The Mentor, No. 35,
The Story of America in Pictures:
The Contest for North America

The Mentor

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

THE STORY OF AMERICA IN PICTURES
THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA

By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
Professor of Government, Harvard University

The whole round world is now open. Gone is the pleasure of finding new lands, sighting strange mountains, floating down mysterious rivers, and meeting unknown races of men. After Mt. Everest is climbed by some daring mountaineer, and after an airship lands on the highest peak of Mt. McKinley, what will be left for the seeker of novelty? Where can you now find a river or mountain range or tribe certified never before to have been seen by white men?

That rich pleasure was enjoyed in the fullest measure by the explorers in North America; in fact, they enjoyed it so much that they kept it alive for four centuries. For a good two hundred and fifty years the English at intervals battered their way into Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait, and the Arctic deserts, trying to smash a route through the ice, around to the north of Asia and Europe. Nearly three centuries passed after De Soto reached the lower Mississippi before Lieutenant Pike found its source in its native lair. As late as 1880 no man, white or red, knew the passes across the Canadian Rockies; and to this day only three boat parties have ever gone through the length of the canyon of the Colorado.

ROBERT CAVELIER DE LA SALLE

Born 1643; died 1687.

In the work of opening up North America the French surpassed the English: if no bolder, they were more adventurous. From the lower St. Lawrence they held a direct route into the interior, which flanked the two great obstacles to western exploration; namely, the Six Nations of the Iroquois and the Alleghany Mountains. It is hard to say which was the firmer wall against English discovery.

FRENCH ADVENTURE

LA SALLE’S SHIP, THE GRIFFIN

From an old print.

If we were only French, we could weep at the splendid story of French discovery, as compared with the final collapse of the French empire on the continent of North America. The French were the first to find the St. Lawrence; first to see each one of the Great Lakes; first to spread exaggerated ideas about Niagara Falls—where, according to Mark Twain, the hack fares in his time were so much higher than the falls that the visitor did not perceive the latter. They were first to be awestruck at the site of the future city of Chicago; first to reach the Mississippi; first to be stopped by the Falls of St. Anthony, which unfortunately were not at that time subject to conservation; first to navigate the Mississippi; first to see the Rocky Mountains; first to cross from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. What a fate, to be the star actors in so many first performances, and then not to appear at all in the last act! What a destiny for the earliest explorers of our country!

One reason why the French secured early control of the interior was that they had an astonishing gift of living on the country. When Stanley crosses the Dark Continent, or Amundsen penetrates the White Continent, he carries great quantities of stores with him; but Champlain, and Marquette, and La Salle went light. The Frenchmen paddled their canoes along with their Indian friends, lived on game and Indian corn, found much to engage and interest them, and were always ready for a joyous fight. Frenchmen know how to draw the pleasures of life out of unpromising surroundings.

FOUNDING OF QUEBEC

The French made their first permanent settlement at Quebec in 1608; but the English had then been in Jamestown a year. From the first the continent was too small to hold two such boisterous, expanding, and conflict-loving people. Captain Argall in 1613 opened the ball by capturing the little Jesuit settlement at Flying Mountain on Mount Desert. From that time, for just a hundred and fifty years, the two nations were sparring with each other.

Copyright, 1897, by Little, Brown & Co. Reproduced by permission.

LA SALLE PRESENTING A PETITION TO KING LOUIS XIV

For many years this warfare was hedged in, because mountains, woods, and savages filled up a broad belt of territory between the English coast settlements and the St. Lawrence. But in war, as in the chivalric game of football, when you cannot break through the center, you play round the ends. Hence in every one of the six regular wars, besides various local squabbles, there was always fighting between French and English in Nova Scotia, or the Islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or along that river. In 1613 the English captured Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy, and again in 1690 and 1710,—it became almost a habit,—in 1670 they broke into Hudson Bay; in 1745 and 1758 they mastered Louisburg; and in 1759 took Quebec.

LA SALLE

The most gallant figure in this century and a half is the chevalier Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who had all the pluck and endurance of his Norman ancestors. He was educated by the Jesuits; but preferred the life of a seignior on the frontier of Canada. There he heard tales of a river starting somewhere near the Great Lakes and following so long a course that he guessed it must be the Colorado. From that time he became a still hunter for the Mississippi River. He built the Griffin, the first vessel ever seen on Lake Erie. Apparently he found the Ohio, and decided that that was not the advertised stream; and before he could get to the Mississippi it had been discovered by the priest Marquette and the Indian trader Joliet, while Father Hennepin went up the great stream to the falls.

NIAGARA FALLS

As pictured by Father Louis Hennepin, probably the first white man to see this wonderful waterfall. From a plate made from the original Utrecht edition of 1697.

La Salle had larger plans than to see new countries and float on strange rivers: he wanted to occupy that region for his sovereign and friend, Louis XIV, Le Grand Monarque. Early in 1682 he reached what the recorder of that expedition calls “the divine river, called by the Indians Checagou.” With him was that picturesque figure Tonti, “the man with the iron hand”—and his artificial member was no tougher and more enduring than his iron heart.

February 6, 1682, the expedition reached what they called “the River Colbert,” and six leagues lower they passed the mouth of the Missouri. There they registered the first protest against the St. Louis water supply; for that stream, they said, “is full as large as the River Colbert, into which it empties, troubling it so that from the mouth the water is hardly drinkable.” The Indians entertained him with the fiction that by going up the Missouri ten or twelve days he would come to a mountain, beyond which was the sea with many ships.

La Salle was the man who put the French into the Mississippi Valley, and thus gave them possession of the two finest regions in North America,—the whole watershed of the St. Lawrence, including the Great Lakes, and the whole watershed of the Mississippi. How many different craft have followed after his canoes,—a keel boat containing Aaron Burr and his misfortunes; a flat boat, with Abraham Lincoln stretching his long arms over the steering oar; the Belle of St. Louis racing the Belle of Memphis, cramming sugar and hams into the furnace, and, just as she pulled abreast of her rival, blowing up in most spectacular style; and Porter’s gunboats, driving past Vicksburg and exchanging broadsides with the batteries on the heights! Little did La Salle know that he was opening up a highway for a nation not yet born!

ENGLISH CLAIMS

GENERAL PEPPERELL AT LOUISBURG

General Pepperell was commander of the English forces which on June 16, 1745, captured the town of Louisburg.

Where were the English all this time? Did their Indian friends tell them nothing about great rivers full of crocodiles, and crook-backed, woolly oxen, and mountains of gold? After 1664 they held the whole coast from the St. Croix River to the Savannah River; but it took them a long time simply to reach the edge of the Mississippi Valley. Two adventurous men, Thomas Batts, and the German, John Lederer, wormed their way through the confused mountains of western Virginia, and Batts reached the New River about 1671,—“a pleasing but dreadful sight to see, mountains and hills piled one upon another.” They took possession of “all the territories thereunto belonging” for his Majesty Charles II. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania all had charters reaching west of the mountains; but they knew better than to try to pick up territory from under the lodge poles of the ferocious Iroquois. The English seemed to lack the discoverer’s spirit, which can be satisfied only, as the colored preacher puts it, “by unscrewing the inscrutable.” John Endicott thought he was as heroic as Marco Polo, when he went up the Merrimac River to Lake Winnepesaukee, and there cut his initials on a rock; and Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia felt very proud of himself when in 1716 he conducted a party of gentlemen on horseback across the mountains into the valley of the Shenandoah, which was still a long way from the Mississippi Basin.

DOOR OF OLD HOUSE, DEERFIELD

Showing the holes chopped in the door by the Indians, through which they shot Mrs. Weldon, a victim of the raid.

The French riveted their claim on the Mississippi by sending out a colony in 1699, which soon after founded the town of New Orleans, on the high bluff fourteen feet above the sea level of the nearby Lake Pontchartrain. They made many settlements; such as Detroit, and St. Joseph, and Green Bay, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Natchez. They set up trading posts among the Indians; they buried lead plates along the banks of the Ohio River, bearing the arms of the king,—they had a clear claim to the two enormous river valleys.

OLD HOUSE IN DEERFIELD

This old house escaped the conflagration in 1704.

What was a clear claim? The Indians thought they had a clear claim, and warlike tribes like the Iroquois and the Creeks fought for that conviction. The English claimed the Mississippi Valley because they wanted it, and took advantage of the four international wars of the eighteenth century to make that claim good by further right of conquest. After the second war, by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, the first territory was clipped off from the French possessions; Acadia (Nova Scotia) passed to the English, and with it they acquired whatever the French claims had been to Newfoundland and Hudson Bay. At the end of the third war, in 1748, they were holding Louisburg; but gave it back. Then in 1754 came the great struggle of the French and Indian War, in which the English attacked the French on the upper Ohio, on Lake Ontario, at Louisburg, and finally at Quebec, all with triumphant success. The Canadian French were outnumbered five or six times to one in America, and their home government had its hands full with European and naval wars, and could not help them.

FRONTIER WARFARE

SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT, DEERFIELD

This monument stands on the common in Deerfield, on the site of the church of 1704.

All this fighting was not according to the nice, formal, observe-the-laws-of-war methods, such as are now followed between civilized nations: it was more like a campaign in the Balkans, or the amenities of the Zulus in Africa. Europeans were not particularly gentle in their warfare. The early colonies were planted when the Thirty Years’ War was raging in Germany, a war in which the unoffending peasants expected both sides to rob them of their little property, and then to torture them because they had no more to give. The Indians were not the only race that found pleasure in inflicting awful suffering on other human beings. The cultivated English colonists and the French trappers and hunters were not above taking scalps on occasion; and, though they did not torture their prisoners, allowed their Indian allies to indulge themselves in that amusement.

DEERFIELD MEMORIAL

This stone marks the grave of the victims of the Deerfield massacre on February 29, 1704.

GENERAL MONTCALM’S HEADQUARTERS AT QUEBEC

The French were better wood fighters than the English, and throughout these struggles had a disagreeable habit of raiding English settlements. Twice they captured villages within a day’s march of sacred Boston. Their most spectacular achievement was the raid upon Deerfield in 1704, upon which an epic poem might be written. Depict the French and Indians stealing two hundred miles through the frozen wilderness; the Puritans in Deerfield trusting to their stockade; the sudden dash at dawn; the shots, cries, screams; the Indians chopping away with their hatchets at Parson Williams’ front door, till they made a loophole through which to fire at the family; the file of captives quickly marshaled for the terrible northward trail; the valiant little band from Hatfield pursuing the Indians, many times their number, and getting a bad licking; the wrath and fear of all New England at this appearance of the fearful enemy!

QUEBEC IN COLONIAL DAYS

From an old print.

The people of Haverhill, Massachusetts, have put up a statue to a militant woman named Hannah Dustin, who, when carried away a captive, had the sweet thought to brain half a dozen of her captors, and so get home again with her children. Had there been more Hannah Dustins, there would have been fewer French raids!

In all these wars the English colonists excelled as fighting seamen. We may still be proud of William Phipps and his levy of colonial forces, who took Port Royal in 1690. Who shall envy him his well earned title of Sir William, and his fair brick house on Green Lane, Boston? Think of the New England men, aided by a small British fleet, sallying out in 1745 to attack Louisburg, the proudest fortress in the western world,—laying siege to it, digging trenches before it, complimenting it with bombshells, and compelling it to surrender! That was worth a score of Deerfields!

WOLFE’S MONUMENT, QUEBEC

This memorial commemorates the capture of Quebec from the French by the English.

The world has agreed to give the palm of picturesqueness in warfare to the capture of Quebec in 1759 by Wolfe’s English fleet and army. Modern critics tell you that nothing could be easier; that anybody can make his way up the steep footpath in Wolfe’s Cove. But Montcalm, the French commander, as brave a man and as skilled a warrior as you could find, did not think it likely that a British army would find its way to the Plains of Abraham at the top. Still, he realized, when his little army came out of the strongly fortified town, and offered battle, that the French empire in America was at stake. The battle of Quebec was a stage battle,—soldiers arriving in alarms and incursions, and both commanders fighting like heroes till they fell covered with wounds. Quebec was a battle that makes a man glad of being what he is, whether French or English.

DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE

When Quebec was captured from the French by the English under General Wolfe, the commanders on both sides were killed. General Montcalm was in command of the French forces. From the painting by Benjamin West.

Four years earlier the French took their chance to defeat an army and kill a British general. Somebody has said that it was a hard fate for a brave military officer to go down to history known only through “Braddock’s Defeat.” The trouble with Braddock was that he was an Englishman, bigoted, obstinate, know-it-all, but brave to his heart’s core; and his march up through the wild country was managed with great skill. Braddock was a good officer; for on that fateful day he recognized and gave responsibility to a better officer, young George Washington. The French had been on the point of fleeing from Fort Duquesne, and as a last desperate chance came out, faced the invader, and defeated him.

BRADDOCK’S MARCH

General Braddock marched his army through the wilderness as though he were on a parade ground in Europe. To this lack of caution was due in great measure his defeat.

THE INDIAN’S FATE

“If the pitcher fall on the rock, the pitcher shall be broken; and if the rock fall on the pitcher, the pitcher shall be broken.” So runs the Eastern proverb, and it applies to the fate of the Indian throughout the wars of the French and English. Every time an Indian tribe fought with either side it was sharpening an arrow that would be directed against itself.

Copyright, 1908, by E. K. Weller.

BRADDOCK’S GRAVE

Near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, one mile east of Chalk Hill, beside the National Pike, lie the remains of General Edward Braddock. They are said to have been reinterred at this place in 1824.

PONTIAC

The chief of the Ottawas. In April, 1769, he was murdered, when drunk, at Cahokie (nearly opposite St. Louis) by a Kaskaskia Indian, bribed by an English trader. He was buried near the St. Louis fort.

For a long time the Indian astutely played off one foreign nation against the other; but after the French were excluded the only Great Father left to the poor Indian was his Majesty King George III—God bless him! The French loved the Indians, in both a flowery and an actual way; but the English would neither protect them nor marry them. Hence the outbreak under Pontiac, after the Northwest had been turned over to England. He was one of the greatest of his race. He might have said, as one of his brethren did say to an Anglo Saxon potentate, “I am a man; and you are another.” This was one of the few attempts in America to combine the Indian tribes and to attack the whites all along the line. When Pontiac failed there was nothing for it but to yield.

Even the Iroquois gave in and learned to eat out of the hand of Sir William Johnson of Johnson Hall; and they made the treaty of Fort Stanwix with the English in 1768, generously giving lands they had never possessed. That was fatal for the Six Nations; for they got so addicted to Great Father George III that they stood by him when the Revolution broke out. That gave to Patriot General Sullivan the chance to march into their own country in 1779, and to break to pieces the only American third power that ever tried to stand neutral between the French and the English.

STARVED ROCK

In 1770 this rock became the last refuge of a small band of Illinois Indians flying before a large force of Pottawattomies, who believed that one of the Illinois had assassinated Pontiac, in whose conspiracy the Pottawattomies had taken part. Unable to dislodge the Illinois, the Pottawattomies cut off their escape and let them die of starvation.

Editorial

When the plan of The Mentor Association was in its formative state a prominent educator said, “Your principle, ‘Learn One Thing Every Day,’ is good. Stick to it. Don’t give too much in a single number. There are four things that I regard essential to the success of your plan. They are: Make your matter simple, make it interesting, be sure that it is correct and authoritative, and last, don’t give too much at a time. The mental fare that you serve to your many readers should be frugal. If not, mental indigestion will follow.”

We have had that good advice in mind in all of our work. Some of our readers have asked us why we do not exhaust a subject in one number of The Mentor. Our answer is that, in no case, could we exhaust a subject in a single number, and, in most cases we would exhaust the reader. We give as much on any subject as will interest the reader, and as much as he can conveniently retain in mind.

Just in the way of illustration: In the issue of September 29th, “Beautiful Buildings of the World,” Professor Clarence Ward describes the Alhambra. Mr. Dwight L. Elmendorf also tells about this celebrated Moorish palace in the issue of September 15th. A large volume could be written on the Alhambra without exhausting all that is interesting in it. But a large volume would be more than most people would care to read. The bare facts about the Alhambra could be told in a brief encyclopedic article. But that would be dry and, to many, uninteresting. In The Mentor Mr. Elmendorf describes the Alhambra as an experienced traveler and observer sees it. Professor Ward, with the cultivated eye of a student of architecture, appraises the Alhambra as a beautiful building. Two well-informed men tell about the same subject, each from his own point of view. The result is a fuller and more satisfying impression. And later on, in considering the historic palaces of the world, the Alhambra may again be considered from another point of view.

In this way the light of information is brought to bear on a subject from various sides, and the reader is brought with fresh interest to the subject several times, and can view it in its different aspects. We want all the members of The Mentor Association to appreciate the breadth of this plan, for it will make clear to them the reason why some important subjects are at present merely touched upon in The Mentor. We want our members to know the plan that we are building up in a simple, constructive way, under the advice of the wisest educators. And we want our members to feel a share in this constructive work.

Write to us freely and frankly. It will be a great help. Tell us what has interested you most in The Mentor. It is most interesting in our work to note the desire shown by readers for certain subjects, and the demand for back numbers. In a plan of this sort back numbers are just as valuable as forthcoming numbers, and as the weeks go by the store of valuable material increases in volume. This makes a binder desirable. We have a very attractive Mentor box binder, neat in appearance and holding 13 copies. It will preserve your Mentors in good condition, and that is worth something, for you will always want them. The price is 50 cents each (or four for $1.75), by prepaid parcel post.

LA SALLE’S HOUSE. NEAR MONTREAL, CANADA

ONE

Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was the foremost pioneer of the great West of our country; but he failed because his schemes were too large for his resources. La Salle was brilliant, energetic, and courageous; but he could stir neither enthusiasm nor affection in those whom he commanded. Therein lay one reason for his failure. He was a shy, proud, and reserved man, loved by a few intimate friends, and greatly liked and respected by the Indians.

La Salle was born in Rouen (roo´-ohng), France, on November 22, 1643. He came of a good burgher family. He taught in the Jesuit schools during his early life; but in 1666 went to Canada to make his fortune. It was then that La Salle had the first of his great visionary schemes. He planned to discover a way to China across the American continent. That does not sound so impossible now; but it must be remembered that in the seventeenth century the first railroad had not even been dreamed of, and that the American continent, except for a few colonies along the eastern seacoast, was a wilderness of trackless forest and prairie.

La Salle finally saw, however, that he must give up his plan of finding a route to China, and in 1677 he replaced it with one intended to colonize the whole interior of the United States for France. He was convinced that the Mississippi River flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, and he intended to build forts all along its banks, and thus hold it open for French settlers and traders. He believed that he could bring practically one-half of France over to live in the new country.

In 1677 he went to France and laid this scheme before Minister Colbert. He told of the great extent of the West, of its boundless resources, and of the many advantages of opening trade with its numerous peaceful Indians. He received permission from the king to rule over all land that might be colonized within twenty years, so long as it cost the Crown nothing. He raised money for this great plan by help from his friends and relatives, and returned to Canada accompanied by Henry de Tonti and a friar named Louis Hennepin.

The expedition started from Fort Frontenac in November, 1678, and La Salle spent the winter at Niagara, building a small vessel, which he named the Griffin. He had many heartbreaking struggles and misfortunes; but at last, accompanied by Tonti, thirty Frenchmen, and a band of faithful Indians, on February 6, 1682, he set out on the Mississippi. They reached its mouth on April 9, and La Salle took possession of the whole Mississippi Valley in the name of Louis XIV, king of France. He planted a column, bearing the arms of his country.

He then returned to France to obtain an expedition to found a fort at the mouth of the Mississippi. He secured a squadron under the command of an officer named Beaujeu, and sailed in 1684. They could not find the Mississippi, and Beaujeu sailed for France, leaving La Salle and his little band of colonists alone, sick, disconsolate, mutinous, and starved. After two years La Salle resolved to make one last effort to reach the Mississippi, ascend it, and bring back aid to his colonists. But in March, 1687, some of his followers conspired to kill him on a branch of the Trinity River, and hiding in the long grass, they shot him through the brain.

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COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

JOHN WESLEY PREACHING TO THE INDIANS

TWO

John Wesley, the great evangelist, was born at Epworth Rectory, England, on June 28 (new style), 1703. He was the fifteenth child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. When John was only five years old the rectory was burned to the ground, and the family had a narrow escape from death. For six years Wesley was a pupil at Charterhouse School, and in 1720 he entered Oxford. He had only a little over two hundred dollars a year to live on, and his health was poor; but, nevertheless, he managed to get the most out of his studies. He was fond of riding and walking, was an expert swimmer, and played a good game of tennis.

On September 25, 1725, he was ordained deacon, and he preached frequently in the churches near Oxford. In 1726 he began to act as his father’s curate. He already displayed those talents for leadership which were to find so conspicuous a field in the evangelical revival.

On April 25, 1735, Wesley’s father died, and the following October John and his younger brother Charles, with two other Methodists, sailed for Georgia. John hoped to be able to convert the Indians to Christianity; but the mission was a failure.

On his return to England from Georgia, Wesley became the acknowledged leader of Methodism. He began itinerant preaching. No other preacher of the century had his mastery over an audience. He made his appeal to the conscience in the clearest language, with all the weight of personal conviction. Victory over sin was the goal he set before all his people.

Up to 1742 Wesley’s work was chiefly confined to London and Bristol and the country thereabout. But now he began to extend the territory over which he preached. In August, 1747, he paid his first visit to Ireland, where he had such success that he gave more than six years of his life to the country, and crossed the Irish Channel forty-two times. Wesley’s first visit to Scotland was in 1751. In all he paid twenty-two visits to that country.

Wesley generally traveled about five thousand miles in a year. This was a great strain upon his powers. In his encounters with the mob, however, his tact and courage never failed. He always looked a mob in the face, and appealed to its better feelings.

On March 2, 1791, John Wesley died in his house at City Road. He was eighty-eight years old.

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WILLIAMS HOUSE, DEERFIELD, MASS.

THREE

In the early morning of February 29, 1704, a band of French and Indians stole down upon the little village of Deerfield in Massachusetts. Hertel de Rouville was the leader of this band. Silently they crept in upon the unsuspecting town. Most of the settlers were still sleeping soundly. Suddenly, with a wild whoop, the attack began. Forty-nine men, women, and children were massacred, the village was burned, and then with one hundred and eleven captives the cowardly attackers departed. On the way back to Canada twenty of the captured were cruelly murdered. This raid has ever since been known as the Deerfield Massacre.

Deerfield was called Pocumtuck until 1764. The territory that originally constituted the township was a tract of eight thousand acres, granted in 1654 to the town of Dedham in place of two thousand acres previously taken from that town and granted to the Rev. John Eliot to further his mission among the Natick Indians. The Pocumtuck Indians originally owned this land. Their rights to the Deerfield tract were purchased for about ten cents an acre.

The settlement was begun in 1669, and the township was incorporated in 1673. Deerfield was for a great many years the northwest frontier settlement of New England. At the beginning of King Philip’s War the English fortified the town. On September 1, 1675, it was attacked by Indians. A small garrison under the command of Captain Samuel Appleton was placed in the town after this. A second attack was made on September 12.

Six days later Captain Thomas Lothrop and his company were acting as escort to some teams that were hauling wheat from Deerfield to the English headquarters at Hadley. Suddenly a band of Indians leaped out of ambush and set upon the train. Lothrop and more than sixty of his men were killed. The spot where this fight took place has since been known as “Bloody Brook.” It is in the village of South Deerfield. From this time until the end of the war Deerfield was abandoned.

In the spring of 1677 a few of the old settlers returned; but on September 19 some were killed, and the others were captured by a party of Indians from Canada. Again in 1682 settlement was resumed. Twelve years later, on September 15, a party of French and Indians attacked Deerfield, and almost succeeded in capturing the town. Then in 1704 came the Deerfield Massacre.

Among the captives was the Rev. John Williams, the first minister of Deerfield, who was redeemed in 1706 along with some others. The year following his return he published an account of his experiences as a prisoner, called “The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion.” In this same year a house was built for Williams by the town of Deerfield. The house has been somewhat changed since then; but the secret staircase is still to be seen, and also much fine old furniture.

Williams’ wife and one of his children were killed in the raid; but all his other children returned to Deerfield except Eunice, who married an Indian. Her great-grandson was the pretended “Lost Dauphin” of France, about whom there was formerly so much discussion.

Today Deerfield has a population of over two thousand. Its natural beauty and the historic interest connected with the town attract many visitors. Many houses in the village are very old. In Memorial Hall, a building erected in 1797-98 for the Deerfield Academy, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association has gathered an interesting collection of colonial and Indian relics.

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GENERAL WOLFE

FROM A PORTRAIT BY THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

FOUR

The capture of Quebec from the French by the English in 1759 is one of the epics of modern military history. Quebec was supposed to be absolutely impregnable, and was the stronghold of France in America. If the English had not been able to capture Quebec, Canada might have been French today. And this brilliant military feat was accomplished by a young major general only thirty-two years old. The leaders on both sides of the battle were killed; but the glory of their heroism has lived to this day.

After General Amherst had captured Louisburg in 1758 he took charge of the American campaigns of the Seven Years’ War between England and France. Under him was Major General James Wolfe, who was but thirty-one years old. Amherst ordered him to attack Quebec, while that general himself led a force to capture Montreal.

Wolfe’s command consisted of seven thousand men; while Montcalm, the French commanded of Quebec, had under him a considerably larger army. The British sailed up the St. Lawrence River and camped on the Isle of Orleans, facing the city.

There were three ways of attacking Quebec,—from the St. Lawrence River, from the St. Charles River, and up the steep cliffs to the Plains of Abraham. On the St. Lawrence side it was impossible to get near enough to the city to damage it, and to climb the steep rock to the Plains of Abraham seemed unworthy of consideration. So Wolfe decided to cross the St. Lawrence seven miles below Quebec, and to fight his way to the city by the St. Charles side. But this attack failed, with great loss to the English.

However, although he was discouraged, the stout heart of General Wolfe never failed. He began immediately to plan another way of getting into Quebec. He learned that the impossible could be accomplished, the heights to the Plains of Abraham could be scaled. From a little cove in the river, Wolfe’s Cove, a steep path led up the cliffs. It was a desperate chance; but it was worth taking.

He only had thirty-six hundred men that could be spared for the attempt, and on the evening of September 12, 1759, these embarked on the warships and sailed upstream. Montcalm was a wary warrior, and sent some troops to watch the movements of the English. The British troops landed some distance above Wolfe’s Cove; but at one o’clock in the morning Wolfe and half his force dropped downstream in boats and landed at the cove.

Then came the scramble up the cliff-side in the inky darkness. Slowly they worked their way to the top. At the summit the French had a weak redoubt guarded by a handful of men. This was the last place at which Montcalm had expected an attack. The garrison was easily driven from the redoubt, and by daylight the entire English force was upon the Plains of Abraham.

Montcalm drew up his men, and the two armies, French and English, stood face to face on the narrow battlefield. The French advanced and began to push the English back; but Wolfe rallied his men. He held back his fire until the French came within close range, and then at his order one volley decided the battle. With great gaps in their lines, the French halted, and Wolfe led on his men to complete the victory.

But the brave English general, wounded twice already, now received a shot through the breast that was fatal. Montcalm too was mortally wounded, and died the next day.

Quebec surrendered on September 18, 1759.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

BRADDOCK’S FIELD—FROM AN OLD PAINTING

FIVE

The defeat of General Edward Braddock by the French and Indians was not due to any lack of courage on the part of the English commander and his men, but to the fact that they knew nothing about colonial warfare and would not take advice from the colonial troops. Had Braddock followed the advice of George Washington the French would have been routed, and Fort Duquesne, which is now Pittsburgh, would have been captured.

Edward Braddock was born in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1695. He was the son of Major General Edward Braddock. In 1710 he joined the Coldstream Guards. As a lieutenant colonel in 1747 he served under the Prince of Orange during the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. Six years later he was made colonel of the 14th Foot, and the following year became a major general.

This was at the time of the Seven Years’ War between the French and English. England had a poor opinion of the colonial officers and soldiers,—these same officers and soldiers who were to defeat their trained troops on every hand a few years later in the Revolution,—and at the beginning of the war sent General Braddock with two regiments of regulars to Virginia. Braddock landed on American soil in 1755, and, appointing George Washington one of his aides, set off with his regulars and some colonial troops from Fort Cumberland in Maryland for Fort Duquesne.

The country to be traversed was a wilderness. No road led through the woods; so the troops were forced to cut one as they slowly went westward. Braddock was brave and honest, but harsh and brutal in manners. He could not understand the nature of a war in the woods. Like other English officers of the time, he despised American militia and their half-Indian way of fighting. Washington and the other American officers advised him to send scouts ahead to look for the enemy; but Braddock would have none of this. He marched his army through the forest in perfect alignment, with the band playing and banners flying.

On July 9, 1755, after crossing the Monongahela River, when they were only eight miles from Fort Duquesne, those in the front of the army suddenly saw what seemed to be a single Indian coming toward them. It was really a French officer with a band of French and Indians at his back. Feeling that they were doomed to defeat, the French had determined as a last resort to sally out from Fort Duquesne and give battle to the English in the woods.

As soon as the French officer saw the British he stopped and waved his hat. The French and Indians immediately disappeared into the bushes and opened fire on the English troops. The red coats of Braddock’s men made a fine target. They tried to return the enemy’s fire; but there was no foe to be seen. They stood their ground bravely for a time; but it was a slaughter. Huddled together like sheep, they were shot down by scores.

The colonial soldiers attempted to fight from behind trees, but Braddock considered this cowardly, and beat them back into line with the flat of his sword.

“Come out into the open field like Englishmen!”

It was courageous; but it was foolhardy.

General Braddock exposed himself fearlessly. In rallying his men he had four horses shot under him, and was at last mortally wounded. Washington, who was the only officer on Braddock’s staff not killed or wounded, saved the defeat from becoming a rout. Two horses were shot under him and four bullets pierced his clothes.

On the way back to Fort Cumberland, General Braddock died, and Washington took charge of the demoralized troops. In order to prevent the Indians finding Braddock’s grave and mutilating the body, the general was buried in the road and the entire army passed over it,—men, horses, and wagons.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

PONTIAC IN COUNCIL

SIX

Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, a remarkable Indian in many ways, had a power rare among members of his race, the power of organization. He was the leader of the Indian rising known as “Pontiac’s Conspiracy,” which took place in 1763-1764. He was cruel and treacherous, but a brave fighter. Pontiac was probably born sometime between 1712 and 1720. He became chief of the Ottawas about 1755. As an ally of France he took part in the defeat of General Braddock on July 9, 1755.

In 1762 Indian prophets began preaching a union of tribes to expel the English. The French took advantage of this religious fervor to stir up trouble. On April 27, 1763, representatives of the Algonquin tribes met near Detroit. It was at this meeting that Pontiac outlined the plans for his conspiracy.

With sixty warriors he attacked Detroit on May 7; but this attempt failed. Major Henry Gladwin, with one hundred and sixty men, was in command of this fort. When Pontiac’s attack failed he and his braves calmly sat down outside the stockade and besieged the fort until the end of October. Reinforcements managed to get into the fort during this time, and there were many bloody fights between the besiegers and the besieged; but the fort held out, and on October 30, after Pontiac learned that the French were not going to help him, the Indians quietly stole away.

In the meanwhile other English forts all along the frontier were being attacked. On June 22, 1763, Fort Pitt, with a garrison of three hundred and thirty men, stoutly repelled an assault. At Michilimackinac (Mackinac), Michigan, on June 4, the Indians gained admission to the fort by a trick, killed nearly twenty of the garrison, and captured the rest, seven of whom were killed in cold blood by a chief of the Ojibwas. Fort Sandusky at Sandusky, Ohio, Fort Miami at Fort Wayne, Indiana, Fort St. Joseph at Niles, Michigan, and many other British outposts were captured and their brave little garrisons massacred.

In June, 1764, Colonel John Bradstreet led twelve hundred men from Albany to Fort Niagara, where, at a great gathering of Indians, several treaties were made. But these treaties were of little value. Colonel Bouquet led an expedition of fifteen hundred men from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to the present site of Tuscarawas, Ohio, in August, 1764. Here he put an end to the conspiracy, forced the Indians to release their prisoners, and made them stop their warfare.

Pontiac himself surrendered to Sir William Johnson on July 25, 1766, at Oswego, New York. Three years later he was murdered, when drunk, by another Indian. It was an ignominious ending for one of the greatest Indians that ever lived.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.