At age 21, Major George Washington, still a loyal British subject, left Williamsburg, Virginia at the end of October 1753 on orders from Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie to travel into western Pennsylvania and determine whether the French were building forts on land claimed by England and Virginia, deliver Dinwiddie’s letter demanding that the French leave the Ohio Country, and persuade Native Americans to favor trade with England over France. As England and France competed for control of trade in the Ohio River region, Washington traveled with the experienced guide Christopher Gist, and both kept journals. At Logstown on the Ohio River, Washington met Shawnee, Delaware, and Iroquois Indians, and some joined his party. In his journal he wrote of “several extensive and rich meadows,” words that later helped draw David Mead to establish a settlement in this area. On December 8, 1753, Washington and his party reached Cussewago, a Delaware village at the mouth of Cussewago Creek where it joins French Creek, and camped there overnight before continuing north the next day to Fort LeBoeuf, now Waterford, Pennsylvania, where he met the French commander and presented Dinwiddie’s letter. Washington and Gist returned by way of French Creek and Indian paths, passed through this area again, and arrived back in Williamsburg on January 16, 1754, where Washington delivered the French reply asserting that they were the rightful owners of the Ohio River Valley and warning the British to stay out of New France. Within seven months, Washington returned to western Pennsylvania to fight the French and their Indian allies at Fort Necessity, and his 1753 mission helped lead to the Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War.