These long contests really made one continuous series of hostile operations, with only a breathing-spell now and then. It was one long-drawn-out and stubborn battle to decide whether the French or the English should be masters of North America. Jealous of the rich and prosperous English colonies on the seaboard, and having determined that England should not control the whole of this vast continent, the French built a chain of more than sixty forts stretching from Montreal to New Orleans.
The French had always treated the Indians with more consideration than had their rivals. The Jesuit missionaries had converted many of the red men to their religious belief. Sometimes the French took Indian women for wives, and often they adopted the red man's ways of living.
=107. The Indians ally themselves with the French.=--When these sons of the forest found the English slowly but surely crowding them out of their haunts and homes, and saw that their hunting grounds were getting reduced to mere strips of territory here and there, it was not strange that they felt bitter towards the ever-encroaching new-comers. The tribes had steadily diminished, and they were unable to cope single-handed with the English. Hence they naturally looked to the French for help, and the French readily induced the Indians to join them against the English and their American descendants.
It was a fierce struggle. English and American blood flowed like water before it was ended. The Indians never fought in open field, but always after their own fashion. They trusted to sudden attacks, especially at night, and to rapid raids, doing their savage work suddenly and retreating swiftly into the forest.
Lonely families and small settlements suffered most. Like lightning out of the clear sky came the horror of an Indian night attack. The war-whoop waked the midnight sleepers and the glare of burning cabins lighted up the darkness.
The massacre of defenseless women and children crimsoned the earth in scores of settlements during these cruel wars.
[Illustration: INDIANS ATTACKING A SETTLER'S CABIN.]
=108. The Indian Attack on Deerfield in the Massachusetts Colony.=--One bitter cold night in February, 1704, the French and Indians attacked the town of Deerfield in the western part of Massachusetts. For this purpose they had walked all the way from Canada on snowshoes. The people had been warned of their danger, but the watchmen fell asleep, and the villagers were awakened by the war-whoop of their savage foes. About fifty men, women, and children were killed, and nearly a hundred half-clad captives were marched off through the deep snows. Those who could not keep up were killed with the tomahawk.