[Footnote 4:  “De toutes les nations domiciliees dans les postes des pays d’en haut, il n’y a que les hurons du detroit qui aient embrasse la Religion chretienne.” Memoirs du Roy pour servir d’instruction au S’r.  Marqius de Lajonquiere.]

These traders came in part from Virginia, but chiefly from Pennsylvania.  Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, says of them:  “They appear to me to be in general a set of abandoned wretches;” and Hamilton, governor of Pennsylvania, replies:  “I concur with you in opinion that they are a very licentious people.[5] Indian traders, of whatever nation, are rarely models of virtue; and these, without doubt, were rough and lawless men, with abundant blackguardism and few scruples.  Not all of them, however, are to be thus qualified.  Some were of a better stamp; among whom were Christopher Gist, William Trent, and George Croghan.  These and other chief traders hired men on the frontiers, crossed the Alleghanies with goods packed on the backs of horses, descended into the valley of the Ohio, and journeyed from stream to stream and village to village along the Indian trails, with which all this wilderness was seamed, and which the traders widened to make them practicable.  More rarely, they carried their goods on horses to the upper waters of the Ohio, and embarked them in large wooden canoes, in which they descended the main river, and ascended such of its numerous tributaries as were navigable.  They were bold and enterprising; and French writers, with alarm and indignation, declare that some of them had crossed the Mississippi and traded with the distant Osages.  It is said that about three hundred of them came over the mountains every year.

[Footnote 5:  Dinwiddie to Hamilton, 21 May, 1753.  Hamilton to Dinwiddie,—­May, 1753.]

On reaching the Alleghany, Celeron de Bienville entered upon the work assigned him, and began by taking possession of the country.  The men were drawn up in order; Louis XV. was proclaimed lord of all that region, the arms of France, stamped on a sheet of tin, were nailed to a tree, a plate of lead was buried at its foot, and the notary of the expedition drew up a formal act of the whole proceeding.  The leaden plate was inscribed as follows:  “Year 1749, in the reign of Louis Fifteenth, King of France.  We, Celeron, commanding the detachment sent by the Marquis de la Galissoniere, commander-general of New France, to restore tranquillity in certain villages of these cantons, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and the Kanaouagon [Conewango], this 29th July, as a token of renewal of possession heretofore taken of the aforesaid River Ohio, of all streams that fall into it, and all lands on both sides to the source of the aforesaid streams, as the preceding Kings of France have enjoyed or ought to have enjoyed it, and which they have upheld by force of arms and by treaties, notably by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle.”