Houston County, Minnesota - Chapter 10: Effect of the English and French War, 1882

Chapter 10: Effect of the English and French War

CnfUsh Influence Increasing. - Le Due Bobbed at Lake Superior. - St. Pierre at Mackinaw. - Escape of Indian1 Prisoners. - La Ronde and Yerendrye. - Influence of Sieor Marin. - St Pierre Recalled from Winnipeg Region. - Interview with Washington. - Langlade Urges Attack Upon Troops of Braddock. - Saint Pierre Killed in Battle. - Marin's Boldness. - Rogers, a Partisan Ranger, Commands at Mackinaw. - At Tieonderoga. - French Deliver up the Posts in Canada. -Capt Balfour Takes Possession of Mackinaw and Green Bar. - Lieut. Oorrell in Com. mend it Green Bay. - Sioux Visit Green Bay. - Pennensha a French Trader Among the Sioux. - Treaty of Paris.

English influence produced increasing dissatisfaction among the Indians that were beyond Mackinaw. Not only were the voyageurs robbed and maltreated at Sault St. Marie and other points on Lake Superior, but even the commandant at Mackinaw was exposed to insolence, and there was no security anywhere.

On the twenty-third of August, 1747, Philip Le Due arrived at Mackinaw from Lake Superior, stating that he had been robbed of his goods at Kamanistigoya, and that the Ojibways of the lake were favorably disposed toward the English. The Dahkotahs were also becoming unruly in the absence of French officers.

In a few weeks after Le Due's robbery, St Pierre left Montreal to become commandant at Mackinaw, and Vercheres was appointed for the post at Green Bay. In the language of a document of the day, St. Pierre was " a very good officer, much esteemed among all the nations of those parts ; none more loved and feared.97 On his arrival, the savages were so cross, that he advised that no Frenchman should come to trade.

By promptness and boldness, he secured the Indians who had murdered some Frenchmen, and obtained the respect of the tribes. While the three murderers were being conveyed in a canoe down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, in charge of a sergeant and seven soldiers, the savages, with characteristic cunning, though manacled, succeeded in killing or drowning the guard. Cutting their irons with an axe, they sought the woods, and escaped to their own country. "Thus," writes Galassoniere, in 1748, to Count Maurepas, was lost in a great measure the fruit of Sieur St. Pierre's good management, and of all the fatigue I endured to get the nations who surrendered these rascals to listen to reason."

Under the influence of Sieur Marin, who was in command at Green Bay in 1763, peaceful relations were in a measure restored between the French and Indians.

As the war between England and France deepened, the officers of the distant French posts were called in and stationed nearer the enemy. Legardeur St. Pierre, was brought from the Lake Winnipeg region, and, in December, 1763, was in command of a rude post near Erie, Pennsylvania. Langlade, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, arrived early in July, 1756, at Fort Duquesne. With Beauyeu and De Lignery, who had been engaged in fighting the Fox Indians, he left that fort, at nine o'clock of the morning of the 9th of July, and, a little after noon, came near the English, who had halted on the south shore of the Monongahela, and were at dinner, with their arms stacked. By the urgent entreaty of Langlade, the western half-breed, Beauyeu, the officer in command ordered an attack, and Braddock was overwhelmed, and Washington was obliged to say, " We have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of Frenchmen."

Under Baron Dieskau, St. Pierre commanded the Indians, in September, 1766, during the campaign near Lake George, where he fell gallantly fighting the English, as did his commander. The Rev. Claude Coquard, alluding to the French defeat, in a letter to his brother, remarks:

" We lost, on that occasion, a brave officer, M. de St. Pierre, and had his advice, as well as that of several other Canadian officers, been followed, Jonckson [Johnson] was irretrievably destroyed,

Other officers who had been stationed on the borders of Minnesota also distinguished themselves during the French war. The Marquis Montcalm, in camp at Ticonderoga, on the twenty-seventh of July, 1757, writes to Vaudreuil, Governor of Canada:

" Lieutenant Marin, of the Colonial troops, who has exhibited a rare audacity, did not consider himself bound to halt, although his detachment of about four hundred men was reduced to about two hundred, the balance having been sent back on account of inability to follow. He carried off a patrol of ten men, and swept away an ordinary guard of fifty like a wafer; went up to the enemy's camp, under Fort Lydias (Edward), where he was exposed to a severe fire, and retreated like a warrior. He was unwilling to amuse himself making prisoners; he brought in only one, and thirty-two scalps, and must have killed many men of the enemy, in the midst of whose ranks it was neither wise nor prudent to go in search of scalps. The Indians generally all behaved well. * * * The Outaouais, who arrived with me, and whom I designed to go on a scouting party towards the lake, had conceived a project of administering a corrective to the English barges. * * * On the day before yesterday, your brother formed a detachment to accompany them. I arrived at his camp on the evening of the same day. Lieutenant de Corbiere, of the Colonial troops, was returning, in consequence of a misunderstanding, and as I knew the zeal and intelligence of that officer, I made him set out with a new instruction to join Messrs de Langlade and Hertel de Chantly. They remained in ambush all day and night yesterday; at break of day the English appeared on Lake St. Sacrament, to the number of twenty-two barges, under the command of Sieur Parker. The whoops of our Indians impressed them with such terror that they made but feeble resistance, and only two barges escaped.7'

After De Corbiere's victory on Lake Champlain, a large French army was collected at Ticonderoga, with which there were many Indians from the tribes of the Northwest, and the Ioways appeared for the first time in the east.

Pierre, Lusignan, Marin, Langlade, and others, became the pioneers of the British, a few years afterwards, in the occupation of the outposts of the lakes, and in the exploration of Minnesota.

Rogers, the celebrated captain of rangers, subsequently commander of Mackinaw, and Jonathan Carver, the first British explorer of Minnesota, were both on duty near Lake Champlain, the latter narrowly escaping at the battle of Fort George.

On Christmas eve, 1757, Rogers approached Fort Ticonderoga, to fire the outhouses, but was prevented by discharge of the cannons of the French.

He contented himself with killing fifteen beeves, on the horns of one of which he left this laconic and amusing note, addressed to the commander of the post:

I am obliged to you, Sir, for the repose you have allowed me to take; I thank you for tlie fresh meat you have sent me, I request you to present my compliments to the Marquis du Montcalm."

On the thirteenth of March, 1758, Durantaye, formerly at Mackinaw, had a skirmish with Rogers. Both had been trained on the frontier, and they met " as Greek met Greek." The conflict was fierce, and the French victorious. The Indian allies, finding a scalp of a chief underneath an officer's jacket, we^e furious, and took one hundred and fourteen scalps in return. When the French returned, they supposed that Captain Rogers was among the killed.

On the eighth of September, 1760, the French delivered up all their posts in Canada. A few days after the capitulation at Montreal, Major Rogers was sent with English troops, to garrison the posts of the distant Northwest.

On the eighth of September, 1761, a year after the surrender, Captain Balfour, of the eightieth regiment of the British army, left Detroit, with a detachment to take possession of the French forts at Mackinaw and Green Bay. Twenty-five soldiers were left at Mackinaw, in command of Lieutenant Leslie, and the rest sailed to Green Bay, under Lieutenant Gorrell of the Royal

Pennen8Ha Whites A Letter For The Sioux

Americans, where they arrived on the twelfth of October. The fort had been abandoned for several years, and was in a dilapidated condition. In charge of it there was left a lieutenant, a corporal, and fifteen soldiers. Two English traders arrived at the same time, McKay from Albany, and Goddard from Montreal.

" On March 1, 1763, twelve warriors of the Sous -came here. It is certainly the greatest nation of Indians ever yet found. Not above two thousand of them were ever armed with firearms ; the rest depending entirely on bows and arrows, which they use with more skill than any other Indian nation in America. They can shoot the wildest and largest beasts in the woods at seventy or one hundred yards distant. They are remarkable for their dancing, and the other nations take the fashions from them. ***** This nation is always at war with the Chippewas, those who destroyed Mishamakinak. They told me with warmth that if ever the Chippewas or any other Indians wished to obstruct the passage of the traders coming up, to send them word, and they would come and cut them off from the face of the earth ; as all Indians were their slaves or dogs. I told them I was glad to see them, and hoped to have a lasting peace with them. They then gave me a letter wrote in French, and two belts of wampum from their king, in which he expressed great joy on hearing of there being English at his post. The letter was written by a French trader whom I had allowed to go among them last fall, with a promise of his behaving well ; which he did, better than any Canadian I ever knew. ***** With regard to traders, I would not allow any to go amongst them, as I then understood they lay out of the government of Canada, but made no doubt they would have traders from the Mississippi in the spring. They went away extremely well pleased. June 14th, 1763, the traders came down from the Sack country, and confirmed the news of Landsing and his son being killed by the French. There came with the traders some Puans, and four young men with one chief of the Avoy [Ioway] nation, to demand traders. *****

41 On the nineteenth, a deputation of Winnebagoes, Sacs, Foxes and Menominees arrived with a Frenchman named Pennensha. This Pennensha is the same man who wrote the letter the Sous brought with them in French, and at the same time held council with that great nation in favour of the English, by which he much promoted the interest of the latter, as appeared by the behaviour of the Sous. He brought with him a pipe from the Sous, desiring that as the road is now clear, they would by no means allow the Chippewas to obstruct it, or give the English any disturbance, or prevent the traders from coming up to them. If they did so they would send all their warriors and cut them off."

By the treaty of Paris of 1763, France ceded to Great Britain all of the country east of the Mississippi, and to Spain the whole of Louisiana, so that the latter power for a time held the whole region between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean, and that portion of the city of Minneapolis known as the East Division was then governed by the British, while the West Division was subject to the Spanish code.