The contracts made at Quebec in 1701 and later, respecting the right to trade at the straits, are given in Mrs. Sheldon’s Early Hist. of Michigan (N. Y., 1856, pp. 93, 138). In Shea’s Relation des affaires du Canada, 1696-1702 (N. Y., 1865), there is a “Relation du Destroit,” and other papers touching these Western parts.[1187]
Mrs. Sheldon’s Early History of Michigan contains various documents on the condition of the colony at Detroit and Michilimackinac.[1188]
On the attack on Detroit in 1712, made by the Foxes, in which, as confederates of the Iroquois, they acted in the English interest, we find documents in the N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. pp. 857, 866; and the Report of Du Buisson, the French commander, is in W. R. Smith’s Hist. of Wisconsin, iii. 316.[1189]
The report of Tonti, on affairs at Detroit in 1717, is given by Mrs. Sheldon (p. 316).
In Margry’s Découvertes et Établissements des Français dans l’Amérique Septentrionale (vol. v. p. 73) is a “Relation du Sieur de Lamothe Cadillac, capitaine en pied, ci-devant commandant de Missilimakinak et autres postes dans les pays élorgnés, où il a été pendant trois années” (dated July 31, 1718).
In the third volume of the Wisconsin Historical Collections there are other documents among the Cass papers.[1190]
There is in another chapter some account of preparations at Boston for the fatal expedition of 1711, under Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker, with its contingent of Marlborough’s veterans.[1191] An enumeration of the forces employed was printed in the Boston Newsletter, no. 379 (July 16-23, 1711), and is reprinted in what is the authoritative narrative, the Journal or full account of the late expedition to Canada, which Walker printed in London in 1720,[1192] partly in vindication of himself against charges of peculation and incompetency. The failure of the expedition was charged by constant reports in England to the dilatoriness of Massachusetts in preparing the outfit. Walker does not wholly share this conviction, it is just to him to say; but Jeremiah Dummer, then the agent of the province in London, thought it worth while to defend the provincial government by printing in London, 1712 (reprinted, Boston, 1746), a Letter to a noble lord concerning the late expedition to Canada,[1193] in which he contended that this expedition was wisely planned, and that its failure was not the fault of New England. There is another tract of Dummer’s to a similar purpose: A letter to a friend in the country, on the late expedition to Canada, London, 1712.[1194] Palfrey[1195] says that he found various letters and documents among the British Colonial Papers, including a “Journal of the expedition, by Col. Richard King.”[1196]
FRENCH SOLDIER, 1710.