Savages In A Civilized War: The Native Americans As French Allies In The Seven Years War, 1754-1763

Major Adam Bancroft

• Publisher: Golden Springs Publishing
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781782899570
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The Seven Years' War was the first truly global war but it will forever be recognized in North America as the French and Indian War because of the extensive use of Native American allies by the French from 1754-1758. These irregular forces were needed to offset the massive manpower advantage the British possessed in North America, 1.5 million British colonists to 55, 000 French colonists. This thesis examines the complex relationship the French had with their Indian allies who were spread throughout their territorial holdings in North America. It examines French and Indian diplomatic relations and wartime strategy, and moves to describe and form an understanding of the savage frontier warfare practiced by the Indians and its adaption by the French settlers known as la petite guerre. The thesis examines the French employment of the Indians as frontier raiders, setting the conditions for conventional army operations, and counter irregular force operations and how understanding an irregular force's culture is crucial for success. The thesis examined these cultural differences and why the Indians began to move away from the French in 1758 after the massacre of the British prisoners at the surrender of Fort William Henry. This examination of the employment of Native Americans provides a concise understanding of their use and where understanding the lessons of the past benefits the modern military officer working with partner forces today.

CHAPTER 1 — INTRODUCTION

“The more prescient colonial military and political leaders understood that the Indians were a critical element in the successful prosecution of war in the colonies. Their participation, or even neutrality, could represent the difference between victory and defeat.”{1} —Lieutenant-Colonel Bernd Horn, Terror on the Frontier

The Seven Years’ War (1754-1763) was a watershed moment in the history of not only France and England, but also of the North American continent as a whole. It would not only affect which European power dominated the continent as the premier colonial world power, but it also shaped the history of the many Indian tribes that inhabited the spaces claimed and managed by the European powers. By the end of the war and the defeat of the French in 1763, Britain had established itself as the sole colonial power in North America and had set the stage for American history as we know it today.{2}

However, the war had another name. In modern American and British history, the war would come to be known as, The French and Indian War. This name was not merely a moniker applied because those were the parties that fought the war against the British, but so named because of the deep seated and long standing alliance between the French and the Native Americans of the continent. This alliance permeated every aspect of French life, from trade, to missionaries, and most especially to warfare.{3}

This alliance was critical to the French during wartime because it enabled them to counter the amazing advantage the British had in resources and manpower, which in 1754 stood a staggering 1.5 million people in British territory to a meager fifty five thousand in New France, by practicing a form of warfare known as la petite guerre. This form of war, adapted from the Indian style of frontier warfare, focused on ambushes, raids, and other irregular tactics. The French used this non-European style of warfare to keep the British contained in their colonies by utilizing disruptive attacks on points of British weakness, combined with an unrelenting series of raids on the British frontier to terrorize the colonists. In 1756 this form of war would be integrated into the French operational plans, using native North American Indian warriors combined with the French regular army to shape an efficient form of combined irregular and regular warfare that would see the Indians, and their non-European fighting tactics, used where they could be the most successful. This strategy would keep the British off balance through a series of French tactical victories until 1758, when a series of cultural misunderstandings would ultimately force the Indians to cease their mass support of the French and move towards neutrality until the end of the war.{4}

This alliance was so critical to the French that a wide scale system of diplomacy and gifts was established to maintain positive relations with the Indians. These relations served to secure the French frontier against the punishing raids of the Indians, gain and maintain profitable trade in New France and provide warriors in time of war. An added benefit of this relationship was that it also prevented the British from gaining similar benefits from the Indians as well. This system led to the establishment of numerous forts and trading outposts along the British and French borderlands that would become the focus of the military actions of the war. The French devoted a staggering amount of resources to this trade with the Indians over the 150 years before the Seven Years’ War (1609-1754).{5}

Though the war would ultimately be a defeat for the French and they would be pushed out of North America, they held the far larger British military force for the first three years of the war due to their solid and prosperous alliance with the Native Americans and the Canadians adoption of the irregular war fighting tactics of la petite guerre. Their use of the Indians as auxiliaries, raiders integrated into a campaign plan, reconnaissance scouts, and frontier raiders on the periphery of the theater, allowed the French to practice a strategy of defending Canada by attacking the British deep in their own territory and keeping them off guard.{6} While the British would eventually overwhelm the French with regular troops and mitigate the advantage the Indians provided, the French and Indian War showed that the successful combination of regular and irregular warfare could be effective against a superior force. But success is dependent on understanding the two keys to successful implementation of this tactic; the knowledgeable and appropriate use of this partner force as well as recognizing the dangers of misunderstanding their culture or using them inappropriately.{7}These are lessons that echo today with the modern military officer as he seeks to understand the contemporary operating environment.

CHAPTER 2 — CANADIAN-INDIAN RELATIONS AND FRENCH WARTIME STRATEGY FOR NATIVE AMERICAN USE

“What has resulted from this? And what is resulting from this? Our Indians, disgusted, and dissatisfied, are taking their furs to the English, are becoming attached to them to the prejudice of our interests and to the detriment of the trade. . . . The presents that the king has given to them keep them loyal to him.”{8} — Charles de Raymond, On the Eve of Conquest

The Native Americans played an essential role for both the British and French Empires in North America during the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763). They were essential to the survival of the colonists that inhabited the areas. They were vital trading partners; they acted as guides, and in the case of some British agreements, also hunted to provide food for the settlers.{9} The Indians also provided the essential manpower that the French relied upon to help offset the British settlements vast advantage on the continent, 1.5 million settlers to the French 55,000.{10}

This employment as soldiers in the army did not develop only in the years leading up to war. Instead, securing the alliances and good relations with the Indians that were needed to develop the constant flow of manpower the war demanded were the result of carefully molded colonial policy and diplomatic relations with their neighboring tribes in the vast areas that were settled by the French. This policy, relying on gifts, flattery, and favors, and not the purchase or outright control of the Indians’ land allowed them to rapidly expand and trade for the furs that were so valued in Europe.{11}

This relationship also had a double edge to it. When the style of warfare of the Seven Years’ War moved past the small-scale frontier war of the late 16th and early 17th centuries to a large European style war, the French had trouble adapting their small regular force augmented by Indians to the European style. Conversely, the large European armies had trouble maneuvering in the dense terrain of the Americas. In the middle were the Native Americans. The Canadian Governor General Pierre de Riguad de Vaudreuil de Cavagnial, Marquis de Vaudreuil (known here after as Vaudreuil) advocated a much more defensive forward guerilla style campaign{12} as the French leadership’s best strategy to employ the Native Americans, while the French military commander, Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, Marquis de Montcalm (known here after as Montcalm) sought a more European maneuver army strategy of massing for decisive battles with the Indians as auxiliaries.{13} Their eventual usage, as scouts and guerillas, would be born of the relationship between the Indians and the French as allies and partners and not as subjects or subordinates, a direct result of the relations cultivated between them outside of war.{14}

At the start of the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), the French and the British both commanded vast numbers of men and resources on the continent. The French commanded 55,000 permanent settlers in North America. These settlers were spread around a territory that stretched from Canada in the north, the Atlantic to the Great Lakes region east west, and south down the Mississippi to Louisiana and eastward to the Ohio Valley. The 1.5 million citizens of the British colonial holdings were inside this buffer in the commonly understood thirteen colonies. Key to managing, exploiting, and more importantly, protecting and maintaining this vast swathe of territory were the Native Americans.{15}

The Native Americans of the vast French territory represented over 15 different tribal groups. Realizing that their survival depended on these groups, Samuel Champlain, the founder of Quebec, immediately started a relationship with the Algonquin Indians he made contact with in 1609. From that point on the survival of the French settlers and Indians were merged. Indians would trade with the French for muskets, tomahawks, iron, clothes, blankets, and other goods required for survival, while teaching the settlers how to survive on the land and trading furs, foodstuffs, and skins the settlers required. Over the next 150 years, the French would form alliances with the Pequot, Illinois, Kickapoo, Menomini, Miami Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi Indians throughout the northeast and Great Lakes, or pays d’en haut, area.{16} At the same time the British would be engaging in the same sorts of activities in order to bring the native tribes in their areas under their control. Where the two empires met, this led to the empires competing over the same Indians. For 150 years, the French would consistently surpass the British in almost every regard in Indian relations. This could not have been achieved without a strong system of Indian relations and a developed knowledge of their culture and what was required to sway the Indians to their cause. In 1753, the French were using three primary methods to secure Indian alliances: religion, trade and gifts, and force, if necessary. This battle over Native American influence would be the catalyst to start the Seven Years’ War.{17}

For the French, the need for good relations and strong alliances with Native Americans was key to their survival and retaining the hegemony it had in the frontier areas of the continent in the 1700s. New France, particularly Canada, was founded as a trading and resource monopoly base, not as a full-fledged colony where excess population from the mother country could be sent. In fact, the French government did little to actively encourage large scale settlement of the new colony. This is in contrast to the British colonies that experienced consistent growth in their colonies along the Atlantic seaboard.{18} The French method of empire was not one of land grabs and gain, but one of commerce and trade with the Native Indian population.{19} This made the colony devoid of any real troop base to call upon in time of war. As will be discussed in chapter 3, the colonists depended on the Native Americans to assist them in their fighting, both as teachers and allied soldiers. Throughout the history of the colony, the French had been subjected to constant raids by Iroquois raiding parties (1610-1701), numerous small Indian wars, and three small frontier wars against their southern British neighborhoods, King William’s War (1688-1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), and King George’s War (1744-1748). In each of these wars, the French learned that they could not achieve lasting strategic victory against the British; they could only achieve tactical victories that would have the strategic effect of disrupting British invasion plans.{20} The key to their success was the consistent ability to recruit warriors from the Native Americans, and almost as essential, deny the same ability to the British. In 1753, the populations of French allied Native Americans in the Ohio Valley and pays d’en haut region provided the French with access to potentially 16,000 warriors that they could recruit from.{21}

These wars created a power vacuum in the western portions of New France due to a lack of French presence. The French Governor-General Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière (1693-1756) correctly assessed that the next point of conflict between the British and the French would shift from the Lake Champlain/New England region to the Ohio Valley on the British western frontier.{22} The British had already made inroads in the Ohio Valley through the Ohio Company, a land trading company, and quickly moved to counter their expansion by reasserting French dominance over the region. To do this, he would employ the French methods of religion, trade and gifts, and force.{23}

Religion had always been a driving force in New France and the relations with the Indians within its borders. From the beginning of the colony in the 1600s, Jesuit missionaries were sent to New France in order to bring the “savage” into the fold, as Champlain believed that the soul was all that mattered and feared for the soul of his new found allies.{24} This drive started the process of linking some of the native population with the French.

In the 1600s the Jesuits came to New France and established a series of missions, the most famous of these, the Huron Mission, worked ceaselessly to convert Indians to Catholicism. Though this mission would be destroyed and its priests ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ABSTRACT
• CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 2 - CANADIAN-INDIAN RELATIONS AND FRENCH WARTIME STRATEGY FOR NATIVE AMERICAN USE
• CHAPTER 3 - NORTH AMERICAN IRREGULAR WARFARE
• CHAPTER 4 - VICTORIES IN LA PETITE GUERRE
• CHAPTER 5 - A FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND
• CHAPTER 6 - CONCLUSION
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY