By Val Van Meter
The Winchester Star

FRYE’S FORT — A pleasant stone house, surrounded by woodland, perched on a bank above murmuring Cedar Creek.

Two hundred fifty years ago, this house was a fortress, surrounded by a wooden stockade and under attack by Native American allies of the French.

On Saturday, tribesmen and frontiersmen, including George Washington, shared venison and drinks on its lawns while looking back on a war that brought old western cultures and their New World allies to mortal combat.

To commemorate the anniversary of the French and Indian War, Shenandoah University’s Knowledge Point History and Tourism Center in Winchester offered a three-day seminar on the 1754 conflict, which concluded Saturday at Frye’s Fort in Shenandoah County, just across the Frederick County line on Moores Ford Road.

“This was a conflict of cultures,” said Warren Hofstra, professor of history at Shenandoah University, where most of the conference was held.

Steve Stewart (left), dressed as a Lenape Indian, and James Blake, portraying a Shawnee, talk at the entrance to Frye’s Fort in Shenandoah County, the last stop on Saturday’s tour of Winchester-area French and Indian War forts. The tour capped a three-day seminar on the 250-year-old conflict. (Photo by Ginger Perry)

The British imperial culture faced the French imperial culture across the Atlantic Ocean, in this new land of North America, Hofstra explained.

There, the colonial culture formed by British and German immigrants faced the culture of the Native Americans.

The seminar, Hofstra said, dealt with how different people saw and interpreted the same events.

In turn, he said, those interpretations affected how the war evolved.

It started as a war of national, economic, and imperial interests. “It increasingly became a cultural conflict,” Hofstra said.

“We drew a lot of parallels,” said Clarke County resident Sid Stern, “between the Seven Years’ War [of 1756-1763 in Europe, which pitted England against France following the first two years of conflict in the French and Indian War] and the one today [in Iraq].”

“We couldn’t talk about one war without realizing we are in the shadow of another,” Hofstra said. “The war in Iraq is becoming a cultural conflict.”

The war in Iraq is viewed by the United States as a liberation, but is seen by many Iraqis as an occupation, Hofstra explained.

Joe Weaver, a historian and teacher at Allegheny Community College in Cumberland, Md., said the three-day seminar was “one of the best conferences” he’s attended. Weaver said he was especially impressed with the knowledge and experience of the speakers at the event.

The French and Indian War Foundation of Winchester capped the Knowledge Point seminar with a Saturday tour of seven frontier forts that were utilized during the French and Indian War.

The tour ended at one of the most successful, Frye’s Fort, erected by Benjamin Frye along Cedar Creek.

Built in 1750, the three-story stone house was added to and somewhat modified in the 1970s and ’80s.

Frye’s Fort owner Chuck Veatch (center) talks to tour participants Saturday about the former French and Indian War fort. (Photo by Ginger Perry)

In its heyday as a frontier fort, surrounded by a 10-foot-tall wooden stockade, it successfully held off an Indian attack.

“As many as 60 people were inside the house,” said current owner Chuck Veatch, who purchased Frye’s Fort in 2000.

Veatch led a tour of the fortress section, with stone walls more than 21/2 feet thick. One of numerous springs on the property was channeled into the basement of the house, so the defenders were not exposed while trying to get water.

With a shaved head, trade clothing, and a tomahawk, Steve Stewart of Winchester was in the guise of a Native American warrior as he talked to visitors about the fate of the Lenape Indians.

Although many tribes in Virginia spoke a similar language, the Iroquois waged war on any tribe outside the six nations. Coupled with the French and Indian War and attacks by the colonists, many of these smaller tribes, including the Lenape, were decimated.

Many of the colonists who later successfully fought the British during the American Revolution learned their trade during the French and Indian War, Hofstra said.

Berryville resident Don DeHaven, a George Washington look-alike who has often portrayed the first president in re-enactment events, was dressed Saturday as Washington might have been while surveying the lands in the Winchester area 250 years ago.

DeHaven said the young surveyor from Tidewater finished his military education in Winchester during the French and Indian War.

“It set the stage for the Revolution,” Hofstra said.

And, as a clash of cultures, it still has lessons to teach today.

— The Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society, in conjunction with the French and Indian War Foundation, has a special exhibit at Abram’s Delight Museum, on South Pleasant Valley Road, on the French and Indian War period. The exhibit will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and Tuesday.

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