ts, by establishing trading
houses, and by employing persons to survey the country.

The governor of Canada, who obtained early information of this
intrusion, as he deemed it, into the dominions of his most christian
majesty, wrote to the governors of New York and Pennsylvania,
informing them that the English traders had encroached on the French
territory by trading with their Indians; and giving notice that, if
they did not desist, he should be under the necessity of seizing them
wherever they should be found. At the same time the jealousy of the
Indians was excited by impressing them with fears that the English
were about to deprive them of their country.

His threat having been disregarded, the governor of Canada put it in
execution by seizing the British traders among the Twightwees, and
carrying them prisoners to Presque-isle, on Lake Erie; where he was
erecting a strong fort. About the same time, a communication was
opened from Presque-isle, down French creek, and the Alleghany river,
to the Ohio. This communication was kept up by detachments of troops,
posted at proper distances from each other, in works capable of
covering them from an attack made only with small arms.[146]

[Footnote 146: Minot Gazette.]

{1753}

This territory having been granted as part of Virginia, to the Ohio
company, who complained loudly of these aggressions, Dinwiddie, the
lieutenant governor of that province, laid the subject before the
assembly, and dispatched MAJOR WASHINGTON, the gentleman who
afterwards led his countrymen to independence, with a letter to the
commandant of the French forces on the Ohio; requiring him to withdraw
from the dominions of his Britannic majesty.

This letter was delivered at a fort on the river Le Boeuf, the western
branch of French creek, to Monsieur le Guarduer de St. Pierre, the
commanding officer on the Ohio, who replied that he had taken
possession of the country by the directions of his general, then in
Canada, to whom he would transmit the letter of the lieutenant
governor, and whose orders he should implicitly obey.

{1754}

[Sidenote: Defeat at the Little Meadows.]

Preparations were immediately made, in Virginia, to assert the rights
of the British crown; and a regiment was raised for the protection of
the frontiers. Early in the spring, Major Washington had advanced with
a small detachment from this regiment into the country to be contended
for, where he fell in with and defeat