Fort Bedford, Pennsylvania. The meeting place of Christian Frederick Post and John Forbes, this small pentagonal fort was Forbes’s supply base in the construction of the road to Fort Duquesne. Fort Ligonier, a similarly sized post on Loyalhanna Creek about forty-five miles to the west of Bedford, was the jumping-off point for the assault on Fort Duquesne. Between them, and along the length of Forbes Road generally, smaller blockhouse forts lay about a day’s march apart. From Rocque, A Set of Plans and Forts. Courtesy of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan.
Thus the breaking in upon—not to say disappointments of—our hitherto so fair and flattering hopes of success touches [me] most sensibly. How far we shall find the bad effects of it, I shall not at present say.
What worried him most was that the result of this setback would be the “alienating and altering the disposition of the [Ohio] Indians, at this critical time, who (tho’ fickle and wavering), yet were seemingly well disposed to embrace our alliance and protection.”12
To this crushing load of anxiety, the “unusual and unexpected rains” of October added one last straw. “I am ruined and undone by Rain,” Forbes complained on a day when the army could “not move one yard.” “Pray God send us a few fair days.” Under these gloomy circumstances, with the campaigning season and the enlistments of his provincials (the great majority of his army) both drawing rapidly to a close, Forbes fixed his hopes on the peace conference that opened at Easton on October 11. Although he no longer expected direct aid in the form of Indian auxiliaries, if the Ohio tribes could be neutralized he might yet—all other impediments notwithstanding—complete his mission. Thus on October 16 although Forbes was “quite tyred” he still dragged himself to his desk to write a long letter to Pennsylvania’s provincial secretary at the Easton Congress, urging him and his fellow delegates in the proprietary interest to do everything in their power to make it a success.13
“I am this moment flattering myself,” he wrote, “that from the joint endeavours of all with you, the dropping of foolish trifles, some measure will be taken with those originale Inhabitants[, the Indians, so] as to strengthen ourselves and diminish our Ennemys Influence with them [on the Ohio]. . . . As I see things giving up sometimes a little in the beginning will procure you a great deal in the end.” Although on the twelfth the enemy had made a strong raid against “our advanced post at Loyal Hannon,” Forbes reported, Bouquet’s men had repelled them, inflicting “Considerable” casualties without sustaining comparable losses of their own. The repulse of the raiders had actually raised morale, making “all the Waggoners, horse drivers &ca . . . on the road as brave as Lyons.” Therefore, he wrote, because “I have everything in readyness at Loyal Hannon, [and] I only want a few dry days to carry me to the Ohio Banks,” he had dispatched Christian Frederick Post to Easton, so that the moment peace had been concluded Post could return to the valley “with proper Messages (as the Governor shall direct) to the Ohio Indians to retire directly.” No one knew better than Forbes that everything now depended upon the success of the peace conference: “Pray heartily,” he concluded, “for fair weather and dispatch of Business.” 14
Post brought Forbes’s letter to Easton on October 20, the day that the congress reached its climax. From its beginning the gathering had been a large and confused one, fraught with tension and conflict.15 Although this conference had been convened under the joint aegis of the governors of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the parties present and the interests they represented closely paralleled those at the previous year’s Easton treaty. As in 1757, the divided interests of Pennsylvania were represented by its governor, a delegation of antiproprietary commissioners from its assembly, a variety of officeholders attached to the proprietary interest, and the proprietor’s veteran Indian diplomat, Conrad Weiser. As in 1757, George Croghan attended as the deputy of Sir William Johnson; and as before Croghan was being shadowed by Johnson’s (and the proprietor’s) Quaker antagonist, Israel Pemberton. As in 1757, Indians of several nations were on hand: a few to speak and a few to counsel with the speakers, and many more to lend support to their nations’ spokesmen with choruses of assent or murmurings of disapproval. But despite these resemblances, the 1758 conference also differed significantly from its predecessor.
In the first place, there were more Indians present, from many more tribes, and their larger numbers and greater diversity made the internal dynamics of this gathering more complex than those of its predecessor. In 1757 there had been only one principal Indian negotiator, Teedyuscung, who had brought with him a sizable group of Delawares; a considerable number of Senecas had also attended, but they had come as observers from the Iroquois Confederacy, not as independent negotiators. By contrast, more than five hundred Indians from thirteen nations attended the great congress of 1758. The western Delaware delegation was the most important one, but it was also one of the smallest, consisting only of Pisquetomen and his counselors. The eastern Delawares far outnumbered them, for Teedyuscung brought along approximately sixty supporters; but even that group was dwarfed by the numbers of Indians from the Iroquois League. Each of the Six Nations had sent official representatives, and the Onondaga Council had encouraged many of the small nations that lived under its protection—Nanticokes, Tuteloes, Chugnuts, Mini-sinks, Mahicans, and Wappingers—to send observers. The large number of Iroquois gave the first indication that this congress would differ from its predecessor, for the Grand Council had decided that the time had come to reassert its claim to preeminence over its tributary peoples. Onondaga had therefore sent no fewer than three powerful chiefs—the great Oneida orator Thomas King, the Seneca sachem Tagashata, and the Mohawk chief Nichas (Croghan’s father-in-law)—with the express intent of silencing Teedyuscung and quelling the tendency he represented toward independent action.
Teedyuscung saw this from the start and realized that the gains he had made at the 1757 conference—the promise of an inquiry into the validity of the Walking Purchase and the promise of a permanent Delaware reservation in the Wyoming Valley—could all be lost if the Iroquois successfully reasserted their claim to power over himself and his people. But he also knew that, having already concluded a peace between his own eastern band and the English, and having helped to bring the western Delawares to this peace table, he had become dispensable. With nothing left to offer as a mediator, he had lost his power to make demands. Teedyuscung’s impotence helps to explain his behavior at Easton, for before the sessions began and frequently thereafter, he was loudly, belligerently, disruptively drunk. Whatever emotional reasons he may have had to drink, he gained nothing by it and made such a nuisance of himself that the Iroquois spokesmen scarcely even needed to argue that he was unfit to speak for his people. Once again, by virtue of adroit diplomacy if not the reality of control, the Iroquois reasserted their claims to hegemony over the eastern Delawares.
This was possible because both Denny and his cosponsor, Governor Francis Bernard of New Jersey, were coming to see Teedyuscung more as a liability than an asset. If the promises previously made to inquire into the Walking Purchase could be permanently deflected, and if the Wyoming Valley could be left under the control of the pliant Iroquois rather than being deeded to Teedyuscung’s upstart Delaware band, they reasoned, so much the better. Such a solution suited the proprietor’s men, who wished neither to see the Walking Purchase invalidated nor to have two and a half million acres of superb land removed from their master’s control. Once it was clear that the Iroquois delegates at the conference would be speaking, as it were, in a chorus of agreement—and that the chorus was being harmonized by George Croghan and his father-in-law, Nichas—Teedyuscung was, for all practical purposes, isolated. Since the welfare of this man and his people was of no driving concern to the commissioners who represented the assembly, his sole remaining support came from Israel Pemberton. But Pemberton was present only as an unofficial observer and, saddest of all for Teedyuscung, he was not about to squander the chance for regaining peace by defend
ing the claims of a drunk and frequently abusive chief. Thus between the rum that robbed him of his wits and the dynamics of power and peace that robbed him of his influence, Teedyuscung found himself abandoned at Easton; and before the conference ended, he sobered up and made the best accommodation he could with his, and his people’s, plight.
It was on October 20 that Teedyuscung formally submitted to Iroquois control in a moving plea for a Wyoming Valley homeland. “Uncles, ” he said, addressing the Iroquois chiefs,
You may remember that you have placed us [Delawares] at Wyomink, and Shamokin, Places where Indians have lived before. Now I hear since, that you have sold that Land to our Brethren the English; let the matter now be cleared up, in the Presence of our Brethren the English.
I sit there as a Bird on a Bough; I look about, and do not know where to go; let me therefore come down upon the Ground, and make that my own by a good Deed, and I shall then have a Home for ever; for if you, my Uncles, or I die, our Brethren the English will say, they have bought it from you, and so wrong my Posterity out of it.16
The Oneida spokesman Thomas King replied loftily that, for the time being, Teedyuscung could “make use of those Lands in Conjunction with our People, and all the rest of our Relations.” As for the “good Deed” that Teedyuscung wanted, that was the concern of the sachems of the Iroquois at Onondaga; King would not presume to speak for them, but he would pass along the request. The proprietor’s men rejoiced. Now they were prepared to make two carefully rehearsed concessions, the net effect of which would be simultaneously to hamstring Teedyuscung, seal the peace with the western Delawares, and reestablish the Iroquois hegemony that was invaluable to the Penn family.17
When Teedyuscung said in his speech that he had heard the Iroquois had “sold that Land [at Wyoming] to our Brethren the English” he alluded to the cession at the Albany Congress in which Conrad Weiser, acting as agent for the Penn family, had secured from the Iroquois title to all the land in Pennsylvania that lay west of the Susquehanna River, between 41°31’ north latitude and the Maryland border. Weiser had intended to preempt the Wyoming Valley land purchase that his competitor, John Henry Lydius, was attempting to negotiate for the Susquehannah Company of Connecticut: hence Teedyuscung’s anxiety to obtain a “good Deed” to Wyoming. But Weiser’s enormous purchase had also included all Iroquois claims to the region around the Forks of the Ohio, and thus the Albany purchase also went to the heart of Pisquetomen’s concerns. Everyone at Easton realized that the Ohio Indians would never make peace with the English unless they were satisfied that the Ohio Country would remain theirs once the war was over. Thus as soon as Teedyuscung had acknowledged his submission to Iroquois authority, Conrad Weiser, acting as the agent of the Penn family, formally returned to the Iroquois all the land from the Albany purchase that lay west of the Allegheny mountains.18
This masterstroke allayed the immediate fears of the Ohio Indians for their land even as it reaffirmed the Iroquois’s status as lords of the valley, but it also raised a second issue that needed to be resolved. Pisquetomen had no less reason to worry about the long-run consequences of Iroquois control than that of the English, since he knew as well as Teedyuscung did that the Iroquois had never hesitated to sell land out from under their tributary nations. Thus Governor Denny stepped forward to make the second of the two planned concessions, by promising to “kindle up again” the “first Old Council Fire” at Philadelphia—that is, making a pledge on behalf of the proprietor to negotiate directly with representatives of the Delawares (and through them, the Ohio Indians generally) in the future, as William Penn had negotiated with their ancestors in 1682. Thus the form of Iroquois predominance over the Ohio Country was revived but the substance of Iroquois control over the Ohio Indians was not, for the Ohioans would be free to act for themselves in future dealings with the Penns. With these concessions secured, Pisquetomen agreed to peace on behalf of the western Delawares and the other Ohio bands for whom he spoke.19
The formal conclusion of the Treaty of Easton came on October 25 and 26, 1758, with feasting and the distribution of gifts. It had been the most important Indian congress in Pennsylvania’s history, and its significance was by no means limited to the restoration of peace with the Ohio tribes. By subtle and compliant diplomacy, the Iroquois had regained predominance over the eastern Delawares and had reestablished their claim to the Ohio Country, an asset of far greater importance to the Confederacy than the one they ostensibly surrendered—the ability to speak for the western Delawares. The Penn family’s representatives had staved off a considerable threat to the proprietary interest and had cemented anew the proprietor’s ties to the Six Nations. If the Penns’ enemies in the Pennsylvania Assembly and the Friendly Association were compelled to concede those gains to the proprietary interest, they could at least look forward to an end of bloodshed in the backcountry. Forbes could now strike at Fort Duquesne, supposing that the weather permitted and that word of the peace could be gotten to the western Indians before the enlistments of his provincial troops expired. And Pisquetomen had gained for his people the cessation of hostilities they could no longer afford to sustain, Onondaga’s recognition of their autonomy, and an English promise that the whites would not establish permanent settlements in the Ohio Country after the war.
Of all the parties present at Easton, only the two men most responsible for regaining the peace had sustained irreversible losses. Israel Pemberton and the Friendly Association would never again play so prominent a role in Indian diplomacy; Teedyuscung would forfeit the freedom of action he had striven to achieve. In the end, however, Teedyuscung’s people would lose much more. After a brief hearing in 1759, the Privy Council referred the promised investigation of the Walking Purchase to the Board of Trade, which in turn assigned it to Sir William Johnson. Teedyuscung’s request for a reservation in the Wyoming Valley was referred to the Iroquois Council, which of course took no action. The lack of satisfactory resolution in the issues of the Walking Purchase and the Wyoming question would prove, over the long run, to be among the most painful legacies of the Easton Congress—and not only for the eastern Delawares. On October 25, however, only Teedyuscung, weeping and promising to look to God for guidance as he bade Israel Pemberton farewell, sensed what the failures, as well as the achievements, of the Easton treaty might mean.20
Meanwhile, Christian Frederick Post, Pisquetomen, and their escorts were already hurrying back to the Ohio Country with news of the peace. Following the new road (which Post thought “one of the worst roads that ever was travelled”) they caught up with Forbes and the rest of his army at the Loyalhanna advanced post, Fort Ligonier, on November 7. Forbes welcomed them, feted them, toasted their healths, and hustled them on their way with wampum belts and letters to Shingas, Tamaqua, and the other Ohio chiefs. “Brethren,” Forbes had written,
I embrace this opportunity . . . of giving you Joy of the happy Conclusion of that great Council [at Easton], w[hi]ch is perfectly agreable to me; as it is for the mutual advantage of Y[ou]r Brothers, the Indians, as well as the English nation.
. . . As I am now advancing, at the Head of a large Army, against his Majesty’s Enemies, the French, on the Ohio, I must strongly recommend to you to send immediate Notice to any of your People, who may be at the French fort, to return forthwith to your Towns; where you may sit by y[ou]r Fires, w[i]th y[ou]r Wives and Children, quiet and undisturbed, and smoke your Pipes in safety. Let the French fight their own Battles, as they were the first Cause of the War, and [the] occasion of the long difference, w[hi]ch hath subsisted between you & your Brethren, the English; but I must entreat you to restrain y[ou]r young Men . . . , as it will be impossible for me to distinguish them from our Enemies; . . . lest . . . I should be the innocent Cause of your Brethren’s Death. This Advice take and keep in your own Breasts, and suffer it not to reach the Ears of the French.21
By the sixteenth Pisquetomen and Post were delivering Forbes’s message to the Indian settlements along Beaver Creek. The tas
k was far from easy, for they arrived at a “precarious” time, just as many warriors were returning from a raid against the Anglo-Americans near Loyalhanna. For three days Post and his companions found themselves confined in a house in Kuskuski from which they dared not venture. In part their peril proceeded from the French officers present, who urged the town’s young men “to knock every one of us messengers on the head.” But most of all their lives were at risk, Post thought, “because the people who came from the slaughter . . . were possessed with a murdering spirit; which led them as in a halter, in which they were catched, and with bloody vengeance were thirsty and drunk.” Anxiously the emissaries waited first for calm, then for a decision to emerge from the Indians’ private debates over whether to accept the peace belts and messages from Easton. Everything depended upon their interpretation of English intentions. As Post well understood, “the Indians concern themselves very much about the affair of land; and are continually jealous, and afraid the English will take their land.” 22
After what seemed an eternity, Tamaqua and Shingas formally agreed to accept the messages and peace belts on November 25. Several days of speeches in public council followed, but these only served to ratify the decision, already made, to accept the Easton settlement. At the conclusion of the council on November 29, Tamaqua told Post that he and Shingas would take the word personally to the other Ohio villages and asked the missionary to carry the news of their acceptance to the English. Then, as “we made ready for our journey,” another sachem approached with a final request.
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