USA > Pennsylvania > Erie County > History of Erie County, Pennsylvania, Volume One > Part 11
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"At twelve o'clock we set out for the fort, and were prevented arriv- ing there until the 11th by excessive rains, snows, and bad traveling through many mires and swamps; these we were obliged to pass in order to avoid crossing the creek, which was impassable, either by fording or rafting, the water was so high and rapid.
"12th-I prepared early to wait upon the commander, and was re- ceived and conducted to him by the second officer in command. I ac- quainted him with my business, and offered by commission and letter; both of which he requested me to keep until the arrival of Monsieur Reparti, Captain of the next fort, who was sent for and expected every hour.
"The commander is a Knight of the military order of St. Louis, and named Legardeur de St. Pierre. He is an elderly gentleman and has much the air of a soldier. He was sent over to take command imme-
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diately upon the death of the late general, and arrived here about seven days before me.
"At two o'clock the gentleman who was sent for arrived, when I offered the letter, etc., again, which they received, and adjourned into a private apartment for the captain to translate, who understood a little English. After he had done it, the commander desired I would walk in and bring my interpreter to peruse and correct it, which I did.
"13th-The chief officers retired to hold a council of war, which gave me an opportunity of taking the dimensions of the fort, and making what observations I could.
"It is situated on the south or west fork of French Creek, near the water; and is almost surrounded by the creek, and a branch of it, which form a kind of island. Four houses compose the sides. The bastions are made of piles driven into the ground, standing more than twelve feet above it, and sharp at the top, with port-holes cut for cannon, and loop-holes for the small arms to fire through. There are eight six-pound pieces mounted in each bastion, and one piece of four pounds before the gate. In the bastions are a guard-house, chapel, doctor's lodging, and the commander's private store round which are laid platforms for the cannon and men to stand on. There are several barracks without the fort, for the soldiers' dwellings, covered, some with bark, and some with boards made chiefly of logs. There are several other houses, such as stables, smith's shop, etc.
"I could get no certain account of the number of men here; but, according to the best judgment I could form, there are a hundred, exclu- sive of the officers, of whom there are many. I also gave orders to the people who were with me, to take an exact account of the canoes, which were hauled up to convey their forces down in the spring. This they did and told fifty of birch bark, and a hundred and seventy of pine; besides many others, which were blocked out, in readiness for being made.
"14th-As the snow increased very fast and our horses daily became weaker, I sent them off unloaded, under the care of Barnaby Currin and two others, to make all convenient dispatch to Venango, and there to wait our arrival, if there was a prospect of the river's freezing; if not, then to continue down to Shanopin's town, at the forks of Ohio, and there to wait until we came to cross the Allegheny; intending myself to go down by water, as I had the offer of a canoe or two.
"As I found many plots concerted to retard the Indians' business, and
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prevent their returning with me, I endeavored all that lay in my power to frustrate their schemes, and hurried them on to execute their intended design. They accordingly pressed for admittance this evening, which was at length granted them, privately, to the commander and one or two other officers. The Half-King told me that he offered the wampum to the commander, who evaded taking it, and made many fair promises of love and friendship; said he wanted to live in peace and trade amicably with them, as proof of which he would seen some goods immediately down to the Logstown for them. But I rather think the design of that is, to bring away all our straggling traders they meet with, as I privately understood they intended to carry an officer, etc., with them. And what rather confirms this opinion, I was inquiring of the commander by what authority he had made prisoners of several of our English subjects. He told me .that the country belonged to them; that no Englishman had a right to trade upon those waters; and that he had orders to make every person prisoner who attempted it on the Ohio, or the waters of it.
"I inquired of Captain Reparti about the boy that was carried by this place, as it was done while the command devolved upon him, between the death of the late general, and the arrival of the present. He acknowl- edged that a boy had been carried past; and that the Indians had two or three white men's scalps (I was told by some of the Indians at Venango eight), but pretended to have forgotten the name of the place where the boy came from, and all the particular facts, though he had questioned him for some hours, as they carrying past. I likewise inquired what they had done with John Trotter and James McClocklan, two Pennsylvania traders, whom they had taken with all their goods. They told me they had been sent to Canada, but were now returned home.
"This evening I received an answer to his honor, the Governor's letter from the commandant," which read as follows:
" 'December 15, 1753.
" 'From the Fort on the River Au Boeuf :
" 'Sir-As I have the honor of commanding here as chief, Mr. Wash- ington delivered to me a letter which you wrote to the commander of the French troops. I should have been glad that you had given him orders, or that he had been inclined to proceed to Canada to see our Gen- eral, to whom it better belongs than to me to set forth the evidence and the reality of the rights of the King, my master, to the lands situate along the River Ohio, and to contest the pretensions of the King of Great Britain
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thereto. I shall transmit your letter to the Marquis Du Quesne. His answer will be a law to me. And if he shall order me to communicate it to you, sir, you may be assured I shall not fail to dispatch it forthwith to you. As to the summons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it. Whatever may be your intentions, I am here by virtue of the orders of my General, and I entreat you, sir, not to doubt one moment but that I am determined to conform myself to them with all the exactness and resolution which can be expected from the best officer. I do not know that in the progress of this campaign anything has passed which can be reputed an act of hostility, or that is contrary to the treaties which subsist between the two crowns; the continuance of which pleases us as much as it does the English. Had you been pleased, sir, to descend to particularize the facts which occasioned your complaint, I should have had the honor of answering you in the fullest, and I am persuaded, the most satisfactory manner, etc., LeGardeur De St. Pierre'."
"15th-The commandant ordered a plentiful store of liquor, provi- sions, etc., to be put on board our canoes, and appeared to be extremely complaisant, though he exerted every artifice which he could invent to set our Indians at variance with us, to prevent their going until after our departure; presents, rewards and everything which could be suggested by him or his officers. I can not say that ever in my life I suffered so much anxiety as I did in this affair; I saw that every stratagem, which the most fruitful brain could invent, was practiced to win the Half-King to their interest; and that leaving him there was giving them the oppor- tunity they aimed at. I went to the Half-King and pressed him in the strongest terms to go; he told me the commandant would not discharge him until morning. I then went to the commandant, and desired him to do their business, and complained of ill-treatment; for keeping them as they a part of my company, was detaining me. This he promised not to do, but to forward my journey as much as he could. He protested that he did not detain them but was ignorant of the cause of their stay ; though I soon found it out. He had promised them a present of guns, etc., if they would wait until the morning. As I was very much pressed by the Indians to wait this day for them, I consented, on a promise that nothing should hinder them in the morning.
"16th-The French were not slack in their inventions to keep the Indians this day also. But as they were obliged, according to promise, to give the present, they then endeavored to try the power of liquor, which
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WASHINGTON MONUMENT AT WATERFORD, PA.
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I doubt not would have prevailed at any other time than this; but I urged and insisted with the King so closely upon his word, that he refrained, and set off with us as he had engaged.
"We had a tedious and very fatiguing passage down the creek. Sev- eral times we had like to have been staved against rocks; and many times were obliged all hands to get out and remain in the water half an hour or more, getting over shoals. At one place the ice had lodged and made it impassable by water; we were therefore obliged to carry our canoe across the neck of land, a quarter of a mile over. We did not reach Venango until the 22d, where we met with our horses.
"This creek is extremely crooked. I dare say the distance between the fort and Venango can not be less than one hundred and thirty miles to follow the meanders.
"23d-When I got ready to set off, I sent for the Half-King to know whether he intended to go with us, or by water. He told me that White Thunder had hurt himself much, and was sick and unable to walk; therefore he was obliged to carry him down in a canoe. As I found he intended to stay here a day or two and knew that Monsieur would employ every scheme to set him against the English, as he had before done, I told him I hoped he would guard against his flattery, and let no fine speeches influence him in their favor. He desired I might not be concerned, for he knew the French too well for anything to engage him in their favor; and that though he could not go down with us, he yet would endeavor to meet at the forks with Joseph Campbell, to deliver a speech for me to carry to his Honor the Governor. He told us he would order the Young Hunter to attend us and get provisions, etc., if wanted.
"Our horses were now so weak and feeble, and the baggage so heavy (as we were obliged to provide all the necessaries which the journey would require), that we doubted much their performing it. Therefore, myself and the others, except the drivers, who were obliged to ride, gave up our horses for packs to assist along with the baggage. I put myself in an Indian walking dress, and continued with them three days, until I found there was no probability of their getting home in reasonable time. The horses became less able to travel every day; the cold increased very fast; and the roads were becoming much worse by a deep snow, continu- ally freezing; therefore, as I was uneasy to get back, to make report of my proceedings to his Honor, the Governor, I determined to prosecute my journey the nearest way through the woods on foot.
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"Accordingly I left Mr. Vanbraam in charge of our baggage, with money and directions to provide necessaries from place to place for them- selves and horses, and to make the most convenient dispatch in traveling.
"I took my necessary papers, pulled off my clothes and tied myself up in a watch-coat. Then, with gun in hand and pack on my back, in which were my papers and provisions, I set out with Mr. Gist, fitted in the same manner, on Wednesday, the 26th. The day following, just after we had passed a place called Murderingtown (where we intended to quit the path and steer across the country for Shannapin's town), we fell in with a party of French Indians, who had laid in wait for us. One of them fired at Mr. Gist or me, not fifteen steps off, but fortunately missed. We took this fellow into custody, and kept him until about nine o'clock at night, then let him go and walked all the remaining part of the night without making any stop, that we might get the start, so far as to be out of reach of their pursuit the next day, since we were well assured they would follow our track as soon as it was light. The next day we con- tinued traveling until quite dark, and got to the river above Shannapin's. We expected to have found the river frozen, but it was not, only about fifty yards from each shore. The ice I suppose had broken up above, for it was driving in vast quantities.
"There was no way of getting over but on a raft; which we set about, with but one poor hatchet, and finished just after sun-setting. This was a whole day's work; we next got it launched then went on board of it and set off ; but before we were half way over were jammed in the ice in such a manner that we expected every moment our raft to sink and our selves to perish. I put out my setting pole to try to stop the raft that the ice might pass by ; when the rapidity of the stream threw it with so much violence against the pole, that it jerked me out into ten feet water; but I fortunately saved myself by catching hold of the raft logs. Notwithstanding all our efforts, we could not get to either shore, but were obliged, as we were near an island, to quit our raft and make to it.
"The cold was so extremely severe, that Mr. Gist had all his fingers and some of his toes frozen, and the water was shut up so hard, that we found no difficulty in getting off of the island on the ice in the morning, and went to Mr. Frazier's. We met here with twenty warriors, who were going to the southward to war; but coming to a place on the Great Ken- hawa, where they found seven people killed and scalped (all but one woman
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with very light hair), they turned about and ran back, for fear the inhabi- tants would rise and take them as the authors of the murder. They report that the bodies were lying about the house, and some of them much torn and eaten by the hogs. By the marks which were left they say they were French Indians, or the Ottaway nation, who did it.
"As we intended to take horses here, and it required some time to find them, I went up about three miles to mouth of the Youghiogany, to visit Queen Aliquippa, who had expressed great concern that we passed her in going to the fort. I made her a present of a watch-coat and a bottle of rum, which latter was thought the better present of the two.
"Tuesday, the first of January, we left Mr. Frazier's house and ar- rived at Mr. Gist's, at Monongehela, the second, where I bought a horse and saddle. The six, we met seventeen horses loaded with materials and stores for the fort at the Fork of the Ohio, and the day after, some fami- lies going out to settle. This day we arrived at Wills' Creek, after as fatiguing journey as it is possible to conceive, rendered so by excessive bad weather. From the first day of December to the fifteenth there was but one day on which it did not rain or snow incessantly ; and throughout the whole journey we met with nothing but one continued series of cold, wet weather, which occasioned very uncomfortable lodgings, especially after we quitted our tent, which was some screen from the inclemency of it."
As we contemplate the uncomfortable, hazardous, and altogether miserable conditions experienced by the young man who shortly after- wards become our most distinguished American, we can but realize that the hand of Providence most surely guided him and protected him during the journey; and we very naturally, and most likely, will appreciate the facility, the speed, and the comfort, in which one may now journey by rail, or by automobile over the hard, smooth, concrete roadways of this state, between the points covered by the journey of George Washington in 1753.
The journey and his mission afforded but little in the way of tangible results; but it did serve to inform the English that a most determined effort was to be made by the French to secure and hold the territory west of the great mountain chain. From this time on, there could be no doubt of the plans of the French. No doubt was felt too, that nothing but military strength would avail to decide the ownership of that great empire.
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We have no doubt that Mr. Washington sincerely regretted that circumstances, over which he had but a limited control, served to prevent his calling upon the lake front of our county. Had he done so, we would have certainly been put to the expense in time and anxiety, of doing the planning if nothing more, for a memorial in his honor, the site of which would, without doubt, have served as such a bone of contention, that it would have been finally proposed to be located in the Erie Cemetery, as was done by a petition circulated in 1857 to obtain funds from Congress for the erection of a memorial to that distinguished naval hero, Commo- dore Oliver Hazard Perry; which in the latter case resulted in as complete a burial of the proposal as its funeral flavor seemed to anticipate.
The persuasions of the French, and especially those of Captain Jon- caire, did not swerve the sincere attachment of the Half-King for his English friends. But the arts brought into play on the occasion of Washington's visit were too much for the ambitious Guyasuta, who seems to have joined a delegation of Seneca Indians in a trip down to Montreal, where the Marquis de Vaudreuil and his council received them with im- pressive pomp. He appears from time to time in the French service, until the fall of Fort Niagara a little later, when he and other Senecas most humbly sought English favor.
Captain Chabert Joncaire was, perhaps, the chief moving spirit in the French activities and plans hereabouts during 1753 and later. He it was who sought out, and placated the Indians; to him belongs to the credit of choosing the locations for most of the fortified sites in this region ; to him Washington first applied for information as to the French commanders; it was Captain Chabert Joncaire who earnestly sought to seduce the Indians from their friendship for the English, and whose per- suasions caused Washington such anxiety and distress on the occasion of his visit to Venango and La Boeuf ; his acumen inspired the ambition of the French government to prepare and back the expeditions into and down the valley of the Ohio, and thence to the Wabash country ; his persuasions obtained the permission of the Indians for the building of the new fort at the mouth of French Creek, which the French usually styled Fort Machault, at Weningo, Venango, Veningo, and other euphonious titles; and the English uniformly referred to as Fort Venango.
It is proper to note here, that the English had long considered the plan of acquiring authority over the Niagara region, and of fortifying that dominating locality. In 1754 a project for fortifying the Niagara (11)
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was a part of the plan "for a general union of the British Colonies in North America," formulated by Benjamin Franklin and by him proposed as one of its commissioners, to the Albany Conference; which conference, although rarely mentioned in standard histories of our time, had much to do with stimulating colonial feelings towards national freedom and unity.
The Albany Conference consisted of twenty-three commissioners from New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Maryland, who met in the Court House at Albany on June 19, 1754, and persisted in their sessions until July 11. Mr. Franklin's plan was proposed to this conference on July 10, and was unanimously recommended to the respective colonies. Embraced in this plan was the "settling of two strong colonies of English between the Ohio and Lake Erie . . providing only that the Crown would be at the expense of removing the little forts the French have erected in their encroachments on his Majesty's territories and supporting a strong one near the Falls of Niagara, with a few small armed vessels, or half galleys to cruise the Lakes. .
. The fort and armed vessels at the Strait of Niagara would be a vast security to the frontiers of these new colonies against any attempts of the French from Canada."
Mr. Franklin was far-sighted enough to realize that every fort should have some sort of a settlement about it, for, he says, "the fort would protect settlers, and the settlers defend the fort and supply it with pro- visions." He pointed out in his newspaper, the "Pennsylvania Gazette," that the French encroachments meant business, and would ultimately cause most serious trouble for the English colonies if not suppressed. The colonies in those days were very much each for itself, and had not yet learned that they had a superior common interest which should be fos- tered and developed by a more perfect union amongst them. It was on the occasion of the surrender of the fort at the Forks of the Ohio by Ensign Ward of Captain Trent's company, on April 17, 1754, to an overwhelming force of French and Indians who had descended from the north, that Franklin's "Gazette" contained the first and only news for some time, of this mishap, and with his philosophical observations that "from the great distance of Britain, they (the French) presume that they may with impunity violate the most solemn treaties, subsisting between the two Crowns, kill, seize and imprison our traders, and confiscate their effects at pleasure (as they have done for several years past), murder
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and scalp our farmers, with their wives and children, and take an easy possession of such parts of the British territory as they find most con- venient for them; which, if they are permitted to do, must end in the destruction of the British interest, trade and Plantations in America."
Realizing the supreme value of some appeal to the understanding through the eyesight, he had prepared a wood-cut of a serpent, which was divided into eight sections, a section for each colony at that time, with the legend "Unite or Die." Such suggestions as these, which Ben- jamin Franklin persistently placed before the contemplative mind of the reading public, went far toward preparing the soil, and sowing the vital- ized seeds, which grew into the harvest which was announced with the startling clangor of the great bell in a certain Philadelphia steeple on July 4, 1776. Much of quiet preparation throughout the colonies, of a similar character to this, had needs to be done, before the inhabitants of those colonies realized that a nation had been brought into being here on this continent; and that they had long outgrown their first condition of separated and individual settlements in a wilderness land. The col- lective determination of the inhabitants required careful and earnest education, and persistent fostering, to convince those same inhabitants that the welfare of all was also the welfare of each. Much persistent argument and urging was required before it was possible to secure the needed initiative by the colonies to meet the danger developing in the west. They had been so utterly dependent upon the Crown for their laws, their management, their government, and their protection, that it had not entered their heads that they, themselves, possessed the right and the might, to take a stand in their own interests, and for their own welfare, without waiting for the Power so far off to lead the way.
There can be no doubt but that the French were under much appre- hension as to the movements and strength of English forces which they from time to time had rumors of. Belief was prevalent that the English were moving to contend the supremacy of the region with them. Many alarms which caused intense uneasiness within the rude forest fortifica- tions, turned out to be wholly false alarms. But they did serve to instil a degree of caution into their movements which to some extent retarded their expeditions.
Some of the more noteworthy French officers who came to the two forts in this county, and spent some time here with the troops were, of course, those who first set foot upon Erie County soil; Chevalier Le
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Mercier, the discoverer of the county; the Chevalier Pierre Paul Marin (Morin, Morang, Marrain, or Murray as some spelled it), a veteran captain of infantry in command of the first expedition; Michel Jean Hughes Pean, his second in command; Monsieur the Captain LeGardeur de Repentigny ; Monsier Duverger de St. Blin; Desmeloizes, brother-in-law to Pean; Sieur Drouillon; Sieur de Carqueville; Sieur Portneuf; La Force; Benois Du Muys; J. Depre Simblim; Father Denys Baron (Charles Baron) the Chap- lain to the expedition; Jean Baptiste Texier; Friar Gabriel Anheuser; Charles Descamps de Boishebert; who had served under Celeron in a detachment sent from Montreal to Detroit "to the strait situated between Lake Grié (Erie) and Huron"; the Sieur Joncaire-Chabert; "J. C. B." which is believed to have stood for J. C. Bonnefons, a commissory with the forces; Captain Joncaire; Monsieur Pierre Claude de Contrecoeur; De Courtemanche; Lieutenant Douville ; De Lery ; and probably others.
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