When in 1754 a French battalion drove off the party of English backwoodsmen who had begun the erection of a fort at the forks of the Ohio, and proceeded to build Fort Duquesne, the French and Indian War began. The course of this struggle, exceeding by far in point of magnitude the war of the Revolution, cannot here be followed. At the close of the campaign of 1757 the French seemed triumphant. In the year following they lost Fort Duquesne, in 1759 Quebec, and in 1760 Montreal. The power of the French in North America was broken. Historians of Canada still name the epoch that of “the Conquest.”
The diplomatic settlement of this contest awaited the outcome of a great war raging in Europe, the so-called Seven Years’ War of Frederick the Great against Austria, Russia, and France. England was early drawn into the support of the Prussian monarch, and supplied his military chest and sent an army to the continent. France presumptuously aspired to wrest the empire of the seas from Britain, with the result that her navies were sunk or battered to useless wrecks. In a separate treaty signed at Paris, February 10, 1763, France surrendered to England all her possessions and claims east of the Mississippi except the city of New Orleans and the island embracing it. The British government, however, was none too desirous to accept this cession. It was a matter of lively debate in the ministry whether it would not be the better policy to leave Canada to the French and strip her of her West Indian possessions. That course might have been adopted, but for the influence exerted by Benjamin Franklin’s famous “Canada Pamphlet,” which is still “interesting reading.” Franklin was in England while the question was pending, and published his views in answer to “Remarks” ascribed to Edmund Burke.
It may be well to note here that in the year preceding the treaty of Paris (1762) France had taken the precaution to assign to Spain, by a secret treaty, all her North American possessions west of the Mississippi, in order to put them out of the reach of England.
It was the 8th of September, 1760, when the capitulation of Montreal was signed, turning all Canada over to the British. Five days later Amherst, the victorious commander, dispatched Major Robert Hayes with two hundred rangers to take possession of the western posts. Expected opposition at Detroit was not offered, and that important strategic point was occupied on November 29. The season was then too late for further movements, and more than a year passed before garrisons were established at Mackinaw and Green Bay. The British were none too welcome among the savages, long accustomed to French dealings and alliances. But French influence was not what it had formerly been. During the long struggle for the mastery of the continent the Indian trade had languished, and in remoter regions the savages had reverted to their ancient ways and standards of living. The trade revived, however, under British rule, which brought peace and protection. In 1762 the British commandant gave a permit to a Frenchman named Pinchon to trade on the Minnesota River, then in Spanish territory. Four years later the old post on Pigeon River was revived and trade was reopened in northern Minnesota. Prairie du Chien became in the course of a decade a village of some three hundred families, mostly French half-breeds, and remained a supply station for the Indian trade of southern and central Minnesota till far into the nineteenth century.