in Mobile. The town must have shrunk a great deal, for in 1745 the male population outside of the garrison amounted to only one hundred and fifty and the negroes of both sexes to two hundred, and from this time dates the grant for agricultural purposes of some of the land which earlier had been in town lots. Red Shoe renewed his hostility, and three years later was killed by a Choctaw, rumor has it, for a reward offered by the French. Bossu tells us that the governor managed to end the revolt by cutting off supplies of ammunition from the friendly Choctaws until they forced the hostiles to peace.

Vaudreuil found himself able in 1752 to undertake an expedition against the Chickasaws, the third by the French, which was, like one of Bienville's, from Mobile and up the Tombecbé. In fact, it offered a curious parallel to that ill-fated first expedition, which terminated at Ackia. The canoe fleet proceeded up to Fort Tombecbé, where it remained for a short time, and then to what is now Cotton Gin Port, whence the troops marched across the country, and with the assistance of the Choctaws attacked the Chickasaw towns. Vaudreuil had the advantage of Bienville in artillery, and succeeded in destroying cabins and crops; but he met a defeat only less disastrous, and in retreating seems to have abandoned his artillery in the river on account of low water. He halted long enough at Tombecbé to enlarge and strengthen it and then returned to Mobile.

The Chickasaws were unconquerable, and their hostility to the French could not be appeased. They could be worn out by sheer attrition, but would not yield voluntarily. One cannot restrain admiration for a tribe gradually growing fewer in number before the increasing French, and who, unlike the oak, would neither bend nor break. The British hold upon the Appalachian Mountains and their southwestern foothills was unbroken. Forts Toulouse and Tombecbé remained a menace to their influence, and their traders had to use Tennessee River and the mountain paths near by; and yet, without a fort among the Chickasaws, by traders

few in number, the English maintained this wedge of Indian tribes, extending westwardly from the mountains of Carolina almost to the Mississippi.

In the Kentucky region as elsewhere in the Ohio valley the mountains barred out the English settlers but not the English traders. In 1745 Vaudreuil writes to the French government that he has sent by the Elephant three traders captured on the Mississippi, although we also learn afterward that the Elephant was captured by the English themselves, and there were earlier and later instances of such trade invasions. Virginia, it is true, claimed all this country, because Maryland and Pennsylvania, unlike her, had definite western boundaries whose lines were perhaps uncertain but at least capable of being run, while we recollect that ever since La Salle's time all territory watered by streams tributary to the Mississippi was claimed by France as part of Louisiana. On neither side were the native inhabitants much considered. The French, however, had less difficulty, for they called the Indians their brothers, really with themselves subjects of the French king. We find treaties of alliance, but no cessions of territory to the French. Nor was any needed, for the French trader was either a royal officer or under official supervision, and the fort to protect French interests was not less a post for trade, welcomed by the natives.

The claim of the English to the Ohio valley as against the Indians was based upon treaties with the Iroquois, and that of the Iroquois upon conquest. The Five Nations had in many respects the most instructive history of the native tribes. They had learned that in union there was strength, and in one of their congresses with the British colonists they even exhorted their white brethren to a similar union, and this before confederation was planned by anyone. They claimed by conquest all the country east of Mississippi River from Hudson Bay to the Cherokees, themselves friendly to these northerners. The Catawbas they almost exterminated, and it was the Tuscaroras from the south who made up the sixth nation of the league. The justice of the

claim is another matter, but for the present let us see how the English fell heir to it.

While the Canadians and the Iroquois were engaged in their long Thirty Years' War, the British were careful to cultivate and spur on the Long House. In 1684 and even in 1701, after the Iroquois had made peace with Canada, the British acquired their rights to different districts adjoining the northern settlements, and in 1726 yet other lands were thus obtained, "to be protected and defended by his Majesty to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs." In 1744, at Lancaster, the Six Nations were persuaded by means of whiskey and debauchery to recognize the king's right to "all lands that are or by his Majesty's appointments shall be within the colony of Virginia,"--which was a "walking purchase" putting to blush the original of the On this was based the grant by the government of five hundred thousand acres, to be principally located on the south side of Ohio River between the Monongahela and the Kanawha, by the Ohio Company, an association made up of Thomas Lee, Lawrence and Augustine Washington, brothers of George Washington,-ten other Virginians, and a gentleman of London. Two hundred thousand acres were to be located at once and held for ten years free of rent if the company colonized there one hundred families within seven years and built a sufficient fort. In consummating this, Christopher Gist in 1750-1751 made his famous exploration from Colonel Cresap's house at the old town on Potomac River down the Ohio within fifteen miles of the falls and thence to Roanoke River in North Carolina.

name.

It would seem as if the cessions by the Iroquois of these lands west of the Alleghanies violated on a great scale the principle as to conveyance by a party out of possession. The Iroquois had been much set back by the long war with Canada beginning in 1663, and the very fact of the cession of lands behind them showed that their activity now was more limited than their claims. On the other hand, while few Indians lived upon the banks of the Ohio, the upland

was by no means a wilderness. What we call Kentucky, it is true, had few occupants, but it was the hunting ground for the Shawnees and tribes to the north. Not to mention those of the Illinois region, next west of the Alleghanies and thus about Muskingum River were the Delawares, who had retired from their ancient eastern seats; and there were gathered about the Scioto in the eighteenth century the Shawnees, those American Bedouins whose hand was heavy against the English. West of these, about the Miami Rivers, great and little, were the Miamis, or Twightwees, who extended over to the Wabash, and along Lake Erie were the Wyandots and other Canadian tribes. Altogether what makes up the States of Ohio and Indiana had a fairly large population of warlike Indians, far superior to the Illinois and other victims of French fire-water. These not only did not consent to the Iroquois cessions, but, on the contrary, did not acknowledge Iroquois supremacy in any shape, and the irritation of the Indians was readily taken advantage of by the French.

The rivalry of the French and the British in the Mississippi valley had reached a stage where dispute could only be settled by arms. The French held the banks of the Mississippi, and to some extent those of the Ohio, and were equally powerful upon the Great Lakes west of the Iroquois. The Gulf, too, was theirs or Spanish, but they had been unable by force or trade to come into control of the Chickasaws and Cherokees about the lower end of the Appalachian Mountains. The French coureurs, the French traders, and the French officials had their territory fairly in hand; and while the English were less organized, they were more numerous and seemed through their firm hold upon the Cherokees and Chickasaws to keep a great wedge between the Latins of the Gulf and of the Ohio valley. From a contest of traders it had come to be an almost incessant

conflict of pioneers, if not of outposts. It needed but an outbreak in Europe to produce open war in the wilds of America.

CHAPTER XVIII

OPEN WAR

WAR has more often resulted from trade rivalry than from any other secular cause. It is true that in early eras uncivilized races projected themselves upon more cultivated but weaker countries, urged on by a desire to better their condition, or pushed by more savage races behind. Even in later times an expanding population has caused a powerful country to seize neighboring provinces. But the main cause of war, nevertheless, will be found in historic times to be the desire to secure a market or a vantage ground for trade. It is not necessary for this to be consciously in the minds of statesmen. Insult to the flag, real or fancied, injury to merchants, true or assumed, desire for territory better fitted for trade, commercial concessions to one power conflicting with those to another, these and the like are the origin of most modern struggles. And so it was with France and England in the eighteenth century. At first, America had been drawn into European conflicts; now, it was to be at least in part the main object of war between the mother countries.

We have seen that the Mississippi valley was the field of commercial rivalry between the French and the English traders. This basin was bounded by the Alleghanies on the east, while the Great Lakes on the north and the AlabamaTombigbee region and Florida on the south afforded access to and from it. Through the mountains also were different