was here, and a few old men. The trader Croghan and Captain Montour
whose Seneca name was Sattelihu had stopped, and gone into the west,
bearing presents and peace belts from Pennsylvania to the Miamis of
Ohio.
“You have been away a long time, Hunter,” Bright Lightning greeted
Robert.
“I have been to the Americans,” said Robert.
“Who are they?”
“They are the people of the captain Washington, in the Long Knives’
country.”
“Wah!” Bright Lightning exclaimed. “What do they look like?”
“Like the English. They are white, too; but they differ like the
Mohican differs from the Delaware.”
“Do the Washington Americans come to build a big house?”
“Not yet,” said Robert. “A man named Gist is come to open the trail
and look upon the land for the Americans.”
“The men of Onas say that the Long Knives of Virginia are coming to
settle upon the lands,” Bright Lightning informed. “We shall be driven
off. The hearts of the people in Logstown are turning bad.”
And that was so. When Christopher Gist drove his pack horses down the
valley to Logstown he was met with black looks and mutterings.
“You will never get home safe,” said Delawares and Shawnees, and even
some of the Mingos. “You are here to spy upon the land, and steal it
with settlers.”
The Pennsylvania traders stationed here laughed, and encouraged the
talk. But Gist acted boldly.
“I am come with a message from the great King across the water,” he
answered. “He has sent me to his children. I visit all the Indians to
bid them to a great council with their other father, the Governor of
Virginia, at Logstown this next spring.”
“I think you had better go on,” Scarouady said to Gist. “Your words
shall be spoken by me to Tanacharison, but the forest is better for you
than Logstown.”
“I think so, myself,” replied Gist. “I will catch up with Croghan.”
“The Miami have sent a peace belt to the Governor of Pennsylvania, and
have told him that their friendship for the English will last while the
sun and moon run round the world,” stated Scarouady. “Croghan and his
men are safe. You should be safe, for you bear peace words from the
King our father and from the Governor of Virginia. But to make you safe
I will send with you this boy, whose name is the Hunter. Tanacharison
is his father. When the Wyandot and the Shawnee and the Miami see that
Tanacharison has lent his son to you they will not dare to harm you.
Besides, the boy was born in that country. He knows the trails and
maybe he will see his mother again on White Woman’s Creek. A warrior
should not forget his mother.”
To protect Christopher Gist and to show him the way, Robert the Hunter
rode beside him southward down the wintry Ohio Valley. Soon they cut
west across the country for the town of the Wyandots or Little Mingos,
on the upper Muskingum River which means Elk’s Eye.
Here they caught George Croghan and Captain Andrew Montour, who had
been giving out presents. The Wyandots were many. They numbered one
hundred families, so that Muskingum of eastern Ohio was larger than
Logstown.
The English traders were gathering here. The French Ottawas to the
north had captured three traders and sent them to Canada. Part of the
Wyandots had been in favor of the French of Onontio, but now George
Croghan laughed gaily when he shook hands with Christopher Gist.
“Unpack,” he said. “We are brothers. I have raised the flag over my
house and over the house of the chief. The Wyandots say that the French
have spread evil in the land with their lead plates and are trying to
drive out the traders. We are to hold a council soon. After that we
will travel together.”
The Wyandots crowded forward to shake hands also with Gist.
“The French of Onontio have broken the chain of friendship,” they
said. “Let the English come and live with us. Bring great guns and make
a fort.”
When the council was held Christopher Gist and George Croghan and
Captain Montour dressed in their best. Captain Montour was as famous as
Captain Joncaire, but was better looking. His mother was half French
and half Indian, his father was a Seneca; and he stood high in the
councils of the Iroquois. He spoke well in the Iroquois tongues, and
was white of skin.
At the council he wore a long coat of reddish cloth, a red vest of
satin, a white shirt outside his trousers, which were tucked into his
shoes and stockings; around his neck a black tie with silver stars,
upon his head a tall, hard hat, in his ears brass wire rings plaited
like a basket handle; and his face was painted with a broad circle of
bear’s grease and blue clay.
He spoke the words of George Croghan, and the Hunter spoke the words of
Christopher Gist; and the Wyandots listened.
“We accept the wampum of our brothers from the English of Pennsylvania
and of Virginia,” they said. “The French have soiled the peace path.”
“Your father of Virginia asks you to visit him and receive presents
sent by your great father across the water.”
“That,” the Wyandots answered, “cannot be decided until after the big
council at Logstown in the spring.”
“We will go on to the Shawnee,” said George Croghan.
That pleased Robert. The trail to the Shawnees led across White Woman’s
Creek, where his mother lived among the Delawares. He found her there,
and well.
“What are you doing, travelling with white people?” she asked.
“I am the mouth and ears of Captain Gist who brings peace belts from
the Governor of Virginia,” he said proudly. “He is a good man.”
“I do not know him, but I know this Croghan,” she answered. “He is
filling the country with his traders who feed the Indians rum against
the law. I remember when I was a girl not as old as you I lived among
the white people and they were good. They prayed much and did right.
I have seen that as soon as they get into the woods they turn about
and cheat and lie and do wrong. I would rather have you stay with
Tanacharison, or else come home.”
“But all the English are not bad,” said Robert. And he had much to tell
her, of Washington the American, and the old man, and Christopher Gist.
But she would not believe, for through forty years she had seen only
the rough traders.
The principal town of the terrible Shawnees, who were light of skin,
red of heart, and looked upon the Delawares as grand-fathers, lay in
the southwest, at the mouth of the river Sciota in southern Ohio. The
Shawnees, like the Delawares, hated the Iroquois who had driven them
and the Delawares out of their Pennsylvania homes.
The Shawnees, too, had heard that the French were taking the English
traders away from the Indians of the Ohio. They held council with
Captain Croghan and Christopher Gist in the great council house ninety
feet long and roofed with bark, on the north side of the Ohio, here at
Sonnioto.
“The French came, claiming the land,” they said. “We shot bullets
through their flag. We threatened Captain Joncaire with fire. We would
not give up the English traders to them, for the English traders
furnish us with plenty of powder. Were it not for the English we would
be poor. You may stay among us, and in the spring we will go with you
to the big council at Logstown.”
But the Miamis were yet to be visited. Their principal town was two
hundred miles northward; and they had sent friendship belts to Onas the
Governor of Pennsylvania.
The Shawnees pointed out the way, and George Croghan led into the
unknown.
The season was early spring. The country was fresh and beautiful, rich
with deer and buffalo and turkeys, and grass and noble trees.
After a time they came to the upper Miami River, and they saw upon the
west side the great town Pickawillanee of the Miami nation, where today
is Piqua, Ohio.
So they made a raft of logs and branches, and loaded it with the
presents and the saddles, and drove their horses into the river. The
white men and Captain Montour crossed on the raft, but Robert the
Hunter swam with the horses, to keep them going.
The Miamis came out with the peace pipe to meet George Croghan and
Christopher Gist. Then under the flag of the English they entered the
town, while the warriors fired salutes.
The flag was hoisted over the chief’s house. A powerful people, were
these Twightwees or Miamis, forming a league as strong as the league of
the Iroquois, and ruling all this country clear to the Mississippi.
They were haughty, but polite, and swift of foot.
Pickawillanee contained four hundred houses, and many English traders,
who had built a fort against the French. The chief was Old Britain of
the Piankashaw tribe. The French of Captain Céleron had been here; and
as answer to his threats Old Britain had asked the traders to build
that fort.
This very afternoon a council was held in the Long House with the
messengers from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Captain Montour said, for
Croghan and Gist:
“Brothers the Twightwees, we give you two strings of wampum to remove
the trouble from your hearts and to clear your eyes to the sunshine.
Your brothers the Wyandot and Delaware and Shawnee in the south send
you these four strings of wampum and ask you to take care of us.”
“Yo ho!” the Miamis grunted, in approval.
“Your brother the Governor of Pennsylvania has heard you speak to him,
and he sees that his traders are safe among you,” said Captain Montour.
“We come with news of great importance, and we hope that you have
among you somebody who knows the Mingo tongue, so that we are being
understood.”
“Yo ho!” the Miamis grunted.
“You see this man Gist, from the Long Knives of the country of
Virginia,” said Captain Montour. “Tanacharison who is Half-King of the
Mingo upon the Ohio, your brothers to the east, out of love has given
his son to him, to travel with him and sit beside him. This man also
has news for you from your brother the Governor of Virginia.”
“Yo ho!” the Miamis grunted.
But not all the Miami tribes were here. The principal men of the Weas
and the Piankashaws who lived farther west in Indiana and Illinois had
to be sent for.
So another council was set. Gist and Croghan dealt out paint and
colored shirts, that the chiefs and councillors might dress for the
great event. Robert the Hunter, from Logstown of the Mingo, roaming
about Pickawillanee with its bark houses and swarm of Miamis, never
before had seen so many Indians together.
At the grand council in the Miami Long House Captain Montour wore his
tall hat and his reddish coat and his spangled neckerchief. Sitting in
a circle the chiefs and old men and the messengers from the English
each took one puff of the great calumet or peace pipe. Then there
were speeches. Then the Miami delegates, two from each tribe, signed
a treaty with the Governor of Pennsylvania. Old Britain promised
Christopher Gist that the Miami should come to the Logstown council and
get their presents from the Governor of Virginia.
Then a herald hurried in to say that peace messengers from the French
of Onontio were waiting outside.
The Miami shouted in anger; but King Britain stood up beside the
English flag and called:
“Silence! This is no way in which to receive messengers. Let those men
be admitted and we will hear what they have to say. Then we shall know
what to answer.”
The messengers came in. They were four Ottawas from the north. The head
Ottawa strode proudly through, with the French flag.
“Brothers the Miami,” he said, “we are come with the flag of Onontio
and with words to strengthen the chain of friendship between the Miami
and their French brothers. Onontio wishes to speak through our lips.”
“The messenger from Onontio may speak,” answered King Britain; so he
took the flag and planted it beside the English flag.
“Your father, the French King,” the Ottawa said, “remembers his
children in the Ohio country, and sends them two kegs of milk and
this tobacco for their pipes.” The other Ottawas laid down two kegs
of brandy and the roll of tobacco. “Your father has, by these, made
a clean road for you to come and see him and his officers,” the head
Ottawa went on; “and he urges you to come, assuring you that all past
differences will be forgotten.”
But King Britain replied sternly:
“It is true that your French father has sent for us several times, and
has said the road to him is clear. But the road is not clear; it is
foul and bloody and the French have made it so. We have cleared a road
for our brothers the English; now your fathers have made it bad and
have taken some of our brothers prisoners. This we look upon as done to
ourselves.”
With that, King Britain turned his back upon the Ottawas and strode out
of the Long House.
The Ottawas pretended to weep.
“We see our brothers the Miami dead,” they howled. “The French of our
father are like the leaves of the forest, but who are the English? When
your father learns of your reply, he will send soldiers with whips to
drive you from his land. Woe, woe! All the land will be red, and there
will be only widows and small children. The name Miami will be known
no more. We weep for the Miami.”
The Miamis did not mind; and George Croghan and Christopher Gist
laughed. The chief orator of the Miami stood up. He said, to the
English:
“You have taken us by the hand into the great chain of friendship.
Therefore we give you this bundle of skins, to make shoes for your
people, and this pipe to smoke in, to let you know that our hearts are
good toward you, our brothers. As for these foolish messengers, they
may go back where they came from.”
War Chief Whooping Crane stood up:
“French fathers,” he called, looking north as if he were speaking to
Canada, “you have wished us to go home to you, but I tell you it is not
our home. We have made a path to the sun-rising, and have been taken by
the hand by our brothers the English, and in that road we shall go. As
you threaten us with war in the spring, we tell you, if you are angry
we are ready for you, and we will die here before we will go to you.
That you may know this is our mind we send you this string of black
wampum.”
Then he said to the Ottawas:
“Brothers, the Ottawas, you hear what I say. Tell that to your fathers
the French, for it is our mind, and we speak it from our hearts.”
While the Miamis hooted and defied, the Ottawas were given back their
flag and their kegs of “milk” and their tobacco; and still weeping and
howling they started off for the French at the Great Lakes. That seemed
to settle the French.
The next day there was a grand Feather Dance, most remarkable. Three
chief dancers, painted all over, pretended to be birds and jumped
about inside a circle, to the beats of a drum, and waved feathered
sticks. Warriors struck the post with their hatchets and sang of their
great deeds, and threw gifts. The dance lasted half a day.
Then Christopher Gist and the Hunter left George Croghan and Andrew
Montour, and the Miamis of Pickawillanee, and started home.
“Tell the Governor of Virginia that our friendship for the English
shall stand like the loftiest mountain. We give no heed to the French,”
Old Britain bade.
So having crossed the river again with Gist, Robert the Hunter rode
south, through the rich prairies of Ohio, the two hundred miles to
Shawnee town.
“You will have good word for the Washington company,” he said.
Everything seemed to have turned out well.
“Yes,” said Gist.
“Now the French will see they cannot come in, and the Washington
company will build their big houses.”
“Yes,” said Gist. “But the French are quick. They can travel down
the rivers again while the men of Virginia are breaking through the
mountains.”
“Long Knife Americans must get there first and block the road,” said
the Hunter.
“Americans? Where did you learn that word?” asked Gist.
“I heard. Washington is American; you are American. Mebbe many
Americans in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Not the same as English of the
King across the water. Mebbe if you act quick you beat the French.”
“Your ears are big. You should be called the Rabbit,” laughed
Christopher Gist. “Methinks the French are quick and brave, like the
eagle; the English are slower, but also brave, and hard to turn when
once they have started, like the buffalo. If we Americans, such as you
call Washington, are free to act, we may partake of the qualities of
both the French and English; but now we are children of the King. Well,
from this Shawnee town I go down river to see more country. You will go
up river, and tell Tanacharison what we have done. You have been a good
boy; the horse you ride is yours.”
Then Gist travelled for the south, and Robert turned around and rode
home alone, to report to Tanacharison and Scarouady.
He had left Logstown in the last week of November; he arrived at the
beginning of the last week of March, having been gone four months.
V
THE YOUNG CHIEF ARRIVES
The French were coming! The great council of Mingos, Shawnees,
Delawares, Wyandots and Miamis had been held at Logstown. Christopher
Gist was there and a man named Captain Joseph Fry to sign for Virginia.
Washington had stayed home. Gist said that Washington’s brother, the
sick chief, had died, and Washington was needed to comfort the widow.
The Iroquois from Onondago the council seat did not come.
“We do not meet to talk of business in the woods and weeds,” they sent
word. “But the English have our permission to use land southeast of the
Ohio. We do not give title to that land. The lands of Virginia stop on
the sunrise side of the Alleghany Mountains.”
So a treaty of friendship was signed with Virginia. Tanacharison
himself said, to Gist and Fry:
“Be quick to build us a big fort at the Forks of the Ohio, that will
keep the French back. If the chief Washington is dead, let the young
Washington bring in the men and build the fort.”
But the French were coming. The council had been ended a little time
when runners from the west arrived with bad news. Two hundred and fifty
Ottawas and Ojibwas of the French, led by Charles Langlade the bold
French ranger, had attacked Pickawillanee of the Miamis, and taken it
and its English traders, and the Ottawas had eaten old Chief Britain
of the Piankashaws!
“Now we see that the French of Onontio are strong,” said the King
Shingis of the Delawares. “They have conquered the Miami, but the
English have done nothing. We had better wait and see.”
For the French were coming. Christopher Gist was laying out a town
fifty miles southeast of the Forks, near a place called Great Meadows;
but the Ohio company were still sitting in their storehouse at Will’s
Creek on the Potomac, one hundred and fifty miles by trail from the
Forks of the Ohio.
And the French were coming. Runners from Onondago arrived. Mohawks had
seen a great fleet of French canoes loaded with soldiers making south
upon the Great Lakes, to enter the Ohio Country.
The water was covered with boats, said the runners, and the boats bore
six thousand soldiers and Indians, to drive the English out of the Ohio
country.
Next, the French had landed and had built a fort on the southeastern
shore of Lake Erie, from which they could march by land and river to
the head of the Allegheny River. And from this place they cut a road
through the woods to the River of Buffalo, which emptied into the
Allegheny. Here they built another fort; and they would paddle down
Buffalo River into the Allegheny, and down the Allegheny to the Forks
of the Ohio. They sent men forward under Captain Joncaire to the Seneca
and Delaware town of Venango at the mouth of the Buffalo River, and
drove Trader John Fraser from his house and took it. Fraser had run
away, to live in another house at the Monongahela, south of the Forks.
Now Venango was French; the French were as close as the head of the
Allegheny, sixty miles from Logstown, and the American-English of
Virginia and of Pennsylvania had not paid any attention, except with
words, to the Mingo wampum belts summoning aid.
“The French will build a line of forts all down the Ohio, and shut
us from the English traders,” said Tanacharison. “Where is that Ohio
Company, who have permission to build a fort for us? If we go to war
with the French we lose our lands.”
And many of the Delawares and Mingos and Shawnees began to think that
the English of Virginia and Pennsylvania were weak.
At last a man came, sent by the Governor of Virginia, to warn the
French to stay back out of the country. His name was Captain William
Trent. From Logstown he marched northwest, to find the French
commander. But in a little time he was back again. When he had reached
Pickawillanee he found only the French flag flying over the burned fort
and houses, and his heart turned over. He did nothing at all.
“That man is a coward,” said Tanacharison. “He is afraid of the French,
but I am not. I will go, myself, to the French at Lake Erie and find
the head soldier, and tell him what he must do.”
Tanacharison was gone a month. Then he, too, came back. He had talked
with the French chief, and had tried to return the peace belt which
held the Mingos to the French. The French chief had laughed at him, and
called him “child”――had thrown the belt in his face and ordered him
home.
A Delaware who had been at Venango brought word to Logstown that the
French were coming down in the spring; if the Indians meddled the
Indians would be killed while the English were being conquered; and
even if the English kept part of the lands, the other lands would go
to the French and the Indians would have nothing. This was the warning
sent by Captain Joncaire.
“If the English do not help us this fall, in the spring they will be
too late,” said Tanacharison. “For in the spring when the waters are
high the French will bring their canoes and men while the English are
kept back by the snows in the mountains. Why do the men of Virginia sit
with their hands between their knees?”
The Half-King sent a string of wampum to Trader Fraser’s house in the
south on the Monongahela, and a speech for Assaragoa the Governor
of Virginia, telling him that the Chippewas, the Ottawas and the
Adirondacks of the north had taken up the hatchet for the French;
he should hurry many men. Then, having done all that he could, the
Half-King went hunting.
Scarouady stayed. If word came from the Governor, Robert was to carry
it to Tanacharison at his hunting cabin.
Then, when Tanacharison had been gone only a few days, great news broke.
It was Robert who made the discovery. Early in the morning he had
ridden up the Ohio, to hunt on the other side of the Meeting of the
Waters. He kept a little canoe hidden in the bushes at the Forks, just
for that purpose.
He passed King Shingis’s town, across the Ohio; and leaving his horse
he was going for his canoe, when he saw two men among the trees of the
bank opposite.
They were on horses, and so they were English; Indians travelled afoot.
And he could see that they were white men, anyway. Thereupon the Hunter
shoved right out and paddled over, and found George Washington waiting
for him.
“Hallo!” Washington greeted. “It is the Hunter again. Welcome, Hunter.”
“Welcome, Washington,” Robert answered. “You build fort?”
The other man he did not know. That was a stout man, with a face like a
wrinkled persimmon, and with red nose, very blue eyes, and the yellow
hair of his chin cut to a point like a tuft of a lynx ear. He wore a
uniform of old blue coat, buttoned tight, and pants tucked into boots.
Washington wore a three cornered hat, and a blue coat with white
facings and bright buttons and tails turned back, tight breeches and
boots. It looked like a soldier chief’s dress.
“This is a good place for a fort,” said Washington. “But I do not build
it. I am going on.”
“You come Logstown with company?” asked the Hunter.
“Yes, to Logstown. Is the Half-King there?”
“Half-King gone hunting. He leave Scarouady and me to wait if any word
come from English. You bring Long Knife Americans, Washington?”
“My men follow with a canoe so that we can cross,” said Washington.
“It iss a goot friend of yours, major?” spoke the stout, red-nosed man,
in English hard to understand.
“He is the boy who showed me how to wade a stream by carrying a rock,”
answered Washington. “Half-King is his father.”
Washington remembered. That had been several years ago; he seemed much
older now, and the Hunter had grown, too. But he remembered.
Other men came. They were Christopher Gist and John Davidson the
trader. They had left a third man to wait for the men bringing a canoe
down from John Fraser’s place up the Monongahela.