Battle of the Trough

Part of the French and Indian War

Date	March or April, 1756
Location	South of "The Trough", near present-day Old Fields, Hardy County, West Virginia, USA
Result	Indian victory

Belligerents

Shawnee and Delaware Indian warriors

British America

Commanders and leaders

Killbuck

Unknown

Strength

14 or 60–70 (differing accounts)

16 or 18 (differing accounts)

Casualties and losses

3 dead (or many more); “several” wounded

7 dead, 3 wounded

The Battle of the Trough (March or April 1756) was a skirmish of the early French and Indian War (1754–63) fought between Native Americans and British settlers in the valley of the South Branch Potomac River in what is now northern Hardy County, West Virginia, USA.

After the defeat of General Edward Braddock at the Battle of the Monongahela (9 July 1755), the white settlers of the Allegheny Mountains were largely unprotected from a series of Shawnee and Delaware Indian raids. In October, in an effort to provide some respite, two forts were raised in the North Branch Valley on Patterson Creek. By the end of the year, the Virginia Regiment had increased its numbers by several hundred troops and began to temporarily man some of these settler forts. Shortly after the new year, a new commander of the Regiment — the 24-year-old Colonel George Washington — ordered Captain Thomas Waggener to leave Fort Cumberland with his company and proceed up the South Branch. His orders directed him to construct two forts in the area above the rugged gorge known locally as "The Trough" and to station detachments accordingly to best protect the settlers on the upper South Branch.

That spring of 1756, a pair of Indians, a remnant of a party recently defeated (along with their French captain) by a Capt. Jeremiah Smith at the head of the Capon (Cacapon) River, were passing through the upper South Branch (somewhere near the present site of Cabins, West Virginia) when they encountered two white women. One of these (a Mrs. Brake) they killed (tomahawked and scalped) outright and the other (a Mrs. Neff) they took prisoner. The party then proceeded to the vicinity of Fort Pleasant (at present day Old Fields and the lowermost of Waggener's two forts) where they encamped. That night Neff escaped and fled to the fort. (According to one version, the Indians deliberately allowed her to “escape” in order to draw the whites out.)

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