Winnebago County, Wisconsin - Chapter 14, 1880

War Between the French and English Colonies - The Aggressors - Destruction of Port Royal - Terrible Massacre of English Settlers on the Frontier - Frontinae Ravages the Iroquois Country - That Nation Sues for Peace with the French - Detroit Founded - The French in Possession of the Country from the St. Lawrence to the Uulf of Mexico.

^T is not within the province of a work of this kind, to discuss the European complications, which were partly the cause of the war between the French and English colonies in North America; a war which exposed the innocent and defenseless frontier settlers of both colonies to all the horrors of savage warfare; but those subjects of the strife, involving historical events in the Northwest, are very pertinent to our present inquiries, and will be briefly considered.

It has been shown in the preceeding pages, how the daring enterprise of the French commenced the settlement of the Northern part of the country, prior to any other people. In the language of Farkman: "Long before the ice-coated pines of Plymouth had listened to the rugged psalmody of the Puritans, the solitudes of Western New York and the shaddowy wilderness of Lake Huron were trodden by the iron heel of the soldier and the sandalled foot of the Franciscan friar. France was the true pioneer of the Great West. They who bore the Fletir de lis were always in the van, patient, daring, indomitable; and foremost on this bright roll of forest-chivalry, stands the half-forgotten name oi Saiiiiiel de Cliainplain." The French, as has been shown, endeavored to peaceably occupy the country conjointly with the Indians, and to raise the savages from the depths of barbarous brutality to the plane of Christian and civilized morals; to release them from the terrible tribal wars that were continually desolating the land with their ravages, and to unite them in the blessed bonds of peace and brotherly amit)-. Their efforts were peaceful, benign and nobly magnanimous, and furnish, at least, one chapter in the cruel history of the world that sheds a luster reflected from the nobler and better qualities of the human heart.

Seventy years after Jaques Cartier and Roberval's attempted colonization on the St. Lawrence, we find a little French colony at Anapolis, Nova Scotia (then called Acadia). There were then no other civilized beings on the continent north, of the Spanish possessions in Florida.

The little colony peacefully occupying their new possessions, and enjoying the friendship of the Indians, lived for several years in the greatest tranquility. They cleared up and culi6o7.]

tivated large tracts of ground. The bountiful waters yielded an ample supply of fish, and the forests abounded in game. The beautiful Bay of Anapolis and its charming slopes of verdure, with its cozy little hamlet, was a scene of peaceful content. They joined the Indians in hunting and fishing parties, and the lodges of the latter were always found in neighborly proximity to their white friends. The weather was so mild in the winter of 1607, that Lescarbot says: "I remember that on the fourteenth day of January, on a Sunday afternoon, we amused ourselves with singing and music, on the river Equille, and that in the same month we went to see the wheat-fields, two leagues from the fort, and dined merrily in the sunshine. "

But this peaceful scene was now to be converted into one of havoc and desolation. One Samuel Argall, commander of a large English armed vessel, the same who afterward treacherously kidnapped Pocahontas, after she had saved the life of Smith, suddenly appeared in the harbor of Anapolis. She carried fourteen guns and sixty men, and was accompanied by two other small vessels which she had formerly captured from the French, and was now sent by the Governor of Virginia, who claimed the territory as a British possession. The invasion was unauthorized by every law of nations; for the two powers were at peace, and the French had been in possession long before the English had a settlement in America.

The settlement at Port Royal was tenantless when Argall's ships sailed into the harbor. Biencourt, the Commander, with a number of his men, was at the village of a neighboring tribe. The balance of the men were reaping their harvest in the fields, two leagues from the fort.

The assailants found no one to resist them. They first captured the animals and killed them, carrying the carcasses on board the- ships. They then plundered the fort and buildings, and afterwards applied the torch, laying the whole in ashes. They then went in boats up the river, and destroyed the grain fields.

They were re-embarking when Biencourt and his small band arrived on the scene of destruction. Although largely outnumbered, he tried to lure Argall and his followers to the shore, but his efforts were vain. His word of honor being given, an interview was obtained. Biencourt, who was a young man, raved furiously, and threatened future reprisal on the English.

houseless in the forests. They had endured great privations through the winter, sustaining life frequently for days at a time on roots dug in the woods.

Port Royal was rebuilt and again occupied by the French. This was the beginning of the strife between the French and English. The latter were the aggressors again, in the capture of Quebec, when it was in a most forlorn and defenseless condition, and surrendered by Champlain and his little half-starved band. But this rapacious power was obliged to disavow the acts of its agents, and restore the control of the country to its lawful posessors. The continued aggressions of the English Government at last involved the colonies in war, which resulted in the expulsion of the Acadians from what is now Nova Scotia. One of the most merciless and malignantly cruel acts recorded in history, and of which Bancroft says: "I know not if the annals of the human race keep the record of sorrows so wantonly inflicted, so bitter and perrennial as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia. " This pitiful event is the theme of Longfellow's beautiful poem, Evangeline.

The two great powers that attempted to hold this continent as a fuedal dependency, were both destined to lose the prize they grasped at; for the very forces which England invoked to assist her, viz., the English colonies, were the mixed races inhabiting the sea coast; and if these, through superior numbers and resources, did overcome the French, it was not that the flag of St. George might wave triumphant, but that it should be supplanted by the new banner representing a free people; a flag which France helped to crown with victory at the glorious battle of Yorktown. If the Finer dc lis had to yield its supremacy in America, and bend to remorseless destiny, it was not to see the flag of its hated rival take its place, but it was to be gloriously associated forever with the great event which gave birth to a mighty Republic.

In the struggle between the French and the English colonies, the French labored under such disadvantages that the result of the contest could not be doubtful. Bancroft declares: "If the issue had depended on the condition of the colonies, it could hardly have seemed doubtful. The French census for the North American continent in 1688 showed but eleven thousand two hundred and forty-nine; scarcely a tenth part of the English population on its frontiers. " the country, by the Iroquois, and the French had largely exhausted their energies and resources in endeavors to suppress those enemies to peace, and in protecting the other nations. They had been partially successful and several times had brought that war-like nation to submission; and now all of their work was to be overthrown, by the English making an alliance with the Iroquois, and furnishing them with arms and means to resist the French and the Algonquin allies of the latter. In the vast territory to be guarded, there were only three or four defensive posts west of Montreal. Those were Forts Frontenac, Niagara, St. Louis, on Starve Rock, in the Illinois countr)-, St. Ignace, near Mackinaw, and the Mission at Green Bay.

The English had sent the secret wampum belt, not only to the Iroquois, but their emmissaries had passed as far west as our Fox River, and tampered with the troublesome Foxes and Sauks, the only Algonquin tribes against which the French ever waged war. It was expected by the English, that through the instrumentality of the Foxes, a league might be effected with the other nations of the West; but the attempt failed, and the other Algonquin nations remained the steadfast friends of the French. The desperate situation of the French was not only discouraging, but seemed absolutely hopeless. They did not number one-tenth of the compact population of the English colonies, which were comparatively safe, except on the frontier, while the French were exposed on all points, except at Quebec and Montreal.

On the twenty-fifth of August, 1689, fifteen hundred Iroquois, well armed, secreted themselves, dui ing the night, on the Isle of Montreal, and at daybreak attacked La Chine. The inhabitants were awakened by the noisy warwhoop, whose ominous sound foretold their fearful doom. The houses were set on fire, and a general slaughter ensued, in which neither age, sex or condition was spared. In an hour over two hundred were massacred and the place reduced to ashes. They next attacked Montreal, and, after a struggle, obtained possession of the fort, and became masters of the island.

In this emergency, a band of brothers, De Sainte Helene and D'Iberville, came to the rescue. They distinguished themselves through marvelous exploits and heroic adventures that have made their names famous. In 1686 they had conquered the English posts from Fort Rupert to Albany River; and now, at the head of a force of P"rench and Indians, they marched for the English settlements. Cocheco was first reached. At this point, thirteen years before some three hundred Indians had been treacherously captured by the English, and shipped to Boston, where they were sold into foreign slavery. The memory of this wrong rankled in the breasts of the remainder of the nation, and they were eager for revenge. As usual, in such instances, the innocent, unoffending frontier settlers suffered for the atrocious wrong done by the guilty parties.

The settlers at this point were all slain or captured. The stockade at Pemaquid, on the Penobscot, next captured, and the Indians, dividing into war-parties, scoured the country, and mercilessly massacred the English settlers.

In September, commissioners from New England met the Mohawks in council, for the purpose of perfecting the alliance between them. The Indians boasted of their serviceable achievements in behalf of the English. "We have burned Montreal," they said; "we are allies of the English and will keep the chain unbroken. "

A party of a hundred P"rench and Indians after twenty days travel reached the vicinity of Schenectady. At midnight they stealthily entered the picketed enclosure, and the sleeping inhabitants were awakened by the yells of the invaders. A dreadful scene of massacre ensued.

" The party from Three Rivers, led by Hertel, and consisting of but fifty-two persons, of whom three were his sons, and two his nephews, surprised the settlement at Salmon Falls, on the Piscataqua, and, after a bloody engagement, burned house; 1 barns, and cattle in the stalls, and took fifty-four prisoners, chiefly women and children. The prisoners were laden by the victors with spoils from their own houses. Robert Rogers rejecting his burden, was bound by the Indians to a tree, and dry leaves kindled about him, yet in such heaps as would burn but slowly. Mary Furguson, a girl of fifteen, burst into tears from fatigue, and was scalped forthwith. Mehetabel Goodwin would linger apart in the snow to lull her infant to sleep, lest its cries should provoke the savages: angry at the delay, her master struck the child against a tree, and hung it among the branches. The infant of Mary Plaisted was thrown into the river, that, eased of her burden, she might walk faster. "

" While the people of New England and New York were concerting the grand enterprise of the reduction of Canada, the French had, by their successes, inspired the savages with respect, and renewed their intercourse with the West But, in August, Montreal became alarmed. An Indian announced that an army of Iroquois and English was busy in constructing canoes on Lake George ; and immediately Frontenac himself placed the hatchet in the hands of his allies, and, with the tomahawk in his own grasp, old as he was, chanted the warsong, and danced the wac-dance." - Bancroft.

Military expeditions were now fitted out in New England and sent to Canada, and a large fleet from Boston started to aid in the reduction of Quebec. These were repulsed, and the English colonies, found themselves even unable to defend their own frontier. Their borders were scenes of sorrows, horrors, captivity and death. The heart sickens in the contemplation of the terrible massacres of the defenseless settlers.

The Algonquins were e.xasperated at the former treachery and bad treatment they had received at the hands of the English authorities. From Virginia to Acadia, the Indians regarded the English with implacable hatred. The kidnapping of Pocahontas by Argall; his destruction of Port Royal; the treacherous capture of friendly Indians by the hundred, for the purpose of selling them into foreign slavery, and the many wrongs they had sustained, rankled in their breasts as bitter memories.

It must be remembered, too, that the Indian is a bloodthirsty savage, in time of war, who neitherasks nor grants quarter. He is a bitter, relentless foe, with neither pity nor remorse.

The French have been censured by some writers, for the atrocities committed by their Indian allies; but it ought to be remembered that the course of the French had been peaceful up to the time of the aggressions of the English, and that the French forces did not number one-tenth of those of the English; that the latter first instigated the Indians to make war on the French, and armed the Iroquois, preparatory to their massacre of La Chine.

The French were, therefore, compelled to have recourse to their Indians allies, as a means of self-defense. There is no question that the English authorities, knowing the defenseless situation of the French, the paucity of their numbers, the weakened condition of the Algonquin allies, and the formidable power of the Iroquois, which threatened them at every point, believed that they could make an easy conquest of the whole French possessions. That they did not do so, under such circumstances, must be a wonder to every discriminating reader of the history of that struggle.

English historians, in commenting bitterly on the conduct of the French, seem perfectly oblivious of the fact, that after England's conquest of the country, through the valorand enterprise of the mixed races who inhabited the English colonies, and who suffered untold miseries and horrors, on account of the perfidy and incompetency of their aristocratic rulers, she next attempted to subject them to her unjust demands; and when they resisted her tyrannous authority, she set the Indians upon her

Having defeated the English and driven in the frontier settlers, Frontenac next turned his attention to the Iroquois. La Motte Cadillac, Governorat Michilimakinac, had, at the head of the Chippewas, Pottawattamies and Ottawas, made avigorousresistance to the Iroquois, in the West, routing them at all points, and driving their marauding bands out of the country; and now, that the English had been repulsed, the French, as victors, were e.xalted in their eyes. Frontenac, therefore, resolved to pursue his advantage, and teach them a lasting lesson. At the head of a large body of French and Indians, he marched for the country of the F'ive Nations. He was at this time seventyfour years of age, but he conducted the army in person. F'rom Fort Frontenac he proceeded to Oswego, and ascended the river; arriving at the rapids, the canoes were carried over the portage at night by torch-light. The next day they found the Indian defiance - two bundles of reeds suspended in a tree - signifying that fourteen hundred warriors defied them. When they reached the villages of the Onondagas it was night. The inhabitants, on their approach, applied the torch, and the invaders witnessed the conflagration of the village. The Iroquois fled in all directions, and the invading army ravaged the country, destroying the growing crops and taking many prisoners. The army then returned to Montreal. The Indians had been humbled, and left to suffer from the effects of famine. They were now experiencing some of the evils they -had so mercilessly inflicted on their Algonquin neighbors.

By the year 1700, the Five Nations were glad to seek for peace. They sent envoys to Montreal, "to weep for the French who had died in the war, "and a treaty of peace and alliance was concluded.

In 1701 , LaMotte Cadillac, with onehundred Frenchmen, built a fort and trading-post at Detroit, and took possession of the beautiful surrounding country. Two years previous to this, D'Iberville set sail for the mouth of the Mississippi, at which place he subsequently established a colony.

The French were now in the possession of the country from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and the trade with the Northwest, through the lakes and rivers was uninterrupted.