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Tl P< oi fil O b( th si< ot fil sii or T^ sh Tl w IVI dil er be rig re( m( This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checlted below/ Co document est filmi au taux de reduction indiqu4 ci-dessous. 10X 14X 18X 22X 26X 30X y 12X 16X aox 24X ?8X 32X The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks to the generosity of: Legislative Library of British Columbia The images appearing h«»re are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Original copies in prir«ted paper covers are filmed beginning with the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. The last recorded frame on each microfiche shall contain the symbol — »> (meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END"), whichever applies. IVIaps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The followir=i~i*&"- '■-,?<)< ctn"t8 for the Trans- Alleghany region, as they respectively n ! unced them at the time, were thus put : The English pretended to have spcured their rights by a westward extension, from the reg' jra of their coast occu- pation, and down to 1763 they stubbornly maintained this claim, though forced to strengthen it, first, by alleging cer- tain sporadic, and sometimes doubtful and even disproved, wanderings of their people beyond the mountains ; and second, by deriving an additional advantage from professed rights ceded to them by the Iroquois. When the main grants to the Plymouth and London Companies were superseded by leco extensive allotments, this same sea-to-sea extension was constantly reinforced as far as iteration could do it. The provincial charter of Massachusetts, for instance, in confirming the earlier bounds, carried her limits west towards the South sea. That of Virginia did the same, but with so clumsy a definition that the claims of Massachusetts and Virginia collided in the O'lio Valley and beyond. The Congress at Albany, in 1754, re-affirmed this west- ward extension, but allowed that it had been modified ^ north of the St. Lawrence only by concession to Canada under the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. A similar ground was assumed by Shirley at Paris, in 1755, when he met the French ComTi.issionors in an endeavor to reconcile their respective claims. The French, on the other hand, derived their rights, in their opinion, from having been the first to traverse the great valley, and because they had made settlements at a few points ; and still more because they possessed and had settled about the mouth of the great I'iver. It was their 8 contention, that such a possession of the mouth of a main stream, gave them jurisdiction over its entire watershed in the interior, just as their possession of the outlet of the St. Lawrence gave to France the control of its entire basin. Upon this principle, Louis XIV. had made his concession to Crozat for monopolizing the trade of the great valley. These two grounds of national rights, the one arising from the possession of the coast and the other from occupa- tion of a river-mouth, were consequently at variance with each other. They were both in themselves preposterous, in the opinions of adversaries, and both claimants were forced to abate their pretensions. The English eventually conceded to France all west of the Mississippi. France by the arbitrament of war yielded, to one people or another, the water-sheds of both the Mississippi and the St. Law- rence, just as the United States at a later day, making a like claim for the entire valley of tha Columbia River through the discovery of its mouth, were forced to be con- tent with but a portion of their demand. There was another difference in the claims of the two contestants, which particularly affected their respective relations with the original occupants of the Great Valley. The French asserted possession against the heathen, but cared little for his territory except to preserve it for the fur trade. They were not, consequently, despoilers of the sav- ages' hunting-grounds. One to three square miles was esti- mated as each Indian's requirement for the chase. On the other hand, they seized such points as they wished, without thought of recompensing the savage owners. This preroga- tive of free appropriation, the French persistently guarded. When, in 1751, La Jonquiere told the tribes on the Ohio, that the French would not occupy their lands without their permission, he was rebuked by his home government and Duquesne, his successor, was enjoined to undo the impress- ion, which La Jonquiere bad conveyed to the savages. 9 a main ■shed in the St. e basin. Dcession ralley. arising occupa- ice with )sterQus, ats were rentually ranee by another, it. Law- [naking a )ia River be con- the two espective Vulley. then, but )r the fur ■ the sav- was esti- On the , without preroga- guarded. she Ohio, tout their tuent and impresp- igos. On the other hand, the English pioneers, by their char- ters and patents, got a jurisdiction over, but not a fee in, the lands conveyed. In the practice which England estab- lished, or professed to establish, occupation could only follow upon the extinguishment by purchase or treaty of the native title. Thus the Indian had exemplified to him by these intrud- ers two diverse policies. He was inclined to the French policy because it did not disturb his life, and drive him away from his ancestral hunting-grounds. Duquesne was wont to tell the Indians that the French placing a fort on the Indian's lands did not mean the felling of forest and planting of fields, as it did with the English ; but that the French fort became only a convenient hunting-lodge for the Indian, with undisturbed game about it. The Indian was inclined to the English policy because it showed a recognition of his right to the soil, for which he could get cloth and trinkets and rum, if he chose to sell it. But he soon found that the clothes which he obtained wore out, the liquor was gone, and the baubles were worthless. The transaction, forced upon him quite us often as volun- tarily assumed, was almost sure to leave him for a heritage a contiguous settlement of farmholders, who felled the forests and drove away his buffalo The savage was naturally much perplexed between these rival methods, in determining which was more for his advan- tage. Accordingly, we find the aboriginal hordes over vast regions divided in allegiance, some preferring the French and others the English, and neither, by any means, constant to one side or the other. Moreover, these two diverse policies meant a good deal to such disputants in the trial of strength between them. The French knew they were greatly inferior in numbers, but they counted on a better organization, and a single responsible head which induced celerity of movement, and 10 this went a great way in overcoming their rival's weight of numbers. Joncaire boasted of this to Washington, when this Virginian messenger went to carry the warning of Dinwiddie. Pownall understood it, when he said that Canada did not consist of farms and settlements as the English colonies did, but of forts and soldiers. "The English cannot settle and fight too," he adds. "They can fight as well as the French, but they must give over settling." Thus the two peoples, seeking to make the new world tributary to the old, sought to help their rival claims by gaining over these native arbiters. It was soon seen that success for the one side or the other depended largely on holding the Indians fast in allegiance. The savage is always impressed by prowess. The French for many years claimed his admiration through their mili- tary success, and the English often lost it by lack of ouch success. In personal dealing with the savage, the French always had the advantage* They were better masters of wiles. They knew better how to mould the savage passions to their own purposes. With it all, they were always tactful, which the English v/ere far from being. William Johnson, the astutest manager of the Indians which the English ever had, know this thoroughly, and persistently tried to teach his countrymen the virtue of tact. It was not unrecognized among his contemporaries that Johnson's alliance with a sister of Brant, a Mohawk chief, had much to do with his infiuence among the six nations. "General Johnson's success," wrote Peter Fontaine, "was owing under God to his fidelity to the Indians and his generous conduct to his Indian wife, by whom he hath several hopeful sons, who are all war-captains, the bulwark with him of the Five Nations, and loyal subjects to their mother-country." This Huguenot, Fontaine, traced much of the misery of frontier life to the failure of the English to emulate the French in intermarrying with the natives, and he, curiously rather than accurately, refers the absence 11 when of the custom to an early incident in Virginia history, "for when our wise politicians heard that Rolfe had married Pocahontas, it was deliberated in council whether he had not committed high treason by marrying an Indian prin- cess ; and had not some troubles intervened which put a stop to the inquiry, the poor man might have been hanged up for doing the most just, the most natural, the most generous and politic action that ever was done this side of the water. This put an effectual stop to all intermarriages afterwards." Both French and English wore not slow in discoverinf; that among the American tribes the Iroquois were the chief arbiters of savage destiny in North America. The struggle of each rival was to secure the hel}) of these doughty con- federates. In the early years, of the European occupation, the Dutch propitiated the Iroquois and the French pro- voked them. The English succeeded to the policy of the Hollanders, and the French long felt the enmity which Champlain had engendered. The Dutch and English could give more and better merchtindiso for a beaver skin, and this told in the rivalry, not only for the friendship of the Iro- quois, but for that of other and more distant tribes. This was a decided gain to the English and as decided a loss to the French, and no one knew it better than the losing party. Throughout the long struggle, the English never ceased for any long period to keep substantial hold of the Iroquois. There were defections. Some portions of the Oneidas and Mohawks were gained by the Jesuits who settled their neophytes near Montreal. The Senecas were much inclined to be independent, and the French possession of Niagara and the arts of Joncaire helped their uncertainty. Every tribe of the United Council at Onondaga had times of inde- cision. But, on the whole, the English were conspicuously helped by the Iroquois allegiance, and they early used it to give new force to their claim for a westward extension. 12 The country which the Iroquois originally occapied was that portion of the State of New York south of its great lake, and their tribes were scattered through the valley of the Mohawk, along the water-shed of Ontario, and through- out the country holding the springs of the Susquehanna and the Alleghany. The Susquehanna had been from the days of John Smith an inviting entrance to the interior from the Chesapeake, and Champlain's deputy, in 1615, bad found that it afforded a route to the sea from the Iroquois country. It was a dispute between the French and the English, which of the two peoples first penetrated this Iroquois country. La Jonquiere, in 1751, claimed the priority for the French. There can be little question, however, that whatever right followed upon priority belonged to the Dutch, and by inheritance to the English. This was always the claim at Albany, and when the French seized upon Niagara, the English pronounced it an encroachment upon the Iroquois country, as, indeed, Charlevoix acknowledged it was. At the same time the French contended that it was a part of the St. Lawrence valley, which was theirs by virtue of Cartier's and later discoveries. On this ground they also claimed the valley of Luke Champlain, and had advanced to Crown Point in occupying it, though the Iro- quois considered it within their bounds. So when the English seized Oswego it was in the French view an usurpation of their rights, "the most flagrant most pernicious to Canada." This sweeping assertion, transformed to a direct statement, meant that the posses- sion of Oswego gave the English a superior hold on the Indians. It also offered them a chance to intercept the Indians in their trading journeys to Montreal. This ad- vantage was rendered greater by the English ability to give for two skins at Oswego as much as the French offered for ten at Niagara. De Lancey looked upon the English ability to do this as the strongest tie by which they retained the Indians in their alliance. "Oswego," said the French, 13 "gives us all the evils, without the advantages of war." Duquesne, in August, 1755, confessed that it was nothing but a lack of pretext, which prevented his attacking this English post. About the middle of the seventeenth century the Iroquois by conquests had pushed a sort of feudal sway far beyond their ancestral homes. They had destroyed the Hurons in the country west of the Ottawa. They had exterminated the Eries south of the lake of that name, and had pushed their conquests at least as far as the Scioto, and held in vassalage the tribes still farther west. They even at times kept their enemies in terror as far as the Mississippi. Somewhat in the same way they had caused their primacy to be felt along the Susquehanna. Their war parties were known to keep the fruitful region south of the Ohio in almost absolute desolation. The area included in these conquests is, perhaps, a mod- erate estimate of what the English meant by the Iroquois claim. As early as 1697, the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, in formulating the English rights to sovereignty over the Iroquois, asserted something larger in saying that these confederates held "in tributary subjection all the neighboring Indians and went sometimes as far as the South Sea, the northwest passage and Florida, as well as over that part of the country now called Canada." Mitchell, in 1755, claimed that by the conquest of the Shawnees in 1672 the Iroquois acquired whatever title the original occu- piers of the Ohio valley bad, and that their conquest of the Illinois carried their rights beyond the Mississippi. The English turned these Iroquois conquests to their advantage by assuming that the regions covered by this supremacy fell to their jurisdiction as one of the considera- tions of their alliance with the confederates. This preten- sion, in its most arrogant form, allowed there was no terri- tory not under Iroquois control east of the Mississippi, 14 unless it wns the region of the south, where, with equal complacency, the English used tlieir friendship with the Cherokees, Chickasaws and Creeks to cover all territory of the modern Gulf States, with a bordering region north of them. In Ruske's English map of 1755, even this territory of the southern tribes is made tributary to the Iroquois, as well as all east of the Mississippi and the Illinois and Lake Michi- gan, and of a line thence to the upper waters of the Ottawa. In pushing their conquests to the Illinois, the Iroquois claimed, as Pownall tells us, that they warred upon these distant savages because it was necessary to protect the beaver, which the Illinois were exterminating. There was little reason for so benign an excuse, for the ravages of the confederates were simply prompted by an inherent martial spirit. So distinguished a student of their career as Mr. Horatio Hale is inclined to give them a conspicuously beneficent character, which, however, hardly met the ap- proval of a more famous student, the late Francis Parkman. This Iroquois-Engiish claim had distinguished advocates in Golden, Franklin and Pownall, but there was some abatement at times in its pretensions. Sir William John- son, in 1763, traced the line of this dependent country along the Blue Ridge, back of Virginia to the head of the Kentucky River, down that current to the Ohio above the falls ; thence to the south end of Lake Michigan ; along its eastern shore to Ma<;kinac ; and northeast to the Ottawa and down that river to the St. Lawrence. The right of the English king to such a territory as this dated back, as the English claimed, to an alleged deed of sale in 1701, when the Iroquois ceded these hunting-grounds to English juris- diction, in addition to their ancestral lands. It was, as they claimed, a title in addition to that of their sea-to-sea char- ters. When the French cited the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) as giving them sway over the river basins where they held the mouths, and claimed this as paramount to any rights the Iroquois could bestow, the English fell back on these 15 territorial charters as the most ancient and valid claim of all. If the English charter claims were preposterous, this supplemental one was, in even some part of contemporary opinion, equally impudent and presumptuous. There was by no means an undivided sentiment among the colonists upon this point ; and history has few more signal instances of tergiversation, than when, at a later day, the English government virtually acknowledged the justice of the French claim in urging the passage (1774) of the Quebec Bill. " We went to war," said Townshend, in the dei)ates on this bill, <' calling it Virginia, which you now claim as Canada." We read in Franklin's statement, in 1765, before the Stamp Act Committee, that the Virginia Assembly seriously questioned the right of the king to the territory in dispute. George Croghan, on the contrary, in a communication to Secretary Peters of Pennsylvania, wondered how any- body could doubt that the French on the Alleghany were encroaching upon the charter limits of Pennsylvania. The French were more unanimous in their view ; but it was only gradually that they worked up to a full expression of it. Bellin, the map-maker for Charlevoix, had drawn in his early drafts the limits of New France more modestly than the French government grew to maintain, and he was soon instructed to fashion his maps to their largest claims. In like manner, the earliest English map-makers slowly came to the pitch of audacity which the politicians stood for, and Bollan, in 1748, complained that Popple (1732), Keith (1738), Oldmixon (1741), Moll, and Bowen (1747) had l)oen recusant to English interests. It was not till Mitchell produced his map in 1755 that the ardentest claimant for English rights was satisfied. The instructions of Duquesne, in 1752, say that '''tis certain that the Iroquois have no rights on the Ohio, and the pretended rights through them of the English is a 16 chimera." In the negotiations of the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, the English had succeeded in getting an admission from the French which required all the resources of French diplomacy to qualify. This was an acknowledgment of the English sovereignty over the Iroquois. The French at a later day, when they felt better able to enforce their views, sniffed at the obligation and called the phrase "a simple enunciation" in words of no binding significance, — a summary way of looking at an obligation which could demolish any contract. When they condescended to ex- plain what they sniffed at, they insisted that the Iroquois themselves never acknowledged such a subjection. Sir William Johnson was frank enough to call the connection of the English and Iroquois one of alliance rather than subjection. The French farther pointed out what was true, that the Iroquois did not always consider it necessary to consult the English when making treaties or declaring war. Again, when forced to other explanations, the French main- tained that the subjection of the Iroquois in their persons did not carry sovereignty over their, lands. If it did, they said, the Iroquois who occupy lands at Caughnawagu, would be equally subject in land and person, and that would in- volve the absurdity of yielding to the English jurisdiction territory at the very gates of Montreal. There was another clause in this treaty of Utrecht which the French were hard put to interpret to their advantage. This was the clause by which the French acknowledged the English right to trade with all Indians. The minutes of in- struction given to Duquesne, show how this was interpreted. " The English may pretend that we are bound by the Treaty of Utrecht to permit the Indians to trade with them ; but it is sure that nothing can oblige us to allow this trade on our own lands." This, in the light of the French claim to the water-sheds of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, would debrr the English from trading at Oswego, and on the Ohio. 17 The English had, in 1726, by a treaty made on Septem- ber 14, and which Governor Pownall prints in his Admin' iKlralion of the Colonies^ secured a fresh recognition by the Iroquois of their guardianship over them. By this compact the Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas, falling in with the concessions of the Mohawks and Oneidas in 1684, surren- dered a tract from Oswego to Cayahoga (Cleveland), with an extent inland of sixty miles. A score of years and more passed thereafter before the French became fully sensible that they must forcibly con- test their claim to the Ohio. By this time their plan had fully ripened of connecting Canada and Louisiana by a chain of posts, and of keeping the English on the seaward side of the Alleghanies. In this, they we<-c convinced, lay a riper future for New France rather than in crossing the Mississippi and disputing sovereignty with the Spaniard. This accomplished, they hoped to offer a barrier against the English effective enough to prevent their wresting from Spain the silver mines beyond the Mississippi. The French had always claimed priority on the Ohio, and when Celoron was sent in 1749 to take formal possession along its banks, by hanging royal insignia on trees and burying graven plates in the soil, that officer professedly made " a renewal of possession of the Ohio and all its afflu- ents," — a possession originally established " by arms and treaties, particularly those of Ryswick, Utrecht and Aix-la- Chapelle." There was urgency for such a " renewal," for Celoron found that the English were already in possession of the country, so far as the friendly sanction of the natives signified it. Thus the Iroquois claim to that extent had proved effective, and Colden has distinctly expounded it in his History of the Five Nations. It was also clearly traced in maps by Jefferys in 1753, and by i»lit43hell and Huske in 1755. It was, therefore, a necessity for the French to use force if they were to make good their claims by holding the 18 valley. Accordingly, we find in 1751, La Jonquicre iDHtructed " to drive from the Beautiful River (Ohio) any European foreigners, and in a manner of expulsU'!^ which should make them lose all taste for trying to return." With the usual French diplomatic reservation, that gov- ernor was further enjoined " to observe notwithstanding the cautions practicable in such matters." There is a M4moire of 1751 which sets forth the French anxiety lest the English, by securing a post on the Ohio, should be able to keep the Indians in alienation from the French. Such English success would mean a danger to French communications with the settlers on the Mississippi, who stood in particular need of Canadian assistance in the war which was waged against them by the Carolina Indians, instigated by the English there. Without such a bar *o their progress, as the French possession of the Ohio, the English could easily advance, not only upon the French posts among the Illinois, but they could endanger the port- age of the Miami, which was the best route from Canada, and which if lost might involve the abandonment of Detroit. The conclusion of this complaint is two-fold : Detroit must be strengthened by a farming population about it for its sup- port in order to preserve it as the best place to overawe the continent. The Illinois country must be protected ; its buf- falo trade fostered ; that animal's wool made marketable ; and the custom of salting its flesh prevail so that the neces- sity of depending on Martinico for meat be avoided. The movement of the French on the Alleghany in 1754 had put an end to temporizing. Albemarle, who was Eng- land's ambassador at Paris, was a butterfly and a reprobate, and he was little calculated to mend matters, now easily slipping from bad to worse. A tough and sturdy young Yankee, then keeping school in Worcester, Mass., John Adams by name, represented the rising impatience of the colonists, who had not forgotten their yeoman service at Louisburg. He looked forward to 19 the complete expulsion of *'tbe turbulent Gallicksl" The year 1755 opened with events moving rnpidly. In January, France proposed to leave matters as they were and let commissioners settle the dispute in details. Eng- land in response fell back on the treaty of Utrecht. In Fel)ruary, France proposed as a substitute that all east of the mountains should belong to -England, and all west of the Alleghany River and north of the Ohio should fall to France. This left as neutral territory the slope from the mountains to the Alleghany and the region south of the Ohio. In March, England assented to this, provided the French would destroy their posts on the Alleghany and Ohio. This would make a break in the French cordon connecting Canada with the Mississippi, and would give the English an advantage in the control of the neutral country. So France refused the terms. In June, England again resorted to the conditions of Utrecht, and insisted on the validity of the Iroquois claim. France reiterated her denial of such a claim, as regards the territory, but acknowl- edged it as regards the persons of the confederates. Eng- land insisted, as well she might, that this was not the inter- pretation put upon similar provisions in other treaties. England now reminded Braddock of this provision in the treaty of 1726, and instructed him to act accordingly. This brought the business to the pitch of war, though both sides hesitated to make a declaration. Galissonniere claimed it to be the testimony of all maps that France was right in her claim, and her possession of what she strove for was now to be settled by sterner evidence. Danville and the other French map-makers had been brought to representations that kept Galissonniere's state- ment true. The English cartographers had done equally well for their side, and Mitchell could be cited to advantage. His Map of the British and French Dominions in North America was based on document? which the English Board of Trade thought best enforced their claim, and the so publication, wlien made, in 1755, was dedicated to their secretary. In an accompanying text the English claim was pushed to its utmost, and every old story was revamped which served to bolster pretensions of the English preced- ing the French in exploring the country, reviving the anti- quated boast that New Englanders had even preceded the French in crossing the Mississippi, and bad really furn- ished the guides for La Salle's discoveries. Perhaps the best knowledge which was attainable at the time, of the valley of the Ohio, had been reached by Christopher Gist, who, in his wandering, had corrected the supposed curves and trends of that river. Lewis Evans, in June, 1750, made his proposals to visit and map the country under disguise as a trader, and in the pay of the province of Pennsylvania. His map of the British Middle Colonies was published at Philadelphia just in time to be of use to firaddock. Washington later said of it that, "considering the early period, it was done with amazing exactness." The Governor of Pennsylvania wai satisfied that Evans bad mapped the Alleghanies coriectly, and contended that this new draft showed how much M'ould be lost if the English made these mountains their bounds. Of the country in dispute Evans's map in one of its legends represents: "Were nothing at stake," it reads, "between the crown of Great Britain and France but the lands in the Ohio, we may reckon it as great a prize as has ever been contended for between two nations, for this coun- try is of that vast extent westward as to exceed in good land all the European dominions of Great Britain, France and ^nain, and which are almost destitute of inhabitants. It is impossible to conceive, had His Majesty been made ac- quainted with its value and great importance, and the huge strides the French have been making for several years past in their encroachments on his dominions, that His Majesty would sacrifice one of the best gems in his crown to their usurpation and boundless ambition." II The opinion of James Muury that whoever was left at the end of the war in the possession of the laltes and the Ohio would control the continent, was not, at this time, an unfamiliar one in the public mind. It was, moreover, not unconnected with the belief that in the time to come, a route west by the Hudson or the Potomac, connecting with these vaster water-ways of the interior, would make some point on the Atlantic coast "the grand emporium of all East. Indian commodities." We have lived to see the prophecy verified, but by other agencies.