USA > New York > Niagara County > Outpost of empires; a short history of Niagara County > Part 6
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Magazin Royal was only a stepping stone Construction of Fort Niagara and Little Fort Niagara gave France control to the fort that the French had wanted since the days of La Salle. And there was no time to lose, either. By the 1720's time was running out for the French. Year by year they saw the English and Dutch traders in Albany capture a bigger part of their fur market. Higher prices for furs and cheaper trade goods attracted Indians and some French to Albany. French authorities fined and imprisoned every outlaw French trader they caught, but this did not stop the illegal traffic in furs for one minute. Only better prices could do this and the French could not hope to equal the bargains offered by Albany.
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FT
Raising the French Castle at Fort Niagara in 1726.
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As might be imagined, this situation was bad enough. But then the English added insult to injury by moving practically to the doorstep of the French. In 1724 they raised a fort at Oswego on Lake Ontario. This was the last straw as far as the French were concerned. The Governor of Canada called on Joncaire and ordered him to consult with the Senecas and get a decent fort built on the Niagara River. He hoped that this fort would stop the flow of western furs to the English and Dutch traders.
Joncaire was just the man for this job. The Senecas had trust- ed him for years and in the end he was able to persuade them to allow the French to build a stone house on the Niagara River. Joncaire naturally hid the fact that this house was really going to be a fort, and a strong fort at that. He told the Indians that the French needed it for storing goods and they believed him. If he had not said this, the French plan would surely have been ruined, for no Seneca chief would have agreed to a fort of stone in Niagara County.
The French went right to work. They had waited for this moment for years and they did not want to give the Senecas a chance to change their minds. An engineer named Gaspard de Lery was picked to raise the stone house on the Niagara River. De Lery chose the mouth of the river as the best place to build, although Joncaire wanted Lewiston, as near to Magazin Royal as possible. De Lery, of course, made a wise choice. That piece of land at the mouth of the river was the key to the whole river and the river was the key to the West. La Salle and Denonville had been right.
De Lery built the stone house in 1726. He built it as much like a French chateau as he possibly could because he wanted to fool the Senecas, who knew what a French fort looked like. Actually, De Lery's stone house was a strong fort. He made the walls four feet thick and built huge stone arches to stand the shock of can- nons fired from the top floor. Moreover, just beyond the thick oaken entrance door, a well was later dug so that soldiers would have a steady supply of water during a siege. The Senecas did not realize that the French had tricked them until it was too late to do anything about it.
Fort Niagara gave the French control of the key to the West. The French also built Little Fort Niagara at Upper Landing to guard the south end of the portage. But they never regained com- plete control of the western fur trade. Indians and outlaw traders continued to carry furs to New York colony during the years the French flag floated over Niagara County.
In the next chapter we shall see that flag pulled down and Niagara County become an outpost of Great Britain and finally a part of the United States of America.
4. Britain loses Niagara Region to the United States
Britain and France fight over North America
The year 1689 saw England and France begin a series of wars over colonies and trade. It is the last of these wars that concerns us here. Beginning in America, it was known as the French and Indian War. Later it spread to Europe and Asia where it was called the Seven Years' War.
It all started because both England and France (ignoring the real owners, the Indians) said that the Ohio Valley belonged to them. The French had the better claim, having been first in the valley and having raised a string of forts there. But England ignored this, and British traders began pushing over the Alle- ghenies. The long and short of the whole business was that neither side would give an inch. At the same time both swore that the other was trespassing. The matter was finally decided by muskets, bayonets and cannons.
A young colonial major named George Washington actually started the fighting by surprising some French soldiers in 1754. But neither England nor France bothered to declare war for two years. Meanwhile the French had a winning streak. A big victory came in Pennsylvania in 1755 when French and Indians ambushed and almost wiped out an army under a British general named Braddock.
How did Fort Niagara become involved in the war?
But the luck of the French did not continue. In North America, one French stronghold after another fell as the years passed. And one of these strongholds was Fort Niagara, at the mouth of the Niagara River. This is where we take up our story.
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The English lay siege to Fort Niagara
How did the English manage to take the fort?
The English army led by General Prideaux and Sir William John- son outnumbered the French defenders
It was near the end of 1758 that the British made plans for the conquest of Fort Niagara, the key French fort that linked Canada with the West. At Oswego, an army of over two thousand soldiers assembled under a general named John Prideaux. But this was not the whole army. Sir William Johnson, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, brought in six hundred Iro- quois warriors. And several hundred more Indians joined up at Fort Niagara after the siege had begun.
The army made ready to sail from Oswego in July, 1759. Prideaux watched his sweating, joking soldiers, muskets glittering in the sunlight, crowd into large canoes and steer for Niagara. In the distance he saw Johnson's Indians paddling near the shore.
One evening a few days later the army glided into the mouth of Four Mile Creek, so-called because it was four miles from Fort Niagara. Soldiers pitched their tents nearby and slung kettles and soon hundreds of campfires flickered in the surrounding woods. The Indians camped some distance away.
Meanwhile Indian scouts sneaked through the woods and sur- prised some French pigeon hunters at the edge of the clearing
near Fort Niagara. One hunter got away. He raced across the darkened clearing and sounded the alarm. For the rest of the night French soldiers stood behind the walls of the fort and waited for an attack that did not come.
At daybreak Prideaux had batteries of cannons set up and started British soldiers digging out zigzag trenches through the woods back of the clearing. Other soldiers began dragging boats and cannons through the woods some distance up the river. They then ferried the cannons across to Canada and set up batteries opposite Fort Niagara. Now the British could bombard the fort from Canada.
The French commander at the fort was a Fort commander Pouchot lacked munitions captain named Francois Pouchot. Thanks to him, the fort had earthworks and moats, a powder storehouse, and artillery bat- teries. But even so he had less than six hundred men under arms. He knew that he could not hold out without help.
So he sent runners racing south to French forts in Pennsyl- vania to bring up more soldiers. On the way there the runners stopped off at Little Fort Niagara. The soldiers there burned it to keep it from falling into British hands. They ferried the horses and cattle, carts and tools and guns to Canada. Later they slipped by Prideaux's sentries and got into Fort Niagara.
Building a canoe took several days. The Iroquois used elm bark for canoes since birch bark was scarce in their lands.
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While all this was happening, Prideaux had gotten his siege operations well under way. Before he opened fire, however, he sent an officer to the fort with a demand for its surrender. But Pouchot expected help and so he turned down the demand. As things turned out, he was not to get that help. But of course he did not know that then.
Pouchot's refusal to surrender brought about an eighteen-day siege. During this time cannons flashed and thundered over the river and clearing. British soldiers dug more trenches and got closer to the fort. Meanwhile Pouchot's cannons kept up a steady fire, raking the British lines.
And so the days passed. Fog came. It drifted in ghost-like from the lake and draped the fort, the trees, and the river. Then spatter- ing rains fell and drenched the British soldiers huddled in the rapidly flooding trenches. Prideaux however pressed the attack. His wet and tired troops pushed and dragged cannons through the mud and set them in new positions nearer Fort Niagara. And all the while his batteries in Canada hurled red-hot shot across the river and into the fort.
The bombardment went on. British guns roared and shells plowed into the earthworks of the fort and ripped gaping holes. Within the fort, the fierce bombardment caused storehouses and other wooden buildings to blaze.
French cannon fire began to slacken as ammunition ran low. Then the gunners ran out of wadding for their cannons. Hastily they took hay and straw and bed linen and shirts and stuffed these into the cannons for wadding. French muskets broke down con- tinually during the siege and gunsmiths worked round the clock repairing them as best they could.
Pouchot made his wounded soldiers, and even women and children, work day and night filling bags with earth. These bags they piled one on top of another to plug holes in the battered walls. Pouchot kept his soldiers at their posts. Some had been days with- out sleep and they nodded over their muskets. Others, completely exhausted, slept like dead men. There was no question in Pouchot's mind that the end was near if help did not come soon. Anxiously he gazed up the river and looked for the soldiers he had sent for.
French reinforce- ments were routed at the Battle of La Belle Famille And help was on the way. An army of French and Indians had gathered in Penn- sylvania and hastened north. They beached their canoes and boats at Fort Little Ni- agara, now a burned ruin, and hurried over the portage road. They climbed down Lewiston Hill-and
marched straight into a British and Indian trap at La Belle Famille, a short distance from Fort Niagara.
In the fort that morning a soldier's shout brought Pouchot hurrying to the walls. The day was clear. He looked southward, his eyes following the soldier's pointing finger. And in the distance he saw puffs of musket smoke and fighting groups of soldiers and Indians, now moving forward, now retreating. He watched, tense and hardly breathing, knowing full well that the fate of his fort and indeed that of New France hung on this battle.
Meanwhile, at La Belle Famille, French and Indians reeled under a sharp fire from British soldiers who had taken up posi- tions behind a breastwork of fallen trees. Then the British, sharp- pointed bayonets gleaming at the ends of their muskets, leaped the breastwork and charged the disorganized enemy. At the same time yelping Indians rushed in from the sides. It was too much for the French. French officers raced back and forth like wild men trying desperately to rally their men. But the French broke ranks and ran southward and their Indians fled with them. Dead and wounded lay strewn on the field and along the trail to the escarp- ment at Lewiston.
An Indian slipped through the British lines and brought Pouchot news of the disaster. He knew then that it was all over. France had lost Niagara and any more bloodshed would be useless.
Shortly a trumpet blared from the British trenches. It must have sounded like the clap of doom to Pouchot. And so it was- for the fort and for the French empire in the West. As the trumpet blast died away, he observed a British officer, a white flag fluttering over his head, appear in the clearing. Some twenty-four hours later, Pouchot stood stiffly at attention and heard the expected demand for the surrender of Fort Niagara.
Pouchot turned the fort over to the British. He had no choice now. Prideaux, however, was unable to enjoy his hour of triumph. He had been accidentally killed by a shell fragment from one of his own cannons. As next in command, Sir William Johnson ac- cepted Pouchot's surrender.
On July 26, 1759, a stirring scene took place before the eyes of Johnson's army. Within the fort, French soldiers snapped to attention as drums beat. And then with their muskets on their shoulders, they marched out of Fort Niagara. The French with- drawal was the signal for swarms of Iroquois to pour over the walls and loot the fort. Then British soldiers hauled up the Union Jack. The air was filled with the cheers of soldiers and the yelps of
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Indians. The thing was done. French power in Niagara had come to an end.
The following month, Quebec fell to the British. Montreal sur- rendered the next year. And by the end of 1761, the Union Jack fluttered over all the French forts in the West. Thus French dreams of empire in North America died. Half a continent now belonged to Great Britain.
The western tribes unite
After the French had been driven out, Indians in the West welcomed the British because they wanted rum and cheap trade goods. But they quickly discovered that there was a world of difference between them and the French.
Why did the Indians turn against the British?
White men invaded their land Traders and landseekers followed close on the heels of the British soldiers. A trading license could be had for a few coins. Crafty traders now swarmed over the West. They cheated and robbed the Indians, whom they looked upon as animals. Settlers flocked across the Alleghenies over a road cut by the British Army during the French and Indian War. And the forests crawled with land spec- ulators who pretended to be hunters, but actually spied out the Indian lands which they hoped later to buy cheap and sell to white settlers at a good price.
Lord Amherst planned to wipe out the tribes
Before the invasion of these white people the red men got little protection from the British Government. The commander of British forces in North America, a gentle- man named Lord Amherst, hated Indians. And he made no bones about it. He wanted the West opened to white settlement and the Indians stood in the way. The answer to the problem, as he saw it, was to wipe out the tribes. This could be done by warfare. It could also be done by spreading disease. Amherst went so far as to sug- gest that blankets infected with small-pox be distributed among the Indians.
Another problem in the relations between the Indians and the British was the matter of gifts. Over the years, the French had given them presents in return for friendship and peace. The French had always done this and the Indians naturally expected the British to do the same thing. But Lord Amherst was a different kind of man. And he would have none of it.
The tribes grumbled and finally worked themselves into a rage. Sir William Johnson was still the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and he had his hands full trying to keep the tribes from reaching for tomahawks. Johnson had a way with Indians. But in the end even he could not stop an uprising. The thing had gone too far. Revolt was in the wind. Around the council fires warriors were listening to French agents, who said that the French king had been asleep but would now send armies to help them drive the British out.
What was Pontiac's Rebellion?
And then along came Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, and one of the most remarkable Indians who ever lived. He took up the cause of his people. During the winter of 1762-1763, he worked to unite them in a strong confederation to shove the British back across the mountains. Under his leadership the Indians had a brief mo- ment of glory.
Pontiac struck Detroit in May, 1763. At the same time, his Indian lieutenants hit other British forts up and down the fron- tier. It is not our place here to go into Pontiac's Rebellion in detail. Success was sweet but short. His Indian armies captured one post after another. Only Detroit held out against him. However, Pon- tiac soon saw that he had bitten off more than he could chew. The French king's sleep was undisturbed by sounds of musket fire in far off North America and no French armies appeared to aid Pontiac. Meanwhile, Lord Amherst hammered back. Pontiac was beaten and he knew it. Finally the Indians assembled at Fort Ni- agara in the summer of 1764 to make peace. Discouraged and heartbroken, an outcast deserted by his followers, his world in ruins about his feet, Pontiac slipped away to the Illinois country. There he was murdered by an Indian for a barrel of rum.
Why did the Senecas rebel?
Pontiac's Rebellion had been an uprising of western tribes for the most part. But the Senecas took a hand in it for a while, although Fort Niagara was not attacked. The trouble with the Senecas could be traced to Lord Amherst and an ex-soldier named John Stedman.
Whitemen would . settle on Indian land After Fort Niagara fell, the British re- paired the damage done during the siege and strengthened the fort. Besides this they raised a fort below Lewiston Hill and garrisoned it with two companies of regulars. Up river on the ruins of the French fort they raised another fort named Fort
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Schlosser. Thus the British grip on Niagara was secure, or seemed so. And Lord Amherst was free to open the area for white settle- ment.
He granted ten thousand acres of the Seneca land to a Sche- nectady company. It was supposed to begin settlement. A company agent did build a storehouse and dwelling on the site of Fort Little Niagara. But Johnson soon put a stop to Amherst's plans. Johnson knew that the Senecas would take the warpath if the Schenectady company went unchecked. He advised the British government to take away the company's grant. It did, and Amherst's scheme to settle -Niagara County collapsed. Although the British Parliament had supported Johnson and stopped settlement at Niagara, many Senecas must have seen the handwriting on the wall. It was only a question of time before they would be overrun by white settlers.
Senecas on the portage were thrown out of work Then in 1763 Stedman was appointed Portage Master at Niagara. And he went right to work at his new job. He improved the portage road and introduced carts pulled by ox teams to haul goods. Now all this was progress, of course. But the hundreds of Seneca portage carriers that he threw out of work did not see it that way. By this time many Senecas must have been fed up with the British, anyway. So it is easy for us to imagine Pontiac's agents talking them into raiding British portage traffic to stop supplies from reaching Detroit. In any case the result of this whole business was the Massacre at Devil's Hole in September, 1763.
This is how that tragedy happened. Stedman and a small guard of soldiers took a wagon train over the portage to Fort Schlosser. Fort Schlosser, remember, was at the upper end of the portage road. They got through to the fort all right. But on the way back to Lewiston they ran into a Seneca ambush at Devil's Hole, a steep- walled break in the side of the gorge just south of Lewiston Hill.
A few in Stedman's party got away. Two that we know of by name were Stedman and a drummer boy named Matthews. Sted- man was mounted on a fast horse and he simply spurred the beast through the Indians grasping at him and galloped back to Fort Schlosser. Matthews, on the other hand, jumped into the gorge, drum and all. Fortunately for him, he missed breaking his neck by landing in a tree-top. The Indians overlooked him and he later made it to Fort Niagara.
Meanwhile, the soldiers stationed at the foot of Lewiston Hill heard the shots and screams of battle. They suspected what was happening and rushed to help their comrades. They found them
and they also met the Senecas waiting in ambush. Tomahawk and scalping knife soon did bloody work on them too.
What were the effects of the Seneca uprising?
The British had their hands full with Pontiac at this time. So the Senecas got away with this massacre, at least for a while. Then Pontiac was crushed and the situation changed. The Senecas be- came scared, and with reason. Several hundred of them went to see Johnson at his home in the Mohawk Valley in the summer of 1764. What they wanted was a way out, so they could escape punishment by the British Army.
The Senecas ceded land to the British
And Sir William showed that he was their friend. He did not ask a life for a life, as he could have. He merely wanted land, and not much at that ... just a thin strip four miles wide along the Niagara River. Probably the Senecas congratulated themselves at escaping so easily and so cheaply. Of course, at the time, this strip was one of the most valuable pieces of land in all of North America. In 1764 their chiefs signed a treaty giving this land to the British. The grateful Senecas also gave Johnson all the islands in the Niagara River. Sir William later turned them over to the British king.
The British gar- risoned the portage After the ambush at Devil's Hole, the British took no more chances on the port- age road. They did not intend to be caught napping by the Indians again. A British army engineer named John Montressor was sent to build a chain of blockhouses along the route. One went up near Devil's Hole itself and others were spaced at short distances all the way from Lewiston to Fort Schlosser.
Montressor then turned his attention to Lewiston Hill. He built a wooden railway there that has been claimed as the first in America. It ran from the foot of the escarpment to the top. Goods went up and down in cradles which moved on grooved log rails. Montressor's inclined railway ended the use of Indian carriers on the hill.
Once the fear caused by the Devil's Hole massacre died away, Niagara turned into a protected highway for British trade. The tramp of scarlet-coated soldiers mingled with the crack of whips, the snort and stamp of oxen, and the creak of wagon wheels on the portage road. Over the years, hundreds of tons of trade goods and furs moved back and forth. Niagara remained a British trade route until 1796.
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8. Start a scrapbook of pictures and drawings of costumes. Be- gin with Indian costumes and the clothing of earliest white settlers. Keep a record of styles and costumes by adding to the scrapbook as your study of history progresses through the year.
9. After re-reading the section of your book that discusses how the Niagara region became the outpost of France, make a list of the reasons.
10. Select pupils to dramatize the following series of scenes :
a. The Senecas trying to argue La Salle out of exploring the Niagara region.
b. The Senecas greeting the Rooseboom trading party when it first appeared.
c. Joncaire and the Senecas discussing the right to build Fort Niagara.
11. Prepare a complete report on the siege and capture of Fort Niagara by the British during the French and Indian War. Include something about the military leaders, the strategy of both commanders (the conduct of the siege, and the defense of the fort), and the results of the British victory.
12. Imagine that an agent of Pontiac is meeting with a Seneca chieftain. The agent is urging that the Senecas join Pontiac's Rebellion. Write the speech he might have used in persuading the chief.
13. Make up a ten-question True and False test on the events leading to and following the construction of Fort Denonville. The section in Chapter Three called "The French seek to strengthen their hold" covers this topic.
14. Prepare a brief radio news broadcast concerning Sullivan's attempt to end the British-Indian raids on the frontier during the Revolution. Present the facts only; offer no opinions. After reading it to your classmates, ask them for criticisms.
15. Draw a cartoon to illustrate Niagara as an outpost of France.
16. Write a one-paragraph "Who am I'' quiz on a Part II Indian leader; then present it to the class orally.
17. Illustrate on a map of Niagara River the series of fortifica- tions which appeared there. Label the name and date of each neatly. Begin in 1678 with La Motte's house and stockade, the earliest white fortification. What would be a good title for this project ?
18. Give a "thumbnail" biographical sketch of La Salle up to the time he traveled through the Niagara region.
Books with exciting stories
Anderson and Flick, A Short History of the State of New York. Difficult reading.
Hart, Albert B., and Hazard, Blanche (eds.), Colonial Children. A source reader in American history. Grades 6-8.
Berry, Eric, Seven Beaver Skins. 1941. Grades 6-9.
Bingham, R. W., Niagara Highway of Heroes. Buffalo: 1944. Grades 6-9.
Burlingame, Roger, Three Bags Full. Story of a Dutch family in central New York. Grades 6-9.
Earle, E. M., Colonial Days in Old New York. 1896. Grades 7-12. Jacobson, H. S., For the Freedom of the Mohawk. Mohawk river valley in the Revolution. Grades 7-12.
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