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."
Glad you picked up on that subtlety..many others would not have...
Oh, Please, point me to where the English did anything that resembled the slaughter the Indians did.
The Indians came into towns outnumbering the Whites 200 to one, took little children and swung their heads into trees, scalped women and children.
The English only did these things in response. The English did their best to live with the same Indians who were trying to slaughter the whites.
Look up INCIDENTS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND or TRUMBULL'S HISTORY or WOLCOTTS HISTORY
You need to read more! :)
BTTT
It would be PG-13 or R, and many people would just not like what they saw.
What most people refuse to face is that the wars back then were based on religion.
And that is exactly what this war was about.
That was my first thought also.
There is a movie called "Black Robe" in which a French priest travels with some Indians to a mission in the wilderness. Relationships between the natives and Europeans were complex. It was brought up that the Indians would trade captured Frenchmen to the English or Dutch for weapons. In turn I would guess that the English and Dutch would sell the French back to France.
It seemed the the church had good intention's but it was the Indians destiny to lose the New World to the Europeans due to lack of technology and old hatreds between tribes.
Same old story throughout mankind's history.
Our history lessons reminded me that the French and Indian War opened the Ohio Valley to greater British settlement, planting the seeds for Eminent Domain, and it gave the very inexperienced Colonials an opportunity to earn their stripes prior to the Revolution.
Washington became a Colonial hero because of the F/I War, and that fame helped cement his selection to lead the Patriot Army. I'm really enjoying 4th Grade History!
BTW, I enjoyed your story of visiting Mount Vernon on Christmas Day. Our family tradition is to visit the Smithsonian Museums and other Mall attractions on Christmas Eve. It's the best time to go. Very little traffic and minor crowds.
Have you been to the new Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian? It is a beautiful building, gorgeous architecture, but disappointing exhibits. I'd like a lot more on Native American history and traditions and a lot less of "Modern Artists who just happen to be Indians."
The birth of the US Army Rangers traces right back to Rodgers Rangers in this war. The precepts he devised are the basis for Ranger tactics still.
Wherever the French are involved, we're talking absolute evil!
I do not deny that the red race produced admirable examples such as Pocahontas, Sacajawea, Chief Joseph and Washaiki, 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.
Really? Then I guess the Louisiana Purchase never happened.
Rodgers was a Loyalist during the RevWar and partly responsible for having Nathan Hale captured and hung as a spy. But, he was a great fighter.
I think the French acquired that land from the Spanish in 1800. So, their statement would be correct.
That territory went to the Spanish in 1763 due to the treaty. Napolean Bonapate got it back about 1800 when he put his brother up as ruler of Spain. Then, we bought it in 1804 off of Napolean.
Thanks for the history lesson. I should have looked up the facts before I shot my mouth off.
The movement for American independence, not strong anywhere before the F&I War, was given a powerful kick-start by the contempt with which colonial officers and soldiers were treated by their British counterparts sent to North America to oversee things. Washington himself politicked for a regular commission in the Army during and after the war but he and his contemporaries were treated like oafs and bumpkins by the lace-cuff Redcoat set. Well, if that's how they really feel, we'll get our own damned army! And before you know it, it's 1775 on Cambridge Common....
The movement for American independence, not strong anywhere before the F&I War, was given a powerful kick-start by the contempt with which colonial officers and soldiers were treated by their British counterparts sent to North America to oversee things. Washington himself politicked for a regular commission in the Army during and after the war but he and his contemporaries were treated like oafs and bumpkins by the lace-cuff Redcoat set. Well, if that's how they really feel, we'll get our own damned army! And before you know it, it's 1775 on Cambridge Common....
They have a "Frenchtown" section which I find fascinating. Some of the buildings there may be about 200 years old. Almost colonial.
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