Among the colonists, 1 in 16 men of military age was killed in King Philip’s War. At least 3,000 Indians died; many more were deported and sold into slavery in the West Indies.
Word for the Day
In French, “little war” is la petite guerre. This phrase soon evolved into the single word guerrilla to describe a limited, covert style of warfare as well as the combatants who fight such wars.
Stats
How much was a human being worth? The wholesale price for the Tuscaroras sold on the West Indies slave market was Ј10 each at a time when Ј100 year was considered a handsome living.
Global War—American Style
(1749-1763)
The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended King George’s War on October 18, 1748, brought no more than fleeting peace to the American frontier. On March 27, 1749, King George II granted huge wilderness tracts to a group of entrepreneurs called the Ohio Company, stipulating that, within seven years, the company must plant a settlement of 100 families and build a fort for their protection. The grant and the stipulation accompanying it rekindled the hostility of the French and their Indian allies, who feared an English invasion.
Their fears were valid. Throughout 1749, an influx of British traders penetrated territories that had been the exclusive trading province of the French. In response, on June 26, 1749, Roland-Michel Galissoniere, marquis de La Galissoniere, governor of New France, dispatched Captain Pierre-Joseph Celeron de Blainville with 213 men to the Ohio country. By November 20, 1749, Celeron had made a round trip of 3,000 miles, burying at intervals lead plates inscribed with France’s claim to sovereignty over the territory. The lines of battle were drawn.
The French and Indian War
La Galissoniere was replaced as governor by Jacques-Pierre de Jonquiere, marquis de La Jonquiere, in August 1749. He decided it would take more than buried lead plates to control North America, and he began to build forts. He also attacked the Shawnees, the most powerful of the Ohio country tribes who traded with the English. In the meantime, an English trader named Christopher Gist negotiated a treaty (1752) at Logstown (Ambridge), Pennsylvania, between Virginia and the Ohio Company, and the Six Iroquois Nations (plus the Delawares, Shawnees, and Wyandots). This treaty secured for Virginia and the Ohio Company deeds to the vast Ohio lands. However, French-allied Indians drove the English out of this wilderness country by 1752, and yet another governor of New France, Ange Duquesne de Menneville, marquis Duquesne, quickly built a string of forts through the Ohio country that ultimately stretched from New Orleans to Montreal. Lord Halifax, in England, pushed the British cabinet toward a declaration of war, arguing that the French, by trading throughout the Ohio Valley, had invaded Virginia.
First Blood for the Father of Our Country
In the heat of war fever, Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia secured authority from the crown to evict the French from territory under his jurisdiction. He commissioned 21-year-old Virginia militia captain George Washington to carry an ultimatum to the French interlopers: Get out or suffer attack. Washington set out from Williamsburg, Virginia’s capital, on October 3 1, 1753, and delivered the ultimatum to the commandant of Fort LeBoeuf (Waterford, Pennsylvania) on December 12, 1753. Captain Legardeur, 30 years older than Washington, politely but firmly declined to leave. In response, Governor Dinwiddie ordered the construction of a fort at the strategically critical “forks of Ohio,” the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, the site of present-day Pittsburgh.
In the meantime, up in Nova Scotia, British authorities demanded that the Acadians—French-speaking Roman Catholic farmers and fishermen who freely intermarried with the Micmac and Abnaki Indians—swear loyalty to the British crown. These people had the misfortune of living in the midst of the most important fishery in the world, waters coveted by all the nations of Europe. While the British threatened the Acadians with expulsion from Nova Scotia, the French threatened to turn their Indian allies against any Acadians who took the loyalty oath. Tensions mounted.
Back at the forks of the Ohio, the French, having patiently watched the construction of Dinwiddie’s fort, attacked. Badly outnumbered, Ensign Edward Ward, in command of the new outpost, surrendered on April 17, 1754, and was allowed to march off with his men the next day. The English stronghold was now christened Fort Duquesne and occupied by the French. Unaware of this takeover—and on the very day that the fort fell-Dinwiddie sent Washington (now promoted to lieutenant colonel) with 150 men to reinforce it. En route, on May 28, Washington surprised a 33-man French reconnaissance party. In the ensuing combat, 10 of the Frenchmen were killed, including Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, a French “ambassador.” This battle, then, was the first real battle of the French and Indian War.
