The Niagara River

by Archer Butler Hulbert

Governor Duquesne once said to a deputation of Indians:

Are you ignorant of the defence between the king of France and the English? Look at the forts which the king has built; you will find that under their very walls the beasts of the forests are hunted and slain; that they are, in fact, fixed in places most frequented by you merely to gratify more conveniently your necessities.

M. Garneau, the historian, frankly acknowledges that the Marquis accurately stated the route of Indian admiration for the Frenchmen they saw; but it should not be overlooked that the French also were "the most romantic and poetic characters ever known in American frontier life. Their every moment attracts the rosiest colour of imagination"; all this helps to fascinate the savage.

In 1725, the Marquis De Vaudreuil proposed the erection of a storehouse at Niagara, and soon the agent met the council of the Five Nations and got their permission to build what was really a fort at Niagara, which was to cost $5592; one hundred men were instantly sent to begin the work.[25] Thus the historic pile known as the "Mess House" or "Castle" was begun in 1725 and completed in 1726; at a council fire at Niagara the Senecas gave their final ratification to this project, July 14, 1726.

Joncaire's "Magazine Royal" was permitted to fall into decay, being abandoned in 1728 despite the fact that Louis XV. gave his approval to a plan for spending twenty thousand livres for its repair although approving strongly the erection of the castle, as it would prevent the English from trading on the north shore of Lake Ontario as well as getting a foothold on the Niagara River. Mr. Porter brings out well the service of Joncaire's "Magazine Royal" by saying:

That building had done good service; it had given the French the desired foothold on the Niagara River; it had held and fostered the trade in furs; it had established French supremacy in this region, and furnished them with the key to the possession of the Upper Lakes and the Ohio Valley; and last, and most important of all, it had been the means of France obtaining a real fortress at the point where her diplomats and armies had been waiting to erect one; for over half a century it had served its purposes; a fort had been built at the mouth of the river, its usefulness was ended, and it was abandoned forever.

The story that the foundations of the castle were laid within a gigantic wigwam at a time when the French had induced the Indians to go on a hunting expedition is probably no less true than most legends of the kind with which our history is filled; and if it is not literally true, the spirit of it undoubtedly is, for there must have been a fine story of stratagem and diplomacy in the conception and the erection of this massive old building upon which the tourist looks to-day with much interest. It is also a legend that the stone for the fort was brought from Fort Frontenac; this in a way threatens the authenticity of the former legend of the magical erection of the building. De Witt Clinton writing in 1810 explains that as the stones about the windows are different and more handsome than those in the rest of the building it is possible that they were brought from Kingston; he gave the measurements of the building as 105 by 47 feet.

It is interesting and informing to observe from whence the fort here at the mouth of the Niagara received, first and last, its armament; it appears that upon the capture of Oswego twenty-four guns "of the largest calibre" were sent to Fort Niagara, and we know that during the final siege in 1759 some of the guns trained upon Johnson's army were lost by Braddock away down in the forests beside the Monongahela River. The position held by Fort Niagara in the French scheme of western occupation is clearly suggested by these facts.

The modern tourist looking upon the massive, picturesque "Mess House" must not forget that "Fort Niagara" was a thing of slow growth. The first work here was undoubtedly the foundation and first story of the Mess House, surrounded by the common picket wall always found around the frontier fort. The first picket wall was falling down by 1739, when it was repaired. At this time Niagara was fast losing its hold on western trade because of the enforcing of the policy of not selling the Indians liquor; however, in 1741, the Governor of New York affirmed that he held the Six Nations only by presents and that Fort Niagara must be captured. In 1745, when the French policy regarding the Indians was changed, Fort Niagara contained only a hundred men and four guns. It is said that the fort had been used to some extent as a State prison; surely few French prisons, at home or abroad, had a more gloomy dungeon than that in Fort Niagara which is shown visitors to-day; the apartment measures six by eighteen feet and ten feet in height, of solid stone with no opening for light or air. The well of the castle was located here, and many a weird story attaches, especially of the headless trunk of the French general that haunted the curbstone moaning over his sorry lot. This dungeon is one of the places named as the scene of imprisonment of the anti-Masonic agitator William Morgan in later days.

As the middle of the eighteenth century drew on France and England turned from the European battlefields to America to settle their immemorial quarrel for the possession of the continent. It is interesting to note that the opening of the struggle occurred not in the North or East, as would naturally be expected, but in the West to which Niagara offered "the communication."