For more than a hundred years after the sailing of the Griffin the Great Lakes and the country about them were destined to be the scenes of almost ceaseless war. The fury of the internecine strife of the Indians was on the wane. Their conflicts of extermination had worked their frightful end and it now came time for them to give up the red arena of the Inland Seas to other foes, among whom the last vestiges of their power were doomed to melt away like snow under the warmth of the sun. For unnumbered generations they had fought among themselves. Nations of red men had been born, and nations had died. The Lake regions were white with their bones and red with their blood, and now those that remained of them were to be used as pawns in the games of war between the English and the French, among whom they were still to play an important though a fatal part.

The romantic voyage of the Griffin marked that era when the French were gaining possession of the Lakes. Eight years before La Salle’s expedition, Simon Francis Daumont had taken formal possession of the Inland Seas in the presence of seventeen different Indian nations. In 1761, a fort had been erected at Mackinaw, and Daniel Deluth, after whom the city of Duluth was named, planted a colony of French soldiers among the Sioux and Assiniboines of Minnesota. From this time on, the power of the French steadily gained in ascendancy and the work of winning the allegiance of the Indians progressed for a number of years without interruption. In 1686, Fort Duluth was built on the St. Clair River, and fifteen years later, in 1701, Cadillac built a fort on the present site of Detroit, which was destined to play a picturesque and important part in the century of war that was to follow. Other forts of the French were at Michilimackinac (Mackinac), Chicago, Green Bay, and on the Niagara River. Nearly all of the Indians of the Lake regions had become their allies, with the exception of the Iroquois. The forests and streams were the haunts of French traders. The Church was establishing itself more and more firmly among the tribes. The adventurous trappers of the fur companies were even living among the savages, and there was fast developing between the red men and the French that bond of friendship which was to remain almost unbroken through all of the troublous times that were to follow. The power of France, at this time, seemed bound to rule the destinies of the Inland Seas.

On the other hand, the Iroquois were the implacable enemies of the French and their allies, and the friends of the English. They were distributed over a territory which embraced the Lake Ontario regions and which extended to the English settlements of the East, thus offering a free and safe road of travel to English traders into the domains of the French. Reduced to less than a quarter of the fighting strength that they had possessed before the wars of extermination, they were still the terror of all other Lake tribes, and the English were not slow to take advantage of the opportunities which their friendship offered them. At every possible point the Five Nations checked the movements of the French, and at the same time assisted the English traders to invade their territory. In 1684, De la Barre, then Governor of Canada, determined to destroy this last menace to French dominion, and sent word throughout the Lake regions calling upon his warrior allies to assemble at Niagara for a great war of extermination upon the Iroquois. De la Barre himself proceeded to Lake Ontario with a powerful force of nearly two thousand men, but an epidemic of sickness attacked his army and the only result of the “campaign of extermination” was a peaceful conference with the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas.

The failure of De la Barre’s plans was the first great blow to French dominion. The English traders became more daring and parties penetrated even as far as Michilimackinac, one of the French strongholds. These traders were regarded as fair game by the French wherever found, but though several parties were captured the invasion from the East did not cease. Alarmed at the growing danger, the French determined to make another campaign against the Iroquois. To the existence of the Five Nations they ascribed their peril. With these fierce warriors out of the way they could easily hold the English back.

In 1687, the Marquis Denonville, who had succeeded De la Barre, gathered two thousand troops and six hundred Indian warriors at Montreal, and with the advice that a thousand Indian allies would meet him at Niagara set out for the land of the Iroquois. On June 23d, the forces met at Fort Frontenac and from there proceeded to Irondequoit, in the enemy’s country. Only the Senecas, one branch of the Five Nations, had gathered to meet the invaders, and in the fierce battle that followed, the French and their allies were defeated and driven to the shores of the lake. Satisfied with their victory, the Senecas did not press the invaders, and Denonville took advantage of his opportunity to build Fort Niagara, after which he led the remnant of his defeated army back to Montreal, leaving a garrison of one hundred men in the new stronghold. During the winter that followed, the Senecas besieged the fort with such success that less than a dozen of its defenders escaped with their lives.

News of the defeat of the French spread like wildfire. It penetrated to the farthest fastnesses of the known wildernesses. English traders began to swarm into the Lower Lake regions. The Indian nations allied to the French were thrown into a panic. The war spirit of the Iroquois was aroused to a feverish height by their victory, and they swarmed to the invasion of the French dominions. Fort Frontenac was captured and burned. Both the allies and the French were swept back with tremendous slaughter, and their power upon the Lower Lakes was broken. “It seemed,” said an early writer, “as if the Five Nations would sweep over the entire Lake country, driving all enemies from their shores, and thus delivering into the hands of the English all that the French had gained.”

But, in this hour of victory, the shadow of doom was hovering over the martial people of the Five Nations. For unnumbered years the conquerors of the New World, the time had at last come for their fall. The War of the Palatinate was at hand, and the hostilities of the French and the English spread to land and sea. Rumours came that Frontenac was about to sweep down upon New York, and the faithful Iroquois turned back to defend the city of their White Father. They threw themselves between the invaders and their friends, an unconquerable barrier. New York was saved, but in the struggle the power of the Five Nations was broken. For many years they still remained a force to be reckoned with, but as the conquering Romans of the Wilderness and the terror of a score of nations, extending even to the Mississippi, their history was at an end. In their passing it must be said that a braver man, a truer friend, or a more relentless foe never existed on the American continent than the Iroquois warrior.

There now came a brief lull in the warfare of the Lakes. The end of the War of the Palatinate was closely followed by Queen Anne’s War, but hostilities did not openly break out along the Inland Seas. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 left France technically in possession of the Lakes, but, even after this treaty, the English claimed as a sort of inheritance from the Iroquois the regions of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. This fact again gave opportunity for plenty of excitement and trouble. The French had rebuilt Fort Frontenac and were establishing other strongholds, their object being to hem the English along their seacoast possessions by means of a string of forts extending from Canada southward. To frustrate these designs Governor Burnett, of New York, began the erection of a trading-post at Oswego in 1720. The French at once reciprocated by rebuilding Fort Niagara of stone, whereupon, in 1727, the English added a strong fort to their holdings in Oswego. This all but started active hostilities again. Beauharnois, the Governor of Canada, flew into a high dudgeon, sent a written demand for the English to abandon the fort, and threatened to demolish it unless this was done. The response of the English was to strengthen their garrison. Instead of carrying out his threat of war, Beauharnois began the strengthening of all the French forts, a work which continued for several years. Meanwhile the French trappers, traders, and priests of the Upper Lakes had been stirring the passions of the Indians against the encroaching English. The latter, in 1755, built two warships on Lake Ontario, and it was pointed out to the Western tribes that these were two of the terrible engines that were intended to work their destruction. By the time of the breaking out of the Seven Years’ War, the French, though their population was less than a tenth of that of their enemies, were splendidly prepared for war.

Actual operations in this last struggle between the French and the English for the possession of the Lakes began in 1756, when De Lery and De Villier set out with some six hundred men to capture Oswego and other forts. On the Onondaga River, De Villier encountered Bradstreet and his English and was completely defeated, more than a hundred of his men being killed. Meanwhile, from Fort Frontenac, General Montcalm was preparing to descend upon Oswego, and on the ninth of August, 1756, he arrived in sight of the English stronghold with three thousand men under his command. On the twelfth the battle began. From the beginning it was a surprise to both combatants. The victory of the French was comparatively easy and complete. The English loss was one hundred and fifty killed and wounded. Nearly two thousand prisoners were taken, one hundred and twenty cannon and mortars, six war vessels, and an immense amount of stores and ammunition. The blow was a terrific one for the English. Oswego had been their Gibraltar. In it were their shipbuilding yard, nearly all of their heavy ordnance, and a large part of the stores that were to supply them during the war. For the first time, the English realised what a terrible loss they had sustained in the breaking of the power of the Five Nations.

It was not until 1758 that the English regained a little of their lost prestige. Everywhere the French had been victorious. But, in the summer of this year, Colonel Bradstreet attacked Fort Frontenac with thirty-five hundred men, and after two days of battle the garrison surrendered. This was as decisive a blow to the French as was the loss of Oswego to the English. Ten thousand barrels of supplies, nearly a hundred cannon, and five vessels were destroyed. The French now saw that the beginning of the end was at hand. Little Fort Niagara was burned the following year to keep it from falling into the hands of their enemies, and a little later Fort Niagara surrendered. At this time French reinforcements were on their way to Niagara, but hearing of the fall of this last stronghold the ships which bore them were destroyed at the northern end of Grand Island, in a bay which from that time has been known as Burnt Ship Bay, and at the bottom of which, until a comparatively short time ago, the remains of the old vessels were plainly to be seen. With the fall of Montreal in 1760, the last flag of the French passed from the Great Lakes. Their warships were scuttled, their forts in the North surrendered, and within a few months England was everywhere supreme along the Inland Seas.

There now followed a curious and absorbingly interesting phase of Lake history. The English had conquered the French – but they had not conquered the red allies. The warriors of the Upper Lakes could not be made to understand the situation. “We fight until there are none of us left to fight,” they said. “Why is it that our French brothers have run? Shall we run because they have run? We were their friends and brothers. We are their friends now, and though you have conquered them we will still fight for them, so long as there are among us men who can fight.” A more beautiful illustration of the friendship and loyalty of the Indian warrior could hardly be conceived than this.

And it was largely this loyalty, this loyalty to a race that had been destroyed in their regions, that was to result in those terrible wars and massacres which marked the course of English rule along the Lakes, almost as regularly as mile-posts mark the course of a road. In the hearts of the savages there was an intense, ineradicable hatred of the English. They, and not the French, were regarded as the usurpers and despoilers of the country. This hatred was even greater than that of the Five Nations toward the French. It was something, as one old writer says, “beyond description, beyond the power to measure.”

In these days, a fearful fate was rolling up slowly for the string of forts along the Inland Seas, a doom that came without warning and with terrible completeness. At the head of the great conspiracy which was to result in the destruction of all the forts held by the English, with the exception of that at Detroit, was Chief Pontiac. On May 16, 1763, the first blow fell. By what was called treachery on the part of the Indians, but what would be termed stratagem in a white man’s war, Fort Sandusky was captured and its entire garrison, with the exception of one man, was massacred. Meanwhile a band of Pottawatomies from Detroit had hurried to the fort at the mouth of St. Joseph’s River, at the head of Lake Michigan, and, on the morning of the twenty-fifth, killed the whole of its garrison with the exception of three. Eight days later Michilimackinac (Mackinac) fell. On the morning of this fatal day, a large party of Ojibwas were to play a game of ball with the Sacs, and not a breath of suspicion filled the breasts of the doomed officers and men. Discipline was relaxed on account of the game. Excitement ran high. The Indians were in the best of spirits, and had never seemed more friendly. Their sole thought seemed to be of the great game. Scores of blanketed squaws and old men had assembled, and these, without creating suspicion, had gathered close to the open gates. The game began, and the shouting, struggling savages rushed this way and that in pursuit of the ball. Now they would surge far from the stockade, now so close that they would crush against its pickets. Suddenly the ball shot high into the air and fell inside the fort, and a hundred yelling savages rushed to the gates. Instantly the scene was changed. The squaws and the old men threw back their blankets and gave hatchets and guns to the warriors as they rushed past them. Within a few minutes, seventeen men were killed and the rest of the garrison were prisoners. Five of these prisoners were afterward killed by their captors. The fate of the garrison at Presque Isle was less terrible. For two days, the defenders of the fort held off the savages and then surrendered upon the promise that their lives would be spared. The prisoners were carried to Detroit.

During this time, while the conspiracy was working with such terrible success at nearly every point, the great Pontiac himself had failed in his designs upon Detroit. The garrison at this point was the strongest on the Lakes, being composed of one hundred and twenty men under the command of Major Gladwin and some forty or fifty traders and trappers. They were strongly entrenched behind palisades twenty-five feet high, were well supplied with the necessities of war, and Pontiac regarded them as invincible unless he could overcome them by stratagem. By the merest chance a fearful massacre was averted. Early in May Major Gladwin received warning of Pontiac’s plotting, but paid comparatively little attention to it until, under a clever pretext, the Indian chieftain asked that he and a number of his warriors be allowed to enter the fort. Under their blankets Pontiac and his braves carried hatchets and short-barrelled rifles, their intention being to take the unprepared garrison by surprise and during the first excitement of the fray to throw open the gates for the hundreds of armed savages waiting near. But when the Indians came within the palisades they found the garrison under arms and awaiting them.

This frustrated all of the great chief’s carefully laid plans, and the attack was postponed. Three days later Pontiac again asked admittance to the fort, but was refused. Knowing that in some way his plot had been revealed to the English, Pontiac at once began his attack and for several hours fought desperately to take the stronghold, but was repulsed again and again with great loss. Desultory fighting, attacks and counter-attacks, were frequent features of the siege that followed. Meanwhile twenty boats and a hundred men, together with a large quantity of supplies, had left Fort Niagara for Detroit under the command of Lieutenant Cuyler, and these reinforcements were anxiously awaited by the besieged. They were destined never to reach Detroit. On June 28th, Lieutenant Cuyler and his command landed on Point Pelee with the intention of camping there for the night. Hardly had they drawn their boats upon the beach when they were greeted by a tremendous volley of musketry, and with frightful yells a horde of savages rushed down upon them from their ambush. Taken completely by surprise the English made no resistance but fled precipitately for their boats. Less than forty men, many of them wounded, escaped in three boats and made for Fort Sandusky, which they found had been destroyed. All hope of reaching Detroit was now abandoned and the worn and wounded remnants of the reinforcing party rowed back to Niagara.

Meanwhile the condition of the garrison at Detroit was becoming desperate. Both ammunition and food were becoming exhausted, many of the defenders were wounded or sick, and each day seemed to add to the strength of the savage besiegers. On the morning of June 30th, seven weeks after the beginning of the siege, a large number of boats flying the English flag were seen coming up the river. Joy gave place to horror when it was seen that these boats were filled with Indians and with white prisoners, the latter being those who were captured at Point Pelee. While these savage victors had been making their way westward, Lieutenant Cuyler and his handful of fugitives were on their way to Niagara, where they brought news of the destruction of Fort Sandusky and of the possible fate of Detroit. At Fort Niagara was the armed schooner Gladwin, named after the defender of Detroit, and on July 21st, she sailed for the besieged fort carrying with her supplies and a reinforcement of sixty men. On the night of the 23d, while the schooner was lying becalmed between Fighting Island and the mainland in the Detroit River, she was attacked by the Indians, who were completely repulsed. For several days, while slowly making her way up the river against headwinds and current, the cannon of the Gladwin spread consternation and havoc among the savages along the shores. Late in July, Captain Dalzell arrived with a score of barges, bringing cannon, ammunition, supplies, and an additional force of three hundred men. Pontiac, however, was still hopeful of success. His force had been increased by more than a thousand warriors, and this fact led to the sending of another reinforcement from Fort Niagara. Six hundred regulars under the command of Major Wilkins left late in September. Near Pointe-aux-Pins they encountered a terrific gale on Lake Erie in which seventy men and three officers besides an immense amount of stores and ammunition were lost, a calamity which compelled the survivors to return to Niagara. Winter brought partial relief to Detroit. The great number of Pontiac’s warriors made the struggle for subsistence a hard one and with the coming of the cold months the tribes separated to keep from starvation, leaving only a part of their fighting men to maintain the siege, thus removing for the time being the immediate danger of the capture and massacre of the garrison.

During the winter that followed, the English prepared to begin a campaign in the spring of a magnitude heretofore unknown among the wilderness tribes. The daring and confidence of the Indians were becoming more and more menacing. On September 14th, one of the most terrible massacres of the Lake country occurred at Devil’s Hole, three miles below Niagara Falls. The Devil’s Hole is now visited by thousands of tourists each year, but probably not one in a hundred knows of the bloody conflict that gave it its name. On that day, a convoy of soldiers were returning to Fort Niagara from Fort Schlosser, and in the gloomy chasm of the “Hole,” which leads from the bluffs above down to the river, a party of ambushed Senecas were awaiting them. Unaware of their danger, the soldiers came within a few rods of the ambush, and in the massacre that followed all but three of the total number of twenty-four were killed. A strong force from Niagara came to give the Indians battle and was completely defeated, losing about twoscore of its men.

The English were now practically wiped out of the Lake country, with the exception of along the Niagara and at Detroit, and the investment at the latter place threatened to be successful unless prompt steps were taken for the relief of the fort with an overwhelming force. It was not until August of the following year that a force sufficiently powerful for the campaign was gathered at Fort Schlosser. With three thousand men, General Bradstreet set out in bateaux to first strike a blow at the Indians along Lake Erie. Instead of fighting, however, the Ohio tribes were anxious to make peace with the invaders, and after a few skirmishes and many promises on the part of the Indians, Bradstreet reached Detroit. The long siege, which had existed for more than a year, was broken, treaties of peace were signed with many Indian tribes, and the English again secured possession at Michilimackinac, Green Bay, and Sault Ste. Marie. But Pontiac was irreconciliable and, like Robert Bruce of old, fled into the West with a few of his followers to await another opportunity to swoop down upon his enemies.

But the balance of fate still seemed to be with the untamed children of the wilderness, for Bradstreet’s return to Fort Niagara was marked by disasters sufficient to offset much that he had achieved. At Rocky River, near Cleveland, he was caught in a terrific gale and met a fate similar to that which had overtaken Major Wilkins in the preceding September. In the rush for shore, twenty-five of his bateaux, six cannon, and a great quantity of his baggage and ammunition were lost, together with scores of his men. The force was now divided, a part of it to make its way through the wilderness, and the remainder to travel in the uninjured bateaux. Bradstreet reached Niagara on November 4th, but for twelve weeks the land force fought its way through tangles of forest and swamp, fighting, starving, and dying of disease and exposure. The number of those who were lost in the storm and in this overland march has never been recorded, but it was so large as to occasion petitions to the government, which was an unusual thing in those days of war and carnage. From that day to this, at various times, Lake Erie has given up relics of the lost fleets of Major Wilkins and General Bradstreet in portions of old bateaux, gun-flints, musket-barrels, bayonets, cannon balls, and other objects. At one time, when a sandbar at the mouth of the Rocky River changed its position, a vast quantity of these relics were revealed, showing that one of the lost bateaux had sunk there and had been uncovered after a lapse of many generations.

For a number of years after the subjugation of the Indian tribes, the peace of the Lakes was disturbed only by the rivalries of the fur-traders and unimportant skirmishes with the savages. The era of warships on the Inland Seas had now begun, and by the time the Revolutionary War broke out, they were patrolled by quite a number of armed vessels bearing the flag of England. The Lakes were destined to play but a small part in the struggle for independence, however, and the most tragic event of these years upon them was the loss in a storm of the British ship Ontario, of twenty-two guns, which went down between Niagara and Oswego with her entire crew and more than a hundred of the 8th King’s Own Regiment. At this time, Spain was scheming to gain a foothold in the Lake regions, and, in 1781, a force under Don Eugenio Purre left St. Louis in the depth of winter and captured the English fort at St. Joseph. For only a few hours the flag of Spain floated over the Lake country, Don Eugenio’s scheme being merely to secure a “claim” to the regions, and once his banner had risen triumphantly above the captured fort he abandoned his position and retreated to St. Louis.

Several times during the Revolutionary War it was proposed that an attempt be made to capture Detroit, but no efforts were made in this direction, so that when peace was declared and the colonies were granted their independence, England still remained in possession of the Great Lakes. It was not until 1796 that the line of forts along their shores were surrendered into the hands of the Americans. On July 4th of that year, Forts Niagara, Lewiston, and Schlosser floated for the first time in history the banner of the new nation, and a week later, Captain Moses Porter raised the same emblem above Detroit. Thus after having been the stage of almost ceaseless war for more than a century and a half did it seem that peace had at last come to the Great Lakes regions. Yet were the clouds already gathering which a few years later were to burst forth in another storm of blood along the shores and upon the waters of the Inland Seas.