Unsettling the West
Page 9
their efforts, though he may well have doubted whether haley would face
further punishment. if so, he had good reason: haley soon recanted his con-
fession and was sent across the mountains for trial. pennsylvania’s Bedford
county court extended haley’s term of service for eighteen months to com-
pensate his master for “gaol fees and loss of time,” but did not charge him
with murder. The events further underscored transmontane differences. in
the upper Ohio Valley no one objected to putting haley in chains, but across
the mountains in Bedford the court did not even prosecute him. Brown and
his neighbors did not necessarily like indians any more than the people of
carlisle and Bedford, but they hesitated to defend those who killed them.38
amid these periodic murders, redstone colonists and two creeks sene-
cas continued to meet, drink, and trade, notwithstanding occasional dis-
putes. in 1767, men from redstone and cheat river reportedly took up arms
after Beaver river seneca hunters took some of their horses. in response, the
“Whole people” of the senecas’ town brought the horses to Fort pitt. The
commandant assured the senecas that the redstone colonists lived outside of
British protection, but they returned the horses anyway, bringing the crisis to
an end. at a 1768 council, British officials complained that the two creeks
senecas took “rum and other Things” from traders traveling to other towns
downriver. The senecas likely considered the goods a toll exacted for the
containment, 1765–72
43
privilege of conducting business on their river, but they apparently stopped
the practice after the British complained. Their trading visits to redstone and
cheat river continued.39
during the early 1770s, though, imperial politics disrupted upper Ohio
commerce. colonial protests against British policies cut off merchants from
european manufactures, including the cloth, jewelry, and metal tools that
Ohio indians expected in trade. colonists who wished to buy their deerskins
increasingly offered a more abundant commodity: rum. indians soon com-
plained about both the lack of goods they wanted and the problems caused
by the influx of liquor. in april 1771, shawnees reported that in the past year,
nine of their people had died because of alcohol. in the four months that fol-
lowed, eight more indians died in alcohol- related violence in the pittsburgh
area alone. in september, a delaware leader noted that drunkenness had
caused eleven deaths in his town and that there was “not a Vil age any where
thro’ the country but what has had some people killed by drinking rum.”
not surprisingly, the influx of rum also launched a new wave of intercultural
violence. in early July 1770, a Fort pitt soldier shot and gravely wounded a
seneca man, sparking rumors that the British army had gone to war against
indians. instead, the soldier and the seneca had been drinking together in a
cabin— likely a makeshift tavern— across the river from the fort. They ar-
gued. They came to blows. The soldier, “a young Unexperienced lad,”
grabbed a gun and fired a load of buckshot into the seneca’s side. after the
seneca recovered— with the aid of an army surgeon— a two creeks delega-
tion visited Fort pitt to ask that the soldier be spared from punishment.40 The
shooting showed not only the dangers of mixing alcohol with firearms, but
also the ubiquity of intercultural drinking.
a few days after the shooting, about sixty miles to the south, two men,
two women, and a child from two creeks stopped to trade at the cheat river
homestead of a colonist named Wilson, then paddled away in Wilson’s canoe.
The senecas probably believed Wilson had sold them the canoe in exchange
for their deerskins, but Wilson claimed they had robbed him. he and several
neighbors pursued and attacked them at their camp farther down the monon-
gahela, killing one man. The survivors fled, leaving all their deerskins and
other possessions behind. some of the attackers pursued until a seneca shot
back and killed one of them. after the shootout, Wilson hurried downriver
to explain the events to george croghan. When the news reached two
creeks, the townspeople sent a large delegation to pittsburgh to explain that
their people had fired in self- defense. in a series of condolence ceremonies,
44
chapter 1
all involved reiterated their desire to keep the peace. in the midst of their
meeting, another haudenosaunee man appeared with news of further skir-
mishing, this time at redstone. two separate groups of indian hunters had
camped nearby to trade deerskins for blankets and other supplies. The colo-
nists, at least some of whom knew their visitors personal y, had little to sell
except rum. loud reveling ensued. at one camp, the haudenosaunee invited
two white hunters to join them, but the white men fled amid the carousing
and later complained that the indians had robbed and “abused them.” some-
where nearby, another group of haudenosaunee hunters reportedly ran-
sacked the homes of rum- selling colonists. as Wilson had done less than two
weeks before, the colonists pursued the indians on horseback, overtaking
first one group of hunters and then the other. One pursuer called out in del-
aware that they intended no harm, but others fired their guns as soon as they
caught sight of indians, who fled. no one was harmed, but the haudenos-
aunee hunters lost all their deerskins as well as other valuables.41
news of these assaults spawned rumors that Virginia had declared war on
indians. delaware, shawnee, and haudenosaunee communities “cal ’d in all
their hunters . . . [,] kept night watches about their towns,” and dispatched
delegations demanding an explanation. in a short council, croghan blamed
the recent shooting on rum and insisted that no one wanted war; White eyes
and a shawnee messenger promptly left to spread this version of events
throughout Ohio. meanwhile, at the indians’ invitation, a delegation from
redstone arrived to help clear the air. Their spokesman, Van swearingen,
freely admitted to selling the liquor that precipitated the latest incident, and
he pledged in the future to sell it only in smaller quantities. While faulting his
trading partners for drunken carousing and theft, he acknowledged that his
own companions had fired on the haudenosaunee against his orders, and he
pledged to return the goods they had abandoned when they fled. swearingen
and guyasuta exchanged mutual pledges of goodwill and promised to spread
news of their agreement among their respective peoples. not for the last
time, this seeming consensus among indian and colonial spokesmen belied
sharp divisions within their respective constituencies. according to croghan,
many indian leaders at the council with swearingen initial y called for “re-
venging the many insults they had received” by “attacking and driving the
Virginians over the mountains.” similarly, not all redstone colonists shared
swearingen’s desire for reconciliation.42 trusting in the peacemakers’ prom-
ises demanded a leap of faith.
For
the two creeks senecas, such faith was running out, bringing an end
containment, 1765–72
45
to their ambivalent friendship with redstone. When the town’s leaders vis-
ited pittsburgh to help patch up the crisis, they assured croghan they would
no longer visit the monongahela colonists to trade. The next spring, a shaw-
nee delegation invited them to move to the scioto Valley. increasingly wary
of their colonial neighbors, most of the townspeople began moving west in
the fall of 1771. Others moved upriver instead, likely to the Beaver river or
pine creek towns. By the spring of 1772 only a few families remained at two
creeks, and they soon departed for the scioto as wel . From their new homes,
the migrants brushed off guyasuta’s and Johnson’s pleas to return, reiterating
their independence from the six nations. They also rejected guyasuta’s pol-
icy of territorial concession and embraced the contentious pan- indian move-
ment. meanwhile, the deadly violence on the monongahela likely heightened
Ohio indian militancy. in the spring of 1771, unknown attackers killed a
white woman and her four children at a new homestead near the Kanawha
boundary. in 1772 the British army evacuated Fort pitt, shuttering the region’s
only semblance of imperial authority. British officials, clearly, would punish
neither indians nor colonists for intercultural murder.43
and yet peace endured. The sporadic violence of 1770 and 1771 failed to
trigger wider hostilities. divisions within both indian and colonial societies,
as well as the remaining alliances between them, continued to mitigate
against large- scale violence. Without six nations and cherokee backing, in-
dians who favored war had little hope of winning over others. neither
guyasuta nor his militant rivals could credibly speak for all or even most
Ohio indians, but guyasuta’s case for peace was an easier sel . similarly,
swearingen’s promises of goodwill rang hollow, but his redstone neighbors
carried out no further attacks. Upper Ohio colonists might sympathize with
the paxton Boys, but they lacked the unity and cohesion necessary to emulate
them. above al , the unavailability of even quasi- legal land title in Kentucky,
together with shawnee and cherokee policing, confined trans- appalachian
colonists to the upper Ohio Valley. despite widespread intercultural suspi-
cion, fear, and even hatred, intercultural violence remained sporadic. to
bring about the war that so many dreaded, something would have to change.
Chapter 2
patronage, 1773– 74
in early June of 1773, the hardman, the shawnees’ preeminent civil leader,
faced a diplomatic dilemma. several Virginians had appeared at chillicothe,
claiming to bring a message from Virginia’s governor. a veteran peacemaker,
the hardman had negotiated several treaties and championed the British al-
liance, but these Virginians presented a puzzle. They had failed to send news
of their coming in advance or bring wampum to validate their words: stan-
dard protocols that British emissaries had observed for decades. moreover,
they had circumvented the indian agents at pittsburgh, the usual bearers of
imperial speeches. The hardman thus doubted the visitors’ credibility, but he
worried that turning them away might antagonize Virginia. instead, his peo-
ple followed the standard protocol for greeting other nations’ spokesmen
when they “first [came] to make peace with them.” The hardman and other
civil leaders stayed away: they had no business with not- yet- allies. instead,
more than one hundred armed and painted warriors demonstrated shawnee
prowess with shouts, threats, and brandished weapons. Then the nation’s mil-
itary leaders welcomed their guests to a cordial council to exchange speeches.
But the strangers’ message muddled matters even more. With a trader, rich-
ard Butler, interpreting, Thomas Bullitt, the Virginians’ leader, explained that
his governor had sent them to colonize Kentucky. The announcement made
no sense. British agents had repeatedly declared that the king had forbidden
colonization west of the Kanawha river. The Virginians clearly misunder-
stood imperial policy, but setting them straight was the job of imperial offi-
cials. so the shawnees replied amicably, sent the strange delegation on its
way, and dispatched messengers to pittsburgh for answers.1
The meeting had gone smoothly enough, but the participants interpreted
it in ominously different ways. Bullitt believed that Ohio indians had
patronage, 1773–74
47
endorsed his plans. But as Butler pointed out, the shawnees “claim[ed] an
absolute rite to all that country” and looked to British authorities to set the
Virginians straight. Butler urged Bullitt’s men to win the shawnees’ trust by
not “destroying the game.”2 instead, the visit began a dizzying series of events
leading to a series of brutal murders, the burning of Ohio indian towns, and
a pitched battle involving over 1,500 combatants. Ultimately a Virginian
army, led by governor John murray, the earl of dunmore, marched on chill-
icothe, demanding that shawnees acquiesce to Kentucky’s colonization.
some accounts of these events portray dunmore as a greedy schemer,
while others credit him with attempting to bring order to a lawless region,
but nearly all trace the conflict’s origin to Ohio Valley colonists’ unruliness
and impulsive violence.3 By contrast, beginning the story with Bullitt’s visit to
chillicothe blurs the distinction between bloodthirsty frontier folk and the
gentlemen who aspired to govern them. rather than a hobbesian nightmare,
the Ohio Valley remained largely peaceful until Bullitt’s surveyors moved
into Kentucky. Their widely publicized venture signaled dunmore’s new pol-
icy of aggressive expansionism, which triggered a land rush the following
spring. Far from reflecting disregard for state authority, the initial wave of
killing in april 1774 resulted from colonists’ close attention to dunmore’s
plans. nor did indians retaliate impulsively. The victims’ friends and relatives
attacked no colonial homesteads until weeks after the initial murders, when
dunmore’s agent blamed the bloodshed on shawnees and reiterated Virgin-
ia’s claim to Kentucky. indians and colonists had disliked one another long
before dunmore arrived on the scene, but it took the governor’s pursuit of
land— and countless others’ pursuits of the governor’s patronage— to plunge
the region into chaos.
Beginning in October 1772, advertisements in Virginia and pennsylvania
newspapers announced that dunmore had appointed Bullitt “surveyor on
the Ohio” and that he planned to set out “early next spring” to “locate . . .
claims.” news of Kentucky’s imminent colonization spread quickly. in far- off
pittsburgh, it reached pennsylvanian John connol y, a onetime surgeon’s
mate who had received land certificates for serving in pontiac’s War. con-
nol y had since met and married susanna sample and became “intimately
associated” with one of her relatives: the indian agent and land speculator
george croghan. The
older man had repeatedly rescued connol y from debt,
then got him a job as an army surgeon in illinois. The journey west brought
48
chapter 2
the young doctor to the miles- long portage around the Fal s of the Ohio,
where he saw visions of future wealth and power. a man who owned land
around the rapids, he saw, could reap immense profits from the passing traf-
fic. Over the following years, as he dodged creditors and set broken bones,
connol y sought patrons to help him become that man.4
in 1770, connol y finagled a meeting with Virginian george Washington,
who avidly recorded his glowing descriptions of Kentucky. The future presi-
dent spurned connol y’s proposals but returned to mount Vernon deter-
mined to acquire such land himself. With the help of William crawford,
Washington had already bought desirable tracts in the upper Ohio Valley, but
that region’s jurisdictional disputes and quasi- legal speculative schemes left
no commonly recognized authority to resolve the tangle of overlapping
claims. “as soon as a mans back is turnd,” crawford complained, “an other is
on his land.” The mayhem left scant chance for profit, so speculators increas-
ingly looked west to Kentucky, a region filled with rich soil and empty of
colonists. Their hopes required a change in imperial policy. in 1768, the six
nations had sold most of the region to the crown, but British officials had
quickly prohibited colonization west of the Kanawha. in 1772, london explic-
itly barred Virginia from issuing new western land grants. instead, the minis-
try entertained a proposal to establish a new Ohio Valley colony, called
Vandalia, to be run by a coterie of British and american investors.5
to overcome such obstacles, Virginia speculators turned to their new
governor, an ambitious and well- connected scottish nobleman. starting in
1771, Washington repeatedly pressed dunmore to grant Kentucky lands to
the holders of military certificates, like himself and connol y, or risk losing
hold of the region completely. Westering colonists, speculators argued,
poured uncontrol ably into new lands. “not even a second chinese wal ,” one