CHAPTER VI
MILITARY POSTS
It was in the year 1796 that England had given up possession to the Americans of Forts Michilimackinac, Miami, Detroit, Niagara, and Oswego, and now at the beginning of the nineteenth century Kingston, York, Fort George, Fort Chippawa, Fort Erie, and Amherstburg were the chief military posts. The very names of the forts take one back to very stirring days in the country, and a glance at their history shows that this new province of Upper Canada had been once the scene of many a struggle for supremacy between the French, the English, and the Indian.
Michilimackinac, or Mackinaw, the island which lies in the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, had been for more than a century the resort of North-West traders, where furs were collected and shipped for Montreal. In 1671 it had been a Jesuit mission, and stories of treachery and massacre hover round its shores.
Fort Miami was in the heart of the Indian country on the Maumee River about fifteen miles from Lake Erie, into which the river flows. Lord Dorchester had ordered the reconstruction of the fort, a step to which the United States had objected, deeming it an invasion of their territory. Both the 8th and the 53rd Regiments had been stationed there during the war with the colonies.
Fort Detroit, on the river of the same name, situated about twenty-eight miles above Lake Erie and ten miles below Lake St. Clair, had had a most exciting history. The strait was the key to the upper lakes, and gave Canada the readiest access to the Mississippi. Five times its flag had changed in the century since it was founded by La Mothe Cadillac. Twice it was besieged by Indians, once burned to the ground. In the last days of the eighteenth century it was surrounded by a flourishing little town, with a mixed French and English population.
Fort Niagara
Fort Niagara, like Detroit, had also been the scene of many a conflict when France and England, with varying fortunes, had struggled for its possession. It was in 1678 that La Salle, La Mothe, and Father Hennepin, sailing up Lake Ontario from Fort Frontenac, found, at the entrance of what was afterwards known as the Niagara River, a small village of Seneca Indians. Here they built a stockade of palisaded storehouses, and dedicated it by chanting a Te Deum, and placing within it a large wooden cross. This stockade was burnt in 1680, and afterwards rebuilt of stone by Denonville. It was designed to be large enough to hold a garrison of five hundred men. This fort was abandoned in 1687, and of the hundred men left there by Denonville, all but ten perished by disease or in conflict with the Indians. Charlevoix, the priestly historian, mentions a blockhouse being on the site in 1721, and that in 1726 it was the quarters of some French officers, who strengthened it by adding four bastions. In 1749 it was rebuilt as one of the chain of forts designed to surround the French domain as far as the Gulf of Mexico. In 1759, after an obstinate siege, the fort capitulated to General Johnson. One of the English officers, General Lee, writing at that time to a friend in New York, gives a glowing description of the fort and its surroundings. He ends his letter thus: "I am afraid you will think I am growing romantic, therefore shall only say it is such a paradise and such an acquisition to our nation that I would not sacrifice it to redeem the dominion of any one electoral province of Germany from the hands of the enemy." In 1763 a dreadful massacre took place, near the fort, of an English regiment that fell into an ambuscade of the Indians while marching alongside the river Niagara to Fort Schlosser, above the falls. Only a few escaped to tell the tale, and the spot has since been known as the Devil's Hole. In 1764 peace was made with the Indians, who, to the number of two thousand, met Sir William Johnson at the fort, and agreed to give up to the British four miles on each side of the river from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. In 1783, after the American war, this fort was surrendered by treaty by the British, but on account of unsettled claims of the United Empire Loyalists, whose property had been confiscated, possession was not given up until 1790, when Fort George on the western side of the river received its flag, garrison, guns and stores.
Fort Oswego, on Lake Ontario, almost opposite Kingston, had also been the centre of many a bloody struggle in the eighteenth century, when the French with their Indian allies battled for its possession, knowing well that to the victor belonged the command of the lake.
Of the military posts left to the British in 1803, Kingston was the largest and most populous of the Upper Province. It was founded in 1784 on the site of old Fort Frontenac, and was the main entrepôt between Montreal and the settlements along the lakes. It was three hundred and seventy-five miles from Quebec, one hundred and ninety-five from Montreal, and one hundred and fifty-three from York. Governor Simcoe had designed to make the latter a fortified shipping town, but this had been vetoed by Lord Dorchester who preferred Kingston for this purpose.