Grounds of sympathy between Massachusetts and Virginia.
These contests also helped to arouse a strong sympathy between the popular leaders in Massachusetts and in Virginia. Between the people of the two colonies there was not much real sympathy, because there was a good deal of difference between their ways of life and their opinions about things; and people, unless they are unusually wise and generous of nature, are apt to dislike and despise those who differ from them in opinions and habits. So there was little cordiality of feeling between the people of Massachusetts and the people of Virginia, but in spite of this there was a great and growing political sympathy. This was because, ever since 1693, they had been obliged to deal with the same kind of political questions. It became intensely interesting to a Virginian to watch the progress of a dispute between the governor and legislature of Massachusetts, because whatever principle might be victorious in the course of such a dispute, it was sure soon to find a practical application in Virginia. Hence by the middle of the eighteenth century the two colonies were keenly observant of each other, and either one was exceedingly prompt in taking its cue from the other. It is worth while to remember this fact, for without it there would doubtless have been rebellions or revolutions of American colonies, but there would hardly have been one American Revolution, ending in a grand American Union.
CHAPTER III
THE FRENCH WARS, AND THE FIRST PLAN OF UNION.
Disputed frontier between French and English colonies.
It was said a moment ago that one of the chief objects for which the governors wanted money was to maintain troops for defence against the French and the Indians. This was a very serious matter indeed. To any one who looked at a map of North America in 1750 it might well have seemed as if the French had secured for themselves the greater part of the continent. The western frontier of the English settlements was generally within two hundred miles of the sea-coast. In New York it was at Johnson Hall, not far from Schenectady; in Pennsylvania it was about at Carlisle; in Virginia it was near Winchester, and the first explorers were just making their way across the Alleghany mountains. Westward of these frontier settlements lay endless stretches of forest inhabited by warlike tribes of red men who, everywhere except in New York, were hostile to the English and friendly to the French. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century French towns and villages had been growing up along the St. Lawrence, and French explorers had been pushing across the Great Lakes and down the valley of the Mississippi river, near the mouth of which the French town of New Orleans had been standing since 1718. It was the French doctrine that discovery and possession of a river gave a claim to all the territory drained by that river. According to this doctrine every acre of American soil from which water flowed into the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi belonged to France. The claims of the French thus came up to the very crest of the Alleghanies, and they made no secret of their intention to shut up the English forever between that chain of mountains and the sea-coast. There were times when their aims were still more aggressive and dangerous, when they looked with longing eyes upon the valley of the Hudson, and would fain have broken through that military centre of the line of English commonwealths and seized the keys of empire over the continent.
The Indian tribes.
From this height of their ambition the French were kept aloof by the deadly enmity of the most fierce and powerful savages in the New World. The Indians of those days who came into contact with the white settlers were divided into many tribes with different names, but they all belonged to one or another of three great stocks or families. First, there were the Mobilians, far down south; to this stock belonged the Creeks, Cherokees, and others. Secondly, there were the Algonquins, comprising the Delawares to the south of the Susquehanna; the Miamis, Shawnees, and others in the western wilderness; the Ottawas in Canada; and all the tribes still left to the northeast of New England. Thirdly, there were the Iroquois, of whom the most famous were the Five Nations of what is now central New York. These five great tribes—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—had for several generations been united in a confederacy which they likened to a long wigwam with its eastern door looking out upon the valley of the Hudson and its western toward the falls of Niagara. It was known far and wide over the continent as the Long House, and wherever it was known it was dreaded. When Frenchmen and Englishmen first settled in America, this Iroquois league was engaged in a long career of conquest. Algonquin tribes all the way from the Connecticut to the Mississippi were treated as its vassals and forced to pay tribute in weapons and wampum. This conquering career extended through the seventeenth century, until it was brought to an end by the French. When the latter began making settlements in Canada, they courted the friendship of their Algonquin neighbours, and thus, without dreaming what deadly seed they were sowing, they were led to attack the terrible Long House. It was easy enough for Champlain in 1609 to win a victory over savages who had never before seen a white man or heard the report of a musket; but the victory was a fatal one for the French, for it made the Iroquois their eternal enemies. The Long House allied itself first with the Dutch and afterwards with the English, and thus checked the progress of the French toward the lower Hudson. We too seldom think how much we owe to those formidable savages.