15 Facts About Tanacharison

1.

Tanacharison, called Tanaghrisson, was a Native American leader who played a pivotal role in the beginning of the French and Indian War.

2.

Tanacharison was known to European-Americans as the Half-King, a title used to describe several other historically important Native American leaders.

3.

Tanacharison's name has been spelled in a variety of ways.

4.

Tanacharison first appears in historical records in 1747, living in Logstown, a multi-ethnic village about 20 miles downstream from the forks of the Ohio River.

5.

Those Iroquois who had migrated to the Ohio Country were generally known as 'Mingos,' and Tanacharison emerged as a Mingo leader at this time.

6.

Tanacharison represented the Six Nations at the 1752 Treaty of Logstown, where he was referred to as "Thonariss, called by the English the half King".

7.

However, some modern historians have doubted this interpretation, asserting that Tanacharison was merely a village leader, whose actual authority extended no further than his own village.

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George Croghan
8.

Tanacharison agreed to return the symbolic wampum he had received from French captain Philippe-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire.

9.

Tanacharison traveled with Washington to meet with Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the French commander of Fort Le Boeuf in what is Waterford, Pennsylvania.

10.

Tanacharison had requested that the British construct a "strong house" at the Forks of the Ohio and early in 1754 he placed the first log of an Ohio Company stockade there, railing against the French when they captured it.

11.

Tanacharison sent a messenger to Contrecoeur the following day with news that the British had shot Jumonville and, but for the Indians, would have killed all the French.

12.

Tanacharison scornfully called the fort "that little thing upon the meadow" and complained that Washington would not listen to advice, and that Washington treated the Indians like slaves.

13.

Tanacharison had a long relationship with George Croghan, a fur trader, interpreter, and diplomat among the Native Americans who had been appointed a member of the Iroquois' Onondaga Council.

14.

Tanacharison had been "one of the sachems who had confirmed Croghan in his land grant of 1749," 200,000 acres minus about two square miles at the Forks of the Ohio for a British fort.

15.

Shortly after the battle of Jumonville Glen, Tanacharison moved his people and the old queen Aliquippa east to Croghan's Aughwick plantation in the Aughwick Valley near present Shirleysburg, Pennsylvania.