William Johnson
According to Johnson, the Indians were "whooping and hollowing in a frightful manner."8 They shouted news of Marin's arrival in the Ohio Valley, and they demanded that the English take action to protect their lands from the invaders. In response, Governor Clinton called a hasty June meeting at Albany.
The Iroquois were led by Chief Hendrick (Theyanoguin), a revered figure, over seventy years of age, who had traveled to England twice. In 1710 he and three other chiefs were presented to Queen Anne, an event memorialized by portraits of the "Four Kings" done by John Verelst. More than forty years later Hendrick returned to London, this time to be introduced to King George II. The king gave him a blue coat, trimmed with gold lace, and an impressive cocked hat. A Protestant convert, Hendrick was a close friend of Johnson's.
At the Albany meeting, Hendrick insisted to Clinton that the English abide by their obligations and move against the French. " [You don't care] what becomes of our nation," he accused the English. "You sit in Peace and quietness here whilst we are exposed to the enemy." The session was contentious and ended on a frightening note when Hendrick declared that the Covenant Chain, a term used to describe the long-standing friendly relations between the Iroquois and English, was "broken."9
Chief Hendrick (Theyanoguin). This engraving shows him in old age, scarred and wearing the coat and hat given him by George II.
The situation was equally confusing and critical in Virginia. At Williams-burg Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie read alarming reports of the French "invasion." His concerns went beyond mere matters of imperial rivalry. He and a coterie of wealthy friends risked heavy financial losses if the French made good on their claim to the Ohio. Like Governor Shirley and his colleagues in Massachusetts, Dinwiddie and other Virginians had been speculating for years in land and fur trading. In 1749 their machinations resulted in the formation of the Ohio Company. As a result of heavy lobbying, the king awarded the company a charter granting them huge tracts of western lands. From the moment of its conception the company was controversial. Those Virginians left out of the company cried foul, while Pennsylvanians, who thought the Ohio belonged to them, raised fiery objections to Virginia's presumptuous claims. Indians, particularly the Iroquois overlords, feared any European encroachment on their lands and watched anxiously as land-hungry settlers chopped down forests and planted crops in their homelands.10
Dinwiddie was as cynical about the prospects of peace with the French as William Shirley and the imperialists in London. As far as he was concerned, the Ohio belonged to whoever could hold it. So he decided to make a bold move. Using as his excuse the "repell force by force" instructions from Lord Holderness, Dinwiddie preempted his fellow governors by dispatching a twenty-two-year-old militia major named George Washington to deliver a letter to "the Commandant of the French forces on the Ohio," warning him to vacate Virginia's lands.11
Washington invited Jacob Van Braam, a Dutchman, who had settled in Virginia a year before and taught French and fencing, to come along as his translator. On October 31 Washington and Van Braam left Williamsburg and rode to the place where Wills Creek* flowed into the north branch of the Potomac River. The Ohio Company had recently erected a small storehouse there, and a few settlers had gathered nearby. Christopher Gist, an employee of the company, had surveyed the Ohio as far south as Great Falls.† He was probably the first Englishman to explore the river, and Washington was eager for him to join his party. Four other "servants" also signed on for the trip.12
By November 26, Washington's party reached Logstown, seventeen miles downstream from the forks of the Ohio. Here the young major met Tanaghrisson, who was still smarting from Marin's insulting rebuff. In the face of a powerful French juggernaut that seemed to be advancing everywhere, erecting forts, evicting traders, and intimidating Indians, Governor Dinwiddie's inexperienced emissary, accompanied by a half dozen men, did little to impress the chief. Dismayed at the lack of resolve on the part of his Virginia friends, Tanaghrisson told Washington that he had seen the power of the French at Le Boeuf. He asked the major what he intended to do. Washington's feckless reply did not impress the "half king." He told Tanaghrisson that his mission was to deliver "a Letter to the French Commandant, of very great Importance." Washington then tried to persuade the Indians to provide a powerful escort as a way to impress the French. All that would muster were Tanaghrisson and three warriors.
Washington's party headed north from Logstown, slogging along trails left muddy by the cold rains of the late fall. About fifty miles north at Venango, the Virginians encountered Philippe-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire. A soldier, trader, and interpreter, Joncaire was at Venango to court the local Delaware and Shawnee, who were traditionally wary of the Iroquois and English. Through the use of bribes, trade, and, most recently, the imposing presence of a sizable French force, Joncaire had succeeded in bringing them over to the French.
At the prospect of a visit with convivial, albeit English, company, Joncaire brought out the best bottles from his frontier wine cellar and invited Washington to dinner. As the evening wore on, loosened tongues wagged and Washington listened. Joncaire predicted that the French would soon have possession of all of the Ohio. He knew, he told Washington, that "the English could raise two Men for their one," but that seeming advantage, he boasted, was more than offset by the ability of the French to strike quickly. French hatchets would fall while the English slept. Late the next morning the major headed north to Le Boeuf.
Paul Marin was indeed a remarkable soldier. In the face of overwhelming obstacles, he had carried out the orders of his king, but in the process he had driven his soldiers and himself to exhaustion. Duquesne ordered him home to recuperate, but it was too late. On October 29, just two days before Washington and his party left Williamsburg, Marin was buried at Le Boeuf. His successor, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, another tough Canadian, had been at the fort barely a week when Washington arrived on November 13. He greeted the Virginian and his bedraggled escort with wry amusement. For his part, Washington was impressed, describing Legardeur as "an elderly Gentleman [with] much the Air of a Soldier."13 Legardeur invited Washington to dine with him. The French claim to the Ohio was absolute, he declared over the wine, and as a soldier of the king he would defend the territory. When Washington presented Legardeur with Dinwiddie's letter demanding that the French withdraw, the commander responded with more courtesy than the situation required. "As to the summons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it." Washington noted Legardeur's succinct reply, bid a cordial farewell, and headed back to Williamsburg.14
After a miserable return trip of nearly a month, in which "there was but one Day on which it did not rain or snow incessantly," Washington arrived at the governor's palace in Williamsburg. His report to Dinwiddie presented an alarming but hardly surprising picture. The French, he told the lieutenant governor, were sweeping south. Having built forts at Presque Isle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, they set their sights on the forks of the Ohio. Once they seized that strategic location, Washington said, there was little to prevent them from controlling the entire river to the Mississippi. Dinwiddie considered the major's report carefully, and then, much to the surprise of Washington, he ordered it printed.15 The lieutenant governor was playing a dangerous game, and Washington was his pawn. By printing the report and circulating it both at home and in London, he was craftily stirring the political pot, hoping to rally support for another bold move he had already undertaken without awaiting permission from London.
While Washington was still returning from his mission to the French, Dinwiddie had sent a small force under Captain William Trent, a former fur trader, to occupy the forks of the Ohio. Trent's detachment of less than fifty men reached the forks in mid-February and built a modest stockade overlooking the spot where the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the Ohio. Dinwiddie knew that Trent's fort would provoke the French. It was a fatal move. The lieutenant governor had set a dangerous tripwire on the banks of
the Ohio.16
Thanks to his Indian allies, Legardeur knew about the English incursion, and in his dispatches to Quebec he kept Governor Duquesne informed. In January 1754 the governor recalled Legardeur to Montreal and ordered him to prepare a spring offensive. At the same time he dispatched another veteran Canadian soldier, Claude-Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecoeur, to take command in Ohio. Contrecoeur's orders were unambiguous: expel the English.17
With six hundred men and artillery Contrecoeur arrived at Presque Isle in early March. The trek had been long and difficult. Across the ice and snow each of the French soldiers dragged a traine behind him. An Indian invention, the traine was a long thin wooden sled shaped much like a toboggan, six to nine feet long and about eighteen inches across. The men wore snowshoes and covered their feet and legs with heavy moccasins and Indian-style leggings called mitlasses. They protected their hands with thick deerskin mittens. Every soldier also wore a heavy capote, a long wool coat fitted with a hood. After dropping men off to reinforce the garrisons at Niagara and Presque Isle, Contrecoeur continued south and drew near the forks of the Ohio in early April.
Although Trent and his men had been at work on the fort since mid-February, they had not accomplished much. A dreadful winter, made worse by a shortage of provisions, had weakened the men and broken morale. They sought assistance from local Indians, who refused, fearing retribution at the hands of the large French force rumored to be on its way. In desperate straits, Trent left his men under the command of his subordinate and brother-in-law Ensign Edward Ward and struck out on his own to Wills Creek for help.
The French arrived at the forks on April 16. On condition that his men be allowed to return home, Ward quickly surrendered. With the usual show of civility Contrecoeur invited his opponent to dinner. Table conversation ranged over a wide variety of topics, none more important, however, than the disposition of the carpenters' tools in Ward's possession. Contrecoeur offered rations for the tools, and the next morning as the Virginians were leaving, the French were already busy with their newly acquired hammers and saws, building a proper fort to be named Duquesne.18
In the same month that Duquesne was organizing his expedition against Trent, Dinwiddie ordered Washington, whom he had recently promoted to lieutenant colonel, to raise a force and proceed "to the Fork of Ohio [and there] finish and compleat the Fort . . . already begun by the Ohio Company." 19 If Dinwiddie, Washington, and other Ohio Company investors were eager to challenge the French to protect their pocketbooks, other Virginians were not so quick to risk their lives. Washington's expedition was delayed for weeks while he tried unsuccessfully to recruit men. Not until Dinwiddie offered two hundred thousand acres of company land as signing bounties did enough men appear. The recruits were a motley group. Washington described them as "loose, Idle Persons. . . . many of them [are] without Shoes, others want Stockings, some are without shirts, and not a few... have Scarce a Coat, or Waistcoat to the Backs."20
Washington assembled his force at Alexandria on the Potomac River. On April 2, 1754. he ordered the men to form ranks by company, one under the command of Captain Peter Hogg, a Scotsman from Augusta County, and the other under Captain Jacob Van Braam. Altogether 132 men stood to arms. At the command they marched, with Washington riding at the head of the column. Compared to their colonel, resplendent in his red coat trimmed with white lace cuffs, red vest, breeches, and highly polished black boots, the rest of the men looked curiously casual, dressed as they were in the common attire of Virginia yeomen, buckskin and homespun. Behind the marching men lumbered a line of clumsy wagons packed with camp supplies and ammunition. They had no artillery. Pulling heavy guns over rutted roads would delay the expedition, and Washington was in a hurry. Few, if any, of these men, including their commander, had ever been in combat. Ahead of them was a difficult march of more than two hundred miles along a winding forest trail. They would have to cross a seemingly endless number of streams and follow switchback trails over steep hills that packhorses, let alone wagons, found a daunting challenge.
On its first day out Washington's little army made barely six miles. The next morning they broke camp and moved off on a northwesterly route. They picked up the pace to a brisk eleven miles a day, and in less than a week they had crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains at Vestal Gap and ferried over the Shenandoah River to Winchester. Captain Adam Stephen and his Virginia company were waiting in the town, bringing Washington's force up to 159 men. The three assembled companies represented half of the entire Virginia militia regiment. Two companies under Captain Andrew Lewis and Robert Stobo were still in Alexandria trying to raise men.21 As soon as the companies were completed, they would march to join Washington. The sixth company was already at the forks of the Ohio under Captain Trent. Additional reinforcements were promised as well. Dinwiddie had beguiled himself into believing that the southern Indians—Catawba, Cherokee, and Chickasaw—would march, and he had assurances from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland that they would commit militia. For a man who was otherwise savvy and cynical, Dinwiddie was credulous to think that his parochial neighbors would help him defend Virginia and the Ohio Company.
Washington decided to strike ahead as quickly as possible and leave the wagon train to catch up with him. He set out for Wills Creek on April 18. On the nineteenth, only a few miles out of Winchester and still more than fifty miles from Wills Creek, "an Express with Letters from Captain Trent" met the column with alarming news. According to Trent's message, a flotilla of several hundred canoes and bateaux with more than eight hundred French were headed down the Allegheny. He needed reinforcements immediately.22
Washington relayed Trent's plea back to his superiors in Williamsburg, appending his own urgent request that reinforcements be sent as soon as possible. Rather than wait, however, Washington, more bold than prudent, decided to advance against the French. At Wills Creek Washington encountered Ensign Ward and his men, who brought him the not unexpected news that the large French force reported by Trent had taken the forks. Ward also carried a message from Tanaghrisson. The half king pledged that he and his warriors remained loyal to the English, and they were anxious to attack their mutual enemy.23
Tanaghrisson's constancy was not matched by Trent's men. They decided that their obligation to defend the colony ended when Ensign Ward surrendered to the French. After staying at Wills Creek long enough to complain to Washington about not being paid, the men drifted off for home. The Virginia regiment now numbered only five companies, three at Wills Creek and two still mustering at Alexandria.
On April 23 Washington convened a council of war. He had, he told the officers, about 180 men. Tanaghrisson's message notwithstanding, the number of Indians available was uncertain but in any event would be few. Reliable intelligence put the French at one thousand men with eighteen cannon.
Washington had no doubt about French intentions. His own failed mission the previous year, followed by Contrecoeur's expulsion of Ward, made matters very clear. The French claimed the Ohio, and they were backing up that claim with force. After some discussion the council came to an unusual decision. They agreed that it was "impracticable" to attack the French, but rather than wait for new orders or reinforcements they decided that "being strongly invited by the Indians, and particularly by the Speeches of the Half-King, the President [i.e., Washington] gave his Opinion, that it would be proper to advance as far as Red-Stone Creek, on the Monongahela, about Thirty-seven Miles on this side of the Fort [Fort Duquesne], and there to raise a Fortification, clearing a Road broad enough to pass with all our Artillery and our Baggage, and there to wait fresh Orders."24
In retrospect, Washington's decision was rash. He was crossing into disputed territory and exposing his men to attack by an overwhelmingly superior enemy. His chief motivation seems to have been a desire to demonstrate courage to the Indians and protect Ohio Company property.
Redstone Creek* was a company trading post located on the Mononga-hela River about one hundred miles from Wills Creek. Nema
colin's Path, a primitive trace first laid out by company traders, was the only link between the two posts. Despite the obstacles, Washington decided to improve the path and build a road to Redstone Creek, where he would set up an advance base to support his counterattack against the French.
Construction got under way on April 25. A work party of sixty men went ahead to reconnoiter and survey the route. A few days later Washington marched out with the rest of the men. It was brutal work. Rain punctuated warm spring days as the men sweated and slogged over steep hills and through dense forest, underbrush, and mud. High water in the numerous creeks and rivers made fording and bridge building a nightmare. Progress was maddeningly slow. On average the crews could not clear more than two miles per day. As the men chopped, dug, filled and, bridged, they met English traders fleeing from the French threat. Wild rumors filled the camp about the closeness of the advancing enemy.
By the end of May, after more than a month of grueling roadwork and hard marching, Washington was barely halfway to Redstone Creek. From behind he heard virtually nothing about reinforcements, while ahead the French were steadily advancing. At least a half dozen men had deserted, and the rest were exhausted and growing more fearful when Washington decided to pause at a place called Great Meadows. It was an open area a few hundred yards wide and about two miles long, tucked in a valley between Laurel Ridge on the east and Chestnut Ridge toward the west. The open meadow offered pasturage for his animals and level space for a field camp. Its chief problem was wetness. The land was low, and a shallow stream called Great Meadows Run ran leisurely through the meadow and over its banks. The constant tramping of soldiers' feet could easily turn the soft ground into a muddy mess.
Empires at War Page 6
