‘The Undiscovered Country’ Review: Into the West
Departmental News
Posted: Aug 19, 2025 - 08:00am

Dr. Paul Andrew Hutton's novel "The Undiscovered Country" was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
‘The Undiscovered Country’ Review: Into the West
In 1754, a 22-year-old newly promoted Lt. Col. George Washington led a ragtag band of militia through the wilds of western Pennsylvania on behalf of the British Crown. His assignment was to recruit Native American allies and search for French troops rumored to be lurking near the strategically vital Forks of the Ohio. Washington found the French, and in a skirmish he bested them and captured the ensign in command, who declared himself an emissary with a message for the British to abandon the contested country. Tanaghrisson, the leader of Washington’s Native American warriors, stepped forward. As a horrified Washington looked on, the chief sank his tomahawk into the ensign’s skull and then washed his hands in the man’s brains. “And thus,” writes Paul Andrew Hutton, “with a single tomahawk blow, did Tanaghrisson incite the Seven Years’ War between France and England, as well as the forty-year conflict between the Americans and the Native tribes for possession of the Ohio Country.”