* This chief was a bold and patriotic man. He warned both the English and the French to leave the country. He had felt the encroachments of the French, by their taking actual possession of large tracts of land; but as yet he mistook the character of the English, and believed that they came simply to trade with his race. He and his brethren soon learned, by fearful experience, that the French and English were equally governed by whatever policy was necessary for the accomplishment of those acts of rapacity and injustice which are sanctioned by the law of nations! "Fathers," said Tanacharison to the French, "The Great Being above allowed this land to be a place of residence for us, so I desire you to withdraw, as I have done our brothers the English; for I will keep you at arm's length. I lay this down as a trial for both, to see which will have the greatest regard to it, and that side we will stand by, and make equal shares with us." The French treated him with contempt, and hence he was the friend of the English.
** Jeskakake and White Thunder.
*** Dinwiddie, in his letter, asserted that the lands on the Ohio belonged to the Crown of Great Britain: expressed surprise at the encroachments of the French; demanded by whose authority an armed force had crossed the lakes, and urged their speedy departure.
**** On one occasion, an Indian, supposed to have been induced by Joncaire, at Venango, attempted to shoot them. On another occasion, after working a whole day in constructing a frail raft, they attempted to cross the swift current of the Alleghany, then filled with drifting ice. Their raft was destroyed among the ice, and the travelers, drenched in the river, were east upon a desert island, where they laid upon the snow all night. In the morning the ice over the other channel was sufficiently strong to bear them. They crossed over, and toward evening reached the house of Frazier (who was a lieutenant under captain Trent the following May), near the spot where a year and a half afterward was fought the battle of the Monongahela. The island on which they were cast now bears the name of Washington's Island. It is directly opposite the United States Arsenal, at Lawrenceville, two or three miles above Pittsburgh.
* (v) See Washington's Journal. This journal was published in the newspapers here, and also in England and France, where it excited great attention.
* (vi) Washington says in his Journal, in reference to the imprudence of Joncaire and his party, on account of too free indulgence in wine: "They told me that it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and by God they would do it; for that, although they were sensible the English could raise two men to their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any undertaking of theirs."
Expedition against the French.—Attack upon the Virginians.—Fort Duquesne.—Fort Necessity.—Surprise of Jumonville.
the traders on the frontier. The command of the two companies was given to Major Washington, one of which was to be raised by himself; the other by Captain Trent, who was to collect his men among the traders in the back settlements. Washington proceeded to Alexandria, while Trent went to the frontier and collected his corps in the neighborhood of the Ohio Fork.
When the Virginia Assembly met, they voted ten thousand pounds toward supporting the expedition to the Ohio. The Carolinas also voted twelve thousand pounds. With this aid, and promises of more, Dinwiddie determined to increase the number of men to be sent to the Ohio to three hundred, to be divided into six companies. Colonel Joshua Fry * was appointed to the command of the whole, and Major Washington was made his lieutenant. Ten cannons and other munitions of war were sent to Alexandria for the use of the expedition.
Washington left Alexandria, with two companies of troops, on the 2d of April, 1754 and arrived at Will's Creek on the 20th. He was joined on the route by Captain Adam Stephen, the general who was cashiered after the battle at Germantown, twenty-three years subsequently. When about to move on, Ensign Ward arrived with the intelligence that Captain Trent's corps, with those sent out by the Ohio Company to construct a fort at the Ohio Fork (now Pittsburgh), had been obliged to surrender the post to a French force of one thousand men, most of them Indians, under Monsieur Contrecoeur. ** April 7 This was the first overt act of hostility—this was the beginning of the French and Indian war, which lasted seven years. The French completed the fort taken from Trent, and called it Duquesne, in honor of the governor general of Canada.