The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  Hurrying along the rough road Forbes had blazed, Post and Pisquetomen caught up with the army, bringing news of the treaty. Forbes immediately sent them with wampum belts and a speech to Shingas, Tamaqua, and other Ohio chiefs, calling on them to return to the villages, sit quietly by their fires with their wives and children, and smoke their pipes in safety while the British took care of the French. They should keep their young men at home so the British did not mistake them for enemies.41 Washington made provision for ensuring that his Indian allies would not be so mistaken. His orderly book for November 3 recorded: “A number of the Indians who have come over to our Alliance by the late Treaty at Easton are now upon their March to join us to go to War. The troops are therefore to receive them as Friends, & they will be known by Carry[in]g red Handkerchief with white Spots at the end of a Pole.”42 After another round of diplomacy in the Indian towns along Beaver Creek, Shingas and Tamaqua agreed not to interfere as Forbes advanced against Fort Duquesne, and Tamaqua worked to promote the peace among neighboring tribes.

  Like building a physical road to Fort Duquesne, opening a diplomatic path from Philadelphia to the Ohio took time and energy.43 Washington had little patience for the pace of either. Busy griping about the Pennsylvania Road and going behind his commanding officer’s back, he paid the Treaty of Easton little attention.44 As it turned out, the painstaking diplomacy it took to convene the tribes at Easton and the promises made there had an immediate impact on the course of the conflict and were crucial to Forbes’s ultimate victory. Fred Anderson in his authoritative study of the Seven Years’ War in America calls the Treaty of Easton “the most important diplomatic breakthrough of the war.”45 The French Empire beyond the St. Lawrence rested on a network of alliances with Native nations. French forts in the west depended for their defense less on palisades and firepower than on allegiance with the Indian people who lived outside the forts. Once those allegiances were removed, even a substantial edifice like Fort Duquesne became essentially indefensible. The Treaty of Easton removed the resistance of the Ohio nations. The French could still call on the Ottawas, Ojibwas, and other Great Lakes Indians, who were their main allies and not party to the Easton Treaty, but their presence near Fort Duquesne was only temporary, and most returned home to go hunting. They had families to support, and French supply lines had dried up after the capture of Fort Frontenac. Smallpox, likely brought by warriors returning from the war, was raging in their villages. Few Great Lakes warriors joined the French in the campaigns of 1758.46

  In November, Forbes held a council of war that advised against a final advance on Fort Duquesne that season.47 The next day, Washington and Lieutenant Colonel George Mercer were involved in a tragic incident when the detachments they were leading in the woods at dusk mistook each other for the enemy and exchanged gunfire. By the time the shooting stopped, fourteen men lay dead, another twenty-six wounded. Virginia’s Captain Thomas Bullitt, who Washington acknowledged had shown great courage at Grant’s defeat, blamed Washington for the calamity and said he did nothing to stop it. Washington conspicuously said nothing about the event in his correspondence at the time, but in the version of events he prepared for David Humphreys thirty years later he figured heroically: he was leading his men to Mercer’s assistance, and it was Mercer’s troops that initiated the friendly fire; Washington stopped the bloodshed at great personal risk, standing between the two sides and knocking down his men’s muskets with his sword.48

  In any case, Fort Duquesne’s fate was already sealed. On November 20 its commander, Captain François-Marie Le Marchand de Lignery, sent a messenger to Kuskuski to rally the Indians to the fort’s defense. Christian Frederick Post, who was already in the village and had conveyed his news of peace, witnessed what happened. The messenger spoke and then presented a wampum belt to the assembled chiefs, but the call for warriors fell on deaf ears. One chief announced, according to Post, “I have just heard something of our brethren the English, which pleaseth me much better. I will not go. Give it to the others, may be they will go.” He threw the wampum belt on the ground. Others kicked it away from them, “as if it was a snake.” Finally, one hurled it the length of the room. “Give it to the French captain, and let him go with his young men,” he said; “he boasted much of his fighting; now let us see his fighting. We have often ventured our lives for him; and now he thinks we should jump to serve him.” The French officer stationed at the village “looked pale as death.” At midnight he sent messengers to Fort Duquesne bearing the bad news.49

  Just as Forbes was thinking he would have to defer the assault until the spring, French captives revealed Fort Duquesne was seriously undermanned. Then an Indian scout reported huge smoke clouds rising from the Forks. In spite of Washington’s insubordination and scheming over the issue of the Pennsylvania road, his persistent naysaying, and a friendly fire debacle that must have raised doubts about his competence as a commander, Forbes appointed him brevet brigadier general to lead one of the columns that advanced to take the fort.50 On the morning of November 25, in what must have been a mixture of elation and anticlimactic disappointment, Washington arrived to find Fort Duquesne reduced to a pile of smoldering ruins. The French had blown it up and abandoned the Forks.51

  Forbes promptly renamed the site Pittsburgh and called for the construction of a fort. He had understood all along that victory depended on the Indians abandoning, or at least not actively supporting, the French, and he acknowledged their importance in his reports the day after the capture of the fort. Anxious to make an alliance with “our real Friends” the Indians, he invited their leading men to meet him and “in a few Words and few Days to make everything easy.”52 He had worked hard at peace for six months, and there had been so many obstacles to overcome and so many different interests to reconcile that he had almost despaired of success, but in the end, he said, it “turned out as I foresaw it would.” Now Forbes wanted to complete his work and wrap things up. He intended to leave “as soon as I am able to stand, but God knows when, or if I ever reach Philadelphia.”53 Incapacitated by inflammation in his stomach, midriff, and liver, he departed on December 3, leaving Bouquet to meet with Tamaqua and the other chiefs the next day.54 Forbes made it to Philadelphia in great pain, but when Indian delegates came to see him, he was too ill to meet with them.55 He did not live long after his triumph. He died in March 1759. The campaign that Washington had consistently warned could never succeed had succeeded, led by a dying general, making slow and methodical progress, and assisted by intricate Indian diplomacy.

  Henry Bouquet made it implicitly clear that Forbes captured Fort Duquesne in spite of, not because of, George Washington. “After God the success of this Expedition is intirely due to the General,” he wrote in his report, “who by bringing about the Treaty of Easton, has struck the blow which has knocked the French in the head, in temporizing wisely to expect the Effects of that Treaty, in securing all his posts, and giving nothing to chance; and not yielding to the urging instances for taking Braddock’s Road, which would have been our destruction.”56 Instead, Forbes had removed the staging post for French and Indian raids on the Virginia frontier.

  With Colonel Hugh Mercer in command, the new British post at Fort Pitt became the center of British diplomatic efforts. The Delawares were relieved to be at peace. Many of the residents of Sawcunk, also known as Beaver’s Town or Shingas’s Town, had moved farther north to Kuskuski to be out of harm’s way. Tired of fighting, they had seen too much of both the English and the French to want to live near either of them.57 Other tribes took more convincing. Tamaqua and Delaware George continued working to bring neighboring tribes to make peace with the British, and Bouquet and Croghan sent Indian messengers to the tribes, and spies to ascertain Indian inclinations and French activities.58 As the focus of diplomacy shifted westward, the British held a series of conferences at Fort Pitt. Thousands of Indians came for negotiations between 1759 and 1761, not only Delawares, Shawnees, and Senecas in the Ohio country but also, increasingly, Mi
amis, Ojibwas, Ottawas, Potawatomis, and Wyandots, nations that were not inclined to adhere to a peace made by the Six Nations and Delawares.59 The British had learned what the French knew: that in Indian country imperial policies often depended on negotiation and agreement.

  They also feared what the French feared: that they risked losing everything if they could not supply the Indians with gifts to lubricate diplomacy and goods to cement the alliance. Washington told Lieutenant Governor Fauquier that the capture of the fort came as a “great surprise to the whole army—and we can not attribute it to more probable causes than those of weakness, want of Provisions, and desertion of their Indians.” He expected it to be “attended with happy effects.” The tribes on the Ohio were suing for peace, but the best way to secure their friendship was to provide free trade on fair terms and send goods immediately to the Forks. The trade would have to be regulated to ensure that it was carried on by men of principle, and not by “a set of rascally Fellows divested of all faith and honor,” and protected in its infancy from “the sinister views of designing, selfish men.” Presumably, he did not include the members of the Ohio Company in that characterization. He feared the Forks would be lost and the frontiers exposed again if the garrison was not reinforced in the spring; “lose our footing on the Ohio,” warned Washington, and we “lose the interest of the Indians.”60 The French were rumored to be mounting a counteroffensive against Fort Pitt, but Bouquet was more worried about losing the Indians since they had the power to cut off supplies to the fort. Without adequate supplies, the peace with the western Indians—and the fort itself—would remain precarious. Britain would lose all the advantages it had gained at so much effort and expense.61 Supply problems continued to plague Fort Pitt.

  In fact, the threat of a French counterattack and losing Fort Pitt ended in July when the British captured Fort Niagara. The French commander, Pierre Pouchot, said Indians from all parts of North America traveled to Niagara to trade, and Sir William Johnson predicted that if the British could destroy the fort they could shake the French and Indian alliance to its core and undermine France’s entire system of Indian trade and power on the continent.62 Again, Indian-Indian politics and diplomacy played a key role in the British victory. Most of the Six Nations remained neutral for most of the war, but in 1759 they joined the British war effort, partly to reassert their crumbling authority among the nations of the Ohio Country. Johnson and almost one thousand Iroquois warriors accompanied the expedition against Niagara. The local Senecas had given permission for their French allies to build Fort Niagara, but what use were a fort and allies that that could not deliver trade goods? When the British-allied Iroquois arrived, the Senecas met with them in council and decided to sit out the fight rather than fight against their relatives. They stood aside and let the British take care of expelling the French from their land.63 At Fort Niagara as at Fort Duquesne, Indian inactivity affected the outcome of the war.

  despite recommending trade as the way to win over the Indians, Washington had other plans for the Indians’ lands that would require their absence, not their presence as trading partners.

  Just weeks after he stood amid the smoking ruins of Fort Duquesne, Washington was back at Belvoir, and then Mount Vernon. After five years of military service, the time seemed right to return to civilian life. The war was not over, but the French had been driven from Fort Duquesne, and most of the remaining fighting was in the North. In 1757 he had made plans for rebuilding Mount Vernon. His participation in Forbes’s campaign meant he was absent while construction was under way, and he was anxious to get back.64 Also, in July 1758, while he was on campaign, his political backers and prodigious amounts of alcohol had won him election from Frederick County to a seat in the House of Burgesses. He was no nearer attaining a royal commission, and there seemed little likelihood that he would. “Nose out of joint,” as the historian Francis Jennings suggested, he resigned his command.65 On January 6, 1759, he married Martha Custis, a wealthy widow who brought two children and some two hundred slaves from her previous marriage to Daniel Parke Custis.66 In February he took his seat in the House of Burgesses. His position in Virginia society and politics seemed assured.

  His attention now turned to settling the Custis estate, running his plantation, and ordering merchandise from England. Still, the fallout from the Indian war followed him into the House of Burgesses, where the members considered petitions from soldiers and civilians seeking compensation for losses and injuries they had suffered. Washington chaired a committee to review the memorial of his cousin and comrade Major Andrew Lewis, who, following his capture at Grant’s defeat, spent sixteen months in a Quebec jail, which “greatly impoverished his private Fortune.” On Washington’s recommendation, the House voted Lewis £350 as reward for his services, compensation for his hardships, and the expenses he incurred “to support and maintain the Dignity of his Character as an Officer.”67

  Washington also followed the news from Indian country. “All is well and quiet on the Ohio,” Lieutenant Colonel George Mercer wrote from Winchester in September 1759. Indians were coming in great numbers to mend fences with Bouquet; the French had burned their forts at Venango, Presque Isle, and LeBoeuf and retreated to Detroit, and the British were going to build a strong brick fort at Pittsburgh.68 Washington’s friend Robert Stewart reported from Pittsburgh the same month that the Indians were ready to make a permanent peace. They had brought in nearly fifty captives and promised to deliver more. The Delawares and Shawnees had both suffered heavy losses in the war and, said Stewart, were “greatly incens’d against you, who they call the Great Knife & look on you to be author of their greatest misfortunes.” Now there was peace, the Pennsylvanians were busy making money trading with the Indians. Stewart could not understand why Virginians were not active in the fur trade as well—surely some public-spirited gentlemen “must have an Inclination to advance the Interest of their Country by encreasing their private Fortunes.”69

  He may have hoped to push Washington in that direction, but Washington had other ideas. He had turned from building a military reputation to building the landholdings and wealth that would secure his place and his status as a planter. His travels into the Ohio country and the rich lands he saw there convinced him that the West was the land of opportunity—where he would grow rich by renting or selling to other people who settled there. He urged others to move west and start a new life though he showed no interest in doing so himself; for Washington, western lands offered the means to further his ambitions as a Tidewater planter and secure his position as member of the Virginia gentry—in other words, to build an old life.70

  By 1760 the war against France was winding down with the conquest of Canada. The almost routine capture of French possessions was “becoming a Story too stale to relate in these days we are often at a loss for something to supply our Letters with,” joked Washington. Unaware of a storm brewing in the Ohio country, he thought the Cherokees were now “the only People that disturbs the repose of this great Continent.”71

  The military cooperation between Cherokee warriors and British soldiers that contributed to Forbes’s victory also brought cultural conflicts and misunderstandings. Disillusioned with the campaign’s slow progress, or perhaps assuming his scouting was done, Attakullakulla had headed for home even before Fort Duquesne fell, taking the guns the British had given him. To Forbes such behavior was desertion. Like most British officers, he believed Indian allies should use British guns to fight British enemies. He sent orders to British posts to have the Cherokees arrested and disarmed. Like most other Cherokees, Attakullakulla refused to see accepting British guns as subjecting himself to British control. He regarded Forbes’s actions as an assault on Cherokee autonomy and “a stinging personal affront.” Attakullakulla was released, but the damage was done.72

  Cherokees who had gone north to fight with Forbes had been poorly supplied, frustrated by the ponderous progress of the army, and subjected to suspicion and insult, said the trader James Adair;
“their hearts told them therefore to return home, as freemen and injured allies.” En route, some Cherokees took what they regarded as just payment for their services. Passing through southwestern Virginia, they stole horses and clashed with settlers. Lieutenant Governor Fauquier’s revocation of Virginia’s scalp bounty had not yet gone into effect, and Cherokee allies made tempting targets. Colonists in the spring and summer of 1758 murdered at least thirty Cherokees on their way home from fighting for the British. Cherokees appealed to Virginia and to North and South Carolina for satisfaction but received none, and, Adair explained, “when the Indians find no redress of grievances, they never fail to redress themselves.” Cherokee warriors took vengeance on backcountry settlers. Attakullakulla went to Williamsburg and met with the governor and council to try to heal the wounds, and some chiefs traveled to South Carolina to apologize, but Governor Lyttelton seized and executed twenty-three Cherokee hostages.73