IIITHE MINGOS SEND FOR HELP
It was the hunting season again—the month of Fat Deer, when the leaves were beginning to fall and the flies had been killed by the first frost. No more French had been seen, but no English had come yet to build a fort.
The Mingos, the Delawares and Shawnees of Logstown were getting ready to start out on the hunt and kill meat for winter. Soon there would be only a few old persons left in Logstown. But Tanacharison spoke to Robert.
“We have been waiting for the English and their house. The trader Davidson said that Virginia was sending in men to clear land and build a house. I do not see them. You know this Washington, who makes lands. He should be getting near. Do you go with Scarouady and point him out, that we may tell him to hurry. I will show him a good place for a house with great guns.”
Now that was better than a regular hunt. Robert set out gladly enough, with Scarouady the famous warrior, his good friend. He had his ash bow, powder horn and bullet pouch, his tomahawk and hunting knife; Scarouady had his English rifle, his powder horn and bullet pouch, his tomahawk and knife. With flint and steel and with a blanket each they needed nothing else, although the settlements of the English were two hundred miles through the mountains and the forests, in the east and south.
They took the Shawnee Trail up to the Forks, and crossed in a canoe that Scarouady knew of. Then following game trails they struck off for Virginia, their eyes glancing sharply right and left and down before, that nothing should be missed. No one could say what the trees and bushes might conceal.
They had been out two days and nights, when on coming to another hill Scarouady said:
“Do you go round this side and I will go round that side, and we will meet. I think we will get a deer or turkey for camp tonight.”
This meant a half circle of ten or twelve miles, but that mattered little to a hunter and warrior. The time was afternoon; the forest lay silent, beautiful and wild, with the shadows from the sun stretching long across the grassy openings, and the air sweet with the drying leaves.
His bow strung and his arrows loose in his quiver Robert trotted upon straight-footed moccasins around the hill, and through the timber and whenever he sighted a little opening he paused, to spy, in hope of seeing deer or turkey.
The way was not smooth, of course. This was virgin forest, cut by ravines and cumbered with great fallen trees that made a boy seem very small. He had traveled almost half around the hill, and was expecting to meet Scarouady any moment, or at least hear from him, when he stopped, frozen.
The route he was taking had been crossed by fresh moccasin prints, heading toward where Scarouady should be.
Robert studied the prints in the leafy mould. They were not plain enough to read; they might be Delaware, might be Mingo, might be Ottawa, andmight be enemy moccasins. At any rate his business was to follow them until he found Scarouady, or else where they were going, and what the owners were doing.
So he looked and listened, and he took after the moccasins, as if he were a dog trailing. The trail led on and on, winding among the giant trees and skirting the parks. He kept his ears open and his eyes fixed, with little darts side to side; and the trail was so fresh that it made his heart thump. Something told him that these were stranger moccasins. Where was Scarouady?
Then an Indian leaped at him from behind a tree.
Robert was quick. This was no Scarouady, and was no joke. Even as he ducked and leaped, himself, and the Indian crashed by, he glimpsed a bushy head and black and yellow paint, and he knew that the Indian was from the south—likely a Cherokee or Catawba again. And away he ran, like a rabbit, full speed into the forest, with the Indian hard after.
Robert the Hunter was swift, but the Indian was swift, too. Whenever the Hunter looked behind he saw the fellow coming, with great bounds, his tomahawk raised and a grin on his painted face. He was a slender, light-skinned man, with thick hair. Yes, it was a Cherokee, and a warrior. He did not shoot, or throw his tomahawk; evidently he wished to catch this boy alive.
The Hunter had no notion of being caught and carried south. He did not take the time to fit an arrow to his bow; that would be later when he was winded and had turned at bay behind a tree of his own. He simply ran, with the Cherokee in close pursuit. His throat grew dry, and his breath grewshort as he doubled and dodged, but he could not shake the Cherokee off.
It was a hot race. Robert looked behind again. The long-legged Cherokee had gained on him. They had run a mile, as it seemed to Robert. Now another fallen tree trunk barred his way. He gave a leap and a scramble, and landed plump into a growling furry body, which whirled upon him, while smaller bodies scampered right and left.
He ducked back just in time. This was a mother bear with two late cubs, half grown. And she barred the way. The Cherokee was coming. The mother bear, bristling, sniffed at Robert, then sniffed the air beyond him, and the Cherokee could be heard. Then the Hunter chuckled, and crouched low, under the log. He was to see some fun. The mother bear paid little attention to him, for he was quiet; but just as the Cherokee sprang through the screen of branches above the log she rose, and his great leap landed him into her arms.
Wah! What a noise, of bear and Cherokee language and of threshing and wrestling! The Cherokee stabbed with the knife, the mother bear bit and struck; and Robert crawled away and ran again, laughing.
Hark! That was a rifle report—Scarouady’s rifle ringing among the trees. The Hunter well knew the sharp bark of Scarouady’s gun. When that gun spoke, it signaled either meat or scalp. He paid no more attention to the bear-and-man fight, but ran for the place from which Scarouady’s rifle had sounded.
As he ran he fitted an arrow to his bow-string. The rifle had sounded near. Now he heard the rifle again, and the scalp yell of the Mingo—a long, shrillyell, the Indian hurrah! Next he had arrived at a little dip in the forest, where the glade opened to thinner trees and low brush. Guns banged, but not at him. Just before him were several Indians, hiding behind trees, and firing and whooping; and across, from behind a log, upon which lay a dead Indian, a long rifle barrel was thrust out, between branches, threatening these nearer Indians.
The dead Indian had been scalped. Behind that rifle barrel was Scarouady. By their paint and head-dresses, these nearer Indians were Cherokees; and Scarouady was in a tight place. He could not run back to the forest; he would soon be surrounded.
The Hunter knew what to do. He gave the Mingo war whoop, and drawing the arrow to the head he let fly. A Cherokee yelped and leaped, with the arrow jutting from his left arm. Robert whooped again, his bow twanged, the arrow hissed and quivered in a tree, for attacked from the rear the four Cherokees had bolted away into the forest as if they thought that a whole company of Mingos were upon them.
Scarouady sprang up and threw his hatchet after. He whooped with triumph, and then he laughed.
“Is that you, Hunter?”
“Yes.”
“Good. They are gone.” He came over, with the scalp in his belt. “You did well, Hunter. You are a warrior,” he said. “Wah! You have been running far.”
“A Cherokee chased me; then I heard you shoot.”
“Where is he?”
“I left him with a bear,” said Robert; and explained.
“Ho, ho,” laughed Scarouady. “We will go and see.”
So he picked up his hatchet, and they back-tracked, and found the bear place. But no bear was here, and no Cherokee. The ground was torn and bloody. The bear might be dead, somewhere; and the Cherokee might be badly hurt, somewhere. Anyway, both had had enough, according to the signs.
“That was a smart trick, Hunter,” Scarouady praised. “After this you must not kill a bear. The bear is good to you. Wah! The Cherokees will go home lacking one man, maybe two. They thought to strike the Delaware. Instead, they met the Mingo. Scarouady saw them. A man and a boy drove them like deer. I have hidden a turkey that I killed with my hatchet. We have a scalp. We will go on and find Washington.”
They travelled on, and camped that evening, and travelled again the next day.
“Where does this Washington live?” Scarouady asked.
“I don’t know,” answered Robert. “He was at the River Potomac, marking English lands.”
“Such a man will be known to others,” said Scarouady. “We are getting near the Potomac. See? The English have been here. They have marked the trees with hatchets. We will follow the hatchet marks and come to somebody.”
The hatchet marks were new, marking a line along an old buffalo trail that seemed to lead between the Potomac and the Monongahela in the west.
“There will be English at the other end,” said Scarouady. “Maybe Washington himself. He is marking lands still.”
When they caught up with the tree markers, at a noon camp in the forest beside a stream, there were two of them; one was an Indian and the other was the trader Cresap.
That, however, was good. Scarouady knew the Indian, and Cresap knew Washington.
Scarouady advanced straightway, and spoke:
“Hello, Nemacolin. Hello, brother.”
“Hello, Monacathuatha,” replied Nemacolin, in the Delaware. He was a Delaware who lived at the Monongahela above Queen Allaquippa’s town. “My brother is welcome.”
“Good,” said Scarouady. “What does my brother do here, far from home and his hunting ground, marking trees with a white man?”
“We make a road for an English company to travel over from the Potomac to the Monongahela,” said Nemacolin. “The English are blind, so I show this man the way, for it is my road through the Little Meadows and the Great Meadows and over the Laurel Hills to the Monongahela.”
“Wah!” exclaimed Scarouady. “An English company? That is the Washington company?”
“I do not know,” replied Nemacolin. “It is an English company to build a great house on my land and keep many goods there.”
“Wah!” again exclaimed Scarouady. “The Washington company. Who is this white man?”
“He is named Cresap. He lives in the east, down the river Potomac.”
“Wah!” said Scarouady. And he bade of Robert: “Ask that man where we find the young captain, Washington.”
“He will know,” Robert said eagerly. “It was athis place that I saw Washington.” So he said, in English: “We look for Washington.”
The Englishman, who was burly and bearded, smiled.
“It is you, is it, young man? You want to see George Washington again?”
“We come to find Washington,” Robert the Hunter repeated. “At your place?”
“No, George Washington doesn’t live at my place. That was a long time ago. You travel east, down the Potomac, to Will’s Creek. Ask at the Ohio Company’s house there, and they’ll tell you where to find George Washington. He’s likely down south at Greenway Court, near the Shenandoah, on the Lord Fairfax plantation. Or else in the woods, surveying. Understand?”
Much of this was Greek to Robert. But he understood enough.
“We go to a house at Will’s Creek, in the east,” he said, to Scarouady. “They will tell us.”
“Goodby,” uttered Scarouady; and he turned about and made off, and Robert followed close.
So they left Nemacolin the Delaware from the Monongahela to guide Colonel Thomas Cresap, blazing the trail known as Nemacolin’s Trail from present Cumberland upon the upper Potomac at Will’s Creek in northern Maryland to Redstone Creek of the Monongahela River far in the west.
By this trail the Ohio Company of the Washingtons and others, settling lands between the Alleghany Mountains and the Ohio River, intended to take their goods. By this trail George Washington marched against the French. By this trail General Braddock, with his aide George Washington, marched his armyacross rivers and over the mountains, to meet the French and Indians in battle near the Forks of the Ohio; and it was named Braddock’s Road. And in due time the trail of Nemacolin and the road of Braddock became the National Road of southern Pennsylvania, for travel between the Potomac and the Monongahela, and thence north to Pittsburgh.
So they took the eastward trail, which wended through ravines, through parks, dense forests, around hills, across creeks and over mountains where snow had fallen, until the second evening they were almost in sight of the Potomac of present Maryland.
“I smell smoke,” said Scarouady. “Somebody cooks meat.” Then they came out into a clearing for a cabin with smoke curling from the mud chimney.
Children ran, a woman screamed, and a man working outside jumped for his gun. But Scarouady shouted “Friend, No ’fraid,” and went in, with Robert close at his heels.
“He has a scalp!” the woman cried; and the man still kept his gun ready. Scarouady laughed.
“Mingo, friend of English. Cherokee scalp. Where Washington comp’ny?”
“Washington company?” uttered the man.
“Yep. Washington comp’ny. Will’s Creek. Where?”
“He means that Ohio Company that’s built a storehouse down near the creek mouth, John, I reckon,” spoke the woman.
“Oh! Well, this here creek jines Will’s Creek. You foller down to the river an’ ask at the big house there, if it’s the Ohio Company you’re seekin’.”
“Goodby,” said Scarouady. He and the Huntertrotted away. Robert’s moccasins were worn through and his feet were sore, and Scarouady settled into a long wolf stride rather rapid for a boy’s tired legs.
“Now we catch Washington soon,” said Scarouady over his shoulder.
They could smell the river. It was the Potomac—smelling very different from the creek that they followed. Within a short time they sighted lights, glimmering through the darkness. The forest was dark and cold; the lights were those of a house at the river—and of a camp fire, nearer than the house.
The camp fire, in a sheltered hollow among the black trees, looked inviting. They went down to it. There were horses; and men lying wrapped in blankets, like Indians, their feet to the blaze; and in front of a lean-to of boughs, fronting the fire, two other men, sitting; a young man, in a match coat, or wool blanket-coat, putting marks upon paper, and an older man, well muffled against the night air, smoking a pipe and staring into the fire.
“Washington!” Robert whispered. “You see him!”
Scarouady hailed: “Hallo, English.”
One of the men lying down started up; but the old man sitting never moved, and Washington only raised his head, and answered:
“Hallo. Come in, friends.”
Scarouady and Robert stepped forward into the fire circle. The old man glanced at them; then he looked at Washington, as if curious to see what Washington would do. He was a large old man, with a tired, thin face, sharp beaked nose, and bulging gray eyes; and he was watching Washington.
Washington sat calmly.
“Our brothers are welcome,” he said. The old man nodded as if satisfied. Washington was larger and browner than before, and wore Indian moccasins, leather trousers, and a deer-hide shirt underneath his wool coat, and upon his head a fox-skin cap. This camp at the edge of the thick, frosty forest might have been a thousand miles into the wilderness, for it was a very simple camp—a regular woodsman’s camp.
Scarouady was eying Washington; and Scarouady, with his fierce visage, his Oneida paint and his cheeks tattooed with bow-and-arrow, his head shaven except for his scalp lock, and the Cherokee scalp stiff in his belt, might easily have frightened these English.
“It is good,” he said. “I seek Washington.”
“By George, George!” crackled the old man. “He does? Who’s your friend?”
“I am George Washington,” said the young chief. “My brother has travelled far. He is an Oneida. Let him sit down and eat and rest.” And Washington made the sign for eating and resting.
“George, George!” laughed the old man. “You’re gettin’ on. Gist could do no better.”
The Hunter saw that Washington had learned manners. The first time, he had asked questions; now he asked no questions. Curiosity is impolite. He used the sign language. He spoke to Scarouady the chief, he read the Oneida paint, he did not appear to recognize Robert who was not a warrior.
Scarouady and Robert sat down, and ate. Washington waited until they were through; then he asked:
“My brother who comes with the Hunter wishes to see me?”
“The Hunter is a boy; be warrior some day. He has more English. He may tell young captain,” directed Scarouady. “Speak.”
“We come from Tanacharison,” Robert explained. “He is Mingo Half-King, on the Ohio. He send Scarouady to say for you to come quick, with company, and build a house with guns to keep the French out.”
“George, George!” laughed the old man. “That’s what.”
“But why does he send to me?” Washington asked.
“Trader says Washington is captain of a company making ready to march and build houses at the Ohio. Tanacharison says for you to come with big guns and he will show you where to build.”
“Are the French there now?”
“French been, gone, come again,” grunted Scarouady. “Next time come, find big house with guns. Boom!”
“Gad! It’s true, then,” spoke the old Englishman. “The frontier pot’s boilin’; eh, Gist?”
The third man, who was a stout, gray-eyed, red-faced man weathered by sun and wind, heat and cold, nodded.
“Yes, my lord. ’Tis high time for action, or we lose the west and are penned in like sheep.”
“French come with soldiers. Bury plates to make the land theirs, and order English out,” said Robert. And he insisted: “Washington march his company and stay.”
“Tanacharison does not understand,” said Washington, gravely. “He has heard of the Ohio Company. That is not my company. I have no company.I am George Washington. It is my brother Lawrence Washington who is head of the company.”
“Huh!” said Scarouady. “He chief?”
“A soldier chief. Older than I am.”
“Wah!” Scarouady grunted. “Too many Washington. Where he?”
“He is far,” replied George Washington, with the sign. “But the company is coming to the Ohio. It is making ready. You tell him, Chris. It’s well we’ve camped here. This man,” he added, to Scarouady, “is Christopher Gist, a great trader and hunter.”
“Brother,” spoke Christopher Gist, in the Mingo dialect, which was a sort of trade tongue used among all the Indians. “I see you are a chief.”
“Wah!” said Scarouady.
“You have a Cherokee scalp at your belt. I am from the south.” Christopher Gist used signs as well as words. “You are from the north. The Cherokee are wolves that travel between. They are to be struck, so that the road shall be kept open to brothers.”
“Wah!” said Scarouady. “It is said. I have heard of my brother. He is called Gist, and the Cherokee fear him. Has he changed his hunting ground?”
“I live upon the river called Yadkin, in the land called North Carolina,” said Christopher Gist. “Now I am coming to the Mingo.”
“Wah!” exclaimed Scarouady surprised. “Will my brother live among the Mingo?”
“He thinks to do so,” said Christopher Gist. “He is coming now to speak with the Mingo for the Washington company?”
“Wah!” Scarouady exclaimed again. “Does Washington come too?”
“Listen, brother,” continued Christopher Gist: “You say the French of Onontio are spying out that land and claiming it. We know it is not French land, but Indian land and English land. The Washington Company will march into it and build houses along the Ohio to keep the French out. But first they send me, to learn the trail and to look upon the land and to sit in council with the Mingo so that the Long House of the Iroquois will know the talk.”
“Why does not Washington come?” asked Scarouady.
“This Washington does not speak the Indian tongue.”
“What does he do here, then?”
“He and that old man have marched with me a little way, to see me start.”
“Who is that old man with the hawk nose and glass eyes?”
“He is a great English chief. His English name is Lord Fairfax. He owns all this land to the Shenandoah—the Daughter of the Stars.”
“Does he own that house with the lights in it, by the river?” asked Scarouady.
“No. You see the house. That is the great storehouse of the company. It is full of goods for Indian brothers at the Ohio. The company has come this far and only waits for me to mark the trail and open the road to the Ohio.”
“Why does not the company send its chief to talk with chiefs?” demanded Scarouady. “Where is the chief Washington?”
“The chief Washington is sick. He cannottravel. But he is this young chief’s brother, and he has sent his brother with me to the beginning of the road. His brother that you see is young, but he is wise.”
“Well,” said Scarouady, “if that is the house of the Washington company and this Washington is here for his brother who is the chief, why does he not sleep in the warm house instead of out here in the cold and dark like a squirrel?”
“Because he does not fear the cold and dark,” said Christopher Gist. “His heart is strong. In marking out lands he lives besides the trail and the forest is his house.”
Scarouady nodded.
“Wah! That is good. He is a warrior. Do you come, Gist, and open the road to the English and close the road to the French.”
“Onondago will permit?” inquired Christopher Gist.
As everybody knew, or should know, the Grand Council of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, at Onondago in New York, would expect to be asked about this matter of white men building houses in the Ohio Country. Scarouady stood up and made a speech.
“For many years, and before I was born,” he said, “the Iroquois have been friends of the English. The first French of Onontio helped the Huron dogs against the Iroquois. The hatchets of the Iroquois have not forgotten. The Iroquois have conquered from the big water to the setting sun, they own the country where the Beautiful River flows, and they give the land beyond the mountains to the English. Scarouady and Gist will set out in the morning to open a short road and carry the wordthat the English are coming with horses and great guns.”
Scarouady suddenly held out his hand to George Washington, who took it, and Scarouady tested his grip.
“Wah! I have heard the truth,” Scarouady uttered. “Strong hand, strong heart. My young brother is not a squirrel, he is a bear. If his brother is sick, let him himself go upon the road to the Ohio. He has this old hawk for councillor. Now I will sleep.”
So he lay down, and likewise did Robert, with their feet to the fire. But the three white men sat up for some time, talking in English.
They talked of the French who threatened to come down from Canada and seize the Ohio Country, beyond the Alleghany Mountains; of the necessity of holding the country for the English King across the water; of the big tracts of lands west of the mountains and along the Ohio, that had been granted by the King to the Ohio Company; of what Christopher Gist should say to the Mingos, the Delawares, the Wyandots, the Shawnees and the Miamis, to win their friendship; and of the chance of war between the English and the French, to see which should keep the country that both claimed.
“You colonists are like a bullock. You have yet to find out your own strength,” said the old man.
“That will be found, if France undertakes to drive us. We cannot suffer our traders to be mistreated, sir,” said George Washington, “and our trade with the Indians to be cut off.”
“Aye,” laughed the old man. “You are slow, and stubborn, like English, and admit no attack uponyour liberties. I sometimes think that the best part of England has come over here. And out of this war there will arise, I also think, a new race of peoples by a new name.”
“And what will that be, my lord?” Christopher Gist inquired.
“Americans, by George.”
“How so, sir?” Washington asked.
“You are already Americans in some of your notions,” said the old man. “You wish to grow, and you desire to think as you please. That is why you came here. It is your weakness now, for you do not act together. You cannot bring France to terms of yourselves. You will need help from the King, and helped by the King you will learn to use your strength. France certainly will lose. She cannot hold this remote Ohio country, and she will lose her Canada. You colonists will then be free to expand, without a rival shutting you in. An empire lies west of you. You will grow out of your English clothes, and when England tries to remind you that you owe her your humble duty and must pay for her expenses, you will fight.”
“Would you think us so ungrateful, sir?” said Washington.
“Ha ha!” the old man chuckled. “One may be thankful for being set up in business, and then object to turning the business over to outside hands. You Americans are born of freedom, and freedom of action by your own vote you will have.”
And that proved true; for when these American colonies had grown large and were self-supporting, and England would have taxed their prosperity, without giving them a vote, they did object.
Much of the talk, however, Robert the Hunter, rather sleepy, did not understand. “Americans!” That was something new. Washington was an American. This perhaps explained why he was so different from the traders whom the Indians called English.
He saw that the old man and Christopher Gist talked with George Washington as though he were a man; he had seen that Washington pleased Scarouady; and he felt satisfied and happy. Tanacharison would find that his word about George Washington the American had been true word.