USA > New York > Niagara County > Biographical and portrait cyclopedia of Niagara County, New York > Part 5
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In the next year after Fort Niagara was rebuilt, New France, embracing Canada and Louisiana, with only 100,000 population, had, by the bravery and genius of her gen- erals, defeated the armies of England and the forces of the American colonies, then having a population of 1,500,000, and owned twenty twenty-fifths of North America, while Spain owned four twenty-fifths and England the remaining one twenty-fifth.
But affairs were to change, for William Pitt became prime minister of England, and under his direction the war which had be- gun for territorial supremacy in America and was then raging in Europe, the West Indies, and on the plains of Hindostan, was. so ably conducted that at its close England was triumphant in every quarter of the globe and mistress of the seas.
The year 1757 was fraught with disasters to the English arms in northern and west- ern New York. The Marquis Montcalm attacked and captured the two forts at Os- wego, with 1,600 men, several ships, a large number of cannon and valuable stores. By this victory France swept her dreaded rival from western New York. During the next year Colonel Bradstreet, of New York, with a small colonial force, made a rapid march, surprised and captured Fort Frontenac, with an immense quantity of stores and cannon intended for the Niagara frontier and the French forts in western Pennsylvania.
Another year passed and the eagle eye of Pitt, whose influence was felt from his Lon- don cabinet to the battle-fields of Europe, Asia, and America, took in the Niagara frontier. He planned three expeditions, one against Quebec, the next against Crown Point, and the third for the capture of Fort Niagara, to be commanded by General Prideaux.
On July 1, 1759, a force of 2,200 regular troops and militia, which had assembled at Oswego under Brigadier-General John Pri- deaux, embarked for the siege of Fort Ni- agara. He was accompanied by Sir Wil- liam Johnson, with 943 Iroquois warriors. Colonel Haldinand was left with a New York battalion to hold Oswego, and was attacked on July 5th, by a force of 1,500 French, Canadians and Indians, which he success- fully repulsed with considerable loss.
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The French garrison at Fort Niagara was composed of 149 men, detached from the regiments of Lasarre, Royal Rousillon, Guienne and Bearn; 183 colonials, 133 militia, and 21 gunners and others, making 486 soldiers and 39 employees.
Prideaux landed at the Little Swamp, and on the 8th summoned Pouchot to sur- render Fort Niagara, which was reinforced on the 10th, by Chadbert Joncaire, with the small force with which he had held Little Fort Niagara. Prideaux advanced his trenches on the last named day to within three hundred toises of the fort, and on the 15th had carried his trenches to the lake shore. A cohorn burst that day and killed General Prideaux, by which sad accident the command of the English forces devolved upon Sir William Johnson, who pressed the siege with great vigor, and three days later breached the walls of the fort by his heavy artillery fire. On the 24th, General D'Aubry attempted to raise the siege with 1,400 French and Indians, whom he had drawn from the western garrisons. Johnson dis- patched a part of his force which met D'Aubry at "Bloody Run," a mile and one- half below the Five Mile meadows, and in the battle the French lost one hundred and fifty killed, and one hundred and thirteen prisoners, including General D'Aubry. The French survivors of the battle who were not prisoners, fled to their fort, at Presque Isle, and the garrison at Fort Niagara, upon learning D'Aubry's fate, surrendered on the 25th. The garrison, numbering 618, was sent to New York, and according to promise the Indians were rewarded with the plunder in the fort.
The elder Joncaire had secured footing for the second French occupation of the Niagara frontier, and his son, Chadbert Joncaire, the
half-breed Seneca chief, had built Little Fort Niagara, and in 1750 had led a force south into Pennsylvania, where he captured all the English fur traders which he could find. But now the second and last French occupation was ended, and France and the Joncaires retired from the soil of Niag- ara, and England and Sir William Johnson entered in the inauguration of English occupation, which was to continue for a quarter of a century. The two great char- acters who were prominent in the closing struggle of France and England over the Niagara frontier, were Montcalm and Johnson.
Louis Joseph Montcalm de Saint-Veran was a French marquis, who entered the army at fourteen years of age and gained honor and distinction in several European wars. His ability and talents as a com- mander were such as to secure him, in 1756, the command of the French forces in Can- ada. He was very successful in his cam- paigns in New York, although much larger and far better disciplined troops were ar- rayed against him. His forces were prin- cipally raw Canadian volunteers, brave to rashness, but lacking both experience and discipline, and poorly clad and half starved. The genius of Montcalm shone bright in his many victories won under such circum- stances and with the opposition of the gov- ernor of the province, who often hampered his movements. He was born in 1712, and met imperishable glory and an honorable death upon the plains of Abraham in 1759.
His successful opponent on the Niagara frontier was Sir William Johnson, who was prominent and active in more fields than any English leader in New York, and exer- cised a greater influence and control over the Iroquois than any other person. He
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was born in County Down, Ireland, in 1715, and at eighteen years of age came to New York to take charge of an estate which his uncle, Sir Peter Warren, owned in the Mo- hawk valley. He lived in the town which bears his name, was adopted by the Mo- hawks as a war chief, and in a short time was raised by Governor Clinton, in military affairs, above the heads of all other colonial officers in New York.
Sir William Johnson probably exercised more influence over the Five Nations than any other white man that ever came in con- tact with them, and as general superinten- dent of Indian affairs for the English, did much to secure the success of his nation in the northern and western parts of New York.
While the Iroquois were true to English interests, yet the Senecas accepted the En- glish occupation of the Niagara frontier with but ill grace, and but awaited an op- portunity to wreak their vengeance upon the soldiers and fur-traders of King George of England. This opportunity came to their hand sooner than they expected and in less than four years after the fall of Fort Niagara.
Sir William Johnson left a garrison of 700 men in Fort Niagara, and the English in a short time built a fortification about forty yards from Little Fort Niagara, which was named Fort Schlosser, in honor of its first commandant, Captain Joseplı Schlosser, who was of German descent. In 1761 John- son visited Fort Niagara during a trip to Detroit. About this time Captain Ruther- ford, Lieutenant Duncan and others had ob- tained a license from General Amherst to trade with the Indians and settle on ten thousand acres of land at the Niagara carrying place near Fort Schlosser. The
Indians became dissatisfied with this attempt of the English to make a settlement on the Niagara river, and King George, in an effort to appease the red lords of the forest, sent orders to stop any settlement on the Niagara frontier.
In the spring of 1763, the mighty Indian chief, Pontiac, led the Indian tribes north of the Ohio river against the twelve western posts from Detroit to Niagara, and nine of them fell before his strategy, while Detroit, Pittsburg and Niagara barely escaped cap- ture. Colonel Boquet with five hundred Scotch highlanders and colonial volunteers, marched for the relief of Fort Pitt, and on August 5, 1763, at Bushy Run, was drawn into an Indian ambuscade. Darkness saved his army from terrible defeat, and on the next day, by masterly strategy, he drew the Indian force into an ambuscade by a feigned retreat, and finally routed them with great slaughter. This battle, so nearly lost on the first day by the carelessness, and so bril- liantly won on the second day by the mas- terly generalship of Colonel Henry Boquet, is classed by Parkman (tlie historian) as one of the "decisive battles of the world;" for mighty Pontiac's grand dreanı of empire was wrecked when his warrior hosts were crushed and scattered at Bushy Run. This defcat saved Fort Pitt, and prevented Pontiac from sending additional forces to the siege of Fort Niagara.
The Senecas, who had never accepted tlie English occupation of Fort Niagara with good grace, rose in arms when Pontiac led the Indians of the northwest against the British posts. The Senecas, while not strong enough to risk an attack on Fort Niagara, yet kept it in a constant state of siege. The English had a guard stationed at the head and the foot of the Niagara portage,
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
and a convoy of soldiers guarded all wagon trains passing over the portage. On Sep- tember 14, 1763, a wagon train which had come up from Lewiston with supplies for Detroit, set out on its return from Fort Schlosser with a guard of twenty-five men. When the train was passing along the "Portage Road," where it runs along a precipice rising nearly one hundred feet above a dark chasm or hole, known as "The Devil's Hole," it ran into an ambuscade of five hundred Seneca Indians, mainly Che- nussios. A single fire from the Indians killed and wounded nearly all the men with the train. The firing and yelling of the savages frightened some of the teams so badly that they plunged over the rocky wall of the precipice, while some of the men in preference to being butchered and burned at the stake, sprang over after the teams, and met an instant death. A drum- mer boy named Matthews made the leap, fell into a tree top, climbed down and escaped. John Stedman, who had charge of the por- tage, dashed through the Indian line and regained Fort Schlosser. The Indians fin- ished with knife and hatchet the wounded, and then withdrew into their ambuscade to await the arrival of any English relief party, as the firing they knew could be heard at the lower landing. . They were not disappointed in their calculation. The guard at the lower landing marched to the succor of the train which they supposed had been attacked. They ran into the ambus- cade, and more than half of them fell at the first fire of the Indians, who then massacred the survivors with tomahawk and scalping knife. But eight men of the second de- tachment escaped, and they bore to Fort Niagara the news of the horrible slaughter. The larger part of the garrison instantly
marched to the scene of the massacre, but the Indians expecting no more relief detach- ments, had retreated with eighty scalps. After the massacre at the "Devil's Hole," the Senecas still kept around the Niagara posts, and on November 5th, killed two of the garrison at the lower landing, who were cutting wood.
Toward winter the Senecas withdrew, and when they learned of Pontiac's utter failure they were anxious to make peace on any terms, for fear of receiving a fearful pun- ishment at the hands of the triumphant English. In April, 1764, four hundred of the Senecas went to Sir William Johnson at Johnson Hall and begged for peace. He exacted severe articles of concession from them, and one of the articles was as follows :
"That they (the Senecas) cede to his Majesty and his successors forever, in full right, the lands from the fort of Niagara, ex- tending easterly along Lake Ontario about four miles, comprehending the Petit Mavais, or landing place, and running from thence southerly, about fourteen miles, to the creek above Fort Schlosser, or Little Niagara, and down the same to the river or strait and across the same at the great cataract, thence northerly to the banks of Lake Ontario, at a creek or small lake about two miles west of the fort; thence easterly along the banks of Lake Ontario, and across the river or strait to Niagara ; comprehending the whole carrying place, with the lands on both sides the strait, and containing a tract of abont fourteen miles in length and four in breadth. And the Senecas do engage never to ob- struct the passage of the carrying place, or the free use of any part of the said tract, and will likewise give free liberty of cutting timber for the use of his Majesty, or that of
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the garrisons, in any other part of their country not comprehended therein."
Eight chiefs signed the articles of con- cession by which the Senecas were to give up all their prisoners, allow the English free passage through their country, and to give up any of their number who murdered or injured British subjects, to be tried by En- glish laws. The chiefs now went home to see if their tribe would ratify their treaty, and to notify them of a general meeting of the Indian tribes at Fort Niagara that was called by Sir William Johnson as superin- tendent of Indian affairs for the English government. In June, 1764, Johnson, with 550 Iroquois warriors, joined General Brad- street at Oswego, where the latter had 1,200 men. The combined force left Oswego on July 3, and arrived at Fort Niagara on the 8th. "The sight which greeted Sir Wil- liam Johnson," says Stone, "as he stepped from his boat upon the sandy beach, must have been peculiarly gratifying to his self- love. In response to his invitations be be- held, far stretched across the fields, the wig- wams of over a thousand Indians, whose number but a few days after was increased to two thousand and sixty, of whom one thousand seven hundred were warriors. Deputations from all the nations dwelling in that vast region lying between the pine forests of Nova Scotia and the head springs of the Mississippi were here assembled ; while here and there might be seen an Indian from tribes that trapped the beaver on the margin of Hudson's bay and hunted the moose on the northern shores of Lake Su- perior."
The Senecas were tardy, and when they did come, brought fourteen English prisoners with them. They promptly ratified the pre- liminary treaty at Johnson Hall, and for fifty
years afterward were the allies of the Eng- lish. The Senecas extended the four-mile cession of land on the east bank of the Niagara from Fort Schlosser to the head of the river, and gave all the islands in the river to Johnson, who afterwards turned them over to the King of England.
After making treaties with the various tribes, Johnson left for the east, and Brad- street, on August 8th, embarked at Fort Schlosser for Detroit, where he accomplished his mission, and lost part of his artillery and some of his men by a storm on the lake, on his return towards the Niagara frontier.
Sir William Johnson's influence now with the Indians was such as never had been equaled by any one in English employ. He remained loyal to England when the Revo- lutionary struggle came, and at the time of his death at Johnson Hall, July 11. 1774. he had commenced a powerful opposition to the patriot cause in the Mohawk valley and the Statc.
Sir William Johnson had been the lead- ing character on the English side, on the Niagara frontier, and the great Indian actor in the struggle, Pontiac, one of the mighty red kings of America, has found his histo- rian in Parkman, and his biographer in Lossing, who says of him :
"Savage and treacherous as he is, the native Indian, is his forest home, has many generous and noble qualities, such as we have been taught to admire when displayed by Roman warrior or Greek law-giver. Pontiac, the great chief of the Ottawa tribe a hundred years ago, possessed these in an eminent degree; and had his natural en- dowments been nurtured under the warm sun of civilization, no doubt his name would have been high among the great ones of
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
earth. But he was forest born and forest bred, and history speaks of him only as a great chief, filled with deadly hatred of the white man, and renowned for bloody deeds and bloodier intentions.
" Pontiac, when he first became known to the white man, was ruler of the whole northwest portion of our present domain. Where Cleveland now stands in its pride, Major Rogers first met the great chief, one bright morning in the autumn of 1760. He informed Pontiac that the English had taken Canada from the French, and then made a treaty of friendship with him. Though Pontiac had been the fast friend of the French during the war just ended, he now appeared upon the field of history for the first time, in the full strength of mature manhood. He was doubtless sincere in his treaty with the English, but the non-fulfill- ment of their promises, and the influence of French emissaries, soon made him trample all compacts beneath his feet. He did more, far more, than any North American Indian ever effected before or since. He confeder- ated all the Indian tribes of the northwest to utterly exterminate the English, or drive them from all their posts on the great lakes and in the country around the head waters of the Ohio. Like Philip of Mount Hope, Pontiac viewed the approach of white settle- ments with jealousy and alarm. He saw, in the future, visions of the displacement, per- haps destruction, of his race, by the pale- faces ; and he determined to strike a blow for life and country. So adroitly were his plans matured that the commanders of the western forts had no suspicion of his con- spiracy until it was ripe, and the first blow had been struck. Early in the Summer of 1763, within a fortnight, all of the posts in possession of the English, west of Oswego,
fell into his hands, except Niagara, Fort Pitt, and Detroit. Early the following spring, Colonel Bradstreet penetrated the country to Detroit, with a strong force. The Indians were speedily subdued, their power was broken, and the hostile tribes sent their chiefs to ask for pardon and peace. The haughty Pontiac refused to bow. He went to the country of the Illinois tribe, where he was basely murdered, in 1769, by a Peoria Indian, who was bribed by an English trader to do the deed, for a barrel of rum. The place of his murder was at Cahokia, on the east side of the Mississippi, a little below St. Louis. A great man fell when Pontiac died. He was the greatest of all chiefs known to the white men, and deserved a better fate. It is said that during his oper- ations in 1763, he appointed a commissary, and even issued bills of credit, which passed current among the French inhabitants of the northwest. When he died, he wore a uniform presented to him by Montcalm, who esteemed him highly. Pontiac was an actor in the last scene in the drama of the French and Indian war."
Revolutionary War .- When the struggle for Independence burst into life with the rustling flame of the rifle shots on Lexington " Common " in 1774, the Five Nations had become the Six Nations by the addition of the Tuscaroras, who left the south for a northern home. The Niagara frontier was so far from tlie populated parts of New York and Pennsylvania that it remained in undisputed and uninterrupted possession of its British garrisons and their allies, the Six Nations, although the larger part of the Oneida nation of that wonderful confederacy took up arms in favor of the colonies.
Fort Niagara became a great hive from which Indian and tory bands issued to raid
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with fire and sword and scalping knife the eastern part of New York and the northern part of Pennsylvania. In September, 1776, a grand council was held at Fort Niagara with the Iroquois nations and ten other tribes who were favorable to the English and tories, and all these nations and tribes declared in favor of the English and against the colonies.
Two years later, in 1778, the great war chief of the Six Nations, the Mohawk, Joseph Brant, burned and plundered Cobles- kill, Springfield, German Flats, and the Schohariekill valley. He led the Indians in the terrible massacre of Cherry Valley, and commanded one thousand Mohawks in the battle of Oriskany, where he and St. Leger, who had a considerable force of English and tories, were defeated by General Herkimer. Brant was ably assisted in most of his daring expeditions by Cornplanter, a chief of the Senecas. Not content with the terrible vengeance he was wreaking on the English in the Mohawk and Hudson valleys, Brant joined the tory Butlers in the fearful massa- cre of Wyoming in northern Pennsylvania, where between three and four hundred women, children, and old men were killed. These different plundering and murdering expeditions were fitted out from Fort Niagara, to which the Indians and tories returned with their plunder, scalps, and prisoners.
To inflict a stern and terrible vengeance for the massacres of Wyoming and Cherry Val- ley, Washington directed General Sullivan to lay waste the country of the Six Nations. Sullivan, in 1779, with three thousand men, moved into western New York, and near Elmira he attacked and defeated one thous- and seven hundred tories and Indians, led by the Butlers and Brant, Cornplanter and
Red Jacket. He then ravaged the country, burning villages, destroying corn fields and orchards, but for some so far unexplained reason failed to attack and capture Fort Niagara, which was but a short distance from him.
Brant and his followers were now com- pelled to depend upon Fort Niagara for their living, as their country was a desolate waste, yet he kept up his raids upon the English frontier. In 1780 an Oneida Indian reported that Brant, Col. Butler, and Guy Johnson were at Fort Niagara with sixty regular troops, four hundred tories, and one thousand two hundred Indians. During most of the war the Mohawks, who had left the Mohawk valley, resided upon the site of Lewiston, where they had a little log church.
When the Revolutionary war closed, Eng- land refused to give up Fort Niagara and the rest of the lake posts, as they were to have done according to Article VII. of the treaty. They based their refusal on the grounds that the Colonial authorities failed to provide for English merchants to collect their old debts in the colonies, and to pro- tect the property of loyalists.
Thus it was that England held Fort Ni- agara until July 4, 1796, when it was sur- rendered under the provisions of a second treaty, made and ratified in 1794. Of the Six Nations, the Mohawks refused to live under the Colonial government of New York, and removed to a large tract of land north of Lake Erie, which had been granted them by the English crown.
In this connection the three great Indian leaders of the Six Nations in the Revolu- tionary struggle deserve more than mere mention :
Joseph Brant, or " Thayendanegea, one of
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
the most renowned of the warriors of the Six Nations of Indians in the State of New York, was a Mohawk of the pure native blood. His father was an Onondaga chief, and Thayendanegea (which signifies a bun- dle of sticks, or strength), was born on the banks of the Ohio, in 1742. There his father died, and his mother returned to the Mohawk valley with her two children- this son, and a sister who became a concn- bine of Sir William Johnson. She married a Mohawk, whom the white people called Barent, which, in abbreviation, was pro- nounced Brant. Sir William Johnson placed the boy in Dr. Wheelock's school, at Leb- anon, in Connecticut, where he was named Joseph, and was educated for the Christian ministry among his own people. Sir Wil- liam employed him as secretary and agent in public affairs, with the Indians, and his missionary labors never extended much be- yond the services of an interpreter for Mr. Kirkland and others. He was much em- ployed in that business from 1762 to 1765. Under the stronger influence of Johnson and his family, Brant resisted the importu- nities of Mr. Kirkland to remain nentral when the war of the Revolution approached, and he took an active part with the British and tories. In 1775 he left the Mohawk valley, went to Canada, and finally to En- gland, where he attracted great attention, and found free access to the nobility. The Earl of Warwick caused Romney, the enii- nent painter, to make a portrait of him for his collection, from which the prints of the great chief have been made. Throughout the Revolution he was engaged in preda- tory warfare, chiefly on the border settle- ments of New York and Pennsylvania, with the Johnsons and Butlers ; and he was gen- erally known as Captain Brant, though he
held a colonel's commission from the king. Brant again visited England, in 1783, to make arrangements for the benefit of the Mohawks who had left their ancient coun- try and had settled on the Grand river, west of Lake Ontario, in Upper Canada. The territory given them by the government em- braced six miles on both sides of the river from its mouth to its source. There Brant was the head of the nation until his death. He translated a part of the New Testament into the Mohawk language, and labored much for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his ruined people. There he died on the 24th of November, 1807, at the age of sixty- five years. One of his sons was a British officer on the Niagara frontier in the war of 1812; and a daughter married W. J. Kerr, esq., of Niagara, in 1824."
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