Colonial America

by Richard Middleton, Anne Lombard

  For the Micmacs the most serious threat to their culture arrived in 1713 when the Treaty of Utrecht consigned Micmac lands in Nova Scotia to Britain and British settlers began to move into the region. The French government was reluctant to become openly involved in time of peace. Nevertheless the Micmacs determined to fight for their homes with the encouragement of a Jesuit priest, the Abbé Le Loutre, who had a mission at Bay Verte on the isthmus connecting Nova Scotia to the mainland. A series of raids was launched to confine the British to their principal settlement at Annapolis Royal, and until 1750 the Micmacs were indeed generally successful in their endeavors to defend their homes.

  Their Abenaki neighbors to the south faced greater challenges, but they too managed to hold their own against colonization for many years. The Abenakis included a number of nations, known collectively as the eastern and western Abenakis. Among the eastern Abenaki peoples were the Maliseets, Kennebecs, Pigwackets, and Penobscots. The western Abenakis included the Sokoki and Penacook peoples. Like the Micmacs, the Abenakis were primarily hunters, fishermen, and gatherers, but members of the western Abenakis also found it advantageous to engage in agriculture, and as a result their settlements were more sedentary than those of the Micmacs. Nevertheless their ability to move, either in family groups or in larger bands, ultimately helped them to avoid the devastation suffered by the Indians of southern New England.

  Document 24

  The Micmacs ridicule the French, 1677, reprinted in Colin G. Calloway, The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America (Boston, 1994), 50–2

  Though allies of the French, the Micmacs remained skeptical of European culture. Questions to consider: What can the following episode tell us about the relationship between the Micmacs and the French? What can it tell us about the differences between Micmac society and French society?

  Thou sayest of us also that we are the most miserable and most unhappy of all men, living without religion, without manners, without honour, without social order, and, in a word, without any rules, like the beasts in our woods and in our forests, lacking bread, wine, and a thousand other comforts which thou has in superfluity in Europe … I beg thee now to believe that, all miserable as we seem in thine eyes, we consider ourselves nevertheless much happier than thou in this, that we are very content with the little that we have; and believe also once for all, I pray, that thou deceivest thyself greatly if thou thinkest to persuade us that thy country is better than ours. For if France, as thou sayest, is a little terrestrial paradise, art thou sensible to leave it? And why abandon wives, children, relatives, and friends? Why risk thy life and thy property every year, and why venture thyself with such risk, in any season whatsoever, to storms and tempests of the sea in order to come to a strange and barbarous country which thou considerest the poorest and least fortunate of the world? Besides, since we are wholly convinced of the contrary, we scarcely take the trouble to go to France, because we fear, with good reason, lest we find little satisfaction there, seeing, in our own experience, that those who are natives thereof leave it every year in order to enrich themselves on our shores. We believe, further, that you are also incomparably poorer than we, and that you are only simple journeymen, valets, servants, and slaves, all masters and grand captains though you may appear, seeing that you glory in our old rags and in our miserable suits of beaver which can no longer be of use to us, and that you find among us, in the fishery for cod which you make in these parts, the wherewithal to comfort your misery and the poverty which oppresses you. As to us, we find all our riches and all our conveniences among ourselves, without trouble and without exposing our lives to the dangers in which you find yourselves constantly through your long voyages. And, whilst feeling compassion for you in the sweetness of our repose, we wonder at the anxieties and cares which you give yourselves night and day in order to load your ship. We see also that all your people live, as a rule, only upon cod … until things come to such a pass that if you wish some good morsels, it is at our expense; and you are obliged to have recourse to the Indians, who you despise so much, and to beg them to go a-hunting that you may be regaled. Now tell me this one little thing, if thou hast any sense: which of these two is the wisest and happiest – he who labours without ceasing and only obtains, and that with great trouble, enough to live on, or he who rests in comfort and finds all that he needs in the pleasure of hunting and fishing? … Learn now, my brother, once and for all, because I must open to thee my heart: there is no Indian who does not consider himself more happy and more powerful than the French.

  The Abenakis' relationship with the English in the New England settlements was originally cordial, and they traded with both the English and the French for decades after the arrival of the first settlers. Like most groups that had contact with Europeans the Abenakis were exposed to unfamiliar diseases, which caused population losses. However, during much of the seventeenth century they were relatively successful in replenishing their lost population by absorbing refugees from further south. The largest influx of refugees came after King Philip's War, when between 1,000 and 2,000 Algonquian-speaking peoples from southern New England migrated north and were taken into Abenaki villages or allowed to live under Abenaki protection.

  By the time of King Philip's War the Abenakis' relationship with the English had become considerably less amicable, since English settlers had begun moving into their territory in the middle of the seventeenth century. The settlers endangered Abenaki villages and drove away their game, cheated them in trade and demanded that they give up their guns. Some Abenakis therefore joined the rebellion against the English in 1675, opening up a second front of King Philip's War in Maine. Even though the English ultimately prevailed over Indian resistance in southern New England, the Abenakis actually won the war in Maine. By the end of 1676 they had driven most of the English settlers out of their villages in Maine to seek shelter in Massachusetts. When Massachusetts authorities finally signed a peace treaty ending the war in April of 1678, they had to agree to pay a token tribute to the Indians, rather than vice versa.8

  During the 1680s, English people began returning to their former settlements in New Hampshire and southern Maine. The Abenakis once again were faced with the problem of having to compete with the settlers for the use of their own land. Some Abenakis sought French support in raids against the English. Yet the French government proved a reluctant ally, fearing that it would antagonize the English by attacking them on English territory. The French Catholic Church provided a welcome alternative. Many Abenaki families migrated north to St. Francis, a Jesuit mission village in Québec, beginning in the 1680s. Here they found shelter from English hostilities, which could be devastating. Like other Indians who lived in the reserves along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, they typically converted to Catholicism but did not dramatically change their cultural practices. Chiefs and tribal councils retained their authority, and Indian languages continued to be spoken. Men continued to hunt to supplement what women produced on their farms. Children were raised to think of themselves as members of Abenaki peoples, not as French.

  Other Abenakis remained in northern New England, where they continued to resist the encroachment of the settlers on their lands. With the beginning of King William's War Abenakis began a series of raids on English villages, destroying houses and taking prisoners in the hope that they could convince the settlers to abandon their towns and go back to their homelands. Attacks resumed during Queen Anne's War, terrifying the settlers as entire villages were destroyed and the survivors taken prisoner and marched north to Montréal and Québec.

  After the wars more Abenakis moved north to avoid further conflict, while those who remained behind continued to be caught up in hostilities with the British. The people most immediately affected by the tide of British settlement were the Norridgewock Indians of the Kennebec River, home to another French mission run by Father Sébastien Rale. The Norridgewocks repeatedly tried diplomacy to reach an amicable settlement with their new neighbors,
since they had no wish to become the clients of France and were keen to trade with the British. All attempts to negotiate, however, were frustrated by the unacceptable demands of the Massachusetts authorities, who insisted on hostages to secure conformity with their wishes. Rale himself tried constantly to mediate between the parties, seeking to do what was best for his mission in a difficult situation. The British, however, believed Rale was an evil priest who connived with French authorities in the sending of war parties against peaceful British settlements, a view later perpetuated by the nineteenth-century American historian Francis Parkman.9

  In fact the Norridgewock Indians were forced to struggle alone in their conflict with Massachusetts, since the French were not willing to provide effective assistance against a British colony during peacetime. Neither did other Abenakis provide much military assistance. They lacked a political structure for coordinating broad military action, and by now most Abenaki peoples had decided to seek neutrality in order to avoid conflict. Their main interest, as in the past, was to obtain essential European goods through trade. And by now they had learned that their best chance to continue trading was to maintain good relations with both European nations.

  The attempt of the Norridgewock people to protect their way of life finally ended in 1724 when Governor Shute of Massachusetts sent an expedition to destroy Rale's mission. Rale, an old man in his late sixties, was scalped and brutally killed by the Massachusetts soldiers. The remnants of the Norridgewock Abenakis fled to the French settlement of St. Francis, and a neutralist faction gained control in most Abenaki communities as people decided that diplomacy was a more prudent course than violent resistance. In 1727 the Abenakis concluded a treaty with Massachusetts. It was hardly a panacea, since further disagreements arose soon afterwards. Yet the Abenakis' decision to remain neutral, as well as the decision of many Abenaki families to migrate north into New France, enabled them to escape further conflict for several decades. Like the Iroquois they had learned that avoiding conflict with either the British or the French offered their best chance to maintain trade ties with Europeans and retain their independence.

  Document 25

  An attempt to cheat Indians of their lands, New Jersey, 1716, reprinted in W. Keith Kavenagh, Foundations of Colonial America: A Documentary History (New York, 1973), Vol. 2, 1595–6

  Unscrupulous whites commonly used fraudulent deeds to rob Indians of their land, which led many Indians to distrust all paper documents. Some British colonial officials, especially in New Jersey and Pennsylvania where the Quakers were sympathetic, attempted to protect them from such practices. This description of a hearing before a Quaker Justice of the Peace illustrates one such attempt. Questions to consider: What can this interchange tell us about the relationship between Quaker officials, non-Quaker white settlers, and Delaware peoples? Do you think the Quakers' efforts to protect the Indians were likely to have been successful?

  John Kay came before me, Jacob Doughty, one of the King's Justices of Peace for the County of Burlington.

  Myself [John Kay] with several others sent for John Weitherill and heard the Indian's complaint against him, which was that said John Weitherill had come to said Indian King and treated him with cyder and made him drunk, and that he came again to him the next morning and would have given him more cider and told him he sold him some land the night before, being land which said Indian King and other Indians lived on, and had set his hand to a deed or writing for the sale of said land. The said Indian King declared he remembered nothing of selling any land to said John Weitherill or setting his hand to any paper and further said he had always refused to sell that land and had reserved it for himself and the Indians to live upon and that the Indians had a right in it and would never suffer him to sell it. He had also promised them that he would not sell it and that he loved to live near John Wills and other Englishmen whom he called his bretheren and … if John Weitherill had got him to sign any paper it was by defraud and cheating him and that he could neither eat, drink, nor rest with quiet until that writing or paper was destroyed.

  We used what endeavours we could with John Weitherill to persuade him to deliver the writing to the Indian King and make him and the rest of the Indians easy, telling him how unjust such an action it was and the dangerous consequences that might thereby happen, but could not prevail with him to give any satisfaction.

  Eventually the governor of New Jersey interceded, and the deed was destroyed.

  One group of northern Indians who waged a more difficult struggle to retain their autonomy after 1700 were the Algonquian-speaking Lenni Lenapes, now known as the Delawares, in Pennsylvania. Originally the Delawares had inhabited much of southern New York and New Jersey, but by the late seventeenth century they had been pushed back by white settlement to the region around the Delaware River. By 1700 they numbered perhaps 4,000 people. Never a single nation, the Delawares were divided into two linguistic groups: the Munsees, or northern Delawares, and the Unamis, or lower Delawares. The Delawares were largely agrarian in their means of subsistence, growing corn and legumes, though like all Eastern Woodlands Indians they relied on hunting for meat. They lived mainly in small, semi-permanent villages, some of which were stockaded, though others were merely a series of dwellings scattered along a convenient stretch of river.

  Delaware relations with the English were for many years fairly harmonious, not least because William Penn had made particular efforts in the 1680s to negotiate proper land purchases. The Delawares were content to sell some territory, seeing the advantage of trade and assistance against other, more aggressive neighbors. The Quakers, almost alone out of all the English settlers, showed respect for the indigenous inhabitants and their customs. Yet despite the Quakers' well-intentioned solicitousness for their Delaware neighbors, the relationship compromised the Indians' independence almost from its inception.

  As early as 1700 the Delawares were being pushed away from their homelands along the lower Delaware River by European settlers. Some moved further upriver to the fork between the Delaware and the Lehigh rivers. Others, as we have seen, moved to the Susquehanna Valley which by now was becoming a relatively heterogeneous place thanks to the resettlement here of the Delaware, Shawnee, Nanticoke, Conoy, and Conestoga Indians. Here Delawares became “Props of the Longhouse,” since this was a region where the Iroquois claimed to have jurisdiction by right of conquest. The Delawares did not see themselves as Iroquois subjects, but made nominal acknowledgments of Iroquois authority so as to avoid conflict.

  After Penn returned to England, Indian policy in Pennsylvania fell largely into the hands of his former secretary, James Logan. Pennsylvania had no militia to protect it from hostile Indians, should they attack the colony. So during the 1720s Logan began to further strengthen the colony's relationship with the Iroquois, in hopes that the Iroquois could serve as a proxy defense force to guard the colony's inhabitants against attackers. Under the terms of the treaty agreed by Pennsylvania and the Iroquois in 1727, the Iroquois purported to sell Pennsylvania most of the land in the Susquehanna Valley in return for Pennsylvania's recognition of their right to sovereignty over the Indians in the region. Of course it was not the Iroquois at all, but rather Delawares, Shawnees, and other recently resettled peoples who actually inhabited that land. As result of the treaty, the claims both of the Iroquois and of Pennsylvania to the Susquehanna grew stronger, while those of the actual inhabitants were weakened.

  In the 1730s Penn's sons, Thomas and John, took over the proprietorship of Pennsylvania, with the assistance of James Logan. All three were more interested in developing their lands than in protecting the Indians, having abandoned the Quaker moral commitment to treat the native inhabitants with Christian compassion. The situation was the more volatile because numerous Germans and Scots-Irish were now entering Pennsylvania in search of land. The arrival of the new immigrants offered the Penns the prospect of huge profits from land sales if they could remove the native inhabitants.

  The result was a n
ew mechanism to dispossess the Delawares from their homeland on the upper Delaware River, called the “Walking Purchase” of 1737. Thomas Penn claimed to have discovered an ancient deed granting his father an area extending from the junction of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers as far as a man could walk in one and a half days. The Delawares grudgingly agreed to respect the deed, believing it would require them to give up only a relatively small area. Unbeknownst to them, Thomas Penn had arranged for a relay of runners to mark out the boundary along a trail they had secretly blazed in advance. The runners ran a distance of 70 miles to the west, enabling the Penns to claim over one million acres of new territory. The Delawares could do nothing to stop them. They had trustingly based their security for 50 years on their original treaties with William Penn. Although they totaled about 4,000 people, their warriors were too few and their settlements too exposed for outright resistance.

  Not that the Penn brothers had a completely free hand, since they still had to deal with the Quakers in the assembly. It was partly to circumvent this obstacle that Thomas and John Penn again enlisted the aid of the Iroquois. The two sides had several interests in common. Apart from land, the Penns wanted to open trade with the western tribes, which they could do only with the agreement of the Iroquois. The latter believed that the subjection of the Delawares would increase their power and influence. Accordingly, in 1744 a treaty was concluded at Lancaster. The Iroquois claimed suzerainty over the Delawares on the upper Delaware River, whom they claimed to have conquered and reduced to the status of women, and told them to move to the other Delaware settlements on the Susquehanna River. The Delawares were forced to leave. The Pennsylvania proprietors received the lands thus vacated, along with the blessing of the Iroquois for a western trade route.