The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  Washington and most historians have explained the Sullivan-Clinton campaign as a war measure, to avenge and terminate Iroquois attacks on the frontier. But it was also a measure to prepare for peace. Washington understood that when terms were drawn up ending the war, it would be a hollow victory if his new nation got only a strip of territory along the Atlantic and no lands to the west into which it could expand. The officers and men who destroyed so many crops and orchards in Iroquois country came home with reports of rich lands for the taking in upstate New York and Pennsylvania. Being able to claim the fertile lands of Iroquoia on the basis of conquest during the war would be essential to American success at the peace talks. “Not many leaders of 1779 saw the great prize, but Washington, the seer, did,” wrote the historian A. C. Flick in 1929.120 Of course, the seer’s vision also embraced the Ohio country.

  Chapter 12

  Killing Crawford

  The revolution was a messy affair in the West. In western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and the Ohio Valley, the collapse of the imperial order left a power vacuum and a kaleidoscope of contests. Frontier populations not only rebelled against the king, they also fought to build new societies on their own terms amid the upheaval and violence of a revolution that was also, increasingly, a race war. Indian communities fought to fend off embryonic republics that demanded their land and, increasingly, their destruction. British and American agents, operating out of Detroit and Fort Pitt, competed for the allegiance of the tribes in the Ohio country. Local struggles for power and authority—between Virginia and Pennsylvania, between the Continental Congress and frontier settlers, between poor western settlers and wealthy eastern land speculators, between Indians and settlers, between the Delawares and the Six Nations—often took precedence over the bigger struggle between colonists and Crown.1 The Revolution here sometimes turned neighbors into killers, when frontier militia attacking Indian villages and Indian warriors raiding frontier settlements knew the people they were fighting.2 It was also a continuation of the war for the lands of the Ohio country that Washington had helped instigate in 1754.3 It was an opportunity to get lands Washington had coveted for a quarter of a century. Congress and the individual states needed land there to pay the warrants they issued in lieu of pay during the war. Western settlers found in the war opportunities to rid contested lands of Indian inhabitants.

  Washington had ambivalent attitudes toward frontier settlers. These were the same people who squatted on his lands, disputed his title, and defied his authority. Like many other members of the eastern elite, he often blamed frontier whites as much as Indians for bloodshed in the region. At the same time, like other land speculators, he relied on settler families to brave the dangers of frontier warfare and to help secure lands he intended to develop.4 As commander, he outsourced much of the war in the West to frontier whites, who furnished militia for expeditions against Indian villages and collected bounties on Indian scalps.

  The war in the West continued long after, indeed heated up after, Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, in part because Washington and his fellow Americans wanted to lay claim to as much of the Ohio country as they could before the peace terms ending the Revolution were decided. The presence of settlers or militia on the ground added weight and legitimacy to the claim. Washington and William Crawford had worked long and hard to get their hands on the best Ohio lands before the Revolution, but their lands stood idle and unsold while the war continued. Winning the Revolution in the West would remove the last obstacle. But victory in the West proved elusive, and the cost was high—although much higher for Crawford than for Washington.

  the revolution in the west began as a contest of words and wampum belts, as Indian leaders negotiated with British and American agents and with other Indians. In one of its last acts, the Virginia House of Burgesses in June 1775 elected Washington, Thomas Walker and his son John, Adam Stephen, Andrew Lewis, and Captain James Wood, “or any three or more of them,” as commissioners to meet with the chiefs of the Ohio Indians as soon as possible “at such place as they shall find most proper.”5 Their job was to confirm the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, where the Shawnees had ceded their lands south of the Ohio River to Dunmore, and allay the tribes’ concerns. Washington had other business to attend to, of course, and Thomas Walker became the chairman of the commission. (Walker was subsequently appointed commissioner for the middle of the three Indian departments that Congress created; his son John was appointed a commissioner for the Southern Department.)

  The “most proper” place for dealing with the Ohio tribes was Fort Pitt (which John Connolly and the Virginia militia had occupied and renamed Fort Dunmore after the British left), the place Washington had helped capture seventeen years earlier. Congress established a military department at Pittsburgh but diverted few troops or resources from the main theater of war in the East, leaving the burden for their own defense on the shoulders of the inhabitants.6 Nevertheless, Pittsburgh’s strategic location rendered it important to the broader revolutionary struggle and a center for military and diplomatic campaigns into Indian country.

  Delegates from the Ohio Iroquois, Delawares, and Shawnees met at Fort Pitt in June and July 1775 to arrange for a fuller meeting in the fall with the commissioners from Congress and Virginia and restore their “antient friendship.”7 In a council that dragged on for five weeks in September and October, the commissioners asked the Indians to stay home, take care of their women and children, and go about their usual occupations.8 Most Indians would have been happy to do just that, and avoid getting embroiled in a conflict they regarded as a British civil war that would likely catch them in its crossfire. Guyasuta attended the council, as did two of Washington’s other acquaintances from the Ohio country, Silver Heels and White Mingo. Guyasuta had been a key player in Pontiac’s War, but he worked tirelessly to keep his people out of this one. He had inherited Tanaghrisson’s role as half king, “appointed by the Six Nations to take care of this Country, that is of the Indians on the West side of the River Ohio,” and was a strong voice for peace in the council talks. He assured the Virginians that the Six Nations held fast to the chain of friendship and presented wampum belts to the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, and Ottawas to bind them in friendship as well. He even urged Virginia and Pennsylvania to settle their differences.9

  Virginian actions undermined Virginian overtures and assurances. Shawnee chiefs said Virginians were building forts and settling in Kentucky, hunting north of the Ohio, and driving away the game. They repeated a familiar refrain; the Indians had been pushed steadily west as American population increased, and now they feared the Virginians were determined to go to war with them and take what was left of their country.10 The Virginian case was not helped when two men in hunting shirts took a shot at White Mingo not far from the treaty grounds.11

  During the talks, Guyasuta declared that “the Six Nations are the head of all the other Tribes here present.”12 However, the Delaware war captain Quequedegatha or Koquethagechton, commonly known as White Eyes, demonstrated that the thirteen states were not the only ones asserting independence. Addressing his “Brethren the White People and Uncles the Six Nations,” and with Guyasuta present, White Eyes announced the Delawares now lived on land given to them in Wyandot country and told the Six Nations to “not permit any of your foolish People to sit down upon it.” According to some accounts, he metaphorically cast off the petticoat the Iroquois had formerly placed on the Delawares, exchanged the corn hoe and pounder for guns, and with a dramatic sweep of his arm claimed all the land beyond the Allegheny River!13 Like the colonists who had thrown off their alliance with the Crown, the Delawares would need allies elsewhere. After the conference White Eyes traveled to Philadelphia, where he spent the next six months negotiating with Congress. He asked for a minister, a schoolteacher, and assistance in adopting agriculture. Congress promised to send an agent to instruct the Delawares in American-style farming.14

  White Eyes advocated gradual acculturation as the path to the futur
e, and peace with the Americans as the best strategy for Delaware security.15 Nonetheless he did not speak for all Delawares. Religion and revolution divided Delawares as well as colonists. Some embraced the Moravian faith and followed a Christian life in the mission villages. White Eyes, war captain of the Turtle clan, and Gelemend or John Killbuck, chief of the Turtle clan, supported the work of Moravian missionaries and favored a neutral and then pro-American stance, as did many of the Turkey clan. Hopocan or Captain Pipe of the Wolf clan and his followers distanced themselves from the missions and later moved to Sandusky, settling closer to the Wyandots and the British at Detroit. The Delaware chief Pachgantschihilas or Buckongahelas was openly hostile to the missionaries and their teachings and wanted them expelled from Indian country.16

  George Morgan, the American Indian agent at Fort Pitt, recognized that, as “grandfathers” of the Algonquian family of Indian nations, the Delawares occupied a key position in intertribal diplomacy. He worked with White Eyes, dispatching runners with speeches and wampum belts to bring multiple nations to Fort Pitt for a council in the spring of 1776.17 The Indians, he found, were “much confused & unsettled in their Resolutions.”18

  Guyasuta, however, remained constant: he said he had “but one heart” and would continue to work for peace.19 At a meeting with the Americans and the western tribes at Fort Pitt in July, he presented a wampum belt sent by the Six Nations to the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, and other western Indians, informing them that the Iroquois were determined to take no part in the war and urging them to do the same. The British at Niagara had tried to enlist Seneca support, but “we must be fools indeed to imagine that they regard us or our Interest who want to bring us into an unnecessary War,” Guyasuta said. Then, turning to the Virginians and Pennsylvanians present, he warned: “We will not suffer either the English or Americans to march an army through our country.”20 At the end of the month, Congress instructed the commissioners of Indian affairs to thank Guyasuta for his conduct at Niagara and invite him to visit the great council fire at Philadelphia.21 In the fall, more than six hundred Indians showed up at Fort Pitt and made a treaty that confirmed the Ohio River as the boundary of their lands. Guyasuta again assured the Americans that the Indians would mind their own business and not join either side, no matter how much pressure the British at Niagara and Detroit applied, “for if any of our young Warriors should be cut off it would occasion us great Grief.” He asked the Americans to restrict their campaigns against the British to the coast, and not come into Indian country to fight, which would risk alienating the tribes.22 In private meetings, Guyasuta and White Mingo warned the commissioners that the hearts of the Ojibwas “were black and ill affected towards us.”23

  Cornstalk and other Shawnee chiefs also told Morgan they intended to remain neutral and preserve their friendship with the white people. As the Fort Pitt conference drew to a close, Cornstalk asked Morgan to record his words and send them to Congress. Congress had asked the chiefs several times to explain the causes of their complaints against the Americans; Cornstalk was surprised they had to ask:

  All our lands are covered by the white people, and we are jealous that you still intend to make larger strides. We never sold you our Lands which you now possess on the Ohio between the Great Kanawha and the Cherokee River, and which you are settling without ever asking our leave, or obtaining our consent. Foolish people have desired you to do so, and you have taken their advice. We live by Hunting and cannot subsist in any other way. That was our hunting Country and you have taken it from us. This is what sits heavy upon our Hearts and on the Hearts of all Nations, and it is impossible for us to think as we ought to whilst we are thus oppressed.24

  He was talking about lands Washington and other Virginians coveted. Although Cornstalk continued to assert the Shawnees’ desire for peace, he did so with diminishing confidence. The war party was gaining strength, and he could not restrain his warriors.25 Three Shawnees and two Cherokees, including a chief named Hanging Maw, kidnapped Daniel Boone’s daughter Jemima and two of her friends in July. (Fearing they might be raped or killed, Boone and his neighbors gave chase and recovered the girls, although Jemima said the Indians treated them kindly.) Shawnee delegates carried the war belt to the Cherokees in August.26 Meanwhile, Congress had shifted from trying to secure Indian neutrality to actively soliciting Indian allies.

  In early October 1777 Cornstalk and two other Shawnees visited the American garrison at Fort Randolph on the Kanawha River, at the site where he had fought the Virginians exactly three years earlier. The post commander took them hostage to prevent other Shawnees from joining the British. A month later, American militia murdered and mutilated the prisoners. The governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania sent urgent apologies to the Shawnees; George Morgan conveyed Congress’s regret, and Patrick Henry denounced the murders, but it was too little and too late.27 Outraged Shawnees retaliated against frontier settlers, and the Ohio River became a war zone, crossed and recrossed by Shawnee raiding parties and Kentucky militia who burned villages, plundered homes, and lifted scalps with equal ferocity.

  American actions made it impossible for Indians to ignore British warnings that the rebels intended to steal their country and destroy them. Many saw their best chance in siding with the redcoats, who had offered at least token protection for Indian lands, rather than with the Americans, who were clearly hell-bent on taking them. Guyasuta abandoned his neutral stance: he, White Mingo, and other Seneca chiefs went to war in late 1777.28 “The western Indians are United against us,” Brigadier General Edward Hand informed Washington in September. He had called out the militia but could not get them to do duty at Fort Pitt nor assemble in sufficient force to mount a campaign into Indian country.29 In November, Washington sent William Crawford to join Hand’s command.30

  William Crawford entered the Revolutionary service as a lieutenant colonel of the 5th Virginia Regiment, then took command of the 7th Virginia Regiment, and then raised a new regiment, the 13th, west of the Alleghenies. “If a War With the Westerly Endians happen I am to go there,” Crawford wrote Washington in September 1776, though he doubted such a war would happen. By February he had changed his tune and warned Washington that an Indian war was likely, and for the reasons the Indians had given during the summer.31 Despite the looming threat of war, and despite the deaths of his brother, Valentine, and half brother, Hugh Stephenson, to illness, Crawford continued to look out for Washington’s business interests west of the Alleghenies, where squatters occupied Miller’s Run, his largest tract in Pennsylvania, on a branch of Chartier Creek.32 Washington’s time and attention was “so constantly taken up & ingrossed by public Matters,” he wrote Crawford in February, “that I scarce bestow a thought on my private Affairs beyond my family at Mount Vernon.”33 Nevertheless, he kept an eye on his own future as well as that of his country, and on the lands that were key to both.

  After his transfer, Crawford participated in the first American invasion of Indian country from Pittsburgh. In February 1778 General Hand led a force of five hundred men to capture British stores reported to be at an Indian town on the Cuyahoga River. The campaign petered out in bad weather, and the troops managed only to kill one old man, four Indian women, and a boy. Captain Pipe’s brother was among the dead. “In performing these great exploits,” wrote Hand, one soldier was wounded and another drowned. The expedition became known as the “squaw campaign.” Washington learned of it in March.34

  In May he appointed Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh to succeed Hand. He had “great expectations” of McIntosh, who possessed good sense and lengthy experience dealing with Indians in Georgia and South Carolina.35 Two regiments were stationed at Fort Pitt, the 8th Pennsylvania under Colonel Brodhead and the 13th Virginia under Colonel William Russell. Since Indian affairs in the West demanded officers who were familiar with the country and with Native languages and customs, Washington sent Colonel John Gibson to take temporary command of the 13th, with Russell returning east to command Gibso
n’s old regiment. Russell and Crawford had been rivals for command of the 13th, and Washington did not want Gibson’s temporary appointment to prejudice Crawford’s claim in future. If there were in be two regiments on the frontier, Washington wanted Crawford in command of one of them.36 Under McIntosh, Crawford commanded the militia of the western counties of Virginia, constructed Fort McIntosh at what is now Beaver, Pennsylvania, and participated in an expedition against Detroit.37

  McIntosh found things in a bad way at Fort Pitt. Distressing accounts of Indian attacks and atrocities came in from the frontier settlements, the militia was dispirited and deserting, and with a garrison of only about one hundred men, Hand had done nothing to help the settlers. Washington was disappointed to hear of the state of affairs and that more vigorous measures had not been taken.38

  There was still hope the Delawares might cling to their neutrality, but their hold was precarious. Other Indians warned that if they persisted in their attachment to the Virginians, they would treat them as Virginians. The Wyandots, whose lands the Delawares were living on, pressured them to join the emerging anti-American coalition. War parties passed through the Moravian mission villages with scalps and captives, sometimes threatening, sometimes cajoling the pacifist converts. At Lichtenau on the Muskingum River, Rev. David Zeisberger on June 15, 1777, heard reports that the Indian nations on both sides of the lakes and as far west as the Mississippi had united to wage war against the colonies. “If this were true, then the entire Delaware Nation and we would be in danger of being attacked by other Nations and we would certainly all be destroyed,” he wrote in his diary. “Our heavenly father will have to look at this situation and do what is best.”39 A year later White Eyes sounded desperate, telling George Morgan: “If you do not assist me now as soon as possible then I shall be ruin’d & destroy’d.”40