With the burial of this sixth and last leaden plate, which, so far as known, has never been discovered, Céloron’s voyage on La Belle Rivière ended, and on the morning of the first of September the canoes began the ascent of the shallow Rivière à la Roche en route to Quebec by way of Lake Erie.

Through the eyes of these travelers the Governor of New France looked upon the great valley of the Ohio and realized its extent and strategic value. The many large rivers entering it, the Indian villages which dotted its banks and, more than all else, the avidity of English traders for the fur trade of these villages, were the items in the report of these first voyageurs which led quickly to the French fort-building here and precipitated the old French War.

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From original in Library of Congress

CHAPTER II

THE INDIAN SIDE

The campaign of General John Forbes in 1758, which ended French rule on the Ohio, gave the Ohio Valley to the English. From this time on, the entire sweep of territory between the Atlantic Ocean and the present Pittsburg may be termed English territory. While England now nominally came into possession of all of this portion of New France, the lands on either side of the Ohio River below Pittsburg were claimed by the Indian nations inhabiting them, and the Crown attempted, in the Proclamation of 1763, to preserve these lands for the Indians by prohibiting the migrations of the colonists. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, and the expansion of Virginia into the vast tract south of the Ohio have been recounted.[35] It is sufficient to recall here that this treaty gave to Virginia the entire southern bank of the Ohio and all the territory southward to the banks of the Tennessee. The treaty was made with the Iroquois, the conquerors of half a continent, not with the Delawares and Shawanese and Southern Nations, who camped and hunted there. These dependents of the Iroquois contested the treaty stoutly and not until 1774 did the Shawanese even pretend to agree to its stipulations. This agreement was secured by what is known as Dunmore’s War and was the direct result of General Andrew Lewis’s bloody victory over the allied Indians at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, October 10, 1774. It is not less than significant that this decisive battle which assured the Old Southwest to the Americans, should have been fought practically over the burial place of Céloron’s fifth leaden plate which claimed the land for France. By the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the entire southern shore of the Ohio had been abandoned by Indians, though for many years they continually invaded the pleasant country which was fast filling with a scattered white population.