spring, we tell you, if you are angry, we are ready to receive you, and resolve to die here, before we will go to you. That you may know this to be our mind, we send you this string of black wampum.

"Brothers, the Ottawas, you hear what I say, tell that to your fathers, the French, for that is our mind, and we speak it from our hearts."

"The French colors are taken down," adds Bancroft, "and the Ottawas are dismissed to the French fort of Sandusky.”

On the 1st of March, Gist left on his return by the falls of Ohio, and through the Cumberland mountains, to North Carolina; but in April, 1751, the Miami chiefs were revisited by Croghan, with similar results, as narrated in his published journal.

The Shawanese, found by Gist at the mouth of the Scioto, were lately returned from their southern wanderings, but as the scattered portions of the tribe came to Ohio, they established themselves higher up the stream and on the waters of the Miami, building several towns.

Having thus generally examined the land upon the Ohio, in November Gist commenced a thorough survey of the tract south of the Ohio, and east of the Kanawha, granted to the Ohio Company, and spent the winter in that labor.

Early in 1752, a settlement of English traders was attempted on the Great Miami, at the mouth of Loramie's Creek. A party of French soldiers having heard of it, came to the Twigtwees or Miamis, and demanded the traders as intruders. The Indians refused-the trading house was destroyed-fourteen natives killed, and the traders were carried into Canada, and some of them, according to one account, burned alive. This fort or trading house, was

9) History of the United States, iv, 81.

called by the English writers Pickawillany. These traders were probably Pennsylvanians, for that State made a gift of condolence to the Twigtwees for those slain in their defence.10

On the 9th June, 1752, Messrs. Fry, Lomax and Patton, Virginia Commissioners, met the Indians at Logstown, fourteen miles below Pittsburg, on the right bank of the Ohio, which had long been a trading point, but had been abandoned by the Indians in 1750. Gist appeared as agent for the Ohio Company. The Commissioners urged a confirmation of the treaty of Lancaster. The Indians claimed that the treaty at Lancaster did not cede any lands west of the warrior's road, which ran at the foot of the Alleghany ridge. Two old chiefs asked Mr. Gist where the Indians' land lay— for the French claimed all the land on one side of the Ohio river, and the English on the other? Mr. Gist found the question difficult to answer. "However," said the savages, "as the French have already struck the Twigtwees, we shall be pleased to have your assistance and protection, and wish you would build a fort at once at the Fork of the Ohio." The Virginians asked much more, and at length, by bribing one of the Montours to exert his influence, induced the Indians to sign a deed, confirming the Lancaster treaty in its full extent, consenting to a settlement southeast of the Ohio, and guarantying that it should not be disturbed by them.

Hildreth says in 1752, "a band of the Miamis, or Twigtwees, as the English called them, settled at Sandusky,

10) This was in May, 1753. The present to the Miamis was two hundred pounds, besides a grant of six hundred pounds for general distribution among the tribes; but so great was the apprehension of the French, that the money probably was not sent, though Conrad Weiser was dispatched as a messenger in August to learn how things stood. Sparks' Franklin, iii, 219; N. A. Review, xlix, 83.

having refused to remove to Detroit, and persisting in trade with the English, their village was burned, the English traders were seized, and their merchandize confiscated."" This is probably an inaccurate version of the affair at Loramies or Pickawillany.

Early in 1753, Gist had established a plantation near the Youghiogany, west of Laurel Hill, consisting of eleven families, but his purpose to lay off a town and fort near the mouth of Chartier's creek, about two miles below the Fork, on the southeast side of the river, was relinquished.

In the summer and fall of 1753, the French landed at Erie, and planted their garrisons at Presq' Isle, Le Boeuf and Venango.

In November of the same year, George Washington, as the envoy of Virginia, had his unsatisfactory interview of remonstrance with the French commandant.

11) History of the United States, by Richard Hildreth, II, 436.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ASCENDANCY OF FRANCE UPON THE OHIO.

THE year 1754 may be indicated as the period when the favorable sentiments which Croghan and Gist had ascertained and cultivated among the Ohio Indians, began to change to hostility. It was a year of French activity and English folly. The colonies were alarmed, but inefficient and parsimonious; while the French labored zealously to conciliate the Indians by gifts and flatteries. The envoys of the latter did not alarm the savages by any demands-their only object was to conciliate good will. "During the autumn of 1754," says Perkins, "the pleasant Frenchmen were securing the west step by step; settling Vincennes, gallanting with the Delawares, and coquetting with the Iroquois, who still balanced between them and the English. The forests along the Ohio shed their leaves, and the prairies filled the sky with the smoke of their burning; and along the great rivers, and on the lakes, and amid the pathless woods of the west, no European was seen whose tongue spoke other language than that of France."

On the other hand, the infatuation of the colonists in seeking a grant of extensive tracts, occupied by Ohio Indians, from the Iroquois-the increasing numbers and influence of the Shawanese, who were the hereditary enemies of the English, and whose professions otherwise to Gist were probably hypocritical or mercenary-the failure of the colonies to

1) Perkins' Writings, ii, 280.

continue their donations to the western Indians, while French emissaries swarmed in every village, with gifts of trinkets and exchanges of ammunition and ardent spirits; and finally the evidences of French activity and strength afforded by the erection of forts at Sandusky, Vincennes, Miamis, Presque Isle, Du Quesne, &c.-all these circumstances conspired to alienate even the Delawares and Miamis from the English, and to make all the tribes either allies or acquiescent spectators of the French inroad. The main body of the Wyandots, and the Ottawas, without exception, became the active allies of the French.

Perhaps no one was more keenly sensitive to the approaching danger, and more sagacious in devising means to avert it, than Benjamin Franklin. He was the life and soul of the Albany Congress of 1754, which was summoned to promote the common defence and general welfare of the colonies, and his writings reflect vividly the weakness of the English counsels as contrasted with his clear perception of the exigencies of the crisis. No western annalist should omit a cordial recognition of Franklin's timely and valuable suggestions on the eve of that momentous struggle which terminated French dominion upon the St. Lawrence and the Ohio.

As is well known, the Albany Convention of 1754, resulted in a plan of union, drawn by the sagacious Franklin, which was deemed too loyal to the crown by the colonies, and too democratic by the Court of England, and therefore was universally rejected. There were present delegates from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Six Nations were also represented by Hendrick, the Mohawk Sachem, and certainly no one was more capable than an Iroquois chieftain to im