The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  In the past, individuals had bought land from Indian people in all kinds of circumstances. Now only the Crown and its official representatives could purchase Indian land; only tribes could sell land, and they must do it in open treaty council. The Crown claimed a right of preemption to those lands—an exclusive right to purchase if and when the Indians chose to sell. In other words, the government effectively said that Indians could sell their lands only to the government. East of the Appalachians, governors and commanders in chief were authorized to purchase Indian lands on the Crown’s behalf, but west of the mountains the right belonged to the Crown alone. Colonial governors and individual colonists had no right to claim title to Indian lands there. In short, London, not the colonies, controlled western expansion.53

  By restricting and regulating access to Indian country, the proclamation intended to avoid further frontier wars and to keep colonists within the British orbit as the empire grew. Ministers latched on to the Appalachians as a clear demarcation line that could be adjusted when time and circumstances allowed; the goal was to control westward expansion, not to stop it in its tracks. The proclamation boundary never existed except as a line drawn on a map; it was an abstract idea that had to be negotiated and implemented in subsequent meetings and treaties with the Indians.54 With France removed from the scene, the proclamation outlined the foundations for building a new relationship between Britain and the Indian nations. John Stuart and the governors of the southern colonies met with nearly a thousand Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, Chickasaws, and Choctaws at Augusta, Georgia, in November, and in the winter Sir William Johnson dispatched runners carrying copies of the document and strings of wampum across Indian country, summoning the tribes to a council. Two thousand Indians, representing twenty-four nations from Nova Scotia to the Mississippi and as far north as Hudson Bay, assembled at Niagara in the summer of 1764. Johnson read the provisions of the proclamation, and the Indians pledged themselves to peace. Gifts and wampum belts were exchanged to seal the agreement and usher in a new era of alliance between equals based on mutual respect and interdependence.55

  Getting American colonists to accept the proclamation was another matter. Many frontier settlers simply ignored it. Those who had crossed the Appalachians were now squatting illegally on Indian land and might be removed by British troops. Squatters were used to that, however, and the proclamation had limited effect on them, especially as there were no courts beyond the line and the British army lacked the resources to patrol and maintain the line. Scotch-Irish pioneers who had resented English laws at home were unlikely to obey them now they were three thousand miles away. In effect, as the historian Patrick Griffin points out, the proclamation created an area beyond the line that was beyond the law, a no-man’s-land “of possibilities for the desperate.”56 Lieutenant Governor Fauquier issued proclamations and tried to enforce the boundary, but he was no more able to keep frontier Virginians off Indian lands than to stop them murdering Indian people.57 Four years after the proclamation, Indians complained that settlers were making more encroachments on their country than they had before. And colonists not only encroached on Indian lands; they also encroached on the deer and other game Indians claimed as their own, following their prey across boundary lines and claiming that game-rich country like Kentucky constituted common hunting territory, not an Indian reserve.58

  Land speculators were furious. Unlike squatters, they could not ignore the proclamation. They had pinned their hopes on being able to turn speculations into fortunes when the war was won, the French were expelled, and Indian lands were opened to settlement. Instead, the empire seemed to be favoring the Indians at the expense of men like Washington who had fought in its service. The members of the Ohio Company were shocked to find that the very backcountry lands the Indians had laid waste were now “reserved for these cruel butchers,” while His Majesty’s subjects were ordered off them. George Mason declared the proclamation “an express destruction of our grant.”59 They could not rent or sell the land they owned or claimed unless they had clear title to it, and now title to the land derived from the Crown, not from the Indians. They could not, now, buy and sell western lands legally. The proclamation not only threatened the Virginia gentry’s opportunity to make money speculating in western land; it also threatened their ability to make money selling or renting that land to the farming classes. Settlers, even if they did so illegally, could now acquire Indian land without paying any money to speculators and brokers, who, without legal title to the land, could neither extract payment from them nor evict them. Britain’s interference with what they regarded as their right to make enormous profits in the West generated sentiments of rebellious resentment among Virginia gentry.60

  British policy and the Indian boundary threatened to stifle attempts by Washington and other planters at achieving greater economic independence and to frustrate their vision for the expansion and development of Virginia. Already feeling the effects of imperial restrictions on Virginia’s economy, they would not watch their investments in Indian country slip away.61 Colonial elites who saw themselves transforming wilderness into civil society on the edge of the empire had developed a “settler political theory” that included the right to acquire property by dispossessing and supplanting Native peoples without restriction or interference from the imperial center; for many, the restrictive new policies threatened their rights as settlers and constituted the first step in their alienation from the empire. The fruits of the victory over France for which they had fought and bled were being denied them; in fact, the old French and Indian barrier seemed to have been replaced by a British-Indian barrier. Washington, Jefferson, Arthur Lee, Patrick Henry, and others denounced British interference as tyranny and demanded freedom. It included the freedom to acquire and sell Indian land at will.62

  the proclamation slammed the door shut on Washington’s land speculations, or almost. Rather than continue struggling to grow quality tobacco on Mount Vernon’s light soil, he began to replace tobacco, which had to be exported, with wheat, which could be sold locally, and in 1767 he turned all of his fields over to wheat.63 But he did not give up on land speculations—nor did anyone else. He needed other sources of revenue, and he knew where to look.

  As the historian Joseph Ellis puts it, Washington’s various schemes to acquire land in the Ohio Valley “crisscrossed in dizzying patterns of speculation” that were further complicated by border disputes between Virginia and Pennsylvania, overlapping tribal claims, shifting imperial policies, and squatters who claimed land by virtue of occupying it. But, in Ellis’s apt summation, “at bottom lurked a basic conflict about the future of the Ohio Country: Washington believed it was open to settlement; the British government believed it was closed; and the Indians believed it was theirs.”64 Washington was not about to abandon his views, his claims, or his schemes. He did not risk being punished by the government if he continued to buy land west of the mountains; the problem was that such purchases were unenforceable in court, and the titles derived from them could be superseded by later title. He might lose his purchase price if the government later granted the land to someone else. It was a risk he was prepared to take. He looked for ways around the new law.65

  Frustrated by British policy on the ground in America, speculators turned their efforts to changing British policy at the highest levels in London, even lobbying Parliament to approve new colonies west of the Appalachians. Since now only the government could grant title to Indian land, instead of trying to buy land themselves, speculators lobbied the government to buy it for them; once it was purchased, the government could grant it to the speculators, who would in turn divide it up and sell it to settlers. These gentry had connections in high places. The Ohio Company had shareholders in Britain as well as America; some members of the government were also stakeholders in the Ohio Company or other land syndicates. After 1763 it was common practice to offer shares in land companies to people in positions of power who could decide, or influence those who decided, wh
ether and which land could be purchased. Land speculators and their agents and associates were soon lobbying to have the boundary abandoned or at least moved.66 George Croghan, after an abortive trip to London to promote his and his associates’ claims, announced in 1766: “One half of England is Now Land Mad & Every body there has thire Eys fixt on this Cuntry.”67 Not surprisingly, there were plans to renegotiate the boundary almost as soon as the Royal Proclamation announced it. Those negotiations now had to be carried out by the Crown’s official representatives—John Stuart, British superintendent for Indian affairs south of the Ohio, and Sir William Johnson in the North—but it was only a matter of time before the West was reopened.

  Washington believed so. Once that happened, he and other men of ambition and mettle could get back to building fortunes and futures on Indian lands. As he advised his neighbor Captain John Posey in June 1767, there was “an opening prospect in the back Country for Adventurers … where an enterprising Man with very little m[o]ney may lay the foundation for a Noble Estate in the New Settlem’ts upon Monongahela for himself and posterity.” This was, after all, “how the greatest Estates we have in this Colony were made … by taking up and purchasing at very low rates the rich back Lands which were thought nothing of in those days, but are now the most valuable Lands we possess.” Posey had served with Washington during the French and Indian War but was now a deadbeat neighbor perpetually in debt—and in debt to Washington, who had a mortgage on his land. He chose not to follow Washington’s advice, preferring instead to follow his example and marry a widow with property, even though she was, according to local gossip, “as thick as she is high, and gets drunk at least three or four times a week.”68

  Washington learned of Johnson’s plans for a new Indian boundary in Pennsylvania as early as 1767, and he took steps to purchase lands in the area that would fall to Pennsylvania when the line was redrawn. He turned to William Crawford, whom he had known since their school days. Crawford was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and at an early age moved with his family across the Blue Ridge Mountains to Frederick County. Commissioned as an ensign in 1755, he served with Christopher Gist’s company of scouts and marched with Washington on Braddock’s campaign; as a lieutenant in the Virginia Regiment he marched again with Washington on Forbes’s campaign, and he served in Pontiac’s War.69 During his campaigns he got to know the rich country of the Monongahela Valley, and in 1765 he secured land grants and moved with his wife and three children to the Youghiogheny River, settling at a place called Stewart’s Crossing or Crossings in western Pennsylvania. As a man on the spot and an old friend in whom Washington felt he could confide, Crawford was well positioned to act as his agent in the region.70

  In September 1767 Washington wrote to Crawford proposing a partnership. The letter stands as a bald statement of Washington’s tactics for acquiring Indian land ahead of the curve. He asked Crawford to “look me out a Tract of about 1500, 2000, or more Acres” close to his own settlement. Washington was not interested in just any land. “No; a Tract to please me must be rich (of which no Person can be a better judge than yourself),” and, if possible, level and close to river navigation. He wanted Crawford to find the land soon and find a way of “securing it immediately from the attempts of others, as nothing is more certain than that the Lands cannot remain long ungranted.” He could circumvent Pennsylvania’s practice of making grants in tracts of no more than 300 acres each by making several contiguous entries. He also wanted to collaborate with Crawford to secure some of the most valuable lands in the territory placed off-limits by the Royal Proclamation, and to start the ball rolling now, “for I can never look upon that Proclamation in any other light (but this I say between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the Minds of the Indians.” The prohibition was bound to be removed in a few years, in which case anyone “who neglects the present opportunity of hunting ou[t] good Lands & in some measure Marking & distinguishing them for their own (in order to keep others from settling them) will never regain it.” So if Crawford would do the legwork of seeking out the lands, Washington would take care of the paper work and secure title to them as soon as it was possible, and he would assume all the costs of surveying and patenting. Once the business was concluded, Crawford would get “such a reasonable proportion of the whole as we may fix upon at our first meeting.” Washington also intended “to let some few of my friends be concerned in the Scheme & who must also partake of the advantages” to help move the project along. “By this time,” he added redundantly, “it may be easy for you discover, that my Plan is to secure a good deal of Land.” To avoid censure for his opinion on the proclamation and to avoid giving alarm—or giving the same idea to others—Washington urged Crawford to “keep this whole matter a secret.” Do everything “by a silent management” and “under the guise of hunting game,” he advised. Once Crawford identified the lands, Washington would have them “immediately surveyed, to keep others off, and leave the rest to time and my own assiduity to accomplish.”71

  Crawford did as he was asked. In fact, he had already been thinking of searching out land beyond the proclamation line under pretense of hunting. He and Washington were on the same wavelength. Washington could depend on him to lose no time and to keep the whole thing “a profound secret,” he said. Trading with the Indians was a good way to locate the best land, and for that he would need licenses, which he asked Washington to obtain for him.72 Crawford identified some suitable tracts of land near Fort Pitt. The next year Washington secured title to a tract on the Youghiogheny River about thirty-five miles southeast of Fort Pitt, his first land west of the Alleghenies. It was the beginning of a lucrative partnership that would last fifteen years.73 Confident the boundary line would be extended, Washington had Crawford survey a tract of land for him in southwestern Pennsylvania as if acting for himself, “taking all the good lands and leaving out the sorry.”74

  Negotiating a new boundary required preparatory diplomacy and preliminary talks. Since a new boundary would engulf the area through which the Warriors’ Path ran, the Iroquois and Cherokees had first to settle their differences. Attakullakulla and several other Cherokee chiefs sailed for New York in November 1767 (where Attakullakulla, who had gone to the theater in London thirty-seven years before, attended a performance of Richard III) and then traveled on to Johnson Hall, where Sir William orchestrated a peace in March.75 Many Iroquois worried more about land-hungry Virginians than they did about Cherokees. “We and our dependants have been for some time like Giddy People not knowing what to do, wherever we turned about we saw our Blood,” the Oneida chief Conoghquieson told Johnson. When they went hunting they found the country covered with fences, the trees cut down, and the animals driven away. They wanted a new boundary, too, Conoghquieson said, but it would only work if the governor of Virginia could “keep his people in better order … otherwise the Path will Close up and not be safe to travel.”76

  In April and May 1768, Croghan met at Fort Pitt with 1,100 Indians, including Guyasuta and Tamaqua, to settle differences. A Shawnee chief named Nimwha told the British the Indians were “uneasy to see that you think yourselves Masters of this Country, because you have taken it from the French, who you know had no Right to it, as it is the Property of us Indians.” Guyasuta played a more conciliatory role; the Six Nations and their allies had agreed to allow the British to build forts and trading posts, and “to Travel the Road of Peace,” he said. The commissioners thanked him “for his friendly Behavior on this occasion.”77

  While Washington was participating in the gala events welcoming the new governor, Baron Botetourt, to Williamsburg in October 1768, two treaties were being negotiated that hugely affected Washington’s prospects of making a fortune in the West. John Stuart followed his instructions and negotiated what became known as the Treaty of Hard Labor with the Cherokees. It moved the boundary west to the Kanawha River but left Kentucky and southwestern Virginia to the Cherokees, contrary to the interests of Washington and other Virginia la
nd speculators.78 Meanwhile, at Fort Stanwix in New York, Johnson met with some two thousand Iroquois over a period of several weeks to negotiate a new boundary line in the North. Pennsylvania, Virginia, traders seeking compensation in land for losses they had suffered in the war, and various other interested parties sent representatives. Croghan and Montour were present. The home government had authorized Johnson to secure an extension of the boundary down the Ohio River as far as the Kanawha River, where it would meet up with the new boundary Stuart had negotiated with the Cherokees. Instead, in exchange for £10,000 in merchandise, Johnson obtained a cession of territory that stretched another four hundred miles down the Ohio to the mouth of the Cherokee or Tennessee River. The home government rapped Johnson’s knuckles for exceeding his instructions, but the treaty suited just about everyone who was present. Britain got a new Indian boundary line; Johnson and Croghan got chunks of land for themselves; Pennsylvania and its traders secured confirmation of their claims. For their part, the Iroquois obtained British confirmation of their claims to lands in the Ohio Valley, effectively diverted the oncoming rush of settlement away from Iroquois country and down the Ohio, and received a huge haul of goods in the process.79