Empires at War

by Jr. , William M. Fowler

  In England, too, the crowds cheered the end of the war. Merchants rejoiced at the resumption of trade in an expanded empire. But while the bells rang out in joy, some in the government expressed concern. Victory had come at a huge financial cost. Pitt's strategic vision had exhausted Newcastle's purse. He had been lavish in his support to the colonies in both cash and promises. At the opening of the war the national debt had stood at a worrisome seventy-five million pounds. By the end of the conflict it had nearly doubled.10 The price of conquered real estate had been high. Who would pay the mortgage? Surely, thought the men in London, the colonies ought to bear a fair share of the empire's expanded obligations. Thus far they had gained the most and paid the least.

  Money was not the only worry in London. Although sentiment varied in intensity from colony to colony, for generations the people of British North America had shown a decided tendency toward defining themselves separately from their Old World relations. Central to this emerging "American" identity was the growth in power of the lower houses of the colonial assemblies. Often without notice, but sometimes in dramatic ways, local assemblies had been challenging and eroding the power of the royal government. Most often this resulted from conflicts between the members of the colony's representative body and the royal governor. During the war these political encounters had grown more frequent and intense. At numerous times when Commanders in Chief Braddock, Loudoun, and Amherst sought support from colonial governments, they experienced firsthand the rising power of these bodies, which somehow managed to refuse and obey at the same time. Such behavior infuriated the generals and drew the ire of leaders in London, including the king and Lord Bute.

  While the king's officers bristled at the boorish behavior of the colonials and their petty assemblies, Americans for their part grew increasingly resentful of what they viewed as the high-handed tactics of the men sent from England. Disputes over rank and command, the commandeering of supplies, wartime embargoes, and a host of other issues drove a deepening wedge between colonial authorities and the home government. Nonetheless, while the French remained in Canada and their Indian allies prowled the borderlands, the colonists were willing to suffer imperial indignities in return for imperial defense. After 1763, they would be less accommodating.

  Amid the nation's exuberance, Bute's ally the duke of Bedford expressed a common concern among those closest to the king. He believed that England might have overextended itself; "we have too much already," Bedford noted. Taking Canada was a financial and strategic mistake. If these "few acres of snow" had been nothing but a drain to the French, of what use would they be to England? Even more important were the strategic implications. The duke noted presciently that Canada in French hands had been a monitor to the colonies. "The neighbourhood of the French to our North American colonies was the greatest security for their dependence on the mother-country, which I feel will be slighted by them when their apprehension of the French is removed."11 Even as the duke spoke, disturbing news was arriving from the newly conquered west.

  In the spring of 1763, after the French had officially withdrawn, English traders began to arrive, and the Indians discovered that life would be different. The French had been their partners. The English wanted to be their masters. The British would not sell rum. Instead they offered overpriced goods for which the Indians had little use. Native traders arriving at Detroit resented the new restrictions and complained to the fort's commander, Captain Donald Campbell.12 The captain warned his superiors that "the French have a different manner of treating them from us." Perhaps it might be wise, he suggested, at least for a time, to follow the French traditions when dealing with the Indians.13

  Campbell's concerns reached William Johnson, who shared his worries with Amherst. The general's reply was less than heartening. He told Johnson he did not agree with the custom of "bountifull" gift giving carried on by the French. Amherst did "not see why the Crown should be put to [the] Expense" of supporting the Indians. They should, he wrote, "be able to supply themselves." He continued, "as to purchasing the good behavior either of Indians, or any Others, is what I do not understand; when men of what race soever behave ill, they must be punished but not bribed."14

  Having spent his entire career cajoling Indians with flattery and gifts, Johnson must have been taken aback, if not actually insulted, by Amherst's letter. It would be difficult to overstate Jeffrey Amherst's visceral dislike for Indians or his ignorance of their culture. For the Indians in the west who were already lamenting the departure of their French friends, Amherst's arrogance was frightening and inexplicable. Rumors began to travel that the British intended to seize their lands. Given previous British behavior in the Ohio country and elsewhere, such fears were hardly unfounded. In their dealings with the tribes the French had always been careful to behave as guests among them. No matter what their real intentions might have been, fur traders, Troupes de la Marine, and missionaries always gave the impression of being in Indian lands "temporarily." In that regard the French were cautious about building that most ominous symbol of occupation: the fort. When Amherst announced his intention of building a blockhouse at Sandusky, the Indians objected and complained to Johnson. Johnson understood their fears and suggested to Amherst that in light of these concerns he might wish to reconsider his decision. Amherst bluntly refused and dismissed the Indian objection as having "no manner of weight" with him.15

  Defeated, disgraced, and dismissed, many Indians turned to spiritual sources for solace and the energy to fuel their resistance. Prophets arose. Among the most influential was Neolin, "the Enlightened." A Delaware, he rejected servile acceptance of English rule and preached resistance to the "dogs clothed in red."16 Neolin inspired a native renaissance. Through him the Master of Life spoke:

  This land where ye dwell I have made for you and not for others. Whence comes it that ye permit the Whites upon your lands ? Can ye not live without them? I know that those whom ye call the children of your Great Father supply your needs, but if ye were not evil, as ye are, you could surely do without them. Ye could live as ye did before knowing them—before those whom ye call your brothers had come upon your lands. Did ye not live by the bow and arrow? Ye had no need of gun or powder, or anything else, and nevertheless ye caught animals to live upon and to dress yourselves with their skins.... I do not forbid you to permit among you the children of your [French] Father-, Hove them. They know me and pray to me, and I supply their wants and all they give you. But as to those who come to trouble your lands—drive them out, make war upon them.17

  Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, heard the teachings of Neolin. Robert Rogers had met Pontiac two years before when Amherst had sent him to accept the surrender of the French posts in the west. Rogers was impressed with the chief and described him as a man "greatly honored and revered by his subjects." 18 Pontiac was suspicious of the intentions of the British, and in the spring of 1763 he organized a meeting at Ecorse River a few miles south of Detroit. Ottawa, Chippewa, Pottawatomi, and Wyandot gathered. At the council Pontiac preached Neolin's fiery gospel of resistance. He told them that if they rose up their French brothers (the good whites) would return and help them. When the council ended, the warriors left carrying home the message of war and the promise of French help.

  Within days of the meeting at the Ecorse Pontiac arranged with Detroit's commander, Major Henry Gladwin, to hold a council within the walls of the fort on May 7. Pontiac and more than three hundred warriors planned to walk into the fort with knives, tomahawks, and sawed-off muskets concealed beneath their clothes. When he gave the signal, the entire garrison would be massacred. The night before the council, an unidentified informant warned Gladwin. In the morning the major was ready. When Pontiac and the Ottawa paraded into the fort, they saw immediately that Gladwin had turned out the guard. Everywhere they looked, armed redcoats were standing ready. After some conversation, Pontiac gave up the plan and led his warriors out of the fort. For two days Pontiac remained nearby and made several more attempts to gain entra
nce. Gladwin would not allow it. Unable to take the fort from the inside, Pontiac threw aside the pretense and ordered attacks on the settlers around the fort. Detroit was under siege.19

  Pontiac, as he may have looked, in an unattributed portrait

  News of the events at Detroit spread quickly through the west, and other tribes joined in the uprising. Thanks to Gladwin, Detroit held out. Other posts were not so fortunate. A band of Ottawa and Huron surprised and captured the garrison at Sandusky. In late May a relief force of ten bateaux sailing from the Niagara peninsula to Detroit was ambushed at Point Pelee on the western end of Lake Erie. Fort Miamis (near Fort Wayne, Indiana) surrendered, as did Fort Ouiatenon (Lafayette, Indiana). At the upper end of the lakes Fort Michilimackinac was taken by a classic ruse. One morning Chippewa warriors, who played lacrosse from morning to noon every day outside the fort, threw the ball inside the stockade. Pretending to retrieve the ball, the players ran through the gate. Indian spectators, mostly women, followed the men into the fort. Once inside, the women drew weapons from beneath their clothes and passed them to the men. In a matter of minutes they nearly annihilated the garrison.20 In the Ohio area the old French posts at Venango and Le Boeuf surrendered. Fort St. Joseph on the southern edge of Lake Michigan and Presque Isle on Lake Erie also fell. Through the spring and summer the Indians mauled the British. Virtually every post in the west surrendered, with the exception of Niagara, Fort Pitt, and Detroit. Across the frontier, settlers and traders fled to escape attack.

  Amherst was caught unawares and unprepared. Some of his regiments were still in the Caribbean and Cuba awaiting redeployment, while others that had returned to North America were recovering from tropical diseases and battle casualties. It would take considerable time to march these soldiers west. In the meantime "Pontiac's Rebellion" gained force. Pontiac understood that time was not on his side. The longer Niagara, Detroit, and Pitt held out, the more likely that Amherst would be able to marshal his forces for the counterattack. Vainly, the Ottawa and other tribes awaited word from their French brothers in Louisiana that they were coming to the rescue.

  Amherst's reaction to the news from the west bordered on fury. He told Gladwin to put "every Indian in your Power to Death."21 To Colonel Henry Bouquet, commanding a relief force marching west to Pitt in July, he wrote that the Indians should be infected with smallpox and hunted down with dogs. A few weeks later the general told Lieutenant Valentine Gardner that the Indians must be treated "as the vilest Race of Beings that ever Infested the Earth and whose Riddance from it must be esteemed a Meritorious Act, for the good of mankind."22 Murdering prisoners, spreading smallpox, shooting women and children were all part of Amherst's plan to bring peace to the frontier.

  In the case of smallpox, the general need not have worried. His men were ahead of him. When a group of Delaware chiefs arrived to parley at Fort Pitt in June 1763, the fort's commander, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a Swiss mercenary, invited his guests in to negotiate. They talked, and then as a parting gift he presented them with two blankets and a handkerchief taken from the smallpox hospital. Captain William Trent, the Virginia officer who had built the first fort in 1753, was the man who supplied the "gifts." He noted, "I hope it will have the desired effect."23 It did.

  While Ecuyer held out, Bouquet assembled a relief force at Carlisle. He marched via Fort Loudoun, Bedford, and Ligonier. At Ligonier he abandoned his wagons and baggage and loaded four hundred packhorses with flour for the famished men at Fort Pitt. Three days later on August 5, 1763, about twenty-five miles east of the fort, his advance guard ran into a large force of Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, and Huron who had come south from Sandusky. "The action became general... we were attacked on every side." The battle lasted into the night. Bouquet's men took a position on top of Edge Hill and fortified themselves with flour sacks. The Indians had the advantage and took a heavy toll on the British. The next day in a ploy to draw the Indians into a trap, Bouquet made a show of withdrawing some of his men from the perimeter. Believing that the British had left a hole in the line, the Indians poured through the gap only to be met by a fierce bayonet counterattack. As they retreated off the hill, other units pursued them. Bouquet's tactic worked, and on August 10 the battered column reached Fort Pitt.24

  To the north Pontiac continued to press on Detroit. His coalition of tribes was fragile, and as it became increasingly apparent that the fort would not fall, individual chiefs struck deals with the British and headed home. In September the schooner Huron beat off a canoe attack and easily made its way safely to the fort with much needed supplies. Pontiac did all that he could to rally support, but on the evening of October 29 he received devastating news.

  That night a young officer of the Troupes de la Marine, Cadet Dequindre, delivered a message from Major Pierre Joseph Neyon de Villiers, the French commander at Fort Chartres.25* It was addressed to the "French children." "The Master of Life," wrote Villiers, commanded peace. "What joy you will have in seeing the French and English smoke with the same pipe, and eating out of the same spoon and living like brethren."26 The letter assured the tribes that the French king had not given away their lands to the English, only the lands he owned, and that the king "will never abandon [his] children and will always supply them from the far side of the Mississippi." The note ended "farewell. Live in Peace."27

  Having lost so many of his own allies who had returned home for the winter, and now abandoned by his French brothers, Pontiac needed a respite. He dictated a note to Gladwin

  My Brother

  The word which my father has sent me to make peace I have accepted; all my young men have buried their hatchets. I think you will forget the bad things which have taken place for some time past. Likewise I forget what you may have done to me, in order to think of nothing but good. I, the Chippewas, the Hurons, we are ready to speak with you when you ask us.28

  Gladwin was not ready to negotiate with the Indians. He would, he told them, have to seek instructions from Amherst. The major, however, was a reasonable and humane officer, more so than his general, and he wrote to Amherst that while it was entirely possible to destroy the defeated tribes, perhaps even as easily as providing them with free rum, it was not a good policy. The natives were no longer a threat, and any prosecution of the war would only harm the fur trade and lengthen the bill of costs.

  Since Gladwin refused to speak to him, the Ottawa chief broke camp and, accompanied by a few followers, headed south to see his French brother Villiers. He reached Fort Chartres on April 12, 1764. The visit was pointless; Villiers was packing for New Orleans—his war was over. After several days of fruitless negotiation Pontiac returned north. Although his power was waning, Pontiac's persistent preachings to resist British authority alarmed Thomas Grage. Gage, who had first come to America with Braddock and remained to serve with Amherst, had succeeded Amherst as commander in chief when the general returned to England in rnid-November.29 Determined to crush the Indian uprising once and for all, Gage assigned Bouquet and John Bradstreet the task. Bradstreet was to strike from Niagara; Bouquet had orders to march from Fort Pitt.

  Bradstreet planned to advance along the Lake Erie shore with a force of twelve hundred men, mostly militia, to seek out Delaware, Shawnee, Ottawa, and others who had participated in the uprising. It took several weeks for the militia to gather and for Bradstreet's carpenters to construct the heavy boats (each forty-seven feet long) that would carry the force. While work went forward, William Johnson arrived, and so too did nearly one thousand Indians he had invited to Niagara to discuss peace. In July of the previous year Johnson had hosted a similar meeting at his home for the Six Nations. All but the Seneca had come to renew their pledge of friendship. The absent Seneca instead, lookup the hatchet in sympathy with Pontiac. By April, however, with Pontiac in flight and redcoats arriving, the Seneca had second thoughts. This time they too came to see Warraghiyagey, and on April 3, 1764, they signed a treaty repenting their transgressions and pledging friendship.

  Johnson's or
atory and the sight of Bradstreet's small army had the desired effect. The tribes pledged peace. On August 6 Bradstreet's flotilla, twelve hundred soldiers in large boats accompanied by three hundred Indians in canoes, set off for the south shore of Lake Erie. His mission was "to give peace to all such nations of Indians as would sue for it, and chastise those that continued in arms."30

  Foul weather delayed Bradstreet's advance. On the twelfth he sought shelter in a small bay a few miles east of Presque Isle. It was there that a delegation of Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandot, and Mingo approached him. They blamed all the recent troubles on "some young men" and assured Bradstreet of their sincere desire for peace. Although he had no power to enter into any treaty—that authority was reserved to Johnson as Indian superintendent—Bradstreet drew up a "preliminary," which all the parties signed. Not only had Bradstreet exceeded his authority, a point that would not go unnoticed by Johnson, but he had also been deceived. Whoever the warriors were who met Bradstreet, they had no authority to negotiate for the tribes they claimed to represent. The agreement was meaningless. Johnson was furious at the trespass into his territory, and Gage was embarrassed that one of his senior officers had acted so foolishly. He told Johnson that Bradstreet's "Astonishing Treaty of Peace" did not contain "one Article whereby the least Satisfaction is given for many horrid Murders committed by those Barbarians, the sole Promoters and Contrivers of all our Troubles, and the Chief Actors in the Bloody Tragedy. . . . I disavow and Annullit."31