Lesson 6
Student Essay: Relationship between the English,
the French, and the Native Peoples
The placid,
well-kept New England town of Deerfield, Massachusetts of today
was, for one winter night in the early years of the eighteenth century,
the scene of violent clashing among European colonial empires, diverse
Native American Nations, and personal visions and ambitions.
At 2:00 A.M.
on February 29, 1704 - came the flash of fire, the smell of gunpowder,
the shouts of French, English, and Natives. What brought this diverse
group to the site of the little village between the Deerfield and
Connecticut Rivers on this snow-covered night? What caused the violence
that raged through the palisade and resulted in the death of 44
of the residents and the capture of 109 more, more than half the
total population?
The attack on
Deerfield was a complicated event that raises deep questions even
today, nearly 300 years later. What started as a European struggle
spread to the colonies as England and France vied for political
and commercial control of North America. Between 1689 and 1763,
with a peaceful interlude 1714-1744, France and England and their
particular Native allies fought a series of wars, known collectively
as the French and Indian Wars or the Colonial Wars. The 1704 attack
on Deerfield was one of a series of battles in what was known in
Europe as the War of Spanish Succession. As part of this conflict,
England and France fought Queen Anne's War (1703-1713), struggling
for control of North America. The 1704 attack was an effort by the
French and their Indian allies to halt the gradual expansion of
English settlement up the Connecticut River Valley. For the Indians,
many of whom had their own agendas in addition to supplying manpower
to the French, an additional motive was to regain their sovereignty
by wresting their traditional homelands from the English.
In the winter
of 1704, Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville led a party of forty-seven
French Canadians and two hundred Abenaki, Pennacook, Kanien'kehaka
[Mohawk], and Wyandot Huron allies to Deerfield. This attack came
to symbolize the English struggles in the settling of America.
Although the
French and the English shared certain goals in the colonization
of the "new" world, mainly the enrichment of their respective mother
countries, there were differences in their methods. England was
concerned with placement of its excess population and in securing
the flow of raw materials back to the homeland. In addition they
expected the colonists to bolster England's economy with demands
for manufactured goods. To meet these goals, the colonists were
encouraged to make permanent agricultural settlements. The French,
on the other hand, were more concerned with controlling trade routes,
with furs being the driving force. The English villages spreading
throughout the northeast threatened the beaver population, which,
in turn, impacted the French.
The lands contested
by the French and the English were not uninhabited, but were home
to a complex web of people with their own histories of both conflict
and cooperation: Algonquian speaking people living east of the Hudson
River and Iroquoian people to the west of that river. Many of the
Native people, threatened by the land-taking English, allied themselves
with the fur-trading French with whom they often shared political
and religious beliefs. As the upheaval of Native communities undermined
their traditional culture and religion, Christianity grew in importance
and many Natives were drawn to Catholicism.
All of these
factors converged to result in the pre-dawn attack by the French
and Indians on the English settlement of Deerfield on February 29,
1704.
top
of page
|
