Fort de la Présentation was built at the mouth of the Oswegatchie River in 1749 and 1750 and was used as a fortified mission and supply base by Father Abbé François Picquet. Picquet, a Sulpician priest who came from France to Montreal in 1734, had studied Indian languages and customs, served at the Sulpician Mission at Lake of Two Mountains from 1739-1749, and then chose to work with American Indians south of the Great Lakes to convert them and secure their loyalty to France. He sought to Christianize much of the native population, make them French allies, and persuade them to attack English settlements on the Mohawk River and at Oswego, and he accompanied them on numerous raids, including Captain de Lery's winter raid on Fort Bull on the Oneida Carry in 1756, Captain de Belletre's attack on Burnetsfield in the fall of 1757, and the surprise raid on Fort Herkimer in April of 1758. Although the fort's garrison remained small at about two dozen men, Picquet's parish included 3,000 people on both sides of the river. The fort became an important supply base for French forts at Niagara on Lake Ontario and Duquesne in western Pennsylvania, sending native-made snowshoes, toboggans, clothing, fruits, vegetables, dried fish, meat, bread, and lumber from its sawmill into the interior and to the boat building facility at Pointe au Baril on the St. Lawrence River. After Fort Niagara fell in 1759, Picquet abandoned Fort de la Présentation and moved his mission to Isle Péquétou de Gal, and when that mission was burned in 1760 by British-allied American Indians, he fled to Montreal, then to New Orleans, before eventually returning to France in 1772.