The writings of George Washington; being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes and illustrations. By Jared Sparks.

PART I.] THE FRENCH WAR. 15
the Branch, forty miles distant. However, in the mean
time, I detached a party of sixty men to make and mend
the road, which party since the 25th of April, and the
main body since the Ist instant, have been laboriously
employed, and have got no farther than these Meadows,
about twenty miles from the New Store.'* We have
been two days making a bridge across the river, and
have not done yet. t
The great difficulty and labor, that it requires to mend
-" You know very well, when the white people first came here, they
were poor; but they have got our lands, and are by them become rich,
and we are now poor; what little we have had for the land goes soon
away, but the land lasts for ever." And again;- -" The great king might
send you over to conquer the Indians; but it looks to us, that God did not
approve it; if he had, he would not have placed the great sea where it is,
as the limits between us and you." - Colden's History of the Five ANations,
Vol. II. pp. 86, 87.
When Mr. Gist went over the Alleganies, in February, 1751, on a tour
of discovery for the Ohio Company,'" an Indian, who spoke good English,
came to him, and said that their great man, the Beaver, and Captain
Oppamyluah, (two Chiefs of the Delawares) desired to know where the
Indians' land lay, for the French claimed all the land on one side of the
Ohio River, and the English on the other." This question Mr. Gist found it
hard to answer, and he evaded it by saying, that the Indians and white men
were all subjects of the same king, and all had an equal privilege of taking
up and possessing the land, in conformity with the conditions prescribed
by the King. - Gist's MIanuscript Journal.` A storehouse, or magazine, established by the Ohio Company at
Will's Creek.
t A council of war had been called, when the news of Ensign Ward's
capitulation reached Will's Creek, in which it was agreed to be impossible
to march towards the fort without reinforcements; but it was resolved to
advance to the mouth of Red-stone Creek on the Monongahela, and raise
a fortification, clearing the roads on the way, so that the artillery and
baggage could pass, and there wait for fresh orders.
The reasons for this decision were, that the mouth of the Red-stone
was the nearest convenient position on the Monongahela; that the storehouses already built there by the Ohio Company would receive their
munitions and provisions; that the heavy artillery might be easily transported by water from that place, whenever it should be expedient to attack
the French fort; and that by this movement the soldiers would be kept
from the ill consequences of inaction, and the Indians encouraged to
remain true to their alliance.