After Yorktown

by Don Glickstein

  Indians protested the incursions to white authorities. “Take these people off from our land . . . that we may not be at the trouble to drive them off,” petitioned the Delawares to Pennsylvania’s governor. “[We] cannot enjoy our birthright in peace and quietness, but we are abused as if we were enemies and not friends.” Forty years later, a missionary translated another protest: “I admit that there are good white men, but they bear no proportion to the bad; the bad must be strongest, for they rule. . . . There is no faith to be placed in their words. . . . They will say to an Indian: ‘My friend, my brother.’ They will take him by the hand, and at the same moment, destroy him.”7

  Treaties that granted land to whites in exchange for food, supplies, and firm borders were often made under duress—by “consent in a context of coercion”—or by unauthorized individuals. The Iroquois, for example, ceded Shawnee, Mingo, and Delaware land, without the owners’ agreement, to whites in a 1768 treaty in exchange for more than £10,000 in goods ($1.9 million today). The Iroquois themselves, under Johnson’s threats, were forced to cede land, and three Indian towns became enclaves within white territory.8

  In 1763, the British tried to ease tensions—and save money required for fighting Indian wars—by prohibiting white settlements west of the Appalachians. The prohibition was enforceable. “I am fully convinced that the boundary lines never will be observed,” said the British commander. “The frontier people are too numerous, too lawless, and licentious ever to be restrained.”9

  One of those frontier people was Washington. He wrote his land agent that he could never consider the boundary between Indians and whites as anything but “a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians” before they were coerced into more land cessions. He ordered his agent to continue to scout future acquisitions, and to mark the land “in order to keep others from settling them.”10

  Washington’s assumptions were correct: In 1774, a Virginia captain murdered thirteen unarmed Indians west of Pittsburgh, triggering what became known as Lord Dunmore’s War. The result was an Indian defeat and further land cessions. Johnson, trying to keep Dunmore’s War from becoming widespread, complained that while the Senecas made restitution for one of their men murdering a white, Ohio Valley settlers “trepanned and murdered” forty Indians. “I have daily to combat with thousands who, by their avarice, cruelty, or indiscretion, are constantly counteracting all judicious measures with the Indians.”11

  Johnson’s counterpart in the south gave London a similar warning: “I know of nothing so likely to interrupt and disturb our tranquility with the Indians as the incessant attempts to defraud them of their land by clandestine purchase.”12

  After the revolution, Franklin concluded that “almost every war between the Indians and whites has been occasioned by some injustice of the latter toward the former.” Arthur St. Clair, one of Washington’s generals who was later defeated in a campaign against Indians, nonetheless took their side: “It has long been a disgrace to the people of all the states bordering upon the Indians, both as men and as Christians, that while they [whites] loudly complained of every injury or wrong received from them [Indians], and imperiously demanded satisfaction, they were daily offering to them injustices and wrongs of the most provoking character, for which I have never heard that any person was ever brought to due justice and punishment, and all proceeding from the false principle that because they [Indians] had not received the light of the gospel, they might be abused, cheated, robbed, plundered, and murdered at pleasure.”13

  Virginia governor Francis Fauquier was frustrated trying to prevent fighting between whites and Indians. “I have found by experience it is impossible to bring anybody to justice for the murder of an Indian who takes shelter among our back [frontier] inhabitants. It is among these people looked on as a meritorious action, and they are sure of being protected.”14

  Each incident, each fight, each war, compounded its impact on both sides and polarized perceptions. “Having lost so many relatives by the Indians,” wrote a minister who grew up on the Pennsylvania frontier, “they became subjects of that indiscriminating thirst for revenge which is such a prominent feature in the savage character, and having had a taste of blood and plunder, without risk or loss on their part, they resolved to go on and kill every Indian they could find, whether friend or foe.”15

  The nature of Indian warfare offended white standards. Indians terrorized civilians, often picking off isolated farmers and carrying away women and children, sometimes killing them. Burning prisoners at the stake, torturing them, and even eating their hearts were all part of a religious ritual. For some tribes, taking scalps was a sacrificial offering; for other tribes, they were trophies and incentivized an enemy’s surrender.16

  Far more frequently, tribes adopted prisoners. “It is but seldom that prisoners are put to death by burning and torturing,” wrote a missionary. “It hardly ever takes place except when a nation has suffered great losses in war, and it is thought necessary to revenge the death of their warriors slain in battle, or when willful and deliberate murders have been committed of an enemy of their innocent women and children.”17

  Given real atrocities and lack of security, frontier Whigs embellished their accounts “of ferocity and blood as might best serve to keep live the strongest feelings of indignation,” wrote an early historian whose father fought in the revolution. “The crude, verbal reports of the day—tales of hearsay, colored by fancy and aggravated by fear—not only found their way into the newspapers, but into the journals of military officers.” Fear bred fear until whites knew that Indians were “monsters . . . of unparalleled and unapproachable barbarity.”18

  Early in the war, John Adams predicted the British would bring “eternal infamy” on themselves if they allied themselves with Indians. “To let loose these bloodhounds to scalp men, and to butcher women and children is horrid.” Washington routinely referred to them as “savages,” although he conceded “excellent use” could be made of them. Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson described Indian warfare as “cruel and cowardly,” distinguished by “the indiscriminate murder of men, women, and children with the usual circumstances of barbarity.”19

  The belief that Indians were less than human began long before the revolution. To many whites, they were “barbarous, inhuman monsters”—“a savage multitude who are cruel and have no mercy,” who made the “brains, hearts, and bowels [of their victims] swim in streams of gore.”20

  Hugh Henry Brackenridge, who moved to the Pennsylvania frontier in 1781, contributed to the common wisdom: “They have the shapes of men and may be of the human species, but certainly in their present state, they approach nearer the character of devils. . . . Are not the whole Indian nations murderers?”21

  When, in 1775, William Johnson’s son and successor, John, tried to mobilize Indians for the British, he invited them to “feast on a Bostonian, and to drink his blood.” The Indians understood that Johnson was talking about a roasted ox and wine. Many Whigs believed it literally.22

  Incidents involved Loyalists who often participated in Indian raids and added their own style to warfare. One Tory, on a raid with Mohawks in 1780, grabbed an eight-year-old boy, slit his throat from ear to ear, then scalped him. Another Tory raider, said a Whig history, was “revengeful and cruel in his disposition, inflexible in his purposes, his bosom cold as the marble to the impulses of humanity.” Another was “cruel . . . one of the greatest scourges . . . of a morose temperament, possessing strong passions, and of a vindictive disposition.”23

  One anonymous writer blamed Loyalists for Indian atrocities: “Who prevailed on the savages of the wilderness to join the standard of the enemy? The Tories! Who have assisted the Indians in taking the scalp from the aged matron, the blooming fair one, the helpless infant, and the dying hero? The Tories! Who advised and assisted in burning your towns, ravaging your country, and violating the chastity of your women? The Tories!”24

  In 1776, the Whigs enshrined their fear of Indian at
rocities into the Declaration of Independence. George III, the declaration said, “has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” From Indian and British perspectives, the rebels were hypocrites.

  As early as the 1637 Pequot War, whites had responded to isolated incidents with mass murder. After Indians killed captains of trading boats in Connecticut, whites responded with a massacre of four hundred Indian men, women, and children, who were shot if they tried to escape from a burning fort. “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God,” wrote a participant. In Virginia, Captain John Smith tortured at least one Indian on the rack.25

  While Indians didn’t usually kill women and children, it was the Whigs’ standard practice to kill Indian women and children. A British general saw the rebels as “a treacherous and cruel enemy, resolved to destroy the Indians at all events. When any of the King’s troops are taken, they are treated as prisoners of war, but when Indians were taken, they were immediately put to death.”26

  Where Indians rarely, if ever, raped women, it was common for rebels to do so. “Bad as the savages are, they never violate the chastity of any women, their prisoners,” said a Whig general as he warned against his own men’s conduct. “Yet these rebels call themselves Christians,” said an Onondaga warrior after women in his village were raped and killed.27

  Scalping started as an Indian practice, but was soon adopted by Whigs and encouraged by most of their governments in the form of bounties. The Loyalist chief justice of Massachusetts talked in 1781 about that colony’s bounties, which had been used for a century: “I have seen a vessel enter the harbor of Boston with a long string of hairy Indian scalps strung to the rigging and waving in the wind.”28

  Much of the anti-Indian violence was against neutrals and even allies; as in Vietnam and Afghanistan generations later, whites often couldn’t or didn’t distinguish between native friend and native foe. In 1778, Whigs destroyed an Iroquois town—home to both friendly and enemy Indians—on the Susquehanna River. After the war, a Whig veteran recalled fellow soldiers finding several small children hiding, then boasted about “running them through with bayonets and holding them up to see how they would twist and turn.”29

  A missionary told of “white men flaying or taking off the skin of Indians who had fallen into their hands, then tanning those skins, or cutting them into pieces, making them up into razor-straps or exposing those for sale.”30

  Nor was the brutality only directed against Indians. Rebel mobs tarred and feathered Loyalists and officials. The British reported that after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the rebels “scalped and cut off the ears of some of the wounded that fell into their hands.”31

  A British agent who tried to suppress torture practice by Indian allies said in 1783 that the rebels were “reviving the old savage custom of putting their prisoners to death which with much pains and expense we had weaned the Indians from in this neighborhood.”32

  If Indians had a way to tell “the world the many acts of treachery and cruelty committed by them on our women and children,” said a Seneca chief, “it would appear that the title of savages would with much greater justice be applied to them than to us.”33

  As the war began, most Indian nations wanted to take the course that would best preserve their lands, and provide them food, arms, and supplies. Each nation had a different response—and sometimes multiple ones that reflected internal differences of opinion. The Mohawks, influenced by Johnson (who died in 1774) and his native wife, Molly Brant, quickly aligned with the British. Most tribes tried to stay neutral, remembering the ill fortune of those that had allied with the French during the Seven Years’ War. The Oneidas, for example, told the Whig Connecticut governor: “We are unwilling to join on either side of such a contest, for we love you both—old England and new. Should the great King of England apply to us for aid, we shall deny him, and should the colonies apply, we shall refuse.”34

  But neutrality became increasingly difficult. The Indians, as a Wyandot chief said, sat between “two powerful angry gods.”35

  Washington urged Congress to help persuade tribes to fight for the Whigs. “It will be impossible to keep them in a state of neutrality,” he said in early 1776. “They must, and no doubt will, take an active part either for us or against us. I submit to Congress whether it will not be better to immediately engage them on our side.” Massachusetts urged a Whig missionary working among the Iroquois to “whet their hatchet and be prepared with us to defend our liberties and lives.” In the Ohio Valley, a Whig general warned Indians against neutrality, saying, “Bystanders must take care lest the splinters should scar their face.” Soon after Lexington and Concord, Ethan Allen, a Vermont militia colonel, urged tribes to attack the British. “I want your warriors to join with me and my warriors like brothers and ambush the regulars,” he said. “If you will, I will give you money, blankets, tomahawks, knives, and paint and the like as much as you say, because they first killed our men when it was peace time.”36

  But the British also pressured the tribes, and with few exceptions—the Oneidas and a few smaller nations—they succeeded. The British had made good-faith efforts to stop white theft of Indian lands. “The Indians well know that in all their landed disputes, the Crown has always been their friend,” a British commander said. A Loyalist ranger chastised Iroquois who had signed a friendship treaty with the rebels, warning: “They mean to cheat you, and should you be so silly as to take their advice, and they should conquer the King’s Army, their intention is to take all your lands from you and destroy your people.”37

  Unlike the rebels, Britain had a government that could levy taxes that paid for Indian “gifts”—what’s now called foreign aid. As war and land thefts devastated Indian farm lands and hunting territories, the British also provided food and safe havens in their strongholds of Detroit, Niagara, and Oswego, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.

  Finally, the rebels alienated Ohio Valley tribes when, in late 1777, six Pennsylvania militiamen murdered a Shawnee leader, Cornstalk (Hokoleskwa), his son, and two others. Cornstalk, a moderate, had gone to Fort Randolph (in what is now West Virginia) under a truce flag. The rebel commander detained the entire party as hostages. Militia broke in and killed them in retaliation for the death of a white near the fort. Despite apologies from Congress and the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia, “the Indians are not to be pacified,” a British officer said. The next year, settlers murdered White Eyes (Koquethagechton), a pro-Whig Delaware leader.38

  The frontier war heated up. Indians often worked in joint operations with Loyalist rangers and British officers. They frequently raided New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio Valley settlements and with disastrous results for the rebels. The Whigs retaliated with their own raids, culminating in a 1779 expedition through Iroquois country led by Continental general John Sullivan. Sullivan’s strategy was to starve the Indians to death by destroying their food supplies, including 160,000 bushels of corn, and burning their forty towns.

  The strategy was effective. Three years before, North Carolina’s Rutherford had destroyed thirty-six Cherokee towns, along with their crops and livestock. It was one of many such expeditions. After one, a Shawnee man reported, “Our women and children . . . are left now destitute of shelter in the woods or food to subsist on.”39

  Charles Stedman, a British officer, described the frontier war. “Mutual incursions were made, and ruin and devastation followed on the steps of the ruthless invaders. Whole families were butchered, their houses burnt, the growing corn cut up, and entire plantations laid waste.”40

  News of the Yorktown surrender reached the frontier in late 1781 and early 1782. In upstate New York, the British and Indians began what would be th
eir final expedition against the rebels. But in the Ohio Valley, the war escalated.

  17. The Death of Colonel Butler

  SCHENECTADY, NEW YORK, HAD BEEN A FRONTIER TOWN SINCE 1661, when Dutch settlers traded wampum currency and goods to Mohawks for land along their namesake river. The settlers thrived by illegally trading with the Mohawks for furs that would otherwise have gone to Albany, eighteen miles to the southeast. It was an astute location for a town; Schenectady’s name itself was derived from an Indian word meaning “end of the pine plains,” a reference to its location as the terminus of a portage between the Mohawk and Hudson rivers.1

  Three years after Schenectady’s founding, the British seized the Dutch territory and renamed the colony New York. When the centuries-long dispute between the British and French spilled into North America, Schenectady became vulnerable. In early February 1690, a French force from Québec with Indian allies attacked Schenectady. They burned seventy-eight of the town’s eighty houses, killed sixty people, and took twenty-seven prisoners. A resident, Symon Schermerhorn, though wounded, escaped on a horse and warned residents along the road to Albany.

  By the Revolution, about 43,000 whites lived throughout the region. Schenectady had grown to at least three hundred homes, and Albany had five thousand residents. Whites by the hundreds encroached on Iroquois land, making game scarce and people hungry. Many, probably most, settlers became Whigs, if only because the British tried to enforce the Indian treaties. The Iroquois declared neutrality in late 1774 because, its council said, “it was contrary to their custom to interfere between parents [British] and children [Whigs].” But just as there was no place for neutrality among the white “parents and children,” the unity of the six Iroquois nations fractured. The Oneidas and some Tuscaroras, influenced by a Whig missionary, became Whig allies. The other Iroquois nations turned to the British. They were pushed by the Mohawks, who, being the easternmost tribe, already had lost most of their land to whites. The rebels also prevented the Mohawks from trading with Canada, and it was the Mohawks who were most influenced by Johnson and Johnson’s family, including Molly Brant.2