One of the most influential factors in determining the ultimate triumph of England over France in North America, was the Indian confederacy known as the Six Nations, to which reference has already been made.  Both English and French early recognized the importance of conciliating these haughty warriors.  In this the former were the more successful.  The French, though usually more tactful than the English in dealing with the aborigines, on several occasions made the mistake of provoking the people of the "Long House" - a mistake that all subsequent diplomacy, united to the indefatigable exertions of the missionaries, was unable wholly to rectify.  While the Jesuits were giving thanks to God for having at last affected the conversion of these formidable savages, the Iroquois attacked and almost utterly destroyed the friendly Hurons west of the Ottawa.  Their incessant forays kept the frontier settlements in a miser able state of uncertainty and suspense that operated as a powerful check to the execution of French plans for obtaining a solid foothold it the West.  It was owing chiefly to the Iroquois that Lake Erie was the last of the Great Lakes, and the territory now known as Ohio, the very last portion of the Northwest, to be discovered and explored.   After the destruction of the Eries this region was covered by roving bands of Iroquois, and the main body of French immigration was turned aside from the lower lakes to the Ottawa and the Nipissing.  Could France have gained the friendship of the Six Nations, her traders, settlers, and garrisons would have filled the West, "and cut up the virgin wilderness into fiefs, while as yet the colonies of England were but a weak and broken line along the shore of the Atlantic."
     The feudal nature of the then existing French scheme of government - a government of officers, not of laws - is clearly shown in a letter of instruction that Colbert wrote to Frontenac in 1672.
     "It is well for you to observe that you are always to follow in the government of Canada the forms in use here, and since our kings have long regarded it as good for the service not to convoke the states of the kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish insensibly this ancient usage, you on your part should very rarely, or, to speak more correctly, never give a corporate form to the inhabitants of Canada.  You should even, as the colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the syndic who presents

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petitions in the name of the inhabitants; for it is well that each should speak for himself and none for all."
     "The Iroquois," says Parkman, "retarded the growth of absolutism until liberty was equal to the final struggle, and they influence our national history to this day, since populations formed in the ideas and habits of a feudal monarchy, and controlled by a hierarchy profoundly hostile to freedom of thought would have remained a hindrance and a stumbling block in the way of that majestic experiment of which America is the field."

INDIAN CESSIONS.

     No sooner had New York been wrested from the Dutch than the English settlers who poured into that province to reap the benefits of the fur trade, which had been established on the Upper Hudson and the Mohawk by their predecessors, set themselves to cultivate good feeling and commercial relations with the people of the six tribes, and they succeeded in winning from them many valuable concessions, "some of which they did, and some of which they did not understand."  Sometimes the Iroquois permitted New York traders to pass through their country to the lakes.  Once on the shore of Lake Erie a few days' paddling brought the traders to the extensive beaver grounds of the lower Michigan peninsula.
     At a later date it was claimed by the English that a treaty had been made by them with the Iroquois, in 1701, whereby the confederated tribes had ceded to the English king all the lands to which they laid claim north of the Ohio, and reaching to the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, but the genuineness of this deed has been doubted.  Other extensive concessions, however, were actually made by them to the English.  In 1684, the Iroquois at Albany placed themselves under the protection of King Charles and the Duke of York; in 1726 they conveyed all their lands in trust to England, to be protected and defended by his majesty to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs."
     A more important treaty was that made at Lancaster, Pa., in 1744, when the deputies of the Iroquois confirmed to Maryland the lands within that province, and made to Virginia "a deed that covered the West as effectually as the Virginian interpretation of the charter of 1609.  Says Hinsdale, "It gave the English their first treaty hold upon the West, and it stands in all the statements of the English claim to the country, side by side with the Cabot voyages.  Again at Albany, in 1748, the bonds binding the Six Nations and the English together were strengthened, and at the same time the Miamis were brought within the covenant chain.  In 1750-54, negotiators were busy with attempts to draw to the English interest the Western tribes.  Council fires burned at Logstown, at Shawneetown, and the Pickawillany, and generally with results favorable to the English."

ENGLISH SETTLERS CROSS THE MOUNTAINS.

     In 1748 there began a general movement of Pennsylvanians and Virginians across the mountains.  Kentucky and Tennessee were explored by a Virginian expedition under command of Dr. Thomas Walker.  About the same time the Ohio Company was formed for the purpose of speculating in western lands and carrying the trade with the Indians.  Adventurous traders and backwoodsmen extended their excursions farther and farther into the Western wilds, and soon the Indian town of Pickawillany, on the upper waters of the Miami, became a great center of English trade and influence.  The growing interest in the West was evinced also by the fact that the Colonial authorities in every direction were seeking to obtain Indian titles to Western lands and to bind the Indians to the English by treaties.

THE FRENCH PRECIPITATE THE WAR.

     Celoron de Bienville, who in 1749, was sent by Galissoniere, Governor of Canada, to take possession of the valley of the Ohio and propitiate the Indians, found the valley full of English traders, and the Indians generally well dis-

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posed to the English.  The conflict which was to decide "whether French of English ideals and tendencies were to have sway in North America" was now recognized by all to be close at hand.  France took the initiative.  Early in 1753, before the English Colonial governments had agreed upon any concerted plan of action, the Marquis Duquesne, who had succeeded Galissoniere as Governor of Canada, and who realized the need of prompt action, sent a strong force to seize and hold the northeastern branches of the Ohio.  The party constructed two forts, one at the confluence of French Creek and the Allegheny River.  This called forth a remonstrance from Governor Dinwiddle of Virginia, the messenger being George Washington, who thus makes his first appearance in history.  The French officer greets Washington with all the politeness and suavity of his nation, but returns the unsatisfactory reply that he will refer the matter to Quebec, and in the meantime proposes to hold his ground.  This was in December. Early in the following year - 1754 - a small force of Virginians was sent to seize and fortify the forks of the Ohio - the key to the West.  Before the works, which should have been built several years before, could be completed, they were seized and demolished by a large force of French, who had descended the Allegheny, and who proceeded to build a much stronger fort, which they called Fort Dusquesne.  "This was an unmistakable act of war, and it precipitated at once the inevitable contest."  It is unnecessary here to follow the long struggle through all its shifting scenes.  Though the French gained some early successes, the most important being the terrible defeat they inflicted on the headstrong Braddock, July 7, 1755, they were unable long to retain the advantage.  In the summer of 1758 the current changed.  Though the expedition under command of General John Forbes, undertaken for the capture of Fort Duquesne, received a temporary set-back, in the severe defeat sustained by Grant, who, hurrying forward too rapidly with the vanguard of Scotch Highlanders, had left his support behind, the object of the expedition was fully attained.  On the advance of the main army, the French evacuated the fort and fled.  Forbes, who had conducted the campaign while incapacitated from illness to such an extent that he had to be carried most of the time in a litter, took possession of the fort and called the spot Pittsburg, after the great English minister.  Placing an officer in command, he left for Philadelphia, where he died in March of the following year, contented in his last hours to know that, in spite of his feebleness, he had been able to restore the red flag to the Great Valley.  The capture of Niagara by General Prideaux and Sir William Johnson, in 1759, secured the victory of Forbes, and Fort Pitt was safe.  Quebec fell in September of the same year, and the end came a year later at Montreal, when after some desultory operations, Vaudreuil, commander of the remaining French forces, surrendered to General Amherst.  By the terms of his capitulation not only Montreal, but Canada and all its dependencies came into possession of the British Crown.  The treaty of Utrecht, 1763, left the French substantially nothing of their vast empire in America east of the Mississippi, save the town of New Orleans and a small strip of land at the mouth of the Great River.

PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY.

     The defeat of Braddock in the early part of the war, let loose swarms of bloodthirsty savages against the frontier settlements of Virginia and Pennsylvania, who kept up their murderous raids, with but few intermissions, for many years thereafter.  They seem to have had some provocation in the numerous un authorized frontier settlements made by vagrant and vicious whites, who debauched them with rum while cheating them out of their lands and destroying their hunting grounds.  The Indians who were not parties to the treaty of 1763, felt that they had far more to fear from the English than from the French.  The news that France had ceded so large a part of North America, including the Indian lands, to Great Britain, drove them to desperation.  Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, one of the

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GEN. GEORGE ROGERS CLARK,     GEN. ANTHONY WAYNE,
GEN. WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON,
GEN. ARTHUR ST. CLAIR      &    GEN. JOSIAH HARMAR

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strongest and most influential of the western tribes, organized a formidable conspiracy against the whites, in which he was joined by the Ojibways, the Pottawattamies, and to a certain extent by some other tribes.  In May, 1763, a simultaneous attack was made upon all the forts and frontier settlements from Pennsylvania to Lake Superior.  The settlers, unprepared, were everywhere slaughtered in great numbers; two thousand are said to have been killed along the borders outside the armed posts.  Every white man was driven from the upper Ohio and its tributaries, all the posts along the river were destroyed, and the savage foe even swept through unguarded passes of the mountains.  Some of the smaller forts were also taken and their garrisons massacred.

BOUQUET'S EXPEDITION.

     When the extent of the calamity became known, a military force of regulars and provincials was organized to relieve the garrisons and subdue the Indians.  It was placed under charge of Colonel Henry Bouquet, a man of high character and ability, who had taken an important part in the war and in some of the events leading up to it.  Though delayed and harrassed harassed  by the Pennsylvania authorities, who had raised a force for the borders, but refused to place it under his control, he at last started with about 1,500 men.  He first encountered the enemy at Bushy Run, twenty six miles from Fort Pitt, and gained some advantages, though at the loss of about sixty men.  On the next day the battle was renewed, and ended in the utter rout of the Indians, who proved to be a mixed force of Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots and Mingoes.  By the 11th of August Bouquet, who had lost altogether 11; men, reached Fort Pitt, which had successfully stood a siege of five days.  All the other forts in the West, except that at Detroit, had been either captured by the enemy or abandoned.
     Bouquet's victory had for a time a quieting effect upon the Indians, though during the autumn small parties continued to commit depredations along the Virginia frontier.  It was known that the Indians had been supplied with ammunition by the French, who thus sought to thwart the English and gain the friendship of the savages, with the view of establishing settlements beyond the Mississippi.  The next year General Thomas Gage, who had succeeded General Amherst in the command of the English forces in America, planned a campaign against the Indians, putting Colonel Bouquet in charge of all the regular forces in Philadelphia and south of it.  These, accompanied by militia, were to be pushed into the Mississippi region, while another expedition, under Colonel Bradstreet, was to make a western advance in the direction of Sandusky.
     Bradstreet was deluded by the Shawnees and Delawares into making a worthless treaty, a scheme devised by them to escape punishment.  This treaty they had no intention of honoring, the Delawares, after signing it, continuing to ravage the frontiers.  Bradstreet, however, relieved tbe weary garrison at Detroit, and sent forward detachments to take possession of Mackinac, the Sault, and Green Bay.
     Bouquet, a man of very different caliber, after losing some time, owing to the apathy of the, local authorities, pushed at last into the wilderness to "force peace of his own imposing which should relieve the regions east and south of the Ohio of the tribes, and preserve the navigation of the Ohio itself.  He had advanced into the Muskingum Valley, when on the 17th of November, the Indians about thought it wise to sue for peace."  Bouquet would make no terms until every prisoner among them was surrendered. "I give you," said he, "twelve days from this date to deliver into my hands at Wakatamake all the prisoners in your possession, without any exception Englishmen, Frenchmen, women, and children, whether adopted into your tribes, married, or living amongst you under any denomination and pretense whatsoever - together with all negroes.  And you are to furnish said prisoners with clothing and provisions, and horses to carry them to Fort Pitt.  When you have fully complied with these conditions, you shall then know on what terms you may obtain the peace

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you sue for."  It took the Indians nearly a month to collect the prisoners, who numbered eighty-one males and 125 women and children.  The scene at the camp on the arrival of these unfortunates is thus described in the account of Bouquet's expedition (Ohio History Series):
     "In the camp were to be seen fathers and mothers recognizing and clasping their long lost babes, husbands hanging around the necks of their newly recovered wives, sisters and brothers unexpectedly meeting together after long separation, scarce able to speak the same language, or for some time to be sure that they were children of the same parents.  In all these interviews joy and rapture inexpressible were seen, while feelings of very different nature were painted in the looks of others flying from place to place in eager inquiries after relatives not found; trembling to receive an answer to their questions; distracted with doubts, hopes and fears, on obtaining no account of those they sought for, or stiffened into living monuments of horror and woe on learning their unhappy fate.
     "The Indians, too, as if wholly forgetting their usual savageness, bore a capital part in heightening the most affecting scene.  They delivered up their beloved captives with the utmost reluctance, shed torrents of tears over them, recommending them to the care and protection of the commanding officer.  Their regard to them continued all the time they remained in camp.  They visited them from day to day, and brought them what corn, skins and horses and other matters they had bestowed on them while in their families, accompanied with other presents, and with all the marks of the most sincere and tender affection.  Nay, they did not stop here, but, when the army marched, some of the Indians solicited and obtained leave to accompany their former captives all the way to Fort Pitt, and employed themselves in hunting and bringing provisions for them on the road.  A young Mingoe carried this still further, and gave an instance of love which would make a figure even in romance.  A young woman of Virginia was among the captives, for whom he had formed so strong an attachment as to call her his wife.  Against all remonstrances and warnings of the imminent danger to which he exposed himself by approaching the frontiers, he persisted in following her at the risk of being killed by the surviving relations of many unfortunate persons who had been captured or scalped by those of his nation."  Among the forest exiles was one who had given birth to an offspring supposed to be the first white child born in what is now the State of Ohio.  Hoving imposed his terms.  Bouquet broke up his camp and marched to Fort Pitt, which he reached on the 28th of December.  When subsequently congratulated by Sir William Johnson on his success, here marked, "'Nothing but penetrating into their country could have done it."

END OF CHAPTER VI -