Great Epochs in American History Volume II Part 12

III

THE REALITY OF PENN'S TREATY

(1682)

BY GEORGE E. ELLIS[1]

There has been much discussion of late years concerning the far-famed Treaty of Penn with the Indians. A circ.u.mstance, which has all the interest both of fact and of poetry, was confirmed by such unbroken testimony of tradition that history seemed to have innumerable records of it in the hearts and memories of each generation. But as there appears no doc.u.ment or parchment of such criteria as to satisfy all inquiries, historical skepticism has ventured upon the absurd length of calling in question the fact of the treaty. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with commendable zeal, has bestowed much labor upon the questions connected with the treaty, and the results which have been attained can scarcely fail to satisfy a candid inquirer. All claim to a peculiar distinction for William Penn, on account of the singularity of his just proceedings in this matter is candidly waived, because the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English had previously dealt thus justly with the natives. It is in comparison with Pizarro and Cortes that the colonists of all other nations in America appear to an advantage; but the fame of William Penn stands, and ever will stand, preeminent for unexceptionable justice and peace in his relations with the natives.

Penn had several meetings for conference and treaties with the Indians, besides those which he held for the purchase of lands. But unbroken and reverently cherished tradition, beyond all possibility of contradition, has designated one great treaty held under a large elm-tree, at Shackamaxon (now Kensington)[2], a treaty which Voltaire justly characterizes as "never sworn to, and never broken." In Penn's Letter to the Free Society of Traders, dated August 16, 1683, he refers to his conferences with the Indians. Two deeds, conveying land to him, are on record, both of which bear an earlier date than this letter; namely, June 23d and July 14th of the same year. He had designed to make a purchase in May; but having been called off to a conference with Lord Baltimore, he postponed the business till June.

The "Great Treaty" was doubtless unconnected with the purchase of land, and was simply a treaty of amity and friends.h.i.+p, in confirmation of one previously held, by Penn's direction, by Markham, on the same spot; that being a place which the Indians were wont to use for this purpose. It is probable that the treaty was held on the last of November, 1682; that the Delawares, the Mingos, and other Susquehanna tribes formed a large a.s.sembly on the occasion; that written minutes of the conference were made, and were in possession of Governor Gordon, who states nine conditions as belonging to them in 1728, but are now lost; and that the substance of the treaty is given in Penn's Letter to the Free Traders. These results are satisfactory, and are sufficient corroborated by known facts and doc.u.ments. The Great Treaty, being distinct from a land purchase, is significantly distinguished in history and tradition.

The inventions of romance and imagination could scarcely gather round this engaging incident attractions surpa.s.sing in its own simple and impressive interest. Doubtless Clarkson has given a fair representation of it, if we merely disconnect from his account the statement that the Indians were armed, and all that confounds the treaty of friends.h.i.+p with the purchase of lands. Penn wore a sky-blue sash of silk around his waist, as the most simple badge. The pledges there given were to hold their sanct.i.ty "while the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure."

While the whites preserved in written records the memory of such covenants, the Indians had their methods for perpetuating in safe channels their own relations. They cherished in grateful regard, they repeated to their children and to the whites, the terms of the Great Treaty. The Delawares called William Penn _Miquon_, in their own language, though they seem to have adopted the name given him by the Iroquois, _Onas_; both which terms signify a quill or pen. Benjamin West's picture of the treaty is too imaginative for a historical piece. He makes Penn of a figure and aspect which would become twice the years that had pa.s.sed over his head. The elm-tree was spared in the war of the American Revolution, when there was distress for firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel beneath it for protection. It was prostrated by the wind on the night of Sat.u.r.day, March 3, 1810. It was of gigantic size, and the circles around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries. A piece of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where it is properly commemorated. A marble monument, with suitable inscription was "placed by the Penn Society A.D. 1827 to mark the site of the Great Elm Tree."

[1] Mr. Ellis was a Unitarian clergyman, long pastor of a church at Charlestown, Ma.s.s.

[2] Kensington is now a part of Philadelphia, being the northeastern section. It lies on the Delaware River, about two miles distant from the City Hall, and is a center of the s.h.i.+p-building industry.

THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT

(1682)

BY ALEXANDER JOHNSTON[1]

In December, 1686, the Hartford authorities were called upon to measure their strength again with their old antagonist. Andros had landed at Boston, commissioned as governor of all New England, and bent on abrogating the charters. Following Dudley's lead, he wrote to Treat, suggesting that by this time the trial of the writs had certainly gone against the colony; and that the authorities would do much to commend the colony to his majesty's good pleasure by entering a formal surrender of the charter. The colony authorities were possibly as well versed in the law of the case as Andros, and they took good care to do nothing of the sort; and, as the event showed, they thus saved the charter.

The a.s.sembly met as usual in October, 1687; but their records show that they were in profound doubt and distress. Andros was with them, accompanied by some sixty regular soldiers, to enforce his demand for the charter. It is certain that he did not get it, tho the records, as usual, are cautious enough to give no reason why. Tradition is responsible for the story of the charter oak. The a.s.sembly had met the royal governor in the meeting-house; the demand for the charter had been made; and the a.s.sembly had exhausted the resources of language to show to Andros how dear it was to them, and how impossible it was to give it up. Andros was immovable; he had watched that charter with longing eyes from the banks of the Hudson, and he had no intention of giving up his object now that the king had put him in power on the banks of the Connecticut.

Toward evening the case had become desperate. The little democracy was at last driven into a corner, where its old policy seemed no longer available; it must resist openly, or make a formal surrender of its charter. Just as the lights were lighted, the legal authorities yielded so far as to order the precious doc.u.ment to be brought in and laid on the table before the eyes of Andros. Then came a little more debate. Suddenly the lights were blown out; Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, carried off the charter, and hid it in a hollow oak-tree on the estate of the Wyllyses, just across the "riveret;" and when the lights were relighted the colony was no longer able to comply with Andros's demand for a surrender.

Altho the account of the affair is traditional, it is difficult to see any good grounds for impeaching it on that account. It supplies, in the simplest and most natural manner, a blank in the Hartford proceedings of Andros which would otherwise be quite unaccountable.

His plain purpose was to force Connecticut into a position where she must either surrender the charter or resist openly. He failed: the charter never was in his possession; and the official records a.s.sign no reason for his failure. The colony was too prudent, and Andros too proud to put the true reason on record. Tradition supplies the gap with an exactness which proves itself.

Having done all that men could do, Treat and his a.s.sociates bowed for the time to superior force. Andros was allowed to read his commission, and Treat, Fitz-John and Wait Winthrop, and John Allyn received appointments as members of his council for New England. John Allyn made what the governor doubtless considered to be the closing record for all time. But it is noteworthy that the record was so written as to flatter Andros's vanity, while it really put in terms a declaration of over-powering force, on which the commonwealth finally succeeded in saving her charter from invalidation, it is as follows:

"At a General Court at Hartford, October 31st, 1887, his excellency, Sir Edmund Andross, knight and Captain General and Governor of His Majesty's territories and dominions in New England, by order of His Majesty James the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, the 31st of October, 1687, took into his hands the government of the colony of Connecticut, it being by His Majesty annexed to Ma.s.sachusetts and other colonies under his excellency's government.

"FINIS."

The government was destined to last far longer than either the governor or his government. But, while it lasted, Andros's government was bitterly hated, and with good reason. The reasons are more peculiarly appropriate to the history of Ma.s.sachusetts, where they were felt more keenly than in Connecticut; but even in Connecticut, poor as was the field for plunder, and distant as it was from the "ring" which surrounded Andros, the exactions of the new system were wellnigh intolerable to a people whose annual expense of government had been carefully kept down to the lowest limits, so that, says Bancroft, they "did not exceed four thousand dollars; and the wages of the chief justice were ten s.h.i.+llings a day while on service."...

April, 1689, came at last. The people of Boston, at the first news of the English Revolution, clapped Andros into custody. May 9, the old Connecticut authorities quietly resumed their functions, and called the a.s.sembly together for the following month. William and Mary were proclaimed with great favor. Not a word was said about the disappearance or reapeparance of the charter; but the charter government was put into full effect again, as if Andros had never interrupted it. An address was sent to the king, asking that the charter be no further interfered with; but operations under it went on as before. No decided action was taken by the home government for some years, except that its appointment of the New York governor, Fletcher, to the command of the Connecticut militia, implied a decision that the Connecticut charter had been superseded.

Late in 1693 Fitz-John Winthrop was sent to England as agent to obtain a confirmation of the charter. He secured an emphatic legal opinion from Attorney General Somers, backed by those of Treby and Ward, that the charter was entirely valid, Treby's concurrent opinion taking this shape: "I am of the same opinion, and, as this matter is stated, there is no ground of doubt." The basis of the opinion was that the charter had been granted under the great seal; that it had not been surrendered under the common seal of the colony, nor had any judgment of record been entered against it; that its operation had merely been interfered with by overpowering force; that the charter therefore remained valid; and that the peaceable submission of the colony to Andros was merely an illegal suspension of lawful authority. In other words, the pa.s.sive att.i.tude of the colonial government had disarmed Andros so far as to stop the legal proceedings necessary to forfeit the charter; and then prompt action, at the critical moment, secured all that could be secured under the circ.u.mstances. William was willing enough to retain all possible fruits of James's tyranny, as he showed by enforcing the forfeiture of the Ma.s.sachusetts charter; but the law in this case was too plain, and he ratified the lawyers' opinion in April, 1694. The charter had escaped its enemies at last, and its escape is a monument of one of the advantages of a real democracy.

[1] From Johnston's "History of Connecticut." By permission of, and by arrangement with, the authorized publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1887, by Alexander Johnston.

THE COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA

(1699)

BY CHARLES E.T. GAYARRE[1]

On February 27, 1699, Iberville and Bienville reached the Mississippi.

When they approached its mouth they were struck with the gloomy magnificence of the sight. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but reeds which rose five or six feet above the waters in which they bathed their roots. They waved mournfully under the blast of the sharp wind of the north, s.h.i.+vering in its icy grasp, as it tumbled, rolled, and gambolled on the pliant surface. Mult.i.tudes of birds of strange appearance, with their elongated shapes so lean that they looked like metamorphosed ghosts, clothed in plumage, screamed in the air, as if they were scared of one another. There was something agonizing in their shrieks that was in harmony with the desolation of the place. On every side of the vessel, monsters of the deep and huge alligators heaved themselves up heavily from their native or favorite element, and, floating lazily on the turbid waters, seemed to gaze at the intruders....

It was a relief for the adventurers when, after having toiled up the river for ten days, they at last arrived at the village of the Bayagoulas. There they found a letter of Tonty to La Salle, dated in 1685. The letter, or rather that "speaking bark" as the Indians called it, had been preserved with great reverence. Tonty, having been informed that La Salle was coming with a fleet from France to settle a colony on the banks of the Mississippi, had not hesitated to set off from the northern lakes, with twenty Canadians and thirty Indians, and to come down to the Balize to meet his friend, who had failed to make out the mouth of the Mississippi, and had been landed by Beaujeu on the sh.o.r.es of Texas. After having waited for some time, and ignorant of what had happened, Tonty, with the same indifference to fatigues and dangers of an appalling nature, retraced his way back, leaving a letter to La Salle to inform him of his disappointment. Is there not something extremely romantic in the characters of the men of that epoch? Here is Tonty undertaking, with the most heroic unconcern, a journey of nearly three thousand miles, through such difficulties as it is easy for us to imagine, and leaving a letter to La Salle, as a proof of his visit, in the same way that one would, in these degenerate days of effeminacy, leave a card at a neighbor's house.

The French extended their explorations up to the mouth of the Red River. On their return the two brothers separated when they arrived at Bayou Manchac. Bienville was ordered to go down the river to the French fleet, to give information of what they had seen and heard. Iberville went through Bayou Manchac to those lakes which are known under the names of Pontchartrain and Maurepas. Louisiana had been named from a king: was it not in keeping that those lakes should be called after ministers?

From the Bay of St. Louis, Ibervile returned to his fleet, where, after consultation, he determined to make a settlement at the Bay of Biloxi.

On the east side, at the mouth of the bay, as it were, there is a slight swelling of the sh.o.r.e, about four acres square, sloping gently to the woods in the background, and on the bay. Thus this position was fortified by nature, and the French skilfully availed themselves of these advantages. The weakest point, which was on the side of the forest, they strengthened with more care than the rest, by connecting with a strong intrenchment the two ravines, which ran to the bay in a parallel line to each other. The fort was constructed with four bastions, and was armed with twelve pieces of artillery....

A few huts having been erected round the fort, the settlers began to clear the land, in order to bring it into cultivation. Iberville having furnished them with all the necessary provisions, utensils, and other supplies, prepared to sail for France.... As the country had been ordered to be explored, Sauvolle availed himself of that circ.u.mstance to refresh the minds of his men by the excitement of an expedition into the interior of the continent. He therefore hastened to dispatch most of them with Bienville, who, with a chief of the Bayagoulas for his guide, went to visit the Colap.i.s.sas. They inhabited the northern sh.o.r.e of Lake Pontchartrain, and their domains embraced the sites now occupied by Lewisburg, Mandeville, and Fontainebleau....

Ibervile had been gone for several months, and the year was drawing to a close without any tidings of him. A deeper gloom had settled over the little colony at Biloxi, when, on December 7th, some signal-guns were heard at sea, and the grateful sound came booming over the waters, spreading joy in every breast.... It was Iberville returning with the news that, on his representations, Sauvolle had been appointed by the King governor of Louisiana; Bienville, lieutenant-governor; and Boisbriant, commander of the fort at Biloxi, with the grade of major.

Iberville, having been informed by Bienville of the attempt of the English to make a settlement on the banks of the Mississippi, and of the manner in which it had been foiled, resolved to take precautionary measures against the repet.i.tion of any similar attempt. Without loss of time he departed with Bienville, on January 16, 1700, and running up the river, he constructed a small fort, on the first solid ground which he met, and which is said to have been at a distance of fifty-four miles from its mouth.

When so engaged the two brothers one day saw a canoe rapidly sweeping down the river and approaching the spot where they stood. It was occupied by eight men, six of whom were rowers, the seventh was the steersman, and the eighth, from his appearance, was evidently of a superior order to that of his companions, and the commander of the party. Well may it be imagined what greeting the stranger received, when leaping on sh.o.r.e he made himself known as the Chevalier de Tonty, who had again heard of the establishment of a colony in Louisiana, and who, for the second time, had come to see if there was any truth in the report. With what emotion did Therville and Bienville fold in their arms the faithful companion and friend of La Salle, of whom they had heard so many wonderful tales from the Indians, to whom he was so well known under the name of "Iron Hand!" With what admiration they looked at his person, and with what increasing interest they listened to his long recitals of what he had done and had seen on that broad continent, the threshold of which they had hardly pa.s.sed!

After having rested three days at the fort, the indefatigable Tonty reascended the Mississippi, with Ibervile and Bienvile, and finally parted with them at Natchez. Iberville was so much pleased with that part of the bank of the river where now exists the city of Natchez that he marked it down as a most eligible spot for a town, of which he drew the plan, and which he called Rosalie, after the maiden name of the Countess Pontchartrain, the wife of the chancellor. He then returned to the new fort he was erecting on the Mississippi, and Bienville went to explore the country of the Yata.s.ses, of the Natchitoehes, and of the Ouachitas. What romance can be more agreeable to the imagination than to accompany Iberville and Bienville in their wild explorations, and to compare the state of the country in their time with what it is in our days?...

After these explorations Iberville departed again for France, to solicit additional a.s.sistance from the government, and left Bienville in command of the new fort on the Mississippi. It was very hard for the two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, to be thus separated, when they stood so much in need of each other's countenance, to breast the difficulties that sprung up around them with a luxuriance which they seemed to borrow from the vegetation of the country. The distance between the Mississippi and Biloxi was not so easily overcome in those days as in ours, and the means which the two brothers had of communing together were very scanty and uncertain.

Sauvolle died August 22, 1701, and Louisiana remained under the sole charge of Bienville, who, tho very young, was fully equal to meet that emergency, by the maturity of his mind and by his other qualifications.

He had hardly consigned his brother to the tomb when Iberville returned with two s.h.i.+ps of the line and a brig laden with troops and provisions.

According to Iberville's orders, and in conformity with the King's instructions, Bienville left Boisbriant, his cousin, with twenty men, at the old fort of Biloxi, and transported the princ.i.p.al seat of the colony to the western side of the river Mobile, not far from the spot where now stands the city of Mobile. Near the mouth of that river there is an island, which the French had called Ma.s.sacre Island from the great quant.i.ty of human bones which they found bleaching on its sh.o.r.es.

It was evident that there some awful tragedy had been acted; but Tradition, when interrogated, laid her choppy fingers upon her skinny lips, and answered not....

The year 1703 slowly rolled by and gave way to 1704. Still, nothing was heard from the parent country. There seemed to be an impa.s.sable barrier between the old and the new continent. The milk which flowed from the motherly breast of France could no longer reach the parched lips of her new-born infant; and famine began to pinch the colonists, who scattered themselves all along the coast, to live by fis.h.i.+ng. They were reduced to the veriest extremity of misery, and despair had settled in every bosom, in spite of the encouragements of Bienville, who displayed the most manly fort.i.tude amid all the trials to which he was subjected....

Iberville had not been able to redeem his pledge to the poor colonists, but he sent his brother Chateaugue in his place, at the imminent risk of being captured by the English, who occupied, at that time, most of the avenues of the Gulf of Mexico. He was not the man to spare either himself or his family in cases of emergency, and his heroic soul was inured to such sacrifices. Grateful the colonists were for this act of devotedness, and they resumed the occupation of their tenements which they had abandoned in search of food. The aspect of things was suddenly changed; abundance and hope reappeared in the land, whose population was increased by the arrival of seventeen persons, who came, under the guidance of Chateaugue, with the intention of making a permanent settlement, and who had provided themselves with all the implements of husbandry.

This excitement had hardly subsided when it was revived by the appearance of another s.h.i.+p, and it became intense when the inhabitants saw a procession of twenty females, with veiled faces, proceeding arm in arm, and two by two, to the house of the Governor, who received them in state and provided them with suitable lodgings. What did it mean?

The next morning, which was Sunday, the mystery was cleared by the officiating priest reading from the pulpit, after ma.s.s, and for the general information, the following communication from the minister to Bienville: