Attempts to Enslave the Americans Resisted

More cruel were the proceedings against the Indians on the peninsula, whom Jesuit priests had incited to furious raids along the New England frontiers. Cornwallis summoned a powerful Micmac chief to his presence. He came, feathered and painted, with two young warriors. Wrapped in his blanket, he stood erect and defiant before the English commander. Cornwallis demanded the instant submission of all the tribe to British authority. The chief haughtily replied: "The land on which you sleep, is ours; we sprung from it as do the trees, and the grass, and the flowers. It is ours forever, and we will not yield it to any man;" and turning on his heel went back to his people. Under the orders of his superiors, who declared that the Indians on the peninsula were "banditti, ruffians or rebels," Cornwallis offered ten guineas for every one of them "taken or killed," to be paid on producing the body or scalp of the savage. Such were the measures adopted by the English at the middle of the last century for checking the encroachments of the French on the east and west of their domain. At that time the English in America numbered almost a million and a half; the French were not more than a hundred thousand strong, but they controlled much of the Indian power of the continent. France and England were heirs to an ancient quarrel originating far back in feudal ages and kept alive by frequent collisions.

While the French power in America seemed to be confined to a narrow strip of territory along the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, the remote north-eastern portion of the continent, and in the western wilderness to very distant missionary stations, very little apprehension of real danger to their colonies was felt by the English; but when, after the French lost Louisburg in 1745, they built strong vessels at the foot of Lake Ontario; made stronger their little trading fort at Niagara; built a cordon of fortifications, more than sixty in number, between Montreal and New Orleans; claimed dominion over all the territory drained by tributaries of the Mississippi, with the plausible plea that the French were the discoverers of a greater portion of that stream, and were negotiating treaties with the powerful Delawares and Shawnoese, on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, the English perceived real and impending danger. The American colonists saw it first, and were alarmed; hence the proposition to plant an English settlement west of the Alleghanies. It was at that moment, when there appeared the plausible pretext of a necessity for united action, under a single head, against the French, that the British government resolved to assert its supreme authority in the colonies. Governor Shirley, a thorough royalist, proposed the building of frontier forts, under the direction of royal officers and engineers, at the expense of the colonies, and demanding from them the levying of a tax sufficient for the purpose. The crown officers of New York approved the measure. Shirley went to England to perfect his schemes, and found the government eager to do anything to check the democratic spirit in America which was evidently aiming at legislative independence, if not the setting up of an independent sovereignty. The English-Americans found themselves in the critical position of being compelled to fight the French and Indians for the preservation of their domain, and to contend with the mother country for their chartered rights and natural liberties. The French were their political and religious enemies, and menaced them with open hostility; their British brethren were their social foes, nestling in their bosoms, and seeking to conquer their noble and holy aspirations under false pretences. Yet the Americans were hopeful and firm. When the Lords of Trade induced the parliament to attempt to assert its supremacy in the colonies, and royal governors, under instructions, demanded of the colonial assemblies, in haughty words, the money and the rights of the Americans, their demands were met by a quiet defiance in the form of positive refusals and energetic protest of an indignant people. These had, many of them, been driven from England by persecution; had founded homes and built up states without England's aid, and had spent blood and treasure freely for England's honor and glory without even the poor return of thanks; therefore this insidious attempt to enslave them gave vehemence to their determination to assert their right to local self-government at all hazards. Their bold attitude at this time made the imperial government pause, and reserve its wrath for a more convenient season.