| Sebastian Rasle. His mission destroyed and himself killed. Peace between the Indians and New Englanders. |
The foremost French emissary among the Abenaki Indians at this time was a Jesuit priest, Sebastian Rasle, keen in controversy, uncompromising in zeal, a bitter foe of the English, but not so utterly inhuman as were some of his colleagues. His mission was among the Norridgewocks, high up on the Kennebec river, where the head waters of that river flowing down to the Atlantic are at no very great distance from the Chaudière river which runs into the St. Lawrence. Against this place, in August, 1724, a strong body of men was sent from Massachusetts. They rowed up the Kennebec in whaleboats, and, landing at some distance below the Indian village, marched on it, and took it by surprise. Rasle was shot dead, the Indians were killed or dispersed, their homes were burnt to the ground; and the expedition returned in safety, having struck a strong and relentless blow at a centre of French and Indian hostility to the English colonists. War went on for some little time longer, and the English raided the tribes of the Penobscot. At length, in 1726, the Indians came to terms; and a peace was concluded which lasted for many years, dépôts being established at various points, where the natives could to their advantage barter furs with the traders of New England.
| The Indians were the tools of the French Government and its agents. |
The principal point to notice in the dreary record of murder and pillage is the attitude of the Canadian Government and their superiors in France. Letters were intercepted, proving beyond dispute that the Indians were acting under the direct encouragement of the French authorities. In time of peace and nominal friendship the old struggle was ever going on. North America was a chessboard. On the French side the Indians were in front, pawns in the game. Behind them was the King temporarily in check, bishops or their representatives, half-breed knights of tortuous movement, and the castles of Louisbourg and Quebec.
| Oswego. Fort Rouillé or Toronto. |
The mouth of the Niagara river had long been held in intermittent fashion by the French, and by 1720, in spite of jealous opposition on the part of the Five Nation Indians, a permanent fort was built there. The English in their turn, in the year 1727, established and garrisoned a trading fort at Oswego, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario,3 Burnet, the Governor of New York, finding the necessary funds, as the colonial Legislature would not vote the money. The establishment of this station was a serious blow to French trade, nullifying to a large extent the advantage of holding Niagara. In vain the Canadians tried to incite the Five Nations to destroy it; and in vain, in 1749, they planted a rival post, Fort Rouillé, at Toronto,4 on the other side of the lake, to command the direct route to Lake Huron by Lake Simcoe. To Oswego the Indians brought their furs, and the traffic enriched the Iroquois and their English neighbours in New York.
3 See the letter from Governor Burnet to the Board of Trade, dated New York, May 9, 1727: 'I have this spring sent up workmen to build a stone house of strength at a place called Oswego, at the mouth of the Onnondage river, where our principal trade with the far Nations is carried on. I have obtained the consent of the Six Nations to build it.' Papers relating to Oswego in O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, vol. i, p. 447.
4 The name of Toronto appears before the founding of this fort. On the old maps, i.e. on Delisle's map of Canada, published in 1703, Lake Simcoe appears as Lake Toronto.
| Crown Point. |
But, menacing as was this outpost on the lake to the commercial interests of Canada, greater danger threatened both New England and New York from another move made by the French. Far up on Lake Champlain, at the point where the lake narrows into a wide river, stretching many miles to the south, there is a small isthmus on the western side standing out boldly in the lake. It was known to the English as Crown Point; and here in 1731, at the instance of a well-known French officer, the Chevalier Saint Luc de la Corne, the French built a fort commanding the strait, and named it Fort St. Frederic. The English colonies protested, but did not use united force to back their protests; and the position remained, fortified in time of peace, an evidence of French claims and a base for future attack.