c Mr. Mrs. ederick Lockwood Lipman Presented by Robert L. Lipman LX Jilt. jFtfifue a {totortcal THE, DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. With Maps. 2 vols. crown 8vo, $4.00. OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS. 2 vls crown 8vo, $4.00. IU ^ tra ^ d Edition Wit h Portraits, Facsimiles, etc. a vols. ovo, $8.00, net. THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND, or the Puri tan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty. Crown 8vo, $2.00. Illustrated Edition. Containing Portraits, Maps, Facsimiles, Contemporary Views, Prints, and other Historic Materials 8vo, $4.00, net. THE DUTCH AND QUAKER COLONIES IN AMER ICA. With 8 Maps. 2 vols. crown 8vo, $4.00. Illustrated Edition. Containing Portraits, Maps, Facsimiles, Contemporary Views, Prints, and other Historic Materials. 2 vols. 8vo, $8.00, net. NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND. With Maps. Crown 8vo, #2.00. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 2 vols. crown 8vo, $4.00. Illustrated Edition. 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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON MAP SHOWING THE BRITISH COLONIES AND SOUTHERN NEW FRANCE 40 SO 100 2W Dark buff represents 1,000 ft. and ov ^] New France | | British Colonies NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND BY JOHN FISKE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Cambrib0e COPYRIGHT I9O2 BY ABBY M. FISKE, EXECUTRIX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ,,. E. GIFT PUBLISHERS 1 NOTE THE place of the present volume in the series of Mr. Fiske s books on Amer ican history may best be indicated by a few words from his preface to " The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America." That work, it will be remembered, comes next in order after " The Beginnings of New England," and in describing its scope Mr. Fiske remarks : " It is my purpose, in my next book, to deal with the rise and fall of New France, and the develop ment of the English colonies as influenced by the prolonged struggle with that troublesome and dangerous neighbour. With this end in view, the history of New England must be taken up where the earlier book dropped it, and the history of New York resumed at about the same time, while by degrees we shall find the histo ries of Pennsylvania and the colonies to the south of it swept into the main stream of Conti nental history. That book will come down to the year 1765, which witnessed the ringing out of the old and the ringing in of the new, the one with Pontiac s War, the other with the Stamp v vi PUBLISHERS NOTE Act. I hope to have it ready in about two years from now." This preface bears the date of May day, 1899. It will be seen that " New France and New England " completes the story of the settlement and development of the colonies up to the point where Mr. Fiske s "American Revolution " has already taken up the narrative. It therefore gives a final unity to the sequence of remark able volumes which he has devoted to American history. The lamented death of the brilliant author prevented him from giving the final touches to his work. Most of the material for it was de livered as lectures before the Lowell Institute during the last winter of his life ; but only the first two chapters received his definite revision for the press. The third chapter was unfinished, but has been completed by a few pages, en closed in brackets, and prepared in accordance with Mr. Fiske s own memoranda indicating what incidents he proposed to include in the remaining paragraphs. The other chapters were in the form of carefully prepared lectures, but were not equipped with the side-notes and an notations calling attention to authorities, such as Mr. Fiske supplied freely in his " Discovery of America " and other volumes. From the third PUBLISHERS NOTE vii chapter onward, it has been thought best to provide such topical notes and references as may prove helpful to the reader. These notes are enclosed in brackets. The text of all the chapters has been printed as it left his hand. Though he doubtless would have touched it here and there either for adorn ment or for a more exact precision of detail, it will on that account possess no less interest for the readers of that notable series of historical writings to which this volume now gives the desired continuity and unity. 4 PARK STREET, BOSTON Autumn, 1902 CONTENTS FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN PACK Norman sailors ....... i On the coast of Africa ..... 2 Breton ships on the Banks ..... 4 Alleged discovery of the Gulf of St. Lawrence . 4 The Portuguese voyages to North America . . 6 Verrazano ....... 8 Francis I. and the demarcation line .... 8 Verrazano s purpose ..... 9 The Sea of Verrazano . . . . . .11 Death of Verrazano . . . . . . 12 Jacques Cartier . . . . . . 13 The exploration of the St. Lawrence . . . 14 The name < Canada " 15 Hochelaga . . . . . . 16 An Indian trick . . . . . . .16 Cartier arrives at Hochelaga . . . . 17 Hochelaga a typical Iroquois town . . . .18 The name " Montreal ..... 20 Distresses of the winter . . . . . .20 Indian tales . . . . . . . 22 Roberval ........ 22 Carrier s voyage, 1541 23 Jean Allefonsce tries to explore the Sea of Verrazano . 24 Errors in regard to the voyage of Allefonsce . . 26 The true direction of Allefonsce s voyage . . -27 x CONTENTS Allefonsce visits the Hudson . . . . 28 The character of Roberval . . . . -30 The romance of Roberval s niece . . . 31 Suspension of French exploration . . . 3 2 Ribaut in Florida . . . . . . 33 Importance of Dieppe in the traffic of the sea . 3 3 II THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC Voyage of the Marquis de la Roche . . -35 Pontgrave and Chauvin secure a monopoly of the fur- trade ........ 36 De Chastes succeeds Chauvin . . . . 38 The early life of Champlain . . . . 39 Champlain in the West Indies .... 40 Champlain s first voyage to Canada . . . .42 The disappearance of the Iroquois village of Hochelaga 42 The Iroquois displaced by the Algonquins . 43 The Iroquois Confederacy ..... 46 Outlying tribes of Iroquois . . . . .48 Designs of the Sieur de Monts .... 49 Homeric quarrels . . . . 50 Occupation of Acadia . . . . . 51 Founding of Port Royal, later Annapolis . . 5 2 Champlain explores the New England coast . . 52 A second exploration of the Massachusetts coast . -54 A picturesque welcome . . . . . 55 The Knightly Order of Good Times . . .57 Collapse of de Monts monopoly . . . 58 Champlain turns his attention to Canada . . 58 The expedition of 1608 ..... 60 Quebec founded ....... 60 Treachery foiled . . . . . . 61 CONTENTS xi The first winter at Quebec . . . . .62 Friendship with the Indians the condition of successful exploration . . . . . . 63 This condition determines the subsequent French policy 63 Character of the Indians of Canada ... 64 Champlain allies himself to the Ottawas and Hurons . 64 A war party ....... 65 Consultation of departed heroes . . . 67 Lake Champlain . . . . . . 67 War dances 68 The Mohawks panic-stricken by firearms . . 69 The first battle of Ticonderoga sows the seed of deadly hostility between the French and the Iroquois . 70 III THE LORDS OF ACADIA. LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN Poutrincourt returns to Port Royal, 1610 . . . 72 Remoter consequences of the death of Henry IV. . 73 The far-reaching plans of the Jesuits . . 74 They secure an interest in Acadia . . . 75 Madame de Guercheville obtains from Louis XIII. a grant of the coast from Acadia to Florida . . j6 La Saussaye in Frenchman s Bay . . . 76 The French captured by Argall . . . . 77 Argall s trick 78 Argall returns and burns Port Royal 79 Champlain helps in the destruction of an attacking party of Iroquois ....... 80 Beginnings of Montreal . . . . .81 The Count of Soissons and the Prince of Conde succeed Monts 82 A traveller s tale . 82 xii CONTENTS Champlain among the Ottawas, 1613 . . 83 Vignau s imposture discovered . . . . 85 Champlain returns from France with the Recollets . 86 Le Caron reaches Lake Huron . . . . 86 The attack on the Iroquois . . . . .87 Champlain s military engines . . . . 88 Rivalry of interests . . . . . .89 The coming of the Jesuits . . . . . 89 The One Hundred Associates . . . 90 Religious uniformity . . . . . . 91 The capture of Quebec by the English . . .92 Champlain s last days ..... 92 James I. grants Acadia to Sir William Alexander . 93 Claude and Charles de la Tour . . . . 93 Legend of La Tour s fidelity to France . . -94 La Tour and D Aunay ..... 94 Death of D Aunay 96 La Tour gives place to Sir Thomas Temple . . 96 IV WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE Jean Nicollet 98 Nicollet explores Lake Michigan .... 99 Father Jogues near Lake Superior . . . .100 Radisson and Groseilliers . . . . 101 Accession of Louis XIV. . . . . . I o I His changes in Canadian administration. . . 102 Two expeditions against the Iroquois, 1666 . . ioa Contrasts between New France and New England . 104 The French trading route to the Northwest . .105 The coureurs de bois . . . . .105 Father Allouez on the Wisconsin , .106 CONTENTS xiii The French take possession of the Northwest . 107 Father Allouez depicts the greatness of Louis XIV. . 108 Early life of La Salle 109 La Salle comes to Canada . . . . .no La Salle hears of the Ohio and resolves to explore it in His expedition combined with a mission exploration of the Sulpicians . . . . . .in The way blocked by the Senecas . . . 112 Meeting with Joliet . . . . . . 1 1 3 La Salle parts from the Sulpicians . . . 114 La Salle explores the Ohio . . . . .115 Frontenac succeeds Courcelles . , . . 115 Character of Frontenac . . . . .116 Joliet chosen to explore the Mississippi . . 117 Marquette . . . . . . .117 Joliet and Marquette reach the Mississippi . . 1 1 8 They pass the mouth of the Missouri . . .119 The return . . . . . . .120 La Salle s great designs . . . . .120 The Mississippi valley to be occupied . . . 121 Difficulty of carrying out so vast a plan . . .122 La Salle s privileges arouse opposition . . . 123 Fort Frontenac granted to La Salle . . . .124 La Salle builds the Griffin . . . . .124 Henri de Tonty . . . . . .125 Louis Hennepin . . . . . .125 The voyage of the Griffin . . . . .126 ]La Salle s terrible winter journey . . . 127 Fresh disasters . . . . . . .128 La Salle goes to rescue Tonty ... . . 129 Destruction of the Illinois village by the Iroquois . 130 La Salle s winter voyage down the Mississippi . 130 La Salle returns to France . . . . . 1 3 1 Failure of the Mississippi expedition . . . 131 La Salle s death 132 xiv CONTENTS WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE Louis XIV. commutes the sentence of death imposed upon alleged witches . . . . 1 3 3 The parliament of Normandy protests . . . 134 The belief in witchcraft universal . . . 135 Vitality of the belief 136 Cause of the final decay of the belief . . . 137 Rise of physical science . . . . .138 An English witch trial before Sir Matthew Hale . 138 Grotesque evidence . . . . . . 139 Indications of shamming ignored . . . . 139 Sir Matthew Hale affirms the reality of witchcraft . 140 Revival of witchcraft superstition . . . 141 The Hammer of Witches . . . . .142 King James on the reality of witchcraft . . .143 The delusion increases with the rise of the Puritan party to power . . . . . . . 143 Last executions for witchcraft . . . .144 Primitive America regarded as a domain of the Devil 144 The first victim of the witchcraft delusion in New Eng land . . . . . . . . 145 The case of Mrs. Hibbins . . . .146 A victim of malice acting through superstition . . 147 A sensible jury . . 1 . . .148 The Goodwin children . . . . . 149 Cotton Mather . . . . . .149 His character . . . . . . .150 His courage in advocating inoculation . . . 1 50 Views of Calef and Upham . . . . . 1 5 1 Mr. W. F. Poole 151 Cotton Mather and the Goodwin case . . .152 Cotton Mather and the Goodwin girl . . . 153 CONTENTS xv Tests of bewitchment . . . . . . 1 5 3 Mather publishes an account of this case . . 154 Cotton Mather s book and the Salem troubles . .156 Gloomy outlook in 1692 . . . . .156 Salem village . . . . . . . 1 5 7 Samuel Parris, the pastor . . . . .157 Parish troubles in Salem village . . . .158 Mr. Parris s coloured servants . . . . 159 The "afflicted children" 159 Mistress Ann Putnam . . . . .160 Beginnings of the troubles . . . . .161 Physicians and clergymen called in . . .162 The trial of Sarah Good 162 The accusation of Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse 1 64 Character of Martha Corey . . . . . 1 64 Rebecca Nurse . . . . . .165 A village feud . . . . . . .165 The examination of Rebecca Nurse . . .166 Deodat Lawson . . . . . . .167 The spread of the delusion . . . . 167 Cases of personal malice . . . . .168 The Rev. George Burroughs . . . .169 The special court erected . . . . .169 The advice of the ministers . . . . 1 70 Spectral evidence . . . . . . 173 The jury acquit Rebecca Nurse . . . .174 The court sends them back . . . . 1 7 5 The case of Mary Easty . . . . 176,177 Mary Easty torn from her home at midnight . .178 Doubt perilous . . . . . .178 Peine forte et dure . . . . . 1 79 The Rev. Mr. Noyes 1 80 The petition of Mary Easty . . . . .181 Her warning . . . . . . .182 Sudden collapse of the trials . . . . .183 Reaction follows the intense strain . . . 184 xvi CONTENTS The accusers aim too high . . . . .184 Accusers threatened with a suit for damages . . 185 The Court of Oyer and Terminer abolished . .186 Cotton Mather 186 Explanation of Mather s speech . . . .187 Judge Sewall s public acknowledgment of wrong . 188 Ann Putnam s confession . . . . .188 Were the accusers misled or shamming ? . . 189 Evidences of collusion . . . . . .190 Was there a deliberate conspiracy ? . . . 191 Contagion of hysterical emotion . . . .191 Psychology of hallucinations . . . . 192 Playing with fire . . . . . . 193 The evils of publicity in the examinations . . 193 Explanation of Mrs. Putnam s part . . . 194 She exercised hypnotic control over the children . 195 The case of Salem village helps one to realize the ter rors of the witchcraft delusion in the past . . 196 VI THE GREAT AWAKENING The reaction from the witchcraft delusion . -19? Rise of secular opposition to the theocracy . 198, 199 The Halfway Covenant . . . . .200 The South Church 201 The opposition to the theocracy lays the foundation of Toryism . . . . . . .201 The new charter of Massachusetts . . . 202, 203 The Brattle Church founded 1698 . . . 204 Relaxation of conditions of membership . . . 204 Cotton Mather s alarm . . . . .205 The theocracy helpless under the new charter . .206 CONTENTS xvii The new church finally recognized . . .206 The effort to get a new charter for Harvard . .207 Governor Bellomont vetoes a test act for college officers 208 Rise of liberalism in the college . . . . 208 President Increase Mather displaced . . . 209 Cotton Mather s indignation . 209 Governor Dudley . . . . . .210 The new charter for Harvard a substantial reenactment of that of 1650 ...... 210 Conditions in Connecticut . . . . .211 New Haven annexed to Connecticut . . . 212 Comparison of Massachusetts and Connecticut . .212 Causes of Connecticut conservatism . . . 213 The tendency in organizations to become rigid and mechanical . . . . . . .213 The instance of the Cambridge Platform, 1 648 . .214 Lack of a party of opposition in Connecticut . . 215 The Saybrook Platform . . . . .216 The platform tends to assimilate Congregationalism to Presbyterianism . . . . . .217 Massachusetts and Connecticut change places . .217 The founding of Yale College . . . .218 The conservative tendencies of Connecticut reinforced by the college . . . . . . .219 State of religion early in the eighteenth century . 220 Rise of commercial interests . . . . .221 " Stoddardeanism " 222 Jonathan Edwards . . . . . .222 Ed wards s vein of mysticism . . . . 223 His emphasis on conversion . . . . .224 Revivals . . . . . . .225 The Revival of 1734 226 George Whitefield invited to New England . . 226 Gilbert Tennent 227 James Davenport . . . . . .227 Comparison with the Antinomians . . . .228 xviii CONTENTS Whitefield s return to New England . . .229 Davenport arrested for public disturbance . . .230 Last days of Edwards . . . . .231 Results of the Awakening 232 VII NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG The "irrepressible conflict" between France and Eng land in America . . . . . . 233 Acadia finally passes to England . . . . 234 The French view of the limits of Acadia . . . 234 The Abenaki tribes 235 Sebastian Rale . . . . . . .236 The Norridgewock village . . . . 236 The country between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec 237 The Indian view of selling land . . . .238 The Indians and the French . . . . 239 Conference between Governor Shute and the Indians 239 Baxter and Rale . . . . . .239, 240 The Indians instigated to attack the English . . 241 Border warfare . . . . . . .241 Conflicts between the Governor and the Assembly . 242 Shute succeeded by Dummer . . . . 243 Expeditions against the Indians . . . .243 Extermination of the Norridgewock tribe . . . 244 Captain Lovewell . . . . . ,,245 Love well s fight 245 The death of Frye 247, 248 Louisburg . . . . . . . . 249 The project to capture Louisburg . . . 250 The New England colonies undertake the attack . 251 The naval force .252 The French surprised . . . . . . 253 CONTENTS xix The Grand Battery abandoned in panic . . 254 Capture of a French line-of-battle ship . . . 2 5 5 Louisburg surrendered June 17, 1745 . . . 256 A relic of Louisburg . . . . . .256 VIII BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle . . . .258 The spread of the English westward . . . 259 The Scotch-Irish . . . . . . 259 The pioneers pass the Alleghanies . . .260 This advance of the English a menace to the French 261 The French influence with the Indians declines . 261 The founding of Oswego ..... 262 Sir William Johnson . . . . . 263 English traders in the Ohio valley . . . 264 Celoron takes possession of the Ohio valley for Louis XV., 1749 265 Celoron among the Miamis . . . .266 The Miamis under English influence . . .267 The French destroy the Miami trading village . 267 The Marquis Duquesne . . . . .268 The French expedition of 1753. . . . 268 The Indians between two fires . . . .269 A chance meeting . . . . . .270 Major George Washington sent to warn the French . 270 The French boast of their plans . . . . 271 Governor Dinwiddie resolves to occupy the Gateway of the West 272 Duquesne anticipates the English . . . .272 The Virginia expedition to Fort Duquesne . . 273 Washington surprises a French force . . -274 Fort Necessity 275 XX CONTENTS The battle of Fort Necessity . . . . .275 The English retreat . . . . . .276 Niggardliness of the Provincial Assemblies . -277 The defence of the colonies dependent on the governors 278 The need of a union of the colonies . . .279 The Albany Congress . . . . .280 Franklin s plan of union rejected . . . .280 England and France send troops to America, 1755 281 Capture of two French ships . . . . .282 General Braddock . . . . . .283 Indian mode of fighting . . . . .283 English regulars ill prepared for such tactics . . 284 Braddock s difficulties 285 Braddock should have landed at Philadelphia . . 286 The march ....... 287 A detachment sent on in advance . . . 288 Beaujeu sets out to waylay the English . . .289 Braddock s precautions . . . . .289 The battle ....... 290 The English fall before unseen foes . . . 291 Bravery of Braddock and Washington . . .291 Braddock s death . . . . . .292 Dunbar s culpable retreat . . . . 292, 293 IX CROWN POINT, FORT WILLIAM HENRY, AND TICONDEROGA Governor Shirley s plan of campaign . . . 294 William Johnson to attack Crown Point . . 295 Character of Johnson s army ..... 296 Johnson names Lake George .... 297 Dieskau s approach . . . . . .297 The Indians prefer to attack the camp . . . 298 The English scouting party routed .... 299 CONTENTS xxi Dieskau repulsed and captured .... 299 Shirley s expedition against Niagara a failure . . 300 Desolation on the frontier . . . . -301 Opening of the Seven Years War . . . 302 England and Prussia join forces . . . .302 Montcalm ....... 303 Montcalm s account of the voyage to Canada . . 304 Vaudreuil not gratified by Montcalm s arrival . 305 Shirley superseded . . . . . .306 The Earl of Loudoun . . . . 307 Loudoun plans to attack Ticonderoga . . . 307 Fall of Oswego ...... 308 Montcalm s capture of Oswego impresses the Indians 309 Loudoun s expedition against Louisburg . . .310 Montcalm s expedition against Fort William Henry 310 Ferocity of Montcalm s Indian allies . . . 311 The English force at Fort William Henry and Fort Ed ward . . . . . . . .312 Montcalm invests Fort William Henry . . . 313 Surrender of the forces at Fort William Henry . . 3 1 4 The Indians uncontrollable . . . .314 The massacre of prisoners . . . . . 3 1 5 William Pitt 315 Pitt s hold on popular confidence . . . .316 Pitt recalls Loudoun . . . . 3 1 7 Lord Howe 317 The expedition against Ticonderoga . . . 318 Lord Howe s adaptability . . . . . 319 The English scouting party lost in the woods . 319 Death of Lord Howe . . . . . .320 Montcalm s defences . . . . 3 21 Alternatives open to Abercrombie . . . 3 22 Montcalm saved by Abercrombie s stupidity . 322, 323 An assault ordered . . . . . 3 2 4 All assaults repulsed . . . . . 324 Abercrombie ridiculed . . . . . 3 2 5 xxii CONTENTS LOUISBURG, FORT DUQUESNE, AND THE FALL OF QUEBEC Strategic points in the contest . . . 326, 327 Louisburg . . . . . . .328 The English expedition against Louisburg . . 329 General Wolfe effects a landing . . . . 330 The harbour batteries secured or reduced by the English 331 Gradual destruction of the French fleet . . . 3 3 i Surrender of Louisburg . . . . .332 Wolfe returns to England . . . . -333 Bradstreet s expedition against Fort Frontenac . 334 Fort Frontenac taken, August 27 . . -334 The loss of Fort Frontenac weakens Fort Duquesne 335 General John Forbes . . . . -336 The expedition against Fort Duquesne . . -336 The choice of routes . . . . -337 Forbes s method of advance . . . . -337 The slow progress of the march favourable to success 338 Major Grant s disastrous reconnoissance . . 339, 340 Christian Frederic Post wins over the Indians . 341 The French evacuate Fort Duquesne . . . 341 Pitt resolved to drive the French from Canada . 342 Preparations for the campaign of 1759 343 Weak points of eighteenth century strategy . . 344 General Arnherst s plan of campaign . . . 344 General Prideaux s expedition against Fort Niagara 345 Fall of Fort Niagara . . . . . .346 General Amherst marches against Ticonderoga . 347 Ticonderoga deserted and blown up . . 348 Amherst s ineffective activity . . . . -349 Quebec . . ... 349 The position of the French forces . . . 350, 351 The difficulties which confronted Wolfe . . 352 CONTENTS xxiu His illness .... . 35 2 Wolfe plans to scale the heights . . . 3 5 3 Final preparations . . . 354 The start . 355 The ascent 355 Complete surprise of the French . . . 356 The battle 357 Death of Wolfe 35 Death of Montcalm 35^ 359 INDEX 3^ ! LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE MAP SHOWING THE BRITISH COLONIES AND NORTHERN NEW FRANCE, 17501760 (coloured} Frontispiece MAP OF THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE BY CHAMPLAIN, 1632 54 From The History of Canada under French Regime. MAP OF NORTH AMERICA 236 From Edward Well s New List of Maps, London, 1698-1699. MAP OF LOUISBURG 254 From Maute s History of the Late War. MAP OF LAKE GEORGE 312 From Maute s History of the Late War, London, 1771. MAP OF THE SIEGE OF QUEBEC 342 From Mile s History of Canada under French Regime. NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND I FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN A1ONG the seafaring people of Europe there are perhaps none more hardy and enterprising than the inhabitants of the picturesque little towns along the coasts of Nor mandy and Brittany. In race characteristics there is a close similarity to their neighbours of the opposite British shore. The Welsh of Armorica are own brethren of the Welsh of Cornwall, and as long ago as the reign of the Emperor Julian the regions about the mouth of the Seine were commonly known as a Litus Saxonicum, or Saxon shore. There to this day you will find the snug enclosed farmsteads so characteristic of merry England, while Norman the map is thickly dotted with Anglo- 8ailors Saxon names. Thither a thousand years ago flocked the Vikings from the fjords of Norway and settled down over the north of Gaul as over the east of Britain. The geographical position 2 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND was favourable to the indulgence of inherited proclivities, and throughout the Middle Ages the French and English shores of the Channel were famed for their hardy mariners. Their ships thronged side by side in the Icelandic waters, in quest of codfish, and even the chase of the whale was not unknown to them. When at the beginning of the fifteenth century the Norman knight Jean de Bethencourt conquered and colonized the Canary Islands, for which in return for aid and supplies he did homage to the king of Castile, 1 his company was chiefly composed of Bretons and Normans, who have left their descendants in those islands to the pre sent day. As early as 1364 we find merchants from Dieppe trading on the Grain Coast, be tween Sierra Leone and Cape Palmas ; and by 1383 these bold adventurers had established themselves upon that shore, which they held until I4io. 2 They were thus in advance of the On the coast pioneers of Henry the Navigator, of Africa anc j f or a moment it might have seemed as if the Guinea coast were likely to be come French rather than Portuguese, when the civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians and the invasion of France by Henry V. of England put a new face upon the matter, and the hold of the French upon Africa was lost. 1 See my Discovery of America, i. 321. 2 Shea s Charlevoix, i. 13. FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 3 A substantial monument of their early activity in that quarter is furnished by the fortified town of Elmina, upon the Gold Coast, whence in these British days runs the direct road to Ku- massi. Elmina was founded in the fourteenth century by men of Dieppe, and the trade in elephants* tusks then inaugurated gave rise to the ivory manufactures which still flourish in the little Norman seaport. 1 Under these circumstances it is not strange that the voyages of Columbus and the Cabots should have met with a quick response from the mariners of northern Gaul. Local traditions of a patriotic sort have asserted that Normandy and Brittany did not wait for the Cabot voy ages to be taught the existence of the New foundland fisheries, but had learned the lesson for themselves even before the crossing of the Sea of Darkness by Columbus. 2 There is no reason why fishing voyages to the Newfound land banks might not have been made before 1492, but on the other hand there is no respect able evidence that any such voyages had been made. The strong impression made upon John 1 Gaffarel, Etude stir les rapports de / Amerique et de / ancien Continent avant Christophe Colomb, Paris, 1869, p. 3 i6. 2 Such claims are to be found in the extremely uacritical book of Desmarquets, Memoir es chronologiques pour servir a fhistoire de Dieppe, Paris, 1785. 4 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Cabot by the enormous numbers of codfish off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland 1 in dicates that the western stretches of the ocean were by no means familiar to the fishermen of the English Channel. The first authentic record Breton ships we nave ^ Breton ships in New- on the banks foundland waters is in the year 1 504, and from that time forward we never lose a year. The place once found was too good to be neg lected, and thus a presumption is raised against any date earlier than 1504. From catching fish in these waters to visiting the neighbouring coasts the step was not a long one, and presently the name Cape Breton makes its appearance, the oldest surviving European name upon the Atlantic coast of North Amer ica. It is asserted by Dieppese writers that a chart of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was made in 1506 by Jean Denys of Honfleur, and that two years later Thomas Aubert ascended the great river for eighty leagues, and brought back to Alleged dis- Europe seven tawny natives who were Gutfofst. C exhibited at Rouen and perhaps else- Lawrence where in 1509. We are furthermore assured that upon this voyage Aubert was ac companied by a Florentine mariner destined to win great renown, Giovanni da Verrazano. The i See his conversation with the Milanese ambassador in Harrisse, John Cabot, the Discoverer of North America, and Sebastian his Son, London, 1 896, p. 54. FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 5 authority for these statements is not such as we could desire, being found chiefly in uncritical documents collected by the uncritical editor Desmarquets, who lets slip no opportunity for glorifying Dieppe. There is strong collateral evidence, however, of a voyage into the Gulf of St. Lawrence at about this time. Not only does the exhibition of the kidnapped Indians rest upon independent evidence, as early as 1512,* but in the edition of Ptolemy brought out in 1511 by Sylvanus, there is a map con taining a square-looking gulf to the west of a spacious island which is unquestionably in tended for Newfoundland, and the outlines of this gulf seem to have originated in actual ex ploration and not in fancy. There is a map preserved in the government archives at Ottawa, which purports to be a copy of that of Jean Denys, and may well be so, for, although the names upon it belong to a later period, there is some reason for believing that they are a sub sequent addition. If the outlines are those of Denys of Honfleur, we have in them a satisfac tory explanation of the strange map of Sylva nus. Moreover, some weight must attach to the fact that both the voyages of Denys and of Aubert are mentioned under the years 1506 and 1508 by Ramusio. 2 There can be little doubt 1 Eusebii chronicon, Paris, 1512, fol. 172. fl Ramusio, Navigation! e viaggi, Venetia, 1550, iii. 423; 8 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND that the attention of Frenchmen was, to an appreciable extent, drawn toward the New World during the reign of Louis XII. Under his successor, the gay, gallant, and ambitious Francis I., attention was still further drawn to these strange shores. The jovial law yer, Marc Lescarbot of Vervins, writing in 1612, tells us that about the year 1 5 1 8 a certain Baron de Lery made an unsuccessful attempt at establishing a colony upon Sable Island, and left there a stock of cattle and pigs which mul tiplied apace, and proved comforting and tooth some to later adventurers. 1 The French had sturdy rivals in these Atlan tic waters. That was the golden age of Portu- The Portu- g uese enterprise, and one of the first guese voy- results of the Cabot voyages was to ages to i i r -r i North stimulate the curiosity or .Portugal. America ^he VO y a g e o f Cabral in 1 500 proved that the Brazilian coast in great part falls east of the papal line of demarcation, and therefore belonged to Portugal, and not to Spain. In that same year a voyage in the northern waters by Caspar Cortereal raised hopes that the same might be proved true of Newfoundland, and zd ed., Venetia, 1606, iii. 355. Ramusio speaks of Aubert as the first who brought Indians to France, " il primo che condusse qui le genti del detto paese." 1 Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, Paris, 1612, t 22 ; De Laet, Novus or bis, p. 39. FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 1 Portuguese vessels sailed often in that direction. Their fishing craft were to be seen off the coast, in company with Norman, Breton, and Biscayan vessels, and sometimes an elaborate attempt at exploration was made. Such was the voyage of Alvarez Fagundes in 1520. In accordance with an old custom the king of Portugal promised this mariner a grant of such new lands as he might discover upon this expedition. In March, 1521, after the return of Fagundes and his report to the king, the grant was duly issued. From the descriptions in the grant, supplemented by a map made forty years later by Lazaro Luiz, we may draw conclusions, somewhat dubious, as to just what was accomplished by Fagundes ; but there can be little doubt that he explored more or less thoroughly the coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 1 But the Portuguese were becoming too deeply absorbed with their work in the Indian Ocean to devote much attention to North America. And in like manner in 1517-21 the discovery of Mexico and the astonishing exploits of Cortes quite riveted the minds of their rivals, the Spaniards, in that direction. It was just at 1 The voyage of Fagundes is discussed in Harrisse, The Discovery of North America,^. 180-188; Bettencourt, Descobrimentos, guerras, e conquista dos Portugueses em ter ras de Ultramar nos seculos xv. e xvi., Lisbon, 1881, i. 2 - I etc - 8 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND this moment, and through these circumstances, that French interest in America received a fresh stimulus. After the capture of the city of Mex ico an immense store of gold and silver was shipped for Spain, in charge of Alonso de Avila ; but Avila, with his ships and his treasure, was captured by the famous Verrazano Verrazano r i rr and carried off to France, probably to Dieppe, where the Florentine navigator seems for many years to have had his headquarters. In the course of the same cruise Verrazano cap tured another Spanish ship on its way from San Domingo, heavily laden with gold and pearls, so that he was enabled to make gorgeous pre sents to King Francis and to the Admiral of France. The delightful chronicler, Bernal Diaz, who tells us these incidents, adds that the whole country was amazed at the stupendous wealth that was pouring into the treasury of Charles V. from the Indies. The first great war between Francis i. Charles and Francis was raging, and fcmrcation tne latter did nOt need tO be told that line Mexican money could be used to pay the troops that were defeating his army in Lom- bardy. He sent a bantering message to Charles, asking if it were really true that he and the king of Portugal had parcelled out the earth between them without leaving anything for him. Had Father Adam made those two his only heirs ? FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 9 If so, he wished they would show him that patriarch s last will and testament. 1 Until they could do so he should feel at liberty to seize whatever his good ships might happen to meet upon the ocean, and forthwith he concerted with Verrazano fresh raids upon the enemy s sinews of war. The result of these meditations was the great voyage of 1 524, which first placed upon the map the continuous coast-line of the United States, from North Carolina to the mouth of the Pe- nobscot River. The purpose of this ven-azano s voyage was twofold : first, to ascertain P ur P se if any more countries abounding in precious metals, like Mexico, or in pearls, like Venezuela, were to be found within or near the longitudes traversed by Columbus and Cabot ; secondly, to find some oceanic route north of Florida from European ports to the Indian Ocean. In other words, this voyage of Verrazano was the first one which had any reference to a northwest passage. Columbus had believed the shores on which he landed to be parts of Asia, either continental or 1 " Y entonces dize que dixo el rey de Francia, o se lo embio a dezir a nuestro gran Emperador, Que como auian partido entre el y el rey de Portugal el mundo sin darle parte a el ? Que mostrassen el testamento de nuestro padre Adan, si les dexo a ellos solamente por herederos," etc. Diaz, His- toria verdadera y Madrid, 1632, cap. clxix. 10 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND insular, and his last voyage was an attempt to find the Strait of Malacca at the Isthmus of Pan ama. Subsequent explorations, however, had disclosed an unbroken coast-line all the way from Florida to Patagonia ; and the recent return in 1522 of the wornout remnant of Magellan s ex pedition brought convincing evidence that the voyage to India by his southerly route was so long and difficult as to be practically useless. Thus the New World coasts were coming to be recognized as a barrier on the route to Asia, and an important part of Verrazano s business was to discover a northern end to this long barrier, or a passageway through it somewhere to the north ward of the regions already examined. This is not the best place for giving a detailed account of Verrazano s voyage, inasmuch as it was confined to portions of the American coast over which France has never held sway. I have given the principal details of it in treating of the Dutch and Quaker Colonies/and need not repeat them here. Let it suffice to say that besides delineating the coast of the United States from North Carolina to Maine, Verrazano entered the Hudson River and Narragansett Bay, and saw from his ship s deck the distant peaks of the White Mountains. He found no gold mines nor beds of pearl, neither did he anywhere detect 1 [The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, i. 60-68.] FROM C ARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 11 what seemed to him a feasible waterway into the Indian Ocean, but he did discover in this con nection one of the most extraordinary mare s nests on record. He seems to have gone ashore upon the Accomac peninsula and tramped across it until his eyes rested upon the waters of Ches apeake Bay, which he mistook for the Pacific Ocean. For soon after his return to Europe two maps were issued, one by his own brother, Girolamo Verrazano,one by Vesconte Maggiolo, which exerted a great influence upon the geo graphical ideas of the next three generations of Europeans. These maps show a solid continen tal mass connecting Florida with Mexico, and another solid mass to the northward, such as would naturally have been suggested to Verra- zano by the presence of such large The Sea of rivers as the Hudson and the Penob- Verraz ano scot. But between these masses the whole cen tral region of the United States is represented as an immense sea continuous with the Pacific Ocean ; while the Virginian coast is shown as a very narrow isthmus, with an inscription by Ver- razano s brother, informing us that here the distance from sea to sea is not more than six miles. A full century elapsed before this notion of the Sea of Verrazano was eliminated from men s minds, and without taking this fact into the account it is impossible to understand the 12 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND movements of navigators who ascended rivers like the Hudson and the St. Lawrence in the hope of finding passageways into the western sea. When Verrazano arrived in Dieppe in July, 1525, the king, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia in February, was a captive at Madrid. His demand for a sight of Father Adam s will had met with a rude response. He purchased his freedom in January, 1526, by sign ing a disastrous treaty, but no sooner had he leaped upon his goodly steed, on the French side of the Pyrenees, than he renounced all intention of keeping promises thus made under duress. The worthy Verrazano fared much worse than his royal master. In the year 1526 he entered into an arrangement with Jean Ango and other important citizens of Dieppe for a voyage into Death of the Indian Ocean for spices, but in the Verrazano course of the following year he was overhauled by Spanish cruisers, who took him prisoner and hanged him as a pirate. 1 There enters now upon the scene a man of whose personality we have a much more distinct conception than we have of Verrazano. As that accomplished Italian is one of the chief glories of the town of Dieppe, so the Breton seaport of 1 Barcia, Ensayo chronologies para la historia general de la Florida , 1735, p. 8, since confirmed by documents in the archives of Simancas. FROM C ARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 13 St. Malo is famous for its native citizen, Jacques Cartier. His portrait hangs in the town hall. Unfortunately its authenticity is not j ac ques above question, but if it is not surely Cartier a true likeness it deserves to be ; it well ex presses the earnestness and courage, the refine ment and keen intelligence of the great Breton mariner. 1 He had roamed the seas for many years, and had won and doubtless earned from Spanish mouths the epithets of " corsair " and " pirate," when at the age of three and forty he was selected by Philippe de Chabot, Admiral of France, to carry on the work of Denys and Aubert and Verrazano, and to bring fresh tid ings of the mysterious Square Gulf of Sylvanus. On April 20, 1534, Cartier sailed from St. Malo with two small craft carrying sixty-one men, and made straight for the coast of Labra dor, just north of the Straits of Belle Isle, a re gion already quite familiar to Breton and Nor man fishermen. Passing through the straits he skirted the inner coast of Newfoundland south ward as far as Cape Ray, whence he crossed to Prince Edward Island, and turned his prows to the north. The oppressive heat of an American July is commemorated in the name which Car- tier gave to the Bay of Chaleur. A little further on, at Gaspe, he set up a cross, and with the 1 The best and most critical biography is Longrais, Jacques Cartier, Paris, 1888. 14 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND usual ceremonies took possession of the country in the name of Francis I. Thence he crossed to the eastern end of Anticosti, and followed the north shore of that island nearly to its western point, when he headed about, and passing through Belle Isle made straight for France, carrying with him a couple of Indians whom he had kidnapped, young warriors from far up the St. Lawrence, who had come down to the sea to catch mackerel in hemp nets. With this voyage of reconnoissance the shad owy Square Gulf of Sylvanus at once becomes The expiora- clothed with reality. Enough interest sTLa^ was aroused in France to seem to jus- rence tify another undertaking, and in May, 1535, the gallant Cartier set forth once more, with three small ships and no men. Late in July he passed through the Strait of Belle Isle, and on the loth of August, a day sacred to the martyred St. Lawrence, he gave that name to a small bay on the mainland north of Anticosti. Whales were spouting all around his course as he passed the western point of the island and ploughed into the broad expanse of salt water that seemed to open before him the prospect of a short passage to the Indian Ocean. Day by day, however, the water grew fresher, and by the September morning when he reached the mouth of the Saguenay our explorer was reluctantly convinced that he was not in a strait of the ocean, FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 15 but in one of the mightiest rivers of the earth. To these newcomers from the Old World each day must have presented an impressive specta cle ; for except the Amazon and the Orinoco it may be doubted if there be any river which gives one such an overwhelming sense of power and majesty as the St. Lawrence ; certainly the Mis sissippi seems very tame in comparison. As the Frenchmen inquired the names of the villages along the banks, a reply which they com monly received from their two Indian The name guides was the word Canada^ which is simply a Mohawk word for" village." Hence Cartier naturally got the impression that Canada was the name of the river or of the country through which it flowed, and from these begin nings its meaning has been gradually expanded until it has come to cover half of a huge conti nent. Presently on arriving at the site of Que bec, Cartier found there a village named Stada- cona, with a chieftain called Donnacona. Painted and bedizened warriors and squaws came troop ing to the water s edge or paddling out in canoes to meet the astounding spectacle of the white- winged floating castles and their pale-faced and bearded people. In the two kidnapped inter preters the men of Stadacona quickly recognized their kinsmen ; strings of beads were passed about, dusky figures leaped and danced, and 1 Beauchamp, Indian Names in New Tork, p. 104. 16 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND doleful yells of welcome resounded through the forest. Was this the principal town of that coun try ? No, it was not. The town in question was many miles up-stream, a great town, and its name was Hochelaga, but it would be rash Hochelaga , 5 . . . for the bearded visitors to attempt to go thither, for they would be blinded with falling snow, and their ships would be caught between ice-floes. This ironical solicitude for the safety of the strangers has the genuine Indian smack. The real motive underlying it was doubtless " protection to home industry ; " why should the people at Hochelaga get a part of the beads and red ribbons when there were no more than enough for the people at Stadacona ? Recourse was had to the supernal or infernal powers. On a fine autumn morning a canoe came down the river, carrying three scowling devils clad in dog skins, with inky-black faces surmounted by long antlers. As they passed the ships they paddled shorewards, prophesying in a dismal monotone, until as the canoe touched the beach all three fell flat upon their faces. Thereupon forth issued from the woods Donnacona s feathered braves, An Indian an d in an ecstasy of yelps and groans trick seized the fallen demons and carried them out of sight behind the canopy of leaves, whence for an hour or so their harsh and gut tural hubbub fell upon the ears of the French men. At last the two young interpreters crawled FROM CARTIER TO CHAM1 LAIN 17 out from the thicket and danced about the shore with agonized cries and gestures of lively terror, until Cartier from his quarter-deck called out to know what was the trouble. It was a message, they said, from the mighty deity Coudouagny, warning the visitors not to venture upon the dangerous journey to Hochelaga, inasmuch as black ruin would surely overtake them. The Frenchman s reply was couched in language dis respectful to Coudouagny, and the principle of free-trade in trinkets prevailed. With a forty-ton pinnace and two boats car rying fifty men Cartier kept on up the river, leaving his ships well guarded in a snug harbour within the mouth of the stream now known as the St. Charles. A cheerful voyage of a fortnight brought the little party to Hochelaga, Cartier where they landed on a crisp October arriv f at J r \ Hochelaga morning. There came forth to meet them in the magniloquent phrase of the old narrator " one of the principal lords of the said city/ 1 with a large company of retainers, for thus did their European eyes interpret the group of clansmen by whom they were wel comed. A huge bonfire was soon blazing and crackling, and Indian tongues, loosened by its genial warmth, poured forth floods of eloquence, 1 " L un des principaulx seigneurs de la dicte ville." Cartier, Brief recit de la nautgation faicte es ysles de Canada^ etc., p. 23. 18 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND until presently the whole company took up its march into the great city of H ochelaga. A sketch of this rustic stronghold was published in 1556 in Ramusio s collection of voyages. The name of the draughtsman has not come down to us, but it was apparently drawn from memory by some one of Carder s party, for while it does not answer in all details to Carder s description, it is a most characteristic and unmistakable Iro- Hocheiagaa ^ u i s town. Itwas circular in shape. typical iro- The central portion consisted of about quois town r r -\ i r fifty long wigwams, about 150 feet in length by 50 in breadth, framed of saplings tightly boarded in with sheets of bark. Through the middle of each wigwam ran a passageway, with stone fireplaces at intervals coming under openings in the high bark roof whereby some of the smoke might escape. Kettles of baked clay hung over most of the fires, and the smoky at mosphere was redolent of simmering messes of corn and beans and fowl, or, if it were a gala day, of boiled dog, while the fumes of tobacco were omnipresent. On either side were the rows of shelves or benches covered with furs, which served as beds ; while here and there, overlook ing sheaves of stone arrows and scattered toma hawks, there dangled flint knives and red clay pipes and dried human scalps. These spacious wigwams were arranged about a large central square, and outside of them a considerable inter- FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 19 val or boulevard intervened between habitations and wall. Such a town might have held a pop ulation of from 2500 to 3000 souls, but the ac tual number was apt to fall short of the capacity. The town wall was ingeniously constructed of three concentric rows of stout saplings. The middle row stood erect in the ground, rising to a height of twelve or fifteen feet ; and the two outer rows, planted at a distance of five or six feet on either side of it, were inclined so as to make a two-sided tent-shaped structure. The three rows of saplings met at the top, and were tightly lashed to a horizontal ridge-pole, while at the bottom, and again about halfway up, they were connected by diagonal cross-braces, after the herring-bone pattern, thus securing great strength and stability. Around the inside of this stout wall, and near the top, ran a gallery acces sible by short ladders, and upon the gallery our explorers observed piles of stones ready to be hurled at an approaching foe. Outside in all di rections stretched rugged half-cleared fields clad in the brown remnant of last summer s corn crop, and dotted here and there with yellow pumpkins. The arrival of the white strangers was the cause of wild excitement among the bark cabins and in the open square of Hochelaga. Their demeanour was so courteous and friendly that men, women, and children allowed curiosity 20 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND to prevail over fear ; they flocked about the Frenchmen and felt of their steel weapons and stroked their beards. Sick Indians came up to be touched and cured, trinkets were handed The name about, polite speeches were made, and " Montreal " at length amid a loud fanfare of trum pets the white men took their leave. Before they embarked the Indians escorted them to the summit of the neighbouring hill, which Cartier named Mont Royal, a name which as Montreal still remains attached to the hill and to the noble city at its foot. It was getting late in the season to make further explorations in this wild and unknown country, and upon returning to Stadacona the Frenchmen went into winter quarters. There they suffered from such intensity of cold as the shores of the English Channel never witnessed, Distresses of an <3 presently scurvy broke out with the winter such virulence that scarcely a dozen of the whole company were left well enough to take care of the rest. In vain were prayers and litanies and genuflexions in the snow. The heavenly powers were as obdurate as when Cas- sim Baba forgot the talismanic word that opened the robbers cave. But presently Cartier learned from an Indian that a decoction of the leaves of a certain evergreen tree was an infallible cure for scurvy. The experiment was tried with re- FROM C ARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 21 suits that would have gladdened Bishop Berke ley, had he known them, when he wrote his famous treatise on the virtues of tar water. 1 Whether the tree was spruce, or pine, or bal sam fir, is matter of doubt, but we are told that Cartier s men showed such avidity that within a week they had boiled all the foliage of a tree as big as a full-grown oak, and had quaffed the aromatic decoction, whereupon their cruel dis temper was quickly healed. The ranks had been so thinned by death that Cartier was obliged to leave one of his ships behind. Further exploration must be postponed. It was the common experience. A single season of struggle with the savage con tinent made it necessary to return to Europe for fresh resources. So it was with Cartier. The midsummer of 1536 saw him once more safe within the walls of St. Malo, and confident that one more expedition would reveal some at least of the wonders which he had heard of, comprising all sorts of things from gold and diamonds to unipeds. As we are confronted again and again with these resplendent dreams of the early voyagers to America, we are re- 1 On its specific use in scurvy, see Berkeley s Sir is, pp. 86-119, in Eraser s edition of his works, Oxford, 1871, ii. 395-408. The bishop s interest in tar water seems to have been started by his experiences in America, iv. 262. 22 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND minded not only that the wish is father to the thought, but also that the stolid-looking red man is the most facetious of mortals, and in his opinion the most delightful kind of Indian tales r racetiousness, the genuine epicure s brand of humour, consists in what English slang calls " stuffing," or filling a victim s head with all manner of false information. In Carrier s case one effect was to lead him to kidnap Don- nacona and several other chiefs, and carry them to France, that they might tell their brave sto ries before the king. Five years elapsed before another expedition was ready for Canada. King Francis made up his mind that a little more flourish of trumpets, such as the crowns of Spain and Portugal in dulged in, would not come amiss. Columbus and Gama had been admirals and viceroys ; it was high time for the king of France to create a viceroyalty in the New World. To fill this eminent position he selected Jean Fra^ois, Sieur de Roberval, a nobleman who held large estates in Picardy. This man he created Lord of Norumbega and Viceroy over Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, and so on through a long string of barbaric names. At the same time Cartier was made cap- Roberval . .... . . r tain-general, and m his commission the king declares that the lands of Canada and Hochelaga "form the extremity of Asia toward FROM CAETIER TO CHAMPLAIN 23 the west." l The flourish of trumpets was loud enough to reach the ears of Charles V., but the Spaniards had become convinced that the cod fish coasts contained no such springs of sud den wealth as Cortes and Pizarro had dis covered for them, and the Spanish ambassador at Paris advised his master that the soundest policy was to let Francis go on unmolested and waste his money in a bootless enterprise. The event seemed to justify this cynicism. It was a dismal tale of misdirected energies. So little commercial interest was felt in the voyage that volunteers were not forthcoming and had to be sought in the jails. So much time was consumed in getting ready that it was decided to send on a part of the expedition carder s voy- in advance, and so in May, 1 541, Car- a s e > l w tier started with three ships, expecting soon to be overtaken by Roberval. In this expecta tion he tarried six weeks on the Newfoundland coast, until the arrival of August determined him to wait no longer, and he pushed across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and up the river. Of this voyage we have no such full report as of its predecessor. Very little seems to have been accomplished in new explorations ; at Hoche- laga there were rumours of hostile plots on the part of the red men ; and then there was another i Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouvelle France, ft De par le toy," 17 Oct. 1540. 24 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND wretched winter near the site of Quebec ; and then a forlorn retreat to the ocean and to France. At one of the harbours on the New foundland coast the little fleet of Cartier met that of Roberval, whose detention of a whole year has never been accounted for. Our author ities are here so confused that it is impossible to elicit from them a coherent story. It seems clear, however, that the meeting between the two commanders was not a pleasant one, and that Cartier kept on his way to France, leaving Roberval to shift for himself. The Lord of Norumbega was not left help less, however, by this departure. He had sturdy pilots on board, already familiar with these coasts, and one of his three ships was com manded by a veteran navigator who was thought jeanAiie- to ^ e unexcelled by any other seaman fonsce tries o f France. This was Jean Allefonsce, to explore _ . . r ~ . the sea of of the province of Samtonge, over wn i c h sweep the salt breezes of the Bay of Biscay. In forty years or more of life upon the ocean he is likely to have visited more than once already these northern waters, such a haunt of Biscay an fishermen. He was now en trusted with an important enterprise. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence the expedition was divided, and it seems clear that while Roberval under took the task of exploring the river he sent Allefonsce on an ocean trip to find a passage FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 25 into the Sea of Verrazano. This voyage is usually mentioned in such terms as to be unin telligible ; as for example by the Recollet friar, Sixte le Tac, writing in 1689, who says that Roberval sent Allefonsce northward to Labra dor in quest of a passage to the East Indies, but that Allefonsce was so beset with floating ice that he was fain to rest contented with dis covering the strait between Newfoundland and the continent in latitude 5 2 , 1 or, in other words, the Strait of Belle Isle. Now this is of course absurd, for the Strait of Belle Isle had long been familiar to mariners and was a favourite route for entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In one of the most recent books, the late Justin Win- sor s " Cartier to Frontenac," we get a reverber ation of this statement when we are told that " Allefonsce went north along the Labrador coast to find, if possible, a passage to the west. The ice proved so dense that he gave up the search." 2 But while most writers have repeated this state- 1 " Ce flit 1m [Roberval] aussy qui envoy a Alphonse tres habile pilote xaintongeois vers la Brador pour essayer de trouver un passage aux Indes Orientales, mais il se contenta de decouvrir seulement celuy qui est entre Pisle Terreneuve et la grande Terre du Nord par les 52 degres, les glaces 1 empeschant d aller plus loing." Sixte le Tac, Histoire chronologique de la Nouvelle France, publi ee pour la premiere fois d apres le manuscrit original de 1689, par E. Re-ueillaud, Paris, 1888, p. 45. 2 Cartier to Frontenac > p. 4 1 . 26 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND merit, it is to be observed that the careful and thoroughly informed Hakluyt, writing in 1589, Errors in re- knows nothing of any such northern yage of Allefonsce. The truth i S) that eminent sailor, after return ing from his expedition with Roberval, wrote an account of his voyages, in which he was aided by a friend, Paulin de Secalart, a geogra pher of Honfleur. This narrative, written in 1545, still remains in manuscript, a folio of 194 leaves, and is preserved in the National Library at Paris. 1 But in 1559, shortly after the death of Allefonsce, and during that brief period of quickened curiosity about the man which is wont to come at such a time, a book was pub lished at Poitiers, entitled " The Adventurous Voyages of Captain Jean Allefonsce," and this book ran through at least seven editions. It was compiled by a merchant of Honfleur named Maugis Vumenot, and is a thoroughly uncritical and untrustworthy narrative. 2 It omits much that Allefonsce tells, and weaves in such interesting material as Master Vumenot hap- 1 Its description is Cosmographie avec espere et regime du Soleil et du Nord en nostre langue fran^oyse par Jehan Alle fonsce, Bibliotheque Nationale, MSS. fran^ais 676. An account of it is given in Harrisse, D ecouverte de Terre-Neuve, p. 153, and Notes sur la Nouvelle France, p. 7. See also De Costa, Northmen in Maine, etc., pp. 92-122. 2 Cf. Weise, The Discoveries of America, New York, 1884, p. 352. FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 27 pened to have at hand, without much regard to its historic verity. Such were the naive methods of sixteenth century writers. If we consider what Allefonsce himself tells us, although his allusions to places are often far from clear, we cannot fail to see that his voyage in quest of a western passage in the summer of 1 542 was directed not northward but The true di- southward from the Gulf of St. Law- rence. He seems to have entered voyage Massachusetts Bay, and may have passed through Long Island Sound and Hell Gate ; at all events he has much to say about the town of Norumbega, which M creator s map of 1569 places upon Manhattan Island ; and he tells us that the river of Norumbega is salt for more than ninety miles from its mouth, which is true of the Hudson, but not of any other river which men have sought to associate with Norumbega. Moreover our good pilot feels confident that this great river, if followed far enough to the northward, would be found to unite with the other great river of Hochelaga, that is, the St. Lawrence. 1 This notion, of a union between the Hudson and the St. Lawrence, became a very common one, and found expression upon the famous map of Gastaldi in 1553, and upon other maps. 1 Cf. Weise, The Discoveries of America, New York, 1884, p. 352. 28 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND If we were to allow a little free play to our fancy, it would not be difficult to assign a suit able explanation for this voyage of Allefonsce in connection with the expedition of Roberval. There is no longer any doubt that the Hudson River was first made known to Europeans by Verrazano in 1524, and was called by various names, of which perhaps the Grand River was the most common. At the Indian village on Manhattan Island French skippers traded for furs, and in 1540 a French blockhouse was built near the site of Albany for the purpose of Allefonsce protecting such traffic with the red visits the men of the Mohawk valley. The name Norumbega unquestionably first appears with Verrazano s voyage, and for forty years thereafter it was closely associated with the neighbourhood of the Hudson. In reading the string of Roberval s titles which begin with Norumbega and run through Canada, Hoche- laga, Saguenay, etc., down to Newfoundland it is clear that the king meant to concentrate under his rule the various regions which Ver razano and Cartier had discovered. When the expedition arrives on the American coast it seems not unnatural that the viceroy should send his lieutenant to Norumbega while he himself should prosecute the journey to Hoche- laga. Possibly, as some believed, the watery channels pursued by the two might unite. At FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 29 all events a passage into the Sea of Verrazano was more likely to be found at the fortieth par allel than at the fifty-second. It is a pity that these amiable old skippers, in telling of their acts and purposes, should have paid so little heed to posterity s craving for full and exact knowledge. Just how far the good Allefonsce ever got with his Norumbega voyage, or what turned him back, we are not informed. We may safely say that he did not succeed in sailing into the Sea of Verrazano, and the next summer we find him once more with Roberval on the St. Lawrence. Thither that captain had proceeded at the outset after part ing company with Allefonsce. Of his fortunes during the next seventeen months our accounts are but fragmentary. Hakluyt is unusually brief and vague, and we have to rely largely upon a manuscript of I556, 1 written by the somewhat mendacious Andre Thevet, who seems to have been an intimate friend of Roberval and a boon companion of the irrepressible buffoon Rabelais. Provokingly scanty as Thevet often is, there are times when he goes into full details, and one of his romantic stories is worthy of mention, since it probably rests upon a basis of fact. The expedition of Roberval was intended not only for exploring the wilderness but for founding a colony. Homes were to be estab- 1 See Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouvelle France, p. 278. 30 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND lished in the New World, and many of the company brought along with them their wives and children. Among the young women was Marguerite Roberval, niece of the Lord of Norumbega, and on the same ship was a gal lant chevalier, and the twain loved one another not wisely but too well. Roberval Thecharac- ter of Rober- was a man or stern and relentless dis position, and forgiveness of sins formed no part of his creed. He set his niece ashore on a small barren island, with an old Norman nurse who had been in her confidence, and left them there with a small supply of food and guns for shooting game or noxious beasts. As the ship sailed away, the lover leaped into the sea and by dint of frenzied exertion swam ashore. The place was dreaded by sailors, who called it the Isle of Demons, but bears and wolves were more formidable enemies. On that island was born, during the year 1542, the first child of European parents within the vast region now known as British America, but one after another, child, father, and nurse, succumbed to the hardships of the place and died, leaving the young mother alone in the wilderness. There for more than two years she contrived to sustain life, on three occasions shooting a white bear, and at all times keeping the de mons aloof by the sign of the cross, until one day she was picked up by a fishing vessel and FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 31 carried back to France. There Thevet tells us that he met her a little later, in a village of Peri- gord, and heard the story from her . J The romance own lips. At all events it was much ofRobervai s talked of iri France, and forms the mece subject of the sixty-seventh tale in the famous collection of Queen Margaret of Angouleme, sister of Francis I. 1 The Isle of Demons was often called by sailors the Isle of the Damsel. Ascending the great river to Cap Rouge, near the site of Quebec, where Cartier had win tered, Roberval made it his headquarters. Lit tle is known as to the course of events, save that in the following summer Allefonsce had re turned, and a trip was made up the Saguenay. There were severe hardships and many died. The sternness of Roberval is conspicuous in the narrative, and may have been called forth by apparent necessity. There were occasions on which both men and women were shot for an example, and the whipping-post was frequently in requisition, " by which means," observes the worthy Thevet, "they lived in peace." This is about all we know of the mighty viceroyalty of Hochelaga, etc. Lescarbot tells us that in the course of 1543 the king sent out Cartier once 1 See Heptameron : Les Nouvelks de Marguerite, Reine de Navarre, Berne, 1781, torn. iii. pp. 179-184. In my copy of this edition de luxe the superb engraving by Freu- denberg represents the lovers seated under palm-trees .! 32 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND more, who brought home to France the wretched survivors of the company. 1 About this time Cartier received from the king a grant of a manor on the coast of the Channel, not far from St. Malo, and there we lose sight of the navi gator, except for the mention of his death at that place in 1557. Allefonsce seems to have been killed in a sea fight about ten years before, and we are told that Roberval was assassinated one evening on the street in Paris. After the failure of this expedition there was a partial cessation of French enterprise upon the high seas. The reign of Henry II. was clouded by the disastrous wars with Spain, in which France lost the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and French armies were so woefully defeated at St. Quentin and Gravelines. The death of the king in ICCQ was Suspension of . 3 r i French ex- the signal for the rise of the Guises and the pursuance of a policy which brought on one of the most disastrous civil wars of modern times. From 1562 to 1598 some historians enumerate eight successive wars in France, but it is better to call it one great civil war of thirty-six years, with occasional truces. It is still more instructive to regard it all as a phase of the still mightier conflict which was at the same time raging between Spain and the Netherlands, and which presently included 1 Lescarbot, ii. 416. FROM CARTIER TO CHAMPLAIN 33 Queen Elizabeth s England among the com batants. It was not a favourable time for ex pending superfluous energy in founding new states beyond sea. During the latter half of the century we witness two feeble and ill- starred attempts at planting Huguenot colonies in America, the attempt of Villegagnon in Brazil in 1557-58, and that of Ribaut in Florida in 1562-65. The latter of these was formidable in purpose ; it represented the master thought of Coligny which led Sir Walter Raleigh to plan the founding of an English nation in America. The violent de struction of this Huguenot colony was the last notable exhibition of Spanish power beyond sea in that century of Spanish preeminence. Spanish energy, too, was getting absorbed in the conflict of Titans in Europe. The affair of Florida was essentially military in purpose and execution. Attempts at planting commercial colonies on the St. Lawrence must wait for some more favourable opportunity. Yet French fishing vessels steadily plied to and fro across the Atlantic. Investigations in the local aCCOUnt-books Of SUch tOWnS aS Importance Dieppe and Honfleur lead to the con- the traffic of elusion that as many as 200 ships were ^ sea equipped each year in French ports for fishing in American waters. 1 It was no uncommon 1 Winsor, Carrier to Frontenac, p. 74. 34 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND thing for these craft to bring home furs and walrus ivory. But we hear of little in the way of exploration. Dieppe, indeed, boasted some thing like a school of seamanship. It was a city to which astronomers, geographers, and map- makers were drawn in order to profit by the experiences of practical navigators, and where questions connected with oceanic exploration were likely to be treated in a scientific spirit. In those days such men as Pierre Desceliers, who has been called the creator of French hy drography, and whose beautiful maps are now of great historical importance, made his head quarters at Dieppe. It was a time of keen in tellectual curiosity and bold commercial activity ; and nothing was needed but relief from the oppressive anarchy that had ruled so long to see France putting forth new efforts to plant colo nies and to prepare for maritime empire. The end of the century saw a new state of things, the military strength of Spain irretrievably broken, the policy of France in the hands of the greatest and wisest ruler that France ever had, with England and the Netherlands loom ing up as powerful competitors in the world be yond seas. Before the rivals lay the American coasts, inviting experiments in the work of transplanting civilization. It remained to be seen how France would fare in this arduous undertaking. II THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC THE year 1598 was a memorable one in the history of France, for it witnessed the death of that insatiable schemer, Philip II. of Spain, supporter of the Guises, and it also saw the end of the long wars of religion and the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes. The time seemed to be more propitious than before for commercial enterprises, and the thoughts of a few bold spirits turned once more to the St. Lawrence. One of these was the Marquis de la Roche, a Breton noble- Voyage of man. who obtained from Henry IV. the Marquis . . . .. de la Roche a commission very similar to that under which Roberval had sailed. But so little popular interest was felt in the enterprise that volunteers would not come forward, and it be came necessary to gather recruits from the jails. The usual scenes of forlorn and squalid tragedy followed. Roche was cast ashore on the Breton coast in a tempest, and was thrown into a dun geon by the king s enemy, the Duke de Mer- cceur ; 1 while his convicts were landed on Sable i The " Duke Mercury " of John Smith s True Travels, chaps, v., vi. 36 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Island, and only saved from starving by the wild cattle descended from Lery s kine of four score years before. While these things were going on there was a skipper of St. Malo, a man of good family and some property, Fran9ois Grave, Sieur du Pont, commonly known as Pontgrave, who had made up his mind that the Canada fur-trade was some thing that ought to be developed. He had sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as Three Rivers, and had feasted his eyes upon the soft glossy pelts of mink and otter, lynx and wol verene. The thing to do was to get a monopoly of the trade in furs, and with this end in view Pontgrave applied to a friend of the king, a wealthy merchant of Honfleur named Pierre Chauvin and a staunch Huguenot withal. An other man of substance, the Sieur de Monts, became interested in the scheme, and the three formed a partnership ; while the king granted Pontgrave them a monopoly of the fur-trade on and chauvin the condition that they should establish n^poiVofdie a colony. This privilege awakened fur-trade fierce heart-burnings among the gal lant skippers of St. Malo, who declared that they had done more than anybody else to maintain the hold of France upon the St. Law rence country, and there was no justice in sin gling out one of their number for royal favour, along with merchants from Honfleur and else- THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 37 where. Similar complaints were heard from Rouen, Dieppe, and Rochelle ; the parliaments of Normandy and Brittany took up the matter, and a fierce outcry was made because Chauvin and Monts were Protestants. But this argument naturally went for little with Henry IV., and the monopoly was granted. Pontgrave and Chauvin made their head quarters at Tadousac, where the waters of the Saguenay flow into the St. Lawrence. The traf fic in furs went on briskly, but the business of colonization was limited to the leaving of mis erable garrisons in the wilderness to perisL of starvation and scurvy. So things went on from 1599 to 1603, when Chauvin on his third voy age died in Canada. The partnership was thus broken up, and the monopoly for the moment went a-begging. It was only for a moment, however. The governor of Dieppe since 1589 was Aymar de Chastes, a stout Catholic of the national party and a friend of Henry IV. On the great day of Arques in 1589, when the Leaguers boasted that their fat Duke of Mayenne, 1 with his army of 30,000, would make short work of the king with his 7000, when the fashionable world of Paris was hiring windows in the Faubourg St. 1 Mais un parti puissant, d une commune voix, Pla^ait deja Mayenne au trone de nos rois. Voltaire, La Henriade, vi. 6l. 38 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Antoine, to see the rugged Bearnese brought in tied hand and foot, it was largely through the aid of Chastes that Henry won his brilliant vic tory and scattered the hosts of Midian. 1 It was therefore not strange that when upon the death De chastes ^ Chauvin ^is scarred and grizzled succeeds veteran asked for the monopoly in furs, his request was promptly granted. Chastes soon found an able ally in Pontgrave, but even with the allurements of rich cargoes of peltries it was hard to get people to subscribe money for such voyages. Loans for such pur poses were classed on the market as loans at heavy risk, and the rate of interest demanded was usually from 35 to 40 per cent. 2 While the preparations were briskly going on a new figure entered upon the scene, the noble figure of the founder of New France. Samuel Champlain was now about six and thirty years of age, having been born in or about the year 1 567, at Brouage, a small seaport in the province of Saintonge, not many miles south of Rochelle. The district, situated on the march between the Basque and Breton countries, was famous as a 1 Michelet, Histoire de France, xii. 286 ; Gravier, Vie de Champlain, p. 6. 2 Toutain, " Les anciens marins de 1 estuaire de la Seine," in Bulletin de la Sodete normande de Geographic, 1898, xx. 134 ; Breard, Le vieux Honfleur et ses marins, Rouen, 1897, p. 59. THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 39 nursery of hardy sailors, and the neighbour hood of Rochelle was one of the chief centres of Huguenot ferment. Champlain s father was a seafaring man, but nothing is positively known as to his station in society or as to his religion. One local biographer calls The early life him an humble fisherman, but the ofChampiain son s marriage contract describes him as of noble birth. The son was often called by con temporaries the Sieur de Champlain, but that was chiefly perhaps after he had risen to em inence in Canada. The baptismal names of the father and mother, Antoine and Marguerite, indicate that they were born Catholics ; while Samuel, the baptismal name of the son, affords a strong presumption that at the time of his birth they had become Huguenots. In later life Champlain appears as a man of deeply reli gious nature but little interested in sectarian dis putes, a man quite after the king s own heart, who realized that there were other things in the world more important than the differences be tween Catholic and Huguenot. Champlain was to the core a loyal Frenchman, without a spark of sympathy with those intolerant partisans who were ready to see France dragged in the wake of Spain. The early years of this noble and charming man were mostly spent upon the sea. He was a true viking, who loved the tossing waves and 40 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND the howling of the wind in the shrouds. His strength and agility seemed inexhaustible ; in the moment of danger his calmness was un ruffled as he stood with hand on tiller, calling out his orders in cheery tones that were heard above the tempest. 1 He was a strict disciplina rian, but courteous and merciful as well as just and true ; and there was a blitheness of mood and quaintness of speech about him that made him a most lovable companion. In the whole course of French history there are few person ages so attractive as Samuel Champlain. For several years until the peace of 1598 Champlain served in the army of Henry IV. as deputy quartermaster-general. One of his uncles was pilot major of the Spanish fleets, and after the peace Champlain accompanied him to Seville. A fleet was on the point of sailing for Mexico, under the Admiral Francisco Colombo, and Champlain obtained, through his uncle s influence, the command of one of the ships. Champlain > Ott in the West land, lasted more than two years, and Champlain kept a diary, from which after returning to France he wrote out a narra tive 2 which so pleased the king that he granted 1 Champlain, Trait e de la marine et du devoir d un bon mar inter, pp. 1-7. 2 An English translation from this MS. was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1859 under the title Narrative of A THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 41 him a pension. In this relation Champlain de scribed things with the keen insight and careful attention of a naturalist. Shores, havens, and mountains lie spread out before you, with the wonderful effects of snow-clad peaks rising from the masses of tropical verdure, birds of strange colour sing in the treetops, while hearsay grif fins, with eagles heads, bats wings and croco diles tails lurk in the background ; and worse than such monsters, our traveller thinks, are the spectacles of Indians flogged for non-attend ance at mass, and heretics burned at the stake. While making a halt at the Isthmus of Panama it occurs to him that a ship-canal at that point would shorten the voyage to Asia even more effectually than the discovery of a northwest passage. When Champlain returned to France he found Aymar de Chastes preparing to send Pontgrave upon a voyage to Canada. The veteran Pontgrave was brave and wise, resource ful and light-hearted, just the sort of man whom Champlain would be sure to like. It is therefore not strange that we find him embarking in the Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico. The original MS. was first published in 1870 as the first volume of Champlain s works edited by Laverdiere : Brief discours des chases plus remarquables que Samuel Champlain de Brouage a reconnues aux Indes occidentales au voyage qu* il en a faict en ice lies eH Lannee mil v c iiij xx xix, etc. 42 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND enterprise with Father Pontgrave, as he used affectionately to call him. The two sailed from champs HonflcuT on the 1 5th of March, 1603, first voyage and seventy days later they were gliding past the mouth of the Sague- nay. As they approached the St. Charles they saw no traces of the Iroquois town of Stadacona. On they went, as far as Hochelaga, where Car- tier had been entertained sixty-eight years be fore, but not one of its long bark cabins was left, nor a vestige of its stout triple palisade, nor a living soul to tell the story of the dire catastrophe. No Iroquois weresnow to be met upon the St. Lawrence except as invaders, nor were the accents of their speech to be heard from the lips of the red men who emerged from the thickets to greet Champlain and Pontgrave. The disap- Another name than " Canada " would pearance of h ave become attached to that country the Iroquois village of had these explorers been the first to penetrate its wilds. No doubt, what ever, can attach to the facts. There is no doubt that in 1535 Iroquois villages stood upon the sites of Montreal and Quebec, or that the Iroquois language was that of the natives who dwelt along the shores of the St. Lawrence ; while in 1603 the villages with their people and their language had vanished from these places- and instead of them were found Algonquin vil lages of a much lower type and a ruder people, THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 48 known as Adirondacks, and speaking an Al- gonquian language. The visits of our good Frenchmen have placed dates upon a portion of one of those displacements or wanderings of people that have commonly gone on in barbaric ages alike in the Old World and in the New. Just as we find Hunnish hordes in one age breaking their strength against the great wall of China and in another age mowed down by the swords of Roman and Visigoth in the val ley of the Marne, just as we see the Arab smile and hear the Arabic guttural in Cordova and in Lucknow, so in the New World we find Dacotahs or Sioux strayed afar into the Caro- linas with their identity veiled under the name " Catawbas," and we recognize in the brave and intelligent Cherokees of Georgia pure-blooded Iroquois, own cousins of the Mohawks. Now the Iroquois, as we know them, while preeminent in power of organization, have not been a numerous family. Within our historic ken, which is so provokingly narrow, the most fruitful and abounding Indian stock has been that of the Algonquins. They include the Blackfeet of the Rocky Mountains and the Crees of the Hudson Bay country The along with the Powhatans of Old Vir- ginia, and Eliot s version of the Bible <i uins for the natives of Massachusetts Bay is to-day for the most part intelligible to the Ojibways 44 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of Minnesota. Obviously within recent times, that is to say since the fourteenth century, the Algonquins have been for a period of some du ration a rapidly multiplying and spreading race, and their weight of numbers for a time proved too much for the more civilized but less numer ous Iroquois to withstand. Thus in the Appa lachian region we find the mound-building Cherokees retiring from the Ohio valley into Georgia before the advancing swarms of Shaw- nees ; and we see the Tuscaroras, another band of Iroquois, pushed into Carolina by the ex pansion of the Algonquin Powhatans and Del- awares. From the time when white men. first became interested in the Five Nations of New York, it was a firmly established tradition among the latter that their forefathers had once lived on the St. Lawrence, and in particular that they had a stronghold upon or hard by the site of Montreal ; but that they had been driven to the southward of Lake Ontario by the hostility of a tribe of Algonquins known as Adiron- dacks. 1 Their first movement seems to have been up the St. Lawrence and across Lake On tario to the mouth of the Oswego River, where for some time they had their central strongholds. Thence they spread in both directions. Those 1 Golden s History of the Five Indian Nations, London, 1755, i. 23. THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 45 who settled at the head of the Canandaigua lake became known by the Algonquin name of Senecas, which has been variously interpreted. Those who stopped at a lake to the eastward, with a marsh at its foot, called Cayuga, or " mucky land," were known by that name. Those who kept up the ancestral council fires, and spread over the divide between the Oswego and Mohawk watersheds, and so on over the gentle rolling country eastward of the Skan- eateles or " long lake," have ever since been known as Onondagas, or " men of the hills." Eastward from this central region the people were called Oneidas, or " men of the boulders " (or perhaps " men of granite "), from the profu sion of erratic blocks strewn over their territory. Furthest to the east, and most famous of these confederated warriors, were the people who called themselves, or were called by their kins men, Caniengas, or " people of the flint " that was used in striking fire ; they are best known to history, however, by the name of Mohawk, or " man-eater," bestowed upon them by their Algonquin foes, and which all the Iroquois seem abundantly to have earned by their canni bal propensities. 1 The driving of the Iroquois up the St. Law- 1 Beauchamp, Indian Names in New Tork, passim ; Mor gan, League of the Iroquois, pp. 51-53 ; Ancient Society, p. 125. 46 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND rence valley into central New York by their Algonquin assailants had remarkable conse quences. For military and commercial purposes the situation was the best on the Atlantic slope of North America. The line of the Five Na tions stretched its long length between the trea sures of beaver and otter on the great lakes and the wampum beds on the coast of Long Island ; but if an enemy, from any quarter of the com pass, ventured to attack that long line, forth with it proved to be an interior line in follow ing which he was apt to be overwhelmed. Along with this singular advantage of geo graphical position the Five Nations soon learned the value of political confederation in preserv ing peace among themselves while increasing their military strength. It was a common thing for Indian tribes of allied lineage to enter into confederation, but no other union of this sort was so artfully constructed, harmonious, and The iroquois enduring as the League of the Iro- confederacy q UO j S0 Xhe date of the founding of this confederacy seems to have been not far from 1450, and we may suppose the great movement from the valley of the St. Lawrence to the lakes of central New York to have oc curred about a century earlier. This group of Iroquois, which became the Five Nations, was an overgrown tribe which underwent expansion and segmentation. From the expanding Onon- THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 47 dagas the extreme wings first broke off as Sen- ecas and Mohawks ; afterward the Onondagas again threw off the Cayugas, while a portion of the Mohawks became marked off as Oneidas. To abolish war throughout their smiling coun try by referring all affairs of general concern to a representative council was the great thought of the Onondaga chief Hiawatha, who, after bit ter opposition in his own tribe, found a powerful ally in Dagonoweda, the Mohawk. 1 Soon after the middle of the fifteenth century the work of these sagacious statesmen was accomplished, and thenceforth the people of the five tribes, from Canandaigua, " the chosen settlement," to Sche- nectady, " the plain beyond the opening," were proud to call themselves Hodenosaunee, or "Kinsmen of the Long House." Thenceforth they found themselves more than a match for the Algonquin foe, and able to go forth and as sail him. But there were yet other Iroquois kinsmen beside those of the Long House. To the north of the St. Lawrence and of Lake Ontario as far west as the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron one might have encountered the populous tribe of Hurons. In blood and speech they differed no more from Mohawks than a Frank from a Fri sian, or a Welshman of Wales from a Welsh man of Cornwall. They were the rear of the 1 Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, chap. ii. 48 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND retiring Iroquois host, the buffer that took the first brunt of the Algonquin onsets. They were probably the last to leave the valley of the St. Lawrence. In all probability the towns of Outlying Hochelaga and Stadacona, visited in tribes of i $3 $ by Cartier, were Huron towns, which in the course of the next half century were swept away by the last advancing Algonquin wave. In Champlain s time the Huron boundaries all stopped west of the meridian of Niagara, and their population of 20,000 souls was to be found mostly between Lake Simcoe and the Georgian Bay. Between these Hurons and Lake Erie, west of the Ni agara River, dwelt another tribe of identical blood and speech, known as the Attiwenda- ronks ; and south of Lake Erie came the Eries ; while down in the pleasant valley of the Sus- quehanna were the villages of the powerful tribe variously called Susquehannocks, Andastes, or Conestogas. All these were Iroquois, and were severely ^blamed by the Five Nations for refus ing to accept Hiawatha s " Gift of Peace " and join the confederacy. They were scorned as base and froward creatures, so bent upon having their own way that they held aloof from the only arrangement that could put a curb upon the per petual slaughter ; such, at least, was the purport of the solemn speeches that used to be made be fore the council fires at Onondaga. The Fivt THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 49 Nations were bound to be peace-makers, even at the cost of massacring all the human population of America. They fully appreciated the injunc tion " Compel them to enter in." In the course of the seventeenth century we find them annihi lating successively the Hurons, Attiwendaronks, Eries, and Conestogas, and after the customary orgies of torment and slaughter, adopting the remnants into their own tribes. In Champlain s time the hatred between the Five Nations and the Hurons had come to such a pass that the latter forgot their ancient hostility to the Al- gonquins of the St. Lawrence, and were wont to make common cause with them against the dreaded Long House. In these ways, when Champlain arrived upon the scene, a situation had been prepared for him and for France, of which he understood absolutely nothing. Five years were to pass, however, before the gallant Frenchman was to taste the first fruits of the true significance of the disappearance of Hochelaga. When in the autumn of 1603 the returning ships arrived at Havre, they were met by the news that Chastes was dead. Once more the business must be reorganized, and this time it was the Sieur de Monts, already men- Designs of tioned, who took the lead. This no- the sieur de bleman turned his thoughts a little to the southward, perhaps with a view to milder winters, and obtained from the king a grant 50 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND extending from about the latitude of Montreal as far south as that of Philadelphia. There is a Micmac word, Acadie or Aquoddy, which means simply " place " or " region," and which appears in such names as Passamaquoddy. In French it has a romantic flavour, which is perhaps slightly enhanced in the English Acadia. To the country since famous under that name the Sieur de Monts brought his little company in the spring of 1 604. There had been indignant out cries over the circumstance that this gentleman was a Huguenot, but the king laughed at these protests. He insisted that Monts should so far defer to public opinion as to take a Romish priest with him to preach the gospel to the hea then ; but he allowed him also to take a Calvin- ist minister for his own spiritual solace and en- livenment. Hardly had the French coast-line sunk below the horizon when the tones of enven omed theological discussion were heard upon the quarter-deck. The ship s atmosphere grew as musty with texts and as acrid with quibbles as that of a room at the Sorbonne, and now and Homeric then a scene of Homeric simplicity quarrels was enacted, when the curate and the parson engaged in personal combat. " I forget just now," says Champlain, "which was the hard est hitter, but I leave you to imagine what a fine spectacle they made, aiming and dodging blows, while the sailors gathered around and backed THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 51 them according to their sectarian prejudices," l some shouting " Hang the Huguenot ! " and others " Down with the Papist ! " On shore similar scenes recurred, with an accompaniment of capering and yelping Indians, to whom it was quite enough that a scrimmage was going on, and who were perhaps scarcely worse fitted than the combatants themselves to understand the, issues involved. It happened that amid the hardships which assailed the little company these two zeal ous men of God succumbed at about the same time, whereupon, says one of our chroniclers with a shudder, the sailors buried them in the same grave, expressing a hope that after so much strife they would repose in peace together. 2 In our brief narrative there is no need for en tering into the details of this first experience of white men in Acadia. The experiment occupation extended over three years, during ofAcadia which there were voyages back and forth across the ocean with reinforcements to offset the losses from disease. Among the company, besides its leaders, were two men of rare and excellent qual ity, the Baron de Poutrincourt and Marc Les- carbot, an advocate and man of letters who was seized by a sudden inclination for wild life. Among Lescarbot s accomplishments was a knack of turning off long Alexandrine verses by 1 Champlain, Voyages, 1632, i. 46. 2 Sagard, Histoire du Canada, 1636, p. 9. 52 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND the yard, but what was of far more value, he wrote a shrewd and pithy prose, abounding in good sense and cheer. After the priceless writ ings of Champlain himself there are few books about the beginnings of New France with which we should be so loath to part as the three teem ing volumes of Lescarbot. The first attempt at settlement was made at the mouth of the river Ste. Croix, but the fancy of Poutrincourt was captivated by the beautiful gulf to which the English in later days gave the name of Annapolis. He obtained from Monts a grant of the spot with its adjacent territory, Founding of and called it Port Royal. There after Et AHM- a w ^^ e t ^ ie work f tnese colonists was P 0118 concentrated, while Champlain spent much time in exploring and delineating the coasts. Of making charts he was never weary, and in following sinuous shore-lines he found delight. One of his first discoveries was the grand and picturesque island which he called " isle of the desert mountains/ " L Isle des Monts Deserts," a name which to this day by its noticeable accent on the final syllable pre serves a record of this French origin. A little further to the west he entered and explored for Champlain some distance the Penobscot, which Ne P wEngk e fishermen often called the river of land coast Norumbega, but he found no traces of the splendid city into which popular fancy had THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 53 magnified Allefonsce s Indian village upon the island of Manhattan. 1 Farther on he ascended the Kennebec, and was correctly told by Indians of the route to the St. Lawrence by the valley of the Chaudiere, the route which was traversed with such bitter hardship by Benedict Arnold and his men in 1775. ^ s tne French navigator passed Casco Bay he began to notice a marked superiority in the Indians over the squalid Mic- macs and Etetchemins of Acadia. The wigwams were better built, and the fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins wore a kind of savage cheerful ness under the scorching July sun. Champlain entered the Charles River, and mistook it for the great stream which was soon to be explored by Henry Hudson. After duly astonishing the natives of the triple-peaked peninsula, he passed on to Plymouth, sailed around Cape Cod, and proceeded as far as Nauset Harbour, where the supplies began to give out, and a direct return was made to the Bay of Fundy. The object of this coasting voyage was to see if any spot could be found for a settlement that would be preferable to those already visited in Canada or on the Bay of Fundy. For a moment the Charles River seems to have tempted these worthy Frenchmen, but they decided to go fur- 1 In Gravier s Vie de Samuel Champlain, Paris, 1900, pp. 40-49, the reader will find more or less uncritical specu lation connected with this little summer voyage. 54 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND ther. Their narrative indicates a much greater coast population of red men than was found by the Mayflower Pilgrims fifteen years later, and enables us to form some idea of the magnitude of the pestilence which in the interval nearly de populated the shores of Massachusetts Bay. In 1605 all the best spots seemed to show Indian villages. The next summer Champlain made A second ex- another reconnoitring voyage from piorationof p O rt Royal, in company with Pou- the Massa- . _,. . * ,. , . chusetts trmcourt. They lost but little time in getting to Cape Cod, and then in rounding Cape Malabar they had a singular ex perience. At a distance of a league and a half from the shore they found the depth of water rapidly diminishing to less than a fathom, while on every side the waves leaped and gambolled in the wildest confusion. They got their bark across this ugly shoal with a broken rudder, lit tle dreaming that only four years before the same spot, proudly rearing its head above the sea, had been described by Bartholomew Gosnold under the name of Nauset Island. It had lately been beaten down and submerged by the angry wa ters, but nearly three centuries were consumed in washing away the fragments. The sea is now six fathoms deep there. 1 After getting clear of this dangerous place Poutrincourt put into Chatham Harbour for re- 1 De Costa, Pre-Columbian Discovery of America , p. 97. MAP OF THE GULF OF ST. THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 55 pairs, and there he remained a fortnight, closely watched from the bushes by peering red men who one morning before daybreak came swarm ing about a party of sleeping Frenchmen, and killed several. Thence our voyagers kept on to Hyannis, and from that neighbourhood descried a shore-line to the southward, which must have been either Martha s Vineyard or Nantucket. By this time Poutrincourt had made up his mind that Port Royal was the best place for his colony after all, and so the prow was turned in that direction. Things went well enough with them until in a stress of weather near Mount Desert their rudder broke, and their last hundred and fifty miles were far from comfortable. As they en tered the harbour of Port Royal a singular spectacle greeted them. That fortress consisted of a large wooden quadrangle enclosing a court yard. At one corner, which came down to the water s edge, was an arched gateway flanked by rude bastions mounting a few cannon. One side of the quadrangle comprised the dining-room and officers quarters, on the second side were the barracks for the men, on the third the kitchen and oven, and on the fourth A picturesque the store-rooms. Now on the No- welcome vember evening when Champlain and Poutrin court sailed into the harbour they saw the build ings brightly lighted and the arch surmounted 56 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND by the royal arms supported on either hand by the heraldic emblems of Baron Poutrincourt and the Sieur de Monts. While the weary voy agers were admiring the pageant there stepped forth from the gateway no less a personage than old Neptune, Lord of the Ocean, with a pom pous retinue of Tritons, who marched with measured step to meet the ship, declaiming long Alexandrine rhymed couplets of praise and welcome. Thus was the tedium of the wilder ness relieved by the ingenious Lescarbot, whose active brain was never idle, but in the intervals of work was sure to be teeming with quips and quirks and droll conceits. During the summer he had kept the men at work to good purpose, and not only raised a crop of maize, but made a respectable beginning with barley, wheat, and rye. It was to a well-stocked home that he politely ushered the voyagers, after wanderings which he would refrain from comparing with those of ^Eneas and Ulysses, inasmuch as he did not like to soil their holy missionary enter prise with unclean pagan similitudes. In such whimsicalities there was a strong sympathy between the mariner of Saintonge and the law yer of Vervins. Champlain praised Lescarbot s thrifty housekeeping, and devised a plan whereby their table might be always well supplied. The magnates at Port Royal, who occupied the dining-room, were fifteen in number; Cham- THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 57 plain formed them into an order of knighthood, which he called " The Order of Good Times/ and each member in regular rotation was Grand Master of the Order for one day, The Knight . during which he was responsible not iy Order of , 7? , , / i i i i Good Times only for the supply or the larder but for the cooking and serving of the meals. The result was a delicious sequence of venison, bear, and grouse, ducks, geese, and plover, as well as fresh fish innumerable, to go with their bread- stuffs and dried beans. Lescarbot boasted that the fare could not be excelled in the best res taurants of Paris, and they had brought more over such a generous quantity of claret that every man in the colony received three pints daily. Under such circumstances we need not wonder that there was no scurvy, or that there were only four deaths during the winter. Such comfort and immunity were unusual in those improvident days. It was with high hopes that these blithe Frenchmen hailed the approach of spring, but its arrival brought unwelcome news and re minded them of the flimsiness of the basis on which such hopes had been sustained. The merchants and fishermen of Normandy and Brittany had never approved of the monopoly granted to Monts ; on the contrary they had never ceased to fight against it at court with money and personal influence, and now at last 58 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND they had procured a repeal of the monopoly. Monts had spent on the enterprise a sum ex ceeding $100,000 of our modern money; he was allowed an indemnity of $6000 provided he could collect it from fur-traders. The blow Collapse of was decisive. If it proved so hard to DC Monts found colonies even with the advan tages of a monopoly, clearly there was no use in going on without such aid. The good Poutrincourt could not be induced to give up his plans for Port Royal, but three years elapsed before he was enabled to renew his work there. Meanwhile we must follow the fortunes of Champlain and Monts after their return to France. They first betook themselves to Paris, to confer with the king ; and Champlain tells us how day after day he walked the streets of the great city like a man in a dream. In early days he had loved the ocean and felt suffocated in an air that was not spiced with adventure. He had now left his heart in the wilderness, a subtle robber that in such matters never makes restitu tion. He longed to follow up each entrancing vista in the woodland, and to improve his ac- champiain quaintance with its denizens, four- Ittentionto footed or winged as well as human. Canada Especially was his curiosity whetted by the recollection of the mighty river which he had once ascended for so many miles. At THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 59 Hochelaga, or rather upon the shore where that barbaric town had once stood, he had heard of oceans to the westward, by which his informants doubtless meant the great lakes, and he had been told of a cataract a league in width, down which leaps a mighty mass of water, which cer tainly sounds to our ears like a reference to Niagara Falls. Champlain wished to see such things for himself, and he believed that the St. Lawrence fur-trade would prove a source of great wealth ; nor was he at all lacking in mis sionary zeal. He was more than once heard to say that the saving of a soul is worth more than the conquest of an empire. Here then was important work which he felt that Frenchmen were called upon to do. He consulted with his comrades Monts and Pontgrave, and found in them abundant sympathy. Henry IV. was in clined to look with favour upon such schemes, but his able minister Sully took a different view. The European schemes of these two statesmen were far-reaching and of the utmost importance, and Sully believed that France had need at home of all the able-bodied men she could muster ; it was poor economy, he thought, to be wasting lives in Canada. There was also the cry against monopolies, but Henry neverthe less yielded so far as to renew to Monts the monopoly in furs for one year, a concession which was far from showing the king s cus- 60 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND tomary soundness of judgment, since it was too brief to be of much use. The grantee and his friends, however, could go on in the hope of further renewals ; and so in fact they did. In April, 1608, the expedition sailed from Honfleur, Champlain following Pontgrave at a The expedi- week s interval. On arriving at Ta- tkmofi6o8 d ousa c our French adventurers got into further trouble in the matter of Father Adam s will. Pontgrave found a party of Basques trading with the Indians, and so far were they from taking his remonstrance in good part that a tussle ensued in which they boarded his ship, killing and wounding some of his men, and seized all his fire-arms. But on the arrival of Champlain the strangers became more peace fully inclined, and an agreement was made by which the whole matter was referred to the courts of justice in France. Champlain then pursued his way up-stream past the island of Orleans to the narrow place where a mighty promontory rears its head over Quebec opposite Point Levi. The French founded continued calling it by its Algonquin name Quebec, or " The Narrows," 1 and there, in what is now the Lower Town, they speedily reared a stack of buildings enclosed by a wooden wall mounting a few cannon and loopholed for musketry. While the building was going on 1 Parkman, Pioneers of France, p. 329. THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 61 there was a leaven of treason at work in the company. A locksmith, named Duval, took it into his head that more was to be gained from playing into the hands of the Spaniards who had not yet left Tadousac than from loyally serving his own country. What private motives may have urged him we do not know. The plan was to murder Champlain and hand over the new fortress and all the property to the Basques. But the secret was entrusted to too many per sons, and so came to Champlain s ears. Just as he had learned all the details a pinnace sent up from Tadousac by Pontgrave arrived upon the scene, and in it was a man whose fidelity was above suspicion. Champlain instructed him to invite Duval and three accomplices Treachery to a social evening glass in the cabin, foiled telling them that the wine was a present from some Basque friends. The bait was eagerly swallowed, and no sooner had the plotters set foot aboard the pinnace than to their amaze ment they were seized and handcuffed. It was not clear just how far the plot had spread, but it mattered little now. In the middle of the summer night the little colony was aroused from its slumbers, and many a heart quaked with fear as the announcement was made of the detection of the plot and the arrest of the ringleaders. The long rays of the morning sun revealed the severed head of the locksmith Duval adorning 62 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND the wooden gateway of the courtyard ; his three accomplices were sent to France to work in the galleys ; and a proclamation of pardon without further inquiry put everybody else at his ease. Treason and assassination had suddenly become unpopular. A terrible winter followed. When Pontgrave set sail for France in September with a magni ficent cargo of furs he left Champlain The first 5 winter at at Quebec with twenty-eight men. Quebec were left alive. At last the good Pontgrave ap peared with reinforcements and supplies, and it was arranged that he should carry on his trading at Quebec while Champlain should ex plore the country. This was a task the mean ing of which was to be learned only through harsh experience, but it was obvious from the first that it would involve penetrating the forest to a great and unknown distance from any pos sible civilized base of operations. It was work of immense difficulty. To carry on such work with an army had well-nigh overtaxed the genius of such commanders as Soto and Coro- nado, with the treasury of the Indies to back them. For Champlain, without any such re sources, different methods must be sought. He must venture into the wilderness with a hand ful of followers and as little encumbrance as possible of any sort. There seemed to be but THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 63 one feasible way of approaching this problem, and this was to cultivate the friendship of such native tribes as might be most ser- 1-1 Friendship viceable to him on his long routes, with the in- By assimilating these expeditions to S^ 001 * journeys through a friendly country successful ex- J . . , i 1 i j i i ploration the risks might be greatly diminished, and the solid results indefinitely increased. It was such considerations as these that started French policy in America upon the path which it was destined thenceforth to follow to the end. It was a choice that was fraught with disaster, yet it would be unjust to blame Cham- plain for that. Nothing short of omniscience could have looked forward through the tangle of wilderness politics that seems so simple to us looking backward. For Champlain s purposes his choice was natural and sagacious, but as to the particular people with whom he should ally himself he can hardly be said to have had any choice. Grim destiny had already selected his allies. The valley of the St. Lawrence This condi . was the route for the fur- trade, and tion det , er - i i mines the friendship must be preserved with subsequent the tribes along its banks and in- Fre " ch P lic y ward on the way to those great seas of which Champlain had heard. The tribes on the St. Lawrence were Algonquins whom the French called Montagnais, but who were afterward known as Adirondacks to the English of New 64 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND York. They were less intelligent and more bar barous than the Iroquois. Agriculture and Character of V ^ a g C ^^" e WCrC ^ Ut slightly developed the Indians among them, they were more depend ent upon hunting and fishing, and as they showed less foresight in storing provisions for the winter their numbers were more fre quently depleted by famine and disease. Farther up the great river and commanding the north western trails were the Ottawas, another Algon quin people considerably more advanced than the Montagnais ; while southerly from the Ottawas and bordering on the Georgian Bay, as already observed, were the Hurons, who rather than join the league of their Iroquois brethren preferred to maintain a sullen inde pendence, and to this end kept up an alliance with their Algonquin neighbours. For such conduct the Hurons were denounced by the confederated Iroquois as the vilest of traitors. Thus the allies marked out for Champlain and his colony were the neighbouring Algon- quins and the Hurons. It was absolutely ne cessary that friendship with these tribes should be maintained. In the autumn of 1608 Champlain champiain learned that it was in his power to allies himself do them a signal favour. A young to the Ot- i r i i tawas and Ottawa chief who happened to visit Quebec was astounded at its massive wooden architecture and overwhelmed with awe THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 65 at the voice of the cannon and the distant effects wrought by their bullets. Could not these weird strangers be induced to hurl their thunders and lightnings at the insolent enemy of the Algon- quins ? The suggestion suited Champlain s love of adventure as well as his policy. It was an ex cellent means of getting access to the Ottawa s country. Late in the following June the woods about Quebec resounded with the yells of three hundred newly arrived Hurons and Ottawas im patient to start on such an expedition as these forests had never witnessed before. It is a pity that we have no account of it from the red man s point of view ; it is fortunate, however, that we have such a narrative as Champlain s own. On the 28th of June, 1609, after the custom ary feast and war dance, they started from Que bec, some three to four hundred bar- A war art barians in bark canoes, and Champlain with eleven other Frenchmen, clad in doublets protected with light plate armour, and armed with arquebuses, in a shallop, which the Indians assured Champlain could pass without serious hindrance to the end of their route. The weap ons of the red men were stone arrows, lances, and tomahawks, but already there were many sharp French hatchets to be seen which had been bought with beaver skins. Their route lay across that broad stretch of the St. Lawrence known as Lake St. Peter to the river which a generation 66 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND later received the name of Richelieu. There they paused for some fishing and feasting, and some thing happened which has been characteristic of savage warfare in every age. A fierce quarrel broke out among the Indians, and three fourths of the whole number quit the scene in a tower ing passion and paddled away for their northern homes. The depleted war party, taking a fresh start, soon reached the rapids and carrying-place above Chambly, and there it was found that the shallop could go no further, since she could not stem the rapids, and was too heavy to be carried. Why the Indians had misinformed their white ally on this point it would be hard to say. Perhaps the inborn love of hoaxing may have prevailed over military prudence, or perhaps they may have entertained misplaced notions of the Frenchman s supernatural powers. At all events the shallop must go back to Quebec, but Champlain decided to go forward in a canoe, and from his men he selected two volunteers as com panions. After they had passed the portage there was a grand roll-call, and it was found that the total force was four and twenty canoes car rying sixty feathered warriors and the three white men. As they approached the noble lake which now bears the name of Champlain, but was long known as Lake of the Iroquois, their movements became more circumspect, they sent scouts in THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 67 advance, and occasionally they consulted the tutelar spirits of departed Algonquin and Hu ron heroes. To the pious Champlain Consultation this sort of invocation seemed like an of departed , -.^ ., heroes Uncanny attempt to raise the Devil, but he observed it narrowly and described it fully, according to his custom. A small circu lar tent was raised, of saplings covered with deer skins, and into it crawled the medicine-man, with shudders and groans, and drew together the skins which curtained him off from the specta tors. Then the voice of the tutelar spirit was heard in a thin shrill squeak, like that of a Punch and Judy show, and if the manifestation were thoroughly successful the frail tent was rocked and swayed hither and thither with frantic en ergy. This motion was thought by the awe struck spectators to be the work of the spirits, but the scoffing Champlain tells us that he caught several distinct glimpses of a human fist shaking the poles, which would seem to be a way that spirits have had in later, as in earlier times. As the war party came nearer and nearer to the enemy s country they took more pains in scouting, and at last they advanced La k e only by night. As the sky reddened cham P lain in the morning they would all go ashore, draw up their canoes under the bushes, and slumber on the carpet of moss and pine-needles until sunset ; then they would stealthily embark and 68 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND briskly ply the paddles until dawn. It was on the 29th of July, a full month after leaving Que bec, that they were approaching the promontory since famous under its resounding Iroquoisname of Ticonderoga, or " meeting of the waters," since there Lake George is divided only by a thin strip of land from Lake Champlain ; as they were approaching this promontory late in the evening they descried a dark multitude of heavy elm-bark canoes which were at once recognized as Iroquois. Naval battles are not to the red man s taste. The Iroquois landed at once and began building a barricade, while the invaders danced a scornful jig in their canoes, War dances . .* and the very air was torn asunder with yells. All night the missiles in vogue were taunts and jeers, with every opprobrious and indecent epithet that the red man s gross fancy could devise. Early in the morning the invaders landed, all except the Frenchmen, who lay at full length, covered with skins. There was no thought of tactics. The landing was unopposed, though the enemy were at least three to one. There were as many as 200 of them, all Mo hawks, tall, lithe, and many of them handsome, the best fighters in the barbaric world. In the ordinary course of things the invaders would have paid dearly for their rashness. As it was, their hearts began to quake, and they called THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 69 aloud for Champlain. Then he arose and coolly stepped ashore before the astounded Mohawks, while his two comrades moving to a flank posi tion stationed themselves among the trees. Half palsied with terror at this supernatural visitation, the Mohawks behaved like staunch men, and raised their bows to shoot, when a volley from Champlain s arquebus, into which he had stuffed four balls, instantly slew two of their The Mo- chiefs and wounded another. A sec- ^k S en pa b y lc " ond fatal shot, from one of the other fire-arms Frenchmen, decided the day. The Mohawks turned and fled in a panic, leaving many prison ers in Algonquin hands. Most of these poor wretches were carried off to the Huron and Ottawa countries, to be slowly burned to death for the amusement of the squaws and children. There was an intention of indulging to some extent in this pastime on the night following the victory, but Champlain put a stop to it. The infliction of torture was a sight to which he was not accustomed ; at the hissing of the live flesh under the firebrand he could not contain him self, but demanded the privilege of shooting the prisoner, and his anger was so genuine and imperative that the barbarians felt obliged to yield. After this summer day s work there was a general movement homewards. It was a fair average specimen, doubtless, of warfare in the TO NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Stone Age ; a long, desultory march, a random fight, a few deaths on the field and a few more at the stake, and nothing definitely accomplished. This last remark, however, will not apply to Champlain s first forest fight. A specimen of the Stone Age in all other particulars, it was in one particular the presence of the three Frenchmen entirely remote from the Stone Age. In that one particular it not only accom plished something definite, but it marked an epoch. Of the many interesting military events associated with Ticonderoga it seems the most important. There was another July day 149 years later when a battle was fought at Ticonde- This battle roga in which 20,000 men were en- defdT a g a g e d an d more than 2000 were killed hostility be- and wounded. That battle, in which item-hand Americans and British were woefully the iroquois defeated by the Marquis de Mont- calm, was a marvellous piece of fighting, but it is now memorable only for its prodigies of valour which failed to redeem the dulness of the English general. It decided nothing, and so far as any appreciable effect upon the future was concerned, it might as well not have been fought. But the little fight of 1609, in which a dozen or more Indians were killed, marks with strong emphasis the beginning of the deadly hostility between the French in Canada and the strongest Indian power on the con- THE BEGINNINGS OF QUEBEC 71 tinent of North America. In all human prob ability the breach between Frenchmen and Iroquois would in any case have come very soon ; it is difficult to see what could have pre vented it. But in point of fact it actually did begin with Champlain s fight with the Mohawks. On the July day when the Frenchman s thunder and lightning so frightened those dusky warriors, a little Dutch vessel named the Half- Moon, with an English captain, was at anchor in Penobscot Bay, while the ship s carpenter was cutting and fitting a new foremast. A few weeks later the Half-Moon dropped anchor above the site of Troy and within the very precincts over which the warriors of the Long House kept watch. How little did Henry Hudson imagine what a drama had already been inaugurated in those leafy solitudes ! A few shots of an arque bus on that July morning had secured for Frenchmen the most dangerous enemy and for Dutchmen and Englishmen the most helpful friend that the mysterious American wilderness could afford. Ill THE LORDS OF ACADIA. LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN WE must now turn our attention for a moment from Quebec to the Bay of Fundy, where it will be remembered that the withdrawal of the monopoly once granted to Monts had for the moment brought things to a standstill. While Monts and Cham- plain had forthwith renewed their labours on the poutrincourt banks of the St. Lawrence, Poutrin- p^tRoyai, court had clun g to his beloved set- 1610 tlement at Port Royal. Thither he returned in 1610 with a good priest who con verted and baptized the squalid Micmacs of the neighbourhood, and then found it hard to restrain them from testing the efficacy of their new religion by sallying forth with their toma hawks against the nearest heathen tribes. A certified list of baptisms was drawn up, and Pou- trincourt s son, usually known by the family name of Biencourt, returning next year to France for assistance, carried with him this list as a partial justification of the enterprise. Arriving THE LORDS OF A CADI A 73 in Paris the gallant young sailor found the world turned topsy-turvy. The great Henry had been murdered by Ravaillac. " Never was king so much lamented as this," says James Howell in one of his letters. 1 The effects upon Europe were far-reaching, and in the New France, which had as yet been scarcely more than half ushered into existence, a new and unexpected turn was given to the course of events. The society of the Jesuits, which began in the year 1534 with seven members, had now come to number not less than 7000, and it was everywhere recognized as one of the most powerful agencies of the counter-reformation. In many directions its influence was beneficial, but there can be no doubt as to its Remoter con- disastrous results in France. The ETSSrf dagger of Ravaillac pointed the way Henr y IV - to the discontinuance of the States-General, the expatriation of the Huguenots, the wasting warfare of the last days of Louis XIV., the de grading despotism of the next reign, and the ruthless surgery of the guillotine. Such were the cumulative results of the abandonment of the broad and noble policy inaugurated by Henry in 1598. At the time of his death they were of course too remote to be foreseen, but it was clear to everybody that the power of the 1 Howell s Familiar Letters, i. 49. 74 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Jesuits was rapidly growing, and it was dreaded by many people for its ultramontane and Span ish tendencies. At that time the spirit of propaganda was very strong among the Jesuits ; they aimed at The far- nothing short of the conversion of pianShe tne world, and displayed in the work Jesuits suc h energy, such ability, such unal loyed devotion as the world has never seen sur passed. As early as 1549 St. Francis Xavier had penetrated to the remotest East and set up a flourishing church in Japan. Before the death of Claudio Aquaviva in 1615 they had made their way into China. They had already estab lished Christian communities in Brazil, and about this time began their ever memorable work among the Indians of Paraguay. It was quite in the natural course of things that they should include New France in their far-reach ing plans. From Henry IV. they obtained but slight and grudging recognition, but his death for a moment threw the reins quite into their hands. There is something irresistibly funny in the alliance of the three women who made the success of the Jesuits their especial care, when one thinks of their various relations with the lamented king, Marie de Medicis, the miserable and faithless queen ; Henriette d En- traigues, the vile mistress ; and Antoinette, the admirable Marchioness de Guercheville, whom THE LORDS OF AC ADI A 75 Henry had wooed in vain. The zealous fathers might well believe that Satan and the good angels were alike enlisted in their behalf. Young Biencourt soon learned that & They secure resistance was useless. It was in vain an interest that the merchants of Dieppe, who in Acadia were fitting out a new expedition for America, protested that they would have no Jesuit priests, or other agents of the king of Spain, on board. Madame de Guercheville forthwith raised money by subscription, and bought a control ling interest in the business. So the Jesuits came to Port Royal, and bitter were the dis putes which they had with Poutrincourt and his high-spirited son Biencourt. An Indian sagamore of the neighbourhood, who loved these old friends, the grantees and true lords of Port Royal, came forward one day with a suggestion for simplifying the situation and securing a quiet life. Provided he could be sure it would be agreeable, he would take great pleasure in murdering the newcomers ! To his surprise this friendly service was declined. The grantees found that there was no contending against money. Loans were offered to Poutrin court in emergencies when he had not the courage to refuse them, and thus a load of debt was created with the result that on his next visit to France, in 1613, he was thrown into prison. At that juncture a ship bearing the inau- 76 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND spicious name of Jonas was fitted up with Jesuit money and manned by persons entirely in the interest of that order. Madame de Guercheville had bought out all the rights and claims of Monts to lands in Acadia, and she Madame de had also obtained from the boy king, Sfc7n c s h a vme Louis XIII -> a g rant of a11 the terri - grantofthe tory between the river St. Lawrence an< 3 Florida. Here was a grant that Florida came into direct conflict with that which James I. of England had given only six years before to his great double-headed Vir ginia Company. According to this new French charter the settlers at Jamestown were mere trespassers upon territory over which Madame de Guercheville was lady paramount ! Would she venture to claim their allegiance ? Nothing nearly so bold was attempted ; but when the Jonas arrived on the Acadian coast, the chief of the expedition, a gentleman of the court named La Saussaye, set up a standard bearing Madame de Guercheville s coat of arms. At Port Royal he picked up a couple of Jesuits and thence stood for Penobscot Bay, La Saussa e kut ^ rst ^ e entere d Frenchman s Bay in French- at Mount Desert, and dropped anchor there, for the place attracted him. Presently a spot was found so charming that it was decided to make a settlement there. It was on the western shore of Somes Sound, between THE LORDS OF AC ADI A 71 Flying Mountain and Fernald Cove. Scarcely had work begun there when a sloop of war came into the sound, carrying fourteen guns, and at her masthead was flying the little red flag of England. She was commanded by young Captain Samuel Argall, who had come all the way from James River to fish for cod, but incidentally Sir Thomas Dale, who was then governing Virginia under the title of High Marshal, had instructed him to look out for any Frenchmen who might have ventured to trespass upon the territory granted by King James to the Virginia Company. Argall had picked up some Indians in Penobscot Bay who told him of the white men at Mount Desert, and from their descriptions he recognized the characteristic shrugs and bows of Frenchmen. When his flag appeared in Somes Sound, the French commander La Saussaye, with some of the more timid ones, took to the woods, but a few bold spirits tried to defend their ship. It was of no use. After two or three TheFrench raking shots the English boarded and captured by c i_ -nu Are* 11 took possession or her. 1 he astute Argall searched La Saussaye s baggage until he found his commission from the French govern ment, which he quietly tucked into his pocket. After a while La Saussaye, overcome by hunger, emerged from his hiding-place and was received with extreme politeness by Argall, who ex- 78 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND pressed much regret for the disagreeable neces sity under which he had laboured. It was a pity to have to disturb such estimable gentle men, but really this land belonged to King James and not to King Louis. Of course, however, the noble chevalier must be acting under a royal commission, which would lay the whole burden of the affair upon the shoulders of King Louis and exonerate the officers who were merely acting under orders. So spake the foxy Argall, adding with his blandest smile that, just as a matter of formal courtesy, he would like to see the com mission. We can fancy the smile growing more grim and Mephistophelean as the bewildered Frenchman hunted and hunted. When at length it appeared that La Saussaye could produce no such document Argall began to bluster and swear. He called the Frenchmen pirates, and confiscated all their property, scarcely leaving a coat to their backs. Then as he had not room enough for all the prisoners, he put La Saus saye, with one of the Jesuit fathers and thirteen men, into an open boat and left them to their fate, which turned out to be a kindly one, for after a few days they were picked up by a French merchant ship and carried back to the Old World. As for the other Jesuit father with thirteen other men, Argall carried them to Jamestown, THE LORDS OF AC ADI A 79 where that great stickler for martial law, Sir Thomas Dale, was inclined to hang them all without ceremony ; but the wisdom of Master Reynard was Argall s, and he saw that this would be going too far. It might make serious trouble between the two Crowns, and would tend to reveal his trickery in a way that would be awkward. So he revealed it himself to Sir Thomas Dale, pulled La Saussaye s commission from his pocket, saved the lives of the captives, and remained master of the situation. Argaii re - Presently he sailed for the north ^ u r r n n s s a p d rt again with three ships and burned Roy* 1 the settlement at Port Royal, destroying the growing crops and carrying away the cattle and horses. At the moment of the catastrophe Biencourt and most of his armed men were absent, and when they returned they were too few to engage with Argall ; so after a fruitless parley and much recrimination the English skipper sailed away. Next year the Baron de Poutrincourt was slain in battle in France, and his steadfast son Biencourt, succeeding to the barony and the title, still remained devoted to the father s beloved Port Royal. He obtained fresh recruits for the enterprise, and the little wooden town rose Phoenix-like from its ashes. At the French court there was grumbling over the con duct of Argall, and complaint was made to King James ; and there the matter rested. 80 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND The dsath of the elder Poutrin court occurred in 1615. We must now return for a moment to 1609 and take up the story of Champlain *ifter his memorable experience at Ticonderoga. In June, 1610, he was called upon to repeat it an a larger scale. A party of 100 Mohawks Cham kin ^ a d advanced as far as the site of helps in the Contrccoeur, on the peninsula formed S^tdb. there b y the St - Lawrence and the ing party of Richelieu, a few miles above the mouth of the latter river, and there they were overwhelmed by a large force of Al- gonquins aided by a dozen Frenchmen. The Mohawks, driven to bay, fought until only fif teen were left alive. These were taken prison ers, and one of them was surrendered to Cham- plain, while another was chopped into fragments and eaten. The rest were put to death with slow fires by the Algonquin women, who in this re spect, Champlain tells us, are much more in human than the men, " for they devise by their cunning more cruel punishments, in which they take pleasure, putting an end to their lives by the most extreme pains." After this second taste of Indian warfare Champlain returned to France, and in the fol lowing December married a young girl, Helen Boulle, daughter of one of the late king s pri vate secretaries. Clearly Champlain was now no 1 Voyages of Champlain, ed. Slafter, ii. 246. LATER HISTORY OF CHAMP LAIN 81 Huguenot, for as this young lady was some what too much of a Calvinist he left her for a while in the following spring at an Ursuline convent, where she might learn more whole some opinions. At a later time she accompanied him to Canada, but he was not yet quite ready to bring her to such a place. On his next return, in 1611, he began building a Chris- Beginnings tian city on the site of the old Hoche- of Montreal laga. Both in the interests of the fur-trade and of his proposed western explorations he thought it best to have an available station higher up the river than Quebec. The site where building operations were begun he called Place Royale, and on a part of it the Hospital of the Gray Nuns was afterwards erected. Scarcely was the work well begun, and a few substantial walls built, when Champlain again crossed the ocean. His old colleague Monts had been appointed governor of Pons, an important place near Rochelle, and could no longer pay attention to things in America. He therefore entrusted everything to Champlain, and it was agreed that in order to give to his enterprise the requisite dignity and protection it was desirable to secure as patron some personage of great social influ ence. Such a person was found in Charles de Bourbon, Count of Soissons, a prince of the blood royal, who was made viceroy over New France, with Champlain for his lieutenant. To 82 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND the latter was given full control over the fur- trade. This arrangement was scarcely made when Soissons died and a still greater magnate The Count was ^ ounc ^ to succee d him, namely, of Soissons Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, pJfoaTof a man celebrated, as Voltaire says, for Conde sue- having been the father of the great ceed Monts ^ . 9 , . - , . Conde, but eminent for nothing else save petty ambition and greed. Champlain had come to doubt the wisdom of too exclusive a policy of monopoly, and he sought to organize a numerous association of merchants in the sea port towns. During this arduous work, when ever some little assistance at court was wanted the Prince of Conde was always ready to absorb the spare cash as a retaining fee. There was so much to be done that Cham- plain could not leave France in 1612, but a young man appeared in Paris with such a story about his experiences in the New World that fashionable society had an unwonted sensation. The name of this youth was Nicolas de Vignau. Two years before Champlain had let him go home with a party of Ottawas, in order to learn what he could about their country and perhaps A traveller s to inculcate a few civilized ideas into tale the heads of their warriors. Now Vignau strutted about Paris with the story that he had seen with his own eyes the western ocean ; at all events, he had followed the river Ottawa LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN 83 up to its origin in a lake, whence a river flowing northward had carried him down to the sea. On its shore he had seen the wreck of an English ship and the heads of eighty Englishmen who had been massacred by the natives ! It is not likely that this story was pure invention. The Ottawa River has its sources in a chain of small lakes, and from these a group of rivers, such as the Moose and Abbittibi, flow northward into James Bay, the southeasternmost portion of the vast Hudson Bay. Vignau may very well have heard of this route and have coupled with it some vague rumour of the mutiny and disaster at James Bay in which Henry Hudson lost his life in June, 1612. The plausibleness of his story and his straightforward manner carried conviction to everybody, to Champlain among others; and Champlain resolved to make the visiting of that western sea the chief work of the summer of 1613. Late in May he started from the island op posite Montreal, which in honour of the wife he had left behind he called Helen s Island. He had two canoes, carrying, besides himself and Vignau, three other Frenchmen and one Indian. Far up the Ottawa River they made their way, with fierce and sanguinary opposition from the mos- l6i s quitoes, of which Champlain writes with most lively disgust, but otherwise without unpleasant 84 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND experiences. At Allumette Island they came to a thriving Ottawa village, many of the inmates of which had never seen any white man except Vignau. After the usual formalities of feasting and smoking, Champlain addressed the warriors in the kind of speech which he had learned that they liked, and concluded by asking for canoes and guides to take him further on, even to the country of the Nipissings. But here he read in the faces of his hearers that he had touched an unpleasant chord ; they were not on good terms with the Nipissings. The old chieftain Tessouat, who replied, gently rebuked Cham- plain for not having been at Montreal the pre ceding summer to take part once more in a fight against the Iroquois. As for the canoes, of course if Champlain wanted them he should have them ; but oh, those Nipissings ! what could he be thinking of in wishing to go to them ? They would be sure to kill him ! and what a day of mourning for every true Ottawa that would be ! On Champlain s further representa tions the canoes and guides were promised, and he stepped out of doors to get a breath of fresh air. No sooner was his back turned than the assembled warriors reconsidered the subject and decided not to grant the canoes. A message to this effect brought him back into the wigwam, and once more he had to listen to the tale of Nipissing depravity. Naturally he pointed to LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLATN 85 Vignau and observed that here was a man who had been to the Nipissings and had not found them quite so black as they were V ignau s painted. " Ah ! " exclaimed old Tes- imposture , 11- discovered souat, turning upon the wretched im postor, " Nicolas, did you tell him that you had been to the Nipissings ? " It was a terrible mo ment for that silly young man, before that scowling company, with all those pairs of little snakelike eyes fixed savagely upon him. It mat tered little whether he answered yes or no ; but after some moments of silence he replied stoutly that he had been there. Angry shouts of " Liar ! " arose ; for Vignau had really spent his whole winter in this very village, and everybody present knew it. Effrontery was of no avail ; he was plied with sarcastic queries which left him dumb and bewildered. Then quoth Champlain, " Look here, Vignau, if you have told me lies I will forgive what is past, but I insist that you tell the truth now, and if you fail me you shall be hanged on the spot." For a moment more the young rascal hesitated, then fell upon his knees and confessed the whole. The Indians begged to be allowed to kill him, but Cham- plain kept his word and the worthless life was spared. There was no further talk of canoes and guides, and our hero returned somewhat crest fallen to Montreal. [Later in the season Champlain took ship 86 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND for France where he enlisted the interest of the Recollet friars in the establishment of missions among the Indians. Armed with a royal patent and the authorization of the Pope, he returned to Canada in the spring of the Recoiiets 1615, accompanied by four friars, whose singular garb at first greatly astonished their prospective flock. One of these missionaries, Le Caron, leaving his brethren at Quebec went on to Montreal, where he found the yearly gathering of Indian fur-traders. Champiain appeared a few days later, and was then besought by the throng of Hurons to join them in an attack upon the Iroquois. Yielding to these solicitations he returned to Quebec for equipment. In the mean time Le Caron went on with Indians, making his way in a northwesterly direction until he, Le Caron tne ^ rst ^ white men, gazed on the reaches great Fresh Water Sea of the Hurons. Lake Huron :P T . . /^-i i Not many days later, Champiain arrived at the Huron villages and rejoined Le Caron, and on August 1 2 the first Christian service was held. Hardly was the work of the church in this abode of evil spirits begun with these solemn rites before attention was directed to the worldly project which the Hurons had most at heart. Champiain reached the chief village of the Hurons, Cahiague, the iyth of August. Feasts LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN 87 and war dances filled the hours of waiting till all the bands were gathered, and then, crossing Lake Simcoe, the Indians, accompanied by a handful of Frenchmen under the intrepid Champlain, pushed on rapidly by lakes and the river Trent to Lake Ontario. Boldly venturing upon this inland sea in their frail craft they safely reached the other shore. A few days march brought them to the Iroquois village, 1 where their first rash The attack attack was successfully repelled, but on ^ at the sound of French muskets and the hissing of the bullets the pursuing Iroquois fell back and sought protection within the pali sades of their town. To enable an effective assault to be made upon these defences Champlain had a movable tower built, from which sharp-shooters could pick off Iroquois behind the palisades ; and also large shields to protect the assailing party from arrows and stones, in their efforts to set fire to the palings. But the excitement of battle was too much for these undisciplined hordes. They threw away the shields, rent the air with cries which made it impossible for Champlain to be 1 [The situation of this fortified town of the Iroquois has been the subject of no little discussion. For the various views, see Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., iv. 125; Parkman, Pio- veers of France in the New World., p. 402.! 88 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND heard, and in their haste lighted the fires on the lee side of the stockade, where they were champiam s ^ck\y put out by the water poured military down by the defenders. After three hours of aimless and ineffectual strug gle, the Hurons fell back discouraged. Nor was Champlain able to rouse thean to another set attack. They refused to stir unless they should be reinforced by some expected allies. These failing to arrive, the defeated Hurons gave up the contest and stole off, carrying their wounded in baskets upon their backs. They found their canoes unharmed, and safely recrossed the lake, but Champlain, greatly to his chagrin, was un able to induce the leaders to fulfil their promise to conduct him back to Quebec. At the last he was fain to accept the shelter of the lodge of a Huron chief. After some months spent in hunting, exploration, and the observation of Huron manners, Champlain returned to Quebec, where he was received as one from the dead. Champlain s plans to found a colony were in conflict with the commercial interests of the company of merchants who controlled the for tunes of New France. For them the fur-trade was the chief concern, and the growth of settle ment could but diminish the profitableness of this commerce. As a trading-post Quebec was a success, but the lapse of eight years from its LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN 89 beginnings saw only two farms in cultivation, one by the Recollet friars, the other by Louis Hebert, who brought his wife and Rivalry of children to Quebec in 1617, and es- interests tablished the first Christian household in Can ada. In 1620 Champlain brought his own young wife to Quebec, where she devoted herself with the zeal of a young convert to the spiritual wel fare of the Indian women and children. These four years of missionary apprenticeship seem to have kindled her piety to such a flame that nothing would satisfy her but retirement from the world, and after her husband s death she became a nun. In 1621 the merchants of St. Malo and Rouen, owing to repeated complaints, were ordered to give place to two Huguenot mer chants named De Caen. Their refusal brought on quarrels between the rival traders, and in weariness at these discords Montmorency sold his viceroyalty of New France to his nephew the Duke of Ventadour, whose interest in the welfare of Canada was wholly religious. It was through him that the order of the The coming Jesuits embraced New France in the ofthe J esuits world-wide field of their labours. In 1625 Lale- mant, Masse, and Brebeuf began the work which was to place their names so high in the history of Canada. The far-seeing eye of Richelieu 90 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND was now directed to the possibilities for the ex tension of French power in the New World, and the wasted opportunities of eighteen years devoted to the conflicting interests of trade and religion, which had left Quebec with only one or two self-supporting families, and at most a motley population of little over one hundred persons, convinced the great minister that a radical change was necessary. He abolished the privileges of the De Caens, and formed the com pany of New France, to consist of one hundred The one members with himself at their head. Hundred AS- To this body, commonly known as the " One Hundred Associates," were granted the political control of all of New France, the commercial monopoly of the fur- trade forever, and of other commerce, except whaling and cod-fishing, for fifteen years, for which period the trade of the colony was to be exempt from taxation. In return, the Associates must settle in Canada during these fifteen years not less than four thousand men and women, who were to be provided with cleared lands after three years residence. In contrast to the lax unconcern with which for the most part England saw her colonies peopled with all sorts and con ditions of men, German Protestants and English Catholics, English Puritans and Irish Papists, New France was henceforth to be open only to LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN 91 Catholics and Frenchmen. To attain the ideal of religious unity the strongest inducement for an energetic and progressive population to mi grate was relinquished, and the inter- Religious esting possibility of the growth of a uniformi ty Huguenot New France side by side with a Puritan New England was rejected. Hardly had this reorganization been effected, when, through the outbreak of war between England and France, these plans were inter rupted, and not only the possession but even the existence of the colony hung in the balance. The new company despatched four armed ves sels in April, 1628, under Roquemont, one of their number, to succour the distressed colonists, and simultaneously Charles I. of England au thorized a private expedition, patronized by London merchants and commanded by the three sons of their associate, Gervase Kirke, to dislodge the French from Acadia and Canada. The English fleet arrived first, but Champlain s sturdy resolution and the apparent strength of his position disconcerted them, and they turned back. But if the Kirkes failed to capture Que bec, the blow they did inflict was hardly less serious, for they overwhelmed the expedition of relief led by Roquemont, and the feeble garrison dragged through another year in such misery that Champlain meditated the desertion of Que- 92 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND bee and the capture of some Iroquois village where they would find a buried store of corn. Before so desperate a plan was resolved upon, Captain Kirke reappeared, this time to secure The capture tne surrender of Quebec, not through of Quebec by the valour of his attack, but through the English . . c . , ^ the despair or its holders. The English possession, however, was short-lived. Three years later, in accordance with the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, Canada and Acadia were restored to France in response to a demand which the honour of France, the personal pride of Richelieu as the head of the One Hundred Associates, and the pious urgency of Champlain for the conversion of the savages, all combined to press. In 1633 Champlain returned to Que bec as governor under commission from the One Hundred Associates. For a brief two years more he guided the destinies of New France. champiain s His days of exploration were over, last days an j fa s m \ n ^ turned more and more to the development and extension of the mis sions, to which all other interests were now sub ordinate. On Christmas day, 1635, tne f atner of New France passed away. Like Bradford and Winthrop, his contemporaries, he was not only the brave, patient, and wise leader of an epoch-making enterprise, but also its honest and dispassionate historian. Yet this was not all, for to-day he is not less remembered as the LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN 93 adventurous and indefatigable explorer and the curious observer of savage life and manners. 1 Recurring now to the rivalry between France and England for the possession of Acadia, the next stage to be noticed is the grant j ames L of that region in 1621 by King grants Acadia James I. to Sir William Alexander, a ii am Akxan- member of the newly organized Coun- cil of New England, to be held under the name Nova Scotia as a fief of the Crown of Scotland. The first obstacle to the establishment of his sway Sir William found in the French occu pants under the leadership of Biencourt. At Biencourt s death about the year 1623 his pos sessions and claims fell to his friend and com panion, Charles de la Tour. In 1 627 Charles de la Tour petitioned the king of France to be appointed commandant of Acadia. His mes senger was his own father, Claude de claude and la Tour, who, upon his return with charles de Roquemont s Quebec relief expedi tion, was captured by the Kirkes and carried to England. Here, being a Protestant, he re nounced his French allegiance and entered the 1 [Champlain s works are easily accessible in the scholarly collected edition of the Abbe Laverdiere, 6 vols., Quebec, 1870. An English translation of his Voyages by C. P. Otis has been published by the Prince Society under the editorial charge of Rev. E. F. Slafter, who has added a memoir and extensive notes.] 94 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND service of Sir William Alexander, who made him a baronet of Nova Scotia in 1629. The return of the father with a commission from England after he had been despatched to Legend of secure one from France produced a fideiky U to S situation which has appealed alike to France poet, historian, and novelist, who have depicted the son sternly rejecting the father s solicitations to change his allegiance. The story is a doubtful one, and the facts seem to be that La Tour adapted himself to the changes in the political world with the readiness of the Vicar of Bray. 1 The restoration of Canada and Acadia to France in 1632 forced the La Tours to trim their sails again, and Charles de la Tour suc ceeded in getting a grant of lands and a com mand from the French king. He soon found himself confronted by a shrewd and tireless ri- La Tour and va l> D Aunay Charnisay, the heir of D Aunay ^g authority of Claude de Razilly, whom the king had sent over in 1632 to receive back Acadia from the English. The rivalry of these two chieftains revived in Acadia the petty warfare of the feudal ages. Ensconced in their rustic castles, first on opposite sides of the penin sula of Acadia, D Aunay at Port Royal and 1 [Roberts, History of Canada, p. 50 ; and Rameau, Une Colonie Feodale en Am erique, Paris, 1877, p. 57.] LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN 95 La Tour at Cape Sable, and later, on opposite sides of the Bay of Fundy, where La Tour es tablished his Fort St. Jean, contesting each other s holdings, capturing each other s retain ers, now proposing common action against the English interlopers, now appealing to Boston for assistance, they carried on the struggle inter mittently for years. 1 Appeals to the king of France at first only complicated matters because of the uncertainties of Acadian geography, but in 1641 D Aunay s superior influence at court prevailed. La Tour s commission was recalled, and he was ordered to report to the king in France. At the same time D Aunay was authorized to take possession of La Tour s forts. La Tour refused obedience, and D Aunay was ordered to seize him. La Tour, now finding himself in the dangerous plight of a rebel, had recourse to Boston for help, and convinced the leaders of the Puritan colony that his cause was just, and that D Aunay was an intruder. Their help, however, was of little lasting advantage, and in 1645 D Aunay cap tured Fort St. Jean and hanged most of the prisoners. Five years later the tide turned, when 1 [For the vicissitudes of this struggle the reader may be referred to Murdoch s History of Nova Scotia, to Rameau s Une Colonie Feodale, and to Parkman s The Old Regime in Canada.~\ 96 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND D Aunay was drowned, leaving a widow and eight children. The skies then brightened for Death of La Tour, and he came back to Acadia, D Aunay having succeeded in getting a new commission from the king. Madame D Aunay was now overwhelmed with misfortune ; her claims and those of La Tour seemed incapable of adjustment, and, urged by the necessities of her children, she accepted La Tour s proposal to merge them with his by marriage. 1 Hardly had this promising settlement been effected when a force of New Englanders under Major Robert Sedgwick of Charlestown, following secret in structions received from Cromwell, suddenly attacked and conquered Acadia. Again La Tour s adroitness served him well. In 1656 he secured for himself, in conjunction with Thomas Temple and William Crowne, a grant of all of Acadia, but apparently he had now had enough of the labours and vicissitudes of founding a peo ple, for in less than two months he relinquished La Tour his share to Temple, who devoted MET himself with great energy to building Temple U p the colony. Temple successfully weathered the change in government at the Restoration, reminding Charles II. that he had been faithful to his father, and " that one of the last commands that he whispered to Kirke on 1 [Murdoch prints the marriage contract, i. 120-123.] LATER HISTORY OF CHAMPLAIN 97 the scaffold was to charge this king to have a care of honest Tom Temple." The injunction was heeded so far as to allow Temple to retain Acadia, but it was not heeded to the extent of indemnifying him for his losses when Acadia was transferred again to France in 1667. The Lords of Acadia, from Sir William Alex ander to Sir Thomas Temple, and not least the two indefatigable rivals, La Tour and D Aunay Charnisay, had learned to their cost how great a labour it is to found a state.] 1 [Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, i. 496. This vol ume contains many items on these Lords of Acadia.] IV WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE WE must now return to the lifetime of Champlain and note some of the prin cipal steps by which the French ac quired control of the central portion of North America. Among the young men whom Cham- plain selected to send among the Indians to fit themselves for the work of interpreters was a Norman named Jean Nicollet. This Jean Nicollet f J ~ , was in ioi8,and for the next sixteen years Nicollet s time was chiefly spent among the Ottawas and Nipissings, engaging in their various expeditions, and encountering with them the privations and hardships of the forest. In 1634 Champlain sent Nicollet upon a western expedition. The object was to find out, if pos sible, what was meant by the repeated stories of large bodies of water to the westward, and of a distant people without hair or beards who did all their journeying in enormous tower-like canoes. Nicollet thought that this must be an Oriental people, and in order that he might not present too strange an appearance when he should have arrived among them, he took along with him a WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 99 Chinese gown of rich brocade embroidered with flowers and birds. Nicollet s route lay up the Ottawa River to Lake Nipissing, and thence to the Georgian Bay. On that broad expanse of water the party launched their canoes for a journey to the Sault 3te. Marie and the Ojibway tribe which dwelt >n its neighbourhood. It does not appear that Nicollet gained any positive knowledge of Lake Superior, but he entered Lake Michi- gan, and followed its western shores as far as Green Bay, where he met with e an Indians of strange speech who had never before set eyes upon a white man. These were Winne- bagoes, belonging to the great Dacotah family, and in their presence the robe of brocade was put to uses quite different from those which its owner had intended. The amazed redskins beheld in its wearer a supernatural being, and were more than confirmed in this belief when they heard the report and saw the flash of his pistol. 1 From Green Bay our explorer pushed on up the Fox River, where he fell in with a tribe of Algonquins famous for their valour, under the name of Mascoutins. These Indians told him of the existence of a " great water " in the 1 [On this expedition, cf. Jesuit Re la tions, Th wakes s ed. xxiii. 275279, and the monograph of C. W. Butterfield, History of the Discovery of the Northwest by John Nicolet) Cincinnati, 1881.] 100 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND neighbourhood, and inasmuch as their speech was Algonquin, the words which they used were in all probability Missi-Sippi. Whether Nicollet entered the Wisconsin River or not is uncertain, but it seems probable that he went further to the south than Green Bay, to reach the country belonging to the Algonquin tribe of the Illinois. He also established friendly relations with the Algonquin Pottawattamies. After this he re traced his course, and reached Three Rivers in July, 1635, just a bout one year from the time of starting. Of course the " great water " to which Nicol- let s Indian informants alluded was the Missis sippi River, but it was an easy and natural mis take to identify it with the western ocean, for which everybody had been so long and so eagerly looking. Many years elapsed before this and its kindred questions were correctly solved. The Jesuit influence, which after Champlain s death was long supreme in the colony, was not espe cially favourable to western exploration. The scientific zeal of Champlain, which studied geo graphy for its own sake, was not theirs, but their missionary zeal took them to great lengths, and Father jogues in 1641 we find Father Jogues preach- near Lake ing the gospel to a concourse of red Superior 1111 i r T i r^ men hard by the outlet of Lake Su perior. 1 It is possible that the movements in Relations, xx. 97 ; xxiii. 19.] WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 101 that direction might have been more vigorously prosecuted but for the terrible Iroquois war re sulting in the destruction of the Hurons in 1649. Ten years later the journey of two Frenchmen, Radisson and Groseilliers, is worthy of Radisson and mention because they reached a stream Groseiuiers which they called Forked River " because it has two branches, the one towards the west, the other towards the south, which we believe run towards Mexico." This, of course, might be meant for the Mississippi and Missouri. Within the next three or four years Menard and Allouez ex plored portions of the Lake Superior coast, and again heard enticing stories about the "great water." About this time a marked change came over Canada. In 1661 the youthful Louis XIV. as sumed personal control of the gov- Accession of ernment of France, and it cannot be Loms XIV * said of him that either then or at any later time he was at all neglectful of the interest of Can ada. As our narrative will hereafter show, if Canada suffered at his hands, it was from ex cessive care rather than from neglect. In 1664 and the following year the king sent three very able men to America ; the first was the Marquis de Tracy, to be military commander of New France, the Sieur de Courcelle, to be governor 1 [Radisson s narratives of his travels have been printed by the Prince Society, Boston, 1885.] 102 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of Canada, and Jean Baptiste Talon, to be in- tendant of Canada. The intendant was an of- His changes ficer charged with the duty of enfor- IdrSn isfra- 11 cm g a m i nute system of regulations in tion the colony, and incidentally of keep ing a watch upon the governor s actions, ac cording to the universal system of surveillance for which the old regime in France was so not able. With these men came as many as 2000 fresh colonists, together with 1200 veteran in fantry, as fine as anything Europe had to show ; so that there was now some hope that the Iro- quois nuisance might be kept at arm s length. Talon was a man of large views ; he had an inkling of what might be accomplished by such extensive waterways as those of North America; and it was his settled intention to occupy the interior of the continent, and to use the mouths of its southern rivers as places from which to emerge in force and threaten the coast of Span ish Mexico. So aggressive was the mood of the French at this moment that Courcelle projected an invasion of the Long House, and in January and February, 1666, he proceeded as far as Schenectady, whence he retired on learning that TWO expedi- the English had taken possession of iTiroqll, New Netherland. In the ensuing au- 1666 tumn another expedition was under taken, and Courcelle, accompanied by Tracy, penetrated the greater part of the Mohawk val- WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 103 ley. It was a singular spectacle, that of 600 French regulars in their uniforms, marching through the woodland trails to the sound of drum and trumpet. At a later period such bold ness would have entailed disaster, but at that time white men and their ways were still suffi ciently novel to inspire a great deal of whole some terror. It is not easy to calculate the death-dealing capacity of the unknown, and accordingly our Mohawks, though thoroughly brave men, retired in confusion before the con fident and resonant advance of the Gallic chiv alry. 1 The moral impression thus produced was reinforced so effectively by Jesuit missionaries that the Long House was kept comparatively quiet for twenty years. Indeed, fears were en tertained at times in New York that the French might succeed in winning over the Iroquois in spite of the past, but any such result was averted by the far-sighted policy of Sir Edmund An- dros and Thomas Dongan, and the ascendancy acquired over the Mohawks by the Schuylers at Albany. The remotest western frontier of French mis sionary enterprise was now the northern portion of Lake Michigan from the Sault Ste. Marie to Green Bay. The French names dotted with 1 [For these two expeditions, see the Abbe Faillon s Histoire de la Colonle Fran$aise en Canada, iii. 130-158 ; Parkman, The Old Regime, pp. 236-256.] 104 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND such profusion over that portion of the United States known as the Old Northwest preserve Contrasts be- for us an eloquent record of the trav- S^rf els and toils of the old explorers. New England The New England colonies were more than twenty times as populous as Canada, yet their furthest inland reach was to the shores of the Connecticut River at Deerfield and Hadley, while the French outposts were more than a thousand miles from the Atlantic. This differ ence was partly due to the fact that the primary object of the English was to found homes, and reproduce in the wilderness the self-supporting and self-governing rural communities of the Old Country ; whereas the primary object of the French was either to convert the heathen, or to trade for peltries, or to settle geographical questions, and all this was a more migratory kind of work than founding villages. In par ticular, the effects of Champlain s policy in be coming a leader of the alliance against the Long House are conspicuously visible. 1 It will be observed that for more than half a century after Champlain s attack upon the Onondaga fort, the route taken by Frenchmen toward the great West was up the Ottawa River and across the northern portion of Lake Huron. The French acquaintance with Lake Ontario was as yet but slight, while of Lake Erie they knew 1 [See above, p. 70.] WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 105 nothing save by hearsay. It was impossible for them to use those southerly routes because of the Iroquois. But inasmuch as the The French Iroquois by sudden raids to the north- %%*. ward could cut off the current of west the northwestern fur-trade at almost any point between Lake Ontario and the Sault Ste. Marie, it became very important for the French to maintain friendly relations with all the Algon quin tribes about the great lakes, from the Otta- was to the Ojibways and Pottawattamies. These were among the prime necessities which car ried their activity so far to the west, and it so happened that side by side with the devoted missionaries a peculiar kind of population was developed in adaptation to the wild and lawless life of these woodland regions. Among the picturesque figures of New France are those of the coureurs de bois, which, literally rendered, would be " runners of the woods/ Many of these men were ne er-do-weels The cou- brought over from France by a legis- reurs de bois lation which insisted rather upon quantity than quality for the settlers of the New World. Their ranks were reinforced by those who for what ever purpose were dissatisfied with steady work in a steady-going community. The paternal legislation of Louis XIV. would have had them marry French women of their own station, cul^ 106 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND tivate their small farm, and comport themselves with sober dignity. In point of fact, they tramped off to the woods, took to themselves Indian wives, and hunted the moose, or speared the salmon, or set traps for every four-footed creature with fur on its back. We are told, with much probability, by Charlevoix, that these men did not do nearly so much to civil ize the Indians as the Indians did to barbarize them. It was certainly felt by Father Allouez that these wood rangers were as much in need of a missionary as the red men themselves, for early Father AI- * n l ^7 ne busied himself in preach- on the Jng to them. At this time he reached the head of the Wisconsin River, and was told that six days journey from there it flowed into the Mississippi or "Great Water." The " Jesuit Relation " for 1670 speaks of this "great water" as a very wide river, of which none of the Indians had ever seen the end, and it was not clear whether it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico or that of California. The politic Frenchmen at the north of Lake Michigan had their hands quite full with the relations, peaceful or hostile, of the Indian tribes. Thither had retreated the Hurons and Ottawas to get out of the reach of the dreaded Long House, and by coming hither they had WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 107 given umbrage to the ferocious Dacotahs or Sioux, whom Father Marquette not inaptly termed the Iroquois of the West. But the chas tisement wrought by Tracy in the Mohawk country was reported with savage exultation from red man to red man along the chain of lakes, until it encouraged the Ottawas with the remnant of Hurons to move backward as far as Mackinaw and the great Manitoulin Island. In 1670, in accordance with the injunctions of the king, Talon despatched St. Lusson to take possession of the Northwest, and in the spring of 1671 the heights looking upon the Sault Ste. Marie witnessed a pageant such as none knew so well as Frenchmen how to prepare. Besides the tribes just mentioned, there were representatives from not less than a The French dozen others, Pottawattamies, Win- ^^~ nebagoes, Illinois, Shawnees, Ojib- Northwest ways, Nipissings, and others, a vast assemblage of grunting warriors hideous with every variety of lurid paint, and bedizened with feathers and wampum. Here were games of ball, mock fights, and whatever peaceful diversion the barbaric rnind was capable of finding pleasure in. These festivities continued for some weeks, inter spersed with feasts at which were served the wild fowl of the season and abundance of fish, with that pride of the red man s menu, boiled dog. On the i4th of June, a great concourse 108 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of people assembled in the bright sunshine at the top of a lofty hill, and there all the mag nates present, white and red, affixed their sig natures or made their marks to a document which practically claimed for Louis XIV. all the continent there was, from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the coast of Labrador as far west as land might go, which some bold spirits thought might be two or three hundred miles west of the Wisconsin River. These signatures were supposed to commit the Indian tribes as well as the Frenchmen to this extensive French claim. After the signing was over, an immense wooden cross was reared aloft and planted in the hole which had been dug to receive it, while the Frenchmen present, with uncovered heads, chanted an ancient Latin hymn. A post with the lilies of France was planted close by, while the French commander, Sieur de St. Lusson, held up a sod as symbolic of taking seizin of the land. It was felt, however, that all this pageant would be incomplete with out a speech that would stir the hearts of the Indians, and Father Allouez, the orator of the day, knew how to tell them what they could Father AI- appreciate. He informed the gaping depicts re d men that when it came to the the greatness - r . of Louis business or massacre, their bloodiest chiefs were mere tyros compared with the most Christian king of France. He depicted WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 109 that monarch as wet with the blood of his en emies, and declared that he did not keep scalps as a record of the number slain simply because the carnage to which he was accustomed was so wholesale, that no such petty method of reck oning would be of any use. Having listened to this ensanguined rhetoric, the assemblage broke up, and with the usual choruses of yelps and grunts, the tawny audience separated into count less little groups and disappeared in the recesses of the forest. 1 At the time of this wild ceremony there had already entered upon the scene the man who in some respects must be counted the most re markable among all these pioneers of France. In the city of Rouen there had dwelt for sev eral generations a family by the name of Cave- lier, wealthy and highly respected, whose mem bers were often chosen as diplomats and judges, or for other positions entailing large responsi bility. Although these people did not strictly belong to the noblesse, they were nevertheless lords of small landed estates, and the estate be longing to the Caveliers was known as La Salle. In the year 1643, Rouen witnessed the birth of Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Early life of Salle. This boy seems to have been u SaUe educated at a Jesuit school, but as he grew up, 1 [For the text of this speech, see Jesuit Relations, Iv. 109113, and Parkman, La Salle y pp. 44-46.] 110 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND feeling no inclination for the priesthood, he parted from his old friends and teachers with a reputation for excellent scholarship and unim peachable character. He had shown unusual precocity in mathematics, and a strong love for such study of physical science as could be com passed in those days of small things. He was noted at an early age for a reserved and some what haughty demeanour, a Puritanic serious ness in his views of life, and a power of deter mination which nothing could shake. It so happened that his elder brother, Jean Cavelier, a priest of St. Sulpice, was in Canada, and that circumstance may perhaps have drawn him thither. His entrance into a religious order had cut him off from his inheritance, so that his re sources were then and always extremely meagre. On arriving in Montreal, La Salle La Salle comes to accepted the feudal grant of a tract of land at the place now called La Chine, above the rapids known by that name. That La Salle must have entertained some purpose of exploring the wilderness before his coming to America is highly probable, for the first two or three years at La Chine were spent by him in the diligent study of Indian languages ; and he was not long in acquiring high proficiency both in Iroquois and in several dialects of Al gonquin. One day he was visited by a party of Senecas, who spent some weeks at his house WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 111 and had much to tell him about a river that they called the Ohio, which had its sources in their country and reached the ocean at a dis tance so great that many months would be re quired to traverse it. By the Ohio River, these Indians meant the Allegheny with the Ohio and the lower Mississippi, in which group- La Saik hears ing their error was just as natural and an d th r e es ves no greater than we make in calling to explore it the upper and lower Mississippi by the same name ; whereas in fact, the Missouri with the lower Mississippi is the main river, and the upper Mississippi is the tributary. From the Senecas account of the immense length of their Ohio River, La Salle concluded that it must fall into the Gulf of California, and hence afford the much-coveted passage to China. La Salle therefore decided that he would visit the Seneca country and ascertain for himself the truth of what he had been told. He found no difficulty in obtaining the requisite authorization from Courcelles and Talon, but as he had no ready money he was obliged to sell his estate of La Chine in order to raise the necessary funds. Just at that moment the sem- ~ . . His expedi- inary of St. Sulpice was meditating tion com- a similar enterprise, but with a very different destination and purpose, pioration of ... , the Sulpicians They wished to go northwesterly to convert some Indians who they had been told 112 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND surpassed all others for heathenish ignorance. To combine two such diverse expeditions into one was not an augury of success. In July, 1669, seven canoes carrying twenty- four men started up the river from La Chine, and after a voyage of thirty-five days they reached Irondequoit Bay on the south side of Lake Ontario, from which a march of twenty miles brought them to one of the principal Seneca villages. There they found the people in great excitement because of the return of a small war party with one young captive warrior. One of the French priests tried to buy him from his captors, but the village found the season dull and was determined not to be de prived of its night s pleasure. So the French men were obliged to look on for six weary hours while the young man was subjected to The wa every torture that the red man s in- biocked by genuity could devise. After the life had quite left his charred and writh ing form, and after the body had been cut into fragments and passed about to be eaten as dainty morsels, the savage hosts were ready to inquire what service they could do to their guests. But when they heard what was wanted they became profuse in their warnings against the wicked Indians who dwelt on the banks of the Ohio. They would furnish no guides nor be in any way instrumental in leading their WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 113 beloved friends into such unseemly dangers. Our Frenchmen had long since learned the true meaning of such ironical expressions of solicitude on the part of the red men. Practi cally, they often amounted to a threat, as if to say, If you go down there we will kill you and lay the blame upon the Indians of that part. Why the Senecas did not wish the Frenchmen to pass through their country at that moment, unless it may have been the general Iroquois feeling toward Frenchmen, is not clear. At this juncture one of the Indians offered to guide the party by an entirely different route, from which they could reach the Ohio at a point lower down than originally contemplated. La Salle and the Sulpicians concluded to accept this offer, and were led back to the shore of Lake On tario. They crossed the Niagara River just below the bluffs at Queenston and distinctly heard the magnificent sub-bass monotone of the great cataract, to which, perhaps, they were the first of Europeans to approach so near. At a village on the present site of Hamilton, La Salle was presented with a Shawnee prisoner who promised to take him across Lake Erie to the Ohio ; but a new turn to events was sud denly given by the unexpected arrival of a couple of Frenchmen from the north- Meeting with west. One of these was Louis Joliet, J oll< a man of about the same age as La Salle, who 114 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND had, like him, been educated by the Jesuits and taken orders, but had afterward come to devote himself to mercantile pursuits. Talon, the In- tendant, had heard much of the copper mines on the shore of Lake Superior, the fame of which was very widespread in aboriginal Amer ica, and he had sent Joliet to discover and in spect them. In this quest the young French man had not been successful, but he brought with him such a desperate account of the sinful condition of the Pottawattamies that the Sulpi- cian priests decided to go at once and convert LaSaiie parts tnern > in spite of all that La Salle could from the sa y. So the exploring party was Sulpicians . % . . 9 broken up, the Sulpicians went to Sault Ste. Marie, where they met with a rather cold reception from the Jesuits, and after a while concluded to return to Montreal without anything to show for their pains. As for La Salle at that disappointing moment, he showed a quality for which he was ever after ward distinguished. When he had started to do a thing he never relinquished his purpose, although men and fortune forsook him. If he had been one of a Balaklava Six Hundred and the only survivor among them, he would have attacked the enemy, single-handed, with una bated courage. Unfortunately, our sources of information partially fail us at this point, so that WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 115 some uncertainty remains as to the route which La Salle took after the Sulpicians had left him. One account of his route perhaps as probable as any takes him by way of Lake La Salle ex- Chautauqua into the Allegheny val- piores the * ley, and thence down the Ohio River as far as Louisville. In the following year he seems to have crossed Lake Erie from south to north, and ascended the Detroit River to Lake Huron ; thence to have passed into Lake Michi gan and ascended the Chicago River, from which he found his way across the brief portage to the river of the Illinois. According to some accounts, he reached the Mississippi River on both these trips, first from the Ohio, and after ward from the Illinois. But these conclusions are not well supported and have generally been pronounced improbable. An interest in this remote "great water" continued strongly to agitate many minds, and Talon had already settled upon Louis Joliet as a fit man to undertake its discovery, when circumstances led to a change of governorship for New France. Courcelles and Talon were both recalled, and in place of them the affairs of Canada were managed by one of Frontenac the most remarkable Frenchmen of succeeds his time, Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac. This man was of the bluest blood 116 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of France, a veteran soldier of no mean ability, and for executive capacity excelled by few. His talents for dealing with Indians were sim ply marvellous. He could almost direct the policy of an Indian tribe by a wave of the hand. If need be, he could smear his face with war paint and lead off the demon dance with a vigour and abandon that no chieftain could hope to rival. He could out-yell any warrior in the Long House, and when he put on a frown and spoke sternly, the boldest warriors shiv ered with fear. Among white men he was domineering and apt to be irascible. A man of very clear ideas, he well knew how to re- character of ^^ them, and cared little for the Frontenac advice of those who seemed to him frivolous or stupid. It was hinted that some times in his management of money he was not above sundry slight peccadilloes, with which his enemies were fond of twitting him, but this was not always a safe game, since he was liable to retort upon his accusers with an utterly over whelming tu quoque. On the whole, however, he must be called a man of public spirit, de voted to the interests of his country, and with fewer serious failings than most of the public men of his age. In his general view of things he was far-sighted and not petty. If Talon had remained in Canada, Frontenac would probably WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 117 have quarrelled with him, but as it was, he adopted most of that official s intelligent plans ; among other things he warmly espoused the ideas of La Salle, and he confirmed the choice of Joliet for the proposed expedition to the Mississippi. The mention of Joliet reminds us that New France was coming of age as a colony, for this explorer was a native of the country, having been born at Quebec in 1645, ten Y ears after the death of Champlain. It appears that Joliet was a well-educated man and y oliet chosen showed considerable proficiency in to explore the the higher mathematics. It was said, too, that he was rather a formidable debater on questions of logic and metaphysics. There is nothing in his career that shows qualities of a lofty or transcendent order, but we get the im pression of a prudent and painstaking man of sober judgment. At Mackinaw Joliet was joined by a Jesuit priest named Jacques Marquette, a native of the old Carlovingian capital, Laon, born % . . . , , r Marquette in 1637. He was distinguished for linguistic talents and for the deeply spiritual quality of his mind. He seems to have had a poetic temperament profoundly sensitive to the beauties of nature and of art, while his reii- gion exercised upon him a transfiguring influ ence, so that all who met him became aware of 118 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND a heavenly presence. This gentle and exquisite creature was as brave as a paladin and capable of enduring the fiercest extremes of hardship. It was on the iyth of May, 1673, that Joliet and Marquette started with five companions in two birch canoes well supplied with dried corn and smoked buffalo meat. From Green Bay joiiet and they ascended the Fox River to Lake Winnebago, and after various adven- tures reached the portage from which they launched their canoes on the Wisconsin River. One month from the day of starting they passed the bluffs at Prairie du Chien and glided out upon the placid blue waters of the. upper Mississippi. Their joy, as Marquette informs us, was too great for words. A fortnight passed while they floated down-stream without disclos ing any trace of human beings, but at length they came to a village called Peoria, where they were treated with great civility and regaled with the usual Indian dishes, while the chief, in a more than usually florid speech, assured them that their visit to his village added serenity to the sky and new beauty to the landscape and a fresh zest to his tobacco, but he really, as a friend, could not advise them to pursue their course, as it abounded with dangerous enemies. Disregarding this caution, however, they kept on their way without any ill consequences. They did not fail to note the striking spectacle WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 119 below the cliffs at Alton where the furious Missouri, with its load of yellow mud accumu lated during its 3000 miles* course through the mountains, rushes through, swallows The up and defiles the quiet blue waves the mouth of of the Mississippi. Down the turbid and surging yellow river they kept on for hun dreds of miles, until they encountered parties of Arkansas and narrowly escaped without a fight. Presently they stopped at an Arkansas village where they were feasted as usual, but after the hilarity was over the principal chief informed them that a foul conspiracy was on foot to murder them, an infringement of the laws of hospitality which he felt himself unable to sanction. This incident seems to have had its effect in deciding them to retrace their course. They had gone so far southward as to convince themselves that the river must empty into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Ver milion Sea, as the Gulf of California was then commonly called. This was the most impor tant of the points which they had it in mind to establish, and it seemed to them better to return with the information already acquired than to run the risk of perishing and sending back no word. For such reasons they turned back on the iyth of July, just two months from their date of starting. After ascending to the mouth of the Illinois they went up to the head of that 120 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND stream, and there met some Indians who guided them to Lake Michigan. It was about the end of September when they reached The return * . / Green Bay, after having wielded the paddles for more than 2500 miles. There the two friends parted. While Joliet made his way to Montreal with a report of what had been accomplished, Marquette lay ill at Green Bay for more than a year. A partial recovery of health led him to attempt the founding of a new mission at the principal town of the Illinois, to be called the Immaculate Conception, but his strength again gave out, and on the way to Mackinaw in the spring of 1675 tn * s beautiful spirit passed away from the earth. 1 The immediate effect of the voyage of Mar quette and Joliet was to revive in La Salle the spirit which had led him down the Ohio River some years before. The conception of New France as a great empire in the wilderness was La Saiie s taking a distinct shape in his mind, great designs Among its comprehensive features were the extension of the fur-trade, the build ing up of French colonies with an extensive agriculture, the conversion of the Indians to Christianity, and the playing a controlling part in forest politics. Marquette and Joliet had 1 [A translation of Marquette* s own narrative may be found in J. G. Shea s History and Exploration of the Missis sippi Valley, pp. 6-50.] WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 121 well-nigh demonstrated that the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. One might, perhaps, suppose that a reference to the expedition of Soto more than a century before would have sufficed to establish the identity of the river descended by Marquette and Joliet with the river where the great Spanish knight was buried. But the Frenchmen of the seventeenth century seem to have known nothing about Soto or his explorations. To them the prob lem was a new one. After once completely solving it, La Salle would be in a position to establish a town at the mouth of the great river. Such a town might become a commercial rival of the Spanish seaports in Mexico and the West Indies, while it would be a formidable menace to them in time of war. A chain of military posts might connect the town at the mouth of the Mississippi with the spot where the Illinois empties into that river, and similar chains might connect the Illinois on the one hand ~, AT . . The Missis- with the Sault Ste. Marie, and on the sippivaUey to other hand with Lakes Erie and Ontario. It was the generally accepted French doctrine that the discovery of a great river gave an inchoate title to all the territory drained by the river, and this inchoate title could be com pleted by occupation. La Salle s plan was to effect a military occupation of the whole Missis- 122 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND sippi valley as far eastward as the summit of the Appalachian range by means of military posts which should control the communications and sway the policy of the Indian tribes. Thus, the Alleghanies would become an impassable barrier to the English colonists slowly pressing westward from the Atlantic coast. This became the abiding policy of the French in North America. This was the policy in attempting to carry out which they fought and lost the Seven Years War. Of this policy such men as Talon, Frontenac, and La Salle were the originators, and in La Salle it found its most brilliant representative. An obvious criticism upon such a scheme is its mere vastness. In a colony recruited so Difficulty of s l w ly as Canada there were not carrying out enough people to carry it into opera tion. Under the most favourable circumstances it could scarcely remain more than a sketch ; but La Salle believed that the inducements held out by an increasing fur- trade and enlarged opportunities of agriculture and commerce in general would bring settlers to New France and greatly accelerate its rate of growth. There was perhaps nothing necessa rily wild in his calculations, except that he en tirely failed to understand the inherent weak ness of colonization that was dependent upon government support. WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 123 When it came to performing his own part of the great scheme, the essential point of weak ness was want of money, a kind of weakness which has proved fatal to many a great scheme. In order to cure this want La Salle was inclined to resort to the agency which was chiefly in vogue in the seventeenth century, namely, that of monopoly. This at once enlisted against him the fur-traders as a class. His friendly relations with Frontenac made it seem probable that he could get whatever he wanted, and in whatsoever quarter he turned his attention the La S monopoly scare was excited and every possible device was adopted for hinder- sition ing his success, devices which went all the way from attaching his property to hiring despera does to murder him. Besides this, La Salle was regarded with coldness, if not hostility, by the Jesuits, whose service he had abandoned and whose schemes for civilizing the wilderness were often at variance with his. Moreover, with all his admirable qualities, La Salle was not exactly a lovable person. He was too deeply absorbed in his arduous work to be genial, and he was a stern disciplinarian against whom lawless spirits, familiar with the loose freedom of the wilder ness, were liable to rebel. The history of his brief career of eight years after he had finally given himself up to his life work is a singular record of almost unintermitted disaster leading 124 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND to a tragic end, yet relieved by one glorious, though momentary, gleam of triumph. One of Frontenac s first steps for the protec tion of the fur-trade between Montreal and the northwestern wilderness was the erection of a strong wooden blockhouse at the outlet of Fort Fronte- Lake Ontario. Its site was about that nac granted o f the present town of Kingston, and to La Salle f ^ it was long known as Fort Frontenac. It served as a wholesome menace to the men of the Long House over across the lake. La Salle went to France and had an interview with Louis XIV., in which he obtained that mon arch s authority to conduct an exploring expe dition, and he was placed in command of Fort Frontenac on his promise to rebuild and greatly strengthen it. This promise was amply ful filled. The fortress was rebuilt of stone accord ing to sound military principles, and was strong enough to defy the attempt of any force that was likely to be brought against it. The next reach of La Salle s arm was from the outlet of Ontario to the Niagara River La Saiie above the Falls. For the prosecution builds the of his enterprise canoe navigation seemed hardly to suffice, and on the Niagara River La Salle built and launched a schooner of some forty-five tons burden, armed with five small cannon, and carrying on her WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 125 prow a grotesque griffin, the name that was given to her in honour of Count Frontenac s family arms. While these preparations were going on La Salle received a treacherous dose of poison, the effects of which his iron constitution threw off with rather surprising ease. He started out on his enterprise with about forty men, two of whom deserve especial mention for various rea sons. Henri de Tonty was a native of Naples, son of the gentleman who invented the kind of life insurance for a long time popular Henri de as the Tontine. In his youthful days Tont y Tonty had one hand blown off in battle ; he had it replaced by an iron hand over which he always wore a glove, and he was commonly known among the Indians as Iron Hand. He was a man of direct and simple nature, brave and resourceful, and in every emergency was absolutely faithful to La Salle. A very different sort of person was Louis Hennepin, a native of Flanders, about thirty- seven years of age. He had early joined the Franciscan friars, and an irrepressible love for adventure brought him to Canada, Louis where he found the wild solitudes H e nne P in about Fort Frontenac quite in harmony with his tastes. He was a capable man with many excellent qualities, and on most occasions truth ful, although his reputation has greatly suffered 126 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND from one gigantic act of mendacity. 1 We shall have occasion to note his characteristics as we go on. He was one of the advance party sent by La Salle to the Niagara River, and was probably the first of Europeans to look at the Falls. It is certain that he was the first to make a sketch of them for publication. Such a sketch is en graved in his account of his journeys published in Utrecht in 1697, anc ^ * s extremely interest ing and valuable as enabling us to realize the changes which have since occurred in the con tour of the Falls. 2 It was in the autumn of 1678 that La Salle set sail in the Griffin. His departure was clouded The voyage by the news that impatient creditors of the Griffin ^^ ] a jj hands upon his Canadian estates, but nothing daunted, he pushed on through Lakes Erie and Huron, and after many disasters reached the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. The Griffin was now sent back with half the party to the Niagara River with a cargo of furs to appease the creditors and purchase 1 [Hennepin, in his Nouvelle Decouverte d* un grand Pays situe dans / Am erique, Utrecht, 1697, affirmed that he him self had explored the Mississippi to its mouth, in 1680, thus anticipating the great exploit of La Salle, and he gave an ac count of the voyage. This account Hennepin based on the journal that Father Membre kept of his voyage down the river in company with La Salle.] 2 [Hennepin s sketch of the Falls is reproduced in Win- sor s Narr. and Crit. Hist., iv. 248.] WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 127 additional supplies for the remainder of the journey, while La Salle, with his diminished company, pushed on to the Illinois, where a fort was built and appropriately named Fort Creve- coeur. It was indeed at a heart-breaking mo ment that it was finished, for so much time had elapsed since the departure of their little ship that all had come to despair of her return. No word ever came from her. In that time of uni versal suspicion there were not wanting whispers that her crew had deserted and scuttled her, carrying off her goods to trade with on their own account. But perhaps she may simply have foundered in some violent gale on the lakes. After a winter of misery it was evident that nothing could make up for the loss of the Griffin, except a journey on foot to Montreal. La Salle , s Accordingly, in March, 1680, La terrible win- Salle started on this terrible walk of 1000 miles, leaving Fort Crevecoeur under command of the faithful Tonty. La Salle had with him a long-tried Indian guide, a Mohegan from Connecticut, who for many years had roamed over the country. He took with him also four Frenchmen ; and these six fought their way eastward through the wilderness, now floundering through melting snow, now biv ouacking in clothes stiff with frost, now stop ping to make a bark canoe, now leaping across streams on floating ice-cakes, like the runaway 128 NEW FRANCE AfrD NEW ENGLAND slave girl in " Uncle Tom s Cabin ;" in such plight did they make their way across Michigan and along the north shore of Lake Erie to the lit tle blockhouse above Niagara Falls. All but La Salle had given out on reaching Lake Erie, and the five sick men were ferried across by him in a bark canoe to the blockhouse. We may see here how the sustaining power of wide-ranging thoughts and a lofty purpose enabled the scholar reared in luxury to surpass in endurance the Indian guide and the hunters inured to the hardships of the forest. He had need of all this sustaining power, for at Niagara he learned that a ship from France, freighted for him with a cargo worth about $3 0,000 in our modern money, had been wrecked in the St. Lawrence, and everything lost. He received this stagger ing news with his wonted iron composure, and taking three fresh men in place of his invalids, completed his march of 1000 miles td Mon treal. There he collected supplies and rein forcements, and, returning as far as Fort Fron- Fresh disas- tenac, was taking a moment s rest pre- ters paratory to a fresh start when further ill tidings arrived. In July there came a mes sage from the fort so well named Heart-break. The garrison had mutinied, and after driving away Tonty with such men as were faithful, they had pulled the blockhouse to pieces and WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 129 made their way eastward through Michigan. Recruiting their ranks with divers wood rangers of ill repute, they had plundered the station at Niagara, and their canoes were now cruising on Lake Ontario in the hope of crowning their work with the murder of La Salle. These wretches, however, fell into their own pit. Be tween hearing and acting, the interval with La Salle was not a long one. That indomitable commander s canoes were soon upon the lake, and in a few days he had waylaid and cap tured the mutineers and sent them in chains to be dealt with by the viceroy. La Salle now kept on his way to the Illinois River, intending to rebuild his fort and hoping to rescue La Salle goeg Tonty with the few faithful followers to rescue who had survived the mutiny. That little party had found shelter among the Illinois Indians ; but during the summer of 1680 the great village of the Illinois was sacked by the Iroquois, and the hard-pressed Frenchman re treated down the western shore of Lake Michi gan as far as Green Bay. When La Salle reached the Illinois village he found nothing but the horrible vestiges of fiery torments and cannibal feasts. The only thing to be done was with out delay to utilize the situation by cementing a firmer alliance than before with the west ern Algonquins on the basis of their common 130 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND enmity to the Iroquois. After thus spending Destruction the winter to good purpose, he set viihgebf 018 out a g ain for Canada in May, 1681, the iroquois to arrange his affairs and once more obtain fresh resources. At Mackinaw his heart was rejoiced at meeting his friend Tonty, after all these wild vicissitudes, and together they paddled their canoes a thousand miles and came to Fort Frontenac. La Salle s enemies had begun to grow quite merry over his repeated discomfitures, but at length his stubborn courage for a time van quished the adverse fates. On the next venture things went smoothly and according to the pro gramme. In the autumn he started with a fleet of canoes, passed up the lakes from Ontario to the head of Michigan, crossed the narrow port- La Saiie s age from the Chicago River to the rgTd ow^the Illinois, and thence coming out upon Mississippi the Mississippi, glided down to its mouth. On the 9th of April, 1682, the fleurs- de-lis were duly planted, and all the country drained by the great river and its tributaries, a country far vaster than La Salle ever imagined, was solemnly declared to be the property of the king of France, and named for him Louisiana. 1 Returning up the Mississippi after this 1 [Father Membre s narrative of this voyage is given in translation in J. G. Shea s Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, pp. 165-184.] WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE 131 triumph, La Salle established a small fortified post on the Illinois River which he called St. Louis of the Illinois. Leaving Tonty in com mand there, he lost no time in re- LaSa Ue re turning to France for means to com- turns to plete his scheme. The time had ar rived for founding a town at the mouth of the Mississippi and connecting it with Canada by a line of military posts. La Salle was well re ceived by the king, and a fine expedition was fitted out, but once more the fates began to frown and everything was ruined by the ill fortune of the naval commander, Beaujeu, whom it was formerly customary to blame more than he seems really to have deserved. The intention was to sail directly to the mouth of the Missis sippi, but the pilots missed it and passed be yond ; some of the ships were wrecked Failure of the on the coast of Texas ; the captain, Mississippi t 1 /- i i i j- expedition beset by foul weather and pirates, dis appeared with the rest, and was seen no more. Two years of misery followed, and with the misery such quarrelling and mutual hatred as had scarcely been equalled since the days of the early Spanish explorers in South America. At last, in March, 1687, La Salle started on foot in search of the Mississippi, hoping to ascend it and find succour at Tonty s fort ; but he had scarcely set out with this forlorn hope when 132 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND two or three mutineers skulked in ambush and shot him dead. Thus was cut short at the early La Saiie s age of forty-two the career of the man death whose personality is impressed in some respects more strongly than that of any other upon the history of New France. His schemes were too far-reaching to succeed. They re quired the strength and resources of half a dozen nations like the France of Louis XIV. Nevertheless, the lines upon which New France continued to develop were substantially those which La Salle had in mind, and the fabric of a wilderness-empire, of which he laid the foun dations, grew with the general growth of colo nization, and in the next century became truly formidable. It was not until Wolfe climbed the Heights of Abraham that the great ideal of La Salle was finally overthrown. V WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE IN the year 1670 the provincial parliament of Normandy condemned a dozen women, young and old, to be burned at the stake. Their crime was attendance upon the Witches Sabbath. An appeal was taken to the Crown, and Louis XIV. was persuaded to Louis xiv. spare their lives on condition that t s ^ ce they should leave the kingdom and of death im- never return. Astonishment and in- Seged Up dignation greeted this exercise of royal witches clemency, and the provincial parliament sent a petition to the king containing a grave re monstrance : " Your parliament have thought it their duty on occasion of these crimes, the greatest which men can commit, to make you acquainted with the general and uniform feel ing of the people of this province with regard to them ; it being moreover a question in which are concerned the glory of God and the relief of your suffering subjects, who groan under their fears from the threats and menaces of this sort of persons. . . . We humbly supplicate 134 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND your Majesty to reflect once more upon the extraordinary results which proceed from the malevolence of these people; on the loss of g ods and chatte ! s a "d the deaths from unknown diseases, which are often the consequence of their men aces ; ... all of which may easily be proved to your Majesty s satisfaction by the records of various trials before your parliaments. " It is pleasant to be able to add that Louis XIV. was too well versed in the professional etiquette of royalty to withdraw a pardon which he had once granted, and so the poor women were saved from the flames. What we have espe cially to note is that the highest court of Nor mandy, representing the best legal knowledge of that province, in defining witchcraft as the infliction of disease or the destruction of pro perty by unknown and mysterious means, de scribes it as the greatest of all crimes, and has no more doubt of its reality than of burglary or highway robbery. 1 This unquestioning belief in the reality of witchcraft has been shared by the whole human 1 [For the original text and further particulars in regard to this petition Lecky refers to Garinet, Histoire de la Magie en France, p. 337. Cf. also Rambaud, Hist, de la Civilisa tion Fran$aise, ii. 154. "In 1672, Colbert directed the magistrates to receive no accusations of sorcery." Lecky, Hist, of Rationalism, i. 118.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 135 race, civilized and uncivilized alike, from pre historic ages to the end of the seven- Thebeliefin teenth century. 1 There are tribes of witchcraft men with minds so little developed that travellers have doubted the existence of religious ideas among them ; but none have been found so low as not to have some notion of witchcraft. Indeed, one of the most primi- 1 [For a comprehensive survey of the history of witchcraft and allied occult phenomena, from the standpoint of modern psychology, see Alfr. Lehman, Aberglaube und Zauberei, Stuttgart, 1898. Mr. Lecky s opening chapter on Magic and Witchcraft, in his History of Rationalism, still remains for the English reader the most convenient sketch of witch craft in modern times. On the rise of modern witchcraft, the most scholarly investigation in English is that of H. C. Lea, in his Inquisition in the Middle Ages, vol. iii. chaps, vi. and vii. Recently there has appeared an investigation into the be ginnings of the witchcraft delusion that surpasses all previous works in scientific thoroughness. It is Joseph Hansen s Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter, Bonn, 1901. Hansen has presented his results in popular form in his Zau- berwahn. Inquisition und die Entstehung der Grossen Hexen- verfolgungy Munich, 1 90 1 . In the Report of the American Hist. Assoc. for 1890 will be found an admirably compact and learned sketch of " The Literature of Witchcraft," by Professor George L. Burr. An excellent selection of extracts illustrating the belief in witchcraft, the methods of trial, and the growth of the opposition is given in Professor Burr s The Witch-Persecutions, a pamphlet published by the University of Pennsylvania.]] 136 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND tive and fundamental shapes which the relation of cause and effect takes in the savage mind is the assumed connection between disease or death and some malevolent personal agency. The conceptions of natural disease and natural death are attainable only by civilized minds. To the savage, who has scarcely an inkling of such a thing as laws of nature, all death is regarded as murder, either at the hands of a superhuman power that must be propitiated, or at the hands of some human being upon whom vengeance may be wreaked. The interpretation of disease is the same, and hence one of the chief occu pations of medicine-men and priests among barbarous races is the detection and punish ment of witches. 1 Hence among all the super stitions, or things that have" stood over* from primeval ages, the belief in witchcraft vitality of has been the most deeply rooted and the belief thg most tenac i ous Q f \\f^ J n a U times and places, until quite lately among the most advanced communities, the reality of witchcraft has been accepted without question, and scarcely any human belief is supported by so vast a quantity of recorded testimony. At the present day, among communities like 1 [On the stubborn resistance made in modern times to the displacement of the Satanic theory of disease and disaster by scientific theories, see A. D. White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, chaps, xi.-xvi.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 137 our own, we may observe a wonderful change. Among educated people the belief in witch craft is practically extinct. It has not simply ceased to be taken seriously, but it has vanished from people s minds. We recognize it as one of the grotesque features in an Indian s theory of things, or perhaps we find it cropping out among the odds and ends of diabolism that the negro mind retains from the old stock of Afri can folk-lore, but we no longer associate such a belief with civilized men, and a good deal of historical study is needed to enable us to real ize adequately its omnipresence only two cen turies ago. What has caused this remarkable change in our mental attitude toward witchcraft? Surely not argument. Nobody has ever re- Causeofthe futed the evidence that once seemed final decay of so conclusive in favour of the belief. For the most part we should now regard that evidence as not worth the trouble of refuting. Some powerful cause has made our minds insu perably inhospitable to such sort of evidence. That cause is the gigantic development of phy sical science since the days of Newton and Des cartes. The minds of civilized people have become familiar with the conception of natural law, and that conception has simply stifled the old superstition as clover chokes out weeds. It 138 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND has been observed that the existence of evidence Rise of P hy- m favour of witchcraft closely depends skai science U p O n the disposition to believe it, so that when the latter ceases the former disap pears. Accordingly we find no difficulty in un derstanding the universality of the belief until quite modern times. The disposition to believe was one of the oldest inheritances of the human mind, while the capacity for estimating evidence in cases of physical causation is one of its very latest and most laborious acquisitions. In 1664 there was a witch trial at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. The presiding justice An English was Sir Matthew Hale, one of the witch trial most eminent and learned of English Matthew judges. Two aged widows, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, were in dicted for bewitching six young girls and one baby boy. This infant was seized with fainting turns, and his mother, suspecting witchcraft, took counsel of a country doctor, who told her to hang the child s crib blanket all day in the chimney corner, and if on taking it down at nightfall she should see anything strange there, she was not to be afraid of it, but to throw it into the fire. Well, when she was putting the baby to bed she took down the blanket, and a big toad fell out and hopped about the hearth. " Oh, put it in the fire, quick," said she to a boy WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 139 present, who forthwith seized the poor toad with a pair of tongs and held it in the blaze. There was a flashing as of powder, and a strange noise, and then the toad vanished ; but that Grotesque same evening Amy Duny sitting by evldence her own fireside had her face all smirched and scorched. Of course Amy was the toad, and it was natural that she should be vexed at such treatment, so that when the baby s sister sud denly sickened and died, and its mother grew lame enough to use crutches, it was all clearly due to Amy s diabolical arts. Absolute demon stration was reached when Amy was sentenced to death, for then her witch-power ceased, and the lame woman forthwith threw away her crutches and walked as briskly as anybody. The other afflicted children complained of griping pains, and vomited crooked pins and twopenny nails. In the court-room when Amy Duny or Rose Cullender came near to them, they threw their aprons over their heads and writhed in agony. It happened that among the magistrates present were some hard-headed Sad- ducees. Lord Cornwallis and Sir Edmund Bacon suspected these fits and torments of being a wicked sham. They blindfolded the Indlcations O f girls, and had other old women ap- shamming proach and touch them. The girls went off into fits every time without discrimi- 140 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND nating between Rose or Amy and the other wo men. But this trifling flaw in the case was nothing when set off against the weighty evi dence of a witness who declared that Rose Cul lender had given him hard words, and shortly afterwards his hay-cart was stuck in passing through a gate. Another deposed that Amy Duny had said, " That chimney of yours will be falling down one of these days," and so sure enough it did. After this there could be no doubt in any reasonable mind that Rose had be witched the cart and Amy the chimney. The learned justice in his charge aimed a rebuke at the scepticism exhibited by some of the magis- sir Matthew trates ; he declared that the reality of Se^dl^f witchcraft was not open to question, witchcraft since it was expressly affirmed in Holy Writ, and provided for in the criminal codes of all nations. The jury took less than half an hour to agree upon their verdict of guilty ; and next week the two old dames were hanged at Cam bridge, protesting their innocence with their last breath. 1 Upon just such so-called " evidence " more thousands of innocent persons than it will ever 1 Linton s Witch Stories, p. 395. [Cotton Mather printed an account of this trial in his Wonders of the Invisible World, London reprint, 1862, pp. 1 11-120. He says it " was a Tryal much considered by the Judges of New Eng land." Ibid. p. in.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 141 be possible to enumerate have been put to death under the forms of law. It is difficult to accept all the wholesale figures mentioned by old his torians, yet the figures for which we have good authority are sufficiently dreadful. In general we may regard it as probable that during the Middle Ages executions for witchcraft occurred with much the same monotonous regularity as executions for murder and other felonies, but from time to time there were epidemics of ter ror when the number of victims was fearfully swelled. Now the famous bull of Pope Inno cent VIII. against witchcraft, pub- Revivalof lished in 1484, marks the beginning witchcraft of a new era in the history of the su perstition. 1 As literature and art have had their Golden Ages, so the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were especially the Sulphurous Age of the witchcraft delusion. It was the period when the Church of Rome was engaged in a life and death struggle with heresy, and obnoxious per sons suspected of heresy could sometimes be destroyed by a charge of witchcraft when there was no other method of reaching them. Thus the universal superstition was enlisted in the ser vice of a militant and unscrupulous ecclesiastical organization with effects that were frightful. As it was understood that the diabolical crime of 1 [This bull is given in an English translation by Burr, The Witch-Persecutions, pp. 710.] 142 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND witchcraft was now to be stamped out once for all, the evidences of it were naturally found in The Ham- P lent T- The " Malleus Maleficarum," merof or Hammer of Witches, 1 published in 1489, became the great text-book of the subject, and at no time since history be gan have the fires of hell been so often lighted upon earth as in the course of the next two cen turies. We are told by Martin del Rio that in 1515 not less than 500 witches were executed in the single city of Geneva ; and a certain inquisitor named Remigio boasted that in his district, in the north of Italy, within fifteen years he had personally superintended the burning of more than 900 such criminals. 2 In Scotland, from 1560 to 1600, the average annual number of victims was 200, making a grim and ghastly total of 8000 for the forty years. Or, to put it in another form, the executions averaged four each week in a population about equal to that of Massachusetts at the present day. In 1597 that grotesque royal author, James VI., pub lished at Edinburgh his treatise on "Daemono- 1 [An extract from this book is given by Burr, The Witch- Persecutions, and an analysis of it in RoskofPs Geschichte des Teufehy ii. 226-292. Cf. also Hansen, as above.] 3 [Williams, The Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 107. See also White, Warfare of Science and Theology, i. 358, 359.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 143 logic," in which he maintained that against so foul a crime as witchcraft any sort of evidence is good enough, and the testimony of very young children, or of persons of the vilest King j ames character, ought on no account to be on the reality omitted. In the course of our story we shall see that James was by no means singular in this absurd style of reasoning. In 1604, scarcely more than a year after he had become King of England, Parliament passed the famous "Witch Act," which remained on the statute- book until the reign of George II. It was in the reign of Charles I. that trials and executions under the Witch Act were most frequent. While the Long Parliament * . . to The delusion was in session the affair attained al- increases most the proportions of an epidemic, ^he^uri- 6 but under the rule of Cromwell there tan P art y to was a sudden halt, and thereafter the delusion never fully recovered its hold upon the community. Cases like those of Amy Duny and Rose Cullender were sporadic. In that age of Newton and Locke, the whole baleful troop of demons were spreading their wings for their final flight from this world. The last executions for witchcraft, however, occurred in England in 1712 and in Scotland in 1722.* We may observe in passing that in * [Cf. Lecky, i. 139.! 144 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Germany the case of Maria Renata, a nun be- Last execu- headed for witchcraft, occurred as late tions for as 1 749, the year in which Goethe witchcraft i i was born. Considering the fact that the exodus of Puritans to New England occurred during the reign of Charles I., while the prosecutions for witchcraft were increasing toward a maximum in the mother country, it is rather strange that so few cases occurred in the New World. It was already noted in Cromwell s time that In dependency in ecclesiastical matters seemed to be attended by a diminution of activity in the world of witches, but on the other hand the Independents who came over to New Eng- Primitive ^ n( ^ voluntarily thrust themselves America re- j nto a country which was supposed garded as a . J f , domain of to be in a special sense under the direct control and administration of the Devil. It was believed that Pagan coun tries generally were ruled by Satan, and that here in the American wilderness that old foe of mankind had taken his stand to annoy and dis hearten the Lord s elect. As for the red men, it was easy to se^ that they were his veritable imps ; their tricks and manners proclaimed them 1 [On this case see White, Warfare of Science, ii. 121 and i 56. He refers in particular to an essay on Maria (or Anna) Renata by Johannes Scherr in his Hammer -schlage und Histo- WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 145 as such. There could be little doubt that the heathen New World was Satan s Kingdom ; 1 and in view of this very common belief it is strange that the instances of witchcraft or dia bolism were so rare in the early history of New England. During the sixty years following the first set tlement of Boston, a dozen or more cases can be enumerated. The first victim in the New World was Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, who had some sensible ideas about medicine. She disapproved of wholesale bleeding and vio lent emetics, and used to work cures by means of herb tonics and other simple pre- The first vic _ scriptions. This offended the doc- timofthe . . s n \ witchcraft de- tors, and in 1648 the poor woman i us ionmNew was tried for witchcraft, convicted, En g knd and hanged. Governor Winthrop, who tells the story, adds that at the very hour of her ex ecution there was a great gale in Connecticut, which blew down trees, and this he considers an absolute demonstration of her guilt. 2 When Winthrop wrote this, Isaac Newton was a child playing in the nursery. When we see a mind so broad and cultivated as Winthrop s enter- 1 [See Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World, London, 1693, London reprint, 1862, p. 74.] 2 [See Winthrop, ii. 326 (rev. ed., ii. 397); W. F. Poole, No. Am. Rev., April, 1869, pp. 343, 344.] 146 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND taining such notions of cause and effect, is it not obvious that the mainstay and support of the frightful superstition was ignorance of phy sical science ? About the same time, according to Thomas Hutchinson, a woman was hanged at Dor chester, and another at Cambridge, for the crime of witchcraft. The next case was a star tling one, on account of the victim s social posi tion. A woman like Margaret Jones, though perhaps educated, and such as would to-day be classed as a lady, was in those times not called Mrs. Jones, but simply Goodwife or Goody Jones. To be Mrs., or Mistress, one must be the wife of an esquire, and the rank of esquire was as carefully guarded in common forms of speech as the rank of knight or baronet. The next victim of the witch-delusion was Mistress The case of Ann Hibbins. Her husband, Wil- Mrs. Hibbins jj am Hibbins, who died in 1654, had been for twelve years a member of the council of assistants, and at one time was the colony s diplomatic agent in England. Her brother, Richard Bellingham, was deputy-governor of Massachusetts. In 1656 this lady was tried for witchcraft before Governor Endicott and the General Court. She was found guilty, and was hanged on Boston Common on the ipth of June of that year. The verdict and death-war- WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 147 rant are in the Colonial Records, 1 but we have no report of the case, and do not know how the accusation was originated. Hutchinson, whose great-grandfather Edward was one of the lady s friends, believed it to be a case of outrageous persecution, and so some of her contemporaries regarded it. The Rev. John Norton, persecutor of Quakers, was by temperament quick to see marks of Satan s presence, but he tried his best to save Mrs. Hibbins, and afterward A victim of spoke of her accusers with his cus- tomary sarcasm. Mrs. Hibbins was hanged, he said, " only for having more wit than her neighbours." 2 One day she saw two persons whom she knew to be unfriendly to her talking together in the street, whereupon she exclaimed that she knew they were talking about her. Her guess being correct was forth with cited against her as an instance of super natural insight which must have been imparted to her by the Devil. According to Norton this argument had great weight with the Court. It is a pity, and it is strange too, that we know so little of this case, for there must have been something extraordinary in the circumstances that could thus send to the gallows one of the foremost persons in that colonial society. There 1 [Mass. Records, iv. pt. i. 269. The record is quoted in Winsor s Memorial Hist, of Boston, ii. 139.] 2 [Hutchinson s Hist, of Mass., i. 173.] 148 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND is evidence that the affair created fierce excite ment and left much bitterness behind. There were many in Boston who insisted that a saint had been wickedly done to death by slanderous tongues. Out of a dozen cases in the course of the next thirty years we find several acquittals, and once in a while we encounter a gleam of genuine com mon sense, as in the case of John Bradstreet of Rowley, who was accused of familiarity with the Devil ; forasmuch as the said Bradstreet con fessed that he had " read in a book of magic, and that he heard a voice asking him what work he had for him. He answered, c Go make a A sensible bridge of sand over the sea ; go make J ur y a ladder of sand up to heaven, and go to God, and come down no more/ When the case was tried at Ipswich, the jury found that the said Bradstreet lied, whereupon the court sentenced him to pay twenty shillings fine or else to be whipped. 1 More disastrous was the case of the Good win children in Boston in 1688. An Irish Cath olic woman named Glover was laundress for John Goodwin s family, in which there were four children. One day the eldest child, Mar tha, aged thirteen, accused the Glover woman of purloining some pieces of linen. Glover an- 1 [Nevins, Witchcraft in Salem Village, p. 34. This case occurred in 1652.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 149 swered with threats and curses, and Martha presently fell down in a fit. The other children aged eleven, seven, and five soon followed her example. Then they went through with all sorts of pranks : they would pretend The Good- to be deaf and dumb ; they would win children complain of being pricked with pins or cut with knives ; they would bark like dogs and purr like cats ; they even performed feats of what modern spirit-rappers call " levitation," skimming over the ground without appearing to touch it, seeming, as Cotton Mather said, to "fly like geese." This sort of thing went on for several weeks. Doctors and ministers agreed that the children must have been bewitched by the Glover woman, and she was accordingly hanged. The chief interest in this case arises from Cotton Mather s connection with it. That fa mous divine, son of Increase Mather cotton and grandson of John Cotton, was Mather then five and twenty years of age. He had been graduated at Harvard ten years before, his career as an author had already begun, and he was already regarded as the most learned man of his time. The range of his reading was enormous. Theology, philosophy, history, literature, physical science, in all these he was omnivorous, and he could write and speak at least seven languages (one of them the Iroquois) 150 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND with fluency and precision. 1 In the course of his life he published nearly four hundred books and tracts, most of which bring a high price now, while some are indispensable to the student of history. He was an earnest and severely conscientious man. His chief foible His character . , . , . was vanity, which was perhaps not strange in view of the wholesale homage and adulation to which he was accustomed. He was not a profound or original thinker, nor was he free from the. errors and superstitions char acteristic of his time ; but in most matters his face was set toward the future and his work was helpful to mankind. In 1721, in spite of His coura e ^ ur i us opposition and some personal in advocating peril, he succeeded in introducing into America inoculation for small pox, 2 the most conspicuous among many in stances in which he showed himself wiser than his contemporaries. With his other fine qualities he was a man of loving heart and gracious sympathies. But in the disputes and conflicts of his time he took too prominent a part to get along without making enemies ; and so it happened that after trie witchcraft delusion had become thoroughly discredited, a malicious writer saw fit to distort and misrepresent his relations to it. The slanders of Robert Calef 1 [Samuel Mather, Life of Cotton Mather, p. 49.] 8 [See Peabody s Life of Cotton Mather, pp. 311-326.]) WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 151 became the commonplaces of historical writers in a later generation, and the memory views of of Cotton Mather has been held up Caiefand to scorn as that of the man who did more than any one else to stimulate and foster the witchcraft delusion in Massachusetts. This view is maintained by Charles Wentworth Up- ham, in his history of "Salem Witchcraft," pub lished in 1867 in two volumes, the most learned and elaborate work on the subject. 1 It was repeated at second hand from older writers and embellished with cheap rhetoric by George Bancroft, and has usually been copied by the makers of compendiums and school-books, so that it has obtained a firm lodgement in the popular mind. The correct view of Cotton Mather s relations to witchcraft was first set forth in Longfellow s "New England Trage dies," published in 1868. The poet had studied the original documents with profound attention, and his fine critical insight had detected the truth where Upham, the Dryasdust specialist, had missed it. But the first full and adequate statement of the case was made in 1869 by 1 [For the literature of this subject, see G. H. Moore, Bib liographical Notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts, Worcester, 1888, and Justin Winsor, "The Literature of Witchcraft in New England," Proceedings of the Am. Antiquarian Soc. t 1895.] 152 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND the late William Frederick Poole, who was at Mr. w. F. that time librarian of the Boston Poole Athenaeum. 1 Cultivation of the critical faculty and the exercise of it upon original sources of information are perpetually obliging us to modify, and sometimes to reverse, long- accepted judgments upon historical characters and events. In the present brief narrative I shall simply indicate, without controversy, the true position of Cotton Mather. His connection with the Goodwin case began late. He was the last minister invited to attend. He had nothing to do with the accusation or prosecution of the poor laundress, but after her Cotton death sentence he visited her twice in ^GooT^m prison to pray for her. She confessed case to him that she had made a covenant with Satan, and was in the habit of going to meetings at which that personage was present. She was utterly impenitent and wanted none of his prayers. "However," as he says so sweetly in his account of the matter, " against her will I prayed with her, which, if it were a fault, it was in excess of pity." In her confession she implicated several other persons by name, but Mather never divulged any of these names, for, as he said, " we should be very tender in such i [Mr. Poole s paper was published in the No. Am. Re- blew in April, 1869. Mr. Upham replied to it in The His torical Magazine in September, 1869.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 153 relation, lest we wrong the reputation of the innocent by stories not enough inquired into." About the time of this woman s execution Mather took the little accuser, Martha Good win, into his own home and kept her there for several months, partly as a subject for investi gation, partly as a patient to be cured by prayer and judicious treatment, 1 for this cotton brilliant young clergyman was also a t ^ e at G 7 d " d doctor in medicine of no mean attain- wingiri ments, besides knowing more law, and knowing it to better purpose, than half the jurists of his time. The girl showed herself an actress of elf-like precocity and shrewdness. She wished to prove that she was bewitched, and she seems to have known Mather s prejudices against Quakers, Papists, and the Church of England ; for she could read Quaker books and Catholic books fluently, and seemed quite in love with the Book of Common Prayer, but she could not read a word in the Bible or any Testsofbe . book of Puritan theology, and even witchment in her favourite Prayer Book, whenever she came to the Lord s Prayer, she faltered and 1 ["I took her home to my own family, partly out of compassion to her parents, but chiefly that I might be a criti cal eye-witness of things that would enable me to confute the Sadducism of this debauch d age." Mather s Magnalia y ii. 460 (Hartford ed., 1853). The Magnalia was first pub lished in 1 700.] 154 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND failed. Gradually the young minister s firm good sense and kindness prevailed in calming her and making her discard such nonsense, but during the cure her symptoms showed the actress. She would refuse to go into the study, lined with its goodly tomes of Greek and Hebrew, because her devils forbade it ; then she would go into hysterics of six-young-lady-power until it occurred to some one of the family to drag her, all screams and kicks, into the sacred room; then she would instantly grow quiet and say that the accursed thing had just gone from her in the form of a mouse, which was of course a bit of ancient Teutonic folk-lore, a remnant of the doctrine of changelings, im plicitly believed by our ancestors when they lived in what Freeman used to call Oldest Eng land, before ever Hengist and Horsa sailed for Kent. After a while the little minx was cured ; her distemper gave way to kind patience and common sense, and the affair went no further. Cotton Mather was a firm believer in the Mather reality of witchcraft. He published accounfof 1 an account of this case and its cure. 1 this case His object in the publication was two- 1 [Mather s account of this case was included in his Mem orable Providences, relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, etc., Boston, 1689. Reprinted in London in 1691 as Late Memorable Providences, etc. He also gave a full account in his Magnalia, Hartford ed., ii. 456-465.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 155 fold : first, to prove the reality of witchcraft against a few bold sceptics who were lately be ginning to doubt it, in spite of the teachings of Holy Writ; secondly, to show the best method of effecting a cure. In this second point he was in advance of his age, and had others been as discreet and self-contained as he, there need have been no such tragedy as was soon to be enacted in Salem. All personal and local refer ences, whatever could give the mania a concrete hold and a chance to work bodily mischief, he had kept, and ever after kept, locked up within his own breast. He had evidence enough, per haps, to have hung half the old women in Bos ton, but his strong common sense taught him that the Devil is too tricksome a rascal to be worthy of much credit as an accuser. His rules of evidence were far in advance of those upon which the great lawyer, Sir Matthew Hale, had condemned people to death only four and twenty years before. Mather s rules would not have allowed a verdict of guilty simply upon the drivelling testimony of the afflicted persons, and if this wholesome caution had been ob served, not a witch would ever have been hung at Salem. Some writers have thought that the mere publication of Mather s book must have led to the outbreak of the delusion in Salem, since it must have helped put such ideas into the heads 156 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of Salem people. But this is forgetting that the superstitious ideas were in everybody s head cotton already. Not a man, woman, or child bo okTnd * n Massachusetts, or elsewhere in the the Saiem civilized world, but knew exactly how a witch should behave. Tracts and chap-books on the wretched subject abounded, and poisoned young minds as dime novels do in our time. Even if Mather had written no thing, the execution of the Irish laundress and the pranks of her little accusers were familiar topics at every fireside in New England. But in 1692, quite apart from any per sonal influence, there were circumstances which favoured the outbreak of an epidemic of witch craft. In this ancient domain of Satan there were indications that Satan was begin- G1 my 1 1 TTT 1 1 outlook ning again to claim his own. War had broken out with that Papist champion, Louis XIV., and it had so far been going badly with God s people in America. The shrieks of the victims at Schenectady and Salmon Falls and Fort Loyal still made men s blood run cold in their veins ; and the great expedition against Quebec had come home crestfallen with defeat. Evidently the Devil was bestirring himself; it was a witching time; the fuel for an explosion was laid, and it needed but a spark to fire it. That spark was provided by servants and WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 157 children in the household of Samuel Parris, minister of the church at Salem Village, a group of outlying farms from three to five miles out from the town of Salem. The place was some times called Salem Farms, and in later times was set off as a separate township under the name of Danvers. Any one who has ever vis ited a small New England village can Salem form some idea of the looks of the villa e e place, for the type is strongly characteristic, and jfrom the days of Cotton Mather to the intro duction of railroads the changes were not great. On almost any country roadside in Massachu setts you may see to-day just such wooden houses as that in which Samuel Parris dwelt. This clergyman seems to have lived for some years in the West Indies, engaged in commer cial pursuits, before he turned his attention to theology. Some special mercantile connection between Salem and Barbadoes seems to have brought him to Salem Village,, where he was in stalled as pastor in 1689. An entry Samuel in the church records, dated June 18 Pan-is, of that year, informs us that " it was agreed and voted by general concurrence, that for Mr. Parris his encouragement and settle ment in the work of the ministry amongst us, we will give him sixty-six pounds for his yearly salary, one third paid in money, the other two third parts for provisions, etc. ; and Mr. 158 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Parris to find himself firewood, and Mr. Parris to keep the ministry-house in good repair ; and that Mr. Parris shall also have the use of the ministry-pasture, and the inhabitants to keep the fence in repair ; and that we will keep up our contributions ... so long as Mr. Parris con tinues in the work of the ministry amongst us, and all productions to be good and merchant able. And if it please God to bless the inhabit ants, we shall be willing to give more ; and to expect that, if God shall diminish the estates of the people, that then Mr. Parris do abate of his salary according to proportion." 1 This arrangement was far from satisfying the new minister, for it only gave him the use of the parsonage and its pasture lands, whereas he was determined to get a fee simple of both. Parish trou Another entry in the parish book bies in Saiem says that it was voted to make over to him that real estate, but this entry is not duly signed by the clerk, and at the time there were parishioners who declared that it must have been put into the book by fraudu lent means. Out of these circumstances there grew a quarrel which for utterly ruthless and truculent bitterness has scarcely been equalled even in the envenomed annals of New England parishes. Many people refused to pay their church-rates till the meeting-house began to 1 [C. W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, i. 291.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 159 suffer for want of repairs, and complaints were made to the county court. Matters were made worse by Parris s coarse and arrogant manners, and his excessive severity in inflicting church discipline for trivial offences. By 1691 the factions into which the village was divided were ready to fly at each other s throats. Chris tian charity and loving-kindness were well-nigh forgotten. It was a spectacle such as Old Nick must have contemplated with grim satisfaction. In the household at the parsonage were two coloured servants whom Parris had brought with him from the West Indies. The , T . ivir. r arris s man was known as John Indian ; the coloured hag Tituba, who passed for his wife, servants was half-Indian and half-negro. Their intel ligence was of a low grade, but it sufficed to make them experts in palmistry, fortune-tell ing, magic, second-sight, and incantations. Such lore is always attractive to children, and in the winter of 1691-92 quite a little circle of young girls got into the habit of meeting at the parsonage to try their hands at the Black Art. Under the tuition of the Indian servants they soon learned how to go into trances, talk gibberish, and behave like pythonesses of the most approved sort. These girls were The Parris s daughter Elizabeth, aged "afflicted 11- A i - M -rS-i children" nine, and his niece Abigail Wil liams, aged eleven ; Mary Walcott and Eliza- 160 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND beth Hubbard, each aged seventeen ; Eliza beth Booth and Susannah Sheldon, each aged eighteen ; Mary Warren and Sarah Churchill, each aged twenty. Conspicuous above all in the mischief that followed were two girls of wonderful adroitness and hardihood, Ann Putnam, aged twelve, daughter of Sergeant Thomas Putnam, and Mercy Lewis, aged seventeen, a servant in his family. This Thomas Putnam, who had taken part in the great Narragansett fight, was parish clerk and belonged to an aristocratic family. One of his nephews was Israel Putnam, of Revolutionary fame. Mistress Ann Putnam, the sergeant s wife, was a beautiful and well-educated woman of thirty, but so passionate and high-strung Mistress Ann that m ner best moments she was Putnam scarcely quite sane. She was deeply engaged in the village quarrels ; she also played an important part in supporting her daughter Ann and her servant Mercy Lewis in some of the most shocking work of that year. Beside Mrs. Putnam, two other grown women, one Sarah Vibber and a certain Goody Pope, ap peared among the sufferers, but were of no great account. The minister withdrew his own daughter early in the proceedings and sent her to stay with some friends in Salem town. The chief managers of the witchcraft business, then, were two barbarous Indians steeped to the WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 161 marrow in demonolatry, the half-crazed and vindictive Mrs. Putnam, and nine girls between the ages of eleven and twenty. These girls came to be known as the "Af flicted Children." Their proceedings began at the parsonage about Christmas time, 1691. They would get down on all fours, crawl under chairs and tables, go off into fits, and speak an unintelligible jargon. All this may have been begun in sport. It would doubtless tickle them to find how well they could imitate T ,. ,. . , J , . Beginnings Indian medicine, and the temptation of the to show off" their accomplishments would be too great to be resisted. Then if they found their elders taking the affair too seriously, if they suddenly saw themselves in danger of getting whipped for meddling with such uncanny matters, what could be more natural than for them to seek an avenue of escape by declaring that they were bewitched and could not help doing as they did ? As to these first steps the records leave us in the dark, but somewhat such, I suspect, they must have been. The next thing would be to ask them who bewitched them ; and here the road to mischief was thrown open by Mr. Parris taking the affair into his own hands with a great flourish of trumpets, and making it as public as possible. Such was this man s way, as different as possible from Cotton Mather s. 162 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Physicians and clergymen, who came from all quarters to see the girls, agreed that they must Physicians ^ e suffering from witchcraft. When and clergy- commanded to point out their tor- men called in . ., . . T . . mentors, they first named the Indian hag Tituba, and then Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, two forlorn old women of the villa ge, who were not held in high esteem. On the last day of February, 1692, these three were ar rested, and the examinations began next day. The chief accusations against Sarah Good were that after she had spoken angrily to some neighbours their cattle sickened and died ; that The trial of she threw Mary Walcott and other Sarah Good children into convulsions; and that she tried to persuade Ann Putnam to sign her name in a book. It was supposed that such signatures were equivalent to a quitclaim deed surrendering the signer s soul to the Devil ; and his agents, the witches, were supposed to go about with that infernal autograph book so liciting signatures. Similar charges were brought against the other prisoners. In their presence the afflicted children raved and screamed. At the indignant denials of the two old white wo men the violence of these paroxysms became frightful, but when Tituba confessed that she was an adept in witchcraft and had enchanted the girls, their symptoms vanished and perfect calm ensued. As the result of the examination WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 163 the three prisoners were sent to the jail in Bos ton to await their trial. 1 The country was now getting alarmed, and the girls began to feel their power. Their next blow was aimed at victims of far higher sort. The wretched Tituba knew human nature well enough to consult her own safety by acting as king s evidence, 2 and in her examination she testified that four women of the village tor mented the girls ; two of them were Good and Osburn, but the faces of the other two she said she could not see. After Tituba had gone to prison, the girls were urged to give up the names of these other two tormentors. At first they refused, but shortly it began to be whispered in bated breath that some of the most respected and godly persons in the village were leagued with Satan in this horrible conspiracy. About the middle of March the whole community was thunderstruck by the arrest of Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse. Of these two ladies the for- 1 [For the details of these examinations, see W. E. Wood ward, Records of Salem Witchcraft, Roxbury, Mass., 1864, i. 149 ; Upham, ii. 4-32 ; Nevins, Witchcraft in Salem Village, pp. 57-69-] 2 [" The account she since gives of it is, that her master did beat her, and otherways abuse her, to make her confess and accuse (such as he called) her sister-witches ; and that what soever she said by way of confessing, or accusing others, was the effect of such usage." Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, Salem reprint, 1823, p. 189.] 164 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND mer was about sixty years of age, the latter more than seventy. As they were addressed not Theaccusa- as " Mrs.," but as " Goodwife," their tion of Mar- position was not exactly aristocratic tha Corey \ . . . . and Rebecca It was nevertheless most respectable. They were thoroughly well-bred and well-educated ladies, full of sweet courtesy and simple-hearted kindliness, like the best of farmers wives in New England villages of to day. Martha Corey was third wife of Giles Corey, a farmer eighty years old, a man of her culean stature and strength, proud, self-willed, and contentious, but frank and noble, with a rash, unruly tongue. He had been in many a quarrel, and had made enemies. His wife, so far as we know, had not. She was a wo- Character . of Martha man of deep and sincere piety, with as clear and sound a head as could be found anywhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. She disbelieved in witchcraft, was inclined to regard it as a mere delusion, and had no sym pathy with the excitement which was beginning to turn the village topsy-turvy. She did not flock with the multitude to see the accusing girls, but she reproved her more credulous hus band for giving heed to such tomfoolery, and he, with that uncurbed tongue of his, was heard to utter indiscreet jests about his good wife s scepticism. It was probably this that caused her to be selected as a victim. Sceptics must WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 165 be made to feel the danger of impugning the authority of the accusers and the truth of their tales. Accordingly Martha Corey, accused by little Ann Putnam, was soon in jail awaiting trial. The next was Rebecca Nurse. She was one of three sisters, daughters of William Towne of Yarmouth, in England. Her two Rebecca sisters, who were arrested soon after Nurse her, were Mary Easty and Sarah Cloyse. With their husbands they were all persons held in highest esteem, but an ancient village feud had left a grudge against them in some revengeful bosoms. Half a century before there had been a fierce dispute between parties from Salem and from Topsfield who had settled in the border region between the two townships. The dispute related to the possession of certain lots of land ; it had grown more and more complicated, and it had engendered hard feelings between A v iu age the Putnams on one side and the feud Eastys and Townes on the other. Besides this, Rebecca Nurse and her husband had become obnoxious to the Putnams and to the Rev. Mr. Parris from reasons connected with the church dispute. There was evidently a method in the madness of the accusing girls. Rebecca Nurse was arrested two days after the committal of Martha Corey. The appearance of this vener able and venerated lady before the magistrates 166 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND caused most profound sensation. Her numerous children and grandchildren stood high in public esteem, her husband was one of the most hon oured persons in the community, herself a model of every virtue. As she stood there, deli cate and fragile in figure, with those honest eyes that looked one full in the face, that soft gray The ex- hair and dainty white muslin kerchief, one mar vels what fiend can have pos- sessed those young girls that they did not shamefastly hold their peace. In the inter vals of question and answer they went into fits as usual. When the magistrate Hathorne became visibly affected by the lady s clear and straight forward answers, the relentless Mrs. Putnam broke out with a violence dreadful to behold : " Did you not bring the black man with you ? Did you not bid me tempt God and die ? How oft have you eaten and drunk your own dam nation?" At this outburst, like the horrible snarl of a lioness, the poor old lady raised her hands toward heaven and cried, " O Lord, help me ! " Whereupon all the afflicted girls " were grievously vexed." Hathorne thought that their spasms were caused by a mysterious influence emanating from Goodwife Nurse s lifted hands, and so his heart was hardened toward her. Mary Walcott cried out that the prisoner was biting her, and then showed marks of teeth upon her wrist. Thus the abominable scene went on till WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 167 Rebecca Nurse was remanded to jail to await her trial. That was on a Thursday morning. The Rev. Deodat Lawson, a fine scholar and powerful preacher, had arrived in the village a few days before, and it was known that he was to preach the afternoon sermon familiar in those Deodat days as the Thursday lecture. He Lawson had scarcely arrived when two or three of the girls called upon him and drove him nearly out of his wits with their performances. Their victory over him was complete, and the result was seen in that Thursday lecture, which was afterwards printed, and is a literary production of great intensity and power. The arrests of Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse had de stroyed all confidence, everybody distrusted his neighbour, and that impassioned sermon goaded the whole community to madness. If the Devil could use such " gospel women " for . . . . r The spread his instruments, what safety was there ofthede- for anybody ? Arrests went on with in creasing rapidity during the spring and summer, until at least 126 persons, of whom we know the names and something of the family history, were lodged in jail ; and these names do not exhaust the number. Among them to mention only such as were executed we may note that John Procter and the venerable George Jacobs had each had one of the accusing girls in his family 168 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND as a domestic servant, and in both cases per sonal malice was visibly at work. In the case Cases of per- of George Jacobs it may also be ob- sonai malice serve d tna t his own granddaughter, to save her own life, confessed herself a witch, and testified against him ; afterward she confessed this horrible wickedness. Sarah Wildes, Eliza beth How, and Mary Easty were connected with the Topsfield affair already mentioned. Some, such as Susannah Martin, seem to have owed their fate to mere superstition of the low est sort. On a rainy day she walked over a good bit of country road without getting her hose or skirts muddy, and it was sagely concluded that such neatness could only have been attained through the aid of the Devil. She was mother of the Mabel Martin about whom Whittier wrote his beautiful poem, " The Witch s Daugh ter." John Willard incurred his doom for having said that it was the accusing girls who were the real witches worthy of the gallows, and John Procter in a similar spirit had said that by the judicious application of a cudgel he could effect a prompt and thorough cure for all the little hussies. People who ventured such remarks took their lives in their hands. The boldest and most remarkable of all these arrests was that of the Rev. George Burroughs, and it was one of the cases in which malice was most clearly concerned. This gentleman was WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 169 graduated at Harvard College in 1670, and had been pastor over the church in Salem Village from 1680 to 1682. He had left there The Rey because of church feuds, in which George he had the misfortune to belong to the party hostile to Mrs. Ann Putnam and her friends. He was afterwards settled over a church in Wells, Maine, and was living there quietly in 1692, when about the first of May he was arrested and taken to Salem to answer a charge of witchcraft. His physical strength was alleged against him. Though small in frame he could carry a barrel of cider and hold out a heavy musket at arm s length, which without infernal aid was not likely. On accusations brought by the afflicted girls he was thrown into prison. 1 All the events thus far recounted happened under the provisional government of Massa chusetts that followed the overthrow of Andros. Now in the middle of May the first royal governor, Sir William Phips, arrived in Boston with the new charter. Military duties The special soon called him far down East, and court erected he did not return till October. Before his de parture he appointed a special court of Oyer and Terminer to try the witchcraft cases. Wil liam Stoughton was presiding justice, and among his colleagues it may suffice to mention John Hathorne for his connection with one of the 1 [Cf. Nevins, Witchcraft in Salem Village, pp. 131 ff.] 170 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND most illustrious names in modern literature, and Samuel Sewall, in whose voluminous diary we have such a wonderful picture of that old Puri tan society. Early in the proceedings this court requested the opinion of the ministers in Boston and neigh bouring towns concerning the subject then uppermost in all minds. The opinion, written by Cotton Mather, one of the youngest of the ministers, and subscribed by all the most eminent, was calm and judicial. It ran as fol lows : BOSTON, June 15, 1692. 1. "The afflicted state of our poor neigh bours that are now suffering by molestations The advice of from the Invisible World we appre- the ministers h en j so deplorable, that we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their several capacities. 2. " We cannot but with all thankfulness ac knowledge the success which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous en deavours of our honourable rulers to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been com mitted in the country ; humbly praying that the discovery of these mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected. 3. "We judge that, in the prosecution of these and all such witchcrafts there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 111 much credulity for things received only upon the devil s authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us ; for we should not be ignorant of his devices. 4. " As in complaints upon witchcraft there may be matters of inquiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and there may be matters of presumption which yet may not be matters of conviction, so it is necessary that all proceedings thereabout be managed with an exceeding tenderness toward those that may be complained of, especially if they have been persons formerly of an unblemished reputation. 5. " When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances of such as may lie under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could wish that there may be admitted as little as possible of such noise, company and openness as may too hastily expose them that are examined, and that there may be nothing used as a test for the trial of the suspected, the lawfulness whereof may be doubted by the people of God, but that the directions given by such judicious writers as Perkins and Barnard may be observed. 6. " Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and much more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as guilty of witchcrafts, ought certainly to be more con siderable than barely the accused persons being 172 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND represented by a spectre unto the afflicted, inas much as it is an undoubted and notorious thing, that a demon may by God s permission appear, even to ill purposes, in the shape of an inno cent, yea, and a virtuous man. Nor can we esteem alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to be abused by the devil s legerdemains. 7. " We know not whether some remarkable affronts given the devils, by our disbelieving these testimonies whose whole force and strength is from them alone, may not put a period unto the progress of the dreadful calamity begun upon us, in the accusation of so many persons, whereof some, we hope, are yet clear from the great transgression laid to their charge. 8. " Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly re commend unto the government, the speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the direc tions given in the laws of God and the whole some statutes of the English nation for the de tection of witchcrafts." Had these recommendations been followed, not a single capital conviction could have been secured. Note the warning to the judges against relying upon " spectral evidence " or upon the physical effects apparently wrought upon the accusers by the presence of the accused persons, WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 173 since evidence of that sort is "frequently lia ble to be abused by the devil s legerdemains." Now every one of the victims was convicted and hung upon the strength of " spectral evi dence " or the tantrums of the afflicted chil dren, or both combined. And what, pray, was " spectral evidence " ? Little Ann Putnam s testimony against Mr. Burroughs was an in stance of it. She said that one evening the ap parition of a minister came to her and asked her to write her name in the devil s book ; then came the forms of two women in spectral winding sheets, and looked angrily evidence upon the minister and scolded him till he was fain to vanish away ; then the women told little Ann that they were the ghosts of Mr. Bur- roughs s first and second wives whom he had murdered, and one of them showed the very place under the left arm where he had stabbed her. At another time three other persons who had recently died appeared to Ann and accused Mr. Burroughs of murdering them, and com manded her to tell these things to the magis trates before Mr. Burroughs s face. On such evidence was a gentleman and scholar con demned to death. 1 So when Mercy Lewis was found sobbing and screaming, " Dear Lord, receive my soul," " O Lord, let them not kill 1 [See Cotton Mather s account of Burroughs s case, Won* ders of the Invisible World, pp. 120 ff.] 174 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND me quite," the same Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams were sent for to see what was the matter, and both declared that they saw the apparitions of Mary Easty and John Willard pinching and biting and strangling poor Mercy Lewis. On such evidence Mary Easty and John Willard were sent to the gallows. With such ghost stories did Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard convict Rebecca Nurse of three hideous murders, naming persons who had died within a few years. When the astounded old lady called upon God to witness her inno cence, the girls all went into fits. Nevertheless it was hard to obtain a verdict against her. An ancestor of mine (my great-grandfather s great-great-grandfather), Dr. John Fisk, one of the most eminent physicians in the colony, then lived in Wenham, within four miles of Mr. Parris s meeting-house. The family tradi tion has it that he was sceptical about witchcraft. His uncle, Thomas Fisk, was a firm believer in The - u witchcraft, but disapproved of spectral acquit Re- evidence. He was foreman of the jury in the trial of Rebecca Nurse, and the verdict was Not Guilty, whereat the girls began screaming and rolling about as if all Bedlam were let loose. The judges then told the jury that they must have overlooked one fact, that in an unguarded moment the pris oner had really confessed her guilt ! It seems WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 175 that one of the prisoners, Deliverance Hobbs, had gone clean daft with fright, confessed her self a witch, and joined the accusing girls as a sort of king s evidence. When she was brought in to testify against Rebecca Nurse, the old lady exclaimed : " What ! do you bring her ? $he j s one of us." Of course she meant one of us pris oners^ but the atrabilious chief justice was sure she meant one of us witches* and he _. J t The court insisted that the jury should go out sends them again. They were not convinced, but presently returning to the court-room asked the accused to explain what she meant. She made no reply, and the jury at length reluctantly accepted this silence as a confession of guilt. Afterwards she explained that, being somewhat " hard of hearing and full of grief," she did not realize what was asked of her. She was sen tenced none the less, and after being excom municated from the church with elaborate cere mony was taken to the gallows. Thomas Fisk, the juryman who held out longest, made a writ ten statement afterward in which he declared that what finally overcame him was her sudden silence at the critical moment. The whole incident is a pretty clear case of judges brow beating jury. 1 1 [See Calef, New Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 209-211 ; Kevins, Witchcraft in Salem Village, pp. 125- 176 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND The case of Mary Easty, sister of Rebecca Nurse, still further illustrates the fierce persis tency of the accusing girls and the complete- The case of ness of the influence which they exer- Mary Easty c i se d over a large portion of the com- munijy. Mary Easty had been arrested soon after her sister, but had borne herself so well upon examination that after two months im prisonment she was set free on May 18. Evi dently, the accusing girls made up their minds that it would not do to allow this sort of thing. One day elapsed, during which they had plenty of time to interchange messages with one an other and with Mrs. Putnam. On the 2Oth, at about nine o clock in the morning, Mercy Lewis, being at John Putnam s house, was sud denly seized with the paroxysms above men tioned. Let us observe the rapidity with which the desired effects were produced. A neighbour named Samuel Abbey was sent in all haste to Thomas Putnam s house, to bring little Ann to see what was the matter. The distance was about a mile. He found Abigail Williams with Ann, and brought the two girls back with him. On the way, they both exclaimed that they saw the apparition of Goody Easty afflict ing Mercy Lewis. When they arrived upon the scene, they found Mercy in convulsions, apparently choked and strangled, and catching for each breath as if it were the last. The two WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 177 girls exclaimed, " There are Goody Easty and John Willard and Mary Whittredge afflicting poor Mercy Lewis ! " After this had continued for some time, a messenger was sent up to Cap tain Jonathan Walcott s to get his daughter Mary. The distance was a mile and a half. She arrived about one o clock, and immediately cried out that she saw the spectre of Mary Easty standing over the patient and tightening a chain about her neck. Presently a messenger was sent to the house of Dr. Griggs, three and a half miles distant, to get Elizabeth Hubbard, who upon her arrival immediately saw Goody Easty, as she said, torturing Mercy in a most dreadful man ner. Occasionally Mercy would grow tired, but as her convulsions ceased, Elizabeth Hubbard would be seized with fits and would ask the spectre why she had brought with her a coffin and winding-sheet. By eight o clock in the evening the room was full of neighbours, who were so impressed by the acting of the girl that some of them were afterward ready to testify that they saw the winding-sheet, the coffin, and the devil s autograph book, and heard words uttered by the spectre as well as by the girls. About eight o clock two messengers went to Salem town to apply to Justice Hathorne for a warrant for the arrest of Mary Easty. The distance was seven miles. Hathorne at once issued the warrant, which bears the date, May 20. The constable 178 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND went with it to the house of Isaac Easty, nine miles distant, which he seems to have reached Mary Easty about midnight. For two days poor home f T her MaI T had enjoyed her freedom, the midnight comforts of home, and the pleasure of being once more with her husband and children. Now at midnight she was aroused from sleep, carried off to prison, and put in irons, after which the constable returned seven miles to John Put nam s house to witness the performances of Mercy Lewis until dawn. Mercy kept scream ing, "What ! Have you brought me the wind ing-sheet, Goodwife Easty ? Well, I had rather go into the winding-sheet than set my hand to the book." About daybreak she fell asleep, but only for a short time ; her paroxysms were not finished until Mary Easty had been exam ined before Hathorne and finally committed to prison early the next morning. Nothing could show more forcibly than the events of that 2Oth of May the extent to which the community was dominated by the accusing girls. There is no hint that among all the bystanders who watched Mercy Lewis in the course of that day and night there was one who ventured to express any doubt as to the reality of the pretended appari tions. Indeed, the slightest expression of any Doubt such doubt would have been fraught perilous w i t } 1 p er i} to tne doubter, and it is most likely that none but willing believers made WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 179 bold to attend the scene. It only need be added that after Mary Easty was finally committed for trial and the news of it reached John Put nam s house, the wretched Mercy Lewis at once recovered, thus sealing the belief in the truth of her story. From that moment it was a fore gone conclusion that Goody Easty must die, slain by the same degrading methods which had achieved the destruction of her sister. Further details of the trials seem unnecessary ; it was but the same old story repeated. In all, nineteen persons were hanged, one died of ill- treatment in prison, and the old wretch Tituba was sold into slavery to pay for her board in prison. One often hears people allude to the burning of witches in New England ; no per sons were ever burned there by white people for witchcraft. One cruel punishment, however, was inflicted on this occasion for the only time in American history. In old English law, in cases working corruption of blood, the refusal to plead either guilty or not guilty to p e ine forte an indictment would prevent confisca- et dure tion of estates. Hence a prisoner would some times refuse to plead, and in order to overcome his obstinacy the law would stretch him on the floor and pile weights upon his chest until the breath was gradually squeezed from his body. This was appropriately called the peine forte et dure. Now Giles Corey was arrested for witch- 180 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND craft in April. His wife, who had been in jail since March, was sentenced to death on Septem ber io, and his own trial came two or three days later. The knowledge that thoughtless words of his, uttered in jest, had been used against his wife had broken his heart, but not his will of iron. This man, who in all his eighty years had never known the meaning of fear, ex pected nothing but death, and probably wished for nothing better, but he had made up his mind to leave his property where he pleased, and baulk his enemies of at least one gratifica tion. So he stood mute before the court until he was taken out and pressed to death. Nothing could quell that indomitable spirit. Three days later, on September 22, his good wife and seven companions were taken to the gallows. One of the most busy witch-hunters, ever since the The Rev. affair began, had been Rev. Nicholas Mr. Noyes N oy es, pastor of the First Church in Salem town. Such meagre pity as his soul found room for was expressed when he pointed to the swinging bodies and exclaimed, " What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hang ing there ! " L Some weeks before, this truculent Mr. Noyes had been present at the execution of Sarah Good, and just before she was turned off he said to her, " You are a witch, and you know you are ! " The spirited answer of the 1 [Calef, p. 221.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 181 dying woman is refreshing to read : " You are a liar ! I am no more a witch than you are a wiz ard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink ! " In strong contrast with this were the dying words of that noble Christian woman, Mary Easty : " The humble petition of Mary Easty unto his Excellency, Sir William Phips, and to the Honoured Tudge and Bench now sit- , J & The petition ting in Judicature in Salem, and the of Mary Reverend Ministers, humbly show- Easty eth, that, whereas your poor and humble peti tioner, being condemned to die, do humbly beg of you to take it in your judicious and pious consideration, that your poor and humble pe titioner, knowing my own innocency, blessed be the Lord for it ! and seeing plainly the wiles and subtilty of my accusers by myself, cannot but judge charitably of others that are going the same way of myself, if the Lord steps not mightily in. I was confined a whole month upon the same account that I am condemned now for, and then cleared by the afflicted per sons, as some of Your Honours know. And in two days* time I was cried out upon [by] them, and have been confined, and now am condemned to die. The Lord above knows my innocency then, and likewise does now, as at the great day 1 [Calef, p. 209.] 182 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND will be known to men and angels. I petition not to Your Honours for my own life, for I know I must die, and my appointed time is set ; but the Lord he knows it is that, if it be possible, no more innocent blood may be shed, which un doubtedly cannot be avoided in the Her warning . T way and course you go in. I question not but Your Honours do to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witch craft and witches, and would not be guilty of innocent blood for the world. But, by my own innocency, I know you are in the wrong way. The Lord in his infinite mercy direct you in this great work, if it be his blessed will that no more innocent blood be shed ! I would humbly beg of you, that Your Honours would be pleased to examine these afflicted persons strictly, and keep them apart some time, and likewise to try some of these confessing witches ; I being con fident there is several of them has belied them selves and others, as will appear, if not in this world, I am sure in the world to come, whither I am now agoing. I question not but you will see an alteration of these things. They say my self and others having made a league with the Devil, we cannot confess. I know, and the Lord knows, as will [shortly] appear, they belie me, and so I question not but they do others. The Lord above, who is the Searcher of all hearts, knows, as I shall answer it at the tri- WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 183 bunal seat, that I know not the least thing of witchcraft ; therefore I cannot, I dare not, belie my own soul. I beg Your Honours not to deny this my humble petition from a poor, dying, innocent person. And I question not but the Lord will give a blessing to your endeavours." l The execution of Mary Easty, Martha Corey, and their six companions was the last scene in the tragedy. Further trials were held, but there were no more executions, and early in 1693 a ^ the prisoners were set free. As to the r i J J 11 -1 Sudden col- CaUSe of this sudden collapse in the lapse of the frenzy we may say that it came, as such collapses always come, when humanity has been outraged more than it will bear. Why did the guillotine stop its work in 1794 just after the fall of Robespierre ? The men who overthrew him were not much better than himself, but the state of things had come to be unendurable. Such periods of furious excitement inevitably lead up to a moment of reaction, and the sudden ness and completeness of the reaction is apt to be proportionate to the intensity and ferocity of the excitement. The reign of terror in Salem Village was due to a temporary destruction of confidence ; everybody became afraid of his neighbours, and there is nothing so pitiless as 1 [Upham, ii. 328, 329 ; Calef, pp. 219, 220. There are slight differences in the two texts. The two insertions in brackets are from CalePs text.] 184 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND fear. But many long ages of social discipline Reaction foi- based u p on mutual confidence, without lows the in- which human society could not exist, tense strain i j i have made that sentiment so strong and tough that it cannot be suppressed for more than a short time. The feeling with which people endured the sight of Rebecca Nurse and George Burroughs and Martha Corey hanged like com mon felons was a feeling of tension that must soon give way. The accusing girls did not ap preciate this point ; they became overweeningly bold and aimed too high. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, had expressed his disapproval of the methods of the court, and a member of his family was accused. Then the girls cried out against Rev. Samuel Willard, pastor of the Old South Church in Boston, a man of as much eminence in his day as the late The accusers Phillips Brooks. They even assailed aim too high Lady Phips, the governor s wife, who condemned their proceedings and expressed sympathy with the victims. In these instances the girls struck too high. The same Stoughton and Hathorne, who could take for granted the guilt of Martha Corey, could entertain no such thoughts about Mr. Willard, and when some of the girls mentioned his name they were sharply rebuked and told to hold their tongues. Their final and most fatal mistake was made in October, when they accused Mrs. Hale, wife of WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 185 the minister in Beverly, a lady known through out the colony for her noble Christian character. The vile accusation opened the eyes of her hus band, who had been active in the pursuit of the witches. He instantly faced about, began to op pose the whole prosecution, and confessed that he had been deceived. This was a fatal blow to the witch-hunters, and the effect was presently enhanced when some high-spirited persons in Andover, on being accused of witch- Accusers ,, . . 1 . threatened craft, retorted by bringing an action w i t hasuit for defamation of character with heavy for dama es damages. This marked the end of the panic, and from that time people began to be quick in throwing off the whole witchcraft delusion. Another circumstance is worthy of notice in this connection. About three weeks after the execution of Martha Corey and her companions the General Court of Massachusetts was assem bled at Boston. It was different from any Gen eral Court that had sat before, for it was the first Court elected under the new charter. Un der the old charter none but church members could either serve as representatives or vote for representatives. 1 Under the new charter such restrictions were abolished and a property quali fication was substituted for them. The effect 1 [This was modified in 1664, in response to the king s command, so as to extend the suffrage to all respectable citi zens of orthodox opinions.] 186 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND was not only greatly to widen the suffrage, but The court also to secularize it. One of the first of oyer and acts Q f fae new legislature was to abol- Termmer . , i c r\ j T abolished ish the special court of Oyer and Ter- miner under which the witchcraft trials had been held, and to establish a superior court. When the new court met in January, the change was visible. The grand jury began by throwing out more than half of the indictments. 1 In the mean time a tract published by Increase Mather, en titled " Cases of Conscience," 2 had done much to cast discredit upon spectral evidence. As for Cotton Cotton Mather, he had not been pre- Mather sent a t anv o f tne w itch trials, nor do we know of any comment which he made upon them at the time, except that Calef tells us that at the execution of Mr. Burroughs young Mather was present on horseback, having, per haps, ridden down from Boston for the occasion. Calef says the spectators were so impressed with Burroughs s innocence of demeanour that Cot ton Mather felt it necessary to tell them that the devil might take on the semblance of a saint or an angel ; and that thereupon, the people being appeased, the executions went on. Now Calef has so often been convicted of inaccuracy that 1 [See Sir William Phips s report to the home government of his policy in regard to the troubles, Palfrey, iv. 112, 1 1 3.^ 2 [This occupies pp. 220-291 of the London reprint of the Wonders of the Invisible World.~\ WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 187 his statement here is open to suspicion. The argument that Satan might assume the appear ance of some person of known innocence or ex cellence was a favourite one with Cotton Mather when he was inveighing against spectral evi dence. As applied to the alleged testimony of the two deceased wives of Mr. Burroughs, it had a peculiarly Matherian meaning ; it meant that instead of the first and second Mrs. Bur roughs, it was the devil who was talking to little Ann Putnam, so that therefore the unfortunate minister was condemned upon the devil s evi dence. As ordinarily understood, in J Explanation the sense that Mr. Burroughs himself of Mather s was an impersonation of the devil, the spee< remark ascribed by Calef to Mather does not fit in with his habits of expression and has no point. Apart from this misconstruction, there is nothing in the records to set off against the weighty evidence of Mather s own rules of pro cedure, which were in themselves the strongest condemnation the court could have had. Long fellow s picture of Mather in his tragedy of Giles Corey seems absolutely justified, except in one trifling particular, when he makes him say to Mary Walcott, " Accept an old man s bless ing," which from a spruce young minister of twenty-nine is, no doubt, a slight anachronism. The reign of terror we have been describing was the expiring paroxysm of the witchcraft 188 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND delusion. In the energy of the reaction scep tics declared themselves in all quarters. How judge sew- J u dg e Sewall, only five years after- airs public ward, got up in the Old South mentof Church and publicly acknowledged wrong j^ s sname anc [ repentance is known to every one. Not all the court were so open to conviction. Stoughton, who was at best a narrow-minded and cross-grained creature, maintained to his dying day that he had done nothing to be sorry for. Of the wretched chil dren, one of the most active, Ann Ann Put- nam scon- rutnam, fourteen years afterward, humbled herself before the village church at Salem and declared that she had been instrumental, with others, in bringing upon the land the guilt of innocent blood ; " though what was said or done by me against any person, I can truly and uprightly say be fore God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them, but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded of Satan. And particularly as I was a chief in strument of accusing Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families." 1 1 [Nevins, Witchcraft in Salem Village, p. 250.] WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 189 I think we should accept this solemn dis claimer of malice as sufficient evidence that in 1706 the poor girl did not believe herself to have been actuated by unworthy motives in 1692. By declaring herself to have been de luded by Satan she meant that when she accused Rebecca Nurse and George Burroughs and others she said what she believed to be true at the time, but had since learned to reject as false. In other words, when a little girl of twelve, she believed that she had seen the ghosts of Mr. Burroughs s wives and other persons who said that they had been murdered, but as a young woman of six and twenty she looked back upon this as a delusion, and charged it to Satan. This brings us to the question, Are we justified in accepting this explanation of Ann Put- Were the nam as to her own conduct, and shall ^ e s ^ r we suppose the case to have been sub- shamming ? stantially the same with the other girls ? Did they really have visions of ghosts and black men and yellow birds and devil s autograph books, or was it all a lie ? Did they really fall into convulsions, and fancy themselves pricked with pins, and cut and bitten, or was all that put on for effect? In his elaborate history Mr. Up- ham seems to incline toward the latter view. Certainly the fits came and went, and the ghost stories were told, as if to order, and certainly there was methodical cooperation of some sort, 190 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND if not collusion, between most if not all the Evidences of girls, and Ann Putnam s mother and collusion the m i n i ster p arr i s . There can be no doubt as to such cooperation. They all worked together as harmoniously and relentlessly as the cog-wheels in a machine. Of the victims from Salem Village and the towns near by, a large majority were persons against whom either the Putnam family, or the minister, or some of the afflicted girls, are known to have entertained a grudge ; others were sceptics whose scoffing re marks were liable to weaken the authority of the accusers. When we have eliminated these two classes, very few names are left. Like the tracks of various beasts which Master Reynard saw, all pointing toward the lion s cave and none coming out from it, the traces of evidence here all point in the same direction, all point toward methodical cooperation between the accusers. The question remains, however, was this co operation a case of conscious and deliberate con spiracy, or must we seek some other explana tion ? The theory of conspiracy, toward which Mr. Upham seems inclined, offers us a spectacle of astounding wickedness. We are asked to believe that a minister of the gospel and a lady of high position in the community make up their minds to destroy their enemies, and for that purpose employ young girls in their fami- WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 191 lies to pretend illness and bring false accusations conceived and supported with all the Was there skill of trained actresses ! Such a con- a deliberate spiracy is much too diabolical and altogether too elaborate for belief. Moreover, it leaves out of account the most important fact in the whole case, the fact that the accusers, like nearly all the rest of the community, un questionably believed in the reality of witchcraft. It will not do to invest those poor girls with a nineteenth century consciousness. The same delusion that conquered learned magistrates led them also astray. Still more, they were doubt less in a morbid mental condition. A n Contagion large part of Indian medicine consists of hysteric* c j , emotion or convulsive muscular movements, twitching, capering, and groaning, accompanied! by an awestruck belief in the presence of some supernatural agency. Such convulsive move ments tend to prolong themselves, to recur with spasmodic violence, and they are in a high de gree contagious. Abundant instances may be found among the experiences of revival meet ings, where multitudes of ignorant minds are at work after much the same fashion as the Indian s, though in connection with different religious symbols. This kind of hysterical ex citement selects for its victims impressionable people with sensitive nerves ; it attacks children more frequently than adults, and women more 192 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND frequently than men ; vivacious and quickly PS choio responsive temperaments are more of haiiudna- subject to it than those that are phleg matic and slow. Under suitable cir cumstances it easily develops into a thoroughly morbid mental state, in which convulsive move ments are attended by partial and temporary hallucinations ; the nervous impressions be come so vivid that ideas are clothed with ex ternality and mistaken for realities. Such are the characteristics of hysteria and allied forms of mental disturbance, which differ from true insanity in being merely temporary and func tional, and not connected with any organic lesion. They are very striking phenomena, and often very shocking, but not more mysterious than many other phases of abnormal mental life. It was not strange that an ignorant age should have called them the result of witchcraft ; that same age, we must remember, regarded ordinary insanity as the direct work of the devil. Applying these considerations to the case of the Salem girls, we may suppose that the min ister s West Indian servants began by talking Indian medicine and teaching its tricks to his daughter and niece ; then the girls of their ac quaintance would naturally become interested, and would seek to relieve the monotony of the winter evenings by taking part in the perform- WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 193 ances. Their first motives are most likely to have been playful, but there was prob- pi ay i n g ably a half-shuddering sense of wick- with fire edness, a slight aroma of brimstone, about the affair, which may have made it the more attrac tive. I feel sure that sooner or later some of those girls would find themselves losing control over their spasms, and thus, getting more than they had bargained for, would deem themselves bewitched by Tituba and John Indian. But, especially if they found themselves taken to task by their parents, the dread of punishment perhaps of church discipline, wherein Parris was notably severe would be sure to make them blame the Indians in order to screen themselves. If Cotton Mather s methods had now been fol lowed, the affair would have been hushed, and the girls isolated from each other would have been subjected to quiet and sooth- The evils of ing treatment; and thus no doubt it P" blidt y| n o the examma- would all have ended. But when Par- tions ris made the affair as public as possible, when learned doctors of divinity and medicine came and watched those girls, and declared them be witched, what more was needed to convince their young minds that they were really in that dreadful plight ? Such a belief must of course have added to their hysterical condition. Nat urally they accused Tituba, and as for the two old women, Good and Osburn, very likely some 194 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of the girls may really have been afraid of them as evil-eyed or otherwise uncanny. For the rest of the story a guiding influence is needed, and I think we may find it in Mrs. Putnam. She was one of the Carrs of Salis bury, a family which for several generations had been known as extremely nervous and excit- Expianation ^ Qt There had been cases of in- of Mrs. Put- sanity among her near relatives. The nam s part Deaths o f some Q f h tr own children and of a beloved sister, with other distressing events, had clouded her mind. She had once been the most sparkling and brilliant of wo men, but was sinking into melancholia at the time when the first stories of witchcraft came from the parsonage and she learned that her little daughter Ann, a precocious and imagina tive child, was one of the afflicted. Mrs. Put nam and her husband were both firm believers in witchcraft. I do not think it strange that her diseased mind should have conjured up horrible fancies about Goodwife Nurse, mem ber of a family which she probably hated all the more bitterly for the high esteem in which it was generally held. Mrs. Putnam fell into vio lent hysterical fits like her daughter, and their bright and active servant Mercy Lewis was af flicted likewise. These three, with the min ister s niece Abigail Williams and her friend Mary Walcott, were the most aggressive and WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE 195 driving agents in the whole tragedy. I presume Mrs. Putnam may have exercised she exercised something like what it is now fashion- tToverX" able to call hypnotic influence over the children young girls. She honestly believed that witches were hurting them all, and she naturally sus pected foes rather than friends. I see no good reason for doubting that she fully believed her own ghost stories, or that the children believed theirs. In their exalted state of mind they could not distinguish between what they really saw and what they vividly fancied. It was analogous to what often occurs in delirium. Such an explanation of the witchcraft in Salem Village accounts for the facts much bet ter than any such violent supposition as that of conscious conspiracy. Our fit attitude of mind toward it is pity for all concerned, yet the feelings of horror and disgust are quite legiti mate, for the course of the affair was practically the same as if it had been shaped by deliberate and conscious malice. It is on the whole the most gruesome episode in American history r and it sheds back a lurid light upon the long tale of witchcraft in the past. Few instances of the delusion have attracted so much attention as this at Salem, and few have had the details so hilly and minutely preserved. It was the last witch epidemic recorded in the history of fully civilized nations. It occurred among 196 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND people of our own sort, and the sixth generation, born since it happened, has not yet passed away. It came just as the superstition which produced it was about to die out from the thoughts of educated men, and there is no monument more conspicuous than the Salem Witchcraft to mark the remote and fast reced ing side of the gulf which the human mind has traversed in these two centuries. For these reasons it looms up in our memory, and is sometimes alluded to as if it were in some way a singular or exceptional instance of supersti tion. Yet in Europe, only a few years earlier, the hanging of nineteen persons for witchcraft in a single village and in the course of a single summer would have called forth no special comment. The case of Salem Village may help us in the attempt to form some dim conception of the stupendous wickedness that must have been wrought by the terrible delusion in the The case of days ^ * ts sta l wart prime, when vic- Saiem vii- tims by the hundred were burned at lage helps one , TTT 1 r i to realize the the stake. We can but faintly im- wkchcraft^ 6 a g* nC W ^ at mUSt ^ aVC k eeri tne de- delusion in struction of confidence, the breaking of the dearest ties, the madness, the reign of savage terror ; and we cannot be too grateful that the gaunt spectre which stalked so long over the fairest parts of earth has at length been exorcised forever ! VI THE GREAT AWAKENING ONE of the effects of the witchcraft epi demic at Salem was to cast discredit upon the clergy, who still represented the old theocratic ideal which had founded the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is true, that with regard to the prosecutions of witches, the more eminent among the clergy had behaved with much wisdom and discretion ; nevertheless, the new public opinion, receiving its The reaction tone far more from laymen than for- * h ^. merly, was inclined to charge this whole delusion business of diabolism to the account of the men who represented an old and discredited state of things. With regard to the reality of witchcraft, Cotton Mather had been foremost among the defenders of the belief, and now that there came a sudden and violent reaction against the super stition, it made little difference to people that he had been remarkably discreet and temperate in his handling of the matter ; it was enough that he had been a believer and prominent ad vocate. To some extent Cotton Mather was made the chief butt of popular resentment be- 198 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND cause he and his father especially typified the old theocratic state of things. Now the old Puritan theocracy in the early days when Winthrop and Cotton led it had framed for itself an ideal of society that was at least lofty and noble, although from the first there were settlers who dissented from it. The defensive wall behind which the theocracy sought to shelter itself from all hostile attack was the restriction of the rights to vote and hold office to members of the Congregational churches in full communion. One of the first effects of this policy was to drive away from Massachusetts the men who founded Con necticut 1 and some of those who founded Rhode Island; but after such depletions there was a considerable number left in Massachusetts who were disfranchised, and who would have been glad in many respects to secularize the government. In the second period of the theo- ise of secu- cracy, with Endicott, Bellingham, and Norton at the head, the opposition had become very strong ; indeed, it numbered a majority of the population. When the Quakers arrived upon the scene, determined to stay in the Commonwealth at all hazards and thus destroy its character as a united body of believers, there is little doubt that a majority 1 [Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, pp. 123, 249.] THE GREAT AWAKENING 199 of the people sympathized with them. 1 The violent policy pursued by magistrates and min isters soon failed because the force of a new and growing public opinion was arrayed against it. During the reign of Charles II. the course of the theocracy, in spite of its narrowness and ar rogance, commands our admiration for the bold ness with which it resisted all attempts of the British government to interfere with the local administration of the colony. There can be no doubt that the Massachusetts theocracy then made a splendid fight for the principles of po litical freedom, so far as they concerned the re lation between a colonial and imperial govern ment. At the same time, the theocracy at home was felt as more and more oppressive. By the time of the death of Charles II. it was reckoned that four fifths of the adult males in Massachu setts were disfranchised because of inability to participate in the Lord s Supper. It is not strange, therefore, that between the one fifth who ruled, and the four fifths who had no voice in ruling, there should have been marked differ ences of policy accompanied with a good deal of ill-feeling. 1 [On the Quakers in Massachusetts, cf. Fiske, The Be ginnings of New England, pp. 179 ff. ; Doyie, The English in America, The Puritan Colonies, ii. 126 ff. ; and R. P. Hallowell, The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts.^ 200 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND In view of such difficulties which began to be foreseen soon after 1650, an opinion grew up that all baptized persons of upright and deco rous lives ought to be considered, for practical purposes, as members of the church, and there fore entitled to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for participation in the Lord s Supper. This theory, according to which a person might be a halfway member of The Half ^ cnurcn > member enough for wayCov- political purposes, but not for reli gious, was known at the time as the "Halfway Covenant." 1 It formed the occasion for prolonged and bitter controversy, in which prominent clergymen took opposite sides. It was contended by some that its natural ten dency would be toward the spiritual demorali zation of the church, while others denied that such would be its practical effect, and pointed to the lamentable severance between ecclesias tics and laymen as a much greater evil. In the 1 [Cf. Dexter, Congregationalism as seen in its Litera ture , pp. 467 ff. ; Walker, History of Congregational Churches, pp. 170 ff. ; Trumbull, History of Connecticut, i. 296 ff. ; Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 487 ff.; Doyle, The English in America, The Puritan Colonies, ii. 96 ; Bancroft, History of the United States (author s last revision), i. 360 ; Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 117 and 164. Dr. Dexter, p. 476, gives two specimen "Halfway Covenants."] THE GREAT AWAKENING 201 First Church of Boston, the Halfway Covenant was decisively condemned, and the Rev. John Davenport, a theocrat of extreme type, was called from New Haven to be its pastor. Then the minority in the church, who approved of the Halfway Covenant, seceded in 1669 and formed themselves into a new society known The South as the South Church, further defined church in later days as the " Old South." The wooden meeting-house of this society, which occupied the spot of land upon which its brick successor still stands to-day, was a favourite place for meet ings which dealt with political questions, and in a certain sense its founding may be regarded as a kind of political safety valve for the agitation in Massachusetts. 1 In spite of such palliatives, however, the op position grew, and it was apt to take the form of political Toryism, or a disposition to uphold the British government in its contests with the theocracy. From this point of view, The Q og ._ we may regard Joseph Dudley and don to the his friends as the founders of New ^Tefoua- England Toryism. Boston was be- dationof & . c . , Toryism coming a place or some commercial note, sustaining business relations with various parts of the world. Among its residents were 1 [Mr. Fiske writes a little more fully of this movement in The Beginnings of New England , pp. 250 ff.] 202 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND members of the Church of England, who de sired a place of worship for themselves, and naturally felt indignant that nothing of the sort was allowed to be provided. Such was the state of affairs when the old charter was rescinded, and Sir Edmund Andros was sent by James II. to govern New England according to his own sweet will, without any constitutional checks or limitations. The rule of Andros produced for the moment something approaching to unanimity of opposition, for there were few men in Massachusetts ready to surrender the charter of their liberties, although there were many who would be glad to see it modified. After the well-planned and fortunate insurrection which expelled Andros, the repre sentatives of the theocracy, and in particular Increase Mather, made every effort to obtain from William III. a charter essentially similar to the old one. In this they were completely The new defeated. The new charter, with its Massachu- substitution of a royal governor for a setts governor elected by church members, dealt a serious blow at the independence of the Commonwealth. At the same time the wide extension of the suffrage, and its limitation only by a property qualification, was equivalent to the death-blow of the old theocracy. It was a revo lution, the severity of which for the clergy was but slightly disguised by the appointment of THE GREAT AWAKENING 203 Mather s candidate, Sir William Phips, to be the first royal governor. 1 Five years after the new charter had gone into operation, an event occurred which illus trated most strikingly the decline in the power of the clergy. Increase Mather had been for many years minister of the North Church in Boston, and in 1685 was appointed president of Harvard, but continued to live in Boston. Dur ing the Andros interval he was occupied in pro tecting the interests of the colony in London. Thus the management of affairs at Harvard was left chiefly in the hands of William Brattle and John Leverett, who both belonged to the extreme liberal wing of the clergy ; for the influ ences which were raising up a crop of freethink ers for the eighteenth century in England were not entirely without effect in the English colo nies. Under the influence of Brattle and Lev erett, grew up Benjamin Colman, who took his master s degree at Harvard in 1695, anc ^ tnen went to England, where he was settled over a congregation at Bath. The group of liberals in Boston was steadily increasing in number, and one of their leaders was Thomas Brattle, trea surer of Harvard, a wealthy merchant whose leisure hours were more or less devoted to astronomy and physics. He was the author of several papers on lunar eclipses and of an able i [On the new charter, see Palfrey, iv. 76.] 204 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND criticism of the witchcraft delusion. In 1698 Thomas Brattle conveyed to a body of trustees The Brattle the land upon which a new meeting- fbunded house was to be built, and in the fol- 1698 lowing year an invitation was sent to Benjamin Colman to become the pastor of the new Brattle Church. Upon Colman s arrival in Boston, his church issued a manifesto in which two startling novelties were announced. It had been the custom to require from all candidates for admission to the Lord s Supper not only a general subscription to the Westminster creed, but also a relation of personal experiences, which in order to insure their admission must be satisfactory to the presiding clergy. The new church announced that it would dispense with such personal experiences, requiring merely a Relaxation formal subscription to the Westmin- ofTmST ster creed. It had also been customary shi p to confine the choice of a minister to the male communicants alone ; the new church proposed to allow all members of the congre gation who contributed money toward the sup port of the church to have votes in the election of ministers. It is hardly necessary to point out the far-reaching character of these provisions in allowing a wholesome opportunity for variations in individual opinion to creep into the church. A body of ministers elected only by communi cants, and able to exclude all communicants save THE GREAT AWAKENING 205 such as could satisfy them in a relation of per sonal experiences, was naturally able to exert a very powerful influence in repressing individual divergences. The Mathers were quite right in thinking that the Brattles and their friends aimed a blow at the vitals of the church. On the 5th of January, |^, Cotton Mather writes in his diary: " I see Satan beginning a terrible shake in the churches of New England, and the innovators that have set up a new church in Boston (a new one, indeed !) have Cotton made a day of temptation among us. Mather s *-r-i i alarm The men are ignorant, arrogant, ob stinate, and full of malice and slander, and they fill the land with lies. . . . Wherefore I set apart this day again for prayer in my study, to cry mightily unto God." : It was indeed probable that should the new Brattle Church succeed in obtaining recognition as a Congregational church in good standing, it would create a precedent for latitudinarianism which might be pushed to almost any extent, and yet there was no available method of pre venting it. Under the old theocracy, that clause of the Cambridge Platform would have been suf ficient which enjoined it upon the magistrates to suppress heresy. Had the old state of things continued in 1699, there can be little doubt that Leverett, Colman, and the two Brattles 1 [See Quincy s Hist, of Harvard University, i. 48 7. J 206 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND would either have been expelled from the Commonwealth or heavily fined, as had been The theo- the case with William Vassall, Robert undTrS 1 88 Child > and their companions. But the new charter Cambridge Platform had fallen with the fall of the old charter; and although Increase Mather had endeavoured to obtain a provision substantially replacing it, King William, who was no friend to theocracies, would not hear of such a thing. The Mathers were therefore reduced to the expedient of declining to exchange pulpits with the new pastor ; this refusal of ecclesiasti cal courtesies was all that was left for The new church finally them, and from the theocratic point of view one cannot wonder if they thought that in some essential respects the world was coming to an end. In the course of the following year a kind of peace was patched up between the party of the Brattles and that of the Mathers, and blessings were interchanged ; but as we look back upon the affair we can see that the theocracy had received a fatal blow. The increasing power of the liberals was dis played about the same time in what went on at Harvard College. The charter of 1650, by which the Company of Massachusetts Bay had incorporated that institution, was generally re garded as having lost its validity when the char ter of the company was repealed ; and although things went on about as usual at the college, it THE GREAT AWAKENING 207 was felt that things stood upon a precarious foot ing. But to obtain a new charter which would be satisfactory to the theocrats was no The effort to easy matter, for any such charter must fhlrte^for either exclude or allow the exclusion Harvard from the teaching body of all persons not in communion with the Congregational church, and King William would never consent to the exclusion of Episcopalians. It will be remem bered that one of the chief sources of conten tion between Charles II. and the government of Boston had been the repressive policy pursued by the latter toward members of the Church of England. King William felt, both as an advo cate of liberalism and as the representative of imperial authority, that no concessions could be allowed to the theocracy on this point. In 1699 the party of the Mathers introduced a bill into the General Court, providing for a reli gious test in Harvard College, the substance of which was, " that in the charter for the col lege, our holy religion may be secured to us and unto our posterity, by a provision that no person shall be chosen president or fellow of the college, but such as declare their adherence unto the principles of reformation which were es poused and intended by those who first settled the country . . . and have hitherto been the general professions of New England." This bill passed both houses, but, fortunately, was 208 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND vetoed by the royal governor, Lord Bellomont. Meanwhile, the discontent in Cambridge aris- Govemor * n g ^ rom President Mather s non-re- Beiiomont sidence had been increasing. That vetoes a test i i* r i act for coi- worthy divine seems to have felt lege officers more attachment to his church in Bos ton than toward the college. 1 After a while the Rev. Samuel Willard of the Old South was ap pointed vice-president of the college, but he, too, seems to have preferred the duties of pastor to those of administering a college, and his ab senteeism attracted comment as well as Mather s. I think, however, that the true explanation of Mather s difficulty with the college lies deeper. Rise of liber- There can be no doubt that between aiismin the 1685 and i joo the intellectual atmos phere of the college was rapidly be coming more and more liberal. Leverett and the Brattles were the ruling spirits, and the events of each passing year made Mather more and more uncongenial to them ; whereas, Wil lard was both in character and in turn of thought more to their mind. It is not strange, there fore, that we find Mather s non-residence com plained of, while the same fault in Willard is but lightly noticed. After a while Mather sig nified that if the General Court were not satis fied with his conduct, it might perhaps be well for them to choose another president. To his 1 [Se wall s Diary, i. 493.] THE GREAT AWAKENING 209 intense chagrin, he was taken at his word, and in September, 1701, the dignity and President duties of the president were trans- Mat-iST ferred to Willard, who, however, re- displaced tained the title of vice-president, thus somewhat softening the blow. A couple of entries in Judge Sewall s diary are rather amusing in this connec tion. Sewall was a member of the court which had just wrought this change in the presidency. The first entry is : " Mr. Cotton Mather came to Mr. Wilkins s shop, and there talked very sharply against me as if I had used his father worse than a neger ; spake so loud that people in the street might hear him. ... I had read in the morning Mr. Dod s saying: Sanctified afflictions are good promotions. I found it now a cordial. * Then follows a memorandum : " Oct r 9. I sent Mr. Increase Mather a hanch of very good venison ; I hope in that I did not treat him as a negro." l As for Cotton Mather, he hoped to be chosen president of Cotton Harvard when Willard should die or Mather s resign, but he did not read correctly the signs of the times, nor did he play his part with skill ; for he chose the part of sulking, and went so long without attending the meetings of the corporation, of which he was a member, that people spoke of his having abdicated his office. 2 1 [Sewall s Diary, ii. 43, October 20, 1701.] 8 [See Quincy s Hist, of Harvard University, i. 151.] 210 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND In 1702 Joseph Dudley, who had been in Eng land ever since the Andros days and had just been appointed to succeed Lord Bellomont as governor of Massachusetts, arrived in Boston. Governor The enmity between Dudley and the Dudley Mathers was of long standing, and may be said to have had its origin in the very roots of things. Between the representatives of the old theocracy and the subtle founder of Toryism there could be no love lost at any time ; on the other hand, by that very law of selection which was apt to bring together revolters against the theocracy, whether for religious or political reasons, a strong alliance grew up between Dud ley and Leverett. When Willard died, in Sep tember, 1707, the corporation at once chose Leverett as his successor. At his instigation a resolution was introduced into the General Court declaring that the charter of The new P charter for 1650 was still in force ; or rather, en- s"b7andaire- acting a charter which in its essential enactment of provisions was identical with the old that of 1 650 _,. , . one. 1 his charter was at once signed by Governor Dudley. The English Privy Coun cil might still have overturned it, but they never did, so after the vicissitudes of the great revolution through which Massachusetts had passed, Harvard College started quietly upon a new chapter in her career, with her hands tied THE GREAT AWAKENING 211 as little as possible by hampering statutes or traditions. While these things were going on in Massa chusetts, affairs were taking a somewhat dif ferent turn in Connecticut. The confederacy of river towns which gave birth to the state of Connecticut had represented a more liberal principle than that upon which Massachusetts was founded. The wholesale migration which carried the people of Dorchester, Cambridge, and Watertown to the Connecticut River was a migration of people for whom Massachusetts was too theocratic. In Connecticut there was no restriction of civil rights to church members ; the relative power of the representa- conditions in tives as compared with the Council Connectlcut of Assistants was much greater, and the local independence of the several towns was more complete. Connecticut was originally more de mocratic and more liberal in complexion than Massachusetts. On the other hand, the federal republic of New Haven closely resembled the common wealth of Massachusetts, but was even more theocratic and aristocratic. 1 But the union of 1 [After the Restoration the people of Connecticut through their governor, the younger Winthrop, secured from the king a charter which included New Haven in the boundaries al lotted to Connecticut, and in spite of the reluctance of the people of New Haven the absorption of their republic was 212 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND New Haven with Connecticut did not by a mix ture of plus and minus make a commonwealth New Haven <jm te l^e Massachusetts. The most annexed to theocratic elements in New Haven either migrated in large bodies to New Jersey, or came as individuals one by one back to Massachusetts. Of those who remained on the shores of Long Island Sound, the greater part were those who had protested against the New Haven theocracy with its exclusiveness. On the whole, the Connecticut of 1670 to 1690 seems to have been a more liberal-minded com munity than Massachusetts. But if we come forward into the nineteenth century, it can hardly be denied that while both states have maintained a high intellectual level, Massachusetts has been the more liberal-minded community. Or, if a different phrase be pre- ferred, Massachusetts has been some- what more prompt in adopting new Connecticut ideas or in following out new vistas of thought, especially in all matters where theo logy is concerned. Or, to put the case in yet another way, Massachusetts has shown less hesi tation in departing from ancient standards. The history of Unitarianism is of itself a sufficient illustration of this. To some minds the rise of Unitarianism seems like a great step in advance ; consummated in 1665. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, ii. 154-162.] THE GREAT AWAKENING 213 to other minds it seems like a deplorable for saking of the highroad for byways that lead to Doubting Castle ; but all will agree that the great development of Unitarianism in Massa chusetts, as compared with its small develop ment in Connecticut, shows in the former state less hesitation in deviating from old standards. Something of the same contrast in regard to deviation is shown in the history of Yale Col lege as contrasted with Harvard ; no Cauges of one will deny that the temper of the Connecticut r | conservatism former has been more conservative. It becomes interesting, then, to inquire what has produced this change. In what respects have circumstances operated to render the career of Connecticut more conservative than that of the sister commonwealth ? Such questions are always difficult to answer with confidence, but certain facts may be pointed out which have a bearing upon the question. It is a general tendency of organizations to grow more rigid through increase of rules and definitions, and to interfere more and more with the free play of individu- dency in or- ality ; so that often in the pursuit of $ a given end, the organization will so and me - - & . i r chanical far hamper itself as to decrease its fitness for attaining the ends desired ; in other words, the ends become a matter of secondary importance, while the machinery of the organi- 214 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND zation absorbs the entire attention. Especially has this been true in the case of ecclesiastical organizations. The members of a priesthood are apt to acquire an exaggerated idea of the im portance of the body to which they belong and which is invested by public opinion with a pecu liar sanctity, and they are apt to feel justified in making laws and regulations tending to coerce all their members into conformity with some prescribed set of rules. In Massachusetts an The instance early and baneful source of rigidity bridge PiT was the Cambridge Platform of 1648, form, 1648 which enjoined it upon magistrates to punish any infractions of ecclesiastical doctrine or observance. Among the fruits of this Cam bridge Platform were the odious proceedings against Baptists and Quakers, which have left such a stain upon the annals of Boston. But it is worthy of note that owing to the very re strictions which confined the civil liberties of Massachusetts to communing church members, a large body of citizens grew up in opposition, so that the Commonwealth was never deprived of the healthful stimulus of competition and struggle between opposing views in interest. To such a point had this conflict come that when, in 1699, an attempt was made to fasten a religious test upon Harvard, it fell to the ground, and that critical period of the history of the Commonwealth saw Harvard falling more THE GREAT AWAKENING 215 and more completely under the guidance of the party opposed to the old theocracy. Lack of a On the other hand, Connecticut pur- P art y f p- t position in sued the even tenor of her way from Connecticut the first beginnings into the nineteenth century with comparatively little severe internal commo tion. She had for a moment, of course, resented the arrogance of Andros, but her constitution was never wrenched out of shape by such violent changes as those which Massachusetts witnessed after 1685. I think we must attribute it to this very fact of the slightness and gentleness of the opposition, to the comparative mildness of ec clesiastical life in Connecticut, that at the be ginning of the eighteenth century her clergymen and people should have yielded so easily to the natural impulse to improve, or, rather, to define and limit their ecclesiastical organizations. By that time it bad come to seem to many worthy people that the work of the church might be greatly facilitated if its organization were made a little more thorough in its working. The result was the synod held at the town of Say- brook in May, 1708, which adopted the famous constitution known as the Saybrook Platform. This constitution provided that "the par ticular pastors and churches, within the respec tive counties in this government/ 1 should " be one consociation, or more if they should judge meet, for mutual affording to each other such 216 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND assistance as may be requisite, upon all occa sions ecclesiastical." Hitherto ecclesiastical au- The thority had been exercised by councils Saybrook formed by voluntary election by indi viduals or by single churches. Such authority was henceforth to be vested in per manent councils appointed by the consociation of churches. Disobedience to the decree of one of these permanent councils was punished by excommunication of the too independent pastor or church. The council of one consociation might invite councils from one or more neigh bouring consociations to take part in its proceed ings, and it was further provided that a general association consisting of representatives from all the churches in the commonwealth should be held every year at the time of the election of governor and legislature. This platform was adopted by the General Court of Connecticut, with the proviso that a church which conducted itself discreetly and soberly might be allowed to carry on worship and exercise discipline according to its own con science, even though it should not be able to enter into the consociation of churches. This was a prudent and liberal provision, and was intended to prevent injustice and persecution. The general effect of the platform was to assim ilate Congregationalism in Connecticut to Pres- byterianism, and there can be little doubt that THE GREAT AWAKENING 217 this was an important change in the direction of conservatism. Manifestly, the power of any ecclesiastical organization in checking The piat- individual variations depends upon formtends . 1-11 i i to asslmllat e the coercive power which the whole can bring to bear upon any one of its parts. Manifestly, the conservative power of a Mussulman caliph, being absolutely unchecked, was greater than that of the medi aeval Pope, who might be limited by a council or thwarted by an emperor. Still less coercive power could be exercised by a sovereign head of a church, like Elizabeth or Charles II. Still less could be exercised by a Presbyterian synod, and from this again down to an independent congre gation the step in diminution of coercive power was a long one. It is therefore interesting and significant that just at the moment when Mas sachusetts by the founding of Brattle Church took a long step in the direction Massachu- of further independency, Connecticut Connecticut should have taken a decided conser- change places vative step in the direction of Presbyterianism. The effect exerted by the mere possession of coercive power does not always need to be ex hibited by overt actions ; it is a subtle effect consisting largely in the colouring which it gives to that indefinable thing known as public opin ion, but I suspect that in the circumstances here narrated we have at least a partial explanation 218 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of the fact that a century later, when so many churches in Massachusetts adopted Unitarian theology while still remaining Congregational churches, on the other hand, in Connecticut a step so extreme was very difficult to take, and that while there were churches in which dissent from time-honoured doctrines was rife, never theless it was seldom that Unitarian doctrines were avowed. One effect of the Saybrook Platform was to make it easy in later times for the Congrega tional churches in Connecticut to fraternize with the Presbyterian churches. To such an extent has this fraternization been carried in modern times, that persons in Connecticut and states to the west of it are very apt to use the word " Presbyterian " in a loose sense when they really mean "Congregational," a use of lan guage which would have made the hair of one of Cromwell s Ironsides stand on end with horror. The beginning of the eighteenth century in Connecticut was also memorable for the found- ing of Yale College. The journey from ing of Yale the Connecticut towns to Cambridge was much longer than it is now, and it was felt that there ought to be a college nearer home. The movement was begun by a meeting at Branford of ten ministers, nine of whom were graduates of Harvard. These gentlemen con- THE GREAT AWAKENING 219 tributed from their libraries about forty gigantic folios for the founding of a college library. Other gifts began to come in, and an act of in corporation in 1701 created a body of trustees, all of whom were to be clergymen and not less than forty years of age. The college was at first situated in Saybrook, though in the first years the classes were taught at Killingworth, where the first rector of the college, Abraham Pierson, was pastor. At length the college was settled in New Haven in 1716, and two years later it re ceived the name of Yale College in recognition of a donation from Elihu Yale, a merchant of London, whose father had been one of the ori ginal settlers of New Haven. Now this found ing of Yale College exerted a conservative effect upon the mind of Connecticut. While , Theconser- on the one hand it brought a classical vative ten- education within the reach of many persons -who would not have gone reinforced by , . , & , the college to Cambridge to get it, on the other hand it tended to cut off the clergy of Con necticut from the liberalizing influences which were so plainly beginning to be powerful at Harvard. From the outset something like a segregation began. Many persons in Massachu setts who were disinclined to the liberalism of Leverett and the Brattles transferred their affec tions to Yale College, making gifts to it and sending their sons there, and in this way the 220 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND conservatism of the university that was con trolled entirely by ministers holding under the Saybrook Platform was increased. When to all these circumstances we add that the royal gov ernor in Boston, although an abiding cause of irritation, nevertheless kept bringing in ideas and fashions from Europe, we can see how the stormier life of Massachusetts Bay was more favourable to change than the delicious quiet of the land of steady habits. The general state of the church in New Eng land in the first decades of the eighteenth cen tury was one which may be best characterized by saying that spirituality was at a low ebb. Pretty much the same might be said of the church in England, and if we were to extend the state of reii- observation to France, we should have gion early to make it still more emphatic. The in the r i r i eighteenth causes or this state or things were century complicated. Among other things, the scientific reaction against supernaturalism, which was so rapidly destroying the belief in witchcraft, was leading the great mass of superfi cial thinkers in the direction of materialism. In France the church had discredited itself through an alliance with despotism, until nearly all the best minds had turned against it. In England the epoch of intense mental exaltation which characterized the seventeenth century had pro voked a reaction in which worldly-mindedness THE GREAT AWAKENING 221 prevailed and sanctity was derided. There can be little doubt, I think, that the political uses to which religion had been put during the terrible struggle of the counter-reformation had done much to loosen its spiritual hold upon men s minds. Something may be said, too, of the rapidly expanding effects of com- R . ge of merce. Men s interests were multi- commercial plying so that something must suffer for a time, and religion, for the causes already mentioned, was the weak spot in the social fabric. But whatever the explanation may be, the fact is generally accepted that the early years of the eighteenth century were a period of coldness in religious matters. This coldness was quite generally perceived and lamented by clergymen and laymen throughout New England, and speculations were rife as to the probable cause and the best cure. It is not unlikely that among other things the Halfway Covenant may have exerted a baneful influence. If there could be anything serious and solemn in life it would seem to be the ascertainment of the state of mind which would qualify a person for partici pation in the Lord s Supper, yet the Halfway Covenant practically admitted to this sacrament all persons of decorous lives who had been baptized in infancy. One effect of this was to endow infant baptism with the character of a 222 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND magical ceremony and to make of the commun ion a mere lifeless form. At first, indeed, the supporters of the Halfway Covenant simply allowed baptized members of the congregation stoddard- to vote and hold office, without allow ing them to participate in the com munion until they could make some statement of their internal experience which proved them qualified for such participation ; but a crisis seemed to be reached when the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton admitted people to communion without any other credentials than proof of baptism in infancy. 1 This work was to be undone and this whole state of things put an end to by the writings and the preaching of Solomon Stoddard s grand son, a man who was one of the wonders of the world, probably the greatest intelligence that Jonathan tne western hemisphere has yet seen. Edwards Jonathan Edwards was born at East Windsor, Conn., in 1703, inheriting extraordi nary abilities both from his father, Rev. Timo thy Edwards, and from his mother, Esther Stoddard. From early childhood Edwards was a personage manifestly set apart for some high calling. His " Notes on Nature," written at the 1 [On this outgrowth of the Halfway Covenant, see Walker, Hist, of the Congregational Churches in the U. ., pp. 180-182. Stoddard advocated this practice as early as 1679. 1* was adopted in his church in 1706.] THE GREAT AWAKENING 223 age of sixteen, show a precocity as remarkable as that of Pascal ; his Treatise on the Will and other works of his maturity show a metaphy sical power comparable with that of Kant or Berkeley ; while in many of his speculations his mind moves through the loftiest regions of thought with a sustained strength of flight that comes near reminding one of the mighty Spi noza. There can be no doubt that the more one considers Edwards, the more colossal and astonishing he seems. Among writers of Chris tian theology his place is by the side of Augus tine, Aquinas, and Calvin. At the same time, there was more in Edwards than sheer power of intellect. His character was as great as his genius. The highest attributes of manliness were united in him. He was a man of deep affection, abounding in sympathy, so that with out resorting to the ordinary devices of rhetoric he became a preacher of the first order. Now in the mind of Jonathan Edwards there Edwards , s was a vein of mysticism as unmistak- vein of able as that in the mind of William mysti< Penn. Such mysticism may be found in minds of medium capacity, but in minds of the highest type I believe it is rarely absent. A mind which has plunged deeply into the secrets of nature without exhibiting such a vein of mysticism is, I believe, a mind sterilized and cut off in one direction from access to the truth. Along with 224 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Edwards s abstruse reasoning there was a spirit ual consciousness as deep as that of Spinoza or Novalis. From his mystic point of view, the change whereby a worldly, unregenerate man or woman became fitted for divine life was a conversion of the soul, an alteration of its inner most purposes, a change of heart from evil to goodness. Perhaps this way of conceiving the His emphasis case was noMiew with Edwards. From on conversion tne ear K es t ages of Christianity a turn ing of the soul from the things of this world to Christ has been the essential, but the importance of what has since come to be known as conver sion, or change of heart, assumed dimensions never known before. As Calvinism enhanced the value of the individual soul by representing it as the subject of a mighty struggle between the powers of heaven and those of hell, so Edwards, while setting forth this notion in all its grimness, gave it a touch of infinite tragedy and pathos through the power with which he conceived the situation of the soul whose salva tion trembled in the balance. The distinction between the converted and the unconverted be came in his hands more vitally important than the older distinction between the elect and the non-elect. There was great difficulty in work ing the two distinctions together, and a large portion of the eighteenth century was consumed by New England theologians in grappling with THE GREAT AWAKENING 225 this difficulty. It was due to Edwards that the prime question with every anxious mind was not so much, Am I one of the elect ? as this other question, Have I surrendered my heart to Christ? It is obvious that this new point of view in itself, and even more in the mood in which it was set forth, soon worked a vivify ing change in the religious consciousness of New England. The effect was presently shown in those so-called revivals which are . j r i Revivals in the strict sense a product or the New England mind. Phenomena of religious excitement, sometimes reaching epidemic pro portions, are of course to be found among heathen savages, but religious emotion of an intense sort, coupled with a high general level of education, such as we see it in modern re vivals, is something that had its beginnings in New England. The essential features of a re vival are the aroused consciousness of sin, over whelming fears associated therewith, and a con dition of doubt as to whether one has really satisfied the conditions of salvation. One can see that when such a state of things has been generally reached in a community, there is no longer any room for such mechanical devices as the Halfway Covenant. Before such a state of things can be reached, the ecclesiastical atmos phere must be spiritualized. To this end the whole tenor of Edwards s preaching contributed, 226 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND for he insisted, with as much emphasis as Wil liam Perm, upon the insignificance of the form as compared with the spirit. Sometimes the religious revival seemed a mere survival of barbaric superstition, as when the earthquake of 1727 brought people in The Revival crowds into the Boston churches. But of 1734 in 1734 there began at Northampton, where Edwards, who had succeeded his grand father, had been preaching for eight years, a revival of a much higher kind. This wave of religious excitement spread through the whole Connecticut valley and lasted for six months. It attracted some notice in England, and presently George Whitefield accepted an invitation from Dr. Benjamin Colman to come to New Eng land and preach. Whitefield was twenty-six George years of age, and had just been or- Zteftf dained as a minister of the Church of New England England. He was a man of medi ocre intelligence, without distinction either as a scholar or as a thinker, but his gifts as an ora tor were very extraordinary. In 1740 White- field preached in various parts of New England, sometimes in churches, sometimes in the open air, to audiences which on occasion reached 15,000 in number. He made a pilgrimage to Northampton in order to visit the preacher of the late revival there, and thought he had never seen such a man as Edwards, while, on the other THE GREAT AWAKENING 227 hand, under the influence of Whitefield s musi cal voice, Edwards sat weeping during the en tire sermon. The example set by Whitefield was followed after his departure by a Presbyterian minister from New Jersey named Gilbert Ten- Gilbert nent. This preacher came to Boston Tennent and spent some three months in the neighbour hood, preaching to enormous audiences with most startling effect. Tennent was followed by James Davenport of Southold, Long Island, a great-grandson of the famous Davenport of the old New Haven colony. This James Daven port was highly esteemed by Whitefield and other revivalist preachers, but his ill-balanced enthusiasm led him to very strange lengths. On one occasion he is said to have preached a sermon nearly twenty-four hours in length, with such violence of intonation and gesture that he brought on a brain fever. He was consti tutionally intemperate in speech, eccentric in action, and inspired by that peculiar self-conceit which is one of the marks of mental derange ment. If he came to a town where j am es little excitement was manifested on Davenport the subject of religion he would revile the min isters of the town, accusing them of being un converted, blind leaders of the blind, and he warned the people that by listening to such preaching they were imperilling their souls. At 228 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Boston he grew so abusive that the ministers held a conference and decided that they would not allow him the use of their pulpits. Nothing daunted, however, this Boanerges hurled forth his thunderbolts on such places as Copp s Hill and Boston Common, where he spoke his mind with great freedom to thousands of listeners. For example, in one of his prayers, he said, " Good Lord, I will not mince the matter any longer with Thee, for Thou knowest that I know that most of the ministers of Boston and of the country are unconverted, and are leading their people blindfold to hell." For these words Davenport was indicted for slander, but was acquitted on the ground of insanity. A situation had now arisen in some respects not unlike that when Mrs. Hutchinson and her Antinomian friends had been preaching in Boston a century earlier. One of the Comparison * with the chief objections to the Antinomians was that they professed to have their minds illumined by a divine light which en abled them to see truths hidden from the gen erality of Christians, and in this belief they confidently assailed even the highest of the clergy as creatures acting under a covenant of works. It was now held by many clergymen that the conduct of Tennent and Davenport and other followers of Whitefield resembled that of the Antinomians, and tended to intro- THE GREAT AWAKENING 229 duce dissensions into the churches. There can be no doubt that such was its immediate effect. Emotional extravagances on the part of revi valists were so marked as to lead many persons to question whether, in view of this and of the intemperate criticism that had been indulged in, the revival had not really been productive of more harm than good. Such questions were agitated until in almost every church there came to be a party who approved of the revival and a party which condemned it. Under these cir cumstances it is not strange that the power of the revival should have declined, or that we should find the Rev. Thomas Prince writing in 1744 that "The Sovereign Spirit, in His awakening influence, has seemed these two last years in a gradual and awful manner to with draw. For a twelvemonth I have rarely heard the cry of any new ones, What shall I do to be saved ? But few are now added to our churches and the heavenly shower in Boston seems to be over." About the time that Prince expressed himself so despondingly Whitefield whitefield s returned to New England, but he was return to not so much a novelty as before and New England made less sensation. The Brattle Church showed its liberality by inviting him, an Episcopal priest, to administer its Communion. On the other hand, President Holyoke and the Faculty of Harvard passed a resolution condemning his 230 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND itinerant methods, and the clergymen of Cam bridge refused to allow him in their pulpits ; so that his preaching was done to a large audience on Cambridge Common. In Massachusetts the opposition to the revi valists showed itself only in such protests by professors and clergymen, but in Connecticut the matter went further. Whitefield, Tennent, and Davenport travelled about in that com monwealth, making converts by hundreds, and Davenport, at least, made no scruple of attack ing the settled ministers. These proceedings called forth interference from the government. Davenport At Stratford Davenport was arrested JubUc ed f r f r disturbing the peace by gathering disturbance great crowds of people, filling their heads with pernicious doctrines, and inciting them to a noisy and disorderly demeanour. During their examination a mob of their con verts undertook to rescue them from the sher iff s custody, and in order to quiet the disturb ance it proved necessary to call out the militia. For revivalist practices similar to Davenport s the Rev. Benjamin Pomeroy was turned out of office and deprived of his salary. It thus appears that one result of the Great Awakening was to stir up dissension in the churches between the more aristocratic ministry of the old type and the more democratic preach ers like Whitefield and his friends. Our ac- THE GREAT AWAKENING 231 count would be far from complete if we were to omit the conclusion of the story at Northamp ton, the home of Jonathan Edwards, from whose preaching this Great Awakening had Last days of emanated. We have seen that the Edwards Edwards doctrine of conversion was flatly op posed to the Halfway Covenant to which Ed- wards s grandfather in Northampton had given its most extreme form. In 1749, after Edwards had been settled twenty-two years over that par ish and regarded with extreme reverence by his parishioners, he suddenly lost favour with them by insisting upon more rigorous requirements in admitting communicants to the church. This gave rise to a quarrel of such bitterness that Edwards s parish not only dismissed him, but obtained a vote in town meeting to the effect that he should not be allowed any more to enter a pulpit in that town. The result was the removal of Edwards to Berkshire for mis sionary work among the Stockbridge Indians, and thence after six years to the presidency of Princeton College. He died in Princeton at the early age of fifty-five. One result of the breaking down of the Half way Covenant was to discredit infant baptism, so that the majority of the revivalists of the more democratic type went over to the Baptist church and greatly swelled its numbers in New Eng land. With regard to the general effect of the 232 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Awakening, in spite of the extravagances with which it was here and there attended, it cer tainly did much to heighten and deepen the religious life in New England. As compared with the old days of the Halfway Covenant, the new doctrine of conversion was like an uplift ing of the soul to better things. The religious thought of the seventeenth century was in dan ger of losing its life among dry logical formulas. It needed to be touched with emotion, and that Results of the was what the Great Awakening ac- Awakening complished. It may be said to have exerted a stimulating influence similar to that which attended the preaching of the Wesleys in England, and it should not be forgotten that John Wesley in the early part of his career received a powerful stimulus from news which reached him from New England. If we were able thoroughly to sift all relevant facts I think we should conclude that in producing the ten derness of soul in which the nineteenth cen tury so far surpassed the eighteenth, a consider able share must be assigned to the preaching and self-searchings, the prayers and tears, the jubilation and praise, of the Great Awakening. VII NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG WHEN Mr. Seward, about forty years ago, spoke of the "irrepressible con flict " between slavery and freedom, it was generally felt that he had invented a happy and telling phrase. It was a conflict equally irrepressible that was carried on for sev enty years between France and England for the possession of North America. It was The <<irre the strife between absolutism and possible individualism, between paternal gov- ernment carried to the last extreme, and . . . r r in America and the spontaneous life of commu nities that governed themselves in town meet ing. Alike in Europe and in America each party was aggressive and uncompromising. Particularly in America the proximity of the Indians made it next to impossible to avoid bloodshed even when the governments of France and England were nominally at peace with one another. There is no better illustra tion of this than is afforded by the story of Norridgewock. The treaty of Utrecht, by which the long war 234 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of the Spanish succession was brought to an end in 1713, transferred the province of Acadia from France to England. After many changes of ownership backward and forward it was de- Acadia finally cided that Acadia was finally to be- passes to come English. But what was Acadia? England A .. 1-11 As customarily applied, the name in cluded Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and a part of Maine ; and the English maintained that all this territory was ceded to them by the treaty ; but the French, on the other hand, maintained that they had only given away Nova Scotia, and woe to the Englishman who should dare to meddle with the rest ! It was intended that this question should be settled by a special commis sion, but the question was such a ticklish one that neither country was in haste to appoint a commission, and so things remained until the matter was settled forever by the mighty Seven Years* War. According to the French view, the boundary between their territory and that of New Eng land was the river Kennebec. This line they felt it important to defend for two reasons. The French First, the New England settlements Hmksof he were ra pidly extending northeast- Acadia wardly along the coast ; secondly, the sources of the Kennebec were connected by an intricate network of streams, marshes, and lake lets, with those of the Chaudiere, which falls NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISRURG 235 into the St. Lawrence just opposite Quebec. It was an excessively difficult route by which to invade Canada, as Benedict Arnold found half a century later. Nevertheless, it was a possible route which the French felt it necessary to bar. In this they proceeded according to their usual manner by establishing a hold upon their Al gonquin friends along the Kennebec River. These Algonquins were commonly known as Abenakis, or Eastern Men. Their grade of culture was quite similar to that of the tribes in Massachusetts and considerably more advanced than that of the Micmacs of Nova Scotia. They were divided into numerous tribes and sub- tribes, the names of which, such as Kennebec, Penobscot, etc., have in many cases remained as local names upon the map, while the most important of these Abenaki tribes was The Abenaki that of the Norridgewocks, inasmuch trlbes as their position guarded the approaches to the upper waters of the Kennebec, The stockaded Norridgewock village was situated close by the river, about seventy-five miles from its mouth, and a journey to it from Portsmouth or Boston seemed like plunging into the innermost depths of the wilderness. These Indians were no longer heathen, for they had all been converted and bap tized by the devoted efforts of Father Sebas tian Rale. This interesting man was a native of that part of Burgundy known as Franche- 236 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Comte, and when thirty-two years of age came over to Canada with Frontenac in 1689. After a more or less migratory service extending as Sebastian far west as the Illinois River, Father Rale took charge of the Norridge- wock Indians in 1693, anc ^ remained with them until his death. His attainments in American languages were very considerable, for he pos sessed a fluent knowledge of at least three dia lects of Algonquin, besides the Huron dialect of Iroquois, and his knowledge of the Indian character was as thorough as his proficiency in their tongue. The Norridgewock village was a square enclosure 160 feet on each side, walled in with a palisade of stout logs about nine or ten feet in height. In the middle of each side was a gate, and the two streets connecting the gates crossed each other in an open square at the centre. Within the enclosure were twenty- six wigwams, and outside of it at a distance of a few yards stood the chapel. Altogether it was a much ruder village than the Iroquois Hoche- laga which Cartier had visited nearly two centu ries before, and very much ruder than the Onondaga village attacked by Champlain in 1615. Besides being the spiritual father of this The Nor- Httle community, Father Rale was ridgewock o f necessity a jack-of-all-trades. He village 1 1 r i must be a bit or a carpenter, and more or less of a gardener, with a pennyweight MAP OF NORTf iRICA, 1698-1699 NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 237 of medicine to an intolerable deal of theology, and unlimited devotion to the spiritual needs of his flock. To these duties he added those of linguist and diplomat ; for his leisure hours were whiled away in making a vocabulary of the Abenaki tongue, while his own talent of speech was put to diligent use in instructing all the tribes of that region how to comport them selves in the presence of the much hated Eng lish. At the time of the peace of Utrecht, the country between the Piscataqua and the Kenne- bec had been the scene of atrocious warfare for nearly forty years. First there was King Philip s War in which the French had no part, and then there were the two great wars between France and England from 1689 to 1697, an d from 1702 to 1713. The result was that this border coun try had almost relapsed into a desert. The muntry But after 171^, a new wave of set- between the , Piscataqua tlement advanced northeasterly, old and the villages were rebuilt and new ones Kennebec founded, and in all directions might be seen clearings in the forest, where the smoke curled up from the log cabins of English pioneers, Now this advance of the white frontier incensed and alarmed the Indians, as it was natural that it should. They maintained that the English were encroaching upon their lands. The Eng lish retorted that these lands were their own, in- 238 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND asmuch as they had formerly been bought from Indian sachems, and prices had been paid for them which the Indians had deemed liberal and satisfactory. But the red man s notions of own ership and transfer of real estate were in a hope lessly different stage of evolution from those of the white man. To an Indian, the selling of a The Indian territory meant little more than grant- view of sell- ing permission to catch fish and game ing land & r . i i upon it, or to pass through it unhin dered for whatever purpose. The Indian had not arrived at the point where the sale of an estate conveys to the vendee the right to ex clude the vendor ; but his mind was open to a suggestion of Father Rale, that no sale of land by a sachem could be other than void because the land was the property of the clan, and must be kept in trust for the children born to the clan. This was exactly in accordance with In dian ways of thinking, and it is not strange that Father Rale s doctrine suited the red men s temper better than the English notion that after once buying the land they had a right to fence the Indian out. As the English farmhouses came nearer and an occasional blockhouse was erected, the disgust of the Abenakis increased beyond all bounds, but they entertained a wholesome dread of attacking the English with out assistance from the French, and this was difficult to obtain in time of peace. NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 239 While the French, however, prudently re frained from gross violations of international law, they were nevertheless quite willing to incite the Indians to attack the Eng- The Indians lish. Vaudreuil, the governor of and the Canada, expressly declared that it was convenient to maintain a secret alliance with the Indians, since the latter might inflict much damage upon the English, while the French could disclaim all responsibility for their acts. In 1717, when Colonel Shute was royal gov ernor of Massachusetts, a conference was held on Arrowsick Island at the mouth conference of the Kennebec River. There the be ^ w e e r e n n or Indians showed themselves so eager shuteandthe for peace that even the insults of Gov- Indians ernor Shute, who was an arrogant person utterly destitute of tact, failed to produce an outbreak. A Puritan minister from Medfield by the name of Joseph Baxter was left among the Indians to counteract by his preaching the influence of Father Rale ; and the twain indulged Baxter and in a Latin correspondence, in which Rale the writers not only attacked each other s poli tics and theology, but made game of each other s Latin style, a kind of fierce banter in which the Puritan came off second best. This con test over the Kennebec River was typical of the whole struggle between the French and the 240 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND English. On the one hand, there was the steadily advancing front of the self-governing and greatly thriving agricultural community ; on the other hand, there was the little group of French noblemen and priests governing a mere handful of settlers, and striving to keep back the advancing English by means of diplo matic control over barbarous Indians. It was a struggle which could really have but one issue. It was a struggle, moreover, that was conducted without pity or mercy, with scarcely a pretence of regard for the amenities of civilized warfare. Neither side was particularly scrupulous, while from that day to this, each side has kept up a terrible outcry against the other for doing the very same thing which it did itself. From that day to this English writers have held up their hands in holy horror at the atrocious conduct of the French in sending savages to burn vil lages and massacre women and children on the English border. Yet was it not an English governor of New York who in 1689 launched the Iroquois thunderbolt against Canada, one of the most frightful Indian incursions known to history ? It does not appear that the con science of either Puritan or Catholic was in the slightest degree disturbed by these horrors. Each felt sure that he was fighting the Devil, and thought it quite proper to fight l*im with his own weapons. NOER1DGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 241 On the Kennebec frontier the problem for New France was to prevent English villages and fortresses from advancing in that The Indians direction, and the most obvious way S^L of accomplishing the result was to En s lish instigate the Indians to acts of warfare. This was the avowed policy of Vaudreuil, and it was carried out by Father Rale to the best of his ability. When he found that his Norridgewock Indians were timid, and inclined to peace, he sent to Montreal and caused parties of warriors from divers tribes, Ottawas, Caughnawagas, Hurons, and others, to be sent to the Kenne bec River, where all engaged in a frantic war dance, and quite carried away the Norridge- wocks in a frenzy of bloodthirsty enthusiasm. This was in 1721. Then began the sickening tale so many times repeated in early American history, the tale of burning homes, of youth and beauty struck down by the tomahawk, and of captives led away through the gloom of the forest to meet a fiery death. Thus, in turn, the English government at Boston was confronted Border war - with its problem : how to put a stop fare to these horrors without bringing on a new war with France. The practical New England mind saw that the principal hotbed of all the mischief must be destroyed, and if a Frenchman or two should come to grief in the process, it was his own fault for playing so recklessly with fire. It 242 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND was easier, however, for Boston to know what ought to be done than to do it ; for there was the irreconcilable hostility between governor and legislature to be reckoned with. For example, when the Norridgewocks on one occasion com plained to Governor Shute that they were cheated and shamefully used by irresponsible traders, the governor undertook to set up cer tain trading stations on the frontier which should be controlled by trustworthy persons, and where Indians might rest assured of fair Conflicts be- treatment, but when he proposed this Go vTrnor and P lan to the Assembly, that body flatly the Assembly refused to appropriate any money for the purpose. Finally, when the torches were lighted and the shrieks of the victims were heard, when the indignant governor was raising his arm to strike, what should this contuma cious Assembly do but interpose obstacle after obstacle ! Not only was it unwilling to entrust the governor with the money for obtaining mil itary supplies, but it even insisted upon carry ing on the war through committees of its own. Its blundering conduct was not unlike that of the Continental Congress in the War for Inde pendence. After a while the course of the legis lature put the governor into such a rage that on New Year s day, 1723, he drove down to the water side, and embarked in a ship for London NOREIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 243 without so much as telling anybody what he was about to do. He left it for the town to rub its eyes in astonishment at finding its governor gone. His place was filled by the lieutenant-gov ernor, William Dummer, who fared no better at the hands of the Assembly, al- shutesuc though he was a native of New Eng- ceeded by land. The Assembly insisted that Dummer two competent but unpopular officers should be removed from command, and when Dummer refused, the many-headed king retorted by re fusing to grant supplies until the officers in ques tion should have been removed. When we read of such scenes as this, which were perpetually recurring during the seventy years struggle with France, we can understand why the British gov ernment thought it necessary to raise money by stamps in order to protect the frontier against the Indians. After much tribulation an expedition under Colonel Westbrook sailed for the Penobscot River, ascended it for some distance Expeditions above the site of Bangor, and de- against the stroyed a missionary village which the French had founded there. The next year, 1724, a force of about 200 men went up the Kennebec River, carried the Norridgewock vil lage by storm, and slew many of its defenders, 244 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND while the rest were scattered. In the course of the fight Father Rale was shot through the head. Puritan writers have sought to stigmatize this interesting man as a murderer, while Catholics have praised him as a martyr. In the impartial light of history, he was neither the one nor the other. He was true to his own sense of duty, and the worst that can be said about him is The death of that he was not exceptionally scrupu- FatherRaie j ous j n fa s choice of political and military means; while on the other hand, the title of "martyr" seems hardly to belong to a man who was killed in the ordinary course of battle, not because of his religious faith, but be cause he was fighting in the service of France. 1 The fighting thus begun continued for nearly four years, and in the course of it the Norridge- wock tribe was practically extermi- natcd The destruction of that mis- tribe s i O n was a serious blow to the French hold upon the Maine frontier, and they never succeeded in making good the loss. Our forefathers of that time had come to re gard Indians very much in the light of wolves or panthers, to be hunted and slain wherever found. Parties of yeomanry were enlisted for the purpose of penetrating into the wilderness 1 [On the manner of Rale s death, see Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, i. 237-239 ; and on the Norridgevvock troubles as a whole, the same, pp. 205-240.] NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 245 and finding the enemy in his lair. The regular wages paid by the Commonwealth for such ser vice were half a crown a day, paid in a currency so depreciated that the half-crown amounted to about twenty-five cents of our money; but, in addition, there was a liberal bounty of a hundred pounds for each Indian scalp. Even in that detestable rag money a hundred pounds was worth securing. Among the leaders in this rough service was Captain John Lovewell of Dunstable on the Merrimac River, a son of one of Cromweirs soldiers. In January, 1725, he earned his first hundred pounds by bringing a scalp from a remote point among the White Mountains. It was customary for the Massachusetts rangers to patrol those wild stretches of forest, through which captain Algonquins from Canada used to Lovewe11 come on their murderous raids. Toward the end of February, 1725, Lovewell s party were passing the shores of a large pond in what is now the township of Fryeburg in Maine, just on the border of New Hampshire, and about sixty miles north of Dover. That sheet of water is still known as Lovewell s Pond. Near its shore his party suddenly came upon ten In dians sleeping around a fire, and immediately killed them all, for which they received a thou sand pounds from the treasurer at Boston. The 246 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Indians who were killed were on their way to join an expedition for massacre in the frontier villages, so that the* bounty would seem to have been well bestowed. A few weeks later Love- well once more tried his fortune at the head of forty-six men, but as they approached the pond which had witnessed their winter performance, one or two of their number fell sick, so that it was necessary to build a rude^fortification and leave there a guard for the sick ones. This re duced the number to thirty-four. Early on a bright May morning these men fell into an am buscade of Pequawket Indians, and they kept LoveweU s up a desperate fight all day against fig ht overwhelming odds. Toward sunset the Indians gave way and retired from the scene, leaving a tremendous harvest of scalps for the victors. But these children of the Iron sides had paid a high price for their victory. Captain Lovewell and eleven others were slain, being rather more than one third of the number. One coward had run away and told so dismal a story to the sick men and their guard that they deemed it best to quit their rude fortification and travel southward with all possible despatch. The retreat from the battlefield began at mid night and was led by Ensign Wyman. One of the party was the chaplain of the expedition, Rev. Jonathan Frye of Andover, a youth of twenty-one, recently graduated at Harvard, who NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 247 was as zealous an Indian killer as any of the party. He had been terribly wounded in the fight, and as he felt his strength giving out so that he must lie down upon the ground, he begged his comrades not to incur danger by waiting with him, but to keep on their The death way, and he said to one of them, ofFrye " Tell my father that I expect in a few hours to be in eternity, and am not afraid to die." So they left him alone in the forest and nothing more was heard of him. The survivors of this expedition were rewarded with extensive grants of land on the mountain ridges between Lan caster and the Connecticut River, which down to that time were a howling wilderness, and it was in this way that Petersham and others of the hill towns in that region originated. For half a century, until its memory was ob scured by the incidents of the Revolutionary War, Lovewell s fight was a popular theme with the New England farmers. Ballads as long as " Chevy Chase " were written about it, and perhaps a few verses should be quoted in this connection. " Then spake up Captain Lovewell, when first the fight be gan, Fight on, my valiant heroes, you see they fall like rain ! For, as we are informed, the Indians were so thick, A man could scarcely fire a gun, and not some of them hit. 248 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die ; They killed Lieutenant Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, Who was our English chaplain : he many Indians slew, And some of them he scalped, when bullets round him flew." * As for this worthy young chaplain, he was mourned by the fair Susanna Rogers, daughter of the minister at Boxford, to whom he was be trothed. She afterward wrote a long monody which thus begins : " Assist, ye Muses, help my quill While floods of tears does down distil, Not from mine eyes alone, but all That hears the sad and doleful fall Of that young student, Mr. Frye, Who in his blooming youth did die." Such incidents as the destruction of Nor- ridgewock and Lovewell s fight occurred in what was reckoned as an interval of peace be tween the second and third great intercolonial wars. We may now pass over twenty years and make some mention of the most important event that marked in America the war of the Austrian Succession, which began with the seiz ure of Silesia by Frederick the Great in 1740, 1 [The whole of this ballad is given in Hart s American History told by Contemporaries, ii. 344-346.] NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 249 and ended with the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. On the southeast side of Cape Breton Island, in a very commanding position, was a small town which had been known as English Har bour, but which in the many vicissitudes of Acadia had passed into the hands of the French and had been by them christened Louisburg, after the king. After the treaty of Utrecht, the French refused to sur render Cape Breton Island on the ground that the name " Acadia " applied only to Nova Scotia in the strictest sense, excluding the adja cent islands. About 1720 the French began fortifying this place, and went on until they had spent a sum equivalent to more than $ 1 0,000,000 of our modern money, and had made it one of the strongest places in the world, scarcely sur passed by Quebec or Gibraltar. With refer ence to Canada, France, and the West Indies, this place occupied a central position. It blocked the way to any English ascent of the St. Lawrence, such as had been attempted in 1690 and 17 1 1, and it afforded an admirable base of supplies from which a powerful French squadron might threaten Boston or any other English city upon the Atlantic coast. It was in 1744 that France and England were dragged into the war between Austria and 250 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Prussia, and no sooner had the news arrived in America than Duquesnel, the French com mander of Louisburg, sent a squadron to sur prise and capture such English ports in Nova Scotia as might be found insufficiently guarded. The little port of Canseau was at once taken, and an energetic, but fruitless attack was made upon Port Royal. A certain number of prison ers who had been taken from Canseau to Louis- burg were returned in the autumn of 1744, and they sent such messages to Governor Shirley as led him to believe that a prompt attack The project ir 1. * capture upon Louisburg itself might prove successful. Perhaps the first person to entertain such a scheme seriously was William Vaughan, a graduate of Harvard in 1722, whose father had been lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire. Vaughan had an estate on the Damariscotta River, and did a brisk trade in lumber and fish. There was imminent danger that Louisburg might work the destruction of the English fisheries, and Vaughan, who was dar ing to the verge of foolhardiness, thought it a good plan to anticipate such a calamity by captur ing the impregnable fortress. So bold was the project that Parkman gives to his chapter on this subject the simple heading, " A Mad Scheme." Fortunately, Shirley was himself a man of cour age and resource. After a conversation with 1 {Half Century of Conflict, ii. 78-107.] NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 251 Vaughan, Shirley informed his legislature that he had a proposal to make of such great impor tance that he wished them before receiving it to take an oath of secrecy. Shirley had shown much tact in avoiding dissensions with his legislature, and this extraordinary request was granted, but when the Assembly came to con sider the question of attacking Louisburg with out assistance from British arms, the Assembly deemed the proposal chimerical, and voted to reject it. Nothing daunted, however, Shirley returned to the attack, and with the active co operation of many merchants who felt that their business absolutely demanded the reduction of the French stronghold, he succeeded at last in obtaining a majority of one vote in the Assem bly. The next step was to seek aid The New from the other colonies, but only New England Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Con- dertaTe thT necticut gave favourable responses. attack Connecticut and New Hampshire furnished each 500 men, and Rhode Island furnished the sloop of war Tartar. Massachusetts supplied 3000 men, and Shirley selected William Pep- perell to command the expedition. Pepperell was a very wealthy merchant of Kittery, who had served as justice of the peace and as a mili tia officer of various grades, ending with colonel. He was by no means a genius, but a man of energy, good sense, and tact. He was now 252 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND raised to the rank of lieutenant-general, and Roger Wolcott of Connecticut was commis sioned major-general and appointed second in command. Pepperell s good sense was sufficient to make him doubt the possibility of success ; and the Rev. George Whitefield, when asked to furnish a motto for one of the flags, suggested Nil desperandum Christ o duce, or, in other words, There is room for hope when Christ is leader, which, under the circumstances, does not seem to indicate a very exuberant confidence on the part of the great preacher. As for a naval force, it was always possible to extemporize something of the sort in New The naval England, where almost every seaport had citizens ready to venture money in privateering, or perhaps in equipping expe ditions for capturing privateers from French men and Spaniards. The force collected for the Louisburg expedition consisted of one new 24- gun frigate and twelve smaller vessels, mostly sloops of from 8 to 20 guns. This was a ludi crous force for the purpose assigned ; one French line-of-battle ship could easily have destroyed the whole of it. To put 4000 men upon Cape Breton Island without an adequate naval force to insure their retreat might easily entail their starvation or capture. More ships must be had, and Shirley sent a message to Commodore Peter Warren, at the island of Antigua, requesting NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 253 assistance. Warren was inclined to give the aid required, but a council of war overruled him, and he declined ; but Shirley had wisely pro vided another string to his bow, and had writ ten some time before to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, pointing out the great danger to the fisheries and the Acadian ports from the proximity of Louisburg. It was this Duke of Newcastle who knew so little about Ameri can affairs that, one day when he was told that Annapolis must be fortified, replied, " Annap olis, Annapolis ! Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended ; to be sure, Annapolis should be de fended. Where is Annapolis ? " l Fortunately, this amiable secretary s zeal was better than his knowledge, and he promptly wrote to Com modore Warren, ordering him to sail for Bos ton and do what he could to help the cause. Warren accordingly sailed with one line-of-bat- tle ship and two 44-gun frigates. While on the way he met a Boston vessel which informed him that Pepperell s force had already sailed, so Warren changed his course and joined the expedition at Canseau. Perhaps Pepperell had been precipitate, but in point of fact The French this headlong speed was the salvation sur P rlsed of the enterprise. The French were practi- 1 [Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George II; i- 396.] 254 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND cally taken unawares ; for although rumours of the scheme had reached them, they had been inclined to laugh them to scorn. What likeli hood was there of an enemy attacking them with any hope ? Their batteries mounted at least 150 heavy guns, against which the pro vincial assailants brought a vastly inferior arma ment in size and strength. The British ships, however, constituted a powerful reinforcement. The French garrison consisted of 560 French regulars and Swiss mercenaries, with about 1400 Canadian militia, some 2000 in all. The New Englanders effected a landing on the ist of May, and immediately laid siege to the town. On the next day Vaughan led 400 men behind a line of hills to a point where there were large magazines of naval stores. These he set on fire ; and what with the pitch and tar and other such combustibles, the smoke that came up and floated over the town was something quite tremendous. One effect upon The Grand the French was absurd. Near the do a n7dl aban ~ burning stores was a large fortifica- P anic tion known as the Grand Battery, mounting 30 heavy guns. As the thick clouds of smoke rolled up and enveloped this battery, the defenders were seized with panic and aban doned it without firing a shot ; so that when Vaughan s men passed it, observing the pro found quiet, they reconnoitred for a moment A R Weft Gate O _ Cap* 1 Xoir S T O U mM, <cf Ac/////// \N V N \ V t<r//< /7/ \,^< NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 255 and then exultingly marched in. So hastily had the French departed that they left an im mense quantity of ammunition as a present for Vaughan s men, while the cannon were so poorly spiked that the gunsmith, Seth Pome- roy, had them all ready for use the next morn ing. So that our New Englanders could now bombard the town with cannon and shot pro vided by the most Christian king. This capture of the Grand Battery was some thing on which the besiegers had no right to count, for if it had been properly defended they probably could not have taken it. As it was, its loss by the French probably decided the issue of the whole conflict. The New England troops pressed matters with vigour, and at the end of a week demanded the surrender of the place, but the time had not yet come. On May 19 a French line-of-battle ship arrived upon the scene heavily laden with material of Catureofa war, and on approaching the town French line- she encountered one of the English ships of smaller calibre, which, retreating before her, lured her within reach of the whole Brit ish fleet. She was soon surrounded and cap tured, and all her material of war passed into the hands of the besiegers. Presently the lat ter received a great reinforcement by the arrival of eight British seventy-fours, under cover of which the troops were able to establish new 256 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND batteries at various points. By the middle of June there was scarcely a house in the town that had not been more or less riddled by shot and shell. The British fleet held the harbour closely invested, and 1000 scaling ladders were made ready for a grand attack. This was too much for the Frenchmen, and on the X 7 th of J une this famous fortress J 745 was surrendered. The mad scheme of Vaughan and Shirley had become a sober re ality. When the news was disseminated abroad the civilized world was dumb with amazement. For the first time it waked up to the fact that a new military power had grown up in America. One of the strongest fortresses on the face of the earth had surrendered to a force of New England militia. Pepperell was at once cre ated a baronet, being the first native Ameri can who attained that rank. Warren was pro moted to the grade of admiral. Louisburg Square in Boston commemorates the victory. Some twenty-five years ago, when we were re building the eastern transept of Harvard Col lege Library, I discovered in a gloomy corner an iron cross about thirty inches in height, which had stood in the market-place at Louis- A relic of burg and was brought to Cambridge Louisburg as a trophy. I thought it a pity to hide such a thing, so I had it gilded and set up over the southern entrance to the library, NORRIDGEWOCK AND LOUISBURG 257 where it remained several years, until one night some silly vandals, presumed to be students, succeeded in detaching this heavy mass of iron and carrying it away. 7 1 [Fortunately it has since been returned, and is now in the library.] VIIi BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR THE treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle did very little to set matters at rest in North America; it provided only a short breathing spell before the numerous unsettled The treaty questions gave rise to another and far of Aix-ia- greater war. The treaty did little or nothing toward marking out bounda ries either at the east in Acadia, or at the west toward the Ohio valley, and it was in the latter region that the next great storm was to burst. By 1748 the schemes of La Salle had developed as far as they were ever destined to do. A thriving colony had been founded near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and that region was connected with Canada by a straggling series of fortified villages at great distances apart. Such places were Kaskaskia and Caho- kia, as well as Fort Chartres in the Illinois country, and Detroit. But the French were now beginning to feel the disadvantage of scarcity of numbers dis tributed over long exterior lines. Every year BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 259 that brought them closer to contact with the English made this disadvantage more apparent. Since La Salle s time a great change had come over the land. In his day, Pennsylvania was merely the banks of the Delaware River, while the Maryland and Virginia settlements The gpread were confined to the tidewater re- oftheEng- 1 111 lish westward gions ; but by 1748 not only had these English populations spread for many miles into the interior, but a fresh migration from Europe, conducted on a greater scale than any of its predecessors, had introduced into the mid dle Appalachian region an active and aggressive population. Of the 3,000,000 inhabitants of the United States in 1776, at least one T he Scotch- sixth part were Presbyterians who had Irlsh come from the north of Ireland since I72O. 1 Along with these there was a considerable pop ulation of Protestant Germans who had come at about the same time. By far the greater part of this population had passed through the old settled seaboard districts and made homes for itself on what was then the western frontier ; that is to say, the Alleghany region of Pennsylvania, i [Cf. on the Scotch-Irish, Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbours, ii. 456-462 ; The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, ii. 410-414 ; and Mr. C. A. Hanna s elaborate work, The Scotch- Irish, or the Scot in North Britain, North Ireland, and North America, ^ vols., New York, 1902.] 260 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. From this population came some of the most hardy and enterprising pioneers of the old west, such men as Daniel Boone, James Robertson, and John Sevier the Huguenot ; for in this move ment we find the name of many a Protestant Frenchman enlisted under the banner of St. George. By 1748 the settled English population was fast approaching the Appalachian ranges, and the more mobile company of hunters, trap- The pioneers P ers > fur-traders, and other pioneers pass the Aiie- were passing beyond them and fast ghanies , . x . P , making their mark upon the western country. A company had already been formed in Virginia for the improvement of lands on the Ohio River, and in this company were inter ested some of the most prominent men in the colony, including two brothers of George Wash ington. Some of the pioneers were pressing for ward to make homes in the wilderness where afterward grew up the two great commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee ; but that stage was only realized three years later. Meanwhile as the Indian trade was lucrative, and hunting had its charms, all the restless spirits who preferred life in the wilderness to life on plantations were finding their way through the picturesque defiles of the mountains down the broad grassy slopes through which flowed the western rivers. BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 261 Now this advance of the English frontier was an advance against the centre of the whole French position. In those days, as at Th is advance present, there were two great routes, of ^ En - ... r lishamen- whether for military purposes or for a ce to the trade, between the Atlantic seaboard French and the Mississippi valley. One of these was from Albany to the Niagara River, and thence westward either to the north or to the south of Lake Erie. The other was from Philadelphia or Baltimore to Pittsburg, and thence down the Ohio River. It followed, therefore, that if the English could firmly hold both the Niagara River and the junction between the Allegheny and the Monongahela, where Pittsburg now stands, it would be in their power to strike at the centre of the long exterior line held by the French, and forever to cut Louisiana asunder from Canada. By degrees the more far-sighted Frenchmen who administered the affairs of Can ada had been taking in the alarming character of the situation. Since the early part of the cen tury the influence of the Frenchmen The French over the Indian tribes had relatively influence diminished. They held as firmly as Indians ever the alliance of the northern Al- declines gonquins, from the Micmacs of Nova Scotia to the Ojibways of Lake Superior, and at one time in the early part of the eighteenth century their 262 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND influence had waxed strong even among their ancient enemies of the Long House. The per suasive tongues of the Jesuits had even won converts among the Mohawks, a small colony of whom they had established at Caughnawaga on the St. Lawrence River, a short distance above Montreal. These Caughnawagas were useful as middle men in the trade between the remote northwest and the province of New York by way of Lake Champlain, and they were also of considerable service as spies to report in Canada the affairs of New York. These circumstances led William Burner., the able governor of New The founding York, to build a fortress at Oswego in of oswego 1722 upon land which he bought for the purpose from the Six Nations. As the New York Assembly was as froward and penny wise as usual, Burnet cut the Gordian knot by pay ing the expenses out of his own pocket. This founding of Oswego was an event of prime im portance in the history of the United States, inasmuch as it diverted the main current of the northwestern fur-trade from the valley of the St. Lawrence to the valley of the Mohawk, and thus greatly strengthened the hold of the Eng lish upon the Long House all the way from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. 1 In 1738 this English influence was still further increased by 1 [W. L. Stone, Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, u BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 263 the arrival of that remarkable man, William Johnson, a native of Ireland, who waxed rich in the Indian trade, built for himself two strong holds in the Mohawk valley, and acquired such a reputation among the Mohawks that they revered him like one of their natural chiefs. The influence exerted upon the In- sh-wiiiiam dians by Johnson and by the Schuy- J ohnson lers of Albany, as well as through the trading station at Oswego, made it probable that in the event of a conflict with France the English could control the Niagara River. Still more important, however, was the moun tainous site of Pittsburg, the Gateway of the West, as it used to be called ; for it was in that neighbourhood that the English were already pressing westward and winning control over the numerous and powerful tribes of the Ohio val ley. Among these should especially be men tioned the Delawares and Shawnees upon the upper Ohio ; and with them were associated the remnants of the Hurons, generally known as Wyandottes, and likewise a group which had migrated from the Long House, apparently con sisting chiefly of Senecas, but called by the fron tiersmen Mingos. Westward of all these came the Miamis, and then the Illinois. Late in the seventeenth century all these tribes had been invaded, tormented, and made more or less trib- 264 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND utary by the Long House. Whether they ac knowledged the relationship or not, the Long House asserted it whenever an occasion offered. French influence over these tribes had never been strong except among the Illinois. On.the English other hand, the English traders as thfohlo the T came into the Ohio valle 7 were valley careful to propitiate the natives, and succeeded in establishing a strong influence over them, especially the tribes of the upper Ohio. Obviously, if this sort of thing were to go on, it would not be long before the English would hold the whole stretch of country from Oswego south of Lake Erie to Cahokia as firmly as the French held the country from Montreal to the Sault Ste. Marie ; in other words, the English would hold both the great routes between east and west, and New France would be severed in twain. This situation was distinctly realized by the Marquis de la Galissoniere, who governed Can ada in 1749; and that year he sent a party of about 250 men to inspect the country between the Niagara and Ohio rivers, to take possession of it in the name of the French king, and to as certain the sentiments of the native tribes. The command of this party was entrusted to a cap tain and chevalier named Celoron de Bienville. They went up the St. Lawrence as far as Fort BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 265 Frontenac, crossed Lake Ontario in canoes which they carried up by the bank of the Niag ara River, and launching them at a safe distance above the falls, made their way into Lake Erie. Then for seven days they forced their way through the dense forest to the placid waters of Chautauqua Lake, and after landing where Jamestown now stands, and struggling once more with the tangled woods, they reached the Allegheny River. At that point of their route on the 29th of July they took possession of the country in the name of Louis XV. This act of taking possession was performed ceioron takes as follows : The royal arms of France possession of stamped upon a tin plate were nailed ^J 51 )^ to a tree. At the foot of the tree a Louis xv., plate of lead was buried, upon which I749 was an inscription stating that Monsieur Ceio ron had buried this plate " as a token of re newal of possession heretofore taken of the aforesaid river Ohio, of all streams that fall into it, and all lands on both sides to the source of the aforesaid streams, as the preceding kings of France have enjoyed or ought to have en joyed it, and which they have upheld by force of arms and by treaties, notably by those of Ryswick, Utrecht; and Aix-la-Chapelle." * It 1 [A facsimile of this plate is given in Winsor, Narrative and Critical Hist, of America, v. 9. 1 266 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND will be observed that this is the usual style which France has maintained for some centu ries. Whenever her borders have been extended it has always been officially declared to be sim ply taking possession of what was hers already. Upon various other spots as they descended the river our party of Frenchmen buried these leaden tablets, the last place being at the mouth of the Great Miami. Some of the plates have since then been dug up and preserved in mu seums. The general demeanour of the Indians through whose towns the Frenchmen passed was polite, but suspicious and unsatisfactory. It was evident that the English influence was strong throughout the upper country drained by the Ohio. When Celoron reached the Great Miami he turned his course up that river and Ceioron presently came to a village of the among the Miamis, ruled by a chieftain who was a firm friend to the English, in so much that they commonly called him " Old Britain," but the French oddly called him " La Demoiselle," or " The Maiden/ Whether he was faint-hearted, as such an epithet might seem to imply, or perhaps more delicate of feature than others of his race, we cannot say ; but as to his capacity for lying, we are not left in doubt. His home had formerly been upon the Maumee River, not far from the site of Fort Wayne, and BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 267 he had now moved close down to the Ohio, apparently in order to be in the highway of English trade. Celoron heaped gifts upon him and urged him to take his men back to their old home on the Maumee. The astute Demoi selle accepted the presents and was profuse in promises, but so far was he from re- The Miamis tiring that he gathered into his new urder English ! , j hraience town as many recruits as he could summon. 1 The English called it Pickawillany. It became one of the princpal Indian towns of the west, completely under English influ ence, and was a series- obstacle to all French schemes in that quarter. For some time Cana dian officials intrigued and fulminated against Pickawillany, until at length in the summer of 1752 Charles de Langlade, a young French trader of Green Bay, led a large The French force of Ojibways and Ottawas against ^3 td- the obnoxious town. They took it in villa g e by surprise, slaughtered many of the defend ers, and burned the town, crowning the work by a hilarious supper in which they feasted upon the boiled carcase of the Demoiselle him self. Considering the vital importance of the Gate- 1 [A facsimile of the map of Father Bonnecamp, the chap lain of the expedition, is given in Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist, of Amer. , v. 569.] 268 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND way of the West, it seems very strange that the English, who were then in possession of it, did not build and maintain a strong fortress there, but in truth the spot was claimed at once by Virginia and by Pennsylvania, and in neither of these provinces did the legislature wish to invest money in property that might be adjudged to belong to another province. The swarm of difficulties that surrounded this unsettled ques tion sufficed to prevent all action. Meanwhile, a new governor came to Canada, the Marquis Duquesne, who saw clearly that New France The Marquis must either control the Gateway of Duquesne t h e w estj or give up all hold upon the Ohio valley and submit to see Canada severed from Louisiana. Accordingly, in the spring of 1753 Duquesne sent out a force of 1 500 men commanded by an able veteran named Marin. This little army crossed Lake Erie at some distance to the west of Niagara River, and landed at Presqu Isle, where the town of Erie now stands, and there they built a strong The French blockhouse. From that point they expedition cu t a road through the forest to the stream since known as French Creek, and there they erected a second blockhouse and called it Fort Le Boeuf. Here they could re sume their canoes and easily float down French Creek to the Allegheny River,, and so on, if need BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 269 be, to the Gulf of Mexico. At this point the French commander fell dangerously ill, and his place was taken by another skilful veteran, Le- gardeur de Saint-Pierre- By these active measures the French were gaining strength daily. It is true that the In dians of the region they were entering were friends of the English, but the red man s pol itics were apt to be of a vacillating sort, and truckling to strength was one of their The Indians chief characteristics. They resembled between the politics of the famous Vicar of Bray, whose conduct was always guided by one unswerving principle, no matter what party might be uppermost, always to remain Vicar of Bray, sir. The red man was usually ready to follow the advice of Mr. Pickwick and shout with whichever mob shouted the loudest. This was seen in the conduct of a feathered potentate whom the English called the Half- King; he came out from his village with a show of fight, but soon made up his mind that discretion was the better part of valour. Fifteen hundred Frenchmen ! truly the white father at Quebec must be a mighty chief. Several tribes sent messages seeking to curry favour with the in vaders. It was Duquesne s intention to have a third fort built at Venango, where French Creek flows 270 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND into the Allegheny, and an advance party, com manded by Joncaire, had arrived at that place and seized and fortified an English trading house there. Thus far had things proceeded in the early days of December, 1753, when one A chance evening as Joncaire and his friends meeting were sitting down to supper, some unbidden guests arrived upon the scene. The party consisted of Christopher Gist, a veteran trader who ;cted as guide, an Indian interpre ter named Davison, a French interpreter named Vanbraam, and four wood rangers as servants. The person for whom this little party acted as escort was a tall and stately youth named George Major Washington, a major in the Virginia George militia. Governor Dinwiddie of Vir- Washington . . , . . . sent to warn gmia, who was keeping as keen a the French watcn U p on tne Ohio valley from Williamsburg as Duquesne was keeping from Montreal, had heard of the crossing of Lake Erie by the French and their approach toward the Gateway of the West. To warn them off was a delicate matter, while to counteract their in trigues with the Indians a wise head was called for. Washington had been in the employ of Lord Fairfax in surveying frontier land, and had made good use of the opportunities for studying Indians. Governor Dinwiddie, more over, gave him credit for a clear-sightedness that nothing could hoodwink and a courage BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 271 that nothing could daunt, and in this the wise old Scotchman was not deceived. After the party had sat down to supper and the wine had begun to circulate, the Frenchmen grew somewhat confidential, and with their po litest smiles assured Washington that they in tended to drive the English out of all The French that country; and they felt sure that boast of their they could do it, for although inferior ] in force, they more than made up for this by their quickness of movement. The next day Washington proceeded to Fort Le Boeuf, where he met the French commander, and gave him a polite letter from Dinwiddie expressing his sur prise that he should thus venture to encroach upon English territory in time of peace. The old Frenchman treated Washington with ex treme politeness, but said that he should feel it necessary to remain where he was until he should have had time to transmit Dinwiddie s letter to Montreal and get a reply from Governor Du- quesne. Washington s return to Virginia was marked with adventures and some hair-breadth escapes. 1 When Governor Dinwiddie heard the results of his journey, which were not very dif- 1 [Washington s Journal of this expedition is in Sparks s ed. of his works, ii. 432-447. For other reprints, see Win- sor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., v. 572. Gist s Journal is to be found in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 3 ser. v. 101-108.] 272 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND ferent from what he had anticipated, he made up his mind that as large a force as possible must be collected from Virginia and other Governor . colonies, to advance, while there was 7 et time, and occupy the Gateway Gateway of o f the West ; but the governor of a the West - , free Jinglish colony was at a great disadvantage as compared with a despotic gov ernor of Canada. Dinwiddie must persuade his legislature, and he must notify other governors, who in turn must persuade their legislatures. We need not be surprised that the English were too late. Washington had selected the spot where Pittsburg now stands as the proper place for a commanding fortress, but scarcely had his men begun to work there when they were driven away by a superior force of French men, who proceeded to build a stout fortress and call it Fort Duquesne. Well might the indig- Duquesne nant Dinwiddie exclaim in a letter anticipates written at this time, "If our Assembly had voted the money in November which they did in February, it s more than .probable the fort would have been built and garrisoned before the French had approached; but these things cannot be done without money. As there was none in our treasury, I have ad vanced my own to forward the expedition ; and if the independent companies from New York BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 273 come soon, I am in hopes the eyes of the other colonies will be opened ; and if they grant a proper supply of men, I hope we shall be able to dislodge the French or build a fort on that river." l When we read such letters as this and realize that through the whole seventy years of struggle with New France the difficulty was always the same, we surely cannot much wonder that the British minister at the beginning of Pontiac s war should have deemed it necessary to resort to such a measure as the Stamp Act. Americans should not forget that while that measure was ill-considered, the evil which it was designed to relieve was most flagrant and dangerous. In point of fact, in May, 1754, Dinwiddie s force on the frontier was only the Virginia regi ment of about three hundred men The Virginia under Colonel Joshua Fry, with Ma- jor Washington second in command. Fry was detained by sickness at Will s Creek, about one hundred and forty miles from Fort Duquesne. The advance was slow and difficult, as it was necessary to cut roads through the virgin forests and over the mountains in order to drag cannon and wagons. An advance of a mile in a day was sometimes all that could be accomplished. In spite of these obstacles, 1 [Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, i. 144.] 274 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Washington had crossed the mountains and encamped at a spot called Great Meadows with about one hundred and fifty men, when a message came to him from his friend the Half- King, saying that the French were upon the march to meet him. For two or three days Washington watched vigilantly for a surprise, and the reports that came in seemed to indicate that a French force was lurking in the neigh bourhood. Presently the Half-King arrived upon the scene, and as everything Washington . r J 5 surprises a indicated that the enemy intended a French force surpr j se> J t wag decide d tO find them if possible and inflict a counter surprise. The result was that presently the French were dis covered in a ravine, and there was a brief fight in which the French commander, an ensign named Jumonville, was killed, with nine others, and the remaining twenty-two were captured. After it was all over some of the prisoners in formed Washington that they were a party sent from Fort Duquesne by its commander, Con- trecreur, to carry a message to Washington. In point of fact, it was a scouting party intended to look out for any approaching party of Eng lish, and to warn them to withdraw from this portion of New France. A great outcry was afterward raised by the French at what they chose to call perfidy on Washington s part, and BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 275 an absurd story was circulated to the intent that he had fired upon a flag of truce. The whole case may, however, be properly summed up as a chance encounter between two forces engaged in actual hostilities before any declaration of war. Each side professed to be unwilling to force on hostilities, while each side was eager to strike the other as soon as a proper occasion offered. After this affray Washington built a rude en trenchment at Great Meadows which he called Fort Necessity. A few days after- Fort ward news came of Colonel Fry s Necessit y death, and presently other troops arrived from Virginia and South Carolina, until Washington was in command of some three hundred men besides about one hundred and fifty Indians under the Half-King and others. Meanwhile, the authorities in Canada had not been idle, and the garrison of Fort Du- quesne now numbered fourteen hundred men. A force of about six hundred under Coulon de Villiers, brother of the slain Jumonville, marched up the Monongahela in quest of Washington. Villiers arrived at Great Meadows on a rainy day, and a lively firing was The ^^ kept up until dark. By that time the of Fort English found their powder nearly exhausted and their guns foul, while their food 276 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND was gone and starvation faced them. Washing ton therefore accepted the terms offered by the French commander, that the English should march away with the honours of war, with drums beating and colours flying, and that they should be protected from insult, while on the other hand, they should surrender their prisoners of Jumonville s party. So the English marched away. It was not a very murderous affair, and Washington s friend, the red man Half-King, sarcastically gave it as his opinion that the Frenchmen had behaved like cowards and the English like fools. It was on the 4th of July The English that young Washington began his retreat doleful retreat across the mountains into Virginia. The situation seemed to have nothing to retrieve it. At this first outbreak of the struggle with France the enemy seemed to be carrying everything before them. The Gate way of the West was in their possession, and the red flag of England waved nowhere within the limits of what they chose to call New France. Yet Washington even at that early age was already a marvel of fortitude and may have consoled himself with the thought that better days were coming. Before he was permitted, however, to see such better days, the cup of disaster must be drained to its dregs. Nothing could be clearer than that BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 277 the possession of Fort Duquesne by the French and their infliction of a slight defeat upon the English would have an immediate and disas trous effect upon most of the Indian tribes in the Ohio valley. Dinwiddie therefore at once prepared to assume the offensive and carry the war on a larger scale into the enemy s country. But he found himself impeded at every step by the Virginia House of Burgesses. Those canny planters were loath to put much money into the governor s hands lest he should make an improper use of it. At one time they would refuse the appropriation asked for, at another time they would grant a sum too small to be of much use, and yet Assemblies again they would grant a sufficient sum, while attaching to the bill a rider concerning some long-disputed question which they knew would elicit an angry veto from the governor. Simi larly in Pennsylvania the Assembly refused money for military purposes in order to wring from the governor some concession with regard to the long-vexed question of taxing proprietary lands. Moreover, the Assembly at Philadel phia was not quite sure that it was worth while to raise troops for taking Fort Duquesne from the French if it should thereby fall into the possession of Virginia. It was with difficulty that these representative bodies could be made to see anything that required any breadth of 278 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND vision. Moreover, they were used to contend ing against their governors ; in the eyes of most representatives that was the sole object for which legislatures existed, but they were not accustomed to devote much thought to the French as enemies, nor had they as yet learned Very well what it meant to be invaded by In dians. On the other hand, New York and The defence Massachusetts were somewhat more ofthecoio- forward inasmuch as they had a keen mes depend- . * ent on the perception of what was involved in warfare against Frenchmen and In dians. Here too, however, the zeal of the gov ernors far outran the efficiency of the legisla tures. Shirley, in particular, a veteran lawyer of great sense and more than average insight, appreciated the nature of the threatened strug gle more keenly than any of the other gov ernors except Dinwiddie. In fact, something was happening of the sort that people never quite see until they can look backward. The English colonies had insensibly drifted into a continental state of things. The crisis had been hastened by the wholesale in coming of the Scotch-Irish and Germans. The bulging of the centre of the English line toward the Ohio valley had brought things to a pass where it was no longer a conflict between New France and New England in the narrower sense, BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR but between New France and the entire world of English America. Under these circumstances the next war that should break out must be a continental affair ; it would concern Louisiana and Georgia as well as New York and 5 The need of Canada ; and yet, here were the peo- a union of pie of these colonies profoundly thecolonies ignorant and almost culpably careless of each other s interests, ready to throw away all the advantages of numerical strength and interior lines and give away the victory to an inferior enemy rather than cooperate with one another in defeating him. Obviously, the crying need of the time was some feasible plan for a federal Union. In the event of a war, it was important to insure the aid of the Six Nations, and to this end it was necessary to let them know how much support they might expect from the Eng lish colonies. For this purpose a congress was called to assemble at Albany in the summer of 1754 in order to consider the situation. It was the second congress that assembled on Ameri can, soil, the first having been the one called by Leisler at New York in I69O. 1 It is significant that even on this verge of a mighty conflict only the four New England colonies with New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were represented 1 [Cf. Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, ii. 228, and Frothingham, Rise of the Republic of the United States , pp. 90-93.] 280 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND at the Albany Congress. The deliberations were chiefly memorable for a plan of union drawn The Albany up by Benjamin Franklin which, if congress j t fad been adopted, might perhaps have averted the Revolution of twenty years later. 1 This plan would have created a true federal Union, the government of which would have operated directly upon individuals, as our present federal Union does, and not upon states only, as the Continental Congress did. Frank lin s plan would have created a Continental government with taxing power for continental purposes only, leaving otherwise intact the local self-government. There would have been a president or governor-general appointed by the Crown to serve as chief executive in purely continental matters. 2 This plan of federation was rejected with small ceremony by the colonies. In some cases no notice was taken of it ; in others it was treated Franklin s w ^ contern p t - There were few peo- pian of union pie as yet who saw any meaning in the demand for a closer union, and nothing but a long experience of distress and disaster would have taught them the need of it. This rejection of the Albany plan left the col- 1 [[Such seems to have been Franklin s opinion in 1789 ; see Frothingham, Rise of the Republic, etc., p. 149, note.J 2 [See Bigelow, Franklin s Works, ii. 355-375 ; Froth ingham, Rise of the Republic, etc., pp. 134-151.] BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 281 onies in a very embarrassing position. On the brink of a great war there was no single power in the country which could raise men and money for the common defence. Of course, there were but few who anticipated war, or were alive to the situation. It was at this moment that it occurred to Shirley that if the colonists could not create for themselves a continental taxing power it would be necessary for Parliament to fulfil that function. This would involve a direct tax, and while Shirley recognized the American unwillingness to submit to taxation by any other authority than that of the colonial Assemblies, he nevertheless thought that a stamp tax might be received with acquiescence because it had so few annoying features. It was by such consid erations as these that the British official mind was prepared for the Stamp Act of eleven years later. As it was, the colonies had to flounder through a great war as best they could. The representations of the royal governors and of the viceroy of Canada created some ex citement both in England and in Englandand France. In England a couple of regi- France send ments, each of five hundred men, were America, shipped for Virginia under command I755 of Major-General Edward Braddock. When this was learned at Versailles a force of three thousand men was started for Canada under 282 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Baron Dieskau. The health of Duquesne was failing, and with Dieskau s expedition there came a new viceroy for Canada, the last of her French governors, Vaudreuil, a younger son of the former governor of that name. The expedition did not get clear of European waters without adventure. It was well understood by the Brit ish government that the squadron gathering at Brest had troops on board destined for Amer ica. Accordingly, a powerful force of eighteen or twenty ships of the line was sent out to inter cept and capture any French vessels bound for America. The greater part of the French squad ron, however, got away, but three of its ships, having fallen behind through stress of weather, Ca ture of were m ^ neighbourhood of Cape two French Race when the British fleet overtook them. As the British ship Dunkirk came abreast of the French ship Alcide, a red flag was suddenly hoisted upon the British flag ship as a signal for fighting ; whereupon the French captain of the Alcide called out, " Is this peace or war ? " He was answered by Richard Howe, captain of the Dunkirk, " I don t know ; but you d better get ready for war." Scarcely had the words been uttered when the Dun kirk and other English ships opened fire, and the Alcide, with one of her companions, was forced to surrender. This little incident at BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 283 sea was the naval counterpart to Washington s passage at arms with Jumonville in the moun tains. It was in February, 1755, that General Brad- dock arrived at Governor Dinwiddie s house at Williamsburg. The spring was spent General in preparations for the campaign that Braddock was to wrest Fort Duquesne from the enemy and recover the Gateway of the West. The fig- ^ ure of Braddock has long been well known to all Americans, a British bulldog, brave, ob stinate, and honest, but more than ordinarily dull in appreciating an enemy s methods, or in freeing himself from the precise traditions in which he had been educated. His first and gravest mistake, however, that of underrating his Indian foe, is one that has been shared by many commanders, to their confusion, and by many writers. The fighting qualities of the red man have often been ill appreciated, and in par ticular he has been ignorantly accused of cow ardice because of his stealthy methods Indian mode and unwillingness to fight in the open. of fi e htin g In point of fact, his method of fighting was closely adapted to the physical conditions of the American wilderness, and it was just what was produced by survival of the fittest during thou sands of years of warfare under such conditions. When white men came to America, they were at 284 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND first able to wreak wholesale destruction upon the natives without regard to numbers or con ditions. Such was the case when the Pequots, the Stamford Indians, and the Narragansetts were swept out of existence. 1 This was largely because of the European superiority in arms, but in later days, when this disparity had been done away with, white men were apt to find Indians quite as formidable enemies as they cared to deal with, and in order to achieve success it was found necessary to adopt the Indian methods, aban doning solid columns and lines of battle, so as to fight in loose order and behind trees or earth works. It is interesting to see that in these later English days wnen tne increase in the power regulars and precision of death-dealing wea- ffl prepared r . . . , . For such pons has greatly increased the danger- ousness of the battlefield, there has been a tendency to recur to Indian methods in so far as concerns looseness of order and the use of various kinds of cover. In the eighteenth century there was nobody so ill fitted to fight with Indians as a European regular, trained in European manuals of war and inured to Euro pean discipline. Braddock s fatuity was well illustrated in his reply to Dr. Franklin, when the latter informed him that the Indians, as 1 [Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, pp. 128, BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 285 antagonists, were by no means to be despised: " These savages may, indeed," said Braddock, " be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king s regular and disci plined troops, sir, it is impossible that they should make any impression." Many stories of Braddock s arrogance and ill- temper have come down to us, but if we con sider the obstacles that were thrown in the way of military promptness, by which zealous men like Shirley and Dinwiddie were so often goaded to anger, we need not wonder that Braddock s temper was sometimes not altogether at its best. He scolded a good deal about the legislatures, and sometimes let fall exasperating remarks about the lack of zeal and rectitude in public servants. For such insinuations there was sometimes appar ent ground, especially when the member of a legislature showed himself more intent upon an noying the governor than upon attacking the enemy. The energetic Shirley made a visit to Brad- dock s camp at Alexandria, in the course of which a comprehensive plan of procedure was agreed upon, which involved operations on the Niagara River and Lake Champlain and the 1 \^Life of Benjamin Franklin, written by himself. Edited by John Bigelow, Philadelphia, 1884, i. 425.] 286 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND northeastern frontier as well as in the Alleghany Mountains. For the present we will confine our story to the latter. At the outset a mistake was made in the choice of a route. For a force like Braddock s, wagons were indispensable, and wagons were far more common in Pennsylvania than in Vir ginia. A route corresponding with the general direction of the Pennsylvania rail- r ad WOuld nOt nl 7 haVC beCn much Philadelphia shorter than the route through Vir ginia, but it would have been, at least in its earlier stages, a route through a population which could furnish wagons. By adopting this route Brad- dock would have made the Pennsylvanians feel some personal interest in the acquisition of Fort Duquesne ; whereas, when he decided to march through Virginia it only tended to confirm Penn sylvanians in the impression that Fort Du quesne, if conquered, was to pass into Virginian hands. After a while Benjamin Franklin went about among the farmers, and by pledging his own personal credit obtained a fair supply of horses and wagons. 1 Braddock s force at length set out in de tachments and marched along the banks of the Potomac River to the old trading station 1 \_Life of Benjamin Franklin, etc., edited by John Big- clow, i. 322.] BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 287 of the Ohio Company known as Will s Creek, It had lately been fortified, and received the name of Fort Cumberland. This was the ren dezvous of the army. The two regiments from England had been increased by further enlist ments in Virginia of nine companies of militia of fifty men each to a total of fourteen hundred men. Braddock despised these militia, and had small respect either for partisan guerilla forces or for Indian auxiliaries. The services of the chief Scarroyaddy, or of the noted frontiersman Black Jack, were at his disposal at the cost of a few civil words only, but he treated these worthies so superciliously that they went off on business of their own. In spite of these instances of indiscretion, however, it is not correct to say, as has often been said, that Braddock neglected all The march precaution and was drawn into an am buscade. Such statements are samples of the kind of exaggeration that is apt to grow up about events that create great public excitement. Braddock made mistakes enough, but he was not absolutely a fool. During the whole of the march flanking parties were kept out on each side of the creeping column, while scouts in all directions ranged through the depths of the woods. The column, which consisted of about twenty-two hundred men, sometimes extended 288 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND for four miles along a road hardly fit to be called a bridle-path, on the average scarcely four yards in width. The march began on June 10, and eight days later the force had advanced only thirty miles from Fort Cumberland. By that time the rear of the column was so heavily encumbered with sick men that its power of marching had almost come to an end. It was A detach therefore decided to leave with the ment sent on rear column of about one thousand men most of the heavier wagons and other impedimenta, and to proceed somewhat more quickly toward Fort Duquesne with an advance guard of twelve hundred. But in spite of this diminution of labour, the difficulties of the road were such that the yth of July had arrived when the advance column approached Turtle Creek, a stream that flows into the Monongahela about eight miles south of Fort Duquesne. Meanwhile, its progress had been detected and watched, as was to have been ex pected, by French and Indian scouts. At the fortress Contrecoeur still governed, with Beau- jeu second in command. The force consisted of five or six hundred Frenchmen, partly reg ulars and partly Canadian militia, with eight hundred Indians, some of them baptized con verts from the northeast, some of them wild Ojibways led by Charles de Langlade, the BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 289 conqueror of the Demoiselle, and the rest, Ottawas under their renowned chieftain, the long-headed and ferocious Pontiac. When^ the approach of Braddock s column to the mouth of Turtle Creek was announced at the French fortress Captain Beaujeu volunteered to go out with a strong party and lay an ambuscade for the English. With this end in view Beaujeu sets he took some two hundred and fifty Z^^SSJ- Frenchmen and over six hundred In- lish dians and stole through the woods between the fortress and Turtle Creek, but he never suc ceeded in preparing the desired ambuscade, nor did Braddock s force march into an ambuscade, in any proper sense of the word. So sensible was Braddock of the great danger of the road between Turtle Creek and Fort Duquesne, on the right bank of the Monongahela, Braddock s that he forded the latter stream and P recautions proceeded down the opposite bank for five or six miles, when he again crossed the river and brought his column on to a rising ground along which the narrow road ran toward the fortress. His column was then in its usual condition : a few Virginian guides in front, then the advance under Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Gage, among whose men were two lieutenants destined in later days to play inglorious parts, Horatio Gates and Charles Lee. Behind Gage came Sir John 290 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND St. Clair with the working party, followed by a couple of cannon, and these, in turn, by the wagons with powder and tools. Behind these came the principal part of the column, while both flanks and rear were very strongly guarded with flanking parties. The situation would not have been particularly dangerous if the British regulars had known how to separate and fight under cover. It was owing to this internal fault- iness, and not to any ambush, that Braddock s column came to grief. When the opposing forces met it was simply the meeting of the two heads of columns in a narrow woodland road. Who can The battle ever forget that moment when Gage s light horsemen quickly fled back and those be hind could catch a glimpse through the trees of a young Frenchman wearing a brilliant red gorget and bounding lightly along the road, till, on seeing his enemy, he turned and waved his hand ? That brief glimpse of Captain Beau- jeu at the moment of his death will forever live in history. At the third volley he dropped dead. Gage s men delivered fire with admirable coolness, but its effect was slight, for the enemy, in two bifurcating columns, passed to right and to left of the English, all the time pouring in a galling fire from behind trees and bushes. Never were the conditions of a battle more simple. The English were torn to pieces be- BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 291 cause they stood in solid line where they could be seen ; and if anything were needed to make it impossible to miss them, it was their bright scarlet coats. On the other hand, no matter how diligently the British loaded and The English fired, they could see nothing to aim fail before at. One officer who had been in the thickest of the fight, literally wedged in among falling bodies, said after the battle that he had not caught sight of an Indian during the whole of the battle. They were fighting "simply against puffs of smoke which seemed to come from all points of the compass. For a time the can non were diligently plied and split many tree trunks. Many of the regulars fired wildly and hit their own comrades. The Virginians, who scattered and fought in Indian fashion, suffered but little and did more than their share of exe cution. Some of the regulars tried to imitate these tactics, but wherever Braddock saw any thing of the sort going on he would strike them with the flat of his sword and Bravery of force them back into the ranks. As a B n r d ad wal for the general himself, he performed in g ton prodigies of valour, and was forever in the most exposed places, while he had four horses shot under him and at last fell from the fifth with one of his lungs badly torn by a bullet. Wash ington s fighting was equally desperate. Two horses were killed under him and his clothes 292 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND were partly torn from his back by bullets. He seemed to bear a charmed life. It is needless to enlarge further upon such a scene. Let it suffice to say, that out of a total force of thir teen hundred and seventy-three all but four hundred and fifty-nine were killed or wounded ; and in addition to these, out of eighty-six offi cers only twenty-three escaped unhurt. The whole affair was as thickly fraught with horror as anything that is likely to happen in modern warfare. The utter fatuity of the affair, the hopeless feeling of brave men drawn up for slaughter without understanding the means of defence, has in it something peculiarly intoler- Braddock s able. The gallant Braddock, as he death i av half-dazed upon his death-bed, was heard to murmur, " Who would ever have thought it ? " and again, after an interval, " We shall know better how to do it next time." 1 The skilful retreat from this field of blood added much to the credit of the youthful Wash ington, and marked him out as an officer likely to have a brilliant future. As for the Dunbar s culpable re- rear column, which had been left un der command of Colonel Dunbar, it retreated to Fort Cumberland, and presently abandoned the campaign, a most ill-judged and reprehensible proceeding which threw open the 1 \_Life of Benjamin Franklin, written by himself, j. 327.^ BEGINNINGS OF THE GREAT WAR 293 frontier to all the horrors of Indian invasion. The events of the past twelve months had done all that twelvemonths could do in destroying the influence of the English among the Ohio tribes. Washington s disaster at Great Meadows had gone far toward undermining their allegiance, Braddock s insolence had seasoned their con tempt with a spice of anger, and now at last this headlong overthrow of an English army had convinced the red men that good medicine was all on the side of the Great White Father on the St. Lawrence. Thus inauspiciously for the English began the mighty war that was to put an end to the dominion of Frenchmen in America, yet it must be remembered that no declaration of war had as yet been made public. These deeds of blood were the deeds of a time of so-called peace. 1 1 [For the literature of Braddock s march and defeat, see Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist. v. 575-580.] IX CROWN POINT, FORT WILLIAM HENRY, AND TICONDEROGA WHILE General Braddock was at Williamsburg in the spring of 1755, discussing plans for the summer, he was visited by Governor Shirley, and a very ex- Govemor tensive scheme of campaigning was Shirley s plan laid out. While Braddock was to ad vance against Fort Duquesne, Shirley was to conduct a force, consisting largely of New England troops, to the Niagara River by way of the Mohawk valley and Oswego. At the same time a force commanded by William Johnson was to wrest from the French the con trol of Lake Champlain, and yet another force under Colonel Monckton was to proceed against the French on the Acadian frontier. The expedi tion against Niagara was to be commanded by Shirley himself, and he also undertook to pro vide a leader for the operations against Crown Point. Few royal governors had so much suc cess in dealing with their legislatures as Shirley, who was conspicuous for moderation and tact. He knew how to make his demands seem rea- CROWN POINT 295 sonable in amount, and he knew how to urge them so gracefully as to make it hard to refuse them. In the present instance he had to deal with the four New England colonies and New York ; and he understood very well that he could not appoint a commander from anyone of the New England commonwealths without of fending the other three. But against the ap pointment of William Johnson nothing could very well be said, since the aid of the Iroquois seemed important and Johnson s influence over them was well known. Besides, the expedition was to be directed toward points in the Mohawk country. For these reasons Shirley selected Johnson to command the movement wmiam against Crown Point, and it proved J^ to a good selection. It greatly pleased Crown Point New York and the Long House, and no serious objection was made in New England except that Connecticut insisted that one of her own of ficers, Phineas Lyman, should be second in command, and this, too, was a good selection. There was much delay, owing to the necessity for communicating with five different legisla tures, and the larger part of the summer had passed away before anything was accomplished. The sad news of Braddock s defeat came like an augury of disaster to Johnson and his men as they were approaching the upper waters of the Hudson in August. Along with this news 296 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND came a report from the north that the French were coming with eight thousand men to de fend Lake Champlain. Johnson s little army consisted almost en tirely of New England yeomanry, many of whom were now for the first time in training Character of i i Johnson s for the tasks that awaited them in 1775 and the ensuing years. Among them were names afterward so important as those of Seth Pomeroy, Israel Putnam, and John Stark. The training now gained by these men and their comrades made veterans of them for the opening scene of the later war. The movements were slow and the delays incessant, partly because the business of moving an army was so ill understood. Cannon, am munition, and camp kettles would be forgotten and left on the way ; wagons would not arrive at the right time, either because distances had been miscalculated, or because the wagoners were disappointed of their pay and spiteful ; the stock of bullets delivered to a regiment would not fit their muskets ; stores of food were delayed un til men were oppressed with hunger ; and so on through the usual list of mishaps attendant upon bad logistics. By the third week in August this New England army had arrived at a point on the Hudson River where a fortress then partly built was called Fort Lyman, a place which after ward acquired celebrity as Fort Edward. There CROWN POINT 297 they were joined by three hundred Mohawks. From Fort Lyman to Crown Point two routes were available : one by way of Lake George, the other by way of Wood Creek, which emptied into the long, narrow head of Lake Champlain. These two routes united at Ticonderoga, about twenty-five miles south of Crown Point. After some discussion it was decided to follow the route by Lake George, which was then known by its French name of Lake Sacre- . i T i -i Johnson ment, but Johnson gave it the name names Lake of the British king, partly by way of George asserting his dominion over it. Leaving five hundred men to complete Fort Lyman, John son moved with the other two thousand to the head of Lake George, and encamped there. Meanwhile, the French commander, Baron Dieskau, had arrived at Crown Point with a force of more than thirty-five hun- Dieskau s dred men, and decided to push for- a PP roach ward and find the enemy. At Ticonderoga he received information from an English prisoner which was intended to draw him into a trap. The prisoner informed him that five hundred of the New England army were at Fort Lyman, but the remainder had for some unknown rea son turned back and retreated upon Albany. This story seemed to offer to Dieskau an easy conquest of Fort Lyman, and he pursued his way with all haste southward by Lake Cham- 298 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND plain to what was called the South Bay, the head of which was about halfway between Wood Creek and Lake George. Thence he marched directly toward Fort Lyman, and had arrived within four miles of it when he captured a letter which disclosed the truth, that the principal body of New Englanders were encamped at the head of Lake George. Dieskau had with him six hun dred Indians under Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, and these allies suggested that they would The Indians greatly prefer to attack the open camp atttck the rather than the fort. Indians, indeed, camp had no love for encountering can non. When it was objected that there seemed to be more English in the open camp than in the fort, it was replied that the English were wretched fighters, and would think of nothing but running away. The victory over Braddock was cited with exultation, and several painted chieftains yelped with delight as they assured Dieskau that the more English there were in the camp the more scalps there would be to bring away. Thus persuaded, if not convinced, Dieskau gave orders to march directly upon Lake George. Meanwhile in Johnson s camp, when scouts announced the approach of a large French force, its size was underestimated, and at first two par ties, each of five hundred men, were ordered out by different trails to attack it. Then the CROWN POINT 299 veteran Mohawk chief Hendrick picked up a couple of stout sticks and tried in vain to break them, but immediately thereafter took them separately and broke them with ease. The En lish " Very well," quoth Johnson, " let scouting them take the same trail." But even now the old red skin was not quite satisfied. "If their aim is victory," he said, "there are not enough of them ; but if they are going to be defeated, there are too many to lose." The upshot was that Dieskau, receiving intelligence of this advancing party, laid an ambush and inflicted upon it a severe defeat, in which the veteran Hendrick and many well-known New England officers were killed. Emboldened by this success, and half believ ing the slanders against English courage, Dies kau pressed on to attack Johnson s camp, but the latter was strongly fortified with earthworks and with trunks of fallen trees. The w , Dieskau most desperate efforts of the French repulsed and to carry the place by storm were fruit less, and after they had fought until their strength was nearly exhausted, the New Englanders came leaping over the works in a deadly charge, and the Frenchmen were driven from the field with heavy slaughter. Among the killed was the Chevalier de Saint- Pierre, whose interview with George Washington at Fort Le Boeuf had been the opening scene of this great drama. 300 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Dieskau was wounded and taken prisoner, and Johnson s Mohawks were furiously eager to burn him, but the Irishman treated him with great kindness and courtesy, and assured him, " They will not burn you until they burn me with you." There is not time to go into the disputed questions which cluster about this as about most battles. New England men have claimed the chief credit for Lyman, 1 to whom they allege that Johnson never did justice ; and I am in clined to think this judgment is, on the whole, well supported. The chief credit at the time accrued to Johnson, and the promptness of his reward is an index to the chagrin which was felt in England over the defeat of Braddock. John son was at once made a baronet. As for the vic tory, it would have been a very important one if Johnson had followed it up and destroyed the enemy s force. Much fault was found with him for not doing this, but, as has often happened in such cases, the reasons for his inaction are not easy to explain. With the victory, such as it was, the English were obliged to rest content shirie s ^ OT some time to come. For Shirley s expedition expedition against Niagara was a com- Nilgara plete failure. Shirley penetrated the New York wilderness as far as Oswego, from which it was possible to reach the Niagara 1 [Cf. Dwight s Travels, iii. 367-370.] CROWN POINT 301 River in boats in the course of five or six days. But there was a French force of fourteen hun dred men at Fort Frontenac. This was about equal to Shirley s full force. If he were to leave men enough at Oswego to defend the works, he would not be able to go on with force enough to accomplish his object ; but if he were to pro ceed westward with his full force, the French from Fort Frontenac would at once capture Oswego and expose him to starvation. There was no escape from the dilemma, and it became necessary to abandon the campaign. The winter which followed was one of such misery on the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsyl vania as had never been witnessed be- Desolation on fore. Firebrand and tomahawk were the frontier perpetually busy, and it proved impossible to concentrate forces in such way as to deal with the horror. It was a winter of bitter contention in legislatures, and of gloom and fault-finding everywhere. At last, in May, 1756, nearly two years after Washington s little campaign at Great Mead ows, England declared war against France, and the most memorable war of modern times was begun. Frederick of Prussia, in beginning to build up a modern Germany out of the sound est elements that had survived the general devastation of the Thirty Years War, had con trived to enlist against himself a powerful coali- 302 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND tion. By his seizure of Silesia he had made a o nin of permanent enemy of Austria. Maria the Seven Theresa, having failed to recover Sile sia in the recent war, was ready to try again ; and she found a formidable ally in Eliza beth of Russia, who was ready to attack Prus sia for various reasons, all of them sharpened and embittered by the deadliest of insults when Frederick had called her by an epithet that was strictly true. To these two powers was added that of France, which was coming to forebode more danger from Prussia than from Austria. In such a combination the alliance of England with Prussia was marked out by all sound policy. From the narrowest point of view, George II. En land and wou ^ & n d ms principality of Hanover Prussia join thus better protected, while from the widest point of view, the contest for colonial empire could best be carried on while the military strength of France was largely ab sorbed in warfare on the continent of Europe. The English treasury was thus the mainstay of Frederick the Great, who put every penny of the money thus received to the best possible use by sustaining single-handed a victorious contest against Russia, Austria, and France. 1 1 [For the diplomatic changes which preceded the Seven Years War, see Perkins, France under Louis XV., ii. 184, or Tuttle, History of Prussia under Frederic the Great , ii. 234-321.] CROWN POINT 303 While Frederick was winning some of the most astonishing victories the world has seen, and keeping his three antagonists at bay, the fight for control of the colonial world was carried on by England with great advantage against France in North America and in Hindostan. It was not in a moment, however, that the English world reaped the advantages of this new combination of forces, for it happened that the choice made by the French minister for a commander-in-chief in America proved to be exceptionally fortunate. The appointment of Louis Joseph, Marquis de Mont- , r . Montcalm calm, was an appointment for long- tried merit. He was forty-four years of age, having been born in the neighbourhood of Nimes in 1712. He had an excellent educa tion, especially in Greek and Latin classics and philology, and his literary tastes were such that one of the great objects of his ambition was to become a member of the Academy. In his leisure moments he was always* engaged in read ing and study. During the war of the Austrian Succession he had served with great distinction, and he was recognized by competent judges as one of the ablest officers in the French service. When he came to America he left behind him in his charming country home at Candiac, near Nimes, a wife and six children, besides his mother. Montcalm was a man of strong fanv 304 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND ily affections and intense love of home, as we see from many charming allusions in his jour nal and letters while campaigning in the New World. His voyage of nearly six weeks was a rough one, and sometimes dangerous. In a letter to his wife he says : " The forecastle was always under water, and the waves broke twice over the quarter-deck. From the 22d of April to the evening of the 4 th of Canada May we had fogs, great cold, and an amazing quantity of icebergs. On the 3Oth, when luckily the fog lifted for a time, we counted sixteen of them. The day before, one drifted under the bowsprit, grazed it, and might have crushed us if the deck-officer had not called out quickly, Luff. After speaking of our troubles and sufferings, I must tell you of our pleasures, which were fishing for cod and eating it. The taste is exquisite. The head, tongue, and liver are morsels worthy of an epicure. Still, I would not advise anybody to make the voyage for their sake. My health is as good as it has been for a long time. I found it a good plan to eat little and take no supper ; a little tea now and then, and plenty of lemonade. Nevertheless I have taken very little liking for the sea, and think that when I shall be so happy as to rejoin you I shall end my voyages there. I don t know when this letter CROWN POINT 305 will go. I shall send it by the first ship that returns to France, and keep on writing till then. It is pleasant, I know, to hear particulars about the people one loves, and I thought that my mother and you, my dearest and most beloved, would be glad to read all these dull details. We heard mass on Easter Day. All the week before, it was impossible, because the ship rolled so that I could hardly keep my legs. If I had dared, I think I should have had myself lashed fast. I shall not soon forget that Holy Week." 1 When Montcalm arrived in Montreal, his reception by Governor Vaudreuil was far from cordial. Vaudreuil aspired to military fame, and thought himself competent to direct military operations on a large calm s arrival scale as well as to command either Canadian militia or French regulars. He liked, moreover, to have everything his own way, and knew very well that he was not likely always to pre vail over a strong-willed and energetic general- in-chief. Besides, Vaudreuil was a native of Canada, having been born there during his father s administration, and between Canadians and Frenchmen from the old country there was somewhat the same kind of jealousy that existed between Americans and British. The coldness between Montcalm and the governor 1 [Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, i. 364, 365.]] 306 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND sometimes had an ill effect upon the French operations. Nevertheless the arrival of Montcalm was soon signalized by a heavy blow to the Eng lish. In a certain sense the blow was prepared by the English themselves. We have seen how Shirley s expedition had been turned back at Oswego by French demonstrations from Fort Frontenac. Such a failure was of course inevi table for any expedition directed against Niag ara, unless Fort Frontenac were first captured. After Shirley s return to New York the gen- shiriey eral discontent assumed the form of superseded a q uarre i between him and Johnson, and several persons of influence in New York wrote to the minister requesting that another commander-in-chief be appointed in his stead. The ministry replied by appointing John Camp bell, Earl of Loudoun, to the chief command in America ; but as this particular Campbell was slow in coming, they sent General James Aber- crombie in advance of him, and as Abercrombie was not quite ready, they sent Colonel Daniel Webb; insomuch that Shirley, who was just preparing a new campaign against Oswego, had to turn over the command to Webb, who turned it over to Abercrombie, who turned it over to Loudoun, and so much swapping of horses in mid-stream, as President Lincoln would have said, was not conducive to promptness and CROWN POINT 307 unity of operation. As for the new comman- der-in-chief, he was as poor a choice as could have been made. Shirley was a mere The Earl of amateur soldier, but he had courage, Loudoun quickness, and discretion. Loudoun, on the other hand, was dull, sleepy, and irresolute, the kind of man who would be likely to stop halfway in any important undertaking. Dr. Franklin summed him up very well when he compared him to Saint George on the tavern signboards, always on horseback, but never get ting ahead. The effect of the arrivals of Webb and Aber- crombie was to delay an expedition which Shir ley would have sent to Oswego in the hope of moving from that point against Fort Fronte- nac. When Loudoun arrived, late in Loudoun July, he determined to concentrate ^ a n c s k to his efforts against Ticonderoga, where Ticonderoga the French had erected a new fortress, and to content himself on Lake Ontario by merely holding Oswego. Having thus decided, he allowed time to slip away without reinforcing Oswego. This was bad generalship, since if the French were to take Oswego, they would not only cut off the English from Niagara but would have their hands free to concentrate against them at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. After Loudoun s arrival at Albany, all opera tions were brought to a standstill by a silly 308 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND order of the king in council that all generals and colonels holding commissions from the colonial governments should rank only on the level of senior captains. Such an arrangement might have put the entire provincial army under the command of a British major. While hot disputes were raging over this matter, Loudoun suddenly remembered the need of Oswego and sent Webb in all haste with reinforcements, but this hurry at the eleventh hour was unavailing. When Webb arrived at the great portage be tween the Mohawk valley and Lake Ontario, about where Fort Stanwix was afterwards built, and near the site of the present city of Rome, Fail of ne learned with dismay that Mont- Oswego ca ] m na d captured Oswego. It was even so. While Loudoun had been dawdling, Montcalm had been acting. He had crossed from Fort Frontenac, invested Oswego, and pressed the siege so vigorously that the garri son of fourteen hundred men with two or three hundred non-combatants surrendered, prisoners of war. Among the spoils were more than a hundred light cannon. Here something oc curred which was ominous of future horror. A few of Montcalm s Indians began murdering prisoners, and it was only with great difficulty and by making lavish promises that he suc ceeded in restraining those painted demons. He reckoned that the presents to be given them CROWN POINT 309 as a ransom for the prisoners would amount to ten or twelve thousand livres. The following winter witnessed many scenes of partisan warfare which we need not here stop to describe. The summer of 1757 found things looking ill for the English cause. The French had destroyed Oswego, which was for them an outpost dangerously near the strongholds of the Six Nations, but while they held Fort Fronte- nac they could prevent the English from reach ing the Niagara River, and this fact, together with their possession of Fort Duquesne, seemed to have given them the victory so far as the whole interior of the continent was concerned. The effect of the capture of Oswego upon the Indians was very great. One day a Montcalm > 8 party from Lake Superior came to see ca P ture f TV if i j i i i Oswego im- Montcalm, and their spokesman thus presses the addressed him : " We wanted to see Indians this famous man who tramples the English under his feet. We thought we should find him so tall that his head would be lost in the clouds. But you are a little man, my father. It is when we look into your eyes that we see the greatness of the pine-tree and the fire of the eagle." l It remained to see what could be done in the direction of Lake Champlain or in that 1 [Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, i. 475, from Bougain ville s Journal.] 310 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of Cape Breton Island. The Earl of Loudoun Loudoun s decided that the most important thing IgaTnsT n to be done was to capture Louisburg, Louisburg anc j to that end he started with more than ten thousand men and seventeen ships-of- the-line, and after wasting the whole summer retired to the mainland because he heard that a French fleet was approaching which outnum bered him by one ship. He was an apt scholar of that worthy king of France who marched his forty thousand men up a hill and down again. But while Loudoun seems to have been incapable of achieving anything, he was able to spoil much. These mighty preparations for Louisburg went far towards stripping the Hud son River of its defenders, so that Montcalm was able to entertain thoughts of advancing southward and capturing Albany. For this purpose there were assembled at Ticonderoga Montcalm s in J ul 7 a forCQ f SCVCnty-SlX hun- expedition dred Frenchmen and Canadians with waiiam eighteen hundred Indians, a force Henry unusually large and unwieldy. The story of Braddock s defeat and the fall of Oswego had penetrated far and wide through out the wilderness, and among the bedizened chiefs who were gathered between Lake Cham- plain and Lake George were some from dis tant Iowa, whose language none of the whit* FORT WILLIAM HENRY 311 men, not even those most familiar with the forest, could understand. They made no secret of the fact that they had come for feasting and pelf. Such gormandizers the Frenchmen said they had never seen. Long rows of oxen roasted whole disappeared with amazing celerity, and wild fowl vanished as if they had taken to wing and flown down the red men s throats. When, however, it came to eating human flesh, our Frenchmen winced at the sight. As for brandy and rum, it was necessary to guard the casks with great care to prevent these thirsty allies from breaking them open ; and when Ferodty of the Indians were thoroughly drunk Montcaim s ^U C -^ U 11 Ul Indian allies their ferocity became uncontrollable ; they quarrelled incessantly, and bit and tore each other with their teeth like wild beasts. It was not easy for the French to restrain these creatures, for if they had been prevented from eating prisoners and drinking rum, they would have taken offence and gone trooping off on other business, and in that wilderness they were as necessary to the French as cavalry are necessary in civilized warfare. It has been said that the eyes of an army are its cavalry ; it might be truly said that the eyes of the French force in the wilderness were its Indian scouts. The only English force opposed to Mont- calm consisted of twenty-six hundred men at 312 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Fort Edward, under the immediate command of General Webb, and twelve hundred at the head of Lake George, where Johnson had for merly defeated Dieskau. It was shameful mis- The English management on the part of Loudoun force at Fort to leave this important point so weakly Henry and guarded. When Webb learned that Fort Edward the Frencn were yfcdy to make an attack, he intended to move his men from Fort Edward to Lake George, but he presently de sisted from this lest the French should seize the occasion to come down by way of South Bay, 1 slip around his right flank, and move upon Albany. The expedient of withdrawing his weak advance force to the meeting of routes at Fort Edward does not seem to have occurred to him. So he sent forward a thousand men, thus raising the numbers at Lake George to twenty- two hundred. This force was protected by strong lines of works which Johnson had called Fort William Henry, and also by huge trunks of felled trees scattered in various directions. Against this fortress Montcalm started on the ist of August with a force of seven thou sand Frenchmen and sixteen hundred Indians, leaving a garrison of four hundred men at Ti- conderoga. On arriving at Fort William Henry he sent a summons to the commander, Colonel 1 [The southern tip of Lake Champlain, about halfway between Ticonderoga and the head of Lake George. ] Y O R K *" i** E N G L A D FORT WILLIAM HENRY 313 Monro, to surrender, but Monro refused, and presently the French general found himself obliged to proceed by regular meth- Montcaim ods of siege, opening parallels, plant- JJ^Snf ing batteries, and pounding the works. Henr x While this was going on, a letter from Gen eral Webb was captured by the French. It was written to inform Colonel Monro that General Webb would be unable to come to his assistance until further reinforcements should arrive, for which he had sent repeated requests down the river. After reading this welcome information, Montcaim kept it in his pocket two or three days until some bad breaches had been made in the English works, and then he sent it in to Colonel Monro with a flag of truce and many compliments upon his bravery. Monro politely dismissed the flag and con tinued to earn the compliments by holding out until the close of the eighth day ; by that time his heavy guns were all silenced, three hundred of his men were killed, and a considerable por tion of the garrison were disabled with small pox. Under these circumstances Monro capit ulated. His force was to march out with the honours of war and to retain one cannon as a present in token of their gallantry. Before the articles were signed Montcaim called a meeting of the Indian chiefs, and received from them a solemn promise confirmed in every manner 314 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND known to the Indian mind that there should be no molestation of the prisoners. The chiefs Surrender of were unanimous in making this prom- Fo^wuHarn ise > an< ^ asseverated with much ear- Henry nestness that they would restrain their young warriors from any acts of cruelty or plunder. No sooner, however, had the garrison left the fort, than a rabble of Indians swarmed in and instantly tomahawked all the men who were confined to their beds by sickness. This incident was like the tiger s foretaste of blood. The Indians were too numerous to be kept in control by their French allies. They understood their power, and were to the last de gree indignant at the prospect of being baulked in their bloodthirsty fury. The next morning, according to agreement, the English column started for Fort Edward with an escort of The Canadian militia. At the moment of Indians un- starting, a large party of Indians tomahawked and scalped seventeen wounded men in the presence of an inadequate French force that had been sent to guard them. Not long after the march had begun another party rushed up from under cover of the trees and seized some seventy or eighty New Hamp shire soldiers, and dragging them off under cover, massacred them at leisure. The short journey to Fort Edward was an evil one, for such acts of murder kept recurring in spite of FORT WILLIAM HENRY 315 Montcalm s persistent and furious efforts to prevent them. It is said that in the course of the march the Indians succeeded in dragging six or seven hundred persons from the column ; but Montcalm was able to rescue from four to five hundred of these. The exact number of the victims has never been satisfactorily esti mated, but it was enough to make Themas . Fort William Henry a name of hor- sao-eof ror to Americans for many a long year. To Montcalm it was an abiding grief; but while we must acquit the general of any share of this atrocity, it can hardly be denied that some of the French officers showed culpa ble weakness, acting as if they were more than half afraid of the red men themselves, so that they were over-cautious about drawing the wrath of the murderers upon themselves. Take it for all in all, it is one of the blackest inci dents in the history of our country. Before the next season of campaigning a great change had been made in England. By a happy stroke of fortune the conduct of military operations throughout the empire had been put into the hands of William Pitt, the . . William Pitt greatest war minister and organizer of victory that the world has seen. It boded no good to France when the genius of Pitt was called upon to cooperate with that of Frederick of Prussia. Pitt had a supreme capacity for 316 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND administration and an infallible eye for the selection of men to carry out his plans. He was never confused by petty details, but saw through them to the great underlying princi ples. He delighted in large ideas, as is shown by the fact that the maritime supremacy of England, the winning of the Mississippi valley for English-speaking America, and the creation of a renovated Protestant empire in -Germany were in his mind the closely allied phases of one stupendous scheme. Along with these high intellectual qualifications, there was in Pitt a magnetic glow of lofty emotion which seemed at once under his leadership to inspire the whole English people. It was said of him that no man ever entered his presence without going away a better citizen and a braver man. In an age when most statesmen looked with tolerance upon corruption, and when domestic morals were not upon a high plane, Pitt was absolutely spotless in public and in private life, and the popular faith in his disinterestedness was never disappointed. He was a democrat, too, after the fashion of the eighteenth century, and for Pitt s hold t ^ le ^ rst ^ me s ^ nce tne death of pn popular Cromwell the English people felt that they had a leader who represented the whole nation, from the highest to the low est. In America the feeling toward him was nearly as strong as in England, so that when FORT WILLIAM HENRY 317 he began by informing the New England colo nies that he should have to ask them for twenty thousand men, they replied with greater willing ness than when formerly they had been asked for one fourth of that number. One of Pitt s first acts was to recall the in competent Loudoun and to replace him by a general of tried ability, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and among his subordinate generals was the youth ful James Wolfe, of whom we shall presently hear more. Pitt would have been glad Pi tt recalls to remove Abercrombie, but influ- Loudoun ences were brought to bear in behalf of that general of such a nature that it did not seem altogether wise to disregard them. He was accordingly retained in command of the forces on the Hudson River, while Pitt sent over to be his second in command Lord Howe, whom Wolfe called the best soldier in the English army, and who was unquestionably an officer of rare personality and extraordinary powers. This George Augustus, Viscount Howe was the elder brother of the famous admiral, Richard, Vis count Howe, and of Sir William Howe, who commanded the British army in America a few years later. These three brothers were grand sons of George I., whose daughter by the Bar oness Kielmannsegge married Eman- i T7 - TT & ~,, Lord Howe uel, Viscount Howe. They were half-cousins to the reigning king, George II 318 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND All three studied military affairs from their ear liest years ; all three were warm friends to the American colonists ; but this was especially true of the eldest brother, George Augustus. In sending him to America Pitt had reason to be lieve that he would prove the real guiding spirit of Abercrombie s army. We have now to see how an adverse fate exacted yet one more costly sacrifice before all the benefits of the new change in administration were realized. At the end of June, 1758, Abercrombie s army was encamped at the head of Lake George where Johnson had defeated Dieskau Theexpedi- don against three years before, and where scarcely ten months had e lapsed since the hor- rors of Fort William Henry. Abercrombie had collected at that spot more than six thousand British regulars and nine thousand provincial troops ; in all, more than fifteen thousand, the largest army that had ever been collected in North America. The task before him was to do what Johnson had failed to do, to move upon Montcalm at Ticonderoga and defeat him. By the 4th of July all the arrangements were completed, and next morning the whole army embarked in bateaux and canoes on Lake George. It was an imposing sight, eloquently described by more than one contemporary pen. It soon appeared that Pitt had not been wrong in supposing that Lord Howe would prove to TICONDEROGA 319 be the life of the army. His popularity was un bounded with all ranks, from the commander down to the private soldiers. On his first arrival in America he had seized an opportunity for learning something about the conditions of war fare in the wilderness, for he sought Lord Howe s with the true insight of genius to adaptability adapt himself to new conditions. He would lay aside all cumbersome baggage and trim away all useless apparel, cutting down long coats into jackets, making the men wear leather leggings for protection in the brush, and carry meal in their knapsacks, which they could at any time cook for themselves. In all such things he him self set the example. At noon of July 6 the flotilla had reached the northern end of Lake George, where it nar rows into a crooked river or strait communicat ing with Lake Champlain at the mouth of Wood Creek. The whole force was speedily landed, and began its march on the west side of the river. Robert Rogers led the way with a couple of New England regiments,but presently became entangled in woods so dense that the The English rays of the sun could hardly find their ^ t t"f h p e arty way in. Here, after a while, they be- woods came confused, and were at a loss in which di rection to move. A party of three hundred and fifty French under Langy had been watching the landing from an eminence between the river 320 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND and Trout Brook. Before they could retreat from that spot the whole English army had advanced so far as to cut them asunder from their main army at Ticonderoga, but Langy was an old hand at bushranging, and he thought that by crossing to the north of Trout Brook he could describe a semicircle and reach Ticon deroga. Thus the three hundred and fifty Frenchmen under Langy and the two New England regiments under Rogers were wander ing in a forest which at midday was nearly as dark as night. And here the Frenchmen, too, soon lost their bearings. At the very head of the English column was Lord Howe with Major Israel Putnam, when all at once a rustling was heard among the branches, and a sharp cry of " Qui vive ? " The answer, " Fran^ais" was prompt enough, but some of Langy s men had sharp eyes, and even in that pitch darkness could tell the British scarlet from the French white. Langy s reply was a volley which slew Lord Death of Howe and wrecked the fortunes of Lord Howe an arm y. The further result of this chance collision was the defeat of Langy s party, most of which was captured, but when this densest piece of woods had been traversed, and the news of what had happened flew from rank to rank, it is said the spirit of the whole army was dashed, and high hopes gave place to con sternation. So greatly had this young officer TICONDEROGA 321 endeared himself to people in the short time since his arrival in America, that at the news of his death there was weeping throughout the northern colonies. The commonwealth of Mas sachusetts afterward erected a monument to Howe in Westminster Abbey. Nobody felt the loss more keenly than Aber- crombie, who had been depending upon Howe s advice. He had need of such advice after com ing within touch of the French position. Across the plateau northwest of the fortress of Ticon- deroga there runs a ridge which Montcalm had fortified by felling trees in such wise Montcaim s as to make a zigzag parapet, so that defences an approaching foe could be torn between flank fires of grapeshot and musketry. On the inner side was a platform from which to fire, and the parapet was so high that nothing could be seen of the French soldiers standing upon the plat form except the crowns of their hats. Along the entire front of the parapet the ground was covered with intertwisted boughs presenting a myriad sharp points to any approaching foe. Now this position was obviously one which could hardly be carried by infantry armed with muskets, but to a general who possessed the slightest inventiveness of mind it was very far from being an impregnable position. Indeed, Montcalm had been slow in making up his mind whether to try to hold Ticonderoga or to 322 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND retreat upon Crown Point, and when at last he decided to fortify this position, his resolution was somewhat hastily taken. It is probable that Montcalm made a mistake in trying to defend the point of land upon which the for tress of Ticonderoga stood, for there were sev eral ways in which Abercrombie might have de feated him. He might have sent back to the landing place and brought up all his cannon and used them to batter down these Alternatives open to wooden obstructions before charging them with his infantry. That, one would suppose, would have been a mere ordi nary precaution. And then, there was a hill in the immediate neighbourhood where Abercrom bie might have planted a few batteries that could have torn the French army to pieces, and must have obliged them to change their position at once. Precisely such a use of that hill was made in 1777 by General Burgoyne, with the desired result of taking Ticonderoga, and since that occasion it has been known as Mount Defiance. Yet again, if Abercrombie had made a feint with part of his army upon Montcalm s position, while with his main force he had marched about five miles on the road to Crown Point, he would Montcalm have found the lake there so narrow Abercrom- tnat ne might have commanded the bie s stupidity w hole of it with batteries, and thus cut off Montcalm s retreat and left it for star- TICONDEROGA 323 vation to do the rest. It would seem, there fore, that Montcalm was rescued from a perilous situation by the stupidity of his enemy, and it is among the possibilities that he may have counted upon that very circumstance. There is a curious analogy between this battle of Ticon- deroga and those of Bunker Hill and New Orleans. At Bunker Hill the American force was completely at the mercy of the British, and might have been forced to surrender without the loss of a life. This would have been done if the British had simply gone by water and occupied Charlestown Neck, but the brother of the young general slain at Ticonderoga pre ferred to assault intrenchments and suffered ac cordingly. 1 So, too, at New Orleans. It was not necessary for Sir Edward Pakenham to assault Andrew Jackson s intrenchments, for he might have advanced up the further bank of the Mississippi River and turned the whole position, but he preferred the bulldog method, and very probably Jackson should have the credit of having known his man. With regard to Abercrombie, he seems to have been influenced by undue haste. A rumour reached him that reinforcements were on the way to Montcalm, and therefore he was anxious to adopt the quickest method. Besides, he seems to have harboured that fallacious notion that one 1 [See Fiske, The American Revolution, i. 167.] 324 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Englishman can under any circumstances beat three Frenchmen. At all events, on the fore An assault noon of July 8 the assault was or ordered dered. The instructions to the Eng lish infantry were to carry the works by a solid bayonet charge, an order which seems almost incredible, for as might have been expected, the compactness needed for a bayonet charge was almost instantly broken up by the tangle of pointed boughs and the trunks lying in all directions upon the ground, and presently the assailants, caught in a hailstorm of grape and musket shot on either flank, could only answer by firing in turn. Again and again, with as tounding gallantry, the men from New England and Old England returned to the charge. Be tween noon and nightfall they made six assaults of the most desperate character, sometimes almost winning their way over the parapet, but of course the situation was utterly hopeless. The AH assaults greater the bravery, the sadder the repulsed \ oss o f j jf ei At twilight, when the fir ing ceased, Abercrombie had lost in killed and wounded two thousand men. 1 Even after all this useless waste of life, there was no reason why the English should have retreated. Montcalm was in no condition to take the offensive, and it would still have been 1 [The killed alone amounted to some five hundred and fifty men. Kingsford, History of Canada, iv. 173.] TICONDEROGA 325 in Abercrombie s power to march down the Crown Point road and cut off all supplies from the French army ; but our accounts agree in representing the general s conduct as disgraceful. He seems to have lost his head, and thought only of escaping, as if from a superior foe. By the time he had returned to the head of Lake George, Abercrombie found himself a laughing stock. People called him a poltroon, Abercrombie an old woman, Mrs. Nabbycrombie, ridiculed and such other nicknames and epithets as served to relieve their feelings. It was indeed a dark day for New England when the death of Lord Howe deprived the army of its brains. Of all the disasters of the war, perhaps none struck so near home as Ti- conderoga. But the tide of misfortune had reached its height, and was already turning. We have now to take up the story of Louis- burg, of Fort Frontenac and Niagara, of Fort Duquesne and Quebec, a story fraught with good cheer for English-speaking America. LOUISBURG, FORT DUQUESNE, AND THE FALL OF QUEBEC A midsummer of 1758 four years had elapsed since Washington s experiences at Great Meadows, and as yet little or nothing had occurred to encourage the English. It will be remembered that along the border between New France and the English colonies strategic there were strategic points of primary points in importance. The first of these was the contest _ .. c rort Duquesne, commanding one or the great central routes into the western wilder ness. The French had anticipated the English in seizing this point, and the ruin of Braddock s army had been incurred in the attempt to recover it for the English. The second strategic point was Fort Frontenac at the outlet of Lake On tario into the river St. Lawrence, for this strong hold commanded the eastern approaches to Niag ara, and thus controlled the other great route to the west. Thus far its importance had been illustrated, first, by the failure of Shirley to ad vance beyond Oswego in the direction of Niag ara, and secondly, by Montcalm s capture of LOUISBURG 327 Oswego, a very heavy blow to the English. The third strategic point was the southern ex tremity of Lake Champlain with its fortresses at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, for in French hands this was an excellent base for an invasion of New York, while in English hands it would serve equally well for an invasion of Canada. This strategic point had been held from the first by the French, and in three campaigns the English had failed to drive them away. In the first of these Johnson had won a tactical victory which he failed to improve. The second had witnessed the shocking tragedy of Fort William Henry. The third had been a climax of imbe cility, as shown in the useless butchery at Ticon deroga and the shameful retreat of Abercrom- bie after that battle. The fourth strategic point was the fortified town of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island, which not only threatened the Newfoundland fisheries and British commerce on the Atlantic in general, but also afforded an excellent base for a French invasion of the New England coast, while at the same time it made the entrance of the St. Lawrence dangerous for a hostile fleet. On the other hand, if held by the English, Louisburg afforded an excellent base for a naval expedition up the St. Lawrence against Quebec. This important place had been captured by New England militia, aided by Brit ish ships in the preceding war thirteen years 328 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND before, but had been restored to France by the treaty which terminated that war. Down to the midsummer of 1758 nothing seemed to have prospered with the English, but at all the strategic points where there had been collision, the advantage had remained with the French. The first change of Louisburg r T . fortune was at Louisburg. That town was situated on a peninsula at the south side of Cape Breton Island. To the east of it was a deep and finely sheltered bay which was de fended at its northern end by what was called the Grand Battery, and on an island at the entrance, by what was called the Island Bat tery ; while across the peninsula, in front of the town, the entrance to the harbour was com manded by a series of four bastions named from south to north Princess s, Queen s, King s, and Dauphin s. The rear of the town was to a con siderable extent protected by marshes, and the rocky coast of Gabarus Bay to the rear or west presented but few points where troops could effect a landing. At all times the sea was so boisterous as to make it dangerous for any floating thing to approach the rocks. Since the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle the French govern ment had spent great sums of money in per fecting the fortifications. It was now com manded by General Drucour, who had three thousand regular troops with a few Canadians LOUISBURG 329 and Indians, while in the harbour were five ships-of-the-line and seven frigates mounting five hundred and forty guns and carrying three thousand men. On the twenty-eighth day of May there sailed out from Halifax an English force which was to undertake the reduction of Louisburg. It was commanded by Admiral Bosca- The English wen, who had twenty-three ships-of- the-line and eighteen frigates along with a fleet of transports carrying eleven thou sand British regulars and five hundred colonial militia. The land force was commanded by the new general-in-chief for America, Sir Jeffrey Amherst. It was the 2d of June when this powerful force arrived in Gabarus Bay and scrutinized its wild coast for a place to land in the rear of the town. The prospect was not encouraging, and some officers were inclined to pronounce the attempt foolhardy, but Boscawen and Amherst saw a spot which seemed practi cable, and they entrusted the task of effecting a landing there to the young brigadier-general, James Wolfe. There were three or four places along the coast where a landing might be effected if the sea were somewhat to subside, and the plan was to make demonstrations against all these points while the extreme left wing under Gen eral Wolfe should advance against the most 330 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND remote of them, known as Fresh Water Cove, with the intention of carrying it. Although this plan was matured on the id of June, it was not until the 8th that there was enough of a lull in the violence of the surf to admit of any approach to the shore whatever. Then the plan was tried, and Wolfe s landing was General . Wolfe effects achieved with brilliant success. Al- a landing t h ou gh Fresh Water Cove was de fended by one thousand Frenchmen behind entrenchments supported by a battery of eight cannon, Wolfe managed his landing so as to pass by their left flank, between it and the town, and there to attack them in such wise as to cut them off. Under these circumstances the Frenchmen abandoned their works and fled to the woods, whence they made a circuitous re treat to their comrades in the town. After this auspicious beginning the remainder of the English army was safely landed, and ready for further operations. Troops were presently moved so as to threaten the communications of the Grand Battery at the north end of the harbour, whereupon the French abandoned it. The eastern side of the harbour ran in the shape of a sickle from the Grand Battery, terminating in a point opposite the point of the peninsula on which the city stood. The space of sea between these two points was the entrance to the harbour, and the small island already LOUISBURG 331 mentioned, with its Island Battery, lay midway between them. Considering the great superior ity of the English fleet, the French had felt it rash to keep a detachment upon the The harbour opposite point, where it was liable to ^" e d ri " se " be cut off", and they had therefore reduced by withdrawn it. Now Wolfe, with theEn e lish twelve hundred men, marched past the Grand Battery and around the sickle-shaped shore and took possession of the works which the French had there abandoned, and from that point he kept up a heavy fire against the Island Battery until by June 25 all its guns were dismounted and silent. It now became possible for the English fleet to enter the harbour, and in order to ward off" such a calamity, Drucour sank six ships at the entrance. Meanwhile, General Amherst was digging his trenches and building his parallels with prodigious labour over the treacherous ground behind the town. Gradually the English drew nearer, until they approached the very walls on both sides of the peninsula, and kept throw ing shot and shell into the streets. Gradual In one adventure after another the ^French French ships were sunk or burned fleet until only five were left. On the 2ist of July a bomb falling upon one of these penetrated her magazine and she blew up, communicating the 332 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND flames to two sister ships, which were burned to the water s edge. A large part of the town had now taken fire, and the time of the besieged was largely consumed in fighting the flames ; then a party of six hundred English sailors in boats rowed into the harbour and seized the two remaining French ships ; one of them, a seventy-four, they burned ; while the other, a sixty-four, they made a prize and towed away. On the 26th of July the last gun in the row of French bastions was dismounted and a white flag was raised. The details of the sur- Surrender of render were completed next day. It Louisburg was a truly great victory, for the New England coast was at last relieved of a serious danger, and the way was opened for an English fleet to ascend the St. Lawrence. There was a general feeling that the glory of the achievement belonged to the youthful Wolfe more than to any one else. While the management of the whole affair, both by General Amherst and by Admiral Boscawen, had been admirable, yet in all Wolfe s operations there had been the artis tic touch, so seldom witnessed, that marked real military genius, and along with all the intelli gence, the quickness and sureness, there was an electric enthusiasm that communicated itself to the whole army, and wherever that tall, emaci ated form was present, there was the centre of interest. FORT FRONTENAC 333 It had been Wolfe s desire to follow up the capture of Louisburg by an immediate advance against Quebec, but the obstinate defence of Drucour had made it so late in the . Wolfe re- season that it was thought best to post- turns to pone such an enterprise for the present, **&* and Wolfe, who was seriously ill, went home to England for the winter, while Amherst took his army to the Hudson River with intent to re lieve the situation at Lake George. Meanwhile in Abercrombie s camp there had been much despondency and grumbling since the terrible slaughter of the 8th of July. Dur ing the summer more or less guerilla fighting went on, in the course of which Israel Put nam was at one time taken prisoner and tied to a stake to be burned alive, but was res cued by a French officer after the tongues of flame had actually begun to curl around him. Presently one of Abercrombie s officers, Colonel John Bradstreet, accomplished something which went far toward changing the face of things on the New York frontier. Bradstreet was a native of England, forty-six years of age, but most of his life had been spent in America. Among Shirley s officers he had been recognized as very capable; he had taken part in the first capture of Louisburg, and in the present war he had been connected with the Oswego cam- 334 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND paign. He now had reason to believe that such heavy demands had been made upon the French Bradstreet s resources in various directions that an inadequate force had been left to guard Fort Frontenac. He there fore proposed to conduct an expedition for the capture of that important place. Lord Howe had favoured this plan, but Abercrombie had not regarded it with approval. At last, after a council of war had been held to consider the case, Bradstreet was allowed to undertake the task with a force of three thousand men, chiefly militia of New York and New England. On his march through the Oneida country he found occasion to observe that Montcalm s victory at Ticonderoga had wrought more or less disaf fection toward the English even in the Long House. It was high time to do something to counteract this influence. Bradstreet kept on to the site of the ruined Oswego, and thence, crossing the lake in boats, pounced upon Fort FortFron- Frontenac and captured it, with its tenac taken, garrison of only one hundred and ten men. He also took seventy cannon and mortars, nine sloops of war, and an enor mous quantity of warlike material, provisions, and furs. It was impossible to make the best use of these captures without rebuilding Os wego, so as to regain a seaport on the lake; FORT FRONTENAC 335 but there did not seem to be men enough and time enough for this. General Stanwix was then building the fort known by his name, on the divide between Lake Ontario and the Mohawk valley, and that seemed to be all the construc tive work that could then be undertaken. The walls of Fort Frontenac were battered down by its own cannon, and as much as possible of the military spoil was taken across the lake, whence some of it was carried away and the remainder destroyed. A thousand men were left to de fend Fort Stanwix, and Bradstreet returned to the Hudson River. In this expedition Bradstreet dealt a blow second only, if second at all, to the capture of Louisburg. It is true the success was but partial ; a complete success would have meant the restoration of Oswego as a port on the route to Niagara. The building of Fort Stan wix as a means of maintaining English influ ence near the centre of the Long House did not quite supply the place of such a The loss of port ; nevertheless, the route to Niag- Fort Fron - tenac weak- ara was laid open, and what was of ens Fort far greater importance, the communi- Duc i uesne cations with Fort Duquesne were cut off. That all-important fortress was supplied through the long line of communication from the St. Law rence River to the Niagara, and thence across 336 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND Lake Erie to Presqu Isle and Venango and down the Allegheny River. Among the munitions of war and other provisions captured at Fort Frontenac there was a great supply already on its way for Fort Duquesne. The exploit of Bradstreet left that remote strategic point in the air, and we have now to see how its con quest was completed. Among the excellent officers sent by Pitt to America was a veteran Scotchman named John General Forbes. He was a well-educated man, John Forbes wno h ac i ^ een f or SO me time a physi cian before taking up the life of a soldier. He was frank, simple, honest, abounding in good sense, and very ready to learn from others. His weight of character, combined with kindliness, made him as much liked by the Americans as Braddock had been detested. It is a commen tary upon Forbes s strong qualities that during his American campaign he was suffering from a severe illness which carried him off in the following spring. Among its symptoms was a severe gastric and intestinal inflammation which kept him a large part of the time in acute tor ture, and it was commonly necessary for him The expe- to be carried in a litter, so that this campaign might well be said to have been conducted by a man upon his death-bed. General Forbes, however, had two very active and capable lieutenants : one was FORT DUQUESNE 337 George Washington ; the other was Lieutenant- Colonel Henry Bouquet, a native of Switzer land, who had seen much service on the con tinent of Europe and had entered the English service in 1756. He was destined a few years later, in Pontiac s war, to win a great reputa tion. The army commanded by General Forbes with these able lieutenants consisted of about seven thousand men, partly British regulars, partly the ordinary provincial militia, and partly a force known as the Royal Americans and composed chiefly of Pennsylvania Germans. It was among these Royal Americans that Bou quet held his commission. The first serious question was the choice of a route. Washington was in favour of the old route which had been taken by Brad- The choke dock, but Bouquet thought it would ofroutes be better to push westward through the moun tains of Pennsylvania in a course more or less like that now taken by the railroad from Har- risburg to Pittsburg. The opinion of Bouquet found favour with General Forbes and that route was chosen. Forbes s method of advance was very dif ferent from that of Braddock. Instead of ad vancing through mile after mile of un- Forbes , s known wilderness, taking with him im- method of mensely long baggage trains, Forbes s : method was to clear the way and make some- 338 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND thing of a road as he went along, building at in tervals sundry blockhouses which might serve as temporary supports and magazines. This required a great amount of digging, hewing, blasting, and building, and was a truly Hercu lean piece of work. Gradually, but surely, the rude road was carried over the ridges of the Al- leghanies and Laurel Hill, and finally at Loyal- hannon Creek the last magazine was built as a base for the final advance on Fort Duquesne, which was about fifty miles distant. One circumstance which reconciled Forbes to this slow method of advance was his know ledge of the difficulty of holding Indian allies together for many weeks at a time without the stimulus of slaughter or plunder frequently re newed. Vaudreuil had sent parties of Hurons, Miamis, Ottawas, and Pottawattamies to the The slow a id f Fort Duquesne, and earnestly progress of hoped that the English would not the march f. . -11 favourable defer their approach until these war- to success r - ors snou id have grown tired and gone home. Forbes appreciated this point and was willing to give them time to get tired. He had much reason to expect that delay would work in his favour, inasmuch as the advance of so large a force as seven thousand men could not fail to produce a notable moral effect upon the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingos, and he FORT DUQUESNE 339 entertained strong hopes of winning back these tribes to the English alliance. 1 At this juncture it was especially important that no opportunity should be afforded the enemy of inflicting even the slightest reverse upon the English advance, since the moral effect which might thus be produced upon the Indians was likely to be out of all proportion with the importance of the affair itself. Now there was in the English army a hot headed and ill-balanced Scotch officer named James Grant. He was a supercilious sort of person, and looked down with ineffable con tempt upon the provincial troops. It was very irksome to Major Grant to be within fifty miles of Fort Duquesne and not engage in some kind of work more exciting than that of spade and pickaxe ; so he sought and obtained permission from Bouquet to take a thousand men and go forward to reconnoitre the situation. Major Grant went forward, but did not re- Grant s dis astrous re- turn until he had provoked a fight with the enemy, in which he was ignominiously defeated with a loss of one quarter of his force. This Grant was afterward a member of Par liament, and served in the British army during a large part of the Revolutionary War. He is i [Cf. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. 141, 142, where the letters of Vaudreuil and Forbes, describing their plans, tre quoted.] 340 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND now perhaps best remembered for a remark which he made in the House of Commons in 1774, to the effect that the Americans were an undisciplined rabble who would take to their heels at the first sound of a cannon. But two years after that unlucky speech, when he met Smallwood s Marylanders at the battle of Long Island and pounded them four hours without making them give up an inch of ground, he found reason to amend his opinion. 1 Grant s defeat near Fort Duquesne occurred about the middle of September, and three weeks afterwards a convention of Indian chiefs was assembled at Easton in Pennsylvania. This conference was brought about by the earnest persuasion of General Forbes and the wise co operation of Sir William Johnson. It will be remembered that while the Mohawk end of the Long House, where Johnson had his home, was firmly attached to the English cause, yet through the rest of the confederacy symptoms of vacillation were sometimes seen, and at the Seneca end French interests now and then pre vailed. The recent capture of Fort Frontenac by Bradstreet had done much to discredit the French in the minds of the Senecas, and could these Indians, with the tribes southwest of them, be induced once more to make common 1 [Fiske, The American Revolution, i. 207-209.] FORT DUQUESNE 341 cause with the English, it was clear that Fort Duquesne would become untenable. To this end was exerted all the influence of Sir William Johnson over the Senecas, while at the same time a memorable triumph of diplo- Christian macy was effected by the noble Mo- Frederi f . . . Xi_ T- j Post wins ravian missionary, Christian rredenc over the Post, who at the Easton conference Indlans won the alliance of the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingos. 1 This achievement sealed the doom of Fort Duquesne. It was isolated in a hostile country without means of supply. Its French militia from New Orleans and the Illi nois country departed in boats down the Ohio. Its painted and feathered allies from Detroit and Green Bay tramped off through the many- hued autumn forests in the haze of Indian summer, and presently the French commander retired with his garrison up the Al- The French legheny River to Lake Erie and so evacuate Fort to Montreal. When Washington and Bouquet arrived at Fort Duquesne they found it dismantled and partially destroyed. There was not time enough, so late in the season, to rebuild it properly, but around the clus ter of traders cabins m that had gathered there a stockade was built, and the embryo village was named Pittsburg, in honour of the great 1 [Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. 142-150, gives in teresting extracts from Post s Journal^ 342 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND war minister. 1 In the following year General Stanwix came there and built Fort Pitt. The gallant Forbes, after lingering all winter on the brink of the grave, died in March, and was buried in Christ Church, Philadelphia. 2 Great were the rejoicings in Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as in all the other Eng lish colonies, over this auspicious capture of the Gateway of the West. But neither this nor any other conquest could be deemed finally secure so long as the French maintained them selves in Canada. Pitt was one who well under stood the sound military maxim that in war, until everything has been done, nothing has Pitt resolved been done, and he entered upon the Fre d nth e from 7 ^759 with the firm intention Canada o f driving the French from America altogether ; and what had been done on both sides of the globe was only the prelude to heavier blows. " We are forced to ask every morning," wrote Horace Walpole, " what new victory there is, for fear of missing one." Ter rible was the catalogue of French defeats in 1 ["I have used the freedom of giving your name to fort du Quesne, as I hope it was in some measure the being actu ated by your spirit that now makes me master of the place." Forbes to Pitt, Nov. 27, 1758. Kingsford, History of Can ada, iv. 213.] 2 [For the literature of this campaign, see Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., v. 599.] DEFENCES OF QUEBEC HAT rr mrs n v orcuns M0ff* 0. tftw BctUf/y a4tfi UfJ/x-r 4. The- Citadel. 9 o ?. Sailors It f> . . 7 . o D.Tht Hospital *, :e S. Anew Batitsv over -the . jftfy fjtjfnltcL <A/T> /VrAif t \ part oftfo Jfiru/4 Yards HJ^ewBatlfty at tbe lowr fHurlofih^Kingit^nrA I.RoyalsBottttry K Dauphin .Battery 3 & io >0 o o f> .(hitetu?Rat ttij no G.ntotuitcji o }Xe*r&ta6TJ J It P L A. OF THE RIVER >ST L AWR E N E V .< M to tlie Fa// of >>- /tfj tftf> OpvmtwaiJS of the QUEBEC, 1759 MAP OF THE OF QUEBEC THE FALL OF QUEBEC 343 1759. Their army in Germany was routed at Minden by Ferdinand, Prince of Brunswick ; one great fleet was defeated at Lagos Bay by Admiral Boscawen, and another was annihilated at Quiberon by Sir Edward Hawke ; Havre was bombarded by Admiral Rodney ; Guadeloupe, the most valuable of the French West Indies, was taken ; and serious reverses were experi enced in India. In America prodigious exertions were made. Massachusetts raised seven thousand men, and during the year contributed more Preparations than a million dollars toward the ex- c r mp ai gn penses of the war. Connecticut raised ofl 759 five thousand troops ; New Hampshire and Rhode Island furnished one thousand between them ; New York raised twenty-six hundred and eighty ; New Jersey, one thousand ; Penn sylvania, twenty-seven hundred ; Virginia, two thousand ; and South Carolina, twelve hun dred and fifty. These, together with twenty- two thousand British regulars and other special levies of provincial troops, made an aggregate of somewhat more than fifty thousand collected for the overthrow of the French power in America. With regard to the strategy with which this force was to be used, it bears the marks, of course, of the pre-Napoleonic age. The weak points in eighteenth-century strategy were the 344 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND insufficient concentration of resources and the persistence in advancing against objective points weak points by means of converging lines. Such clntur teentk ~ errors were f ten enough repeated in strategy the nineteenth century with less ex cuse. Since now, for the first time in the great war, the capture of Quebec entered into the plan of campaign, the more modern method would have been to concentrate everything upon that one point and to avoid expending energy in subordinate matters, however im portant, such as the capture of Fort Niagara, or the reestablishment of Oswego, inasmuch as success in the greater undertaking would carry with it success along the whole line. Nevertheless, the policy of diffused attack was more in accordance with the mental habits of that time, and Amherst, the commander-in- chief, though a capable general, was not a man of great originality. His plan was to complete the victories at the west and insure Creneral Am- herst s plan the safety of Pittsburg by sending an expedition westward to restore Os wego and take Niagara. At the same time the principal blow should be struck at Quebec by General Wolfe, assisted by the fleet under Ad miral Saunders. As for Lake Champlain, Am herst undertook to clear the French from there and proceed against Montreal, in the hope either of taking that city and advancing against THE FALL OF QUEBEC 345 Quebec, or, at least, of creating a diversion that would lighten Wolfe s task. The subor dinate parts of this scheme were carried out with a creditable measure of success, yet not such as to take away from Wolfe the necessity for doing the impossible. As often happens in warfare, the shortcomings of the average in tellect were repaired by the presence of some heaven-sent genius. We may first note the fortunes of the west ern expedition which started from Albany under General Prideaux, with Sir William General Johnson second in command. The work to be accomplished by this force was important, and five thousand men Nia g ara were prudently allotted to it. General Prideaux was to garrison the new Fort Stanwix, and pro ceeding thence to the shore of Lake Ontario was to leave half of his troops under Colonel Haldimand l to restore and defend Oswego, while he himself with the remainder of the army should move against Fort Niagara. The wis- 1 [On Haldimand s interesting career and invaluable ser vices to American history, see Kingsford, History of Canada, i y - 3 I 7 3 l %- Like Bouquet, he was a Swiss by birth. He gathered together two hundred and thirty-two volumes of manuscripts relating to American history for the years 1758 1785, which are now in the British Museum. They have been copied for the Canadian Archives, and have been calen dared in Brymner s Reports. Cf. Winsor, Narr. and Crtt. Hist., viii. 461.] 346 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND dom of leaving a strong force at Oswego was presently demonstrated when the French came across Lake Ontario to attack it. The pressure upon Quebec had become so heavy that it was not easy to find men enough for this western work, and one thousand men were all that could be gathered. This party, commanded by the partisan chieftain La Corne, made a demonstra tion upon the camp at Oswego, but was re pulsed with considerable loss, and retired from the scene. Fort Niagara, situated at the mouth of the Niagara River, was bravely defended by its commander, Pouchot. In the course of the en gagement Prideaux was killed by a shell, and the command devolved upon Johnson. Cut off, as Pouchot was, from all help from the east, his fate was only a question of time unless some thing could be done in his behalf by the militia and Indians of the west. A force had been gathered together from Detroit and the Sault Ste. Marie, from Green Bay and the Illinois Fail of Fort River, consisting of about eleven hun dred Frenchmen with two hundred In dians under command of the able leaders Marin, Aubry, and Ligneris, who had been the last commander at Fort Duquesne. The original object of this western muster had been to retrieve the last autumn s disaster and take Pittsburg from the English ; but the Frenchmen had only THE FALL OF QUEBEC 347 advanced as far as Presqu Isle and Le Boeuf when a message from Pouchot summoned them to come to the rescue at Fort Niagara. They made all haste in that direction, but on arriving in the neighbourhood were encountered by Sir William Johnson and totally defeated, losing all their principal leaders, who were taken prison ers. Nothing was left for Pouchot but to sur render his fortress and men. This surrender, which was made on the 24th of July, was the final blow to the French in the west. While these things were going on at Niagara, General Amherst with thirteen thousand men was advancing from the Hudson River upon Ticonderoga. The terrible defences which Montcalm had built, and which had cost Aber- crombie two thousand men in his attempt to carry them by storm, were still in position and once more confronted the brave men who re turned to the spot. Montcalm was no longer in command, having been called away to Quebec to defend that supreme position General Am- against the expedition led by Wolfe. Ticonderoga was now commanded by General Bourlamaque, who made as few signs of life as possible. Amherst was a man not given to erring on the side of rashness. Such an at tempt as Abercrombie s he would never have thought of making ; so he drew up his army 348 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND before the works and studied the situation. His meditations were interrupted by a stupendous explosion which scattered one of the forts in Tkonderoga fragments through the air, like a gi- deserted and gantic Roman candle. This explo sion represented the partial success of the Frenchmen s attempt to destroy the fort. Bourlamaque had been instructed by Vau- dreuil not to offer serious resistance at either Ticonderoga or Crown Point, where a defeat would endanger his being cut off; but, on the other hand, he was to withdraw the whole length of Lake Champlain to the river Richelieu, and there make a determined stand, where his line of retreat would be tolerably secure. In these prudent instructions we see how great had been the change of animus in the French command ers during the past twelve months. They had ceased to despise their adversary. The faults of Amherst as a commander now come into the foreground. He was a safe and prudent commander, not likely to commit any startling blunder, but his movements were marked by excessive deliberation. Instead of pushing and harassing Bourlamaque with might and main, he devoted too much attention to the restoration and repair of the forts at Ticonde roga and Crown Point, a kind of work which might have been left for another season. Am- THE FALL OF QUEBEC 349 herst was the commander-in-chief, whose objec tive point was some position where he might cooperate with his subordinate, Wolfe, Amheret > s in what all agreed to be the crowning ineffective operation of the war, if it should prove successful. If he could not directly cooperate with Wolfe, his next best course was to compel Montcalm to weaken his own force for the sake of helping Bourlamaque ; and the only practi cable way of doing this was to push Bourlamaque with all possible persistence and fury ; but this Amherst was far from doing. His conduct of the campaign was busy, but languid, and the month of September arrived before any pro gress had been made in disturbing the French lines at Isle aux Noix. Thus the problem of taking Quebec was left for Wolfe to solve alone, and after his own fashion. It seems hardly necessary to cumber the narrative with the numerous details of the summer s disappointing work. The principal elements in the problem were as follows : The city of Quebec stands on the summit of a cliff at least two hundred feet in height at the function of the St. Charles River with i o T T -i Quebec the St. Lawrence. It occupies the apex of the cliff between the two rivers, and looks eastward down the St. Lawrence. Below the St. Charles the distance down the north side 350 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND of the St. Lawrence to the Montmorenci is six miles. The bank is rather low, but precipitous, with a low beach at its foot, and for some distance from this beach the river is shallow. Nearly opposite the magnificent cataract of two hundred and fifty feet by which the Montmo renci discharges itself is the island of Orleans in mid-stream. Between this large island and the city of Quebec six miles up-stream the width of the river is not less than two miles, and it is often called the Basin. In passing Quebec, a name which means " The Narrow Place," the stream narrows to less than twelve hundred yards, so that in Wolfe s time the city could be reached by batteries planted on the south side of the stream at Point Levi, although the French had been disinclined to believe this. When Wolfe came up the river in June he encamped his army upon the island of Orleans and upon the mainland at Point Levi and sur veyed the situation. The French army, four- The position teen thousand strong, was encamped of the French behind entrenchments along the six miles of low cliff between the St. Charles River and the falls of Montmorenci. The lofty cliff above the city had small sentry parties posted at intervals along the summit, while eight miles above, a force of twenty-three hundred men under Bougainville was posted at THE FALL OF QUEBEC 351 Cap Rouge. The purpose of this latter detach ment was to check and give timely warning of any possible movement from above on the part of Amherst, should he succeed in getting into that part of the world. Now Wolfe was good enough general to know that Montcalm s army was his chief objective point in a deeper sense than Quebec. Unless he should crush the French army, the position of Quebec would be of small use to him, while with the army once disposed of, Quebec would drop into his hands like a ripe apple. The difficult question was, how to get at the French army. Their position between the St. Charles and the Montmorenci was sim ply inaccessible. They could not be reached from English batteries south of the river, and it was impossible for any English force to turn their left flank without putting itself into a very dangerous position, where it would be liable to be cut off from the fleet which served as its base. The greater part of July was spent by Wolfe in inspecting the eastern bank of the Montmo renci to see if there were any means of attacking there ; but no available place was found, and with all his dare-devil courage, Wolfe was not the man to risk useless sacrifice of life. Be sides, even if a vigorous attack could have been made at that point, the French could easily withdraw, for their supplies came to them from 352 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND the west. A flank attack on the west of their The difficui- line by the St. Charles River would confied have compelled them to stand and Wolfe fight, where defeat meant ruin. But for the English to land in that locality was sim ply impossible. On the last day of July, appar ently for the sake of doing something or other, Wolfe landed a considerable force on the low ground just above the Montmorenci. That he did not intend to storm is obvious, for when some of his brave regiments rushed forward, it was entirely without orders, in pursuit of a sud den impulse, and a deadly fire from the French infantry soon made them recoil. A large part of the month of August was spent by the young general on a sick-bed, attacked by a complica tion of diseases from which there was small hope of recovery ; he begged only to live long enough to solve the problem which Pitt had laid before him. To his physician he exclaimed, " Oh, Doctor, just patch me up enough for this busi ness and I 11 ask no more ! " It was His illness . probably while tossing on that fever ish couch that his mind began playing with the thought which presently developed into a stern resolve. If a landing could not be effected at the St. Charles in face of a greatly superior force, how might it be with the heights above the city, which were watched only by small par ties of sentinels ? Wolfe went up the river with THE FALL OF QUEBEC 353 boats and inspected the bank for himself, and about two miles above the city, at a place called Anse du Foulon, he detected a zigzag path which he rightly judged led to the summit of the well-nigh perpendicular cliff, though its course was in great part hidden by stout bushes. At the summit of this cliff the point of land upon which the city stood opened out into a wide plateau, known from some old Wolfe ^ settler as the Plains of Abraham. If to scale the a force could be landed here it would heights compel Montcalm to come and attack, for other wise his food supply would be cut off. With this end in view Wolfe increased the activity of his men in all directions. The batteries at Point Levi had been throwing shot and shell into the city for several weeks, and had reduced large portions of it to ruins. The bombardment now became more furious than ever. One move which he made quite puzzled Montcalm, but conveyed no hint of what was really contem plated ; the greater part of the British force was moved up the river to Cap Rouge, where such demonstrations were made as completely to ab sorb the attention of Bougainville. Montcalm was inclined to regard the movement as the final embarking of the British army preparatory to sailing down-stream and away, for his mind could conceive no possible alternative for Wolfe except the abandonment of the enterprise. With 354 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND regard to Wolfe himself, while his attitude was one of grim determination, it can hardly be said to have been hopeful. The expedient was one from which success might come, and was there fore preferable to a confession of failure. One circumstance upon which he rested some hope was the fact that boats now and then succeeded in stealing down under the black shadow of the lofty bank with provisions for the French army below. On the 1 2th of September all was in readiness, and Wolfe made such demonstrations below the city that Montcalm began to think that a landing at the mouth of the St. Charles might be intended, and that thus the Lord was delivering his enemy into his hands. At the Final pre- same time, the demonstrations against paradons Bougainville were redoubled, and English ships kept moving from point to point in such wise as to strain every nerve of the watchful and bewildered French. In the course of the day Wolfe called to him his friend Jervis, afterward celebrated as an admiral, and told him that he had a presentiment of impending death ; and taking from about his neck a small chain with the miniature of the lady to whom he was betrothed, he gave it to Jervis to be returned to her in case he should not survive the antici pated battle. As midnight approached, all was silence at Cap Rouge, but such demonstrations were made below the city that Montcalm was THE FALL OF QUEBEC 355 on horseback all night, expecting an attack at the St. Charles. Meanwhile, at the gleaming of a lantern at the masthead of one of the ships, sixteen hundred men dropped into their boats and waited for the ebb of the tide. Then, at the momentary flash of another lantern, J . . . The start all began rowing down-stream in the dark shadow of the cliff. Twice they were chal lenged by sentinels above, but an officer who spoke French fluently replied that they were boats with provisions for Montcalm. Wolfe sat buried in thought, occasionally repeating aloud verses from Gray s " Elegy," which had been published a few years before, and one line, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," betrayed what was passing in his mind. " Gen tlemen," he said to the officers with him, " I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec." When they reached the land ing-place, the head of the column i j i i j r TTT-i The ascent went ashore, under the lead or Wil liam Howe, youngest brother of the general who had been killed at Ticonderoga. As the sixteen hundred landed, the zigzag path was overcrowded, but there were so many bushes as to afford an abundance of handles and foot holds on that steep precipice. The height of the climb was a little over two hundred feet, 356 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND or about the same as that of Bunker Hill Monument. But at length it was safely accom plished, and just as the first streaks of dawn glimmered on the eastern horizon, the gallant Howe with his men leaped upon the summit and scattered the French sentinels, who were seized with panic and stood not upon the order of their going. It was still early dawn when the sixteen hundred were drawn up in order on the Plains of Abraham. Other boats were fol lowing close behind, and by six o clock three thousand more had climbed the rocky wall. The alarm was now spreading in many direc tions, but it was a long march for any of the French forces to reach the spot where Wolfe stood. When the tidings came to Montcalm Com kte ^ s countenance fell. " This is a very surprise of serious business," he said, and in- the French i i . r 1 r stantly put a large portion or his force under marching orders. Not a moment was to be lost, for Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham was in possession of his line of communication. Nothing was to be done but to go and fight the English in a position where defeat meant destruction. By nine o clock in the morning Montcalm had about five thousand men on the plateau, while Wolfe was waiting for the numbers of the French to reach a point where their defeat might be final ; for now Wolfe had good grounds for confidently expecting victory. THE FALL OF QUEBEC 357 Only two thousand of the force opposed to him were French regulars. The rest were Canadian militia, unsurpassed in bush fighting, but hardly fit to withstand a charge of British grenadiers. The attack was made by the French, . . r i i The battle who rushed forward with great spirit. Wolfe s orders to his men, like those of Pres- cott in later days at Bunker Hill, were to with hold their fire until the enemy were within very close range. This order was strictly obeyed. When the volley was delivered, it made sad havoc in the French ranks, and when the Brit ish followed it with a solid bayonet charge on the double-quick, the French line was hope lessly broken. The firing in some parts of the field remained very brisk on both sides. In crossing an exposed place Wolfe received a ball in the wrist which shattered the arm, but he tied it up with his handkerchief and kept on. Presently a second ball struck him in the groin without causing him to stop, and almost immediately afterward a third passed through one of his lungs. As he staggered, he was seized by four men, who carried him to the rear and laid him upon the ground. He was already somewhat comatose, when one of the officers exclaimed, " My God ! see how they run ! " " Who run ? " exclaimed Wolfe, rousing himself. " The enemy," replied the officer, " is giving way everywhere." The young general s 358 NEW FRANCE AND NEW ENGLAND eyes lighted up once more as he eagerly cried Death of out, " Go, one of you, my lads, to Wolfe Colonel Burton and tell him to march down to the Charles River Bridge and cut off their retreat ; " then, turning upon his side, he murmured, " Now, God be praised, I will die in peace." For Montcalm, too, the final summons had come, and he was no more to see the beautiful Proven9al home for which he had so wearily yearned. As he was approaching one of the gates of the city, mounted on his black horse, a bullet was lodged in his chest, which in the intensity of excitement he seemed hardly to feel. As he passed through the gate a party Death of of women, seeing the blood stream- Montcaim j n g d own n j s waistcoat, burst into loud lamentations : " He is killed ! The Mar quis is killed ! " " Do not weep for me, my children," said he ; " it s nothing." But, as he said the words, he fell from his horse and was caught in the arms of his officers. When the surgeon informed him that the wound was mor tal, his reply was, " So much the better. I shall not live to see Quebec surrendered." Thus came to a close one of the greatest scenes in the history of mankind, the final act in the drama which gave the North American continent into the keeping of the English race instead of the French ; and perhaps there has THE FALL OF QUEBEC 359 never been a historic drama in which the lead ing parts have been played by men of nobler stuff than Montcalm and Wolfe. After the fall of Quebec there could be no doubt that the fate of Canada was decided. The capture of Montreal by Amherst in the following sum mer was like an appendix to a tale already told. INDEX ABENAKIS, Algonquin Indians in Maine, 235. See also Norridge- wock. Abercrombie, James, English gen eral, arrives with Loudoun, 306 ; commands on the Hudson, 317 ; expedition against Ticonderoga, 318-323; assault, 324; retreat, 325 ; ridiculed, 325. Acadia, meaning of the word, 50 ; occupation by Monts, 50-58 ; Madame de Guercheville buys Monts s claim, 76 ; restored to France, 92, 97 ; Alexander s grant, 93 ; La Tour s rule, 93, 94 ; contest between La Tour and D Aunay, 9496 ; conquest by New England, 96 ; Temple s grant, 96 ; passes finally to Eng land, 234; extent, 234, 249. See also Canada, Port Royal. Adirondacks, Algonquin Indians in Canada, 43, 63. Africa, Dieppe traders on western coast, 2. Albany Congress, purpose, 279 ; at tendance, 279 ; plan of union, 280. Alexander, Sir William, grant of Nova Scotia, 93. Algonquin Indians, displace Iroquois on the St. Lawrence, 42 ; fruit ful stock, 43 ; friendship neces sary to the French, 63, 64 ; character of Canadian, 64 ; in Maine, 235 ; tribes in the Ohio valley, 263. Allefonsce, Jean, Roberval s lieu- tenant, sent to find Verrazano Sea, 24 ; mistaken ideas on his voyage, 25 ; narrative, 26 ; Vu- menot s account, 26 ; true course, 27 ; on the Hudson River, 27 ; probable object of voyage, 28 j rejoins Roberval, 31 ; death, 32. Allouez, Claude, Jesuit missionary, explores Lake Superior, 101 ; hears of the Mississippi, 106 ; oration to the Indians, 108. America considered the Devil s do main, 144. Amherst, Sir Jeffry, English com- mander-in-chief in America, 317; expedition against Louisburg, 329- 332 ; goes to the Hudson, 333 ; plan of campaign for 1759, 344 ; advance on Ticonderoga, 347 j fails to support Wolfe, 348 ; cap tures Montreal, 359. Andastes, name for the Susquehan- nocks, 48. Andros, Sir Edmund, preserves friendship of Iroquois, 103 ; rule in Massachusetts, 202. Annapolis, N. S. See Port Royal. Antinomianism and the Great Awak ening, 228. Argall, Samuel, attacks the French at Mount Desert, 77-79 ; burns Port Royal, 79. Army, English, Braddock s force, 281 ; ignorant of Indian warfare, 28 3 ; character of Johnson s force, 296 ; rank of colonial officers, 308 ; Abercrombie s force, 318 ; force against Louisburg, 329 ; Forbes s force, 337; in 1759, 343- 362 INDEX Army, French, force sent over with Dieskau, 281 5 character of the Indian allies, 308, 310, 313-315 ; at Quebec, 350. Assemblies, colonial, reluctance to grant funds, 242, 262, 272, 273, 277, 285. Attiwendaronks, kin to the Five Nations, 48 ; refuse to join the confederacy, 48 j consequent an nihilation, 49. Aubert, Thomas, alleged voyage on St. Lawrence River, 46. Aubry, French partisan, unsuccess ful attempt to relieve Fort Niagara, 346. Austrian Succession, war of the, 248, 249. Baptists profit by the Great Awaken ing, 231. Baxter, Joseph, Puritan missionary in Maine, controversy with Rale, *39- Beaujeu, second in command at Fort Duquesne, 2885 waylays Brad- dock, 289 j death, 290. Bethencourt, Jean de, Norman knight, colonizes Canary Islands, 2. Biencourt, son of Poutrincourt, in France, 72, 75 ; and Argall, 79 ; rebuilds Port Royal, 79 ; death, 93- Booth, Elizabeth, and the Salem witchcraft, 1 60. See also Salem Village. Boscawen, Edward, English admiral, expedition against Louisburg, 329. Boston, Ann Hibbins witchcraft case, 146-148 ; Goodwin witchcraft case, 148, 152-155. Boulle, Helen, marries Champlain, 80 ; in Canada, 89 ; religious zeal, 89. Bouquet, Henry, English colonel, with Forbes, 337. Bourlamaque, Chevalier de, French general, evacuates Ticonderoga, 347- Braddock, Edward, English general, sent to America, 281 5 prepara tion to march against Fort Du quesne, 283, 285 $ character, 283 $ underestimates the Indians and militia, 283-285, 287 j mistake in route, 286 ; march, 286-288 $ not ambushed, 289 ; defeat, 2905 bravery, 291 ; death, 292; retreat of his forces, 292. Bradstreet, John, trial for witchcraft, 148. Bradstreet, John, English colonel, ability, 333; captures Fort Fron- tenac, 334. Brattle, Thomas, liberal views, 203 ; gives land for Brattle Church, 204. Brattle, William, liberal views, 203. Brattle Church, Boston, founded, 204 ; conditions of membership, 204 ; recognized, 206. Brazil, Huguenot colony, 33. Brebeuf, Jean de, Jesuit missionary, arrives in Canada, 89. Brittany, France, race characteristics, I $ mariners, 2 ; interest in New foundland fisheries, 3 ; objects to trade monopoly in Canada, 36, 57. Bunker Hill and Ticonderoga, 323. Burnet, William, governor of New York, builds fort at Oswego, 262. Burroughs, George, arrested for witchcraft, 168 ; accusation, 173; execution, 186. Bury St. Edmunds, England, witch craft trial, 138140. Cahiague, Canada, Huron village, Champlain at, 86. Calef, Robert, and Cotton Mather, 150; on the witchcraft trials, 163 n., 186. Cambridge, Mass., execution of a witch, 146. INDEX 363 Cambridge Platform, fall, 206 ; some results, 214. Canada, early explorations, 5, 7 ; early attempt at settlement, 6 ; Carrier s explorations, 1322, ; first use of name, 15 5 Roberval s attempted colony, 22-24, 29-32 ; fur-trade monopoly, 36-38, 49, 57> 59> 60; Champlain s first voyage, 42 5 change in Indian in habitants, 42-44; Champlain s second voyage, 60 ; first settle ment, 60 ; beginnings of Indian policy, 62-65, 7> 7 1 5 Indian missionaries, 86, 89, 103 ; rivalry of interests, 88 ; Richelieu s mea sures for settlement, 90 ; religious uniformity required, 91 ; captured by the English in 1628, 91 ; re stored to France, 92 ; inland ex plorations, 98101, 1 06 ; inter est of Louis XIV., 101 ; policy of development, 104 ; route to the interior, 104; possession taken of the Northwest, 107109; La Salle s expedition to the Ohio, 111115; exploration of the Mississippi, 117120; scheme for empire in the Mississippi val ley, 120-122, 132; Louisiana added to French possessions, 1 30 ; irrepressible conflict with English colonies, 233, 239 ; importance of Kennebec River to, 234 ; policy against English settlements, 239, 241 ; loss of the control of the Kennebec, 244; loss of Louis- burg in 1745, 249256 ; develop ment of scheme of empire, 258 ; menace in the English advance into the Ohio valley, 261, 264 ; decline of influence over the In dians, 261-264; possession and occupation of Ohio valley, 264 273 ; restored control of the in terior, 309 ; strategic points, 326 ; Pitt resolves to destroy, 342 ; English conquer, 358. See also Acadia, French and Indian War, Newfoundland. Canary Islands, Bethencourt colo nizes, 2. Caniengas, name for Mohawks, 45. Canseau, Nova Scotia, captured by the French, 250. Cape Breton, named, 4. Cartier, Jacques, early career, 13 ; first voyage, 13 ; second voyage, 14 ; explores St. Lawrence River, 14; at Stadacona, 15; visit to Hochelaga, 1 6-20 ; winter quar ters at Stadacona, 20 ; return voyage, 21 ; captain-general, 22 ; third voyage, 23 ; and Roberval, 24 ; brings Roberval back to France, 31 ; death, 32. Caughnawaga, Canada, village of converted Iroquois, 262. Cavelier family, 109. See also La Salle. Cavelier, Jean, brother of La Salle, no. Cayugas, Iroquois Indians, 45 ; segregated from the Onondagas, 47. See also Iroquois. Celoron de Bienville, takes possession of Ohio valley for France, 264 266 ; and La Demoiselle, 266. Champlain, Samuel, birth, 38 ; re ligion, 39, 59, 8 1 ; character, 39, 58, 92 ; in the West Indies and Mexico, 40 ; suggests a canal at Panama, 41 ; and Pontgrave, 41 ; first voyage to Canada, 42 ; on coast of New England, 52-55 ; purpose of the exploration, 53, 55 ; greeting at Port Royal, 55 ; his knightly Order of Good Times, 57 ; interest in Canada, 58 ; re turn to Canada, 60 ; founds Que bec, 60 ; puts down treason, 6 1 ; makes alliance with Algonquins and Hurons, 62-64 5 fi fst expedi tion against the Iroquois, 65-70 ; great consequences, 70, 71 ; sec ond encounter with the Iroquois. 364 INDEX 80 $ married, 80 ; founds Mon treal, 8 1 ; viceregal lieutenant, 8 1 ; controls the fur-trade, 82 ; interests merchants, 82 ; seeks the western sea, 83 ; among the Ot- tawas, 83 ; brings Recollets to Canada, 86 ; attacks an Iroquois village, 86-88 ; defends Quebec against Kirke, 91 ; surrenders, 92 ; governor, 92 ; last days, 92. Charles River, Mass., Champlain enters, 53. Charlestown, Mass., execution of a witch, 145. Charlevoix, P. F. X. de, Jesuit his torian, on the coureurs de bois, 106. Charter, new, for Massachusetts, 202. See also Grants. Chastes, Aymar de, aid to Henry IV., 37} joins Pontgrave s mo nopoly, 38 j death, 49. Chauvin, Pierre, monopoly of the fur-trade, 36 ; death, 37. Chesapeake Bay and Verrazano Sea, II, Church and State in Massachusetts, opposition to theocracy and growth of Toryism, 197, 201 ; overthrow of theocracy, 202, 205. Churchill, Sarah, and the Salem witchcraft, 1 60. See also Salem Village. Clergy of Massachusetts and the Salem witchcraft, 170-172. Colman, Benjamin, liberal views, 203 ; pastor of Brattle Church, 204. Colonies, English, purpose, 104; frontier growth, 237, 259, 263 ; incite Indian raids, 240 $ gov ernors and legislatures, 242, 262, 272, 273, 277, 285 ; effect of growth on New France, 261- 263 5 increased influence with the Indians, 262-264, 266 ; inter colonial relationship in 1754, 278; rejection of the Albany Plan, 280 ; results of rejection, 281 ; troops raised for campaign of 1759, 343. See a/so New England and colonies by name. Colonies, French, attempt at Sable Island, 6 j attempted Huguenot, 33 5 and the fur-trade interests, 88. See also Acadia, Canada, Louisiana. Conde, Henri, Prince of, viceroy of New France, 82. Conestogas, name for the Susquehan- nocks, 48. Congregationalism, innovations of Brattle Church, 204 5 Saybrook Platform, 215-218 ; condition in early years of eighteenth century, 220222 ; outgrowth of Halfway Covenant, 221 j effect of Edwards s teachings, 224. See also Great Awakening. Connecticut, civil liberalism, 211 j increased conservatism, 212-219 j Saybrook Platform, 215218; founding of Yale College, 218 220 ; opposition to the Great Awakening, 230 ; share in the Louisburg expedition, 251 ; troops for campaign of 1759, 343- Contrecceur commands Fort Du- quesne, 74, 288. Corey, Giles, character, 1 64 j charged with witchcraft, 179 j pressed to death, 1 80. Corey, Martha, wife of Giles, charac ter, 164 ; accused of witchcraft, 165 j condemned, 180 ; executed, 183. Cortereal, Gaspar, voyage, 6. Courcelle, Sieur de, governor of Canada, IOI 5 invades the Iroquois country, ioa j recalled, 115. Coureurs de bois, origin and nature, 105. Crown Point, N. Y., Johnson to attack, 295 ; strategic value, 327 j evacuated by the French, 348. See also Ticonderoga. Crowne, William, English grant of Acadia, 96. INDEX 365 Cullender, Rose, trial for witchcraft, 138-140. Dacotah Indians, first contact with whites, 99 $ character, 107. Dagonoweda, Mohawk chief, helps establish Iroquois confederacy, 47. Dale, Sir Thomas, governor of Vir ginia, and the Jesuits, 79. D Aunay Charnisay, Charles, Seign eur, contest with La Tour in Acadia, 94 j supported by the king, 95 ; death, 96 j widow marries La Tour, 96. Davenport, James, revivalist, eccen tricities, 227 ; arrested, 2.30. Davenport, John, opposes Halfway Covenant, 201. De Caen, Emery, trade monopoly in Canada, 89 ; abolished, 90. Delaware Indians in Ohio valley, 263 ; become English allies, 341. Demarcation, bull of, opinion of Francis I., 8. Demoiselle, La, Miami chief, and Celoron, 278 ; killed, 279. Denys, Jean, French navigator, al leged chart, 46. Desceliers, Pierre, French hydro- grapher, at Dieppe, 34. Diaz de Castillo, Bernal, Spanish historian, on Verrazano and Fran cis I., 8. Dieppe, France, early trade with Africa, 2 j and the Newfoundland fisheries, 33 ; as a centre of nau tical science, 34 ; objects to the fur-trade monopoly, 37. See also Normandy. Dieskau, Baron, French general, sent to America, 28 1 ; advance from Crown Point, 297 ; am bushes Johnson s scouts, 299 ; repulsed by Johnson, 299 5 cap tured, 300. Dinwiddie, Robert, governor of Vir ginia, sends Washington to warn off the French, 270 ; attempt to build a fort at Pittsburg frustrated, 272 ; war measures impeded by the legislature, 272, 277. Dongan, Thomas, governor of New York, preserves Iroquois friend ship, 103. Donnacona, Canadian chief, 155 taken to France, 22. Dorchester, Mass., execution of a witch, 146. Drucour, Chevalier de, French gen eral, commands Louisburg, 328. Dudley, Joseph, founder of New England Toryism, 201 ; governor of Massachusetts, 2105 and the Mathers, 210. Dummer, William, lieutenant-gov ernor of Massachusetts, conflict with the Assembly, 243. Dunbar, Thomas, commands Brad- dock s rear detachment and re treats, 292. Duny, Amy, trial for witchcraft, 138-140. Duquesne, Marquis, governor of Canada, sends expedition to Ohio valley, 268 ; recalled, 282. Duval, treason at Quebec, 61. Easton, Penn., convention of Indian chiefs, 340. Easty, Mary, accusation and trial for witchcraft, 176179; petition, 181-183 5 execution, 183. Edict of Nantes issued, 35. Edwards, Jonathan, greatness, 222 5 mysticism, 223 ; emphasis on conversion, 224 ; revival of 1734, 226; quarrel with his church, 231 j president of Prince ton, 231. Elizabeth, empress of Russia, and the Seven Years War, 302. Elmina, Gold Coast, founded by Dieppe traders, 3. England, captures Acadia and Que bec in 1628, 91 ; restores them, 92 j purpose of colonial enter prise, 104; witchcraft trials, 138-140, 143 ; Witch Act, 366 INDEX 143 ; irrepressible conflict with France in America, 233, 239 ; in the war of the Austrian Suc cession, 249 ; first troops sent for French and Indian War, 281 ; declares war on France, 301 5 allied with Prussia, 302. See also Colonies, French and Indian War. Entraigues, Henriette d , Henry IV. s mistress, and the Jesuits, 74- Erie, Penn. See Presqu Isle. Eries, kin of Five Nations, 48 ; re fuse to join confederacy, 48 ; consequent annihilation, 49. Europe, condition at end of sixteenth century, 34. Fagundes, Alvarez, Portuguese navi gator, voyage, 7. Five Nations. See Iroquois. Florida, Huguenot colony, 33. Forbes, John, English general, char acter, 336 ; expedition against Fort Duquesne, 336 ; lieutenants and force, 336; route, 337; method of advance, 337 339 ; Grant s defeat, 339 ; finds the fort deserted, 341 5 death, 342. Fort Crevecceur, 111., built, 127 j mutiny and destruction, 128. Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg), im portance of location, 261, 263, 326 ; rival English colonial claims to site, 268 ; English attempt to build a fort, 272 5 French build, 272; Braddock prepares to march against, 283-285 ; his march, 286-288 ; French force, 288 ; defeat of Braddock, 289292 ; English retreat, 292 ; effect of destruction of Fort Frontenac, 335 34 j Forbes s expedition against, 337-340 ; isolated and abandoned, 341 ; named Fort Pitt, 341- Fort Edward, N. Y., built, 296 ; Webb s force at, 311. Fort Frontenac (Kingston), Canada, built, 1 24 ; La Salle commands and rebuilds, 1 24 5 strategic value, 326, 335 ; captured, 334; de stroyed, 335. Fort Le Bceuf, Penn., French block house, 268 5 Washington at, 271. Fort Lyman. See Fort Edward. Fort Necessity, Penn., Washington builds, 275 j battle and surrender, 275. _ Fort Niagara, N. Y., failure of Shirley s expedition against, 294, 3005 Prideaux s expedition against, 345 $ relief routed, 346 ; sur render, 347. Fort Stanwix (Rome), N. Y., built, 335 ; purpose, 335. Fort William Henry, N. Y., Mont- calm advances against, 310-312 ; reinforced, 3125 siege, 312; sur render, 313 ; massacre, 314. France, war with Spain, 8, 12 j civil wars, 32 5 condition at end of sixteenth century, 34, 35 ; policy in America, 62-64, IO 4 1 20 122, 132; takes possession of the Northwest, 1071095 claim to the Mississippi valley, 130; irrepressible conflict with England in America, 233, 239 j in war of Austrian Succession, 249 5 first troops sent for French and Indian War, 281 ; England declares war, 301 ; in the Seven Years War, 302 ; disasters in 1759, 342. See also Canada, French and Indian War. Francis I. of France, on the bull of demarcation, 8 ; capture, 12 ; creates a viceroyalty in the New World, 22, 28. Franklin, Benjamin, Albany Plan, 280 5 and Braddock, 284 ; on Loudoun, 307. Frederick the Great of Prussia, and the Seven Years War, 301 ; allied with England, 302. French and Indian War, first move- INDEX 367 ments, 271-276; French and English troops sent to America, 281 ; first naval battle, 282 ; first comprehensive plan, 285, 294 ; war declared, 301 ; strategic points, 326 ; English preparations for campaign of 1759, 343 ; plan of campaign of 1759, 344- $ ee also fortified places and generals by name. Frontenac, Louis de Buade, Count of, governor of Canada, 115; character and influence over the Indians, 116. Frontier, advance of English settle ments, 259-264 ; Indian depre dations, 301. See also Kennebec River, Ohio valley. Fry, Joshua, colonel Virginia militia, on the frontier, 273. Frye, Jonathan, in Lovewell s fight, 246 ; death, 247 ; verses on, 248. Fur-trade, early French, on the Hudson, 28 ; monopoly of Cana dian, 36-38, 49, 57, 59, 90; Champlain controls, 82 ; interests opposed to settlement, 88 5 route, 104, 261 5 diversion to the Eng lish, 262. Gage, Thomas, lieutenant-colonel under Braddock, 289. Gastaldi, Jacopo, Italian geographer, map, 27. Gates, Horatio, with Braddock, 289. General Court of Massachusetts, character under new charter, 185. Geneva, Switzerland, execution of witches, 142. Geography, alleged chart of Denys, 4-6 5 Luiz s map, 7 ; Verra- zano smap, II ; Maggiolo s map, 1 1 ; Verrazano Sea, 1 1 ; carto graphical union of Hudson and St. Lawrence rivers, 27. Germany, last execution for witch craft, 144; emigration to the English colonies, 259. Gist, Christopher, with Washington, 270 ; journal, 271 n. Glover, Mrs., of Boston, executed for witchcraft, 148 ; confession, 152. Good, Sarah, accused of witchcraft, 162 ; execution, 180. Goodwin, John, his children be witched, 148 ; Cotton Mather s connection with the case, 152 154- Governors, English colonial, con flicts with the Assemblies, 242, 243, 262, 272, 273, 277, 285. Grant, James, English major, disas trous reconnoissance on Fort Du- quesne, 339; contempt for pro vincials, 340. Grants, fur-trade monopoly, 36-38, 49, 59, 90 5 of Acadia to Monts, 49 ; Madame de Guercheville s, 76 ; of Nova Scotia to Alexander, 93 ; of Acadia to Temple, 96. See also Charter. Grave, Fra^ois. See Pontgrave. Great Awakening of 1734, 225- 228 ; and the Halfway Covenant, 225, 231 ; and Antinomianism, 228 ; decline, 229 j opposition, 229 ; effect, 231. Griffin, La Salle s schooner, built, 124 ; loss, 126. Groseilliers, Sieur des, explorations in the West, 101. Guercheville, Antoinette, Mar chioness de, and the Jesuits, 74 j grant, 76. Gulf of St. Lawrence, alleged dis covery, 4 ; Fagundes s explora tion, 7 ; Carder in, 13, 14. Haldimand, Frederick, English colo nel, restores and defends Oswego, 345 ; manuscripts, 345 n. Hale, Sir Matthew, English jurist, belief in witchcraft, 138, 140. Hale, Mrs., of Beverly, accused of witchcraft, 184. Half-King, Indian chief on the 368 INDEX Ohio, unstable friendship, 269 ; warns Washington, 274 ; at Fort Necessity, 275. Halfway Covenant, 200 ; outgrowth, 221 ; effect of the Great Awak ening, 225, 231. Hallucinations, psychology, 191. Harvard College, Increase Mather non-resident president, 203, 208 ; liberalism, 203, 208, 213, 214, 2195 question of the charter, 206, 210; question of religious test for its officers, 207 j Mather displaced and Willard made head, 208 ; Leverett president, 210 ; condemns Whitefield, 229; Louis- burg cross, 256. Hathorne, John, judge of Salem witches, 169. Hebert, Louis, first farm at Quebec, 89. Hendrick, Mohawk chief, at Lake George, 299 ; killed, 299. Hennepin, Louis, character, 125 5 false claims, 126 ; with La Salle, 126 j sketches Niagara Falls, 126. Henry IV. of France, grants mo nopoly in fur-trade, 36, 38, 59 ; grant to Monts, 49 5 favours Champlain s scheme, 59 ; mur dered, 73 5 results of abandoning his policy, 73. Hiawatha, Onondaga chief, con ceives Iroquois confederacy, 47. Hibbins, Ann, execution for witch craft, 146-148. Hobbs, Deliverance, confesses to witchcraft, 175. Hochelaga (Montreal), Carder s visit, 16-19; typical Iroquois town, 1 8 ; destroyed, 42. See also Montreal. Holyoke, Edward, president of Har vard, condemns Whitefield, 229. How, Elizabeth, executed for witch craft, 1 68. Howe, George, Viscount, English general, Abercrombie s lieutenant, 317; ancestry, 3175 military insight, 319 ; death, 320 ; effect of his death, 320, 325 ; monu ment, 321. Howe, Richard, Lord, intercepts French troops, 282 ; ancestry, 317. Howe, Sir William, ancestry, 317 ; at Quebec, 355. Hudson Bay and Vignau s story, 83. Hudson River, Verrazano enters, JO, 28 ; Allefonsce explores, 27; belief in its union with the St. Lawrence, 27 j early French fur- trade, 28. Huguenots, attempted colonies, 33 ; not allowed in Canada, 90. Huron Indians, kin to the Five Na tions, 47 ; location, 48 ; refuse to join the confederacy, 48 ; con sequent annihilation, 49, 101 ; allied with Algonquins, 49, 64 ; friendship necessary to the French, 63, 64; and Champlain attack an Iroquois village, 8688 ; rem nants in Ohio valley, 263. Illinois, Algonquin Indians, Nicol- let encounters, 100 ; Iroquois in vade, 129, 263. Indians, facetiousness, 22, 66 5 mi grations, 43 $ pestilence in Massa chusetts, 54 ; French policy, 62- 64, 7, 7i, I0 5 *39> consult ing of tutelary spirits, 67 ; war fare, 6870, 283 ; missions, 86, 89, 92, 103 5 Northwest tribes, 99, 1 06 j and Frontenac, 116; idea of land selling, 238 ; both French and English incite Indian raids, 239-241 ; destruction of Maine, 243, 244 5 bounty for their scalps, 245 ; Lovewell s fight, 245-248 ; decline of French influence, 261267 5 Ohio valley tribes, 263 5 vacillation, 269 5 as French allies, 288, 298, 307, 308, 310, 313-315, 338, 346 i INDEX 369 as English allies, 297, 300, 341 ; convention of chiefs at Easton, 340. See a/so Algonquin, Hu ron, Iroquois. Innocent VIII., pope, bull against witchcraft, 141. Intendant of Canada, duties, 102. Iroquois Indians, at Hochelaga, 18 5 driven from the St. Lawrence by Algonquins, 42-44 ; settlement in New York, 44 ; tribes, 45 ; advantages of situation, 46 ; con federacy, 46 ; origin of the five tribes, 46 ; destruction of outlying tribes, 47-49, IOI j first fight with Frenchmen, 68-70 j results, 70, 71 ; second defeat by the French, 80 ; Champlain attacks a village, 86-88 ; destroy the Hurons, IOI ; Courcelles inva sion, 102 ; effect, 103 ; friend ship for the English, 103 ; tem porary French influence, 262 ; power in the Ohio valley, 263 5 and the Albany Congress, 279 ; with Johnson s army, 297 ; atti tude in French and Indian War, 34- Jacobs, George, executed for witch craft, 167. James I. of England, Dtemonologie, 142. Japan, St. Francis Xavier in, 74. Jesuits, growth and power, 73 ; spirit of propaganda, 74, 100; at Port Royal, 75 ; with La Saussaye at Mount Desert, 76 5 treatment by Argall and Dale, 78, 79 ; supreme in Canada, 100. Jogues, Isaac, Jesuit missionary, at outlet of Lake Superior, 100. Johnson, William, influence over the Iroquois, 263 ; selected to attack Crown Point, 294, 295 j charac ter of his army, 296 ; advance, 296 ; scouts ambushed, 299 ; defeats Dieskau, 299 ; made a baronet, 300 ; fails to pursue the French, 300 5 second in com mand against Fort Niagara, 345 j takes command, 346 ; defeats re lief force, 347 ; captures the fort, 347- Joliet, Louis, education, 113, 117 ; exploration for copper mines, 114; sent to find the Mississippi, 115, 1 1 6 j on the Mississippi, 1 1 8 1 20. Joncaire-Chabert and Washington at Venango, 270, 271. Jones, Margaret, executed for witch craft, 145. Jumonville, Coulon de, surprised and killed by Washington, 274. Kennebec River, Maine, Champlain ascends, 53 ; importance to Can ada, 234 ; Indians, 235 ; Shute s conference with the Indians, 2395 Indians attack English settlements, 241 5 French control destroyed, 243, 244. Kirke, David, attack on Quebec, 91, 92. La Corne, Saint-Luc de, French partisan, unsuccessful attack on Oswego, 346. La Galissoniere, Marquis de, gov ernor of Canada, sends expedition to claim Ohio valley, 264. La Salle, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de, birth and early life, 109 5 charac ter, no, 114, 123 $ at La Chine, 1105 expedition to the Ohio, 111-1155 on the Great Lakes, 115; reputed trip to the Missis sippi, 115 ; scheme for French empire, 120122, 132 ; opposi tion, 123, 125 ; commands and rebuilds Fort Frontenac, 124 j builds schooner Griffin, 124; discomfitures, 126128 ; voyage to head of Lake Michigan, 126 ; loss of the Griffin, 126 ; builds Fort Crevecoeur, 1275 overland 370 INDEX return to Montreal, 127 ; and the Crevecceur mutineers, 128 ; goes to rescue Tonty, 1 29 ; descends the Mississippi, 130} takes pos session for France, 1305 plan for a colony, 131 ; death, 132; de velopment of his scheme, 258. La Saussaye, chief of Jesuit colony, at Port Royal, 76 ; attacked by Argall at Mount Desert, 76-78 ; set adrift but rescued, 78. La Tour, Charles de, succeeds Bien- court in Acadia, 93 ; relations with England and France, 94- 96 ; contest with D Aunay, 94 ; marries D Aunay s widow, 96 ; retires, 96. La Tour, Claude de, father of Charles, captured and enters English ser vice, 93 ; and his son, 94. Lake Champlain, Champlain crosses, 66 j strategic value, 327. Lake George, named, 297 ; battle, 297-300. See also Fort William Henry. Lake Huron, discovery, 86. Lake Michigan, Nicollet s explora tions, 99. Lake Ontario, Champlain crosses, 87. Lake Superior, Jogues at outlet, 100 j explored, 1 01. Lalemant, Gabriel, Jesuit missionary, arrives in Canada, 89. Land, Indian ideas of selling, 238. Langlade, Charles de, French trader, destroys Miami trading village, 267 ; at Fort Duquesne, 288. Langy, French partisan, encounter with Howe s scouting party, 319. Lawson, Deodat, lecture on witch craft, 167. Le Caron, Joseph, Recollet mission ary, reaches Lake Huron, 86. Lee, Charles, with Braddock, 289. Ltry, Baron de, attempted colony on Sable Island, 6. Lescarbot, Marc, in Acadia with Monts, 51 ; as an author, 51 ; pageant for Poutrincourt, 55. Leverett, John, liberal views, 203 ; president of Harvard, 210. Lewis, Mercy, and the Salem witch craft, 1 60. See also Salem Vil lage. Ligneris, French partisan, attempt to relieve Fort Niagara, 346. Longfellow, H. W., on Cotton Mather s connection with the Salem witchcraft, 151, 187. Loudoun, Earl of, English com- mander-in-chief in America, 306 ; character, 307 ; plans to attack Ticonderoga, 307 ; futile expedi tion against Louisburg, 310 5 re called, 317. Louis XIV. of France, and Canada, 101 j pardons witches, 133. Louisburg, Cape Breton Island, for tified, 249 $ colonial project to capture in war of the Austrian Succession, 250 ; attacking mili tary force, 2515 attacking naval force, 252, 255 ; progress of the attack, 253-256 ; surrender, 256; Loudoun s expedition against, in French and Indian War, 3105 strategic value, 327 j restored to France by treaty of Aix-la-Cha- pelle, 328 5 situation and defences, 328 } English expedition against, in 1758, 329; landing effected, 329; reduction of outer works, 330 5 bombardment, 331 ; French fleet destroyed, 331 ; surrender, 33*- Louisiana, possession taken for France, 1305 La Salle s attempted colony, 1315 development, 258. See also Canada, Mississippi River. Lovewell, John, Massachusetts cap tain, fight with the Indians, 245 247 ; death, 247 ; ballad on the fight, 247. Luiz, Lazaio, map, 7. Lyman, Phineas, Connecticut gen eral, Johnson s lieutenant, 295 j credit for battle at Lake George, 300. INDEX 371 Maggiolo, Vesconte, map, n. Maine, advance of settlement, 237. See a/so Kennebec River. Malleus Malefcarum, 142. Maria Theresa, queen of Hun gary, and the Seven Years War, 302. Marie de Medicis, widow of Henry IV., and the Jesuits, 74. Marin, French officer, expedition to the Ohio valley, 268. Marin, French partisan, attempt to relieve Fort Niagara, 346. Marquette, Jacques, Jesuit mission ary, character, 117; on the Mississippi, 1 1 8-1 20 5 death, 120. Martin, Susannah, executed for witchcraft, 168. Mascoutins, Algonquin Indians on Lake Michigan, 99. Massachusetts, early witchcraft trials, 145-1495 change in character of General Court under new charter, 185 ; opposition to the theocracy, 197, 201 ; Halfway Covenant, 200 ; Andros s rule, 202 ; new charter, 202 ; liberalism com pared with Connecticut, 212215, 220 ; conflicts between governor and Assembly, 242, 243 ; expe dition against Kennebec Indians, 243 ; bounty for Indian scalps, 245 5 share in the Louisburg ex pedition, 251 j monument to George, Viscount Howe, 321 ; troops for campaign of 1759, 343. See also Great Awakening, Salem Village. Masse, Enemond, Jesuit missionary, arrives in Canada, 89. Mather, Cotton, attainments, 149 ; character, 1 50 ; and the Salem witchcraft, 150-152, 155, 170- 173, 186, 197 5 connection with the Goodwin witchcraft case, 152 155 ; religious conservatism, 197, 205, 206 ; and Harvard College, 209. Mather, Increase, Cases of Con science, 1 86 ; religious conser vatism, 197, 206 ; effort to ob tain a charter for Massachusetts, 202 ; non-resident president of Harvard, 203, 208; displaced, 208. Menard, Rene, Jesuit missionary, explores Lake Superior, 101. Mercceur, Duke de, and Roche, 35 Mexico, Champlain in, 40. Miamis, Algonquin Indians in Ohio valley, 263 5 Celoron among, 266 5 English influence, 267 5 French attack, 267. Mingos, Iroquois Indians in Ohio valley, 263 j English allies, 341. Missions to the Indians, French, Re- collets arrive, 86 $ Jesuits arrive, 89 ; paramount interest, 92 5 ex tent, 103. Mississippi River, Nicollet unwit tingly hears of, loo ; Allouez hears of, 106 ; question of its mouth, 106, in, 1195 La Salle s reputed trip, 115 ; Mar quette and Joliet on, 118-1205 La Salle descends, 130. Missouri River, Joliet and Marquette discover, 119. Mohawks, Iroquois Indians, mean ing of name, 45 5 segregated from the Onondagas, 47. See also Iro quois. Monckton, Robert, English colonel, to attack the French from Acadia, 294. Monopoly in Canada, fur-trade, 36- 3 8 49>_ 57, 59> 9 5 general commercial, 90. Monro, English colonel, defends Fort William Henry, 3125 surrenders, 3*3- Montagnais, name for the Adiron- dacks, 63. Montcalm, Louis Joseph, Marquis de, French commander-in-chief in America, 303 ; character, 372 INDEX 303 ; voyage to America, 304 ; and Vaudreuil, 305 ; captures Os- wego, 308 ; expedition against Fort William Henry, 310-3125 siege and surrender of the fort, 312 ; unable to prevent a massacre, 313- 315 ; defences at Ticonderoga, 321 $ repulses Abercrombie s at tack, 324 ; defence of Quebec, 350 5 battle of Plains of Abra ham, 356 5 mortally wounded, 358. Montmorency, Duke of, sells vice- royalty, 89. Montreal, named, 20 ; founded, 82 5 captured, 359. See also Hochelaga. Monts, Pierre du Guast, Sieur de, monopoly of fur-trade, 36 ; grant, 49 ; voyage to Acadia, 50 ; monopoly withdrawn, 57 ; tem porary renewal of monopoly, 59 5 governor of Pons, 8 1 ; gives up Canadian affairs, 81. See also Acadia, Port Royal. Mount Desert, Maine, discovered, 52 5 La Saussaye and Argall at, 76-78. Nausett Island, submerged, 54. New England, Champlain on the coast, 52-55 ; conquers Acadia, 96 j purpose of settlement, 104 5 gloomy outlook in 1692, 156 ; advance of settlement in Maine, 2375 Indian depredations, 241 ; captures Louisburg, 250-256. See also colonies by name. New France. See Canada, Louisi ana. New Hampshire, share in Louisburg expedition, 251 j troops for cam paign of 1759, 343- New Haven annexed to Connecticut, 2ii n. New Jersey, troops for campaign of J759, 343- New Orleans, battle of, and Ticon deroga, 323. New York, troops for campaign of 1759, 343. See also Iro- quois. Newcastle, Duke of, and the attack on Louisburg, 253. Newfoundland, question of pre- Cabotian voyages, 3 ; exploitation of the fisheries, 4, 7, 33. Niagara Falls, Champlain hears of, 59 ; La Salle hears, 113 ; Hen- nepin sketches, 126. Niagara River. See Fort Niagara. Nicollet, Jean, among the Indians, 98 j sent to find the western "great water," 98; explores Lake Michigan, 99, 100 ; hears of the Mississippi, 99. Normandy, France, race character istics, I 5 mariners, 2 ; early in terest in Newfoundland fisheries, 3 ; objects to trade monopoly in Canada, 37, 57; condemnation of witches, 133- See also Dieppe. Norridgewock, Maine, village of Christianized Algonquin Indians, importance of location, 235 j Rale in, 235-237 ; construction, 236 5 inhabitants take the war path, 241 ; stormed, 243 ; tribe exterminated, 244. North America identified with Asia, 22. Northampton, Mass., development of Halfway Covenant in church at, 222 ; beginning of Great Awakening, 226 5 church quar rel with Edwards, 231. Northwest, route used by the French, 104; Indian conditions in 1670, 105-107 5 France takes posses sion, 107109. Northwest passage, why sought, 9 ; Verrazano seeks, 10 ; Carrier seeks, 14. Norumbega, location, 27, 28 ; Al- lefonsce at, 27 ; Penobscot River so called, 52. Nova Scotia. See Acadia. INDEX 373 Noyes, Nicholas, and the Salem witches, 1 80. Nurse, Rebecca, accused of witch craft, 165 ; judges force convic tion, 174. Ohio River, La Salle hears of, 1115 La Salle s expedition, 111-115. See also next title. Ohio valley, beginnings of English occupation, 260, 264 ; effect on the French, 261 ; Indians, 263 ; power of the Iroquois, 263 ; French influence over the Indians, 264, 266, 269 ; French posses sion asserted, 264267 ; Du- quesne sends expedition to control, 268 j Washington s mission, 270, 271 ; Fort Duquesne built, 272 5 failure of Washington s expedition, 273-276 ; effect of Fort Du quesne on English prestige, 277, 293 ; English gain control, 340. See also Fort Duquesne. Ojibways, Algonquin Indians, loca tion, 99 j French friendship, 105. Old Britain. See Demoiselle. Old South Church, Boston, founded, 20 1. One Hundred Associates, privileges and duties, 90 5 first expedition captured by English, 91. Oneidas, Iroquois Indians, meaning of name, 45 ; segregated from Mohawks, 47. See also Iro quois. Onondagas, Iroquois Indians, mean ing of name, 45. Organizations, tendency to rigidity, 213. Osburn, Sarah, accused of witch craft, 162. Oswego, N. Y., importance of founding, 262 j captured by the French, 308 ; destroyed, 309 ; effect of capture, 309 ; rebuilt, 345 ; successfully defended, 346. Ottawas, Algonquin Indians in Can ada, 64 j war party with Cham- plain, 65-70 ; Champlain among, 84 ; driven westward by the Iro quois, 1 06. Panama, Champlain suggests a canal at, 41. Parliament, Witch Act, 143. Parris, Elizabeth, and the Salem witchcraft, 159. See a/so Salem Village. Parris, Samuel, minister of Salem Village, 157; church troubles, 158; his household and the begin nings of the witchcraft delusion, 159-161, 192. Pennsylvania, western claim, 268 ; attitude of the Assembly on Fort Duquesne, 277 ; troops for cam paign of 1759, 343-. Penobscot River, Maine, explored by Champlain, 525 called No- rumbega, 52. Pepperell, William, commands the attack on Louisburg, 251 ; cre ated a baronet, 256. Pequawket Indians, Lovewell s fight, 246-248. Philip II. of Spain, death, 35. Phips, Sir William, governor of Massachusetts, 169, 203 5 wife accused of witchcraft, 184. Physical science, effect on belief in witchcraft, 137. Pickawillany, Ohio, Miami trading village, Celoron at, 266 ; de stroyed by the French, 267. Pitt, William, controls war affairs, 315 ; character, 315 ; popularity, 316; policy of destruction of New France, 342. Pittsburg, Penn., named, 341. See also Fort Duquesne. Pomeroy, Benjamin, punished for revivalism, 230. Pomeroy, Seth, in Johnson s army, 296. Pontgrave (Francois Grave, Sieur du Pont), monopoly of the fur-trade, 36, 37 ; and Champlain in Can ada, 41, 60, 62. 374 INDEX Pontiac, Ottawa chief, at Fort Du- quesne, 289. Poole, W. F., on Cotton Mather and the Salem witchcraft, 152. Port Royal (Annapolis), Acadia, founded, 52 ; Lescarbot s pageant 55 ; early life at, 56 ; Poutrincourt returns to, 72 ; Jesuits arrive 75 ; burned by Argall, 79 5 re built, 79 ; D Aunay controls, 94 5 French attack, 250. See also Acadia. Portugal, voyages to northwest, 6, 7 ; interest in Newfoundland fish eries, 7. Post, C. F. , Moravian missionary, secures Indian alliance for the English, 341. Pottawattamies, Algonquin Indians on Lake Michigan, Allouez meets, loo ; French friendship, 105 ; Sulpicians attempt to convert, 114. Pouchot, M., French captain, de fends Fort Niagara, 346 j sur renders, 347. Poutrincourt, Baron de, in Acadia with Monts, 51 ; founds Port Royal, 52 ; on the coast of New England, 54 ; greeting at Port Royal, 5 5 ; returns to Port Royal, 72 ; and the Jesuits, 75 ; death, 79- Presbyterianism, tendency in Con necticut, 215-218. Presqu Isle (Erie), Penn., French blockhouse, 268. Prideaux, John, English general, ex pedition against Fort Niagara, 345; killed, 346. Prince, Thomas, on decline of the Great Awakening, 229. Princeton College, Edwards presi dent, 231. Proctor, John, executed for witch craft, 167, 1 68. Putnam, Ann, wife of Thomas, and the Salem witchcraft, 1 60, 194. See also Salem Village. Putnam, Ann, daughter of Thomas, and the Salem witchcraft, j 60 j confession, 186. See a/so Salem Village. Putnam, Israel, in Johnson s army, 296 ; in Abercrombie s army, 320 ; rescued from the stake, 333- Quebec, meaning of the name, 60 j founded, 60 j treason in, 61 j first winter, 62 ; early conditions, 88, 90 ; attacked by the English in 1628, 91 j surrender, 925 restored to France, 92 j unsuc cessful expedition against, in 1 690, 156 ; situation, 349 ; position of French army in 1759, 35} problems of attack, 351 ; Wolfe prepares to get above, 352-355 j bombardment, 353 j English as cend to Plains of Abraham, 355 j battle, 356-358 ; fall, 359. See also Stadacona. Radisson, Pierre d Esprit, Sieur, ex plorations, 1 01. Rale, Sebastian, Jesuit missionary, at Norridgewock, 235-237 ; ex cites attacks on the English, 237, 238, 241 $ controversy with Bax ter, 239 ; killed, 244 5 character, 244. RavaLCac, assassin of Henry IV., 73- Recollets arrive in Canada, 86. Religion, effect of rigid organization 213 ; condition in early years of eighteenth century, 220-222 j Edwards on conversion, 224 ; re vivals, 225 ; Great Awakening in New England, 226232. See also Church and State, Congrega tionalism, Missions. Remigio, inquisitor, execution of witches by, 142. Renata, Maria, executed for witch craft, 144. Rhode Island, share in Louisburg INDEX 375 expedition, 251; troops for cam paign of 1759, 343- Ribaut, Jean, attempted colony in Florida, 33. Richelieu, Cardinal, measures for New France, 90. Roberval, Jean Fra^ois, Sieur de, his New World titles, 22, 28 ; arrives in Canada, 24 ; divides his expedition, 24 ; to found a colony, 29 5 and his niece, 30 ; character, 30, 31 ; failure of the colony, 31 ; death, 32. Roberval, Marguerite, niece of the Sieur de, romance, 30. Roche, Marquis de la, voyage to Canada, 35. Rogers, Susanna, verses on Frye, 248. Royal Americans in Forbes s army, 337- Sable Island, attempted colony, 6. Saguenay River, Canada, Roberval explores, 31. Saint Francis Xavier in Japan, 74. St. Lawrence River, Aubert s al leged voyage, 4 ; Carrier explores, 14; impressiveness, 155 notion of union with the Hudson, 27. St. Louis on the Illinois River, founded, 131. St. Lusson, Sieur de, takes posses sion of the Northwest for France, 107109. St. Malo, Brittany, opposition to fur-trade monopoly, 36. See also Brittany. Saint-Pierre, Legardeur de, expedi tion to Ohio valley, 269 ; with Dieskau, 298 5 killed, 299. Salem Village (Danvers), Mass., Cotton Mather s connection with the witchcraft delusion, 150-152, 155, 170-173, 186, 197 ; biblio graphy of the witchcraft, 151 n. j situation, 157 ; church troubles, 1 57-159; beginnings of the witch craft troubles, 159-161 ; persons accused, 161-169, 184; malice as an element in the accusations, 165, 167-169, 180-191, 195; special court, 169 5 recommenda tions of the ministers, 170172 j convictions on spectral evidence, 173 ; trials, 174-180 ; execu tions, 179, 1 80, 1 86 ; protes tations of innocence, 180-183 > reaction, 183-185 ; special court abolished, 1865 confessions of miscarriage of justice, 188 5 ex planation of the delusion, 189- 195 ; historical importance of the troubles, 195 ; reaction on the clergy, 197. See aho Witch craft. Saybrook Platform, 215-218. Schuyler family, influence over the Iroquois, 103, 263. Scotch-Irish immigrants, settlement, 259. Scotland, witchcraft trials, 142, 143. Secalart, Paulin de, French geogra pher, and Allefonsce s narrative, 26. Sedgwick, Robert, Massachusetts major, conquers Acadia, 96. Senecas, Iroquois Indians, 45 ; segre gated from the Onondagas, 47 ; and La Salle s expedition to the Ohio, 111113. See also Iro quois. Seven Years War, beginning, 301. See aho French and Indian War. Sewall, Samuel, judge of Salem witches, 1 70 ; public acknow ledgment of error, 188 ; on In crease Mather s displacement from presidency of Harvard, 209. Shawnees, Algonquin Indians in Ohio valley, 263 ; English allies, 357- Sheldon, Susannah, and the Salem witchcraft, 160. See also Salem Village. Shirley, William, governor of Massa chusetts, project to attack Louis- burg, 250 j and his Assembly, 376 INDEX 278, 294 ; suggests a stamp tax, 28 1 ; part in the first campaign, 294 ; failure of expedition against Fort Niagara, 300 ; superseded as commander-in-chief, 306. Shute, Samuel, governor of Massa chusetts, conference with the Maine Indians, 239 ; conflict with the Assembly, 242 ; sails suddenly for England, 242. Soissons, Charles, Count of, viceroy of New France, 8 1 . Soto, Fernando de, explorations un known to La Salle, 121. South Carolina, troops for campaign of 1759, 343- Stadacona (Quebec), Carrier at, 15 ; jealous of his visit to Hochelaga, 1 6 j he winters at, 20 j destroyed, 42. Stamp tax, reasons for, 243, 273, 281. Stark, John, in Johnson s army, 296. Stoddard, Solomon, and the Halfway Covenant, 222. Stoughton, William, judge of the Salem witches, 169. Suffrage, under new charter of Mas sachusetts, 185, 202; theocratic restrictions in Massachusetts, 197 ; Halfway Covenant, 200. Sully, Duke of, opposes Champlain s scheme, 59. Sulpicians, expedition with La Salle, 111-114. Susquehannocks, kin to the Five Nations, 48 ; refuse to join the confederacy, 48 ; consequent an nihilation, 49. Sylvanus, Bernadus, Italian carto grapher, Gulf of St. Lawrence in his edition of Ptolemy, 5. Tac, Sixte le, Recollet missionary, on Allefonsce s voyage, 25. Tadousac, Canada, headquarters of Pontgrave s monopoly, 37. Talon, Jean Baptiste, intendant of Canada, policy, loa j recalled, 115. Temple, Sir Thomas, English grant of Acadia, 96. Tennent, Gilbert, revivalist, 227. Tessouat, Ottawa chief, and Cham- plain, 84. Theocracy. See Church and State. Thevet, Andre, on Roberval s ad ventures, 29. Ticonderoga, N. Y., meaning of name, 68 ; site of Champlain s first Indian battle, 68, 70 ; Lou- doun plans to attack, 307 ; Aber- crombie s expedition against, 318 321 j defences, 321 ; possible methods of attack, 322 ; and battles of Bunker Hill and New Orleans, 323 ; assault and re pulse, 324 ; English retreat, 325 ; strategic value, 327 ; Amherst s expedition against, 347 ; evacuated by the French, 348. Tituba, servant of Parris, and the beginnings of the Salem witch craft, 159, 192 ; accused of witchcraft, 162; king s evidence, 162, 163 ; sold into slaver) , 179. Tonty, Henri de, La Salle s lieu tenant, 125 ; commands Fort Crevecoeur, 127 ; driven away by mutineers, 128 ; reunion with La Salle, 130. Toryism and opposition to Massa chusetts theocracy, 201. Tracy, Marquis de, military com mander in Canada, 101. Trade, effect of rise of, on religion, 221. See also Fur-trade. Treaties, St. Germain-en-Laye, 92 ; Utrecht, 233 ; Aix-la-Chapelle, 258. Union, Iroquois confederacy, 46 ; need of colonial, in 1754,279; Albany Plan, 280. Unitarianism as a gauge of liberalism, INDEX 377 Vaudreuil, Philippe de, governor of Canada, policy, 239, 241. Vaudreuil, Pierre Francois, Marquis de, governor of Canada, 282 ; and Montcalm, 305. Vaughan, William, project to cap ture Louisburg, 250 ; occupies the grand battery at Louisburg, 254. Venango, Penn., Washington and Joncaire at, 269271. Ventadour, Duke of, viceroy of New France, 89 ; sends Jesuits, 89. Verrazano, Giovanni da, and Au- bert, 4 ; captures Spanish treasure ships, 8 ; purpose of his voyage, 9; course, 105 Verrazano Sea, II ; death, 12. Verrazano, Girolamo, map, 1 1. Verrazano Sea, origin of the idea, II; on maps, 1 1 ; influence, 1 1 ; Allefonsce seeks, 24. Vignau, Nicolas de, story of adven tures, 82 ; probable basis of truth, 83 ; sequel, 85. Villegagnon, Nicholas de, attempted colony in Brazil, 33. Villiers, Coulon de, at Fort Neces sity, 275. Virginia, Assembly impedes Dinwid- die s war measures, 272, 277 ; troops in Braddock s expedition, 287; troops for campaign of 1759, 343. See also Fort Duquesne. Voyages, pre-Cabotian, to New foundland fisheries, 3 ; alleged, of Denys and Aubert, 46 ; of Fagundes, 7 ; Verrazano s, 9 II ; Carrier s, 13-24, 31 ; Alle- fonsce s, 24-29 ; Roche s, 35 ; Champlain s, 42, 5255. Vumenot, Maugis, on Allefonsce s voyage, 26. Walcott, Mary, and the Salem witchcraft, 159. See also Salem Village. Warfare, character of border, 240 ; Indian, 283 ; former popularity of convergent movements, 343. Warren, Mary, and the Salem witch craft, 1 60. See also Salem Vil lage. Warren, Peter, English commodore, and the attack on Louisburg, 252, 256. Washington, George, mission to the French in Ohio valley, 270, 271 j driven from site of Fort Duquesne, 272 ; advance against Fort Duquesne, 273 ; surprises Jumonville, 274 ; question of per fidy, 274 ; at Fort Necessity, 275 ; surrender and retreat, 276 ; at Braddock s defeat, 291, 292 j with Forbes, 337. Webb, Daniel, English general, with Loudoun, 306 $ tardy reinforce ment for Oswego, 308 j at Fort Edward, 312. West Indies, Champlain in, 40. Westbrook, Thomas, Massachusetts colonel, expedition against Maine Indians, 243. Whitefield, George, revival in New England, 226 ; second visit to New England, 229 ; motto for Louisburg expedition, 252. Wildes, Sarah, executed for witch craft, 1 68. Willard, John, executed for witch craft, 1 68. Willard, Samuel, accused of witch craft, 1 84 ; non-resident vice- president of Harvard, 208 ; be comes head of the college, 209. Williams, Abigail, and the Salem witchcraft, 159. See a/so Salem Village. Winnebagoes, Dacotah Indians on Lake Michigan, Nicollet meets, 99- Winsor, Justin, on Allefonsce s voy age, 25. Winthrop, John, on witchcraft, 145. Wisconsin River, Allouez at its 378 INDEX head, 1 06 ; Joliet and Marquette descend, 1 1 8. Witchcraft, condemnation for, in Normandy, 133 ; universal be lief in, 134-137; bibliography, J 35 n - J 5 2 n - 5 " se f scepti- cism, 137 ; specimen English trial, 138-140; epidemic of condemnations, 140-143, 205 ; papal bull against, 141 ; text book, 142; James I. s treatise, 142 ; Witch Act in England, 143 ; trials in England, 143 ; last trials, 143 ; comparatively few cases in America, 144 ; early trials in Massachusetts, 145-148 ; the Goodwin case, 148, 152- 155. See also Salem Village. 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