2.31 America: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 10/20)

In the lower Mississippi region in 1713 St. Denis, from French Biloxi, settled Natchitoches as the oldest city in Louisiana. Near there were a series of small Indian states, including the famous Natchez, perhaps the last inheritors of the Mound-building tradition. There were perhaps 4,000 Natchez people left at the beginning of this century, living in 7 villages clustered near the present city of Natchez. Their social structure included a chief, the Great Sun and his relatives, known as Little Suns. A step below were nobles, then groups of Honored Men, a class achievable by anyone through distinguished action in war or religious devotion and finally the Commoners or Stinkards. Each Sun and Noble, however, had to marry a Stinkard, so there was a constant social turnover. These Indians attacked French Louisiana colonies in 1729, killing 200 and taking women, children and black slaves as prisoners. When they revolted against the French again in 1734, however, within a few years almost none remained alive. The French commanders disposed of a thousand captives in the West Indies. (Ref. 215 , 267 )

Throughout the century whenever England and France were threatening each other or at war in Europe, the Canadian French made sporadic raids on the frontiers of New England and vice versa. At the end of the 1740s the French took an expedition down the Ohio River and buried lead plates to mark their territorial possessions. Then in 1754 they destroyed a rude English fort at the crucial spot where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet (near present Pittsburg) and built their own Fort Duquesne. At 21 years of age George Washington had his first taste of battle against the French as they moved out of that fort in 1755 at the opening of the true French and Indian War. General Braddock and his English forces were badly defeated by the French and their 1,000 Indian allies.

The victory brought almost all the Indians of the old "northwest" to the French side. This was the American aspect of the Seven Years War but it was a frontier war, strange to the British and they suffered atrociously in the mountains and forests from Indian guerrillas and in the pitched battles they were out-maneuvered. Af ter six years the English did take Quebec and Montreal and the fighting ended. In the Treaty of Paris, three years later, Canada and the whole empire of France in the interior United States were transferred to England. We have noted previously that in the same treaty Florida was taken from Spain, who had come in too late and on the wrong side. The Spanish did acquire La Salle's vast, vague region of Louisiana, however, from the French. (Ref. 39 )

The Old Northwest was the territory about the Great Lakes and between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. By 1750 the Shawnees of that area were divided into five semi-autonomous political units or bands, each occupying a special place within the tribal confederacy. The Thawegila and Chalahgawtha bands supplied the leaders for the entire tribe, but all the bands took an active part in the French and Indian Wars, most of them supporting the French. Some of them fought beside Captain Daniel de Beaujeu as they cut the British column to pieces in the battle near Fort Duquense. During the next 4 years they joined bands of Delawares to raid the English frontier in Pennsylvania and Virginia. After the fall of Quebec, however, most Shawnees withdrew from the warfare, at least for the moment. The Treaty of 1763 did not give absolute peace on the frontier. In that very year Chief Pontiac of the Ottawas along with some Wyandots, Potawatamis and Ojibwas, attacked and then besieged the fort at Detroit from May until November