When
we think of colonial America, our mind generally casts images of the eastern
seaboard and the states that once comprised the original Thirteen English
colonies. But the lands we now call
the Point Beach State Forest
were
once part of the colony of New France.
By the 1740’s, the French were very active in the lucrative fur trade
of the Ohio River Valley and western Great Lakes region, and maintained
fortified trading posts at La Baye (Green Bay) and Michilimackinac at the
straits between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The English, at this time feared
that French claims west of the Appalachian Mountains would stand in the way of
their desire to expand colonial and fur trading interests westward to the
Mississippi. Tensions between the
two world powers eventually erupted into a full-fledged war by 1754, which would
determine which crown would be victorious in defending their claims. The English
colonies referred to this conflict as the French and Indian War, because they
were fighting against the French and their Indian allies. Initially the English attempted to fight the war using
traditional open field tactics used in Europe. Early French victories quickly
taught them that wilderness warfare would require different methods of fighting
and a different kind of army with soldiers who knew the land and life in the
wilderness. The Royal American Regiment was just such a military unit. The men
were recruited as British regular troops from largely Pennsylvania colonists and
were trained in tactics adapted to woodland warfare, fighting French Colonial
Militia and Indian warriors. With these changes, the tide of the war began to
turn in favor of the British. In 1759 the backbone of French resistance was
broken with the British victory in the battle of Quebec. By 1760 the Royal
Americans would accept the surrender of the French commandant at Michilimackinac,
and in the autumn of 1761, a small detachment of Royal Americans would establish
Fort Edward Augustus on the site of Fort La Baye at
Green Bay, ending the French and Indian War and establishing law under
the rule of the British crown. The ridges and swales of Point Beach State Forest
were never the site of any battles in that war, but they were, nonetheless, part
of the wider picture of wealth in fur resources over which two
powerful kings waged a war for domination.
Gorrell’s
Company of the 60th Royal
American Regiment