Warriors and Leadership
. . . Among Indian tribes of the Great Lakes, warfare and hunting were exclusively male activities. A man's position and stature within an Indian society often rested on his abilities and accomplishments as a hunter and warrior. A successful warrior was assured of respect and prestige in his tribe, and for the rest of his life he could relate his heroic feats at certain public ceremonies. In most Great Lakes tribes, there were civil chiefs who directed internal tribal affairs while war chiefs directed men during battles with other nations. . . .
War chiefs did not always lead war parties. Individual warriors could, and often did, lead small war parties, but needed the war chief's permission to do so. War chiefs could prevent warriors from going on the warpath if it was not in their communities' best interests.
. . . Among many tribes, war power was vested in the owners of war bundles, which were collections of charms, medicines, and other equipment used to ensure successful engagements and the safe return of the warriors.
Raiding Parties
War itself consisted of sorties made by relatively small raiding parties operating on a hit-and-run basis, and raids were organized to avenge a slain member of the tribe or to gain personal war honors. There was little loss of life.
An individual organized his war party by sending a messenger with a pipe to nearby villages. The messenger explained the purpose of the mission to the assembled warriors and those who wished to join the party took the offered pipe and smoked it. At an appointed time, the volunteers met at the leader's lodge for a feast, where they were given a fuller explanation of the mission and a chance to offer their final pledge.
The Menominee conducted pre-raid ceremonies in which the party assembled at a certain spot in the forest. There, they erected a lodge of boughs, displayed the open war bundle, made sacrificial offerings, performed the war dance, and related their former deeds of valor. The party then moved out.
As they neared the enemy camp, which had been located by advance scouts, they reopened the war bundle and, after singing the special songs associated with the bundle, distributed its contents to the warriors. One man might receive a snakeskin to give him stealth, another a root to chew on to make him invulnerable. These charms were important magical aspects of the war bundle.
Just before dawn the attack began. The warriors rushed the enemy camp with clubs and bows and arrows, unprotected by such devices as shields or armor. Those who killed a foe were accorded the highest honor: an eagle feather to be worn in the hair. The Menominee awarded a wampum belt to the man who killed the first enemy. The Ho-Chunk granted war honors for counting "coup," or striking a fallen enemy, a custom popular among the Indians of the Plains.
The Iroquois practice of taking captives for adoption or torture was not common among the Algonkian-speaking tribes.
Scalping
Scalping was common. A circular portion of the scalp was cut from the crown of the enemy's head. On the homeward journey it was stretched on a hoop and, back at the village, all the scalps were carried on sticks or poles in a Scalp Dance. After this, the warriors gave them to a female relative. Occasionally they were added to the war bundle. The Ojibwe and Ho-Chunk had the custom of planting the scalp poles at the grave of a slain warrior where they were left to disintegrate.
"Covering the Dead"
Those who suffered losses in warfare felt obliged to seek revenge. Because escalating revenge on both sides had the potential to spin out of control, there were also accepted ways to break the cycle. The most common was called "covering the dead." If a family lost a member in war or a raid, the person who committed the killing could provide goods -- food, clothing, or weapons -- to the bereaved family. If the family accepted the gifts, the killing was forgotten. If the family did not, this signaled their desire to settle the affair through revenge. . . .
Post-Contact Changes in Warfare
After the arrival of Europeans, war and its purposes changed. Indians war tactics were very different than those of Europeans, who generally disdained Indian combat methods. Nevertheless, in battles for control of North America, the French, British, and Spanish all relied on Indians for military support despite their general aversion to Indian tactics.
. . . .
Indians also fought national wars when they allied themselves with European powers. France and Great Britain fought four colonial wars between 1689 and 1763 for control over North America. In the last conflict, the French and Indian or Seven Years' War from 1754 to 1763, both French and British managed to convince many tribes to come to their aid. The tribes provided significant manpower to the war efforts of the two competing powers, and did so in large part because colonial wars for empire allowed them to fight their Indian enemies. The Algonkian-speaking tribes of the Great Lakes had a long-simmering dispute with the Iroquois tribes and naturally gravitated toward the French, who not only fought the British but also Britain's allies among the League of the Iroquois.
The manner in which Great Lakes Indians fought provides the greatest contrast between Indian and European warfare. Once an Indian war party of any size began an attack, each warrior generally fought on his own. Unlike Europeans, who kept soldiers in tight ranks under the supervision of sergeants and officers, Indian men fought as individuals. Like Europeans, Indian communities had definite goals for their war parties, but once combat started, Indian men sought to gain recognition through personal bravery. This usually involved killing an enemy warrior, and in this fashion, Indian men gained reputations as great warriors. In this way, war was a much more personal activity for Great Lakes Indians than for Europeans, who called Indian tactics a "skulking way of war." In reality, it was simply a different set of tactics.
European Attitudes Towards Indian Warfare
When it appeared that the tide of battle was turning against them, Indian war parties often retreated. Because all men of fighting age went to war, the loss of even a small number of warriors could have serious effects on community welfare. Rather than lose many men who had families to provide for, war parties almost always retreated when faced with the potential for large numbers of casualties. This practice irritated many European commanders who complained that their Indian allies always seemed to desert them at a battle's most crucial moments.
Europeans also found certain Indian war practices inscrutable or distasteful. Among some tribes, particularly the Iroquois, Indian warriors captured in battle were often tortured to death by being tied to a post, scalped, and then burned. It was considered cowardly if he cried out in pain, and there are many European accounts of captured warriors undergoing grisly deaths silently and seemingly without fear. . . . .
Often, war parties would not kill captives but instead took them back to their villages. Since many men, women, and children were often killed in these intertribal battles, war captives could be adopted into the tribe to take the place of a deceased relative. They would often be given the name of the deceased, would assume that person's family role (even to the point of marrying his or her spouse), and would learn the tribal language and customs. White captives could also be adopted into the tribe since Indians did not discriminate on the basis of race. Captive Whites were often confounded because some would be adopted, while others would be tortured to death. Whites were simply unacquainted with Indian customs and did not realize that such treatment depended largely on the particular contexts and circumstances of Indian families and tribes. . . . .
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From Army Mil. History
The Indian method of warfare in the forest, perforce adopted by the colonists also, was the most significant influence in developing and preserving the spirit of individualism and self-reliance in the military sphere. Before the European came to America, the Indian had relied on bow and spear or tomahawk and knife; but he soon learned the value of muskets and was not long in obtaining them in trade for his valuable furs. With bow or musket, his method of fighting was the same. The Indian tribes with whom the colonists first came in contact had no organized system of war; warriors generally formed voluntary bands under war chiefs and took off on the warpath. In battle each Indian fought a separate opponent without regard for his fellows. Indians avoided pitched battle whenever possible, instead seeking victory by surprise and careful use of cover and concealment. Only when they had the advantage did they close in for hand-to-hand combat. In such combat the Indian brave lacked neither skill nor courage. Since he cared little about the rules of European warfare, he sometimes slaughtered men, women, and children indiscriminately or adopted prisoners permanently into his tribe. The favorite Indian tactic was a surprise raid on an isolated settlement. When the settlers organized a pursuit, the Indians lay in wait and ambushed them.The European colonist soon adapted his tactics to the Indian’s, quickly learning the value of surprise and stealth. To avoid ambush, he sent out scouts as the Indians did, frequently employing friendly Indians in the role. Instead of fighting in the closed formations of Europe, he too adopted the open formation and fought from behind trees, rocks, and fences. (If the Indians were accused of scalping dead and wounded, it should be noted that colonial soldiers occasionally did the same.) In such fighting more depended on individual initiative and courage than on strict discipline and control. Many of these tactics and techniques would serve the colonists well in their later war with Britain. The settlers tried to provide some permanent protection for their frontiers by erecting forts along the westernmost line of settlement in each colony, moving them forward as the line of settlement moved. These forts were not the elaborate earth and masonry structures of Europe but simple rectangular enclosures, their walls constructed of upright sharpened logs. Usually there were wooden blockhouses at each corner. These rude frontier forts served as points to which settlers and their families could retreat for protection in time of Indian trouble. Having no artillery, the Indians found the forts hard to take and could rely only on burning arrows to set them afire, on surprise attack, or on direct frontal assault. From the last alternative they almost invariably shrank. Their war chiefs possessed no power to order any group of braves to undertake an assault in which they would suffer heavy casualties for the sake of gaining an objective. For fighting Indians, colonial governments were in no position to form professional armies, even had the nature of Indian warfare lent itself to such a practice. Instead they fell back on the ancient British tradition of the militia. This tradition took on new vitality in America at the same time it was declining in England, where, after Oliver Cromwell’s time, most of the country’s battles were fought on the sea and in foreign lands. The British government came to rely on its regular army and navy just as other European states did, despite a deep political tradition of opposition to a standing army. Each of the thirteen colonies (except for Pennsylvania, where Quaker influence was dominant) enacted laws providing for a compulsory militia organization generally based on the principle of the Saxon fyrd that required every able-bodied free male from sixteen to sixty to render military service. Each member of the militia was obligated to appear for training at his county or town seat a certain number of days each year, to provide himself with weapons, and to hold himself in readiness for call in case of Indian attack or other emergency. Each colony maintained a separate militia establishment, and each concentrated on the problems of protecting or extending its own frontiers. Cooperation among the militias of the various colonies was confined to specific expeditions in which two or more colonies had an interest. The militia was by and large a local institution, administered in county and town or township under the general militia laws of each colony. It was closely integrated with the social and economic structure of colonial society. Though the royal governors or colonial assemblies appointed the general officers and the colonels who commanded militia districts, the companies in each locality usually elected their own officers. This practice seemingly put a premium on popularity rather than wealth or ability, but rank in the militia generally corresponded with social station in the community. Each militiaman was expected to provide his own weapon—usually a smoothbore musket—and ammunition, clothing, and food for a short expedition, just as the British knight had been required to provide his own horse, armor, and suitable weapons for feudal warfare. Local authorities maintained reserve supplies of muskets to arm those too poor to buy them and collected stores of ammunition and sometimes small cannon that could be dragged along through the wilderness. For very long campaigns, the colonial government had to take charge, the assembly appropriating the money for supplies and designating the supply officers or contractors to handle purchasing and distribution. Although the militia was organized into units by county or township, it hardly ever fought that way. Instead the local unit served as a training and mobilization base from which individuals could be recruited for active operations. When a particular area of a colony was
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One of the more unpleasant manifestations of the militia system in America occurred in those colonies, most but by no means all in the south, with a large slave population. Fears of slave uprising and the rapidly growing imbalance between black and white populations in some areas of the colonies led to the establishment of militia units focused on detecting and defeating the smallest sign of trouble among the African slave population. In South Carolina in 1739, almost one hundred slaves organized themselves, seized weapons, and killed several white colonists before being suppressed by hastily raised militia soldiers. The resulting fear and legislative attempts to deal with the issue ensured that a primary focus of an organized militia in South Carolina, and later the rest of the southern colonies, was on internal security against the slaves.
On the frontier, where Indian raids were a constant threat, training days were frequent and militia had to be ready for instant action. Except on the frontier, where proficiency in this sort of warfare was a matter of survival, it is doubtful that colonial militia in general were really adept in forest fighting. Training days were devoted not to the techniques of fighting Indians but to learning the drill and motions required on a European battlefield. When raids were to be conducted against the Indians, often popularly elected officers selected individual volunteers from the militia to serve for the duration of the expedition. Thus the militia existed mostly as an internal defense force and a pool of trained manpower for ad hoc colonial expeditions against the Indians or other enemies, such as the nearby French Canadians.
The Colonies in the World Conflict, 1689–1783
While England was colonizing the eastern seaboard from Maine to Georgia, France was extending its control over Canada and Louisiana and asserting its claim to the Great Lakes region and the Mississippi Valley in the rear of the British colonies. (Map 1) Spain held Florida, an outpost of its vast colonial domains in Mexico, Central and South America, and the larger islands of the West Indies. England and France were invariably on opposite sides in the four great dynastic coalition wars fought in Europe between 1689 and 1763. Spain was allied with France in the last three of these conflicts.
Each of these European wars had its counterpart in struggles between British and French and Spanish colonists in America, intermingled with a quickening of Indian warfare all along the frontiers as the contestants tried to use the Indian tribes to their advantage. Americans and Europeans called these wars by different names. The War of the League of Augsburg (1689–1697) was known in America as King William’s War, the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1713) as Queen Anne’s War, the War of Austrian Succession (1744–1748) as King George’s War, and the final and decisive conflict, the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) as the French and Indian War. All these wars involved control of the North American continent; in the last of them it became the principal point at issue in the eyes of the British government.
between New York and Quebec, either on the lake and river chain that connects the Hudson with the St. Lawrence in the interior or along the seaways leading from the Atlantic up the St. Lawrence. In the south, the arena of conflict lay in the area between South Carolina and Florida and Louisiana. In 1732 the British government established the colony of Georgia primarily as a military outpost in this region and as a dumping ground for their convicts.In the struggle for control of North America, the contest between England and France was vital, the conflict with Spain, a declining power, important but secondary. This latter conflict reached its height in the "War of Jenkins’ Ear" (1739–1742), a prelude to the War of Austrian Succession, which pitted the British and their American colonists against the Spanish. In the colonies the war involved a seesaw struggle between the Spanish in Florida and the West Indies and the English colonists in South Carolina and Georgia.
Its most notable episode, however, was a British expedition mounted in Jamaica against Cartagena, the main port of the Spanish colony in Colombia. The mainland colonies furnished a regiment to participate in the assault as British regulars under British command. The expedition ended in disaster, resulting from climate, disease, and the bungling of British commanders. Only about 600 of over 3,000 Americans who participated ever returned to their homes. The net result of the war itself was indecisive, and it did little to inspire the average American soldier with admiration for British military leadership.
The first three wars with the French were also indecisive. The nature of the fighting was much the same as that in the Indian Wars. Although the French maintained garrisons of regulars in Canada, they were never sufficient to bear the brunt of the fighting. The French Canadians also had their militia, a more centralized and all-embracing system than in the English colonies; but the population of the French colonies was sparse, scarcely a twentieth of that of the British colonies in 1754. The French relied heavily on Indian allies whom they equipped with firearms. They were far more successful than the British in influencing the Indians. Their sparse population posed little threat to Indian lands; and the French-controlled fur trade depended on Indian workers, while the British colonies saw Indians as an obstacle to settlement. The French could usually count on the support of the Indian tribes in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions, though the British colonists did maintain greater influence with the powerful Iroquois Confederacy in New York. The French constructed forts at strategic points, like Niagara and Detroit, and garrisoned them with small numbers of regulars, a few of whom they usually sent along with militia and Indian raiding parties to supervise operations. Using guerrilla methods, the French gained many local successes and indeed kept the frontiers of the English colonies in a continual state of alarm, but they could achieve no decisive results because of the essential weakness of their position.
The British and their colonists usually took the offensive and sought to strike by land and sea at the citadels of French power in Canada. The British Navy’s control of the sea made possible the mounting of sea expeditions against Canada and at the same time made it difficult for the French to reinforce their small regular garrisons. In 1710 a combined British and colonial expedition captured the French fort at Port Royal on Nova Scotia, and by the treaty of peace in 1713 Nova Scotia became an English possession. In 1745 an all-colonial expedition sponsored by Massachusetts captured Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island in what was perhaps the greatest of colonial military exploits, only to have the stronghold bargained away in 1748 for Madras, a post the French had captured from the British in India.
The British and their colonists usually took the offensive and sought to strike by land and sea at the citadels of French power in Canada. The British Navy’s control of the sea made possible the mounting of sea expeditions against Canada and at the same time made it difficult for the French to reinforce their small regular garrisons. In 1710 a combined British and colonial expedition captured the French fort at Port Royal on Nova Scotia, and by the treaty of peace in 1713 Nova Scotia became an English possession. In 1745 an all-colonial expedition sponsored by Massachusetts captured Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island in what was perhaps the greatest of colonial military exploits, only to have the stronghold bargained away in 1748 for Madras, a post the French had captured from the British in India.
While militia units played an important part in the colonial wars, colonial governments resorted to a different device to recruit forces for expeditions outside their boundaries such as that against Louisbourg. This was the volunteer force, another institution that was to play an important part in all American wars through the end of the nineteenth century. Unlike the militia units, volunteer forces were built from the top down. One of the colonial governors or assemblies chose the commanding officer, who in turn enlisted his men. The choice of a commander was made with due regard for his popularity in the colony, since this was directly related to his ability to persuade officers and men to serve under him.
While the militia was the main base for recruitment and the officers were almost invariably men whose previous experience was in the militia, indentured servants and drifters without military obligation were also enlisted. The enlistment period was only for the duration of a campaign, at best a year or so, not for long periods as in European armies. Colonial assemblies had to vote money for pay and supplies, and assemblies were usually parsimonious as well as unwilling to see volunteer forces assume any of the status of a standing army. With short enlistments, inexperienced officers, and poor discipline by European standards, even the best of these colonial volunteer units were, like the militia, often held in contempt by British officers.
The only positive British gain up to 1748 was Nova Scotia. The indecisive character of the first three colonial wars was evidence of the inability of the English colonies to unite and muster the necessary military forces for common action, of the inherent difficulty of mounting offensives in unsettled areas, and of a British preoccupation with conflicts in Europe and other areas. Until 1754 the British government contented itself with maintaining control of the seas and furnishing regulars for sea expeditions against French and Spanish strongholds. Until 1755 no British regulars took part in the war in the interior, though small "independent companies" of indifferent worth were stationed continuously in New York and occasionally in other colonies. No colony, meanwhile, was usually willing to make any significant contribution to the common cause unless it appeared to be in its own interest. Efforts to form some kind of union, the most notable of which was a plan that Benjamin Franklin promoted in a colonial congress held at Albany in 1754, all came to naught.
Between 1748 and 1754 the French expanded their system of forts around the Great Lakes and moved down into the Ohio Valley, establishing Fort Duquesne at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in 1753 and staking a claim to the entire region. In so doing, they precipitated the final and decisive conflict that began in America two years before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in Europe. In 1754 Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia sent young George Washington at the head of a force of Virginia militia to compel the French to withdraw from Fort Duquesne. Washington was driven back and forced to surrender, certainly an inauspicious beginning to his military career. The British government then sent over two understrength regiments of regulars under Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock, a soldier of forty-five years’ experience on continental battlefields, to accomplish the task in which the militia had failed. Accustomed to the parade-ground tactics and the open terrain of Europe, Braddock placed all his faith in disciplined regulars and close-order formations. He filled his regiments with American recruits and early in June 1755 set out on the long march through the wilderness to Fort Duquesne with a total force of about 2,200, including a body of Virginia and North Carolina militiamen. (Map 2) Washington accompanied the expedition but had no command role.
Braddock’s force proceeded westward through the wilderness in traditional column formation with 300 ax men in front to clear the road and a train of wagons in the rear. The heavy train so slowed his progress that about halfway he decided to let it follow as best it could and went ahead with about 1,300 selected men, a few cannon, wagons, and packhorses. As he approached Fort Duquesne, he crossed the Monongahela twice to avoid a dangerous and narrow passage along the east side where ambush might be expected. He sent Lt. Col. Thomas Gage (later to gain a measure of infamy as the general in charge of the raids on Lexington and Concord in 1775) with an advance guard to secure the site of the second crossing, deemed a likely spot for an ambush. Gage found no enemy, and the entire force crossed the Monongahela the second time on the morning of July 9, 1755, then confidently took up the march toward Fort Duquesne, only seven miles away.
About three-quarters of a mile past the Monongahela crossing, Gage’s advance guard suddenly came under fire from a body of French and Indians concealed in the woods. Actually, it was a very inferior force of 70 French regulars, 150 Canadian militiamen (many mere boys), and 650 Indians who had just arrived on the scene after a hasty march from Fort Duquesne. Some authorities think Gage might have changed the whole course of the battle had he pushed forward and forced the enemy onto the open ground in their rear. Instead he fell back on the main body of Braddock’s troops, causing considerable confusion. This confusion was compounded when the French and Indians slipped into the forests on the flanks of the British troops, pouring their fire into a surprised and terrified mass of men who wasted their return volleys on the air. "Scarce an officer or soldier," wrote one of the participants, "can say they ever saw at one time six of the Enemy and the greatest part never saw a single man."
None of the training or experience of the regulars had equipped them to cope with this sort of attack, and Braddock could only exhort them to rally in conventional formation. Two-thirds of his officers fell dead or wounded. The militia, following their natural instincts, scattered and took positions behind trees; but there is no evidence they delivered any effective fire, since French and Indian losses for the day totaled only twenty-three killed and sixteen wounded. The few British cannon appear to have been more telling. Braddock, mortally wounded himself, finally attempted to withdraw his force in some semblance of order; but the retreat soon became a disordered flight. The panic-stricken soldiers did not stop even when they reached the baggage wagons many miles to their rear.
Despite the completeness of the victory, the French and Indians made no attempt to pursue. The few French regulars had little control over the Indians, who preferred to loot the battlefield and scalp the wounded. The next day the Indians melted back into the forest, and the French commandant at Duquesne noted in his official report, "If the enemy should return with the 1,000 fresh troops that he has in reserve in the rear, at what distance we do not know, we should perhaps be badly embarrassed." The conduct of the battle was not so reprehensible as the precipitate retreat of the entire force to the safety of the settled frontiers when no enemy was pursuing it.
Although Braddock had been aware of the possibilities of ambush and had taken what he thought were necessary precautions, in he broader sense he violated the principles of security and maneuver: When the ambush came he had little idea how to cope with Indian tactics in the forest. As he lay dying on the wagon that transported him from the battlefield, the seemingly inflexible old British general is alleged to have murmured, "Another time we shall know better how to deal with them."
Braddock could not profit from his appreciation of the lesson, but the British Army did. "Over the bones of Braddock," writes Sir John Fortescue, the eminent historian of the British Army, "the British advanced again to the conquest of Canada."
After a series of early reverses of which Braddock’s disastrous defeat was only one, the British government under the inspired leadership of Prime Minister William Pitt was able to achieve a combination of British and colonial arms that succeeded in overcoming the last French resistance in Canada and in finally removing the French threat from North America. In this combination, British regular troops, the British Navy, British direction, and British financial support were the keys to victory; the colonial effort, though considerable, continued to suffer from lack of unity.
As an immediate reaction to Braddock’s defeat, the British Government sought to recruit regulars in America to fight the war, following the precedent set in the Cartagena expedition. Several American regiments were raised, the most famous among them Col. Henry Bouquet’s Royal Americans. On the whole, however, the effort was a failure, for most Americans preferred short service in the militia or provincial volunteer forces to the long-term service and rigid discipline of the British Army. After 1757 the British government under Pitt, now convinced that America was the area in which the war would be won or lost, dispatched increasing numbers of regulars from England—a total of 20,000 during the war. The British regulars were used in conjunction with short-term militia and longer-term volunteer forces raised in the service of the various individual colonies. The most effective device to assure the sort of colonial cooperation the British desired was to shoulder the principal financial burden, reimbursing individual colonies for most of their expenses and providing the pay and supply of many of the colonial volunteer units to ensure their continued service. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York furnished about seven-tenths of the total colonial force employed.
Braddock’s defeat was not repeated. In no other case during the French and Indian War was an inferior guerrilla force able to overcome any substantial body of regulars. The lessons of the debacle on the Monongahela, as the British properly understood, were not that regular forces or European methods were useless in America or that undisciplined American militia were superior to regular troops. They were rather that tactics and formations had to be adapted to terrain and the nature of the enemy and that regulars, when employed in the forest, would have to learn to travel faster and lighter and to take advantage of cover, concealment, and surprise as their enemies did. Or the British could employ colonial troops and Indian allies versed in this sort of warfare as auxiliaries, something the French had long since learned to do.
The British adopted both methods in the ensuing years of the French and Indian War. Light infantry, trained as scouts and skirmishers, became a permanent part of the British Army organization. When engaged in operations in the forest, these troops were clad in green or brown clothes instead of the traditional red coat of the British soldier, with their heads shaved and their skins sometimes painted like the Indians’. Special companies, such as Maj. Robert Rogers’ Rangers, were recruited among skilled woodsmen in the colonies and placed in the regular British establishment.
The ultimate lesson of the colonial wars, then, was that European and American tactics each had a place; either could be decisive where conditions were best suited to its use. The colonial wars also proved that only troops possessing the organization and discipline of regulars, whatever their tactics, could actually move on, seize, and hold objectives and thus achieve decisive results.
The Seven Years’ War was a critical event that swung the balance of power in North America and one that still has lessons to be learned today. It started as the result of a dispute over the territorial expansion of British colonies into the Ohio River valley and the efforts of the French colonists of New France to stop them.
Other important lessons lay in the realm of logistics, where American conditions presented difficulties to which European officers were unaccustomed. The impediments to supply and transport in a vast, undeveloped, and sparsely populated country limited both the size and variety of forces employed. The settled portions of the colonies produced enough food, but few manufactured goods. Muskets, cannon, powder,ball, tents, camp kettles, salt, and a variety of other articles necessary for even the simple military operations of the period almost all had to come from Europe. Roads, even in the settled areas, were poor and inadequate; forces penetrating into the interior had to cut their roads as they went, as Braddock did. Movement by water, when possible, was by far more efficient. These logistical problems go far to explain why the fate of America was settled in battles involving hardly one-tenth the size of forces engaged in Europe in the Seven Years’ War and why cavalry was almost never employed and artillery to no great extent except in fixed fortifications and in expeditions by sea when cannon could be transported on board ship. The limited mobility of large regular forces, whatever the superiority of their organization and tactics, put a premium both on small bodies of trained troops familiar with the terrain and on local forces, not so well trained, already in an area of operations. Commanders operating in America would ignore these logistical limitations at their peril.
By the end of the French and Indian War, a new weapon had appeared on the frontier in Pennsylvania and to the south, one far better suited to guerrilla warfare than was the musket. This weapon would later become renowned as the Kentucky rifle. The effects of rifling a gun barrel, that is, of making spiral grooves that imparted a spinning effect to the bullet, giving it greater range and accuracy, had been known for some centuries in Germany and Switzerland. But the early rifles made there were too heavy and slow to load to be of military use. The Germans who settled in Pennsylvania developed, around 1750, a much lighter model, far easier and faster to load. They used a bullet smaller than the bore and a greased patch to keep the fit tight. This early American rifle could, in proper hands, hit a target the size of a man’s head at 200 yards.
Despite its superior range and accuracy, the rifle was to undergo almost a hundred years of development before it would supplant the musket as the standard infantry weapon. At first, each individual piece was handmade and each required a custom-made bullet mold. The standard bayonet would fit none of them. The rifle was effective only in the hands of an expert trained in its use. The rate of fire was only about one-third that of the musket; and therefore, without bayonet, the rifle could hardly be used by troops in the line. For the guerrilla tactics of the frontier, however, where men did not fight in line but from behind trees, bushes, and rocks, it was clearly a superior weapon. Like the tactics of the American forest, it would have its place in any future war fought in America.
In the Indian Wars and the colonial wars with France, Americans gained considerable military experience, albeit much of it in guerrilla warfare that did not require the same degree of organized effort and professional competence as the European style. The British had, after all, directed the major effort against the French in Canada. Many colonials later to become famous in the Revolution had served their military apprenticeship as officers of middle rank in the French and Indian War: George Washington, Israel Putnam, Philip Schuyler, and John Stark, for instance, in provincial forces and Charles Lee, Horatio Gates, and Richard Montgomery in the British Army.
Certain traditions had been established that were to influence American military policy and practice right down to the two great world wars of the twentieth century. One of these was primary reliance on the militia for defense and on volunteer forces for special emergencies and expeditions. Another was that relatively permanent volunteer units should be formed within the militia. The fear of a standing army of professionals, an English heritage, had become an even stronger article of faith in America. The colonial experience also established a strong tradition of separatism among the colonies themselves, for each had for many years run its own military establishment. Within each colony, too, the civilian authority represented in the popular assembly had always kept a strict rein on the military, another tradition that was to have marked effect on American military development.
Some characteristics of the American soldier that were to be fairly constant throughout all future wars had also made their appearance. The American soldier was inclined to be highly individualistic and to resent discipline and the inevitable restrictions of military life; he sought to know why he should do things before he would put his heart into doing them. If in the end he accepted discipline and order as a stern necessity, he did so with the idea of winning victory as quickly as possible so he could return to his normal civilian pursuits.
These traditions and characteristics were the product of a society developing along democratic lines. The military strengths and weaknesses they engendered were to be amply demonstrated when the American soldier took up arms against his erstwhile comrade, the British regular, in the American Revolution.-------------------------------
Bancroft, Adam, Savages in a Civilized War: Native Americans as French Allies in the Seven Years War, 1754-1763 (Masters Thesis), U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (2013)
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The more prescient colonial military and political leaders understood that the Indians were a critical element in the successful prosecution of war in the colonies. Their participation, or even neutrality, could represent the difference between victory and defeat. —
Lieutenant-Colonel Bernd Horn, Terror on the Frontier
The Seven Years’ War (1754-1763) was a watershed moment in the history of not
only France and England, but also of the North American continent as a whole. It would
not only affect which European power dominated the continent as the premier colonial
world power, but it also shaped the history of the many Indian tribes that inhabited the
spaces claimed and managed by the European powers. By the end of the war and the
defeat of the French in 1763, Britain had established itself as the sole colonial power in
North America and had set the stage for American history as we know it today.2
However, the war had another name. In modern American and British history, the
war would come to be known as, The French and Indian War. This name was not merely
a moniker applied because those were the parties that fought the war against the British,
but so named because of the deep seated and long standing alliance between the French and the Native Americans of the continent. This alliance permeated every aspect of
French life, from trade, to missionaries, and most especially to warfare.
This alliance was critical to the French during wartime because it enabled them to
counter the amazing advantage the British had in resources and manpower, which in 1754
stood a staggering 1.5 million people in British territory to a meager fifty five thousand in
New France, by practicing a form of warfare known as la petite guerre. This form of war,
adapted from the Indian style of frontier warfare, focused on ambushes, raids, and other
irregular tactics. The French used this non-European style of warfare to keep the British
contained in their colonies by utilizing disruptive attacks on points of British weakness,
combined with an unrelenting series of raids on the British frontier to terrorize the
colonists.
In 1756 this form of war would be integrated into the French operational plans,
using native North American Indian warriors combined with the French regular army to
shape an efficient form of combined irregular and regular warfare that would see the
Indians, and their non-European fighting tactics, used where they could be the most
successful. This strategy would keep the British off balance through a series of French
tactical victories until 1758, when a series of cultural misunderstandings would ultimately
force the Indians to cease their mass support of the French and move towards neutrality
until the end of the war.
This alliance was so critical to the French that a wide scale system of diplomacy
and gifts was established to maintain positive relations with the Indians. These relations served to secure the French frontier against the punishing raids of the Indians, gain and
maintain profitable trade in New France and provide warriors in time of war. An added
benefit of this relationship was that it also prevented the British from gaining similar
benefits from the Indians as well. This system led to the establishment of numerous forts
and trading outposts along the British and French borderlands that would become the
focus of the military actions of the war. The French devoted a staggering amount of
resources to this trade with the Indians over the 150 years before the Seven Years’ War
(1609-1754).
Though the war would ultimately be a defeat for the French and they would be
pushed out of North America, they held the far larger British military force for the first
three years of the war due to their solid and prosperous alliance with the Native
Americans and the Canadians adoption of the irregular war fighting tactics of la petite
guerre. Their use of the Indians as auxiliaries, raiders integrated into a campaign plan,
reconnaissance scouts, and frontier raiders on the periphery of the theater, allowed the
French to practice a strategy of defending Canada by attacking the British deep in their
own territory and keeping them off guard.6 While the British would eventually
overwhelm the French with regular troops and mitigate the advantage the Indians
provided, the French and Indian War showed that the successful combination of regular
and irregular warfare could be effective against a superior force. But success is dependent on understanding the two keys to successful implementation of this tactic; the
knowledgeable and appropriate use of this partner force as well as recognizing the
dangers of misunderstanding their culture or using them inappropriately.7 These are
lessons that echo today with the modern military officer as he seeks to understand the
contemporary operating environment.
CHAPTER 2
CANADIAN–INDIAN RELATIONS AND FRENCH WARTIME STRATEGY
FOR NATIVE AMERICAN USE
What has resulted from this? And what is resulting from this? Our Indians, disgusted, and dissatisfied, are taking their furs to the English, are becoming attached to them to the prejudice of our interests and to the detriment of the trade. . . . The presents that the king has given to them keep them loyal to him.
— Charles de Raymond, On the Eve of Conquest
The Native Americans played an essential role for both the British and French
Empires in North America during the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763). They were
essential to the survival of the colonists that inhabited the areas. They were vital trading
partners; they acted as guides, and in the case of some British agreements, also hunted to
provide food for the settlers. The Indians also provided the essential manpower that the
French relied upon to help offset the British settlements vast advantage on the continent,
1.5 million settlers to the French 55,000.
This employment as soldiers in the army did not develop only in the years leading
up to war. Instead, securing the alliances and good relations with the Indians that were
needed to develop the constant flow of manpower the war demanded were the result of
carefully molded colonial policy and diplomatic relations with their neighboring tribes in the vast areas that were settled by the French. This policy, relying on gifts, flattery, and
favors, and not the purchase or outright control of the Indians’ land allowed them to
rapidly expand and trade for the furs that were so valued in Europe.
This relationship also had a double edge to it. When the style of warfare of the
Seven Years’ War moved past the small-scale frontier war of the late 16th and early 17th
centuries to a large European style war, the French had trouble adapting their small
regular force augmented by Indians to the European style. Conversely, the large
European armies had trouble maneuvering in the dense terrain of the Americas. In the
middle were the Native Americans.
The Canadian Governor-General Pierre de Riguad de
Vaudreuil de Cavagnial, Marquis de Vaudreuil (known here after as Vaudreuil)
advocated a much more defensive forward guerilla style campaign as the French
leadership’s best strategy to employ the Native Americans, while the French military
commander, Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, Marquis de Montcalm (known
here after as Montcalm) sought a more European maneuver army strategy of massing for
decisive battles with the Indians as auxiliaries. Their eventual usage, as scouts and
guerillas, would be born of the relationship between the Indians and the French as allies and partners and not as subjects or subordinates, a direct result of the relations cultivated
between them outside of war.
At the start of the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), the French and the British both
commanded vast numbers of men and resources on the continent. The French
commanded 55,000 permanent settlers in North America. These settlers were spread
around a territory that stretched from Canada in the north, the Atlantic to the Great Lakes
region east west, and south down the Mississippi to Louisiana and eastward to the Ohio
Valley. The 1.5 million citizens of the British colonial holdings were inside this buffer in
the commonly understood thirteen colonies. Key to managing, exploiting, and more
importantly, protecting and maintaining this vast swathe of territory were the Native
Americans.
The Native Americans of the vast French territory represented over 15 different
tribal groups. Realizing that their survival depended on these groups, Samuel Champlain,
the founder of Quebec, immediately started a relationship with the Algonquin Indians he
made contact with in 1609. From that point on the survival of the French settlers and
Indians were merged. Indians would trade with the French for muskets, tomahawks, iron,
clothes, blankets, and other goods required for survival, while teaching the settlers how to
survive on the land and trading furs, foodstuffs, and skins the settlers required.
Over the
next 150 years, the French would form alliances with the Pequot, Illinois, Kickapoo,
Menomini, Miami Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi Indians throughout the northeast and Great Lakes, or pays d’en haut, area. At the same time the British would be
engaging in the same sorts of activities in order to bring the native tribes in their areas
under their control. Where the two empires met, this led to the empires competing over
the same Indians.
For 150 years, the French would consistently surpass the British in
almost every regard in Indian relations. This could not have been achieved without a
strong system of Indian relations and developed knowledge of their culture and what
was required to sway the Indians to their cause. In 1753, the French were using three
primary methods to secure Indian alliances: religion, trade and gifts, and force, if
necessary. This battle over Native American influence would be the catalyst to start the
Seven Years’ War.
17
For the French, the need for good relations and strong alliances with Native
Americans was key to their survival and retaining the hegemony it had in the frontier
areas of the continent in the 1700s.
New France, particularly Canada, was founded as a
trading and resource monopoly base, not as a full-fledged colony where excess
population from the mother country could be sent. In fact, the French government did
little to actively encourage large scale settlement of the new colony. This is in contrast to
the British colonies that experienced consistent growth in their colonies along the
Atlantic seaboard. The French method of empire was not one of land grabs and gain,
but one of commerce and trade with the Native Indian population. This made the colony devoid of any real troop base to call upon in time of war.
As will be discussed in
chapter 3, the colonists depended on the Native Americans to assist them in their fighting,
both as teachers and allied soldiers. Throughout the history of the colony, the French had
been subjected to constant raids by Iroquois raiding parties (1610-1701), numerous small
Indian wars, and three small frontier wars against their southern British neighborhoods,
King William’s War (1688-1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), and King George’s
War (1744-1748). In each of these wars, the French learned that they could not achieve
lasting strategic victory against the British; they could only achieve tactical victories that
would have the strategic effect of disrupting British invasion plans.
The key to their
success was the consistent ability to recruit warriors from the Native Americans, and
almost as essential, deny the same ability to the British. In 1753, the populations of
French allied Native Americans in the Ohio Valley and pays d’en haut region provided
the French with access to potentially 16,000 warriors that they could recruit from. These wars created a power vacuum in the western portions of New France due to
a lack of French presence. The French Governor-General Roland-Michel Barrin de La
Galissonière (1693-1756) correctly assessed that the next point of conflict between the
British and the French would shift from the Lake Champlain/New England region to the
Ohio Valley on the British western frontier.
The British had already made inroads in the
Ohio Valley through the Ohio Company, a land trading company, and quickly moved to counter their expansion by reasserting French dominance over the region. To do this, he
would employ the French methods of religion, trade and gifts, and force.
Religion had always been a driving force in New France and the relations with the
Indians within its borders. From the beginning of the colony in the 1600s, Jesuit
missionaries were sent to New France in order to bring the “savage” into the fold, as
Champlain believed that the soul was all that mattered and feared for the soul of his new
found allies.
This drive started the process of linking some of the native population with
the French.
In the 1600s the Jesuits came to New France and established a series of missions,
the most famous of these, the Huron Mission, worked ceaselessly to convert Indians to
Catholicism. Though this mission would be destroyed and its priests martyred in the
Beaver Wars (the series of French and Iroquois conflicts that lasted until a lasting peace
was signed in 1701), the precedent was established for French Catholics from the Society
of Jesus and the Society of Saint-Sulpice to work to convert more and more Indians and
bring them under the French banner.
This conversion was loathed by their British
neighbors as the Indians would believe that baptism to Catholicism made them allies and
subjects of the French crown. These missions were established at logical confluences of the water lines of communication in order to attract the most Indians to live there. The
priests then used a combination of gifts, presents, and religious education to get the
Indians to convert to Catholicism. This religious conversion had multiple effects on the
Indians. Not only did it tie them religiously and culturally to the Catholic French, the
missions provided a stable community where Indians and French citizens could
intermingle.27 This created a shared acceptance and tolerance in regards to the Native
Americans. This was not found in the British colonies. This goal is seen in the words of
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1667 who stated
to the intendant of New France, “You must try to draw these people and especially those
who have embraced Christianity in to the neighborhood of settlements and, if possible,
intermingle them there so that, with the passage of time having but one law, and one
master, the king.”
The missions also provided another more tangible benefit be used extensively in
the Imperial Wars and the years leading up to the Seven Years’ War, which was to use
the missions and the “praying Indians” to conduct wartime and peace time activities. In
fact these missions provided a ready recruiting ground for Indians who already were
inclined to French direction and a healthy dislike for the British and their non-Catholic
allies. Indians were molded to conduct activities for the French benefits.
The most
famous mission, La Presentation, near modern day Montreal, is an example of these
behaviors. Founded in 1747 by Abbe Francis Piquet, the fort would grow to house 3,000 Indians, when the population of Montreal was only 4,000.29 The fort ostensibly worked to
convert Indians to Catholicism,
30 but its actual purpose was to wean the Iroquois off of
their British Alliance. Indian spies would be dispatched and presents and bribes
designed to sway Indian loyalty would be sent down river to their targets. In short, Abbe
Piquet conducted some of what the modern day military would call unconventional and
information warfare operations in North America.
Not all of his activity was benign;
Piquet also recruited Indians to conduct raids and military operations against the British
and their frontier towns. Piquet was placed in charge of using his converted Iroquois to
entice their non-converted brethren to attack the British at Fort Oswego, and avoid having
the French implicated in the attack. General Jeffery Amherst, the commander who
captured Louisburg for the British in 1758, accused Piquet of raising 150 Indians to war
and to grant no mercy. Piquet was not unique in this fact and “praying Indians” were
feared all over the frontier. Governor George Clinton wanted a specific church in New
York destroyed because he feared the French were using it to incite the local Oneidas to
war against the British.
In 1753, through religious conversions and missions, the French were able to
solidify their alliances with the native peoples of America and secure their warriors and
resources in future conflicts. Fort de la Presentation was in full working order and the
French were looking to again exert their dominion over the Ohio valley. They will do this
with the ability to call upon the “praying Indians” and their tribal allies to assist them in
pacifying other tribes that had allied with the British. When the Seven Years’ War began,
they would be crucial in the fight against the British as well.
The second method that the French used to gain and solidify alliances and
relations with the Native Americans was trade and gift giving. Founded as a fur trading
colony to secure the monopoly in North America, this practice not only gave the French
access to the furs that the continental French and settlers alike desired, it also fostered
good relations and mutual assistance between the Indians and the French. This was
beneficial in assisting the French; not only as a means to protect and dissuade attacks by
neighboring Indian tribes, but also against the British in the imperial wars of the early
18th century. The French would use multiple methods to secure this trade but would rely
mostly on forts and trading outposts to conduct their activities.
As the 18th century
continued, this battle for the Indians through trade and giving of gifts would play a key
role in leading to the start of the Seven Years’ War. New France, specifically Canada, was dependent on trade for its essential
resources and for protection. The French settlers, outnumbered both by the British and Indians that neighbored their colonies as has been previously stated, needed strong
relations with the Indians to offset this weakness. Good relations with the tribes in their
surrounding areas, such as the Huron, Algonquians, Abnaki, and others in the Ohio
Valley were formed. Developing trading relations with the Illinois, Kickapoo, and
Menomini tribes’ furthered French influence in the Ohio Valley. Friendly relations with
multiple tribes would assist in preventing them from going to war with each other and
decimating the numbers of warriors the French could recruit from. With only 55,000
persons in the valley, the French would often have to rely on solid relations with their
Indian partners to counter British influence on them and collect the furs and trade goods
the colony desired.35 To this end, expeditions were often sent through French claimed
areas to remind the Indians who they would gain the most benefit from trading with and
to expel any British traders in their area. Expeditions such as the 1749 Celeron expedition
were mounted to expel British traders from the Ohio Valley and win back defecting
Indians to the French banner. These expeditions were mounted with great expense,
requiring infusions of capital from France to fund them, but were necessary to keep the
integrity of the colony as well as provide a firm recruiting and operating base for
operations during war.
The Canadian government was integral in ensuring that this policy was
synchronized across the colony. This diplomatic effort was so important that the
Canadian government tracked the giving of gifts and trade at the national level to the
individual gift and which agent had provided it to the Indians. Their hierarchical government structure unified this process as a singular entity, merged with its military
and diplomatic efforts and tracked the expenses that these gifts cost the crown. It also
provided a large resource block for the purchase of large or numerous gifts and trade
goods.
This contrasted to the British who spread Indian relations and trade throughout
their colonies. This strict system also solidified loyalty of the Indians to the French king
versus a singular British colony. As the Chevalier de Raymond stated in his Enumeration
of All the Canadian Posts, the “Indians are self-interested and attach themselves only to
the ones who gives them the most, and they like the benefactor only through the benefit
that they receive and expect from him.” To this end, French traders and officers ensured
that all the Indians they traded with knew that the gifts and goods traded were from the
Father Ontontio as the French king was known to the Indians and that gifts were given
in enough frequency to solidify their loyalty.
The specific types of gifts and trade goods did not have to be valuable metals or
coinage. More often than not the goods were of an everyday nature necessary to daily life
as the need of the Indian home life often outweighed the more ostentatious gifts of
jewelry and gold and silver. The goods often included tomahawks, blankets, clothes,
gunpowder, knives, and other goods a post-stone age culture would desire from a foreign
pre-industrial power and would often be paid for by the agent giving the gift and later
reimbursed from the French government. This would allow the giving of little gifts as
needed from the garrisons of trading outposts on the frontier while they awaited the annual shipment of gifts and good from France.
Most gifts and trade goods were
practical tools that could be used in the village. More colorful and “loud” clothing were
reserved for chiefs and warriors of high regard and consisted mostly of bright stripes and
trim. Rum and brandy was avoided as much as possible in order to prevent the
intoxication of the Indians and violence and mayhem that often followed, but was
provided when necessary to ply the Indians, or influence their decision making in certain
times of negotiations. As the competition for Indian loyalty increased in the 18th century,
most metal goods and decorations, i.e. gorgets, were stamped with the French king on
one side and the royal coat of arms on the other. This would solidify in the Indians mind
who had provided the gift and where his loyalty should lie.
In order to maintain this constant flow of goods and gifts into the Ohio Valley and
their allied tribes, the French established a series of trading posts and forts to act as
protectors of their dominion. These forts would run down the Ohio River Valley from
Lake Erie to the furs of the Ohio, modern day Pittsburgh. These forts were designed to
protect the Ohio Valley from British incursion. The forts, Presque Isle, Le Beouf,
Machault, Vernago, and eventually Duquesne were to facilitate trade with the local
Indian population and protect the water lines of communication in the area. Unlike the
British, the French did not establish their forts and begin to absorb Indian land and claim
it from them. Instead, the French established smaller trading posts to trade with Indians
and did not threaten their autonomy.
These posts, located at key strategic points where
lines of communication and French and Indian territory would align, would usually consist of a blockhouse, warehouse, and wooden palisade to protect those that lived
inside. In some cases, such as La Presentation, a mission would be present to convert
the Indians that chose to remain at the post. This would cause Indian settlements to spring
up alongside the European post, further cementing French and Indian relations. The post
would be minimally manned with a small garrison, sometimes only three to five, Troops
de la Marine, the French regular army soldiers stationed in Canada.
The forts also
served as a jumping off point for offensive actions against the British and hostile Indian
forces in the area. This extended the French’s ability to penetrate deep into British
territory and would be the centers of the struggle in the Seven Years’ War. Trade and gift giving along with the infrastructure that developed alongside it
provided the means for the French to secure the native allies it would need to secure its
vast terrain and exploit the land for its purpose as a commercial outpost. These positive
Indian relations would provide a recruiting ground for warriors and act as a buffer against
expanding British influence prior to the Seven Years’ War.
The last method the French would use would be force. If all other measures of
securing the positive relations with an Indian group were exhausted or if time was short,
the French would resort to the use of force to reassert its colonial domination over an
area. This would prevent British domination, enforce treaties, expel British traders, and force the Indians in an area either to accept French rule, in the case of the Miamis in the
Ohio Valley, or to remain neutral, such as the Iroquois after 1701.
The French did not want to resort to force for two main reasons. First it
squandered already limited resources. The French needed positive Indian relations to
counter the fact that it did not have many settlers or soldiers in the colony. Fighting
protracted wars with the Iroquois in the 1600s had shown that frontier wars against the
Amerindians would be a war of attrition that would cost many lives and hinder trade. As
the same time, positive Indian relations that had been generated through trade and mutual
trust and respect, as with the Hurons and Abebi’s, had gained strong allies that were used
to great effect in the imperial wars of the early 1700s. Using force to subdue Native
American groups would not allow this recruitment and would not benefit the colony.
Secondly, during the previous conflicts, the French had relied heavily on native warriors
to assist them. Using force to subdue an opponent would cause tribal disruptions in the
area that would cause the Indians to fight each other outside of European influence in
retaliation for fighting with the Europeans, as was the case with the Iroquois
extermination of the Huron nation in 1634 during the Iroquois wars. This would lessen
the ability of the Indians to come to the French aid and may even draw the French into a
new war because of allied ties.
In 1751, the French were forced to use force in the opening rounds of the Ohio
River valley conflict that would become the Seven Years’ War. The Canadian Governor General had sent an expedition of 200 men in 1749 under Pierre-Joseph Celoron to
reinforce the claims of the French to the Ohio River valley. This is the so called lead plate
expedition, named because of Celoron’s placing of lead plates along the route to mark
French claim, which also had the secondary missions of expelling British traders that it
found in French territory, ascertain which Indians had defected to the British due to the
undercutting of French goods, and had attacked a French trading post as reported by
Chevalier Raymond, and neighboring Troops de La Marine commander in the Miami
Post.
Over the course of his expedition, he traveled to every Indian village along his
path and discovered that English traders were indeed undercutting French goods in the
valley and were defecting to the British. Almost all of the Indian villages respond to the
giving of gifts and negotiations to remain solely trading partners with the French. He also
expelled six British traders with a letter to the Pennsylvania Governor to remove all his
traders from the French territory. One village of Miamis, Pickawillany and its chief, La
Demoiselle violently expel the French expedition and Celoron returned to Montreal to
report his findings.
The French government, seeing negotiations fail, decided to send an
armed force to capture Demoiselle and bring the Miamis back into the fold. CharlesMichel Mouet de Langlade was dispatched in 1752 to deal with the rebellious village.
With 272 Indians and Troops de La Marine, Langlade killed La Demoiselle, and
destroyed the village. The remaining Miamis were dispersed to other Miami villages in
the area. This sudden and decisive use of force against a British ally, and subsequent lack of British response brought a majority of the Indians in the Ohio back into the fold of the
French due to the Indians proclivity towards respecting strength and victory.
This would
work in providing a buffer against the British in the upcoming war, while at the same
time providing a recruiting ground for allied fighters during the war. French policy towards the Indians in the 1700s resulted in strong alliances with
many of the Native American tribes that inhabited the Ohio River valley and the vast
territory of New France. Their relationship would provide a solid base of fighters to
augment the low number of French soldiers in the colony as well as provide a solid
augmentation force for the large European armies that would fight in the Seven Years’
War. What the French did not expect was how their relationship would shape what would
develop into the strategy for how the French would fight the next war. The dependence
on the Indians and their effectiveness as allies would lead to a great conflict over how
they were to be used in the coming conflict.
When war broke in 1754, the use of the Native Americans was the key pillar to
how the French would fight the war. Their employment alongside the Canadian regulars
and militias in the earlier imperial wars of the 1700s cemented their place on the battle
field to the government of Canada. Vaudreuil’s trust of the Indians’ fighting style and the
French’s alliances and relations would drive their desire to use them as a light fighting
force, attacking the enemy deep in the British colonies and forcing the British to defend
at home rather than push into Canada. As the war became heavily European, with large moving armies of regular troops, the recently arrived commander of the French regulars,
Montcalm, saw the Canadian irregular war as a savage war that was uncivilized and
lobbied for a more traditional approach with the Indians in a supporting role.
Although
in the end neither strategy could win the war with the amount of resources the British
could array against them, Vaudreuil’s and Montcalm’s strategic conflict would result in a
dysfunctional strategy that would simultaneously use the Indians in the most effective
ways, while at the same time alienate them culturally.53
At the start of the war in 1754, the French were in a precarious position regarding
their ability to resource another war in North America. The events in the Ohio Valley,
unresolved status of the valley and its Indian nations had given the French cause to
prepare for a war in North America. It was not ready strategically to withstand a
determined war from the British. First, the goals of their strategy were never in conflict;
the preservation of New France as a French holding was always the ultimate objective.
The basis for their strategy was primarily on a limitation of ways to conduct the war and
the means to do so, both manpower and monetarily. These limitations would not allow
Canadian forces to create a strategic victory out of tactical success due to their limited
exploitation capability.
This problem would remain a Canadian problem as the government of France had made it well known that it was willing to sacrifice the
Canadian colony for the lucrative sugar island colonies in the Caribbean.54
Militarily, Canada lagged far behind the British colonies to the south and this gap
would form the basis for its strategy. Outnumbered 1.5 million inhabitants to 55,000, the
French could not muster the manpower to compete man for man with the British, let
alone reinforcements from Europe.55 To compound this, there were no French regular
soldiers stationed in Canada. The “regular” troops were actually Troops de La Marine,
French soldiers stationed in Canada but led by Canadian or French officers. The
Canadian answer to this was la petite guerre, or little war.
Explained in detail in chapter
3, this style of guerilla tactics aimed at causing terror and disrupting the British forces in
their own territory that had characterized the warfare of the imperial wars that had
allowed the French to fight the British to stalemates and maintain their territorial
integrity. This style of warfare was an attrition based style that was heavily reliant on
large numbers of Indian allies and warriors to fight alongside the French and Canadian
forces in order to make up the manpower shortages.
The Canadians were also deprived of resources to generate and train large
numbers of regular troops. The French empire was stretched thin monetarily in the 1600-
1700s and was dependent on their colonies to supply the resources needed to support the
mother country.
To this end, the French government had always made known that they would not support the colony unless its fate was in jeopardy. This is shown through their
lack of support in the Iroquois Wars of the 1600s until the short commitment of the Tracy
expedition.
The French government had also made it plain that in the event of a war in
North America, the French army would be used to fight the war in Europe and not be able
to fully support or reinforce any French soldiers sent to fight on the continent. This
meant that the French army would unlikely be able to eventually match the
overwhelming numbers of British troops in the field and necessitated a strategy that could
delay the British and exhaust them until a peace could be agreed upon in Europe.
Based on these limitations both Vaudreuil and Montcalm derived their own
strategies as to how to fight the coming war. These strategies would come into direct
conflict with one another and force the decision to be made ultimately from France itself.
These strategies, each with its own merits and flaws could not prevent the ultimate
British victory when the British committed overwhelming resources and forces to the
conflict.
Vaudreuil, the Governor-General of New France, looked at the limitations above
and quickly decided to maintain the strategy that had worked so well in the previous
imperial wars. He advocated the strategy of la petite guerre and the terror it would sow
among the population of the British colonies. He is quoted as saying in his journal,
“Nothing is more calculated to discourage the people of these English colonies and make
them wish to return to peace.”
His strategy would consist of an aggressive forward defense using the guerilla
tactics of year round raids, ambushes, and spoiling attacks to keep the British armies
penned inside their own colonial territories. Much like in the previous wars, Vaudreuil
saw how the French dominated the British and exhausted them monetarily and militarily
by forcing them to remain on the defensive in their own territory. He thought this could
be repeated and even expanded upon as he could raise a war party of Indian allies and
attack faster than the British could mass and move an invasion army into Canada. At
the same time, valuable manpower in the form of British militia forces would be raised to
defend their frontiers, and not be allowed “to cause mischief elsewhere.”
Forts would be key to Vaudreuil’s strategy. Garrisoned by the French regular
army who was trained in siege warfare, they would be used as jumping off points for
offensive actions by the Troops de La Marine, the Canadian militia, and their Indian
allies to conduct raids into British territory. The forts would also serve to lengthen the
supply lines of the British and leave them open to attack by the Canadians operating out
them. Since the French government had already built the forts, this strategy could be
conducted very inexpensively for the Canadians and they could retain their resources to
supply and support the larger French army when it arrived from France.
There were two main drawbacks to this strategy. First it was heavily dependent on
the Native Americans as early warning and allied warriors. In order to maintain surprise
and mass enough raiders on the attacks, friendly Indians would have to be used to
maintain secrecy of the attack from neighboring tribes and to prevent interception or
counterattack as they made their way back to the forts. These alliances relied heavily on
positive relations with Indians throughout territory, which was resource intensive on the
government.
The second drawback was that it was a strategy of exhaustion and relied
on the British tiring of war and suing for peace. Although it was extremely and effective
from 1754-1756, it could not obtain more than tactical victories against the British forces
and their own forts in the area. As the British committed more and more resources to the
fight, they began to outlast the French and outpace their ability to counter their plans. The
fight became a more conventional European campaigning war and the raids of the
guerrillas could do little to stop them. Montcalm, conversely, called for a more European style of warfare. Montcalm
arrived in North America in 1756 and immediately set to create a strategy that could win
the war. Unlike Vaudreuil, Montcalm saw a role for the French Army, Troops de Terre,
and the Troops de la Marine to work together in a defensive strategy to mass forces at a
decisive point and bring the British army to battle at a time and place of his choosing.
Schooled in European conflict, he saw the war as one of siege and counter siege
in the frontier to defeat the British Forces while using the guerilla forces of the militia and Indians as auxiliaries and shaping operations. By conducting sieges of British forts
on the periphery, but still close to French territory, he could draw forces off of the
invasion of Canada and engage them in battle.
Though Montcalm did not initially see
many issues with utilizing the Indians as part of his army, he did not like them as people.
He found them brutish and selfish, lacking any discipline or will to stay and fight. While
he did not approve of their fighting style, discipline, or civility, Montcalm did respect
their ability to fight at the tactical level.
His first committed action on the continent was at Fort Oswego, a series of three
British forts near modern day Oswego, New York on Lake Ontario in August 1756.69
After a short battle, his force of 3,000 men attacked and captured the fort which was
garrisoned by approximately 1.800 British soldiers. This was a successful campaign that
proved Montcalm’s tactics of using regular forces in conjunction with irregular forces in
support to achieve a tactical victory. While the quickness of the campaign did not pull off
the forces he wanted from the British, it could work the next time at William Henry.
However, the lasting impact of Oswego and what would negatively impact Montcalm’s
strategy was his first taste of frontier warfare with Indian allies.
To his chagrin, Montcalm’s Indians killed 30 and wounded 100 prisoners after the
surrender and proceeded to loot the bodies and the fort for payment. This embarrassed
Montcalm greatly as the prisoners were under his charge and deemed protected by the rules of European warfare. Montcalm decided that the barbarities of frontier warfare were
to be avoided at all costs. Prisoners were to be protected and surrenders honored and the
less fighting he did with the Indians the better.
Montcalm, however, failed to understand the Native Americans’ culture and
reasons for fighting. The Native Americans fought for prisoners, loot, and plunder and
fought as long as their reasons were there and their allies appeared strong. When
Montcalm accepted the surrender of the British forces at William Henry, he deprived
them of these spoils. The Indians were angered by this slight and took matter into their
own hands. Montcalm’s even poorer handling of the massacre that occurred after the fort
was captured when the Indians kill or capture over 100 British surrendered persons
further exasperated the problem. Montcalm attempted to purchase back prisoners and
shamed the Indians who remained behind for their lack of civility. Upset, one Indian said,
“I make war for plunder, scalps, and prisoner. You are satisfied with a fort, and you let
your enemy and mine live.” Most of his 1,600 Indians left the fort and few returned to
fight for the French again.
Montcalm’s strategy was hampered by two shortcomings. First, like Vaudreuil’s it
relied on the use of Native Americans to act as auxiliaries, scouts, spies, and the bulk of
the irregular guerilla force to shape conditions for his main effort. This relied on a
balanced cultural knowledge of how and why they fought, and strong relations with them.
This was resource intensive and heavily unpalatable to conventional minded French officers of the Troupes de Terre.
73 Secondly, this strategy involved European style sieges
and counterseiges which required European style armies and reinforcement from
mainland Europe. In 1757, with British forces increasing heavily in North America, the
war in Europe increasing, and fronts in India all needing reinforcement, the French
government was simply not able to reinforce them all and decided that the North
American front would be put on the defensive and minimally reinforced until peace with
Britain could be sued for on the European front. In 1758, Montcalm was given overall
command of the French forces, outranking Vaudreuil as Governor-General, as a reward
for his defeat of the forces of Ticonderoga. Against Vaudreuil’s wishes, who still wanted
to fight an offensive campaign and “contest every inch of territory,”
Montcalm
withdrew from the frontier forts as the British approach until the final battle of Quebec in
1759. The one constant both strategies employed was use of Native Americans as scouts
and raiders in a guerilla role. Montcalm used the guerrillas as shaping operation, an
operation that sets the conditions for the decisive operation, and Vaudreuil advocated
their use as part of the colony’s decisive operation, or main operation that would defeat
the British. While neither strategy could defeat the overwhelming resources of the British
at the end of war, both fought to stave off defeat as long as possible. Vaudreuil’s strategy,
however, delayed the inevitable the longest and caused the British the most heartache and
maintained the initiative of the French forces until 1757. Without their use as raiders and allies, the Seven Years’ War would have been a short campaign dominated by
overwhelming British regulars.
The Native Americans played a key role in the outcome of the Seven Years’ War.
Their use as raiders and to conduct ambushes was critical to the French war effort, not
only in the Seven Years’ War, but also throughout the history of the colony. Their ability
to train, teach, trade with, and cohabitate with the Europeans ensured that New France
could continue to survive in the growing face of British and hostile Indian
confrontation. This ability was built on a solid base of positive relations cultivated by a central
government system of managing, coordinating, and funding efforts to shape relations
with the neighboring tribal groups. Whether by religion, trade and gifts, or force, the
French government worked to maintain its sphere of influence and buffer against the
encroaching British. When the final imperial war of the 1700s, the Seven Years’ War
finally started, the French found a solid base of allies to call upon to fight la petite guerre
against a common British adversary. This style of war would be key to prolonging the
French war effort against inevitable defeat and would last only as long as the French
could meet their cultural and economic obligations to their Indian allies.
CHAPTER 3
NORTH AMERICAN IRREGULAR WARFARE
In our first war with the Indians, God pleased to show us the vanity of our military skill, in managing our arms, after the European mode. Now we are glad to learn the skulking way of war.
— John Elliot, The Skulking Way of War, 1667
Irregular warfare was a factor of day to day life for the Indians, the Dutch, British,
and French colonies of North America. Raids and ambushes were common occurrences
and comprised the majority of military action between the major actors in the area,
Indians versus Indians, and Indians versus European colonists. This style of war, the
“skulking way of war,” as John Elliot (1667) called it, was a systemic shock to the
European colonists whose concepts were comprised of wars fought by large, well
disciplined, armies. The frontier brought with it new challenges and changes to the ways
wars would be waged to secure victory.
To the Native Americans, the skulking way of war was the natural way of war.
Comprised of raids and ambushes as the preferred tactic and fought for prisoners, pillage,
and to sow terror, it had been practiced for generations. It was an extension of their
hunting culture and they were very proficient at its conduct. Indian children were
instructed in hunting and moving through the woods at very young ages.
These skills,
critical to the supporting of the village, were also the hallmarks of the skulking way of war. These skills would prove the defining factor in their ability to confront larger, better
trained forces of European regulars and to stave off European conquest. The skulking way of war was also critical to the survival of the small number of
French colonists that sought to expand their territorial and commercial empire of New
France in North America. To these Canadians, long hard fought battles with the Iroquois
throughout the 17th century taught them that to be successful in the wilderness; against
the Indians they would have to adopt their method of fighting.
The Canadians learned
from their Native allies and, through experience, developed the methodology of the La
Petite Guerre. Together with their Indian allies, the skulking way of war and la petite
guerre proved to be quite effective during the imperial wars of the 17th and 18th
Centuries and a critical component of the French strategy during the Seven Years’ War.
They proved to be more than a match for the British colonial forces until the introduction
of British regular forces in the latter half of the war.
The Native American way of war that fought the British and French forces during
the Seven Years’ War was a hybrid of the original aboriginal style of warfare practiced
by Indians and the technology that the Europeans brought with them when they arrived in
17th and 18th centuries. That combination, when applied to the terrain, created a practice
of warfare in North America that directly contrasted the European way of war. In
addition, it was shaped by the early conflicts with colonists that shocked the Natives into understanding what it meant to fight a European style war that was terrain focused rather
than force focused. It consisted of limited long range raids and ambushes designed to
terrorize and subdue a population through fear.
Their wars focused on the acquisition of
prisoners, plunder, and attrition of the opposing force versus a terrain-based warfare
focusing on capturing enemy villages and exterminating the populace.
To European colonists, this style of warfare appeared to be a campaign of
fickleness, terror, and violence; it was in actuality a well-developed system of tactics and
traditions. It utilized cunning, cover, stealth, marksmanship, raids, and ambushes to
achieve limited objectives.
The skulking way of war as it was encountered by the
French in the 17th century and employed to great effect in the imperial wars of the 18th
century was the blending of European technology and the natives own military culture.
The understanding of military culture, along with the strategy and tactics employed, and
the impact of Europeans on the Indians are essential to the understanding the skulking
way.
The military culture of the Alqonquins, Hurons, Ottawas, and the tribes of the
Iroquois Confederacy was something unlike anything the Europeans had encountered. Rooted in the long history of the Indians in North America, it shaped how the Indians
approached war.
The military culture is not only illustrated in their wartime leadership,thoughts on just war, and views of bravery and the importance of strength, but is also
shown through their treatment of prisoners and moral conduct, their hunting practices,
use of the supernatural and superstitions, and the actions of scalping.
Perhaps the largest factor that impacted the Indians’ military culture and how they
conducted warfare was their nature as a hunting people.
By the 17th century, when
Europeans arrived in New France and New England, the Indians that lived in the area
surrounding the Great Lakes and the area of the North East United States and Quebec
were a largely agricultural people with established settlements and farm land.89 They
grew maize, or Indian corn, that could sustain the people during long periods through
drying and storing in their villages. This diet was supplanted through hunting and
gathering of nearby animals and wild plants and berries. The Indians of the Great Lakes
and New France also supplanted their income through the trapping and hunting animals
for the lucrative fur trade that was starting to develop in the in the 1600s. This hunting
culture and its associated skills provided the Amerindians with three main advantages: it
taught them the skills necessary for skulking, made them an extremely hardy people, and
shaped their views on war.
Hunting required the Indians to range out of their settlements in search of game.
They would do this year round and it was especially important in the winter when game
was scarce and the human body was burning more calories to stay warm. The Indians
would travel in small groups or as individuals to seek out this game. French coeurs de
bois, fur traders reported that the Indians could move upwards of 30-50 miles in a day in search of game.
While this is most likely an exaggeration, movement thorough the
heavily forested terrain of North America required great endurance especially during the
winter and on limited sustance that consisted mostly of maize, and locally foraged
foods.91 This endurance would be applied militarily when the diet would conduct long
distance raids into enemy territory at times when the Europeans thought that movement
was impossible. This hardiness was shown in the raids of the Abnaki war chief Grey
Lock. His raids during Friar Rasle’s War (1722) and Grey Lock War (1722-1724)
routinely penetrated the fertile lands of Northfield, Massachusetts from his headquarters
in Missisquoi Bay at the northern end of Lake Champlain. This was a total distance of
over 210 miles away during the harsh winter months and his parties eluded capture until
peace in 1724.
Hunting also taught the Native Americans the key skills necessary for the
skulking way and the need for specialized tools and equipment. The Indians started their
training at a young age. Boys as young as eight began to learn to hunt and move through
the woods. They carried a bow or musket wherever they went.93 The Indians learned how
to shoot at elusive prey such as deer, rabbits, and beavers. These shots were first made
with a bow, but were easily adapted to the flintlock musket when the Europeans
introduced the weapons to the Natives through trade. They also learn to use deadfall
traps, nets, and cover and concealment to hide their positions and strike animals and persons from afar and not expose themselves to attack.
Indians developed snowshoes to
assist them in moving through the high snow and moccasins to move quietly through the
underbrush. The Indians also developed lightweight and warm clothing that was subdued
in color to assist them in hiding from game, but also allowed them to move quietly when
needed. Self-reliance and the ability to repair their bow, make arrows, make basic field
repairs to their muskets, cloths and even cast lead ammunition when needed were also
critical skills taught at a young age.
In total, the Native American fighters that the French
and English faced in the Seven Year’s Way often had a decade or more of experience in
moving and shooting in the frontier forests of North America.
The Native American view on hunting also influenced their view on warfare.
Since the skills were so similar and the techniques transferrable from war to hunting, the
Indians saw little distinction between the two at an individual level. Children were taught
how to shoot and move at a young age and were proficient with their equipment. As such,
the harsh discipline and constant drill that typified European armies of the day were not
needed among the Native Americans.
The Indians also did not possess a distinction
between soldiers and civilians during war. All targets were lawful in war and hunting. W.
Smith, while traveling with the British Army in the Ohio Country, noted that Native
warriors “use the same stratagems and cruelty as against the wild beats.” Native American wartime leadership differed from peace time leadership. The
tribes of the Upper Country and New England often had two leadership structures, peace
and war. The peace structure consisted of a sachem, or paramount chief, as a leader of the Indian group. He led the group through a council of advisors comprised of other sachems
that each had their own supporters within the tribe. The lead sachem’s power was not
absolute and he ruled through persuasion and oratory skills. Other sachems could leave if
they did not agree with his decisions. He would negotiate treaties and alliances with
Europeans and other Indian groups, as well as domestic decisions for the group. These
alliances could hold great prestige for the sachem if they were successful. Their impact
and the empowering of key sachems would hold great influence and, if influenced with
gifts and support, could pay huge dividends for the French cause. At the end of the 1701,
the Huron Sachem Kondiaronk, a sachem heavily supported by French gifts and support
against his Iroquois Indians, solidified the obligations of the French to his people and
gave a rousing speech that convinced the leaders of the Iroquois, Ottawa, and over 40
other Indian nations to agree to peace and end the various wars that had lasted for nearly
the entirety of the 17th century.
When negotiations failed, war became the only recourse. The Indians would then
turn to a war chief, separate from the sachem. These war chiefs were typically younger
than the sachems that presided over the councils, though in some cases they could be the
same individual. The war chief was typically a warrior who had great experience fighting
and was a successful leader and tactician. Indian warriors would not fight for a war
chief who suffered too many casualties or defeats. The young war chief kept discipline in
his ranks through success, and by sharing glory and spoils with the warriors who
followed him. Their own reputations increased through success and they could become respected leaders and pass to the role of sachem, when they became too old for war.
Grey Lock is an example of a war chief of the Abnaki people. During the height of his
time as war chief, during the Grey Lock War, his war party had attracted many members
of neighboring tribes, including some that had historically been enemies. It grew to
consist of members from both the Abnaki and Iroquois nations who had recently made
peace in 1701. He remained very prominent due to his success and defied a peace treaty
in Boston that had been negotiated between the Indians, the French, and the British. It
was only through the weariness of his fighters that he stopped his fight against the
Europeans.
The Indians’ view of bravery and warfare also influenced the skulking way of
war. The skulking way was fought by groups of individuals on personal “endeavors,” and
the opportunities for personal reputation, prestige and a chance to showcase individual
skills were high. Because of this, Indians were often accused of being brave to the point
of recklessness, but it pushed them to perform harder, faster, and better than their fellow
warriors and the group benefitted overall. Indians followed successful war chiefs and the
strongest warriors in the tribe. At the strategic level, Indian alliances were only as good
as the other party was perceived to be strong and capable of meeting the Indians interests.
There was no shame in backing out of an agreement with a person who no longer was
strong enough to meet the tribe’s interests. The French would learn this fact when their
Indian allies began to withdraw from their alliances as the British began to dominate the
Seven Years’ War.
Individually, the Indians showed little respect for enemies who surrender and were taken prisoner though their own volition. This showed a lack of
individual bravery and they held no respect for them as warriors.
The Native Americans also viewed war in a way that contradicted the European
view of national war. Indians saw war a personal endeavor. Bernd Horn writes that the
Indians saw wars an opportunity to gain individual prestige and honor by participating in
battles and raids. There was honor in success shown by loot, scalps, and prisoners. Unlike Europeans for whom war was a national act and controlled by the state, the
Indians had a duel concept of national war and personal war. National war was a war that
was declared by the sachems and sanctioned by the elders of the tribe. Personal war is
war that an individual could embark upon for personal reasons to avenge a slight or death
of a family or group member. Individuals were encouraged to engage in individual war as
a means of gaining personal honor and fame through raiding of one’s opponents.
To
complicate the concept of personal war, the Indians did not see a difference between
killing on the battlefield and murder and did not understand the European distinction
between the two. A death in battle demanded as much vengeance as a death off the
field. This led to many cultural differences and loss of rapport between the French and
the Natives such as what happened after the surrender of Fort William Henry. As
discussed in chapter 5, the French did not allow the Indians a chance to avenge their own
comrades’ deaths in battle or to attain plunder and prisoners as payment.
The Indians’ moral attitudes towards warfare and the treatment of prisoners
dictated how they approached war. Indians defined success differently than Europeans.
They defined tactical victory as the defeat of the opponent, few casualties, and more
importantly, by the amount of scalps, plunder, and prisoners seized. This meant that
Indians did not fight a terrain focused battle. Because of this, Indians often followed
military necessity rather than the niceties of honor on the field Europeans held.
Indians
did not seek a fair fight that could jeopardize lives of prisoners and Indians, and also
risked the life of the warrior himself. Risk had to be worth the material and personal
reward.104
This view of warfare, coupled with the hunting culture of the Natives, led to an
often misunderstood treatment of prisoners by the Indians. Indians made the taking of
prisoners the number one priority in battle.
To most groups, especially the Iroquois,
prisoners were a form of population control. Prisoners taken during raids were often
integrated into the community as fully-adopted members of the groups. Through this
adoption ritual, they were made part of the tribe to make up for losses in women or men.
This practice was extended, though rarely, to European prisoners. Europeans were
usually ransomed back to their colonies, if they were not killed outright. This meant that
prisoners were treated well until a decision was made as to their fate. Once this decision
was made they could then be subjected to cruel torture, such as beating and being burned
alive regardless of age or gender. This treatment was linked back to the Indian’s view of warfare as hunting. The treatment of prisoners was akin to their treatment of animals.
Indian cosmology also made no distinction between animals and people and the torture
fulfilled a ritualistic aspect to please ancestors. Revenge for perceived slights most likely
also played a role in their fate.
Contrary to some accounts, Indians rarely sexually
assaulted female prisoners as that could mix the woman’s spirit and dilute the warrior’s
own manhood. Europeans did their best to prevent these “atrocities” but their failure to
understand the cultural implications of this prevention often led to a failure of rapport and
a loss of respect and support of the local Indian groups. To deprive the Indians of
prisoners or decry their treatment would be detrimental to the relations of Europeans and
their allies. The French even went so far as to buy back British prisoners for 25–50
British pounds to prevent their torture and executions after the “massacre” after the fall of
Ft William Henry. This caused a catastrophic loss of rapport with the Indian allies.1
No discussion of the Indians’ conduct of warfare in the Seven Years’ War would
be complete without touching upon the practice of scalping. According to J. Axtell of the
University of William and Mary, evidence now indicates that scalping had been
conducted prior to the arrival of Europeans. It was a means of showing that a warrior had
been successful in his personal war and his raiding as a means of offering proof of that
success. Woman’s scalps were especially prized as they showed that a warrior had been
able to penetrate deep into enemy territory.
Europeans however were guilty of rapidly
expanding its use through the offering of bounties. What had once been a medium of showing prowess on the battlefield now became a way to make money. This drove an
increase of Indian on Indian violence as bounties as high as 35 British pounds for a male
scalp and 10 pounds for a woman’s.107 During the period covered in this study, scalping
was still very much in practice and an essential part of proving a warrior’s prowess and
skill.
The strategy behind the Indians’ wars was a very different kind than the
Europeans were used to. The Indians did not fight in campaigns based on seizing
territory. They fought for various reasons, such as economic boons, revenge, prisoners,
loot, and, more importantly, to secure their autonomy. Regardless of the objectives, the
Indians did not take and hold land as the Europeans did. Instead they conducted raids to
seize prisoners and absorb the other group into their tribe. Once successful they would
retreat back to their villages to plan the next raid.
Captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville,
an aide to the Marquis du Montcalm remarked, “to go through the woods, to take a few
scalps, to return at full speed once the blow was struck, that is what they called war, a
campaign, success, victory.” The Indians dominated their neighbors rather than
conquering them outright. The total destruction of the opponent’s force was never the
goal. Rather, the Indians fought a limited war of attrition. Any means necessary could be
used to meet their ends; if fighting could be avoided, then alliances with other tribes and
the Imperial powers could be used to secure their interests. Indians would back out of
alliances and retreat from battles if the outcome would no longer benefit them. This made
them dubious allies at best according to the European powers. Once war was decided upon this strategy would then be enacted through the two key tactical actions of the
skulking way of war, the raid, and the ambush.
The raid was a staple of the small-scale limited warfare practiced by the Native
Americans. It allowed the Indians to achieve their objectives in a single blow and to
retreat back to a safe haven. Indians would raid villages for prisoners, kill enemy
warriors, take plunder, or destroy enemy supplies. Indians would also raid settlements to
capture enemy supplies. Due to technological and resource limitations, Indians could not
produce gunpowder. As such, many raids in the 17th and 18th centuries were to capture
gunpowder as well as resupply their stocks of muskets and ammunition. More important
to the overall strategy of the Indians, the raid sowed terror in the enemy. During the 18th
century, raids against Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies forced the governors there to
raise over 100 militia companies to protect the frontier. This fixed those forces in the
existing colonies and prevented the expansion of the Europeans into Indian territory.
In execution the Indians were meticulous in their planning. The Indians sent
reconnaissance parties in advance and to the flank of the main war party. They travelled
great distances and moved at night to avoid detection. Once they arrived near their
objective, they would establish a base and conduct a final reconnaissance of their target.
They would return to the base area and finalize their plan and conduct rehearsals. Samuel
Champlain in his travels with the Algonquian and Huron noted that they made mockups
of the target on the ground in a space of “five or six square feet” and “the chief shows
them (the warriors) the rank and order in which they are to observe when they fight with the enemy.”
Prior to execution, an ambush would be established to attack any relief
effort that could come to the target’s relief. Raids were timed to maintain surprise
utilizing terrain, time, light, and weather to advantage. The attacks were then executed
with maximum violence. The preferred tactic was to infiltrate the village at night, if
fortified, and slaughter the inhabitants by hand to hand combat if possible. If at daylight,
the Indians would attack people outside the protective lines of the village and kill or
capture them. They would then use muskets to attack people they could not reach and
attempt to gain entry to the settlement proper. If they could not, they would retreat with
their spoils.
Indians, however, would rarely conduct a direct siege on a fortified village
and would often resort to ruses to gain entry. In 1763 at Fort Michilimackinac, the
attacking Indians pretended to be seeking a lacrosse ball that had been launched over the
walls of the fort.
The second hallmark of the skulking way of war and one most likely to be
encountered was the ambush. Europeans thought the ambush was unfair; however it was
a perfect fit for the Native way of war. Ambushes were developed out of hunting game
and were designed to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the foe in the least
amount of time and retreat back to a safe haven. They were the main form of
engagement sought by the Native Americans. They often used it as an economy of force
measure to attack a larger force and attrit them as the force advanced towards the Indian’s village and Indians would often retreat in order to gain a more advantageous position
from which to ambush an attacking force. Colonel Henry Bouquet stated that the “Indian
tactics in battle could be reduced to three principles, surround the enemy, fight in
scattered formation, and always give ground when attacked.”
As with the raid, the execution of the ambush was just as well developed. The
ambush was planned to take place at a point that consisted of natural blocking terrain
features, such as cliffs, rivers, lakes, etc. that would prevent the enemy force from
retreating. If no obstacle was present, the Indians would encircle their enemy as soon as
possible. For larger forces, human decoys would be used to lure the target into the kill
zone. The Indian force would than position themselves in cover and concealed positions
where they could inflict the maximum amount of damage in the first shot. Indian warriors
would aim at specific targets, officers and NCOs, to start and seek to kill that
individual. Once the initial attack of one or two shots was over, Indians would leave
their covered positions and would attack the survivors in melee with clubs, tomahawks,
and knives. To make themselves look more ferocious and intimidate their foes, they
would paint themselves different colors in different designs and utilize bird feathers along
with war cries. They would then scalp the dead for the bounty and secure any prisoners
for movement back to their village.
For example, in 1645, an Alquonain force of six
warriors ambushed a force of 16 Iroquois in canoes, killing seven in the first volley. The
surviving Iroquois moved to land the canoes down the shore from the initial ambush,
only to find that the Algonquins had displaced and set up a second ambush to attack them where they had landed. The Algonquins attacked and the remaining Iroquois were
killed. The violence and surprise nature of these attacks were condemned by the
Europeans as “cowardice” and butchery, but none denied their effectiveness in
achieving their objectives.
The introduction of Europeans, their philosophies, and their technology to North
America altered the tactics and techniques of Native American warfare in the 17th
century. These changes, solidified in the 18th century, did not occur in a manner that the
Europeans intended, that is to make the Indians fight a more European style battle. The
Indians instead took the European philosophy for war and technology and adapted it to
their own fighting style, often employing the weapons far more effectively that the
Europeans themselves.
The Europeans had three lasting effects on Native American
warfare. The first was the concept of war on a national scale, the second was firearms and
trade goods, and the third was disease.
The traditional view of warfare in North America is that the brutality visited upon
colonists was a factor of native war and native war alone. Native Americans typically
fought limited wars for limited objectives. Their objective was the taking of prisoners and
loot and retreating back to their own village. The European concept of warfare was one of
seizing ground and holding it while annihilating the enemy.
The Indians first brush ith this total war was during the Pequot War of the 17th century. In 1637 British forces
destroyed a Pequot village in Connecticut along the Mystic River. Not only did they
destroy the village, but killed all the women and children prior to putting the village to
the torch. This affected the allied Indians so significantly that they left rather than take
part in the massacre.121 This was a direct contradiction to the skulking way of war and its
objectives; however it was a clear message to the Indians as to how the Europeans would
fight their wars in the future and how they would be treated in future wars between
Indians and Europeans. In 100 years of war, the French successfully annihilated over 50
percent of the Iroquois Mohawk population while at the same time allowed the Huron to
be culturally and anthropologically driven to extinction in between 1609 and 1701.
The second and arguably most important effect of Europeans on the Native
Americans is through the introduction of firearms and other trade goods. Firearms
fundamentally changed how the Indians fought. From its introduction in New France in
1609 by Samuel Champlain, the firearm has been a key component of the nature of
Indian warfare and its economy. While the Indians largely ignored adaptation of the
matchlock because the burning matches gave their positions away at night and to game,
they quickly adopted the flintlock musket. This was adapted as a one for one exchange
with the bow and arrow weapon systems that were being carried by the Indians. The
musket could fire faster, straighter, and had more killing power than an arrow and it
could kill a man at longer range. The hunting culture of the Indians merged well with the flintlock. They could shoot quickly at fleeting targets from a variety of positions.
The
Indians aimed their shots for precise targeting of game and enemy forces. Aimed fire
proved to be a great tactical advantage in the forests of North America. The Indians also
adopted the musket to the ambushes and raids of the skulking way of war. The Europeans
spent most of the 17th century passing laws restricting the sales of muskets and powder
to the Indians, but rivalries between the French, English, and Dutch kept the trade alive
and by 1701, most of all Indians encountered in the forest were armed. The combination
of the Indian, trained from youth for marksmanship and stealth, and the musket made the
skulking way of war the effective tactical system on the frontier.
The adaptation of the musket, while making the Indians more deadly and able to
defend themselves against the Europeans, also made them dependent on the Europeans.
The Europeans were the only people in North America with a consistent supply of
gunpowder and spare parts for their muskets. While the Indians could do some minor
repairs on their weapons, they could not make gunpowder. This strategic dependency
meant that the Indians would always be tied to some sort of alliance system with the
Europeans to supply themselves with vital war material.
The last major effect Europeans had on the Native American method of war was
through disease. Disease ravaged the population of Indians, reducing their numbers from
75,000 to 35,300, or roughly half, over the 17th century in the areas settled by Europeans. This disrupted the balance of power in the regions both between Indian groups as well as
Indian groups and Europeans. Intertribal warfare became more common as groups
attempted to replenish their numbers through raiding and adoption. Indian groups also
allied themselves with Europeans to protect themselves and secure their access to
resources as both Indians and Europeans moved in to fill the vacuums caused by
declining populations. In the end, the majority of the Huron, Algonquin, and Ottawa
people allied with the French and the Iroquois Confederacy allied with the English.
The skulking way of war quickly became the most effective tactical system in
North America. Both sides actively courted the Indians despite having grave misgivings
about torture, scalping, and pillaging after a battle. Louis Antoine de Bougainville,
Montcalm’s aide-de-camp, even went so far as to say that “One must be a slave to these
savages,” in regards to negotiating with them. Their prowess was that essential to war
efforts of the Europeans. If they could not be allied with, then they would have to be
negotiated to a state of neutrality so as not to face them in battle.
Throughout the 17th
century the Indians were able to raid the frontiers of Canada, Virginia, and Pennsylvania
with impunity. They could not defeat the regular soldiers of Britain and France in open
battle, nor could they exploit their tactical success with operational level campaign
planning or logistical independence. To that end, the Indians needed the skills of the Europeans. Together, the skulking way of war and the resources and planning of the
Europeans could be fully merged into a system that kept the British at arm’s length for
nine years.
That system was la petite guerre. The key to New France’s military success during the Indian Wars of the 17th
century, and the wars between the British and French Empires in the 18th century, up to
the early half of the Seven Years’ War, was the method of fighting known as the la petite
guerre. This small-scale irregular warfare was the employment of the ambush, raid, and
terror tactics of the Indians, the skulking way of war, practiced by French militia and
Troops de la Marine in North America. It was warfare that was a strategy of survival,
fought for limited objectives to disrupt enemy offensive actions. It was a key component
to the colonies’ survival as France was unwilling and unable to supply regular troops to
New France for her protection.
In the face of unrelenting Indian raids and ambushes in
the wars over access to the fur trade, the Canadian colonists adopted the fighting style of
the Indians and started to merge it with European planning and technology. By learning
from, leading, and utilizing the Indians and their manner of warfare, the colonists became
a hybrid force of Indian allies and French militias that secured New France until the
surrender of the colony in 1763 after a European style war fought in the latter half of the
Seven Years’ War.
Several factors combined to create la petite guerre. The first were the harsh
realities of New France in terms of its location, its resource base, and the attitudes of the
French government. The second was the history of the colony that drove the colonists to adopt this method of fighting. The North American warfare of the 17th century cemented
the need for the colonists to fight in their own defense. These two factors are key to
understanding the formation of la petite guerre.
The location of New France was a key factor in the adoption of la petite guerre.
Its location in the New World, far from Europe made resourcing the colonists and troops
stationed there difficult. The Canadian leadership realized that it was unlikely that the
French government will send troops to garrison the frontier colony. The King of France,
Louis XIV, and his government had decided that troops would be sent to garrison the
more profitable colonies of the Caribbean and not the frontier colony of New France. Furthermore, they would not risk a war with the other European powers that could draw
France’s troop strength away from the homeland in Europe. This was a result of French
military might waning due to the expensive Thirty Years War of the 1600s which had
reduced France’s ability to project French troops throughout their empire. Any response
by French regulars required reinforcement from the Caribbean.
This placed the onus of
defense on the colonists themselves and their militias who had little training except what
they experienced fighting and interacting with the local Indians and through military
necessity. This interaction and fighting experience led to the tactics of la petite guerre.
The second factor for the adoption of la petite guerre was the amount of resources
required in the colony for the equipping and training of regular forces. The French
Canadians were economically and numerically inferior to the British throughout the history of their colonies in the New World. In 1687 the British had a 20:1 advantage over
the France’s population with a staggering 200,000 to 10,000 advantage. This remained
consistent and, at the height of both colonies’ populations prior to the start of the Seven
Years’ War, the British population outnumbered the French, 1.5 million to 55,000.
Combined with poor agricultural production to support a larger population, this ratio
made the utilization of Indians as allies and surrogates as an economy of force measure
essential. Canadian warfare would have to be on the cheap and with limited resources;
long campaigns and the exploitation of tactical victories were not possible. Survival was
the sole objective.
The government of New France spent a significant amount of
money courting the Indians to fight with and for them as they were now essential to
survival of the colony. As more Indians joined the French settlements near
missionaries, or traded with the French near frontier forts, the French learned the fishing,
trapping, navigating, and other essential skills for survival on the frontier. They also were
students of how the Indians conducted warfare and the militias and Troops de la Marine,
colonial uniformed soldiers, learned the skulking way of war and its application on the
frontier.
The attitude of the French government and warfare in the North American theater
of the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries also played a part in the adaptation of la petite
guerre. Warfare on the European continent was on a massive scale compared to the North American continent. An engagement near the French village of Malplaquet in 1709 was
fought by 190,000. This was more than fought in the entirety of the North American
conflicts during King William’s War (1689-1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), and
King George’s War (1744-1748) combined.
New France was not a theater of note to
the French government, nor did they have the material to fully resource warfare there.
This meant that wars in North America, particularly for the French, were fought entirely
by French Canadian militias, Troops de La Marine, and their Indian allies against the far
more numerous English militias and their Indian allies. The French forces were not able
to make any lasting contributions to the war, except to defend the colony against English
incursions until France could negotiate a settlement that would retain the colony and its
territory.139 Like the lack of resources, the lack of importance placed on New France and
the diversion of resources to fight on the European continent drove the Canadians to
adopt la petite guerre in an attempt disrupt larger British forces before they could invade
the colony.
The need to adopt la petite guerre is also a result of the military history of the
colony. From Champlain’s first interactions with the Indians in 1609, the colony began a
nearly 150 years of constant conflict between either the Indians or the British and their
Indian allies. French military history in North America can be characterized into two
major areas that taught the Canadians the value of la petite guerre: the wars with the Iroquois in the 17th century including the only employment of French army regulars, or
Troops de Terre, in North America until the Seven Years’ War, and the frontier raiding
of the Imperial wars of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. These conflicts provided
the breadth of experience and the justification behind adopting la petite guerre.
The history of war between the Canadians of New France and the Iroquois began
as early as the colony itself, when Champlain killed two Iroquois chiefs with one shot of
his harquebus at a battle with his allied Huron and Algonquin near Ticonderoga, New
York in 1609. This conflict would continue until a final peace in 1701 and was fought,
as intendant of New France Jean Talon stated in 1667, “no more good faith than between
the most ferocious animals”
Champlain had allied the French settlements with the
Huron, Abenakis, Algonquin, Huron, and other tribes in the area to ensure trading and the
economic survival of the new colony. In exchange, these Indians asked for the assistance
from the French with their conflicts with the Iroquois. From 1610-1615, Champlain and
the allied tribes were successful in routing a 100+man Iroquois war party from the
Richelieu Valley and the surrounding areas near modern day Montreal, Quebec. The
Iroquois had “not recovered from their first terror of the arquebuse.” That would soon
change. In 1615 Champlain assisted his allies in an invasion of the Iroquois territory. This
attack failed to capture a single Iroquois village and they were repulsed after suffering
heavy casualties in an attack on a fortified Iroquois village. The air of invulnerability that Champlain brought with him had ended and the ability of the French and their Indian
allies to disrupt and prevent Iroquois raiders had ended as well.
From 1615-1627 Iroquois raids on the missions and settlements of New France
increased steadily and the Iroquois could raid with impunity along the frontier. They
focused their attacks on the St. Lawrence valley settlements and prevented any
meaningful expansion of the colony or fur trading. Quebec’s population still remained
low, with approximately 60-81 colonists and only 17 cultivated acres. In 1630, with the
population of only 100, Champlain and his allies again attempted to go to war with the
Iroquois with disastrous results. The French learned that the skulking way of war was a
war of exhaustion and one that the Indians would eventually win if things went
unchecked.
In 1649 the Huron nation was essentially destroyed by the Iroquois and its
power base removed from the region. The removal of the key partner from the French
fully exposed the French to the Iroquois war parties. Surviving Huron were absorbed into
neighboring tribal groups. For 15 years, without benefit of early warning or support, the
French remained bottled up in their stockades. They could only move to farm their land
when they could mass a large enough group of armed men to scare off the raiders or as a
Jesuit missionary stated, “The Iroquois used to keep up closely confined that we did not
even dare to till lands that were under the cannon of the forts.”
These raids gave the
Canadians ample opportunity to suffer at the hands of the skulking way of war and to
learn its tactics, techniques, and procedures. They absorbed the violence of action the raids were conducted with and knew that no quarter could be expected and that no
individual, man, woman, or child was safe. The Canadians countered when possible with
raids of their own and patrols to deter Iroquois raiding parties. When the French
government finally committed French regular army soldiers to fight in Canada, the
Canadian settlers there would assist through the adaptation and application of the same
tactics that had been applied against them.148
In 1661 the French government reorganized the government of Quebec in
response to the problems with population and the growing Indian threat to the region.
They named a veteran soldier as Governor-General, Daniel de Remy, and dispatched
1200 French Regular soldiers of the Carignan-Salieres Regiment from Quadalope under
Lieutenant-General Alexandre de Prouville, marquis de Tracy to Canada to either bring
the Iroquois to terms or destroy them. Tracy’s two expeditions taught the Canadians
two things. The first lesson was that regulars could use overwhelming force to defeat the
Iroquois in tactical and operational campaigns; however strategic defeat was not possible.
Second, it taught them that European army tactics would suffer horrendous casualties in
the frontier war against the Indians. Ultimately, the key lesson was that a hybrid force
consisting of professional soldiers and capable of fighting the frontier war of the Indians
was the best force to defend themselves with.
Tracy’s first action was to conduct an assessment of where the Iroquois raiding
parties were coming from. As they were coming by way of Lake Chaplain, to the Richelieu River and into the St Lawrence valley, Tracy built four forts along that route to
deny the Iroquois access to this line of communication; Fort Sorel where the Richelieu
meets the St Lawrence; Fort Chambly near the rapids at the mouth of the river in to Lake
Champlain; Fort Theresa at the mouth of the river into Lake Champlain; and Fort St
Anne at Ile La Motte near the outlet of Lake Champlain.
These forts did not stop the
Iroquois raids; instead they altered their landing points and provided early warning for
the settlers of impending Iroquois raids and extending the line of defense away from the
fertile St Lawrence. The key benefit these forts provided was as a launching point for
actions against the Iroquois. The Canadians could finally take the fight to the Indians. Tracy’s first expedition and the first major offensive action against the Iroquois
since Champlain’s in 1615, departed on 9 January 1666 and consisted of a mixed force of
300 French regulars, 200 Canadians and their Indian allies.153 This force was largely
unsuccessful in bringing the Mohawk to battle and suffered casualties in Mohawk
ambushes, losing four French soldiers, and due to the harsh winter conditions, losing 300
soldiers to cold weather injuries.
The force travelled from Quebec City through the
Richelieu valley and ultimately to Schenectady, New York, a distance of over 359 miles,
where they skirmished with an Iroquois trading party, losing ten soldiers. They conducted
two patrols around Schenectady and located an Iroquois village that was empty of warriors. The French burned the village’s supplies and returned to Canada over the next
two weeks being harassed by Iroquois ambushes but without losing soldiers.
This campaign taught the French many lessons. The French regulars, used to
warfare in the spring campaign seasons of Europe, were unable to cope with the harsh
conditions of travelling with heavy loads over rough terrain using snowshoes and were
not equipped for the frigid cold. The Canadians on the other hand had learned from their
native allies and were properly equipped and were rugged travelers. Second was that a
European force could not move in the forest without coming under attack from Indians.
They needed the security of soldiers skilled in forest warfare.
The leader of the
operation, Daniel de Remy de Courcelle, the new governor of New France, was so
impressed with the Canadian’s ability to operate in the forest that he used them as
vanguard, rearguard, and flankers for the security of his force. He also mandated that any
action by French regulars must take a contingent of Canadians. Expected engagements
were skirmishes for which the French regulars were not trained. The Canadians, used to
forest engagements and guerilla tactics, inflicted the majority of the casualties on the
Indians. The volley fire of the regulars was not as effective as the aimed shots of the
Indians and Canadians. More importantly, the raid showed the Iroquois that they were not
safe in their own territory and that attack could come at any time of year.
Tracy dispatched a second expedition in October 1666 in response to Iroquois
raids during the spring and summer months while at the same time they conducted peace talks with the French. This time Tracy sought to use overwhelming force against the
Iroquois to bring them to the peace table. He departed with a force of 600 French
regulars, 600 Canadians, and 100 Indian allies. The French were again impressed with the
ability of the Canadians to conduct themselves in the forests and as reconnaissance force
in support of the main body of French soldiers. The force sailed through Lake Champlain
to Lake George and up the Mohawk River to the main support area of the Iroquois.
Rather than face Tracy’s force, the Iroquois abandoned their forts and moved further up
river and away from the French. The French burned four of the Iroquois’ main villages
and enough supplies, crops, and foodstuffs to “nourish all of Canada for two years.”
This forced the Iroquois to come to the negotiation table and sign a peace treaty with the
French in 1667.
Though this victory was a victory for French military might, it did not defeat the
Iroquois who would again begin to raid the colony again in the 1680s. The Tracy
operations showed the value of regular soldiers; however the French government was
unwilling to permanently station soldiers in Canada due to the cost and vulnerability of
the Caribbean colonies. The French government devised a plan that encouraged any
soldiers from the Carignan-Salieres to settle in Canada as the unit was redeployed to
France in 1668 through payments. Four hundred soldiers settled and became the
independent companies of the Troops de la Marine.
158 They formed a nucleus of formal
military experience to add to the Canadian militia. This experience and training formed
the last part of la petite guerre, French regular soldiers, led by Canadian officers experienced in the Indian way of war, and augmented by Canadian militia and Indian
allies. With the departure of Tracy’s Troops de Terre, France would not deploy regulars
to North America again until 1755. This meant that defense of the colony again fell on
to the under-resourced and undermanned Canadian militia and newly formed Troops de
la Marine. When the Iroquois began to raid the colony again in the 1680s and the
Imperial wars of the 18th Century began, the Canadians were much more proficient at
defending themselves and taking the fight to the enemy thorough la petite guerre. As
Jacques de Meulles stated in 1683, “They have two thousand six hundred soldiers, and
are well seasoned for war. But our youth is hardened and quite used to the woods.
Besides we make war better than they do.”
From 1689-1748 the colony of New France was involved in the North American
theater of the wars between England and France in the European continent collectively
known as the Imperial Wars. These wars, King William’s War (1689-1697), Queen
Anne’s War (1702-1713), and King George’s War (1744-1748), would serve as an
opportunity for the Canadians to perfect la petite guerre and would be a preview of the
first half of the Seven Years’ War. As this theater was the ancillary theater in the wars, no
regular troops were dispatched to fight on the continent. Instead, these wars were fought
by the militias and Indian allies on both sides. While the Canadians possessed the better
fighter, a man who in “the forest warfare of skirmish and surprise there were few to
match him,” the advantage lay with the British who had the superior resources and
fighting men. Though as most historians agree and Francis Parkman states, “The New England Man was the same material that Cromwell formed his invincible “Ironsides” but
had little forest experience.”
During these wars la petite guerre was practiced to great effect, however the fact
that the war would be fought for survival also was maintained. Canada simply did not
have the manpower to seize the strategic initiative and exploit a tactical victory. At the
start of King William’s War in 1690, New France went on the offensive. Frontenac, the
new governor of Canada sent three raiding forces deep into English territory to
discourage any attacks on New France and to secure the neutrality or alliances of Indians
in the area through a show of strength.162 The Indians of North America often sided on
the side who had the most promise of victory. The three forces, all mixed forces
consisting of Troops de La Marine, Canadian militia, and allied Indians, mostly Abnaki,
targeted Fort Loyal in Portland, Maine, Salmon Falls in New Hampshire, and
Schenectady, New York in the dead of winter when the English thought they were safe.
All of these attacks were successful. In the case of Fort Loyal and Salmon Falls, both
surrendered in exchange for safety. After they had been captured, the men, women, and
children were handed over to the Indians, tortured, and killed.
As previously mentioned, the Indians fought for prisoners and spoils. To deny
them this would have lost the respect of the Indians at a time when they were needed the
most. In the town of Schenectady the French and Indians infiltrated the town and
simultaneously attacked and killed all the inhabitants minus the Iroquois trading party
that was there at the same time. The British were incensed by this violence and retaliated with raids of their own into Canada. Most of these raids were defeated by French and
Indian allies ambushing and disrupting these attacks, however a few managed to
penetrate these defenses and attack French settlements near Montreal.
When the Peace of
Ryswick came in 1697, the frontier was largely unchanged and the Canadians had
practiced the strategy and tactics of la petite guerre to keep Canada safe from invasion.164
In 1693, Frontenac took his forces to war against the English allies, the Iroquois.
In three years he succeeded in conducting deep long distance raids utilizing mixed forces
that destroyed three Iroquois villages in 1693 and two more villages in 1696. From 1697–
1699 these mixed forces continued their destruction of Iroquois raiding war parties,
taking more than seventy casualties per war party destroyed, by launching offensive
actions from the forts that guarded the Canadian frontier. The French were also able to
penetrate deeply into Iroquois territory again and razed the Iroquois fortifications and
home settlements. These stunning blows, coupled with the neutrality of the English due
to the treaties that ended King William’s War, forced the Iroquois to the peace table that
culminated with the peace treaty signed in 1701 at Montreal. This peace secured Iroquois
neutrality until the Seven Years’ War.
Queen Anne’s War was mostly a repeat of King William’s War. La petite guerre
was refined and practiced by the French continuing to raid British settlements. This time,
they took care to avoid the Iroquois territory in the Mohawk River valley and confined their raids to New England.
A particularly deadly raid typified la petite guerre. In the
dead of winter 1704, covering a distance of over 500 miles, a force of 50 Canadians and
200 Indian allies attacked Deerfield, Massachusetts. The British again believed
themselves to be protected due to the season and had little in the way of defense of the
settlement. The result was 180 of the 250 population was killed or captured and half of
the town was burned. La petite guerre had struck a devastating blow.167 However, this
would be the only real attack of note. The French continued to raid the frontier
settlements of New England while the English militias attempted to defend themselves.
Attempts by the British to raid Canadian settlements ended in confusion or defeat at the
hands of French ambushes due to the British colonies’ inability to coordinate and work
together. The British navy and army attempted to take Quebec with 55 ships and 5,300
men and failed, losing 900 men and nine ships to wrecks caused by fog and storms near
the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River.
168 This ended their furthest incursion into New
France. The Peace of Utrecht (1713) brought an end to the war and true peace for the
Anglo-French conflict in North America for 30 years, although for allied Indians of the
French, the war was not over and war chiefs, like the Grey Lock, would continue to raid
New England for their own reasons.
During King George’s War, the French again practiced la petite guerre to
frightening effect. Once war was declared in 1744, the French opened with a devastating act of la petite guerre by raiding the towns of Saratoga and Hoosic in New York. Over 27
raids were so successful that over 100 prisoners were taken, all of the houses and crops
were burned and citizens had abandoned the colony north of Albany.170 Any counter raid
was either ambushed by the French and Indians or never sighted Canadian or Canadian
settlements. As one English observer stated, “The only Englishman to have sighted a
French settlement during the course of the war had either been a prisoner or under a
banner of truce.”171 In the east, the French launched a daring raid on Cans, Nova Scotia.
The French successfully raided and captured the settlement that was lost in the Treaty of
Utrecht. The French attempted to follow up this success and in retaliation the English
captured the strategic fort of Louisburg. This was the only real victory for the English and
tactically the war was a victory for the French having fended off any invasion of Canada
proper and any retaliatory attacks in the Vermont-New York Theater.172 La petite guerre
was a stunning success achieving great results considering the fact that the French were
outnumbered 1.5 million to 55,000. At this point the Canadians had gained experience in
la petite guerre and considered themselves to be a challenge tactically for the English or
Indians they would face on the field of battle. This would benefit them in the coming
conflict with the British, although it would not be as beneficial to them once the conflict
was turned in to a European conflict.
The strategy of la petite guerre was formed around the Canadian’s particular
strategic situation. The territorial span of New France at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War spread from the Saint Lawrence River in the east to Lake Superior in the west
and down the Mississippi River to Louisiana. With a population of only 55,000, la petite
guerre was designed to grant Canada the ability to project more power than its population
and military resources allowed. Bernd Horn puts it clearly when he states “it was a
strategy designed from a position of weakness.” Its means was not to seize territory or to
destroy the enemy’s army. It was designed to sow terror by attacking the enemy’s
population year round and deprive them of the will to fight.
It was also designed to
disrupt large forces and prevent them from massing for an invasion. If the British were
too busy defending their frontier they could not invade Canada. Governor Vaudreuil, who
would use the strategy to great effect during the Seven Years’ War, said that “nothing is
more calculated to discourage the people of these English colonies and to make them
wish for a return to peace.”173 La petite guerre was designed as a low budget, minimal
resource, guerrilla style warfare. The French were able to use it to conduct raids and
spoiling attacks into enemy territory from a series of fortifications along the frontier
located at key locations, such as Fort Niagara, Little Niagara, and Petit Rapide on Lake
Ontario, which allowed access into and out of New France.174 By monitoring these lines
of communication, the Canadians could attack a force that was emerging or ambush
passing war parties. These forts were key in maintaining the key social, political, and
economic links to the local native populations who could also provide early warning
extending the reach of the French as well as extending and exposing the lines of
communication of the invading forces. These Indian allies were essential in providing the manpower to make up for the lack of French soldiers needed to fight la petite guerre.
These Indians, their methods of warfare, and the theory of terror to dishearten the enemy
would be echoed in the tactics of la petite guerre as well.
Much like the strategy, the tactics of la petite guerre emphasized terror and
surprise. The tactics of la petite guerre were nothing more than the Indian’s skulking
tactics of raids and ambushes coupled with more detailed planning on an operational
level to link these actions into a campaign plan. They took the Indian way of war and
applied European planning to it. In King George’s War the raids in the Vermont-New
York Theater were able to fix the militias of those two states in place at the same time a
raid in Nova Scotia took place to harass British troops there.176 Unlike their European
counterparts, the Canadians practiced marksmanship and took aimed shots at specific
targets. Unique to the Canadians is the ability to develop tactics combining the raid and
ambush tactics of the Indians while augmenting them by overcoming their hesitation to
attack fixed sites.
They coupled these tactics with an essential part of any action that is conducted
by a numerically inferior force, speed and violence of action. The attacking force must
move quickly and overwhelm the enemy with sheer raw violence or the superior numbers
will eventually dominate. This is a technique still taught to modern army organizations in
their infantry schools.
An illustration of these tactics coupled with the violence of action, indeed the
whole of la petite guerre concept, was a raid on Fort Clinton in Orange Country, New
York on 30 June 1747 by St Luc de la Corne. The French force consisted of 20 French
Troops de la Marine and 200 Indian allies. The fort was defended by over 400 British
soldiers. Most of the Indians refused to attack a fixed position. Instead St Luc designed a
ruse to draw out the defenders. Starting from a position a little over a mile away, he
moved forward and established an ambush in the woods near the fort and had several
Indians who were present fire their muskets at the fort. When the British returned fire the
Indians pretended to run away acting as if they had been wounded or were scared off. As
he predicted, the British sallied 120 soldiers to pursue the Indians. When the British were
out of musket range from the fort but still within sight, St Luc sprung his ambush. The
force fired one full fusillade and then without reloading attacked the British with
tomahawks and knives. In the end they took 40 prisoners and 28 scalps. Only 25 returned
to the fort. The British would later call St Luc the “Bloody Morning Scout.” This ambush
was violent and succeeded in demoralizing the British into staying in the fort, which
allowed the French freedom of maneuver through the area. It also showed the British that
the French could strike wherever and whenever they wanted. This caused the British to
send larger forces into the area and prevented them from massing for an invasion of
Canada.
The mixed force represented above was a key component to the success of la
petite guerre. It was comprised of four parts, Canadian or French officers, Troops de la Marine, Canadian militia, and Indian allies.179 A force typically was led by one or more
officers, and formed around a nucleolus of 10-20 Troops de la Marine, a similar number
of militia and a slightly larger number of native allies. This could be subdivided down
into smaller organizations to control a larger force or individual pieces.
It was common
for a force of just Troops de la Marines and native allies to conduct operations. Although
each of these were effective on their in their own right, together they were force that no
continental force, Colonial or Indian, could match in battle.
The force was led by trained officers that were either Canadian or French born
officers that were enticed to settle in the colonies. The French government handed out
payments as incentives for French officers and military personnel to serve and live in the
colonies rather than station soldiers there permanently. These officers were absorbed
into the colonial culture and readily adopted by the Canadians. Unlike their English
regular counterparts, these officers were involved in nearly constant frontier war that
exposed them to the Indian way of war from their arrival all the way to the beginning of
the Seven Years’ War.
At the start of the war, some officers such as St Luc de la Corne
had been actively fighting against the Iroquois and Fox Indians since 1732. This meant he
had 15 years of experience in la petite guerre when he mounted his raid on Fort Clinton
in 1747. Additionally these officers were key in manning and running of frontier forts.
They were on the front line of managing the relations with the Indian allies on the borders of the frontier and containing any unrest while keeping British influence away from
French Indian allies. Their experience in these relations was critical to keeping Indian
allies happy and shaping their interests to match those of the French.
The second part of this force was the Troops de la Marine. These soldiers were
trained professional soldiers that had been recruited in France by the Ministry of the
Marine by offering incentives to French soldiers to settle in the colonies. They were
charged with protecting crown property and acting as regular soldiers should they be
needed to fight a conflict. They were independent of the army and served at the direction
of the Governor-General of New France. They were organized into companies of about
100-120 men each and served throughout the frontier. Each company was led by a
captain, with two lieutenants, two ensigns, and two cadets. The enlisted soldiers
comprised of two sergeants, two corporals, and the rest were privates. Sometimes there
would only be an officer or NCO together with three to four soldiers manning a fort. At
the larger forts, like Detroit, a full company could be stationed. As with the officers, these
men were involved in the frontier style of warfare from the time they arrived at the
garrison until the start of the Seven Years’ War and some of the could have over thirty
years of experience in la petite guerre when the war started.
The third element of the force was the Canadian militia. These were volunteer
organizations that were comprised of local settlers and trappers, the coeurs de bois, which
would fight as needed for the colonies’ and their settlement’s defense. While these men
were not fully trained soldiers their significant experience defending against Indian raids and surviving in the wilderness made them naturals at the frontier way of warfare. They
performed very well in combat and Montcalm commended their action to Governor
Vaudreuil after the battle of Carillon by saying, “The colonial troops and the Canadians
have caused us great regret that there were not in greater number.” Quite simply the
Canadian militia was the most experienced militia in frontier warfare and more trained
than his counterpart in the British colonies.
The fourth part of the force was the native allies. These were often the most
important and most numerous portion of the force. They saw themselves as allies and not
members of the force. As such, great care had to be taken when dealing with them to
maximize their effectiveness and to keep them involved in the fight. Though they could
be fickle and leave if the risk was too high, or if they perceived that there was no chance
of plunder or prisoners, there was no other force as skilled in frontier warfare or with
better knowledge of the terrain. Most importantly their numbers were essential to the
French in order to minimize greater strength of the British as much as possible. French
survival depended on the Indians being a member of their forces.
La petite guerre was a system of war fighting that was essential to the French
survival and expansion in North America. Its origins were nested in the harsh reality of
poor resources and the fact that France was unable to dedicate regular troops to the
protection of it colony. Without this clever combination of native tactics applied with the
concept of European operational planning, France would have been defeated long before the Seven Years’ War since it was vastly outnumbered by both the hostile Iroquois
nations and British colonies to the south. Its very survival depended on allying with the
Indians and learning the way they fought
The strategy of using raids and ambushes to sow terror throughout the British and
Indian colonies was extremely effective and allowed New France to attain the strategic
goal of survival through purely tactical means. It defeated the Iroquois nation in a war of
exhaustion that lasted over 100 years and kept the English from mounting a successful
invasion of Canada over three wars.188 It was so successful in fixing British forces in
British controlled territory through long distance winter raids that the governors of
Virginia and Pennsylvania each raised over 1,000 men purely for the defense of the
colonies.
La petite guerre was not learned overnight but perfected through 150 years of
consistent military action and exposure to Indian warfare. In the end it was a devastating
way of warfare that the British regular army was not used to. Defeats of larger regular
forces, such as Major General Edward Braddock’s at Fort Duquesne in 1755, showed the
method would be a force to be reckoned. War in North America would be a long and
bitter struggle that had the first half of the Seven Years’ War being to the French
advantage.
Irregular warfare was a way of life for the Indians and European colonists of the
17th and 18th centuries in North America. For the Indians, the skulking way of war was a natural way of fighting that adapted their hunting culture, terrain, and world view into a
method of warfare that accentuated speed, surprise, and violence of action into a cohesive
fighting system. It caught the Europeans off guard and shocked them into adapting to a
totally new way of fighting that conflicted at the base level with their own outlook on
war.
For the badly outnumbered French Canadian colonists in New France, it was
essential for their survival that they make friends with the friendly Indian nations of New
France and co-opt their way of war.192 This adaptation into la petite guerre and their
combined forces of well experienced soldiers and militia members enabled the small
number of French colonists to expand their territorial and commercial empire in North
America but was dependent on the use of Indian allies to make up for the fact that the
Canadians were vastly outnumbered at the outset of the war. The Canadians learned from
their Indian allies and la petite guerre was key during the Imperial wars of the 17th and
18th centuries.
Skillful use of la petite guerre and the skulking way of war defeated
large British forces, terrorized the British settlements and was capable of striking in any
season at seemingly any target. These styles of warfare would form the basis of French
colonial strategy during the 17th and 18th century as well as their military strategy during
the Imperial wars of the early 1700s.194 This would continue to be the case during the Seven Years’ War until the introduction of the French Army and Montcalm in 1756.195
La petite guerre would truly make it a French and Indian War,
CHAPTER 4
VICTORIES IN LA PETITE GUERRE
We was cowards, was, we because we knowed better than to fight Injuns like redbacked ijits across the ocean is used to fight: because we wouldn’t stand up rubbin’ shoulders like a passel o’sheep and let the red-skins make sieves outen us!196— Tom Faucett, Provincial soldier at the Battle of Monongahela
For the entirety of its existence, New France, specifically Canada, has been a
colony in conflict. Whether against the Iroquois for almost the entire 17th century or
fighting the imperial wars against the British over the undefined borderlands between
their colonies, the French colonists in the French and Indian War were no strangers to
conflict. As has been discussed, the Canadians met these challenges through la petite
guerre.
The war was fought starting with the fall of Fort Necessity on 4 July 1754 in
Pennsylvania and would be fought by leaders who had been raised in the Troupes de la
Marine. They had honed their skills in the wars against the Iroquois and the British and
most had over ten years of fighting in North America when they met their British
counterparts on the fields, trails, and in the forts during the war. The war would not be
fought with French troops and experience alone, the French war effort relied upon
numerous factors to be successful. It needed solid relations with the Native Americans to provide fighters and intelligence support; it needed soldiers, Troupes de la Marine, and it
needed a strategy, in this case Vaudreuil’s defense forward utilizing la petite guerre.
This combination would help the French to dominate the tactical battlefield in the
early part of the war, from 1754-1758. These victories were not due to French fighters
alone. The key component to their mixed forces that terrorized the farms and frontier of
the North American borderlands, as we have seen in chapter 3, was the Native
Americans. The Indians allowed the French to even out the disparity in numbers of
colonists and military forces between the French and the British in North America. The
Indians also provided the French the manpower and expertise to fully exploit the
wilderness environment and the tactics of la petite guerre. These benefits were seen in
almost every French victory of the war. Indians were used as partisans throughout the
war in raids and ambushes to disrupt or destroy larger British forces in the wilderness and
they were used to shape operations during sieges of fixed fortifications by conducting
cordons, reconnaissance, or raids on smaller outposts. They were useful in meeting
engagements and battles to defeat British irregular forces.
Though the French and Indian War is rife with examples of the French utilizing
their Native American allies to great effect to achieve tactical victories, three stand out as
principal examples that are definitive, and clear in their illustration. First, the defeat of
Major-General Edward Braddock at Fort Duquesne in 1755 shows the utilization of
Indians for the survival of the fort and also their use in defeating a larger British force. Second, their use as shaping operations to facilitate and set conditions for the capture of
Fort Oswego, New York in 1756 by combining regular and irregular warfare to achieve
operational effects was as important as was their defeat of a British irregular force, the
famous Rogers Rangers, at the Battle on Snowshoes near Fort Ticonderoga, New York in
1758.
Following the start of hostilities in North America with the defeat of George
Washington at Fort Necessity on 4 July 1754, the French landed another stunning defeat
on a numerically superior British force. The defeat of Braddock (1695-1755) one year
later was the first major military engagement of British regular forces of the Seven Years’
War and a stinging reminder of how the French planned to conduct the war by using the
same frontier warfare methods they had in the wars of the early 18th century to counter
the British advantage in numbers. How the French and Indians conducted this battle as a
mixed force, led by a French officer, to defeat a larger British force would be a preview
of the tactics and use of Indian allies that the French would employ throughout the war
and would have profound impacts on the Indian-European relationships shaping the war
effort on both sides.
After the defeat of Washington, the French and British both took stock of their
strategic situations. The French were not prepared for another war and were still heavily
in debt after the wars of the early 18th century. While they had a large army, their navy
was small in comparison to the British. As result the French government would rather pursue a campaign in Europe to confront England where they had superior numbers. The
British would rather fight in North America, where the navy would prevent
reinforcements from arriving for the French and they could win. Nevertheless, both sides
dispatched troops to North America, the British sent two regiments under Braddock to
Virginia, and the French dispatched six regiments to Canada. These six regiments would
not take part in the battle, as they arrived in Louisburg and Quebec, Canada too late.
They would take part in the fighting for Lake George later that same year.
When Braddock arrived in North America on 19 February 1755, he immediately
began to implement the strategy that the British government had developed. This plan
was ignorant of the effects the North American terrain would have on its execution and
feasibility. At a meeting of governors in Alexandria, Virginia, in April 1755, Braddock
laid out the four-part strategy. He would attack Fort Duquesne in Pennsylvania with his
newly arrived 44th and 48th Regiments. The 50th and 51st regiments, reactivated from
the King George’s War and manned with colonials, under the command of William
Shirley would seize Fort Niagara. William Johnson was made superintendent of the
Iroquois and would use Mohawk and colonial soldiers to attack Fort St Frederic at Crown
Point, New York. The last component would seize the French forts, Fort St John and Fort
Beausejour, on the Chignecto isthmus in Nova Scotia.
Braddock, the main effort of the campaign, had the most difficult movement of
the attacks. He would march his forces along the Potomac River from Fort Cumberland,
Virginia, and north into the Youghiogheny drainage and into the Monongahela Valley He would have to build the road to carry his supplies and cannon as he went, which
slowed his advance and spread out his forces. A sea movement to Philadelphia and an
overland movement through the easily, relatively, traversable terrain of Pennsylvania to
the Forks would have shortened the journey by as many as 100 miles, however this was
in contradiction to the plans that had been made in London by the British government and
Braddock would not change his mind. His reputation for inflexibility and for strict
discipline would hinder him tactically in the coming battle as well. Braddock would have
one more mistake to make before he departed on his attack on 29 May 1755 and that was
in his interactions with the Indians.
Shortly before Braddock and his force left for the campaign, Braddock met with
George Croghan, the deputy intendant to William Johnson who was the Superintendent
for Indian Affairs, about Indian support to his expedition. In late May, a conference was
held between Braddock and Oneida, Delaware, and Mohawk chiefs. Braddock’s
contempt for the Indians caused him to commit two errors that would have grave
repercussions. First, Braddock disregarded a sketch of Fort Duquesne that was presented
by a Mohawk chief, despite it being drawn by a British officer. The second was simple
lack of strategic vision. The Ohio Indians were interested in removing the many allied
Indians that the French had brought with them from Canada and the pays d’en haut.
These Indians were dominating the Ohio Valley’s native Indians of Delawares,
Shawnees, and Mingos. The Delaware Chief Shingas asked Braddock what he intended
to do with the land once he had driven the French away. Braddock replied that the British
should inherit the land. Shingas then asked that Braddock allow the Indians that were friends to the British to be permitted to cohabitate freely with self-rule, so as not to be
driven to their enemies the French. Braddock again replied that “no savage should inherit
the land.”206 The Indians, enraged, left and, of the 40 that came to join the attack only
seven stayed.
On 29 May 1755, Braddock departed with his 2,200 man force and began his
movement from Fort Cumberland to attack Fort Duquesne. His army marched for six
weeks building a road though the forest. He deployed his Indian scouts, along with flank
and lead security. By 18 June, he had only advanced 30 miles from Fort Cumberland. His
men were suffering from dysentery, fever, and dehydration.
Braddock, who saw the
pace as unreasonable, decided to detach an advance force that would move ahead of the
main body, which would remain with the cannon and heavy baggage. This advance guard
moved far quicker than the baggage and artillery portions. Braddock continued to be
optimistic about his prospects and continued to push forward, dispersing the few Indian
and French scouts encountered along the way, and suffering no casualties. On 9 July
1755, he had advanced to ten miles of Fort Duquesne, and met the French spoiling
attack.
In contrast the French were consolidating their position following the victory at
Fort Necessity the year earlier. The French government had dispatched troops in the
summer of 1755, but they would not arrive in time to assist in the battle against Braddock and the other movements the British were planning. Instead the French in North America
would be on their own until those reinforcements arrived. This was not unfamiliar to
them, as this had been the situation in the imperial wars of the 18th century to date.210
After Washington’s defeat, both sides understood the strategic importance of
fortifications along the river and the key terrain that Fort Duquesne represented due to its
location at the forks of three strategic lines of communication, the Allegheny, the
Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers.
The French immediately set about consolidating and
reinforcing their position in the fort awaiting the inevitable British counterattack. The leadership and situation of the French were ideal for the battle they were
about to face. A captain in the Troupes de la Marine named Claude-Pierre Pecaudy de
Contrecoeur commanded the French. He had a mixed force of approximately 1,600 men,
two companies of Troupes de la Marine, Canadian militia and allied Indians. The Indians
were the majority of the fighters numbering at approximately 800. Contrecoeur realized
that these Indians could not be depended upon to defend the ground of the Fort, but
would have to be enticed to fight for the French with promises of loot and plunder. He
decided to launch a spoiling attack to defeat the British prior to them getting into siege
range of the fort.
Contrecoeur’s second in command, and his replacement, Captain
Daniel-Hyacinthe-Marie Lienard de Beaujeu, would lead the attack. Beaujeu selected
Jen-Daniel Dumas, another partisan leader of the Troupes de la Marine to be his second
in command. Leading the Indian contingent of the force would be Sieur Charles-Michel
de Langlade, a half-Ottawa captain in the Troupes de la Marine. It is important to note hat all four of these individuals had extensive experience as raiders in King George’s
War, whereas Braddock was a novice in North American frontier warfare.
Beaujeu knew from his experience as a raider that the French needed to convince
the Indians to fight the battle with them. This was due as much to their fighting ability as
it was to the need for the French to make up their numbers to counter Braddock’s force.
Unlike Braddock however, Beaujeu also knew how to convince the Indians to fight for
him. On 8 July, he addressed the Indians that were at the fort dressed not as a French
officer but as a Native American war chief. He wore only his pants and painted his chest
in the style on an Indian warrior. His only indication of French military was his silver
gorget. After speaking to the Indians at length about fighting the British they asked for
the night to deliberate. On the morning of 9 July, Beaujeu departed to attack the British.
As he approached the assembled chiefs, again dressed as a Native warrior, they told him
they would not march. Beaujeu flexed his last muscle of cultural knowledge to secure
their efforts to fight by saying “I am determined to confront the enemy. What? Would
you let your Father go alone? I am certain to defeat them!”213 The Indian chiefs agreed to
fight with the French and Beaujeu’s war party departed with 637 Indians, 146 Canadian
Militia, and 108 Trouped de La Marine. Using the ground as cover and moving as Native
American hunters through the brush they made contact with Braddock’s advance force at
one o’clock in the afternoon on 9 July 1755.
The two forces fought a meeting engagement just seven miles away from the fort.
This area was dominated by a large hill to the east of the road. Braddock, having crossed
the river unopposed and thinking the French would not defend the fort did not push out a
scouting team to reconnoiter the fort. His advance force, led by Captain Gage, fired three
volley at the mixed French force at the extreme range of 200 yards. A lucky shot hit
Beaujeu in the head and he was killed instantly. Rather than flee, though their morale was
shaken, Dumas rallied his forces. While the Troupes de la Marine formed a blocking
position, Langlade, the Indians, and the Canadian militia began to deploy as skirmishers
around the flanks of the British column. This meeting engagement could not have worked
more effectively as an ambush if it was planned.
The Indians and Canadians began to
pour fire into the flanks and rear of the British forces. Their superior marksmanship,
taught since childhood, honed in hunting, and constant frontier raids made them far more
accurate than their British counterparts and allowed them to begin targeting the officers
and drummers to disrupt their orders. Indeed Lieutenant William Dunbar revealed that
almost all the officers in the advance party were killed when Braddock arrived on the
field. This was coupled with the ample cover the surrounding terrain provided them.
This area, just north of the Monongahela River was cleared of underbrush and served, in
times of peace, as a traditional hunting ground of the Indians in the area.
The ferocity of the Indian and Canadian fire with sporadic hand-to-hand combat
quickly combined with the loss of leadership to break the British formation. The clear fields of fire allowed the Indians to fire on the British, while the British could not return
fire as they could not identify any targets other than the French troops to their front. As
Francis Parkman stated in his history of the French and Indian War, “The troops broke
their ranks and huddled together in a bewildered mass, shirking from the bullets that cut
them down by scores.”
As his advance force laid destroyed, having abandoned two
cannons and in general retreat, Braddock arrived on the field and attempted to rally his
men. The regulars of the main force mixed with the survivors of the relief force and
instead of new organized lines, the men formed clumps of missed soldiers firing in all
directions while the Indians and Canadians continued to fire into their massed ranks.
Braddock rode to his men attempting to rally them and form them into lines, but it was
for naught. The men were too disorganized and too many of his junior officers were
killed or wounded, a full 63 of 86 were casualties.
Braddock himself had four horses shot
out from underneath him and his aide George Washington had two. After a three hour
battle and unable to gain fire superiority, Braddock ordered the retreat. As they retired
from the field, he was mortally wounded from a bullet that went through his arm and into
his lung. His force retreated in disorder leaving behind wounded, material, and baggage.
The French retired to the fort, and the Indians were allowed to plunder the field before
they returned to the fort. Of the 1400 man force engaged, Braddock lost a total of 1.060
men, of which 63 were officers and 997 enlisted, while French and Indian losses numbered less than 50. The day was a total victory for la petite guerre and a shock for
the British regular army in North America.
There are two lessons to be learned from Braddock’s defeat. First it showed the
French employing Native Americans in ways for which they were best suited. Second it
showed that cultural understanding was paramount in gaining and maintaining the
support of the Native Americans in the conflict.
The Battle at the Monongahela displayed a sound knowledge of la petite guerre
by the French and its application. Further it illustrated that they understood the fighting
style of the Native Americans. The French took the tactical lessons learned from fighting
the frontier wars of the early 18th century and capitalized on them. When they
employed the Indians on the flanks and utilized cover to engage in aimed shots versus
volley fire, the French employed the Native Americans where they could do the most
damage on the battlefield.
The second lesson of Braddock’s defeat was the importance of knowing the
Indians’ culture and motivations in order to secure their assistance. The French prior to
the battle exploited their knowledge of the Indians’ culture by appealing to their pride and
warrior nature, at one point calling them cowards for not fighting in order to cajole them
into fighting the British. They also allowed them to plunder the field for payment, afurther exploitation of their culture. Lastly, the French were victorious. Native
Americans supported strength and sided with the nation that met their interests and was
perceived as strongest. By securing victory against the British, assisted by Braddock’s
cultural ignorance, the French secured the continued neutrality of the Iroquois, as well as
securing the allegiance of the Ohio Valley tribes of the Shawnee, Delaware, and
Mingos.
The second example of Native American employment by the French in the French
and Indian War was the raiding and destruction of Fort Bull in New York during the Fort
Oswego, campaign in 1756. This is an important example because it shows that the
French, understanding Indian culture and la petite guerre, combined irregular and regular
operations and employed them as a shaping operation, an operation that sets conditions
for the successful completion of the main or decisive operation, in a larger campaign to
take a fixed fortification. An attack against a fixed site was something the Indians would
not do.
The forts at Oswego were a key strategic outpost for the British, and was going to
be the launching point for William Shirley’s attack in 1755 against the French at Fort
Niagara. It was built in 1724 as a British trading post in order to trade with the Indians
along the southern banks of Lake Ontario. Over the next thirty years until the start of the
Seven Years’ War, the trading post grew into a fort and eventually was reinforced by the British into a stone fort.
The fort of Oswego rapidly became a thorn in the side of
French trade with the English and Abbey Piquet noted that Fort Frontenac, Kingston,
Ontario, was devoid of Indian traders as they had all traveled to Oswego for cheaper
British goods. More important than trade however, was the fort’s strategic location on the lake.
This gave the British excellent access to the interior of New France and positioned them
to attack via very rapid water transportation and access to the Saint Lawrence River. It
also provided the British with contact through which to lure away, or dissuade, the
Indians on which the French heavily relied.
This contact was so noticeable and
significant a threat that Charles de Raymond, a Captain in the Troops de La Marine, in
his 1754 work the Enumerations of All the Posts in Canada, spends over seven pages
discussing the importance of the Indians to their cause and the negative effect that
Oswego had on their trade with the French. As the farthest penetration of British
dominion into the undefined borderlands of New France and the British colonies, it was
also a staging post for attacks to seize the French’s southern forts and interrupt movement
into the Ohio Valley. William Shirley staged there for his attack on Fort Niagara, which
was cancelled due to the defeat of Braddock at Duquesne. For the French governorgeneral Vaudreuil, it had long been an objective for him to eliminate and seize complete
control of Lake Ontario.
With the defeat of Braddock and the new arrival of French regular army forces with Baron le Diesku the French had their opportunity to strike. To
be successful however, the supply lines that supplied this major stone fort would have to
be interrupted in order to allow the mixed force to be successful.
Fort Oswego was supplied by a long logistics train from Albany that utilized the
Mohawk River, Wood Creek, and the various waterways to get the supplies from
Schenectady, New York, to the fort. This supply chain was over 90 miles long against the
current of the Mohawk River to it termination in the vicinity of present day Rome, New
York. It was then necessary to carry the supplies overland via portage known as the Great
Carrying Place, or the Oneida Carry, to Wood Creek.233 Supplies were then moved by
water to the Fort. The New York government and British military officials had long
viewed this portage as the key, and also weakest, link in the Oswego supply chain and
decided to build two forts to secure it. The eastern fort was Fort Williams, and the
western fort nearest Oswego, was Fort Bull. These forts were located at the halfway point
of the journey to Oswego and were also the holding point for supplies moving to the fort
as they awaited any weather to clear, threats to disperse, or escorts to assemble.
Vaudreuil was informed by allied Indians that Oswego was garrisoned by the
remnants of 50th and 51st Foot Regiments, as well as cannons, chose a strike against supply lines of the fort, specifically at the forts of Williams and Bull. This would weaken
the forts at Oswego, as well as limit the material available to resist the siege that would
be conducted by Montcalm’s forces that spring. Vaudreuil stated that he hoped the forts
at Oswego would just “die on the vine and wither due to lack of supplies”235 Vaudreuil
favored a la petite guerre style raid to destroy the forts, and chose Gaspard-Joseph
Chaussergros de Lery, to lead the strike. De Lery, a veteran of the King George’s War
strikes on Saratoga, assembled a force of 360 men, including 100 Indians, 250 Canadian
militia, Troupes de la Marine, and one Father Piquet.
Vaudreuil and de Lery chose
winter as the appropriate time for the strike for two reasons: first the fort was already low
on supplies due to the route being untrafficable due to the winter weather and frozen
waterways, and second because the British defenses were at their lowest. The British
continued to think that they were safe in the winter time and continually failed to learn
the lessons of the raids during all seasons of the previous wars.237
De Lery and his force departed on 12 March 1756 from Fort La Presentation,
Canada on the 296 mile journey to Fort Bull. Over the course of the next two weeks the
men moved through snow storms, freezing rain, and sub-freezing temperatures. There
was little food other than what they carried, and no fires were allowed. The men only
carried enough supplies for a one way trip and planned to resupply from the stores of the
captured forts.238 The force lost 17 Frenchman due to exposure and frost bite who sent back to La Presentation for treatment, and five additional soldiers from food
poisoning. The force reached Fort Bull on 26 March 1756, and immediately began to
reconnoiter the forts.
The force had not eaten for two days and needed to attack
quickly.239
The next day de Lery and his men advanced to the Great Carrying Road and
ambushed a supply wagon to capture prisoners and provisions. They captured food and
ten prisoners, but in their haste for the food, the wagon driver was able to escape and run
back to Fort Bull. De Lery, surprise now lost, decided that a swift violent strike was
needed to attack the forts. The prisoners revealed that Fort Williams was heavily
defended with cannon and a large garrison, where Fort Bull had no cannon, a smaller
garrison, and was the location of all the munitions staged for transport to the Oswego
forts. De Lery chose to attack Fort Bull.
The Indians, who at this point were satisfied with
their ambush of the wagon train, needed to be cajoled and bribed to continue the attack,
but de Lery was able to do this and set out with his force to attack the fort. The British
were moving supplies from the river to the fort and were taken by surprise when the
Indians and French charged out of the forest to attack them. The British in the fort closed
the gates and the Indians turned on the British at the river, while the French attacked the
fort. Seizing on the fact that the British were not in position, the French fired their
muskets at the defenders through the loopholes in the wall, while Canadian militia used
axes to cut through the wall. De Lery asked three times for the fort to surrender, each time with no reply. When the gate was finally breeched, the call for surrender was
repealed and the French killed every British soldier in the fort.
The French set about exploiting their victory. De Lery found 260 kegs of
gunpowder each weighing over 100 pounds for an estimated total of 26,000 pounds of
gunpowder. De Lery ordered it dumped into the river along with the musket balls, cannon
balls, and grenades. He also ordered the fort razed to the ground. Unfortunately for de
Lery, these things were executed simultaneously, not sequentially. Before the powder
could be fully emptied from the magazine, de Lery noticed the fires from the fort
approaching the magazine and ordered everyone to evacuate the fort. P.S. Garand, in his
1927 history of the city of Ogdensburg stated that “Building and palisades were reduced
to atoms, all was destroyed in the interior of the fort: food, munitions, and all war
material. The fort was razed to the ground.”
The fight for the fort elicited a relief force
of 17 soldiers that was sent from Fort Williams to the aid of Fort Bull; however it was
intercepted and destroyed along the road by de Lery’s Indian and Canadian reserve. De
Lery made the decision to retreat rather than attack the now alerted Fort Williams, and
made his way back to Sackets Harbor, New York and awaited the relief force from the
Bearn regiment of the Troupes de Terre. De Lery reported in his journal that his force
had taken 80 prisoners with “heads of hair” and had suffered “one marine killed, one Indian killed, four were wounded, and three Canadians were wounded, as well as two
soldiers from the land troops.”
With the Fort Bull at the western end of the Oneida Carry destroyed, there was
now no security for the bateaux men and British supply convoys moving to the Oswego
forts. Raids and poor weather forced the supplies flow to slow to a trickle. In fact, from
March to July, only one major supply convoy reached the fort and its defenders.
For the
garrison of Oswego, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Mercer, the situation was
rapidly getting worse. His men were dying from disease, lacked adequate supply, had low
morale, and there was little relief. By the time Montcalm’s army of 3,000 strong force
arrived on 10 August 1756 to begin the siege of Oswego, taking the garrison by surprise,
the garrison was reduced to only 1,135 soldiers. A short siege followed where the French
systematically seized the high ground around the main fort, surrounded it, and fired into
the fort. Lieutenant Colonel Mercer was beheaded by a cannonball on 13 August 1756,
and his subordinate surrendered the fort on 14 August 1756.
The taking of this fort
provided the French secure waterborne lines of communication throughout the Great
Lakes from Quebec to the pays d’en haut and would remain that way until 1758. The raid on Fort Bull showed that the French were keen on utilizing the Indians
and their skills at la petite guerre to combine regular and irregular warfare actions in
order to shape larger operations. Multiple long distance raids against fortified positions,
such as the raid against Fort Clinton in June 1747, in the King George’s War and Queen
Anne’s War had shown that the Indians were reluctant to attack fortified positions and would be unwilling to commit, or participate in, a frontal attack against the forts of
Oswego with the army of Montcalm.
As a side note, though the Indians were there in
large numbers, they participated only on the periphery not in the siege works themselves
against the main fort.245 Vaudreuil and his Canadian partisan officers understood this
facet of Indian culture and warfare and sought to capitalize on it. Through the raid on
Fort Bull, Vaudreuil was able to apply the irregular capabilities of la petite guerre and
make it part of an operational level campaign plan. He would use their raiding ability to
conduct tactical actions at one point, Fort Bull, to facilitate easier completion of the
French main objective, the capture of Oswego. Certainly more variables played into the
fall of Oswego, such as the lack of many Indian scouts and counter-reconnaissance assets
of the British and the harsh weather and the dominance of the French. However the lack
of constant supplies, men, and powder from the supply line along the Mohawk River and
the Oneida Carry was a major factor in the defeat of the British at Oswego.
The third method of French employment of Native Americans was a part of a
mixed force to engage and counter the British employment of irregular forces, or rangers,
as the British termed them. The meeting engagement known as the “Battle on
Snowshoes” took place on 13 March 1758 between Rogers Rangers and a mixed force
led by Langy of the Troupes de la Marine and shows the continued French dominance in
the irregular warfare front of the war. It also clearly shows their employment of Indians
and their understanding that Indians and la petite guerre were key to disrupting, and if possible, destroying the British’s irregular capabilities to raid and reconnoiter French
forts and troop movements.
The year 1758 marked a pivotal year for the French and Indian War as the tide
began to turn against the French. For the British it marked a transition to new leadership,
William Pitt as prime minister and General James Abercromby as Commander in Chief
of North America as well a surge of British resources to defeat the French and seize
North America. The British government had made the conquering of North America its
main effort in the war and had finally mobilized the resources to overwhelm the French
defenders. By the campaign season of 1758, the British had 50,000 troops under arms in
North America. This was equivalent to almost 2/3 of the total population of New
France.
Pitt designed a three pronged attack against the French; the first was to seize
Louisburg at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River as a staging base for an attack on
Quebec itself. The second was a move to seize Fort Carillon, now Ticonderoga, New
York in order to facilitate the invasion along the Lake Champlain-Lake George Corridor,
and lastly to seize Fort Duquesne in the Ohio Valley to finally end the plaque of raids and
ambushes in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania that had hampered the British’s
previous attempts at invasion by draining valuable men and logistics to defend the
frontier and establish control, and the support of the Ohio Indians.
However before any action against Fort Carillon could be taken, the conditions
needed to be set. Troop dispositions and defensive works would need to be mapped. This would take reconnaissance patrols of a new force the British created to compensate for
the lack of Indian scouts and to counter the effectiveness of French irregulars against
British regulars. This force were the Independent Companies of Rangers. The most
famous were Rogers Rangers led by, at this point in the war, Captain Robert Rogers.
Formed in 1755 to protect the frontier against, as Robert Dinwiddie, governor of
Virginia, called them the “flying parties of the enemy,” the rangers would be
incorporated into the British forces by William Shirley and William Johnson. They were
to be separated from the rest of the New Hampshire provincials and screen Shirley’s
forces in his aborted Lake George campaign. Loudoun quickly saw the value of having
the rangers in their ability to counter the partisan mixed forces of the Troupes de la
Marine and their Indian allies, as well as their ability to conduct independent raids to
harass enemy troops. He called for the creation of 1,100 rangers to counter the threat of
the Marines. In 1758 when he was replaced by Abercromby, who, though a critic of the
rangers admitted that they were key to the British war effort. To this end, Rogers was
ordered to create five companies of Rangers, four to be sent to Louisburg, and one with
Rogers, to go to Fort Edward to support the campaign against Fort Carillon.
For New France, 1758 marked the start of the end of their ability to win the war,
and began a race to delay and exhaust the British until the two countries could sue for
peace. Two straight failed harvests, and rampant internal corruption, drove up food prices among the population and the Indian allies that they paid for support. It also reduced the
morale of the people in Quebec and Montreal, and also limited the full supply of
Montcalm’s army and the many forts that served as the life line for New France and their
Indian allies. This, coupled with increasing British dominance of the sea and the blockade
of French trade, prevented what small trickle of supplies and specie that was sent to the
colony to pay for food.
By the spring of 1758, when the battle took place, the French
government turned to protecting France from cross channel British raids and defending
the more profitable sugar islands of the Caribbean. They would send no more meaningful
replacements to defend a financially draining colony the British were sending large
armies to capture.253
Vaudreuil and Montcalm, their rivalry increasing by this point in the conflict,
were faced with bleak prospects. They were able to muster a force of approximately
6,800 Troupes de Terre, 2,700 Troupes de la Marine, and, if all military aged males from
15-60 years of age were called to service, 16,000 militia. This total force of
approximately 25,500 men comprised all the forces they could muster against the
British’s 50,000 soldiers.254 Their Native American allies, whom they had depended on
for the first years of the war, not did not turn out in as large of numbers. A small pox
epidemic ravaged the western pays d’en haut convincing some of the more superstitious
that the French had done something to them. Most of the other tribes offered excuses not
to come to the aid of the French. This was due in part to treatment of the Indians after the
victories at Oswego and William Henry where they were admonished for plunder and scalping British wounded and insulted by the allowed surrender of the British denying
them of their rightful compensation for their assistance in the campaigns.
Montcalm, now a lieutenant general and given command over Vaudreuil by the
French government, now had to choose where to defend New France from the British
invasion. He chose to make the strategy of trading space for time. He would withdraw
from unnecessary frontier posts and concentrate his forces along the invasion routes into
Canada. As forts were attacked, they were to be abandoned and the forces retreat to the
next fort in the line. Key forts necessary to the defense of the essential lines of
communication to the Illinois country of southern New France, Fort Duquesne and those
along the Mississippi, as well as Forts Niagara and St Frederic on Lake Ontario,
maintained the line of communication with the pays d’en haut, and Louisburg along the
St Lawrence.
The last avenue approach into Canada that was to be defended, and the
most likely for the British to utilize, the Lake Champlain-Lake George corridor, was
where Montcalm stationed himself, at Fort Carillon, now Fort Ticonderoga, New York.
The reconnaissance and harassing raids conducted both against this fort by the British at
Fort Edward, and the counter operations of the French is where the Battle on Snowshoes
finds its place. The battle took place on 13 March 1758 and would become one of the most
famous battles of the French and Indian War. Roger’s defeat at the hands of Jean Baptiste Levreault de Langis (Langy) de Montegron, a scout who Montcalm called
excellent and above all others in his journals, and a mixed force of Indians, Canadians,
and French was a key victory for the French.258 It was the culmination of an intensive
winter season of raids, counter-raids, ambushes, and reconnaissance operations that were
undertaken by the irregular forces of both sides around the French Fort Carillon and the
British Fort Edward. For the British this fight culminated in December, when Roberts left
a bragging note on a horn of a slaughtered ox within sight of the fort and burned a good
deal of its stored firewood. For the French, the fight peaked in February when Langy, as
reported by Montcalm’s letters to France, had ambushed multiple patrols and convoys
killing 25 British personnel and taking three prisoners. The British responded by sending
Rogers and Rangers in pursuit of Langy when he attacked, but he had always managed to
elude capture.
On 10 March, Rogers was ordered to undertake a patrol to reconnoiter Fort
Carillon by the commander of Fort Edward Colonel Haviland. Instead of maintaining the
usual secrecy of the reconnaissance missions due to the fear of Indian warning to the
French, or of prisoners being taken, Haviland announced the mission in public to the
garrison. This made Rogers uneasy of the mission, but he proceeded to plan and ask for
volunteers. Though Haviland had announced that the mission would be undertaken by
400 Rangers, Rogers departed with only 183, not knowing if his mission had been tipped
to the French or if they were waiting in ambush for his force.
They travelled uneventfully along the ice of Lake George until the 13th. In the
morning Rogers decided to move up Trout Brook Valley to lay in ambush for the daily
French patrol that was known to use that pass as they moved through the area. As an
added bonus, the route would also prevent discovery by French solders observing the lake
for signs of British activity. Rogers force moved along the valley, keeping the ridge in
between them and the French trails on the lake, cached their sleds, and established a
resting point at 1100 where they planned to rest until 1500 that day.260 At 1500, the
French patrol had returned to their fort. Rogers and his force would then move to the
other end of the valley closest to the fort and establish another ambush for the patrol in
the morning. Unfortunately, earlier that morning, a French allied Abenaki Indian scouting
mission returning from Fort Edward discovered the trail of Rogers and his Rangers on the
ice and followed it to the point where they had camped that morning. The Indians
immediately returned to Fort Carillon to report their findings.
Upon receiving word of the Rangers, the commandant of Fort Carillon, Captain
D’Hebecourt ordered a patrol dispatched to destroy the Rangers. The Indians, incited by
the prospect for battle by the Abenakis that had returned, immediately began to depart for
an attack. In order to control those that had departed early, Sieur de La Durantaye
gathered them up at the gate and departed with 96 Indians in tow. Langy departed 30
minutes later with a force of 205 Indians, Troupes de la Marine, and Canadian militia.
Durantaye’s force of 96 Indians moved into Trout Brook Valley along the exact
trail that Rogers was watching and at 1500 Rogers’ advance guard of three scouts spotted
the approaching French force. They quickly estimated the number of Indians in the
clearing and returned to report to Rogers. As they left their hiding place, their route of
travel obscured their view of the 200 men in Langy’s force only a half mile behind
Durantaye’s. Rogers immediately ordered the force to establish an ambush for the
approaching French force and the Rangers dispersed along the trail, laying down in the
snow and awaited the French force.263 Rogers initiated the ambush at approximately
1600, and according to his own estimation killed 40 Indians. As the French force was
now in disarray, Rogers ordered his force forward to complete the victory in hand-tohand combat and run down the now retreating Indians. To his dismay, he ran right into
Langy’s force that, having been alerted by the gunfire, deployed into crescent shaped
firing position and fired into Rogers’ force from three sides when Rogers crossed Trout
Creek in pursuit. Langy’s initial volley killed or wounded 50 rangers, and the rest
immediately began to retreat in disarray with Langy’s force in pursuit killing the
wounded in hand-to-hand combat and shooting at the retreating Rangers.
As sunset fell, Rogers and his remaining 60 men retreated up Bear Mountain and
established their position on the high ground. They waited there until darkness when they
would make their escape. Unfortunately, the white snow increased the ambient light and
allowed the Canadians to continue firing. This continued for two hours, with neither the
Rangers nor Langy’s force gaining superiority. The superior marksmanship of the French and Indians allowed them to continue to pick off Rangers as they attempted to fire. A
small isolated group surrendered to the Indians, only to be tied to trees and killed. When
darkness finally fell, Langy ordered his force to make camp and they would pursue the
scattered Rangers, now numbering less than 50 men and the Indians could plunder the
field in the morning. The Rangers retreated back to Lake George where they had cached
their sleighs, and retreated to Fort Edward.265 Final casualty counts vary from 140
Rangers killed and many of the rest wounded, to what Bougainville recorded in his
journal as “the Indians brought back 144 scalps and took seven prisoners.
We had two
cadets wounded, a Canadian wounded, three Iroquois and a Nipissing killed, 18 Iroquois
wounded.”266 Those estimates would mean that of Rogers’ 186 man force, only 35
returned to Fort Edward, not counting wounded who may have been left on the field.
The Battle on Snowshoes, and indeed the entire la petit guerre campaign around
Forts Edward and Carillon is another example that the French knew how to best employ
their Indian allies to achieve victory against the British. In this example, the French very
successfully employed their Indians as an effective counter guerrilla force to disrupt
British operations against Fort Carillon. Having observed the British regulars attempt to
respond to the mixed forces of la petite guerre and observed their own success in the
imperial wars and the early years of the Seven Years’ War, the French understood that
regular troops did not have a reasonable chance of success against the ambushes and raids
of the Rangers and countered by overmatching their strength in that area with Indians and skilled partisan leaders such as Langy. In the 13 March battle, the French effectively
destroyed a guerrilla force with minimal losses by dispatching a small force well suited
for counter guerrilla operations while preserving the fighting strength of Fort Carillon by
not dispatching large numbers of troops that could be ambushed, leaving the fort more
vulnerable to attack.
During the Seven Years’ War, the armies and population of New France were not
large enough to defeat the growing number of British soldiers, ships, money and
resources that the British poured in to North America to conquer the continent. Indeed, by
1758, when the French military might was at its highest in Canada, they could only
muster 25,500 men to combat the British Empire’s 50,000 soldiers. The key to making
up this difference was the vast number of Indian allies that the last 100 years of
aggressive diplomacy and gift giving had provided them. The ability to combine these
Indian warriors and their tactics, with skilled partisan leadership, and a plan that linked
their tactical actions into an operational and strategic vision for the conduct of the war
would be key in the French victories of 1755-1758.
Successful employment of the Indians was developed over 100 years of constant
warfare in the style of la petite guerre. The wars against the Iroquois in the 1600s and the
British in the 1700s had taught the French that there were some lessons to be learned
about employing the Indians where their superior marksmanship, superior abilities in stealth and scouting, and aggressive natures could be of the most benefit.270 In looking at
three examples taken from the early war period, Battle of the Monongahela in July 1755,
the raid on Fort Bull during the campaign to seize of the Forts at Oswego, New York in
1756, and the successful counter guerrilla operations of winter 1757-1758 around Fort
Carillon and the Battle on Snowshoes, we can see where the French correctly applied
these lessons to develop and maintain the upper hand until the second half of 1758.
The problem that would develop for New France is that this success depended on
the constant utilization and influx of Indian fighters. This allegiance relied on beneficial
trade, battlefield victories, and allowance for the Indian custom of plunder, scalping, and
prisoner taking. In 1758 this supply of Native Americans begins to dry up and support
moved to the British, and the French lose the ability to stave of the British and maintain
their hold over the pays d’en haut and Ohio Valley. When Fort Niagara is captured
without a single Indian fighting for the French by a British army supported by local
Iroquois, the way is paved for a British victory where overwhelming numbers cannot be
matched by the French without their Native allies.
CHAPTER 5
A FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND
I am obligated in humanity, to desire you to surrender your Fort. I have yet in my power to restrain the savages, and oblige them to observe capitulation, as hitherto none of them have been killed, which will not be in my power in other circumstances.— Lieutenant-General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, Relief Is Greatly Wanted
The fall and spring of 1757-1758 proved to be turning point in the French and
Indian War. It was not, however, the decisive point that the French and Canadians sought.
Though the French army under Montcalm and French guerrilla fighters using Vaudreuil’s
strategy would achieve stunning victories at Fort William Henry and Fort Carollin in
New York, the year proved to mark the beginning of the end of France’s reign in North
America. This point of tipping point was not due to losses on the battlefield. Indeed, the
early part of 1758 proved to be a banner year for the French and their Indian allies. It was
this latter factor, the Indian allies that proved to be the undoing of France’s chances to
stall the British enough to sue for a peaceful settlement.
For the campaign season of 1758 through the end of the war, the Indians that
Vaudreuil and the Canadians put their faith in to match the overwhelming resources of
British North America, failed to turn out in the large numbers as they had in the previous
years. When the 1759 campaign started, the Canadians were augmented with only 1,800 Indian warriors to combat the British invasion by both irregular and regular means.274
This is compared to over 2,000 Indians who, drawn by French victories and gifts, assisted
in just the battle for Fort William Henry in 1757. It is estimated that at one point, the
Indians of the Ohio Valley and the pays d’en haut were a pool of over 16,000 Indian
warriors the French could call upon.
Without the augmentation of Indians, the British
maintained a 2:1 advantage over the French, and more importantly, the war increasingly
became Europeanized, and the British drove the French from North America. The French, separate from the Canadians, had a general misunderstanding and
dislike of Indian culture and their way of war by Montcalm and the French officers of the
Troupe de Terre possessed this dislike. Montcalm’s general disdain grew from his first
major campaigns in 1756, and was clearly shown in his reaction to the “massacre” of
British prisoners at Fort William Henry in 1757. This one incident was the turning point
for the Indians and the French alliance.
The most prominent reasons the French lost the robust support of their Indian
allies was the continued negative reaction to Indian actions and their style of warfare. The
most famous was Montcalm’s acceptance of the surrender of Fort William Henry, New
York, in 1757 and his reaction to the massacre of the British soldiers and camp followers
by his Indian allies after the fort’s surrender. This was the main event that resulted in the
majority of Indian support not turning out to assist the French in large numbers from 1758 forward.
The battle at the fort also showed Montcalm that in order to fight a
civilized war, and ensure that French troops would be offered the honors of war in the
future; he would have to Europeanize the war and avoid putting himself in situations
where he would be unable to control his allies or not use them at all. This further drove
the Indians away as they would not have the opportunity for plunder or scalps.
While massacre may have been the main catalyst for the Indian, it was the
culmination of a series of savage acts that caused a resentment of the savagery of the
Native American style of warfare and that of his Canadian militia. Montcalm routinely
criticized the Indian way of war for its savagery and was disdainful of their treatment of
prisoners. From the time he arrived in 1756, he and his officers wrote in their journals
about the shock they had while utilizing their allies and the concern over the dishonor it
would bring.
Montcalm’s aide-de-camp, Captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville, kept a
prolific journal about his time in North America. He often wrote about his and his
commander’s disdain for the Indian treatment of prisoners and their way of war in
general. In September 1756 during the campaign around Fort Carillon he wrote, “The
Indians have seventeen prisoners; they have already knocked several of them on the head.
. . . The cruelties and the insolence of these barbarians is horrible, their souls are as black
as pitch, it is an abominable to make war; the retaliation is frightening.”
Routinely
Bougainville wrote to his family deriding the behavior of the Indians. Throughout 1756
and 1757 he expressed fear and shock in these letters regarding the Indian use of annibalism and savagery towards prisoners, they were “dancing the war song, getting
drunk and, yelling for broth, that is to say blood, drawn from 500 leagues by the smell of
fresh human flesh.”
Bougainville and his French compatriots were concerned about
their allies’ behavior and sought to distance themselves from the Indian way of fighting.
Indeed, as was noted in chapter 2, concern and fear over how the Indians waged war was
a major component of why Montcalm opposed Vaudreuil’s strategy of raiding and la
petite guerre.
It should be noted that while Montcalm viewed the Indians as savages and wrote
to the French government about their excesses and savagery on the field of battle, he
made every effort to maintain positive relations with their leadership.
Montcalm’s
strategy called for the use of Indians as scouts and as a counter-reconnaissance force
against the British and he needed them fight for the French army. He placated Indian
sachems and sought to use them where he could, but he was always wary of their actions
on the field and after the battles. He held war councils with their chiefs and worked to
make sure that Indian allies were part of the team in order for him to better control them
on the battlefield and work for his own operational ends and also acting as a
representative of the French crown. Before the battle of William Henry, a great Ottawa
chief is recorded as saying, “we have come to see this great man who tramples the
English.” Montcalm also presented Indian chiefs with wampum belts of 6,000 beads as a sign of friendship and an enticement to battle for him. These would indicate that
Montcalm had embraced Indian culture, or at least accepted it enough to get them to fight
for him. However, this would not be the case, as Montcalm’s actions at William Henry
would show that these words and actions were all for show, and he did not care for the
Indian way of war or the frontier waging of la petite guerre.
Montcalm’s disdain for the Indian was not based solely on his views of how a war
should be fought tactically. He viewed war as a matter of honor, and that the Indian way
of war and la petite guerre was uncivilized and dishonorable.284 More importantly,
Bougainville and Montcalm were concerned about their reputations and the honor of
French forces if forced to surrender to British troops. Montcalm would make every effort
to preserve European honor of war by making war in the European way and not paying
heed to the Indians, their previous wars alongside the Canadians, or the culture of la
petite guerre.
As seen in the aftermath of William Henry, Montcalm was worried about
how the treatment of British soldiers after terms of capitulation would affect the
treatment of French soldiers in future battles.
This concern was based on the fact that Montcalm had a persistent fear of not
being able to control his Indian allies after battle and their inability to abide by the rules
of European war. He often sought terms in accordance with these rules for the honorable
and peaceful surrender of forts and their garrisons to protect the lives of the surrounding
soldiers. This led him to alienate his Indian allies in a very significant way. By
preserving his sense of honor on the field and denying his Indian allies plunder and prisoners from the battle, he was denying them the honor, pay, and prestige these actions
had for the Indians. This upset the Indians and caused many to question their willingness
to fight for Montcalm in the future.
This mentality was exemplified in his actions at
William Henry and the acceptance of the British surrender and the subsequent
massacre. This fear was based on his very real and tangible experiences of working with
Indians throughout the war. Montcalm consistently criticized the Canadian and Indian
way of war, but he appreciated its usefulness. His fears and concern over using them in
the war stemmed most pointedly from his experiences in the aftermath of the capture of
the forts at Oswego and the murder of prisoners by his Native American allies.
When the French captured Fort Oswego in 1756, the battle had been short and the
garrison surrendered without the need for a protracted siege. The only real promise that
Montcalm had made in the capitulation agreement was that he would protect the British
soldiers from the predations of the Indians. He failed. In the aftermath of the battle
Montcalm’s Indian allies began to gather what they had always taken after battles: scalps,
prisoners, and plunder. In total the Indians killed 30 to 100 British soldiers and civilians
and took many prisoners before Montcalm and the French could restore order. The
Indians had never been denied these trophies during the previous imperial wars by their
Canadian counterparts, and had no reason to think they were out of line in doing so again.
Montcalm was intensely embarrassed and dishonored by this. They were so embarrassed that neither he nor Bougainville mentioned the incident in their official reports.
The
only mention Montcalm makes of this incident is in recording that he paid “8,000-10,000
livres in order to maintain good relations with the Indians after the battle. It is unknown
how many prisoners he was able to ransom back. This set two dangerous precedents
that would replay at William Henry: first, that Montcalm did not understand the Indian
reasoning for fighting or how their culture viewed warfare and its aftermath, and,
secondly, he tipped his hand that the French would pay a ransom for British prisoners in
order to preserve their honor. These two lessons would come to haunt Montcalm at
William Henry less than a year later.
At the start of 1757 the war still appeared to be going in France’s favor. The
capturing of Fort William Henry would prove to be a continuation in those victories and
the most famous of the war, thanks to its immortalization in the novel Last of the
Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Postured at the south end of Lake George in New
York, the fort was a strategic point for control of the lake and the movement into the
British colony of New York. It was captured by a combined force of French and Indian
allies led by Montcalm in a very effective siege. However, the fort is more famous for
the events that occurred after the battle. The massacre of the British soldiers and camp
followers after the battle and Montcalm’s and the Canadian government’s actions after that neither he nor Bougainville mentioned the incident in their official reports. The
only mention Montcalm makes of this incident is in recording that he paid “8,000-10,000
livres in order to maintain good relations with the Indians after the battle. It is unknown
how many prisoners he was able to ransom back.
This set two dangerous precedents
that would replay at William Henry: first, that Montcalm did not understand the Indian
reasoning for fighting or how their culture viewed warfare and its aftermath, and,
secondly, he tipped his hand that the French would pay a ransom for British prisoners in
order to preserve their honor. These two lessons would come to haunt Montcalm at
William Henry less than a year later.
At the start of 1757 the war still appeared to be going in France’s favor. The
capturing of Fort William Henry would prove to be a continuation in those victories and
the most famous of the war, thanks to its immortalization in the novel Last of the
Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Postured at the south end of Lake George in New
York, the fort was a strategic point for control of the lake and the movement into the
British colony of New York. It was captured by a combined force of French and Indian
allies led by Montcalm in a very effective siege.291 However, the fort is more famous for
the events that occurred after the battle. The massacre of the British soldiers and camp
followers after the battle and Montcalm’s and the Canadian government’s actions after the massacre marked a turning point and high water mark for Indian support for the
French.
After the battle, the French would never see the same large numbers of Indian
warriors turn out for the remainder of the war.292
As was discussed in chapter 4, the British had a number of different strategic
options in 1756-1757. One of the thrusts planned for the year by Loudoun was toward
Louisburg with a large fleet from New York. As his fleet weighed anchor and sailed to
Louisburg, Loudoun left General Daniel Webb in charge of the strategic lakes frontier of
Lake George and Lake Champlain in upstate New York as a blocking force to prevent the
French from moving down the valley into New York. Failure to block these forces would
have forced Loudoun to call off his attack on Louisburg and return to defend the British
frontier.
The long water line of communication that was Lake George and its connected
northern neighbor Lake Champlain provided a rapid and continuous avenue of approach
from the St Lawrence valley, the heartland of New France, down into the heart of New
York and the British colonies. By moving down the lakes, raiders and Indians had raided
the northern frontier of the British throughout the wars of the 18th century.294 To prevent
this both the British and the French established forts to defend the waterway and provide
early warning of enemy movements. The French constructed Fort St. Frederic at the
southern end of Lake Champlain and Fort Carillon on the rocky promontory that was
between Lake George and Lake Champlain.
The British countered with Fort William Henry at the southern edge of Lake George, and Fort Edward 16 miles to the south of
William Henry along the only good road south from the lakes into the inhabited areas of
New York. Loudoun strongly suggested that Webb move to the northern end of Lake George
and besiege Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga). The capture of this fort would prevent the
French from moving deep into the heart of British New York and prevent some of the
raiding that was taking place in the borderlands.
While he would have liked this to
happen, Loudoun realized that Webb was unlikely to do so based on his tendencies to
panic and overreact as he did when rebuilding Fort Bull in late 1756 only to destroy it at
the rumor of a French force moving to attack. Loudoun also wanted to make Louisburg
an all regular army force and left Webb with only two regiments to defend the fort and
the frontiers. Five companies of the 35th Foot, totaling 1,500 men, under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel George Monro would defend Fort William Henry.
296
Fresh from their victory at Fort Oswego, Montcalm and Vaudreuil sought to
exploit their victory. While doing so, they also sought to strengthen the defenses of New
France and prevent a British invasion of New France through the Lakes area while they
were massed in the western portion of the state. This attack did not occur. Montcalm and
Vaudreuil both saw William Henry as a key point to their defense of Canada. A
successful strike would close off the water line of communication to the St Lawrence
Valley and remove an obstacle to French raiding forces in the area.
To do this the French developed two plans. The first was a classical la petite guerre style raid in March
1757. This raid, led by Vaudreuil’s brother Rigaud, failed to capture the fort due to a lack
of manpower and artillery, but did succeed in destroying a sloop, a significant amount of
firewood stored for the winter, and several buildings. While the fort was undamaged, the
raid destroyed all of the out buildings around the fort including a hospital, sawmill,
numerous bateaux, storehouses, and a barracks building. This destruction prevented the
garrison from mounting reconnaissance patrols outside the fort and a maritime patrol of
the lake. This exposed the fort to a siege at any time of Montcalm’s choosing. The
siege army would arrive that summer.
Montcalm’s army, the largest force assembled to date in the French and Indian
war, staged at Fort Carillon in the spring and summer of 1757. It numbered over 8,000
men, including 6,000 French Troupes de Terre, Troupes de la Marine, and Canadian
militia. It contained multiple pieces of heavy artillery, including howitzers, cannons, and
mortars. Some of these pieces had been captured from Oswego a year earlier. The
manpower was a critical factor. Montcalm was accompanied by 2,000 Native American
allies. Drawn by the victories against Braddock, the capture of Oswego, and the promise
of plunder and prisoners, this was the largest single turn out to date of allied Indian
warriors. These Indians were made up of Indian tribes from all over French territory in
North America, including the Ohio Valley, Canada, and the pays d’en haut. It included
“uncivilized,” Indians from the Ottawa, Ojibwa, Menominee, Potawatomi, Winnebago, Sauk, Iowa, Fox, Miami and Delaware and “domiciled,” or converted, Indians from the
Abenaki, Algonquin, Caughnawaga, and Nipissing tribes.
This great variety of tribes created multiple tensions in the army due to long
standing feuds between some of the Ohio Valley tribes. The different tribes also produced
Montcalm’s worst fear about fighting with Indians, which was his inability to control
their actions. Montcalm only possessed a dozen Canadian officers who spoke the Indians’
languages through interpreters and were attached, not assigned to the Indians in order to
try and control some of their actions on the battlefield and in the camp. While encamped
around Carillon, French officers and camp followers, including a Jesuit Missionary
names Roubaud reported the savagery and uncivilized behaviors of the Indians. They
stated that the Indians were constantly drunk and warlike. He and Bougainville also
described the lack of compassion towards the British prisoners taken by their patrols
around William Henry. Roubaud described in his journal how the Indians made the
prisoners run the gauntlet while warriors hit them with their clubs or about the suspected
and confirmed cases of cannibalism of British prisoners. This included cooking and
eating prisoners in front of other prisoners or making the prisoner eat part of himself.
This behavior shocked French persons who had not worked with the Indians up close
before and worried Montcalm and his deputy, Francis de Gaston, Chevalier de Levis,
about the span of control they would be able to exert among such a large group of Indians when battle was joined.
This lack of control prevented Montcalm from controlling his
Indians after the capitulation of the garrison and the ensuing massacre. The assembled forces moved by boat from Fort Carillon in late July 1757 and
arrived on 2 August, outside William Henry. Levis and his advance party opened fire on
the fort in the early hours of 3 August 1757. Montcalm had ordered him to move to the
south and secure the southern road to Fort Edward with his Indians and Canadians. Once
they had secured this road, some of his Indians began to snipe at the defenders of William
Henry on the walls. Montcalm landed his forces to the west of the fort and began
preparations to build siege trenches for his cannon. At 1500 hours on 3 August,
Montcalm formally began the siege with the presentation of a letter demanding Monro’s
surrender.
This letter is significant because it shows that Montcalm was worried about his
Indians behavior and his ability to protect English prisoners prior to the formal beginning
of battle. He states, “I am obligated in humanity, to desire you to surrender your Fort. I
have yet in my power to retrain the savages, and oblige them to observe capitulation, as
hitherto none of them have been killed, which will not be in my power in other
circumstances.” Monro declined this offer and the firing resumed.
For the next four
days the French besieged the fort, firing on it with musket and cannon fire and building
trenches to move the cannon closer to the fort where they can be more effective. Monro wrote multiple reports to Webb at Fort Edward asking for relief and describing the
situation. While some of the letters went through, most were intercepted by the
Canadians and Indians to the south of the fort. They also intercepted a letter on 4 August
from Webb, stating that he would not relieve William Henry and that Monro should seek
honorable terms of surrender.304 Monro did not receive this letter until 7 August 1757,
when Montcalm presented it to him while demanding the fort’s surrender a second time.
When Monro received the letter from Montcalm, the siege had been raging 24
hours a day for four days. Montcalm’s Indians had been scouting the edge of the
battlefield keeping the fort isolated, and at Montcalm’s request, patrolling for any signs
of movement from Fort Edward. The Indians were so successful that Webb wrote to
Loudoun complaining that he did not have situational awareness of what was transpiring
at the fort.305 The state of the defenders on the 8th was harsh and deplorable. They had
suffered more than 300 casualties; all of their heavy cannon and mortars had burst or
were rendered useless by the French barrage leaving only seven small pieces for the
defense. Smallpox infected a large number of the remaining garrison. The fighting
continued on the 8th as the French expanded their siege lines. The British officers, tired,
and with little ammunition or medical supplies remaining, held a council of war and
decided to seek terms of surrender. At 1300 on 9 August 1757, Fort William Henry,
surrendered to Montcalm.
he terms of surrender were generous. The agreement contained nine articles
which allowed British to march from the fort with their weapons and other honors of war,
i.e. unit and national colors. The British would not be able to fight the French in North
America for a period of eighteen months. Two of the articles posed problems for
Montcalm and the Indians. The first was article 1 that stated the soldiers would be able to
keep their personal effects, minus implements of war beyond their personal arms. The
second was article 7 which stated that Montcalm would protect the British sick and
wounded until they healed enough to be returned to the British.
These articles would
clearly be issues for the Indians who, up until this point, had not been paid for their part
in the campaign. As was custom from fighting in the previous wars, the Indians claimed
the right of pillage to the fort after the surrender.308
Montcalm was also extremely worried about the Indians and their actions in light
of the capitulation. He sought to mitigate this risk and held a council with the assembled
Indian chiefs before he signed the capitulation agreement. Montcalm explained the terms
of the surrender to the assembled chiefs and trusted them and the Canadian officers to
explain the terms to the 1,600 remaining Indian warriors. They agreed to restrain their
Indians and wait until the British had left the fort before plundering it. They agreed to
take whatever was not a provision, war material, or personal effects. Those belonged to
the French. This left very little for the Indians
The British garrison turned over the fort to the French and they marched to the
camp outside of the fort to remain until they were to march to Fort Edward the next
morning. Trouble began almost immediately. As the French entered the fort, Indians
immediately began to enter the fort and plunder it. While that was expected to a degree
by the French, the Indians also entered the hospital and began to kill and scalp wounded
and sick British that had remained under care of the French. Roubaud wrote that he saw
“one of these barbarians come out of the casemates with a human head in his hand, from
which the blood ran in streams.”
French solders attempted to protect the British in the
fort, but the Indians were disgruntled that the French were keeping the best plunder for
themselves and that much of the good plunder was being protected by British claiming
personal baggage. For the next day, the Indians roamed the camp of the British stealing
personal effects and harassing soldiers. British officers offered money to the Indians to
protect their belongings which only added to the amount of harassment. Some of the
confrontations turned violent with Indians accusing the French of lying to them and
siding with the British. By nightfall the situation had gotten so bad that Montcalm was
called in to mediate. Montcalm used every tool he had from praise, to cajoling, to bribery,
and prayers to sooth the Indians and move them towards honoring the capitulation. While
details are lacking about what specifically he did, he returned to his camp at 2100 that
night and the Indians left the British camp.
It was announced throughout the French camp
that the British would march at first light. Monro and Montcalm attempted to march
earlier during the night, however a warning was given that 600 warriors were not present
in the Indian camps and it was suspected that they would ambush the column as it marched to Fort Edward. Three of the surrendered regiments had begun to march when
they were turned back to the camp at William Henry.
The next morning, the British assembled to march and the Indians returned to the
camp. This time though each British soldier carried a tomahawk, knife, or firearm. The
Indians were extremely angry at their situation and it continued to get worse. They had
been denied the best plunder and had nearly been tricked out of more by the attempted
midnight march. They again harassed the British for personal baggage, but this time were
more willing to use force. The small French escort arrived shortly after dawn, and the
British began to march to Fort Edward. As the British began to leave, the Indians became
more and more agitated. As the column marched, the Indians continued their harassment
and were taking packs, materials, and other implements of war, including muskets from
the marching soldiers. Inside the camp, the remaining British waiting to march were also
harassed. Seventeen wounded soldiers were killed and scalped. By this time, Indians that
had taken plunder from the column and fort had returned to the Indian camp to display
their trophies. This caused more Indians to join in the plundering. These Indians,
numbered by witnesses in the hundreds, descended on the entrenched camp and the rear
of the column where the provincials and followers marched and began to strip them of
any plunder.
The Massachusetts Regiment at the rear of the column heard a war whoop
from the Indians as they began to attack and kill the stragglers that resisted. The Indians
began to attack and take prisoners from the rear of the column. They killed those that
resisted and took their scalps instead. The arrival of more French forces made the situation worse. Montcalm hearing
the attack ran to the site of the massacre and immediately began to try to protect the
British. He met with chiefs and tried the same methods that he had used the night before.
As those failed, he finally resorted to force. He seized a child from an Indian and
prevented him from being taken prisoner. The Indian immediately killed and scalped his
remaining prisoner. As the French began to negotiate for the reclamation of prisoners,
some Indians began to kill some of their prisoners for the scalps, rather than come away
with nothing. The French used various methods including intimidation and negotiations
to get prisoners back from the Indians.
Most prisoners however were taken by the Indians
and those that could not move were killed and scalped. By the end of 10 August 1757,
69-185 British were killed and over 500 were prisoners of the Indians. Most of the
Indians had left by the night of the 10th, either moving to Montreal to ransom their
prisoners and scalps, or to return to their home with their prisoners in the pays d’en haut.
Some dug up British who had died of smallpox for their scalps and took the disease back
with them.
For the next month and half, Montcalm and Vaudreuil were engaged in a full
blown effort to mitigate the damage done by the massacre, recover any lost prisoners, and
minimize counter reports that came out about the massacre. Montcalm worked on
reclaiming prisoners he could in the local area but remained wary of Webb at Fort
Edward. He wrote letters to Vaudreuil and the French government in Europe about what
had transpired and attempted to minimize the damage that would surely have national
consequences in the dialogue between the British and French governments.
Vaudreuil, on the other hand, began to pay ransom for the prisoners that Indians brought to Montreal
realizing that their happiness was key to remaining in the alliance and fighting for the
French. Vaudreuil also realized that reclaiming the prisoners would also keep his general
happy and would reduce his negative letters to France.
The Indians arrived at the same
time as Bougainville did carrying Montcalm’s report of the massacre. Vaudreuil
immediately rebuked the Indians for breaking the capitulation. These Indians, who were
unbaptized Indians from the west, blamed Montcalm for tricking them and denying them
plunder, as well as blaming the Christian natives for beginning the killing.
One Indian
complained that, “I make wars for plunder, scalps, and prisoners. You are satisfied with a
fort, and you let your enemy and mine live.” Montcalm ransomed the prisoners for the
outrageous sum of 30 bottles of brandy and 130 livres a piece. Most of the others were
recovered through trade and ransom and by the end of 1757 only 200 would still be in
Indian hands and would remain there after the end of the war in 1763.
The aftermath of the massacre was critical for the French war effort. No single
event so soured relations on both sides of the French and Indian alliance. For the French,
the massacre was a public relations and military disaster. The departure of 1,300 of his
1,600 Indian allied force left Montcalm with insufficient military power to successfully
attack and capture Fort Edward. Their departure deprived him of valuable scouts and
raiding forces who could shape the operations by providing reconnaissance, intelligence,
and the raiding of supply lines to disrupt the fort.
Montcalm also saw the massacre as a potential sticking point in all future actions with the British in siege actions. He foresaw
the British denying French forces the right to surrender, or if they did, the right to honors
of war, or to the paroling of prisoners who do surrender. The massacre would also prove
to be a black mark on Montcalm’s honor as he could not live up to the terms he dictated
in surrender. His worst dreams would come true, when Amherst and the British denied
the honors of war to the surrendering forces in the Battles of Louisburg (1758) and
Montreal (1760). There, French troops were denied the honors of war and forced to turn
over colors, drums, and weapons to the British.
The British honored the terms of the
capitulation by not having the paroles fight in active units for 90 days, after which
Loudoun ordered every unit to move for the 1758 campaigns. Citing the massacre as a
breach of the capitulation agreement, all soldiers were back in the fight in 1758 for the
Louisburg campaign.
For the Indian allies of the French, the massacre was also a high water mark. Both
western “undomesticated” Indians and “civilized” Indians were disgruntled about the
attack. The groups left on 10-11 August 1757, to return to their homes as they viewed the
campaign over with the plundering of the fort. The western Indians of the pays d’en haut
were so insulted by their treatment and of the terms that robbed them of plunder and they
blamed Montcalm for their poor situation. The most damning insults were heard by
Pouchot at Fort Niagara as the western Indians returned to their homes through the
fort. They complained that Montcalm had colluded with the British and that that he
had deprived them of the plunder that was rightful to their success through this collusion. Though most of them returned with gifts of some kind, tobacco, cloths, weapons, and
alcohol, most saw this as a pittance compared to what they feel they justly deserved for
their part in the campaign.
To add insult to injury, smallpox was prevalent in the fort
during the siege and during the aftermath. Indians that had taken part in the battle did not
have the natural inoculation that been developed by the generations of domiciled Indians
that took part in the battle and they brought the disease back with them to their villages.
The combination of the betrayal of Montcalm and small pox crushed the desire for the
Indians to support the French army again.
The “domiciled” or Indians from the missions in New France were also
disgruntled with Montcalm and his treatment of the western Indians. While they were
able to trade their prisoners and were inoculated against the small pox, they saw
Montcalm’s actions towards their allies as a betrayal of the agreement between them and
the French army. As a result, the Indians were reluctant to take part in future campaign.
Bougainville writes that the Indians were “hunting” and not able to come to the war in
1758 as Montcalm was beginning to prepare his defense of Fort Carillon. This lack of
support was first noted in April and continued on into the summer. By the time the
French army prepared its defenses only sixteen321 of the estimated 800 domiciled Indians
in Canada showed for the campaign. This disturbing trend would continue through the
end of the war. Native American warriors continued to participate as irregulars with the Troupes de la Marine, however, they would never turnout for Montcalm’s banner as they
had in 1756-1757.
The capture of Fort William Henry marked a transition point in the French and
Indian War. The French army, relying heavily on Indian allies, had been successful in the
first two full years of the war from 1755-1756 based on their ability to combine irregular
and regular warfare to great success in defeating the British and keeping them in their
Atlantic colonies. These victories were celebrated across the Native American territory
and more Indians flocked to Montcalm’s army to fight for the chances of plunder and
prisoners.
The capture and subsequent massacre, as well as Montcalm’s handling of the
massacre, changed this dynamic and made such a negative impression that the Native
Americans refused to fight for Montcalm in numbers enough to positively affect a battle
again. The capitulation agreements that denied the Indians plunder or prisoners, coupled
with the gross mishandling by ransoming prisoners back and giving the impression of
siding with the British so jaded the Indians that they would return to their homes and
spread these negative feelings and prevent more Indians from assisting the French.
The
situation grew so grave, that even domiciled Indians that were used to French
mannerisms refused to fight for Montcalm. The effect on the French war effort would be profound. For Vaudreuil, this was a
disaster as the combination of la petite guerre and regular forces was key to his strategy
of defending by raiding and attacking the British before they could invade. While some Indians continued to appear for irregular operations with known and proven leaders of the
Troupes de La Marine, like those discussed in chapter 4, they would never appear in
numbers for Montcalm to be effective.
For Montcalm, who never fully overcame the
lasting negative impression of the Indians that Oswego and William Henry gave him, this
lack of Indians was a blessing and curse. Immediately, he was not able to exploit his
victory and attack Fort Edward because his scout and reconnaissance force had vanished.
He did, however, get his wish of being able to more Europeanize the war and fight it in a
civilized manner not reliant on Indians.
As Vaudreuil and Montcalm fought to mitigate
the fallout from the massacre with the French government and argue over strategy and the
implications of Britain’s reinforcement of their regular troops in North America,
Montcalm scored a stunning victory at Fort Carillon in 1758 by defeating a superior
British force with a smaller, all regular, French force. The French government, weary
of the massacre, having written off Canada in favor of the islands of the Caribbean, and
buoyed by Montcalm’s regular army victory, promoted him to lieutenant general and
made him military commander in North America. At the same time the French switched
tactics and moved to the defensive, retreating back to Canada as the British and their
superior numbers pushed up the river valleys, down the St Lawrence, and into Quebec.
This left the way open for the British offensives of 1758 and marked the beginning of the
end of the French empire in North America.
When the British attacked Quebec in the
decisive battle on the Plains of Abraham on 13 September 1759, Montcalm defended the
city against the 4,426 British regular forces with a force of 4,400. This force was comprised of 2,000 Troupes de Terre, 600 Troupes de la Marine, 1,000 Canadian militia,
and only 300 Native Americans, most of whom were Cree and had no past dealings with
Montcalm.
CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
The Seven Years’ War was a critical event that swung the balance of power in North America and one that still has lessons to be learned today. It started as the result of a dispute over the territorial expansion of British colonies into the Ohio River valley and the efforts of the French colonists of New France to stop them.
It expanded into a world
war on many fronts both in Europe and in the Americas that forced the French and the
British to fight over their colonial holdings. For the French, the campaign in North
America would at the end of the day, be a losing one. What started as a victory in a small
skirmish at Fort Necessity would ultimately result in the end of the French in North
America.
Both sides fought the war the best way they knew how, the British relying on their
resources, large population base, strong regular army, and traditional European tactics to
defeat a smaller French army that relied heavily on Native American allies who used nonconventional tactics to make up the numbers they lacked in regular troops. Despite this
augmentation, the French would eventually be overcome by British resources, and
despite numerous tactical victories, the French were unable to merge these into a strategic
defeat of the British.
It was this French reliance on the Indians, and their fighting style of frontier
warfare known as la petite guerre, that characterized this war as the French and Indian War and gave the French their best way to fight the British. To counter Britain’s large 1.5
million person population in North America, the 55,000 persons of New France were
forced to ally with and use the many Native American tribes that lived and traded in the
vast territory they controlled. This territory, ranging from the Great Lakes in the West,
Atlantic Ocean in the East, and down the Mississippi to Louisiana and the Gulf of
Mexico in the south contained over 16,000 warriors.
The French could call upon these
tribes to augment their relatively small army of Troupes de la Marine militia, and, from
1756 on, the regular troops of the Troupes de Terre. This army at its height comprised
only 25,000 men at arms compared to the British’s 50,000 regular troops alone. The
French would seek to mitigate this disadvantage using North American Indians to fight a
strategy they had used successfully against the numerically superior British in the frontier
wars of the early 18th century. This tactic utilized the frontier way of war they learned
during the nearly century of war with the Indians in the 1700s, la petite guerre. This
style of war fighting allowed the French to fight a numerically superior British force on
their terms. Using raids and ambushes to disrupt British troops prior to sieges as in the
Battle of the Monongahela, setting conditions for the French army to be successful as
seen in Oswego, countering British irregulars near Carillon, or raiding the British frontier
to prevent the provincials from joining the British army, all served to keep the war
predominantly on British territory. The French sought not to defeat the British and conquer their land, but to stall the British in North America so that the French in Europe
could force a peace.
This reliance on the Indian fighter and their ways of war also proved to be their
downfall. Montcalm’s actions over a two year period in attempting to control the
savagery of the Indians as well as force European concepts of honor and what he
considered a proper civilized war ethic on the Indian warrior after the massacre at Fort
William Henry, resulted in the Indians ceasing to support the French in any large
numbers through the end of the war. This lack of support prevented the French from
being able to match the British in manpower. While Montcalm got his wish of fighting a
European “civilized war,” he was forced to switch his battle strategy to one of strategic
withdrawal. In the face of overwhelming numbers, and lacking the robust scouts and
intelligence from his Indians allies, he pulled back from the French and British contested
borderlands.
This allowed the British armies to cut off French territory from the
capital, isolate Montcalm’s forces at Quebec and defeat them. Flooding into the terrain
behind his forces were English traders and business people who were eager to exploit the
lack of French goods and convert the Indians to their cause. As British victories increased
in 1758 and British-Indian diplomacy increased in the same period, the French lost more
and more of their Native American support forcing them to withdraw further into Canada
to mass their forces. After the Battle of Quebec in 1759, the French army, on the retreat,
grew more and more isolated from their Indian allies, and surrendered in 1763.
The French reliance on Indians and, as noted in chapter 2, the government’s
decision to fight the North American theater as an economy of force action prevented the
large reinforcements needed to match the British in a conventional fight. The only hope
of success for the French was that the la petite guerre could cause enough havoc and
destruction in the British territory that it would be able to force a peace. Unfortunately,
this was not the case and the British chose to defeat the French permanently in North
America.
While la petite guerre and the Indian allies could inflict many tactical victories
on the British, it was ultimately not able to turn any of these into a strategic victory.
The modern army officer can learn much from the study of the French and Indian
War. While a scholar would most likely focus on the British as the victors, the French, in
defeat, also hold many valuable lessons for today’s soldier. These are lessons that we see
executed day after day in the hybrid battlefields of Afghanistan and other places where
the light footprint combined force will be used with an allied partner force. We find that
knowledge of culture, of understanding your allies, and the very nature of warfare in your
environment is key.
The hard lessons of Braddock and Montcalm in their cultural and
tactical errors show that understanding your environment and how war is waged in that
environment is critical to being successful. In the 20th century, Mao Zedong would lay
down the lessons that Montcalm and Braddock failed to learn. Mao stated that to be
successful, one must first understand war, then understand your environment, then understand how war is applied in that environment.
Braddock’s defeat in 1755 is a
clear example in how failing the last two lessons will spell defeat.
Montcalm also teaches the modern officer that the officer must be smart in
applying his way of war and culture onto that of allies. If the officer pushes to hard to
drastic of a change, they risk losing their allies altogether. This is countered with the
valuable positive lessons of La Corne, de Leary, and the other French partisan leaders
who successfully exploited the way of war and culture of their allied force to maintain
their allegiance and put them to the best use on the battlefield.
Could the French have won the Seven Years’ War? It is highly unlikely that true
victory by conquering British territory was possible. The French lacked the manpower
and resources to defeat the British in the face of a blockade in the Atlantic and the
massive numbers of regular troops the British were willing to spend in order to defeat the
French permanently in North America. The French had one option, use their allies to
fight the British to a standstill and sue for peace. While they were not able to this, the
French, their Indian allies, and la petite guerre stand as a testament to how a successful
integration and combined allied force of regular and irregular forces can be used to fight
a larger force and all but snatch victory from defeat.
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Gerring, Brian, La Petitie Guerre and American Indian Irregular Warfare: Siblings, But Not Twins, Journal of the American Revolution (Online Publication) (Dec. 2020)
When the major European powers began to use light troops in the mid-eighteenth century, they typically employed them in a manner of war that the French labeled as la petite guerre. Troops participating in la petite guerre operated separately from the main army, often using speed and maneuver for quick attacks and ambushes in support of an army’s goals. Concurrent with this European development was warfare between North American Indian tribes and American colonists, an ongoing clash beginning in the sixteenth century. In their conduct of war, American Indians typically operated using similar tactics to European light troops—maneuver and speed for sudden attacks and ambushes—while also utilizing the wooded North American terrain to their advantage. In a sermon concerning Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock’s defeat, William Vinal declared that “as to the General, he was an experienced warrior, in the Regular Way . . . But he had not opportunity to acquaint himself with the Irregular Manner of fighting in this country [italics in the original].”[1] Because of the similarities between European petite guerre and the North American Indian irregular manner of war, there is an assumption that the two forms of warfare were the same. From the primary sources, however, it is clear that, while similar in conduct, Europe’s petite guerre and the Indian’s irregular manner of war were two distinct forms of warfare for most of the eighteenth century.
There is no exact phrase for regular European warfare in the primary sources. After all, it was the regular way that armies conducted warfare, which consisted primarily of infantry-based armies, supported by cavalry and artillery, battling in open terrain or conducting well-ordered sieges. During regular warfare, European armies conducted battles using linear tactics, which involved lines of troops maneuvering in orderly fashion and firing in massed volleys. The purpose of this type of warfare was to bring an overwhelming amount of musket fire against an enemy, which only massed formations of soldiers could accomplish. Once these massed volleys sufficiently broke the enemy’s forces, the army would initiate a bayonet charge that would drive the enemy from the battlefield—the shock assault. The intent of both la petite guerre and the Indian irregular manner of war was not to engage and defeat massed armies on the traditional, or regular, battlefield. Instead, operations of la petite guerre were ancillary to regular operations in eighteenth century warfare, and the irregular manner of war was a way of war that was opposite of regular eighteenth century warfare.
The first treatises promoting the usefulness of la petite guerre were Armand François de La Croix’s Trait’e de la Petite Guerre pour les Compagnies Franches (1752), Turpin de Crissé’s Essai sur L’Art de la Guerre (1754), and Thomas Auguste le Roy de Grandmaison’s La Petite Guerre (1756). These treatises originated from the French military experiences during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), a conflict that shaped the European concept of the usefulness of la petite guerre during war. Although la petite guerre is a French term, it remained untranslated when used by English speakers; however, English speakers did translate the definite article la so that the standard use of the term was petite guerre. This is apparent in Maj. Lewis Nicola’s 1777 translation of Grandmaison’s work where he translates the entire text, except for the phrase petite guerre.[2] The French treatises are known to have been in possession of Continental Army officers, including Gen. George Washington who recommended the reading of these treatises.[3] The Continental Congress also advocated the study of these treatises; they authorized the establishment of a “military school for young gentlemen,” which would contain “a regimental library of the most approved authors on tactics and the petite guerre.”[4] From theory and practice, troops conducting operations in the petite guerre were separate or detached from the main army—the grand army—and they typically used quick strikes and harassment attacks against the enemy’s less protected areas. Due to the separated nature of units conducting the petite guerre, contemporary sources also referred to this type of warfare as a war of detachments. The intent of these limited and continual harassment-type attacks was to syphon military resources away from the enemy’s grand army. This understanding was made clear in Roger Stevenson’s Military Instructions for Officers Detached in the Field . . . Necessary in Carrying on the Petite Guerre (1775), where he wrote:
This corps is a light party . . . separated from the army, to secure the camp or a march; to reconnoitre the enemy or the country; to seize their posts, convoys, or escorts; to plant ambuscades, and put in practice every stratagem for surprising or disturbing the enemy: which is called carrying on the Petite Guerre.[5]
As stated, there is no exact phrase for regular European warfare in the primary sources. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the petite guerre was a component of regular warfare; thus, it was merely a subset within established eighteenth century European warfare. Stevenson detailed in Military Instructions that troops engaged in the petite guerre were operating against traditional military forces in support of the main army’s efforts.[6] Likewise, British Maj. Robert Donkin delivered an entire section on the petite guerre that focused on activities designed to support the grand army.[7] Like other contemporary Europeans, Americans understood that troops operating in the petite guerre were supporting the main war effort.
Even though the petite guerre revolved around regular warfare, armies sometimes employed irregular troops so that military commanders could focus their regular troops on traditional military operations, such as battles and sieges. By the eighteenth century definition, irregulars were any soldiers that were not part of a structured, state-recognized and funded, full-time army.[8] In his Universal Military Dictionary (1779), George Smith noted that militia—who were part-time troops—were not “regular or stated troops.”[9] Simply put, in the eighteenth century mindset, if troops were not in the regular army, they were irregular. While the eighteenth century contains many examples of irregular troops engaged in the petite guerre, notable examples occurred during the War of the Austrian Succession with such units as the hussars and pandours. These organizations were irregular light troops that operated using their mobility to conduct attacks against vulnerable military targets, ambushes, reconnaissance, and scouting for the main army. Some irregular light troops, particularly the pandours, could be brutal in their operations because of their penchant for killing captives, mutilating the dead, and targeting non-combatants, traits indicative of savage or uncivilized warfare. The barbarity of these actions proved objectionable to the civilized notion of warfare held by most Europeans. Therefore, after the War of the Austrian Succession, European militaries began a process of normalizing irregular light troops into authorized regular light troops who were more controllable to military leaders to curtail these atrocities. Simultaneously, the French military treatises appeared promoting the usefulness of la petite guerre as a way to bring the conduct of that form of warfare under the umbrella of “civilized” warfare.
Warfare on the frontiers of North America between colonists and Indians during the eighteenth century often involved similarly brutal, if not identical, tactics of the pandours. This type of warfare typically involved attacking and burning villages and homes, destroying crops, and killing or capturing non-combatants. This type of warfare usually impacted the whole of society, not just dedicated military forces. Modern parlance calls this unlimited or total war because anyone, combatants or non-combatants, could be a target. A Jesuit priest recorded this type of warfare in 1649 as attacking Iroquois completely destroyed structures and killed or captured everyone in Huron villages.[10] This type of warfare was in direct contrast to European warfare, which, in theory, stressed “humanity . . . even in war.”[11] Political theorist Emmerich de Vattel wrote in 1758 that when a nation conducts war
let us not divest ourselves of that charity which connects us with all mankind. Thus shall we courageously defend our country’s rights without violating those of human nature. Let our valour preserve itself from every stain of cruelty, and the lustre of victory will not be tarnished by inhuman and brutal actions.[12]
Commenting on humane conduct of war, political philosopher Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui wrote in 1747:
In general, even the laws of war require that we should abstain from slaughter as much as possible, and not shed human blood without necessity. We ought not, therefore, directly and deliberately to kill prisoners of war, nor those who ask quarter, or surrender themselves, much less old men, women and children.[13]
Contrasting these European ideas, Thomas Jefferson described the common understanding of North American warfare as:
The known rule of warfare with the Indian savages is an indiscriminate butchery of men women and children. These savages . . . [fight] not against our forts, or armies in the field, but the farming settlements on our frontiers.[14]
Jefferson’s quote reflects the stereotypical colonial American understanding of the Indian’s conduct of war, while seemingly ignoring the fact that the Americans freely practiced the same type of warfare against Indians, such as the Conestoga massacre in 1763.[15] Americans took to this manner of warfare, particularly on the frontier, as they clashed with Indian tribes during their settlement expansions to the west. James Smith, who spent the entirety of the French and Indian War in Indian captivity and intimately understood the Indian manner of war, wrote in the early nineteenth century that “Kentucky would not have been settled at the time is was, had the Virginians been altogether ignorant of this method of war.”[16] This manner of war was the opposite of the regular European way of war; thus, eighteenth century sources called it an irregular manner of war. Because of this opposition, Americans and Europeans habitually characterized the Indian irregular manner of war as “uncivilized.”
Despite the prevalence of attacks on non-combatants, Indians did perform operations against military targets. Typically, when Indians conducted operations against military forces, these attacks occurred in the enclosed wooded terrain of North America, which was very different from the regular, open European battlefields. Writing shortly after the Revolutionary War, British Lt. Thomas Anburey noted that “the Indian’s idea of war consists in never fighting in an open field.”[17] Donkin’s perception of the early years of the Revolutionary War was that the Americans fought contrary to the customary rules of war—the ruses de guerre. He wrote that because of “the nature of the country, and cowardliness of the rebels . . . [they] delight more in murdering from the woods, walls and houses, than in shewing any genius or science in the art military.”[18] Donkin echoed the prevailing thought of the time that denoted two different forms of courage in war. Scottish philosopher Henry Home Kames summed up this concept in 1774 as passive courage compared to active courage. Kames theorized that passive courage was attributable to “North-American savages” because they practiced a form of warfare that relied on “stratagem and surprise” to avoid fighting in open areas; conversely, Europeans had active courage because they willingly conducted warfare in open areas.[19] In a letter written in 1775, shortly after the British retreat from Concord, a British soldier noted this difference. He wrote that the American militia “did not fight us like a regular army, only like savages, behind trees and stone walls.”[20] While these quotes do not reflect the American reliance on traditional European tactics throughout the war—and the victories brought by such tactics—they do demonstrate a difference in the perception between civilized and uncivilized conduct in warfare.
The enclosed and shrouded forest environment of North America necessitated a closer type of warfare between combatants. The tactics for operating in this constricting terrain involved a loose order or extended way of fighting, instead of the traditional linear European tactics. During the Revolutionary War, both the American and British armies adopted extended formations while also maintaining, practicing, and performing traditional European linear tactics. Warfare in the woods typically involved sudden ambush attacks from concealed positions, a type of warfare described as “skulking.”[21] Anburey concluded that the Indian way of war derived from their hunting practices. He wrote: “Every Indian is a hunter, and their manner of making war is of the same nature, only changing the object, by skulking, surprising and killing those of their own species.”[22]
Virginia Lt. Gov. Robert Dinwiddie summed up Indian warfare to Maj. Gen. James Abercrombie in 1756 this way:
Dear Sir, You are come into a Country cover’d with woods and sometimes unaccessible Mountains, &c. The European Method of Waring not practic’d here. The Indian Method is bush fighting and watching every Opp’ty to destroy their Enemys.[23]
The tactics used by Indians were contrary to the traditional and regular European warfare tactics; thus, contemporaries labeled those tactics as irregular. A British officer recorded that during Braddock’s Defeat, the Indians fought in an “irregular method” by firing and moving quickly, using the trees for cover, while another British participant noted that the Indians used the terrain to their advantage by fighting “either on their bellies or behind trees or running from one tree to another.”[24] However, contemporaries labeled any tactic contrary to regular tactics as irregular. The Americans defeated Col. Patrick Ferguson’s forces at King’s Mountain using irregular tactics; a British officer present during the battle noted that the attacking Americans used trees for cover and “poured in an irregular destructive fire.”[25] Likewise, an American soldier noted that some British troops operated with “irregularity” during the New York Campaign.[26] Despite the distinction between the civilized—la petite guerre—and uncivilized—irregular—manners of war, the conduct for both forms of warfare frequently involved similar tactics. Because of this tactical similarity, there is a present-day perception that both forms of warfare are interchangeable. Eighteenth century sources do not reflect that interchangeability.
Did Revolutionary War-era Americans include the Indian irregular manner of war a part of the European sanctioned petite guerre? Primary sources suggest that they did not; both forms of warfare were distinct. The difference was in the perception of what constituted civilized and uncivilized warfare. Washington’s writings give a clear representation of the eighteenth century American mindset that differentiated between the irregular manner of war and the petite guerre. Knowing both the European and Indian styles of warfare, Washington considered the Indian tactical mode of fighting as irregular. He remarked that because of the army’s “apprehension of the Indian Mode of fighting,” he dispatched Col. Daniel Morgan and his rifle-armed regiment to the Northern Department in 1777 because those soldiers were capable of engaging and restraining the Indian allies of Burgoyne.[27] In 1779, he requested the states of Pennsylvania and New York to enlist rangers who were “accustomed to the irregular kind of wood-fighting practiced by the Indians.”[28] In 1779, Washington ordered Maj. Gen. John Sullivan to conduct an expedition against the Six Nation Indians in western New York. Washington considered this entire expedition as an irregular operation, an operation that was separate from the Continental Army’s regular operations against the British army. In gauging military allocations for Sullivan’s requests, Washington wrote: “If the operations he is to be concerned in were the regular ones of the field, his calculation would be better founded; but in the loose irregular war he is to carry on, it will naturally lead to error and misconception.”[29]
Although Sullivan’s Expedition was separate from the main army, it was not warfare in the realm of the petite guerre because it was a large military operation against irregular enemies in western New York, mostly Indians and Tories, not British regulars. The intent of Sullivan’s Expedition was to devastate whole British-allied Indian tribes in western New York. Washington issued the following orders to Sullivan, which demonstrate a manner of war contrary to the regular European conduct of war:
The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.[30]
This order reflects the irregular manner of war that Sullivan was to carry out. Conversely, from his experience and education, Washington understood to whom the petite guerre applied; namely, troops involved in the main war effort. When Washington departed New York for Virginia in 1781, he used the term to describe the permissible activities for the remaining troops under the command of Maj. Gen. William Heath. Washington instructed:
Altho your general Rule of Conduct will be to act on the defensive only, yet it is not meant to prohibit you from striking a Blow at the Enemys Posts or Detatchments, should a fair Opportunity present itself . . . [including] annoying the Enemy, & covering the Country, as for the Security & repose of your own Troops . . . to hold the Enemy in Check, & carry on the Petit Guerre with them.[31]
This quote reflects a nearly textbook description for the petite guerre. The 1783 Encyclopedia Britannica defines the petite guerre as involving the tactics of “secret marches, occupying, defending, or attacking posts, reconnoitering countries or the enemy, placing of ambuscades, &c.,” which is similar to Stevenson’s Military Instructions quoted above.[32]
After the Revolutionary War, Americans, at times, began to use the term petite guerre to describe the Indian way of war, as Jefferson did in 1787 when he remarked that “the petite guerre always waged by the Indians” did not dissuade Americans from settling Kentucky.[33] John Connolly, a Loyalist during the war, writing about his time as a provincial soldier during Pontiac’s Rebellion several decades later, noted that he “had an opportunity of observing the great difference between the petite guerre of the Indians, and the military system of the Europeans.”[34] This change reflects the changing perception of war in the post-Revolutionary War era, where civilized and uncivilized warfare began to intertwine. Events in Europe further blurred any distinction between civilized and uncivilized warfare, notably from France. Concerning the ongoing French Revolution, Edmund Burke wrote:
The hell-hounds of war, on all sides, will be uncoupled and unmuzzled. The new school of murder and barbarism, set up in Paris, having destroyed (so far as in it lies) all the other manners and principles which have hitherto civilized Europe, will destroy also the mode of civilized war.[35]
Subsequent events throughout the nineteenth century would continue to transform the meaning of the petite guerre as the traditional perception of civilized warfare changed. As the meaning of the phrase morphed, it began to encompass any small or limited conflict, whether that conflict was part of a larger war strategy. While the petite guerre is no longer a modern-day expression, such terms as police action, insurgency and counter-insurgency, minor operations, dirty wars, little wars, and guerrilla and irregular warfare all have roots in the eighteenth century phrase.
In Washington’s writings, it is evident that military forces involved in carrying out the petite guerre were conducting limited yet continual operations—typically skirmishing, harassment attacks, and reconnaissance—only against British Army forces.[36] Troops conducting the petite guerre could use the same tactics that Indians utilized in their manner of war—such as maneuverability for surprise attacks, firing from concealed positions, and attacks on isolated posts. Despite the later views, there was a differentiation between an irregular manner of war and the petite guerre throughout most of the eighteenth century, even though both types of warfare involved similar and, at times, identical tactics. This distinction between the two forms of warfare originated from how troops engaged a targeted enemy. This was a result of the perception of the “civilized” European conduct of warfare, which involved la petite guerre, and the “uncivilized” conduct of warfare of the North American Indians, a type of warfare that colonial Americans also practiced, which involved irregular methods.
[1]William Vinal, A Sermon on the Accursed Thing that Hinders Success and Victory in War (Newport, RI: James Franklin, 1755), 14.
[2]Thomas Auguste le Roy de Grandmaison, La Petite Guerre, trans. Lewis Nicola (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1777), 5.
[3]Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal Captain Johann Ewald Field Jäger Corps, trans. Joseph P. Tustin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 108; George Washington to William Woodford, November 10, 1775, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0320.
[4]Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, vol. 8, 1777 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907), 485.
[5]Roger Stevenson, Military Instructions for Officers Detached in the Field[. . .] Necessary in Carrying on the Petite Guerre (Philadelphia: R. Aitken, 1775), 35.
[7]Robert Donkin, Military Collections and Remarks (New York: H. Gaine, 1777), 240.
[8]“Essay on Regular and Irregular Forces,” Gentleman’s Magazine 16 (1746): 30–32.
[9]George Smith, Universal Military Dictionary (London: J. Millan, 1779), s. v. “militia.”
[10]Reuben Gold Thwaites, The Jesuit and Allied Documents, vol. 34, Lower Canada: The Hurons, 1649 (Cleveland: Burrow Brothers, 1898), 123-134.
[11]Henry Home Kames, Sketches of the History of Man, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Edinburgh: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1778), 386.
[12]Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, ed. Béla Kapossy and Richard Whitmore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), 369.
[13]Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, The Principles of Politic Law: Being a Sequel to the Principles of Natural Law, trans. Mr. Nugent (London: J. Nourse, 1752), 282.
[14]Thomas Jefferson to William Phillips, July 22, 1779, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-03-02-0052.
[15]A Narrative of the Late Massacres (Philadelphia: 1764), 5-6.
[16]James Smith, A Treatise on the Mode and Manner of Indian War (Paris, KY: Joel R. Lyle, 1812), 10.
[17]Thomas Anburey, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in a Series of Letters by an Officer (London: William Lane, 1789), 294.
[18]Donkin, Military Collections, 223.
[19]Kames, History of Man, 45, 47.
[20]“Extracts From Several Intercepted Letters of the Soldiery in Boston,” Boston, April 28, 1775, in Peter Force, American Archive: Fourth Series, vol. 2 (Washington D.C.: M. St. Clair Clark and Peter Force, 1839), 440.
[21]Benjamin Franklin to James Parker, March 20, 1751, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0037; Washington to Lord Loudon, January 1757, in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washingtonfrom the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799, vol. 2, 1757-1769 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931), 10.
[23]Robert Dinwiddie to James Abercrombie, May 28, 1756, Williamsburg, in R. A. Brock, ed., The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Virginia, 1751-1758, vol. 2 (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1884), 425-426.
[24]Charles Hamilton, ed., Braddock’s Defeat: The Journal of Captain Robert Cholmley’s Batman; The Journal of a British Officer; Halkett’s Orderly Book (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959), 29, 50.
[25]Quoted in W. H. Wilkin, Some British Soldiers in America (London: Hugh Rees, 1914), 167.
[26]Quoted in Frank Moore, Diary of the American Revolution, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner, 1860), 326.
[27]Washington to Horatio Gates, August 20, 1777, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-11-02-0012.
[28]Washington to Joseph Reed, March 3, 1779, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-19-02-0360; Washington to George Clinton, March 4, 1779, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-19-02-0368.
[29]Washington to John Jay, August 15, 1779, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-22-02-0115.
[30]Washington to John Sullivan, May 31, 1779, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0661.
[31]Washington to William Heath, August 19, 1781, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-06729.
[32]Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 10 (Edinburgh: J. Balfour, 1783), 8840.
[33]Jefferson to William Carmichael, December 11, 1787, Paris, in Albert Ellery Bergh, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 5 (Washington, DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905), 382.
[34]John Connolly, “A Narrative of the Transactions, Imprisonment, and Sufferings of John Connolly, an American Loyalist and Lieut. Col. in His Majesty’s Service,” in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 12 (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1888), 311.
[35]Edmund Burke, “A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, May 1791,” in Edmund Burke, Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. D.E. Ritchie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992), 55-56.
[36]Washington to Philip Schuyler, February 23, 1777, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-08-02-0460; Washington to Heath, January 22, 1782, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-07719.
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The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among the New England Indians
by Patrick M. Malone (Author)
The stealthy native style of warfare practiced by Indians of the forest and lake country of northeastern North America. Skulking was essentially the mode of the natural guerilla and raider, with the cultural addition that forest Indians did not make a moral distinction between murder and “private war.” Thus, even in times that were otherwise peaceful, a young skulking brave might attack and kill personal enemies to hone his fighting skills and acquire honor and reputation. The “skulking way” as group combat was notable for avoiding direct assaults on heavy fortifications that would cost too many lives among attackers. Instead, it employed guile and ruses. It made effective use of ground and forest cover in making an approach, to spring ambushes, and for refuge in retreat or defeat. Skulking bewildered settlers, militia, and European regulars, at least until some of them-notably Canadian militia and, later, American rangers-learned its methods and began to use them in combat. Skulking enraged European officers, who viewed it as opposed to the “rules of war.” It should not have: Europeans themselves had for centuries “skulked” along wild frontiers in Ireland, Hungary, Scotland, and across the Militargrenze, waging petite guerre and guerre guerroyante from the borders of France and the Holy Roman Empire to Poland and Ukraine.
Well adapted to its environment as a military approach, the skulking way of war also reflected native cultural and ritualized religious values-some admirable, but others less so. At its core was the Indian brave, who was a warrior rather than a soldier. A brave was usually very young-training began no later than age twelve-exceptionally fit, and capable of greater speed and physical endurance on the march than his European allies, enemies, or prisoners. He was an expert marksman, taking the white man’s firearms, powder, and shot in exchange for furs and excelling in use of the rifle in hunting and war. As Armstrong Starkey has shrewdly noted, the brave possessed “the skills and discipline of modern commandos and special forces.” He could move and survive in winter by using snowshoes and eating scraps from the forest floor, while white troops stayed huddled in wooden huts, awaiting the spring, or died starving and frozen in the deep snow. In summer, he moved over river and lake in stealthy birchbark canoes that gave his war party unparalleled mobility and tactical surprise. His officers were “elected” on the basis of demonstrated bravery, audacity, and cunning, not mounted stiffly in a saddle by accident of birth, or from a purchased commission.
Indian military discipline was based on personal honor, rather than hard punishment. Indian tactics aimed at victory achieved with minimal loss of the lives of attackers. Tactical retreat, or refusing to fight in the face of superior numbers or fortified works, was thus commonplace. This infuriated European commanders, who misunderstood Indian battlefield prudence as cowardice or fecklessness toward the “cause,” further misreading the fact that Indians fought in white men’s wars for reasons of their own. A brave’s ethics were also akin to a modern commando’s, notably when it came to prisoners. They would take prisoners if chance permitted, or they would slaughter all their enemies because they could not move quickly with old men and women and children in tow. While contemptuous of enemy males who surrendered, a warrior could still treat a prisoner gently and adopt him (or her) into his nation. Or he might slowly torture or burn him (or her) to death. Unlike European or Asian soldiers for whom rape was a ubiquitous part of war, out of mystical taboo Indian warriors rarely molested captive women. In sum, braves could be as kind and humane or as callous and cruel as any other soldier, in any era.
Most eastern Indians quickly adapted to firearms, exclusively matchlock weapons prior to 1660 and principally flintlock firearms after that. Starkey argues that they abandoned bows and arrows because the ability of most braves to dodge arrows became an impossible feat with bullets. In short, Indians appreciated the greater hitting power of firearms. They often loaded weapons with several balls or bullets to maximize a gun’s wounding or killing effect. Moreover, Indians much preferred rifles to muskets for hunting and in war, domains they did not always distinguish. Most became expert riflemen well beyond the skills exhibited by settlers, who were mainly farmers who occasionally supplemented their winter larder with wild game. European regulars sported smoothbore muskets and fired in volley, were not trained in marksmanship, and did not aim at individual targets. Braves fired, moved to new cover to reload, fired again, and then moved again. This emphasis on aimed fire did not mean that they fought merely as individuals. War parties made up of larger numbers of braves, each firing and seeking new cover, conducted skilled advances and retreats “blackbird fashion.” In that style of fighting, braves with loaded guns covered those reloading or moving, rather as a modern commando unit in urban warfare moves from cover to cover under suppressing fire. The skulking way of war also reduced casualties, a great concern of Indian societies once demographic decline set in after contact with virgin European and African diseases borne by settlers or slaves.
Suggested Reading: Patrick Malone, The Skulking Way of War (1991); A. Starkey, European and Native American Warfare (1998)
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