Interest in the new colony led to a great development of
southwesterly trade from New France. Already the French coureurs
de bois were following the water route from the Illinois to South
Carolina. Jean Couture, a deserter from the service in New
France, journeyed over the Ohio and Tennessee rivers to that
colony, and was known as "the greatest Trader and Traveller
amongst the Indians for more than Twenty years." In 1714 young
Charles Charleville accompanied an old trader from Crozat's
colony on the gulf to the great salt-springs on the Cumberland,
where a post for trading with the Shawanoes had already been
established by the French. But the British were preparing to
capture this trade as early as 1694, when Tonti warned Villermont
that Carolinians were already established on a branch of the
Ohio. Four years later, Nicholson, Governor of Maryland, was
urging trade with the Indians of the interior in the effort to
displace the French. At an early date the coast colonies began to
trade with the Indian tribes of the back country: the Catawbas of
the Yadkin Valley; the Cherokees, whose towns were scattered
through Tennessee; the Chickasaws, to the westward in northern
Mississippi; and the Choctaws farther to the southward. Even
before the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the South
Carolina settlements extended scarcely twenty miles from the
coast, English traders had established posts among the Indian
tribes four hundred miles to the west of Charleston. Following
the sporadic trading of individuals from Virginia with the inland
Indians, the heavily laden caravans of William Byrd were soon
regularly passing along the Great Trading Path from Virginia to
the towns of the Catawbas and other interior tribes of the
Carolinas, delighting the easily captivated fancy and provoking
the cupidity of the red men with "Guns, Powder, Shot, Hatchets