Thomas Cresap, a clever Yorkshireman, who operated a trading post in the mountains near the junction of the North and South Branches of the Potomac River, became an organizing member of the Ohio Company. So lavishly hospitable was Cresap to the Indians and others with whom he did business that he was known to them as “Big Spoon,” but to his Pennsylvania trading competitors he was an undercutting Marylander not above committing murder for a beaver skin. Certain it is that he had once been carted off in irons, after some “rascality” on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, to spend a year in prison at Philadelphia. In any case the aristocratic tidewater Virginians counted “Colonel Cressup” a key member of their Ohio Company. The Marylander’s trading paths already led to the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela, and the Ohio. So, the fort-like establishment he maintained on Virginia’s northwestern frontier served as a convenient base from which the company commenced its well-financed operations in the Ohio valley. Employed by the company were some former associates of George Croghan. Among them were Andrew Montour, a colorful half-breed of _coureur des bois_ stock, and Croghan’s brother-in-law William Trent. With the aid of experienced men like these, Thomas Cresap was soon proving his worth to his tidewater partners and to the British Empire. The threat was too obvious to be ignored by the French. They laid plans to push the English back over the mountains. Already, a French army detachment, using a traders’ portage between the eastern end of Lake Erie and Lake Chautauqua, had gone down to the Ohio via the Allegheny River, planting lead plates along both streams as a warning to trespassers. Already, French-led and French-inspired Indian raids had taken the lives of English traders, as well as those of their native hosts. In one case a prominent Indian chief allied with the English had been boiled and eaten by some Ottawas led by a French half-breed, all without discouraging the Englishmen it seemed. Now, in 1753, a French army of 1,000 men headed down the Allegheny from Canada, to begin building a line of forts along the line of the previously planted lead plates. Forts were built first at present-day Erie on the lake and at the head of French Creek to secure a portage. Then, John Frazer’s trading post at Venango on the Allegheny was taken and converted to a fortification. There the French troops, bogged down with sickness, dug in for the winter. That is where Major George Washington found them when he carried a note from the Governor of Virginia to their commanding officer suggesting that they all retire promptly to Canada. This, the Frenchmen said, they had no intention of doing. In the spring they would push on, down the Allegheny, to the strategic Forks of the Ohio.