]
[Footnote 149: Pouchot, _Memoire sur la derniere Guerre_.]
French writers say that, on first seeing the English, Jumonville's
interpreter called out that he had something to say to them; but
Washington, who was at the head of his men, affirms this to be
absolutely false. The French say further that Jumonville was killed in
the act of reading the summons. This is also denied by Washington, and
rests only on the assertion of the Canadian who ran off at the outset,
and on the alleged assertion of Indians who, if present at all, which is
unlikely, escaped like the Canadian before the fray began. Druillon, an
officer with Jumonville, wrote two letters to Dinwiddie after his
capture, to claim the privileges of the bearer of a summons; but while
bringing forward every other circumstance in favor of the claim, he does
not pretend that the summons was read or shown either before or during
the action. The French account of the conduct of Washington's Indians is
no less erroneous. "This murder," says a chronicler of the time,
"produced on the minds of the savages an effect very different from that
which the cruel Washington had promised himself. They have a horror of
crime; and they were so indignant at that which had just been
perpetrated before their eyes, that they abandoned him, and offered
themselves to us in order to take vengeance."[150] Instead of doing
this, they boasted of their part in the fight, scalped all the dead
Frenchmen, sent one scalp to the Delawares as an invitation to take up
the hatchet for the English, and distributed the rest among the various
Ohio tribes to the same end.
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