Clinton (November 6, 1747) complains to the Duke of Bedford of De Lancey’s efforts to thwart the government’s aims to secure the assistance of the Six Nations for the invasion of Canada.[1245]
BONNECAMP’S MAP, AFTER THE KOHL COPY.
In February, 1749-50, a long report was made to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury on the expenses incurred by the colonies during the war for the attempts to invade Canada. It is printed in the New Jersey Archives, 1st ser., vii. 383-400. The annual summaries on the French side, 1745-48, are in N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 38, 89, 137.
A stubborn fight in 1748 with some marauding Indians near Schenectady is chronicled in Pearson’s Schenectady Patent, p. 298.
In 1749 came Céloron’s expedition to forestall the English by burying his plates at the mouths of the streams flowing into the Ohio. A fac-simile of the inscription on one of these plates has been given already (ante, p. 9).[1246]
While Céloron was burying his plates, and La Galissonière was urging the home government to settle 10,000 French peasants on the Ohio, the kinsmen of Washington and others were forming in 1748 the Ohio Company, which received a royal grant of half a million acres between the Monongahela and the Kenawha rivers, on condition of settling the territory;[1247] “which lands,” wrote Dinwiddie,[1248] “are his Majesty’s undoubted right by the treaty of Lancaster and subsequent treaties at Logstown[1249] on the Ohio.” Colonel Thomas Cresap was employed to survey the road over the mountains,—the same later followed by Braddock.
Of the subsequent exploration by Christopher Gist, in behalf of the Ohio Company, and of George Croghan and Montour for the governor of Pennsylvania, note has been taken on an earlier page.[1250] A paper on Croghan’s transactions with the Indians previous to the outbreak of hostilities has been printed.[1251] Referring to the Ohio region in 1749, Croghan wrote: “No people carry on the Indian trade in so regular a manner as the French.”[1252]
Reference has already been made (ante, pp. 3, 4) to the movement in 1749 of Father Piquet to influence the Iroquois through a missionary station near the head of the rapids of the St. Lawrence, on the New York side, at the site of the present Ogdensburg. The author of the Mémoires sur le Canada, whence the plan of La Présentation (ante, p. 3)[1253] is taken, gives an unfavorable account of Piquet.[1254]