day, and had become a place of note long previous to the alliance of the Miamis with the English. From the latter it received the name of "Tawixtwi town", until the building of a stockade, when it was called Pickawillany, although in some accounts we find the name "Picktown" applied to it. In July 1748, fifty-five representatives of the Six Nations, Delawares, Shawnees, Nanticokes, and Twightwees met at the courthouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and signed a peace treaty with the Pennsylvania Provincial Council. This treaty guaranteed commercial access to tribes across the Ohio Valley as far west as the Wabash River, an unprecedented diplomatic achievement for the English. The Indian leaders promised to try to persuade other Ohio communities to leave the French and join a pro-English alliance. Visit by Céloron de Blainville, 1749 In response to these new English alliances, the Governor of New France, Charles de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois decided to send a military force down the Ohio River to persuade and intimidate the main Native American communities to remain loyal to France. In mid-1749 Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville, leading a force of eight officers, six cadets, an armorer, 20 soldiers, 180 Canadians, 30 Iroquois and 25 Abenakis, moved down the Ohio River on a flotilla of 23 large boats and birch-bark canoes, on his "lead plate expedition," burying lead plates at six locations where major tributaries entered the Ohio. The plates were inscribed to claim the area for France. Céloron also sought out English traders and warned them to leave this territory which belonged to France. After visiting Kittanning, Logstown and Lower Shawneetown and receiving a cool response, Céloron's party traveled up the Great Miami River (which Bonnecamps referred to as the "rocky river", Rivière a la Roche) to Pickawillany, arriving there on 13 September. Céloron immediately found two "English soldiers" living in Pickawillany and sent them away. Of the Miami living in Pickawillany, Father Bonnecamps remarks, "This band is not numerous; it consists at most of 40 or 50 men." Céloron's party spent a week camped outside the town. He wanted to persuade Memeskia to lead his people back to Kekionga, and some of the Miamis said they "had not much objection". At one point he proposed that the Miamis accompany his party north to Detroit, emphasizing that the English could not be trusted. Céloron dispensed the last of his trade goods to