Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/51

 HISTORY OF OHIO.

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��dians were given goods and gold amounting to near a thousand pounds sterling. They were also promised the protection of the English. Had this latter provision been faithfully carried out, much blood would have been saved in after years. The treaties with the Six Nations were the real basis of the claims of Great Britain to the West ; claims that were only settled by war. The Shawanee In- dians, on the Ohio, were also becoming hostile to the English, and began to assume a threatening exterior. Peter Chartiez, a half-breed, residing in Philadelphia, escaped from the authorities, those by whom he was held for a violation of the laws, and joining the Shawanees, persuaded them to join the French. Soon after, in 1743 or 1744, he placed himself at the head of 400 of their war- riors, and lay in wait on the Alleghany River for the provincial traders. He captured two, exhib- ited to them a captain's commission from the French, and seized their goods, worth £1,600. The Indians, after this, emboldened by the aid given them by the French, became more and more hostile, and Weiser was again sent across the mount- ains in 1748, with presents to conciliate them and sound them on their feelings for the rival nations, and also to see what they thought of a settlement of the English to be made in the West. The visit of Conrad Weiser was successful, and Thomas Lee, with twelve other Virginians, among whom were Lawrence and Augustine Washington, brothers of George Washington, formed a company which they styled the Ohio Company, and, in 1748, peti- tioned the King for a grant beyond the mountains. The monarch approved the petition and the gov- ernment of Virginia was ordered to grant the Com- pany 500,000 acres within the bounds of that colony beyond the Alleghanies, 200,000 of which were to be located at once. This provision was to hold good for ten years, free of quit rent, provided the Company would settle 100 families within seven years, and build a fort sufficient for their protection. These terms the Company accepted, and sent at once to London for a cargo suitable for the Indian trade. This was the beginning of lilnglish Companies in the West; this one forming a prominent part in the history of Ohio, as will be seen hereafter. Others were also formed in Virginia, whose object was the colonization of the West. One of these, the Loyal Company, received, on the 12th of June, 1749, a grant of 800,000 acres, from the line of Canada on the north and west, and on the 29th of October, 1751, the Green- briar Company received a grant of 100,000 acres.

��To these encroachments, the French were by no means blind. They saw plainly enough that if the English gained a foothold in the West, they would inevitably endeavor to obtain the country, and one day the issue could only be decided by war. Vaudreuil, the French Governor, had long anxiously watched the coming struggle. In 1774, he wrote home representing the consequences that would surely come, should the English succeed in their plans. The towns of the French in Illinois were producing large amounts of bread-stuffs and provisions which they sent to New Orleans. These provinces were becoming valuable, and must not be allowed to come under control of a rival power. In 1749, Louis Celeron was sent by the Governor with a party of soldiers to plant leaden plates, suit- ably inscribed, along the Ohio at the mouths of the principal streams. Two of these plates were afterward exhumed. One was sent to the Mary- land Historical Society, and the inscription* deci- phered by De Witt Clinton. On these plates was clearly stated the claims of France, as will be seen from the translation below.

England's claim, briefly and clearly stated, read as follows: "That all lands, or countries west- ward from the Atlantic Ocean to the South Sea, between 48 and 34 degrees of North Latitude, were expressly included in the grant of King James the First, to divers of his subjects, so long- time since as the year 1606, and afterwards con- firmed in the year 1620; and under this grant, the colony of Virginia claims extent so far west as the South Sea, and the ancient colonies of Mass- achusetts Bay and Connecticut, were by their respective charters, made to extend to the said South Sea, so that not only the right to the sea coast, but to all the Inland countries from sea to sea, has at all times been asserted by the Crown of England."f

To make good their titles, both nations were now doing their utmost. Professedly at peace, it only needed a torch applied, as it were, to any point, to instantly precipitate hostilities. The French were

found at Venango: " In the year 1749, reign of Louis XV, King of France, we, Celeron, comniaMdanl of a detachment by Monsieur the Marquis of Gallisoniere, Commander-in-chief of New France, to establish tranquillity in certain Indian villages in these Cantons, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Toraclakoin, this twenty-ninth of Jnly, near the River Ohio, otherwise Beautiful River, as a monument of renewal of possession which we have taken of the said river, and all its tribirtaries; and of all the land on both sides, as far as the sources of said rivers; inasmuch as the preceding Kings of France have enjoyed it, and maintained it by their arms and by treaties; especially by those of Kyswick, Utrecht, and Aii La Chapelle."
 * The following is the translation of the inscription of the plate

i Colonial Records of PennsylTania.

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