These expeditions seemed to be a part of the grand scheme of the French to confine the English, now pushing into the wilderness in all directions, to the Atlantic sea-board; but their forts on the lakes and upon the Ohio, and their extensive alliances with Indian tribes, could not repress the spirit of adventure and love of gain which marked their southern neighbors. The great confederacy of the Five Nations of New York remained for a long time the fast friends and allies of the English, none but the Caughnawagas, as the French Jesuits termed their converts of the confederacy, lifting the hatchet against them. Protected by these friendly savages, trading posts were founded, and these in turn became military establishments. In 1722, Governor Burnet, of New York (son of the celebrated English bishop of that name), established a trading house at Oswego. His object seemed to be political rather than commercial, for he desired to gain a foothold there, and thus, in a measure, command Lake Ontario. He had been advised by the Board of Trade, after the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, "to extend with caution the English settlements as far as possible, as there was no probability of obtaining an arrangement of general boundaries." Acting under this advice and the promptings of his own clear judgment, he planted the English standard, for the first time, upon the great lakes, and, in spite of the remonstrances of the French and the mur-murings of the Oneidas and Senecas (who disliked to see fortresses rising in their neighborhood), he built and armed, at his own expense, a small fort at Oswego in 1727. The French, in the mean while, had strongly fortified their trading post at the mouth of the Niagara River, and thus outflanked the English so far as the lake was concerned. Beauharnois, the governor of Canada, ordered Burnet to desist. Burnet defied, the Frenchman threatened, but, after blustering for a while, the latter, as a countervailing measure, took possession of Crown Point and built Fort St. Frederic there. From that time until 1755, the English had undisturbed possession of Burnet's fort, and kept it garrisoned by a lieutenant and twenty-five men.
I am indebted to E. W. Clarke, Esq., of Oswego, for much local information concerning that city and neighborhood. He kindly permitted me to use the manuscript of a lecture delivered by him before a literary society there, and from it I gleaned a description of the trading-house and fort erected by Governor Burnet. It was situated on the west side of the river, directly on the bank of the lake, and forty feet above the water. The bank, composed of rock and hard-pan, was almost perpendicular. The building was of stone, and about ninety feet square. The eastern end was circular. It was provided with port-holes and a
* The name of the Confederation of the Five Nations was changed to that of Six Nations when it was joined by the Tuscaroras of Carolina in 1714.
Description of Burnet's Fort.—Erection of other Fortifications.— Fort Ontario.—Shirley's Expedition against Niagara.
deep well. The ascent to it from the south was a flight of stone steps (see engraving), the remains of which have been visible within a few years.
The earth embankments of the fort, with its ditch and palisades, were about two hundred feet west of the building, upon' higher ground, and traces of these might be seen until the late growth of the city obliterated them. The bluff on which the trading-house and fort rested has been leveled in filling in the basin, for the construction of wharves.
While Braddock was making his fatal march against Fort Duquesne, at the junction of the Ohio and Monongahela, in 1755, Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, with a force of about one thousand five hundred men, composed of provincials and Indians, was on the march from Albany to Oswego, for the purpose of making attacks simultaneously upon Niagara and Frontenac.