by Rob Harper
ans now sought imperial recognition of their political and territorial sover-
eignty, along with ongoing trade and diplomacy. Their diverse strategies for
obtaining these goals often caused tensions within and between their own na-
tions. colonists, meanwhile, raced to occupy and obtain legal title to upper
Ohio Valley land. rather than either accepting or defying imperial authority,
colonists more often debated which manifestation of the imperial state ought to
prevail in a given time and place. an array of uncertainties— the merits of
decades- old Virginia land grants, the precise western boundary of pennsylva-
nia, and more— fueled lasting disputes in which all sides claimed to respect and
uphold some version of tangled and contradictory imperial policies. such feuds
gummed up the workings of nascent governing institutions, but also fostered
coalitions and patronage networks that in themselves created a tenuous order.
This story of the interwar Ohio Valley begins with the creation of two
new communities: the seneca town of two creeks and the cluster of colo-
nists around redstone. From the mid- 1760s into the early 1770s, the people
of these communities traded, talked, fought, and made peace. Both groups
often exasperated nominal authorities in the six nations and the British em-
pire, sometimes finding common cause as they grappled with imperial de-
mands. in 1768, a massive new land cession threatened to bring on a new war,
but British officials responded with a compromise boundary that most of the
region’s inhabitants seemed to accept. Throughout, indians and colonists met
and interacted often, usual y peaceful y. When they fought, they did so in this
context of everyday encounters. animosity endured, and sometimes led to
bloodshed, but through the early 1770s the region’s peoples contained such
violence. rather than a virtual state of war, they preserved a tenuous peace.
On a sunday morning in march 1768, the reverend John steel delivered a
sermon and a death threat. The governor of pennsylvania had sent him and
Figure 1. Th e Upper Ohio Valley, 1765–74.
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three companions to redstone creek to order the unauthorized colonists
there to leave or face execution. The errand seemed urgent. Just two months
before, two white men had murdered ten senecas and mohicans in the mid-
dle creek massacre, 170 miles to the east. The local sheriff jailed the culprits
in carlisle, but nearby colonists rioted and set them free. to atone for this
failure of colonial justice, provincial officials aimed to drive off the redstone
colonists, about whose presence the six nations had repeatedly complained.
When steel arrived, the trespassers insisted that their native neighbors “were
very peaceable” and wanted them to stay, but the minister insisted that “a few
straggling indians” could hardly represent “the mind of the six nations” as a
whole. amid heated discussion, most of steel’s audience agreed to leave.
Then eight senecas arrived from the town of two creeks, about seventy miles
to the west, bearing wampum to affirm the integrity of their words. steel and
his companions hoped they would persuade the holdouts to move, but in-
stead they insisted that the colonists stay. all talk of leaving ceased and the
pennsylvanians headed for home, their mission a failure.4
like the redstone colony, the seneca town of two creeks was only a few
years old. The historic seneca homeland lies south of lake Ontario, several
hundred miles northeast, but by the 1740s many senecas and other haudeno-
saunees had built new towns on the upper Ohio river and its tributaries.
during the seven years’ War, a group of senecas left their vil ages on French
creek, between the allegheny river and lake erie, and moved down the
Ohio river, hoping to find “plenty of game.” They built about twenty cabins
on the river’s west bank, just above the mouths of two creeks that entered the
Ohio from opposite sides. colonists subsequently referred to the community
by various names: two creeks, cross creeks, crow’s town, or simply “the
mingo town.” in 1761, other senecas built a town at the mouth of pine creek,
just a few miles from pittsburgh and directly across the Ohio from the home
of the British indian agent george croghan. They likely abandoned the site
during pontiac’s War but reoccupied it soon thereafter. in early 1767, a third
group of senecas occupied an abandoned shawnee and delaware vil age at
the mouth of Beaver river, thirty miles downstream.5
By settling on the region’s aquatic thoroughfare, these Ohio river senecas
gambled on a peaceful and commercial y vibrant future. Their new towns
positioned them to profit from colonial trade, but also left them vulnerable to
attack. during the seven years’ War many delawares and shawnees had
moved from similarly exposed locations to new sites northwest of the Ohio,
farther from British garrisons. By contrast, the people of the pine creek,
containment, 1765–72
27
Beaver river, and two creeks towns aimed to capitalize on proximity. in
1765, as western indians assembled at Fort pitt to end pontiac’s War, about
eighty two creeks senecas showed up with loads of peltry, “expecting to
trade.” The political y nimble guyasuta, now a prominent leader at pine
creek, urged “our Brethren, the english,” to “Open the trade, and let us sell
our skins.” This enthusiasm for economic connectedness accompanied an
equal y fervent political independence. ethnic and linguistic ties linked the
three towns to one another, and to the six nations league as a whole, but like
other haudenosaunee communities they governed themselves local y. in
1765, when croghan led an intercultural embassy to illinois, a two creeks
leader insisted on joining him to represent his community, marking it as an
autonomous entity rather than a mere satellite.6 Their subsequent defense of
the redstone colonists thus reflected a shared ambivalence, if not indiffer-
ence, toward national and imperial authorities.
a well- worn path stretched southeastward from two creeks to the red-
stone country, where John ryan killed captain peter and the reverend steel
gave his ineffective sermon. in the eyes of imperial officials, the redstone
colonists had flagrantly violated a royal ban on trans- appalachian coloniza-
tion. colonists could move there, they argued, only after the six nations sold
the region to the crown, and then only under imperial and provincial over-
sight. One described the colonists as “idle persons” looking to avoid the de-
mands of either “landlord or law.”7 people with so little regard for their king,
they reasoned, would hardly tolerate other aspects of social order.
The officials failed to recognize, or conveniently forgot, how imperial and
provincial policies had spurred redstone’s colonization. twenty years earlier,
land- hungry Virginia had issued a series of vast upper Ohio land grants to
well- connected speculators, who surveyed, established trading posts, and
brought colonists to live there. The colonists fled during the midcentury
wars, but
the fighting created new means and incentives to move west. Vir-
ginia promised western land to those who fought to defend its claim, while
the British army built two roads linking the region to the seaboard colonies.
after expelling the French and building Fort pitt, many soldiers and camp
followers liked what they saw of the region and chose to stay. By the early
1770s, thousands had joined them. such migrants plainly violated the royal
ban on western colonization, but Fort pitt’s commanders muddied things by
inviting farmers, traders, and craftsmen to settle nearby to help feed and sup-
ply the garrison. citing such arrangements, some colonists insisted they had
built homesteads on “the King’s orders.” Others asserted that Virginia’s
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prewar grants— including a 100,000- acre spread issued to William russell
and partners— trumped the royal prohibition. rather than a spontaneous
flood of independent pioneers, the colonization of the upper Ohio Valley
stemmed from the expansionist policies of Virginia, wars that those policies
brought about, and the British army’s determination to hold on to the region
after the wars were won.8
The redstone colony combined all these elements. in the 1740s Thomas
cresap helped establish the Ohio company, the most ambitious and influen-
tial of the Virginia grantees. he became one of the company’s foremost
agents, surveying land, reaching out to nearby indians, and fending off rival
speculators. The company built a small trading post at redstone, cleared a
rough path to the potomac, and recruited eleven families to settle nearby. The
colonists fled during the seven years’ War, returned in the early 1760s when
the British built a small fort there, and fled once more at the outbreak of pon-
tiac’s War. When hostilities ended, cresap sought to revive his dormant claim
despite the new ban. he offered land around redstone on easy terms, aiming
to populate the area with people whose right to the land depended on his
own. in the spring of 1766, after the six nations complained about the tres-
passers, both the army and the governor of Virginia threatened to drive them
off by force. cresap promptly met with a few dozen haudenosaunee, who
allegedly “ceded to him a large extent of land.” neither the six nations nor
British authorities considered the sale valid: cresap likely met only with
passing travelers, rather than anyone empowered to sell territory. But he
found many customers willing to gamble on his dubious title: within a year,
hundreds of families had built homesteads on his claim. When an army de-
tachment burned all the houses they could find and urged the colonists to
leave, they quickly rebuilt, and more joined them. Within a few years of pon-
tiac’s War, colonists had occupied nearly all the good farmland east of the
monongahela.9
rather than illegal squatters with no regard for authority, these migrants
are better understood as quasi- legal colonists seeking to manipulate the law
for their own ends. From long experience in the seaboard colonies, they had
learned that the imperial state’s many arms often promulgated contradictory
policies, and that local interpretations of the law usual y mattered more than
imperial ones. They also knew that wealthy and well- connected colonists
often exploited such contradictions to their own advantage, particularly in
matters of land tenure. These circumstances, together with the vicissitudes of
the atlantic economy and the perennial scarcity of cash, had dashed many
containment, 1765–72
29
people’s aspirations to own farms east of the mountains, even as the royal
proclamation denied them the chance to obtain legal title in the west. But the
“fluid constitutional environment” of British north america offered fuzzy
and malleable lines between legality and illegality. The quasi- legal claims of
russell and cresap, as well as the army’s need for farmers to supply Fort pitt,
suggested plausible routes to circumvent london’s disapproval. Far from in-
different to government authority, the monongahela colonists aimed to fi-
nesse murky imperial policies to gain a title that might someday prove good.10
The colonists’ persistence reflected a mutual y advantageous relationship
with nearby indians like the two creeks senecas. a decade of war had dis-
rupted trade networks and inflated prices. meanwhile, postwar imperial pol-
icymakers tried to restrict frontier trade to established posts like Fort pitt,
under army and indian department supervision. agents who stood to profit
from the new system insisted that it would prevent fraud and abuse, but it
forced indians to travel farther to buy goods and limited competition among
merchants. many simply ignored the policy. shawnee and delaware towns in
Ohio soon hosted many resident traders, often working for prominent penn-
sylvania merchants, who trucked and bartered at wil . On the monongahela,
cresap regularly traded with haudenosaunees from the Ohio river towns, as
well as others passing through the region, and asked Virginia’s governor to
help squeeze out pennsylvanian competitors. after the governor rebuffed
him, cresap and his colonists waged a price war, inviting indians to buy
goods “at one half the rates” charged by pittsburgh merchants. The pittsbur-
ghers howled in protest. in 1770, croghan complained that “every Farmer
[wa]s a sutler,” foiling all his attempts to police trade. cresap’s low prices
helped reconcile his customers to the growth of his colony. as a rival specu-
lator noted, indians were “more oblidging” to colonists “[w]ho trade[d] with
them.”11
The redstone colonists also paid at least some respect to indian territorial
rights. They built homesteads only east of the monongahela river, “for fear of
disturbing” their native neighbors. This discretion likely reflected an agree-
ment with nearby senecas. When provincial officials surveyed the southern
border of pennsylvania, indians stopped them at the monongahela, insisting
that the survey proceed no farther until they were “paid for the land.” They
did not object to the survey east of the monongahela, even though Britain
had not yet paid for that land either, suggesting that they, too, recognized the
river as an intercultural boundary, even if the British empire did not. This
common understanding likely emerged during informal discussions,
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probably in the course of trade. Ohio indians ful y expected the six nations
to sell the monongahela Valley within a few years— in 1765, William Johnson
and six nations leaders had demanded that they acquiesce to the planned
cession— and so the premature arrival of cresap and his colonists deprived
them of nothing they did not already expect to lose. This expectation, to-
gether with their shared understanding of a monongahela boundary, de-
terred nearby indians from opposing the colonization of redstone, even
when British officers encouraged them to do so.12
For one haudenosaunee family, the redstone colonists were literal y
neighbors
. like many others of his nation, mohawk peter moved west from
Kahnawake, near montreal, but while most of the migrants settled in central
and northern Ohio, peter, his wife, and their children made their home near
the mouth of redstone creek. They may have done so to be close to his wife’s
British family: when pontiac’s War began, they took refuge among her rela-
tives east of the mountains. prior to that conflict they had lived alongside red-
stone’s small British garrison, on the site of cresap’s earlier Ohio company
settlement. after pontiac’s War, peter’s family reoccupied their home along-
side the rapidly growing colonial population. When six nations spokesmen
demanded that the redstone colonists be evicted, they stressed that peter and
his family could stay. in 1768, when the two creeks delegation came to the
redstone colonists’ defense, they stayed at peter’s home. The following year,
when a pennsylvania land office began selling upper Ohio Valley land, peter
obtained a warrant for over three hundred acres across the monongahela from
redstone. his widow and son sold the land in the mid- 1780s, perhaps to es-
cape growing anti- indian sentiment. But in the 1760s, trade, cooperation, and
intermarriage remained possible, even amid wartime upheaval.13
two months after steel’s mission to redstone, perhaps two thousand
Ohio indians met with pennsylvania officials in pittsburgh. six nations
spokesmen once again demanded that the British “remove the people from
our lands” until “you have purchased them.” in reply, the pennsylvanians
detailed their attempts to do so and griped about interference from two
creeks. a prominent pine creek leader agreed to accompany pennsylvanians
John Frazier and William Thompson to redstone to drive off the offenders
once and for al . The next morning, Frazier and Thompson woke early, sad-
dled their horses, and waited. after some time the senecas appeared and de-
clared they could not undertake such a “disagreeable” task. The english, they
argued, ought to take full responsibility for their own people’s misbehavior: if
