The Great Lake Seaway Trail region was the vital transportation and communication link between France and her colonies.

The struggle for control of this area was essential to the early settlers.

This interpretive panel is one of twenty along the Seaway Trail.  On July 1, 1759,  Gen.  John Prideaux’s army camps in Sodus Point on their way to besige Fort Niagra.overall strategy for dominion of North America.

Twenty years before American colonists declared their independence from Great Britain , another great conflict was fought between 1754 and 1763 for control of North America.

Popularly known as the French & Indian War, the struggle began as a contest for the Ohio River Valley and quickly developed into a multinational struggle fought throughout North America and in Europe, Asia and on the high seas.

The war pitted Britain and her American colonists along the Atlantic seaboard against the French and their colonists in Canada, the Great Lakes Basin and Louisiana. Native peoples supported both sides, but early in the war France had the upper hand in recruiting Native warriors to her cause.

Besides determining that England, not France, would control the American interior, the war had other far-reaching consequences. Many future leaders of America’s revolutionary cause received their early military training in this conflict. American attitudes about Native peoples also hardened during the war’s long years of violent border warfare.