WI: Guy Carleton recruits Native Americans

With many of his regulars sent to New York, Carleton was facing a scarcity by the time of the invasion. He had little success recruiting the provincials for a militia, so he only had the local Native Americans to turn to, who wanted to fight. The Crown also pressured him to do so but he refused out of fear that they would kill noncombatants.

So what would happen if he did choose to recruit them? How would this effect the invasion and would they really go around killing noncombatants? What effect would the latter have?
 

Redhand

Banned
The forces Carleton had at his disposal in 1775 were more than enough to defeat any invasion. The fact that it was as close as it was and that the Americans took Montreal and Trois-Rivieres reflects poorly on Carleton. If Carleton recruited Indians, he'd likely face discipline problems while cooped up in Quebec, but his defeat of the invasion might be more decisive.

And yes, more noncombatants would be killed. People may not like to hear it but the tribes Carleton could recruit from were particularly brutal and had shown themselves to be in the last war and later on in the Revolutionary War. Civilian casualties may be less if he goes for the Iriquois and more if he goes for the Huron or the Ojibwa.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The Jenny McCrea incident is probably an indicator...

With many of his regulars sent to New York, Carleton was facing a scarcity by the time of the invasion. He had little success recruiting the provincials for a militia, so he only had the local Native Americans to turn to, who wanted to fight. The Crown also pressured him to do so but he refused out of fear that they would kill noncombatants.

So what would happen if he did choose to recruit them? How would this effect the invasion and would they really go around killing noncombatants? What effect would the latter have?


The Jenny McCrea incident is probably an indicator...

"War to the knife" is, generally, a guarantee the combatant that suffers it first will retaliate; raising the black flag, essentially, just engenders tougher resistance.

The Waxhaws, the Alamo, or Goliad were not war-winning moves, as examples.

Best,
 
With many of his regulars sent to New York, Carleton was facing a scarcity by the time of the invasion. He had little success recruiting the provincials for a militia, so he only had the local Native Americans to turn to, who wanted to fight. The Crown also pressured him to do so but he refused out of fear that they would kill noncombatants.

So what would happen if he did choose to recruit them? How would this effect the invasion and would they really go around killing noncombatants? What effect would the latter have?

It was my understanding that he was successful at recruitment among the Quebecois. OTOH, some 500 Anglo-Canadians ran off to join the Americans.:( Apparently, the mostly Calvinist (if I can call them that) Yankees were filled with promises to the Anglo-Canadians of what would be done to the French-Canadians. Promising total primacy to English-speakers, and second-class status for the French-speakers.:eek::( This certainly wasn't policy per se from the Continental Congress or Washington, but there appears to have been anti-catholic scuttlebutt in the camps of the Americans, and that fact got out.

As to his failures to defend Montreal and Ft. St.John, it was impossible. He had neither the forces needed nor the assurance of timely re-inforcement should the Americans be reinforced-which in fact they were. Had Carleton been slugging it out up at Montreal (which was mostly defenseless after the siege of Fort St. John ended) and Arnold then took Quebec City from the rear, Carleton would have seen his army starved and destroyed, while he would have eventually been court-martialed.

As it was, he skillfully played a defensive campaign, always being certain that Quebec City (town, really) was never in serious danger of capture, so when the ice melted in the Spring overwhelming British reinforcements arrived and destroyed the American invaders.

After this, and all he did to aid the American Loyalists, small wonder that Carleton was the only British flag officer to emerge from the American Revolutionary War with his career significantly enhanced. And with the huge influx of English-speaking American Loyalist refugees, Anglo-Canadian opinions of Carleton did a complete 180 degree turn.:)
 
Carleton himself was almost captured at Fort Saint-Jean but managed to escape by disguising himself as a commoner to get past the Americans. Would Native American troops help prevent Fort Saint-Jean from falling?
 
It was my understanding that he was successful at recruitment among the Quebecois.

The Catholic clergy of the colony backed the British side in the war, but only a small number joined them, while some went to the American side (a famous example of the latter was Jean-François Hamtramck, who has a city named for him in Michigan). The vast majority of the population remained neutral.
 
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Carleton himself was almost captured at Fort Saint-Jean but managed to escape by disguising himself as a commoner to get past the Americans. Would Native American troops help prevent Fort Saint-Jean from falling?

Not really. Native troops were good for raiding, serving as scouts, skirmishing, sniping, ambushing, moving fast as ultra-light infantry in heavy forest, and the like. But as Old Stone Age tribesmen (this wasn't the Aztec Empire after all) you couldn't hope for them to stand up in linear combat actions and engage the enemy head on. After all, with such small populations, one battle could conceivably wipe out most every male head-of-household in a Native village. They really FELT the casualties in a way that White races with teeming urban populations would not.
 

Redhand

Banned
Not really. Native troops were good for raiding, serving as scouts, skirmishing, sniping, ambushing, moving fast as ultra-light infantry in heavy forest, and the like. But as Old Stone Age tribesmen (this wasn't the Aztec Empire after all) you couldn't hope for them to stand up in linear combat actions and engage the enemy head on. After all, with such small populations, one battle could conceivably wipe out most every male head-of-household in a Native village. They really FELT the casualties in a way that White races with teeming urban populations would not.

Native troops, like white troops, often differed in quality. The ones you're describing are the warrior elite that dominated most of the tribes of the Northeast, Southeast, and Canada. More often than not, when natives were forced to fight whites for a piece of territory they lost and lost badly due to inferior discipline and unit cohesion as well as poorer weapon quality. American militia was often able to match the warrior elites, even in forest battles and the real quality of native troops came in their intricate knowledge of the land, their ability to forage for supplies to support the rest of the army, and the terror they were capable of inflicting on settler populations.

It of course did not help that much of their able bodied male population died at first contact with white people from disease.
 
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