Part 17 (2/2)
In one of his letters to his brothers, (page 63,) Major-General Brock said that he had visited Detroit, the neighbourhood of which was a delightful country, far exceeding any thing he had seen on that continent, and a cursory description of it, as it appeared in 1812, may prove interesting.
The Detroit river, which connects Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie, extends from about lat.i.tude 41 48' to 42 18' north, and divides that part of Canada from the United States. Possessing a salubrious climate, a productive soil, and a water communication with the upper and lower lakes and the river St. Lawrence, we can scarcely conceive any thing more favorable than the geographical position of the adjacent country.
Michigan afforded a rich field for ”fowling” and fis.h.i.+ng, and its forests were plentifully supplied with various kinds of game. It was the opinion of a former governor of Upper Canada, Simcoe, that the peninsula of that province formed by Lakes Huron, St. Clair, Erie, Ontario, Rice, and Simcoe, would alone furnish a surplus of wheat sufficient for the wants of Great Britain. The banks of the Detroit were in many places thickly peopled and in a fair state of cultivation. The inhabitants on the Canadian side were chiefly of French origin, who began to occupy the country when Canada was still under the dominion of France. They still retained that urbanity of manners which distinguishes them from the peasantry of most countries. Further back, the country was settled princ.i.p.ally by Americans, partial to the United States. Three or four years after the war, the houses were so numerous and so close together upon the banks of the Detroit, that there was an appearance of a succession of villages for more than ten miles. The farms were very narrow in front, extending a long way back, and were allotted in this awkward and inconvenient form, that their respective occupants might be able to render each other a.s.sistance when attacked by the Indians, who were at one time very numerous and troublesome in this vicinity.
The banks of the river Detroit are the Eden of Upper Canada, in so far as regards the production of fruit. Apples, pears, plums, peaches, grapes, and nectarines, attain the highest degree of perfection, and exceed in size, beauty, and flavour, those raised in any other part of the province. Cider abounds at the table of the meanest peasant, and there is scarcely a farm that has not a fruitful orchard attached to it.
This fineness of the fruit is one consequence of the amelioration of climate, which takes place in the vicinity of the Detroit river and Lake St. Clair. The seasons there are much milder and more serene than they are a few hundred miles below, and the weather is likewise drier and less variable. Comparatively little snow falls during the winter, although the cold is often sufficiently intense to freeze over the Detroit river so strongly, that persons, horses, and even loaded sleighs, cross it with ease and safety. In summer, the country presents a forest of blossoms, which exhale the most delicious odours; a cloud seldom obscures the sky; while the lakes and rivers, which extend in every direction, communicate a reviving freshness to the air, and moderate the warmth of a dazzling sun; and the clearness and elasticity of the atmosphere render it equally healthy and exhilarating.[76]
The fort of Detroit was originally constructed to overawe the neighbouring Indian nations, and its military importance as the key of the upper lakes appears to have been well known to them. But, neither possessing battering cannon nor understanding the art of attacking fortified places, they could only reduce them by stratagem or famine, and Detroit could always be supplied with provisions by water. In the year 1763, the Indian chief, Pontiac, whose name has already appeared, (page 164), formed a powerful confederacy of the different tribes, for the purpose of revenging their past wrongs and of preventing their total extirpation, which they were erroneously led to believe was contemplated. In a sudden, general, and simultaneous irruption on the British frontier, they obtained possession, chiefly by stratagem, of Michilimakinack,[77] Presqu'ile, and several smaller posts; but there still remained three fortresses formidable alike by their strength and position, which it was necessary the Indians should subdue before they could reap any permanent advantage from their successes. These were Detroit, Niagara, and Pittsburg; and the first and last, although so remote from each other, were invested almost at the same moment. The consummate address, which the Indians displayed in this alarming war, was supported by a proportionate degree of courage, determination, and perseverance; nor ever did they approve themselves a more stubborn and formidable enemy than in this final stand against the encroachments of European dominion and civilization in North America. General Amherst, sensible of the danger, sent immediate succours to those two western garrisons, and thus prevented their fall. Captain Dalzell, after conducting, in July, a strong reinforcement to Detroit, was induced to think that he could surprise the Indian force encamped about three miles from the fort, and he sat out at night with 270 men, adopting the most judicious precautions for the secrecy and good order of his march. But the Indians, apprized of his design, were prepared to defeat it, and every step from the fort only conducted the English troops further into the jaws of destruction. Their advance was suddenly arrested by a sharp fire on their front, which was presently followed by a similar discharge on their rear, and then succeeded by destructive vollies from every side. In the darkness neither the position nor the numbers of the Indians could be ascertained. Dalzell was slain early, and his whole detachment was on the brink of irretrievable confusion and ruin when Captain Grant, the next in command, perceiving that a retreat, now the only resource, could only be accomplished by a resolute attack, promptly rallied the survivors, who, steadily obeying his orders, charged the Indians with so much spirit and success as to repulse them on all sides to some distance. Having thus extricated themselves from immediate peril, the British hastily regained the shelter of the fort, with the loss of 70 killed and 40 wounded; and the Indians, unable to reduce the fort by a regular siege, and pausing long enough to ascertain that the garrison was completely on its guard against stratagem and surprise, broke up their camp and abandoned the vicinity of Detroit.
The Indians, thus grievously disappointed in their designs on Detroit and Pittsburg, now closely beleaguered Niagara, which they justly considered as not less important. They hoped to reduce it by famine, and on the 14th of September, surrounding a convoy of provisions which had nearly reached its destination, they succeeded in making it their prey by a sudden attack, in which 70 of the British soldiers were slain.
Shortly after, as a schooner was crossing Lake Erie with supplies for Detroit, she was attacked by a numerous fleet of canoes, in which were nearly 400 Indians. But this attempt was less successful, and, after a warm engagement, the Indian flotilla was repulsed with considerable loss, as, in a conflict with an armed vessel, they were exposed to the same disadvantages which attended their operations against fortified places. Niagara having at length been powerfully reinforced and well supplied, the Indians abandoned all hope of reducing it, and thenceforth confined themselves to their wonted predatory hostility. In the spring and summer of the following year, the British troops attacked them with such vigour and success, that they were compelled to propose, in Indian phrase, to _bury the hatchet_; and in September a treaty of peace was concluded, the conditions of which were dictated by the English.[78]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 61: The captain of the spies was killed and scalped on the march. ”Thus fell the brave, generous, and patriotic McCulloch, captain of the spies,”--and in a foot note a few pages before--”Captain McCulloch, of the spies, scalped an Indian, whom he killed in the engagement,” in Upper Canada! We quote from Brown's-American History, so it appears that at least one patriotic American could _scalp_ as well as the Indians!]
[Footnote 62: Christie's Memoirs.]
[Footnote 63: Christie's Memoirs.]
[Footnote 64: The American historian, Brown, observes: ”In the meanwhile, Michilimakinack surrendered to the British without resistance. The indefatigable Brock, with a reinforcement of 400 regulars, arrived at Maiden; and several Indian tribes, before hesitating in the choice of sides, began to take their ground and array themselves under the British standard.” Vol. i, page 64.--100 regulars!]
[Footnote 65: Now Colonel Glegg, of Thursteston Hall, Ches.h.i.+re.]
[Footnote 66: His age was then about forty.]
[Footnote 67: The American historian, Thomson, in his ”Sketches of the War,” says that General Hull surrendered ”to a body of troops inferior in _quality_ as well as number!” and he adds: ”When General Brock said that the force at his disposal authorized him to require the surrender, he must have had a very exalted opinion of the prowess of his own soldiers, or a very mistaken one of those who were commanded by the American general.”]
[Footnote 68: Including four bra.s.s field pieces, captured with General Burgoyne, at Saratoga, in 1777, and which were retaken by the Americans, at the battle of the Thames, in October, 1813.]
[Footnote 69: Afterwards named the Detroit.]
[Footnote 70: Appendix A, Section 2, No. 1. Jefferson's Correspondence.]
[Footnote 71: Christie's Memoirs.]
[Footnote 72: Doubtless an error for 1330, the entire British force.]
[Footnote 73: There is a tradition in the editor's family, that one of its members removed from Guernsey to England early in the seventeenth century, and that a son of his, a clergyman, settled in the island of Barbadoes, whence he or his family emigrated to the then British provinces of North America, now the United States.]
[Footnote 74: James' Military Occurrences.]
[Footnote 75: For his revolutionary services, see Appendix A, Section 2, No. 2.]
[Footnote 76: Howison's Upper Canada. London, 1821.]
[Footnote 77: The British garrison was surprised, not being aware of the war, and the Indians butchered nearly all the whites, in number about 100. An English trader, concealed in the house of one of the French inhabitants, beheld the ma.s.sacre from an aperture which afforded him a view of the area of the fort. He describes it as follows: ”I beheld, in shapes the foulest and most terrible, the ferocious triumphs of barbarian conquerors. The dead were scalped and mangled; the dying were writhing and shrieking under the insatiated knife and tomahawk, and from the bodies of some, ripped open, their butchers were drinking the blood scooped up in the hollows of joined hands, and quaffed amid shouts of rage and victory.”]
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