Contested Grounds : the Transformation of the American Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Eastern Cape, 1770-1850

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2005 Contested grounds : the transformation of the American Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Eastern Cape, 1770-1850/ Christoph, Strobel University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Strobel, Christoph,, "Contested grounds : the transformation of the American Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Eastern Cape, 1770-1850/" (2005). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 862. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/862 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONTESTED GROUNDS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN UPPER OHIO VALLEY AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN EASTERN CAPE, 1770-1850 A Dissertation Presented by CHRISTOPH STROBEL Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2005 Department of History © Copyright by Christoph Strobel 2005 All Rights Reserved CONTESTED GROUNDS THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN UPPER OHIO VALLEY AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN EASTERN CAPE, 1770-1850 A Dissertation Presented By CHRISTOPH STROBEL Approved as to style and content by Neal Salisbury, Chair c HigginsoivCo-Chair Alice Nash, Member Joye Bowman, Member feter d'Errico, Member Audrey AltstadyDepartment Chair Department of History DEDICATION To Kristin ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My acknowledgements do not do justice to the many debts I have incurred while working on this project. I owe special gratitude to Neal Salisbury the chair of my dissertation committee. Over the last few years, Neal has been a mentor and an advisor. He provided numerous detailed and speedy suggestions on chapters and conceptual organization, which helped to move this dissertation toward completion. John Higginson, the co-chair, deserves special mention as well. Throughout my years in graduate school, John has been a special mentor - generous with his advise and assistance. Furthermore, my thanks go to the other members of my dissertation committee: Joye Bowman, Peter d'Errico, and Alice Nash. I appreciate all their help and suggestions. Alice also aided tremendously with the final formatting of the dissertation. I could not have asked for a better and more supportive team to work with. Family and friends also played an instrumental role in the completion of this dissertation. I owe a special debt to the Haywards and the Strobels. I also want to thank the Andersons, Jean and John, Laila and Abe, Gab and Pat, Melinda and Charlie, Kristin and Luisa, Mike and Angie, Janice and Alex, Carla and Rick, and many more friends. All of them were supportive of this project, and more importantly, provided welcome distractions. The most profound thanks go to my wife Kristin. She not only read several drafts of the thesis, but most importantly she often reminded me that this was a worthwhile project to pursue. One could not hope for a more supportive partner. To her this dissertation is dedicated. ABSTRACT CONTESTED GROUNDS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN UPPER OHIO VALLEY AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN EASTERN CAPE, 1770-1850 MAY 2005 CHRISTOPH STROBEL, B.A., HIRAM COLLEGE M..A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Neal Salisbury This dissertation examines the circumstances created by colonial encroachments in the American Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Eastern Cape. Beginning in the second half of the eighteenth and lasting well into the mid-nineteenth century, American Indians and Africans in the two areas faced increasing intrusions by people of European origin. Colonialism, the encounter between alien cultures, infringements on homelands, violence, dispossession, decimation, cultural invasion, removal, accommodation, revitalization, and survival led to rapidly changing worlds for local populations and white colonizers. My comparative study highlights the similarities and differences between historical developments in the two regions, with a particular focus on the creations of colonial racial orders in the United States and South Africa. Comparative history is a valuable method for examining phenomena of cross-cultural significance while subverting any notions about an area's historical uniqueness. It is an especially helpful approach in understanding the significant roles that the institutionalization of vi colonial expansion, racism and racial domination played in the United States and South Africa. The Upper Ohio Valley and the Eastern Cape functioned in many ways as testing grounds for American and British expansion. Developments in each place contributed to the making of colonial racial systems in the larger United States and greater southern Africa. While the scenarios in the Upper Ohio Valley and the Eastern Cape did not repeat themselves identically in other locations, comparable patterns would emerge in later years as the United States expanded westward and Britain expanded into southern and eastern Africa. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth century in the Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Cape, systems of racial exclusiveness became entrenched through increasingly close ties between settlers and the state. In both places, settlers, indigenous groups, missionaries and humanitarians attempted to influence the emerging colonial racial orders with varying success. Yet ultimately, it was the power of the state with its ability to defeat indigenous groups militarily, to dispossess and move, and to legislate, which shaped the two regions' colonial racial orders. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ABSTRACT vi CHAPTER INTRODUCTION j PARTI 1 . NATIVE AMERICANS, AFRICANS AND EUROPEANS: A COMPARATIVE OVERVIEW OF THE PRE-COLONIAL AND EARLY COLONIAL HISTORY OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY AND THE EASTERN CAPE 15 PART II 2. CONQUEST, "CIVILIZATION," AND DISPOSSESSION: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE UPPER OHIO VALLEY 56 3. HUMANITARIANS, SETTLERS AND THE STATE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EASTERN CAPE 95 PART III 4. THE OHIO INDIANS' REVOLUTION: A STRUGGLE FOR SOVERIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE 141 5. "THIS LAND IS OUR LAND:" AFRICANS IN THE EASTERN CAPE AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE AND SOVEREIGNTY 183 CONCLUSION: COMPARING THE ENTRENCHMENT OF TWO COLONIAL RACIAL ORDERS 222 APPENDICES A. A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY 233 B. A NOTE ON SOURCES 235 C. MAPS 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY 238 viii LIST OF MAPS Page The Ohio Country 236 The Eastern Cape 237 ix INTRODUCTION In June of 1966, the American politician Robert Kennedy addressed the students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He began his speech with the following comment. I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent. A land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day. A land which defined itself on a hostile frontier. A land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America. 1 As Kennedy recognized, the histories of the United States and South Africa are startlingly similar on several levels. These similarities have led historians to write comparative histories of the two countries in recent decades. Most of these studies focus on relations between whites and blacks. This dissertation, however, examines issues of white-Native American and white-African relations during the period of colonization in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. At first glance, this may seem like an unusual pairing. But Africans and Native Americans are the indigenous populations of the two regions and both employed numerous tactics to maintain their culture and ways of life in the face of European colonialism. Still, many South Africans and Americans maintain that, unlike Africans in South Africa, Native Americans "disappeared," "vanished," or were "exterminated," overlooking the fact that significant numbers of people of Native American descent live on and off reservations all over the United States today. Moreover, much of American mainstream thought ignores the role that internal and external 1 colonization and empire played 2 in the history of the United States. A comparative examination of American and British efforts at empire building in North America and southern Africa, and their impact on the indigenous populations may, illuminate our understandings of the history of colonization, empire, and race relations in the two regions. Argument This dissertation explores the circumstances surrounding colonial encroachments in the American Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Eastern Cape. From the second half of the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, American Indians and Africans in the two areas faced intrusions by people of European origin. Such encounters led to the creation of empire, expropriation of land, violence, dispossession, decimation, and in several instances removal of the original inhabitants. In turn, indigenous populations pursued strategies of resistance, accommodation,

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