Upper Canada, New York, and the Iroquois Six Nations, 1783-1815 Author(S): Alan Taylor Reviewed Work(S): Source: Journal of the Early Republic, Vol
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Society for Historians of the Early American Republic The Divided Ground: Upper Canada, New York, and the Iroquois Six Nations, 1783-1815 Author(s): Alan Taylor Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 55-75 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3124858 . Accessed: 02/11/2011 18:25 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Pennsylvania Press and Society for Historians of the Early American Republic are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Early Republic. http://www.jstor.org THE DIVIDED GROUND: UPPER CANADA, NEW YORK, AND THE IROQUOIS SIX NATIONS, 1783-1815 AlanTaylor In recentyears, historians have paid increasing attention to bordersand borderlandsas fluidsites of bothnational formation and local contestation. At theirperipheries, nations and empires assert their power and define their identitywith no certainty of success.Nation-making and border-making are inseparablyintertwined. Nations and empires, however, often reap defiance frompeoples uneasily bisected by theimposed boundaries. This process of border-making(and border-defiance)has been especiallytangled in the Americaswhere empires and republicsprojected their ambitions onto a geographyoccupied and defined by Indians.Imperial or nationalvisions ran up against the tangled complexities of interdependentpeoples, both native and invader. Indeed, the contest of rival Euro-Americanregimes presented risky opportunitiesfor native peoples to play-off the rivals to preserve native autonomyand enhancetheir circumstances.1 AlanTaylor is professorof historyat theUniversity of Californiaat Davis. He is the authorof LibertyMen and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on theMaine Frontier,1760-1820 (1990); WilliamCooper's Town: Powerand Persuasionon the Frontierof theEarly American Republic (1995); and American Colonies (2001). ! DavidJ. Weber, 'Tuner, the Boltonians, and the Borderlands," American Historical Review,91 (Feb.1986), 66-81; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republicsin the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991). For a discussionof the relationshipof comnlp-ativeto transnationalhistory, see Ian Tyrell, "American Exceptionalismin an Ageof InternationalHistory," American Historical Review, 96 (Oct. 1991), 1031-55;George M. Frederickson,"From Exceptionalism to Variability:Recent Developmuentsin Cross-National Compaiative History," Journal of AmericanHistory, 82 (Sept. 1995),487-604; and Richard White, 'The Nationalization of Nature,"ibid., 86 (Dec. 1999), 976-86. JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC,22 (Sprin 2002). O 2002 Society for Historiansof the EarlyAmeican Republic. 56 JOURNALOF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Ina recentessay, Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron advance a helpful distinctionbetween "borderlands" and "borders." They argue that, in North Americanhistory, native peoples tried to prolong broad and porous "borderlands,"but eventuallybecame confined within the "borders"of consolidatedregimes imposed by invadingEuro-Americans. This paper examines the transitionof one borderland-theland of the Iroquois Indians-into two borderedlands: the Stateof New Yorkin the American republicand the province of UpperCanada in the Britishempire.2 At Parisin 1783,British and American negotiators concluded the War of the AmericanRevolution, recognizing the independenceof the United States while reservingthe Canadianprovinces to the British empire. Americanindependence and Canadian dependence required a newboundary betweenthe youngrepublic and the lingeringempire. The negotiatorsran that boundarythrough the GreatLakes and the riversbetween them, including,most significantly,the thirty-six-mile-longNiagara River that emptiedLake Erie into Lake Ontario. Long a criticaljuncture for overland movementeast-and-west, as well as watertransport north-and-south, the Niagara River assumeda contradictorynew role as an international boundary.A naturalplace of communication,passage, and mixing became redefinedas a place of separationand distinction.Or, so it seemed,on paperto negotiatorsin distantParis and theirsuperiors in Londonand Philadelphia.3 Along the NiagaraRiver, the IroquoisSix Nations clung to their positionas autonomouskeepers of a perpetualand open-ended borderland, a placeof exchangeand interdependence. Recognizing their own weakness in numbersand technology, the nativessought renewed strength in their 2 JeremyAdelman and Stephen Aron, "From Borderlands to Borders:Empires, Nation- States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History," American Historical Review, 104 (June 1999) 814-41. See also Evan Haefeli, "A Note on the Use of North AmericanBorderlands," and John R.Wunder and Pekka Hamalainen, "Of Lethal Places and Lethal Essays,"and the thoughtfulreply by Adelmanand Aron, "Of Lively Exchanges and Larger Perspectives," in ibid. (Oct. 1999), 1222-25, 1229-34, 1235-39. Wunder and Hamalainenfault Adelman and Aron for inadequateattention to the agency of native peoples in borderlandrelationships. The latter accept that point but reiterate the transforming rupture ultimately effected by the United States in confining native peoples within boundaries-a point that Wunderand Hamalainenobscure. 3 For a borderlandsstudy of Canadaand the United States, see Reginald C. Stuart, United States Expansionismand British North America, 1775-1871 (Chapel Hill, 1988). Stuart does not examine the role of Indiansin the constructionof that borderland. A more recent work on a later, more westernportion of the borderdoes illuminatethe pivotal role of native people; see Beth LaDow, TheMedicine Line: Lifeand Death on a NorthAmerican Borderland (New York, 2001). UNDERSTANDINGBOUNDARIES 57 geographicand political position between the Americansand the British. By exploitingthe lingering rivalry between the republic and the empire, the IroquoisSix Nationshoped to remainintermediate and autonomous rather than dividedand absorbed by the rivals. The nativesconceived of their borderlandas porousat bothends to thereception of informationand trade goods andfor the free movement of theirpeople. In 1790the Six Nations spokesmanRed Jacket explained to theAmericans, "that we maypass from one to the otherunmolested ... we wish to be underthe protectionof the thirteenStates as well as of the British."A yearlater, he remindedthe Americans,"[we] do not give ourselvesentirely up to them[the British], nor leanaltogether upon you. Wemean to standupright as we livebetween both." As gatekeepersof a borderland,the Six Nationsenjoyed a leverage thatwould be lost if dividedand confined by an artificialborder defined as a precise geographicline where two Euro-Americanpowers met and assertedcontrol over all inhabitantswithin their respective bounds.4 Beforethe American Revolution, the six Iroquoiannations sustained a loose confederationof villageslocated south of LakeOntario and east of LakeErie, within the territory claimed by thecolony of New York. From east to west,the Six Nationswere the Mohawk (in theMohawk valley), the Oneidaand the Tuscarora(both south of LakeOneida), the Cayugaand Onondaga(in the Finger Lakes region), and the especially numerous Seneca (in the Genesee,Allegheny, and Niagara valleys). Culturallysimilar, they spokekindred languages of theIroquoian family and occupied villages that mixed a few traditionalbark-roofed long-houses with many, compact log cabins. Theirvillages were modest in size-rarely inhabitedby morethan 500 people-and theirpopulation aggregated to about9,000 on the eve of the war. Occupyingand cultivating the most fertile pockets of alluvialsoil, they reservedmost of theirbroad hinterland as a forestfor huntingand gathering.Of course,American settlers coveted that vast hinterland, which theyregarded as wastedupon Indians and properly rededicated to theirown farm-making.5 4 Red Jacket, speech, Nov. 21, 1790, Timothy Pickering Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston), Red Jacket, speech, July 10, 1791, ibid. See also the Young 21, 1791, AmericanState Indian King's5 speech, May Papers, Affairs, 1: 165. "Reportof GovernorWilliam Tryon on the State of the Province of New York, 1774," in E. B. O'Callaghan,ed., The DocumentaryHistory of the State of New York(4 vols., New York, 1849-51), 1:766; HelenHornbeck Tanner, ed., Atlas ofGreat LakesIndian History (Norman,1987), 74-78; ElisabethTooker, 'The Leagueof the Iroquois:Its History, Politics, and Ritual,"in Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast (12 vols. to date;Washington, DC, 1978-2001), 15: 418-41; Dean R. Snow, The Iroquois (Cambridge,MA, 1994), 141-57. 58 JOURNALOF THE EARLY REPUBLIC The Warof the AmericanRevolution proved catastrophic for the Six Nations.Under severe pressure from both sides, the Iroquois divided. Most of the Oneidaand some of theTuscarora assisted the Americanrebels, but the greatmajority of theIroquois allied with the British as theirbest bet for resistingexpansionist settlers.