The English and French regulars wore neat uniforms. The French were distinguishable from a long way off for the color white, the English for the color red, which predominated in their dress. The drill of regular soldiers was careful, and their discipline severe. They fought with great steadiness, standing up and facing the enemy, and they and their officers held in contempt the skulking way of fighting which prevailed among the colonial troops on both sides.

The Americans, in both the French and English colonies, had learned to fight in the woods. They loaded their guns lying on the ground, and they fired from behind trees and stumps, now running forward and now retreating and charging again. The regular troops took no definite aim, but fired at the enemy's line, while the colonists were the best marksmen in the world, and the man whom one of them covered with his gun was generally doomed. In the first siege of Louisbourg their deadly aim at last rendered it impossible for the French to load or fire a cannon. Though without experience, they had plenty of courage. At the battle of Lake George, it was said that the American provincials fought in the morning like good boys, about noon like men, and in the afternoon like demons.

The British officers were generally incapable of getting on well with the American soldiers. They looked with contempt on men who wore little or no uniform, and sometimes carried in the same company guns of the various sorts they had used in hunting. The Americans made a bad show on parade, and refused to fight standing up in close ranks. By the side of the neatly-kept, red-coated British troops, the American militia looked shabby enough. The British officers holding the king's commission assumed to command American officers of higher rank, and this caused a dislike of the English to spread through the colonies. Pitt ordered that the American officers should take equal rank with the British.

The English troops were rather unfit for the work of fighting in the woods. "Our clothes, our arms, our accoutrements, even our shoes and stockings, are all improper for this country," wrote General Wolfe from America. Lord Howe, who was one of the noblest of men and best of generals, changed the dress of his men to fit them for marching in the woods. Hair was worn long in that day, and Lord Howe cut off his own fine head of hair to persuade the men to sacrifice theirs. He reduced the officers' baggage, and dismissed the great company of washerwomen, setting a good example by washing his own linen in the brook. Lord Howe cultivated the friendship of the American officers, and treated the soldiers with great respect. He was second in command to Abercromby, and was killed in a skirmish just before the attack on Ticonderoga. The defeat of Abercromby in the battle which followed is attributed to the loss of Lord Howe, who was the real soul of the army.

It was impossible to keep troops enough in the field to protect the long frontier. No one could tell where the American Indians would strike, and when they attacked they escaped too swiftly for pursuit. The colonies offered rewards for the scalps of American Indians as they were accustomed to pay for wolves' heads. One can see how barbarous they were, however, in the offer of smaller rewards for the scalps of Indian women and children.

In many ways, the French wars exposed the corruption and greed of humankind. Traders seeking to profit secretly sold arms to the American Indians. Another set of English men, some of whom were connected with the government, sold provisions to the French. Very many embarked in privateering—that is, they fitted out ships to capture and plunder the merchant ships of France. This was only a kind of lawful piracy. Many of the soldiers who returned from the war had learned habits of idleness and dissipation. The sorrows inflicted on both the French and English colonists were more than can be imagined. The frontier people lived in continual fear of being attacked.

In 1689, captives taken in Maine were carried to Canada and sold there. From that time forward, innumerable people captured on the frontier by the American Indians were sold into Canada, enduring horrible sufferings in their forced journeys through the woods. Many of these were ransomed by their friends. Husbands made dangerous and sorrowful journeys to redeem their wives, and parents went in search of their children. Great compassion was excited in New England for the captives, and collections were frequently made for their redemption. Sometimes captive children were reclaimed who had been educated in French, and had quite forgotten the language and the religion of their parents. The Canadians were generally kind to the captives, and some of the prisoners were very sorry to return. Many of the captives remained among the American Indians; one American Indian village contained a hundred Europeans carried away in childhood. These captives had forgotten how to speak English. Some of the American Indian tribes doubled their numbers in the last French war by adopting settler children. Three thousand, men, women, and children, were carried into captivity from Pennsylvania and the provinces south of it in the year 1756.

The colonies did not immediately have peace. The American Indians of the Western country hated the English and the occupation of the old French forts by small English garrisons. Under the lead of Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, a plan was formed and carried out to attack the garrisons of many of the smaller forts. Detroit, Pittsburg, and the frontier were attacked, and colonists decided to march forces into the American Indian-controlled country. General Bouquet, with five hundred men, defeated a large force of American Indians in a desperate two days' battle at Bushy Run, in Pennsylvania, in 1763. "Pontiac's War," as it was called, was brought to a close in 1764, and the frontiers had a brief rest. But already there were seen the beginnings of that great quarrel of the Americans with the mother-country which brought on the bitter struggle of the Revolutionary War.



CAPTIVES IN THE FRENCH WARS

One of the first of the many thousands of captives carried to Canada was a little girl named Sarah Gerrish. While being transported by the American Indians, she was so weary that she overslept, and awoke to find herself alone in the woods and covered with snow. She followed the tracks of the American Indians until she overtook them. She was sold to the French in Canada, and ultimately returned to her family. In the fall of 1677, two men, White and Jennings, set out from the Connecticut River for Canada to redeem their captured wives and children. Without guides, they paddled through Lake Champlain and reached Canada. After seven months, they brought back approximately twenty captives in all. The people sent horses to meet them at Albany and bring them into Hatfield, where they were received with the greatest joy. One woman found one of her captive sons, a lad of eleven, an American Indian in habits and unable to speak any but an American Indian language; while a daughter of fifteen, who had been educated in a Canadian convent, spoke nothing but French. One Pennsylvanian returned home just as the sale of his property at auction had been completed, his neighbors having supposed him dead. James Smith, having endured six years of captivity among the Indians, came home a few days after his sweetheart had married another man.