The Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle: Ohio Company and Ottawas

Gist left Alexandria on horseback at the close of October; crossed the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah Valley; waded through snow-drifts in the Alleghany Mountains; swam his horse across the Ohio River, and made his way through a rich narrow valley to Logstown, where it was proposed to hold the Indian council. He presented himself as an ambassador from the British sovereign. As such he was respected by the chief, but the savages received him with coolness. "You are come to settle the Indians' land," said the chief; "you never shall go home safe." Undaunted by this covert threat, Gist pressed forward to the Muskingum, stopping at a village of Ottawas, who were friends of the French. The Wyandots at Muskingum received him cordially, and there he found George Croghan, an emissary of the Pennsylvanians who were jealous of the Ohio Company, regarding them as rivals seeking a monopoly of the trade with the Indians of the northwest.

Gist crossed the Muskingum as he had crossed the Ohio--the "beautiful river," in the language of the Iroquois--and pushing on with Croghan and other traders through the stately forests and across savannahs then white with snow, he reached the Scioto River a few miles from its mouth. There dwelt some Delawares; and a short distance below the Scioto there were Shawnoese on both sides of the Ohio. Both professed friendship for the English, and a willingness to attend a general council at Logstown.

Northward lay the beautiful land of the Miamis, a confederacy really more powerful than that of the Iroquois, with whom they were friendly. Thither the representatives of Virginia and Pennsylvania went. They were kindly received. Strings of wampum were exchanged as tokens of friendship. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded with the confederacy, and arrangements were made for all the friendly tribes to meet at Logstown in grand council.

Just as the treaty was signed, four Ottawas came with presents from the French. The Indian sovereign, who presided at the council, immediately set up the flags of France and England side by side. Addressing the Ottawas, he said: "The path of the French is bloody, and was made so by them. We have made a road plain for our brothers, the English, and your fathers have made it foul and crooked, and have made some of our brethren prisoners. This we look upon as an injury done to us." Then suddenly turning his back upon the Ottawas, he left the council. The French flag was removed, and the emissaries who bore it were ordered to return to their Gallic friends at Sandusky.

Gist viewed the magnificent country he was in with deepest admiration, and bidding his English companions and the dusky barbarians farewell, he went down the valley of the Little Miami to the Ohio and along that stream almost to the Falls. Then he penetrated the famous blue-grass region of Kentucky, with its marvellous forests; climbed over the mountains to the headwaters of the Yadkin and the Roanoke, and at the end of a journey of seven months, he stood before Lawrence Washington, at Mount Vernon, then chief director of the Ohio Company, with a vast amount of valuable information.

The promised council of the western tribes was not held until June, 1752. Gist was there as the agent of the Ohio Company, and Colonel Fry and two other commissioners represented Virginia. Friendly relations with the Western Indians were established by the treaty, but the barbarian chiefs steadily refused to recognize any English title to lands west of the Alleghany mountains. On that point they had been equally firm with the French, and resisted the importunities and claims of both. A shrewd Delaware chief said to Gist: "The French claim all the land on one side of the river, and the English claim all the land on the other side of the river; where is the Indians' land?" It was a question difficult to answer. Gist did not attempt it, but said: "Indians and white men are subjects of the British king, and all have an equal privilege of taking up and possessing the land, in conformity with the conditions prescribed by the sovereign."

The Ohio Company sent out surveyors to explore the country, make definite boundaries and prepare for settlements. English traders penetrated the Ohio country to the domain of the Miamis and beyond, and the Indians found profit by their friendly relations with them. The jealousy of the French was aroused. They regarded the English as intruders. They saw with alarm the waning French influence among the tribes of the upper Ohio Valley, and presaged the ultimate destruction of their fortified line of communication between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. Finally, in 1753, they seized and imprisoned some of the surveyors and traders; and about twelve hundred French soldiers were employed to erect forts in the wilderness between the upper waters of the Alleghany River and Lake Erie. One of these was erected at Presq'-isle, now Erie, on the southern shore of the lake of that name. Another was reared at Le Boeuf, on French Creek, now Waterford; and a third was constructed at the junction of French Creek and the Alleghany River, on the site of the village of Franklin.