XIX.

A PERIOD OF TRANSITION--PONTIAC'S WAR--THE QUEBEC ACT.

(1760-1774.)

The Canadian people, long harassed and impoverished by war, had at last a period of rest. They were allowed the ministrations of their religion without hindrance, and all that was required of the parochial clergy was that they should not take part in civil affairs, but should attend exclusively to their clerical duties. The seigniors and priests, no doubt, did not give up for some time the hope that Canada would be restored to France, but they, too, soon bowed to the necessity of things, and saw that their material and spiritual interests were quite secure under the new government. None of the _habitants_ ever left Canada after the war. A few members of the seigniorial nobility, the officials and some merchants--perhaps three hundred in all--may have gone back to France. Men like Bigot and Varin on their return were severely punished, and forced to give up as much as possible of their ill-gotten {268} gains. Governor de Vaudreuil himself was cast into the Bastile, but it was ascertained after investigation that he had no connection with the crimes of the worthless parasites that had so long fattened on the necessities of the unhappy province. He died soon after his imprisonment; the iron of humiliation had probably eaten into the heart of a man who, whatever his faults, had many estimable qualities, and loved his native country.

For several years Canada was under what has been generally called the military régime; that is to say, the province was divided into the three districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, of which the government was administered by military chiefs; in the first place by General Murray, Colonel Burton, and General Gage respectively. These military authorities--notably General Murray--endeavoured to win the confidence of the people by an impartial and considerate conduct of affairs. Civil matters in the parishes were left practically under the control of the captains of militia, who had to receive new commissions from the British Crown. Appeal could be always made to the military chief at the headquarters of the district, but, as a matter of fact, the people generally managed their affairs among themselves, in accordance with their old usages and laws. Military councils tried criminal cases according to English law.

While the French Canadians were in the enjoyment of rest on the banks of the St. Lawrence and its tributary rivers, the Western Indians, who had been the allies of France during the war, suddenly arose and seized nearly all the forts and posts which {269} had been formerly built by the French on the Great Lakes, in the valley of the Ohio, and in the Illinois country. After the taking of Montreal, Captain Robert Rogers, the famous commander of the Colonial Rangers, whose name occurs frequently in the records of the war, was sent by General Amherst to take possession of the forts at Presqu'ile, Detroit, Michillimackinac, Green Bay, and other places in the West. In the course of a few months there were in all these western posts small garrisons of English soldiers. In the neighbourhood of Detroit and Michillimackinac there were French Canadian villages, conspicuous for their white cottages with overhanging bark roofs and little gardens, orchards, and meadows. Forts Chartres and Vincennes were still in the possession of the French, and there was a population of nearly two thousand French Canadians or Louisiana French living in the Illinois country, chiefly at Cahokia and Kaskaskia on the Mississippi. The Indian tribes that took part in the rising of 1763 were the Ottawas, Pottawattomies, Ojibways (Chippeways), Wyandots (Hurons), and Kickapoos, who lived in the vicinity of the upper lakes; the Delawares (Loups or Lenapes) and the Shawanoes, who had their villages on the Ohio and its tributary rivers, especially on the Muskingkum and the Scioto; the Sauks or Saks, who encamped on the Wisconsin; the Senecas, who lived not far from the Niagara. All these Indians, except the Wyandots and Senecas, were members of the Algonquin family. The Senecas were the only tribe of the Six Nations that took part in the alliance against {270} England; the other tribes were, happily for English interests, under the influence of Sir William Johnson.

French emissaries from the settlements on the Mississippi made the Indians believe that they would be soon driven by the English from their forest homes and hunting grounds, and that their only hope was in assisting France to restore her power in America. Many of these Indian tribes, as well as French settlers, believed until the proclamation of the treaty of Paris that Canada would be restored to the French. Indian sympathy for France was intensified by the contumely and neglect with which they were treated by the English traders and authorities. The French, who thoroughly understood the Indian character, had never failed to administer to their vanity and pride--to treat them as allies and friends and not as a conquered and subject race. By the judicious distribution of those gifts, on which the tribes had begun to depend and receive as a matter of right, the French cemented the attachment of the Indians. The English, on the other hand, soon ceased to make these presents, and neglected the Indians in other ways, which excited their indignation and wounded their pride.

Among the Western chiefs was Pontiac, whose name is as prominent in the history of the past as the names of the Onondaga Garangula, the Huron Kondiaronk (Rat), the Mohawk Thayendenagea (Brant), and the Shawanoese Tecumseh. He was the son of an Ottawa chief and an Ojibway mother, and had a high reputation and large influence among the {271} tribes of the upper lakes. He showed in his career all the strength and weaknesses of the Indian character--great courage, treachery, vanity, and generosity, according to the impulses of the moment. The war in which he took so prominent a part is generally called by his name; his is the central figure in the striking drama which was enacted in the Western and Ohio country for two years and a half before peace generally reigned and Canada could be considered secure from Indian attacks.

At Detroit, where Major Gladwin was in command, Pontiac hoped to seize the fort by a stratagem. The Ottawas and other Indians under that chief were to meet the English officers in council within the fort at an appointed time. They had filed off the tops of the barrels of their muskets so as to conceal them easily under their garments. While in council Pontiac was to give a signal which would tell the assembled warriors that the time had come for falling on the garrison and taking possession of the fort.[1] Some writers give credence to the story that an Indian maiden, the mistress of Gladwin, warned him of the scheme of the Indian chief, who came to the council, in accordance with his intention, and found the garrison in arms and ready for any treacherous movement on his part. He left the fort in anger, and soon afterwards attacked it with all his force, though to no purpose, as Gladwin was able to hold it for many months, until aid reached him from {272} the east. As one Indian woman's devotion saved Detroit, so the treachery of a Delaware girl gave Fort Miami and its little garrison to the Indians encamped on the Maumee. Holmes, the commandant, was her lover, and believed her when she told him that a squaw, who was seriously ill in one of the wigwams, wished to see him. He proceeded on his charitable mission, and was shot dead while about entering the place of his destination. At Michillimackinac Captain Etherington was surprised by a clever piece of strategy on the part of a body of Sacs and Ojibways, who invited him to witness a contest between them at their favourite sport of Lacrosse, which in these modern times has been made the national game of Canadians. While the game was going on, the gate was left open while the officers and soldiers stood in groups outside, close to the palisades, watching the Indians as they tossed the ball to and fro between the goals on the level ground opposite the fort. The squaws, wrapped in their blankets, passed in and out the fort, without attracting any attention from the interested spectators. Suddenly, when the game was most hotly contested, the ball was violently driven in the direction of the pickets of the fort. A crowd of the savage players tumultuously followed the ball, and in a moment were inside the fort where they snatched weapons from the squaws. One officer and several soldiers were instantly killed, but Etherington and the remainder of the garrison were taken prisoners. Etherington and a well-known trader of the West, Alexander Henry, eventually escaped, after having {273} been on several occasions on the point of death. In six weeks' time from the first attack on Detroit, on the 9th of May, 1763, all the forts in the Western and Ohio country had been seized and destroyed by the Indians, except Fort Pitt at the forks of the Ohio, the one at Green Bay which was abandoned, and another at Ligonier. The garrisons were massacred or made prisoners, and in many cases tortured and even eaten. The frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania were laid waste by hordes of savages, who burned the homes of the settlers, murdered a large number, and carried off many prisoners, men, women, and children, to their savage fastnesses in the western wilderness. The war never ended until Virginia and Pennsylvania--where the Quaker element still prevailed--were aroused from their apathy and gave the requisite aid to an expedition under the command of an able officer, Colonel Bouquet, who had been one of Brigadier Forbes's officers during the campaign of 1759 in the Ohio valley. He rescued Fort Pitt, after administering to the Indians a severe defeat at Bushy Run. A year later he succeeded in taking a large force into the very heart of a country where the Indians thought themselves safe from any attack of their white enemy. His unexpected appearance on the banks of the Muskingkum awed the Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mingoes, who gladly agreed to terms of peace, especially as they knew that Colonel Bradstreet was in their rear on the banks of Lake Erie. The prisoners, whom the Indians had taken during their raids on the frontier settlements of Virginia and {274} Pennsylvania, were restored to their friends and relatives who had, in the majority of cases, never hoped to see them again. The annals of those days tell us strange stories of the infatuation which some young women felt for the savage warriors whom they had wedded in Indian fashion. Some children had forgotten their mothers, and Parkman relates in his graphic narrative of those memorable times that one girl only recalled her childhood when she heard her distracted mother sing a song with which she had often lulled her daughter to sleep in happier days.

Peace again reigned in the West. Detroit, after repulsing Pontiac so successfully, was at last relieved, and the red cross of England floated above the forts of Chartres and Vincennes, which were given up by the French.

By the end of the autumn of 1765 France possessed only a few acres of rock, constantly enveloped in fog, on the southern coast of Newfoundland, of all the great dominion she once claimed in North America. Pontiac now disappears from history, and is believed to have been killed by an Indian warrior of the Illinois nation, after a drunken bout at the village of Cahokia--an ignominious ending to the career of a great chief whose name was for so many months a menace to English authority in that wilderness region, which was declared in later years by an imperial statute, the Quebec Act, to be a part of Canada's illimitable domain.

While this Indian war was going on, George III., in the autumn of 1763, issued a proclamation establishing four new governments in North America; {275} Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada. The governors were empowered to summon general assemblies, and to make laws and ordinances for good government with the consent of the councils. and the representatives of the people, and to establish courts of justice. Members elected to the proposed assemblies had to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the declaration against transubstantiation. No assembly, however, ever met, as the French Canadian population were unwilling to take the test oath, and the government of the province was carried on solely by the Governor-General--General Murray--with the assistance of an executive council, composed of certain officials and leading residents in the colony. From 1763 to 1774 the province remained in a very unsettled state, chiefly on account of the uncertainty that prevailed as to the laws actually in force. The "new subjects," or French Canadians, contended that justice, so far as they were concerned, should be administered in accordance with their ancient customs and usages. On the other hand, "the old," or English subjects, argued from the proclamation of 1763, that it was His Majesty's intention at once to abolish the old jurisprudence of the country, and to establish English law in its place.

Not the least important part of the proclamation of 1763 was that relating to the Indians, who were not to be disturbed in the possession of their hunting grounds. Lands could be alienated by the Indians only at some public meeting or assembly called for that special purpose by the Governor or {276} commander-in-chief where such lands were situated. This was the commencement of that just and honest policy towards the Indians which has ever since been followed by the government of Canada. One hundred and ten years later, an interesting spectacle was witnessed in the great Northwest Territory of Canada. The lieutenant-governor of the new province of Manitoba, constituted in 1870 out of the prairie lands of that rich region, met in council the representatives of the Indian tribes, and solemnly entered into treaties with them for the transfer to Canada of immense tracts of prairie lands where we now see wide stretches of fields of nodding grain.

Governor Murray conducted his government on principles of justice and forbearance towards the French Canadians, and refused to listen to the unwise and arbitrary counsel of the four or five hundred "old subjects," who wished to rule the province. He succeeded in inspiring the old inhabitants of the province, or "new subjects," with confidence in his intentions. The majority of the "old subjects," who were desirous of ruling Canada, are described by the Governor in a letter to Lord Shelburne, as "men of mean education, traders, mechanics, publicans, followers of the army,"--a somewhat prejudiced statement. As a rule, however, the judges, magistrates, and officials at that time were men of little or no knowledge.

In 1774, Parliament intervened for the first time in Canadian affairs, and passed the Quebec Act, which greatly extended the boundaries of the province of Quebec, as defined by the proclamation of {277} 1763. On one side, the province now extended to the frontiers of New England, Pennsylvania, New York province, the Ohio, and the left bank of the Mississippi; on the other, to the Hudson's Bay Territory. Labrador, Anticosti, and the Magdalen islands, annexed to Newfoundland by the proclamation of 1763, were made part of the province of Quebec.

The Quebec Act created much debate in the House of Commons. The Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, described it as "a most cruel, and odious measure." The opposition in the province was among the British inhabitants, who sent over a petition for its repeal or amendment. Their principal grievance was that it substituted the laws and usages of Canada for English law. The Act of 1774 was exceedingly unpopular in the English-speaking colonies, then at the commencement of the revolution on account of the extension of the limits of the province so as to include the country long known as the old Northwest in American history, and the consequent confinement of the Thirteen Colonies between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany Mountains, beyond which the hardy and bold frontiersmen of Virginia and Pennsylvania were already passing into the great valley of the Ohio. Parliament, however, appears to have been influenced by a desire to adjust the government of the province so as to conciliate the majority of the Canadian people at this critical time.

The advice of Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, who succeeded General Murray as {278} Governor-General, had much to do with the liberality of the Quebec Act towards the French Canadians. After a careful study of the country he came to the conclusion that the French civil law ought to be retained, although he was met by the earnest advice to the contrary of two able lawyers, Chief-Justice Hay and Attorney-General Masères, who believed a code adopted from English and French principles was preferable. Masères, who was of Huguenot descent and much prejudiced against Roman Catholics, was also an advocate of a legislative assembly to be exclusively Protestant--in other words, of giving all power practically into the hands of a small British minority. When the subject of a new Canadian Constitution came to be discussed in England, Carleton crossed the Atlantic in 1769 and remained absent from Canada for four years. He returned to carry out the Quebec Act, which was the foundation of the large political and religious liberties which French Canada has ever since enjoyed.

The new constitution came into force in October, 1774. It provided that Roman Catholics should be no longer obliged to take the test oath, but only the oath of allegiance. The government of the province was entrusted to a governor and a legislative council, appointed by the Crown, inasmuch as it was "inexpedient to call an assembly." This council had the power, with the consent of the Governor, to make ordinances for the good government of the province. In all matters of controversy, relative to property and civil rights, recourse should be had to the French civil procedure, whilst the law of {279} England should obtain in criminal cases. Roman Catholics were permitted to observe their religion with perfect freedom, and their clergy were to enjoy their "accustomed dues and rights," with respect to such persons as professed that creed.

Sir Guy Carleton nominated a legislative council of twenty-three members, of whom eight were Roman Catholics. This body sat, as a rule, with closed doors; both languages were employed in the debates, and the ordinances agreed to were drawn up in English and French. In 1776 the Governor-General called to his assistance an advisory privy council of five members.

When Canada came under the operation of the Quebec Act, the Thirteen Colonies were on the eve of that revolution which ended in the establishment of a federal republic, and had also most important influence on the fortunes of the country through which the St. Lawrence flows.

[1] The siege of Detroit by Pontiac inspired one of the best historic novels ever written by a Canadian--_Wacousta, or the Prophecy_, by Major Richardson, who was the author of several other books.

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