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The Castle at Fort Niagara, New York

THE OLDEST BUILDING IN THE NORTHERN UNITED STATES, WEST OF THE MOHAWK "The story of Fort Niagara is peculiarly the story of the fur trade and the strife for commercial monopoly," Frank H. Severance of the Buffalo Historical Society said in an address delivered at the fort in 1896; "and it is, too, in considerable measure, the story of our ALL THE WAY BACK TO NEW ENGLAND neighbor, the magnificent colony of Canada. . . . It is a story replete with incidents of battle and siege, of Indian cruelty, of patriot captivity, of white men's duplicity, of famine, disease, and death, - of all the varied forms of misery and wretchedness of a frontier post, which we in days of ease are wont to call picturesque and romantic. It is a story without a dull page, and it is two and a half centuries long.

I cannot better tell the story • • • then to symbolize Fort Niagara as a beaver skin, held by an Indian, a Frenchman, an Englishman, and a Dutchman, each of the last three trying to pull it away from the others (the poor Dutchman early bowled over in the scuffle), and each European equally eager to placate the Indian with fine words, with prayers, or with brandy, or to stick a knife into his white brother's back."

The story begins in 1669, with the first efforts of the French to secure possession of the Niagara country. It includes also the romance of the building of the Griffon, the first vessel on the Great Lakes, and the episode of the early fortification of the late seventeenth century. But it was not until 1726, the year of the building of the stone castle near the mouth of the Niagara River, that the fort had its real beginning. The French felt compelled to build the fort because the activity of the English was interfering with their own fur trade with the Indians, and their plan to build Fort Oswego would increase the difficulty. No time was to be lost; Governor Joncaire felt that he could not wait for the approval of the authorities at home. To these latter he sent word that he must build a fortress, and he asked for an appropriation; to the Indians he declared that he wished to have a mere trading station. His real purpose was indicated when he wrote to France that the building " will not have the appearance of a fort, so that no offence will be given to the Iroquois, who have been unwilling to allow any there, but it will answer the purpose of a fort just as well."

The first step was the construction of two barques for use on Lake Ontario, to carry stone and timber for the building, and later, to cruise on the lake and intercept traders bound for Oswego.

After the construction of the barques had been begun, the consent of the five Iroquois nations was secured. Longueuil promised them that it would be to them “a House of Peace" down to the third generation and farther. To Gaspard Chaussegros de Léry, engineer, was committed the building of the structure. He determined to make it fireproof. "Instead of wooden partitions I have built heavy walls, and paved all the floors with flat stone," he wrote in a report sent to France. The loft was paved with flat stones "on a floor full of good oak joists, upon which cannon may be placed above the structure."