After three days of smoke and thought, a wordy warrior from Onondaga replied for the Confederacy in prolix detail. The day was closed with a dance by the young braves, and the king’s health was drunk in five barrels of beer.
On the following day the River Indians spoke, expressing gratitude for favours past, and asserting that if they had been present when news of the Schenectady battle reached Albany, they would have cheerfully joined in pursuit, even to the gate of Crown Point.
By this time it was no longer possible to suppress the news of peace in Europe, and the poor savages who had been goaded into digging up the hatchet and neglecting their hunting, and who were thirsting for revenge, were now left in the lurch, and told to go quietly home. Nevertheless, most of the colonists were satisfied with the result of the council, and Johnson’s popularity increased. The Iroquois were pleased when they found that both Shirley and Clinton were about to send back all the French prisoners to Canada, and to ask for the return of both the white, red, and black captives, who had been carried away from their homes south of the St. Lawrence.
Lieutenant Stoddard and Captain Anthony Van Schaick went to Canada, and into the Indian country; but their success was not gratifying. Only twenty-four prisoners accompanied Lieutenant Stoddard when he left Canada, June 28, 1750. The white boys and girls who had nearly or wholly forgotten their old home and kin, and had been adopted into the tribes, declined, or were forced to decline, going back. Occasionally white women had abjured their religion, and in other cases the red squaws threatened sure death to the adopted captives should they try to return, even at the French governor’s orders. With the Indians, however, exchange was more easy, though the savages were unable to understand the delays of diplomacy between Clinton and Gallissonière; and to pacify them, Johnson was often at his wits’ end. However, by his personal influence, by visits of condolence, by social participation in their games and feasts, by persistent patience, public eloquence, private persuasion, and the frequent use of money and other material gifts, he won fresh laurels of success. In spite of the diplomacy of La Gallissonière, the ceaselessly active Jesuit priests, French cunning and strategy on the one hand, and English and Dutch weakness and villany on the other, he held the whole Iroquois Confederacy loyal to the British Crown. The greatness of Johnson is nobly shown in thus foiling the French and all their resources.
This year, amid manifold commercial, military, and domestic cares, he entertained the famous Swedish botanist, naturalist, and traveller, Peter Kalm, with whose name the evergreen plant Kalmia is associated. He had come at the suggestion of Linnæus to investigate the botany and natural history of North America. He arrived at Fort Johnson with a letter from Dr. Colden, who was as fond of physical science as he was of his Toryism. After dispensing courtly hospitality, Johnson furnished him with a guide to Oswego and Niagara, and a letter to the commandant at the former place. Kalm’s “Voyage to North America” was translated and published in London in 1777, and the map accompanying it is of great interest. After him was named that family of evergreens in which is found the American laurel, Kalmia latifolia, which has been proposed as the national flower of the United States.
CHAPTER VII.
AT THE ANCIENT PLACE OF TREATIES.
The Old French War, or the War of the Austrian Succession, was foolishly begun in Germany, and foolishly ended in Europe, Asia, and America. The peace which came without honour settled nothing as regarded the questions at issue in America. In reality this treaty guaranteed another American war. Louisburg was again handed over to the French in exchange for Madras. All prisoners in the three continents were to be released without ransom, and a return of all conquered territory and property was agreed to. The balance of power now rested level on its fulcrum, ready for some fly’s weight to tilt it and cause the scale-pans to bounce.
In what part of the world first? With unspeakable disgust the raw troops and scarred veterans, and the people generally of the colonies, received the news. Not a few thought it was time to think of not only fighting their own battles, but of making their own treaties. The continental or American spirit, already a spark, was fanned almost to a flame.
Meanwhile, in home politics, New York was steadily advancing in the pathway that was to merge into the highway of national independence. To a New England writer, accustomed to the unbridled laudation of his own State and ancestry as those who led the Teutonic-American colonies in the struggle for liberty, the doings in the New York Assembly may seem “teapot-tempest politics.” To those less prejudiced, it is a noble chapter in the story of freedom, when they see an ultra-Tory British governor fast relegated to a position of impotence, though backed by the able Tory, Cadwallader Colden, while the people’s will is manifested in persistent limitation of the royal prerogative.
This was the state of affairs in May, 1750, when, on the death of Philip Livingston, Col. William Johnson was appointed to a seat in the governor’s Executive Council. The Livingstones were sturdy men of Scottish descent, descended from a Presbyterian minister who had been banished for non-conformity. Like so many of the founders of America, the Pilgrim Fathers and most of the chief settlers of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, he reinforced his democratic ideas by some years’ residence in the Dutch Republic, living gladly under the red, white, and blue flag of the United States of Holland. The Livingstones in America married into families of Dutch descent, and thereby were still further imbued with Republican ideas. Robert and Philip had been secretaries of Indian affairs, and had thus gained great favour and influence over the Iroquois. Of their descendants, one was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and others were officers in the Revolutionary army, while others are even yet adorning the annals of freedom, progress, and order.