Part 7 (2/2)
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
=102. Prosperity of the Early Colonists.=--For fifty years or more after the colonists had established their homes in the wilderness of the New World, they were growing rich and strong. They cleared away forests, planted fields, traded with the Indians, and built for themselves more comfortable houses.
Especially was this the case during the years when Cromwell and his party were in power in England, and until after Charles II was restored to the English throne. The settlers boldly pressed further and further on, crossing great rivers, climbing steep mountains, and building log cabins in far distant regions.
The colonists in Pennsylvania and Virginia pushed westward into the valley of the Ohio, while the English settlers in New York made their way through the forest toward the Great Lakes.
=103. The French in North America.=--More than seventy years before Jamestown was settled, a French explorer by the name of Cartier had entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sailed up the river of the same name, and taken possession of the country in the name of France. This same region became afterwards the great French stronghold in America.
A Frenchman by the name of Champlain sailed up the beautiful river St.
Lawrence, and was so charmed with the scenery of the country that in 1608, the year after Jamestown was settled, he began to plant a colony on the site of what is now Quebec. The settlement soon became a city and the capital of the French possessions in America.
The French were also the first explorers of the vast interior regions of our country. Their fur traders and trappers kept on good terms with the Indians, and slowly pushed along the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lakes until they had established a chain of trading-posts from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior. About the time of King Philip's War in New England Father Marquette discovered the upper Mississippi, and floated down this great river nearly as far as the mouth of the Arkansas.
=104. La Salle floats down the Mighty Mississippi.=--The bravest and ablest of all the French explorers was a fur-trader by the name of La Salle. This daring man, whose life was filled with romantic adventures and hards.h.i.+ps, bravely undergone, gave France the right to claim as her own the vast domain of the Mississippi valley.
On Lake Erie, La Salle built a small vessel, in which he sailed to the westward over the Great Lakes. In the year 1682, with a few companions, he floated down the mighty Mississippi until he reached the Gulf of Mexico.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LA SALLE AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI.]
With solemn ceremonies he claimed for France all the country drained by this great river and its branches. This enormous territory, extending from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, he named Louisiana in honor of his king, Louis XIV. The narrow strip of land held by the English along the Atlantic seaboard seemed a feeble possession compared with the vast untrodden wilderness known as ”New France.”
Hand in hand with the French explorers and fur-traders, and often in advance of them, went the Jesuit missionaries. In their efforts to carry their religion to the Indians and convert them to their faith, these zealous men boldly struck out into the unbroken wilderness of the great West. They often became brave and intelligent explorers. All hards.h.i.+ps and all dangers, and even torture by the Indians, they endured without a murmur.
=105. Beginning of the Contests between the French and English Colonists.=--At the time the French and English were making settlements on this continent, and for many long and weary years, with very short intervals of rest, Europe was cursed with war. Whether these cruel strifes between the nations arose from political ambition, greed for gain, or common jealousy, there was always intermingled the same old undercurrent of religious hatred. The French settlers in this country were Roman Catholics, while the English were almost all Protestants.
Hence it is not strange that these bitter religious controversies were not confined to the Old World, but stained with blood the soil of the New.
The English colonists dearly loved their mother country; her wrongs were their wrongs. Hence when war was declared between France and England, the English colonists readily took up arms against the French.
=106. The French and Indian Wars.=--In the seventy-four years from 1689 to 1763 the American colonies were involved in four wars, occupying in all twenty-seven years. These were called by different names; but the last and most important is known as the ”French and Indian War,” which began in 1755 and lasted about eight years.
These long contests really made one continuous series of hostile operations, with only a breathing-spell now and then. It was one long-drawn-out and stubborn battle to decide whether the French or the English should be masters of North America. Jealous of the rich and prosperous English colonies on the seaboard, and having determined that England should not control the whole of this vast continent, the French built a chain of more than sixty forts stretching from Montreal to New Orleans.
The French had always treated the Indians with more consideration than had their rivals. The Jesuit missionaries had converted many of the red men to their religious belief. Sometimes the French took Indian women for wives, and often they adopted the red man's ways of living.
=107. The Indians ally themselves with the French.=--When these sons of the forest found the English slowly but surely crowding them out of their haunts and homes, and saw that their hunting grounds were getting reduced to mere strips of territory here and there, it was not strange that they felt bitter towards the ever-encroaching new-comers. The tribes had steadily diminished, and they were unable to cope single-handed with the English. Hence they naturally looked to the French for help, and the French readily induced the Indians to join them against the English and their American descendants.
It was a fierce struggle. English and American blood flowed like water before it was ended. The Indians never fought in open field, but always after their own fas.h.i.+on. They trusted to sudden attacks, especially at night, and to rapid raids, doing their savage work suddenly and retreating swiftly into the forest.
Lonely families and small settlements suffered most. Like lightning out of the clear sky came the horror of an Indian night attack. The war-whoop waked the midnight sleepers and the glare of burning cabins lighted up the darkness.
The ma.s.sacre of defenseless women and children crimsoned the earth in scores of settlements during these cruel wars.
[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIANS ATTACKING A SETTLER'S CABIN.]
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