The year after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French governor of Canada, La Galissonière, had sent Celeron de Bienville to register the claims of France to the Ohio valley, and thus carry on the great scheme of shutting in the English settlers behind the Alleghany Mountains. The demonstration was purely peaceful, and for the next three years nothing serious came of it. Galissonière resigned his government to De la Jonquière, who, in turn, was succeeded by the Marquis Duquesne. In the meantime, in 1750, the Virginian traders, for the most part, had formed the Ohio Company for the exploiting of that rich valley. The work of this corporation was not of a successful character, owing to the jealousies between Virginia and Pennsylvania, both colonies trying to shift the burden of fort building on to the shoulders of the other. The French, seeing their opportunity, began to teach these bickering colonials those bitter lessons which were at last to be an indirect cause of their union. In June of 1752, the Miami Indians, a confederacy friendly towards the English, were attacked; their town was burnt, and their chief killed. This was not a mere raid upon an insignificant group of Redskins' wigwams, but was the outward and visible sign of the aggressive policy of Duquesne towards the advanced English traders in the Ohio valley. In the spring of the next year, a veteran French officer, Marin, established, by means of two forts, communication between the Great Lakes and the sources of the Ohio. This, indeed, was a direct act of trespass upon that debatable land lying on the borders of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and was a heavy blow at the Ohio Company and their trading station at Fort Cumberland. The French intrusion aroused the wrath of William Shirley of Massachusetts, and also of the cross-grained Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia. Ill-tempered though the latter was, he possessed clear judgment and tenacity of purpose, and from this moment worked strenuously for the welfare of the colonies against the French.