From these early dealings with Native Americans, Washington was later spared either a racist attitude toward them or a tendency to sentimentalize them. He seemed cynical but accepting about Indian diplomacy: “The Indians are mercenary—every service of theirs must be purchased—and they are easily offended, being thoroughly sensible of their own importance.”¹⁹ Once at Logstown, with an assurance that belied his years, Washington not only summoned the Seneca tribal leader, Tanacharison—known to the English simply as the Half King—who was then off on a hunting trip, but also distributed needed largesse to his deputy, Monacatoocha. “I gave him a string of wampum and a twist of tobacco and desired him to send for the Half King, which he promised to do by a runner in the morning.”²⁰ From the outset, Washington conveyed an authoritative air that seemed instinctive. While awaiting the Half King, he quizzed four French deserters who had come up the Mississippi River. From them, he was able to corroborate the prevalent suspicion in Williamsburg that the French planned to encircle the British by uniting their Louisiana territory with Canada and the Great Lakes.

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 with it, soon banished the restraint which at first appeared in their conversation and gave license to their tongues to reveal their sentiments more freely.” To his amazement, the French bragged about “their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio” and even spilled military secrets about the location of their forts.²⁵ Washington’s sense of triumph was premature. The next day the Frenchmen seduced the Indians with so much food and drink that they got roaring drunk and were reluctant to proceed. Joncaire was obviously a more slippery foe than the callow Washington had realized. The young envoy was still feeling his way in a disorienting new world that did not abide by the polite rules of Virginia drawing rooms.

After three days in Venango, Washington pushed on toward Fort Le Boeuf amid more inclement weather. Now fortified by both an Indian and a French escort, he traversed forty miles of treacherous terrain, punctuated by “many mires and swamps.”²⁶ Even though he usually had an iron constitution and was accustomed to harsh weather, the temperature had turned intolerably cold. He and Christopher Gist decided to ride on ahead of the others through a snow-encrusted landscape, logging as many as eighteen miles per day in unending rain and snow.

When Washington reached Fort Le Boeuf after dark on December 11, he found a crude structure of four buildings, patched together from bark and planks. The next morning he received an obliging reception from the silver-haired, one-eyed commander, Captain Jacques Legardeur de St. Pierre, whom Washington described as an “elderly gentleman” with “much the air of a soldier.”²⁷ Despite the civil reception, Washington carried a truculent message that the French should quit the Ohio Valley, and St. Pierre requested several days to respond. During this time Washington reconnoitered the grounds and scribbled detailed notes on the fort’s military specifications. He noted the 220 birch and pine canoes lined up along the creek, which the French had assembled for military operations. St. Pierre made clear that he was not intimidated by the British and retained every right to arrest their traders poaching on French territory. “As to the summons you send me to retire,” he told Washington, “I do not think myself obliged to obey it.”²⁸ Clearly the British had not misread the hostile intent lurking behind French expansion into the Ohio Country.

As with Joncaire, Washington discovered that St. Pierre’s elaborate courtesy masked a dense web of sinister intentions. On December 14 he summoned Washington, handed over a sealed message for Governor Dinwiddie, and then—ever the attentive host—said he had stocked Washington’s canoe with supplies for the journey home. Only then did Washington discover that the crafty St. Pierre had waylaid his Indian guards by bribing them with guns and liquor if they stayed behind. Irate at such duplicity, Washington mentally accused St. Pierre of “plotting every scheme that the devil and man could invent to set our Indians at variance with us to prevent their going till after our departure.”²⁹ In the end, Washington hotly confronted the Half King, accused him of patent betrayal, and got him to depart with the British party as promised.