A Half Century of Conflict Volume Ii Part 2

For twenty days the travellers saw no human being, so scanty was the population of these plains. Game, however, was abundant. Deer sprang from the tall, reedy gra.s.s of the river bottoms; buffalo tramped by in ponderous columns, or dotted the swells of the distant prairie with their grazing thousands; antelope approached, with the curiosity of their species, to gaze at the pa.s.sing hors.e.m.e.n, then fled like the wind; and as they neared the broken uplands towards the Yellowstone, they saw troops of elk and flocks of mountain-sheep. Sometimes, for miles together, the dry plain was studded thick with the earthen mounds that marked the burrows of the curious marmots, called prairie-dogs, from their squeaking bark. Wolves, white and gray, howled about the camp at night, and their cousin, the coyote, seated in the dusk of evening upright on the gra.s.s, with nose turned to the sky, saluted them with a complication of yelpings, as if a score of petulant voices were pouring together from the throat of one small beast.

On the 11th of August, after a march of about three weeks, the brothers reached a hill, or group of hills, apparently west of the Little Missouri, and perhaps a part of the Powder River Range. It was here that they hoped to find the Horse Indians, but n.o.body was to be seen. Arming themselves with patience, they built a hut, made fires to attract by the smoke any Indians roaming near, and went every day to the tops of the hills to reconnoitre. At length, on the 14th of September, they descried a spire of smoke on the distant prairie.

One of their Mandan guides had left them and gone back to his village. The other, with one of the Frenchmen, went towards the smoke, and found a camp of Indians, whom the journal calls Les Beaux Hommes, and who were probably Crows, or Apsaroka, a tribe remarkable for stature and symmetry, who long claimed that region as their own. They treated the visitors well, and sent for the other Frenchmen to come to their lodges, where they were received with great rejoicing. The remaining Mandan, however, became frightened,--for the Beaux Hommes were enemies of his tribe,--and he soon followed his companion on his solitary march homeward.

The brothers remained twenty-one days in the camp of the Beaux Hommes, much perplexed for want of an interpreter. The tribes of the plains have in common a system of signs by which they communicate with each other, and it is likely that the brothers had learned it from the Sioux or a.s.sinniboins, with whom they had been in familiar intercourse. By this or some other means they made their hosts understand that they wished to find the Horse Indians; and the Beaux Hommes, being soothed by presents, offered some of their young men as guides. They set out on the 9th of October, following a south-southwest course. [Footnote: _Journal du Voyage fait par le Chevalier de la Verendrye en 1742._ The copy before me is from the original in the Depot des Cartes de la Marine. A duplicate, in the Archives des Affaires Etrangeres, is printed by Margry. It gives the above date as November 9th instead of October 9th. The context shows the latter to be correct.]

In two days they met a band of Indians, called by them the Little Foxes, and on the 15th and 17th two villages of another unrecognizable horde, named Pioya. From La Verendrye's time to our own, this name "villages" has always been given to the encampments of the wandering people of the plains.

All these nomadic communities joined them, and they moved together southward, till they reached at last the lodges of the long-sought Horse Indians. They found them in the extremity of distress and terror. Their camp resounded with howls and wailings; and not without cause, for the Snakes, or Shoshones,--a formidable people living farther westward,--had lately destroyed most of their tribe. The Snakes were the terror of that country. The brothers were told that the year before they had destroyed seventeen villages, killing the warriors and old women, and carrying off the young women and children as slaves.

None of the Horse Indians had ever seen the Pacific; but they knew a people called Gens de l'Arc, or Bow Indians, who, as they said, had traded not far from it. To the Bow Indians, therefore, the brothers resolved to go, and by dint of gifts and promises they persuaded their hosts to show them the way.

After marching southwestward for several days, they saw the distant prairie covered with the pointed buffalo-skin lodges of a great Indian camp. It was that of the Bow Indians, who may have been one of the bands of the western Sioux,--the predominant race in this region. Few or none of them could ever have seen a white man, and we may imagine their amazement at the arrival of the strangers, who, followed by staring crowds, were conducted to the lodge of the chief. "Thus far," says La Verendrye, "we had been well received in all the villages we had pa.s.sed; but this was nothing compared with the courteous manners of the great chief of the Bow Indians, who, unlike the others, was not self-interested in the least, and who took excellent care of everything belonging to us."

The first inquiry of the travellers was for the Pacific; but neither the chief nor his tribesmen knew anything of it, except what they had heard from Snake prisoners taken in war. The Frenchmen were surprised at the extent of the camp, which consisted of many separate bands. The chief explained that they had been summoned from far and near for a grand war-party against that common foe of all,--the Snakes. [Footnote: The enmity between the Sioux and the Snakes lasted to our own time. When the writer lived among the western Sioux, one of their chiefs organized a war-party against the Snakes, and numerous bands came to join the expedition from a distance in some cases of three hundred miles. Quarrels broke out among them, and the scheme was ruined.] In fact, the camp resounded with war-songs and war-dances. "Come with us," said their host; "we are going towards the mountains, where you can see the great water that you are looking for."

At length the camp broke up. The squaws took down the lodges, and the march began over prairies dreary and brown with the withering touch of autumn.

The spectacle was such as men still young have seen in these Western lands, but which no man will see again. The vast plain swarmed with the moving mult.i.tude. The tribes of the Missouri and the Yellowstone had by this time abundance of horses, the best of which were used for war and hunting, and the others as beasts of burden. These last were equipped in a peculiar manner. Several of the long poles used to frame the teepees, or lodges, were secured by one end to each side of a rude saddle, while the other end trailed on the ground. Crossbars lashed to the poles just behind the horse kept them three or four feet apart, and formed a firm support, on which was laid, compactly folded, the buffalo-skin covering of the lodge. On this, again, sat a mother with her young family, sometimes stowed for safety in a large open willow basket, with the occasional addition of some domestic pet,--such as a tame raven, a puppy, or even a small bear cub. Other horses were laden in the same manner with wooden bowls, stone hammers, and other utensils, along with stores of dried buffalo-meat packed in cases of rawhide whitened and painted. Many of the innumerable dogs--whose manners and appearance strongly suggested their relatives the wolves, to whom, however, they bore a mortal grudge--were equipped in a similar way, with shorter poles and lighter loads. Bands of naked boys, noisy and restless, roamed the prairie, practising their bows and arrows on any small animal they might find. Gay young squaws--adorned on each cheek with a spot of ochre or red clay, and arrayed in tunics of fringed buckskin embroidered with porcupine quills--were mounted on ponies, astride like men; while lean and tattered hags--the drudges of the tribe, unkempt and hideous--scolded the lagging horses, or screeched at the disorderly dogs, with voices not unlike the yell of the great horned owl. Most of the warriors were on horseback, armed with round, white s.h.i.+elds of bull-hide, feathered lances, war-clubs, bows, and quivers filled with stone-headed arrows; while a few of the elders, wrapped in robes of buffalo-hide, stalked along in groups with a stately air, chatting, laughing, and exchanging unseemly jokes.

[Footnote: The above descriptive particulars are drawn from repeated observation of similar scenes at a time when the primitive condition of these tribes was essentially unchanged, though with the difference that the concourse of savages counted by hundreds, and not by thousands.]

"We continued our march," says La Verendrye, "sometimes south-southwest, and now and then northwest; our numbers constantly increasing by villages of different tribes which joined us." The variations of their course were probably due to the difficulties of the country, which grew more rugged as they advanced, with broken hills, tracts of dingy green sage-bushes, and bright, swift streams, edged with cottonwood and willow, hurrying northward to join the Yellowstone. At length, on the 1st of January, 1743, they saw what was probably the Bighorn Range of the Rocky Mountains, a hundred and twenty miles east of the Yellowstone Park.

A council of all the allied bands was now called, and the Frenchmen were asked to take part in it. The questions discussed were how to dispose of the women and children, and how to attack the enemy. Having settled their plans, the chiefs begged their white friends not to abandon them; and the younger of the two, the Chevalier, consented to join the warriors, and aid them with advice, though not with arms.

The tribes of the Western plains rarely go on war-parties in winter, and this great expedition must have been the result of unusual exasperation.

The object was to surprise the Snakes in the security of their winter camp, and strike a deadly blow, which would have been impossible in summer.

On the 8th of January the whole body stopped to encamp, choosing, no doubt, after the invariable winter custom of Western Indians, a place sheltered from wind, and supplied with water and fuel. Here the squaws and children were to remain, while most of the warriors advanced against the enemy. By pegging the lower edge of the lodge-skin to the ground, and piling a ridge of stones and earth upon it to keep out the air, fastening with wooden skewers the flap of hide that covered the entrance, and keeping a constant fire, they could pa.s.s a winter endurable to Indians, though smoke, filth, vermin, bad air, the crowd, and the total absence of privacy, would make it a purgatory to any civilized white man.

The Chevalier left his brother to watch over the baggage of the party, which was stored in the lodge of the great chief, while he himself, with his two Canadians, joined the advancing warriors. They were on horseback, marching with a certain order, and sending watchmen to reconnoitre the country from the tops of the hills. [Footnote: At least this was done by a band of Sioux with whom the writer once traversed a part of the country ranged by these same Snakes, who had lately destroyed an entire Sioux village.]

Their movements were so slow that it was twelve days before they reached the foot of the mountains, which, says La Verendrye, "are for the most part well wooded, and seem very high." [Footnote: The Bighorn Range, below the snow line, is in the main well timbered with pine, fir, oak, and juniper.]

He longed to climb their great snow-enc.u.mbered peaks, fancying that he might then see the Pacific, and never dreaming that more than eight hundred miles of mountains and forests still lay between him and his goal.

Through the whole of the present century the villages of the Snakes were at a considerable distance west of the Bighorn Range, and some of them were even on the upper waters of the Pacific slope. It is likely that they were so in 1743, in which case the war-party would not only have reached the Bighorn Mountains, but have pushed farther on to within sight of the great Wind River Range. Be this as it may, their scouts reached the chief winter camp of the Snakes, and found it abandoned, with lodges still standing, and many household possessions left behind. The enemy had discovered their approach, and fled. Instead of encouraging the allies, this news filled them with terror, for they feared that the Snake warriors might make a circuit to the rear, and fall upon the camp where they had left their women and children. The great chief spent all his eloquence in vain, n.o.body would listen to him; and with characteristic fickleness they gave over the enterprise, and retreated in a panic. "Our advance was made in good order; but not so our retreat," says the Chevalier's journal. "Everybody fled his own way. Our horses, though good, were very tired, and got little to eat."

The Chevalier was one day riding with his friend, the great chief, when, looking behind him, he missed his two French attendants. Hastening back in alarm, he found them far in the rear, quietly feeding their horses under the shelter of a clump of trees. He had scarcely joined them when he saw a party of fifteen hostile Indians stealthily creeping forward, covered by their bull-hide s.h.i.+elds. He and his men let them approach, and then gave them a few shots; on which they immediately ran off, firearms being to them an astounding novelty.

The three Frenchmen now tried to rejoin the great chief and his band, but the task was not easy. The prairie, bare of snow and hard as flint, showed no trace of foot or hoof; and it was by rare good fortune that they succeeded, on the second day, not in overtaking the chief, but in reaching the camp where the women and children had been left. They found them all in safety; the Snakes had not attacked them, and the panic of the warriors was needless. It was the 9th of February. They were scarcely housed when a blizzard set in, and on the night of the 10th the plains were buried in snow. The great chief had not appeared. With such of his warriors as he could persuade to follow him, he had made a wide circuit to find the trail of the lost Frenchmen, but, to his great distress, had completely failed.

It was not till five days after the arrival of the Chevalier and his men that the chief reached the camp, "more dead than alive," in the words of the journal. All his hards.h.i.+ps were forgotten when he found his white friends safe, for he had given them up for lost. "His sorrow turned to joy, and he could not give us attention and caresses enough."

The camp broke up, and the allied bands dispersed. The great chief and his followers moved slowly through the snowdrifts towards the east-southeast, accompanied by the Frenchmen. Thus they kept on till the 1st of March, when the two brothers, learning that they were approaching the winter village of a people called Gens de la Pet.i.te Cerise, or Choke-Cherry Indians, sent one of their men, with a guide, to visit them. The man returned in ten days, bringing a message from the Choke-Cherry Indians, inviting the Frenchmen to their lodges.

The great chief of the Bow Indians, who seems to have regarded his young friends with mingled affection, respect, and wonder, was grieved at the thought of losing them, but took comfort when they promised to visit him again, provided that he would make his abode near a certain river which they pointed out. To this he readily agreed, and then, with mutual regret, they parted. [Footnote: The only two tribes of this region who were a match for the Snakes were the Sioux and the Blackfeet. it is clear that the Bow Indians could not have been Blackfeet, as in that case, after the war-party broke up, they would have moved northward towards their own country, instead of east-southeast into the country of their enemies. Hence I incline to think the Bow Indians a band of Sioux, or Dakota,--a people then, as since, predominant in that country.] [Footnote: The banks of the Missouri, in the part which La Verendrye would have reached in following an east-southeast course, were occupied by numerous bands or sub-tribes of Sioux, such as the Minneconjou, Yankton, Oncpapa, Brule, and others, friends and relatives of the Bow Indians, supposing these to have been Sioux.]

The Frenchmen repaired to the village of the Choke-Cherry Indians, who, like the Bow Indians, were probably a band of Sioux. [Footnote: The Sioux, Cheyennes, and other prairie tribes use the small astringent wild cherry for food. The squaws pound it, stones and all, and then dry it for winter use.] Hard by their lodges, which stood near the Missouri, the brothers buried a plate of lead graven with the royal arms, and raised a pile of stones in honor of the Governor of Canada. They remained at this place till April; then, mounting their horses again, followed the Missouri upward to the village of the Mandans, which they reached on the 18th of May. After spending a week here, they joined a party of a.s.sinniboins, journeyed with them towards Fort La Reine, and reached it on the 2d of July,--to the great relief of their father, who was waiting in suspense, having heard nothing of them for more than a year.

Sixty-two years later, when the vast western regions then called Louisiana had just been ceded to the United States, Captains Lewis and Clark left the Mandan villages with thirty-two men, traced the Missouri to the mountains, penetrated the wastes beyond, and made their way to the Pacific. The first stages of that remarkable exploration were antic.i.p.ated by the brothers La Verendrye. They did not find the Pacific, but they discovered the Rocky Mountains, or at least the part of them to which the name properly belongs; for the southern continuation of the great range had long been known to the Spaniards. Their bold adventure was achieved, not at the charge of a government, but at their own cost and that of their father,--not with a band of well-equipped men, but with only two followers.

The fur-trading privilege which was to have been their compensation had proved their ruin. They were still pursued without ceasing by the jealousy of rival traders and the ire of disappointed partners. "Here in Canada more than anywhere else," the Chevalier wrote, some years after his return, "envy is the pa.s.sion _a la mode,_ and there is no escaping it."

[Footnote: Le Chevalier de la Verendrye au Ministre, 30 Sept. 1750.] It was the story of La Salle repeated. Beauharnois, however, still stood by them, encouraged and defended them, and wrote in their favor to the colonial minister. [Footnote: _La Verendrye pere au Ministre, 1 Nov. 1746,_ in Margry VI. 611.] It was doubtless through his efforts that the elder La Verendrye was at last promoted to a captaincy in the colony troops.

Beauharnois was succeeded in the government by the sagacious and able Galissoniere, and he too befriended the explorers. "It seems to me," he wrote to the minister, "that what you have been told touching the Sieur de la Verendrye, to the effect that he has been more busy with his own interests than in making discoveries, is totally false, and, moreover, that any officers employed in such work will always be compelled to give some of their attention to trade, so long as the King allows them no other means of subsistence. These discoveries are very costly, and more fatiguing and dangerous than open war." [Footnote: _La Galissoniere au Ministre, 23 Oct. 1747._] Two years later, the elder La Verendrye received the cross of the Order of St. Louis,--an honor much prized in Canada, but which he did not long enjoy; for he died at Montreal in the following December, when on the point of again setting out for the West.

His intrepid sons survived, and they were not idle. One of them, the Chevalier, had before discovered the river Saskatchawan, and ascended it as far as the forks. [Footnote: _Memoire en abrege des etabliss.e.m.e.nts et Decouvertes faits par le Sieur de la Verendrye et ses Enfants._] His intention was to follow it to the mountains, build a fort there, and thence push westward in another search for the Pacific; but a disastrous event ruined all his hopes. La Galissoniere returned to France, and the Marquis de la Jonquiere succeeded him, with the notorious Francois Bigot as intendant. Both were greedy of money,--the one to h.o.a.rd, and the other to dissipate it. Clearly there was money to be got from the fur-trade of Manitoba, for La Verendrye had made every preparation and incurred every expense. It seemed that nothing remained but to reap where he had sown.

His commission to find the Pacific, with the privileges connected with it, was refused to his sons, and conferred on a stranger. La Jonquiere wrote to the minister: "I have charged M. de Saint-Pierre with this business. He knows these countries better than any officer in all the colony."

[Footnote: _La Jonquiere au Ministre, 27 Fev. 1750_.] On the contrary, he had never seen them. It is difficult not to believe that La Jonquiere, Bigot, and Saint-Pierre were partners in a speculation of which all three were to share the profits.

The elder La Verendrye, not long before his death, had sent a large quant.i.ty of goods to his trading-forts. The brothers begged leave to return thither and save their property from destruction. They declared themselves happy to serve under the orders of Saint-Pierre, and asked for the use of only a single fort of all those which their father had built at his own cost. The answer was a flat refusal. In short, they were shamefully robbed.

The Chevalier writes: "M. le Marquis de la Jonquiere, being pushed hard, and as I thought even touched, by my representations, told me at last that M. de Saint-Pierre wanted nothing to do with me or my brothers." "I am a ruined man," he continues. "I am more than two thousand livres in debt, and am still only a second ensign. My elder brother's grade is no better than mine. My younger brother is only a cadet. This is the fruit of all that my father, my brothers, and I have done. My other brother, whom the Sioux murdered some years ago, was not the most unfortunate among us. We must lose all that has cost us so much, unless M. de Saint-Pierre should take juster views, and prevail on the Marquis de la Jonquiere to share them. To be thus shut out from the West is to be most cruelly robbed of a sort of inheritance which we had all the pains of acquiring, and of which others will get all the profit." [Footnote: _Le Chevalier de la Verendrye au Ministre, 30 Sept. 1750._]

His elder brother writes in a similar strain: "We spent our youth and our property in building up establishments so advantageous to Canada; and after all, we were doomed to see a stranger gather the fruit we had taken such pains to plant." And he complains that their goods left in the trading-posts were wasted, their provisions consumed, and the men in their pay used to do the work of others. [Footnote: _Memoire des Services de Pierre Gautier de la Verendrye l'aisne, presente a Mg'r. Rouille, ministre et secretaire d'Etat._]

They got no redress. Saint-Pierre, backed by the Governor and the Intendant, remained master of the position. The brothers sold a small piece of land, their last remaining property, to appease their most pressing creditors. [Footnote: Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, in spite of his treatment of the La Verendrye brothers, had merit as an officer. It was he who received Was.h.i.+ngton at Fort Le B?uf in 1754. He was killed in 1755, at the battle of Lake George. See _Montcalm and Wolfe,_ I. 303.]

Saint-Pierre set out for Manitoba on the 5th of June, 1750. Though he had lived more or less in the woods for thirty-six years, and though La Jonquiere had told the minister that he knew the countries to which he was bound better than anybody else, it is clear from his own journal that he was now visiting them for the first time. They did not please him. "I was told," he says, "that the way would grow harder and more dangerous as we advanced, and I found, in fact, that one must risk life and property every moment." Finding himself and his men likely to starve, he sent some of them, under an ensign named Niverville, to the Saskatchawan. They could not reach it, and nearly perished on the way. "I myself was no more fortunate,"

says Saint-Pierre. "Food was so scarce that I sent some of my people into the woods among the Indians,--which did not save me from a fast so rigorous that it deranged my health and put it out of my power to do anything towards accomplis.h.i.+ng my mission. Even if I had had strength enough, the war that broke out among the Indians would have made it impossible to proceed."

Niverville, after a winter of misery, tried to fulfil an order which he had received from his commander. When the Indians guided the two brothers La Verendrye to the Rocky Mountains, the course they took tended so far southward that the Chevalier greatly feared it might lead to Spanish settlements; and he gave it as his opinion that the next attempt to find the Pacific should be made farther towards the north. Saint-Pierre had agreed with him, and had directed Niverville to build a fort on the Saskatchawan, three hundred leagues above its mouth. Therefore, at the end of May, 1751, Niverville sent ten men in two canoes on this errand, and they ascended the Saskatchawan to what Saint-Pierre calls the "Rock Mountain." Here they built a small stockade fort and called it Fort La Jonquiere. Niverville was to have followed them; but he fell ill, and lay helpless at the mouth of the river in such a condition that he could not even write to his commander.

Saint-Pierre set out in person from Fort La Reine for Fort La Jonquiere, over ice and snow, for it was late in November. Two Frenchmen from Niverville met him on the way, and reported that the a.s.sinniboins had slaughtered an entire band of friendly Indians on whom Saint-Pierre had relied to guide him. On hearing this he gave up the enterprise, and returned to Fort La Reine. Here the Indians told him idle stories about white men and a fort in some remote place towards the west; but, he observes, "n.o.body could reach it without encountering an infinity of tribes more savage than it is possible to imagine."

He spent most of the winter at Fort La Reine. Here, towards the end of February, 1752, he had with him only five men, having sent out the rest in search of food. Suddenly, as he sat in his chamber, he saw the fort full of armed a.s.sinniboins, extremely noisy and insolent. He tried in vain to quiet them, and they presently broke into the guard-house and seized the arms. A ma.s.sacre would have followed, had not Saint-Pierre, who was far from wanting courage, resorted to an expedient which has more than once proved effective on such occasions. He knocked out the heads of two barrels of gunpowder, s.n.a.t.c.hed a firebrand, and told the yelping crowd that he would blow up them and himself together. At this they all rushed in fright out of the gate, while Saint-Pierre ran after them, and bolted it fast. There was great anxiety for the hunters, but they all came back in the evening, without having met the enemy. The men, however, were so terrified by the adventure that Saint-Pierre was compelled to abandon the fort, after recommending it to the care of another band of a.s.sinniboins, who had professed great friends.h.i.+p. Four days after he was gone they burned it to the ground.

He soon came to the conclusion that farther discovery was impossible, because the English of Hudson Bay had stirred up the Western tribes to oppose it. Therefore he set out for the settlements, and, reaching Quebec in the autumn of 1753, placed the journal of his futile enterprise in the hands of Duquesne, the new governor. [Footnote: _Journal sommaire du Voyage de Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, charge de la Decouverte de la Mer de l'Ouest_ (British Museum).]

Canada was approaching her last agony. In the death-struggle of the Seven Years' War there was no time for schemes of Western discovery. The brothers La Verendrye sank into poverty and neglect. A little before the war broke out, we find the eldest at the obscure Acadian post of Beausejour, where he wrote to the colonial minister a statement of his services, which appears to have received no attention. After the fall of Canada, the Chevalier de la Verendrye, he whose eyes first beheld the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, perished in the wreck of the s.h.i.+p "Auguste," on the coast of Cape Breton, in November, 1761.

[Footnote: The above narrative rests mainly on contemporary doc.u.ments, official in character, of which the originals are preserved in the archives of the French Government. These papers have recently been printed by M.

Pierre Margry, late custodian of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris, in the sixth volume of his _Decouvertes et etabliss.e.m.e.nts des Francais dans l'Amerique Septentrionale,_--a doc.u.mentary collection of great value, published at the expense of the American Government. It was M.

Margry who first drew attention to the achievements of the family of La Verendrye, by an article in the _Moniteur_ in 1852. I owe to his kindness the opportunity of using the above-mentioned doc.u.ments in advance of publication. I obtained copies from duplicate originals of some of the princ.i.p.al among them from the Depot des Cartes de la Marine, in 1872. These answer closely, with rare and trivial variations, to the same doc.u.ments as printed from other sources by M. Margry. Some additional papers preserved in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies have also been used.]

[Footnote: My friends, Hon. William C. Endicott, then Secretary of War, and Captain John G. Bourke, Third Cavalry, U. S. A., kindly placed in my hands a valuable collection of Government maps and surveys of the country between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains visited by the brothers La Verendrye; and I have received from Captain Bourke, and also from Mr. E. A. Snow, formerly of the Third Cavalry, much information concerning the same region, repeatedly traversed by them in peace and war.]

CHAPTER XVII.

1700-1750.

THE CHAIN OF POSTS.

OPPOSING CLAIMS.--ATt.i.tUDE OF THE RIVAL NATIONS.--AMERICA A FRENCH CONTINENT--ENGLAND A USURPER.--FRENCH DEMANDS.--MAGNANIMOUS PROPOSALS.--WARLIKE PREPARATION.--NIAGARA.--OSWEGO.--CROWN POINT.--THE Pa.s.sES OF THE WEST SECURED.

We have seen that the contest between France and England in America divided itself, after the Peace of Utrecht, into three parts,--the Acadian contest; the contest for northern New England; and last, though greatest, the contest for the West. Nothing is more striking than the difference, or rather contrast, in the conduct and methods of the rival claimants to this wild but magnificent domain. Each was strong in its own qualities, and utterly wanting in the qualities that marked its opponent.

On maps of British America in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, one sees the eastern sh.o.r.e, from Maine to Georgia, garnished with ten or twelve colored patches, very different in shape and size, and defined, more or less distinctly, by dividing lines which, in some cases, are prolonged westward till they touch the Mississippi, or even cross it and stretch indefinitely towards the Pacific. These patches are the British provinces, and the westward prolongation of their boundary lines represents their several claims to vast interior tracts, founded on ancient grants, but not made good by occupation, or vindicated by any exertion of power.

These English communities took little thought of the region beyond the Alleghanies. Each lived a life of its own, shut within its own limits, not dreaming of a future collective greatness to which the possession of the West would be a necessary condition. No conscious community of aims and interests held them together, nor was there any authority capable of uniting their forces and turning them to a common object. Some of the servants of the Crown had urged the necessity of joining them all under a strong central government, as the only means of making them loyal subjects and arresting the encroachments of France; but the scheme was plainly impracticable. Each province remained in jealous isolation, busied with its own work, growing in strength, in the capacity of self-rule and the spirit of independence, and stubbornly resisting all exercise of authority from without. If the English-speaking populations flowed westward, it was in obedience to natural laws, for the King did not aid the movement, the royal governors had no authority to do so, and the colonial a.s.semblies were too much engrossed with immediate local interests. The power of these colonies was that of a rising flood slowly invading and conquering, by the unconscious force of its own growing volume, unless means be found to hold it back by dams and embankments within appointed limits.