ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606270035
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Bloodshed, torture and mayhem are difficult to imagine when you're standing atop a peaceful green hill on a balmy June evening.
But the pages of history created a chilling breeze as they flipped back 240 years this week, to pioneer days and a ferocious battle at a frontier outpost where so many perished.
Colonial re-enactors in period attire came here Tuesday to mark the spot and the day when Fort Vause fell on June 25, 1756. They read Scripture, placed wreaths on a historical marker and fired a salute with their muskets during a ceremony attended by about 100 people.
Nothing remains of the stockade where a handful of English settlers stood off a force of more than 200 French Canadian and Shawnee Indians. Now there's only a state historical marker beside Oldtown Road on this village's western end, and a smaller stone up the hill where the fort is believed to have been built.
People today don't know much about what happened at Fort Vause or why, said Scott Sarver, one of the re-enactors and a student of frontier days.
That's why he and others affiliated with Virginia's Explore Park in Roanoke County dressed up and marched through town with fife and drum to the old fort's site.
"It is well for us not to forget the suffering and sacrifices of our ancestors," he told the gathering.
History tells us that in the mid-1750s Fort Vause was a lonely refuge at the edge of the world, strategically positioned beside a wilderness road that led west into the Allegheny Mountains. A settler named Ephriam Vause built the log palisade to enclose some buildings.
During the early stages of the French and Indian War, Fort Vause offered some comfort to the few hearty pioneers trying to hack out a life in the backcountry. But as one of a threadbare chain of frontier military bastions established by the English, it was also a target for the ire of displaced American Indians.
Vicious struggles for control of the American continent's vast interior came to the New River Valley a year before Fort Vause was attacked, when the Draper's Meadow settlement near the present-day Virginia Tech campus was attacked by Indians in July 1755.
That event was less influential in the larger scheme of the frontier wars than the incident at Fort Vause. But Draper's Meadow has received more notoriety over the years in large part because of the saga of Mary Draper Ingles, the pioneer woman who made her long way home after being captured and carried into captivity by Indians.
Sarver points out that Fort Vause had its own epic stories. The Shawnees and their French-Canadian cohorts trekked thousands of miles to besiege the lightly defended outpost. Once there, they attacked early on the morning of June 25.
Those in the fort - women and children included - held out for most of the day, but capitulated when the French commander said he couldn't control the Indians if the fort held out after dark.
About 40 people died in the fighting and the barbarism that ensued after the surrender - despite the Frenchman's promise of protection. Accounts say women and children were bludgeoned to death or carried off, and the fort commander's son was burned at the stake.
At Tuesday's ceremony, the re-enactors read the names of those Englishmen and women killed, wounded or captured. Cited also were an unnamed black servant and an Indian boy who perished.
No real or make-believe American Indians attended the event, and the only Shawnees present were graduates of Shawsville High School. Usually, accounts of battles are written by the victors. But what we know about the Fort Vause incident comes from the losing side, the English, and they generally refer to the Indians as "savages."
Having won this battle, the Indians still lost the French and Indian War, and found their world shrinking as the English colonies grew. Psychological terror from the attack on Fort Vause did drive many English settlers away from the frontier, but only temporarily.
Sarver said the incident forced Virginia's Colonial government in Williamsburg to assign young George Washington to build more protective forts. A rebuilt Fort Vause was among those.
But the Indians never came back in force and the fort became obsolete, as more and more restless pioneers passed by on the road that led to a new land.
Tuesday's anniversary ceremony concluded a weekend of "Fort Days" events at Explore Park that included a re-enactment of the attack. The march through Shawsville by the men in leggings and women in bonnets, bodices and petticoats became something of a community festival, with townsfolk watching the parade from their front porches, or joining in the procession along Oldtown Road.
For certain, this day at Fort Vause ended in a much more civilized fashion than June 25, 1756. Ann Gardner Gray, who lives next to the old fort's site and who donated the property to the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission some years ago, invited everyone in attendance over to her back yard for punch and cookies.
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. 1. Colonial re-enactors from Virginia'sby CNBExplore Park march through the center of Shawsville on Oldtown Road
on their way to the historical marker commemorating the fall of Fort
Vause. 2. Colonial
re-enactors fire their salutes with muskets in front of about 100
people who attended the ceremony. color. 3. Making their way to the
ceremony site, the parade takes a turn off Oldtown Road near the
roadside historical marker for Fort Vause.