CHAPTER VIII.
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GREAT VALLEYS OF NORTH AMERICA.
BY JUSTIN WINSOR,
The Editor.
THE death of Frontenac[1097] and the peace of Ryswick (September, 1697) found France in possession of the two great valleys of North America,—that of the St. Lawrence, with the lakes, and that of the Mississippi, with its affluents.[1098] In 1697 the Iroquois were steadfast in their adherence to Corlear, as they termed the English governor, while they refused to receive French missionaries. In negotiations which Bellomont was conducting (1698) with the Canadian governor, he tried ineffectually to induce a recognition of the Five Nations as subjects of the English king.[1099] Meanwhile, the French were omitting no opportunity to force conferences with these Indians, and Longueil was trying to brighten the chain of amity with them as far west as Detroit, where in July, 1701, La Motte Cadillac began a French post. Within a month the French ratified at Montreal (August 4, 1701) a treaty with the Iroquois just in time to secure their neutrality in the war which England declared against France and Spain the next year (1702). So when the outbreak came it was the New England frontiers which suffered (1703-4),[1100] for the Canadians were careful not to stir the blood of the Iroquois. The French jealously regarded the English glances at Niagara, and proposed (1706) to anticipate their rivals by occupying it. When, in 1709, it was determined to retaliate for the ravages of the New England borders, the Iroquois, at a conference in Albany[1101] (1709), were found ready to aid in the expedition which Francis Nicholson tried to organize, but which proved abortive. Already Spotswood, of Virginia, was urging the home government to push settlers across the Alleghanies into the valley of the Ohio.[1102] But attention was rather drawn to the petty successes in Acadia,[1103] and the spirit of conquest seethed again, when Sir Hovenden Walker appeared at Boston,[1104] and a naval expedition in the summer of 1711 was well under way to capture the great valley of the St. Lawrence. Stupidity and the elements sent the fleet of the English admiral reeling back to Boston, leaving Quebec and Canada once more safe. The next year (1712) the distant Foxes tried to wrest Detroit from the French; but its garrison was too enduring. France had maintained herself all along her Canadian lines, and she was in fair hopes of gaining the active sympathy of the Iroquois, when the treaty of Utrecht (1713) brought the war to a close.
FRENCH SOLDIER (1700).
After a water-color sketch in the Mass. Archives: Documents collected in France, v. p. 271. The coat is red, faced with brown.
The language of this treaty declared that the “Five Nations[1105] were subject to the dominion of England.” The interpretation of this clause was the occasion of diplomatic fence at once. The French claimed a distinction between the subjectivity of the Indians and domination over their lands. The English insisted that the allegiance of the Five Nations carried not only their own hereditary territory, but also the regions of Iroquois conquests, namely, all west of the Ottawa River and the Alleghany Mountains to the Mississippi River.[1106] The peace of Utrecht was but the prelude to a struggle for occupying the Ohio Valley, on the part of both French and English. Spotswood had opened a road over the Blue Ridge from Virginia in 1716, and he continued to urge the Board of Trade to establish a post on Lake Erie. Governor Keith, of Pennsylvania, reported to the board (1718) upon the advances of the French across the Ohio Valley, and the English moved effectually when, in 1721, they began to plant colonists on the Oswego River. By 1726 they had completed their fort on the lake, and Montreal found its Indian trade with the west intercepted. Meanwhile, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia strengthened their alliance with the Iroquois by a conference at Albany in September, 1722, and in 1726 the Indians confirmed the cession of their lands west and north of Lake Erie.