at Edgehill. Pennsylvania, roused at
last to the necessity of vigorous action, had sent 1,000 men to
join the expedition; and, though of these last a considerable
number deserted on the route to Fort Pitt, 700 remained and were
supplemented by over 200 Virginians. In the first days of October
the advance from Fort Pitt began, the troops crossed the Ohio,
followed its banks in a north-westerly direction to the Beaver
Creek, crossed that river, and, marching westward through the
forests, reached in the middle of the month the valley of the
Muskingum river, near a deserted Indian village known as Tuscarawa
or Tuscaroras. Bouquet was now within striking distance of the
Delawares and the other Indian tribes who had so long terrorized
the borderlands of the southern colonies. Near Tuscarawa Indian
deputies met him, and were ordered--as a preliminary to peace--to
deliver up within twelve days all the prisoners in their hands.
[Sidenote: Submission of the Western Indians.]
The spot fixed for the purpose was the junction of the two main
branches of the Muskingum, forty miles distant to the south-west,
forty miles nearer the centre of the Indians’ homes. To that
place the troops marched on, strong in their own efficiency and
in the personality of their leader, although news had come that
Bradstreet, who was to threaten the Indians from Sandusky, was
retreating homewards to Niagara. At the Forks of the Muskingum
an encampment was made, and there at length, at the beginning of
November, the red men brought back their captives. The work was
fully done: north to Sandusky, and to the Shawano villages far
to the west, Bouquet’s messengers were sent; the Indians saw the
white men in their midst ready to strike hard, and they accepted
the inevitable. The tribes which could not at the time make full
restoration gave hostages of their chiefs, and hostages too were
taken for the future consummation of peace, the exact terms of
which were left to be decided and were shortly after arranged by
Sir William Johnson. With these pledges of obedience, and with the
restored captives, Bouquet retraced his steps, and reached Fort
Pitt again on the 28th of November.
[Sidenote: Bouquet’s success.]
[Sidenote: His death.]
He had achieved a great victory, bloodless but complete; and at
length the colonies realized what he had done. A vote of thanks to
him was passed by the Pennsylvanian Assembly in no grudging terms.
The Virginians, too, thanked him, but with rare meanness tried to
burden him with the pay of the Virginian volunteers, who had served
in the late expedition. This charge Pennsylvania took upon itself,
more liberal than the sister colony; and the Imperial Government
showed itself not unmindful of services rendered, for, foreigner
as he was, Bouquet was promoted to be a brigadier-general in the
British army. He was appointed to command the troops in Florida,
and died at Pensacola in September, 1765, leaving behind him the
memory of a most competent soldier, and a loyal, honourable man.
[Sidenote: The Illinois country and the Mississippi.]
[Sidenote: British occupation of Fort Chartres.]
Beyond the scene of Bouquet’s operations--further still to the
west--lay the Illinois country and the settlements on the eastern
bank of the Mississippi. Ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of
1763, they were still without visible sign of British sovereignty;
and, when the year 1764 closed, Pontiac’s name and influence was
all powerful among the Indians of these regions, while the French
flag still flew at Fort Chartres. By the treaty, the navigation
of the Mississippi was left open to both French and English; and
in the spring of 1764 an English officer from Florida had been
dispatched to ascend the river from New Orleans, and take over the
ceded forts. The officer in question--Major Loftus--started towards
the end of February, and, after making his way for some distance
up-stream, was attacked by Indians and forced to retrace his steps.
Whether or not the attack was instigated by the French, it is
certain that Loftus received little help or encouragement from the
French commander at New Orleans, and it is equally certain that
trading jealousy threw every obstacle in the way of the English
advance into the Mississippi valley. It was not until the autumn
of 1765 that 100 Highlanders of the 42nd Regiment made their way
safely down the Ohio, and finally took Fort Chartres into British
keeping.
[Sidenote: Croghan’s mission.]
The way had been opened earlier in the year by Croghan, one of Sir
William Johnson’s officers, who in the summer months went westward
down the Ohio to remind the tribes of the pledges given to Bouquet,
and to quicken their fulfilment. He reached the confluence of the
Wabash river, and a few miles lower down was attacked by a band of
savages, who afterwards veered round to peace and conducted him,
half guest, half prisoner, to Vincennes and Ouatanon, the posts on
the Wabash. Near Ouatanon he met Pontiac, was followed by him to
Detroit, where it was arranged that a final meeting to conclude
a final peace should be held at Oswego in the coming year. The
meeting took place in July, 1766, under the unrivalled guidance of
Sir William Johnson, and with it came the end of the Indian war.
[Sidenote: End of the Indian war and death of Pontiac.]
The one hope for the confederate Indians had been help from
the French. Slowly and reluctantly they had been driven to the
conclusion that such help would not be forthcoming, and that for
France the sun had set in the far west of North America. Pontiac
himself gave in his submission to the English; he took their King
for his father, and, when he was killed in an Indian brawl on the
Mississippi in 1769, the red men’s vision of independence or of
sovereignty in their native backwoods faded away. The two leading
white races in North America, French and English, had fought it
out; there followed the Indian rising against the victors; and soon
was to come the almost equally inevitable struggle between the
British colonists, set free from dread of Frenchman or of Indian,
and the dominating motherland of their race.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The _Annual Register_ for 1763, p. 19, identified the St. John
river with the Saguenay, and the mistake was long perpetuated.
[2] All the quotations made in the preceding pages are taken from
the _Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada
1759-1791_, selected and edited by Messrs. Shortt and Doughty, 1907.
[3] _Annual Register_ for 1763, p. 22.
[4] _Journals of Major Robert Rogers_, London, 1765, p. 207.
[5] _Journals of Major Robert Rogers_, London, 1765, p. 214.
[6] _A Concise Account of North America_, by Major Robert Rogers,
London, 1765, pp. 240-4.
[7] _Rogers’ Journals_, p. 229.
[8] _A Concise Account of North America_, p. 168.
[9] Dalyell seems to have been a good officer. Bouquet on hearing
of his death about two months’ later wrote, ‘The death of my good
old friend Dalyell affects me sensibly. It is a public loss.
There are few men like him.’ Bouquet to Rev. M. Peters, Fort
Pitt, September 30, 1763. See Mr. Brymner’s _Report on Canadian
Archives_, 1889, Note D, p. 70.
[10] Brymner’s Report on _Canadian Archives_, 1889, note D, p. 59.
[11] Ibid., Note D, pp. 60, 62.
[12] Bouquet to Amherst, July 26, 1763: _Canadian Archives_, as
above, pp. 61-2.
[13] Bouquet to Rev. Mr. Peters, September 30, 1763: _Canadian
Archives_, as above, p. 70.
[14] ‘There have been half a dozen battles in miniature with the
Indians in America. It looked so odd to see a list of killed and
wounded just treading on the heels of the Peace.’ Letter of October
17 and 18, 1763, to Sir Horace Mann.
[15] Bouquet to Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania, Fort Pitt,
August 11, 1763: _Canadian Archives_, as above, p. 66.