Washington [26]
When the Half King, a man in his fifties, arrived in Logstown on November 25, he must have been taken aback to find a young envoy less than half his age inviting him into his tent. The previous year the chieftain had signed a treaty with the British, making him their nominal ally, and he had sternly warned the French against incursions in the region. He had a visceral dislike of the French, claiming that they had murdered, cooked, and consumed his father. He had bristled at high-handed treatment from Sieur de Marin, the French commandant, who referred to Indians as “flies or mosquitoes.”21 It soon became clear why the Half King preferred the British: they had come (or so he thought) simply to trade, whereas the French wished to seize their lands. (Other Indians, however, suspected the British of having designs on their homelands and sided with the French for the same reason.) Washington quickly discovered that the Half King was an artful diplomat who expected the British to respect Indian rights. It is clear that Washington believed devoutly in his mission and was incensed at French machinations to woo the chieftain. At this stage of his life, he trusted implicitly in the wisdom and benevolence of the British Empire.
By all indications, Washington handled his talk with the Half King smoothly. A cordial feeling arose between them, even though the Indian chief gave Washington the same predatory nickname, Conotocarious, that had been bestowed on his great-grandfather, John Washington. There’s no evidence that Washington spurned the name as pejorative. In fact, he seemed proud of it, as if it were conferred with affection. After the Revolutionary War, he observed of the name that the Indians had “communicated [it] to other nations” and that it was “remembered by them ever since in all their transactions with [me] during the late war.”22
The next day, when Washington addressed an Indian council, he slid deftly into the requisite high-flown style: “Brothers, I have called you together in Council, by order of your brother the governor of Virginia.”23 At this first meeting, Washington concealed the true nature of his mission, testing, for the first time, the diplomatic merits of evasion. He asked the Indians to provide an escort of young warriors for his journey to the French commandant. The Half King requested a few days’ delay, so that Washington could receive ceremonial wampum from the Shawnee chiefs. Now a young man in a hurry, bearing the weight of an empire on his shoulders, Washington chafed at the notion, but his better judgment prevailed over his quick temper. “When I found them so pressing in their request . . . I consented to stay as I believed an offence offered at this crisis might have been attended with greater ill consequence than another day’s delay,” he wrote in his frontier journal.24 In the end, the Indians mustered a paltry four escorts, including the Half King, then rationalized the small party as a way to prevent the French from suspecting hostile intentions. Washington penetrated this cover story to spy the true reason for the tiny convoy: deep-seated Indian ambivalence about their British allies.
After a five-day journey north in a pounding rain, Washington’s party arrived at the trading post of Venango, located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and French Creek. Here he met a French officer, Captain Philippe Thomas de Joncaire, and had another chance to sharpen his diplomatic skills. The offspring of a French officer and a Seneca woman, Joncaire invited Washington to dine with some French officers. The Frenchmen drank freely and talked indiscreetly, while Washington never shed his steely self-control: “The wine, as they dosed themselves pretty plentifully