1759-1796 Guardhouse of the Great Lakes
The capture of Fort Niagara severed French communications with the West. The first winter was a difficult one for the new British garrison, however. French troops and their native allies still held Detroit and the other western posts and guarded the St. Lawrence River to the east. The only contact with friendly forces was by a tenuous route along Lake Ontario to Oswego and thence down the Mohawk River to Albany. To make matters worse, the British garrison was ravaged by a terrible epidemic of scurvy.
The capitulation of New France in September 1760 ended Fort Niagara's isolation. The British immediately turned their attention to the West. Expeditions left Niagara in 1760 and 1761 to occupy posts scattered as far west as Wisconsin. Fort Niagara became a meeting place between the British and the Indians of the Great Lakes. In 1761 Sir William Johnson held councils at Niagara with many tribes, former allies of the French, in an effort to cement the new relationship. The post also provided a point of contact between the British and the Indians of the Lower Great Lakes, particularly the powerful Seneca of Western New York and the Mississauga who lived in what is today southern Ontario. Fort Niagara thus retained its usefulness to frontier diplomacy.
Niagara immediately became the guardian of Britain's communications with West and provided a convenient storehouse for military supplies and trade goods consigned to the other Great Lakes forts. British merchants established commercial warehouses in the shadow of Niagara's fortifications. The army improved the portage and new stockade was erected above Niagara Falls in 1760 to replace Fort Little Niagara which had been burned by its French garrison in 1759. Little Niagara was renamed Fort Schlosser in 1763. Another outpost was built at the Lower Landing (modern Lewiston, NY). These posts facilitated the movement of goods bound for Detroit, Michilimackinac and other western outposts.
The Pontiac Uprising
While British soldiers and traders quickly displaced their French predecessors, the Indians proved difficult to pacify. The Great Lakes tribes accepted British victory and waited. They soon found themselves badly treated by both the arny and the traders. Rebellion erupted in 1763 in a conflict commonly known as the "Pontiac Uprising".
Fort Niagara was not at first affected by the rebellion as the Indians' fury fell on the western forts. Eight of the tiny posts were captured by early summer. Only Detroit and Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) were able to resist. Fort Niagara, guardian of the communication between Detroit and British colonies, was crucial for supplying the beleaguered post. It was also the place where British forces gathered for a counterattack.
While the safety of the Niagara Portage was particularly important, few troops were available to protect it. The vulnerability of this communication was made terribly evident on September 14, 1763. As a number of empty wagons were returning to the Lower Landing from Fort Schlosser, they neared the spot on the rim of the Niagara Gorge known as "the Devil's Hole." Suddenly, the convey was attacked by a large body of Seneca warriors. The drivers, guards and draft animals were killed. Wagons and harness were thrown into the gorge in a clever attempt to disrupt supplies.
Gunfire from the Seneca attack was heard at the Lower Landing, about two miles away, where two companies of the 80th Regiment of Foot were encamped. The soldiers rushed to the aid of the wagons but fell into an ambush which cost eighty British lives. Although Fort Niagara was not directly threatened, the disaster combined with autumn weather to prevent the suppression of the uprising during 1763. Winter found the rebellious tribes unsubdued.
Bradstreet's Expedition
During the winter, the British laid plans to crush the rebellion. Fort Niagara would be the staging point for a new expedition to be led by Colonel John Bradstreet. Throughout the spring and summer of 1764, British and provincial regiments gathered at Niagara. The troops improved the defenses of the portage by building redoubts along the road from the Lower Landing to Fort Schlosser. A new post, named Fort Erie, was established on the shore of its namesake. Once this work had been completed, early in August, Bradstreet led his expedition across Lake Erie, relieved Detroit and held councils with the Indians. By the end of 1764, British troops were again in control of most of the Great Lakes posts.
Fort Niagara played a further role in quelling the Pontiac Uprising. As Bradstreet prepared to advance to Detroit, Niagara hosted a huge council between Sir William Johnson and the Great Lakes Indians. Johnson obtained promises of peace and good behavior from most of the tribes. From the Seneca, however, he also exacted territorial concessions. As punishment for their role in the Devil's Hole ambush, they were forced to cede a one mile-wide strip of land the length of the east side of the Niagara River. Johnson thus secured Britain's route to the heart of America.
Between the Wars
By 1765 the Great Lakes were once again peacefully under British control. Although memories of the uprising would linger and influence future dealings with the Indians, British policies became more sensitive to their needs. Greater attention was paid to keeping the tribes contented, and traders were further regulated in an effort to prevent abuses. Fort Niagara assumed an important role in both tasks. Soldiers of the garrison often served as policemen, and officers met daily with the many Indians who visited the post.
Fort Niagara became quiet frontier garrison. A treaty of peace between Britain and France in 1763 ended their worldwide hostilities and any threat to Fort Niagara from European army. The number of troops on the Great Lakes was accordingly reduced, and Fort Niagara was seldom occupied by more than 150 men during the later 1760s. The troops guarded the portage, moved supplies and policed the traders.
Although Fort Niagara held the largest garrison on the Great Lakes, it still lacked the manpower to properly maintain rambling fortifications designed for a garrison of six hundred to one thousand soldiers. The earthworks were difficult to preserve and, with the end of any threat from the French, they were allowed to crumble. The defenses were bolstered in 1768 by a stockade around the "Castle" to provide a citadel against Indian attack. Occasional repairs were made to the fort, but the construction of two stone redoubts in 1770-71 was the only major addition of this period. Even these substanial buildings were intended to do little more than repel a determined Indian assault.
The American Revolution
The eve of the American Revolution found Fort Niagara again incapable of resisting a regular military attack. The fortifications, once so strong, were little more than grass-covered mounds outlined by sagging wooden pickets. When the outbreak of hostilities found British forces in Canada in the position of their former French rivals, it became clear that Fort Niagara would have to be re-fortified. During the next eight years, the British would expend much effort and expense to protect their link with the West.
The war began badly for Fort Niagara's garrison. American forces invaded Canada during 1775, captured Montreal and cut off the Great Lakes posts. Niagara's isolation was not ended until the summer of 1776 when the Rebels were expelled from Canada. From the outbreak of the war, however, Fort Niagara served as the chief contact point with the Iroquois and the Indians of the Upper Lakes as British representitives sought to persuade them to take up arms against King George's subjects. Niagara's position made it Britain's most important post for marshalling the support of the Six Nations.
Protection of the portage for military and commercial purposes remained the chief duty of the Niagara garrison. The Canadian fur trade continued, despite the inconveniences of war, and the traders, although restricted in their activities, maintained a steady traffic across the portage. Not suprisingly, they were highly vocal in their advocacy of a strong defense of the Great Lakes.
Fort Niagara also assumed important new roles during the American Revolution. It became a haven for loyalists fleeing from the frontier settlements of New York and Pennsylvania By 1777, able-bodied male refugees were being recruited into Loyalist military units. A corps of rangers was formed at Niagara under the leadership of John Butler during the winter of 1777-78. "Butler's Ranger's", accompanied by Iroquois warriors and a few regular troops from Fort Niagara, were soon raiding their former neighbors, a practice with overtones of civil war.
So devastating were the raids from Fort Niagara, particularly those in 1778 against the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania and Cherry Valley, New York, that the United States government took military action. The farms of New York and Pennsylvania were threatened, and, since they produced food essential for American armies, drastic steps were deemed necessary. In 1779 George Washington dispatched an army under General John Sullivan to chastise the Iroquios. Sullivan's troops brushed aside feeble resistance and marched through the Iroquios country that summer, burning crops and villages. The Americans halted at the Genesee River, only eighty miles from Fort Niagara. Sullivan might have attacked the British post, but fall was approaching, and he lacked the provisions and artillery needed to conduct a siege. The Americans retired to Pennsylvania.
The Iroquios incurred few battle casualties during Sullivan's destructive march. Many villages and crops were destroyed, however, and the Six Nations faced starvation during the winter of 1779-80. They flocked to Fort Niagara for supplies, aggravating an already serious shortage of provisions. The British tried to feed the Indians who camped before the walls or to disperse as many as possible to undamaged villages where food could be obtained, but many starved during the winter. The Iroquios were not forced out of the war, however, and their attacks continued with greater ferocity. The population displacement caused by Sullivan's campaign dramatically increased the number of Iroquois living near the Niagara River, and several new villages, including one near the modern Tuscarora Reserve in Lewiston, were established during the later years of the American Revolution.
Sullivan's expedition marked the closest approach of United States troops to Fort Niagara during the War for Independence. This threat stimulated much labor on the fortifications. The earthworks were repaired and strengthened to resist assault. The final years of the American Revolution saw continued raiding from Fort Niagara, and the garrison also supported campaigns being waged in the West. Troops from Fort Niagara were called upon to respond to American threats from both New York and the Ohio Valley. Their efforts helped keep the Great Lakes under British control throughout the conflict.
The Hold-Over Period
The Treaty of Paris ended hostilities in 1783. Despite their soldiers' successful defense of the Great Lakes, however, British negotiators relinquished a large part of the region when they agreed to a boundary line between the United States and Canada which essentially followed the modern border. Fort Niagara fell within United States territory. British officers, Loyalists, the Indian raders, and, most of all, the Iroquois were aghast.
British troops did not immediately withdraw frm Fort Niagara. By the fall of 1784 disputes had arisen between the two powers over the fulfillment of treaty obligations. The British decided to retain the Great Lakes posts including Carleton Island, Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac. This "holdover" period would last another twelve years.
This decision allowed the British to securely hold the Niagara while settlements of refugee Loyalists were established on the west bank of the river. Their farms and villages were soon flourishing while the American side remained an undeveloped wilderness. Many people of the Six Nations also opted to leave their ancestral home in New York and resettle on Canadan lands offered by the British. Fort Niagara as maintained, although its commandants realized that the post would be ceded to the United States.
Resolution of the dispute over the Great Lakes forts finally came in the early 1790s after Britain became involved in war with revolutionary France. The time was ripe for re-negotiation of the status of these valuable posts. The resulting Jay Treaty of 1794 stipulated that the British were indeed to give up the forts. United States troops peacefully received them from their British garrisons during the sumer of 1796. Fort Niagara was occupied on August 10. The British retired to the wet side of the river and began contruction of a new post, Fort George, which would be completed by 1799.