Like all Virginians, I was disturbed during this time by the news of the insolence of the French on the frontier, and began to feel that my brother's money, put into the Ohio Company, was in peril, for we were like to be soon cooped up by a line of forts, and our trade in peltries was already almost at an end, and about to pass into the hands of the French. We learned with pleasure that the royal governors were ordered to insist on the retirement of these overbusy French, who claimed all the land up to the Alleghanies, but I did not dream that I was soon to take part in the matter.
About that time, or before, there had been much effort to secure the Six Nations of Indians as allies. One of their chiefs, Tanacharisson, known as the Half-King, because of holding a subsidiary rule among the Indians, advised a fort to be built by us near to the Forks of the Ohio, on the east
