"We further beg leave to inform your Majesty, that if the measures of
France should provoke your Majesty to a state of hostility against it in
Europe, we have great reason to expect an invasion will be here made upon
your Majesty's subjects by the French and Indians from the Mississippi
settlements. They have already paved a way for a design of that nature,
by erecting a fort called the Albama fort, alias Fort Lewis, in the
middle of the Upper Creek Indians, upon a navigable river leading to
Mobile, which they have kept well garrisoned and mounted with fourteen
pieces of cannon, and have lately been prevented from erecting a second
nearer to us on that quarter. The Upper Creeks are a nation very bold,
active and daring, consisting of about two thousand five hundred fighting
men, (and not above one hundred and fifty miles distant from the
Choctaws), whom, through we heretofore have traded with, claimed and held
in our alliance, yet the French, on account of that fort and a superior
ability to make them liberal presents, have been for some time striving
to draw them over to their interest, and have succeeded with some of the
towns of the Creeks; which, if they can be secured in your Majesty's
interest, are the only nation which your Majesty's subjects here can
depend upon as the best barrier against any attempts either of the French
or their confederate Indians.

"We most humbly beg leave farther to inform your Majesty, that the French
at Mobile perceiving that they could not gain the Indians to their
interest without buying their deer-skins, (which is the only commodity
the Indians have to purchase necessaries with), and the French not being
able to dispose of those skins by reason of their having no vent for them
in Old France, they have found means to encourage vessels from hence,
New-York, and other places, (which are not prohibited by the acts of
trade), to truck those skins with them for Indian trading goods,