1749 French Claims to Ohio River Valley

In 1749, French leaders in North America saw British expansion west of the Allegheny Mountains as a threat to the Ohio River Valley and beyond. French commander Pierre Joseph Celeron, sieur de Blainville, left Montreal, New France, with 250 men to establish French claims by burying inscribed lead plates at the mouths of six important tributaries of the Ohio River. Three of the plates have been recovered, one was sent to England, and two are in American historical societies. The final plate was buried just west of here at the mouth of the Great Miami River before the detachment turned north. After the British captured Montreal in 1760, French claims east of the Mississippi River were ceded to Britain by the 1763 Treaty of Paris, and the British Parliament annexed to Quebec, now Canada, and controlled all lands north of the Ohio River until 1776. The inscription on the plates declared that in the reign of Louis XV, Celeron, commanding a detachment sent by Monsieur the Marquis de la Galissoniere, Governor General of New France, buried the plate at the mouth of the Great Miami River on August 31 as a monument renewing possession of the Ohio River and the lands on both sides of its tributaries to their sources, as claimed by the Kings of France through arms and through the treaties of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix La Chapelle.

Cincinnati, Ohio · United States