England never had any claim; and he requested the governor to forbid their future intrusion, and to advise them of their danger in trespassing on the territories of France.* The governor-general of Canada wrote, soon afterward, to the governors of New York and Pennsylvania, official letters, in which he informed those officers that, as the English inland traders had encroached on the French territories and privileges, by trading with Indians who were under the protection of France, he would cause such persons to be seized wherever they could be found, if they did not immediately desist from that illicit practice.†

These threatening letters did not, however, prevent the directors of the Ohio Company from prosecuting their designs. They employed an agent, Christopher Gist, "to explore the country, examine the quality of the lands, keep a journal of his adventures, draw as accurate a plan of the country as his observation would permit, and report the same to the board" of directors. In the course of the years 1750, 1751, and 1752, Mr. Gist, Dr. Walker, of Virginia, and other British subjects, explored the country, southwesterly, as far as the falls of the river Ohio, and northwardly several miles up the valleys of the Scioto and the Miami rivers. On the 13th of June, 1752, at a place called Loggstown, which was situated on the river Ohio, about eighteen miles below the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, Colonel Fry and two other commissioners on the part of Virginia, obtained a promise from some Indians, that they would not "molest any settlements that might be made on the southeast side of the Ohio." Some time in the course of the same year, certain agents of the Ohio Company established a trading-house in the country of the Twightwees or Miamis. This trading-house was built at a point which lies about forty-seven miles north of the town of Dayton, in the State of Ohio. While the English were thus making preparations to take possession of the lands on the borders of the Ohio, the French were adopting measures for the erecting of forts at Presq' Isle on lake Erie, at Le Boeuf on the western branch of French creek, and at Venango, on the Allegheny, at the mouth of French creek.

*Minutes of Council of Pennsylvania.

Smollett, ii, 125.

CHAPTER

VII.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH MOVEMENTS IN THE WEST.

In the year 1753, the government of England, foreseeing that its controversy with France, concerning the territories lying westward of the Allegheny mountains, could be settled only by the sword, earnestly urged the English colonies in America to form a union. Preparations were made, in Virginia, to raise a military force for the protection of the frontiers; the general assembly of that colony passed an act for the encouragement of settlers on the waters of the Mississippi; and, in 1753, Major GEORGE WASHINGTON was sent, by Governor Dinwiddie, to the west as the bearer of an official letter to the commandant of the French forces in this quarter. The letter, which required the French forces to withdraw from the dominions of Great Britain, was delivered, by WASHINGTON, to M. Le Guarduer de St. Pierre, who was the commandant of a post on the western branch of French creek. The French

officer, in reply to the message from the governor of Virginia, said that "it was not his province to specify the evidence and demonstrate the right of the king, his master, to the lands situated on the river Ohio, but he would transmit the letter to the Marquis du Quesne, and act according to the answer he should receive from that nobleman. In the mean time, he said, he did not think himself obliged to obey the summons of the English governor-that he commanded the fort by virtue of an order from his general, to which he was determined to conform with all the precision and resolution of a good officer."**

At this time the French had in their possession several forts or trading posts, scattered throughout the great valley of the Mississippi. Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Vincennes, the post of Arkansas, Natchitoches on Red river, and Natchez on the Mississippi, were all trading-posts of some importance, while New Orleans, Mobile, and Detroit, had become places of considera

* Smollett.

ble commerce. From these various points the influence of the French was disseminated among the Indians; and, while the Six Nations, and a branch of the Miamis, were almost the only Indian allies of the English, the French were connected by ties of interest and friendship with nearly all the tribes of the north and west.*

The Miami villages which stood at the head of the river Maumee, the Wea villages which were situated about Ouiatenon, on the Wabash river, and the Piankeshaw villages which stood on and about the site of Vincennes, were, it seems, regarded by the early French fur traders as suitable places for the establishing of trading-posts. It is probable, that, before the close of the year 1719, temporary trading-posts were erected at the sites of Fort Wayne, Ouiatenon, and Vincennes. These points had, it is believed, been often visited by traders before the year 1700.

The descendants of the early French settlers on the border of the river Wabash have preserved a traditional account of the making of a grant of a large tract of land, in the year 1742, by the Indians in that quarter, for the use of the French inhabitants of Post Vincennes. In the year 1794, and again in 1817, the French residents of Vincennes made some fruitless efforts to obtain, from the government of the United States, an acknowledgment of the validity of this old Indian grant. They stated, in a memorial which was laid before the senate of the United States, that their ancestors, natives of France, came at a very early period of the eighteenth century, under the authority and protection of France, to establish themselves in trade and commerce with the natives who possessed and inhabited the country on the river Wabash; that the Indians grared to them a large portion of territory to promote the

jects of their establishment; that, from the time of their settlement on the borders of the Wabash, for the greater part of the eighteenth century, they held quiet and undisturbed possession of their lands; and that their right was never questioned by any power or authority whatever. They said that among

*Frost's U. S., 170.

The Indian village at the site of Vincennes was called Chip-kaw-kay. The French post has been called, by various writers, Post Vincennes, Post Vincent, St. Vincent, Au Poste, etc.

the early settlers were found men of the first rank in the nation from which they emigrated; that, some being opulent, and many in comfortable circumstances, they were able not only to support themselves in the enjoyments which the blessings of a fine climate and abundant means placed within their reach, but also to provide employment and plentiful means of subsistence for "boatmen and others under their care." The memorial further stated, that the early French settlers, thus situated, were "contented and happy-never troubling, by their conduct or importunities, the various governments under which, by the vicissitudes of human events, they were placed."

In 1749, a church or mission was established, under the charge of the missionary Meurin, at the Piankeshaw village, which stood at the site of Post Vincennes. In the course of the next year, 1750, a small fort was built at that place; and another light fortification was erected, about the same time, at the mouth of the Wabash river. The white population of Vincennes was considerably increased in the course of the years 1754, 1755, and 1756, by the arrival of emigrants from Kaskaskia, Detroit, Canada, and New Orleans.

In the spring of the year 1754, Major Washington received orders, from the governor of Virginia, to proceed with a detachment of two hundred men to the point at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, and there to complete a fort which the Ohio Company had begun to build.* The attempt that was made to execute this order was defeated by the French. M. Contrecœur, a French officer, who had under his command a force consisting of about one thousand men, with eighteen pieces of cannon, passed down the Allegheny river from Venango, early in the spring of 1754, and

*Governor Dinwiddie issued a proclamation inviting the people to enlist in the service against the French, and, as an inducement, promised that the quantity of two hundred thousand acres of land should be laid out and divided among the adventurers, when the service should be at an end. One hundred thousand acres of land was to be laid out at the confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers; and the other one hundred thousand acres on the Ohio. On the appearance of this proclamation, Mr. Hamilton, the governor of Pennsylvania, wrote to Governor Dinwiddie reminding him that the proposed grants of lands, and the settlements which might be made thereon, should not be made use of to prejudice the right of the province of Pennsylvania to the territories about the upper waters of the river Ohio.

landed, on the 17th of April, with his French and Indian warriors, at the point which Washington had been ordered to fortify. After driving off a small detachment of Virginia militia under the command of Captain Trent, and a few workmen who were engaged at that place in the service of the Ohio Company, the French erected Fort du Quesne. This fort was completed in the month of April, 1754.

About the close of the year 1754, there were, in the country lying northward of the river Ohio, seventeen French posts, viz: two on French creek; du Quesne; Sandusky; Miamis, on the river Maumee; St. Joseph, on the St. Joseph of lake Michigan; Pontchartrain, at Detroit; Michilimacinac; Fox river, of Green bay; Crevecœur, and Rockfort or Fort St. Louis, on the river Illinois; Vincennes; mouth of the Ohio; mouth of the Wabash; Cahokia; Kaskaskia; and mouth of the Missouri.*

Between the years 1749 and 1754, the French and their Indian allies captured several English traders on the borders of the river Ohio, seized their peltries and other commodities to the value of twenty thousand pounds sterling,† and took possession of a blockhouse and truckhouse, which the agents of the Ohio Company had erected on the banks of the Ohio at Loggstown. The Twightwees or Miamis, in resentment of these injuries done to their English allies, captured three French traders, and sent them, as prisoners, to the English authorities of Pennsylvania. In the year 1752, the English trading-post on Loramie's creek was taken by the French and their Indian allies, who killed fourteen of the Twightwees in order to punish that tribe for their temporary alliance of friendship with the English. In November, 1752, Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent a friendly message to the Twightwees. In this message, which was written on a sheet of parchment about eight inches square, the governor said: "I received your belt of wampum and scalp by the bearer, Thomas Burney, and your speeches, with a beaver blanket, pipe, and belt of wampum, by Captain Trent and Mr. Montour. It has given

*Present state of North America, London ed., 1755.-N. A. Rev., xlix, 70.Annals of the West, 41.

Rider's History, xl, 71.-Smollett, ii, 152.

Situated on one of the head branches of the Great Miami-lat. north 40° 16' and lon. west 7° 15'.