Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (10 page)

The moving spirit of disaffection was the chief called Old Britain, or the Demoiselle, and its focus was his town of Pickawillany, on the Miami. At this place it is said that English traders sometimes mustered to the number of fifty or more. “It is they,” wrote Longueuil, “who are the instigators of revolt and the source of all our woes.”
²
Whereupon the Colonial Minister reiterated his instructions to drive them off and plunder them, which he thought would “effectually disgust them,” and bring all trouble to an end.
³

La Jonquière’s remedy had been more heroic, for he had ordered Céloron to attack the English and their red allies alike; and he charged that officer with arrogance and disobedience because he had not done so. It is not certain that obedience was easy; for though, besides the garrison of regulars, a strong body of militia was sent up to Detroit to aid the stroke,
⁴
the Indians of that post, whose co-operation was thought necessary, proved halfhearted, intractable, and even touched with disaffection. Thus the enterprise languished till, in June, aid came from another quarter. Charles Langlade, a young French trader married to a squaw at Green Bay, and strong in influence with the tribes of that region, came down the lakes from Michillimackinac with a fleet of canoes manned by two hundred and fifty Ottawa and Ojibwa warriors; stopped a while at Detroit; then embarked again, paddled up the Maumee to Raymond’s fort at the portage, and led his greased and painted rabble through the forest to attack the Demoiselle and his English friends. They approached Pickawillany at about nine o’clock on the morning of the twenty-first. The scared squaws fled from the cornfields into the town, where the wigwams of the Indians clustered about the fortified warehouse of the traders. Of these there were at the time only eight in the place. Most of the Indians also were gone on their summer hunt, though the Demoiselle remained with a band of his tribesmen. Great was the screeching of war-whoops and clatter of guns. Three of the traders were caught outside the fort. The remaining five closed the gate, and stood on their defence. The fight was soon over. Fourteen Miamis were shot down, the Demoiselle among the rest. The five white men held out till the afternoon, when three of them surrendered, and two, Thomas Burney and Andrew McBryer, made their escape. One of the English prisoners being wounded, the victors stabbed him to death. Seventy years of missionaries had not weaned them from cannibalism, and they boiled and ate the Demoiselle.
⁵

The captive traders, plundered to the skin, were carried by Langlade to Duquesne, the new governor, who highly praised the bold leader of the enterprise, and recommended him to the Minister for such reward as befitted one of his station. “As he is not in the King’s service, and has married a squaw, I will ask for him only a pension of two hundred francs, which will flatter him infinitely.”

The Marquis Duquesne, sprung from the race of the great naval commander of that name, had arrived towards midsummer; and he began his rule by a general review of troops and militia. His lofty bearing offended the Canadians; but he compelled their respect, and, according to a writer of the time, showed from the first that he was born to command. He presently took in hand an enterprise which his predecessor would probably have accomplished, had the Home Government encouraged him. Duquesne, profiting by the infatuated neglect of the British provincial assemblies, prepared to occupy the upper waters of the Ohio, and secure the passes with forts and garrisons. Thus the Virginian and Pennsylvania traders would be debarred all access to the West, and the tribes of that region, bereft henceforth of English guns, knives, hatchets, and blankets, English gifts and English cajoleries, would be thrown back to complete dependence on the French. The moral influence, too, of such a movement would be incalculable; for the Indian respects nothing so much as a display of vigor and daring, backed by force. In short, the intended enterprise was a master-stroke, and laid the axe to the very root of disaffection. It is true that, under the treaty, commissioners had been long in session at Paris to settle the question of American boundaries; but there was no likelihood that they would come to agreement; and if France would make good her Western claims, it behooved her, while there was yet time, to prevent her rival from fastening a firm grasp on the countries in dispute.

Yet the Colonial Minister regarded the plan with distrust. “Be on your guard,” he wrote to Duquesne, “against new undertakings; private interests are generally at the bottom of them. It is through these that new posts are established. Keep only such as are indispensable, and suppress the others. The expenses of the colony are enormous; and they have doubled since the peace.” Again, a little later: “Build on the Ohio such forts as are absolutely necessary, but no more. Remember that His Majesty suspects your advisers of interested views.”
¹

No doubt there was justice in the suspicion. Every military movement, and above all the establishment of every new post, was an opportunity to the official thieves with whom the colony swarmed. Some band of favored knaves grew rich; while a much greater number, excluded from sharing the illicit profits, clamored against the undertaking, and wrote charges of corruption to Versailles. Thus the Minister was kept tolerably well informed; but was scarcely the less helpless, for with the Atlantic between, the disorders of Canada defied his control. Duquesne was exasperated by the opposition that met him on all hands, and wrote to the Minister: “There are so many rascals in this country that one is forever the butt of their attacks.”
¹

It seems that unlawful gain was not the only secret spring of the movement. An officer of repute says that the Intendant, Bigot, enterprising in his pleasures as in his greed, was engaged in an intrigue with the wife of Chevalier Péan; and wishing at once to console the husband and to get rid of him, sought for him a high command at a distance from the colony. Therefore while Marin, an able officer, was made first in rank, Péan was made second. The same writer hints that Duquesne himself was influenced by similar motives in his appointment of leaders.
²

He mustered the colony troops, and ordered out the Canadians. With the former he was but half satisfied; with the latter he was delighted; and he praises highly their obedience and alacrity. “I had not the least trouble in getting them to march. They came on the minute, bringing their own guns, though many people tried to excite them to revolt; for the whole colony opposes my operations.” The expedition set out early in the spring of 1753. The whole force was not much above a thousand men, increased by subsequent detachments to fifteen hundred; but to the Indians it seemed a mighty host; and one of their orators declared that the lakes and rivers were covered with boats and soldiers from Montreal to Presquisle.
³
Some Mohawk hunters by the St. Lawrence saw them as they passed, and hastened home to tell the news to Johnson, whom they wakened at midnight, “whooping and hollowing in a frightful manner.”
⁴
Lieutenant Holland at Oswego saw a fleet of canoes upon the lake, and was told by a roving Frenchman that they belonged to an army of six thousand men going to the Ohio, “to cause all the English to quit those parts.”
⁵

The main body of the expedition landed at Presquisle, on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie, where the town of Erie now stands; and here for a while we leave them.

1
Johnson to Clinton,
28
April,
1749.

1
The estimate of a French official report, 1736, and of Sir William Johnson, 1763.

2
La Jonquière au Ministre,
27
Fév
. 1750.
Ibid
., 29
Oct
. 1751.
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1751.
Notice biographique de la Jonquière
. La Jonquière, governor of Canada, at last broke up their contraband trade, and ordered Tournois to Quebec.

3
I once saw a contemporary portrait of him at the mission of Two Mountains, where he had been stationed.

4
ouillé à la Jonquière,
1749. The Intendant Bigot gave him money and provisions.
N.Y
.
Col
.
Docs
., X. 204.

5
Journal of Conrad Weiser,
1750.

1
Lalande,
Notice de l’Abbé Piquet,
in
Lettres Édifiantes
. See also Tassé in
Revue Canadienne,
1870, p. 9.

2
Piquet à la Jonquière et Bigot,
8
Fév
. 1752. See
Appendix A
. In spite of Piquet’s self-laudation, and in spite also of the detraction of the author of the
Mémoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760, there can be no doubt of his practical capacity and his fertility of resource. Duquesne, when governor of the colony, highly praises “ses talents et son activité pour le service de Sa Majesté.”

3
Appendix A
.

1
On Toronto,
La Jonquière et Bigot au Ministre,
1749.
La Jonquière au Ministre,
30
Août,
1750.
N.Y
.
Col
.
Docs
., X. 201, 246.

2
La Jonquière au Ministre,
23
Fév
. 1750.
Ibid
., 6
Oct
. 1751. Compare
Colonial Records of Pa
., V. 508.

1
Lieutenant Lindesay to Johnson, July,
1751.

1
Clinton to Lords of Trade,
30
July,
1750.

2
Journal of Conrad Weiser,
1750.

3
Compare
Doc
.
Hist
.
N.Y
., I. 463.

1
Journal qui peut servir de Mémoire et de Relation du Voyage que j’ay fait sur le Lac Ontario pour attirer au nouvel Établissement de La Présentation les Sauvages Iroquois des Cinq Nations,
1751. The last passage given above is condensed in the rendering, as the original is extremely involved and ungrammatical.

2
La Jonquière au Ministre,
24
Août,
1750.

3
Relation du Voiage de la Belle Rivière,
1749.

4
A plan of Detroit is before me, made about this time by the engineer Lery.

5
Le Ministre à la Jonquière et Bigot,
14
Mai,
1749.
Le Ministre à Céloron,
23
Mai,
1749.

1
Ordonnance du
2
Jan
. 1750.
La Jonquière et Bigot au Ministre,
1750. Forty-six persons of all ages and both sexes had been induced by La Galissonière to go the year before.
Lettres communes de la Jonquière et Bigot,
1749. The total fixed population of Detroit and its neighborhood in 1750 is stated at four hundred and eighty-three souls. In the following two years, a considerable number of young men came of their own accord, and Céloron wrote to Montreal to ask for girls to marry them.

2
Le Ministre à la Galissonière,
14
Mai,
1749.

3
Mémoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760. The charges made here and elsewhere are denied, somewhat faintly, by a descendant of La Jonquière in his elaborate
Notice biographique
of his ancestor.

4
Le Ministre à La Jonquière, Mai,
1749. The instructions given to La Jonquière before leaving France also urge the necessity of destroying Oswego.

5
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres; à MM. de la Jonquière et Bigot,
15
Avril,
1750. See
Appendix A
for original.

6
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1750.

1
Chalmers,
Collection of Treaties,
I. 382.

2
La Jonquière à Clinton,
10
Août,
1751.

3
Deposition of Morris Turner and Ralph Kilgore, in
Colonial Records of Pa
., V. 482. The deponents had been prisoners at Detroit.

4
Précis des Faits, avec leurs Pièces justificatives,
100.

5
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1750.

6
Ibid
., 6
Juin,
1751.

7
La Jonquière au Ministre,
19
Oct.
1751.

1
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1751.

2
He died on the sixth of March, 1752 (
Bigot au Ministre,
6
Mai
); not on the seventeenth of May, as stated in the
Mémoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760.

1
Dépêches de Longueuil; Lettres de Raymond; Benoit de Saint-Clerc à la Jonquière, Oct
. 1751.

2
Longueuil au Ministre,
21
Avril,
1752.

3
Le Ministre à la Jonquière,
1752.
Le Ministre à Duquesne,
9
Juillet,
1752.

4
La Jonquière à Céloron,
1
Oct.
1751.

5
On the attack of Pickawillany,
Longueuil au Ministre,
18
Août,
1752;
Duquesne au Ministre,
25
Oct
. 1752;
Colonial Records of Pa
., V. 599;
Journal of William Trent,
1752. Trent was on the spot a few days after the affair.

1
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1753.