under M. de Villiers, brother of Junonville, obliged him to fall back to Fort Necessity. His troops were fatigued, discouraged and short of provisions; and, after a day's fighting, he agreed to give up the fort, and to retire with his arms and baggage. Having retired to Wills creek, Washington's troops assisted in the erection of Fort Cumberland, which now became the frontier post of Virginia.

We need not repeat the tale of Braddock's defeat. It occurred on the 9th of July, 1755. An expedition against Niagara also failed.

Singular as it may seem in this paper age, war was not declared between England and France until May, 1756. This year was also barren of results.

Nothing decisive until 1758. Then, among other triumphs of English arms, Fort Du Quesne was abandoned on the approach of Gen. Forbes through Pennsylvania. With the fall of this fort ceased all direct contest in the West. From that time, Canada was the scene of operations, but in 1759, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Niagara, and at length Quebec itself, yielded to the English; and, on the 8th of September, 1760, Montreal, Detroit, and all Canada were given up by Vaudreuil, the French Governor.

Our statement that Fort Sandusky was built and occupied by the French as early as 1750-1, is now seen to be fully sustained by the journal of Gist, and the essay of Franklin (both contemporary documents) as well as by the opinion of Bancroft. The exact locality of this stockade cannot be ascertained, but the probability is, on a comparison of all the references which have fallen under our notice, that the site was about three miles west of the city of Sandusky, near the village of Venice, on Sandusky Bay. The trail from Fort Du Quesne, afterwards Fort Pitt, and now Pittsburg, to

Detroit, evidently struck Sandusky Bay, near the locality above mentioned, and Fort Sandusky was not probably far from that trail.

All the Revolutionary treaties with the Ohio Indians, as well as the treaties of January 9, 1789, at Fort Harmar, and August 3, 1795, at Greenville, contain grants to the United States of "six miles square upon Sandusky Lake, where the Fort formerly stood." On a map of Ohio, published in 1803, this tract is clearly delineated as extending from the south shore of Sandusky Bay, and including the locality which we have supposed to be the situation of Fort Sandusky. Parkman, in a chart of "Forts and Settlements. in America, A. D. 1763," places nothing within the present limits of the State of Ohio, except Fort Sandusky, which is situated on the Bay or Lake of that name. The allusions to Fort Sandusky imply so distinctly that it was near Lake Erie, or easily accessible therefrom, that the opinion has been expressed, that the Fort was situated on the peninsula north of the Bay; and Evans' "Map of the British Colonies," published in 1755, represents Fort Sandusky on the left side of the outlet of the Bay, and marks a Fort Junandat (a probable corruption of Wyandot) near the mouth of the Sandusky River, on the south side. This location of Fort Sandusky, placing it in Danbury township, Ottawa county, is universally contradicted by subsequent charts and descriptions, and we have adopted an opinion in favor of the location on the great northwestern trail. That trail we suppose to have struck a point on the Tuscarawas River, near the junction of Sandy creek, on the southern border of Stark county; thence westward through the southern tier of townships in Wayne county, and the towns of Mohican and Vermillion, in Ashland county; thence turning northwest through

Mifflin, Franklin and Plymouth townships, of Richland county, crossing the Black Fork of the Walhonding or Whitewoman River twice; still more northwardly through the townships of New Haven, Greenfield, Peru and Ridgefield, of Huron county, striking across a bend in the Huron River; and so through Erie county northwestwardly in the direction of De

troit.

CHAPTER VII.

A PICTURE OF OHIO ONE HUNDRED YEARS SINCE.

It is in our power, by transcribing freely from a Narrative of the Captivity of Col. James Smith among the Ohio Indians, between May, 1755, and April, 1759, to present a picture of the wilderness and its savage occupants, which, bearing intrinsic evidence of faithful accuracy, is also corroborated by the public and private character of the writer.

Col. James Smith was a native of Pennsylvania, and after his return from Indian captivity, was entrusted, in 1763, with the command of a company of riflemen. He trained his men in the Indian tactics and discipline, and directed them to assume the dress of warriors, and to paint their faces red and black, so that in appearance they were hardly distinguishable from the enemy. Some of his exploits in the defence of the Pennsylvania border are less creditable to him than his. services in the war of the Revolution. He lived until the year 1812, and is the author of a Treatise on the Indian mode of warfare. In Kentucky, where he spent the latter part of his life, he was much respected, and several times elected to the Legislature.

The first edition of Smith's Journal was published in Lexington, Kentucky, by John Bradford, in 1799.1 Samuel G. Drake, the Indian antiquarian and author, accompanies

1) See a volume entitled "Indian Captivities, or Life in the Wigwam;" by S. G. Drake, author of the "Book of the Indians; " Derby & Miller, publishers, Auburn, N. Y

its republication in 1851 by a tribute to Smith as "an exemplary Christian and unwavering patriot."

In the spring of 1755, James Smith, then eighteen years of age, was captured by three Indians, (two Delawares and one Canasatauga,) about four or five miles above Bedford, in Western Pennsylvania. He was immediately led to the banks of the Alleghany River, opposite Fort Du Quesne, where he was compelled to run the gauntlet between two long ranks of Indians, each stationed about two or three rods apart. His treatment was not severe, until near the end of the lines, when he was felled by a blow from a stick or tomahawk handle, and, on attempting to rise, was blinded by sand thrown into his eyes. The blows continued until he became insensible, and when he recovered his consciousness, he found himself within the fort, much bruised, and under the charge of a French physician.

While yet unrecovered from his wounds, Smith was a witness of the French exultation and the Indian orgies over the disastrous defeat of Braddock. A few days afterwards, his Indian captors placed him in a canoe, and ascended the Alleghany River to an Indian town on the north side of the river, about forty miles above Fort Du Quesne. Here they remained three weeks, when the party proceeded to a village on the west branch of the Muskingum, about twenty miles above the forks. This village was called Tullihas, and was inhabited by Delawares, Caughnewagas and Mohicans.2 The

2) Heckewelder, in his History of the Indian Nations (p. 77), says that the Cochnewago Indians were a remnant of the Mohicans of New England, who had fled to the shores of the St. Lawrence, where they incorporated themselves with the Iroquois, and became a mixed race, of course under French influence. A number of the Mohicans from Connecticut emigrated to Ohio in 1762, and their chief was "Mohican John," whose village was on the trail from Sandusky to Fort Pitt, near the township of Mohican, in Ashland county, according to our reckoning.