We first encountered the Half King, the Mingo Iroquois less often associated with his Indian name, Tanacharison, when reading Edward Lengel’s eponymous biography of Washington, “General George Washington.” This was some 250 years after the British had sent the young colonel into the Ohio country for the purpose of evicting its occupying French during the Seven Years' War. Knowing of Half King’s animosity toward the gastronomical Franks (despite his fondness for their brandy, he claimed they'd boiled and eaten his father), Washington took the Mingo on as a guide and tribal emissary. This association led to a small victory near present-day Uniontown, Pennsylvania, at a place called Half King’s Rock. It was there where, after uttering Tu n'es pas encore mort, mon père! (Thou art not yet dead, my father), the Indian cleaved commander Joseph de Jumonville's skull with his tomahawk and helped himself to a portion of the Frenchman's brains.

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That only seemed fair.

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The tide would soon turn in favor of the French at

Fort Necessity, an engagement that Half King sat

out, possibly contributing to Washington's

surrender of the stronghold that the Iroquois had

dismissed as "that little thing upon the meadow."

Throughout these events, Half King’s loyalties were

not always steadfast; yet, as one caught up in a war

waged between foreign powers, the part he had to play was a complex one fraught with the dangers of combat and frailties of men. As evidence of this, the title of "Half King" that the British bestowed upon the warrior was an indication of their regard for him as “a sort of viceroy” among the Six Nations. 

 

From the time we read of Tanacharison's title, we liked it for its oxymoronic cast as well as for its association with Washington and the early American frontier. But what really sold us on the semi-sachem’s sobriquet was the fact that, at the time we read of him, hardly a man was then alive who'd ever heard of any Mingo Indians, much less that particular one. This had its appeal. Half King, we figured, would reappear to the modern world as something of ours. We thus became sold on the idea of using the name for some as-yet-to-be-determined venture.

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Quelle arrogance.

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We hadn’t counted on winds of fortune blowing from the Ohio Country through time as well as space; for soon after we’d made our private resolution regarding Tanacharison, someone went and opened the Half King Bar and Restaurant in mid-town Manhattan.

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We held off for years, but eventually there was nothing for it but to visit the Half King. There, we ordered a French 75 and did a google search. Some 715,000,000 references to "Half King" -- including a mattress topper and something called a pigeon posse -- showed us that others had also beat us to the name. With that, the voice of a mentor sounded in our memory: "It's nice to be first," he'd said, "but the money's in being second." By that measure, how astronomical must be the rewards of becoming the seven-hundred-and-fifteen-millionth-and-first Half King? With that in mind, we went ahead with naming our production company for History on the Road after Washington's erstwhile ally and the aboriginal absentee from Fort Necessity. 

 

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