Chapter XXII: The New British Possessions (1763-1783)

PROVISIONS FOR DEFENCE, GOVERNMENT, AND THE FUR TRADE

Amherst's plan for defence.--While the Spaniards were occupying western Louisiana the British were organizing the country ceded by France and Spain east of the Mississippi, in Canada, and in the West Indies. In 1763 the Secretary of War asked General Amherst, commander-in-chief in America, for a plan of defence of the British possessions. In response he drew up a "Plan of Forts and Garrisons prepared for the security of North America" which reveals England's outlook upon her newly acquired territory. It provided for ten regiments of approximately seven hundred and fifty men each. The stated purposes were: (1) to keep the king's new subjects in Canada and Louisiana "in due subjection," (2) to keep the old provinces "in a state of Constitutional Dependence upon Great Britain," (3) to command the respect of the Indians, (4) to prevent encroachments of the French or Spaniards, (5) and to protect the colonies in case of war. The regiments were to be distributed in posts along the St. Lawrence, about the Great Lakes, in the Illinois country, along the lower Mississippi, and in Nova Scotia, South Carolina, Georgia, and the Floridas.

Purposes regarding the West.--Regarding the interior posts the particular aims expressed were to keep open the navigation of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, maintain communication between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, hold the western tribes in check, and guard against French or Spanish intrusion. A post at St. Augustine was especially desirable as a defence against Spain, and Pensacola and Mobile would command the commerce of the Gulf as well as the tribes of the Alabama Basin. The lower Mississippi posts were essential to control the Chickasaws. A post at Crown Point was not only needed to maintain a winter highway to Canada, but might also be useful to suppress disaffection in the maritime colonies, "who already begin to entertain some extraordinary Opinions, concerning their Relations to and Dependence upon the Mother Country."

The Proclamation of 1763.--In October, 1763, the king issued a proclamation creating, within the newly acquired territory, four distinct provinces, Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada, and providing a form of government for them. Quebec comprised the Valley of the St. Lawrence from the western end of Anticosti Island to the 45th parallel and Lake Nipissing. Labrador, Anticosti, and the Magdalen Islands were attached to Newfoundland. St. Johns, Cape Breton, and the lesser adjacent islands were attached to Nova Scotia.

East Florida extended to Appalachicola River, and was bounded on the north by St. Mary's River and a line from the head of that stream to the junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers. The district between St. Mary's and Altamaha Rivers, formerly in dispute between Spain and England, was attached to Georgia. West Florida was the district south of latitude 310 and between the Appalachicola River and the Isle of Orleans. The Island of Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent's, and Tobago were erected into the Government of Grenada.

Crown colonies created.--These new jurisdictions were made crown colonies. For each a governor was to be appointed, with power to call assemblies, "in such Manner and Form as is used and directed in the Colonies and Provinces in America which are under our immediate Government." Until such assemblies should meet, the governors, with their executive councils, were empowered to erect courts, having appeals to the privy council.

The Indian reservation.--For the time being all British possessions on the continent not included in the foregoing jurisdictions, or within the Territory of Hudson Bay, and all lands west or north of the streams flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, were reserved as crown lands for the use of the Indians. No colony might grant lands within this Indian reservation, and settlers were requested to move out. The considerable French settlements in the reserve were ignored.

Until 1755 the English government had managed its Indian affairs through the different colonies, but the results were far from satisfactory. In that year the government assumed political control over the Indians, creating a southern and a northern department, and appointing a superintendent for each. In 1761 the purchase of Indian lands was taken out of the hands of the colonies.

Regulation of Indian trade.--The acquisition of extensive territories in 1763 called for new trade regulations. The proclamation had created an Indian reserve and opened trade to all duly licensed subjects. In the following year Lord Hillsborough drew up a general plan for the management of Indians and the fur trade. It safeguarded the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company and provided for the continuation of the two superintendents, with three deputies for the northern and two for the southern district. In the North all trade must be conducted at regularly established posts, and in the South at the Indian towns. All traders must be licensed, must trade at schedule prices, and must have no dealings with Indians except at the prescribed places. By 1768 the plan had proved too expensive, and the management of the fur trade was restored to the individual colonies.

THE OCCUPATION OF THE FLORIDAS

The West Florida posts.--On August 6, 1763, Colonel Prevost took possession of Pensacola, which became the capital of West Florida. Shortly afterwards Mobile was occupied by Major Robert Farmar. The French troops there withdrew to New Orleans, as did some of the people, but most of the latter remained. Fort Tombecbe, renamed Fort York, was given a garrison of thirty men, for the express purpose of keeping the Choctaws hostile to the Chickasaws, but was abandoned in 1768. The French among the Choctaws moved across the Mississippi into Spanish territory, but continued to trade with the tribe.

The boundary and the river forts.--In 1764 the northern boundary of West Florida was moved north to 32 deg. 28' to take in the Natchez settlements, and to make room for the land speculators who were seeking land grants on the lower Mississippi. A garrison was placed at Natchez (Fort Panmure). In connection with efforts to keep the Mississippi open and to establish navigation through the Iberville River, Fort Bute was bunt near the latter stream in 1766. These Mississippi posts were designed also to prevent French and Spanish smuggling among the Choctaws. But there was English smuggling likewise, and to stop it Spanish posts were later built on the other bank of the river. In 1769 the troops of most of the English posts were withdrawn to St. Augustine, but there was a protest at once. Pensacola drew up a memorial, and immigrants recently arrived at the Mississippi demanded protection. O'Reilly had just come to New Orleans, and it was feared that he might have designs on West Florida. In 1770, therefore, most of the troops were restored, and a new garrison was established at Manchac.

Indian agents and fur magnates.--The possession of West Florida proved an important asset to Great Britain in the control of the southwestern Indians, especially during the Revolution. John Stuart, Superintendent for the Southern Department, made his headquarters at Pensacola, but Mobile was the real center of control for the whole Southwest. Subagents convened at Mobile a great congress of all the tribes and effected an alliance with them, and soon afterward the Indian lands about Mobile were ceded to the English. The military authorities encouraged inter-tribal dissensions, and the Creeks and Choctaws were frequently at war, in which the Chickasaws sometimes joined. According to the general system, the fur trade of the Southwest was opened to all traders having a government license and a proper bond. The fur magnates at Mobile were the house of Swanson and McGillivray, who by 1777 had a branch house at Fort Bute, which conducted trade with the Illinois. At Pensacola Panton, Leslie, and Company, the largest business house, became an important factor in the trade and in the management of the tribes.

Politics and government.--West Florida was accorded a governor, council, and assembly. Governor George Johnstone arrived at Pensacola in October, 1764, but the first assembly was not elected until 1766. Mobile, Pensacola, and Campbell Town were electoral precincts at first, and after 1778 Natchez and Manchac were represented. The brief political experiences of the province were as interesting as those of the older colonies in early days. The governor and assembly frequently quarreled. In 1772 Governor Chester prorogued that body and for six years got along without it. More harmful than these quarrels were the factional disputes between the civil and military officials.

Development of West Florida.--When England took possession, Pensacola consisted of some forty thatched huts and small barracks, all enclosed within a palisade, but it was rebuilt, and practically dates from British rule. Mobile remained largely French, and was reduced in size by the emigration to New Orleans. British rule gave impetus to Mobile's commerce, and by 1776 the port was paying L4000 a year to the London custom house alone.

Immigration.--Efforts were made also to secure immigrants for West Florida. In 1763 the Board of Trade put an advertisement regarding land grants in the London Gazette, and in 1764 Governor Johnstone issued a circular to attract settlers. In 1765 or 1766 a colony from North Carolina went by sea and settled about Natchez and Baton Rouge. Speculators obtained large grants of land about Natchez as early as 1767, among them being Daniel Clark, later a great figure at New Orleans. Before the Revolution numerous settlers arrived from England, the West Indies, and most of the mainland colonies, including New England. Most of them settled on the Mississippi River between Manchac and Natchez. In 1772 three hundred persons from Virginia and the Carolinas are said to have been established on the lower Mississippi, and three or four hundred families were expected that summer. As a result, the Mississippi posts were repaired and civil government established. In 1775 a considerable immigration from New England was led by General Lyman. About the same time Colonel Putnam led a company from New England to the Yazoo district. In 1777, according to the botanist Bartram, more than half of the population of Mobile were people who had come from the northern colonies and Great Britain.

During the Revolution West Florida was a refuge for Loyalists. In November, 1776, Mathew Phelps led a colony of New Englanders to the lower Mississippi. Highland soldiers defeated in North Carolina that year took refuge in the province. Loyalists from Georgia and South Carolina settled on the Tombigbee River and Mobile Bay, and others from the same colonies settled on the Tensaws Bayou.

East Florida under British rule.--In East Florida, St. Augustine became the capital and the chief military post. St. Marks on the Gulf was occupied for military purposes and the posts of Matanzas, Picolata, and Mosquito were also maintained for a time. The military of both East and West Florida were under the general command at Pensacola. James Grant was made first governor. In East Florida there was no assembly till 1781. Difficulties between military and civil authorities prevailed as in West Florida.

At the time of the British occupation, St. Augustine was a small Spanish town with adobe houses and narrow streets. Under British rule East Florida prospered. Harbors were improved, and highways were constructed, one being built from St. Mary's River to St. Augustine. In 1766 some forty families went from the Bermudas to Mosquito Inlet to engage in ship-building. In the following year Dr. Turnbull brought fifteen hundred indentured colonists from the Mediterranean region and settled them at New Smyrna. In 1776 the indentures were cancelled and the settlers moved to St. Augustine, where their descendants still five. During the Revolution East Florida, like West Florida, became a Mecca for southern Loyalists.

MILITARY OCCUPATION OF THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY

Plans to occupy the Illinois country.--By the end of 1761 British troops had taken possession of all the lake posts from Niagara to Green Bay, besides Venango, Miamis, and Ouiatanon further south. In July, 1763, orders were sent by the Governor of Louisiana for the evacuation of the Illinois posts, and boats were prepared at Fort Pitt for sending four hundred English troops to relieve the French garrisons. But the conspiracy of Pontiac delayed the complete transfer of this region for nearly three years.

The conspiracy of Pontiac.--Early in the war the tribes north of the Ohio had ravaged the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontiers, but after 1758 they had been quiet, although they did not like the English. They feared eviction from their lands, English traders had proved arrogant and dishonest, and General Amherst was attempting a policy of economy in presents, in spite of the criticism of the better informed Indian agents. Pontiac, head chief of the Ottawas, organized a general revolt, embracing the Algonquins, some of the tribes of the lower Mississippi, and some of the Iroquois. By a simultaneous assault in May, 1763, all but three northwestern posts--Detroit, Fort Pitt, and Niagara --fell almost without a blow. At Presq'Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Mackinac, Sandusky, St. Josephs, and Ouiatanon, there were massacres, and the garrison fled from Green Bay.

Failure of the Loftus expedition.--It being impracticable now to send troops to the Illinois country by way of the Ohio, this was attempted by an expedition up the Mississippi Major Loftus was sent from Mobile with three hundred and fifty men to occupy Fort Massac, Kaskaskia, and Fort Chartres. In February, 1764, he left New Orleans, but when two hundred and forty miles up the river, at Rocher a Davion, he was attacked by Tunica Indians, whereupon he abandoned the expedition and returned to Mobile.

Peace.--While Colonel Bradstreet reoccupied the Lakes, General Gage, Amherst's successor, resorted to conciliation, and a series of peace embassies were sent to the Illinois country from Mobile and from the northern garrisons. The submission of the Ohio tribes, failure of hopes for aid from New Orleans, and news of the transfer of western Louisiana to Spain, led Pontiac to negotiate at Ouiatanon in 1765 with George Croghan. At Detroit Croghan secured peace with all the western tribes. Thomas Stirling then descended the Ohio with a detachment and in October occupied Fort Chartres. "Thus, after nearly three years of fighting and negotiating, British forces were in possession of the last of the French posts in the West."

Establishment of government.--In accordance with the Treaty of Paris a proclamation of General Gage guaranteed the inhabitants the free exercise of the Catholic religion. Settlers were allowed to sell their lands and emigrate, or to become British subjects on taking the oath of allegiance. The inhabitants of Kaskaskia and other places asked and received an extension of the time for decision to March, 1766. Many of them emigrated to St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve, or to New Orleans. The Proclamation of 1763 made no provision for civil government in the Indian reserve, and local administration was left to the military authorities and Indian agents. The French people were dissatisfied, and many misunderstandings arose between them and the English settlers and officers. By 1770 the complaint took the form of a demand for civil government, which was provided in 1774 by the Quebec Act.

LAND SPECULATION AND PLANS FOR WESTERN COLONIES

Western schemes.--Before the French and Indian War grants had been made by the British government of lands beyond the Alleghanies, and settlement on the back lands had been favored as a means of opposing, the French and of extending British trade. During the war the frontiers of settlement were contracted, but, in anticipation of victory, new grants were sought and new schemes proposed. Not only were lands desired, but prominent men proposed new colonial governments west of the mountains. Nearly all of the proposals involved territory in the Ohio Valley. After the Albany Congress of 1754 Franklin urged the formation of two barrier colonies in the West. In 1756 Thomas Pownall, ex-governor of New Jersey, made a similar proposal. About the same time Samuel Hazard of Philadelphia promoted the formation of a Presbyterian colony to embrace most of the Ohio Valley and extending across the Mississippi. In 1757 the Greenbrier Company secured 100,000 acres of land on the western waters.

The victory over the French stimulated new speculative and colonizing schemes for the West both in England and America. In June, 1763, the Mississippi Company was formed, composed of prominent Virginians, including Colonel George Washington and Richard Henry Lee. A memorial to the king was drawn asking for 2,500,000 acres on both sides of the lower Ohio, quit rent free for twelve years, and protection by royal forts, on condition of settling two hundred families. Late in 1763 a pamphlet published in Edinborough, Scotland, proposed a colony named Charlotiana, to include the country between the Wabash, Ohio, Mississippi, and the Great Lakes. About the same time Charles Lee proposed a colony on the Illinois and another on the Ohio.

Effect of the Proclamation.--The Proclamation of 1763 closing the Trans-Alleghany country to settlement seems to have checked for a time the schemes for speculation. The Proclamation contained an implied promise that the boundary would be revised, while it was well known that influential politicians in England favored the opening of the West. New schemes for western lands, therefore, were not long suppressed. In 1766 William Franklin, governor of New Jersey, launched a plan for two colonies, one at Detroit, the other on the lower Ohio. Through the aid of Benjamin Franklin, father of the governor, the Ohio country was favored by the Board of Trade, but in 1768 the plan dropped from sight. Meanwhile many other land companies were formed.

A policy of expansion adopted.--The policy of the ministry regarding the West was vacillating, and more so, no doubt, because of the pressure of conflicting interests. But in 1768 the ministry decided on a definite plan for western settlement, the principle being that expansion should be gradual and under control of imperial agents, who should purchase land from the Indians as needed. Johnson and Stuart, Indian superintendents, had already made tentative arrangements for revising the proclamation line. In 1765 the Six Nations ceded their claims to lands between the Ohio and the Tennessee. Stuart, by a series of treaties, secured a line from the southern boundary of Virginia to the St. Mary's River. Florida, thence along the tidewater line to the Appalachicola River. West of that point the line was not completed, but important cessions were made along the Mobile coast. In 1768 the former lines were ratified, and Stuart, in two treaties with the Cherokees and Creeks (October, November, 1768), secured the extension of the line to the mouth of the Kanawha River on the north and to the Choctaw River on the south. At Fort Stanwix in 1768 the Iroquois ratified essentially their cession of 1765. The lines did not correspond, since the Iroquois cession included Western Tennessee and Kentucky, which were not within the other cessions. Meanwhile the southern line was modified by the treaty of Lochaber by running it west along the southern boundary of Virginia to the Holston River, thence direct to the mouth of the Kanawha. The purpose of the change was to take in the recently formed Watauga settlement.

Vandalia.--Having extinguished the Indian titles, it was now possible to found a new colony back of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and such a project was put on foot. Samuel Wharton of Philadelphia formed a company for the purpose of purchasing part of the lands. The company included some of the leading men in England and America, among them being Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Walpole. Official aid was enlisted by including two members of the ministry. In 1769 the purchase was made, and, in spite of Lord Hillsborough's opposition, by 1775 the project of a new and separate province named Vandalia had been approved by king and council. The outbreak of the Revolution set the plan aside. Had it been carried out it would have cut Virginia off from her back lands. The Quebec Act of 1774 operated in the same direction, by attaching the Northwest to Quebec. Virginia therefore resisted. Governor Dunmore opposed the Vandalia colony, made grants of land both within and beyond it, and joined a company which purchased Indian lands north of the Ohio.

TRANS-ALLEGHANY SETTLEMENT

Western settlements before 1763.--But it was the backwoodsmen, and not the corporations, who opened the Trans-Alleghany country. Before the war a few settlements had been made on the western waters, In 1748 Draper's Meadows, on the Greenbrier, in West Virginia, were settled. Between 1750 and 1752 a settlement was made by the Ohio Company at Redstone on the Monongahela. By 1758 several small settlements had been made on the Holston, Watauga, and Cheat Rivers. But during the war these western settlements were abandoned, and the frontier pushed eastward a hundred miles or more.

The westward movement after the war.--The French and Indian War was scarcely over when the westward movement began again, regardless of proclamations or the deliberations of the Board of Trade. In 1760 Daniel Boone, from the Yadkin in North Carolina, "cilled a bar" on the Watauga River. Between 1761 and 1765 Wallen annually led hunters to the west. In 1765 Croghan surveyed the Ohio River, and the next year James Smith and others explored the Tennessee. In 1767 Finley was in Kentucky, and Stoner, Harrod, and Lindsay were at French Lick (the site of Nashville). In 1767 and 1770 Boone was "prospecting" for Judge Richard Henderson, a land speculator of North Carolina. At the same time Mansker led a party down the Cumberland and on to Natchez. By this time others had wandered far beyond the Mississippi and were causing the Spanish officials anxiety.

The hunters, traders, and prospectors were followed by surveyors and settlers. The chief participants in the movement were from the middle region and the South: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Prominent among the pioneers on the western waters were the Scotch-Irish who had settled the back country of the older colonies and stood waiting at the western passes.

The Appalachian barrier.--To reach the Mississippi Valley the frontiersman was forced to pass the Appalachian barrier, extending from Maine to Georgia. The easiest pass through it, by way of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, was impeded by the Six Nations who stood between the western frontier of settlement and the vacant lands beyond. Farther south the barrier was traversed by a series of interlocking rivers, flowing in opposite directions, whose valleys afforded trails. The Susquehannah led to the Alleghany, the Potomac to the Monongahela, the James and Roanoke to the Great Kanawha, the Great Pedee, the Yadkin, and Catawba to the head waters of the Tennessee. A series of longitudinal valleys on the eastern front of the southern Appalachians gave access from Virginia and North Carolina to the upper Tennessee, from whose valley an easy pass was found to Kentucky by way of Cumberland Gap.

The Indian barrier.--The Iroquois Confederacy, though friendly, was a retarding force to the northern stream of emigration. The Algonquin tribes north of the Ohio had been friendly with the French, and after the French and Indian War they favored the French traders rather than those from the seaboard colonies. At the southern end of the Appalachians westward expansion was retarded by the strong confederacies of the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. The region between the Ohio and the Tennessee was the "dark and bloody ground" between the northern and southern tribes, but permanently inhabited by neither. It was this region which was opened to settlement by the Indian cessions between 1768 and 1770. The cessions were followed immediately by a movement of settlers into the area.

_THE SETTLEMENT OF EASTERN TENNESSEE_

The North Carolina Regulators.--The movement across the mountains was stimulated by a popular upheaval in the back country of North Carolina. Shortly before 1740 the Scotch-Irish and German migration reached North Carolina and by 1765 the lands along the headwaters of the Yadkin, Haw, Neuse, Tar, Catawba, and Deep Rivers had been occupied. Many English and Welsh also had settled in the same region. Between the Piedmont and the coastal plain was a sparsely settled country of pine forests. "Cut off ... from the men of the east, the men of the 'back country' felt no more sympathy for the former than they received from them." The coast country controlled the legislature and the courts. The men of the West complained that they were forced to pay excessive taxes, that the sheriffs were dishonest, and fees extortionate. An additional grievance was the scarcity of money. During 1765-1767 the frontiersmen began to organize and from 1767 to 1771 the back country was in a state of rebellion. Lawyers were seized and whipped, and the Hillsboro court was broken up. In 1771 the Regulators were defeated by Governor Tryon's troops in the battle of the Alamance and the rebellion soon subsided. During those troubled years many had sought new homes in the western valleys.

The Watauga settlement.--Permanent settlement was made in eastern Tennessee in 1769. In that year a band of pioneers moved down the valley from Virginia and settled on the Watauga River, a branch of the Tennessee, thinking that they were still in Virginia. A short time afterward they were joined by settlers from North Carolina, within whose bounds the colony proved to be. Two able leaders soon emerged. James Robertson, a backwoodsman and a "mighty hunter," went to Watauga in 1770 and took thither a colony of sixteen North Carolina families in 1771. A year later arrived John Sevier, a Virginian of Huguenot extraction. Like Robertson, he was an able Indian fighter and a leader of men.

The Watauga Association.--Finding themselves outside of Virginia and beyond the reach and protection of the North Carolina administration, the settlers, like the Pilgrim Fathers in a similar situation, reverted to the social compact--familiar to Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and to back-country North Carolinians who had "regulated" horse stealing--and formed a government for themselves. In 1772 a convention of the settlers created an independent government called the Watauga Association. It had a written constitution, vesting the administration in an executive committee of five, two of whom were Sevier and Robertson. This committee exercised most of the powers of sovereignty, making treaties, administering justice, granting lands, and making war on the Indians. In 1776 the Watauga Association, realizing the need of help, petitioned the Council of North Carolina to extend its government over the new settlements, and in 1777 they were organized as Washington County.

_THE BEGINNINGS OF KENTUCKY_

The surveyors and first settlers.--Settlement had also begun in what is now Kentucky. Ahead of the settlers went the prospectors and surveyors, who descended the Ohio and the Kanawha to select and survey lands. In 1770 and 1772 George Washington explored lands in what is now northeastern Kentucky. In 1773 the McAfees led a party of surveyors down the Ohio, crossed Kentucky, and returned over the Cumberland Mountains. In the following year several parties of surveyors and land hunters were sent by Virginia officials to lay out bounty lands for soldiers. Others went without official sanction. One party was led by John Floyd from Fincastle County, Virginia, who descended the Kanawha and Ohio to the Falls, crossed Kentucky, and returned by Cumberland Gap. During his expedition he surveyed lands for George Washington, Patrick Henry, and others. Attempts at settlement had already been made. In 1773 Daniel Boone led a colony from North Carolina toward Kentucky, but was driven back by Indians. The next year Harrod, of Virginia, founded a settlement in Kentucky called Harrodsburg, but it was broken up by Indians, whose hostilities drove out all settlers and land hunters.

Indian ravages.--The border war which now occurred was the culmination of a long series of troubles between the frontiersmen of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the Indians of the Ohio Valley. The Delawares had been pushed over the Pennsylvania Mountains to the Muskingum and Tuscarawas Rivers. Among them settled the Moravian missionaries, who formed them into Christian towns and kept them peaceful when others were hostile. The Shawanee had been pushed north to the Scioto River, whence they marauded the Virginia border. Behind them were the hostile tribes who had taken part in Pontiacs War. Through 1773 an Indian uprising was threatening, and preparations were made in the westernmost settlements of Virginia. Early in 1774 many settlers fled from the Holston and Clinch Valleys. Minor outrages being committed along the Ohio, alarm, spread, and in April there was a retreat across the Monongahela, which was crossed by more than a thousand refugees in a single day.

Lord Dunmore's War.--Governor Dunmore now prepared for war, which, there is some ground for thinking, he helped to bring on as a means of strengthening Virginia's claims to the Northwest. To warn the surveyors and settlers Colonel Preston, lieutenant-sheriff and surveyor of Fincastle County, Virginia, sent Boone and Stoner through Kentucky. They went as far as the Falls of the Ohio, and saved most of the men on the frontier. The governor organized a campaign, himself leading the Virginia regulars down the Ohio, while the frontier levies were led by Colonel Andrew Lewis. They were to meet at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. When Lewis reached that point he was attacked before the arrival of Dunmore by the Indians under Chief Cornstalk, whom he defeated. Thereupon the Indians sued for peace with Dunmore, who had entered their country north of the Ohio. In the following October a treaty was made at Fort Pitt which kept the northern Indians quiet during the first two years of the Revolution and made it possible to settle Kentucky.

Henderson and Transylvania.--Harrodsburg was now refounded by Virginians (1775) who constituted the majority of the settlers. Henderson, the North Carolina land speculator, formed a land company, called the Transylvania Company. To improve his title in 1775 he made a treaty with the Overhill Cherokees paying them L10,000 for their claims to lands along and between the Cumberland and the Kentucky. Boone, with a party of thirty men, was sent ahead to clear a road for Henderson's colony from the Holston River to the Kentucky (1775). It became the famous highway known as the Wilderness Road. Henderson followed with his colony, founded Boonesborough, built a fort, and opened a land office, naming his colony Transylvania. He attempted to set up in the wilderness a modified proprietary regime. Having established his colony, he called a convention; the delegates made laws which Henderson approved, and a compact was formed between the delegates and proprietors defining the irrespective rights. The proprietors retained control by reserving to themselves the veto power.

Transylvania absorbed by Virginia.--Henderson's procedure was regarded as illegal, and he was denounced by the governors of both Virginia and North Carolina. When the Revolution broke out the proprietors sent a delegate to the Continental Congress and appealed to that body for protection, but, largely through Virginia's influence, the delegation was rejected. The Virginia settlers in Kentucky, led by Harrod, opposed Henderson's claim to lands, appealed to Virginia, and sent George Rogers Clark to the assembly. Virginia asserted sovereignty over Kentucky, and stormy times continued till 1777, when Kentucky with her present boundaries was organized as Kentucky County, Virginia.

_THE UPPER OHIO AND MIDDLE TENNESSEE_

Westsylvania.--While Henderson was founding Transylvania another region west of the mountains was being settled and was struggling for independent statehood. Emigrants from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and other states had crossed the mountains and settled on the tributaries of the upper Ohio in what are now western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. By the middle of 1776 there were said to be 25,000 families on the tributaries of the Ohio above the Scioto River. But the land which they occupied was in dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the Indiana and Vandalia Companies, and the settlers took up the struggle, quarreling over land titles and jurisdiction. The disorders prevented effective organization against the Indians. Shortly after the Declaration of Independence the settlers memorialized Congress, asking independent statehood as a "sister colony and fourteenth province of the American confederacy," under the name of Westsylvania, whose boundaries they described, but the request was not granted.

The Cumberland settlement.--Robertson was the type of frontiersmen desirous to be ever on the move. In 1779 he prospected at French Lick, returned to Watauga, raised a colony, and in the fall led it forth. The women and children were conducted by Donelson down the Tennessee and up the Cumberland, while Robertson, guided by Mansker, led the men overland. Nashborough, now Nashville, was founded at the Cumberland Bend, and other stations were occupied along the river. In 1780 a convention formed an "Association" much like that of Watauga, but after three years of independence the district became Davidson County, North Carolina.

THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC

The French people.--At the time of the conquest the Canadian people numbered about 65,000 living in the St. Lawrence Valley, with several thousand scattered among the western posts. The settlers were in the main a frugal, industrious, unlettered, religious people. They were of two distinct classes, the gentry and the peasant tenants. After the war there was a considerable emigration to France of the official, noble, and commercial classes, leaving chiefly cultivators of the soil and fur traders. By 1775 the population had grown to perhaps 90,000, chiefly through natural increase of the French. By 1784 the population was 113,000.

The British settlers.--The conquest left in the province and attracted to it later a small body of British settlers but by 1775 they did not number more than five or six hundred. Most of them lived in the towns of Quebec and Montreal, and engaged in business, especially in the fur trade, many as agents for English houses, others being independent merchants. When Hillsborough restored seignorial tenure, many of them acquired seigniories, though they continued to live by trade.

Military rule.--British rule in Canada began with the capitulation of Montreal in September, 1760. General Amherst was made governor-general, with lieutenant-governors at Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers. From that time to the enforcement of the Proclamation of 1763 Canada was under military rule. But French law and customs were followed in the main, and there was little discontent.

Civil government established.--Civil government was established in August, 1764. The governor was assisted by an executive council composed of the lieutenant-governor, chief justice, and eight citizens. The government provided by the Proclamation of 1763 was unsuited to a population almost wholly French, professing the Catholic religion, and living under laws and customs of their own. The Proclamation provided for an assembly, but none was held in Quebec because the French people would not take the test oath, and the British settlers were too few in numbers to warrant an assembly representing them alone. Uncertainty existed regarding tithes and the future status of the Catholic Church. The Proclamation contemplated the establishment of British law, but practice was uncertain. The French inhabitants were not politically ambitious, but the British were aggressive in their demands for an assembly and the uniform establishment of English law.

The Quebec Act.--Under these circumstances a change of system was deemed necessary. It was provided by the Quebec Act of 1774, the first parliamentary legislation for Canada. The act maintained the privileges of the Catholic clergy, tithes from Catholic subjects being continued. French civil procedure was established, with some exceptions, but English criminal procedure was enforced. Provision was made for an appointive executive council with powers to make ordinances for the province, but no provision was made for a provincial assembly.

Boundaries extended.--The population of the Illinois country was similar to that of Quebec. The French _habitants_ there had been demanding civil government, and it had been complained by the Montreal traders that the prosperity of Canada had been impaired by cutting off the western posts. Therefore the boundaries of Quebec were extended to include the region between the Ohio River and the Upper Mississippi. By the Proclamation of 1763 Labrador east of River St. John's, Anticosti, and the Magdalens, had been attached to Newfoundland. Labrador now began to develop commerce with the interior and the North and with Newfoundland. Opposition to the fishing admirals of Newfoundland caused these three districts to be annexed to Quebec in 1774.

Not intended as a blow at liberty.--The Quebec Act was regarded in the other colonies as a blow at popular liberties and as an encroachment upon colonies whose chartered boundaries extended into the Northwest. It was in fact an administrative act intended primarily as a means of providing for the interests of the great body of the inhabitants, the French. The attachment of the Ohio country to Quebec, however, checked the natural spread of settlement from the seaboard colonies, and the act, on the other hand, prevented the assimilation of the French people by the English in Canada.

The Loyalists in Canada.--During the American Revolution a considerable number of Loyalists crossed into Canada and settled at the border posts. Many others joined the British army against the Americans. At the close of the war some of the border counties of New York were almost depopulated. In 1783 there were in the Montreal district seventeen hundred Loyalists at seventeen posts, not counting enlisted men. Of those who migrated after the revolution the greater number at first settled in Nova Scotia. By the end of 1784 the number there exceeded 28,000 and caused the forming of the new province of New Brunswick. Over three thousand went to Cape Breton Island, and three times that number to the interior of Canada. Thirteen hundred settled at Kingston and formed the nucleus of Upper Canada, which was separated from Lower Canada in 1791. More important than this, the Revolution determined the course of Canadian history. In order not to be absorbed by the United States, Canada was forced into unswerving loyalty to the British Empire.

THE NORTHERN FUR TRADERS

Supervision of the fur trade.--The fur trade of Quebec under the new regime was supervised according to the principles of the Proclamation of 1763. The most fundamental fact was that the French monopolistic system was discontinued, except at certain "King's posts" in the lower St. Lawrence Valley. The trade was open to any duly licensed subject, superintendents were established at the posts, local courts were erected in the interior, and settlement limited to the immediate neighborhood of the posts in order not to drive away the fur bearing animals.

The French traders ruined.--The conquest had destroyed the French fur trading organization. Under the mercantile system then in vogue, supplies and markets had now to be sought in England. The French merchants were ruined, and the entire trade of the Great Lake region was thrown into the hands of the British traders. The French _coureurs de bois_, however, remained in the country, and, in the employ of the British, continued to be the backbone of the fur gathering business in the interior.

The rush to the interior.--As early as 1761 British traders of Montreal began to enter the field left vacant by the French. Pontiac's War caused a suspension of their activities, and during it British traders were plundered and murdered. By 1765, however, there was a new rush to the interior, though it was 1771 before they could safely trade in the most remote posts on the Saskatchewan. In the meantime the Indians had learned to take their furs to the posts on Hudson Bay or down the Mississippi.

Extent of operations.--The American Revolution destroyed the western fur trade of the seaboard colonies and threw the commerce of the entire Northwest into the hands of the Quebec and Montreal traders. By the close of the war they were conducting operations on both sides of the Great Lakes, in the Illinois country, beyond the upper Mississippi, on the Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, Churchill, and Athabasca Rivers, to the neighborhood of Great Slave Lake. They traded on the Assiniboine, and may have reached the Missouri by that route.

Management of the trade.--During and after the Revolution the value of the furs annually sent from Montreal and Quebec to London was probably $1,000,000. The trade centered mainly in Montreal. In London great mercantile establishments throve by the commerce. At Montreal other great houses were founded. Detroit and Michillimackinac were interior supply posts, where branch houses or lesser merchants conducted business. Wintering partners and clerks went with the fleets of batteaux into the far interior, but most of the common hands or _engages_ were French and half-breed _coureurs de bois_, just as in the case of the Spanish fur trade in Louisiana. The entire business was conducted on the credit system.

The fur magnates.--Many of the fur magnates were Scotchmen. Among the Montreal merchants of importance in this period were Alexander Henry, Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, James Finlay, and Peter Pond. Henry was one of the earliest in the West. Finlay is said to have been among the first on the Saskatchewan River. The Frobishers were leading traders on the Saskatchewan and Churchill. Pond was probably the pioneer on the Athabasca, having wintered there in 1778-1789.

The Northwest Company formed.--The free access of all licensed traders to the interior resulted in reckless competition in regions remote from the military posts. Acts of violence were committed and Indians were involved in the contest. Besides the grave disadvantages of competition, there were obvious advantages of combination. In 1779, therefore, nine enterprises were consolidated for one year. The success caused the arrangement to be repeated, and finally in 1783-1784 the Northwest Company was organized and became permanent. This company soon monopolized the larger part of the Montreal trade, and became the great rival of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Advance of Hudson's Bay Company.--After the Peace of Utrecht the Hudson's Bay Company had returned to an era of prosperity. Urged on by French competition, by 1700 expeditions inland had been made by Kelsey (1691) and Sanford, and Henley House had been built a hundred and fifty miles inland from Fort Albany; and by 1720 other minor inland expeditions had been made by Macklish and Stewart, but in the main the Company had held to the shores of the Bay. Instead of sending employees inland, as did the French, reliance was placed on furs brought by the Indians to the posts, all of which were close to the Bay. The monopoly enjoyed was a cause of jealousy among British merchants, and critics arose, notably Arthur Dobbs, who charged that the Company had failed in its obligation to seek the northwest passage and explore the interior. Coerced by criticism, between 1719 and 1737 the Company made some explorations, but little was accomplished.

Hearne's explorations.--After 1763 criticism of the Company was reinforced by the rise of the Montreal trade, and new explorations northwestward were undertaken. After two unsuccessful attempts in 1769 and 1770 to reach the Coppermine River overland, in December, 1770, Samuel Hearne set out from Fort Prince of Wales to seek "a North-West Passage, copper-mines, or any other thing that may be serviceable to the British nation in general, or the Hudson's Bay Company in particular." Going west, then north, on July 18, 1771, Hearne reached the mouth of the Coppermine River near latitude 68 deg., where he took formal possession of the Arctic Ocean for the Company. Returning by way of Lake Athabasca, which he discovered and crossed, he reached his fort on June 30, 1772.

Rival posts in the interior.--Hearne's explorations were indicative of a new policy. Coerced by the aggressive Montreal traders, the Company now pushed into the interior in a struggle for the mastery. Side by side the two, companies placed rival forts on all the important streams from the Hudson Bay to the Rockies and from the Red River of the North to Great Slave Lake.

READINGS

Alden, G.H., _New Governments west of the Alleghanies before 1780_; Alvord, C.W., "Virginia and the West: An Interpretation," in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, III, 19-38; _The Critical Period, 1763-1765_; _The Mississippi Valley in British Politics_; Alvord, C.W., and Carter, C.E., editors, _The New Regime, 1765-1767_; Bassett, J.S., "The Regulators of North Carolina," in American Hist. Assoc., _Annual Report, 1894_, pp. 141-212; Bourinot, J.G., _Canada under British Rule, 1760-1905_ (G.W. Wrong revision), chs. 2-3; Bryce, George, _The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company_, chs. 8-13; Carter, C.E., _Great Britain and the Illinois Country, 1763-1774_; "The Beginnings of British West Florida," in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, IV, 314-341; Coffin, Victor, _The Quebec Act_; Hamilton, P.J., Colonial Mobile, chs. 23-31; The Colonisation of the South, chs. 20-21; Henderson, A., "Richard Henderson and the Occupation of Kentucky, 1775," in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, I, 341-363; Hinsdale, B.A., _The Old Northwest_, ch. 8; Howard, G.E., _Preliminaries of the Revolution, 1763-1775_, ch. 13; Roosevelt, Theodore, _The Winning of the West_, I-II; Siebert, W.H., "The Loyalists in West Florida and the Natchez District," in _The Mississippi Vauey Historical Review_, II, 465-483; Stevens, W.E., "The Organization of the British Fur Trade, 1760-1800," in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, III, 172-202; Thwaites, R.G., _Daniel Boone_; Thwaites, R.G., and Kellogg, L.P., editors, _Documentary History of Dunmore's War_, 1774, Introduction; Turner, F.J., "Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era," in _American Historical Review_, I, 70-87, 251-269; Wallace, S., _The United Empire Loyalists_; Winsor, Justin, _The Westward Movement_, 38-100; Wood, W., _The Father of British Canada_; Davidson, G.C., _The North West Company_.

THE REVOLT OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES