affairs of consequence, and this was service of a most important nature, requiring on the part of him who performed it delicacy, tact, boldness and unassailable honesty of purpose. Having left New York at an early age as the result of a historic land dispute, he removed to Pennsylvania, where he became one of the important men of that colony. At one time under strong religious conviction he entered the Adventist monastery at Ephrata, but tiring of that connection he withdrew to secular life and in so doing made for himself many life-long enemies. He was commissioned colonel in 1756, and before and after this date, he was eminently useful to the governors of four provinces in the regulation of their Indian affairs. The name he bore with the Six Nations, Taracháwagon, and the evidences of their affection for him and reliance upon his friendship is preserved in scores of the documents of that day. His memory must be honored as long as men shall retain their interest in those treaties and diplomatic exchanges between the colonists and the Six Nations, that high race of statesmen and warriors.

In 1747, George Washington, then a boy of fifteen years, made a journey into Cresap's country for the purpose of surveying Lord Fairfax's western lands.22 From his journal it is possible to gather a vivid picture of the scenes and incidents which were the daily life of a boy destined to become one of the great ones of the world, pictures all the more valuable for their quality of unconscious self-revelation. They have in them the epic spirit which shows itself in many different ways in the records of conquest and settlement of that western country. Two entries from this journal are of immediate concern to us in this narrative:

"Monday, March 21st, 1747. We went over in a Canoe & Travell'd up Maryland side all y. Day in a Continued Rain to Collo. Cresaps right against y. Mouth of y. South Branch about 40 Miles from Polks I believe y. worst Road that ever was trod by Man or Beast."

"Washington's Journal, ed. by. J. M. Toner.

High water kept the youthful surveyor at Cresap's for the next five days and on Wednesday he writes:

"Rain'd till about two oClock & Clear'd when we were agreeably surpris'd at y. sight of thirty odd Indians coming from War with only one Scalp. We had some Liquor with us of which we gave them Part it elevating there Spirits put them in y. Humour of Dauncing of whom we had a War Daunce there manner of Dauncing is as follows Viz, They clear a Large Circle & make a Great Fire in y. middle then seats themselves around it y. Speaker makes a grand Speech telling them in what Manner they are to Daunce after he has finished y. best Dauncer Jumps up as one awaked out of a Sleep & Runs & Jumps about y. Ring in a most comicle Manner he is followed by y. Rest then begins there Musicians to Play ye Musick is a Pot half of Water with a Deerskin Stretched over it as tight as it can & a goard with some Shott in it to Rattle & a piece of an horses Tail tied to it to make it look fine y. one keeps Rattling and y. other Drumming all y. while y. others is Dauncing."

Another character of interest who must have been often at Cresap's stockade in these days was Andrew Montour, 23 the son of Catherine Montour and an Indian of the Six Nations. The celebrated Catherine, known in border history as Madame Montour, was the daughter of a Huron woman and the Comte de Frontenac, who was charged during his governorship of Canada with "debasing the morals of the colony by propagating more than sixty half-breeds." Catherine, however, partook only of the great qualities of her father, for captured by the Senecas in the course of a raid into Canada, she married a halfbreed chief of that nation and herself eventually became chieftainess of the Niagara Senecas, whom she ruled until her death in 1752. Her quarter-bred sons, John, Andrew and Henry became firm allies of the English, whom they served in war and peace in a variety of ways, sharing to some extent the fame of Joseph Brant as friends of the white man. Andrew Montour was of real value to Washington, under whom he

"Buell, A. C., Sir William Johnson.

held a captain's commission in the Fort Necessity campaign, and before this, at the Logstown Treaty, he had been most influential in securing the renewal of the ratification of the Indians to the old treaty of Lancaster.

The limits of the writer's space and of his hearer's patience forbid further detailed reference to more of these backwoods types with whom Cresap came into touch in those troublous days on the border. George Croghan,24 for instance, agent of Indian affairs for Pennsylvania, the friend and helper of Sir William Johnson, was a figure of the first importance in that place and period. He was a pioneer and trader who served the whole English establishment by his influence with the Pennsylvania and Ohio Indians. The Half King,25 whose name appears frequently in the records before us, was a Seneca chieftain, who by the practise of his real diplomatic gift engaged and held the Long House to the English in many a crisis. He was the friend and loyal supporter of Washington, who one day conferred upon the proud chieftain the name "Dinwiddie," and pinned on his breast a medal sent by His Excellency of Virginia.

From this digression of persons, it were well to return to a more orderly relation of the events in which Cresap was concerned in various capacities. In the year 1749, the British government chartered a group of gentlemen who had associated themselves for the purpose of exploring and settling a portion of that vast territory called, because of the name of the river which drained it, the "Ohio country." They were given They were given a grant of five hundred thousand acres of land on the Ohio between the Monongahela and the Kanawha Rivers, of which number two hundred thousand were to be settled immediately. The grant was made free from quit rent or tax to the Crown on the condition that one hundred families were settled there within

seven years. This was the celebrated Ohio Company, 26 and

Washington's Journal, ed. by J. M. Toner.

Ibid.

Gist's Journal, etc., ed. by W. M. Darlington.

Thomas Lee, Lawrence and Augustine Washington, Thomas Cresap, George Mason, John Mercer, Robert Dinwiddie and others of equal eminence in Maryland and Virginia were its proprietors. They set to work immediately to carry into effect the purposes for which they were incorporated. Gist was sent on his memorable journey of exploration into the vaguely known region; a store-house, afterwards Fort Cumberland, now the second city in Maryland, was built at Wills Creek; and Cresap was ordered to mark and clear a road from this point to the spot where Redstone Creek empties into the Monongahela, the present site of Brownsville, where another trading post and store-house known as Redstone Old Fort was constructed in 1752. The threatened French War discouraged a steady settlement of the lands, but the fact that a visitor to Cresap's house at Old Town in 1754 found him away from home visiting the Company's settlers on the Ohio, is evidence that the activities of this organization were the point of the wedge that entered the wilderness and laid it open to the inrush of emigrants which occurred in the years following the Revolution. After the close of the war with France, the Ohio Company was merged with one formed in London by Thomas Walpole, called the Grand Company, but as the majority of the proprietors of the elder concern did not approve of the change a contest arose between the two which might have remained unsettled to this day save for the War of Independence, which put an end to both organizations and the private exploitation of the domain which they controlled.

It were foolish to applaud the incorporators of the Ohio Company as disinterested patriots intent on extending the bounds of the British dominions. That is not how such things are done. The westward star of empire follows the path of individual self interest, but now and then an individual builds larger than he knows, and is fortunate in being able to serve his own interests and the common weal at the same time. The adventurers of the Ohio Company were of this sort, and we cannot but feel that, land speculators as they were, they yet

C

25

THOMAS CRESAP, A MARYLAND PIONEER.

had a vision of a greater eventuation in that western country than was measured by the material profits which they hoped to obtain from the enterprise.

The achievement of Cresap's life which has been remembered most universally by historians of various sorts is one which must have commended itself to him and his associates in the Ohio Company as a measure of great importance in the prosecution of their plans for the future. I mean the opening of the road, sixty miles in length, from the mouth of Wills Creek across the Laurel Mountains to the junction of Redstone Creek with the Monongahela,27 a road whereby was formed a means of passage between the Potomac and the Ohio, the settled country of the eastern seaboard and the vast, as yet only dimly realized region of the west, and a road which was to become more important and more deeply saturated with historic interest with every year that passed, and finally as the National Pike to take rank among the famous highways of the world.

To Thomas Cresap and his friend, the Indian Nemacolin, falls the honor of having first blazed this trail and removed some of its most difficult obstructions, for as far as can be learned they did no more than this at the time of which we are speaking. Nemacolin seems to have had in charge the physical labor of the road-making, while Cresap acted as surveyor and overseer. This was in 1749 or 1750, and the story of that road from then until the present day forms an entrancing chapter in the history of the country's development.28 Gist's Trace, Nemacolin's Path, Washington's Road, Braddock's Road, the National Pike these are some of the names which it has borne at different times, and it is scarcely necessary to adduce more evidence than these names give of its tremendous importance in the political and economic history of the United States. If Waterloo was won on the football fields of England, the American Revolution was fought on the narrow path which Cresap and Nemacolin cleared through the wilderness, for here

"Jacob, J. J., Biog. Sketch of Capt. Michael Cresap.

Hulburt, A. B., Historic Highways-Washington's Road.