102 
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 
discovery. That there might be no mistake about the French 
claim, the governor of Canada, in 1749, sent a company of 
French and Indians down the Allegheny and Ohio rivers to take 
formal possession of the country 
in the name of the King of 
France. As signs of possession, 
tin plates bearing the arms of 
France were nailed to trees 
standing at the mouths of 
streams flowing into the Ohio, 
while in the bed of the river 
were buried leacden plates bear- 
ing an inscription to the effect 
that the land around belonged to 
France. 
England paid no attention 
whatever to the leaden plates. 
In the very year in which they 
were buried, the King of Eng- 
land granted a large tract of the 
Ohio country to some wealthy 
Virginians. "This action thor- 
dughly aroused the French, and 
to strengthen their position they 
at once built a chain of three 
forts (map, p. 106)—one at 
Presque Isle (Erie), one twenty 
miles away at Lebceuf, and one 
at Venango (Franklin, Penn- 
sylvania). The building of these forts brought on the fourth 
and final clash between the English and French in America, a 
clash which is known as the French and Indian War, and which 
was really a life-and-death struggle for the possession of North 
America.