Did the French and Indian War was fought between the French and the Indians?

Answer 1

· In the 1750s, France was Britain's greatest rival in the struggle to build a world empire, and one major area of contention between them was the rich Ohio River Valley.

· The colonists favored Great Britain because they still thought of themselves as British. They were also eager to expand the colonies westward from the increasingly crowded Atlantic seaboard.

· France had begun its North American empire in 1534, when Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River.

· In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the town of Quebec, the first permanent French settlement in North America.

· After establishing Quebec, French priests and traders spread into the heart of the continent.

· In 1682, Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, claimed the entire Mississippi Valley for France, naming it Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV.

· However, by 1754 the European population of New France, the French colony in North America, had grown to only about 70,000 (compared to more than 1,000,000 in the British colonies.

· From the start, New France differed from the British colonies. Typical French colonists included fur traders and Catholic priests who wanted to convert Native Americans. Neither had a desire to build towns or raise families.

· The French colonists also developed friendlier relations with Native Americans than did the British. They relied on Hurons, Ottawas, Ojibwas, and others to do most of the trapping and then traded with them for the furs, which were in great demand in Europe.

· As the French empire in North America expanded, it collided with the growing British empire. France and Britain had already fought two inconclusive wars during the previous half-century. In 1754, the French-British conflict reignited. In that year, the French built Fort Duquesne at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio - the site of modern Pittsburgh.

· However, the British had previously granted 200,000 acres of land in the Ohio country to a group of wealthy planters. The Virginia governor sent militia, ordinary citizens who performed military duties, to evict the French.

· The small band, led by an ambitious 22-year-old officer named George Washington, established an outpost called Fort Necessity about 40 miles from Fort Duquesne. In May, 1754, Washington's militia attacked a small detachment of French soldiers, and the French swiftly counterattacked. In the battle that followed in July, the French forced Washington to surrender. Although neither side realized it, these battles at Fort Necessity were the opening of the French and Indian War, the fourth war between Great Britain and France for control of North America.

· A year after his defeat, Washington again headed into battle, this time as an aide to the British general Edward Braddock, whose mission was to drive the French out of the Ohio Valley.

· Braddock first launched an attack on Fort Duquesne. As Braddock and nearly 1,500 soldiers neared the fort, French soldiers and their Native American allies ambushed them. The British soldiers, accustomed to enemies who marched in orderly rows rather than ones who fought from behind trees, turned and fled.

· Washington showed incredible courage, while the weakness of the supposedly invincible British army surprised him and many other colonists. They began to question the competence of the British army, which suffered defeat after defeat during 1755 and 1756.

· Angered by French victories, Britain's King George II selected new leaders to run his government in 1757. One of these was William Pitt, an energetic, self-confident politician. Under Pitt, the reinvigorated British army finally began winning battles, which prompted the powerful Iroquois to support them. Now Britain had some Native American allies to balance those of France.

· In September, 1759, the war took a dramatic and decisive turn on the Plains of Abraham just outside Quebec. Under the cover of night, British troops under General James Wolfe scaled the high cliffs that protected Quebec. Catching the French and their commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, by surprise, they won a short but deadly battle. The British triumph at Quebec led them to victory in the war.

· The French and Indian War officially ended in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris. Great Britain claimed all of North America east of the Mississippi River. This included Florida, which Britain acquired from Spain, an ally of France. Spain gained the French lands west of the Mississippi, including the city of New Orleans. France kept control of only a few small islands near Newfoundland and in the West Indies. The other losers in the war were Native Americans, who found the victorious British harder to bargain with than the French had been.

· Claiming ownership of the Ohio River Valley brought Great Britain trouble. Native Americans feared that the growing number of British settlers crossing the Appalachian mountains would soon drive away the game they depended on for survival. In the spring of 1763, the Ottawa leader Pontiac recognized that the French loss was also a loss for the Native Americans.

· Led by Pontiac, Native Americans captured eight British forts in the Ohio Valley and laid siege to two others. In angry response, British officers presented smallpox-infected blankets to two Delaware chiefs during peace negotiations, and the virus spread rapidly among the Native Americans. Weakened by diseases and war, most Native American groups negotiated treaties with the British by the end of 1765.

· To avoid further conflicts with Native Americans, the British government issued the Proclamation of 1763, which banned all settlement west of the Appalachians. This ban established a Proclamation Line, which the colonists were not to cross. However, the British could not enforce this ban any more effectively than they could the Navigation Acts, and colonists continued to move west onto Native American lands.

· Because the Proclamation of 1763 sought to halt expansion, it convinced the colonists that the British government did not care about their needs. A second result of the French and Indian War - Britain's financial crisis - brought about new laws that reinforced the colonists' opinion even more.

· By 1763, tensions between Britain and one colony, Massachusetts, had already been increasing. During the French and Indian War, the British cracked down on colonial smuggling. In 1761, the royal governor of Massachusetts authorized the use of the writs of assistance, which allowed British custom officials to search any ship or building. Because many merchants worked out of their residences, the writs enabled officials to search colonial homes. The merchants of Boston were outraged.

· After the war, the British government stationed 10,000 troops in its territories to control the Native Americans and former French subjects. Although this army was meant to protect the colonists, the colonists viewed it as a standing army that might turn against them. Maintaining troops in North America was an added expense on an already strained British budget. Britain had borrowed so much money during the war that it nearly doubled its national debt.

· Hoping to lower the debt, King George III chose a financial expert, George Grenville, to serve as prime minister in 1763. Grenville soon angered merchants throughout the colonies. He began to suspect that the colonists were smuggling goods into the country. In 1764 he prompted Parliament to enact a law known as the Sugar Act. The Sugar Act did three things. It halved the duty on foreign-made molasses (in the hopes that colonists would pay a lower tax rather than risk arrest by smuggling). It placed duties on certain imports. Most important, it strengthened the enforcement of the law allowing prosecutors to try smuggling cases in a vice-admiralty court rather than in a more sympathetic colonial court.

· By the end of 1764, the colonies and Great Britain were disagreeing more and more about how the colonies should be taxed and governed. These feelings of dissatisfaction soon would swell into outright rebellion.

Answer 2

North America