WTDTYIH: In the 1750s a series of small wars erupted among the French, British, their respective colonies, and their Indian allies for control over the St. Lawrence and Ohio River valleys. On the French side were the Delaware, Shawnee, Abnaki, Ojibwa, Ottawa and Potawatomi along with mission educated Indians from Montreal and Quebec. On the British side was the powerful Iroquois Confederation, which had its own agenda, played the Europeans off each other. The English seemed bent on deliberately alienating the tribes. The crown authorized Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia to evict the French from territory under his jurisdiction. Dinwiddie commissioned George Washington (21) to carry an ultimatum to Captain Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, commander of the French outpost in western Pennsylvania. Washington arrived in May 1754 and the French and Indian war was set in motion. In September 1758 the Delaware were brought to peace with the Treaty of Easton (Pennsylvania) and the help of the Iroquois. The Delaware were promised hunting rights in western Pennsylvania which would remain free of white settlement. In November 1758 the treaty collapsed when the British took Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt. The British built the first of three roads into western Pennsylvania and settlers moved into the Delaware territory. In 1759 the French were defeated at Quebec and Canada surrendered to the British. The war in the Ohio Valley raged on for four more years. By the time the war ended the British had fought not only France but Germany, Austria, Sweden, Spain and Prussia. 3 November 1762 France concluded the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau with Spain, ceding all of its territory west of the Mississippi and the Isle of Orleans in Louisiana to Spain. 10 February 1763, with the Treaty of Paris, France ceded all of Louisiana to Spain and the rest of its North American holdings to Great Britain. The war was far from over for the various tribes of the Algonquin tribes of the Old Northwest who would fight for another forty-years, to force the English-speaking aliens to withdraw.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 05:59:38 +0000
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