rested the possibility of holding and controlling this immense acquisition of territory and of wealth.

The Strength of the English with the Indians.

The next historical problem which confronts us therefore is that of the policy of the English toward this newly acquired territory and the events by which it was prepared through complicated statecraft and bloody battles for a peaceful occupation.

1763.

On the 7th day of October, 1763, George III, the English King, issued a proclamation concerning the government of all the other territories ceded to England by the treaty of Paris, excepting this particular region in North America. His reason for excepting it from the provisions in that proclamation was the desire to rescue it all for crown lands, in order to exclude the inhabitants of the colonies from settling upon it! The selfish motive for this exclusion is one of the monstrosities of history, and is concealed and confessed in the words “Let the savages enjoy the desert in quiet, for were they driven from their forests the peltry trade would decrease!"

For the profit of the home government through the revenue derived from a fur trade with the Indians, this whole magnificent region was to be closed to the innumerable home seekers who were waiting to clear it, plow it, inhabit it and turn it into a paradise!

Pontiac War-Pontiac-1763.

This cold and selfish policy was instantly resented and assisted powerfully to provoke that hatred of England which produced the wave of the American Revolution. At the first the sanguine colonists believed that, now, because the French were conquered they could safely enter upon the occupation of this splendid domain, for it did not seem even to occur to them that the Indians could offer any serious resistance without the co-operation of the French. In this belief they were most lamentably in error, for the Indians from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, grieving over the disaster to their French friends, and irritated by the sudden and daring encroachments of their white neighbors broke out into open remonstrances and threats. The French had been conciliatory and politic in their treatment of the Indians; the English were harsh and unfair. One act of injustice followed another until at last the outraged Red Men rose in a movement of unprecedented magnitude. This movement, dangerous in itself, was rendered more so because inspired and directed by a man. of extraordinary genius, Pontiac the Chief of the Ottawas. By the exercise of his unrivaled powers this great warrior rallied the tribes of the whole region to his standard and planned a campaign of resistance, with the most consummate military skill. Various divisions of his army were to attack the several forts which the English had seized and manned, and began to do so in the months of May and June in 1763. One after another these fortresses succumbed. Forts St. Joseph (on the St. Joseph river, Michigan), fort Ontario, (now Lafayette, Indiana), fort Michillimacinac (now Mackinac, Michigan), fort Pesque Isle (now Erie, Pa.), fort Le Boeuf (in Erie Co., Pa.), fort Venango (Venango Co., Pa.), and the forts at Carlisle and Bedford, Pa.

Bouquet.

The only unsuccessful efforts of this sudden and brilliant campaign were, curiously enough, the one undertaken by the Chief himself (through the treachery of an Indian girl) and another less dramatic but not less fatal, at the eastern end of the confederacy. In that zone of the fighting, the Indians encountered a master in the art of war, Col. Henry Bouquet. At Burley Run, about 25 miles east of Fort Pitt, this sagacious and indomitable old veteran stumbled upon a large body of Indians and, by pretending to retreat with his 500 regulars, drew them into an ambuscade. Crushing them was the work of a few bloody moments when in the jaws of the trap he had so cunningly set.

Two such dire disasters were fatal to the confederacy, and as Bouquet in swift marches swept on his errand of recovery from frontier post to frontier post, in one of the most brilliant campaigns of American history, it hopelessly collapsed restoring peace and re-establishing the English power.

Treaties of German Flats and Fort Stanwick-1765-1768.

The territory had been conquered in a fair fight but something else remained, for on account of its vastness it was as necessary to peace that it be defined as that it should be subjugated. This was not an easy task. Three years were consumed in earnest and sometimes heated discussions between the representatives of the two powers. At last, however, (and it is another illustration of the numerous and distant influences required to pave the way for the foundation of our city) a satisfactory treaty was arranged and signed in 1768 at German Flats and Fort Stanwix in far away New York.

Lord Dunmore's War.

This was an event of the greatest importance; but it was not the last obstacle to be removed, by any means, nor the final complication which we have to understand. A struggle of the most violent and bitter character now sprang up between the various interests bent upon the occupation of the territory thus secured. Upon the instant of signature, almost, immigration began. It was at first of a sporadic character and consisted, with the exception of the Moravian Colony on the Muskingum, of individual attempts to trade or settle. The immigrants, as was inevitable, were of the most heterogeneous character and came from all the adjacent colonies, a fact which soon gave rise to misunderstandings and altercations between the legislatures of these ambitious political bodies. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina were principally involved. They dreaded, each one to see the other getting the lion's share of that vast wilderness empire which stretched away into the dim distance. The differences between Virginia and Pennsylvania were the most serious for they concerned not only the amount of territory each might grasp; but the policy by which they governed their relations to the Indian tribes. Pennsylvania desired, principally, a peaceful trade with them in furs; the Virginians avidly coveted their soil. Had it not been for the Indian outbreak which this greed for land provoked and which served to unite the warring factions by the spread of a common danger, the disagreement might have resulted in war between the whites, themselves.

1773.

It did, in fact, provoke a most perilous uprising of the Indians which for a time united the white men against the red men and developed into a struggle for supremacy which has been dignified by the title of Lord Dunmore's war. By the fall of 1773 the Indians had become thoroughly aroused and began making attacks upon the widely scattered settlements which had been commenced within. their borders. The Shawnees were the leaders of this uprising; but were joined by bands of Mingoes and Cherokees; Wyandots and Delawares, as well as the Miamis and the Wabash. In the spring of the following year open hostilities were inaugurated in consequence of an open letter issued by an agent of Lord Dunmore's, which was generally regarded as a formal declaration of war. the first sound of arms the whites developed a rude organization of their forces into two divisions, one under Michael Cresap and the other under General Andrew Lewis. The former, goaded by a natural antipathy for his red-skinned enemies, plunged recklessly into the struggle and fell (some say intentionally and some with vindictive purpose) upon a community of friendly Indians whom he ruthlessly put to the sword. This horrible atrocity provoked a conflict of such savage ferocity as had scarcely been known before even in that border land of blood.

1774.

It was, however, a brief struggle and was brought to an illustrious termination by a memorable victory won by the division under Lewis at Point Pleasant, on the Ohio river. On the 10th of October, this astute soldier encountered, at that spot, a body of Indians superior to his own in numbers but inferior in military prowess, and won from them one of the most remarkable victories recorded in the annals of Indian warfare. The results of this victory were momentous, for in the first place it was so complete as to keep the Indians quiet during the first two years of the Revolution (then just approaching) and in the second place to permit the whites to secure a foothold in Kentucky.

1778-1779-Kaskaskia and Vincennes.

The advances of the whites thus far recorded took place from the north and east; but inroads were being made from the south and west, as well. Those southernly encroachments were of the utmost consequence and must be here described. As has been already told, the French had established (a century or so before) important trading points at Kaskaskia and Vincennes and when the transfer was made in 1763, these frontier fortifications passed under the government of the King of England. It was inevitable that in the struggle between the colonies and the mother country, originating in 1776, these settlements should have a strategic value as suitable places for the British to fit out hostile bands of Indians to operate against the Americans and it, therefore, became a matter of the greatest importance to the revolutionaries that they should be captured or destroyed. The possibility of accomplishing either idea seemed remote to every one else; but there was a military genius living at the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville, Ky.), to whom nothing either necessary or important ever appeared impossible. The name of this remarkable man was George Rogers Clark. For some time he had pondered the problem of snatching these frontier posts from

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the hands of the British and, after overcoming all obstacles to the assemblage of a force adequate for his purpose, he conducted his raw recruits to an island in the Ohio river and drilled them for his difficult and dangerous enterprise. On the 24th of June, 1778, during an eclipse of the moon, he set sail; passed safely over the rapids; landed at an abandoned fortification (Fort Massie); traveled six days across the country (part of the time without food); fell upon Kaskaskia (situated on a river by that name on the west side of Illinois, near the Mississippi) and captured both it and the neighboring French settlements, without the firing of a gun.

1779.

The surrender of Vincennes across the state (on the Wabash river) followed soon afterward and the whole region thus fell swiftly and easily into the hands of the Americans; a loss so serious to the British that Governor Hamilton, the Commander in Detroit, began immediately to organize an expedition for their recovery. In this he was partially successful for Vincennes surrendered, with but feeble resistance, and the news of its fall was carried promptly to Kaskaskia where Clark then was. The comment of the hardy soldier was characteristic. "I must take Hamilton or he will take me," he said and almost upon the instant, in the very dead of winter, marched. His path was through a frozen wilderness at first and afterwards over a region flooded with melting snows. Pushing resolutely forward, the army waded shoulder deep in the slush, and falling upon the fortifications on the 24th of February, 1779, carried them by assault. There were obstacles of the most serious character still opposed to their retaining possession of their conquest; but the heroic little battalion planted itself so firmly there as to establish an insuperable line of defense against the Indians, all along the banks of the lower part of the Ohio river.

Conquest of Tennessee.

To these lines of defense and points of attack thus being established on the north, east and west of the disputed territory of the Northwest another was now added on the south, thus helping to encompass it with those powers by which its conquest, ultimately, was achieved.

By the treaty of Fort Stanwix the Indian tribes had ceded to the English all the land lying between the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, a cession which afforded the frontiersmen, ever on the watch for an opportunity, to rush in and seize the soil of the "Virginia wilderness," all the excuse they needed for a long delayed attempt. With eager eyes and swelling hearts the bolder mountaineers on the eastern slope of the Alleghanies had coveted that vast, fertile, well-watered and hill strewn country bounded on one side by the Cumberland and on the other by the great Smoky Mountains. In it rise the Clinch, the Holston, Wautega, Nolichucky and French Broad rivers, whose volumes combined with less important streams fill the broad bed of the Tennessee with abundant water. The upper end of the valley lay well within Virginia and so made access to the coveted paradise easy to its adventurous inhabitants. Through this rich and beautiful region ran the war trail of the savage tribes of Indians bitterly opposed to any entrance of the whites. At once, they sprang to its defense and put their bodies and their arms across the way; but all in vain. The lust of land; the love of ad

venture and the instinct for civilization were too powerful for resistance. Steadily the numbers of white men were increased and their hold tightened until at last. by force and fraud they drove the red men out. It was a long and bloody struggle characterized by heroic deeds and the development of remarkable men. Two of these, John Sevier and James Robertson; uneducated but gifted with great natural powers, became both indomitable soldiers and incomparable statesmen helping not only to conquer a wilderness but to establish civilization by originating its institutions.

The settlement of Tennessee is but half of that southern movement which assisted to open the Northwest to the whites. To the north of it lay a region still more beautiful and fertile, which had early tempted adventurers to penetrate its solitudes. Curiously enough, it was not inhabited by Indians who considered it their permanent abode. Lying as it did in the midst of tribes forever at war, it became a sort of Armageddon in which they ceaselessly struggled for supremacy and was known among them as "a dark and bloody battle ground." As it was unoccupied by the Indians it was neglected by the French, and so open, in a way, for the entrance for any comers who had the courage to confront the dangers of the ever fluctuating waves of Indian forays. In 1766 a little party of five adventurers entered Kentucky from Tennessee, and in 1769 Daniel Boone with five companions from North Carolina followed them. In 1774 John Harrod established a small colony which was called by his associates Harrodsburg, in honor of its founder, and in 1775 several other similar parties settled permanently in the region. For a time, these scattered settlements undertook to govern themselves by a code of laws of their own ordainment; but soon afterwards the claims of Virginia to the region were recognized and she took them under her wing. During the years which followed, until the close of the Revolutionary War, the struggles of the settlers with the Indians were almost incessant; but slowly and steadily they gained a foothold from which nothing could dislodge them. Over "The Wilderness Way" and down the Ohio river a stream of immigrants poured in such ever increasing volumes that the territory of the Northwest was utterly secure from attack upon its southern side.

1781-1786.

A moment's consideration will disclose the fact that the region of the great Northwest for which these armed forces British, Indian and American were so bitterly disputing was now so effectively surrounded by the latter as to be doomed to their ultimate possession. In fact, it fell into their hands. When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, the whole vast region became the property of the new government and the question of its ownership so far as other civilized people may concern was forever solved. The problem of the right and title of its original inhabitants, the Indians, still remained to be settled by the arbitrament of the sword; but more of that, anon.

Division of the Territory of the Northwest Among States.

The military conquest of this vast region was only a phase of the problem of its final occupation. It had not only to be conquered but divided! What parts of the prize should fall to the various states which had contributed to its conquest was a matter of the greatest perplexity—as well as of the greatest importance. There were many minor difficulties; but these were eclipsed by the mo