Historic Highways of America/Volume 3/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE VIRGINIAN GOVERNOR'S ENVOY
A THOUSAND vague rumors came over the mountains to Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia in 1753, of French aggressions on the upper Ohio, the more alarming because vague and uncertain.
Orders were now at hand from London, authorizing the erection of a fort on the Ohio to hold that river for England and conciliate the Indians to English rule. But the governor was too much in the dark as to the operations of the French to warrant any decisive step, and he immediately looked about him for a person whom he could trust to find out what was really happening in the Ohio valley.
Who was to be this envoy? The mission called for a person of unusual capacity: a diplomat, a soldier, and a frontiersman. There were five hundred miles to be threaded on Indian trails in the dead of winter. This was woodsman's work. There were cunning Indian chieftains and French officers, trained in intrigue, to be met, conciliated, influenced. This, truly, demanded a diplomat. There were forts to be marked and mapped, highways of approach to be considered and compared, vantage sites on river and mountain to be noted and valued. This was work for a soldier and strategist.
After failing to induce one or two gentlemen to undertake this perilous but intrinsically important task, a youthful Major, George Washington, one of the four adjutant-generals of Virginia, offered his services, and the despairing Scotch governor, whose zeal always approached rashness, accepted them.
But there was something more to the credit of this ambitious youth than his temerity. The best of Virginian blood ran in his veins and he had already shown a taste for adventurous service quite in line with such a hazardous business. Acquiring, when a mere lad, a knowledge of mathematics, he had gone surveying in Lord Fairfax's lands on the south branch of the Potomac. There he spent the best of three years, far beyond the settled limits of Virginia, fortifying his splendid physique against days of stress to come. In other ways this life on his country's frontier was of advantage. Here he met the Indian—that race over which no man ever wielded a greater influence than Washington. Here he came to know frontier life, its charms, its deprivations, its fears, and its toils—a life for which he was ever to entertain so much sympathy and so much consideration. Here he studied the Indian traders, a class of men of much more importance, in peace or war, than any or all others in the border land—men whose motives of action were as hard to read as an Indian's, and whose flagrant and oft practiced deceptions on their fellow white men were fraught with disaster. It was of utmost fortune for his country that this youth went into the West in his teens, for he was to be, under Providence, a champion of that West worthy of its influence on human affairs. Thus he came to it early and loved it; he learned to know its value, to foresee something of its future, to think for and with its pioneer developers, to study its roads and rivers and portages; thus he was fortified against narrow purposes, and made as broad in his sympathies and ambitions as the great West was broad itself. No statesman of his day knew and believed in the West as Washington did; and it is not difficult to think that had he not so known and loved it, the territory west of the Alleghany Mountains would never have become a portion of the United States of America. There were far too many serious men like Thomas Jefferson who knew little about the West and boasted that they cared less. Yet today the seaboard states are more dependent commercially and politically on the states between the Alleghanies and Mississippi than these central commonwealths are on them.
The same divine Providence which directed this youth's steps into the Alleghanies had brought him speedily to his next post of duty, for family influence secured him an appointment as adjutant-general (with rank of major) over one of the four military districts into which Virginia was now divided for purposes of defense, a position for which he was as fitted by inclination as by frontier experience.
This lad now received Dinwiddie's appointment. As a practical surveyor in the wilderness he possessed frontiersman's qualifications; as an apt and diligent student of military science, with a brother—trained under Admiral Vernon—as a practical tutor, he had in a degree a soldier's qualifications; if not a diplomat he was as shrewd a lad as chivalrous old Virginia had within her borders, still, at twenty-one, that boy of the sixty maxims, but hardened, steadied and made exceeding thoughtful by his life on Virginia's great black forest-bound horizon. All in all, he was far better fitted for this mission than any one could have known or guessed. His keen eye, quick perception, and daring spirit were now to be turned to something of more moment than links and chains or a shabby line of Virginian militia.
It is not to be doubted that George Washington knew the danger he courted, at least very much better than we can appreciate it today. He had not lived three years on the frontier for nothing. He had heard of these French—of their bold invasion of the West, their growing trade, their cunning conciliation of the Indian, their sudden passion for fort building when they heard of the grant of land to the Ohio Company, to which his brothers belonged. Let who can doubt that he looked with envious eyes upon those fearless fleets of coureurs-de-bois and their woodland pilgrimaging. Who can doubt that the few stolid English traders who went over the mountains on poor Indian ponies made a sorry showing beside these roistering, picturesque, irrepressible Frenchmen who knew and sailed the sweet rivers of the great West? But the forests were filled with their sly, red-skinned proselytes. One swift rifle ball might easily be sent from a hidden covert to meet the stripling envoy from the English who was come to spy out the land and report both its giants and its grapes. Yet, after one day's preparation, he was ready to leave a home, rich in comfort and culture, a host of warm friends, and bury himself five hundred miles deep in the western forests, to sleep on the ground in the dead of winter, wade in rivers running with ice, and face a hundred known and a thousand unknown risks.
"Faith, you're a brave lad," broke out the old Scotch governor, "and, if you play your cards well, you shall have no cause to repent your bargain," and Major Washington departed from Williamsburg on the last day of October but one, 1753. The first sentence in the Journal he now began suggests his zeal and promptness: "I was commissioned and appointed by the Honourable Robert Dinnwiddie, Esq; Governor, &c of Virginia, to visit and deliver a Letter to the Commandant of the French Forces on the Ohio, and set out on the intended Journey the same Day." At Fredericksburg he employed his old fencing tutor Jacob van Braam as his interpreter and pushed on westward over the trail used by the Ohio Company to Wills Creek (Cumberland, Maryland) on the upper Potomac, where he arrived November 14.
Wills Creek was the last Virginian outpost, where Fort Cumberland was soon erected. Already the Ohio Company had located a storehouse at this point. Onward the Indian trail wound in and out through the Alleghanies, over the successive ranges known as Wills, Savage, and Meadow Mountains. From the latter it dropped down into Little Meadows. Here in the open ground, covered with rank grasses, the first of the western water was crossed, a branch of the Youghiogheny river. From "Little Crossings," as the ford was called, the narrow trail vaulted Negro Mountain and came down upon the upper Youghiogheny, this ford here being named "Big Crossings." Another climb over Briery Mountain brought the traveler down into Great Meadows, the largest tract of open land in the Alleghanies. By a zigzag climb of five miles the summit of the last of the Alleghany ranges—Laurel Hill—was reached, where the path turned northward and followed the line of hills, by Christopher Gist's clearing on what is known as Mount Braddock, toward the lower Youghiogheny, and forded at "Stewart's Crossing." Thence the trail ran down the point of land where Pittsburg now lies between the "Forks of the Ohio."
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Washington's Road
It was the main trail to the Ohio over which Gist now guided the young envoy. This path had no name until it took that of a Delaware Indian, Nemacolin, who blazed its course, under the direction of Captain Thomas Cresap, for the Ohio Company. To those who love to look back to beginnings, and read great things in small, this Indian path, with its border of wounded trees, leading across the first great divide into the Central West, is worthy of contemplation. Each tree starred white by the Indian's ax spoke of Saxon conquest and commerce, one and inseparable. In every act of the great world-drama now on the boards, this little trail with its blazed trees lies in the foreground.
And the rise of the curtain shows the lad Washington and his party of seven horsemen, led by the bold guide Christopher Gist, setting out from Wills Creek on the 15th of November, 1753. The character of the journey is nowhere better described than in Washington's words when he engaged Gist's services: "I engaged Mr Gist to pilot us out."
It proved a rough voyage! A fierce, early winter came out of the north, as though in league with the French to intimidate, if not drive back, these spies of French aggression. It rained and snowed, and the little pathway became well-nigh impassable. The brown mountain ranges, which until recently had been burnished with the glory of a mountain autumn, were wet and black. Scarce eighteen miles were covered a day, a whole week being exhausted in reaching the Monongahela. But this was not altogether unfortunate. A week was not too long for the future Father of the West to study the hills and valleys which were to bear forever the precious favor of his devoted and untiring zeal. And in this week this youth conceived a dream and a purpose, the dearest, if not the most dominant, of his life—the union, commercial as well as political, of the East and the West. Yet he passed Great Meadows without seeing Fort Necessity, Braddock's Run without seeing Braddock's unmarked grave, and Laurel Hill without a premonition of the covert in the valley below, where shortly he should shape the stones above a Frenchman's grave. But could he have seen it all—the wasted labor, nights spent in agony of suspense, humiliation, defeat, and the dead and dying—would it have turned him back?
The first roof to offer Washington hospitable shelter was the cabin of the trader Frazier at the mouth of Turtle creek, on the Monongahela, near the death-trap where soon that desperate handful of French and Indians should put to flight an army of five times its own number. Here information was at hand, for it was none other than this Frazier who had been driven from Venango but a few weeks before by the French force sent there to build a fort. Joncaire was spending the winter in Frazier's old cabin, and no doubt the young Virginian heard this irrepressible French officer's title read clear in strong English oaths. Here too was a "Speech," with a string of wampum accompanying, on its way from a few anti-French Indians on the Ohio to Governor Dinwiddie, bringing the ominous news that the Chippewas, Ottawas, and Wyandots had taken up the hatchet against the English.
Washington took the Speech and the wampum—and pushed on undismayed. Sending the baggage down the Monongahela by boat, he traveled on overland to the "Forks," where he chose a site for a fort, the future site, first, of Fort Duquesne, and later, Fort Pitt. But his immediate destination was the Indian village of Logstown, fifteen miles down the Ohio. On his way thither he stopped at the lodge of Shingiss, a Delaware king, and secured the promise of his attendance upon the council of anti-French (though not necessarily pro-English) Indians. For this was the Virginian envoy's first task—to make a strong bid for the allegiance of the red men; it was not more than suggested in his instructions, but was none the less imperative, as he well knew whether his superiors did or not.
It is extremely difficult to construct anything like a clear statement of Indian affiliations at this crisis. This territory west of the Alleghanies, nominally purchased from the Six Nations, was claimed by the Shawanese and Delawares who, as we have seen, had come into it, and also by many fugitives from the Six Nations, known generally as Mingoes, who had come to make their hunting ground their home. Though the Delaware king was only a "Half King" (because subject to the Council of the Six Nations) yet they claimed the land and had even resisted French encroachment. "Half King" and his Delawares believed the English only desired commercial intercourse and favored them as compared with the French who had already built forts in the West. The northern nations who were nearer the French soon surrendered to their blandishments; and soon the Delawares and the Shawanese were overcome by French allurements and were generally found about the French forts and forces. In the spring of the year Half King had gone to Presque Isle and spoken firmly though vainly to the French.
In so far 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 red men, 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—his past experiences were now of utmost value to him.
Here at Logstown unexpected information was had. 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 rôle of interpreter!
Half King was ready with the story of his recent 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 had been no less spirited because of his own dying condition. The Frenchman had 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 ruled 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. This, however, did not settle the question.
At the council on the following day (26th) Washington delivered an address, asking for guides and guards on his trip up the Allegheny and Rivière aux Bœufs, adroitly implying, in word and gesture, that his audience were 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 counseling. Little wonder: Washington would soon be across the mountains again and the rough Frenchman who claimed even the earth beneath his finger-nails, and had won over the Ottawas, Chippewas, and fierce Wyandots, would make short work with all who had housed and counseled with the English envoy! And—perhaps most ominous of all—Washington had not announced his business in the West, undoubtedly fearing the Indians would not aid him did they know 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 had 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 reason he gave those suspicious chieftains for this five-hundred-mile journey in the wintry season to a miserable little French fort on Rivière aux Bœufs! 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 on the 4th of December (after four "nights' sleep") the party arrived at the mouth of Rivière aux Bœufs, where Joncaire was wintering in Frazier's cabin. The seventy miles from Logstown were traversed at about the same poor rate as the 125 from Wills 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. Pierre at Fort La Bœuf, the successor of 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 License 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 although 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 this Washington (who is said to be forgotten) what one would be chosen before this: a youth from Virginia sitting before the log fire in a German's cabin from which the French had driven its owner, on the Allegheny river; about him are sitting leering, tipsy Gauls, bragging with oaths of a conquest they were never to make; he is dressed for a five-hundred-mile ride through a wilderness in winter, and his sober eyes rest thoughtfully upon the crackling logs while the oaths and boasts and smell of foreign liquor fill the hot and 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 foreground before the blazing logs is unknown save in the rôle of the general or statesman he became in later life.
How these French officers looked this tall, stern boy up and down! How they enjoyed sneering to his face at English backwardness in crossing the Alleghanies into the great West which their own explorers had honeycombed with a hundred swift canoes! As they even plotted his assassination, how, in turn, that young heart must have burned to stop their mouths with a clenched 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 France!
But with the boasts came no little information concerning the French operations on the Great Lakes, the number of their forts and men. But Washington did not get off for Fort La Bœuf the next day, as 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 Half King was in the envoy's retinue, he professed great regret that Washington had not "made free to bring him in before." The Virginian was quick with a stinging retort: 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 Liquor 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 Indian 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 in different circumstances within 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 Rivière aux Bœufs. On the 11th of December, Washington reached his destination, having traveled over 500 miles in forty-two days.
Legardeur de St. Pierre, the one-eyed commander at Fort La Bœuf, 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:
"Sir,
"The lands upon the River Ohio, in the Western Parts of the Colony of Virginia, are so notoriously known to be the Property _-_III.jpg)
A Map of the Country Between Wills Creek and Lake Erie
[Showing the designs of the French for erecting forts southward of the lake; drawn, before the erection of Fort Duquesne, evidently on the basis of Washington's information secured in 1753. From the original in the British Museum]
of the Crown of Great-Britain; that it is a Matter of equal Concern and Surprize to me, to hear that a Body of French Forces are erecting Fortresses, and making Settlements upon that River, within his Majesty's Dominions.
"The many and repeated Complaints I have received of these Acts of Hostility, lay me under the Necessity, of sending, in the Name of the King my Master, the Bearer hereof, George Washington, Esq; one of the Adjutants-General of the Forces of this Dominion; to complain to you of the Encroachments thus made, and of the Injuries done to the Subjects of Great-Britain, in open Violation of the Law of Nations, and the Treaties now subsisting between the two Crowns.
"If these Facts are true, and you shall think fit to justify your Proceedings, I must desire you to acquaint me, by whose Authority and Instructions you have lately marched from Canada, with an armed Force; and invaded the King of Great-Britain's Territories, in the Manner complained of? that according to the Purport and Resolution of your Answer, I may act agreeably to the Commission I am honoured with, from the King my Master.
"However, Sir, in Obedience to my Instructions, it becomes my Duty to require your peaceable Departure; and that you would forbear prosecuting a Purpose so interruptive of the Harmony and good Understanding, which his Majesty is desirous to continue and cultivate with the most Christian King.
"I persuade myself you will receive and entertain Major Washington with the Candour and Politeness natural to your Nation; and it will give me the greatest Satisfaction, if you return him with an Answer suitable to my Wishes for a very long and lasting Peace between us. I have the
Honour to subscribe myself,
Your most obedient,
Humble Servant,
Robert Dinwiddie."
While an answer was being prepared, the envoy had an opportunity to take careful note of the fort and its hundred defenders. The fortress which Washington carefully described in his Journal was not so significant as the great host of canoes along the river shore. It was French canoes the English feared more than French forts. The number at Fort La Bœuf at this time was over two hundred, and others were being made. And every stream flowed south to the land "notoriously known" to belong to the British crown.
On the 14th, Washington was planning his homeward trip. His horses, lacking proper nourishment and exhausted by the hard trip northward, were totally unfit for service, and were at once set on the road to Venango, since canoes had been offered the little embassy for the return trip. Anxious as Washington was to be off, neither his business nor that of Half King's had been despatched with any celerity until now; but this day Half King secured an audience with St. Pierre and offered him the wampum which was promptly refused, though with many protestations of friendship and an offer to send a load of goods to Logstown. Every effort possible was being put forth to alienate Half King, and the Virginian lad frankly wrote: "I can't say that ever in my Life I suffered so much Anxiety as I did in this Affair." This day and the next, the French officers outdid themselves in hastening Washington's departure and retarding Half King's. At last Washington complained frankly to St. Pierre, who denied his duplicity—and doubled his bribes. But on the day following Half King was gotten away, Venango being reached in six long days, a large part of the time being spent dragging the canoes over icy shoals.
Four days were spent with Joncaire, when, abandoning both horses and Indians, Washington and Gist set out alone and afoot by the shortest course to the Forks of the Ohio. It was a daring alternative but altogether the preferable one. At Murdering Town, a fit place for Joncaire's assassin to lie in wait, some French Indians were come up with, one of whom offered to guide the travelers across to the Forks. At the first good chance he fired upon them and was disarmed and sent away. The two, building a raft, reached an island in the Allegheny after heroic suffering, but were unable to cross to the eastern shore until the following morning. They then passed over on the ice which had formed and went directly to Frazier's cabin. There they arrived December 29th. On the first day of the new year, 1754, Washington set out for Virginia on the little path over which he had come out. On the sixth he met seventeen horses loaded with materials and stores "for a fort at the Fork of the Ohio." Governor Dinwiddie, indefatigable if nothing else, had commissioned Captain Trent to raise a company of a hundred men to erect a fort on the Ohio for the protection of the Ohio Company.
On the 16th of January the youthful envoy rode again into Williamsburg, one month from the day he left Fort La Bœuf. St. Pierre's reply to Governor Dinwiddie's letter read as follows:
"Sir,
"As I have the Honour of commanding here in Chief, Mr. Washington delivered me the Letter which you wrote to the Commandant of the French Troops.
"I should have been glad that you had given him Orders, or that he had been inclined to proceed to Canada to see our General; to whom it better belongs than to me to set-forth the Evidence and Reality of the Rights of the King, my Master, upon the Lands situated along the River Ohio, and to contest the Pretensions of the King of Great-Britain thereto.
"I shall transmit your Letter to the Marquis Duguisne. His Answer will be a Law to me; and if he shall order me to communicate it to you, Sir, you may be assured I shall not fail to dispatch it to you forthwith.
"As to the Summons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it. What-ever may be your Instructions, I am here by Virtue of the Orders of my General; and I intreat you, Sir, not to doubt one Moment, but that I am determin'd to conform myself to them with all the Exactness and Resolution which can be expected from the best Officer.
"I don't know that in the Progress of this Campaign any Thing passed which can be reputed an Act of Hostility, or that is contrary to the Treaties, which subsist between the two Crowns; the Continuation whereof as much interests, and is as pleasing to us, as the English. Had you been pleased, Sir, to have descended to particularize the Facts which occasioned your Complaint, I should have had the Honour of answering you in the fullest, and, I am persuaded, most satisfactory Manner.
"I made it my particular Care to receive Mr Washington, with a Distinction suitable to your Dignity, as well as his own Quality and great Merit. I flatter myself that he will do me this Justice before you, Sir; and that he will signify to you in the Manner I do myself, the profound Respect with which I am,
Your most humble, and
most obedient Servant,
Legardeur de St. Pierre."
Washington found the Governor's council was to meet the day following and that his report was desired. Accordingly he rewrote his Journal from the "rough minutes" he had made. From any point of view this document of ten thousand words, hastily written by this lad of twenty-one, who had long since left his school desk, is far more creditable and remarkable than any of the feats of physical endurance for which the lad is idolized by the youthful readers of our school histories. It is safe to say that many a college bred man today could not prepare from rough notes such a succinct and polite document as did this young surveyor, who had read few books, and, it can almost be said, had studied neither his own nor any foreign language. The author did not "in the least conceive . . . that it would ever be published." Speaking afterward of its "numberless imperfections," he said all that could recommend it to the public was its truthfulness of fact. Certain features of this first public service of Washington's are worthy of remark: his frankness, as in criticizing Shingiss's village as a site for a fort, as proposed by the Ohio Company; his exactness in giving details (where he could obtain them) of forts, men, and guns; his estimates of distances; his wise conforming to Indian custom; his careful note of the time of day of important events; his frequent observations of the character of the lands through which he passed; his knowledge of Indian character.
This mission prosecuted with such rare tact and skill was an utter failure, considered from the standpoint of its nominal purpose. St. Pierre's letter was firm, if not defiant. Yet Dinwiddie, despairing of French withdrawal, had secured the information he desired. Already Trent had reached the Forks of the Ohio where an English fort was being erected. Peaceful measures were exhausted with the failure of Washington's embassy. England's one hope was—war!