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Erie and Ontario, was confirmed; and, in addition, a strip of sixty miles in width, extending from Oswego to Cuyahoga River at Cleveland, was "submitted and granted," by sachems of the three western tribes, to "their sovereign lord, King George," "to be protected and defended by his said majesty, for the use of the said three nations." The chiefs could give no new validity to the alleged treaty of 1701; they had no authority to make a cession of land; nor were they conscious of attempting it. If France had renounced its rights to Western New York, it had done so only by the treaty of Utrecht. Each new ground for an English claim, was a confession that the terms of that treaty were far from being explicit.

But France did not merely remonstrate against the attempt to curtail its limits and appropriate its provinces. Entering Lake Champlain, it established, in 1631, the fortress of the Crown. The garrison of the French was at first stationed on the eastern shore of the lake, but soon removed to the Point, where its batteries defended the approach to Canada by water, and gave security to Montreal.

The fort at Niagara had already been renewed. Among the public officers of the French, who gained influence over the red men by adapting themselves, with happy facility, to life in the wilderness, was the Indian agent Joncaire. For twenty years he had been successfully employed in negotiating with the Senecas, He was become, by adoption, one of their own citizens and sons, and to the culture of a Frenchman added the fluent eloquence of an Iroquois warrior. "I have no happiness," said he in council, "like that of living with my brothers;" and he asked leave to build himself a dwelling. "He is one of our own children," it was said, in reply; "he may build where he will." And, in 1721, he planted himself in the midst of a group of cabins, at Lewiston, on the site where La Salle had driven a rude palisade, and where Denonville had designed to lay the foundations of a settlement. In May of that year, a

party arrived at the spot, to take measures for a permanent establishment; among them were the son of the governor of New France, De Longeuil, from Montreal, and the admirable Charlevoix,' best of early writers on American history. It was then resolved to construct a fortress. The party were not insensible to the advantages of the country; they observed the rich soil of Western New York, its magnificent forests, its agreeable and fertile slopes, its mild climate. "A good fortress in this spot, with a reasonable settlement, will enable us" thus they reasoned" to dictate law to the Iroquois, and to exclude the English from the fur trade." And, in 1726, four years after Burnet had built the English trading-house at Oswego, the flag of France floated from Fort Niagara.

The fortress at Niagara gave a control over the commerce of the remote interior: if furs descended by the Ottawa, they went directly to Montreal; and if by way of the lakes, they passed over the portage at the falls. The boundless region in which they were gathered knew no jurisdiction but that of the French, whose trading-canoes were safe in all the waters, whose bark chapels rose on every shore, whose missions extended beyond Lake Superior. The implacable Foxes were chastised, and driven from their old abode on the borders of Green Bay. Except the English fortress at Oswego, the entire country watered by the St. Lawrence and its tributaries was possessed by France.

The same geographical view was applied by the French to their province of Louisiana. On the side of Spain, at the west and south, it was held to extend to the River Del Norte; and on the map published by the French Academy, the line passing from that river to the ridge that divides it from the Red River followed that ridge to the Rocky Mountains, and then descended to seek its termination in the Gulf of California. On the Gulf of Mexico, it is certain that France claimed to the Del Norte. At the north-west, where its collision would have been with the possessions of the com

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pany of Hudson's Bay, no treaty, no commission, appears to have fixed its limits.

On the east, the line as between Spain and France was the half way between the Spanish garrison at Pensacola and the fort which, in 1711, the French had established on the site of the present city of Mobile: with regard to England, Louisiana was held to embrace the whole valley of the Mississippi. Not a fountain bubbled on the west of the Alleghanies but was claimed as being within the French empire. Louisiana stretched to the head-springs of the Alleghany and the Monongahela, of the Kenawah and the Tennessee. "Half a

mile from the head of the southern branch of the Savannah River is Herbert's Spring, which flows to the Mississippi strangers, who drank of it, would say they had tasted of French waters."

The energy of the centralized government of New France enabled it to act with promptness; and, before the English government could direct its thoughts to the consequences, the French had secured their influence on the head-springs of the Ohio.

In 1698, a branch of the Shawnees, offended with the French, established themselves at Conestogo; in 1700, William Penn received them as a part of the people of Pennsylvania; and they scattered themselves along the upper branches of the Delaware and the Susquehannah. About the year 1724, the Delaware Indians, for the conveniency of game, migrated to the branches of the Ohio; and, in 1728, the Shawnees gradually followed them. They were soon met by Canadian traders; and Joncaire, the adopted citizen of the Seneca nation, found his way to them from Lake Erie. The wily emissary invited their chiefs to visit the governor at Montreal; and, in 1730, they descended with him to the settlement at that place. In the next year, more of them followed; and the warriors of the tribe put themselves wholly under the protection of Louis XV., having, at their whim, hoisted a white flag in their town. It was even rumored

that, in 1731, the French were building strong houses for them. The government of Canada annually sent them presents and messages of friendship, and deliberately pursued the design of estranging them from the English.

The dangerous extent of the French claims had for a long time attracted the attention of the colonies. To resist it was one of the earliest efforts of Spotswood, who hoped to extend the line of the Virginia settlements far enough to the west to interrupt the chain of communication between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. He caused, also, the passes in the mountains to be examined, desired to promote settlements beyond them, and sought to concentrate within his province bands of friendly Indians. Finding other measures unavailing, he planned the incorporation of a Virginia Indian company, which, from the emoluments of a monopoly of the traffic, should sustain forts in the western country. Disappointed by the determined opposition of the people to a privileged company, he was still earnest to resist the ercroachments of the French; although a wilderness of a thousand miles was a good guaranty against reciprocal collisions.

In the more northern province of Pennsylvania, the subject never slumbered. In 1719, it was earnestly pressed upon the attention of the lords of trade by the governor of that colony, who counseled the establishment of a fort on Lake Erie. But, after the migration of the Delawares and Shawnees, James Logan, the mild and estimable secretary of Pennsylvania, could not rest from remonstrances, demanding the attention of the proprietary to the ambitious designs of France, which extended "to the heads of all the tributaries of the Ohio."

Nor was this all. In the autumn of 1731, the subject was pressed upon the attention of Sir Robert Walpole. But "the grand minister and those about him were too solicitously concerned for their own standing to lay any thing to heart that was at so great a distance."

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Thus did England permit the French to establish their influence along the banks of the Alleghany to the Ohio. They had already quietly possessed themselves of the three other great avenues from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi: for the safe possession of the route by way of the Fox and Wisconsin, they had no opponents but in the Sacs and Foxes; that by way of Chicago had been safely pursued since the days of Marquette; and a report on Indian affairs, written by Logan, in 1718, proves that they very early made use of the Miami of the Lakes, where, after crossing the carrying-place of about three leagues, they passed the summit level, and floated down a shallow branch into the Wabash and the Ohio. Upon this line of communication the French established a post; and of the population of Vincennes, a large part trace their lineage to early emigrants from Canada. Yet it has not been possible to fix the date of its foundation with precision. It seems evident from records, that the hero, whose name it bears, was commander there before 1733. In 1735, it was certainly a well-established post. Thus began the commonwealth of Indiana. Travellers, as they passed from Quebec to Mobile or New Orleans, pitched their tents on the banks of the Wabash; till, at last, in 1742, a few families of resident herdsmen gained permission of the natives to pasture their beeves on the fertile fields above Blanche River.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

PROGRESS OF LOUISIANA.

THAT Louisiana extended to the head-spring of the Alleghany, and included the Laurel Ridge, the Great Meadows, and every brook that flowed to the Ohio, was,