“No, the Iroquois have conquered it by conquering the people. The French say that a captain of theirs, many years ago, discovered it by floating down the River Mississippi in the west, in a canoe. He took it for the King of France. But the Indians owned it; they were here first; the French have not conquered the Indians. The Iroquois are the conquerors, and they say that their brothers the English shall trade in this land and that their enemies the French shall stay out. The French have their own country. The Indians and the English have theirs. We are children of the British father, who treats us well. We cannot share our lands with two white nations or pretty soon we shall have nothing. I am telling you these things so that you may understand, and not listen to the foolish words of the Delawares.”
Robert continued to think a great deal about that other boy, George Washington, who asked questions like a boy but acted like a man. If the Long Knife and the Pennsylvania boys were that kind of a boy, so strong and steady, the English beyond the mountains were going to be very powerful when the boys grew up.
George Croghan the trader, and Andrew Montour who spoke for Onas the governor of Pennsylvania, and gay Captain Joncaire of the French, were fine men; but somehow George Washington was different, like a young eagle among hawks, or a young oak in a clearing.
II
ALARM AT LOGSTOWN
Logstown, or Shenango, the head village of the Mingos, was nicely located in a clearing of the forest upon the high north bank of the Ohio River, a half day’s travel below De-ka-na-wi-da—the two-rivers-flowing-together place. This place, where the Monongahela River from the southward and the Allegheny River from the northward joined to form the Ohio or Beautiful River, the English traders called the Forks.
Logstown contained some fifty log cabins and skin and bark lodges and almost three hundred people. Fifteen miles east up the Ohio, on the south bank near the Forks, there was the Delaware village of fiery old King Shingis, sachem of the Delawares. On the Monongahela south of the Forks there was the village of fat old Queen Allaquippa, a woman sachem of the Delawares. Up the Allegheny, on the east bank just north of the Forks there was the village Shanopin’s-town of old King Shanopin, another Delaware sachem. And further north up the Allegheny there was Kittanning, where more Mingos and Delawares lived under command of the Delaware chief named Captain Jacobs.
West from Logstown, down along the Ohio by the Shawnee Trail there were the Delawares of King Beaver, and the Wyandots or Little Mingos of Muskingum, and the Shawnees and Delawares of White Woman’s Creek which was the home of Robert’s mother, and the Shawnees of Sonnioto or Scioto.
All, all this country of the Ohio River was Indian country. But to Robert the Hunter the Logstown of the Mingos was the most important place. He rather doubted whether the Englishmen’s Albany or Philadelphia could equal it.
Tanacharison was the chief man in Logstown. He was about fifty years old, and wise. The Grand Council of the Six Nations, sitting at Onondaga, New York, had appointed him head of the Mingos of the Ohio River country, therefore he ranked as a Half-King among the Iroquois.