View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenGrey Repository University of Dundee DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Holding the line the changing policies of the British Army with respect to Native Americans, 1759-1774 Watson, David Award date: 2012 Awarding institution: University of Dundee Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 16. Jun. 2016 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Holding the line the changing policies of the British Army with respect to Native Americans, 1759-1774 David Watson 2012 University of Dundee Conditions for Use and Duplication Copyright of this work belongs to the author unless otherwise identified in the body of the thesis. It is permitted to use and duplicate this work only for personal and non-commercial research, study or criticism/review. You must obtain prior written consent from the author for any other use. Any quotation from this thesis must be acknowledged using the normal academic conventions. It is not permitted to supply the whole or part of this thesis to any other person or to post the same on any website or other online location without the prior written consent of the author. Contact the Discovery team ([email protected]) with any queries about the use or acknowledgement of this work. Holding the line: the changing policies of the British Army with respect to Native Americans, 1759-1774 David Watson Doctorate of History, The University of Dundee, April 2012 Acknowledgements This thesis would have been impossible without the generous aid of many different people and organisations. In particular, I am grateful for the boundless patience and continuing encouragement of my supervisor, Matthew Ward, and the never-ending love and support of my family. In addition, generous funding for my research was provided by the William L. Clements Library, the David Library of the American Revolution, the Carnegie Trust for the University of Scotland, the British Association for American Studies, the Royal Historical Society and the University of Dundee itself. Finally, I would like to extend additional thanks to the staff of the William L. Clements Library for providing me with essential furniture when I accidentally ended up in an unfurnished flat. Table of Contents Introduction.................................................................................................. 3 Chapter One: Lessons of the Seven Years’ War..................................... 30 Chapter Two: Amherst’s Policy ............................................................... 57 Chapter Three: Weak Garrisons -Worried Soldiers .............................. 71 Chapter Four: The Problems of Frontier Diplomacy............................. 95 Chapter Five: Pontiac’s War .................................................................. 119 Chapter Six: Gage’s Policy...................................................................... 155 Chapter Seven: A Lack of Authority ..................................................... 191 Chapter Eight: The Final Act ................................................................. 233 Conclusion................................................................................................. 265 1 2 Introduction The subject of this thesis is the meeting of the British Army and Native Americans on the colonial frontier in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War. More specifically, this is an examination of the policies and strategies adopted by the British Army when dealing with Native Americans. Much has been written on this period, yet the unusual role played by the British Army has often been simplified, perhaps because it eventually failed in its allotted task. Still, for a little over ten years, between 1763 and 1774 the British Army was used not to expand empire but to restrain its growth, and this deserves examination. This study has several aims: firstly, to lay out the policies pursued with respect to Native Americans by both General Jeffrey Amherst, later Baron Amherst, the commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America at the end of the Seven Years’ War and General Thomas Gage, who replaced Amherst as commander-in-chief in North America in 1763. The second aim is to answer the question of why these two Generals chose the policies they did, and what their goals were in doing so. The third aim will be to determine whether either Amherst or Gage changed their chosen strategies as the impact of their decisions became apparent. Finally, this study will examine how senior British officers responded to their orders concerning Native Americans, and the difficulties the army faced in carrying out those orders. The chronological structure of this thesis has been chosen in order to best answer these questions. 3 Chapter One is focused on the Seven Years’ War, as it was the genesis of the Indian Department and the reason for the large-scale deployment of the British Army to America. This chapter also examines the key role the Seven Years’ War played in shaping the attitude of the British Government towards the frontier and Native Americans. One of the lessons that the British took from the war was that the Colonies could not be trusted to handle Native American diplomacy, with the result that they created the Indian Department to take over that role. However, as a legacy of its wartime inception, the Indian Department was made subordinate to the commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America. This meant that in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, Jeffery Amherst, the commander- in-chief at that time, had the final say on the Indian policy adopted by both the Army and the Indian department. The policies he chose to adopt and the opinions that gave birth to them are the subject of Chapter Two. The foundation of all Amherst’s dealings with Native Americans was his conviction that with sufficiently rigorous treatment they could be turned into hard-working vassals of the empire. Senior British officers on the frontier greeted this policy with a range of responses, and their varying reactions are detailed in Chapter Three. Amongst some senior army officers on the frontier there was a recognition that their position was inherently weak, and so they attempted to secure Native American acquiescence for the army’s presence on the frontier rather than follow Amherst’s policy, which insisted on economy above all. Britain’s occupation of the frontier, in breach of promises made to Native Americans during the Seven Years’ War, eventually led to the 4 conflict known as Pontiac’s War. Pontiac’s War began in the spring of 1763, and was an almost successful attempt by a disparate group of Native Americans to remove the British from the frontier. Chapter Four covers the run-up to Pontiac’s War, and details how a few senior officers tried engaging Native Americans with their traditional forms of diplomacy, while begging Amherst to change his stance on the treatment of Native Americans. Amherst’s failure to change tack helped to bring about Pontiac’s War, and the differing strategies pursued by Amherst and his successor, General Thomas Gage, in the prosecution of the war are dealt with in Chapter Five. The key change brought about by Pontiac’s War was the British Government’s decision to replace General Amherst with General Thomas Gage in August 1763. Gage had managed to bring Pontiac’s War to a spluttering end by 1765, with the result that he was now faced with the same problem that had confronted Amherst at the end of the Seven Years’ War: how best to keep the peace on the frontier. Gage’s policies were a radical departure from Amherst’s, and Chapter Six examines the new commander-in-chief’s conception of Native Americans, and how his ideas shaped the policies he adopted. One of Gage’s key beliefs was that Native Americans could be brought to accept British domination of North America, provided their concerns were listened to and, where possible, addressed. Chapter Seven is focused on the army’s attempts to carry out Gage’s orders to resolve frontier conflicts and provide satisfaction to Native Americans with the limited powers at their disposal. Sadly, the powers 5 granted to the army by the Proclamation of 1763 and later the Mutiny Act proved to be insufficient for this task. In light of the army’s failures and the growing Native American anger that resulted, Gage began urging his officers to permit Native Americans to revenge themselves on those who had wronged them. Gage argued that this should not just be the case for individual settlers but also for entire colonies, and expressed the opinion that since any conflicts with Native Americans were likely to be caused by colonial provocation, then it should be left to the Colonies to sort it out, without assistance from the British Army. This argument was the logical outcome of Gage’s belief that Native Americans were rational beings who would only go to war if they felt it was in their interest. This change in policy, and Gage’s role in bringing it about, is the focus of Chapter Eight. As the army struggled to make peace on the frontier both Gage and Whitehall came to the conclusion that this matter might best be handled by the Colonies themselves, provided they were made aware that the army would not be available to bail them out if they failed.