|
August
24, 1758. - A shiver runs through the weary traveler as he gazes
across the Allegheny River at Fort Duquesne. Three summers ago,
French soldiers and Indian warriors swarmed out from those very
walls to destroy Braddock's glittering, confident army, and the
tortured cries of captives echoed across the water from the very
ground he stands on. And now, two armies poised once again to struggle
for possession of the Forks of the Ohio.
But Christian Frederick Post, a Moravian missionary turned emissary,
is a man of peace, and the message he carries is more powerful than
the British artillery inching slowly westward toward this place.
To the French officers pulling their boat ashore below, Post is
the most dangerous man in America, threatening to break the tenuous
alliance upon which their control of the Forks of the Ohio depends.
[From
the diary of Christian Frederick Post, August 24, 1758]: "We
continued our journey to the fort; and arrived in sight, on this
side the river, in the afternoon, and all the Indian chiefs immediately
came over, they called me into the middle, and King Beaver presented
me to them, and said, "Here is our English brother, who has brought
great news."
|
|