While Charles Townshend was urging the English home government (1752) to seize the Ohio region forcibly, the French were attacking the English traders and overcoming the allied Indians, on the Miamis. Virginia, by a treaty with the Indians at Logstown, June 13, 1752, got permission to erect a fort at the forks of the Ohio; but the undertaking was delayed.
In the spring of 1753 Duquesne, the governor of Canada, sent an expedition[1116] to possess by occupation the Ohio Valley, and the party approached it by a new route.[1117] They landed at Presquisle, built a log fort,[1118] carried their munitions across to the present French Creek, and built there another defence called Fort Le Bœuf.[1119] This put them during high water in easy communication by boat with the Alleghany River. French tact conciliated the Indians, and where that failed arrogance was sufficient, and the expedition would have pushed on to found new forts, but sickness weakened the men, and Marin, the commander now dying, saw it was all he could do to hold the two forts, while he sent the rest of his force back to Montreal to recuperate. Late in the autumn Legardeur de Saint-Pierre arrived at Le Bœuf, as the successor of Marin. He had not been long there, when on the 11th of December a messenger from Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, with a small escort, presented himself at the fort. The guide of the party was Christopher Gist; the messenger was George Washington, then adjutant-general of the Virginia militia.[1120] Their business was to inform the French commander that he was building forts on English territory, and that he would do well to depart peaceably. Washington had been made conscious of the aggressive character of the French occupation, as he passed through the Indian town of Venango, at the confluence of French Creek and the Alleghany River, for he there had seen the French flag floating over the house of an English trader, Fraser, which the French had seized for an outpost of Le Bœuf, and there he had found Joncaire in command.[1121] Washington had been received by Joncaire hospitably, and over his wine the Frenchman had disclosed the unmistakable purpose of his government. At Le Bœuf Washington tarried three days, during which Saint-Pierre framed his reply, which was in effect that he must hold his post, while Dinwiddie’s letter was sent to the French commander at Quebec. It was the middle of January, 1754, when Washington reached Williamsburg on his return, and made his report to Dinwiddie.
The result was that Dinwiddie drafted two hundred men from the Virginia militia, and despatched them under Washington to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio. The Virginia assembly, forgetting for the moment its quarrel with the governor, voted £10,000 to be expended, but only under the direction of a committee of its own. Dinwiddie found difficulty in getting the other colonies to assist, and the Quaker element in Pennsylvania prevented that colony from being the immediate helper, which it might from its position have become.
Meanwhile, some backwoodsmen had been pushed over the mountains and had set to work on a fort at the forks. A much larger French force under Contrecœur soon summoned them,[1122] and the English retired. The French immediately began the erection of Fort Duquesne.
