Pen and Ink Witchcraft

by Calloway, Colin G.

  According to John Long, who spent twenty years in Indian country, when Johnson held a treaty with the Indians the wampum belts were generally several rows wide, black (or purple) on each side and white in the middle “to express peace, and that the path between them was fair and open.” In the center of the belt was the figure of a diamond made of white wampum, representing a council fire. Johnson took the belt by one end, while the Indian chief held the other. If the chief had anything to say, he moved his finger along the white streak: if Sir William had anything to communicate, he touched the diamond in the middle. Long explained that “these belts are also the records of former transactions, and, being worked in particular forms, are easily deciphered by the Indians, and referred to in every treaty with the white people. When a string or belt of wampum is returned, it is a proof that the proposed treaty is not accepted and the negotiation is at an end.”96

  Wampum spread throughout the eastern woodlands, but the calumet (from the French word for reed), commonly called the peace pipe, became a key artifact of diplomacy from the St. Lawrence Valley, down the Mississippi, and out to the Rocky Mountains. Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit Father, said there was “nothing more mysterious or respected” among Indians than the calumet. “It seems to be the God of peace and of war, the Arbiter of life and death.” Indians used the calumet “to put an end to Their disputes, to strengthen Their alliances, and to speak to Strangers.”97 French and Métis traders contributed to the spread of the calumet and French, English, and American traders and officials “found that learning the ritual language of pipes” was indispensible for conducting business in Indian country.98

  Bearers of calumet pipes decorated the stems with feathers of different colors and sometimes with wampum. A British captain, Robert Carver, who spent three years traveling through the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi, described the pipe of peace or calumet as about four feet long; the bowl was made of “red marble” (by which he meant catlinite), and the stem “of a light wood, curiously painted with hieroglyphicks in various colours and adorned with the feathers of the most beautiful birds.” Each nation decorated their pipes in a different way “and they can tell at first sight to what band it belongs. It is used as an introduction to all treaties, and great ceremony attends the use of it on these occasions.”99

  Ritually smoking the pipe opened communications, solemnized proceedings, and established friendships; it was a necessary prelude to negotiations and trading relationships. Western Indians at a conference in Albany in 1723 explained to the New York commissioners and the Iroquois in attendance: “When one brother comes to visit an other it is the common practice among us to smoke a pipe in Peace and reveal our Secrets.” They asked “that according to our Custom we may each take a Whiff out of a Calumet Pipe in token of Peace and Friendship”; smoking their calumet pipe, they said, was “a sufficient proof to us of your friendship.”100 Pennsylvania Governor William Denny puffed on a pipe and passed it to the disgruntled Delaware chief Teedyuscung at a council in Philadelphia in 1758 with the words or at least the wishful thinking that “We have found by experience that whatever Nations smoaked out of it two or three hearty Whiffs, the Clouds that were between us always dispersed.”101 Smoking together and pointing the pipe in the four directions, and above and below, was a sacred action that opened the channels of communication and bound the smokers in a collective commitment to speak the truth. The smoke metaphorically carried their words upward and bound the speakers in a covenant with the Great Spirit.102 The calumet was “the symbol of peace,” said John Long, and Indians held it “in such estimation that a violation of any treaty where it has been introduced would, in their opinion, be attended with the greatest misfortunes.”103 Council participants might also retire from negotiations to smoke their pipes and reflect on what had been said and consider their response. In a world of escalating violence and disorder, the calumet made peace, reason, understanding, and trust possible.

  The calumet ceremony, in which Indians smoked and danced to welcome newcomers, transformed strangers into kin and enemies into friends; it opened the way for good relations and was a prerequisite for negotiations. When Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, entered the villages of the Quapaws in Arkansas in 1682, the Indians greeted the Frenchman with a calumet dance, a feast, and an exchange of gifts, to establish ritual ties and to give status within their social system.104 Mesquakie or Fox Indians seem to have taken the calumet ceremony to Abenakis and the Iroquois adopted it in the form of the Eagle Dance.105

  Jacob Jemison told Governor Lewis Cass in the 1820s that “No pipes are used among the Six Nations.”106 That may have been the case traditionally but the calumet began to appear in Iroquois diplomacy in the eighteenth century. In the spring of 1710 New York commissioners at Onondaga found three Ottawa emissaries there, singing. “They had long Stone Pipes in their hands & under the Pipes hung Feathers as big as Eagles Wings.” The commissioners filled their pipes and the assembled parties smoked to demonstrate friendship. In 1735, sachems from Kahnawake, who had traveled to Albany to reconcile differences between the Iroquois in Canada and the Six Nations in New York, opened the meeting “by offering the Calumet or Pipe of Peace to all the Commissioners who according to the Indian custom take each a Whif [sic].” At the chiefs’ request, the commissioners sent the pipe to Onondaga to be stored there along with the wampum “as a Memorial to Posterity of this Solemn Treaty.” Twenty years later, the Iroquois seemed well versed in the ritual of the pipe: when Sir William Johnson gave them a large pipe in 1756 “to be a constant memorial of the important advice you have given us, when you are dead and gone, and to smoke out of it, at our public meeting-place, where we jointly and maturely reflect upon our engagements” the Onondaga Red Head assured him, “we shall hang it up in our council-chamber, and make proper use of it upon all occasions.”107

  Indians carried calumets as passports guaranteeing safe conduct through other nations’ territories. Nicholas Perrot said the calumet stopped vengeful warriors in their path and compelled them to receive peace delegates who carried it. “It is, in one word, the calumet that has authority to confirm everything, and which renders solemn oaths binding.”108 In 1721, a Chickasaw chief who had traveled all the way from the Mississippi entered the council chamber in Williamsburg in company with some Cherokee chiefs; “they entered singing, according to their Custom; And the Great Man of the Chickasaws carrying in his hand a Calamett of Peace.”109 On their way to the Treaty of Logstown in 1752, the commissioners from Virginia were met by a party of Delawares on horseback about three miles from Shenapin’s town on the Ohio. “The Indians having filled and lighted their long Pipes or Calumets, first smoak’d and then handed them to the Commissioners and others in their Company, who all smoak’d. After the Ceremony had been repeated two or three Times, the Chief of the Indians made a short Speech to welcome the Commissioners, which being answered, they all mounted and the Indians led the Way” to the village.110 When Alejandro O’Reilly arrived as the governor of Spanish Louisiana in 1769, nine Indian chiefs went to New Orleans to smoke and establish peaceful relations. Each chief presented O’Reilly with his burning pipe and held it while the governor smoked, which “His Excellency did as he was not ignorant of its significance.”111

  The Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk explained that when the pipe was smoked, a three-fold peace was established. There was peace between individuals and peace between nations but first and most important was the peace in men’s souls that came with understanding their relationship to the universe and all its Powers; “the others are but a reflection of this.” There could be no peace between nations until there was peace within men’s souls.112

  Writing and Memory

  As Europeans and Americans learned the art of wampum and calumet diplomacy, they expected Indians to reciprocate by learning their customs. “We understand that by an ancient Custom observ’d by your Ancestors, the Delivery and Acceptance of the Calumet Pipe are the Ceremonies which render valid, and bind fa
st your Alliances,” Pennsylvania commissioners told Miamis who had come to Lancaster in 1748. “We must now tell you what our Usages are on these Occasions. The English when they consent to take any Nation into their Alliance, draw up a Compact in Writing, which is faithfully interpreted to the contracting Parties, and when maturely consider’d, and clearly and fully understood by each Side, their assent is declar’d in the most publick Manner, and the Stipulation render’d authentick by sealing the Instrument with Seals, whereupon are engraven their Families Arms, writing their Names, and publishing it as their Act and Deed.” This was how the English ratified treaties and other nations had drawn up documents like this when they first made alliances with the English. The Miamis would be expected to do the same.113

  It was not always easy. “I cannot write as you and your beloved Men do,” a Cherokee chief named Skiagusta told Governor Glen of South Carolina in council. “My Toungue is my Pen and my Mouth my Paper. When I look upon Writing I am as if I were blind and in the Dark.”114 Understanding this, Europeans asserted the superiority of writing as a method of recording. “Writing,” Virginian commissioners lectured Iroquois delegates at the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744, “is more certain than your Memory. That is the way the white people have of preserving Transactions of every kind and transmitting them down to their Children’s Children for ever; and all Disputes among them are settled by this faithfull kind of Evidence, and must be the Rule between the Great King and you.”115

  Indian people valued the spoken word, the gifts or wampum exchanged, and the oral tradition that preserved memory more than they did the written word by which Europeans recorded history. They assured Europeans that, although they did not commit transactions to writing, “we nevertheless have Methods of transmitting from Father to Son an account of all these things, whereby you will find the Remembrance of them is faithfully preserved.”116 Iroquois delegates assured the governor of Pennsylvania in 1721 that they remembered well the agreements their ancestors had made with William Penn, because “though they cannot write, yet they retain every thing said in their Councils with all the Nations they treat with, and preserve it as carefully in their memories as if it was committed in our method to Writing.”117 Non-Indians frequently were impressed by Indian methods of recall. “It is amazing with what exactness these people recollect all that has been said to them,” marveled Tench Tilghman, in council with the Six Nations. “The speech which we delivered took up nine or ten pages of folio Paper, when they came to answer they did not omit a single head and on most of them repeated our own words, for it is a Custom with them to recapitulate what you have said to them and then give their Answer. They are thorough bred politicians!”118

  The distinctions between oral and written culture can be exaggerated.119 Indians inscribed messages, information, and symbols on bark, trees, rocks, and paper, and they recorded information in wampum.120 They recognized writing as a parallel form of record keeping and as a parallel kind of ritual: sometimes they sent a letter along with wampum belts, although the English worried that if the letter fell into French hands they would “make the Indians believe quite the Contrary what the Letter mentions.”121 Indians presumably had similar worries about their belts being misinterpreted to Englishmen who were illiterate in reading wampum. Many Indians acquired an appreciation of the “power of print” and some learned to read and write; they understood that literacy could serve them as a weapon in the fight for cultural and political survival as well as it served the English and Americans as an instrument for dispossession.122

  It is often said that the spoken word and oral tradition, and the wampum belts that contained them, were alive, compared to the dry, dead documents of Europeans. But Indians who distrusted writing as “pen and ink witchcraft” did so precisely because they understood that written words had power and life, or at least that documents could take on a life of their own. Indians who signed treaties, affixed their marks, or “touched the pen” usually did so to affirm what they had said or to indicate their agreement to what they had been told the treaty document said. Canasatego referred disparagingly to “the Pen-and-Ink Work that is going on at the Table (pointing to the Secretary)” at Lancaster because Indians knew from experience that written words could come back to bite them.123 Indians sometimes requested, preserved, and referenced duplicate copies of treaties and agreements written by colonial scribes, just as they preserved the wampum belts of other nations they dealt with.124 A delegation of Esopus Indians from the Hudson Valley meeting Sir William Johnson in 1769 brought with them the transcript of a treaty they had made with the governor of New York more than one hundred years before, and which they periodically renewed, although the document was falling to pieces.125

  The written records of treaty conferences did not necessarily provide an accurate account of what was said, how it was said, or what was meant. Between the words emanating from a speaker’s mouth and the words appearing on paper, several hands intruded, multiple agendas could exert an influence, errors occurred, and numerous shadings could, and often did, occur.126 Scribes, clerks, and secretaries became regular figures at treaty conferences, producing an invaluable collection of written sources. They also played a significant role in shaping the written record of the conferences. In theory, their job was to preserve in English a verbatim account of multilingual negotiations translated by an interpreter. In practice, that almost never happened. Scribes struggled to keep up, rested their hands, let their attention wander, grew bored, misheard things, ignored asides spoken between individuals, omitted words and phrases, glossed over or condensed lengthy passages, or even put their pens down and sat back while Indian speakers went into lengthy orations or recapitulated earlier speeches. Once the conference was over, scribes sat down to make “fair copies” from their drafts for the official record, initiating another round of editing, in which they “corrected” the minutes; omitted, inserted, and changed words; and altered the tone and shifted the emphasis of conversations, sometimes in the interests of efficiency and style, sometimes with the deliberate intention of giving a particular slant to the proceedings.127 Sometimes, what was left out could be as damaging as what was included. Charles Thomson, a Philadelphia schoolmaster who served as a clerk at the Treaty of Easton in 1758, wrote a tract blaming Indian support for the French on Pennsylvania’s record of unscrupulous treaty practices, but he acknowledged that the paper trail evidencing such practices was thin:

  It is true, as the Indians have no Writings, nor Records among them, save their Memories and Belts of Wampum, we can only have Recourse to the Minutes taken, and Records kept, by one Party, nay, oftentimes, by those who, if any advantage was taken of the Indians, must have been concerned in it, and consequently would not care, by minuting every Thing truly, to perpetuate their own Disgrace.128

  Indians often found wanting the documentary record of the treaties they had attended. Loron Sauguaarum, a Penobscot who participated in negotiations with the English at the Treaty of Casco Bay in 1727, denounced the written terms of the treaty. “These writings appear to contain things that are not,” he said, and he proceeded to provide an article-by article correction of the record, refuting English assumptions and assertions regarding Indian land, sovereignty, and war guilt. “What I tell you now is the truth,” he concluded. “If, then, any one should produce any writing that makes me speak otherwise, pay no attention to it, for I know not what I am made to say in another language, but I know well what I say in my own.”129

  FIGURE 1.2 William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians in November 1683, 1771–72 (oil on canvas) by Benjamin West (1738–1820). Benjamin West’s later idealized painting of William Penn’s Treaty with the Delawares under an elm tree at Shackamaxon in 1683 reflects an earlier era of treaty making and peaceful relations in Pennsylvania. Indian treaties in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania more often seemed to involve fraud and land theft than peace and friendship. (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  The
Delaware chief Teedyuscung had plenty of experience with the power of writing and spent much of his life battling the theft by treaty of Delaware lands.130 Between 1630 and 1767, the Delaware, or Lenni Lenape, Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania signed nearly eight hundred deeds of land to colonists (see figure 1.2). In 1734, Thomas Penn, son of William, the first governor and proprietor of Pennsylvania, claimed to have found a copy of a deed made in 1686 in which certain Delaware chiefs granted his father and his father’s heirs lands “as far as a man can go in a day and a half,” and from there to the Delaware River and down its course. Thomas Penn and his associates persuaded a number of Delaware chiefs to agree to measuring out the lands. Instead of dispatching a man to walk the woods, the Pennsylvanians cleared a path and sent a relay team of three runners speeding along it. By the time the third runner collapsed in exhaustion at noon on the second day, they had covered about sixty-five miles. This infamous “Walking Purchase” deprived the Delawares of their last lands in the upper Delaware and Lehigh valleys.131 They protested but to no avail and the governor of Pennsylvania called in Canasatego and the Iroquois to help silence their complaints. Teedyuscung was still fuming over it in November 1756 when he met the Pennsylvania authorities in a treaty conference at Easton, at the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware rivers. Teedyuscung was a formidable presence—Richard Peters described him as “near 50 years old, a Lusty rawboned Man haughty and very desirous of Respect and Command. He can drink 3 quarts or a Gallon of Rum a day without being Drunk”—and not afraid to speak his mind. “The Times are not now as they were in the Days of our Grandfathers,” Teedyuscung said, “then it was Peace, but now War and Distress,” and he presented wampum belts of condolence to remove tears of mourning and heal past wounds. But old wounds still festered. “This very Ground that is under me (striking it with his Foot) was my Land and Inheritance and is taken from me by Fraud,” he declared. Governor William Denny responded that part of the problem was that, in Indian society, memory of land sales sometimes died with those who made the sale, “and as you do not understand Writings and Records, it may be hard for me to satisfy you of the Truth. Though my Predecessors dealt ever so uprigthly.”132