The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  Captives’ fates and experiences varied, depending on circumstances, the character of their captors, the decisions of bereaved relatives back in the villages, and even chance happenings. Adult males, older people, and crying infants might be tomahawked and left for dead on the trail, and other captives might be ritually tortured once they reached the village. On the other hand, Indians often displayed considerable—and considered—kindness to those, mainly women and children, they targeted for adoption into their community and conversion to their way of life. Even the notorious running of the gauntlet sometimes turned out to be a symbolic event. Marie le Roy and Barbara Leininger, taken captive in the fall of 1755, arrived in December at the Delaware town of Kittanning, where they “received [a] welcome, according to the Indian custom.” Instead of being severely beaten, however, they each received three blows on the back, “administered with great mercy.” The captive girls “concluded that we were beaten merely in order to keep up an ancient usage, and not with the intention of injuring us.”74 Horror stories of the treatment white women could expect if they fell into Indian hands had circulated since Puritan times in New England, and they added to the terror now, although fueled by rumor more than reality. Indian men whose ritual preparations for war included sexual abstinence and whose captives might be adopted as clan relatives were unlikely to risk compromising their war medicine or infringing incest taboos by forcing themselves on female captives. The Indians “are said not to have deflowered any of our young women they captivated, while at war with us,” explained the trader James Adair; “they would think such actions defiling, and what must bring fatal consequences on their own heads.” According to one escaped captive “even that bloodthirsty villain, Capt. Jacob, did not attempt the virtue of his female captives.”75

  Even so, the raids took a heavy toll. By the end of 1756, Indian raiders had killed more than one thousand colonial settlers and soldiers. One-third of the men in Virginia’s army were lost during Washington’s first eighteen months back in command. Refugees flooded into Winchester, where Washington tried to stem the tide, and the Pennsylvania frontier recoiled to Carlisle. Colonists abandoned more than nine hundred farms and evacuated a swath of territory from fifty to two hundred miles wide, almost thirty thousand square miles.76 Even some Christian Delawares, who had adopted the Moravian faith, joined the exodus after a war party attacked one of their mission villages. Pennsylvania, a colony once defined by peace, was transformed into a frontier war zone.77 James Smith, who had been captured during Braddock’s expedition, said the Indians boasted they had driven the English out of the mountains; laid waste much of the best land in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania; and hoped to push the Virginians back to the sea. “The white people appeared to them like fools,” they said; “they could neither guard against surprise, run or fight.”78

  After Braddock’s defeat, the main focus of the war, and of British regular forces, shifted to the North. Virginia was left to defend its own frontiers. Neither Virginia nor Pennsylvania was equipped to wage this kind of warfare. Unlike New England, where the colonists had experienced recurrent conflicts with the French and Indians, Virginia and Pennsylvania had enjoyed long years of peace. Neither had developed a tradition of militia defense. The militia had been Virginia’s principal defense in the seventeenth century, but by the middle of the eighteenth century it had become more of a social institution. Washington in January 1757 described Virginia as “a Country young in War,” which “Untill the breaking out of these Disturbances has Lived in the most profound, and Tranquil Peace; never studying War or Warfare. It is not therefore to be imagined She can fall into proper Measures at once.”79 In later years he recalled he could do no more than distribute troops along the frontiers in stockade forts, “more with a view to quiet the fears of the Inhabitants than from any expectation of giving security on so extensive a line to the settlements.”80

  In addition to death and misery, the raids created tensions and opened deep rifts within society. Most Virginians had little interest in Ohio lands and Ohio Company schemes, and they resented being called upon to supply men and money for a rich man’s fight. Dinwiddie complained loudly about the spineless and parsimonious character of the populace, who neither rallied to defend the colony themselves nor voted sufficient money to keep the militia in good shape. “They seem to be seiz’d with a Panick at the approach of a few Fr. And Ind’s,” he told Lord Fairfax.81 What was more, Dinwiddie had to keep part of his forces close to home to guard against unrest among African slaves, who had been “very audacious” since Braddock’s defeat.82 Backcountry folk who bore the burden of the raids resented eastern elites who were supposed to organize defense; backcountry elites clashed with colonial authorities in Williamsburg and London. Gentlemen officers fumed about rank-and-file militiamen who were willing to defend their own homes against immediate threats but refused to serve for prolonged periods away from their fields and families. Farmers who had abandoned lands resented other farmers who coveted those lands. Divisions widened between Germans and Scotch-Irish on the frontier, and between pacifist Quakers and Presbyterians in Pennsylvania.83 Faced with an unpopular war and wary of the threat of slave revolt, Virginia’s political leaders tried conscription. In effect, this meant that the “better sort,” who ran the colony, and the “middling sort,” who usually served in the militia, left frontier defense to the “lesser sort,” who were conscripted to fill the ranks of the Virginia Regiment. The poor resisted conscription and evaded draft laws, and those in the ranks gave halfhearted service and often deserted, compelling Virginia to abandon conscription and introduce an enlistment bounty in 1758.84

  It is often said that the disaster on the Monongahela convinced Americans in general, and Washington in particular, to break with conventional British tactics and employ their own, American, way of war. Looking back on the battle several years after the Revolution, Washington wrote: “The folly & consequence of opposing compact bodies to the spare manner of Indian fighting, in woods, which had in a manner been predicted, was now so clearly verified that from hence forward another mode obtained in all future operations.”85 The French Troupes de la Marine serving in Indian country commonly modified their uniforms with Indian moccasins, leggings, and loincloths, and English colonial forces, too, had long included ranger units that incorporated Indians and Indian ways of fighting. Nevertheless, Braddock’s defeat drove home the limitations of conventional modes of warfare in frontier fighting. When Major General James Abercromby arrived in America in the spring of 1756, Dinwiddie warned him that he was coming to a country covered with woods and inaccessible mountains where there was no place for conventional European ways of war. “The Indian Method is bush fighting and watching every Opp’ty to destroy their Enemys.” However distasteful Abercromby might find Indian allies, they were “absolutely necessary to attack the Enemy’s Indians in their way of fighting and scowering the Woods before an Army.”86 British commanders modified their tactics to help them win the war in America. Washington trained his men in Indian ways of warfare, and Dinwiddie ordered other officers to do the same.87 However, it took time to retrain and reequip troops, and even as Washington came to recognize the effectiveness of the Indians’ tactics, he despaired of being able to match them.88

  Benjamin Franklin said Braddock’s defeat and Dunbar’s subsequent inaction showed Americans for the first time that the British regulars’ reputation for military prowess was exaggerated.89 In some accounts, Washington learned from the experience how to beat the British in the Revolution by having his men fight Indian fashion, shooting down ranks of redcoats from behind trees. Washington did apply elements of irregular warfare, but he remained committed to regular war waged by a regular army and did not abandon British methods. He trained his troops to fight from cover when necessary but continued to rely on regular soldiers and tried to build a conventional army. He did his best to emulate British standards of discipline: his complaints about the redcoats at the Monongahela focused on the break
down of their discipline in the face of Indian assault, and he constantly complained about the lack of discipline in his own militia. For British and Americans alike, war in America involved “irregular,” guerrilla warfare punctuated by “conventional” campaigns and battles. Rather than cause Washington to fight like an Indian, Braddock’s defeat convinced him that effective campaign management, efficient transportation and supply systems, rigorous training, and strict discipline were fundamental to military success.90

  In that area, Washington met recurrent frustrations. Men deserted; officers quarreled; supplies were embezzled. He complained about local militia and about backcountry settlers who subverted his authority, denied him appropriate deference, withheld provisions, undermined the discipline of his troops by peddling liquor, and fled at the first rumor of Indians.91 The Virginia backcountry was a very different world from that of the Chesapeake tobacco planter. The Indian raids brought him face-to-face with the sufferings of people who frustrated and angered him, but defending those people, the historian Warren Hofstra suggests, also brought him “face to face with the essence of republican politics”—the need to promote the welfare and win the support of citizens he neither understood nor liked. “Mastering his revulsion for the people for the sake of the success he coveted would ultimately compel him to see himself as the virtuous leader who could place the public welfare before self-interest.”92

  That meant he must defend the public against its own fears and control the rumors that flew through the backcountry settlements, fabricating impending attacks, magnifying the size of war parties, and amplifying the psychological impact of actual raids. “The Inhabitants of Pennsylvania are more scared than hurt,” wrote Adam Stephen. Washington sent out “advertisements,” urging people not to be alarmed by “every false Report they may hear” and to stay at their homes and fields, which would soon be well guarded. But Washington was in Winchester, and backcountry families who lay between him and Shingas’s warriors were not so easily convinced.93 Washington expended energy raising and organizing troops, touring the several stations, and firing off orders that amounted to micromanaging. He imposed brutal discipline, sentencing men to floggings and hanging deserters. He struggled to bring the Virginia Regiment up to even half strength. Building the military forces necessary to withstand the Indian assaults was a slow and painful process. He trained his men in “the Indian Method of fighting,” hoping they would be ready for action in the spring,94 but Washington and his new regiment were no match for Shingas the Terrible.

  Chapter 6

  Frontier Defense and a Cherokee Alliance

  The seven years’ war pitted Britain and France in a global conflict and dramatic battles on land and sea that ended in 1763 with France defeated on every front. For George Washington, however, it was a frontier war fought against Delawares and Shawnees and in collaboration with Cherokees and Catawbas. Between 1755 and 1758, a total of eight hundred Cherokees and more than two hundred Catawbas, Tuscaroras, Nottaways, and others came to Virginia’s aid as allies. While the Virginians remained essentially on the defensive in their frontier forts, their Indian allies carried the war into Shawnee and Delaware country.1 Washington recognized the vital importance of Indian allies, but, like most British and colonial officers, he experienced and expressed recurrent frustrations in dealing with them. Cherokees and Catawbas experienced their own frustrations in dealing with Washington and the British. The alliance was always precarious and often strained.

  After his experiences with Braddock, and acutely aware of the inadequacies of his own forces, Washington knew he needed Indian allies to help defend Virginia’s frontier. In September 1755 he invited Andrew Montour to join the regiment, promising that any Indians he brought with him would receive better treatment than they had in the past, and he instructed Adam Stephen to make sure Indians who came to Fort Cumberland were well treated. Three weeks later, hearing that Montour was heading for Venango with three hundred Indians, he wrote asking him to tell his Indian brothers that since Washington now held the chief command he was “invested with power to treat them as Brethren & Allies, which I am sorry to say they have not been of late.” He also asked Montour to let Scarouady and other chiefs know that he was on the march against the French and their Indian allies and “how happy it would make Conotocaurious to have an Opportunity of taking them by the Hand at Fort Cumberland, & how glad he would be to treat them as Brothers of our great King beyond the Waters.” He sent Christopher Gist to assist Montour in drumming up Indian support—“Never were Indians more wanted than at this time,” he wrote. Unfortunately, Montour and Scarouady and the three hundred Indians did not make it to Fort Cumberland.2

  Unable to recruit Indian allies in the Ohio country, Virginia looked to the South. The Cherokees had ostensibly made a treaty of alliance with Britain a quarter century before when Sir Alexander Cuming, posing as the Crown’s emissary, orchestrated a visit to London by a delegation of Cherokee chiefs. One of them was a young man named Ouconecaw, who would later feature in the events of Washington’s life as Attakullakulla or Little Carpenter. The 1730 Treaty of Westminster created a chain of friendship between the Cherokees and the king and included a provision that the Cherokees would fight the king’s enemies.3 Getting them to do so, however, required more than simply calling out the warriors. Rather than a commitment to fight someone else’s wars, most Cherokees regarded the alliance as a partnership in which the British would uphold their end of the chain by providing trade and protection to Cherokee communities. As the trader James Adair noted, Cherokees regarded themselves as “freemen and equals,” not as British subjects.4

  Cherokees saw their alliance as with the king rather than his colonies, but relations with the British involved dealing with South Carolina and Virginia rather than directly with the king. The two colonies often diverged in their Indian policies, and the issue was complicated by a larger emerging debate about whether and when the empire or its colonies should conduct Indian affairs. When Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie redoubled his efforts to recruit southern Indian allies for Virginia, he did so as much in competition as in collaboration with Governor Glen of South Carolina, who jealously guarded his colony’s role in dealing with the Cherokees, promised to build Fort Prince George at Keowee in Lower Cherokee country, and promised improved trade terms to Cherokee people.5

  For their part, the Cherokees would not, could not, respond as one to British appeals for help. Connected by a common language (although with several dialects), shared culture, and a kinship system of seven matrilineal clans, Cherokees lived in more than fifty towns scattered across the southern Appalachian Mountains and clustered in several separate regions, known as Overhill, Valley, Middle, and Lower. The Overhill Cherokees inhabited the Little Tennessee and Tellico Rivers in eastern Tennessee; the Valley towns occupied the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers in northern Georgia and southwestern South Carolina; the Middle towns were in western North Carolina, and the Lower Cherokees in South Carolina. Towns were politically independent, and regional clusters followed their own agendas rather than that of a Cherokee Nation as imagined by the British. Anglo-French conflict exacerbated regional divisions: Lower Cherokees tied to South Carolina by trade generally supported the British; Overhill Cherokees, especially the town of Tellico, more often leaned toward the French. Indian-Indian conflict complicated Cherokee decisions: Overhill Cherokees had connections with the Shawnees; Lower Cherokees who went north to help defend Virginia would have fewer or no qualms fighting against Shawnee enemies, but they would have concerns that their British allies were allied to their Iroquois enemies. Cherokees also worried that sending warriors away to fight would leave their homes vulnerable to assault from the north by Indian raiders or from the south by the Creeks, with whom they had recently ended forty years of intermittent conflict.6 Many Catawbas and Cherokees saw a campaign with the British as an opportunity to resume age-old fighting against Mingoes and Shawnees rather than to serve the empire.

  Dinwiddi
e held a council with the Cherokees at the governor’s house in Williamsburg in September 1755 and sent William Byrd III and Peter Randolph to make a treaty with the Cherokees and Catawbas in February and March and solicit their assistance come spring.7 The Cherokees sent 130 warriors. When Dinwiddie heard they proposed attacking the Shawnee town on the Scioto River, he ordered Washington in December 1755 to send rangers and other troops to join them. Washington delayed until his regiment was activated in January and remained skeptical, but Dinwiddie continued to pressure him. So Washington ordered Major Andrew Lewis and some 350 men, including a hundred Cherokees led by Ostenaco, to attack the Shawnee towns on the Ohio and Scioto River. Ostenaco, also known as Judd’s Friend, was often called by his title Outacite (Mankiller), signifying head warrior (see plate 2). Lewis set out along Sandy Creek, a tributary of the Ohio in what is now West Virginia, in February 1756. The campaign was a debacle. After six weeks of suffering and starvation, their progress halted by flooded rivers, Lewis abandoned the attempt. Washington was not surprised, and reminded Dinwiddie he had often expressed his “uneasy apprehensions on that head.” Lewis and his men came home “having done nothing essential,” Dinwiddie told Washington. “I believe they did not know the Way to the Shawnesse Towns.” Lewis would get another crack at the Shawnee towns on the Kanawha River—but not until eighteen years later.8