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Updated: May 4, 2025
It was certain that, unless vigorously prevented by a counter attack, the French would gather in early spring from all their nearer western posts, Niagara, Detroit, Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, to retake the place; but there was no food for a larger garrison, and the risk must be run. The rest of the troops, with steps quickened by hunger, began their homeward march early in December.
It had been agreed that the start should be made at once, the party meeting at Will's Creek, where the Ohio company had a station, and proceeding thence to Logstown, and so on to Venango, or, if necessary, to the fort on French Creek. How my cheeks burned as I thought of that journey through the wilderness and over the mountains, and how I longed to be of the party!
Perhaps this movement has its most typical and picturesque illustration in the extent to which the Northern soldiers opened up the oil-producing regions of western Pennsylvania. Venango County, where this great development started, boasted that it had more ex-soldiers than any similar section of the United States.
For several days they followed the traders' path, pelted with unceasing rain and snow, and came at last to the old Indian town of Venango, where French Creek enters the Alleghany. Here there was an English trading-house; but the French had seized it, raised their flag over it, and turned it into a military outpost.
Here Pouchot, an able officer, who has given us an interesting memoir of the war, was stationed, with authority to call to his assistance the French forces at Presqu'ile, Le Boeuf, and Venango some three thousand men altogether, made up mostly of colonial forces and Indian auxiliaries.
On June 15 the little fort of Presq' Isle, near the modern city of Erie on the Lake Erie shore of northern Pennsylvania, was attacked. It was captured in two days, by the Ottawas and Potawatomis from Detroit. On June 18, Fort Le Boeuf, twelve miles south of it, was burned. Just when Fort Venango, farther south, fell to the Senecas, no word says, for not a man of it remained alive.
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.
"We would soon make M. de Ligneris shift his quarters at Venango," writes Bouquet just after the fort was taken, "if we only had provisions; but we are scarcely able to maintain ourselves a few days here.
It was much the same in purport as that which he had made to the French general, and he ended by offering to return the French speech-belt; but this Joncaire refused to receive, telling him to carry it to the commander at the fort. All that day and the next was the party kept at Venango by the stratagems of Joncaire and his emissaries to detain and seduce the sachems.
All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to the Ohio Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Ligonier had been given up to the English, as well as western posts Detroit, Fort Miami, Ouatanon on the Wabash, and Michilimackinac. The settlements on the Mississippi, however, still displayed the white flag of France.
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