General Washington, in command of forty provincial troops, and Tannacharison, the Half-King, in command of a company of friendly Indians, on May 28, 1754. This action was the first conflict at arms between the French and English for supremacy in the Mississippi valley. Erected July 4th, 1908, under the auspices of the Centennial committee of 1904. Washington's situation now was extremely perilous. Contrecoeur had finished the fort from which Ward had been driven. He had already nearly one thousand men with him, and reenforcements and Inidan allies were on their way to join him. Messengers sent by Jumonville previous to the late affray apprised him of the weakness of the encampment at the Great Meadows. Washington lost no time in enlarging the entrenchments and erecting palisades. He wrote to Colonel Fry, who lay sick at Will's creek, having been seriously injured by his horse falling on him, urging immediate reenforcements, but at the same time declaring his resolution to "fight with unequal numbers rather than give up one inch of what he had gained.” The Half-King and Queen Aliquippa and twenty-five or thirty families, making in all eighty to one hundred Indians, arrived at the Great Meadows on June first. Colonel Fry died on the thirty-first of May, a few days after the accident, and Major Muse took command and joined Washington, where he arrived on the ninth of June with the residue of the Virginia regiment and nine swivel guns, powder and balls. Major Muse had served with Lawrence Washington in the campaign of the West Indies, and had been with him in the attack on Carthagena. He had been Washingtin's instructor three years before in the manual of arms, and was now acting as quartermaster. By the death of Colonel Fry the chief command devolved upon Major Washington, who was commissioned lieutenant-colonel on June fourth. Captain James Mackaye, with an independent company of the royal army, composed of one hundred men from South Carolina, joined Washington on the tenth |