small settlements and garrisons, some of which are not eighty miles
distant from the colony of Georgia. To the south-west and west of us the
French have erected a considerable town, near Fort Thoulouse on the
Moville river, and several other forts and garrisons, some not above
three hundred miles distant from our settlements; and at New Orleans on
the Mississippi river, since her late Majesty Queen Anne's war, they have
exceedingly increased their strength and traffic, and have now many forts
and garrisons on both sides of that great river for several hundred miles
up the same; and since his most Christian Majesty has taken out of the
Mississippi Company the government of that country into his own hands,
the French natives in Canada come daily down in shoals to settle all
along that river, where many regular forces have of late been sent over
by the King to strengthen the garrisons in those places, and, according
to our best and latest advices, they have five hundred men in pay,
constantly employed as wood-rangers, to keep their neighbouring Indians
in subjection, and to prevent the distant ones from disturbing the
settlements; which management of the French has so well succeeded, that
we are very well assured they have now wholly in their possession and
under their influence, the several numerous nations of Indians that are
situated near the Mississippi river, one of which, called the Choctaws,
by estimation consists of about five thousand fighting men, and who were
always deemed a very warlike nation, lies on this side the river, not
above four hundred miles distant from our out-settlements, among whom, as
well as several other nations of Indians, many French Europeans have been
sent to settle, whom the priests and missionaries among them encourage to
take Indian wives, and use divers other alluring methods to attach the
Indians the better to the French alliance, by which means the French are
become throughly acquainted with the Indian way, warring and living in
the woods, and have now a great number of white men among them, able to
perform a long march with an army of Indians upon any expedition.