Fort Duquesne. Washington, with his expeditionary force sent to
garrison Captain Trent's fort, defeated Jumonville and his small
force near Great Meadows (May, 1754); but soon after he was
forced to surrender Fort Necessity to Coulon de Villiers.

The titanic struggle, fittingly precipitated in the backwoods of
the Old Southwest, was now on--a struggle in which the resolute
pioneers of these backwoods first seriously measured their
strength with the French and their copper-hued allies, and
learned to surpass the latter in their own mode of warfare. The
portentous conflict, destined to assure the eastern half of the
continent to Great Britain, is a grim, prophetic harbinger of the
mighty movement of the next quarter of a century into the
twilight zone of the trans-Alleghany territory:



CHAPTER IV. The Indian War

All met in companies with their wives and children, and set about
building little fortifications, to defend themselves from such
barbarian and inhuman enemies, whom they concluded would be let
loose upon them at pleasure.--The Reverend Hugh McAden--Diary,
July, 1755.


Long before the actual outbreak of hostilities powerful forces
were gradually converging to produce a clash between the
aggressive colonials and the crafty Indians. As the settlers
pressed farther westward into the domain of the red men,