Empires at War Read online

  Although the French had ceded Nova Scotia, they still held an important post on the Atlantic coast: the imposing fortress at Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island. The port flourished as a fishing and trading station as well as a key military post.

  To counter French power on Cape Breton Island, in 1748 the British Board of Trade ordered Colonel Edward Cornwallis to lay out a settlement and naval base at Chebucto on the Atlantic shore of Nova Scotia. Christened Halifax in honor of the board's president, it commanded one of the most impressive harbors in North America—spacious enough, according to some local boosters, to accommodate the entire Royal Navy. Barely a two-day sail from Cape Breton Island, Halifax provided the Royal Navy with a powerful base from which it could monitor French activities and prowl the approaches to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

  Many Acadians lived on the western side of Nova Scotia, near the Bay of Fundy, one of the most unusual bodies of water in the world. It is shaped like a huge funnel with its wide mouth facing south, and twice a day its enormous tides, in some places more than forty feet, inundate vast expanses of estuaries and salt marshes. As they ebb, these tides leave a rich and luxuriant soil in their wake. By enclosing these tidal lands with a complex system of dikes and gates, Acadian farmers were able to reclaim and protect large areas of tillable land, among the most fertile in North America. (Acadie means "fertile lands" in the native Micmac language.) But these lands were in dispute.

  Relations between the English and French were particularly tense along Fundy's north shore approaching the Chignecto Isthmus. Across the isthmus, tying Nova Scotia to the mainland, ran the paths linking Quebec, Cape Breton, Isle St. Jean (Prince Edward Island), and Acadia. The British claimed their sovereignty extended through this area and 150 miles west, as far as Baie des Chaleur. The French set the boundary 150 miles in the opposite direction at the Missaguash River. Within this disputed netherworld roamed Abbe Jean Louis Le Loutre, missionary, agitator, and alleged butcher.

  Ordained in Paris in 1737, Le Loutre left almost immediately for missionary work in Acadia, where he took up residence at Shubenacadie near modern-day Truro, Nova Scotia. Driven by a devotion to church and nation that his enemies condemned as fanatical, Abbe Le Loutre preached to the Micmac and Acadians. His gospel text was a long way from the Sermon on the Mount; his objective, to save both the Acadians and his Native American converts from the heresy of English Protestantism. He urged the Acadians who lived under British authority to uproot themselves from their ancient homes and move to the soil of the French king. With the Indians, however, he took a different tack. He saw them as pawns to be used to harass the English and prevent the Anglais from settling west of the Missaguash. Le Loutre informed his superiors, "As we cannot openly oppose the English venture, I think that we cannot do better than to incite the Indians to continue warring on the English." His superiors in Paris were in complete agreement.2

  To the English, Abbe Le Loutre was the devil incarnate. Cornwallis described him as "a good for nothing scoundrel as ever lived."3 He was accused of taking up the hatchet into his own hands and leading raids against defenseless farmers, burning homes, and offering a bounty of one hundred livres for each British scalp, women and children included. The British were not the only ones to feel Le Loutre's wrath. He terrified the neutral Acadians, too, warning them that if they swore allegiance to the British heretics, they would forfeit their souls, and that he would personally order the Indians to lay waste to their homes.

  To protect themselves in an atmosphere of mounting threats, both the British and French built forts at key locations. Of these posts, none were more critical than a pair that stood barely two miles apart, separated by the Missaquash River: Fort Lawrence and Fort Beausejour. Peace was brittle in the space between them. On an October evening in 1750 Edward How, an officer at Fort Lawrence, was returning alone from a parley with the French. As he walked the short distance between the two forts, unknown assailants ambushed and murdered him. As usual, the English blamed Le Loutre.

  To the west of Acadia lay the vast territory of Canada. Taken together with Louisiana, it represented a huge chunk of North America, dwarfing in size the British colonies hugging the Atlantic coast. Despite its expanse, this territory had only two doors by which to enter and exit: the mouth of the Mississippi and the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Communication within Canada and between Canada and Louisiana was almost wholly dependent upon movement along lakes and rivers. Feeling the heat of British ambitions on the fringes of Acadia, the French grew deeply suspicious when the English began to threaten these vital interior lines. Lake Ontario and the Ohio Valley drew special concern.

  Lake Ontario was a key link between the St. Lawrence and all the water routes to the west and south. The French claimed the western shore of the lake and asserted their rights by building a fort at the source of the St. Lawrence (Fort Frontenac) and another to guard the Niagara portage (Fort Niagara). Ontario's opposite shore was home to the Iroquois Confederation. Since the Iroquois's presence worked to block British occupation, the French supported their claim to the land. Neither the French nor the Iroquois were pleased when British traders built a post at the mouth of the Oswego River in 172:7. Much to the anger of the French, English traders at Oswego often diverted Montreal-bound trade, siphoning off large quantities of furs intended for French markets, sending them instead to Albany via the Oswego and Mohawk rivers. The Iroquois were more accommodating, since the English often had better goods for sale than the French and offered them at more reasonable prices. Although the Iroquois Confederation tolerated the British presence, they never regarded these traders as anything more than their guests. The land had been theirs since the days of their legendary founder.

  According to Iroquois history, sometime long before Europeans arrived, a virgin Huron living near the Bay of Quinte,* was visited by a heavenly messenger who announced that she would be the mother of a son to be named Dekanahwideh, whose mission would be to bring peace to the warring Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Oneida nations who lived in the Mohawk Valley between Lake Ontario and the Hudson River. He would do this by planting the "Tree of Peace" at Onondaga.† Under this tree the chiefs of the five nations would meet around a "council fire that never dies."

  Upon reaching maturity, Dekanahwideh left his mother and paddled across Lake Ontario in a stone canoe. Following the Great Spirit's vision, he found the place where an Onondaga warrior known for his cruel and evil ways lived. His first test was to bring this violent man to the ways of peace which he did. Once converted, the warrior changed his name to Hiawatha. The two then separated and went about the five nations to preach the message of peace: "The land shall be beautiful, the river shall have no more waves, one may go everywhere without fear." The first tribe to convert were the Mohawk, who resided in the east nearest the Hudson. Soon the other four followed. The Onondaga, who lived midway between the lake and the river, were named as the keepers of the perpetua council fire, around which the chiefs held their meetings. At the western end, nearest the lake, the Seneca, largest of the five nations, stood paramount. The Oneida and Cayuga dwelled between.

  Like all creation stories, the story of Dekanahwideh is a concoction of fact and fiction. What is indisputable is that the Iroquois Confederation, known officially as Kayanerenhkowa (the Great Peace), was the strongest pre-European military alliance in North America. Its strategic position astride the east-west water routes placed it in control of a good part of the fur trade. And its role was strengthened by the arrival of the Europeans, particularly the Dutch in the Hudson River valley, who traded firearms for furs. Armed with such weapons, in the mid—seventeenth century the Iroquois launched a series of wars against their neighbors, especially the Huron, aimed at seizing control of the fur trade.4

  The Iroquois Confederation, organized to preserve the peace, proved even more successful at waging war. Blessed with superior organization, European technology, and an ample number of warriors, the Five Nations swept to victory, virtually annihil
ating the Huron. Within a few years the Iroquois dominated all the tribes and territory between the Illinois country in the west, the Hudson Valley in the east, and as far south as the Carolinas, where the powerful Cherokee blocked their expansion.

  Eventually, Iroquois ambitions exceeded their power. In the early 1660s they engaged in a series of wars against the French in Canada. Despite some early successes, the French forced them to negotiate a peace in 1667. In the meantime the English had driven the Dutch out of New Netherlands and established themselves in the colony renamed New York. The arrival of the English turned out to be a boon for the Iroquois, for it allowed them to play these two European powers against each other. Oswego was a classic instance of this diplomatic strategy: By allowing the English to remain as tenants at Oswego, the Iroquois reasoned, the French were kept at bay. The British, however, had a very different view. In the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the same treaty by which the French surrendered Nova Scotia, they also surrendered their sovereignty over the Iroquois to the English. Swapping sovereignties over native people was something Europeans did easily in all parts of the world. Yet the Iroquois were never consulted; nor were they participants in the treaty. They acknowledged neither empire's rule—they regarded themselves as an independent nation.

  Farther east the English and French glowered at each other along the waters of Lake Champlain. Like a giant lizard, Lake Champlain stretches 120 miles on a north-south axis. At its northern end the lake drains down the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence. Toward the south the lake narrows near the La Chute River where a short portage connects to Lake George, which in turn connects via a twelve-mile portage to the Hudson River. The Lake Champlain/Lake George corridor was a vital waterway and a prime invasion route for armies moving in either direction. In 1781 the French seized the advantage on the lake by building Fort St. Frederic at Crown Point, a promontory standing guard at a place where the lake narrows to barely a mile across. Only ninety miles north of Albany, the fort was a constant threat to the English and, in their minds, at least, a point of trespass by the French.

  By far the most menacing specter of British encroachment against the French was west of the Appalachians in the valley of the Ohio River. Here, on a scale larger and more threatening than anything they had encountered in Acadia or on the lakes, the French watched fretfully as the British expanded. From Pennsylvania and Virginia, British fur traders hiked west, tugging at the reins of packhorses heavily laden with trade goods. These Anglo traders found willing customers among Native Americans, who were eager to swap beaver skins for woolen cloth, rum, knives, hatchets, and muskets.

  In the competition for trade, the British had the advantage. Bureaucratic restrictions and fees, along with less efficient production in the home country, made French goods more expensive than their British counterparts. Native consumers were well aware of the benefits of having British traders to compete with the men from Montreal and Quebec. It meant, quite simply, that they could sell high and buy low. A Wea chief complained to the French commandant at Miamis:* "You know well, my father, we pay for a wool blanket of 2½ points, 9 beavers; for one of cotton, 5 beavers; a pair of mitasses, 3 beavers; a pound of powder, 3 beavers; 2, pounds of lead, a beaver. That is what rebuffs all our young men, and we are no longer able to keep them from going to the English, who give them every thing very cheap."5 Given an opportunity, even the French traders dealt with the English. French and British officials railed at these scofflaws to no effect.

  The competition between the English and French traders was a testy business; nonetheless, had commerce been the only point of friction between them, the rivalry might have smoldered and not exploded. However, when trading conflicts were read against the backdrop of imperial expansion, government ministers in Paris and London interpreted events in the Ohio Valley as sinister proof of the enemy's intent to attack and rob them of their rightful possessions. For generations the French, Indians, and English had been stacking the kindling. It was about to ignite.

  *Near present-day Belleville, Ontario.

  †Near present-day Syracuse, New York.

  *Near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana.

  (1)

  Lining Up Allies

  All I can say is that the natives of these localities are

  very badly disposed towards the French, and are entirely devoted to the English.

  —Celéron, "Expedition Down the Ohio"

  Among those most aware of the English threat was New France's governor, the marquis de la Galissonière, an officer in the French navy who arrived at Quebec in September 1747. During his travels through Canada Peter Kalm, the Swedish scientist and diarist, met Galissonière and was astounded to discover, deep in the North American wilderness, a man so well versed in science and philosophy. The governor was equally at ease bantering in Parisian salons or barking orders from the quarterdeck of a warship. He brought energy and vision to Canada.

  Galissonière was the accidental governor. The marquis de La Jonquiere was the original appointee, but he had the misfortune of being taken prisoner in May 1747 when his vessel was captured by the British off the coast of Spain. Louis XV sent Galissonière as a stand-in until he could manage the release of Jonquiere from the Tower of London. His instructions reflected both the failure of New France in the eyes of the ministers in Paris as well as their hope for the colony's future. "Although capable of supporting enterprises both solid and profitable, Canada has made but little progress in the course of a fair number of years. The first settlers, who were little concerned with these sorts of enterprises, concerned themselves solely with the fur trade they could manage to carry on with the Indians, and there are still a rather large number of them who, satisfied with what that trade brings them and attracted still more by the independence they enjoy in their travels, are not much interested in devoting themselves to farming."1

  Galissonière embraced the challenge. To strengthen the colony, he supported improvements in agriculture and encouraged the development of manufacturing. Ironically, his superiors at home viewed his work with indifference and sometimes hostility. French mercantilists could not abide the thought that the colonies might compete with the mother country. The comte de Maurepas, minister of marine, to whom Galissonière reported, wrote him that his efforts at improving the economy of New France were not welcomed and that they would "be tolerated only to the extent that they [did] not harm the market in France, and for this reason they must not be allowed to multiply."2 Although disappointed at Maurepas's comments, Galissonière paid them little heed, for his immediate concerns were less with the colony's economy and more with its defense.

  Galissonière appreciated his strategic advantage of interior lines. Despite the huge size of the territory of New France, its vast network of lakes and rivers provided secure routes. As long as Galissonière held these water routes, he had the advantage of mobility, and he could mass his forces to hit decisive points. The French could, in short, move fast and strike hard.

  In addition to providing pathways, the water passages served as boundaries and barriers. The Ohio River system marked one of Galissonière s key links. By holding that line, he could block the British advance and secure his communications with the lower Mississippi. Given the length of the line, however, and his limited resources, the only way he could hope to maintain his position was with the aid of Indian allies. Galissonière realized that if the British continued to seep into the west with their cheap goods, which enabled them to woo the Indians to their side, the French were doomed.

  From the British point of view, expansion into the west was profitable and legal. By article 15 of the Treaty of Utrecht, France and England had agreed that the Iroquois would be subjects of the British Crown. Since the Iroquois claimed the Ohio Valley, the British, as their sovereign, took it to be theirs as well.

  The French rejected the claim and asserted that sovereignty over a mobile people such as the Iroquois could only extend to persons, not to the lands through which they traveled. T
o prove this point, and to establish his king's authority, Galissonière summoned Pierre-Joseph Céloron de Blainville. A native-born Canadian and a grizzled veteran officer in the Troupes de la Marine (regular colonial forces), Céloron had been commandant at both Crown Point as well as in the west at Detroit. Galissonière ordered him to lead an expedition into the Ohio country. His mission was similar to Le Loutre's in Acadia: to remind the Indians of their obligation to the French king and if necessary terrify them into submission.

  The Marquis de la Galissonière

  Both Céloron and the expeditions chaplain, Father Joseph-Pierre de Bonnecamps, kept careful journals. They set off from Lachine on June 15, 1749, with a force of 213 men in twenty-three canoes. After getting past the rapids, where they lost one canoe and one man, they arrived at the mission of La Presentation. Two days later they beached their canoes at Fort Frontenac. From there they made their way along Lake Ontario's north shore to cross the portage at Niagara over to Lake Erie. Hugging the southeastern side of Erie, the expedition beached its canoes at the Chautauqua portage,* where Céloron and his men shouldered their small craft and marched overland to Lake Chautauqua and thence to the headwaters of the Allegheny River. Although the road was "passably good," the portage to the lake took five days.3