They warned the Indians to have no
dealings with the scheming English who would "infallibly prove to
be robbers," and asserted as boldly as Celoron dared the lordship
of the King of France and his love for his forest children.
Celoron realized that he was on an historic mission. At several
points on the Ohio, with great ceremony, he buried leaden plates,
as La Verendrye had done a few years earlier in the far West,
bearing an inscription declaring that, in the name of the King of
France, he took possession of the country. On trees over these
memorials of lead he nailed the arms of France, stamped on sheets
of tin. Since that day at least three of the plates have been
found.
Celoron's expedition went well enough. He advanced as far west on
the Ohio as the mouth of the Great Miami River, then up that
river, and by difficult portages back to Lake Erie. It was a
remarkable journey; but in the late autumn he was back again in
Montreal, not sure that he had achieved much. The natives of the
country were, he thought, hostile to France and devoted to the
English who had long traded with them.
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