At Will’s Creek he added to his party.  Here he was joined by Mr. Gist, an experienced frontiersman, who knew well the ways of the wilderness, and by four other persons, two of them Indian traders.  On November 14 the journey was resumed.  Hardships now surrounded the little party of adventurers.  Miles of rough mountain had to be climbed; streams, swollen to their limits, to be crossed; unbroken and interminable forests to be traversed.  Day after day they pressed onward, through difficulties that would have deterred all but the hardiest and most vigorous of men.  In ten days they had accomplished an important section of their journey, and reached those forks of the Ohio which were afterwards to attain such celebrity both in war and peace,—­as the site of Fort Duquesne and of the subsequent city of Pittsburgh.

Twenty miles farther on the Indian settlement of Logstown was reached.  Here Washington called the Indian chiefs together in conference.  The leading chief was known as Tanacharison (Half-King), an Indian patriot, who had been much disturbed by the French and English incursions.  He had been to the French forts.  What he had said to their commanders is curious, and worthy of being quoted: 

“Fathers, I am come to tell you your own speeches; what your own mouths have declared.  Fathers, you in former days set a silver basin before us, wherein was the leg of a beaver, and desired all the nations to come and eat of it,—­to eat in peace and plenty, and not to be churlish to one another; and that, if any person should be found to be a disturber, I here lay down by the edge of the dish a rod, which you must scourge them with; and if your father should get foolish in my old days, I desire you may use it upon me as well as others.  Now, fathers, it is you who are the disturbers in this land, by coming and building your towns, and taking it away unknown to us, and by force....

“Fathers, I desire you may hear me in civilness; if not, we must handle that rod which was laid down for the use of the obstreperous....  Fathers, both you and the English are white; we live in a country between; therefore, the land belongs to neither one nor the other.  The Great Being above allowed it to be a place of residence for us; so, fathers, I desire you to withdraw, as I have done our brothers the English:  for I will keep you at arms’ length.  I lay this down as a trial for both, to see which will have the greatest regard for it, and that side we will stand by, and make equal sharers with us.  Our brothers, the English, have heard this, and I now come to tell it to you; for I am not afraid to discharge you off this land.”

The poor Half-King was to find that he had undertaken a task like that of discharging the wolves out of the sheep-cote.  The French heard his protest with contempt, and went on building their forts.  He thereupon turned to the English, whom he, in the simplicity of his heart, imagined had no purpose save that of peaceful trade.  His “fathers” had contemned him; to his “brothers” he turned in amity.