ot back to Canada. It could not
be honestly said that he had done much to make good his king's claim
to the country with his plates of tin and lead. He had flattered and
threatened the Indians at several places; and the Indians had promised,
over the cups of brandy and pipes of tobacco which he supplied them, to
be good subjects to Louis XV., who was such a very bad king that he did
not deserve even such subjects as they meant to be. They seem not to
have taken Celoron's warnings very seriously, though he told them that
the English traders would ruin them, and that they were preparing the
way for the English settlers, who would soon swarm into their country,
and drive them out.

The Indians did not believe Celoron, and yet he told them the truth. The
English traders were often men of low character, thoroughly dishonest in
their dealings, and the English settlers were only waiting for the end
of the struggle with the French to come and take the Indians' lands
from them. If the French soldiers and the French priests had won in
that struggle, Ohio and the whole West might now be something like the
Province of Quebec as it was then. The Indians would have been converted
to the Catholic faith, and they would still be found in almost as great
numbers as ever throughout the vast region where hardly one of their
blood remains.

But this was not to be. The French built their forts with a keen eye
for the strongest points in the wilderness, and the priests planted the
cross even beyond the forts. But all around and between the forts and
the missions, the traders from our colonies, which afterwards became our
states, stole into the country claimed for the king of France. At that
time, there was peace between the king of France and the king of England
in Europe, and they pretended that there was peace between their nations
in America. They were very civil to each other through their ministers
and ambassadors, over there, but their governors and captains here never
ceased to fight and trick for the ownership of the West. From their
forts, built to curb the English settlers, the French set the savages on
to harass the frontier of our colonies, which their war parties wasted
with theft and fire and murder. Our colonies made a poor defense,
because they were suspicious of one another. New England was suspicious
of New York, New York of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania of Virginia, and
the mother country was suspicious of them all. She was w