web of politics that was being spun at Philadelphia,
Williamsburg, New York, London, and Paris. Generations of
tenacious struggle along the American frontier had developed such
men. The Weisers, Croghans, Gists, Washingtons, Franklins,
Walkers, and Cresaps were men of varied descent and nationality.
They had the cunning, the boldness, and the resources to
undertake successfully the task of conquering commercially the
Great West. They were the first men of the colonies to be
unafraid of that bugbear of the trader, Distance. We may aptly
call them the first Americans because, though not a few were
actually born abroad, they were the first whose plans, spirit,
and very life were dominated by the vision of an America of
continental dimensions.

The long story of French and English rivalry and of the war which
ended it concerns us here chiefly as a commercial struggle. The
French at Niagara (1749) had access to the Ohio by way of Lake
Erie and any one of several rivers--the Allegheny, the Muskingum,
the Scioto, or the Miami. The main routes of the English were the
Nemacolin and Kittanning paths. The French, laboring under the
disadvantages of the longer distance over which their goods had
to be transported to the Indians and of the higher price
necessarily demanded for them, had to meet the competition of the
traders from the rival colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia,
each of them jealous of and underbidding the other.

When Celoron de Blainville was sent to the Allegheny in 1749, by
the Governor of New France, his message was that "the Governor of
Canada desired his children on Ohio to turn away the English
Traders from amongst them and discharge them from ever coming to