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Post
& King Beaver at Ft. Duquesne by Robert Griffing
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."
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