USA > Mississippi > A history of the Mississippi valley, from its discovery to the end of foreign domination. The narrative of the founding of an empire, shorn of current myth, and enlivened by the thrilling adventures of discoverers, pioneers, frontiersmen, Indian fighters, and homemakers > Part 11
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In the face of the dangers which threatened them, now that the French were fully seated at the forks of the Ohio, the citizens of seven colonies sent dele- gates to a Congress which met at Albany, and appointed a committee to consider the trouble further. They were still unable to agree to do any real work.
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In Europe, the matter received more practical con- sideration. The reader who would like to learn what was done in Europe, in connection with this war, is advised to read Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," first of all. For the war that followed between France and England was a part of the great "Seven Years War," that is so fully treated in Carlyle's "Frederick." And Carlyle is one of the two British writers of the Nine- teenth Century whose works are all worth oft-repeated readings.
The British King ordered two regiments of red- coated regulars (500 men each) to sail for Virginia, under command of "our trusty and well-beloved Ed- ward Braddock," whose instructions were dated No- vember 25, 1754. These soldiers sailed in January, 1755.
On hearing of this move the French government ordered 3,000 men to Canada under Baron Dieskau. But as the Rev. Mr. Parkman says, "In France the true ruler was Madam de Pompadour, once the King's mistress, now his procuress, and a sort of feminine prime minister." Men were appointed to office for pleasing her, regardless of their lack of other abilities, and Dieskau did not sail until May 3, 1755. Thus the British had time to learn all about the expedition, and to send a squadron to intercept it.
Braddock arrived at Hampton, Va., on February 20, 1755, and an intercolonial conference was convened on April 14, at Alexandria, where the two regiments were encamped. Here attacks were planned on Acadia, Crown Point, Niagara and Fort Duquesne. Braddock, with his two regiments of regulars, chose
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FREDERICK THE GREAT. From the engraving in the Encyclopedia Londinensis.
Mississippi Valley.
to lead the force against Fort Duquesne. He reached Will's Creek on May 10. Washington, with some hundreds of Colonial militia, had been at work there during the preceding winter, and had built Fort Cumberland where Will's Creek entered the Potomac, (Cumberland, Md.). A month later, June 10, the force moved forward with three hundred axemen, cut- ting a road twelve feet wide ahead of all. There were about 1,200 soldiers in the command, besides officers, teamsters and workmen. The line stretched out to a length of four miles-"a thin, long, party-colored snake, red, blue and brown, trailing through the depth of leaves." They were able to advance but a trifle more than three miles a day.
On July 7, Braddock with eighty-six officers and I373 men reached Turtle creek, (eight miles from Fort Duquesne), having decided to leave his heavy baggage under a guard in order to advance more rapidly with a fighting force. Here he crossed to the southerly side of the Monongahela, continued down stream, and on the 9th crossed back again by a ford that lay near the dam at the present village of Braddock, Pa.
At this time Contrecoeur commanded Ft. Duquesne, with a force of something over 250 white men and nearly 800 Indians. The approach of Braddock had created not a little excitement in the fort, and there were two British Colonials there, (James Smith and Robert Strobo), to take note of what was done. The Indians at first refused to fight the British, but when they had seen how the red coats marched in close order, and that it would be possible to shoot them "like pigeons," as one said to Smith, they decided to try it.
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Accordingly, when Capt. Daniel Liénard de Beaujeu was placed in command of the regulars and Canadians, on the 9th, with orders to ambush Braddock at the ford of the Monongahela, the Indians raised the war whoop.
Barrels of gun powder, bullets and flints, were opened at the fort gate, and the Indians helped them- selves. Beaujeu dressed himself like an Indian, (a common habit of the French at the time), and with 108 officers and regulars, 146 Canadians, and 642 In- dians, (one account says 637), he started at 8 o'clock for the ford. It appears, however, that they were in no haste to reach the ford. A man could walk the dis- tance in two hours, but Braddock crossed unmolested at I o'clock. Even when the British sat down and ate a luncheon no attack was made. But when Brad- dock's advance guard had passed a ravine in the hills a mile from the ford, they met a man "dressed like an Indian, but wearing a gorget of an officer." This man-Beaujeu, no doubt-stopped at sight of the Brit- ish, gave an Indian war whoop, waved his hat and jumped for a tree. The French regulars, Canadians and Indians were then seen coming behind him. The greater part of the Canadians fled crying, "Sauve qui peut," but the regulars and Indians "treed" themselves, and stood still while the British advance guard fired three almost harmless volleys into the tree trunks-al- most harmless, but not quite, for Beaujeu was killed by the third.
Then the French and Indians began to shoot from their safe shelters; and the range was short. No braver regular troops than those red coats had ever marched into such a battle, but their bravery was their
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A MAP OF THE COUNTRY
BETWEEN WILLS' CREEK & MONONGAHELA RIVER, Showing the route and Encompments of the English Army in 1755.
Charter.r Old T. A
Kichker
Scwickty!
tas
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Shanopins. T. a Fort du Quesne
rezer.
Continent
WestBounds of Pennsylvania
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Salediets: 15
P.
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I
Swamp
ack
Stewartss
Wi
Port
Timberland
Savan
RY
A
REFERENCES.
pen delow Camp 12 East side of the
2. Martin's Plant?
Yoxiogeny
8. SavageHiver.
13. West side,
4 Little Meadow.
14. Great Swamp
5. West side of the 15. Jacobslabbe
noah
little crossing. 6.Bear Camp.
16. SaltLick. 17. Thicketty Run 13. Honacatura
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8. East side of the Camp. Great Meadow. 19 Monongahe
SCALE
9. West side.
of English Miles.
10.Rock Fort.
·la Camp. ... -
10
11. Gists .
"Degrees of Longstarte West from Philadelphia.
THE BRADDOCK CAMPAIGN.
Laurel Hills
North
Hon
". Squaws Fort.
Allegany Mountains
Three Forks
Pincel.
RELMEEM MIFFEL CBEER ? HAVOREVMITY BIAEK
السلطة
Mississippi Valley.
destruction. They stood in place in solid masses, scorn- ing shelter, and fired back-uselessly as before. But a time soon came when flesh and blood could not stand the unseen death that pelted them from the brush, and they gave way just as Braddock arrived to support them with the main part of his force, shouting, "God save the King."
The fresh troops, on meeting the retiring vanguard, were thrown into some confusion, but were rallied by their officers, and formed into solid masses; and there, with few exceptions, they stood, facing the lead-laden storm, and firing back exactly according to the manual.
The Virginians, almost to a man, took to the trees like Indians. Braddock, with vigorous British pro- fanity, ordered them back into line, and even killed one of them, it is said, with his sword, (see Gordon's "Pennsylvania"). A few of the red coats, who also sought shelter were beaten back into line or killed by the exasperated general. No flinching would be per- mitted by this commander. He crowded them to- gether until they were as close together as wild pigeons on a roost, and they were slaughtered like the pigeons, as the Indians had foreseen. It was an army of disciplined Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotchmen. As firmly as their native islands, they withstood the storm until half their number were down-"stood panting, their foreheads beaded with sweat, loading and firing mechanically,"-and then they broke and fled. A mo- ment later Braddock fell, shot through the lungs- "bleeding, gasping, unable even to curse." He was shot down by Thomas Fawcett, whose brother Brad- dock had cut down for seeking a tree, says Gordon.
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The retreat at once became a panic, but Washing- ton, with his sheltered Virginians, covered the flight, and the Indians turned from slaughter to the gather- ing of plunder, and finally went back to Fort Duquesne, "driving before them twelve British regulars, stripped naked, and with their faces painted black." They were to be burned.
Said James Smith who, from within Ft. Duquesne, saw the victorious mob return : "The savages appeared frantic with joy, dancing, yelling, brandishing their red tomahawks and waving scalps in the air, while the great guns of the fort replied to the incessant discharge of the rifles without. The most melancholy spectacle was the band of prisoners. They appeared dejected and anxious. They were led to the banks of the Alleghany" and there each was "tied to a stake with his hands above his head," and then they were "burned to death." The Frenchmen made no efforts to prevent these tor- tures. There is every reason to suppose that the French approved them. The French had, on several occasions, burned Indians to death, and the instances where any Frenchman actually interfered in behalf of a British prisoner are so rare that one is fully justified in be- lieving that the tortures at Fort Duquesne had their full approval.
It seems proper, therefore, to call attention to the fact that in all the wars between the British Colonies and the Indians, and between the United States and the Indians, no captured Frenchman was ever burned to death, nor was any captured Indian. Our people saw their wives and children outraged, murdered and tor- tured by the Indians, but there was never a case where
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FALL OF BRADDOCK.
Mississippi Valley.
our men so degraded themselves as to burn to death one of the inferior race in retaliation. One may re- member this with some satisfaction, even in the midst of the unspeakable humiliation which has been brought upon our nation by the burning of members of an in- ferior race during recent years.
Braddock's wound was mortal. He had faced the enemy he justly despised with vigorous, voluble energy and courage; for four days he faced death with silent resolution. Once, as he recalled the rules his teachers had given him, he said aloud, "Who would have thought ?" And then at 8 o'clock in the evening of Sunday, July 13, having seen, at least, that tactics in war, as in all other matters, must be adapted to the circumstances, he said, "We shall know better how to deal with them another time," and then died.
Out of eighty-six officers in the British force, sixty- three were killed. Washington had two horses shot under him, and several bullets pierced his clothing as he fearlessly exposed himself. Twenty years later, an armed host of Americans who had gathered around the port of Boston and were staggering beneath a bur- den of war that was yet too great for them to carry, remembered that battle on the bank of the Mononga- hela, and sent word to the Continental Congress that they would "rejoice to see this way the beloved Colonel Washington."
Out of 1373 privates and non-commissioned officers, 459 only escaped unhurt. Among those who escaped was a teamster who was to achieve fame in after years. His name was Daniel Boone, and he was then twenty- one years old.
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The French had three officers killed and two officers and two cadets wounded. Of their regular privates four were hurt. The Canadians lost five wounded, and the Indians twenty-seven killed and wounded.
In its immediate result, the victory seemed almost decisive for the French, for the whole frontier, from Pennsylvania south, was left unguarded, and every tribe of red men, save only the well-settled portion of the Iroquois at the eastern end of their "long house," was fully committed to French interests.
And yet the success of the French here led them ultimately to their downfall. For as soon as they learned that the British were fully defeated, they began raiding the British frontier, and the devilish cruelty of these raids united the colonists and brought them into the field in overwhelming numbers.
The orders to raid the home makers on the British frontiers were issued in France-"manage on occasions in which there may be acts of violence in such a manner as not to appear the aggressor," said a letter to Du- quesne dated September 6, 1754, but "if you consider it necessary to make the Indians act offensively against the English, his Majesty will approve of your using that expedient."
As a matter of fact little effort was made to avoid appearing as aggressors. Captain Dumas succeeded Contrecoeur at Fort Duquesne, and he immediately began sending parties of Indians under French officers to raid the Pennsylvania frontiers. In speaking of these raids Father Godfroy Cocquard, S. J., in a letter . to his brother, written early in 1757, said:
"The Indians do not make any prisoners; they
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MODERN SCENE OF BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.
Mississippi Valley.
kill all they meet, men, women and children. Every day they have some in their kettle, and after having abused the women and maidens, they slaughter or burn them." (N. Y. Colonial Manuscripts, vol. x, p. 528.)
"The upper country Indians have really laid waste Virginia and Pennsylvania," wrote Montcalm in 1756. The Indians on the Upper Lakes heard of the vast amount of plunder gathered when Braddock fell, and they came to get more by raiding the undefended col- onists.
"In April [1756] there had been in those parts twenty detachments of Delawares and Chauanons [Shawnees] ; these were joined by more than sixty Indians from the Five Iroquois Nations who have com- mitted frightful ravages. The only resource remaining to the inhabitants was to abandon their houses and to remove to the sea coast. Three forts have been burnt, among the rest one containing a garrison of forty- seven men. The garrison was summoned to surrender, but having refused, the fort was set on fire in the night. The garrison attempted to escape, and the Indians gave no quarter," so says "Abstract of Despatches from Canada, Vol. x, N. Y. Colonial Documents. M. Dou- ville comanded the last named assault, and was killed.
1
Parkman notes that Dumas gave to each French officer in command of a party of raiders a written order to keep the Indians from torturing prisoners. Park- man thinks these orders were sincerely given. But the student of history may reasonably ask why were the orders written in every case? An officer obeys an oral order as carefully as a written one. One of these written orders was found on Douville whose forces
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"gave no quarter." The French commander not only knew that the Indians would give no quarter, but he knew that "every day they have some in their kettles," as Father Cocquard wrote. If the French King, in his orders to Duquesne was careful to say that "acts of violence" must be managed so as not "to appear the aggressor," is it too much to suppose that Dumas was animated by the same regard for appearances, and the same disregard of the infinite horrors of Indian atro- city?
The extent of the country raided is shown by the fact that on August 2, 1756, the Chevalier Villiers burned the log fort called Grandville on the north bank of the blue Juniata, a mile west of the present town of Lewiston, Mifflin county, Pa. He was but sixty miles from Philadelphia.
The French officers, in their reports on aggressions very often used the term "disgust the English." What they meant to say was that they believed the raids would intimidate the Colonists-fill them with the sense of inferiority to the French.
During the years 1756 and 1757, (called by Win- sor the two dismal years), and in a part of 1758, the state of affairs seemed to justify the French hope. To keep back the Indians the Governor of Virginia built a fort, (1756), on the Holston river about thirty miles above the present site of Knoxville. Colonel Bird built another in the same county in 1758. Both were well garrisoned and mounted cannon, but both were whelmed by Indians and the garrisons forced by heavy losses to leave. A line of forts was built along the frontier. At the demand of the backwoodsmen, and in
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Mississippi Valley.
spite of Quaker protests, a reward of 136 Spanish dol- lars was offered for every scalp of a male Indian, over twelve years of age, and fifty dollars for a squaw scalp. "John Potter, sheriff of Cumberland County, declared that the only way to prevent slaughter and destruction on the frontier was to send a strong force into the center of the Indian stronghold. His words are worth further consideration. While it is true that the friendship of the Indians might have been retained had they been treated on all occasions with Quaker kindness and justice, it is equally true that when war had been precipitated by wrong treatment, the quickest and therefore the most merciful way to end it was to send a strong force under a strong man into the center of the Indian country. The advice of John Potter cannot be emphasized too much. If a people are attacked, the best method of self-defence is to strike into the heart of the enemy's country. The Governor of Virginia refused to heed John Potter. He built a chain of forts instead. So the raiding continued un- checked.
In August, 1756, the French captured Oswego, "using in the operation the cannon Braddock had lost on the Monongahela." On July 6, 1758, Abercrombie was defeated at Ticonderoga.
Then the bloody tide was turned. At the end of July, Amherst, seconded by "the slender, nervous and almost dying Wolf," captured Louisburg. Coming thence to Lake Champlain, Amherst brought victory with him. Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet, with "an amphibious little army" of 3,000 men, crossed Lake Ontario. and captured Fort Frontenac on the morning
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of August 26, 1758. Nine armed vessels were in the harbor. Seven of these were destroyed, and two loaded with supplies needed for a new fort building on the site of Oswego, which the French had abandoned.
By this success Bradstreet gave the French power in the Mississippi Valley a serious wound. Their com- mand over Lake Ontario, and so over their highway from Montreal to the southwest, was gone. Supplies could still be sent up the river from New Orleans, and from Illinois, but the chain of French posts, stretched first by La Salle, was broken.
Meantime General John Forbes left Philadelphia, (end of June, 1758), with an army to take Fort Du- quesne, and on November 5, he was on Loyal Hannon Creek, in the town of Ligonier, Westmoreland County, Pa., fifty miles from his destination. He had advanced by slow but sure stages; and having studied well Brad- dock's disaster, he had trained his force, (between 6,000 and 7,000 men, of whom 5,000 were from Penn- sylvania, Virginia and South Carolina), to meet the French and Indians in their own manner of warfare.
It was an efficient force, but the Quakers of Phila- delphia forestalled it in its work. They opened the way so effectually that Fort Duquesne might have been taken without firing a gun in the whole campaign. And none was fired in the vicinity of the fort.
That the Quakers had no direct influence on the French scarcely need be said. But while Forbes was on the way west they persuaded the Governor of Penn- sylvania to send Christian Frederick Post, a Moravian preacher, with a pipe of peace from them to the Indians beyond the Ohio. Post had earned the con-
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fidence of the Indians by his sincerity when a mission- ary among them, but he took his life in his hands when he accepted this task, for it was certain the French would have him assassinated, if possible. How- ever, he reached his red friends in November, and they accepted the pipe of peace the Quakers had sent them.
Sufficient credit has not been given to this mission of peace, in our histories because, probably, the writers have supposed that Forbes and his force frightened the Indians into submission. But a careful reading of Post's second journal, (see the "Olden Time"), shows clearly, first, that Post was entirely truthful, and, second, that the Indians changed their allegiance from the French to the British (in spite of every opposition on the part of the French officers), because of the message Post carried to them. They did this in the face of the overwhelming defeat of a detachment of Forbes's army, 800 strong, under Major Grant, where- in nearly 300 men were lost, (Sept. 15, 1758).
Forbes, after a council of war, had determined to proceed no further than Loyal Hannon Creek, and he would have persisted in this determination, but for the defection of the Indians from the French interests after they had seen the Quaker pipe of peace. And the French would have stood firm at Fort Duquesne but for this defection. French officers were present at the public councils Post held with the Indians, but on the night of November 22d, 1758, "the Indians danced around the fire until midnight for joy of their brethren, the English coming," and the next day the French gave up hope.
Returning to Fort Duquesne, on the afternoon of
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the 23d, De Ligneris, who was then in command, and who had been watching Post, prepared his forces for embarkation. All the buildings and the fort were fired. Under the ominous shadow of the smoke the French divided themselves into two companies, and at daylight, one under De Ligneris went up the Alleghany to Venango. The other paddled down the Ohio to Fort Massac, a station not far from the Mississippi, left there a small garrison, and then went on to Fort Chartres.
On November 25, General Forbes entered Fort Duquesne, and having repaired it, he renamed it Fort Pitt, from which we have the name of the modern city of Pittsburg.
How the British won at Fort Niagara and at Lake Champlain in 1759; how and why Wolf on the Plains of Abraham said, "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace," need not be recounted here, even though these victories shut out forever the French from the Great Valley which La Salle had given them. But a word regarding French official life in America during the last days will prove instructive. To quote the words of Parkman, ("Wolf and Montcalm") :
"A contagion of knavery ran through the colony. Conspicuous among these military thieves was Major Pean. 'La Petite Pean' had married a young wife, famed for beauty, vivacity and wit. Bigot [the Intendant] who was near sixty, became her lover ; and the fortune of Pean was made. He had bought as a speculation a large quantity of grain with money of the King, lent him by the Intendant. Bigot then issued an order raising the commodity to a price
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far above that paid by Pean, who thus made a profit of 50,000 crowns. A few years later his wealth was estimated at from two to four million francs. Madam Pean became a power in Canada, the dispenser of favor and offices. Pean, jilted by his own wife, made pros- perous love to the wife of his partner, Penisseault, and after the war took her with him to France; while the aggrieved husband found consolation in the wives of the small functionaries under his orders."
And while Wolf was before Quebec, and food was so scarce that the people were placed on a ration of two ounces of bread a day, "fowls by the thousand were fattened on wheat," that Bigot and his followers, male and female, might have delicate food for their carousals.
After the fall of Quebec, the remainder of this war-the great Seven Years War-was fought out in Europe. In November, 1762, the plenipotentiaries of England, France and Spain, at a meeting in Paris, agreed to make peace. One condition of the treaty was that Canada should be ceded to Great Britain, with all of the French claim east of the Mississippi. Fear- ing that, in the negotiations, he would have to give the whole valley to the British, the French King fore- stalled such a disaster by a secret treaty, (dated Nov. 3, 1762), in which he gave to Spain the island on which New Orleans stood, and all the French posses- sions west of the Mississippi.
Robert Rene Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, by honest work, filed a claim in the name of France, on the broad basin of the Mississippi. Honest work only was needed to secure to that nation the full title in fee simple. But
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those whom France sent to complete her title took for a pattern of life the example found in the King's court. From first to last the most exciting theme among them-the theme that created deadly quarrels most frequently-was the matter of precedence in social and public functions. From the first to the last they sought the sea of beaver instead of the South sea. In gathering wealth they flung honor to the winds, where they had any to fling, and when they had accumulated a store, they spent it as their King was spending the whole French nation. It was be- cause the dominant French in America were foul ex- udations of the Court over which the Pompadour ruled, that the French nation was driven across the Atlantic. When ten righteous men could not be found in all the plain, the fire of God swept it. It was in accordance with an inexorable law of nature that the man with the axe should at last supplant the vagabond with the sword.
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