P
“Let this Belt of Wampum
serve to Chastise You; You
ought to be taken by the Hair
of the Head and shaked se-
verely till you recover your
Senses and become Sober; you
don’t know what Ground you
stand on, nor what you are
doing.... This land that you
Claim is gone through Your
Guts. You have been furnished
with Clothes and Meat and
Drink by the Goods paid you
for it, and now You want it again
Children as you are.... For all
these reasons we charge You
to remove instantly.”
—Iroquois orator Canasatego
to the Lenni Lenape at their
1742 council1744May
King George’s War breaks out.
King George’s War—known in Europe as the War
of the Austrian Succession—ends the 30 years of
peace between England and France inaugurated by
the Treaty of Utrecht (see entry for JULY 13, 1713).
The fighting begins in present-day Nova Scotia, when
French soldiers from the fort at Louisbourg attack
English villages in the area. In retaliation, English
troops descend on Louisbourg and capture it the
following year. Sporadic raids are made by both the
English and French, aided by the Indian allies, until
- The peace treaty requires England to return
Louisbourg to French control but does little to resolve
the underlying conflicts between the two powers.
Within six years, they and their Indian supporters will
again be at war (see entry for JULY 4, 1754).1745Russian traders slaughter 15 Aleut at Attu.
Using a standard Russian trading practice (see entry
for 1741), a trade expedition kidnaps women and
children from an Aleut village on the island of Attu
and forces Attu’s men to hunt for their ransom.
When the number of sea otter furs the Aleut deliver
is not great enough, the traders murder 15 of the
hunters as a warning to other villages of the conse-
quences of not meeting the Russians’ demands.1746Trade rivalries drive the Choctaw to civil war.
For more than a decade, the Choctaw have been di-
vided between those to the east who prefer to deal
with French traders and those to the west who favor
the British as trading partners. The contentiousness
grows into warfare when Red Shoes, a pro-English
leader, is murdered by a pro-French tribe member for
a bounty placed on Red Shoes’s head by the gover-
nor of Louisiana. In the resulting civil war, both sides
rely on their European allies for weapons. Because the
British are less willing to trade guns, the pro-English
faction is defeated. Once peace is restored in 1750,
three new divisions in the tribe develop: a southern
and a western distinct that support the French, and a
northeastern district that sides with the British.1747JulyMary Bosomworth (Coosaponakeesa)
declares herself queen of the Creek.
A member of a powerful Creek family, Coosap-
onakeesa (known to whites as Mary Bosomworth)
meets with authorities in the colony of Georgia and