James Baquet

Americans tend to think that their history of battle starts with the War of Independence from Great Britain (1775-1783). But when I was 9 years old, my mother bought me a 12-volume set of U.S. history books (one per week at the grocery store), and Volume 2 is titled “The Indian Wars 1675-1774.” (I still have the set!)

Yes, though the Spanish conquistadores get more of the bad press, the British-Americans, too, had to fight to occupy the land that had belonged to Native Americans for millennia.

Sometimes, these wars were complicated by competition with other European colonial powers. Thus, the “French and Indian War” (1754-1763) saw the U.K. and British-Americans fighting alongside the Iroquois and Cherokee tribes against the Kingdom of France and New France and a number of Native tribes, including the Algonquin, Lenape, Ojibwa, and Shawnee peoples. (New France embraced France’s New-World colonies in what is now Canada and the central portion of the U.S., procured for the U.S. by Thomas Jefferson in 1803.)

The first minor engagement of the war was an ambush of a French patrol by the British-Americans under a callow young 22-year-old named George Washington; that was in May 1754.

After a high-level meeting among six governors and the newly-arrived British Army commander, General Edward Braddock, it was decided to try to oust the French from Fort Duquesne, at a site called the Forks of the Ohio, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio River. This strategic action was a catastrophe for the British.

Braddock led the Battle of the Monongahela (July 9, 1755). Not knowing the terrain, he failed to use Native scouts, and did not anticipate the difficulties of moving men and equipment down narrow forest roads. He was wounded during the battle (after having several horses shot from under him) and died a few days later. (Touchingly, Braddock specifically requested that Washington oversee the burial of his remains.)

Fort Duquesne remained in French hands until, having lost the support of their Native allies, they abandoned it at the approach of a superior British force in 1758.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. included

2. disaster

3. kick out

4. in a heart-warming way

5. immature; inexperienced

6. important; integral to a plan

7. acquired; purchased

8. gave up; left

9. leaders of states or colonies

10. periods of 1,000 years