colonies to help fight the French. When they refused,
Virginia sent Captain Trent to raise a company of men in the western
country and to build a fort at the fork of the Ohio River, where the
city of Pittsburgh now stands.

Washington, now Colonel, was ordered to raise three hundred men and
build a road to this fort for cannon and supplies. He succeeded in
getting together one hundred and fifty men, who were poorly equipped,
and without training. They built the road as far as Cumberland. Here, in
April, 1754, they met Captain Trent's men in retreat. A French force of
three hundred men had surprised them by suddenly paddling down the river
in canoes, and planting their guns before the fort, with a summons to
surrender in an hour. One young officer and fifty men could not hold out
against so many. So they surrendered and marched back over the
mountains.

Every day traders and settlers came by, hurrying eastward. They said the
French had taken the place at the fork of the Ohio and were building a
strong fort. They were coaxing the Indians, with fine presents, to fight
the English. If the British were to succeed against the French, they
required a good road over which to march an army. So Colonel Washington
hurried the road building as much as possible, but at best he could make
only slow progress in such mountainous country.

He received a message from the friendly chief Half King, telling him
that a French force was on its way to attack him. With a little band of
men, Washington made his way by night through the forest, in a heavy
rain, to the camp of Half King. Indian scouts tracked the Frenchmen to a
forest near a place called Great Meadows, where, in May, Washington and
his men attacked them on one side and the Indians on the other. The
Colonel was in the thickest of the fight and, for the first time, heard
bullets whistling about his head. Ten Frenchmen were killed and
twenty-one taken prisoners. Half King sent the scalps of the dead men,
with tomahawks and strings of black wampum (small beads made of shells
and sometimes used by the Indians as money), to all his allies and asked
them to join the English.

This was Washington's first skirmish and it opened the French and Indian
War that lasted seven years. Washington now encamped at Great Meadows
where he dug rude trenches, which he called Fort Necessity. Supplies of
food and ammunition were slow in reaching him. He had been reenforced
with troops from the comman