From the seventeenth century onward, French missionaries and fur traders had extended their explorations and their scattered posts, effecting alliances with the Indians, and inciting violent resistance to English and colonial approach. As late as 1749 Celoron led a considerable expedition down the Ohio River, up the Great Miami and to the Lakes, tacking notices on trees and planting leaden plates claiming possession in the name of the king of France. This had an ominous meaning, in that the French had done almost nothing in settling Ohio, whereas it was in this very direction that English settlement pressed. During this period, which culminated in the French and Indian War, the colonies did not cooperate, although, as has already been said, the need for united effort was first publicly urged at the Albany convention. After the French and Indian war was over, and the title to the Northwest had been ceded to England, she herself became suspicious of westward American settlement, and forbade it, even to the extent of giving to the province of Quebec the lands she had previously given to the American colonies. The rugged and fearless individualists who were most likely to settle the West were the least inclined to conform to stabilized government, especially if that government were objectionable in any of its phases. And, removed beyond the Alleghany Mountains, they would be beyond hope of subjection. Those who had already migrated to the West asked nothing from the colonies except help in defense against the Indians—and of this received very little. They were free men—perhaps the freest of any considerable group of individuals in ages of history. Ahead of them lay a wide continent, blessed with God’s bounties, and, as law and restraint caught up with them, all that was necessary was to move farther westward to seemingly endless lands and natural resources—and freedom. [Illustration: ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE _Drawn by Marie Kellogg, Superior, Wisconsin_] In 1776 Virginia, in the fervor of her revolt, did give indication of the trend of her people’s feelings through her “Bill of Rights,” and this undoubtedly expressed the long restrained but culminating American idea. When revolt mounted to the utterance of the Declaration of Independence, that great document set forth in fervid terms the general principles of the rights of man. But there was nothing discernible in it as to what specific form or type of government should make those principles effective. The Articles of Confederation, which immediately followed, were but the forced cooperation of the colonies for defensive purposes.