James Lincoln Collier - The French and Indian War: 1660 - 1763

T HE D RAMA OF A MERICAN H ISTORY

The FRENCH and INDIAN WAR

16601763

Christopher Collier

James Lincoln Collier

ACKNOWLEDGMENT : The authors wish to thank Gregory Evans Dowd, Associate Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, for his careful reading of the text of this volume of The Drama of American History, and his thoughtful and useful comments. The work has been much improved by Professor Dowd's notes. The authors are deeply in his debt but, of course, assume full responsibility for the substance of the work, including any errors that may appear.

Photo research by James Lincoln Collier

Cover photo Colonial Williamsburg Foundation .

PICTURE CREDITS: The photographs in this book are used by permission and through the courtesy of:

Chapter I: Corbis-Bettmann: Indian village. Jamestown-Yorktown Educational Trust: Indian chief's back, chopping wood, working a tobacco field. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: Bruton Parish church, Virginia governor's palace, Fidele in Cymbeline .

Chapter II: Corbis-Bettmann: Peter Stuyvesant. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: Cherokees visiting London, Denny Soccabesan, New York in 1763.

Chapter III: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: Charles Town, packing tobacco, carpentry, slaves cutting wood, slaves' quarters.

Chapter IV: Corbis-Bettmann: Treaty of Fort Stanwix. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: William Penn's treaty with the Indians, servant dressing a woman, reading from the Bible, typical meal, curtained bed, cooking over an open fire, musical instruments.

Chapter V: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: hospital in Virginia, Samuel Caw, Mary Blair Braxton, navigational instrument, ladies' fan, gentlemen's tool chests, important crops, farm in the wilderness. Corbis-Bettmann: hunters on snowshoes.

Chapter VI: Corbis-Bettmann: George Washington, Battle of Lake George, William Pitt, Lord Jeffrey Amherst. Jamestown-Yorktown Educational Trust: French short saber. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: General Wolfe dying.

AUTHORS' NOTE: The human beings who first peopled what we now call the Americas have traditionally been called Indians, because the first Europeans who landed in the Americas thought they had reached India. The term Indians is therefore not very accurate, and other terms have been used: Amerinds, and more recently, Native Americans. The Indians had no collective term for themselves. Today, most of them refer to themselves as Indians, and we will use that term here, while understanding that it is not very accurate.

1998 Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holders.

First ebook edition 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-497-3

Library ISBN 978-0-7927-9542-1

The FRENCH and INDIAN WAR

16601763

C ONTENTS

P REFACE

OVER MANY YEARS of both teaching and writing for students at all levels, from grammar school to graduate school, it has been borne in on us that many, if not most, American history textbooks suffer from trying to include everything of any moment in the history of the nation. Students become lost in a swamp of factual information, and as a consequence lose track of how those facts fit together, and why they are significant and relevant to the world today.

In this series, our effort has been to strip the vast amount of available detail down to a central core. Our aim is to draw in bold strokes, providing enough information, but no more than is necessary, to bring out the basic themes of the American story, and what they mean to us now. We believe that it is surely more important for students to grasp the underlying concepts and ideas that emerge from the movement of history, than to memorize an array of facts and figures.

The difference between this series and many standard texts lies in what has been left out. We are convinced that students will better remember the important themes if they are not buried under a heap of names, dates, and places.

In this sense, our primary goal is what might be called citizenship education. We think it is critically important for America as a nation and Americans as individuals to understand the origins and workings of the public institutions which are central to American society. We have asked ourselves again and again what is most important for citizens of our democracy to know so they can most effectively make the system work for them and the nation. For this reason, we have focused on political and institutional history, leaving social and cultural history less well developed.

This series is divided into volumes that move chronologically through the American story. Each is built around a single topic, such as the pilgrims, the Constitutional Convention, or immigration. Each volume has been written so that it can stand alone, for students who wish to research a given topic. As a consequence, in many cases material from previous volumes is repeated, usually in abbreviated form, to set the topic in its historical context. That is to say, students of the Constitutional Convention must be given some idea of relations with England, and why the revolution was fought, even though the material was covered in detail in a previous volume. Readers should find that each volume tells an entire story that can be read with or without reference to other volumes.

Despite our belief that it is of the first importance to outline sharply basic concepts and generalizations, we have not neglected the great dramas of American history. The stories that will hold the attention of students are here, and we believe they will help the concepts they illustrate to stick in their minds. We think, for example, that knowing of Abraham Baldwin's brave and dramatic decision to vote with the small states at the Constitutional Convention will bring alive the Connecticut Compromise, out of which grew the American Senate.

Each of these volumes has been read by esteemed specialists in its particular topic; we have benefited from their comments.

C HAPTER I: T HE E UROPEAN C OLONIES IN THE L ATE S EVENTEENTH C ENTURY

ONE OF THE most neglected periods in the modern history of North America is the period that began in the 1670s, when it was clear that the European colonies were in the country to stay, and ended in 1763 when, for reasons we shall see, the spirit of revolt against England began to stir. Everybody knows the stories and legends of the first settlersthe Mayflower and Plymouth Rock, John Smith and Pocahontas; and everybody remembers the great events of the 1770s and afterthe Boston Tea Party, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the signing of the Declaration of Independence.