The Student's Life of Washington; Condensed from the Larger Work of Washington Irving For Young Persons and for the Use of Schools

western tribes that was to take place at Logstown, to conclude a treaty with the Virginians.
    It was a great object with the French to prevent this treaty, and to spirit up the Ohio Indians against the English. This they hoped to effect through the agency of one Captain Joncaire, a veteran of the wilderness, who had grown gray in Indian diplomacy, and was now sent to maintain French sovereignty over the valley of the Ohio. He appeared at Logstown accompanied by another Frenchman, and forty Iroquois warriors. He found an assemblage of the western tribes, feasting and rejoicing, and firing off guns, for George Croghan, and Montour, the interpreter, were there, and had been distributing presents on behalf of the governor of Pennsylvania.
    Joncaire was said to have the wit of a Frenchman, and the eloquence of an Iroquois. He made an animated speech to the chiefs in their own tongue, the gist of which was that their father Onontio (that is to say, the governor of Canada) desired his children of the Ohio to turn away the Indian traders, and never to deal with them again on pain of his displeasure; so saying, he laid down a wampum belt of uncommon size, by way of emphasis to his message. For once his eloquence was of no avail; a chief rose indignantly, shook his finger in his face, and stamping on the ground, “This is our land,” said he. “What right has Onontio here? The English are our brothers. They shall live among us as long as one of us is alive. We will trade with them, and not with you;” and, so saying, he rejected the belt of wampum.
    Joncaire returned to an advanced post recently established on the upper part of the river, whence he wrote to the governor of Pennsylvania: “The Marquis de la Jonquiere, governor of New France, having ordered me to watch that the English make no treaty in the Ohio country, I have signified to the traders of your government to retire. You are not ignorant that all these lands belong to the King of France, and that the English have no right to trade in them.” He concluded by reiterating the threat made two years previously by Celeron de Bienville against all intruding fur traders. In the meantime, in the face of all these protests and menaces, Mr. Gist, under sanction of the Virginia Legislature, proceeded in the same year to survey the lands within the grant of the Ohio company, lying on the south side of the Ohio river, as far down as the great Kanawha.
    The French now prepared for hostile contingencies. They launched an armed vessel of unusual size on Lake Ontario; fortified their trading-house at Niagara; strengthened their outposts, and advanced others on the upper waters of the Ohio. A stir of warlike preparation was likewise to be observed among the British colonies. It was evident that the adverse claims to the disputed territories, if pushed home, could only be settled by the stern arbitrament of the sword.
    In Virginia, especially, the war spirit was manifest. The province was divided into military districts, each having an adjutant-general, with the rank of major, and the pay of one hundred and fifty pounds a year, whose duty was to attend to the organization and equipment of the militia. Such an appointment was sought by Lawrence Washington for his brother George, who set about preparing himself, with his usual method and assiduity, for his new duties. Virginia had among its floating population some military relics of the late Spanish war. Among these was a certain Adjutant Muse, a Westmoreland volunteer, who had served with Lawrence Washington in the campaigns in the West Indies. He now undertook to instruct his brother George in the art of war; lent him treatises on military tactics; put him through the manual exercise, and gave him some idea of evolutions in the field. Another of Lawrence’s campaigning comrades was Jacob Van Braam, a Dutchman by birth, who had been in the British army, but was now out of service, and, professing to be a complete master of fence, recruited his slender purse in this time of military excitement, by giving the Virginian youth lessons in the sword exercise. Under the instructions of these veterans Mount Vernon, from being a quiet rural retreat, was suddenly transformed into a school of arms.
    Washington’s martial studies, however, were interrupted for a time by the critical state of his brother’s health. The constitution of Lawrence had always been delicate, and he had been obliged repeatedly to travel for a change of air.