The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  In 1757–58, following his participation in the French and Indian War, Washington had been quick—too quick, some said—to leave his men to defend the frontier while he went to Boston, Philadelphia, or Williamsburg. In the winter of 1777–78, he stayed with his army, what was left of it, as it shivered and starved at Valley Forge, and he held it together. This, more than any battle he fought, says the historian John Ferling, “was the time of his transfiguration.” As never before, he came to be seen as a heroic figure, the savior of his country, dedicated to the army and the cause.3 There were Indians with him at Valley Forge. In early January, Albigence Waldo, a surgeon from Connecticut, was called to administer to an Indian soldier, “an obedient good natur’d fellow,” who died before Waldo reached his hut. The Indian had no doubt signed up for money like many others, Waldo noted in his diary, but he had served his country faithfully, fighting “for those very people who disinherited his forefathers.”4

  More Indians joined Washington’s bedraggled little army in the spring when a group of Oneidas journeyed more than 250 miles from their homes in upstate New York, bringing stores of dried corn. Polly Cooper is said to have cooked for the troops, showed them how to prepare hulled corn soup, and refused any payment. The army—and the Revolution—survived. Later, so the story goes, a grateful Martha Washington took Polly shopping in Philadelphia and bought her a hat and shawl.5 It is difficult to imagine that a group of people traveling such a distance could have carried enough corn to feed an army, but the story endures and is commemorated in the statue as a symbol of the Oneidas’ contribution to the birth of the nation.

  Why would the Patriot army, in winter camp in the midst of one of the most populated and fertile areas in the American colonies, be starving, and why would Oneidas care? The answer to the first question is relatively simple. The Revolution in 1778 was hardly an outpouring of patriotic unity. Rather than a band of farmers turned freedom fighters united in sacrifice for the cause, Washington’s army was a motley collection of indentured servants, recent Scotch-Irish immigrants, unemployed laborers, emancipated slaves, misfits, and no-hopers—the poorest of the poor, many of whose services were paid for by more prosperous Americans who had bought out their own service. Most farmers in southeastern Pennsylvania went about the business of growing and selling food—and many of them sold it in Philadelphia to the British army, which paid hard cash in pounds sterling, not to the Continental Army, which paid in worthless paper currency. Washington worked incessantly to win the hearts and minds of local farmers, merchants, and officials and keep his men supplied despite what he called “the Horrid Intercource” between the country and the city.6 Why Oneida Indians stepped up to save the Revolution when Pennsylvania farmers failed to do so requires more explanation.

  The chain of friendship between the Iroquois and the British had endured through tumultuous times before the colonists split with the Crown. Six Nations chiefs had steered their people through perilous currents of imperial conflict, and sometimes had cooperated with imperial and colonial officials in transferring huge amounts of land from other Indian peoples. Whereas Indian-white relations in Pennsylvania unraveled into bloodshed in the 1750s and ’60s, the economic, social, kinship, and religious ties that Iroquois people built with colonial neighbors generally survived, strained but intact. Mohawks and Oneidas had adapted European agricultural techniques and raised livestock. They participated in the cash economy of the Mohawk Valley, with the result that the Indian and colonial communities in the area became economically interdependent and their material cultures merged. Such ties made conflict all the more bitter when it came.7 Neutrality had served the Iroquois well in past conflicts between Britain and France, and it seemed for a time as if it might work again in what looked like an English civil war. “It was a family quarrel,” the Iroquois told Major General Philip Schuyler; “they would not Interfere, but remain neuter and hoped we would not desire more of them.”8 Washington’s position regarding the Six Nations as of February 1776 was that “we don’t want them to take up the hatchet for us, except they chuse it, we only desire that they will not fight against us.”9

  That meant paying special attention to Iroquois emissaries and conveying an impression of American strength and generosity to counteract British propaganda. In the spring of 1776, some Mohawks from Canajoharie on the Mohawk River traveled to Boston and requested a commission to raise men and to fight against the British. As they did not appear to Washington “to be Persons of any Sort of Consequence,” he sent them on their way with a few presents and suggested they go and see General Schuyler. But he knew Indians were watching events in New England as intently as he and Schuyler were watching events in Indian country, and he recognized the propaganda potential in the Mohawks’ visit: they had seen the king’s troops abandon Boston, and it would “be Good Policy to hasten them home as fast as possible, that they may Communicate the Intelligence, their Tale will Carry more Conviction than the Report of twenty white men.”10 Schuyler agreed. During a conference with the Iroquois in Albany in May, he had the Indians attend his review of Major General John Sullivan’s troops and had his soldiers “Continually walking the Streets in Order to induce the Belief of a greater Number than there really was,” to contradict Tory agents who told the Indians that the American forces were weak.11

  Schuyler and the other commissioners suggested that the Iroquois send a delegation to New York to visit the great warrior George Washington, and then proceed to Boston and Philadelphia to meet American leaders. When a delegation of twenty-one Iroquois complied, a nervous Schuyler suggested that Washington detain them or send them on to Philadelphia or other places, “that they might serve as a Kind of Hostages” to keep other Iroquois peaceful. Washington agreed and kept the Indian delegates in Philadelphia in June for that purpose. He heard that they returned home the next month “with very favourable Ideas of our strength and resources.”12 Nevertheless, things hung in the balance in Iroquois country, and Washington knew it. “Our Situation,” he wrote Schuyler, “is rather delicate & Embarrassing.” The Mohawks and many other Iroquois were attached to John Johnson, Sir William’s son, who was exerting his influence against the Patriots, and although it made sense to try to capture Johnson and other Tories, to do so risked incurring the Indians’ resentment.13

  Once John Hancock sent Congress’s approval for employing Indian allies, Washington hastened to get the word to the Six Nations. He urged Schuyler and his fellow commissioners to make an alliance with them on whatever terms seemed most likely to secure their friendship, without waiting for further directions from Congress. “The Situation of our Affairs will not suffer the Delay.”14 Schuyler met with the Six Nations at German Flatts on the Mohawk River in August 1776, although he feared that asking them to actively support the American cause might prove counterproductive.15 In October, when two Cayuga (or possibly Kahnawake) sachems expressed an inclination to visit Washington, Schuyler “greedily embraced” the opportunity and sent them on. They spent three or four days with Washington, who, as Schuyler had suggested, “shewed them every Civility in My Power & presented them with such Necessaries as our Barren stores afforded and they were pleased to take.” He also gave them a tour of the military installation to dispel notions spread by Tory agents that the army was weak. The chiefs “seemed to think we were amazingly strong” and departed, Washington hoped, “with No Unfavorable Impressions.”16

  Conscious of their vulnerable position on the edge of colonial settlement, the Oneidas had to weigh multiple factors and respond to many forces as the Revolution divided their neighbors and divided the longhouse. The Oneida sachem Conoghquieson had worked closely with Sir William Johnson in fashioning the Treaty of Fort Stanwix that diverted the tide of colonial settlement away from Iroquois country.17 But the Oneidas derived far less from their relationship with Johnson than did his Mohawk neighbors and relatives. The treaty placed the boundary line west of the Oneida Carrying Place, the portage linking the Mohawk River–Hudson waterway to Wo
od Creek and Lake Erie, which Oneidas regarded as an essential source of future income. Relations with the British became increasingly strained. As Oneidas came to depend more heavily on farming, animal husbandry, and trade with colonial settlers, their relations with the other Iroquois tribes, already tested by their exposure to missionaries, also became more tenuous.18

  When the Revolution broke out, the Oneidas were initially determined to stay out of the war. In June 1775 their chiefs issued a declaration of neutrality. They were “altogether for Peace,” they said, and did not want to meddle in the disputes “in these times of great confusion.” In fact, they actively tried to maintain a broader Iroquois neutrality.19 But the neutral ground they tried to cultivate was shrinking rapidly, and cracks appeared in the ancient unity of the Iroquois League. As happened throughout Indian country, militant younger voices challenged the cautious authority of older chiefs. “Times are altered with us Indians,” said one Onondaga chief. “Formerly the Warriors were governed by the wisdom of their uncles the Sachems but now they take their own way & dispose of themselves without consulting their uncles the Sachems—while we wish for peace and they are for war.”20 Oneidas and Cayugas disagreed over what course to take, and some Indians said the league had never witnessed such fierce debate in all its history.21 Ultimately, Oneidas saw supporting their Patriot neighbors as their most viable option.

  Historians have long recognized the influence of the New Light Presbyterian missionary Samuel Kirkland in winning over the Oneidas, and so did Washington. Congress in July 1775 recommended employing Kirkland to win the friendship and neutrality of the Six Nations.22 “All Accounts agree that much of the favourable Disposition shewn by the Indians may be ascribed to his Labour & Influence,” Washington told Hancock in September.23 Kirkland and the Mohawk war chief Joseph Brant (see plate 5) had been friends at Eleazar Wheelock’s school in Lebanon, Connecticut, where they first met in the summer of 1761, when Brant was eighteen, Kirkland nineteen. Brant taught Kirkland Mohawk; Kirkland helped Brant with his English. Brant returned to Mohawk country after he left school; Kirkland went as a missionary to Kanonwalohale, the largest of the four main Oneida villages. As tensions escalated between Britain and its colonies, Brant reaffirmed his ties to the Church of England, the Johnson family, and the Crown; Kirkland edged the Oneidas away from the Church of England, the Johnsons, and the Crown. With the outbreak of the Revolution, Brant and Kirkland became bitter enemies, each exerting his influence in the tug-of-war for Indian allegiance.24

  Washington said Kirkland had an “uncommon Ascendency” over the Oneidas.25 Many trusted him because of his commitment to the community, demonstrated by his efforts to create schools, convert people to Christianity, and curb alcoholism.26 He also, so far, had kept his pledge not to use his mission to speculate in Indian land. Kirkland influenced the flow of information into Oneida country, talked up the benefits of an American alliance, and acted as a conduit between the Oneidas and Congress. He asserted that by interpreting the actions of Congress to a number of sachems, he did “real service to the Cause of the Country, or the Cause of Truth & Justice.” Conoghquieson was not so sure; he said Kirkland caused a lot of trouble “by always collecting news and telling us strange matters of the white people.”27

  In the summer of 1775 Kirkland accompanied his friend Skenandoah to Boston. Skenandoah had embraced Kirkland’s New Light Presbyterianism and was inclined to embrace the Patriot cause as well. Washington went out of his way to make sure Skenandoah was well treated, gave him a tour of the army, and wrote him a letter of introduction to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Skenandoah, he said, was a chief “of Considerable Rank in his own Country”; the Oneidas were “very friendly to the Cause of the United Colonies,” and Skenandoah’s report when he returned home would “have important Consequences to the publick Interest.”28 The following spring “our Staunch Friends the Oneidas” brought Schuyler word that some of the Six Nations had gone to Niagara to join the British, and some Oneidas set out to prevent tribes in Canada from defecting.29 The Americans planned to build a fort on the site where Fort Stanwix had stood, and Schuyler was confident the Oneidas, who lived only twenty-four miles away, would provide early warnings of enemy movements in the area.30 In July 1776 Skenandoah and one hundred Oneidas attended Schuyler’s conference with the Iroquois at German Flatts, where Kirkland preached a service in the Oneida language. (Joseph Bloomfield, a captain in the Continental Army, said the Oneida congregation listened with such reverence and sang so beautifully that “their devout Behaviour struck me with Astonishment & made me blush with shame for myself and my own People.”)31 Another delegation of six Oneidas visited the American forces early in 1777, asking for accurate information about the state of affairs so they could relate it to the Grand Council, and Kirkland brought them to see Washington at his headquarters. Again Washington did all he could to treat them well and to impress them with the strength of his army. He also told them France was about to join the war, knowing the news would have a considerable impact on several nations and help secure their neutrality, if not an outright commitment to the American cause.32

  Other students of Wheelock worked for the Patriot cause in Oneida country. James Dean was born in Connecticut in 1748, and as a boy accompanied his missionary step-uncle to the village of Oquaga or Onoquaga on the Susquehanna River. The Oneidas adopted him, and by the time he was thirteen he was “a perfect Indian boy, in language, manners and dress.” Wheelock admitted him to Dartmouth free of charge in return for his services as an interpreter. Two years after his graduation, Wheelock sent Dean in the spring of 1775 to strengthen his school’s ties with the Indian communities on the St. Lawrence, and he recommended him to the Continental Congress as “the fittest man I know on Earth” for employment among the western and northern tribes. Congress sent Dean to Kanonwalohale, where he worked with Kirkland to win over the Oneidas.33 Wheelock also recommended Joseph Johnson, a Mohegan preacher and schoolteacher, to Washington as someone who was acquainted with the intrigues of British agents among the Iroquois and had been successful in his efforts to counteract them.34

  Meanwhile Joseph Brant traveled to London in 1776. On his return, according to the British Indian agent Daniel Claus, he proved the most loyal friend to His Majesty’s cause and urged his warriors to defend their lands and liberty against the Americans, “who in great measure began this Rebellion to be sole Masters of the Continent.” What was more, Brant was proficient in Christianity, his English was flawless, and he had translated part of the New Testament into Mohawk.35 The Mohawk was clearly a formidable presence in war or peace. Washington would confront him as an enemy and then court him as an ally.

  The widening divisions in the Iroquois League came to a head in 1777. After smallpox struck Onondaga in the winter of 1776–77, the central council fire—the symbol of the league’s unity—was ritually extinguished for the first time, leaving the tribes free to follow their own paths.36 The Oneidas split with most of the others and sided with the Patriots. In the summer Iroquois warriors fought with both the British and American armies. Britain launched a campaign to cut off New England from the other colonies. General John Burgoyne advanced from Montreal down the Champlain-Hudson Valley, and Brigadier General Barry St. Leger drove into Iroquois country and laid siege to Fort Stanwix. Oneida warriors rallied to assist their neighbors and resist the invasion of their homeland. About sixty joined General Nicholas Herkimer and the Tryon County militia in an effort to relieve the fort. Ambushed by the British and their Mohawk and Seneca allies at the Battle of Oriskany, the Americans suffered heavy casualties. As many as thirty Oneidas died. The Senecas suffered similarly heavy casualties in a fight that pitted Iroquois against Iroquois. Mohawks and Oneidas subsequently destroyed each other’s villages, and although Iroquois warriors generally avoided fighting other Iroquois during the remainder of the war, the Revolution had become an Iroquois civil war.37

  The Oneidas sent warriors to join General Horatio Gates and the Am
erican army opposing Burgoyne, and they participated in the victory at Saratoga that helped propel France into the war. In the spring of 1778, when Washington proposed enlisting Indians to join his army at Valley Forge, he had the Oneidas and Tuscaroras specifically in mind. He asked Schuyler and the northern commissioners to recruit two hundred warriors, primarily from the Oneidas, who “have manifested the strongest Attachment to us throughout this Dispute.”38 Schuyler told Washington that in the presence of the other Iroquois nations, the Oneidas and Tuscaroras “announced their Determination to Sink or swim with us.” Nevertheless, they feared retribution and requested assistance in building a fort to protect them against other Iroquois; they were reluctant to send their young men away to fight and leave their homes defenseless against Seneca attacks.39

  After a three-week journey, forty-seven Oneidas arrived at Valley Forge in mid-May. Washington assigned them to reconnaissance missions under the command of the marquis de Lafayette. The Oneidas performed well and suffered several casualties at the Battle of Barren Hill on May 20. Washington was impressed, but news of French intervention had reached Valley Forge a couple of weeks before the Oneidas did, and, anticipating that the British would be increasingly on the defensive, he now saw less need for Indian allies. In mid-June the Oneidas began to return home.40 Both Lafayette and Washington were grateful for their assistance.41