French and Indian War

“ It is called the French and Indian War, because there were many Indians on the side of the French. There were some on the side of the English, also. Indians are very savage and cruel in their way of fighting, as you already know. I shall have to tell you one instance of their love of bloodshed. [114] One of the English forts, called Fort William Henry, which stood at the southern end of Lake George, had to surrender to the French, and its soldiers were obliged to march out and give up their guns. ”

“ The Indians were plyed with gifts and flattered by the French, so that, in the fierce struggle for the possession of America, the red warriors sided, for the most part, with those who held dominion over Canada and the Great Lakes. The English won the war, and thus the wilderness beyond the Allegheny mountains, over which France had claimed sovereignty, passed into the hands of her rival, who, with a force of but five or six hundred men, expected to keep it secure. ”

“ The Five Nations answered:
"We cannot declare War against the Eastern Indians, for they have done us no Harm: Nevertheless our Brethren of New-England may be assured, that we will live and die in Friendship with them. When we took up the Axe against the French and their Confederates, we did it to revenge the Injuries they had done us ”

“ No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the government thirty million dollars, and carried conflagration and death to the border settlements. During the spring and summer of 1865, no less than eight thousand troops were withdrawn from the effective force engaged in suppressing the Rebellion, to meet this Indian war. The result of the year's campaign satisfied all reasonable men that war with Indians was useless and expensive. ”

“ The present Indian war is essentially different from any former one. When Britain and France divided North America betwixt them, if the emissaries of both excited the Indians to war, the power of both afforded protection. When Britain became possessed of the Western posts, and many tribes of Indians commenced a war, the British Government conducted the war, carried it into the Indian country, and by the dread of their arms procured peace ”

“ We have conquered them, on the field, not to usurp territory, but to place them in a condition to observe how much more their interests and permanent prosperity would be, and have ever been, promoted by the plough than the sword. And there has been a prompt recurrence, at every mutation from war to peace, punctually, to that fine sentiment embraced in the first article of the first treaty ever made between the American government and the Indian tribes, namely, that all offences and animosities "shall be mutually forgiven, and buried in deep oblivion, and never more be had in remembrance." ”

“ White men—some of them not even citizens of the United States—in violation of law enter the Indian reservation, steal the Indians’ ponies, drive off their cattle, shoot down a few of the Indians for resisting them, or perhaps for the mere fun of the thing. The Indians, maddened by the wrongs inflicted upon them, go on the war-path. ”

“ Perhaps he thought he was strong enough, for the hour, to defeat them in any attempt at an outbreak. But it is not strength so much as strategy which is needed in Indian warfare. To whip the Indians, we must become Indians in our plan and conduct of battle. The civilization and mathematics of war, as practised by cultivated people, are useless in the wilderness, and all our proud and boasted tactics are mere foolish toying and trifling—a waste of time, strength, and opportunity. No one doubts that if our troops could meet the Indians in open field, they would slaughter them like rats ”

“ In a word, the Indian has always been a formidable savage, treacherous, cruel, and cunning to an extreme degree, no doubt, but a desperate and dogged fighter, with a natural instinct for war. It must be remembered, too, that he was far more formidable in 1790 than he is to-day, with the ever-rising tide of civilized population flowing upon him and hemming him in. When the Constitution came into being, the Indians were pretty well out of the Atlantic States, but beyond the Alleghanies all was theirs, and they had the unbroken wilderness as their ally and their refuge. ”

“ The fact is, however, that this condition of things is one unavoidably growing out of the clashing of adverse interests—the Indians being anxious to check, we to extend our dominion and power as a people; and the causes existing now, were in being nearly a century ago, and will, in all probability, continue until all vestige of Indian existence shall have passed utterly away. ”

“ And the Indians, William! Only think of going within sound of the Indian war-whoop!”
“The Indians are in a very different state now,” he replied, “from what they were when the Puritan women followed their husbands into the wilderness of this new world. They are few in numbers now. Their spirit has been tamed by accumulated wrongs, and they are too well aware of the power of the United States’ government, to make any aggressions upon those who are under its protection. Besides, you know it is my opinion that the Indians never would have made unprovoked aggressions. ”

“ Nor can the civil population be trusted to keep arms, much less to{37} manufacture them. Much fuss has been made over the Indians having been allowed to participate in the European War. The Indians have gone mad over the incident, as if that were the greatest boon that could be conferred on them. The truth is that the step was actuated by and taken purely in British interests. Without the Indian contingent Great Britain could not send a decent expeditionary force to France. The whole of the white army could not be removed from India. ”

“ Even the trade with the Indians living a thousand miles inland was changed in favour of the British and against the French, as all the guns and knives and beads and everything else that the white man offered to the Indian in exchange for his furs had to come across the sea, which was just like an enemy's country to every French ship, but just like her own to every British one. ”

“ To this cause was to be ascribed any disposition which might exist on the part of the Indians to continue hostilities, and to its removal the efforts of the government ought to be directed.
But, admitting the war to have been just in its commencement, and its continuance to be required by the honour and interest of the nation, yet as an invasion of the Indian country ought not to be attempted, this augmentation of the military establishment could not be necessary. Regular troops could only be useful as garrisons for posts to which the militia might resort for protection or supplies. ”

“ With the conquest of Canada and the expulsion of France as a military power from the continent, the English colonists were abounding in loyalty to the mother country, were exultant in the expectation of peace, and in the assurance of immunity from Indian wars in the future; for it did not seem possible that, with the loose system of organization and government common to the Indians, they could plan and execute a general campaign without the co–operation of the French as leaders. ”

“ In spite of the counter strokes of the wild wood-rangers, the Indian ravages speedily wrapped the frontier in fire and blood. In such a war the small parties were really the most dangerous, and in the aggregate caused most damage. It is less of a paradox than it seems, to say that one reason why the Indians were so formidable in warfare was because they were so few in numbers. Had they been more numerous they would perforce have been tillers of the soil, and it would have been far easier for the whites to get at them. ”

“ At war the Indians are under the control of the military, at peace under the control of the civil officers. Exactly what constitutes Indian hostilities is not agreed on; and, besides this, as soon as the military forces, after a hard campaign, conducted with great hardship and at large expense, have succeeded in forcing the Indians into such a position that punishment is possible, the Indian, seeing the result and the impossibility of avoiding it, immediately proclaims his wish to make peace. ”

“ We will have a sort of predatory war for years, every now and then be shocked by the indiscriminate murder of travellers and settlers, but the country is so large, and the advantage of the Indians so great, that we cannot make a single war and end it. From the nature of things we must take chances and clean out Indians as we encounter them." Although it was the tendency of military control to provoke Indian wars, the army was near the truth in its notion that Indians and whites could not live together. ”

“ It may be a question likewise, whether colonization of the kind could be effected without an Indian war, and fighting for every inch of ground. The Indians have long been jealous of our power, and have no patience in seeing us approach their towns, and settle up on their hunting grounds; atonements may be made for a fraud discovered in a trader, and even the murder of some of their tribes, but encroachments upon their lands have often produced serious consequences. The springs of the last general war are to be discovered near the Allegany mountains, and upon the banks of the Ohio. ”

“ To precipitate a conflict by striking the Indians unnecessarily would in the unprotected condition of the settlers have been a crime, while to let the Indians escape to carry on in unbroken force an Indian warfare would have been worse. ”

“ Such a force would drive all the Indians between the Yellowstone and the British line to their agencies, with little, if any, loss of life. If the humanitarians would end the war with the least possible shedding of blood, this is the way to do it. When such a display of force is made as makes resistance hopeless—and the Indian will be quick to see it—there will be an end of Indian wars and we may begin the work of civilization in earnest. ”

“ And if, after all, we should meet with some Trouble from the Indians of Canada, might it not be effectually prevented, by playing our Indians upon them, as they do theirs upon us? And would not the Charge of all this be a Trifle, compared with that of defending ourselves in Time of War? But if we neglect them, and take no Measures to cultivate Friendship with them, and especially if we deal injuriously by them, shall we not put an Advantage into the Hands of the French (which they will not fail of improving) to engage them in their Interest, and to employ them against us in Time of War? ”

“ While we bear any cool premeditated acts of Indian hostility with that crouching base behaviour, such passive conduct will serve only to tempt the Indians to advance in their favourite science of blood, and commence a general war. ”

“ Congress also voted $20,000 to defray the expenses of negotiations with the Indians. But tribes both at the North and the South were then making trouble, regardless of their treaties. Instigated and supplied with arms by the British on the Northern frontier, they kept up a steady and destructive warfare. In our war with the Creeks, in 1793, we used Indian allies against Indians. Our treaties with England and Spain, in 1794 and 1795, for the most part cut the natives off from receiving foreign aid, and left them for a time wholly to us. ”

“ Therefore most of the Indians took sides with the French; and therefore most of the scalps lifted were British scalps. The question of the barbarity of Indian warfare remains. The Indians were in fact living the same sort of barbarous life that the ancestors of the French and British had lived two or three thousand years earlier. So the Indians did, of course, just what the French and the British would have done at a corresponding age. Peoples take centuries to grow into civilized nations ”

“ The United States authorities vainly sought peace; while the British instigated the tribes to war, and the savages themselves never thought of ceasing their hostilities. The frontiersmen also wished war, and regarded the British and Indians with an equal hatred. They knew that the presence of the British in the Lake Posts meant Indian war; they knew that the Indians would war on them, whether they behaved well or ill, until the tribes suffered some signal overthrow ”

“ They may settle about the reservation, and we may not be able to prevent their committing some wrong. If they should commit wrong on the Indians, we fear you would commit some wrong against them in retaliation. Then the white people and the Indians might have a great war. There are great numbers of white people, and we fear they would exterminate the Indian. This we wish to prevent. Our hearts are with the Indians, and, as law-makers, we wish to protect them. ”

“ But the difficulties between the two nations, already referred to, now daily becoming more serious, and threatening, at no distant day, a resort to the ultima ratio regum, had wrought a decided change in the views of the Canadian authorities respecting an Indian pacification. In the event of a war, the Indians would again be found valuable auxiliaries to the arms of his Majesty, for the annoyance they would inflict upon the United States, if not by reason of any important victories they might gain. ”

“ It is evident that these very liberal rewards must have operated as a frequent cause of Indian wars, and made the colonists open-eared to tales of native outrages; indeed the whites sometimes disguised themselves like Indians, and robbed like Indians, in order, it would appear, the more effectually to raise the war-cry against them. ”