A Treaty with the Indians at Camp Mount Pleasant October 18th 1754
Dr David L Preston’s article, “When Young George Washington Started a War ” in Smithsonian Magazine October 2019 issue was quite a hit, so to speak, in the history and re-enactor world online.
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First compiled by Jim Moyer 9/20/2019, 9/23/19, 9/24/19, 9/26/19, 9/27/19, 9/29/2019, updated 4/10/2024
We have 4 questions we want to pose.
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This is the site of George Washington’s first battle on May 27, 1754. It was the opening skirmish in what came to be known as the French and Indian War or the Seven Years War, a worldwide conflict between England and France. This panorama was taken in 2007. Wikipedia picture. Click or Touch to Enlarge.
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We admit the questions we are asking are no where near the important ones, such as who fired the first shot and the testimony of this unknown "Chief Warrior" Dr Preston finds in this October 1754 Treaty at Camp Mount Pleasant.
1) Did George Washington really fire the first shot in the Jumonville incident ?
2) What was the Indian Treaty about?
3) These new eye witnesses do not corroborate the extra gory details Fred Anderson writes about in his Crucible of War on that Jumonville battle.
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Nevertheless, to our 4 Questions we still go:
From Dr David L Preston’s article in the Smithsonian Magazine issue of Oct 2019 entitled, When Young George Washington Started a War.
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Dr Preston’s article mentions there were British officers at a Camp Mount Pleasant and that nobody has really referenced the contents of that Treaty made on that site. So, our questions are:
Question 1: Was there a British Army on the Potomac in Western Maryland in 1754?
Question 2. Where was this Camp Mount Pleasant on the Potomac in Western Maryland exactly?
Question 3: And did no one ever before cite this treaty with the Indians October 3, 1754 to November 3, 1754?
Question 4: Who possibly might have been at this Camp Mount Pleasant Treaty?
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What prompted these questions?
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Dr David Preston’s article for Smithsonian Magazine.
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We re-enactors desperately CRAVE exactitude. We want to know if British Officers really mean British Officers. We want to know exactly where Fort Mount Pleasant was. Was it the same place as latter named Fort Cumberland?. We want to know for sure if anyone ever cited this treaty before, as David Preston claimed it wasn't.
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Dr David Preston writes in Smithsonian Magazine,
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“I was intrigued by the location and date of one document in particular: It was entitled “A Treaty with the Indians at Camp Mount Pleasant October 18th 1754.”
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Dr David Preston continues,
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“Camp Mount Pleasant was a British outpost along the upper Potomac River in what is now western Maryland. In the fall of 1754, a group of British Army officers gathered there with Ohio Iroquois, Delaware and Shawnee leaders to renew their alliance and hear their grievances. Through an interpreter, a British scribe recorded the Indians’ speeches word-for-word with quill and ink over a total of ten pages.”
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The article rightfully covers the amazing speeches of the Indians who knew about the Jumonville incident.
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But we need to clarify answers to 4 questions. 🙂
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FOUR QUESTIONS
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Question 1:
British Army on the Potomac in 1754 ???
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British Army in North America?
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There was no British Army on the Potomac in 1754.
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Order this book here. See this link.
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Nor was the British Army present in the colonies before the Braddock Expedition of 1755, except for being stationed in what is known as today’s Canadian Maritime Provinces.
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But “British” in Dr Preston’s Smithsonian article is used in a general way.
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All the colonies were British. Its citizens were British. It’s colonial soldiers were British. But official British Army they were not.
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We crazed re-enactors knew this. Okay maybe you aren’t crazed. But sometimes we need “confirmed clarity.” It allows us to breathe easier, right?
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But what about the Independent Companies in 1754?
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Definition:
An independent company is a company which has no parent regiment.
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It is a company whose captain has no superior other than the King himself.
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Source:
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This was noticed that we missed covering Independent Companies staffed by Britain in Britain by a reader who reviewed this post. So, we are adding this belatedly (added 9/29/ 2019).
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It still holds true, that mostly British Army line would have been in the maritime provinces in Canada but not in the colonies before 1755,
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We are interested in one of those 4 New York Independent Companies, Captained by Horatio Gates. See Founders Online footnote:
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So this Gates’ Company was not in North America in 1754. But Gates was in the maritime provinces of Canada in 1754.
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Born in England, he entered the British army at an early age. Between 1749 and 1754 he served in Nova Scotia, first as a lieutenant attached as an aide to the colony’s governor and later as a captain lieutenant in the 45th Regiment of Foot.
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Returning to England, he purchased the captaincy of a New York independent company in Sept. 1754. He joined his new command at New York City the following March [1755] …
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in time to take it south for Braddock’s expedition. Gates’s company, which consisted of 5 officers and about 90 men, had arrived on the Potomac by 28 April 1755.
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Source:
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We don’t have all the specific dates in this area in quote below. We do know Gate’s 4th NY Independent Company didn’t arrive in this area of Wills Creek and the Potomac until March 1755.
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When the Seven Year’s War broke out in Virginia in 1754, an independent company was present. A composite company of the fittest one-third of each company was sent with Captain James Mackay to join Provincial Colonel George Washington to man Fort Necessity in Great Meadows.
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It lost Lt. Peter Mercier and a number of men in that action. The company remained at Will’s Creek after the battle, where it was joined by two independent companies from New York [which at last the one NY Independent Company did not appear until March 1755 in previous source cited above].
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The three companies, under the combined command of Colonel James Innes, built Fort Cumberland. Captain Mackay returned to South Carolina, to be replaced by Captain Paul Demere, Raymond’s younger brother, in 1755.
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Source:
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Sources on Independent Companies:
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Sources on just the British Line Army:
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Question 2:
Where is this Camp Mt Pleasant?
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Fort Cumberland Maryland named by Braddock whose men enlarged it from the former Camp Mt Pleasant. Click or Touch to enlarge.
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It was on Wills Creek and the North Branch of the Potomac, before Braddock came along to name it Fort Cumberland.
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John A Miller, a former Ranger Historian, states where:
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“The store houses of The Ohio Company were first located near this point. In 1754 the first fort (called Mt. Pleasant) was built.
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Cumberland Maryland today as of 2019. Click or Touch to enlarge.
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“Gen’l Edward Braddock enlarged the fort in 1755 and renamed it after his friend the Duke of Cumberland.“
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Dr David Preston shows Camp Mt Pleasant on this map in his book, Braddock’s Defeat.
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Question 3:
Was the Treaty ever discussed before?
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David Preston remarks,
“Not believing my good fortune, I went back to the existing histories and confirmed that this October 1754 treaty had never been transcribed, analyzed or even cited by previous scholars writing on Washington and the Jumonville affair.”
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Source:
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But was this treaty never cited by previous scholars?
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These authors listed below do — in 1983.
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But they only cite it, not analyze it, nor transcribe it for the reader.
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William L. Anderson and James Allen Lewis, are the authors.
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They wrote a bibliography of sorts:
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A Guide to Cherokee Documents in Foreign Archives, published 1983, do cite that very treaty, October 18, 1754 to November 3, 1754.
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The full entry reads:
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Below is same entry (you can use to copy and paste) as the entry shown above:
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“C.O. 5/15 Orginal Correspondence of Sec of State 1753-1754 in folio 190.”
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“Fol 190 18 Oct. – 3 Nov. 1754, Camp Mt. Plesant at Willis Creek. Copy of an Indian treaty that includes a talk with the Six Nations urging them to make peace with the Catawbas and fight the French. 14p. [Enclosure of Dinwiddie’s letter of 20 Jan. 1755]. “
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Scroll down until you see Mt Pleasant mentioned in the book, A Guide to Cherokee Documents in Foreign Archives, published 1983.
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Source:
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However when you look this up online at the British National Archives, you will never know there is a folio 190 containing that Indian Treaty of 1754 in here:
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C.O. 5/15 Orginal Correspondence of Sec of State 1753-1754 in folio 190.
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And that is exactly where Dr David Preston went. He writes:
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“A few years ago, I was sitting in the sprawling reading room of the British National Archives in Kew. The enormous bound volume on the table before me was part of a collection called the Colonial Office papers. “
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Dr Preston continues,
“This trove of colonial documents included official correspondences, maps, legal and military records, and Indian treaties. ” and Dr David Preston continues, “I was intrigued by the location and date of one document in particular:
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It was entitled “A Treaty with the Indians at Camp Mount Pleasant October 18th 1754.””
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Source:
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Question 4:
Who possibly might have been at Camp Mount Pleasant?
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We discussed above that the official British Army was NOT there.
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Dr Preston will be reporting more on his great find, but in the meantime, we will do some conjecture here.
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Marylanders were there?
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September 1754 50-60 men raised for Captain Dagworthy’s Company of Maryland and marched to Ft. Mount Pleasant/Cumberland.
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Was our Captain George Mercer there when the Indians came?
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He was in the area building a road in June 1754, promoted from Lieutenant to Captain for running a company building a road. He was wounded at Fort Necessity July 1754. He is heading towards Wills Creek in August 1754.
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“Captain Mercer may have been in late 1754 at frontier posts from time to time, but in January 1755, he was at Fredericksburg with a small force of recruits for his independent company.”
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Source:George Mercer Of The Ohio Company A Study In Frustration by Alfred Proctor James, published 1963, University of Pittsburg Press
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Was Colonel George Washington there?
No.
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He’s busy presenting the House of Burgesses an accounting of expenses.
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Founders Online footnote:
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GW arrived in Williamsburg on 21 Oct. and left on 2 Nov. 1754. During that time he delivered up these accounts to the “committee of directors” of the assembly, whose responsibility it was to supervise the expenses of the Virginia Regiment, and then resigned his commission as colonel of the Virginia Regiment. See William Fitzhugh to GW, 4 Nov. 1754, n.1.
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In a letter to George Washington dated, 14 October 1754, Founders Online footnote states:
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Sharpe was invited to Williamsburg to meet Dinwiddie and Arthur Dobbs, the latter being the newly appointed governor of North Carolina who had just arrived in Williamsburg from England with orders, letters, and a commission for Sharpe to command all the colonial forces that would be raised to drive the French from Fort Duquesne. Sharpe arrived in Williamsburg on 19 Oct., and GW arrived 2 days later.
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Source:
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NOTES
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Quote from David Preston's article:
October 18 to November 3 The Treaty itself. “We are all Soldiers and Warriors. Some sharp words will now pass between us. We shall talk like drunken Men.”
Reprint of the Smithsonian Article by Dr David Lee Preston.
By regulation, British officers wore a red coat. Washington later outfitted his troops in blue regimental coats faced with scarlet. (Illustration by Tim O’Brien)
WHEN YOUNG GEORGE WASHINGTON STARTED A WAR
A just-discovered eyewitness account provides startling new evidence about who fired the shot that sparked the French and Indian War
BY DAVID PRESTON; PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALLISON SHELLEY
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | October 2019
On the night of May 27, 1754, Lt. Col. George Washington led a party of Virginia soldiers out of an encampment in the Ohio Valley. The conditions were horrid—a night “as black as pitch,” as the young commander recorded in his journal. An unceasing rain made the dark woods even more impervious to the soldiers and warriors.
Washington was only 22 years old, his mouth still full of teeth. The uniform he wore was likely a woolen officer’s coat showing his allegiance to the British empire—he was a loyal subject of King George II. He and his Virginia Regiment of a little over 100 effective soldiers were the tip of His Majesty’s spear in North America. Their assignment: to finish building a fort that would anchor Britain’s control over the Ohio Valley.
But as Washington and his men marched westward over the Appalachian Mountains, they received stunning news: The French had already captured their intended destination, known as Trent’s Fort. Hundreds of French troops had aimed over a dozen cannons at the British soldiers stationed there and forced their surrender.
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This article is a selection from the October 2019 issue of Smithsonian magazine
This reconstruction of the circular Fort Necessity in Farmington, Pennsylvania, was based on information from an archaeological study of the site during the early 1950s. (Allison Shelley)
By May 24, Washington had encamped at the Great Meadows, one of the few open clearings amid the dark Appalachian woods. There he received word from a man named Tanaghrisson, an Ohio Iroquois, that an army of French soldiers was coming to attack his men. French tracks were spotted only five miles from the camp, and Washington sent out 75 of his best soldiers to search for the French party. Then his Indian allies found the spot where the French were camping, hidden in a glen near the crest of a mountain ridge.
On May 27, the men who remained with Washington—a small party of 40 British soldiers and perhaps seven or eight Ohio Iroquois allies—marched five miles and climbed 700 feet up the steep eastern face of Chestnut Ridge. Seven soldiers got lost as they stumbled in the rain over the ridgeline’s many rocks, spurs and draws. By the time the remaining 33 men crested the ridge, they were exhausted and soaked.
As the sun began to rise, the soldiers struggled to operate their muskets amid the lingering dampness. It was around 7 a.m. on May 28 when the Virginians, advancing in single file, came to the rocky precipice overlooking the French camp. Washington was at the head of the column and the first to spot the French who, he later reported, scrambled for their muskets.
The “Half King” Tanaghrisson, Washington’s Iroquois ally. According to one French officer, he was “formerly inclined to the French” before turning to help the Virginians. (Heinz History Center)
The battle lasted only 15 minutes. At least ten French soldiers fell, most of them killed by Washington’s Indian allies. One of those dead Frenchmen was the party’s commander, Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville. The mountain glen was a macabre scene of unburied and scalped French corpses, with a Frenchman’s decapitated head stuck upon a pole.
Historians have long identified this skirmish in the woods as the spark that ignited the French and Indian War. But there’s an untold dimension to this story, as I discovered several years ago, digging through colonial papers in the British National Archives. This evidence, previously unreported, suggests that the man who would become America’s first president might have been more complicated a leader—and more culpable for starting a seven-year-long global war—than history has led us to believe.
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The French and Indian War is one of those conflicts we learned about in history classes, but we tend to be hazy on the details. That’s partly because it all took place a generation before the Revolutionary War, a time most Americans don’t think much about. It’s also because the name is a bit confusing: It was a conflict between British and French colonists, with Indian nations as allies on both sides. Back then, the colonists on the Atlantic seaboard were still loyal to Britain. French influence extended far inland, and it was starting to expand into the Ohio Valley, edging into Pennsylvania. The British had more people and resources, but the French had access to important waterways, including the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. As the French philosopher Voltaire wrote around the time of the Jumonville affair: “So complicated are the political interests of the present times that a shot fired in America shall be the signal for setting all Europe together by the ears.”
At that time, the Indians in the Ohio Valley were still independent and powerful, and both sides needed them as military and trading partners. The French had cultivated a broad network of Indian alliances by the 1740s. In response, the British tried to inflate the power of the Six Nations—the Iroquois Confederacy that dominated much of the Northeast. In particular, they elevated an Ohio Iroquois leader named Tanaghrisson, treating him as a spokesman for all the Ohio nations. The British dubbed Tanaghrisson the “Half King.” Yet he didn’t actually speak for all the Ohio Indians. He’d come on the scene only in the late 1740s and his role was never recognized by the French, who thought him “more English than the English.”
In the mid-18th century, the French presence in North America dwindled as a result of the French and Indian War. (Guilbert Gates)
In the summer of 1753, the French started acting more brazenly. They sent 2,600 soldiers into the region, building a fort on the shore of Lake Erie and another at the headwaters of nearby Le-Boeuf Creek. Both the British officials in Virginia and their Indian allies in Ohio were alarmed.
Virginia Gov. Robert Dinwiddie (in a portrait c.1760) was an important patron of the young Washington. (National Portrait Gallery, London)
That’s when Washington walked onto the stage of history. At the end of 1753, Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie asked him to lead a diplomatic expedition to warn the French to leave their forts. Washington had been in the militia less than a year, but he’d worked as a surveyor starting at the age of 16, and the governor knew this experience would help him navigate the frontier as he led the 500-mile trek from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Fort LeBoeuf.
The group reached Fort Le-Boeuf on December 11, 1753, accompanied by Tanaghrisson and other Ohio Indians. The French commandant received the party with great civility, even sent them home with supplies, but he rebuffed Governor Dinwiddie’s demands. Still, Washington’s journey had allowed him to gather valuable intelligence: He’d learned that the French were assembling a flotilla of small boats to carry them to the Forks of the Ohio, where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers met to form the Ohio River, and where the British planned to build a small but strategic fort.
After Washington returned, his journal of the expedition was published in Williamsburg and London, spreading the young officer’s fame. In early 1754, Dinwiddie promoted him to second in command of the Virginia Regiment—and sent him back to the Ohio Valley, this time to complete the fort at the Forks of the Ohio. Although he wasn’t instructed to start a war, he had the authority to restrain any French interlopers and, if necessary, “kill & destroy” them.
Following the May 28 battle, when French officials learned that Ensign Jumonville had been killed by British colonists and their Indian supporters, their anger boiled over. According to French accounts, Jumonville and his men were preparing to deliver a diplomatic summons to the British, not take up arms against them. In fact, they insisted, Jumonville had tried to get the British to stop firing so he could speak to them. One report even claimed that Jumonville had been shot through the head while one of his fellow soldiers was in the process of reading a message to the British. The French portrayed Washington’s ambush as the brutal murder of a diplomatic official.
Some sources—including a British newspaper—reported that Tanaghrisson himself had killed Jumonville. One telling of that story, by a British deserter, added an especially brutal twist: As Jumonville lay wounded after the battle, Tanaghrisson approached him and remarked, “Tu n’es pas encore mort, mon père”—“You are not yet dead, my father.” He lifted his tomahawk and planted the blade in Jumonville’s skull.
An illustration of the death of Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, from the 1859 Illustrated Life of George Washington. Washington, the blue-clad figure on the left, is misleadingly portrayed standing by as others fire on the French. (New York Public Library)
Centuries later, it’s still not clear who is to blame for the bloody incident. Had the French been planning to attack the British all along? Or had the British opened fire hastily, or been manipulated by their Indian allies? Dinwiddie, for his part, had always blamed his Indian allies for starting the whole thing, telling his superiors back in London: “This little Skirmish was by the Half-King & their Indians, we were as auxiliaries to them.”
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A few years ago, I was sitting in the sprawling reading room of the British National Archives in Kew. The enormous bound volume on the table before me was part of a collection called the Colonial Office papers. This trove of colonial documents included official correspondences, maps, legal and military records, and Indian treaties.
I was intrigued by the location and date of one document in particular: It was entitled “A Treaty with the Indians at Camp Mount Pleasant October 18th 1754.” Camp Mount Pleasant was a British outpost along the upper Potomac River in what is now western Maryland. In the fall of 1754, a group of British Army officers gathered there with Ohio Iroquois, Delaware and Shawnee leaders to renew their alliance and hear their grievances. Through an interpreter, a British scribe recorded the Indians’ speeches word-for-word with quill and ink over a total of ten pages.
One speech had been delivered by a man identified as a “Chief Warrior” of the Ohio Iroquois. The French had driven the chief warrior and his people from their lands in the Ohio Valley, and they were now living as refugees among the British. The chief warrior began bluntly, telling the British officers: “We are all Soldiers and Warriors. Some sharp words will now pass between us. We shall talk like drunken Men.”
Those “sharp words” turned into an extended account of the major events that had brought them to their current crisis—from Washington’s 1753 diplomatic mission to the French conquest of the Forks of the Ohio River and the Jumonville affair. Hidden in plain sight was a new document pertaining to none other than George Washington and the Indian allies who had supported him.
Not believing my good fortune, I went back to the existing histories and confirmed that this October 1754 treaty had never been transcribed, analyzed or even cited by previous scholars writing on Washington and the Jumonville affair. It provided a rare eyewitness account of the opening scenes of the French and Indian War.
Who was this “Chief Warrior”? The treaty minutes provide no clues, other than that he was known “to have a true Heart” to the British alliance. Perhaps the speaker was Kanuksusy, a Seneca man whom Washington had once described as a “great Warrior.” Or perhaps it was Silver Heels, who went on to one of the most remarkable British military careers of any Indian warrior, fighting with distinction in the Ohio Valley, New York, South Carolina and even on the West Indies island of Martinique.
The chief warrior voiced his suspicion that “the King of England and the French King had made an Agreement to cut us off”—that both European powers were conspiring to divide and conquer the Indians. As the chief warrior told the British, certain events and revelations had “given us some Reason to suspect you.”
The chief warrior then described his own involvement in the Jumonville affair. The young George Washington he described was neither a valiant hero nor a bloodthirsty aggressor. Instead, he was an earnest but headstrong 22-year-old who, simply put, wasn’t very good at cultivating allies.
History Lesson
A mural at George Washington High School in San Francisco depicts the future founding father on the battlefield during the French and Indian War, including the Jumonville incident at top left. The mural is one of 13 painted on the school walls as part of a New Deal project. Others in the series show Washington as a slave owner, among other roles. The murals were slated to be destroyed after a committee of students, faculty, artists, historians and Native Americans said the paintings glorified colonization and white supremacy. The city’s board of education initially voted to paint over the murals, but hundreds of academics and preservationists protested and signed a petition. Richard Walker, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus who leads the Living New Deal project, insisted that the murals had been designed to show “uncomfortable facts” about the nation’s first president. In August, the school board voted to cover the paintings rather than destroy them. (Jim Wilson / The New York Times / Redux)
The chief warrior complained that after he and his fellow Ohio Iroquois escorted Washington from their encampment in Logstown to Fort LeBoeuf in 1753, Washington “left us there, came through the Woods, and never thought it worth his while to come to Logs Town, or near us and give us any Account of the Speeches that passed between him and the French at the Fort which he promised to do.” Washington had seemed more interested in making his report to Governor Dinwiddie than cultivating Indian allies.
The chief warrior had also witnessed the French takeover of Trent’s Fort in April 1754. He reported that the British had surrendered meekly in the face of 600 French marines and militia—the largest European military force that had yet been seen in the Ohio River Valley. But the chief warrior noted that Tanaghrisson, the “Half King,” had tried to stir up conflict during the surrender, warning the French not to trespass on Ohio Iroquois lands, where he had given permission for the English to build a trading post. Tanaghrisson had even pushed a French officer, and “a Scuffle” ensued. If cooler heads had not prevailed, the chief warrior told the group, “they would not have left one Frenchman alive upon the spot.”
This telling of the story offers an important new angle on the origins of the Jumonville affair. It indicates that the French had humiliated Tanaghrisson, dealing with him as an English puppet and exposing his lack of influence. After the incident, Tanaghrisson’s band of 80 to 100 men, women and children had fled the area, taking refuge with their British allies to the east. Tanaghrisson had a vendetta against a particular French officer named Michel Pépin, also known as La Force. Only a few weeks earlier, La Force had spoken at Tanaghrisson’s settlement of Logstown, threatening his band of Ohio Iroquois that “You have but a short Time to see the Sun, for in Twenty Days You and Your Brothers the English shall all die.” By the end of May 1754, when Tanaghrisson reported to Washington that a French “armey” was on its way to “strike the first English they see,” Tanaghrisson believed that the French—especially the feared La Force—were plotting to kill him and his followers.
The three parties met amid a perfect storm of misunderstandings. The Ohio Iroquois band believed they were being pursued by the French. The French considered themselves diplomats, delivering a summons to the British to leave French lands—much like the summons Washington had delivered to the French some months earlier. And the British were advancing with the information they’d gathered from Tanaghrisson and others, believing the French were coming for them with violent intentions.
A re-enactor dressed as a French marine walks through Jumonville Glen at Fort Necessity. (Allison Shelley)
When it comes to the battle itself, the chief warrior’s account surpasses all other eyewitness accounts in its level of tactical detail. In particular, no other account provides as much insight on how Indian warriors guided the young Washington in his first combat action—an ambush. The Indians directed him to “go up the Hill, straight to the French where they were, not above fifty Yards off, when they must come in Sight of the French Camp below them.”
While the warriors sent the Virginian toward the rocky precipice, the Indians descended into the hollow: “The Half King with his Warriors went to the left to intercept them if they should go that Way, and Monacatootha with another young Warrior Cherokee Jack went to the Right.”
One line from the chief warrior’s speech struck me above all others: “Col. Washington begun himself and fired and then his people.” Washington himself always took responsibility for ordering his company to open fire, but the chief warrior’s report takes this even further, claiming that Washington literally fired the first shot. Perhaps it was a signal to his soldiers and his Indian allies to commence the attack, or perhaps he was taking aim at a French adversary. Either way, if true, it heightens Washington’s moral responsibility in the whole affair.
The chief warrior contended that the French traded volleys with the English, “two or three Fires of as many Pieces as would go off, being rainy Weather.” The French “having taken to their Heels and running, happening to run the Way the Half King was with his Warriors, eight of them met with their Destiny by the Indian Tomayhawks.” The stunned French survivors fled back in the opposite direction, only to run headlong into Monacatootha and Cherokee Jack, who presented the prisoners to Washington, adding that “we had blooded the Edge of his Hatchet a little.”
One Frenchman, named Monceau, managed to slip into the woods and spread news of the skirmish. The rest were now prisoners huddled near the British, hoping that they would not be tomahawked. Three Virginians were wounded—a strong indication that the French had managed to return fire earlier in the battle. One Virginian had been killed.
The chief warrior, however, revealed what Washington failed to report about one of his casualties—that the Virginians “unluckily shot their own Man,” who had gotten ahead of their lines in the chaos of battle.
The chief warrior’s account mentions La Force numerous times, but never Ensign Jumonville—an omission that supports the notion that the Iroquois were more focused on the hated La Force. His account also says nothing of the French reading any summons. It does relate that the Half King angrily shouted at La Force: “You came after me to take my Life and my Children.” He then raised his tomahawk over La Force, declaring, “Now I will let you see that the Six Nations can kill as well as the French.” But according to the chief warrior, La Force took refuge behind Washington, who “interposed” and prevented his death.
Immediately following the skirmish, Tanaghrisson sent French scalps to various Native groups to announce his deed. But if Tanaghrisson had expected this to somehow galvanize Ohio Indians against the French and restore his own authority, he had woefully misjudged the geopolitics of the entire Ohio Valley. By 1754, Ohio Shawnees had already declared “perpetual war” against the English, while other Delaware and Iroquois bands were firmly committed to the French alliance.
Jumonville Glen, the site of the pivotal battle, is now part of Fort Necessity National Park. The boulders in the foreground are called Washington’s Rocks. (Allison Shelley)
The chief warrior’s speech also described what happened after the battle. Washington and his men eventually returned to the Great Meadows, where they began building a fort. According to the chief warrior, Tanaghrisson had encouraged Washington to fortify elsewhere. No Indian warrior wanted to fight a European-style battle in what Tanaghrisson called “that little thing upon the Meadow.” But Washington had few options.
On July 3, 1754, Fort Necessity, as it was called, was attacked by a group of 600 Frenchmen and about 100 of their Indian allies seeking vengeance. The group’s commander, Capt. Louis Coulon de Villiers, was Jumonville’s older brother. Washington’s side suffered severe casualties. The British accepted French terms for an honorable surrender of the post.
The first skirmishes of the war took place where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers form the Ohio River, near modern-day Pittsburgh. (Guilbert Gates)
Or so they thought. Washington missed important language in the surrender document: It stated that Villiers and his men had acted only to avenge Jumonville’s “assassination.” In the pouring rain and darkness, Washington’s translator provided a faulty translation of the document. Washington maintained that he never would have signed it had he known of that charge, but the political damage was done.
The Ohio Iroquois allies were absent for all of this; by that time, they had become thoroughly disappointed with their British allies. Following Washington’s defeat at Fort Necessity, some Ohio Iroquois took refuge on the Pennsylvania frontier, while other prodigals returned to their French father in due time. The chief warrior left an unflattering portrait of Washington as a leader who “never consulted with us nor yet to take our Advice.” Tanaghrisson also described Washington as a “good-natured man but had no Experience,” complaining that the young Virginian “took upon him to command the Indians as his Slaves.”
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News of Washington’s defeat broke like a thunderclap when it reached imperial officials in London in August 1754. The British government intervened by sending Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock with two regiments of regular troops to accomplish what the colonists could not. But Braddock requested that Washington serve as an aide.
In July 1755, Washington had the chance to reclaim his reputation when Braddock’s expedition met with disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela. About ten miles east of what is now Pittsburgh, Braddock’s men were attacked by an alliance of French and Indian warriors. The British column fell into confusion as the Indian warriors formed a half moon around it. Braddock had multiple horses shot out from under him and ultimately was wounded through the lung himself. Two out of three British soldiers were wounded or killed during the four-hour battle.
Washington had multiple bullet holes through his clothes, but by all accounts, behaved with extraordinary poise under fire and tried to rally the remaining troops after Braddock was wounded. When Braddock died a few days later, Washington took his sash and kept it at Mount Vernon as a memento.
A 1913 monument marks the final resting place of Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock, who led the British forces in North America and died in 1755 at Fort Necessity. (Allison Shelley)
Washington’s heroism at the Monongahela eclipsed his earlier failures. Indeed, the military experience that he gained during the French and Indian War—along with his integrity—were the reasons the Continental Congress selected him as commander in chief of the Continental Army in 1775.
By that time, memory of Washington’s culpability in the Jumonville affair had waned significantly. The British had emerged victorious from the French and Indian War, or the Seven Years’ War as it was known in a global context: When the two countries signed the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France surrendered all of its North American territories east of the Mississippi.
But the peace between France and Britain didn’t last long. In 1778, the French signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States, which pitted them against Britain in the American War for Independence. Ironically, this meant the French were now supporting their old foe, George Washington—apparently willing to overlook the fact that he had once unintentionally confessed to the assassination of Ensign Jumonville.
What became of the Ohio Iroquois? Their alliance with the British brought them few rewards, as British settlers expanded onto their Ohio lands in the 1760s. The Revolutionary War dislocated them even farther. Some Ohio Iroquois descendants today are part of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma.
Tanaghrisson never lived to see any of this. After the Jumonville affair, he and his people relocated to a plantation in central Pennsylvania. While waiting there in exile, Tanaghrisson caught pneumonia and died in early October 1754—a fictional viceroy over an Ohio kingdom that existed only in the British imperial imagination.
1. For the newspaper description of Gist’s letter, see Gist to GW, 23 Feb. 1754. By the early 1750s Gist (c.1706–1759), a native of Maryland, had become a leading explorer, surveyor, and Indian trader. He was living in North Carolina when he was employed by the Ohio Company in 1750 to explore as far west as the Scioto River, and between 1751 and 1753 he carried out further explorations for the company on the Great Kanawha and Ohio rivers. Gist had accompanied GW on his journey to the French commandant. See Diaries,
1:130–61. At the outbreak of hostilities in 1754 Gist moved his family from his plantation (Gist’s Settlement) in the Monongahela Valley near Redstone Old Fort back to Opeckon, his place across the Potomac River from the Ohio Company’s trading post at Wills Creek. Gist later served as a guide in Braddock’s expedition and beginning in 1755 acted as a captain of scouts in the Virginia Regiment commanded by GW.
2. The Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet at the site of present-day Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. The confluence was generally called the Forks of the Ohio or the Forks.
3. The Ohio Company storehouse on the right bank of Redstone Creek near present Brownsville, Pa., was erected by the company in late 1753 and early 1754 and soon became known as Redstone Old Fort. Ens. Edward Ward described it later as “a strong square Log house with Loop Holes sufficient to have made a good Defence with a few men and very convenient for a Store House, where stores might be lodged in order to be transported by water to the place where Fort Du Quesne now stands” (Darlington, Bouquet, 42).
4. Michel Pépin, called La Force, was French commissary of stores on the upper Ohio. Because of his skill as an interpreter and diplomat he was sent down the Ohio in the winter of 1753–54 to prepare the Indians for the French occupation. In the spring of 1754 he was captured by the British forces near Fort Necessity, and a number of British observers noted how serious the loss of his services was to the French. See GW to Dinwiddie, 29 May 1754. GW had encountered La Force in Dec. 1753 while he was carrying Dinwiddie’s letter to the French commandant (Diaries, 1:146–47). For a report of this speech, see Pa. Arch. Col. Rec., 6:21–22.
5. In MS this word reads “them.”
6. Before 1754 George Croghan (d. 1782) was one of Pennsylvania’s leading Indian traders, land speculators, and Indian agents. His trade was virtually destroyed during the French and Indian War, but he continued to serve Pennsylvania during the war as commander of scouts and in supplying provisions to British forces. Trent and Croghan had been business partners since around 1745. By 1754 Croghan had moved his operations to a 4,000–acre tract on the banks of Aughwick Creek and to his plantation on Pine Creek 4 miles above the Forks of the Ohio. At the time this letter was written Croghan was at the Forks acting as an interpreter for Trent, who spoke no Indian languages.
7. Lower Shawnee Town lay on both sides of the Ohio at its confluence with the Scioto River. Although a major Shawnee town, it was inhabited by Indians of other tribes as well.
8. Muskingum, on Tuscarawas River, was about 5 miles east of present-day Coshocton,
Ohio..
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Braddock’s Defeat was the defining generational experience for many British and American officers, including Thomas Gage, Horatio Gates, and, perhaps most significantly, George Washington. A rich battle history driven by a gripping narrative and an abundance of new evidence, Braddock’s Defeat presents the fullest account yet of this defining moment in early American history
About the Author: Allison Shelley is a Washington, D.C.-based photographer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, among many other places. Her work has been recognized by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the International Women’s Media Foundation. Read more articles from Allison Shelley and Follow on Twitter @allison_shelley
.......Written documents in cursive.
HistoryThe Ohio Company, founded in 1747,
Original Washington letter in cursive
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British Army
1st (Royal, Royal Scots) Regiment of FootFormed in 1633 as a Scottish regiment, designated as 1st Regiment in 1751. Both battalions of the regiment were sent to America during the early part of the Seven Years’ War. The regiment was at the capture of Louisburg in 1758 with a strength of 954. The 1st also participated In the expedition against Ticonderoga and in the conquest of Canada after the fall of Quebec.
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17th (Leicestershire) Regiment of FootFormed in 1688 and designated the 17th in 1751. The regiment was sent to Nova Scotia in 1757, and after wintering in New York took part in the famous siege and capture of Louisburg in 1758 with a complement of 741. In the following year it was in the expedition which captured Crown Point. In the summer, after the capture of Quebec by Wolfe, columns were dispatched to converge upon Montreal, whither the remainder of the French army had withdrawn. The Seventeenth formed part of the southern column. With Lord Rollo the regiment was afterwards employed at the capture of Martinique, and subsequently at the conquest of Havana. At the peace of 1763 Cuba was restored to Spain in exchange for Florida, and the Seventeenth went back to North America.
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27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of FootFormed in 1689 and designated as the 27th regiment in 1751. At the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, the 27th went out to America 1756 and served in the operations at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and afterwards in the expedition to Montreal, which accomplished the conquest of the Canada’s. In 1761 it removed to Nova Scotia, and afterwards engaged at the capture of Martinique and Grenada, and at the siege and conquest of the Havana. From Cuba the regiment went to New York, and thence to Canada, where it served until 1767, when it returned home.
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40th (2nd Somersetshire) Regiment of FootFormed in 1702 and designated as the 40th regiment in 1751. It to served in Nova Scotia, Maine, and Newfoundland for some thirty years After the breaking out of the Seven Years’ War, the regiment went to Louisburg and took part in the capture of that famous stronghold; its grenadiers, with the “Grenadiers of Louisburg,” fought under Wolfe at Quebec in 1759. Arriving from Cape Breton in the following spring, the regiment, witnessed the surrender of the French at Montreal in September, 1760, and was afterwards at the taking of Guadeloupe in 1761, and at the conquest of the Havana in 1762..
42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of FootFormed as The Highland Regiment in 1739, it was numbered in 1751. At the beginning of the Seven Years’ War the 42nd embarked for America and was distinguished by its, “extraordinary gallantry ” in the attack on Ticonderoga, 22nd July 1758. . A second battalion was formed at this time in Perthshire, and sent out to the West Indies; it served in the attempt on Martinique, and at the conquest of Guadeloupe, afterwards joining the forces on Lake Ontario in the fall of 1759. The two battalions were employed in the operations, ending with the capture of Montreal in 1760, and at the capture of Havana in 1762. From Cuba the two battalions, reduced to one, returned to America, and were for years employed on harassing service against the Indian tribes, who at this period made incessant raids on the frontiers of Maryland, Philadelphia, and Virginia. The regiment was particularly distinguished by its gallantry at a place called Bushy Run in July 1763.
It returned from New York to Cork in October, 1767. When the War of Independence broke out, the 42nd was again sent to America. At a review on 10th April, 1776, prior to embarkation, there were in its ranks 921 Highlanders, 74 Scotch Lowlanders, 3 English, 1 Welsh, and 2 Irish. Arriving at New York in July, it fought at Long Island, White Plains, Brandywine, Philadelphia (1777) the siege of Charleston(1780), and other engagements of that struggle. In September 1783 the 42nd were posted to Halifax came home from Cape Breton in 1787. In 1786 the 2nd Battalion became the 73rd Regiment. After 1842 the regiment served at Malta, in Bermuda, and Nova Scotia until 1852, when it returned home.
43rd (Monmouthshire Light Infantry) Regiment of FootFormed in 1741, it received its numeric designation in 1751. At the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War the 43rd, which had been some years in Ireland, embarked for North America. In 1757-8. In 1759 it accompanied the expedition to Quebec. and fought under Wolfe in the memorable battle on the Plains of Abraham on 13th August, 1759. The regiment served at the subsequent defence of Quebec, and the expedition against Montreal. It was afterwards at the capture of Martinique and in the expedition to the Havana. Less than 400 strong, it left Havana for Jamaica at the peace, and was, recruited by drafts from other regiments in the West Indies. It returned home in 1764.
When troubles were threatening before the commencement of the War of Independence, the 43rd was the first regiment. sent out to America. It was in camp at Boston in July 1774, and twelve mouths later, on 17th June, 1775, at Bunker’s Hill. It saw much hard and varied service in New York (1776), Rhode Island (1777-79) and Virginia(1781), down to the surrender at Yorktown in October 1781. After the peace its scattered companies were brought home from America and Jamaica.
In 1812, the first battalion proceeded from the south of France to America, and took part in the desperate attempt on New Orleans, and subsequent capture of Fort Bowyer, Mobile. It was at Deal at the commencement of the Waterloo campaign. It went to New Brunswick in 1835, and was one of the regiments dispatched from New Brunswick to Quebec, on horse-sleighs, in the depth of the winter of 1838-39, on the occasion of the insurrection in Lower Canada. The regiment was employed in Canada until 1844, when it removed to Nova Scotia, and came home in 1846.
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44th (East Essex) Regiment of FootFormed in 1741, it received its numeric designation in 1751. In 1755, the regiment went with reinforcements to North America, and was with Braddock in the disastrous attempt on Fort du Quesne, on the Ohio, and afterwards in the attacks on Ticonderoga and Fort Niagara, and in the expedition against Montreal. It remained in Canada until 1765, when it came home.
In May, 1775, the regiment embarked for Boston, and arrived there in July just after the battle of Bunker’s Hill. It made the campaigns of 1776-8, and fought at Long Island, Brandywine, and Philadelphia (1777), after which it was at New York, whence, in 1779, it proceeded to Canada, and remained there until 1786, when it again returned home. In 1816, the first battalion proceeded from the east coast of Spain to America, and fought at Bladensburg and at the capture of Washington, and in the disastrous expedition to New Orleans. It returned home at the peace.Links- East Essex Regiment
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45th (Nottinghamshire) Regiment of FootFormed in 1741, it received its numeric designation in 1751. The regiment was sent to Gibraltar, and afterwards to America, in 1746, to assist the New Englanders in their enterprise against the French settlement of Cape Breton, but, after the peace, was withdrawn from Louisburg to Nova Scotia, and there served many years. It was in Nova Scotia when the Seven Years’ War commenced, and bore a share in the capture of Louisburg (with 956 soldiers) in 1758; after which it was stationed in Cape Breton and Nova Scotia until 1766, when it returned home, and was some years in Ireland..
47th (Lancashire) Regiment of Foot Formed in 1741, it received its numeric designation in 1751.The regiment went to America in 1750. At the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War it was still in America, serving in Nova Scotia. The regiment was at the siege and capture of Louisburg in June 1758. It went with Wolfe to Quebec the year after, and in the memorable battle on the Plains of Abraham on 12th September, 1759, together with the 43rd, formed the centre of the front line. The regiment was with Murray at the winter defence of Quebec, and in the expedition against Montreal in 1761 . It was, also at the conquest of Martinique in 1762. It returned home at the peace of 1763..
48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment of FootFormed in 1741, designated as 48th Regiment in 1751 and became the Northamptonshire Regiment in 1782. The regiment was one of those sent out to America under General Braddock in 1755, and served in the expedition against Fort Duquesne. In 1756 it was among the troops sent from Virginia to Nova Scotia, and served at the capture of Louisburg in 1758 (with its 1,029 troops), and with Wolfe at Quebec in 1759. It was in Quebec during the winter defence of 1759-60, and the expedition against Montreal ; after which it was at the reduction of Martinique and at the conquest of Havana in 1762. It returned home at the peace of 1763. The regiment was in America when the troubles with the mother country began; but it afterwards went to the West Indies, and served there throughout the period of the American War..
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