Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/245

 of the French. In the progress of events, however, as they became acquainted with the regions beyond the mountains, and as they penetrated into those beautiful and fertile portions of the country on the banks of the Ohio and its tributaries, the English colonists not only learned the value and importance of the vast tracts of territory thus far unexplored, but also resolved to set up counter claims to the right over the soil. The French had established numerous military and trading posts from the frontiers of Canada even to the city of New Orleans, and in order to establish their claims to jurisdiction over the country, they had carved the lilies of France on the forest trees, or had sunk plates of metal in the ground for this purpose. The French claimed as discoverers, and in so far seemed to have a just ground for their pretensions : the English, on the other hand, had grants of territory extending in a direct line westward to the Pacific Ocean, and hence they claimed a right to all the thousands of miles intervening between the Atlantic coast and the almost illimitable West. Neither party, it is worth noticing, deemed it necessary to pay a moment's attention to the prior claims of the Indian occupants. From this position of things, it is evident, that actual collision between the contending parties could not much longer be deferred.

Shortly after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, a body of London merchants and Virginia land speculators, known as the Ohio Company, obtained in England a grant of six hundred thousand acres of land on the east bank of that river, with exclusive privileges of Indian traffic. This was naturally looked upon, by the French, as an encroachment, they claiming the whole region watered by the tributaries of the Mississippi. The English set up a counter claim, in the name of the Six Nations, recognized by the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle, as under British protection, whose empire, so it was said, reached over the whole eastern portion of the Mississippi Valley and the basin also of the lower lakes. As the principal object of the Ohio Company was to obtain a footing on the soil, they forthwith proceeded to establish the post of Redstone, on the Monongahela River—a step, of course, regarded as an aggression by the French, who built a new fort on the shores of Lake Erie, and were evidently preparing to drive out all opponents, and take possession of the disputed territory. In anticipation of this step, Dinwiddie, lieutenant-governor of Virginia, had already sent out a messenger in the guise of a trader, to ascertain the temper of the Indians, and to spy out the