France lost its mainland possessions to North America. Britain now claimed all the land from the east coast of North America to the Mississippi River. Everything west of that river belonged to Spain. France gave all its western lands to Spain to keep the British out. Indians still controlled most of the western lands, except for some Spanish colonies in Texas and New Mexico. When the treaty was signed, the British were given control over the area west of the 13 British Colonies to the Mississippi River.
Also, the French agreed to no longer support any colonies in North America, including all of the territory that is known as Canada. Since Spain had joined the war on the side of the French, the Spanish were also forced to give up their claim to Florida. The struggle for empire in North America would lead to even more wars, with dramatic effects on our state.
Shifts from French to British and finally to American control were carried out in a century of nearly continuous fighting among France, Britain, the US, and Native American nations.
They fought for control of North America and the rich fur trade. Background The French, who had a strong presence in the Great Lakes region early on, built a fort at Green Bay in to tighten their hold on the western Great Lakes. They became embroiled in a series of wars with the Meskwaki Fox Nation. The conflicts disrupted fur-trade routes along the critical Fox-Wisconsin waterway to the Mississippi.
The French also developed a new route along the Maumee, Wabash, and Ohio rivers to bypass the western lakes. This new trade route brought the French into sharper conflict with the British, whose colonists were seeking to claim the same areas.
The British and French vied for control by courting local Native nations, but neither side was able to secure the region. The establishment of a series of French forts in the area prompted the colonists to take action. In Colonel George Washington led a Virginia militia force to demand removal of the forts, but had to retreat after a brief skirmish, the first in a series of encounters that led to war the French and Indian War the following year.
Some of the text on this page is from: project.. One copy may be printed for personal use. The war did not begin well for the British. The British Government sent General Edward Braddock to the colonies as commander in chief of British North American forces, but he alienated potential Indian allies and colonial leaders failed to cooperate with him.
On July 13, , Braddock died after being mortally wounded in an ambush on a failed expedition to capture Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh. The war in North America settled into a stalemate for the next several years, while in Europe the French scored an important naval victory and captured the British possession of Minorca in the Mediterranean in However, after the war began to turn in favor of Great Britain.
British forces defeated French forces in India, and in British armies invaded and conquered Canada. Facing defeat in North America and a tenuous position in Europe, the French Government attempted to engage the British in peace negotiations, but British Minister William Pitt the elder , Secretary for Southern Affairs, sought not only the French cession of Canada but also commercial concessions that the French Government found unacceptable.
The terms of the agreement stated that Spain would declare war on Great Britain if the war did not end before May 1, The long-term goal of the meeting was to achieve greater colonial unity and thus bolster their common military defense against France.
At the meeting, Pennsylvania representative Benjamin Franklin proposed the Albany Plan of Union, which called for a loose confederation of the colonies led by a president general with a limited authority to levy taxes to fund a central treasury.
Although it failed, the Albany Congress was a defining moment in American politics because it was the first time the colonies had met to discuss uniting together. After the war broke out in , tens of thousands of British colonists actively fought in the war, which provided these soldiers with valuable military experience that later served them well in their own war against the British during the Revolutionary War.
The military force of the British colonies consisted of the British Army, British Navy and American volunteer military units supported by only a few tribes of American Indian allies. Unlike the British colonies, where self-rule was established early on, there were no elected assemblies in New France. Decisions were made by local magistrates on behalf of the French king so the French colonists had little say in the war with the British. The military force of New France consisted of the French Army, French Navy and Canadian volunteer military units which were supported by a large number of independent American Indian allies and American Indian militia units.
This military force was ultimately no match though against corrupt French officials and the superior British military, according to an article on the Canadian History Project website:. The Iroquois Confederacy claimed that it owned the lands that made up the Ohio Country.
The British government, which argued that the Iroquois were their subjects, used the Iroquois claim to assert that it held legal title to the land. Morris in an article in American Heritage Magazine:. But the bonds between England and her Indian allies had been stretched to the breaking point as the Iroquois observed with increasing alarm the rising military might of France.
Their tension mounted when the French boldly established Fort Niagara on Lake Erie as a bastion against them. To the Six Nations the alliance with England seemed to have less and less military value. As the French became more aggressive the Six Nations moved toward neutrality. In , the Albany Congress attempted to recruit the Iroquois to fight alongside the British by showering them with gifts, provisions and promises of redress of grievances. After the war began, the Iroquois watched as the British lost many of the early battles of the war and feared the British would lose the war, thus bolstering their decision not to ally with them.
Realizing that the British might win, the Iroquois reasoned it would benefit them to be on the winning side. The Catawba Indian Nation had been trading partners with the British since the colonists first arrived in North America in the 17th century.
During the conflict with France, the Catawbas sided with the British and patrolled the frontier and provided guides and about three hundred warriors to the British forces. In , although the colony was not under widespread attack, Catawba warriors killed two Frenchmen and three of their Indian allies, probably a scouting party, in North Carolina. In , when Carolina leaders received news of Cherokee scouting parties attacking and robbing English settlers along the Broad River and Catawba River, two colonial militia companies were ordered to patrol the area and a shipment of gun power and lead were sent to the Catawba to help them defend the backcountry.
In , a smallpox outbreak reduced the Catawba population to around people and about warriors. This led the Catawbas to establish a smaller settlement at Twelve Mile Creek in South Carolina and a land reservation of 15 square miles in present-day counties of York and Lancaster. In , during the last days of the war, a Shawnee war party killed the Catawba chief, King Hagler, which devastated their morale and strength.
By June of , the Catawba nation had been reduced to just 50 warriors. The Cherokee, who lived in the interior hill country of the Carolinas and Georgia, had been trading partners with the British since In , the Cherokee allied with the British for the first time when they provided warriors against the Tuscarora Indians.
When the French and Indian War broke out, the British recruited the Cherokee and their warriors to help them fight the French. A small band of about Cherokee served as mercenaries with Virginian frontier forces in In , a Cherokee war party was returning from a raid in the Pennsylvania back country and passed through the colony of Virginia where they stole some horses and cattle from local farmers.
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