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They had not forgotten the conduct of Celeron de Bienville in the previous year, and the mysterious plates which he had nailed against trees and sunk in the ground. "If the French claim the rivers which run into the lakes," said they, "those which run into the Ohio belong to us and to our brothers the English."
Celeron de Bienville distributed presents among the Indians, made speeches reminding them of former friendship, and warned them not to trade with the English. "They mean to steal our country from us," murmured they; and they determined to seek protection from the English.
It is said that about three hundred of them came over the mountains every year. On reaching the Alleghany, Céleron de Bienville entered upon the work assigned him, and began by taking possession of the country.
They plundered their country but were ready to fight for it against the national enemy. Other officers followed in succession, men whose names were already familiar, or destined to become glorious in New France, La Corne, St. Luc, Celeron de Bienville, Colonel Philibert, the Chevalier de Beaujeu, the De Villiers, Le Gardeur de St. Pierre, and De Lery.
Early in 1749, the Marquis de la Galisonniere, Governor of Canada, despatched Celeron de Bienville, an intelligent officer, at the head of three hundred men, to the banks of the Ohio, to make peace, as he said, between the tribes that had become embroiled with each other during the late war, and to renew the French possession of the country.
Towards the end of spring the vanguard of the expedition sent by Duquesne to occupy the Ohio landed at Presquisle, where Erie now stands. This route to the Ohio, far better than that which Céleron had followed, was a new discovery to the French; and Duquesne calls the harbor "the finest in nature."
Great were the changes here since Céleron, a year and a half before, had vainly enticed him to change his abode, and dwell in the shadow of the fleur-de-lis. The town had grown to four hundred families, or about two thousand souls; and the English traders had built for themselves and their hosts a fort of pickets, strengthened with logs.
This war was the strife of a united and concentred few against a divided and discordant many. It was the strife, too, of the past against the future; of the old against the new; of moral and intellectual torpor against moral and intellectual life; of barren absolutism against a liberty, crude, incoherent, and chaotic, yet full of prolific vitality. Céleron de Bienville
Celeron finding some traders from Pennsylvania trafficking among the Indians, he summoned them to depart, and wrote by them to James Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania, telling him the object of his errand to those parts, and his surprise at meeting with English traders in a country to which England had no pretensions; intimating that, in future, any intruders of the kind would be rigorously dealt with.
La Jonquière's remedy had been more heroic, for he had ordered Céleron to attack the English and their red allies alike; and he charged that officer with arrogance and disobedience because he had not done so.
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