About the middle of the eighteenth century the number of French subjects in America, including Acadia, Canada, and Louisiana, was estimated at about eighty thousand. The subjects of England were estimated at about twelve hundred thousand. But, as before remarked, this vast disparity of numbers by no means represented an equal difference in the effectiveness of the two nationalities in the conduct of military movements. The French were centralized in command. They had unity of purpose and in action. In most cases they held actual defensive positions at points which the English had to reach by difficult approaches; and more than all, till it became evident that France was to lose the game, the French received much the larger share of aid from the Indians. Pennsylvania and Virginia were embarrassed in any attempt for united defensive operations on the frontiers by their own rival claims to the Ohio Valley. The English, however, welcomed the first signs of vacillation in the savages. When Céloron, in 1749, had sent messengers to the Indians beyond the Alleghanies to prepare for the measures he was about to take to secure a firm foothold there, he reported that the natives were “devoted entirely to the English.” This might have seemed true of the Delawares and Shawanees, though soon afterwards these were found to be in the interest of the French. In fact, all the tribes, except the Five Nations, may be regarded as more or less available for French service up to the final extinction of their power on the continent. Indeed, as we shall see, the mischievous enmity of the natives against the English was never more vengeful than when it was goaded on by secret French agency after France had by treaty yielded her claims on this soil. Nor could even the presumed neutrality of the Five Nations be relied upon by the English, as there were reasons for believing that many among them acted as spies and conveyed intelligence. Till after the year 1754 so effective had been the activity of the French in planting their strongholds and winning over the savages that there was not a single English post west of the Alleghanies.
At the same critical stage of this European rivalry in military operations, the greed for the profits of the fur trade was at its highest pitch. The beavers, as well as the red men, should be regarded as essential parties to the struggle between the French and the English. The latter had cut very deep into the trade which had formerly accrued wholly to the French at Oswego, Toronto, and Niagara.
Up to the year 1720 there had come to be established a mercantile usage which had proved to be very prejudicial to the English, alike in their Indian trade and in their influence over the Indians. The French had been allowed to import goods into New York to be used for their Indian trade. Of course this proved a very profitable business, as it facilitated their operations and was constantly extending over a wider reach their friendly relations with the farther tribes. Trade with Europe and the West Indies and Canada could be maintained only by single voyages in a year, through the perilous navigation of the St. Lawrence. With the English ports on the Atlantic, voyages could be made twice or thrice a year. A few merchants in New York, having a monopoly of supplying goods to the French in Canada, with their principals in England, had found their business very profitable. Goods of prime value, especially “strouds,” a kind of coarse woollen cloth highly prized by the Indians, were made in and exported from England much more cheaply than from France. The mischief of this method of trade being realized, an act was passed by the Assembly in New York, in 1720, which prohibited the selling of Indian goods to the French under severe penalties, in order to the encouragement of trade in general, and to the extension of the influence of the English over the Indians to counterbalance that of the French. Some merchants in London, just referred to, petitioned the king against the ratification of this act. By order in council the king referred the petition to the Lords of Trade and Plantations. A hearing, with testimonies, followed, in which those interested in the monopoly made many statements, ignorant or false, as to the geography of the country, and the method and effects of the advantage put into the hands of the French. But the remonstrants failed to prevent the restricting measure. From that time New York vastly extended its trade and intercourse with the tribes near and distant, greatly to the injury of the French.[1357]
The first white man’s dwelling in Ohio was that of the Moravian missionary, Christian Frederic Post.[1358] He was a sagacious and able man, and had acquired great influence over the Indians, which he used in conciliatory ways, winning their respect and confidence by the boldness with which he ventured to trust himself in their villages and lodges, as if he were under some magical protection. He went on his first journey to the Ohio in 1758, by request of the government of Pennsylvania, on a mission to the Delawares, Shawanees, and Mingoes. These had once been friendly to the English, but having been won over by the French, the object was to regain their confidence. The tribes had at this time come to understand, in a thoroughly practical way, that they were restricted to certain limited conditions so far as they were parties to the fierce rivalry between the Europeans. The issue was no longer an open one as to their being able to reclaim their territory for their own uses by driving off all these pale-faced trespassers. It was for them merely to choose whether they would henceforward have the French or the English for neighbors, and, if it must be so, for masters. Nor were they left with freedom or power to make a deliberate choice. But Post certainly stretched a point when he told the Indians that the English did not wish to occupy their lands, but only to drive off the French.
As Governor Spotswood, in the interest of Virginia, had attempted, in 1716, to break the French line of occupation by promoting settlements in the west, Governor Keith, of Pennsylvania, followed with a similar effort in 1719. Both efforts could be only temporarily withstood, and if baffled at one point were renewed at another. The English always showed a tenacity in clinging to an advance once made, and were inclined to change it only for a further advance. Though Fort Duquesne was blown up when abandoned by the French, with the hope of rendering it useless to the English, the post was too commanding a one to be neglected. After it had been taken by General Forbes in November, 1758, and had been strongly reconstructed by General Stanwix, though it was then two hundred miles distant from the nearest settlement, the possession of it was to a great extent the deciding fact of the advancing struggle. Colonel Armstrong had taken the Indian town of Kittanning in 1756.
The treaty negotiations between English and French diplomates at a foreign court, in 1763, which covenanted for the surrender of all territory east of the Mississippi and of all the fortified posts on lake and river to Great Britain, was but a contract on paper, which was very long in finding its full ratification among the parties alone interested in the result here. There were still three of these parties: the Indians; the French, who were in possession of the strongholds in the north and west; and the English colonists, supported by what was left of the British military forces, skeleton regiments and invalided soldiers, who were to avail themselves of their acquired domain. During the bloody and direful war which had thus been closed, the Indians had come to regard themselves as holding the balance of power between the French and the English. Often did the abler savage warriors express alike their wonder and their rage that those foreign intruders should choose these wild regions for the trial of their fighting powers. “Why do you not settle your fierce quarrels in your own land, or at least upon the sea, instead of involving us and our forests in your rivalry?” was the question to the officers and the file of the European forces. Though the natives soon came to realize that they would be the losers, whichever of the two foreign parties should prevail, their preferences were doubtless on the side of the French; and by force of circumstances easily explicable, after the English power, imperial and provincial, had obtained the mastery of the territory, the sympathies and aid of the natives went with the British during the rebellion of the colonies. But before this result was reached England won its ascendency at a heavy sacrifice of men and money, in a series of campaigns under many different generals. The general peace between England, France, and Spain, secured by the treaty of 1763, and involving the cession of all American territory east of the Mississippi by France to Britain, was naturally expected to bring a close to savage warfare against the colonists. The result was quite the contrary, inasmuch as the sharpest and most desolating havoc was wrought by that foe after the English were nominally left alone to meet the encounter. The explanation of this fact was that the French, though by covenant withdrawn from the field, were, hardly even with a pretence of secrecy, perpetuating and even extending their influence over their former wild allies in embarrassing and thwarting all the schemes of the English for turning their conquests to account. General Amherst was left in command here with only enfeebled fragments of regiments and with slender ranks of provincials. The military duty of the hour was for the conquerors to take formal possession of all the outposts still held by French garrisons, announcing to those in command the absolute conditions of the treaty, and to substitute the English for the French colors, henceforward to wave over them. This humiliating necessity was in itself grievous enough, as it forced upon the commanders of posts which had not then been reached by the war in Canada, a condition against which no remonstrance would avail. But beyond that, it furnished the occasion for the most formidable savage conspiracy ever formed on this continent, looking to the complete extinction of the English settlements here. The French in those extreme western posts had been most successful in securing the attachment of the neighboring Indian tribes, and found strong sympathizers among them in their discomfiture. At the same time those tribes had the most bitter hostility towards the English with whom they had come in contact. They complained that the English treated them with contempt and haughtiness, being niggard of their presents and sharp in their trade. They regarded each advanced English settlement on their lands, if only that of a solitary trader, as the germ of a permanent colony. Under these circumstances, the French still holding the posts, waiting only the exasperating summons to yield them up, found the temptation strong and easy of indulgence to inflame their recent allies, and now their sympathizing friends, among the tribes, with an imbittered rage against their new masters. Artifice and deception were availed of to reinforce the passions of savage breasts. The French sought to relieve the astounded consternation of their red friends on finding that they were compelled to yield the field to the subjects of the English monarch, by beguiling them with the fancy that the concession was but a temporary one, very soon to be set aside by a new turn in the wheel of fortune. Their French father had only fallen asleep while his English enemies had been impudently trespassing upon the lands of his red children. He would soon rouse himself to avenge the insult, and would reclaim what he had thus lost. Indeed, on the principle that the size and ornamentings of a lie involved no additional wrong in the telling it, the Indians were informed that a French army was even then preparing to ascend the Mississippi with full force, before which the English would be crushed.
There was then in the tribe of Ottawas, settled near Detroit, a master spirit, who, as a man and as a chief, was the most sagacious, eloquent, bold, and every way gifted of his race that has ever risen before the white man on this continent to contest in the hopeless struggle of barbarism with civilization. That Pontiac was crafty, unscrupulous, relentless, finding a revel in havoc and carnage, might disqualify him for the noblest epithets which the white man bestows on the virtues of a military hero. But he had the virtues of a savage, all of them, and in their highest range of nature and of faculty. He was a stern philosopher and moralist also, of the type engendered by free forest life, unsophisticated and trained in the school of the wilderness. He knew well the attractions of civilization. He weighed and compared them, as they presented themselves before his eyes in full contrast with savagery, in the European and in the Indian, and in those dubious specimens of humanity in which the line of distinction was blurred by the Indianized white man, the “Christian” convert, and the half-breed. Deliberately and, we may say, intelligently, he preferred for his own people the state of savagery. Intelligently, because he gave grounds for his preference, which, from his point of view and experience, had weight in themselves, and cannot be denied something more than plausibility even in the judgment of civilized men, for idealists like Rousseau and the Abbé Raynal have pleaded for them. Pontiac was older in native sagacity and shrewdness than in years. He had evidence enough that his race had suffered only harm from intercourse with the whites. The manners and temptations of civilization had affected them only by demoralizing influences. All the elements of life in the white man struck at what was noblest in the nature of the Indian,—his virility, his self-respect, his proud and sufficing independence, his content with his former surroundings and range of life. With an earnest eloquence Pontiac, in the lodges and at the council fires of his people, whether of his own immediate tribe or of representative warriors of other tribes, set before them the demonstration that security and happiness, if not peace, depended for them on their renouncing all reliance upon the white man’s ways and goods, and reverting with a stern stoicism to the former conditions of their lot. He told his responsive listeners that the Great Spirit, in pouring the wide salt waters between the two races of his children, meant to divide them and to keep them forever apart, giving to each of them a country which was their own, where they were free to live after their own method. The different tinting of their skin indicated a variance which testified to a rooted divergence of nature. For his red children the Great Spirit had provided the forest, the meadow, the lake, and the river, with fish and game for food and clothing. The canoe, the moccasin, the snow-shoe, the stone axe, the hide or bark covered lodge, the fields of golden maize, the root crops, the vines and berries, the waters of the cold crystal spring, made the inventory of their possessions. They belonged to nature, and were of kin to all its other creatures, which they put freely to their use, holding everything in common. The changing moons brought round the seasons for planting and hunting, for game, festivity, and religious rite. Their old men preserved the sacred traditions of their race. Their braves wore the scars and trophies of a noble manhood, and their young men were in training to be the warriors of their tribes in defence or conquest.
These, argued Pontiac, were the heritage which the Great Spirit had assigned to his red children. The spoiler had come among them from across the salt sea, and woe and ruin for the Indian had come with him. The white man could scorn the children of the forest, but could not be their friend or helper. Let the Indian be content and proud to remain an Indian. Let him at once renounce all use of the white man’s goods and implements and his fire-water, and fall back upon the independence of nature, fed on the flesh and clothed with the skins secured by bow and arrow and his skill of woodcraft.
Such was the pleading of the most gifted chieftain and the wisest patriot, the native product of the American wilderness. There was a nobleness in him, even a grandeur and prescience of soul, which take a place now on the list of protests that have poured from human breasts against the decrees of fate. Pontiac followed up his bold scheme by all the arts and appliances of forest diplomacy. He formed his cabinet, and sent out his ambassadors with their credentials in the reddened hatchet and the war-belt. They visited some of even the remoter tribes, with appeals conciliatory of all minor feuds and quarrels. Their success was qualified only by the inveteracy of existing enmities among some of these tribes. It would be difficult to estimate, even if only approximately, the number of the savages who were more or less directly engaged in the conspiracy of Pontiac. A noted French trader, who had resided many years among the Indians, and who had had an extended intercourse with the tribes, stayed at Detroit during the siege, having taken the oath of allegiance to the king of Great Britain. Largely from his own personal knowledge, he drew up an elaborate list of the tribes, with the number of warriors in each. The summing up of these is 56,500. In the usual way of allowing one to five of a whole population for able-bodied men, this would represent the number of the savages as about 283,000, which slightly exceeds the number of Indians now in our national domain.[1359]