Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/369

Rh with their territory, by one foreign power to another, both being alike intruders and interlopers. England did indeed, after the treaty, by proclamation, reserve the Ohio Valley and the neighboring region for the Indians, and forbade the whites to intrude for settlement upon it. But the Indians had not at the time the knowledge of this royal provision for them; and in fact it was made too late, for the mischief which it was intended to avert had been already done. That country had been penetrated by English traders, who coursed over portions of it with their trains of pack-horses. More than this: daring and enterprising men, with or without their families, had cleared and occupied many settlements or isolated homes scattered over its attractive spaces. Wofully did they have to meet, in addition to the toils and bufferings of their pioneer life, the vengeance of their exasperated savage foes.

The first move of the regulars of the Crown with provincial troops was to take possession of the forts and strongholds ceded with the French dominion, to change their garrisons, and to substitute the British flag for that of France. These strongholds were sadly battered and decayed. The French had cajoled the ever-jealous savages to wink at their establishment, as trading-posts and mission stations, on the pretence that they would be a security to the favored tribes against their foes. The British forces at the time were much reduced; only skeletons of regiments left here and others weakened by service in the West Indies being available, as the body of the troops had been disbanded and sent home at the peace. It was under these circumstances and with such means that the lake and valley posts passing from the sway of France were to be occupied by the English at a cost not foreseen.

In reading from original and authentic sources the letters, journals, and narratives relating to the French and Indian wars and to our own immediately subsequent conflicts under Great Britain with the infuriated savages, we