The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  The French prisoners insisted they had been sent by Contrecoeur to present Washington with a summons to withdraw or bear the blame for any hostilities that followed. Jumonville had held up papers, calling for a ceasefire, and the only French soldier to escape back to Fort Duquesne said the ensign was killed as he tried to read aloud the summons to the Virginians.25 Washington devoted much more space to refuting the French claim that this was an embassy than he did to recounting the fight. They were spies, he said, and it was not true that they called out to their attackers when the fighting began. What was more, “the Half King’s opinion in this case is that they had evil designs, and that it was a mere pretext; that they had never intended to come to us as anything but enemies, and that if we had ever been so foolish as to let them go, he would never help us to capture other Frenchmen.” Before the day was over, Washington sent Dinwiddie a second letter, repeating that the French were spies and denying that they had called out not to fire. He urged Dinwiddie to disregard anything the French prisoners might say to the contrary (which Dinwiddie did).26 Dinwiddie congratulated Washington on his success, which would show the Indians that the French were not invincible “when fairly engaged with the English.”27 Washington and Tanaghrisson both protested too much.

  Most accounts indicate that Tanaghrisson killed Jumonville in cold blood. John Shaw, a twenty-year-old Irish soldier in the Virginia Regiment who did not take part in the fight himself but spoke with others who did, testified later that when the French found their escape route cut off by the Indians, they ran back to the Virginians asking for quarter. “Some Time after the Indians came up the Half King took his Tomahawk and split the head of the French Captain haveing first asked if he was an Englishman and haveing been told that he was a French Man. He then took out his Brains and washed his Hands with them and then Scalped him.”28 Another account, this one given to Contrecoeur by a deserter from the English camp who may have been an Iroquois, reported that Tanaghrisson came up to the wounded Jumonville and said, “Thou art not yet dead, my father,” and then tomahawked him. For Tanaghrisson to address the young officer as “father” might seem strange, but if true, Fred Anderson observes, “the last words Jumonville heard on earth were spoken in the language of ritual and diplomacy, which cast the French father (Onontio) as the mediator, gift-giver, and alliance-maker among Indian peoples. Tanaghrisson’s metaphorical words, followed by his literal killing of the father, explicitly denied French authority and testified to the premeditation of his act.”29

  Tanaghrisson’s action, therefore, was more than a grisly atrocity in the heat of combat; the Half King publicly and dramatically severed the peace that had existed between the Ohio tribes and their French father and washed his hands of the French alliance as he washed his hands in Jumonville’s brains. Tanaghrisson said he must send the French scalps to the other Ohio nations, inviting them to take up the hatchet, and he promptly dispatched a runner to carry a hatchet and a black wampum belt to Shingas and the Delawares. He also reaffirmed the Ohio Indians’ determination to act independently of the Onondaga Council. Claiming to speak for the Ohio nations, Tanaghrisson had warned the French to stop their advance into the Ohio country. When the French ignored his warnings, and the Ohio Indians’ resolve began to waver in the face of the invasion, Tanaghrisson tried to save face and regain the initiative by pushing both the Indians and the British into more decisive action. When Jumonville began to read his document, Tanaghrisson, who understood French, which Washington did not, literally cut him off. “It was Tanaghrisson who goaded young Washington into the fateful encounter at what became known as the Battle of Jumonville Glen,” wrote the late historian David Dixon, “and, it was Tanaghrisson who ended any chance of reconciliation between the two European adversaries by killing the hapless Ensign Jumonville.” Because Washington was nominally in command in the opening clash of what became the global conflict known as the Seven Years’ War, he is often credited with starting it. “In reality,” concluded Dixon, “it was an aged Seneca sachem who began the first of the World Wars.”30

  News of the skirmish reverberated around the colonies and across the Atlantic. When the news reached Albany, where Benjamin Franklin and other colonists were negotiating with the Iroquois, the Mohawk chief Hendrick said “if it be a Fact that the Half-King be engaged in blood, ’tis of more consequence to ye English than twenty such Treaties.”31 The governors of Virginia and of New France both blamed Tanaghrisson. “This little skirmish was by the Half King and their Indians,” Dinwiddie emphasized in his report to the Board of Trade. “We were as auxiliaries to them, as my orders to the Commander of our Forces was to be on the defensive.”32 Dinwiddie was on the defensive himself, but his characterization of the action as one in which the Indians called the shots may not be far off the mark. Governor Duquesne ordered Contrecoeur to find a way to have Tanaghrisson killed by Indians so that the French would not be implicated in the assassination.33 The Versailles government, finding it difficult to believe that the English king who had so often expressed his desire for peace could have authorized the actions, demanded an explanation from the British court. In the meantime, Duquesne was ordered to assume a defensive posture and repel force if necessary. King Louis wished to avoid bloodshed and would approve Indian attacks on the English only if they were essential for the safety of the colony.34

  In an often-quoted letter to his younger brother Jack after the fight, Washington said he had heard the bullets whistling by—a favorite chapter title for Washington biographers—and found “something charming in the sound.” (When George II, the last British monarch to lead an army into battle and a veteran of European bloodbaths, read of it in the London Magazine, he suggested the young man might not find the sound so charming had he heard it more often).35 But Washington’s bravado after the event surely masked his emotions and reactions just as his accounts tried to conceal what really happened. And that was that Tanaghrisson had maneuvered the inexperienced Washington into attacking an enemy that was not looking for a fight—that was not, officially at least, even an enemy. The young colonel then stood by helplessly as his first action spiraled out of his control, surely unnerved by Tanaghrisson’s bloody deed and no doubt stunned by the likely repercussions of what had happened.36 Tanaghrisson’s gamble was Washington’s debacle.

  The gamble did not pay off. Anticipating a French counterattack, Washington had his men build a fort “with a little palisade” in Great Meadows, about five miles southeast of Jumonville Glen; Washington called this circular stockade surrounded by entrenchments Fort Necessity. He had no experience building fortifications, and it showed. In a depression, overlooked by hills, and with forest cover within firing range, the fort was so poorly situated and constructed that “only an amateur or a fool would have thought it defensible.” Washington said it would withstand an attack by five hundred men.37 He also thought that he could still march on Fort Duquesne but turned back as reality began to sink in.

  On the evening of June 1, Tanaghrisson, Queen Aliquippa, and twenty-five or thirty families arrived—between eighty and a hundred people, but few of them warriors. Tanaghrisson had sent Scarouady to Logstown with a belt of wampum and four French scalps to be forwarded to the Six Nations and other tribes, telling what had happened and asking for their assistance “to uphold this first blow.” Tanaghrisson said he had more to say in council that would wait until the Shawnees arrived in the morning, but the next day only two or three families of Shawnees and Delawares drifted in.38 Washington held a ceremony in which he presented Tanaghrisson with a silver gorget of George II and bestowed on him the name Dinwiddie, which he said meant “the Head of Everything.” Aliquippa asked that her son, Kanuksusy, “might be taken into Council, as She was declining and unfit for Business and have an English Name given him.” On Tanaghrisson’s advice, Washington called the Indians together, presented Kanuksusy with a medal to wear “in remembrance of his g[rea]t Father the King of England,” and gave him the name Fairfax, saying it meant “First
of the Council.” Bestowing honorary names was common practice in Indian country. Scarouady’s only son was also baptized Dinwiddie, and other Indians had the name as well. Washington gave his own name to Scarouady.39

  It would take more than high-sounding names to maintain the Indians’ allegiance. Washington knew he was out of his depth and asked for help. Andrew “Montour would be of singular use to me here at this present, in conversing with the Indians,” he wrote to Dinwiddie in early June, “for I have no Person’s that I can put dependence in: I make use of all the influence I can to engage them warmly on our side, and flatter myself that I am not unsuccessful, but for want of a better acquaintance with their Customs I am often at a loss how to behave and should be reliev’d from many anxious fear’s of offending them if Montour was here to assist me.” In fact, Dinwiddie had already dispatched Montour with a wampum belt for Tanaghrisson and a supply of “4000 Black & 4000 white Wampum” for Washington to use when he had to make speeches. He also sent Croghan to serve as interpreter, and more medals for Washington to hand out to the chiefs. Washington, who had lectured Dinwiddie on Indians just three months before, now assured him he would turn to Croghan and Montour for guidance “in all Indian affairs agreeable to your Honour’s directions.”40

  On May 31 Colonel Joshua Fry died after falling from his horse. Washington took command of the Virginia Regiment.41 Reinforcements arrived in mid-June: almost two hundred troops from Virginia (including Captain Andrew Lewis and Lieutenant George Mercer) and a South Carolina independent company of one hundred British regulars under Captain James Mackay, who, as an officer commissioned by the king, refused to place himself under the command of a colonial officer appointed by a governor. Even with his force increased to almost four hundred men, Washington realized that without Indian allies he was in trouble.

  The Ohio Indians were skeptical about throwing in with the British and suspicious of their intentions. Washington invited them to meet him at Gist’s settlement, a dozen miles away on Chestnut Ridge near present-day Braddock, Pennsylvania. About forty Delaware, Shawnee, and Iroquois delegates arrived and expressed their reservations in a council with him on June 18. They had been told the Virginians intended to destroy any Indians who did not join them, “wherefore we who keep in our Towns, expect every Day to be cut in pieces by you.” The English had no intention of hurting them, Washington replied; the rumor must have been invented by the French to deceive them. The Frenchman made beautiful speeches and promised great things, “but all this is from the lips only, while in his heart there is only corruption and poison.” The English were the Indians’ true friends, Washington said, and then he lied: his army was there “to maintain your rights, to restore you to possession of your lands and to guard your women and children.” The Indians should sharpen their hatchets and unite with their English brothers who had “taken up the sword in your defense and in your cause.” He would provide sanctuary, food, and clothing to their women and children while the warriors were away fighting the French.42 Washington’s meager and ill-supplied force hardly added weight to his arguments and promises to Indians who showed no inclination to join the impending fight, and the council broke up. Shingas agreed to keep scouts along the river to warn of any French activities and gave assurances of assistance, but he refused to bring his people to Washington’s camp for fear, he said, of offending Onondaga. He advised Washington to send a war belt to invite warriors “to act independently of their King and council”—in other words, circumvent the Half King and Onondaga and deal directly with Shawnees and Delawares—and “promised to take privately the most subtil Methods to make the Affair succeed, though he did not dare do it openly.” Then Shingas and the rest of the Indians left. They had little reason to throw themselves into a war between colonial powers that would be fought in their own country and little reason to think the British would win it. Tanaghrisson, whose actions and miscalculations had led to the situation, recognized it was hopeless, and left. He may also have been affronted by Washington’s dealings with Shingas.43 Whatever the reasons, Washington was left without Indian allies to face the impending French retaliation.

  Receiving word that a French army was on the march, Washington’s little army retreated to their hastily built stockade and prepared for the assault. Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers, brother of the murdered Ensign Jumonville, who had recently arrived at Fort Duquesne with a reinforcement of twenty soldiers and 130 Indians, begged Contrecoeur to let him command the expedition to avenge his brother’s death. Contrecoeur sent him off with orders to find and destroy the English army “in order to punish them for the murder that they inflicted on us in violating the most sacred rights of Civilized Nations.” Villiers’s force consisted of six hundred French and Canadian soldiers and about one hundred Indians—Abenakis, Algonquins, Hurons, Nipissings, and Ottawas, and Iroquois from villages on the St. Lawrence, some of whom were ambivalent about fighting in the Ohio country, where they had friends and relatives.44 A handful of Ohio Indians tagged along but showed no more inclination to fight for the French than for the British. They provided indifferent service as scouts, and may even have provided misinformation in a vain attempt to divert the French from attacking Washington.45

  Villiers reached Great Meadows on July 3 and began his assault. The fort afforded little protection against the French gunfire from the woods, and torrential rain flooded the defenders’ ditches and soaked their powder. By night, Washington’s command had suffered thirty killed and more than twice as many wounded. “Our men behaved with singular Intrepidity, and we determined not to ask for Quarter but with our Bayonets screw’d, to sell our Lives as dearly as possibly we could,” Washington claimed later, but it is doubtful that many of them shared his expressed resolve. Discipline started to unravel, and some of the men broke into the storehouses and began getting drunk on rum. It was only a matter of time before the French and their Indian allies closed in for the kill.46

  Then, with his brother’s killers within his grasp, Villiers offered to parley and proposed terms of surrender. He said his men were tired and wet, and the Indians were fed up and leaving the next day. But Washington’s men were more tired and wet, and Villiers could have crushed the Virginians with or without Indian help. Villiers wanted to wrap up the siege in a hurry because he believed Washington was about to be reinforced; “it was repeated continuously that drum beats or cannon fire were heard in the distance,” he wrote. Since the Ohio Indians who had attached themselves to his command were likely to be the ones ranging through the forests, they were the likely source of the misinformation. They had abandoned Washington’s little army, but in David Dixon’s view, they recognized it was the only countervailing force to French power in their country and did not want the French to destroy it.47 If this interpretation of their actions and motivations is correct—and it is plausible—then an Ohio Indian got Washington into the mess at Great Meadows, and Ohio Indians got him out of it.

  Villiers sent Washington word that since France and England were not at war he was willing to spare the defenders from “the cruelty from the Indians to which they were Exposed.” The French had come only to avenge Jumonville’s murder and to remove the Virginians from the French king’s land. They would allow them to go home in peace with full military honors. Around eight o’clock in the evening, Villiers, Washington, and Mackay signed the rain-soaked document laying out the terms of surrender. Both the preamble and the final article referred to Jumonville’s death as “assassination” or “murder.”48 Washington’s admission gave the French an enormous propaganda asset.49 The articles of capitulation were published in the colonial newspapers.50 One English writer denounced the surrender document as “the most infamous a British subject ever put his hand to.”51 Washington claimed he did not know what he signed because Van Braam did not translate it accurately.52

  Washington’s journal of the expedition, left behind in the hurried evacuation, fell into French hands. It was translated in Montreal and parts of it published in
Paris in 1756; a retranslation was published in London and New York a year later. (The original has been lost, although another, more reliable version turned up in Contrecoeur’s papers.) Washington said the publication contained heavy editorializing, significant omissions, “and many things added that never were thought of.” Governor Duquesne said Washington’s journal revealed him to be “the most impertinent of men, but that he is as clever as he is crafty with credulous Indians. Besides, he lies a great deal in order to justify the assassination of Sieur de Jumonville, which has recoiled upon him, and which he was stupid enough to admit in his capitulation.”53 William Johnson, the British superintendent of Indian affairs for the North, wished Washington “had acted with prudence and circumspection requisite in an officer of rank”; he suspected he had been too hungry for glory.54 Lieutenant Governor James DeLancey of New York reported the news of Washington’s defeat to the Lords of Trade; the particulars were not exact, he said, but there was no doubt about “the truth of the disaster.”55 Washington’s bungling fueled British attitudes about the incompetence of colonial militia and convinced the government in London that it needed to dispatch regular troops under centralized command to oust the French from the Forks.56