With George Washington into the wilderness

by Edwin L. Sabin

So a treaty of friendship was signed with Virginia. Tanacharison himself said, to Gist and Fry:

“Be quick to build us a big fort at the Forks of the Ohio, that will keep the French back. If the chief Washington is dead, let the young Washington bring in the men and build the fort.”

But the French were coming. The council had been ended a little time when runners from the west arrived with bad news. Two hundred and fifty Ottawas and Ojibwas of the French, led by Charles Langlade the bold French ranger, had attacked Pickawillanee of the Miamis, and taken it and its English traders, and the Ottawas had eaten old Chief Britain of the Piankashaws!

“Now we see that the French of Onontio are strong,” said the King Shingis of the Delawares. “They have conquered the Miami, but the English have done nothing. We had better wait and see.”

For the French were coming. Christopher Gist was laying out a town fifty miles southeast of the Forks, near a place called Great Meadows; but the Ohio company were still sitting in their storehouse at Will’s Creek on the Potomac, one hundred and fifty miles by trail from the Forks of the Ohio.

And the French were coming. Runners from Onondago arrived. Mohawks had seen a great fleet of French canoes loaded with soldiers making south upon the Great Lakes, to enter the Ohio Country.

The water was covered with boats, said the runners, and the boats bore six thousand soldiers and Indians, to drive the English out of the Ohio country.

Next, the French had landed and had built a fort on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie, from which they could march by land and river to the head of the Allegheny River. And from this place they cut a road through the woods to the River of Buffalo, which emptied into the Allegheny. Here they built another fort; and they would paddle down Buffalo River into the Allegheny, and down the Allegheny to the Forks of the Ohio. They sent men forward under Captain Joncaire to the Seneca and Delaware town of Venango at the mouth of the Buffalo River, and drove Trader John Fraser from his house and took it. Fraser had run away, to live in another house at the Monongahela, south of the Forks.

Now Venango was French; the French were as close as the head of the Allegheny, sixty miles from Logstown, and the American-English of Virginia and of Pennsylvania had not paid any attention, except with words, to the Mingo wampum belts summoning aid.

“The French will build a line of forts all down the Ohio, and shut us from the English traders,” said Tanacharison. “Where is that Ohio Company, who have permission to build a fort for us? If we go to war with the French we lose our lands.”