The French and Indian War (1754–1763) is the name for the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War.
The war was primarily fought over contested claims between the British and French over the land of the Ohio Country. The outcome of the war was one of the most significant developments in a century of Anglo-French conflict, with Britain gaining control over Canada and Florida.
American Indian tribes supporting France included the Wabanaki Confederacy, Algonquin, Caughnawaga Mohawk, Lenape, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Shawnee, and Wyandot.
American Indian tribes supporting the British included the Iroquois Confederacy, Catawba, and the Cherokee prior to 1758.
Treaty of Paris: A peace agreement signed in 1763 that ended the Seven Years’ War, or the French and Indian War; also the name for a peace agreement signed in 1783 that ended the American Revolutionary War and recognized the United States’ independence.
Seven Years’ War: A global military war between 1756 and 1763 involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines.
New France: France’s former possessions and colonies in North America, including Quebec, Acadia, and Louisiana, before 1763.
The war began in May 1754 because of these competing claims between Britain and France. Twenty-two-year-old George Washington, a Virginian surveyor whose family helped to found the Ohio Company, gave the command to fire on French soldiers near present-day Uniontown, Pennsylvania. This incident on the Pennsylvania frontier proved to be a decisive event that led to imperial war. For the next decade, fighting took place along the frontier of New France and British America from Virginia to Maine. The war also spread to Europe as France and Britain looked to gain supremacy in the Atlantic World.
After initially remaining neutral, the Ohio Country Indians and most of the northern tribes largely sided with the French, who were their primary trading partner and supplier of arms. The British fared poorly in the first years of the war. In 1754, the French and their American Indian native allies forced Washington to surrender at Fort Necessity, a hastily built fort constructed after Washington’s attack on the French. In 1755, Britain dispatched General Edward Braddock to the colonies to take Fort Duquesne. The French, aided by the Potawotomis, Ottawas, Shawnees, and Delawares, ambushed the 1,500 British soldiers and Virginia militia who marched to the fort. The attack sent panic through the British force, and hundreds of British soldiers and militiamen died, including General Braddock. The campaign of 1755 proved to be a disaster for the British. In fact, the only British victory that year was the capture of Nova Scotia. In 1756 and 1757, Britain suffered further defeats with the fall of Fort Oswego and Fort William Henry.
The war began to turn in favor of the British in 1758, due in large part to the efforts of William Pitt, a very popular member of Parliament. Pitt pledged huge sums of money and resources to defeating the hated Catholic French, and Great Britain spent part of the money on bounties paid to new young recruits in the colonies, helping invigorate the British forces. In 1758, the Iroquois, Delaware, and Shawnee signed the Treaty of Easton, aligning themselves with the British in return for some contested land around Pennsylvania and Virginia. Between 1758 and 1760, the British military successfully penetrated the heartland of New France, with Quebec falling in 1759 and Montreal finally falling in September 1760. The French empire in North America began to crumble.
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