Tanacharison
Tanacharison was the Iroquois representative on the Ohio, and he began a world war with a hatchet. He was probably born a Catawba and taken as a child by the French, and raised among the Seneca - which is the reason usually given for his hatred of them. The English called him the Half King, a title that describes the job: the Iroquois Confederacy claimed the Ohio country by conquest and governed the peoples living there through appointed representatives who had authority without independence. His problem was that the Ohio nations were increasingly unwilling to be governed that way, and both empires were arriving at once. He confronted the French as they built forts on the upper Allegheny and was dismissed by them, and he attached himself to Virginia instead, which he judged the weaker and therefore the safer partner. In May 1754 he led George Washington, then twenty-two, to a French detachment camped in a hollow. The fight lasted about fifteen minutes. What happened next is disputed and was decisive: by several accounts Tanacharison walked up to the wounded French commander Jumonville, said in French that this was not the end of his father, and split his skull with a hatchet - killing an officer the French insisted had come as a diplomat. Washington was forced to surrender at Fort Necessity weeks later and signed a French document, in French, admitting the assassination. Tanacharison abandoned him, saying the Virginians would not take advice, and died of pneumonia that October. The war ran for nine more years.
- Lived: 1700 CE – 1754 CE
- Nationality: Seneca
- Roles: head_of_state, military
