Chap XLI.} 1769. |
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not attract too strongly the cupidity of England.
Its system of restriction struck its victim to the
The settlement of the wilderness, of which France had reserved no portion and Spain and England feared to develope the resources, was promoted by native Pioneers.
Jonathan Carver of Connecticut, had in three former years explored the borders of Lake Superior, and the country of the Sioux beyond it;1 had obtained more accurate accounts of that Great River, which bore, as he reported, the name of Oregon2 and flowed into the Pacific; and he now returned to claim reward for his discoveries, to celebrate the richness of the copper mines of the Northwest; to recommend English settlements on the western extremity of the continent; and to propose opening, by aid of Lakes and Rivers, a passage across the continent, as the best route for communicating with China and the East Indies.3
Illinois invited emigrants more than ever; for its aboriginal inhabitants were fast disappearing from the earth.
In April, 1769, Pontiac, so long the dreaded enemy of the English, had been assassinated by an Illinois4 Indian without provocation and in time of peace;5 the Indians of the Northwest sent round belts to all the Nations to avenge the murder of their Chief.
In vain did five or six hundred of the Illinois
1 Bernard to the Earl of Hillsborough; Same to Lord Barrington and to Fitzherbert, 21 February, 1769.
2 The Oregon or the River of the West. Carver's Travels, 76.
3 Carver's Travels through the interior parts of North America, in the years 1766, 1767, and 1768. Introduction, v. VI.
4 J. Campbell to Lieut. Governor Brown, 30 July, 1769.
5 Gage to Sir William Johnson, 20 August, 1769. Gage to Hillsborough, 12 August, 1769.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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