THE FRENCH IN THEIR COLONIES.
We may dismiss the French in a few pages, merely because they are
only so much like their neighbours. It would have been a glorious
circumstance to have been able to present them as an exception; but
while they have shown as little regard to the rights or feelings
of the people whose lands they have invaded for the purpose of
colonization, they seem to have been on the whole more commonplace in
their cruelties. In Guiana they drove back the Indians as the Dutch
and the Portuguese did in their adjoining settlements. In the West
Indies, they exterminated or enslaved the natives very much as other
Europeans did. They were as assiduous as any people in massacring the
Charaibs, and they suffered perhaps more than any other nation from
the Charaibs in return. Their historian, Du Tertre, describes them as
returning from a slaughtering expedition in St. Christopher’s “_bien
joyeux_;” so that it would appear as though they executed the customary
murders of the time, with their accustomed gaiety. In the Mauritius
they found nobody to kill. In Madagascar, they alternately massacred
and were massacred themselves, and finally driven out of of the
country by the exasperated natives for their cruelties. If they made
themselves masters of countries of equal importance with the Spaniards,
Portuguese, English, or even the Dutch, they had not the art to make
them so, for if we include Louisiana, Canada, Newfoundland, Nova
Scotia, Cape Breton, Madagascar, Mauritius, Guiana, various West Indian
islands and settlements on the Indian and African coasts, the amount of
territory is vast. The value of it to them, however, at no time, was
ever proportionate in the least degree to the extent; and no European
nation has been so unfortunate in the loss of colonies. Their attempt
to possess themselves of Florida was abortive, but it was attended by a
circumstance which deserves recording.
The Spaniards hearing that some Frenchmen had made a settlement in
Florida about 1566, a fleet sailed thither, and discovered them at Fort
Carolina. They attacked them, massacred the majority, and hanged the
rest upon a tree, with this inscription,—“_Not as Frenchmen, but as
heretics_.” They were Huguenots. Dominic de Gourgues, a Gascon of the
same faith, a skilful and intrepid seaman, an enemy to the Spaniards,
from whom he had received personal injuries, passionately fond of his
country, of hazardous expeditions, and of glory, sold his estate,
built some ships, and with a select band of his own stamp, embarked
for Florida. He found, attacked, and defeated the Spaniards. All that
he could catch he hung upon trees, with this inscription,—“_Not as
Spaniards, but as assassins_;”—a sentence which, had it been executed
with equal justice on all who deserved it in that day, would have
half depopulated Europe; for almost every man who went abroad was an
assassin; and the rest who stayed at home applauded, and therefore
abetted. Having thus satisfied his indignant sense of justice, de
Gourgues returned home, and the French abandoned the country.
The French seemed to take the firmest hold on Canada; but their
powerful neighbours, the English, took even that from them, as they
had done their Acadia (Nova Scotia), Hudson’s Bay, Newfoundland, Cape
Breton, and the Island of St. John.
In all these settlements, they treated the Indians just as creatures
that might be spared or destroyed,—driven out or not, as it best
suited themselves. Francis I. invaded the papal charter to Spain and
Portugal of all the New World, with an expression very characteristic
of him. “_What! shall the kings of Spain and Portugal quietly divide
all America between them, without suffering me to take a share as their
brother? I would fain see the article of Adam’s will that bequeaths
that vast inheritance to them!_” But he did not seem to suspect for
a moment, that if Adam’s will could be found, the most conspicuous
clause in it would have been that the earth should be fairly divided
amongst his children; and that one family should not covet the heritage
of another, much less that Cain should be always murdering Abel.
Accordingly, Samuel de Champlain, whose name has been given to Lake
Champlain, had scarcely laid the foundations of Quebec, the future
capital of Canada, than the subjects of Francis began to violate every
clause which could possibly have been in Adam’s will. Champlain found
the Indians divided amongst themselves, and he adopted the policy
since employed by the English in the East with so much greater success,
not exactly that recommended by the apostle, to live in peace with all
men, as far as in you lies, but to set your neighbours by the ears, so
that you may take the advantage of their quarrels and disasters.
One of the greatest curses which befel the North American Indians on
the invasion of the Europeans, was, that several of these _refined_
and _Christian_ nations came and took possession of neighbouring
regions. Being indeed so refined and Christian, one might naturally
have supposed that this would prove a happy circumstance for the
savages. One would have supposed that thus surrounded on all sides, as
it were, by the light of civilization and the virtue of Christianity,
nothing could possibly prevent the savages from becoming civilized and
Christian too. One would have supposed that such miserable, cruel,
and dishonest savages, seeing whichever way they turned, nothing but
images of peace, wisdom, integrity, self-denial, generosity, and
domestic happiness, would have become speedily and heartily ashamed
of themselves. That they would have been fairly overwhelmed with the
flood of radiance covering those nations which had been for so many
ages in the possession of Christianity. That they would have been
penetrated through and through with the benevolence and goodness, the
sublime graces, and winning sweetness of so favoured and regenerated
a race! Nothing of the sort, however, took place. The savages looked
about them, and saw people more powerful, indeed, but in spirit and
practice ten times more savage than themselves. What a precious crew
of hypocrites must they have regarded these white invaders when they
heard them begin to talk of their superior virtue, and to call them
barbarians! There were the French in Canada, Nova Scotia, and other
settlements; there were the Dutch in their Nova Belgia, and the English
in Massachusets, all regarding each other with the most deadly hatred,
and all rampant to wrest, either from the Indians, or from one another,
the very ground that each other stood upon.
The people brought with them from Europe, crimes and abominations
that the Indians never knew. The Indians never fought for conquest,
but to defend their hunting grounds—lands which their ancestors had
inhabited for generations, and which they firmly believed were given
to them by the Great Spirit; but these white invaders had a boundless
and quenchless thirst for every region that they could set their eyes
upon. They claimed it by pretences, of which the simple Indians could
neither make head nor tail—they talked of popes and kings on the
other side of the water as having given them the Indians’ countries,
and the Indians could not conceive what business these kings and popes
had with them. But the whites had arguments which they _could not_
withstand—_gunpowder and rum_! They forced a footing in the Indian
countries, and then they gave them rum to take away their brains, that
they might take away first their peltries, and then more land. There
is nothing in history more horrible than the conduct to which the
Dutch, French and English resorted in their rivalries in the north-east
of America. Each party subdued the tribes of Indians in their own
immediate neighbourhood, by force and fraud, and then employed them
against the Indians who were in alliance with their rivals. Instead
of mutually, as Christians should, inculcating upon them the beauty
and the duty, and the advantages of peace, they instigated them, by
every possible means, and by the most devilish arguments, to betray and
exterminate one another, and not only one another, but to betray and
exterminate, if possible, their white rivals. They made them furious
with rum, and put fire-arms into their hands, and hounded them on
one another with a demoniac glee. They took credit to themselves for
inducing the Indians to _scalp_ one another! They gave them a premium
upon these horrible outrages, and we shall see that even the Puritans
of New England gave at length so much as 1000_l._ for every Indian
scalp that could be brought to them! They excited these poor Indians
by the most diabolical means, and by taking advantage of their weak
side, the proneness to vengeance, to acts of the most atrocious nature,
and then they branded them, when it was convenient, as most fearful
and bloody savages, and on that plea drove them out of their rightful
possessions, or butchered them upon them.
I am not talking of imaginary horrors—I am speaking with all the
soberness which the contemplation of such things will permit—of a
deliberate system of policy pursued by the French, Dutch, and English,
in these regions for a full century, and which eventually terminated in
the destruction of the greater part of these Indian nations, and in the
expulsion of the remainder. We shall see that even the English urged
their allies—the Five Nations—continually to attack and murder the
French and their Indian allies; and in all their wars with the French
in Canada, hired, or bribed, or compelled these savages to accompany
them, and commit the very devastations for which they afterwards
upbraided them, and which they made a plea for their extirpation.
But of that anon; my present business is with the French; and though
the facts which I have now to relate regard their conduct rather in
our colonies than their own, yet they cannot be properly introduced
anywhere else; and they could not have been introduced impartially here
without these few preliminary observations.
The French were soon stripped of their other settlements in this
quarter by the English. It was from Canada that they continued to
annoy their rivals of New York and New England, till finally driven
thence by the victory of Wolfe at Quebec; and it was principally on the
northern side of the St. Lawrence that their territory lay. On that
side, the great tribe of the Adirondacks, or, as they termed them, the
Algonquins, lay, and became their allies; with tribes of inferior note.
On the south side lay the great nation of the Iroquois, so termed by
them; or “The Five Nations of United Indians,” as they were called by
the English. These were very warlike nations—the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senekas—whose territories extended along the
south-eastern side of the St. Lawrence, into the present States of
Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and New
Hampshire—a country eighty leagues in length, and more than forty
broad.
To drive out these nations, so as to deprive them of any share in the
profitable fur trade which the Algonquins carried on for them, and to
get possession of so fine a country, Champlain readily accompanied
the Algonquins in an expedition of extermination against them. The
Algonquins knew all the intricacies of the woods, and all the modes and
stratagems of Indian warfare; and, aided by the arms and ammunition of
the French, they would soon have accomplished Champlain’s desire of
exterminating the Iroquois, had not the Dutch, then the possessors of
New York, furnished the Iroquois also with arms and ammunition, for it
was not to their interest that these five nations, who brought their
furs to them, should be reduced.
In 1664 the English dispossessed the Dutch of their Nova Belgia, and
turned it into New York; and began to trade actively with the Indian
nations for their furs. The French, who had hoped to monopolise this
trade, which they had found very profitable, by exterminating the
Iroquois, and throwing the whole hunting business into the hands
of tribes in their alliance, now saw the impolicy of having vainly
attacked so powerful a race as that of the Iroquois, or Five Nations.
They now used every means to reconcile them, and win them over. They
sent Jesuit missionaries, who lived in the simplest manner amongst
them, and with their powers of insinuation and persuasion laboured
to give them favourable ideas of their nation. But the English were
as zealous in their endeavours, and, as might naturally be expected,
succeeded in engrossing all the fur trade with the Iroquois, who had
received so many injuries from the French.[26] Irritated by this
circumstance, the French again determined on the ferocious scheme of
exterminating the Iroquois. Nursing this horrible resolve, they waited
their opportunity, and put upon themselves a desperate restraint,
till they should have collected a force in the colony equal to the
entire annihilation of the Iroquois people. This time seemed to
have arrived in 1687, when, under Denonville, they had a population
of 11,249 persons, one third of whom were capable of bearing arms.
Having a disposable force of near 4,000 people, they were secure in
their own mind of the accomplishment of their object; but, to make
assurance doubly sure, they hit upon one of those schemes that have
been so much applauded through all Christian Europe, under the name of
“happy devices,”—“profound strokes of policy,”—“chefs d’œuvres of
statesmanship,”—that is, in plain terms, plans of the most wretched
deceit, generally for the compassing of some piece of diabolical
butchery or oppression. The “happy device,” in this instance, was to
profess a desire for peace and alliance, in order to get the most
able Indian chiefs into their power before they struck the decisive
blow. There was a Jesuit missionary residing amongst the Iroquois—the
worthy Lamberville. This good man, like his brethren in the South,
whose glorious labours and melancholy fate we have already traced,
had won the confidence of the Iroquois by his unaffected piety, his
constant kindness, and his skill in healing their differences and their
bodily ailments. They looked upon him as a father and a friend. The
French, on their part, regarded this as a fortunate circumstance,—not
as one might have imagined, because it gave them a powerful means of
reconciliation and alliance with this people, but because it gave them
a means of effecting their murderous scheme. They assured Lamberville
that they were anxious to effect a _lasting peace_ with the Iroquois,
for which purpose they begged him to prevail on them to send their
principal chiefs to meet them in conference. He found no difficulty
in doing this, such was their faith in him. The chiefs appeared, and
were immediately clapped in irons, embarked at Quebec, and sent to the
galleys!
I suppose there are yet men calling themselves Christians, and priding
themselves on the depth of their policy, that will exclaim—“Oh,
capital!—what a happy device!” But who that has a head or a heart
worthy of a man will not mark with admiration the conduct of the
Iroquois on this occasion. As soon as the news of this abominable
treachery reached the nation, it rose as one man, to revenge the
insult and to prevent the success of that scheme which now became too
apparent. In the first place they sent for Lamberville, who had been
the instrument of their betrayal, and—put him to death! No, they did
_not_ put him to death. That was what the _Christians_ would have done,
without any inquiry or any listening to his defence. The _savage_
Iroquois thus addressed him—“We are authorised by every motive to
treat you as an enemy; but we cannot resolve to do it. Your heart has
had no share in the insult that has been put upon us; and it would be
unjust to punish you for a crime you detest still more than ourselves.
But you must leave us. Our rash young men might consider you in the
light of a traitor, who delivered up the chiefs of our nation to
shameful slavery.” These savages, whom Europeans have always termed
Barbarians, gave the Missionary guides, who conducted him to a place of
safety, and then flew to arms.[27]
The wretched Denonville and his politic people soon found themselves in
a situation which they richly merited. They had a numerous and warlike
nation thus driven to the highest pitch of irritation, surrounding them
in the woods. On the borders of the lakes, or in the open country, the
French could and did carry devastation amongst the Iroquois; but on the
other hand the Indians, continually sallying from the forests, laid
waste the French settlements, destroyed the crops of the planters, and
drove them from their fields. The French became heartily sick of the
war they had thus wickedly raised, and were on the point of putting an
end to it when one of their own Indian allies, a Huron, called by the
English authors Adario, but by the French Le Rat, one of the bravest
and most intelligent chiefs that ever ranged the wilds of America,
prevented it by a stratagem as cunning, and more successful, than their
own. He delivered an Iroquois prisoner with some story of an aggravated
nature to the French commandant of the fort of Machillimakinac, who,
not aware of Denonville being in treaty with the Iroquois, put him to
death, and thus roused again all the ancient flame.
In this war, such were the barbarities of the French and their Indian
allies, that they roused a spirit of revenge that soon brought the
most cruel evils upon themselves. They laid waste the villages of the
Five Nations with fire. Near Cadarakui Fort, they surprised and put to
death the inhabitants of two villages who had settled there at their
own invitation, and on their faith, but whom they now feared might act
as spies against them. Many of these people were given up to a body of
the Canadian Indians, called _Praying_ or _Christian_ Indians, to be
tormented at the stake. In another village finding only two old men,
they were cut to pieces, and put into the war kettle for the _Praying
Indians_ to feast on.[28] To revenge these unheard of abominations,
the Five Nations carried a war of retaliation into Canada. They came
suddenly in July of the next year, 1688, upon Montreal, 1200 strong,
while Denonville and his lady were there; burnt and laid waste all the
plantations round it, and made a terrible massacre of men, women, and
children. Above a thousand French are said to have been killed on this
occasion, and twenty-six taken, most of whom were burnt alive. In the
autumn they returned, and carried fire and tomahawk through the island;
and had they known how to take fortified places would have driven the
French entirely out of Canada. As it was, they reduced them to the most
frightful state of distress.
To such a pitch of fury did the French rise against the Five Nations
through the sufferings which they received at their hands, that they
now seemed to have lost the very natures of men. It is to the eternal
disgrace of both French and English that they instigated and bribed the
Indians to massacre and scalp their enemies—but it seems to be the
peculiar infamy of the French to have imitated the Indians in their
most barbarous customs, and have even prided themselves on displaying
a higher refinement in cruelty than the savages themselves. The New
Englanders, indeed, are distinctly stated by Douglass, to have handed
over their Indian prisoners to be tormented by their Naraganset allies,
but with the French this savage practice seems to have been frequent.
I have just noticed a few instances of such inhuman conduct; but the
old governor, Frontenac, stands pre-eminent above all his nation for
such deeds. From 1691 to 1695, nothing was more common than for his
Indian prisoners to be given up to his Indian allies to be tormented.
One of the most horrible of these scenes on record was perpetrated
under his own eye at Montreal in 1691. The intendant’s lady, the
Jesuits, and many influential people used all possible intreaties to
save the prisoner from such a death, but in vain. He was given up to
the _Christian_ Indians of _Loretto_, and tormented in such a manner
as none but a fiend could tolerate.[29] There was only one step beyond
this, and that was for the French to enact the torturers themselves.
That step was reached in 1695, at Machilimakinak Fort; and whoever has
not strong nerves had better pass the following relation, which yet
seems requisite to be given if we are to understand the full extent of
the inflictions the American Indians have received from Europeans.
The successes of the Iroquois had driven the French to madness—and the
prisoner was an Iroquois. “The prisoner being made fast to a stake,
so as to have room to move round it, a _Frenchman_ began the horrid
tragedy by broiling the flesh of the prisoner’s legs, from his toes to
his knees, with the red-hot barrel of a gun. His example was followed
by an _Utawawa_, and they relieved one another as they grew tired. The
prisoner all this while continued his death-song, till they clapped a
red-hot frying-pan on his buttocks, when he cried out ‘Fire is strong,
and too powerful.’ Then all their Indians mocked him as wanting courage
and resolution. ‘You,’ they said, ‘a soldier and a captain, as you say,
and afraid of fire:—you are not a man.’”
They continued their torments for two hours without ceasing. An
_Utawawa_, being desirous to outdo the _French_ in their refined
cruelty, split a furrow from the prisoner’s shoulder to his garter,
and, filling it with gunpowder, set fire to it. This gave him exquisite
pain, and raised excessive laughter in his tormentors. When they found
his throat so much parched that he was no longer able to gratify their
ears with his howling, they gave him water to enable him to continue
their pleasure longer. But, at last, his strength failing, an _Utawawa_
flayed off his scalp, and threw burning coals on his skull. Then they
untied him, and bid him run for his life. He began to run, tumbling
like a drunken man. They shut up the way to the east; and made him run
westward, the way, as they think, to the country of miserable souls.
He had still force left to throw stones, till they put an end to his
misery by knocking him on the head with one. After this, every one cut
a slice from his body, to conclude the tragedy with a feast.[30]
Such is the condition to which the practice of injustice and cruelty
can reduce men calling themselves civilized. We need not pursue further
the history of the French in Canada, which consists only in bickerings
with the English and butchery of the Indians. Having, therefore, given
this specimen of their treatment of the natives in their colonies,
or in the vicinity of them, we will dismiss them with an incident
illustrative of their policy, which occurred in Louisiana.
When the French settled themselves in that country, they found,
amongst the neighbouring tribes, the Natchez the most conspicuous.
Their country extended from the Mississippi to the Appalachian
mountains. It had a delightful climate, and was a beautiful region,
well watered, most agreeably enlivened with hills, fine woods, and rich
open prairies. Numbers of the French flocked over into this delicious
country, and it was believed that it would form the centre of the
great colony they hoped to found in that part of America. If the
Natchez were such a people as Chateaubriand has pictured them, they
must have been a noble race indeed. They were, like the Peruvians,
worshippers of the sun, and had vast temples erected to their god. They
received the French as the natives of most discovered countries have
received the Europeans, with the utmost kindness. They even assisted
them in forming their new plantations amongst them, and the most
cordial and advantageous friendship appeared to have grown between the
two nations. Such friendship, however, could not possibly exist between
the common run of Europeans and Indians. The Europeans did not go so
far from home for friendship; they went for dominion. Accordingly, the
French soon threw off the mask of friendship, and treated their hosts
as slaves. They seized on whatever they pleased, dictated their will
to the Natchez, as their masters, and drove them from their cultivated
fields, and inhabited them themselves. The deceived and indignant
people did all in their power to stop these aggressions. They reasoned,
implored, and entreated, but in vain. Finding this utterly useless,
they entered into a scheme to rid themselves of their oppressors, and
engaged all the neighbouring nations to aid in the design. A secret and
universal league was established amongst the Indian nations wherever
the French had any settlements. They were all to be massacred on a
certain day. To apprise all the different nations of the exact day,
the Natchez sent to every one of them a little bundle of bits of wood,
each containing the same number, and that number being the number of
the days that were to precede the day of general doom. The Indians
were instructed to burn in each town one of these pieces of wood every
day, and on the day that they burnt the last they were simultaneously
to fall on the French, and leave not one alive. As usual, the success
of the conspiracy was defeated by the compassion of an individual.
The wife, or mother, of the great chief of the Natchez had a son by
a Frenchman, and from this son she learned the secret of the plot.
She warned the French commandant of the circumstance, but he treated
her warning with indifference. Finding, therefore, that she could not
succeed in putting the French on their guard against a people they had
now come to despise, she resolved that, if she could not avert the fate
of the whole, she would at least afford a chance of safety to a part.
The bits of wood were deposited in the temple of the sun, and her rank
gave her access to the temple. She abstracted a number of the bits of
wood, and thus precipitated the day of rising in that province. The
Natchez, on the burning of the last piece, fell on the French, and,
out of two hundred and twenty-two French, massacred two hundred,—men,
women, and children. The remainder were women, whom they retained as
prisoners.
The Natchez, having accomplished this destruction, were astonished
to find that not one of their allies had stirred; and the allies
were equally astonished at the rising of the Natchez, whilst they
had yet several pieces of wood remaining. The French, however, in
the other parts of the country, were saved; fresh reinforcements
arrived from Europe, and the unfortunate Natchez felt all the fury
of their vengeance. Part were put to the sword; great numbers were
caught and sent to St. Domingo, as slaves; the rest fled for safety
into the country of the Chickasaws. The Chickasaws were called upon
to give them up; but they had more sense of honour and humanity than
Europeans,—they indignantly refused; and, when the French marched
into their territories, to compel them by force, bravely attacked and
repelled them, with repeated loss. As in Canada, Madagascar, India,
and other places, the French reaped no permanent advantage from their
treachery and cruelties, as the other European nations did. Louisiana
was eventually ceded, in 1762, to the Spaniards, just as the French
families, from Nova Scotia, Canada, St. Vincent, Granada, and other
colonies won by the English, were flocking into it as a place of
refuge. They had all the odium and the crime of aboriginal oppression,
and left the earth so basely obtained, to the enjoyment of others no
better than themselves.