The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  By midmorning discipline was unraveling and resistance breaking down. Around 9:30 a.m. St. Clair ordered a desperate retreat. It quickly turned into a rout. Soldiers ran for their lives, throwing aside muskets, cartridge boxes, and anything that impeded their flight; “the whole Army Ran together like a mob at a fair,” Lieutenant Colonel William Darke told Washington.78 Stores, equipment, artillery, wagons, horses, and wounded were abandoned to the Indians.79 Most of the survivors made it into Fort Jefferson by sunset; more wounded and stragglers stumbled in the next day. The dazed remnants of the US Army staggered back to Fort Washington on the afternoon of November 8. The army lost 630 killed (37 officers, 593 enlisted men) and 32 officers and 252 enlisted men wounded, in addition to noncombatants and captives. “I think the Slaughter far Grater than Braddocks,” Darke told Washington, which surely conjured up nightmare memories in the president’s mind.80 Indian losses were relatively light: 20 or 30 killed and perhaps 50 wounded, according to different estimates.81 It was the biggest victory American Indians ever won and, proportionately, the most severe defeat the United States ever suffered. The nation’s only army lay in ruins. “The fortunes of this day have been as the cruellest tempest to the interests of the Country and this Army, and will blacken a full page in the future annals of America,” wrote Winthrop Sargent, who served as adjutant general.82

  Precisely when Washington received news of the disaster is unclear. According to his private secretary, Tobias Lear, a mud-spattered officer arrived at the president’s home in Philadelphia during a dinner party. Leaving the room to receive the dispatch, Washington composed himself and returned to his guests. Only after they had left did he fly into a rage against St. Clair, striking his forehead in fury. Here in this very room, he had warned him: “Beware of surprise! You know how the Indians fight us. He went off with that, as my last solemn warning, thrown into his ears.” And still St. Clair had allowed the army to be surprised and cut to pieces. He was “worse than a murderer,” and the blood of the dead was on his hands. But then the storm passed. “This must not go beyond this room,” Washington told Lear; “General St. Clair shall have justice.”83

  News of the disaster reached Philadelphia through various routes, appearing in western newspapers and transmitted east before St. Clair’s official report—he sent three copies—arrived. Unofficial reports arrived on December 8; partial reports appeared in Philadelphia newspapers the next day.84 “The late calamity to the Westward has produced great sensation here,” wrote Jefferson, who hoped the defeat would prevent enlarging the regular army and increase reliance on militia.85 Ebenezer Denny, carrying one of St. Clair’s reports, made it to the capital on December 19 after an eight-hundred-mile odyssey. The next morning Henry Knox called at his quarters and took him to the president’s house, “where we breakfasted with the family, and afterward had much talk on the subject of the campaign and defeat.”86 By then, it was old news. Washington had informed Congress of “the misfortune” in a brief message a week before, on December 12. The loss to the nation was considerable, he acknowledged, “yet maybe repaired without great difficulty, excepting as to the brave men who have fallen.” He provided copies of St. Clair’s reports and a list of the officers who had been killed and wounded.87 The Senate and the House ordered the message and enclosures to be read and tabled.88

  As news of the disaster and the magnitude of the losses sank in, correspondents, the press, and Congress debated how it could have happened and who was responsible.89 The commander in chief did not escape criticism for a military expedition badly conceived and badly executed, and he received plenty of advice on what to do next. William Darke wrote him a long and detailed account of the defeat the same day that St. Clair wrote his report. He offered to meet with Washington during the winter and answer any questions he might have about the campaign.90 But Darke’s son died of wounds sustained in the defeat, and in February 1792 Darke published in the press an anonymous diatribe against Washington for having sent an infirm and bedridden general into battle.91 George Nicholas agreed that St. Clair’s infirmities rendered him “totally unfit” for a command that would have taxed a strong and healthy man.92

  Frontier settlers renewed their alarmed calls for protection. A “Citizen of Georgia” asked Washington why the government was waging an “inhuman and unprofitable War” against the Indians in the Northwest whose only crime was defending their own territory, while on Georgia’s frontiers innocent families were being butchered by Indians in violation of the treaty Washington had made with McGillivray.93 Newspapers printed rumors of escalating Indian war, accounts of the western settlers’ peril, and letters, often written under pseudonyms, denouncing the war as unjust and the government’s Indian policy as driven by the interests of land speculators.94 Tobias Lear told Washington the war was extremely unpopular in New England, where everyone he spoke with thought it stemmed “from a wish on the part of the United States to obtain lands to which they have no just claim.”95 William Stoy, a German minister, physician, and member of the Pennsylvania legislature, blamed wrong-headed and hypocritical policies predicated on taking Indian lands by right of conquest from Britain: “What would your Excellency think if I or Some body else was powerful enough to rob you of your Estate?” he asked Washington.96

  Many of Washington’s correspondents criticized aggressive land policies that did not give peace a chance. Quakers, appalled by the bloodshed, urged him to return to pacific measures.97 Benjamin Hawkins declined to comment on the battle itself—“You are a military Judge,” he told Washington—but he made his position quite clear: “I am for peace.” He attributed the defeat to the government’s policies in Indian country and its “feeble efforts” to make peace. Indian policy was being dictated by those “at the head of affairs to the Westward” who were all for war, he said; “this is their harvest.” The Indians were “wholly unacquainted with the real disposition of our government.”98 Aaron Burr agreed. Widespread opinion held that peace was possible, he told Washington. The Indians were fighting because they believed the government intended to take their lands, and they would cease once those misapprehensions were removed; unfortunately, since hostilities broke out, the government had not conveyed to them any direct assurances to the contrary.99 Other correspondents argued that victory over the Indians was a prerequisite to real peace, and that without it St. Clair’s soldiers had died in vain. The question was how best to achieve that victory.100

  As the debate was fought out in the press, Knox came in for scathing criticism. He and his supporters were quick to defend his policies. But the opposition increasingly coalesced around the secretary of the treasury: Hamilton wanted the war in order to maintain the national debt and promote his financial policies, and he had authorized his crony William Duer to supply the army.101 The delays in carrying out the campaign rendered it incapable of success, said George Nicholas, and those delays were the fault of the quartermaster and contractor: “As long as men who are strangers to the country in which they are to act are appointed from motives of friendship &c. the business will have a similar end,” he told Madison.102 In Congress, critics of the government questioned Washington and Knox’s plans to overhaul the militia system and expand and fund the regular army. “We are preparing to squander away money by millions,” railed one congressman, “and no one, except those who are in the secrets of the Cabinet, knows for what reason the war has been carried on for three years.”103 An emerging Republican faction squared off against Hamilton and the Federalists.

  Congress conducted an official investigation into the disaster. St. Clair, who wanted to clear his name and then resign his command, requested an inquiry into his conduct. Washington replied that there were not enough officers of sufficient rank left in service to form a court of inquiry. He asked St. Clair to resign immediately, so a successor could be appointed and dispatched to the frontier, and assured him the congressional inquiry would afford the opportunity to explain his conduct “in a manner satisfactory to the public and your
self.” Newspapers reprinted the exchanges between the president and his disgraced general.104 In discussion with his cabinet Washington said he disapproved of St. Clair “not keeping his army in such a position always to be able to display them in a line behind trees in the Indian manner at any moment.”105

  Congress established a special committee. It was the first congressional investigation under the new Constitution.106 The committee’s sessions were held in public, and its investigations went far beyond St. Clair to uncover the causes of the disaster. It raised questions about the authority of the new federal government and the accountability of elected officials, and traced the failures and mismanagement to the secretary of war and secretary of the treasury. Knox, who had initially told St. Clair he was not to blame for the defeat, now tried to pin the blame squarely on the general’s shoulders.107 When Congress requested relevant documents, Washington, conscious of establishing precedents, consulted his cabinet—Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. They concluded that Congress had every right to request documents from the president but recommended that Washington release those papers which “the public good would permit” and “refuse those the disclosure of which would harm the public good.” The notion that the president had the right to withhold documents that might be deemed detrimental to the public good was thus established, and with it the foundation for what became known in the twentieth century as executive privilege. Washington eventually decided that disclosing the papers would not harm the national interest and was necessary to give St. Clair a fair hearing. He ordered Knox to provide the House with the relevant documents and had copies made for the committee.108

  The committee reached unanimous agreement and communicated its report to the House of Representatives in May 1792. It absolved St. Clair of any responsibility for the defeat. Instead, it blamed congressional delay in apportioning funds for the campaign, the troops’ lack of discipline and experience, the lateness of the season, and, most of all, “the delays consequent upon the gross and various mismanagements and neglects in the quarter master’s and the contractor’s departments.” Although Washington and Knox were not identified by name, the committee made it clear that St. Clair was under orders from the top to forge ahead despite serious delays and deficiencies; those orders were so “express and unequivocal” as to “preclude the commander in chief from exercising any discretion relatively to that object.”109 The committee did not recommend taking action against any government official. Knox, Hodgdon, Duer (from debtor’s prison, where he had been since March 1792), and St. Clair all subsequently submitted memorials, but the committee did not change its conclusions.110 Although the committee blamed contractor fraud rather than leadership, St. Clair spent the rest of his life trying to clear his name. In 1812, by which time he was an old man, he published by subscription his own 275-page Narrative of the Manner in which the Campaign against the Indians, in the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-one, was Conducted, under the Command of Major General Arthur St. Clair.111

  The Indian victory put the United States in a precarious position. Frontier inhabitants were alarmed at the prospect of being left defenseless in the face of renewed Indian raids. The destruction of St. Clair’s army reaffirmed their concerns that the federal government lacked the resolve to bring order in the West.112 Land speculators fretted over their investments. Encouraged that the experiment in republicanism was faltering, the British stepped up the pressure to reach an accommodation. Elated by “the astonishing success of a few Indians … who have opposed and destroyed, the whole American force,” Alexander McKee hoped the United States, “now convinced of the difficulty of Subduing a Brave & warlike race of People, may listen to the Voice of Equity and Reason and Establish a firm and lasting Peace on the Principles of natural Justice & Humanity.”113 The British government advocated turning the Northwest Territory into a neutral Indian barrier state. Such a state would be independent of both Britain and the United States, closed to further settlement but open to trade; it would protect Indian lands from American expansion, protect Canada from American aggression, and help maintain British influence among the Indian nations.114 But Washington consistently maintained that the only irreparable loss of St. Clair’s defeat was the men who died there. Everything else could be recovered if the government stayed the course in its policies toward the Indians and its efforts to take control of the West and its lands.115 He was proved right, but building a new army took time and money. Buying the time to do it and ensuring that the Indian war did not spread required him to balance a strategy of preparing for war even as he negotiated for peace.

  Chapter 17

  Philadelphia Indian Diplomacy

  Washington had learned the rudiments of Indian diplomacy as a young man in Indian country, but in the early 1790s he conducted his Indian diplomacy in and from Philadelphia. These were critical years. The Indian war was going from bad to worse; British and Spanish agents encouraged the tribes, and conflict between Britain and Revolutionary France created a foreign policy crisis that threated American neutrality. Washington dealt with Indian diplomacy at a frenetic pace. He met prominent Indian leaders who came to Philadelphia to establish relationships with the new president, get a clear reading of the government’s intentions, and chart their own courses in light of US policies. He talked, smoked, and dined with Indian chiefs. He dispatched peace emissaries into Indian country, even as he dispatched armies into Indian country. He asked individual Indians to negotiate on his behalf, embracing indigenous diplomatic practices and traditions that the United States had spurned in its initial dealings with Indian nations.1 It was, wrote Anthony Wallace some fifty years ago, “the climax of a political generation during which ‘Indian Affairs’ was the major public business of an entire nation” (see plate 11).2

  Washington’s Indian diplomacy was always about land, but in his first administration, isolating, dividing, and defeating the Northwestern Confederacy took priority. Doing so required talking and making peace as well as threatening and waging war. The two approaches went hand in hand: if he could achieve the nation’s goals without recourse to war, he would; if his peace efforts failed, they would justify the war he then had to wage.

  implementing this doubled-edged policy required some delicate diplomatic footwork, and Washington turned for help to the Iroquois, whose country he had invaded a dozen years before. Fearful that the conflict with the Northwestern Confederacy might spread into a general Indian war all along the frontier, he had to keep the Six Nations out of the fight. Alexander Hamilton spelled out the situation for him: “You are sensible that almost every person here is interested in our Western lands; their value depends upon the settlement of the frontiers, these settlements depend on Peace with the Indians, and indeed the bare possibility of a war with the six Nations, would break up our whole frontier.”3 The government asked Iroquois chiefs to act as intermediaries with the western Indian nations as it negotiated a peace settlement, or at least bought time for its army by appearing to negotiate a peace settlement. It also hoped, rather optimistically, that the Six Nations might assist the United States in its war against the western tribes. Washington wanted the Iroquois to be pliant instruments of his policy, and many western Indians castigated them as American tools, but the Iroquois were practicing a peacemaking tradition that stretched back hundreds of years. They were past masters of the art of diplomacy.4

  Cultivating the support of the Six Nations required sending American emissaries into Iroquois country. Washington appointed Timothy Pickering as federal commissioner to head the Iroquois initiative. The New Englander faced a steep learning curve. He held his first council, with more than two hundred Senecas and a few Onondagas, at Tioga Point on the Susquehanna (near present-day Athens, Pennsylvania) in November 1790. Following the murder of two influential Turtle clan Senecas at Pine Creek in Pennsylvania, Washington wanted Pickering to assure the Six Nations that the offenders would be punished and to head off a potential cycle of rev
enge by giving gifts to “cover the dead,” according to Iroquois custom and at the request of peace-minded Seneca chiefs.5 Prior to the meeting, Pickering sent the Senecas word that in future all their business with the citizens of the states would “be conducted by the authority of the United States, through their President, or Great Chief: that I was appointed by him to wash off the blood of their murdered brothers, & wipe away the tears from the eyes of their friends.”6 At the conference, Pickering reported to Washington, “I studied to please them in every thing within the limits of your instructions: the sole object of my mission being to soothe their minds.” The Indians wanted peace; they appreciated the gifts Washington sent, and the conference went well. Only the acquittal by a Pennsylvania jury of the one suspect who had been apprehended marred Pickering’s satisfaction. He found it mortifying that most frontier inhabitants considered it no crime to kill Indians in peacetime. Unless some examples were made, he would have to hold many more meetings like the one at Tioga Point.7

  A novice in the art of doing business in Indian country, Pickering fumbled his way through the protocols and rituals of diplomacy. “I was an utter stranger to the manner of Indians,” he confessed to Washington after the council. But Pickering was a different kind of American treaty commissioner, with a different attitude toward Indians and different goals—he was not there to ask for land. After listening to the Indians recite the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the whites, he told Washington, “a man must be destitute of humanity, of honesty, or of common sense” who did not sympathize with them.8 The contrast with previous federal and state treaty commissioners who had dictated terms and demanded land was not lost on the Iroquois, who made allowances for his inexperience.