Chapter 5

ENGLISH AND FRENCH CLAIMS TO THE OHIO VALLEY--WILD STATE OF THE COUNTRY-- PROJECTS OF SETTLEMENTS--THE OHIO COMPANY--ENLIGHTENED VIEWS OF LAWRENCE WASHINGTON--FRENCH RIVALRY--CELERON DE BIENVILLE--HIS SIGNS OF OCCUPATION-- HUGH CRAWFORD--GEORGE CROGHAN, A VETERAN TRADER, AND MONTOUR, HIS INTERPRETER--THEIR MISSION FROM PENNSYLVANIA TO THE OHIO TRIBES-- CHRISTOPHER GIST, THE PIONEER OF THE YADKIN--AGENT OF THE OHIO COMPANY-- HIS EXPEDITION TO THE FRONTIER--REPROBATE TRADERS AT LOGSTOWN--NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE INDIANS--SCENES IN THE OHIO COUNTRY--DIPLOMACY AT PIQUA--KEGS OF BRANDY AND ROLLS OF TOBACCO--GIST'S RETURN ACROSS KENTUCKY--A DESERTED HOME--FRENCH SCHEMES--CAPTAIN JONCAIRE, A DIPLOMAT OF THE WILDERNESS--HIS SPEECH AT LOGSTOWN--THE INDIANS' LAND--"WHERE?"

During the time of Washington's surveying campaigns among the mountains, a grand colonizing scheme had been set on foot, destined to enlist him in hardy enterprises, and in some degree to shape the course of his future fortunes.

The treaty of peace concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle, which had put an end to the general war of Europe, had left undefined the boundaries between the British and French possessions in America; a singular remissness, considering that they had long been a subject in dispute, and a cause of frequent conflicts in the colonies. Immense regions were still claimed by both nations, and each was now eager to forestall the other by getting possession of them, and strengthening its claim by occupancy.

The most desirable of these regions lay west of the Allegany Mountains, extending from the lakes to the Ohio, and embracing the valley of that river and its tributary streams. An immense territory, possessing a salubrious climate, fertile soil, fine hunting and fishing grounds, and facilities by lakes and rivers for a vast internal commerce.

The French claimed all this country quite to the Allegany mountains by the right of discovery. In 1673, Padre Marquette, with his companion, Joliet, of Quebec, both subjects of the crown of France, had passed down the Mississippi in a canoe quite to the Arkansas, thereby, according to an alleged maxim in the law of nations, establishing the right of their sovereign, not merely to the river so discovered and its adjacent lands, but to all the country drained by its tributary streams, of which the Ohio was one; a claim, the ramifications of which might be spread, like the meshes of a web, over half the continent.

To this illimitable claim the English opposed a right derived, at second hand, from a traditionary Indian conquest. A treaty, they said, had been made at Lancaster, in 1744, between commissioners from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and the Iroquois, or Six Nations, whereby the latter, for four hundred pounds, gave up all right and title to the land west of the Allegany Mountains, even to the Mississippi, which land, according to their traditions, had been conquered