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Chapter XXIII
The colonies of France and England encroach more and more on the red men.
the Tuscaroras changed their dwelling-place before
the treaty of
Utrecht was completed.
Their chiefs had become indignant at the encroachments of the proprietaries of
Carolina, who had assigned their lands to unhappy German fugitives from the banks of the Neckar
and the
Rhine.
De Graffenried, who had undertaken the establishment of the exiles, accompanied by
Lawson, the
surveyor-general for the northern province, in September of 1711, ascended the
Neuse River in a
boat, to discover how far it was navigable, and through what kind of country it flowed.
Seized by a party of sixty well-armed
Indians, both were compelled to travel all night long, till they reached a village of the Tuscaroras, and were delivered up to its chief.
Before a numerous council of the principal men from various towns of the tribe, complaint was made of the conduct of the
English in
Carolina, and especially of the severity of
Lawson.
He who, with his compass and chain, had marked their territory into lots for settlers, was reproved as ‘the man who sold their land.’
After a discussion of two days, the death of the prisoners was decreed.
The large fire was kindled; the ring was drawn round the victims, and strown with flowers.
On the morning appointed for the execution, a council
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assembled anew.
Round the white men sat the chiefs
in two rows; behind them were three hundred of the
people, engaged in festive dances.
Yet mercy was mingled with severity; and, if no reprieve was granted to
Lawson, yet Graffenried, as the great chieftain of the Palatines, on pledging his people to neutrality, and promising to occupy no land without the consent of the tribe, was suffered, after a captivity of five weeks, to return through the woods on foot.
He returned to desolated settlements.
On the twenty-second of
Sep-
tember, small bands of the Tuscaroras and Corees,
acting in concert, approached the scattered cabins along the
Roanoke and Pamlico Sound.
As night came on, a whoop from a warrior called his fierce associates from the woods, to commence the indiscriminate carnage.
The wretched Palatines, now tenants of the wilderness, encountered a foe more savage than
Louvois and the hated Louis XIV.
At
Bath, the Huguenot refugees, and the planters in their neighborhood, were struck down by aid of the glare from the burning of their own cabins; and, with a lighted pine knot in one hand and the tomahawk in the other, the hunters after men pursued their game through the forests.
In the three following days, they scoured the country on the
Albemarle Sound, and did not desist from slaughter till they were disabled by fatigue.
Not all the Tuscaroras had joined in the conspiracy;
Spotswood sought immediately to renew with them an alliance; but, as the burgesses of
Virginia engaged with him in a contest of power, no effectual aid came from the Old Dominion.
But the assembly of South Carolina promptly voted relief; and, defying the hard-
Statutes at large II 366. |
ships of a long march through the wilderness,
Barnwell, with Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, and Yamassees,
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as allies, led a small detachment of militia to the
banks of
Neuse River.
There, in the upper part of
Craven county, the Indians were intrenched in a rude
fort. With the aid of a few soldiers of
North Carolina, the fort was besieged; but the province was rent by intestine divisions.
Even imminent danger had not roused its inhabitants to harmonious action; they retained their hatred for the rule of the proprietaries; and, surrounded by difficulties,
Barnwell could only negotiate with the Indians a treaty of peace.
The troops of
South Carolina, on their return, themselves violated the treaty, enslaving inhabitants of vil-
lages which should have been safe under its guaranties; and the massacres on
Neuse River were renewed.
The province was impoverished, the people dissatisfied with their government; in autumn, the yellow fever raged under its most malignant form; and the
country south of
Pamlico Sound seemed destined to become once more a wilderness.
But
Spotswood succeeded in dividing the Tuscaroras.
Large reenforcements of Indians from
South Carolina arrived, with a
few white men, under
James Moore; the enemy were pursued to their fort (within the limits of the present
Greene county) on the
Neuse; and, on its surrender, eight hundred became captives.
The legislature of North Carolina, assembling in May, under a new governor, issued its first bills of credit, to the amount of eight thousand pounds; ‘the very refractory’ among the people grew zealous to supply the forces with provisions; the enemy was chased across the lakes and swamps of
Hyde county; the woods were patrolled by red allies, who hunted for prisoners to be sold as slaves, or took scalps for a reward.
At last, the hos-
tile part of the Tuscaroras abandoned their old huntinggrounds,
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and, migrating to the vicinity of the
Oneida Lake, were welcomed by their kindred of the
Iroquois as the sixth nation of their confederacy.
Their humbled allies were established as a single settlement in
the precincts of
Hyde.
Thus the power of the natives of
North Carolina was broken, and its interior forests became safe places of resort to the emigrant
Meantime, the house of
Hanover had ascended the
English throne—an event doubly grateful to the colonies.
The contest of parties is the struggle, not between persons, but between ideas; and the abiding sympathy of nations is never won but by an appeal to the controlling principles of the age. George I. had imprisoned his wife; had, from jealousy, caused a young man to be assassinated; had had frequent and angry quarrels with his son; and now, being fiftythree years old, attended by two women of the Hanoverian aristocracy, who were proud of being known as his mistresses, he crossed the sea to become the sovereign of a country of which he understood neither the institutions, the manners, nor the language.
Intrusting the administration to the whigs, he avowed his purpose of limiting his favor to them, as though he were himself a member of their party; and, in return, by a complaisant ministry, places in the highest ranks of the
English aristocracy were secured to his mistresses, whose number he, in his sixty-seventh year, just before his death, was designing to enlarge.
And yet, throughout English America, even the clergy heralded the elevation of George I. as an omen of happiness; and from the pulpit in
Boston it was announced
of its people that, in the whole land, ‘not a dog can wag his tongue to charge them with disloyalty.’
To the children of the Puritans, the accession of the house
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of
Hanover was the triumph of Protestantism, and the
guaranty of Protestant liberties.
The advancement of the new dynasty was, moreover, a pledge of a pacific policy; and this pledge was redeemed.
Louis XIV.
drew near his end: he had out-
lived his children and every grandchild, except the new king of
Spain,—his own glory,—the gratitude of those whom he had advanced.
‘My child,’ said he, as he gave a farewell blessing to his great-grandson, the boy of five years old, who was to be his successor, ‘you will be a great king; do not imitate me in my passion for war; seek peace with your neighbors, and strive to be, what I have failed to be, a solace to your people.’
‘Sad task,’ madame
de Maintenon had written, ‘to amuse a man who is past being amused;’ and, quitting his bedside, she left him, after a reign of seventy-two years, to die alone.
He had sought to extend his
power beyond his life by establishing a council of regency; but the will was cancelled by the parliament, and his nephew, the brave, generous, but abandoned Philip of
Orleans, became absolute regent.
In the event of the early death of Louis XV., who should inherit the throne of
France?
By the treaty of
Utrecht, Philip of Anjou, accepting the crown of
Spain, renounced the right of succession to that of
France.
If the treaty were maintained, Philip of
Orleans was heir-apparent; if legitimacy could sustain the necessary succession of the nearest prince, the renunciation of the king of
Spain was invalid, and the integrity of his right unimpaired.
Thus the personal interest of the absolute regent in
France was opposed to the rigid doctrine of legitimacy, and sought an alliance with
England; while the king of
Spain, under the guidance of Alberoni, was moved not less by nereditary attachment to
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legitimacy than by personal ambition to disregard the
provisions of the treaty, and favor alike the pretensions of the Stuarts to the
British throne and of himself to the succession in
France.
The French
