Proces verbal,
The French term for an official report or record of proceedings in a court of justice or elsewhere.
The French discoverers and explorers in
America set up a cross and a column, and placed the royal arms of
France upon the latter, and then proclaimed the country discovered to be a part of the dominions of
France.
Then a report of the whole proceedings was written and signed by the leader and his companions.
Sometimes they deposited a tablet of lead with an appropriate inscription.
La Salle did so at the mouth of the
Mississippi, and in the next century Celoron, who led a French expedition from
Canada to the
Ohio country (1749), buried several of them at different points as an enduring proces verbal. One of these plates, stolen by an Indian from the
French interpreter at
Fort Niagara, was taken to
Gen. William Johnson by a Cayuga sachem for an interpretation of its meaning.
The following is a translation of the inscription: “In the year 1749, of the reign of Louis XV.,
King of
France, we, Celoron, commander of a detachment sent by
Monsieur the
Marquis de la Galissoniere,
governor-general of New France, to re-establish tranquillity in some Indian villages of these cantons, have buried this plate of lead at the confluence of the
Ohio
[
306]
and
Chautauqua1 this 29th day of July, near the river
Ohio, otherwise Belle Riviere, as a monument of the renewal of the possession we have taken of the said river
Ohio, and of all those which empty into it, and of all the lands on both sides as far as the sources of said rivers, as enjoyed or ought to have been enjoyed by the kings of
France preceding, and as they have there maintained themselves by arms and by treaties, especially those of
Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle.”
This inscription revealed the designs of the
French.
The plate was sent to the royal governor of New York, and by him to the
British government.
He sent copies of the inscription to other colonial governors, and
Colonel Johnson told the Five Nations that it implied an attempt to deprive them of their lands, and that the
French ought to be immediately expelled from the
Ohio and
Niagara.
One of the plates buried by Celoron near the mouth of the
Muskingum River was found by some boys near the close of the eighteenth century.
A part of it was used for bullets; the preserved fragment is now in the library of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Mass.
Near the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, W. Va., another leaden proces verbal, buried by Celoron, was found by a boy in 1846.
