No, It Wasn't French vs. Indians

The New York Times ^ | January 1, 2005 | GLENN COLLINS

[Pharmboy]

Associated Press

Re-enactors fire their muskets at British soldiers near Fort Ticonderoga. There are as many as 3,000 French and Indian War
re-enactors in the United States and another 800 in Canada.

Welcome to 2005: the Year of the French and Indian War.

Actually? Make that years, plural. The celebration is continuing through 2010.

It seems that New York would like to be known as the French and Indian War State, since it will serve as host of a national, and international, five-year-long commemoration of the many battles that took place within its borders.

Just exactly why are we supposed to care about this bicenquinquagenary?

"Well, for starters, this war is why we speak English and not French today," said Bob Bearor, a French and Indian War re-enactor from Newcomb, N.Y., who has written five books about New York as the bloody ground for French insurgent fighters and their Indian allies.

To history lovers, the conflict is increasingly seen as a crucible for the American Revolution and a war college for George Washington. "Most of the battles were fought in this state," Mr. Bearor added. "It was a war for an empire, and it changed the fate of the world."

The latest rediscovery of an under-heralded war prompted Gov. George E. Pataki to sign legislation in November creating the New York State French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration Commission, a 19-member group charged with organizing, promoting and carrying out a series of "re-enactment tourism events," the act says. The panel will also encourage studies of the French and Indian War from kindergarten through Grade 12 in New York State schools.

The unpaid commissioners are soon to be appointed, and meetings to determine a schedule of commemorative events will begin this winter.

"The battles of the French and Indian War," the governor said in a statement, "were the driving force for inspiring the values and ideals that led to the successful drive toward American independence, and the birth of freedom and democracy in the New World."

And there is always visitorship. The war's anniversary "is a major historic event that could be important for tourism upstate," said State Senator George D. Maziarz, Republican of Niagara County, who was a champion of the legislation. About that name: in Europe they call the French and Indian War the Seven Years' War. French Canadians call it la Guerre de Sept Ans. Other Canadians have termed it the War of the Conquest. And just like Civil War battles that were differently designated in the North and South, the New York conflicts have competing names above and below the Canadian border.

For example, Fort Ticonderoga was known by the French as Fort Carillon, and Lac du Saint Sacrement was renamed Lake George by the English in honor of their king.

It was Winston Churchill who, in "History of the English-Speaking Peoples," called the Seven Years' War the first world war, since it was the first conflict of European countries fought out in North America, the Caribbean, West Africa, India and the Philippines. But the war has often been relegated to footnote status, since "historians tended to write out everything that didn't lead directly to the Revolutionary War," said Dr. Fred Anderson, professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an expert on the Seven Years' War.

The French and Indian War was a flashpoint of the maritime and colonial conflict between France and England - which had previously been contending for domination of the North American continent for more than a century - and it began with a land dispute over control of the Ohio Valley.

None other than the inexperienced 22-year-old George Washington was a catalyst, triggering the war on May 28, 1754, when the contingent of Virginia soldiers and native warriors he was leading ambushed a French detachment and killed its commander, Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville.

Though the French had many early victories, the tide ultimately turned in favor of the English, and they won control of Canada in 1760, a year after their victory on the Plains of Abraham at what is now Quebec City. The war continued in Europe, Africa and Asia until 1763, when the Treaty of Paris formally concluded hostilities. France lost all of its colonies in North America to the English, except for two coastal islands.

Historians had long discounted the importance of Indians in the French and Indian War "because the attitude was that they chose the wrong side and they were doomed," said Dr. Anderson.

But, he said, research in recent years has shown "that Indians controlled every single historical outcome on the North American continent from the 1500's to the middle of the 18th century. They had always managed to play one side off against the other, but it didn't work in the Seven Years' War."

Ultimately, "though the British booted the French out of the North American continent, they ended up with an empire they couldn't control and with debts they couldn't pay," Dr. Anderson said. England's imposition of new taxes alienated not only the colonies but also that former Anglophile, George Washington.

Indeed, "it is the Seven Years' War that makes Washington as we know him possible - it shaped his attitudes and made him a competent military commander," Dr. Anderson said, adding that the war also taught colonists how to establish a militia and gave them a taste for controlling their own destiny.

To Dr. Anderson, without the French and Indian War, "it is impossible for me to imagine that the American Revolution would have taken place," he said.

The dominoes dislodged by Washington in 1754 just kept falling: the French and Indian conflict led, ultimately, to disaster for the French, Dr. Anderson said. They got their revenge for losing "by helping the Americans to win the war against the English," he said. "But that left the French crown so deeply in debt that the result was the French Revolution."

Dr. Anderson foreshadowed some of those insights in his book "Crucible of War," published in 2000, and has gone further in putting the Seven Years' War at the center of American history in "Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000," which he wrote with Andrew Caton, to be published next week by Viking.

Chapman Historical Museum

A painting that was commissioned by the Glens Falls Insurance Company in the early 20th century is titled the "Surrender
of Fort William Henry, Lake George, N.Y. 1757."

"Our schools teach a lot about the Revolutionary War, but not about the French and Indian War," Senator Maziarz said. Mr. Bearor has long tried to raise consciousness about the conflict, and credited the late David L. Dickinson, Niagara County historian, with heading the recognition effort.

Among the literary reimaginings of the era were "Northwest Passage" by Kenneth Roberts, as well as James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales" (in the 1992 film "The Last of the Mohicans," Daniel Day-Lewis played the role of Hawkeye). But there is live drama in the French and Indian War re-enactments, a colorful mix of those wearing the red of British regulars, as well as Highlanders with bagpipes, not to mention colorful French militia and marine units, as well as those portraying Indians.

Mr. Bearor estimates that there are as many as 3,000 "F&I" re-enactors in the United States and another 800 in Canada. Some of them had tired of the same-old "rev war" and "civ war" events, as they term them, and became "F&I" devotees. "The French and Indian War opened up a whole new genre," said Mr. Bearor, a retired Troy, N.Y., firefighter whose best-known history book is "The Battle on Snowshoes," (Heritage Books, 1997).

Canadian re-enactors, too, will be participating in the New York events. One of them will be Daniel Roy, the direct descendant of a French marine who arrived in New France in 1720. "The French lost the empire but no one ever conquered the French spirit," said Mr. Roy, a warrant officer in the Canadian Air Force who has been a re-enactor for 12 years. He carries an epee and flintlock pistol and portrays Captain Lacorne, a marine commander. "I feel we are helping Canadians to rediscover their own culture."

The schedule of French and Indian War re-enactments began last summer in Pennsylvania and commemorated George Washington's 1754 battle at Fort Necessity. Future re-enactment events in New York are likely to include Lake George this summer, Fort Bull in 2006, Fort William Henry in 2007, Fort Ticonderoga in 2008, Fort Niagara in 2009, and Fort Levis in 2010.

"I'm so glad that New York is giving recognition to this history," said George Larrabee, a 70-year-old re-enactor from Woodbury, Vt., who said he was proud of his Indian blood.

Since 1982, he has been portraying the character of Peskunck, an Abenaki warrior, paddling a 16-foot birch-bark canoe, carrying his flintlock musket and wearing a headdress of wild turkey feathers painted to resemble those of the spotted eagle, a protected species.

"I don't know that Indians regretted picking the wrong side," Mr. Larrabee said. "Even if Indians had picked the English side, it wouldn't have done them any good, because the English thought of them as dirty savages and treated them terribly."

[Chad Fairbanks]

but the objective truth remains that these people were Aborigines who engaged in the barbarous practices I have described in my previous post to a degree that surpassed the excesses of the English settlers.

Oh, of course, because the original settlers were just soooo nice. If you can name one instance where American Indian tribes used biological warfare against the settlers (such as the english did by deliberately providing indians with blankets as gifts, not mentioning that the 'gifts' were used by smallpox patients) or if you can name one time where an American Indian nation had a specific governmental policy of eradication of the settlers, then maybe I'll buy your version of events...

However, you'll never find any instance of genocide on the part of indians... and there is nothing more savage than that.

Thanks for playing.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Ok, so what. Mark Twain was well known as a writer of fiction. There are far more documented examples from far more credible sources that disagree with Twain.

American Indians are far from perfect, certainly - after all, we are human, too - but what Twain had to say was bulls**t.

[Chad Fairbanks]

I think Twain was referring primarily to the Plains Indians who I didn't know had any friends, especially among neighboring tribes or what was left of them after their savage massacres. If you check their long history of terrorism you might chill out and broaden your thinking a bit.

When you say massacres, are you referring to Wounded Knee, or maybe the Washita River, or maybe Chivington or maybe one of any of dozens of other instances? Or are you speaking of inter-tribal warfare, which was pretty much just like it was throughout Europe for centuries?

[jackbill]

Actually, we might be better off if the French had conquered New York.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Sorry, I had relatives who were victims of the plains indians in the late 1800s, and they were quite innocent of anything but trying to farm and survive and feed their families on otherwise unused land in southern Minnesota.

So, I'm guessing that no innocent indians, who just wanted to live in peace and be left alone, were ever killed by the white man, then?

FR is not a good place to try and revise history.

I'm not revising anything. YOu just seem to have some vested interest in denying that Whites could be just as "brutal" as American Indians. Why is that?

[Pharmboy]

Low blow...LOL!

[Chad Fairbanks]

And just out of curiosity, did they get caught up in that whole Leech Lake thing? Ya know, where the whites spend several years daming up the mississippi and missouri rivers, flooding indian villages and destroying their crops, causing some violent encounters? Or was it something else?

[SuziQ]

To Dr. Anderson, without the French and Indian War, "it is impossible for me to imagine that the American Revolution would have taken place," he said.

I don't remember particularly learning about it in school. I've read books and seen movies since then that have given me the info. It's a fascinating time in the pre-history of our country.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

I really can't believe how scrawny and dirty this cowardly man (Chief Joseph) is. Probably just got back from the saloon, or from begging (along with all his relatives) for some white guy's food. The question is, where is his sardine can necklace, and which hand is he holding his pants up with? < /extremesarcasm >

P.S. Some people have a perceived score to settle, it seems.

[mewzilla]

They really have done a terrific job with the museum. We got a really great lunch at the restaurant too, and what a gorgeous view :)

[redheadtoo]

Maybe not a new ancestor but a derivative of the spelling of Dowd

My father, the genealogist in the family, has often been frustrated by the different spellings for names. But, it wasn't until Noah Webster published his dictionary that spelling was standardized and since most people of the time were illiterate spelling didn't matter much.

[VeniVidiVici]

My father, the genealogist in the family, has often been frustrated by the different spellings for names

Me too. Drives me nuts. Several ancestor names that are the same in my tree:

Sillings
Silings
Silling
Sillin

Stover
Stoever
Stober
Stoeber

Still, it's fun.

[HenryLeeII]

Thank you for posting this article. The Seven Years War is one of the most important and overlooked periods in our history.

[HenryLeeII]

The first of many times over the next 30 years when he [George Washington] would be under fire, yet never wounded.

Truly a man of Providence! He came through battles with numerous bullet holes through his coat, had multiple horses shot out from under him in a single battle; and even his "mistake" in opening fire on the French without provocation, initiated a series of events that led to the French losing their grip on the future U.S. and the American Revolution.

[HenryLeeII]

When George Washington served during this war as a major and colonel in the Virginia militia, he was still subordinate to any commissioned officer in the regular British army, a fact that grated on him to no end. So, years later at Yorktown, when Cornwallis refused to surrender in person and sent his second-in-command in his place, Washington returned the snub by sending his, General Benjamin Lincoln, to accept the surrender.

Also, as a true measure of the man's intellect, he learned lessons from this war that the British failed to grasp during the next. Washington had no military experience when his half-brother, Lawrence, died. Washington was 20 at the time, rode to Williamsburg to meet the governor, and talked his way into filling Lawrence's post as the adjutant-general of the colony's militia. He read any books available and interviewed any military man he could find, and basically taught himself without any formal military training. During the Seven Years War Washington learned the lessons of continental-scale warfare and put them to use during the Revolution. So, even though he only won three of the nine major battles he commanded our army in, he was able to keep the army together and lead us through a grueling war of attrition against the most powerful army in the world.

[Mudboy Slim]

Thanks fer the link...I'd never really given the F&I War much thought, but this was interesting...MUD

[Pharmboy]

I worked with a Texas physician who is a direct descendant of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln...after we finished the job we gave her a framed print of Lincoln taking the sword.

[Redcitizen]

I would call them freedom fighters. The year 1492 was the Native american's 9/11. Before you go calling Indians names, just remember your ancestors were the same way. They were barbarians who just had an edge in organized violence. As a matter of fact, every people group had cannibals too. Just reference the Donner part and Jefferey Dahmer. Have a nice day.