Pennsylvania’s Protestant Politics

Chapter 9 discusses how Pennsylvania gave Franklin more room for his talents, doubts, and questions than Boston did, thanks to the Quakers’ commitment to intellectual and religious freedom. The colony’s religious diversity, especially among German Protestants, was a challenge to its well-being especially when Quaker pacifism proved a liability in defending against French and Native American military forces. It shows how Franklin continued to rely on his knowledge of Protestantism and skills as a civic leader while he served in the Pennsylvania Assembly during the French and Indian War and then as the colony’s chief negotiator in London with the Penn family and British government officials in efforts to secure a royal charter for Pennsylvania.

1730–1776: We Leave, Never to Return

This chapter describes the events in Starved Rock from 1730 to 1776. By 1732, nearly all Peoria Indians were living at villages in the Illinois Valley, at either Starved Rock or at Lake Peoria. For the Illinois, especially the Peoria and possibly some Cahokia living at Starved Rock, it appeared that the Mesquakie threat had been extinguished. Rather than continue their campaign of genocide against the Mesquakie, the French administration decided to utilize its resources where they were needed most—in the lower Mississippi Valley against the fierce Chickasaw tribe, who were allies and trade partners of the British. Meanwhile, in Europe, the French became embroiled in a conflict with the British known as the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), a conflict that spilled over to North America, where it is commonly and incorrectly called the French and Indian War. By 1777, the Potawatomi were firmly ensconced in the Illinois Country. Like the Potawatomi, the Mascouten and Kickapoo Indians also moved into Illinois. None of these groups, however, established themselves at Starved Rock.

George Croghan

Before “Colonel” George Croghan became Sir William Johnson’s British deputy Indian Supervisor, he traveled as far as today’s Cleveland to trade goods with Ohio Natives. Ruined during the trade hiatus created by the French and Indian War, Croghan was with Washington at the fall of Fort Necessity and Braddock’s defeat before he and Johnson witnessed the destruction of British forces at Fort Ticonderoga. At Fort Pitt in postwar service to the Crown, Croghan welcomed his Irish nephew, William Croghan, and taught young George Rogers Clark the ways of the West.He was the father of two daughters: Susanna, whomarried a British officer, and Catherine, whose mother led the Mohawk nation’s Turtle Clan.

Barracks

This chapter explores the alternative quarters the American colonists sought for the North American Establishment, describing how massive barracks arose in the four largest American cities and several smaller towns in 1756-58. Following a history of barracks since ancient times, it explains the effects that barracks had on urban locales, colonists, and soldiers, as well as what happened in places that did not have barracks. The conclusion of the French and Indian War brought Canada, Florida, and the backcountry into the British Empire, which raised new questions about quartering as few of these places had barracks. Although the removal of the British army from the American colonies emptied the urban barracks, events like the Paxton Boys raids of 1763-64 put control of the military infrastructure at odds with the military geography of the colonies.

Houses

This chapter investigates quartering in houses, a common practice in colonial America, and details struggles to billet troops from ancient times to the eighteenth century. It asks why quartering in houses was challenged in seventeenth-century England, and how this introduced the ideal of the home as a distinct place of domestic privacy, absent of military geography. When the French and Indian War brought large numbers of British regular soldiers to North America, American colonists were forced to quarter troops, and this elicited a variety of reactions, with some colonies billeting soldiers in private homes, some in public houses, and others in alternative locales like barracks.

Captivity as Literacy Event

The introduction uses James Smith’s 1799 narrative of captivity during the French and Indian War to illustrate key concepts adapted from sociolinguistics, academic literacy studies, and narratology. Representations of literacy events, or action sequences involving reading and writing, express the captives’ affiliation with their discourse communities, which share literacy practices and language ideologies, including the widespread belief that literacy entails a cultural superiority over native peoples. The analysis distinguishes between conventional textual references, such as allusions, that belong to the author’s discourse, and texts that appear as part of the captive’s story. It presents the concept of the reception allegory, an application of another text to one’s present circumstances, and emphasizes the ethnohistorical context for the captive’s experience, as opposed to the cultural context for the author’s narrative.