Five days afterward (September 18, 1759,) the city and garrison capitulated.
CLOSE OF THE WAR.
[Footnote: The five points which were especially sought by the English were now all captured. Canada itself, worn out, impoverished, and almost in famine, because of the long war, was ready for peace.]
PEACE.—The next year an attempt was made to re-capture Quebec. But a powerful fleet arrived from England in time to raise the siege. A large army marched upon Montreal, and Canada soon submitted. The English flag now waved over the continent, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mississippi. Peace was made at Paris in 1763. Spain ceded Florida to England. France gave up to England all her territory east of the Mississippi, except two small islands south of Newfoundland, retained as fishing stations; while, to Spain she ceded New Orleans, and all her territory west of the Mississippi.
PONTIAC'S WAR.—The French traders and missionaries had won the hearts of the Indians. When the more haughty English came to take possession of the western forts, great discontent was roused. Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas, Philip-like, formed a confederation of the tribes against the common foe. It was secretly agreed to fall at once upon all the British posts. Eight forts were thus surprised and captured.
[Footnote: Various stratagems were employed to accomplish their designs. At Maumee, a squaw lured forth the commander by imploring aid for an Indian woman dying outside the fort. Once without, he was at the mercy of the ambushed savages. At Mackinaw, hundreds of Indians had gathered. Commencing a game at ball, one party drove the other, as if by accident, toward the fort. The soldiers were attracted to watch the game. At length the ball was thrown over the pickets, and the Indians jumping after it, began the terrible butchery. The commander, Major Henry, writing in his room, heard the war-cry and the shrieks of the victims, and rushing to his window beheld the savage work of the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. Amid untold perils he himself escaped. At Detroit, the plot was betrayed by a squaw, and when the chiefs were admitted to their proposed council for "brightening the chain of friendship," they found themselves surrounded by an armed garrison. Pontiac was allowed to escape. Two days after he commenced a siege which lasted several months. In payment of the supplies for his army, he issued birch-bark notes signed with the figure of an otter. These primitive "government bonds" were promptly paid when due.]
Thousands of persons fled from their homes to avoid the scalping-knife. At last the Indians, disagreeing among themselves, deserted the alliance, and a treaty was signed. Pontiac, still revengeful, fled to the hunting-grounds of the Illinois. There he was murdered by a Peorian Indian, while endeavoring to incite another attack.
EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.—In this war the colonists spent $16,000,000, and England repaid only $5,000,000. The Americans lost thirty thousand men, and suffered the untold horrors of Indian barbarity. The taxes sometimes equaled two-thirds the income of the tax-payer; yet they were levied by their own representatives, and they did not murmur. The men of different colonies and diverse ideas fought shoulder to shoulder, and many sectional jealousies were allayed. They learned to think and act independently of the mother country, and thus came to know their strength. Democratic ideas had taken root, legislative bodies had been called, troops raised and supplies voted, not by England, but by themselves. They had become fond of liberty. They knew their rights and dared maintain them. When they voted money they kept the purse in their own hands.
The treatment of the British officers helped also to unite the colonists. They made sport of the awkward provincial soldiers. The best American officers were often thrust aside to make place for young British subalterns. But, in spite of sneers, Washington, Gates, Montgomery, Stark, Arnold, Morgan, Putnam, all received their training, and learned how, when the time came, to fight even British regulars.
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