By the best information I can get, I much doubt whether any of the Indians will be in to treat in May. Are the Indian women and children, if they settle amongst us, to be maintained at our expense? They will expect it. I have the honor to be, &c.

TO JAMES HAMILTON, GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA. Will's Creek, 27 April, 1754.

SIR,

It is with the greatest concern I acquaint you, that Mr. Ward, ensign in Captain Trent's company, was compelled to surrender his small fort at the Fork of the Monongahela to the French, on the 17th instant, who fell down from Venango, with a fleet of three hundred and sixty batteaux and canoes, upwards of one thousand men, and eighteen pieces of artillery, which they planted against the fort, drew up their men, and sent the enclosed summons to Mr. Ward, who, having but

state of affairs in Virginia, and pressing for assistance. But nothing was done. Several of the governors brought the matter before their Assemblies, with moving appeals to their patriotism and sympathy. The evil was too distant to be felt, and was little heeded. The Assemblies of New York and Pennsylvania, and some persons in that of Virginia, professed to doubt, whether his Majesty's dominions actually extended to the French encroachments. Governor Glen of South Carolina was perplexed with similar misgivings. This idea was shocking to the zeal and loyalty of Dinwiddie and others, who supposed the question of right to have been put at rest by the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle, and by certain diplomatic arrangements with the Indians of recent date.— Review of Military Operations in North America, p. 10.- Votes of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, Vol. IV. pp. 287–513.— Dinwiddie's Letter-Books.

Pennsylvania and Maryland were more immediately concerned, as their frontiers were threatened. In both these colonies the Assemblies passed money bills for general protection, but so clogged with what the governors called attacks upon the prerogative, that they would not sign them. Long feuds had existed between the governors and the Assemblies on this subject of granting money, and the Assemblies were generally adroit enough to connect a full assertion of their claims with those cases, in which the

an inconsiderable number of men, and no cannon, to make a proper defence, was obliged to surrender. They suffered him to draw off his men, arms, and working-tools, and gave leave that he might retreat to the inhabitants.

I have heard of your Honor's great zeal for his Majesty's service, and for all our interests on the present occasion. You will see, by the enclosed speech of the Half-King, that the Indians expect some assistance from you; and I am persuaded you will take proper notice of their moving speech, and their unshaken fidelity.

I thought it more advisable to acquaint your Honor with it immediately, than to wait till you could get intelligence by the way of Williamsburg and the young man, as the Half-King proposes.

I have arrived thus far with a detachment of one hun

dred and fifty men. Colonel Fry, with the remainder of the regiment and artillery, is daily expected. In the mean time, we advance slowly across the mountains, making the roads, as we march, fit for the carriage of

public exigencies were the most urgent, hoping thereby to bring the governors to proper terms, and in this they sometimes succeeded. As the people gave the money, it was said, they ought to be allowed to raise and appropriate it in their own way. To this broad principle the governors objected instructions, prerogative, and precedent.

Governor Dinwiddie's official dignity was severely tried in the affair of the ten thousand pounds, granted by the Virginia legislature. By the bill, making the grant, a committee was appointed to act in concert with the governor in appropriating the money. In writing to the Board of Trade, he says, "I would by no means have given my assent to the bill, if his Majesty's service had not immediately called for a supply." He averred, that the business of appropriating the money, granted for the defence of the colony, was vested wholly in the hands of the governor.

He wrote at the same time to the Earl of Halifax:-"I am sorry to find the House of Burgesses in a republican way of thinking; and, indeed, they do not act in a proper constitutional way, but make encroachments upon the prerogative of the crown, in which some former governors have submitted too much to them; and, I fear, without a very particular instruction, it will be difficult to bring them to order." - Dinwiddie's Letter-Books, 12 March, 1754.

our great guns; and are designed to proceed as far as the mouth of Red-stone Creek, which enters the Monongahela about thirty-seven miles above the fort taken by the French, from whence we have a water carriage down the river. And there is a storehouse built by the Ohio Company, which may serve as a receptacle for our ammunition and provisions.

Besides these French, that came from Venango, we have credible accounts, that another party are coming up the Ohio. We also have intelligence, that six hundred of the Chippewas and Ottawas are marching down Scioto Creek to join them. I hope your Honor will excuse the freedom I have assumed in acquainting you with these advices; it was the warm zeal I owe my country, that influenced me to it, and occasioned this express.

I am, with all due respect and regard, your Honor's most obedient and very humble servant.*

This letter was immediately laid before the legislature by the governor. A bill was then pending for a grant of ten thousand pounds for the King's use, but it was obstructed in its progress by the opposition of the Governor to the plan proposed by the Assembly for raising the money, and no relief was obtained for the expedition.- Votes of the Pennsylvania Assembly, Vol. IV. p. 313.

Whatever doubts there may have been in the minds of some members of the Assembly, as to the King's title to the Western lands, these doubts were not publicly urged as a reason for withholding a grant of money. But the truth is, that, when the contest between France and England began, neither power had any just title to the lands west of the Ohio River. There could be no pretence, by either party, of conquest, purchase, or occupancy. The French had been accustomed to pass from Canada and the Lakes down the Wabash and through the Illinois country to Louisiana, and a few English traders had recently gone over the mountains and bartered with the Indians. The English government had even granted five hundred thousand acres of land there to the Ohio Company. The claim by the English was founded on the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle, in which France consented that Great Britain should have jurisdiction over all the regions possessed by the Iroquois, or Six Nations. But there is no proof, that the territory in question belonged to the Iroquois. In fact, there is the strongest evidence to the contrary. VOL. II.

B

SIR,

TO GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE.

Little Meadows, 9 May, 1754.

Even

I acquainted you by Mr. Ward with the determination, which we prosecuted four days after his departure, as soon as wagons arrived to carry our provisions. The want of proper conveyances has much retarded this expedition, and at this time it unfortunately delays the detachment I have the honor to command. when we came to Will's Creek, my disappointments were not less than before; for there I expected to find a sufficient number of packhorses provided by Captain Trent, conformably to his promise, and to Major Carlyle's letters and my own, that I might prosecute my first intention with light, expeditious marches; but instead of that, there was none in readiness, nor any in expectation that I could perceive, which reduced me to the necessity of waiting till wagons could be procured from

The only rightful owners were the Indian occupants, and these were not the Iroquois. This point is very clear from the whole tenor of Indian history, and is fully confirmed by Hecke welder, though in some things that venerable missionary was credulous, and too much influenced by the traditions of his favorite Delawares.

Besides the above memorable treaties of the high European powers, Governor Dinwiddie gave great weight to an Indian treaty made at Lancaster, in 1744, between a large number of delegates from the Iroquois tribes, and Commissioners from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. This treaty was conducted with much parade and formality, after the Indian manner, and the Iroquois professed to give up their claim to the lands on the west of the Allegany Mountains for four hundred pounds, paid to them by Virginia in money and goods; but the extent of these lands is not defined; and the Commissioners themselves seem to doubt the title of the Iroquois, when they tell them, "We are informed that the Southern Indians claim these very lands that you do." During the whole transaction, which lasted several days, the Indian negociators expressed more solicitude about the rum, that was given them from time to time, than the affairs of state in which they were engaged.

There was much good sense, however, in the following remarks of the Sachem Gachradodow, in his speech to the Commissioners from Virginia,

the Branch, forty miles distant. However, in the mean time, I detached a party of sixty men to make and mend the road, which party since the 25th of April, and the main body since the 1st instant, have been laboriously employed, and have got no farther than these Meadows, about twenty miles from the New Store.* We have

been two days making a bridge across the river, and have not done yet.†

The great difficulty and labor, that it requires to mend

-"You know very well, when the white people first came here, they were poor; but they have got our lands, and are by them become rich, and we are now poor; what little we have had for the land goes soon away, but the land lasts for ever." And again;-"The great king might send you over to conquer the Indians; but it looks to us, that God did not approve it; if he had, he would not have placed the great sea where it is, as the limits between us and you."— Colden's History of the Five Nations, Vol. II. pp. 86, 87.

When Mr. Gist went over the Alleganies, in February, 1751, on a tour of discovery for the Ohio Company, "an Indian, who spoke good English, came to him, and said that their great man, the Beaver, and Captain Oppamyluah, (two Chiefs of the Delawares) desired to know where the Indians' land lay, for the French claimed all the land on one side of the Ohio River, and the English on the other." This question Mr. Gist found it hard to answer, and he evaded it by saying, that the Indians and white men were all subjects of the same king, and all had an equal privilege of taking up and possessing the land, in conformity with the conditions prescribed by the King. Gist's Manuscript Journal.

A storehouse, or magazine, established by the Ohio Company at Will's Creek.

A council of war had been called, when the news of Ensign Ward's capitulation reached Will's Creek, in which it was agreed to be impossible to march towards the fort without reinforcements; but it was resolved to advance to the mouth of Red-stone Creek on the Monongahela, and raise a fortification, clearing the roads on the way, so that the artillery and baggage could pass, and there wait for fresh orders.

The reasons for this decision were, that the mouth of the Red-stone was the nearest convenient position on the Monongahela; that the storehouses already built there by the Ohio Company would receive their munitions and provisions; that the heavy artillery might be easily transported by water from that place, whenever it should be expedient to attack the French fort; and that by this movement the soldiers would be kept from the ill consequences of inaction, and the Indians encouraged to remain true to their alliance.