The Mentor, No. 35,
The Story of America in Pictures:
The Contest for North America

The Mentor

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

THE STORY OF AMERICA IN PICTURES
THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA

By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
Professor of Government, Harvard University

The whole round world is now open. Gone is the pleasure of finding
new lands, sighting strange mountains, floating down mysterious
rivers, and meeting unknown races of men. After Mt. Everest
is climbed by some daring mountaineer, and after an airship lands on the
highest peak of Mt. McKinley, what will be left for the seeker of novelty?
Where can you now find a river or mountain range or tribe certified
never before to have been seen by white men?

That rich pleasure was enjoyed in the fullest measure by the explorers
in North America; in fact, they enjoyed it so much that they kept it
alive for four centuries. For a good two hundred and fifty years the
English at intervals battered their way into Hudson Bay, and Davis
Strait, and the Arctic deserts, trying to smash a route through the ice,
around to the north of Asia and Europe. Nearly
three centuries passed after De Soto reached
the lower Mississippi before Lieutenant Pike
found its source in its native lair. As late as
1880 no man, white or red, knew the passes
across the Canadian Rockies; and to this day
only three boat parties have ever gone through
the length of the canyon of the Colorado.

ROBERT CAVELIER
DE LA SALLE

Born 1643; died 1687.

In the work of opening up North America
the French surpassed the English: if no bolder,
they were more adventurous. From the lower
St. Lawrence they held a direct route into the
interior, which flanked the two great obstacles
to western exploration; namely, the Six Nations
of the Iroquois and the Alleghany Mountains.
It is hard to say which was the firmer wall
against English discovery.

FRENCH ADVENTURE

LA SALLE’S SHIP, THE GRIFFIN

From an old print.

If we were only French, we could weep at the splendid story of French
discovery, as compared with the final collapse of the French empire on
the continent of North America. The French were the first to find the
St. Lawrence; first to see each one of the Great Lakes; first to spread exaggerated
ideas about Niagara Falls—where, according to Mark Twain,
the hack fares in his time were so much higher than the falls that the visitor
did not perceive the
latter. They were first to
be awestruck at the site
of the future city of Chicago;
first to reach the
Mississippi; first to be
stopped by the Falls of
St. Anthony, which unfortunately
were not at
that time subject to conservation;
first to navigate
the Mississippi; first to
see the Rocky Mountains;
first to cross from Lake
Superior to Hudson Bay.
What a fate, to be the
star actors in so many
first performances, and
then not to appear at all in the last act! What a destiny for the earliest
explorers of our country!

One reason why the French secured early control of the interior was
that they had an astonishing gift of living on the country. When Stanley
crosses the Dark Continent, or Amundsen penetrates the White Continent,
he carries great quantities of stores with him; but Champlain,
and Marquette, and La Salle went light. The Frenchmen paddled their
canoes along with their Indian friends,
lived on game and Indian corn, found
much to engage and interest them,
and were always ready for a joyous
fight. Frenchmen know how to draw
the pleasures of life out of unpromising
surroundings.

FOUNDING OF QUEBEC

The French made their first permanent
settlement at Quebec in 1608;
but the English had then been in
Jamestown a year. From the first
the continent was too small to hold
two such boisterous, expanding, and
conflict-loving people. Captain Argall
in 1613 opened the ball by capturing
the little Jesuit settlement at Flying
Mountain on Mount Desert. From
that time, for just a hundred and fifty
years, the two nations were sparring
with each other.

Copyright, 1897, by Little, Brown & Co. Reproduced by
permission.

LA SALLE PRESENTING A PETITION TO KING
LOUIS XIV

For many years this warfare was
hedged in, because mountains, woods,
and savages filled up a broad belt of
territory between the English coast
settlements and the St. Lawrence.
But in war, as in the chivalric game
of football, when you cannot break through the center, you play round
the ends. Hence in every one of the six regular wars, besides various
local squabbles, there was always fighting between French and English
in Nova Scotia, or the Islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or along that
river. In 1613 the English captured Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy,
and again in 1690 and 1710,—it became almost a habit,—in 1670 they
broke into Hudson Bay; in 1745 and 1758 they mastered Louisburg;
and in 1759 took Quebec.

LA SALLE

The most gallant figure
in this century and a half is
the chevalier Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de la Salle, who
had all the pluck and endurance
of his Norman ancestors.
He was educated by the
Jesuits; but preferred the life
of a seignior on the frontier
of Canada. There he heard
tales of a river starting somewhere
near the Great Lakes
and following so long a course
that he guessed it must be
the Colorado. From that time
he became a still hunter for
the Mississippi River. He
built the Griffin, the first vessel
ever seen on Lake Erie. Apparently he found the Ohio, and decided that
that was not the advertised stream; and before he could get to the Mississippi
it had been discovered by the priest Marquette and the Indian trader
Joliet, while Father Hennepin went up the great stream to the falls.

NIAGARA FALLS

As pictured by Father Louis Hennepin, probably the first white
man to see this wonderful waterfall. From a plate made from
the original Utrecht edition of 1697.

La Salle had larger plans than to see new countries and float on
strange rivers: he wanted to occupy that region for his sovereign and
friend, Louis XIV, Le Grand Monarque. Early in 1682 he reached what
the recorder of that expedition calls “the divine river, called by the
Indians Checagou.” With him was that picturesque figure Tonti, “the
man with the iron hand”—and his artificial member was no tougher and
more enduring than his iron heart.

February 6, 1682, the expedition reached what they called “the
River Colbert,” and six leagues lower they passed the mouth of the
Missouri. There they registered the first protest against the St. Louis
water supply; for that stream, they said, “is full as large as the River
Colbert, into which it empties, troubling it so that from the mouth the
water is hardly drinkable.” The Indians entertained him with the fiction
that by going up the Missouri ten or twelve days he would come to a
mountain, beyond which was the sea with many ships.

La Salle was the man who put the French into the Mississippi Valley,
and thus gave them possession of the two finest regions in North America,—the
whole watershed of the St. Lawrence, including the Great Lakes,
and the whole watershed of the Mississippi. How many different craft
have followed after his canoes,—a keel boat containing Aaron Burr and
his misfortunes; a flat boat, with Abraham Lincoln stretching his long
arms over the steering oar; the Belle of St. Louis racing the Belle of Memphis,
cramming sugar and hams into the furnace, and, just as she pulled
abreast of her rival, blowing up in most spectacular style; and Porter’s
gunboats, driving past Vicksburg and exchanging broadsides with the
batteries on the heights! Little did La Salle know that he was opening
up a highway for a nation not yet born!

ENGLISH CLAIMS

GENERAL PEPPERELL AT LOUISBURG

General Pepperell was commander of the English forces which on June 16, 1745,
captured the town of Louisburg.

Where were the English all this time? Did their Indian friends tell
them nothing about great rivers full of crocodiles, and crook-backed,
woolly oxen, and mountains of gold? After 1664 they held the whole
coast from the St. Croix River to the Savannah River; but it took them
a long time simply to reach the edge of the Mississippi Valley. Two
adventurous men, Thomas Batts, and the German, John Lederer, wormed
their way through the confused mountains of western Virginia, and Batts
reached the New River about 1671,—“a pleasing but dreadful sight to
see, mountains and hills piled one upon another.” They took possession
of “all the territories thereunto belonging” for his Majesty Charles II.
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania all had charters reaching
west of the mountains; but they knew better than to try to pick up
territory from under the lodge poles of the ferocious Iroquois. The English
seemed to lack the discoverer’s spirit, which can be satisfied only,
as the colored
preacher puts it,
“by unscrewing the
inscrutable.” John
Endicott thought
he was as heroic as
Marco Polo, when
he went up the
Merrimac River to
Lake Winnepesaukee,
and there cut
his initials on a
rock; and Governor
Alexander Spotswood
of Virginia
felt very proud of
himself when in
1716 he conducted
a party of gentlemen on horseback across the mountains into the valley
of the Shenandoah, which was still a long way from the Mississippi Basin.

DOOR OF OLD HOUSE,
DEERFIELD

Showing the holes chopped in the door by the
Indians, through which they shot Mrs. Weldon,
a victim of the raid.

The French riveted their claim on the Mississippi by sending out a
colony in 1699, which soon after founded the town of New Orleans, on
the high bluff fourteen feet above the sea level of the nearby Lake Pontchartrain.
They made many settlements; such as Detroit, and St.
Joseph, and Green Bay, Vincennes, Kaskaskia,
and Natchez. They set up trading
posts among the Indians; they buried
lead plates along the banks of the Ohio
River, bearing the arms of the king,—they
had a clear claim to the two enormous
river valleys.

OLD HOUSE IN DEERFIELD

This old house escaped the conflagration in 1704.

What was a clear claim? The Indians
thought they had a clear claim, and
warlike tribes like the Iroquois and the
Creeks fought for that conviction. The
English claimed the Mississippi Valley
because they wanted it, and took advantage
of the four international wars of
the eighteenth century to
make that claim good by
further right of conquest.
After the second war, by the
treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, the first territory was clipped off from the
French possessions; Acadia (Nova Scotia) passed to the English, and with
it they acquired whatever the French claims had been to Newfoundland
and Hudson Bay. At the end of the third war, in 1748, they were holding
Louisburg; but gave it back. Then in 1754 came the great struggle of
the French and Indian War, in which the English attacked the French on
the upper Ohio, on Lake Ontario, at Louisburg, and finally at Quebec, all
with triumphant success.
The Canadian
French were outnumbered
five or six times
to one in America, and
their home government
had its hands
full with European
and naval wars, and
could not help them.

FRONTIER
WARFARE

SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT, DEERFIELD

This monument stands on the common in Deerfield, on the site of the
church of 1704.

All this fighting
was not according to
the nice, formal, observe-the-laws-of-war
methods, such as are now followed between civilized nations: it was
more like a campaign in the Balkans, or the amenities of the Zulus
in Africa. Europeans were not particularly gentle in their warfare. The
early colonies were planted when the Thirty Years’ War was raging in
Germany, a war in which the unoffending peasants expected both sides to rob
them of their little property, and then to torture them because they had
no more to give. The Indians were not the only race that found pleasure
in inflicting awful suffering on other human beings. The cultivated English
colonists and the French trappers and hunters were not above taking
scalps on occasion; and, though they did not torture their prisoners,
allowed their Indian allies to indulge themselves in that amusement.

DEERFIELD MEMORIAL

This stone marks the grave of the victims of the Deerfield massacre on
February 29, 1704.

GENERAL MONTCALM’S HEADQUARTERS
AT QUEBEC

The French were
better wood fighters
than the English,
and throughout
these struggles had
a disagreeable habit
of raiding English
settlements. Twice
they captured villages
within a day’s
march of sacred
Boston. Their most
spectacular achievement
was the raid
upon Deerfield in
1704, upon which an epic poem might be
written. Depict the French and Indians stealing
two hundred miles through the frozen
wilderness; the Puritans in Deerfield trusting
to their stockade; the sudden dash at dawn;
the shots, cries, screams; the Indians chopping
away with their hatchets at Parson Williams’
front door, till they made a loophole
through which to fire at the family; the file of
captives quickly marshaled for the terrible
northward trail; the valiant little band from
Hatfield pursuing the Indians, many times
their number, and getting a bad licking; the
wrath and fear of all New England at this appearance
of the fearful enemy!

QUEBEC IN COLONIAL DAYS

From an old print.

The people of Haverhill, Massachusetts,
have put up a statue to a militant woman
named Hannah Dustin, who, when carried
away a captive, had the sweet thought to
brain half a dozen of her captors, and so get
home again with her children. Had there
been more Hannah Dustins, there would have been fewer French raids!

In all these wars the English colonists excelled as fighting seamen.
We may still be proud of William Phipps and his levy of colonial forces,
who took Port Royal in 1690. Who shall envy him his well earned title
of Sir William, and his fair brick house on Green Lane, Boston? Think of
the New England men, aided by a small British fleet, sallying out in 1745
to attack Louisburg, the proudest fortress in the western world,—laying
siege to it,
digging trenches
before it, complimenting
it with
bombshells, and
compelling it to
surrender! That
was worth a score
of Deerfields!

WOLFE’S MONUMENT,
QUEBEC

This memorial commemorates
the capture of Quebec from the
French by the English.

The world has
agreed to give the
palm of picturesqueness
in warfare
to the capture
of Quebec in 1759
by Wolfe’s English fleet and army. Modern
critics tell you that nothing could be easier; that
anybody can make his way up the steep footpath
in Wolfe’s Cove. But Montcalm, the French commander,
as brave a man and as skilled a warrior
as you could find, did not think it likely that a
British army would find its way to the Plains of
Abraham at the top. Still, he realized, when his
little army came out of the strongly fortified town,
and offered battle, that the French empire in
America was at stake. The battle of Quebec was
a stage battle,—soldiers arriving in alarms and
incursions, and both commanders fighting like
heroes till they fell covered with wounds. Quebec
was a battle that makes a man glad of being what
he is, whether French or English.

DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE

When Quebec was captured from the French by the English under General
Wolfe, the commanders on both sides were killed. General Montcalm was in
command of the French forces. From the painting by Benjamin West.

Four years earlier the French took their
chance to defeat an army and kill a British general.
Somebody has said that it was a hard fate
for a brave military officer to go down to history known only through
“Braddock’s Defeat.” The trouble with Braddock was that he was an
Englishman, bigoted, obstinate, know-it-all, but brave to his heart’s core;
and his march up through the wild country was managed with great skill.
Braddock was a good officer; for on that fateful day he recognized and
gave responsibility to a better officer, young George Washington. The
French had been on the point of fleeing
from Fort Duquesne, and as a last desperate
chance came out, faced the invader,
and defeated him.

BRADDOCK’S MARCH

General Braddock marched his army through the wilderness as though he were on a parade ground in Europe.
To this lack of caution was due in great measure his defeat.

THE INDIAN’S FATE

“If the pitcher fall on the rock, the
pitcher shall be broken; and if the rock
fall on the pitcher, the pitcher shall be
broken.” So runs the Eastern proverb,
and it applies to the fate of the Indian
throughout the wars of the French and
English. Every time an Indian tribe
fought with either side it was sharpening an
arrow that would be directed against itself.

Copyright, 1908, by E. K. Weller.

BRADDOCK’S GRAVE

Near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, one mile east
of Chalk Hill, beside the National Pike, lie
the remains of General Edward Braddock.
They are said to have been reinterred at this
place in 1824.

PONTIAC

The chief of the Ottawas. In April,
1769, he was murdered, when
drunk, at Cahokie (nearly opposite
St. Louis) by a Kaskaskia
Indian, bribed by an English
trader. He was buried near the
St. Louis fort.

For a long time the Indian astutely
played off one foreign nation against the
other; but after the French were excluded
the only Great Father left to the poor
Indian was his Majesty King George III—God
bless him! The French loved the Indians, in both a flowery and an
actual way; but the English would neither protect them nor marry them.
Hence the outbreak under Pontiac, after the Northwest had been turned
over to England. He was one of the greatest of his race. He might have
said, as one of his brethren did say to an Anglo Saxon potentate, “I am
a man; and you are another.” This was one of the
few attempts in America to combine the Indian
tribes and to attack the whites all along the line.
When Pontiac failed there was nothing for it but
to yield.

Even the Iroquois gave in and learned to eat
out of the hand of Sir William Johnson of Johnson
Hall; and they
made the treaty of
Fort Stanwix with the
English in 1768, generously
giving lands they had never possessed. That was fatal for the
Six Nations; for they got so addicted to Great Father George III that
they stood by him when the Revolution broke out. That gave to Patriot
General Sullivan the chance to march into their own country in 1779, and
to break to pieces the only American third power that ever tried to stand
neutral between the French and the English.

STARVED ROCK

In 1770 this rock became the last refuge of a small band of Illinois Indians
flying before a large force of Pottawattomies, who believed that one of the
Illinois had assassinated Pontiac, in whose conspiracy the Pottawattomies
had taken part. Unable to dislodge the Illinois, the Pottawattomies cut
off their escape and let them die of starvation.

Editorial

When the plan of The Mentor Association
was in its formative state a prominent
educator said, “Your principle, ‘Learn One
Thing Every Day,’ is good. Stick to it.
Don’t give too much in a single number.
There are four things that I regard essential
to the success of your plan. They
are: Make your matter simple, make it
interesting, be sure that it is correct and
authoritative, and last, don’t give too
much at a time. The mental fare that
you serve to your many readers should
be frugal. If not, mental indigestion will
follow.”

We have had that good advice in mind
in all of our work. Some of our readers
have asked us why we do not exhaust a
subject in one number of The Mentor.
Our answer is that, in no case, could we
exhaust a subject in a single number, and,
in most cases we would exhaust the reader.
We give as much on any subject as will
interest the reader, and as much as he can
conveniently retain in mind.

Just in the way of illustration: In the
issue of September 29th, “Beautiful Buildings
of the World,” Professor Clarence
Ward describes the Alhambra. Mr.
Dwight L. Elmendorf also tells about this
celebrated Moorish palace in the issue of
September 15th. A large volume could
be written on the Alhambra without exhausting
all that is interesting in it. But
a large volume would be more than most
people would care to read. The bare
facts about the Alhambra could be told
in a brief encyclopedic article. But that
would be dry and, to many, uninteresting.
In The Mentor Mr. Elmendorf describes
the Alhambra as an experienced
traveler and observer sees it. Professor
Ward, with the cultivated eye of a student
of architecture, appraises the Alhambra
as a beautiful building. Two well-informed
men tell about the same subject, each
from his own point of view. The result
is a fuller and more satisfying impression.
And later on, in considering the
historic palaces of the world, the Alhambra
may again be considered from another
point of view.

In this way the light of information is
brought to bear on a subject from various
sides, and the reader is brought with
fresh interest to the subject several times,
and can view it in its different aspects.
We want all the members of The Mentor
Association to appreciate the breadth of
this plan, for it will make clear to them the
reason why some important subjects are
at present merely touched upon in The
Mentor. We want our members to know
the plan that we are building up in a
simple, constructive way, under the advice
of the wisest educators. And we want our
members to feel a share in this constructive
work.

Write to us freely and frankly. It will
be a great help. Tell us what has interested
you most in The Mentor. It is most
interesting in our work to note the desire
shown by readers for certain subjects, and
the demand for back numbers. In a plan
of this sort back numbers are just as valuable
as forthcoming numbers, and as the
weeks go by the store of valuable material
increases in volume. This makes a binder
desirable. We have a very attractive
Mentor box binder, neat in appearance
and holding 13 copies. It will preserve
your Mentors in good condition, and that
is worth something, for you will always
want them. The price is 50 cents each
(or four for $1.75), by prepaid parcel post.

LA SALLE’S HOUSE. NEAR MONTREAL, CANADA

ONE

Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was the
foremost pioneer of the great West of our country;
but he failed because his schemes were too large for
his resources. La Salle was brilliant, energetic, and
courageous; but he could stir neither enthusiasm nor affection
in those whom he commanded. Therein lay one reason for
his failure. He was a shy, proud, and reserved
man, loved by a few intimate
friends, and greatly liked and respected by
the Indians.

La Salle was born in Rouen (roo´-ohng),
France, on November 22, 1643. He came
of a good burgher family. He taught in
the Jesuit schools during his early life; but
in 1666 went to Canada to make his fortune.
It was then that La Salle had the
first of his great visionary schemes. He
planned to discover a way to China across
the American continent. That does not
sound so impossible now; but it must be
remembered that in the seventeenth century
the first railroad had not even been
dreamed of, and that the American continent,
except for a few colonies along the
eastern seacoast, was a wilderness of trackless
forest and prairie.

La Salle finally saw, however, that he
must give up his plan of finding a route to
China, and in 1677 he replaced it with one
intended to colonize the whole interior of
the United States for France. He was convinced
that the Mississippi River flowed
into the Gulf of Mexico, and he intended
to build forts all along its banks, and thus
hold it open for French settlers and traders.
He believed that he could bring practically
one-half of France over to live in the new
country.

In 1677 he went to France and laid this
scheme before Minister Colbert. He told
of the great extent of the West, of its
boundless resources, and of the many advantages
of opening trade with its numerous
peaceful Indians. He received permission
from the king to rule over all land
that might be colonized within twenty
years, so long as it cost the Crown nothing.
He raised money for this great plan by
help from his friends and relatives, and
returned to Canada accompanied by Henry
de Tonti and a friar named Louis Hennepin.

The expedition started from Fort Frontenac
in November, 1678, and La Salle
spent the winter at Niagara, building a
small vessel, which he named the Griffin.
He had many heartbreaking struggles and
misfortunes; but at last, accompanied by
Tonti, thirty Frenchmen, and a band of
faithful Indians, on February 6, 1682, he
set out on the Mississippi. They reached
its mouth on April 9, and La Salle took
possession of the whole Mississippi Valley
in the name of Louis XIV, king of France.
He planted a column, bearing the arms of
his country.

He then returned to France to obtain
an expedition to found a fort at the mouth
of the Mississippi. He secured a squadron
under the command of an officer named
Beaujeu, and sailed in 1684. They could
not find the Mississippi, and Beaujeu
sailed for France, leaving La Salle and his
little band of colonists alone, sick, disconsolate,
mutinous, and starved. After two
years La Salle resolved to make one last
effort to reach the Mississippi, ascend it,
and bring back aid to his colonists. But
in March, 1687, some of his followers conspired
to kill him on a branch of the Trinity
River, and hiding in the long grass, they
shot him through the brain.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

JOHN WESLEY PREACHING TO THE INDIANS

TWO

John Wesley, the great evangelist, was born at
Epworth Rectory, England, on June 28 (new style),
1703. He was the fifteenth child of Samuel and
Susanna Wesley. When John was only five years
old the rectory was burned to the ground, and the family had
a narrow escape from death. For six years Wesley was a pupil
at Charterhouse School, and in 1720 he
entered Oxford. He had only a little over
two hundred dollars a year to live on, and
his health was poor; but, nevertheless, he
managed to get the most out of his studies.
He was fond of riding and walking, was an
expert swimmer, and played a good game
of tennis.

On September 25, 1725, he was ordained
deacon, and he preached frequently in the
churches near Oxford. In 1726 he began
to act as his father’s curate. He already
displayed those talents for leadership
which were to find so conspicuous a field
in the evangelical revival.

On April 25, 1735, Wesley’s father died,
and the following October John and his
younger brother Charles, with two other
Methodists, sailed for Georgia. John
hoped to be able to convert the Indians to
Christianity; but the mission was a failure.

On his return to England from Georgia,
Wesley became the acknowledged leader
of Methodism. He began itinerant preaching.
No other preacher of the century had
his mastery over an audience. He made
his appeal to the conscience in the clearest
language, with all the weight of personal
conviction. Victory over sin was the goal
he set before all his people.

Up to 1742 Wesley’s work was chiefly
confined to London and Bristol and the
country thereabout. But now he began to
extend the territory over which he
preached. In August, 1747, he paid his
first visit to Ireland, where he had such
success that he gave more than six years
of his life to the country, and crossed the
Irish Channel forty-two times. Wesley’s
first visit to Scotland was in 1751. In all
he paid twenty-two visits to that
country.

Wesley generally traveled about five
thousand miles in a year. This was a
great strain upon his powers. In his encounters
with the mob, however, his tact
and courage never failed. He always
looked a mob in the face, and appealed to
its better feelings.

On March 2, 1791, John Wesley died in
his house at City Road. He was eighty-eight
years old.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

WILLIAMS HOUSE, DEERFIELD, MASS.

THREE

In the early morning of February 29, 1704, a band of
French and Indians stole down upon the little village
of Deerfield in Massachusetts. Hertel de Rouville
was the leader of this band. Silently they crept in
upon the unsuspecting town. Most of the settlers were still
sleeping soundly. Suddenly, with a wild whoop, the attack
began. Forty-nine men, women, and children
were massacred, the village was
burned, and then with one hundred and
eleven captives the cowardly attackers departed.
On the way back to Canada
twenty of the captured were cruelly murdered.
This raid has ever since been
known as the Deerfield Massacre.

Deerfield was called Pocumtuck until
1764. The territory that originally constituted
the township was a tract of eight
thousand acres, granted in 1654 to the
town of Dedham in place of two thousand
acres previously taken from that town and
granted to the Rev. John Eliot to further
his mission among the Natick Indians.
The Pocumtuck Indians originally owned
this land. Their rights to the Deerfield
tract were purchased for about ten cents
an acre.

The settlement was begun in 1669, and
the township was incorporated in 1673.
Deerfield was for a great many years the
northwest frontier settlement of New
England. At the beginning of King
Philip’s War the English fortified the
town. On September 1, 1675, it was attacked
by Indians. A small garrison under
the command of Captain Samuel Appleton
was placed in the town after this.
A second attack was made on September 12.

Six days later Captain Thomas Lothrop
and his company were acting as escort to
some teams that were hauling wheat from
Deerfield to the English headquarters at
Hadley. Suddenly a band of Indians
leaped out of ambush and set upon the
train. Lothrop and more than sixty of his
men were killed. The spot where this fight
took place has since been known as “Bloody
Brook.” It is in the village of South Deerfield.
From this time until the end of the
war Deerfield was abandoned.

In the spring of 1677 a few of the old
settlers returned; but on September 19
some were killed, and the others were captured
by a party of Indians from Canada.
Again in 1682 settlement was resumed.
Twelve years later, on September 15, a
party of French and Indians attacked
Deerfield, and almost succeeded in capturing
the town. Then in 1704 came the
Deerfield Massacre.

Among the captives was the Rev. John
Williams, the first minister of Deerfield,
who was redeemed in 1706 along with
some others. The year following his return
he published an account of his experiences
as a prisoner, called “The Redeemed Captive
Returning to Zion.” In this same
year a house was built for Williams by the
town of Deerfield. The house has been
somewhat changed since then; but the
secret staircase is still to be seen, and also
much fine old furniture.

Williams’ wife and one of his children
were killed in the raid; but all his other
children returned to Deerfield except
Eunice, who married an Indian. Her
great-grandson was the pretended “Lost
Dauphin” of France, about whom there
was formerly so much discussion.

Today Deerfield has a population of
over two thousand. Its natural beauty
and the historic interest connected with
the town attract many visitors. Many
houses in the village are very old. In
Memorial Hall, a building erected in 1797-98
for the Deerfield Academy, the Pocumtuck
Valley Memorial Association has
gathered an interesting collection of colonial
and Indian relics.

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COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

GENERAL WOLFE

FROM A PORTRAIT BY THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

FOUR

The capture of Quebec from the French by the English
in 1759 is one of the epics of modern military
history. Quebec was supposed to be absolutely impregnable,
and was the stronghold of France in
America. If the English had not been able to capture Quebec,
Canada might have been French today. And this brilliant
military feat was accomplished by a young
major general only thirty-two years old.
The leaders on both sides of the battle
were killed; but the glory of their heroism
has lived to this day.

After General Amherst had captured
Louisburg in 1758 he took charge of the
American campaigns of the Seven Years’
War between England and France. Under
him was Major General James Wolfe,
who was but thirty-one years old. Amherst
ordered him to attack Quebec, while
that general himself led a force to capture
Montreal.

Wolfe’s command consisted of seven
thousand men; while Montcalm, the
French commanded of Quebec, had under
him a considerably larger army. The
British sailed up the St. Lawrence River
and camped on the Isle of Orleans, facing
the city.

There were three ways of attacking
Quebec,—from the St. Lawrence River,
from the St. Charles River, and up the
steep cliffs to the Plains of Abraham. On
the St. Lawrence side it was impossible to
get near enough to the city to damage it,
and to climb the steep rock to the Plains
of Abraham seemed unworthy of consideration.
So Wolfe decided to cross the
St. Lawrence seven miles below Quebec,
and to fight his way to the city by the St.
Charles side. But this attack failed, with
great loss to the English.

However, although he was discouraged,
the stout heart of General Wolfe never
failed. He began immediately to plan
another way of getting into Quebec. He
learned that the impossible could be accomplished,
the heights to the Plains of
Abraham could be scaled. From a little
cove in the river, Wolfe’s Cove, a steep path
led up the cliffs. It was a desperate
chance; but it was worth taking.

He only had thirty-six hundred men
that could be spared for the attempt, and
on the evening of September 12, 1759, these
embarked on the warships and sailed upstream.
Montcalm was a wary warrior,
and sent some troops to watch the movements
of the English. The British troops
landed some distance above Wolfe’s Cove;
but at one o’clock in the morning Wolfe
and half his force dropped downstream in
boats and landed at the cove.

Then came the scramble up the cliff-side
in the inky darkness. Slowly they
worked their way to the top. At the summit
the French had a weak redoubt
guarded by a handful of men. This was
the last place at which Montcalm had expected
an attack. The garrison was easily
driven from the redoubt, and by daylight
the entire English force was upon the
Plains of Abraham.

Montcalm drew up his men, and the two
armies, French and English, stood face to
face on the narrow battlefield. The
French advanced and began to push the
English back; but Wolfe rallied his men.
He held back his fire until the French
came within close range, and then at his
order one volley decided the battle. With
great gaps in their lines, the French halted,
and Wolfe led on his men to complete the
victory.

But the brave English general, wounded
twice already, now received a shot through
the breast that was fatal. Montcalm too was
mortally wounded, and died the next day.

Quebec surrendered on September 18,
1759.

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BRADDOCK’S FIELD—FROM AN OLD PAINTING

FIVE

The defeat of General Edward Braddock by the
French and Indians was not due to any lack of
courage on the part of the English commander and
his men, but to the fact that they knew nothing
about colonial warfare and would not take advice from the
colonial troops. Had Braddock followed the advice of George
Washington the French would have been
routed, and Fort Duquesne, which is now
Pittsburgh, would have been captured.

Edward Braddock was born in Perthshire,
Scotland, in 1695. He was the son
of Major General Edward Braddock. In
1710 he joined the Coldstream Guards.
As a lieutenant colonel in 1747 he served
under the Prince of Orange during the
siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. Six years later
he was made colonel of the 14th Foot, and
the following year became a major general.

This was at the time of the Seven Years’
War between the French and English.
England had a poor opinion of the colonial
officers and soldiers,—these same officers
and soldiers who were to defeat their
trained troops on every hand a few years
later in the Revolution,—and at the beginning
of the war sent General Braddock
with two regiments of regulars to Virginia.
Braddock landed on American soil in 1755,
and, appointing George Washington one of
his aides, set off with his regulars and
some colonial troops from Fort Cumberland
in Maryland for Fort Duquesne.

The country to be traversed was a wilderness.
No road led through the woods;
so the troops were forced to cut one as
they slowly went westward. Braddock
was brave and honest, but harsh and
brutal in manners. He could not understand
the nature of a war in the woods.
Like other English officers of the time, he
despised American militia and their half-Indian
way of fighting. Washington and
the other American officers advised him to
send scouts ahead to look for the enemy;
but Braddock would have none of this.
He marched his army through the forest
in perfect alignment, with the band playing
and banners flying.

On July 9, 1755, after crossing the
Monongahela River, when they were only
eight miles from Fort Duquesne, those in
the front of the army suddenly saw what
seemed to be a single Indian coming
toward them. It was really a French
officer with a band of French and Indians
at his back. Feeling that they were
doomed to defeat, the French had determined
as a last resort to sally out from
Fort Duquesne and give battle to the English
in the woods.

As soon as the French officer saw the
British he stopped and waved his hat.
The French and Indians immediately disappeared
into the bushes and opened fire
on the English troops. The red coats of
Braddock’s men made a fine target. They
tried to return the enemy’s fire; but there
was no foe to be seen. They stood their
ground bravely for a time; but it was a
slaughter. Huddled together like sheep,
they were shot down by scores.

The colonial soldiers attempted to fight
from behind trees, but Braddock considered
this cowardly, and beat them back
into line with the flat of his sword.

“Come out into the open field like Englishmen!”

It was courageous; but it was foolhardy.

General Braddock exposed himself fearlessly.
In rallying his men he had four
horses shot under him, and was at last
mortally wounded. Washington, who was
the only officer on Braddock’s staff not
killed or wounded, saved the defeat from
becoming a rout. Two horses were shot
under him and four bullets pierced his
clothes.

On the way back to Fort Cumberland,
General Braddock died, and Washington
took charge of the demoralized troops. In
order to prevent the Indians finding Braddock’s
grave and mutilating the body, the
general was buried in the road and the
entire army passed over it,—men, horses,
and wagons.

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PONTIAC IN COUNCIL

SIX

Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, a remarkable Indian
in many ways, had a power rare among members of
his race, the power of organization. He was the
leader of the Indian rising known as “Pontiac’s
Conspiracy,” which took place in 1763-1764. He was cruel
and treacherous, but a brave fighter. Pontiac was probably
born sometime between 1712 and 1720.
He became chief of the Ottawas about
1755. As an ally of France he took part
in the defeat of General Braddock on
July 9, 1755.

In 1762 Indian prophets began preaching
a union of tribes to expel the English.
The French took advantage of this religious
fervor to stir up trouble. On April
27, 1763, representatives of the Algonquin
tribes met near Detroit. It was at this
meeting that Pontiac outlined the plans
for his conspiracy.

With sixty warriors he attacked Detroit
on May 7; but this attempt failed. Major
Henry Gladwin, with one hundred and
sixty men, was in command of this fort.
When Pontiac’s attack failed he and his
braves calmly sat down outside the stockade
and besieged the fort until the end of
October. Reinforcements managed to get
into the fort during this time, and there
were many bloody fights between the besiegers
and the besieged; but the fort held
out, and on October 30, after Pontiac
learned that the French were not going to
help him, the Indians quietly stole away.

In the meanwhile other English forts all
along the frontier were being attacked.
On June 22, 1763, Fort Pitt, with a garrison
of three hundred and thirty men,
stoutly repelled an assault. At Michilimackinac
(Mackinac), Michigan, on June
4, the Indians gained admission to the
fort by a trick, killed nearly twenty of the
garrison, and captured the rest, seven of
whom were killed in cold blood by a chief
of the Ojibwas. Fort Sandusky at Sandusky,
Ohio, Fort Miami at Fort Wayne,
Indiana, Fort St. Joseph at Niles, Michigan,
and many other British outposts were
captured and their brave little garrisons
massacred.

In June, 1764, Colonel John Bradstreet
led twelve hundred men from Albany to
Fort Niagara, where, at a great gathering
of Indians, several treaties were made. But
these treaties were of little value. Colonel
Bouquet led an expedition of fifteen hundred
men from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to
the present site of Tuscarawas, Ohio, in
August, 1764. Here he put an end to the
conspiracy, forced the Indians to release
their prisoners, and made them stop their
warfare.

Pontiac himself surrendered to Sir
William Johnson on July 25, 1766, at
Oswego, New York. Three years later
he was murdered, when drunk, by another
Indian. It was an ignominious ending
for one of the greatest Indians that ever
lived.

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