USA > Kentucky > A history of the commonwealth of Kentucky > Part 2
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* Thatcher's Lives of the Indians, p 39
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not be from any dubious or unimportant character, which is at- tached to them, since they are derived from the highest colonial authorities, and embrace the treaty history of Western Amer- ica. The tribes in question, says Governor Pownal in his "Administration of the British Colonies," about 1664, carried their arms, as far south as Carolina, and as far west as the Mississippi, over a vast country, which extended twelve hundred miles in length, and about six hundred in breadth; where they destroyed whole nations, of whom there are no accounts remaining among the English. "The rights of these tribes," says the same respectable authority, "to the hunting lands of Ohio, (meaning the river of that name) may be fairly proved by the conquest they made in subduing the Shavanoes, Delawares, Twictwees, and Oillinois, as they stood possessed thereof, at the peace of Ryswick in 1697." In further confirmation of this Indian title, it must be mentioned, that Lewis Evans, a gentleman whom Dr. Franklin compli- ments, as possessed "of great American knowledge," repre- sents in his map of the middle colonies of Great Britian on this continent, the country on the south-easterly side of the Ohio river, as the hunting lands of the Six nations. In his analysis to his map, he expressly says, *"that the Shawanese who were formerly one of the most considerable nations of these parts of America, whose seat extended from Kentucke, south-westward to the Mississippi, have been subdued by the confederates, (or Six Nations) and the country since become their property."
This chain of testimony is corroborated by the statement of the Six Nations to the commissioners of the provinces of Penn- sylvania, Virginia, and Maryland, at an Indian council held with them in 1744. When at this meeting, the Indian chiefs were called upon by the colonial commissioners "to tell what nations of Indians they had conquered lands from in Virginia, and to receive satisfaction for such lands, as they had a right to;" they are said by Dr. Franklin to have made this reply:
. Franklin's works, vol. 4, 271, and observations on the conduct of the French, dedicated to Win. Shirley, Governor of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay, Boston, 1755; p, 4.
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"All the world knows, that we conquered the several nations living on the Suquehannah, Cohongoranto, (now Potomack) and back of the Great Mountains in Virginia;" "we conquered the nations residing there, and that land, if the Virginians ever get a good right to it, it must be by us."
These tribes had previously, as early as 1701, placed themselves under the protection and government of Great Britain. In their deed, or treaty of the 4th of September, 1726, they confirmed this disposition of their country. Calculating implicitly on this acknowledgment, General Braddock, when, in 1755, he came over to command one of the military expe- ditions, directed against the French intruders upon the very Ohio lands in question, issued suitable instructions to Sir William Johnson. This gentleman was the celebrated Indian agent, of the British government, among the Mohawks. Bv these directions he was required to call the Five Nations together to lay before them the above grant to the King in 1726; by which they had placed all their hunting lands under his majesty's protectection, to be "guurrantied to them and to their use." The general then, after alleging the invasion of the French, and their erecting forts upon these lands, "contrary to the said deed and treaties; calls upon them in his name, to take up the hatchet, and come and take possession of their own lands." These Indian claims are solemnly appealed to in a diplomatic memorial, addressed by the British ministry to the Duke Mirepoix, on the part of France, on the 7th June, 1755. *"It is a certain truth," this memorial states, "that the" (mean- ing the countries possessed by the Five Nations) "have be- longed, and as they have not been given up, or made over to the English, belong still to the same Indian nations." The court of Great Britain maintained in this negotiation, f"that the Five Nations were by origin, or by right of conquest, the lawful proprietors of the river Ohio, and the territory in ques- tion."
In pursuance of this ancient aboriginal title, the author may not omit the testimony of Dr. Mitchell , who, at the solici-
· Franklin's works, ante, f Idem.
·
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tation of the British Board of Trade and Plantations, published a Map of North America, and was furnished for this purpose, with documents from the Colonial office. In this map, the same which the elder Adams mentions,* as the one by which the boundaries in the treaty of Paris of 1783, were adjusted; the Doctor observes, "that the Six Nations have extended their territories ever since the year 1672, when they subdued, and were incorporated with, the ancient Shawanese, the native pro- prietors of these countries. Besides which, they likewise claim a right of conquest over the Illinois and all the Missis- sippi, as far as they extend." This, he adds, "is confirmed by their own claims and possessions in 1742, which include all the bounds here laid down (meaning on his map,) and none have ever thought fit to dispute them." Such faith did the British go- vernment and their agent, Sir William Johnson, repose in this Indian title, that in October, 1768, agreeably to ministerial instructions solicited by Pennsylvania, "through Dr. Franklin, it was purchased of its holders, the Six Nations, for £10,460 7s. 6d. sterling. This Indian treaty was held at Fort Stanwix, afterwards denominated Fort Schuyler, and now included in the township of Rome, on the Erie canal, in the State of New York. At this meeting, so memorable in the annals of the west, the Six Nations declared to the agent, eminent for his knowledge of Indian concerns, that "you who know all our affairs, must be sensible, that our rights go much further to the south than the Kenhawa, and that we have a very good and clear title, as far south as the Cherokee river, which we cannot allow to be the right of any other Indians, without doing wrong to our posterity, and acting unworthy of those warriors who fought and conquered it; we therefore, expect this our right, will be considered." Jn 1781, t Colonel Croghan who, for thirty years had been deputy superintendent among the Six Nations, deposed, "that these Indians claimed by right of con- quest, all the lands on the south-east side of the Ohio, to the Cherokee river, and on the west side, down to the Big Miami, otherwise called Stony river." 'T'his title, as has been men-
+ State Papers, vol. 1, 15. t Haywood's Tennessee, p. 232. A *
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tioned was alienated to the British Crown in the treaty to which reference has just been had. The Cherokee river mentioned in this session, was also called the Hogotege* in the treaty, and is now known as the Tennessee river. The first of these names is used convertibly with Tennessee, by the legislature of Virginia in their resolutions of 1778, and again in the celebrated land law fo 1779,f as well as in Filson's To- pography of Kentucky, compiled in 1781. It is hoped that be- fore the termination of this history, some more minute account of this remarkable treaty may be obtained from the inquiries, so courteously promoted by Governor Breathitt of Kentucky, and addressed to the government of our parent State. Yet the hope is but faint, unless the inquiry shall be pursued to the Colonial office in London, since, on application of secre- tary Jefferson, in 1793, to Governor Clinton of New York, for copies of all Indian treaties negotiated during the colonial government; it was replied, that on the rupture of the revolu- tion, the British Superintendent for Indian affairs, had taken away all the papers belonging to his department.
Thus far the aboriginal title to Kentucky has been traced to its transfer to the British Crown; and although, as a matter of convention, and a question of treaty obligation, it seems well founded; yet it is not quite conclusive against the tribes west of the Six Nations. In the fluctuations so peculiarly inci- dent to savage society, one tribe successively succeeds to the do- minion, and the rights of its feebler neighbor; and in the weak- ness consequent upon the approach of the dense population of agricultural society, while one nation fades before the civilized man, another formerly tributary, resumes the paramount au- thority, which had been lost by its conquerors. In this manner, the north-western tribes, who seem to have been conquered by the Mohawks in ancient times, appear to have succeeded to the rights of their conquerors, when their former masters had lost the predominancy, which they certainly possessed during the war of 1755. Since our countrymen have been particularly acquainted with the north-western Indians, and have under-
. Haywood's History of Tennessee, 231-2 t Henning's Statutes at large, 2, 1779.
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stood their titles and fluctuating dominions, the Miami confede- racy, or as they designated it, the Mi-a-mi-ah, have occupied the country between the Ohio, the lakes and the Mississippi, as far east as the Scioto. General Harrison, to whose curious inquiries the country is particularly indebted for information on this subject, gives this account in his valuable letter to Se- cretary Armstrong, in 1814. * "They (meaning the Miamis) have no tradition of removing from any other quarter of the country; whereas all the neighboring tribes, the Piankishaws excepted, who are a branch of the Miamies, are either intru- ders upon them, or have been permitted to settle in their coun- try." "The claims of the Miamies were bounded on the north and west by those of the Illinois confederacy, consisting originally of five tribes, called Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peo- rians, Michiganians, and Temarois, speaking the Miami lan- guage, and no doubt, branches of that nation."
In the above war between France and Great Britian,t the Indians inhabiting the countries between the rivers Mississippi, Ohio, and Miami, were known by the name of the Western con- federacy, and were the allies of the former; while the Six Nations were attached to the latter, and were denominated the Northern confederacy. #On the termination of this war, the Kaskaskias, under the mediation of the British government, formed a treaty of peace with the Iroquois. The former tribe, including the tribes between the Wabash and the Mississippi, had previously separated from the rest of the confederacy; for indeed the nature of Indian society, forbids the continuance of any large population together; and hence its endless rami- fication. The Illinois tribes had been driven from their pos- sessions on lake Michigan, and had been nearly extirpated by the Sacs or Saukies, before the close of our revolutionary war. But all the traditional accounts of the north-western Indians, represent the country now composing the State of Indiana and that of Ohio west of the Scioto, to have been occupied by the Miami confederacy. The occupation of the country on the
. McAfce's History. p. 43. t Wheaton's Reports, Johnson against McIntosh. t Gen. Harrison's Letter to the Author.
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Scioto and the Miamis of the Ohio by the Delawares and Shawnees, was on the same authority, of more recent date, and by the permission of the Miamis. The Wyandots were the most easterly of these nations, and had long before the revo- lutionary war, carried on hostilities with the Mohawks. One battle fought in canoes near Long Point, on lake Erie, was so fatal to the Wyandots, as to have compelled the remnant of their tribe to remove to lake Michigan. The precise date of these events, cannot now be ascertained; but sometime before the close of the revolution, the Wyandots were found in their ancient seats about Sandusky river. Their numbers were not formidable, but their character for valor was so distinguished, that they obtained the custody of the great calumet, which was the emblem of the confederacy of nine tribes, formed by British influence against the United States, and terminated only by the victory of Wayne, at the rapids of the Maumee, in 1794. The return of this tribe, was in all probability, the result of British mediation, after their conquest of Canada. The Senecas, the most western of the Six Nations, had, at one time, extended themselves as far as the Sandusky river, and possessed a town upon it, which bore their name .* This is the farthest western settlement of the Six Nations known, independent of the ac- counts of the colonial writers, which have been quoted; now had they conquered the Wyandots, still this tribe have not been discovered to have had any pretensions to Kentucky, beyond the other coterminous bands. Within the personal knowledge of our countrymen since the war of 1755, Kentucky has not been in the occupancy of any tribe. There are indeed through it, as all over the western country, indications of a race of people having existed, much more advanced in the arts, than the tribes known to us; but, whose history is but a tissue of faint and disjointed conjectures, like that of innumerable tribes all over the globe, who have been destitute of letters and the use of the metals. Without these foundations, civilization has neither fruits to record, nor instruments to perpetuate their memory. Our hunters from 1767, in' their various pere-
+ General Harrison had his head quarters at this point during the late war ..
:
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grinations through the territory, since denominated Kentucky, met with no marks of a modern Indian town within the whole extent of the country. The villages of Indians known to have been nearest to Kentucky, were on the Scioto and the Miamis of the Ohio in the north, and on the waters of the Tennessee river in the south. From these points, the various war and hunting parties issued to engage in the one or the other pur- suit, as the passions, or the opportunties of their expeditions might lead. Here, the Chickasaws and Cherokees of the south, used to engage with various tribes of the Miami confederacy; here they indulged their passions for hunting, in the profusion of game afforded by Kentucky. So much was this ground ex- empted from settlement, that on neither the Ohio nor the lower Tennessee, are any Indian towns known to have been settled. Yet no situations have generally delighted savage tribes so much, as the margins of water courses; the opportunities of navigation and of fishing, unite to attract them to such spots. Accordingly the banks of most of our western rivers, except- ing those of Kentucky, (although they abounded in game and in salt licks,) were found occupied by the native tribes of the forests.
There is another circumstance suggested by Gen. Harrison, which confirms the modern limitation of the Six Nations, what- ever may have been their ancient ascendency. The chief seat of the Miamis was the scite of Fort Wayne, between the St. Joseph's and the St. Mary's. Had the Six Nations achieved any great recent success over the Miamis, they would in all proba- bility, have forced them from this favorite spot, which is the key to the country below; and the defeated tribes would have been driven on their confederates upon the lower Wabash. This, however, was not their location.
That long and obstinate wars subsisted between the Iroquois and their immediate western neighbors, about the middle of the last century, derives much probability from another circum- stance. * The French for fifty years, used no route to their possessions on the Mississippi, but the circuitous one by lakes
+ Letter of Gen. Harrison.
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Erie and Michigan, and the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. This distant embarrassed course of communication, could not have been resorted to, from their ignorance of the more direct route, by the Maumee and the Wabash. It is therefore to be pre- sumed, that the prevalence of wars between the adjacent tribes, prevented them from passing over this belligerent ground. It was not till about 1735, that Capt. De Vincennes, accompanied by a Jesuit, accomplished the passage by this latter route. Sometime before this period, the Wyandots probably returned; and peace having been made with the Six Nations, the country was opened to the enterprises of the French, as has been seen. No treaties made with the north-western Indians directly, are known to exist in our imperfect colonial records, previous to the treaty of 1774, between Lord Dunmore and the Shawanees, if even this has been preserved.
The nature of this treaty, the author has been unable to as- certain with any precision from any accessable records. There is a brief notice of its purport, in Burk's Virginia,* which represents, that peace was made by the royal governor with the Shawanees, on "condition that the lands on this side of the Ohio, should be forever ceded to the whites; that their pris- oners should be delivered up, and that four hostages should be immediately given for the faithful performance of these condi- tions." Such a treaty appears at this day, to be utterly beyond the advantages which could have been claimed from Dunmore's expedition. The principal blow had been struck by the left wing of his army apart from him, at the bloody battle of Point Pleasant, in which, under Col. Andrew Lewis, with the choicest spirits of the western backwoodsmen, the Indians fought with an open resolution worthy of their highest military fame, although they retreated .; Gov. Dunmore crossed the Ohio seventy-five miles above the mouth of the Kenhawa, and ordered Lewis to join him at the Indian towns eighty miles from the river. Here but little fighting is said to have taken place, when the Governor patched up a peace, which would have little deserved the sub- sequent suspicions evinced by the legislature of Virginia,t . + 3d vol. p. 306. 1 Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry. ! Niles' Register, vol. 12, p. 145.
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had it affected a transfer of such valuable territory even at that day. Then, indeed, the prospect of western prosperity, was thickly veiled, in comparison with its modern reality, and still more splendid indications; yet the "colony and ancient domi- nion of Virginia," was by no means, insensible to the cradle of empire she possessed, extending from the Alleghany to the Mississippi. This is evinced by the eagerness with which she laid claim in her first constitution of June 29th, 1776, to the extreme boundaries of dominion, under the charter granted by James the first of Great Britian. "Within these limits she asserted the exclusive right of purchasing the soil from the aborigines." So far the title of the Indians to Kentucky and the adjacent country, has been traced to its voluntary convey- ance to the British Crown, for a valuable consideration at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, in 1768. This treaty was formed on the principles which had regulated the intercourse of the French and British with the natives of North America, from the ear- liest period of their connexion.
The European nations seem to have adopted the principle of prior discovery, as one of peace among themselves, and not as a source of title over the aboriginal inhabitants .* Spain, in the discussions with other European nations, as well as with the United States, placed her title to her American posses- sions, not upon the celebrated bull of Pope Alexander VI., but upon the rights given by discovery; "Portugal sustained her claim to the Brazils by the same title. France also founded her title to the vast possessions she claimed in America on disco- very." The letters patent granted to the Sieur Demonts, in 1603, constituted him Lieutenant General, and the represen- tative of the King in Acadie, which is described as stretching from the 40th to the 40th degree of north latitude. The States of Holland also made acquisitions in America, and sustained their right on the common principle adopted in Europe. No one of the powers of Europe gave its full assent to this principle, more unequivocally than England. So early as 1495, her monarch granted a commission to the Cabots to discover coun-
+ 8 Wheaton's Reports; McIntosh against Johnson.
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tries then unknown to Christian people, and to take possession of them, in the name of the King of England. In the same manner were granted, the charters to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, and finally to Sir Thomas Gates, and others, in 1606. The latter charter granted the country be- tween 34 and 41 degrees of north latitude: this was after- wards enlarged in 1609, into the grant to the Treasurer and Company of Adventurers of the city of London for the first colony in Virginia. This charter embraced four hundred miles in absolute property, extending along the sea coast and into the land throughout from sea to sea. Between France and Great Britian, whose discoveries, as well as settlements, were nearly cotemporaneous, contests for the country actually covered by the Indians, began as soon as their settlements ap- proached each other, and were continued until finally settled in the year 1763 by the treaty of Paris. In the controversies which were closed by this war, France had contended, not only that the St. Lawrence was to be considered as the centre of Canada, but that the Ohio was within that colony. She foun- ded this claim on discovery, and on having used this river for transportation of troops in a war with some southern Indians. In the treaty of 1763, "France ceded and guarantied to Great Britian, all Nova Scotia or Acadie and Canada, with their de- pendencies, to the middle of the Mississippi, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain," while Great Britian on her part, surrendered to France all her pretensions to the country west of the Mississippi. "It has never been supposed that she sur- rendered nothing, although she was not in possession of' a foot of the land. She surrendered all right to acquire the country ; and any after attempt to purchase it from the Indians, would have been considered and treated as an invasion of the territory of France. Thus, all the nations of Europe who have acquired territory from the Indians on this continent, have asserted in themselves, and have recognized in others, the exclusive right of the discoverer to appropriate the lands occupied by the Indians. By the treaty which concluded the war of our revo- lution, Great Britian relinquished all claim not only to the go-
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vernment, but to the "proprietary and territorial rights of the United States." By this treaty, the powers of the government, and the right to soil, which had previously been in Great Britain, passed definitely to these States. "They had before taken possession of them by declaring independence; but nei- ther the declaration of independence, nor the treaty confirming it, could give us more than that, which we before possessed; or to which Great Britain was before entitled. It has never been doubted that the United States, or the several States, had a clear title to all the land's within the boundary lines described in the treaty, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and that the exclusive power to extinguish that right, was vested in that government, which might constitutionally exercise it." This extinguishment has been made as mentioned, by the treaty of Fort Stanwix for the country east of the Tennessee river; for the balance of Kentucky, to the Mississippi, a treaty with the Chickasaws on the 19th October, 1818, provided. In addition to these transfers of native title to Kentucky, a con- veyance was made by the southern Indians, the Cherokees, to Richard Henderson and Company, on the 17th March, 1775, on the Wataga or Wataugah, the south-eastern branch of Hoi- ston. By this treaty was ceded, as it imports, "all the tract or territory of lands now called by the name of TRANSYLVANIA, lying on the Ohio river, and the waters thereof, branches of the Mississippi, and bounded as follows: Beginning on the said Ohio river at the mouth of the Cantuckey Chenoee, or what by the English is called Louisa river; from thence running up the said river, and most northwardly fork of the same to the head spring thereof; thence a south-east course to the top ridge of Powel's mountain; thence westwardly along the ridge of the said mountain unto a point from which a north-west course will hit or strike the head spring of the most southwardly branch of Cumberland river; thence down the said river including all its waters, to the Ohio river; thence up the said river as it meanders to the beginning. Which said tract or territory of lands was at the time of said purchase, and time out of mind, had been the land and hunting grounds of the said trite of (Chero-
B
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