The new French governor, Jonquière, had arrived in Quebec in August, 1749. Kalm[1255] describes his reception, and it was not long before he was having a conference with the Cayugas,[1256] followed the next year (1751) by another meeting with the whole body of the Iroquois.[1257] His predecessor, La Galissonière,[1258] was busying himself on a memoir, dated December, 1750,[1259] in which he shows the great importance of endeavoring to sustain the posts connecting Canada with Louisiana, and the danger of English interference in case of a war.
William Johnson, meanwhile, was counteracting the French negotiation with the Indians as best he could;[1260] and both French and English were filing their remonstrances about reciprocal encroachments on the Ohio.[1261] Cadwallader Colden was telling Governor Clinton how to secure (1751) the Indian trade and fidelity,[1262] the Privy Council was reporting (April 2, 1751) on the condition of affairs in New York province,[1263] and the French government was registering ministerial minutes on the English encroachments on the Ohio.[1264]
What instructions Duquesne had for his treatment of the Indians on the Ohio and for driving out the English may be seen in the N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 242.
Edward Livingston, in 1754, writing of the French intrigues with the Indians, says, “They persuade these people that the Virgin Mary was born in Paris, and that our Saviour was crucified at London by the English.”[1265]
The English trading-post of Picktown, or Pickawillany, at the junction of the Great Miami River and Loramie’s Creek, was destroyed by the French in 1752.[1266] This English post and the condition of the country are described in the “Journal of Christopher Gist’s journey ... down the Ohio, 1750, ... thence to the Roanoke, 1751, undertaken on account of the Ohio Company,” which was published in Pownall’s Topographical Description of North America, app. (London, 1776). Gist explored the Great Miami River.[1267]
Parkman[1268] tells graphically the story of the incidents, in which Washington was a central figure, down to the retreat from Fort Necessity.[1269] The journal of Gist, who accompanied Washington to Le Bœuf,[1270] is printed in the Mass. Hist. Coll., xxv. 101.[1271]
The Dinwiddie Papers (vol. i. pp. 40-250) throw full light on the political purposes and other views during this interval. Parkman had copies of them, and partial use had been made of them by Chalmers. Sparks copied some of them in 1829, when they were in the possession of J. Hamilton, Cumberland Place, London, and these extracts appear among the Sparks MSS. in Harvard College library as “Operations in Virginia, 1754-57,” accompanied by other copies from the office of the Board of Trade, “Operations on the Frontier of Virginia, 1754-55.”[1272]
The Dinwiddie papers later passed into the hands of Henry Stevens, and are described at length in his Hist. Collections, i. no. 1,055; and when they were sold, in 1881, they were bought by Mr. W. W. Corcoran, of Washington, and were given by him to the Virginia Historical Society, under whose auspices they were printed in 1883-4, in two volumes, edited, with an introduction and notes, by R. A. Brock.[1273]
Very soon after Washington’s return to Williamsburgh from Le Bœuf, his journal of that mission was put to press under the following title: The Journal of Major George Washington, sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie, Esq., his Majesty’s Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Virginia, to the Commandant of the French forces in Ohio; to which are added the Governor’s letter and a translation of the French Officer’s answer, Williamsburgh, 1754. This original edition is so rare that I have noted but two copies.[1274] It has been used by all the historians,—Sparks, Irving, Parkman, and the rest.