Stories of Ohio by William Dean Howells

If the people of Ohio were Eskimos in the ages before history began, and then thousands of years after, but still thousands of years ago were Aztecs, there is no doubt that when history first knew of them they were Frenchmen. The whole Great West, in fact, was once as much a province of France as Canada; for the dominions of Louis XV. were supposed to stretch from Quebec to New Orleans, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi. The land was really held by savages who had never heard of this king; but that was all the same to the French. They had discovered the Great Lakes, they had discovered the Mississippi, they had discovered the Ohio; and they built forts at Detroit, at Kaskaskia, and at Pittsburg, as well as at Niagara; they planted a colony at the mouth of our mightiest river, and opened a highway to France through the Gulf of Mexico, as well as through the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and they proclaimed their king sovereign over all.

In Ohio they had a post on the Maumee, and everywhere they had settlements at each of the forts, where there was always a chapel and a priest for the conversion of the Indians. With the French, the sword and the cross went together, but very few of the savages knew that they were either conquered or converted. From time to time they knew that companies of picturesque strangers visited their towns, and promised them the favor of the French king if they would have nothing to do with the traders from the English colonies on the Atlantic, and threatened them with his displeasure if they refused. When these brilliant strangers staid among them, and built a fort and a chapel, and laid out farms, then the savages willingly partook of the great king's bounty, and clustered around the French post in their wigwams and settled down to the enjoyment of his brandy, his tobacco, his ammunition, and his religion. When the strangers went away, almost as soon as they had promised and threatened, then the savages went back to business with the English traders.