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Special Episode - Christopher Gist
200 Plays4 months ago
You've heard his name come up a few times on this podcast - now learn the story of one of colonial America's toughest frontiersmen, who played a key role in the opening stages of the French and Indian War.
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Transcript
Introduction to Christopher Gist's Journey
Gist's Encounter with an Indian Warrior
00:00:06
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Christopher Gist looked at the Indian warrior who had just asked him a question. The native was staring at him intensely, eyes searching for any hint of a lie. Gist couldn't fail to notice the tomahawk at his belt, nor the scalping knife beside it.
Mission for George Krogan and Andrew Montour
00:00:22
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No, he replied. I'm here to find George Krogan and Andrew Montour and deliver them a message by order of the king across the great sea. The native leaned back, impressed by the authority behind Gist's trip.
00:00:36
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Maintaining his composure, Gist breathed an internal sigh of relief. The Indian found the answer convincing. But he couldn't help but think what might have happened if the warrior knew the real reason Christopher Gist was roaming the Ohio country in the autumn of 1750.
Early Life and Surveying Skills
00:00:54
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Christopher Gist was born in 1706 in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, Richard Gist, had helped plot and arrange the city of Baltimore, and it's very likely that the young Christopher had absorbed skills in surveying from his father.
00:01:08
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These skills would assist him greatly in his later career as a frontiersman and explorer. Sometime in the 1720s, he married Sarah Howard, and they would have three sons and two daughters, Richard, Nathaniel, and Thomas, and Anne and Violet.
00:01:23
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Nathaniel and Thomas would go on to accompany Christopher in many of his frontier activities.
Surveying the Ohio Country for the Ohio Company
00:01:28
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Gist first shows up on the scene in the French and Indian War a few years before it officially starts.
00:01:35
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Hired by the Ohio Company, the land speculation organization with ties to the colonial government of Virginia, Gist was dispatched by Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie in the fall of 1750 to survey the Ohio country, the vaguely defined territory around the Ohio River watershed.
00:01:53
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His orders included testing soil quality, roughly measuring plots of good land, describing the type and amount of flora and fauna, and gauging the presence of Indian villages, as well as ingratiating himself and the British colonies to them.
Settling in the Appalachian Mountains
00:02:09
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He was a strong choice for the role. All his life, the frontier, and specifically the Ohio country, would beckon him. At the time of his appointment, he had already settled his family deep within the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, far from coastal hubs of population like the Baltimore of his youth.
00:02:28
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Five times would he venture into the Ohio country in the 1750s, becoming one of the most informed and experienced Europeans of the region.
Conflict and Diplomacy in Indian Villages
00:02:39
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In his first surveying and exploration journey, he departed with his team of about ten, including one of his sons, from the Potimac into southern central Pennsylvania, heading west until arriving at Shanapinstown and then Logstown, two Indian villages located at present-day Pittsburgh and Ambridge, respectively.
00:02:59
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It was at Logstown that some Indians, suspicious of the nature of his journey, pressed him, accusing him of coming to steal their land. Gist was able to deflect the heat and leave with his life and belongings by convincing them that he was delivering a message from the British King George II, saying,
00:03:16
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to the famed Indian trader George Krogan and Andrew Montour, who had recently passed by. While he specifically was not there to evict Indians from their land and settle there himself, he was indeed working for a company designed to settle the area with Europeans.
00:03:31
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Christopher Gist headed further into the Ohio country, crossing Beaver Creek and heading west by land until he caught up with Krogan and Montour at the Muskingum River and the cluster of Delaware villages there.
Cultural and Religious Interactions in Ohio
00:03:43
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On Christmas Day, he celebrated the holiday with the locals, with readings from the Church of England, the first Protestant religious service in modern Ohio. Ironically, he had more attendees and positive reception from the natives living there than from the European traders who were set up in the villages.
00:04:00
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Some of the Indians even expressed their desire that priests would be sent to them, that they could properly learn the religion and be baptized. They also gave Gist the name Anasana, after a well-respected Indian who had passed away.
00:04:15
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Positive interactions with Indians, which Gist was often able to have, also were interspersed with negative ones. The day after the pleasant Christmas celebration, Gist, shaking his head, described a dismal affair in his journal.
00:04:29
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A female prisoner of the Indians, who had recently escaped, was recaptured and brought back to the village. There she was beaten, killed, and scalped. A grim spectacle.
00:04:40
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That evening, some of the Europeans and Indians went out to bury her.
Observations of Ohio's Landscape and Resources
00:04:45
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From the Muskingum River settlements, Gist traveled southwards back towards the Ohio River, visiting some Shawnee settlements on the Sioto.
00:04:54
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From there, he detoured up to Picowolany to visit the growing town and meet the chief Mimeskia, and encouraged the Indians there to remain in the British interests, which they affirmed. Some tense moments occurred when French-aligned Indians arrived and tried to convince the local Indians to return to French influence.
00:05:11
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Gist had a first-person view to the rapidly developing Cold War in the Ohio Country. All the while, Gist detailed the land through swamps, thickets, rolling hills, and idyllic creeks and meadows.
00:05:25
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Buffalo still roamed through Ohio at this point, and Gistrecord seeing 30 or 40 of them at a time in the meadows. Deer, elk, and bear were plentiful and often hunted for provisions.
00:05:37
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In western Ohio, he described the area as fine, rich, level land, well-timbered with large walnut, ash, sugar trees, cherry trees, etc., well-watered with a great number of streams and full of beautiful natural meadows.
00:05:53
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In short, he writes, It wants nothing but cultivation to make it a most delightful country.
Return Home and Family Reunion
00:06:00
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Gist then went back south, crossing the Ohio and exploring parts of Kentucky before making the arduous journey back across the Appalachian Mountains and ending in North Carolina at his family homestead.
00:06:12
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His blood must have run cold for a moment. The home was abandoned, and a neighbor mentioned that an Indian war party had come through and killed some settlers. Fortunately, Christopher's family had fled to nearby Roanoke, Virginia, and they were safely reunited after about seven months apart.
Adventures with George Washington
00:06:31
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The very next year, starting in November, Gist was again sent out by Dinwiddie to further explore the area, this time a shorter trip, focusing on the southern side of the Ohio River in modern-day Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
00:06:45
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In the winter of 1753, Gist was recruited by George Washington, serving as his guide to the recently built French Fort LaBeouf in northwestern Pennsylvania, as described in our episode two.
00:06:58
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On this trip, Gist saved Washington's life twice, once from a hostile Indian and once from drowning in the icy Allegheny River. The following year, he accompanied Washington again, this time alongside the provincial and regular soldiers building a road to Fort Duquesne, which ended in the humiliating defeat at Fort Necessity, covered by our episode four.
00:07:21
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A plantation and small company town Gist had been trying to establish near modern Union town Pennsylvania was then destroyed by the French.
Later Life and Legacy of Christopher Gist
00:07:30
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Still once more, Christopher Gist headed into the Ohio country again in 1755, acting as a scout and ranger for Edward Braddock's expedition.
00:07:41
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His son Nathaniel was alongside him. Fortunately, despite the disastrous defeat for the British and near annihilation of their army, both father and son survived, no doubt thanks to the hardy frontier skills both had developed in the previous years.
00:07:56
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Before his death by smallpox in 1759, Christopher served as a captain of a scouting regiment that aimed to protect the beleaguered Virginia frontier settlements, and then finally as Indian agent to the Catawba Indians in the South, who quickly came to respect him.
00:08:13
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His son Nathaniel would go on to serve in the American War of Independence. Though not as famous as other explorers around his time, Christopher Gist played an outsized role in the fraught and dangerous 1750s.
00:08:27
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With his hardiness, ability to respect and be respected by the natives, and first-hand knowledge of the backcountry, he played an active role in the build-up and beginning stages of the French and Indian War.
00:08:39
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He doesn't deserve mention only for saving the life of the most prominent founder of the United States, but also for his own merits, exploring a massive region that few Europeans had ever seen, building relationships with the natives, and returning home safely, not just once, but five times, including three trips spanning the bitter winter months.
00:09:01
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If there ever were a man emblematic of the name of frontiersman, it would be Christopher Gist.