of the conduct of Washington’s Indians is no less erroneous.  “This murder,” says a chronicler of the time, “produced on the minds of the savages an effect very different from that which the cruel Washington had promised himself.  They have a horror of crime; and they were so indignant at that which had just been perpetrated before their eyes, that they abandoned him, and offered themselves to us in order to take vengeance."[150] Instead of doing this, they boasted of their part in the fight, scalped all the dead Frenchmen, sent one scalp to the Delawares as an invitation to take up the hatchet for the English, and distributed the rest among the various Ohio tribes to the same end.

[Footnote 150:  Poulin de Lumina, Histoire de la Guerre contre les Anglois, 15.]

Coolness of judgment, a profound sense of public duty, and a strong self-control, were even then the characteristics of Washington; but he was scarcely twenty-two, was full of military ardor, and was vehement and fiery by nature.  Yet it is far from certain that, even when age and experience had ripened him, he would have forborne to act as he did, for there was every reason for believing that the designs of the French were hostile; and though by passively waiting the event he would have thrown upon them the responsibility of striking the first blow, he would have exposed his small party to capture or destruction by giving them time to gain reinforcements from Fort Duquesne.  It was inevitable that the killing of Jumonville should be greeted in France by an outcry of real or assumed horror; but the Chevalier de Levis, second in command to Montcalm, probably expresses the true opinion of Frenchmen best fitted to judge when he calls it “a pretended assassination."[151] Judge it as we may, this obscure skirmish began the war that set the world on fire.[152]

[Footnote 151:  Levis, Memoire sur la Guerre du Canada.]

[Footnote 152:  On this affair, Sparks, Writings of Washington, II. 25-48, 447. Dinwiddie Papers.  Letter of Contrecoeur in Precis des Faits.  Journal of Washington, Ibid.  Washington to Dinwiddie, 3 June, 1754.  Dussieux, Le Canada sous la Domination Francaise, 118.  Gaspe, Anciens Canadiens, appendix, 396.  The assertion of Abbe de l’Isle-Dieu, that Jumonville showed a flag of truce, is unsupported.  Adam Stephen, who was in the fight, says that the guns of the English were so wet that they had to trust mainly to the bayonet.  The Half-King boasted that he killed Jumonville with his tomahawk.  Dinwiddie highly approved Washington’s conduct.

In 1755 the widow of Jumonville received a pension of one hundred and fifty francs.  In 1775 his daughter, Charlotte Aimable, wishing to become a nun, was given by the King six hundred francs for her “trousseau” on entering the convent. Dossier de Jumonville et de sa Veuve, 22 Mars, 1755. Memoire pour Mlle. de Jumonville, 10 Juillet, 1775. Response du Garde des Sceaux, 25 Juillet, 1775.]