his intercourse ceased, but he
was not forgotten, for in descending the Ohio in his Western trip of 1770
a hunting party was met, and "in the person of Kiashuto I found an old
acquaintance, he being one of the Indians that went [with me] to the
French in 1753. He expressed satisfaction at seeing me, and treated us
with great kindness, giving us a quarter of very fine buffalo. He insisted
upon our spending that night with him, and, in order to retard us as
little as possible moved his camp down the river."

With his appointment to the Virginia regiment came military friends. From
the earliest of these--Van Braam, who had served under Lawrence Washington
in the Carthagena expedition of 1742, and who had come to live at Mount
Vernon--Washington had previously taken lessons in fencing, and when
appointed the bearer of a letter to the French commander on the Ohio he
took Van Braam with him as interpreter. A little later, on receiving his
majority, Washington appointed Van Braam his recruiting lieutenant, and
recommended him to the governor for a captain's commission on the grounds
that he was "an experienced good officer." To Van Braam fell the duty of
translating the capitulation to the French at Fort Necessity, and to his
reading was laid the blunder by which Washington signed a statement
acknowledging himself as an "assassin." Inconsequence he became the
scapegoat of the expedition, was charged by the governor with being a
"poltroon" and traitor, and was omitted from the Assembly's vote of thanks
and extra pay to the regiment. But Washington stood by him, and when
himself burgess succeeded in getting this latter vote rescinded.

Another friend of the same period was the Chevalier Peyroney, whom
Washington first made an ensign, and then urged the governor to advance
him, promising that if the governor "should be pleased to indulge me in
this request, I shall look upon it in a very particular light." Peyroney
was badly wounded at Fort Necessity and was furloughed, during which he
wrote his commander, "I have made my particular Business to tray if any
had some Bad intention against you here Below; But thank God I meet
allowais with a good wish for you from evry Mouth each one entertining
such Caracter of you as I have the honour to do myself." He served again
in the Braddock march, and in that fiasco, Washington wrote, "Captain
Peyroney and all his officers down to a corporal, was killed."

With Captain Stewart--"a gentlema