Episode Details

The French and Indian War began at the forks of the Ohio in 1754, and in 1758 it came home to where it started. This is the story of how the British finally took the forks — not in one great battle, but through a dying Scottish general who built a road instead of charging down one, and a lone Moravian missionary who walked into the heart of the enemy’s country to make a peace. John Forbes, carried on a litter and wasting away, ground his army west across Pennsylvania the slow, stubborn way Braddock should have. Christian Frederick Post carried a wampum belt into the Ohio towns and asked the Delaware the question underneath the whole war: why do you fight your wars on our land? And when the French blew up Fort Duquesne and fled, a grieving son went out to a three-year-old battlefield to find his father’s bones. A road, a treaty, a burning fort, and a burial — the forks of the Ohio change hands, and a promise is made that no one intends to keep.