Source:Fleming-french-plan
George T. Fleming. "French plan to dominate Ohio: Celeron's expedition and burial of the leader [sic] plates part of valley history: Bonnecamp's story." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, July 18, 1915, sec. 5, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85379215.
HAVING traced the relationship of the few French names in our street nomenclature to the individuals and noted the parts taken by them in the early history of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, it is proper to show before closing our history of the French dominion, the first steps in asserting that dominion and some of the historic characters involved not previously mentioned.
The governor general of New France in America in office when the English traders made inroads on the French traffic to the west of the Alleghenies, was Rolland Michael Barrin, Comte de la Galissonniere, sometimes mentioned as marquis. In the "Jesuit Relations" his title is "Comte," count.
Like many other governors at Quebec he was an admiral, a high rank to leave for civil duties in a pioneer country. New France was yet quite new and vast in extent. It stretched from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.
Most of this country France lawfully claimed by the right of discovery—good under the law of nations in those warring times when kings found it necessary to have some basis of agreement both for war and peace.
An Energetic Governor.
De la Galissoniere was born at Rochefort in 1693. He entered the navy in 1710 and served with distinction, becoming a captain in 1738. His term as governor general of New France in America lasted from September 19, 1749 [sic], to September 24, 1749.
Encyclopedia writers impress the fact that he was energetic and that his administration was marked with severe disputes with the English relative to territorial rights in Nova Scotia and the Ohio region. The latter concerns us, for Galissoniere sent Celoron and his party in 1749, warning off the English traders on the Ohio and depositing his leaden plates and posting his "proces Verbal."
That same year De Galissoniere was one of the commissioners for settling the boundaries of Acadia. He was an author and a devoted student of natural science, of great heart and mind. He was low in stature and deformed in person. In 1751 he published a memoir of the French colonies in America.
In 1756 De Galissoniere was given command of a squadron in the West Indies designed to capture Martinique. He fought a severe engagement with an English fleet under Admiral Byng, a celebrated naval commander of that day.
Bouchette, a French historian, gives the date of Galissoniere's successor in office as August 16, 1749, and states that Admiral Byng for the delinquency of a successful encounter with the French admiral forfeited his life.
Never in Ohio Country.
Galissoniere died at Nemours, France, October 26, 1756. He was a generous supporter, and a strenuous one, of the Abbe de la Loutre in the missionary work of that great prelate in Acadia, furnishing both money and supplies liberally.
De Galisoniere was not, as far as we know, ever in the Ohio country. He was the forerunner of the equally energetic Duquesne de Menneville and de Vaulreuil [sic], the last governors preceding English dominion in Canada.
In 1747 the French had entered upon actual explorations of the regions about the Allegheny and the Ohio. They ascertained the geography of the country and the proximity of the English settlements on the west of the Allegheny Mountains.
They took active measures to extend their trade among the Indians then ranging the region, well aware that when this inevitable clash came these would prove most useful auxiliaries or dangerous enemies.
The Ohio Company came along about this time, gaining influence among the Indians and it was obligatory to counteract the English influence by every means possible.
The first symptoms of the approaching war between the nations began on the northern borders. The English extended their claims to the St. Lawrence, the French to all the country westward of the Alleghenies. At first it was not believed that either nation would insist on the extent of its claims. It was believed that the French were especially extravagant in their pretensions.
As early as 1745 the French fomented disaffection among the Ohio Indians toward the English. Peter Chartiers, the half-breed trader, was a French spy, and his efforts resulted in the subserviency of the Shawanese to the French cause.
He had previously endeavored to embroil this tribe in a war with the Iroquois, as a confederacy always hostile to the French, and suspected of this scheming he fled to the Shawanese and persuaded them to declare for the French. He was recompensed with a French commission, under which he committed numerous depredations. We keep his name, however.
In 1748, after the treaty at Aix-la-Chapelle, the French ministry began paying close attention to the strength and resources of Canada and Louisiana. Between these far-off lands there is an almost continuous inland water communication. Hence the design of uniting these extremities and unfolding the means of subduing English power in North America.
January 17, 1750, the governor of Pennsylvania informed the council that three letters of an extraordinary nature in French, signed "Celeron" were delivered to him by the Indian traders who came from the Allegheny informing him that this captain, Celeron, was a French officer and had the command of 300 French and some Indians sent during the summer to the Ohio and Wabash, and from Canada to reprove the Indians there for their friendship to the English and for permitting the English to trade with them.
This was Pierre Joseph de Celeron, found also spoken of as Sieur Celeron de Bienville. He was a noted character in the French history of those years on the frontiers.
Celoron as a Soldier.
He was a good soldier, a chevalier of the military order of St. Louis and a reliable man and his story of this expedition and his explorations are most interesting.
We have a full account of Celoron's efforts to legalize the claim of France to our region. We find this in the "Jesuit Relations" the caption translated reading, "Account of the voyage on the beautiful river made in 1749 under the direction of Monsieur de Celoron, by Father Bonnecamps."
We find the name of the French commander spelled in two ways, Celeron and Celoron, the latter in the Bonnecamps narrative as translated by Dr. Thwaites, but Darlington and old historians of Pennsylvania use the former spelling. Dr. Archer Butler and Charles A. Hanna follow Thwaites.
We may note that, large as the figure Celoron cut in our history, we have no commemoration of him in street or local geography.
The Journal or "Relation" of Father Bonnecamps and his map form a curious exhibit. The strange Indian names he uses are unknown in our history. His quaint but inaccurate map is to be noted in that he has omitted entirely the Monongahela River. His "Relation" contains no mention of the "Forks."
Celoron and his party were here early in August, 1749. They must have passed down the river on August 7, for Bonnecamps says:
"We found another village of Loups"—their name for the Delaware Indians—which was probably Shannopin's town on the Allegheny, as it is marked on Bonnecamps' map and this village was about Thirty-third street.
English Warned.
In the narrative the narration calls the Shawanese, Chaouans and Logstown, Chinigue, which name we have retained in another place and have changed to Shenango. Some English traders were found at this village of the "Loups" and were warned off. Previously traders had been met in the other Indian towns.
The traders at Shannopins were lodged, the father says, "in miserable cabins, and had a storehouse well filled with peltries which we did not disturb."
On August 8 we find this record:
M. de Celoron sent me with an officer to examine certain writings which our savages had seen the evening before on a rock, and which they imagined to contain some mystery. Having examined it, we reported to him that this was nothing more than three or four English names scrawled with charcoal. I took the altitude of our camp, the latitude of which was 40 degrees, 46 minutes.
The real latitude, as fixed by the United States Geological Survey is 40 degrees, 28 minutes at the Allegheny observatory, North Side.
This mention of these rocks is about the first of what the French and Indians subsequently referred to as the "Written Rocks," and the English and we following have since called McKees Rocks from the early McKee settlement there.
At 3 o'clock on the afternoon of the eighth the Celoron party arrived at Logstown. It was a formidable party too. Celoron was a captain. His detachment was made up of eight subalterns, six cadets, an armorer, 20 soldiers, 180 Canadians, 30 Iroquois, (probably Serecas), and 25 Abenakis.
With Celoron in a subaltera [sic] capacity was Contracoeur to whom, five years later, Ensign Ward was compelled to surrender at the Forks of the Ohio, and who gave the French fort that arose here the name Duquesne. Another subaltern was Coulon de Villiers to whom Washington capitulated at Fort Necessity.
English Flag Comes Down.
Celoron awed the hostile Indians at Logstown and remained there two days. He had the English flag hauled down and the French flag raised. Celoron was firm but wary; he doubled his guard and took no chances. He left on August 11.
Bonnecamps relates that the village was quite new.
It is hardly more than five or six years since it was established. The savages who live here are almost all Iroquois; they count about 60 warriors. The English there were 10 in number and one among them was their chief. M. de Celeron had him come and ordered him, as he had done the others, to return to his own country. The Englishman who saw us ready to depart, acquiesced in all that was exacted from him—firmly resolved, doubtless, to do nothing of the kind, as soon as our backs were turned.
George Croghan came in August and checkmated Celoron's efforts.
The translation of the inscription on one of the leaden plates, which the Celeron party buried is:
In the year 1749, in the reign of Louis XV, King of France, We, Celoron, commandant of a detachment sent by the Marquis de la Galisionniere, Commandant in Chief of New France to re-establish peace in certain villages of the Indians of these districts, have buried this plate at the Three Rivers below Le Boeuf River, this third of August near the River Ayo, otherwise the Fair River, as a monument of the renewal of our possession of the said River Oyo and of all those which fall into it, and of all the lands on both sides to the sources of said rivers 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, especially by those of Riswick Utrecht and Aix-la-Chappelle.
(On the back of the plate are the words "Paul Lebrosse Fecit," the name of the maker.
Notices Are Posted.
Celoron also posted his written notices on "white iron" or tin, embodying in about the same words the matter on the plates, and he, too, kept a journal and records:
We have also affixed in the same place to a tree the arms of the King in testimony of which we have drawn up and signed the present "proces verbal."
Done at the entrance of Belle Riviere July 29th, 1749. All the officers have signed.
While Celoron was busy burying his plates in the earth, the one mentioned on the Allegheny at the mouth of Conewango Creek in Warren county, De Galisionniere was urging his government to settle 10,000 French peasants on the Ohio.
The kinsmen of Washington and others at about the same time were forming the Ohio Company, which received a royal grant of 500,000 acres of land between the Monongahela and Kanawha Rivers on condition of settling the territory, "which lands," wrote Gov. Dinwiddie of Virginia, "are his majesty's undoubted right by the treaty of Lancaster (1744) and subsequent treaties at Logstown on the Ohio."
Col. Thomas Cresap was employed to survey a road over the mountains. This was the road used by Braddock.
All of the efforts to sufficiently colonize were futile. De Galisonniere died before the English took Quebec and New France was no more.
All of the French commandants and governors had elaborate official titles. Witness this one:
Marquis de la Jonquiere, Knight of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, Admiral and Lieutenant Governor of All New France, Isle Royal and the Territories of Louisiana.
The second of Celoron's plates was buried on the shore of the Allegheny nine miles below Franklin, at the "Indian God Rock." This was on August 3, 1749. Bonnecamps notes this and gives a detailed description of the celebrated rock.
Plate three was buried below Wheeling. Some of these plates were never found.
Very Rare Book.
Jared L. Sparks in his "Life and Writings of Washington" has placed in his second volume an extract from a journal published by the French government. This journal relates to the exploration of the country about the Ohio and events occurring here, and was printed in Paris in 1756.
Its title is long beginning: "Memoire Contenant le Precis des Faits, etc."
A translation of an English edition reads:
A memorial containing a summary View of Facts, with their authorities, in answer to the "Observations" sent by the English Ministry to the Courts of Europe: Translated from the French. New York, printed and sold by H. Gaine, at the Printing Office of the Bible and Crown in Hanover Square, 1757.
An introduction called "An Advertisement to the Reader," states that there were three French volumes found in a French prize, a ship taken and brought into the port of New York. Hence the translation and the authenticity of these volumes cannot be doubted. They were published by order of the French King at the royal office.
Neville B. Craig was furnished with a written copy of parts of this curious work by Mr. Sparks, supplying missing pages in a copy possessed by James Veech, once noted as a historian of this region.
The "Memoire" contains many official and other documents relating to the questions at issue and particularly selections from the manuscripts of Braddock and Washington captured at the battle of the Monongahela, July 9, 1755.
Previous to 1755 six years had been spent in unavailing attempts at negotiations between England and France with the design of effecting a reconciliation of difficulties. It seems neither party was really anxious to avoid a war, although the French were magnanimous enough in many ways.
Start of the War.
Hostilities commenced in time of peace and each nation charged the other with being the aggressor. Two French vessels en route to Canada were captured by the British admiral, Boscowen, and to justify this procedure, the British ministry sent out the "Observations."
In this book the British maintained the French had actually began [sic] the war by their encroachments with military forces on the Ohio. These acts complained of took place in Western Pennsylvania and began at our "Point," then geographically known as the "Forks of the Ohio."
These facts have all been reverted to in this series of articles. To repel the charge of the British government and to prove the British had been first to transgress, was the object of this French "Memoire."
It is obvious that the French were well informed of British intentions. They found them fully expressed in the documents captured with Braddock's baggagce [sic].
It is equally obvious that had they destroyed these documents much of the history of the great events in this region in those years would have been lost.
Neville B. Craig has given us [135?] pages of this matter in "The Olden Time," and it is a mine of wealth for historians. We find in the extracts much relating to our former French governor, the Marquis Du Quesne de Menneville, and much about the "murder of Jumonville" by Washington. We find Duquesne spelled Du Quesne when it refers to the fort and du Quesne referring to the marquis with the title prefixed.
It is interesting to read in Washington's Journal, which the French reproduced, the mention of Ensign Edward Ward as "Wart" throughout, and Craig does not correct him, but says in a footnote that Ward is meant. Washington, we know, was a phonetic speller.
The exhaustive treatment of the French claims appeals to us as scholarly and the deduction seems reasonable if we accept their premises. They go back of the treaties of Aix la Chapelle and tell of the invasion of the English traders in the French country about the Ohio. They also tell of Celeron's expedition and the moderation of the governor, the Count de la Galisoniere, and other French authorities.
The French Claims.
One statement puts the gist of the French claim in a few words, to wit:
The Ohio, or La Belle Riviere, as it is sometimes called, forms a natural communication between Canada and Louisiana by the Lake Erie, the French being concerned both to discover and preserve that communication, were the first that traced out the whole course of that river, part of which was visited by M. de la Salle, a gentleman of Normandy, in the year 1679. In 1712, the King in his Letters Patent for the settling of Louisiana comprehended the River Wabash which empties itself into the Ohio and in general, all the rivers that fall into the Mississippi. Since that time, the Ohio has never been frequented by any but the French, nor did the English ever make any pretentions to the lands watered by it. The Appallachian Mountains have always been looked upon as the bounds of their colonies.
That brings us to the story of La Salle and the evidence that he was ever at the Forks of the Ohio is so slight that it would be rejected in a court of justice. He was on other parts of the Ohio beyond a doubt.
However that is a long drawn-out historical controversy and the libaries [sic] are full of books relative to La Salle. Had we a La Salle street as Chicago and Cleveland have, it would be under this phase of treating local history.
Some of the queer names on Bonnecamps' map need explanation, and also his signs.
River Aux Pommes is Apple River; Tjadikoin is one of the many variations for Chautauqua. The Loups, or "Wolves," were the Munsy clan of the Delawares. Atigue is generally taken for Kittanning; River le Boef is French Creek, then the river of the "Beef." Kanaonagon, Conewango Creek; River au Vermillion is the Clarion; River Ranonouara is Wheeling Creek.
The original map is in the archives of the Department de la Marine, in Paris. the words along the south shore of Lake Erie state: "All this part of the lake is unknown."
The signs are interpreted thus:
Various historians use this map. A large one is to be found in J. H. Newton's "History of Venango County." Also in Craig's "Olden Time."A black cross, a plate deposited; three horizontal lines across a vertical, latitude and longitude taken; a house marks a village. Degrees of longitude are west from the meridian of Paris. The inner figures on the east and west margins are leagues in the proportion of 20 to a degree.
