The victory over the French stimulated new speculative and colonizing schemes for the West both in England and America. In June, 1763, the Mississippi Company was formed, composed of prominent Virginians, including Colonel George Washington and Richard Henry Lee. A memorial to the king was drawn asking for 2,500,000 acres on both sides of the lower Ohio, quit rent free for twelve years, and protection by royal forts, on condition of settling two hundred families. Late in 1763 a pamphlet published in Edinborough, Scotland, proposed a colony named Charlotiana, to include the country between the Wabash, Ohio, Mississippi, and the Great Lakes. About the same time Charles Lee proposed a colony on the Illinois and another on the Ohio.
Effect of the Proclamation.—The Proclamation of 1763 closing the Trans-Alleghany country to settlement seems to have checked for a time the schemes for speculation. The Proclamation contained an implied promise that the boundary would be revised, while it was well known that influential politicians in England favored the opening of the West. New schemes for western lands, therefore, were not long suppressed. In 1766 William Franklin, governor of New Jersey, launched a plan for two colonies, one at Detroit, the other on the lower Ohio. Through the aid of Benjamin Franklin, father of the governor, the Ohio country was favored by the Board of Trade, but in 1768 the plan dropped from sight. Meanwhile many other land companies were formed.
A policy of expansion adopted.—The policy of the ministry regarding the West was vacillating, and more so, no doubt, because of the pressure of conflicting interests. But in 1768 the ministry decided on a definite plan for western settlement, the principle being that expansion should be gradual and under control of imperial agents, who should purchase land from the Indians as needed. Johnson and Stuart, Indian superintendents, had already made tentative arrangements for revising the proclamation line. In 1765 the Six Nations ceded their claims to lands between the Ohio and the Tennessee. Stuart, by a series of treaties, secured a line from the southern boundary of Virginia to the St. Mary's River. Florida, thence along the tidewater line to the Appalachicola River. West of that point the line was not completed, but important cessions were made along the Mobile coast. In 1768 the former lines were ratified, and Stuart, in two treaties with the Cherokees and Creeks (October, November, 1768), secured the extension of the line to the mouth of the Kanawha River on the north and to the Choctaw River on the south. At Fort Stanwix in 1768 the Iroquois ratified essentially their cession of 1765. The lines did not correspond, since the Iroquois cession included Western Tennessee and Kentucky, which were not within the other cessions. Meanwhile the southern line was modified by the treaty of Lochaber by running it west along the southern boundary of Virginia to the Holston River, thence direct to the mouth of the Kanawha. The purpose of the change was to take in the recently formed Watauga settlement.
Vandalia.—Having extinguished the Indian titles, it was now possible to found a new colony back of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and such a project was put on foot. Samuel Wharton of Philadelphia formed a company for the purpose of purchasing part of the lands. The company included some of the leading men in England and America, among them being Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Walpole. Official aid was enlisted by including two members of the ministry. In 1769 the purchase was made, and, in spite of Lord Hillsborough's opposition, by 1775 the project of a new and separate province named Vandalia had been approved by king and council. The outbreak of the Revolution set the plan aside. Had it been carried out it would have cut Virginia off from her back lands. The Quebec Act of 1774 operated in the same direction, by attaching the Northwest to Quebec. Virginia therefore resisted. Governor Dunmore opposed the Vandalia colony, made grants of land both within and beyond it, and joined a company which purchased Indian lands north of the Ohio.
TRANS-ALLEGHANY SETTLEMENT
Western settlements before 1763.—But it was the backwoodsmen, and not the corporations, who opened the Trans-Alleghany country. Before the war a few settlements had been made on the western waters, In 1748 Draper's Meadows, on the Greenbrier, in West Virginia, were settled. Between 1750 and 1752 a settlement was made by the Ohio Company at Redstone on the Monongahela. By 1758 several small settlements had been made on the Holston, Watauga, and Cheat Rivers. But during the war these western settlements were abandoned, and the frontier pushed eastward a hundred miles or more.
The westward movement after the war.—The French and Indian War was scarcely over when the westward movement began again, regardless of proclamations or the deliberations of the Board of Trade. In 1760 Daniel Boone, from the Yadkin in North Carolina, "cilled a bar" on the Watauga River. Between 1761 and 1765 Wallen annually led hunters to the west. In 1765 Croghan surveyed the Ohio River, and the next year James Smith and others explored the Tennessee. In 1767 Finley was in Kentucky, and Stoner, Harrod, and Lindsay were at French Lick (the site of Nashville). In 1767 and 1770 Boone was "prospecting" for Judge Richard Henderson, a land speculator of North Carolina. At the same time Mansker led a party down the Cumberland and on to Natchez. By this time others had wandered far beyond the Mississippi and were causing the Spanish officials anxiety.
The hunters, traders, and prospectors were followed by surveyors and settlers. The chief participants in the movement were from the middle region and the South: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Prominent among the pioneers on the western waters were the Scotch-Irish who had settled the back country of the older colonies and stood waiting at the western passes.
The Appalachian barrier.—To reach the Mississippi Valley the frontiersman was forced to pass the Appalachian barrier, extending from Maine to Georgia. The easiest pass through it, by way of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, was impeded by the Six Nations who stood between the western frontier of settlement and the vacant lands beyond. Farther south the barrier was traversed by a series of interlocking rivers, flowing in opposite directions, whose valleys afforded trails. The Susquehannah led to the Alleghany, the Potomac to the Monongahela, the James and Roanoke to the Great Kanawha, the Great Pedee, the Yadkin, and Catawba to the head waters of the Tennessee. A series of longitudinal valleys on the eastern front of the southern Appalachians gave access from Virginia and North Carolina to the upper Tennessee, from whose valley an easy pass was found to Kentucky by way of Cumberland Gap.
The Indian barrier.—The Iroquois Confederacy, though friendly, was a retarding force to the northern stream of emigration. The Algonquin tribes north of the Ohio had been friendly with the French, and after the French and Indian War they favored the French traders rather than those from the seaboard colonies. At the southern end of the Appalachians westward expansion was retarded by the strong confederacies of the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. The region between the Ohio and the Tennessee was the "dark and bloody ground" between the northern and southern tribes, but permanently inhabited by neither. It was this region which was opened to settlement by the Indian cessions between 1768 and 1770. The cessions were followed immediately by a movement of settlers into the area.