Indians and British Outposts in Eighteenth-Century America (review)

It is astonishing that no one has ever thought of writing this book before. Forts on the frontier where Native Americans, colonial settlers and traders, and European forces mingled were important outposts in the eighteenth century. Yet before Ingram, they had been discussed for their military role but only occasionally—as in Colin Calloway’s treatment of Fort Niagara in The American Revolution in Indian Country (New York, 1995)—for their equally important function as locations where Indians met whites for a variety of purposes.

Ingram looks at five British forts during the French and Indian War—Fort Loudoun in South Carolina, Fort Allen in Pennsylvania, Fort Michilimackinac in what is now the upper peninsula of Michigan, Fort Niagara in New York, and Fort Chartres in Illinois. Admitting the impossibility of obtaining the Indians’ point of view from their own sources, he nevertheless uses Euro-American documents and archaeo-logical artifacts to show that forts served a variety of functions depending on their particular circumstances. For instance, the presence of Indian or European goods or the bones of specific animals in a particular fort indicated whether the Europeans were dependent on the Indians, or vice versa.

The construction of Fort Loudoun, named after one of several British commanders in North America during the French and Indian War, was requested by Cherokee leaders Old Hop and Little Carpenter from the government of South Carolina. They wanted to use their contacts with the British to increase trade, as well as their own wealth and influence among their people, primarily at the expense of a pro-French faction that warned them that the British presence would threaten their way of life. The Francophiles turned out to be correct; the British used this fort and others during the Cherokee War of 1758 to 1761 to drive the Cherokees further west.

Fort Allen, located north of Bethlehem on the Lehigh River, was one of many forts hastily constructed by Pennsylvania beginning in 1756 to serve as a refuge from attacks by the Indians dispossessed by crooked treaties (beginning with the Walking Purchase of 1737), following Braddock’s defeat in 1755. Pennsylvania and the British negotiated the Treaty of Easton in 1758 with the Indians, promising to restore Indian land (a promise broken once the French were defeated). As a result, Fort Allen became a center of trade and gift giving, where Pennsylvania essentially bribed the Delawares, their former enemies, to keep the peace until the British eventually moved them out.

Forts Michilimackinac and Chartres, isolated from other major forts, had to depend heavily on the Indians just to survive. Ingram takes the history of the Michilimackinac into the mid-nineteenth century, revealing that the dependence on Indians lasted long after the American Revolution. Fort Chartres became a financial drain on the British, who had to keep doling out presents to the Indians to ensure that they would not destroy the fort. Fort Niagara, however, the location of which on the Great Lakes made it easily supplied, first by the French and then by the British, reversed the situation. Local Indians, especially the Iroquois, turned to the British garrison during the French and Indian War for supplies and later served as workers in the fur trade.

Showing the diversity of these forts, and tracing in detail the history of white–Indian interactions at these locations, Ingram demonstrates the importance of forts not only for military and imperial history but also for shaping the history and culture of the societies in their regions. His well-written, thoroughly researched book adds considerably to our knowledge of the North American frontier.