Owing to the shameful neglect of those whose duty it was to send up supplies, he and his men suffered much from the want of food,--many days at a stretch sometimes passing by without their tasting bread. To aggravate this new distress, the Half King and many of his warriors, with their wives and children, now sought refuge in the fort from the vengeance of the French and their savage allies; which added nothing to their strength, and only increased the number of hungry mouths to be fed. To this place, then, where gaunt famine pinched them from within and watchful enemies beset them from without, Washington gave the fitting name of Fort Necessity. Luckily for them, while in this pitiable plight, days and days passed by, and still no avenging De Villiers showed himself, though alarms were frequent.
Col. Washington now ordered Major Muse to bring up the rest of the troops that had been waiting all this while at Wills's Creek, with the heavy stores and cannon. To reward the friendly Indians for their services and fidelity, Major Muse brought with him presents of hatchets and knives, guns, powder and lead, tin cups, needles and pins, beads, and dry-goods of every gaudy hue, and it may be, although we can only guess it, a ruffled shirt or two. In addition to these, there came a number of silver medals for the chief sachems, sent by Gov. Dinwiddie at the suggestion of Col. Washington, who well knew how much these simple people prize little compliments of this kind. Major Muse handed out the presents, while Washington hung the medals about the necks of the sachems, which yielded them far more delight, you will be sorry to hear, than their good old missionary's catechism. This was done with all that show and parade so dear to an Indian's heart; and, to give a still finer edge to the present occasion, they christened each other all over again: that is to say, the red men gave the white men Indian names, and the white men gave the red men English names. Thus, for example, Washington gave the Half King the name of Dinwiddie, which pleased him greatly; while he, in his turn, bestowed on his young white brother a long, high-sounding Indian name, that you could pronounce as readily spelt backwards as forwards. Fairfax was the name given a young sachem, the son of Queen Aliquippa, whose eternal friendship to the English, it must be borne in mind, had been secured by Washington, the previous winter, by the present of an old coat and a bottle of rum.