The campaign of General John Forbes in 1758, which ended French rule on the Ohio, gave the Ohio Valley to the English. From this time on, the entire sweep of territory between the Atlantic Ocean and the present Pittsburg may be termed English territory. While England now nominally came into possession of all of this portion of New France, the lands on either side of the Ohio River below Pittsburg were claimed by the Indian nations inhabiting them, and the Crown attempted, in the Proclamation of 1763, to preserve these lands for the Indians by prohibiting the migrations of the colonists. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, and the expansion of Virginia into the vast tract south of the Ohio have been recounted.[35] It is sufficient to recall here that this treaty gave to Virginia the entire southern bank of the Ohio and all the territory southward to the banks of the Tennessee. The treaty was made with the Iroquois, the conquerors of half a continent, not with the Delawares and Shawanese and Southern Nations, who camped and hunted there. These dependents of the Iroquois contested the treaty stoutly and not until 1774 did the Shawanese even pretend to agree to its stipulations. This agreement was secured by what is known as Dunmore's War and was the direct result of General Andrew Lewis's bloody victory over the allied Indians at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, October 10, 1774. It is not less than significant that this decisive battle which assured the Old Southwest to the Americans, should have been fought practically over the burial place of Céloron's fifth leaden plate which claimed the land for France. By the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the entire southern shore of the Ohio had been abandoned by Indians, though for many years they continually invaded the pleasant country which was fast filling with a scattered white population. [Illustration: CAPTAIN GORDON'S MAP OF THE OHIO RIVER (1766) _From original in Library of Congress_] The story of the conquest and occupation of the northern side of the Ohio River is as bitter and bloody a tale as that of the southern side. The artificial division of the Middle West into states has resulted in some very artificial historical distinctions; the Ohio River has perhaps never been considered a mighty boundary line on the brink of which civilization paused for many critical years. The northern bank of the Ohio was, through many years, known as the "Indian Side;" and while western Virginia and Kentucky were counting their tens of thousands, the "Indian Side" was forbidden territory. The Ohio River was the western boundary of the colonies and of the United States for seventeen years: from 1768 until 1785. When, in 1783, the United States by the Treaty of Paris came into possession of the territory between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, the "men who wore hats" had not purchased an acre of land north and west of the Ohio River from its bareheaded inhabitants.