A few years later a sort of flank movement was made on Oswego, as well as on New England, by the French pushing up Lake Champlain, and establishing themselves in the neighborhood of Crown Point (1731), where they shortly after built Fort St. Frederick. The movement alarmed New England more than it did New York.
The French persisted in seeking conferences with the Six Nations,—as they had been called since the Tuscaroras joined them about 1713,—and in 1734 succeeded in obtaining a meeting with the Onondagas. They ventured in 1737 to ask the Senecas to let them establish a post at Irondequot, farther west on Lake Ontario than Oswego. The Iroquois would not permit, however, either side to possess that harbor. For some years Oswego was the burden of the French despatches, and the English seemed to take every possible occasion for new conferences with the fickle Indians.
The most important of these treaties was made at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1744, when an indefinite extent of territory beyond the mountains was ceded to the English in the form of a confirmation of earlier implied grants. A fresh war followed. The New Englanders took Louisbourg,[1107] but New York seemed supine, and let French marauding parties from Crown Point fall upon and destroy the fort at Saratoga without being aroused.[1108] Oswego was in danger, but still the New York assembly preferred to quarrel with the governor; and tardily at best it undertook to restore the post at Saratoga, while the Albanians were suspected of trading clandestinely through the Caughnawagas with the French in Canada. Both sides continued in their efforts to propitiate the Iroquois, while a parade of arming was made for an intended advance on Crown Point and Montreal. Governor Shirley, from Boston, had urged it, since a demonstration which had been intended by way of the St. Lawrence had to be given up, because the promised fleet did not arrive from England. To keep the land levies in spirits, Shirley had written to Albany that he would send them to join in an expedition by the Lakes, and had even despatched a 13-inch mortar by water to New York.[1109] Before the time came, however, the rumors of D’Anville’s fleet frightened the New Englanders, and they thought they had need of their troops at home.[1110] It was some time before Governor Clinton knew of this at Albany, and preparations went on. Efforts to enlist the Iroquois in the enterprise halted, for the inaction of the past year had had its effect upon them, and it needed all the influence of William Johnson, who now first appears as Indian commissioner, to induce them to send a sufficient delegation to a conference at Albany.
VIEW OF QUEBEC, 1732.
From Popple’s British Empire in America. It is repeated in fac-simile in Cassell’s United States, p. 372; and in Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 307. Cf. The view from La Potherie in Vol. IV. p. 320; also reproduced in Shea’s Charlevoix, vol. v. Kalm described the town in 1749 (Travels, London, 1771, ii. p. 258). See views under date of 1760 and 1761, noted in the Cat. of the King’s Maps (Brit. Mus.), ii. 220. Cf. De Lery’s report on the fortifications of Quebec in 1716, in N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 872.
The business still further dragged; the withdrawal of New England became in the end known, and by September 16 Clinton had determined to abandon the project, and the French governor had good occasion to twit old Hendrick, the Mohawk chief, when he ventured with more purpose than prudence to Montreal in November.[1111]