At the period of the accession of William to the British SECT. III. throne, this scourge of a savage foe no longer existed in the heart of the settlements; but obstacles to civil labour, and causes of inordinate mortality, of the same kind, were even multiplied. From the year 1690, to the peace of Paris, in 1763, the colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, were engaged in almost unremitting hostilities with the aborigines on their borders. Their whole western frontier was a scene of havoc and desolation. After the establishment of the French at Fort Du Quesne, in 1754, the tribes of the Ohio assailed and laid waste the western settlements of the middle provinces; and it is calculated that the colonies lost altogether by war, not less than twenty thousand adults, in the interval from that period to the peace of 1763.

About the year 1690, the French in the north, and the Spaniards in the south, began to act as the instigators and auxiliaries of the savages, and continued for seventy-three years to be the instruments of infinite distress and mischief to the Anglo-Americans. Their enmity was occasioned by the connexion of the latter with Great Britain; and their hostilities arose directly, and date exactly, from her quarrels with France. It is doubtful whether, if that connexion had not existed, they would have molested their neighbours. In 1644, the season of the total dereliction of the British provinces by the mother country, a formal treaty of amity was concluded between the French of Acadie, and the commissioners of the united colonies of New England. The French of Canada sent an agent, in 1647, to solicit aid from Massachusetts against the Mohawks; which was refused from an unwillingness to assist in removing, what might serve as a barrier between the English and French colonies, in case of a rupture between the two mother countries. A year after, when it was proposed by New England, to the governor and council of Canada, that the parties should contract an engagement to maintain perpetual peace, whatever might be the relations of the parent states, the French entered with alacrity into a negotiation for the purpose. It failed only because they required the English colonists to aid them against the Iroquois; and they renewed it themselves by plenipotentiaries, at a short interval of time, without success.* These facts warrant the supposition, that, but for their allegiance to the British crown, the provinces would have been able to avert the animosities which proved their severest affliction, and even, perhaps, to make auxiliaries of the French and Spanish dependencies. It seems,

* Universal History, vol. xxxix. p. 448.

PART. I. moreover, upon an attentive review of the history of France, during the seventeenth century, almost certain, that she would not herself have attempted, in that period, to arrest their progress: Afterwards, they might have defied her powers.

'

They could, at all events, hold the mother country responsible, for the long train of ills, which they suffered from the neighbourhood of the French, by referring to the treaty of 1632, between Charles I. and Louis XIII. On this occasion, Charles restored to France, absolutely and without demarcation of limits, "all the places possessed by the English in New France, Lacadie, and Canada, particularly Port Royal, Quebec, and Cape Breton." An officer, in the British service, Sir David Kirk had, under a commission from the crown, made himself master of Quebec, in 1628, during the war between England and France. "To this fatal treaty," says a British writer," may be truly ascribed all the disputes we have had ever since with France, concerning North America; our "king and his ministers being sadly outwitted by Richlieu's "superior dexterity. The three places delivered up to France were not, it is true, thought of the same importance then, as they are since found to be; yet it was very obvious, even "then, to any considerate observer, that as those French co"lonies should increase in people and commerce, those places "would be of the utmost importance to France, and very "dangerous to England; but more especially, our parting with "Port Royal and Cape Breton is never to be excused, as the 66 possession of them by the French gave them a fair pretext "for settling on the south side of the river St. Lawrence, and "thereby claiming the rest of Nova Scotia bordering on Eng

66

land; whereas, had the French been strictly confined to their "original settlements on the north side of that river, the coun"try is so bad and the trade thereof so indifferent, that before "now they would probably have quite abandoned them."

4. At a very early period, the mother country cast the reproach which she has constantly repeated, against the colonists, of provoking the Indian wars, and acquiring the dominion of the Indian territory by fraud as well as force. Dum mer's Defence of the Charters, written at the commencement of the last century, treats of this "unworthy aspersion," as the honest author styles it, and as he proves it to be, by unanswerable suggestions. With respect to New England particularly,

*

Macpherson's Annals, vol. ii. p. 372. Chalmers holds nearly the same language.

what he asserts is susceptible of abundant evidence that "she SECT. III. sought to gain the natives by strict justice in her dealings with them, as well as by all the endearments of kindness and humanity;" that "she did not commence hostilities, nor even take up arms of defence, until she found by experience that no other means would prevail" and, "that nothing could oblige the Indians to peace and friendship, after they conceived a jealousy of the growing powers of the English." The congress of the New England league was particularly authorized, to prescribe rules for the conduct of the colonists, towards the natives; and its legislation on this head, was tempered with as much forbearance and mercy, as a due regard for self-preservation, would possibly admit. So rigid were its enactments against private violence, and so strict was the execution of them, that we have an instance of three settlers being put to death at the same time, for the murder of a single Indian.

The New England colonies, far from being exasperated, as was natural, by the desperate and harassing nature of their struggle with the aborigines, into an obdurate resentment and mortal hate against the whole race, exerted, as I have already had occasion to state, unbounded zeal and generosity, in improving the condition, and refining the character, of that portion of them whom they were able to propitiate. I believe the other provinces, to whom the British charge was extended, and who have been more particularly the object of it, in recent times, to be capable of vindication; and I am convinced, that the American writers, who have maintained the contrary doctrine, have either suffered themselves to be hoodwinked by prejudice, or have not traced our Indian relations in the detail requisite for the formation of a sound opinion. But if the point were not determinable by history, we might at once infer from the general aims and obvious interests, the weakness and the wants, of the early colonists, that they were not the aggressors in the Indian wars. Be this, for the present, as it may, it cannot be denied, that after hostilities had begun to rage; after the savage had been roused to distrust and vengeance the case of the settlers was one of the most absolute self defence of extreme necessity. In the contest which I have noticed, between Philip and New England, and in the similar struggles in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the very existence of these provinces, respectively, was at stake,. and often in suspense. Those English writers who so loudly inveigh against the North American colonies for their treatment of the Indians, may be defied to detect in their annals, an expedient for the destruction of their inveterate enemy, like

PARTI. that of the employment of the Spanish bloodhounds in Jamaica, to subdue the Maroon negroes, in the year 1730, and again towards the close of the eighteenth century. Certainly, there is no argument urged by Dallas* or Bryan Edwards, to justify the recourse, on the part of the government of that island, to such fell auxiliaries, which would not have been available for the people of New England; which might not, indeed, receive additional force from their situation.† The pride of manhood,‡ the innate sympathies of kind, and the influence of religion, with the hardy and virtuous Puritans, must have rendered it impossible for them to imitate, while they professed to abhor, the worst of the atrocities practised by the Spaniards on the aborigines of the West Indies.§

But, in order to convict the accusers, of a guilt of inhumanity, far deeper than any with which they have ventured to charge their "kinsmen of America," it is not necessary to refer to their alliance, in Jamaica, with the Spanish chasseurs, or to their military administration in Hindostan. I would challenge the closest scrutiny into our history, for a parallel to the measure which the British commanders adopted, after the reduction of Nova Scotia, in 1755, of transplanting, and dispersing through the British colonies, the French inhabitants of that province. This is a transaction in which the point at issue was, not existence, but the more easy retention of a conquest; in which the victims were, not blood-thirsty and untameable savages, or ferocious banditti, who had aimed at the extermination, and whose presence seemed incompatible with the safety, of the conquerors;-but "a mild, frugal, industrious, pious people," of whom only a few had committed any offence, and who, generally, could be taxed with no more, than having indirectly favoured the cause, and preferred the dominion, of their own nation. It has always appeared to me, that the reason of state was never more cheaply urged, or more odiously

History of the Maroons, by R. C. Dallas, vol. ii. letters ix. and x. History of the West Indies, by Bryan Edwards, Appendix to Book II. †The Edinburgh Review, (No. 4,) in condemning the proceedings of the Jamaica government, remarks, "If, by our own policy, we have filled our colonies with barbarians, let us not aggravate the original crime," &c. The American colonists did not originally fill the country which they acquired, with the barbarians whom they expelled: they did not even, for the most part, intrude upon them voluntarily; but were driven by the lash of domestic tyrants.

"Some gentlemen," says Bryan Edwards, "even thought that the co-operation of dogs with British troops, would give not only a cruel, but also a very dastardly complexion to the proceedings of government." § See Note E.

triumphant, than on this occasion; that no proceeding in rela- SECT. III. tion to the Indians, for which we have been rebuked by the British, either before or since our independence, could, by any ingenuity or eloquence, be made to wear an aspect of so much wantonness and barbarity, as the case of the French neutrals presents in the simplest form of recital. Although I may seem to fall into a wide digression, or an awkward anticipation, I will venture to exhibit it here in some detail, as matter of history worthy of being more generally and accurately known. Retribution is due to all the parties; to those who perpetrated the crime, and to the memory of the sufferers, who, with the Americans that received them, have been aspersed, in order to weaken the impression of its enormity.

The most particular account which I have found of this transaction, is given in Minot's Continuation of the History of Massachusetts.* The historian drew his narrative from the manuscript journal of the American commander of the Massachusetts' troops, to whom the merit of the conquest of Nova Scotia was due. This officer, General Winslow, of an unexceptionable and elevated character, left upon record, the expression of his disgust and horror, in submitting to act the part which was imposed upon him by the British authorities. I transcribe some of the shocking details from Minot.

"The French force in Nova Scotia being subdued, it only remained to determine the measures which ought to be taken with respect to the inhabitants, who were about seven thousand in number, and whose character and situation were so peculiar, as to distinguish them from almost every other community that has suffered under the scourge of war."

"They were the descendants of those French inhabitants of Nova Scotia, who after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, by which the province was ceded to England, were permitted to hold their lands, on condition of making a declaration of allegiance to their new sovereign, which acknowledgment of fidelity was given under an express stipulation that they and their posterity should not be required to bear arms, either against their Indian neighbours, or transatlantic countrymen. This contract was at several subsequent periods revived, and renewed to their children; and such was the notoriety of the compact, that for half a century, they bore the name, and with some few exceptions, maintained the character of neutrals."

"The character of this people was mild, frugal, industrious and pious; and a scrupulous sense of the indissoluble nature of their ancient obligation to their king, was a great cause of their misfortunes. To this we may add an unalterable attachment to their religion, a distrust of the right of the English to the territory which they inhabited, and the indemnity promised them at the surrender of fort Beau-sejour, where it was stipulated that they should be left in the same situation as they were in when the army arrived, and not be punished for what they had done afterwards."

"Such being the circumstances of the French neutrals, as they were

* Chap. x.