Having inherited his brother Lawrence’s shares in the Ohio Company, Washington had a personal stake in securing the Forks of the Ohio and in where the road was built to do so. Braddock was to follow roughly the same route Washington had traveled the previous year to Fort Necessity, across enormously difficult terrain. The Duke of Cumberland may have been influenced by the Ohio Company, in particular by John Hanbury, who was one of the people consulted for advice and who not surprisingly recommended centering operations in Virginia. Cumberland was certainly misinformed about the geography and topography: the maps available to him showed Fort Duquesne to be just 15 miles from the British outpost at Wills Creek; the actual distance was about 120 miles.12 Washington and other members of the company exerted their influence to make sure Braddock selected a route that ran through northwest Virginia to the company storehouse at Redstone Creek and on to the Forks, rather than one that cut through Pennsylvania. Company agents also supplied Braddock’s army.13 Despite the protestations of disinterested service he had made to William Byrd, Washington was still a young man on the make.
When Washington arrived at Fort Cumberland, there were about one hundred Indian men, women, and children there, with George Croghan and Andrew Montour. Dinwiddie had tried without success to recruit Catawba and Cherokee warriors to join Braddock’s army; these Indians were mainly Mingoes under Scarouady who had accompanied Croghan from Aughwick.14 They were not there as idle spectators; Scarouady and Tanaghrisson had pleaded with the British to expel the French from the Ohio country, and now it seemed to be happening. A British sailor—from a Royal Navy detachment that accompanied the army to move the cannons by block and tackle—said the Indians were surprised at the numbers of soldiers and their regular way of marching. He also recorded his initial impressions of the Natives. “The men are tall, well made, and active, but not strong, but very dexterous with rifle barreled gun, and their tomahawk, which they will throw with great dexterity at any mark and at a great distance.” He thought the women were well made and had many children—but that they had “had many more before spirits were introduced to them”—and he described how they carried their babies on cradleboards. “They paint themselves in an odd manner, red, yellow, and black intermixed. And the men have the outer rim of their ears cut, which only hangs by a bit top and bottom, and have a tuft of hair left at the top of their heads, which is dressed with feathers.” Most wore a blanket and deerskin moccasins. Like many other Europeans who saw no churches or organized services in Indian communities, the sailor assumed the Indians had “no notion of religion, or of any sort of Superior being.” He thought them “the most ignorant people as to the knowledge of the world and other things” and complained that their dancing and war songs made “a horrible noise.” Braddock gave strict orders that the soldiers stay away from them and not speak to them lest they should give offense.15
Most of the army likely shared the sailor’s attitudes and antipathy toward their Indian allies. Relations were not good and were about to get worse. Soldiers enticed Indian women into camp with liquor and then seduced or raped them. Braddock responded with floggings—as many as nine hundred lashes, a nearly fatal punishment—for selling liquor to the Indians and ordered the Indians to send their women and children back to Aughwick. The Indians were appalled by that kind of punishment and offended by that kind of order. Many of them left with their women.16
Scarouady, Shingas, and several other sachems wanted assurances that if they helped the redcoats the British would not steal their land once the war was over. Braddock, so the story goes, would have none of it. According to Charles Stuart, who was captured in an Indian raid in Pennsylvania in the fall of 1755, Shingas told his prisoners he regretted what had happened but that the English, not the Indians, had caused the war. Recalling the council held at Fort Cumberland, Shingas said he had asked what the general intended to do with the land if and when he drove out the French and their Indian allies. Braddock replied “the English Should Inhabit & Inherit the Land.” Would not their Indian allies be allowed to live and trade among them and have enough hunting ground to support their families? Shingas queried; otherwise they would have nowhere to go but the lands of the French and their Indian allies, who were Shingas’s enemies. Braddock replied disdainfully that “no Savage Should Inherit the Land.” Shingas and the other chiefs conveyed Braddock’s answer to their people that night. In the morning they returned to Braddock with the same question, hoping he might have changed his position. Braddock gave the same answer as before. The chiefs replied that “if they might not have Liberty To Live on the Land they would not Fight for it.” Braddock retorted he did not need their help to drive out the French and their Indians. When the chiefs related the conversation, their people “were very much Enraged,” and some immediately went and joined the French. But most remained neutral, waiting to see how things would turn out when Braddock and the French met in battle. Braddock was left with only a handful of Indian allies. Even then, Shingas said, most of the Indians hoped the English would prevail, but once Braddock’s army was destroyed they had no choice but to join the French “for their own safety.”17
Stuart made a statement of his captivity experiences for the military authorities, and historians have usually accepted his account of Shingas’s account—in other words, hearsay evidence—and pinned the blame for Braddock’s poor showing with the Indians on this incident. Contemporaries, too, reported he mishandled his allies. Dinwiddie said, “I fear Gen’l Braddock despis’d them too much.” Benjamin Franklin said, “He slighted & neglected them, and they gradually left him.” When Franklin brought up the danger of Indian ambush, Braddock only “smil’d at my Ignorance, & reply’d, ‘These Savages may indeed be a formidable Enemy to your raw American Militia, but, upon the King’s regular & disciplin’d Troops, Sir, it is impossible they should make any Impression.’”18 Yet despite his enduring image as arrogant, ignorant, and stubborn, Braddock attempted to cultivate Indian allies with gifts, followed the rituals of wampum diplomacy, and assured them he would restore their lands to them if they would assist him in defeating the French.19 George Croghan, head of the Indian scouts, was not a man to mince words when he saw superiors mishandling Indian allies, but Braddock, he said, behaved “as kindly as he possibly could” when he met with the Indians and ordered that they should “want for nothing.” The Delawares promised to join the army on its march but failed to show up: whether deterred by previous English breaches of faith or biding their time to see how Braddock fared against the French, Croghan could not tell.20
The Indians’ aversion to supporting Braddock’s army stemmed from deeper issues than the general’s supposed arrogance and cultural insensitivity. Shingas’s pointed questions reflected ongoing concerns about British intentions. The recent cession of lands at the Albany Congress rankled. Having been pushed west repeatedly, Shingas and the western Delawares were determined not to have to migrate again. They were concerned by the French invasion, which threatened their territorial security and violated their sovereignty, but they also resented the intrusions of Pennsylvania traders and Virginia speculators. They waited to see what the outcome of Braddock’s expedition would be.21 What influence Washington’s earlier poor showing may have had on their decision is difficult to assess. Sir William Johnson told Braddock the principal factors governing Indian actions were, first, fear of the French “& the shameful hand we have always made of our former Expeditions” and, second, that many of the chiefs were attached to the French by kinship and other ties. Unfortunately, by the time Johnson wrote this, Braddock was dead.22
Customarily attributed to British high-handedness and ineptitude, Braddock’s eventual defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela is better understood as an Indian victory: a multinational assemblage of Native warriors, supported and directed by French Canadian officers who were experienced in fighting and leading Indians, brought their mobility, firepower, and marksmanship to bear on inadequately trained troops in a situation where conventional
tactics proved disastrous.23 Hundreds of Indians rallied to the French at Fort Duquesne for a variety of reasons that included fear of English encroachment but also economic and kinship ties with the French. Many came from the upper Great Lakes, the Mississippi, or mission villages on the St. Lawrence, and would not have been particularly concerned about the threat to Ohio Valley lands. One of the warriors who had answered the French call for help and traveled to Fort Duquesne that summer was a teenager called Atiatoharongwen or Atayataghronghta. Born in Saratoga in 1740 to an African American father and an Abenaki mother from Odanak, he had been captured as a child during a French and Indian raid on the town, adopted by Mohawks, and grew up as a French Catholic Mohawk at Kahnawake. Twenty years later, Washington would come to know him as Louis Cook.24
In contrast with the Indian allies the French mustered, Braddock’s Native contingent was tiny. Only eight Ohio Iroquois warriors accompanied his army (although sixteen others joined after the battle). Washington already knew most of them. Scarouady had little choice but to stick with Braddock. Like Tanaghrisson, he clung to the hope that allying with the British to expel the French would confirm Iroquois dominance and restore Indian autonomy in the Ohio country. It was, says Fred Anderson, “a vision shared by almost no one else.”25 The others were Scarouady’s son; Kanuksusy, the son of Queen Aliquippa, whom Washington had met in 1753 and, as we’ve seen, given the name Fairfax (and to whom the governor of Pennsylvania gave a new name, Newcastle, after the battle); White Thunder or Belt of Wampum, who had been one of Washington’s escorts; his son-in-law Silver Heels; Tanaghrisson’s son, Gahickdodon, whom the English sometimes called Johnny; and another Indian, Skowonidous, whom they called Jerry. Jerry later deserted, and Scarouady’s son was killed by friendly fire, leaving Braddock with just six Indian allies—less than 1 percent of the number aligned with the French—by the time of the battle.26
Washington would soon learn the importance of having Indian allies, but, as Fred Anderson points out, at this point he saw little role for them in his conventionally European view of warfare, and he also had his own reasons for shunning them. Indians delayed the settlement of the Ohio Valley that Washington and his Ohio Company friends needed to promote, and one way or another, Indian actions had contributed to his military setbacks. He had good reason to want Indians driven from the Ohio Valley along with the French.27
In mid-May, with his army running short of supplies and awash in logistical difficulties, Braddock sent Washington to Hampton to draw £4,000 from the army’s paymaster, and to tell the paymaster to deliver an additional £10,000 to Fort Cumberland within two months. Braddock was in a hurry, but Washington took his time. He made a side trip to Mount Vernon; went shopping in Williamsburg, where he bought gloves, stockings, toothbrushes, and other items; and tested the political waters for running for a seat in the House of Burgesses. By the time he returned to camp at the end of the month, Braddock was almost ready to march.28
A road had to be cleared through the forest before the army could advance, however, and it was another week before it set out. The two royal regiments went first, with three independent companies of provincials, and eleven companies of volunteers (nine from Virginia, one each from North Carolina and Maryland) brought up the rear with the artillery. Dr. Thomas Walker was commissary to the Virginia troops. Daniel Morgan and twenty-year-old Daniel Boone served as teamsters. Discipline was harsh, drunkenness and desertion were common, and morale was low. Hacking out a road as it went, and hauling wagons and artillery, the army inched its way through dense forest and across mountainous terrain. Heavy rain, mosquitos, accidents, desertions, and disease further impeded progress. Acrimonious quarrels between the officers didn’t help; most of them hated Robert Orme, who had made himself Braddock’s favorite.
Washington’s experience in transporting supplies along forest and mountain trails was limited to packhorses. He fretted as two thousand soldiers lugged their equipment and maneuvered heavy artillery and wagons over mountains and through forests; instead of pushing on with vigor, he wrote in private to his brother, they stopped to level every molehill and build bridges over every creek. It took four days to travel twelve miles.29 After more than two weeks of snail’s progress, Washington said, Braddock asked his advice on how to proceed, since he had been in this country before. Although we have only Washington’s word for it, he urged his commander “in the warmest terms I was master of” to press on against Fort Duquesne with a flying column supported by artillery, leaving the heavier material to follow at a slower pace. On June 17 Braddock divided his army, forging ahead with eight hundred soldiers, eight artillery pieces, and thirty wagons; Colonel Thomas Dunbar was to bring up the rest of the troops and the baggage. It was a decision some historians think contributed to the disaster that followed.30
As the flying column pushed on, Indians increasingly sniped at the edges, took the occasional captive or scalp, and left grisly evidence of the fate awaiting anyone who fell into their hands. Washington was certain they lacked the strength to mount a serious assault, but their use of psychological terror further eroded the morale of soldiers already out of their element in a strange and threatening environment.31 Nervous soldiers shot and killed Scarouady’s son when the Indian guides were coming to their assistance against enemies lurking in the woods. Braddock offered condolences to the grief-stricken father and ordered a full military funeral.32
Like many others, Washington came down with the “bloody flux,” the contemporary term for dysentery. His condition became so severe he could not ride a horse and was confined to a cot in the rear of the army. Craik, the army physician, prescribed Dr. Robert James’s fever powder, a medication used for a variety of maladies in the eighteenth century, and that eased his distress somewhat. Sitting astride his horse on cushions, Washington rejoined the column in time to cross the Monongahela River, the final obstacle before Fort Duquesne.33 On July 9 Braddock ordered Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage to advance with three hundred regulars and make the crossing. Croghan and Scarouady led the way. Braddock had achieved an impressive military feat: he had assembled an expedition, constructed 150 miles of new road over the Allegheny Mountains, marched some 250 miles in less than three months, and arrived at the Monongahela with the means to lay siege and take Fort Duquesne.34 Gage crossed the river unopposed.
Meanwhile, forty-four-year-old Captain Daniel-Hyacinthe-Marie Liénard de Beaujeu was hurrying toward the river with about 250 French and 650 Indians. Most of the Indians were Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Wyandots from the Great Lakes, although some Shawnees, a few Delawares and Mingoes, and even some Otos and Osages from beyond the Mississippi were present. Just the day before, according to a French account, the Iroquois and Shawnees inhabiting the area around Fort Duquesne, who hitherto had remained neutral, had come to join Beaujeu. A Delaware Indian eight years later said there were no Delawares at Braddock’s defeat, and only three Shawnees and four Mingoes, all the rest being northern Indians.35 Intending to set an ambush at the Monongahela, the French and Indians had to improvise and attack the British advance column that had crossed the river before they reached it. In the opening exchange of shots, a British musket ball killed Beaujeu. Gage opened fire with his artillery, and it looked for a moment as if the redcoats would swat aside the opposition. But the Indians begin to enfilade the British column and, firing from behind trees, picked off the gun crews and officers. Trained to hold their ranks under fire, the redcoats made easy targets for unseen enemies pouring fire into them. Packed in a killing pen with their officers dropping around them, they began to fall back. In doing so, they collided with the main body that Braddock had ordered forward to support Gage, generating more confusion.36
According to Orme, who was severely wounded in the thigh, the officers “were absolutely sacrificed by their unparalleled good Behaviour” as they tried in vain to rally their troops. Braddock had five horses killed under him before a bullet passed through his right arm into his lungs. Sir Peter Halkett was killed instantly.
His son, a lieutenant in the 44th, was killed as he knelt over his stricken father. “Poor Shirley”—Braddock’s secretary and the son of General William Shirley—“was shot thro’ the Head.” Washington, said Orme, behaved “the whole Time with the greatest Courage and Resolution.”37 Washington escaped without injury, although he told his mother and brother he had two horses shot under him and four bullets through his coat.38
Later traditions attributed to Indians the prophecy that the “Great Spirit” shielded Washington from harm in the battle to fulfill his greater destiny as “the chief of nations” and “founder of a mighty empire.” According to Osage tribal tradition, their warriors at the battle remembered a tall man who rode “toward the guns and arrows of the Heavy Eyebrows [the French] and the Indians.” After his first horse fell with bullets and arrows in its neck, he mounted another, which fell in the same way, but the rider escaped untouched. The Osage warriors said “they shot at him with arrows, and for some reason the arrows seemed to miss him. Later they said they curved around him.” They said “this tall, brave Long Knife” was George Washington, “and he was spared to become the father of his country because of his strong medicine.” Reviewing the tradition in the twentieth century, the Osage tribal historian and writer John Joseph Matthews pointed out that the Osages knew nothing about Washington until many years later.39 Indian warriors who witnessed Washington’s escape from death likely would have attributed it to spiritual protection, just as Washington and his contemporaries attributed it to “providence.” The notion that he was spared for some future, higher purpose came much later, however.
The Indian World of George Washington Page 15
