Signature of D'Iberville.
One sees by a glance at the map what advantage France had in this
struggle. It possessed the best fishing grounds and fur-producing
districts, and fish and furs were at first the only exports of value
from the north of America. The French, too, held all the water-ways to
the heart of the continent. Coming up Lake Champlain they could threaten
New York and New England from the rear. The colonies farther south they
shut in almost as straitly, French bullets whistling about any
Englishman's ears the instant he appeared beyond the mountains.
In other respects England had the advantage. In population English
America had become as superior as French America was territorially,
having 1,116,000 white inhabitants in 1750, to about 80,000 French. The
English colonies were also more convenient to the mother-country, and
the better situated for commerce both coastwise and across the ocean.
Among the English, temper for mere speculation and adventure decayed
very early, giving way to the conviction that successful planting
depended wholly upon persistent, energetic toil.
A piece of fortune more important yet was their relatively free
religious and political system. Toleration in religion was large.
Self-government was nearly complete internally, and indeed externally,
till the navigation acts. Canada, on the other hand, was oppressed by a
feudal constitution in the state, settlers being denied the fee simple
of their lands, and by Jesuits in Church. "New France could not grow,"
says Parkman, "with a priest on guard at the gate to let in none but
such as pleased him. In making Canada a citadel of the state religion,
the clerical monitors of the Crown robbed their country of a
transatlantic empire." Thus the Huguenots, France's best emigrants to
America, did not come to New France, but to New England and the other
Protestant colonies.
The Attack on Schenectady.
The Indian hostilities which heralded King William's War began August
13, 1688. Frontenac prepared to capture Albany and even Manhattan. He
did not accomplish so much; but on the night of February 8, 1689-90, his
force of ninety Iroquois and over a hundred Frenchmen fell upon
Schenectady, killed sixty, and captured eighty or ninety more. Only a
corporal's guard escaped to Albany with the sad news. This attack had
weighty influence, as occasioning the first American congress. Seven
delegates from various colonies assembled at New York on May 1, 1690, to
devise defence against the northern invaders.
The eastern Indians were hardly at rest from Philip's War when roused by
the French to engage in this. An attack was made upon Haverhill, Mass.,
and Hannah Dustin, with a child only a few days old, another woman, and
a boy, was led captive to an Indian camp up the Merrimac. The savages
killed the infant, but thereby steeled the mother's heart for revenge.
One night the three prisoners slew their sleeping guards and, seizing a
canoe, floated down to their home. Dover was attacked June 27, 1689,
twenty-three persons killed, and twenty-nine sold to the French in
Canada. Indescribable horrors occurred at Oyster River, at Salmon Falls,
at Casco, at Exeter, and elsewhere.
Hannah Dustin's Escape.
[1702]
In 1702 Queen Anne's War began, and in this again New England was the
chief sufferer. The barbarities which marked it were worse than those of
Philip's War. De Rouville, with a party of French and savages, proceeded
from Canada to Deerfield, Mass. Fearing an attack, the villagers meant
to be vigilant, but early on a February morning, 1704, the wily enemy,
skulking till the sentinels retired at daylight, managed to effect a
surprise. Fifty were killed and one hundred hurried off to Canada. Among
these were the minister, Mr. Williams, and his family. Twenty years
later a white woman in Indian dress entered Deerfield. It was one of the
Williams daughters. She had married an Indian in Canada, and now refused
to desert him. Cases like this, of which there were many in the course
of these frightful wars, seemed to the settlers harder to bear than
death. Massachusetts came so to dread the atrocious foe, that fifteen
pounds were offered by public authority for an Indian man's scalp, eight
for a child's or a woman's.
[1705]
Plan of Port Royal, Nova Scotia.
Governor Spotswood urged aggression on the French to the west; Governor
Hunter of New York had equal zeal for a movement northward. New York
raised 600 men and the same number of Iroquois, voting 10,000 pounds of
paper money for their sustenance. Connecticut and New Jersey sent 1,600
men. A force of 4,000 in all mustered at Albany under Nicholson of New
York. They were to co-operate against Montreal with the naval expedition
of 1711, commanded by Sir Hoveden Walker. Walker failed ignominiously,
and Nicholson, hearing of this betimes, saved himself by retreating.
Sir William Phips had captured Port Royal in 1690, and Acadia was
annexed to Massachusetts in 1692. In 1691 the French again took formal
possession of Port Royal and the neighboring country. In 1692 an
ineffectual attempt was made to recover it, but by the Treaty of
Ryswick, 1697, it was explicitly given back to France.
[1710]
At the inception of Queen Anne's War, in 1702, there were several
expeditions from New England to Nova Scotia; in 1704 and 1707 without
result. That of 1710 was more successful. It consisted of four regiments
and thirty-six vessels, besides troop and store ships and some marines.
Port Royal capitulated, and its name was changed to Annapolis, in honor
of Queen Anne. Acadia never again came under French control, and was
regularly ceded to England by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.
Notwithstanding this, however, French America still remained
substantially intact.
Queen Anne.
[1714]
If the great struggle for the Ohio Valley now became a silent one, it
was none the less earnest. Spotswood had opened a road across the Blue
Ridge in 1716. In 1721 New Yorkers began settling on Oswego River, and
they finished a fort there by 1726. Closer alliance was formed with the
Five Nations. The French governor of Quebec in 1725 pleaded that Niagara
must be fortified, and on his successor was urged the necessity of
reducing the Oswego garrison. It was partly to flank Oswego that the
French pushed up Lake Champlain to Crown Point and built Fort St.
Frederick.
The Treaty of Utrecht had left Cape Breton Island to France. The French
at once strongly fortified Louisburg and invited thither the French
inhabitants of Acadia and Newfoundland, which had also been ceded to
Great Britain. Many went, though the British governors did much to
hinder removal. This irritated the French authorities, and the Indian
atrocities of 1723-24 at Dover and in Maine are known to have been
stimulated from Montreal. Father Rasle, an astute and benevolent French
Jesuit who had settled among the Indians at Norridgewock, became an
agent of this hostile influence. In an English attack, August 12, 1724,
Rasle's settlement was broken up and himself killed. The Indians next
year made a treaty, and peace prevailed till King George's War.