The French Indian War was part of a global conflict whose legacy to North America, and especially to the theater of struggle in Pennsylvania, was profound. At the same time that war dispossessed France of its continental North American empire, it pitted Native American cultures as proxies against each competing European alliances, as well as against one another, and hastened the recession and decline of native culture as a whole. Historical Essay and Annotated Bibliography by Louis M. Waddell, Introduction, Methodology, Concluding Observations, and Fort Inventory by Bruce D. Bomberger.