412 Frank Carney 



their possession. This came first through their affihations or 

 alhances with the Five Nations, the Iroquois Confederacy. 



Deed from the Iroquois Confederacy. The very year that 

 Cadillac made a military post at Detroit, 1701, Governor Nanfan 

 of New York colony met the Indian chiefs where Albany now is, 

 on the Hudson river. These Indian chiefs were themselves 

 somewhat frightened; they had learned of the successful aggres- 

 siveness of the French in reference to the English trade. They 

 were aware of the fortified settlement at Detroit and of the minor 

 posts at different points of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. They had 

 been made ignominiously aware of the prowess of the western 

 Indians under French organization and guidance. Consequently 

 the Iroquois Confederacy was ready to form a mutual alhance 

 with the British. July 19, 1701 , this Confederacy deeded to Great 

 Britain, through the governor of New York, land won by conquest, 

 including a strip 800 miles long and about 400 miles wide, which, 

 they said, their fathers had acquired by conquest some eighty 

 years before. Thereafter, so far as this part of North America 

 was concerned, the British jurists could urge better claim than 

 Cabot's discovery. All the nations of Europe from the time of 

 Philip of Macedon had accepted conquest as a sufficient reason 

 for claiming ownership. Nevertheless, another governor of the 

 New York colony, twenty-five years later, had this deed renewed 

 by the Iroquois Confederacy. 



France and Spain did not contest England's ownership of the 

 coast colonies land. That narrow strip between the Appala- 

 chians and the sea the English were left to colonize, but both 

 countries said that England's territory ended with the crest 

 of the Appalachian mountains ; and that the region of the streams 

 which had their sources in the Appalachian mountains and 

 flowed westward belonged to them. England's claim to the 

 whole area was urged on the basis of discovery by John Cabot, 

 and to a particular part of the Mississippi basin on the basis of 

 deed from the Five Nations. Nevertheless, to trace the evolu- 

 tion of England's ownership requires reference to other transac- 

 tions. 



The French and Indian War. It was inevitable that France 

 and England should clash in this country. The rivers of the 

 Atlantic slope occupy beautiful valleys, which tempted congested 

 population across into the valleys and plains beyond the moun- 



