Follow the River

The events of Follow the River occur in the context of the French and Indian War. Lasting from 1754 to 1763, the French and Indian War was a complex conflict between European imperial powers and Indigenous Americans over trade and territory in the New World. The name of the conflict is a reference to the alliance between French colonialists and some Indigenous American tribes against British colonialists. The French and Indian War was one part of a larger imperial conflict between the French and the British known as the Seven Years’ War.

The key events of this war that impact the plot of Follow the River are the conflicts between the French, the British, and Indigenous Americans at Fort Duquesne and Jumonville. In February 1754, at the advice of then Major George Washington, the British began building Fort Prince George, or Trent’s Fort, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River in modern-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to secure the region for British trade routes. In April 1754, a large French force arrived to destroy the unfinished fort and build their own, Fort Duquesne, on the location. Washington was on his way to defend Trent’s Fort when he encountered French Canadian forces in nearby Jumonville.