The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-11-03
Niagara, Key Position To West, Is Scene of
Strife for Supremacy Between Indians
English and French

What Champlain had begun in MAX
ing implacable enemies for the French
Sir William johnson, after his rather
futile campaign which changed Lake
Sacrament to Lake George, completed
in making durable allies for the Eng
lish.
Johnson knew the Indians as well
as any Frenchman could know them.
He did not have moralistic scruples.
If the Indians liked him for giving or
selling them rum or using it in bar
ter, he satisfied them. The first min
lister in his domain was dismayed by
this and started the Anti-Saloon lea
que some thirty or forty years be-
fore the Revolution. The provincial
Assembly at Albany passed law
prohibiting traffic in spirits with the
Indians.
When johnson heard of the legis-
lation and inquired into it's cause and
source, he found that the minister had
given the Assembly a petition with
the signs and symbols of the Iroquois
sachems in signature to it.
When he asked them if they wan
ted their rum cut off they said they
couldn't think of a thing they desired
less. They had been offered a docu-
ment of worthy purpose and they had
signed it. That was their story to
Johnson, who became then the first
bootlegger.
His success was greatest with the
Mohawks, who were Immediately his
neighbors. Unfortunately for the COL
onies, his influence carried over into
the Revolution after his death and
was used by his successors in the To-
ry cause against the patriots. What
they had gained in the wars with the
French they paid for in their own war
for independence. In balancing ac-
counts the gain would outweigh the
loss, bloody as that was in such de-
scents as that of the Iroquois Brant
upon the Wyoming Valley in Penn
sylvania.
Although the French could never
appease the clans in the East, they
had some fluctuating, unstable and
uncertain successes with the Senacas
about Niagara. La Sales first at
tempts at treaty with them were
largely failures. Father Hennepin
was one of the negotiators. He was
told, in formal ceremony, that the
Senecas preferred to trade with the
Dutch and the English, getting bet
ter bargains from them and goods
more to their liking.
The tribe at the time was about to
carry war to the Hurons north of
Georgian Bay and the men not re-
quired for that were needed in hunt
ing. The French carpenters were put
to work hurriedly on the Chiffon
while the Senecas were thus occupied.
The location of the yard where the
ship was built is indicated now, as
we'll as research can satisfy itself, by
a tablet in the village of La Sale a.
bove the falls.
The workers were in constant ap-
prehension of Indian attack, but they
had a sixty-ton ship built by the time
the war and hunting parties returned
and the Senecas, with amazement, saw
a monster canoe sailing up the river
for Lake Erie with salutes from its
guns, bound for the great interior of
the country. The navigation of the
river was difficult, but the ship made
the lake. 1t got to Green Bay and
was loaded with furs, but was lost in
storm.
La Sale had tried and was trying
at his death in 1857 to connect the
Gulf of Mexico with the Gulf of St..
Lawrence by the Niagara portage, a
vision which radiates out of Chicago
today. The valleys and plains back of
the mountains would be French. The
lakes and rivers, the Mississippi and
Ohio, and all the contributing water
ways would be French.
The new Governor of New France,
De Nonville, decided to secure Mag
ara by teaching the Senecas a lasting
lesson. Champlain had followed up
his initial mistake with punitive ex-
petition. Frontenac had really made
an impression on the Iroquois with
his attacks. De Nonville was thot
to be as vigorous as Champlain and
as terrible as Frontenac.
He assembled a force, including In
dams from Michilimackinac, and mar
ched to put the Senecas permanently
in their place. He defeated a party
of warriors and destroyed four vii
lagos with great stores of corn. He
then returned and began the building
of fort at Niagara.
Considerable as the devastation of
Seneca territory had been, it was on
ly a pin prick for the Iroquois con-
federation. The warrior nation arose
in retaliation and the French line of
settlements from what is now King
ston (Fort Frontenac) to Tadousac
quivered under the raids.