50 Fun Facts About French and Indian War

Which future Kentucky trailblazer drove a supply wagon on the doomed British march toward Fort Duquesne in 1755?

Daniel Boone served as a teamster and blacksmith with a North Carolina company. Stuck in the rear with the wagons, he took no part in the battle and fled with the retreating soldiers.

Which newspaper publisher printed the Join, or Die cartoon of a severed snake as war with France loomed in 1754?

Benjamin Franklin ran the woodcut in his Pennsylvania Gazette beside an editorial on the colonies' disunity. Its snake has only eight pieces: New England is a single segment, and Georgia and Delaware are left out.

Which Gulf Coast people descend from French-speaking settlers the British began deporting from Nova Scotia in 1755?

Cajuns get their name from a clipped Louisiana French form of the word Acadian. The British feared the settlers would aid France and scattered them in what became known as the Great Upheaval.

Which classic novel, filmed in 1992 with Daniel Day-Lewis, follows two sisters through the siege of Fort William Henry?

The Last of the Mohicans was James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 hit, subtitled A Narrative of 1757 for the year the fort fell to the French.

Which future Pacific explorer helped chart the St. Lawrence River so a British fleet could reach Quebec in 1759?

James Cook was a Royal Navy ship's master at the time. He took soundings and marked shoals around Quebec, work that let the army cross the river in a stealthy night attack.

Which tune mocking colonial soldiers is credited to a British army surgeon serving in the French and Indian War?

Yankee Doodle was sung by British officers to mock the scruffy colonial troops serving beside them. American soldiers later embraced it and added verses of their own that mocked the British.

Ojibwe warriors seized Fort Michilimackinac in 1763 by staging a game that was a forerunner of which modern sport?

Lacrosse grew out of baaga'adowe, the game the Ojibwe played outside the walls that June day as a ruse. Once inside they overwhelmed the garrison and held the fort for a year.

Which outpost in a Pennsylvania mountain meadow did George Washington abandon to the French on July 4, 1754?

Fort Necessity was undone partly by the weather: heavy rain turned its trenches into streams and soaked the defenders' gunpowder. The fight was among Washington's first tastes of combat.

Which disease did British officers try to spread to besieging Delaware warriors in 1763 using hospital blankets?

Smallpox had broken out inside the besieged fort, so its commander gave Delaware envoys two blankets and a handkerchief from the sick ward during a parley. A militia captain logged the gift in his journal.

Which French writer sneered in 1759 that Britain and France were fighting over a few snowy acres near Canada?

Voltaire slipped the jibe into his satire Candide, adding that the two nations were spending more on the war than all Canada was worth.

Which river's valley, coveted by Virginia land speculators and by New France, sparked the French and Indian War?

Land in the Ohio country was granted to a Virginia land company in 1749, and the colony's own governor was one of its investors. France claimed the same ground and sent troops to hold it.

Which worldwide conflict, fought from Europe to India, counts the French and Indian War as its North American theater?

The Seven Years' War is dated from 1756, two years after the first shots in the American backwoods. Britain and France were still officially at peace when that frontier fighting began.

Which 1763 peace deal ended the French and Indian War and handed Canada to Britain?

The Treaty of Paris also confirmed the right of Britain's new Canadian subjects to keep practising Catholicism, a concession made partly to avoid antagonizing France.

Which British statesman directed the war effort against France from 1757?

William Pitt poured money, ships and regular troops into America. The army that finally took the forks from the French in 1758 named its new fort and the settlement beside it in his honor.

Which British general was mortally wounded in 1755 while marching on Fort Duquesne with George Washington as his aide?

Edward Braddock was buried in the middle of the road his men had just cut through the forest. Wagons were rolled over the grave so that his body would not be found.

Which mountain range became the western limit of colonial settlement under a royal proclamation issued in 1763?

The Appalachians became the edge of a vast Indian reserve where new settlement was forbidden. Colonists and land speculators objected, since Britain had already promised some of them land beyond the line.

Which tax on newspapers and legal papers was meant to fund troops kept in America after the French and Indian War?

The Stamp Act was meant to help pay for some 10,000 soldiers posted to the frontier. Colonists replied that they had already paid their share of the war.

Which Odawa war chief gave his name to the 1763 uprising that opened with a siege of Fort Detroit?

Pontiac first tried to take the fort by surprise with 300 followers. When that plan was foiled he settled into a siege, joined by more than 900 warriors from a half-dozen tribes.

Which British general died of gunshot wounds at Quebec in 1759 just as the French line broke and ran?

James Wolfe was 32 and had already been hit in the wrist when two more shots struck him. Told that the enemy had broken, he gave a few last orders and died.

Which city's surrender in September 1760, a year after Quebec fell, ended French rule in Canada?

Montreal was ringed by some 18,000 British troops who had converged from three directions. The French governor overruled his general, who wanted to make a last stand.

In which New York city did delegates from seven colonies meet in 1754 to debate a plan of union?

Albany hosted the congress, whose scheme for one colonial government was rejected by every legislature it went to. Some of its ideas resurfaced decades later in the Articles of Confederation.

Which confederacy, including the Mohawk and Seneca, began the French and Indian War neutral before backing Britain?

The Iroquois stayed neutral at first so they could keep trading with both empires, and worried British colonial delegates gathered in 1754 partly to win them over.

Which French commander captured Fort William Henry in 1757 and was mortally wounded defending Quebec two years later?

Montcalm lived through the night and died around five the next morning. His capture of the fort had been stained when his native allies attacked the garrison after it surrendered.

Where outside Quebec's walls, on land named for an early settler, did a 1759 battle last only about an hour?

The Plains of Abraham are likely named for Abraham Martin, a river pilot known as the Scot who was granted land there. The battlefield became a city park in 1908.

Which Longfellow poem follows lovers torn apart by the British expulsions from Nova Scotia?

Evangeline was suggested to Longfellow by his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it became his most famous work during his lifetime.

Which ally of France was given Louisiana in a secret 1762 treaty as compensation for its losses to Britain?

Spain got the vast territory to make up for giving up Florida. The deal stayed secret even while France was negotiating its own peace with Britain a few months later.

Which Caribbean port, captured by a British fleet in 1762, was handed back at the peace in exchange for Florida?

Havana cost the British more men to fever than to fighting: 2,764 casualties in the siege, but 4,708 dead of disease by mid-October.

Which river became the western boundary of British North America under the peace that ended the French and Indian War?

The Mississippi split the continent on paper: Britain took every French claim east of it, while the country on the far bank passed to another crown, leaving France almost nothing on the mainland.

Which monarch inherited the British throne at 22 in 1760, midway through the French and Indian War?

King George III succeeded his grandfather, who died suddenly at 76, and went on to reign for 59 years.

Which kingdom under Frederick the Great was Britain's chief European ally during the French and Indian War?

Prussia fought France and its partners on the continent while British subsidies helped pay the bills. Frederick's army was large and well drilled but continually short of money.

Which French fortress on Cape Breton Island did the British capture in 1758 to open the sea route to Quebec?

Louisbourg had its walls systematically destroyed by British engineers after the siege. About a quarter of the fortress town was rebuilt from the 1960s as a historic site.

By what name is France's Fort Carillon, where 4,000 defenders beat off 16,000 British troops in 1758, known today?

Ticonderoga comes from a Mohawk word meaning the junction of two waterways. The British came back a year after their defeat and drove out a token French garrison.

Which New Hampshire frontiersman raised a ranger company for Britain and wrote 28 rules for fighting in the woods?

Robert Rogers is claimed as a founder by both the US Army Rangers and Canada's Queen's York Rangers. He grew up on the frontier and first served in a militia scouting company as a teenager.

Which British commander, namesake of a Massachusetts college town, accepted the surrender of French Canada in 1760?

Jeffery Amherst earned the top command in North America by taking a great French coastal fortress in 1758. Places from Nova Scotia to Virginia were later named in his honor.

On which lake did the French build Fort Carillon and Fort Saint-Frédéric to bar the British route north into Canada?

Champlain and the Hudson River together formed a travel route used long before Europeans arrived, linking the British-held Hudson Valley with the French-held St. Lawrence.

Which animal's pelts, prized in Europe for felt hats, were the backbone of New France's fur trade?

Beaver fur made superior felt, and the fashion for hats made from it turned a sideline of cod fishermen into the trade that drew French traders deep into the interior.

Which hands-off British policy toward colonial trade laws ended once the French and Indian War was won in 1763?

Salutary neglect only got its name in 1775, from Edmund Burke, after it was gone. With the war over, London began enforcing stricter rules and managing its colonies more directly.

Which southern nation fought beside the British early in the French and Indian War, then went to war with them in 1758?

The Cherokee had sent warriors on British campaigns against Fort Duquesne, but each side came to suspect the other of betrayal and frontier tensions grew into three years of open war.

Which damning word in the surrender George Washington signed in July 1754 did he later blame on a mistranslation?

Assassination was how the French text described the death of an officer killed in Washington's ambush weeks earlier. He could not read French and relied on a Dutch interpreter.

Which officer in the vanguard routed near Fort Duquesne in 1755 governed Massachusetts when the Revolution began?

Thomas Gage served alongside his future opponent George Washington in that defeat. Twenty years later his attempt to seize militia stores sparked the fighting at Lexington and Concord.

Which Virginia governor sent 21-year-old George Washington into the wilderness in 1753 to order the French to leave?

Robert Dinwiddie, a Glasgow-born merchant turned official, had money in the land company whose claims the new French forts threatened. He is credited with starting Washington's military career.

Which Mingo leader, called the Half-King by the British, led George Washington to the French camp ambushed in 1754?

Tanacharison is said in several disputed accounts to have killed the wounded French commander himself. He died of pneumonia that October and saw almost none of the war he helped to start.

Which Irish-born trader, fluent in Mohawk, won a baronetcy for his part in the 1755 victory at Lake George?

William Johnson came to New York to manage his uncle's estate in Mohawk country, where he learned the language and customs. On that 1755 march he renamed the lake in honor of his king.

Which Highland regiment lost heavily storming the French breastwork at Fort Carillon in 1758?

The Black Watch, then the 42nd Foot, kept attacking after the general tried to recall his troops and around 5 pm reached the base of the French wall. The few who managed to scale it were bayoneted.

Which Scottish general, so ill he was carried back in a litter, led the 1758 army that finally took Fort Duquesne?

John Forbes found only ruins, because the French blew up the fort as his army drew near. He had cut a new road across Pennsylvania to get there, and he died not long afterward.

Which French officer who fought in Canada later led France's first voyage around the world?

Bougainville arrived in 1756 as a captain of dragoons and aide to the French commander. A decade later he set out around the globe, and the expedition's botanist named a flowering vine after him.

Which American-born artist painted the dying British general at Quebec in modern uniform instead of classical costume?

Benjamin West broke the rules of history painting with his 1770 canvas, which also crowds the scene with figures who were never there. It was first shown at London's Royal Academy.

Which sugar island did Britain hand back to France in 1763 so that it could keep Canada?

Guadeloupe was judged by France to be worth more than Canada. Britain debated the choice at length before keeping Canada, which was costly to hold, for strategic reasons.

Which islands off Newfoundland, a French territory to this day, did Britain return to France in the 1763 peace?

St. Pierre and Miquelon gave French fishermen a foothold beside the cod banks, and the same peace granted them fishing rights along the Newfoundland coast.

Which winter gear, worn by British rangers routed near Lake George in March 1758, gave the battle its name?

Snowshoes carried about 180 rangers and regulars out to scout French positions. The force was nearly destroyed, and the French thought its captain dead after finding his abandoned jacket.