Note 225 — Chapter VIII
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"They had been incessantly making settlements upon the English property since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and at last they made a settlement on the western part of Virginia, upon the River Ohio. Mr. Dinwiddie (Governor of Virginia) having intelligence of this, sent an officer, Major Washington, with a letter to the French commandant there, requiring him to desist, and with orders, if possible, to bring the Indians over to the British interest. Washington had but indifferent success with the Indians; and when he arrived with some of the Indians at the French settlements, he found the French by no means inclined to give over their undertaking, and that the Indians, notwithstanding all their fair promises, were much more in their interest than in that of England. Upon further inquiry it was found that the Indians called the Six Nations, who, by the treaty of Utrecht, were acknowledged to be subject to Great Britain, had been entirely debauched by the French, who had likewise found means to bring over to their interest those vast tracts that lie along the great lakes and rivers to the west of the Apalachian (or Allegany) mountains.
"Having thus got the friendship of those Indians, they next contrived how they could cut them off from all communication with the English, and for that purpose they seized the persons and effects of all the English whom they found trading with the Indians; and they erected a chain of forts from Canada to Mississippi, to prevent all future communication between the English and those Indians; at the same time destroying such of the Indians as discovered any affection or regard for the British subjects: so that in a very few years all the eastern as well as the western colonies of Great Britain were in danger of being ruined."—Ib., pp. 290, 291.
"Though the several provinces belonging to Great Britain, in the neighbourhood of the French encroachments, raised both men and money against them, yet the forms of their legal proceedings in their assemblies were so dilatory that the French always had the start of them, and they surprised a place called Log's Town, belonging to the Virginians, on the Ohio. This was a place of great importance, and the French made themselves masters of the block-house and the truck-house, with skins and other commodities to the amount of £20,000, besides cutting off all the English traders in those parts but two, who found means to escape. About the same time, near 1,000 French, under the command of Monsieur de Carstrecœur, and 18 pieces of cannon, came in 300 canoes from Venango, a fort that they had usurped upon the banks of the Ohio, and surprised an English fort on the forks of the Monongahella. After this, a great many skirmishes happened between the English and the French with various success.
"In the meanwhile, orders came from England to the Governors of the British settlements in America to form a kind of political confederacy, to which every province was to contribute a quota. Though the scheme of political confederacy was the best measure that could be pursued in the situation of the British settlements, yet it had not all the effect that was expected from it." (Rapin's History of England, Vol. XXI., pp. 491, 492.)