[2] He had acquired the nickname "La Demoiselle" from the French, which translates to "young lady" or "damselfly", but was supposedly a grandiloquent rendering of the meaning of meemeehšihkia, Miami-Illinois for 'dragonfly,' signifying "fickle or capricious."
Old Briton established his village of Pickawillany in the Ohio Country, and in 1750 allowed a trading post and nearby stockade for early British traders and settlers from Pennsylvania, in defiance of French claims to the region.
The village quickly gained notoriety as a frontier outpost, but only for a short time; the location would later develop as Piqua, Ohio.
Rival tribes, loyal to France and under métis chieftain Charles Langlade, attacked Pickawillany in June 1752, with a force consisting of around 240 Ottawa and Ojibwa.
Langlade's raid on Pickawillany, which drove British traders out of the Ohio Country, was one of the events leading up to the French and Indian War.