The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  Pickering found a good teacher. The Seneca chief Sagoyewatha, known to the Americans as Red Jacket (see plate 12), was not known for his prowess in war; his enemies called him Cowkiller, referencing a story that he had fled a battle and daubed himself with the blood of slaughtered cattle to give the impression he had been in combat. But he was an accomplished orator and a master of council-fire diplomacy and stood as a spokesman for those of the Six Nations who remained in New York. A Quaker observer who saw Red Jacket in conference with Pickering recorded in his diary: “His appearance & manner would cut no inconsiderable figure on the floor of a British Parliament, or an American Congress. I do not remember to have seen any statesman make a more majestic appearance.”9

  Red Jacket and Farmer’s Brother (Honanyawas) instructed Pickering in the ritual of condolence that was a foundational element of the Iroquois League and the Great Law of Peace; it eased the grief of bereaved kin, ensured that negotiators were “of good mind,” and “cleared the path” so that talks could begin.10 Red Jacket alternately lectured and tutored Pickering on how to conduct himself. He listened as Pickering explained the Constitution and the terms of the Trade and Intercourse Act, but when the commissioner urged Iroquois men to give up hunting and become farmers like the Americans, Red Jacket pointed out that the Great Spirit intended Indians and whites to walk different paths. The Six Nations wanted to brighten the chain of friendship with General Washington, as they put it, but they must be allowed “to follow our ancient rules” as the white people followed theirs. “We can then as well agree as if we followed one rule.” It was an argument Red Jacket would reprise many times in the years to come. He impressed Pickering as “a man of great ambition.” The Iroquois in turn honored Pickering by giving him the name Connesauty. Washington expressed his “entire Approbation” of Pickering’s conduct and offered to appoint him superintendent of Indian affairs in the North, an offer Pickering declined as conflicting with his appointments by the state of Pennsylvania.11

  Meanwhile, Washington was meeting a chief who did not attend Tioga and who was on the outs with many Six Nations leaders. The Allegheny Seneca chief Cornplanter or Kayenthwahkeh could not be ignored. Sometimes called Obeal or Captain Abeel after his father, an Albany trader named John Abeel, Cornplanter was a member of the Wolf clan through his mother, who seems to have been related, possibly a sister, to Guyasuta.12 Along with Sayenqueraghta of the Turtle clan, he was one of the two war chiefs of the confederacy that the Senecas were entitled to name.13 A rival of both Joseph Brant and Red Jacket, both like him members of the Wolf clan, Cornplanter had earned a reputation fighting against the Americans during the Revolutionary war. But at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784, he had grudgingly accepted the American terms, an act for which he was vilified by Brant as well as many Senecas at Buffalo Creek. The next year he moved his band away and resettled on the Allegheny River, closer to American settlements. In 1786 he had traveled to Philadelphia and then to New York City, the capital at the time, where he addressed Congress. The Ohio Company in 1788 granted him one square mile of land in recognition of his service to the United States and “the Friendship he has manifested to the Proprietors of Land purchased by the Ohio Company.”14 In 1789, along with Guyasuta and several other Seneca chiefs, Cornplanter signed the Treaty of Fort Harmar, confirming the cession made at Fort Stanwix. The historian Alan Taylor portrays him as “an ambitious and eloquent man with a powerful mind, an often overbearing will, and flexible scruples,” who coveted private property and “would make many compromises with the Americans rather than eat crow served by Red Jacket or Joseph Brant.” Rather than attend Tioga as one of a number of Seneca chiefs, he preferred to go to Philadelphia, speak with the president in person, and position himself as the key player in Iroquois-US relations.15 But Cornplanter was motivated by more than ego and self-interest. He had plenty to say to Washington.

  Accompanied by Half Town, Big Tree, New Arrow, and Guyasuta, Cornplanter arrived in Philadelphia in October 1790. The delegation first met with the Pennsylvania Executive Council. “When I was young and strong our country was full of game,” Guyasuta told the council, but white people had driven away the game, and now “we are old and feeble and hungry and naked, and … have no other friends than you.” Cornplanter acknowledged that the shifting power dynamics demanded a redefinition of the relationship. “In former days when you were young and weak I used to call you brother, but now I call you father,” he told them.16

  Rev. Samuel Kirkland brought his influence and interpretive skills to bear. Traveling from Oneida country at the government’s request and expense to meet with the Seneca delegates, he arrived in December. Kirkland had known Cornplanter for five or six years and counted him a good friend. Cornplanter told him the purpose of their visit was to represent “the abuses which the Seneka Nation had suffered from the white people,” obtain an adjustment to the boundary line established in 1784, ask Congress for assistance to promote agriculture “& gradually introduce the arts of civilized life among the Senekas,” and, last, discuss the western Indians. Kirkland spent three weeks with the Seneca delegation and admired Cornplanter’s sobriety, sagacity, and Christianity. “He seems raised up by Providence for the good of his nation,” he wrote in his journal. When they had first met, Cornplanter “was so strongly attached to the traditions of the fathers that the truths of Christianity could not have a fair hearing from him,” Kirkland said; “but now, by an over-ruling Providence, he has become very attentive.”17

  Between December 1, 1790, and February 1791, the chiefs addressed a series of speeches to the man they called Town Destroyer. (The British obtained copies of the proceedings.18) Reviewing their treatment since the end of the Revolution, Cornplanter said the Iroquois had accepted Washington’s invitation to attend the peace talks at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. “You then told us we were in your hand, and that, by closing it, you could crush us to nothing, and you demanded from us a great country, as the price of that peace which you had offered us; … our chiefs had felt your power, and were unable to contend against you, and they therefore gave up that country.” Then the Americans had acted “as if our want of strength had destroyed our rights,” but “your anger against us must, by this time, be cooled,” he said; “we ask you to consider calmly, Were the terms dictated to us by your commissioners reasonable and just?” No sooner had the chiefs signed their treaty with the United States than commissioners from Pennsylvania had pressured them into ceding a large chunk of what is now northwestern Pennsylvania, for a sum of $5,000. The Livingston leasing scheme and a contentious land sale to speculators Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham further eroded the Seneca homeland, and Phelps had reneged on his promised payments. “You have compelled us to do that which has made us ashamed,” Cornplanter said. Signing the Fort Stanwix Treaty had put Cornplanter’s life in danger, and one of the signatories had even contemplated suicide. All the treaties and land deals rested on the assumption that the king had ceded the Indians’ land to the United States, but that was not the case. The king could not have ceded what the Indians had not ceded to him; “the land we live on, our fathers received from God, and they transmitted it to us, for our children and we cannot part with it.”19 They were custodians of the land and could not sell it even if they wanted.

  It took Washington almost a month to reply. He waited for Pickering’s full report on the Tioga negotiations and to be briefed by Knox, to whom he had forwarded the Senecas’ speeches. Knox in turn forwarded their complaints to Governor Clinton, asking for information about the Livingston and Phelps purchases, about which Knox and Washington knew little or nothing, so the president could answer Cornplanter “with precision and effect.”20 Knox then reviewed and contextualized their complaints and gave his assessments of the chiefs. Though not a sachem, Cornplanter was an accomplished war captain and “a very active partizan against our frontiers” in the Revolution “but by no means cruel or blood thirsty.” Since then his attachment to the United States and his role a
t the treaties at Fort Stanwix and Fort Harmar had earned him the hatred of many of his people and the enmity of Joseph Brant. Now in his early forties, Cornplanter was “a man of truth” and had “never been known to be drunk, certainly not habitualy so.” Knox thought him “the fittest person to make use of to manage the six nations.” Brant was too close to the British; Farmer’s Brother, the principal sachem, was “a great drunkard” and had lost standing; Red Jacket and Big Tree lacked Cornplanter’s talents or influence. To bind Cornplanter to the United States with ties of self-interest, Knox recommended paying him an annual pension of $250 in his choice of money, goods, livestock, or farming utensils, with a similar amount distributed among other chiefs who appeared friendly to the United States. Preaching to the choir, Knox repeated his conviction that civilizing the tribes “instead of extirpating them” would enhance the government’s reputation. Most important for the moment, however, was to make sure Cornplanter and the Senecas kept their young men from joining the western Indian alliance.21

  Two days after he got Knox’s briefing, Washington replied to the Senecas. He assured them he would protect their lands as defined by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The evils Cornplanter described had happened because the central government had been weak and the individual states had acted on their own to acquire Indian lands, but things were very different now. Their remaining lands were safe because the Constitution gave the federal government exclusive authority to deal with the Indian nations, and the Trade and Intercourse Act contained additional protections. In words that must have sounded reminiscent of British assurances after the Proclamation of 1763, Washington explained that Indian lands could only be purchased at public treaties held under the auspices of the United States. “The general Government will never consent to your being defrauded, but it will protect you in all your just rights,” including the right to sell their lands to whomever they wished and not to sell if they so chose, he said. He also claimed that the preparations for war were a last resort, necessitated by the western Indians’ continued hostilities and refusal of peace offers.22

  The Senecas were appeased but not assured. “Father,” said Cornplanter, “your speech, written on the great paper, is to us like the first light of the morning to a sick man, whose pulse beats so strongly in his temples and prevents him from sleep. He sees it, and rejoices, but he is not cured.” In other words, “Yeah, right.” The Senecas wanted restoration of lands lost at Fort Stanwix, not confirmation of the loss. Washington replied that they themselves had already confirmed it: the boundaries they established at Fort Stanwix and reaffirmed at Fort Harmar must stand. Even so, Cornplanter assured Washington of his people’s pacific intentions and the government made arrangements for him to go to the Miami and Wabash villages on a peace mission that, Washington said, would “render those mistaken people a great service, and probably prevent their being swept from the face of the earth.”23

  Cornplanter had all he could do to prevent his own people from being swept from the face of the earth. Survival meant adapting to new situations and adopting new ways of living. In what must have been music to Washington and Knox’s ears, he asked them “to teach us to plow and to grind corn; to assist us in building saw mills, and supply us with broad axes, saws, augers, and other tools, so as that we may make our houses more comfortable and more durable; that you will send smiths among us, and above all that you will teach our children to read and write, and our women to spin and weave.” Like Washington and Pickering, Knox believed that teaching agricultural skills was more useful than sending Indian children to eastern schools, and he promised to send a schoolteacher and one or two farming instructors.24 Before the Senecas left, the Pennsylvania legislature granted Cornplanter three tracts of land totaling 1,500 acres.

  Governor St. Clair had hoped some of Cornplanter’s Senecas would accompany his expedition; the government was more concerned with keeping them out of the Northwestern Confederacy and employing Cornplanter as an emissary.25 He was supposed to go with Colonel Thomas Proctor, who had been an artillery officer during Sullivan’s campaign, to deliver Washington’s final peace offer and ultimatum, which Knox described as “inviting the hostile Indians to peace, previously to striking them.” Cornplanter had Proctor present his case in council at Buffalo Creek, but the Iroquois were not impressed, and when the British commander at Fort Niagara refused to furnish a boat, Proctor abandoned his mission.26

  Few Iroquois were convinced by Washington’s assurances that their lands were now safe. Not everyone in the settler republic approved of a federally controlled and just Indian policy. Speculators continued to operate in Iroquois country, and the state of New York continued to conduct its own negotiations. Washington was furious. What did it say to the Indians if the left hand seemed not to know what the right hand was doing? he asked Hamilton in exasperation. “That we pursue no system, and that our declarations are not to be regard[ed].” State interferences and individual speculations “will be the bane of all our public measures.”27 Worse, Iroquois delegates had been assaulted and robbed on their way home, and some Senecas trading in Pennsylvania had been murdered. “We hope you will not suffer all the good people to be kill’d,” Cornplanter and his fellow delegates told Washington, “but your People are killing them as fast as they can.” Washington knew there was little prospect of peace “so long as a spirit of land jobbing prevails, and our frontier Settlers entertain the opinion that there is not the same crime (or indeed no crime at all) in killing an Indian as in killing a white man.”28

  As St. Clair gathered his forces in the summer of 1791, the government dispatched Pickering to keep the Six Nations neutral, at the least, during the impending conflict. Pickering met with about a thousand Iroquois at Newtown Point (Elmira, New York) in July. Things did not go well. Red Jacket had asked that Congress “speak to us of nothing but peace.” Pickering, however, following Knox’s instructions, tried to get the Iroquois to send warriors to assist St. Clair and boasted of American power. Red Jacket was quick to exploit the misstep. Grandstanding before the assemblage, he took Pickering to task for talking war when he should have been talking peace, mocked his mistakes in council protocol, and ridiculed his assertions of American superiority. Plain-speaking Pickering was no match for the Seneca orator. He dropped his request for warriors and salvaged the council by reaffirming American friendship and Washington’s promises of protection for their land and rights. Pickering said he and Red Jacket “parted as friends.”29

  Pickering and Washington promised more than they could deliver. When Governor Clinton of New York protested that his state claimed a right of preemption to Indian lands within its borders—in other words, New York Indians could sell their lands only to the state of New York—Washington backed down.30

  At Newtown, Pickering invited a Six Nations delegation to visit the president after the corn harvest and discuss plans for introducing agriculture. Offering the chiefs bribes and pensions would serve little purpose because if the British offered them more they’d take the highest bid, he explained to Knox; with few exceptions, they were “as corrupt as the ministers of any court in Europe.” But bringing them to see the nation’s capital would counter British claims that the United States was “poor, mean, & contemptible.” With more than forty thousand inhabitants, large streets laid out on a grid plan, bookstores and printers, and a bustling wharf, Philadelphia impressed the French traveler Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville two years earlier as “the metropolis of the United States. It is certainly the finest town, and the best built; it is the most wealthy, though not the most luxurious.” Pickering intended it to similarly impress Iroquois visitors: “The dignity of the President & the splendor of his house—the number of attendants, the magnificence of entertainments … cannot fail to strike them with surprise and to excite their reverence,” he thought. “The public buildings in Philadelphia—the extent & populousness of the city, the vast quantities of goods in every street, and the shipping at the wharves will so much exceed any thin
g they have seen before, and so far surpass their present ideas that they cannot fail to wonder and admire.”31 Such thinking would bring Indian delegations to the nation’s capital for the next hundred years.32

  St. Clair’s defeat delayed the visit but made it all the more pressing. The United States set to work to exploit divisions in the Indian confederacy. The loose and fragile coalition of many nations had less unity and unanimity of purpose now it had repulsed the invasion. The Shawnees, Miamis, and Delawares remained resolute to halt American expansion at the Ohio River, but Joseph Brant and the Six Nations, as well as the Ojibwas, Ottawas, and Potawatomis, were willing to consider a compromise boundary.33 The government sent messages warning the Six Nations and southern Indians to remain “fast friends” as it redoubled its efforts to crush the hostile tribes and again tried to enlist the Six Nations as mediators with the western tribes.34

  It commissioned Rev. Samuel Kirkland to bring a delegation to the capital. Kirkland, accompanied by the Oneidas Skenandoah, Good Peter, and Peter Otsequette, and Hendrick Aupaumut, a Stockbridge Mahican, traveled to the western reaches of Iroquois country to invite chiefs from the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. Brant warned that “the real design of the invitation was not on the paper—but behind it,” and he and Cornplanter stayed away.35 But so many wanted “to see the Great Council of the 13 fires,” and get a glimpse of the famous General Washington, that Kirkland brought about fifty people. Red Jacket, Farmer’s Brother, Good Peter, and many other chiefs accompanied the missionary down the Susquehanna Valley, arriving in Philadelphia on Tuesday March 13, where they were welcomed with a cannon salute. Washington invited a group of the delegates to dinner the following Monday.36