Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/97

 Its current runs about three miles an hour except in floods, when it is sometimes impelled at the rate of six or seven. Its banks were uninhabited except by the aborigines, and a line of distant posts fortified by the French, to preserve the communication by this route between Canada and Louisiana, previous to the conquest of the former country by the British in 1759; also to prevent the extension of the Anglo American settlements to the westward of this river; and to command the friendship and trade of the Indians; and to prevent as much as possible the English from participating with them in those advantages. Within the last twenty years, the Indians disliking the extension of the American settlements into their neighbourhood, have abandoned this whole tract of country, and have retired to Sandusky, about three hundred miles further west, with the exception of a tribe under a celebrated chief called the Cornplanter, which has a town and settlement near the Allegheny about 120 miles from Pittsburgh,[44] and which is gradually falling into an agricultural life.[45]*