American History - The French and Indian War

The takeover of the Ohio Country by the French alarmed the British government to the degree that it did something it had never done before, sending regular troops from Europe to bolster the colonial militias in order to put an end to the French threat once and for all.  Arriving in 1755, two major campaigns were planned for that year.  The first was an invasion of what is today New Brunswick in order to put to an end raids by the Wabanaki Confederacy on New England, which had been continuing unabated since King George’s War, and the second was an invasion of the Ohio Country by British troops, colonial militia, and the Iroquois.  The invasion of New Brunswick went off without a hitch, which was then closely followed by the forced expulsion of large parts of the French colonial population, many of whom fled to Louisiana, ending forever the threat of the Wabanaki Confederacy in one fell swoop.  However, the invasion of the Ohio County did not go to plan.  While small in numbers, the French troops were well trained and well versed in combat in the New World.  As well, their numbers had been greatly bolstered by a significant number of allied natives from across the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, and even some from as far west as the Siouan nations in what is today Minnesota.  The British invasion force was almost completely wiped out, allowing the French to launch attacks across the northern frontier and invade northern New York.  Though further British troops were sent across the Atlantic to shore up the colonial defenses, the French and their native allies largely had free reign to do as they would.

What had begun as a North American conflict between France and Britain soon expanded into a worldwide conflagration in 1756 which became known as the Seven Years’ War.  Central Europe was again falling into conflict, with Prussia and Austria coming to blows over who should dominate the German States, drawing an alliance of Britain, Portugal, and Russia to support the former and France, Spain, and Sweden to support the latter.  The war than spread into the Caribbean, west Africa, India, and the Philippines, with both France and Britain hoping to use it as an excuse to expand their overseas empires.  As with all wars, it was a giant clusterfuck which caused chaos and death, and left the nations involved riddled with debt and the dead. 

Back in North America, one by one the French managed to capture the frontier forts between Quebec and New York and by 1757 were fully poised to sweep south into the colonies.  However, fate was not on their side.  Small pox began to spread amongst their troops, having a particularly terrible affect on their native allies, many of whom returned home, further spreading the dreaded diseases across the Midwest, devastating towns and villages across the region.  This created animosity between the French and their allies for some reason, greatly weakening them for the following year’s campaign season.  With British reinforcements arriving in 1758, the British successfully took several forts as the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, effectively blockading Quebec from France, which was soon after followed by a successful invasion of the Ohio Country.  However, all was not fortuitous for the British and their colonies.  Angered over continued trespass of their territories by British colonists, the Cherokee left their long standing alliance with the British and began launching attacks across southern frontier.  Unable to spare troops, the local militias were left to defend the southern colonies as best they could.

Despite the setback of the Cherokee switching sides, the was quickly winding down.  In 1759, British and colonial militia invaded Quebec, successfully taking the colony by the following year and effectively ending French resistance.  Though sporadic fighting continued, by 1761 the British had managed to occupy the formerly French trading posts throughout the Great Lakes and Midwest, pacifying the small pox ravaged natives in the areas.  This allowed British troops to be sent south to aid the militias of the southern colonies in a scorched earth invasion of Cherokee territory, destroying towns and food supplies until the Cherokee capitulated and signed a treaty to end the conflict.  British troops were also sent to the Caribbean to take French and Spanish settlements.

By 1763, France and its allies, facing mounting debts and continued losses, chose to negotiate an end to the conflict.  France made significant concessions to Britain, handing control over significant parts of North America and India, thus solidifying the British as the new dominant world superpower.  In North America, France gave Britain all of its claims east of the Mississippi River in order to retain control of its more lucrative sugar producing colonies in the Caribbean.  They as well gained Florida from Spain, though Spain did get all of France’s claims west of the Mississippi River in compensation for its losses, though only after it agreed with Britain that the Mississippi River would be free for both sides to navigate.  The conclusion of the French and Indian War left the Thirteen Colonies for the first time secure from French assault, but it also opened a can of worms which would ultimately lead to a revolution.   

American History - The Ohio Country

Between 1700 and 1750, the population of the Thirteen Colonies expanded rapidly from just over 250,000 to 1.2 million, fueled by immigration and a significant baby boom.  The colonists were all about pumping out them babies, with the average family having seven children, a greater number of which survived to adulthood compared to Europe thanks to a higher standard of living.  The rapid growth in population created a bit of an issue in many of the more well-established colonies, specifically a shortage of available land.  Much of the success of the Thirteen Colonies had long been tied to vast swaths of land available to settle, but by the mid-eighteenth century good arable land east of the Appalachians was becoming hard to come by, sparking an economic recession which in turn led to previously unheard of levels of poverty and crime.  As a result, settlers began pushing further westward, leaving many of the colonial governments in the position of both supporting such settlement to relieve their economic woes while also scrambling to setup new treaties with the natives to keep the peace.  Virginia was the most aggressive in doing this, being both the oldest and most populated colony at the time.  By 1750, the wealthy elite of Virginia had gotten permission from the British government to claim lands further westward and had founded three companies to survey and claim land to sell to settlers, the largest being the Ohio Company. 

For many of the colonists on the move, the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains seemed rather empty, which realistically it was, at least to their European standards, and nowhere seemed more empty than the Ohio Country.  Encompassing most of what is today Ohio, West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania, the Ohio Country had largely been depopulated during the Beaver Wars a century prior.  The Iroquois Confederacy, in an attempt to dominate the fur trade, had pushed out the Algonquian tribes which had lived there, only later allowing a few to return.  The largest of these were the Shawnee, who had been pushed south by the Iroquois, and the Lenape, which were the collective remains of various tribes who had once lived east of the Appalachians, both of whom had to swear fealty to the Iroquois for the privilege.  Dependent on the buckskin trade to get European goods, the Iroquois kept the Ohio Country sparsely populated to retain it as a productive hunting ground.  This significant source of income, combined with their fierce reputation, gave them significant political power and influence, allowing them to retain their traditional homeland in what is today western New York long after other tribes had been pushed westward. 

Unfortunately, the power of the Iroquois Confederacy was increasingly an illusion.  Ravaged by disease and facing an ever growing colonial population, they took great pains to avoid becoming embroiled in the conflicts between Britain and France, even as the Confederacy itself was increasingly strained by debate between those who wanted to maintain their traditional way of life and those who saw embracing a European style of living as the best course of action.  A debate which only became more heated when in 1752 representatives of the Ohio Company came to ask permission to settle lands southeast of the Ohio River.  Wishing to avoid conflict, the Iroquois signed a treaty selling the requested land to the Ohio Company as well as the rights to build several forts in what is today western Pennsylvania.  This turn of events severely pissed off the Shawnee and Lenape, who saw lands where they lived suddenly given away without their consent.  Furious, they turned to the French for help, which the French were more than willing to give. 

The French viewed any encroachment by the British as a direct threat to their vast fur trading network, which by that time stretched from Quebec and the Great Lakes south to Louisiana and west to the Rocky Mountains.  Not content with just arming the natives to attack any potential colonists, in 1753 they marched an army of French regulars and various allied native tribes from the eastern Great Lakes region into the Ohio Country, chased out any British or colonial traders they found, and began construction on several forts.  Not too happy about this, the Iroquois sent a delegation to the French demanding they leave, to which the French replied fuck off.  The Iroquois then went to the various colonial governments to ask for help, but found most of the colonies less than willing, all of them being worried about securing their own borders for the likely coming conflict, the one exception being Virginia.  With the Virginia elite heavily invested in the Ohio Company, the government quickly dispatched a delegation to insist the French leave, which was every bit as successful as the Iroquois in convincing them.  Not willing to back down, the following spring they sent their volunteer militia to forcibly dislodge the French.  The well-trained French soldiers beat the shit out of the militia and forced them to retreat.

This chain of events sparked a panic amongst the colonies.  A large French force was firmly entrenched in the Ohio Country and more soldiers were sailing from France, the Shawnee and Lenape were raiding colonial settlements, the Wabanaki Confederacy was attacking New England, and the Iroquois Confederacy was splintering with some members joining the French and more threatening to do so.  With the British mired in their own negotiations with the French, the colonists decided to see to their own defense.  In the summer of 1754, delegates from the colonies of Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the Iroquois Confederacy, met in Albany to discuss aiding each other in their mutual defense.  While the congress did secure the Iroquois Confederacy firmly to the colonial side, it also went a bit off the rails, with delegates ratifying a plan for a united colonial government to oversee such issues affecting all of the colonies.  However, all seven of the colonial assemblies rejected the plan as soon as hearing it, none willing to give up any of their individual independence to such a united government.  It didn’t matter.  In the winter of 1755, Britain declared war on France, dispatching the Royal Navy to harry French shipping and sending an army of British regulars to take the Ohio Country by force.  The French and Indian War had begun. 

American History - Native Allies

It’s probably well worth pausing for a moment to take a look at the situation in eastern North America at the start of the French and Indian War.  When we look back at the colonial era, it’s to forget the amount of time it encompassed.  For the French and British colonists of 1750, thinking back to the foundation of the first colonies was similar to us thinking back to the U.S. Civil War, and thinking back to the discovery of the New World by Columbus was similar to us looking back to the end of the colonial era.  By 1750, many generations of colonists had been born and died in the New World.  For the natives who had once inhabited the lands now dominated by the colonists, ravaged by disease and warfare, a time without the colonists was only a distant memory.  Within the confines of the Thirteen Colonies and what are today known as Quebec and the Canadian maritime provinces, few native peoples remained.  Those who had not fled west had converted to Christianity and adopted European agriculture and culture.  Many had assimilated into the colonial settlements, while others lived separately in impoverished villages wracked by alcoholism.  None remained independent from colonial governance, with the exception of Wabanaki Confederacy, who intermingled with the French colonists of what is today New Brunswick and were armed by the French for the sole purpose of keeping British settlements from expanding northward in what is today Maine. 

For most native nations, an alliance with the French seemed a much better deal than allying with the British.  Though the French controlled a vast trade network which stretched throughout the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basin, they were more interested in controlling trade rather than territory, leaving native nations largely alone as long as they kept the peace with their neighbors and did not disrupt the trade network.  The closest allies of the French were the Iroquoian nations of the eastern Great Lakes, which had formed a resurgent Huron Confederacy, and the Ojibwe who dominated the western Great Lakes.  With a high degree of intermarriage with French voyageurs and conversion to Christianity, they formed the backbone of the French fur trade, acting as middlemen and cheap sources of labor, travelling with French traders far west and south from their native homelands. 

South of the Great Lakes, in what is today the Midwest, the various Algonquian nations had largely stabilized in the decades following the Beaver Wars of the previous century, though with the occasional conflict still erupting between them.  Though some large confederacies did exist, such as the Illinois Confederacy in what is today Illinois and the Wabash Confederacy largely in what is today Indiana, overall the nations were diffuse and lacking centralized control, with most towns and villages completely seeing to their own affairs.  However, around the many French trading posts in the region, multicultural villages had arisen, with natives from many nations peacefully living alongside for longer periods of time than had ever happened before.  Though the native nations of the Midwest were well aware of the growing colonial population to the east, they were less affected and therefore less concerned than those living in the Ohio Country.  Rather, their concern was more with the rising power of the various horse empires developing to the west on the Great Plains, from which the enforced peace of the French trade monopoly promised the best defense.

Further east, the Iroquois Confederacy controlled a swatch of territory stretching from western New York south to the Ohio River.  Thanks to their fearsome reputation, control of deer hunting grounds in the Ohio Country, and the willingness of the British to bend over backwards to maintain their alliance and thus a buffer between Quebec and New York, they had managed to maintain a significant degree of independence.  However, with the buckskin trade beginning to wane they were increasingly facing the dilemma of a changing world, with some fighting to maintain their old ways of life while others pushed for greater assimilation and adoption of European agricultural practices and culture to survive.  With the Ohio Country increasingly becoming less valuable to them, they became more willing to sell off chunks of it for further colonial settlement, greatly alarming the various Algonquian peoples that the Iroquois had allowed to live there. 

In the southeast, the once powerful Chickasaw and Choctaw had been devastated in a forty year conflict which had acted as a proxy war between the French and British, leaving the Creek Confederacy and Cherokee as the most powerful native groups in the region.  The Creek Confederacy, centered in what is today Mississippi, Alabama, and western Tennessee, kept to a policy of strict neutrality, trading with anyone who was willing.  While the Cherokee, centered in what is today Georgia, Alabama, and eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, allied themselves closely with the British and were buffered from the French by the Creek and other native nations further west.  However, the depletion of once plentiful deer herds was forcing all of the native nations in the southeast to consider how they might need to adapt in the future given realistically they could not return to the way of life they had led prior to the introduction of European trade goods.  Debates regarding what to do were especially common amongst the Cherokee, who also faced an expanding colonial presence on their eastern border.