first permanent European settlement in Alabama. Biloxi was another early French settlement on the Gulf Coast, to the west in what is now Mississippi. The French and the English contested the region, each attempting to forge strong alliances with Indian tribes. To strengthen their position, defend their Indian allies, and draw other tribes to them, the French established the military posts of Fort Toulouse, near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and Fort Tombecbe on the Tombigbee River. The French and the English engaged in competition for Indian trade in what is now the state of Alabama between roughly the 1690s and the 1750s, at which point the French and Indian War broke out. It was the North American front of the Seven Years' War between these two nations in Europe. Though the French claimed the territory as their own and attempted to rule it from Fort Toulouse, so as to engage in trade with the Indians, English traders based out of the Carolinas infiltrated the region, also engaging in trade. The Chickasaw frequently favored the English in this contest. Overall, during this time the English proved to be the better traders and colonizers. They operated independently, while the French government was more directly involved in its colonies. On this note Edmund Burke would later note that English colonists in America would owe their freedom more "to [the Crown's] carelessness than to its design". This was a policy referred to as "salutary neglect". The distance between the colonies and the home countries meant they could always operate with some freedom. The English Crown's grant of Georgia to Oglethorpe and his associates in 1732 included a portion of what is now northern Alabama. In 1739, Oglethorpe visited the Creek Indians west of the Chattahoochee River and made a treaty with them. The 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years' War after France's defeat by Britain, resulted in France ceding its territories east of the Mississippi to Britain. Great Britain came into undisputed control of the region between the Chattahoochee and the Mississippi rivers, in terms of other European powers. Of course it had not consulted with any of the numerous indigenous peoples whom it nominally "ruled." The portion of Alabama below the 31st parallel was considered a part of British West Florida. The British Crown defined the portion north of this line as part of the "Illinois