Battle of the Trough

Background

Braddock's crushing loss at Monongahela on July 9, 1755 left settlers along the Allegheny Mountains exposed, and Shawnee and Lenape (Delaware) war parties soon began striking the frontier with little resistance. That October, hoping to ease the danger somewhat, builders raised two forts in the South Branch Valley. Before the year closed, the Virginia Regiment had grown by several hundred men and started placing temporary garrisons in some of these outposts. Not long into the new year, Colonel George Washington, then just twenty-four and newly placed in command of the Regiment, directed Captain Thomas Waggener to march his company out of Fort Cumberland and up the South Branch. He was to erect two additional forts beyond the rough gorge locals called "The Trough" and to position his men so as to best shield the settlers living farther up the river.

By the spring of 1756, two Indians who had survived an earlier clash near the head of the Capon (Cacapon) River, where Captain Jeremiah Smith had defeated their party along with a French officer leading them, found themselves passing through the upper South Branch, close to what is now Cabins, West Virginia. There they came upon two settler women. One, Mrs. Brake, was tomahawked and scalped on the spot, while the other, Mrs. Neff, was seized and led away as a captive. The pair then made their way toward Fort Pleasant, the lower of Waggener's two forts near present day Old Fields, and made camp nearby. That same night, Neff managed to slip free and reached the fort's safety. One account claims her captors let her go on purpose, hoping the escape would lure the settlers into the open.

Battle

Word of the two Indians and their actions reached the men holding Fort Pleasant through Mrs. Neff, though she had no way of knowing that her captors were far from alone in that country. Decades afterward, James Parsons of Hampshire County, who had taken part as a young man, offered his own account of what followed.

According to Parsons, the warriors split into smaller groups, agreeing to reunite at an appointed hour beside a large spring near the lower end of the valley, not far below the fort. As planned, a portion of them showed themselves outside the fort in the early hours, loosed a handful of shots, and then withdrew down the valley in plain sight. Their small numbers gave the settlers confidence, and scouts were dispatched at once to check for additional signs or trails. Finding none, the scouts reported back that the fort could easily spare enough men to chase down and punish those responsible for the recent raids. Plans for an immediate pursuit were drawn up without delay.

That same morning, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen mounted men, well armed and experienced, set out from Fort Pleasant and from Buttermilk Fort, Waggener's post roughly five miles upriver, aiming to strike the retreating warriors. These were reputedly hardened veterans of frontier combat. Leaving their horses behind, they split into two groups meant to close in from both sides, pushing north into the treacherous gorge called "The Trough," notorious for its sheer, nearly unclimbable walls. A barking dog, however, cost them any chance of catching their quarry unaware.

Parsons recalled that the Indians' trail forded the river about a mile above the spring, a spot where the warriors customarily paused to eat during their travels along the valley, and it was there the settlers hoped to catch them. Smoke was spotted shortly after the men crossed the river, but instead of stopping at the usual spring, the Indians had pushed further, up to the head of a small branch feeding into the Potomac just below it. Ridges ran down to the valley floor on either side of this branch, and since the one on the right offered an easier climb, the settlers chose it as their route into battle. The Indians, anticipating pursuit, had posted lookouts, and once it became clear which ridge the settlers had taken, some of the warriors quietly descended the opposite ridge and slipped in behind them undetected.

These warriors, said by one source to number some 60 or 70 under the Lenape chief Killbuck, had by then cut the settlers off from their own horses. Trapped between a steep mountain slope to the east and a river swollen with floodwater to the west, the settlers had nowhere left to maneuver.

Fighting broke out and continued fiercely on both sides for a time, but the settlers realized too late that they had been outmaneuvered and heavily outnumbered. Driven back, they were forced to cut their way through the warriors now positioned behind them, a struggle that cost many their lives and left many others wounded. Those who broke free scattered in every direction, each fending for himself; some threw themselves into the nearby river, while others fled back along the bottom land they had used in their earlier pursuit.

The clash, set off by the Indians, lasted one to two hours and left seven settlers dead and four wounded, while the Indians suffered three killed and "several" wounded. The settlers' horses fell into Indian hands, and the survivors managed to retreat to Fort Pleasant, where they immediately took up defensive positions and kept watch through the entire following night.