Under the Lilies of France
Did it ever occur to you that at one time the Flag of France waved over Perry County? There may never have been really a flag of that nation planted on, our hill-tops, but the Lilies of France kept watch over our silent forests from where they were planted on the steeple of some mission house or over the door of a French trading station. The claim of France to this territory was based upon the fact of her explorations. While neither England nor her colonies had ever given their consent to France utilizing the rivers and trade of the vast region yet France was in actual possession of it. As "possession is nine points of the law" we must consider that at one time if there had been white people here they would have really been subjects of the French king.59
France had done four things that to her mind gave her an undisputed title to the region. The first was the sending of the Jesuit missionaries who wandered through the unbroken forests, dressed in their simple garb, exploring the rivers, and building mission chapels, from whose roofs went out to the natives
"The sound of the church-going bell,
The valleys and rocks never heard,
Never sighed at the sound of a knell,
Nor smiled when a Sabbath appeared."The second was the discoveries of LaSalle. Robert LaSalle, an ambitious young Frenchman, determined to find out something about the interior of the Amer- ican continent. In the year 1669 with a party of French he sailed over the waters of Lake Erie and crossing the portage of one of the three Ohio rivers that find their sources near the head waters of the streams that flow into the Lake, he descended either the Muskingum, the Scioto or the Miami and reaching the Ohio was the first white man to sail over the bosom of the Oyo, the Beautiful River. That the French based their right of ownership on the explorations of LaSalle is evidenced from the answer of the haughty commandant at Quebec to the demand carried by Washington in 1753. "We claim the country on the Ohio by virtue of the discoveries of LaSalle, and will not give it to the English. Our orders are to make prisoners of every Englishman found trading in the Ohio Valley." Another reason for their claim was the reiteration of their title of possession. Eighty years after the voyage of LaSalle and only thirty years before the Second Mayflower landed on the banks of the Mus- kinigum there floated down the Ohio a gorgeously ar-60
rayed fleet of boats. From the bow of one floating to the breeze was the flag of France. The founding of the Ohio Land Company the preceding year was no doubt the occasion for sending out one Louis Celoron, who crossing from Canada, embarked upon the Alle- gheny. Arrayed in his "pomp and circumstance." his companions clad in lace coats and doublets, he pro- ceeded in solemn ceremony and much ostentation, as only a Frenchman can, to bury certain leaden plates, that would forever set at rest the real ownership of the region drained by the Ohio and her tributaries. The plate testified that in the year 1749 it was buried as a monument of the renewal of possession. "His men were drawn up in order. Louis the XV was pro- claimed lord of all that region. The arms of France were stamped to a sheet of tin nailed to a tree; the plate of lead was buried at the foot, and the notary of the expedition drew up a formal act of the whole proceeding." This ceremony was gone through with at Wheeling, the source of the Allegheny, the mouth of the Muskingum, French Creek, the Kanawha, and the Great Miami. The plates at the Muskingum and the Kanawha were afterward found---the memorials of France's dream of an Empire in the New World. The last reason for their claim was the fact that France had actual possession of the territory. A chain of forts extended from Montreal to New Orleans. Their trading stations extended along that entire route. They had spied out the land and foresaw its possibili- ties in the way of trade. They never expected to col- onize it. This fact alone made the Indian a firm ally. The stories of fertile valleys, of navigable streams, and interminable forests had reached the practical ear61
of the Anglo-Saxon colonists, who saw utility in quite a different light. The French could not believe that their efforts in exploration would be of such little use to them and redound only to the good of the Eng- lish. They made every effort to keep it a part of their royal possessions. The defeat of Braddock gave them temporary hope for its retention, but the fall of Quebec shattered their hopes and the Lilies of France ceased to wave over the hills of Ohio.62