anada,
commissioned Celoron de Blainville to take possession of the Ohio
Valley, which he did in form, descending the river to the Maumee, and so
to Lake Erie and home again, having at convenient points proclaimed
the sovereignty of Louis XV over that country, and having laid down,
as evidence of the accomplished fact, certain lead plates bearing
awe-inspiring inscriptions, some of which have been discovered and
are preserved to this day. It was none the less a dangerous junket.
Everywhere Blainville found the Indians of hostile mind; everywhere, in
every village almost, he found English traders plying their traffic and
"cultivating a friendship with the Indians"; so that upon his return
in 1750, in spite of the lead plates so securely buried, he must needs
write in his journal: "All I can say is that the nations of those
countries are ill disposed towards the French and devoted to the
English."

During the first years of the war all this devotion was nevertheless
seen to be of little worth. Like Providence, the Indians were sure to
side with the big battalions. For want of a few effective garrisons at
the beginning, the English found themselves deserted by their quondam
allies, and although they recovered this facile allegiance as soon as
the French garrisons were taken, it was evident enough in the late years
of the war that fear alone inspired the red man's loyalty. The Indian
apparently did not realize at this early date that his was an inferior
race destined to be supplanted. Of a primitive and uncultivated
intelligence, it was not possible for him to foresee the beneficent
designs of the Ohio Company or to observe with friendly curiosity the
surveyors who came to draw imaginary lines through the virgin forest.
And therefore, even in an age when the natural rights of man were being
loudly proclaimed, the "Nations of Indians inhabiting those parts" were
only too ready to believe what the Virginia traders told them of
the Pennsylvanians, what the Pennsylvania traders told them of the
Virginians--that the fair words of the English were but a kind of mask
to conceal the greed of men who had no other desire than to deprive the
red man of his beloved hunting grounds.

Thus it was that the industrious men with pedantic minds who day by day
read the dispatches that accumulated in the office of the Board of Trade
became aware, during the years from 1758 to 1761, that the old policy
of defense was not altogether adequate.