UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date: 9 February 2005 I, __William H. Bergmann______________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctorate of Philosophy in: History It is entitled: Commerce and Arms: The Federal Government, Native Americans, and the Economy of the Old Northwest, 1783-1807 This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _Wayne Durrill_________________ _Geoffrey Plank________________ _Christopher Phillips__________ _Andrew Cayton_________________ _______________________________ “Commerce and Arms: The Federal Government, Native Americans, and the Economy of the Old Northwest, 1783-1807” A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY In the Department of History of the College of Arts and Sciences 9 February 2005 by William H. Bergmann M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2000 B.A., Franklin and Marshall College, 1998 Committee Chair: Wayne K. Durrill 2 Abstract This dissertation is a study of the changing economy of the Old Northwest for the period following the Revolution until the War of 1812. It examines the role of the federal government in bringing the market economy to the West. This work relies on local and national sources from the United States and Canada to give a fuller picture of the interstices of policy and economy during a critical period in the economic history of the region. This study supports Andrew Cayton’s assertion that the federal government had an important influence on the history of the early West. But whereas his focus is on politics and ideology, this dissertation examines the impact of government on the economy. This study also refutes Eric Hinderaker’s assertion that federal government fostered western growth by not interfering in its economic affairs. Following the Revolutionary War, settlers began to move into the Ohio Valley hoping to transplant a market economy in the West. When they did, they entered into a region largely controlled by the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Wyandot, Ottawa and others who practiced a semi-subsistence trade economy. The local conflict for economic control of the Ohio Valley manifested itself as a drawn-out property war. This property war ended when Anthony Wayne and his military defeated the northern tribal confederacy and took control of the region’s economy. After Wayne’s victory, the United States built military and post roads, which facilitated the movement of goods and people, and encouraged settlements along specific lines of trade. The federal government also spent great sums of money through the Indian Agency, the factory system and territorial governments to assimilate Native Americans into the American economy by making them European-style farmers. These efforts failed and much of the money ended up 2 in the hands of western traders. By 1807, the western market economy again threatened the productive power of the northern tribes. The Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa helped form a new confederacy by addressing the economic problems many villages faced. The defeat of the confederacy in the War of 1812 removed regional economic control from the hands of the confederacy. 4 Acknowledgements During the course of this dissertation, I have been helped by some very generous people. I want to thank Wayne Durrill for guiding me through much of my graduate career. He encouraged me to remain in academia when I had nearly convinced myself to leave. Throughout my work on this project he provided me with the space to explore my own ideas while also providing intellectual guidance whenever I asked for it. He has been an excellent advisor and I appreciate his friendship. Geoffrey Plank, in many ways, acted as a junior advisor to this dissertation. He read each chapter draft as I wrote it and gave me excellent critiques that have greatly improved my arguments. Over the years, Christopher Phillips provided steady encouragement and challenged me intellectually in ways I am only just beginning to appreciate. I also wish to thank Andrew Cayton for agreeing to read my dissertation and serve on my committee. The staff at the Cincinnati Historical Society unintentionally set me on the path of this project, for which I thank them heartily. Along the way they have kindly answered my many questions and helped me locate information I was not sure existed. Likewise, the staffs at the Ohio Historical Society, the Kentucky Historical Society, The Filson Historical Society, and Margaret I. King Library at the University of Kentucky all provided invaluable assistance to my research. At the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa and at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., I was probably less noticeable to the staff. Nevertheless their help allowed me to negotiate more easily the very weighty collections at those repositories. 5 At the University of Cincinnati I found an inviting intellectual environment and good friends. The Department of History has generously offered me fellowships to research and write my dissertation. Hope Earls has steadily watched over me throughout my career and offered me nothing less than an undying friendship, for which I am eternally grateful. For their loyal friendship and advice, though living afar from me, I want to thank, Adam Chill, Babette Faehmel, and Barbara Hahn. Closer to home, which is really what Cincinnati became for me, Stephen Rockenbach, Michael Rhyne, Kevin Bower, Ted Petro, and Clinton Terry have been the best of friends. They and the rest of Dissertations Anonymous—our writing group, where we overcame the mental and physical hardships of “dissertating”—read and critiqued most chapters in this volume, often when they were in very rough form. Both reading their work and listening to their comments helped shape many of my ideas. Finally I would like to thank those closest to me. My parents gave me all the latitude I wanted as a child and an adult to find my own path. They and my brothers often did not care to hear my incessant ramblings about one or another aspect of history, but they tolerated these sessions without complaint. Likewise Lara Schaefer’s unwavering support has carried me through the past few years. She very often picked me up when I was down. And of course, without the comic relief of Ernie, Buster and Dea, I surely would have gone insane. 6 Table of Contents Dissertation Abstract 3 Acknowledgments 5 List of Maps 8 Introduction 9 Chapter 1. American Expansion into the Ohio Valley: A Property War 16 Chapter 2. Wayne’s Campaign: War as Economy by other Means 54 Chapter 3. The Road to Greenville: Reshaping the Western Economy 97 Chapter 4. Webs of Commerce: Roads, Trade, and Government 138 Chapter 5. Defining the Market: State Directed Assimilation and the Economic Transformation of the Northwest 183 Epilogue: Wars of Economy Redux 223 Bibliography 240 7 List of Maps Map 1. Major Rivers and Lakes of the Northwest 20 Map 2. The Northwest, 1791-1795 37 Map 3. Map of the Northwest, c. 1808 196 Map 4. Native American Land Cessions, 1795-1809 225 8 Introduction On December 31, 1804, Thomas Jefferson addressed the Senate regarding a recent treaty made with chiefs of the Sac and Fox. In return for a large land cession along the Wisconsin River, these tribes received an annuity of $1,000. This treaty “strengthens our [the United States’] means of retaining exclusive commerce with the Indians,” he pronounced, “a right indispensable to the policy of governing those Indians by commerce rather than by arms.”1 Jefferson’s comments here suggest a larger federal policy regarding the West than historians have recently acknowledged. The United States did not trade with Native Americans on neutral ground, nor did they control the West. Indeed, the tribes of the Northwest, most notably the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Wyandot, and Ottawa, among others, commanded not only land and resources in the West, they also dictated its economy. Almost all of these tribes practiced a form of semi-sedentary agriculture mixed with a rich fur trade economy and most of this trade traveled north into the hands of British merchants and traders in Upper Canada. When American settlers and speculators moved west they reproduced the growing market economy that characterized the economy of the eastern states. Jefferson hoped that by engaging Native Americans more intimately with market forces, primarily by forcing them into debt, they could be more easily managed and assimilated into the American economy. Trade therefore served two purposes for the federal government; it allowed Americans access to the resources of the West while also serving as a vehicle for the transformation of the western economy. Jefferson, in his remarks to the Senate, also alluded to the central role of the federal government in that transformation. For the United States to command the West, it needed to be 1 Thomas Jefferson to the Senate, 31 December 1804, and Articles of a Treaty, 3 November 1804, American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1: 693-94. 9 able to shape the terms of the western economy. The tools at the government’s disposal, according to his words, were commerce (policies and institutions designed to control trade), and arms (the military). Since the 1790s, the United States had used both means to alter the economy of Kentucky, Ohio and the Indiana Territory. Specifically, the federal government had done so in three ways. First, the military wrested control of the western economy from the tribes of the Northwest Territory through warfare. Second, the federal government sponsored the construction of roads throughout the region, some of them as a part of the war effort. Other roads the Post Office ordered constructed as a part of that institution’s extension into the West.