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Treaty Making in Colonial America
THE MANY LANGUAGES OF INDIAN DIPLOMACY
“Whosoever has any affairs to transact with Indians must know their forms and in some measure comply with them,” said Sir William Johnson. As Britain’s superintendent of Indian affairs in the North, Johnson built his career doing just that.1 Treaty making in colonial America was a learning process for Indians and Europeans alike. Europeans brought their established and elaborate diplomatic protocols for making treaties with other nations in Europe to North America. Indians had equally well-established and elaborate protocols for dealing with other Native nations in North America, and they drew European empires and colonists into their existing systems of diplomacy and exchange. Europeans learned to operate with the languages, rituals, and rhythms of Indian diplomacy as a necessity to doing business in Indian country, but at the same time they introduced their own diplomatic procedures and shifted the balance of power away from Indians. European and Native American traditions and practices melded to produce a new, uniquely American form of cross-cultural diplomacy. But it was never a perfect mix and was replete with opportunities for misunderstanding, deceit, and abuse.
Diplomacy was nothing new in North America. Long before Europeans arrived, Indian people demarcated and maintained territorial borders and negotiated multicultural frontiers.2 Reaching across barriers of language, distance, and culture, they operated and traveled trade networks, built and sustained alliances, conducted foreign policies, and concluded international agreements. They developed rituals of respect and reciprocity that allowed, indeed required, them to resolve conflicts, establish mutual trust, and come together in peace. “Trade & Peace we take to be one thing,” said the Iroquois.3 Dealing with other peoples as trade partners required making alliances and turning strangers who were potential enemies into friends and even relatives. Native peoples extended or replicated kinship (anthropologists call it “fictive kinship”) to include people with whom they were not related by birth or marriage, bringing them into their community by adoption, alliance, and ritual. Forging and renewing relationships of cooperation, coexistence, and kinship with others was essential to survival in the pre-contact multitribal world. It became even more essential in the violent and chaotic world generated by European invasion and colonialism, where war and disease upset balances of power and when alliances offered viable alternatives to endless cycles of bloodshed in escalating competition for diminishing resources. In the seventeenth century, European colonies were fragile and often rendered vulnerable by supply problems. Like Native Americans, the colonists struggled to survive “in a world in which international or cultural isolation could easily lead to extermination,” and like Native Americans—and like European colonists in other parts of the globe—they sought and made intercultural alliances and trade to protect and enhance their positions. European diplomatic encounters with Indians occurred at the edges of a world of multiple Indian-to-Indian social, political, and exchange relationships that fanned out across the continent and brought the newcomers into existing nation-to-nation networks.4 The diplomatic landscape of colonial America was a kaleidoscope of shifting relationships where different Indian communities, nations, and confederacies pursued their own foreign policies, just as European nations, empires, and rival colonies pushed their own agendas. Relations with any one group could affect relations with others.
Few in number at first, and evidently inept in their new environment, the English settlers at Jamestown cannot have seemed much of a threat to the peoples of the powerful Powhatan chiefdom, some thirty tribes extending across most of eastern Virginia. The Indians supplied corn to the colonists and the paramount chief, Powhatan, seems to have tried to incorporate the English into his domain. John Smith, the leader of the colonists, recalled several years later how he was captured by the Indians in December 1607 and saved from execution when Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, threw her body across his “at the minute of my execution.” If (and it’s a big “if”—in Smith’s accounts of his adventures, beautiful women save him from dire peril not once but three times) the events occurred as Smith described them, Pocahontas was most likely performing a prescribed role in a standard ritual by which Powhatan could adopt Smith and make him a werowance, or subordinate chieftain. She continued to play an important role as a mediator between the Powhatans and the English during the rest of her brief life.5
Similar diplomatic misunderstanding occurred in New England where Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit made a treaty of peace and friendship in 1621. Massasoit likely understood the agreement as forming an alliance that would bolster him in a power struggle with the neighboring Narragansetts. The English, on the other hand, regarded the treaty as a formal submission by the Wampanoag sachem to King James and an acknowledgment of English sovereignty.6 The English were quick to proclaim dominance over Indians. At the Treaty of Hartford in 1638 they proclaimed the Pequot tribe extinguished. But Indians balked: Narragansetts asserted their independence from and equality with the New England colonies by “going over their heads” and making “a voluntary and free submission” to King Charles I in 1644, and Indians elsewhere in New England regularly refuted English assertions of sovereignty.7
Early European diplomatic encounters with Indians occurred in areas and eras where Indians held the power. Would-be imperialists had to adjust to local and kinship politics and to make a place for themselves within a network of fluid relationships, held together by various languages, rituals, and patterns of behavior. First the French and then the British had to come to terms with the reality that to succeed in Indian country they must behave as Indians thought friends and allies should, and to conciliate more often than command.8 Indians extended to newcomers from Europe the same metaphors and mechanisms for peace that they employed among themselves. “What happened in the hinterland called colonial North America,” wrote the historian Dorothy Jones, “was the development of a multilateral, multicultural diplomacy unlike the diplomatic tradition of any single participant but partaking of them all.” This hybrid diplomacy combined legal documentation of agreements and ritualized renewals of human relationships. Indian chiefs, perhaps wearing uniform coats, three-cornered hats, and medals given to them by European allies, negotiated with colonial emissaries who had learned to smoke the calumet pipe and speak on beaded wampum belts, while their words were translated by interpreters, who might be white men tattooed, painted, and dressed like the Indians with whom they lived.9
Treaty making for Indians involved extending relationships and establishing sacred obligations, and they went about it all with solemn purpose following time-honored procedures. Edmond Atkin, a Charlestown merchant in the Indian trade who became Britain’s southern Indian superintendent, remarked in his report of 1755 that “in their publick Treaties no People on earth are more open, explicit, and Direct. Nor are they excelled by any in the observance of them.” George Croghan, a trader and Indian agent not known for an overabundance of scruples and principles in his dealings, acknowledged that Indians “to their Honour” never “attempted to dissolve a Contract, justly and plainly, made with them.”10 “It must not be supposed that these treaty conferences were in any sense haphazard in character, in any degree less ceremonious than meetings for a similar purpose between the high contracting parties to European agreements,” the historian Lawrence Wroth wrote many years ago; and Indians who engaged in treaty making compelled Europeans to observe ancient protocols “that reached back through centuries of ceremonial observance.11 These rituals and metaphors held significant symbolism and precise meanings. Indians and Europeans who endeavored to deal with each other across cultural gulfs had to negotiate a collision and confluence of worldviews; consequently, the texts of their treaty conferences “can be deciphered now only with careful scrutiny and an informed appreciation of cross-cultural interaction.”12
Reaching Across Cultures
Indians g
enerally preferred to hold treaties in their own country and away from disease-infested colonial cities. One of the major architects of the Great Peace at Montreal, a Huron chief known as Kondiaronk (or the Rat), died during an epidemic (probably influenza) at the treaty, and the Iroquois complained that they lost many men every time a delegation went to Philadelphia. “The evil Spirits that Dwell among the White People are against us and kill us,” they said.13 But it was not uncommon to see Indian delegates walking the streets of Quebec, Montreal, Albany, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Charlestown, St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa Fe, and other colonial capitals. On occasion, they also traveled to Paris or London, conducting diplomacy in a strange new world, although such visits often constituted “a kind of crude theater, drained of the dialogue and intensity that marked intercultural negotiations in America.”14 When Indian delegates came to town, the host governments wined and dined and tried to impress them with their power and wealth. Creek delegates in Charlestown in July 1763 were treated to a river cruise with musical entertainment.15 Indian visitors to London saw the sights, attended the theater, and visited royal palaces, although the filth and poverty they saw in the streets shocked them as much as the power and wealth impressed them.
Rather than assemble in Indian villages or colonial capitals, however, treaty delegates often met at frontier locations distant from both, which meant that Indian communities and colonial governments might not learn until much later what had transpired at the treaty. Once a treaty council was announced, messengers went to Indian villages, summoning the tribes to attend. It took time for the participants to assemble, especially when delegates came from various and sometimes distant nations. Indians often marked their arrival at the treaty site with a ceremonial entrance. James Thacher, a surgeon with the American army during the Revolution, walking in the woods one morning prior to a conference being attended by two hundred Iroquois men and women, saw them “occupied in dressing and ornamenting themselves for the ceremony; painting their faces, adjusting their hair, putting jewels into their ears, noses, &c.” Several of the young men and girls wore “little bells about their feet, to make a jingle when dancing.” When the proceedings began, the Indians filed in and “arranged themselves, by sitting on the ground in a circle, the men on one side, the women on the other, leaving a vacancy for our commissioners, who were seated on chairs.” In the intervals between talks, the Indians danced around the fire in the center of the circle and, taking each commissioner one at a time by the hand, danced with them around the circle.16
The Iroquois were so influential and played the game of Indian-European diplomacy so well that Iroquois forms, conventions, and terminology pervaded the diplomacy of northeastern North America. At the opening of an Iroquois council, a speaker greeted the participants and metaphorically wiped their eyes, cleansed their ears, and cleared their throats so that they might see, hear, and speak without impediment, a ritual of condolence that dated back to the legendary founding of their league when Deganawidah the Peacemaker assuaged the grief and torment of Hiawatha. The condolence ceremony typically began by greeting messengers “at the wood’s edge,” as they emerged from the forest to the clearing around the village. Then strings of wampum—shells or later glass beads—were presented, with the speaker telling the stories spoken by the wampum, accompanied by songs, to remove past grievances, resentments, and grief. These rituals created or renewed connections of peace and goodwill between the council participants, who put aside bad memories and negative feelings in order to meet with open hearts and minds.17 The condolence ceremony marked the beginning of any Iroquois negotiation with Europeans, and abbreviated versions of the ceremony marked the opening of many councils with other northern Indians, even when no Iroquois were present.18 A condolence council was not a one-time, once-and-for-all affair; in an increasingly volatile world, people met recurrently to settle differences, mend allegiances, and assuage anger and grief. In the Southeast, colonial officials dealing with the Creeks and their neighbors could similarly expect to partake of a ceremonial and purgative black drink before talks got under way.19
European treaty makers had to learn to tolerate such time-consuming indigenous rituals and deliberative processes that involved frequent adjournments. “The Indians adhere so closely to their Tedious Ceremonies that I am sensible you must have had a most fatiguing time of it,” Governor Robert Hunter Morris of Pennsylvania sympathized with William Johnson after one treaty.20 For the Indians, those “tedious ceremonies” sanctified the proceedings and established relationships of trust that were the very “sinews of diplomacy.” Without the proper rituals, “a treaty simply was not a treaty.”21 Peace for Indians meant more than just an absence of conflict or an end to fighting; it was a state of being and a state of mind that carried moral obligations.22
As the anthropologist Raymond DeMallie explains in regards to treaty negotiations on the Great Plains, “If the council as a diplomatic forum was commonly understood by both whites and Indians, the concept of the treaty was not.” For Indians, the council was an end in itself. What mattered was coming together in peace, ritually smoking a pipe, establishing trust, speaking the truth, and exchanging words. Indians generally reached decisions by consensus so all opinions and points of view had to be discussed. “Until that occurred, no decision was made, and once it was reached, no vote was necessary.” For whites, the council and its associated rituals were preliminaries to the real business at hand: drawing up and signing a written treaty. Indians, who “had already sworn themselves to the truth,” regarded signing the treaty as redundant, but they recognized that it was an important ritual for white men.23
European diplomats in Indian country had to deal with systems of government that were quite different from their own centralized and hierarchical structures and which made negotiations tedious and treaties tentative. Colonial powers generally appointed commissioners to treat with the Indians and they expected Indian leaders to make agreements that were binding on their people. Indian orators often spoke on behalf of their people, but representation at treaty councils was fuller and decision making more fluid than Europeans were accustomed to. Governor Cadwallader Colden of New York, writing of the Iroquois in the 1720s, said, “Each Nation is an absolute Republick by its self, govern’d in all Publick Affairs of War and Peace by the Sachems or Old Men, whose Authority and Power is gain’d by and consists wholly in the Opinion the rest of the Nation have of their Wisdom and Integrity. They never execute their Resolutions by Compulsion or Force upon any of their People.”24 A trader named John Long said, “The Iroquois laugh when you talk to them of obedience to kings….Each individual is sovereign in his own mind.”25 Southern Indians felt the same way, according to the trader James Adair: “The power of the chiefs is an empty sound. They can only persuade or dissuade the people,” and everyone “to a man” voiced opinions.26 In such political systems, leaders relied on the power of their words to achieve consensus, not the authority of their office to enforce obedience.
To complicate things further, the Indian delegates who appeared at treaties, and whom colonists courted and cultivated, were often the men who possessed the ritual knowledge and oratorical skills necessary for public speaking rather than the political leaders, who might remain silent while these front men did the talking. “Chief” was a term that embraced a variety of people in a variety of leadership roles. Europeans and Americans “not only misunderstood the origin and exercise of chiefly power but also failed to understand the nuances of how this authority was held, transferred, and wielded differently through Native American societies.” They expected and pressured chiefs to be more authoritarian than their societies allowed, which in many cases undermined consensus and caused divisions. But Indian leaders rarely made decisions on their own and regularly consulted with their constituencies, which meant bringing large numbers of people with them to the treaty grounds or securing the consent of people back in the villages to any agreements they made. Speakers at treaty councils frequently
made a point of explaining whom they spoke for and asserting that they acted with the support of the other chiefs, the warriors, and the women.27
Although men typically negotiated and concluded the treaties, women traditionally exercised important diplomatic roles in some Native societies. A Quaker who expressed surprise at seeing an old woman speak in a council near the Susquehanna River in 1706 was told “that some women were wiser than some men, and that they had not done anything for many years without the council of this ancient, grave woman.” Gendered language pervaded the discourse of diplomacy and women served as a metaphor for peaceful intentions throughout the eastern woodlands. The Delawares were often called, and called themselves, “a nation of women” because of the tribe’s historic role as intertribal mediators.28 Women continued to feature in the diplomacy of colonial early America. They signed their names to land deeds and petitions.29 They functioned as peace emissaries and mediators in the Texas borderlands as well as in the northeastern woodlands.30 They accompanied delegations to treaty councils and wove wampum belts. At the treaty grounds, they erected and took down lodges, kept an eye on the children, and cooked food. Sometimes, the women sat on one side of the circle as the treaty talks proceeded and they doubtless exerted more influence on negotiations than the official transcripts of the treaties recorded. In matrilineal societies only women could adopt outsiders as fictive kin—which they did by ritual embrace—establishing bonds of kinship as a prerequisite to engaging in diplomacy.31 And private relationships and intermarriage between Indian women and European men often provided a basis for public and diplomatic relations.32 Often, women had their say back in the villages before the male delegates departed for the treaty grounds or in the evening during breaks in the negotiations. What women said to their husbands or sons did not usually make it into the written records of treaty proceedings but, as the Arapaho chief Little Raven explained at Medicine Lodge, a treaty could not be made without their participation.33
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