Washington shared Forbes’s appreciation of the need “to please the Indians, who are our steady friends, and valuable allies,” as he wrote Forbes. That required, the Indians told him and he told Forbes, “an early Campaigne, and plenty of Goods.” Indians came to Fort Loudon almost daily, and many went out in war parties. As usual, Washington lacked arms and clothing to give them. In letters to General Stanwix, Forbes, and Quartermaster St. Clair, he returned to a familiar refrain: Indians were mercenary, expected to be paid for everything they did, and were “easily offended, being thoroughly sensible of their own importance.” They seemed to be in high spirits about the upcoming campaign against Fort Duquesne, but he had seen Indian support evaporate before and was eager to get the campaign under way soon, “for on the assistance of these people, does the security of our march, very much depend.” No matter how well they were treated or what assurances their chiefs gave, many of the warriors would return home if the troops took a long time to assemble, Washington warned; it was just their nature.76 He might have added that the Indians wanted to be sure of their allies before they risked their lives fighting alongside them and preferred to hunt and protect their families than to sit on their hands far from home.
In late April, Washington joined Bosomworth, Gist, and other officers in a council with the Cherokees and Catawbas at Fort Loudon. Talking up the justness of the war, the power of Forbes’s army, and the strength of the Anglo-Indian alliance, Bosomworth called on “that great Warrior (Colo. Washington)” to witness the mutual promises made. The Cherokees in their response repeated the description of Washington as “that great Warrior.”77
The great warrior was barely holding his own. The same month, a young warrior called Ucahula and two other Cherokees descended the Monongahela by canoe and landed on the north bank, not far from Fort Duquesne. They lay concealed for two days, lifted a couple of French scalps, and brought back information that the fort was strong on the landward side but protected only by a stockade on the river side. It did not appear to be strongly garrisoned. On the return journey Ucahula came across signs of Indian war parties heading against the Virginia frontier. Washington dispatched a detachment of troops and Indians to try to intercept them but was too late to prevent them falling on the back settlements of Augusta County, where they killed nearly fifty people.78
Another Indian foray caused considerable consternation. After the Raven Warrior of Hiwassee, a Cherokee war chief, returned from leading an unsuccessful scouting party and produced two white men’s scalps, it turned out he had brought them with him when he came from Cherokee country. Detected in his deceit, which offended his own warriors, the Raven promptly took off for home with thirty followers, calling the English “Cowards and Liars” who had promised a large army and not delivered. When Forbes heard of the Raven’s defection, he had his brigade major Francis Halkett (who had served with Braddock when his father and brother were killed) write to Washington, stressing in the strongest terms that everybody under his command should pay the utmost attention to keeping the Indians in a good disposition, and that he must do all he could to bring back the Raven, as well as the other Indians who had left. Forbes did not need disgruntled Cherokees jeopardizing peace talks with the Shawnees and Delawares. Washington must keep them busy by sending them out on scouting parties and send any information he got from prisoners directly to Forbes.79
The implied reprimand struck a nerve. Washington fired off two letters—to Halkett and to John St. Clair—on the same day, May 11. Contrary to what Forbes might have heard, the Catawbas had not brought in a single prisoner or scalp this year, he told Halkett. Only Ucahula had brought in scalps this season. Washington had sent Forbes a full account by the last post of the intelligence Ucahula brought, and he would “have kept him duly informed of every interesting occurrence, even had it not been recommended to me.” Washington and Gist had done all they could to prevent Cherokees from wandering off toward Maryland and Pennsylvania, “clearly foreseeing the bad consequences such a peregrination would produce,” but those two colonies had “very impolitically” given the Indians presents the year before and encouraged them to return this spring. Then back to an ongoing sore point: “I and my officers constantly have and always will pay the strictest regard to every circumstance that may contribute to put, and keep the Indians in a good humour. But, as Governor Dinwiddie ordered me not to meddle or interfere with Indian affairs on any pretence whatever, the sole management of them being left to Mr Atkin, and his Deputy, Mr Gist—and those orders having never been countermanded—neither I nor my officers have adventured to do any thing relative to them, but in a secondary manner, thro’ Mr Gist.” Since Forbes and his subordinates seemed “to be unacquainted with the Villainy of the Raven Warrior and his Party,” Washington explained what had happened. Then he shifted from defense to offense. He could do nothing to stop some parties of Cherokees returning home, unless Forbes’s troops assembled “sooner than there seems to be a probability of their doing.” And that, he added ominously, “might be of the most fatal consequence to this part of the Continent.”80
In order to operate effectively in the North, the Cherokees and Catawbas had to be reconciled with the Six Nations. The Iroquois told the governor of Pennsylvania that they and the Cherokees had been at war “ever since we were created.” Catawbas in 1750 declared they would fight the Six Nations as long as one of them lived, “and that after Death their very bones shall fight.”81 Arranging a détente between the old enemies shifted the balance of power by confronting the French and their Indian allies with a potentially formidable array of Native power aligned with the British, but dealing with multiple Indian nations required some delicate diplomatic footwork.
The Cherokees became suspicious of British intentions when they heard that their allies were trying to make peace with their Delaware and Shawnee enemies. Recognizing that the security of the Susquehanna Delawares required reaching an accommodation with both Pennsylvania and the Iroquois, Chief Teedyuscung employed Newcastle (the Seneca warrior whom Washington had given the name Fairfax) as a go-between with Deputy Governor William Denny and attended peace talks at Easton in the summer and fall of 1756.82 (Newcastle’s intermediary efforts cost him his life: he died of smallpox in Philadelphia in November and was buried, at his request, in the Quaker burial ground.83) Teedyuscung returned in the summer and fall of 1757 (when he demanded that Charles Thomson act as his clerk) and was given a large white wampum belt depicting three figures—King George, the Iroquois, and Teedyuscung—holding hands in peace.84
For that peace to succeed, the British would have to stop their Cherokee allies attacking the Ohio Indians. Washington and other officers faced the challenge of how to convey to the Cherokees and Catawbas at Winchester that the British were talking peace with Teedyuscung and the Delawares without “disgusting them and incurring their displeasure.”85 The British were talking out of both sides of their mouths: sending Cherokees to raid the Shawnees and Delawares at the same time as they were negotiating peace with the Shawnees and Delawares. Even the Shawnee band of the pro-British chief Paxinosa on the Susquehanna feared the English might turn the Cherokees against them.86 Before the British could make peace with the Shawnees and Delawares, they had to help smooth over relations between the Cherokees and the Shawnees and Delawares.87 At the same time, they had to keep the Six Nations from joining the French.
Meanwhile, the British expedition against Fort Duquesne seemed to be going nowhere fast, as logistical problems continued to delay Forbes’s army. The Cherokees became skeptical of the redcoats’ intentions, and many warriors grew tired of waiting. Neither “promises nor presents,” wrote Forbes, could prevent them from heading for home.88 St. Clair and Washington did everything they could to keep the Cherokees at Winchester, but to no avail.89 The presence of smallpox among the British troops may have hastened the exodus.90 Byrd and his 57 Cherokees reached Winchester at the end of May.91 But by early June only 186 remained with the army, and most of those left
during the summer. Bosomworth held council after council trying to talk them out of it and get them to join the campaign, but the Cherokees laughed at his efforts.92 Forbes now called the Cherokees “fickle” and “a very great plague.” He did what he could to get the expedition moving to placate them, but even the arrival of the Scottish Highlanders, whom Forbes called the Cherokees’ “Cousins,” and the artillery did not stop them from leaving.93 On their way south, Cherokees exchanged blows with backcountry settlers and plundered goods they no doubt felt were due them for their unpaid services.94 The Cherokees’ presence, their impatience at the army’s inactivity, their threats to leave if supplies and gifts were not forthcoming, and finally their absence—all of these exasperated British officers.95
Attakullakulla was supposed to be on his way with two hundred warriors, traveling north as other Cherokees headed south, but his progress was slowed by delays and, some suspected, delaying tactics. In July 1758 they postponed their departure because their medicine men saw omens that warned disease would strike the warriors. The British dismissed such talk, but Attakullakulla told them the Cherokees never undertook anything important without consulting their medicine men. Access to spiritual power was essential to success in war, and omens could deter, delay, deflect, or terminate an expedition.96 As an additional deterrent, Virginians in the Piedmont region who clashed with Cherokees left some of their victims lying in the road so that other Indians coming to join the army would see them.97
Anxious that relations with the Cherokees were literally and figuratively going south, Washington again took the liberty of writing directly to Forbes about the importance of Indian allies. Marching more than one hundred miles through rugged and mountainous country contested by the French and their Indian allies would be extremely arduous and perhaps impracticable unless the British were accompanied “by a considerable Body of Indians, who I conceive to be the only Troops fit to Cope with Indians in such Ground.” Doubtless haunted by the memory of Braddock’s march, he added that success in the woods did not depend on numbers: on the contrary, a handful of “the Skulking Enemy we shall have to deal with” could frustrate and harass an unwieldy body of troops on the march. He urged Forbes to dispatch someone to the Cherokee Nation to cultivate the support of the southern Indians who seemed to be wavering. Heaven forbid that those powerful nations should be lost to the French and turn against the English: if that happened the enemy would be able to destroy the southern colonies “and make themselves Masters of this part of the Continent at least.”98 Everything hinged on Forbes’s campaign, a theme Washington continued to press on Bouquet.
By July 1758 Forbes had assembled an army of more than 6,000 that included 1,200 British regulars (mainly Highland Scots), 350 men of the Royal American Regiment, 2,700 provincials from Pennsylvania and 1,600 from Virginia, two companies from North Carolina, and a couple of hundred Marylanders.99 Though he was dying from his ailment and probably knew his time was short, Forbes was not a man to be rushed, especially by a pushy young officer like Washington, who had advised Braddock to divide his command and send a flying column ahead. Forbes planned his campaign with great deliberation and moved men, munitions, and supplies at what Washington thought was a frustratingly slow pace. It was even more frustrating for the Indian allies who remained.
Washington had no illusions about his Indian allies but could not deny their contribution to the defensive war he was fighting. “The Malbehaviour of our Indians gives me great concern,” he wrote Bouquet; “if they were hearty in our Interest their Services would be infinitely valuable; as I cannot conceive the best whitemen to be equal to them in the Woods: but I fear they are too sensible of their high Importance to us, to render us any very acceptable Service.” From Fort Cumberland that summer, he dispatched Indian scalping parties to harass the enemy by keeping them in a continual state of alarm, but he always sent some white men to accompany the Indians.100 Cherokees launched at least seventeen raids toward Fort Duquesne between April and August. Even as their numbers declined, their presence with the army contributed to the Ohio Indians’ growing sense that the war was slipping away from the French. As Forbes acknowledged, the Cherokees kept the French and Indians “in awe.”101
One hundred Cherokees and a contingent of Catawbas led by a chief known as Captain James Bullen (whom Bouquet adopted according to Indian custom) remained with the army.102 Forbes was heartened by the news that Attakullakulla was finally coming with more warriors, but nervous that the slightest incident might give offense and change things in an instant.103 At the beginning of August, Byrd wrote Forbes from Fort Cumberland with the news that “every one of my cursed Indians has left me,” saying they were tired of waiting. He expected they would “shortly revolt from our Interest.”104 Forbes denounced the Cherokees as “a parcel of Scoundrels” who had “left us in a most Scandalous manner” just when they might have been of service. He now pinned his slim hopes for Indian assistance on Captain Bullen.105 But British officers and officials thought no better of their Catawba allies than of their Cherokee allies.106 Captain Bullen was killed before the end of the month.107 A few Cherokees accompanied the army on the march to Fort Duquesne, but the southern Indian alliance was crumbling.
In the years before the war, Senecas, Delawares, and Shawnees had introduced Washington to the protocols and pitfalls involved in securing Indian allies. In the first years of the war, Cherokees and Catawbas introduced him to the costs and complexities of maintaining Indian allies. He confronted a dilemma that other imperial officials faced and sometimes argued about: Indian allies expected generous gifts and regular supplies, but they refused to behave as subordinates and often seemed to deliver limited results—did one expend vast amounts to keep them as allies or risk having to expend even more to fight them as enemies? It was an issue Washington would face again as commander of the Continental Army and president of the United States.
Chapter 7
Frontier Advance and a Cherokee War
As is clear from the war’s name, Indians were major players in the French and Indian War. How they influenced the outcome of the war, however, is less clear. Indians did not line up on one side or the other of the imperial conflict and fight to the end for King George or King Louis; they waged their own parallel wars and made decisions consistent with their own interests as circumstances changed. In the end, the British victory at Fort Duquesne, when it happened, owed less to their Cherokee allies than to the Indians Washington and the Cherokees had fought against. Washington’s war ended in 1758 primarily because the Delawares made peace.
Washington’s ideas about fighting in Indian country, like those of the British army, reflected a sharp learning curve. When he first arrived in the Ohio backcountry in 1754, he had requested red regimental uniforms for his troops, thinking the Indians would be impressed. But regimentals were styled after fashionable three-piece suits, with skirted coats, waistcoats underneath, and breeches with tight bands just below the knees. They required a lot of expensive fabric, restricted movement, and offered legs and ankles little protection against underbrush, rocks, and snakes.1 Four years later, in 1758, he ordered one thousand pairs of tanned deerskin Indian leggings to better equip his men for service in the woods and urged Forbes and Bouquet to permit Virginia militiamen to dress Indian style in buckskins. If it were up to him, he wrote Bouquet, “I woud not only cause the Men to adopt the Indian dress, but Officers also, and set the example myself.” If he knew that General Forbes would approve, Washington would not “hesitate a moment at leaving my Regimentals at this place, and proceeding as light as any Indian in the Woods. T’is an unbecoming dress, I confess, for an officer; but convenience rather than shew I think shoud be consulted.”2 Adam Stephen requested and Washington ordered loincloths for his men.3 Washington, of course, was not “going Indian”; like Daniel Boone, Sir William Johnson, and others who made their way in Indian country, he adopted some Indian ways to achieve his goals—which entailed defeating and dispossessing Indian people. Mean
while, of course, Indians were adopting elements of European clothing; many of the warriors fighting alongside or against Washington’s troops would have worn imported linen shirts, leggings fashioned from woolen cloth, and perhaps a red coat taken at Braddock’s field.
Nor did Washington introduce a new way of fighting to Englishmen who were hopelessly entrenched in conventional ways of war. English colonists had been adapting to Native ways of fighting since the seventeenth century, as Indians had adapted to new ways of fighting necessitated by firearms. The British army was already building units of rangers and light infantry, and adapting tactics, clothing, and equipment to the demands of forest fighting. In fact, two weeks before Washington wrote to Bouquet on the subject, Bouquet had suggested that Forbes “make Indians of part of our provincial soldiers,” by removing their coats and breeches, “which will delight them,” giving them moccasins, blankets, and face paint, cutting their hair, and mixing them with “the real Indians” to give the enemy an inflated impression of the number of Indian allies. Forbes was convinced of the need to adopt new tactics of forest fighting in small companies and had long shared Bouquet’s opinion about equipping some of the soldiers like Indians; “in this country, wee must comply and learn the Art of Warr, from Ennemy Indians,” he said.4 As his army advanced, Forbes screened his regulars with American riflemen in the woods. According to the captive James Smith, Indians acknowledged that “Forbes’s men were beginning to learn the art of war.”5
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