He called it the "Old Beloved Speech"; and he gave his
confidence to the man who spoke this speech even in the close
barter for furs.
We shall find it worth while to refer to the map of America as it
was in the early days of the colonial fur trade, about the
beginning of the eighteenth century. A narrow strip of loosely
strung English settlements stretched from the north border of New
England to the Florida line. North Florida was Spanish territory.
On the far distant southwestern borders of the English colonies
were the southern possessions of France. The French sphere of
influence extended up the Mississippi, and thence by way of
rivers and the Great Lakes to its base in Canada on the borders
of New England and New York. In South Carolina dwelt the Yamasi
tribe of about three thousand warriors, their chief towns only
sixty or eighty miles distant from the Spanish town of St.
Augustine. On the west, about the same distance northeast of New
Orleans, in what is now Alabama and Georgia, lay the Creek
nation. There French garrisons held Mobile and Fort Alabama. The
Creeks at this time numbered over four thousand warriors. The
lands of the Choctaws, a tribe of even larger fighting strength,
began two hundred miles north of New Orleans and extended along
the Mississippi.
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