Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/92

 The houses and forts were burned to the ground, the cattle killed or burned in their stalls, and only one or two inhabitants escaped to tell the tale.

This war was a prelude to the French and Indian, or Seven Years' War, which, with its five campaigns, raged continuously through the war-worn valley of the grand northern waterways. Nearly a century and a half of struggle, first of the French discoverers and missionaries with the savages, and then of the Frenchmen and Iroquois, and later the French, the Indians, and the English, had proved the importance of this