The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  82. PGW, Rev. 13:402; Lengel, General George Washington, 313.

  83. JCC 10:203, 220–21; PGW, Rev. 13:409n, 14:68, 167–68.

  84. DAR 12:130–32, 189–208; Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, ch. 7; Nadia Dean, A Demand of Blood: The Cherokee War of 1776 (Cherokee, NC: Valley River Press, 2012).

  85. PGW, Rev. 8:57–58n, 249; 13:408n.

  86. Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 199–200; EAID 18:217–20.

  87. EAID 18:226–55 (Corn Tassel quote at 239), 265–70.

  88. Colin G. Calloway, “Declaring Independence and Rebuilding a Nation: Dragging Canoe and the Chickamauga Revolution,” in Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation, ed. Alfred F. Young, Gary B. Nash, and Ray Raphael (New York: Knopf, 2011), ch. 11.

  89. EAID 18:241.

  90. PGW, Rev. 15:20–21, 129–30.

  91. “You were no nation then,” the chiefs said, “We took pity on you then, and assisted you.” CVSP 3:171–72, 398.

  92. Parkinson, Common Cause, 374–84, 440–41, 474–75; Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 292–301.

  93. Lengel, General George Washington, 313.

  Chapter 11: Town Destroyer

  1. Peter J. Hatch, “A Rich Spot of Earth”: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 83; Benjamin Henry Latrobe, The Journal of Latrobe: Being the Notes and Sketches of an Architect, Naturalist and Traveler in the United States from 1796 to 1829 (New York: D. Appleton, 1905), 60 (“negroes”).

  2. A. C. Flick, ed., “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign in 1779: The Indian-Tory Side of the Campaign,” Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 10 (July–Oct. 1929): 193.

  3. John Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 172–73.

  4. Hugh F. Rankin, ed., Narratives of the American Revolution: As told by a young sailor, a home-sick surgeon, a French volunteer, and a German general’s wife (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley, 1976), 201.

  5. Karim M. Tiro, The People of the Standing Stone: The Oneida Nation from the Revolution through the Era of Removal (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), 39–40; Joseph T. Glatthaar and James Kirby Martin, Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution (New York: Hill & Wang, 2006), 203–8.

  6. Joseph J. Ellis, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic (New York: Vintage, 2007), 61–77; Edward G. Lengel, First Entrepreneur: How Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity (Boston: Da Capo, 2016), 126–30; PGW, Rev. 13:323, 351, 447–48, 592 (“Horrid Intercource”), 683, 14:327, 352–54, 368, 476–77, 486–87, 492.

  7. David L. Preston, The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667–1783 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009).

  8. PGW, Rev. 1:367.

  9. PGW, Rev. 3:349.

  10. PGW, Rev. 4:193–94.

  11. PGW, Rev. 4:267–68.

  12. Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972), 92; PGW, Rev. 4:388, 475, 5:517, 531; American Archives, ser. 4, 6:768–70.

  13. PGW, Rev. 4:373.

  14. PGW, Rev. 4:516.

  15. PGW, Rev. 5:584.

  16. PGW, Rev. 6:448–49, 531. The word “Cayugas” is rather indistinct in Washington’s letter to Philip Schuyler, Oct. 10, 1776, in the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress (GWPLC). Peter Force in American Archives, ser. 5, 2:974, identified the visiting Indians as “Caughnuagas,” not Cayugas, which makes sense as James Dean, the interpreter who accompanied them, had recently returned from Canada, but Force appears to have based his transcription on that made by Richard Varick. Washington’s letter book in GWPLC has “Cayugas,” as does Schuyler’s letter book in the New York Public Library. The editors of PGW, Rev. used the latter for the copytext since it is the closest available to Schuyler’s received copy. Benjamin L. Huggins, associate editor, PGW, personal communication, July 21, 2016.

  17. Colin G. Calloway, Pen and Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treaty Making in American Indian History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 70–74.

  18. David Levinson, “An Explanation for the Oneida-Colonist Alliance in the American Revolution, Ethnohistory 23 (1976): 265, 280–81; Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 45–47.

  19. Oneida declaration, Correspondence of Samuel Kirkland, Hamilton College, 57b, in EAID 18:4; David J. Norton, Rebellious Younger Brother: Oneida Leadership and Diplomacy, 1750–1800 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), 72; Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 87–89.

  20. Onondaga chief Tenhoghskweaghta at the Johnstown conference, March 10, 1776, NYPL, Schuyler Papers, box 14.

  21. Kirkland to Schuyler, Mar. 11, 1776, Hamilton College, Kirkland Papers, 64b.

  22. JCC 2:187.

  23. PGW, Rev. 2:70.

  24. On Brant and Kirkland, see Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 2006); Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 78–85.

  25. PGW, Rev. 14:168.

  26. Graymont, Iroquois in the American Revolution, 34–40.

  27. Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 42–43.

  28. Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 95–96; PGW, Rev. 2:61.

  29. Schuyler to GW, May 31, 1776, NYPL, GW reel 1.

  30. PGW, Rev. 5:26.

  31. Mark E. Lender and James Kirby Martin, eds., Citizen-Soldier: The Revolutionary War Journal of Joseph Bloomfield (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1982), 90–91.

  32. PGW, Rev. 8:517, 9:10; Writings of Washington 7:328–29.

  33. Karim M. Tiro, “James Dean in Iroquoia,” New York History 80 (1999): 391–422; Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 44–45; Colin G. Calloway, The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2010), 39–40; Wheelock to Trumbull, March 27, 1775, Papers of Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth College, Rauner Library, Ms. 775222.2; Wheelock to Trumbull, March 16, 1775, Ms. 775216.2; Wheelock to Macluer, March 20, 1775, Ms. 775220.1.

  34. PGW, Rev. 3:193; Laura J. Murray, ed., To Do Good to My Indian Brethren: The Writings of Joseph Johnson, 1751–1776 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 280–82.

  35. From Daniel Claus, June 27, 1778, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Archives, London, C. Mss., C/CAN/PRE, 14.

  36. PCC, item 153, 3:43–75; item 170, 2:88–112.

  37. PGW, Rev. 10:625; DAR 14:248–51; Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 48–49; Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 13–14; Graymont, Iroquois in the American Revolution, ch. 6.

  38. Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 194–96; PGW, Rev. 13:402, 14:167–68; GW to Schuyler, Mar. 13, 1778, NYPL, GW, reel 1.

  39. PGW, Rev. 14:276–77, 15:191; Schuyler to GW, Mar. 22, Apr. 26, 1778, NYPL, GW, reel 1.

  40. Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 205–16; PGW, Rev. 15:129–30, 390.

  41. Stanley J. Idzerda, ed., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776–1790, 5 vols. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977–83), 2:76.

  42. GW to Congress, Dec. 24, 1779, GWPLC.

  43. PGW, Rev. 15:224–25; Writings of Washington 11:457; Lengel, First Entrepreneur, 145.

  44. DAR 15:18–19, 36, 199, 261–63.

  45. Writings of Washington 12:496.

  46. PGW, Rev. 14:679.

  47. Barbara Alice Mann, George Washington’s War on Native America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 27–28.

  48. JCC 13:251–52.

  49. JCC 11:588–90, 720–21; PGW, Rev. 16:132, 182–83, 226–29; Flick, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 210–11.


  50. PGW, Rev. 15:359–61, 483–85n (McHenry quote), 490–91.

  51. PGW, Rev. 16:145, 197, 275.

  52. Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, ch. 4 (Butler and veteran at 124); PGW, Rev. 17:386, 461–62, 523 (“places of Rendezvous”), 18:37 (Brant’s HQ); Writings of Washington 13:97–98, 111, 131; James Austin Holden et al., eds., Public Papers of George Clinton, First Governor of New York, 1777–1795, 1801–1804, 10 vols. (New York and Albany: State Printers, 1889–1914), 4:163–64, 222–28; PCC, reel 179, item 162, 213.

  53. PGW, Rev. 17:388 (“No Man”), 18:614.

  54. Ferling, Ascent of George Washington, 185–90; PGW, Rev. 18:149–51, 169.

  55. Max M. Mintz, Seeds of Empire: The American Revolutionary Conquest of the Iroquois (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 65.

  56. PGW, Rev. 21:185; PTJ 2:285, 3:5–6.

  57. Louise Phelps Kellogg, ed., Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio, 1778–1779 (Madison: Wisconsin State Historical Society, 1916), 365.

  58. Joseph R. Fischer, A Well-Executed Failure: The Sullivan Campaign against the Iroquois, July-September 1779 (Columba: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 173; PGW, Rev. 18:48, 350–52, 571, 19:xxix–xxx, 73, 114–17, 127, 176–79, 203–6, 270, 307–10, 329–30, 345–46, 353–54, 502–3, 511–14, 537–39, 555–56, 564–66, 593–94, 610–13, 646–47, 667, 676–92 (map at 685), 729–34, 20:99–100, 137–39, 243, 265–66, 305–6, 589–92, 606–7. GW to Hand, Feb. 7, Mar. 16, 1779; to Schuyler, Feb. 11, 26; to Maxwell, Mar. 25, 1779; Questions Answered … , Mar. 2, 1779, all in GWPLC. Many copies and extracts of correspondence about preparations for the campaign are in PCC, roll 183, item 166.

  59. PGW, Rev. 20:xxviii.

  60. PGW, Rev. 16:183, 19:612; GW to Knap, Apr. 27, 1779, GWPLC.

  61. PGW, Rev. 18:571; Richard K. Showman et al., eds., The Papers of General Nathanael Greene, 13 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Rhode Island Historical Society, 1976–2005), 3:145.

  62. PGW, Rev. 18:627.

  63. Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 53; PGW, Rev. 19:270.

  64. PGW, Rev. 19:511–14, 610–13, 729–30; Greene to GW, Mar. 2, 1779, GWPLC.

  65. PGW, Rev. 19:xxx, 203–6, 20:148.

  66. PGW, Rev. 21:217.

  67. PGW, Rev. 19:612, 20:335 (“Coin”).

  68. Mann, George Washington’s War, 28; William L. Stone, Life of Joseph Brant–Thayendanegea, 2 vols. (New York: Alexander V. Blake, 1838), 1:407.

  69. PGW, Rev. 20:335; Graymont, Iroquois in the American Revolution, 196 (Clinton warning); Mann, George Washington’s War, 29–33; Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 53; Haldimand Papers 21756:94, 21762:238, 21779:109–10; Flick, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 222–23.

  70. PGW, Rev. 20:349, 373, 403, 407, 429.

  71. Schuyler to GW, June 10, 1776, NYPL, GW, reel 1; PGW, Rev. 4:504.

  72. PGW, Rev. 20:307–8, 341, 658; GW to Schuyler, May 5, 28, 1779, GWPLC; GW to Commissioners for Indian Affairs, May 28, 1779, GWPLC.

  73. PGW, Rev. 19:377–78, 388–89.

  74. PGW, Rev. 20:90–93; Otis G. Hammond, ed., Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan, 3 vols. (Concord: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1939), 3:1–9.

  75. Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:48–53; PGW, Rev. 20:717–18; Stephen Brumwell, George Washington: Gentleman Warrior (London: Quercus, 2012), 346–47.

  76. PGW, Rev. 21:350.

  77. Frederick Cook, ed., Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779 (Auburn, NY: Knapp, Peck & Thomson, 1887), 39, 64, 182, 226.

  78. PGW, Rev. 20:606–7.

  79. Fischer, Well-Executed Failure, ch. 5; Glenn F. Williams, Year of the Hangman: George Washington’s Campaign against the Iroquois (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2005), ch. 11; PGW, Rev. 21: xxvii, 150–51, 253, 272, 291, 300, 323–24, 426–28, 726–32, 737, 749, 22:124–29, 196–200, 205; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:52–54, 57–78.

  80. DAR 17:187; Graymont, Iroquois in the American Revolution, 204–7; Flick, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 279–80 (incl. Guyasuta).

  81. Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 54; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:114–15.

  82. PGW, Rev. 21:184, 345–47.

  83. Cook, Journals, 7–8 (“scalped immediately” and skinned), 26–27, 71–72, 88, 94–95, 126–28, 155, 172, 231–32, 244 (“Drest them for Leggins”), 279 (“Sm. Skn.”); Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:107–12; Flick, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 282–84, 308–9, 316; PGW, Rev. 22:134–36, 301–4, 387, 406, 422, 537; Mintz, Seeds of Empire, 128. John Butler’s account of the battle is in DAR 17:197–99.

  84. Cook, Journals, 383; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:121; Flick, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 311.

  85. PGW, Rev. 22:528; Flick, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 310.

  86. Mann, George Washington’s War, 88.

  87. PGW, Rev. 22:529–30; Cook, Journals, 9, 12, 33, 45, 49, 57, 73, 89, 96, 100, 158, 164, 173, 176, 186, 233, 271; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan, 1257; Mann, George Washington’s War, 89–93. Susan M. S. Pearsall, “Re-Centering Women in the American Revolution,” in Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians, ed. Susan Sleeper-Smith et al. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 57–70, discusses this incident as part of a campaign of systematic violence again indigenous women in the Revolutionary War.

  88. Cook, Journals, 59.

  89. Cook, Journals, 54.

  90. PGW, Rev. 22:136.

  91. Kurt A. Jordan, “Seneca Iroquois Settlement Pattern, Community Structure, and Housing, 1677–1779,” Northeast Anthropology 67 (2004): 40–44; Mann, George Washington’s War, 69.

  92. I am grateful to William Kerrigan of Muskingum College, historian of apples in America, for this observation.

  93. Cook, Journals, 13.

  94. PGW, Rev. 22:531–33 (“grand Capital” at 531); Cook, Journals, 40, 48, 60, 75, 91, 99, 111, 142, 162–63 (piled up), 175, 188 (“beautiful flats”), 206, 235 (“Most Horrid Manner”), 301; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:129–32; Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 253; Mann, George Washington’s War, 94–100.

  95. Graymont, Iroquois in the American Revolution, 218; Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 254–55; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:117–19, 133–34.

  96. PGW, Rev. 22:522–23.

  97. PGW, Rev. 22:533; Cook, Journals, 303; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:134.

  98. Jordan, “Seneca Iroquois Settlement Pattern,” 40–41, lists seventeen Seneca settlements destroyed by Sullivan; Mintz, Seeds of Empire, 153–54; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:147–148, 158, 161–62, 165–67; PGW, Rev. 22:772; General Orders, Oct. 21, 1779, GWPLC.

  99. William N. Fenton, ed., Parker on the Iroquois (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1968), 20; PGW, Rev. 22:433–36, 752–53; Pennsylvania Archives, 1st ser., 12:155–58, 165; Louise Phelps Kellogg, ed., Frontier Retreat on the Upper Ohio (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1917), 56–66. (In Brodhead’s estimate of “30 m. Dollars” “m” stood for mille, meaning one thousand.)

  100. GW to Gates, Oct. 16, 1779, GWPLC.

  101. PGW, Rev. 22:669–70; Hammond, Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan 3:143–46; Graymont, Iroquois in the American Revolution, 219–20. On Tiononderoga earlier in the century, see Preston, Texture of Contact, 85–92 (tavern at 289).

  102. Mann, George Washington’s War, 75.

  103. June Namias, ed., A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison by James E. Seaver (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 104–5.

  104. Flic
k, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 296; Haldimand Papers 21765:140.

  105. Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, ch. 5.

  106. ASPIA 1:140.

  107. PGW, Rev. 23:57.

  108. Fischer, Well-Executed Failure.

  109. Sayengeraghta quoted in Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 132–33.

  110. Haldimand Papers 21765:141 (revenge); William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison, 10 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 162–77), 2:37; Cook, Journals, 101 (“nests”).

  111. Mintz, Seeds of Empire, 162; Fischer, Well-Executed Failure, 192–93; Peter C. Mancall, Valley of Opportunity: Economic Culture along the Upper Susquehanna, 1700–1800 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 139.

  112. Haldimand Papers 21774:121.

  113. Holden et al., Public Papers of George Clinton 3:458–59, 5:883–84; James Clinton to GW, Jan. 7, 1779, NYPL, GW, reel 1; PGW, Rev. 18:549n, 552–53, 602–3, 19:412–13.

  114. Oneida chiefs to Van Dyke, June 18, 1780, GWPLC; GW to Van Schaick, June 22, 1780, GWPLC; Haldimand Papers 21764:86–87 (prisoners), 21767:91, 99, 104, 125, 129, 157; DAR 18:208.

  115. Writings of Washington 21:284–85.

  116. JCC 20:465, 25:491–92.

  117. Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 56–57; Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 270–80.

  118. Elizabeth Cometti, trans. and ed., Seeing America and Its Great Men: The Journal and Letters of Count Francesco dal Verme, 1783–1784 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1969), 16, 18, 109.

  119. Pickering Papers, reel 62, 157–74.

  120. Flick, “New Sources on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign,” 194.

  Chapter 12: Killing Crawford

  1. Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007); Daniel P. Barr, A Colony Sprung from Hell: Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744–1794 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014), 175–93; Honor Sachs, Home Rule: Households, Manhood, and National Expansion on the Eighteenth-Century Kentucky Frontier (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); Patrick Spero, Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), ch. 10.