Braddock's Harsh Reply — Huntingdon County Information Page

Did you know? In 1755 a Lenape chief asked a British general a direct question, and the answer helped set this whole frontier on fire.

Shingas asked General Edward Braddock whether Indians who were friends to the English might be permitted to live and trade among them, and keep hunting ground enough to support themselves and their families. The National Park Service records Braddock's answer in five words. No Savage Should Inherit the Land.

What happened next was not a fit of temper, and it is worth getting right. Shingas and his villagers stayed neutral at first. They declined to help George Washington at Fort Necessity in 1754 and declined to help Braddock in 1755. The Lenape had no wish to be French subjects either. It was only after Braddock was defeated and France took control of the region that they reluctantly aligned with the French.

Then the raids came, deep into Pennsylvania and Virginia settlements, and the settlers gave him a name for it. Shingas the Terrible. Pennsylvania and Virginia both put a bounty on him.

One more thing belongs in this story. However hard he fought, he was never known to treat a prisoner of war with cruelty.

From the record

Passages about this subject, quoted from county histories now in the public domain. Each one names the book and the position in the text so it can be checked. Spelling is as printed.

The little detachment at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela was driven off by a French force, which then built a fort there and named it Fort Du Quesne, after the governor of Canada. George Washington, who was in command of the Virginians, and who, it is said, fired the first shot in the skirmish at Fort Du Quesne, fell back some distance and built Fort Necessity, which he w<is compelled to surrender to a superior force on July 4, 1754, but not until he received the promise that he and his men should be allowed to return home. As yet there had been no formal declaration of war between the two nations, but both England and France hurried additional troops and munitions of war to America. Among the colonists the English outnumbered the French about ten to one. To ofiFset this inequality, the latter, as far as possible, formed alliances with the Indian tribes. This was not a difficult thing to do, as the French were traders rather than actual settlers and interfered but little with the Indian hunting grounds, while the English felled the forests and built permanent habitations, thus driving away the game. It is because of this alliance that the conflict is known in history as the French and Indian war. In 1755 General Edward Braddock was sent over from England as commander-in-chief. Four campa^ns were planned for that year , one against Louisbur^, which guarded the approach to the St.John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 566,272 of the scanned text

George Washington was sent by the Governor of Virginia with a small military force to occupy the Forks of the Ohio, but before reaching his destination was attacked at Fort Necessity, by a body of French and Indians much superior in numbers, and compelled, on the 4th day of July, 1753, to surrender his defenses and retrace his steps over the Alleghenies. Some Indians friendly to the English interests immediately moved eastward towards the settlements. Croghan writes to Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton from "Aucquick Old Town, Aug. 16, 1754," that "The Half-King Scarrooyady and several other Indians, with their wives and families, have been here since Col. Washington was defeated, and about twelve days ago come here the young Shawanese king from the lower Shawanese town, and seyeral more with 1 Wright's Perry Connty, p. 10. , 1 him, and Delaware George and several other Delawares came here from the French fort." Coinciding with the views of his Indian guests, Croghan suggested that the government must move quickly and vigorously or the Ohio lands would be lost. A conference was proposed to be held at his place in ten days.J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883) · character 270,636 of the scanned text

What the fact check changed. CORRECTED, and this one carried the single riskiest thing a post can carry: a direct quote in quotation marks that does not match its own cited source. THE QUOTE IS WRONG AS CITED. The post has Braddock replying "the English Shoud Inhabit & Inherit the Land." The post's own claimed source, the National Park Service page on Shingas, gives the reply as "No Savage Should Inherit the Land." Both phrases circulate in accounts of this exchange, which descends from Charles Stuart's captivity narrative, but the post is quoting one wording and citing a page that prints another. The rewrite uses the NPS wording and says so in the text, so a reader can check it in one click. CAUSATION INVENTED, and this is the bigger fault. The post says "Enraged, Shingas switched sides to the French." No source says that. What the sources say is that the Lenape stayed NEUTRAL in the early stages, declined to assist Washington at Fort Necessity in 1754 and Braddock in 1755, had no desire to be French subjects, and aligned with France only reluctantly after Braddock's defeat left France dominant in the region. Turning a considered and reluctant political decision by a Native leader into an emotional outburst is a real distortion, and it is the kind that reads badly. DROPPED, 'killing and capturing hundreds': no source opened supports a number. The sources say numerous raids, and that both Pennsylvania and Virginia put a bounty on him. CONFIRMED and kept: 'Shingas the Terrible' is genuine. ADDED, because leaving it out makes a one-sided portrait of a real person: 'Although he was an implacable foe in battle, he was never known to treat his prisoners of war with cruelty.' This is the same defect class as the McKenzie post in batch 009, a real human being flattened into one trait. Check how a person's story ENDED and what cut against the headline, every time. SOFTENED: 'sparked a frontier war that changed Pennsylvania forever' overstates single-cause history. The rewrite says the answer helped set the frontier on fire, which the sequence supports.

Sources

Checked 2026-08-01 · County history, independently fact checked

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