trading station. Then, leaving his lieutenant, Monsieur Tonti, and some of the men in charge of the station, he returned to Mackinac, where the Jesuits had a missionary settlement, and spent some months voyaging between that point and Fort Fronte

nac.

In January, 1682, La Salle set out on a grand voyage to discover the mouth of the Mississippi. By way of Lake Michigan, the Chicago and Illinois rivers, he reached the great river and descended it as far as the site of New Orleans. There, on the 9th of April, with due solmenities, in the name of Louis, king of France, he took possession of "the country of Louisiana, all its seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, tions, people, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams and rivers," from the Gulf to the sources of the Mississippi.

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After this expedition the great voyageur returned to his native land and induced his government to fit out an expedition for the purpose of planting a colony on the Mississippi. Sailing from France in 1685, he reached the Gulf of Mexico, but failed to discover the mouth of the Father of Waters. Landing within the present State of Texas, he explored the adjacent region some distance westward and northward. La Salle was murdered in March, 1687, by two of his own men. Thus perished one of the bravest and most gallant of the explorers of the New World. His scheme of colonization was a failure; but upon the strength of his action in taking possession of

the country in the name of the king, France laid claim to the vast territory of Louisiana.

As early as 1688 France had established military posts at Frontenac, Niagara, Mackinac, and on the Illinois River, and before 1750 French settlements were established at several points on the great lakes and in the Mississippi Valley. But of the Ohio Valley, from the death of La Salle to near the middle of the eighteenth century, there is little authentic history except that furnished by the journals of the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the country along the Wabash and Maumee and the Illinois, founding missions and preaching to the Indians. Soon after the missionaries began their labors the French traders established posts, and to some extent explored the country. They had a trading-post at or near the mouth of the Maumee as early as 1680, and traveled back and forth from Canada to the Mississippi; later they traveled to that stream by way of the Maumee, the Wabash and the Ohio, and from Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, by way of the Allegheny (which was long known as the Ohio), and the Ohio.

The entire region west of the Alleghenies was little known to the English prior to 1740, when English traders began to supersede the French. The colonial governments of Virginia and Pennsylvania especially encouraged and fostered the commerce between the whites and the Indians. In this Virginia took the lead. Governor Spotswood was an enthusiast upon the subject, and

after exploring and finding a practical passage through the Alleghenies in 1714 he entered eagerly upon the project of taking possession of the country beyond them. He urged upon the British government the importance of obtaining such a foothold in the West as to be able to resist the growth of French influence. One romantic feature of his work was the founding of the Transmontane order of knights, with the motto, Sic juvat transcendere montes. Though no systematic settlement or exploration resulted, yet from time to time adventurers reached La Belle Riviere- the Beautiful River

as the French called the Ohio. Had Governor Spotswood's advice been heeded, the long and bloody French and Indian war (1754-63) might not have been necessary to dislodge the French from the West.

English traders visited the Ohio between 1730 and 1740, and were licensed by the government of Pennsylvania to trade as far west as the Mississippi in 1744. John Howard descended the Ohio in 1742, and was captured on the Mississippi by the French. In 1748 Conrad Weiser, acting for the English, visited Logstown, a Shawnee town on the Ohio, a short distance from Pittsburgh, bearing gifts to gain the favor of the savages. Soon after, the renowned pioneer, George Croghan, accompanied by Andrew Montour, a Seneca half-breed, journeyed Westward into the country of the Miamis, won the favor of the tribes by gifts, and in 1751 erected a stockade on the great Miami within the present limits of

Shelby County, Ohio. This station, which was called Pickawillamy, was destroyed by the French and Indians in June of the following year. It was doubtless the first structure erected by the hands of Englishmen within the limits of the State.

Prior to 1750 the French established a trading-station and built a fort at Sandusky, and made a systematic exploration of the Ohio and its tributaries. The expedition for this purpose was sent out by the Marquis de la Galissoniere, captain-general of New France, and was led by Celeron de Bienville. In 1798 a leaden plate was found at the mouth of the Muskingum, which bore an inscription of which the following is a translation:

"In the year of 1749, of the reign of Louis XV of France, we, Celeron, commandant of a detachment sent by the Marquis de la Galissoniere, captain-general of New France, in order to establish tranquillity among some villages of savages of these parts, have buried this plate at the mouth of the river Chi-no-da-hich-e-tha, the 18th of August, near the river Ohio, otherwise Beautiful River, as a monument of renewal of possession which we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of all those which empty themselves into it, and of all the lands of both sides, even to the sources of said rivers, as have enjoyed or ought to have enjoyed the preceding kings of France, and that they have maintained themselves there by force of arms and by treaties, especially by those of Ryswick, of Utrecht and of Aix-la-Chapelle." Another plate bearing a similar inscription was

found later at the mouth of the Kanawha, and a few years ago one of like purport was found on the Upper Allegheny.

The first concerted movement looking toward the establishment of an English colony in the Ohio Valley was made in 1748, when twelve. prominent Virginians, among whom were Robert Dinwiddie, governor of the province, Lawrence and Augustine Washington, brothers of George Washington, and Thomas Lee, president of the council of Virginia, formed an association styled the Ohio Land Company. In 1749 the company received from George II a grant of half a million acres of land, to be located either between the Kanawha and Monongahela rivers, or on the northern bank of the Ohio. One of the conditions of the grant was that one hundred families should be settled on the tract within seven years.

De Bienville's expedition was made for the purpose of driving the English out of the Ohio Valley and thwarting the purposes of the Ohio Land Company. To the same end the French built forts at Presque Isle (now Erie, Pa.), at Le Boeuf, on a tributary of the Allegheny, about fifteen miles south of Lake Erie, and at Venango, and sent out a party to destroy the English post on the Maumee.

Meantime, in 1750, the Ohio Land Company sent out Christopher Gist and a surveying party to examine and explore the country in which it was proposed to establish the colony. The party reached the Ohio, opposite

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the mouth of Beaver Creek, and, after tarrying at Logstown, crossed the country, arriving at the Tuscarawas River, opposite the present town of Bolivar, on the 5th of December. On the 7th Gist crossed the river to an Indian village, whose inhabitants were favorable to the French. lowing the river south, on the 14th he reached an Indian town near the junction of the White-woman Creek and the Tuscarawas. The town contained about one hundred families, part of them favorable to the English and part to the French. Here he found Montour and George Croghan, the latter having his headquarters in the town.

"When we came in sight of the town," says Gist, in his journal, "we perceived the English colors hoisted on the king's (chief's) house, and at George Croghan's. Upon inquiring the reason I was informed that the French had lately taken several English traders, and that Mr. Croghan had ordered all the white men to come into this town, and had sent runners to the traders of the lower towns, and that the Indians had sent to their people to come and counsel about it."

Gist tarried among the Indians of the Tuscarawas Valley until the latter part of January, 1751, and during his stay visited the white woman, Mary Harris, who lived among the Indians and had great influence with them. White-woman Creek received its rame from her. She was of New England birth, and was captured and taken west when a child. She grew up and married

Gist, accompanied on part of his journey by Croghan, crossed from the Muskingum to Licking Creek, thence to the Scioto, which he explored to its mouth, then journeyed on the Ohio nearly to the falls at Louisville, returning on foot to Virginia through Kentucky.

In 1753 the Virginians opened a road from Will's Creek, near Cumberland, Md., to the Ohio Valley, and made preparations to establish a colony. The governor sent George Washington, with Christopher Gist as his guide, to the French posts at Venango (now Franklin, Pa.), and Le Bœuf, to demand the reason for the French invasion of British territory. The young Virginian received a defiant answer, and the project of founding a colony was abandoned, as it became evident that war must ensue between the French and the English. The struggle that followed established the British in possession of Canada and all the country east of the Mississippi, excepting the Spanish territory and a small body of land about New Orleans.

In 1764 occurred the first English military expedition into the country northwest of the Ohio. Colonel Henry Bouquet was sent out to punish the Delawares, Shawnees and other Ohio tribes for their depredations and massacres on the Pennsylvania frontiers during the war between the French and the English. With a force numbering fifteen hundred men, three hundred of whom de

fairly begun, he had marched through Pennsylvania along Braddock's old trail in 1763, conquered the Indians in a two days' fight at Bushy Run and taken the remainder of his army to Fort Pitt. On the 3d of October, 1764, he marched from Fort Pitt with fifteen hundred men on his way into the valleys of the Muskingum and the Tuscarawas. The expedition penetrated the Indian country as far as the forks of the Muskingum, where Coshocton now is. No blood was shed, the Indians yielding their assent to the terms of a treaty proposed by Colonel Bouquet, and delivering up the captives they then held. Over two hundred white prisoners were delivered into the Colonel's charge, and it was stated that more than a hundred more still remained at distant points in possession of the Shawnees, who promised to deliver them to the English authorities in the following spring. Bouquet's army returned from its bloodless conquest, reaching Fort Pitt on the 28th of November.

While Bouquet was in the Muskingum country Colonel Bradstreet led an expedition to the Indian towns along the southern shore of Lake Erie, and was equally successful in his object, gaining the promise of peace without any fighting.

The British took but little advantage of their ascendency in the Northwest. The country was visited by few except Indian traders. The borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia were peopled years before adventurous hunters and trappers ("squat

ters") sought to make homes for themselves north of the Ohio, where the Indian title to the lands had not yet been extinguished.

In 1770 George Washington, Captain William Crawford and Dr. Craik, accompanied by a party of Indians, journeyed down the Ohio as far as the mouth of the Big Kanawha. (Crawford, afterward colonel, was burned at the stake in what is now Wyandot County, in 1782.) The party were at the mouth of the Muskingum on the 27th of October.

In the spring of 1774, on the West Virginia side of the Ohio, there was perpetrated a most cruel and unprovoked murder of Indians by the whites. The massacre took place opposite the mouth of the Yellow Creek, Jefferson County, Ohio. The victims were the kindred of Logan, the talented Mingo chief, renowned for his friendship to the whites. Logan had taken no part in the French and Indian war, except as a peacemaker. At the time of the At the time of the massacre he was living on Yellow Creek and supporting himself and family by hunting. A party of white men encamped opposite the mouth. of the creek, and were visited by six Indians - five men and one woman. The whites, after making some of the Indians drunk, murdered all, not even sparing the woman.

To avenge the death of his relatives, Logan took the warpath, and became the terror of the adventurous squatters of the border. Then, retiring farther into the wilderness, he made his home with the Shawnees a tribe most hostile to the whites

in the old Indian town of Chillicothe. The Shawnees, doubtless inspired by the influence and example of Logan, renewed their bloody assaults upon the frontier settlements. To quiet the increasing trouble, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, organized and led an army into the Ohio country. The force was in two divisions, one led by General Alexander Lewis, and the other by Lord Dunmore himself.

General Lewis' division marched by land to the mouth of the Big Kanawha, while Dunmore's force proceeded down the Ohio in boats and canoes. At Point Pleasant, on the 10th of October, 1774, General Lewis' division (the smaller of the two), consisting of about eleven hundred men, was attacked by almost an equal number of Shawnees, under the leadership of Cornstalk. There ensued one of the most hardly contested battles ever fought between the white men and the red on the banks of the Ohio. The Indians retired after losing several of their best warriors. The whites lost over fifty men and several officers. The loss of the Indians was estimated at over two hundred.

Dunmore, instead of landing at the mouth of the Kanawha, as had been his original intention, disembarked at the mouth of the Hocking, where he erected a blockhouse in which to leave his surplus stores while he advanced farther into the enemy's country. Dunmore's division did no fighting, but advanced to within eight miles of the Indian town of Chillicothe, and there was joined by