USA > Ohio > The Ohio Valley in colonial days > Part 3
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* N. Y. Council Minutes, MSS., VI, 126.
+ N. Y. Col. Hist., IV, 43.
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In Colonial Days.
confirm it with the fruits of their far country, whither they intend to depart in twenty days." A Minissink Indian, present at this interview, declared- that they had accepted the Far Indians "as their friends and relations," and that his tribe, being very poor, intended to go with the Showanees and hunt in their country.
Governor Fletcher told the Showanees delega- tion that they first must make peace with the Five Nations, and this done, he would extend to them the same protection as to the rest of the Indians .* The result of these interviews, in August and September, 1692, were the before-mentioned message, sent by the Five Nations in July of the following year, and a cessation of hostilities between the two most im- portant tribes in the valley of the Ohio.
The various cessions of territory, made by the Five Nations, and other sources enable us to locate these tribes almost definitely, but it is difficult to say, where the Shawanese came from, when they first appeared upon the stage of Colonial Indian politics.
L
In 1622 some of them appeared nearly one thou- sand miles east of the location, given by Joliet, as stated before. From this time we must assume, that they became important factors in Indian politics, for in August, 1694, they have again, in company of Mohicans, an interview with Governor Fletcher at Kingston, t in which the River Indians say, that they
* N. Y. Council Minutes, MSS., VI, 126.
+N. Y. Col. MSS., XXXIX, 188.
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have had great difficulties in bringing the Shawanees and Far Indians to see Corlear. The Showanees and the Far Indians are here named as two distinct tribes, but as the name of "Far Indians" is arbi- trarily applied in Colonial days to all tribes west of the Five Nations, it is very likely that a subdivision or a tribe in close alliance with the Shawnees is meant. They were now admitted to the covenant chain, and reported that three hundred of their tribe were to follow them east in a short time. Their ad- herence to the English interest lasted for some time, for during Queen Anne's war, they sent war parties to assist the Senecas of New York against the French .* But twenty years later, in 1732, we read in a letter from King Louis XIV to his Governor of Canada, Beauharnois, + that the Chaouanons have come down to Montreal during the preceding sum- mer, to demand of Onontio ¿ the place, where he wished to locate them. In the same year, Joncaire, the French agent on the Ohio, reported that the Shawnees were settled in villages on the other side of "Oyo," six leagues below the river Atigue. § Negligence on the part of the English authorities and skillful management by the French changed the feeling among the Chaouanons so much, that in 1736, the same Joncaire could write to the Governor of Canada, the tribe had rejected the evil advices,
*N. Y. Col. Hist., V, 270.
+ Ib., IX, 1033.
# Indian name for the Governor of Canada.
§ R. au Boeuf, now French Creek, Bellins Carte de la Louisiane.
45
In Colonial Days.
given by their old allies, the Iroquois, and would not take up the hatchet against the French. They said, as Onontio had located them on the Ohio, they would not leave there without his orders .* In the following year they were again expected at Montreal and Governor Beauharnois was directed, not to neg- lect any thing, to make them settle near Detroit, especially as Cherokees and Chickasaws had made settlements on the Ohio.+ In the course of time the Shawnees became a fixture on Ohio territory. According to an official report of the "Occurrences in Canada during 1747 and 1748"} they refused to leave their village of Sonioto,§ where they formed a league to destroy the upper country posts, in which league Senecas and Mohegans, with whom the Shaw- nees seem to have entertained special friendly rela- tions, participated. These eastern Indians living then on the Ohio, were very much incensed by the news that four of their people had been killed by French from Detroit, and two war parties set out with the avowed intention to make war against the French at the Miamis ** and at Detroit. At the same time news from Ostandausket (Sandusky) reached Montreal, that the Chaouanons of Chartier's tribe,++
* N. Y. Col. Hist., IX, 1050.
+ Ib., p. 1059.
# Ib., X, 138.
§ Now Scioto.
** Fort St Joseph.
++ A map of Pennsylvania, by T. Kitchin, 1756, locates Chartier's Old Town about thirty miles above Pittsburgh.
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had not come to Detroit on an invitation, extended to them, but had surprised some forts on Cherokee (Tennessee) river; they were reported to be in a fort with the Cherokees and Alibanons, though Chartier, who seems to have had much influence over his tribe, excused that evasion and gave assur- ances that he and his people would remain friends of the French. It is evident that the Shawnees were vacillating ; they had probably seen and learned that, although the French descended to their level of savage and uncivilized life with more readiness than the English, commercial benefits were easier ob- tained from the latter than from the former. All their actions at this time point to a desire of sever- ing the alliance with Canada. The Miamis, a tribe allied with the Shawnees, but unfriendly to the French, had resolved to send a deputation under their chief, La Demoiselle, to Detroit and to return to their duty in the French interest, but messengers from the Chaouanons dissuaded them. In 1750, when according to some authority this tribe first ap- peared in Ohio, the Indians of the Six Nations, then settled on the Ohio, the Shawnees and the Dela- wares with their new allies, the Owendaets and Twightwees, formed a body of 1500 to 2000 men,* a factor in English-French politics important enough to cause both sides to make all endeavors for secur- ing their alliance. Joncaire, well versed in Indian affairs, and a companion were sent from Canada, to
* N. Y. Council Minutes, MSS., XXI, 397.
47
In Colonial Days.
bring the Ohio Indians firmly back into the French interest, while goods were expected from London for the same purpose and to pay for lands bought from them by the Treaty of Lancaster. The French were apparently successful, for in 1756, Governor Hardy of New York has to confess in a letter to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, that there was little hope for inducing the Shawnees and Delawares, settled on the Ohio, to leave the French and come over into the English interest, although Sir William Johnson, the Indian Commissioner, thinks that their defection is not general. But at the end of the year Edmund Atkins, the Superintendent of Indian affairs for the Southern Department, writes, " that Sir William had told him, the Six Nations were weakened and dis- tressed, some of the western Nations having fallen off from their alliance and the Shawanese and such of the Delawares living on the Ohio, who had been subject to them, having been set up and supported in an inde- pendency by the French, still continuing hostilities." At the close of the French war, which necessarily set- tled the difficulty, the Shawnees had moved back from the Ohio and established a village about ninety miles up the Scioto, where numbers of the Delawares and others joined them. The defeat of their French friends had not made the Shawnees very friendly to the Eng- lish victors. They continued to harass the frontiers and caused considerable anxiety to the officers of the Indian Department .* The Indian outbreak · under
* N. Y. Col. Hist., VII, 603.
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Pontiac found the Shawnees willing to follow this great leader against the English, and after the cessa- tion of hostilities, they were employed, through Pon- tiac's agency, by a nation beyond the Chickasaws, as peace negotiators among all other tribes, because they spoke all languages. In the decade preceding the War of Independence, they moved further down the Ohio and were severely taken to task for this withdrawal by Thomas King, a chief of one of the Six Nations, who, while on his way to a great Indian Congress on the Scioto, harangued them at Fort Pitt and arrived at Scioto, addressed himself to all nations present, upbraiding the Shawnees again for the same reason. The Shawnees answered, that they had moved down the Ohio, because they felt neg- lected by the Six Nations, who disregarded the promises to give them the lands between the Ohio and the lakes, therefore they had taken their canoes and went down the river. But the Six Nations had stopped them at Scioto, fixed them there and charged them to live in peace with the English. They were astonished afterward to see the same Six Nations take up the hatchet against the English on the lakes. Then the Iroquois again ill-treated them and they became allies of the Illinois and the Ten Confederate Nations. * Sir William Johnson, who reports the above in a letter to Lord Hillsborough in 1772, gives, to a certain extent, an explanation for the dissatisfaction and hostile feeling of the Shawnees
* N. Y. Col. Hist., VII, 864.
In Colonial Days. 49
in his allusion to land transactions. He says : " It appears to me, the Shawanese who, to my knowledge, grasped at the lands on both sides of the Ohio, though at the late conference they only mention the north side, repenting ye sale of lands on the south side, had sent belts to the Senecas to stir up the Six Nations to disavow their own act. Another meeting, I am informed, is to be held at Scioto. I ought to remark that the Shawnees have spoken of the sale to the Crown extending to the Ohio; that it is not that part, which for the several reasons I formerly gave, I ventured to continue from Kanhawa to Cherokee river, but this pretended ojection is to the part above the Kanhawa."*
A play-bill always gives the names of all the per- sons who are to appear upon the stage, whether they have much to say or not. Following this rule, we must look up the Indian tribes, who were brought forward on the political stage of the Ohio Valley in Colonial days.
Next in importance to the two powerful native clans, already mentioned, were the Delawares or Lenni-Lenapes. We have nothing to do with their history when they were living on the lower Delaware and Susquehannah rivers, except to know that they had been subdued by the Five Nations, and though not bodily wiped from the surface of the continent like the Eries, they had been deprived of all political rights and had been given the petticoat with the title
* N. Y. Col. Hist., VIII, 292.
7
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The Ohio Valley
of women, unfit for warlike work. A treaty with the Indians of his department in 1756, which the Dela- wares attended, was concluded by Sir William John- son with the ceremony of taking off from the Algonquin or Lenni-Lenape followers of the Iroquois the petticoat and that invidious name of women. This was done in the name of their "father, the great King of England," with the promise to induce the Six Nations to do the same .* As soon after the Delawares acted independently from their former masters, it is most likely that the Six Nations fol- lowed Sir William's example. Another chapter will show how impolitic and subsequently disastrous this well-meant, good-natured act of Sir William turned out for the English of the Ohio Valley. At the time of the just mentioned treaty Delawares were seated in the forks of the Allegany and Monongahela rivers where Pittsburgh now stands, and Shingiss, their chief, was in 1754, a terror to the frontier settle- ments. They had obtained, between 1740 and 1750, from their ancient allies and uncles, the Wyandots, a grant of land on the Muskingum river, and hither the Delawares with their allies in the war, the Sha- wanoes, moved in 1768 .*
"At the present day," says Parkman in his Pontiac, " the small remnant settled beyond the Mississippi are among the bravest marauders of the west." General Fremont bears witness to their usefulness
* N. Y. Col. Hist., VII, 119.
51
In Colonial Days.
to him on his expedition and the Federal generals who, during the late war, commanded in that depart- ment knew their value as scouts and outposts.
The original location of another Algonquin tribe, the Miamis, seems to have puzzled the historians of the aboriginal race of America, as much as the Sha- wanoes. Gallatin in his "Synopsis of Indian Tribes" places them upon the banks of the Wabash, C. C. Baldwin, who wrote on the " Early Migrations of the Indians in Ohio,"* locates them upon the river form- erly called after them as the River Miami of Lake Erie, now the Maumee. The first Europeans, who must have traversed their territory, La Salle, Joliet, Tonty and the earlier Jesuits, do not mention their name of Miamis, but may have reported about them under a name so different, that neither the French name of Miamis nor the English of Twightwees is to be recognized. Later Jesuit missionaries, Charlevoix and Allouez, think that the Miamis and the Illinois have been the same people, because of the great affinity of their language.
When the Twightwees first appear in history, they were allies of the French and at war with the Five Nations. The Five Nations admitted in 1687, that to make peace with the Far Indians (which title in- cluded the Miamis, the Shawanoes the Ottawais, also called Waganhaes or Dowangahaes, and the Dionon- dadee of the Huron nation), was well-meant advice, t
* American Antiquarian, April, 1879.
+ N. Y. Col. Hist., IV, 650.
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but in 1699 they had not yet made up their minds to follow this advice, and in 1700 the secretary to the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, Robert Livingston of Albany, N. Y., again advises after a journey to Onondaga, that it is necessary to obtain a peace be- tween the Five Nations and Dowangahaes, Twight- wees and other Far Indians and to build a fort between Lakes Sweege (Erie) and Ottawawa (Huron), 744 miles from Albany. To such a fort, he thinks all the Twightwees, Kichtages (Illinois), Wawyachtenokes and Shawanoes would come. In 1721 the Miamis (Twightwees) are still settled upon the river, named after them and running into Lake Erie, to the number of 2,000. To gain this nation as allies and friends of the English was considered as a matter of great im- portance and it was proposed and recommended,- the Board of Trade in London and Governor Spots- wood of Virginia being of this opinion,-to establish a trade with them and build a small fort on Lake Erie, where, up to 1718, the French had as yet no settlement .* Two years later, in 1723, they were first seen in the colonies of England. Deputies of their nation arrived in New York with an interpreter, who informed the Governor and Council, that they were called Miamis by the French and lived upon the branches of the Mississippi.
A peace between the Five Nations and the Far Indians was evidently not concluded, as Livingston had suggested, for in 1736 the Miamis had dwindled
*N. Y. Col. Hist., V, 620-2.
53
In Colonial Days.
down to 200 fighting men, while their sub-tribes of the Ouyattanons, Peanguichias and Petikokias num- bered only 350. The peculiar social division into families, distinguished by totems, but belonging to the same village, extended to these western tribes. Mr. Parkman, in his "Conspiracy of Pontiac," and Schoolcraft, in his "Oneota," have explained this system of totems so fully, that it is superfluous to dilate on it here beyond stating, that the Miamis had for totems of their principal families the Hind and the Crane, a third family was of the Bear. The Serpent, Deer and Small Acorn were the totems of the sub-tribes.
The first half of the eighteenth century had nearly passed and the Iroquois were still at war with the Miamis. A sachem of the Five Nations tells the Mar- quis de Beauharnois, Governor of Canada, in 1745 : "This spring your children, the Ouyatonons, Miamis and Peanguichias have struck me. I* did not carry the hatchet back to them, as I bore in mind your or- der to keep peace."+ Beauharnois promised to rep- rimand his children, the Miamis, etc., and did it so well, that three years later, the Iroquois presented at the treaty, held at Lancaster, Pa. (1748), some depu- ties from their former enemies, to have them admit- ted to the covenant chains with the English and their Indian allies. Apparently the Miamis did not
* The speaker means by I the whole of the Confederacy of Iroquois, for whom he speaks.
+N. Y. Col. Hist., X, 25.
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The Ohio Valley
include their sub-tribes of Pianguichias and Wawi- oughtones in this covenant, or the tie between them was of such a character, that one tribe could not act politically for the others. For George Croghan, who traded along the south shore of Lake Erie and was for some time Sir William Johnson's agent to the Indians in the Ohio Valley, reported, that while among the Twightwees in 1749-50, to deliver them presents, chiefs of the Pianguichias and Wawiough- tonas living on the Wabash came to him and re- quested admission to the Covenant chain with the English and the Five Nations. Croghan, well versed in Indian politics and knowing the necessity of draw- ing over to the British interest as many of the west- ern tribes as possible, was in favor of having these new applicants received into the English alliance, but the Assembly of Pennsylvania rejected this friendly offer of the Pianguichias and Wawiough- tones, "condemned Croghan for bad conduct in drawing an additional expense on the Government and the Indians were neglected."*
Gist, an agent of Virginia, who was sent out west on a mission to the Indians in 1751, found Twightwees, whom Harrison, in his "Aborigines," calls the most eastern of the Miami tribes, in villages on the Scioto. The same author places Hurons or Wyandots into the territory eastward from Miami bay along what is now called the Western Reserve and southward as far as the Ohio. West of them sit, according to
* N. Y. Col. Hist., VII, 268.
1
55
In Colonial Days.
him, the Miamis. Numerous villages were to be found in the extensive territory occupied by them on the Scioto, the headwaters of the two Miamis of the Ohio, also on the Miami of Lake Erie and the Wabash, but none on the Ohio. In 1763 the Wyan- dots, numbering 250 men, had some villages near Fort Sandusky, while the Twightwees, living near the fort on the Miami (Maumee) river, numbered only 230 men. The official report, from which these figures are taken,* calls them an originally very powerful people, who, having been subdued by the Six Nations, were permitted to enjoy their landed possessions. The report continues by calling the. Kickapous, Mascoutens, Piankashaws and Wawiagh- tonas, altogether 570 fighters, sub-tribes of the Miamis on the Wabash. They resided in the neigh- borhood of the fort at Wawiaghta, and though the reporter has heard of more tribes and villages there, he confesses that the just named are all, who are per- fectly known.
Of the Far Nations, not already spoken of, much need not be said here, for they were not residents of the Ohio Valley. But as the term "Far Nations " is sometimes used in colonial documents without giv- ing the tribal name, a short resume of their relations with the Colonies, may interest the reader.
The Governor and Council of New York directed in 1687, that an inquiry should be made among the Five Nations of how long since they first traded with
* N. Y. Col. Hist., VII, 583.
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the farther Indians and the Indians with the Straws or Pyres through their noses .* [Quære? the mod- ern Nez Percés. ]
This inquiry was instigated by commercial reason, as the subsequent action of the Representatives of Albany and Esopus (Ulster county) in the General Assembly of the Province showed. Both places were more or less the fur and peltry market of the Eng- lish Colonies, and as the Five Nations had practi- cally depopulated their country from fur-bearing ani- mals, it became necessary to go farther afield for the valuable products of the chase, by the trade for which the Dutch inhabitants of the named districts laid the foundation for their wealth. The Represen- tatives mentioned urged in 1691, that commu- nications opened and peace made with the Far Na- tions would be of great benefit and revenue for the Province. The Assembly concurred in this view of the matter and ordered, that Albany should send six Christians and Esopus also six with twenty-five In- dians to treat with the Far Nations.+
In 1694 Far Indians, settled in the Minissink country, came to thank Corlear for the care taken of them and put themselves under the protection of New York. These Far Indians were probably Shawanese, who have been shown above to have come to New York at this time. The Indians of the
* N. Y. Council Minutes, MSS., VI, p. v.
+ Ib., 27.
# Ib., VII, 99.
.
-
In Colonial Days. 57
Minissink country were of the Lenni-Lenape or Delaware tribe and the alliance between them and the Shawanese, which later became so fateful to the English colonists, dates probably from the time of their settlement in the valley of the Delaware river.
Onondagas acquainted the Governor of New York in 1701, that the Waganhaes or Far Nations wanted to make peace with the Five Nations, and had ap- pointed the "hunting place, called Tiughsaghronde " (Detroit) for the meeting. They wanted an agent of New York to be present. If none should be sent, Dekanisore, the great Sachem of the Onondagas, declared, he would never concern himself again in public affairs. Lawrence Claese, the Indian inter- preter of the Commissioners for Indian Affairs, was first sent to look into the matter in hand, and upon his report, that a treaty of peace with the Wagan- haes was really meant to be negotiated, Captain John Bleeker and David Schuyler were sent to represent New York at the treaty and tell the Five Nations that they must be on their guard at Detroit, for Onondaga ought to have been selected as the place of meeting, their Long House or Coun- cil chamber standing there .* The negotiations at Detroit were apparently not quite satisfactory or re- sulted only in a truce between the warring tribes, for in April, 1709, a message reached the Governor of New York from the Five Nations, that four nations of the Waganhaes, with whom the New York tribes
* N. Y. Col. MSS., XLIV, 170.
8
·
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had been at war, wanted to make peace and had again named the place for a conference. The Five Nations remembered the reminder given them on the former occasion, refused to go to the place ap- pointed by the Far Indians and named places in their own territory for the meeting. A New York agent was again sent to be present at the meeting, in order to secure for the Province free trade with the Waganhaes .* Indian peace-treaties seem to have had very little binding force and required always ad- ditional negotiations. In 1710 the Far Nations wanted to come into the Covenant chain,t but a year later the Five Nations of New York again in- tending to go to war with the Waganhaes, were re- fused powder and lead for that purpose, when they called for it upon Corlear. We do not know when the peace between these warring tribes became final, but may presume it was perfected in the following decade, as Captain Peter Schuyler, who was sent as agent to live among the Indians, received the follow- ing instructions in September, 1721: "You are to acquaint all the Far Nations, that the road through the Five Nations for trade with this Province shall be kept open and clean."} Captain Abraham Schuy- ler was sent on the same errand in the following year and told to use all means to draw the Far In- dians to the Province of New York, by giving them notice, that he was settled in the Seneca country for
*N. Y. Col. MSS., LIII, 56; Council Min., MSS., X, 299.
+ Ib., 526.
¿ N. Y. Council Min., MSS., XIII, 169.
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In Colonial Days.
their ease and encouragement. He was also to promise them a free passage through the country of the Iroquois .*
The southern intervales of the Ohio Valley seem to have been principally inhabited by the Cherokees or Cherakees. Joliet, to whom we owe the first knowl- edge of the tribes living along the Mississippi, does not mention their name on his map, while Dr. John Mitchell says on his map of 1755, the western part of Kentucky, " The country of the Cherakees, which extends westward to the Mississippi and northward to the confines of the Six Nations, was formally sur- rendered to the crown of Great Britain at Westmin- ster, 1729." Delisle's map of 1707 has "gros vil- lages des Cheraquee " on the Cosquinambaux river and at the heads of the rivers passing through South Carolina on their way to the ocean. The "improved " d'Anville map places them near the head of the river called after them ; in the German edition of d'Anville they are moved to the mouth of the Holston river, while Henry Popple has them at the sources of the Ganahooche or Apalachicola. A map of "Carolina nebst einem Theile von Florida " (with a part of Florida), published by the Homans, tells us the Cherokees had thirty villages at the head of the Cusatzes and ten on that of the Savan- nah river.
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