ENGLISH DISCOVERIES AND CLAIMS.

We have now sketched the progress of French discovery in the valley of the Mississippi. The first travellers reached that river in 1673, and when the new year of 1750 broke upon the great wilderness of the West, all was still wild except those little spots upon the prairies of Illinois, and among the marshes of Louisiana, which we have already named. Perhaps we ought also to except Vincennes, or St. Vincent's, on the Wabash, as there is cause to believe that place was settled as early as 1735, at least. But the evidence in relation to this matter is of a kind which we think worth stating, not from the importance of the matter itself, but to illustrate the difficulty which besets an inquirer into certain points of our early western history. Volney, by conjecture, fixes the settlement of Vincennes about 1735:† Bishop Brute of Indiana, speaks of a missionary station there in 1700, and adds, "The friendly tribes and traders called to Canada for protection, and then M. de Vincennes came with a detachment, I think, of Carignan, and was killed in. 1735;" Mr. Bancroft says a military establishment was formed there in 1716, and in 1742, a settlement of herdsmen took place. Judge Law regards the post as dating back to 1710 or 1711, supposing it to be the same with the Ohio settlement noticed on page 30, and quotes also an Act of Sale, existing at Kaskaskia, (if we understand him aright,) which, in in January, 1735, speaks of M. de Vinsenne, as "Commandant au Poste de Ouabache.§" Again, in a petition of the old inhabitants at Vincennes, dated in November, 1793, we find the settlement spoken of as having been made before 1742; and such is the general voice of tradition. On the other hand, Charlevoix, who records the death of Vincennes, which took place among the

Also called Post St. Vincent's and Au Poste or O'Post.

+ Volney's View, p. 336.

+ Butler's Kentucky, Introduction, xix., note.

History United States, iii. 346.

Law's Address, 1839, p. 21.

American State Papers, xvi. 32.

1750.

Founding of Vincennes.

41

Chickasaws, (see ante p. 37,) in 1736, makes no mention of any post on the Wabash, or any missionary station there; neither does he mark any upon his map, although he gives even the British forts upon the Tennessee and elsewhere. Vivier, a part of whose letters we have already quoted, says in 1750 nothing of any mission on the Wabash, although writing in respect to western missions, and speaks of the necessity of a fort upon the "Ouabache;" by this, it is true, he meant doubtless the Ohio, but how natural to refer to the post at Vincennes, if one existed. In a volume of "Memoires" on Louisiana, compiled from the minutes of M. Dumont and published in Paris, in 1753, but probably prepared in 1749,* though we have an account of the Wabash or St. Jerome, its rise and course, and the use made of it by the traders, not a word is found touching any fort, settlement or station on it. Vaudreuil, when Governor of Louisiana, in 1751 mentions even then no post on the Wabash, although he speaks of the need of a post on the Ohio, near to where Fort Massac† or Massacre was built afterwards, and names Fort Miami, on the Maumee.‡ The records of Vincennes, Judge Law says, show no mission earlier than 1749. Still farther, in "The Present State of North America," a pamphlet published in London, in 1755, with which is a map of the French posts in the West, we have it stated that in 1750 a fort was founded at Vincennes, and that in 1754, three hundred families were sent to settle about it.§

Memoires Historiques sur la Louisiane, &c.

+ Thirty-five or forty miles from the Mississippi. It received its name, as the common tale goes, from the slaughter of its garrison by the Indians, who decoyed the French soldiers to the river side, by covering themselves with bear skins. The story may be found in Hall's Sketches of the West, i. 181. Nicolet, however, in his Report to Congress, (p. 79,) says it was not named Massac or Massacre, but Marsiac: while the writer of Bouquet's Expedition in 1764, calls it Massiac or Assumption, built in 1757. (Appendix ii. p. 64.) This last is probably the best authority.

Quoted by Pownall, in his Memorial on Service in North America, drawn up in 1756. It forms an appendix to his " Administration of the Colonies," 4th edition, London, 1768. There is also an English map published in 1747, by Kitchen, purposely to show the French settlements, which does not name Vincennes. See also Sparks' Franklin, iii. 285. | Address, p. 17.

p. 65. The French forts mentioned in this work, (Present State, &c.) as north of the Ohio, were,

Two on French Creek, (Riviere des Bœufs.)

Du Quesne.

Sandusky.

Miamis on Maumee.

St. Joseph's on the St. Joseph's of Lake Michigan.

Pontchartrain at Detroit.

(over)

42

Spotswood crosses the Allegheny.

1710.

Such is the state of proof relative to Vincennes: one thing, however, seems certain, which is, that the Wabash was very early frequented. Hennepin, in 1663-4, had heard of the "Hohio"; the route from the lakes to the Mississippi, by the Wabash, was explored in 1676;* and in Hennepin's volume of 1698, is a journal, said to be that sent by La Salle to Count Frontenac, in 1682 or 3, which mentions the route by the Maumeef and Wabash, as the most direct to the great western river.

In 1749, therefore, when the English first began to move seriously about sending men into the West, there were only the Illinois and the lower country settlements, and perhaps Vincennes; the present States of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, being still substantially in the possession of the Indians. From this, however, it must not be inferred that the English colonists were ignorant of, or indifferent to, the capacities of the West, or that the movements of the French were unobserved up to the middle of the eighteenth century. Governor Spotswood of Virginia, as early as 1710, had commenced movements, the object of which was to secure the country beyond the Alleghenies to the English crown. He caused the mountain passes to be examined, and with much pomp and a great retinue, undertook the discovery of the regions on their western side. Then it was that he founded "The Tramontine Order," giving to each of those who accompanied him a golden horse-shoe, in commemoration of their toilsome mountain march, upon which they were forced to use horse-shoes, which were seldom needed in the soft soil of the eastern vallies. In Pennsylvania, also, Governor Keith and James Logan, Secretary of the Province, from 1719 to 1731 represented to the powers in Eng

At the mouth of the Scioto, (called in the work just named, the "Sikoder") the French had a post during the war of 1756; see Rogers's Journal, London, 1765; Post's Journal in Proud's Pennsylvania, vol. ii. App. p. 117. See also Holmes' Annals, ii. 71, 72. * Histoire General des Voyages, xiv. 758.

Until this century, usually called the Miami, and sometimes the Tawa or Ottawa River.

1664.

Colonel Wood's Travels.

43

land, the necessity of taking steps to secure the western lands.* Nothing, however, was done by the government of the mother country, except to take certain diplomatic steps to secure the claim of Britain to those distant and unexplored wildernesses.

England, from the outset, claimed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on the ground that the discovery and possession of the seacoast was a discovery and possession of the country; and, as is well known, her grants to Virginia, Connecticut, and other colonies were through to the South Sea. It was not upon this, however, that Great Britain relied in her contest with France; she had other grounds, namely, actual discovery, and purchase or title of some kind from the Indian owners.

Her claim on the score of actual discovery was poorly supported however, and little insisted on.

"King Charles the First, in the fifth year of his reign (1630,) granted unto Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general, a patent of all that part of America," which lies between thirty-one and thirty-six degrees north latitude, from sea to sea. Eight years afterwards, Sir Robert conveyed this very handsome property to Lord Maltravers, who was soon, by his father's death, Earl of Arundel. From him, by we know not what course of conveyance, this grant, which formed the Province of Carolana (not Carolina,) came into the hands of Dr. Daniel Coxe, who was, in the opinion of the attorney-general of England, true owner of that Province in the year of D'Iberville's discovery, 1699.†

In support of the English claim, thus originating, we are told by Dr. Coxe, that, from the year 1654 to the year 1664, one "Colonel Wood in Virginia, inhabiting at the Falls of James river, above a hundred miles west of Chesapeake Bay, discovered at several times, several branches of the great rivers, Ohio and Meschasebe." Nay, the Doctor affirms, that he had himself possessed, in past days, the Journal of a Mr. Needham, who was in the Colonel's employ, which Journal, he adds, "is now in the hands of," &c. The Doctor also states, that about the year 1676, he had in his keeping a Journal, written by some one who had gone from the mouth of the Mississippi, up as far as the Yellow or Muddy river, otherwise called Missouri; and he says, this

Bancroft, iii. 354; Jones's Present State of Virginia, (1724,) 14; Universal History, xl. 192.

+ A Description of the English Province of Carolana, &c., by Daniel Coxe, Esquire. London 1722. pp. 113 et seq.

44

English Discoveries.

1699.

Journal, in almost every particular, was confirmed by the late travels. And still further, Dr. Coxe assures us, that, in 1678, "a considerable number of persons went from New England upon. discovery, and proceeded so far as New Mexico, one hundred and fifty leagues beyond the river Meschasebe, and, at their return, rendered an account to the government at Boston;" for the truth of all which he calls Governor Dudley, who was still living, as witness. Nor had he been idle himself; "apprehending that the planting of this country would be highly beneficial," he tried to reach it first from Carolina, then from "Pensilvania, by the Susquehannah river," and "many of his people travelled to New Mexico." He had also made discoveries through the great river Ochequiton, or, as we call it, Alabama; and "more to the northwest, beyond the river Meschasebe," had found "a very great sea of fresh water, several thousand miles in circumference," whence a river ran into the South Sea, about the latitude of fortyfour degrees, and "through this," he adds, "we are assured the English have since entered that great lake."

These various statements are, it must be owned, somewhat startling; but, leaving them undisturbed for the present, we can see clearly the bearing of what follows, namely, that the Doctor, in 1698, fitted out two vessels, well armed and manned, one of which (when, we hear not) entered the Mississippi and ascended it above one hundred miles, and then returned,-wherefore, is not specially stated. This was, doubtless, the corvette which M. Bienville turned out of what he considered French domains; as Charlevoix tells us, that the vessel which Bienville met, was one of two which left England in 1698, armed with thirty-six guns, the same number which Daniel Coxe, the Doctor's son, tells us, were borne by his father's vessels. The English, having thus found their way to the Meschasebe, wished to prosecute the matter, and it was proposed to make there a settlement of the French Huguenots, who had fled to Carolina; but the death of Lord Lonsdale, the chief forwarder of the scheme, put an end to that plan, and we do not learn from Coxe, whose work appeared in 1722, that any further attempts were made by England, whose wars and woes nearer home kept her fully employed.

And now, what are we to say to those bold statements by Coxe; statements contained in his memorial to the King in 1699, and such as could hardly, one would think, be tales a la Hontan? Colonel Wood's adventures are recorded by no other writer, só