Part 775

"The close of King George's War was marked by an extraordinary development of interest in the Western country. The Pennsylvanians and Virginians had worked their way well up to the eastern foot-hills of the last range of mountains separating them from the interior. Even the Connecticut men were ready to overleap the province of New York and take possession of the Susquehanna. The time for the English colonists to attempt the Great Mountains in force had been long in coming, but it had plainly arrived. In 1748 the Ingles-Draper settlement, the first regular settlement of English-speaking men on the Western waters, was made at 'Draper's Meadow,' on the New River, a branch of the Kanawha. The same year Dr. Thomas Walker, accompanied by a number of Virginia gentlemen and a party of hunters, made their way by Southwestern Virginia into Kentucky and Tennessee. … The same year the Ohio company, consisting of thirteen prominent Virginians and Marylanders, and one London merchant, was formed. Its avowed objects were to speculate in Western lands, and to carry on trade on an extensive scale with the Indians. It does not appear to have contemplated the settlement of a new colony. The company obtained from the crown a conditional grant of 500,000 acres of land in the Ohio Valley, to be located mainly between the Monongahela and Kanawha Rivers, and it ordered large shipments of goods for the Indian trade from London. … In 1750 the company sent Christopher Gist, a veteran woodsman and trader living on the Yadkin, down the northern side of the Ohio, with instructions, as Mr. Bancroft summarizes them, 'to examine the Western country as far as the Falls of the Ohio; to look for a large tract of good level land; to mark the passes in the mountains; to trace the courses of the rivers; to count the falls; to observe the strength of the Indian nations.' Under these instructions, Gist made the first English exploration of Southern Ohio of which we have any report. The next year he made a similar exploration of the country south of the Ohio, as far as the Great Kanawha. … Gist's reports of his explorations added to the growing interest in the over-mountain country. At that time the Ohio Valley was waste and unoccupied, save by the savages, but adventurous traders, mostly Scotch-Irish, and commonly men of reckless character and loose morals, made trading excursions as far as the River Miami. The Indian town of Pickawillany, on the upper waters of that stream, became a great centre of English trade and influence. Another evidence of the growing interest in the West is the fact that the colonial authorities, in every direction, were seeking to obtain Indian titles to the Western lands, and to bind the Indians to the English by treaties. The Iroquois had long claimed, by right of conquest, the country from the Cumberland Mountains to the Lower Lakes and the Mississippi, and for many years the authorities of New York had been steadily seeking to gain a firm treaty-hold of that country. In 1684, the Iroquois, at Albany, placed themselves under the protection of King Charles and the Duke of York [see NEW YORK: A. D. 1684]; in 1726, they conveyed all their lands in trust to England [see NEW YORK: A. D. 1726], to be protected and defended by his Majesty to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs, which was an acknowledgment by the Indians of what the French had acknowledged thirteen years before at Utrecht. In 1744, the very year that King George's War began, the deputies of the Iroquois at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, confirmed to Maryland the lands within that province, and made to Virginia a deed that covered the whole West as effectually as the Virginian interpretation of the charter of 1609 [see VIRGINIA: A. D. 1744]. … This treaty is of the greatest importance in subsequent history; it is the starting-point of later negotiations with the Indians concerning Western lands. It gave the English their first real treaty-hold upon the West; and it stands in all the statements of the English claim to the Western country, side by side with the Cabot voyages. … There was, indeed, no small amount of dissension among the colonies, and it must not be supposed that they were all working together to effect a common purpose, The royal governors could not agree. There were bitter dissensions between governors and assemblies. Colony was jealous of colony. … Fortunately, the cause of England and the colonies was not abandoned to politicians. The time had come for the Anglo-Saxon column, that had been so long in reaching them, to pass the Endless Mountains; and the logic of events swept everything into the Westward current. In the years following the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle the French were not idle. Galissonière, the governor of Canada, thoroughly comprehended what was at stake. In 1749 he sent Cèloron de Bienville into the Ohio Valley, with a suitable escort of whites and savages, to take formal possession of the valley in the name of the King of France, to propitiate the Indians, and in all ways short of actual warfare to thwart the English plans. Bienville crossed the portage from Lake Erie to Lake Chautauqua, the easternmost of the portages from the Lakes to the southern streams ever used by the French, and made his way by the Alleghany River and the Ohio as far as the Miami, and returned by the Maumee and Lake Erie to Montreal. His report to the governor was anything but reassuring. He found the English traders swarming in the valley, and the Indians generally well disposed to the English. Nor did French interests improve the two or three succeeding years. The Marquis Duquesne, who succeeded Galissonière, soon discovered the drift of events. He saw the necessity of action; he was clothed with power to act, and he was a man of action, And so, early in the year 1753, while the English governors and assemblies were still hesitating and disputing, he sent a strong force by Lake Ontario and Niagara to seize and hold the northeastern branches of the Ohio. This was a master stroke: unless recalled, it would lead to war; and Duquesne was not the man to recall it. {2394} This force, passing over the portage between Presque Isle and French Creek, constructed Forts Le Bœuf and Venango, the second at the confluence of French Creek and the Alleghany River."

_B. A. Hinsdale, The Old Northwest, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _J. H. Perkins, Annals of the West, chapter 2._

_B. Fernow The Ohio Valley in Colonial Days, chapter 5._

See, also, CANADA: A. D. 1750-1753.

_O. H. Marshall, De Celoron's Expedition to the Ohio in 1749 (Historical Writings, pages 237-274)._

_N. B. Craig, The Olden Time, volume 1, pages 1-10._

OHIO: (Valley): A. D. 1754. The opening battle. Washington's first campaign.

The planting of the French at Forts Le Bœuf and Venango "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 [1753] 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. 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. … 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 February, 1754, when Washington reached Williamsburg on his return, and made his report to Dinwiddie. The result was that Dinwiddie drafted 200 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, and the English retired. The French immediately began the erection of Fort Duquesne [on the site now covered by the city of Pittsburgh]. While this was doing, Dinwiddie was toiling with tardy assemblies and their agents to organize a regiment to support the backwoodsmen. Joshua Fry was to be its colonel, with Washington as second in command. The latter, with a portion of the men, had already pushed forward to Will's Creek, the present Cumberland. Later he advanced with 150 men to Great Meadows, where he learned that the French, who had been reinforced, had sent out a party from their new fort, marching towards him. Again he got word from an Indian —who, from his tributary character towards the Iroquois, was called Half-King, and who had been Washington's companion on his trip to Le Bœuf—that this chieftain with some followers had tracked two men to a dark glen, where he believed the French party were lurking. Washington started with forty men to join Half-King, and under his guidance they approached the glen and found the French. Shots were exchanged. The French leader, Jumonville, was killed, and all but one of his followers were taken or slain. The mission of Jumonville was to scour for English, by order of Contrecœur, now in command of Duquesne, and to bear a summons to any he could find, warning them to retire from French territory. The precipitancy of Washington's attack gave the French the chance to impute to Washington the crime of assassination; but it seems to have been a pretence on the part of the French to cover a purpose which Jumonville had of summoning aid from Duquesne, while his concealment was intended to shield him till its arrival. Rash or otherwise, this onset of the youthful Washington began the war. The English returned to Great Meadows, and while waiting for reinforcements from Fry, Washington threw up some entrenchments, which he called Fort Necessity. The men from Fry came without their leader, who had sickened and died, and Washington, succeeding to the command of the regiment, found himself at the head of 300 men, increased soon by an independent company from South Carolina. Washington again advanced toward Gist's settlement, when, fearing an attack, he sent back for Mackay, whom he had left with a company of regulars at Fort Necessity. Rumors thickening of an advance of the French, the English leader again fell back to Great Meadows, resolved to fight there. It was now the first of July, 1754. Coulon de Villiers, a brother of Jumonville, was now advancing from Duquesne. The attack was made on a rainy day, and for much of the time a thick mist hung between the combatants. After dark a parley resulted in Washington's accepting terms offered by the French, and the English marched out with the honors of war. The young Virginian now led his weary followers back to Will's Creek. … Thus they turned their backs upon the great valley, in which not an English flag now waved."

_J. Winsor, The Struggle for the Great Valleys of North America (Narrative and Critical History of America, volume 5, chapter 8)._

ALSO IN: _W. Irving, Life of Washington, volume 1, chapters 7-12._

_H. C. Lodge, George Washington, volume 1, chapter 3._

_N. B. Craig, The Olden Time, volume 1, pages 10-62._

OHIO: (Valley): A. D. 1755. Braddock's defeat. The French possess the West and devastate the English frontiers.

"Now the English Government awoke to the necessity of vigorous measures to rescue the endangered Valley of the Ohio. A campaign was planned which was to expel the French from Ohio, and wrest from them some portions of their Canadian territory. The execution of this great design was intrusted to General Braddock, with a force which it was deemed would overbear all resistance. {2395} Braddock was a veteran who had seen the wars of forty years. … He was a brave and experienced soldier, and a likely man, it was thought, to do the work assigned to him. But that proved a sad miscalculation. Braddock had learned the rules of war; but he had no capacity to comprehend its principles. In the pathless forests of America he could do nothing better than strive to give literal effect to those maxims which he had found applicable in the well-trodden battlegrounds of Europe. The failure of Washington in his first campaign had not deprived him of public confidence. Braddock heard such accounts of his efficiency that he invited him to join his staff. Washington, eager to efface the memory of his defeat, gladly accepted the offer. The troops disembarked at Alexandria. … After some delay, the army, with such reinforcements as the province afforded, began its march. Braddock's object was to reach Fort Du Quesne, the great centre of French influence on the Ohio. … Fort Du Quesne had been built [or begun] by the English, and taken from them by the French. It stood at the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela; which rivers, by their union at this point, form the Ohio. It was a rude piece of fortification, but the circumstances admitted of no better. … Braddock had no doubt that the fort would yield to him directly he showed himself before it. Benjamin Franklin looked at the project with his shrewd, cynical eye. He told Braddock that he would assuredly take the fort if he could only reach it; but that the long slender line which his army must form in its march 'would be cut like thread into several pieces' by the hostile Indians. Braddock 'smiled at his ignorance.' Benjamin offered no further opinion. It was his duty to collect horses and carriages for the use of the expedition, and he did what was required of him in silence. The expedition crept slowly forward, never achieving more than three or four miles in a day; stopping, as Washington said, 'to level every mole-hill, to erect a bridge over every brook.' It left Alexandria on the 20th April. On the 9th July Braddock, with half his army, was near the fort. There was yet no evidence that resistance was intended. No enemy had been seen; the troops marched on as to assured victory. So confident was their chief that he refused to employ scouts, and did not deign to inquire what enemy might be lurking near. The march was along a road twelve feet wide, in a ravine, with high ground in front and on both sides. Suddenly the Indian war-whoop burst from the woods. A murderous fire smote down the troops. The provincials, not unused to this description of warfare, sheltered themselves behind trees and fought with steady courage. Braddock, clinging to his old rules, strove to maintain his order of battle on the open ground. A carnage, most grim and lamentable, was the result. His undefended soldiers were shot down by an unseen foe. For three hours the struggle lasted; then the men broke and fled in utter rout and panic. Braddock, vainly fighting, fell mortally wounded, and was carried off the field by some of his soldiers. The poor pedantic man never got over his astonishment at a defeat so inconsistent with the established rules of war. 'Who would have thought it?' he murmured, as they bore him from the field. He scarcely spoke again, and died in two or three days. Nearly 800 men, killed and wounded, were lost in this disastrous encounter —about one-half of the entire force engaged. All the while England and France were nominally at peace. But now war was declared."

_R. Mackenzie, America: a history, book 2, chapter 3._

"The news of the defeat caused a great revulsion of feeling. The highest hopes had been built on Braddock's expedition. … From this height of expectation men were suddenly plunged into the yawning gulf of gloom and alarm. The whole frontier lay exposed to the hatchet and the torch of the remorseless red man. … The apprehensions of the border settlers were soon fully justified. Dumas, who shortly succeeded de Contrecœur in the command at Fort Duquesne, set vigorously to work to put the Indians on the war-path against the defenceless settlements. 'M. de Contrecœur had not been gone a week,' he writes, 'before I had six or seven different war parties in the field at once, always accompanied by Frenchmen. Thus far, we have lost only two officers and a few soldiers; but the Indian villages are full of prisoners of every age and sex. The enemy has lost far more since the battle than on the day of his defeat.' All along the frontier the murderous work went on."

_T. J. Chapman, The French in the Allegheny Valley, pages 71-73._

ALSO IN: _F. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, volume 1, chapters 7 and 10._

_W. Sargent, History of Braddock's Expedition (Pennsylvania Historical Society Mem's, volume 5)._

_N. B. Craig, The Olden Time, volume 1, pages 64-133._

OHIO:(Valley): A. D. 1758. Retirement of the French. Abandonment of Fort Duquesne.

See CANADA: A. D. 1758.

OHIO:(Valley): A. D. 1763. Relinquishment to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR: THE TREATIES.

OHIO:(Valley): A. D. 1763. The king's proclamation excluding settlers.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1763.

OHIO:(Valley): A. D; 1763-1764. Pontiac's War.

See PONTIAC'S WAR

OHIO:(Valley): A. D. 1765-1768. Indian Treaties of German Flats and Fort Stanwix. Pretended cession of lands south of the Ohio. The Walpole Company and its proposed Vandalia settlement.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765-1768.

OHIO:(Valley): A. D. 1772-1782. The Moravian settlement and mission on the Muskingum.

See MORAVIAN BRETHREN.

OHIO:(Valley): A. D. 1774. Lord Dunmore's War with the Indians. The territorial claims of Virginia. The wrongs of Logan and his famous speech.