Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 9).djvu/45

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FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE OHIO
41

miles below the present Economy, Pennsylvania) has figured prominently in later Indian history as Logstown. Croghan's Journal under date of August, 1749, says that "Monsieur Celaroon with two hundred French soldiers" had passed through Logstown just before his arrival. Inquiring of the inhabitants the object of "Celaroon's" expedition, he was told that "it was to drive the English away, and by burying iron plates, with inscriptions on them at the mouth of each remarkable creek, to steal away their country."[1]

Upon reaching Chiningué Céloron compelled several English whom he found established there to leave and sent by them a letter, similar to the one previously spoken of, to Governor Hamilton. The Indians were very suspicious of Céloron, and here his Iroquois and Abenaki allies deserted him. They treated his speech with contempt and tore down the plates which had been nailed upon the trees.

Céloron left Chiningué on the eleventh and at noon of the thirteenth interred a

  1. O. H. Marshall's "Céloron's Expedition," Magazine of American History, vol. 2, no. 3, (March 1878).