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 THE DUTCH AND THE 
 
 BY THE, 
 
 REV: CHARLES
 
 THE DUTCH AND 
 
 THE IROQUOIS. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS AS TO 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP 
 
 IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 FOR THE POSSESSION OF THIS 
 
 CONTINENT. 
 
 BEING A PAPER READ BEFORE 
 
 THE LONG ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 FEBRUARY 21, 1882. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. CHARLES H. HALL, D. D. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 PRINTED BY FRANCIS HART & COMPANY. 
 
 1882.
 
 r 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 rHIS paper follows so closely the line of thought 
 contained in the Preface to the thirteenth volume 
 of "Documents relating to the History of the State 
 of New York'' by Hon. Joseph B. Carr, Secretary of 
 State, that I should cheerfully present it as the devel- 
 opment of his thoughts, were it not true that it is an 
 entirely independent testimony to the same. At the 
 tlose of an evening, December 27, 1881, the Historical 
 Society having listened to a paper from the Rev. 
 Charles W. Baird, D. D., of Rye, N. Y., on "The 
 Walloon and Huguenot Settlements of New Amster- 
 dam," I ventured, in moving a vote of thanks to the 
 reverend speaker, to offer the propositions herein con- 
 tained, as a challenge to some descendant of the Dutch 
 to do his ancestors justice, by substantiating them from 
 the records of the colony. In putting my motion, the 
 President of the Society, the Rev. Dr. Starrs, added 
 to it a rider, that I should be requested by the Society 
 to undertake the work. After the meeting had dis- 
 solved, the Librarian, Mr. George Hannah, informed 
 me of the recent issue of the thirteenth vohtme of the 
 
 1863716
 
 Historical Documents, which I had not seen, and 
 which he said would be found to confirm my expressed 
 opinions. They do it in the main so completely that 
 I am compelled to accept the appearance of plagiarism. 
 
 On the whole, I determined to adhere to the propo- 
 sitions as I made them, as the restiltof my own reading, 
 and trusting to the kindly interpretation of my mo- 
 tives, to leave them as they really were, the independent 
 testimony of a second witness to what I must consider 
 one of the most remarkable facts in the history of our 
 country, honorable to the original Dutch Colonists, 
 and most beneficial to their successors. 
 
 The paper has been prepared under the pressure 
 of professional duties and distractions, and is at best 
 nothing more than suggestions as to what should be 
 done more thoroughly by some one who has more time 
 and ability to do full justice to the subject. It is com- 
 mitted to print in the hope that it may carry out my 
 original thought of challenging some scholarly Dutch- 
 man to develop the honorable record of his ancestry. .
 
 THE DUTCH AND THE IROQUOIS. 
 
 Mr. President, and Members of the 
 
 Long Island Historical Society : 
 
 THE propositions which I ventured to make to 
 you in December, and which I now offer to 
 develop and submit to your decision, whether they 
 have any substantial foundation in our colonial rec- 
 ords, were mainly these : 
 
 First. That there was a manifest Providence in 
 the fact that the Dutch, rather than the English, first 
 came into possession of the valleys of the Hudson 
 and Mohawk rivers, and thus into friendly relations 
 with the great Amphictyonic League of the Iroquois, 
 originally known as the Five Nations, and later, 
 after their absorption by conquest of the Tuscaroras, 
 as the Six Nations ; that they gained their lasting 
 friendship and bound them by a series of treaties, to 
 which the English afterward succeeded, and which 
 were maintained without a break, until an epoch of 
 most remarkable interest, which, for the purposes of 
 this paper, I shall fix near the middle of the eight- 
 eenth century, at the fall of Quebec (1759).
 
 Second. That after the discovery of the Missis- 
 sippi River by Marquette and Joliet, in 1673, and 
 the completion of that discovery by La Salle, in 
 1682, the magnificent plan was conceived by the 
 ruling powers of France first by Colbert, the finan- 
 cial minister of Louis XIV., who succeeded Cardinal 
 Mazarin, and was then and afterward pursued with 
 inflexible purpose and unvarying promise of success, 
 to confine the English and Protestant race to the 
 narrow region lying east of the Alleghanies. 
 
 In process of time it became known to the French 
 that the Iroquois held the key of the position, and 
 their friendship, conversion, conquest, or destruction 
 became of the last importance to the success of this 
 plan. All efforts in either direction failed, contrary 
 to the usual experience of the French with other 
 tribes, and failed because of the influences traceable 
 to the original impressions made by the policy of the 
 Dutch settlers, and bequeathed by them to the Eng- 
 lish in succession. So far as human eyes can see, it 
 was largely due to this fact that the vast regions 
 lying west of the mountain ranges, before-mentioned, 
 were not finally possessed and fully Latinized by the 
 French nation. Singularly enough, after the fall of 
 Quebec and the disastrous ending of this scheme, 
 the Iroquois willingly sought the friendship and in 
 numbers accepted the religion of the Catholic Church, 
 and many of them settled on the northern side of the 
 lakes and the River St. Lawrence. 
 
 Third. A subordinate proposition was submitted, 
 that the call of William Pitt to the head of affairs in
 
 England, for a very brief period, was an important 
 element in the final result. He gave unity and di- 
 rectness to the weak and distracted counsels, both at 
 home and in the colonies* at the critical moment. He 
 imparted vigor to the final campaigns, unlike all those 
 which preceded, which drove the French and Indians 
 from Fort Duquesne and from Fort Frontenac, and, 
 with the regular movement of a drama, at last com- 
 pelled Montcalm to account for the massacre of Fort 
 William Henry on the plains of Abraham. But it 
 ought never to be forgotten that the rock on which 
 the scheme of Colbert and his successors, which 
 would have changed the destinies of the world, 
 was wrecked, was the inveterate hatred of the Six 
 Nations to the French, or, in other words, their 
 friendship originally secured by the few humble Dutch 
 colonists of Fort Orange, where the city of Albany 
 now stands. 
 
 In developing such a series of propositions, extend- 
 ing from 1609, or say 1621, until the middle of the 
 succeeding century (1759), and rich in so many side- 
 issues, you perceive that one must and can follow 
 only a single thread of history, and establish only 
 certain pregnant facts between very narrow limits. 
 
 First of all, then, by way of preface, allow me to 
 say a few words on what is meant by "a manifest 
 Providence" I do not intend to draw on your faith 
 in the supernatural or the miraculous. I include in 
 the word a vast field of that human ignorance where 
 men are seeking only their own private ends, and 
 aiming only at objects in the limits of their narrow 
 horizon, while they are really working out some
 
 8 
 
 mighty order of destiny which lies far outside of 
 their vision. I include all that we call accidents, 
 "that work together for good," that come unforeseen 
 or seemingly disappointing* to the actors in them, 
 whose importance is unfelt at the time, whose imme- 
 diate results are feebly recognized, and whose ultimate 
 consequences are beyond the calculations of the wisest 
 statesmen. 
 
 All these may be only the evolutions of an in- 
 sensible cellule. They may be the accidents of un- 
 thinking Fate. They may be, as well, the movements 
 of a vast Mind. 
 
 Let me ask you, first of all, to consider the 
 geographical features of the continent, which enter 
 into the subject. Look with the mind's eye upon 
 the topography of the United States, only remem- 
 bering that it was altogether unknown to the early 
 colonists. Passing up the River St. Lawrence, and 
 through Lake Ontario, and by the Niagara into the 
 next lake, you reach the port of Erie, first known as 
 Presque Isle, a distance of about nine hundred miles 
 from the sea. Threading the shallow stream of 
 Muddy Creek, and making a portage of a half-dozen 
 miles, you can launch a canoe on the head-waters of 
 the French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany* River, 
 and float on its rapid current some two hundred and 
 eighty-five miles to the city of Pittsburg. From thence 
 to the Gulf of Mexico, by way of the Ohio River, 
 the distance is two thousand and twenty-eight miles. 
 You have now in mind the greatest inland water- 
 way on the globe over thirty-five hundred miles in 
 length in these two vast basins. They are still the
 
 subjects of wildest speculation as to their future 
 populations, their prospective wealth, and political 
 importance. The River St. Lawrence, draining 
 waters which have entered the western end of Lake 
 Superior through the dalles of the St. Louis River, 
 twelve hundred and fifty miles west of Kingston, 
 runs seven hundred and fifty miles eastwardly to its 
 terminal point at Cape Chatte in all, two thousand 
 miles. It drains a water-shed of four hundred thou- 
 sand square miles. Beginning from its prime sources 
 in the western prairies and hackmatack swamps of 
 Minnesota, it was computed by Darby, before the 
 discovery of the great African lakes, to contain 
 " more than half the fresh water on the globe." A 
 vessel of five hundred tons can, to-day, load at 
 Duluth, some two thousand miles from the Atlantic, 
 and "break bulk" in any port in the world.* 
 
 Again, one can hardly mention the name of the 
 Miche-sepe, the Father of Waters, without a spasm 
 of the imagination such as our poet, Drake, must 
 have felt when he seemed to see " Freedom from 
 her mountain height," wherever that may have 
 been, in a rampant humor " tearing the azure robe 
 of night," and setting "the stars of glory" in her 
 flag of "manifest destiny." It is the Nile, pos- 
 sibly, excepted the longest river in the world, and 
 i~ 
 
 * There are two other natural by the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, 
 
 connections between these great But the route I have indicated 
 
 basins, farther west, by which the above was the one which they at 
 
 French traveled to discover the last endeavored to occupy and 
 
 great river namely, the one by hold for the purpose of securing 
 
 Chicago and by the Illinois River, the cotnmand of this continent, 
 and the other through Green Bay,
 
 IO 
 
 drains a region almost equal to the continent of 
 Europe. From the cool trout-lakes of Upper Min- 
 nesota it is about two thousand nine hundred and 
 eighty-six miles long, and, by the Missouri branch, 
 four thousand five hundred and six miles, and re- 
 ceives the waters of fifteen hundred tributaries. It 
 drains an area of one million two hundred and fifty- 
 four thousand square miles. It bears an annual 
 tribute to its delta, in sediment, of a square mile of 
 earth two hundred and forty-one feet in thickness. 
 Reckoning all its branches, it forms a natural water- 
 way of fifteen thousand miles. De Soto, the Span- 
 iard, in search of an El Dorado, was the first white 
 who, in 1541, stood on its banks somewhere up the 
 stream, and found his grave in its bosom. The 
 story of Pere Marquette and the trader Joliet, in 
 1673, descending its current to some point within 
 three days' journey of its mouth, reads now like a 
 romance. It fired alike the imagination of the Chev- 
 alier de la Salle, at Fort Frontenac ; of Talon, the 
 Intendant of Canada, at Quebec ; and of Colbert, at 
 Paris. The former, like Themistocles at the victories 
 of Miltiades, could not rest till he had reached its 
 mouth and determined its position whether in the 
 Gulf of California, or of Mexico, or in the Atlantic 
 Ocean. 
 
 We may pause for a moment to glance at the 
 region which France sold to the United States in 
 1803, f r fifteen million dollars, which was a mere 
 fragment and chattel mortgage of the vast territory, 
 to which she once aspired and very nearly secured. 
 That fragment sold to us was "all the region west of
 
 1 1 
 
 the Mississippi not occupied by Spain, reaching north 
 to the British possessions," being the States of Louisi- 
 ana, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, 
 Nebraska, Oregon, the Indian Territory, Colorado, 
 Dakota, Montana, and Washington Territory. Fancy 
 what New France might have been, had their plan of 
 empire succeeded. I ask you again to remember now, 
 that in 1 609, when Champlain joined a war-party of 
 Algonquins at Hochelaga, the Island of Montreal, 
 these vast regions were entirely unknown. Euro- 
 peans looked west from the lip of the sea, on inter- 
 minable forests, ignorant of their contents, creeping 
 along the shores, or penetrating the bays, in hopes 
 that some channel might lead them at once to the 
 spice islands of golden Cathay. The principal object 
 of the gay and gallant chevalier in joining the Algon- 
 quins was the discovery of the wilderness above 
 Montreal. The numbers of the party were increased 
 by a chance meeting with some Hurons, and together 
 they reached, on a bright May morning, the leafy 
 shores of the lake which bears his name. They 
 were suddenly attacked by a band of Mohawks, the 
 terror then of all the tribes. One of those accidents 
 on which the imagination is apt to linger occurred 
 there. On the advancing warriors, who had been 
 hitherto invincible, Champlain discharged his arque- 
 buse with deadly effect. Terrified at this novel mode 
 of slaughter, they fled in confusion, and told to their 
 castles the story of a new race of pale faces, who 
 carried the lightning in their hands, and smote their 
 enemies from a distance with the noise of thunder. 
 It may be doubted if the echo of that morning fire
 
 12 
 
 of an arquebuse ever ceased to vibrate on the nerve 
 of Mohawk memory. It was about the only result 
 of the expedition. 
 
 The same year, not without hope that he might 
 be looking into the channel which would lead to 
 India, Hendrick Hudson entered the Bay of Man- 
 athe, or Manhattan, and groped up the river as far as 
 the falls at Cohoes. He returned home to tell the 
 merchants of England and Holland of the great river 
 that bears his name. Nineteen years afterward the 
 Pilgrims left Leyden, intending to make a settlement 
 on this river of Hudson, but were treacherously 
 landed on Massachusetts Bay. In 1629 Sir David 
 Kirke took Quebec from Champlain. It was restored 
 to the French three years afterward, 1632, ninety- 
 seven years after Jacques Cartier had reached it and 
 found an Indian village there ; and had been visited 
 by Donnacona, the Agonhanna, or King of Canada. 
 A century had passed, and it was little more than an 
 Indian village still, with a French trader wandering 
 thither now and then, little dreaming of the fierce 
 contest which should yet be fought out for an empire, 
 on its far-famed summit. 
 
 May I ask you here to notice another geographi- 
 cal feature which enters into the great struggle which 
 was then to come ? It is the subordinate water-way, 
 with its short portage at Fort Edward, which con- 
 nects the River St. Lawrence with New York Bay. 
 A canoe starting from Quebec can reach with little 
 difficulty the southern end of Lake Champlain, or of 
 Lake George. Thence, by a portage of a few miles 
 to Glen's Falls, or Fort Edward, it may be launched
 
 on the swift current of the Hudson River and landed 
 at Manhattan Island. You will remember the im- 
 portant part which this natural passage played so late 
 as the Revolution of 1776, when first General Bur- 
 goyne and Sir Henry Clinton attempted to gain pos- 
 session of it, and thus to dissever the colonies, that 
 they might conquer them in detail. Afterward 
 Major Andre lost his life and Arnold his honor, by a 
 second attempt to gain by craft what they had failed 
 to secure by force. The dangers to the Dutch and 
 English colonists from this source were early appre- 
 ciated by all parties, and the French once tried to 
 take possession of it by a land force transported over 
 the lakes cooperating with a naval attack on New 
 York. It was, too, over this water-way that the ma- 
 rauding parties of French and Indians often jour- 
 neyed, whose night-howls announced massacre and 
 captivity to the terrified villagers of the Connecticut 
 and Mohawk valleys. 
 
 These, then, are the geographical features which 
 enter into my propositions, and will help to explain 
 the course of our national history. The elevated 
 plateau which extends from the Green Mountains 
 south to the Kaatskills, and west across the State to 
 Lake Erie, and southward again to the Pennsylvania 
 line, sheds its waters into the Atlantic at Sandy 
 Hook, into the Northern Ocean by the St. Lawrence, 
 and into the Gulf of Mexico by the Alleghany, the 
 Ohio, and the Mississippi rivers. During the period 
 of colonial history when the canoe and the batteaux 
 were the only means of inland conveyance, and the 
 arquebuse and patereros were the chief weapons ot
 
 offensive warfare, this region was the key of the con- 
 tinent. When Joliet revealed to France the true 
 course of the Mississippi, it became the natural policy 
 of the French Government to gain possession of it, 
 and to keep the English from it. If they had suc- 
 ceeded and they did nearly succeed in gaining 
 the alliance of the tribes living upon that plateau ; 
 if their agents, everywhere else possessed of fascina- 
 tions to charm the savage mind by their unparalleled 
 heroism, by their unequaled daring as traders and 
 hunters, or as discoverers and chivalrous soldiers ; by 
 appeals to Indian vanity and self-interest, and no less 
 by exciting their respect and fear, in that they saw 
 all other tribes coming willingly under the influence 
 of the French, and they in danger of being hemmed 
 in on the north and west by powerful enemies, and 
 left to the feeble support of timid and half-hearted 
 allies ; if they could have gained this one object of 
 their ambition, it is little to say, that, so far as we can 
 see, this continent would now be under the power and 
 religious teaching of the Latin races. 
 
 It will be found that the Five Nations were the 
 rock of resistance to oppose and defeat these plans. 
 The Iroquois are always recognized by the French in 
 this light. They resisted for a century and a half 
 the flatteries and menaces of the French, and kept 
 unexampled faith with the Dutch and English to the 
 end of the contest. 
 
 It is, therefore, of prime interest to us to know 
 something of the character and motives of these 
 savages, to whom we owe so much. They are by no 
 means a lovely set. They are, in some things, a
 
 15 
 
 horrible race. None the less they are the happiest 
 of accidents in our past history. It gives me satis- 
 faction here to corroborate my statements by the 
 authority of the last volume of the Documents re- 
 lating to the colonial history of this State. It is 
 there stated that the Five Nations " had possession 
 of the very key to this continent, and they had been 
 masters of a large portion of it, and ruled the tribes 
 from Maine to the Mississippi, and as far south as 
 Georgia." The same industrious compiler agrees 
 with me, " that we can only congratulate ourselves, 
 as citizens of the State of New York, that the first 
 white men with whom the Indians of this section of 
 the American continent had to deal were the upright 
 and sturdy, even if slow and phlegmatic, Dutch.* 
 Other causes cooperated with this fortunate circum- 
 stance, which serve to explain it. 
 
 The general name by which the quarter of a 
 million or less of American aborigines were known 
 in the seventeenth century was "the Algonquins." 
 It seems to have been the name of a particular tribe, 
 which lived upon the Ottawa River, who were ene- 
 mies to the Iroquois. It was the luck of the French 
 to come first upon them and other such enemies of 
 the Five Nations, and to rouse against themselves 
 the active hatred of the latter. Champlain, as I have 
 said, in 1609, eager for discovery, came into hostile 
 collision with the Mohawks, and taught them the 
 terrible power of fire-arms, and no less the inap- 
 peasable detestation of his race. Again, in 1615, he 
 joined their ancient enemies, the Hurons, in an 
 
 * poet, of Col. Hist., Vol. XIII., p. v.
 
 i6 
 
 expedition against one of their towns in the interior 
 of this State. Therefore, in 1632, when that nation 
 recovered Canada, and began the continuous history 
 of " New France," they found the Five Nations pre- 
 dominant, and fiercely determined in hostility to 
 them. Seventeen years before that is, in 1615 
 these tribes had already made a firm treaty with the 
 Dutch at Fort Orange, had learned from them the 
 use of fire-arms, and had invaded Canada with their 
 old success. They at once shut off the French from 
 Lake Ontario, and compelled them to pursue their 
 objects of settlement, by means of the Hurons, 
 around Georgian Bay. For a long period no priest 
 or trapper was bold enough to attempt the passage 
 of the St. Lawrence, or to be seen on Lake Ontario-; 
 and even^ in tracking the cold Ottawa, they were 
 often waylaid and murdered by these wakeful foes. 
 
 These Iroquois, as the French called them, or 
 Maguas, that is, Bears, as they were known to 
 the Dutch and the Algonquins, were found to 
 consist of five separate nations, which were bound 
 together by an ancient league, which appears as the 
 first rude step, and the only one known to the abo- 
 rigines, of an incipient civilization. They were called, 
 among themselves, "Maguas," " Oneidas," " Onon- 
 dagas," " Cayugas," and " Senecas." The first tribe 
 dwelt in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, and the 
 others along the lakes which bear their names. 
 
 This league is called by Colden, who compiled 
 his facts as early as 1727, though his history ap- 
 peared in 1747, "immemorial," and it gave them the 
 common name of " Konoshioni," the " Cabin-mak-
 
 ers," or " People of the long house " ! This long 
 house, metaphorically, reached from the river to the 
 shore of Lake Erie. The eastern door of it was the 
 Maguas. The council-fire was on the shores of Lake 
 Onondaga, where always an Onondaga chief, who 
 was known as the " Atotarho," presided and had 
 charge of the sacred fire. Each tribe was subdivided 
 into three clans or sections, and each clan was a 
 separate and independent democracy in itself, distin- 
 guished by its " totem," or badge, of the wolf, the 
 bear, and the tortoise. They proudly called them- 
 selves the " Ongue-honwe " the men surpassing 
 all others. As their league-name implies, they had 
 advanced far enough in civilization to build castles, 
 rude structures enough, but very effective fortresses 
 for all the warfare which was then known among 
 them. These castles were in some cases roomy 
 habitations, or, again, groups of huts, surrounded by 
 a strong palisade and trench. 
 
 What they had of history points us to some period 
 of the sixteenth century, when they were living on the 
 banks of the St. Lawrence, around the island of Mon- 
 treal. They were then corn-planters. The Algon- 
 quins were hunters living at some distance from them 
 to the north. They supplied each other's wants by a 
 sort of rude commerce, until the proud hunting tribes 
 broke out into war against them, overcame them, and 
 steadily pursued them across the river and the lakes 
 to the center of this State. There for a time they 
 continually wasted away, until at last they learned 
 from bitter experience the wisdom of union. They 
 put aside their meaner quarrels with each other, and
 
 iS 
 
 entered into the league of the "Konoshioni," or castle- 
 builders. From that time they began to make head 
 against their foes. They rose by constant success to 
 a superior condition, and carried their "totems" in ter- 
 ror over half the continent. A single Magua brave 
 has been known, from mere wantonness, to enter a 
 town of the hostile Abenakis, or Eastern Indians, and 
 play for an hour the part of Achilles among the 
 Myrmidons. The poetry of Street is hardly exag- 
 gerated, in which he describes the prowess of these 
 savages, which gave them some right to call them- 
 selves the " Ongue-honwe," the Anaxanders, the 
 Anakims of this Western* world. 
 
 " The fierce Adirondacks had fled from their wrath, 
 The Hurons been swept from their merciless path ; 
 Around the Ottawas like leaves had been strown, 
 And the Lake of the Eries struck silent and lone. 
 The Lenape, lords once of valley and hill, 
 Made women, bent low at the conqueror's will. 
 By the far Mississippi the Illini shrank, 
 When the trail of the Tortoise was seen on the bank ; 
 On the hills of New England the Pequod turned pale, 
 When the howl of the Wolf swelled at night on the gale, 
 And the Cherokee shook in his green smiling bowers, 
 When the foot of the Bear stamped his carpet of flowers." 
 
 " Their invincible arms," says Brodhead, "humbled 
 every native foe, and their national pride grew with 
 every conquest." * 
 
 My first proposition is, that it was well for us that 
 the Dutch came first into contact with these people, 
 and not the English nor the French. It is not worth 
 
 * Quoted by Brodhead, Hist. St. of N. Y., First Period, p. 87.
 
 19 
 
 your while either to praise or abuse them. Certain 
 facts stand out unquestioned, and will partly explain 
 their conduct. They were superior to all other tribes, 
 and they ought to be, compared with them ; and all 
 together should be compared, or contrasted, if you 
 will, not with ourselves, but with the men of earlier 
 and ruder civilizations, with Autochthones of Euro- 
 pean peninsulas, Druids of German or British woods, 
 or with the savage tribes of other continents. The 
 question is not what we can sentimentally say of th,em 
 as "Stoics of the woods, the men without a tear," but 
 just how it came to pass that they were able and 
 ready to make an abiding compact "an iron chain," 
 as they called it with such civilized men as they 
 found at Fort Orange in 1615, and to observe that 
 compact with undisturbed probity during a century 
 pregnant with important issues. 
 
 They were splendid animals in their physique, 
 when the white men first fell in with them animals 
 at the head of our Western organisms. They had 
 not idealized the powers of savage nature about them 
 into dreamy idolatries. Their language proves that 
 they had no habit of reflection or faculty of analysis. 
 They were content to hold and cherish on a plane 
 which is probably inconceivable to us a profound 
 sympathy with the most savage things in nature. 
 There was in them a measureless stupidity of imag- 
 ination as to things abstract. Their own perfect 
 physical organisms were closely in sympathy with 
 the wild denizens of the forest. They honored the 
 wolf, whose totem was their mark of aristocracy, 
 their Order of the Garter, the oriflamme of their chiv-
 
 2O 
 
 airy, the catechism of their moral training, the gaunt 
 hero of their imaginations. They had by heredity an 
 infinite savagery, before which we weaker invalids 
 shrink back appalled. We have violently reached 
 some recesses of crime they sounded all with a 
 masterful genius. Who like the wolf to them, whose 
 howlings in the thicket, terrific to civilized men, were 
 to them, by the training of generations, the music of 
 religious love? Like him, they lived on what the 
 forest supplied. They could steal'over the withered 
 leaves on their deadly trail as silently as he, as hun- 
 gry for blood, as insatiable and remorseless, as ter- 
 rible in their final spring, as daring at last^ to the 
 bitter end, when all arts failed, as grim and untam- 
 able in death. They tuned their war-whoop to his 
 howl, and the only music which ever resounded 
 through their settlements, whether in war song or 
 funeral lament, was a wail as harsh and rude as his. 
 They emulated his cunning, and what we should call 
 his treachery. It was no shame it was glory to 
 their young warriors to model their honor by this 
 fiercest and mostT dangerous animal of their forests. 
 We call it the hungry wolf. The lynx is keener of 
 vision, the panther larger, but each can be appeased 
 or turned aside. It was a sense to them of the hun- 
 gry wolf, that identified him with them, as the ideal 
 sublime. Untiring, insatiable, moved by a mystical 
 scent from afar, turning aside for no obstacle, know- 
 ing no pause or fatigue, insensible to cold or heat, he 
 had in his make-up no suggestion of any weakness 
 of mercy or honor to check his one fierce craving for 
 blood.
 
 21 
 
 Or, next, they chose the " Magua," the Bear, as 
 the god of their warlike idolatry. Dark, mysterious, 
 cowardly as we know him, given to the meanest 
 panics and most ignominious victories over defense- 
 less victims, he was no coward to them. He sug- 
 gested no ignominy who could prowl around their 
 paths unseen, and, when brought to bay, would 
 silently give the deadly hug, but would yield no sign 
 at the keen knife in his ribs, but die in fierce embrace, 
 with immense rage, and without a sign of remorse or 
 fear. 
 
 Again, they found in the tortoise a poem of silent 
 hate, an animal Odyssey of cunning. We may call it 
 sneaking and stupid, a poor reptile, whose insig- 
 nificance seems to be his highest praise ; but we 
 have little right to offer our critical judgment for 
 their condemnation in these matters, till we recall on 
 the one side our own historical antecedents, which 
 have created our national symbols of thought, having 
 barely escaped the rattlesnake on our flag, in favor of 
 the eagle greediest, and, in some regards, the vilest 
 of birds ; or, on the other side, until we realize in 
 some degree what must have been the mental con- 
 dition of men who knew nothing beyond ceaseless 
 internecine warfare ; men whose imaginations held 
 no gentler or better thoughts than wolves, bears, 
 and reptiles had in common with them. Singularly 
 enough,- those tribes had a code of honor with the 
 rattlesnake, and are said to keep to it still. If he 
 strikes at them after rattling his* dread defiance, they 
 pass on and leave him uninjured. They respect him. 
 But, if he strikes without it, they hunt him to the 
 death.
 
 22 
 
 These were the human animals of whom I speak. 
 There was in them an educated capacity of infinite 
 hate. The women of the tribes appear to have sur- 
 passed the men in fidelity to their ferocious creed. 
 They were always the principal actors in the doleful 
 records of tortures to captives. Of course, I am not 
 admiring this quality in them ; but I do respect con- 
 sistency, even in the Devil. Hate was their religion. 
 The women were their sublime hierophants. They 
 are said to be always more religious than men. 
 These were. They taught it to their children. 
 There is always a down-look there is to-day 
 in the savage, a moral flat-headedness, melancholic, 
 atrabilious, horrible. Let us grant them at least the 
 one alleviation of consistency. 
 
 Just here I cannot resist the temptation to turn 
 aside for a word to my imaginative friends, who 
 claim to find sermons in stones, and books in run- 
 ning brooks to the disparagement of Bibles, creeds, 
 and churches. They tell- us of Bryant, who dis- 
 covered on these same uplands how " the groves 
 were God's first temples," where 
 
 " An invisible Breath in all their green tops bowed 
 Man's spirit with the thought of boundless power 
 And inaccessible majesty. And why 
 Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect 
 God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore 
 Only among the crowd and under roofs 
 That our own frail hands have raised ? " 
 > 
 
 Why, indeed ! Mark, if you please, that the poet 
 states it as an historical fact that the original races
 
 23 
 
 learned their religions by these means. There has 
 been a time with me, in youth, on a June day, when 
 
 " All the green leaves over me, 
 Clapped their little hands in glee, 
 With one continuous sound" 
 
 that I have accepted, not his poetical charm, for that 
 we all feel, but his historical accuracy. Pardon my 
 later skepticism. What Bryant found in the "calm 
 shades" which taught him that we must " conform 
 the order of our lives" "to the beautiful order of God's 
 works," he had previously learned elsewhere, in 
 temples made by humble hands ; from the ages 
 when Moses, who had had enough of lonely deserts, 
 stretched his tent of "dyed badger-skins" to cen- 
 tralize a nation's worship, and thus secure its virtue ; 
 from ages when Christians built their first churches 
 of wattles, and plastered them with clay ; and from 
 brown, unpainted New England or Dutch meeting- 
 houses, beneath whose benign influences a merciful 
 nation rose to majestic power here, and made the 
 poet's wood-wanderings safe for him. I leave you 
 to explain how it was that these Maguas failed to 
 spell out a word of the Forest Hymn in the groves 
 of the Empire State. It was well for us, on the 
 whole, that the colonists did their worship mainly 
 under cover, and in reach of their muskets, or these 
 sylvan devotees might have disturbed the even tenor 
 of their devotions. The Iroquois had learned a far 
 different lesson in our forests the lesson of hate. 
 This hatred, by nature, by heredity, and by education, 
 was an important element in my proposition. They
 
 24 
 
 first approached the Dutch with hearts full of de- 
 testation of the French. Their first wish was for 
 fire-arms. 
 
 For ages immemorial in their simple annals, the 
 Algonquins, Adirondacks, and Hurons had been 
 their enemies. At a flash they were driven back 
 before them in terror, no less in mortification. And 
 again, these enemies had dared to invade their forests 
 almost to the place of their league-hearth. I am not 
 inclined to indulge the dramatic vein, but it was cer- 
 tainly unlucky for him that Champlain should have 
 appeared before them as the friend of the detested 
 and despised Hurons. The compact which the Mo- 
 hawks made with the Dutch was secured partly by 
 their sublime faculty of enduring animal hatred. 
 
 Again, the Iroquois were a cruel race. The ac- 
 counts of their ingenuity in torturing their captives 
 would sicken a tiger, if he could be made to under- 
 stand it. One wonders, in reading the narrative of 
 Father Isaac Jogues, whether the Fiend himself could 
 have done more, if he had been present. The his- 
 tory of the Inquisition reads tame after it. I will not 
 pursue the theme.* 
 
 They were vain to extreme silliness "pleased 
 with a rattle and tickled with a straw" when the 
 braggart nerve was touched. They were drunkards 
 by predetermined vicious'ness. There was nothing 
 in the animal catechism, there was nothing learned 
 by them in wood or leaf, on lake or stream, which 
 could give them a shadow of a dream of virtuous 
 self-restraint. Their older chiefs begged piteously 
 
 * Doc., etc., etc., Vol. xiii., Appendix A, p. 577.
 
 25 
 
 and stormed eloquently to the civilized men to keep 
 the " brandy kegs" away from the tribes, because no 
 Indian could resist temptation, and then they went 
 aside to indulge in debauch. In matters of family 
 life, virtue had no name among them. They learned 
 no one of the ten commandments from wolves and 
 bears, and did not improve on their example. To 
 sum up this darker side, they were pure and simple 
 animals, of stout health and vigor, able to endure 
 great hardship in the chase and upon the war-path, 
 when appetite and revenge were driving them, and 
 they were little more. But they were a little more. 
 They had begun to reach upward, to almost the only 
 thing known to the aborigines of a constitutional 
 government. Fierce and intractable, they were pain- 
 fully independent and restless of the least restraint. 
 
 Each clan, yea, every solitary cabin or castle, was 
 a republic. They would have no leader over them, 
 except as he was successful. The aged warrior who 
 had been for years a victor fell into disgrace, if he 
 was once defeated. Yet we read of one virtue in 
 their chiefs, which some would recommend to -our 
 own chiefs and city fathers they were mostly poor, 
 on principle. They could indulge any love of power 
 only by resigning all profits of the chase or spoils of 
 war to their followers. 
 
 Another virtue in them I am afraid to analyze 
 too closely, lest it should vanish in the handling 
 was some practical sense of the value and obligation 
 of treaties. Their original league was "immemorial." 
 Probably for a century it had somehow taught them 
 the lesson necessary to any civilization. Once they
 
 26 
 
 had nearly perished by division. They had become 
 a great power by union. Rudest in forms and curi- 
 ous to study, they possessed a sort of general govern- 
 ment, which held them together for certain purposes. 
 They met often at the council-fire at Onondaga, and 
 discussed in some stormy manner the questions of 
 peace and war. Intractable, they yielded submission 
 to the decrees which issued from thence, and the 
 totem sent abroad, like the fire-tipped cross of 
 the Scotch Highlanders, was recognized by every 
 tribe or solitary hunter as a call which was to be 
 instantly obeyed. Launching their canoes on the 
 lakes or on the head-waters of the various rivers that 
 flowed every way from their country, they made ex- 
 peditions against the Abenakis at the forks of the 
 Kennebec, the Hurons around Georgian Bay, the 
 Miamis, Chippeways, and Sioux of the West, and 
 the Tuscaroras and Cherokees of the South. They 
 did it as a nation, rather than as single tribes. At 
 the remonstrance of the Governor of Maryland, we 
 read of them once calling the Oneidas and Senecas 
 to account for invasions on Southern tribes. This is 
 a small quantum of virtue to find in a race, but it is 
 the one virtue which was of the last importance to 
 us. Beside their hatred of the French, we must 
 grant them a knowledge of the advantage of treaties, 
 and intelligence enough to account for the fact that 
 they did make and observe them as no other 
 Western tribes did. Golden claims for them "a 
 bright and noble genius shining through their in- 
 heritance of darkest ignorance," and compares them, 
 as Volney also has done, to the ancient Romans.
 
 2 7 
 
 But it is a suspicious circumstance of this commen- 
 dation, that, antedating General Sherman's remark 
 "that a good Indian is a dead Indian," he offers as 
 proof of this noble genius their ability to die. It 
 were well if we could find in them more of a genius 
 to live decently and soberly. He terms them "the 
 fiercest and most formidable people in North Ameri- 
 ca, and, at the same time, as politic and judicious 
 as can be conceived." 
 
 These were the men of the Five Nations, the door 
 of whose "great house" were the Mohawks. Know- 
 ing nothing of the importance of the spot to them 
 and to us, the Dutch, for purposes of trade solely, 
 came wandering up the Ca-ho-ha-ta-tea, the " river 
 splitting the mountains," our Hudson, passed 
 by the Algonquin tribes, who were living on its 
 banks, the Mohicans on the east, and the Minnisinks 
 on the west side, hereditary enemies of the Iroquois, 
 with whom they must yet have deadly doings, and 
 sat down at the Mohawk's door. Wars with the 
 Esopus Indians will yet cut them off at times from 
 New Amsterdam, and often no "yachts" will pass up 
 the river but in fear of battle, and bringing tales of 
 treachery and massacre. That once fearful associa- 
 tion of ideas, which was long the terror of New 
 England houses, of " French and Indians," and the 
 consequent midnight slaughter and conflagration, and 
 the dreary after-tale of captivity in Canada, will draw 
 very near to their own humble dwellings : but these 
 few Dutch, with their poor little stockade, were putting 
 their hands unwittingly on the key of the continent, 
 and were about to hold some of its wildest tribes in a
 
 28 
 
 leash of inviolable treaties for a century and a half, 
 until the mighty struggle for a continent should be 
 fought out around them. Who were they ? 
 
 In answering, let us look only at the general 
 qualities of the people, such as made them fit instru- 
 ments in the molecular activities of that microscopic 
 cellule of science, from which science would now tell 
 us the universe primarily, aftd human history re- 
 cently, has all been evolved. As I look at them, 
 they were the only colonists which the proliferous 
 cellule aforesaid could have concatenated into such 
 results. If I knew the proper scientific terms, I would 
 pause here and indulge in a paean to the mighty 
 unthinking and unreasoning Cellule. In my igno- 
 rance I must feel that praise is due to One before 
 whom the lakes had been always lying open, the 
 rivers always known from fountain to salt sea, the 
 races always been guided or left unguided, if you 
 will until the year of grace came for a new develop- 
 ment of human progress, even Him, who "rulethih 
 the kingdom of men, and appointeth over it whomso- 
 ever He will." 
 
 The Dutch, at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, were divided into three classes the nobles, 
 the citizens, and country people, or " boors." They 
 and their land are almost a paradox. The land the 
 Nether-land, the hollow land had been rescued from 
 the Northern Ocean by enormous dykes, and once at 
 least saved from destruction by turning the wild sea 
 back upon it to defeat their fiercer human foes. They 
 had been oppressed by the religious wrath of the
 
 2 9 
 
 Spaniard until the totem of the Iroquois, the tor- 
 toise, might have been fairly claimed as their own. 
 They were made, like the tortoise, to bear injuries 
 and burdens which would have crushed any other 
 organism, and which only compacted their constitu- 
 tional vigor, and condensed a world of power under 
 their thick, hard shell. The Spanish barbarities had 
 shorn them of every grace of imagination, had in- 
 jured and distressed them to the last degree of 
 human endurance, and had failed utterly to move 
 their phlegm or crush their torpid and dauntless 
 resolution. Suddenly, at the first breathing-place 
 which was granted to them, the Dutch rose to be- 
 come onfc of the leading nations of Europe, conquer- 
 ors, and successful explorers on every sea. We have 
 not, however, to deal with that part of their history. 
 They, too, had learned the power of union, and the 
 advantages of righteous dealing with all men, when, 
 as a part of a greater commercial scheme, and almost 
 by accident, they began to colonize this country. 
 There was one great difference between them and 
 the other European nations which were competing 
 for this continent. The men of Plymouth went forth 
 as " pilgrims and strangers," under more or less of 
 religious enthusiasm. Religion entered prominently 
 into the professions of those who followed Lord 
 Baltimore and William Penn. Each party sought 
 here that " freedom to worship God," which meant, 
 mostly, after their own fashion. The Spaniards and 
 French were driven also by what was known to 
 them as their religion, which implied also chivalrous 
 national feeling. They came with the cross in one
 
 30 
 
 hand and the flag of their country in the other. It 
 was not discontent with the Government at home 
 which drove them forth, but rather an intense enthu- 
 siasm of religious patriotism. 
 
 It was quite otherwise with the Dutch. It was 
 mainly a quiet scheme of commercial colonists, such 
 as sends myriads of men across the Atlantic now. 
 They had no wrongs to escape, no brilliant schemes 
 of new lands to conquer. They came simply to 
 secure their share of the trade which had begun to 
 rouse the attention of the busy merchants of their 
 country. And they were not all of one ilk in 
 Holland. There were castes among them. The 
 boors, who came first, formed the bulk of tfie popu- 
 lation of the United Netherlands. They were the 
 tiers etat, whose liberties had hardly been regarded 
 by either nobles or townsmen. These farmers were 
 of very humble and patient character, thrifty on 
 smallest incomes, able and willing to live hard, to 
 amass meager gains, to look carefully after pennies 
 or groschen, to live peaceably with all men, without 
 fierceness, chivalry, or pride, but not without sauer- 
 kraut and beer. Contrasted with the fiery Latin 
 races, they were insensible to the disturbances of 
 imagination which encumbered their progress. They 
 had no broad plains in Holland, where a party 
 of forty knights, barbaric as Saracens, could ride 
 down and slaughter forty thousand Jacquerie ; or, 
 had there been such, they would have been the 
 suffering peasants and not the vain-glorious knights. 
 They had the virtues of contented, toiling agricul- 
 turists, and such victories as were dear to them had
 
 been mostly won by the Fabian policy of patient en- 
 durance. Or, compared with the English, they were 
 free from the fierce conscience of the Puritans, and the 
 loose consciences of the others. It was natural that 
 the Pilgrims, being Bible-expounders and elect saints, , 
 should pass a statute in 1633, in the Massachusetts 
 colony, to "confirm to the Indians" the little patches 
 of land around their wigwams, where they raised 
 their corn and beans, and declare the rest of the 
 land the property of the whites, on the authority of 
 chapter i., Genesis, " and the invitation of the In- 
 dians." * And it was quite as natural that the red 
 men, having been careless readers of Genesis, and 
 by no means sure of their election, should demur at 
 this private interpretation of the first chapter, and- 
 fail to recognize it peacefully as the oracle of God. 
 We recall here the fine scorn of Washington Irving 
 at the claims which were set up to this continent 
 by the right of discovery, and the proud supremacy 
 of intelligence as against ignorance on the part of 
 Protestants, and the rights which were given to the 
 Catholic nations by the empty formulas of the Pope. 
 The Dutch had neither plea to offer. They had none 
 of that peculiar conscience which biassed all the others 
 and brought them face to face with the untaught 
 savages as religiously predetermined enemies. Hence, 
 the other colonies, one by one, were involved in cease- 
 less wars with the natives, with intervals of hollow 
 truce. There was an essential incapacity in the 
 parties for peace. How the imagination turns from 
 such dark records to fancy what might have been our 
 
 * Doc., etc., etc., Vol. XIII., p. vi.
 
 history if all men coming hither had been Christians 
 in heart and soul. The sad chronicles of Las Casas, 
 and others after him, would have been more like the 
 book of Acts, to tell of bloodless victories over will- 
 ing Tlascalans and Aztecs, and others. "The dew 
 of that birth would have been of the womb of the 
 morning," as -new nations would have learned a true 
 Gospel of the Cross, which Cortes and Pizarro 
 flashed in their eyes and disgraced by their deeds. 
 The brilliant record of the courage and martyrdoms 
 of the Jesuit missionaries to the Hurons loses some- 
 thing of its interest as we recall the prevailing cor- 
 ruption of the French nation and the infamous Parc- 
 aux-cerfs, where a most Catholic king had set up a 
 harem more revolting than that of Turk or Mormon. 
 With all our reverence for Puritan and Quaker, one 
 sadly dreams now over what might have been, had 
 either of them substituted Christian practice for doc- 
 trine in their treatment of the weaker races. It is 
 and that alone is now my point it is a fact of 
 record that they all became involved in bitter wars 
 with the natives ; that they alike slowly and steadily 
 pressed them back and exterminated them. We feel 
 that, given the elements of the tragedy in each case, 
 the result was bound to be the destruction of the red 
 men. An abyss yawned between the parties, and 
 the Indian, like Dives in the parable, called in vain 
 across it- for some Lazarus to be sent to him to 
 alleviate the horrors of his fiery doom. I shall not 
 denounce the one, 'nor dissolve in pity over the other. 
 Suffer me to dream of what might have been, of 
 what some day will be, when the Christus Consolator
 
 33 
 
 shall be seen to stand as the ruler of nations, the 
 strong and weak alike : 
 
 " Folding together, with the all-tender might 
 
 Of His great love, the dark hands and the white." 
 
 The Dutch agricultural boors, who had seated 
 themselves at Fort Orange, I will hot claim for them 
 imagination to grasp the issues which were before 
 them, or to plan the deep foundations of a just and 
 mighty government. I do not hold them up as mod- 
 els of anything sublime and far-seeing. I do not 
 need to do so. They were just to the Indian. 
 They were wonderfully patient with his ignorance 
 and follies, and constitutionally phlegmatic to the 
 annoyances of his vanity and braggadocio. They 
 had no thought of his land as a deodand or a papal 
 gift. They could not have quoted to him Genesis, 
 chapter i., nor flaunted the oriflamme and the cross 
 before his vision. They bought his lands and they 
 paid for them, as per contract, taking care to make 
 a fair bargain, and scrupulously filling the bill. They 
 bought his furs and sold him rifles and brandy, both 
 equally sure to kill. They made covenants with 
 him, and they religiously observed them. The Iro- 
 quois often taunted them for stupidity, for tameness 
 and cowardice ; never for unfaithfulness or treachery. 
 They seemed to the warriors often like the tortoise 
 drawing in his head and observing the position of 
 "masterly inactivity." But was not the "totem" of 
 the tortoise well known to them ? They knew that 
 they could yet put coals of fire on his back, and the 
 inactivity would cease. I am only interested to claim
 
 34 
 
 that the average Dutchman, by his patience and 
 phlegm, by the virtues which he had learned slowly 
 but effectually from Spanish contempt and cruelty, 
 from his training in the flatlands of the European 
 delta, and by his simple, unwarlike and tolerant 
 piety, had the character which was best fitted to deal 
 with the Iroquois, to win his esteem and hold it 
 against tremendous odds, and transmit it to the 
 English who came after him in 1 664. They treated 
 the Indians as men. In practice, by individual tem- 
 perament, and by laws that were honestly maintained, 
 they traded with them to their satisfaction. 
 
 By law every settler could choose his lands 
 wherever it suited him, but he must first extin- 
 guish the Indian title.* The Dutchman was singu- 
 larly tolerant in matters of religion, thanks partly 
 to the tyranny of Spain. He did not disturb 
 his neighbors by his zeal. He was also con- 
 tented with little. I find a paper of Cornelis Van 
 Tienhoven, Secretary of the Province, among the 
 documents of the colony, which was sent to Holland, 
 encouraging emigration and detailing how able- 
 bodied men and women could live, and what would 
 
 * " Rule 26 of the ' Freedoms merous Indian deeds in this volume 
 and Exemptions Granted by the go to show how this rule was, as I 
 West India Company to all Pa- stated above, always strictly en- 
 trons, Masters or Private Persons forced, and the tradition of the 
 who will plant colonies in New purchase of Manhattan Island 
 Netherlands, adopted June 7, 1629, proves that even at their first com- 
 says: " Whosoever shall settle any ing the Dutch had no intention of 
 colony out of the limits of Man- acquiring the land they coveted by 
 hattan Island shall be obliged to any other means than by pur- 
 satisfy the Indians for the lands chase.'" Doc., etc., etc., Vol. 
 they shall settle upon." The nu- XIII., p. vi.
 
 35 
 
 be done for them if they came.* It proves that they 
 were able to get down to the hard-pan of economy, 
 and lay the foundations of a great state, by living for 
 a while in cellars hardly better than the tepees of the 
 savages. 
 
 We may despise all this, but then we might have 
 blundered contemptuously by a stable of old in Beth- 
 lehem, or disregarded the chamber in Jerusalem 
 where a few ignorant, unlearned men were once dis- 
 cussing a new sort of spiritual forces. This patience 
 and simple endurance of hardship, if it likened them 
 outwardly to the savages, also secured their sympa- 
 thy and confidence. The Dutch could point to the 
 fact of an influence over the fierce, intractable tribes 
 of the West, when wars were to be prevented and 
 captives were to be redeemed, which only they could 
 exercise. The Iroquois understood and trusted them, 
 and them alone. 
 
 In 1614, a charter and a name were given to this 
 province New Netherland. In 1615, Hendrik 
 Christiansen built a truck-house and military post on 
 Castle Island, just below the site of Albany, with a 
 garrison of twelve men, and called it Nassau. A 
 few annual inundations and ice blockades drove them 
 out of it, and in 1623, Fort Orange was built on 
 higher ground, "just beyond the pines," with pali- 
 sades reaching down to the river. Eighteen families 
 were settled in huts of bark about the fort. Kilaen 
 Van Rensselaer, by successive purchases from the 
 Indians, became patroon or proprietor of the region 
 about Fort Orange, and to secure his rights by law, 
 
 * Doc., etc., Vol. IV., pp. 25-36.
 
 36 
 
 was required to plant there a colony of at least fifty 
 families. In 1624, Cornells Jansen, armed with all 
 powers except that of inflicting capital punishment, 
 began to govern the post. That same year a ship 
 returned to Holland laden with valuable furs, and the 
 colony was reported to be "bravely prosperous." 
 Hither came the Mohawks to trade. They entered 
 into treaty relations, which were renewed with much 
 solemnity from time to time, and were never dis- 
 turbed. There was, in fact, a time when the Dutch 
 had no friends but the Mohawks. The Eastern colo- 
 nists were contemptuously set against them. " The 
 Dutch," said the faithful warriors of the Five Nations, 
 " are our brethren. With them we keep but one 
 council-fire ; we are united by a covenant chain."* 
 In 1664, the English took possession of the colony, 
 and the Dutch rule, but not the Dutch influences, 
 ended. As late as 1689, De Callieres, Governor of 
 Canada, speaks of Albany as being " about as large 
 as Montreal, containing about one hundred and fifty 
 houses and three hundred inhabitants capable of 
 bearing arms, the majority of whom are Dutch, and 
 some French refugees, with some English." He 
 states that " the greater part of the inhabitants, 
 both of Manathe (Manhattan) and Orange were 
 then Dutch, and all Protestants, who will doubt- 
 less receive the commands of the Prince of Orange, 
 in case England should resent the taking posses- 
 sion of the Hudson by France." f Again, as late 
 as 1721, the Marquis Vandreuil speaks in his dis- 
 patches of sending messengers "to the Dutch at 
 
 * Bancroft, Vol. II., p. 66. t Doc. Hist., Vol. I., pp. 288-291.
 
 37 
 
 Orange, to remonstrate against the new settlement 
 at Choueguen." * 
 
 In 1665, Corlaer received a party of French and 
 Algonquins at Schenectady, which was then returning 
 from an expedition against the Five Nations. He 
 was a private citizen, but was so much honored by the 
 Indians that they always afterward called the English 
 Governor " the Corlaer." 
 
 In 1666, another French expedition was made 
 against the Mohawks, which succeeded only in in- 
 flaming their minds with hatred against a murderous 
 and treacherous nation. Afterward Denonville and 
 Frontenac also assaulted them in vain. 
 
 We must now turn to the brilliant record of the 
 French occupation of the regions lying along the St. 
 Lawrence and to the north of Lake Ontario, with a 
 single remark of Golden in his history, that " the 
 French had no hopes of persuading the Five Nations 
 to break with New York directly," which union, he 
 says, " always obstructed, and often defeated, the de- 
 sign the French had, of subjecting all North America 
 to the crown of France." f We propose to trace 
 briefly the development of this design. It took shape 
 slowly, but was held with consistent pertinacity for a 
 century. The French were always united by wise 
 counsels, from both the political and ecclesiastical 
 authorities at home. The English were always 
 distracted, inconsistent, and dilatory, until, by a 
 change of ministry, William Pitt was called for a 
 short time to assume the management of affairs 
 
 * Doc. Hist., Vol. I., p. 445. 
 
 t Cadwallader Colden's Hist., Part I., chap, iii., p. 43.
 
 33 
 
 a time long enough, however, to annihilate the 
 French scheme. 
 
 Champlain, after the discovery of the lake which 
 bears his name, returned thrice to France, and, in 
 1615, came to Tadoussac with four Recollet (Fran- 
 ciscan) priests. He went with a party of Algonquins 
 by the head- waters of the Ottawa, and discovered 
 Lake Huron. On his return he reached Lake On- 
 tario, and passed along its eastern shores. The 
 Franciscans began at once their labors as mission- 
 aries, but were soon displaced by the Jesuits, who, 
 under the name of " the black robes," were afterward 
 known as the mighty " medicine men" of -the whites. 
 Their story has the charm of a romance. The sturdi- 
 est Protestant must pause to wipe away the tear that 
 gathers, as he reads of their heroism in penetrating 
 pathless wilds ; their humility in accepting all manner 
 of insults and hardships from sensual, brutal savages ; 
 their zeal in continuing the offices of religion in leafy 
 huts or under the shade of trees, often with wine 
 pressed from the wild grapes by their own hands, 
 and sometimes transubstantiated into the blood of 
 martyrs ; their ceaseless catechisings of children and 
 adults, whose minds were clouded by ages of igno- 
 rance and inhumanity ; their disregard of all the 
 attractions of society ; their " deaths oft " with or 
 for their catechumens, sometimes surrendering them- 
 selves to tortures that they might confess a penitent 
 or baptize a candidate with drops of dew gathered 
 from the ears of maize contemptuously thrown to 
 them for food. Nero's blazing candles and Spain's 
 Inquisition in the Low Countries were simple con-
 
 39 
 
 trivances compared with the tortures of the cannibal 
 tribes into whose hands they fell. But nothing 
 daunted or delayed them. As one fell, another, at 
 the command of his superior, took up his crucifix and 
 entered a Huron canoe, and went away into the wil- 
 derness, trusting, as Pere Mesnard said, "to the 
 Providence that feeds the birds and clothes the wild 
 flowers of the forest." Nobles of France lived and 
 died in this work, for the conversion of the Hurons 
 no less, or little less, for the glory of France.* 
 
 To conquer souls for Jesus, to extend the honor 
 of their order, and to open new lands for the stand- 
 ard of the lilies, was motive, incentive, and reward 
 enough for men who saw in it the certain beatitudes 
 of piety on earth and beyond it. It is a strange, I 
 fancy it is an unparalleled, record. Condemn their 
 faults, their superstition, their treachery as politi- 
 cians, as we may, he must be hard indeed who does 
 not feel a tremor of his highest sensibilities at the 
 name of Rale defying the New England bullets on 
 the Kennebec, to save his flock ; or Pere Jogues, 
 meekly submitting to appalling anguish at the hands 
 of the Iroquois ; or Mesnard, reasoning that if the 
 latter could reach the Chippewas for murder, he too 
 
 * We have a specimen of the and offered commerce and an alli- 
 
 ordinary motives of the missionar- ance against the Iroquois ; the sol- 
 
 ies, in the person of Father Claude diers of France would smooth the 
 
 Alloiiez (1665). "He arrived on path between the Chippewas and 
 
 the first day of October, at a great Quebec ; would brush the pirate 
 
 council of ten or twelve nations, at canoes from the river ; would leave 
 
 the great village of the Chippe- the Five Nations no choice be- 
 
 was, in the Bay of Chegoimegon." tween tranquillity and destruction." 
 
 " In the name of Louis XIV., and Bancroft, Vol. III., p. 150. 
 his viceroy, he commanded peace,
 
 40 
 
 must venture thither for the Gospel's sake. It is 
 very strange that these Jesuits made no marked im- 
 pression on the Iroquois. They seemed to all other 
 tribes as men of another world. The American 
 savage always looks upon the insane and maniacal as 
 inspired, and reverences them as beings in com- 
 munion with superior powers of good and evil. The 
 enthusiasm of the Jesuits exalted them to the borders 
 of such inspiration. They claimed to work miracles, 
 to wash out sins forever, to bring out of the wafer 
 and wine-cup the mysterious sang real, to anoint with 
 the mystic unction of peace the dying warrior, and 
 speed him to the land of the Great Spirit, and they 
 dared and died to prove -their zeal. They seldom 
 failed. They failed effectually to move the Five 
 Nations. The few converts given to them among 
 that people they were compelled to gather around 
 the Island of Montreal, thenceforth exiles, lost to 
 their former friends. 
 
 With the Jesuit went forth the fur-trader and 
 trapper. Launching their batteaux on the chill 
 waters of the Ottawa, these voyageurs toiled through 
 grim wildernesses, now at the oar, now at the danger- 
 ous rapids, and anon over the muddy, tangled port- 
 ages, pushing on and on westward to Huron, to the 
 straits of Mackinaw and the Sault St. Mary, and set- 
 ting their traps far up on the streams that turn north 
 toward Hudson's Bay. He, too, had a native fitness 
 for the work before him a religious conscience that 
 availed him, and a patriotic fire that could feed his 
 fancy, where the wild animals of the chase, or the
 
 wilder savages, who often chased him, were his only 
 neighbors. He had the skill to cook all manner of 
 creatures of or under the earth, and could hobnob 
 with the aborigines over their raw meat and pounded 
 corn, and ignore their dirt and vulgarity. He had, 
 too, the religion of the Parc-aux-cerfs of his most 
 Christian Majesty at Paris, and could find a savage 
 wife in every tribe, and mate his constancy to her 
 canine chastity. He could carry his vanity and brag- 
 gadocio uninjured everywhere, and wrap himself in it 
 and defy the savagery of nature and the ridicule of 
 savages. He cared nothing for the rights of man or 
 of colonial charters. The English had nothing of 
 this ; more, they were vexing themselves about po- 
 litical questions and colonial rights. The corrupt 
 court of the Hanoverian princes was petrified in self- 
 ishness and petty tyranny, all the while that the 
 subtle Frenchmen were pushing on their advance 
 and laying the foundations of a mighty empire. The 
 English hardly saw what was before their eyes. 
 "The English," said the French officers to Colonel 
 Washington at Venango, "can raise two men to our 
 one, but they are too dilatory to prevent any enter- 
 prise of ours.* The enterprise which was just then 
 in their minds was the closing the possession of the 
 tract lying between the Ohio River and Lake Erie. 
 
 These, then, were the armies which France sent 
 out as the av ant- couriers of discovery. "Not a cape 
 was turned," says the historian, "nor a river entered, 
 but a Jesuit led the way." The voyageur followed 
 fast, and a great trade sprang up on the St. Law- 
 
 * Bancroft's Hist., Vol. III., p. 71.
 
 42 
 
 rence, which incited and rewarded his daring indus- 
 try. Strangely enough again, the Dutch could and 
 did always undersell them, and thus again checked 
 their advance into the regions of the Five Nations. 
 
 In 1634, the Jesuits Brebeuf and Daniel, and 
 soon after "the gentle Lalemant," established the 
 first house of the Society of Jesus on the shores of a 
 bay of Lake Huron. The French were shut off from 
 Lake Ontario, and their line of advance to this mis- 
 sionary trading-post was by the Ottawa, over per- 
 haps "fifty cataracts and five and thirty portages." 
 
 We pass on now to mention certain names which 
 bear upon my proposition. 
 
 In 1673, forty years after this first mission-house 
 was built, Pere Marquette and the layman Joliet and 
 five other Frenchmen, with two Algonquins as guides, 
 carrying their canoes on their shoulders, set out on 
 the loth of June to cross the short space of less than 
 two miles which separates the Fox River from the 
 Wisconsin, thus leaving the streams which run toward 
 Quebec. With a prayer to the Immaculate Virgin, 
 they embarked on the latter, and in seven days were 
 floating on the waters of the Mississippi. They en- 
 dured many dangers and hardships in their long jour- 
 ney down the stream, past the mouth of the Arkansas, 
 to a region where snows were unusual, and satisfy- 
 ing themselves that the great river ran into the Gulf, 
 and not into the Pacific or the Atlantic, they returned 
 to Canada and reported the unfinished discovery. 
 "The fame" of this report of Joliet, says Bancroft, 
 "fired the ambition of Colbert." I am inclined to
 
 43 
 
 insert the name of Talon, the Intendant of Canada, 
 between Joliet and Colbert, as being the first to grasp 
 the advantages of the discovery.* 
 
 About this time Robert de la Salle had obtained 
 a grant of land at Fort Frontenac, in Canada, where 
 the city of Kingston now stands, with a "right to 
 trade with the Five Nations." His imagination be- 
 came excited by the news brought by Joliet, and by 
 the older tales of Columbus and De Soto, and he 
 sighed for nobler worlds to conquer. He, too, would 
 dare the perilous journey and add new glories to 
 French conquest. Returning to France, he found out 
 Colbert, that greatest of financial statesmen, and com- 
 municated his plans to him and his son Seigneley. 
 They entered with zeal into them. He was given all 
 that he asked, and was commissioned to carry out 
 the scheme. He was directed to complete the dis- 
 covery of the river, to establish a fort at the mouth 
 of it, as a defense against the Spanish, "and to se- 
 cure the communication of Canada with the West 
 Indies." This plan finally included a chain of forts 
 and strong trading-posts across the country between 
 the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, in order to 
 hold possession of it and secure his advance. 
 
 This was in 1678. The next year La Salle built 
 and launched the first vessel that ever sailed upon 
 Lake Erie the "Griffon," a boat of sixty tons. He 
 planted a colony at Niagara, established a trading- 
 post at Michilimackinac, passed through Lake Michi- 
 gan, and anchored in Green Bay. -Sending back 
 thence the "Griffon" with a load of furs, he started in 
 
 * Bancroft, Vol. II., p. 332.
 
 44 
 
 canoes for the head of Lake Michigan, and built there 
 a small fort among the Miamis. Then, December 
 3d, he passed on with Father Hennepin and Tonti 
 to Kankakee. Sailing down the river, he reached an 
 Illinois village and made another fort, which, in the 
 bitterness of his soul, he named " Crevecceur," the 
 " fort of the broken heart," near the present city of 
 Peoria. Leaving Tonti in command, he returned on 
 foot, with three companions, to Canada for supplies. 
 He learned there the loss of the "Griffon'," and also 
 of a ship which had been sent over with supplies. 
 Making up another party, he started again for fort 
 Crevecceur, where he found that the Iroquois had 
 attacked Tonti, who had retreated to Green Bay. 
 He went down the Illinois River to its mouth, and 
 again returned to Canada to gather his companions 
 and obtain fresh resources. At last, in 1681, this 
 man of iron will overcame all obstacles and succeeded 
 in traversing the Mississippi downward to its mouth. 
 He explored three of its channels, and on April Qth, 
 1682, he set up a column with the French arms upon 
 it, and took formal possession of the territory. Re- 
 turning to Quebec, he went again to France. There 
 he received a patent, to his wish, of boundless grants 
 along the river. Colbert had died, but Seigneley, 
 his son, who succeeded, seconded his applications, 
 and Louis XIV. gave him letters authorizing him to 
 discover the western parts of New France, and to 
 build forts, bestowing on him "the seigniory of the 
 government of the forts which he should erect on his 
 route." La Salle "proposed to the king to unite 
 Canada with Louisiana, and extend his sovereignty
 
 45 
 
 to the Gulf, and received from him instructions to 
 return and immediately to colonize Louisiana." He 
 fitted out a naval expedition for the mouth of the 
 river, which ended in shipwreck- and ruin to him, and, 
 while seeking his way back to Canada, he was mur- 
 dered by his companions. He perished miserably, but 
 the results of his discovery remained. 
 
 About the year 1699, Iberville built a fort upon 
 the banks of the river, and in 1718, New Orleans was 
 commenced. From that period we must leave to 
 your imagination the uninterrupted advance of the 
 French power. They possessed the friendship of 
 almost all the tribes along the great circle which 
 stretches from Quebec around the lakes and down the 
 Great River to its mouth. Nearest to them, to the 
 south and east, were the Spaniards in Mexico and 
 Florida and the West Indies. The English were con- 
 fined to the Atlantic coast, shut in by the natural bar- 
 rier of the long ridges of mountains, which begin 
 with the spurs of the Adirondacks and sink down 
 into the uplands of Alabama and Georgia. The 
 French nation was at one with their colonies the 
 English never at one with theirs. The strongest re- 
 ligious bonds united the former. Jesuit missions 
 
 o * 
 
 dotted the rivers and takes with an obedient army of 
 men ready to become martyrs for their church or for 
 France. No question of rights, no vexatious duties 
 or stamp acts, interfered with the home commerce. 
 It was a commerce of mutual benefit. The central 
 power of the throne demanded and received the 
 same obedience at the far-off trading-post, among 
 savage tribes, which it received in the outskirts of
 
 4 6 
 
 Paris. Those historians are correct who, like Froude, 
 find a paramount cause of the success of the Reforma- 
 tion in England in the weariness of discord which fol- 
 lowed the Wars of the Roses. So, the unified, compact, 
 unquestioned power of the Bourbons can be traced 
 back to a similar weariness of the strifes of rebellious 
 nobles and religious factions. Patriotism and religion 
 in the French breast had come to mean absolute rule 
 in Church and State, and unmurmuring, heroic obedi- 
 ence from every citizen. We have, then, the opposing 
 conditions of the great struggle of the eighteenth 
 century for the mastership of this continent. The 
 odds were all with the French were all against the 
 English. Here and there, for a little while, the latter 
 awoke to the fact that the French were absorbing all 
 the trade with the Indians, were creeping steadily 
 along the lakes and drawing supplies from lands 
 hardly known to them by name, on the north and 
 west of them, and were advancing up the Great 
 River and its streams that sprang from the Alle- 
 ghanies, and were impressing on the natives the sense 
 of the power and ubiquity of the Grand Monarque. 
 Golden, who wrote in 1647, told the English in Lon- 
 don that " Indian affairs in Canada were the care of 
 the Government, in New York, of traders," and 
 hence came the wise policy of the one and the folly 
 shown by the others! 
 
 Another influence from home came to the aid of 
 the French scheme. You remember that this colony 
 was the pr6vince of the Duke of York, afterward 
 King James the Second. The one wish of the Cana- 
 dians was to send the Jesuit priests among the Five
 
 47 
 
 Nations; the policy of the New York "traders" was 
 by all means to keep them out. There was reason 
 enough for their distrust. The Jesuits were politi- 
 cians as well as religionists. What so natural for them 
 as to bring these intractable savages to the knowledge 
 of the cross and obedience to the lilies. Of course, 
 the Duke of York sent orders that Jesuit priests must 
 be received among the Iroquois. The governors and 
 people were helpless. The priests are said to have 
 incited parties of the Five Nations to make war on 
 friendly Indians in Virginia and Maryland, hoping 
 thus to disturb the peace, and compel the English to 
 punish them and drive them into the arms only too 
 willing to receive them. They failed. The Governor 
 of Maryland sent Colonel Coursey, in 1677, to meet 
 the tribes at Albany and renew their friendship. The 
 treaty was reinforced, and the prisoners that had been 
 taken were mostly returned. The tribes who were 
 absent from the meeting sent in their adherence, and 
 the plan fell through. 
 
 Let me here put together a few dates. 
 
 In 1646, fourteen years from the restoration of 
 Quebec, France had her posts on the Kennebec and 
 on Lake Huron, and had approached the settlement 
 at Albany by a fort commanding Lake Champlain. 
 
 In 1689, forty years afterward, Chevalier De Cal- 
 lieres developed his plan to capture Fort Orange and 
 Manhattan Island, in order to become master of the 
 Iroquois, "and thus establish their (the French) race." 
 He confesses that the Dutch were able to trade with 
 the Indians and give them bargains, "nearly a half less 
 than his Frenchmen could afford, and were likely to
 
 48 
 
 destroy the trade in peltries,"* then sustaining Canada 
 and largely benefiting the mother country. His plan 
 was approved, and Sieur De Frontenac was under 
 orders to carry it out; but it came to nothing beyond 
 burning Schenectady and the massacre of its inhabit- 
 ants. In 1685, the Marquis Denonville invaded the 
 Genesee country, and, as Golden words it, "got no'th- 
 ing but dry blows by this expedition." In 1696, 
 Frontenac entered the Mohawk country with a thou- 
 sand French and two thousand Indians. He surprised 
 a castle at Oneida, and destroyed some standing corn. 
 The English looked on tamely, though one Colonel 
 Fletcher reports "that a rumor of his approach caused 
 them to beat a retreat." Half a century later, in 
 1 743, the wily policy of the French has stolen on to- 
 ward itsobject. Governor Clarke writes of " the vast 
 increase of the French trade since the peace of 
 Utrecht; of their steady advance to link together the 
 Mississippi and Lake Ontario; of two forts at Fron- 
 tenac and Niagara; of two vessels of fifty or sixty 
 tons on that lake, by the mastery of which they ac- 
 quire power over the Indians; of their intrigues with 
 the Five Nations, whose old chiefs still remain faith- 
 ful and restrain the younger men; of their certain 
 result in separating the Five Nations and destroying 
 them in detail, having already cowed their spirit" 
 Meanwhile, they had fastened themselves on Lake 
 Champlain to control the Mohawks, and the English 
 were only idly looking on, to see the great circle joined 
 which would shut them off finally from the trade 
 which was then so valuable. 
 
 * Documentary History of N. Y., Vol. I., p. 286.
 
 49 
 
 Therefore, in 1757, with many victories and much 
 successful policy to warrant it, the French proudly 
 "claimed and seemed to possess twenty parts in 
 twenty-five of this continent, leaving four only to 
 Spain and but one to Great Britain." Abroad, 
 England had hardly done better. To all human 
 calculation, the struggle was about to end in favor 
 of France. 
 
 Fort Duquesne, at the junction of the Mononga- 
 hela and Alleghany rivers, was one pole of her great 
 battery; the fort at Erie, on the lake, was the other. 
 Two or three stockades on the space between were 
 uniting the poles, and the circle would be complete, 
 and New France would soon rival the old in power. 
 The one bar to success had always been the treaty 
 faith between the Iroquois and the Corlaer.* 
 
 But the struggle was about to end in the defeat 
 of the French, and I have kept you too long to do it 
 justice. Fortunately for my purpose, you are all suf- 
 ficiently familiar with the two closing scenes of the 
 great drama. It is only necessary for me to link 
 them to the third fact occurring across the ocean, and 
 my work is done. 
 
 The French had been everywhere successful. 
 When Montcalm roused the echoes of Ganouski Bay 
 on Lake George, on the morning of that summer day, 
 
 * " During a century of conten- lay on the side of France. But 
 
 tion with France, the friendship of for this the whole course of our 
 
 the Five Nations, in possession of history might have been changed; 
 
 the great mountain barrier between New York might now belong to 
 
 Canada and the upper Hudson, France, and the other States might 
 
 turned the scale and counterbal- still be colonies of England." Doc. 
 
 anced the great advantages which Hist. N. Y., Vol. I., p. vi.
 
 50 
 
 August 2, 1757, as he started to assault Fort Wil- 
 liam Henry, at the head of the lake, fifteen hundred 
 savages of thirty-three tribes, collected from the 
 shore of the Kennebec in the east, to Sandusky Bay 
 in the west, from the Montaignais and St. Francis 
 tribes along the river and the Hurons of the North, 
 raised their war-whoop in answer to his reveille. 
 The Frenchman was free of the woods. The Eng- 
 lishman crept through them in fear, and fled back to 
 his towns with thanksgiving. The narrative of Lake 
 George and of Braddock's defeat alike show the skill 
 and united purpose of the French, the stupid disor- 
 der and timid confusion of the English. General 
 Webb lay inactive at Fort Edward, in sound of the 
 cannon battering down Fort William Henry, and 
 dared not stir to help it. The dash, the courage, the 
 successes, were all on the wrong side. The French 
 were masters. They and their dusky allies had 
 learned to despise the ignoble Anglais, and the Iro- 
 quois wondered at their inaction and lack of courage. 
 We read the sad story with feelings of shame at its 
 unvarying disgrace. Colonists, busy with their sepa- 
 rate interests, meanly confounded all generalship, and 
 the home government slumbered on until a continent 
 had almost slipped from their grasp. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that one of the events of the 
 final drama began without plan or honor. Where 
 Pittsburg now stands was a wilderness claimed by 
 the English, as given to them by a treaty with the 
 Iroquois ; and a hunter, one Gist, was called from the 
 Upper Yadkin, and sent to explore the lands beyond 
 the Monongahela. An effort followed to build a
 
 small fort at its junction with the Alleghany, in 1754. 
 It was a far-off land, and known only to a few hunters 
 like Gist. The French claimed the land by right of 
 possession, and simply wiped out the stockade and 
 scattered its occupants. They in turn built a fort, 
 which Captain Contrecoeur called after the Governor 
 of Canada, Duquesne, and meant it, as he said, to 
 become " the great center of the French in all that 
 country." Then came General Braddock upon the 
 scene, as proud as Walpole and as inefficient, to lead 
 his eight thousand men the largest force that had 
 ever been raised in the colonies to a disgraceful panic 
 and massacre. We here get a glimpse of the young 
 Virginian surveyor as he tries to teach the unteach- 
 able general, and then is busy in saving the remnant of 
 the beaten host. It was a foolish, shameful campaign ; 
 but, read backward, and it was all of a piece with the 
 administration of the colonies for years before. 
 
 It was found that the treaty of Utrecht* had 
 omitted to determine the lines of demarcation between 
 the races, especially as to the Iroquois question, and 
 hence came the old French war. 
 
 It helped the downfall of the corrupt English min- 
 istry, and George II., despite his hostility to him, was 
 
 * The treaty of Utrecht (1713) Five Nations were found. The 
 
 determined that " France should treaty shut them off from molesting 
 
 never molest the Five Nations the people who lived on their land, 
 
 subject to the dominion of Great This anomaly the treaty of Aix la 
 
 Britain." The French claimed, ac- Chapelle (1748) failed to appreci- 
 
 cording to a recognized figment of ate and remove. The French 
 
 state policy of that age, by discovery pushed into their lands. The Eng- 
 
 and some spots of possession, all lish appealed in behalf of the peo- 
 
 lands bordering on the lakes, and, pie under their dominion, and a 
 
 therefore, of the lands on which the resort to arms was the result.
 
 52 
 
 compelled by public opinion to summon William Pitt 
 to the head of affairs in 1757. Called to power by 
 the will of the people, and only for the few closing 
 years of an inglorious reign, he nobly fulfilled their 
 expectations. His energetic and wise measures were 
 felt to the remotest point of the empire. The tide of 
 success turned. The men sent to capture Fort Ticon- 
 deroga knew that the Premier, as our boys say, 
 " meant business." Amherst led his army across Lake 
 George to victory, and the French were forced to 
 evacuate Crown Point and leave the lake free to the 
 English. Fully awake to .the importance of the 
 blows about to be struck, the English minister deter- 
 mined to cut the great circle that had been so long 
 forming at the points on the Ohio and on the St. 
 Lawrence. Bradstreet captured Fort Frontenac, on 
 Ontario, and gained the command of the lakes. In 
 1 758, Major Grant made an ineffectual assault on Fort 
 Duquesne, and General Forbes, urged on by Colonel 
 Washington, with six thousand men sat down before 
 it, when, November 25, the French set fire to it, and 
 retreated down the river by its light. 
 
 The next year Admiral Saunders conveyed Gen- 
 eral Wolfe and an army of eight thousand men from 
 Louisburg to besiege Quebec. On June 27th they 
 landed on Orleans Island, and began operations by 
 a useless bombardment of the city. Montcalm looked 
 down on him from the citadel and easily outgeneraled 
 him. The short summer slipped away and the foe 
 was inaccessible, and likely to remain so. Then came 
 to him one of those inspirations which are something 
 more than accidents. Ten years before no English-
 
 53 
 
 man would have dared the venture that Wolfe made. 
 Pitt was behind him, and the prize was a continent. 
 
 On the evening of September i2th, Wolfe, wrap- 
 ped in a boat-cloak, was busy on the river scrutiniz- 
 ing the cliffs to find a path to the summit. It was 
 remembered afterward, that, as the boat was silently 
 drifting under the cliffs in the autumn twilight, Wolfe 
 was busy in dreamland, and full of the tenderness of a 
 poem of his loved England. He was heard to repeat 
 the lines of Gray's "Elegy": 
 
 " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
 Await alike the inevitable hour 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 
 
 He turned to his companion and said : " I had 
 rather be the author of those lines, than be the victor 
 in to-morrow's battle." 
 
 The next day, as Wolfe stood on the Heights of 
 Abraham with his army, the dreamy mood had passed 
 from him. He was the actor, then, in one of the most 
 important scenes of our country's history, and filled 
 the part with honor. The struggle of a century cul- 
 minated where the path of glory had led him up those 
 steeps to an early grave ; but it was also the grave of 
 the dream of Latin power on this side of the Atlantic. 
 Dying, he heard the distant shout of the soldiers : 
 " They run ! they run !" and died happy. The next 
 day died also Montcalm the splendid cavalier, the 
 polished marquis, the chivalrous nobleman, whose 
 name comes to us adorned with many virtues, but also 
 incarnadined by the massacre of Lake George, which
 
 54 
 
 neither the limpid waters there, nor " all great Nep- 
 tune's ocean " can wash " clean "again. On the i8th, 
 Quebec surrendered, and four years afterward Can- 
 ada was ceded to Great Britain. 
 
 The French scheme had failed. The perpetual 
 barrier to its success for a hundred and fifty years, 
 which no religious zeal, nor diplomacy, nor greed, 
 nor threats, nor actual wars could ever abate or re- 
 move, was the friendship of the Iroquois for the 
 Dutch. There is no parallel to it in the colonial 
 records. We suspect that there could not have been 
 one. The men who followed Miles Standish would 
 have treated the Mohawks as they did the Pequods. 
 The Virginians were not exemplary for patience, jus- 
 tice, or forbearance. The Quakers did make an 
 effort after fair treatment, but their virtues were an- 
 tagonisms to the natives. 
 
 If I have fairly sketched the parties and the facts, 
 I now leave you to judge whether I said too much, 
 when I claimed that there was' a manifest Providence 
 in the fact that the Dutch rather than the English 
 first came into possession of the valleys of the Hud- 
 son and the Mohawk, and thus into connection with 
 the Iroquois, gained their lasting friendship and 
 bound them in an iron chain of treaty-faith for a 
 century and a half, till the dying Wolfe heard the 
 shout of victory on the Plains of Abraham.* 
 
 * The same year France lost In- her finances exhausted and her 
 
 dia by the victories of Clive, and commerce destroyed. Her religion 
 
 her navy by the victories of Hawke fared little better. The miserable 
 
 and others, and came out of the king was soon compelled to banish 
 
 war humiliated and crippled, with the Jesuits, and the golden age of in-
 
 55 
 
 And if this be true, must we not honor the virtue 
 of the patient, honest, and industrious race who, not 
 ignorant of evils, learned to pity the miserable and to 
 deal fairly and humanely with them ? While we give 
 a thought of compassionate regret for the splendid 
 athletes who have mostly passed away from the 
 hunting-grounds of their fathers, which were for that 
 period the key of the position, we may leave them 
 with the Judge of all the Earth, and thank God for 
 the rich heritage which the Corlears of the past se- 
 cured for us and for our children, from their friendship. 
 
 fidelity blossomed out, in such men others, and in works like the great 
 as Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and " Dictionnaire Encyclopedique."
 
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