It was

ance into New York. A fleet from France, intended for Canada, was forced to strike its colors. this rumor, however, that broke up a plan agreed upon by New England, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania for the invasion of Canada, which was to have been carried out in 1746. The war of the Austrian succession came to an end by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, and by its terms Louisburg and Cape Breton were restored to France. Upon this settlement the Colonies were made restless. They felt that they had striven without stint to preserve to the Mother Country her distant possessions, and that they did not receive from the powers at home the consideration. which they deserved.

The English had kept up their missionary efforts under Eliot and his companions, and the field of operations in this respect has been gradually enlarged, for John Sergeant, a graduate of Yale College, had served as minister among the Stockbridge Indians, in Western Massachusetts, from 1734 to 1749; the celebrated Jonathan Edwards had superintended the same mission for several years; and David Brainerd (who had been expelled from Yale College) became preacher to the same Indians, in July, 1742, under appointment from the society that encouraged Eliot. In 1744, Brainerd was ordained, and began to preach among the Indians at the forks. of the Delaware, in Pennsylvania, removing afterwards to Newark, N. J., where his health wore out.

In 1749, the British Parliament acknowledged the Moravian Brethren as an Episcopal Church, and encouraged them to settle in America. They came

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185

in considerable numbers, and devoted themselves with patience and success to missions among the Indians, having stations in Pennsylvania, and at the present town of Gnadenhütten (tents of grace), in Tuscarawas County, O. The Indian converts of the Moravians were attacked and put to death in the town of Paxton, Pa., in 1764, and at a later period, March 8, 1782, one hundred were treacherously murdered at Gnadenhütten, on the ground that they had been connected with outrages in Pennsylvania, with which they had had nothing to do.*

The next struggle between the English and French opened in 1754, without a declaration of war. It was not at first connected with a European war, as the other struggles between the colonists had been, but it ended at the time that the "Seven Years' War," which convulsed Europe, was brought to a close by the treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763, and was, therefore, to a considerable extent, coincident with that war.

The French claimed the northwestern territory of the United States, by virtue of the discoveries of Marquette, Jolliet and La Salle. They had not, however, gone to the West for purposes of colonization, but rather to discover, and for half a century after the death of La Salle, the French missionaries are the only persons who gave any information of what was going on on the Ohio River. After the treaty

*The history of the Moravian Missions is related with great detail, in "The Life and Times of David Zeisberger, the Western pioneer and apostle of the Indians," by Edmund De Schweinitz : Philadelphia, 1871. See, also, an article on Gnadenhütten, by W. D. Howells, in the Atlantic Monthly, for January, 1869.

of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French began to take formal possession of the region on the Ohio River,* by erecting wooden crosses, at the foot of which they buried plates of lead setting forth the facts that Louis XIV. claimed the land by right of discovery and by treaty with other European rulers.

English traders were at this time forbidden to visit the region, but it was a fact that nearly nine years before, they had begun to move about among the Indians buying peltries of them. In 1748, Thomas Lee, a member of the Royal Council of Virginia, associated certain others with him (among whom were Lawrence and Augustine Washington) to form the "Ohio Company," and a half million acres of land were granted to them. The Governor of Virginia was interested in the new company, and made treaties with the Indians, and tried to open negotiations with the French. The French would not treat, however, and attacked an Indian village in which some traders were hidden, taking them prisoners. The troops of the company were attacked, and, in 1753, a Virginia party engaged in building a fort on the present site of Pittsburg, was driven off, the French finishing the work and calling it Fort Du Quesne.

To repel these encroachments, it was determined by

* The right to this region had long been in dispute, and the matter had not been settled by the treaty. The English claim to the region from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, was based upon a treaty entered into by the representatives of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and the “Six Nations,” at Lancaster, Pa., July 2, 1744, by which the latter assigned the territory to the English for four hundred pounds. The treaty is said to have been signed when the Indians were under the influence of liquors. It conveyed lands to which they had no valid title.

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the English to send out four expeditions. General Edward Braddock, Commander-in-Chief,

to

go towards the Ohio and the Northwest; General Lyman (the command afterward fell to Sir William Johnson) was to attack Crown Point with a body of Provincial militia and some Mohawk allies; Governor William Shirley, of Massachusetts, was to reduce Fort Niagara; and Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow

BRADDOCK'S HEADQUARTERS IN WESTERN VIRGINIA.

(great-grandson of Edward Winslow, of Plymouth) was to force the French from Nova Scotia.

Braddock was aided by Franklin, then PostmasterGeneral, and George Washington, who in 1753 had been sent by the Governor of Virginia, to examine the state of affairs in the region he was now to invade, and the expedition set out in the spring of 1755. It

marched slowly through the wilderness, the General being fettered by English military rules, and did not meet the enemy until July 9, ten miles from Fort Du Quesne, when Braddock was defeated, and, mortally wounded, was obliged to retreat. In a few days he died, and the command devolved upon Washington. The defeat of this expedition showed that British soldiers were no better than American militiamen, and gave the colonists more inclination to depend with confidence upon themselves; but it was disastrous in making the savages less fearful of molestation in their raids upon the unprotected regions of Pennslyvania and Virginia, which suffered much from their incursions in the following years.

The armies destined to go against Niagara and Crown Point met at Albany, in June, and General Shirley went westward, stopping, however, at Oswego, disheartened by the news of Braddock's defeat, while Johnson and Lyman went towards Lake Champlain. The English were entrapped at Bloody Pond on the eighth of September, by General Dieskau, commanding the French, and Colonel Ephraim Williams and Hendrick, a chief of the Mohawk allies, were killed.* The English Americans fell back to the lake (Lake George), where a second battle was fought; Dieskau was defeated and killed, and his panic-stricken soldiers fled the field. Instead of profiting by this success, Johnson merely erected a fort, which he called William Henry, making no attempt to reduce Ticonderoga and Crown Point, against which he had been sent.

* Before leaving home on this expedition, Williams had made his will, leaving his property for the founding, in western Massachusetts, of the college which now bears his name.