Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 1 (of 8) / Aboriginal America

by Unknown

The French in Canada from the first adopted the policy of alliance with native tribes. Though their warfare with the English was hardly intermittent, there were several occasions when it was specially active. Beginning with the first invasion of the Iroquois territory by Champlain, in 1609, already mentioned, under the plea of espousing the side of his friends and allies, the Hurons and Algonquins, other like enterprises were later pursued. Courcelles, in 1666, made a wild and unsuccessful inroad upon the Iroquois. Tracy made a more effective one in the same year. De la Barre in 1684, Denonville in 1687, and Frontenac in 1693 and 1696, repeated these onsets. The last of these invasions of what is now Central New York was intended to effect the complete exhaustion of the Indian confederacy. Its havoc was indeed well-nigh crushing, but there was a tenacity and a recuperative power in that confederacy of savages which yielded only to a like desolating blow inflicted by Sullivan, under orders from Washington, in our Revolutionary War.

This formidable league of the Five Nations, when first known to Europeans, claimed to have obtained by conquest the whole country from the lakes to the Carolinas, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. France, as against other Europeans, though not against the Indians, claimed the same territory. Great Britain claimed the valley of the Ohio and its tributaries, first against the French as being merely the longitudinal extension of the line of seacoast discovered by English navigators, and then through cessions from and treaties with the Five Nations. The first of these treaties was that made at Lancaster, Pa., in June, 1744. But the Indians afterwards complained that they had been overreached, and had not intended to cede any territory west of the Alleghanies. Here, of course, with three parties in contention, there was basis enough for struggles in which the prize, all considerations of natural justice being excluded, was to be won only by superior power. Neither of the rivals and intruders from across the ocean dealt with the Indians as if even they had any absolute right to territory from which they claimed to have driven off former possessors. So the Indian prerogative was recognized by the French and the English as available only on either side for backing up some rival claim of the one or the other nation; though when the mother-countries were at peace in Europe, their subjects here by no means felt bound even to a show of truce, and they were always most ready to avail themselves of a declaration of war at home to make their wilderness campaigns. It is curious to note that in all the negotiations between the Indians and Europeans, including those of our own government, the only landed right recognized as belonging to the savages was that of giving up territory. The prior right of ownership by the tenure of possession was regarded as invalidated both by the manner in which it had been acquired and by a lack to make a good use of it.

It was in the closing years of the seventeenth century and in those opening the eighteenth that the military and the priestly representatives of France in Canada resolutely advised and undertook the measures which promised to give them a secure and extended possession of the whole north of the continent, excepting only the strip on the Atlantic seaboard then firmly held by the English colonists. Even this excepted region of territory was by no means, however, regarded as positively irreclaimable, and military enterprises were often planned with the aim of a complete extinction of English possession. The French in their earliest explorations, in penetrating the country to the west and to the south, had been keenly observant in marking the strategic points on lake and river for strongholds which should give them the advantage of single positions and secure a chain of posts for easy and safe communications. Their leading object was to gain an ascendency over the native tribes; and as they could not expect easily and at once to get the mastery over them all, policy dictated such a skilful turning to account of their feuds among themselves as would secure strong alliances of interest and friendship with the more powerful ones. The French did vastly more than the English to encourage the passions of the savages for war and to train them in military skill and artifice, leaving them for the most part unchecked in the indulgence of their ferocity. It is true that the Dutch and the English had the start in supplying the savages with firearms, under the excuse that they were needed by the natives for the most effective support of the rapidly increasing trade in peltries. But the French were not slow to follow the example, as it presented to them a matter of necessity. And through the long and bloody struggle between the two European nationalities with their red allies, it may be safely affirmed that the frontier warfare of the English colonists was waged against savages armed as well as led on by the French.

Two objects, generally harmonious and mutually helpful of each other, inspired the activity of the French in taking possession successively of posts in the interior of the continent. The first of these was the establishment of mission stations for the conversion of the savages. The other object of these wilderness posts was to secure the lucrative gains of the fur trade from an ever-extending interior. Though, as was just said, these two objects might generally be harmoniously pursued, it was not always found easy or possible to keep them in amity, or to prevent sharp collisions between them. There was a vigorous rivalry in the fur trade between the members of an associated company, with a government monopoly for the traffic, and very keenly enterprising individuals who pursued it, with but little success in concealing their doings, in defiance of the monopolists. The burden of the official correspondence between the authorities in Canada and those at the French court related to the irregularities and abuses of this traffic. Incident to these was a lively plying of the temptations of that other traffic which poured into the wilderness floods of French brandy. The taste of this fiery stimulant once roused in a savage could rarely afterwards be appeased. The English colonists soon gained an advantage in this traffic in their manufacture of cheap rum. It is easy to see how this rivalry between monopolists and individuals in the fur trade, aided by the stimulant for which the Indian was most craving, would impair the spiritual labors of the priests at their wild stations. Nor were there lacking instances in which the priests themselves were charged with sharing not only the gains of the fur trade, but also those of the brandy traffic, either in the interests of the monopolists or of individuals.

The earliest extended operations of the French fur trade with the Indians were carried on by the northerly route to Lake Huron by the Ottawa River. The French had little to apprehend from English interference by this difficult route with its many portages. But it soon became of vital necessity to the French to take and hold strong points on the line of the Great Lakes. These were on the narrow streams which made the junctions between them. So a fort was to be planted at Niagara, between Ontario and Erie; another at Detroit, between Erie and Huron; another at Michilimackinac, between Michigan and Huron; another at the fall of the waters of Superior into Huron; and Fort St. Joseph, near the head of Lake Michigan, facilitated communication with the Illinois and the Miami tribes; the Ojibwas, Ottawas, Wyandots, and Pottawattomies having their settlements around the westernmost of the lakes, the Sioux being still beyond. South of Lake Erie, in the region afterwards known as the Northwest Territory, between the Alleghanies, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, were the Delawares, the Shawanees, and the Mingoes. It is to be kept in view that this territory, though formally ceded by France to England in the treaty of 1762-63, had previously been claimed by the English colonists as rightfully belonging to their monarch, it being merely the undefined extension of the seacoast held by virtue of the discovery of the Cabots.

The fifth volume of the Mémoires published by Margry gives us the original documents, dating 1683-1695, relating to the first project for opening a chain of posts to hold control of, and to facilitate communication between, Canada and the west and south of the continent. The project was soon made to extend its purpose to the Gulf of Mexico. The incursions of the Iroquois and the attempted invasions of the English, with a consequent drawing off of trade from the French, had obliged the Marquis Denonville to abandon some of the posts that had been established. In spite of the opposition of Champigny, Frontenac vigorously urged measures for the repossession and strengthening of these posts. The Jesuits were earnest in pressing the measure upon the governors of Canada. In pushing on the enterprise, the French had sharp experience of the intense hostility of the inner tribes who were to be encountered, and who were to be first conciliated. The French followed a policy quite unlike that of the English in the method of their negotiations for the occupancy of land. The colonists of the latter aimed to secure by treaty and purchase the absolute fee and ownership of a given region. They intended to hold it generally for cultivation, and they expected the Indians then claiming it to vacate it. The French beguiled the Indians by asserting that they had no intention either of purchasing or forcibly occupying, as if it were their own, any spot where they established a stronghold, a trucking or a mission station. They professed to hold only by sufferance, and that, too, simply for the security and benefit of the natives, in furnishing them with a better religion than their own and with the white man’s goods. The Iroquois, finding the hunting and trapping of game for the English so profitable on their own territory, were bent on extending their field. They hoped, by penetrating to Michilimackinac, to make themselves the agents or medium for the trade with the tribes near it, so that they could control the whole southern traffic. So they had declared war against the Illinois, the Miamis, the Ottawas, and the Hurons. It was of vital importance to the French to keep firm hold of Lakes Ontario and Erie, and to guard their connections. The Iroquois were always the threatening obstacle. It was affirmed that they had become so debauched by strong drink that their squaws could not nourish their few children, and that they had availed themselves of an adoption of those taken from their enemies. As they obtained their firearms with comparative cheapness from the English on the Hudson and Mohawk, they used them with vigor against the inner tribes with their primitive weapons, and were soon to find them of service against the English on the frontiers of Virginia. So keenly did the English press their trade as to cause a wavering of the loyalty of those Indian tribes who had been the first and the fast friends of the French. Thus it was but natural that the Iroquois should be acute enough to oppose the building of a French stronghold at any of the selected posts.

In 1699,[1346] La Mothe Cadillac proposed to assemble their red allies, then much dispersed, and principally the Ottawas, at Detroit, and there to construct both a fort and a village. At the bottom of this purpose, and of the opposition to it, was a contention between rival parties in the traffic. The favorers and the opponents of the design made their respective representations to the French court. De Callières objected to the plan because of the proximity of the hostile Iroquois, who would prefer to turn all the trade to the English, and his preference was to reëstablish the old posts. The real issue to be faced was whether the Indians now, and ultimately, were to be made subjects of the English or of the French monarch. Cadillac combated the objections of Callières, and succeeded in effecting his design at Detroit. The extension of the traffic was constantly bringing into the field tribes heretofore too remote for free intercourse. In each such case it depended upon various contingencies to decide whether the French or the English would find friends or foes in these new parties, and the alternative would generally rest, temporarily at least, upon which party was most accessible and most profitable for trade. It would hardly be worth the while for an historian, unless dealing with the special theme of the rivalries involved in the fur trade as deciding with which party of the whites one or another tribe came into amity, to attempt to trace the conditions and consequences of such diplomacy in inconstant negotiators.

The English began the series of attempts to bind the Five, afterwards the Six, Nations into amity or neutrality by treaty in 1674. These treaties were wearisome in their formalities, generally unsatisfactory in their terms of assurance, and so subject to caprice and the changes of fortune as to need confirmation and renewal, as suspicion or alleged treachery on either side made them practically worthless. There were two ends to be gained by these treaties of the English with the confederated tribes. The one was to avert hostilities from the English and to secure them privileges of transit for trade. The other object, not always avowed, but implied as a natural consequent of the first, was to alienate the tribes from the French, and if possible to keep them in a state of local or general conflict. Each specification of these treaties was to be emphasized by the exchange of a wampum belt. Then a largess of presents, always including rum, was the final ratification. These goods were of considerable cost to the English, but always seemed a niggard gift to the Indians, as there were so many to share in them.

The first of this series of treaties was that made in 1674, at Albany, by Col. Henry Coursey, in behalf of the colonists of Virginia. It was of little more service than as it initiated the parties into the method of such proceedings.