Crucible of War
Page 8
And indeed Captain Contrecoeur, at the Forks, was following reports of their progress closely as he pondered his options. It was clearly unwise to allow an armed and presumably hostile force to approach his unfinished fort. Yet he dared not strike preemptively, for his orders forbade him to attack without provocation. Eventually he decided to send an emissary to the English force and learn its intentions. Choosing as his representative the scion of a distinguished military family, Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, Contrecoeur instructed him to determine whether the party had reached French territory. If it had, he was to send word back to Fort Duquesne, then seek a conference with the commander and instruct him to withdraw immediately from the domains of Louis XV. Jumonville left on May 23 with an escort of thirty-five men. Since Contrecoeur’s Indian informants had described a force several hundred strong, he clearly intended Jumonville’s small party to do no more than gather reliable intelligence and deliver his message.3
Washington, of course, knew nothing of Contrecoeur’s intentions or of Jumonville’s orders when he learned, four days later, that a party of French soldiers was scouting his position. Since May 24 his men had been encamped in Great Meadows, a marshy clearing perhaps a mile long by a quarter mile wide, tucked between the hills that flanked two imposing mountains, Laurel Ridge and Chestnut Ridge. Because Great Meadows halved the distance between Wills Creek and Red Stone Fort, because a constant stream ran through it, and because its grasses could feed the expedition’s draft animals, Washington planned to erect a fortified post there. The Virginians were accordingly entrenching, clearing brush, and preparing to build a stockade on the morning of May 27 when Washington’s old guide Christopher Gist rode into camp. At noon on the previous day, Gist said, a party of French troops had passed his trading post, a way station twelve miles to the north. He had seen signs of their march while riding to Great Meadows. The tracks were less than five miles away.4
Washington, concerned about a surprise attack, ordered Captain Peter Hogg to take seventy-five men and intercept the French between the meadows and the Monongahela, where they presumably had left their canoes. His concern changed to alarm after sunset, however, when a warrior arrived with a message from Tanaghrisson, who had encamped with a small group of Mingos a few miles away: the Half King himself had located the French camp just beyond Laurel Ridge, about seven miles northwest of Washington’s position. Washington, realizing that he had sent half his troops off in the wrong direction, decided that he had to take action. Setting off before ten o’clock “in a heavy Rain and a Night as dark as Pitch” with forty-seven men (half of the number left at Great Meadows), Washington made for Tanaghrisson’s camp. When the Virginians arrived at “about Sun-rise,” Washington and Tanaghrisson conferred, then “concluded that we should fall on them together.” Washington’s men, together with the Half King and several warriors, set off toward the hollow where the French had camped, then paused a short way off while two Indians went ahead “to discover where they were, as also their Posture, and what Sort of Ground was thereabout.” Then, as Washington described it in his diary, we formed ourselves for an Engagement, marching one after the other, in the Indian Manner: We were advanced pretty near to them, as we thought, when they discovered us; whereupon I ordered my company to fire; mine was supported by that of Mr. Wag[gonn]er’s, and my Company and his received the whole Fire of the French, during the greatest Part of the Action, which only lasted a Quarter of an Hour, before the Enemy was routed.
We killed Mr. de Jumonville, the commander of that Party, as also nine others; we wounded one, and made Twenty-one Prisoners, among whom were M. la Force, M. Drouillon, and two Cadets. The Indians scalped the Dead, and took away the most Part of their Arms....5
This was hardly a detailed account of the action, but it was the one that Washington was prepared to stand behind. He so nearly replicated it on May 29 in his official reports to Dinwiddie, and again (with flourishes appropriate for a kid brother’s consumption) in a letter to Jack Washington on May 31, that one might reasonably assume that he made his diary entry as a memorandum of record. His account was not, however, the only version of the skirmish.6
In the confusion of the firing, one of Jumonville’s soldiers managed to hide in the woods, where he watched the fight and part of its aftermath before slipping away to make his report. Contrecoeur described it in a letter to Duquesne on June 2: Contrecoeur, however, had a conclusion for the story, provided by another witness. An Indian from Tanaghrisson’s camp had come to Fort Duquesne and informed him “that Mr. de Jumonville was killed by a Musket-Shot in the Head, whilst they were reading the Summons; and the English would afterwards have killed all our Men, had not the Indians who were present, by rushing between them and the English, prevented their Design.”7
One of that Party, Monceau by Name, a Canadian, made his Escape and tells us that they had built themselves Cabbins, in a low Bottom, where they sheltered themselves, as it rained hard. About seven o’Clock the next Morning, they saw themselves surrounded by the English on one Side and the Indians on the Other. The English gave them two Volleys, but the Indians did not fire. Mr. de Jumonville, by his Interpreter, told them to desist, that he had something to tell them. Upon which they ceased firing. Then Mr. de Jumonville ordered the Summons which I had sent them to retire, to be read. . . . The aforesaid Monceau, saw all our Frenchmen coming up close to Mr. de Jumonville, whilst they were reading the Summons, so that they were all in Platoons, between the English and the Indians, during which Time, said Monceau made the best of his Way to us, partly by Land through the Woods, and partly along the River Monaungahela, in a small Canoe. This is all, Sir, I could learn from said Monceau.
Here, then, is a different event from the one in Washington’s diary. In Washington’s narrative the action occurs cataclysmically: the Virginians, in self-defense, unleash a deadly fire that leaves ten men dead and one wounded. The Indians take no active part until the skirmish is over, then scalp and despoil the enemy dead. Monceau’s version agrees with Washington’s only insofar as Indians are present but take no direct role in the combat. It differs in that the English fire first, in two volleys, after which the action breaks off: Jumonville calls for a cease-fire to allow the “summons” to be translated, and the French gather around him, flanked by Indians on one side and English on the other. Monceau slips away with Jumonville still alive and the summons being translated, sees no more, and hears no more shots. The denouement, provided by a witness from the Half King’s camp, describes Jumonville as the victim of an English coup de grâce administered before he can finish explaining his mission. Only the timely interposition of Tanaghrisson and his warriors save the French from being slaughtered by the English barbarians. As Contrecoeur understood it, then, what happened was not a battle, but an ambush followed by a massacre.
The disparity between these accounts, unsurprising insofar as the French and English governments both insisted that their troops were innocent of aggression, leaves everything significant in dispute. Was it a fair fight or a massacre? If only Washington’s and Contrecoeur’s narratives existed, we could never know. But two other accounts also survive, and between them it becomes possible not only to understand what happened, but why.
The most plausible, relatively complete version of the encounter in English was rendered by an illiterate twenty-year-old Irishman from Washington’s regiment who was not in fact a member of his detachment on the morning of May 28. Private John Shaw, however, heard detailed accounts of the engagement from soldiers who had been present, and he recounted them in a sworn statement before South Carolina’s governor on August 21:
That an Indian and a White Man haveing brought Col. Washington Information that a Party of French consisting of five and thirty Men were out [scouting] and lay about six miles off upon which Col. Washington with about forty Men and Capt. Hogg with a Party of forty more and the Half King with his Indians consisting of thirteen imediately set out in search of them, but haveing taken differen
t Roads Col. Washington with his Men and the Indians first came up with them and found them encamped between two Hills[. It] being early in the morning some of them were asleep and some eating, but haveing heard a Noise they were imediately in great Confusion and betook themselves to their Arms and as this Deponent has heard, one of [the French] fired a Gun upon which Col. Washington gave the Word for all his Men to fire. Several of them being killed, the Rest betook themselves to flight, but our Indians haveing gone round the French when they saw them imediately fled back to the English and delivered up their Arms desireing Quarter which was accordingly promised them.
Some Time after the Indians came up the Half King took his Tomahawk and split the Head of the French Captain haveing first asked if he was an Englishman and haveing been told he was a French Man. He then took out his Brains and washed his Hands with them and then scalped him. All this he [Shaw] has heard and never heard it contradicted but knows nothing of it from his own Knowledge only he has seen the Bones of the Frenchmen who were killed in Number about 13 or 14 and the Head of one stuck upon a Stick for none of them were buried, and he has also heard that one of our Men was killed at that Time.8
As in Washington’s account, the French fire first, the English shoot back, and the Indians take no part in the battle except to block the retreat of the French and drive them back to the glen. As in Monceau’s narrative, a pause follows the firing; and, as in the conclusion furnished by Contrecoeur’s Indian informant, a massacre ensues, in which Jumonville dies of a head wound. But this time his assassin is not a savage Virginian but the Half King himself.
Several features commend this version, despite the fact that Shaw was not an eyewitness. Much of what can be verified in Shaw’s account is in fact more accurate than Washington’s elliptical, compressed narrative. He states the size of Jumonville’s command correctly: Contrecoeur’s official report noted that the party consisted of Jumonville, another ensign, three cadets, a volunteer, an interpreter, and twenty-eight men—a total of thirty-five. Shaw correctly describes the division of the English command into parties commanded by Hogg and Washington; he gets the size of Washington’s party and its Indian escort exactly right and the distance from Great Meadows to the glen approximately so. As in Monceau’s version, the French are eating breakfast when they discover that they have been encircled; and as in the anonymous Indian witness’s account, Jumonville is murdered in cold blood. Shaw gives a more accurate tally of the French dead than Washington—“thirteen or fourteen,” he says, as opposed to ten—a particularly significant detail since he takes care to note that he himself saw the remains. Even his comment that Tanaghrisson “took out [Jumonville’s] Brains and washed his Hands with them” makes good, if gruesome, sense. Once the tough meningeal membrane that enclosed the brain had been breached, as it would have been by the edge of a hatchet and the many sharp shards of bone driven into the wound, Tanaghrisson could easily have scooped out the exposed brain with his bare hands. Because the gray matter would have been the consistency of thick, wet plaster, the Half King could in fact have squeezed it between his fingers, seeming, as Shaw said, to wash his hands in the tissue. Most of all, however, Shaw’s version makes the best sense of Tanaghrisson’s role in the encounter.9
The Half King had compelling reasons to kill Jumonville in a public, spectacular way. After Ensign Ward surrendered the fort, Tanaghrisson had “stormed greatly against the French,” but the Delawares and Shawnees had paid him no heed. Soon thereafter he left the Forks as a refugee. His party, encamped near Great Meadows, consisted of about eighty people, mostly women and children, virtually all of them Mingos. Only about a dozen warriors had followed him. Everything about the group suggested the flight of a man, his family, and his immediate supporters. If he cherished any hope of reestablishing his (or the Six Nations’) authority on the Ohio, Tanaghrisson would have known that he could do it only with British support. The colonies with which he had previously dealt, Virginia and Pennsylvania, had proven so vacillating that he had good reason to believe that only severe provocation to the French—enough to cause them to retaliate militarily—would galvanize them into action.10
Tanaghrisson, then, had ample motive to murder Jumonville—and good reason, thereafter, to send word to the French that the English had killed him, then attempted to massacre his men. But what can we make of Shaw’s puzzling comment that the Half King split Jumonville’s skull only after first “haveing asked if he was an Englishman and haveing been told he was a French Man”? The final account of the battle, which Contrecoeur obtained more than three weeks after his initial report to Duquesne, holds the key to that riddle.
Contrecoeur’s informant was one Denis Kaninguen, a deserter “from the English army camp” whose name suggests that he was a Catholic Iroquois and thus most likely a member of Tanaghrisson’s party. Lieutenant Joseph-Gaspard Chaussegros de Léry, commandant at Fort Presque Isle, transcribed Contrecoeur’s summary of Kaninguen’s statement before he forwarded it to Montréal.
[ July] The 7th, Sunday, at midday, a courier arrived from the Ohio [la Belle Rivière]. Monsieur de Contrecoeur . . . sends the attached deposition of an English deserter.
Denis Kaninguen, who deserted from the English army camp yesterday morning, arrived at the camp of Fort Duquesne today, 30 June.
He reports that the English army is composed of 430 men, in addition to whom there are about 30 savages. . . .
That Monsieur de Jumonville had been killed by an English detachment which surprised him[T]hat that officer had gone out to communicate his orders to the English commander [N]otwithstanding the discharge of musket fire that the latter [Washington] had made upon him, he [Washington] intended to read it [the summons Jumonville carried] and had withdrawn himself to his people, whom he had [previously] ordered to fire upon the French [T]hat Monsieur de Jumonville having been wounded and having fallen[,] Thaninhison [Tanaghrisson], a savage, came up to him and had said, Thou art not yet dead, my father, and struck several hatchet blows with which he killed him.
That Monsieur Druillon, ensign and second in command to Monsieur de Jumonville, had been taken [captive] with all of the detachment, which was of thirty men[.] Messieurs de Boucherville and DuSablé, cadets, and Laforce, commissary, were among the number of prisoners [T]hat there were between ten and twelve Canadians killed and that the prisoners had been carried to the city of Virginia [Williamsburg].
That the English had little food with them.
That if the French do not come into the territory of the English, the latter will no longer want [to] come into the land of the former.
That the said Denis Kaninguen had been pursued in leaving the English camp by a horseman, whose thigh he broke with a gun shot, [and that he] had taken his horse, and had ridden at full speed to the French camp.11
Here again is an exchange of shots followed by a cease-fire during which Jumonville tries to convey his message to Washington; and again violence cuts short the effort to communicate. But unlike John Shaw’s informant, who evidently inferred that the French words Tanaghrisson spoke to Jumonville were a question—Are you English?—Denis Kaninguen understood exactly what Tanaghrisson had said, and why he said it. The last words Jumonville heard on earth were spoken in the language of ritual and diplomacy, which cast the French father (Onontio) as the mediator, gift-giver, and alliance-maker among Indian peoples. Tanaghrisson’s metaphorical words, followed by his literal killing of the father, explicitly denied French authority and testified to the premeditation of his act.
All of this enables us, at last, to understand Washington’s behavior and attempt to conceal the truth of what happened in Jumonville’s Glen. Despite his rank as a field officer, Washington had never before led troops in battle. Commanding a body of men about the size of a modern infantry platoon, he seems to have behaved like any ordinary second lieutenant in his first firefight. Excited and disoriented by combat—he later described the hiss of passing bullets as “charming”—and in the midst of more confusion, s
moke, and noise than he would ever have experienced before, he could hardly have been in full control of himself and his men, let alone of the Half King and his warriors. The effect upon Washington of seeing Jumonville’s cranium shattered is impossible to calculate, but it seems likely that the sight would have unmanned him long enough to allow the Indians to kill most of the wounded prisoners.12
That a massacre followed Jumonville’s murder, moreover, is the only explanation consistent with the casualty figures that Washington himself gave. Shots fired in battle almost invariably produce two to four times as many wounds as deaths, as the three-to-one ratio among the Virginia casualties attests. The scanty training of Washington’s men, no less than the inaccuracy of their Brown Bess muskets and the fact that men firing downhill will always overshoot their targets unless they have been instructed to aim low, makes it impossible to believe the Virginians killed thirteen men (or even, as Washington maintained, ten) while wounding only one. That a massacre followed the surrender of the French also makes sense of Washington’s abbreviated account, which collapsed events to make it seem as if all of the French soldiers had been killed in battle. It also explains Washington’s insistence that the French were spies and his repeated urgings to Dinwiddie to believe nothing of what the prisoners said. 13
Finally, such covering-up of the truth would have been consistent with Washington’s concern to protect a fragile reputation for military competence. The anxious undertones of the letters he wrote following the skirmish belied their veneer of bravado. On one hand Washington boasted that he had the physical stamina and courage to face whatever challenges lay ahead: “I have a Constitution hardy enough to encounter and undergo the most severe tryals,” he wrote to Dinwiddie on the day after the encounter, “and I flatter myself [that I have] resolution to Face what any Man durst, as shall be prov’d when it comes to the Test, which I believe we are upon the Border’s off.” On the other hand, the future left him worried about his capacities as a commander. Two weeks after the murders of Jumonville and his men, Washington would write that he “most ardently wish’d” to be “under the Command off an experienced Officer.”14