Surveyors from this period. The Indian town was called Caiuctucuc and consisted of a series of huts called wigwams that were built chiefly along the Potomac riverfront, now Greene Street. The natives referred to the present day Potomac river as the Cohongaronto River, and the present day Wills Creek as Caiuctucuc Creek. Colonial era The name of Caiuctucuc was later changed by the first European settlers, about 1750, to Wills Creek, and the settlement's name to Wills Town, in honor of the Indian chief called "Will", who lived on the mountain to the north of the village at that time. With the coming of the European settlers, most of the Indians abandoned this region and trailed across the mountains to the Ohio River Valley, but Indian Will was not hostile to the outside settlers, and with a few of his followers continued to live on the mountain where he had his wigwam, and died there, it is believed, some time after the close of the Revolutionary War. An old Indian grave on Will's Knob is supposed to be his. Chief Will claimed all the land along the creek and sold it to the European settlers for mere trifles. When European settlers first began moving into western Maryland in the 1730s and 1740s, they encountered Native Americans residing between the Potomac and Susquehanna rivers. Conflicts ensued, and in 1744 the Maryland legislature purchased the land from the area's Native Americans, observing they would settle "for nothing less than Blood or Money." This contract opened the area to official settlement. Germans, Swiss-Germans, and Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania quickly colonized the area. Although the Maryland legislature had "purchased" the area, Virginia and Pennsylvania claimed the land as well. More troubling to the British Empire were French traders intent on securing their rights to the land. In 1750 Virginia planters and English merchants established a trading house and small storehouse on land which is now the heart of Cumberland. The new trading post (later called Fort Cumberland) attracted the French, who moved south and west from their Lake Ontario forts, drove out the English traders and claimed the Ohio River Valley for France. In 1753, with tensions running high between the French and English, the Governor of Virginia sent a small company led by a young Virginian named George Washington to inform the French to leave English territory and return north. The French ignored Washington's