123. The French Title to the Beautiful River (1752)
FROM ROYAL MINISTERIAL MINUTES
The Ohio, or "la Belle Riviére," was the tributary of the Mississippi having branches nearest to the English settlements, and thus became the centre of the conflict for the possessions of the West. — Bibliography of the French and Indian War : Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, V, ch. viii, notes; Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, ch. v; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 132.
IT appears from a letter of the Marquis de la Jonquiére, that the efforts the English are making, and the expenses they incur, to gain over the Indians, are not without success among several Nations. Information has been received last year of the progress they had already made among the Indians in the environs of the River Ohio, where they have undertaken, since the peace, to form some establishments.
The Marquis de la Jonquiére had rendered an account of a plan he had prepared both to drive the English from that river and to chastise the Indians who allowed themselves to be gained over. . . But all the consequent operations reduce themselves to the seizure of some English traders with their goods, and to the murder of two Indians of the Miamis Nation.
The seizure of the English traders whose effects have been confiscated and even plundered by our Indians, cannot but produce a good effect, by disgusting the other traders of that Nation. . . .
The English may pretend that we are bound by the Treaty of Utrecht to permit the Indians to trade with them. But it is certain that nothing can oblige us to suffer this trade on our territory.
Accordingly in all the alliances or quasi treaties or propositions we have had with the Far Indians, we have never obliged them expressly to renounce going to the English to trade ; we have merely exhorted them to that effect, and never did we oppose that treaty by force.
The River Ohio, otherwise called the Beautiful river, and its tributaries belong indisputably to France, by virtue of its discovery by Sieur de la Salle ; of the trading posts the French have had there since, and of possession which is so much the more unquestionable as it constitutes the most frequent communication from Canada to Louisiana. It is only within a few years that the English have undertaken to trade there ; and now they pretend to exclude us from it.
