第20章 Chapter IV. The Passing Of The French Peril(3)

Governor Glen took this inauspicious moment to hold high festival with the Cherokees. It was the last year of his administration and apparently he hoped to win promotion to some higher post by showing his achievements for the fur trade and in the matter of new land acquired. He plied the Cherokees with drink and induced them to make formal submission and to cede all their lands to the Crown. When the chiefs recovered their sobriety, they were filled with rage at what had been done, and they remembered how the French had told them that the English intended to make slaves of all the Indians and to steal their lands. The situation was complicated by another incident. Several Cherokee warriors returning from the Ohio, whither they had gone to fight for the British, were slain by frontiersmen. The tribe, in accordance with existing agreements, applied to Virginia for redress--but received none.

There was thus plenty of powder for an explosion. Governor Lyttleton, Glen's successor, at last flung the torch into the magazine. He seized, as hostages, a number of friendly chiefs who were coming to Charleston to offer tokens of good will and forced them to march under guard on a military tour which the Governor was making (1759) with intent to overawe the savages. When this expedition reached Prince George, on the upper waters of the Savannah, the Indian hostages were confined within the fort; and the Governor, satisfied with the result of his maneuver departed south for Charleston. Then followed a tragedy. Some Indian friends of the imprisoned chiefs attacked the fort, and the commander, a popular young officer, was treacherously killed during a parley. The infuriated frontiersmen within the fort fell upon the hostages and slew them all--twenty-six chiefs--and the Indian war was on.

If all were to be told of the struggle which followed in the Back Country, the story could not be contained in this book. Many brave and resourceful men went out against the savages. We can afford only a passing glance at one of them. Hugh Waddell of North Carolina was the most brilliant of all the frontier fighters in that war. He was a young Ulsterman from County Down, a born soldier, with a special genius for fighting Indians, although he did not grow up on the border, for he arrived in North Carolina in 1753, at the age of nineteen. He was appointed by Governor Dobbs to command the second company which North Carolina had raised for the war, a force of 450 rangers to protect the border counties; and he presently became the most conspicuous military figure in the colony. As to his personality, we have only a few meager details, with a portrait that suggests plainly enough those qualities of boldness and craft which characterized his tactics. Governor Dobbs appears to have had a special love towards Hugh, whose family he had known in Ireland, for an undercurrent of almost fatherly pride is to be found in the old Governor's reports to the Assembly concerning Waddell's exploits.

The terror raged for nearly three years. Cabins and fields were burned, and women and children were slaughtered or dragged away captives. Not only did immigration cease but many hardy settlers fled from the country. At length, after horrors indescribable and great toll of life, the Cherokees gave up the struggle. Their towns were invaded and laid waste by imperial and colonial troops, and they could do nothing but make peace. In 1761 they signed a treaty with the English to hold "while rivers flow and grasses grow and sun and moon endure."

In the previous year (1760) the imperial war had run its course in America. New France lay prostrate, and the English were supreme not only on the Ohio but on the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Louisbourg, Quebec, Montreal, Oswego, Niagara, Duquesne, Detroit--all were in English hands.

Hugh Waddell and his rangers, besides serving with distinction in the Indian war, had taken part in the capture of Fort Duquesne.

This feat had been accomplished in 1758 by an expedition under General Forbes. The troops made a terrible march over a new route, cutting a road as they went. It was November when they approached their objective. The wastes of snow and their diminished supplies caused such depression among the men that the officers called a halt to discuss whether or not to proceed toward Fort Duquesne, where they believed the French to be concentrated in force. Extravagant sums in guineas were named as suitable reward for any man who would stalk and catch a French Indian and learn from him the real conditions inside the fort.

The honor, if not the guineas, fell to John Rogers, one of Waddell's rangers. From the Indian it was learned that the French had already gone, leaving behind only a few of their number. As the English drew near, they found that the garrison had blown up the magazine, set fire to the fort, and made off.

Thus, while New France was already tottering, but nearly two years before the final capitulation at Montreal, the English again became masters of the Ohio Company's land--masters of the Forks of the Ohio. This time they were there to stay. Where the walls of Fort Duquesne had crumbled in the fire Fort Pitt was to rise, proudly bearing the name of England's Great Commoner who had directed English arms to victory on three continents.

With France expelled and the Indians deprived of their white allies, the westward path lay open to the pioneers, even though the red man himself would rise again and again in vain endeavor to bar the way. So a new era begins, the era of exploration for definite purpose, the era of commonwealth building. In entering on it, we part with the earliest pioneer--the trader, who first opened the road for both the lone home seeker and the great land company. He dwindles now to the mere barterer and so--save for a few chance glimpses--slips out of sight, for his brave days as Imperial Scout are done.