The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  When the American army retreated from Canada and left the northern frontiers exposed, Washington saw that employing Indian allies was absolutely necessary.72 On July 4, 1776, when John Hancock signed his name in bold letters on the Declaration of Independence, Washington wrote the president of the Congress a letter pressing his case. The British were doing everything they could to incite the Indians, and American efforts to employ the western Indians showed little prospect of success. Congress should make a treaty of alliance with tribes in Maine and Nova Scotia to keep them out of the British camp and also secure their assistance if the enemy attempted an invasion. The General Court of Massachusetts was the body best situated to negotiate it. Four days later, Congress gave Washington permission to “call forth and engage in the service of the United States, so many Indians of the St. John’s, Nova Scotia and Penobscot tribes, as he shall judge necessary” and authorized him to request the assistance of the General Court of Massachusetts.73

  Washington promptly wrote urging the General Court to recruit five or six hundred men from the tribes and have them join his army with all possible speed. He was no longer ambivalent. “At a crisis like the present, when our Enemies are prosecuting a War with unexampled severity—When they have called upon foreign mercenaries, and have excited Slaves and Savages to arms against us, a regard to our own security & happiness calls upon us to adopt every possible expedient to avert the blow & prevent the meditated ruin.” Since the eastern Indians had already shown their willingness to join the Americans, he hoped they might serve for less pay and on better terms than the Continental troops, but if not, they would have to be paid the same. He recommended that they enlist for a term of two or three years, or failing that, “such time as they will agree to, provided It is not too short,” and, if possible, bring their own firelocks. And the sooner they arrived, the better: “It is unnecessary to suggest to you the necessity of the utmost dispatch in the matter.”74

  Even as Washington was writing his letter, the Massachusetts Council and its president, John Bowdoin, had begun talks with Ambroise Saint-Aubin and ten Mi’kmaq and Maliseet delegates at Watertown in Massachusetts. A couple of Penobscot chiefs arrived soon after. The Indians said they had come because of the letter Washington had sent them, which they brought with them. Then, Washington had declined their help and asked them to pray for him. Now, Ambroise said, “We shall have nothing to do with Old England, and all that we shall worship or obey will be Jesus Christ and General Washington.” After the conference where they were “strongly urged” to join the Americans in their war, the chiefs on July 17 signed “a Treaty for that purpose.” It was the first treaty of the newly independent United States. In fact, the Declaration of Independence, signed just two weeks before, was translated for the assembled chiefs, with the interpretation that “you and we … have nothing to do with Great Britain; we are wholly separated from her.” The chiefs said that the six villages they represented could furnish about 120 men, but that—as those villages were scattered across great distances and their men dispersed in hunting—they would not be able to come until the next spring. The Maliseets who lived closest promised to return early in the fall with about thirty warriors. Bowdoin said another six villages of Mi’kmaqs, who had not been informed of Washington’s letter and therefore had not sent delegates, could probably provide about as many men as the other villages. The Penobscots too seemed well disposed, although, despite promises of payment, they had received no support for the families of their five men who had accompanied Benedict Arnold, two of whom had been wounded, and three taken prisoner. Bowdoin assured them the matter “would be represented to Genl Washington, & that what is right & just he would order to be done.” The Indians declared they were “one people with us” and had no doubt their tribes “would be willing to join Genl Washington” once the chiefs got home and called them together to discuss the matter. Bowdoin sent Washington a copy of the proceedings and the treaty.75

  Taking no chances, the Massachusetts Council sent agents to accompany the Indians to their homes and recruit warriors. Thomas Fletcher, who had come with the Penobscots, was appointed to work with that tribe; Major Francis Shaw, who had brought the Mi’kmaqs and Maliseets, was to work with the Maliseets and Passamaquoddies; Lieutenant Andrew Gilman, who served as an interpreter for the Penobscots for much of the war, was to go to the Abenakis at Odanak. Back in the villages, however, older chiefs were concerned that younger men had exceeded their authority and committed the tribes to involvement in a war they did not want. The American recruiters had limited success. Gilman brought seven Penobscots to Watertown, who enlisted for a one-year term in the fall of 1776; Shaw brought only a few Indians from Nova Scotia, who enlisted but “were fond of Returning back again to their Families.” The Massachusetts Council informed Washington that the Indians “must Attend Upon your Excellency,” but Washington had no use for them where he was and passed them on to General Heath with instructions to employ them as he thought best.76

  On Christmas Eve 1776, in his encampment on the west bank of the Delaware River, Washington was surely preoccupied with preparations for the next day’s historic crossing. Yet he took time to send letters to the chiefs of the Maliseets and Passamaquoddies. He was glad to hear from Shaw that they had accepted the chain of friendship he had sent them from Cambridge in February, and that they were determined to keep it bright and unbroken. When he first heard that the Passamaquoddies had refused to send warriors to his assistance, he wrote, “I did not know what to think; I was Afraid that some Enemy had turned your Hearts Against Me,” but he had since learned they were out hunting, which “Made my Mind easy.” He hoped he would always be able to call on them in future. He then updated them on developments elsewhere in Indian country. Despite British efforts to stir up all the tribes from Canada to South Carolina, the Six Nations, Shawnees, and Delawares “kept fast hold of our Ancient Covenant Chain.” The Cherokees, on the other hand, were foolish enough to listen and had taken up the hatchet. In response, American armies had invaded their country, burned their houses, destroyed their corn, and forced them to sue for peace and give hostages for their future good behavior. Let that serve as a warning, Washington implied. “Now Brothers never lett the Kings Wicked Councellors turn your Hearts Against Me and your Bretheren of this Country, but bear in Mind what I told you last February and what I tell you now.”77

  In January 1777 Congress appointed Colonel John Allan as superintendent of the eastern Indians. That summer, the British drove the Americans from the St. Johns River in Maine and Nova Scotia. The Maliseets informed the local British commander that after giving the matter due consideration, they were “unanimous that America is right and Old England wrong” and he should remove his troops, but most of the tribe fled south with Saint-Aubin to Machias on the Maine coast.78 Pierre Tomah tried to operate between the British and the Americans, offering his services to one or the other as occasion and opportunity demanded.79 One hundred leading men from the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy tribes signed an oath of loyalty to the king between September 1778 and January 1779, and other Indian nations in Canada warned the three tribes to stay out of the way as they waged war against the “Boston people.”80 Chief Orono and a company of Penobscots served with the United States and fought in the action at Penobscot Bay in 1779, but, by and large, Indian people in Maine and Nova Scotia were reluctant to get dragged into a war that could catch them between two fires.81

  washington continued to seek indian allies—and permission to recruit them—as need demanded during the war. In January 1778, in winter quarters at Valley Forge, he wrote a long letter to Congress, describing the sacrifices of his men, outlining the defects in the military and supply system, and recommending improvements. At the end, he also raised again the issue of Indian allies. With the enemy calling on Indians “and even our own slaves” to assist them, “would it not be well to employ two or three hundred Indians” in the coming campaign? Washington remembered from firsthand experience
the psychological impact of Indian warriors and Indian ways of fighting, and he argued that a body of Indians combined with American woodsmen would strike fear into the British and foreign troops, especially the new recruits. Once Indians gave up “the Savage Customs” they exercised in their intertribal wars, they would make excellent scouts and light troops.82 Congress gave him permission to raise as many as four hundred Indians, if they could be recruited on suitable terms.83

  Washington planned to recruit about half from the North and half from the South. Not forgetting his experience with Cherokee allies during the French and Indian War—and the problems of keeping them adequately supplied—he turned to them again in this war, but with different arrangements for compensation in mind.

  As Washington told the Passamaquoddies, the outbreak of the Revolution brought disaster for the Cherokees. Older chiefs like Attakullakulla, who had lived through the war of 1760–61 and subsequently pursued a policy of buying time by ceding space, advocated remaining neutral. Younger warriors led by Dragging Canoe, angered by recurrent land cessions and frustrated by their elders’ policies, accepted the war belt when emissaries from the North called on them to fight. Cherokee attacks brought swift retaliation. Expeditions from Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas stormed through Cherokee country, burning towns and cornfields, and reducing the people to famine. The older chiefs reasserted their voices and asked for peace.84 Despite his complaints about Cherokee allies in the last war, Washington wanted Cherokees to join the Indians he recruited in this one.

  Nathaniel Gist seemed the obvious person to do the recruiting. He had served under Washington in the Virginia Regiment as a lieutenant in the company of scouts commanded by his father, Christopher Gist; he lived among the Cherokees, and his wife was a sister of the Cherokee chief Corn Tassel or Old Tassel. In January 1777 Washington ordered Gist to raise four companies of rangers and then go directly to the Cherokees, or any other nation where he had influence, and “procure a number of Warriors (Not exceeding in the whole 500) to join the Army under my immediate Command.” The Indians were to bring their own weapons and blankets but would be supplied with ammunition and provisions and, instead of presents, which had proved the bane of their service in the French and Indian War, would receive the same pay as soldiers in the Continental Army. If they had their own officers, Gist was to advance them more pay, but not more than American officers received. If raised, this body of Indians was to consider Gist as their leader and obey all orders he received from Washington. Recruiting a company or two of Cherokees, Washington explained to Hancock, would serve two valuable purposes: first, they made excellent scouts, and second, they would function as hostages to help ensure “the good behavior of their Nation.”85

  The Cherokees were in the process of making peace and giving up lands to secure it. In March, Gist traveled to Chota to invite the Overhill Cherokees to meet Virginia’s peace commissioners at Long Island, located on the Holston River in northeastern Tennessee, an ancient treaty ground considered sacred in Cherokee tradition. In April, Attakullakulla, Oconostota, and a delegation of thirty chiefs went to Williamsburg to talk peace. It was one of Attakullakulla’s last acts. A month later, the Lower Cherokees ceded virtually all their remaining lands in South Carolina at a treaty with Georgia and South Carolina.86 In July the Cherokees made another treaty with Virginia and North Carolina at Fort Patrick Henry on the Holston, where Gist’s ranger company was stationed. Corn Tassel stressed the Cherokees’ desire for peace but balked at the amount of land the commissioners demanded. He suggested the Americans demanded so much knowing the Cherokees would refuse and give them an excuse to renew the war. Hoping for justice from a former ally, Corn Tassel asked the commissioners to write a letter to General Washington and have Gist deliver it: “I will leave the difference between us to the great Warrior of all America,” he said. It was a mystery to him why the Americans asked for so much land so close to the Cherokees, he said, and he knew the lands were worth far more than what the Americans paid for them. “It spoils our hunting ground; but always remains good to you to raise families and stocks on, when the goods we receive of you are rotten and gone to nothing.” The North Carolina delegation insisted this was a matter between the Cherokees and North Carolina alone. At the Treaty of Long Island of Holston, the Cherokees were forced to give up their land in western North Carolina and upper eastern Tennessee.87 Many Cherokees followed Dragging Canoe west to the Chickamauga River and continued their fight for independence from there.88

  During the course of the negotiations at Long Island, Colonel William Christian reminded the Cherokees that “our Great Warrior General Washington” had sent them a letter by Gist inviting them to send some warriors to his camp, where they would be warmly welcomed, treated as friends, and free to return safely home whenever they wanted. They would be under Gist’s care and be paid and well clothed. The Americans did not want them to fight their battles, just “to see the riches and grandeur of our Army and Country,” Christian assured them.89

  Little or nothing came of it. Talk of forming a mixed corps of Indians and light infantry continued, but by May 1778 Washington was backing away from the idea of having Indians join the army. It was unlikely to succeed because the British had the advantage when it came to buying Indian support with gifts. Besides, he explained at length to Henry Laurens of South Carolina, who had succeeded Hancock as president of the Continental Congress, he had proposed the measure “by way of experiment” at a time when prospects were very different. France had now entered the war, and the British, instead of launching an early offensive, as anticipated, now seemed likely to remain on the defensive. In that case, there would be “very little of that kind of service in which the Indians are capable of being useful,” and little point in bringing them such a distance. Washington knew from his experience in the French and Indian War that that would create needless expense and frustrate the Indians. Since the Indians seemed apprehensive about leaving their homes unprotected, they might be just as pleased to learn their services were no longer required. Better, after all, Washington concluded, to tell them to remain peacefully at home and be ready to cooperate with us if called on in the future. As for those who were already on their way to join his army, “I had much rather dispense with their attendance.”90 Cherokee chiefs seeking relief from the United States for their starving people had to invoke their services in the French and Indian War rather than in the Revolution.91

  Patriot leaders and newspapers downplayed or ignored the service and sacrifices of Indian allies, and publicized and exaggerated the hostilities and atrocities of Indian enemies. The belief that all Indians allied with the British served to unify Patriots during the war and to justify the tribes’ dispossession in its aftermath.92 In truth, Washington never quite overcame his reluctance to use Indians for much more than scouting operations.93 The need and opportunities for Indian allies demanded his attention at critical times during the Revolution, but he was always more interested in Indian lands than in Indian allies. Ultimately, in his vision, Indian territory, not Indian assistance, would secure the independence of the United States. Instead of being remembered for employing Indians in his armies during the Revolution, Washington would be remembered for sending his armies against them.

  Chapter 11

  Town Destroyer

  A life-sized bronze sculpture in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, depicts Washington flanked by an Oneida chief, Skenandoah, and an Oneida woman named Polly Cooper. Polly is carrying a basket of corn. The sculpture commemorates what Oneidas remember as a pivotal moment in the Revolution and the nation’s struggle for independence. It also reminds us that Washington’s relations with the Six Nations during the Revolution often revolved around corn. For most Iroquois people, however, the relationship involved burning cornfields. Recalling in later years the villages laid waste by Washington’s troops, they called him Town Destroyer, the name he claimed from his great-grandfather.

  Although as
a Virginia planter Washington mainly grew tobacco and then wheat, corn was the dominant food crop throughout most of North America. Corn cultivation had spread north from Mexico before Europeans came to America. Indian peoples grew corn across large areas of the continent, from the Rio Grande to the St. Lawrence. After men cleared the fields, women hoed the soil and planted the corn, dropping several kernels in holes three or four feet apart in small hillocks formed by hand. Planting beans and pumpkin seeds together with corn added nitrogen to the soil. The growing cornstalks served as beanpoles and also afforded shade to the pumpkin vines. The Iroquois referred to corn, beans, and squash as the “sacred three sisters.” European colonists grew imported crops like wheat, oats, and barley, but they also adopted the indigenous corn agriculture. Corn was higher in nutrition than most other grain crops, and it gave higher yields. In New England and Virginia, Native knowledge and food surpluses helped the earliest colonists survive their first hard years. Indian people taught English settlers how and when to plant, cultivate, and harvest corn, and how to grind it into meal, preserve it through the year, and cook it with beans to make succotash.

  Corn soon became the proverbial staff of life for many European colonists, as it had been for many Native peoples for centuries. Indian crops, combined with Euro-Indian farming techniques, produced prolific yields. Thomas Jefferson grew Indian corn, and he also employed indigenous planting techniques such as hilling in his “revolutionary garden.” Washington planted his cornfields in straight rows for ease of weeding. Although a wheat farmer, he thought corn was more nourishing than wheat bread “as food for the negroes.”1 Corn not only fed colonists and their slaves; it also sustained colonial armies that often relied on Indian fields and storehouses to feed the troops and keep the campaign alive. Washington understood the centrality of the “three sisters” to Indian life, and he knew the military importance and vulnerability of Indian cornfields. Iroquois crops and stores of corn were an important source of provisions for the British army and Loyalists, as well as for Washington’s soldiers at Valley Forge.2 They also offered easy targets for invading armies.