CiU"MKiNK : Pknnsvi.vania I'.iundarv Con trdvf.rsv. oOO 



gahela and Ohio. All this contest between the l*>eneh and Indians on 

 the one side, and the luiglish on the other, was brought about without 

 the agency of Pennsylvania. 



There followed a state of (juiesence on the part of the French, them- 

 selves apparently satisfied with the fact of their possession ; but not so 

 was the state of the Indians. Secretly incited by the French, doubt- 

 less, the Indians carried their l)loody incursions into the valleys east of 

 the nioiintains, lea\ ing desolation, death, and suffering on every side. 

 lUit, in 1756, occurred the expedition of Col. James Armstrong from 

 Fort Shirley, in what is now Huntingdon county, resulting in the de- 

 struction of the Indian towns at Kittanning ; in 1758, Forbes's expedi- 

 tion, with ( irant's defeat on Grant's Hill, Pittsburgh, on September 14, 

 followed by the capture or rather the abandonment of Fort Duquesne 

 on November 25th, and the erection of Fort Pitt (though not in the 

 .same location as Fort I)u(iuesne\ in 1759, by a force under the com- 

 mand of Gen. Stanwix. 



It must be remembered that this expulsion of the French from the 

 Ohio valley was not by the militia alone of either Pennsylvania or 

 \'irginia, but by royal forces sent over by the English government, 

 aided by the militia from both colonies. And so the French occupa- 

 tion was terminated by the definitive treaty of peace between Eng- 

 land and France, signed on February 10, 1763, and then passed from 

 France all her possessions in America east of the Mississip])i, including 

 Canada. 



THE VIRGIXIA OCCUPATION. 



The erection of the fort at the Point l)y Capt. Trent, in 1754, 

 a tre.spa.ss by Virginia upon the lands in the valley of Ohio, brought 

 about the French and Indian war, resulting beneficially, however, in 

 the loss to France of most of her American possessions and their ac- 

 quisition by the English, and bringing directly to Pennsylvania a 

 sharpened sense of the necessity for looking after her political interests 

 ■west of the Alleghanies. 



Now, what was the origin of this Virginia usurpation, for usurpation 

 it was? How did it happen that Virginia claimed any of her territory 

 within our western border? How did she come to claim jurisdiction 

 over the great Northwestern Territory, the mother of magnificent 

 states of the Union ? The answers to these queries arise out of the 

 following facts : 



