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Page 2
Outside influences, as well, were at work among the
Indians. Soon after the French armies departed, the
inhabitants along the St Lawrence had learned to welcome
the change of government. They were left to cultivate
their farms in peace. The tax-gatherer was no longer
squeezing from them their last sou as in the days of
Bigot; nor were their sons, whose labour was needed on
the farms and in the workshops, forced to take up arms.
They had peace and plenty, and were content. But in the
hinterland it was different. At Detroit, Michilimackinac,
and other forts were French trading communities, which,
being far from the seat of war and government, were slow
to realize that they were no longer subjects of the French
king. Hostile themselves, these French traders naturally
encouraged the Indians in an attitude of hostility to
the incoming British. They said that a French fleet and
army were on their way to Canada to recover the territory.
Even if Canada were lost, Louisiana was still French,
and, if only the British could be kept out of the west,
the trade that had hitherto gone down the St Lawrence
might now go by way of the Mississippi.
The commander-in-chief of the British forces in North
America, Sir Jeffery Amherst, despised the red men. They
were 'only fit to live with the inhabitants of the woods,
being more nearly allied to the Brute than to the Human
creation.' Other British officers had much the same
attitude. Colonel Henry Bouquet, on a suggestion made to
him by Amherst that blankets infected with small-pox
might be distributed to good purpose among the savages,
not only fell in with Amherst's views, but further proposed
that dogs should be used to hunt them down. 'You will do
well,' Amherst wrote to Bouquet, 'to try to inoculate
the Indians by means of Blankets as well as to try every
other method that can serve to extirpate this Execrable
Race. I should be very glad if your scheme for hunting
them down by dogs could take effect, but England is at
too great a Distance to think of that at present.' And
Major Henry Gladwyn, who, as we shall see, gallantly held
Detroit through months of trying siege, thought that the
unrestricted sale of rum among the Indians would extirpate
them more quickly than powder and shot, and at less cost.
There was, however, one British officer, at least, in
America who did not hold such views towards the natives
of the soil. Sir William Johnson, through his sympathy
and generosity, had won the friendship of the Six Nations,
the most courageous and the most cruel of the Indian
tribes. [Footnote: For more about Sir William Johnson
see _The War Chief of the Six Nations_ in this Series.]
It has been said by a recent writer that Johnson was 'as
much Indian as white man.' [Footnote: Lucas's _A History
of Canada, 1763-1812_, p. 58.] Nothing could be more
misleading. Johnson was simply an enlightened Irishman
of broad sympathies who could make himself at home in
palace, hut, or wigwam. He was an astute diplomatist,
capable of winning his point in controversy with the most
learned and experienced legislators of the colonies, a
successful military leader, a most successful trader;
and there was probably no more progressive and scientific
farmer in America. He had a cultivated mind; the orders
he sent to London for books show that he was something
of a scholar and in his leisure moments given to serious
reading. His advice to the lords of trade regarding
colonial affairs was that of a statesman. He fraternized
with the Dutch settlers of his neighbourhood and with
the Indians wherever he found them. At Detroit, in 1761,
he entered into the spirit of the French settlers and
joined with enthusiasm in their feasts and dances. He
was one of those rare characters who can be all things
to all men and yet keep an untarnished name. The Indians
loved him as a firm friend, and his home was to them
Liberty Hall. But for this man the Indian rising against
British rule would have attained greater proportions. At
the critical period he succeeded in keeping the Six
Nations loyal, save for the Senecas. This was most
important; for had the Six Nations joined in the war
against the British, it is probable that not a fort west
of Montreal would have remained standing. The line of
communication between Albany and Oswego would have been cut,
provisions and troops could not have been forwarded, and,
inevitably, both Niagara and Detroit would have fallen.
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