Washington’s plans for a comfortable retirement rested on income from his lands at Washington’s Bottom, Miller’s Run, and the Great Kanawha. But his trip showed him these were precarious assets at best: the first was producing no revenue; squatters occupied the second; Indian hostility restricted access to the third. Removing such obstacles to turning a profit on frontier investments, Washington decided, would require government action. In a sense, Edward Larson explains, “his long journey back from retirement to the Constitutional Convention and the presidency began with his trip to the frontier in 1784.”68
The journey also renewed his commitment to making the Potomac River the gateway to the West. In the weeks after his return, he wrote letter after letter to influential individuals in Virginia and Maryland promoting the project. The more he thought about it, the greater the advantages appeared, he said. As the Indians were dispossessed, the West would be linked to the East by commerce, which required clearing rivers and building canals to connect the Potomac and the Ohio. It was time to open the way for western produce to flow to American markets before it got diverted “into another channel,” namely to New Orleans. Developing the Potomac water route served Washington’s personal interests as well as the nation’s agenda. It would alleviate western settlers’ dependence on the Spanish-controlled Mississippi, strengthen ties between the eastern and western states, and link his Tidewater properties with his holdings in the West, enhancing their value. The Potomac canal never came to fruition, but its potential for opening the West and uniting the nation figured continuously in Washington’s thinking, conversation, and correspondence.69
James Madison shared Washington’s enthusiasm for the project.70 So did Jefferson, who had the canal “much at heart” and lobbied for it with his friends in the Virginia Assembly. “All the world is becoming commercial,” Jefferson said, and the citizens of “our new empire” must have as large a share as possible of the West’s resources. Connecting the Potomac to the Ohio would bind the nation together and enhance the economy of Virginia in particular.71 Whereas Jefferson felt western settlers were bound to the United States by their republican sentiments and needed minimal control from the federal government, Washington placed far less faith in them to do the right thing and thought commercial connections were necessary to bind them to the nation.72
A week after he returned from his trip, Washington lobbied Virginia governor Benjamin Harrison to revive the enterprise and form a company to undertake making the Potomac navigable to the Ohio. Recycling reflections he had penned in his journal, he reminded Harrison that the state of affairs in the West was anything but orderly. Frontier settlers regarded the government with suspicion and eastern elites with resentment; individual states competed for territory, and foreign powers loomed in the North and South. It was vital to bind all parts of the union together by bonds of self-interest, especially in the region immediately west of the middle states.
For what ties, let me ask, shou’d we have upon these people? How entirely unconnected with them shall we be, and what troubles may we not apprehend, if the Spaniards on their right, & Gt Britain on their left, instead of throwing stumbling blocks in their way, as they do now, should hold out lures for their trade and alliance? What, when they get strength, which will be sooner than most people conceive (from the emigration of foreigners, who will have no particular predilection toward us, as well as from the removal of our own Citizens), will be the consequence of their having formed close connections with both or either of those powers, in a commercial way? It needs not, in my opinion, the gift of prophecy to foretell.
From his own observation, Washington added, the western settlers stood, “as it were, upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them either way.”73
Westerners had little reason to commit to a union that seemed on the verge of falling apart. Separatist tendencies surfaced in Kentucky and Vermont, where residents were courted by Spain and Britain, respectively. By 1783 Kentucky had twelve thousand white inhabitants; two years later, thirty thousand, half of them from Virginia. Deprived of property and prosperity by Eastern elites and their land policies, and attracted by the possibilities of better trade down the Mississippi, many Kentuckians “turned their eyes to New Orleans, and may become riotous and ungovernable,” said Washington. Resentful Kentuckians were soon demanding self-government and separation from Virginia.74 In western North Carolina settlers formed their own state, Franklin, and looked to their own leaders rather than the state government for access to Indian lands and protection from Indian attacks. Adam Stephen, who had learned to respect the Cherokees after serving against them and making peace with them in 1761, feared that “the Wild men” of Franklin intended to drive the Cherokees out of their country and would force them into war. Leaders like Governor John Sevier, who burned Cherokee towns during the Revolution, built and maintained their reputation on speculation and Indian fighting. The movement for secession in Franklin raised the specter that any settlement with any grievance might, as Governor Alexander Martin of North Carolina feared, claim the right to separate and declare its independence and expose the frailty of “a pusillanimous Government, that either is unstable, or dares not restrain the lawless designs of its Citizens.”75
Virginia must take the lead in linking the West to the East. The Potomac, Washington told Jefferson in 1788, “will become the great avenue into the Western Country; a country which is now sett[lin]g in an extraordinary rapid manner, under uncommonly favorable circumstances, and which promises to afford a capacious asylum for the poor and persecuted of the Earth.”76 The illusion that the river flowing past Mount Vernon provided the most direct access to the West stayed with him all his life and played a significant role in the decision to locate the national capital on the Potomac in 1790.77 Meanwhile, if the nation was to be built on western lands, it must secure them quickly lest it fly apart before it had chance to fully form.
the need to strengthen the national government and make expansion a national project was urgent, but the federal government was not the only player active in the field. Jurisdictional disputes with the states over Indian lands and Indian affairs were central issues in debates about federalism and the union.78 Regional divisions and federal-state tensions complicated and jeopardized Indian policy.
As had Britain, the United States preferred to achieve its goals by treaty rather than by war, and obtain Indian lands by purchase rather than by risky and expensive military campaigns. But whereas the Six Nations declared their intention to live in peace and friendship with Congress “provided their intentions be agreeable and leave our possessions undisturbed,”79 Congress insisted that it had acquired all territory east of the Mississippi by right of conquest and that the defeated Indians must relinquish lands as atonement for the atrocities they had committed and the expenses the United States had incurred fighting them. They could have no complaints about the boundaries that were imposed.80 Treaty commissioners representing “the Thirteen Fires” of the United States employed the rhetoric and symbols of council-fire diplomacy, but they dictated more than they negotiated. “We are now Masters of this Island, and can dispose of the Lands as we think proper or most convenient to ourselves,” General Schuyler lectured the Iroquois.81 Joseph Brant told the British that Schuyler was as “Saucy” as the devil and the Indians who met with him behaved shamefully. Dismayed that “after our friends the English left us in the lurch, still our own chiefs should make the matter worse,” Brant began “to prepare my death song for vexation will lead one to rashness.”82
The federal government had to assert its authority over the state of New York in dealing with the Six Nations, and New York was in a mess. Still recovering from the devastation of the war, the state confronted the intrusion of congressional authority within its borders, lingering land claims by the state of Massachusetts, and separatist Vermonters trying to establish an independent republic on its eastern border. Agents from New York, Massachusetts, and Congress held councils with Indians, wh
ile private operations like the Genesee Company of Adventurers, organized by members of the Hudson Valley elite in 1787, also negotiated leases.83 Schuyler called on New York to let federal commissioners conduct its Indian diplomacy, but Governor Clinton and other state leaders insisted that under article 9 of the Articles of Confederation—which gave the United States the power to deal “with the Indians, not members of any of the states, provided that the legislative right of any state within its own limits be not infringed or violated”—any attempt by the federal government to deal with the Six Nations constituted a violation of the state’s rights.84 New York intended to make its own treaty.
As chair of the Committee on Indian Affairs, James Duane supported the exclusive right of Congress to make treaties; as the first mayor of New York City, he sided with Clinton in opposing that policy as a threat to his own state. In the summer of 1784 Duane advised Clinton that since Congress had clear authority to make treaties with Indian nations that were independent of the states, New York must treat the Six Nations not as nations but “as ancient Dependants on this State, placed under its protection … with the Management of whom Congress have no concern.” The state should play hardball in negotiating with the Iroquois and strip them of any attributes of nationhood. “If we adopt the disgraceful system of pensioning, courting and flattering them as great and mighty nations, we shall once more, like the Albanians be their Fools and Slaves, and this Revolution in my Eyes will have lost more than half it’s Value.” New York should dictate terms, dispense with wampum belts, and stop calling the tribes nations “or any other Form which would revive or seem to confirm their former Ideas of Independence.”85
New York sent commissioners to deal with the Seneca chief Cornplanter and about twenty delegates from the Six Nations at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix that fall, as did Pennsylvania.86 Commissioners from the United States—Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, Richard Butler of Pennsylvania, and Arthur Lee of Virginia, accompanied by 150 troops and the marquis de Lafayette—joined those from New York and Pennsylvania. The competing federal and state claims confused the negotiations. “Here lies some Difficulty in our Minds,” said Brant, “that there should be two separate Bodies to manage these Affairs, for this does not agree with our ancient Customs.”87
Declaring that they, not New York, had full authority to make peace with the Indians, the federal commissioners demanded huge cessions of Iroquois country as the price of that peace. “You are a subdued people,” they told them. Divided by the war and abandoned by the British, the Iroquois delegates ceded much of Seneca land in western New York and Pennsylvania as well as all their territory west of Pennsylvania, essentially giving up all claims to the Ohio country, and gave hostages to guarantee their compliance.88 When Washington saw the terms of the treaty, he thought the Six Nations had given “all that the United States could reasonably have asked of them.” He hoped that their example would influence the Ohio tribes—“the Western gentry,” as he called them—and smooth the way for the commissioners who were on their way to Fort Pitt.89 But when the Iroquois delegates returned home they were met with scorn. The Six Nations in council refused to ratify the treaty on the grounds that King George had never given up their lands and that delegates were not authorized to cede the territory. When Cornplanter, along with Guyasuta and other chiefs, met Brigadier General Josiah Harmar, now commander of the American army, at Pittsburgh in July 1785, he brought the original articles of the Fort Stanwix Treaty with him and “said they were burdensome, and wished to deliver them up.”90 The United States proceeded as if the treaty were valid.
The Fort Stanwix Treaty exposed divisions within the United States as well as within the Six Nations. New York not only negotiated its own treaty but attempted to derail the federal negotiations. “What think You of the State of New York undertaking a Treaty of its own Authority?” one congressional delegate, Jacob Read, asked Washington. “If this Conduct is to be pursued,” Read warned, “our Commissioners are Rendered useless.”91 James Monroe, then also a congressional delegate traveling through the area, witnessed the negotiations and expressed alarm to James Madison that New York making its own treaty raised the question of the political status of tribes and whether states had primary authority over Indian peoples living within their boundaries. Madison, who was touring New York State with Lafayette and also attended the treaty, insisted the federal government had priority over the states in Indian affairs. He feared that states’ intrusions on the treaty-making power of the national government could destroy the authority of Congress and that states’ treatment of Indians threatened the reputation of the United States.92
That said, on a visit to Mount Vernon the next year, Madison asked Washington’s advice about buying land in the Mohawk Valley. Washington, who had just purchased a tract there, replied it was “the very spot his fancy had selected of all the U.S.” Madison and Monroe together bought 900 acres of land on the edge of Oneida territory in 1786. Sounding a lot like Washington had twenty years earlier, Madison regretted they were not able to purchase more, for “my private opinion is that the vacant land in that part of America opens up the surest field of speculation of any in the U.S.” With twelve to fifteen feet of topsoil in the Fingers Lakes region, Oneida land impressed European visitors as some of “the richest and most fertile on our globe.”93
Washington lamented the interference of individual states in Indian affairs. So long as they set up competing claims to Indian land and pursued their own short-term interests, the federal government was “a name without substance,” he told Secretary of War Henry Knox (see plate 7). The states’ insistence on conducting their own dealings with Indians highlighted the larger issue of states’ rights. “We are either a United people under one head, & for Fœderal purposes,” he explained to James McHenry, “or we are thirteen independent Sovereignties, eternally counteracting each other.” Knox agreed: “We are entirely destitute of those traits which should Stamp us one Nation.” He feared that some of the states’ views “sooner or later must involve the Country in all the horrors of civil War.”94
The Confederation Congress thanked the Oneidas for their support and services during the Revolutionary War, and while the Treaty of Fort Stanwix imposed punitive terms on the other Iroquois, article 2 secured the Oneidas and Tuscaroras “in the possession of the Lands on which they are settled.”95 The state of New York and most of its citizens had other ideas. They coveted the fertile lands closest to them, which belonged to their wartime allies the Oneidas, rather than lands farther west that belonged to their wartime enemies. In a series of treaties marked by fraud, deception, and intimidation, the Oneidas rapidly lost most of their homeland. At the Treaty of Herkimer in June 1785, over the protests of their chief Good Peter (see plate 8), they ceded about 200,000 acres to Governor Clinton for $11,500. Although Samuel Kirkland had lost some influence as a result of participating in Sullivan’s expedition, the Oneidas evidently requested that lands be set aside for both him and James Dean; the state granted 2,650 acres to Dean and 320 acres to Kirkland, with another 320 acres held in trust for his successor as a missionary. In January 1788, in an attempt to circumvent a state law that prohibited private purchases of Indian land without legislative approval, the Hudson Valley landowner John Livingston and the Genesee Company got some Oneidas to agree to lease them all Oneida land for 999 years for an annual rent of $1,000. The New York legislature promptly rejected the company’s request and authorized Governor Clinton to negotiate with the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas for their land. At the Treaty of Fort Schuyler in September 1788, the Oneidas ceded most of their remaining lands, about 5 million acres, for $5,000 in cash, clothing, and provisions, money to build a sawmill and gristmill, and an annuity of $600.96 New York made similar treaties with the Cayugas and Onondagas before the Constitution went into effect giving the federal government the sole authority to make treaties. In each treaty the Indians granted all their lands to the state of New York, and the state then appropriated for the use of e
ach tribe a portion of the lands they had ceded. On these state-owned reservations, they were to take up American-style agriculture and could also sell or lease their lands, under state supervision.97
In 1790 Timothy Pickering negotiated an agreement to compensate the Oneidas for their losses in the Revolution. Good Peter told him that his people’s loyalty to the United States had reduced them to landless poverty.98 A treaty made in 1794 provided up to $5,000 for individual losses, promised to rebuild and maintain the sawmill and gristmill, and paid $1,000 to replace the church that was destroyed when Brant burned Kanonwalohale.99 But New York’s assault on the lands of the Oneidas and other tribes within its borders proved relentless. “The York People have got almost all our country; and for a very trifle,” said Cayuga and Onondaga chiefs.100 In 1825 the marquis de Lafayette was touring the United States on the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution. At Oriskany, Rome (the site of Fort Stanwix), and Utica, he received a rapturous welcome from the citizens of Oneida County. Almost lost in the crowds, three Oneidas came to see him, old comrades in the Revolution. They told him they could no longer support themselves by hunting and were miserable having to subsist by agriculture. Lafayette “entreated them to regard the Americans as their brothers forever.”101
In the South, at the Treaty of Hopewell on the Keowee River in South Carolina in the winter of 1785–86, Benjamin Hawkins and the other federal commissioners met with delegates from the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws to establish relations and confirm boundaries. The treaty stipulated that any squatter who remained on the Indian side of the boundary after six months would forfeit the protection of the United States and the Indians could “punish him or not as they please,” a provision that convinced many frontier settlers the government had no concern for their safety.102 Georgia and North Carolina also sent commissioners. Hawkins told Jefferson some months later that nothing was more important to him than preserving the Indians’ rights in the treaties. North Carolina’s commissioner, William Blount, on the other hand, went there primarily to protect his land investments in the great bend of the Tennessee River and to coerce the Cherokees and Chickasaws to accept the Tennessee as their northern boundary. (Blount pushed for North Carolina to cede its western land to the nation because that would put his speculations under federal protection.) He told the commissioners that if they fixed any other boundaries with the Cherokees, his state would consider it an infringement of its legislative rights. Governor Richard Caswell told Congress the same thing.103 Even Hugh Williamson, who represented North Carolina at the Constitutional Convention and advocated a strong federal government, advised his state governor in 1788 that with Britain and Spain tampering with the Indians and only a handful of national troops in service, “North Carolina must depend on her own Prudence or her own strength for the Measure of Peace that she may enjoy with the neighbouring Indians.”104
The Indian World of George Washington Page 40