<P> This boundary remained in effect through the capitulation of French forces in Canada in 1760 until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, after which France surrendered its remaining territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain . (Although British forces had occupied the "Canadian" posts in the Illinois and Wabash countries in 1761, they did not occupy Vincennes or the Mississippi River settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia until 1764, after the ratification of the peace treaty .) As part of a general report on conditions in the newly conquered Province of Canada, Gen. Thomas Gage (then commandant at Montreal) explained in 1762 that, although the boundary between Louisiana and Canada wasn't exact, it was understood the upper Mississippi (above the mouth of the Illinois) was in Canadian trading territory . </P> <P> Following the transfer of power--at which time many of the French settlers on the east bank of the Mississippi crossed the river to what had become Spanish Louisiana--the eastern Illinois Country became part of the British Province of Quebec, and later the United States' Northwest Territory . Those fleeing British control founded outposts such as the important settlement of St. Louis (1764). This became a French fur - trading center, connected to trading posts on the Missouri and Upper Mississippi rivers, leading to later French settlement in that area . </P> <P> In the 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau, France ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain, its ally in the war, as compensation for the loss of Spanish Florida to Britain . Even after France had lost its claim to Louisiana, settlement of Upper Louisiana by French - speakers continued for the next four decades . French explorers and frontiersmen, such as Pedro Vial, were often employed as guides and interpreters by the Spanish and later by the Americans . The Spanish lieutenant governors at St. Louis maintained the traditional "Illinois Country" nomenclature, using titles such as "commander in chief of the western part and districts of Illinois" and administrators commonly referred to their capital St. Louis "of the Ylinuses". </P> <P> In 1800 Spain returned its part of Louisiana to France in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, but France sold it to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 . Through this time, but especially following the Louisiana Purchase, French Creoles, as they called themselves, began to move further into the Missouri Ozarks, where they formed mining communities such as Mine à Breton and La Vieille Mine (Old Mines). </P>

Who did france transfer the louisiana territory to after the french and indian war