Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (Vol 1 1904).djvu/67

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1751]
Croghan's Journals
61

May the 24th.—Some Warriors of the Delawares came to Town from the Lower Shawonese Town, and brought a Scalp with them; they brought an Account that the Southward Indians had come to the Lower Towns to War, and had killed some of the Shawonese, Delawares, and the Six Nations, so that we might not expect any People from there to the Council.

May the 25th.—I had a conference with Monsieur Ioncoeur; he desired I would excuse him and not think hard of him for the Speech he made to the Indians requesting them to turn the English Traders away and not suffer them to trade, for it was the Governor of Canada's Orders[1] to him, and he was obliged to obey them altho' he was very sensible which way the Indians would receive them, for he was sure the French could not accomplish their designs with the Six Nations without it could be done by Force, which he said he believed they would find to be as difficult as the method they had just tryed, and would meet with the like success.

May the 26th.—A Dunkar from the Colony of Virginia came to the Log's Town and requested Liberty of the Six Nation Chiefs to make [a settlement] on the River Yogh-yo-gaine a branch of Ohio, to which the Indians made answer that it was not in their Power to dispose of Lands; that he must apply to the Council at Onondago,
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  1. Galissoniére, the governor of Canada, who planned Céloron's expedition to the Ohio, was superseded in the autumn of 1749 by Jacques Pierre de Taffanel, Marquis de la Jonquiére, who continued the policy of the former; he sent orders to the commandants of the Western posts to arrest all British subjects found in the Ohio Valley. La Jonquitre, who was born in 1686, had served in the French navy with distinction, and after his first commission as governor of New France was captured by an English vessel (1747), and kept a prisoner for more than a year, so that he did not reach his post until 1749. His term of service was but two years and a half, being terminated by his death in May, 1752.—Ed.