Most fighting in the French and Indian War in North America ended by 1760, and the victorious British began to take possession of forts in the Ohio Country and Great Lakes region previously occupied by the French. Although the 1758 Treaty of Easton with Ohio Country Indians promised that no additional forts would be built, in 1761 British General Jeffrey Amherst ordered the erection of Fort Sandusky on Sandusky Bay in order to link Fort Detroit with Fort Pitt. The Sandusky Bay area had long been an important trade area. There were a number of Native American villages in the area, primarily Wyandots. Orontony, a Wyandot chief, had settled here in the 1740s, and emerged as a leader. Before the French and Indian War, French and British traders competed for influence among the Indians here.