Sales made according to this form, Sir William Johnson
declared to the Lords of Trade, he had never known to be
repudiated by the Indians. This paragraph of the Proclamation was
in substance an embodiment of Johnson's suggestions to the Lords
of Trade. Its purpose was square dealing and pacification; and
shrewd men such as Washington recognized that it was not intended
as a final check to expansion. "A temporary expedient to quiet
the minds of the Indians," Washington called it, and then himself
went out along the Great Kanawha and into Kentucky, surveying
land.
It will be asked what had become of the Ohio Company of Virginia
and that fort at the Forks of the Ohio; once a bone of contention
between France and England. Fort Pitt, as it was now called, had
fallen foul of another dispute, this time between Virginia and
Pennsylvania. Virginia claimed that the far western corner of her
boundary ascended just far enough north to take in Fort Pitt.
Pennsylvania asserted that it did nothing of the sort. The Ohio
Company had meanwhile been merged into the Walpole Company.
George Croghan, at Fort Pitt, was the Company's agent and as such
was accused by Pennsylvania of favoring from ulterior motives the
claims of Virginia. Hotheads in both colonies asseverated that
the Indians were secretly being stirred up in connection with the
boundary disputes.
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