Pen and Ink Witchcraft

by Calloway, Colin G.

  Europeans were troubled by the influence and independence that Indian women displayed in public meetings (as well as in their private lives), and they tried to limit female involvement in political processes. In addition, Europeans were primarily interested in Indians as allies or enemies in war and as partners and customers in the fur and deerskin trades; consequently they expected to deal with men, the warriors and hunters, not women, who were peacemakers and farmers. The Iroquois came to employ “women” as a pejorative term to describe the Delawares as militarily weak and politically powerless.34 Sir William Johnson married Mary or Molly Brant, who became an influential clan mother, and he was well aware of the influence women exercised in Iroquois society. (In 1758, for example, he heeded the entreaties of Mohawk women, and others, not to attend the League council at Onondaga.) But he downplayed the role of women in Iroquois diplomacy and tried to deal exclusively with men (in part, no doubt, to try and reduce the numbers of people running up expenses at treaty councils).35 Iroquois women turned up for a treaty at Johnson Hall in April 1762 despite Sir William’s request that they stay away. The Oneida chief Conoghquieson explained (as if Johnson did not know), “it was always the Custom for them to be present on Such Occasions (being of Much Estimation Amongst Us, in that we proceed from them, and they provide our Warriors with Provisions when they go abroad).”36

  Gifts of Meaning

  Doing business in Indian country involved giving and receiving gifts. The first governor of New France gave presents to the Iroquois, explained a Jesuit priest, “according to the custom of the country, in which the term ‘present’ is called ‘the word,’ in order to make clear that it is the present which speaks more forcibly than the lips.”37 Gifts—in the form of wampum, feathers, medals, items of clothing, knives, ammunition, blankets, tobacco, food, rum, horses on the Plains, and a host of other articles—were essential lubricants of Indian diplomacy, although the objects themselves, and giving and receiving them, often held different meanings for Indians and Europeans. To Indians, gifts signified greetings, generosity, and goodwill; they helped to establish and reaffirm reciprocal relations, and they served to amplify a request, underscore a point, and seal an agreement. Gifts established obligations; hence the importance of generosity as an attribute of leadership in Native societies. Indians requested gifts from their allies, sometimes pleading poverty or hunger, and they expected their allies to request gifts from them: mutual dependence underscored the need for alliance; refusing to give or receive gifts indicated a lack of mutual reliance and potential hostility. Accepting a gift meant accepting the message that accompanied it, the agreement it signified, or the undertaking it symbolized.38

  In January 1621 the Narragansett sachem Canonicus sent Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony a gift of a snakeskin stuffed full of arrows. Bradford’s interpreter told him it represented a threat and a challenge, and the governor read it to mean that the Narragansetts were the dominant power in the region to which the English had better submit. To accept the gift would have been to acknowledge Narragansett dominance; instead, Bradford added bullets and gunpowder to the snakeskin and sent it back to Canonicus. Canonicus was no more willing to submit than Bradford and “hee would not once touch the powder and shot, or suffer it to stay in his house or Country,” and the snakeskin bundle “at length came whole back againe.”39

  Alliances that were not built on the trust of gifts given and received were always fragile and would usually founder. In 1752, Miami Indians sent the governor of Virginia the gift of a scalp and a wampum belt “to confirm what we say and assure you that we will ever continue true Friends and Allies to our Brothers, the English.”40 Sending gifts, especially of tobacco, was a way to open communication, invite people to meet, and “break the ice.” “Sit down with them and command tobacco for them so that they may smoke as is their custom,” Don Tomás Vélez Capuchín advised his successor as governor of New Mexico in 1754 as the best way to receive visiting Comanche chiefs and initiate diplomatic proceedings with them.41

  Gifts were given in public council and in private meetings, to assemblages, and to individuals as “marks of distinction.” Sir William Johnson often recognized individual chiefs with medals, laced coats, and hats. After a conference at Fort Johnson in the summer of 1756, he gave departing Onondaga chiefs “a Handsome private Present in cloathing and money and a quantity of Corn for their families who were in great want.”42 Such largesse cemented personal and national alliances, bolstered Johnson’s individual standing among the Iroquois, and strengthened Britain’s position in Indian country at a time of escalating competition with the French. It also allowed Johnson to exert increasing influence in Iroquois politics and chief making.43

  Competition with the French also allowed Indians to leverage more and higher-quality presents from the English. Warriors from the Ohio country asked for better weapons during King George’s War (1744–48) because “the French have hard Heads, and … we have nothing strong enough to break them.” At the beginning of the French and Indian War (1754–63), the Oneida chief Scarouady told the English “You think You perfectly well understand the Management of Indian Affairs, but I must tell You that it is not so, and that the French are more politick than you. They never employ an Indian on any Business but they give him fine Cloathes besides other Presents, and this makes the Indians their hearty Friends, and do any Thing for them. If they invite the Indians to Quebec, they all return with laced Cloathes on, and boast of the generous Treatment of the French Governor.”44 Scarouady was not making things up: the French did indulge their Indian allies. The Marquis de Montcalm and the Marquis de Vaudreuil held a conference at Montreal in 1756 with forty Iroquois ambassadors and delegates from other nations to try and secure their neutrality or allegiance against the English. As the conference wound down at the end of December, the Iroquois “asked to remain until the morrow, New Year’s day, because they had been told that on that day the Pale faces kissed each other and that liquor was furnished.” The cost of hosting the Iroquois for an extra day would have been dwarfed by the total expenses for the conference, which were large enough to merit explanation and justification in the record of the conference: “The Ambassadors, their women and children, have been fitted out entire and entertained at the King’s expense from the moment of their arrival to that of their departure. They had also been furnished with supplies and provisions for their journey, and the civil and war chiefs have received special presents. These expenses are unavoidable. The neutrality of those Nations is one of the greatest advantages we could obtain over the English.”45 The invoice of goods given by the English to the Indians at a relatively small “private conference” held at Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1758, a critical point in the contest for Indian allegiance, included some 30 different kinds of cloth, 100 blankets, 5 laced coats, 160 matchcoats, more than 400 shirts, 33 painted looking glasses, 50 pairs of shoes, knives, handkerchiefs, hats, ivory combs, buttons, thread, stockings, handkerchiefs, garters, and tobacco boxes.46 This was nothing compared to the cost of food and gifts for the three thousand Indians who ten years later assembled for three weeks at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix.

  Medals constituted a particularly important and common form of distinction. The Spanish, French, and English all presented medals to Indian chiefs (or to designate chiefs) and used them to interfere in tribal politics. The Spaniards recognized three levels of leaders—great medal chiefs, small medal chiefs, and chiefs, usually war captains, who merited the gorgets commonly worn by European officers. (Originally designed as armor to protect the throat, gorgets by the eighteenth century were small crescent-shaped plates primarily designed as ceremonial wear.) A formal presentation of such medals signified allegiance to the nation presenting them and conveyed status on the recipient. For Indians who wore them, the medals and gorget may have signified a pledge of their allegiance to a European ally but they also signified access to the sources of power Europeans represented (trade goods and weapons) and, like shell gorgets,
may have carried spiritual power. Choctaws called medals tali hullo, a “sacred piece of stone.” When the British replaced the French after 1763 and Spain took over possession of Louisiana many Choctaw chiefs turned in their French medals and requested replacements, so that colonial recognition of their leadership might continue unbroken.47 When the governor of New Mexico, Juan Bautista de Anza, negotiated peace with the Comanches in 1786 he tried to make Ecueracapa (Leather Shirt or Iron Coat) head chief of all the Comanches (something that would have made little sense to the various independent Comanche bands); to that end, he formally presented him “with his Majesty’s medal” and a complete uniform to better display it.48

  Colonial governments frequently complained about the cost of gifts and William Johnson’s rivals, in particular General Jeffery Amherst, the British commander-in-chief, criticized his extravagance. When Britain emerged victorious but facing financial ruin at the end of the French and Indian War, Amherst decided to dispense with the expensive practice of cultivating Indians’ allegiance by giving them gifts. “I Cannot See any Reason for Supplying the Indians with Provisions,” he wrote to Johnson, “for I am Convinced that they will never think of providing for their Families by hunting, if they can Support them by begging Provisions from Us.” Johnson retorted that Amherst’s stinginess would alienate the Indians and compromise the safety of British garrisons in Indian country and he was right. By giving gifts, the British could appease the spirits of warriors who had fallen in the war, demonstrate that they spoke from the heart when they assured Indians of their good intentions, and show that the King of England was prepared to take the place of the French king as a benevolent father. Gifts could restore relationships and turn enemies into friends. Withholding gifts had the opposite effect. Amherst saw his policy of retrenchment as an appropriate response to a changed situation and a financial crisis; Indians saw it as tantamount to a declaration of war.49

  The Power of Words

  Indian diplomacy, of course, involved exchanging words as well as gifts. In societies where leaders persuaded rather than commanded, speakers were renowned for their oratory. A Jesuit missionary named Pierre Biard described the Montagnais in 1616 as “the greatest speech-makers on earth. Nothing is done without speeches.” Fellow Jesuit Paul Le Jeune said, “All the authority of their chief is in his tongue’s end; for he is powerful in so far as he is eloquent.”50

  Europeans and Native Americans at the earliest stages of contact employed concrete terms as the easiest means of communication. Translating abstractions was always problematic.51 “Metaphor is largely in use among these Peoples,” wrote Father Le Jeune about the Hurons in 1636. “Unless you accustom yourself to it, you will understand nothing in their councils, where they speak almost entirely in metaphors.”52 Metaphors like “speak with forked tongue” and “bury the hatchet” have entered popular culture as figures of speech, but these now stereotypical expressions do little justice to the image-rich language of Indian orators who planted trees of peace; opened and maintained white paths of peace by removing thorns, clearing obstacles, and keeping them straight; polished chains of friendship to keep them free of rust; wiped away tears; rekindled fires; dispelled clouds; warned against listening to “bad Birds that whistle Evil things in our Ears”; cast weapons into bottomless pits; turned aside anger; softened hard hearts; distinguished between a peace “made from the Teeth outwards” and one that came from the heart; and even, on occasion, asserted dominance over a rival tribe by assuming a second penis!53

  Indians conducted diplomacy by the stories they told as well as by the arguments they made and points they negotiated. Orators used storytelling to convey their meanings, to draw listeners into their vision of the world, and “to invoke the imaginative capacity in others to see themselves as connected in a world of human solidarity.”54 They used body language, poise, posture, and gestures for dramatic effect; Father Barthélemy Vimont saw an Iroquois orator employ “a thousand gestures, as if he had collected the waves and caused a calm, from Quebec to the Iroquois country.”55

  Canasatego, an Onondaga who figured in many mid-eighteenth-century treaties, was famous for his oratory. He was also famous for his hard drinking and some observers thought him a braggart rather than a statesman, but time and again he impressed with his dignified bearing, his speech making, and his astuteness. Canasatego headed the Iroquois delegation at the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744, where he politely, but with tongue in cheek, declined Virginia’s offer to educate Iroquois children: “we thank you for your Invitation; but our Customs differing from yours, you will be so good as to excuse us,” an answer that, in the longer and more elaborate version Benjamin Franklin printed, became a telling indictment of colonial pretensions to cultural superiority. Canasatego is also famous for advising the individual colonies to follow the model of the Iroquois League and form a union. He did so, coincidentally, on the fourth of July.56

  “The conference,” Lawrence Wroth explained, “was not a debate: it consisted in the delivery of set speeches by either side in response to the proposals made by the other at the preceding session. Speaking only after deliberation in tribal council, and expressing the common opinion, the Indian had few ill-considered words to regret when the conference was ended.”57 A speaker delivered his talk, punctuated, in the northeast, by presenting strings of wampum to reinforce his points, and made sure, everywhere, to pause for one or more interpreters to translate his words. The audience sat in silence while he spoke. A speaker from the other side recapitulated what had been said, to ensure that everyone understood, but would not usually respond until his group had had an opportunity to consider and agree on their answer. Composed in advance, like those of their white counterparts, Indian speeches were more often “tribal or band position statements,” rather than spontaneous flights of oratory. Objections or questions were rarely answered when they were raised; more often they were dealt with in later speeches after an opportunity for deliberation.58 The pace was slow, deliberate, and frequently frustrating for time- and cost-conscious Europeans who were anxious to take care of business. Lieutenant Colonel Tench Tilghman, secretary of the Indian commissioners appointed by the Continental Congress to treat with the Six Nations at German Flatts, New York, in the summer of 1775, found that multiple translations and lengthy recapitulations of speeches made for “dull entertainment.”59

  Many tribes and confederacies had their own metaphors to describe their alliances and relationships, but it was the Iroquois Chain of Friendship or Covenant Chain that became almost the standard term.60 The Iroquois regarded the Covenant Chain as one of many chains by which they were linked—allied—to other Native and colonial peoples by regularly renewed relationships of friendship and reciprocity; the British preferred to see it as an exclusive alliance between themselves and the Iroquois, through which they also gained access to and exerted influence over other Indian nations. Either way, the Covenant Chain was a multinational alliance in which “no member gave up its sovereignty” and decisions were made by consultation and treaty.61 When the Crown and the New York Assembly cut allowances for Indian affairs after King George’s War, the Mohawk chief Hendrick publicly and symbolically broke the Covenant Chain during a conference in 1753, precipitating a crisis in British-Iroquois relations. With conflict looming against France in the Ohio Valley, the English government could ill afford to alienate the Iroquois and hurried to mend fences, reconstituting the Covenant Chain at the Albany Congress the following year.62

  For the Iroquois, diplomatic relations with outsiders involved “an extension of the same principles that governed social relations within Iroquois families and communities.”63 In societies built around kinship, kinship ties were the sinews of diplomacy and kinship terms were more than just a form of address. They constituted a system of establishing the rights and obligations of the parties vis-à-vis one another and they conveyed real messages. Employing the language of Indian diplomacy, Europeans often stood as “fathers” to their Indian “children”;
coming from a patriarchal and patrilineal society, they naturally assumed that the father figure represented authority and wisdom in dealing with Indian children. Indians addressed colonial officials as “father,” but the term had rather different connotations in matrilineal societies where the most important adult male in a child’s life was the mother’s brother, not the biological father. Indians who addressed Europeans as fathers expected them to act like indulgent and protective Indian fathers who gave gifts, not orders; who observed rituals, not rules; and who counseled proper conduct instead of invoking paternal authority. Indians would sometimes remind colonial officials that they were their brothers, not their fathers. “Brother” clearly conveyed equal status, but the qualifiers “older” or “younger” brother gave the relationship a slightly different cast. The Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas were the elder brothers in the Iroquois League; the Oneidas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras were younger brothers. The elder brother(s) in a diplomatic relationship might enjoy seniority and greater influence but would also likely have particular obligations to protect the younger brother(s).64 Europeans had not only to learn the meanings of kin metaphors as applied in their own dealings with Indians but they also had to learn that kinship relations often had different meanings in Indian societies and that different nations applied different kin metaphors in dealing with one another. Hendrick Aupaumut, who acted as a Mahican emissary to the western nations, said his people called the Delawares grandfathers; the Shawnees younger brothers; and the Miamis, Ottawas, Ojibwes, and Potawatomis grandchildren. John Norton, an adopted Mohawk of Scots-Cherokee descent, said the Ojibwes called the Delawares grandfathers; the Delawares called the Iroquois and Hurons uncles; and other tribes called the Iroquois and Hurons elder brothers. The Cherokees also called the Delawares grandfathers but called the Iroquois elder brothers. The Creeks and Chickasaws called the Cherokees elder brothers, but the Choctaws called the Cherokees uncles.65