Teedyuscung understood only too well. He knew what consequences a change of words could have. “Somebody must have wrote wrong, and that makes the Land all bloody,” he said.133 He knew English, but he had his own interpreter, John Pumpshire. He was concerned that everything he said and everything that was said to him “be taken down aright; some speak in the Dark; do not let us do so; let all be clear and known. What is the Reason the Governor holds Councils so close in his Hands, and by Candle Light?” The governor insisted that he held his council in the open and had no secrets, but the following year Teedyuscung requested that he be provided with his own clerk to record the minutes of meetings “along with the Governor’s Clerk.” The colonists balked at his request—having Indians read what was written was one thing; involving them in the recording process was another matter—but Teedyuscung got his clerk: the Quaker Charles Thomson, a former schoolteacher who wrote An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians and who later became secretary of the Continental Congress.134 George Croghan thought Quaker commissioners must have put Teedyuscung up to it. He objected when Teedyuscung had a speech drawn up in writing “and desired his clerke [sic] to read it off as a lawyer would put in a plea before the bar” and insisted Teedyuscung deliver the speech himself. It was, he reported to Sir William Johnson “very extraordinary and the most unprecedented procedure ever known at an Indian treaty.”135 Indians understood the power of writing but they understood that it lay predominantly in white hands. “We have often seen (and you know it to be true),” Iroquois deputies told William Johnson in 1769, “that the White people by the help of their paper (which we don’t understand) claim Lands from Us very unjustly and carry them off.”136
The written records of treaties covered the public conferences in which statements, and wampum, were presented and considered. They did not usually record meetings “in the bushes” or “the Debates, Arguments and discourses at the private Conferences where the principal Subjects are first Agitated and determined upon.”137 Private meetings between treaty commissioners and Indian leaders sometimes flag shady deals, but working things out in private before agreements were formally concluded in public was standard practice in both Native American and European diplomacy.138
Interpreters and Go-Betweens
Someone had to translate the exchange of words, wampum belts, gifts, and rituals across cultures. Translation, and the imposition of language that distorted Native meanings and did violence to indigenous worldviews, was central to European colonization and imperialism in the Americas, and it was critical to the process and purpose of treaty making.139 Many Indians learned to speak French, Spanish, and English, of course, but as John Heckewelder observed, “even if an Indian understands English he prefers communicating to a white man through an interpreter.”140 And an interpreter might mishear, misunderstand, misremember, mistranslate, or misrepresent what was said.141
Interpreters obviously played a key role in treaty negotiations. The French sent young boys to live in Indian villages as a way of creating a pool of interpreters. Jacques Cartier in 1541 left boys among the Indians to learn their language; Samuel de Champlain sent boys to the Hurons and Algonquins in 1610–11, and the French continued the practice in Louisiana into the eighteenth century.142 Most interpreters in the seventeenth century were Indians, but despite the fact that more and more Indians learned English, interpreters during the eighteenth century were usually non-Indians: professional interpreters like Conrad Weiser, George Croghan, and Andrew Montour, and agents, missionaries, traders, and captives who had learned Indian languages and Indian ways. A good interpreter had to do more than translate speeches. He, and occasionally she, needed to understand and advise on the protocols of intercultural diplomacy, know the names of the chiefs, have their fingers on the pulse of tribal and intertribal politics, provide guidance on the tone and content of speeches and messages, operate as cultural intermediaries behind the scenes, participate in private meetings, understand the language and handling of wampum belts, edit speeches for fluency and efficiency, and exercise judgment about what not to translate in order to avoid misunderstandings, head off a potential breakdown of the talks, or obscure shady deals from public view.143 “It surely dos [sic] not require any detail of Reasoning to evince how very important the Capacity & Integrity of an Interpreter is to the public,” wrote New York’s secretary of Indian affairs in 1738, although he had serious doubts about the abilities of the current one.144
Conrad Weiser “practically made a career of the Indian business.” Born in Germany in 1696, Weiser settled with his family in southeastern New York. He was adopted by the Mohawks, developed a facility in Iroquoian languages, and became an interpreter. After moving to Pennsylvania, he played a pivotal role as a negotiator and intermediary in tribal relations with the colonial governments of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Weiser understood that effective translation required more than knowing Indian words; it was necessary, he said, “to converse with the Indians and study their Genius.”145 At the Treaty of Lancaster, wrote Witham Marshe, a young Scotsman serving as secretary to the Maryland commissioners, “Our interpreter, Mr. Weiser desired us, whilst we were here, not to talk much of the Indians, nor laugh at their dress, or make any remarks on their behaviour: if we did, it would be very much resented by them, and might cause some differences to arise betwixt the white people and them. Besides,” added Marshe, “most of them understood English, though they will not speak it when they are in treaty.”146 When Weiser died in 1760, Iroquois delegates in council with Pennsylvanians condoled the passing of a great man, who was one half Indian “and one half an Englishman.” They were “at a great Loss, and sit in Darkness, as well as you,” they said, “as since his Death we cannot so well understand one another.”147
Interpreters and cultural mediators did not just operate between two sides with two clearly defined agendas; effective brokers drew on their connections and expertise to negotiate their way through “a kaleidoscope of local and supralocal leaders working at cross-purposes, struggles and alliances among competing interest groups, and tangled family ties” to help produce agreements that everyone could accept as promoting or protecting their interests.148 At the Treaty of Logstown, where the Indians confirmed the earlier deed made at Lancaster, the Virginian commissioners dispatched their interpreter, Andrew Montour, “to confer with his Brethren, the other Sachems, in private, on the Subject, to urge the Necessity of such a Settlement & the great Advantage it wou’d be to them, as to their Trade or their Security.”149 Struggling to make headway building Indian alliances in the Ohio country on the eve of the French and Indian War, a young George Washington regretted not having the benefit of Andrew Montour’s expertise. “Montour would be of singular use to me here at this present, in conversing with the Indians,” he wrote to Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie in June 1754: “for want of a better acquaintance with their Customs I am often at a loss how to behave and should be reliev’d from many anxious fear’s [sic] of offending them if Montour was here to assist me.” In fact, Dinwoodie had already sent Montour, armed with wampum belts, to assist Washington in his Indian diplomacy.150
Treaty councils might require teams of interpreters speaking several different languages. Conferences in Albany in the seventeenth century often involved several Iroquoian and Algonquian languages as well as Dutch and English; conferences in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century might involve Iroquoian and Algonquian and German and English (with Quakers or Moravians acting as mediators).151 In 1748, in order for the Oneida chief Shickellamy to converse with a German visitor, another colonist translated the German’s words into Mahican; a Mahican woman translated into Shawnee for her husband, who then translated into Oneida for Shickellamy. The reply then made its way back along the translation chain.152
Few interpreters could handle more than a couple of languages and the challenges of translating across several languages and across cultures and worldviews taxed even the best o
f them. Cadwallader Colden knew from his dealings with the Iroquois that “our Interpreters may not have done Justice to the Indian Eloquence.” Indian orators used “many Metaphors in their Discourse, which interpreted by an hesitating Tongue, may appear mean, and strike our Imagination faintly, but under the Pen of a skilful Interpreter may strongly move our Passions by their lively Images.” He had heard Indian speakers move their audience “with much Vivacity and Elocution,” only to have an interpreter “explain the whole by one single Sentence,” satisfied with communicating “the Sense, in as few words as it could be exprest.”153 The areas where translation was difficult most clearly reveal the differences in ideological systems.154
Interpreters could influence the outcome of treaty negotiations and sometimes exerted that influence to help themselves. Some interpreters did well in the Indian business, coming away from treaties with land given by Indians in “grateful recognition” of their services. After Conrad Weiser’s death, Tachendorus (also called John Shickellamy, son of the Oneida chief) called him “one of the greatest thieves in the World for Lands.”155 James Dean, a white boy who grew up at Onoquaga and received a free education at Dartmouth College in the 1770s in return for his skills in Iroquois languages, later used those skills to make a small fortune interpreting at treaties in which the federal and state governments and private land companies separated the Oneidas from millions of acres of land.156 Individuals of mixed heritage and uncertain or multiple identities were well suited to fulfilling the roles of culture broker and translator that were essential on the diplomatic frontiers of early America but they were rarely trusted.
Land, Liquor, and Captives
It is easy to assume that while Indians were masters of oratory and the rituals of the council fire, they were babes in the woods when it came to dealing with Europeans on land and politics. Certainly Indians sometimes claimed to be naïve in such matters, but they were quick learners from hard experience. “We know our Lands are now become more valuable,” Canasatego explained in a meeting at Philadelphia in July 1742. “The white People think we do not know their Value; but we are sensible that the Land is everlasting, and the few Goods we receive for it are soon worn out and gone.”157 Men like Teedyuscung and Canasatego regularly called colonial governments on their record in acquiring Indian land, citing chapter and verse. Unwitting colonial representatives might find themselves in trouble if they had not done their homework or if they failed to keep up with Indian diplomats who led them into a maze of intertribal relations or bogged them down in intercolonial controversies and contention over land.
Oratory could conceal bluff and bluster and a treaty council was a good place to elevate a claim by voicing an assertion for the record. So, at the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744, when delegates from Maryland expressed doubts about the validity of Iroquois claims to land within their colony, Canasatego brushed aside any such reservations with “an oratorical barrage”:
Brother, the Governor of Maryland,
When you mentioned the Affair of the Land Yesterday, you went back to old Times, and told us, you had been in Possession of the Province of Maryland above One Hundred Years, but what is a Hundred Years, in Comparison of the Length of Time since our Claim began? Since we came out of the Ground? For we must tell you, that long before a Hundred Years, our Ancestors came out of this vey Ground, and their Children have remained here ever since. You came out of the Ground in a Country that lies beyond the Seas; there you may have a just Claim, but here you must allow us to be your elder Brethren, and the Lands to belong to us long before you knew any thing of them.
Canasatego reinterpreted Iroquois history to suit his purposes. Iroquois claims to aboriginal occupancy of Maryland were dubious at best, but by placing the Iroquois in the position of indigenous inhabitants and relegating the colonists to the status of recent arrivals Canasatego effectively undermined Maryland’s objections.158
But it was not enough to stave off a massive cession of Indian lands. Canasatego and the other Iroquois left Lancaster “well pleased,” believing that they had ceded their claims to the Shenandoah Valley on Virginia’s western border. But Virginia’s original royal charter granted the colony land “from sea to sea.” As the Treaty of Lancaster was written, the Iroquois actually ceded a huge chunk of America, including the Ohio Valley and all the way to the Pacific! In 1747 a group of influential individuals, including two brothers of George Washington, formed the Ohio Company of Virginia to lay claim to lands within the Lancaster cession and the next year the Crown granted them two hundred thousand acres near the headwaters of the Ohio River.159 The English and the French saw the Ohio Valley as the key to controlling the continent and Virginian ambitions and French imperial agendas clashed there, igniting the so-called French and Indian War that became the global conflict known as the Seven Years’ War. Canasatego had good reason to fear pen and ink work.
Treaties that involved land sales also involved different relationships to land and conflicting concepts of occupation and property. Europeans and Americans saw land in economic terms, a commodity to be surveyed and measured, bought and sold; property to be bounded, fenced, and owned. Indians, who “shared a pervasive understanding that a particular place belonged to a particular people only to the extent that the people belonged to the place,” had different notions about how it could be sold and owned, if at all.160 Indians who signed deeds sometimes thought they were sharing the right to use the land, not conveying exclusive ownership. Sometimes they “sold” land and were later shocked to find themselves excluded from it by fences, or treated as trespassers when they returned to old hunting territories; sometimes they sold the same lands several times over. They soon learned that when colonists bought land they insisted they acquired exclusive title once and for all. The Mohawk chief Hendrick clearly understood how the different conceptions of land ownership worked to the disadvantage of the Indians. When Pennsylvanians offered to buy Iroquois lands west of the Susquehanna at the Albany Congress in 1754, Hendrick replied:
We are willing to sell You this Large Tract of Land for your People to live upon, but We desire this may be considered as Part of our Agreement that when We are all dead and gone your Grandchildren may not say to our Grandchildren, that your Forefathers sold the Land to our Forefathers, and therefore be gone off them. This is wrong. Let us be all as Brethren as well after as before of giving you Deeds for Land. After We have sold our Land We in a little time have nothing to shew for it; but it is not so with You, Your Grandchildren will get something from it as long as the World stands; our Grandchildren will have no advantage from it; They will say We were Fools for selling so much Land for so small a matter and curse us.
Colonists may have given lip service to such requests while a land sale was being negotiated but paid scant attention to them after the transaction was completed.161
The Iroquois also famously sold the British on the idea that they exercised dominion over the tribes of the Ohio Valley (the British seized on it to promote their own imperial agenda) and on more than one occasion they sold the British land that belonged to other tribes.162 When they did so at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, they were indeed cursed “for selling so much Land for so small a matter.”
Where spoken and written words failed, alcohol often proved effective in inducing Indians to relinquish their land. Alcohol was an instrument of market capitalism and colonial control, prevalent in the fur and deerskin trades as a means of stimulating overhunting and devastating in its effects in Indian communities.163 Alcohol lubricated many a land deed and flowed freely at treaty councils. Colonial commissioners and Indian delegates drank rounds of toasts to each other, to colonial governors, to the king. Indians were given wine, rum, punch, and tobacco during adjournments in negotiations. The record of one treaty council, in Philadelphia in 1743, noted simply: “Here the Conversation drop’d; and after another Glass of Wine, the Indians resumed the Discourse.” Indian delegates often negotiated while under the influence and “Wine and other Liqu
ors” were regularly dispensed at the end of conferences “according to the Indian Custom.”164
But Indians and colonists alike knew the dangers of drink. Negotiations sometimes were delayed or disrupted because Indian delegates turned up drunk or hungover.165 Conrad Weiser and George Croghan often dispensed liquor and drank with Indians during negotiations but when many of the Ohio Indians with whom they were negotiating in the summer of 1748 got drunk, they staved an eight-gallon cask belonging to a trader who had “had brought near 30 Gallons of Whiskey to the Town.” Thomas Lord Fairfax, Virginia’s commissioner for dealing with the Iroquois and their allies at Winchester in 1753, gave the Indian delegates five gallons of rum but prohibited local tavern keepers from serving liquor to the Indians while they were in town.166
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