NIAGARA, FORT, an American fortification, on the east side and at the mouth of Niagara river, opposite the Canadian village of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Ft. Niagara has a reservation of 288 ac., with fairly modern equipments, and several historic buildings of the time of French and of British possession, in one of which, the old magazine (1757), William Morgan was im prisoned in 1826. Fort Niagara was long, especially during the French occupation of Canada, one of the most important forts in North America, being the key to the Great Lakes, beyond Lake Ontario. La Salle wintered here in 1678-9, built his ship the "Griffen," and established a trading post and Fort Conti, destroyed not long afterwards. Fort Denonville, built in 1687 by Jacques Rene de Bresay, marquis de Denonville, governor-general of Canada, in his cruel campaign against the Iroquois, was abandoned in 1688, after the garrison, commanded by Pierre de Troyes (d. 1687), had been wiped out by an epidemic. The first Fort Niagara, to be so named, was built in 1725-1727 at the instance of Charles le Moyne, 1st baron of Longueil (1656-1729), and became a very important military and trading post ; the fort was rebuilt by Francois Pouchot (1712-1769) in 1756, but in July 1759, after a siege of about sixteen days, it was surrendered to Sir William Johnson by Pouchot. On the 14th of September 1763 a British force marching from Fort Schlosser (about 2 m. above
the Falls ; built 1761) to Fort Niagara was ambushed by Indians, who threw most of their captives into Devil's Hole, along the Niagara river. In July 1764 a treaty with the Indians was signed here, which detached some of them from Pontiac's conspiracy. Joseph Brant, John Butler and, in general, the Indians of north western New York favouring the British during the Revolutionary War, made Fort Niagara their headquarters, whence they ravaged the frontier, and many loyalists and Indians took refuge here at the time of Gen. Sullivan's expedition into western New York in 1779. The fort was not surrendered to the United States until Aug. 1796. In the War of 1812 it was bombarded by the guns of Ft. George immediately across the river, and on Dec. 19, 1813 was surprised and taken by assault—most of the garrison being killed or taken prisoners—by British troops under John Murray. After the close of the war, on March 27, 1815, Ft. Niagara was restored to the United States, and a garrison was kept there until 1826. The fort was regarrisoned about 1836, and has since remained a post of the regular army.
See F. H. Severance, An Old Frontier of France (1917); L. L. Babcock, War of 1812 on the Niagara Frontier (1927) ; Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society; F. Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851) and Montcalm and Wolfe (1884).