But now the French began to push their advanced posts into the valley of the Ohio. Unhappily for the English interest, they found the irritated minds of the Indians in a state which favored their efforts at seduction, and held forth a flattering promise that tribes so long faithful to the English might soon be won over to the cause of France. While the English interests wore so inauspicious an aspect in this quarter, their prospects were not much better among the Iroquois. Since the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, these powerful tribes had so far forgotten their old malevolence against the French, that the latter were enabled to bring all their machinery of conciliation to bear upon them. They turned the opportunity to such good account, as not only to smooth away the asperity of the ancient grudge, but also to rouse in the minds of their former foes a growing jealousy against the English. Several accidental circumstances did much to aggravate this feeling. The Iroquois were in the habit of sending out frequent war-parties against their enemies, the Cherokees and Catawbas, who dwelt near the borders of Carolina and Virginia; and in these forays the invaders often became so seriously embroiled with the white settlers, that sharp frays took place, and an open war seemed likely to ensue.[88] It was with great difficulty that the irritation caused by these untoward accidents was allayed; and even then enough remained in the neglect of governments, the insults of traders, and the haughty bearing of officials, to disgust the proud confederates with their English allies. In the war of 1745, they yielded but cold and doubtful aid; and fears were entertained of their final estrangement.[89] This result became still more imminent, when, in the year 1749, the French priest Picquet established his mission of La Présentation on the St. Lawrence, at the site of Ogdensburg.[90] This pious father, like the martial churchmen of an earlier day, deemed it no scandal to gird on earthly armor against the enemies of the faith. He built a fort and founded a settlement; he mustered the Indians about him from far and near, organized their governments, and marshalled their war-parties. From the crenelled walls of his mission-house the warlike apostle could look forth upon a military colony of his own creating, upon farms and clearings, white Canadian cabins, and the bark lodges of Indian hordes which he had gathered under his protecting wing. A chief object of the settlement was to form a barrier against the English; but the purpose dearest to the missionary’s heart was to gain over the Iroquois to the side of France; and in this he succeeded so well, that, as a writer of good authority declares, the number of their warriors within the circle of his influence surpassed the whole remaining force of the confederacy.[91]