1891-02.] EARLY TRADERS. 257 
place at Niagara Falls lay on the eastern bank of the river and was 
about nine miles long. Block-houses guarded the wharves at the land- 
ings, the lower being called Petite Marie; the upper, Little Niagara. 
Windlasses were used for hoisting heavy weights up the heights and also 
for assisting vessels to overcome the rapids at Fort Erie. 
From Lake Erie the French made their way at an carly date to Lake 
Chautauqua, thence down the Venango into the Ohio, but this route was 
soon abandoned for the shorter and easier one from Presqu’ Isle (Erie) to 
French Creek. Here they made so good a road that heavy cannon were 
easily hauled over it in the days when they held Fort du Quesne. The 
forts they had built at Presqu’ Isle, Venango, and Le Boeuf were taken 
and destroyed by the Indians during Pontiac’s war. They were not 
rebuilt, the route became disused, and the road soon fell out of repair. 
There were three other much frequented water-routes from Lake Erie 
to the Ohio. A fortage of a single mile connected the headwaters of 
the Cuyahoga with the Muskingum ; another four miles in length united 
the Sandusky with the Scioto. The carrying-place from the Miami of 
the Lakes to the Great Miami was nine miles long, and a branch of the 
former river interlocked with a branch of the Scioto. In the region 
watered by these rivers the fiercest struggle for trade had been waged and 
here those inevitable collisions occurred which precipitated the conquest. 
About three hundred English traders annually came over the mountains 
from Pennsylvania and Virginia. They usually ascended the Susquehan- 
na, Juniata, or Potomac to the head of boat navigation and then made 
their way through the gaps of the hills to the nearest branch of the Ohio. 
Many of the Indians living in the vicinity were emigrants from the 
English colonies who had settled there with the permission of the Six 
Nations by whom they were treated as allies or “younger brothers.” 
From the first they were inclined to be friendly to the English and 
regarded the French with suspicion. One English factory was established 
far up the Muskingum, another at Shannoah (Shawnee-town) near the 
confluence of the Scioto with the Ohio, but their principal mart and 
place of trade was at Pickiwillany (Piqua) on the upper waters of the Great 
Miami. From these posts, individual traders driving pack-horses before 
them made their way to the different Indian settlements. As early as 
1749, De Bienville reported that every village on the Ohio and its tribu- 
taries had one or more English traders in it and that each of these had 
men employed in transporting their furs. Raymond, the Commandant 
of the French pust on the Miami of the Lakes, at the same time described 
the feeling of the Indians as decidedly hostile to his countrymen. 
The Six Nations claimed the sovereignty over the country on the 
