pent worship; and
the fear and hate which the Zufiis bear the red savages of the plains
may be another heritage from the kindred race which once peopled our
Ohio valleys.

II. OHIO AS A PART OF FRANCE.

If the people of Ohio were Eskimos in the ages before history began,
and then thousands of years after, but still thousands of years ago were
Aztecs, there is no doubt that when history first knew of them they were
Frenchmen. The whole Great West, in fact, was once as much a province
of France as Canada; for the dominions of Louis XV. were supposed to
stretch from Quebec to New Orleans, and from the Alleghanies to the
Mississippi. The land was really held by savages who had never heard of
this king; but that was all the same to the French. They had discovered
the Great Lakes, they had discovered the Mississippi, they had
discovered the Ohio; and they built forts at Detroit, at Kaskaskia, and
at Pittsburg, as well as at Niagara; they planted a colony at the mouth
of our mightiest river, and opened a highway to France through the
Gulf of Mexico, as well as through the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and they
proclaimed their king sovereign over all.

In Ohio they had a post on the Maumee, and everywhere they had
settlements at each of the forts, where there was always a chapel and a
priest for the conversion of the Indians. With the French, the sword and
the cross went together, but very few of the savages knew that they
were either conquered or converted. From time to time they knew that
companies of picturesque strangers visited their towns, and promised
them the favor of the French king if they would have nothing to do with
the traders from the English colonies on the Atlantic, and threatened
them with his displeasure if they refused. When these brilliant
strangers staid among them, and built a fort and a chapel, and laid out
farms, then the savages willingly partook of the great king's bounty,
and clustered around the French post in their wigwams and settled down
to the enjoyment of his brandy, his tobacco, his ammunition, and his
religion. When the strangers went away, almost as soon as they had
promised and threatened, then the savages went back to business with the
English traders.

The company of Frenchmen who visited our Miami Indians at their town of
Pickawillany, on the head waters of the Miami River in 1749, was of this
last sort. It was commanded by the Chevalier Celoron de Bienville, and
it counted some two