xt79s46h1h7t https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt79s46h1h7t/data/mets.xml Ogg, Frederic Austin, 1878-1951. 19201919  books b92-125-29177585 English Yale University Press, : New Haven [Conn.] : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Northwest, Old History. Ohio River Valley History. Old Northwest  : a chronicle of the Ohio Valley and beyond / by Frederic Austin Ogg. text Old Northwest  : a chronicle of the Ohio Valley and beyond / by Frederic Austin Ogg. 1920 2002 true xt79s46h1h7t section xt79s46h1h7t 












THE OLD NORTHWEST

 
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GRADUATES' EDITION


    VOLUME 19
 THE CHRONICLES
OF AMERICA SERIES
  ALLEN JOHNSON
      EDITOR

  GERHARD R. LOMER
  CHARLES W. JEFFERYS
  ASSISTANT EDITORS

 

















































i










                            NE Al I





                                           1  ,z ,   ;Z                 K

 

























             GEORGE ROGERS CLARK

Painting in the Virginia State Library, Richmond, Virginia.

 









THE OLD NORTHWEST

      A CHRONICLE OF THE
    OHIO VALLEY AND BEYOND
    BY FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG



NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK  CO.
  LONDON: HTMPHREY MILFORD
  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
            1990

 




















Copyright, 1919, by Yale University Press



 















                CONTENTS

  I. PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY            Page 1

  II. "A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS"          "  0

  III. THE REVOLUTION BEGINS            " 41

  IV. THE CONQUEST COMPLETED              57

  V. WAYNE, THE SCOURGE OF THE INDIANS  76

  VI. THE GREAT MIGRATION                 97

VIl. PIONEER DAYS AND WAYS              110

VIII. TECUMSEH                         " 131

IX. THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE NEW WEST  " 151

X. SECTIONAL CROSS CURRENTS          " 179

XI. THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY    " 189

    BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE              "2

    INDEX                             " 215



vii

 
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                ILLUSTRATIONS

GEORGE ROGERS CLARK
   Painting in the Virginia State Library, Rich-
   mond, Virginia.



Frontispiece



THE OLD NORTHWEST, 1760-1836
   Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical
   Society.                             Facing page 26



lx

 
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THE OLD NORTHWEST



                CHAPTER I

            PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY

THE fall of Montreal, on September 8, 1760,
while the plains about the city were still dotted
with the white tents of the victorious English and
colonial troops, was indeed an event of the deepest
consequence to America and to the world. By the
articles of capitulation which were signed by the
Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor of New France,
Canada and all its dependencies westward to the
Mississippi passed to the British Crown. Virtu-
ally ended was the long struggle for the dominion of
the New World. Open now for English occupation
and settlement was that vast country lying south of
the Great Lakes between the Ohio and the Missis-
sippi - which we know as the Old Northwest -
                      I

 




THE OLD NORTHWEST



today the seat of five great commonwealths of the
United States.
  With an ingenuity born of necessity, the French
pathfinders and colonizers of the Old Northwest
had chosen for their settlements sites which would
serve at once the purposes of the priest, the trader,
and the soldier; and with scarcely an exception
these sites are as important today as when they
were first selected. Four regions, chiefly, were
still occupied by the French at the time of the ca-
pitulation of Montreal. The most important, as
well as the most distant, of these regions was on the
east bank of the Mississippi, opposite and below
the present city of St. Louis, where a cluster of mis-
sions, forts, and trading-posts held the center of
the tenuous line extending from Canada to Loui-
siana. A second was the Illinois country, centering
about the citadel of St. Louis which La Salle had
erected in 1682 on the summit of "Starved Rock,"
near the modern town of Ottawa in Illinois. A
third was the valley of the Wabash, where in the
early years of the eighteenth century Vincennes
had become the seat of a colony commanding both
the Wabash and the lower Ohio. And the fourth
was the western end of Lake Erie, where Detroit,
founded by the doughty Cadillac in 1701, had as-



2

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



sumed such strength that for fifty years it had dis-
couraged the ambitions of the English to make the
Northwest theirs.
  Sir Jeffrey Amherst, to whom Vaudreuil sur-
rendered in 1760, forthwith dispatched to the
western country a military force to take possession
of the posts still remaining in the hands of the
French. The mission was entrusted to a stalwart
New Hampshire Scotch-Irishman, Major Robert
Rogers, who as leader of a band of intrepid
" rangers" had made himself the hero of the north-
ern frontier. Two hundred men were chosen for
the undertaking, and on the 13th of September
the party, in fifteen whaleboats, started up the
St. Lawrence for Detroit.
  At the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, near the
site of the present city of Cleveland, the travelers
were halted by a band of Indian chiefs and warriors
who, in the name of their great ruler Pontiac, de-
manded to know the object of their journeying.
Parleys followed, in which Pontiac himself took
part, and it was explained that the French had
surrendered Canada to the English and that the
English merely proposed to assume control of the
western posts, with a view to friendly relations be-
tween the red men and the white men. The rivers,



3

 




THE OLD NORTHWEST



it was promised, would flow with rum, and presents
from the great King would be forthcoming in end-
less profusion. The explanation seemed to satisfy
the savages, and, after smoking the calumet with
due ceremony, the chieftain and his followers with-
drew.
  Late in November, Rogers and his men in their
whaleboats appeared before the little palisaded
town of Detroit. They found the French com-
mander, Beletre, in surly humor and seeking to stir
up the neighboring Wyandots and Potawatomi
against them. But the attempt failed, and there
was nothing for Beletre to do but yield. The
French soldiery marched out of the fort, laid down
their arms, and were sent off as prisoners down the
river. The fleur-de-lis, which for more than half a
century had floated over the village, was hauled
down, and, to the accompaniment of cheers, the
British ensign was run up. The red men looked on
with amazement at this display of English author-
ity and marveled how the conquerors forbore to
slay their vanquished enemies on the spot.
  Detroit in 1760 was a picturesque, lively, and
rapidly growing frontier town. The central por-
tions of the settlement, lying within the bounds of
the present city, contained ninety or a hundred



4

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



small houses, chiefly of wood and roofed with bark
or thatch. A well-built range of barracks afforded
quarters for the soldiery, and there were two pub-
lic buildings-a council house and a little church.
The whole was surrounded by a square palisade
twenty-five feet high, with a wooden bastion at
each corner and a blockhouse over each gateway.
A broad passageway, the chemin du ronde, lay
next to the palisade, and on little narrow streets
at the center the houses were grouped closely
together.
  Above and below the fort the banks of the river
were lined on both sides, for a distance of eight or
nine miles, with little rectangular farms, so laid out
as to give each a water-landing. On each farm was
a cottage, with a garden and orchard, surrounded
by a fence of rounded pickets; and the countryside
rang with the shouts and laughter of a prosperous
and happy peasantry. Within the limits of the
settlement were villages of Ottawas, Potawatomi,
and Wyandots, with whose inhabitants the French
lived on free and easy terms.  The joyous spark-
ling of the bright blue water, writes Parkman;
"the green luxuriance of the woods; the white
dwellings, looking out from the foliage; and in the
distance the Indian wigwams curling their smoke



5

 





THE OLD NORTHWEST



against the sky-all were mingled in one broad
scene of wild and rural beauty.
  At the coming of the English the French residents
were given an opportunity to withdraw. Few,
however, did so, and from the gossipy correspon-
dence of the pleasure-loving Colonel Campbell, who
for some months was left in command of the fort,
it appears that the life of the place lost none of its
gayety by the change of masters. Sunday card
parties at the quarters of the commandant were
festive affairs; and at a ball held in celebration of
the King's birthday the ladies presented an appear-
ance so splendid as to call forth from the impres-
sionable officer the most extravagant praises. A
visit in the summer of 1761 from Sir William John-
son, general supervisor of Indian affairs on the
frontier, became the greatest social event in the
history of the settlement, if not of the entire West.
Colonel Campbell gave a ball at which the guests
danced nine hours. Sir William reciprocated with
one at which they danced eleven hours. A round
of dinners and calls gave opportunity for much dis-
play of frontier magnificence, as well as for the con-
sumption of astonishing quantities of wines and
cordials. Hundreds of Indians were interested
spectators, and the gifts with which they were gen-



6

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



erously showered were received with evidences of
deep satisfaction.
  No amount of fiddling and dancing, however,
could quite drown apprehension concerning the
safety of the post and the security of the English
hold upon the great region over which this fort
and its distant neighbors stood sentinel. Thou-
sands of square miles of territory were committed
to the keeping of not more than six hundred sol-
diers. From the French there was little danger.
But from the Indians anything might be expected.
Apart from the Iroquois, the red men had been
bound to the French by many ties of friendship and
common interest, and in the late war they had
scalped and slaughtered and burned unhesitatingly
at the French command. Hardly, indeed, had the
transfer of territorial sovereignty been made before
murmurs of discontent began to be heard.
  Notwithstanding outward expressions of assent
to the new order of things, a deep-rooted dislike
on the part of the Indians for the English grew
after 1760 with great rapidity. They sorely missed
the gifts and supplies lavishly provided by the
French, and they warmly resented the rapacity
and arrogance of the British traders. The open
contempt of the soldiery at the posts galled the



7

 




THE OLD NORTHWEST



Indians, and the confiscation of their lands drove
them to desperation. In their hearts hope never
died that the French would regain their lost domin-
ion; and again and again rumors were set afloat
that this was about to happen. The belief in such
a reconquest was adroitly encouraged, too, by the
surviving French settlers and traders. In 1761
the tension among the Indians was increased by the
appearance of a "prophet" among the Delawares,
calling on all his race to purge itself of foreign in-
fluences and to unite to drive the white man from
the land.
  Protests against English encroachments were
frequent and, though respectful, none the less em-
phatic. At a conference in Philadelphia in 1761,
an Iroquois sachem declared, "We, your Brethren,
of the several Nations, are penned up like Hoggs.
There are Forts all around us, and therefore we are
apprehensive that Death is coming upon us. " "We
are now left in Peace," ran a petition of some
Christian Oneidas addressed to Sir William John-
son, "and have nothing to do but to plant our
Corn, Hunt the wild Beasts, smoke our Pipes, and
mind Religion. But as these Forts, which are built
among us, disturb our Peace, and are a great hurt
to Religion, because some of our Warriors are



8

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



foolish, and some of our Brother Soldiers don't fear
God, we therefore desire that these Forts may be
pull'd down, and kick'd out of the way. "
   The leadership of the great revolt that was im-
pending fell naturally upon Pontiac, who, since
the coming of the English, had established himself
with his squaws and children on a wooded island in
Lake St. Clair, barely out of view of the fortifica-
tions of Detroit. In all Indian annals no name
is more illustrious than Pontiac's; no figure more
forcefully displays the good and bad qualities of his
race. Principal chief of the Ottawa tribe, he was
also by 1763 the head of a powerful confederation
of Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomi, and a leader
known and respected among Algonquin peoples
from the sources of the Ohio to the Mississippi.
While capable of acts of magnanimity, he had
an ambition of Napoleonic proportions, and to at-
tain his ends he was prepared to use any means.
More clearly than most of his forest contempora-
ries, he perceived that in the life of the Indian
people a crisis had come. He saw that, unless the
tide of English invasion was rolled back at once,
all would be lost. The colonial farmers would
push in after the soldiers; the forests would be cut
away; the hunting-grounds would be destroyed;



9

 




THE OLD NORTHWEST



the native population would be driven away or
enslaved. In the silence of his wigwam he thought
out a plan of action, and by the closing weeks of
1762 he was ready. Never was plot more shrewdly
devised and more artfully carried out.
  During the winter of 1762-63 his messengers
passed stealthily from nation to nation throughout
the whole western country, bearing the pictured
wampum belts and the reddened tomahawks
which symbolized war; and in April, 1763, the
Lake tribes were summoned to a great council on
the banks of the Ecorces, below Detroit, where
Pontiac in person proclaimed the will of the Master
of Life as revealed to the Delaware prophet, and
then announced the details of his plan. Every-
where the appeal met with approval; and not only
the scores of Algonquin peoples, but also the Seneca
branch of the Iroquois confederacy and a number
of tribes on the lower Mississippi, pledged them-
selves with all solemnity to fulfill their prophet's
injunction " to drive the dogs which wear red cloth-
ing into the sea. " While keen-eyed warriors
sought to keep up appearances by lounging about
the forts and begging in their customary manner
for tobacco, whiskey, and gunpowder, every wig-
wam and forest hamlet from Niagara to the Missis-



10

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



sippi was astir. Dusky maidens chanted the tribal
war-songs, and in the blaze of a hundred camp-fires
chiefs and warriors performed the savage pan-
tomime of battle.
  A simultaneous attack, timed by a change of the
moon, was to be made on the English forts and
settlements throughout all the western country.
Every tribe was to fall upon the settlement nearest
at hand, and afterwards all were to combine -
with French aid, it was confidently believed - in
an assault on the seats of English power farther
east. The honor of destroying the most important
of the English strongholds, Detroit, was reserved
for Pontiac himself.
  The date fixed for the rising was the 7th of May.
Six days in advance Pontiac with forty of his war-
riors appeared at the fort, protested undying
friendship for the Great Father across the water,
and insisted on performing the calumet dance
before the new commandant, Major Gladwyn.
This aroused no suspicion. But four days later a
French settler reported that his wife, when visiting
the Ottawa village to buy venison, had observed
the men busily filing off the ends of their gun-
barrels; and the blacksmith at the post recalled
the fact that the Indians had lately sought to



11

 




THE OLD NORTHWEST



borrow files and saws without being able to give a
plausible explanation of the use they intended to
make of the implements.
  The English traveler Jonathan Carver, who
visited the post five years afterwards, relates that
an Ottawa girl with whom Major Gladwyn had
formed an attachment betrayed the plot. Though
this story is of doubtful authenticity, there is no
doubt that, in one way or another, the command-
ant was amply warned that treachery was in the
air. The sounds of revelry from the Indian camps,
the furtive glances of the redskins lounging about
the settlement, the very tension of the atmosphere,
would have been enough to put an experienced In-
dian fighter on his guard.
  Accordingly when, on the fated morning, Poii-
tiac and sixty redskins, carrying under long blan-
kets their shortened muskets, appeared before the
fort and asked admission, they were taken aback
to find the whole garrison under arms. On their
way from the gate to the council house they were
obliged to march literally between rows of glitter-
ing steel. Well might even Pontiac falter. With
uneasy glances, the party crowded into the council
room, where Gladwyn and his officers sat waiting.
"Why," asked the chieftain stolidly, "do I see so



12

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



many of my father's young men standing in the
street with their guns " " To keep them in train-
ing, " was the laconic reply.
  The scene that was planned was then carried
out, except in one vital particular. When, in the
course of his speech professing strong attachment
to the English, the chieftain came to the point
where he was to give the signal for slaughter by
holding forth the wampum belt of peace inverted,
he presented the emblem -to the accompaniment
of a significant clash of arms and roll of drums
from the mustered garrison outside - in the nor-
mal manner; and after a solemn warning from the
commandant that vengeance would follow any
act of aggression, the council broke up. To the
forest leader's equivocal announcement that he
would bring all of his wives and children in a few
days to shake hands with their English fathers,
Gladwyn deigned no reply.
  Balked in his plans, the chief retired, but only to
meditate fresh treachery; and when, a few days
later, with a multitude of followers, he sought
admission to the fort to assure "his fathers" that
"evil birds had sung lies in their ears," and was
ref used, he called all his forces to arms, threw off his
disguises, and began hostilities. For six months



13

 




THE OLD NORTHWEST



the settlement was besieged with a persistence
rarely displayed in Indian warfare. At first the
French inhabitants encouraged the besiegers, but,
after it became known that a final peace between
England and France had been concluded, they
withheld further aid. Throughout the whole pe-
riod, the English obtained supplies with no great
difficulty from the neighboring farms. There was
little actual fighting, and the loss of life was insig-
nificant.
  By order of General Amherst, the French com-
mander still in charge of Fort Chartres sent a mes-
senger to inform the redskins definitely that no
assistance from France would be forthcoming.
"Forget then, my dear children, " - so ran the ad-
monition - "all evil talks. Leave off from spilling
the blood of your brethren, the English. Our hearts
are now but one; you cannot, at present, strike the
one without having the other for an enemy also. "
The effect was, as intended, to break the spirit of
the besiegers; and in October Pontiac humbly sued
for peace.
  Meanwhile a reign of terror spread over the
entire frontier. Settlements from Forts Le Boeuf
and Venango, south of Lake Erie, to Green Bay,
west of Lake Michigan, were attacked, and ruses



14

 




           PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY              15
similar to that attempted at Detroit were generally
successful. A few Indians in friendly guise would
approach a fort. After these were admitted,
others would appear, as if quite by chance. Fi-
nally, when numbers were sufficient, the conspira-
tors would draw their concealed weapons, strike
down the garrison, and begin a general massacre of
the helpless populace. Scores of pioneer families,
scattered through the wilderness, were murdered
and scalped; traders were waylaid in the forest
solitudes; border towns were burned and planta-
tions were devastated. In the Ohio Valley every-
thing was lost except Fort Pitt, formerly Fort
Duquesne; in the Northwest, everything was taken
except Detroit.
  Fort Pitt was repeatedly endangered, and the
most important engagement of the war was fought
in its defense. The relief of the post was entrusted
in midsummer to a force of five hundred regulars
lately transferred from the West Indies to Pennsyl-
vania and placed under the command of Colonel
Henry Bouquet. The expedition advanced with
all possible caution, but early in August, 1763,
when it was yet twenty-five miles from its destina-
tion, it was set upon by a formidable Indian band
at Bushy Run and threatened with a fate not un-

 




16         THE OLD NORTHWEST
like that suffered by Braddock's little army in the
same region nine years earlier. Finding the woods
full of redskins and all retreat cut off, the troops,
drawn up in a circle around their horses and sup-
plies, fired with such effect as they could upon the
shadowy forms in the forest. No water was ob-
tainable, and in a few hours thirst began to make
the soldiery unmanageable. Realizing that the
situation was desperate, Bouquet resorted to a ruse
by ordering his men to fall back as if in retreat.
The trick succeeded, and with yells of victory the
Indians rushed from cover to seize the coveted pro-
visions - only to be met by a deadly fire and put
to utter rout. The news of the battle of Bushy
Run spread rapidly through the frontier regions
and proved very effective in discouraging further
hostilities.
  It was Bouquet's intention to press forward at
once from Fort Pitt into the disturbed Ohio coun-
try. His losses, however, compelled the postpone-
ment of this part of the undertaking until the fol-
lowing year. Before he started off again he built
at Fort Pitt a blockhouse which still stands, and
which has been preserved for posterity by becom-
ing, in 1894, the property of the Pittsburgh chapter
of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



October, 1764, he set out for the Muskingum valley
with a force of fifteen hundred regulars, Pennsyl-
vania and Virginia volunteers, and friendly In-
dians. By this time the great conspiracy was in
collapse, and it was a matter of no great difficulty
for Bouquet to enter into friendly relations with the
successive tribes, to obtain treaties with them, and
to procure the release of such English captives as
were still in their hands. By the close of Novem-
ber, 1764, the work was complete, and Bouquet
was back at Fort Pitt. Pennsylvania and Virginia
honored him with votes of thanks; the King for-
mally expressed his gratitude and tendered him
the military governorship of the newly acquired
territory of Florida.
  The general pacification of the Northwest was
accomplished by treaties with the natives in great
councils held at Niagara, Presqu'isle (Erie), and
Detroit. Pontiac had fled to the Maumee country
to the west of Lake Erie, whence he still hurled
his ineffectual threats at the "dogs in red." His
power, however, was broken. The most he could
do was to gather four hundred warriors on the
Maumee and Illinois and present himself at Fort
Chartres with a demand for weapons and ammuni-
tion with which to keep up the war. The French
    2



17

 





THE OLD NORTHWEST



commander, who was now daily awaiting orders to
turn the fortress over to the English, refused; and a
deputation dispatched to New Orleans in quest of
the desired equipment received no reply save that
New Orleans itself, with all the country west of the
river, had been ceded to Spain. The futility of
further resistance on the part of Pontiac was ap-
parent. In 1765 the disappointed chieftain gave
pledges of friendship; and in the following year
he and other leaders made a formal submission to
Sir William Johnson at Oswego, and Pontiac re-
nounced forever the bold design to make himself at
a stroke lord of the West and deliverer of his coun-
try from English domination.
  For three years the movements of this disap-
pointed Indian leader are uncertain. Most of the
time, apparently, he dwelt in the Maumee country,
leading the existence of an ordinary warrior. Then,
in the spring of 1769, he appeared at the settlements
on the middle Mississippi. At the newly founded
French town of St. Louis, on the Spanish side of
the river, he visited an old friend, the command-
ant Saint Ange de Bellerive. Thence he crossed to
Cahokia, where Indian and creole alike welcomed
him and made him the central figure in a series
of boisterous festivities.



is

 




PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY



  An English trader in the village, observing jeal-
ously the honors that were paid the visitor, resolved
that an old score should forthwith be evened up.
A Kaskaskian redskin was bribed, with a barrel of
liquor and with promises of further reward, to put
the fallen leader out of the way; and the bargain
was hardly sealed before the deed was done. Steal-
ing upon his victim as he walked in the neighboring
forest, the assassin buried a tomahawk in his brain,
and " thus basely " in the words of Parkman "per-
ished the champion of a ruined race.  Claimed
by Saint-Ange, the body was borne across the river
and buried with military honors near the new Fort
St. Louis. The site of Pontiac's grave was soon
forgotten, and today the people of a great city
trample over and about it without heed.



19



 














CHAPTER II



          "A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS"

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, who was in London in 1760 as
agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly, gave the Brit-
ish ministers some wholesome advice on the terms
of the peace that should be made with France. The
St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes regions, he said,
must be retained by England at all costs. More-
over, the Mississippi Valley must be taken, in order
to provide for the growing populations of the sea-
board colonies suitable lands in the interior, and
so keep them engaged in agriculture. Otherwise
these populations would turn to manufacturing,
and the industries of the mother country would
suffer.
  The treaty of peace, three years later, brought
the settlement which Franklin suggested. The vast
American back country, with its inviting rivers
and lakes, its shaded hills, and its sunny prairies,
became English territory. The English people had,

 




         "A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS"             21
however, only the vaguest notion of the extent,
appearance, and resources of their new possession.
Even the officials who drew the treaty were as ig-
norant of the country as of middle Africa. Prior
to the outbreak of the war no widely known Eng-
lish writer had tried to describe it; and the absorb-
ing French books of Lahontan, Hennepin, and
Charlevoix had reached but a small circle. The
prolonged conflict in America naturally stimulated
interest in the new country. The place-names of
the upper Ohio became household words, and en-
terprising publishers put out not only translations
of the French writers but compilations by English-
men designed, in true journalistic fashion, to meet
the demands of the hour for information.
  These publications displayed amazing miscon-
ceptions of the lands described. They neither es-
timated aright the number and strength of the
French settlements nor dispelled the idea that the
western country was of little value. Even the most
brilliant Englishman of the day, Dr. Samuel John-
son, an ardent defender of the treaty of 1763, wrote
that the large tracts of America added by the war
to the British dominions were "only the barren
parts of the continent, the refuse of the earlier ad-
venturers, which the French, who came last, had

 





THE OLD NORTHWEST



taken only as better than nothing. " As late indeed
as 1789, William Knox, long Under-Secretary for
the Colonies, declared that Americans could not
settle the western territory "for ages, " and that the
region must be given up to barbarism like the plains
of Asia, with a population as unstable as the Scy-
thians and Tartars. But the shortsightedness of
these distant critics can be forgiven when one re-
calls that Franklin himself, while conjuring up a
splendid vision of the western valleys teeming with
a thriving population, supposed that the dream
would not be realized for "some centuries." None
of these observers dreamt that the territories trans-
ferred in 1763 would have within seventy-five
years a population almost equal to that of Great
Britain.
  The ink with which the Treaty of Paris was
signed was hardly dry before the King and his
ministers were confronted with the task of provid-
ing government for the new possessions and of solv-
ing problems of land tenure and trade. Still more
imperative were measures to conciliate the Indians;
for already Pontiac's rebellion had been in progress
four months, and the entire back country was
aflame. It must be confessed that a continental
wilderness swarming with murderous savages was



22

 




"A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS"



an inheritance whose aspect was by no means alto-
gether pleasing to the English mind.
  The easiest solution of the difficulty was to let
things take their course. Let seaboard popula-
tions spread at will over the new lands; let them
carry on trade in their own way, and make what-
ever arrangements with the native tribes they de-
sire. Colonies such as Virginia and New York,
which had extensive western claims, would have
been glad to see this plan adopted. Strong objec-
tions, however, were raised. Colonies which had
no western claims feared the effects of the advan-
tages which their more fortunate neighbors would
enjoy. Men who had invested heavily in lands
lying west of the mountains felt that their returns
would be diminished and delayed if the back coun-
try were thrown open to settlers. Some people
thought that the Indians had a moral right to pro-
tection against wholesale white invasion of their
hunting-grounds, and many considered it expedi-
ent, at all events, to offer such protection.
  After all, however, it was the King and his min-
isters who had it in their power to settle the ques-
tion; and from their point of view it was desirable
to keep the western territories as much as possi-
ble apart from the older colonies, and to regulate,



23

 





THE OLD NORTHWEST



with farsighted policy, their settlement and trade.
Eventually, it was believed, the territories would
be cut into new colonies; and experience with the
seaboard dependencies was already such as to sug-
gest the desirability of having the future settle-
ments more completely under government control
from the beginning.
  After due consideration, King George and his
ministers made known their policy on October 7,
1763, in a comprehensive proclamation. The first
subject dealt with was government. Four new
provinces -- "Quebec, East Florida, West Florida,
and Grenada"'r -     were set up in the ceded terri-
tories, and their populations were guaranteed all
the rights and privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants
of the older colonies. The Mississippi Valley, how-
ever, was included in no one of these provinces;
and, curiously, there was no provision whatever for
the government of the French settlements lying

   The Proclamation of 1763 Irew the boundaries of "four distinct
and separate governments." Grenada was to include the island of
that name, together with the Grenadines, Dominico, St. Vincent, and
Tobago. The Floridas lay south of the bounds of Georgia and east
of the Mississippi River. The Apalachicola River was to be the
dividing line between East and West Florida. Quebec included the
modern province of that name and that part of Ontario lying north
of a line drawn from Lake Nipissing to the point where the forty-fifth
parallel intersects the St. Lawrence River.

 




         "A LAIR OF WILD BEASTS"              25
within it. The number and size of these settle-
ments were underestimated, and apparently it was
supposed that all the habitants and soldiers would
avail themselves of their privilege of withdrawing
from the ceded territories.
  The disposition made of the great rectangular
area bounded by the Alleghanies, the Mississippi,
the Lakes, and the Gulf, was fairly startling. With
fine disregard of the chartered claims of the sea-
board colonies and of the rights of pioneers already
settled on frontier farms, the whole was erected into
an Indian reser