Insofar as the English were more backward than the French in occupying the land the unprejudiced Delawares and Mingoes were inclined to further English plans. When, a few years later, it became clear that the English cared not a whit for the rights of the redmen, the latter hated and fought them as they never had the French. Washington was well fitted for handling this delicate matter of sharpening Indian hatred of the French and of keeping very still about English plans.
Here at Loggstown unexpected information was received. Certain French deserters from the Mississippi gave the English envoy a description of French operations on that river between New Orleans and Illinois. The latter word “Illinois” was taken by Washington’s old Dutch interpreter to be the French words “Isle Noire,” and Washington speaks of Illinois as the “Black Islands” in his Journal. But this was not to be old van Braam’s only blunder in the role of interpreter!
Half-King was ready with the story of his journey to Presque Isle, which, he affirmed, Washington could not reach “in less than five or six nights’ sleep, good traveling.” Little wonder, at such a season, a journey was measured by the number of nights to be spent in the frozen forests! Marin’s answer to Half-King was not less spirited because of his own dying condition. The Frenchman frankly stated that two English traders had been taken to Canada “to get intelligence of what the English were doing in Virginia.” So far as Indian possession of the land was concerned Marin was quickly to the point: “You say this Land belongs to you, but there is not the Black of my Nail yours. I saw that Land sooner than you did, before the Shannoahs and you were at War: Lead was the Man who went down, and took Possession of that River: It is my Land, and I will have it, let who will stand-up for, or say-against, it. I’ll buy and sell with the English, (mockingly). If People will be rul’d by me, they may expect Kindness, but not else.” La Salle had gone down the Ohio and claimed possession of it long before Delaware or Shawanese, Ottawa or Wyandot had built a single fire in the valley! The claim of the Six Nations, only, antedated that of the French—but the Six Nations had sold their claim to the English for 400 pounds at Lancaster in 1744. And there was the rub!
At the Council on the following day (26th), Washington delivered an address, asking for guides and guards on his trip up the Allegheny and Riviere aux Boeufs, adroitly implying, in word and gesture, that his audience was the warmest allies of the English and equally desirous to oppose French aggression. The Council was for granting each request but the absence of the hunters necessitated a detention; undoubtedly fear of the French also provoked delay and counselling. Little wonder: Washington would soon be across the mountain again and the rough Frenchman who claimed even the earth beneath his finger nails and had won over Ottawas, Chippewas, and fierce Wyandots, would make short work with those who housed and counselled with the English envoy! And—perhaps more ominous than all—Washington did not announce his business in the West, undoubtedly fearing the Indians would not aid him if they knew it. When at last they asked the nature of his mission he answered just the best an honest-hearted lad could. “This was a Question I all along expected,” he wrote in his Journal, “and had provided as satisfactory Answers to, as I could; which allayed their Curiosity a little.” This youthful diplomat would have allayed the burning curiosity of hundreds of others had he mentioned the reasons he gave those suspicious chieftains for this five-hundred-mile journey in the winter season to a miserable little French fort on the Riviere aux Boeufs! It is safe to assume that could he have given the real reasons he would have been saved the difficulty of providing “satisfactory” ones.
For four days Washington remained, but on the 30th. he set out northward accompanied only by the faithful Half-King and three other Indians, and five days later (after four “nights sleep”) the party arrived at the mouth of the Riviere aux Boeufs where Joncaire was wintering in Frazier’s cabin. The seventy miles from Loggstown were traversed at about the same poor rate as the one hundred and twenty five from Will’s Creek. To Joncaire’s cabin, over which floated the French flag, the Virginian envoy immediately repaired. He was received with much courtesy, though, as he well knew, Legardeur de St Piere, at Fort La Boeuf, the successor to the dead Marin, was the French commandant to whom his letter from Dinwiddie must go.
However Washington was treated “with the greatest Complaisance” by Joncaire. During the evening the Frenchmen “dosed themselves pretty plentifully,” wrote the sober, keen-eyed Virginian, “and gave a Licence to their Tongues. They told me, That it was their absolute Design to take Possession of the Ohio, and by G— they would do it: For that altho’ they were sensible the English could raise two Men for their one; yet they knew, their Motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any Undertaking of theirs.” For a true picture of the man Washington (who is said to be forgotten) what one would be chosen before this: the youth sitting before the log fire in an Englishman’s cabin, from which the French had driven its owner, on the Allegheny river; about him sit leering, tipsy Gauls, bragging, with oaths, of a conquest they were never to make; dress him for a five-hundred-mile ride through a wilderness in winter, and rest his sober eyes thoughtfully upon the crackling logs while oaths and boasts and the rank smell of foreign liquor fill the heavy air. No picture could show better the three commanding traits of this youth who was father of the man: hearty daring, significant, homespun shrewdness, dogged, resourceful patience. Basic traits of character are often displayed involuntarily in the effervescence of youthful zest. These this lad had shown and was showing in this brave ride into a dense wilderness and a braver inspection of his country’s enemies, their works, their temper, and their boasts. Let this picture hang on the walls of every home where the lad in the fore-ground before the blazing logs is unknown save in the role of the general or statesman he became in later life.
How those French officers must have looked this tall, stern boy up and down! How they enjoyed sneering in his face at English backwardness in coming over the Alleghenies into the great West which their explorers had honeycombed with a thousand swift canoes! As they even plotted his assassination, how, in turn, that young heart must have burned to stop their mouths with his hand. Little wonder that when the time came his voice first ordered “Fire,” and his finger first pulled the trigger in the great war which won the west from those bragging Frenchmen!
But with the boasts came no little information concerning the French operations on the great lakes, the number of their forts and men. Washington did not get off for Fort La Boeuf the next day for the weather was exceedingly rough. This gave the wily Joncaire a chance to tamper with his Indians, and the opportunity was not neglected! Upon learning that Indians were in the envoy’s retinue he professed great regret that Washington had not “made free to bring them in before.” The Virginian was quick with a stinging retort: for since he had heard Joncaire “say a good deal in Dispraise of the Indians in general” he did not “think their Company agreeable.” But Joncaire had his way and “applied the Loquor so fast,” that lo! the poor Indians “were soon rendered incapable of the Business they came about.”
In the morning Half-King came to Washington’s tent hopefully sober but urging that another day be spent at Venango since “the Management of the Indians Affairs was left solely to Monsieur Joncaire.” To this the envoy reluctantly acquiesced. But on the day after the embassy got on its way, thanks to Christopher Gist’s influence over the Indians. When Joncaire found them going, he forwarded their plans “in the heartiest way in the world” and detailed Monsieur la Force (with whom this Virginian was to meet under different circumstances inside half a year!) to accompany them. Four days were spent in floundering over the last sixty miles of this journey, the party being driven into “Mires and Swamps” to avoid crossing the swollen Riviere aux Boeufs. On the 11th of December Washington reached his destination, having traveled over 500 miles in forty-two days.
Legardeur St. Piere, the one-eyed commander at Fort La Boeuf, had arrived but one week before Washington. To him the Virginian envoy delivered Governor Dinwiddie’s letter the day after his arrival. Its contents read: