by Alan Axelrod
In the meantime, up north, the French had managed to gather even more Indian allies, especially among the Abnakis, who ravaged English settlements in Maine (where Queen Anne’s War was called the Abnaki War). Farther north, in Nova Scotia, Benjamin Church, now so enfeebled by old age that he had to be carried into battle, terrorized the French Acadian settlements of Minas and Beaubassin during July 1704, while, in Newfoundland, French and Indian forces retaliated during August by destroying the English settlement at Bonavista. The war raged—from Saint Augustine, Florida, to St. Johns, Newfoundland (captured by the French just before Christmas 1708)—not in a series of great battles, but in a string of murders, raids, and counter-raids.
In 1713, Louis XIV, weary of war and crushed under heavy debt, was ready to end the wars in Europe and America. The cause of the War of the Spanish Succession had become a moot point. The 11-year-old Bavarian archduke backed by the Grand Alliance had died, and Louis’s grandson Philip of Anjou ascended the Spanish throne by default. The Treaty of Utrecht (July 13, 1713) ended the European and American wars, with Hudson Bay and Acadia becoming English and the St. Lawrence islands becoming French. The Abnakis swore allegiance to the English crown, but continued to raid the English settlements of Maine for years.
Tuscarora and Yemasee Wars
At about the time Queen Anne’s War was winding down, the Tuscarora Indians in North Carolina were growing tired of being cheated and abused by colonial traders, to whom they continually lost goods and land and at whose hands they even suffered abduction for sale into the West Indies slave trade. Wishing to avoid war, the Tuscaroras, in 1709, obtained permission from the government of Pennsylvania to migrate there. The government of North Carolina refused to furnish the required certificate to make the migration possible. After all, the North Carolina traders enjoyed making a profit from the Indians. In 1710, a Swiss entrepreneur named Baron Cristoph von Graffenried founded the settlement of New Bern at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent rivers in North Carolina. Graffenried chose not to purchase his land from the Tuscaroras, but instead secured the blessing of North Carolina’s surveyor general to “appropriate” the property and drive the Indians off.
That was the final straw for the Tuscaroras. On September 22, 1711, they attacked New Bern, killing 200 settlers, including 80 children. Remarkably, Graffenried, captured and released, managed to negotiate peace, only to have it broken by William Brice, who, thirsting for revenge, captured a local chief of the Coree tribe (allies of the Tuscaroras) and roasted him alive. The war was renewed, and, as if Brice’s act had set its tone, was filled with more than the usual quota of atrocities, including the death-by-torture of scores of captive soldiers and settlers.
North Carolina called on South Carolina for help. In 1713, South Carolina’s Colonel James Moore combined 33 militiamen and 1,000 allied Indians with the troops of North Carolina to strike all the principal Tuscarora settlements. This force killed hundreds of Tuscaroras and captured some 400 more, whom the governor sold into slavery to defray the costs of the campaign. A peace treaty was signed in 1715, and those Tuscaroras who managed to escape death or enslavement migrated north, eventually reaching New York. In 1722, they were formally admitted into the Iroquois League as its “sixth nation.”
No sooner was the 1715 treaty concluded than the Yemasees, a South Carolina tribe, rose up against their white neighbors for much the same reasons that had motivated the Tuscaroras: abuse, fraud, and enslavement. The military response, led by South Carolina governor Charles Craven, was swift and terrible. With the aid of Cherokee allies, the Yemasees were hunted to the point of tribal extinction.
King George’s War
Men have seldom needed to look very hard for a reason to start a war. This one began with the loss of an ear. Following Queen Anne’s War (or, if you prefer, the War of the Spanish Succession), England concluded the “Assiento” with France’s ally, Spain. This was a contract permitting the English to trade with the Spanish colonies in goods and slaves.
English traders soon abused the privileges granted by the Assiento, however, and Spanish officials responded harshly. In one case, Spanish coast guards seized Robert Jenkins, master of the British merchant ship Rebecca, and cut off his ear during an interrogation. Word of this outrage triggered the “War of Jenkins’s Ear” in 1739 between England and Spain, resulting in an abortive invasion of Spanish Florida by Georgia’s James Oglethorpe in 1740.
During this time, the War of Jenkins’s Ear dissolved into a larger conflict, known in Europe as the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). The death of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740 brought several challenges to the succession of daughter Maria Theresa as monarch of the Hapsburg (Austrian) lands. It looked as if the Hapsburg territories were ripe for the plucking, and King Frederick the Great of Prussia moved first to claim his slice by invading Silesia. France, Spain, Bavaria, and Saxony joined Frederick’s fold, while Britain came to the aid of Maria Theresa. Once again, the European conflict also appeared in an export version: King George’s War.
It was fought mainly by New Englanders against the French of Nova Scotia and again resulted in a wilderness in flames. Territory changed hands, but only temporarily; for the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession, also ended King George’s War, restoring (as treaty language puts it) the status quo ante bellum: the way things were before the war. But treaty language can be misleading, and the status was no longer quite quo, Enmities and alliances among the French, the Indians, and the English were now not only lines drawn on a map, but scars seared into the souls of all involved. Wait a few more years. There would be a new, far bigger, far more terrible war.
The Least You Need to Know
Wars were fought with the Indians to gain their land.
Colonies often used Indians as pawns in violent struggles with one another.
North America frequently was a theater of wars that originated in Europe.
Word for the Day
Wampum is the Anglicized version of the Algonquian word wampompeag. Although the, term came to describe any kind of valuable item used as the equivalent of money, it originally was applied to cylindrical seashells strung on strings or beaded into belts and used as money or as tokens of good faith (wampum belts were exchanged at treaty signings, for example).
Word for the Day
Among the Algonquian tribes, a sachem was the equivalent of a chief. Within the Iroquois confederacy of tribes, a sachem was a member of the ruling council. Neither chiefs nor sachems were absolute rulers in the European sense of a monarch but were influential and powerful tribal leaders.
Stats
Among the colonists, 1 in 16 men of military age was killed in King Philip’s War. At least 3,000 Indians died; many more were deported and sold into slavery in the West Indies.
Word for the Day
In French, “little war” is la petite guerre. This phrase soon evolved into the single word guerrilla to describe a limited, covert style of warfare as well as the combatants who fight such wars.
Stats
How much was a human being worth? The wholesale price for the Tuscaroras sold on the West Indies slave market was Ј10 each at a time when Ј100 year was considered a handsome living.
Global War—American Style
(1749-1763)
In This Chapter
Conflict over the Ohio Valley
Braddock’s defeat at Fort Duquesne
Forbes’s victory at Fort Duquesne
Wolfe’s takeover of Quebec
Aftermath: Pontiac’s Rebellion
The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended King George’s War on October 18, 1748, brought no more than fleeting peace to the American frontier. On March 27, 1749, King George II granted huge wilderness tracts to a group of entrepreneurs called the Ohio Company, stipulating that, within seven years, the company must plant a settlement of 100 families and build a fort for their protection. The grant and the stipulation accompanying
it rekindled the hostility of the French and their Indian allies, who feared an English invasion.
Their fears were valid. Throughout 1749, an influx of British traders penetrated territories that had been the exclusive trading province of the French. In response, on June 26, 1749, Roland-Michel Galissoniere, marquis de La Galissoniere, governor of New France, dispatched Captain Pierre-Joseph Celeron de Blainville with 213 men to the Ohio country. By November 20, 1749, Celeron had made a round trip of 3,000 miles, burying at intervals lead plates inscribed with France’s claim to sovereignty over the territory. The lines of battle were drawn.
The French and Indian War
La Galissoniere was replaced as governor by Jacques-Pierre de Jonquiere, marquis de La Jonquiere, in August 1749. He decided it would take more than buried lead plates to control North America, and he began to build forts. He also attacked the Shawnees, the most powerful of the Ohio country tribes who traded with the English. In the meantime, an English trader named Christopher Gist negotiated a treaty (1752) at Logstown (Ambridge), Pennsylvania, between Virginia and the Ohio Company, and the Six Iroquois Nations (plus the Delawares, Shawnees, and Wyandots). This treaty secured for Virginia and the Ohio Company deeds to the vast Ohio lands. However, French-allied Indians drove the English out of this wilderness country by 1752, and yet another governor of New France, Ange Duquesne de Menneville, marquis Duquesne, quickly built a string of forts through the Ohio country that ultimately stretched from New Orleans to Montreal. Lord Halifax, in England, pushed the British cabinet toward a declaration of war, arguing that the French, by trading throughout the Ohio Valley, had invaded Virginia.
First Blood for the Father of Our Country
In the heat of war fever, Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia secured authority from the crown to evict the French from territory under his jurisdiction. He commissioned 21-year-old Virginia militia captain George Washington to carry an ultimatum to the French interlopers: Get out or suffer attack. Washington set out from Williamsburg, Virginia’s capital, on October 3 1, 1753, and delivered the ultimatum to the commandant of Fort LeBoeuf (Waterford, Pennsylvania) on December 12, 1753. Captain Legardeur, 30 years older than Washington, politely but firmly declined to leave. In response, Governor Dinwiddie ordered the construction of a fort at the strategically critical “forks of Ohio,” the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, the site of present-day Pittsburgh.
In the meantime, up in Nova Scotia, British authorities demanded that the Acadians—French-speaking Roman Catholic farmers and fishermen who freely intermarried with the Micmac and Abnaki Indians—swear loyalty to the British crown. These people had the misfortune of living in the midst of the most important fishery in the world, waters coveted by all the nations of Europe. While the British threatened the Acadians with expulsion from Nova Scotia, the French threatened to turn their Indian allies against any Acadians who took the loyalty oath. Tensions mounted.
Back at the forks of the Ohio, the French, having patiently watched the construction of Dinwiddie’s fort, attacked. Badly outnumbered, Ensign Edward Ward, in command of the new outpost, surrendered on April 17, 1754, and was allowed to march off with his men the next day. The English stronghold was now christened Fort Duquesne and occupied by the French. Unaware of this takeover—and on the very day that the fort fell-Dinwiddie sent Washington (now promoted to lieutenant colonel) with 150 men to reinforce it. En route, on May 28, Washington surprised a 33-man French reconnaissance party. In the ensuing combat, 10 of the Frenchmen were killed, including Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, a French “ambassador.” This battle, then, was the first real battle of the French and Indian War.
“Who Would Have Thought It?”
Realizing that the French would retaliate, Washington desperately sought reinforcement from his Indian allies. A grand total of 40 warriors answered the call. It was too late to retreat, so at Great Meadows, Pennsylvania, Washington built a makeshift stockade and christened it Fort Necessity. On July 3, Major Coulon de Villiers, brother of the man Washington’s small detachment had killed, led 900 French soldiers, Delawares, Ottawas, Wyandots, Algonquins, Nipissings, Abnakis, and French-allied Iroquois against Fort Necessity. When the outpost’s defenders had been reduced by half, on the 4th of July, Washington surrendered. He and the other survivors were permitted to leave, save for two hostages, who were taken back to Fort Duquesne.
With the loss of the Ohio fort and the defeat of Washington, it was the English rather than the French who had been evicted from the Ohio country. A desperate congress convened at Albany from June 19 to July 10, 1754, and produced a plan for colonial unity. The plan managed to please no one. In the meantime, from Fort Duquesne, the French and their many Indian allies raided freely throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Finally, in December 1754, the English crown authorized Massachusetts governor William Shirley to reactivate two colonial regiments.
These 2,000 men were joined by two of the British army’s absolutely worst regiments, commanded by one of its dullest officers, Major General Edward Braddock. The French responded by sending more troops as well, and British forces were expanded to 10,000 men. On April 14, 1755, Braddock convened a council of war and laid out a plan of attack. Brigadier General Robert Monckton would campaign against Nova Scotia, while Braddock himself would capture Forts Duquesne and Niagara. Governor Shirley would strengthen and reinforce Fort Oswego and then proceed to Fort Niagara—in the unlikely event that Braddock was detained at Fort Duquesne. Another colonial commander, William Johnson, was slated to take Fort Saint Frederic at Crown Point.
Monckton and John Winslow (a colonial commander) achieved early success in Nova Scotia, but General Braddock struggled to get his expedition under way to Fort Duquesne. Braddock managed to alienate would-be Indian allies, and even insulted the Delawares so profoundly that they went over to the French side. Braddock also alienated the “provincials,” of whom he was so thoroughly contemptuous that the colonial governors resisted collecting war levies and generally refused to cooperate with the general.
At long last, Braddock led two regiments of British regulars and a provincial detachment (under George Washington) out of Fort Cumberland, Maryland. It was an unwieldy force of 2,500 men loaded down with heavy equipment. Along the way, French-allied Indians sniped at the slow-moving column. Washington advised Braddock to detach a “flying column” of 1,500 men to make the initial attack on Fort Duquesne, which Braddock believed was defended by 800 French and Indians. By July 7, the flying column set up a camp 10 miles from their objective.
Spies out of Fort Duquesne made Braddock’s forces sound very impressive, and the fort’s commandant, Claude-Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecoeur, was prepared to surrender. But Captain Lienard de Beaujeu convinced him to take the initiative and attack. All he had available were 72 regulars of the French Marine, 146 Canadian militiamen, and 637 assorted Indians. These he threw against Braddock’s encampment on the morning of July 9, 1755. The result was panic among the British. Troops fired wildly—or at each other. It is said that many of the British regulars huddled in the road like flocks of sheep. Braddock, stupid but brave, had five horses shot from under him as he vainly tried to rally his troops. At last, mortally wounded, he continued to observe the disaster. Of 1,459 officers and men who had engaged in the Battle of the Wilderness, only 462 would return. (George Washington, though unhurt, had two horses shot from under him and his coat pierced by four bullets.) As he lay dying, Braddock said simply: “Who would have thought it?”
Panic, Retreat, Retrenchment
The defeat at the Battle of the Wilderness drove many more Indians into the camp of the French and laid English settlements along the length of the frontier open to attack. To make matters worse, the French had captured Braddock’s private papers, which contained his main war plan. French governor Vaudreuil had intended to move against Fort Oswego on the south shore of Lake Ontario; learning from Braddock’s abandoned papers that Forts Niagara and Saint Freder
ic would be the objects of attack, he reinforced these positions, using the very cannon the routed English had left behind.
While the Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia frontiers were convulsed by Indian raids, William Johnson was victorious at the Battle of Lake George and built the strategically important Fort William Henry on the south end of the lake. Washington, returned from the Battle of the Wilderness, persuaded authorities to build more forts, extending from the Potomac and James and Roanoke rivers, down into South Carolina. These forts, Washington said, were the only effective means of combating the widespread Indian raids unleashed by the French.
By June 1756, British settlers in Virginia had withdrawn ISO miles from the prewar frontier. George Washington complained to Governor Dinwiddie: “the Bleu-Ridge is now our Frontier … there will not be a living creature left in Frederick-County: and how soon Fairfax, and Prince William may share its fate, is easily conceived.”