Associated Press
Posted on 01/01/2005 6:44:12 AM PST by 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."
Your history books were written by white men. Indians did not write their side of the story down. There is a bias by the authors of your books. Books can be made to say anything.
I'm (more or less) on your side on this one. French and Indian atrocities have been remembered and nursed in America.
English/American atrocities against the other two groups have been forgotten.
The same thing is true of Indians, of course. They tend to remember the atrocities committed against them, not those they committed.
I believe it's called human nature.
Okay, so he was prejudiced. At least he was honest.
So, the Indians would have no bias?
Besides, which Indians? The ones who sided with the French or the ones who sided with the English?
Or the ones who wanted to stay out of it?
So, which ones are you referring to?
Or do you eman the fictional Indian who never went to war or ever did anything wrong and ate clean, pure water and was at one with nature?
I can't speak for any of the other American Indians around here, but my people remember both those we committed, and those against us...
Good God, I hope not!!!
Never said we didn't have a bias.It is human nature. Just pointing out the fact that the books of which you are so fond of is slanted toward the English point of view.
Take your pick of any group.Whichever one you pick, the end results are the same. The history books are written by the white man.
Of the books I have read, I dont remember any cases of canibalism by Amrican Indians.
Gross stuff, sure, but I dont remember any canabilism.
Concerning bio-warfare, how many times?
And when?
Jeffrey Amherst is a singular incident, while the attacks on New England farmhouses were in the hundreds.
NO comparison.
I am curious, what has animated you to revisit this thread three months later?
Why has this been revived three months later?
True. The Amherst incident was an attempt at Genocide, whereas the attacks on New England Farmmhouses, with were usually happening at the same time as attacks on indian villages, were part of warfare...
That being said, there were good and bad on both sides. The indians certainly were far from perfect, and committed our share of attrocities - I know that and you know that - however, some people seem to think that it was only indians that committed attrocities - and you and I both know that is patently false.
How ya been, by the way? Havn't seen you around much. Things good? :)
I was just reading up on what this site is all about. It is all new to me. Say, what is the definition of trolls on this site. Thank you.
s Any other application is misplaced in a marketplace of ideas.
Umm, no, they were attempts at GENOCIDE, they were trying to wipe out ALL the white men and women, and it started DECADES before the French and Indian Wars of the 1700's, in fact, the first attempt to wipe out the White settlers happened 2 years after Plymouth Rock, when the Pilgrims discovered a plot of the 4 surrounding tribes planning to wipe them out just because they were white.
Jeffrey Amherst did that Smallpox blanket thing to only one tribe, he didn't do it more than once, and he didn't do it to multiple tribes in multiple states, while the Indians of New England tried to kill the settlers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
My personal belief, is that because of the murders and ambushes of the 1600's and early 1700's by the New England and Virginia Indians, all Indians who were seen after that were immediately considered the enemy.
One scary thought I can imagine, is a friendly Indian, calmly walking down the street in the town he was raised near, dressed as an Indian, coming in to town to trade furs or whatever with the townfolk he grew up next to, is suddenly seen by a European immigrant, his FIRST Indian sighting, and because of the $.10 novels he read on the boat ride, thinks ALL Indians are evil, and then shoots that friendly Indian.
In fact, I would be willing to bet that those incidents certainly colored all treaties with every tribe afterwards, there was no consideration of the individual tribes or 'Nation' of Indians as they thought of themselves.
Somebody pinged me, I didnt even go back and read what I previously posted, I was wondering why I was pinged myself! :)
Well, he had an interesting life.
Several excellent books and "historical novels" about the history of relations between the North American Indians and new settlers from Europe and elsewhere.
BTW, some Indians did write down what were their thoughts and remembrances. Several knew and spoke English and French very well.
As to the beginning of the French and Indian War, events began with the work done by the French, on an expedition down the Ohio River valley, during which they planted several large lead tablets, on which were inscribed, declarations of the realm of his Most Christian King.
The British Crown objected to that intrusion [in its view] and to the additional expeditions by the French, intended to establish a system of forts and trading posts in defense of the claims.
George Washington was given the assignment of passing the word to the French.
He really did lead a most interesting and important life. And, one of the most fascinating things about him is that his second love (after Martha) was his farm.
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