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Quakers & Native Americans Quaker History, Volume 77, Number 1, Spring 1988, pp. 1-30 The Role of Quakers in Indian Affairs 2 Quaker History During the French and Indian War At stake was control over the expenditures of the Assembly. After Braddock's Defeat on 9 July 1755 Lieutenant-Governor Robert Hunter Morris and his allies in the proprietary party, which was by Robert Daiutolo, Jr.* mostly Anglican and Scotch-Irish, Old Light Presbyterian in com- position, pressed the Assembly to pass a bill that would create a "regular" militia and give him its patronage, but the Assembly The role of Philadelphia Quakers in Indian affairs during the countered with its own bill that would create an elective militia and French and Indian War is one aspect of Pennsylvania history that fund it through a property tax. The latter bill was the work of the needs reappraisal, for their inadvertent contributions to the winning Quaker party, which sought to reduce Penn' s prerogatives by tax- of the war have not received appropriate acknowledgement. A gen- ing his estates. This tack, however, caused problems for the Quaker eration ago Theodore Thayer wrote that their "pacifism and idealistic assemblymen, for they were reluctant to compromise their pacifist approach to Indian affairs led them unwittingly to provoke an un- scruples, though their party was now led by Benjamin Franklin, a just charge [of land fraud] against the Proprietors," and that their non-Quaker whose program of frontier defense and taxation of pro- accomplishments "in the way of reform in Indian affairs" would prietary estates appealed to a majority in the Assembly. In late have been greater and more lasting if they ' 'had remained aloof from August, under pressure of military necessity, the Franklin-led Provincial politics."1 Agreeing with this assertion, Daniel Boorstin Assembly appropriated £1 ,000 "for the King's use," a phrase which added that their activities "can hardly be called anything but eased somewhat the strict Quaker conscience.5 meddling."2 Recent studies have not altered this judgment, yet the Settlers, too, were split in politics and in religion. Pietist Germans fact is that the provincial government could not have pacified the backed the Quaker party because of its traditional program of toler- frontier so quickly as it did without the assistance of the Quakers, ation and pacifism. They belived that the Quaker party would pro- who acquitted themselves well as peacemakers precisely because they tect their religious and civil liberties from the kind of encroachment were practical enough to level a just charge of land fraud against they had suffered in Germany, and they suspected that Proprietor the proprietors.3 Moreover humanitarianism was their main legacy Thomas Penn and his placemen were not unlike the noblemen from to the nineteenth-century Quaker reformers of national Indian whose clutches they had escaped. Opposed to the alliance of Pietist policy.4 Germans and pacifist Quakers were the Lutheran and Reformed On the eve of the war the Quakers were embroiled in a bitter Germans who supported the proprietary party and its policy of fron- political struggle with Proprietor Thomas Penn and his placemen. tier defense. Scotch-Irish, New Light Presbyterians appreciated the Quaker party's antiproprietary stance because, being poor, they were fearful of losing their religious and civil liberties. They were against * Robert Daiutolo is an instructor of history at Villanova University. He wishes an appointive militia under the governor's control and for an elec- to thank Francis Jennings for sending him a manuscript of his forthcoming book on the French and Indian War. It was invaluable. tive militia directed by the Assembly. Scotch-Irish, Old Light 1.Theodore Thayer, "The Friendly Association," Pennsylvania Magazine Presbyterians and Anglicans upheld the proprietary party's defense of History and Biography 67, 4 (October 1943), 376. policy because they owed their wealth largely to the Penn family. 2.Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Although Proprietor Thomas Penn was Anglican, most Anglicans Random House, 1958), 57. 3.Francis Jennings' brilliant forthcoming book, entitled Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Year's War, is obviously larger in 5. The material in this paragraph has been drawn from the following: Jack scope than this article, which covers in detail the activities of the Friendly D.Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748-1783 Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 151-152; James H. Hut- son, Pennsylvania Politics, 1746-1770: The Movementfor Royal Government 4.In February 1795 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting established the Committee and Its Consequences (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972), for Promoting the Improvement and Gradual Civilization of the Indian Natives. 16-22; Joseph E. Mick, Colonial Pennsylvania: A History (New York: Charles The agents of the Indian Committee worked among the Oneidas and Sénecas E.Scribner's Sons, 1976), 211-212. For convenience the word lieutenant has of northern Pennsylvania and southwestern New York from 1795 to 1803. See been dropped from the title of lieutenant-governor. The real governors were Sydney V. James, A PeopleAmong Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth- the proprietors, in whose place the lieutenant-governors acted as governors. Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 302-309. 1 The Role of Quakers in Indian Affairs3 4 Quaker History cooperated with defense-minded Quakers in order to check the in- Kelly, the doorkeeper, obtained it and leaked it to proprietary fluence of the Germans and Presbyterians.6 leaders, who published it, condemned it, and intensified their In the autumn of 1755 circumstances conspired to frustrate the demands for an acceptable defense measure. Naturally Kelly was fired." desires of the Quakers. The annual election on 1 October maintained the composition of the Assembly mainly because of Benjamin The Assembly and Governor Morris soon compromised on their Franklin's program.7 In the Ohio Valley the French armed, muni- positions regarding the issue of property taxation. On 25 November tioned, and supplied their Delaware and Shawnee allies, and then the Assembly passed a militia bill that authorized free men to form on 16 October a party of Delaware warriors forayed into a settle- militia units and elect their officers, contingent on the approval of ment on Penn' s Creek south of Shamokin (now Sunbury), killing the governor as commander-in-chief.12 Next day the governor signed and scalping thirteen men and women and an infant, and taking it into law while the Assembly cut the hated property tax from an eleven young men and children into captivity.8 In early November appropriation bill after learning that Proprietor Thomas Penn news of a massacre at Great Cove (now McConnellsburg) reached himself would contribute £5,000 from quitrent arrears to the defense Philadelphia along with petitions for military action from three fron- of the province. The Assembly appropriated £55,000 to augment tier counties, yet to the chagrin of both the Quakers and Governor the gift, but at the same time provided that it possessed the exclusive Morris the Assembly refused to drop the property tax from its power to grant and control suplies. To handle the appropriation, defense bill.9 Thus twenty "weighty" Quakers "under a close exercise the Assembly created an eight-man committee that included two of mind" drafted an address against the measure and gave it to Isaac defense-minded Quakers. Acceding to the Assembly's provision, the Norris II, the Assembly speaker and leading defense-minded Quaker, governor approved the appropriation bill on 27 November.13 In reac- who presented it to the Assembly on 1 1 November. In it they declared tion, on 16 December a committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting their reluctance to comply with the property tax because in effect drafted an epistle urging noncompliance and then sent it to the it would violate both their "peaceable Testimony" and their monthly meetings.14 "religious liberties." Instead, they recommended that the Assembly The winter of 1755-56 brought shocking news from the northern raise revenue to "cultivate" Pennsylvania's old friendship with the frontier: the neutral Delawares living on the Susquehanna River had Indians and to aid settlers in distress.10 In order to prevent criticism taken up arms against the English. On 24 December a war party of the Quakers, the Assembly suppressed the address, but Edward attacked and burned the Moravian mission of Gnadenhiitten (seventy-five miles northwest of Philadelphia), killing and scalping men, women, and children, while Delaware and Mahican converts hid nearby. In December war parties from Wyoming (now Wilkes- 6.The material in this paragraph has been drawn from Jennings, chap. 11, Barre) and elsewhere on the Susquehanna forayed into the and Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth ofDemocracy, 1740-1776 (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Tulpehocken Valley and beyond the Delaware River, killing with 1953), 41-42. abandon, burning homes, taking scalps, captives, and plunder. Then, 7.Thayer, 43. to escape retaliation, the warriors led their families and captives north 8.Thayer, 44; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New to the village of Tunkhannock, leaving behind a war party that was Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 227; Marietta, 150; Joseph J. Kelley, Jr., Pennsylvania: The Colonial Years, 1681-1776 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1980), 334-335; William A. Hunter, Forts on the Pennsylvania Frontier, 1753-1758 (Harrisburg, Penn- 11.Kelley, 336-337. sylvania: The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1960), 173. 12.Pa. Arch., II, 516-519; Hunter, 184; Kelley, 338; Thayer, 46; Esmond 9.Hunter, 174-179; Kelley, 335-336; Marietta, 152.
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