Owing to a growing jealousy of the colonies, the policy of the home government in regard to the settlements west of the mountains was shifting and inconsistent.  In 1769 the Ohio Company, whose purposes had been thwarted by the war, was absorbed in a scheme in which Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin and others were interested, to establish a western colony on the south side of the Ohio River.  It was opposed by Lord Hillsborough, president of the Lords Commissioners for Trade condition; and Plantations, who affirmed that the great object of the North American colonies was to "improve and extend the commerce, navigation and manufactures of England."  Shore colonies he approved because they fulfilled this condition; inland colonies he condemned because they would not fulfill it.  It was his opinion that the king should take every means to check the progress of the western settlements, and should not make grants of land that would have an immediate tendency to encourage them."
     These utterances called forth such a crushing reply from Franklin that the Walpole petition was granted, and Lord Hillsborough resigned in disgust.  His opinions, however, were shared by many in England, who saw in the growing strength of the colonies a future menace to the commercial interests of Great Britain.  Some were even in favor of restoring Canada to the French in exchange for the island of Gaudeloupe, with the idea that a French establishment in Canada would serve to hold the colonies in check.  For the present the western frontier continued to be a wilderness inhabited chiefly by wandering Indian tribes, and the almost equally savage white traders, whom Franklin described in a letter to George Whitefield in 1756, as "the most vicious and abandoned wretches of our nation."  These men, regardless alike of honor, conscience, or even common prudence, and eager only for gain and the gratification of their lawless instincts, were responsible for many of the Indian uprisings which for so long afflicted the western settlements.  In shuddering over the horrid cruelties inflicted by the Indians upon their prisoners, it should be remembered that their acts were often the result of almost equally fiendish excesses on the part of white ruffians, some of them clothed with authority which they were wholly unfit to exercise.

LORD DUNMORE'S WAR

     Thus, to glance briefly ahead of the story.  Lord Dunmore's War, in 1774, which caused

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the murder of many settlers along the Virginia frontier, as well as a great slaughter in battle of both whites and Indians, was directly provoked by the wanton murder of some peaceful Indians, with their families, by Captain Cresap, commander at Fort Fincastle.  In this detestable act he was imitated by one Daniel Greathouse, who, at the head of a bloody gang of ruffians, treacherously slaughtered a party of 'Indians encamped near the mouth of Yellow Creek, having first taken the precaution to make them intoxicated. Among the victims were the entire kin of Chief Logan, of the Cayugas, who, from an influential advocate of peace, was thus converted into a determined enemy of the whites in Virginia.  Bald Eagle, another friend of the pale faces, while alone in the woods near the Monongahela, was murdered by three white men, who "placed the lifeless body of the native in a sitting position in his canoe and sent it adrift down the stream."  The war which followed, and which was participated in by several tribes, was brought to an end after the Indians had been defeated in a great battle by Lord Dunmore, who was more than suspected of having instigated it.  He made a treaty with the Indians in which they acknowledged the Ohio River as the boundary between the white man's territories and their own hunting grounds.

FRONTIER CHARACTERS.

     Among the interesting personages of the period of the French war and for some years both previous and subsequent to it, were the adventurous scouts and frontiersmen, Christopher Gist, George Croghan and Andrew Montour, all of whom were employed at various times, and, indeed, for most of the time, by the Colonial governments or the great trading companies, to negotiate with the Indians.  These three men took a large part in shaping the history of those eventful years.  Gist had accompanied Washington on his mission to the commander of the French troops on the upper Ohio just previous to the breaking out of the war, and on a subsequent expedition.  He was also employed by the Ohio Company to make explorations and treat with the Indians.  He kept a journal in which 'he described the country through which he passed on his various missions, and his descriptions, and the maps which he drew of the course of the Ohio and of the surrounding country, were reproduced in the leading London journals of the day, as the most accurate source of information obtainable of the valley of that river.
     George Croghan, who was employed by the Pennsylvania government in transactions with the Indians, and who was "the idol of the Scotch-Irish settlers," had spent some years in trading along the shore of Lake Erie, and in acquiring the Indian tongue.  He was a man of great tact and thoroughly understood how to deal with the Indians.  His services were of the utmost value in counteracting French influence with the savages.  For some years the deputy of Sir William Johnson, he was sent by the latter to England, after Bouquet's expedition, to advise with the government upon Indian matters, and his recommendations had a direct influence on shaping the policy embodied in the treaty made at Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois four years later.
     Andrew Montour, perhaps the most picturesque character of the three, was the son of Big Tree, an Oneida chief, by a French half breed mother.  When Gist, in the latter part of the year 1750, was sent out by the Ohio Company to survey the country along the Ohio take note of the tribes on the way, and search for good lands, he overtook Croghan and Montour at the Muskingum River.  The latter, who was on the war path against the Catawba Indians, who some years before had slain his father, was painted like a savage, and with his clothes decked out with tinkling spangles.  He was regarded by the Indians as a chief, and was a valuable aid to Croghan in his negotiations with them.  His services also were in request by Washington during the early operations of the war.

FIRST WHITE MAN'S HOUSE IN OHIO.

     Another useful intermediary between the Colonial government and the Indians was Christian Frederick Post, "an honest and fearless Moravian," who had married among the savages, and was thoroughly familiar with their customs.  In 1761 he built himself a cabin on Tuscarawas Creek, Stark County, "which," says Winsor, "was probably the first white man's house in the wilds of Ohio."

MILITARY EXPEDITIONS TO THE WEST.

     From 1760 to 1764 the English made several military expeditions into the lake country, one of which - that under Colonel Bradstreet - has been already noticed.  That under Major Rogers, in the autumn of 1760, took possession of Detroit.  Major Rogers is said to have had an interview with Pontiac, the famous chief of the Ottawas, who, with some haughtiness, demanded to know by what authority the English had invaded his country.  Another expedition, under command of Major Wilkins, was shipwrecked on Lake Erie in December, 1763, owing to a sudden storm, and seventy men and three officers perished.

UNLAWFUL SETTLEMENTS SUPPRESSED.

     The vagrant whites who at the close of the war, under the pretence of hunting, were making unlawful settlements which had a tendency to provoke the Indians, met with a determined enemy in Colonel Bouquet, who was in command at Fort Pitt.  Besides removing interlopers from the Monongahela, he is sued a proclamation "prohibiting all settlements beyond the mountains without the permission of the general or of the governors of the provinces," under the penalty of martial law.  This called forth a protest from Governor Fauquier, but Bouquet was supported by Amherst, who, however, cautioned his subordinate to be discreet, "for no room must be given to the colonies to complain of the military power."

GEORGE III FORBIDS WESTERN SETTLEMENTS.

     In December, 1761, the Colonial governors received orders forbidding' them to make any grants of land in disregard of Indian rights.  On October, 1763, King George III, in a proclamation, with the concurrence of his council and in disregard of the sea-to-sea charters, established as crown lands to be held "for the use of the Indians, for the present, and until our further pleasure is known," all the vast region between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, wherever in the north its source might be.  The governors of the Atlantic colonies were "restrained from allotting any lands beyond the sources of the divers which fell into the Atlantic Ocean, or upon any lands reserved to the Indians, and not having been ceded to, or purchased by, the king."  All private persons were forbidden to buy land of the Indians, such right of purchase being reserved to the crown.
     This proclamation caused much discontent to a large and growing party in the colonies, who regarded it as a "tyrannous check on the inevitable expansion of the race, and as an adoption by the home government of what was recognized as the French system.  By the conservative adherents of the crown it was looked upon as a necessary protection of the rights of the Indians.  It was probably the king's purpose to confine the colonies as much as possible to the coast, within easy reach of the British trade, and to keep the population under the restraint of the seaboard authorities.  As a means of pacifying the Indians, it came, as has been seen, too late.  That it was equally in effective in restraining white emigration is shown in the fact that, on a reliable estimate, from 1765 to 1768 some thirty thousand whites crossed over and settled beyond the mountains.

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