As you enter the stairs, you see Washington as a surveyor, a profession he followed for several years after 1748. In the upper right is Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation where he lived after 1752. (Compare this depiction of Mount Vernon with the north main entrance to this school.) 

A tree divides Washington’s early life from the remainder of the mural, which deals with the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Arnautoff did not place Washington in the center; instead his focal figures are Native Americans who are armed and variously resisting or allied with the French, British and American colonials who surround them on all sides. They carry rifles and are dressed in traditional fashion – war paint, decorative jewelry and the likelihood of scalps on one warrior’s belt.  

The lower center-left depicts Washington receiving his commission in the colonial militia from Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia and being directed to deliver a demand to the French commander of Fort Le Boeuf to vacate, which he does at upper center-right; the French did not comply.

The far left shows Washington leading forces into battle, and the upper-center-left depicts the defeat and surrender of colonials and British troops to the French and their Native allies at the Battle of the Monongahela (June 1755).