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“ALL THE NATIONS TO THE SUN SETTING” , EXTENDING THE LIMITS OF EMPIRE IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Liberal Studies

By

Jeffrey Michael Zimmerman, M.B.A.

Georgetown University Washington, D.C. December 28, 2015

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©2015 by Jeffrey Michael Zimmerman All Rights Reserved

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“ALL THE NATIONS TO THE SUN SETTING” GEORGE CROGHAN, EXTENDING THE LIMITS OF EMPIRE IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA

Jeffrey Michael Zimmerman, MBA

Chair: Ronald M. Johnson, PhD

ABSTRACT

George Croghan was a mid-eighteenth-century British Indian agent. Born in

Ireland, he came to America and settled in in 1741. As an Valley fur trader he pushed far enough west to invite destruction of his Great Miami River depot by in 1752. Over time he befriended , Ohio Huron and Miami

Indians. Indian Department Superintendent Sir William Johnson rewarded his countryman’s effectiveness by appointing him western deputy. Britain’s victory in the

French and Indian War added Illinois to Croghan’s responsibilities. General Lord Jeffrey

Amherst led Britain’s war efforts; he was replaced by General , under whom Croghan had served at Braddock’s Defeat. ’s War ensued; Gage and

Johnson relied on Croghan, who knew the leader, to end it. However, Croghan’s focus became blurred by land speculation. Several western land schemes crafted by

Croghan and financier either failed or were cut short by the . Distrusted by both the Patriots and the British, and his finances ruined, George Croghan died in poverty in 1782.

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Two Croghan biographies exist, written in 1926 and 1958. In the latter, historian

Nicholas Wainwright focused on records he uncovered in the collection of the

Cadwalader family, whose progenitors had been Croghan’s Philadelphia solicitors and accountants. Croghan’s biography as presented herein relies largely on the papers of

General Thomas Gage and Sir William Johnson. This thesis also has two important human values and interdisciplinary subthemes: Croghan’s effective dealings with

Indians, and his appreciation of geopolitics and geography, particularly watersheds.

The Gage papers provide a generally unseen view of Croghan from a contemporary leader who relied on him greatly and was rarely disappointed. Journals of contemporaries who travelled with Croghan as well as Johnson’s papers present useful Indian data. While these native vignettes were perceived through European eyes and ears, Indian narrations appear accurately recorded. Comparisons of maps from different periods yield important information for the interdisciplinary subtheme.

The Cadwaladers had a vested interest in the payoff of Croghan’s speculations, leading Wainwright to judge him negatively. Croghan’s relationships with Gage and

Johnson, who both had frontier experience, dealt with British empire-building and

Francophile Indian reconciliation. Nineteenth-century historian C. Hale Sipe saw

Croghan as an effective servant of the crown and a positive force for Indian relations, conclusions with which this thesis agrees. Croghan had a hand in Amherst’s removal, but his greatest moment came when he reached an accord with Pontiac. Croghan’s legacy, particularly as regards the , was drowned out in the after the Revolution, but to some extent it was carried to by his Mohawk offspring. iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“All the Nations to the Sun Setting” has been a labor of love for three and half years; the associated Georgetown Doctor of Liberal Studies program, close to seven. I cannot say enough about my Chairman emeritus history professor Ronald Johnson.

Ron is just a great person; I wish I had known him my entire life. My first DLS core teacher, Ron later guided me through two semesters of directed readings in American and Canadian history. These involved a lot of coffee and included Timothy Shannon’s

Iroquois Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier. When I decided on George Croghan as a subject Ron advised, “Go find yourself a subject matter expert.” Then he cleverly asked if I knew that Tim Shannon was in my back yard.

In 2012 my wife Amy and I escaped Washington’s onerous economy by moving to Gettysburg. There I found myself to be one of two people who knew anything about history prior to 1863, much less 1763. The other was Tim Shannon, chair of Gettysburg

College’s history department. My friend, former Gettysburg management professor,

Colonel Bill Rosenbach, USAF, introduced us. Tim has become my friend, my mentor and my prodder. A published authority on eighteenth-century North America Tim was the “subject matter expert” that Ron knew I needed.

The third member of my committee is Adjunct Professor Kazuko Uchimura. As a descendent of eighteenth-century Palatine German and Ulster Irish immigrants to

British North America, I had sparred with Kazuko over the starting point of her

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immigration course “Becoming American.” For my part I read two more books than I had expected and wrote an extra paper, but Kazuko moved the start of her course from the nineteenth-century Irish to the seventeenth-century Dutch. When a graduate professor honors you in such a fashion you put her on your doctoral committee.

In the beginning my love of history was enriched by H. Clifton Osborn, my high school history teacher. Clif was arguably the finest history teacher I have had. His course on Modern and Contemporary Europe planted the seeds for my lifetime interest in Europe and North America. Once this project began forty-six years later, many others became cheerleaders, particularly the Thursday breakfast Gettysburg “Romeos.”

Two Romeos deserve special mention. John Murphy, my longest-standing Gettysburg friend and president of the local Notre Dame club, deciphered Dublin Anglicans.

Gettysburg Councilman Graham Weaver rode along on many trips to the Historical

Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I’m also indebted to Barry Ruderman of Barry

Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, Inc., of La Jolla, , who graciously permitted my use of images of three maps which he had previously sold. In my former

Gartner colleague, Richard Stiennon, and his lovely wife, Karen Ethier, hosted me for a week while I pored over the papers of Thomas Gage at the University of Michigan. At

Michigan’s William Clements Library, curators Clayton Lewis, Cheney Schopieray and

Brian Dunnigan, who was especially helpful with maps, worked closely with me to ensure I made the most of my research. Georgetown Assistant Dean Anne Ridder helped me avoid many administrative pitfalls; two DLS cohort-mates, Joyce Lussier and

Lieutenant General Bob Schmidle, USMC, were excellent sounding boards. Doctoral vi

program director and philosophy Professor Francis Ambrosio, a fabulous teacher in his own right, was always available to discuss the project on short notice.

Lastly I cannot thank my wonderful wife, Amy Miller Zimmerman, enough for her steadfast love and encouragement. She’s pretty sick of “Uncle George” as the family has taken to calling Croghan, but her understanding and support have never wavered. I know she will be glad to see both George and me graduate.

Jeffrey M. Zimmerman Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

December 28, 2015

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I have heard with pleasure what our Grand Children the Shawnese have said this day in Council, and I hope it is agreeable to you. I have been present at all the conferences you have held here this last year with all the nations to the sun setting, and as the peace is now confirmed and the ancient friendship renewed, I hope it will last to our latest generation. Be strong brethren, it is in your power to make this a lasting peace.

– Ohio Chief Tamaqua (Old Beaver), , April 7, 1760

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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v

CONTENTS ix

LIST OF MAPS x

INTRODUCTION 12

CHAPTERS

1. THE NEWFOUND WORLD 29

2. ALL THE NATIONS AT THE SWAMP’S EDGE 72

3. BEFORE OHIO: IRELAND AND PENNSYLVANIA 107

4. AUDACITY: OHIO 131

5. THE WAR YEARS 166

6. IMPERIAL HUBRIS: LORD AMHERST AT WAR 215

7. AN IMPERFECT PEACE: GENERAL GAGE AND PONTIAC 255

8. AFTER ILLINOIS: SPECULATION, LOSS AND REVOLUTION 301

9. PROGENY AND LEGACY: THE SUN RISING AND SETTING 347

CONCLUSION 375

APPENDIX A: EARLY 388

APPENDIX B: GEORGE CROGHAN GENEALOGY 393

APPENDIX C: PRÉCIS OF THE CREATION LEGEND 397

BIBLIOGRAPHY 399

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LIST OF MAPS

Map 1-1. Marc Lescarbot, “Figure de la Terre Nueve, Grand Riviere de Canada, et Cotes de l’Ocean en la Nouvelle France,” 1609. 32

Map 1-2. Vincenzo Coronelli, “La Louisiane Parte Settentrionalle,” 1693. 37

Map 1-3. Jacques Bellin, “Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France or du Canada,”

1755 39

Map 1-4. United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Satellite Map of the Great Lakes,” 2011. 41

Map 1-5. John Mitchell, “A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distance, Limits and Extent of the Settlements,” 1755. 43

Map 1-6. Reuben Gold Thwaites, “Fox-Wisconsin Rivers,” 2010. 48

Map 1-7. Pierre Bonnecamps, “Carte d’un Voyage dans La Belle Riviere en La Nouvelle France,” 1749. 53

Map 1-8. Guy Johnson, “Map of the Country of the VI Nations,” 1771. 62

Map 1-9. Paul A. W. Wallace, “Frankstown Path, East,” 1952. 64

Map 2-1. London Magazine, “A Plan of the Fort and Bay of Frontenac with the Adjacent Countries,” 1758. 82

Map 2-2. Johann Baptiste Homann, “Regni Mexicani seu Novae Hispaniae, Floridae, Novae Angliae, Carolinae, Virginiae,” 1720. 99

Map 3-1. Thomas Kitchin, “A Map of The Province of Pensilvania Drawn from the Best Authorities,” 1756. 120

Map 5-1. Christian Friedrich von der Heiden, “Der Gegen des Ohio Flusses, wo ohneit da von am 9 Iuly 1755,” 1760. 178

Map 6-1. J. Gibson, “The British Governments in Nth. America, Laid down agreeable to the Proclamation of Octr. 7. 1763,” 1763. 230

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Map 7-1. , “A Topographical Plan of that Part of the Indian Country through which the Army under the Command of Colonel Bouquet Marched in the Year 1764,” 1765. 272

Map 7-2. Guy Johnson, “Map of the Frontier of the Northern Colonies with the Boundary Line established Between them and the Indians at the Treaty held by Sir William Johnson at Frt. Stanwix in Novr., 1768,” 1768. 297

Map 8-1. Demis Gallery, “,” 2015. 327

Map 8-2. William Shepherd, “1774 Act,” 1923. 331

Map 9-1. William Guthrie, “, Reduced from Elihu Barker’s Large Map,” 1795. 356

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INTRODUCTION

[The Ohio territory] is so little known to the French and, unfortunately, too well known to the English. – Father Joseph Pierre de Bonnecamps, 1749

Marking a Meaningless Boundary

Roland-Michel Barrin, Marquis de La Galissonière, was a Navy man. Something of a rising star, he was well-connected as a Captain of the line in Louis XV’s Armèes

Navales. His peculiar appointment as Governor-General of New France came as a side- effect of Britain’s Royal Navy capturing the intended Governor, Marquis de

La Jonquière, on the high seas during the War of The Austrian Succession. During

Galissonière’s brief posting as Governor-General of New France his principal focus seems to have been on finding a way back to the fleet. To do so Galissonière understood that he need distinguish himself in Canada.

An able administrator who had performed a number of senior-level odd jobs for the French crown previously, Galissonière rose to the challenge. He found what he needed in the aftermath of the War of The Austrian Succession, a forgettable great- powers land campaign in central Europe which essentially resulted in a global status- quo-ante. For Galissonière the timing of the War’s end in the midst of his tenure in New

France provided a perfect solution. By reinforcing Anglo-French demarcations in North

America, loosely defined in the earlier Treaty of Utrecht, and restoring to France the all- important Louisbourg fortress guarding the mouth of the Saint Lawrence, the 1748

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Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle provided Galissonière the justification he needed to get back on the high seas.1

Nevertheless, before he left Canada Galissonière was anxious to show the extent of the Fleur de Lis more precisely in North America. In late spring 1749 he commissioned fellow naval officer Captain Pierre-Joseph Céloron de Blainville to demark not where New France ended in central North America but where the rest of it began.

Paddling and portaging through the northern swamp that fed the ,

Céloron, his Jesuit companion Father Joseph Pierre de Bonnecamps, and a moderately- sized company of French troops and Indian allies reached the river’s headwaters in mid- summer. 2 There, in a feeble attempt to establish French hegemony in an endless, abject wilderness, Céloron planted a lead plate bearing the coat-of-arms of the King of

France and several treaty references, presumably to legitimize his action in the eyes of any reader who extracted the object from its shallow grave and understood French.

1Étienne Taillemite, “Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel de la Jonquière, Marquis de la Jonquière,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto, /Université Laval, 2003), accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/taffanel_de_la_Jonquière_jacques_pierre_de_3E. Ironically, the Treaty included freedom for another French Admiral, the captured Jonquière, who was promptly posted back to New France as if nothing had ever happened.

2Use of the term “Indians” is generally preferred by historians of this period over the more modern “Native Americans” or in Canada “First Nations.” Except for the Conclusion, where these two later terms are significant to the discussion, the term “Indian” or “Indians” will be used throughout this thesis.

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This he continued to do until he reached modern-day on the lower Ohio

River.3

However well-intentioned and diplomatically-armed Galissonière and Céloron were, they were too late. Unencumbered by concern about treaties, at the second plate-burying ceremony near Venango (modern-day Franklin), Pennsylvania, English fur trader John Fraser briefly abandoned his well-established trading post and watched

Céloron from the safety of the woods, no doubt with some amusement. 4 Further, no sooner had Céloron and his entourage departed the Allegheny Valley than some

Anglophile Senecas dug up the first plate and carried it off to Sir William Johnson, New

York Governor George Clinton’s agent for Indian Affairs, at his estate on the Mohawk

River.5

Céloron encountered more English traders further down river, after which he fired off a sharply-worded letter of complaint to Pennsylvania Governor James Hamilton about these incursions into “French” territory. Still later, at (modern

Pittsburgh Airport), Céloron encountered so many English traders and their Indian colleagues that he chose discretion over valor and held a council with them. (There is

3Walter Borneman, The : Deciding the Fate of America (: Harper Perennial, 2007), 15, 310. Borneman cites the journals of both Céloron and Father Joseph Pierre de Bonnecamps, a Jesuit explorer who accompanied Céloron.

4North American fur trade of this period is discussed in Appendix A.

5Christopher Gist, Journals with Historical, Geographical and Ethnological Notes and Biographies of his Contemporaries, ed. William Darlington and Lois Mulkearn (: J. R. Weldin & Co., 1893), 28- 29.

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no record of his having reported this to Hamilton.) Céloron planted his sixth and final plate where the Great Miami River flows into the Ohio west of Cincinnati.6

Rewarded for his administration in Canada by promotion to Rear Admiral,

Galissonière was reassigned to his beloved navy. He went on to glory by “defeating” the hapless British Admiral John Byng at Minorca in 1756. Byng, having clearly outwitted

Galissonière, surprisingly withdrew his fleet handing France the victory.7 Jean-Frédéric

Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas, Louis XV’s Minister of War, who had recommended

Galissonière for Admiral in the first place, endorsed him for promotion to Marshal of

France, citing, “…the promptness with which he sacrificed his repose, his inclinations and personal interests to the pressing needs of the service.” Galissonière was later promoted to Marshal but died before Louis could hand him the baton.8

6Ibid., 27-28. Almost exactly twenty years earlier M. de Lery Chief Engineer of Canada had made the same voyage. France claimed sovereignty over the region, but never acted on it for fear of inciting the Iroquois who also claimed it. The Iroquois were British allies, and as such were spelled out in the 1715 Treaty of Utrecht ending the War of the Spanish Succession of which Britain was the principal victor. Nonetheless, Utrecht or no France generally considered the Ohio Territory theirs. Further the native Shawnees had aligned with France, but almost fifty years earlier against the and not the Iroquois. Meanwhile, at the 1744 Lancaster Treaty without much authority the Iroquois essentially ceded Ohio to Britain, but the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle reversed this. Hence the Céloron expedition of 1749.

7The Twickenham Museum, François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (Twickenham, UK: Twickenham Museum, 2014), accessed September 9, 2014, www.twickenham.org-museum.uk/detail.asp?Content=27. Byng was Court-Martialed and hanged. The French philosopher and playwright, Voltaire, commented wryly about England in general concerning Byng’s execution, "Dans ce pays ci, c'est bon, de temps en temps, de tuer un amiral pour encourager les autres." (“In this country it is good, from time-to-time, to kill an admiral to encourage the others.”)

8Étienne Taillemite, “Roland-Michel, Barrin de la Galissonière, Marquis de la Galissonière,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1974), accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/barrin_de_la_galissoniere_roland_michel_3E.html. Meanwhile Maurepas, Louis XV’s Minister of War, who had recommended Galissonière for Canada in the first place, commended him for promotion, citing, “ . . . the promptness with which he sacrificed his repose, his inclinations and personal interests to the pressing needs of the service.”

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In 1750 Galissonière sent home a prophetic memoir about the importance to

France of maintaining and strengthening La Nouvelle France (New France). In it he observed that New France had always been at odds with the English in North America because of two French advantages. First France maintained numerous alliances with

Indian nations who, “. . . love us . . . a little, and fear us a great deal,” but who because of the enmity between England and France, “. . . may live independent of, and draw presents from, both.” Secondly, Galissonière noted that many Canadiens knew how to fight like Indians and thus comprised a threat to both the English and the Indians.

Galissonière suggested:

. . . `twill be seen that this superiority of the French in America is in some sort accidental, and if they neglect to maintain it, whilst the English are making every effort to destroy it, `twill pass into the hands of the latter. There is no doubt but such an event would be followed by the entire destruction of our settlements in that part of the Globe. This, however serious it may seem, would not be our only loss; it would drag after it that of the superiority which France must claim over England.

Galissonière went on to point out that the British Navy had contributed greatly to the reduction of France during the War of the Spanish Succession, a far-sighted hint that the same could happen in the New World. Mirroring his plate-burying project he remarked that New France could serve not only as a link to French possessions at the mouth of the but a barrier to English meddling in this region. Alluding to the unified Bourbon crowns Galissonière added, “[New France] is not less essential for the conservation of the Spanish possessions in America, especially of ,” going on to suggest that France might, “. . . share with the Spaniards the profit of the rich settle- ments they possess in America.” Galissonière summed up by exhorting France, “. . . not

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to omit any means, nor spare any expense to secure Canada, inasmuch as that is the only way to wrest America from the ambition of the English, . . . as the progress of their empire in that quarter of the globe is what is most capable of contributing to their superiority in Europe.”9 Céloron’s clerical travelling companion Fr. Bonnecamps captured France’s near-term dilemma more precisely at the tactical level. The Ohio the

Jesuit explorer penned in his journal was, “. . . so little known to the French and, unfortunately, too well known to the English.”10

In retrospect Galissonière’s and Bonnecamps’ observations and predictions were correct but incomplete. France did have excellent relations with neighboring

Algonquian Indian nations, but British leverage of the Iroquois League’s reputation among these Indians balanced this across the Saint Lawrence River.11 Canadiens, particularly French-Indian Métis, were exceptional Indian-style fighters as will be seen in the likes of the French-Ottawa leader Charles Langlade.12 Yet Britons and British

9Roland-Michel Barrin, Marquis de La Galissonière, Memoir on the French Colonies in North America December 1750 (Groningen: University of Groningen, 2012), accessed November 25, 2014, http://www.let.rug.nl-use-documents-1701-1750-marquis-de-la-galissoniere.memoir-on-the- french.colonies-in-north-America-1750.php.

10Borneman, French and Indian War, 16n7.

11Merriam-Webster,Inc. “Iroquois” Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam- Webster, Inc., 2014), accessed November 17, 2014, http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/iroquois. Rattlesnakes (Algonquian). The Iroquois League included (geographically from west to east) the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks. A sixth nation the Tuscaroras joined the Iroquois in 1723 upon relocating to New York. “Iroquois” was an appellation given the Haudenosaunee League by the French and the Algonquian Indians. The word is a French corruption of the Algonquian word “Irinakhoiw,” meaning “rattlesnakes.” New France allied itself with Algonquian Nations, who used this disparaging epithet when referring to the Haudenosaunee. Nonetheless, modern historians generally prefer the term “Iroquois” to “Haudenosaunee,” and the former is used in this thesis.

12Métis is a term used in Canadian lexicography to mean people of French and Indian descent. 17

Americans would soon follow their example, led by men such as British irregular force commander Major Robert Rogers. Great Britain would subdue La Nouvelle France by sea. British accession of Canada would eventually, “. . . drag after it that of the superiority which France must claim over England,” elsewhere. The Bourbon Compact in the form of the secret 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau would indeed throw a Spanish obstacle in the way of British control of the Mississippi Valley after the French and

Indian War. Finally, and most significantly to our story, although many traders were

French or were Francophile “English” like Pierre Chartier and merely licensed by a British colony, other true-hearted Britons like Virginian Hugh Crawford were already far down the Ohio Valley when Céloron buried Galissonière’s final plate at the Great Miami River in 1749.

Horizons of History

Had Céloron ventured up the Great Miami River he would have discovered the trading post of arguably the most audacious Briton of them all, the indomitable Dubliner

George Croghan, who had established his trading depot there in 1748 a year before

Céloron arrived.13 Croghan was undoubtedly, particularly in the eyes of the French, the

13Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press, 1959), 15. George Croghan was Irish not Scots-Irish as some historians have mistakenly labelled him. He came to America from Dublin, where his Anglican family was part of the Irish “Pale”, a community known for its loyalty to the British Crown. Appendix B reflects what is known of Croghan’s genealogy. Croghan established his trading post operation in 1748. He situated it near a Miami Indian town on the Great Miami River approximately 30 miles as the crow flies from the modern Ohio- border. This audacious move occurred seven years before Braddock’s Defeat near , over 250 miles east of Croghan’s Pickawillany depot. Wainwright is the most recent biographer of George Croghan. His 1959 work was based primarily on the Cadwalader Family Papers, a collection deposited in the 1930’s into the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, of which Wainwright was the Director. 18

most impudent of those English to whom the Ohio Territory was so well known.

Croghan was a major figure in British North America in his day but today his story is largely unknown. This thesis retells his story. Despite his stature among his contemporaries Croghan’s story has been rarely told.

Twentieth-century German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer suggested that individuals possess unique “horizons” of history. Gadamer argued that a story-teller’s understanding of history is linked to his or her prior involvement with the subject.

Gadamer referred to this as the “historically-effected character of understanding,” or one’s “horizon,” itself governed by one’s position in time which Gadamer called

“historically-determined situatedness.” One’s interpretation always begins from within this horizon. Understanding, Gadamer further argued, comes from not being trapped within one’s own horizon but emerges as the story-teller encounters another’s perception of the same subject. In this way the horizon of one’s understanding can change. Finally, fusion of horizons or Horizontverschmelzung begins to occur when what might otherwise be considered “unfamiliar, strange or anomalous” is folded into the historical dialogue.14 Thus a brief examination of earlier records of George Croghan’s story is in order.

14Jeff Malpas, “Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Happening of Tradition,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, 2014), accessed June 27, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/.

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Few figures in the annals of pre-Revolutionary North America have been more subject to widely varying “horizons” of history and less subject to the fusion thereof than George Croghan. Save for a few journals of his exploits in the post-French and

Indian War west, Croghan left few records of his own. Contemporaries, notably

Virginian and fellow Pennsylvanian and business partner

(the younger), left detailed records in which Croghan appears repeatedly as an important but nonetheless secondary figure. The colonial records of Pennsylvania likewise include several references to Croghan. On balance contemporary records of

Croghan are akin to peering into an Edison kinetoscope through an erratic shutter.

For reasons incorrectly attributed to Croghan’s apparent lack of record-keeping, for two hundred years modern knowledge of this pioneer was limited to anecdotal information from such contemporaneous journals and documents. Given the geographic scope of Croghan’s world and the incredibility of his exploits even these reports were often considered improbable.

From these thin sources three researchers – William Darlington in the early nineteenth century, C. Hale Sipe in the late nineteenth century, and Albert Volwiler in the early twentieth – developed largely postulated evaluations of Croghan which stood for years as his historical record. Like Gist and Trent before them neither Darlington nor

Sipe wrote specifically about Croghan. Born in 1815 Darlington edited and annotated

Gist’s journals as well as George Mercer’s Papers Relating to the of

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Virginia.15 In neither was Darlington particularly sympathetic to Croghan. Sipe on the other hand, born sixty-five years after Darlington, relied almost entirely on

Pennsylvania’s colonial records from which he developed a rather heroic picture of

Croghan. Only Volwiler was the professional historian of the three. Nonetheless, he found himself limited to much the same sources as his predecessors. In 1926 Volwiler dispassionately produced a droll if uncritical tome about Croghan, George Croghan and the Westward Movement, 1741-1782. Volwiler’s history of Croghan stood as the only historical narrative devoted solely to him for the next half century.16

A Twentieth-Century Update

Nonetheless, between 1741 and 1782 George Croghan was a major figure on the

North American frontier. His exploits matched those of “Mohawk Baronet” Sir William

Johnson, the intrepid Indian mediator , and other celebrated “Indian negotiators” of the period. His early successes in the dwarfed those of

General John Forbes who finally conquered the abandoned Fort Duquesne for the

British Crown a decade later. Croghan’s later audacity in the matched that of British Ranger Major Robert Rogers. Yet the intrepid Irishman worked equally effectively with both Rogers and Rogers’s enemy the mercurial Ottawa leader Pontiac.

15George Mercer, Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of , ed. William Darlington and Lois Mulkearn (Pittsburgh: Press, 1954.) Mulkearn, an established historian of this period herself, re-edited Darlington’s earlier work.

16Albert T. Volwiler, George Croghan and the Westward Movement, 1741–1782 (: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1926). Both Darlington and Sipe were attorneys. Darlington bequeathed his 14,000-book collection and his Indian memorabilia to the University of Pittsburgh, now housed there in the eponymous Darlington Library.

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Nonetheless, Croghan managed to stay out of trouble with his crown superiors more than the feisty ranger and, unlike many of his British peers, keep at arm’s length from

Pontiac’s randomly successful war effort.17 Croghan had a more strategic view than

Rogers and better tactical sense than Pontiac. He perceived the importance both of establishing good relations with the Great Lakes and Wabash River Indians and setting a specific boundary for the British Empire in the American west. While his successes were short-lived, by all accounts Croghan did both. Among his frontier colleagues and establishment investors alike, Croghan was very highly regarded, despite the fact that he advocated and realized a relationship with native Americans quite different from either. Yet today few have ever heard his name.

In the 1930s Philadelphia’s Cadwalader Law Firm, whose forebears were

Croghan’s solicitors, donated the company’s early records to the Historical Society of

Pennsylvania. Unknown to anyone at the time inside these musty trunks lay a trove of

Croghan’s records. These were later unearthed by the Society’s Director Nicholas

Wainwright. After considerable additional research, in many cases seemingly only to verify his findings from the Cadwalader collection, Wainwright published the seminal

(and to date only) accurate, scholarly account of this pioneer, George Croghan:

17Gregory Evans Dowd, War Under Heaven: Pontiac, The Indian Nations & The British Empire (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 147. Dowd addresses Pontiac’s successes and failures throughout Chapter Four of War Under Heaven, “Besieging Britons, 1763.” He summarizes events of the period from the Indians’ perspective on page 147. Earlier in this chapter Dowd notes that Pontiac had a good, initial strategy, but here he points out that tactical failures such as being repulsed at the major British forts, not obtaining ammunition from French traders, nor winning the support of Catholic Indians often thwarted the overall Indian war effort. 22

Wilderness Diplomat, in 1959. This record like Volwiler’s before it has stood as

Croghan’s story for another half century.

Because of his inclusion of the Cadwalader material Wainwright’s work is considerably more exhaustive than any earlier Croghan history. However, it remains curiously short of another rich vein of Croghan material. This is the collection of British

Major General Thomas Gage’s papers at the William Clements Library of the University of Michigan, painstakingly bound and indexed during the Second World War by the

Michigan Daughters of the American Revolution.18 Gage succeeded General Lord Jeffery

Amherst as British Commander of North America. He and Croghan knew each other from Braddock’s Defeat where Croghan served as Gage’s scout. It is in Gage’s correspondences both with Croghan and with others often in London about Croghan that Croghan’s post-war exploits in the far west are found. Yet Wainwright, clearly aware of the Gage papers, inexplicably cites this huge collection but several times in

Wilderness Diplomat and then often only to justify his preconception that Croghan was little more than a financial opportunist.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings Wainwright’s contributions to Croghan’s story are immense. Nonetheless, Wainwright was more historiographer than historian and much like Volwiler more researcher than story-teller. Meanwhile George Croghan is more than a chronology with exhaustive footnotes. He was a crafty manipulator of

18Thomas Gage, Papers, 1754-1807, American Series Volumes 1-139 and English Series Volumes 1-30 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1937). Hereafter cited as: Gage, Papers, AS(or ES):volume; or citing a specific document as: Document, Date, Gage Papers, AS(or ES):volume. Note that no page numbers are given papers in the Thomas Gage Papers Documents which are arranged by date within each volume. 23

“other people’s money,” a true frontiersman akin to , a backwoods warrior on a par with Francis Marion, and a pre-Revolutionary Indian diplomat every much the equal of Johnson and Weiser.

All the Nations to the Sun Setting

This thesis is a retelling of George Croghan’s story set against the backdrops of interactions between Europeans and Indians and the geographic stage on which these interactions played out in the eighteenth century. This is the intended distinction from works of the past. How George Croghan leveraged geography and human relations to the advantage of both the British Crown’s and his own interests is another important part of his story.

The thesis relies more heavily on the Gage papers than did Wilderness Diplomat; thus it focuses more Croghan’s activities in the far west as opposed to Pennsylvania and

Ohio. It incorporates several recent important contributions regarding the Ottawa leader Pontiac and his eponymous 1763 rebellion, notable Gregory Evans Dowd’s War

Under Heaven: Pontiac, The Indian Nations & The British Empire, cited previously. The thesis also reflects Paul Mapp’s recent interpretation of eighteenth century imperialism,

The Elusive West and the Conquest for Empire, 1713-1763.19

My hypotheses are these:

First: George Croghan sought to transform colonial attitudes toward Native Americans as he explored and opened the Ohio and Illinois territories to Great Britain. He advocated a cooperative way of dealing with Native Americans, a

19Paul W. Mapp, The Elusive West and the Conquest for Empire, 1713-1763. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 24

contrarian view in his time, but one which may have had positive implications for North America’s future.

Second: George Croghan’s image of British North America after the 1763 complemented William Pitt’s vision of a global British empire. Croghan sought to bring under the Union Jack not only the western lands which France ceded to Great Britain, but the indigenous western peoples as well.

Human Values

One of two secondary themes of the thesis concerns George Croghan’s interactions with Indians. Croghan’s conciliatory approach in dealing with Indians applied particularly to western Indians. Many examples exist, from his skillfully including Iroquois negotiators in western Indian conferences to leveraging his Shawnee connections to align the Kickapoos and Musquattamies with Britain, even after they had injured him and attacked his peace party.

Croghan also influenced British leaders and colonists. Those who did not always concur with his approach to dealing with Indians respected his skill in an alien and often terrifying domain. In post-Revolutionary Canada, Britain’s gratitude for Mohawk contributions to the war effort mirrored George Croghan’s approach to the Shawnees,

Miamis, and other independent-minded western nations, and in large measure set the tone for future Canadian Indian policy.

Croghan knew the French as well, working with traders and local officials of New

France as necessary. While little evidence exists that Croghan worked directly with

French Jesuits, he was nonetheless well connected to western Indians influenced by them. In many ways Croghan’s cross-cultural approach to problem-solving mirrored the flexibility of Jesuits who wove elements of Indian culture into Christianity, and placed

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him in a context with Jesuits and other European groups who treated Indians and their unique cultures and languages with respect and toleration. An example of this was when Croghan carefully bore a calumet, previously disrespected by a commander, to Sir William Johnson in New York for its symbolic use in a successful later treaty. Jesuit influence also may have been transmitted to Croghan by colleagues such as Gage, Johnson, and Johnson’s con-in-law, , who were inspired by priests of the order after fell into British hands.

Croghan’s most significant successes in reconciling Indian and European perspectives were his embassy to London to accelerate the removal of Lord Amherst, thus replacing his Lordship’s negative approach to Indians with more conciliatory worldviews similar to his own, and his clandestine discussions with Pontiac, successfully ending the Ottawa leader’s eponymous war. After Croghan died two approaches to dealing with Indians emerged, largely on opposite sides of the United States-Canadian border. Croghan’s values were ignored in the new republic, as reflected in the 1795 admission of Kentucky, the first new state carved from Indian lands. Ironically, Kentucky included the Shawnee hunting grounds which Croghan had worked to preserve.

Meanwhile, in Canada after the American Revolution British Commander General

Fredrick Haldimand ceded six hundred thousand acres to the Mohawks who, led by

Croghan’s son-in-law , had assisted the British war effort.

Croghan’s respect for Indians set him apart from eighteenth-century society as a whole. Largely because of this worldview he was a highly effective Indian negotiator, respected in virtually all circles. His considerate treatment of Indians reflected a unique 26

human value for his time. George Croghan serves as an excellent example of how some early Europeans valued Indian cultures, and sought to integrate native views with their own vision of an inclusive North American future.

Contents of the Thesis

Aside from the introduction and conclusion this work consists of nine chapters.

Along with George Croghan’s contributions to British North America they present the geographic and demographic milieu in Ireland before he left it and end with his death four decades after he arrived in America. Chapter 1 discusses the geography of the new world where George Croghan established himself both before he arrived in America in

1741 and afterward. Chapter 2 addresses the interaction of European and Indian participants: Dutch, Iroquois, British, French, Anishinabeg, Shawnees, Miamis and

Spanish French, British, Dutch and Spanish.20 Chapter 3 considers Croghan’s Irish background, why he left the old sod and his early days in Pennsylvania. Chapter 4 concerns Croghan’s exploits in Ohio from his early trading days on the to his impressive Pickawillany depot on the Great Miami River.

In Chapter 5 the French and Indian War is examined from the perspectives of both Croghan and his superior Sir William Johnson as they wrestled to balance winning the war with maintaining Indian alliances during it. Chapter 6 discusses British North

20Dowd, War Under Heaven, 9. Anishinabeg nations live on the northwestern Great Lakes. The term refers to Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Pottawatomies.

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America Commander-in-Chief Lord Jeffery Amherst’s attitude toward Indians generally and Johnson’s and Croghan’s successful efforts to speed his removal.

The bond between Croghan and Amherst’s successor General Thomas Gage is central to Chapter 7 which also emphasizes that relationship during Pontiac’s War.

Chapter 8 explores Croghan’s personal dilemma as both a crown Indian negotiator and an over-leveraged land speculator at the Forks of the Ohio (Pittsburgh) and in the agriculturally promising Illinois country. It examines his personal redirection from Indian agent to land speculator, subsequent financial collapse, and dire end-of-life situation.

This chapter also considers his ambiguous loyalty to the crown and the Patriot cause during the American Revolution. Finally Chapter 9 examines Croghan’s progeny in

Canada and the nascent United States, along with his and their impact on Native

American and First Nations policies.

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CHAPTER 1

THE NEWFOUND WORLD

When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come. – Leonardo DaVinci, ca. 1490

Introduction

Eighteenth-century man travelled fastest by water. While in the post-Mercator, capital sailing ship era this was patently evident at sea it was equally true inland.

George Croghan understood the North American continent’s northeastern waterways and watersheds better than most of his colleagues. In part this was true because he was so widely travelled within the continent, and in part because he learned from the

Indians. This chapter examines the major waterways, watersheds and other geographic features where Croghan, excepting his 1763-1764 voyage to Europe, lived and worked for the final forty years of his life. These geographic features affected not only Croghan but Native Americans and other Europeans as well. The story begins in New France on the Saint Lawrence River.

The St. Lawrence as a European and Native Boundary

The Saint Lawrence River was explored most and colonized only by the French.

France called this colony La Nouvelle France, but in time both France and England would simply call it “Canada.” Early French explorer and future Royal Governor Samuel de

Champlain chose to establish La Nouvelle France along the Saint Lawrence instead of in

Acadia () because the river was easier to control upstream. Dutch and 29

English raiders from the south already lurked in ’s many coves and natural harbors, and upriver Indians had been friendlier in the past to French fishermen than had Acadian natives. Meanwhile the Saint Lawrence had several important choke points, the most notable lying at a narrows Indians called “Kebec” from which the territory would ultimately take its name. Kebec was dominated on the north shore by a fortress-like rock outcropping. Champlain would christen this site Île d'Orléans, the location of Québec City.

The Saint Lawrence ranks thirteenth of world river systems. Only the Missouri-

Mississippi and Mackenzie River systems are larger in North America.1 The River begins at what the Indians called Cadaraqui (modern Thousand Islands) at the eastern end of

Lake Ontario and ends in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence between Newfoundland and Cape

Breton Island on the North Atlantic. Despite its width and power as at “Kebec” the river contains other strategic narrows. One such choke point lies at the Lachine rapids where

Champlain later established Montreal. 2

Marc Lescarbot accompanied Champlain in 1608. While a lawyer and not a cartographer in any way as expert as Champlain, Lescarbot is nonetheless credited with drawing the first map of this area. (Champlain began mapping the area with

1Environment Canada, “Facts and Figures,” The Saint Lawrence River (Ottawa: Environment Canada, 2015), accessed February 9, 2015, https://www.ec.gc.ca/stl/default.asp?lang=En&n=49C847E2- 1#hist.

2David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 236-238, 243 and 243 n58. Kebec means “a narrowing of the waters” in Algonquian. The plains west of the town were later named the Plains of Abraham, site of the final battle between France and Britain for control of in 1759. “Lachine” in Champlain’s time was two words, La Chine, or China. Here the early explorers thought was the start of France’s answer to the search for the passage to the Orient.

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considerably more accuracy in the following years.) Lescarbot’s map, Map 1-1 following, shows the early French fishing village of Tadoussac and the narrows at "Kebec.” (The word “Kebec” appears in the river directly beneath the letters

“MONTA” in the Indian name “MONTAGNAIS.”) Note also Lescarbot’s illustrations of grapevines, ears of corn and rows of plants which he positioned in the Iroquois region.

This is part of neither the map’s cartouche nor its scale legend. The Iroquois League was later known for its agricultural expertise, and this may be one of the earliest depictions of this talent. The map also shows Acadia, the area Champlain eschewed because of extensive British and Dutch interest. Many Indian nation names appear on Lescarbot’s map as well.

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Map 1-1. Marc Lescarbot, Figure de la Terre Neuve, Grande Riviere de Canada, et Cotes de l’Ocean en la Nouvelle France, 1609, Barry Ruderman Antique Maps.3

3Marc Lescarbot, Figure de la Terre Neuve, Grande Riviere de Canada, et Cotes de l’Ocean en la Nouvelle France, 1609, used by permission, Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, Inc., La Jolla, CA. [email protected].

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Lachine signaled the end of the navigable Saint Lawrence for capital ships of the day. At Lachine, Indians and French fur traders off-loaded their goods from the interior and returned their European treasures by canoes into the watery mystery of the west.

Here the European world ended and the American world began. Here Champlain established Ville Marie, later renamed Montréal.

A problem with establishing a French settlement at Montréal so far southwest along the river from Québec was its proximity to Iroquois hunting grounds. Further the

Saint Lawrence River had long been a border between Iroquois and Algonquian warriors. In part because of their ancient mutual distrust, and in part because of the same animus between England and France, the river soon became the de facto north- south European border in North America.

In the years preceding the French and Indian War French cartographers had not only re-mapped France proper but had mapped other parts of the world including

Russia and China. In the eighteenth century French land maps were considered the most accurate of all.4 However France seemed unable to map North America with any more accuracy than the British. Paul Mapp in his expose of imperial intentions prior to

1763 points to several factors limiting French mapmakers in North America. First not only did local natives not speak French nor did French mapmakers understand Indian languages, but Indians did not understand any other European languages, something

4Mapp, Elusive West, 171. Mapp says, “French cartographic techniques became a model for other empires.”

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French cartographers had found in Russia and China. Second no centralized North

American Indian authority existed to oversee French cartographic projects as had been the case in China. Third hostilities among Indian nations restricted their ability to guarantee French mapmakers’ safety beyond their local area.5

Like Lachine at Montréal other North American bodies of water promised routes to the Pacific Ocean and the Orient. British attempts to find the so-called Northwest

Passage began in Hudson’s Bay where the imaginary Isthmus of Ray beckoned more than a few explorers to a frozen death. The British were not alone grasping absurdity or finding futility in such searches. In 1722 Guillaume Delisle, then one of the world’s preeminent geographers, suggested that a “Sea of the West” lying between 43o and 45o north latitude might connect New France to the Pacific and the riches of the Far East.6

Grasping at this straw later in the same decade, French explorer Pierre Gaultier de

Varennes et de La Vérendrye searched for such a route near the Black Hills and the

Forks of the Saskatchewan. A Sioux war party finally put La Vérendrye’s quixotic expedition out of commission, killing his son Jean-Baptiste in the process.7

Following the War of the Austrian Succession which ended in 1748 official France began to question the value of New France’s western lands. No rich silver mines such as

5Mapp, Elusive West, 228, 233, 255.

6Ibid., 157-161 (incl. Map 21), 361. “Lachine” derives from the French La Chine (China).

7Ibid., 167, 303.

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the Spanish had found in Mexico were discovered, and French geographers were still unable to map the area correctly if at all.

The Great Lakes

Historians debate which European first “discovered” the Great Lakes, but unquestionably he was informed by natives. Champlain’s personal knowledge of the

Saint Lawrence River ended at Lachine. Nevertheless, Champlain was a geographer of insatiable curiosity. From his discussions with the Indians he learned many details of

Cadaraqui and and heard about other, much larger lakes farther west.8

The Great Lakes make up the largest fresh water system on earth, accounting for twenty-one percent of the world’s fresh water supply and eighty-four percent of the fresh water in North America. A tenth of the population of the U.S. lives in the Great

Lakes basin as does nearly a third of Canada’s. The largest Great Lake is Lake Superior with nearly two and a half times the water volume of the second largest lake, Michigan.

Superior dwarfs the smallest Great Lake, , with over twenty-four times its water volume. Curiously the third largest, Huron, has a longer shoreline than either

Superior or Michigan, a fact attributed in part to the large number of islands in Lake

Huron.9

8Fischer, Champlain’s Dream, 140-141. Champlain had previously served as a “King’s Geographer” in Paris.

9United State Environmental Protection Agency, “Great Lakes: Facts and Statistics,” (Washington: United State Environmental Protection Agency, 2012), accessed January 15, 2015, http://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/lakestats.html.

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French explorers provided European cartographers with manuscript maps showing these immense lakes, but the early map-maker who seems to have captured the Great Lakes most accurately was the Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli.

Coronelli was a Franciscan friar who had considerable influence at the French Court. An early globe-maker he is best known for the twelve-foot diameter terrestrial and celestial globes he created for Louis XIV, a project on which he labored for two years at

Versailles.10 Although generally reviled by history, Louis XIV had an immense impact on cartography. Coronelli was only one of several precise mapmakers to have the Sun

King’s patronage. Coronelli never travelled to North America. Nonetheless his 1696 map of the Great Lakes (Map 1-2) may have been informed by reports and possibly manuscript maps from French Jesuit missionary and explorer Claude Allouez, founder of the St. Francis Xavier mission in 1668 at the Rapides Des Pères on the Fox River south of modern Green Bay, Wisconsin. Coronelli’s map was the first to show the location of this mission.11

10Bibliothèque nationale de France, “L'aventure des Globes de Coronelli,” Les Globes du Roi-Soleil (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2015), accessed January 15, 2015http://expositions.bnf.fr/globes/arret/01.htm.

11Mark Steuer, “The Mapping of the Great Lakes in the Seventeenth Century,” Voyageur Magazine, Historical Review of Brown County and Northeast Wisconsin, Spring, 1984 (Green Bay, WI: Historical Society of Brown County and Northeast Wisconsin, 1984), accessed January 15, 2015, http://www.uwgb.edu/wisfrench/library/articles/maps/maps.htm. Coronelli placed the mission closer to Lake Winnebago than to the Rapides Des Pères. Steuer says Allouez founded the parish in 1669, but St. Francis Xavier de Pere church records claim Allouez held the first mass in 1668. Allouez’s bark chapel may have been constructed in 1669. See also: Saint Francis Xavier Parish, “History of Saint Francis Xavier Parish,” (DePere, WI: Saint Francis Xavier Parish, 2015), accessed January 28, 2015, http://www.stfrancisdepere.org/parHist/index.php.

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Map 1-2. Vincenzo Coronelli, La Louisiane Parte Settentrionalle, 1693, Library and Archives of Canada.12

12Vincenzo Coronelli, La Parte Settentrionalle, 1693, public domain, Library and Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, AMICUS No. 19039450. 37

Later French cartographers were less accurate than Coronelli. For example in

1718 Delisle made more mistakes in his Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississippi

(Map of Louisiana and the Course of the Mississippi) than Coronelli’s intuitive map a generation earlier. Improbably Jacques Bellin’s much later but far less accurate 1755 map (Map 1-3) may have been the source of the most commonly used maps of the

Great Lakes during the French and Indian War. A clue to why Bellin’s map was so widely used may lie in his title, Ingenieur du Roy et de la Marine (Engineer of the King and the

Navy), suggesting he was more a part of the French establishment than Coronelli. Isles

Pontchartrain and Philippeaux in Lake Superior for example are completely fictional.

Also by enhancing the size of Lake Erie Bellin pushed the British colonies farther south, making the region of New France north of this lake appear larger than it actually was.

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Map 1-3. Jacques Bellin, Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France or du Canada, 1755, Geographicus Rare Antique Maps.13

13Jacques Bellin, Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France or du Canada, 1755, public domain, Geographicus Rare Antique Maps, Wikipedia Commons, accessed January 14, 2015, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1755_Bellin_Map_of_the_Great_Lakes_-_Geographicus_- _GreatLakes-bellin-1755.jpg. 39

To best compare the relative accuracy of these two maps, a modern satellite photograph of the Great Lakes is useful (Map 1-4). Note that on the NOAA satellite map the two fictional Lake Superior islands on Bellin’s 1755 (Map 1-3) are gone confirming that Coronelli (Map 1-2) although much earlier than Bellin was correct. is massively out of scale on Bellin’s map; much less so in Coronelli’s. Also note that the angle of with regard to the other lakes is considerably more accurate in the Coronelli map. Finally, Coronelli’s depiction of Green Bay is almost identical to the satellite view, again suggesting that his source was Allouez.

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Map 1-4. United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Satellite Map of the Great Lakes, 2011, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.14

14United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Satellite Map of the Great Lakes, 2011, public domain, U.S. NOAA, Washington, DC, accessed January 12, 2015, http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20111019_glerlwaterlevels.html. 41

Ironically John Mitchell’s gigantic 1755 map of North America, long regarded as the official British map of North America, repeated many of Bellin’s errors including the imaginary islands in Lake Superior, the attitude of Lake Michigan, the scale of Lake

Huron and the distortion of Green Bay. Despite its inaccuracies Mitchell’s map was used widely by the British after the French and Indian War had ended. A portion of the

Mitchell map covering most of the Great Lakes appears as Map 1-5.

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Map 1-5. John Mitchell, A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distance, Limits and Extent of the Settlements, 1755, William Clements Library, University of Michigan.15

15John Mitchell, A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distance, Limits and Extent of the Settlements, 1755, used by permission, William Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 43

George Croghan, his superiors and his military colleagues would have used

Mitchell’s map or at least parts of it. The part presented in Map 1-5 shows many important locations of Pontiac’s War, although in 1755 Mitchell depicted the Ottawas

(Pontiac’s nation) as inhabiting the Upper Peninsula of modern Michigan. By 1760 the

Ottawas had relocated to Michigan’s lower peninsula west of Fort Pontchartrain

(Detroit) between Lakes Huron and Michigan.

While the dates of European discoveries of the five Great Lakes may be open to argument, by George Croghan’s time the lakes were an accepted part of the landscape.

At least the two more southeastern lakes Erie and Ontario were used regularly by

Europeans in trade and diplomacy. Voyages between Detroit and Oswego or Frontenac were routine, even accounting for the portage around Niagara Falls. Travelers tended to stay close to the shore, and Indian paddlers, guides, and interpreters typically formed part of any group making such trip. Another reason these two lakes provided a means for rapid movement was that they were aligned from east to west, much the same as the movement of Europeans across the land frontier in eighteenth-century North

America. In 1765 Croghan himself made the trip across the length of both lakes from

Detroit to Oswego by canoe. Four years earlier an enterprising Royal Navy Officer had constructed three sea-going sailing ships used to relieve Fort Detroit with supplies from the eastern end of Lake Erie. During Pontiac’s War these ships regularly bombarded

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Indian villages with naval gunfire, although the Indians soon learned that the guns of

Detroit’s fledgling navy could only reach so far.16

Less well understood was the difficulty of a trip north to Fort whose straits separate the northern reaches of Lakes Michigan and Huron.

Michilimackinac is over fifty miles south of the eastern end of Lake Superior, at this time separated from the lower lakes by the rapids of the Saint Mary River. In a moment of hubris during Pontiac’s War, Croghan’s superior, Sir William Johnson, ordered Croghan and Major Robert Rogers to Michilimackinac in the dead of winter. Croghan, probably savvier than Rogers about Great Lakes winters, advised Johnson ex post facto that he had sent in his place because Montour was a better interpreter.

Montour and Rogers never made it to Michilimackinac but they did make it back to

Detroit.17

The principal significance of the Great Lakes in the mid-eighteenth century was that they provided a rapid and relatively unimpeded means of transportation both among and between Indian nations and European trading posts, forts and settlements.

This is not to say that these huge interior bodies of water never conveyed warriors.

They did, but more often than not the lakes were a catalyst for commerce and

16Dowd, War Under Heaven, 132.

17William Johnson, Papers of Sir William Johnson ed. James Sullivan (Albany: The University of the State of New York, 1921), 3:301, 316. Hereafter cited as: Johnson, Papers, volume:page; or citing a specific document as: Document, Date, in Johnson, Papers, volume:page. This entire area prior to 1760 was Ottawa and Ojibwa territory. 45

diplomacy as opposed to the southern river frontiers, which divided North American nations.

The main Indian means of delivering furs to market was the birch bark canoe, crafted of stitched bark pieces. The birch bark canoe had the advantages of less weight and displacement over the heavier dugout canoe, carved out of a single, large tree.

Every major Indian village had access to the water of the Great Lakes. While the

Ojibwas developed the birch bark canoe to reach outposts on Great Lakes islands, a related Anishinabeg Nation, the Ottawas, whose name in Algonquian means “trader,” perfected its use on the Lakes to bring furs to market. Ironically, these skilled waterborne traders from the northern and western lakes would put the biggest damper on peace after the French and Indian War until the American Revolution.18

The Fox-Wisconsin Portage

The Jesuit mission of Saint Francis Xavier de Pere was established on the Fox

River just south of its delta on Green Bay in 1668. After local Indians burned down the original bark church in 1672, parish founder Father Claude Allouez commissioned a second church which opened four years later. This church also burned. Father Allouez was nothing if not persistent; a third, much larger church was built in 1684.19

The Fox River is not a tributary of the Mississippi watershed; rather it drains via

Green Bay into Lake Michigan. French pioneer Jean Nicolet explored the Fox River in

18Anton Treuer, Atlas of Indian Nations (Washington: National Geographic Society, 2013), 25-27.

19Saint Francis Xavier Parish, “History.” Father William DeKelver wrote the parish history in 1878. He observed that, “. . . hostile Indians burned the chapel and cabin on December 22, 1672,” but of the fire that destroyed the chapel built in 1676 he wrote only that it was, “. . . destroyed by fire.” 46

1634, but it would be Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet who in 1673 discovered the portage from the Fox to the Wisconsin River, which is a tributary of the Mississippi. This relatively short portage, depicted in Map 1-6, effectively connected the Saint Lawrence with the Mississippi. On this map the portage lies within the modern town of Portage,

Wisconsin; St. Francis Xavier was situated south of Green Bay at De Pere.

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Map 1-6. Reuben Gold Thwaites, Fox-Wisconsin Rivers, 2010, project Gutenberg EBooks.20

20Reuben Gold Thwaites, “Fox-Wisconsin Rivers, Historic Waterways,” in Six Hundred Miles of Canoeing Down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin Rivers, 2010, public domain, project Gutenberg EBook #38556, 2012, accessed January 27, 2015, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38556/38556- h/images/illo_143big.jpg. Note also the location of the Black Hawk Battlefield on this map. This was the principal site of the Black Hawk War, an 1832 skirmish between pro-British Indians and frontier . Ultimately the U.S. Army routed the Indians. Captain Abraham Lincoln served in this battle. 48

The significance to New France of the Fox-Wisconsin portage was that it connected France’s northern colony with southern La Louisiane. The Wisconsin River joins the Mississippi River along the modern Iowa border just south of Prairie du Chien,

Wisconsin. In Croghan’s time both the French and British referred to this region as the

Illinois country. Administratively La Louisiane split into two areas at the River, but in practice the French only inhabited the Mississippi valley and .21

The

Champlain’s exploits in and around Tadoussac, Quebec and Montreal also spawned French exploration toward the south west. In 1670 the French explorer and fur trader René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, visited a Seneca village on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. There he learned from a captive Shawnee Indian of a great river which flowed to the southwest from the . In New

France it would become known as La Belle Riviere (The Beautiful River). It was the mighty Ohio.

More to his own ambitions La Salle recognized the significance of a reported river which might connect La Nouvelle France with La Louisiane. Such a route would provide the added benefit of being free of the meddlesome English by being far to the west of the fledgling coastal colonies. So in 1674 La Salle arranged for an Onondaga guide from the Iroquois League and set out with a small party to find this river.

21La Salle reached the Upper Mississippi watershed from the Wisconsin River in 1673 and named the area La Louisiane for King Louis XIV of France.

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Descending the Allegheny he found the Ohio River, christened it La Belle Riviere and followed it to the Falls of the Ohio near modern-day Louisville, Kentucky. He was about two hundred air miles from its with the Mississippi. Unfortunately, there his

Indian guide and the rest of his party abandoned him. Alone, he found his way back to

New France overland. While La Salle had come close, he had not found the coveted route to Louisiana.

Two years later Marquette and Joliet would discover the Mississippi River, but do so via the Fox-Wisconsin portage. Ironically they too missed the significance of the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi as they followed the Mississippi to New

Orleans. Passing the Ohio junction enroute, Marquette and Joliet incorrectly believed it to be that of the Wabash and Mississippi Rivers – technically true as the Wabash joins the Ohio east of its junction with the Mississippi but does not directly join the

Mississippi. The two French explorers apparently never made the connection that this junction might instead be that of La Salle’s La Belle Riviere and the Mississippi. It would be La Salle himself returning to the Ohio in 1683 who would finally discover this important intersection, arriving as he had before from the east.22

22Charles E. O’Neill, “Jacques Gravier,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1969), accessed August 13, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gravier_jacques_2E.html; Gist, Journals, 26. Both O’Neill and Gist’s nineteenth-century editor, Darlington, draw the same conclusion. Both likely used as their source Jacques Gravier’s journal, Relation ou journal du voyage de r.p. Jacques Gravier de la Compagnie de Jésus, en 1700 depuis le pays des Illinois jusqu’à l’embouchure du Mississipi (New York: la Presse Cramoisy de Jean-Marie Shea, 1859). O’Neill specifically cites Gravier’s Journal but only generally. In Gist, Journals, an annotation likely added by Darlington cites Gravier without further reference. Nonetheless, later in Gist’s Journals Darlington (presumably) credits Gravier with details of La Salle’s earlier travels.

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Despite how close Lake Erie lies to the Allegheny River, a major tributary of the

Ohio, the two bodies of water are on opposite sides of the Saint Lawrence Continental

Divide. Somewhat steeper in Pennsylvania than in modern Ohio, this almost imperceptibly low ridge of dirt and rock cuts across the northern part of Ohio and demarks the Great Lakes watershed from the Ohio-Mississippi. 23 North of the Saint

Lawrence Continental Divide, rivers flow to the Great Lakes; south of it, to the Gulf of

Mexico. George Croghan and his early trading partner Peter Tostee were well aware of this geologic feature when they positioned their trading posts on both the

Cuyahoga and Rivers. The Cuyahoga connects to the lakes; the

Muskingum, to the Ohio-Mississippi watershed. The Ohio River is broad and relatively navigable all the way to the Falls of the Ohio at modern Louisville, Kentucky. After

British General John Forbes’ successful 1758 capture of Fort Duquesne (Fort Pitt), military commanders found they could launch fleets of barges to any number of destinations along the river.

In the early eighteenth century the Ohio River was less critical to France than was the Fox-Wisconsin connection to the Mississippi. France perceived that it already owned the river, most of its tributaries and the land around it, including that between the river and Lake Erie which included the unimpressive Saint Lawrence divide. More significant to France’s efforts to contain Britain were the Allegheny River and the

23Ohio marks this divide where it crosses the Ohio Turnpike southeast of Cleveland. In contrast to the great Continental Divides in Colorado and Montana, without this marker the Saint Lawrence Continental Divide could easily be missed altogether. Some of its higher points can be observed as rock outcroppings between Twinsburg and Solon, Ohio, today.

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portage between it and the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Here was where the early

Pennsylvania traders penetrated La Nouvelle France; here at Venango – the site of

Croghan’s first trading post – was where Céloron planted his first plate, and at the Great

Miami – the site of Croghan’s enormous trading depot – was where he planted his last.

Here along the Allegheny was where Jonquière built the first French forts south of the

Great Lakes. Map 1-7 was drawn by Céloron’s travelling companion Father

Bonnecamps. It depicts the Allegheny River and the Ohio River to the Great Miami River as well as the locations of the six buried French plates shown in red.

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Map 1-7: Pierre Bonnecamps, Carte d’un Voyage dans La Belle Riviere en La Nouvelle France, 1749, Pennsylvania Commission to Locate the Site of Frontier Forts.24

24Pierre Bonnecamps, “Carte d’un Voyage dans La Belle Riviere en La Nouvelle France 1749,” in Clarence M. Busch, Report of the Commission to Locate the Site of Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania, vol. 2 (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Commission to Locate the Site of Frontier Forts, 1896), public domain.

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French explorers and traders often circumvented the Ohio country altogether, preferring the Great Lakes route to the Mississippi via the Fox-Wisconsin portage. There were four reasons for this. First the French had already explored the western shore of

Lake Michigan and established a religious outpost on the Fox River by the late seventeenth century. Second British traders operated along the Allegheny River in the early eighteenth century. Third the portage between Lake Erie and Pennsylvania’s Lake

Chautauqua, the headwaters of the Allegheny (and thus The Ohio), was described as

“precipitous.”25 The portage between Wisconsin’s Fox and Wisconsin Rivers (and thus

The Mississippi) is more level. Finally access to either route from La Nouvelle France required a major portage around Niagara Falls.26 Once on Lake Erie a traveler might just as well go to the Fox River as risk enraging the British on the Allegheny.

During the period before Braddock’s Defeat nobody – including the Indians – knew who was in control of the Ohio. An uneasy standoff cloaked the region. France for the most part grudgingly permitted English traders to trade. (France barely controlled its own traders along the Ohio, many of whom were licensed by British colonies.) Official Pennsylvania did not care about the region. Virginia did not have the manpower to keep Scots-Irish settlers and Iroquois warriors at arm’s length in the

Shenandoah, much less effectively secure the Ohio.

25Charles A. Babcock, Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People, vol. 1 (Chicago: J. H. Beers and Co., 1919), 7.

26Niagara Falls separates Lake Erie from Lake Ontario. 54

Pennsylvania and a Charter from the Past

William Penn’s Royal Charter was at the root of many inter-colonial disputes, notably those between Pennsylvania and each of , Virginia and Connecticut.

Each of these other colonies claimed portions of Pennsylvania. Maryland and Virginia also claimed parts of each other’s territory, while Virginia claimed large portions of the

Ohio country.

Penn’s charter defined both the southern and western boundaries of the colony, but did so based on an egregious cartographic error. The charter defined the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania as where the 40th degree (north) parallel of latitude met a twelve-mile arc centered on New Castle (now in the state of Delaware).

The problem was 40o north at any point lies more than twelve miles from New Castle.

From this inconsistency emerged the seventeenth-century dispute with neighboring Maryland to the south, whose charter extended to Pennsylvania’s southern border. Both provinces at first reckoned this border to be 40o north latitude until the

Pennsylvanians realized that Philadelphia lay fifteen miles below this line. Charles

Mason and Jeremiah Dixon ultimately resolved this much in the Penn family’s favor in

1763 with the eponymous Mason-Dixon Line, the east-west portion of which lies at 39o

43’ north latitude. Prior to Mason and Dixon, Maryland surveyor, self-appointed “quit- rent” (tax) collector and vigilante took to shaking down Pennsylvania settlers in this cartographic no-man’s land. Quaker entrepreneur John Wright who had built a ferry across the Susquehanna in this strip of land was Cresap’s chief antagonist.

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Cresap’s War lasted until 1738 when King George II personally intervened and demanded a negotiated settlement between the two Colonies.27

One might conclude that this dispute over Pennsylvania’s southeastern corner would not affect the Ohio territory, yet it did. Penn’s charter also defined

Pennsylvania’s western boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia (now and Ohio). This line was to be drawn five degrees of longitude west of that same mythical intersection at 40o north latitude and the New Castle Arc. As no such intersection occurs in reality the western boundary of the colony, like its boundary with

Maryland, could not be determined.28 Meanwhile Virginia had no western boundary short of the Pacific Ocean. Both ’s Pennsylvania and Lord Baltimore’s

Maryland charters were available sources. Virginians could see that Maryland’s western boundary was defined and Pennsylvania’s would be soon enough, while theirs was essentially limitless. Virginia wasted no time drawing up plans for development of the

Ohio Territory as part of the Old Dominion.

27University of Maryland, “Historical Note, Cresap/Bruce Family Papers,” University of Maryland Special Collections, Digital Collections (College Park: University of Maryland, 2003), accessed August 24, 2014, http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/1414. Thanks to the intervention of the King Maryland ultimately lost the dispute. Proprietors Penn and Calvert were enjoined to enlist surveyors to settle the boundary dispute. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the borderlands between 1763 and 1767. Their survey resulted in the land between 39o 43’ N and 40o N being awarded to Pennsylvania. Interestingly both John Harris’s 1733 ferry and George Croghan’s 1745 “plantation” on the Conodoguinet Creek lie just above the 40th parallel, Croghan’s by only about fifteen minutes of arc. The author lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at 39o 50’ N latitude – within the formerly-contested segment.

28“Charter for the – 1681,” The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library, 2008), accessed December 17, 2014, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa01.asp.

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The Susquehanna

The lifeblood of the Middle Atlantic Colonies was then and is now the

Susquehanna River and its “drowned valley” the Chesapeake Bay. Europeans do not always mark national or imperial boundaries with rivers; many significant European waterways lie well within national boundaries, and did so in the eighteenth century.29

Conversely Indians did see rivers as natural barriers between Europeans and themselves. Nonetheless, based on their Old World experience European immigrants believed the Susquehanna Valley should be settled and cultivated on both sides.

Settling the area on the western side of the Susquehanna was particularly attractive to mid-century immigrants from Scots-Irish Ulster and Palatine Germany who found upon their arrival that most of southern Pennsylvania’s arable land east of the

Susquehanna had been claimed by English Quaker and German Anabaptist settlers.

Thus many of these later arrivals became the first settlers of York and Cumberland

Counties, the southernmost counties on the west side of the Susquehanna, and land which the Delaware Nation rightly believed had not been sold to Pennsylvania. Further, the feud with Maryland was well known to Pennsylvania settlers and ruled out much of

York County in their minds as a safe haven. Some even preferred to settle farther north on the east side of the Susquehanna across the mountains.

29For example, the Rhine lies within Germany for much of its flood, and its delta is entirely within The Netherlands. Similarly the Po is entirely within Italy, and the Vlatava (Moldau) bisects Czech Bohemia.

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A peculiar geologic feature of the Susquehanna is its perpendicular traverse of the easternmost ridges of the Alleghenies northwest of Harris’s Ferry. Today this feature lies between Dauphin and Perry Counties just beyond Harrisburg. The river banks on the Dauphin County side even today, after being chiseled away for superhighways and rail lines, rise nearly vertically to 1200 feet over a horizontal distance of about 100 meters.30 A similar condition exists to the west on the Cumberland and

Perry County riverbank. Geologists describe this feature as unique and rarely found elsewhere on earth. Typically rivers flow in valleys parallel to mountain ranges. Over millions of years the literally carved its way “across” the mountains at this spot. The implications for settlers on either side of the Susquehanna in this remote region during the eighteenth century were clear: safety from irate natives and

European malcontents lay only downstream, but not too far downstream because of men like Cresap.31

30United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, “Middle Paxton Township, Dauphin County, PA,” USGS 1:24,000 Map Series-Pennsylvania (Washington: United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1952) accessed November 18, 2014, http://www.usgwarchives.net-maps-pa-county-dauphi-usgs- midpaxre.jpg.url.

31The author’s ninth great grandfather, Nicholas Hoffman, settled in this region’s Armstrong Valley (now upper Dauphin County) in the early 1750’s. In a 1755 journal entry Hoffman recorded that he abandoned his farm and retreated to Tulpehocken (likely downriver or via the Manada Gap) to Conrad Weiser’s plantation east of the mountains in Berks County (now Womelsdorf) having been chased off, “…by Indians on one of their marauds.” This was likely during a Shawnee attack which peaked in this part of Pennsylvania during 1755-1756. A contemporary English observer recalled that the entire valley appeared to be burning, so dense and widespread was the smoke. Hoffman later returned to the Armstrong Valley and lived to be 86 years old. He was a Patriot and a veteran of both Germantown and Brandywine. See Nicholas Hoffman, “Journal of Nicholas Hoffman, 1755” (Harrisburg: Dauphin County Historical Society, unpublished).

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The headwaters of the Susquehanna lie in the watershed of in east central New York State where at its base George Croghan built his home of the same name at the end of his life. 32 This lake is a short portage from the , a major tributary of the Hudson and eventually home to Sir William Johnson who would become Croghan’s crown supervisor. Conrad Weiser knew from past experience that the Susquehanna drained from the heartland of the Iroquois League. He and his travelling colleague botanist John Bartram used the Susquehanna as their principal route between Iroquois lands and Pennsylvania. Further south, by way of the so-called

“west branch” of the Susquehanna, a similar short portage connected traders to the

Allegheny, a major tributary of the Ohio. Today Americans think of the Susquehanna

River as primarily linking southern Pennsylvania with the Chesapeake Bay. In the eighteenth century the river linked colonial governments with the Iroquois and British traders with the Shawnees.

In a map drawn in 1771 by Colonel Guy Johnson, Sir William Johnson’s nephew, the proximity of the Susquehanna to a number of important landmarks is visible (Map 1-

8). Otsego Lake itself, spelled by Colonel Johnson “Otsega”, is located west of

“CherryVally” [sic], which appears left of the letter “Y” in the large title NEW YORK.

North of Cherry Valley lie both Sir William’s residence shown as “Fort Johnson” and

32Pennsylvania State University Susquehanna River Basin Hydrologic Observing System, “Otsego Lake/Susquehanna Headwaters,” (State College: Pennsylvania State University, 2014), accessed November 18, 2014, http://www.srbhos.psu.edu/sb_testbeds/OtsegoLake.asp. George Croghan felt that the area around Harris’s Ferry made the best sense for safety and as a crossroads of commerce. In 1745 he placed his “plantation” in Cumberland County along the Conodoguinet Creek near Harris’s Ferry rather than at Shippensburg.

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British Fort Hunter. Both played significant roles in British North America during this period. South of Cherry Valley is the valley of the Schoharie River [sic: “Schohare”] where Conrad Weiser’s father and other disgruntled Palatine Germans formed an illicit but successful settlement in 1710. The elder Weiser sent his eleven-year-old son to live among the Mohawks for what the boy apparently felt was an interminably long eighteen months.33

Much as the Schoharie Valley connects the Susquehanna to the Mohawk River, a tributary of the Hudson, so from the Swatara Creek near Weiser’s settlement one can easily reach the Tulpehocken Creek, a tributary of the Delaware. What young Weiser no doubt learned about New York watersheds from the Mohawks he applied again in

Pennsylvania. While he was living among the Mohawks, Conrad Weiser may have first met his life-long Indian colleague . Shikellamy was an Oneida chieftain who was the Iroquois’ representative to the .34 Together Weiser and Shikellamy were persuasive and powerful advocates for both Iroquois and British interests in British

North America.

The homelands of four of the Six Nations are shown on the map, and explanatory notes refer to the two others, the Mohawks who lived in the same area as the Oneidas and beyond the defined New York border west of Lake George, and the Tuscaroras who

33William Allen Knittle, Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration: A British Government Redemptioner Project to Manufacture Naval Stores (Philadelphia: Heritage Books Inc., 2009), 205-207. In 1723 the younger Weiser and a number of German Schoharie Valley families started a long river voyage to the Swatara Creek, east of modern Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at the headwaters of which they settled Weiser’s Tulpehocken Creek plantation.

34Early historians used the terms “Viceroy” or “half-king” to refer to these Iroquois agents. 60

lived on land allotted them by the Oneidas and Onondagas.35 The Council Fire of the

Iroquois League was typically kept at the town marked “Onondaga” on the southeast shore of “Salt Lake” (now the city of Syracuse and Lake Onondaga respectively), which can be found due north of the letters “IO” in the large title THE SIX NATIONS.

Finally, the northern end of the October 1768 Proclamation Line, which had a significant effect on George Croghan’s post-French and Indian War dealings in the Ohio and Illinois regions, can be seen as a dotted line leading to the Indian village of

Kittanning on the Allegheny River. This line also represents the portage linking the

Susquehanna and Ohio watersheds. As Colonel Johnson suggested in his label for this body of water the Allegheny is an important tributary of the Ohio. More to the point of this thesis the Allegheny itself forms a part of the 1768 Proclamation Line.

35The “Sixth Nation” were the Tuscarora Indians, an Iroquoian nation driven north by inimical Indians to the south. With their joining the Haudenosaunee in 1726 the League became known as “The Six Nations.” 61

Map 1-8. Guy Johnson, Map of the Country of the VI Nations, 1771, New York State Library.36

36Guy Johnson, Map of the Country of the VI Nations, 1771, public domain, New York State Library, accessed November 18, 2014, http://changingaging.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/map- iroquois-17711.jpg.

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Both the Charter for “Penn’s Woods” and the Susquehanna River played major roles in eighteenth-century North America. Pennsylvania’s location in the middle of the was as much hindrance as help. No British business could easily be conducted in the absence of Pennsylvania’s cooperation, and that is often exactly what the crown and its negotiators received. Nonetheless, the Susquehanna River connected easily to the Hudson and the Delaware watersheds linking both native nations and diverse colonies. It provided a route for commerce and a path for negotiation; it formed a boundary between European expectations and Indian intransigence, and it passed through land which, because of uninformed words written in a distant time and place, was contested among people who should have been friends.

Paul Wallace’s “Frankstown Path, East” (Map 1-9) shows the path which many traders took from Harris’s Ferry (Paxtang on the map) to Aughwick and beyond. The map shows Croghan’s Plantation on the Conodoguinet, LeTort’s Spring (Carlisle),

Shippensburg and many other features along the path. Note also “Croghan’s Gap” (now called “Sterrett’s Gap”), on an alternative path, shorter but steeper than Frankstown, which Croghan cut himself.

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Map 1-9: Paul A. W. Wallace, Frankstown Path, East, 1952, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.37

37Paul A.W. Wallace, “Frankstown Path, East” in Indian Paths in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1965), 51, map 26, used by permission, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. 64

Much as the Susquehanna River was a boon to colonial and Indian intercourse alike, the Allegheny Mountains were the opposite. Even today the northern ranges of these mountains in Pennsylvania are referred to as “the endless mountains.” Range upon range crosses the Commonwealth diagonally, rising from about 300 feet above sea level to over 3000’ from northeast to southwest. The first range consists of three lesser ranges which lie immediately northwest of Harris’s Ferry. Because the Susquehanna

River bisects these folds, its tributaries form the valleys. In Croghan’s time unlawful settlements dotted the Juniata and Aughwick Valleys in the southwest and the

Armstrong and Lykens Valleys on the northeast.

British Generals Braddock and Forbes cut separate roads across these mountains to attack the French at the Forks of the Ohio. Much like the French, not all British mapmakers fully appreciated the nuances of the American west, even the nearby west.

Lewis Evans apparently misunderstood the significance of the “Z axis” of terrain: elevation. Paul Mapp argues that Braddock carved the road from Virginia to the Forks of the Ohio in 1755 on the advice of Evans, considered one of the most accurate British mapmakers of the time, rather than (as Forbes later took) the “manifestly easier

Pennsylvania road from Carlisle” to Fort Duquesne.38

38Mapp, Elusive West, 267. Braddock took a route through western Virginia and Maryland into southwestern Pennsylvania. The highest mountains in both Pennsylvania and Maryland are in this general area, respectively Mount Davis at 3212’ and Hoye Crest at 3360’.

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Through what became known as “Croghan’s Gap,” George Croghan cut a road so treacherous that even his own packhorses could not make the journey in bad weather.39

Ironically, the easier paths had been worn down by Indians over hundreds if not thousands of years, or they simply followed the various branches of the Susquehanna

River.

Conclusion

George Croghan understood North America’s northeastern waterways and watersheds better than most of his colleagues. In part this was true because he was widely travelled within the continent, and in part because he learned from the Indians.

When the French landed in North America in the early seventeenth century they chose to settle upstream on the Saint Lawrence River. At the outset the fledgling colony was intended as an extension of France’s offshore North Atlantic fishing operations.

While Atlantic fishing occurred closest to the mouth of the Saint Lawrence at Acadia, the threat of Dutch and English pirates suggested that inland was a better option. Yet

Samuel de Champlain was not a fisherman; he was an expert cartographer and a seasoned military veteran. He needed both skills in the sites he chose to administer La

Nouvelle France. The North American map had yet to be drawn, and the native assistance which itinerant French cartographers had received elsewhere did not exist in

North America. Champlain was left to his own wits to map the unknown, and it began

39Pennsylvania Routes 944 and 34 run through Croghan’s Gap, now called Sterrett’s Gap. The steep climb that other traders complained of is now part of Route 944 (aka Wertzville Road), the downhill slope running northeast toward modern Enola.

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at the mysterious Cadaracqui. To Champlain’s military skills, just south of this area was the land of the Iroquois, a constant menace to the French and an ancient enemy of their

Algonquian allies. As a result of a similar, global animus between England and France the Saint Lawrence soon became the de facto north-south European border in North

America.

West of the Cadaracqui where Lake Ontario spills into the Saint Lawrence lay the

Great Lakes. Champlain himself mapped Ontario, the most eastern Great Lake, and likely its neighbor Erie. From Algonquian nations living around the northwestern lakes he learned about the others. Champlain was not alone in these ventures; the early

European map-maker who seems to have captured the Great Lakes most accurately was the Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli, who was retained by Louis XIV as a court cartographer and also relied on geographic information from others.

Everywhere the French went Jesuit priests went also. In many instances these priests were the explorers. Living exemplars of Christ’s commandment, “Go ye therefore into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation,” the Jesuits were among the first to extend New France to the western Great Lakes.40 Among them was

Claude Allouez, founder of the St. Francis Xavier mission in 1668 at the Rapides Des

Pères on the Fox River south of modern Green Bay, Wisconsin. Upstream from the Fox via a short portage lay the headwaters of the Wisconsin River, which in turn drained into the Mississippi. Thanks to Allouez, along with fellow Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette

40Mark, 16:15 (KJV). 67

and his backwoods companion Louis Joliet who discovered the Fox-Wisconsin portage in

1673, La Nouvelle France obtained a connection to La Louisiane. Another advantage of the Fox-Wisconsin was that it circumvented England’s coastal colonies which lay south of Canada and east of Louisiana.

Coronelli, who never travelled to North America, was likely informed by reports and manuscript maps from these priests and explorers. Later French cartographers were less accurate than Coronelli had been. Among them was Jacques Bellin, who misrepresented a number of Great Lakes features and invented others. Meanwhile

Briton John Mitchell’s gigantic 1755 map of North America, long regarded as the official

British map of North America, repeated many of Bellin’s errors. George Croghan, his superiors and his military colleagues would have used Mitchell’s map or at least parts of it. By Croghan’s time the Great Lakes were an accepted part of the landscape. At least the two more southeastern lakes, Erie and Ontario, were used regularly by Europeans in trade and diplomacy.

Among lakes Indians, as well as between them and the French, more often than not the lakes were a catalyst for commerce and diplomacy. The Ojibwas developed the birch bark canoe, while the Ottawas, whose name in Algonquian means “trader,” perfected its use on the lakes to bring furs to market. This differed from many river frontiers to the south, which often divided North American nations from each other and from the British.

In 1670 the French explorer and fur trader René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La

Salle, learned from a captive Shawnee Indian of a great river which flowed to the 68

southwest from the Allegheny Mountains. La Belle Riviere was the mighty Ohio. In

1670 La Salle had come close to finding its confluence with the Mississippi, but he failed to find the coveted route to Louisiana until he returned to the region in 1683. Largely because of these early explorers, in the early eighteenth century France perceived that it already owned the Ohio River.

The Ohio’s main tributary, the Allegheny, was more important to British traders such as Croghan because of the portage between it and the Susquehanna. The

Allegheny soon became more significant to France’s efforts to contain Britain than the

Ohio itself. Meanwhile, French explorers and traders often circumvented the Ohio country altogether, preferring the Great Lakes route to the Mississippi via the Fox-

Wisconsin portage. During the period before Braddock’s Defeat nobody – including the

Indians – knew who was in control of the Ohio. An uneasy standoff cloaked the entire region

Despite how close Lake Erie lies to the Allegheny the two bodies of water are on opposite sides of the Saint Lawrence Continental Divide. North of it rivers flow to the

Great Lakes and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence; south of it, to the Gulf of Mexico. George

Croghan and his early trading partner Peter Tostee were well aware of this geologic feature when they positioned their 1740s trading posts on both the Cuyahoga and

Muskingum Rivers. The Cuyahoga connects to the lakes; the Muskingum, to the Ohio-

Mississippi watershed.

The lifeblood of the coastal Middle Atlantic colonies was then and is now the

Susquehanna River and its “drowned valley,” the Chesapeake Bay. Indians saw rivers as 69

natural barriers between Europeans and themselves. However, based on their Old

World experience European immigrants believed the Susquehanna Valley should be settled and cultivated on both sides. Further complicating peoples’ understanding of the Susquehanna as a border was that fact that the colonial establishment in the eighteenth century used it as a primary means of diplomacy between Penn’s colony and the Iroquois. This was particularly true of Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania’s principal

Iroquois negotiator, who not only travelled up and down the Susquehanna regularly but cleverly placed his own plantation near tributaries of both it and the . In

New York meanwhile the headwaters of the Susquehanna were a short portage to the

Mohawk River, a major tributary of the system. The Mohawk was the location of the estate of Sir William Johnson, New York’s Indian negotiator who later became both crown Indian superintendent and Croghan’s supervisor.

In central Pennsylvania, the area on the western side of the Susquehanna was particularly attractive to mid-century immigrants from Scots-Irish Ulster and Palatine

Germany who found upon their arrival that most arable land east of the river was already claimed. Further, the feud with Maryland ruled out much of the land between the first ridge of the Alleghenies and the Susquehanna as a safe haven. As a result these settlers pushed into interior valleys well west of the river, on Delaware land never purchased by the colony.

The paths to the west which traders and settlers took generally followed two routes: over the mountains through Indian lands or via the Allegheny River through lands claimed by France. The Susquehanna led to the Allegheny via its west branch 70

portage, and thus became a route not only for British traders but for settlers as well.

For its part Virginia claimed the Pacific Ocean as its western boundary, engendering disputes with both Pennsylvania and France.

France was slow to lay claim to the Allegheny valley. By the time it did three quarters of a century had passed since LaSalle’s expeditions. Yet here was where the

Pennsylvania traders had penetrated La Nouvelle France; where Céloron planted his first plate, and where Jonquière built the first French forts south of the Great Lakes. Along the Allegheny the seeds of the French and Indian War were sown.

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CHAPTER TWO

ALL THE NATIONS AT THE SWAMP’S EDGE

Many a human foot has gone into forbidden territory, but harder than that is to make the heart go too. You stand with one foot on firm land, the other in a canoe. Behind you is light, the expected horizon of your life; in front of you the green overhead hunkers down, crouches over waters.1

– Barbara Hurd, 2001

Introduction

Barbara Hurd in her literary gem, Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs and Human

Imagination, likens new human interactions to those at the edge of a swamp. Here trees give way to reedy grasses, grasses to muddy bogs and all ultimately gives way to water. Coming out of the water, the reverse occurs and all gives way to land. So it is with creatures, and those who live at the edge of the swamp are equally at home on land and in water.

From the fifteenth century on when Europeans realized that the earth had no precipitous edge, explorers pushed farther and farther into “terra incognita.” In many places the peoples they met were old friends or enemies: Chinese, Russian, Asian

Indians, Africans and Arabs to name a few. In the Americas the faces were different.

Not quite Asian not quite Caucasian the people European explorers encountered were different. Because of the common error in assuming the Americas were part of the East

1Barbara Hurd, Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs and Human Imagination (: Beacon Press, 2001), 53.

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Indies which Portuguese and other Europeans had reached by going around Africa, they began calling the indigenous Americans “Indians.” The geographic error was soon corrected, but the term “Indian” stuck.

For humans who sought out the edge of the swamp, explorers, religious people, map makers, soldiers, diplomats and traders, the meetings alternated between enlightening and terrifying. This chapter examines the principal groups who occupied

George Croghan’s world and how they interacted. In the approximate chronological order the main players who had a large impact on Croghan are the Dutch, Iroquois,

French, Algonquians, British, Ohio and Illinois Indians and Spanish.

This chapter first examines the impact of the Dutch in the Hudson Valley on inter-Indian warfare. Despite the fact that France preceded the Netherlands in establishing outposts in North America the Dutch were the first to trade firearms to

Indians. The Mahicans were the first to acquire European weapons, but the nearby, more populous and militarily effective Mohawks soon joined them. These weapons soon spread westward to other nations of the Iroquois League. England took over both

New Netherlands and its trading practices in the mid-seventeenth century. At the same time well-armed, superior Iroquois forces attacked many Algonquian nations to their north.

Somewhat naïvely France established La Nouvelle France in the midst of this internecine warfare. Observing French leaders, such as Samuel de Champlain, use

European weapons against the Iroquois, Algonquians insisted of acquiring their own weapons. France did not have the same ambitions in North America as the British. New 73

France was a royal colony with unified government; Britain’s southern colonies were an assortment of corporate, royal and proprietary colonies. Except for individuals, mostly men, with skills required to maintain its North American colony France discouraged immigration. Thus a lack of women led to many intermarriages between French and

Indians creating a racial sub-category called Métis. Only French explorers, Jesuit priests and traders pushed into the north and northwest. Father Claude Allouez for example established a Jesuit mission at the tip of Green Bay in modern Wisconsin in the 1640’s.

These people were the first to encounter the largely Algonquian nations around the

Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley.

In the British south, with the exception of a few Moravian missionaries, few religious people left the coastal plain. Explorers and military men ventured cautiously to edge of the frontier. In 1671 for example Virginian Abrahame Wood ventured over the mountains to the Kanawha River, barely into modern West Virginia. Calling his expedition a success he retreated home. British colonies unlike La Nouvelle France encouraged mass settlement even from other countries and did little more than license fur traders. In this way the traders and the settlers became the leading edge of British incursion into Indian country.

From among these many groups emerged those most at home at the swamp’s edge, and none more so than the fur traders. George Croghan began as a fur trader, and his initial interactions with both the French and the Indians started along the

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Allegheny River in northwestern Pennsylvania.2 His closest Indian allies would be the

Shawnees and the Miamis. His nemeses would be France and the Great Lakes Indians.

The Hudson Valley

Nieuw Nederland (New Netherland), the Dutch empire in North America, was founded in 1614 along the Hudson River.3 Well before George Croghan was born the colony had been absorbed by treaty into British North America and renamed New York.

Nonetheless the legacy of the Dutch is significant to Croghan’s story in several ways.

The Dutch were global traders and in North America among their first trading partners were the Mahicans. The Mahicans soon became aware of the effectiveness of European firearms, and the Dutch were only too willing to trade firearms to them. The frontier of

Dutch territory west of the Hudson River overlapped what the Five Nations of the

Iroquois League referred to as its “Eastern Door.” The guardians of the Eastern Door were the Mohawks, and they had little use for the neighboring Mahicans. When the

Dutch armed the Mahicans with European firearms the Mohawks were incensed. 4 In

1626 they ambushed the Mahicans with bows and arrows, overwhelming them.

Believing that firearms would win the day, Dutch commander Daniel van Krieckebeeck naïvely interjected his forces into this Indian dispute. Van Krieckebeeck bet on the

2Appendix A examines the roots and economics of the in detail.

3Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from its beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984), 47. Jennings says “ca.” 1614 and cites several contemporaneous sources supporting this date. History records the first Dutch explorers in the region in 1609 and the abandonment of the first Dutch settlement, Fort Nassau on Castle Island near Albany, in 1617 because of repeated flooding.

4By this time the Iroquois League had faced European firearms in encounters with the French.

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losing side. Mahican firepower was no match for the of arrows poured onto them by the Mohawks, killing van Krieckebeeck and three of his men along with the most of the Mahicans.5

Oddly enough neither the Mohawks nor the Dutch took revenge after this debacle. The Mohawks permitted Mahicans back into the Hudson Valley in return for a wampum tribute, and the Dutch – ever more capitalistic than imperialistic – accepted the new realpolitik and signed on with the Mohawks as trading partners.6 Thus the

Mohawks, already known as competent warriors, acquired guns. In short order all the

Iroquois but particularly the Mohawks became highly expert in the use of firearms.7 In

La Nouvelle France this was most unwelcome news. Champlain had demonstrated the power of firearms to Indians but had not sold guns to them. Animosity between France and The Netherlands ran deep, the latter having won its independence and religious freedom after a series of pyrrhic wars in the sixteenth century against Roman Catholic repression. While The Netherlands’ argument was largely against , in the seventeenth century France had picked up the Papal sword. From the French viewpoint, the Mohawks had further cemented their relationship with the Dutch known as “The

Iron Chain of 1643.” This is the concept of the Covenant Chain which the Iroquois

5Paul Lemire, “The Battle in Lincoln Park,” in Albany History, accessed October 8, 2015, http://albanynyhistory.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-battle-in-lincoln-park.html. Some sources spell the name van Krieckenbeeck.

6Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois, 50.

7Fintan O’Toole, White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 53.

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formed with both Indian and European allies with whom they wished trade and peace, but it spelled trouble for La Nouvelle France.

In 1664, after a series of European continental and naval wars, England and the

Netherlands made peace. The resulting treaty ceded Nieuw Nederland to England, but

Dutch influence remained strong in the Hudson Valley. British authorities made few changes to Dutch administration in Albany. Dutch was still the lingua franca in the

Hudson Valley well into the early eighteenth century, and old Dutch customs died hard.8

Land ownership remained in the hands of a few, landed “patroons”; because of this

English settlement in New York lagged that of other colonies particularly Pennsylvania.

For their part the flexible Mohawks soon formed a “Silver Covenant Chain” with the British, a more favored alliance than that with the Dutch as it extended beyond trade to diplomacy.9 This alliance soon extended to the Iroquois League writ large, appearing as an even bigger menace to France. 10

France Discovers a World at War

La Nouvelle France (New France) was first settled in 1602. Unlike English colonies to the south New France was not intended for immigrants although some did

8Timothy J. Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier (New York: Viking/Penguin, 2000), 85. Indeed even during the early nineteenth-century Presidency of Martin van Buren Dutch was commonly spoken in the White House.

9Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois, 55.

10Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies & Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), 148-149, 149 n.10. New York Governor Sir Edmund Andros agreed to the Silver Chain Covenant with the Iroquois sometime between 1677 and 1683. Only one record exists of the transaction. A Silver Chain Covenant expands a relationship to policy and diplomacy, beyond the largely trade-based Iron Chain agreed with the Dutch in 1643.

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settle in the New World. Growing seasons were short; winters were ferocious. New

England privateers determined to control offshore fishing lurked off the Atlantic coast.

Directly south of Ville Marie (Montréal) flowed the eponymous Riviere du Iroquois

(modern Richelieu River); the area was a no-man’s land for natives and Frenchmen alike.

José Antonio Brandão in his seminal work on Indian relations with New France, Your

Fyre Shall Burn no More, catalogued in remarkable detail hundreds of Iroquois raids on the French and their Algonquian allies from 1616 to 1701. Most of these records are from Jesuit sources, a good many from settlements near the Riviere du Iroquois.

Brandão went on to suggest that had Dutch and English records survived as did Jesuit records of New France the tally would only have increased.11

Samuel de Champlain’s earliest seventeenth-century dealings had been with the

Montagnais, hunter-gatherers who allied themselves with Algonquian nations further west. Later Champlain allied with the larger, Iroquoian-speaking Huron nation who lived around the eastern Great Lakes. Within twenty years of the settlement of Montréal,

Jesuit missionaries and explorers had reached as far west as modern Green Bay,

Wisconsin. As a result more western Algonquian nations such as the Anishinabeg and other western Great Lakes Indians came under French influence. All these nations in what the French called pays d’en haut (highlands) had long been at war with their

Iroquois neighbors to the southeast. As Champlain allied with the Montagnais and

11José Antonio Brandão, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More: Iroquois Policy Toward New France and its Native Allies to 1701 (Lincoln: University of Press, 1997), Appendices D and F.

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Algonquians in La Nouvelle France, to the south Dutchmen and Englishmen allied with the Iroquois. Of them the European-armed Mohawks posed the biggest threat to the

French colony.12 A veteran himself Champlain valued peaceful settlements, but his attempts to negotiate between the Iroquois and their northern and western neighbors failed.

Botanist John Bartram accompanied his friend Pennsylvania Indian agent Conrad

Weiser to the Iroquois Council Fire at Onondaga. Because he was less directly involved in European-Iroquois negotiations than Weiser he had the time to record everything around him, as the lengthy title of his “Observations” suggests. In one passage Bartram referred to the Iroquois League as, “. . . Conquerors of all the adjacent nations . . ., ” and in the century preceding his and Weiser’s trips to the Iroquois longhouse the League appeared to most other Indian nations exactly as Bartram had described them. 13

In 1648 for example, the Iroquois crushed the Wendats, a relatively rich and powerful Anishinabeg nation situated near Georgian Bay off Lake Huron.14 The Wendats split into many smaller groups as a result of Iroquois attacks ultimately reorganizing in the eighteenth century as Hurons and Wyandottes. In the same period the Neutrals, another Iroquoian nation unaligned with the League, attacked and decimated an

12Fischer, Champlain’s Dream, 249.

13O’Toole, White Savage, 13. O’Toole cites Bartram’s journal Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals and other matters worthy of Notice, Made by Mr. John Bartram, In his Travels from Pensilvania to Onondaga, Oswego and the Lake Ontario, in Canada 1751.

14Colin Calloway, The Shawnees and the War for America (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 16.

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Algonquian fort in Michigan. Two thousand Neutrals attacked the fort, killing many inhabitants and carrying off over eight hundred others.15 Bartram was right at least regarding the Algonquian nations to the north.

For the Iroquois’ part they had their own issues with New France. Where the

British worked closely to cement a lasting alliance with them, the French seemingly antagonized them at every opportunity. Bad feelings ran especially high concerning two issues. First the French continued to expand their northern empire westward, strengthening alliances with Algonquian nations as far as the Ottawas in the modern

Upper Peninsula of northern Michigan. Emboldened by their association with France the scattered Anishinabeg nations gained strength, extending their trade routes south from the Great Lakes to include previously non-aligned nations such as the Illinois and even the Anglophile Miamis.16 Secondly, in 1673 France began to build .

The fort, situated at the eastern end of Lake Ontario known as the “cataract” where the

St. Lawrence begins, was a stick-in-the eye to the Iroquois because they maintained hunting grounds along both shores of the lake and the river.17 (See Map 2-1. Note that

15Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Regions 1650 -1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 2-3.

16Dowd, War Under Heaven, 9-11. The Anishinabeg, Illinois, Miamis and were Algonquian- speaking neighbors of the Shawnees, whom the Iroquois considered a subordinate nation of “women.” Shawnees came under the scrutiny of the Iroquois by way of Seneca agents posted in the Ohio Territory. Shawnee and other Indian nations kept these Iroquois representatives well-informed about French intentions, and news travelled quickly to New York.

17Brandão, Fyre, 120-122. Fort Frontenac, in the area known to the Indians as “cadaracqui” lies at the western end of the modern “Thousand Islands.” The British never called it anything but “cadaracqui” until they acquired the area later, renaming it Kingston. The US-Canada border runs through this area, and Canada’s unified armed forces college is situated in Kingston. The southern shore is easily 80

the north shore of Lake Ontario on this map is marked “Northern Iroquois” and even the

Saint Lawrence is mislabeled the Iroquois River.)

seen from the northern, and in places the modern international border runs through private property on small islands. 81

Map 2-1: London Magazine, A Plan of the Fort and Bay of Frontenac with the Adjacent Countries, 1758, University of Pennsylvania, Hathi Trust.18

18London Magazine, “A Plan of the Fort and Bay of Frontenac with the Adjacent Countries,” in London Magazine, August, 1758 (London: London Magazine, 1758), public domain, University of Pennsylvania, Hathi Trust Collection, accessed December 29, 2014, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021267516;view=1up;seq=597. 82

The Iroquois were never quite able to involve the British in their disputes with the French. So in late 1700, the Silver Chain with Britain notwithstanding, the League invited New France to a peace conference at Onondaga. There the parties signed a preliminary agreement. The following August the Iroquois sent a delegation to

Montreal to sign a formal peace which became known as the “Great Peace of Montreal of 1701.” The League came away with reassurances from France, but Fort Frontenac remained.19

England Tests the American Frontier

Although several British expeditions to the American west, predominantly from the southern colonies, were contemporaneous with those of La Salle, Marquette, Joliet and other French explorers, the record of British exploration beyond the Allegheny mountain range is generally not one of lasting impact.20 Paul Mapp suggests that the farthest British outposts in the west during the time leading up to the French and Indian

War were the trading posts at Oswego and Pickawillany, George Croghan’s depot.21 A number of Carolina- and Virginia-based expeditions failed even to reach the western slopes of the eastern ranges. British subjects were regularly killed or captured, or they simply disappeared along the way.

19Brandão, Fyre, 129. A concern of the 1701 Montreal Treaty – even in the Iroquois’ own eyes – was that they had an existing alliance with Britain while they were making a treaty with France.

20Most early such explorers were English; however, the author prefers to use the term “British” in this thesis generally because of Croghan’s Irish ancestry and his loyalty to the British Crown. Nonetheless, the 1707 Acts of Union, which united England and Scotland into “Great Britain”, excluded Ireland, which remained an “independent kingdom” subservient to Great Britain. Ireland was not formally unified with Great Britain until 1801.

21Mapp, Elusive West, 265. 83

The exception that proved the rule was the expedition led by Colonel (later

Major General) Abrahame Wood. Wood was an indefatigable adventurer who in the mid-seventeenth century made his home near the Falls of the James River (modern

Richmond). In early September, 1671, Wood and five others including a servant and an

Appomattox chieftain acting as a guide, and armed with a “commission” from Governor

Berkeley,". . . for ye finding out of the ebbing and flowing of ye water behind the mountains in order to the Discovery of the South Sea," headed into the Virginia woods.

This was not Wood’s first foray into the region, nor would it be his last. On this trip however, within two weeks Wood and his party had indeed found a substantial river which ran north but thankfully downhill on the west side of the Alleghenies suggesting a westward watershed. By the seventeenth of September they had reached a falls of considerable height and described the river as being, “. . . as broad as the Thames at

Wapping.”22 Convinced they had satisfied Berkeley’s commission they carved the King’s and Berkeley’s initials into trees, then carved all their own initials, fired their guns and retreated home.23

What Wood and his colleagues had discovered was not the Ohio but the

Kanawha River, and more specifically the Kanawha Falls (modern Glen Ferris, West

Virginia), still some eighty miles from the Ohio. Yet the Kanawha is indeed a tributary of

22The modern Thames at Wapping downstream from the Tower Bridge is slightly under a thousand feet wide. The flood plain in 1671 may have been wider.

23Gist, Journals, 18-20.

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the Ohio, and Wood is the European who discovered it. In some eighteenth-century maps and journals the Kanawha is even referred to as “Wood’s River.”24

The Iroquois League

In earlier times the Iroquois League was neither united nor, as shown in Map 2-1 as “Northern Iroquois” in Canada, located entirely in New York. 25 Despite its history being clouded in legend the story of the Five Nations is compelling and in many ways true. Susan Kalter’s introduction in her edition of ’s The Treaties of

1736-62 includes an exceptional exposition which carefully dissects Iroquois fact from legend. The Iroquois creation legend is significant because it gives rise to the Iroquois

Condolence Ritual, which was used commonly during treaties with Croghan and the

British generally. Kalter explained that “clearing of perception” was central to the ritual and thus was employed not only at the death of a loved one or an important figure but also at the opening of all important treaties. “[Clearing of perception enabled] . . . the adjustment of one’s mind to listen to one’s partner in a cross-cultural negotiation.”26

Kalter’s version of the legend is summarized in Appendix C.

24Gist, Journals, 21.

25Iroquois League members are also known as Haudenosaunee, which derives from the Iroquoian word for “house builder.” Its use in representing the League as a whole implied keepers or people of the “long house,” which has a double meaning. The long house is both a structure wherein the League’s Council Fire was lit and important meetings were held, and a metaphor for the breadth of territory in New York which the Iroquois occupied with its nations each representing various doors or the center of the longhouse.

26Benjamin Franklin, The Treaties of 1736-62 (Between Pennsylvania and the First Nations), ed. Susan Kalter (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 6. 85

Thus another, non-European empire of sorts found itself situated squarely between La Novelle France and British North America. Unlike other native entities the

Iroquois League of Five Nations behaved as an independent nation and in many ways was treated as such. The Iroquois presumed to represent other Indian nations particularly the Delawares and Shawnees in their dealings with European powers. While the Iroquois had not defeated the Delawares, they had at least subordinated them in the south as well as, to a lesser extent, the Shawnees to the southwest.

Algonquian Indians called the French King “father;” Iroquois called the King of

England “brother.” Whereas the French treated the Hurons and other Algonquian nations as children, potential converts best left to the Jesuits, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia negotiated with the Iroquois as they might have with a mercurial but necessary European ally. At the 1744 Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Treaty Council, for example, Onondaga Chief Canasatego went so far as to demand and be granted a corridor from the to permit Iroquois warriors to travel unmolested to the Carolinas to attack the Catawba and Cherokee nations.27

Notwithstanding their titular alliance with Great Britain, the Iroquois saw themselves something of an Indian “Switzerland” whose emissaries could treat with any one European power. In his Iroquois Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier Timothy

27Franklin, Treaties, 106-111. At the 1744 Lancaster Treaty Council the Iroquois spokesman Gachradodow updated the participants that the League had recently made peace with the Cherokees, but that the Catawbas, “… have been treacherous, and know it.” He went on to reassure Brother Assaragoa (Virginia) that this explanation was needed, “…so that you may not be troubled at what we do with the Catawbas.”

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Shannon observed that by the turn of the eighteenth century, “The Iroquois remained autonomous, arms linked with the French and English but standing firmly on their own two feet.”28 Indeed the provisions of the 1715 Treaty of Utrecht ending the European

War of the Spanish Succession stipulated that France must recognize British “suzerainty” over the Iroquois, and commerce with the “Far Indians” would to be open to traders of all nations. The seemingly unbreakable Iroquois’ Silver Covenant Chain with Britain was in reality about as good as British help in warding off the French and their Algonquian enemies. When British pledges failed the Iroquois, they unabashedly turned to

Montreal for assurance, as they had in 1701. Nevertheless, while the alliance between the Iroquois League and Great Britain would prove fatal to the Iroquois League during and after the American Revolution, with the exception of occasional diplomatic wanderings by the western-door Senecas, it would hold firm during and after the French and Indian War. In short the Iroquois were the best allies Great Britain ever had in

North America.

France in the West

The discovery that one could travel from the Great Lakes to the Ohio, Mississippi and on to New Orleans via the Fox-Wisconsin portage is correctly attributed by historians to French explorers such as La Salle, Marquette and Joliet. In the mid- seventeenth century Jesuit Father Claude Allouez founded the mission of Saint Francis

Xavier de Pere on the Fox River where it spills into Green Bay. He was not only deep

28 Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 62. 87

within Anishinabeg territory but almost dead center in what late twentieth-century historian Richard White referred to as a triangular refugee area containing many who had fled the Iroquois’ attacks on their homelands. Algonquian-speaking nations made up the bulk of these peoples and included Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Fox, Sauk,

Kickapoos, Miamis and Illinois among others.29

Around this same time, two French fur traders in the employ of the British

Hudson’s Bay Company, Pierre Esprit Radisson and his brother-in-law Médard Chouart

(dit Des Groseilliers), travelled in the region east of St. Francis de Pere where Iroquois attacks were still taking place. White tells the story of how an Iroquois warrior risked his own life to save the two French traders.30 As every Canadian school child knows

Radisson and Groseilliers are considered fathers of their country. The pair makes an interesting allegory for modern Canadians: two, rough-cut French traders, working for the British, aligned with Algonquians but dealing with the Iroquois.

Another Jesuit priest Jacques Gravier, a prolific and careful writer, recorded the

Indian story on a different canvas. He lived among the Ohio Indians and painstakingly deciphered the Algonquian language. In this sense Gravier proved to be somewhat unique. Educated in both the Old World and the New, he was considered a rising star by the Bishop of Quebec, Jean-Baptiste de La Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier. Having

29White, Middle Ground, 11-14. White provides a detailed map of this area and its refugee villages by Nation on 12-13.

30Ibid., 8-9. For a detailed account of Radisson’s and Groseilliers’ exploits under the HBC banner see Peter C. Newman, The Company of Adventurers, vol. I (Markham, ON: Viking, Penguin Books of Canada, 1985).

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studied at Sillery, Gravier was dispatched to Starved Rock on the (west of modern Peoria) in 1689 to minister to the Illinois nation.31 Seven years later Saint-

Vallier appointed him “Superior of the Missions among the Ottawa, the Illinois, the

Miami, and others,” “others” meaning any other Indians in pays d’en haut. Saint-Vallier later named Gravier Vicar General for the entire region.32 Jacques Gravier embraced native languages, and produced the first authoritative French dictionary of the

Kaskaskia-Illinois language, an outgrowth of the Algonquian he had studied at Sillery.33

When France did move forcefully into the Ohio region six decades later, a variety of factors influenced them to take action. First and most obviously the French rightly feared that British fur traders and military outposts would lead to land speculation and settlements which could threaten their tenuous Mississippi connection between La

Nouvelle France and La Louisiane. Second France saw British incursions into the Ohio as threatening the interests of their familial ally Spain in the far west. Lastly, opening the

American west to Great Britain could foster expansion of British interests in the Pacific

Ocean in violation of the Treaty of Utrecht. 34

31Starved Rock was one of the three corners of White’s “refugee triangle.”

32O’Neill, “Jacques Gravier.”

33Jacques Gravier, Illinois-to-French Dictionary, ed. Carl Masthay (Saint Louis: Carl Masthay, 2002), 325. The presumed original of Gravier’s hand-written, 580-page dictionary is held by the Watkinson Library of Trinity College in Hartford, CT. However, in an accompanying critique of Gravier’s work Masthay suggests that Trinity’s copy was actually transcribed in later years by Gabriel Marest and Rene Tartarin.

34Mapp, Elusive West, 284-286. As regards the second point, France was tied to Spain by the Bourbon Family Compact. (This subject is discussed further in this chapter in the section entitled “.”) As regards the third point, Mapp points out that France had discouraged its own vessels from operating in the Pacific in recognition of Spain’s prerogative there under the Treaty of Utrecht. 89

The Anishinabeg Nations

In the eighteenth century the northern Great Lakes Indians or Anishinabeg nations, specifically the Ottawas, Ojibwas and Pottawatomies, emerged from the

Iroquois onslaught of the preceding century with renewed strength. However, unlike the Iroquois they had no unified organizational structure.35 Tucked away in the far northwest, in the early eighteenth century, these Indians were an afterthought to both

Britain and official France. Nonetheless these adroit navigators of their watery homelands were well known to their trading partners.36 French traders were among the principal economic partners of these northern Great Lakes Indians. Ironically, despite robust agricultural and aquacultural opportunities associated with the Great Lakes, by the mid-eighteenth century the Anishinabeg had become highly dependent on the

French for European goods. 37

Most of the nations around the Great Lakes spoke .

Through trade and common language, the Anishinabeg had become welcome in the more southern villages of the Hurons, Illinois, Ouiatenons, Piankashaws and Miamis in what France called the Illinois country.38 Through these nations along the Wabash and

35Dowd, War Under Heaven, 9.

36Ibid., 11. Dowd argues that the path to Ottawa leadership was through trade. The word in the Ottawa dialect means “trader.”

37Ibid., 30.

38Ibid., 24-25. The Wyandottes and Hurons spring from the same Wendot root. A seventeenth- century Iroquois attack split the nation into two geographic subgroups, Wyandottes and Hurons. The Hurons inhabited areas around the eastern lakes and were a major factor in French relations with Indians generally. 90

Illinois Rivers the Anishinabeg came to know about the trade in British goods near the

Falls of the Ohio. By the 1760’s the Ottawas had relocated to Michigan’s lower peninsula. Western Indians began to form alliances. As Wyandotte representatives cautioned George Croghan in 1760, “All the Indians in this country are allies to each other and as one people.”39

George Croghan and the Shawnees

As George Croghan’s trading activities expanded to the west in the 1740s, far from the comfort afforded by Pennsylvania and ever closer to the sphere of the French he came to depend more and more on a shadowy Indian nation which claimed ancient origins in the Ohio Valley. These were the Shawnees. Viewed in Croghan’s home colony of Pennsylvania as the incarnation of evil, the Shawnees would prove an effective ally for the itinerant Irishman, his colleagues and his future crown superiors.

Most likely the Shawnees did originate in the Ohio Valley. French maps of late seventeenth century situate them along the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers. Nonetheless, in the 1690s the Shawnees moved into Pennsylvania, settling in both the Delaware and

Susquehanna River valleys. Perhaps this was a result of prolonged warfare against the

Catawba and Nations in the late seventeenth century in what is now trans-

Appalachian Kentucky. This conflict had been sufficiently disruptive for the Shawnees to ally themselves with the French as protection against these southern Indians.40

39Ibid., 62, n16.

40Clark, Shawnees, 66. This may have led to the defection of from La Salle to the Shawnees, discussed in Chapter 2.

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However, when William Penn died in 1717, European-Indian relations within

Pennsylvania deteriorated, and the Shawnees moved across the Alleghenies and back to the Ohio valley where they established “lower Shawnee town” near mouth of Scioto

River.41 These migrations supported a view for many years that the Shawnees were

“nomads.”42 Whatever the case, by time the Shawnees had re-settled in Ohio country they had made valuable associations with many eastern Indian nations, notably the

Delawares whom they had always considered their ancestral “grandfathers.”43

The Shawnees were an Algonquian nation linked by language to the Delawares and Miamis as well as to the Great Lakes and Illinois Indians. In this way they differed from the Iroquois League and other nations who spoke . Regardless of their linguistic definition, the Shawnees have been regarded throughout history as successful warriors. Colin Calloway noted, “Even their enemies grudgingly acknowledged the Shawnees’ tenacity and courage.”44

Shawnee society was based on clans. Elders were respected; men hunted, women farmed. However, women also frequently served as chiefs sometimes even during war. Shawnees measured wealth in gifts given rather than accumulated possessions. They considered land to be God-given and it included their entire milieu of

41Calloway, Shawnees, 3-13.

42Paul A. W. Wallace, Indians in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1993), 118-119. Wallace disputes this, as do most modern historians. However, Wallace notes that some Shawnee movements were needed to find “fresh luck.”

43Calloway, Shawnees, 5, 17.

44Ibid., xxiv.

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earth, sky, waters and other creatures. Some Shawnee groups believed that humans and animals communicated. In addition to their clan structure, the Shawnees also divided their numbers into five divisions focused on four functions: religions, war, health and political matters on which two divisions concentrated.45

The story of George Croghan and his Shawnee allies unfolds throughout this thesis. However, in a prophetic vignette Wainwright telegraphs their future cooperation. In the spring of 1745 Croghan had packed up his winter fur harvest at his trading post on the Cuyahoga River (near modern Cleveland) for shipment to

Philadelphia when he was accosted by a “French Indian” who demanded his peltry, claiming Croghan was trespassing on native lands. This Indian was a Shawnee. Croghan had some friendly Senecas in his party.46 They interceded wisely suggesting that

Croghan take what he could carry and forthwith head east. Croghan heeded the

Senecas’ advice but later informed the Pennsylvania Assembly that he had lost, “. . . forty-eight horseloads of deerskins, four hundred pounds of beaver and six hundred pounds of raccoon skins.” He also knew that his trading partner Peter Tostee had lost even more to the Shawnees in a robbery on Tostee’s Allegheny River post.47

Aware that Pennsylvania’s Quaker-dominated Assembly customarily did nothing to defend the Province’s frontier, Croghan argued for a different response to the

45Calloway, Shawnees, xxvii-xxx, 4-5, 16.

46The Senecas were the westernmost Iroquois nation, guardians of the League’s “Western Door.”

47Wainwright, Diplomat, 7-8. Peter Tostee is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3.

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Shawnees: send a small present to those Shawnees who had acted amicably toward the

British.48 Philadelphia agreed; Croghan returned to the Cuyahoga with the gift, and the dispute with the Shawnees ended. Wainwright concluded, “This Shawnee present . . . foreshadowed the policy [Croghan] was soon to promote so vigorously – the policy of alienating the Ohio Indians from the French by Pennsylvania treaties and support.”49

French traders, themselves often at odds with Québec, had long dealt successfully with the Shawnees. Frenchman Martin Chartier and later his son Peter

(Pierre), traded with them. Like Peter Tostee, Croghan’s early trading partner, Peter

Chartier lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. As will be seen later in the thesis, these early Lancaster connections significantly affected Croghan’s experiences in British

North America. Indeed Chartier was licensed by Pennsylvania as an Indian trader as was another Frenchman, James LeTort, the putative founder of the important frontier town

Carlisle.50 LeTort and his Chester County colleague Peter Bezaillion traded regularly with the Shawnees in in both the Ohio and Allegheny River valleys.51

48Croghan also probably knew that his Cuyahoga trading post was well beyond Pennsylvania’s western boundary wherever it lay, but no doubt omitted this in his discussions in Philadelphia. This episode foreshadowed some of Croghan’s later unauthorized diplomatic moves in the name of Pennsylvania.

49Wainwright, Diplomat, 8.

50LeTort’s name is used profusely in Carlisle today, even extending to the “LeTort Community Center” on the grounds of the U.S. Army’s Carlisle Barracks, which houses the Army War College.

51William F. Worner, “Peter Bezaillion: Excerpts on his Life from Old St. John’s Church Yard, Pequea” Lancaster County Historical Society Papers, XXI, no. 10, (December 6, 1917) (Lancaster, PA: Lancaster County Historical Society, 1917), 155-161. Like LeTort Bezaillion was another interesting and shadowy Indian trader of the time, but who evaded LeTort’s immortalization by the 94

George Croghan’s greatest asset in dealing with the Shawnees was Alexander

McKee. McKee had both a Shawnee mother and wife. Croghan wrote to Sir William

Johnson that the Shawnees would tell McKee anything, “. . . as they consider him as one their own people.”52 In 1764 when Croghan laid out his plans for a separate Western

Division of Crown Indian Affairs, McKee was at the top of his list to be Deputy, the position Croghan held under Johnson in the Northern Division.

“In returning to the Ohio Valley the Shawnees put themselves at the focal point of a contest between . . . Britain and France,” Calloway observed. Further the Shawnee alliance with France had gone yellow around the edges. British traders offered them goods of better quality and prices than French traders. Nonetheless, Calloway added,

Britain “failed to take advantage” of this opportunity.53

The Miamis

In the mid-seventeenth century Iroquois nations also attacked Indians south of the Great Lakes. While other Iroquois nations were at war in the north Seneca warriors seized an opportunity to attack the Miamis. Miami warriors had left their villages weakly defended to fight their own wars with Indians further south. The Senecas attacked killing the few remaining men and capturing the women and children. What

when it situated its leadership training base where his home had stood. The Governors of both Pennsylvania and Maryland were leery of Bezaillion and his trade with the “Shall-Narooners” (Shawnees). In 1710 the Governor of Pennsylvania called him, “. . . a Frenchman, a Roman Catholic, and a suspicious person generally . . .”

52Calloway, Shawnees, xxiv, 46.

53Ibid., 22-25.

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ensued was a death march for the Miami children, who were butchered and eaten one- by-one as the party moved east. Returning Miami warriors tracked the Senecas and killed all but six of the raiding party.54

The Miamis were the second nation that George Croghan befriended in the Ohio country. While their influence declined sharply after the French returned to the valley in force, for Croghan they were in the right spot at the right time. Miami chief

Memeskia, also known as Old Briton or derisively by the French as La Demoiselle, was

Croghan’s earliest ally in the far west. In 1750 the Huron Orontony, whom George

Croghan had befriended on the Cuyahoga, passed away. The mantel of leadership for the loose anti-French confederation of Ohio nations fell to Memeskia, despite the fact that he was of mixed Miami and Piankashaw blood.55 At the time of Céloron’s visit in

1749 Memeskia’s village, Pickawillany, contained less than fifty warriors. A year later there were four hundred. George Croghan established his Pickawillany depot there in

1748, and Memeskia took advantage of the cost and value of British goods to attract other Indian nations to the red flag. So broad was Memeskia’s reach that by late 1751

Sieur de Ligneris, commander at Fort Vincennes, was convinced all Indians in the region except the Kickapoos and Musquattamies had abandoned the French. De Ligneris attributed this to British presents.56 Croghan’s impressive trading post on the Miami

54White, Middle Ground, 3-5.

55Ibid., 216. White makes the argument that intermarriage among western Indian nations strengthened alliances

56Ibid., 224-225.

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River piqued more than French interest. The Ottawas were wary of Croghan as well.

The Miami town at Pickawillany would come to symbolize the increasing rancor between the Anishinabeg and the British traders.

New Spain

Spain’s sixteenth-century discovery of silver at Zacatecas in northern Mexico spurred probes further north in hopes of finding similar ore and precious metals deposits in the North American west. 57 Catholic missionaries and prospectors fanned out into what became known as “New” Mexico from California to modern Nebraska.

Nonetheless, until the French and Indian War Spain’s activities in this region were disorganized and poorly administered.

Despite the Bourbon Family Compact between Spain and France, first made after the War of the Spanish Succession and amended several times later, Spain came late to the French and Indian War. In a somewhat lukewarm and belated attempt to support

France while still remaining neutral between 1759 and 1761, Spanish ambassadors to

London warned the British that their actions in Québec could upset the balance of power in North America.58 Spanish diplomats even tried to mediate the dispute suggesting a post-war French presence along the Mississippi to buffer both French infringements in the American west and British into the Gulf of Mexico.59 Unfortunately

57Mapp, Elusive West, 64 and 114. By the 1700’s Mexican mines produced 67% of the silver produced in the Americas.

58Ibid., 392-393.

59Ibid., 407.

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for Spain, the series of British victories in New York, Acadia and Québec drowned out its representatives in Whitehall. Spain reluctantly entered the war through a back door, the secret 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau.60 Recognizing the potential for applying the familial alliance between France and Spain to America however, the clever French

Foreign Minister Duc de Choiseul transferred all of La Louisiane west of the Mississippi to Spain with this clandestine treaty.

When modern Americans consider “Louisiana” in an historic sense they generally think of ’s 1803 Louisiana Purchase. When eighteenth-century

Europeans thought of La Louisiane they pictured a very different map. At the time the

Mississippi River was not a border between New France and New Spain (or “New”

Mexico). In reality the North America border between these two on-again-off-again allies followed the Rio Grande River with remarkable accuracy to its headwaters in the

San Juan Mountains in modern southern Colorado, followed the mountains north, and then abruptly ended around modern Nebraska. Map 2-2 Jean Baptiste Homann’s 1720 map of the area depicts the Louisiana Territory well prior to the French and Indian War.

French Louisiana is shown in red marked in Latin “Ludovicia”; “Nova (New) Mexico” appears in gray.

60This is not to be confused with the 1683 Edict of Fontainebleau which reversed the earlier and religiously tolerant Edict of Nantes and effectively evicted most Protestant Huguenots from France. 98

Map 2-2. Johann Baptiste Homann, Regni Mexicani seu Novae Hispaniae, Floridae, Novae Angliae, Carolinae, Virginiae, 1720, Barry Ruderman Antique Maps. 61

61Johann Baptiste Homann, “Regni Mexicani seu Novae Hispaniae, Floridae, Novae Angliae, Carolinae, Virginiae,” 1720, used by permission, Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc., La Jolla, CA. [email protected]. 99

Homann’s 1720 map remained accurate until September 1762 when France and

Spain signed the secret treaty. France knew only too well that its empire in America was coming to an end. France’s governance of the trans-Mississippi region had always been weak, and Spain’s influence in the American west was significant.

Britain Eyes the Spanish Lake

Britain’s imperial focus diverged in two new directions by the time the French and Indian War broke out. First, Admiral Lord George Anson’s daring late 1740’s round- the-world voyages including the lucrative capture of several Spanish treasure ships enthralled both Whitehall and the British public. Even the French were concerned about this incursion into the Pacific Ocean, which for centuries had been considered a

“Spanish Lake.”62 Second, after the French and Indian War, British leaders began to focus more on protecting the empire’s existing economic assets rather than expanding them. As Paul Mapp put it, “The stress was on the danger rather than the desirability of dominant imperial power.”63

In 1763 European powers still thought of the Pacific Ocean as a “Spanish Lake.”64

Almost two decades earlier Britain’s Lord Anson had seen the Spanish empire up close, recognized its wealth and weaknesses, and believed Britain’s future lay in the Pacific where British naval power could be most effective. Made a peer as the result of his

62Mapp, Elusive West, 287-295.

63Ibid., 423-425.

64Ibid., 103.

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victory over Jonquière at Cape Finisterre, Anson was now First Lord of the Admiralty. In

1755 French Minister of Foreign Affairs Antoine-Louis Rouille portended that in this position Anson would now focus Britain on the rich but decaying Spanish empire in the

Americas.65

Even so in 1763 the economics of becoming the dominant world power were beginning to wear on Great Britain. Britain’s attitudes toward the post-war world were embryonic. William Pitt’s imperial tapestry was unravelling. Over time the Mississippi

River would become a border between Britain and Spain, mirroring their increasingly adversarial status on the high seas of the Pacific Ocean. British Ranger Major Robert

Rogers may have put it best when he suggested that had Britain, “. . . added the fertile and extensive country of Louisiana we should have been possessed of perhaps the most valuable territory on the face of the globe.”66

Conclusion

From the fifteenth century on Europeans pushed deeper into the North

American interior. Notwithstanding the fact that all Europe now knew the Americas were not part of the East Indies, Europeans continued to refer to indigenous Americans as “Indians.”

Despite the fact that France preceded the Netherlands in establishing outposts in

North America the Dutch were the first to trade firearms to Indians. In this regard the

65Ibid., 309.

66Ibid., 404. Mapp quotes Rogers’ 1765 journal.

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Dutch bequeathed a legacy to indigenous peoples which far outlasted their own presence in North America. The Dutch traded mainly with the Iroquois League. The practice of trading arms to the Iroquois carried over to England after it acquired New

York from the Dutch in 1664. The Mohawks in particular became highly expert in the use of firearms, and the British enhanced the Netherlands’ Covenant Chain trade relationship with the Iroquois League to include diplomacy.

La Nouvelle France was a royal colony with unified government. Unlike the

British colonies to the south it discouraged immigration. A lack of women led to many intermarriages between French and Indians creating a racial sub-category called Métis.

Unlike the fertile piedmont valleys of Virginia and Pennsylvania, Canada was a barren, frozen, forbidding wilderness. The French arrived in the midst of a war between their newfound Algonquian friends and the more heavily-armed Iroquois. Algonquians and other Francophile Indians observed the French using European weapons against the

Iroquois, and began to insist on acquiring their own firearms.

At the same time the Iroquois had issues with France. Britain worked closely to cement a lasting alliance with the Iroquois while the French seemingly antagonized them at every step. New France expanded westward, strengthening alliances with

Algonquian nations as far as the modern Upper Peninsula of northern Michigan. In 1673

France built Fort Frontenac at the eastern end of Lake Ontario where the St. Lawrence begins. The Iroquois considered both sides of the “Cadaraqui” their hunting grounds. A tentative French-Iroquois accord was reached in 1701. France reassured the League about its intentions, but Fort Frontenac remained. 102

Britain’s southern colonies were an assortment of corporate, royal and proprietary colonies, most of which encouraged immigration not only from Britain but for other European countries as well. Britons were cautious about exploring the interior. A notable exception was the Indian traders, and George Croghan was arguably the most audacious of them. The farthest British outpost in the west prior to the French and Indian War was Pickawillany, George Croghan’s depot.

Conversely French explorers and Jesuit priests did go far west. In the process they were the first to discover the far reaches of the Great Lakes, settle where the Fox

River fed Green Bay, and discern the connection between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers that led to the upper reaches of the Mississippi. Jesuit Father Claude Allouez unintentionally established his Green Bay mission in the epicenter of a vast Algonquian refugee camp. The French were better linguists than the British for two reasons. Jesuit priests then as now were academics. At their seminary at Sillery near Quebec City they codified Algonquian languages and instructed each other in them. Jesuit Father Jacques

Gravier meticulously developed a French-Algonquian dictionary. Meanwhile, the growing Métis population expanded French proficiency in Indian languages to all classes, giving French Canadiens a better understanding of Indians than Britons. France eventually moved forcefully into the Ohio region in the mid-1700s. Several factors influenced their actions. First France feared that British fur traders and military outposts would lead to settlements, threatening the tenuous connection between La

Nouvelle France and La Louisiane. Second France saw British incursions into the Ohio as threatening the interests of their familial ally Spain in the far west. Finally opening the 103

American west to Great Britain could foster expansion of British interests in the Pacific

Ocean in violation of the Treaty of Utrecht.

The Iroquois League behaved much as an independent nation and in many ways was treated as such by Great Britain. The Iroquois presumed to represent other Indian nations, particularly the Delawares and Shawnees, in their dealings with European powers, a position accepted by several British colonies, notably Pennsylvania and

Virginia. Where Algonquian Indians called the French King “father;” Iroquois called the

King of England “brother.”

In the eighteenth century Anishinabeg nations emerged from the Iroquois onslaught of the preceding century with renewed strength. Nonetheless, unlike the

Iroquois they had no unified organizational structure. Further, despite being skilled

Great Lakes navigators and traders, French traders were their principal economic partners. By the mid- century the Anishinabeg had become highly dependent on the

French for European goods, and this trading dependency zenith would occur just as

France was losing its grip on Canada. Britain was reluctant enough to trade with its own allies after the French and Indian War, particularly in arms and ammunition. It had no interest in such trading with the Great Lakes Indians.

George Croghan’s most long-standing interaction with Indians was the relationship he developed along the Allegheny River with the Shawnees. Except for the early years of the French and Indian War the Shawnees behaved mostly as a neutral nation, cautiously weighing opportunities with both France and Great Britain. The

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, trading community included half-Shawnee Peter 104

Chartier. Although Chartier later went over to the French his relations with the

Shawnees influenced other traders including Croghan. Later another half-Shawnee

Alexander McKee would prove to be Croghan’s best diplomatic ally in Shawnee country.

Croghan encountered the Miamis at the far end of the Ohio Valley. When

Croghan arrived they were already involved with an anti-French alliance of disaffected

Ohio country Indians, and their leader Memeskia assumed authority over this pan-

Indian group after its Huron leader Orontony died. Already an annoyance to the French,

Memeskia did not further endear himself to Montréal when he permitted Croghan to establish his largest trading depot at Pickawillany deep within French territory. It would be a costly decision for both men. Yet the friends and alliances Croghan made among the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes Indians, while somewhat dormant during the French and Indian War, would provide of great value to Great Britain during “Pontiac’s War” which followed.

Not everyone believed the transfer of western Louisiana to Spain was a great idea. French traders and Francophile Indians were among the unhappy stakeholders affected by the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau. Another disenchanted group was the

British traders who had all but shut down French interests in most of the Ohio and

Illinois Territory. As George Croghan’s responsibilities to the Crown expanded into the

Illinois country after the war, his dealings increasingly involved the Spanish along the

Mississippi River. In large part this was a direct result of the now-uncloaked 1762 treaty. Indeed even Spain remained wary of France’s residual interest in the American west after the Treaty of Paris, something Croghan was occasionally able to leverage to 105

his advantage.67 Nonetheless with the 1763 Treaty of Paris France reluctantly embraced the positive aspects of a limited presence in the New World. Versailles accepted that,

“A bounded Louisiana was not worthless, but it was worth less. . .”68

Regardless, by 1763 Britain’s focus had turned increasingly to the Pacific Ocean.

Over time the Mississippi River would become a border between Britain and Spain, mirroring their increasingly adversarial status on the high seas of the “Spanish Lake.”

67Mapp, Elusive West, 397.

68Ibid., 385. 106

CHAPTER 3

BEFORE OHIO: IRELAND AND PENNSYLVANIA

[The Englishman] built his camp fires on the southern shores of Lake Erie, and drove his pack-horses over the Scioto. A few of the boldest hunted wild turkey on the Wabash. The Indian soon learned who paid the best prices for beaver.1

– Joseph Walton (Conrad Weiser Biographer), 1900 Introduction

George Croghan is the central character of All the Nations to the Sun Setting; this chapter introduces him at the onset of his American story in the two places he called home: Ireland and Pennsylvania. Born about 1715 in Dublin, Ireland, to a Protestant merchant family, after two years of bad harvests Croghan immigrated with several relatives to the New World in 1741. Philadelphia, where the Croghan family arrived, was a major city in the British Empire, indeed the world, at the time. To the west of the

City of Brotherly Love the remainder of Pennsylvania spread to the distant mountains like an emerald carpet. Between the city and the frontier could be found some of the continent’s richest farm and game lands. Wealthy Delaware Valley investors were anxious to help other, less risk-averse entrepreneurs conquer this wilderness.

One such investor, III, was already in the business of bankrolling fur traders along the Allegheny River. Operating from a depot on the far edge of the vast Cumberland Valley in the lee of the first range of the Allegheny Mountains, Shippen

1Joseph S. Walton, Conrad Weiser and the Indian Policy of Colonial Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company, 1900), 19.

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saw in Croghan what he had seen in other young men before him, a sharp mind and a willingness to go anywhere to build the lucrative fur-trading business.2

In 1750 Pennsylvania created Cumberland County on the west side of the

Susquehanna. Five years earlier Croghan had settled his own depot in the area of this new county, and in 1750 he became one of its first commissioners. Creating

Cumberland County became both a curse and a blessing for Pennsylvania. The resident

Delaware Indians, still fighting for their lost land in the Delaware Valley, now saw the rich Cumberland Valley slipping from their grasp. Meanwhile, colonial leaders saw the establishment of a local government in this region as an opportunity to control land- grabbing, predominantly by naïve Ulster Irish immigrants, and perhaps in the process placate the Delawares. As the chapter section on Aughwick demonstrates it would be a fool’s errand for Croghan, but it would provide both him and the a supply depot critical to the success of both in the future.

From Pennsylvania George Croghan and his group of Allegheny River trading partners moved on to the Ohio Valley proper where they came to depend on another

Indian nation, the mercurial Shawnees. Nonetheless, regardless how far west the future would take him Croghan always considered himself a Pennsylvanian first; the colony would magnetically draw him back even in the worst of times.

2The fur trade is discussed generally and in more detail in Appendix A. 108

George Croghan’s Murky Irish Past

Bliadhain an air (Year of Slaughter) marked the beginning of the final century of a half-millennium of cold weather to which meteorological historians refer as the “Little

Ice Age.” Bliadhain an air was actually a three-year period causing widespread crop failures across Europe, particularly in Ireland. The Irish potato crop froze in the ground in the winter of 1739-1740, and most other crops failed as well in the following year when cold weather set in as early as August, 1740.3 The harvest of the usually bountiful

Irish oat crop in particular failed throughout most of the country during this second period, and much of what was harvested was shipped to Scotland.4 Mobs at Drogheda and Cork successfully caused local authorities to end such shipments, tearing the sails off and disabling the rudder of an oat-laden ship bound for Scotland before it could depart Drogheda’s docks.5 As with any economic disruption, the crop failures of these years inevitably affected the merchant class which included the Croghans. History records little about George Croghan’s family’s business, but clearly the repeated years of early frost affected the Croghans.

Sources differ about George Croghan’s year of birth, but most reflect it as between 1714 and 1718.6 Croghan arrived in British North America in 1741 and quickly

3The Irish famine of 1739-1741 differed from the more famous potato famine a hundred years later which was caused not by weather but by a fungus-like, oomycete infection of the potato crop.

4Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (New York: Penguin Basic Books, 2000), 183.

5David Dickson, Arctic Ireland (Dublin: White Row Press, 1997), 78.

6Wainwright, Diplomat, 106-108. Wainwright reports that during the Filius Gallicae (French Brother) episode Croghan’s age was reported in the associated letters as thirty-eight, making his birth 109

established himself in Pennsylvania.7 Assuming his birthdate was around 1715 he would have been about twenty-six when he arrived. Bliadhain an air certainly would have influenced his decision to leave his homeland. When Croghan emigrated at least two relatives remained in Ireland, his grandfather Edmund Croghan whose estate was probated in 1763 or 1764, and an uncle Nicholas Croghan who in time became

Croghan’s Irish agent.

Although the Croghans considered themselves Irish and proudly so, they were in no means religiously typical of southern Irish who were mostly Roman Catholic. All the

Croghans, including their half-Native progeny, were devout Anglicans; until the

American Revolution divided the family they were fiercely loyal to the British crown.

Croghan himself maintained a pew in an Anglican Church in Philadelphia. Many

Protestant Scots-Irish emigrated from Ulster in northern Ireland to British North

America. These people were also Protestants but generally Presbyterians not

Anglicans.8 Data for 1732 when George Croghan lived in Ireland suggest how unusual the religious affiliation of this family may have been. Leinster in which Dublin is situated

year 1718. However the Filius Gallicae story, discussed later in this thesis, was discredited shortly after it arose.

7Wainwright, Diplomat, 3.

8James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1962), 188-190, and O’Toole, White Savage, 31-33. Even published historians make this mistake about southern Irish who were Anglicans. (I.e., Erik Hinderaker, who claims that both Sir William Johnson and Croghan were “Scots-Irish.” See Erik Hinderaker, Elusive Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 163.) Johnson came from a southwestern Irish Roman Catholic family and later converted to Anglicanism. Croghan was a Dubliner whose family from all accounts was always Anglican. Neither Johnson nor Croghan counts among the “Scots-Irish.”

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was 79% Roman Catholic in 1732. At the same time Connacht in which the County Town for County Roscommon bears the name “Croghan” was 91% Catholic. Conversely Ulster was 62% Protestant in 1732. Raphoe’s 1732 religious demography of Ireland suggested that the change in Dublin came with the Cromwell Protectorate, during which

Protestants (both mainstream and dissenters) edged out Catholics as a larger proportion of Dublin’s merchant class.9

In the early eighteenth century much of Ireland was administratively dominated by absentee English Protestant landlords. However, the Croghan clan did not fit this model either. From the slim records we have they appear to have been middle-class merchants who lived and worked in and around Dublin, all the while Anglican

Protestants and loyal subjects of the English King. 10

George Croghan’s Relatives

George Croghan arrived in Philadelphia in 1741. Despite his relative youth a seemingly large number of relatives arrived either with him or around the same time.

This group included his mother Mrs. Thomas Ward, her husband, Croghan’s half-brother

Edward Ward and a likely cousin Thomas Smallman. Ward and Smallman would weave in and out of the fabric of Croghan’s life and work for many years. Later when Croghan

9Terry Barry, ed., A History of Settlement in Ireland (London: Routledge, 2000), 114-116. Barry’s book reprints a good deal of Raphoe’s 1732 treatise on Irish religious demography.

10Anglicans generally prefer the term “Anglican Catholics”, arguing correctly that when they broke with Rome they did not break Apostolic Succession (ordination of Priests by Bishops whose ordination traces to St. Peter) as did Luther and Calvin. Nonetheless, from the Roman Catholic perspective the split between King Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII amounted to the same heresy.

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was established he sponsored his cousin William Croghan, Irish Uncle Nicholas’s son, in

New York and Philadelphia.11

Edward Ward served on-and-off as a junior officer in the . Unlike

Pennsylvania, Virginia had an aggressive program of fort-building plus an established militia aimed at defending the frontier. In 1754 as a part of a company commanded by

William Trent, his half-brother’s business partner, Ward began to build the first British fort at the Forks of the Ohio. The French captured Ward in this capacity, but he was later released. Ward served with the Virginia militia during Braddock’s Defeat, and afterward he was increasingly preoccupied by his service for Virginia.

Like cousin George, Thomas Smallman accepted a county commission in what amounted to a local militia and only committed to fight when and where he saw fit to do so. During the French and Indian War Smallman was involved in logistics for the

British army, operating from , his cousin’s former trading post on the

Aughwick Creek.

Two other relatives played later roles in George Croghan’s life and businesses.

His Uncle Nicholas Croghan remained in Dublin and became his “agent” in Ireland.

However, the only substantive record of Uncle Nicholas’s “agency” suggested it existed primarily to provide his nephew with furnishings and staff for his estates. In 1769 Uncle

Nicholas sent George Croghan eight indentured servants, a mason, five laborers and a

11Wainwright, Diplomat, 260. William was the progenitor of the American side of George Croghan’s family. George Croghan’s direct descendants remained loyal British subjects in Canada. Croghan’s family to the extent it is known is discussed in Appendix B.

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gardener, all the while lamenting that George would have to do without the bagpiper because, “. . .a good piper is hard to be got at present.”12 The other relative was

Nicholas’s son William whom he sent to America in 1768. Cousin George placed him with New York merchants Thomas and John Shipboy, and seemingly forgot him.13

William virtually disappeared from Croghan’s story until much later when the younger man appeared in Philadelphia under the wing of Croghan’s accountants Michael and

Bernard Gratz. The Gratzes handled George Croghan’s end-of-life financial affairs.

William remained intensely loyal to his cousin who in return seemed generally to ignore him. The Gratzes forwarded Croghan many of William’s admiring letters in which he referred to George Croghan as “the Colonel” or “the Old Gentleman.” Croghan was nearly destitute at this time, abandoned by almost everyone but William and the

Gratzes. However, he rarely answered these letters.14 William Croghan was later fiercely loyal to the American revolutionaries.

Delaware Valley Investors

Edward Shippen III was a prominent investor who provided the financial glue that kept the early Pennsylvania Indian traders in business and the initial investor in

George Croghan. Shippen was a third generation merchant of Philadelphia whose top-

12“Nicholas Croghan to George Croghan, July 17, 1769,” in John Cadwalader et al., Cadwalader Family Papers (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania), Series 4, Box 204, Folder 6, 21. Hereafter cited as Cadwalader, Papers, Series:Box:Folder:page.

13Wainwright, Diplomat, 268.

14“William Croghan to Bernard Gratz, March 20, 1779,” in Frank M. Etting, Collection of Family Papers, 1558-1917 (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania), Box 55, Folder 57. Hereafter cited as: Etting, Papers, box:page; or citing a specific document as: Document, Date, Etting Papers, box:page.

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shelf access to influential Pennsylvanians from birth was enhanced by his early partnership with Provincial Secretary James . (Logan was much older than

Shippen and had been appointed Secretary by William Penn himself.) Shippen made his home in Lancaster County, two counties west of Philadelphia. It is likely here that he made the acquaintance of Peter Tostee one of the first Indian traders whom Shippen underwrote and who also called Lancaster home. 15 In the 1730’s Shippen split with

Logan, although they remained close associates, and went into a new partnership with

Thomas Lawrence, perennial Mayor of Philadelphia who had taken a budding interest in the fur trade. Shippen and Lawrence soon became the investors of choice for

Pennsylvania Indian traders.

In 1730 Shippen acquired thirteen hundred acres about forty miles southwest of

Harris’s Ferry and close to the ridge of mountains forming the western edge of the

Cumberland Valley. He named the town “Shippensburg,” built a storage depot here and added a substantial house in 1750 which he used on his visits.16

Shippen and Lawrence had bankrolled traders who came before Croghan. One was Tostee. Wainwright, after a somewhat glorified discussion of Shippen’s activities,

15Wainwright, Diplomat, 5. Lancaster County today is home to many Amish and Mennonite residents of German extraction (so-called “Pennsylvania Dutch,” which also includes mainstream Protestants). These Rhineland dissenters, like their neighbors, eschewed violence; unlike Quakers they also embraced a simple lifestyle. Nonetheless when Tostee and Shippen met (ca.1730) German settlements were more prevalent in other areas such as Philadelphia itself, Berks County near Conrad Weiser’s homestead, Moravian settlements in the Lehigh Valley and along the Mohawk River in New York. Large scale German immigration into Lancaster County began in the following decade.

16United States Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, Shippen House (Washington: United States Department of the Interior, 1975), 2. Harris’s Ferry was established three years later.

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“. . . far beyond the mountain wall of the Alleghenies, along the Ohio and Allegheny

Rivers and south of the shores of Lake Erie,” went on to mention Tostee. “Peter

Tostee,” Wainwright claimed, “. . . was one of the principal traders in these areas.”17

Tostee established a trading post on the Allegheny River.

William Trent the younger was the son of William Trent of , a

Delaware Valley investor and founder of eponymous Trenton. Born in 1715 the younger

Trent was about Croghan’s age but far more experienced in American affairs. The elder

Trent had fallen on hard financial times when the young man was only ten.

Nonetheless, the elder Trent’s Delaware Valley connections remained intact. One such contact was Shippen who had become the principal Philadelphia financier for the

Pennsylvania Indian trade by the time Trent was a teenager. By 1740 Shippen had taken the younger Trent on as an apprentice, and by 1745 Trent was working at Shippen’s fur depot in the Cumberland Valley.18

In 1742 Shippen hired Croghan to take some goods to Tostee.19 In later years

Tostee worked closely with Croghan along the Allegheny in Pennsylvania and the

Cuyahoga River, a tributary of Lake Erie near modern Cleveland. Tostee does not count

17Wainwright, Diplomat, 5.

18Even today the approach to Shippensburg from the western ridgeline (Tuscarora Mountain) still has the feel of wilderness.

19Wainwright, Diplomat, 5-8, 5n1. Wainwright’s note cites Edward Shippen, Papers, Vols. XV and XXVII (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania), 33 and 71 respectively. He claims these represent the earliest entries in Shippen’s papers concerning Croghan. Wainwright is probably correct. In discussions with the author, curators at both the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the William Clements Library of the University of Michigan agreed that material on Shippen’s enterprise before he partnered with James Burd (after Croghan) is sparse.

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as one of Croghan’s investors, but his existing trading operations in Pennsylvania and

Ohio before Croghan arrived in Philadelphia in 1741 suggest either that Tostee introduced him to Shippen, or vice versa.

Croghan and Trent apparently met at one of Shippen’s establishments and took a liking to each other. Except for Trent’s valuable connections however, there is little evidence that Trent invested anything in Croghan other than sweat equity from the fur trade. Nonetheless, the two seemed to share both a friendship and a common entrepreneurial spirit which lasted over their lifetimes. Trent and Croghan established a storehouse sometime after 1742 at the mouth of Pine Creek on the Allegheny River between ’s trading post and Logstown.20 Croghan soon expanded his operations across the Ohio territory opening trading posts on the Cuyahoga and

Muskingum Rivers, at Sandusky on Lake Erie, and at Pickawillany at the confluence of the Great Miami and Ohio Rivers. Cuyahoga and Sandusky lie north of the Saint

Lawrence continental divide while Muskingum and Pickawillany are below it.

Croghan’s Traders

In 1733 John Harris received a license from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to establish a ferry across the Susquehanna River southeast of the first ridgeline of the

Allegheny Mountains. By the time he built the ferry, Harris had been a trader in the area for nearly thirty years. Harris was a Yorkshireman and a close friend, business

20Clark, Shawnees, 74.

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associate, and relative by marriage of Edward Shippen.21 His new Ferry provided a

“bridge” across a river which had been a major obstacle on the Great Philadelphia

Wagon Road.22

The area around Harris’s Ferry was significant not only because of its access to the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road but also because of its proximity to three major

Susquehanna tributaries. The Swatara Creek led eastward to Conrad Weiser’s plantation in Berks County where a short portage led to a tributary of the Delaware

River and Philadelphia. The meandered from the southwest at the edge of the mountains forming part of the border between Cumberland and York

Counties, in territory contested by neighboring Maryland. Although a tributary of the

Susquehanna the Yellow Breeches nonetheless provided easy overland access to the

Monocacy River a tributary of the Potomac.23

21Harris married Shippen’s niece Esther Sey. Shippen may have bankrolled Harris as well.

22Leyburn, Scotch-Irish, 197-198; Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historic Registry Resource Form - Market Street Bridge (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1934), 1-7. Harris’s Ferry was highly successful in part because it provided an alternative to Wright’s Ferry which lay within the territory contested by Maryland. Some early maps show the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road crossing at Wright’s and others at Harris’s. Pennsylvania ultimately moved its capital to Harris’s Ferry, naming the city Harrisburg. Harris’s Ferry remained in use even after the 1813- 1815 construction of the Market Street toll bridge connecting Harrisburg and the opposite shore by road. The Market Street Bridge was the first bridge across the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg. No longer a toll bridge it remains a principal access route to downtown Harrisburg from the Cumberland County area southwest of it still known as the “West Shore.” The current bridge is the third iteration, earlier versions having been weakened or destroyed by floods.

23The headwaters of these two systems are closest to each other on the grounds of the modern Letterkenny Army Depot in Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

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However the third Susquehanna tributary near Harris’s Ferry and arguably the most important at the time was the Conodoguinet Creek.24 It was significant for a number of reasons. First, much of it lies above the 40o North latitude border claimed by

Maryland.25 Secondly, it led to both Le Tort’s Spring (Carlisle) and Edward Shippen’s trading post at Shippensburg, two important frontier settlements on the route to western Pennsylvania. 26 George Croghan arrived in Pennsylvania in 1741 and knew this area from his dealings with Edward Shippen. In fact he had discussed with Shippen the possibility of settling in Shippensburg. Nonetheless, Croghan felt that the area around

Harris’s Ferry made the best sense as a crossroads of commerce, and he chose to settle near the mouth of the Conodoguinet rather than at Shippensburg. In 1745 he and Trent purchased an initial parcel of 354 acres on the creek, and two years later Croghan bought another 171 acres.27 Croghan referred to his property as “Pennsborough,” which the township is still called today, but it soon became known as “Croghan’s

Plantation” or simply “Croghan’s.”

24The junction of the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, more significant in later years, lies several miles northwest of this creek. However, the and its junction with the Susquehanna are within the Allegheny Mountains, which was unquestionably “Indian Country” in 1733.

25The Maryland-Pennsylvania border dispute is discussed in Chapter 1.

26James Le Tort was a native of France who traded in western Pennsylvania and on the Ohio River (in modern West Virginia) as early as 1720. A colleague of French traders Peter Chartier and Peter Bezaillion, he no doubt enjoyed the support of others from New France who encountered him. Le Tort is not considered an English (or British) trader and there is no record of him west of the Kanawha River, which joins the Ohio in modern West Virginia.

27Wainwright, Diplomat, 9.

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Map 3-1 shows many of these locations. Following a line straight north from the

“N” in “MARYLAND” to where it intersects the Susquehanna River, one finds Harris’s

Ferry marked “Harris F”. The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road is below it as is the

Swatara Creek. Across the river on the “West Shore” the Conodoguinet Creek can be found north of the Wagon Road. The creek is marked left of the word “Carlisle” but it is difficult to read. (Note that “Carlisle” appears incorrectly on the East Shore of the

Susquehanna as well.) Croghan’s Plantation was situated along the Conodoguinet

Creek about six miles from its junction with the Susquehanna. Carlisle is correctly shown on the West Shore, and Shippensburg is shown southwest of that. In the west, the proximity of on the Allegheny River to the West Branch of the

Susquehanna can be seen (left of the words “The Allegany . . .” in “The Allegany Ridge of Mountains”). Note also that the map’s geographer Thomas Kitchin has shown some

Indian Nations on the map as well.28

28Some of these same locations appear more clearly on Map 1-8 in Chapter 1; however, Map 1-8 is a twentieth century rendering while Map 3-1 was drawn in Croghan’s time.

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Map 3-1. Thomas Kitchin, A Map of The Province of Pensilvania Drawn from the Best Authorities, 1756, London Magazine.29

29Thomas Kitchin, A Map of the Province of Pensilvania Drawn from the Best Authorities (London: London Magazine, 1756), public domain, accessed December 2, 2014, http://www.mapsofpa.com/antiquemaps25b.htm. Kitchin was a military geographer who accompanied Col. Henri Bouquet in the Ohio Territory during the French and Indian War. He relied on earlier maps to which he added contemporary items. His choice of base map was generally excellent, making his maps quite accurate. This particular map is based on the 1749 Lewis Evans map of Pennsylvania, the first map 120

Croghan and Trent obtained the financial wherewithal to purchase the

Conodoguinet plantation in 1745 through Edward Shippen. In the three years preceding the purchase both worked for Shippen and with Tostee. Missing is the period between

Croghan’s arrival in 1741 and the first mention in 1742 of his taking goods to Tostee on the Allegheny. Regardless, what George Croghan did during this period may be less important than where his early business associations began – Lancaster County.30

The Shawnees were inevitably one half of the key to deciphering the Ohio

Territory; French traders provided the other half. Curiously in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Lancaster County provided the link between the two groups more than did the Ohio-Allegheny River complex. The two came together in men such as James LeTort, Peter Bezaillion and – most significantly to Croghan’s story – Peter

Chartier. Chartier’s father Martin led his Métis-Shawnee group to Dekuneagah on the

Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, near a Conestoga Indian settlement in the late seventeenth century.31 Martin and his Shawnee bride were married in 1689, and Peter was born in the far west a few years later.32 When Martin

to limit itself only to the Province. It incorporates the 1732 boundary agreement between Lord Baltimore and the Penn Family, which set the boundary at about the same latitude as did Mason and Dixon in 1763- 7.

30Cumberland County was formed out of Lancaster County in 1750, so technically both Shippensburg and Croghan’s Conodoguinet Plantation were in Lancaster County at this time. Here the author is referring to what was then eastern Lancaster County, east of the Susquehanna River and approximately the same area as modern Lancaster County.

31The location of Dekuneagah is uncertain, but the joins the Susquehanna River about two miles from the Indian (and later Pennsylvania) town bearing the same name as the river. Dekuneagah was probably at this river junction.

32Clark, Shawnees, 74. 121

died he left his son a huge debt to for the Dekuneagah trading post, which propelled Peter’s return to the Allegheny Valley.33

Peter Tostee was also from Lancaster County, and records show him trading in the Allegheny Valley alongside French Traders including Peter Chartier.34 Canadian historian Ian Steele suggests that Tostee regularly traded with James Dunning in the

Alleghany Valley. Steele claims that Dunning traded there as early as “two decades” before 1745 (approximately 1725). As for Chartier, Steele states flatly that he relocated from eastern Pennsylvania to the Forks of the Ohio in 1728; presumably he began trading there at the same time. 35 Chartier was born around 1694. Tostee likely was considerably younger.

In an April 1745 report to the Pennsylvania Assembly, Deputy Governor George

Thomas reported that Chartier had, “. . . gone over to the enemy,” by secretly accepting a, “. . . military commission from the French King,” implying that Chartier had previously been loyal to the British. Two months later Chartier’s assistant, apparently more

33Ian K. Steele, Setting All the Captives Free: Capture, Adjustment, and Recollection in Allegheny Country (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 35.

34A brief survey of American genealogical sources by the author revealed very few hits (less than 10) on the name “Tostee.” Most early references (1880’s and 1890’s) suggest a French language origin. However, in the early 1700’s in Lancaster County a French Huguenot from Palatine Germany, displaced there by the 1683 Edict of Fontainebleau, or a Swiss Anabaptist could just as easily have carried a French surname. Either of these groups would have had little use for France proper.

35Steele, Captives, 35-37. Steele in a discussion of the robbery of traders on the upper Allegheny River in 1745 states that Tostee and James Dunning were robbed at the same time and that Dunning had traded in the region for two decades. Of Tostee he says he, “. . . was another veteran fur trader,” adding that by this time he was working with Croghan, “. . . his more successful protégé.”

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consistently loyal to the British or more fearful of the French, reported that Chartier, newly armed with authority from the “French King,” had summarily relieved Tostee of his goods.36

As for Croghan, by 1742 he was in Shippen’s employ along with Trent. During that year Shippen hired Croghan to take goods to Tostee on the Allegheny.37 Shippen clearly trusted Croghan, then virtually a novice in North America, not only to deliver

Tostee’s goods but to find him in the wilderness in the first place. Finally in an 1876

Pennsylvania Archives list of Pennsylvania Indian Traders for the period 1743-1775,

Tostee, Croghan, and Chartier all first appear in May, 1744.38

While Edward Shippen’s business frequently required his presence in

Philadelphia, he lived in Lancaster County. So in Lancaster County in the years before

Croghan’s arrival in North America were found Shippen, the financier; Chartier, the half-

36Charles A. Hanna, The Wilderness Trail or the Ventures and Adventures of the Traders on the Allegheny Path, Vol. 1 (New York: G. B. Putnam’s Sons, 1911), 311. Putnam’s inserted a copy of the source document pertaining to the April session on this page. Peter (or Pierre) Chartier had previously lived in Lancaster County. He was the son of Martin Chartier who had deserted from LaSalle’s 1680 Mississippi River expedition, married a Shawnee woman and settled in west-central La Louisiana (modern western ). This group of Shawnees, upon hearing of William Penn’s overtures for peaceful coexistence between Indians and whites in Pennsylvania, removed themselves to Lancaster County. Later as English settlements encroached on Indian settlements in eastern Pennsylvania these Shawnees returned to the Ohio Valley. Peter Chartier accompanied them and established his trading operation on the Allegheny. Both Martin and Peter Chartier had been loyal to the English. However, the spring 1754 French attack on Croghan’s and Trent’s storehouse was incited by Chartier, who had defected to the French, probably under pressure from nearby French forces. After Céloron’s 1749 “plate burying” expedition France controlled the upper Allegheny watershed. See Clark, Shawnees, 74.

37Wainwright, Wilderness Diplomat, 5.

38Donald Yates, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America: A Genealogical History (New York: McFarland, 2000), 221. 123

Shawnee Ohio watershed expert and fur trader, and Tostee the young fur trader.

Further Chartier and Tostee were already trading along the Allegheny River.

Arriving on the scene in 1741 Croghan likely first met Trent in Philadelphia who introduced him to Shippen. Through Shippen he would have met Tostee in Lancaster

County, moved on with Trent to Shippensburg in the Cumberland Valley as Shippen’s employee and then followed Tostee or tracked him to the Allegheny River. By all accounts Peter Tostee was older than Croghan by at least a generation; nonetheless both Shippen and Tostee were apparently comfortable enough with the young Irishman to trust him in the fur trade in very short order.

Wainwright varnished over this period. Some of his specifics were vague and provably wrong. Without a single footnote for two and half pages, Wainwright went on a mythical journey with a hypothetical George Croghan from the “potato famine” of

Ireland to the banks of the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County where he supposedly could see the, “. . . misty Blue Hills which formed the far flank of the Cumberland

Valley,” nearly sixty miles away. 39 The précis of Croghan’s first year or so in British

39Fagan, Ice Age, 183; Wainwright, Wilderness Diplomat, 3-5. As discussed previously the Irish crop failure of the mid-Eighteenth Century was a general crop failure which had its roots in bad weather, not botanical disease, and had its greatest impact on oats. While potatoes did freeze in the ground during the Eighteenth Century famine the more disastrous “potato famine of Ireland” occurred a hundred years later. The logical crossing point for the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County in the 1740’s would have been Wright’s Ferry (modern Wrightsville), which is about fifty-seven miles due east of Michaux State Forest in the first ridge of the Alleghenies (i.e., Wainwright’s “far flank of the Cumberland Valley.”) The general height of the ridgeline there is about seventeen hundred feet, which completely disappears from the horizon at fifty-four and a half miles. The highest peak, Chimney Rocks, at nineteen hundred forty feet would be visible at fifty-seven miles, except that Chimney Rocks is seven miles from the Maryland border or sixty-one miles from Wrightsville. (Using the formula: distance to horizon (in miles) = square root (7 × (height in feet)/4). Conversely, had Croghan first crossed at Harris’s Ferry, which is 124

North America is this: the source of Croghan’s fast rise and later success was Lancaster

County where he made lifelong business associations with William Trent, Edward

Shippen and Peter Tostee.

By 1745, when Croghan and Trent purchased Croghan’s Plantation on the

Conodoguinet, Croghan had amassed enough capital or at least credit from his dealings with Shippen and Tostee to bankroll his own trading venture in just four years’ time.

Peter Tostee was Croghan’s first real partner in the fur trade. William Trent also partnered with Croghan. Within a few years Robert Callender and Michael Taafe had joined them. Yet Tostee was the “grand old man” of the British traders on the

Allegheny, and without him Croghan would have become a lonely statistic of an unforgiving wilderness. Where Croghan lacked experience he compensated with vision and bravado. Where the more cautious Tostee lacked these he compensated with knowledge of the Shawnees, geography and the French. Thanks to his early association with Chartier, Tostee also knew he could trust the Shawnees. Together Tostee and

Croghan, portending the much later advice of Baron Rothschild to, “. . . buy when there’s blood in the streets,” went west into the Ohio country and did so in the gathering storm of the French and Indian War.40

possible, the mountains would have appeared twelve hundred feet above him and immediately to his northwest.

40Nathan Mayer, Freiherr von Rothschild, in Kenneth Rapoza “'Buy When There's Blood In The Streets': How Contrarians Get It Right” in Forbes Online, May 21, 2012, accessed December 11, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/05/25/buy-when-theres-blood-in-the-streets-how- contrarians-get-it-right/.

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Aughwick

Croghan’s successes as a trader not only enhanced his wealth, it enhanced his status in the Cumberland Valley. In the later 1740s and early recent immigrants from Germany and Ulster Ireland arrived with little but the shirts on their backs. As

Leyburn noted, “There was no point in trying to buy expensive land near Philadelphia –

Quakers and Germans owned it.” Further, although quitrents went for as little as a shilling for a hundred acres, most Scots-Irish and newly-arrived Germans could not afford even this. So the “new” Germans and Ulstermen followed the rivers and creeks west of Harris’s Ferry, decamping where they chose in the heart of the Cumberland

Valley still claimed by the Delaware nation.41

In January 1750 the Pennsylvania Assembly carved Cumberland County out of

Lancaster County. The new County included Shippensburg, Croghan’s Plantation on the

Conodoguinet, and Carlisle, also known as “LeTort’s Spring,” as the new county’s seat.

Cumberland County also included many of the areas where these new immigrants had settled illegally. The County soon named George Croghan one of its three

Commissioners and also a Justice of the Peace.42 In this second role, Croghan, Peters and Weiser were directed by Proprietor to evict European squatters from

41Leyburn, Scotch-Irish, 189-196.

42Even today Pennsylvania, which has strong-township, weak-county government, elects three Commissioners to manage affairs of most counties.

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land in the new county, which had not been properly acquired and in many cases had not even been purchased by the Province for authorized resale.43

Having routed squatters at the junction of the Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers,

Croghan’s party split off from Peters and Weiser. Croghan and his zealous band moved up the Juniata and down its tributary Aughwick Creek, torching houses and burning crops.44 Notwithstanding the justification for his official duties in the Aughwick Valley,

Croghan clearly grasped the geographic significance of this location for his own interests. It was a good place to reposition his increasingly threatened western trading interests. After the war broke out Aughwick would become Fort Shirley, but its more common moniker was simply “Croghan’s Fort.” Early Pennsylvania historian Hale Sipe detailed several incidents when Aughwick proved strategic for intelligence from the

Ohio and logistics within Pennsylvania.45 Neither Wainwright nor Sipe mentioned how

43Leyburn, Scotch-Irish 198. The Penn family was fairly scrupulous in acquiring land only by treaty and purchase from the Indians. Unfortunately, the sellers were usually the Iroquois who did not “own” the land they were selling. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of an example of this, Croghan’s 1758 role in settling Pennsylvania’s .

44Wainwright, Diplomat, 33-34. Penn congratulated Peters for his “hussar spirit” in carrying out these raids. Some locations discussed in this chapter are now outside of modern Cumberland County.

45C. Hale Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania: An Account of the Indian Event, in Pennsylvania, of the French and Indian War, Pontiac’s War, Lord Dunmore’s War, the Revolutionary War and the Indian Uprising from 1789 to 1795 (Harrisburg, The Telegraph Press, 1929), 278. was the Provincial Governor of Massachusetts, briefly military commander in America, and a man who frequently crossed swords with Sir William Johnson. London recalled him in 1757. Aughwick is now called Shirleysburg.

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Croghan himself gained title to land at Aughwick, but he seemed to begin operating there almost immediately after the 1750 raid and with Carlisle’s blessing.46

However, Wainwright offers a clue. In early 1751, returning from Ohio, Croghan came through the Aughwick Valley and captured the notorious Samuel Saunders who had allegedly murdered British trader . After turning Saunders over to the

Cumberland County Sheriff Croghan moved on to a Philadelphia meeting with Penn,

Peters and Weiser. Weiser had been asked to host a subsequent meeting with the Ohio

Indians, but declared himself unable to travel. At the Philadelphia meeting Croghan reluctantly agreed to return to the Ohio country in Weiser’s stead for a meeting with the

Indians, insisting he take Montour with him as interpreter. Penn and Peters agreed.47

Penn and Peters who would have had the power to do so may have awarded

Croghan a right to establish a trading post at Aughwick in return for both capturing

Saunders and agreeing to go back to Ohio. For Penn and Peters this would have provided a listening post in the west between the Cumberland Valley and the Forks of the Ohio and dampened the squatters’ efforts to resettle in the Aughwick Valley. For

Croghan it provided a trading post about as far west as possible, but in 1751 out of reach of the increasingly bellicose Jonquière.

46Wainwright, Diplomat, 59. In February 1754 Croghan wrote to Governor Hamilton referring to “my house at Aughwick” suggesting that well before then he had acquired title to the property. Croghan’s Aughwick trading post aka Fort Shirley (now Shirleysburg) is in modern Huntingdon County.

47Wainwright, Diplomat, 39. Wainwright does not say “allegedly” but he mysteriously brings Girty back to life later in the book among a group of supposed loyalists arrested by Patriot General , Patriot commander at Fort Pitt, in 1777. For the second coming of Girty see Wainwright, Diplomat, 301. 128

That Aughwick was strategically significant to the British high command was later borne out by British General John Forbes who captured Fort Duquesne in 1758 and his replacement General John Stanwix. Forbes and Stanwix used Aughwick extensively for their supply lines to the Ohio, much as Croghan had. Croghan’s trading operations continued there in a limited fashion during the war until he came under the wing of Sir

William Johnson. By 1759 the war had turned in favor of the British, and Croghan’s

Philadelphia financiers were increasingly demanding returns on their investments. He returned to the west.

Conclusion

As with many immigrants to British North America during the first half of the eighteenth century George Croghan came to escape hardship, in his case the crop failures of 1739-1741. Croghan was the likely instigator of the 1741 family migration as his mother and stepfather Thomas Ward quickly disappeared from the American stage.

At the suggestion of his chronological peer William Trent, Croghan soon moved to Lancaster where he met established fur trader Peter Tostee. Both Trent and Tostee worked for fur magnate Edward Shippen III, Tostee directly in the fur trade on the

Allegheny River and Trent both in the west and at Shippen’s eponymous Shippensburg trading depot. In 1742 Croghan signed on with Shippen who sent him west to work with

Tostee. Over time Croghan became increasingly independent of Shippen but partnered with both Trent and Tostee. While in the west, Croghan made his first intimate contacts with Indians in this case the Shawnees who became his most trusted Indian allies.

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Cumberland County was formed in 1750, and Shippensburg found itself in it. As business grew Croghan and Trent established their own depot closer to Harris’s Ferry, while Croghan and Tostee established several trading posts in the Ohio country on both the Great Lakes and Ohio-Mississippi watersheds. Croghan became a Cumberland

County Commissioner and Justice of the Peace at a time when Britain was trying to contain rogue settlements in Pennsylvania’s frontier and placate the Delaware Indians on whose lands these incursions appeared. He and his fellow justices of the peace took to burning out the impoverished German and Scots-Irish squatters in Indian lands west of the Cumberland Valley. In Croghan’s case the principal action occurred in the

Aughwick Valley a tributary of the Juniata River. This action did nothing to stem the tide of settlers pushing farther west, and it did little to endear Croghan to the Delawares. It did however plant seeds of suspicion in settlers’ minds as to Croghan’s loyalty to fellow

Europeans.

George Croghan’s early life in a Dublin merchant family provided him with enough respectability to connect him almost immediately to wealthy Delaware Valley financiers. His high, native-Irish risk tolerance enabled these financiers to support him beyond the recognized frontier. In both Pennsylvania and the Ohio Country he made many European and Indian friends and quickly became successful as a fur trader, but the land where he operated was treacherous. Possessed by Indians few Britons knew or understood and coveted by landless British colonial settlers, it was all part of La

Nouvelle France.

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CHAPTER 4

AUDACITY: OHIO

Croghan is an idol among his countrymen, the Irish Traders.1

– Christopher Gist, 1750

Introduction

Relying on his trading partners, Shawnee Indian associates from the Allegheny and new Indian allies among the Hurons, in 1745 George Croghan pushed into the Ohio country proper. This Chapter focuses on Croghan’s trading years in this region. His audacity in “The Ohio” would soon earn him the sobriquet “King of the Traders.” He fearlessly established trading posts from the Cuyahoga River near modern Cleveland to the Great Miami River not far from modern Louisville, Kentucky. He astutely placed his trading posts on both sides of the Saint Lawrence Continental Divide.

In the Ohio country Croghan connected with Virginian Christopher Gist. A representative of and land surveyor for the nascent Ohio Company of Virginia, Gist had his own agenda which not always paralleled Croghan’s. Nonetheless, the two got along well and explored a good deal of the Ohio River from Pennsylvania to the Great Miami

River. Gist introduced Croghan to Virginia, a colony far better organized than

Pennsylvania for coming events. Croghan developed a love-hate relationship with

Virginia over the ensuing years, but despite his frustrations with Pennsylvania he remained true to the colony. Nonetheless as the clouds of war began to swirl over

1Gist, Journals, 35. 131

Pennsylvania and Virginia alike George Croghan came to the realize that he could depend more on Virginia than Pennsylvania.

His signal achievement in the Ohio country was his fort-like trading depot at

Pickawillany on the Great Miami River. Built by Piankashaw-Miami leader Memeskia or

“Old Briton,” Pickawillany existed before Croghan arrived. Nonetheless, Croghan put an undeniably British stamp on it. Although Pickawillany was deep within French territory, hubris soon set in. His defiant attitude that he could establish such an operation with impunity so close to New France’s natural geographic connection to Louisiana would cost Croghan not only this trading center but his Ohio operations generally, and it would cost his Miami Indian friend Memeskia his life in a particularly gruesome way.

In 1752 New France Governor Jonquière authorized an attack on Pickawillany,

Croghan’s fort. A combined French and Ottawa Indian force carried out the French commander’s instructions, rudely introducing Croghan to two future nemeses: the

Great Lakes Indians and Métis guerrilla leader Charles Langlade. The terror tactics which

Langlade displayed at Pickawillany served as a dreadful and unambiguous reminder of

France’s intentions in the Ohio country. The message was not lost on Croghan, other

British traders, or Anglophile Indians. What followed was more diplomatic but equally impressive. Picking up where Galissonière had stopped, Jonquière erected French forts along Celeron’s route and elsewhere in what he deemed New France.

Croghan prudently retreated from the far west, but he did not travel very far east. His interest in the Ohio country and his reputation propelled him into several early conferences with Indians and Virginia, including an unexpected détente with Isaac 132

Norris, a leading Philadelphia Quaker. Yet his personal vector pointed away from fur trading and, intrigued by Virginia’s continental vision, toward land speculation.

Nevertheless, this profession would be interrupted by the French and Indian War.

Early Days in “The Ohio”

When Croghan established his first Ohio trading post in 1745, he located it on the Cuyahoga River a short distance from Lake Erie. He cleverly placed his trading post there both to gain water access to the Great Lakes and to connect overland to the Forks of the Ohio. Croghan establish another trading post at Muskingum shortly after

Cuyahoga.2 In 1748 he built a large, fort-like depot at Pickawillany where the Anglophile

Miami leader Memeskia had already established what both the French and British called

“Miami’s Town.”3 Both Muskingum and Pickawillany had the advantage of connecting with the Ohio-Mississippi watershed. Muskingum had water access to the Forks of the

Ohio and Croghan’s Allegheny operation while Pickawillany led directly to the

Mississippi and into the heart of French North America.

Canadian historian Ian Steele claimed that a factor in Indian alignment with

Britain was growing disillusionment with New France, sparking what Montréal called the

“Conspiracy of 1747.”4 According to Steele Croghan was not wholly innocent of this

2Croghan’s Muskingum trading post was located at the Forks of the near modern-day Coshocton, Ohio, about eighty-five miles north of the Ohio River.

3White, Middle Ground, 212. White claims that Memeskia may have been a Piankashaw who married a Miami woman.

4Steele, Captives, 38-39. According to Steele western Indian disillusionment leading to what New France called the “Conspiracy of 1747” stemmed from two factors: Pierre Chartier’s incursions to the south along the Ohio River, and Montreal’s decrease in Indian presents generally as a result of the British blockade of the Saint Lawrence after the fall of Louisbourg. 133

affair, encouraging his friend from his days on the Cuyahoga, Huron chief Orontony, to attack the French. Orontony did build an alliance which Steele called a, “. . . disgruntled faction – an anti-French coalition of Wyandottes, Hurons, Ojibwas, Miamis, Shawnees and [Ohio] Delawares.” Orontony’s forces did attack French traders near Sandusky and on the waters of Lake Huron, killing eight of them and seizing their furs. Steele suggested that Croghan, in a move which presaged his later Illinois Trading Company scheme to rid the entire region of French traders after the 1763 Peace of Paris, sold these furs as his own. The worst attack by Orontony’s allies was perpetrated by

Memeskia on Fort des Miamis where Indians sacked the fort and took eight French prisoners. According to Steele this was the only instance of Indian warriors taking prisoners at a French fort during the “Conspiracy of 1747,” but it reflected a European approach to warfare not previously seen in the west.5 New France eventually ransomed the prisoners, but this episode no doubt figured in Jonquière’s decision to aim

Langlade’s attack on both Memeskia and Croghan five years later.

Peter Tostee had established a trading post on the Cuyahoga earlier and was thus the godfather of both Croghan’s Allegheny and Cuyahoga operations. Less clear is whether or not Croghan’s subsequent Muskingum and Pickawillany operations in central and southwestern Ohio can be attributed to Tostee. When Virginia scout

Christopher Gist caught up with Croghan on the Muskingum River he provided a clue.

Gist reported that Croghan sent Tostee ahead of his own party to Pickawillany, hinting

5Steele, Captives, 39.

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that Tostee either knew the way or was less fearful of what lay “downriver” than

Croghan.6

Tostee had relocated his official residence to Frederick County, Virginia, during this period. In 1747 Croghan gave him blanket Power of Attorney for all his affairs in the

Old Dominion.7 This was not an inconsequential delegation for in time Croghan would be furiously working to ensure that his land grants around the forks of the Ohio were in

Virginia not Pennsylvania.

Linking with Christopher Gist

The first mention of George Croghan in the Ohio country begins with a

November 25, 1750, journal entry by Christopher Gist made during his expedition in support of the Ohio Company of Virginia. Gist had first been sent to the Ohio Valley by

Virginia Lieutenant Governor Thomas Lee and the Ohio Company, of which Lee was a founding partner, to scout the territory the Company hoped to develop.8 The nephew of future revolutionary General Mordecai Gist, Christopher Gist was both a scout and an amateur surveyor. In some ways, given Virginia’s skeptical view of Pennsylvania’s obstructive Quaker assembly, Gist was also here to check out Pennsylvania’s “King of

6Gist, Journals, 37. In 1750 Muskingum Indians were loyal to Britain, while those at Pickawillany divided their loyalty between both France and Britain.

7George Croghan, “Power of Attorney to Peter Tostee, August 5, 1747,” in Darlington Collection, Autograph Files 1610-1914, DAR.1925.07, Box 2, Folder 33 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh).

8Most of the colonies were managed by local Lieutenant Governor, typically elected by the colonial legislature. Their titles titular, actual Governors rarely left England.

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the Traders,” George Croghan. Noted Gist:

In the Loggs Town . . . I found scarce anybody but a parcel of reprobate [sic] Indian traders, the Chiefs of the Indians being out a hunting; here I was informed that George Croghan and Andrew Montour, who were sent upon an embassy from Pennsylvania to the Indians, were passed about a week before me.9

The same day Gist went on to express fear that the Indians might suspect he was intent on settling on their lands rather than trading with them, and because of this they might do him harm. Apparently he successfully deflected their concerns by suggesting that Virginia Governor ’s letter (Gist’s charter for the expedition) was from the King.10

In his journal Gist observed, “Croghan is a[n] idol among his countrymen, the

Irish traders.”11 (Presumably the source for this opinion was the aforementioned reprobates.)

On December fourteenth Gist and his party reached Muskingum which he described as a Wyandotte town.12 Here he found English flags flying at both, “. . . the

9 Gist, Journals, 34.

10Lee had died and Dinwiddie was now Lieutenant Governor. He would remain in this post throughout much of the French and Indian War.

11Gist, Journals, 35.

12Henry Howe, Coshocton County Ohio History, ed. Barbara Rebok (Tucson: A Plus Printing Co., 2014), 467-468. Howe claims it was a Delaware town, but Gist was a contemporary source while Howe was not. Nonetheless, see also Cartographer Thomas Hutchins’s map “A General Map of the Country on the Ohio and Muskingham Shewing the Situation of the Indians Towns with Respect to the Command of Colonel Bouquet, 1764” (Chapter 7, Map 7-1). Like Howe Hutchins labels this a Delaware town, but his map was drawn thirteen years after Gist’s visit. Hutchins’s map may be the source of Howe’s information. Quite possibly both Wyandotte and Delaware towns has been established near here at this time. Neither nation was indigenous to this region.

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King’s House and George Croghan’s.”13 In the same entry Gist gives an early observation about Croghan’s dealing with the Indians. Apparently the French had captured some traders; Croghan had subsequently demanded that all white men in the vicinity come to a council with the local Wyandottes and Pickawillanies. Gist reported that all attended this council, although he said nothing about the proceedings or results. He did claim that he was told the reason the British flags were hoisted was because of the recent abduction of the traders by the French, presumably in advance of Croghan’s council.

Gist met with Croghan and Andrew Montour on December eighteenth apparently for the first time. He reported, “I acquainted Mr. Croghan and Andrew

Montour with my business with the Indians, and talked much of a regulation of trade with which they were much pleased, and treated me very kindly.”14 This subject was one in which both Croghan and the local Indians had an interest.

Gist had referred to the traders he found at Logstown as, “…a parcel of reprobate Indian traders.” Whether Gist meant to include Croghan’s colleagues in this categorization is unknown. Nonetheless later in Muskingum Gist specifically mentioned

Andrew Montour and Robert Callender (sic: “Kallandar”) as Croghan’s fellow traders. In short order Gist seemed to get along with them all reprobates or not. At any rate by

13Gist, Journals, 41. Gist later describes the first structure as the “Wyendott’s King’s House”, a gathering place for the Wyandotte Council.

14Ibid., 37.

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February twelfth only two months after their initial meeting Gist referred to them as

“my old company” as they all set out together.15

Montour was the son of “” a half-French, half-Indian woman who kept her own trading post on a branch of the Susquehanna near modern-day

Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Likely because of his mother’s background Montour was a better linguist than Croghan.16 History records little about Robert Callender except that he once owned Jean Bonnet’s Tavern in Bedford, to this day a favorite watering hole for travelers.17 Gist only ever mentioned Callender in the same breath as Croghan. 18 While

Gist did not mention William Trent he was also part of Croghan’s initial group.

Early Indian Encounters

Christopher Gist recorded many instances of Croghan’s dealings with the Indians.

On January 14, 1751, Croghan and Montour helped Gist explain his mission in Ohio in words which the Indians could understand. Croghan gave them four strings of wampum

15Ibid., 46.

16Madame Montour was the daughter of a French and Algonquian union, and she married the Oneida Carondawana. This combined Iroquoian, Algonquian and French linguistic heritage accounts for Andrew Montour’s skill as an Indian interpreter. In December, 1763, for this reason Croghan dispatched Montour to Fort Michilimackinac with Major Robert Rogers. See “Croghan to Johnson, January 13, 1761,” in Johnson, Papers, 3:301-302.

17Debbie Nunley and Karen J. Elliot, Taste of Pennsylvania History (Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 2000), 165. Nunley and Elliot also claim Callender was a scout for Washington. In 1755 apparently on Gist’s recommendation Washington did ask Callender to help recruit scouts. See letter “From to Robert Callender, 20 October 1755,” in Founders Online, (Washington: U.S. National Archives, 2014), accessed January 7, 2015, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-02- 02-0125.

18Gist, Journals, 31-35. Wainwright mentions Callender several times after 1751, but his last entry simply reflects him as a possible investor in the putative Indiana Company proposed as recourse for the “suffering traders” of 1763. The Indiana Company is discussed in Chapter 8.

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and explained that the Governor of Virginia would send them presents. He also counseled Gist on the veracity of Indian assertions that he could only expect an answer to his propositions after they had met with other Ohio Valley Indian nations.19

Gist’s records for January twenty-seventh, 1751, are particularly illuminating taken in the context of coming events. Croghan and Gist met along Scioto Creek with the

Delaware chief Windaughalah whom Gist described as a man of great influence in the community and “much in the English interest”. 20 In a speech the following day after the

Europeans’ interpreter had passed on the Governor of Pennsylvania’s “instructions” and

“cautions in regard to the French” Windaughalah’s speaker addressed the group:

Brothers, we the Delawares return you our hearty thanks for the news you have sent us, and we assure you, we will not hear the voice of any other nation for we are to be directed by you our brothers the English, and by none else.

After which the Delaware speaker alluding to the upcoming Logstown, Pennsylvania,

Treaty Council, added somewhat portentously, “We shall be glad to hear what our

Brothers have to say to us at the Loggs Town [sic] in the spring,” at which point he presented the visitors four strings of wampum. Gist observed that this town is the, “. . . last town of the Delawares to the westward”. 21

19Ibid., 41.

20Sometimes spelled “Sioto” or “Siota”, the Scioto River runs almost due south from modern-day Columbus, OH, to Portsmouth, OH, where it joins the Ohio River. There is no modern Scioto Creek per se, but Scioto Brush Creek is a major tributary of the Scioto River near McDermott. Both bodies of water are closer to Indiana than to Pennsylvania, and Kentucky lies directly across the Ohio River from Portsmouth.

21Gist, Journals, 43-44.

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A string of wampum was not as significant as a belt of wampum made up of many strings or rows. The famous Penn Wampum Belt given to William Penn under the

Shackamaxon Elm at the future site of Philadelphia by the Conestoga Indians contained eighteen rows.22 Nonetheless, a present of four strings would not have been a trivial present. Much as did the speaker’s comment about Logstown, the four strings of wampum suggested a cautious endorsement of the English cause. Given how far west and how deep within French territory Scioto was at this time, even this amount of approbation given the British – particularly by a Delaware – would have been significant.

How much this can be attributed to Croghan’s dealings in the region remains obscured.

Regardless, it is equally likely that Windaughalah and his western Delawares were favorably predisposed toward the English as a result of French behavioral changes leading to the “Conspiracy of 1747” rather than by past experiences with the British in

Pennsylvania.23

A few days later found Croghan’s itinerant group in a Shawnee town at the mouth of the Scioto River. Gist noted in his journal that the Shawnees had been at odds with the Iroquois League and had not fully reconciled with them. Nonetheless, he reported that they credited what reconciliation there was to the English. From an entry which immediately followed this, in which the Shawnees reported the French had offered a high price for, “. . . Croghan and Andrew Montour the interpreter alive or, if

22Paul A.W. Wallace, Indian Paths in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1952), 56-57. Wallace provides a good discussion about wampum.

23Eastern Delawares remained disgruntled by the outcome of the “Walking Purchase” survey, discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. 140

dead, their scalps,” Gist indirectly leads his reader to believe that both this nascent

“reconciliation” between the Iroquois and Shawnees as well as the Shawnees’ current alignment with the British could be attributed to Croghan. Croghan, ever the

“wilderness diplomat” to borrow Wainwright’s phrase, suggested that the French would not take action against him until the spring and that the Shawnees should, “. . . keep their warriors at home until they see what the French intended.” In a speech later during this same visit, the Shawnee speaker Big Hannaona both alluded to the upcoming

Logstown Council and praised the English directly. “Brothers,” Big Hannaona said, “…I now speak the Sentiments of all our People; when first our Forefathers did meet the

English our Brothers, they found what our Brothers the English told them to be true.”24

It is here at the end of this meeting with the Shawnees on the Scioto River in

February, 1751, that the limits of British influence could be seen. After some consideration the Shawnees elected not to send a guard with Gist and Croghan on their journey further west to meet with the Miamis and Pickawillanies.25 From this place westward George Croghan was on his own.

On Sunday February seventeenth, 1751, Croghan and Montour, accompanied by

Gist, passed the Little Miami and arrived at the confluence of the Ohio and the Great

Miami Rivers. Somewhat more revealing of his intentions Gist wrote,

. . . this place . . . is fine, rich level Land, well timbered with large walnut, ash, sugar trees, cherry trees &c, it is well watered with a great number of little streams or rivulets, and full of beautiful natural meadows, covered with wild rye, blue grass

24Gist, Journals, 44-45.

25Ibid., 45-46.

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and clover, and abounds with turkeys, deer, elks and most sorts of game particularly buffaloes, thirty or forty of which are frequently seen feeding in one meadow[.] In short it wants nothing but cultivation to make it a most delightful country.

Ever the Virginian Gist unfurled the “English colors” and marched into this Miami Indian village deep within French territory. The “chief of the local Miamis,” unquestionably

Memeskia, rose to the occasion, placed the flag on top of his own house and welcomed the English inside.26

By Gist’s account the Miamis, or “Twightwees” as he and other Britons referred to them are the, “. . . most powerful people west of the English settlements . . . much superior to the [Iroquois]”.27 While this was something of an exaggeration, the Miamis clearly stood astride the western frontier separating British North America and New

France.

The Audacious Irishman on The Great Miami

In 1750 with the agreement of Memeskia – “La Demoiselle” as the French disparagingly called him – Croghan’s expanding group of traders constructed a high- walled log fort complete with three substantial gates on The Great Miami River at

Pickawillany. The fort had a working well and could accommodate as many as fifty traders. Over four hundred Miamis resided in and around Croghan’s reinforced trading

26Ibid., 47. The mouth of the Great Miami River is 475 air miles from Carlisle, PA, the closest point securely under British control at the time.

27Ibid., 48. Not that Gist, a Virginian, would have known much about the Iroquois.

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post.28 Croghan’s Pickawillany trading fort was larger than several French forts in the west. Benjamin Stoddard, writing to Sir William Johnson in July 1751 from Oswego, reported that the British (i.e., Croghan’s traders) were building a “trading post of stone” at Pickawillany, but this may have been more in Croghan’s future plans than in reality.29

Pickawillany or “Miami’s Town” existed before the English traders arrived.

Whether it had ever been a French trading post is unclear, but Céloron did stop near there in 1749 to plant his last plate partly in hopes of restoring the Miamis’ allegiance to

France. Hugh Crawford, another but more elusive British trader who appeared on the

Pickawillany stage around the same time, was not a part of Croghan’s group. Crawford was an early Virginia-based competitor of Croghan’s. In May 1750 Crawford sent the following message concerning Céloron to the Governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia at the request of the “Twightwies [sic] of the Four Miamy [sic] Nations” located there:

Last July [July 1749] 200 French and 35 French Indians visited them with presents to try to persuade them to return to the French settlements; French were afraid to use force because they were outnumbered; Indians renew pledges of loyalty to the English with six strings of wampum. 30

28William Trent, Journal of Captain William Trent from Logstown to Pickawillany A.D. 1752, ed. Alfred T. Goodman (Cincinnati: Robert Clark & Co., 1871), 43-45. To put this in a French context, Croghan built this fort less than a year after Céloron had planted his famous “plate” in the same vicinity.

29Trent, Journal, 45n.

30State of Maryland, Calendar of State Papers No. 1: The Black Books (Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2009), 95. The British used the term “Twightwee” while the French used the term “Miami” to refer to the same Indians. What is confusing is that the British also then used the term “Miami” to refer the location of these people who situated themselves along the Miami River. Thus both terms often appear in British records.

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Trent made a similar observation about Céloron’s “visit” in his journal.31

Crawford’s curious story continued into late summer that year. At that time the

Pennsylvania Assembly at Philadelphia received a report of a council held earlier in June,

1750, with the Four Nations of the Twightwee Indians concerning the “intrigues of the

French” and some land disputes. Both Croghan and Crawford were listed as participants as was Trent.32 However, Croghan never mentioned Crawford. Nonetheless Gist, returning to Shawnee Town from Pickawillany in the company of Croghan on March eighteenth, 1751, mentioned Crawford and his partner Robert Smith.33

Croghan’s operation was a thorn in the side of the French. Earlier British traders had annoyed Montréal, but the scale of Croghan’s operation was offensive.

Nonetheless, Croghan sometimes acted in a sort-of ambassadorial role on behalf of

31Trent, Journal, 40-41. In a prophetic note Trent observed, “During the summer of 1749, M. de Céloron visited the [Twightwee] town, but found no traders there, they having had timely notice of his coming, and departed . . . The Miami warriors were in force at the time of Céloron's visit, and that officer [established] no Post at Pickawillany [nor caused the Indians] injury. On the contrary . . . Presents were given, and the usual speeches made, but the Indians withstood his arts and artifices, and remained friendly to the English. While the English traders felt safe in the hands of the Miamis, they were in constant fear of the French. Occasionally an unfortunate trader became a victim. The dread of such a fate was increased by the fact that the Ottawas were known to "kill, roast, and eat" their English captives.” As will be seen Jonquière’s French-Ottawa henchman Langlade did exactly that.

32Maryland, Calendar 1, 96.

33 Mercer, Ohio Company, 25. Gist claimed that seven years earlier (i.e., 1744) Smith had found Mammoth teeth and bones at the Salt Lick, “…about 15 miles below the mouth of the Great Miami River.” Crawford and Smith along with Chartier and perhaps even Tostee were likely in the area around the confluence of the Great Miami and Ohio Rivers before Croghan. See also Isaac Craig, “Indian Traders in Very Early Pittsburg, PA” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol.2, 1878. (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1878). This 1878 list of Indian Traders was compiled for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by Isaac Craig. It lists Crawford, despite his being a Virginian, but does not directly link him to Croghan. (By comparison it does list one Philip Dayle as a licensed trader working for Croghan later.) That Croghan and Crawford (or Smith for that matter) ever worked together seems unlikely, but curiously enough they both participated in the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty conference.

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French interests. When the Miamis demanded transfer of three French defectors at

Pickawillany “for revenge,” Croghan’s underlings instead sent them upriver to Croghan at Muskingum.34

Croghan occasionally managed to annoy even British authorities. In early 1751 a group of Piankashaw and Indians arrived at Pickawillany hoping for a more concrete assurance of British support. Croghan promptly gave them one. He drafted a

“Treaty of Alliance” between Pennsylvania and the two Indian Nations, which he and

Montour forthwith signed on behalf of the colony. Even more outrageous, he had Gist, trailing along with Croghan’s traders in the interests of Virginia, sign it as well. Nor did his bravado stop there. He sent the document back to Pennsylvania Governor James

Hamilton for a rubber stamp. In a rare instance of collaboration with the outraged

Governor, the Pennsylvania Assembly reproached Croghan, agreeing with Hamilton that they would, “. . . readily concur in any measures necessary to prevent the repetition of such an act in the future.” Either unaware of Philadelphia’s rebuke of Croghan or caring less about it, the delighted Piankashaws nonetheless initiated a program to galvanize other Indians to align with the British.35

34Trent, Journal, 44. Trent’s editor cites Gist’s journal for Wed., Jan 9, 1751: “. . . as the French had surrendered themselves to the English, they would not let the Indians hurt them, but had ordered them to be sent under the care of three of our traders, and delivered at this town to George Croghan.”

35Frank E. Ross, “The Fur Trade of the Ohio Valley” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 34, no. 4 (Bloomington, Indiana University Department of History, December, 1938), 423.

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New France Attacks

In a July 1751 letter written from Oswego, Benjamin Stoddard forwarded Sir

William Johnson a report from some French traders. They claimed that Montréal planned a major expedition to invest Croghan’s operation at Pickawillany. From the

French perspective such action was justified. Acting New France Governor Charles le

Moyne Baron de Longueuil portentously penned, "We are menaced by a general outbreak. Even Toronto is in danger . . . Before long the English [will possess] Fort

Chartres, and cut our communication with Louisiana.” In October 1751 the French commandant at Maumee wrote Jonquière, "My people are leaving me for Detroit.

Nobody wants to stay here and have his throat cut."36

More enraged than alarmed, Jonquière subsequently informed Paris that all the tribes of the Ohio valley had gone over to the English, although he apparently did not clarify that by “English” he mostly meant Croghan.37 Croghan’s establishment at

Pickawillany was the last straw for the French governor. Britons like Crawford and

Smith were just harmless if irritating fur traders, but this man acted as if he were the

Lord of Illinois. Among his own supporters Jonquière found just the man to put Croghan

36Trent, Journal, 45n. After the 1730’s construction of the Chemin du Roi, connecting Québec City with Montréal along the north shore of the Saint Lawrence, the latter -- until then primarily the fur trading capital of La Nouvelle France -- assumed something of a shared government role with Québec City. In the subsequent war the less defensible Montréal was easily captured by the British, while Québec proved more intractable. After the war Britain unambiguously made Montréal its Canadian capital. The term “Montréal” used here simply implies pre-war French leadership generally. Notwithstanding his concern Le Moyne was a native-born Canadien who did not share his successor Jonquière’s vitriol toward British traders.

37Ross, “Fur Trade”, 425.

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out of business, Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade. Barely thirty, this rough-cut son of a French soldier and an Ottawa woman despised the British. In June 1752 Jonquière enlisted Langlade to lead a group of like-minded French, Métis backwoodsmen, and

Ottawa Indians from Michilimackinac to Pickawillany, a distance of over five hundred miles. There they sacked Croghan’s fort, burnt it to the ground, scattered the resident

Miami Indians and killed or captured the Indian traders. Next Langlade and his French-

Ottawa gang killed old Briton, then boiled and ate him. The few British traders who survived were carted off to Canada.38 Croghan was not among them, although the

French had already placed a price on his head.

The Aftermath of Langlade at Pickawillany

Subsequently Jonquière began a protracted program of fort building down the

Allegheny, at the base of Lake Champlain and along the Great Lakes. The likes of George

Croghan were not about to delimit La Nouvelle France: Jonquière was. In the accompanying French incursions in the west and north, British fur traders felt the tip of the spear more than any other group. Two servants of old Allegheny trader John Fraser were captured at the Forks of the Ohio (Pittsburgh) and taken to Detroit. Croghan himself claimed to have lost a hundred pack-horses to the French. 39

38Ibid., 427.

39Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. V, (Harrisburg: Theo. Fenn & Co., 1852). 482-483. (Hereafter cited as Pennsylvania, Minutes, volume:page.) From Fraser’s men the British subsequently learned that France had offered a substantial price for Croghan’s scalp. (“Fraser” is the preferred spelling by the descendants of John Fraser, although various sources spell it Frazier or Frazer.)

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Except for Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia, no one in British authority seemed troubled by these French actions. In fact Robert Darcy, Fourth Earl of

Holderness, recently named Secretary of State for the Department which included North

America, sent a circumspect letter of instruction to all the colonial governors on August twenty-eighth, 1753. In it he agreed that they should order the French to leave. “But as it is His Majesty's determination not to be the aggressor, I have the King's commands, most strictly to enjoin you, not to make use of the armed force under your direction, excepting within the undoubted limits of his Majesty's dominions.”40 (Italics mine.)

In 1753 Pennsylvania had no idea where its “undoubted” western limit lay because it could not determine the starting point from which to measure it. Just the same the colony knew it had one and that it was finite. Virginia’s charter, on the other hand, implied that the Old Dominion extended to the Pacific Ocean and Dinwiddie had no compunction about interpreting Holderness’s ambiguous letter in his favor.

Commissioning Trent a Captain in Virginia’s militia, Dinwiddie sent him and later Major

George Washington into the fray.

A year later in New York British authorities had a quite different and somewhat discomforting reaction from an unexpected source: the Iroquois League. In a speech during the June, 1754, Albany Congress, noted Mohawk sachem Hendrick was blunt.

"Look at the French . . . they are men; they are fortifying everywhere,” Hendrick

40Edmund B. O'Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany, State of New York, 1855), VI:794-795.

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avowed. Then, alluding to Britain’s feeble response to French encroachment in the Ohio he sneered, “You are all like women, bare and open without any ."41

Nonetheless the wily George Croghan was not locked into the fur trade; he was also a competent land speculator with the right connections in Philadelphia. The coming French and Indian War curtailed both activities, but when the war ended

Croghan would emerge as less a trader and more a land speculator.

Logstown Treaty of 1752

Despite the question of whether it occurred in La Nouvelle France or

Pennsylvania, the 1752 Logstown Treaty at the Forks of the Ohio was all about Virginia.

The treaty was conceived in Williamsburg and carried out by or on behalf of Virginia. In the end it was, in words of historian Lois Mulkearn, a “bastard treaty,” lacking proper authority in the eyes of the Iroquois, placing the Ohio Indians in an increasingly vulnerable position, inflaming the French and producing little of sustained value for

Virginia. As for Pennsylvania, ever the bystander in its own security affairs, the treaty was a “Godsend” because it enabled the Commonwealth to shift George Croghan’s strident pleas to Virginia for military assistance to the Shawnees. 42

However feeble this treaty was, more than any other it marked a transition in

North America from the 1748 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the French and Indian War.43

41Pennsylvania, Minutes, VI:81.

42Lois Mulkearn, “Why the Treaty of Logstown, 1752,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 59, no. 1, January, 1951 (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1951), 20.

43Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of the Austrian Succession known in North America as King George’s War. 149

To put Logstown-1752 in proper perspective Williamsburg wanted two important agreements from the Iroquois League: ratification of a western boundary agreed at

Lancaster in 1744, and an agreement enabling the nascent Ohio Company of Virginia to purchase land along the Ohio west of the Forks.44

The Lancaster Treaty of 1744 had been one of the major treaties of the pre-

French and Indian War period. It covered several agreements and issues of earlier years. In 1722 Virginia and the Iroquois League had agreed to observe both Virginia’s land claims south of the Potomac and Onondaga’s Warriors’ Path used to fight the

Southern Indians. In addition, it set Virginia’s western boundary at the Blue Ridge

Mountains, thus preserving Indian hunting grounds to the west. In 1736 the Iroquois argued for financial consideration for lands occupied by squatters west of these lines of demarcation; Williamsburg refused. Six years later in Philadelphia Iroquois leader

Canastego again protested settlements in Indian hunting grounds, threatening to, “. . . take payment on ourselves.” Over the following year a series of skirmishes broke out in the Blue Ridge between predominantly Scots-Irish settlers and itinerant Iroquois warriors. The great 1744 convocation at Lancaster was the product of these events.

Nevertheless, the League had never truly ratified the Lancaster Treaty.45

44Several earlier Indian treaties had taken place at Logstown, including a more successful but less far-reaching one in 1748.

45Mulkearn, “Logstown,” 3, 3 n2.

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In 1749 Williamsburg had elevated Thomas Lee, then manager of the newly formed western land speculation group calling itself “The Ohio Company of Virginia,” to

Lieutenant Governor. Lee took the opportunity while wearing “both hats” to seek irrefutable affirmation of the Lancaster Treaty and open the door to an Ohio Valley land purchase from the Iroquois. In Mulkearn’s tongue-in-cheek comment, “. . . Logstown begins with Lieutenant Governor Lee carrying out Manager Thomas Lee’s request [for] .

. . peaceful settlement of their grant beyond the great mountains.”46 Despite the fact that the Ohio Valley was occupied by other Indian nations, Lee knew that only the

Iroquois League (by this time the “Six Nations,” having added the Tuscarora) could affect such a sale. He grandly proposed a treaty to be held in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in

September, 1750, to accomplish these aims.

However, Lee was more than a politician and a land speculator. He was a staunch British patriot who believed that all Indian nations within the British sphere of influence after Aix La Chapelle, “. . . from Nova Scotia to Georgia,” should be considered

British subjects. While this goal had not been one of Lee’s main objectives for the

Fredericksburg conference, the very mention of it did not set well with the Iroquois.

The “to Georgia” part irritated the League even more than the idea of being British subjects.47 Including Indians in the south implied including the hated Catawbas, a

46Ibid., 4. Generally British colonial governors, exception in several Proprietary Colonies, were British nobles appointed as a sinecure and who rarely set foot in the Colonies. Thus Lieutenant Governors not only governed on site, but often were referred to as “Governor.”

47Dowd, War Under Heaven, 174-177. Dowd makes an interesting case that over time neither the Indians nor the British cared to apply the term “subjects” to Indians. For the Indians it implied subjugation; for the British it implied all the rights and liberties of a Protestant English man. 151

principal reason why the Iroquois Warriors’ Path through Virginia existed in the first place. 48

Lee recognized that any such Treaty came with a price: presents for the participating Indians. Three weeks after he took the oath of office as Lieutenant

Governor he forwarded the Ohio Company’s request to the Board of Trade. So considerable was Virginia’s clout in London that Lee had the goods in hand by the following June.49 Now all he needed was Iroquois participation.

Lee was a close friend of Pennsylvania Indian negotiator Conrad Weiser. The two had met at Lancaster where Weiser had been the principal interpreter and Lee had been a Virginia delegate. Lee greatly admired Weiser and appreciated his influence with the

Iroquois; in early 1750 he had engaged Weiser to go to New York and obtain the

Iroquois’ participation in the Fredericksburg Conference, but delayed sending Weiser until the presents arrived.50

Further adding to the stir even before Weiser left Pennsylvania, New York

Governor Clinton sent Lee a strident letter about French incursions in his Colony. In it

Clinton opined that the French might also be inciting the Catawbas. This was pure

48Mulkearn, “Logstown,” 6-7.

49Ibid., 5. Lee had previously sent the same request to the Company’s London solicitor, John Hanbury. Mulkearn suggests that the Board acted on Hanbury’s request because records show the Board only received Virginia’s request in September. Nonetheless, Lee sent a letter of thanks for the goods in July. If this second letter was received ahead of Virginia’s official request it must have caused come head- scratching for the Board.

50Ibid., 6.

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conjecture on Clinton’s part for the Catawbas needed no help from Montréal to hate the Iroquois. Nonetheless, Lee took Clinton’s letter to mean Virginia should amp up discussions of the Iroquois-Catawba dispute at the Fredericksburg Treaty, and so informed the colony’s Executive Council at Williamsburg. Now the Catawba issue would be a principal reason for the Treaty, on a par with the Lancaster and Ohio land issues.

Whether he knew it or not Weiser was headed into diplomatic combat already wounded.

Weiser left Tulpehocken in August. The trip was one of Weiser’s less successful treks to the Iroquois Council Fire. Shortly before he arrived, the great leader Canastego had died. The League was in the midst of a long Condolence Ritual for the man who had carved out the Lancaster agreement in 1744. Nonetheless, out of respect for Weiser the

Indians cut short the Condolence Ritual to meet. The Council listened patiently as

Weiser translated Lee’s request into Mohawk. Then they gave Weiser perhaps the most scorching reply he had ever heard from his Indian friends. The Iroquois leaders told

Weiser there would be no treaty in Virginia; they would only meet with Virginia at

Albany, and they lived in fear of the French and could only rely on the Governor of New

York. In reality their concerns were more about the proposed treaty location and the rank of the Ohio Indians:

Fredericksburg was too close to the Catawbas. They would meet with no Catawbas anywhere and certainly not so close to the enemy homeland. The Ohio Indians were, “. . . but hunters and no counsellors or chief men . . .,” with no right to Treat on their own behalf or receive presents.51

51Ibid., 8-9.

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Known in both colonial and Indian councils for his quick temper Weiser blew up. He told the Iroquois that not only would the Governor of Virginia not come to Albany to treat with them but Virginia just might give the presents directly to the Ohio Indians.

Incensed the Iroquois told Weiser that only they would receive any presents from

Virginia; only they would decide what the Ohio Indians would receive, and only their agents would deliver them.52

Weiser reported in detail to Lee in October, emphasizing the Iroquois aversion to both the proposed Fredericksburg location and any meeting with the Catawbas.

Nonetheless, Lee – idealistic as ever that the Iroquois would see the light – set out to diffuse the Catawba issue all the while retaining his concept of a pan-Indian conference at Fredericksburg. Just to add to the complexity, South Carolina’s governor endorsed the idea of a “General Peace with the Indians” about which he clearly had no clue, and

Clinton set about placating the Iroquois by holding a conference at Albany.53

Unexpectedly in mid-November, 1750, Lee, the architect of this scheme, passed away. Virginia named Lewis Burwell Acting Lieutenant Governor. Meanwhile in the

Ohio Valley Christopher Gist and George Croghan were making their way down river.

Gist, a partner in Virginia’s Ohio Company, knew about the presents but not about

Weiser’s mission to Onondaga. As if matters needed any more complication for

Williamsburg, Gist told the Shawnees and Miamis, “. . . a large present of goods . . . was

52Ibid., 9-10.

53Ibid., 10-11, 11n29. Albany actually held the conference, but only three other colonies attended: Massachusetts, Connecticut and – incredibly – South Carolina.

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now landed safe in Virginia, [and] the Governor had sent me to invite them to come and see him, [and] partake of their father's charity to all his children on the branches of [the]

Ohio.”54 By “father” Croghan and Gist of course meant Lee, but Lee was dead and

Weiser’s mission to Onondaga was in shambles. Burwell – no doubt unaware of any of this – was about to begin a very short tenure as Governor.

Within a year Burwell’s bumbling management inspired Williamsburg to replace him with the more competent Robert Dinwiddie who would occupy center stage during much of the coming French and Indian War. Dinwiddie, a Scot who had served as a tax collector in Bermuda before accepting a post in Virginia, was a quick study with a fatherly appreciation for frontier settlers’ exposure to the ongoing Iroquois-Catawba feud. He had risen quickly in the Virginia Assembly and attracted the support of a number of Virginia’s leading military leaders including Colonel William Fairfax, Colonel

Joshua Fry and Major George Washington. Unlike Lee he had no stake in The Ohio

Company of Virginia, but the Company gave him one anyway when he became

Lieutenant Governor. Like Lee he seemed never to allow this conflict of interest to interfere with his gubernatorial responsibilities. If anything, Dinwiddie may have been the most effective governor of any British colony during this the period.55

54Gist, Journals, 41.

55Dinwiddie loved Britain. In 1758 he requested – and was granted – leave to return home. He never came back to America. Nonetheless the stamp that he left on Virginia – colonial self-sufficiency, decisiveness and independence from central authority – would be a hallmark of the Old Dominion for another century.

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Dinwiddie moved quickly to fix the all but dead Fredericksburg Treaty plan. He directed Gist, still in the Ohio Valley, to invite the Ohio Indian chiefs directly. They declined, citing the same fear of the Catawbas as the Iroquois had. However, they told

Gist they would meet at Logstown.56 So in December, 1751, at Dinwiddie’s request the

Virginia Executive Council approved a change of the proposed Treaty’s location to

Logstown near the Forks of the Ohio, and named Joshua Fry and James Patton as

Virginia Commissioners. Dinwiddie also ruled out any appearance by the Catawbas. He also spelled out the expected terms of agreement and instructed the commissioners to lay these out for the Indians.

Dinwiddie’s terms included the following specifics. The Indians would recognize that Virginia’s presents fulfilled the agreement made at Lancaster in 1744, and give the colony assurance that the Lancaster Treaty was in no way unfair. Williamsburg would secure possession of all Virginia lands recognized by the Lancaster Treaty, “. . . particularly those on the Ohio [River].” Most significantly Dinwiddie wanted agreement that despite an article of the current peace between England and France (Treaty of Aix- la-Chapelle) which restricted building forts in territory claimed by France the Ohio

Company would be excused from compliance therewith. Dinwiddie’s intent was to secure Indian acquiescence for a Virginian fort at the Forks of the Ohio. Last Dinwiddie

56Mulkearn, “Logstown,” 13.

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injected a gratuitous warning to the Indians about French activities in the same area, as if they needed this.57

Lee’s run of bad luck survived the grave, Dinwiddie’s plans notwithstanding.

Dinwiddie wanted Weiser to be the treaty’s official interpreter, but he declined recommending Andrew Montour serve in his stead. Despite his language abilities

Montour was not the translator Weiser was. In his discussions with the Indians during the treaty Montour misrepresented the terms of the 1744 Lancaster Treaty. 58

Meanwhile Patton was no friend of Indians at all. Virginia had given him control of the presents sent from London, and he switched the “rich goods” – fine cloth and ammunition – for goods, “. . . judg[ed] more suitable for the Indians.” Finally the Ohio

Company could not find enough wampum to make a belt to send to the Iroquois so they invited them without sending one, a very serious diplomatic faux pas.59 Whether or not this was the reason, the League was a no-show.

The Logstown Treaty convened on May twenty-eighth, 1752, and lasted two weeks. Of the Indians only those from the Ohio Valley and their Iroquois agents

Tanacharison and Scarouady showed up. and Scarouady apparently acted without authority or even any guidance from the League. Montour persuaded

Tanacharison to sign a confirmation of the Lancaster Treaty, but in the process Montour

57Ibid., 14.

58The 1744 Lancaster Treaty was written in English, ironically a language in which Montour lacked a strong background.

59Mulkearn, “Logstown,” 13.

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apparently agreed that the Indians had not actually sold the Ohio land to Virginia in

1744 and thus had no right to permit them to build a fort at the Forks.60 Regarding the land deal Tanacharison, surely knowing he was out on a limb as an Iroquois agent to begin with, gave only a guarded, personal assurance: he would insure that Indians would not molest settlers in the area.

Patton distributed the modified presents to the Ohio Indians, technically through the Iroquois agents as the League had demanded. Practically simultaneously with

Logstown, Langlade attacked Pickawillany. The Miamis were so routed by the attack on

Croghan’s fort there that they literally could not be found, so Trent took the Miami’s part of Virginia’s present into the woods, distributing it to small groups of the terrified

Indian nation as he found them.

Unconvinced that anything of value had transpired at Logstown, Dinwiddie sent

Montour to Onondaga with an invitation to treat at Winchester the following year.

Montour got the same reception about Winchester that Weiser had gotten to

Fredericksburg two years earlier. Furthermore, by the following year, 1753, the French would be at the Forks. Unwavering in their loyalty to Great Britain, thanks in large part to Croghan, the Ohio Indians nonetheless agreed to treat at Winchester.

60Ibid., 17-19. Weiser was so outraged at Montour’s statement about the 1744 Lancaster Treaty, at which Weiser had been principal interpreter, that he wrote Virginia that, “. . . he was sorry he ever recommended him.” See Mulkearn, “Logstown,” 17 n60. 158

Winchester, Carlisle and the Winds of War

In early 1753 Indians from the Ohio region, alarmed at the forces France had sent down river to build forts, delivered a message to the French commander at

Venango addressed to “Onontio” as they called the Governor of New France. In it they recounted their mutually peaceful relations of the past but, “. . . wondered you came with so strong a body. If you had any cause of complaint, you might have spoke to Onas or Corlaer and not come to disturb us here.” The French commander shot back a curt reply with the salutation “Children” in which he reassured the Indians France meant no harm but, “. . . I am come by the great King’s Command . . . to build four strong houses .

. . at Weningo [Venango], Mohongialo [Ohio] Forks, Logs-Town, and Beaver Creek.” 61

The Indians’ inquiry cited above was the second of three sent to the French. A third quickly followed. Scarouady who had been involved in each exchange shared the

Frenchman’s reply with his British friends at the Forks. There he recited an ancient

Iroquois guidance received from the “Great Being who lives above”: Iroquois must send a future enemy three warnings before declaring war on him. He noted dryly that the

Indians had sent three.62

61Franklin, Treaties, 162. Onas is the Iroquoian word for pen; as quoted usually refers to the Governor of Pennsylvania (as in the first Governor, William “Pen”). Corlaer was a Dutchman who settled among the Mohawks. The Iroquois were fond of this man, and ascribed his name to all future Governors of New York. Ironically, the Mohawks’ principal reason for their homage to Corlaer was that he fed a group of lost and freezing who had wandered into Dutch Mohawk territory. See also William Dunlap and Adriaen van der Donck, History of the New Netherlands, , and State of New York, vol. 1 (New York: Carter & Thorpe, 1839), 123.

62Ibid., 163.

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Scarouady typically dealt with Croghan, Gist and Montour. Venango, the Forks of the Ohio (“Mohongialo Forks”), and Logstown had been (or still were) English trading posts run by Fraser and Tostee, Tostee and Croghan, and Fraser respectively. Beaver

Creek was where Gist had built his local home. Advertently or not the French commander at Venango had stuck the knife in where it created the most pain: the business interests of the Pennsylvania traders and the Virginia land speculators. As was increasingly the case, and sadly would remain so as hundreds of Pennsylvania backcountry settlers would be slaughtered in the coming years, Pennsylvania reacted sluggishly. Virginia meanwhile girded for war. Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie enabled two meetings with Ohio Valley Indians in an effort to obtain their renewed support for Britain to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio.

The first of these conferences was held at Winchester. Colonel William Fairfax, titular head of the Virginia militia, hosted; Scarouady acted as the principal spokesman for the Delaware and Shawnees present. Both Croghan and Montour attended. While there Scarouady rescinded his previous support for such a fort. Alarmed Croghan intervened adroitly suggesting a “storehouse” instead. Scarouady indicated that the

Indians could agree to that.63

Having secured the support of Virginia and anxious to get the British fort project moving, Croghan pressed the Indians to seek agreement from “Brother Onas” in

63Wainwright, Diplomat, 54.

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Philadelphia.64 The Indians balked. Croghan compromised, suggesting Lancaster, a place the Iroquois League had often lit its Council Fire. They refused this idea as well.

However, they proposed to meet with Pennsylvania authorities in early October at

Carlisle, a Pennsylvania frontier town much closer to the Ohio.65 Fairfax sidestepped this second conference, writing in a letter to Pennsylvania Governor James Hamilton,

“. . . for particulars I take leave to refer to Mr. Croghan.”66 Croghan himself quickly delivered Fairfax’s letter to his old employer Edward Shippen at Shippensburg, who dispatched it to Hamilton in Philadelphia. Hamilton agreed to Pennsylvania’s participation but only after he had added Peters, Quaker Assemblyman and

Benjamin Franklin to the Pennsylvania delegation.

In advance the new Pennsylvania delegates met privately with Croghan and

Weiser in Carlisle. A principal issue would be that while Virginia had provided a present of arms and ammunition at Winchester the Indians still lacked sufficient ammunition to engage the French.67 He urged the Pennsylvania delegation to salt the Virginian’s

64As he did with Britain, Croghan remained steadfastly loyal to Pennsylvania. This despite that Philadelphia had slapped his hand for his earlier rogue agreement with the Piankashaws and Ouiatenons at Pickawillany, and Pennsylvania’s western border “five degrees of longitude” from Philadelphia likely lay west of the Forks of the Ohio. He knew Virginia would supply the troops and build the fort, so at first blush his insistence on Pennsylvania’s involvement appears gratuitous. Yet it produced not only a significant present for the Indians, but also enhanced Croghan’s relationship with Quaker Assembly leader Isaac Norris. Whether or not the second result was by design remains open to conjecture.

65Mercer, Ohio Company, 80.

66Wainwright, Diplomat, 54 n17.

67Franklin, Treaties, 163-164.

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proposal with a present of ammunition for the Indians. Conrad Weiser strongly supported this idea. 68

The Carlisle conference began on October 1, 1753. In addition to the Iroquois

League the Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis and Wyandottes attended. Because a number of Indian leaders had recently died or been killed in the west, the conference performed the Iroquois Condolence Ritual on their behalf. Among those lost were many chiefs and elders of the Wyandottes, so much so that the Iroquois added some elements to the Ritual intended to rekindle the League’s ancient but long-since despoiled relationship with the Wyandotte nation. Cynically if somewhat guardedly the Iroquois noted that, “. . . none but youths are left; and this makes us afraid, lest that Treaty, so solemnly established by your ancestors should be forgotten by you.”69

In this midst of the conference, news arrived from other traders that

Tanacharison had been very rudely dispatched from Venango by the French

Commander. Pennsylvania had planned to add ammunition to the Carlisle present but, in light of the report about Tanacharison and fearful the renewed strength of France in the Allegheny, Philadelphia – as ever – wavered. Calling an increase of the amount of goods provided to the Ohio Indians, “. . . too great a [risk], considering the present disorder of things,” the attending Commissioners agreed to store the goods with, “. . .

68Wainwright, Diplomat, 54-55.

69Franklin, Treaties, 166; Dowd, War Under Heaven, 23-25. The “Wendots” ancestors of both Hurons and Wyandottes had been decimated and divided by the Iroquois in the seventeenth century. Splinter groups of Wendots reformed to create eighteenth-century Wyandottes. At best this scene at Winchester must have seemed hypocritical to the Wyandottes present.

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your good friend George Croghan, who is to transmit to the Governor . . . a true and faithful account how matters are likely to turn out; and on the Governors’ orders . . . put you in possession of them.”70

Meanwhile, at the site of old John Fraser’s second trading post William Trent and

Edward Ward had begun to build Dinwiddie’s British fort at the Forks of the Ohio. Their efforts were soon erased by local French commander Captain Claude-Pierre Pécaudy de

Contrecoeur who quickly invested the project, capturing Ward and his small force.

Meanwhile Dinwiddie had already directed Fry to reinforce the fort with Virginia militiamen. Fry did just that, sending his second-in-command Major George

Washington who was no stranger to the Forks or the French. 71

Conclusion

George Croghan’s successes in the Allegheny Valley encouraged him to push into the Ohio country proper. His trading posts in the region included two near Lake Erie and two leading to the Ohio-Mississippi river system. Simultaneous with Croghan’s expansion into Ohio was land development plan of the Ohio Company of Virginia. The

70Franklin, Treaties, 178 n11. In this endnote Kalter casts aspersions on Croghan’s fellow traders Taafe and Callender who made the report, along with its authenticity and the incident itself. She further suggests that traders – who by association would have included Croghan – may have been trying to incite war in the Ohio by controlling goods to Indians. Employed by William Buchanan, another trader, Taafe and Callender were only loosely affiliated with Croghan at this time. Both Croghan and Callender served with the British during the war. The incident happened to Tanacharison as recorded; the only goods Croghan is known to have controlled were liquor and flour, controls which the Indians themselves requested. Buchanan was the report’s actual recipient. He transmitted the report to Carlisle. Therefore its authenticity may be fairly questioned, but only that. The rest of this endnote is nothing more than a fresh dusting of a clichéd criticism of Croghan. It speaks poorly of Kalter’s scholarship and does little justice to Benjamin Franklin.

71Trent, Journals, 59-63.

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Ohio Company hired Indian pathfinder Christopher Gist to scout its territory. There were two bases for this putative expansion of Virginia: first the Elizabethan-era charter which gave Virginia a limitless western frontier; second the 1744 Lancaster Treaty by which the Iroquois had sold much of the Ohio Valley to Virginia. Croghan had no involvement in either, but both would loom large in his future.

George Croghan operated independently of Pennsylvania much as Virginia often operated independently of the crown. Gist and Croghan soon became travelling companions although their objectives were clearly different. Where Croghan left virtually no records Gist left a trove of details in several journals where Croghan’s Ohio trading operations are well documented. Gist’s journals reveal Croghan’s existing alliance with the Shawnees as well as his emerging relationships with the Huron

Orontony, the Miami Memeskia and the Ohio Delaware Windaughalah. Orontony’s attack on Canadien traders on Lake Erie and Memeskia’s sacking of Fort des Miamis were the most severe incidents of the “Conspiracy of 1747,” which died on the vine.72

Nonetheless, simmering Indian disillusionment with France in the region after Britain’s seizure of Louisbourg unquestionably encouraged Croghan to push further downriver.

Gist also recorded Croghan’s increasing reliance on fellow Pennsylvanian Andrew

Montour. Montour descended from both Iroquois and Algonquian parentage; as a result he was an exceptional Indian linguist. Croghan and Montour’s bond would extend for the rest of their lives.

72Steele, Captives, 39. Memeskia’s French prisoners from Fort des Miamis for example were all returned to New France unharmed. 164

Croghan’s operation at Pickawillany was a mounting infuriation to Jonquière, and in 1752 he sent the zealous French-Ottawa warrior Charles Langlade to end it. Langlade did exactly that, but Croghan fortuitously was back in Pennsylvania. Virginia was anxious to claim its land rights in Ohio as spelled out in the 1744 Lancaster Treaty.

Croghan had not been at Lancaster nor were the western Indians well represented.

However, Croghan was involved in treaties at Logstown, Carlisle and Winchester in the early 1750’s which focused on resolving this issue. Nonetheless, the Ohio land ownership issue, a festering sore until well after the American Revolution, was suddenly put on the back burner. Jonquière’s fort-building project had begun in earnest; the

French appeared everywhere in the Ohio Valley and did so in force. Pennsylvania as ever crippled by its pacifistic Quaker Assembly backed away from conflict, but Virginia was not about to stand for this Gallic penetration into territory it perceived as British.

Two strong-willed figures were set to clash over the Ohio Valley: Jacques-Pierre de la

Jonquière and Robert Dinwiddie. In the process they would ignite a global war. George

Croghan, his fellow traders and his Indian allies would find themselves in the crossfire.

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CHAPTER 5

THE WAR YEARS

I question whether any [Indians] but such as are with George Croghan about a dozen will [join us]. 1 - Richard Peters, 1756

Introduction

Braddock’s Defeat thrust George Croghan into the French and Indian War.

Although he held a Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, commission as a militia captain, he served only briefly in a strictly military role during the war. This chapter examines

Croghan’s experiences during the war years from Braddock’s Defeat to Forbes’ retaking of the Forks of the Ohio, his early association with future North American commander

Thomas Gage, his relationship with Sir William Johnson and his conduct at the Easton,

Pennsylvania, Indian Treaty Conferences of 1757 and 1758.

George Washington had not been Governor Dinwiddie’s choice to lead Virginia’s troops against the French; Colonel Joshua Fry and Captain William Trent were. Further

Dinwiddie’s skepticism of Croghan’s optimistic promise both to deliver Indian allies and supply Virginia’s forces was only reinforced by a series of missteps at Great Meadows by

Croghan and his half-brother Edward Ward. Washington and Croghan, two very different men on the same side, had stumbled into a war, bumped into each other and

1Richard Peters to [unknown], January 3, 1756, in Johnson, Papers, 2: 401. Peters was Secretary of the Province of Pennsylvania, Clerk of the Council and a member of the Governor’s Council.

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ruffled each other’s feathers during a precarious situation. The resulting misunderstanding would poison most of their future dealings.

Nor had Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage been picked to lead the 44th Regiment of Foot in July, 1755; he assumed command when its commander Colonel Sir Peter

Halkett was killed. Furthermore his scout, George Croghan, was nothing like the other troops Gage led. Yet Gage did lead the 44th and all the remnants of Braddock’s fractured army out of danger that fateful day, and Croghan did assist him. Nine years later the two men, operating at opposite ends of British North America, would collaborate on many Indian issues and bring a tenuous peace to Pontiac’s War.

New York’s Sir William Johnson became the crown’s principal Indian agent. His jurisdiction extended west across much of British North America including the regions around the Great Lakes and north of the Ohio River, areas where George Croghan had arguably the best Indian contacts of any Briton. Like Croghan, Johnson was both Irish and intensely loyal to Great Britain. His Indian circle included the Nations of the

Iroquois League, notably the Mohawks where he found his second wife, Molly Brant.

Johnson needed a western deputy and Croghan was the logical choice. In 1756 Lord

Loudon approved the move, and Croghan served in this capacity until 1771.

Unlike Johnson Croghan was not known as a warrior. However, while Johnson was engaged against the French in New York Croghan was the diplomat needed to negotiate the persistent Walking Purchase dispute between Pennsylvania and the

Delaware Indians. Ironically, this early Croghan assignment as Johnson’s deputy was with eastern Indians in his home colony. Croghan, aided by the Mohawk sachem Nikus 167

Hance, who would soon become his father-in-law, at least staunched this festering sore in 1757 and 1758 until Johnson could complete the job a few years later.

The Senecas were geographically opposite the Mohawks in Iroquoia. Guardians of the western door of the metaphorical Iroquois Longhouse, their proximity to the Ohio

Valley and Great Lakes Indians made them tenuous allies of the British. Nonetheless,

Seneca Chief Kiashuta, who also represented the Iroquois to some extent among the

Shawnees, proved a strong ally. As the war turned increasingly in Britain’s favor

Croghan and Kiashuta worked diligently to keep the Senecas and Shawnees from aligning with the French. Decimated by Langlade’s 1752 attack, the Miamis, who had literally dispersed into the woods, would be a more difficult undertaking.

General John Forbes seizure of Fort Duquesne in 1758, followed by a series of victories under General Lord Jeffery Amherst in Canada, turned the tide toward the

British, but an unfortunate result would be the accession of Amherst to the top spot in

British North America. More a general than an administrator Amherst would squander

Britain’s victories by alienating the western Indians. In December, 1762, George

Croghan issued a war warning about a pending Indian uprising. His warning, while explicitly a concern that friendly Senecas, Shawnees, and Delawares might align with the western nations, implicitly sounded the alarm about a western Indian rebellion generally. As the triumphant new year arrived Amherst largely ignored it, but Croghan’s message was prophetic as the Ottawa leader Pontiac would soon take up the hatchet against Great Britain.

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Falling Out with Washington

George Croghan and George Washington first encountered each other in 1754.

Washington was a Virginia aristocrat whose family had celebrated four generations in

British North America by the time of his birth. After managing his brother Lawrence’s

Mount Vernon plantation for a number of years, George Washington inherited it upon his brother’s death in 1752.2

The Washington brothers shared another interest, the Forks of the Ohio.

Lawrence had been an early supporter of The Ohio Company of Virginia. Croghan’s Ohio

Valley colleague Christopher Gist was the company’s principal agent west of

Pennsylvania, scouting the territory for Virginia. Because Pennsylvania’s western boundary remained undetermined in 1747 when Lawrence Washington and his compatriots created the “Ohio Company,” Pennsylvanians did not know where their western border was, and Virginians did not care.

The Seneca Tanacharison served as the principal representative for the Iroquois in the same region. Much as Gist kept one eye on the Pennsylvanians, Tanacharison kept track of the Shawnees. This important interlocutor operated from a base at

2Lawrence Washington commanded Virginia troops embarked under Admiral Edward Vernon in the Caribbean during The War of Jenkins' Ear. This war between Great Britain and Spain formally lasted from 1739 to 1748, but conflict ended largely ended by 1742. The war’s name emanates from a pre-war incident when merchantman Robert Jenkins’s ear was unceremoniously removed by a Spanish coastal guard, who believed the Briton to be in violation of the Treaty of Utrecht. Jenkins bore his severed ear to Parliament in a small box, a stunt which proved pivotal in triggering the war. The War of Jenkins’ Ear blended into the War of the Austrian Succession which occurred largely in Europe. Lawrence Washington so admired his commander that he named his estate on Potomac after him.

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Logstown. By 1754 Tanacharison and Gist had collaborated on behalf of the British in the entire region from the Forks of the Ohio to the Great Miami River.

Earlier that year Croghan’s former business partner William Trent, now a Virginia militia captain, had embarked on construction of a fort at the Forks of the Ohio. Trent had contracted with The Ohio Company of Virginia for supplies. Nonetheless, Virginia

Governor Dinwiddie, frustrated by the Pennsylvania Assembly’s ongoing reluctance to garrison forts in its western territories, decided not only to supply Trent’s fort but to garrison it with Virginians. He ordered Colonel Joshua Fry to raise the troops to do so.

Fry’s executive officer was Washington, now a major in the Virginia militia. In early April

Fry dispatched Washington to deliver these troops to Trent. Unbeknownst to either Fry or Washington was the fact that French Captain Contrecoeur had already seized Trent’s project and routed its forty-man British force commanded by Ensign Edward Ward,

George Croghan’s half-brother. Thanks to Tanacharison’s intervention, Contrecoeur treated Ward in the fashion of traditional European warfare, authorizing him and his troops to retreat to Wills Creek.3

Early on May twenty-eighth, 1754, Washington met with Tanacharison, whose warriors had located the French. The two leaders plotted a successful attack on the

French. French Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville and about ten of his men were killed. Washington suffered one killed and three wounded; Tanacharison suffered no casualties. Tanacharison’s warriors scalped the dead French soldiers and sent the

3Wills Creek is modern Cumberland, Maryland. 170

scalps, along with a belt of black wampum, down the Ohio River to encourage other

Indian nations to ally with Britain. At the site which bears his name, young Jumonville died of repeated hatchet blows to the head at the hands of Tanacharison.4

The French did not take lightly the action at what was now being called

“Jumonville Glen.” In late June under command of Jumonville’s half-brother, Captain

Louis Coulon de Villiers, seven hundred French soldiers and Indians pursued the upstart

Virginian. The French brothers were from an esteemed noble family. Both carried

French diplomatic messages demanding that the British – the Virginians – abandon the

Ohio Valley.

Gist maintained a “plantation” at what later would be called Mount Braddock, not far from Great Meadows where Washington had camped with his force of one hundred and fifty men before both Jumonville and Great Meadows. Tanacharison sent word from his camp near Gist’s to Washington at Great Meadows that the French were on the move, and headed in his direction. Croghan had promised Dinwiddie he would supply flour and ammunition to the Virginians, but because Virginia had also asked him to procure Indian allies he had delegated the logistics of supplies to Ward. (Ward had not returned to Wills Creek as Contrecoeur had expected.) Ward delivered the ammunition but not the flour. Croghan, having failed to obtain any significant Indian support for Washington, belatedly seized the reins of the Virginia supply operation

4Sipe, Indian Wars, 156-158. The skirmish at Jumonville Glen occurred May 28, 1754. Three days later Col. Joshua Fry, Commander of the “” as it was known, was thrown from a horse and died near Wills Creek. Fairfax subsequently gave the command to Washington, and approved his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel.

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incautiously relocating a pack train of flour and other supplies for Washington at Gist’s plantation. In the face of an imminent French counterattack Washington astutely retreated, something at which the future American general excelled and was a significant factor in his later Revolutionary War successes. At the same time he ordered his troops to seize Croghan’s horses to haul the to safety.5 Neither the guns nor the horses made it beyond Great Meadows where, in a driving rainstorm, Villiers caught up with and overwhelmed Washington’s smaller force, captured Fort Necessity and, in the process, killed all of Croghan’s horses.6 Ever the European gentleman-at-arms, despite his brother’s bloody murder by Washington’s Indian ally, Villiers permitted the

Virginian and his battered force to retreat to Maryland.

After Great Meadows Washington blamed Croghan for the lack of Indian support and his troops’ lack of food, barely respecting the fact that Croghan had supplied ammunition and had lost his pack horses. Croghan characteristically over-promised the

Indian support, but Ward was to blame for the flour debacle and Washington for

Croghan’s loss of pack horses. In Williamsburg however, Washington’s version gained the high ground, and Dinwiddie would point the finger only at Croghan for the lack of flour and Indian fighters. For the next thirty years George Croghan attempted to be reimbursed both for the supplies he had provided to the Virginians and the horses

5Wainwright, Diplomat, 64-65.

6Sipe, Indian Wars, 162-3.

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seized by Washington. His petitions went unanswered by Virginia, Pennsylvania, Great

Britain and unsurprisingly the United States.

Washington surrendered Fort Necessity to Villiers on July 4, 1754. Later he remarked to his brother Lawrence that during battle, “. . . there is something charming in the sound of whistling bullets.” When King George II, the last British monarch to take the field in battle, read Washington’s comment in a London newspaper he quipped, “He would not say so if he had been used to hear many.”7

Washington and Croghan became wary allies in the ensuing war years, even to the extent of carrying General Braddock’s shattered body from the field during the abortive battle near Fort Duquesne. They did not start the French and Indian War any more than did Contrecoeur or Villiers. Nonetheless, historians often regard

Washington’s 1754 “victory” at Jumonville Glen and subsequent surrender at Great

Meadows as the sparks that ignited the French and Indian War. The first was a small- scale war crime which the inexperienced Major Washington was too stunned to prevent, and the second a decisive French victory at which Captain Villiers gallantly forgave the perpetrators of the first. By contemporaneous standards of European warfare these two encounters should have ended the war not started it.

7Washington Irving, Life of George Washington Vol. I: Early Life, Expeditions and Campaigns (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855), 87, 87n3. King George II commanded Great Britain’s forces in the field at Dettingen, Germany, during the War of the Austrian Succession. He made this statement after reading Washington’s quote in London Magazine. According to Washington Irving, the quote was taken from a letter Washington had sent his brother Lawrence. Horace Walpole provided a copy of the entire letter to London Magazine which subsequently printed it.

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If any two individuals were responsible for triggering this war they would be

Jonquière and Dinwiddie. The war began when Montréal and Williamsburg attempted to exert their hegemony over the same region at the same time. Jonquière expanded on Galissonière’s efforts to mark New France’s western territories by destroying

Virginia’s nascent fort at the Forks of the Ohio and by building French forts where British traders had operated for years. Principal among them was George Croghan. Dinwiddie reacted by supporting the Ohio Company of Virginia’s land speculation in the region, first by survey and then with military force. Croghan was the “King of the Traders”;

Tanacharison was the Iroquois’ eyes and ears; Gist was Virginia’s surveyor; Trent, Ward, and Washington formed the tactical leadership for Virginia’s military force de frappe. 8

They, along with Contrecoeur, Villiers and Langlade, were all pawns in a much larger conflagration. At the tactical level these mid-level warriors struck the match that ignited the western hemisphere, but the war was begun in Montréal and Williamsburg, if not

Versailles and London.

Aligning with Thomas Gage

A year later came Major General ’s historic defeat outside Fort

Duquesne. At the time it was the greatest rout of a British army in history. Fourteen hundred soldiers of the British 44th and 48th Regiments of Foot and two colonial

8Wainwright, Diplomat, 61. In April, 1754, Croghan’s half-brother Edward Ward, by this time an ensign in the Virginia militia and acting under orders from Trent, himself now a Virginia Captain, was engaged in building the first British fort at the Forks of the Ohio when the French attacked. Ward surrendered. Trent was at Wills Creek, Maryland, at the time. Wainwright refers to the subsequent military action as, “. . . the second phase of the rivalry for the Ohio basin.” (italics mine).

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Regiments were all but annihilated by about seventy French regulars and eight hundred

Canadians and Indians. Washington and Croghan were both there, Washington as a

Lieutenant Colonel of the Virginians and Croghan as lead scout for the expedition.9 In this capacity he was part of the vanguard under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage, deputy to Sir Peter Halkett who commanded the 44th.

During the battle Washington’s coat took four rounds; none hit his body.

Croghan also escaped unscathed. Braddock, however, fell mortally wounded. Most sources agree that Croghan and Montour along with a few loyal Indians worked to assist the general, ultimately carrying him from the field. Washington, fellow Virginian

Captain Robert Stewart and Braddock’s less-than-loyal aide Captain Robert Orme also attended Braddock.10 Croghan offered Braddock his pistol to put himself out his misery;

Braddock refused.11

Undeniably, despite the confusion of the battle and the conflicting records which followed, Croghan and Washington assisted the wounded commander. While Croghan,

Montour and the allied Indians may have offered medical aid (including the pistol) at a

9Thomas E. Crocker, Braddock’s March: How the Man Sent to Seize a Continent Changed American History (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2009), 76 and 136. Croghan showed up with about fifty Indians from Pennsylvania. Dinwiddie had promised many more “Southern Indians,” but they never materialized – probably a good thing given the enmity between the Iroquois and the Cherokees and Catawbas. Braddock subsequently engaged Gist as his personal scout, but Crocker does not suggest this was the reason.

10Ibid., 178-179. Crocker’s book is really about Orme, his efforts in the Mayfair salons to undermine Braddock and his self-aggrandizing behavior during the expedition. In this citation Crocker credits Orme’s “asp-tongue” with separating Braddock from his more experienced but junior leaders, particularly Col. Thomas Dunbar, whom Braddock subsequently relegated to the rear.

11Ibid., 223-224. Braddock was hit in several places, most seriously in the lung. 175

slightly different time than when Washington and Stewart tore off Braddock’s red sash to use as a sling to carry his body from the field, at least tacitly in this terrible instant

Croghan and Washington cooperated for the good of a common cause.

Although the two did meet briefly in 1771 to discuss land, aiding the wounded

Braddock would be their last collaboration. Neither trusted the other largely because of the dispute over provisions at Great Meadows. Croghan’s argument that he had never been paid continued to blur his focus over the ensuing years. Washington was mostly glad that Villiers had permitted him to escape with honor; Croghan’s lost supplies and horses were the last things on Washington’s mind. Washington was a mid-level officer and a “provincial”. The matter of paying Croghan rightly deserved to be settled by

Williamsburg if not London. Virginia had sent Washington, and Croghan had supplied

Virginia’s man. Croghan’s view that Washington had the power to make this right was sadly misdirected.

What did happen during Braddock’s Defeat to enhance Croghan’s fortunes was ironically the death of Sir Peter Halkett. Halkett had ordered Thomas Gage, a relatively unknown Lieutenant Colonel leading the vanguard of the 44th, to reconnoiter the ford of the on the night of July eighth-ninth, 1755. Gage did so and camped there in the wee hours of the morning. So quiet was the dawn of July 9, 1755, that Gage and his troops enjoyed a peaceful if sparse breakfast camped on both sides of the river.

The site would later be referred to as an ambush although the French and their allied

Canadians and Indians had not even formed at this location when Gage decamped there. 176

French Commander Captain Daniel Beaujeu suspected that Braddock’s army would ford the Monongahela to attack Duquesne. What he had not expected was that

Braddock would announce his arrival in imperial pomp, banners flying and fifes and drums playing the “Grenadiers March”. Beaujeu heard the music and hastened his forces to the crossing. So impressive was the sound alone that some of Beaujeu’s forces deserted. “Never before had the American wilderness seen such a spectacle,” as

Crocker dryly put it 250 years later.12 The turning point for George Croghan occurred during the battle when Halkett was gunned down and Gage stepped forward to command the 44th.13 The resulting battle needs no retelling.

Map 5-1 shows the deployment of troops. The map is unusual in two ways. First it represents the troop deployment as if the battle had been fought in the traditional

European style. Second the mapmaker apparently did not know that Braddock had crossed the Monongahela twice.

12Ibid., 207-209.

13Sipe, Indian Wars, 197-198. Halkett’s body along with those of most of the British dead and many of the wounded was badly abused by the French-allied Indians. Several years later after Forbes took Duquesne his successor sent a detachment to investigate the scene. The group included young Peter Halkett, Sir Peter’s son, who was also a British officer. Searching the bone pile on the banks of the Monongahela he identified his father’s skeleton from a gold tooth still imbedded in its skull. Across the knight’s skeleton lay another, that of his son and the younger Peter Halkett’s brother.

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Map 5-1. Christian Friedrich von der Heiden, Der Gegen des Ohio Flusses, wo ohneit da von am 9 Iuly 1755; Zwischen denen Franosichen u Engl. Trouppen ein hiziges Tressen vor Gessullen und der Engl Gen. Braddock, 1760, Barry Ruderman Antique Maps.14

14Christian Friedrich von der Heiden, Der Gegen des Ohio Flusses, wo ohneit da von am 9 Iuly 1755); Zwischen denen Franosichen u Engl. Trouppen ein hiziges Tressen vor Gessullen und der Engl Gen. Braddock, 1760, used by permission, Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc., La Jolla, CA, [email protected].

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With Halkett dead and Braddock’s army in disarray, Gage successfully withdrew the tattered remains of Sir Peter’s decimated unit from an inglorious bloodbath.

Wounded himself, Gage took command of the 44th Regiment of Foot. Orme later levelled charges that Gage’s poor field tactics while leading the vanguard somehow engendered the defeat. Some historians speculate that because of Orme’s false accusations and the incorrect idea that the French force awaited Braddock in ambush,

Gage was denied permanent command of the 44th Regiment of Foot.15 Orme roundly criticized nearly every surviving senior officer including men as different as Dunbar and

Sir John St. Clair. For his part St. Clair fired back; meanwhile Dinwiddie defended

Dunbar.16 Regardless of Orme’s harping, Gage’s fortunes proved far better than his own.17 Gage would command considerably more than a regiment; he would command a continent.

When the news of Braddock’s Defeat reached Britain, opinions wavered from complacency to boredom. Horace Walpole called it the, “. . . the longest battle that ever

15John R. Alden, General Gage in America (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1948), 25-26.

16Crocker, Braddock’s March, 239.

17Ibid., 266-267. Orme carried on a scandalous affair with the daughter of Charles Townshend, Third Viscount Raynham. He and the voluptuous Audrey Townshend eloped to The Netherlands where, despite already being married, he wed her anyway. Suffice it to say his days as both a British officer and an “armchair general” were over. After Audrey died Orme returned to England where he lived out his final years at the Vicarage of his son The Reverend Robert Orme where his “career” no doubt caused a few titters among the parishioners.

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was fought with nobody.”18 He was wrong in at least one way: the battle was fairly short. French Captain Beaujeu marched out of Fort Duquesne with seventy-two French regulars, 146 Canadian volunteers and 637 Indian allies. Beaujeu himself was killed, but the total French loss amounted to eleven killed and twenty-nine wounded.19 Of the overwhelming British force of 1,466, thirty one percent died and another twenty-nine percent were wounded.20

Walpole was not the only person to criticize the battle. Iroquois representative

Scarouady, four thousand miles closer to the action than the acerbic Earl, had his own opinion. The resulting debacle was, as Scarouady intoned, due to:

. . . the pride and ignorance of that general that came from England. He looked upon us as dogs . . . We tried to tell him of the danger he was in with his soldiers, but he never appeared pleased with us. . . [T]hat was the reason that a great many of our warriors left him and would not be under his command.21

Gage would go on to govern Montréal after General James Wolfe’s stunning

1759 defeat of Lieutenant General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Gozon Marquis de Saint-

Veran at Québec. Eventually Gage would replace the despised Lord Jeffery Amherst as

18Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Robert Bentley, September 30, 1755, in Horace Walpole, Correspondence of Horace Walpole to George Montagu [et al.] vol. I, 1735-1759. (London: Henry Colburn, 1837), 298-299.

19Crocker, Braddock’s March, 206 and 228; Dowd, War Under Heaven, 46. Dowd maintains that all three Anishinabeg nations were involved in Braddock’s Defeat and that they were led by Charles Langlade.

20Crocker, Braddock’s March, 227. Military historians typically add these numbers to determine a battle’s “casualty count,” given as a percentage of the forces involved. For Braddock’s Defeat this amounts to 4.7% for French forces and 60% for British, who arrived on the field with an army nearly twice the size of the French.

21Ibid., 241.

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overall commander for British North America. In this role, his and George Croghan’s stars would align in the same constellation. Together they would push the limits of

British Empire to the sun setting.

Sir William Johnson

The story of Sir William Johnson and his relationship with both the Mohawks and the Iroquois League as a whole is one of the better known of this period. Johnson came from an Irish Roman Catholic family but later converted to Anglicanism, emulating the career path of his distinguished Royal Navy relative Admiral Sir Peter Warren. Warren had made a fortune seizing Spanish ships, and invested much of it in New York. By marriage he expanded these holdings. In the mid-1730s Warren acquired fourteen thousand acres near the junction of the Schoharie and Mohawk Rivers, not far from the

Palatine German settlement where Conrad Weiser had grown up. Warren needed someone to develop this backwoods, so he returned to his family’s Irish homeland and sought out his nephew “Billy.” Young William Johnson was not a poor lad, but he was bored with life in the “Old Sod.” He jumped at the opportunity to manage Warren’s new estate. Johnson was twenty two.22

In time Johnson built a fine, Georgian-style home for himself in a wilderness surrounded by Mohawk Indians. A gregarious host and a fierce warrior whose appellations over the centuries have ranged from “Mohawk Baronet” to “White

Savage,” Johnson’s place in history makes him unquestionably the central figure in

22O’Toole, White Savage, 19, 36-37.

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British dealings with the Iroquois. While Peter Warren may have launched Johnson’s personal life, New York Governor George Clinton was first to recognize the potential benefit of his Iroquois interactions, albeit Clinton was dragged to this realization by the

Mohawk chieftain Hendrick, a close confidante of Johnson’s. In 1751 both Johnson and

Hendrick took center stage at a conference in Albany. Frustrated because he was functioning as the principal British Indian Agent in New York without compensation or formal appointment, Johnson resigned. Hendrick, frustrated by Johnson’s action and also Britain’s increasing blind eye to the Iroquois following King George’s War, told

Clinton that the ancient Covenant Chain was broken.23 The chain was an Iroquois euphemism for a relationship. It was first forged with the Dutch and enhanced with the

British; the Silver Covenant Chain between Albany and Iroquoia was crucial to British-

Indian relations and Clinton knew it. Without it, at best Britain would lose any legitimacy of its claim to the Ohio and the Great Lakes; at worst the Iroquois would simply go over to the French altogether. Pressured by London, in 1754 Clinton agreed to another Indian conference, the subsequently famous Albany Congress at which he acceded to Hendrick’s demand to reinstate Johnson as Indian Agent whatever Johnson’s terms. Hendrick’s brother Abraham actually put forth the demand; with it he restated something the League had told the French years before. “Your fire here,” Abraham pontificated, “is out.” With this agreement Hendrick knew that Johnson would now

23Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 123. Mohawk chieftain Hendrick was not the same Hendrick who had travelled to London in 1710.

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officially be in the driver’s seat, and New York and London would reinvigorate the

Iroquois alliance.24

After Braddock’s Defeat, the defection of many Indians loyal to the British was a continuing concern. King George II finally named Johnson Crown Superintendent for the

Northern Department of Indian affairs in North America on February second, 1756.

Johnson already knew of George Croghan’s prowess in dealing with the Indians and his support to Gage and Braddock.

Braddock’s Defeat had an immediate effect in Pennsylvania. Delaware and

Shawnee war parties swept east, attacking settlements previously considered safe.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia the colonial assembly controlled by the pacifist Quaker faction acted as if defense of the frontier were none of their affair. George Croghan knew Johnson and kept him informed. In a September, 1755, letter commenting on what colonists were calling “The Outrages,” a brutal series of murders, scalpings and tortures which Indians inflicted on any Europeans connected to the British in the wake of Braddock’s Defeat, Croghan bemoaned the fact that he had to raise a volunteer company and build a small fort at his own expense to secure his Conodoguinet property.

In the same letter he complained about Pennsylvania Governor Robert Morris’s difficulties with the Quaker-dominated Assembly disrupting supplies to the frontier, much as Braddock’s logistician Sir John Saint Clair had before. 25 Croghan claimed, “. . .

24Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 139-149. Brandão, in his previously-cited Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, addresses this same issue leading to the Iroquois-France conference of 1701 in Montreal.

25Crocker, Braddock’s March, 107, 307. Ironically Croghan and St. Clair had gone to verbal fisticuffs over Pennsylvania’s lackluster supply of Braddock’s army, each blaming the other to the extent 183

our Assembly here has prevented this Government from doing anything for [the] defense of this country.” Croghan also addressed some of his concerns about the future of British and Indian relations. Alluding to a letter Johnson had sent him about

Scarouady before the battle, Croghan opined that, “. . . we have very few Indians to depend on,” naming both the Cherokees and Iroquois who now, “. . . seem very much on the French side.”26 Indeed even Scarouady’s own loyalty to Britain wavered, but in the end he fell on the side of the British, however grudgingly.

Croghan’s Appointment as Johnson’s Deputy

Once appointed Crown Superintendent Johnson wasted no time seeking out

Croghan. In April, 1756, his confidante and son-in-law Captain Daniel Claus reported from Philadelphia on Croghan’s whereabouts. Croghan was at Aughwick, but Claus was confident that Croghan would soon, “. . . set off for the Mohawks.”27 Claus’s reference to “the Mohawks” meant that Croghan, as interested in taking the position as Johnson was in appointing him to it, would soon report in at the Baronet’s estate. Before arriving Croghan apparently chronicled all his Indian transactions from 1748 to the summer of 1755 for Johnson, but the record was lost in the 1911 Albany fire.28

that Governor Morris and Braddock intervened. As usual the Quakers were to blame for dithering about funding the expedition, and some German suppliers simply refused to take IOUs from the British military.

26Croghan to Johnson, September 10, 1755, in Johnson, Papers, 2:28-30.

27Daniel Claus to Johnson, April 5, 1756, in Johnson, Papers, 2:436-440.

28Croghan to Johnson, March 14, 1757, Johnson Calendar Notes, in Johnson, Papers, 2:648. The 1911 fire at the New York State Library destroyed many original Sir William Johnson papers. Johnson also kept a calendar, which survived the fire, in which he entered short comments about correspondence.

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Bureaucracies are ever thus, and Croghan’s nascent appointment soon became entangled in that of official British North America. In mid-1756 Johnson recommended

Croghan’s appointment as his deputy to General John Campbell, Fourth Lord Loudoun,

Commander in Chief of North America and Governor of Virginia. Loudoun was an imperious leader, not well-liked in the Colonies. In September Loudoun sent a somewhat negative letter to Johnson about Croghan in which he failed to confirm

Croghan’s appointment.29 In June, 1757, after the matter had dragged on for nine months, Loudoun sent another letter to Johnson which could have been interpreted as grudgingly approving Croghan as deputy, except that Loudoun’s reply was nothing if not convoluted. With regard to Croghan’s appointment, his Lordship offered this solution:

I am empowered [to appoint him], if I see it necessary to appoint him to act under you in that capacity; and you are hereby empowered to employ him in that station, & if you desire it, I shall at my return give him a commission with the salary you proposed for him & you may in the mean time, if you employ him[,] pay him at that rate.30

Unsurprisingly, the issue still seemed unresolved in Johnson’s eyes. In

December, he asked Loudoun again, this time invoking support from the Lords of

Trade.31 Two days later Loudoun reiterated his tepid support for Croghan, stating that he understood Johnson had already appointed Croghan in this capacity. In closing, his

29Loudoun to Johnson, September 19, 1756, in Johnson, Papers, 2:562.

30Loudoun to Johnson, June, 1757, in Johnson, Papers, 2: 724.

31Johnson to Loudoun, December 10, 1757, Johnson, Papers, 2:762. Johnson said, “I should be glad to know whether your Lordship approves of his having a commission,” after which Johnson goes on to suggest he could do so on his own authority.

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Lordship sniffed, “I thought it of no great consequence, as he acts only as your deputy.”32 Johnson appointed him.

Loudoun apparently believed that appointing Croghan was beneath his station.

Johnson on the other hand kept pushing the matter, perhaps to guarantee that when he submitted the bill for Croghan’s services, which he suspected would be high in the

“Indian gifts” category, it would get paid. As much as deputizing Croghan was of “great consequence” to Johnson, funding him without crown endorsement could be greater.

Despite Loudoun’s limp support, Croghan was now officially Johnson’s deputy.33

One of Croghan’s additional duties was to provide intelligence to the Southern Indian

Superintendent Edmund Atkin.34 Atkin went to great pains to explain to Southern

Indians that he was equal to Johnson, which probably did him little good as the mostly

Cherokee listeners saw Johnson as in bed with their hated enemies the Iroquois. Atkin and Croghan had a testy relationship, which carried over to Atkin’s successor John

Stuart. In June, 1757, Croghan sent Atkin a letter from Carlisle about a present which

32Loudoun to Johnson, December 12, 1757, in Johnson, Papers, 2:767. The author’s view of this episode is that Loudoun was cool to the idea in September, 1756, in part because Croghan was with him at the time, and failed to make the best impression. Further, Loudoun expected Johnson should have, “. . . sent a letter . . . recommending him.” (Loudoun to Johnson, September 19, 1756, n29, above. ) Meanwhile, Johnson no doubt wanted Loudoun to appoint Croghan because his Lordship controlled the purse. Johnson probably didn’t want to be out of pocket for Croghan’s pay and, moreover, his typically outlandish expenses. A year later, Loudoun was willing to have Croghan as Johnson’s western deputy; he just believed such an appointment was beneath him, and he wanted Johnson to do it.

33In much of 1757 Loudoun had been distracted by an absurd scheme, which he had developed, to capture the French fort at Louisbourg in Acadia (Nova Scotia). He called off the expedition once it had been launched; afterward London recalled him.

34Johnson’s appointment was only for the Northern Indians. However, this included the all- powerful Iroquois, and effectively made Johnson primus inter parem of the two Crown Superintendents. Edmund Atkin and later John Stuart served as Southern Crown Superintendents during Johnson’s tenure.

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“Pennsylvania,” probably Croghan himself, had for the Cherokees and a desire for the

Mohawks to “brighten their chain of friendship” with the Cherokees. Atkin threw cold water on both plans ostensibly because he distrusted the bearer of the letter, one Capt.

Paris, “. . . having discharged himself by accepting of a commission from another government,” referring to Paris’s commission from Pennsylvania. Atkin went on to say that because of this Paris was generally unfit to negotiate with the Indians despite being an excellent interpreter.35

Croghan’s network spread equally far to the north. In March 1758 he reported to Johnson on conditions in French Canada. He noted that people were eating horse flesh and Indian corn sold for twenty Livres a bushel. Montcalm had returned from

Quebec to Montreal to reassert control over the situation there. French forces were preparing a large number of bateaux, presumably on northern Lake Champlain, and had marched troops south to defend Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga).36

Croghan was instrumental in exchanging goods to Indians for their British captives. At Fort Pitt in 1759 he clothed 721 Indians led by Delaware Chief Tamaqua in exchange for the return of about eighty captives.37 Two years later in September, 1761, after Johnson concluded a peace conference at Detroit, he instructed Croghan to perform a similar exchange with the lakes Indians. These instructions reflected

35Edmund Atkin to Croghan, June 8 1757, Pennsylvania, Archives, Series II, 3: 175-181.

36Croghan to Johnson, March 18, 1758, in Johnson, Papers, 2:791.

37Steele, Captives, 279.

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agreements Johnson had made during his discussions, but Croghan’s knowledge of western Indians clearly influenced his superior’s approach. Johnson directed Croghan to go to Sandusky, join up with Montour, go to the Ohio country and collect all English prisoners. He and Montour were then to return these people to their “former places of abode,” and proceed to Fort Pitt. There Croghan was to hire a smith, send him to

Detroit and order a “couple of hundred of the middling sort” of hoes and send them as well.38 Croghan did so, returning seventy-two British captives to Fort Pitt.39

Croghan was very much his own man in these endeavors. Nonetheless, despite his ongoing relationship with them, the Shawnees were not likely to exchange anything for captives. He knew that the Shawnees commonly assimilated Europeans into their communities; indeed many captives had grown fond of their newfound Shawnee

“relatives” and were reluctant to return to colonial society. Among their Shawnee captors, these feelings were equally strong. Steele in his extensive investigation into the ransom of Indian captives during and after the French and Indian War, Setting All the

Captives Free, tells a poignant story about Shawnee Chief Benevisica fruitlessly hunting for food for a group of captive women and children he was returning to Fort Pitt in the winter of 1764.40 However in 1761 Croghan need not have worried about the

38Instructions to Croghan [after Detroit Conference in] September, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 2:500-501. Smiths were used by Indians to repair hoes, traps, firearms and other European goods. They typically set up shop in or near British forts.

39Steele, Captives, 280.

40Ibid., 335.

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Shawnees’ attitude toward returning captives; in December the new commander

General Lord Amherst stipulated that no ransom of any form should be paid for captives.41

Johnson trusted Croghan and the Irish Baronet often ran interference for his countryman. In October 1761 Croghan sent Johnson a detailed accounting of the funds and staff required for a Western Indian Division. He was at Fort Pitt and the time, and along with the accounts for the west, he reminded Johnson that Pennsylvania had still not paid him for material he had purchased for General Stanwix.42 A few weeks later

Johnson, suffering painfully from a ball lodged in his thigh, sent back an avuncular reply.

He told Croghan he had forwarded the “account and the protest” (meaning the Stanwix invoice) to Amherst. As to the recommendation regarding a Western Indian

Department, Johnson knew only too well Amherst’s aversion to any postwar coddling of

Indians. Adroitly passing the buck up the chain Sir William cautioned Croghan that the recommendation for a western unit is, “. . . not amiss, [and] . . . worthy of our attention of Indian alliances or trade. [H]owever, let it be judged of by those whose province it is.”43 Through all the dark years when France held the field, George Croghan soldiered

41Ibid., 281.

42Croghan to Johnson, October 12, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:550. John Stanwix rose from Colonel to Lieutenant General between 1758 and 1761, holding a number of senior positions in British North America. He left America for good in 1761 and subsequently perished in a turbulent sea crossing from Ireland to Wales. Stanwix was well regarded, worked closely with Croghan and was a friend to George Washington. He initially assumed command of operations around Fort Duquesne after Braddock’s death; Stanwix was replaced by General John Forbes who successfully captured the French fort in late 1758. At Stanwix’s suggestion Fort Duquesne was renamed Fort Pitt. Both Stanwix and Forbes relied heavily on Colonel .

43Johnson to Croghan, November 30, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:573-574. 189

on as Johnson’s deputy as best he could in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and even in the new frontier which would be called “The Illinois Country” after the war.

Maintaining Indian Allies in the West

Among the Indians, significant contributors stood out as much as did the Indian agents working for Sir William. Some acted as negotiators while others remained fiercely loyal to a European or native faction. In many cases these people have disappeared from memory. A few remain as semi-mythical figures in American or

Canadian culture such as Iroquois agent to the Delaware Shikellamy, loyalist Mohawk leader Joseph Brant and the legendary Ottawa warrior Pontiac. Others have been forgotten by history but were equally important in their day, for example, the Delaware

Tamaqua (Old Beaver) and the Seneca Kiashuta. Two factors unified both British and

Anglophile Indian leaders: the French were winning the war, and Lord Amherst’s Indian policies were not helping.

As time passed Croghan’s responsibilities to the crown increased dramatically.

Initially posted to New York, he and Montour witnessed Abercrombie’s disastrous 1758 frontal attack on the huge stone fortress at Ticonderoga from the flanks where British regulars had relegated Colonials and Indians.44 Generally after Braddock’s Defeat

Croghan did not participate as a combatant in the French and Indian War, his skills in

Indian negotiating and diplomacy being more in demand. He was particularly successful

44Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 240-249. Anderson’s account of this debacle is nothing short of spellbinding, particularly if, like the author, the reader is a combat veteran.

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recruiting Indians to the British cause as he did frequently in the west for Col. Henry

Bouquet.

By the mid-1750s through Weiser, Johnson and other official British channels,

Croghan had acquired a good, working relationship with the Iroquois. In 1757 he married his second wife Tekarihoga, a daughter of Mohawk sachem Nikus Hance and herself destined to be the matriarch of the preeminent Turtle Clan.45 These

Pennsylvania and New York relationships carried over in many cases to the west.

Croghan had developed a working relationship with the Delawares in Ohio, but in Pennsylvania it was poisoned at Easton and in Philadelphia by Teedyuscung and the

Quakers. Poisoned but not destroyed: Virginia and the Delawares in Ohio would provide better possibilities for Croghan.

In the summer of 1758 the French and Indian War changed dramatically in

Britain’s favor. British forces had sustained another humiliating defeat at Fort

Ticonderoga in early July, but by the end of August the Union Jack flew over Forts

Louisbourg and Frontenac the historical eastern and western edges of New France.

Within a year the British would capture Ticonderoga, and in September 1759 Quebec itself would be in British hands. As British victories increased in 1759 and 1760

Croghan’s stage broadened beyond Ohio to Illinois. There, the edges of British

45The timing of Croghan’s marriage to Nikus’s daughter Tekarihoga may reflect a desire for closer ties with Mohawks and Iroquois generally, as Sir William Johnson had achieved. Nonetheless, while many records exist of Croghan’s Irish daughter, Suzanna, no mention can be found of his first wife in America. Thus while Croghan’s marriage to Tekarihoga may have had unintended diplomatic benefits especially at Easton, most likely it was a union of attraction and availability. If it benefitted anyone diplomatically it was likely Joseph Brant, who married Croghan’s daughter Adonwentishon. This subsequent union propelled their son John – Croghan’s grandson – to Mohawk Turtle Clan Sachem in later years. 191

hegemony became less distinct, and its actors – particularly the natives – frequently changed roles. After Braddock’s Defeat, the Iroquois League lost control of the Senecas, keepers of the Iroquois’ “Western Door.” So far west and so close to the French, the

Senecas often wrote their own diplomatic script much to the annoyance of the Iroquois

League. Aided by Kiashuta, over time Croghan and Johnson would bring the Senecas back into the fold. Kiashuta also proved instrumental in keeping the Shawnees aligned with the British. At the far end of the Ohio Valley, the Miamis alternately aligned with

France and the Ottawas or Britain and the Iroquois. Restoring the Miamis’ faith in

Croghan after Langlade’s 1752 sack of Pickawillany would be another challenge for the audacious Irishman.

Croghan was ever a friend to Indians even at times to those who were not aligned with British interests. In June, 1758, while in New York, he got wind of the fate of twenty Onondagas who had been killed or taken prisoner in Pennsylvania after having attacked settlers. He dashed off a letter to Governor Denny suggesting the whole affair could be an invention of the French, but all the while asking him not to put any Indians to death before advising Sir William of the facts of the matter.46

Prior to a 1756 meeting scheduled for Reading, Pennsylvania, Richard Peters had casually told a friend that he and Conrad Weiser believed the whole body of Indians was against the British, adding that he questioned whether, “. . . any but such as are with

46Croghan to William Denny, June 30, 1758, Pennsylvania, Archives (Colonial Period) III:420.

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George Croghan – about a dozen – will come.”47 Two years later Croghan, Montour and

Daniel Claus successfully recruited over four hundred Indians to support Abercrombie’s attack at Ticonderoga.48

Croghan looked out for settlers when he believed they had been wronged by

Indians. In late 1757 Capt. Philip Townsend of the 22d Foot reported that some rogue

Oneidas and Tuscaroras had attacked “German Flats” near Johnson’s estate.49

Townsend claimed that a number of inhabitants were killed or carried off. The Oneidas had been frustrated by unfair trading practices with the Germans in this area, and had warned the Flats settlers there could be an attack. Nonetheless, the Indians agreed to parlay with Croghan and the local settlers at the Flats. Johnson urged Croghan to do what he could to repair the fracas, emphasizing that fair trade was the most effective way to “rivet” the Six Nations to Britain. In January Croghan went to the Flats where the

Indians and German settlers joined him. The parties agreed to work toward fairer trade arrangements; the Indians buried the hatchet.50

George Croghan was a superb intelligence collector, but he liked to pay his informants. In September, 1758, he gleefully wrote Johnson that General Forbes had

47Richard Peters to [unknown], January 3, 1756, in Johnson, Papers, 2:401. Weiser’s plantation is in modern Womelsdorf, Berks County, near Reading.

48Summary of Indian Transactions, August 3, 1758, in Johnson, Papers, 2:886. The recruitment occurred in June.

49In 1723 the Tuscaroras joined the Iroquois League, giving rise to the term “Six Nations.” Yet the term “Five Nations” remained in the general vernacular.

50Johnson to James Abercrombie, October 21, 1758, in Johnson, Papers, 2:748-9, 757; Johnson to Croghan, January 30, 1758, in Johnson, Papers, 2:778.

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offered to pay for intelligence about the Ohio. His two Indian informants scouted Fort

Duquesne and returned with very detailed information. In the letter he could not resist a few swipes at Pennsylvania. “Pennsylvania,” he observed ruefully, “. . . refuses to pay one farthing for intelligence.” In the same breath, he recalled Pennsylvania’s infamous breach of a contract for wagons for Braddock’s expedition on which Sir John Saint Clair and the colony had previously agreed. Alluding to Forbes’ current trek to the same destination, Croghan quipped, “So . . . if the expedition fails . . . the General will saddle it on the breach of the contracts with this Province.”51

Nonetheless, Croghan’s loyalty – even to Pennsylvania – remained steadfast.

When intelligence he gathered pertained to Pennsylvania he provided it, but typically straight to Governor Denny rather than through the Quaker-controlled Assembly.52 In

1759 he sent Denny an update from his two spies at Venango. In it he included an inventory of troops and artillery which the French were planning to move from Presque

Isle (Erie) to attack Venango. More significantly, he reported on an Indian conference the French had held where an Iroquois representative present had cautioned them,

“[Your] Father is in too great a hurry.” Croghan reported that this statement, “. . . threw

[the French] into confusion.” Later at the same conference a French commander confirmed that a large army of Iroquois led by Sir William was en route to attack Fort

51Croghan to Johnson, September 21, 1758, in Johnson, Papers, 2:3-5.

52In 1756, as a result of post-Braddock Indian atrocities committed against them in the west, mainstream-religion Germans joined with Scots-Irish to end Quaker control of the Pennsylvania Assembly. The Quaker faction never regained the majority, but as shown in their behavior in the following years at Easton they were still a formidable force in Pennsylvania politics.

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Niagara, and suggested his colleagues delay moving troops and artillery down the

Allegheny.53

Easton Treaties, Teedyuscung and Nikus Hance

When Pennsylvania was founded, a good deal of the eastern portion of the colony stood astride land primarily inhabited by the Delaware Nation. Early land purchases were reasonably fair and were in and around Philadelphia. Logan’s 1737

Walking Purchase changed all this. The purchase called for a joint party of Englishmen and Delawares to set out on a certain northwest azimuth from Philadelphia for a day and a half. That would constitute the southwestern boundary of the purchase. From wherever the walkers were at the end of a day and a half surveyors were directed to turn ninety degrees right and follow that northeast azimuth to the Delaware River. This would form the northwestern boundary. Finally the river would form the eastern boundary. Thus the purchase formed a large triangle west of the Delaware River.

The Delaware Indians believed a “walk” meant a leisurely stroll through the woods with pauses for meals or an occasional smoke along the way. Their expectations of the length of this walk, the northwest azimuth of the triangle, was that it would be about forty miles. However Thomas Penn and Logan hired three very fast runners who sprinted a distance of nearly seventy miles. None of the Indians made it the whole way

53“Croghan to Denny, July 7, 1759,” Pennsylvania, Archives (Colonial Period) III:671-672. The French commander’s report was true. In late July British General John Prideaux invested with over 2000 men and 800 Indians, led by Johnson. Prideaux was killed by friendly fire; Johnson assumed command. The Fort fell to Johnson the same day Amherst conquered Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga).

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and only one of the English runners, Edward Marshall, succeeded. Nonetheless, the ninety degree turn and northeast azimuth to the Delaware River began at this point.

The result was a huge piece of land over one million, two hundred thousand acres in size.

Six treaty conferences were held at Easton regarding the Walking Purchase. Sir

William Johnson delegated two in 1757 and 1758 to George Croghan. Conrad Weiser was also at these treaties. He and Sir William shared two objectives: peace within

Pennsylvania, and keeping the Iroquois loyal to Britain during the war. Johnson was frustrated with the results of earlier conferences, particularly regarding the Walking

Purchase.

Teedyuscung, a disaffected New Jersey Delaware, had emerged to fill a leadership vacuum in the Pennsylvania Delawares. While a fiery orator, Teedyuscung had never been schooled in the art of Indian diplomacy, and he was no fan of the

Iroquois. He was however quite close to the Quaker faction of the Pennsylvania

Assembly, in particular Israel Pemberton.54 Focused on both his wartime responsibilities in New York and retaining the Iroquois as allies, Johnson delegated the 1757 Easton conference to Croghan. Croghan meanwhile was now the son-in-law of the Mohawk sachem Nikus, a senior Iroquois representative who also played a major role in the proceedings.

54Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 326. Jennings makes the argument that Teedyuscung spun the Quakers’ peace message to his own advantage, with the result that he became another obstacle to open communications with the British.

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Croghan’s initial involvement with Teedyuscung came at Harris’s Ferry in April,

1757. Teedyuscung, now calling himself “King of the Delawares,” had not been able to muster his forces for a February conference. He agreed to meet Croghan at Harris’s

Ferry. In addition to Teedyuscung and the Pennsylvania Delawares, the conference included representatives from the Oneidas, Senecas, Shawnees and Ohio Delawares, but it was short-lived.55 At the end of the first week, to accommodate Teedyuscung

Croghan moved the Council Fire to Lancaster. In the ensuing weeks, he gave six Oneida warriors and Ohio Valley Iroquois representative Scarouady leave to fight, “. . . his

Majesty’s enemies on the Ohio.” Croghan suggested moving the remaining participants to Philadelphia, but Teedyuscung balked. Governor Denny agreed to meet at Lancaster.

He arrived on May ninth; again Teedyuscung never showed.56

Colonel John Stanwix, whose men had refused aid to settlers around Lancaster at the time of Croghan’s abortive conference, was seduced by a barrel of Madeira from

Quaker leader Israel Pemberton. Stanwix would stay neutral but agree to defend the

Quaker province. Nonetheless, the door was still open for an agreement between the

Delawares and Pennsylvania. Finally in July Croghan and Teedyuscung gathered enough

55Matthew C. Ward, Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754 1765 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 149. Ward claims that Pennsylvania Governor William Denny wanted Croghan to send some Anglophile Conestogas to invite the Ohio Indians.

56George Croghan’s Indian Conference at Harris’s Ferry, Lancaster County, April and May 1757, Indian Treaties and Conference, Penn Family Papers, Collection 485A (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania) Box NB015, Series IV. Hereafter cited as: Document, Date, Penn Papers, Box:Series; Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 337 n32. No friend to Croghan, Jennings claims the Senecas forbade the Delawares from attending because Croghan’s wampum belts were “improper.”

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participants to begin the conference.57 Nothing went as planned. In the months before

July, Teedyuscung had unilaterally met twice with the French. Teedyuscung demanded his own clerk; Denny refused. Pemberton privately egged on Teedyuscung who in turn told Denny in effect, “no clerk, no Treaty.” Denny relented, assigning master of the

Philadelphia Quaker School Charles Thomson.58 It was a bad choice; the game continued only now with an additional Quaker player. Matthew Ward in Breaking the

Backcountry asserted that competition between Sir William and the colony hampered peace negotiations, and that both the proprietors and the assembly, “. . . significantly distorted the negotiations.” The Delawares’ claims were dismissed by the proprietary faction, both in Pennsylvania and London, as a fabrication of the Quakers.59

Pemberton, a perennial attendee at Easton, wanted the conference held in

England. Taking a cue from the Quakers, Teedyuscung demanded that King George himself intermediate. Denny refused; it would be Johnson. Support for Denny came from an unexpected source: Delaware sachem Lapachpitton. The respected sachem made an impassioned speech denouncing Teedyuscung’s earlier comments about the

57Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 340-341. Jennings claims Croghan was “recruited” by the proprietary faction and had earlier aligned with the Quakers. Quaker Isaac Norris, as much a financial manipulator as Croghan, claimed Croghan aligned with the Penns to relieve his Philadelphia debts. In fact the reason Croghan was at Easton is that he was sent by Johnson. However, given Johnson’s charge Croghan saw himself working for the crown and may not have appreciated the nuance of difference between crown and proprietary interests. As regards Jennings’ claim regarding the Quakers, Croghan and Easton Quaker representative Isaac Norris had briefly shared a common interest at Carlisle in 1753, but these positive feelings did not transfer to the Easton treaty conferences.

58Thomson later became Secretary to the , and was famously portrayed in the play and motion picture “1776.”

59Ward, Backcountry, 156.

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Walking Purchase. Lapachpitton said the Delawares had come to Easton about peace not dirt.60

Teedyuscung sensing defeat grabbed two belts, tied them together and handed them to Denny in an act of amity. Stunned Denny consulted briefly with Croghan and

Weiser. Denny had come prepared with a large white belt depicting three figures. To deflect any misunderstanding, Denny marked them “G.R., 5 N., D.K.”, George the King

(Rex), Five Nations, Delaware King. The treaty conference was over. For the moment the troublemaking Quakers, who noticeably did not appear on Denny’s belt, had been relegated to observer status by Lapachpitton.61

George Croghan was less than optimistic about this outcome. Teedyuscung had appealed to him privately at the end of the 1757 Treaty for a new settlement of the

Walking Purchase. In it he added that he would exclude (modern Sunbury, upriver from Harris’s Ferry). Croghan reported that Teedyuscung had asked for this exception to enable defense of, “. . . he [and] his people in conjunction with their

Brethren the English [against] any of his Britannic Majesty’s enemies that shall come to attack us.”62

60Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 346. Jennings claims this is Croghan’s version and that it was based on a 1757 affidavit by Weiser and Thomas McKee. In turn Jennings discredits Weiser’s and McKee’s document because the Delawares had apparently rejected Weiser’s earlier suggestion that Lapachpitton be considered “paramount chief of the Delawares.” However, this assertion is taken from a 1747 Weiser document, so Jennings would have his reader believe Weiser’s 1747 document but not his affidavit of ten years later.

61Anthony F.C Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung 1700-1763 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990),156-159.

62George Croghan to Governor William Denny, July 30, 1757, Pennsylvania, Archives (Colonial Period), III:248-249. 199

The winter of 1757-1758 was not auspicious for the British or their Iroquois allies. Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) and Fort St. Frederic (Crown Point) in Mohawk territory remained in French hands. The Senecas were already in the pocket of the

French as a result of their capture of Britain’s Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario in 1756.

British General John Forbes would not even begin his lethargic trek across Pennsylvania to regain the Forks of the Ohio for another two years. The French were everywhere, and everywhere victorious.

As regards the Treaty in mid-December Croghan wrote a very formal letter of response regarding the Quakers, probably to General James Abercrombie who had just relieved Loudoun as Commander in Chief:

. . . [with regard to] your letter . . . the Quakers still contrive to set up Teedyuscung against the Government. Sure[ly] they are mad. In my opinion they are setting up the Indians to claim the whole Province if not all the British Colonies.63 In London the Lords of Trade put forth a proposal to have the Delawares’ land claims adjusted by Johnson and the Five Nations. Meanwhile Teedyuscung at the urging of the Quakers showed up in Philadelphia, castigated both Denny and Croghan and

63Croghan to [not shown], December 18, 1757, Pennsylvania Archives (Colonial Period) III:260. The reasons why I believe this letter went to Abercrombie are these: 1. The letter was sent from Fort Johnson (Johnson’s home on the Mohawk River), so it would not have been written to Johnson; 2. It was endorsed at New York, where the British Commander-in-Chief had his headquarters; 3. Johnson was close to Abercrombie, but Sir William had not been at the 1757 Treaty. He would have encouraged Croghan to be straightforward with Abercrombie about the Quakers; 4. Abercrombie relieved Loudoun in December; 5. The letter is signed extremely formally for Croghan: “I am, Sir, with Great Esteem, Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant, George Croghan.” Croghan very rarely signed a letter like this.

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demanded a written copy of the minutes of the 1757 Treaty. Incensed, Denny did just that. He had Croghan’s minutes typeset, printed and publicized.64

Iroquois patience with Teedyuscung and the Delawares was running thin.

Embroiled in the war in New York the League faced more important issues and knew that their British brothers did as well. Both had grown increasingly concerned that the ancient League would disintegrate, split along an east-west divide of loyalty to the

British and French. Amidst all this as the Iroquois thought of Teedyuscung, they remembered the third figure on Denny’s belt “5.N,” Five Nations.

The subsequent 1758 Easton Treaty was the Iroquois’ idea. Diplomatic matters were the purview of the League, not this self-appointed, rogue “King of the Delawares.”

Meanwhile, the fortunes of the British had begun to turn. Famine racked French forts and settlements. Britain had successfully seized Louisbourg fortress at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence in July and were preparing to attack Fort Frontenac at the river’s western beginning. If successful, Montreal and Quebec would be caught in a vise-like,

British grip tightening in on New France’s homeland.65 Johnson again put Croghan in charge of Crown negotiations.66

64Denny to Johnson, November 10, 1757, in Johnson, Papers, 2:751-756. In this letter, Denny told Johnson privately that if the British supported this claim, it would put a stop to all settlement west and north of it and, “. . . effectively cut off our communication with the country of the Six Nations by way of the Susquehanna.” He also casually added that he had, “. . . asked [Lord] Loudoun’s opinion [about] giving the hatchet to the Delaware Indians in the spring.”

65Britain seized Fort Frontenac at the end of August, 1758.

66Croghan to Denny, June 30, 1758, Pennsylvania Archives (Colonial Period), III:420. A pivotal reason for this was that Johnson was a fierce warrior, heavily involved in fighting the war. He led a group of Mohawk warriors alongside General James Abercrombie in northeastern New York, hated the French, and had little use for Teedyuscung’s peevish dispute with Pennsylvania. 201

The Quakers showed up once more this time armed with liquor. Teedyuscung had a serious problem with the bottle, and much as they had done for Stanwix and his troops the pious Friends lubricated the Delaware usurper regularly during the treaty.

When Denny posted sentries around the rum barrels the Quakers had the effrontery to complain that their liberties were being infringed.67

At the conference Teedyuscung suggested that he should be “King” of

Pennsylvania, offering Denny a belt signifying the same message. Weiser grabbed the belt before Denny could touch it telling Teedyuscung that if he wanted a reply to this belt it would be given at the point of a sword. Nikus took Teedyuscung aside and mollified him by asking him to explain why the Forks Delawares had warred against the

British in the first place. Nikus did not buy the story, but Teedyuscung’s reciting it helped calm the atmosphere. 68

By now it was October. Tagashata, assigned by the Iroquois League to lead the talks on its behalf, took the floor again. As Tagashata laid his belts on a table prior to speaking Teedyuscung interrupted him with rude and off-color comments often in

English. The following day Nikus lambasted Teedyuscung in Mohawk. Croghan was not

67A. Wallace, Teedyuscung, 194. Wallace cites Quaker records (Records of the Yearly Meeting, Papers of the Friendly Association 1757-1758) for the paragraph which includes this vignette. Jennings, an unswerving friend of the Friends, omits it.

68Ibid., 196-197; Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 348. Wallace cites Weiser, Observations, (Moravian Archives) for this story. Because of his boyhood stint living among the Mohawks Weiser had many Iroquois friends. He was a Lutheran who distrusted Quaker motives, had little use for Teedyuscung and was not above picking up the sword himself. Jennings relates the same story, suggesting that Teedyuscung was drunk.

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a very good translator of Mohawk, but Weiser was. Whatever Nikus said never made it into the formal minutes; however, Weiser, the chief interpreter and colonial secretary for the treaty, certainly understood it. Teedyuscung had only two options: submit to an

Iroquois diplomatic solution, or continue his dispute with Pennsylvania allied with the

Quakers. Teedyuscung publicly chose the latter, after which the Iroquois leaders ceremoniously stood one after another and denounced the “King of the Delawares.”69

The 1758 Easton Treaty ended in late November. The Iroquois reaffirmed what they had claimed in 1742: that the Walking Purchase was legal. Nonetheless, after

Teedyuscung gave his famous “Bird on a bough” speech, they did agree to take

Teedyuscung’s request that the Forks Delawares be allowed to remain in the

Valley to the Council Fire at Onondaga. Iroquois representative, Oneida leader Thomas

King, dryly advised Teedyuscung, “. . . you may make use of those Lands in Conjunction with our People, and all the rest of our Relations.”70

Croghan for his part had served the Crown and his home colony Pennsylvania well. Teedyuscung went away relatively happy. The Iroquois remained staunchly in the

British camp. In 1762 Sir William Johnson chaired a royal inquiry into the Walking

Purchase. While there Teedyuscung behaved in his usual intemperate manner, castigating all the participants of the 1758 Treaty except the Quakers and this time

69Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 399. Jennings claims they walked out because Teedyuscung asserted that the Delawares owned the land to the headwaters of the Delaware River. This would have been deep within Mohawk lands rather than what Teedyuscung in Jennings’s words “probably” meant, the area near modern Port Jervis where Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York come together.

70Ibid., 400.

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including Croghan.71 Johnson and Pemberton got into a shouting match with Johnson gaining the upper hand. The results of the inquiry remained the same. Pennsylvania at first refused to sign any further documentation claiming it needed none. In the end

Teedyuscung agreed to sign a release for his lands for £400 after which then-Governor

James Hamilton signed for Pennsylvania. The Iroquois accepted a cash present for their troubles.72

Croghan summarized his views of the results of the 1762 royal inquiry for

Johnson. He wrote that the Indians were satisfied and the Quakers quieted by

Johnson’s efforts. Nonetheless, he could not resist adding what he had learned from

“friends who [are] pretty deep in secrets:”

. . . most thinking people amongst them are much alarmed and [say] that Pemberton, Fox and Hughes [have] carried things too far, which they fear will draw His Majesty’s resentment on this Province. [Nonetheless] people look upon it as the luckiest thing that could happen to pull down Quaker power.”73

Re-taking the Forks of the Ohio

In September, 1758, General Forbes dispatched the 1st Highland Regiment under

Major James Grant to the Forks of the Ohio to reconnoiter the French fort. Grant had over 800 men with him but Forbes, anxious to avoid Braddock’s mistake of three years earlier of dividing his forces, instructed Grant that his mission was strictly

71Notes on 1762 Treaty, Easton, June 23, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:776-778.

72Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 434-436; Wallace, Teedyuscung, 247-250. As Jennings puts it, “The Indians got the compensation they desired and the Quakers were outwitted.”

73Croghan to Johnson, July 3, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:822-823. Joseph Fox and John Hughes were Quakers who collaborated with Israel Pemberton at the Easton Treaties.

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reconnaissance. Misjudging the size of the French forces, Grant not only disobeyed

Forbes’ order but attacked, even dividing his own forces. The 1st Highlanders and elements of the 77th Regiment of Foot accompanying the Scots were roundly defeated.

Grant was captured and over 340 Britons were killed or wounded.

Nonetheless Forbes’ force of six thousand, no longer much of a secret, appeared too threatening for the French commander. Aware that like a gigantic, slow-moving snake the long British column which had departed Carlisle in June was almost upon them, on November 26, 1758, he abandoned Fort Duquesne and ordered it burned.

Forbes, so sick he was carried on a litter, and his second in command Swiss-born Colonel

Henry Bouquet entered the smoldering hulk of France’s final foothold at the Forks of the

Ohio unopposed.

Colonel received the command appointment for the new British

Fort Pitt at the same location. He wasted no time beginning to ally the Ohio Indians to

King George afresh. For this Mercer turned to George Croghan. In July 1759 Mercer called together a very large group of Indians for a conference at Fort Pitt. The tide had barely turned in Britain’s favor.74 The purpose of this gathering was to nudge the western Indians back toward Britain. A stunning element of the conference was the number of Indian nations represented. Even Chippewas and Muskogees attended, although the Delaware Chief Old Beaver remarked that had the British invited the

74Amherst’s victory at Ticonderoga occurred on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of July.

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“Southward Indians,” other Nations might have perceived this as “deceitful.”75 Some of the attending nations, Miamis, for example, had been in the British camp all along.

Others, Ottawas for example, in the French. The meeting included Croghan and his business partner Trent now a Virginia Captain. The minutes clearly showed collaboration between Mercer and Croghan throughout. Mercer favorably alluded to the 1758 Easton Treaty, and gave his “approbation” to a speech Croghan forwarded to the French-allied Indians at Venango, “. . . who had joined the French before the conference,” urging them to, “. . . quit the French.” Croghan added, “[This action] would confirm the good opinion I have of the security of your professions, made on your behalf by your Deputies at this conference. . . ”76 Mercer’s conference at Fort Pitt apparently worked. In September Johnson wrote Amherst that Croghan had reported from Ohio that the Indians there were favorably disposed toward the British adding somewhat pointedly that he, “. . . has taken great pains to convince [the Ohio Indians that] His Majesty does not intend to dispossess them of their country.”

Meanwhile Pennsylvania’s normally cantankerous Quakers introduced an approach to peace in the Ohio different from what they had supported in eastern

Pennsylvania. They dispatched their own agent, Samuel Lightfoot, to the Forks.

Lightfoot quickly gained popularity with the Ohio Delawares and Shawnees who likely

75Old Beaver was referring principally to the Cherokees and Catawbas, sworn enemies of the Iroquois and their allies.

76Minutes of Conferences Held at Pittsburgh in July, 1759, Penn Papers, Box NB D15:Series IV (Folder 13). French-allied Indians at Venango were probably a splinter group of Senecas.

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knew about Quakers from their eastern kin, something which rankled Croghan almost as much as had Quaker behavior at Easton. The Forks of the Ohio was his turf; what’s more the upstart Lightfoot’s approach to trade and other dealings with the western

Indians mirrored his own. Unlike Croghan however, Lightfoot carried the baggage of neither Easton nor an association with the Iroquois. Lightfoot maintained that the western Indians, “. . . put a singular confidence in Friends beyond others and . . . would hear them when they would not hear others without them.”77

William Pitt referred to 1759 as Britain’s “Annus Mirabilis” and so it was. In both the Caribbean and India battles on land and sea had turned to favor Great Britain.

Nowhere was the reversal as stunning as in North America. In 1759 and 1760 British forces under Amherst’s command seized the French fortress of Louisbourg, assuring

British control of the mouth of the Saint Lawrence. Wolfe seized Quebec; Monckton took Montreal. French forts fell like dominoes among them Carillon (Ticonderoga) and

Niagara.

As early as March 1760 Johnson and Croghan felt the impact of impending victory, but in the west it was anything but good. Johnson wrote to Gage, now serving under Amherst in Quebec, sharing intelligence from Croghan saying it, “. . . corresponds with some accounts I have had before as well as my own judgment.” If the French were to be provisioned through the Mississippi with help from the western Indians they could interrupt supplies to Fort Pitt, Johnson argued, unless the Ohio Indians agreed to

77Ward, Backcountry, 192-194.

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clear the road or, “. . . at least assist our troops,” adding that, “. . . building so reputable a fort in their country as Pittsburgh being not all agreeable to any of the surrounding nations.” 78

Critical to Croghan’s successes during the war even while the French had the upper hand was his relationship with the Shawnees. He had forged this bond during his early trading days along the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. In spring 1760 Croghan and

Alexander McKee held a pan-Indian conference at Fort Pitt. As had been the case with

Mercer’s 1759 conference, this conference was notable for the number of nations who attended. In addition to the Shawnees, all Six Nations of the Iroquois League sent representatives as did the Delawares, Miamis and . The principal attendees were (Indian Chiefs only listed):

[Great Britain:]George Croghan, Alexander McKee; Six Nations: Neroganera, Sowadereraw; Delawares: [Tamaqua] The Beaver, George, Kikiuskin; Shawnees: Missiweakiwa, Keissnauch, Missiqui Pallathe; Twightwees [Miamis]: Meconock; Mohicans: Weithy Peyocka.79

Croghan signaled his respect for the Shawnees by opening the conference with a greeting to the, “Chiefs and Warriors of the Shawnees, come here to confirm the peace and renew your ancient friendship.”80

Shawnee Chief Missiweakiwa gave a retrospective on the war from the

Shawnees’ point of view accompanied by a wampum belt. He concluded, “I now bury

78Johnson to Gage, March 17, 1760, in Johnson, Papers, 3:200-201.

79Conference Held at Fort Pitt, April 6-12, 1760, in Johnson, Papers, 3:208.

80Ibid., 209.

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the bloody hatchet in the bottomless pit and with this belt I clear the road of peace to the sun rising.” At this point Tamaqua, an esteemed Ohio Delaware and friend to Great

Britain, stood and affirmed what the Shawnees had said:

I have heard with pleasure what our Grand Children the Shawnese have said this day in Council, and I hope it is agreeable to you. I have been present at all the conferences you have held here this last year with all the nations to the sun setting, and as the peace is now confirmed and the ancient friendship renewed, I hope it will last to our latest generation. Be strong brethren[;] it is in your power to make this a lasting peace.81

Croghan then mentioned a line of division between the colonies and Indian country, although he jumped the gun a bit. Pennsylvania had sketched out such a line at

Easton for its own uses. Yet London only approved the North American Proclamation

Line in late 1763 well after the war had ended, and that line was modified five years later. Croghan told the Indians he would provide a copy of the line, “. . . settled at

Easton . . . between the Proprietors’ agents and the Chiefs of the Six Nations,” pointedly omitting any reference to Teedyuscung. Further alluding to the “King of the Delawares,”

Croghan added, “. . . this I deliver to you and your children [so that you] may not foolishly enter into debates with your Brethren [the British] as you have done about trifles.” The Indians were mollified but largely because Croghan was speaking. One spoke what all were thinking. The Indians expected a great council of all nations of

Indians this summer he explained, dryly adding, “When that is done . . . we will let you

81Ibid., 212. By the mid-eighteenth century Indian reference to the “sun rising” implied European colonies, while the “sun setting” meant Indian nations to the west. The source document says “The Beaver,” but the speaker was also known as “Old Beaver.” His Delaware name was Tamaqua.

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know what part of our country you may raise provisions in,” and subtly omitting any reference to land purchases or settlement.82

Croghan may have pushed the envelope too far at this conference. The Indians were not ignorant; they could see the war turning against the French. Nonetheless, despite what the Iroquois and some Delawares thought of Teedyuscung, many Indians knew more than the British thought about shady land deals of the past. Indeed

Johnson’s and Croghan’s own fingerprints could be found on more than a few. The western Indians did indeed hold a major council at Scioto later in 1760. Nonetheless, most knew that the British could not control the explosive immigrant population. The

British wanted land and the old debate over the Walking Treaty was just the beginning.

General Stanwix had been commanding in western Pennsylvania when this conference was held, but he and a number of his forces were sent north after Croghan’s

March conference. Concerned that the Shawnees would misread this Croghan and

Montour held a second conference in May after Stanwix was gone. In a letter to

Pennsylvania Secretary Richard Peters, Croghan pleaded for the colony’s support. “You are the only person in government with whom they are acquainted and who they expect can take care of them,” Croghan wrote adding that these Indians were, “. . . known to be steady friends to the British.” Moreover, the Indians had their own ongoing war with the Cherokees and Catawbas. Croghan insisted Peters’ support was needed to renew their “ancient friendship,” but admitted that the Shawnees were

82Conference Held at Fort Pitt April 6-12, 1760, in Johnson, Papers, 3:215-216. 210

particularly short of ammunition for their war in the south. Toward this end Croghan cleverly suggested that if Pennsylvania supplied them ammunition, such an act might,

“. . . relieve the distrust [of] inhabitants on the Southern frontiers, as it would draw the

Cherokees back to guard their own towns.” In the same letter Croghan made a similar plea for support to Mohawks returning from the Cherokee War, noting that they had also previously served with Captain Montour.83

In September 1760, New France Governor General Vaudreuil sued for a negotiated surrender which Amherst granted. Almost immediately British troops were shipped off to the Caribbean, India and Europe itself to finish what elsewhere was known as The Seven Years War. The western Indians were unsettled by the events in

Canada. They fully understood the difference between French and British approaches to native interests. New France had never been established to attract settlers. Britain’s diverse colonies on the other hand not only wooed settlers but once they arrived lost control of them. With no group was this as pronounced as with the Scots-Irish. Too destitute even to purchase a quit rent, and suspicious of British authority to begin with, they simply kept pushing west.

At the same time land speculators such as the Virginia Company of Ohio as well as independents like Croghan himself vied to legitimize settlements in the new territories. To enable this they needed to mollify both settlers and Indians. As if to

83Croghan to Peters, May 12, 1760, Pennsylvania, Archives (Colonial Period) III:733. Despite Croghan’s frequent irritation with Iroquois policy in the west, because of Croghan’s Mohawk in-laws he never wavered in his support to the Guardians of the Eastern Door.

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punctuate his own concerns about Indian loyalties in the region in April, 1762, Croghan wrote Johnson that he was certain the Indians who had killed two Virginians on the

Redstone Creek were intent on robbery and not murder. Southwest of Pittsburgh the

Redstone had been a repeated source of friction between settlers and Indians as well as the British establishment. Croghan informed Johnson that he did not know to which nation the perpetrators belonged but, “I’ve taken every step to find out,” adding that both Indians and settlers in the region were uneasy due to this crime.84 Redstone would be a harbinger of things to come.

Conclusion

Jacques-Pierre de la Jonquière and Robert Dinwidddie started the French and

Indian War. Their actions in North America sparked a long simmering, worldwide animus between France and Great Britain. George Washington and his French counterparts were little more than bit players on what would soon become a world stage.

As for the actions of George Croghan, on the battlefield they were akin to those of a volunteer fireman. He had better things to do with his life than to parade around a garrison in a flashy uniform, but when the alarm bell sounded he showed up. Not for this reason alone were he and George Washington wary comrades-in-arms at best.

Both men were at Braddock’s Defeat. Together they, Montour and Virginia Captain

Stewart had assisted the mortally-wounded general off the field. Yet during the swirl of

84Croghan to Johnson, May 10, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:734.

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battle on the Monongahela River Croghan made another, more significant relationship with Thomas Gage whose future would include a long tenure as Commander-in-Chief of

British North America.

The Six Nations of the Iroquois League, Great Britain’s steadfast Indian allies, did not remain silent about British colonial indifference vis-à-vis France’s renewed interest in the west, particularly in the wake of Braddock’s Defeat. Both Hendrick at the Albany

Congress the preceding year and Scarouady immediately after the battle were highly critical of British efforts. In the coming years western Indians, aided by disaffected

Delawares, would sweep unabated across Pennsylvania, terrorizing European settlers.

New York’s Sir William Johnson, only recently named Crown Superintendent for Indian

Affairs, exhorted his superiors for a much-needed crown Indian agent in the west.

Croghan was his choice, and in late 1757 Great Britain made it official. Ironically

Croghan’s first official duties were involved with settling Pennsylvania’s longstanding dispute with the Delawares over the 1737 Walking Purchase concerning land in eastern

Pennsylvania.

Within six months the tide had turned in Britain’s favor. Louisbourg and Quebec soon fell. Vaudreuil surrendered Montréal and all of La Nouvelle France. The architect of France’s defeat was General Lord Jeffery Amherst, soon to be named Commander-in-

Chief of British North America. In the west General Forbes had retaken the Forks of the

Ohio. So ill he had to be carried into the ruined Fort Duquesne on a litter Forbes put his second-in-command Colonel Henry Bouquet in charge. However, because of his rank and Swiss heritage Bouquet was not immediately given Forbes’s command. 213

By terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris all the land around the Great Lakes and west to the Mississippi was transferred from France to Great Britain. The western Indians, never having felt that their French “fathers” wanted land, never sold theirs to them.

Exacerbating this was the fact that the new treaty pointed to the Treaty of Utrecht which acknowledged only the Iroquois. As early as December, 1762, two months before the Treaty of Paris was signed, George Croghan had warned the British establishment that the western Indians were disillusioned with the prospects of a British victory and might react violently. His warning fell on deaf ears.

In 1764 Bouquet, a seasoned mercenary and a true field commander, was given

Forbes’s old command. He had about as much regard for Indians as he had for London, but he was intuitive about native abilities and troop strengths and trusted the judgment of men like Croghan. In the coming years he and Croghan would face two remaining obstacles to lasting peace in the west: Amherst’s intransigent negative attitude toward

Indians and Ottawa leader Pontiac’s unwillingness to wait for it to change.

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CHAPTER 6

IMPERIAL HUBRIS: LORD AMHERST AT WAR

I dare say the expense of managing all the Indians in [the west] country will not cost the Crown as much as four families of them cost the Crown of France.1

– Sir William Johnson to Lord Amherst, 1761. Introduction

The architect of eighteenth-century British imperial policy was William Pitt.

Known as the Great Commoner Pitt had orchestrated the Seven Years war, which many historians refer to as the real “first world war.” With many great victories by democracies the price in both coin and blood is too high for the electorate to bear, and the victors’ political faction is shown the door. Exactly this happened to Pitt even before the treaty ending the French and Indian War, as the Seven Years War was known in

North America, was signed. This chapter begins with the turmoil in London as the

Bedford-Bute regime sized the reins of Pitt’s power and began to eviscerate the hard won victories over the King of France even as elsewhere on the globe incommunicado

British forces continued to seize prizes of great value.

In North America the victory was clear cut, or so it seemed. France ceded all of

Canada to Great Britain and greatly reduced Louisiana by cession to Great Britain and

Spain. Left out of the Treaty of Paris were the American Indians. Except for the Iroquois who were cited in the 1763 treaty primarily by reference to the 1715 Treaty of Utrecht,

1Johnson to Amherst, March 21, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 10:243-246.

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which gave Britain “suzerainty” over them, no Indian nations or groups of nations were mentioned. Nonetheless, settlers to British North America continued to pour over the porous Allegheny Mountains and deeper and deeper into Indian lands. Whitehall recognized that something needed done. In October, 1763, the King signed a Royal

Proclamation which defined the border between Indians and colonists as the headwaters of streams flowing to the ocean. In London the ocean was the Atlantic; the headwaters of any stream flowing via the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico was on the wrong side of the Royal Proclamation Line of 1763 as it became known. For thousands of settlers on the west wide of the Alleghenies – mostly Scots-Irish who had little regard for the British Crown to begin with – the Hobson’s choice was returning to the crowded coastal plains or defying their king. They would choose defiance.

Meanwhile, because the Great Lakes drained via the Saint Lawrence River to the

Atlantic, the lakes were not covered by the Royal Proclamation. All the land north of the

Saint Lawrence Continental Divide until one reached Rupert’s Land at Hudson’s Bay was fair game. But this territory belonged to the Anishinabeg and other western Indian nations who had never sold their land to the King of France and were not about to sell to the King of Great Britain.

The stage was set for discord on both fronts. Keeping the Indians aligned with their new landlords would take a huge investment in “presents,” something ingrained by now in America’s both European and Indian cultures. In the way of this stood the imperious General Lord Jeffery Amherst, Knight Commander of the Bath, British

Commander-in-Chief for North America. A brilliant military leader, Amherst had led 216

British troops from the despair of defeats at Fort Duquesne and Fort Carillon

(Ticonderoga) to great and conflict-ending victories at Louisbourg, Quebec and elsewhere. At the end of the war he stood on the British stage much as had the Duke of

Marlborough a half-century before. Yet he hated Indians, even those who had fought for Great Britain under Sir William Johnson. He saw them as drunken louts no better than dogs. As the war turned in Britain’s favor Amherst, now chief administrator in

British North America, turned off the spigot of Indian presents.

Of all British officials in North America, George Croghan was at the greatest risk from Amherst’s “no gifts policy.” It affected his standing with those most alienated,

Indians in the west including his long-time Shawnee allies. It also affected his personal fortune as he was frequently out-of-pocket for gifts to Indians. Sir William Johnson was a strong supporter, but he was loathe to move Amherst off his hard position against presents for Indians. Other Britons from Colonel Henry Bouquet and cartographer

Thomas Kitchin in the New World to Thomas Pownall and in the old criticized Amherst, but he would not be moved. Britain had won the war and the

Indians had best get used to it.

In the fall of 1763 Johnson and Amherst moved to ensure that his Lordship would take a very long leave from North America. Armed with a near-treasonous letter from Johnson to the Lords of Trade, Croghan tracked Amherst east across the Atlantic.

Supported by Pownall and Allen, he met with Lords Halifax and Hillsborough. They quietly shared the Irish trader’s view of the imperious Amherst. Meanwhile, Whitehall directed that back in America Croghan’s former commander Thomas Gage would 217

temporarily assume Amherst’s responsibities as Commander-in-Chief. This was a welcome change for Croghan and Johnson, but it came too late for the Indians. Even before Amherst was gone, Ottawa leader Pontiac had attacked Fort Detroit. Croghan would accelerate British North America’s liberation from the grip of Amherst, but he would return to find the land filled with fear of a new peril from the west – the peril he had predicted two years earlier.

Earthquake in the Empire: The Demise of Pitt and the Treaty of Paris

Great Britain and France fought the Seven Years War, as the French and Indian

War was known elsewhere, across the globe. As noted in this chapter’s introduction, some historians have justifiably referred to it as truly the “first world war.” While the various theatres outside North America generally had no direct effect on the fighting there, the indirect effects could be substantial. In July 1761, for example, on orders from London Amherst shipped out ten infantry battalions from the American theatre to

Barbados along with accompanying artillery and engineers. With them went the

Governor of New York, Major General Robert Monckton.2 A man more positively disposed to the Indians than Amherst, Monckton was a favorite of Croghan’s. Croghan had in fact built a fashionable residence in Philadelphia which he named Monckton Hall in honor of the General.

2Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War, vol. 2, 1759-63 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), 209.

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It was not that Monckton’s experience was unneeded in the Caribbean theatre, but that despite the previous years’ victories it was still needed at home. However,

London orchestrated the Seven Years War and William Pitt was its conductor. Pitt was a contradictory character. Known as the “Great Commoner” for his long refusal to accept a title, he nonetheless ran the government during most of the war under the disinterested Prime Ministerial gaze of the Duke of Newcastle. Pitt and Newcastle were

Whigs, but they belonged to a faction known as the “Patriot Whigs” which stood firmly for expansion of the British Empire.3

The Whig peace coalition led by John Russell, Fourth Duke of Bedford, turned up the heat on Pitt. Bedford was close to the Earl of Bute, a tight-lipped Scot who had been

George III’s tutor and was already Secretary of State for Northern Affairs.4 Wags said of

3Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 168-170. An example of Pitt’s arrogant leadership style was his 1760 decision to seize Belle Isle off the French coast. By then Britain had conquered most of French North America. Pitt, suspicious of the growing peace movement within his own party, was anxious to exert British influence more directly on France. He suggested a plan to seize the French stronghold of Belle Isle off the coast of Brittany; however, the two leading British Admirals Lord George Anson and Sir Edward Hawke refused to endorse the scheme. Undeterred, Pitt took his Belle Isle plan straight to the King. George II had died in October, 1760. Meanwhile George III was twenty two years old and so new to the throne that he not yet had his coronation. Nonetheless in March, 1761, he signed secret orders to seize the French island and sent them to a rising star in the Navy Captain Augustus Keppel. The scion of a Dutch family which had come to England with William of Orange during the 1688 Glorious Revolution, Keppel’s audacity on the water was only matched by that of Pitt and the King on land. By April Keppel, reinforced by Dutch infantry, had an amphibious army and twenty warships of the line under his command. At the time it was the largest fleet in the history of Royal Navy engagements not commanded by an Admiral. Meanwhile, behind the back of its ally Prussia, Britain had already made peace overtures to France. The seizure of Belle Isle, while marked with great celebration in Britain, inflamed both the French for its hypocrisy and Prussia for its secrecy. Belle Isle fell, but with it so did Pitt. George III was crowned in September. Keppel went on to become Viscount Keppel Admiral of the White (equivalent to a Five-Star or Fleet Admiral of the US Navy). Unmarried, he died childless; the peerage died with him.

4Northern Affairs focused on the British Isles and was a subordinate position to Southern Affairs which included the Americas. This distinction is not to be confused with the Northern and Southern Indian Departments within British North America.

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Bedford, “. . . he was the only man who dared to speak firmly in opposition to Pitt and

Temple.”5

A month before the King’s September, 1761, coronation, the Whigs held a turbulent council. Pitt resigned in a tiff over French fishing rights off the Canadian coast. Bute became Prime Minister, and he promptly named Bedford Ambassador to

France to craft a treaty to end the Seven Years War. With Pitt gone and Bute and

Bedford calling the shots, the Whig peace faction ran roughshod over Pitt’s grand vision of empire. In a widely publicized letter to Newcastle, Bedford, alluding to Pitt’s objections to French fishing rights, suggested that an attempt by Britain to control maritime commerce would be no different than Louis XIV’s efforts sixty years earlier to control the European continent, “. . . and might produce a Grand Alliance against us.”6

Bedford was so cautious about the terms of any peace that with regard to Canada he prophetically pondered, “. . . whether the neighborhood of the French to our North

American colonies was not the greatest security for their dependence on the mother country, which I fear will be slighted by them when [France] is removed.”7

Meanwhile, the shrewd French Minister of State, Duc de Choiseul, was drawing

Spain ever more tightly into the French web over the next year. Earlier in 1761

5Sidney Lee, ed. “Russell” Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLIX, Robinson to Russell (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1897), 449. Temple was Pitt’s brother-in-law.

6Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 172. Bedford was alluding to the Grand Alliance of the late seventeenth century where Catholic and Protestant nations joined in alliance against France.

7Ibid., 173.

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Newcastle had sent Lord Stanley to Paris to discuss peace terms with Choiseul. Stanley, in a letter to Pitt, reported a lengthy discussion with Choiseul during which the French

Minister had described “two games” he was playing: the first, establishing grounds for peace with England should Pitt fall from power; the second, drawing Spain into the war so that, “. . . France would be able to profit by the events which this complication might produce and repair her losses.”8

Choiseul’s superior attitude toward Spain was no doubt enhanced by the recent arrival of Spanish Ambassador Grimaldi. The following year Choiseul succeeded in his efforts to seduce Madrid. First he engineered a revision to the Franco-Spanish Pacte de

Famille (Family Compact), known elsewhere as the Bourbon Family Compact, which amounted to what British Naval Historian Sir Julian Corbett called “a confederation.”

Then In May, 1762, he proposed that Spain simply declare war on Great Britain, but eventually Choiseul himself backed away from this idea. Richard Wall, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, eventually agreed to the Family Compact with some modifications.9

In September, 1762, Lieutenant Colonel William Amherst, Lord Jeffery’s younger brother routed a French force which somewhat embarrassingly for the British had secretly reinforced Newfoundland and New Brunswick.10 Colonel Amherst’s victory

8Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 185 n1. In the footnote Corbett cites a letter from Stanley to Pitt, June 12, 1761.

9Ibid., 186. Richard Wall was an Irish Catholic who had ingratiated himself to several Spanish monarchs. He was not ill-regarded in Britain. In Spain Wall led the so-called “English Party” in the Spanish Court, which propelled him to Minister of Foreign Affairs. Wall endorsed the 1763 Treaty of Paris on behalf of the King of Spain, the only non-monarch to do so.

10Anderson, Crucible, 498.

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effectively ended the war for Canada all of which was now in British hands. Choiseul knew the implications for France of the loss of Canada, but he was not completely finished with his Machiavellian manipulations of the Bourbon family. Probably his crowning achievement of the clandestine, pre-Treaty negotiations between France and

Spain was the secret 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau. Among other considerations

Fontainebleau ceded all of La Louisiane to Spain. The “complication” of Fontainebleau, to use Choiseul’s turn of phrase in his discussions with Lord Stanley, did indeed keep a good deal of America in the hands of the Bourbon family after the French and Indian

War. The war had so dramatically turned in Great Britain’s favor that by late 1762 hardly anyone but Bute supported the Treaty of Paris. Suffering from gout Pitt was carried into Commons where he denounced it for three and half hours. Crowds jeered their leaders in the street. Frederick the Great, believing France had gotten off too easily, threatened to make his own peace. In the end, Commons approved the treaty;

Lords agreed without voting. In the Far East, so distant as to be incommunicado with

London, Britain continued to take prizes which by the treaty would be returned including Manila in October.11

The Earl of Bute had won the day, but in the eyes of many citizens and leaders

Pitt’s grand dream of empire – what Britain had won over the past decade – had just been handed back to the enemy. Great Britain, France and Spain signed the Treaty of

11Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 363-365.

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Paris on February 10, 1763. The terms of the treaty which most affected George

Croghan and the expansion of the British Empire in the American west were these:

France ceded to Great Britain all of Canada; the Saint Lawrence River and its islands; Acadia and Cape Breton Island, “. . . and in general, everything that depends on the said countries.” Along with the two small ports [off Newfoundland], France retained fishing rights in both the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Atlantic. France ceded the eastern part of the Louisiana Territory, except for New Orleans, to Great Britain. Great Britain guaranteed rights of former French citizens to freedom of religion; land ownership, purchase and sale, and (for eighteen months) free emigration from former French territories. The signatories guaranteed each other freedom of commercial navigation on the Mississippi River. The signatories agreed to a global peace, and a return of all prisoners. 12

The Treaty of Paris was opaque about the 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau. Yet

Fontainebleau had important ramifications for the new British North America. The new treaty’s preamble alluded to Fontainebleau in a manner unique to – and probably only decipherable to – its two signatories. In the middle of a lengthy paragraph reiterating the various titles of its signatories, Treaty of Paris unobtrusively commented of France and Spain:

. . . the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, Lewis the Fifteenth, by the grace of God, Most Christian King; and the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, Charles the Third, by the grace of God, King of Spain and of the Indies, after having laid

12“Treaty of Paris, 1763, Articles IV, V and VI,” The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library, 2008), accessed December 17, 2014, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/paris763.asp. Presumably “Canada” included the Great Lakes and the Illinois country, but the latter would become a subject of internal debate in Britain in the coming years. As if to pique William Pitt beyond the grave St. Pierre and Petit Miquelon the two French ports off the coast of Newfoundland remain a Department of France to this day, even to the extent that they elect representatives to the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Meanwhile Belle Isle the French offshore island and fortress so covertly annihilated by George III, Pitt and the daring Captain Keppel was returned to the King of France. Britain even agreed to rebuild its fort.

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the foundations of peace in the preliminaries signed at Fontainebleau the third of November last; . . .13 [Italics mine.]

Meanwhile Article II, which invoked an exhaustive list of earlier treaties dating back to the twelfth century, remained silent about Fontainebleau. Nonetheless, Article VII effectively limited Fontainebleau because it ceded to Britain, “. . . everything . . . on the left side of the river Mississippi [left meaning the east side as relates to the direction of flow], except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated.”14

Thus while some sources suggest that the Treaty of Paris revoked the Treaty of

Fontainebleau in reality it did no such thing. In fact from Madrid’s point of view and by extension that of the “Bourbon family,” Spain gave up for what amounted to the

Louisiana Purchase.15 Spain was now George Croghan’s new next door neighbor from

New Orleans to Cape Girardeau.16

Regardless of Great Britain’s expansive acquisitions in North America, Article II had invoked the 1715 Treaty of Utrecht. Moreover, as regards French fishing rights it

13“Treaty of Paris, 1763”, Preamble. France made the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau public in 1764.

14Ibid., Articles II and VII. The United States returned Florida to Spain after the Revolution in thanks for Spain’s seizure of Pensacola from the British. Florida was later ceded to the United States by the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1821, in part because of Andrew Jackson’s forays into the region which subjugated the Seminoles.

15Napoleon returned the western part of La Louisiane to France and subsequently sold it to the United States.

16City of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, History of Cape Girardeau (Cape Girardeau, MO, 2015), accessed February 11, 2015, http://www.cityofcapegirardeau.org/cityhall/history.aspx. As if to prove the point, as late as 1793 Spain granted Louis Lorimer a French-Canadian right to establish a trading post at Cape Girardeau, along with a large tract of land surrounding his post. Lorimer traded with many Indian Nations there and became Spanish commandant of the district. That same year Spain granted land near Cape Girardeau to a group of Shawnees who successfully resisted U.S. Indian removal policies until 1833.

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invoked a specific article of that treaty. Yet within the Treaty of Utrecht lurked wording whose omission from the Treaty of Paris would inflame a missing stakeholder: North

American Indians.

In October 1755 shortly after the beginning of the war, a summary of “French

Encroachments” appeared in a popular London gazette, The Gentleman’s Magazine.

While the editor of The Gentleman’s Magazine does not provide the author’s name, whoever he was he provided a near-perfect abstract of the major issues confronting wartime British North America.

Before the Treaty of Utrecht it was agreed by all authors, whether English or French, that Lake Iroquois, by the French called Lake Champlain . . . and Lake Erie, with the country adjacent, was the country of the Iroquois . . . and since that treaty the Iroquois have conquered most of the other tribes between them and the river Mississippi, and therefore those lands, by right on conquest, belong to the Iroquois. By the Treaty of Utrecht the Iroquois and their country are acknowledged to be under the dominion of Great Britain . . . [The] Treaty of Utrecht . . . expressly stipulated that the French should have the liberty of trading into the country of the Indians, in friendship with the English; and that the English shall have the same liberty with respect to the Indians, in friendship with the French; notwithstanding which they have plundered and murdered many of our people in the country of the Iroquois, and publicly declared that they would make prisoners of all they should find trading there for the future, and confiscate all their effects. By these menaces the English traders have been deterred from passing in the country of the friendly Indians, altho’ before these hostilities more than 300 traders went years from the single colony of Pennsylvania. 17

He stirred in all the ingredients needed to make an explosion: The Treaty of

Utrecht, the Iroquois, their somewhat questionable “conquests” of other Nations to the west (the Mississippi no less), the Great Lakes, the pesky French and their friendly

17Sylvanus Urban, ed., “Observations on the Conduct of the French in America”, The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 25, October, 1755 (London: D. Henry and R. Cave, 1755), 435-436.

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Indians, traders generally and Pennsylvania traders specifically. Had he been more clairvoyant he might have added the future Treaty of Fontainebleau and Pontiac.

For a gentleman seated in his London club sipping a tawny port, the picture presented in the October, 1755, Gentleman’s Magazine might as well have been a message from Mars. For the Indians who would later be forgotten in the lofty Paris discussions, it signaled a call to arms. Even the Iroquois League, so diplomatically addressed in the Treaty of Utrecht as “under British suzerainty,” was beginning to stray from the King’s field of loyal supporters. As the war unfolded much in the favor of

France, the Senecas in particular could be found more often than not holding the western door open for both the French and their Indian allies.

Frank Ross, a modern observer, described the change in British attitudes.

[Indians] formerly attached to France were quick to compare the[ir] treatment . . . by the two nations. The French garrisons had “always treated Indians with attention and respect”. English [with] . . . “cold looks and harsh words”. The British no longer felt the need to avoid offending the savages . . . [N]o longer important as allies, [the Indians] “were treated as barbarians”.18

Above the fray, the official postwar British attitude in North America was no less ambivalent. Amherst argued that ill treatment was, " . . . necessary checks which the

Commanding officers are obliged to give [the Indians], in their drunken frolics." The

Commander-in-Chief had had little appreciation for Indians during the war. "Services must be rewarded," he had instructed Johnson after Canada was in British hands, ". . .

18Frank E. Ross, “The Fur Trade of the Ohio Valley,” Indiana Magazine of History, 34, no. 4 (December, 1938) (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1938), 432.

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but as to purchasing the good behavior either of Indians, or any others, is what I do not understand; when men of what[ever] race . . . behave ill, they must be punished but not bribed."19

The Royal Proclamation Line of 1763

With the Treaty of Paris the battle for Canada had officially ended, but the long struggle for control of the Great Lakes, the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and the

American west was only beginning. The first volley in a long series of misfires was the

King’s Royal Proclamation of October 1763. Not only did it draw a border between

Indians and Europeans well east of where many Europeans – particularly British subjects

– had already settled, but it required such people to remove themselves. For all intents and purposes, the proclamation forbade any further land surveys or sales in these lands without London’s approval. The Proclamation Line of 1763, as it became known in

North America, generally followed the Allegheny Mountains’ diagonal path across western Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and (North) Carolina, as well as the headwaters of “rivers flowing to the sea” in New York and Pennsylvania. The Ohio and

Illinois territories, much of which had been acquired from France, lay well west of

Pennsylvania. Indeed Pennsylvania itself, lacking a clearly-defined western terminus, was proscribed from selling or surveying land west of the line.20

19Amherst to Johnson, February 22, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 4:345, 515.

20In 1763 Mason and Dixon had not yet completed their survey of Pennsylvania’s borders. Nonetheless, they had determined the point in the east where the measurement to establish the western border should begin, and Penn’s Charter defined the distance to the western border as five degrees of longitude west of that point. Indeed Mason and Dixon never did not survey all the way to Pennsylvania’s western edge as defined by Penn’s Charter, because of warring Indians. The “Ellicott Line,” Pennsylvania’s 227

The Proclamation contained three elements which particularly angered

American colonists whose post-war expectations included unfettered settlement in the west. First it reserved for the exclusive use of Indians a huge area beyond the borders of both the original colonies and those acquired during the war. Second, the

Proclamation prohibited the purchase of land or settlement in this , and went so far as to deny authority for colonial governors or British North American

Commanders-in-Chief to sell or even survey land beyond the headwaters of rivers flowing, “. . . from the west and northwest,” to the Atlantic. This section most defined the actual geographic settlement limits of the 1763 Proclamation Line. Finally, and most onerously, the Proclamation required settlers already situated in this Indian reserve to,

“. . . forthwith to remove themselves from such Settlements.”21

In London American geography was not anyone’s particularly strong suit. For the

British the only ocean between Albion and America was the Atlantic, and the sources of the rivers which fall into it “from the west and northwest” were on the eastern slopes of the Appalachians. The treaty thus prohibited new and existing settlements as far east as the tributaries of the Ohio River which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, while at the same time permitted land sales and settlements around the Great Lakes which drain into the

modern western border, was laid out in 1784 by Andrew Ellicott and David Rittenhouse. The Ellicott Line lies well west of both the 1763 Proclamation Line and the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty Line.

21George III, “Royal Proclamation of 1763,” Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, vol. I (Ottawa: , 2006) part 3, app. D, under Government of Canada Web Archive, accessed February 11, 2015, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071124124315/http://www.ainc- inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sga4_e.html.

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Atlantic. Without regard to any effronteries the Anishinabeg perceived from the British to begin with, the Treaty legalized them. Yet technically south of the Saint Lawrence continental divide, a geographic feature few understood, the land was set aside for

Indians. In short the 1763 Treaty of Paris alienated two groups it need not have: the

Indians around the lakes, and the existing settlers in the Ohio watershed, mostly trans-

Appalachian Scots-Irish who had little respect for London to being with. These two groups would be central players in the next wars confronting Great Britain: Pontiac’s

War and the American Revolution.

A map showing the 1763 Proclamation Line was published in Gentleman’s

Magazine in December, 1763. This map comprises Map 6-1. As the map shows the

Proclamation Line lies east of the Great Lakes, Pittsburgh and even Venango. The map also shows the boundaries of the new Governments of Quebec, East Florida and West

Florida all defined in the Royal Proclamation. The Indian lands to the west became known as the “Western Reserve,” a name ironically retained for posterity by Case

Western Reserve University located in eastern Cleveland, Ohio, a few miles northwest of

George Croghan’s 1745 Cuyahoga River trading post in an area above the Saint

Lawrence continental divide. The Proclamation Line notwithstanding, encroachment by settlers continued. In reaction, the universal “peace” so pompously agreed in Paris would soon be broken by the western Indians. But first Sir William Johnson and his deputy George Croghan had other agendas to pursue in the British capital.

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Map 6-1. J. Gibson, The British Governments in Nth. America, Laid down agreeable to the Proclamation of Octr. 7. 1763, 1763, Toronto Public Library.22

22J. Gibson, “The British Governments in Nth. America, Laid down agreeable to the Proclamation of Octr. 7. 1763,” in Gentleman’s Magazine, v. 33, December, 1763 (London: Gentleman’s Magazine, 1763), 576, public domain, Toronto Public Library, accessed February 5, 2015, http://static.torontopubliclibrary.ca/da/images/LC/912-7b67small.jpg. 230

Sir William had written to Richard Peters as early as March, 1763, about a need for a better line, suggesting that rivers would provide better boundaries and more likely prevent disputes with Indians than ridgelines.23 Indeed a Johnson calendar entry made a few days before the King signed the Proclamation told of a letter from, “. . . Croghan at

Philadelphia stating that he has engaged a man to make a draft of the Colonial frontiers.”24

Rumblings in the West

Well before the ink had dried in Paris, Johnson sensed unease in the west. In

August, 1762, he approached Amherst about increased support in the west for the

Indian Department justifying it saying, “[For] such an addition of country[, its] peace and security . . . must in great measure depend on the due management of the Indians.”

Johnson was referring to the huge expanse of territory now held by Britain. Appending a detailed account of personnel needs and associated costs to support both Forts Pitt and Detroit, he concluded with a veiled threat that he was, “. . . assuring your Excellency that it will be impossible for me to perform the Service without such assistance.”25

23Johnson to Richard Peters, March 30, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:76-77.

24Johnson Calendar Note, pages 181-182, October 4, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:212. The Calendar Note is vexing because it fails to say what Johnson (or Croghan) meant by “Colonial”. The western boundary of Pennsylvania had not been determined by 1763; Virginia claimed its boundary was essentially limitless. Meanwhile settlers had tacitly expanded colonial territory well into Indian country west of the entire length of the Proclamation Line.

25Johnson to Amherst, August 14, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:859-860.

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In November Johnson sent an equally strident letter to Thomas Pownall, Royal

Governor of Massachusetts in London. Pownall, as Croghan would soon learn, supported a conciliatory approach to Indians and was no friend of Amherst’s. Johnson expressed concern over the defection of the Francophile Indians and worried that the

Senecas, Shawnees and Delawares would soon join them.

[They] have (unfortunately for our posts and frontiers) been despised and considered latterly of too little importance to render their alliance necessary. . . . [N]eglect on our parts hath occasioned a rupture attended with the deprivation of trade and destruction on our frontiers and that of several large parties of His Majesty’s troops. . . . Without the aid of friendly tribes, surprises, losses and disasters must attend the more prudential steps we can take [which have] hitherto secured the frontier with the important communication to the Lakes.26

The war in North America between France and Great Britain may have ended in

1762, but neither French traders nor western Indians seemed to care. At the end of the year Croghan received a disturbing report from his colleague Alexander McKee who had been living among the Shawnees. Croghan likely had not seen Johnson’s letter to

Pownall, but McKee’s on-the-ground observations were virtually identical. Croghan forwarded McKee’s comments to Johnson, adding his own. McKee reported that in discussions with “principal warriors” of the Shawnees, Senecas and Ohio Delawares, he had learned they had been plotting against the British since the summer. In the spring the Ouiatenons had sent the Ohio River nations a, “. . . belt and hatchet given to them

26Johnson to Thomas Pownall, November, 1763, in George Croghan, Papers, Collection 1459 (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania) Folder 1. Hereafter cited as: Document, Date, Croghan, Papers, Folder number. Croghan departed for London in December so he may have carried Johnson’s letter to Pownall with him. It likely would have been sealed, but given Pownall’s later observations to Croghan about Amherst, he probably shared Johnson’s letter with Croghan anyway. Croghan’s trip to London is discussed later in this chapter.

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by the French in Illinois.” According to McKee, the narrative accompanying the belt instructed the Ohio Indians to prepare to defend themselves from the British because of the cessation of supplying arms and ammunition for their fight with the Southern

Indians. They believed McKee suggested that this was a sign that they believed, “. . . as soon as [they] deliver up prisoners we will attack them,” noting that the Indians had been conspicuous in delaying prisoner returns. He told Croghan he had encountered the Mohawk whom the British called “Silver Heels” who reported that he had recently passed through Seneca country where he heard nothing but talk of “war with the

English.”

To Johnson, Croghan appended, “. . . [It is] lucky for us that these Indians and

[those] over the Lakes are not on good understanding with each other. If they were united,” Croghan prophetically observed, “. . . we should soon have an Indian War.”

Inserting a jab at Amherst Croghan noted, “. . . the General has his own reason for not allowing any presents or ammunition to be given to them.” Nonetheless, Croghan added, “ [I] dread the event . . . because they are rash and never consider the consequences [of their actions].” In conclusion Croghan made his 1762 war warning crystal clear. “If the Senecas, Delawares and Shawnees break with us it will end in general war [with] all the western nations.”27

Amherst’s “No Gifts” Policy

27Croghan to Johnson, December 10, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:964-966. 233

Abercrombie’s colossal failure at Fort Carillon in 1758 propelled General Lord

Jeffrey Amherst KCB into the top spot in America. While a capable general, as an administrator Amherst was a foppish carper who disliked America and its inhabitants red or white. Nothing brings “Lord Jeff” as he called himself to life in the twenty-first century better than Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait. Against a stormy but barren landscape, Amherst is clad in an anachronistic suit of armor adorned with his Knight

Companion of the Bath sash and medallion. His unadorned head rests tentatively on his hand, his antique helmet resting on a map of Montreal. Amherst, seemingly interested in something beyond the observer’s ken, gazes indirectly to the left of the portrait.

Reynolds painted this portrait in 1765 more than a year after Amherst departed

North America for good. In the eighteenth century portrait painters took few liberties with the “look” a subject wished to project into the future primarily because the subject typically paid for the painting. As a result most of these “looks” are staggeringly similar.

Amherst’s is different. What image was this self-inflated Peer trying to project? What does he see beyond the frame that we are either too awestruck or too dimwitted to see?

Amherst inherited a war Britain was losing. He had no desire for history to count him with the likes of Braddock and Abercrombie. Pitt had designed the Empire, and now in North America it was up to Amherst to establish it. Amherst himself and many of those serving under him – Wolfe, Monckton, Forbes, Bouquet and Johnson to name a few – were exceptional field commanders. Within a year, they took Louisbourg,

Carillon, Duquesne, Niagara, and Québec itself. Braddock was revenged, Abercrombie 234

forgotten. In utter defeat French General Louis Montcalm died on the Plains of

Abraham. Montcalm was forty-seven years old; his British conqueror Major General

James Wolfe, only thirty-five and a rising star in Amherst’s army, also died in the battle for Québec City.

Yet while Amherst is rightfully credited with turning the French and Indian War into a glorious success, his record as an administrator was riddled by poor judgment. A central issue was his failure to recognize the history or value of the practice of giving gifts to the Indians. Both official Britain and France recognized the cultural significance of Indian presents. These extensive gifts of cooking ware, agricultural tools, clothing, arms and ammunition were essential to maintaining good order within Indian societies and peace with the colonists. Perhaps none understood this better than Johnson and

Croghan. From Amherst’s post-war perspective, the practice seemed a wartime expense no longer needed. Even during the war Amherst had often refused to reimburse Indians allies for their efforts on behalf of the crown, much less to maintain their loyalty to Britain or win them over from France. Meanwhile Indian experience with British duplicity or indifference during past events from the Walking Purchase to the sack of Pickawillany had been mollified by “presents.” To some extent these gifts supplanted the Condolence Ritual, an important salve for the loss of warriors or leaders.28

28The Condolence Ritual is discussed in Appendix C.

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The issue became known as “Amherst’s no-gifts policy” which his military commanders in the field alternately carried out or scorned, sometimes both.29 Amherst was soon subject to mockery and criticism by others, a good deal of which came from Sir

William Johnson’s Department of Indian Affairs. George Croghan was the source of much of this condemnation, even to the extent of ginning up a sarcastic little ditty about

Amherst, which was a hit with the officers at Fort Pitt:

From ev’ry gen’rous noble passion free As proud and ignorant as man can be Revengeful, avaricious, obstinate is he Malicious, stupid and obdurate will ever be A fleeting consequence he’s dully grave Rest here my pen enough – the man’s a knave.30

Croghan had good reason to criticize Amherst. He was often out-of-pocket for gifts to

Indians, including guns and ammunition needed both to keep them on the British side and feed their families.

Amherst had slight knowledge of Indian affairs. Johnson, caught between

Croghan and the general, vainly tried to school Amherst with little effect. In a 1761 letter to Johnson, Amherst summarized his stand. “Services must be rewarded,”

29Ward, Backcountry, 212. Ward makes a fragile but intriguing conclusion that Sir Charles Wyndham, Lord Egremont, Secretary of State for Southern Affairs (which included North America), while encouraging Indian gifts and trade in the south, discouraged it in the north on the pretext that the north (meaning La Nouvelle France) had already been conquered. Ward is not alone in linking Egremont to Amherst’s “no gifts” policy although little evidence can be found to support it. What is beguiling about Ward’s idea is that true or not it illuminates the lack of awareness in London about issues being raised by western Indians.

30Wainwright, Diplomat, 193, 194 n52. Wainwright cites this and another Croghan ditty as coming from “Entertainment Folder” in Cadwalader and two other references in the footnote. He does not make clear which citation contains this barb at the Commander-in-Chief.

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Amherst agreed, “. . . but as to purchasing the good behavior of Indians or any others

. . . I do not understand; when men of [any race] behave ill, they must be punished but not bribed.”31

Johnson’s closest military confidante was Captain Daniel Claus.32 Claus had performed yeoman service for Johnson; in 1761 he was serving in Canada under

Brigadier (General) Gage now British Governor of Montreal.33 By all accounts Claus was a loyal soldier and a good citizen generally. In Canada he had made the acquaintance of one Father Roubard who asked him to procure clothing for some old Indian women. No doubt aware of Amherst’s “no gifts policy” Claus petitioned Gage for the money to perform this harmless, compassionate act. Amherst got wind of this and told Johnson,

“This priest is not to be depended on.” Johnson directed Claus to do it anyway but never to go to Gage again. All such things however innocent had to go through him – and more to the point – Amherst.

Yet the letter to Claus is interesting in several regards. First, that Johnson told

Claus to buy the clothing. Second, that he apparently knew (or knew of) Father Roubard of whom he said, “I can not help differing with the General in his opinion of Pere

Roubard. I take him to be a sensible man, and I believe sincere in what he says.”

31Amherst to Johnson, February 22, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:343-347.

32Daniel Claus was a second-generation Schoharie Palatine who had married Johnson’s daughter Nancy. Her mother was Catherine Weisenberg, Sir William Johnson’s first wife and another Schoharie German. Palatines had a high regard for the British, much of which they focused on the late Queen Anne who in their view had rescued them from neglect and starvation in Holland.

33The rank “Brigadier General” is an Americanism. The British Army calls the same rank simply “Brigadier”.

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Johnson’s most revealing line came last, referring not only to Roubard or Claus’s relationship with him, but conveying what he thinks of Amherst. “Inter nos, he is not a friend of Indians, which I am afraid may have bad consequences one time or another.”34

Claus shared Johnson’s and Croghan’s view of Amherst. Several months later a rumor circulated among the junior officers that Amherst had decamped to Long Island, preparing to return to England with his regiments. The rumor was premature, but Claus gleefully shared it with Johnson adding, “I hope it may prove true.”35

Some British officers were senior enough to ignore Amherst, in particular

General John Stanwix. In December, 1761, Stanwix ordered Croghan to provide some clothing to the Cherokees and to send Pennsylvania the bill. Croghan complied.

Pennsylvania not only refused to pay the bill, but protested it. Johnson wrote Amherst for help. “I imagine your Excellency will not let him suffer thereby,” adding, “. . . since

1759 George Croghan has secured the freedom of 338 English prisoners in the Ohio and its neighborhoods.” 36 Amherst replied at the end of the month telling Johnson, “I cannot think of passing on [Croghan’s accounts] until I have your report and opinion of these.”37

34Johnson to Daniel Claus, March 10, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:352-356. Gage was probably Amherst’s source, because much as Stanwix had no funds for Indian gifts neither did Gage. Johnson technically controlled the Indian Department funds which came from London, but Amherst interjected himself repeatedly. Rank also played a part: Johnson was a Baronet and a colonial Colonel; Amherst was a Major General, the Commander in Chief and a peer.

35Claus to Johnson, September 30, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:546-547.

36Johnson to Amherst, December 6, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:580-582.

37Amherst to Johnson, December 31, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:597-598. In the same letter he refused to reimburse one Lieutenant Butler for similar provisions the Lieutenant had bought for the 238

Furious but sensitive to the chain of command, Johnson directed Croghan to

“retrench” all future Indians expenses, “expeditiously transmit these to me,” “make use of economy” and make “no charges to the Indian account which do not properly belong to that Department.” Then, possibly seeking leverage to defend future Croghan expenses, Johnson instructed him to, “. . . make strict inquiry as to any remaining prisoners at the Miamis [the rivers], Detroit and Michilimackinac.”38

This was not the first dispute Johnson had with Amherst over reimbursement for presents to the Indians. As early as March of the preceding year, after Amherst had questioned reimbursing Major Robert Rogers and Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell, two of the general’s own officers, Johnson fired back. “I dare say the expense of managing all the Indians in [the west] country will not cost the Crown as much as four families of them cost the Crown of France.”39

By April of 1762 Johnson had had about enough of His Excellency. Amherst had recently questioned the need for a deputy (Croghan) in the west at all, as well as his annual £200 compensation and expenses. Johnson penned a strongly worded defense of expenses for the deputy and the Indian Department generally:

I cannot do everything myself. There is great necessity for a Deputy for whom I have sufficient employment and who might be of good service at present by being sent among the Indians, for which there will be constant occasion.40

Miamis, a long-standing British ally. Amherst told Butler he wanted authorization of Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell, British Commander at Fort Detroit, for the expense.

38Johnson to Croghan, January 8, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:604-605.

39Johnson to Amherst, March 21, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 10:243-246.

40Johnson to Amherst, August 14, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:859. 239

Finally in July, 1762, Amherst agreed to pay for Croghan’s expenses to May 1, 1761, but wrote that he, “. . . cannot pay for money advanced on Stanwix’s orders without hearing from Stanwix.”41

Field grade officers often shared Claus’s opinion of Amherst, but were equally unable to help.42 Croghan wrote Johnson in March 1762 that the Senecas were stirring up the western Indians against the British. He specifically attributed this in part to lack of ammunition to fight to Cherokees. He noted that Col. Bouquet agreed that the British should supply their Indian allies but was, “. . . powerless to do anything.” This episode was typical of Croghan’s largesse with the Indians. Whether reimbursed or not, he continued to supply them presents including arms and ammunition to the Iroquois for their simultaneous war with the Cherokees.43

With the fall of Canada, Amherst reinforced his “no gifts policy” driving the

Indians even further from the British Crown. In May, 1762, Croghan reported that the

French had always clothed poor and naked Indians.44 Amherst did not stop there. Later

41Amherst to Johnson, July 6, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:824-825. Croghan’s generosity to Indians increased his already-heavy debt load and infuriated settlers, a group of whom attacked one of his supply trains in early 1765 at Sideling Hill, PA, near modern Raystown Lake.

42The author is using a modern U.S. term here to denote Colonels, Lieutenant Colonels and Majors, referred to as “Field Grade” by the U.S. military. Field Grade officers comprise the middle level of three U.S. commissioned officer groupings. A Captain, Claus would be considered a lower-ranking, “Company Grade” officer in a U.S. service. In the British Army there are only two groupings of commissioned officers, Field Officers and General Officers. The former includes all ranks from Lieutenant to Brigadier. The author’s point here is that many officers senior to Claus but junior to the Generals shared his views.

43Croghan to Johnson, March 31, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:662-663.

44Croghan to Johnson, May 10, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:733. 240

in the year he ordered Johnson to let the Indians know that, “. . . upon the first hostilities they may be guilty of, they must not only expect the severest retaliation, but an entire destruction of all their nations, for I am firmly resolved, whenever they give me an occasion, to extirpate them root and branch.”45

In May Bouquet gave a similarly discouraging reply to a group of Mohawks enroute to war with the Cherokees. Nonetheless, probably because he was related by marriage to the Turtle Clan at the top of Mohawk hierarchy, Croghan paid £100 out of pocket for them. In his letter to Johnson about this Croghan telegraphed his intention

45Amherst to Johnson, August 18, 1761, in Johnson, Papers,3:520. This thesis would be incomplete without some mention of the infamous June-July, 1763, Fort Pitt smallpox episode. The summary version is that Captains Simon Ecuyer and William Trent gave four smallpox-infected cloths and blankets to visiting Ohio Delawares on orders from Amherst through Bouquet. In the context of the times this was after the Treaty of Paris and at the height of Anishinabeg-instigated attacks in western Pennsylvania. Bouquet is probably the least culpable of all involved. At the time of the incident he was in the field near and had delegated command of Fort Pitt to Ecuyer. He passed Amherst’s order on to Ecuyer without comment. Bouquet had never been exposed to smallpox or cowpox, the latter of which dramatically reduced one’s chance of getting the former. No record is known of Ecuyer’s thoughts on smallpox but for his part Bouquet feared contracting it (or spreading it) enough to encourage Amherst to “hunt Indians with dogs in the Spanish fashion” instead. This suggestion fell on deaf ears. Trent by this time was much more a British (Virginian) officer than Croghan’s partner. Croghan was at Fort Bedford at this time settling some land and stores deals; there is no evidence that Croghan was aware of either Amherst’s letter to Bouquet or Ecuyer’s and Trent’s actions at Fort Pitt. As early as 1722 the British Foreign and Colonial Office was aware of Ottoman successes with injecting humans with cowpox to prevent smallpox, and had brought the idea back to England. Well before Edward Jenner’s much-heralded 1798 smallpox vaccination treatment many nobles and royals had been inoculated in the Ottoman fashion. As for North America smallpox had been transmitted to Indians well before the Fort Pitt incident. Dowd’s work is exceptionally well-documented; as a result he provides a succinct and excellent review of this episode on page 190, despite his contention on page 211 that Gage was somehow implicated. Gage was still at Montreal in June 1763 and the author has found no evidence that deliberate smallpox contamination of Indians was repeated during Gage’s tenure as Commander-in-Chief. Jennings in his emotionally critical expose of this episode, all based on secondary sources, suggests that Delaware Chief may have fallen victim to smallpox as a result. For Fort Pitt Smallpox episode see Dowd, War Under Heaven, 190, 211, and Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 447-448. For Croghan’s whereabouts see Wainwright, 199-200. For smallpox vaccination (“variolation”) history see Abbas M. Behbehani, “The smallpox story: life and death of an old disease,” Microbiological Review, (December, 1983) (Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, 1983), 458-459.

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to resign in the fall, and mentioned that he was still out of pocket £317 for expenses incurred at Detroit, “. . . which no doubt [Amherst] will think too much, [al]though certified by Bouquet.”46

Another who encountered Indian resentment against Amherst was British military cartographer Thomas Hutchins. Johnson’s calendar reflects a late 1762 letter destroyed in the 1911 fire in which Croghan described British military cartographer

Thomas Hutchins’s experiences with the Great Lakes Indians. Johnson’s October 4,

1762, calendar note indicated that Hutchins reported, “. . . opposition of General

Amherst to furnishing Indians with ammunition,” as a principal issue of Indian resentment.47

Johnson’s calendar entry cited previously was made in October, 1762. That very month Amherst wrote Johnson about Croghan’s concerns. Apparently Croghan had the effrontery to write the great general directly. Dismissing Croghan’s anxiety Amherst wrote, “Indeed I cannot think the Indians are so blind to their own interest as to attempt any mischief in those parts.”48 Clearly Amherst believed “their own interest” lay with

Great Britain.

46 Croghan to Johnson, May 10, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:733-734.

47 Peter Darcy to Johnson, October 4, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:889-890, n2. Darcy’s letter is not relevant. However note 2 thereto is a comment probably made by the Volume III editor, James Sullivan, concerning a Johnson Calendar Note about the Darcy letter and another from Croghan, lost in the 1911 fire. Croghan cited Hutchins’ journal.

48 Amherst to Johnson, October 31, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:858-861.

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In November Croghan wrote that a Cayuga Indian reported that the Senecas,

Delawares, Munsees and “his own nation” were uneasy. When Croghan asked why the

Cayuga gave him two reasons: ammunition supply, and the Indians’ conviction that Sir

William had not ordered the promised boundary line run between them and the

Pennsylvania Proprietors.49 Alexander McKee reported much the same in December.50

Croghan’s letter to Johnson in early 1763 summed up the Indian perspective.

The northern and western Indians were upset that Britain was not supplying them with ammunition for their war in the south. Croghan was also piqued that he had spent over a year’s salary in “trifles to keep them in temper.” Ever since Britain’s acquisition of

Canada, Johnson’s Deputy reported the Indians had grown very jealous of British power.

When Croghan told them that all of North America had been ceded to Great Britain, which to the Indians meant the Ohio and Illinois country as well, he reported that they only “seemed moreso.”51

Gage was named Governor of Montreal in 1760. He served in this role for three years, at the end of which he was named to replace Amherst as Commander-in-Chief of

British North America. In the British Colonies, particularly after Amherst had dispatched

Monckton to the Caribbean, Gage’s accession to this new position was as logical as snow

49Croghan to Johnson, November 10, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:931.

50Croghan to Johnson, December 10, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:964-966.

51Croghan to Johnson, March 12, 1763, in Croghan, Papers, Folder 1. All of North America had not been ceded to Britain; a good deal went to Spain and a few pockets in Louisiana and Newfoundland remained French. Yet the Indians were correct that all of the Ohio and Illinois country was now under the red flag.

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in a Canadian winter.52 Such was not the case with the strange departure of His

Excellency General Lord Jeffery Amherst, KCB.

Shipwreck in France; Lords in London

In May, 1763, Lord Egremont wrote a letter to the Lords of Trade in which he laid out a conciliatory policy for dealing with the Indians. Among other suggestions he proposed:

It may be necessary to erect some forts on the Indian Country, with their consent. [And] adopt the more eligible methods of conciliating the minds of the Indians . . . by protecting their persons and property, and securing to them all the rights and privileges they have hitherto enjoyed. [And] guarding against invasion and occupation of their hunting lands.

In closing Egremont, then Secretary of State for Southern Affairs which included North

America, added, “I have already received and transmitted the King’s Command on this subject to the . . . agent for Indian Affairs.” 53 That agent was Sir William. Egremont’s suggestions clearly struck a chord in London because attitudes were about to shift away from Amherst’s views.

Mid-November, 1763, was momentous for Sir William, for it was then that he heard that the King had approved Amherst’s request for home leave. The news came from Amherst himself, and in the same letter he informed Johnson that Gage, now a

52Brigadier Robert Monckton was highly effective as both a general and an administrator. Early in the war he managed Britain’s interests in Nova Scotia and was later wounded at the Battle of Quebec. In early 1762 he captured Martinique giving Britain control of Dominica. He returned in 1763 to London despite the fact that he had been named Royal Governor of New York.

53Sir Charles Wyndham, Lord Egremont, to the Board of Trade, May 5, 1763, in Lord Shelburne Papers, 49: 18, William Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. (Hereafter cited as Shelburne Papers, volume:page.)

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Major General, would take command of British North America. Amherst wrote the letter in New York on November seventeenth but it probably did not reach Johnson’s estate on the Mohawk River on the same day.54

Either Johnson’s New York spies had already informed him of Amherst’s pending departure or he was clairvoyant. For on the very day that Amherst’s letter was posted,

Johnson wrote to Gage in Montreal, congratulating him on his new position but apologizing lest he “. . . should [not] do so yet.”55 A day after that Johnson sent a letter to the Lords of Trade among other things, “. . . representing the efforts [he had] made to commend a liberal Indian policy to General Amherst.”56

Serendipitously, or perhaps conveniently, George Croghan’s grandfather

Edmund Croghan had passed away in Ireland. Croghan asked Johnson for permission to go home, which Sir William approved on the stated basis that the trip was related to settling his grandfather’s estate. Yet on November nineteenth Johnson wrote a letter to

Lord Halifax to be, “. . . carried by George Croghan going to England on his own private affairs.” (Italics mine.) George Montagu-Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax, Knight of the

Garter, was by marriage a very wealthy man and one with a commanding interest in the

North American colonies. Johnson’s letter to Halifax warned of an impending Indian war and commended Croghan’s knowledge of this. Johnson went on to comment

54Amherst to Johnson, November 17, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:237-238.

55Johnson to Gage, November 17, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:238-239.

56Johnson Calendar Note, 188, re: Letter to the Lords of Trade, November 18, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:239-240.

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about, “. . . unheeded measures he had proposed to the Board of Trade,” and, “. . .

Indian Defection which may prove general unless timely prevented by a redress of grievances and a proper distribution of favors to those who have incurred and dread the resentment of the rest for their fidelity to us.” In closing Johnson asked Halifax for instructions from the crown regarding this, and attached a “Memorandum on the Six

Nations and Other Confederacies.”57

Amherst left New York in late November, and Croghan left North America with

Johnson’s letter for Halifax not long afterward in December. Misfortune struck

Croghan’s vessel the Britannia, a Baynton, Wharton and Morgan merchant ship, off the coast of France. Mistaking Guernsey for Portsmouth the captain ran the ship onto the coastal rocks off France during a late January (1764) storm. Remarkably all aboard safely reached Normandy and eventually London in February.58

Having dispatched Croghan to London on his “private affairs”, Johnson re- engaged the new Commander-in-Chief. Writing to Gage on November twenty-third,

Johnson first alluded to, “. . . our late discourse in Albany,” after which he laid out his

“Indian Plan” in detail:

Preserve the fidelity of Nations hitherto our friends (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas with a few Senecas [et al.])

57Johnson to Halifax, November 19, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:240-250. Halifax was both Secretary of State for the Southern Department and a former President of the Board of Trade. Johnson probably wrote Halifax in this second position, in which he had served for thirteen years. (He had resigned with Bute’s elevation.) Despite being a Tory Halifax was considered among the most trustworthy subordinates of the current Prime Minister George Grenville. A Knight of the Garter, Halifax was a member of Britain’s oldest and most exclusive order.

58Wainwright, Diplomat, 202-205.

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As they retain fears of our enemies, it will be necessary to provide assistance, protection and favors. [The Iroquois will] more easily oppose the Western Indians, Delawares and Shawnees than the Senecas who are of their own confederacy. This will prevent surprises to our troops, and intelligence. The Delawares and Shawnees are our most inveterate enemies, more so [now] that they have moved [west]. Canadians should accompany our troops in helping break [these Indians’] friendships with the French.59

In closing, Johnson mentioned his letter to the Lords of Trade but not that he had sent it with Gage’s old Indian scout George Croghan.

Amherst made no secret of either his dislike for America or his disinclination to return, and – home leave or not – he never did return. On the other hand, senior North

American Indian agents’ and British officers’ dislike of Amherst’s Indian policies if not

Amherst himself was widespread. Yet in London Amherst’s tedious administration of

North America took a back seat to his military record. His captures of Louisbourg and

Ticonderoga had made him a national hero. What the ordinary London citizen knew of the natives in America was more about Indian murders, scalpings, torture and kidnapping – mostly all based on true accounts – than the Walking Purchase, the price of furs or the sale of Indian land to various “companies” by Iroquois who did not own it.

What the London citizenry knew of Amherst meanwhile was that he had quashed the

French and was now putting the long-festering Indian annoyance in its proper place.

Nonetheless, there is almost no question that Johnson, Croghan and perhaps

Gage as well, cheered on by officers like Bouquet and Claus, had a heavy hand in ridding

59Johnson to Gage, November 23, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:251-252. 247

America of Lord Jeff. Croghan wasted no time meeting with the Lords of Trade. On

February 11, 1764, he delivered Johnson’s packet to Hillsborough. Croghan reported he was, “. . . very cordially received,” but the Board did not read Johnson’s reports for months. Croghan met with Halifax the same day. Halifax had actually read Johnson’s report and had little good to say about Amherst. In Croghan’s words, Halifax, “. . . found great fault with General Amherst’s conduct.” Halifax’s view of Amherst was not unique among the London cognoscenti. Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas Pownall, a

Member of Parliament who – unlike many other token colony heads – took an interest in American affairs, agreed with Halifax. Nonetheless Pownall apparently cautioned

Croghan about quoting him specifically. Croghan’s entry in his letter to Johnson indicated that Pownall had commented on many injustices done to the northern

Indians, “. . . which [were] made by G: A: as he gave me to understand,” adding, “. . . but he would not name anybody.”60

Croghan’s report to Johnson the following month reiterated Halifax’s support and cited “Mr. Penn” as the source. He could not resist adding another dig at Amherst, this one made by “Colonel Lee” who had written, “. . . General Amherst[‘s] . . . conduct in America is much condemned by every rank of people.” In the March letter Croghan observed that Halifax had raised two other issues close to Croghan’s heart: the boundary with the Indians, and a colony in the Illinois territory. Croghan and Lord

Halifax had detailed discussions about both during which Croghan shared his own and

60Croghan to Johnson, February 24, 1764, in Johnson, Papers, 4:339-340.

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Johnson’s thoughts on the boundary and added that Halifax said he, “. . . will deserve my opinion,” on the new colony.61

The problem with a new Indian boundary was that by 1764 there already was one, and a new Illinois colony would be well beyond it. The October, 1763, Royal

Proclamation Line had been triggered by the end of hostilities. West of the Allegheny

Mountains had always been considered Indian Country but until then never demarked by a specific boundary. Even before Croghan or Amherst left for London, the crown had done just that with the 1763 proclamation line.

Notwithstanding his early 1764 encounters with the great men of the Board of

Trade, the delay of the shipwreck coupled with the slothful London bureaucracy took its toll on Croghan’s mission. In a lengthy letter to Johnson in May, Croghan unsurprisingly told his superior that he was no longer going to Ireland “next month” as he had planned, citing delays with the Board of Trade regarding the management of Indian Affairs as the reason. The gild was off the lily as to why Croghan was in the British Isles; he never did go to Ireland.

Concerning the real mission – resetting British North American Indian policies by ensuring Amherst never returned – he lauded the assistance of “Mr. Penn” and more emphatically William Allen, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. Allen was in London

61Croghan to Johnson, March 10, 1764, in Johnson, Papers, 4:362-363.

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ostensibly on provincial business but, Croghan cheerfully reported, “. . . knows a lot of people and has been helpful.”62

In May he advised Johnson that the Lords of Trade had never read his letter about the state of the Indian Department, but confidently added he would, “. . . mention this to Halifax and Hillsborough.”63 Hillsborough seemed politely receptive to

Croghan. Of Halifax Croghan waxed effusive; he is, said Croghan in a subsequent letter to Johnson, “. . . your sincere friend and [has] approved all the measures you recommended.” Croghan sent this letter almost exactly one month after the May letter. He had made considerably more progress. Not only had the Lords of Trade now read Johnson’s reports, but they had developed a plan for future management of the

Indian Departments. The major points of the plan were: two deputies for Johnson and one for Stuart; an interpreter, a smith and a “commissary to inspect trade” for each post; £7000 per year for presents for Northern Indians; £5000 for Southern, and Gage would provide the presents.64 The Lords emphasized that they hoped Colonel John

Bradstreet’s expedition would end the Indian war.65

62Not everyone in the Imperial capital stood in such esteem with the Indian agent. As regards the city in general Croghan observed, “The more I am acquainted with these people the less I find them sincere.” He singled out one Sir William Beaker, a gatekeeper of sorts for the Lords of Trade. Of Beaker he griped, “He will not use his influence for anybody but himself [which] seems to be the spirit of all the people in this kingdom . . .”

63Croghan to Johnson, May 11, 1764, in Johnson, Papers, 4:419-422.

64Croghan to Johnson, June 12, 1764, in Johnson, Papers, 4:462-463.

65Colonel John Bradstreet was a flamboyant British officer who led a number of critical offenses during war, include the seizure of Fort Frontenac and the relief of Fort Oswego. The Lords here were referring to his then-current expedition to relieve Fort Detroit, a less-successful mission for which he was chastised for making separate peace initiatives with western Indians. Colonel Henry Bouquet’s 250

Croghan observed that except for Halifax, officials in London seemed to care little about the colonies and did not trust power in the hands of anyone in America.

“[N]one of the present Ministry [would] give six pence toward that [Indian] Service except my Lord Halifax, who is a sincere friend and approve[s] of all the measures you recommended.” Croghan pointed specifically to the lack of authority for the

Commander-in-Chief to commission anyone, but reasoned that most believed Sir

William could capably handle Indian affairs. While generally critical of Amherst’s conduct of Indian affairs they seemed still to follow it Croghan observed.66

Croghan engaged the Lords of Trade about his own and Johnson’s land deals but with little success. The Lords told him they intended to control all such deals themselves and limit individual sales to twenty thousand acres. Specifically they refused to acknowledge formally the two hundred thousand-acre 1749 Iroquois grant to

Croghan and claimed no knowledge of Johnson’s grant from the Mohawks.67

Nor was Croghan happy with the October 1763 Proclamation Line. Interpreted in its exact letter, the Royal Proclamation put into Indian hands anything west of the

subsequent expedition into Shawnee country was far more successful. These expeditions are discussed in the following Chapter.

66Croghan to Johnson, June 12, 1764, in Croghan Papers, Folder 1; Alfred Burne, The Noble Duke of York: The Military Life of Frederick Duke of York and Albany. (London: Staples Press, 1949), 227. Amherst was criticized for more than North America. Horace Walpole called Amherst, “. . . that log of wood whose stupidity and incapacity are past belief.” The British sage was referring to Amherst’s 1780 dispute with London authorities. Commanding the suppression of the anti-Catholic “Gordon Riots” Amherst suggested the use of armed force against his fellow citizens. Predominately Protestant Whitehall was aghast. Walpole’s quip about Amherst’s plans for the Gordon Riots fit His Excellency’s tenure in America with equal acuity.

67Croghan to Johnson, June 12, 1764, in Croghan Papers, Folder 1.

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Appalachians, implying not only the entire valley of the Ohio River but those of the

Allegheny and Monongahela rivers as well. Many of Croghan’s speculative land deals lay on the wrong side of the Proclamation Line. Croghan urged the Lords to reconsider the Indian boundary, stirring into his meeting with Halifax a discussion about an Illinois colony including a vivid description of its lush countryside. Hillsborough was mesmerized by this, telling Croghan that if the Proclamation Line were modified to include, “. . . the fine country on the western waters,” which Croghan had described he would encourage its settlement. For Croghan it was about pelts and land; for

Hillsborough it was about empire.

Conclusion

Bute’s and Bedford’s assumption of power in the British Empire was the repercussion of an exhausted and angry electorate. For almost a decade Britons had paid for the Seven Years War in blood and money and they were tired of Pitt’s exuberance over distant and seemingly marginally consequential victories. Bedford presciently went so far as to suggest that the absence of France’s presence in Canada might enhance the growing independence movement in the lower thirteen colonies.

Diplomatic newcomers sent by London to Paris for treaty negotiations could not compare to the savvy Choiseul and Grimaldi who engineered retention by the Bourbon family of the greater prize of western Louisiana. Even Britain’s long-time ally, Frederick the Great, was so appalled by London’s fumbling diplomacy that he threatened to secure a separate peace with France on the continent.

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In North America, the Treaty of Paris strengthened the hand of the Iroquois despite Amherst’s unintended campaign to weaken it. The acquisition of all La Nouvelle

France dramatically increased British holdings in North America but, with regard to

Indian holdings, did so in a peculiar geographic arc swinging around the contested Ohio country. In the process the Treaty added a raft of Great Lakes Indians, already suspicious of British and Iroquois intentions, to Britain’s existing list of apathetic allies in the Ohio Valley.

Against this backdrop the King issued the October, 1763, Royal Proclamation which drew a British ne plus ultra down the spine of the Allegheny ridgeline. The

Proclamation Line of 1763 alienated both Indians and trans-Appalachian settlers.

Among the latter were Germans, many of whose grandparents had experienced a similar diplomatic betrayal in Europe after the War of the Grand Alliance, and now saw their homesteads vulnerable to a more terrifying enemy than Louis XIV had ever been.

Scots-Irish settlers who faced the same situation had little regard for the British crown or the Indians to begin with.

In late 1761 when a British victory seemed assured Amherst had issued a policy of “no gifts” to Indians. This had a negative effect on Croghan’s ability to work in the west as crown Indian agent. Croghan knew that the Ohio Indians in particular needed arms and ammunition not only to hunt but to support their simultaneous war with the southern Indians. Amherst for his part believed that Indians no longer needed “bribes” to maintain their loyalty to Britain. Amherst soon became the butt of jokes even among

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British officers, several of whom like Croghan were out of pocket for expenses for

Indians.

With the onset of winter 1763 Amherst unexpectedly threw a bone to his

American nay-sayers. He applied for home leave and departed for his beloved Kent estate. Armed with Johnson’s strongly worded condemnation of Amherst’s policies,

Croghan pursued Lord Jeff across the Atlantic. In early 1764 Croghan met with First Lord of Trade Hillsborough and perennial trade éminence grise Lord Halifax. Neither were strong supporters of Amherst. Supported by Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas

Pownall and Pennsylvania Chief Justice William Allen, both of whom were in London at the time, Croghan personally outlined the state of affairs created by Amherst’s policies in the Indian country. Hillsborough and Halifax were guarded but heard Croghan out.

Amherst never returned to America.

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CHAPTER 7

AN IMPERFECT PEACE: GENERAL GAGE AND PONTIAC

If the Senecas, Delawares and Shawnees break with us it will end in general war [with] all the western nations. – George Croghan, December 17621

Introduction

Sir William Johnson wanted a conference with the western Indians in 1760. The dust had barely settled on Britain’s conquest of La Nouvelle France, but the senior crown Indian agent understood the importance of bringing the former French-allied

Indians under the red flag. The Detroit Indian conference finally began in September,

1761. Ten Indian nations attended along with Johnson’s team from New York,

Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell and other officers from Fort Detroit and George

Croghan. Croghan’s Mohawk father-in-law Nikus again represented the Iroquois.

Despite Pontiac’s assertion of leadership in the region Johnson firmly believed the

Hurons to be the more powerful spokesmen for the nascent “Ottawa Confederacy.”

With that in mind, on the way back to New York he stopped at the principal Huron village in the vicinity for a rump session. The Hurons made clear that arming the western Indians both for hunting and their ongoing war with the Cherokees was their principal issue. The Hurons also paid homage to the Shawnees reflecting both their respect for the Shawnees and Croghan’s connection to them. Johnson’s conference

1Croghan to Johnson, December 10, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:964-966.

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notwithstanding, Amherst issued his “no gifts” policy two months later effectively negating any progress made at Detroit.

Croghan issued his war warning in December, 1762; the following spring Pontiac invested Fort Detroit. Reinforced by a fledgling British Lake Erie navy Detroit held; the rest of British North America came under attack on a wide front from Michigan to New

York. In summer, 1763, Colonel Henri Bouquet’s stunning military reversal in western

Pennsylvania stopped forward progress of the Ottawa-led rebellion. At the end of the year Major General Thomas Gage assumed command from Amherst. Gage chose good people and delegated to them. He relied on Johnson and Croghan for Indian affairs, and on Bouquet and Campbell for military matters.

Gage had modified Amherst’s no gifts restriction, but settlers in the west remained wary of arming Indians and lived under the threat of expulsion under the terms of the 1763 Royal Proclamation. Even in London British authorities knew colonists and Indians needed a better demarcation. In 1764 and 1765 Gage moved to end the rebellion in the west. He ordered two armies led by Bouquet and Colonel John

Bradstreet to link up and trap the Shawnees on the Muskingum River, presumably to encourage them to negotiate. Bradstreet went off half-cocked ahead of Bouquet, the senior officer, offering the Shawnees and Ohio Delawares an unauthorized peace treaty at Lake Erie. Unsurprisingly the Indians agreed; furious, Gage revoked the treaty further aggravating the Indians. Bouquet subsequently invaded the Shawnee homeland, but knowing the operation had been botched by Bradstreet, he astutely confronted each

Indian nation separately. In an exemplary military campaign Bouquet secured peace 256

with the Ohio Delawares, Seneca and Shawnees and obtained the return of nearly three hundred British captives with the loss of only one man.

In the summer of 1765 Croghan set out to make peace with Pontiac. He and the

Ottawa leader already knew each other. Enroute his party was attacked on the Wabash by a band of Kickapoos and Musquattamies who killed several Shawnees, hatcheted

Croghan in the head and carried him off. The attackers soon realized what they had done and that their captive had important friends – more Shawnees. Feared by Illinois country Indians almost as much as by Pennsylvania settlers, the Shawnees came to parlay but with a war party. The Kickapoos and Musquattamies signed on with Great

Britain. Croghan credited all this with bringing these former Francophile Indians under the British tent. Croghan’s subsequent peace with Pontiac was lauded throughout the

British Empire; Croghan personally celebrated with Gage and his staff in New York. It would be Croghan’s greatest triumph.

In 1768 London finally authorized a new proclamation line. The chapter closes with the Fort Stanwix Treaty Conference which authorized the new line. It would create a new set of issues in the west.

1761 Detroit Treaty Conference

Even before Croghan departed for London British soldiers and settlers alike were hearing the opening shots of Pontiac’s War in the American wilderness. Determined to bring the western Indians to heel once Britain had seized the initiative from France, in

1760 Johnson began working toward a peace conference at Fort Detroit. Delays pushed it to 1761. The usual dispute arose between Amherst and Sir William over gifts, 257

although these would be required for any Indian conference. In December Croghan adroitly assigned Montour, the “better linguist,” to accompany Major Robert Rogers on a cockamamie adventure straight north on Lake Michigan in the dead of winter to relieve Fort Michilimackinac.2 Unsurprisingly Rogers, Montour and their party did not make it, but at least lived to tell about it. Croghan had taken an earlier voyage with

Rogers in November to Detroit. He had not survived this long in the west by being as bold as Rogers, a generation younger, and he was clearly not anxious to make another even more audacious voyage with the Rangers.3

Then Pennsylvania scheduled an unintentionally preemptive treaty causing a conflict for the native participants. Operating from Detroit, Croghan purchased a secret war plan from two Seneca chiefs; the plan proposed a series of attacks along a wide, northern front from Detroit to German Flats practically on Johnson’s doorstep.4 The plan put the fear of God in everybody because it demonstrated that the Ottawas and their allies were not afraid to attack the British in Iroquoia.

Despite all this Croghan, ever watchful for a lucrative land deal, considered an

Indian offer to ferry him to an, “. . . exceptional piece of land between Lakes Huron and

Erie,” but demurred, “. . . as people might say I want a-land-jobbing when I should have

2Croghan to Johnson, January 13, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:301-302.

3Croghan to Johnson, November 1, 1760, in Johnson, Papers, 3:276-277.

4Wainwright, Diplomat, 178-181; Dowd, War Under Heaven, 106. Dowd disputes the assertion that the plan, delivered to Croghan by Senecas members of the Iroquois League, was proof that the Iroquois instigated Pontiac’s War. Dowd concludes that this episode, “. . . points as convincingly to the Anishinabeg as to the Iroquois.”

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done my duty.” Nonetheless, in closing he suggested that if Johnson were interested he could probably get a “small estate” there for the Baronet if, “. . . that Country should be ceded to Great Britain.”5

In October, 1760, at Ashtabula Creek on the shores of Lake Erie and again in

November at Fort Ponchartrain (Detroit), Croghan and Rogers had met with several

Ottawas. Croghan described an Ottawa leader at the first encounter as someone,

“Known to all the nations.”6 Detroit was then still in the hands of the French and commanded by Captain François-Marie Picoté de Belestre, but by September both

Québec and Montréal were in British hands. Young Captain Donald Campbell, who would later be killed by Indians during Pontiac’s War, was already on site. Belestre was an accommodating man who certainly saw the handwriting on the wall. Clearly so did the visiting Ottawas. At both 1760 meetings the Ottawas discussed trade and urged the

British to supply the same sorts of goods that the French had.7

Amherst formalized his no gifts policy in late 1761. Nonetheless, Johnson and

Croghan were fixated on bringing the western Indians into the British sphere of influence. For most of the year Johnson had been planning a conference at Fort Detroit.

The Detroit Treaty Conference finally went off in September 1761. Johnson began the

5Croghan to Johnson, January 13, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:302.

6Dowd, War Under Heaven, 56.

7Ibid., 56-58. Dowd hints that the Ottawa party which “boldly” approached Croghan and Rogers at Ashtabula Creek (modern Ohio near the Pennsylvania border) was motivated to seek peace only after having heard the news from Montreal. Croghan’s and Rogers’s party had been battered by a wild Lake Erie storm, and had only paused at Ashtabula to regain their strength. An interesting speculation is what might have happened had Montreal not yet fallen to the British.

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conference on September ninth; Croghan, Detroit Commander Campbell and other

British officers attended.8 Sachems and warriors represented a number of Indian nations: Ottawas, Wyandottes, Chippewas, Saguenays, Kickapoos, Potawatomies,

Miamis, (Ohio) Delawares, Shawnees and Hurons.9

Croghan’s Mohawk father-in-law Nikus Hance presented the position of Great

Britain and the Iroquois. On the eleventh the Chippewas were first to assure Johnson of a mutual “friendly disposition,” but on the fifteenth the Hurons sidestepped the issue in a private session with Johnson. With Pontiac clearly in mind he admonished them to avoid, “. . . evil minded people or their wicked schemes, and . . . quarreling with the

English.” They thanked him for his advice and left; he gave them a small present.

Despite Pontiac’s leadership and warrior reputation, Johnson rightly believed the

Hurons to be the true leaders of the so-called “Ottawa Confederacy.” So he boldly stopped by their village on the way home. He took along only Croghan and two relatives, son John and nephew Guy. There Ana’ia’sa’, the Huron speaker laid out the principal issue:

Brother You know that the greater part of our warriors agreeable to the request made to [us] last year by Mr. Croghan are gone to war against the Cherokees for which reason we beg you will have pity on them, as when they return home they will

8During this era Fort Detroit was commanded by two men named Campbell, Captain Donald and Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell. Apparently they were not related. Donald was killed by the Indians while John went on to serve the Crown as Indian agent for Quebec during the American Revolution.

9Guy Johnson, “Conference Minutes,” Detroit, September 9-16, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:473- 495. Guy Johnson omitted Hurons in the official accounting but he did include Wyandottes. Possibly Guy Johnson used the term Wyandotte for the more generic “Wendot;” however, Hurons were present at Detroit and hosted the subsequent rump session with Johnson.

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be quite naked; we likewise pray that you will not omit anything for our service [and] that the great man who governs all, will not forget us, that you will order our guns [and] hatchets to be mended for us [and] also procure us some hoes for our corn of which we stand in as much need as of anything else. This is the earnest request of all the nations hereabouts, and we beg that as we shall for the future deserve it, we may meet with the same favors [and] indulgences as those nations of Indians do, who live in your neighborhood, to whose good usage we are not Strangers. Gave six strings.10

As with many Indian narrators Ana’ia’sa’ nuanced his message in this case by including the phrase “to be mended” in the same breath as “guns and hatchets.” There was no question he implied resupply of guns and ammunition inasmuch as the war with the southern Indians still continued. After he gave the six strings Ana’ia’sa’ paused, then gave the small British group three belts, a greater honor than the six strings. He took pains to specify that one of the belts was for “. . . our Brethren the Shawnees,” noting that the Hurons desired their friendship, “. . . as you have recommended to us.”11

“You” in the preceding statement clearly implied Croghan as none of the three Johnsons had ever worked in the west and Croghan’s bridge between the Iroquois and the western Indians was the Shawnees. Over the years, despite his loss of face at home with some Pennsylvania settlers over his cozy relationship with the Shawnees, Croghan had successfully turned the bellicose Indian nation into a sort-of “Switzerland” with characteristics much like the modern European state: loose affiliation with the powers-

10Ibid., 487, 496-497. During the earlier Detroit conference Meca’tepilesis, Speaker for the Ottawas, had also mentioned Croghan.

11Ibid., 497.

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that-be; officially neutral; a conduit for diplomatic exchange between enemies, and armed to the teeth.12

Thanking Johnson for the presents and adding that all the nations around Detroit were “charmed” by his “discourse,” Ana’ia’sa’ concluded:

We entreat you will on your part consider what hath passed, and live peaceably with us, [and] recommend tranquility to both the troops and Inhabitants of this place, whereby we shall look upon them as true Brethren, [and] form one heart and one body together, [and] that when any trifling crime may be committed contrary to the present agreement, by any ignorant, ill-disposed and ungovernable person, we beg you not to look upon it either as an act authorized, or approved of by any of our nations, or as a thing agreeable to us in general, but that we may together enjoy the blessings of the present peace and union without any differences or interruption whatsoever — Gave a large belt.13

Johnson thanked the Hurons for the belts including the one for the Shawnees. He told them he would have Croghan deliver hoes for planting and a smith to repair metal objects but otherwise telegraphed Amherst’s “no presents” policy disguising it as an issue to be decided by the traders:

With regard to the credit which you desire of the traders it is absolutely out of my power to satisfy you, as all English subjects are free, [and] cannot be compelled to sell their goods without receiving value for the same unless they themselves [choose] it, so that it must entirely depend on their inclinations.14

12The author is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer who spent part of his later, private-sector career as a PricewaterhouseCoopers Director in Switzerland where the government had privatized obsolete mountain caverns for use as commercial, high-security data centers. Every male Swiss citizen between the ages of 16 and 46 is required to carry a weapon. One Swiss partner of the firm served as a tank commander. All Swiss military aircraft hangars are hardened mountain sites, and every site has fully redundant power and telecommunications links as well as a number of years’ supplies to support several hundred people.

13G. Johnson, Detroit, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:497.

14Ibid., 498.

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The rump conference at the Huron village ended on September eighteenth. In its final session Johnson informed the Hurons that through Croghan he would instruct the local commanders on maintaining peace with the Indians. For their part the Hurons expressed a desire to cooperate to maintain peace with the King and the General and,

“. . . to live in amity with the Mohawks [meaning the Iroquois as represented by the

Mohawk Nikus].”15 However, they either missed the nuances about compulsion of traders in Johnson’s final speech, or – more likely – kept their own counsel. Ironically

Ana’ia’sa’’s earlier phrase “guns and hatchets to be mended” [italics mine] had given

Johnson the opening he needed to dodge the issue.

On the surface the 1761 Detroit Treaty Conference seemed to be a success.

Generally all the western Indians would, for the moment, bury the hatchet.

Nonetheless, Ana’ia’sa’ had, if somewhat ambiguously, telegraphed what needed to happen to keep the peace: supply arms as well as the agricultural tools and the smith.

This was not about to occur on Amherst’s watch. Even before the conference His

Excellency had lit into Johnson for the Detroit Conference’s scope of presents and tightened the grip on the ability of Croghan, Campbell and others to do the same.16

Moreover Amherst would still be in charge for two more years. As the flow of Indian

“presents” in actuality military and agricultural supplies declined to a trickle, the

15G. Johnson, Detroit, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:500.

16Amherst to Johnson, May 7, 1761, in Johnson, Papers, 3:387-388. Amherst reluctantly agreed to send goods for the Indians, “. . . leaving out . . .scalping knives, razors, tomahawks, gunpowder, fowling pieces and rum.” 263

western Indians again picked up the hatchet. The euphoria of Detroit, 1761, would be short-lived.

From Amherst to Gage

During the final years of the French and Indian War – when everything was going

Britain’s way; when William Pitt so exuberantly declared 1759 Britain’s Annus Mirabilis

– Jeffery Amherst looked in his New York mirror and saw Marlborough. Yet now that the war had ended Amherst’s mirror reflected nothing but Pontiac. The Francophile warrior had stirred up Amherst’s world from Michilimackinac in Northern Michigan to

Carlisle in Central Pennsylvania. In the northwest Pontiac was egged on by French partisans. In Pennsylvania Delaware and Shawnee war parties encouraged by Pontiac’s successes besieged frontier settlements from Tioga to the Maryland border, refugees from which overwhelmed British forts along the Cumberland and Susquehanna valleys.

In Canada Thomas Gage’s mirror reflected a different story. In it Gage saw a lucky man. Unlike Amherst, Gage was the second son of a peer; after his first-born brother had inherited the title and was seated in the House of Lords, young Thomas joined the British Army. He was twenty. Gradually working his way up the British

Army’s ranks Gage survived battles in Flanders in the War of the Austrian Succession, at

Culloden during the Jacobite Rebellion, on the Monongahela River as Braddock’s vanguard, and again in the forefront of Abercrombie’s calamitous assault of the high stone ramparts of Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga). In both these last engagements Gage was wounded. Somehow in the same year as the Fort Carillon debacle Gage found time to

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woo the stunning Margaret Kemble, progeny of a wealthy English-Dutch family of New

Jersey and New York.17 The happy couple eventually had eight children.

As a Colonel and later a brevetted Brigadier Gage had served under Amherst and

Wolfe at Quebec where he funded his own unit the 80th Regiment of Light-Armed Foot.

Gage intended the 80th to be manned by Americans and to incorporate Major Robert

Rogers’s more famous “Rogers Rangers” into the British regular army. 18 Rogers had other ideas. Despite his being a mid-level officer, Rogers’ unit continued on as an irregular but highly effective British force. As a result the two units competed for

American recruits. The better men signed on with Rogers partly because rangers received more pay than infantrymen and partly because Rogers’ Rangers already had the panache that the 80th sought. Meanwhile Gage’s “light infantrymen” – effectively performing the same tasks as rangers – received the same pay as ordinary infantrymen while facing considerably greater risk. The ranks of the 80th soon attracted a disproportionate number of America’s underclass. Croghan, Bouquet, and Rogers would

17David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 96. In his seminal book on the events of the 18-19 April 1775 Fischer includes the old story that Margaret Kemble Gage was a Patriot spy, adding that this accusation is, “ . . . highly probable, though far from certain,” and that her handler (in modern espionage vernacular) was Dr. Joseph Warren. Warren and Gage figuratively if not actually stood against each other at Bunker Hill. Britain’s pyrrhic victory there cost Gage his job in North America. Curiously Gage had shipped his wife off to England even before Bunker Hill. Equally incongruously, her American-born brother served as a British Officer during the Revolution.

18John Alden, A History of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 48. Some historians believe Gage paid for the 80th to “buy” his Colonelcy, but he had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1751 on the merits of his service. The battle for Quebec occurred eight years later, a fairly normal amount of time for a Lieutenant Colonel to attain a merit promotion to Colonel without “buying” one. Meanwhile, the 80th achieved limited success during Pontiac’s War, but by that time Gage had moved up.

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be among the major players in the newly-acquired Ohio and Illinois countries after

Gage’s accession to Commander-in-Chief.

Pontiac’s War

Croghan had issued his war warning in December 1762. In spring Pontiac attacked Fort Detroit, but the Ottawa leader’s plan for seizing the British fort fizzled when intelligence gave local commander Major Henry Gladwin the upper hand. Thus began Pontiac’s long siege of Fort Detroit, the Ottawa leader’s predicated sudden victory having dissolved into a stalemate. The British fort was supplied and defended by its fledgling Lake Erie navy. Nonetheless, Pontiac’s War continued elsewhere without him. By summer loosely coordinated attacks by western Indians had reduced five British forts, among them Michilimackinac taken by clever Indian subterfuge disguised as a harmless lacrosse game. Like Detroit, Fort Niagara did not fall to the Indians who then took to raiding supply lines and harassing neighboring settlements. In several cases

British troops were slaughtered; these attacks took on ominous names which lurked in

American minds well after the Revolution: Bloody Run, a massacre of reinforcements led by Pontiac outside Fort Detroit; Devil’s Hole, a massacre of a British supply train outside

Fort Niagara.

War returned to the Pennsylvania frontier. Along the Allegheny Senecas seized

Forts Le Beouf and Venango where twenty years earlier George Croghan’s trading career had begun. Disaffected Delawares and Shawnees joined Anishinabeg war parties sweeping east across the Alleghenies and threatening long-established British frontier outposts at Carlisle and Shippensburg. Only Bouquet’s unexpected victory at Bushy Run 266

in August turned the tide in Britain’s favor, but not before many harvest-laden fields had been torched and settlers chased off or murdered.19

Thomas Gage’s late 1763 accession to Commander-in-Chief came as a much- needed relief for British North American officials, soldiers, and citizens. Gage was more a diplomat than a general; this trait alone set him apart from the imperious Amherst.20

Generalship was no longer needed so London thought; the big war was over. Unlike

Amherst, Gage recognized his weaknesses. He was a good judge of his subordinates and a savvy delegator, as his retention of Bouquet in western Pennsylvania and his 1764 appointment of Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell at Fort Detroit would show. As for

Britons in the colonies the hated Amherst was gone. Captain Simeon Ecuyer spoke for most British officers when he wrote his friend and commanding officer Bouquet, “What universal cries of joy and what bumpers of Madeira are drunk to his prompt departure.”21

For the western Indians, Gage mattered little; he was just another British general. The peace with France was more unsettling for them than the war had been.

They greatly feared that the British lust for land would far eclipse any experiences they

19Dowd, War Under Heaven, 445-446.

20This difference undid him when the American Revolution erupted twelve years later. Gage neither anticipated Colonial reaction to the Intolerable Acts, nor accepted that his American-born wife Margaret Kemble Gage was probably a Patriot spy. Despite the fact that Gage was involved with planning the British break-out from Boston, General William Howe and not Gage was the senior British officer during the battle at Bunker Hill. Nonetheless, London hung the pyrrhic victory on Gage and sent him home.

21Wainwright, Diplomat, 202 n5, second citation.

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had had with the French. The farther west one went the more intense native concerns grew. In the east for generations the Iroquois had successfully dealt with Great Britain diplomatically. With a few exceptions during the war just ended – a 1755 visit to

Montreal by three of the six nations, and the unfaithful Senecas in the west – the

Iroquois played ball with London.22 The League knew that Great Britain placed value on land, but they took solace in their long-standing position that only they could treat with

Britain for its transfer. The French meanwhile had been almost exclusively interested in trade. In the early days the Montagnais encouraged French development along the

Saint Lawrence partly because the French included them and did not promote mass settlements. Further, the geography and weather of La Nouvelle France did little to encourage agricultural development.

If any two Indian nations best represented opposing native positions over this 150 year period, both diplomatically and geographically they would have been the Mohawks and Ottawas. Like the French the Ottawas were traders skimming around the Great

Lakes in fast canoes trading with other Algonquian Indians and Europeans alike. They had a business-based kinship with the early French traders and accepted the Jesuits’ presence if not wholly embracing their religious teachings. Nonetheless, they were fierce warriors, and they liked the French who did not discourage their independence.

Meanwhile the Mohawks became expert in the use of firearms which the Dutch sold

22Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 146-147. Shannon discusses the 1755 Montreal visit and Johnson’s reaction to it. During the war the Iroquois League sought to keep a diplomatic path to New France open while Johnson wanted it shut off.

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them after their initial encounters with Champlain’s arquebuses. By the mid-1700s the

Mohawks were battle-hardened, fiercely loyal to the British Crown and thanks to Sir

William all but integrated within British forces in North America.

Indian nations in the Ohio and Illinois territories found themselves caught in the middle. Only after 1763 was their land considered part of the British Empire, and even the Iroquois understood that the British meant to take it for themselves. The tenuous thread between west and east woven by Croghan, the Shawnees and the Mohawks over the preceding twenty years was unravelling.

By the time Gage assumed command in North America Pontiac’s War was in full flame, sparked in large part by Amherst’s “no gifts policy” now entering its third year.

Gage’s long-standing relationships with Johnson and Croghan were unquestionably positive and would prove an asset in the coming troubled times for the two Indian agents. Nonetheless, the new Commander-in-Chief was now the man in the big chair, and he soon discovered that many of Amherst’s policies originated in London.23 The

British wanted an empire to be sure, but they wanted it inexpensively. During the war prices had risen dramatically but now that the war was over there followed a, “. . . short but painful period of price deflation and economic depression.”24

23Ward, Backcountry, 212.

24David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 135.

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British Peace Initiative

In the summer of 1764 Colonel John Bradstreet led an abortive expedition from

New York to the Illinois Country which accomplished little and managed to aggravate nearly everyone in British North American leadership. Gregory Evans Dowd astutely describes Bradstreet as confusing objectives with options, picking and choosing those which seemed easier to accomplish.25 Bradstreet’s expedition met with some positive reaction from Pontiac’s forces, but Johnson – an architect of Bradstreet’s mission – had intended it less as a peace mission to the Anishinabeg than a demonstration to the truculent Shawnees and Delawares that the Iroquois were still boss. Bradstreet was well aware that Bouquet was to begin a simultaneous westward movement from

Pennsylvania. The two forces were to trap the Shawnees and Ohio Delawares in a pincer movement near the Scioto River. Bradstreet astonishingly abandoned this objective altogether, choosing instead to hold a peace conference at L’Anse aux Feuilles on the south shore of Lake Erie. No Anishinabeg nations attended although some local

Wyandottes did. More to the point Shawnees and Delawares did attend. Verbally invoking Gage’s authority Bradstreet unilaterally arranged a peace with the attending

Indians including an in situ fort-building limitation on Great Britain, an opaque future prisoner exchange and a promise to halt Bouquet’s southern expedition. (Bouquet was more or less already underway and he was the senior officer.) No one in New York or

Fort Pitt wanted peace at any price with the Ohio Indians; after the outrages in

25Dowd, War Under Heaven, 155.

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Pennsylvania they wanted blood. Gage in particular was furious. He voided Bradstreet’s

L’Anse aux Feuilles “treaty” and energized Bouquet’s expedition. Meanwhile, Croghan was still in London and Pontiac was encamped on the Maumee in Illinois; both missed all the excitement.26

Bouquet’s expedition did in fact invest the Shawnees in their home country later that year. Nonetheless, Bradstreet’s unauthorized peace made Bouquet’s task more difficult for two reasons. First there would be no compelling military victory as envisioned in the planned pincer attack which would have closed off an Indian retreat to the northwest. Second the Ohio Indians were understandably confused that a man of

Bradstreet’s stature could offer peace in Gage’s name and have it rescinded straightaway by the same general. Bouquet’s expedition is depicted in Map 7-1, drawn by Thomas Hutchins who accompanied the expedition.

26Ibid., 155-158. 271

Map 7-1: Thomas Hutchins, A Topographical Plan of that Part of the Indian Country through which the Army under the Command of Colonel Bouquet Marched in the Year 1764, William Clements Library, University of Michigan.27

27Thomas Hutchins, A Topographical Plan of that Part of the Indian Country through which the Army under the Command of Colonel Bouquet Marched in the Year 1764, used by permission, William Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

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A primary mission of both Bradstreet’s and Bouquet’s expeditions was the return of British captives. Bouquet, reinvigorated by Gage’s denunciation of Bradstreet, left

Fort Pitt in the fall with a reinforced troop for Shawnee territory.28 Despite Gage’s orders to craft a tough peace with the Shawnees and Delawares or “extirpate” them,

Bouquet knew that his enemy was strong and that Bradstreet had weakened his bargaining power. The battle-hardened Swiss mercenary astutely opted to treat with the Indian nations separately. By bateaux he positioned his army near the mouth of the

Muskingum River, and on the third of October moved into the Muskingum Valley.

Leveraging his impressive eleven-hundred-man force, he first met with the renegade

Mingo Senecas, technically part of the Iroquois League. Seneca Chief Kiashuta agreed to return eighteen British captives. About a week later in a parlay with Delaware Chief

Custaloga, Bouquet received another forty-two.29 The divide-and-conquer plan backed up by Bouquet’s sizeable force seemed to be working, but the Shawnees were next.30

Not so easily cowed, the Shawnees agreed to meet but only on their terms: in their villages downstream and in November. Bouquet was acutely aware that his force was already over-extended geographically and logistically. Winter was coming on. On

28Steele, Captives, 341. Steele cites Moravian Ohio Valley missionary ’s observation that Bouquet was annoyed about Croghan’s London trip, having expected him to accompany the expedition. Zeisberger wrote that Bouquet went so far as to suggest that Croghan had gone to London to avoid service with the expedition. Zeisberger’s journals are a respected source of the period and his observations about Bouquet are likely accurate. However, Bouquet’s assertion that Croghan was in London to avoid service is at once absurd and pathetic given the proficiency in the west of both men.

29Dowd, War Under Heaven, 164.

30By contrast Braddock’s 1755 force at Fort Duquesne numbered only five hundred more, at the time the largest European army ever deployed in North America.

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November seventh a British soldier was killed outside the perimeter. Bouquet got wind of a fresh supply of ammunition sent to the lower Ohio Valley Shawnees by the French in Illinois. Colonel Henry Bouquet was probably the best “general” the British ever had in the west.31 He detected pending disaster as equally as victory. He demanded a meeting with the Shawnees who did so in Dowd’s words “only enough to be rid of

[him]”.32 The Shawnees committed to return forty captives then and ninety later, provided Virginia sent representatives to their villages to escort them home.

In December 1764 Johnson wrote a lengthy report to Gage. Lauding Bouquet’s successes in the “enemy’s country” he told Gage he wanted the Iroquois in the Ohio

Valley to go home. Adding that he needed the cooperation of the Miamis against

Pontiac, he emphasized the need for Croghan to participate in any peace discussions because of his influence with the Shawnees and Delawares and, “. . . even the

Twightwees [Miamis].” By now Croghan was back from London. Johnson also proposed to have him, “. . . bring over Pontiac . . . in the winter, which I am persuaded he could easily do, and acquaint the Indians with His Majesty’s desire for trade and garrisoning forts for security.” He added that delay would only serve to allow the French to, “. . . stir up the Indians again in the spring.” Johnson closed his letter citing his own

31Bouquet, a Swiss mercenary, believed that his colonelcy was his last promotion. However, he was later promoted to Brigadier but transferred to western Florida. There he died of yellow fever at the age of 46 in 1765, a great loss to Britain’s military leadership in North America.

32Dowd, War Under Heaven, 167.

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considerable pleasure that the King had made Gage’s appointment permanent. “[B]e assured that no person can have more satisfaction at your appointment than myself.”33

A month later Bouquet wrote Johnson that he had seen Croghan in Philadelphia.

Bouquet indicated he believed that Croghan would keep the Shawnees and Delawares

“firm in their commitments” to the British, but observed that Croghan would be further delayed by heavy snow. Johnson wrote Gage two weeks later about this suggesting that in the interim the commander at Fort Detroit Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell might persuade Pontiac to come to a conference at Detroit.34

Croghan was back in the west by spring. In March he wrote in his journal that six

Senecas from Shawnee towns had reported to him that they and the Delawares had gone, “. . . to Illinois to Council with the French who had clothed them and promised supplies needed to carry on the war against the English.” Nonetheless, upon their return to Fort Pitt the Ohio Delawares had reassured Bouquet that they would abide by their agreement with him, “. . . provided the English would open a free trade and intercourse with them, and supply them with ammunition, goods and rum and not prohibit the sale of powder and liquors as they had done before.”35

33Johnson to Gage, December 18, 1764, in Johnson, Papers, 4:623-626.

34Henry Bouquet to Johnson, January 25, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:640-641; Johnson to Gage, February 14, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:646.

35George Croghan, “Journal to the Illinois Country Anno 1764-March 1, 1765,” in Etting Papers, Box 55, Folder 12.

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The order for no ammunition sales or presents to Indians was a holdover from

Amherst which Gage was at liberty to change, but the prohibition against liquor was an on-again-off-again issue for Indian agents. Despite his reputation for a good time, on several occasions Croghan issued his own prohibitions against liquor sales to Indians.

The best example of Croghan’s split personality regarding liquor had been at Aughwick in late 1754 when in his capacity as Cumberland County Commissioner he posted a prohibition against whisky agents selling to Indians, while allowing a keg a month to be distributed to them from his own supplies “for a frolic.”36

In March 1765 the new Fort Pitt Commander Major William Murray informed

Gage that he had unilaterally approved provisioning Indians on “Mr. Croghan’s signature” despite no authorization from Bouquet. The lash of Amherst evidently could still be felt on the frontier because Murray added, “. . . I should be glad to know Your

Excellency’s [meaning Gage’s] pleasure that I may act according[ly] as well . . . after

[Croghan’s] departure.”37

In a letter to Gage mainly concerning an attack on one of Croghan’s British supply trains by anti-Indian settlers known as the “Brave Fellows,” Croghan amplified

Murray’s situation as regards the Indian traders. “Major Murray,” he advised the

36Wainwright, Diplomat, 78.

37William Murray to Gage, March 3, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:31. Bouquet had been sent to fight in the south, where he later died. The gradual decrease of Fort Pitt’s importance to Great Britain is reflected in the ranks of its commanders. Stanwix the last French and Indian War commander was a general. Bouquet was a Colonel; Murray a lowly Major.

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Commander in Chief, “. . . has no instructions as to how to deal with the traders, as the support of their families depends on trade.”38

By spring 1765 Croghan was back at Fort Pitt. He sent a message to Shawnee,

Ohio Delaware, Mingo Seneca, and Sandusky chiefs to come to Fort Pitt for conference regarding the return of captives. 39 Little by little the Indians came bringing captives with them. The Shawnees led by Lawoughqua arrived last on May tenth, crossing the

Allegheny in a tour de force, beating drums and singing songs. They brought forty-two captives and agreed to all of Bouquet’s terms. In a pointed reference to Great Britain’s obligations to its newest Indian subjects, upon arrival at Fort Pitt Lawoughqua addressed Croghan directly. “It gave us great satisfaction to be called the Children of the great King of England, it convinces us that your intentions toward us are upright, as we know a Father will be tender to his children, and they more ready to obey him than a

Brother.”40

By May, 1765, the Swiss Colonel’s relatively bloodless expedition had recovered

278 captives. Bouquet lost only the man murdered after wandering beyond the camp perimeter. In New York Gage expressed great satisfaction with Bouquet’s expedition claiming British “mastery” of the Ohio. By contrast to Bradstreet’s debacle at L’Anse aux

38Croghan to Gage, March 12, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:33; Dowd, War Under Heaven, 265. Dowd points out that this raid is often erroneously credited to the Black Boys, a similar group of settler vigilantes.

39Steele, Captives, 336-337. All came but not before they had inquired about Quaker participation which Steel claims “was refused.”

40Ward, Backcounty, 252.

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Feuilles, it was a great British success. Nonetheless, while Bouquet may have subdued the Mingos and Delawares, regardless what Gage believed his best field commander in the west had not entirely mastered the Shawnees.41

Croghan finally caught up with the western Indians. In the wake of a report that an itinerant French trader had told a Miami village the “. . .King of France, their father, had sent . . . goods from New Orleans to supply his children the Indians in this country and [would ] send them more next year,” Croghan read them the riot act. He said he had been sent there two months ago by Johnson and Gage, and that the Indians’ delays had obliged him to stay thirty days longer than he had expected. He reminded them of a promise they had made to Bouquet to send chiefs to treat with Johnson, observing that they had sent only “one man . . . not a chief.” This conduct, Croghan snapped, had given, “. . . all English a suspicion of your sincerity.” He went on. “[Gage] wants proper deputies sent to Sir William immediately,” adding that only after then would they receive the free trade they sought. Croghan then ticked off the results of the past decade which the Indians had apparently missed: the King of Great Britain had conquered the French; all the French forts and settlements in [their] country had been conquered; French troops were to be sent home; French planters will become subjects of the King of Great Britain, and all the nations of Indians to the sun setting are now under the protection of the King of Great Britain. Softening his tone somewhat,

Croghan added that he would now proceed to visit all the Indians in the Illinois Country

41Dowd, War Under Heaven, 163-167.

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to offer the King’s friendship, adding somewhat pointedly, “. . . as he is now become your Father.” He asked all those attending (Shawnees, Delawares, Sanduskies, Miamis and Senecas) to assist him in this endeavor. Then he delivered two belts.42

Croghan’s excursion to the Illinois territory was no vacation. Pontiac was still active in the countryside, although his earlier fervor had diminished. In June while

Croghan was on the Wabash eighty hostile Indians attacked his party, killing two Britons and three Shawnees including a chief and wounding Croghan in the head. Croghan wise-cracked in a letter to Murray, “I got the stroke of a hatchet on the head, but my skull being pretty thick the hatchet would not enter, so you see a thick skull is of service on some occasions.” He went on to suggest that this incident, “. . . could be the best thing that could have happened to the English interests,” because the French had been

“cock sure” the Delawares and Shawnees would never make peace with Britain.43 This incident demonstrated that they indeed remained allies. The attackers were Kickapoos and Musquattamies. Croghan returned to Shawneetown and requested some Shawnee chiefs accompany him back to the area of the attack to support him. They agreed but also sent an accompanying war party.44

The report of all this excitement on the Wabash eventually reached the French as well. In a letter from Port Vincent to Baptiste Campeau, J. Capucin reported the

42George Croghan, “Journal, May 9, 1765,” in Etting Papers, Box 55:Folder 12.

43Croghan to Johnson, July 12, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41.

44John Reid to Gage, July 30, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:40

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attack on Croghan and his party. Capucin wrote that Croghan lost two of his men and three Indians, and that everyone else had been captured. Paradoxically Capucin also suggested that Croghan’s arrival had been “greatly anticipated” and that he Capucin expected Croghan, “. . . would have better results than the others.”45 Capucin was more prescient than he knew. In a subsequent meeting Croghan’s attackers – no doubt intimidated by his Shawnee war party – gave him five pipes of peace and begged him to intercede to prevent war between them and the Shawnees, Delawares and, most significantly, Iroquois. More importantly the Indians who attacked Croghan agreed to provide safe conduct for British troops enroute from Fort Pitt to the Illinois.46

At the end of the previous year, Gage had delivered standing orders to

Lieutenant Alexander Fraser, Croghan’s military travelling companion, stipulating how the two should deal with the French commanders along the Mississippi. In specific they were to direct Monsieur Saint Ange the holdover French commander at Fort Chartres to assemble local leaders and Indians and instruct them to render assistance as befits nations who are, “. . . in peace and understanding”.47

Croghan’s activities in the west did not end with Johnson’s Northern Department.

In August 1765 Croghan, now more or less recovered from the hatchet wound, joined

45J. Capucin to Baptiste Campeau, June 7, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:762 n4.

46Croghan to Murray, July 12, 1765, Gage AS, Vol. 39; Steele, Captives, 304. Steele, no friend to Croghan, acerbically suggests that Croghan ransomed himself with sixty-four gallons of rum, and only afterward did St. Ange order his release.

47Gage to Croghan and Lt. Alex. Fraser, December 30, 1764, Gage Papers, AS:29

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Pierce Sinott, a Deputy of Southern Superintendent John Stuart, in an Indian conference at Kaskaskia along the Mississippi. Sinott’s conference had begun in July while Croghan was still on the Wabash.48 Sinott confided in Croghan that although French Captain La

Gautrais from New Orleans had joined the group the French officer, “. . . has not as yet been able to accomplish anything.”49 Croghan had with him a copy of Gage’s instructions to Fraser urging that the matter of post-war collaboration be brought to the attention of Saint Ange at Fort Chartres but not specifically to La Gautrais. Fraser meanwhile had set off ahead of Croghan into the northern Illinois territory and was feared lost.50 The Indians had captured Fraser, but apparently re-associated him with

Croghan while both were captives because both men later claimed that Fraser had been treated worse than Croghan. Fraser also maintained that Pontiac was among the captors.51 Sinott was very ill at this time, lapsing in and out of delirium as reflected in his subsequent letter to Croghan in which he thanked him for coming, wished him luck

48Croghan to Murray, July 12, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:39.

49P. A. Sinott to Croghan, June 14, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41

50Johnson to Cadwallader Colden, June 20, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:774. Johnson was restating to the Governor what Croghan had reported a few days earlier, but later corrected.

51Reid to Gage, August 2, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:40. Reid was at Fort Pitt gathering intelligence for Gage; he attached letters from Croghan to McKee and Fraser to Murray with his letter to Gage. The same location in Gage AS, Vol. 40 includes all three letters. Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell, Commander at Fort Detroit, confirmed much the same in a short letter to Johnson. See: Campbell to Johnson, July 25, 1765, Gage Papers AS:41.

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with Pontiac and advised, “Be cautious what you commit to paper and whom you trust.”52

Croghan cannot have been feeling altogether remarkable himself. There is no record of his bringing Gage’s instructions to La Gautrais’ attention. Nonetheless Sinott and a different French officer from New Orleans took Croghan to Port Vincent where some Piankashaws recognized him.53 The Piankashaws told Croghan’s attackers they had been wrong to strike him. As a result of this Croghan reported to Johnson that the

Piankashaws and Ouiatenons, along with his attackers the Kickapoos and

Musquattamies, were now aligned with the British.54

By the end of the year former French territory along the Mississippi was firmly controlled by the British. The new British commander Captain Thomas Sterling arrived at Fort Chartres; according to Croghan he was, “. . . received with open arms by the natives.” In this same letter to Johnson, Croghan depicted the river as a valuable route for communication with Canada and agreed with the local French who claimed the area

52P. A. Sinott to Croghan, June 14, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41. Sinott may have been suffering from malaria, as the handwriting at this letter’s end is almost unreadable. Croghan later caught malaria himself in this same region.

53The Piankashaws were one of the Indian nations with which Croghan had ratified the unauthorized treaty on behalf of Pennsylvania at Pickawillany in 1751. Memeskia the Miami leader killed by Langlade in 1752 was also a Piankashaw by birth.

54Croghan to Johnson, July 12, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41. The Musquattamies are also known as the Muskwaki or Sac and Fox Nation. They are the “yellow earth people” as distinguished from the Fox “red earth people.” All are Algonquian speakers. See: Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, History of the Tribe, (Reserve, KS: Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, 2015), accessed February 17, 2015, http://www.sacandfoxks.com/sacfox.nsf/ContentPage.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=EC854C 1650666A8B862576950079CFE2.

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around the fort was the “. . . granary of Louisiana.” Croghan also observed that Fort

Chartres might serve as the center among four powerful Indian confederacies which he described as the western and Six Nations to the north, and the southern and the

Mississippi nations plus several lesser nations in the southwest.55 As for Sinott’s conference, Croghan reported to Johnson that he had learned from the Indians that at it

Sinott and the French had great difficulties, but as Johnson will, “. . . no doubt be informed of their transactions [I] will say nothing here.” 56

Mirroring the Kickapoos’ and Musquattamies’ five-pipe peace offering in the same letter, Croghan added that the Great Lakes Nations had been receiving presents from the French but remained fearful of a war with the Six Nations. He also raised a concern that the Miamis felt neglected by the British, but added that a Ouiatenon chief would try to reconcile them.

Apparently Saint Ange did eventually reach out to the British, but his approach bore little relevance to either Gage or King George. Via messenger Saint Ange informed

Croghan that Pontiac wanted to see him. Croghan met with Pontiac three times at his camp on the . Former Detroit Major Henry Gladwin had disrespected the western Indians’ calumet in a previous meeting, about which Pontiac reminded

Croghan. Croghan retrieved the calumet from Pontiac, and personally carried it to

Johnson who used it – with appropriate respect – in a later conference with the western

55Croghan to Johnson, December 27, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:886-889.

56Croghan to Johnson, July 12, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41.

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Indians.57 In his July letter to Johnson Croghan had alluded to both his own and the

Ottawa leader’s influence. Pontiac, Croghan told Sir William, holds great sway among the nations, adding that Pontiac’s message indicated, “. . . if he liked what I say, he would do everything in his power to reconcile all Nations to the English.” Continuing on

Croghan noted, “As [Pontiac] is an acquaintance of mine, I hope I should be able to settle matters with him on a good footing.” Mentioning that the Indians who attacked him had sent four pipes to intercede on their behalf with the Iroquois, Croghan ended on a note of Irish wisdom. “This incident [the attack on the Wabash] has brought these

Nations to a conciliation through necessity better than three times the quantity of goods given in presents”.58

The incident also propelled Croghan into a higher sphere of recognition within the British hierarchy. Various sources began referring to him as “Colonel” Croghan, an appellation which stuck for the rest of his life.59 Regardless of Croghan’s burgeoning success in the west, Gage and Johnson remained frustrated by the silence from London about Johnson’s plan for expanding his department, which Croghan had presented to the Lords of Trade a year and a half earlier. In August while the Kickapoos were attacking Croghan, in a fiery letter to Gage Johnson attacked the House of Commons.

57Dowd, War Under Heaven, 228-231. The calumet was a peace pipe of special significance, created for a specific peace initiative. For an excellent discussion of its historical importance see White, Middle Ground, 20-23.

58Croghan to Johnson, July 12, 1765. Gage Papers, AS:41.

59Johnson Calendar Notes, October 27 and 30, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:860-862.

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After Commons deferred appropriations for his requested expansion of the Indian

Department, the irate Johnson told Gage what he already knew. The Lords of Trade and His Majesty clearly approved, Johnson averred, so there should be, “. . . little reason to think it would meet with opposition from the House.” He added a more casually worded comment unlike any he might have sent Amherst. Sir William told Gage,

“[George Croghan] has his hands full.”60

In September, 1765, Gage brought Johnson up to date. Gage responded that he believed the issue was about funding not appropriations per se, noting that, “. . . interpreters, smiths and deputies have at all times been allowed; there is no novelty in those offices, and they certainly must go on.” Nonetheless Gage cautioned Johnson, in words reflecting the general’s confidence in his former Indian scout, that British North

American leaders could not take measures regarding the western Indians until they heard from both Croghan and Campbell, adding somewhat tongue-in-cheek,

“Lieutenant Colonel Campbell is in no doubt what treatment he should give if they come to [Fort Detroit].”61 Johnson replied in an upbeat letter two weeks later citing Croghan’s progress with Pontiac and in the Great Lakes generally. Nevertheless, he emphasized the need for “proper persons at all the outposts” to ensure peace with the western

60Johnson to Gage, August 15, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41.

61Gage to Johnson, September 2, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:837-838. Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell commanded Fort Detroit. Despite Gage’s remark Campbell worked closely with Croghan to affect peace in the region.

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Indians, else it will “come to nothing.” Johnson ended the letter laconically, “This I have repeatedly laid before the Government.”62

Earlier that year Murray held a conference with the Shawnees and Delawares.

Seneca chief Kiashuta and the Shawnee chief Lawoughqua more or less chaired the meeting for the Indians; Delaware chief also attended. At the close of the conference Kiashuta chided Murray and the other British officials present:

Brethren: I am going now to speak to you in behalf of all the Nations present, and those to the Sun Setting. You told us yesterday that the General, and Sir William Johnson, ordered you to assure all Nations to the Sun Setting, that if they performed their engagements we should enjoy a free trade and intercourse; I hope this comes from your heart, as you see Brethren, the Delawares, and their Children, The Shawanese, are willing to comply with everything you required of them. Now, Brethren, do not act as you have done for a year or two before those late troubles, when you prohibited the sale of powder, lead and rum. This conduct gave all Nations in this Country a suspicion that you had bad designs against them, and was contrary to your first promises when you came here to settle and build this Fort on our ground.63

Murray held a private meeting with an unnamed Englishman who had met with

Kiashuta before the conference. The source told the Fort Pitt commander that Kiashuta doubted the sincerity of both the western Indians and the British. Although the Ottawas and Pottawatomies had told the Shawnees and Delawares they had agreed peace with the English in a conference the preceding winter, “. . . it was not with hearts but lips.”

62Johnson to Gage, September 17, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:43. Johnson reported to the Board of Trade, not to the Commander-in-Chief. By “the Government” he means the Board of Trade. Amherst when he was Commander-in-Chief exercised a dubious right to control the purse. He probably got away with this because he was a Peer. Gage’s relationship with Johnson was collaborative, while Amherst’s was confrontational.

63Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, “Minutes of Indian Conference, Fort Pitt, May 10, 1765,” Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. IX (Harrisburg: Theo. Fenn & Co., 1852), 261.

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As for the British Kiashuta had said, “. . . the Shawnees would never be friends with them until an agreement was made about their country.”64

Croghan’s Victory Lap

Upon learning that they had murdered several Shawnee chiefs during their attack on Croghan, the Kickapoos and Musquattamies who had attacked him were apprehensive that the Shawnees would soon attack them. This fear was well grounded for the Shawnees’ reputation for revenge was as great among Indians as it was among

Europeans. Croghan astutely seized the moment. Five Wabash nations including the two who had attacked him agreed to align with the British. As a result Pontiac sent word that he would welcome a meeting with Croghan.65 Croghan and Pontiac knew each other from the past; Croghan accepted the invitation. Along with representatives of several other western Indian nations the two met at Ouiatenon in July. Pontiac and the other Indians agreed to permit the British to send a troop to occupy the former

French forts on the Mississippi. Great Britain sent a company of the Black Watch down the Ohio to occupy Fort Chartres; they arrived unscathed. 66

Nevertheless further north the natives were restless. From Detroit Lieutenant

Colonel Campbell wrote Gage in July that the Saint Josephs, Pottawatomies,

Ouiatenons, Ottawas and Chippewas were, “. . . much disaffected by the English,” and

64Murray to Gage, Intelligence Report, May 9, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:36.

65A measure of Croghan’s facility for expediency is reflected in this incident. Here he leveraged fear of the Shawnees, his own allies, to gain allegiance to Britain from their enemies.

66Wainwright, Diplomat, 221-222.

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threatened to renew war. Campbell reported that they had gone south to the Illinois

Territory where they received presents from the French. He believed the first strike would be at Michilimackinac. He added that he had confirmed all this from the Miamis.

He also expressed disappointment with the government for not supporting his request for a budget increase for provisions needling Gage that he, “. . . had to use a French guide as I have no funds.”67

However Croghan’s and Pontiac’s private council in July proved more fruitful than just guaranteeing the Black Watch an unopposed march to Fort Chartres. No doubt appreciating the legitimacy of Campbell’s concerns, the Anishinabe leader agreed to accompany Croghan to Fort Detroit. There in August Croghan, Campbell and Pontiac held a fortnight-long conference with ten Indian nations and over five hundred chiefs and warriors.68 In a letter to McKee, Croghan reported that the Lakes Indians along with the Shawnees and Delawares had, “. . . agreed to our taking possession of the Illinois.”

He even went so far as to wisecrack that his cozy relationship with Pontiac might, “. . . ruin his influence with his people.”69 Anishinabeg cession of Illinois to Britain enabled the establishment of forts and trading posts, but the indigenous Indians still saw the land as theirs and would require payment in exchange for its use.

67Campbell to Gage, July 25, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:40.

68Campbell to Johnson, July 25, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41. Campbell was put out because the cost of hosting this gathering was far beyond Fort Detroit’s meager budget. Nonetheless, he was among the first to congratulate Croghan on his success.

69Reid to Gage, August 24, 1765, Gage Papers, AS:41. Reid attached a copy of Croghan’s letter to McKee.

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Regardless of the Indians’ caveats, in the British Empire the reaction to Croghan’s

Detroit agreement was universal. He and Pontiac had brought an end to a bloody chapter in British-Indian affairs in North America. The shrewd Irish trader was lauded from Fort Detroit to Whitehall. Even the unbendingly critical Wainwright wrote,

“Croghan’s tour of the Indian Country had been phenomenally successful. It was probably the most notable service he ever performed.” In September Croghan took a celebratory canoe trip across Lake Erie, the Niagara portage and part of Lake Ontario to

Oswego, the heavy lifting accomplished by French voyageurs. From there he joined Sir

William Johnson at his gracious and well-lubricated estate on the Mohawk where he caught up with his recently-married Irish daughter Suzanna Prévost.70 The hatchet to the head had occurred less than four months earlier. “Johnson’s is the dream,” Timothy

Shannon suggested, “. . . that George Croghan is reaching for.”71 It would never be as close as during those heady fall days in 1765 along the Mohawk.

Pontiac’s War was now a thing of the past.72 In November, 1765, Croghan extended his victory lap to New York where he was toasted by Gage and twenty of his officers.

Gage settled an old payment dispute between Croghan and Bouquet, and Croghan

70Wainwright, Diplomat, 185, 215, 223. In 1765 Suzanna Croghan married Major Augustine Prévost, son of Major General Augustine Prévost. Prévost was stationed in Lancaster at the time. Little is known about Suzanna’s earlier life despite Wainwright’s suggestion that she died in 1790 at age forty, implying she was born well after Croghan arrived in Philadelphia. Croghan’s presumably Irish first wife is entirely mysterious, and Suzanna was likely raised by Croghan’s mother (Mrs. Thomas Ward, Suzanna’s grandmother). The Ward family appears in Diplomat at Conodoguinet, Philadelphia and Bedford. Wainwright explicitly places Suzanna in Bedford with Mrs. Ward in 1762.

71Timothy Shannon, interview by author, Gettysburg, PA, September 25, 2014.

72The treaty ending Pontiac’s War was formalized in 1766 by Johnson and Pontiac at Fort Ontario (Oswego). 289

withdrew his most recent threat to resign.73 Johnson formalized the Detroit agreement at Oswego in the following year.

Still, no one had heard yet from the Board of Trade about Johnson’s proposal, so the peace in the west was at best illusory and at worst short-lived until London did something to underwrite it. Croghan and Gage met on November fifth. On November first the notorious Stamp Act passed earlier in the year went into effect. Imposed only on the Colonies the Act’s intent was to defray the cost of troops and other officials needed in North America for defense and security including Johnson’s Indian

Department and his proposed expansion in the west under Croghan. From the comfort of a London, New York or Mohawk Valley armchair, this seemed fair and equitable.

What British officials in North America missed was the nuance that the Stamp Act, a tax on American Colonists, had been passed by a Parliament wholly lacking in American representation.74 Croghan remained in New York into the New Year. During this time he apparently met with Gage more than once. In February, 1766, he wrote Johnson describing a lengthy discussion with the general during which he laid out a proposal

73Wainwright, Diplomat, 224-225. Wainwright takes this opportunity to throw cold water on Croghan because of a dispute over payment to Baynton, Wharton and Morgan for goods from them which he provided to the Shawnees and Delawares. Wainwright would have his readers believe that Croghan deliberately misled Bouquet as to the origin of the goods, and cites this as more evidence of chicanery on Croghan’s part. If there were any crime it was that a barrel of flour containing scalping knives – likely intended for the Indians’ southern wars – was found in the shipment. Whether the goods were BW&M’s or the King’s matters little because either way they were for goods for Indians, Bouquet had authorized them and Gage – after this meeting in New York – paid them.

74Parliament-Great Britain, “The Stamp Act, March 22, 1765” The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library, 2008), accessed February 18, 2014, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/stamp_act_1765.asp.

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regarding Indian trade in the Illinois Territory. He told Gage Britain needed, “. . . a regular and uniform plan . . . to settle matters with those distant and almost unknown nations on a permanent footing.”75

In May 1766 Croghan was back on the Great Lakes. He wrote Gage directly about Captain Sterling’s observations from Fort Chartres. Sterling had told Croghan that all the villages on the Wabash were well disposed toward the British. These included the Miamis, Ouiatenons, Piankashaws, Kickapoos and Musquattamies. However, the four Fort Vincent nations which Sterling (or at least Croghan) did not name were less so.

Sterling told Croghan the French were, “. . . poisoning their minds.” In the account to

Gage he stated that Lieutenant Colonel Campbell at Fort Detroit had reported, “. . . several murders and rapes in the Great Lakes area, some perpetrated by whites, Indians and one negro.” Campbell nonetheless added that Pontiac and the Grand Sota were,

“. . . more or less keeping things under control.”76

Captain George Turnbull, stationed with the Second Battalion Royal Americans at

Fort Detroit in 1766, apparently had an extra-military connection to Gage. He frequently wrote his Commander in Chief with advice much above his pay grade, even going so far as to politely inform his immediate commanding officer Campbell after the fact that he had done so. Nonetheless, much of what Turnbull suggested made good sense, and whether Gage knew him or not he was the kind of general who considered

75Croghan to Johnson, February 14, 1766, in Croghan Papers, Folder 1.

76“Extract of Journal, Fort Pitt, May 22, 1766” in Croghan to Gage, May 26, 1766, Gage Papers, AS:51. The Grand Sota was a Chippewa chief from Michilimackinac.

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good advice from whatever quarter. In early December Turnbull advised Gage that he,

“. . . can not help agreeing with George Croghan that if [the garrisons] at the posts were always strong enough, both the French and the Indians would be very submissive.”

Pressing on with his junior officer advice Turnbull argued that Great Britain should provide a market for, “. . . corn and cattle produced by . . . the inhabitants of this settlement, as an encouragement of this kind would be a means of attaching them more firmly to us.” Even more astonishingly, Turnbull attached a letter from Croghan to

Campbell, reflecting the same general ideas.77

Stanwix

A significant, London-engineered miscalculation of the post-war period had been the 1763 Royal Proclamation. When George III signed it in October, 1763, hundreds if not thousands of settlers were already on the western side of its “Proclamation Line.”

Some ignored it. Others, particularly those Pennsylvania settlers remembering the

“outrages” of just a few years earlier, fled east decamping once again into the forts and frontier settlements east of the Alleghenies.

Even before the Royal Proclamation, Johnson and Croghan had been exploring other options. Johnson long believed that Indians better appreciated river boundaries than ridgelines or headwaters. As early as March 1763 he wrote Richard Peters suggesting that a river provided a, “. . . better boundary to prevent disputes with

77Capt. George Turnbull to Gage, December 3, 1766, Gage Papers, AS:60.

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Indians.”78 A Johnson calendar note for October 4, 1763, recorded that Croghan had previously written from Philadelphia stating he had, “. . . engaged a man to make a draft of the Colonial frontiers.”79

Almost coincident with Croghan’s and Pontiac’s 1765 peace in the west, Sir

William and his counterpart in the south John Stuart petitioned the Board of Trade to legitimize the Proclamation Line. In reality, both men wanted to correct absurdities created by the 1763 line. Moving with its usual alacrity the Board took almost three years to get back to them with its approval. Stuart finished the task first completing the

Treaty of Hard Labor in October, 1768, with the Cherokees, Catawbas and other southern Indians. “Hard Labor” created a boundary between settlers and Indians beginning at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, following the Kanawha to its headwaters, and then running due south to East Florida.80 Johnson took a while longer to complete the work in the north.

In 1768 Johnson convened the northern conference shortly after Hard Labor.

The Lords of Trade had finally approved that a new line be drawn as Johnson and

78Johnson to Peters, March 30, 1763, in Johnson, Papers, 4:76-77.

79Johnson Calendar note, October 4, 1763 re: letter from Croghan to Johnson, in Johnson, Papers, 4:212.

80United States National Park Service, 1768 Boundary Line Treaty of Fort Stanwix (Washington: United States National Park Service, 2015) under Fort Stanwix, accessed February 13, 2015, http://www.nps.gov/fost/historyculture/1768-boundary-line-treaty.htm. NPS says “Spanish” East Florida which was incorrect at the time. Spain ceded both East and to Great Britain by the 1763 Treaty of Paris.

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Croghan had proposed it in 1764. 81 Johnson nonetheless gerrymandered his own line even further west, adding the Wyoming Valley to Pennsylvania pleasing the Penns and colonial leaders but aggravating the Delawares as well as Connecticut.82 Teedyuscung, murdered five years earlier, was no longer around to champion the Delawares’ claim to the Wyoming Valley.

Sir William convened the Fort Stanwix Congress on October eighteenth, 1768.

Over three thousand Indians participated. Johnson represented New York. Virginia and

Pennsylvania sent commissioners; among those representing the latter were Peters and

Commonwealth Chief Justice William Allen who had assisted Croghan in London. New

Jersey Royal Governor came as an observer, but as the highest ranking person there he arrived in style with Johnson’s party from Sir William’s estate. Twenty bateaux of goods for the Indians arrived with Johnson and Franklin.

Despite the largess of the crown and the general exuberance of the participants, on October sixteenth two pieces of ominous news arrived. One was carried from the far west by Croghan’s old Pickawillany competitor Hugh Crawford, the other from the

81James Flexner, Mohawk Baronet: Sir William Johnson of New York (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 324-326. Flexner claims that Lord Shelburne was responsible for granting Johnson authority to move the line, but Shelburne left the Board of Trade in September 1763 before King George had signed even the 1763 Royal Proclamation and before Croghan arrived in London. In view of the reception given Croghan by Hillsborough, who was First Lord of Trade in 1768 and had been so twice before, as well as Halifax, ever an éminence grise, the decision was likely made or at least accelerated by them.

82Much as Maryland claimed part of Pennsylvania in the south, so too Connecticut claimed – and settled – a swath of northern Pennsylvania. The contested area included the Wyoming Valley where in 1778 a bloody battle ensued between the Connecticut Continentals and an allied British and Seneca force.

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Mohawks. Both messages concerned the same subject, and Johnson presciently preserved them in the Congress minutes:

Crawford brought several Letters from the Illinois and Fort Pitt which contained some particulars of the French and Spanish designs, and of a Congress held at the Mississippi to which they had invited all the Indians. Crawford informed that had they not been called by Sir William at that time, they would all have gone to attend the Congress, to which they had been urged by the Spaniards, and that many of them would afterwards go to it as he believed.

At night the Mohawks came, and told Sir William that one of their people had received intelligence from a St. Francis Indian who had been to the westward and at the Mississippi for four years past, and was just returned by way of Michilimackinac, that the French and Spaniards assured them that they were united firmly against the English, and that they were very busy in bringing them over for that purpose. That Pondiack [sic] through the artifices of [French holdover commander] Bellestre and other French, was very busy in calling the Indians, and sending Belts amongst them for a general Convention, and that he had several meetings for that purpose.83

Nevertheless, the resulting treaty was ratified within three weeks by all participants except the Shawnees. Fundamentally the purpose of the Congress was to establish a new boundary to supplant the 1763 Proclamation Line and to settle British and native land disputes particularly in territories acquired from France. Ostensibly by the terms of the Fort Stanwix Treaty the crown formally purchased land from the

Indians in New York, Pennsylvania and the Ohio Territory, redrew the boundary line to accommodate the Ohio Valley, and set aside an Indian “Western Reserve.” In that sense the resulting 1768 treaty and “Fort Stanwix Proclamation Line” were successes. Other major issues proved more contentious. The new boundary line assured British control

83Congress at Fort Stanwix, October 16, 1768, in Johnson, Papers, 12:622.

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of all land east of the Allegheny River and confirmed Pennsylvania’s “New Purchase” of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Fort Stanwix also ceded to Britain land south of the Ohio River all the way to the Tennessee River, effectively enabling Virginia’s accession of what amounted to modern West Virginia and Kentucky. This was Shawnee hunting ground and the principal reason they refused to ratify the Fort Stanwix Treaty. 84

This festering issue would spark several future Shawnee uprisings including two with the

United States triggered by the 1792 creation of Kentucky as the fifteenth state, the first to be carved from British Indian country.

Map 7-2 is Col. Guy Johnson’s 1768 map of the northern colonies; it depicts the

1768 Proclamation Line also known as the Fort Stanwix Treaty Line.

84Congress at Fort Stanwix, Sept. 15 - Oct. 30, 1768, in Johnson, Papers, 12:617-629. The Sir William Johnson Papers record no secretary for the minutes of the Fort Stanwix Congress. Johnson probably delegated it to his nephew, Guy Johnson, who had recorded himself as “secretary” during the 1761 Detroit Indian conference. Claus is the only plausible option, but he was still mourning the recent death of his daughter.

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Map 7-2. Guy Johnson, Map of the Frontier of the Northern Colonies with the Boundary Line established Between them and the Indians at the Treaty held by Sir William Johnson at Frt. Stanwix in Novr., 1768, New York State Library.85

85Guy Johnson, “Map of the Frontier of the Northern Colonies with the Boundary Line established Between them and the Indians at the Treaty held by Sir William Johnson at Frt. Stanwix in Novr., 1768,” in O'Callaghan New York, vol. I (Albany: New York State Library, 1849,) public domain. Guy Johnson's original map was destroyed in the 1911 Albany State Library fire.

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The Fort Stanwix Congress also settled several minor issues among them: condolence rituals for the recent deaths of Seneca Chief Onoghkaridawey and Johnson’s grand-daughter Anne Claus, youngest child of Daniel and Nancy Johnson Claus; resolution of the long-standing dispute between the “Suffering Traders,” Pennsylvania and the Iroquois; resolving the Mohawk-Stockbridge Indian boundary dispute, and provisioning the Tuscaroras, Conoys and Nanticokes with a smith to repair tools needed to till their corn crops. 86

Over three thousand Indians attended the Fort Stanwix Congress; except for forty four Shawnees who refused to endorse it there was no Western Indian representation among them.87 The event cost the crown close to £22,000 of which

£18,000 were spent on the Indians including over £10,000 which went directly to the

Iroquois for land.88 Therein lay the biggest problem with this Treaty, for most of the land sold along the Ohio belonged to the Shawnees, Miamis, Pickawillanies and other western Nations.

86Robert Callender, et al. to Gage, January 5, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 4:631-632; Congress, October 5, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 12:620. Philadelphia merchant bank Baynton, Wharton & Morgan represented the traders at the Congress. Johnson met early with the parties, all of whom agreed to settle the 1763 losses by, “. . . prevail[ing] on the Indians to promise [the Suffering Traders] a tract, when the Boundary line should be settled.” Nonetheless, they all agreed nothing was due the traders for losses suffered before then (ca. 1754) because the Indians had never been made aware of these losses. Guy Johnson’s report also suggested, “. . . [because raising this subject] might tend to obstruct the proceedings.”

87Congress, October 30, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 12:629.

88Johnson to Gage, Account Against The Crown, December 9, 1768, in Johnson, Papers, 12:665- 668. 298

Conclusion

Sir William Johnson and George Croghan sensed that war in the west was imminent almost as soon the Anishinabeg Indians understood the significance of the collapse of New France. Johnson tried to forestall war in the west with his 1761 Detroit conference, but mostly what he got from the attending Indian nations was polite lip service. His clever side-trip to the Huron village produced somewhat more; Huron spokesman Ana’ia’sa’ unambiguously spelled out the Indians’ principal grievance: guns and ammunition. Arms were behind both Amherst’s justification for his “no gifts” policy and the Indians hatred of it.

Croghan’s 1762 war warning largely fell on deaf ears at first, but when Pontiac’s

War began in the spring of 1763 both New York and London dusted it off. Major

General Thomas Gage adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward Indians than had

Amherst, but his accession to command came too late. What success he had was enhanced by delegating tactical matters to subordinates he trusted like Bouquet,

Croghan and Campbell. Good intelligence and regular resupply by a fledgling Great

Lakes navy made the British luckier at Fort Detroit than elsewhere, and this managed to keep Pontiac occupied there. Nonetheless, his eponymous rebellion spread across

British North America like wildfire, engulfing soldiers and colonists alike.

From a military standpoint, Pontiac’s War was repulsed almost single-handedly by Swiss-born Colonel Henry Bouquet. His 1763 reversal of fortune at Bushy Run halted the Indian war’s eastward progress, and his disciplined overwhelming of the Ohio 299

country Indians paved the way for George Croghan to reach a more-or-less honorable peace with Pontiac in 1765. In New York Croghan was roundly lauded for his success at both Johnson’s estate and Gage’s headquarters. Bouquet was promoted to Brigadier and transferred to Florida where he died of yellow fever at the age of forty-six. Henry

Bouquet was Great Britain’s most effective commander in trans-Allegheny North

America; ironically his nationality delayed both his assumption of command and his generalcy. His death was London’s loss.

Johnson’s Treaty Conference at Fort Stanwix in 1768 established a new proclamation line. The new boundary between Indians and colonists was an improvement over the Royal Proclamation Line of 1763 because the crown formally purchased Indian land in New York, Pennsylvania and the Ohio Territory and set aside an

Indian “Western Reserve” in the latter. On the negative side, Stanwix unambiguously added the contested Wyoming Valley to Pennsylvania, gave Virginia a substantial piece of Shawnee hunting ground, and carved out handsome land grants for Johnson and

Croghan. Its signal defect was that the money the crown paid for land went through the

Iroquois, Britain still being guided by the Treaty of Utrecht a half century later. The western Indians were left out of the proceedings altogether and the well-represented

Shawnees refused to ratify it. The British, they reasoned, had no right to buy their hunting grounds south of the Ohio River, and the Iroquois had no right to sell it. This

European-Indian dispute would carry over to the United States with Kentucky statehood, but neither George Croghan nor Henry Bouquet would be alive to see it.

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CHAPTER 8

AFTER ILLINOIS: SPECULATION, LOSS AND REVOLUTION

. . . the unsettling state of this country renders any [land] purchase dangerous.1

– Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, Virginia Militia, 1770

Introduction

This chapter examines George Croghan’s life from the period after Pontiac’s War to its end. Croghan spent a good deal of this time attempting to create wealth through land speculation. Most of his ideas were sound, but three problems stood in the way.

First investors wanted short-term returns, while real estate, then as now, was a long- term venture. Second Whitehall was ever a stumbling block, whether because of the conflict of interest between Croghan’s land speculation and his appointment as Deputy

Crown Superintendent for Indian Affairs, or simply because the crown had to approve such transactions. Third and most conflicting for Croghan was that the western Indians, despite his longstanding amicable relations with them, simply did not want to give up their land to any Briton, Croghan included.

Chapter 8 first looks back to Croghan’s early or non-speculative land acquisitions: his personal properties in Pennsylvania and New York, and his trading posts in

Pennsylvania and the west. As in his early fur-trading years Croghan depended on

Philadelphia investors to bankroll his operations. Among them Samuel Wharton was most prominent, and his association with Croghan cost him a relationship with a rising

1Wainwright, Diplomat, 276. 301

partner and much of his fortune and reputation. Wharton and his partners, who were not always the same, invested over time in Croghan’s Illinois Company, Illinois Traders’ scheme, “Indiana” and the boldest venture of them all, the proposed fourteenth colony of Vandalia.

Along the way external events buffeted Croghan and his investors. Two

“Proclamation Lines,” one in 1763 and the other in 1768, threatened North America with boundaries within British territory ostensibly designed to keep settlers and Indians at arm’s length. The first imposed by King George III was blatantly unworkable. It would have required thousands of European settlers and squatters on the far side of the

Appalachian range to abandon their property, and countless officials and soldiers to enforce it. The second, drawn up by Sir William Johnson at the 1768 Fort Stanwix

Treaty, was a workable solution but it was sullied by the self-serving actions of Johnson,

Croghan, Bradstreet and others anxious to cash in on large grants acquired on the cheap or essentially stolen from the western Indians. The Iroquois also got their hands dirty in the aftermath of Fort Stanwix, often selling land they did not own and pocketing the money.

Before all was said and done, London weighed in with the 1774 Quebec Act which would have combined large parts of the Ohio and Illinois country with former

New France into a mammoth colony called “Québec.” Few people in America were pleased with this proposal, but it was a dead on arrival. Two weeks before it was to take effect the Quebec Act and its putative mega-colony were stopped short by the “shot heard ‘round the world.” 302

Where earlier events were tidal, the American Revolution was tsunamic. Its effects were felt continentally. Not merely British subjects in North America, but British soldiers, inhabitants of former French territory, the new Spanish landlords of the trans-

Mississippi territory and all the Indians were caught up in the rebellion, some as combatants and others who simply found themselves in the way.

George Croghan was a Pennsylvanian first and a British subject second. His divided loyalty to King George and America gave rise to his being accused of collaboration or outright treason by both sides. His fortune gone, his investors and friends abandoned him; he spent his last, pain-ridden days in a Lancaster hovel leaving his heirs an estate of £50.

Early Land Acquisitions

Croghan’s first land deal was not speculative but rather for his own fur trading operations. This was land which he and Trent acquired on the Conodoguinet Creek in

Pennsylvania in 1745. They called it “Pennsborough Plantation,” although everyone else just called it “Croghan’s.”2

Four years later the Iroquois granted Croghan a large tract of land around the

Forks of the Ohio (Pittsburgh) in the summer of 1749. Wainwright claimed this was in return for a substantial present for the Iroquois for which Croghan paid himself. Citing an “undated memorial” in the Cadwalader Collection of the Historical Society of

Pennsylvania, Wainwright quoted Croghan as having claimed this grant was in

2The site is so marked on Map 1-8 in Chapter 1.

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appreciation of his, “. . . constant attention to the preservation of peace and as a testimony of the sincerity with which they desired its continuance, of their own free will and without any application of the part of [the] memorialist . . .”3

However, 1749 marked the outset of a quarter century of dispute over this area beginning with Céloron’s plate-burying expedition, immediately followed by Jonquière’s fort-building program. Closet Francophile Peter Chartier’s trading post was already so well established in this region that the Forks of the Ohio was commonly known as

“Chartier’s Town.”

As for other British traders in 1749 the French drove old John Fraser from his

Venango home and trading post to the Forks where he was forced to compete with

Chartier. By 1749 Peter Tostee’s settlement would have been north of the Forks for nearly a decade, possibly more. If any Britons had earned a right to a grant in the area it would have been Fraser or Tostee, except that the French were already exerting hegemony over the region as a whole. If anyone “owned” this area in 1749 it would have been the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois League. “Queen” Aliquippa, a matriarch of the Mingo branch of the Seneca nation, was the resident leader. At this time both the

Senecas and Aliquippa were pro-British, and Croghan was well known to the Senecas.

Thus the memorial which Wainwright unearthed is likely authentic as it appears to have

3Wainwright, Wilderness Diplomat, 28. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania indexes the Cadwalader collection by Volume and Folio. It seems incredible that Wainwright then Director of the Society cites this memorial without reference to either. The author has not found it in Cadwalader, but then the collection occupies over 200 linear feet. The memorial is likely genuine, probably written by Croghan or on his behalf in late 1763, because in London in 1764 Croghan unsuccessfully petitioned the Board of Trade to cure this grant. (Chapter 6 discusses the London trip.)

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been drawn up ex-post facto to support Croghan’s later claim to the Board of Trade.

Further the grant to Croghan also reflected the Iroquois’ belief in their (the Senecas’) ownership of the Forks of the Ohio. Nonetheless the question remains, was the Iroquois

League clever by half in granting this region to Croghan at a time when both Iroquois and British control of the area was waning?4

Another category of Croghan’s early land acquisition merits a brief review – land he purchased from Indians or simply appropriated for his trading posts. This began in

1742 with Tostee on the Beaver Creek in the Allegheny Valley and ended a decade later at the point of Langlade’s sword at Pickawillany. By all accounts early trading posts in the west consisted of one or two buildings: the first serving as both home and trading post, and the other a forge. John Fraser’s trading post at Venango apparently was only one building although he built a forge at his later post at Turtle Creek off the

Monongahela River south of the Forks of the Ohio.5 Tostee’s and Croghan’s trading post at the Beaver Creek was probably similar to Fraser’s first (Venango) operation of one building.

4As for Croghan, despite the outcome of the French and Indian War, in 1764 he lost his petition to the Board of Trade to legitimize the 1749 Iroquois grant.

5George Washington, Journal of Major George Washington, 1754, ed. Paul Royster (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2007), 11-13, 13n3, 32-22. Washington only described Fraser’s Venango location as a “house” from which the French had flown their flag after evicting Fraser. Washington met there with the local French Commander to arrange a prisoner exchange in late 1753.

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Between the Allegheny and the Great Miami, Croghan established trading operations on the Cuyahoga and Muskingum Rivers, and at Sandusky on Lake Erie. All were abandoned as war clouds rolled east after Braddock’s Defeat.6

Croghan added three acquisitions for his personal use in addition to the

Conodoguinet “Plantation:” Croghan Hall, his Pittsburgh area farm; Monckton Hall, his palatial estate in Philadelphia, and Croghan Forest at the foot of Lake Otsego at what would become Cooperstown, New York, where he had hoped to live out the end of his life.7

Conodoguinet served as Croghan’s principal base of operations for his early fur- trading years. However, in 1748 Croghan and Trent formed a partnership with

Pennsylvania Secretary Richard Peters. Peters was an appointee of the original

Proprietor, and his fingers reached into almost every deal in the Province. He maintained a close relationship with Richard Hockley, probably because Hockley was a confidante of the younger Penns. Peters was the fulcrum for Croghan’s transition from fur trader to land speculator. Anxious to take up a private Iroquois offer to purchase land in the undefined west, Croghan mortgaged his plantation to Peters. Croghan was more enthusiastic than analytical about his business schemes while Peters, despite his

6Muskingum may have been the exception that proved the rule. It was resurrected when Colonel Henry Bouquet assumed leadership of British military operations in the west when fortune began to favor Great Britain.

7Croghan died in Pennsylvania. His daughter Suzanna lived at Croghan Forest briefly. Judge , father of famed Indian novelist James Fennimore Cooper, purchased the Lake Otsego estate after Croghan’s death. The aspiring author grew up there. The town, now famous for the Baseball Hall of Fame, is named for William Cooper. Judge Cooper also served as member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

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general lack of scruples, was an astute investor. Hockley was a dull knife; Croghan and

Trent quickly rid themselves of him. However, Croghan’s dealings with Peters would dog him throughout his life. When the London fur market collapsed in 1751, Peters foreclosed on the Conodoguinet Plantation. Trent’s and Croghan’s business collapsed.8

Delaware Investors Redux: Samuel Wharton

By the early 1750’s the combination of Galissonière’s assertion of French hegemony in the Ohio Valley, his successor Jonquière’s fort-building initiatives on the

Great Lakes and in the Allegheny Valley, and Pennsylvania’s anemic response to all this had pushed Croghan and other traders back across the Allegheny Mountains.9

Wainwright in his chapter “Collapse of the Indian Trade” dryly – and somewhat prematurely – observed, “[Croghan’s] days as an active Indian trader were over”.10

However, Croghan’s dealings with Delaware Valley investors were not over.

After the French and Indian War, he shifted his principal emphasis to land speculation.

To finance his often grandiose schemes he turned to a man whose family name has

8Wainwright, Diplomat, 43-44. Another factor may have been the Pennsylvania Assembly’s refusal to expand licensing of fur trading in the Ohio Territory, which Wainwright blames on an untimely volte face by Andrew Montour before the Assembly. Wainwright says, “By satisfying itself with this mistaken and totally ineffective policy . . . the colony defaulted its leadership in the West to Virginia’s Ohio Company.” Wainwright notwithstanding, Pennsylvania’s Quaker-dominated Assembly did not need Montour’s help to say no. Traditionally they did little to encourage trans-Appalachian Indian trade and European settlement, or military defense of either even within Pennsylvania, much less Ohio. The Assembly continued to act in the same way during and after the war. Meanwhile Williamsburg, acting on its own initiative in the west, needed no “default” by Philadelphia.

9Ironically this also pushed Trent and to some extent Croghan into the arms of Virginia.

10Wainwright, Diplomat, 68.

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been synonymous with American investment banking for more than three centuries:

Samuel Wharton. Wharton came from an established Quaker merchant family in

Philadelphia. His grandfather Thomas had immigrated there in the late seventeenth century, and his father Joseph continued the family business. Samuel was the second son of Joseph Wharton and Hannah Carpenter who raised their children as Quakers. 11

Samuel Wharton was the junior partner in John Baynton’s firm Baynton and

Wharton. Like Wharton and William Trent, John Baynton was the progeny of a prominent Philadelphia merchant. Unlike Trent’s father, Baynton’s father Peter was still accumulating wealth when he died. Wharton brought his interest in trade with the western Indians to Baynton’s firm. Increasingly this involved Croghan’s land speculation deals. Wharton’s association with Croghan and Sir William Johnson led not only to early financial successes but ultimately to involvement in a number of diplomatic and speculative endeavors, notably the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty and the abortive Vandalia

Colony.

Wharton had a fiery temper and often pushed Croghan for returns on speculative land investments the firm had made at Croghan’s urging. Croghan was not

11Historical Society of Pennsylvania, “Abstract,” in Wharton Family Papers, Collection 708A (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), 2. Samuel Wharton later took Pennsylvania’s Oath of Allegiance to the Patriot cause. For a financier or merchant who supported the Patriot cause, Philadelphia was a dangerous place during the middle period of the American Revolution. British troops occupied the city for a year after the Battle of Brandywine in 1777. Meanwhile, Samuel’s elder brother Thomas, something of a Revolutionary War “fence-sitter,” refused to take the Patriot Oath. Although he returned to Pennsylvania from self-imposed exile in Virginia, after the Revolution he lost all his property under Pennsylvania’s Confiscation Act. The reader should not confuse this Thomas Wharton, Samuel’s Tory brother, with Thomas Wharton, “Jr.”, a cousin who was a Patriot and later became Governor of Pennsylvania. This Thomas Wharton added “Junior” to his name to distinguish himself from his Tory relative.

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the only one to cross swords with Wharton. Baynton later admitted his son-in-law

George Morgan as a third partner. A brash, fearless young man, Morgan was suspicious of Croghan’s western deals and Wharton’s enthusiasm for them. So he hied himself to the Illinois territory to see things in person. There he soon realized what Croghan already knew: these deals were fraught with risk and any payoff would be a long time coming. However, Morgan’s father-in-law John Baynton was now sick, and Wharton ignored Morgan’s reports to Philadelphia.12

The Legacy of New France and the Western Indians

Land west of the Alleghenies was not merely a Shawnee issue. The Ottawas and their Anishinabeg allies around the Great Lakes shared the same concerns. France had never much been in the land business, the entire culture of France under the Ancien

Régime differing greatly from Britain’s. Henri IV’s model of toleration, enshrined in the

Edict of Nantes, had been eradicated by Louis XIV four generations before the French and Indian War.13 The Sun King survived all his direct descendants, putting a barely distant relative on the throne as Louis XV. Louis XV’s policies remained those of his predecessor. Champlain and Pont Grave had established New France while Henri was still on the throne. Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to 1715; his was the France of New

France.

12Some historians have attributed John Baynton’s subsequent death to stress from Croghan’s schemes. In the author’s view this idea is specious. Baynton was a seasoned Delaware Valley merchant banker, who was likely no stranger to stressful investments.

13The 1683 Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes. 309

During most of this same period Britain was not merely a “nation of shopkeepers” as Napoleon would later claim, but one of participatory government, freedom of speech and religion and, most significantly to the future of North America, landowners and bankers. The Indians feared the British with good reason; the

Delawares had experienced the marriage of British land speculator and financier in

Pennsylvania. While Teedyuscung may have been quixotic and self-appointed he was nonetheless prophetic. Whatever the British promised the Indians, it was usually their land they wanted. What had happened at the Forks of the Delaware was about to happen in the west.14

Worth noting is the dilemma this set up for George Croghan. A seasoned land speculator with serious investors, before him the vast western plains, “. . . appear[ed] like an ocean.”15 Yet as a Crown Indian Agent he was barred from land speculation in the region. Although he attempted to resign on several occasions, these attempts generally coincided more with the crown’s failure to reimburse him for out-of-pocket expenses for Indians (or on behalf of others such as General Stanwix and Colonel

Bouquet) than with speculative opportunities. Gage had a vested interest in expanding the British Empire peaceably into Algonquian territory previously controlled by France.

Croghan’s Philadelphia investors had a financial interest in the return on their short-

14Dowd, War Under Heaven, 90-91. The impact on the Anishinabeg of the Delawares’ experience with the British in Pennsylvania and the teachings of the contemporaneous Delaware prophet Neolin is a central theme of Dowd’s book.

15Croghan, Private Journal, Fort Pitt to the Illinois Country, May 15 to September 26, 1765, in Cadwalader Papers, Ser. 4, Box 204, Folder 6, 21.

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term notes. In Philadelphia Croghan was a scoundrel whose investments never paid off in time. In New York Croghan was a Patriot of the first order. Taken in the aggregate

Croghan may have been both. To Johnson and the British military he seemed to have mutated from audacious trader to crown diplomat. Yet his declining fortunes pointed to the cost of government service being too high, and the speculator in him reemerged.16

The Illinois Company

After the French and Indian War ended, Wharton, New Jersey Governor William

Franklin, and Croghan proposed the formation of the Illinois Company. The 1766 scheme was based on a putative grant from the Crown of over a million acres of good farmland in Illinois, immigration of two thousand “Protestant” settlers, and the establishment of a British colonial government likely headed by Croghan himself. So huge was this project that it even attracted the interest of Franklin’s father, Benjamin.

Gage was still British commander in America and Croghan was a Crown Indian agent. Gage and Croghan had a close if sometimes testy relationship. Any land deal such as the proposed Illinois Company required the “purchase” of the grant from the resident Indians, usually in the form of a “present” of European goods generally unavailable in the interior. The crown ostensibly funded these presents, and during

16Wainwright, Diplomat, 200-201. Wainwright dismisses Croghan’s trip to London with the closing line, “The time had come to re-establish his fortunes.” In the chapter immediately following this statement, “Illinois Mirage,” he makes a great deal of Croghan’s supposed crossing of the line between speculator and Indian agent. Yet the truth is not so black and white. Wainwright cites few of Gage’s papers which he uses primarily to bolster his central argument that Croghan was a real estate con-man. Wainwright supports this contention by numerous citations from the Cadwalader collection. At this time the Cadwaladers were Croghan’s Philadelphia attorneys and accountants. They would have been the first to hear complaints from frustrated investors.

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Gage’s administration both London and New York were more open to this policy than during Amherst’s. Nonetheless, in the interest of closing a deal quickly Croghan often funded Indian presents from his own resources. More than once he had been burned by Amherst so this time he addressed the issue with Gage. When Croghan proposed a

£3,445 expenditure for the western Indians to shore up the Illinois grant, he anticipated rapid approval. Gage, under the same fiscal pressures from London as his predecessor, was stupefied by both the request and the amount; he flatly refused to pay it. Croghan, by now Gage’s most trusted western Indian negotiator, threatened to resign. Gage blinked.17

Apparently no one considered the Indian view of all this. Croghan found a hostile reception awaiting him at both Fort Pitt and Kaskaskia.18 To mollify them he added first £1,700 and then £1,200 to the Indians’ present, using goods aggrandized from Baynton, Wharton and Morgan’s warehouses without any authorization from them or Gage. While Wharton and Croghan had a generally amicable relationship,

Wharton had a peevish personality which could create enemies where none need exist.

Moreover, in some cases Wharton failed to apply proper due diligence to Croghan’s deals. These two traits of Wharton’s clashed with Croghan’s extravagance toward the

Indians over the Illinois land scheme. The firm had valued Croghan’s Illinois property at

£50,000. Convinced that Gage would never authorize the £2,900 which Croghan had

17Wainwright, Wilderness Diplomat, 230-231.

18Kaskaskia is on the Mississippi in southern Illinois. 312

just added to the Indian present, Wharton suggested that Croghan remit £20,000 to the firm by a date certain. Knowing that at best land sales would occur in the distant future and where Indians were not hostile to British interests, Croghan exploded. He called

Wharton’s request a “contemptible sum” adding some other colorful epithets about the firm which had so generously supported him.19 At the Kaskaskia treaty conference with the western Indians, Croghan contracted malaria. The neighboring Spanish governor took pity on him and provided him passage via ship to New Orleans and around Florida to New York. By the time he reached Pennsylvania, Wharton had pulled the plug on the

Illinois Company.20

Illinois Traders’ Syndicate

Almost all these same financiers came together in late 1769 to support

Croghan’s most spectacular scheme of all: an Illinois traders’ syndicate. Different from and far more clandestine than Croghan’s now-lifeless proposal for an Illinois colony, this intrigue involved a secret takeover of all French fur trade in the Illinois Territory by

British traders, with a subsequent monopoly to be led by Croghan and Trent. The Illinois

Traders’ Syndicate had its roots in the old Allegheny River fur trade where besting the

French was always part of the game. Croghan was anxious to get even for the events of

19Morris K. Turner, “The Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan Manuscripts,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 9, No. 3 (December, 1922), 236-238. This was the deal that provoked as discussed in earlier in this chapter.

20Wainwright, Diplomat, 278. After the defeat at the hands of Britain, France ceded what would later be the “Louisiana Purchase” to Spain, with whose King Louis XV was related, and whose American territories adjoined the region to the west. Napoleon returned the territory to France, which subsequently sold it to the United States.

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1749-1754. In this venture there would be no French challengers. Baynton, Wharton and Morgan, who had all invested in Croghan’s land schemes associated with an Illinois colony along with Benjamin Franklin’s son William, now leapt to underwrite this new scheme.21 Together they owned close to eighty percent of it.22 With Pontiac subdued, now was the time for Britain to seize control of the Illinois Indian trade, or so Croghan thought.

A fly in the ointment was Croghan’s position as Deputy Crown Superintendent of

Indian Affairs. Crown Indian agents were prohibited from involvement in any transactions with Indians from which they stood to gain financially. So for this to succeed Croghan would need London’s approval. Wharton and Trent set off for London to do just that. Croghan even reversed the financier’s role, bankrolling Wharton’s costs for the voyage. Wharton and Trent travelled to London in 1769. There the establishment not only quashed the Illinois traders scheme but failed to agree to land grants to Croghan written into the Fort Stanwix Treaty and which the Iroquois had previously given him.23 To make matters worse, to avoid other creditors, Croghan had

21George Croghan to Benjamin Franklin, ca. 1761-1767, in Shelburne Papers, 50:Folio 93. Unlike his son, Benjamin Franklin, if an investor in Croghan’s schemes at all, was only indirectly so. The undated document cited here is a good example of why. In it Croghan reported to Benjamin Franklin on the progress and limited successes of the Virginia Company of Ohio. He described its proposal in 1748-9, potential issues with the French and Indians and that his “late majesty” (George II who died in October 1760) never approved it, despite petitions from the Government of Virginia supporting it. Croghan’s tone was neutral, suggesting the undated letter was written before he was strongly aligned with Virginia and against Pennsylvania regarding his 1768 “Indiana” grant, discussed later in this chapter.

22Wainwright, Diplomat, 260. Wainwright says eleven fourteenths.

23The Iroquois had previously granted Croghan 200,000 acres in New York, the largest non- Proprietary grant in the Colonies at the time. The British Board of Trade had quashed this transfer in 314

signed off on payment of £5000 of outstanding invoices using his account with Wharton.

Wharton, who himself was about to ask Croghan for another £200 to cover travel expenses, received this flabbergasting news in London.24

Meanwhile Morgan, back in Philadelphia and now more-or-less managing the firm, began to hound Wharton in London about Croghan’s accounts. Morgan blustered that Wharton could have easily doubled the £10,000 he had lost the firm in Croghan’s schemes if he’d just stayed put in Philadelphia.25 By 1771 Wharton had seen the light.

Much of his own capital was tied up in Croghan’s western land which he now knew had no mortgage value in London. London had not even supported the Iroquois grant.

Lacking legal standing, titles for any subsequent land sales could not be legitimized.

Further, much of Baynton, Wharton and Morgan’s current capital was tied up in the abortive Illinois trader’s syndicate. Morgan wanted the ephemeral capital returned to the firm’s coffers; Wharton fled to France.26 Croghan, suffering from painful gout, retreated to Johnson’s Mohawk Valley plantation.27 The chances that Baynton,

1764 when Croghan himself went to London. At the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty conference Sir William Johnson added the protection of Croghan’s “Indiana” grant in western Pennsylvania to the treaty.

24Wainwright, Diplomat, 268. One can only imagine Trent’s predicament when this information arrived.

25Croghan to William Trent, Nov. 30, 1769, Etting Papers, Box I, Folder 18. Although Morgan likely sent the report of the £5,000 draft to Wharton, Croghan mentioned it in the letter to Trent.

26Turner, “Baynton Manuscripts,” 239. Wharton actually stayed in London a while, and fled to France as the American Revolution began to break out. He remained a staunch Patriot and returned later to the United States.

27Wainwright, Diplomat, 269. While he was in New York and Wharton was in London, Croghan permitted Wharton’s wife to occupy his palatial estate Monckton Hall free of charge.

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Wharton and Morgan, particularly the latter, would cover any more of his debts were non-existent.

Indiana

The Indiana Company was a less ambitious Croghan land deal than either Illinois or the Iroquois’ Forks of the Ohio grant. It also had some historical justification for seizing its territory from the Indians. In 1763 several British Indian traders had lost about £81,000 worth of goods from Indian attacks on pack trains.28 Numerous petitions to the Crown for reimbursement had failed; by 1768 the group known as the “suffering traders” indicated it would accept land for payment. Ever keen to embrace a new land deal, Croghan organized the group into the Indiana Company, thereby aggrandizing the suffering traders’ claims into a more inclusive scheme.29

As with Illinois Croghan and William Franklin were major partners in “Indiana.”

While both put up money to launch the project, neither had been affected by the loss in the first place. Further, Croghan’s old partner Trent was also in London to legitimize this grant. Croghan had promised Trent thirty percent of the deal for his troubles. Further, part of Croghan’s financial interest in Indiana would serve to reimburse Baynton,

Wharton and Morgan, but Croghan earmarked it all for Wharton. 30

28Steele, Captives, 599 n38. The suffering traders’ original estimate had been £80,862. However, Murray dispatched Trent to investigate the value of their claim. Trent’s estimate was £45,000.

29Some question exists as to whether or not Croghan was one of the suffering traders, but some goods taken by Indians were likely his.

30Wainwright, Diplomat, 253-255.

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So convoluted was the deal that even Williamsburg, which agreed with Croghan that the grant would lie in Virginia and had been sympathetic to Croghan and Trent in the past, failed to approve it.31 Doubting the Board of Trade would approve it, Croghan dropped the Indiana scheme but cleverly inserted it into the overall plan for the putative colony of Vandalia.

After Stanwix

After Stanwix many hands reached into the till. Colonel John Bradstreet, now more or less demoted to command of Fort Pitt, audaciously approached Croghan after the Congress about previously-recorded land deeds. In a subsequent letter to Johnson,

Bradstreet wrote that Croghan had described a clause in the Treaty, “. . . securing to such person such lands as they at that time [had] deeds.” Bradstreet, who had bungled his mission to secure the crown’s hard-won gains in the west before Croghan and

Pontiac came to the peace table, dispassionately asked Johnson for a copy of the exact wording, “. . . so I may perhaps be able to make something out of it to my advantage and of some of my friends.”32

Croghan spent much of the next decade at his Pittsburgh residence, Croghan

Hall. Captain Charles Edmonstone now commanded at Fort Pitt; together the two men worked tirelessly to keep a lid on western Indian unrest. Of Croghan, Edmonstone wrote Gage, “Mr. Croghan has been indefatigable in [quieting the] Indians . . . I dare

31Ibid., 304. As it turned out a good deal of Indiana was not in Virginia anyway but in Pennsylvania. See Map 8-1 later in this chapter.

32Colonel John Bradstreet to Johnson, November 19, 1765, in Johnson, Papers, 6:507.

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venture to say that we are indebted to him for the present tranquility.”33 While at Fort

Pitt, Croghan was also indebted to Captain George Turnbull still doggedly providing advice and intelligence from Fort Detroit to anyone up the chain of command who would read it. Turnbull had written Croghan that two British traders had been murdered by the Pottawatomies, asserting that the French – not the Spanish who now governed the area where the crime occurred – were behind this act. Croghan was enough of xenophobe to believe that Indians who supported Great Britain were inherently brighter those who supported the French. “English traders,” he suggested in his letter to Gage, “. . . will always [be subject to] the mercy of the French living among the different nations, and who are full as bad as the Indians.” Turnbull also naïvely suggested to the veteran speculator that, “. . . some regular method of selling lands is needed, [otherwise] this settlement will go all into confusion.”34

The 1767 Townshend Acts stirred up British North America. Intended to defray costs of the French and Indian War the acts imposed taxes on the Colonies without representation in Parliament. New taxes applied to British goods imported to the

Colonies including glass, paint, oil, lead, tea and all manner of paper and stationery. The tax on paper increased if the paper were “imprinted.” Perhaps the most onerous component of the Townshend Act was Article XX, which read in part:

33Captain Charles Edmonstone to Gage, August 11, 1770, Gage Papers, AS:78.

34Croghan to Gage, April 14, 1768, Gage Papers, AS:76. Croghan attached letters from Turnbull (March 1, 1768) and Mr. John Hay (January 22, 1768). Hay’s report was of the inquest into the death of the Huron Fuontarryay at the hands of one Alex Labadie, which Hay had ruled as self-defense.

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And whereas . . . it is lawful for any officer of his Majesty's customs, authorized by writ of assistance under the seal of his Majesty's court of exchequer, to take a constable, headborough, or other public officer inhabiting near unto the place, and in the daytime to enter and go into any house, shop cellar, warehouse, or room or other place and, in case of resistance, to break open doors, chests, trunks, and other package there, to seize, and from thence to bring, any kind of goods or merchandise whatsoever prohibited or uncustomed, and to put and secure the same in his Majesty's storehouse next to the place where such seizure shall be made . . . it is, amongst other things, enacted, that the officers for collecting and managing his Majesty's revenue, and inspecting the plantation trade, in America, shall have the same powers and authorities.35

Outraged, but not to be undone, the resilient Colonials passed their own “non- importation agreements” and proceeded to make use of locally-manufactured goods.

British imports dramatically declined, and this affected the Indian trade as many of the goods the Indians depended on came from Britain.

As if the nascent Patriot movement were not enough, the western Indians were again in a bad humor over the Fort Stanwix land deal. As an example of the increasing sense of urgency Gage felt about this, he attached Croghan’s letter of January first,

1770, to his own letter to Lord Hillsborough three weeks later. Agreeing with Croghan’s report that the Indians’ had acquired powder and lead from spurious sources in trade for horses, he told Hillsborough of a “private council” held at the Huron village between the Hurons, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Shawnees, Ohio Delawares and Ohio

Senecas. There the Lakes and Ohio Indians raised the issue that the Iroquois had sold

35Parliament of Great Britain, “The Townshend Revenue Act, June 29, 1767, Article XX,” The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library, 2008), accessed February 19, 2015, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/townsend_act_1767.asp). Article Four of the U.S. Bill of Rights (Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) prohibits this type of warrantless search and seizure.

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their land to the British and then, “. . . shamefully took all the money and goods for themselves.” In addition, Gage reported that from Alexander McKee he had learned the

Ohio and Lakes Indians now referred to the Iroquois as “slaves of the White People.”

(Gage went on to tell Hillsborough that McKee was someone who understood Indian languages and, like Croghan, had influence among them.) In a final volley again citing

Croghan, Gage warned Hillsborough that the western Indians had confirmed a peace with the Cherokees which he described as, “. . . most detrimental to the public interest.”36 Gage was right, but he was premature. The next Indian war, “Dunmore’s

War,” would break out on the southern front in 1774.

Meanwhile, in December 1770, Croghan and Edmonstone convened an Indian

Conference at Fort Pitt. Croghan was not well, and Edmonstone reported on the conference to Gage. He told Gage that the western Indians, “. . . think the English take too much notice of the Six Nations, which leads to jealousy.”37 The Shawnee narrator called everyone to the Council, noting that, “. . . what we are going to say . . . is from all the nations of Indians to the sun setting.” In addition to the complaint about the

Iroquois cheating them out of their land the Shawnee narrator complained that when the Western Indians went to visit Johnson, they were “made drunk,” breaking down any meaningful communication between them, the British and the Iroquois. Thomas King was a respected Oneida and an Iroquois representative. Edmonstone noted that he

36Gage to Hillsborough, January 21, 1770, Gage Papers, ES:17. Gage included Croghan’s letter of January 1, 1770.

37Edmonstone to Gage, December 27, 1770, Gage Papers, AS:99.

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reassured the western Indians that the Iroquois League had “dressed up” its Council Fire where the British and the western Nations could speak. At that point:

King laid over 100 belts and wampum strings on the table and promised the Indians from the Rising Sun including the Canada Confederacy that [the Shawnees] would go to the Scioto Plains and kindle a Council Fire as early as possible in the spring to make peace, and added, “Any nation, Brethren, that refuse to come to this General Confederacy must expect to be struck by us, though it is our desire to promote peace and tranquility with all the nations to the Sun Setting. 38

Despite its conciliatory ending, King’s blustery warning to the western Indians did not help matters much. The Shawnees and other western Indians did indeed light a

Council Fire at Scioto in the spring of 1771 – their own. They invited the Iroquois to it.

Reflecting the fragility of their own Covenant Chain with the British, they attended.

However, Britain had an ear at Scioto, an Indian known as Mohican John. After the

Scioto council he reported to Edmonstone, Croghan and McKee that the Iroquois told the western Indians they had not sold land on the south bank of the Ohio to the British but that the British had stolen it. The Iroquois claimed they urgently desired peace with the western nations, but agreed that in four years all the Indians would strike the

British. According to Mohican John this future assault was agreed to by the Six Nations,

Delawares, Shawnees, Hurons, Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Chippewas, Miamis,

Ouiatenons, Piankashaws, Kickapoos and Musquattamies.39

Croghan objected to Mohican John’s report in one way. He said he thought it odd that the Six Nations, particularly the Mohawks, would agree to such a thing.

38Edmonstone to Gage, December 27, 1770, Gage Papers, AS:99.

39Gage to Hillsborough, April 2, 1771, Gage Papers, ES:20. Gage attached Edmonstone’s report.

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Mohican John insisted he heard it right. Privately Croghan sent for a Shawnee chief and close friend who unfortunately confirmed what Mohican John had said.40 He said that after Fort Stanwix the Six Nations secretly sent the Shawnees and Delawares a hatchet which for now is “underground at Scioto.” Nonetheless he confirmed, “We are all of one mind.” If in four years all were still in agreement, “. . . we would drive the English out of our country and over the Great Mountain,” the Shawnee reported, adding that he would warn Croghan when they intended to strike him.41

Both American and British merchants, particularly in London, urgently sought to correct the trade imbalance caused by the Townshend Act or, in the case of merchant bankers, find alternative solutions. One such merchant banker, Samuel Wharton, was still in London, his Philadelphia firm seriously exposed financially by the Illinois trading venture so heavily leveraged by Croghan. Wharton was in London for much the same reason as Croghan was in Pittsburgh: not to be in Philadelphia. Croghan longed to be free of his Pennsylvania creditors. In this endeavor he and Wharton were staunch allies.

Both of them maintained that Pennsylvania ended at the Laurel Hills. Despite the fact that Andrew Ellicott would not survey Pennsylvania’s western border until a decade and

40Croghan’s Shawnee source may have been Red Hawk who orchestrated and hosted the Scioto Council. Red Hawk would have had little reason to embellish the truth. Calloway notes that Gage independently sourced his intelligence about Scioto through Southern Indian Superintendent John Stuart with whom he had been corresponding regarding Daniel Boone’s endeavors south of the Ohio. Stuart’s agents among the Cherokees confirmed Mohican John’s story except for Iroquois involvement in a future assault, noting that the western Indians were still piqued about the Fort Stanwix Treaty. Stuart’s agents may not have been aware of the Iroquois’s hatchet “now underground at Scioto.” Neither Stuart nor Calloway identified Croghan’s source. See Calloway, Shawnees, 47.

41Gage to Hillsborough, April 2, 1771, Gage Papers, ES:20.

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half later, after Fort Stanwix Pennsylvania aggressively expanded into the west. In 1771 the colony chartered Bedford County around Fort Bedford where stands Robert

Callender’s still-famous Jean Bonnet tavern.42 Indeed Mason and Dixon, scared off by

Indians, had interrupted the survey of their eponymous line in the Laurel Hills, although they recognized that Pennsylvania extended much farther west. It served both

Croghan’s and Wharton’s interests that Croghan’s speculative land along the Ohio not be in Pennsylvania.

However, Virginia seemed increasingly less propitious than before. The eagle- eyed Washington, a far superior surveyor to Croghan if indeed Croghan was one at all, checked out Croghan’s land. Croghan believed Washington was a prospective buyer; a tentative détente between the two ensued even to the point of their sharing a dinner at the Fort Pitt Officer’s Club in October, 1770. Either Washington simply did not trust

Croghan or he was spotting land for his own investments; dinner or no he refused to bite claiming, “. . . the unsettled state of this country renders any purchase dangerous.”43

42Jean Bonnet Tavern, History, (Bedford, PA: Jean Bonnet Tavern) under Jean Bonnet Tavern, accessed February 11, 2015, http://www.jeanbonnettavern.com/history.html. The Jean Bonnet Tavern was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

43Wainwright, Diplomat, 276.

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Vandalia

The solution was a new colony, and in London Wharton audaciously proposed just that: the Colony of Vandalia.44 Vandalia would lie southwest of the Ohio River and incorporate parts of both Virginia’s and Pennsylvania’s Charter-based claims. Virginia’s claim, which by charter ran absurdly to the Pacific Ocean, nevertheless under the terms of the Treaty of Paris still presumably went as far as New Spain (i.e., the Mississippi

River). Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s western border remained undetermined. Vandalia, beginning at the Ohio River, would solve two pesky problems for the crown. It would retain the western Indian reserve which Johnson had laid out at Fort Stanwix, and create an entirely new colony whose government could resolve once and for all conflicting land claims of Pennsylvania and Virginia. For his part Croghan, because his home province had steadfastly refused to recognize his Indian grant at the Forks of the Ohio, “. . . served Vandalia not Pennsylvania,” as Wainwright bluntly put it.45

For both Wharton and Croghan, Vandalia was a last gasp of their western land speculation. Wharton saw himself as Vandalia’s governor and Croghan as his Indian agent. In these capacities they could assure that deeds to their land in the new colony – particularly the two-hundred-thousand acre tract which Croghan had acquired from

44Vandalia was named in honor of King George III’s wife, the much beloved Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. She claimed descent from the Germanic Vandal tribe who had invested Rome in the Fifth Century. Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, are also named in her honor.

45Wainwright, Diplomat, 277.

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Onondaga in 1749 – would be properly recorded.46 So convinced was Croghan that failure to create Vandalia would result in another Indian war in the west that in

November, 1771, he wrote Gage a letter of resignation. This time Gage accepted, expressing regret over the crown’s losing such an experienced Indian agent. The

Commander-in-Chief appointed McKee in Croghan’s stead.47

In London Lord Hillsborough knew Vandalia was the brainchild of two American speculators, both of whom he knew and to some extent respected. Nonetheless, he was still First Lord of Trade for the entire empire, not for just some dot on the North

American map; he sensed that this scheme would offend if not enrage established colonial governments in Philadelphia and Williamsburg, and he was right. However in

August, 1772, William Legge, Second Earl of Dartmouth and a Vandalia supporter, replaced Hillsborough as First Lord of Trade. By year’s end he had successfully pushed the Vandalia proposal through the Privy Council. Nonetheless, powerful forces in both

America and Britain remained opposed to Vandalia, among them Hillsborough,

Croghan’s long-time supporter Gage, and Virginia’s Governor, Lord John Dunmore.48

Nonetheless, Dartmouth pushed ahead. He astutely approached another important Vandalia supporter, the Earl of Hertford, Lord Chamberlain and confidante of

46Ibid., 280. In one of Wainwright’s few uses of maps two small maps on page 280 somewhat unintentionally draw an excellent comparison between Croghan’s smaller 1749 grant, which lay almost entirely within Vandalia, and Croghan’s 1.5 million acre acquisition of 1773, which lay within the western Indian reserve. Nonetheless, as Wainwright’s two maps are of different scales the reader can easily miss this nuance.

47Gage to Croghan, December 10, 1771, Gage Papers, AS:100.

48Alden, American Revolution, 118-119.

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George III, to craft an uplifting speech about the new colony for the Indians. Croghan presented Lord Hertford’s speech to many western Nations in mid-1773 along with the usual promise of presents. Croghan assured the Indians – including a number of the western nations who had not been at Fort Stanwix – that “Governor” Samuel Wharton and he would hold a conference in the fall inaugurating the new colony. In October over a hundred Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandotte and Delaware chiefs showed up. As was often the case the money for the presents failed to arrive; neither did Wharton. As was also typical, Croghan spent £1400 out of pocket. (The Wharton family in Philadelphia ponied up another measly £160.) So deep in debt was Croghan that he “pawned his plate” from his Pittsburgh estate to cover this.49

Map 8-1 is an accurate modern map of Vandalia showing also the modern state of West Virginia in the United States. (West Virginia was part of Virginia until 1864.)

Note also the area shown as “Indiana.” Indiana as shown on this map was Croghan’s earlier land speculation project tied to the “suffering traders,” and bears no relation to the modern U.S. state of Indiana.

49Wainwright, Diplomat, 286.

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Map 8-1. Vandalia, Demis Gallery, 2015.50

50Demis Gallery, “Vandalia”, (The Netherlands: Demis Gallery, 2015), public domain, accessed January 26, 2015, http://www.demis.nl/home/pages/Gallery/examples.htm. 327

The crown was supportive of Vandalia, as were the members of the Privy Council generally, but the project still languished in London, no doubt clouded by the Boston

“tea party” the previous December. Gage went to London on leave in 1774; while there he spoke against the project. Meanwhile, in Williamsburg the repeatedly expressed outrage over it. Even with Spain in possession of the far west, did

Virginia not at least extend to the Mississippi? Lord Dunmore, much closer to

Williamsburg than to London, threw in with the Colonial assembly.51 To further press

Virginia’s position Dunmore went to Pittsburgh and met with Croghan. While there

Dunmore, “. . . agreed to recognize the validity of Croghan’s Indiana grant.” He subsequently named a close associate of Croghan’s, Dr. , as “western agent” for Virginia; planted Connolly in Pittsburgh (part of “West Augusta, Virginia,”) and claimed the town for the Old Dominion. Connolly called in the Virginia militia to support Dunmore’s claim.52

In the spring of 1774 “Dunmore’s War” erupted in the .

Croghan interceded with the Shawnees to keep them out of the uprising, but Virginia settlers accused him of siding with the natives. Pennsylvania meanwhile, moving at its usual nonchalant pace awoke to find Virginia exercising what amounted to martial law in Pittsburgh and the western Indians on the rise again. George Croghan found himself caught between Virginia and Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh resident Francis Wade even fired

51Alden, American Revolution, 119.

52Wainwright, Diplomat, 286-287. 328

off a lengthy letter to Sir William about it. Alluding to Croghan’s alleged stirring up the

Shawnees, Wade wrote, “[H]is life, these stories with the matters above recited, [and] his conduct in a private capacity has caused a good deal of murmuring among people here, as well as in the back counties.” Wade went on to criticize both Connolly and

Captain Arthur Saint Clair whom Pennsylvania had at last sent to Pittsburgh commanding its own militia. Saint Clair arrested Connolly but not Croghan.53

By spring 1774 Vandalia was a dead letter. Gage and Hillsborough had sabotaged it in London, while Dunmore – acting unilaterally in Virginia’s interests much as his predecessor Dinwiddie had done a generation before – simply seized the situation on the ground. Croghan was in debt more than ever and within a year Wharton would be self-exiled in France. Dunmore’s War ended in October, but not before the western

Indians were fired up again. Vandalia was just another broken British promise.

The Quebec Act

In July 1774 Sir William Johnson passed away. Gage, recently promoted to

Lieutenant General, appointed Johnson’s nephew Guy Johnson to replace the Irish

Baronet who had so long served his king in North American Indian affairs. That same month, in yet another attempt to control both the Indians and the colonists, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, but this was just another “intolerable Act” in the eyes of the growing Patriot movement.

53Francis Wade to Johnson, March 6, 1774, in Johnson, Papers, 8:1064-1066. Saint Clair went on to become Major General Arthur Saint Clair a prominent Patriot leader during the American Revolution. 329

One specific provision of the Quebec Act affected George Croghan more than others: the prohibition of all future private land sales by Indians. Not only was Vandalia on the ropes but the Quebec Act threatened to torpedo any new acquisitions in the

Ohio or Illinois country. Meanwhile Wharton, still vainly trying to get Vandalia approved in London, warned Croghan to be wary of Guy Johnson. Guy Johnson would want to push any such sale through the Iroquois League, Wharton thought.54 Thus the huge

Vandalia tract had to be purchased before the Quebec Act was ratified, but Croghan had no financial reserves left to accomplish this.

The Quebec Act was to take effect the following May. The concern for colonists was that the Quebec Act transferred territory claimed by Pennsylvania and Virginia to the Province of Quebec, and also affected New York on the southern shores of Lakes

Ontario and Erie. Moreover, the boundaries of Quebec now extended south and west to the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi, taking in all the Ohio and Illinois country and basically encasing within the British Empire the Great Lakes from Fort Frontenac to the western end of Lake Superior.55 Map 8-2 shows both the original 1763 Province of

Quebec as well as the Annexation to the Province of Quebec authorized by the 1774

Quebec Act.

54Wainwright, Diplomat, 296 n58. Wainwright quoted from a letter from Wharton to Croghan, April 17, 1775, in Cadwalader Family Papers, but did not cite the volume.

55Parliament, Great Britain, “The Quebec Act: October 7, 1774,” The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library, 2015). http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/quebec_act_1774.asp (accessed February 28, 2015). Quebec was also expanded north to the Laurentian Continental Divide between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay (not to be confused with the Saint Lawrence Continental Divide), thus unifying “Rupert’s Land” (Hudson’s Bay Company territory) with southern Canada.

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Map 8-2. William Shepherd, 1774 Quebec Act, 1923, Perry-Castañeda Library, University of Texas.56

56William Robert Shepherd, “The British Colonies in North American 1763-1775,” Historical Atlas (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1923), public domain, under license to Wikimedia Commons by Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin, accessed December 11, 2014, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/#mediaviewer/File:British_colonies_1763-76_shepherd1923.PNG Note that Shepherd also depicted Vandalia.

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For his part Guy Johnson was more concerned about Indian reactions to the

Quebec Act than he had been about Vandalia. He wrote Gage, “I have also been questioned concerning the extent . . . of the Province of Quebec, [and] in this [and] all other matters have hitherto satisfied the Indians, tho' I know little more of [this] than what the prints inform me . . .”57 Mirroring Johnson’s concerns and adding his own pique with London, Gage shot back. “I know nothing of the extent of the Province of

Quebec, but what I see by the Act of Parliament in the public prints.”58

Increasingly the Patriot faction in the colonies south of the Saint Lawrence called themselves “Americans” and they believed the Ohio and Illinois countries were theirs by right. Now this gigantic Quebec, the result of another “Intolerable Act” of a distant

Parliament where America had no representation, stood in the way of settlement in the west. Incredibly, even loyalist Canadians criticized the Quebec Act for its failure to provide Parliamentary representation for Canada. Nonetheless, once the Revolution began the Quebec Act provided a needed justification for the abortive invasion of

Canada by the upstart Continentals in 1775.59

Virtually no Briton in Albion or America marked May 1, 1775, the date the

Quebec Act took effect, because less than a fortnight earlier shots had rung out on

57Guy Johnson to Gage, November 10, 1775, in Johnson, Papers, 13:691.

58Gage to Guy Johnson, November 28, 1775, in Johnson, Papers, 13:698.

59Nancy Brown Foulds, “Quebec Act,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (Ottawa: Historica Canada), accessed February 20, 2015, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quebec-act/. After the attack on Quebec failed Benjamin Franklin, ever the Philadelphia entrepreneur, quipped that it would be easier to buy Canada than conquer it. 332

Lexington Green. Men and boys who had worked and fought shoulder to shoulder for the British Empire now killed each other. The Quebec Act, Vandalia, Pontiac, the

Proclamation Lines, The French and Indian War, the Iroquois League, Samuel Wharton,

William Johnson and George Croghan were consigned to the bin of historical trivia by the unfolding events of the American Revolution. When it ended six and half years later little of what had preceded it would still matter – except perhaps for the 1771 Scioto

Indian Council.

Revolution and the Question of Patriotism

In early 1756, an anonymous source provided some letters from America addressed to the former French Ambassador to Great Britain, the Duke de Mirepoix.

Intercepted in Ireland, these letters described a treasonous plot in western Pennsylvania later labelled Filius Gallicae (French brother). A good deal of the background matched

Croghan and his activities at the time, such as his being Irish, his frustration with the governor of Pennsylvania over non-payment of expenses incurred on behalf of the colony, and the fact that he had been tasked to raise an army for the defense of

Pennsylvania’s western frontier.

All these claims were true. Croghan was Irish; Pennsylvania had not reimbursed him for many presents for the Indians or other expenses, and Cumberland County had named him a Commissioner, commissioned him a Captain in its militia and asked him to raise a western defense force. Other descriptions of this alleged British traitor were clearly not relevant to Croghan. The traitor spoke French; Croghan did not. He was

Roman Catholic; ironically Johnson had been, but Croghan’s family had always been 333

Anglicans. He supposedly levied ten thousand of the fifteen thousand-man army he raised, neither of which was true or even made sense.

Another charge was that Pennsylvania was rife with Roman Catholic Germans and Irish, something that many British leaders suspected. From this source of suspected

Papists and Francophiles Croghan was expected to recruit his huge army. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Irish in Pennsylvania were largely lowland Scots,

Presbyterians whose ancestors had moved to Ulster in northern Ireland a hundred and fifty years earlier. Meanwhile the Pennsylvania Germans were predominantly pacifist

Anabaptists, Reformed (Calvinists) or – like the King’s great-grandfather, George I –

Lutherans.60

A secret investigation into Filius Gallicae ensued in Britain and America. When

General Daniel Webb brought some of the intercepted letters to New York in June,

1756, British authorities compared them with Croghan’s rough script and hammered

English. The Filius Gallicae letters could never have been written by a man as illiterate as Croghan, the British New York cognoscenti concluded. London agreed; the matter was dropped.61

Neither the author nor the subject of the Filius Gallicae letters has ever been determined. Nonetheless, Filius Gallicae was muttered about Croghan in London salons

60Knittle, Palatine Emigration, 78-79. Indeed in 1714 Parliament ungenerously offered Roman Catholics who had settled in New York under the British Naval Stores Redemptorist Project the Hobson’s choice of converting to Protestantism or being sent back to the Palatinate. Queen Anne interceded, allowing them to stay.

61Wainwright, Diplomat, 108-109. 334

for years. One of the men who had initially suspected Croghan was Lord Halifax, to whom Croghan had appealed in 1764 for Amherst’s replacement and Johnson’s modification to the Proclamation Line. Croghan himself was never told of Filius Gallicae and probably never knew of it.

The two years from 1775 to 1777 were not auspicious for George Croghan.

Besieged by gout and other ailments the aging Indian trader, now in his sixties, began to feel the earth move under him. Pittsburgh, with its fond memories upriver along the

Allegheny, was a comfortable home. There he was at least able to hide from his creditors. His Pittsburgh estate, Croghan Hall, was a working farm, creating enough revenue to be self-sustaining.

The Continental Congress had named another trader, , its Indian

Agent. Croghan had officially resigned from British service during the Vandalia fervor; now his services were no longer needed by either the Patriots or the crown. For his part

Butler did rely on Croghan’s experience and his contacts with the western Indians.

However, in spring 1776 Butler retired and the myopic Philadelphia-based Congress named Croghan’s old Baynton and Wharton nemesis George Morgan to replace him.

The two detested each other. Croghan blamed Morgan for the failure of all the Illinois ventures, and Morgan blamed Croghan for the collapse of the firm. Both were right, but

Morgan’s presence in Pittsburgh was a sour reminder that the hand of Philadelphia’s creditors reached all the way across the colony.

Nonetheless, Croghan tested the waters of American patriotism in Pittsburgh, signing on as Chairman of the local Committee of Correspondence. For the record, the 335

Pittsburgh committee had recommended Croghan over Morgan as Indian agent, but the

Philadelphia-based Congress would hear none of it. Lift a pint with Croghan and one found a jovial Irishman; lend him money and he would invest it in some half-baked western land scheme and then mortgage it to someone else; scratch Croghan and one found a British lackey. The general consensus in Philadelphia was that at best Croghan could not be trusted; at worst he was a Tory. After all he had served fifteen years under

Sir William Johnson, and worse, under General Gage, now the pariah of the Colonies.62

In the eyes of the Philadelphia Revolutionaries Morgan was clearly the better choice.

Meanwhile Continental Brigadier General Edward Hand had been dispatched to command the Continental garrison at Fort Pitt. A former British surgeon and Irish doctor who had gone over to the Revolutionary cause, Hand knew Croghan from their days with Edmonstone and suspected he was still loyal to Great Britain.63 Hand had uncovered a somewhat dubious “Loyalist Plot” involving Croghan’s friend Alexander

McKee. McKee had been linked to the British at Fort Niagara; Hand arrested him.64 The full-blooded Patriots turned on Croghan, forcing him to leave town.

62Bunker Hill had occurred the previous June. By then Gage had been “double-hatted” as Governor of Massachusetts. However, Gage was not present at the Battle of Bunker Hill. General Viscount William Howe commanded the British forces there; nonetheless, Gage was still British Commander-in-Chief. Boston Patriots saw him as the incarnation of the devil, and the British sacked him blaming him for Howe’s Pyrrhic victory at Bunker Hill.

63Like Croghan, Hand was Irish. That Hand and Croghan knew each other from the “old sod” is unlikely. Hand was born in 1744, three years after Croghan arrived in America. However, Edmonstone commanded the British unit that Hand supported, and Croghan met Hand when he dressed some Indians’ wounds at Fort Pitt.

64Wainwright, Diplomat, 300. Here is where Wainwright brings the previously “murdered” Simon Girty back to life. Hand arrested him as along with McKee.

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Under scrutiny from Hand and the Pittsburgh revolutionaries, and convinced that his good humor and gift of gab would alleviate some of the pressure from his creditors,

Croghan moved back to Philadelphia in 1777. He settled in at Monckton Hall, his estate on the Delaware River. It would be short-lived; on September eleventh General Howe, now commanding in America, bested the upstart Washington at Brandywine and took the city. The Continental Congress fled to the safety of the west shore of the

Susquehanna.

Howe soon learned that Croghan had served on Pittsburgh’s Committee of

Correspondence. Monckton was situated on high ground north of the city. Howe ordered Croghan to relocate into town so the British could keep a closer eye on him.

Philadelphia was a nest of spies; agents, financiers and suttlers ferried guns and ammunition to Washington’s army all the while playing cards and lifting pints with

British officers.65 No one trusted anyone else, least of all Howe and Croghan.

Washington threatened the city again in early October at Germantown in the north. Washington lost again, but he had gained the element of surprise to which the

British Viscount was unaccustomed. To protect the city from another attack in the north where Washington might succeed enough to seize the high ground and emplace artillery as he had done at Dorchester Heights in Boston, Howe decided to construct a line of fortifications from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. He tore down twenty-seven

65Croghan’s cousin William may have been among them. This is discussed later in this chapter.

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mansions to make this defensive barrier; one of them was Croghan’s beloved Monckton

Hall, still mortgaged to the hilt.

In the summer of 1778 the British high command abandoned Philadelphia for

New York. Croghan, still under a sort-of house arrest, was directed to leave with the prisoners. Croghan’s friend Major General James Robertson intervened. As a major,

Robertson had served in New York as Abercrombie’s chief military logistician for the

British Army in America during the French and Indian War; thus he may have known

Croghan because of use of Fort Shirley (Croghan’s Aughwick depot) by both traders and the military.66 Howe demurred, and agreed to “parole” Croghan. Howe and Robertson decamped to New York, leaving Croghan behind and Philadelphia once again in the hands of the Revolutionaries.

Now the tables turned again. In mid-1778 the Philadelphia Patriots fixed their sights on Croghan, charging him with treason linked once more to the charges against

McKee. The trial was set for November. Pennsylvania Chief Justice Thomas McKean, another Croghan friend in a high place – this time on the Revolutionary side, provided

Croghan a pass to leave town. Incensed over the American charges, the stubborn

Irishman refused to go. In July he took the oath of loyalty to Pennsylvania and in early

November successfully defended himself. Only then did he leave Philadelphia.67

66Saint Andrew’s Society of New York, “Governor James Robertson,” Roster of the Saint Andrew’s Society of New York, Part I: From its Organization to the End of the American Revolution, ed. William MacBean (New York, Saint Andrew’s Society, 1911), 1757, entry 25.

67Wainwright, Diplomat, 302.

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While in Philadelphia, Croghan had engaged the services of Bernard and Michael

Gratz as his accountants. The Gratzes were Jewish accountants in a time Jewish people would have had little reason to help a destitute Irishman, particularly in and around

Philadelphia where during the Revolution no one was easily trusted. Nonetheless, the

Gratz brothers may have been the last to come to the aid of the old Indian agent; they stuck with Croghan to the end, working tirelessly to resolve his many debts.68

Meanwhile Croghan rented modest accommodations in Lancaster. His Lancaster residence was more like those he had built in the far west than his grand home in

Philadelphia. The house was cramped and had no chimney.

A quiet player in this period of Croghan’s life was his cousin William Croghan.

William was the son of Croghan’s uncle Nicholas Croghan who had remained in Ireland.

William, now a Major in the Virginia Militia and a steadfast Patriot, was the progenitor of the only truly American Croghan family. (Both of George Croghan’s daughters married British soldiers and effectively became Canadians.) William wanted to be close to his cousin, but Croghan often rebuffed him. Finally in early January, 1780, William caught up with “the Colonel” as he referred to him at Lancaster and spent ten days with him. George Croghan ultimately moved back to Philadelphia.

George Croghan had considered himself a Briton first and a Pennsylvanian second. Along the way he flirted with Virginia but never gave up his Cumberland

68Jonathan D. Sarna, “Anti-Semitism and American History” in Commentary 71, No. 3 (March, 1981), 42. Sarna quotes Jacob Marcus writing in The Colonial American Jew, published in 1970, “In the colonial era, ‘Jew was still a dirty word,’ Marcus writes, ‘and it was hardly rare to see the Jews denigrated as such in the press.’’’

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County, Pennsylvania, commission and never took one from Virginia. Many of his friends and relatives including Thomas Smallman, Edward Ward, William Croghan and

Robert Callender did take commissions from Virginia. Some remained loyal to Britain while others chose the Old Dominion over the Mother Country. Croghan’s own daughters Suzanna Prévost and Catherine (Adonwentishon) Brant married British officers and moved to Canada.

There are only two indicators supporting Croghan’s being a “large P” Patriot: his participation with the Pittsburgh Committee of Correspondence and his taking the oath to Pennsylvania. The first may have been out of genuine patriotism, but it most likely enabled him to stay “in the game” with the Revolutionary powers in western

Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, General Hand knew Croghan and suspected he was still loyal to Great Britain. Regardless what Hand thought of Croghan, one can make a case that Hand spent much of his time at Fort Pitt looking over his shoulder, suspicious of almost everyone who had ever worked for King and Country.69 The second was

Croghan’s affirmation of Pennsylvania’s (Patriot) Oath of Allegiance and Fidelity which he signed July sixteenth 1778. 70 As an indication of loyalty, this document is even less convincing than his service in Pittsburgh. Unquestionably the oath bolstered his case

69Wainwright, Diplomat, 300. Hand had resigned from the British Army before the Revolution and settled in Lancaster County. In 1779 George Washington gave Hand command of a Brigade of Lafayette’s Division. Perhaps Washington, himself an old “Forks of the Ohio” man, meant to allay Hand’s paranoia of loyalist plots in Pittsburgh by placing him closer to the real British threat.

70George Croghan, Oath of Allegiance and Fidelity Passed by the General Assembly of Pennsylvania 13th June 1777 [signed by Croghan], July 16, 1778, in Cadwalader Papers, 4:Box 202, Folder 7.

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against the charges of treason only lodged against him a month earlier. At the time he signed the oath the treason trial loomed in the future.71 Meanwhile the British would depart Philadelphia a mere two days later. Almost certainly Croghan’s friend British

Major General Robertson secured Croghan’s release before Croghan signed the loyalty oath.72

Nonetheless, there are equally few markers suggesting he was a British collaborator, much less a Tory spy. No question many British officers from Edmonstone to Robertson knew Croghan and respected his work with the Indians. Several members of the House of Lords, notably Halifax and Hillsborough, felt the same. Had his mentor

Johnson lived there is no question he would have remained loyal to the Crown.

In the end George Croghan’s patriotism, much like the man himself, remained enigmatic. All his life Croghan worked to ensure neutrality with and between Indian nations. A week after he signed Pennsylvania’s oath Croghan responded to a request from a fellow land speculator Thomas Walker of Virginia. Walker had asked for

Croghan’s intercession in the “impending ravages” by the western Indians. Croghan was proscribed from helping by the Pittsburgh bureaucracy, but what he told Walker provides an insight into his view of partisanship. Croghan wrote, “I believe you will do

71Supreme Executive Council, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Discharge of Offense Charged to George Croghan, Formerly Indian Trader, November 12, 1778, in Cadwalader Papers, 4, Box 202, Folder 7. The November 12th proceedings exonerated Croghan; the decision was sealed December 3rd.

72Wainwright, Diplomat, 302. Wainwright says Robertson “interceded” (no citation given). This suggests that Robertson lacked the authority to pardon. More to Robinson’s focus than his authority while in Philadelphia, he had commanded the New York barracks for eight years. As a New York “subject matter expert,” in mid-July Robinson would have been concentrating more on supporting the British Army’s imminent move there than securing Croghan’s freedom.

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me justice to believe that while I stayed at Fort Pitt I [did] everything in my power to advise the different tribes to a strict neutrality . . . ”73 In this retrospective on his approach to the Indians Croghan may have inadvertently revealed his true feelings about the Revolution: he supported one side or the other when he had to, and both with equal indifference.

After

Croghan’s prize was Croghan’s Forest a large tract of land at the foot of Lake

Otsego in New York, the headwaters of the Susquehanna. Reflecting Shannon’s view that “Johnson’s was Croghan’s dream,” here was where it was to materialize. The reality was: Croghan was more than broke. To use a modern term he was “underwater” with all his properties. No one understood this better than Suzanna Prévost. She and her British army husband had moved into the small cabin on Croghan’s vast New York property, living more like trans-Appalachian settlers than members of the lower rung of the British ruling class.74

George Croghan died on August 31, 1782. In his will he left to many people vast tracts of over-mortgaged land and other forms of depleted wealth from days gone by.

His estate probated for slightly over £50 sterling. Except for a few distant friends,

Britons forgot him, although he spawned at least two generations of British Canadian heroes. As for the United States, Croghan’s new homeland was more forgiving than he

73Wainwright, Diplomat, 303 n7. Wainwright quoted Croghan to Thomas Walker, July 23, 1778, in Cadwalader Family Papers, but did not cite a volume.

74Prévost’s father was a Major General in the British Army.

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might have expected. In May 1782 a committee of the Continental Congress met to evaluate all pre-Revolutionary Indian grants and purchases including the claims of the

Illinois, Indiana, Vandalia and other companies and land schemes. Indiana was the grant at the Forks of the Ohio that Croghan had been authorized to purchase from the

Iroquois on behalf of the “suffering traders” after the Fort Stanwix Treaty.75 Croghan’s

Indiana parcel was the only claim the United States recognized. All others were denied.

The Congressional Committee wrote:

On the whole your committee are of the opinion that the purchases of Colonel Croghan and the Indiana Company, were made bona fide for a valuable consideration, according to the usage and custom of purchasing land from the Indians.76

The Committee rendered its decision in May, 1782. Unaware of the Committee’s decision George Croghan died a pauper in August that year. Because Croghan’s Indiana property lay within the United States his heirs, by then all British loyalists in Canada, never secured title to any of it.

75Indiana is depicted on Map 8-1, Vandalia, earlier in this chapter.

76Wainwright, Diplomat, 306 n15 and n16, 309. Wainwright quoted a letter from L. A Levy to Michael Gratz, April 24, 1780, but from an HSP collection other than Etting and which the author has not seen. On page 309 in another geo-historical fabrication Wainwright claims that Pennsylvania’s western border was settled in 1780. He then goes on to use this assertion to justify his contention that Croghan should have known that his Pittsburgh area lands were in Pennsylvania. Andrew Ellicott and David Rittenhouse began the survey of the western Pennsylvania border, known as “Ellicott’s Line in Pennsylvania” (to differentiate it from another line they surveyed in Florida), in 1786 – four years after Croghan’s death, not to mention that in 1780 Croghan was nowhere near western Pennsylvania and fairly close to death. Numerous earlier maps had correctly approximated the location of Pennsylvania’s west border, but nothing had fixed it legally before 1786. 343

Conclusion

The French and Indian War, along with George Croghan’s appointment as

Johnson’s deputy, put a relatively permanent damper on his fur-trading activities.

Nonetheless, his early trading days in America had raised in him an awareness of the vast potential in the western lands. He also gained insight into the drainage of eastern

American watersheds, particularly the Ohio-Mississippi and Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence systems.

Land speculation like trading required capital of which Croghan was frequently short. His early days in the fur trade had introduced him to Delaware Valley merchant bankers; while the players were different, the Philadelphia land investment community knew of his reputation for turning dust into gold. Quaker Samuel Wharton was his first and most steadfast investor in land deals.

Two problems hounded Croghan and Wharton. First, returns on land took more time to materialize than returns on peltry. Second, Wharton was the middle partner in a firm bookended by its fatally-ill founder John Baynton and his skeptical son-in-law

George Morgan. In rapid succession Croghan floated an Illinois land scheme, an Illinois traders’ syndicate, another Forks of the Ohio land deal called Indiana, and the grandest land venture of all, the fourteenth colony of Vandalia. Croghan and Wharton became increasingly shrewd in both underwriting land investments and encasing their plans within agendas of the crown and the colonies. Unfortunately, they rarely satisfied both.

The Illinois deals ran afoul of Croghan’s status as a crown official which precluded him from land speculation. While Lord Hillsborough appeared enthralled by the prospect of 344

the Illinois land scheme he had deflected it even while Croghan was in London in 1764.

In 1771 Croghan resolved this conflict of interest by resigning as Johnson’s deputy.

The Indiana deal included the legitimate if overinflated claims of the “suffering traders,” but it was so complex as to scare off Virginia. Vandalia gained support in

London but alienated Virginia and Pennsylvania. Further, General Gage went to London on leave in 1774 and spoke publicly against the fourteenth colony. Despite Lord

Hillsborough’s passing interest in an Illinois colony ten years earlier, he joined Gage in denouncing Vandalia. Meanwhile Croghan, acting impetuously on news of imminent

Privy Council support for Vandalia, briefed the western Indians about it. They were excited because Vandalia, with Wharton as Governor and Croghan as head Indian agent, promised to limit the extent of new settlements in their lands. As Vandalia unraveled

Croghan’s standing was weakened among his closest Indian allies.

Vandalia may have proven a convenient shill for Whitehall’s own solution, the

Quebec Act. This proposed expansion of former French territory would create a huge, triangular crown colony stretching from the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie to the

Mississippi River to Hudson Bay territory. Most of the country north of the Ohio River and all of British Illinois would lie within this overgrown Quebec. London would dictate what areas within in would be set aside for Indians and where colonists could settle. For the growing Patriot faction in the thirteen colonies the Quebec Act was yet another

“Intolerable Act,” but London’s enormous new colony was stillborn. Quebec’s effective date, May 1, 1775, would have been two weeks after Lexington Green. In that fortnight both Albion and America forgot about Quebec. 345

During the American Revolution George Croghan was a sunshine patriot for both sides. His sampling of the Revolutionary cause in Pittsburgh was thwarted by the officious American General Hand, himself a former British Army surgeon. His trust of the British high command in Philadelphia was rewarded by the destruction of his estate.

As the redcoats pulled back to New York, Croghan reluctantly signed Pennsylvania’s loyalty oath. Armed with this document, he successfully defended himself against treason charges by an American kangaroo court. In the end, with virtually no money, he moved back to Lancaster. The location and his circumstances there must have been a bittersweet reminder of 1741. George Croghan died a pauper in August, 1782, without ever knowing that three months earlier a committee of Congress had approved his claim to the Indiana grant at the Forks of the Ohio. He would have owned Pittsburgh; even in

1782 it would have been worth a fortune.

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CHAPTER 9

PROGENY AND LEGACY: THE SUN RISING AND SETTING

No day will ever erase you from the memory of time.

– Virgil, ca. 24 BCE; Canadian Valiants Memorial, 2006

Introduction

The tapestry of George Croghan’s legacy is knotted; unravelling it is the subject of this final chapter. The preceding chapter records the end of George Croghan’s life, but his story continued well into the next century. This chapter examines that legacy.

General George Washington was fighting a revolution against the greatest power on earth when a serious skirmish broke out between Connecticut settlers and a group of

British-led Senecas in Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley. Neither settlers nor

Senecas should have been in Pennsylvania. With few losses, British and Seneca forces under the command of Colonel routed a Connecticut militia unit killing and scalping most of them. Using this “Wyoming Massacre” as it became known as justification, Washington attacked the Iroquois homeland. The Iroquois Confederacy was already unravelling during the Revolution, and this action did little to prevent either its further collapse or its drift toward Britain.

Colonel Thomas Proctor did not know George Croghan. Nonetheless, his experiences during a fruitless, post-war expedition to the Iroquois Council Fire at Buffalo

Creek in northwestern New York illustrated a consequence of the American Revolution in ways which mirrored the aftermath of the French and Indian War in the west.

Proctor, a former Patriot artillery commander, set out with a single colleague to enlist 347

Seneca chief Cornplanter’s assistance in aligning the western Indians with the new nation. Whether Proctor knew it or not, Cornplanter had been one of Butler’s Seneca lieutenants at Wyoming. Nonetheless, Cornplanter helped Procter find the meeting at

Buffalo Creek, but he never made the trip to the west.

Croghan’s long-standing Shawnee allies lost the most of any native nation after the Revolution, and their subsequent defiance would also cost their western allies dearly. Fallen Timbers was but one of America’s early major conflicts with western

Indians, but, unlike earlier defeats of U.S. Generals Arthur Saint Clair and , in this battle General “Mad” Anthony Wayne bested Shawnee Chief in a lopsided victory. The resulting 1795 epitomized many U.S.-Indian treaties to follow. Fallen Timbers occurred in the summer of 1794 two years after

Kentucky statehood. The result was that not only did the Shawnees lose their hunting ground south of the Ohio, but other western Indians lost much of their territory north of the river between the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes.

When Croghan built his palatial home Monckton in Philadelphia he had his Uncle

Nicholas in Dublin ship many fine goods to furnish it. Whether this was a part of these dealings or not is unclear, but Nicholas’s son William came to Philadelphia as well.

William Croghan disappeared into a New York merchant bank for several years, but he re-emerged in Philadelphia during the end of Croghan’s life with a promising future. His link to Cousin George was the Gratz brothers’ accounting firm who handled Croghan’s end-of-life financial affairs. Nor was William well-connected only in business. He became a Patriot officer and a close confidante of Washington’s aide, Maryland Captain 348

Tench Tilghman. He also managed to meet and marry Lucy Clark, sister of George

Rogers Clark. Settling in Kentucky, William and Lucy had a son they named George. This

George Croghan went on to receive accolades for his service during the and establish a distinguished American family.1

Yet George Croghan had his own children. His Irish daughter Suzanna may have arrived with him in 1741 because she married in 1765. No mention is found of her mother, but Croghan’s mother, whom history records only as “Mrs. Thomas Ward,” accompanied him from Ireland. She may have been responsible for raising the girl once in America or perhaps before then. Suzanna married British Major Augustine Prévost, son of Major General Augustine Prévost who commanded the British 60th Regiment of

Foot in 1779 during the Siege of Savannah.2 The younger Prévost did not succeed as well as his father in the British military and settled in Canada after the American

Revolution.

Croghan had a second daughter, Catherine (Adonwentishon), by his second wife

Tekarihoga, the daughter of the Mohawk Turtle Clan Sachem Nikus. Croghan’s most illustrious progeny was no blood relative at all, but rather Catherine’s husband the

Mohawk warrior-diplomat Joseph Brant. Brant’s legacy is almost as complicated as

Croghan’s, except that he stayed fiercely loyal to Great Britain and even today is highly regarded as one of Canada’s “Valiants.” In a bit of Croghan history presaging the

1Should the reader search online for “George Croghan” nine times out of ten this later George Croghan will be the result.

2Prévost like Bouquet was another Swiss mercenary. 349

American Civil War, during the War of 1812 Joseph and Catherine Brant’s son, British

Captain John Brant, fought across Lake Erie from U.S. Colonel George Croghan.

General George Washington

George Croghan’s legacy in the Ohio and Illinois territories was trampled by the

American Revolution. Unlike others, Johnson and Weiser in particular who had the good sense to die before the revolution, Croghan had the misfortune to live just through it. Ironically Johnson and Weiser are remembered in history texts, place names and schools. Croghan is barely recognized in the states which comprised the Ohio and

Illinois country. Pennsylvania maintains his name on a road and a plaque near a mound in a farmer’s field which was the site of Fort Lyttleton. Meanwhile, Weiser has a High

School named for him and Montour an entire county. Even McKee, whether a Tory or not, has several “McKeesport” towns named for his family. Croghan could boast of New

York’s plaque honoring him at the foot of Lake Otsego, except that Croghan’s Forest is overshadowed by both ’s home and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

June, 1778, Canadian Loyalist Colonel John Butler and a group of anglophile

Senecas ambushed a Connecticut militia unit defending a settlement in the Wyoming

Valley of Pennsylvania. Only sixty American soldiers escaped; almost all the rest were killed. Butler’s Rangers and Senecas burned houses and livestock, but spared the local populace.3 Nonetheless, in the revolutionary atmosphere of the time all counted as

3Ernest Cruikshank, Butler's Rangers and the Settlement of Niagara. (Welland, Ontario: Tribune Printing House, 1893), 48-49. The civilians were part of a rogue Connecticut settlement in the Wyoming Valley, ownership of which Connecticut had disputed with Pennsylvania in the years preceding the Revolution.

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American Patriots. Washington was so infuriated by what became known as the

Wyoming Massacre that he invested the Iroquois homeland itself. This action did not cause the weakening of Iroquois influence in North America. The Six Nations had previously agreed to extinguish their council fire, freeing member nations to align with either Britain or the United States. Nonetheless, Washington’s actions hardened

Iroquois support for the British.

What Washington failed to recognize, admittedly in part because he had more important things on his mind, was that the Iroquois were the force on which both the

Dutch and British had depended to maintain good order in America. The Iroquois

League was their ally, a “Third Empire.” As the Iroquois’ representative Thomas King reminded the western Indians at Fort Pitt in 1770, “Any nation, Brethren that refuse to come to this General Confederacy must expect to be struck by us.”4 The Wyandottes in particular needed no memory prod. As for the United States the Iroquois believed that all their territory which had lain within British North America was not part of the new nation. Britain meanwhile fanned these flames by creating several Mohawk enclaves within Canada. Further, the British had repeatedly pointed to the Treaty of Utrecht to explain their relationship with the Iroquois, and it explicitly granted Great Britain

“suzerainty” over the Iroquois, not ownership of their lands.

Nonetheless, Washington’s foray against Iroquoia crippled the Six Nation

Confederacy and beheaded the only existing Indian counterpart to European-styled

4Edmonstone to Gage, December 27, 1770, Gage Papers, AS:99. 351

regimes. Like it or not, the nascent American government was such a regime. As with any such decapitation of friend or foe the result in the Iroquois homeland was anarchy.

Meanwhile, the western and southern Indians not only saw the fall of the Iroquois as

“good riddance,” but an opportunity in the chaos of Revolution to retake their homelands and hunting grounds. The Senecas, keepers of the Iroquois western door, defected to the western Indians; arguably the most effective Iroquois fighters, the

Mohawks, stayed loyal to the British. Only the Oneidas aligned with the United States.

With the flame at Onondaga extinguished, the confederacy of the Six Nations had been dissolved. Washington simply accelerated the process.

Colonel Proctor’s Mission

The artillery which Lord Howe feared would attack Philadelphia from the hills where he had demolished Croghan’s beloved Monckton Hall was under the command of

Patriot Colonel Thomas Proctor. Howe’s fears were well founded. Proctor’s guns had tormented the Redcoats at Trenton, Brandywine and Germantown. Proctor was well liked by both Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox. He was not so appreciated by the Indians because he had formed part of the pincer movement for Sullivan’s

Mohawk Valley campaign against the Iroquois after Wyoming.

A decade after the revolution Knox called on Proctor to undertake a delicate and potentially dangerous mission. Two years earlier American General Josiah Harmar had suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of the western Indians near modern Cincinnati.

Washington had already tasked General Arthur St. Clair to avenge this, but he hoped to first enlist the support of the still-friendly New York Indians. Shortly before Knox met 352

with Proctor, Seneca chief Cornplanter had met with U.S. authorities in Philadelphia in an effort to craft a peace between the new nation and the Indians. Cornplanter agreed to gather some friendly chiefs and go west to try to reach a détente between the western Indians and Philadelphia. Proctor’s mission was to go into Indian country, find out why they hated the United States so much, and try to get Seneca Chief Cornplanter moving on his promised peace initiative.

Only one other person accompanied Proctor on this mission. Knox spotted the two men $600, and they set off unpropitiously in a driving rainstorm on the ides of

March. Proctor followed the old traders’ route to the Allegheny River where he first met with some Senecas. This was a good sign; Cornplanter was a Seneca. Unbeknown to Proctor, on Cornplanter’s way back from Philadelphia he had cheated death at the hands of some marauding Virginia militiamen by escaping into Fort Franklin at Venango.

Later Proctor encountered some Shawnees who refused his credentials, but told him the Council Fire was lit at Buffalo Creek (modern Buffalo) in New York and he could present his papers there. Proctor headed further north, but the clock was ticking on St.

Clair’s expedition. Proctor arrived at Buffalo Creek at the start of a two-week condolence ritual for a chief’s daughter. While there he noticed the finery which the women wore, all of it British. Proctor wrote in his journal that one Indian chief, ". . . was fully regimented as a colonel, as belonging to some royal regiment, and equipped with the best pair of epaulettes." Proctor noted that the Indians were “fully dependent” on the British for everything. Egged on by the nearby British, the Council at Buffalo Creek

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told Proctor that all the Americans would be killed if they ventured west. Disheartened,

Proctor returned to Philadelphia.5

What Proctor found at Buffalo Creek with the British was much the same as the

British had found on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi with the French. After the

Revolution, Britain had been reduced to the same caretaker status along the U.S.-

Canada border as France had in the Illinois country after the French and Indian War.

Oddly enough, when the British behaved like the French, the Indians befriended them and shifted their antagonism toward the United States. Proctor was probably the wrong person to capture this nuance, or Washington did not hear it. St. Clair launched his attack two months later, only to meet with worse results than had Harmar; he lost three fourths of his force. Both Proctor’s peace mission and St. Clair’s military expedition had failed. Cornplanter never made his embassy to the western Indians, but in the ensuing years he managed to keep the Senecas neutral.

The Path to Fallen Timbers

Closest to Croghan’s heart were the Shawnees, and they were among the first

Indians to be distressed by U.S. attitudes after the Revolution. In 1792 Kentucky became the fifteenth state.6 Despite the names “Ohio” and “Illinois,” used by both

5Carl G, Karsch, “Colonel Proctors Mission to the Indians,” Carpenter’s Hall History, (Philadelphia: Association, 2015), accessed February 6, 2015, http://www.ushistory.org/carpentershall/history/proctermission.htm.

6The Republic of Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state in 1791 after founder and Patriot leader Ethan Allen threatened to discuss a similar option with Britain. Vermont was carved from territory contested by two existing colonies, New York and New Hampshire. Thus Kentucky was the first state created from formerly-British Indian territory. 354

France and Great Britain, Kentucky bordered both the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers thus embracing parts of both territories. Further, as if to stick a needle in the eyes of both the western and southern Indians, Kentucky occupied traditional lands of both. The biggest losers were the Shawnees whose hunting grounds occupied the south bank of the Ohio River which forms most of Kentucky’s northern boundary. A 1795 map of

Kentucky comprises Map 9-1.

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Map 9-1: William Gurthrie, Kentucky, Reduced from Elihu Barker’s Large Map, 1795, courtesy Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.7

7William Guthrie, “Kentucky: Reduced from Elihu Barker’s Large Map,” General Atlas For Carey's Edition Of Guthrie's Geography Improved (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1795), public domain, courtesy Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

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Matters went from bad to worse for the western Indians. The United States had interpreted the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution as abrogating the 1768 Fort

Stanwix Treaty, which had set aside the Western Reserve for the Indians. This would be the next place the United States would seize land from the natives over time, carving out the modern states of Ohio and Indiana. The Indians once again rightfully believed they had been excluded from this most recent treaty crafted by Europeans in Paris. The

Shawnees refused to recognize it. Croghan’s son-in-law Joseph Brant, now a British

Canadian, attempted to negotiate a settlement. His efforts fell on deaf ears.

Meanwhile Washington ordered Pennsylvania General “Mad” Anthony Wayne to build an army to defend what the U.S. was now calling its “.” In

August, 1794, Shawnee leader Blue Jacket stood up to Wayne with disastrous results.

Blue Jacket and Wayne met in a clash outside the still-British near modern

Toledo. The Shawnees dug in behind some large trees blown down by an earlier storm.

Wayne attacked with a superior force, encircling the Indians and defeating them with a bloody bayonet charge. The British commander of nearby Fort Miami, fearful of triggering another war with the U.S., locked the gates of the fort to the beleaguered

Indians. Known as the , the skirmish ended quickly. Losses on both sides were about the same, but Wayne’s force was twice the size of Blue Jacket’s so the percentage of Indian casualties was double that of the Americans. By the Treaty

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of Greenville, ostensibly resolving the issues which led to Fallen Timbers, the U.S. formally gained the land for the states of Ohio and much of Indiana.8

One young Shawnee warrior had not been at Fallen Timbers, but he felt its pain.

He was , and a decade and half later he would rekindle this animus. This time the British would open the gate.

William Croghan

George Croghan’s younger cousin William was a Patriot. He served in the

Continental Army with Washington in New Jersey and became very close to

Washington’s aide Maryland Colonel Tench Tilghman. In April, 1779, he apparently met the French Ambassador while attending a fine dinner which Washington hosted for the emissary of America’s new ally.9 After the war, in a letter to Gratz inquiring about his cousin, he even asked the accountant to give an enclosed letter to Tilghman or to, “. . . deliver it to George Washington if Colonel Tilghman is not there.”10

Tilghman must have known about young Croghan’s connections in Philadelphia, and may have enlisted him to procure materials clandestinely. In a 1779 letter to Gratz

William Croghan wrote this odd note including the mysterious blank lines between other lines of text, “______is number 65.054, & 65.055 Tickets in the 2nd Class Blanks or not. _____.” The text immediately preceding this noted that the Continentals believed,

8Michael G. Pratt, “The Battle of Fallen Timbers: An Eyewitness Perspective,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 67, No 1 (Toledo: Maumee Valley Historical Society, Winter, 1997), 4-34.

9William Croghan to Bernard Gratz, April 22, 1779, Etting Papers, Box 55:Folder 58.

10William Croghan to Bernard Gratz, April 21, 1782, Etting Papers, Box 55:Folder 89.

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“. . . the enemy intended landing some men in the Jerseys [and] we expect an active campaign.”11 The British had evacuated the capital in 1778 so this note most likely did not concern espionage. However, it may have concerned procuring something about which Gratz knew, Philadelphia had, and the British in “the Jerseys” did not. Most likely

William Croghan’s request was for ammunition, because a common revolutionary musket supplied by the French was the 69 caliber “Charleyville.” The French Charleyville fired a 65 caliber ball.12

William Croghan and his wife Lucy Rogers Clark, sister of , produced a strongly patriotic American family, found today principally in Kentucky.13

Their son Colonel George Croghan, named for his uncle, was a highly successful officer in the Army of the United States during the War of 1812. Then-Major Croghan became known as the “Hero of Fort Stephenson” for his stoic defense of the U.S. fort on Lake

Erie at Sandusky, where almost seventy years earlier his cousin had briefly established a trading post. Colonel Croghan’s victory there discouraged British General Henry Proctor from advancing into Ohio. The British withdrew to Canada opening the way for

11William Croghan to Bernard Gratz, March 26, 1779, Etting Papers, Box 55:Folder 57.

12Glenn Valis, “Muskets,” Tactics and Weapons of the Revolutionary War, March 21, 2002, accessed April 23, 2015, http://www.doublegv.com/ggv/battles/tactics.html under Glenn Valis battles, tactics.

13That William Croghan’s family settled in Kentucky is somewhat ironic given his cousin’s efforts to preserve Shawnee hunting lands in the same area.

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American control of Lake Erie. For his heroism at Fort Stephenson Colonel George

Croghan was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.14

George Croghan’s legacy in the United States was little more than the brave soldier in the War of 1812 who carried his name. Nonetheless, their blood relationship should not be discounted. At Fort Stephenson the younger George Croghan disobeyed orders of his commanding officer, future U.S. President William Henry Harrison, to evacuate and burn the fort. Convinced Croghan could neither save the fort nor hold off the British, Harrison backed off the main force ten miles. Croghan, equally convinced he could hold it, did so. The chagrined Harrison was nonetheless gracious in admitting he had misjudged the young major. Perhaps that same hard-headed Irishman whose skull the Kickapoos could not penetrate and who could speak so bluntly to the Lords of Trade lived on in his Cousin William’s line.

Catherine Brant and Suzanna Prévost in Canada

Croghan’s direct legacy was in Canada. The American Revolution drove many loyalist citizens out of the lower Thirteen Colonies. British soldiers who had married native-born Americans took even their Patriot-leaning spouses home to England or north to Canada. Indians, particularly Mohawks who had supported the British, found themselves without homelands. In Iroquoia, where he had worked so diligently in earlier years to keep the Iroquois Confederacy intact and allied with Britain, Sir William

14United States Congress, House of Representatives, “Colonel George Croghan, Public Law Stat. 4, 792, September 13, 1835,” Congressional Gold Medal Winners, (Washington: US House of Representatives, 1835) under history, art & archives, accessed September 24, 2014, http://history.house/gov/institution/Gold-Medal/Gold-Medal-Recipients. 360

Johnson’s voice was silenced by death when it was most needed. For all these people at the end of the war North America was still their home, but they were unwelcome south of the Saint Lawrence River. The Oneidas were the only Iroquois nation to align with the new order during the revolution, while the Mohawks and many Senecas remained with the old.15 When the war ended Canada proved to be a safe haven for loyalists, soldiers and Indians alike.

George Croghan’s progeny fit this mold. Both his daughters married men loyal to the crown, Suzanna a British soldier and Catherine a Mohawk warrior. Catherine had wed Augustine Prévost in Pennsylvania, and they made their home in New York. After

Wyoming and its aftermath, the Mohawk Valley was eliminated as an alternative for

Catherine and Joseph Brant. Canada was the only viable option for both families.

During the Revolution over two thousand Mohawks left New York for Canada.16

Canada acknowledged Joseph Brant’s contributions almost immediately. In

1785, Canadians built the Royal Mohawk Chapel in “Brantford.” Brant, his wife –

Croghan’s daughter – and their son, Captain John Brant are buried there. In Canada

15Jay Bilharz, “A Place of Great Sadness: A Mohawk Valley Battlefield Ethnography” Fort Stanwix National Monument Special Ethnographic Report (Boston: US National Park Service, 2009), 15, 53-54. At the 1777 Battle of Oriskany in New York, Patriot and Oneida forces squared off against British troops and Mohawk and Seneca warriors. This is an excellent and well-documented report not only on the battle but on the fracturing of the Iroquois Confederacy during the American Revolution. All Iroquois call Oriskany “A Place of Great Sadness” because there, for the first time in centuries, they fought each other. Joseph Brant left no written record of the battle, but his friend Major John Norton did. Norton was not at the battle, but Bilharz believes that Brant provided Norton an oral history which Norton transcribed. Bilharz made considerable use of Norton’s record in this monograph.

16John F. Leslie, “Assimilation, Integration or Termination? The Development of Canadian Indian Policy, 1943-1963” (doctoral thesis, Carleton University (Canada), 1999), 22.

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Brant is as famous as any founding father in the United States. As an example of this the

Canadian Valiants Memorial in Ottawa was commissioned in 2006 to honor fourteen

Canadian heroes. The statues and busts at The Valiants Memorial depict only individuals who have played an exemplary role in conflicts throughout Canadian history.

One of the chosen fourteen is Joseph Brant depicted as a Mohawk warrior with his native name Thayendanegea. The memorial includes an inscription from Virgil’s Aeneid,

"No day will ever erase you from the memory of time."17

Indisputably with these tributes Canadians celebrate neither George Croghan nor his daughter; they celebrate Joseph Brant. Equally without question Brant deserves credit for his remarkable life and achievements. Nonetheless, Croghan’s passionate

Irish blood flows in Joseph Brant’s Canadian descendants.

Before the American Revolution the Saint Lawrence River was at best a porous boundary within the British Empire. After the American Revolution a new and hardened line appeared on the North American map not only along the Saint Lawrence but throughout the Great Lakes region as well. Forts bristling with guns glowered at each other, and Indian nations aligned with Canada or the United States.18

Croghan’s most significant work had been in these watery borderlands while the boundary was porous. Then came the Revolution. After the abortive Patriot attack on

17Canada Public Arts and Monuments, The Valiants Memorial (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2014), accessed February 6, 2015, http://www.pch.gc.ca/eng/1380043646059.

18A more porous albeit still international border between the US and Canada reappeared after the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ending both the War of 1812 and forty years of hostility between the United States and Great Britain.

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Canada the Saint Lawrence and the Great Lakes became the border once again. After

Wyoming American attitudes toward Indians hardened; with the Treaty of 1783 the frontier settlers’ pre-war mindset became tacit, if not official, American policy. As the statehood of Kentucky demonstrated, no longer did colonial-era borders or Indian claims matter to those demarking the frontier. A new nation was formed and the

Indians simply got in the way of it.

With Croghan’s death and Brant’s exile from the Mohawk Valley the legacy of

Croghan’s work as Crown Indian negotiator shifted with Brant to Canada. There on a much larger geographic scale, but with a considerably smaller European population,

Great Britain could still enforce borders and treaties which it had so miserably failed to do in the south. There, on a six hundred thousand acre Upper Canada tract granted them by British Governor General Sir , the Mohawks were free of the Americans.19

Revolutionary soldiers considered Brant a fierce warrior; many Continentals argued that confronting him in battle was to be avoided at all costs. However, Canada’s view is quite different. While both Johnson and Croghan had influenced Brant, his efforts to conciliate in the west were more like Croghan’s negotiating style than

Johnson’s. Sir William had been too close to the Iroquois to grasp that their haughty approach to land dealing in the west was less a solution than a substantial part of the

19British Brigadier (General) Frederick Haldimand served as Governor of Quebec from 1778 to 1786.

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problem. As Canadian and Brant biographer Joseph Paxton put it, “Brant successfully made the transition from war to peace, from warrior to diplomat.”20 Possibly Catherine

Croghan, by then Matriarch of the Mohawk Turtle Clan, had imbued her husband with some of her father’s understanding of the Algonquian Lakes Indians, who had not been welcome around the Onondaga Council Fire.

As do many modern Canadians Brantford citizens hold Joseph Brant in high esteem to this day. In Brantford, “We thought of Brant more as a negotiator than as a warrior.”21 History bears out this view in several instances. About a month before the

Battle of Oriskany Brant warned his old neighbor, Patriot General Nicholas Herkimer, that the Mohawk Valley should expect attack from a combined British and Indian force.

Herkimer passed this intelligence on to his next-in-command, General Phillip Schuyler, along with his concern that the local militia might defect to the British. Schuyler passed it on to Washington, but Washington decided it was better to continue to harass and channel the main British army under General John Burgoyne than be drawn off by this diversion in the Mohawk Valley.22

Later Brant approached British Rangers commander Colonel John Butler about the efficacy of the Mohawks engaging the Continentals, arguing that Britain had not

20James Paxton, Joseph Brant and His World: 18th Century Mohawk Warrior and Statesman (Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., Ltd., 2008), 61.

21Janice Steedman Zimmerman, interview by the author, Boiling Springs, PA, March 7, 2015. Mrs. Zimmerman is the author’s sister-in-law. A Canadian citizen, she and her father’s family were raised in and around Brantford.

22Bilharz, “Sadness,” 37-38, 48. Washington’s strategic assessment proved to be the better course of action as the later defeat of Burgoyne would bear out.

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provided the Mohawks sufficient ammunition to be effective in a battle with them.

Butler put Brant off, but Sir William’s son-in-law, Captain Daniel Claus, serving with the

British, resolved this matter for Brant. Brant and about 250 Mohawks under his command did fight at Oriskany, but as the battle drew to a close he withdrew his troops to assist native villages which had been ransacked in a Patriot raid.23 Brant subsequently went to Onondaga where he successfully convinced Iroquois leaders to extinguish the Council Fire. This action freed individual warriors to fight on either side without the need for any of the Six Nations to commit to one side or the other.24

An incident similar to Brant’s warning to Herkimer occurred before the action at

Fallen Timbers, when Croghan’s son-in-law attempted to bring Blue Jacket to the negotiating table before American General Wayne’s arrival. Brant urged Blue Jacket to permit some American settlement north of the Ohio River, but Blue Jacket had as much distrust of the Mohawks as he did of Europeans. Brant’s diplomacy fell on deaf ears.25

Brant even went to London in an abortive attempt to obtain British support for the western Indians in the territory still disputed by Britain and the United States.26

Brant, Haldimand and Wayne also serve to illuminate the differences in Indian policy between British North America and the United States after the American

23Ibid., 47, 54, 66.

24Ibid., 41.

25Paxton, Brant, 60.

26Ibid., 58-59.

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Revolution. Two contrasting events following the 1783 Treaty of Paris illustrated this difference. In 1785 British General Haldimand awarded the Mohawks a sizeable grant along the Grand River in Upper Canada to replace their Mohawk Valley homeland lost to the Americans. The grant was largely awarded in appreciation for Brant’s and the

Mohawks’ support of the Great Britain despite having lost war. This grant was half the size of the entire Walking Purchase in Pennsylvania, which all parties had argued about from 1737 to 2004. In 1785 in this new Indian homeland Canada built the Royal

Mohawk Chapel, where the Brant family is buried. By contrast, ten years later under the terms of 1795 Treaty of Greenville following Wayne’s defeat of Blue Jacket’s Shawnees at Fallen Timbers, the United States paid the Western Indians $20,000 in goods in exchange for the state of Ohio as well as land now occupied by Detroit, Chicago and the

Mackinac Straits.27 Ohio alone covers over twenty-nine million acres.

The War of 1812 ended the forty-year animus between the United States and

British North America, but it solidified the differences. Croghan’s grandson Captain

John Brant, who by now had been named Turtle Clan Sachem by his mother, fought on the British side during the final war between Great Britain and the United States, much as did Croghan’s namesake nephew, Colonel George Croghan, for the U.S. as the “hero of Fort Stephenson.” The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, paved the way for the end of enmity between the United States and Great Britain, and effectively created modern Canada. No longer would the Americans invade north of the border,

27Charles J. Kappler, ed., “Treaty with the Wyandot, etc., 1795,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1904), Article 3. 366

nor would British or Canadians attack south. The United States and Canada would be friends, but Canada would be different.

Canadian Indian Policy

Until the 1820’s British officials in Canada regularly considered Indian views in policy-making. Further, trading and intermarriage enhanced relationships among

Canadian Europeans, Métis and Indians. The so-called “seven nations of Canada” remained loyal to the Crown through the War of 1812. In 1816 Indian affairs were moved under control of Canada’s military establishment in part to deflect development of separate Provincial Indian policies, something Canadians had observed with concern in the states of the United States.28 In 1821 Canada established a model program at

York based on Jesuit and other successful aboriginal programs to promote Indian self- reliance. This was followed by a private program of the Methodist Church on the Credit

River near Toronto. These settlements became the Canadian model for the future.29

Not everything went smoothly. In 1817 Britain rescinded the Selkirk Treaty, under which the Hudson’s Bay Company had set aside territory for Indians. British

Canadians wanted to buy the land back from the Indians, but they excluded Métis landowners in the new treaty. An uprising known as the Red River Rebellion ensued; eventually the Métis were allowed to retain their land. The following year Canada

28Leslie, “Assimilation,” 19-23. The seven nations included three Mohawk subsets, two and one group each of Hurons and Onondagas. The Mississaugas are often added. (I.e., “The Seven Nations of Canada and the Mississaugas.”) These eight groups were the Indians who fought with the British during the War of 1812.

29Ibid., 27-28.

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ceded Michilimackinac to the United States without consulting the resident nations.

Many were Anishinabeg and other Algonquian nations with long memories who deeply resented Canada’s action.30 Nonetheless, aside from these incidents Canada saw few

Indian flare-ups in succeeding years.

Yet Canada’s treatment of “First Nations” was not always fair. In the mid- nineteenth century the western provinces attempted both to acquire large tracts without treaties and more aggressively assimilate Indians than in the model settlements of the century’s early decades. This was intended to end Indian “wandering” on land being opened to settlement, and at the same time increase Indian land ownership.31

The policy met with mixed success. On balance however, Canada’s experience with First

Nations has been better than that of the United States. British North America’s treatment of the Mohawks and other nations loyal to the crown during and after the

American Revolution, along with Joseph Brant’s diplomacy, left a blueprint for Canada to follow, which in many respects it did.

Conclusion

There is a point in time around 1750 when George Washington and George

Croghan would have been considered peers. By the middle of that decade they were at best wary colleagues on different but equally rising vectors. George Croghan’s zenith was that happy trip from Detroit to Fort Johnson and on to New York in 1765.

30Ibid., 24.

31Ibid., 27. 368

Washington’s star continued to rise exponentially even beyond the grave. A quarter of a millennium later an American can produce a likeness of George Washington from his pocket or wallet instantly. Not so with George Croghan.

Washington’s attack on the Iroquois homeland in 1779 both accelerated the demise of the Iroquois Confederacy and virtually guaranteed that its individual nations would be drawn to Britain. With the American Revolution the Iroquois role as eastern

North America’s third empire, an effective intermediary between France and Britain, became a thing of the past.

Thomas Proctor’s post-Revolutionary mission to the Indian Council Fire at

Buffalo Creek was exemplary of the dilemma facing the victorious Americans. The

Seneca Cornplanter played it safe; recently attacked by rogue Virginians, he was vague about where Proctor could find the Council Fire. Shawnees refused Proctor’s credentials, but they did send him in the right direction. Finding the Council Fire at

Buffalo Creek, Proctor’s experience was equally frustrating. The Indians he encountered were all Anglophiles, with little use for the upstart republic. More to the point Proctor was no Croghan.

When the United States admitted Kentucky as its fifteenth state, it carved it from the ancient Shawnee hunting grounds south of the Ohio River. Kentucky was Vandalia, where even Croghan and Wharton had planned some settlement restraint. For the fifteenth state there would be no limits. The Shawnees took up the hatchet against the

United States, and did so several times again over the next quarter century. By the time

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of Tecumseh the British were clever enough to ally with the Shawnees, but their support came too late.

William Croghan’s relationship with his cousin George was frustrating. If anything singles out George Croghan as a closet Tory it is the cache of unanswered letters sent by William to George, and from William inquiring about George, all copied for posterity by the Gratz brothers. Over time and under the guiding hand of Tench

Tilghman, William slid quietly under the Revolutionary banner. He married into

American royalty and sired a hero named for his cousin – a true American hero, a winner of the Congressional Gold Medal no less. Quite possibly George Croghan preferred not to deal with him precisely because William was such an avowed Patriot.

Nevertheless, how different might George Croghan’s end of life been had he answered a few of William’s letters? The only conclusions one can draw are that George Croghan chose not to associate with his cousin either because he had become so impoverished or because William had chosen an unambiguously Revolutionary path while he had not.

The first alternative is suspect; George Croghan had swung between wealth and poverty his entire life in America. He was never afraid to ask for money, nor reluctant to share it when he had any. The second conclusion is more likely. Over time his loyalty even to colonial Pennsylvania had been distracted by Virginia’s siren song. If Croghan ever had a

Revolutionary spark it was doused by General Hand in Pittsburgh. His oath of allegiance to the new, Patriot Pennsylvania was expedient; George Croghan was to the end a

Briton, but an unenthusiastic one.

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Regardless of George Croghan’s ambiguous patriotism and William Croghan’s contributions to U.S. history, the old Irish Indian agent’s legacy did not die with him altogether. It migrated to Canada with his own children who fathered a branch of the family reflective of Croghan’s life work with Indians. His Irish daughter Suzanna wed a

British soldier; at war’s end the couple was left with the bittersweet options of renouncing the crown, something unthinkable given Major Prévost’s father; returning to

England, a foreign place for Croghan’s daughter, or relocating to Canada. Augustine and

Suzanna Croghan Prévost chose the last alternative.

George Croghan’s half-Mohawk daughter Catherine was closely tied to Sir

William Johnson. Adonwentishon married the Dartmouth-educated warrior Joseph

Brant, whose sister was Johnson’s second wife. Northern and western New York were

Tory breeding grounds. Johnson and Brant were unquestionably aligned with Great

Britain. Continentals counted themselves lucky that Johnson did not survive to fight for

King and Country, and unlucky to face Brant in battle.

The Mohawks called Brant Thayendanegea. He fought for the crown at Oriskany, but he also held out something of an olive branch beforehand to American General

Herkimer who had been his Mohawk Valley neighbor. When the war was over

Thayendanegea and Adonwentishon had only one option, retreat north into what remained of British North America. Canadians regard Thayendanegea as both a diplomat and a warrior. They honor such individuals as “Valiants,” and in 2006 venerated fourteen such people in Ottawa at the Canadian Valiants Memorial.

Thayendanegea – Brant – is one so honored. In his day Brant’s actions during the 371

American Revolution were British General Haldimand’s principal motivation for the crown’s six-hundred-thousand acre Ontario grant to the Mohawks. Haldimand’s gratitude for Brant’s and the Mohawks’ contributions, as well as future Canadian Indian policy, in large measure mirrored George Croghan’s approach to the Shawnees, Miamis,

Ottawas and other independent-minded Indian nations in the west. The actions of all three men reflected the extent to which British Indian policy had progressed since the days of Amherst and the French and Indian War. In the following century Canadian

Indian policy would waver from these lessons, but in the United States they were silenced with the guns at Yorktown.

***

In 1833 the famous Sauk Chief, Black Hawk, wrote his autobiography. In it he related a story told by his great grandfather, Na-na’-ma-kee. In the early seventeenth century the Sauk Indians lived along the northern shore of the Saint Lawrence River near modern Montreal. Na-na’-ma-kee had a recurring dream. In it the told him that in four years he would meet a white man who would be to him a father. Na-na’- ma-kee had this dream from time to time for three years, and toward the end of the third year the Great Spirit said that, seven days shy of the end of the fourth year, Na- na’-ma-kee should take his two brothers and go to meet this man. To do so the Great

Spirit said to travel the river to the left of the sun rising where he would meet this white men. Na-na’-ma-kee and his brothers went as the Great Spirit had directed, and there

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they met a white man who said he was the son of the King of France.32 Black Hawk’s family’s oral tradition had not recorded the white man’s name, but assuredly it was

Samuel de Champlain. Tadoussac, where Champlain had joined the Montagnais in their

Great Tabagie in 1608, was downriver. As the Saint Lawrence flows to the Atlantic it takes a northeasterly path: left of the sun rising.

A hundred and sixty years later at Fort Pitt the Ohio Delaware Chief Tamaqua, affectionately known by all as “Old Beaver,” promised a young British officer and an aging Irish trader that he would open the road for the British to all the nations of the sun setting. Both William Murray and George Croghan expected this assurance would be realized down the Ohio Valley to the Mississippi River. For Great Britain for a short time it was. Then, as had happened a few years earlier, Europeans fought each other in the America Revolution and again in the War of 1812. Indians took sides; the Iroquois

League was an early casualty. The road to the nations of the sun setting was closed to the United States. In between the two greater wars the Shawnees, George Croghan’s lifetime Indian allies, took up the hatchet over American encroachment south of the

Ohio River at a place called Fallen Timbers. As a result the western Indians lost much of their land north of the Ohio as well.

Nonetheless, in time Old Beaver’s assurance to keep the road open to all the nations of the sun setting would be kept, but only for Great Britain and only in Canada

32Black Hawk, An Autobiography, ed. Donald Jackson (Champagne: The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 1955), 41-42. Black Hawk’s original edition was printed in 1833.

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where the legacy of George Croghan’s young Mohawk relative is revered and where the journey had begun for Na-na’-ma-kee – left of the sun rising.

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CONCLUSION

Summary of the Thesis

The most lasting impact on European-Indian affairs in North America was made by the Dutch when they armed the Mohawks with European weapons. After the

Netherlands ceded its North American territory to England, the arms trade continued.

The Iroquois League soon became Britain’s strongest Indian allies in the new world.

The French appeared in northern North America shortly before the Dutch.

French explorers and Jesuit priests soon found themselves in the midst of an internecine war between the New York-based Iroquois and Algonquian nations around the Great

Lakes. The Algonquians were losing badly and looked to the French to assist them.

Official France was not particularly interested in arming them, but the Jesuits were concerned with Indian welfare. The distant Jesuit mission of Saint Francis Xavier de Pere at the tip of Green Bay inadvertently found itself in the center of an immense refugee area. This region was at the fringe of Iroquois incursions; intentionally or not New

France became the Algonquians’ allies.

In the early eighteenth century the western frontier of coastal North America began at the Appalachian Mountains. Yet a few intrepid European pioneers chose to venture further west. Among them were the British fur traders. To succeed they needed financial middlemen who could turn furs into money and seed risky new ventures with cash. In 1730 a third-generation Philadelphia financier, Lancaster-based

Edward Shippen III, moved his financial empire to the very western edge of the Great

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Valley in Pennsylvania. There he established “Shippensburg,” a large depot to service fur traders, including some in his employ.

In 1741 a ship out of Dublin landed an Irish family at Philadelphia. The leader of the group was young George Croghan. Croghan was a risk-taker who envisioned a rapid ascent to wealth in the New World and was eager to use other people’s money to get there. In Philadelphia and Lancaster he found the connections to achieve this goal in

Edward Shippen and his employees, William Trent and Peter Tostee. Within four years

Croghan had built his own depot near Harris’s Ferry, and acquired his first major trading post on the Cuyahoga River in the French- and Indian-controlled Ohio country. Less than a decade after his arrival in British North America Croghan established a fortress- like trading depot three hundred miles further west at the Miami Indian town,

Pickawillany, on the Great Miami River in the heart of French North America, earning him the sobriquet “King of the Traders.” However, La Nouvelle France was not at all pleased with this audacious British trader; in 1752 a bloody allied French and Ottawa attack on Pickawillany put George Croghan out of business in the Ohio Country.

Croghan quickly grasped the significance of the watersheds of the Ohio and

Illinois country. Of the four Ohio trading posts he established, two were on the shores of Lake Erie and two on rivers draining to the Ohio River. Despite its slight height the

Saint Lawrence Continental Divide is significant because it separates two important

American watersheds, the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence and the Ohio-Mississippi.

Croghan’s instinct to operate on both sides of the Saint Lawrence divide gave him water access to both these systems. The addition of the Illinois country expanded both 376

Croghan’s and Britain’s reach into the heartland of North America. The two principal watersheds remained the same, but many more access points became available. In addition to the control of the Great Lakes afforded by the straits at Detroit and

Michilimackinac, the Fox-Wisconsin portage connected this system to the Ohio-

Mississippi system with considerable ease at its most western edge. These routes were in the domain of French traders.

Croghan did not trade extensively in the Illinois country. However, as exhibited in his western Indian negotiations, the putative Illinois Traders Syndicate and various western settlement plans, he recognized the potential benefits of both trade and agricultural development in the region.

The stunning defeat of General Edward Braddock’s substantial British army in

July, 1755, at the hands of a few dozen French regulars and eight hundred Indians shattered Britons’ sense of security and superiority. British traders found themselves at the tip of the spear; they were the first affected. French and Indian forces swept east; the valleys of Pennsylvania east of the Alleghenies were the new frontier, and they were in flames.

It took over four years for Britain to turn the tide, during which George Croghan was elevated to Deputy Superintendent of Northern Indian Affairs under New York- based Sir William Johnson. During this period, at two Easton treaty conferences

Croghan and Nikus Hance, sachem of the pre-eminent Mohawk Turtle Clan, thwarted a nascent uprising of the eastern Delawares led by the usurper Teedyuscung. Croghan later took Nikus’s daughter as his second wife. 377

The administration of General Lord Jeffery Amherst marked the later war years.

Amherst had an almost visceral hatred of Indians. In December, 1761, having decided the war was effectively over, Amherst initiated a “no gifts” policy which extended even to Indians supporting Britain’s war effort. Gifts and presents had long been a hallmark of European-Indian relations. Johnson and Croghan understood the importance of maintaining the loyalty of Indians aligned with Great Britain, among them the nations of the Iroquois League as well as important western allies. Local British officials also knew that maintaining peace required supplying the Indians not only with gifts but with

European goods generally.

Late in 1763 Johnson wrote a letter to the British Board of Trade which was critical of Amherst. Armed with this letter Croghan followed his Lordship to England where he was taking leave. In London the outspoken Irish trader delivered Johnson’s letter to Lords Halifax and Hillsborough, embellishing it with his own comments. Halifax was an important eminence grise, while Hillsborough served as president of the powerful Board of Trade. They listened to Croghan and reflected on what he said;

Amherst never returned to America.

Croghan and Amherst’s successor, Major General Thomas Gage, had worked together during Braddock’s Defeat. Nonetheless, even before Amherst was gone, the

Ottawa leader, Pontiac, had invested Fort Detroit. The attack failed, but Pontiac besieged the fort for months. His reputation spread as did his eponymous rebellion.

British forts fell like dominoes; soldiers, traders and settlers alike were attacked from

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the Illinois country to Pennsylvania. Croghan returned from London to an apocalyptic landscape.

Led by the Great Lakes Anishinabeg nations, Indians successfully invested forts and settlements across much of North America. Sent by Gage and Johnson to quash this uprising, Croghan was able to negotiate a peace with Pontiac in 1765. However, William

Pitt was no longer Britain’s Prime Minister; facing new imperial threats and opportunities elsewhere, notably in the Pacific, the British abandoned the western

American frontier. Croghan’s peace in the west would not last.

Increasingly focused on land speculation, George Croghan resigned his position as Deputy Indian Superintendent. Aligning with Philadelphia financier Samuel Wharton, he proposed several grandiose land development schemes in the west. The grandest of these, Vandalia, was hatched in London on the eve of the American Revolution. After

Lexington, Vandalia and its Whitehall-born successor, The Quebec Act, died on the vine.

Meanwhile Gage, tarred by the pyrrhic British victory at Bunker Hill, was recalled.

Croghan initially aligned himself with the Patriot faction in Pittsburgh, but fate turned against him. Suspected of being in league with Alexander McKee, who had been implicated in alleged pro-British dealings at Fort Niagara, Croghan returned to

Philadelphia. There he was harassed by both the British and the Revolutionaries until

November, 1778, when a Patriot court reluctantly cleared him of treason. In 1782 he died, forgotten and impoverished.

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Tests of the Hypotheses

The thesis introduction presented two hypotheses, restated and tested in the following discussions.

First Hypothesis: George Croghan sought to transform colonial attitudes toward Native Americans as he explored and opened the Ohio and Illinois territories to Great Britain. He advocated a cooperative way of dealing with Native Americans, a contrarian view in his time, but one which may have had positive implications for North America’s future.

This hypothesis focuses on the human values exemplified by George Croghan, his associates and his progeny in their dealings with native peoples. While he was alive

George Croghan attempted to transform British and colonial attitudes toward Indians, particularly those in the west, notably Shawnees, Miamis, Hurons and Ottawas.

Croghan’s success in the west was sparked by his own confidence and audacity.

However, he would not have succeeded without support from local Indians and traders who had gone before. Croghan’s 1745 response of gifts to friendly Shawnees set a high bar for his own future activities. His actions ended Shawnee intervention in his Ohio country trading activities, and sealed a mutual friendship lasting until his death.

Croghan also reinforced existing British attitudes toward the Iroquois League; he worked most successfully with the Mohawks, with whom he intermarried, but he enjoyed mixed results with the Senecas. In the context of this hypothesis and human values generally, Croghan was least successful with his home colony Delawares. The

Easton treaty conferences of the late 1750s, where he rigidly aligned with official British policy of working through the Iroquois, were not his finest hours. Nonetheless,

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Croghan’s efforts at Easton succeeded in appeasing Teedyuscung, mollifying the

Quakers and relieving pressure on Pennsylvania during the war.

In the west Croghan’s accomplishments among the Miamis, deep in French territory, were remarkable but overly optimistic. After his initial success at Pickawillany, hubris set in, leading to the decimation of the Miamis’ leadership and their principal town at the hands of the French and Ottawas in 1752. Nonetheless, Croghan and the

Miamis remained close during the following years.

The finest example of his understanding approach to Indians came in the aftermath of the 1765 Kickapoo and Musquattamie attack on his party on the Wabash

River. Croghan, hatcheted in the head, lived both to turn the other cheek and jest about the attack. His friendship with the Shawnees deserves a good part of the credit for his success in aligning his attackers with Great Britain. His paramount diplomatic achievement on behalf of the crown was his successful negotiation with Pontiac later that year, ending Pontiac’s War. This achievement was acclaimed as far as London.

Always more diplomat than pugilist, Croghan relied on fair trade, a quick wit, a genial manner and the occasional keg of rum to win the “hearts and minds” of American

Indians. Where expedient he drew up treaties with Indians on his own, paid for

“presents” out of his own pocket, and shipped illegal weapons to Iroquois and Shawnee warriors to help them fight the Cherokees and Catawbas. He went around doctrinaire bureaucrats like Amherst, “borrowed” goods from his business partners for his Indian friends, and embraced supporters on a spectrum from Tostee to Gage. His supportive

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and indulgent superior Sir William Johnson provided Croghan the advantage in these efforts, but the audacity was all Croghan’s.

Croghan’s approach to Indians was contrarian in his time. He liked Indians; he married one. He not only traded with them, but ate with them, lived with them, and stood up for them when it counted. His cross-cultural approach, as seen in the 1765-

1766 calumet incident, in a diplomatic way mirrored religious approaches of French

Jesuits, who often combined Indian culture with Judeo-Christian values. Croghan was a better friend to the Indians than most of his contemporaries, something viewed skeptically by most trans-Allegheny settlers and many British and colonial soldiers. Yet in some cases he was able to imbue his attitudes in officers such as Major Murray and

Captain Edmonstone, whose approaches to Indians mirrored his own. In other cases, for example Lieutenant Colonel Campbell and Colonel Bouquet, he effectively merged his conciliatory approach with their more aggressive style.

South of the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes George Croghan’s attitudes died with him. Yet Croghan’s positive approach in dealing with Indians survived in Canada through the legacy of his son-in-law, Joseph Brant. Brant and his own son John, George Croghan’s grandson, set high bars for valor and loyalty to the crown. What is especially remarkable today is the gratitude Canadians show for the

Brants without regard to their ethnic heritage. Modern Canadian and United States

Indian policies are not dramatically different, but beginning with British General

Haldimand’s extended hand to the Mohawks, the path to the present in Canada has

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resulted in substantially less animosity and bloodshed than in the United States. This difference can be traced directly to George Croghan and his progeny.

Second Hypothesis: George Croghan’s image of British North America after the 1763 Treaty of Paris complemented William Pitt’s vision of a global British empire. Croghan sought to bring under the Union Jack not only the western lands which France ceded to Great Britain, but the indigenous western peoples as well.

This hypothesis focuses on the interdisciplinary aspects of the thesis: geography and geopolitics. European approaches toward native peoples differed; French and

British imperial objectives were varied and evolutionary, and an indigenous animus among North American Indian nations, notably between the Iroquois and Algonquians, shrouded the continent.

No sooner had the Dutch sold European weapons to the Mohawks than they exited the American stage. Meanwhile, the French, who had arrived in North America before the Dutch, were slow to arm Indians. The Saint Lawrence River and the Great

Lakes became both a European and a native boundary. New France only armed its

Indian neighbors after realizing that the ancient hostility between Iroquois and

Algonquian nations had become a lopsided, seventeenth-century genocide on the shores of the Great Lakes. France’s early point-man in the region was Jesuit Father

Claude Allouez, whose outlying Green Bay mission found itself in the center of the principal Algonquian refugee area. This inter-Indian animosity carried over to the eighteenth century.

When George Croghan arrived in North America, the Dutch were gone and Spain was not a threat to Great Britain’s imperial objectives on the continent. France was

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such a threat. The resulting, global Franco-British conflict began at the Forks of the

Ohio. Here Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie and La Nouvelle France Governor

Jacques-Pierre de la Jonquière started the French and Indian War. Arguably the most effective British leader of the period, Dinwiddie staunchly defended his frontier. He appointed capable military leaders from his own colony, and was not averse to poaching similar talent from other colonies, notably Pennsylvania. In the north, Jonquière expanded on his predecessor Galissonière’s symbolism with deeds. He fortified his western lands with forts and soldiers and sent qualified men to lead them. He leveraged his Indian allies in warfare and restrained them in victory more effectively than did the British. Jonquière was convinced the west belonged to France, and it began with the Allegheny, the principal tributary of the Ohio River. Both Dinwiddie and

Jonquière were somewhat hamstrung by London and Versailles respectively, but where they saw an opportunity to act, they did so without waiting for approval.

George Croghan’s image of British North America matched William Pitt’s vision at the outset of the French and Indian War, but not at its end. During the early war years, Croghan hoped to bring under the red flag of British North America not only the western lands which France ceded but, “. . .all the nations to the sun setting.” Croghan’s views and actions matched Pitt’s image of the future British North America, particularly after Britain gained the upper hand over France in 1759.

Yet as British victory loomed over the western Indians, many in Albion began to shrink away. Meanwhile, western Indians trusted George Croghan, but they did not trust Great Britain. The different reality of British versus French administration, coupled 384

with the former’s thousands of settlers anxious to penetrate the west, terrified many

Indians. The experience of the eastern Delawares, resurrected by the nativist prophet

Neolin, amplified this sense of foreboding; his traditionalist message was brought to the easternmost reaches of British North America by the Ottawas and their allies.

Meanwhile, in London British leadership changed dramatically with the Prime

Ministry of Lord Bute, and imperial designs shifted from North America to the Pacific

Ocean. If there were an immediate, residual British concern after the French and Indian

War, it would have been its new border with Spain on the Mississippi. Further, in the not-too distant future lurked a tempest that would completely disrupt Britain’s post-war image of North America: the American Revolution.

The 1765 Detroit agreement between George Croghan and Pontiac was too little, too late. Its cession of Illinois chiefly permitted Great Britain to establish forts and trading posts in territory the Anishinabeg still perceived as their own, and failed to address Shawnee territory south of the Ohio River. Shawnees and other Ohio Valley

Indians continued to feel excluded. The subsequent Fort Stanwix conference exacerbated this by ceding Shawnee hunting grounds south of the Ohio River to Britain.

This led to the 1771 clandestine, pan-Indian council held at Scioto whose aims, much like those of the British, were derailed by the American Revolution.

The America Revolution halted both British and Indian plans. The young nation refused to recognize even Iroquois land rights. Where Croghan and Wharton had outlined a relatively fair-minded agreement with Indians and settlers in Vandalia, within a decade of Yorktown the United States admitted Kentucky, conceding virtually no 385

Indian land rights. Shawnee land would be at the heart of all U.S.-Indian disputes for the first half-century of the United States’ existence. Ironically, after the Revolution many Indian nations would naïvely seek refuge in the arms of the loser, Great Britain, just as they had done after the French and Indian War with a defeated France.

Other Important Conclusions

The purpose of Croghan’s trip to London was to ensure Amherst’s removal, not to settle his Irish grandfather’s estate. He personally delivered Johnson’s critique of

Amherst to the Lords Halifax and Hillsborough. Whether Johnson told him to embellish the letter with his own opinions is uncertain, but that did not stop Croghan from doing so. Unsurprisingly he did, and his comments were well-received. Amherst never went back to America.1 Whether or not Croghan’s embassy caused the Lords of Trade to remove Amherst, the result was that a more conciliatory worldview of men like

Croghan, Johnson and Gage replaced that of Amherst. Croghan represented an approach reflecting an appreciation of the cultural values that shaped the Indians’ world: their attachment to the land they occupied, the significance of presents to them, and their acceptance of the closest of relationships, marriage, as authentic. This is much the same degree of cultural relativism which the early Jesuits and French explorers sought to advance in La Nouvelle France.2

1Amherst had previously transferred Monckton to the Caribbean. Monckton was Amherst’s logical successor, but Whitehall may have already been considering Gage to succeed Amherst before Croghan’s arrival.

2Timothy Shannon, discussion with the author, November 9, 2015, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I am indebted to Dr. Shannon for his contributions to this analysis. 386

The transition from Amherst to Gage came too late. Gage, Johnson and Croghan cooperated in ways which would have been unimaginable during Amherst’s administration. Gage also delegated a good deal of responsibility to trusted subordinates such as Henry Bouquet and John Campbell, and encouraged them to work with those more accustomed to the backwoods such as Croghan. Nonetheless,

Amherst’s policies were not soon forgotten by the Indians.

George Croghan had three weaknesses: an inability to live within his means; a naiveté about returns on other peoples’ money, and a heavy dose of British xenophobia.

His loyalty was to the crown and Pennsylvania. Croghan had been a crown official for many years; he only swore allegiance to the Patriot cause in July, 1778, and then only to

Pennsylvania. He was much closer to his pro-British daughters than to his Patriot cousin. In his heart George Croghan was a loyal Briton, but Pennsylvania formally absolved him of any duplicity in November, 1778. For the poor, sick old Briton it was a free pass.

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Appendix A: Early Fur Trade

Ironically, in view of the long-standing involvement of the French, large-scale fur trade in colonial Northern North America began and ended with the British. In 1670 a group of wealthy London speculators calling themselves the “Company of Adventurers” met to form the Hudson’s Bay Company. Few if any of these armchair adventurers ever made it past Mayfair, but the men they sent to “Rupert’s Land” a large part of what later would be Canada created both a company and an industry which remain vibrant today.

At its height the Hudson’s Bay Company controlled over one seventh of the land area of

North America. HBC as it is still known was all about furs.1

Beaver, one of the most sought-after pelts in Europe, was plentiful in French

Canada and in the bordering northern colonies of British North America particularly New

York and Pennsylvania. The border between these global rivals was water formed by the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. Beavers are amphibious mammals who build their “lodges” of timbers cut from trees along the shores of lakes, rivers and creeks. The lodges themselves are in the water, but the interiors of these ingenious homesteads lie above the waterline. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as now this international but interior North American border included many rivers, creeks and other tributaries of the Saint Lawrence and the Great Lakes. These estuaries were

1For an excellent history of the Hudson’s Bay Company and a story well told, see Newman, Company of Adventurers. 388

favorite breeding grounds of beavers. As a result a border which had enough other reasons to be contested became a battleground over beaver pelts.

In the hundred years following 1670 the French controlled a good deal of the best beaver country in North America. Except for a shrinking HBC along the shores of its eponymous bay most of Canada and thus a good deal of the fur trade was controlled from Quebec. In reality the fur trade depended heavily on both French coureurs de bois

(runners of the woods) and British “Indian traders.” Indeed many early and more successful fur traders in the employ of the HBC were French, including two regarded as founders of the HBC Pierre Radisson and his step-father Médard Groseilliers.2

The fur trade in North America was of no small consequence. North American fur trade historian Frank Ross reported that in 1754 the enterprise yielded over £40,000 in Pennsylvania alone and involved over three hundred traders.3 On the other hand, it was not immune to the vagaries of the European markets. Fisher, in his exemplary exposition of historical economics The Great Wave, paints a grim picture. In France the country was so indebted that a unique class of capitalist risk-takers known as rentiers emerged just to fund the national debt.4 This in turn put a damper on private investment. Similarly Great Britain funded the various Eighteenth Century wars with

2Grace Lee Nute, “Pierre-Esprit Radisson,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1969), accessed February 28, 2015, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/radisson_pierre_esprit_2E.html.

3Ross, “Fur Trade,” 431.

4Fischer, Great Wave, 148-149. During the French Revolution most rentiers lost the entire value of their holdings.

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“consols” or consolidated annuities, literally perpetual government bonds. During the

French and Indian War the price of consols dropped below 70% of value raising the yield from its nominal 3% to well over 5%. The price of grain, already shocked by cold winters a decade earlier, rose dramatically in London, Paris and North America. The price of food even outpaced the price of rents in England. All commodities are linked to some extent, and the price of furs was no exception. As the price of grain and other necessities rose the demand for furs and other luxuries fell. By the end of the war

Britain was in debt over £100 million, a sum Fisher calls “unimaginable”.5

Over the years both George Croghan and Sir William Johnson sought to regulate the fur trade. In 1749 Croghan appealed to the Pennsylvania Council. "No people carries on the Indian trade in so regular a manner as the French. I wish with all my heart the Government of this Province would take some method to regulate the Indian trade

. . . "6 In 1768 Sir William tried to regulate the fur trade in Ohio and failed. The following year New York Assembly crafted a plan only to have it torpedoed by

Pennsylvania and Quebec.7

Despite fur traders’ generally unsavory reputation these hardened British and

French traders typically coexisted both with each other and with native peoples. To do otherwise could lead to anything from a loss of property to a painful, protracted death by torture. In addition fur traders learned important survival and trading skills from the

5Fischer, Great Wave, 129-135.

6Pennsylvania, Archives (Colonial Period), II:31.

7Pennsylvania, Minutes, IX:642-643. 390

Indians such as building canoes. In return for beaver pelts and other furs European traders offered natives metal items such as axes, knives and kettles, as well as more popular items, notably firearms and what later would be called “firewater.”

While Indians actually trapped, killed and skinned beavers the coureurs and traders became the entry point to the European market. In both the French and British fashion worlds of the time headwear made of feathered plumage was giving way in to pelts. Beaver provided an excellent pelt. When treated with mercury it retained a semblance of its soft, lustrous fur while the skin underneath could be molded to a variety of stiff shapes which held their forms over time. 8 A classic example is the gentleman’s “top hat” which in France was popular with women as well.

The volume of France’s fur trade never grew as quickly as did Britain’s. This was due to three factors. First Britain encouraged immigrants of all ilk to North America while France did not. British immigrants and by extension traders included Scots,

Irishmen and even disaffected Frenchmen such as Martin Chartier. Secondly France lacked the volume of goods that the British had available to trade to the Indians. This was amplified by French pricing. In 1745 for example Charles de la Boische, Marquis de

Beauharnois, who served as New France’s Governor before Galissonière complained to

Versailles that the Canadian fur trade was stifled by the contrast of low prices offered for pelts in Europe with the high cost of French goods to trade in America. 9 Finally two

8Extended exposure to mercury causes dementia over time, hence “mad as a hatter.”

9Ross, “Fur Trade,” 416-418.

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of Britain’s major North American cities Philadelphia and New York counted among their wealthier citizens many who were anxious to bankroll the Indian trade. English and Irish

Delaware Valley merchant bankers along with Hudson Valley Dutch patroons whose home empires had been forged in capitalism enthused this investment mentality.

France had few equivalents to such investors even at home much less in Quebec.

Another problem for the French was that British traders did not play by the rules.

In 1741 Captain Pierre-Jacques Payen de Noyan, Commander at Fort Detroit, reported that, “. . . the English have been coming for a number of years to corrupt the savages.”

According to Ross the Pennsylvania-licensed trader Peter Chartier, in part because he could pass for French but also descended from the Shawnees, exercised nearly exclusive control over Ohio Valley trading in the early eighteenth century.10 George Croghan himself was in the Ohio Territory as early as 1742 with Peter Tostee on the Allegheny

River.

10Ross, “Fur Trade,” 419. De Noyan, much like Conrad Weiser, had lived among the Iroquois in his youth. He was considered by many contemporaries to be the most competent Indian negotiator among French officers. For more on De Noyan see: Donald Chaput, “Payen De Noyan et De Chavoy, Pierre-Jacques” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1979), accessed December 12, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/payen_de_noyan_et_de_chavoy_pierre_jacques_4E.html.

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Appendix B: George Croghan Genealogy.1

(Croghan himself appears in Generation 3):

Generation 1:

A. Grandfather Edmund Croghan (?-1763) had apparently died in Ireland prior to Croghan’s 1763-1764 visit to the Board of Trade in London. Croghan had hoped to go to Ireland during this visit to resolve some issues concerning his grandfather’s will, although other matters in London trumped his planned visit to Ireland.

Generation 2:

A. Croghan’s father, (first name unknown) Croghan, seems to have died in Ireland before 1741. (See Generation 2.C., following.)

B. Croghan’s Uncle Nicholas Croghan, a Dublin merchant, remained in Ireland where he eventually served as Croghan’s agent.

C. Croghan’s mother not only arrived at the same time as her son, but did so as Mrs. Thomas Ward (her first name unknown), accompanied by her then-husband Thomas Ward. Her maiden name may have been Smallman. (See Generation 3.D. below.)

Generation 3:

A. George Croghan, (ca. 1715-1782). First married to (first and maiden names unknown) Croghan, the mother of Suzanna (Croghan) Prévost. This wife apparently died before 1741. Croghan next married Tekarihoga, daughter of the Mohawk Turtle Clan Matriarch and the Sachem Nikus Hance2. Nikus and Croghan helped the Crown suppress claims against the Walking Purchase in Pennsylvania by the Delaware usurper, Teedyuscung, at Easton in 1757 and 1758.

B. William Croghan, (1752-1822). Nicholas’s son and Croghan’s cousin, whom he sponsored later in life in Philadelphia. William Croghan served as a Patriot in the American Revolution at Brandywine and Germantown. He married Lucy Rogers Clark, sister of General George Rogers Clark.

1Wainwright, Diplomat, 262. Wainwright does not develop a Croghan genealogy, but he randomly presents much the same data.

2The Mohawk Nation, like many eastern Indians Nations, is matriarchal. Sachems are selected by their clan mothers and wives. The Turtle Clan was first in rank in the Mohawk Nation.

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C. Edward Ward, Croghan’s half-brother and son of Thomas Ward and Croghan’s mother. He was one of Croghan’s fellow traders in the Ohio country. George Croghan obliquely referred to Edward Ward as “my brother” in at least one source.3 Ward was given a commission by Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie to aid an abortive project to construct a British Fort at the Forks of the Ohio before the French built Fort Duquesne.4

D. Thomas Smallman, Croghan’s cousin who may have been a nephew of Croghan’s mother. (See Generation 2.C. above.) He was another of Croghan’s traders.5 Smallman has been incorrectly reported as being killed by the French or the Indians in some sources.

E. Daniel Clark, (unlikely) Croghan’s cousin. In an unsourced entry on page 196 Wainwright referred to an infamous Cumberland County land sale to “his cousin Daniel Clark” and William Peters, unambiguously referring to George Croghan because Wainwright listed Clark first, and Peters was the only other possible antecedent. Further, Clark and Peters are found at odds with Croghan over this deal throughout Wainwrights’ Wilderness Diplomat, eventually taking him to court over it.6 This seemed unlikely because Croghan regularly helped family and friends through difficult financial periods. Daniel Clark may have been part of the George Rogers Clark family into which Croghan’s nephew William Croghan (son of Nicholas) married, but it is unlikely that he was Croghan’s cousin.

Generation 4:

A. Suzanna Croghan, daughter of Croghan and his first wife, born ca. 1740. In 1765 Suzanna married Major Augustine Prévost who served in the 60th (Royal Americans) Regiment commanded by his father, (British) Major General Augustine Prévost, during the American Revolution.7

3George Croghan to William Johnson, September 4, 1762, in Johnson, Papers, 3:873-5. In this letter Croghan said, “…as my brother has quit the [trading] service, [I will make do with] the young [Alexander] McKee,” and asked Johnson for an appointment for McKee. (Virginia Governor Dinwiddie had commissioned Ward in the Virginia militia.)

4Trent, Journals, 61-62.

5George Croghan document in Cadwalader Papers, Series 4, Box 199, Folder 20. Smallman is referred to here as “Major Smallman.”

6Wainwright, Wilderness Diplomat, 196, 250.

7Nicholas Wainwright, “Turmoil at Pittsburgh, The Diary of Augustine Prévost, 1774,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (April, 1961), 115. Unlike that of his father and brothers Augustine Prévost, Jr.’s, military career was undistinguished.

394

B. Catherine (Adonwentishon) Croghan, daughter of Croghan and his Mohawk second wife, Tekarihoga. Catherine married Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Mohawk brother-in-law of Croghan’s superior, Sir William Johnson. Brant also went on to a distinguished career. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he was commissioned a (British) Captain of the Northern Confederated Indians by General Frederick Haldimand, Military Commander and Governor of Quebec during and after the American Revolution. Brant received mixed reviews by American Patriots who later encountered him in battle, but to this day he is venerated in Canada as a “Valiant.” In a 1921 note to Albert Volweiler, L. P. Kellogg stated that Catherine inherited (sic: “retained”) from her mother the right to appoint her father’s successor as Takarihogea, Sachem of the Turtle Clan. She subsequently appointed their son, John Brant, the new Sachem8.

C. John Ward, whom Croghan lists as “nephew” and an heir in his will.9 Ward may have been the son of Edward Ward.

D. Jno [Jonathan?] Smallman, possibly a 1st cousin, once removed, who submitted an invoice for goods to Michael Gratz on behalf of Major (Augustine) Prévost, Croghan’s son-in-law, February 25, 1775.10

E. Colonel George Croghan, Army of the United States, (1791-1849). Son of William Croghan (see generation 3.B. above) and Lucy Clark, sister of George Rogers Clark. George Croghan (subject of this thesis) was the uncle of Colonel George Croghan. Both are often referred to as “Col. Croghan,” although the first George Croghan never held any official military rank higher than Captain in the Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, militia.11 The later George Croghan served with distinction during the War of 1812 and was well known during his lifetime as the “Hero of Ft. Stephenson.” He was later awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

8“Report for [Albert] Volweiler by L. P. Kellogg, August 31, 1921,” Croghan Papers, Folder 9. Catherine’s Mohawk name, Adonwentishon, may have been the name given all Turtle clan matriarchs, as some sources give this name not only for Catherine but also for her mother and grandmother.

9George Croghan’s Will, (probated) June 12, 1782, Etting Papers, Box 55:Folder 90

10Invoice from Major [Augustine] Prévost, February 25, 1775, Etting Papers, Box 55:Folder 44.

11George Croghan seems to have acquired the moniker “Colonel” after his successful behind-the- scenes negotiation with the Ottawa chieftain Pontiac in 1765, but Wainwright cites a bill from a Philadelphia supplier which refers to Croghan as “Colonel” as early as 1762. See Wainwright, Diplomat, 192 n20.

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Generation 5:

A. Suzanna (Croghan) and Augustine Prévost had twelve children, six of whom lived to adulthood. Of the four who were boys, three served as British Army officers.

B. Catherine (Croghan) and Joseph Brant’s son John Brant became Sachem of the Mohawk Turtle Clan after the clan relocated to Canada. John Brant served as a British (Canadian) officer during the War of 1812, across Lake Erie from U.S. Army Colonel George Croghan, his distant cousin.

396

Appendix C: Précis of the Iroquois Creation Legend (extracted from Benjamin Franklin,

Treaties, ed. Susan Kalter)

The Iroquois Creation Legend begins on the north shore of Lake Ontario, significant because the Iroquois have long maintained that the Algonquian Nations ran them out of the St. Lawrence Valley.1 In North American native lore epochs can be

“leaped” through the process of metempsychosis, or transmigration of the soul, after its reincarnation. Thus a legend can pick up where it left off thousands of years before.

In the story of the formation of the Haudenosaunee League the leader

Deganawida, known in the earlier creation epoch as Sapling, sets out from this now- distant shore to bring peace to the warring Iroquois nations. He arrives in the region

(Iroquoian New York) at a time when cultural conflict flared between corn cultivators and hunters. Atotarho an Onondaga chieftain was at the time the leader of a cannibalistic, anti-cultivator group. Before confronting Atotarho Deganawida first encounters Hiawatha, a reluctant follower of Atotarho’s cannibalistic group. Together they share a meal of deer meat and agree to work together on the peace project.

Hiawatha remains to comb the snakes out of Atotarho’s hair (meaning to cleanse his mind of madness), while Deganawida heads east to propose peace with the

Mohawks. On his own with the Onondagas, Hiawatha manages to convert all of them except Atotarho to the peaceful path. In the process he loses his wife and three

1Fischer, Champlain’s Dream, 112-113. Fischer claims that during Cartier’s 1534 exploration of what became New France, he encountered “Laurentian Iroquois” on the Gaspe Peninsula. Later, on his 1615 trip, Cartier kidnapped Donaconna, a leader of this group, along with his sons and carried them off to France. They were never seen again in Canada.

397

daughters. Grief-stricken, Hiawatha travels south where he finds a lake with many shells. Hiawatha threads the shells on strings and they become the first wampum. Then he heads east with the wampum strings. Along the way he discerns how these wampum strings can represent words and how such words might console a person in grief. At this point he encounters Deganawida, and together they develop the Ritual of

Condolence which becomes a critical component of Iroquois diplomacy.

To appreciate why this is true one must understand another important element of this ritual. This is the symbolic (or in some case actual) elimination of the grieving person’s sensory perception of misery in the real world (wiping the eyes, clearing the ears and throat). This permits him to reason with a clear head.

In the legend Deganawida and Hiawatha perform the Condolence Ritual for the

Oneida, Cayuga and Seneca Nations who, now clear-headed, decide to join the peace process, embodied in the formation of the League of the Five Nations. This only leaves the Onondaga Atotarho, who joins the movement only when offered its leadership position. Thus the Great Peace is achieved and with it the Haudenosaunee League of

Five Nations is created.2

2Franklin, Treaties, 3-6.

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