The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-11-03
BY CLIFFORD RAYMOND

Grlffon above Niagara Falls. In 1878
he built ten-ton brigantine at Fort
Frontenac kingston, Ontario,) on the
north shore of Lake Ontario, where
the basin of the inland seas releases
its waters ito the Atlantic through the
st. Lawrence.
That fort had been the outpost of
Frontenac, the vigorous governor of
an expanding new France. The land
about it had been given later to La
Sale as his wilderness seigniory and
he had royal authority for the explor-
alton of the lakes and the Mississ-
ippi, for the development of trade and
the expansion of empire. He was
preeminently fitted for it.
The Niagara peninsula is an arm
thrown as bar across the great wa
terway of a land which is a world in
itself. For the French it was an In
dian arm and the Indians, the Iro-
quois, were the most competent in all
the land France hoped to open up
The Iroquois' long house extended
from the Hudson to Niagara.
The English were cupboarded and
shelved along the Atlantic, penned in
by mountains and with little access
to interior waterways. The French
above them had waterways, which in
spite of their barriers of rapids and
falls, were superb in their accommo-
dation to the needs of explorer, SOL
der, settler, trader and city builder.
Nature gave all the trumps to the
French and a decadent political sys-
tenn misplayed them.
The first misplay was in a fashion
unavoidable. The man who made it
was Champlain, one of the great out
standing men of French Canada. He
picked the loser in Indian wars as old
as the dynastic wars of Europe. He
knew that whoever won the continent
would begin with Indian aid, and quite
naturally he sought to bind to him
the tribes along the St. Lawrence
not knowing that they hadn't a chance
against the Iroquois confederation to
the South.
When he shot two Iroquois chiefs
with his arquebus near Ticonderoga
in the Lake Champlain region of New
York he closed the Niagara portage
for seventy years and more. In fact,
the French never had full and unin-
temupted use OF it. By the time they
could make their foothold good again
st the Indians the English were chal-
longing their position on the frontier.
Permanent French works were put
under construction in 1725 and Will
liam Johnson, the great English In
dian agent of the Hudson region, cap
tured them in 1859. The Iroquois ma
ton near Niagara was the Senaca,
the extreme west of the confedera-
ton, and the most remote from the
scene of the first French encounter
with the American red Romans. The
Chiefs Champlain shot were probably
Mohawks. The Senacas had much ex-
perience with the French later.
So dreaded was the Iroquois bar
rier that the French, in going west,
for years took the Ottawa river and
Lake Nipissing route rather than the
upper st. Lawrnce. They knew Lake
Superior fifty years before they did
Lake Erie. They fought the Iroquois,
there were punitive expeditions and
retaliations, attempts at peace, cajol-
cry and persuasions; promises of
profit and acts of treachery.
When the French mastered the Nj
agara peninsula it was too late. The
Iroquois had held them back until the
English had acquired irresistible mo-
mentum, purpose, power and numbers
to break through the natural barriers
to defeat their enemies and to take
the country.
When La Sale had the Griffon built
above the fall he was making we'll
directed attempt at the closed terri
tory and doing so with the magma
ton, courage and vigor which later
filled the Illinois country and the
Mississippi Valley with the record of
his exploits, the greatest of the Fren-
oh in America, but he was murdered
on Texas plain and thereafter Nj
agara had no guiding genius to open
it up and keep it open for new France.
For the most part the English did
not start ON even terms with the Fren-
CHI when the object was the manage
ment of the Indians. And this was
all the more a tribute to the French
temperament, because the English,
with control of the sea, could bring
their goods over more easily and Sc
eurely. They could make finer pres
ents and give more attractive ex-
change for furs.
England was the better travelling
salesman in the forests and at times
the advantage counted, but in English
America the idea that a good Indian
was a dead Indian had an early
growth.
In the Puritan formula the abort
CINE was peculiar work of the devil,
isolated ON this continent to be be-