by Allan Eckert
After an overnight stop to rest and allow the men time to prepare decent meals for themselves, the journey was resumed in the morning, moving southward down the 16-mile length of Lake Chautauqua. It is a lake of peculiar shape, squeezed together to a relatively narrow passage at about the midpoint and resembling an elongated hourglass. It was from this configuration that the lake had been named by the Indians, the term Chautauqua signifying a sack tied in the middle. It was at this narrow point that they camped for the night. The next day they reached the southern end of the lake and found its outlet, Chautauqua Creek. Disappointment was great when they discovered the stream was at first little more than an extensive shallow swamp area.45 Despite all their efforts, the day’s progress had amounted to just a mile. The next day the swamp was left behind, but the stream became very shallow and rocky, and an entire day was required just to move the canoes a couple of miles. The boats were badly damaged in the process. As Céloron that evening wrote in his journal:
We proceeded about a league with great difficulty. In many places I was obliged to assign forty men to each canoe to facilitate their passage.
Eventually their tortuous movement down Chautauqua Creek led them to where it flows into Cassadega Creek.46 It was a little larger but not much better, and the difficulties continued until they reached that stream’s mouth at Conewango Creek where, with little ceremony, the first of the lead plates was correctly inscribed with the proper location and date and then buried.47 At noon the following day—July 29—the creek they were following at last emptied into the broad, smoothly flowing expanse of the river they sought. It was the Allegheny River, but so far as they were concerned, it was the Ohio.48 Opposite the creek mouth, on the south bank of the river, a hole was prepared, the engraved lead plate carefully marked with place and date, and this second plate buried directly beneath a huge red oak.49 To that tree was also tacked a shiny sheet of tin embossed with the coat-of-arms of France. At that point Céloron addressed his assembled men in a loud voice.
“In the name of France and to her benefit,” he intoned, “I, Pierre Joseph de Céloron de Blainville, do this day and time, take and renew possession of all this country and proclaim King Louis the Fifteenth undisputed lord and protector over all these territories. Beneath this great tree to which I have had attached the insignia of France, I have now buried the leaden plate which substantiates this claim for all time and for all men. Vive le Roi!”
In a rising thunder of voices, the final homage was repeated by his assembled men three times in succession: “Vive le Roi!”
Oddly enough, at almost the precise time this ceremony by the French was being enacted, a claim equally grandiose was being made at Williamsburg. An official proclamation had just been issued by Thomas Lee, president of the Virginia Council and Governor of the Dominion of Virginia. It was publicly posted first in Williamsburg and later elsewhere throughout the colony. The proclamation read:
The boundaries of Virginia are the Atlantic on the east, North Carolina on the south, the Potomac on the north, and, on the west, the Great South Sea, including California.50
The problem with the claims of both these major colonial powers was not only that they included the same territory, but that the land they were so grandly claiming was occupied by scores of Indian tribes and subtribes who didn’t feel required to make claims; they knew the land belonged to no one; it was a gift of their god Moneto to His red children, but not as a possession. Rather, it was a treasure in trust, given to them only to use wisely and well and then to pass on to future generations in as natural a state as when they received it. They could not comprehend the ownership of land as the whites owned things. They were merely the guardians of a deeply revered trust, and they had no intention of meekly turning away from it.
The process of burying lead plates was continued by Céloron and his men as the expedition floated downstream. They encountered numerous Indian villages—many of which had been abandoned at their approach—and to the Indians they did find, the commander gave assurances that their mission was friendly and they had come to protect the interests of those Indians. The Indians were not pleased with Céloron’s presence, but his force was large enough that they did not risk attacking.51 Now and again they came across English traders and bluntly told them that they were trespassing in French territory and ordered them to leave, taking their goods with them. Whatever they did not take was placed inside any structures the English had erected as camps or trading posts, and these structures were then burned.
The third lead plate was interred at the base of a large emergent rock on a small bottom along the left bank nine miles below French Creek.52 The reason Céloron chose this place instead of the mouth of a major stream was because on this bottom the isolated emergent rock inclined upward from the soil. The exposed portion of the rock was 22 feet in length and 14 in breadth, but the remarkable thing was that its inclined surface was inscribed with what appeared to be some sort of ancient pictographic writing. All in the party were greatly moved by the sight, but none could translate the glyphs. Joncaire said the Indians regarded the rock and its writings with great reverence.53 The tin plate with the coat-of-arms was tacked to a nearby oak tree.
A short distance downstream from there, a few miles below the mouth of the Kiskeminetas, Céloron landed his force at a long-deserted Shawnee village at the mouth of a creek where some English traders from Pennsylvania had gathered. He evicted them, burned their trading post and gave them a letter he hurriedly wrote, to be carried to their governor, Alexander Hamilton:
To the Governor of the Pennsylvania from Captain Pierre Joseph de Céloron de Blainville. From our camp on La Belle Rivière, at an ancient village of the Chouanons, 6th of August, 1749.
Sir, — Having been sent with a detachment into these quarters by M. the Marquis de la Galissonière, Commandant-General of New France, to reconcile among themselves certain savage nations, who are ever at variance on account of the war just terminated, I have been much surprised to find some traders of your government in a country to which England never had any pretensions. It even appears that the same opinion is entertained in New England, since in many of the villages I have passed through, the English who were trading there, have mostly taken flight.
Those I have fallen in with, and by whom I wrote you, were treated with all the mildness possible, although I would have been justified in treating them as interlopers, and men without design, their enterprise being contrary to the preliminaries of peace, signed five months ago.
I hope, sir, you will carefully prohibit for the future this trade, which is contrary to treaties; and I give notice to your traders that they will expose themselves to great risks in returning to these countries, and they must impute only to themselves the misfortunes they may meet with.
I know that our Commandant-General would be very sorry to resort to violence; but he has orders not to permit foreign traders in his government.
I have the honor to be, with great respect, sir, your humble servant,
Céloron
Shortly after this incident they were once again afloat. On the point of land at the junction of the two major streams, they found a village that was the finest they had yet encountered, but like so many others it was abandoned except for three Seneca warriors and an old woman whom they learned from Joncaire was named Aliquippa. She was chief of the village—though Joncaire called her Queen Aliquippa, and the term stuck.54 She informed Céloron through Joncaire that nearly all of the villagers had fled to Chiniqué—Logstown—because they had been warned by the English traders evicted by Céloron, who passed this way and then disappeared up the Monongahela, that a French army was coming to destroy them. If she were to die, she told him defiantly, it would be in her own village, facing the enemy, not in flight from a party of whites, be they French or English.
Admiring her courage, Céloron told her through Joncaire that they were not here to harm any Indians and she would be left in peace. He presented her with gifts and imm
ediately set off for the village his map designated as Chiniqué, 22 miles below on the right bank.55 On their arrival at Logstown, they visited briefly with the Indians gathered there, but the atmosphere was suspicious and hostile. It was at that stop that most of their own Indian escorts abandoned them, and because they were pointedly made unwelcome, the French party quickly moved on without burying a plate.56
The fourth plate was buried on August 13 when they came to a fine bottom on the left side of the river where the stream split around a large island. At the foot of the bottom, a considerable stream entered, which their map drawn by de Léry indicated was the Kanououara, although the eight uninvited Indians who had accompanied them from Logstown referred to it as Wheeling Creek.57
Some 75 river miles farther downstream, after seeing great numbers of deer, bear, bison, elk and a wide variety of other wildlife, they arrived at the mouth of the Muskingum River, a stream shown on Céloron’s map as the Yenanguakonan. Here, where there were the ruins of an old Wyandot town, they established camp on the downstream point of land formed at the river’s mouth, and the fifth of his plates was prepared. Céloron noted in his journal that this plate was:
buried at the foot of a maple, which forms a triangle with a red oak and elm, at the mouth of the river Yenanguakonan, and on its western bank.58
Just short of another 100 miles downstream, having passed occasional small abandoned Indian villages, the party came ashore at the mouth of a major river, the Kanawha, entering from the south—a stream de Léry’s map identified as the river Chinodaista but that Father Bonnecamps—the Jesuit priest with the expedition—termed the Chinodahichetha.59 With the usual ceremony the sixth plate was buried at the foot of a large elm tree, to which was tacked the identifying coat-of-arms. The date was August 18, and here the party camped for the night.60
Céloron had fully planned to bury another lead plate at the mouth of the Scioto River, site of the major Shawnee village of Sinioto—which his map showed as St. Yotoc. That plan was abandoned, however, as the Shawnees there were very unfriendly and allowed them to pass only after extensive talks over four days. As Céloron remarked in his journal:
My instructions enjoin me to summon the English traders in Sinhioto and instruct them to withdraw on pain of what might ensue, and even to pillage the English should their response be antagonistic; but I am not strong enough; and as these traders are established in a village and well supported by the Indians, the attempt would have failed and put the French to shame. I have therefore withdrawn with what pride such encounter as we have suffered has permitted us to retain.
They were quite glad enough to depart with their scalps still attached and wasted no time in paddling rapidly downstream. It was at noon on August 30 when they reached the mouth of the river indicated on Céloron’s map as Rivière à la Roche—Rock River—but better known to the English as the Great Miami River, named after the powerful tribe living on its headwaters.61 It was here that the seventh and final lead plate was buried and a well-guarded camp made for the remainder of the day and night.62
The following morning they started their upstream journey on this tributary river, heading for Pickawillany, principal village of the Miamis or, as the tribe was more often referred to by the early French and English traders, the Twigtwees; the chief—called Demoiselle by the French traders, Old Britain by the English traders and Unemakemi by his own people—was the foremost chief of the Miamis and was known to be strongly pro-British.63
Even as the Céloron expedition started up the Great Miami, concern in the British colonies of North America was running high. Word had gradually filtered through them of the daring French expedition under a commander named Céloron, and of the engraved lead plates he was burying that claimed all territory west of the Alleghenies to the Mississippi as part of the French empire.
First had come the startling news from Sir William Johnson on the Mohawk River, who had been informed of the expedition by some Senecas. Their word alone might not have been taken seriously had they not brought along one of the actual engraved leaden plates that they had stolen from the French before it could be buried.
Then Pennsylvania’s governor, Alexander Hamilton, had received an imperious letter from the French commander and quickly dispatched Sir William Johnson’s most skilled and trusted field agent, trader George Croghan, to Logstown to see what he could discover. A better choice could not have been made; of all the English traders, none was held in such great respect and esteem among the northwestern tribes as Croghan, nor was any other white man so influential among them. He had long been one of the very select number of traders, English or French, who could move about at will and with impunity throughout the Ohio country. For many years he had traded with the tribes, helped them in every way possible—not infrequently to his own detriment or financial loss—and because of this he was honored, deeply trusted and unequivocally the most influential white man among the tribes inhabiting western Pennsylvania, the Ohio country and the far lands beyond. Only the influence Sir William enjoyed with the Iroquois League was comparable to Croghan’s.
In a matter of weeks Croghan had accomplished his mission, and the intelligence he brought back to Gov. Hamilton was most alarming. He reported that he had arrived at Logstown only days after the force under Capt. Céloron—whom he referred to as “Monsieur Calaroon”—had passed through. From the Wyandot chief, Monakaduto—called Half King by most of the traders—he had learned of the threats these French were making against the British traders and the staggering territorial claims they were bolstering by planting engraved lead plates at the mouths of major tributaries of the Ohio.64 To British colonial officials, all this was tantamount to a declaration of war, and carefully detailed reports were written and sent at once to His Royal Majesty, George II.
Disturbing as all this was, it did not discourage the British from taking steps to extend their colonial influence and possession west of the Alleghenies. More British traders than ever were crossing the mountains and engaging in trade with the Indians, and even those traders who had actually been ousted by the Céloron party were making their way back and rebuilding their trading posts.
To the south in Virginia two surveyors, Col. Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, were busy at work under a commission to establish the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. One of these two, while engaged in the appointed task, remarked with amusement to his partner that he had experienced difficulty in convincing his son that the trip was too dangerous and too strenuous for him to come along. The boy was only six, and his name was Thomas Jefferson.
About this same time the group of wealthy Virginians who had formed the Ohio Company with the goal of extending and populating Virginia’s domain, as well as her trade with the northwestern Indians, erected at the mouth of Will’s Creek on the upper Potomac, at the eastern terminus of the Nemacolin Trail and just south of the Pennsylvania border, a large, well-built and handsomely supplied trading house that was being called Will’s Creek Station.65
So despite the disturbing news about the Céloron expedition, those who had been pushing for continued and even increased expansion in the beautiful but forbidding lands to the west were not overly concerned.
It was September 12 when the Céloron party reached Pickawillany. Although they knew in advance that it was a good-size village, they had not been quite prepared for what they found. The English traders there, of whom fewer than a dozen were on hand at any given time, had firmly established themselves and were even planning to construct a trading post that would be more like a fort than a store. Coming by canoe along the route Céloron had followed or by packhorse train along the sinuous forest trails, the traders arrived in an almost constant procession, bringing bounteous amounts of all those wondrous goods so coveted by the tribes. As a result, the fame of Pickawillany had spread widely among the Indians. The original village had by this time expanded to upward of 400 permanent dwellings—reasonably substantial log buildings—but there were, in additio
n, transient villages all along the perimeter where wegiwas, quonsets, hogans, tepees, trade tents and other temporary abodes had been set up. As a moderate estimate, Céloron set the population at not less than 4,000, including women and children as well as transients.
Obviously, since this was the principal village of the Miamis—or Twigtwees—there were far more of them than of any other single tribe or faction, but there were also healthy representations of Delawares under chiefs Pimoacan—whom the whites called Pipe—and Wingenund; Shawnees under the chief of their Maykujay sept, Moluntha; Hurons under Orontony; and Wyandots under Tarhe.66 In addition, there were small factions of Kickapoos and Potawatomies, Sacs and Foxes, Mascoutens, Ottawas, Cahokias and Winnebagoes, and even a scattering of such distant tribes as Mandan Sioux, Menominees and Chippewas. Over them all, so long as they were at his village, Unemakemi reigned as principal chief.
Some of the tribes congregated here were hereditary enemies, and others were barely on speaking terms; but over the years Pickawillany had evolved into a neutral site where all, by unstated agreement, observed peace and could come and go for trade purposes without fear of attack.
A flame of envy flickered in Céloron’s breast. This should be a village where trade was dominated by the French, not the British. More than ever he was determined that, if he had his way, that was how it would soon be. He counciled at length with the chiefs gathered here and distributed virtually all of the gifts he had remaining. The greater preponderance of those goods were given to Unemakemi, but Céloron’s efforts to bribe or threaten him away from British influence failed, and it was Céloron and his men themselves who were threatened and left hastily before misfortune could befall them.