The beauty of studying history..........

...................comes from realizing the world has always and forever been a glorious mess.   

      The French expansion into the Ohio country put their plans in jeopardy.  Not only did the French reject the right of the British crown to grant lands in Ohio to the Ohio Company or anyone else, but a French presence in Ohio would render the region insecure for Anglo-American settlers.  The French themselves would be hostile; more threateningly they would turn the Indians of the region hostile.  The various tribes there understood the competition between the two European empires, and they played one against the other, to their own benefit.  Part of the benefit consisted of trade goods that made the lives of Indians easier—firearms, steel knives and the like; another part entailed military support in the rivalries of the tribes against one another.  The sum of the interplay of empires and tribes was a welter of intrigues and conflicts on the frontier: British against French, British against France's Indian allies, Britain's Indian allies against the French and the French Indians, Indians against Indians.  There was even competition between Virginians and residents of other British colonies, notably Pennsylvania and New York, who had their own claims to the Ohio country.

-H. W. Brands, Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution