e, the Virginians and
Marylanders agreed upon a joint campaign to force the Susquehannocks
to leave the region and give hostages for their peaceful conduct. It
was late in September when the Maryland troops, under Major Thomas
Trueman, arrived on the north bank of the Piscataway Creek, the site
of Fort Washington. A few days later a body of Virginians under
Colonel John Washington, great-grandfather of George Washington, and
Colonel Isaac Allerton, landed from a fleet of sloops.

Across the creek, on a low bit of land, protected by patches of swamp,
the Susquehannocks had built a fort. Had it been no more than a round
stockade, after the traditional Indian style, it could have been taken
with ease. But the Marylanders themselves had taught the
Susquehannocks the art of fortification. So they had laid out a large
square, raised embankments on all four sides, with an outer defence of
palisades, and a ditch between. At each corner was a bastion, from
which an attacking force could be enfiladed. Lacking artillery to
batter down these works the three commanders decided to invest the
fort and starve out the defenders.

In the meanwhile Major Trueman invited the "great men" to a parley.
When five of them came out, he charged them with recent murders in
Maryland. The Indians placed the blame on prowling bands of Senecas.
This was an obvious lie, for Susquehannocks had been seen wearing the
clothing of some of the murdered whites, and raiding parties had come
directly to the fort, their canoes laden with beef. Seeing himself in
imminent danger, one of the Indians produced a medal bearing the image
of Lord Baltimore, and a paper which he said was a pledge from a
former governor of Maryland to protect the tribe from harm. Despite
this, and despite the fact that the "great men" had come under a truce
to discuss peace, Trueman ordered his men to knock them on the head.

When word of this outrage reached Governor Berkeley he was furious.
"If they had killed my grandfather and my grandmother, my father and
mother and all my friends, yet if they had come to treat of peace,
they ought to have gone in peace," he blurted out. Major Trueman was
impeached in Maryland, fined and sentenced to imprisonment, but this
did not undo the wrong or prevent the terrible consequences.

The Indians in the fort put up a desperate resistance. Weeks passed,
and they still held out. To every suggestion of parley they asked:
"Where are our great men?" At