 Washington's brother had purchased an interest in the Ohio Company, a land acquisition and settlement company whose objective was the settlement of Virginia's frontier areas, including the Ohio Country, territory north and west of the Ohio River.Its investors also included Virginia's Royal Governor, Robert Dinwiddie, who appointed Washington a major in the provincial militia in February 1753.The Ohio Country was occupied by a variety of Indian tribes that were nominally under the political control of the Iroquois Confederacy based in what is now northwestern New York.