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Show Old) F!7t fttofii f J 1 , ) ' -j 1 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON TT"V7 T 11 KN roI)re.se ii ta tl vea of the Iro-W Iro-W I Q1"'18 Indians, the French, the L'X fA I Iiritlsli and the Americans jolQ :f;l together In the "Four-Nation t J $ f celebration" nt Niagara Falls, p--lj I N. Y., duriiiK the first week In H jj Septeiulier, they will do more 1 l than celebrate the fact that the Yj?SY restoratl"n of 01cl Fort Niagara, I ''(C''l after more than seven years' labor and the expenditure of half a million dollars, is now completo. For one of the highlights high-lights of the celebration will be the unveiling at the fort of a new monument to the Rush-Bagot treaty under which the Canadian-American frontier fron-tier of 3,000 miles has remained unfortified for 110 years. Thus In a period of world unrest, of smoldering hatreds and suspicions, and of increasing in-creasing armaments both on land and sea, this monument will stand as a symbol of the fact that two nations can live In amity side by side without having a boundary line bristling with concrete and steel for either defensive or offensive offen-sive purposes. It is especially appropriate that such a monument monu-ment should be erected at Fort Niagara, for it was a focal point for nearly 150 years of almost endless conflict, first between the French and the British, later between the British and the Americans Amer-icans and In both cases with Indian allies playing play-ing a secondary but nonetheless Important part. Then after this century and a half of warfare came the century of peace that still prevails. Old Fort Niagara Is not only one of the most historic posts on American soil but in one respect re-spect It is unique. As a part of the modern Fort (Niagara military reservation, It Is the only United States army post over which fly foreign flags. It has two of these which memorialize the nations and the periods in history during which they held this post the triple fleur de lis of Louis XIV and Great Britain's Union Jack ot 1759 with Its two crosses. Above and between these two flags Is the Star Spangled Banner, tut ft Is one that seems strangely unfamiliar to Americans or today who visit tne tort. For it has 15 stars and 15 stripes, the reason being that It Is the American flag of 1796 when there were only 15 states In the Union. The history of Fort Niagara goes back to 1678 when the French explorer, La Salle, realizing the strategic value of a fort where the Niagara river flows Into Lake Ontario to control this gateway to the West, built there a crude wooden fortification to which he gave the name of Fort Conti. Like his ship, the Griffon, the fort was burned within a year after Its building through the negligence or treachery of the sergeant and the men whom La Salle left in charge. A decade later the struggle between France and Great Britain for mastery of the fur trade and control of the Interior of North America was under way and in 16S7 the Marquis de Nonvllle, governor-general of New France, reported that "the fur trade will be lost If the English occupy (Niagara." So he asked the French government for "two good battalions and the funds necessary to sustain the movement and occupy the post." These were supplied him and within three days there rose a timber stockade with four bastions which bore the official name of Fort De Nonville but which was commonly called Fort Niagara, a name that has persisted to this day. Fort De Nonvllle was destined to have the same fate as Fort Conti. Garrisoned by 100 men, all but 12 of them fell victims to the rigors of winter and the ravages of the scurvy, so that the fort was abandoned after 11 months. Nothing Noth-ing more was done toward holding possession of this vitally Important spot until 1724 when the Marquis de Vaudreuil, theu governor-general of New France, alarmed by the threat of the British Brit-ish trading post at Oswego, decided to build another an-other fort at Niagara. Submitting his plans to Louis XIV, Vaudreuil did not wait for the king's approval before beginning operations. Even more important than the French king's sanction of the project was that of the Iroquois Indians, the powerful Five Nations who held the balance of power between their French and English neighbors. They were none too friendly toward the French because of various armed clashes in the past and they were pretty likely to look with suspicion upon the establishment of a permanent per-manent post on their lands. Fortunately for Vaudreuil, a French trader named Louis de Joncaire, who had been adopted into the Seneca tribe of the Five Nations, had a trading post at the foot of Niagara gorge and the governor-general made use of Joncaire to accomplish his purpose. Various stories have been told of how the French tricked the Iroquois into giving their consent to the building of a fort at Niagara, but the more believable one Is that it was accomplished through Joncaire, who asked and obtained permission from the Indians to substitute a "stone house" for his trading shed of bark and logs. Under a broad Interpretation of the permission permis-sion given to Joncaire, the French transferred the site of the post from the foot of the gorge to the bluff at the mouth of the river overlooking Lake Ontario, but they scrupulously observed the letter of the agreement by building a "stone house" the plain, straight-walled, rectangukr structure later called "The Castle" which stands there today. The plans for It were drawn by the French engineer Chaussegras de Lery, who V T .in? i .l 1. Flag day at Old Fort Niagara when honors are paid to three historic flags the triple golden Fleur de Lis of La Salle, who founded the fort In 1678 (left); the Union Jack of 1759, the "I ipj I m:i(f ill year me B r 1 1 1 s n wrested it from the French (right); and the 15-starred and 15-striped American national na-tional emblem of 1796, when the victorious colonies received the fort under the Treaty of Paris (center). 2. French names carved In the dungeon of "The Castle." 3. An airplane view of the reconstructed fort. 4. "The Castle" and the famous Lombardy poplars. 5. Fort Niagara In 1759. From Captain Pouchot's map in the British Museum and other sources. designed a structure with thick walls well calculated cal-culated to withstand the fire of any cannon that could ever be dragged through the wilderness to be used against the fort. Incidentally De Lery's original plans were discovered In the French archives by the late Dr. Frank H. Severance qf Buffalo nearly two centuries later and they have been used in the restoration work which has recently been completed. Work on the fort began in- 1725 and when the French king's belated permission for Vaudreuil to build such a post arrived (in 1726), it was well under way. Because of the difficulty of supplying supply-ing the builders with stone and timber, the work dragged along slowly and the fort was not completed com-pleted until late in 1727. For the next three decades Fort Niagara was an important link in the chain of forts which the French were building to control the Interior of North America. At the outbreak of the French and Indian war, when France and England came to grips in their last struggle for mastery of the continent, Fort Niagara became one of the chief objectives of the British. The first plans for the expedition of the ill-fated Braddock contemplated his capture of Niagara after he had successfully reduced Fort Duquesne but the disaster which overtook him on the llonongahela changed all thaL Meanwhile the French engineer Pouchot was strengthening Fort Niagara and by 1759 it was the last important outpost held by the French. Accordingly, General Amherst, British commander-in-chief, sent General Prideaux with a force of 5.000 men, more than half of them New York provincials, and 600 Indians under the renowned Sir William Johnson to lay siege to Niagara. Pouchot had only 500 men, but even with this small force he held out successfully for awhile against the blundering siege tactics of Prideaux. A relief force of Indians and courier cour-ier du bois from the Ohio country was sent to his aid, but Sir William Johnson did to them what the French and Indians had done to Rrad-dock. Rrad-dock. On July 24, 1759, Pouchot had to give up the struggle and the French lilies were lowered over Fort Niagara and the British flag run up In Its place. For the next 40 years the fort was an important impor-tant trading center for the Britisli and played a leading role in colonial frontier history. After the end of the Pontiac conspiracy more than 2,500 Indians gathered there at the invitation of Sir William Johnson, Indian agent for His Majesty, the king of England, and the result of the council was the cession by the Indians to tlie British of a tract of land four miles wide on either side-of the river and reaching from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. At the outbreak of the Revolution Niagara became the haven for hundreds of Tories who were forced to flee from their homes, and it was also the base of operations for young Walter Butler and his Rangers and Indians who wrote their names in red on the map of New York and Pennsylvania. Although several expeditions against the fort were planned by the Americans, none of them ever developed and the British held the post until the close of the war far beyond it, in fact For it was not until August 11, 179C, that the British garrison crossed the t m: Niagara river to Canada, the Union Jack lowered low-ered from the flagstaff and Old Glory given to the breeze in Its place. An American garrison was maintained there and the interval between the Revolution and the War of 1S12 was one of pleasant social Intercourse Inter-course between the officers and their families at the American Fort Niagara and the British Fort George (now Queenstown, Ont.). In December, De-cember, 1813, the British captured Fort Niagara and held it until the close of the war, but by the Treaty of Ghent it was restored to the United States and since that time It has been under the American flag. Although a garrison was maintained there for awhile after that, the signing of the Rush-Bagot treaty in 1818 marked the end of the military career of Fort Niagara. In the years that followed, the historic old fort fell into a gradual decline. The waters of Lake Ontario, washing against the sea wall, began be-gan tS undermine it and much of the wall fell into the lake. Then "The Castle" began to settle and It became apparent that It, too, would soon disappear. Then the Old Fort Niagara association, associa-tion, composed of representatives of various patriotic pa-triotic and civic organizations of the Niagara Frontier country, came into being. It secured appropriations from congress for restoration of the old fort and that restoration, under the direction di-rection of the War department, has gone forward for-ward steadily since that time. Today, from the moated "Porte des Cinq Nations," Na-tions," straddling the entrance, to the British block-house which is its northeastern corner, the old fort stands precisely as It was at the stage of Its most advanced physical development. Twenty-pounders frown again from Its barbettes and wattled redoubts; lmperishably reconstructed near the famous Lombardy poplars on the parade ground Is the 18-foot cross Father Pierre Mllet raised In 16SS ; the hot-shot oven from which heroic Fanny Doyle snatched her Incandescent cannonballs Is once more in operating condition ; the primitive lifting mechanism of its drawbridge draw-bridge has been recommlssloned ; the 30-man beds in the ancient French barracks are ready for exhausted soldiery; the armed French castle, fort within a fort, has been restored in detail, from its subterranean dungeons, grotesque with the chipped names of military and political prisoners, pri-soners, to its Interior well, stocked trade room and covered gun-deck on the roof. And on the rampart which tops the sea wall on the Lake Ontario side, there will be unveiled during the celebration In September the Imposing Impos-ing sandstone monument to the Rush-Bagot treaty. Two months ago this site was the scene of a dramatic ceremony. In the crypt of this memorial were placed the bones of a number of "Unknown Warriors" which had been unearthed during the reconstruction work. Whether they were the remains of French, British or American soldiers or Indian warriors no one could tell. But they found a common grave there and over them were held burial rites by a Tuscarora Indian In-dian chief, a Catholic priest and an Episcopal clergyman. Enemies they were once, perhaps, during dur-ing a century of warfare which centered around Old Fort Niagara, but now their dust mingles in a sepulchre beneath a monument dedicated to a century of friendly nelghborllness and to future centuries of peace. by Western Newspaper Union. |
