Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion That Opened the West

578 Pages·2017·15.66 MB·English

by  William Hogeland

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Table of Contents
A Note About the Author
Photos
Copyright Page

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E.W.H.
1929–2005
LIST OF MAPS
1. The American West, 1791
2. The Fort Stanwix Boundary of 1768
3. The Land of the Three Miamis
4. Ohio River Forts, 1780s
5. Wayne’s March
6. The Battle of Fallen Timbers
PROLOGUE: THE RUINS OF AN OLD
FRENCH FORT
Where the Mississippi River drains North America on the southward tilt,
ceaselessly carving and enriching the bottomland, France once gave a name to
an expanse fanning asymmetrically eastward and westward from that spine of
moving sediment. Saying its name in rude mimicry of Cajun, Quebecois, or the
Paris street—like a guttural “uhln-wah”—would parody how a New Frenchman
might have pronounced what his trading partners, designated as savages, called
that expanse. Of Europeans, it was traders, soldiers, villagers, and administrators
of France who first came to know the Illinois Country. They knew it for a long
time.
But unlike the English speakers who came later, the French never knew that
region as an American West. They did go west. Early on, seeking inland passage
from the St. Lawrence River to the Gulf of Mexico, they navigated Lake
Superior before they even knew about Lake Erie. They would name the Platte
and ascend the Missouri. French traders would lift their eyes to the white peaks
of the Rockies. But that wasn’t the main thing.
The main thing, once it was sorted out and made feasible, was to travel up the
St. Lawrence River from the citadel Quebec into Lake Ontario, portage around
the gigantic falls of the Niagara River into Lake Erie, embark upon rivers
running down to wider rivers, cross more of the land bridges known as portages,
and finally enter the Mississippi itself as it moved, so treacherously but steadily
lower, to posts below sea level at New Orleans and Biloxi and emerge at last in
the Gulf of Mexico. This empire wasn’t western but transmarine. It stretched
from the St. Lawrence’s mouth at the Atlantic to the Mississippi’s mouth at the
gulf.
The imperial claim, it’s true, extended for vast distances in all directions. The
claimant was His Majesty by the Grace of God the most Christian King of
France and Navarre, Count of Provence, Forcalquier, and lands adjacent,
Dauphin of Viennois, and Count of Valentinois and of Diois. That monarch
listed in his North American holdings everything east and west of the
Mississippi, up to and including both the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky
Mountains, and everything north of the Great Lakes as far as the Hudson Bay.
Yet he made actual use of a far more limited section of continent. His two great
American seats were New France above and Louisiana below. Though often in
tension, they participated in a constant imperial motion, undertaken on three
types of peculiarly French boats, from the Atlantic to the gulf and back again.
The Illinois Country, in between and pulled administratively both ways, serviced
that motion, which had one purpose.
Like other people, Europeans had to wear hats. There was no imaginable
alternative to covering the head, and a hat had become the standard means, so
demand was ceaseless. Smooth, warm fur of the big beaver made the best felt for
peltry hats, as well as for other garments, and the beaver had grown scarce in
Europe, with a market nevertheless unsaturated thanks to price. Discovering the
outlandish abundance of giant beavers in North America had been like
discovering gold and silver, or a license to coin them. The supply was evidently
inexhaustible, and obtaining it was easy: by the mid-seventeenth century, a host
of indigenous cultures, expert in extracting the resource, had become eager for—
dependent on—everything that Europe made in such high volume: metal,
buttons, muskets, glass, tailoring, brandy, and more.
And forts. It was in service of getting beaver and other furs that the French
became such great fort builders. Illinois Country Indians often sought protection
from the powerful, aggressive Iroquois confederation to the east, and the French
built forts, usually with the permission of their trading partners, on the high
banks of the Mississippi itself; others they garrisoned near strategic confluences
of the many tributaries. A few permanent settlers hugged the network in support,
and the villages were nice, with houses standing gaily painted in rows along the
riverbanks. While English speakers to the east thought of the region as remote,
the more cosmopolitan forts were scenes of balls and soirees; villagers owned
mirrors, billiard tables, and neat kitchen gardens. Many years later, American
soldiers discovering the ruins of an old fort on the Great Miami River in the
former Illinois Country would conclude that no Indian nation could have
enjoyed sole hegemony there: the French had been there too.
New France villagers wore the latest Paris fashions. So they wore, of course,
the American beaver. Of peltry from America, the hatters of France made
thousands and thousands of hats, and French merchants and shippers sold some
of them across the sea to the French Americans. That all went on for nearly one
hundred years.