by Rob Harper
Unsettling the West
early american stUdies
Series editors:
daniel K. richter, Kathleen m. Brown,
max cavitch, and david Waldstreicher
exploring neglected aspects of our colonial,
revolutionary, and early national history and culture,
early american studies reinterprets familiar themes
and events in fresh ways. interdisciplinary in character,
and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600
to 1850, the series is published in partnership with
the mcneil center for early american studies.
a complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
Unsettling
the West
Violence and state Building
in the Ohio Valley
rOB harper
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
copyright © 2018 University of pennsylvania press
all rights reserved. except for brief quotations used for
purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book
may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
published by
University of pennsylvania press
philadelphia, pennsylvania 19104- 4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
printed in the United states of america on acid- free paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
library of congress cataloging- in- publication data
names: harper, rob (historian), author.
title: Unsettling the West : violence and state building in
the Ohio Valley / rob harper.
Other titles: early american studies.
description: 1st edition. | philadelphia : University of
pennsylvania press, [2018] | series: early american
studies | includes bibliographical references and index.
identifiers: lccn 2017026858 | isBn 9780812249644
(hardcover : alk. paper)
subjects: lcsh: Ohio river Valley—history—18th century.
| political violence—Ohio river Valley—history—18th
century. | indians of north america—political activity—
Ohio river Valley. | colonists—political activity—Ohio
river Valley.
classification: lcc F517 .h37 2018 | ddc 977/.01—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017026858
For my parents,
Gordon Peacock Harper and Jill Robinson Harper
And in memory of my grandparents,
John Leslie Harper, Marjorie Peacock Harper, John Guido Robinson,
and Pauline Hall Robinson
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Contents
note on naming
ix
list of abbreviations
xiii
introduction
1
chapter 1. containment, 1765– 72
23
chapter 2. patronage, 1773– 74
46
chapter 3. Opportunity, 1775– 76
67
chapter 4. reluctance, 1777– 79
95
chapter 5. horrors, 1780– 82
119
chapter 6. Failures, 1783– 95
145
conclusion
173
notes
179
Bibliography
223
index
237
acknowledgments
247
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Note on Naming
in late 1776, cornstalk and Kee we tom, both shawnee, visited a Virginian
outpost at the mouth of the Kanawha river. during their visit a third man
arrived, a stranger to al . he presented a Virginian commander, matthew ar-
buckle, with a string of wampum, a sign of goodwil , but he spoke a language
that none of the others could understand (per great lakes diplomatic norms,
he likely assumed that his hosts would provide an interpreter). When ar-
buckle pressed the shawnees for an explanation, they disagreed: cornstalk
identified the stranger as a Wyandot, but Kee we tom called him “a g_d d_n
mingo.” The words mattered. at the time, the Wyandot nation was divided
on the question of war and might well have sent a diplomatic message to the
Virginians. By contrast, the word “mingo,” to arbuckle’s ears, would have
denoted the most militant of Ohio indians: western haudenosaunees who
had recently killed several Virginians and exchanged gunfire with his garri-
son. Both Wyandots and haudenosaunees spoke iroquoian languages, which
would have sounded similar— and equal y unintelligible— to both shawnees
and Virginians. soon thereafter unknown indians captured one of arbuckle’s
men; in retaliation he imprisoned the ethnical y ambiguous stranger. a few
weeks later, cornstalk negotiated a prisoner exchange, bringing the crisis to a
close. he had been correct— the man was Wyandot— but the confusion about
what to call him might easily have ended in bloodshed.1
historians, like eighteenth- century diplomats, must choose our words
careful y. like painters mixing pigments, or composers blending sounds, we
mix and match ingredients, and assemble them into a larger whole whose
import, we hope, amounts to something greater than the inchoate heap we
x
note on naming
began with. if we choose words wel , and deploy them with care, they may
conjure up images, bring characters to life, navigate a marketplace of compet-
ing and complementary ideas, and— above al — tell stories. it is delicate work,
and unlike most storytellers, we must ever remind our audience of the evi-
dence undergirding the stories we tel . clio is an exacting mistress.
in wrestling our verbiage into some kind of sense, we must reckon with
the powers and perils of naming. This is all the more true when contending
with the history of colonialism, which functions, in part, by replacing indige-
nous languages, stories, and names with colonial ones. in the revolutionary
Ohio Valley, any given person or place might be named in any number of
ways, depending on both the namer and his or her audience. haudenosaunee
people traditional y refer to one Virginian colonist by the name hanodago-
nyes, which translates roughly as “town destroyer.” his contemporaries vari-
ously referred to the same man as “general,” “excellency,” “master,” and more.
But most english- language histories identify him as “george Washington”—
the name he called himself, and the name by which most readers recognize
him. according to some sources, the name of guyasuta (or Kiashuta, or Kay-
aghshota), a seneca leader who alternately befriended and fought against ha-
nodagonyes, translates as “stands up (or sets up) the cross,” but if one visits
the seneca- iroquois national museum, one finds it rendered as “standing
paddles.” perhaps some anglophone chronicler, seeing christian symbolism
at every turn, heard a description of long, upright pieces of wood and imag-
ined a cross. similarly, delaware people referred to one of their lea
ding diplo-
mats by a term— variably spelled coquai,tah,ghai,tah, Koquethagechton, or
Quequedegatha— that means, by one account, “the man who keeps open the
correspondence between his own & all other nations.” someone else took the
name to mean “man who keeps an eye on europeans.” Others simplified it
still further. in consequence, in his own time and since, english speakers have
referred to coquai,tah,ghai,tah by the pseudo- translation “White eyes.”2 But
however bad the translation, White eyes himself apparently accepted it during
his lifetime, perhaps out of convenience: he knew who he was. clear answers,
and perfect translations, are elusive. in the pages that follow i refer to individ-
uals by the names that readers are most likely to recognize. But as you read,
keep in mind that such names often hide from view any number of other
meanings, misunderstandings, and stories.
additional problems arise with the names of peoples. The haudenos-
aunee, including guyasuta’s senecas, referred to Washington’s people as
“assaragoa,” often translated as “long Knife,” in reference to a cutlass that a
note on naming
xi
former governor once wore to a treaty council. The first governor of another
province had introduced himself as “penn”; when the haudenosaunee asked
what this meant, someone showed them a quill pen, earning his successors
the name “Onas,” or “Feather” (much as guyasuta’s paddles turned into a
cross). White eyes’s delawares called all transatlantic migrants “schwonnaks,”
which translates roughly as “salt beings,” al uding to their journey across the
ocean. But anglophone readers will more readily recognize the terms Virgin-
ians, pennsylvanians, and europeans. similarly, the people whom english
speakers call “delaware” refer to themselves as the lenne lenape, or “real
people.” guyasuta’s nation cal s itself O- non- dowa- gah: the term “seneca”
original y referred to a single vil age. They belong to a league of six nations
known to themselves as the haudenosaunee, or people of the longhouse, but
referred to by others as “iroquois,” a term of uncertain, but decidedly non-
haudenosaunee origin. similarly, those who call themselves ani- yunwiya are
known to english speakers as cherokee, and those who call themselves Wy-
andots are sometimes referred to as hurons. The dangerous word “mingo,”
used at times to identify all western haudenosaunees, derived from a dela-
ware root that translates roughly as “untrustworthy.” The list goes on. But a
people’s use of one name to refer to itself does not necessarily entail the rejec-
tion of familiar alternatives: senecas, cherokees, and delawares, among oth-
ers, general y accept these names, despite their nonnative origins.3
i refer to all such groups by the names with which they most commonly
identify themselves to others, using the most widely recognized spellings:
hence Virginians, pennsylvanians, english, irish, haudenosaunees, senecas,
delawares, cherokees, shawnees, Wyandots. as much as possible, i favor
these specific terms to misleading generic ones. When referring general y to
the indigenous peoples of the place senecas call hah- nu- nah, or “turtle
island”— known to english speakers as north america— i regretful y fall
back on columbus’s mistake: “indians.”4 to identify native nations living in
and around the present- day state of Ohio— delawares, shawnees, senecas,
Wyandots, and more— i use “Ohio indians.” today’s allegany indian
territory— part of the seneca nation of indians— is located on the allegheny
river, a name of lenape origin. i use allegheny throughout. senecas con-
sider the allegheny part of the much longer river they know as Ohi:yó, but
anglo- american maps came to reserve the name “Ohio” for the portion
downstream from pittsburgh. similarly, in eighteenth- century sources, tus-
carawas was a vil age site located on the muskingum river; on today’s maps,
the river itself is called tuscarawas, a tributary of the muskingum. i stick
xii
note on naming
with the earlier version. chronology presents another difficulty: in the midst
of the revolutionary period, many schwonnaks stopped calling themselves
British and instead took up the name “american.” my text broadly follows
this shift: i refer to Britons as americans only after they themselves came to
identify with a new confederation, and later republic, they called the United
states of america.
i make one major exception to this rule of naming by self- identification.
as schwonnaks ceased being British, they also stopped calling themselves
colonists. Following their lead, american historians conventional y reserve
the term “colonist” to the period before 1776, when the continental congress
then declared Britain’s seaboard colonies “free and independent states.” But at
the time, the colonization of the Ohio Valley had only just begun and would
soon accelerate. i therefore use “colonists” to refer to all non- indians who
colonized the region, both before and after american independence. in
doing so, i jettison “settlers” and “settlement”: words that suggest peacemak-
ing, compromise, and the benevolent ordering of the land. These connota-
tions elide the brutality of dispossession, the tumultuous politics of
colonization, and the attendant bloodshed and misery. These transformative
processes, along with subsequent mythmaking, together comprise anglo-
american colonialism: the process that turned much of hah- nu- nah into the
United states.5
Abbreviations
aa4 and 5
American Archives: Consisting of a Col ection of Authentick
Records, State Papers, Debates, and Letters and Other Notices
of Publick Affairs. Fourth and fifth ser. Washington, dc,
1837. http://amarch.lib.niu.edu/.
Butler
Butler, richard. “Journal of general Butler.” edited by nev-
ille B. craig. The Olden Time 2, no. 10– 12 (Oct.– dec. 1847):
433– 64, 481– 527, 529– 31.
c&m
heckewelder, John. “narrative of the indian mission on
muskingum: captivity and murder,” [1786?]. Box 213, folder
16. records of the moravian mission among the indians of
north america. archives of the moravian church. Bethle-
hem, pa. microfilm.
chalmers
papers relating to indians, 1750– 1775. george chalmers pa-
pers, 1606– 1812. new york public library. microfilm.
cO5
colonial Office. cO5: america and West indies, Original
correspondence, etc., 1606– 1807. 119 microfilm reels. pub-
lic records of great Britain, ser. 4. White plains, ny: Kraus-
Thomson, 1987.
connol y
connol y, John. “Journal of my proceedings &c. commenc-
ing from the late disturbances with the cherokees Upon the
Ohio.” papers relating to indians, 1750– 1775, george chalm-
ers papers, 1606– 1812. new york public library. microfilm.
crBJ
Butler, richard. “captain richard Butler’s Journal.” historical
&nbs
p; society of pennsylvania.
cresswel
gill, harold B., Jr., and george m. curtis iii, eds. A Man
Apart: The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774– 1781. lanham,
md: lexington, 2009.
crp
Colonial Records of Pennsylvania. 16 vols. harrisburg, pa:
Theo. Fenn & co., 1838– 53.
xiv
abbreviations
daF
darlington autograph Files, 1610– 1914. dar.1925.07. dar-
lington collection. special collections department, Uni-
versity of pittsburgh, http://digital.library.pitt.edu/d/darling
ton/index.html.
dBp
daniel Brodhead papers. dar.1925.04. darlington collec-
tion. special collections department, University of pitts-
burgh, http://digital.library.pitt.edu/d/darlington/index.html.
ddZ
Diary of David Zeisberger a Moravian Missionary Among the
Indians of Ohio. 2 vols. edited and translated by eugene F.
Bliss. 1885; st. clair shores, mi: scholarly press, 1972.
denny
denny, ebenezer. Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny,
an Officer in the Revolutionary and Indian Wars. edited by
William h. denny. philadelphia: historical society of penn-
sylvania, 1859.
dgW
Jackson, donald, and dorothy twohig, eds. The Diaries of
George Washington. 6 vols. charlottesville: University press
of Virginia, 1976– 79.
dhdW
Thwaites, reuben gold, and louise phelps Kellogg, eds.
Documentary History of Dunmore’s War, 1774. madison:
Wisconsin historical society, 1905.
draper
lyman c. draper manuscripts. Wisconsin historical society,
madison.
ehp
hand, edward. papers, 1771– 1807. historical society of
pennsylvania.
FaUO
Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio, 1778– 1779. edited by
louise phelps Kellogg. publications of the state historical
society of Wisconsin, vol. 23. madison: state historical so-
ciety of Wisconsin, 1916.
FdUO
Frontier Defense on the Upper Ohio, 1777– 1778. edited by reu-
ben gold Thwaites and louise phelps Kellogg. publications of
the state historical society of Wisconsin, vol. 22. 1912; mill-
wood, ny: Kraus reprint, 1973.