CHAPTER IV. 1700-1755. COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES. THE people of the northern English colonies had learned to regard their Canadian neighbors with the bitterest enmity. With them, the very name of Canada called up horrible recollections and ghastly images: the midnight massacre of Schenectady, and the desolation of many a New England hamlet; blazing dwellings and reeking scalps; and children snatched from their mothers' arms, to be immured in convents and trained up in the abominations of Popery. To the sons of the Puritans, their enemy was doubly odious. They hated him as a Frenchman, and they hated him as a Papist. Hitherto he had waged his murderous warfare from a distance, wasting their settlements with rapid onsets, fierce and transient as a summer storm; but now, with enterprising audacity, he was intrenching himself on their very borders. The English hunter, in the lonely wilderness of Vermont, as by the warm glow of sunset he piled the spruce boughs for his woodland bed, started as a deep, low sound struck faintly on his ear, the evening gun of. Fort Frederic, booming over lake and forest. The erection of this fort, better known among the English as Crown Point, was a piece of daring encroachment which justly kindled resentment in the northern colonies. But it was not here that the immediate occasion of a final rupture was to arise. By an article of the treaty of Utrecht, confirmed by that of Aix-la-Chapelle, Acadia had been ceded to England; but scarcely was the latter treaty signed, when debates sprang up touching the limits of the ceded province. Commissioners were named on either side to adjust the disputed boundary; but the claims of the rival powers proved utterly irreconcilable, and all negotiation was fruitless.1 Meantime, the French and English forces in Acadia began to assume a belligerent attitude, and indulge their ill blood in mutual aggression and reprisal. But while this game was played on the coasts of the Atlantic, interests of far greater moment were at stake in the west. The people of the middle colonies, placed by their local position beyond reach of the French, had heard with great composure of the sufferings of their New England brethren, and felt little concern at a danger so doubtful and remote. There were those among them, however, who with greater foresight had been quick to perceive the ambitious projects of the rival 1 Garneau, book viii. chap. iii. 2 Holmes, Annals, ii. 183. Mémoire contenant Le Précis des Faits. Pièces Justificatives, part i. nation; and, as early as 1716, Spotswood, governor of Virginia, had urged the expediency of securing the valley of the Ohio by a series of forts and settlements. His proposal was coldly received, and his plan fell to the ground. The time at length was come when the danger was approaching too near to be slighted longer. In 1748, an association, called the Ohio Company, was formed with the view of making settlements in the region beyond the Alleghanies; and two years later, Gist, the company's surveyor, to the great disgust of the Indians, carried chain and compass down the Ohio as far as the falls at Louisville. But so dilatory were the English that before any effectual steps were taken, their agile enemies appeared upon the scene. In the spring of 1753, the middle provinces were startled at the tidings that French troops had crossed Lake Erie, fortified themselves at the point of Presqu'isle, and pushed forward to the northern branches of the Ohio. Upon this, Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, resolved to despatch a message requiring their removal from territories which he claimed as belonging to the British Crown; and looking about him for the person best qualified to act as messenger, he made choice of George Washington, a young man 1 Smollett, iii. 370 (Edinburgh, 1805). 2 Sparks, Life and Writings of Washington, ii. 478. Gist's Journal. 8 Olden Time, ii. 9, 10. This excellent antiquarian publication contains documents relating to this period which are not to be found elsewhere. twenty-one years of age, adjutant-general of the Virginian militia. Washington departed on his mission, crossed the mountains, descended to the bleak and leafless valley of the Ohio, and thence continued his journey up the banks of the Alleghany until the fourth of December. On that day he reached Venango, an Indian town on the Alleghany, at the mouth of French Creek. Here was the advanced post of the French; and here, among the Indian log-cabins and huts of bark, he saw their flag flying above the house of an English trader, whom the military intruders had unceremoniously ejected. They gave the young envoy a hospitable reception,1 and referred him to the commanding officer, whose headquarters were at Le Boeuf, a fort which they had just built on French Creek, some distance above Venango. Thither Washington repaired, and on his arrival was received with stately courtesy by the officer, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, whom he describes as an elderly gentleman of very soldier 1 "He invited us to sup with them, and treated us with the greatest complaisance. The wine, as they dosed themselves pretty plentifully with it, soon banished the restraint which at first appeared in their conversation, and gave a license to their tongues to reveal their sentiments more freely. They told me that it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and by G-d they would do it; for that, although they were sensible the English could raise two men for their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any undertaking of theirs. They pretend to have an undoubted right to the river from a discovery made by one La Salle, sixty years ago; and the rise of this expedition is, to prevent our settling on the river or waters of it, as they heard of some families moving out in order thereto.". Washington Journal. like appearance. To the message of Dinwiddie, Saint-Pierre replied that he would forward it to the governor-general of Canada; but that, in the mean time, his orders were to hold possession of the country, and this he should do to the best of his ability. With this answer Washington, through all the rigors of the midwinter forest, retraced his steps, with one attendant, to the English borders. With the first opening of spring, a newly-raised company of Virginian backwoodsmen, under Captain Trent, hastened across the mountains, and began to build a fort at the confluence of the Monongahela and Alleghany, where Pittsburg now stands; when suddenly they found themselves invested by a host of French and Indians, who, with sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes, had descended from Le Bœuf and Venango.1 The English were ordered to evacuate the spot; and, being quite unable to resist, they obeyed the summons, and withdrew in great discomfiture towards Virginia. Meanwhile Washington, with another party of backwoodsmen, was advancing from the borders; and, hearing of Trent's disaster, he resolved to fortify himself on the Monongahela, and hold his ground, if possible, until fresh troops could arrive to support him. The French sent out a scouting party under M. Jumonville, with the design, probably, of watching his movements; but, on a dark and stormy night, Washington surprised them, as they lay lurking in a rocky glen not far from his 1 Sparks, Life and Writings of Washington, ii. 6. |