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Updated: May 4, 2025
But the French seized the English trading-house at Venango which they converted into a fort; and Virginia's protest, conveyed by a calm and judicious young man, a surveyor, George Washington, availed not to prevent the French from seizing Captain Trent's hastily erected military post at the forks of the Ohio and constructing there a formidable work, named Fort Duquesne.
This speech, he said, was delivered to them by one Captain Joncaire, their interpreter in chief, living at Venango, and a man of note in the army. 29th.
After the loss of Fort Granville the Governor of the province sent him with three hundred men to attack the Delaware town of Kittanning, a populous nest of savages on the Alleghany, between the two French posts of Duquesne and Venango. Here most of the war-parties were fitted out, and the place was full of stores and munitions furnished by the French.
Arriving in due season at Venango, Washington found the French officer in command there very positive that the Ohio was theirs, and that they would keep it; they admitted that the English outnumbered them; but "they are too dilatory," said the Frenchman, staring up with an affectation of superciliousness at the tall, blue-eyed young Virginian.
It was not until the 22d that they reached Venango. Here Washington was obliged, most unwillingly, to part company with the sachems. White Thunder had hurt himself and was ill and unable to walk, and the others determined to remain at Venango for a day or two and convey him down the river in a canoe.
But the serious young soldier had no taste for hobnobbing, and returned at once to Venango, where he found his horses unavailable, and continued southward on foot, meeting bad weather and deep snow. He borrowed a deerskin shirt and leggins from the tallest of the Indians, dismissed his attendants, left the Indian trail, and struck out for the Forks by compass, with Gist as his companion.
Beside the French that had come from Venango, he had received credible accounts of another party ascending the Ohio; and of six hundred Chippewas and Ottawas marching down Scioto Creek to join the hostile camp. Still, notwithstanding the accumulating danger, it would not do to fall back, nor show signs of apprehension. His Indian allies in such case might desert him.
There was a French fort at Venango, and Washington might have waited there very comfortably for better weather; but it was his duty to get back to Virginia as soon as possible with the French commander's answer, and so he made up his mind to go on, even at the risk of his life.
Being informed by his scouts that twelve hundred regular troops, drawn from Detroit, Venango, and Presque Isle, and led by D'Aubry, with a number of Indian auxiliaries, were hastening to the rescue, he detached a force of grenadiers and light infantry, with some of his Mohawk warriors, to intercept them.
He told me, that the nearest and levelest way was now impassable, by reason of many large miry savannas; that we must be obliged to go by Venango, and should not get to the near fort in less than five or six nights sleep, good travelling.
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