For many years the final conflict had been postponed by the existence of a
barrier state,--the Iroquois, or Six Nations of Indians. This fierce,
brave, and statesmanlike race held a strip of the watershed from Lake
Champlain to the Allegheny River. For many years they had been subject to
English influence, exercised chiefly by William Johnson; but the
undisturbed possession of their lands was the price of their friendship.
They held back the current of immigration through the Mohawk. They aimed
to be the intermediary for the fur-trade from the northwest. They remained
throughout the conflict for the most part neutral, but forced the
contestants to carry on their wars east or south of them.

[Sidenote: English claims.]

Southwest of the territory of the Iroquois lay the region of the upper
Ohio and its tributaries, particularly the valleys of the Tennessee, the
Muskingum, the Allegheny, the Monongahela and its mountain-descending
tributary, the Youghioghany, of which the upper waters interlace with
branches of the Potomac. In this rich country, heavily wooded and
abounding in game, there were only a few Indians and no white inhabitants.
In 1749 France began to send expeditions through the Ohio valley to raise
the French flag and to bury leaden plates bearing the royal arms. A part
of the disputed region was claimed by Pennsylvania as within her charter
limits; Virginia claimed it, apparently on the convenient principle that
any unoccupied land adjacent to her territory was hers; the English
government claimed it as a vacant royal preserve; and in 1749 an Ohio
company was formed with the purpose of erecting the disputed region into a
"back colony." A royal grant of land was secured, and a young Virginian,
named George Washington, was sent out as a surveyor. He took the
opportunity to locate some land for himself, and frankly says that "it is
not reasonable to suppose that those, who had the first choice,... were