USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 42
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51
" The treaty alarm is purely one addressed to the imagina- tion and prejudices. Objections that proceed upon error in fact or calenlation may be traced and exposed. But such as are drawn from the imagination, or addressed to it, elude defini- tion and return to domineer over the mind. . . . On a question of shame and honor, reason is sometimes useless and worse. I feel the decision in my pulse; if it throws no light upon the brain, it kindles a fire at the heart."
Ames spoke in a committee of the whole, and the body at once adjourned to avoid the immediate effect of the speech, which seemed to be overwhelming, though the cool rehearsal of some of its warmer passages fails of much effect now. Later, , after the feelings were quieted, the committee were a tie, but the vote of the chairman sent it to the House, where, on April 30, the House gave the majority that Ames had despaired of acquiring in a vote of 51 to 49. The contest was over, and early in May the appropriation bill became a law.
On May 10, 1796, McHenry, the secretary of war, sent Captain Lewis to make arrangements with Dorchester for the transfer of the posts, and on May 27 Wilkinson, now com- manding at Fort Greeneville, asked of the commander at De- troit the day when the American forces could enter that town.
At the end of May, orders were issued to the British com- mandants to evacuate the posts ; but Lewis, now in Quebec, representing that the American troops were not yet ready for
483
THE POSTS EVACUATED.
the occupation, Dorchester agreed to wait their coming, and on June 1 and 2 issued orders accordingly. A few weeks later (July 9), that governor, who had been so long an actor in American history, embarked for England, and was succeeded three days later by Lieutenant-General Robert Prescott.
The British had already reduced their garrisons to a guard. On July 11, 1796, Fort Miami was handed over to Colonel Hamtramck. On the same day, Captain Moses Porter entered Detroit, and found it already evacuated. Some one had filled the well at the fort with stones, and had done other damage. Simon Girty is known to have stayed behind, after the British had crossed the river, and just in time to avoid the Americans he rushed his horse into the stream, and swam to the other side. Porter was so poorly supplied that, to maintain himself till succored, he was obliged to borrow provisions from the British beyond the river.
Oswego was left on the 15th. The American troops under Captain James Bruff, bound for Niagara, were delayed on the way, and when that fort was turned over, on August 11, nearly all the British garrison had left. It was not till October that Major Burbeck with a party, sent from Detroit, reached Macki- nac, where a British officer and twenty men pulled down the last English flag on American territory. Wayne, in June, had been ordered to supervise the several surrenders. In No- vember, when all was done, and he could congratulate himself on the natural sequel of the Fallen Timbers, he left Detroit for Presqu'Isle. When he reached there, he was prostrate with an agonizing attack of gout, and on December 15 he died at that post ; and James Wilkinson - of all men - succeeded to his commanding station.
The determination of the British government to surrender the posts had struck deeply into the heart of Simcoe. We learn of his "displeasure," of his vindictive plotting with the Indians, and of his unbridled passion, "which overleaped all bounds of prudence and decency," in the talks which Rochefoucault- Liancourt reports having had with the governor, not long after, when that traveler visited Canada. He disclosed to that visitor his hopes of regaining some of the prestige which Jay's treaty had taken from Canada by developing a profitable corn trade, and by opening a route for the fur traders from Ontario to
484
JAY'S TREATY.
Lake Huron, avoiding that by Lake Erie, and diverting trade from the United States. He was confident that the Genesee County must pour out its produce to the sea by way of the St. Lawrence. He looked forward to an inevitable war with the Americans, and dreamed of a naval station at Chatham on the Thames. Fortunately, his heated temper was cooled by a dash of Dorchester's soberer sense.
CHAPTER XXII.
WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
1794-1797.
WE need now to look back. It seemed for a while in the autumn of 1794 as if Wayne and his army might have to take part in the unwelcome task of quelling civil commotion in west- ern Pennsylvania. Had he been called to it, his work of paci- fication beyond the Ohio might have been seriously retarded.
The funding policy of Hamilton had necessitated legislation to support it, and, in 1791, a tax had been imposed on whiskey. Certain concessions quieted the opposition to such a tax, which appeared in Virginia and North Carolina, but the population of Pennsylvania beyond the mountains, centring about Pitts- burg, which had now begun rapidly to grow, were not to be satisfied by anything short of an absolute exemption. Their surplus grain, as Gallatin set forth for them in a manifesto, in view of their remote situation, only became transportable at a profit when it had passed the still ; and a tax which was laid on them, and did not burden equally the seaboard, was an unjust one. These views, as Fisher Ames said, "had tainted a vast extent of country beside Pennsylvania."
An organized revolt began at Redstone on the Monongahela, in July, 1791, when, at a conference of distillers, the populace was excited, and officers sent to collect the tax were hustled and seized. When this was known, the government found a strong feeling developed elsewhere in support of law. "The wild men of the back country," wrote Wolcott, " will not have perseverance to oppose the steady, uniform pressure of law, and must finally submit."
This over-mountain population was a ragged one, and had some passionate blood in it. Wolcott, referring to a prepon- derance of Irish and Scotch-Irish among them, said : " It is a specimen of what we are to expect from European emigrants."
486 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
We have not yet got over such feelings. The leaders, insti- gated by the rancorons language which they heard, and perhaps somewhat alarmed at the determined support which the gov- ernment was receiving on the seaboard, sent agents to Ken- tueky to secure support. It was said that their emissaries were dispatched to Canada for like purposes, and spies among them reported that there were Englishmen among their leaders. They were known to rob the mails in order to seeure information .. They might reasonably expect that dispatches would be sent to Wayne touching their actions, and warning him of possibilities. In his cabinet Washington first experienced the disquietude of Randolph and his lack of trust, when that member of it urged him to inactivity. Hamilton, on the contrary, counseled prompt and uncompromising foree. During it all, Governor Mifflin was timid. In the summer of 1794, while the government was anxiously waiting news from Wayne and Jay, disturbing reports were continually coming from over the mountains. At inter- vals of seven weeks (August 7 and September 25), Washington issued two proclamations, warning the rioters of the conse- quences of their folly. Meanwhile he was collecting militia from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In October, the President himself joined the camp at Carlisle, and arrangements were made for entering the insurgent eoun- try through the mountain passes. General Collot, who a little later went over the ground, with his French feelings in sym- pathy with any disturbance that could make America turn to 'France, criticised the indecision of the insurgent chiefs, in that they neglected the opportunity of blocking the progress of the federal army by preoccupation of the defiles. But time had given a chance for passions to cool, and Washington, at the head of the approaching troops, disturbed the equanimity of the defiant hordes, and they sent a deputation to make terms. The President was struck with their subdued bearing, and the end came. Morgan was left for the winter with a body of two thousand five hundred men to be ready for any revival of the rebellious spirit, and Washington returned to his official duties to be prepared for other trials in the spring, when Jay's treaty darkened the atmosphere once more.
It is a curious commentary on the heated polities of the time, when we find Fauchet believing, with how much of Randolph's
487
A TRUCE.
countenance we may never know, that the government had instigated the revolt to divert the attacks which were making on it, and when Washington himself saw in the rebellion " the first formidable fruit of the democratic societies, brought forth too prematurely for their own views, which may contribute to the overthrow of them." Whatever the case, the timely sup- pression of the trouble left Wayne at Greeneville at liberty to devote himself to the pacification which it was his mission to accomplish.
The opening of 1795 showed a disposition on the part of an increasing number of the northwest Indians to sue for peace ; but in Philadelphia the hope of a permanent settlement was not so sanguine. Pickering felt, with many others, that the disturbance in western Pennsylvania was rather quieted than quelled, and that there was no certainty as yet in the outcome of Jay's mission. Its failure meant war at no distant day. So he urged the maintenance of strong advanced posts in the In- dian country, to be ready for any disastrous turn of affairs. Later news from Wayne was more assuring. By February 11, he had come to a preliminary agreement with the Shawnees, Delawares, and Miamis, and on the 22d he issued a proclama- tion announcing a cessation of hostilities. Wayne, buoyed by his satisfaction, neglected a duty in not communicating the fact of such a proclamation to St. Clair, who was still the civil gov- ernor of the northwest. That official only heard of it near the end of April, in a letter from Pickering, and he properly made complaint to the President.
Although there was a truce, there was still uncertainty, and further pacification was jeopardized by the incursions which some Kentuckians made across the river, throwing the Indians into a suspicious frame of mind. The less sanguine doubted if more than half the great body of the Indians were weaned from war, especially if they could be made to feel by the Eng- lish agents that they would be helped in further resistance. The English, however, were themselves uneasy, and the French in Detroit were exciting the apprehensions of Simcoe, and were known to be urging the Indians to peace. Already their trad- ers were sending supplies to Wayne, and rumors of the comple- tion of a treaty in London, with the surrender of the posts
488 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
assured, were raising in French cireles an expectation of large accessions to their numbers from France itself. In March, Simcoe had written to Portland that Wayne threatened to place a garrison in Sandusky. This again added to Simcoe's alarm as hazarding British supremacy on the lakes. Brant and McKee were actively at work to counteract French influence with the Indians ; and Brant was later to feel that nothing could prevent Wayne concluding a peace. By June, Wayne felt that the only impediment to a treaty was the continued in- cursions of the lawless Kentuckians, and appealed to St. Clair to prevent them. Parties of red men had now begun to assen- ble round his camp, and he gave them his first talk on the 16th. By the middle of July, the concourse was large enough for formal proceedings. On the 20th, he read to them the treaty of Fort Harmar, and found that some of the remoter tribes had never heard of it. Little Turtle made a declaration for the Miamis about the territory which they claimed. He said that, beginning at Detroit, their boundary line stretched to the head of the Scioto, followed down that river and the Ohio to the Wabash, and pursuing this last stream, extended to the Chi- eago portage. - an area embracing the westerly half of Ohio, nearly all of Indiana, and the lower Michigan peninsula. Wayne, in reply, thought that other tribes than the Miamis had rights in this territory, and said that the United States were prepared to pay for such part of it as should be surren- dered by the treaty. We may now follow the daily progress of the negotiation : -
July 23. At the end of the day Wayne gave them some liquor, but warned them " to keep their heads clear to attend to what I shall say to-morrow."
.July 24. Wayne told them that the "fifteen fires," as they called the Union of States, had paid twice for land, once at Fort MeIntosh ten years ago, and again at Fort Harmar six years since. He also toll them that he asked for certain reservations for posts farther west than the main cession. He read Jay's treaty to them, showing how the Americans were soon to take possession of the lake posts. He told them they might rest to- morrow and have a double allowance of liquor because the hatchet was buried, and on the following day he would let them know what he demanded for bounds.
489
THE TREATY MADE.
July 27. Wayne read his proposed treaty and enumerated the remote reservations which he wanted, merely " to connect the settlements and the people of the United States " by roads which the Americans could travel. He described these distant posts as not intended to annoy the Indians, but simply to fur- nish convenient trading places; and he explained that they
L Erie
Cleveland
Congress
Western
Reserve
1806
1796
Base Line 41! 7 Lat.
Lands
Seven
Line
Treaty
1795
Ranges
military
Wayne's
Congress
Lands
Columbus
Bounty
1786
17887
Dummes
Purchase
Virginia
military Bounty
Congress
1788
Ohio
Comp-
any
Cincinnati
[Colonel Whittlesey's plan of the divisionary grants in Ohio, from the Western Reserve IIis- torical Society's Tract, No. 61 (1884).]
were all in the main such areas as the Indians had conveyed to the French, who in turn, in 1763, had surrendered them to the English, and by the English they were, in 1782, confirmed to the United States.
July 28. There were numerous Indian comments upon Wayne's propositions.
July 29. The Sandusky Indians presented a written memo-
1at meridian
490 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
rial, asking that what was conceded to the Indians might be granted in severalty to the different tribes. This was followed by some uneasy harangues on the part of the Indians in discon- tent at Wayne's demand for the remote reservations.
July 30. Wayne declined the proposition of the Sandusky tribe, and then addressed himself particularly to the Miamis, who alone had objected to his main line, as interfering with their hunting-grounds. Wayne firmly stood by his expressed demand, and told them they could hunt where they pleased, " as long as they demeaned themselves peaceably." After some further explanations, he read the treaty again, and put the question : " Do you approve these articles ?" All answered one by one, " Yes," - Ottawas, Pottawattamies, Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Miamis, Chippewas, Kickapoos, Weas, and the Eel River tribe.
The conference now broke up " to eat, drink, and rejoice," and to reassemble when the necessary copies of the treaty were engrossed.
On August 3, the tribes again assembled. Wayne once more read his commission, giving him power to treat with them, and went over the treaty for the last time. He then handed a parch- ment copy to the Wyandots, to be kept for the whole, and a paper copy to each tribe. The next day the presents were dis- tributed, - $20,000 worth of goods, with a promise of an annu- ity of $9,500. As a last word he told them they were children, and no longer brothers.
, The line which had been agreed upon, and which Ludlow later marked, gave the whites some 25,000 square miles of ter- ritory east and south of it, and between it and the Ohio. It began at a point on the latter. river opposite the mouth of the Kentucky, and ran northerly, so as to inelude a long gore at the southeast corner of Indiana, to Fort Recovery. Here it turned east and was extended to the upper Muskingum, whence it followed the portage and the Cayahoga to Lake Erie. The reservations west of this line were sixteen in number, and meas- ured each a few miles square. Those which were wrung from the Indians with most difficulty were that at Fort Wayne and that at the portage of the Maumee and Wabash near by. These parcels of land were the beginning of cessions which half a century later drove the Miamis beyond the Mississippi. A
491
THE INDIAN WAR AT AN END.
reservation at the mouth of the Chicago River was six miles square, " where a fort formerly stood," probably a trading-post of the French, and where now stands the city of Chicago, which was begun the next year by a St. Domingo negro, Jean Bap- tiste Pont au Sable, who built a hut on the spot. The grant which Virginia had made to George Rogers Clark, opposite Louisville, was also reserved. Some of these detached cessions were at later dates included in larger grants, made by other treaties. The recognition by the United States of the Indian property in the soil, even though practically salable to the States under something like compulsion, was perhaps some re- compense to the tribes for the English transfer to the Americans of the right of preemption, by the treaty of 1783, without the concurrence of the original owners ; but the Indians on their part were now required to recognize this right as lodged in the Americans only.
A distribution of commemorative medals was made on Au- gust 8, and on August 10, when the last conference was held, it was found there were 1,130 Indians present. A band of Cherokees settled on the upper waters of the Scioto had kept aloof. When, however, Wayne sent them a summons, they obeyed it, and promised to move back to their own country, south of the Ohio.
Tidings of these events were dispatched to St. Clair, and at Cincinnati, on August 25, 1795, he made proclamation that the Indian war was over.
The only drawback to Wayne's content was the fear that the turmoil in the House of Representatives over the treaty of Jay might end in its practical rejection, and on September 15 he wrote to Pickering that if the posts were not repossessed, as the London treaty provided, it " would have a powerful effect upon the Indian mind." Of the treaty which Wayne had effected, Washington said that "the adjustment of the terms and the satisfaction of the Indians were deemed an object no less of the policy than of the liberality of the United States," - a proposi- tion, it must be observed, that McKee severely questioned, when he insisted that Wayne had made provisions in articles that were not communicated to the Indians. The source of this
NOTE. - The map on the following pages is " A Map of the Northwestern Territory," in Jed- ediah Moore's The American Universal Geography, p. 573, Boston, June, 1796. "The dotted squares are the reservations made by the Indians in 1795, and ceded to the United States."
CANAD
UPPER
Noods.
Grand Portage
Rainy
Lake
LAK
Fake
the
R.St Louis
or bottom
Portage
MissisaganL
Chipena R.
Paths of SÅAnthony
Help R.
Lake Pepin
BlackR.
Fax
R. Louiscon sing
Portage
Rockey R.'
MIS
Tanjas.
IS
Old Priorias AST.
S
IS
Rapids
linors
Missoury's
R
I
S.Louis
Kaskast
R
Kaskaskay C
Genevieve
American Miter
EMassa
150
100
-50 Lo 30 0 10°
200
IVER
Nen Madrid
Moingona R.
Missour. R
id to be navigable 1300! Miles
P P
Ossages R.
RawVase
Long Lakes
I. Ro!
A.
al
I Pontchartrain,
UPERIOR
Es .Mary's Straits and Falls S. George's I. AS. Joseph's I.
Michikmackinac F White Wood I.
LAKE
THURON
Portage
LAKE MICHIGAN
Extensive high Plain
B.
Belle chase R.
Maticon R.
,Saw pineR R. a Chines
Crocodil; R
R Marame
New R.
L.S. Clair
OFThickago
2E. S.Joseph
Raisin R
Tortag
Er
Theaku
L
Bo
PORRO
DE Wayne
Sandusky
Connecticut
icononIR
Little R
Mary's R
Vakı
one
Chilarothe
F. Recovery
Mui
Greenvi Iie F. Jefferson
Hoe
E.S. Clair
MadR
Scrota
ing
fuld Murqfuiton
White R.
Mill co
& I.Washington Lit: Acamt
Tiffginia
Bellepre
Gallipoli Great R
Polaka &
Clarkesville H
OLIO R
hiZouvoille
o Lexington
VIRGINIA.
Ohio R
Green R
Kentucke)
R
Greatsandy
KENTUCKEY.
CANAD
LOWER
M' Juliet
Batt: go Aug:iról.
hern.R
KayahogaR
GrandR 1.
UR
Ys Josephs & Fort Defrance
Maumi
AuGlaize
Indian Partage
BigBea
es
Pittsburg
Wah ash R ..
WhiteR! Mud dy Fork
Columbias
Blue R.
Er.studen
FHamilton
47
Gr Miamis
Tarwetia
oigohet
-
FaxR.
F. De tro
Grand R
and.Travers
494 WAYNE'S TREATY AND THE NEW NORTHWEST.
allegation diminishes its chances of truth. There was one outcome of the treaty, in which some reckless Americans joined, not less discreditable than the action charged by MeKec, could this charge have been proved. Certain Michigan tribes, known to be aggrieved at the result, were cajoled by some Canadian merchants to make for a supposable half a million dollars the transfer of some twenty million acres in the lower Michigan peninsula. It was the part of the American sharers in the plot, led by one Robert Randall of Philadelphia, to obtain Congressional sanction by bribing members with the promise of a due propor- tion in the plunder. Randall's effrontery and the testimony of William Smith of South Carolina, who had been approached late in 1795, led to his arrest, and for his attempted bribery the speaker reprimanded him, and the project dropped.
In December, 1795, Washington, on meet- ing Congress, advised them of the treaty as securing "a durable tranquillity." It had indeed put an end to forty years of warfare in the valley of the Ohio, in which it had been reckoned that 5,000 whites had been See either killed or captured. For three years past, if Hamilton's figures can be taken, these wars had cost a million a year. N.W.I. What had been charged specifically to the Indian department for five years had va- ried annually from $13,000 to $27,000. At 35 LOR. W. Front ! the conclusion of Wayne's treaty, the United States had bound itself to pay to the Six Nations, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and the northwestern tribes, an aggregate yearly sun of $23.520, which attending charges would raise to 830,000. These expenses were irritating to those who had not experienced the evils of the frontier life ; but they bore a small
30
L. CF THE
OTOGAM.
Reds
1
· Mississit
45
S: Anthos Co FIL.I.
R.S.P.
5
495
NORTHWEST TERRITORY.
2
5
1
15
THN
TIMIMHH
Alempigeon
Z.
50
missakin.
Maurepas
TES
Pontcharty
Hecquarti
OR
L.S
Grafã
Lake R.
Insoun P .;
Copper Mines.
HIFF
HURON
rys Falls al Mine
QuisconsingR.
Winebago.L. Meadows
Lir. Fast
Lewrich Meadius?
S. Jofoph
.
L, ERIK
Miami
Sanduiky
Per108
Rapids.
rtunei's.
E.rlinsiceMeadows
Wabash R
Greenville
C ol. Simmes
Vir ginia
Donation Land SScieta.R.
allip abb
QuiiBelpre
En: Mafiac
Cumberland
R.
Flinch/B
HolsteinR
ERRITORY
Tennessee
the Suck
35
Přilad®
25
Q
15
I
A
Sony R.
Ilinois L:
eur:F.Wayne
GMiami D'
LilMiamiR.
Marietta
Old Forle ans
Miroun R.
Kaskaskias R.
Lit.Wabash n.
s"Vincent
Cla
ENNATI
Cahokia
Sande
love
gamex
F.Dying Saquinam &.
uillir
por
cler Fusues
Portage
Lead Mine
Fine
.MASCOTTENS
o DETROIT
zy
vakıki
: 8.
: An extensive highPlain
4.
Michillimackin
Elks R.
A
Rany L.
irre
[This map is from Joseph Scott's United States Gazetteer, Philadelphia, 1795.]
proportion to the $7,000,000, which was now the annual expense of maintaining the federal government. It was said that each
NOTE. - The map on the following pages is from Rufus Putnam's map of Ohio, and shows the Western Reserve and the reservations under Wayne's treaty.
Lane
Poudingy
R
Territory
Line
Line
Davion
Old Chillicothe
Boundary
State
Great Mia
Waynesburg
.Adanis
.Saler
El
· River
Falls
Habiller
Deerfield
Allam
Chilli dothe
Helpme
Lille harlana.
Vortabends
Cinsingalı
& Williamsburg
Newmarket
Belville
Indian
Scipto
Soll Sp
.
ar Ilavet
PointPleasant
Great Kanlar's
Lunestone
I
ck
Part
Kentucky
Part.
MAP
1. Indian Dellago
13. The river Cayahoos Jussarawas Branch , the Indian boundary lines, Hachis Rive with the rivers and smaller streams sunning inte the the from the Moth west. as far asthe Indian leundary with the subdividing lines laid down aquelle to nebusal savory , except the this from the Saints iver to the little Missini , and the biginen conorations there with the Indian land Lehod ges aw taken
of Hier wirdder of
OHI O
ORufus I Putnamo
Rese
Franklinton
liver
Hiver
Springfield
. Saltspring
Part of Indian
Symmes Grant
Little
Vir gini a)
Ohio Compay
Virginia
Little So
Branchesle
Malsies burgh ·
Alexandria
Boucles of land ceded to the Mailed Subs by the Indian Chiles1795.
Tuy Sonar K.
.Vewtown
Miami
Hockchochang
farutta
PARE U
ERTE
LAKE
State Line
Josepbs
Miami
andushy Th
i'dkland
Reservation
I
N I,
Connecticut
Harron
Line
Portage
Beaver
Moheain
of
itate
.Trine
Boundary
J'! Lawrence &
Sureudine
of
Houtenlullen
Klubın ville
nans č
Tusharana.
Tract
Wakatornala
Warren.
irVille
Pennsylvania
1
.Leremi: L'reek
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.