USA > Pennsylvania > Crawford County > Our country and its people. A historical and memorial record of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. > Part 12
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Great was the rejoicing at Philadelphia at the result of this expedition;
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the councils voted thanks for the success attending the enterprise, and the sum of £150 for the purchase of presents for the officers, and for the relief of the families of the killed. On the commander was bestowed a medal bearing on one side the words, "Kittanning destroyed by Colonel Arin- strong, September, 1756," and on the other, "The gift of the corporation of Philadelphia."
On the 29th of June, 1757. William Pitt was called to the head of the British ministry, and the inefficiency which had marked the management of the war in America was at an end. Twelve thousand additional regulars were dispatched to America, and the colonies were asked to raise twenty thou- sand more, Pitt promising, in the name of Parliament, to furnish arms and provisions, and to reimburse all the money expended in raising and clothing them. The word of Pitt was magical, fifteen thousand volunteering from New England alone. Louisburg, Ticonderoga and Fort Du Quesne were to be the points of attack in the campaign of 1758. Admiral Boscawen arrived at Halifax in May with forty vessels of war and twelve thousand men. Louisburg was invested, and though a vigorous defense of fifty days was maintained by the French, it was compelled to surrender with a loss of five thousand prisoners, a large quantity of munitions of war and the destruc- tion of all the shipping in the harbor. But not so well fared the advance upon Ticonderoga, which was made by General Abercrombie and the young Lord Howe. With seven thousand regulars, nine thousand provincials and a heavy artillery train, an advance was made upon the fort defended by Montcalmn, with scarcely four thousand French. The attack was vigorously made, but Lord Howe was killed in a skirmish with a scouting party, and after four hours of severe fighting, and the loss of two thousand men, Aber- crombie, finding the work stronger than he had anticipated, fell back dis- comforted, and after sending out a force under Colonel Bradstreet, who captured Fort Frontenac, and subsequently built Fort Stanwix, and gar- risoned Fort George, he retired with the main body to Albany. The fall of Frontenac, with the loss of a thousand prisoners, ten armed vessels, fifty serviceable cannon, sixteen mortars, a large quantity of ammunition and stores, and valuable magazines of goods designed for trade with the Indians, was a heavy blow to the French, as it deprived them of their great store- house for supplies.
The campaign against Fort Du Quesne was entrusted to General John
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Forbes, with about nine thousand men, including the Virginia militia, under Washington. Forbes was a sick man, and was detained on that account in Philadelphia, while Boquet, who was second, moved forward with his forces. Washington favored an advance by the Braddock road, but Boquet chose a line more direct, further north. The labor of cutting an entirely new road through the trackless forest, and over craggy steeps, was toilsome. Colonei Boquet, who had prevailed upon General Forbes to allow him to cut a new road over the mountains, wholly in Pennsylvania, had made so slow prog- ress that so late as September he was still, with six thousand men, not over the Alleghany Mountains. At Raystown, now Bedford, General Forbes. already stricken with a mortal sickness, led by relentless resolution, came up with the column, and was joined by Washington from Fort Cumberland. To ascertain the condition of the country in front. and the temper of the foe, Major Grant, accompanied by Major Andrew Lewis of the Virginia forces, with a detachment of eight hundred men, was sent forward on the IIth of September to reconnoiter. On the third day out Grant arrived close in upon the fort without meeting any foe. With his main force Grant ap. proached under cover of darkness within a quarter of a mile, overlooking the fort. Early in the morning Major Lewis was sent. with four hundred men, to lay in ambush along the path by which they had come, and the re- maining force, with Grant, was formed along the hill facing the fort. Then. sending out a company under Captain McDonald, with drums beating, in the hope of drawing on the enemy, he awaited the result, hoping that the garrison was weak. But in this he was mistaken; for they followed the decoy in great numbers, and boldly attacked. The regulars stood up boldly and were shot down from the coverts. The Americans took to the woods and fought In- dian style. Major Lewis joined in the fight. Major Grant showed the most intrepid bravery, exposing himself to the enemy's fire, but to no purpose. Many were drowned in attempting to cross the river. Seeing that he was outnumbered and hemmed in by the enemy standing on commanding ground, Grant retired to the baggage, where Captain Bullet had held his com- pany, and as the French came on with assurance, his little force made a deter- mined stand, doing good execution. Here Grant endeavored to rally his broken columns, but the terror of the scalping knife had seized his men, and one by one they slipped away. Bullet, finding his force dwindling. finally gave the order to retire; the resolute stand he had made enabled the main
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body to move without molestation, and the hail of bullets he had poured into the faces of the foe left them no stomach to pursue. The loss in this engage- ment was two hundred and seventy-two killed, forty-two wounded, and many, including Grant, taken prisoners. The loss in killed was out of all proportion to the wounded and the number engaged.
Gathering confidence by the great slaughter and rout which they had inflicted, the French determined to follow up their advantage, hoping to find the main body thrown into confusion and ready to retreat, as the Brad- dock army had done under the timid Dunbar. Accordingly, they came on, rejoicing in their strength, twelve hundred French and two hundred Indians, led by De Vetri, and boldly attacked the camp of Boquet, on the 12th of October. From eleven in the morning until three in the afternoon the battle was maintained with great fury, when the French, finding that the English were not likely to run, withdrew, but at night renewed the attack, hoping, between the terrors of the night and the wild whoop of the Indian brandishing his scalping knife, to start a stampede. But Boquet was pre- pared, and, "when, in return for their melodious music," says the chron- icler, "we gave them some shells from our mortars, it soon made them retreat." The loss in this engagement was twelve killed, seventeen wounded and thirty-one prisoners.
General Forbes now pushed forward with the main body of the army from Bedford to Loyalhanna, where he arrived about the first of November. Here the wintry weather set in unusually early, and the summits were already white with snow. A council of war was held, and it was decided that it was impracticable to prosecute the campaign further before the open- ing of spring. But it having been learned from captives that the garrison at Fort Du Quesne was weak, the Indians having mostly gone off on their autumn hunt, preparatory for the winter, the decision of the council was reversed, and Forbes gave orders to push on with all possible dispatch. Colonel Washington was sent forward with a detachment to open the road. When arrived within twelve miles of the fort a rumor was current that the French, either by accident or design, had blown up the fort, and all had been burned. This was soon confirmed by the arrival of Indian scouts who had been near enough to see the ruins. A company of cavalry was dispatched with instructions to extinguish the flames and save all the property possible.
The whole army now pushed forward with joyous step, and arrived on the
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29th of November; but only the blackened chimneys of the quarters and the walls of the fort remained. It was found that a strong work had been built at the point between the two rivers, and a much larger one apparently unfinished, some distance up the Allegheny River. There were two maga- zines, one of which had been blown up, and in the other were found sixteen barrels of ammunition, gun-barrels, a quantity of carriage iron and a wagon of scalping knives. The cannon had all been removed. probably taken down the Ohio to New Orleans. The garrison, which consisted of some five hundred French, had separated. a part having gone down the Ohio, a hundred had gone to Presque Isle by an Indian path, and the remainder, with the Governor, de Lignery, had moved up the Allegheny to Fort Ve- nango.
A somewhat more spirited account of this important event is given by Mr. Ormsby, as quoted in the Western Annals. "At Turtle Creek a coun- cil of war was held, the result of which was that it was impracticable to procced. all the provisions and forage being exhausted. The General, being told of this, he swore a furious oath that he would sleep in the fort or in a worse place the next night. It was a matter of indifference to him where he died, as he was carried the whole distance from Philadelphia and back on a litter. About midnight a tremendous explosion was heard from the westward, on which Forbes swore that the French magazine was blown up, which revived our spirits. This conjecture of the 'Head of Iron' was soon confirmed by a deserter from Fort Du Quesne, who said that the Indians, who had watched the English army, reported that they were as numerous as the trees in the woods. This so terrified the French that they set fire to their magazine and barracks, and pushed off, some up and sonie down, the Ohio."
Forbes now saw himself in possession of the fort and the commanding ground, which, for four long years, the English had been struggling for. Knowing that he could not subsist his army here. he rapidly threw up an earthwork on the Monongahela bank, and leaving Colonel Mercer in com- mand, with two hundred men, he retired with the army to Loyalhanna, where he built a block house, which he stocked with stores and manned with a garrison, and then moved back across the mountains. General Forbes died in the following March. The Gazette said of him: "His services in America are well known. By a steady pursuit of well concerted measures,
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in defiance of disease and numberless obstructions, he brought to a happy issue a most extraordinary campaign, and made a willing sacrifice of his own life to what he valued more-the interests of his King and country."
The campaign of the English, in 1758, had proved very successful. Louisburg, Frontenac and Dit Quesne were in their hands. Pitt had now become master of Parliament and the nation. Elated by his successes in America, he formed the bold plan of not only holding the Ohio Valley, but of conquering and possessing the whole of Canada. His plan was a bold one. Twenty thousand provincials and a strong detachment of land and naval forces of regulars, under command of General Amherst, stood ready to execute his orders. Amherst took the field, and with 11,000 men moved upon Fort Ticonderoga, which the French abandoned without a struggle. Amherst pursued to Crown Point, which the French likewise abandoned. Deterred from pursuing further by the heavy storms that now, October IIth, began to prevail, he retired to Crown Point, where he built a fortress and placed his army in winter quarters.
General Prideaux, with Sir William Johnson second in command, moved by transport from Oswego, by Lake Ontario, to Niagara, and laid siege to the fort. Prideaux was almost immediately killed by the bursting of a gun, and the command devolved upon Johnson. For three weeks the closely beleaguered garrison of French held out, when. on the 24th of July, a force of 3,000 French came to their relief. But Johnson so met them that they were put to rout after a desperate and sanguinary engagement, and on the following day the garrison, some seven hundred men, surrendered. General Wolfe, with 8,000 troops, and a fleet under Holmes and Saunders, moved up the St. Lawrence, and landed on Orleans Island, a little below Quebec, on the 27th of June. Montcalm, with a strong body of French regulars, held the town, which, in the upper part, comprising a local plateau 300 feet above the water, known as the Plains of Abraham, was fortified. By throwing hot shot from Point Levi, opposite the town, the English nearly destroyed the lower town, but could not reach the upper portion. An at- tempt to force the passage of the Montmorenci failed, with a loss of 500 men. For eight weeks all attempts to take the city proved fruitless. Finally, by the advice of General Tonsend, his faithful lieutenant, he determined to scale the rugged bluff which hems in the river, by secret paths. Accordingly, on the evening of the 12th of September, ascending the river with muffled
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oars to the mouth of a ravine, and following trusty guides, Wolfe brought his whole army, with artillery, by sunrise. upon the plains of Abraham, much to the surprise and discomfiture of the French, whose attention had been diverted by a noisy demonstration where a previous attempt had been made. Montcalm immediately drew up his entire force to meet the offered wager of battle. Long and fiercely the contest raged, but everywhere the French were worsted. Both generals were mortally wounded. When, at length, Wolfe heard the glad accents of victory, he asked to have his head raised, and when he beheld the French fleeing on all sides, he exclaimed, with his failing breath, "I die content."
The campaign of 1759, like the preceding, ended gloriously for the combined English and American arms, yet the French were not entirely dispossessed of power in Canada. Early in the spring of 1760 Vaudreuil, Governor-General, sent General Levi, successor to Montcalm, with six frigates and a strong force, to retake Quebec. He was met three miles from the city by General Murray, and a sanguinary battle was fought on April 28th, in which the English were defeated, Murray losing a thousand men and all his artillery. Levi now laid siege to the city, and just when its condition was becoming perilous, from the lack of supplies, a British squadron with reinforcements and supplies appeared in the St. Lawrence. Whereupon Levi hastily raised the siege, and losing most of his shipping fled to Montreal. Vaudreuil now had but one stronghold left, that of Mon- treal, and here he gathered in all his forces and prepared to defend his "last ditch." Early in September three English armies met before the city. First came Amherst, on the 6th, with 10,000, accompanied by Johnson, with a thousand of the Six Nations, and on the same day came Murray, with 4,000 from Quebec, and on the following day Colonel Haviland, with 3,000, from Crown Point. Seeing that it would be useless to hold out against such a force, Vaudreuil capitulated, surrendering Montreal and the entire Domin- ion of Canada, into the hands of the English. Thus ended the war upon the land. But upon the ocean, and among the West India Islands it was prosecuted until 1763, when a treaty of peace was signed at Paris on Feb- ruary Ioth, whereby France surrendered all her possessions in America east of the Mississippi and north of the latitude of the Iberville River, and Spain at the same time ceded to the English East and West Florida. Thus was the Indian war, virtually commenced by planting the leaden plates by the
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French along the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, and commonly designated in history as the Seven Years' War, brought to a close, by the vast plans of empire formed by the comprehensive mind of Pitt, though at a cost to the British nation of five hundred and sixty millions of dollars. And now was forever settled the question whether the population about to spread over the beautiful valleys bordering upon the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers-La Belle Riviére-should be an English or a French speaking people.
CHAPTER X.
FINAL STRUGGLES OF THE ABORIGINES.
T HE treaty of Paris put a period to the sanguinary campaigns of the Seven Years' War, so far as treaty stipulations could. But the In- dians, who had confederated with the French, could not be reached nor bound by stipulations made 3,000 miles away across the ocean, in which they had no voice. Though some of the tribes assembled and smoked the pipe of peace with the English, yet they had grown suspicious. The French had poisoned the minds of the savages against the English, telling them that the desire to obtain the fine lands was the motive which incited this deadly warfare, and that if the French were finally beaten, then the English would turn upon the natives and drive them from all their pleasant hunting grounds. Though the French in America had accepted the conditions of the treaty, and were, as a nation, willing to be bound by it, yet there were individuals in whose breasts the recollection of sore defeats still rankled, and who saw in the hostility of the red men a means of wreaking their ven- geance.
The thoughtful Indians saw, or fancied they saw, that daily coming to pass which the French had told them. They asked themselves, not with- out reason, why the English were so intent to drive the French from the Ohio Valley, spending freely hundreds of millions of money and sacrificing countless lives, if they did not expect to occupy these luxuriant valleys themselves; and when they saw the surveyor with his Jacob staff and chain advancing as the armies retired, blazing his way through the forests, and setting up his monuments to mark the limits of tracts, they were strongly confirmed in their suspicions. The English contemplated doing, so far as reclaiming the forests and settling the country, what was eventually done; but they indulged the hope that the red man and the pale-face coukl dwell together in peace and unity. But that dream had a baseless fabric. Hunt- 8 .
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ing, fishing and war were the occupations of the one, while the arts of peace on farm, in workshop and mill, were the delight of the other.
The mutterings of discontent were heard among the Indians during the seasons of 1760-1-2, and secret enterprises of dangerous consequence had been detected and broken up. Major Rogers, who, with a small de- tachment, had been sent to receive the surrender of the French posts along the great lakes of the Northwest, and raise the English colors, had met on his way the chief of the Ottawas, Pontiac, who dwelt on the Michigan Pe- ninsula. who demanded from Rogers why he was entering upon the land of the Ottawas with a hostile band without his permission. Explanations en- sued, the pipe of peace was smoked, and Rogers was permitted to proceed on his way.
But ill concealed disaffection existed among all the tribes as they saw the emblem of the power of Britain floating from posts along all the lakes and the great river courses. Even the Six Nations, who had always remained the fast friends of the English, especially the Senecas, showed signs of hostility. These. with the Delawares and Shawnees, for two years had been holding secret communications with the tribes of the great Northwest, laboring to induce them to join in a war of extermination upon the English. "So spoke the Senecas," says Bancroft, "to the Delawares, and they to the Shawnees, and the Shawnees to the Miamis and Wyandots, whose chiefs, slain in battle by the English, were still unavenged, until everywhere, from the falls of Niagara, and the piny declivities of the Alleghanies to the whitewood forests of the Mississippi and the borders of Lake Superior, all the nations con- certed to rise and put the English to death."
It was not easy to rouse the tribes to united action, many feeling them- selves bound to the English by treaties, and some by real friendship. It was necessary to work upon their superstition. A chief of the Abenakis declared that the great Manitou had shown himself to him in a dream, saying: "I am the Lord of Life; it is I who made all men. I wake for their safety. There- fore, I give you warning that if you suffer the Englishmen to dwell among you. their diseases and their poisons will destroy you utterly and you shall all die."
The leader in all these discontents was Pontiac. He was now about fifty years old. He had been taken a prisoner from the Catawbas, and had been adopted into the tribe of the Ottawas. instead of being tortured and
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burned, and had, by his cunning and skill, risen to be chief, and was now asserting his authority over all the tribes of the North. Pontiac had been a leading warrior, a sort of lieutenant-general, in the battle of the Monon- gahela, in which General Braddock had been worsted and mortally wounded. Seeing what slaughter his people had then wrought he doubtless thought that it would be easy, if all the Indians could be united, to utterly exter- minate the English and reclaim their country. Accordingly, he sent out his runners to all the tribes in the Northwest, with the black wampum, the signal for war, and the red tomahawk, directing to prepare for war, and on a day agreed upon they were to rise, overpower the garrisons, and then lay waste and utterly exterminate the English settlers. That he might rouse the entire people he summoned the chiefs to a council, which was held at the river Ecorces on the 27th of April, 1763. Pontiac met them with the war-belt in his hand, and spoke in his native and fiery eloquence. He pointed to the British flags floating everywhere, to the chieftains slain unavenged. He said the blow must now be struck. or their hunting grounds would be forever lost. The chiefs received his words with accents of approval, and separated to arouse their people and engage in the great conspiracy. The plan was skillfully laid. They were to fall upon the frontiers along all the settlements during the harvest time, and destroy the corn and cattle, when they could fall upon all the outposts which should hold out and reduce them, pinched with hunger. The blow fell at a concerted signal, and blood and devastation marked the course of the conspirators. So sudden and unexpected was the attack that of eleven forts only three of them were suc- cessfully defended-Venango, Le Bœuf, Presque Isle, Le Bay, St. Joseph's, Miamis, Ouachtunon, Sandusky and Michilimackinac, falling into their hands, the garrisons being mercilessly slaughtered. Detroit, Niagara and Fort Pitt alone holding out.
Among the first to feel the blow was Michilimackinac. Major Ether- ington, who was in command, felt no alarm at the assembling of an unusual number of the tribes under their chief, Menchwehna, though he had been warned of their hostility. But, so confident was the Major of their pacific intentions, that he threatened to send any one who should express a doubt of their friendly purposes a prisoner to Detroit. On the 4th of June, the Indians, to the number of about four hundred, began, as if in sport, to play a game of ball, called baggatiway. Two stakes are driven into the
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earth something like a mile apart, and the ball is placed on the ground midway between them. Dividing their party into two sides, each strives to drive the ball, by means of bats, to the stake of the other. This game they commenced, and the strife became fierce and noisy. Presently the ball was sent, as if by accident, over the stockade into the fort, when the whole company rushed pell-mell into the fort. This maneuver was repeated sev- eral times without exciting any suspicion. Finally, having discovered all of the interior desired, they again sent the ball within, and when all had gained admission, suddenly turned upon the garrison, ninety in number, and mur- dered all but twenty, whom they led away to be made subjects of torture or servitude.
For several reasons the fort at what is now Detroit was among the most important of all the fortified posts. Its location on the river, which connects the upper with the lower lakes, gives it the command of these great water- ways, and along its margin ran the chief Indian warpath into the great Northwest. Attracted by the fertility of the soil and the mildness of the climate, the French farmers had early settled here. "The lovely and cheer- ful region attracted settlers, alike white men and savages: and the French had so occupied the two banks of 'the river that their numbers were rated so high as twenty-five hundred souls. The French dwelt upon farms, which were about three or four acres wide, upon the river, and eighty acres deep; indolent in the midst of plenty, graziers, as well as tillers of the soil, and enriched by Indian traffic."
All this happiness and prosperity Pontiac regarded with an evil eye. To his mind all this country of right belonged to the red man. By the cutting down of the forests, and multiplying the sounds of husbandry, the game, which was their chief resource for living, was frightened away. The favored spots by the living springs and the fountains of sweet waters were grasped by the white man to make his continual abiding place, and would conse- quently be forever lost to the red man. If, by deep-laid strategy and un- blushing deception, they could once seize upon all the strongholds and put the defenders to the slaughter, they could then pursue their trade of blood upon the defenseless frontiers until the whole land would be cleared of the pale-face, and his race exterminated.
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