seduction.  To this end, he called them to a council, gave them ample gifts, and made them an harangue in the name of the Governor.  The Demoiselle took the gifts, thanked his French father for his good advice, and promised to follow it at a more convenient time.[11] In vain Celoron insisted that he and his tribesmen should remove at once.  Neither blandishments nor threats would prevail, and the French commander felt that his negotiation had failed.

[Footnote 11:  Celoron, Journal.  Compare A Message from the Twightwees (Miamis) in Colonial Records of Pa., V. 437, where they say that they refused the gifts.]

He was not deceived.  Far from leaving his village, the Demoiselle, who was Great Chief of the Miami Confederacy, gathered his followers to the spot, till, less than two years after the visit of Celoron, its population had increased eightfold.  Pique Town, or Pickawillany, as the English called it, became one of the greatest Indian towns of the West, the centre of English trade and influence, and a capital object of French jealousy.

Celoron burned his shattered canoes, and led his party across the long and difficult portage to the French post on the Maumee, where he found Raymond, the commander, and all his men, shivering with fever and ague.  They supplied him with wooden canoes for his voyage down the river; and, early in October, he reached Lake Erie, where he was detained for a time by a drunken debauch of his Indians, who are called by the chaplain “a species of men made to exercise the patience of those who have the misfortune to travel with them.”  In a month more he was at Fort Frontenac; and as he descended thence to Montreal, he stopped at the Oswegatchie, in obedience to the Governor, who had directed him to report the progress made by the Sulpitian, Abbe Piquet, at his new mission.  Piquet’s new fort had been burned by Indians, prompted, as he thought, by the English of Oswego; but the priest, buoyant and undaunted, was still resolute for the glory of God and the confusion of the heretics.

At length Celoron reached Montreal; and, closing his Journal, wrote thus:  “Father Bonnecamp, who is a Jesuit and a great mathematician, reckons that we have travelled twelve hundred leagues; I and my officers think we have travelled more.  All I can say is, that the nations of these countries are very ill-disposed towards the French, and devoted entirely to the English."[12] If his expedition had done no more, it had at least revealed clearly the deplorable condition of French interests in the West.

[Footnote 12:  Journal de la Campagne que moy Celoron, Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal et Militaire de St. Louis, Capitaine Commandant un detachement envoye dans la Belle Riviere par les ordres de M. le Marquis de La Galissoniere, etc.

Relation d’un voyage dans la Belle Riviere sous les ordres de M. de Celoron, par le Pere Bonnecamp, en 1749.]