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CHAPTER IV THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER IN QUEEN ANNE'S WAR In America, as in Europe, at the beginning of the eighteenth century a rupture seemed inevitable between England and the Bourbon monarchies. For thirty years Spaniards and Englishmen had been jealous and quarrelsome neighbors in the South, and Spanish dominion had steadily dwindled. But the old conflicts on the Guale border were now subordinated to a greater contest for the hegemony of the interior, in which for some years Florida played a minor role. The founding of Louisiana, and the southwestward advance of the Carolinians, had created a new zone of Anglo-French rivalry for the Indian trade. The obscure struggles of Indian traders and their savage partizans on the farthest frontier of the English colonies in North America made but small stir in a world absorbed in the momentous issue of the Spanish Succession. A few men only understood that these incidents foreshadowed a contest for the richest prize of 'imperial' ambition in America: the heart of the continent . It was on the southern frontier that the conflict was first clearly joined for the control of the valley of the Mississippi. Iberville, for one, had foreseen the impending struggle, and had drawn up a comprehensive frontier policy for Louisiana. In 1702 his scheme of pacification in the Southwest seemed completely successful. But his purpose was not merely defensive . He looked beyond the immediate security of the new colony to the expansion of French interest eastward, 'au cote de Caroline,' and to cooperation with Florida to strike at the flank of the English trading advance. Indeed, the conquest of Carolina, and in the sequel of Virginia, Maryland, and even New York, was already in view. This was the subject of an extraordinary 'Projet sur la Caroline' submitted to the ministry in 1702 with Iberville's approving annotations. Spanish weakness and the successful aggression of the Carolina traders foreshadowed the speedy loss of all Florida. Supreme among the inland tribes, and possibly dominating the Havana passage from the Baye de Carlos (Tampa Bay), the English would menace Louisiana. Franco-Spanish cooperation was therefore [ 71 ] 72 THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER imperative: Carolina must be destroyed. A joint expedition by land and sea was proposed. While six hundred Spanish troops from St. Augustine, Havana, and Vera Cruz, joined by three hundred French and one hundred Canadians, attacked Charles Town fort, fifteen hundred Spanish Indians, armed with French guns, should create a diversion on the Carolina frontiers . Success would mean that the Florida boundary would be extended northward to the 'river of Virginia,' but in compensation Pensacola should be ceded to France. Louisiana, too, would profit by the plunder of the English province, sharing the cattle and slaves of the abandoned plantations with their allies. For the English settlers would be returned to England, and the French Huguenots, deprived of their leaders, carried to Mobile and won back to the Catholic faith. The conquest of Carolina, moreover, would pave the way for a French alliance with the Creeks, and for greater victories. By 1704 the new Indian league should be strong enough to make possible a grand encircling movement against the English seaboard colonies, this time a French enterprise solely, for the profit only of France. Nor was it too soon to put the larger project in train. Le Sueur should be sent up the l\1ississippi to make peace between the Sioux and the Illinois, and to remove the latter to the mouth of the Ohio. (Elsewhere Iberville outlined a grandiose scheme for the rearrangement of the tribes, including the Shawnee and the Cherokee, to expose the southern flank of the English colonies.) Two or three thousand Sioux and Illinois, four thousand Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Mobilians, joined with the converted Upper Creeks (Conchaques) would make a sufficient force of auxiliaries, it was predicted, to enable four or five hundred French and Canadians to carry through the conquest of Virginia. With further aid from the western Indians the frontier invasions might be extended victoriously as far as New York. But the first, essential step was the campaign of 1702 against Carolina.1 It was, of course, one thing to predict on paper the successive stages in the subjugation of the southern frontier and of the Atlantic seaboard. It was another thing, beyond the 1 'Projet sur la Caroline' in Arch. Nat., col. e11 , A 20, f.224 et seq. See also Margry (ed.), Decouvertes, IV. 520. [3.144.127.232] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...

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