Note 16 — I Conrad Weiser’s Journal of a Tour to the Ohio August 11-October 2, 1748

The reference is to Queen Aliquippa, whose town, directly at the Forks of the Ohio, was called by Céloron “the written rock village.” The writings proved on examination to be but names of English traders scrawled in charcoal on the rocks. See Father Bonnécamps’s Relation, Jesuit Relations (Thwaites’s ed., Cleveland, 1896-1902), lxix, p. 175. Céloron says of the Seneca queen: “She regards herself as a sovereign, and is entirely devoted to the English.” Upon the advent of the French, she removed her village to the forks of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny, where she told Gist in 1753 she would never go back to the Allegheny to live, unless the English built a fort. Céloron says of the site of her first village: “This place is one of the most beautiful I have seen on the Beautiful River [la Belle Rivière, the French name for the Ohio].”—Ed.