A Brief History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

The second war party of French and Indians left the St. Lawrence in January, 1690, spent three months struggling through the wilderness, and in March fell upon the village of Salmon Falls, laid it in ashes, ravaged the farms near by, massacred some thirty men, women, and children, and carried off some fifty prisoners. This deed done, the party hurried eastward and fell in with the third party, from Quebec. The two then attacked and captured Fort Loyal (where Portland now stands), and massacred or captured most of the inhabitants.

END OF KING WILLIAM'S WAR.—Smarting under the attacks of the French and Indians, New England struck back. Its fleet, with a few hundred militia under William Phips, captured and pillaged Port Royal, and for a time held Acadia. A little army of troops from Connecticut and New York marched against Montreal, and a fleet and army under Phips sailed for Quebec. But the one went no farther than Lake Champlain, and Phips, after failing in an attack on Quebec, returned to Boston. [3]

For seven years more the French and Indians ravaged the frontier [4] before the treaty of Ryswick (riz'wick) put an end to the war in 1697.

QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.—In the short interval of peace which followed, the French made a settlement at Biloxi, as we have seen, and founded Detroit (1701). In Europe the French king (Louis XIV) placed his grandson on the throne of Spain and, on the death of James II, recognized James's young son as King James III of England. For this, war was declared by England in 1701. The struggle which followed was known abroad as the War of the Spanish Succession, but in our country as Queen Anne's War. [5]

Again the frontier from Maine to Massachusetts was the scene of Indian raids and massacres. Haverhill was laid waste a second time, [6] and Deerfield in the Connecticut valley was burned.

THE ATTACK ON DEERFIELD was a typical Indian raid. The village, consisting of forty-one houses strung along a road, stood on the extreme northwestern frontier of Massachusetts. In the center of the place was a square wooden meetinghouse which, with some of the houses, was surrounded by a stockade eight feet high flanked on two corners by blockhouses. [7] Late in February, 1704, a band of French and Indians from Canada reached the town, hid in the woods two miles away, and just before dawn moved quietly across the frozen snow, rushed into the village, and, raising the warwhoop, beat in the house doors with ax and hatchet. A few of the wretched inmates escaped half-clad to the next village, but nine and forty men, women, and children were massacred, and one hundred more were led away captives. [8]

END OF QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.—As the war went on, the English colonists twice attacked Port Royal in vain, but on the third attack in 1710 the place was captured. This time the English took permanent possession and renamed it Annapolis in honor of the queen. To Acadia was given the name Nova Scotia. Encouraged by the success at Port Royal, the greatest fleet ever seen, up to that time, in American waters was sent against Quebec, and an army of twenty-three hundred men marched by way of Lake Champlain to attack Montreal.

But the fleet, having lost nine ships and a thousand men in the fog at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, returned to Boston, and the commander of the army, hearing of this, marched back to Albany. When peace was made by the treaty of Utrecht (u'trekt) in 1713, France was forced to give up to Great Britain [9] Acadia, Newfoundland, and all claim to the territory drained by the rivers that flow into Hudson Bay (map, p. 131).

THE FRENCH BUILD FORTS IN LOUISIANA.—Thirty-one years now passed before France and Great Britain were again at war, and in this period France took armed possession of the Mississippi valley, constructed a chain of forts from New Orleans to the Ohio, and built Forts Niagara and Crown Point.

This meant that the French were determined to keep the British out of Louisiana and New France and confine them to the seacoast. But the French were also determined to regain Acadia, and on the island of Cape Breton they built Louisburg, the strongest fortress in America. [10]