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The Mentor, No. 35, The Story of America in Pictures: The Contest for
North America




THE MENTOR

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

    Vol. 1             No. 35




THE STORY OF AMERICA IN PICTURES

THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA

    LA SALLE

    CAPTURE OF LOUISBURG

    DEERFIELD MASSACRE

    CAPTURE OF QUEBEC

    BRADDOCK’S DEFEAT

    PONTIAC WAR

[Illustration]

_By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Professor of Government, Harvard University_


The whole round world is now open. Gone is the pleasure of finding new
lands, sighting strange mountains, floating down mysterious rivers,
and meeting unknown races of men. After Mt. Everest is climbed by some
daring mountaineer, and after an airship lands on the highest peak of
Mt. McKinley, what will be left for the seeker of novelty? Where can
you now find a river or mountain range or tribe certified never before
to have been seen by white men?

That rich pleasure was enjoyed in the fullest measure by the explorers
in North America; in fact, they enjoyed it so much that they kept it
alive for four centuries. For a good two hundred and fifty years the
English at intervals battered their way into Hudson Bay, and Davis
Strait, and the Arctic deserts, trying to smash a route through the
ice, around to the north of Asia and Europe. Nearly three centuries
passed after De Soto reached the lower Mississippi before Lieutenant
Pike found its source in its native lair. As late as 1880 no man, white
or red, knew the passes across the Canadian Rockies; and to this day
only three boat parties have ever gone through the length of the canyon
of the Colorado.

[Illustration: ROBERT CAVELIER DE LA SALLE

_Born 1643; died 1687._]

In the work of opening up North America the French surpassed the
English: if no bolder, they were more adventurous. From the lower St.
Lawrence they held a direct route into the interior, which flanked the
two great obstacles to western exploration; namely, the Six Nations of
the Iroquois and the Alleghany Mountains. It is hard to say which was
the firmer wall against English discovery.


FRENCH ADVENTURE

[Illustration: LA SALLE’S SHIP, THE GRIFFIN

_From an old print._]

If we were only French, we could weep at the splendid story of French
discovery, as compared with the final collapse of the French empire on
the continent of North America. The French were the first to find the
St. Lawrence; first to see each one of the Great Lakes; first to spread
exaggerated ideas about Niagara Falls--where, according to Mark Twain,
the hack fares in his time were so much higher than the falls that the
visitor did not perceive the latter. They were first to be awestruck at
the site of the future city of Chicago; first to reach the Mississippi;
first to be stopped by the Falls of St. Anthony, which unfortunately
were not at that time subject to conservation; first to navigate the
Mississippi; first to see the Rocky Mountains; first to cross from Lake
Superior to Hudson Bay. What a fate, to be the star actors in so many
first performances, and then not to appear at all in the last act!
What a destiny for the earliest explorers of our country!

One reason why the French secured early control of the interior
was that they had an astonishing gift of living on the country.
When Stanley crosses the Dark Continent, or Amundsen penetrates the
White Continent, he carries great quantities of stores with him; but
Champlain, and Marquette, and La Salle went light. The Frenchmen
paddled their canoes along with their Indian friends, lived on game and
Indian corn, found much to engage and interest them, and were always
ready for a joyous fight. Frenchmen know how to draw the pleasures of
life out of unpromising surroundings.


FOUNDING OF QUEBEC

The French made their first permanent settlement at Quebec in 1608;
but the English had then been in Jamestown a year. From the first the
continent was too small to hold two such boisterous, expanding, and
conflict-loving people. Captain Argall in 1613 opened the ball by
capturing the little Jesuit settlement at Flying Mountain on Mount
Desert. From that time, for just a hundred and fifty years, the two
nations were sparring with each other.

[Illustration: Copyright, 1897, by Little, Brown & Co. Reproduced by
permission.

LA SALLE PRESENTING A PETITION TO KING LOUIS XIV]

For many years this warfare was hedged in, because mountains, woods,
and savages filled up a broad belt of territory between the English
coast settlements and the St. Lawrence. But in war, as in the chivalric
game of football, when you cannot break through the center, you play
round the ends. Hence in every one of the six regular wars, besides
various local squabbles, there was always fighting between French and
English in Nova Scotia, or the Islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or
along that river. In 1613 the English captured Port Royal on the Bay of
Fundy, and again in 1690 and 1710,--it became almost a habit,--in 1670
they broke into Hudson Bay; in 1745 and 1758 they mastered Louisburg;
and in 1759 took Quebec.


LA SALLE

The most gallant figure in this century and a half is the chevalier
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who had all the pluck and endurance
of his Norman ancestors. He was educated by the Jesuits; but preferred
the life of a seignior on the frontier of Canada. There he heard tales
of a river starting somewhere near the Great Lakes and following so
long a course that he guessed it must be the Colorado. From that time
he became a still hunter for the Mississippi River. He built the
Griffin, the first vessel ever seen on Lake Erie. Apparently he found
the Ohio, and decided that that was not the advertised stream; and
before he could get to the Mississippi it had been discovered by the
priest Marquette and the Indian trader Joliet, while Father Hennepin
went up the great stream to the falls.

[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS

_As pictured by Father Louis Hennepin, probably the first white man
to see this wonderful waterfall. From a plate made from the original
Utrecht edition of 1697._]

La Salle had larger plans than to see new countries and float on
strange rivers: he wanted to occupy that region for his sovereign and
friend, Louis XIV, Le Grand Monarque. Early in 1682 he reached what
the recorder of that expedition calls “the divine river, called by the
Indians Checagou.” With him was that picturesque figure Tonti, “the man
with the iron hand”--and his artificial member was no tougher and more
enduring than his iron heart.

February 6, 1682, the expedition reached what they called “the River
Colbert,” and six leagues lower they passed the mouth of the Missouri.
There they registered the first protest against the St. Louis water
supply; for that stream, they said, “is full as large as the River
Colbert, into which it empties, troubling it so that from the mouth
the water is hardly drinkable.” The Indians entertained him with the
fiction that by going up the Missouri ten or twelve days he would come
to a mountain, beyond which was the sea with many ships.

La Salle was the man who put the French into the Mississippi Valley,
and thus gave them possession of the two finest regions in North
America,--the whole watershed of the St. Lawrence, including the Great
Lakes, and the whole watershed of the Mississippi. How many different
craft have followed after his canoes,--a keel boat containing Aaron
Burr and his misfortunes; a flat boat, with Abraham Lincoln stretching
his long arms over the steering oar; the Belle of St. Louis racing the
Belle of Memphis, cramming sugar and hams into the furnace, and, just
as she pulled abreast of her rival, blowing up in most spectacular
style; and Porter’s gunboats, driving past Vicksburg and exchanging
broadsides with the batteries on the heights! Little did La Salle know
that he was opening up a highway for a nation not yet born!


ENGLISH CLAIMS

[Illustration: GENERAL PEPPERELL AT LOUISBURG

_General Pepperell was commander of the English forces which on June
16, 1745, captured the town of Louisburg._]

Where were the English all this time? Did their Indian friends tell
them nothing about great rivers full of crocodiles, and crook-backed,
woolly oxen, and mountains of gold? After 1664 they held the whole
coast from the St. Croix River to the Savannah River; but it took them
a long time simply to reach the edge of the Mississippi Valley. Two
adventurous men, Thomas Batts, and the German, John Lederer, wormed
their way through the confused mountains of western Virginia, and
Batts reached the New River about 1671,--“a pleasing but dreadful
sight to see, mountains and hills piled one upon another.” They took
possession of “all the territories thereunto belonging” for his Majesty
Charles II. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania all had
charters reaching west of the mountains; but they knew better than to
try to pick up territory from under the lodge poles of the ferocious
Iroquois. The English seemed to lack the discoverer’s spirit, which
can be satisfied only, as the colored preacher puts it, “by unscrewing
the inscrutable.” John Endicott thought he was as heroic as Marco
Polo, when he went up the Merrimac River to Lake Winnepesaukee, and
there cut his initials on a rock; and Governor Alexander Spotswood of
Virginia felt very proud of himself when in 1716 he conducted a party
of gentlemen on horseback across the mountains into the valley of the
Shenandoah, which was still a long way from the Mississippi Basin.

[Illustration: DOOR OF OLD HOUSE, DEERFIELD

_Showing the holes chopped in the door by the Indians, through which
they shot Mrs. Weldon, a victim of the raid._]

The French riveted their claim on the Mississippi by sending out a
colony in 1699, which soon after founded the town of New Orleans, on
the high bluff fourteen feet above the sea level of the nearby Lake
Pontchartrain. They made many settlements; such as Detroit, and St.
Joseph, and Green Bay, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Natchez. They set up
trading posts among the Indians; they buried lead plates along the
banks of the Ohio River, bearing the arms of the king,--they had a
clear claim to the two enormous river valleys.

[Illustration: OLD HOUSE IN DEERFIELD

_This old house escaped the conflagration in 1704._]

What was a clear claim? The Indians thought they had a clear claim,
and warlike tribes like the Iroquois and the Creeks fought for that
conviction. The English claimed the Mississippi Valley because they
wanted it, and took advantage of the four international wars of
the eighteenth century to make that claim good by further right of
conquest. After the second war, by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, the
first territory was clipped off from the French possessions; Acadia
(Nova Scotia) passed to the English, and with it they acquired whatever
the French claims had been to Newfoundland and Hudson Bay. At the end
of the third war, in 1748, they were holding Louisburg; but gave it
back. Then in 1754 came the great struggle of the French and Indian
War, in which the English attacked the French on the upper Ohio, on
Lake Ontario, at Louisburg, and finally at Quebec, all with triumphant
success. The Canadian French were outnumbered five or six times to one
in America, and their home government had its hands full with European
and naval wars, and could not help them.


FRONTIER WARFARE

[Illustration: SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT, DEERFIELD

_This monument stands on the common in Deerfield, on the site of the
church of 1704._]

All this fighting was not according to the nice, formal,
observe-the-laws-of-war methods, such as are now followed between
civilized nations: it was more like a campaign in the Balkans, or the
amenities of the Zulus in Africa. Europeans were not particularly
gentle in their warfare. The early colonies were planted when the
Thirty Years’ War was raging in Germany, a war in which the unoffending
peasants expected both sides to rob them of their little property, and
then to torture them because they had no more to give. The Indians were
not the only race that found pleasure in inflicting awful suffering on
other human beings. The cultivated English colonists and the French
trappers and hunters were not above taking scalps on occasion; and,
though they did not torture their prisoners, allowed their Indian
allies to indulge themselves in that amusement.

[Illustration: DEERFIELD MEMORIAL

_This stone marks the grave of the victims of the Deerfield massacre on
February 29, 1704._]

[Illustration: GENERAL MONTCALM’S HEADQUARTERS AT QUEBEC]

The French were better wood fighters than the English, and throughout
these struggles had a disagreeable habit of raiding English
settlements. Twice they captured villages within a day’s march of
sacred Boston. Their most spectacular achievement was the raid upon
Deerfield in 1704, upon which an epic poem might be written. Depict
the French and Indians stealing two hundred miles through the frozen
wilderness; the Puritans in Deerfield trusting to their stockade; the
sudden dash at dawn; the shots, cries, screams; the Indians chopping
away with their hatchets at Parson Williams’ front door, till they made
a loophole through which to fire at the family; the file of captives
quickly marshaled for the terrible northward trail; the valiant little
band from Hatfield pursuing the Indians, many times their number, and
getting a bad licking; the wrath and fear of all New England at this
appearance of the fearful enemy!

[Illustration: QUEBEC IN COLONIAL DAYS

_From an old print._]

The people of Haverhill, Massachusetts, have put up a statue to a
militant woman named Hannah Dustin, who, when carried away a captive,
had the sweet thought to brain half a dozen of her captors, and so get
home again with her children. Had there been more Hannah Dustins, there
would have been fewer French raids!

In all these wars the English colonists excelled as fighting seamen. We
may still be proud of William Phipps and his levy of colonial forces,
who took Port Royal in 1690. Who shall envy him his well earned title
of Sir William, and his fair brick house on Green Lane, Boston? Think
of the New England men, aided by a small British fleet, sallying out
in 1745 to attack Louisburg, the proudest fortress in the western
world,--laying siege to it, digging trenches before it, complimenting
it with bombshells, and compelling it to surrender! That was worth a
score of Deerfields!

[Illustration: WOLFE’S MONUMENT, QUEBEC

_This memorial commemorates the capture of Quebec from the French by
the English._]

The world has agreed to give the palm of picturesqueness in warfare
to the capture of Quebec in 1759 by Wolfe’s English fleet and army.
Modern critics tell you that nothing could be easier; that anybody can
make his way up the steep footpath in Wolfe’s Cove. But Montcalm, the
French commander, as brave a man and as skilled a warrior as you could
find, did not think it likely that a British army would find its way to
the Plains of Abraham at the top. Still, he realized, when his little
army came out of the strongly fortified town, and offered battle, that
the French empire in America was at stake. The battle of Quebec was a
stage battle,--soldiers arriving in alarms and incursions, and both
commanders fighting like heroes till they fell covered with wounds.
Quebec was a battle that makes a man glad of being what he is, whether
French or English.

[Illustration: DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE

_When Quebec was captured from the French by the English under General
Wolfe, the commanders on both sides were killed. General Montcalm was
in command of the French forces. From the painting by Benjamin West._]

Four years earlier the French took their chance to defeat an army and
kill a British general. Somebody has said that it was a hard fate for
a brave military officer to go down to history known only through
“Braddock’s Defeat.” The trouble with Braddock was that he was an
Englishman, bigoted, obstinate, know-it-all, but brave to his heart’s
core; and his march up through the wild country was managed with
great skill. Braddock was a good officer; for on that fateful day he
recognized and gave responsibility to a better officer, young George
Washington. The French had been on the point of fleeing from Fort
Duquesne, and as a last desperate chance came out, faced the invader,
and defeated him.

[Illustration: BRADDOCK’S MARCH

_General Braddock marched his army through the wilderness as though he
were on a parade ground in Europe. To this lack of caution was due in
great measure his defeat._]


THE INDIAN’S FATE

“If the pitcher fall on the rock, the pitcher shall be broken; and if
the rock fall on the pitcher, the pitcher shall be broken.” So runs the
Eastern proverb, and it applies to the fate of the Indian throughout
the wars of the French and English. Every time an Indian tribe fought
with either side it was sharpening an arrow that would be directed
against itself.

[Illustration: Copyright, 1908, by E. K. Weller.

BRADDOCK’S GRAVE

_Near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, one mile east of Chalk Hill, beside the
National Pike, lie the remains of General Edward Braddock. They are
said to have been reinterred at this place in 1824._]

[Illustration: PONTIAC

_The chief of the Ottawas. In April, 1769, he was murdered, when drunk,
at Cahokie (nearly opposite St. Louis) by a Kaskaskia Indian, bribed by
an English trader. He was buried near the St. Louis fort._]

For a long time the Indian astutely played off one foreign nation
against the other; but after the French were excluded the only Great
Father left to the poor Indian was his Majesty King George III--God
bless him! The French loved the Indians, in both a flowery and an
actual way; but the English would neither protect them nor marry them.
Hence the outbreak under Pontiac, after the Northwest had been turned
over to England. He was one of the greatest of his race. He might have
said, as one of his brethren did say to an Anglo Saxon potentate, “I
am a man; and you are another.” This was one of the few attempts in
America to combine the Indian tribes and to attack the whites all along
the line. When Pontiac failed there was nothing for it but to yield.

Even the Iroquois gave in and learned to eat out of the hand of Sir
William Johnson of Johnson Hall; and they made the treaty of Fort
Stanwix with the English in 1768, generously giving lands they had
never possessed. That was fatal for the Six Nations; for they got so
addicted to Great Father George III that they stood by him when the
Revolution broke out. That gave to Patriot General Sullivan the chance
to march into their own country in 1779, and to break to pieces the
only American third power that ever tried to stand neutral between the
French and the English.

[Illustration: STARVED ROCK

_In 1770 this rock became the last refuge of a small band of Illinois
Indians flying before a large force of Pottawattomies, who believed
that one of the Illinois had assassinated Pontiac, in whose conspiracy
the Pottawattomies had taken part. Unable to dislodge the Illinois, the
Pottawattomies cut off their escape and let them die of starvation._]

    SUPPLEMENTARY READING.--“French and English in North America,”
    Francis Parkman; “History of Canada,” F. B. Tracy; “Formation
    of the Union,” A. B. Hart; “France in America,” Reuben G.
    Thwaites; “Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations,” W.
    E. Griffis; “United States” (Vol. II), Edward Channing;
    “Mississippi Basin,” Justin Winsor; “Old Fort Loudon,” Charles
    Egbert Craddock; “Seats of the Mighty,” Gilbert Parker.




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_Editorial_

When the plan of The Mentor Association was in its formative state a
prominent educator said, “Your principle, ‘Learn One Thing Every Day,’
is good. Stick to it. Don’t give too much in a single number. There are
four things that I regard essential to the success of your plan. They
are: Make your matter simple, make it interesting, be sure that it is
correct and authoritative, and last, don’t give too much at a time. The
mental fare that you serve to your many readers should be frugal. If
not, mental indigestion will follow.”

       *       *       *       *       *

We have had that good advice in mind in all of our work. Some of our
readers have asked us why we do not exhaust a subject in one number of
The Mentor. Our answer is that, in no case, could we exhaust a subject
in a single number, and, in most cases we would exhaust the reader. We
give as much on any subject as will interest the reader, and as much as
he can conveniently retain in mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just in the way of illustration: In the issue of September 29th,
“Beautiful Buildings of the World,” Professor Clarence Ward describes
the Alhambra. Mr. Dwight L. Elmendorf also tells about this celebrated
Moorish palace in the issue of September 15th. A large volume could
be written on the Alhambra without exhausting all that is interesting
in it. But a large volume would be more than most people would
care to read. The bare facts about the Alhambra could be told in
a brief encyclopedic article. But that would be dry and, to many,
uninteresting. In The Mentor Mr. Elmendorf describes the Alhambra as
an experienced traveler and observer sees it. Professor Ward, with the
cultivated eye of a student of architecture, appraises the Alhambra
as a beautiful building. Two well-informed men tell about the same
subject, each from his own point of view. The result is a fuller and
more satisfying impression. And later on, in considering the historic
palaces of the world, the Alhambra may again be considered from another
point of view.

       *       *       *       *       *

In this way the light of information is brought to bear on a subject
from various sides, and the reader is brought with fresh interest to
the subject several times, and can view it in its different aspects.
We want all the members of The Mentor Association to appreciate the
breadth of this plan, for it will make clear to them the reason why
some important subjects are at present merely touched upon in The
Mentor. We want our members to know the plan that we are building up in
a simple, constructive way, under the advice of the wisest educators.
And we want our members to feel a share in this constructive work.

       *       *       *       *       *

Write to us freely and frankly. It will be a great help. Tell us what
has interested you most in The Mentor. It is most interesting in our
work to note the desire shown by readers for certain subjects, and the
demand for back numbers. In a plan of this sort back numbers are just
as valuable as forthcoming numbers, and as the weeks go by the store of
valuable material increases in volume. This makes a binder desirable.
We have a very attractive Mentor box binder, neat in appearance and
holding 13 copies. It will preserve your Mentors in good condition, and
that is worth something, for you will always want them. The price is 50
cents each (or four for $1.75), by prepaid parcel post.




[Illustration: LA SALLE’S HOUSE. NEAR MONTREAL, CANADA]




_THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA_

_La Salle_

ONE


Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was the foremost pioneer of the
great West of our country; but he failed because his schemes were
too large for his resources. La Salle was brilliant, energetic, and
courageous; but he could stir neither enthusiasm nor affection in those
whom he commanded. Therein lay one reason for his failure. He was a
shy, proud, and reserved man, loved by a few intimate friends, and
greatly liked and respected by the Indians.

La Salle was born in Rouen (roo´-ohng), France, on November 22, 1643.
He came of a good burgher family. He taught in the Jesuit schools
during his early life; but in 1666 went to Canada to make his fortune.
It was then that La Salle had the first of his great visionary schemes.
He planned to discover a way to China across the American continent.
That does not sound so impossible now; but it must be remembered that
in the seventeenth century the first railroad had not even been dreamed
of, and that the American continent, except for a few colonies along
the eastern seacoast, was a wilderness of trackless forest and prairie.

La Salle finally saw, however, that he must give up his plan of finding
a route to China, and in 1677 he replaced it with one intended to
colonize the whole interior of the United States for France. He was
convinced that the Mississippi River flowed into the Gulf of Mexico,
and he intended to build forts all along its banks, and thus hold it
open for French settlers and traders. He believed that he could bring
practically one-half of France over to live in the new country.

In 1677 he went to France and laid this scheme before Minister Colbert.
He told of the great extent of the West, of its boundless resources,
and of the many advantages of opening trade with its numerous peaceful
Indians. He received permission from the king to rule over all land
that might be colonized within twenty years, so long as it cost the
Crown nothing. He raised money for this great plan by help from his
friends and relatives, and returned to Canada accompanied by Henry de
Tonti and a friar named Louis Hennepin.

The expedition started from Fort Frontenac in November, 1678, and La
Salle spent the winter at Niagara, building a small vessel, which
he named the _Griffin_. He had many heartbreaking struggles and
misfortunes; but at last, accompanied by Tonti, thirty Frenchmen, and
a band of faithful Indians, on February 6, 1682, he set out on the
Mississippi. They reached its mouth on April 9, and La Salle took
possession of the whole Mississippi Valley in the name of Louis XIV,
king of France. He planted a column, bearing the arms of his country.

He then returned to France to obtain an expedition to found a fort at
the mouth of the Mississippi. He secured a squadron under the command
of an officer named Beaujeu, and sailed in 1684. They could not find
the Mississippi, and Beaujeu sailed for France, leaving La Salle and
his little band of colonists alone, sick, disconsolate, mutinous, and
starved. After two years La Salle resolved to make one last effort to
reach the Mississippi, ascend it, and bring back aid to his colonists.
But in March, 1687, some of his followers conspired to kill him on a
branch of the Trinity River, and hiding in the long grass, they shot
him through the brain.

    PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
    ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
    COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.




[Illustration: JOHN WESLEY PREACHING TO THE INDIANS]




_THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA_

_John Wesley_

TWO


John Wesley, the great evangelist, was born at Epworth Rectory,
England, on June 28 (new style), 1703. He was the fifteenth child
of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. When John was only five years old the
rectory was burned to the ground, and the family had a narrow escape
from death. For six years Wesley was a pupil at Charterhouse School,
and in 1720 he entered Oxford. He had only a little over two hundred
dollars a year to live on, and his health was poor; but, nevertheless,
he managed to get the most out of his studies. He was fond of riding
and walking, was an expert swimmer, and played a good game of tennis.

On September 25, 1725, he was ordained deacon, and he preached
frequently in the churches near Oxford. In 1726 he began to act as his
father’s curate. He already displayed those talents for leadership
which were to find so conspicuous a field in the evangelical revival.

On April 25, 1735, Wesley’s father died, and the following October John
and his younger brother Charles, with two other Methodists, sailed for
Georgia. John hoped to be able to convert the Indians to Christianity;
but the mission was a failure.

On his return to England from Georgia, Wesley became the acknowledged
leader of Methodism. He began itinerant preaching. No other preacher of
the century had his mastery over an audience. He made his appeal to the
conscience in the clearest language, with all the weight of personal
conviction. Victory over sin was the goal he set before all his people.

Up to 1742 Wesley’s work was chiefly confined to London and Bristol and
the country thereabout. But now he began to extend the territory over
which he preached. In August, 1747, he paid his first visit to Ireland,
where he had such success that he gave more than six years of his life
to the country, and crossed the Irish Channel forty-two times. Wesley’s
first visit to Scotland was in 1751. In all he paid twenty-two visits
to that country.

Wesley generally traveled about five thousand miles in a year. This
was a great strain upon his powers. In his encounters with the mob,
however, his tact and courage never failed. He always looked a mob in
the face, and appealed to its better feelings.

On March 2, 1791, John Wesley died in his house at City Road. He was
eighty-eight years old.

    PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
    ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
    COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.




[Illustration: WILLIAMS HOUSE, DEERFIELD, MASS.]




_THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA_

_The Deerfield Massacre_

THREE


In the early morning of February 29, 1704, a band of French and Indians
stole down upon the little village of Deerfield in Massachusetts.
Hertel de Rouville was the leader of this band. Silently they crept in
upon the unsuspecting town. Most of the settlers were still sleeping
soundly. Suddenly, with a wild whoop, the attack began. Forty-nine men,
women, and children were massacred, the village was burned, and then
with one hundred and eleven captives the cowardly attackers departed.
On the way back to Canada twenty of the captured were cruelly murdered.
This raid has ever since been known as the Deerfield Massacre.

Deerfield was called Pocumtuck until 1764. The territory that
originally constituted the township was a tract of eight thousand
acres, granted in 1654 to the town of Dedham in place of two thousand
acres previously taken from that town and granted to the Rev. John
Eliot to further his mission among the Natick Indians. The Pocumtuck
Indians originally owned this land. Their rights to the Deerfield tract
were purchased for about ten cents an acre.

The settlement was begun in 1669, and the township was incorporated
in 1673. Deerfield was for a great many years the northwest frontier
settlement of New England. At the beginning of King Philip’s War the
English fortified the town. On September 1, 1675, it was attacked
by Indians. A small garrison under the command of Captain Samuel
Appleton was placed in the town after this. A second attack was made on
September 12.

Six days later Captain Thomas Lothrop and his company were acting as
escort to some teams that were hauling wheat from Deerfield to the
English headquarters at Hadley. Suddenly a band of Indians leaped out
of ambush and set upon the train. Lothrop and more than sixty of his
men were killed. The spot where this fight took place has since been
known as “Bloody Brook.” It is in the village of South Deerfield. From
this time until the end of the war Deerfield was abandoned.

In the spring of 1677 a few of the old settlers returned; but on
September 19 some were killed, and the others were captured by a party
of Indians from Canada. Again in 1682 settlement was resumed. Twelve
years later, on September 15, a party of French and Indians attacked
Deerfield, and almost succeeded in capturing the town. Then in 1704
came the Deerfield Massacre.

Among the captives was the Rev. John Williams, the first minister of
Deerfield, who was redeemed in 1706 along with some others. The year
following his return he published an account of his experiences as a
prisoner, called “The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion.” In this same
year a house was built for Williams by the town of Deerfield. The house
has been somewhat changed since then; but the secret staircase is still
to be seen, and also much fine old furniture.

Williams’ wife and one of his children were killed in the raid; but all
his other children returned to Deerfield except Eunice, who married an
Indian. Her great-grandson was the pretended “Lost Dauphin” of France,
about whom there was formerly so much discussion.

Today Deerfield has a population of over two thousand. Its natural
beauty and the historic interest connected with the town attract many
visitors. Many houses in the village are very old. In Memorial Hall, a
building erected in 1797-98 for the Deerfield Academy, the Pocumtuck
Valley Memorial Association has gathered an interesting collection of
colonial and Indian relics.

    PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
    ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
    COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.




[Illustration: GENERAL WOLFE

FROM A PORTRAIT BY THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH]




_THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA_

_The Capture of Quebec, 1759_

FOUR


The capture of Quebec from the French by the English in 1759 is one
of the epics of modern military history. Quebec was supposed to be
absolutely impregnable, and was the stronghold of France in America.
If the English had not been able to capture Quebec, Canada might have
been French today. And this brilliant military feat was accomplished by
a young major general only thirty-two years old. The leaders on both
sides of the battle were killed; but the glory of their heroism has
lived to this day.

After General Amherst had captured Louisburg in 1758 he took charge
of the American campaigns of the Seven Years’ War between England and
France. Under him was Major General James Wolfe, who was but thirty-one
years old. Amherst ordered him to attack Quebec, while that general
himself led a force to capture Montreal.

Wolfe’s command consisted of seven thousand men; while Montcalm, the
French commanded of Quebec, had under him a considerably larger army.
The British sailed up the St. Lawrence River and camped on the Isle of
Orleans, facing the city.

There were three ways of attacking Quebec,--from the St. Lawrence
River, from the St. Charles River, and up the steep cliffs to the
Plains of Abraham. On the St. Lawrence side it was impossible to get
near enough to the city to damage it, and to climb the steep rock
to the Plains of Abraham seemed unworthy of consideration. So Wolfe
decided to cross the St. Lawrence seven miles below Quebec, and to
fight his way to the city by the St. Charles side. But this attack
failed, with great loss to the English.

However, although he was discouraged, the stout heart of General Wolfe
never failed. He began immediately to plan another way of getting into
Quebec. He learned that the impossible could be accomplished, the
heights to the Plains of Abraham could be scaled. From a little cove
in the river, Wolfe’s Cove, a steep path led up the cliffs. It was a
desperate chance; but it was worth taking.

He only had thirty-six hundred men that could be spared for the
attempt, and on the evening of September 12, 1759, these embarked on
the warships and sailed upstream. Montcalm was a wary warrior, and sent
some troops to watch the movements of the English. The British troops
landed some distance above Wolfe’s Cove; but at one o’clock in the
morning Wolfe and half his force dropped downstream in boats and landed
at the cove.

Then came the scramble up the cliff-side in the inky darkness. Slowly
they worked their way to the top. At the summit the French had a weak
redoubt guarded by a handful of men. This was the last place at which
Montcalm had expected an attack. The garrison was easily driven from
the redoubt, and by daylight the entire English force was upon the
Plains of Abraham.

Montcalm drew up his men, and the two armies, French and English, stood
face to face on the narrow battlefield. The French advanced and began
to push the English back; but Wolfe rallied his men. He held back his
fire until the French came within close range, and then at his order
one volley decided the battle. With great gaps in their lines, the
French halted, and Wolfe led on his men to complete the victory.

But the brave English general, wounded twice already, now received
a shot through the breast that was fatal. Montcalm too was mortally
wounded, and died the next day.

Quebec surrendered on September 18, 1759.

    PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
    ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
    COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.




[Illustration: BRADDOCK’S FIELD--FROM AN OLD PAINTING]




_THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA_

_Braddock’s Defeat_

FIVE


The defeat of General Edward Braddock by the French and Indians was not
due to any lack of courage on the part of the English commander and his
men, but to the fact that they knew nothing about colonial warfare and
would not take advice from the colonial troops. Had Braddock followed
the advice of George Washington the French would have been routed, and
Fort Duquesne, which is now Pittsburgh, would have been captured.

Edward Braddock was born in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1695. He was the
son of Major General Edward Braddock. In 1710 he joined the Coldstream
Guards. As a lieutenant colonel in 1747 he served under the Prince of
Orange during the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. Six years later he was made
colonel of the 14th Foot, and the following year became a major general.

This was at the time of the Seven Years’ War between the French and
English. England had a poor opinion of the colonial officers and
soldiers,--these same officers and soldiers who were to defeat their
trained troops on every hand a few years later in the Revolution,--and
at the beginning of the war sent General Braddock with two regiments
of regulars to Virginia. Braddock landed on American soil in 1755,
and, appointing George Washington one of his aides, set off with his
regulars and some colonial troops from Fort Cumberland in Maryland for
Fort Duquesne.

The country to be traversed was a wilderness. No road led through
the woods; so the troops were forced to cut one as they slowly went
westward. Braddock was brave and honest, but harsh and brutal in
manners. He could not understand the nature of a war in the woods. Like
other English officers of the time, he despised American militia and
their half-Indian way of fighting. Washington and the other American
officers advised him to send scouts ahead to look for the enemy; but
Braddock would have none of this. He marched his army through the
forest in perfect alignment, with the band playing and banners flying.

On July 9, 1755, after crossing the Monongahela River, when they were
only eight miles from Fort Duquesne, those in the front of the army
suddenly saw what seemed to be a single Indian coming toward them.
It was really a French officer with a band of French and Indians at
his back. Feeling that they were doomed to defeat, the French had
determined as a last resort to sally out from Fort Duquesne and give
battle to the English in the woods.

As soon as the French officer saw the British he stopped and waved his
hat. The French and Indians immediately disappeared into the bushes and
opened fire on the English troops. The red coats of Braddock’s men made
a fine target. They tried to return the enemy’s fire; but there was no
foe to be seen. They stood their ground bravely for a time; but it was
a slaughter. Huddled together like sheep, they were shot down by scores.

The colonial soldiers attempted to fight from behind trees, but
Braddock considered this cowardly, and beat them back into line with
the flat of his sword.

“Come out into the open field like Englishmen!”

It was courageous; but it was foolhardy.

General Braddock exposed himself fearlessly. In rallying his men he
had four horses shot under him, and was at last mortally wounded.
Washington, who was the only officer on Braddock’s staff not killed or
wounded, saved the defeat from becoming a rout. Two horses were shot
under him and four bullets pierced his clothes.

On the way back to Fort Cumberland, General Braddock died, and
Washington took charge of the demoralized troops. In order to prevent
the Indians finding Braddock’s grave and mutilating the body, the
general was buried in the road and the entire army passed over
it,--men, horses, and wagons.

    PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
    ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
    COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.




[Illustration: PONTIAC IN COUNCIL]




_THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA_

_The Pontiac Conspiracy_

SIX


Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, a remarkable Indian in many ways, had a
power rare among members of his race, the power of organization. He was
the leader of the Indian rising known as “Pontiac’s Conspiracy,” which
took place in 1763-1764. He was cruel and treacherous, but a brave
fighter. Pontiac was probably born sometime between 1712 and 1720. He
became chief of the Ottawas about 1755. As an ally of France he took
part in the defeat of General Braddock on July 9, 1755.

In 1762 Indian prophets began preaching a union of tribes to expel the
English. The French took advantage of this religious fervor to stir up
trouble. On April 27, 1763, representatives of the Algonquin tribes met
near Detroit. It was at this meeting that Pontiac outlined the plans
for his conspiracy.

With sixty warriors he attacked Detroit on May 7; but this attempt
failed. Major Henry Gladwin, with one hundred and sixty men, was in
command of this fort. When Pontiac’s attack failed he and his braves
calmly sat down outside the stockade and besieged the fort until the
end of October. Reinforcements managed to get into the fort during
this time, and there were many bloody fights between the besiegers and
the besieged; but the fort held out, and on October 30, after Pontiac
learned that the French were not going to help him, the Indians quietly
stole away.

In the meanwhile other English forts all along the frontier were
being attacked. On June 22, 1763, Fort Pitt, with a garrison of three
hundred and thirty men, stoutly repelled an assault. At Michilimackinac
(Mackinac), Michigan, on June 4, the Indians gained admission to the
fort by a trick, killed nearly twenty of the garrison, and captured
the rest, seven of whom were killed in cold blood by a chief of the
Ojibwas. Fort Sandusky at Sandusky, Ohio, Fort Miami at Fort Wayne,
Indiana, Fort St. Joseph at Niles, Michigan, and many other British
outposts were captured and their brave little garrisons massacred.

In June, 1764, Colonel John Bradstreet led twelve hundred men from
Albany to Fort Niagara, where, at a great gathering of Indians, several
treaties were made. But these treaties were of little value. Colonel
Bouquet led an expedition of fifteen hundred men from Carlisle,
Pennsylvania, to the present site of Tuscarawas, Ohio, in August, 1764.
Here he put an end to the conspiracy, forced the Indians to release
their prisoners, and made them stop their warfare.

Pontiac himself surrendered to Sir William Johnson on July 25, 1766,
at Oswego, New York. Three years later he was murdered, when drunk, by
another Indian. It was an ignominious ending for one of the greatest
Indians that ever lived.

    PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
    ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 35, SERIAL No. 35
    COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.