An Portrait

The chief, Black Hoof. (12)

presence in their area. The powerful Confederacy held hegemony over the and posed an effective barrier to the exploitation of that region by the French. No permanent French post was established in Ohio. By the 1740s, however, French trading rela- tionships with the Miamis and Ottawas were threatened by , Conrad Weiser, and other aggressive Pennsylvania traders who had moved into the Ohio Country with their rum, blankets, steel axes, guns, and trade goods. The threat was pronounced because Croghan was a persuasive forest diplomat and because British traders were giving the Indians more and better trade goods in exchange for pelts than were the French. Moreover, the fron- tier of British settlement was expanding west- ward at a rate that alarmed the French and their named Ohio, Muskingum, Cuyahoga, Miami, Indian allies. Already, ambitious land schemes and Scioto; towns named Wapakoneta, Chil- were being organized. Speculators in Virginia licothe, Ottawa, Junction, and Shaw- and Pennsylvania and their allies in London cast neetown; indeed, in the very name of the state covetous eyes on the Ohio Country. The most itself. direct threat was the Ohio Company, largely a The earliest known penetration of the Ohio Virginia enterprise, whose scout Christopher Country by Europeans occurred relatively late Gist traveled as far west as (in mod- when one considers that Robert Rene Cavelier ern Shelby County) in 1750 and 1751. Virginia Sieur de La Salle did not reach the claimed all of the Ohio Country under her char- until 1669. By that date the French had long- ter of 1609. In 1752 her agents negotiated the established posts along Lake Huron and had Treaty of with the Iroquois and Dela- penetrated the western lakes and the interior of wares, who ceded to Virginia lands south of the the Illinois Country far to the west. This western Ohio, near the Kanawha River, and authorized penetration was late only in terms of French activ- the Ohio Company to build a fort and settle this ity, for in 1669 there was not yet a Pennsylvania, region. New York had been won from Dutch settlers just Earlier French efforts, including the bizarre five years earlier, and English settlements were journey made by Celeron de Bienville along the confined to a narrow coastal littoral. Allegheny and Ohio, where he planted lead La Salle explored the shores washed by la plates claiming the lands for the French king, had belle riviere. His exact route is unknown, and gen- failed to stop the aggressive British. A more di- erations of local enthusiasts throughout the mid- rect warning was required. In the summer of west have made extravagant claims about his 1752, French settlers under Charles Langlade