A School History of the United States. John Bach McMaster
restored to the French.
[Footnote 1: Read Samuel Adams Drake's Taking of Louisburg; Parkman's A Half-century of Conflict, Vol. II., pp. 78–161.]
%76. The French on the Allegheny River; the Buried Plates.%—With Louisburg back in their possession and no territory lost, the French went on more vigorously than ever with their preparations to shut the British out of the Mississippi valley; and as but one highway to the valley, the Ohio River, was still unguarded, the governor of Canada, in 1749, dispatched Céloron de Bienville with a band of men in twenty-three birch-bark canoes to take formal possession of the valley. Paddling up the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, they carried their canoes across to Lake Erie, and, skirting the southeastern shore, they landed and crossed to Chautauqua Lake, down which and its outlet they floated to the Allegheny River. Once on the Allegheny, the ceremony of taking possession began. The men were drawn up, and Louis XV. was proclaimed king of all the region drained by the Ohio. The arms of France stamped on a sheet of tin were nailed to a tree, at the foot of which a lead plate was buried in the ground. On the plate was an inscription claiming the Ohio, and all the streams that run into it, in the name of the King of France.
[Illustration: [1]Half of one of the lead plates]
[Footnote 1: Now owned by the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Mass.]
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TRANSLATION OF THE ENTIRE INSCRIPTION
In the year 1749, during the reign of Louis XV., King of France, we, Céleron, commander of a detachment sent by the Marquis de la Gallissonière, commander in chief of New France, to restore tranquillity in some savage villages of these districts, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and … this … near the river Ohio, alias Beautiful River, as a monument of our having retaken possession of the said river Ohio and of those that fall into the same, and of all the lands on both sides as far as the sources of the said rivers, as well as of those of which preceding kings have enjoyed possession, partly by the force of arms, partly by treaties, especially by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle.
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A second plate was buried below the mouth of French Creek; a third near the mouth of Wheeling Creek; and a fourth at the mouth of the Muskingum, where half a century later it was found protruding from the river bank by a party of boys while bathing. Yet another was unearthed at the mouth of the Great Kanawha by a freshet, and was likewise found by a boy while playing at the water's edge. The last plate was hidden where the Great Miami joins the Ohio; and this done, Céloron crossed Ohio to Lake Erie and went back to Montreal.[1]
[Footnote 1: Read T. J. Chapman's The French in the Allegheny Valley, pp. 9–23, 187–197; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I., pp. 36–62; Winsor's The Mississippi Basin, pp. 252–255.]
%77. The French build Forts on the Allegheny.%—This formal taking possession of the valleys of the Allegheny and the Ohio was all well enough in its way; but the French knew that if they really intended to keep out the British they must depend on forts and troops, and not on lead plates. To convince the French King of this, required time; so that it was not till 1752 that orders were given to fortify the route taken by Céloron in 1749. The party charged with this duty repaired to the little peninsula where is now the city of Erie, and there built a log fort which they called Presque Isle. Having done this, they cut a road twenty miles long, to the site of Waterford, Pa., and built Fort Le Boeuf, and later one at Venango, the present site of the town of Franklin.
%78. Washington's First Public Service.%—The arrival of the French in western Pennsylvania alarmed and excited no one so much as Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia. He had two good reasons for his excitement. In the first place, Virginia, because of the interpretation she placed on her charter of 1609, claimed to own the Allegheny valley (see p. 33). In the second place, the governor and a number of Virginia planters were deeply interested in a great land company called the Ohio Company, to which the King of England had given 500,000 acres lying along the Ohio River between the Monongahela and the Kanawha rivers, a region which the French claimed, and toward which they were moving.
As soon, therefore, as Dinwiddie heard that the French were really building forts in the upper Allegheny valley, he determined to make a formal demand for their withdrawal, and chose as his messenger George Washington, then a young man of twenty-one, and adjutant general of the Virginia militia.
Washington's instructions bade him go to Logstown, on the Ohio, find out all he could as to the whereabouts of the French, and then proceed to the commanding officer, deliver the letter of Dinwiddie, and demand an answer. He was especially charged to ascertain how many French forts had been erected, how many soldiers there were in each, how far apart the posts were, and if they were to be supported from Quebec.[1]
[Footnote 1: Read T.J. Chapman's The, French in the Allegheny Valley, pp. 23–47; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I., pp. 128–161; Lodge's George Washington, pp. 62–69.]
With that promptness which distinguished him during his whole life, Washington set out on his perilous journey the very day he received his instructions, and made his way first to Logstown, and then to Fort Le Boeuf, where he delivered Governor Dinwiddie's letter to the French commandant. The reply of Saint-Pierre—for that was the name of the French commandant—was that he would send the letter of Dinwiddie to the governor of Canada, the Marquis Duquesne (doo-kan'), and that, in the meantime, he would hold the fort.
[Illustration: The French and the English Forts]
%79. Fort Duquesne.%—When Dinwiddie read the answer of Saint-Pierre, he saw clearly that the time had come to act. The French were in force on the upper Allegheny. Unless something was done to drive them out, they would soon be at the forks of the Ohio, and once they were there, the splendid tract of the Ohio Company would be lost forever. Without a moment's delay he decided to take possession of the forks of the Ohio, and raised two companies of militia of 100 men each. A trader named William Trent was in command of one of the companies, and that no time should be lost, he, with forty men, hurried forward, and, February 17, 1754, drove the first stake of a stockade that was to surround a fort on the site of the city of Pittsburg. While the English were still at work on their fort, April 17, 1754, a body of French and Indians came down from Le Boeuf, and bade them leave the valley. Trent was away, and the working party was in command of an ensign named Ward, who, as resistance was useless, surrendered, and was allowed to march off with his men. The French then finished the fort Trent had begun, and called it Fort Duquesne, after the governor of Canada.
%80. "Join or Die."%—Meantime the legislature of Virginia voted £10,000 for the defense of the Ohio valley, and promised a land bounty to every man who would volunteer to fight the French and Indians. Joshua Frye was made colonel, and Washington lieutenant colonel of the troops thus to be raised. As some time must elapse before the ranks could be filled, Washington took seventy-five men and (in March, 1754) set off to help Trent; but he had not gone far on his way when Ensign Ward met him (where Cumberland, Md., now is) and told him all about the surrender. Accounts of the affair were at once sent to the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
[Illustration: JOIN, or DIE.]
In publishing one of these in the Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin inserted the above picture at the top of the account.[1]
[Footnote 1: There is an old superstition, then very generally believed, that if one cuts a snake in pieces and allows the pieces to touch, the snake will not die, but will live and become whole again. By this picture Franklin meant that unless the colonies joined for defense against the French they would die; that is, be conquered.]
%81. Albany Plan of Union.%—The picture was apt for the following reason. The Lords of Trade in London had ordered the colonies to send delegates to Albany to make a treaty with the Iroquois Indians, and to this congress Franklin purposed to submit a plan for union against the French. The plan drawn up by the congress was not approved by the colonies, so the scheme of union came to naught.
%82. Washington's Expedition.%—Meanwhile