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Abstract Mortimer, Loren Michael ABSTRACT MORTIMER, LOREN MICHAEL. “Pageants of Sovereignty: ‘Merciless Indian Savages’ and American Nation-State Formation on the Northern Borderlands, 1774-1775.” (Under the direction of Dr. Craig Thompson Friend). When Thomas Jefferson denounced the Native American nations residing west of the thirteen colonies as “Merciless Indian Savages” in the Declaration of Independence, he willfully misrepresented the negotiated peace that prevailed in the borderlands in the summer of 1776. The British empire had lost its grip on its North American frontiers as early as 1774 with the death of Sir William Johnson, the superintendent for Indian Affairs. Presiding over a personal and political frontier empire of his own making, his larger than life persona substituted for enduring imperial institutions on the colonial frontier. His 1774 death left a power vacuum, which ignited long smoldering conflicts between competing colonial and native factions. Like the colonists, Native American nations had their own grievances with the British Crown and North America erupted in concurrent revolutions in 1775 as colonial and indigenous nations sought to dismantle British North America, replacing the monolithic empire with a plurality of sovereign nations—indigenous and European in origin. Within weeks of convening in 1775, the Second Continental Congress dispatched envoys to the northern frontier to negotiate treaties of neutrality. In the 1775 treaty councils at Albany and Fort Pitt, Native American and local colonial leaders affirmed Congress as an independent, sovereign body with legitimate diplomatic powers. Fear of a British-led Indian war compelled the colonies to cede the power of Indian diplomacy to the embryonic central government; it is a power the federal government has never relinquished. The 1775 treaties of neutrality contained the American Revolution—both the war and the political revolution— to the thirteen colonies and transformed an endemically violent frontier into a neutral space where sovereign American nations were free to pursue their own revolutionary projects. © Copyright 2013 by Loren Michael Mortimer All Rights Reserved Pageants of Sovereignty: “Merciless Indian Savages” and American Nation-State Formation on the Northern Borderlands, 1774-1775 by Loren Michael Mortimer A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2013 APPROVED BY: _________________________ __________________________ Craig Thompson Friend Judy Kertész Committee Chair _________________________ K. Steven Vincent ii BIOGRAPHY Loren Michael Mortimer graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York in 2007. After spending four years working in the political arena—where his work took him to Washington, DC, Iowa, Colorado, and New York—he returned to the academy to commence his studies in early American history. He will begin his doctoral studies at the University of California, Davis in the fall of 2013. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The act of writing out these formal acknowledgements is truly humbling as I consider all of those who have actively invested in my success during my time at NCSU. I have been fortunate to belong to a cohort of energetic and fantastically brilliant graduate students who have lent their time and expertise to the refinement of my prose. Robert Rouphail and Christopher Blakley have been at once editors, critics, confidants, and occasional partners in crime. I am the beneficiary of many dedicated mentors. Steven Vincent imbued me with a respect for ideas as an animating force in history. He first exposed me to many of the intellectual tropes running throughout my work. Judy Kertész’s profound imprint on my work should be self evident to anyone who has had the privilege of working with her. Recovering narratives hidden in plain sight is often easier said than done. To my advisor, Craig Friend, what can I say other than thank you for everything. He has been an inspirational advisor, an energetic mentor, and a patient line editor. Advising this thesis was just one of many ways he has helped me become the professional scholar I have always wanted to be—teaching me everything from how to run a national conference to a healthy respect for the em dash. I was fortunate to learn historical writing from such an imaginative storyteller and pedagogue. Finally, I owe the biggest debt of gratitude for Dustin James Rogers. Keeping me “human” throughout my graduate studies has been no easy task, but certainly a necessary one for one who works in the humanities. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Pageants of Death ........................................................................................ 20 Chapter Two: Pageants of Nations .................................................................................... 56 Chapter Three: Pageants of Power .................................................................................... 98 Epilogue: Memento Mori ................................................................................................ 130 Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 136 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: A pictorial representation of William Johnson’s funeral cortege.. ................. 39 Figure 1.2: Guy Johnson's Map of the Six Nations. .......................................................... 55 1 Introduction In Philadelphia on June 11, 1776, two North Americas converged—one ancient and one embryonic. For a moment, Congress paused its deliberations of American independence to receive dignitaries from the northern borderlands. Twenty-four Haudenosaunee chiefs and warriors, splendidly dressed and painted, stood among the congressional delegates’ powdered periwigs and frock coats as peaceful emissaries from a seemingly distant land. The Haudenosaunee, the league of six Native American nations that Europeans identified as the Iroquois, was the first sovereign power to ostensibly recognize the legitimacy of the Continental Congress as a national government through a treaty of neutrality negotiated a year earlier. From frontier diplomats and official congressional envoys, the Haudenosaunee had heard accounts of the “thirteen council fires” that now burned magnificently as one in Philadelphia. On a fact-finding mission for the Haudenosaunee Great Council at Onondaga, the Indian emissaries had come to see this grand assembly for themselves.1 Pageantry—the more pomp, theatrics, and rhetorical eloquence the better—suffused every aspect of Haudenosaunee diplomacy. The Congress and the Haudenosaunee used the visit as an opportunity to publically reaffirm their treaty of neutrality and friendship. John Hancock, the President of the Second Continental Congress, declared that “we hope the friendship that is between you and us will be firm, and continue as long as the sun shall shine, and the waters run; that we and you may be as one people, and have but one heart, and be kind to one another like brethren.” Impressed with Hancock’s bearing, the 1 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, ed. Worthington C. Ford et al., 34 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904-37), 5: 429; The Connecticut Gazette, 24 May 1776; George Washington to Philip Schuyler, 9 June 1775, in The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, ed. Edward G. Lengel (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008). 2 Haudenosaunee concluded the ceremony with an Onondaga chief conferring upon Hancock the name “Karanduaan,” meaning the Great Tree, an allusion to the Great Tree of Peace at the very core of the Haudenosaunee League. There was power in this gesture: a tree was permanent, ever growing, its deep roots tethering it to the timeless North American soil. As the American woodlands were forests of ancient trees and young saplings, so too was North America a continent of old and new nations. In a moment, which poignantly reminds us that there are no historical inevitabilities—even in the origination of the United States—here was a vision of the American Revolution that accommodated a plurality of nations coexisting on the North American continent. 2 Shortly after the ritual gift-giving and Haudenosaunee delegation’s departure from the chamber, Congress resolved to form a five-man committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. Congress intended this declaration for a European audience; the visiting Haudenosaunee had already recognized Congress as a legitimate, sovereign council. Haudenosaunee recognition of colonial liberty, however, meant little to the Virginian tasked with writing the declaration, Thomas Jefferson. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson cast native peoples as villains in the revolutionary struggle against Britain, writing that “[The King] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an 2 Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 5: 429. For the constructions of “The Great Tree of Peace,” see William Fenton, “Structure, Continuity, and Change in the Process of
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