The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  138. Nichols, “Land, Republicanism, and Indians,” 208.

  139. ASPIA 1:125.

  140. Wright, “Creek-American Treaty,” 392–93.

  141. Gazette of the United States (New York), July 24, 1790.

  142. IALT 28–29.

  143. PGW, Pres. 6:206.

  144. Saunt, New Order of Things, 81.

  145. John Francis McDermott, ed., Memoir; or, A Cursory Glance at My Different Travels & My Sojourn in the Creek Nation, trans. Geraldine De Courcy (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1956), 100.

  146. ASPIA 2:602.

  147. Wright, “Creek-American Treaty,” 395; Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 45, 284–85.

  148. Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 45; DHFFC 14:15–16 (“caressed”), 21–23 (“Caligula” at 22), 35, 21:162, 183; Keith, John Gray Blount Papers 2:94–95 (Williamson).

  149. Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 84.

  150. Wright, William Augustus Bowles, 47–55, 73–78; FO 4/8:410–12, 9:5–17, 69–74, 81–82, 11:181–82, 208, 14:295–300, 24:423–49; CO 42/68:279–304; ASPIA 1:246–51, 255; (London) Times, Mar. 17, 1791, p. 3., col. 2 (dined with Spanish ambassador).

  151. ASPIA 1:364; PGW, Pres. 11:167.

  152. Pope, Tour through the Southern Western Territories, 47, 51.

  153. Kinnaird, Spain in the Mississippi Valley, pt. 3, 22, 57–58; Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 332, 337.

  154. ASPIA 1:257, 259.

  155. PGW, Pres. 10:306–8, 519–23, 577–81 (“in his heart” at 579); ASPIA 1:296, 306.

  156. PGW, Pres. 11:20.

  157. PGW, Pres. 12:335–37; ASPIA 1:310–11.

  158. PGW, Pres. 12:416.

  159. ASPIA 1:378; Gentleman’s Magazine 61 (1786): 1083, 62 (1792): 567–77, 63 (1793): 767.

  160. ASPIA 1:366–67. Washington owned a copy of William Bartram’s Travels through North and South Carolina, published in 1791, and he signed his name on the page opposite the picture of the Seminole chief Mico Chlucco or Long Warrior.

  161. Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 76–77, 84.

  162. James Thomas Flexner, George Washington: Anguish and Farewell, 1793–1799 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 268; Writings of Washington 34:140, 218; PGW, Pres. 18:262–63.

  163. Diaries of GW 6:149–50n; GW to Secretary of War, July 18, 1796, GWPLC; James H. Merrell, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 278–81.

  Chapter 16: The Greatest Indian Victory

  1. St. Clair Papers 2:126; PGW, Pres. 4:141.

  2. PGW, Pres. 4:532; 5:77 (quote). For fuller studies of the ensuing campaigns, see Wiley Sword, President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985); Colin G. Calloway, The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); and William Hogeland, Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion That Opened the West (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017).

  3. PGW, Pres. 7:46, 149; CVSP 5:193–94 (“incorrigible”).

  4. Jeffrey Ostler, “ ‘To Extirpate the Indians’: An Indigenous Consciousness of Genocide in the Ohio Valley and Lower Great Lakes, 1750s–1810,” William and Mary Quarterly 72 (2015): 606–14.

  5. Times (London), Aug. 22, 1791, p. 2, col. 2; Simcoe Correspondence 2:42; Isaac Weld Jr., Travels through the States of North America, and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: John Stockdale, 1799), 2:201–3.

  6. PGW, Pres. 9:554–55.

  7. St. Clair Papers 2:303–4.

  8. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, “The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community,” Ethnohistory 25 (Winter 1978): 16; Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), map 18; Harvey Lewis Carter, The Life and Times of Little Turtle (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 75–77; Milo M. Quaife, ed., “Henry Hay’s Journal from Detroit to the Miami River,” Proceedings of the Wisconsin Historical Society for 1914 (Madison: WHS, 1915), 221–42.

  9. Ebenezer Denny, Military Journal of Ebenezer Denny: An Officer in the Revolutionary and Indian Wars (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859), 145.

  10. Sargent to St. Clair, Aug. 17, 1790, Ohio State Library, Arthur St. Clair Papers, 1788–1815 (hereafter Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL); Territorial Papers 2:301.

  11. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 435, 441; Leroy V. Eid, “ ‘National’ War among Indians of Northeastern North America,” Canadian Review of American Studies 16 (Summer 1985): 145; Leroy V. Eid, “American Indian Military Leadership: St. Clair’s 1791 Defeat,” Journal of Military History 57 (Jan. 1993): 71–88.

  12. Carl F. Klinck and James J. Talman, eds., The Journal of Major John Norton, 1816 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1970), 281–82; White, Middle Ground, 455; Draper Mss. 23U:66–74.

  13. Klinck and Talman, Journal of John Norton, 176; Territorial Papers 2:362; St. Clair Papers 2:95–96; CO 42/83:181 (“unreasonable”).

  14. Donald L. Fixico, “The Alliance of the Three Fires in Trade and War, 1630–1812,” Michigan Historical Review 20 (Fall 1994): 11.

  15. St. Clair Papers 2:132, 155–62; ASPIA 1:93–94.

  16. St. Clair Papers 2:147, 181–82; ASPIA 1:97, 100.

  17. Celia Barnes, Native American Power in the United States, 1783–1795 (Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003), 130–31.

  18. Draper Mss. 2W:324–26 (“convivial glass”).

  19. The Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry, Held at the Special Request of Brigadier General Josiah Harmar, to Investigate his Conduct as Commanding Officer of the Expedition against the Miami Indians, 1790 (Philadelphia: John Fenno, 1791), 2; also in American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Class 5: Military Affairs, ed. Walter Lowrie and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, 7 vols. (Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton, 1832) vol. 1; Denny’s report, Jan. 1, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 22.

  20. Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007), 268.

  21. “Indian History from the Manuscript of Mr. William Wells,” Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine, May 1820, 202.

  22. ASPIA 1:94; Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle, 44–45, 66–81.

  23. John Sugden, Blue Jacket, Warrior of the Shawnees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); Milo M. Quaife, ed., The Indian Captivity of O. M. Spencer (New York: Citadel Press, 1968), 89–92.

  24. Paul A. W. Wallace, ed., Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder; or, Travels amoung the Indians of Pennsylvania, New York & Ohio in the Eighteenth Century (Lewisburg, PA: Wennawoods Publishing, 1998), 165–68 (“long knives”); Rev. John Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1876; rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1971), 81 (“good white men”); White, Middle Ground, 495 (Washington comparison quote).

  25. St. Clair Papers 2:186–87; CO 42/72:77, 79, 81; MPHC 24 (1895): 99–100, 102–3; PTJ 17:131–34, 20:107–8 (Beckwith).

  26. Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle, 91; Gayle Thornborough, ed., Outpost on the Wabash, 1787–1791: Letters of Brigadier General Josiah Harmar and Major John Francis Hamtramck and Other Letters and Documents Selected from the Harmar Papers in the William L. Clements Library (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1957), 266. George Rogers Clark said burying grain was a regular practice and the Indians did so “very usually with success”; Harold C. Syrett et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 27 vols. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1961–87), 7:113.

  27. Denny, Military Journal, 145
, 147; Denny’s report, Jan. 1, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 22; “Journal of Harmar’s Campaign,” Draper Mss. 2W:335–48, Kekionga and Chillicothe at 340–41.

  28. PGW, Pres. 7:70–77; Draper Mss. 2W:340–42; Denny, Military Journal, 146–149; Denny’s report, Jan. 1, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 22; St. Clair to Knox, Oct. 29 and Nov. 6, 1790, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 21 and St. Clair Papers 2:188, 190; Territorial Papers 2:309–10, 313; DHFFC 21:181–84, 235–36, 272, 685, 711–12; Leroy V. Eid, “ ‘The Slaughter Was Reciprocal’: Josiah Harmar’s Two Defeats, 1790,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 65 (Spring 1993): 51–67.

  29. PGW, Pres. 6:615.

  30. PGW, Pres. 6:668; Writings of Washington 31:156; Territorial Papers 2:310.

  31. John Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 319.

  32. The Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry, Held at the Special Request of Brigadier General Josiah Harmar, in American State Papers, Military Affairs, 1:20–30; Draper Mss. 2W:402–6, 419–26, 4U:19–64.

  33. Draper Mss. 2W:395.

  34. The Journal of William Maclay, United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789–1791 (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1927), 339–40, 384; The Diary of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates, in DHFFC 9:340, 342, 379, 385 (pretext).

  35. PTJ 19:440–42, 521 (quote).

  36. PGW, Pres. 7:55–56.

  37. Symmes Papers, Draper Mss. 3WW:79–81; Beverley W. Bond Jr., ed., The Correspondence of John Cleves Symmes (New York: Macmillan, 1926), 134, 136.

  38. PGW, Pres. 7:100–101, 208–9, 470–72; ASPIA 1:121–22; Archer Butler Hulbert, ed., The Records of the Original Proceedings of the Ohio Company, 2 vols. (Marietta, OH: Marietta Historical Commission, 1917), 2:68; Territorial Papers 2:338–39.

  39. PGW, Pres. 7:262–68, 402–13.

  40. PGW, Pres. 8:115; PTJ 20:145, 214.

  41. ASPIA 1:112–13.

  42. PGW, Pres. 7:510; St. Clair Papers 2:283; Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (New York: Free Press, 1975), 110–11.

  43. ASPIA 1:112, 171–74.

  44. PGW, Pres. 7:550–52.

  45. CO 42/73:35–37, 39–41; rpt. in “Information of Blue Jacket,” MPHC 24:135–38.

  46. ASPIA 1:129–33 (list of Indian prisoners at 133); Susan Sleeper-Smith, “George Washington and the Kidnapping of Indian Women in the Wabash River Valley,” paper presented at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Conference, Washington, DC, June 4, 2015.

  47. William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison, 17 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1962–91), 14:32–33.

  48. Cutler to Sargent, Aug. 27, 1791, Winthrop Sargent Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, reel 3, 256.

  49. Wilkinson’s report in ASPIA 1:133–35, and St. Clair Papers 2:233–39; PGW, Pres. 8:535; 9:121.

  50. American State Papers, Military Affairs 1:36, 42.

  51. PTJ 19:442–52, 461–64; Patrick J. Furlong, “Problems of Frontier Logistics in St. Clair’s 1791 Campaign,” in Selected Papers from the 1983 and 1984 George Rogers Clark Trans-Appalachian Frontier History Conferences (Vincennes, IN: National Park Service and University of Vincennes, 1985), available online at http://npshistory.com/series/symposia/george_rogers_clark/1983-1984/sec6.htm (accessed July 31, 2017).

  52. William H. Guthman, March to Massacre: A History of the First Seven Years of the United States Army, 1784–1791 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 207; ASPIA 1:188; American State Papers, Military Affairs 1:36–39; Knox to Butler, June 9, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 26; Ferguson to St. Clair, June 25, 1791, and Knox to Butler, June 23, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 28; St. Clair Papers 2:216–17, 223.

  53. Furlong, “Problems of Frontier Logistics”; St. Clair Papers 2:216, 241; American State Papers, Military Affairs 1:37.

  54. Knox Papers 28:144.

  55. Knox to Butler, July 21, Aug. 4, Aug, 11, Aug. 25, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, cards 30, 31, 32, 33; St. Clair Papers 2:232, 241.

  56. “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary While with General Arthur St. Clair’s Expedition against the Indians,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications 33 (1924): 241.

  57. CVSP 5:370; St. Clair Papers 2:124; Territorial Papers 2:216.

  58. “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 242; Denny, Military Journal, 170; St. Clair to Knox, Aug. 3, 1791, Knox Papers, 29:17.

  59. Arthur St. Clair, A Narrative of the Manner in which the Campaign against the Indians, in the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-one, was Conducted, under the Command of Major General Arthur St. Clair (Philadelphia: n.p., 1812), 5, 26.

  60. American State Papers, Military Affairs 1:36–39.

  61. St. Clair to Knox, Sept. 18, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 34; St. Clair Papers 2:240–41.

  62. PGW, Pres. 9:38.

  63. St. Clair to Ludlow, Aug. 6, 1791, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 31; St. Clair Papers 2:246, 248.

  64. Denny, Military Journal, 154–64; “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 240–53; Milo M. Quaife, ed., “A Picture of the First United States Army: The Journal of Captain Samuel Newman,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 2 (Sept. 1918): 60–73; St. Clair Papers 2:249–59; Frazer E. Wilson, ed., Journal of Capt. Daniel Bradley (Greenville, OH: Frank H. Jobes & Son, 1935), 19–28.

  65. Denny, Military Journal, 171.

  66. St. Clair Papers 2:263; St. Clair, Narrative, 111.

  67. “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 249, 255; St. Clair to Knox, Nov. 1, 1791, Knox Papers, 29:91.

  68. MPHC 24:246–47, 262.

  69. Diaries of GW 2:294.

  70. Consul Willshire Butterfield, History of the Girtys (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1890), 193.

  71. Cary Miller, Ogimaag: Anishinaabbeg Leadership, 1760–1845 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 119; Klinck and Talman, Journal of John Norton, 177; CO 42/89:35; MPHC 24:329–30.

  72. CO 42/89:195; Klinck and Talman, Journal of John Norton, 178.

  73. St. Clair Papers 2:263; “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 258; Winthrop Sargent Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, reel 1, 360; “Extract from a letter from a Gentleman … , Nov. 8, 1791,” Columbian Centinel, Dec. 28, 1791, 3; “St. Clair’s Defeat: Robert Bradshaw’s Narrative,” Draper Mss. 4U:143.

  74. Frazer E. Wilson, ed., “St. Clair’s Defeat, as Told by an Eye-Witness,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications 10 (1901–2): 379–80; Draper Mss. 4U:13; “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 259; St. Clair Papers 2:266; Denny, Military Journal, 165–66; Wilson, Journal of Capt. Daniel Bradley, 29.

  75. St. Clair Papers 2:263; Denny, Military Journal, 166; Quaife, Captivity of O. M. Spencer, 25; “Winthrop Sargent’s Journal,” 260.

  76. “Robert Bradshaw’s Narrative,” Draper Mss. 4U:143.

  77. Testimony of Captain Slough in “Testimonies of the Committee of Inquiry,” Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 39; Klinck and Talman, Journal of Major John Norton, 178; Quaife, Captivity of O. M. Spencer, 25; Sword, President Washington’s Indian War, 191.

  78. Denny, Military Journal, 167–68; “Winthrop Sargent’s Journal,” 261–62; Draper Mss. 4U:13; Darke to Washington, Nov. 9, 1791, Knox Papers, 30:12, and PGW, Pres. 9:158–65 (“Mob at a fair” at 161); Beverley W. Bond Jr., ed., “Memoirs of Benjamin Van Cleve,” Quarterly Publication of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio 17 ( Jan.–June 1922): 26–27.

  79. “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 265; Winthrop Sargent Papers, reel 3, 276–77, 284.

  80. Denny, Military Journal, 171–74; Winthrop Sargent Papers, reel 3, 274, 282; Quaife, Captivity of O. M. Spencer, 27; “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 269; Darke to Washington, Nov. 9, 1791, Knox Papers, 30:12, and PGW, Pres. 9:163.

  81. CO 42/89:193; MPHC 24:336; Klinck and Talman, Journal of
John Norton, 178; “Winthrop Sargent’s Diary,” 262, 272; Winthrop Sargent Papers, reel 3, 306; Territorial Papers 2:382; Draper Mss. 4U:166; “Indian Account, Of the unfortunate action of the 4th Nov. received via Pittsburgh.” New-Hampshire Gazette and General Advertiser, March 7, 1791; “Story of George Ash,” Cincinnati Chronicle and Literary Gazette, Nov. 7, 1829.

  82. Winthrop Sargent Papers, reel 1, 417.

  83. Lear’s account appears in Richard Rush, Washington in Domestic Life (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1857), 65–69, George Washington Parke Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, ed. Benson J. Lossing (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1860), 416–19, and Benson Lossing, The Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812 (New York: Harper’s, 1868), 49–50.

  84. PGW, Pres. 9:275; CVSP 5:399–400; Draper Mss. 4U:153–54, 166; PTJ 22:362–63, 384.

  85. PTJ 22:389–90.

  86. Denny, Military Journal, 175–77.

  87. PGW, Pres. 9:274; ASPIA 1:136.

  88. PGW, Pres. 9:276.

  89. William Patrick Walsh, “The Defeat of Major General Arthur St. Clair, November 4, 1791: A Study of the Nation’s Response, 1791–1793” (PhD diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 1977), 122.

  90. Darke to Washington, Nov. 9, 1791, Knox Papers, 30:12; PGW, Pres. 9:158–65.

  91. PGW, Pres. 10:156–57.

  92. Hutchinson et al., Papers of James Madison 14:213.

  93. CVSP 6:145–53, 155–57; PGW, Pres. 10:1–2 (quote).

  94. Boston Gazette, Jan. 2, 1792, 2.

  95. PGW, Pres. 10:558.

  96. PGW, Pres. 9:575–77.

  97. PGW, Pres. 9:291–92.

  98. PGW, Pres. 9:556.

  99. PGW, Pres. 10:93–94.

  100. PGW, Pres. 10:97–98, 102–5.

  101. Walsh, “The Defeat of Major General Arthur St. Clair,” chs. 4–5; for example, the Boston Gazette, Feb. 13, 1792, 102.

  102. Hutchinson et al., Papers of James Madison 14:213.

  103. PGW, Pres. 9:505.

  104. St. Clair to Washington, March 26, 1792, Feb. 24 (draft), March 26 (formal letter), March 31, 1792, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 38; St. Clair to Washington, Apr. 7, 1792, Arthur St. Clair Papers, OSL, card 40; St. Clair Papers 2:279, 283–86; PGW, Pres. 10:155–56, 172–73, 218, 226–27; Connecticut Courant, Apr. 23, 1792, 1; American Museum, or Universal Magazine, June 3, 1792, 85–88.