George Croghan - The Seven Years' War

The Seven Years' War

At the outset of the Seven years' War in North America (also referred to as the French and Indian War, 1754–1763), French forces were occupying the Ohio Country and expelling or arresting British fur traders. Soon after Washington returned from delivering Virginia Governor Dinwiddie's summons to the French, Croghan was in Ohio Country gathering intelligence, helping build the Ohio Company stockade commanded by William Trent, and supplying the Indians with food, rum, and weapons. At the end of May, He and Montour were in Winchester when Governor Dinwiddie commissioned them as captains under Col. Washington. Croghan was charged with supplying flour and Indian allies. By that time the French had captured the Ohio Company fort at the Forks of the Ohio, which was surrendered by Croghan's half-brother Edward Ward. The Half King murdered Jumonville. Washington alienated his Indian allies and blamed Croghan for his defeat at Fort Necessity. The Half King and Queen Aliquippa took their people to Croghan's plantation on Aughwick Creek, where both died that winter.

During the ill-fated Braddock Expedition in 1755, Croghan, as always assisted by Montour, led eight Indian scouts, the same group the Half King had led at Jumonville Glen. Like Washington, General Braddock alienated friendly Indians, yet Montour and the eight under Croghan attended the gravely wounded general. The teamsters Daniel Boone and Daniel Morgan fled on horseback. Croghan pressed Braddock to relinquish command and, although the general refused, apparently took charge. He got Braddock off the battlefield with the help of his aide, the 23-year-old Washington. Washington's account differs and his biographer James Flexner does not mention Croghan being present. Volwiler asserts that captains Croghan and Montour were there; they outranked the General's aide, and recalled having been Washington's subordinates the year before. They worked together to save Braddock, with Croghan the more likely leader in the emergency. He had taken that role the year before, and would continue to do so in all the subsequent crises in Ohio Country.

In 1755, friendly Indians again sought refuge at Aughwick. He fortified it as Fort Shirley, one of four which Croghan built on the frontier. In 1756, he relocated to the New York frontier, where he began his 15-year career as Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs under Sir William Johnson.

With Montour at his side and in command of 100 Indians on an overlooking hilltop, Croghan witnessed in July, 1758 General James Abercrombie's calamitous frontal assault on Fort Ticonderoga. Afterwards Croghan wrote Johnson that he feared a similar "thrashing" for Gen. John Forbes advance forces nearing Fort Duquesne, unaware of Major James Grant's bloody defeat five days earlier. Before joining Forbes on November 20 with fifteen Indian scouts, Croghan's management of the Indians at Easton, where he acknowledged being an Indian himself, produced a peace treaty that forced the French to burn Fort Duquesne. Forbes assigned Croghan and Montour the dangerous task of bringing in recalcitrant regional Delawares, something Edward Shippen said not even Sir William Johnson could handle better. Placed under Col. Henry Bouquet's command early in 1759, Croghan gathered intelligence about the French force at Venango. The "700 troops and about 950 Indians" there on the eve of overwhelming Pittsburgh in July were instead ordered to relieve Fort Niagara, where they were ambushed and defeated by Johnson.

Preliminary treaties that Croghan negotiated with thirteen western tribes during the next two years were formalized in the September, 1761 conference at Detroit presided over by Johnson. Croghan's diplomacy countered Seneca efforts to enlist the western Indiana in an anti-British alliance by organizing them into a confederacy independent of the Six Nations. General Jeffrey Amherst considered the cost of maintaining peace with the Indians exorbitant, cutting Indian Department expenses to the bone (Croghan wrote that he served "the King for nothing,") and more seriously, Amherst severely limited the gunpowder and lead the Indians needed to feed their families and acquire necessities through the fur trade. Amherst ignored Croghan's intelligence that an Indian war was imminent. The last straw for the Indians and for Croghan was the news that the French had ceded all Indian territory to the British in the Treaty of Paris, prompting Pontiac's Rebellion and Croghan's timely journey to London seeking confirmation of his Indian deeds and reparations for trade losses.