Chapter V (1)

THE RED INDIAN OF NORTH AMERICA IN CONTACT WITH THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH.

BY GEORGE E. ELLIS, D. D., LL. D.

_President of the Massachusetts Historical Society._

THE relations into which the first Europeans entered with the aborigines in North America were very largely influenced, if not wholly decided, by the relations which they found to exist among the tribes on their arrival here. Those relations were fiercely hostile. The new-comers in every instance and in every crisis found their opportunity and their immunity in the feuds existing among tribes already in conflict with each other. This state of things, while it gave the whites enemies, also furnished them with allies. So far as the whites could learn in their earliest inquiries, internecine strife had been waging here among the natives from an indefinite past.

Starting, then, from this hostile relation between the native tribes of the northerly parts of the continent, we may trace the development of our subject through five periods:—

1. The first period, a very brief one, is marked by the presence of a single European nationality here, the French, for whom, under stringency of circumstance that he might be in friendly alliance with one tribe, Champlain was compelled to espouse its existing feud with other tribes.

2. The next period opens with the appearance and sharp rivalry here of a second European nationality, the English, the hereditary foe of the French, transferring hither their inherited animosities, amid which the Indians were ground as between two mill-stones.

3. Upon the extinction of French dominion on the continent by the English, the former red allies of the French, with secret prompting and help from the dispossessed party, were stirred with fresh animosities against the victors.

4. Yet again the open hostilities of contending Indian tribes were largely turned to account, to their own harm, in their respective alliances with the English colonies or with the mother-country in the War of Independence.

5. The closing period is that which is still in progress as covering the relations with them of the United States government. The old hostilities between those tribes have been steadily of less account in affecting their later fortunes; and our government has not found it essential or expedient to aggravate its own severity against its Indian subjects, or “wards,” by availing itself of the feuds between them.

The same antagonisms which had kept the Indian tribes in hostility with each other prevented their effective alliance among themselves against the whites, and also embarrassed the English and French rivals, who sought to engage them on their respective sides. Many attempts were made by master chiefs among the savages, from the first intrusion of the Europeans, to organize combinations, or what we call “conspiracies,” of formerly contending tribes against the common foe. The first of them, formidable though limited in its consequences, was made in Virginia in 1622. Only two of these schemes proved otherwise than wholly abortive. That of King Philip in New England, in 1675, was effective enough to show what havoc such a combination might work. That of Pontiac, in 1763, was vastly more formidable, and was thwarted only by a resistance which engaged at several widely severed points all the warlike resources of the English. But the inherent difficulties, both of combining the Indian tribes among themselves, and of engaging some of them in alliance on either side with the French and the English contestants, were vastly increased by the seeds of sharp dissension sown among them through the rivalries in trade and temptations offered in the fluctuating prices of peltries. Even the long-standing league of the Five Nations was ruptured by the resolute English agent Johnson. He succeeded so far as to secure a promise of neutrality from some of them, and a promise of friendly help from one of them. There were some in each of the tribes falling not one whit behind the sharpest of the whites in skilled sagacity and calculation, who were swift to mark and to interpret the changes in the balance of fortune, as one or the other of the parties of their common enemies made a successful stroke for ascendency.

The facilities for alliance with one or another native tribe against its enemies made for the Europeans a vast difference in the results of their warfare with the aborigines. One might venture positively to assert that the occupancy of this continent by Europeans would have been indefinitely deferred and delayed had all its native tribes, in amity with each other, or willing for the occasion to arrest their feuds, made a bold and united front to resist the first intrusion upon their common domains. Certainly the full truth of this assertion might be illustrated as applicable to many incidents and crises in the first feeble and struggling fortunes of our original colonists in various exposed and inhospitable places. In many cases absolute starvation was averted only by the generous hospitality of the Indians. Taking into view the circumstances under which, from the first, tentative efforts were made for a permanent occupancy by the whites on our whole coast from Nova Scotia to Florida, and along the lakes and great western valleys, we must admit that their fortunes had more of peril than of promise. While, of course, we must refer their success and security in large measure to the forbearance, tolerance, and real kindliness of the natives, yet it was well proved that as soon as the jealousy of these natives was stirred at any threatened encroachment, only their own feuds disabled them from any united opposition, and gave to one or another tribe the alternative of fighting the white intruders or of an alliance with them against their neighbor enemies. The whole series of the successive encroachments of Europeans on this continent is a continuous illustration of the successful turning to their own account of the strife of Indians against Indians. And when two rival European nationalities opened their two centuries of warfare for dominion on this continent, each party at once availed itself of red allies ready to renew or prolong their own previous hostilities.

The French Huguenots in Florida and the Spaniards who massacred them had each of them allies among the tribes which were in mutual hostility. Champlain was grievously perplexed by the pressure, to which none the less he yielded, that if he would be in amity with the Hurons he must espouse their deadly enmity with the Iroquois. Even the poor remnants of the tribe with which the Pilgrims of Plymouth made their treaty of peace, which lasted for fifty years, were the vanquished and tributary representatives of a broken people. A sharp war and a more deadly plague had made that colony a possibility.

And so it comes to pass that, if we attempt to define at any period during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the conflicts between the savages and Europeans on this continent, we have to look for the explanation of any special change in the relations of the Indian tribes to the varying interests and collisions of the different foreign nationalities in rivalry here. The hostilities between the French and the English were chronic and continuous. Frenchman’s Bay, at Mt. Desert, preserves the memorial of the first collision, when Argall, from Virginia, broke up the attempted settlement of Saussaye.[1340] As to the later developments of the antagonism, resulting in the extinction of French possession here, we are to refer them in about equal measure to two main causes,—the jealousy of the home governments, and the keen rivalry of the respective colonists for the lucrative spoils of the fur trade. The profit of traffic may be regarded as furnishing the prompting for strife on this side of the water, while the passion for territorial conquest engaged the intrigues and the armies of foreign courts in the stakes of wilderness warfare.

In tracing the course of such warfare we must take into our view two very effective agencies, which introduced important modifications in the methods and results of that warfare. In its progress these two agencies became more and more chargeable with very serious consequences. The first of these is the change induced in the warfare of the Indians by their possession of, leading steadily to a dependence upon, the white man’s firearms and supplies. The second is the usage, which the Indians soon learned to be profitable, of reserving their white prisoners for ransom, instead of subjecting them to death or torture.

When we read of some of the earliest so-called “deeds” by which the English colonists obtained from the sachems wide spaces of territory on the consideration of a few tools, hatchets, kettles, or yards of cloth, we naturally regard the transaction as simply illustrating the white man’s rapacity and cunning in tricking the simplicity of the savage. But we may be sure that in many such cases the Indian secured what was to him a full equivalent for that with which he parted. For, as the whites soon learned by experience, the savages supposed that in such transactions they were not alienating the absolute ownership of their lands, but only covenanting for the right of joint occupancy with the English. And then the coveted tools or implements obtained by them represented a value and a use not measurable by any reach of wild territory. A metal kettle, a spear, a knife, a hatchet, transformed the whole life of a savage. A blanket was to him a whole wardrobe. When he came to be the possessor of firearms and ammunition, having before regarded himself the equal of the white man, he at once became his superior. We shall see how the rivalry between the French and the English for traffic with the Indians, the enterprise of traders in pushing into the wilderness with pack-horses, the establishment of trucking houses, the facility with which the natives could obtain coveted goods from either party, and the occasional failure of supplies in the contingencies of warfare, were on many occasions the turning-points in the fights in the wilderness, and in the shifting of savage partisanship from one side to the other, as the fickle allies found their own interests at stake.

It was in 1609, when Champlain invaded the Iroquois country, on the lake that bears his name, that the astounded savages first saw the flash and marked the deadly effect of his arquebuse. But the shock soon spent itself. The weapon was found to be a terrestrial one, made and put to service by a man. The Dutch on the Hudson very soon supplied the Mohawks with this effective instrument for prosecuting the fur trade. The French began the general traffic with the Indians near the St. Lawrence, in metal vessels, knives, hatchets, awls, cotton and woollen goods, blankets, and that most coveted of all the white man’s stores, the maddening “fire-water.” But farther north and west for full two hundred years, from 1670 quite down to our own time, annual cargoes of these commodities were imported through Hudson Bay by the chartered company, and had been distributed by its agents among those who paid for them in peltries, in such abundance that the savages became really dependent upon them, and gradually conformed their habits to the use of them. Of course, in their raids upon English outposts, the spoils of war in the shape of such supplies added rapacity to their ferocity. It was with a proud flourish that Indian warriors, enriched by the plunder on the field of Braddock’s disastrous defeat, strutted before the walls of Fort Duquesne, arrayed in the laced hats, sashes, uniform, and gorgets of British officers.

When Céloron was sent, in 1749, by the governor of Canada, to take possession of interior posts along the Alleghanies, he found at each of the Indian villages, as at Logstown, a chief centre, from a single to a dozen English traders, well supplied with goods for a brisk peltry traffic. He required the chiefs, on the threat of the loss of his favor, to expel them and to forbid their return. But the Indians insisted that they needed the goods. Some of these traders were worthless reprobates, mostly Scotch-Irish, from the frontiers of Pennsylvania. When Christopher Gist was sent, the next year, by the Ohio Land Company, to follow Céloron and to thwart his schemes, he complained strongly of these demoralized and demoralizing traders. In the evidence given before the British House of Commons on the several occasions when the monopoly and the mode of business of the Hudson Bay Company were under question, the extent to which the natives had come to depend upon European supplies was very strongly brought into notice. It was urged that some of the tribes had actually, by disuse, lost their skill in their old weapons. It was even affirmed that in some of the tribes multitudes had died by freezing and starvation, because their recent supplies had failed them. This dependence of the natives upon the resources of civilization, observable from the opening of their intercourse with the whites, has been steadily strengthening for two hundred years, till now it has become an absolute and heavy exaction upon our national treasury.

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The custom which soon came in, to soften the atrocities of Indian warfare by the holding of white prisoners for ransom, was grafted upon an earlier usage among the natives of adopting prisoners or captives. There was a formal ceremonial in such cases, and after its performance those who would otherwise have been victims were treated with all kindness. The return of a war-party to its own village was attended with widely different manifestations according to the fortune which had befallen it. If it consisted only of a baffled and flying remnant that had failed in its hazardous enterprise, its coming was announced, and received by the old men, women, and youths in the village with howls and lamentations. If, however, it had been successful, as proved by rich plunder, reeking scalp-locks, and prisoners, some runners were sent in advance to announce its approach. Then began a series of orgies, in which the old squaws were the most demonstrative and hideous. While the scalp-locks were displayed and counted, the well-guarded prisoners were exultingly escorted by their captors, the squaws gathering around them with taunts and petty tormentings. The woful fate which was waiting these prisoners was foreshadowed in prolonged rehearsals for its final horrors. One by one they were forced to run the gauntlet from goal to goal, between lines of yelping fiends, under blows and missiles, stones, sticks, and tomahawks, while efforts were made to trip them in their course, that they might be pounded in their helplessness when maddened with pain. Any exhibition of weakness or dread did but intensify the malignant frenzy of their tormentors. Those who lived through this ordeal, which was intended to be but a preliminary in the barbaric entertainment, and to stop short of the actual extinction of life, were afterwards, by deliberate preparations made in full view of the prisoners, subjected to all the ingenuities of rage and cruelty which untamed savage fiendishness could devise. The hero who bore the trial without flinching, singing his song of defiance, and in his turn mocking his tormentors because they failed to break his spirit, was most likely to find mercy in a finishing stroke dealt by a magnanimous foe.

Anything like an alleviation of these dread revenges of savage warfare being unallowable, there was open one way of complete relief in the usage of adoption, just referred to. This, however, was never available to the prisoner from his own first motion or prompting. He was wholly passive in the matter. It came solely from the inclination of any one in the village, a warrior or a squaw who, having recently lost a relative, or one whose service was necessary, might select a prisoner from the group as desirable to supply a place that was vacant. There would seem to have been a large liberty allowed in the exercise of this privilege, especially for those who were mourning for a relative lost in the encounter in which the prisoner was taken. Sometimes the merest caprice might prompt the selection. Scarcely, except in the rare case of some proud captive who would haughtily scorn to avail himself of a seeming affinity with the tribe of a hated or abject enemy, would the offered privilege of adoption be refused. For, in any case, an ultimate escape from an enforced durance might be looked to. Of course those who were thus adopted were mostly the young and vigorous. The little children were not especially favored in the process,—except, as soon to be noted, the children of the whites. The ceremonial for adoption was traditional. Beginning generally with somewhat rough and intimidating treatment, the captive was for a while left in suspense as to his fate. When at length the intent of the arbiter of his life was made known to him, the method pursued has been very frequently described to us in detail by the whites who were the subjects of it.[1341] The candidate was plunged and thoroughly soused in a stream to rinse out his white blood; the hair of his head, saving the scalp-lock, was plucked out; and after some mouthings and incantations, completing the initiation, all winning blandishments, arts, and appliances were engaged to secure the confidence of the adopted captive, and to draw from him some responsive sign of affection. He was arrayed in the choicer articles of forest finery, and nestled in the family lodge. The father, the squaw, or the patron, in whatever relation, to whom he henceforward belonged, spared no effort to engage and comfort him. Watchful eyes, of course, jealously guarded any restless motions looking towards an escape. The final aim was to secure a fully nationalized and acclimated new member of a tribe, ready to share all its fortunes in peace and war.

Naturally there were differences in this whole process and its results, as they concerned these attempted affiliations between the members of Indian tribes and in the adoption of white captives.[1342]

In their early conflicts with the whites, the Indians generally practised an indiscriminate slaughter. There were a few exceptions to the rule in King Philip’s war.[1343] In the raids of the French, with their Indian allies, upon the English settlements, prisoners taken on either side came gradually to have the same status as in civilized warfare, and to be held for exchange. This, however, would proceed upon the supposition that both parties had prisoners. But before there was anything like equality in this matter, the captives were for the most part such as had been seized from among the whites in inroads upon their settlements, not in the open field of warfare. A midnight assault upon some frontier cabins, or upon the lodge of some lonely settler, left the savages to choose between a complete massacre or upon a selection of some of their victims for leading away with them to their own haunts, if not too cumbersome or dangerous for the wilderness journey. It soon came to be understood among the raiding parties of Indians in alliance with the French in Canada that white captives had a ransom value. Contributions were often gathered up in neighborhoods that had been raided, and in the meeting-houses of New England on Sundays, for redeeming such captives as were known to be in Canada. And, curiously enough, Judge Sewall in his journal records appeals for charity in the same form for the redemption of captives in the hands of our own savages, and for the ransom of our seamen and traders who were kept in durance by African corsairs.

In the raids of desolation on either side of the Alleghanies and along the sources of the Susquehannah and the Ohio, from the outbreak of the French and Indian war, down to and even after the crushing of Pontiac’s conspiracy, while more than a thousand cabins of the borderers were burned and their inmates mostly slaughtered, several hundred captives were borne off by the Indians and distributed among their villages. The ultimate fate of these captives always hung in dread uncertainty. If a panic arose among the lodges in apprehension of an onset from a war-party of the whites, the captives might be massacred. But the force of circumstances and the urgency of interested motives steadily made it an object for their captors to retain their prisoners unharmed, and even to make captivity tolerable to them. The alternative of death or life to them generally depended upon whether they might escape or be released by an avenging party without compensation, or could be held for redemption through a ransom. The knowledge that the Indians retained such captives of course became a very effective motive in inducing their relatives in the settlements to gather parties of neighbors for following the victims into the forest depths. Temporary truces also, when made by victorious parties of the whites, were conditioned upon the surrender of all their surviving countrymen who were supposed to be in duress. The savages practised all their artifices and subterfuges in concealing some of their prisoners, alleging that they had been carried deeper into the country by new masters, or by positively denying all knowledge of their whereabouts. But the persistency and threats of those who had learned how to deal with these red diplomates, with a few resolute strokes generally brought about their surrender. When Bouquet had secured possession of Fort Duquesne with his army of 1,500 men, he stoutly followed up his success beyond the Ohio to the Indian settlements near the Muskingum, and with his sturdy pluck and strong force he overawed the representatives of the neighboring tribes which he had summoned to meet him. He insisted, as the first condition of a truce, upon the delivery of all the white prisoners secluded among them, not only without the payment of any ransom, but upon their being brought in with a protecting escort and with means of sustenance. Of course there was always ignorance or doubt as to the number of captives in any particular place, and as to the hands into which any individual known or supposed to be in durance might have fallen. The word of an Indian on these points was worthless unless backed by other testimony. A stimulating of the tongue into unguarded speech by a dram of rum might in some cases serve the purpose of the rack or the thumb-screw in more civilized cross-examinations. An uncertainty of course always hung over the survival or the whereabouts of individuals or members of a family whose bodies had not been found on the scene of an Indian frontier raid. Bouquet was accompanied by friends and relatives of supposed survivors held in captivity as the spoils of some massacre, and these might be depended upon to circumvent the falsehoods and cunning of the captors, and to insist upon their giving up their prizes. The persistency and the plain evidence of resolved purpose manifested by Bouquet finally compelled from the representatives of the tribes in council a pledge to surrender all the prisoners in their hands, and messengers were sent out to gather and bring them in, though with some plausible excuses for delay, and the grudging return of only a part of them. But those who were given up became the best witnesses as to the deception practised by the cunning culprits in holding back others. Only after repeated exposures of falsehood by those so grudgingly surrendered, asserting of their own knowledge that there were others held in durance, whom they might even know by name, was there brought about a full deliverance, saving that, whether truly or falsely, in the case of a few individuals demanded the excuse was alleged that they belonged to some chief or tribe absent at a distance on a hunt, and so not to be reached by a summons. Bouquet was also absolute in his demand for all such white captives, young or old, as were alleged to have been adopted or married among the tribes. His firmly insisting upon this, and the compliance with it in many cases, led to some scenic manifestations in the wilderness, of a highly dramatic character, full of the matter of romance in their revelations of the working of human nature under novel and strange conditions. Such manifestations often attended similar scenes in the ransom or forced surrender of whites who had been in captivity among the Indians. But in this special instance of Bouquet’s resolute course with the Ohio tribes, numbers, variety, picturesqueness in those manifestations, gave to the bringing in and the reception of captives features and incidents which strongly engage alike the sympathies and antipathies of human nature. Some of those brought into Bouquet’s camp, who had once at least been whites, came with full as much reluctance on their part as that which was felt by those who gave them up. Indeed, several of them could be secured only by being bound and guarded.

Approximation in all degrees to the manners and habits of Indian life and to all the qualities of Indian nature had been realized by Europeans from the first contact of the races on this continent. Of course the instances were numerous and very decisive in which this approximation was completed, and resulted in a substitution of all the ways and habits of savagery for those of civilization. Many of those who were forced back into Bouquet’s camp clung to their Indian friends, and repelled all the manifestations of joy and affection of their own nearest kin by blood. They positively refused to return to the settlements. They had been won by preference to the fascinations and license of a life in the wilderness. This preference was by no means inexplicable, even for some full-grown men and women who had been reared in the white settlements. Life in scattered cabins on the frontiers had more points of resemblance than of difference in hard conditions and privations, when compared with savage life in the woods. Such society as these scattered cabins afforded was rude and rough, all experiences were precarious, daily drudgery was severe, the solitary homes were gloomy, and only exceptional cases of early domestic and mental training alleviated the stern exigencies of the condition of the first generation of the settlers. For women and children especially, the outlook and the routine of life were dismal enough. As for the men, the more they conformed themselves in many respects to the actual habits and resources of the Indians in the training of their instincts, in their garb, their food, their adaptation of themselves to the ways and resources of nature, the easier was their lot. Many women, likewise made captives by the savages, in some cases of mature age, and having looked forward to the usual lot of marriage, found an Indian to be preferable, or at all events tolerable, as a husband. Children who preserved but a faint remembrance of home and parents very readily adopted savage tastes, and testified by their shrieks and struggles their unwillingness to part from their red friends. Specimens from each of these classes were the most marked and demonstrative among the groups brought in to Bouquet from Indian lodges, being in number more than two hundred. Doubtless, however, the majority of them had had enough of the experiences of savage life to make a return to the settlements a welcome release. Such persons thenceforward constituted a useful class as interpreters, mediators, and messengers between the contending parties. Their knowledge of Indian character, superstitions, limitations, weak and strong points, impulsive excitability, stratagems, and adaptability to circumstance proved on many emergent occasions of good account. Such of these returned captives as had had the rudiments of an education, and were trustworthy as narrators, have made valuable contributions to local history.

Among many such intelligent and trustworthy reporters was Col. James Smith, captured on the borders of Pennsylvania in 1755, when eighteen years of age, and kept in captivity five years. Another was John McCullough, taken at about the same time and from the near neighborhood, when eight years old. He was retained eight years, and, being a quick-witted and observing youth, he kept his eyes and ears open to all that he could learn. From such sources we derive the most authentic information we possess of that transition period in the condition and fortunes of many of our aboriginal tribes when the intrusion of Europeans upon them with their tempting goods and their rival schemes, which equally tended to dispossess them of their heritage, introduced among them so many novel complications. Some of the narratives of the whites, who, under the conditions just referred to, lived for years and were assimilated with the Indians, present us occasionally by no means unattractive pictures of the ordinary tenor of life among them. In the brief intervals of peace, and in some favored recesses where game abounded and the changing seasons brought round festivals, plays, and scenes of jollity, there were even fascinations to delight one of simple tastes, who could enjoy the aspects of nature, share the easy tramp over mossy trails, content himself with the viands of the wilderness, employ the long hours of laziness in easy handiwork, delight in basking beneath the soft hazes of the Indian summer, or listening to the traditional lore of the winter wigwam. The forests very soon began to be the shelter and the roving haunts of a crew of renegades and outlaws from the settlements, who assimilated at all points with the savages, and often used what remained to them of the knowledge and arts of civilization for ingenious purposes of mischief. It has always proved a vastly more easy and rapid process for white men to fall back into barbarism than for an Indian to conform himself to civilization. Wild life brought out all reversionary tendencies, and revived primitive qualities and instincts. It gave those who shared it a full opportunity to become oblivious of all fastidious tastes and of all the squeamishness of over-delicacy. The promiscuous contents of the camp-kettle, with its deposits and incrustations from previous banquets, were partaken of with a zestful appetite. The circumstances of warfare in the woods quickened all the faculties of watchfulness, made even the natural coward brave, imparted endurance, and multiplied all the ingenuities of resource and stratagem. There is something that surpasses the merely marvellous in the feats of sturdy and persevering scouts, escaped captives, remnants of a butchery, messengers sent to carry intelligence in supreme peril, and lonely wayfarers treading the haunted forests, or creeping stealthily through ambushed defiles, penetrating marshes, using the sky and their woodcraft for guidance, fording or swimming choked or icy streams, climbing high tree-tops for a wider survey from the closed woods and thickets, subsisting on roots and berries and moss, and yielding to the exhaustion of nature only when all perils were passed and the refuge was reached. Alike on the march of armies and in the siege of some little forest stronghold surrounded by yelping savages, it was necessary from time to time to send out a single plucky hero to carry or to obtain intelligence. When such a messenger was not designated by the commander, and the extremity of the emergency left the dismal honor to a volunteer, such was never found to be lacking. It confounds all calculations of the law of chances to learn how, even in the majority of such dire enterprises as are on record, fortune favored the brave. Narratives there are which for ages to come will gather all the exciting elements of tragedy and romance, and occasionally even of comedy, as, set down in the language of the woods, without the constraints of art or grammar, they make us for the moment companions of some imperilled man or woman who borrowed of the bear, the deer, the fox, or the beaver, their several instincts and stratagems for outwitting pursuit and clinging to dear life. Rare, it may be, but still well authenticated, are cases of victims with a strong tenacity of vitality, who, left as dead, mutilated and scalped, reasserted themselves when the foe had gone, found their way back to their homes, and, after such reconstruction as the art of the time would allow, enjoyed a long life afterwards.

The conditions attending the entrance of European war-parties, with their necessary supplies, into the depths of the wilderness were of the most severe and exacting character. They involved equally the outlay of toil and an exposure to perils requiring the most watchful vigilance. Well-worn trails made by the natives, and always sufficiently travelled to keep them open, had long been in use for such purposes as were needed in primitive conditions. These were very narrow, necessitating that progress should be made through them singly, in “Indian file.” At portages or carrying-places, burdens were borne on the back from one watercourse to another, round a rapid or across an elevation. Some of these trails are even now traceable in the oldest settled portions of the country, where the woods have never been wholly cleared. Part of that which was availed of by the whites two hundred and fifty years ago between Plymouth and Boston, and others in untilled portions of the Old Colony, are clearly discernible. The thickets and undergrowths came close to the borders of these trails, and the overhanging branches of the trees were found a grievous annoyance when the earliest traders with pack-horses traversed them. In a large part of our present national domain and in Canada, it may safely be said that nineteen twentieths of all movement from place to place was made by the savages by the watercourses of lake and stream, and the same was done by the Europeans till they brought into use horses first, and then carts. These were first put to service by the traders from the English settlements on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The pack-horses, heavily laden, trained to their rough service for rocky and marshy grounds, as well as for the thick and stifling depths of the forest, and able to subsist on very poor forage, carried goods most prized by the natives, and generally in inverse ratio to their real worth. They returned to the settlements from the Indian villages with a burden of precious furs, the traffickers mutually finding their account in their respective shares in barter and profit. These traders with their pack-horses were for a long time the pioneers of the actual settlers. The methods and results of their traffic, trifling as they may seem to be, had the two leading consequences of critical importance: first, they made the Indians acquainted with and dependent upon the white man’s goods, and then they provoked and embittered the rival competition between the French and the English for the considerable profits.

What we now call a military road was first undertaken on a serious scale in the advance of the disastrous expedition of General Braddock, in 1755, over the Alleghanies to the forks of the Ohio. The incumbrances with which he burdened himself might wisely have been greatly reduced in kind and in amount. But the exigencies of the service in which he was engaged were but poorly apprehended by him. As in the case of the even more disastrous campaign of General Burgoyne, twenty-two years later, (1777) though his route was mainly by water, the camp was lavishly supplied with appliances of luxury and sensuality. Braddock’s way for his cattle, carts, and artillery was slowly and poorly prepared by pioneers in advance, levelling trees, stiffening marshy places, removing rocks and bushes, and then leaving huge stumps in the devious track to rack the wagons and torment the draught animals. It is not without surprise that we read of the presence of domestic cattle far off in the extreme outposts of single persevering settlers. But when, on the first extensive military expeditions for building a fort on the shore of a lake, at river forks, or to command a portage, we find mention of cannon and heavy ammunition, we marvel at the perseverance involved in their transportation. The casks of liquor, of French brandy and of New England rum, which generally, without stint, formed a part of the stores of each military enterprise, furnished in themselves a motive spirit which facilitated their transport. Flour and bread could, with many risks from stream and weather, be carried in sacks. But pork and beef in pickle, the mainstay in garrisons which could not venture out to hunt or fish, required to be packed in wood. After all the persevering toil engaged in this transportation, the dire necessities of warfare under these stern conditions often compelled the destruction of the stores, every article of which had tasked the strained muscles and sinews of the hard-worked campaigners. When it was found necessary to evacuate a forest post, the stockade was set on fire, the magazine was exploded, the cannon spiked, the powder thrown into the water, and everything that could not be carried off in a hasty retreat was, if possible, rendered useless as booty. As the French and English military movements steadily extended over a wider territory and at more numerous points, with increased forces, the waste and havoc caused by disasters on either side involved an enormous destruction of the materials of war. Vessels constructed with incredible labor on the lakes, anvils, cordage, iron, and artillery having been gathered for their building and arming by perilous ocean voyages and by transit through inner waters and portages, and thousands of bateaux for Lakes Champlain and George, now lie sunken in the depths, most of them destroyed by those in whose service they were to be employed. The “Griffin,” the first vessel on Lake Erie, built by La Salle in 1679, disappeared on her second voyage, and lies beneath the waters still. After Braddock’s defeat, when the fugitive remnant of his army had reached Dunbar’s camp, a hundred and fifty wagons were burned, and fifty thousand pounds of powder were emptied into a creek, after the incredible toil by which they had been drawn over the mountains and morasses.

There were many occasions and many reasons which prompted the Europeans to weigh the gain or loss which resulted to them from the employment of Indian allies, who were always an incalculable element in any enterprise. They could never be depended upon for constancy or persistency. A bold stroke, followed, if successful, with butchery, and a rush to the covert of the woods if a failure, was the sum of their strategy. They had a quick eye in watching the turning fortunes and the probable issue of a venture, and they acted accordingly. They were wholly disinclined for any protracted siege operations. In the weary months of the investment of Detroit, the only enterprise of the sort engaged in by large bodies of savages acting in concert, we find a single exceptional case of their uniform impatience of such prolonged strategy. And even in that case there were intervals when the imperilled and starving garrison had breathing-spells for recuperation. Charges and counter-charges, pleas and criminations of every kind, plausible, false, or sincere, are found in the journals and reports of English and French officers, prompted by accusations and vindications of either party, called out by the atrocities and butcheries wrought by their savage allies in many of the conflicts of the French and Indian war. In vain did the commanders of the white forces on either side promise that their red allies should be restrained from plunder and barbarity against the defeated party. It was an attempt to bridle a storm. From the written opinions expressed by various civil and military officials during all our Indian wars one might gather a list of judgments, always emphatically worded, as to the qualities of the red men as allies. Governor Dinwiddie, writing in May 28, 1756, to General Abercrombie, on his arrival here to hold the chief command till the coming of Lord Loudon, expresses himself thus: “I think we have secured the Six Nations to the Northward to our Interest who, I suppose, will join your Forces. They are a very awkward, dirty sett of People, yet absolutely necessary to attack the Enemy’s Indians in their way of fighting and scowering the Woods before an Army. I am perswaded they will appear a despicable sett of People to his Lordship and you, but they will expect to be taken particular Notice of, and now and then some few Presents. I fear General Braddock despised them too much, which probably was of Disservice to him, and I really think without some of them any engagement in the Woods would prove fatal, and if strongly attached to our Interest they are able in their way to do more than three Times their Number. They are naturally inclined to Drink. It will be a prudent Stepp to restrain them with Moderation, and by some of your Subalterns to shew them Respect.”[1344] Baron Dieskau, in 1755, had abundant reason for expressing himself about his savage auxiliaries in this fashion: “They drive us crazy from morning to night. One needs the patience of an angel to get on with these devils, and yet one must always force himself to seem pleased with them.”[1345]

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It would seem as if the native tribes, when Europeans first secured a lodgment, were beguiled by a fancy which in most cases was very rudely dispelled. This fancy was that the new-comers might abide here without displacing them. The natives in giving deeds of lands, as has been said, had apparently no idea that they had made an absolute surrender of territory. They seem to have imagined that something like a joint occupancy was possible, each of the parties being at liberty to follow his own ways and interests without molesting the other. So the Indians did not move off to a distance, but frequented their old haunts, hoping to derive advantage from the neighborhood of the white man. King Philip in 1675 discerned and acutely defined the utter impracticability of any such joint occupancy. He indicated the root of the impending ruin to his own race, and he found a justification of the conspiracy which he instigated in pointing to the white man’s clearings and fences, and to the impossibility of joining planting with hunting, and domestic cattle with wild game.

The history of the Hudson Bay Company and that of the enterprises conducted by the French for more than a century, when set in contrast with the steady development of colonization by English settlers and by the people of the United States succeeding to them, brings out in full force the different relations into which the aborigines have always been brought by the presence of Europeans among them, either as traders or possessors of territory. The Hudson Bay Company for exactly two centuries, from 1670 to 1870, held a charter for the monopoly of trade with the Indians here over an immense extent of territory, and in the later portion of that period held an especial grant for exclusive trade over an even more extended region, further north and west. The company made only such a very limited occupancy of the country, at small and widely distant posts, as was necessary for its trucking purposes and the exchange of European goods for peltries. During that whole period, allowing for rare casualties, not a single act of hostility occurred between the traders and the natives. A large number of different tribes, often at bitter feud with each other, were all kept in amity with the official residents of the company, and each party probably found as much satisfaction in the two sides of a bargain as is usual in such transactions. Deposits of goods were securely gathered in some post far off in the depths of the wilderness, under the care of two or three young apprentices of the company, and here bands of Indians at the proper season came for barter. Previous to the operations of this company, beginning as early as 1620, large numbers of Frenchmen, singly or in parties, ventured deep into the wilderness in company with savage bands, for purposes of adventure or traffic, and very rarely did any of them meet a mishap or fail to find a welcome. Such adventurers in fact became in most cases Indians in their manner of life. Nor did the jealousy of the savages manifest itself in a way not readily appeased when they found the French priests planting mission stations and truck-houses. In no case did the French intruders ask, as did the English colonists, for deeds of territory. It was understood that they held simply by sufferance, and with a view to mutual advantage for both parties, with no purpose of overreaching. The relations thus established between the French and the natives continued down till even after the extinction of the territorial claims of France. And when, just before the opening of the great French and Indian hostilities with the English colonists, the French had manifested their purpose to get a foothold on the heritage of the savages by pushing a line of strongly fortified posts along their lakes and rivers, the apprehensions of the savages were craftily relieved by the plea that these securities were designed only to prevent the encroachment of the English.

A peaceful traffic with the Indians, like that of the Hudson Bay Company and the French, had been from the first but a subordinate object of the English colonists. These last, while for a period they confined themselves to the seaboard, supplemented their agricultural enterprise by the fishery and by a very profitable commerce. As soon as they began to penetrate into the interior they took with them their families and herds, made fixed habitations, put up their fences and dammed the streams. Instead of fraternizing with the Indians, they warned them off as nuisances. We must also take into view the fact that this steadily advancing settlement of the Indian country directly provoked and encouraged the resolute though baffled opposition of the savages. They could match forces with these scattered pioneers, even if, as was generally the case, a few families united in constructing a palisadoed and fortified stronghold to which they might gather for refuge. If a body of courageous men had advanced together well prepared for common defence, it is certain the warfare would not have been so desultory as it proved to be. All the wiles of the Indians in conducting their hostilities gave them a great advantage. They thought that the whites might be dislodged effectually from further trespasses if once and again they were visited by sharp penalties for their rash intrusion. It was plain that they were long in coming to a full apprehension of the pluck of their invaders, of their recuperative energies, and of the reserved forces which were behind them. From the irregular base line of the coast the English advanced into the interior, not by direct parallel lines, but rather by successive semicircles of steadily extending radii. The advances from the middle colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia marked the farthest reaches in this curvature. The French, in the mean while, aimed from the start for occupying the interior.

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The period which we have here under review is one through which the savages, for the most part, were but subordinate agents, the principals being the French and the English. So far as the diplomatic faculties of the savages enabled them to hold in view the conditions of the strife, there were doubtless occasions in which they thought they held what among civilized nations is called the balance of power. Nor would it have been strange if, at times, their chiefs had imagined that, though it might be impossible for them again to hold possession of their old domains free from the intrusion of the white man, they might have power to decide which of the two nationalities should be favored above the other. In that case the French doubtless would have been the favored party. We have, however, to take into view the vast disproportion between the numbers, if not of the resources, of these two foreign nationalities, when the struggle between them earnestly began. In 1688 there were about eleven thousand of the French in America, and nearly twenty times as many English. The French were unified under the control of their home government. Its resources were at their call: its army and navy, its arsenals and treasury, its monarch and ministers, might be supposed to be serviceable and engaged for making its mastery on this continent secure. The English, however, were only nominally, and as regards some of the colonies even reluctantly and but truculently, under the control of their home government. It had been the jealous policy of the New England colonists, from their first planting, to isolate themselves from the mother-country, and to make self-dependence the basis of independence. Their circumstances had thrown them on their own resources, and made them feel that as their foreign superiors could know very little of their emergencies, it was not wise or even right in them to interpose in their affairs. Indeed, it is evident that all the British colonists felt themselves equal, without advice or help from abroad, to take care of themselves, if they had to contend only against the savages. But when the savages had behind them the power of the French monarch, it was of necessity that the English should receive a reinforcement from their own countrymen. In the altercations with the British ministry which followed very soon after the close of the French and Indian war, a keenly argued question came under debate as to the claim which the mother-country had upon the gratitude of her colonists for coming to their rescue when threatened with ruin from their red and white enemies. And the answer to this question was judged to depend upon whether, in sending hither her fleets and armies, Britain had in view an extension of her transatlantic domains or the protection of her imperilled subjects. At any rate, there were jealousies, cross-purposes, and an entire lack of harmony between the direct representatives of English military power and the coöperating measures of the colonial government. Never, under any stress of circumstances, was England willing to raise even the most serviceable of the officers of the provincial forces to the rank of regulars in her own army. The youthful Washington, whose sagacity and prowess had proved themselves in field and council where British officers were so humiliated, had to remain content with the rank of a provincial colonel. Nor did the provincial legislatures act in concert either with each other, or with the advice and appeals of their royal governors in raising men, money or supplies for combined military operations against common enemies. Each of the colonies thought it sufficient to provide for itself. Each was even dilatory and backward when its own special peril was urgent. These embarrassments of the English did very much to compensate the French for their great inferiority in numerical strength. We are again to remind ourselves of the fact that the French, alike from their temperament and their policy, were always vastly more congenial and influential with the savages.

The French in Canada from the first adopted the policy of alliance with native tribes. Though their warfare with the English was hardly intermittent, there were several occasions when it was specially active. Beginning with the first invasion of the Iroquois territory by Champlain, in 1609, already mentioned, under the plea of espousing the side of his friends and allies, the Hurons and Algonquins, other like enterprises were later pursued. Courcelles, in 1666, made a wild and unsuccessful inroad upon the Iroquois. Tracy made a more effective one in the same year. De la Barre in 1684, Denonville in 1687, and Frontenac in 1693 and 1696, repeated these onsets. The last of these invasions of what is now Central New York was intended to effect the complete exhaustion of the Indian confederacy. Its havoc was indeed well-nigh crushing, but there was a tenacity and a recuperative power in that confederacy of savages which yielded only to a like desolating blow inflicted by Sullivan, under orders from Washington, in our Revolutionary War.