Unsettling the West

by Rob Harper

  mutual Father,” pledging to make the delawares and english “one people,”

  with “one King . . . to govern us.” he soon learned, no doubt to his chagrin,

  that he had embraced King george just as hundreds of thousands of colonists

  were disowning him. On 9 July, a Virginian messenger issued demands but

  failed to mention either the king or dunmore’s promises. in a private meet-

  ing, with his own interpreter, White eyes careful y explained his arrange-

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  ments with the recently deposed governor. in reply, the messenger explained

  dunmore’s fall from power but assured him that Virginia would “amply re-

  ward him for his services and damages.”27

  recognizing in crisis an opportunity, White eyes cultivated the rebels’

  friendship just as he had pursued the king’s. in the months that followed, he

  helped persuade wary indians to meet with congressional emissaries and

  tried to squash British warnings of treachery. at an October council, he vo-

  cal y supported Virginian demands and praised the “commands of our sav-

  iour whose hands were nailed to the cross and sides peirced for our sins.” at

  the same time, he reminded the council that when the english first arrived in

  america, his people had “made room for you to set down by Us,” suggesting

  that colonists’ right to their land originated not with the king they now

  spurned, but with the generosity of their indian neighbors. he reiterated that

  the Wyandots had similarly given land to the delaware and specified the

  boundaries in detail. he also explained delaware government, identifying

  the leaders of the turtle, turkey, and Wolf phratries and noting the influence

  of delaware women, whom he credited with keeping their people out of war.

  he delivered a separate speech and wampum belt from the mothers of his

  nation, who expressed joy at the prospect of continued peace, and urged the

  Virginians to share this message with “your mothers our elder sisters the

  White Women,” perhaps hoping they would perform a similar role among

  their own people.28 Throughout, he balanced concessions and plans for

  change with reminders that delaware women and men remained in charge of

  their own people and land.

  in the months that followed, White eyes continued promoting his agenda,

  with mixed results. he spent the winter in philadelphia lobbying the rebels to

  honor dunmore’s promises. in april congress voted to provide the delaware

  with a minister, schoolmaster, and blacksmith, a steady supply of trade goods,

  and a formal arbitration system to resolve disputes, but the United states

  failed to fulfill these commitments. congress also balked at recognizing dela-

  ware territorial claims, chiefly for fear of antagonizing the six nations. White

  eyes would spend the next three years trying to overcome this setback. But he

  personal y received two horses, saddles, and $300 in cash, and a promise to

  resolve a dispute with two philadelphia merchants. in addition, Virginia

  awarded him £57— about ten times the wages of a common militiaman— for

  his services during dunmore’s War. his goals remained elusive, but within a

  few months he had transformed himself from the trusted al y of a royal gover-

  nor into a favored friend of the rebel congress.29

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  Other Ohio indian leaders balked at White eyes’s program of cultural

  transformation, but they similarly sought the rebels’ friendship. The six na-

  tions council “scolded” Ojibwes and Odawas for spreading British warnings

  of colonial aggression and “reproved” members of their own league who con-

  sidered going to war. guyasuta, another onetime dunmore al y, now accom-

  panied congressional emissary richard Butler on a tour to invite Ohio

  indians to a peace council. at delaware, Wyandot, haudenosaunee, and

  shawnee towns, guyasuta repeatedly berated his hosts for not trusting the

  colonists. such doubts remained legion, but many male and female leaders

  seemed eager to befriend the rebel congress. They repeatedly equated But-

  ler’s invitations with the restoration of old alliances. a group of haudenos-

  aunee leaders addressed Butler as “Onas,” their old name for the governors of

  pennsylvania, and urged that “the Old love & Friendship that was made in

  Old times” be made “new and bright as ever.” mekoche shawnee spokesmen

  told Butler that they still held the old wampum “that made us relations,” ask-

  ing that “as it was of Old let it be again.” These cal s for restoring old ways

  contrasted sharply with White eyes’s vision of radical change, but they also

  reflected a similar desire to foster a personal and political kinship that bal-

  anced interdependence and autonomy.30

  These efforts to befriend colonists cost some communities dearly. in the

  winter of 1775– 76, a band of shawnee men seized twenty prisoners, including

  two small children, and marched them over 150 miles, guarding them care-

  ful y to prevent escape. The story echoes many other tales of early american

  captivity, except that the captors raided shawnee homes, and tore apart shaw-

  nee families, on behalf of Virginia. not for the first time, colonial emissaries

  had demanded that Ohio indians hand over wartime captives, since adopted,

  as a condition of peace. many adoptees came only after the warriors threat-

  ened to “take their scalps” instead. several later escaped Virginia and returned

  to their adoptive families. The two children, though, had been born and raised

  as shawnees. Their mother had escaped from Virginian slavery and found ref-

  uge in the scioto towns, where she met their shawnee father. in 1774, the

  shawnees handed her over to dunmore, and they did so again after she es-

  caped back to her family. But at the October treaty conference, Virginia’s com-

  missioners “insisted upon having the two children” as wel . The otherwise

  conciliatory cornstalk balked, arguing that “as the children were Bagat by our

  people we thought it very hard they shou’d be made slaves of.” But other lead-

  ers gave in. many opposed their choice— hence the warriors’ use of force— but

  enough accepted it to overcome the families’ opposition.31 much like White

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  eyes’s services to congress, shawnees undertook this awful task to secure

  peace and friendship with their troublesome colonial neighbors. Virginia’s de-

  mands challenged shawnee leaders to exercise sovereignty in european terms:

  by controlling people and territory. For a time, such concessions carried the

  day, with the proponents of violent resistance pressed to the margins.

  even so, indian leaders’ submission to revolutionary demands sparked

  resentment and hostility. early in 1775, shawnees killed two delaware hunt-

  ers, probably in retaliation for that nation’s support for dunmore. cornstalk

  later performed condolence rituals to restore the two nations’ friendship, but

  even he privately berated guyasuta and the delawares for acting like “dogs or

  servants” to the British. in august 1776, a colonist “accidental y” shot a dela-

  ware woman near pittsburgh, but the d
elaware council quickly brushed the

  incident aside, faulting the victim for going to the town “for rum.” The coun-

  cil’s readiness to forgive and forget helped convince their newly appointed

  secretary that they were the americans’ “sensear friends,” but the injured

  woman, and any number of other delawares, no doubt saw the episode dif-

  ferently.32 With each new american imposition or broken promise, not to

  mention outright assault, the value of White eyes’s and cornstalk’s hard- won

  friendships with the United states, and their own credibility as leaders and

  spokesmen, came further into question.

  some indians rejected the pro- peace platform entirely. in august 1775 a

  Wyandot named snip, whose friend had died at Virginian hands the year

  before, decided to go to war. On his way toward Kentucky, some haudenos-

  aunees persuaded him to turn back, but then he met two men, one British

  and one Wyandot, bringing a load of trade goods up the scioto. according to

  snip, the white man, John edwards, admitted he had served in dunmore’s

  army. When they camped, snip killed him in his sleep. The Wyandot trader

  fled and snip made off with their goods. Word of the killing reached the san-

  dusky Wyandot towns during a visit from Butler. dunquat, the sandusky

  Wyandots’ preeminent civil leader, announced the news “with tears in his

  eyes” and immediately performed a full condolence ceremony. Wyandot

  women confronted snip with a large wampum belt, signifying their commu-

  nity’s condemnation, and demanded that he return the stolen goods “& not

  bring evil on them.” he bowed to the pressure and handed over his plunder.

  This outcome hardly measured up to european standards of justice, but it

  accorded well with Wyandot ones, and the events had transpired in Wyandot

  territory. above al , both Butler and the Wyandots needed to put the incident

  behind them to move on with the pressing work of diplomacy.33

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  snip was not alone. in the summer and fall of 1775 a mohawk called

  pluggy began cobbling together a motley coalition of haudenosaunees,

  shawnees, and Wyandots who staunchly opposed the colonization of Ken-

  tucky. many, like snip, had lost loved ones in dunmore’s War. pluggy himself

  had attended the governor’s peace council, only to return home and find “his

  blood relations lieing dead”: victims of a Virginian surprise attack. Believing

  he “could not depend on the faith of a treaty at al ,” pluggy repeatedly taunted

  and threatened congressional emissaries and warned indians to distrust co-

  lonial promises. colonists themselves sometimes corroborated his warnings.

  in a meeting with indians along the Ohio, Virginians boasted that they would

  soon cross the river to seize indian land. in another encounter a former cap-

  tive, after asking after his adoptive shawnee mother, similarly warned of an

  imminent invasion. When such threats proved unpersuasive, pluggy and his

  allies turned to exaggeration, deception, and subterfuge. after the edwards

  murder, messengers hurried to tell the pekowi and chillicothe shawnees that

  “the Windots had struck” the colonists, recasting an isolated murder as a na-

  tional declaration of war. But they urged the pekowis and chillicothes to

  keep cornstalk’s mekoche shawnees in the dark. a few weeks later, militant

  mohawks, Wyandots, and Odawas warned the shawnees— again circum-

  venting the mekoche— of another impending invasion. But the Virginians

  remained south of the Ohio, and pluggy’s warnings won him few supporters.

  The militants’ activities alarmed their neighbors: mekoche shawnee women

  repeatedly warned american emissaries that the pekowis and chillicothes

  wanted war. But until the end of 1775, none followed snip’s deadly example.34

  to make a more compelling case for war, pluggy and his allies looked to

  the British to endorse their cause, but they found little encouragement. Brit-

  ish officials had suggested recruiting indian allies since the outbreak of hos-

  tilities, but guy carleton, the governor of Quebec, instructed his subordinates

  merely to befriend the great lakes nations, so that the crown could count on

  their aid in the future. at detroit, lieutenant governor henry hamilton lav-

  ished gifts on visiting indians and avidly warned them against Virginian per-

  fidy but stopped short of an open call to arms. he did urge indians to spy on

  the rebels’ movements, and he persuaded Wyandot allies to seize and hand

  over John dodge, a sandusky trader and congressional spy. pluggy and his

  allies twisted such statements to bolster their cause. in one telling, hamilton

  had promised “to suply them with amunition & much more” if they went to

  war. But rather than encouraging open hostilities, hamilton advised indian

  nations to fight only if the Virginians sent an army across the Ohio.35 Without

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  more explicit British support, few in Ohio cared to undertake a war with

  their colonial neighbors.

  in late december, pluggy and his allies seized an opportunity to more

  forceful y press their case. While scouting around Boonesborough, a small

  party of militants found two colonists out hunting. They killed and scalped

  one, a man named mcQuinney, and captured his companion. it was the first

  attack on the infant colony in months. They brought mcQuinney’s scalp back

  to Ohio, where they proudly presented it as a symbol of the war they wished

  to wage. But most Ohio indians still responded cool y. at sandusky, Wyandot

  leaders declared they would “have no hand in such proceedings.” One revolu-

  tionary official dismissed the killers as “a few insignificant rascals.” hoping

  for a better response from the British, pluggy and his allies hurried to de-

  troit. When hamilton greeted them, they presented him with mcQuinney’s

  scalp, calling it “a little meat to make you some broth”: an invitation to en-

  dorse their cal s for war. caught off guard, hamilton fumbled the transac-

  tion. First he declined the scalp, explaining that he wished to avoid suggesting

  that “he had authorised them to take it.” Then, second- guessing himself, he

  took the scalp, only to “return it instantly untill such time as all the other

  nations met.” if the nations went to war, hamilton promised, he would ac-

  cept the scalp then. having confused everyone, he offered his guests “some-

  thing to refresh themselves” and promised to see them again in a few days.

  he soon resumed his familiar refrain, advising indians to spy on the colo-

  nists’ movements but not to attack them.36 rather than either endorsing or

  censuring the militants’ call for war, hamilton hedged, hoping to keep their

  allegiance while dodging responsibility for their actions.

  Thanks in part to hamilton’s waffling, the first half of 1776 brought almost

  no deadly intercultural violence. early in spring, a group of Wyandots at-

  tacked three colonists near the Fal s of the Ohio, killing a man named Willis

  lee, wounding one of his companions, and plundering their camp. But the

  event apparently stemmed from a peaceful encounter gone bad: the Wyan-

  dots had met w
ith lee’s employer, speculator richard henderson, just a few

  days before. according to two colonists, the killers were “justly irritated” by

  henderson’s behavior. They also declined to scalp the dead man, suggesting

  that they viewed the incident as a private quarrel rather than an act of war.

  The episode could have triggered further violence, but did not. lee’s friends

  reportedly swore “Vengence against all indians they should meet with,” but

  they met with none and did not pursue the killers. resulting rumors of war

  drove many Kentucky colonists eastward, but most returned after learning

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  that “the greatest part of the news [was] false.” For over two months after

  lee’s death, colonists reported no new attacks. meanwhile, at sandusky, dip-

  lomats from several Ohio nations resolved again to remain at peace “even

  though one or two foolish young men may do what is wrong.”37 The incident

  amplified intercultural resentment, and heightened fears of bloodshed, but

  led to no further hostilities.

  Finding little support around Ohio and the great lakes, pluggy and his

  allies looked in another direction. in early 1776, militant haudenosaunee,

  shawnee, and Odawa women designed massive wampum belts— one mea-

  sured nine feet long— to call other nations to war. That spring, fourteen men

  carried the belts south, taking a long detour to avoid Kentucky colonists.

  after seventy days they reached the cherokee town of chota, where they

  called the entire nation to council. When all had gathered, the northerners

  appeared, their faces painted black, and recited a litany of colonial offenses.

  a mohawk speaker declared that the Virginians “had without any pro-

  vocation come into one of their towns and murdered their people” and

  added that they had dunked British agent guy Johnson “into a hogshead of

  Boiling tar.” an Odawa called on all indian nations to unite against “their

  common enemies.” Final y, a shawnee complained that Virginia had “un-

  justly brought war upon their nation” and filled Kentucky “with Forts and