In the meantime Nicholson led a great force against Port Royal, and succeeded in taking the place, the garrison being compelled by famine to surrender. The name was changed to Annapolis, in honour of Queen Anne, and it has remained in the hands of the English ever since. It was on the occasion of this victory that the brave Peter Schuyler hastened to London with his five Iroquois sachems, as we have already related, to induce the British government to prosecute the war thus fortunately commenced against Canada. The witty and dissipated St. John, afterwards Viscount Bolingbroke, entered warmly into this scheme, and a fleet of fifteen ships of war and forty transports was placed under the command of Sir Hovenden Walker, while the brother of Mrs. Masham, “honest Jack Hill,” as he was called by his bottle companions, was placed at the head of seven veteran regiments of Marlborough’s army and a battalion of marines.
On June 25, the fleet arrived at Boston, where supplies and colonial forces were taken on board. An army from Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, Palatine emigrants, and about 600 Iroquois, assembled at Albany, preparatory to an attack on Montreal; whilst in the west, the English having strengthened themselves by an alliance with the Fox Indians, sought to expel the French from Detroit, their settlement in Michigan.[[27]]
Nor were the French on their part negligent; by means of the Jesuit missionaries, treaties were renewed with the natives; the fortifications of Quebec and Montreal were strengthened, and the people were so resolute and determined, that women even laboured voluntarily for the common defence. The whole of New France was ready for the enemy many weeks before he appeared. At length, after unaccountable and inexcusable delay, the English squadron ascended the St. Lawrence, Sir Hovenden Walker puzzling his brain the while how his ships were to be secured during the coming winter, when the rivers would be frozen, and concluding to “secure them on the dry ground in frames and cradles till the thaw.” Thus forgetting the present in the future, they slowly proceeded, and, on a dark and stormy night, through the stupidity of Admiral Walker, who though warned of danger, would not believe it, eight transports were wrecked and near 1,000 men drowned.
A council of war the next morning declared it impossible to proceed. There is something like fatuity in the reasoning of the admiral: “Had we,” says he, “reached Quebec, 1,000 or 1,200 men must have been left to perish of cold and hunger; by the loss of a part, Providence has saved all the rest:” and the fleet, turning about, sailed direct for England, having sent back the colonial transports. Nor did the admiral wait to attack the French post in Newfoundland, as his orders required, so great was his impatience to remove, not only from this inhospitable climate, but from the colonists whom he had come to serve, and of whom he related that “their interestedness, ill-nature, sourness, hypocrisy and canting were insupportable.”
This ignoble retreat caused great disappointment and displeasure at New York; nor was the expedition against Detroit more successful. This little fort, “the most beautiful spot in Canada,” was defended by Du Buisson and only twenty men. Summoning, however, his Indian allies, who were all strongly attached to their Jesuit teachers, they rallied round the fort, each nation under its own ensign, and thus, by one spokesman, addressed the commandant: “Father, behold thy children compass thee round! We will, if need be, gladly die for our father—only take care of our wives and our children, and spread a little grass over our bodies to defend them from the flies!” The English allies of the Fox nation were now in their turn besieged, and being compelled to surrender, were either murdered or distributed among the confederates as slaves.
Whilst the northern states were busy with their schemes of Canadian conquest, and suffering under the horrors of Indian warfare, North Carolina, which was then broken up into factions, as we have already related, under a disputed governorship was thrown into a state of universal alarm, which cast all other considerations into the shade, by the hostilities of the Tuscaroras, by whom a plot was formed for the extermination of the whites. Their first outbreak was on the infant settlements of the already-mentioned German emigrants from the Palatinate, and to whom lands had been appropriated on the southern bank of the Roanoke, near the mouth of which was the Swiss settlement of New Berne, all lying within the country of the Tuscaroras. These Indians, alarmed and offended at the encroachments of the white man, determined to take summary vengeance; and accordingly, Graffenburg, the German superintendent, and Lawson, the colonial surveyor-general, who, with his chain in his hand, was allotting out the lands to the new-comers, were seized by sixty armed Indians, and carried up the country to the chief village of the nation, where the assembled chiefs, after a discussion of two days, condemned Lawson to be burned at the stake; Graffenburg, who represented himself as “the chief of another tribe, distinct from the English, and only recently arrived,” was allowed to return, on condition that he occupied no more Indian lands. The poor, persecuted German settlers, with the Huguenots their neighbours, were now exposed to the cruelties of more pitiless enemies even than their catholic persecutors of the Old World. For three days and nights the fierce Tuscaroras and their allies hunted their human prey through the woods, devastating the country with fire and blood until they paused from weariness.
South Carolina sent a force of 600 militia and 650 Indians, under Captain Barnwell, for their relief; and though as yet “a vast and howling wilderness” separated North from South Carolina, they boldly marched through it, and joining the troops of North Carolina, attacked the Indians intrenched in a rude fort, killed 300, and took a considerable number prisoners. The rest fled to the chief town of their nation, where they hastily constructed means of defence; but being pursued by Barnwell, were at length compelled to sue for peace. After the loss of about 1,000 warriors, the Tuscaroras abandoned their country for ever, and uniting themselves to the Iroquois, became a sixth nation in that terrible confederacy.
But the Indian war was not yet at an end. In 1715, the Yamasees, who occupied the country north-east of the Savannah river, secretly instigated a combination of all the Indians, from Florida to Cape Fear, against South Carolina. The Creeks, Apalachians, Cherokees, Catawbas and Yamasees engaged in the enterprise, the whole force of which was computed to be 6,000 fighting men. The southern tribes fell suddenly on the traders settled among them, and in a few hours ninety persons were massacred. The news was conveyed to Charleston, where the utmost alarm prevailed.
Formidable parties also penetrating the northern frontier approached Charleston; they were repulsed by the militia, but their route was marked by devastation. Charles Craven, at that time governor, adopted the most energetic measures. At the head of 1,200 men he marched towards the southern frontier, and overtook the strongest body of the enemy, at a place called Saltcatchers, when an obstinate and bloody battle was fought. The Indians were totally defeated, and the governor pressing upon them, drove them from their territory and pursued them over the Savannah river. Here they were hospitably received by the Spaniards of Florida, and long afterwards continued to make incursions into Carolina. Nearly 400 of the Carolinians were slain in this war.
These events in their consequences heightened the dissensions already existing between the colonists and the proprietaries. The legislature had applied to the company for aid and protection, which was denied; large issues of paper money were therefore resorted to as a temporary relief, the expenses of the war being estimated at £100,000. Directions were given by the proprietaries to reduce the quantity in circulation. The next step of the assembly was to appropriate the lands from which the Indians had been driven; but even this was opposed by the proprietaries, who refused the necessary sanction. Nor was their request for the recall of the chief justice Trott and the receiver-general Rhett, both of whom had made themselves extremely disliked in the province from their tyrannical measures, attended to; on the contrary, they were not only retained in office, but thanked for their services.[[28]]