DESTRUCTION OF MONTREAL.

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CHAPTER V.

FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.

Destruction of Montreal by the Iroquois - Iroquois conquered Treaty of peace French emigration - Fort Chartres - Manufacture of flour in the Wabash country The adaptation of the Indian manners, etc., by the French - Its effects - Description of the French settlements - Dress of the settlers-Inroads upon the French Attempts of the Spaniards to dispossess the French Their defeat, and overthrow of the Santa Fé expedition — Progress of English settlements toward the West- An English trader among the French - His fate The Ohio Company's grant Gov. Dinwiddie dispatches Geo. Washington with a message to the French-Beginning of the French war The West open to English emigration - Taking possession of the military posts Robert Rogers - Rogers' Rangers - Character of the Rangers The Rangers at Cleveland Visit from Pontiac-The forts delivered to the English.

ALTHOUGH La Salle had miserably perished, and Marquette had died in the wilderness, and Joliet been shamefully neglected, yet their glowing descriptions of the western country had filled the imaginations of adventurous men with visions of a terrestrial paradise in the delightful regions of the Illinois and the Mississippi. Many of the inhabitants along the Lower St. Lawrence were becoming dissatisfied with its sterile shores and rigorous winters, and were preparing to seek new homes in the great valley of the West, where the summer extended through more than half the year; where the rich soils produced, spontaneously, the choicest grains, the most delicious fruits. But, for a time, the progress of the French settlements was checked by the breaking out of

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another Iroquois war. Bitterly had the Canadians rued the day on which Champlain, the founder of the colony, had joined the Huron war-parties in an irruption into the Mohawk country. The hatred of the fierce Mohawk warriors had scarcely slumbered during a period of eighty years. It again broke out afresh.

On the twenty-fifth day of August, 1689, fifteen hundred Iroquois warriors, horrible with paint, and thirsty for blood, made a sudden and terrible inroad into Canada. They ravaged the island of Montreal with fire and sword; destroyed all the settlements, captured the town and fort, and butchered, with frightful cruelties, the victims that fell into their hands. After having spread desolation, and woe, and death, in every direction, they only retired at the approach of winter. The war continued to rage for more than five years. In the meanwhile, Frontenac, then upward of seventy years old, concentrated the whole military force of the colony upon the shore of Lake Ontario. The fields around the fort at the foot of the lake became white with tents; in the bay floated two schooners, armed, and a fleet of canoes. Soon afterward, he made a descent, with four thousand men, upon the Iroquois country. Crossing the lake, and ascending the Oswego, he destroyed the villages and cornfields of the Onondagas and Oneidas, cut down their orchards, burnt up their canoes, and laid waste their country. This great invasion taught the Iroquois an important lesson: the French were too numerous for extermination. The chiefs consented to treat at a council to be held at Montreal. In the summer of the year 1700, the Ottawas and Hurons, from Lake Superior; the Sioux, from the Upper Mississippi; and four of the Iroquois nations, entered into negotiations for an everlasting peace. A treaty was drawn up with great formality, and signed by all the

parties, each Indian nation placing for itself a symbol: the Senecas and Onondagas, a spider; the Oneidas, a forked stick; and the Mohawks, a bear. It declared that war should cease along the whole frontier; that peace should reach beyond the Mississippi.

The way of French emigration to the West had then, at last, become safe. Missionary stations soon began to grow into regular parishes. At Peoria a settlement was rapidly forming. Kaskaskia became a happy and prosperous village. Other places were rapidly rising into note. In June, 1701, De la Motte Cadillac, and one hundred men, took possession of Detroit River and Lake St. Clair, then deemed the loveliest part of country; and the French began the assertion of their claim to the country south and west of the lakes, and upon the streams occupied by their Indian allies, comprising all the territory drained by the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. This extensive region, the best watered, the most fertile of any on the face of the earth, was called New France. Five years later, extensive settlements had been formed in the valley of the Wabash, from which fifteen thousand hides and skins were annually sent south to Mobile, for the European market.

Great efforts were made to secure the possession of the vast inland territory which opened, through such magnificent water communications, to the east and to the south. The Spaniards were creeping up the Rio Grande into New Mexico. The English were yet spread out along the sea-coast, and were hemmed in by the mountains. For that purpose, strong military posts were built on the western and interior waters. In 1720, the construction of a stronghold was commenced in the Illinois country, to serve as the head-quarters of Upper Louisiana. This was Fort Chartres, on the east side of the Mississippi,

and sixty-five miles below the mouth of the Missouri. Having been designed for one of the strongest fortresses in America, its walls were built of solid masonry, which required eighteen months for their completion. But, one hundred years afterward, its massive ruins were so overgrown with vines and forest-trees as to be almost impenetrable to the traveler. Previous to 1735, the fort which had previously been abandoned by La Salle, had been rebuilt at Niagara, near the mouth of the river; another frowned at Vincennes over the Wabash valley, one hundred and fifty miles above the Ohio River; another at Presque Isle overlooked the waters of Lake Erie; that at Detroit commanded the passage to the upper lakes; and, soon after, Fort Du Quesne, now Pittsburgh, controlled the navigation of the Ohio, Monongahela, and Alleghany rivers.

As early as 1746, six hundred barrels of flour were manufactured in the Wabash country, in a single year, and transported to New Orleans, beside large quantities of hides, tallow, and beeswax. The Upper Wabash was the seat of a quiet, industrious, and agricultural people. A few years later, the Illinois country was found to contain six distinct settlements, with their respective villages. Cahokia, at the mouth of a creek of the same name, five miles below the present site of St. Louis; St. Philips. forty-five miles further down the river; Fort Chartres, twelve miles above Kaskaskia; Kaskaskia, on the river of that name, upon a peninsula, and within two miles of the Mississippi; Prairie du Rocker, near Fort Chartres; St. Geneviève, upon Gabarre creek. These were among the oldest villages of the West. And Kaskaskia, before the country passed into the hands of the English, was quite a large town, containing between three and four thousand inhabitants. These villages were secure, though

in the midst of an Indian country, and surrounded by many warlike tribes.

Throughout all their efforts at planting settlements in the western country, the French had steadily adhered to the policy of conciliating the Indians. They, indeed, seem to have been peculiarly adapted to harmonize, in their habits and feelings, with the wild denizens of the forest and the prairie. In their explorations of the remotest rivers, in their long journeys overland, in the wigwams, in the cabins, at the forts, they associated with their red brethren on terms of entire equality. The French temper, so pliant, so plastic, so strongly in contrast with the stubborn spirit of Englishmen, was readily moulded to Indian customs and Indian forms. The wandering Frenchman, with his free and easy manners, his merry laughter, his fondness for display, mingling in the dusky crowd, was cordially welcomed at all the Indian villages of the West. He might choose himself a wife among his Indian friends, and live there with them, and be one of them. In fact, amalgamation existed to a very considerable extent, and in a few generations scarcely a tribe was free from an infusion of Celtic blood.

The ready adoption of the Indian manners and mode of living, and more than that, the frequent intermarriages between the two races, had a tendency to bind the native tribes more closely to the French, who seemed to be bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh. In all the West, the Indian villages were thronged with Frenchmen, who joined in the dances, went forth with the hunting-parties, and along the war-paths. But while this policy of intimate association with the different tribes had strengthened the hold of the government upon the country, it also had tended to sink the Frenchman into a barbarian. Casting off the habits of civilization, he soon imbibed the notions,