r to the new Governor, "we can easily persuade these savages
to destroy Oswego. This is of the utmost importance; but act with great
caution."[49] In the next year the Minister wrote again: "The only means
that can be used for such an operation in time of peace are those of the
Iroquois. If by making these savages regard such an establishment
[_Oswego_] as opposed to their liberty, and, so to speak, a usurpation
by which the English mean to get possession of their lands, they could
be induced to undertake its destruction, an operation of the sort is not
to be neglected; but M. le Marquis de la Jonquiere should feel with what
circumspection such an affair should be conducted, and he should labor
to accomplish it in a manner not to commit himself."[50] To this La
Jonquiere replies that it will need time; but that he will gradually
bring the Iroquois to attack and destroy the English post. He received
stringent orders to use every means to prevent the English from
encroaching, but to act towards them at the same time "with the greatest
politeness."[51] This last injunction was scarcely fulfilled in a
correspondence which he had with Clinton, governor of New York, who had
written to complain of the new post at the Niagara portage as an
invasion of English territory, and also of the arrest of four English
traders in the country of the Miamis. Niagara, like Oswego, was in the
country of the Five Nations, whom the treaty of Utrecht declared
"subject to the dominion of Great Britain."[52] This declaration,
preposterous in itself, was binding on France, whose plenipotentiaries
had signed the treaty. The treaty also provided that the subjects of the
two Crowns "shall enjoy full liberty of going and coming on account of
trade," and Clinton therefore demanded that La Jonquiere should disavow
the arrest of the four traders and punish its authors. The French
Governor replied with great asperity, spurned the claim that the Five
Nations were British subjects, and justified the arrest.[53] He
presently went further. Rewards were offered by his officers for the
scalps of Croghan and of another trader named Lowry.[54] When this
reached the ears of William Johnson, on the Mohawk, he wrote to Clinton
in evident anxiety for his own scalp: "If the French go on so, there is
no man can be safe in his own house; for I can at any time get an Indian
to kill any man for a small matter. Their going on in that manner is
worse than open war."

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