Unsettling the West
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ever they may threaten to forsake us . . . it is impossible they can exist with-
out our aid.” But indians who did not receive desired supplies often refused
to fight. One party returned home when de peyster refused them a keg of
rum. morgan, a talented young shawnee, did the same when the British
failed to replace his stolen saddle. indians also took exception to the euro-
pean practice of releasing prisoners on parole, which sometimes forced them
to “fight twice against the same person.” such grievances amplified doubts
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about other British promises. during a Virginian assault on their towns,
shawnees refused to let a British artilleryman borrow two horses to haul
away the king’s cannon. to punish such behavior, haldimand ordered that
gifts be reserved to those indians who were “most attentive” to British direc-
tion, a policy that did little to reconcile his independent- minded allies.6
These tensions reflected schisms within the broad British alliance. de-
spite a shared antipathy for Ohio Valley colonists and a common interest in
British trade and patronage, differences among allied indians hindered their
collective efforts. in the spring of 1780, de peyster grudgingly sent fifty sol-
diers with two small cannon to help attack the Virginian outpost at the Fal s
of the Ohio. hundreds of warriors from the Wabash and great lakes nations
joined them, creating an unusual y impressive combined army. But Ohio in-
dians’ need to defend their towns jarred with their northern and western al-
lies’ desire to take horses, captives, and scalps. The Wyandots refused to
participate and instead attacked the upper Ohio Valley, which posed a greater
threat to sandusky. The shawnees similarly insisted on first attacking small
communities in the licking Valley, arguing that bypassing them would leave
their own towns “naked & defenceless.” The licking Valley colonists surren-
dered quickly and great lakes warriors promptly seized children to take
home for adoption, ignoring a British promise to leave colonial families in-
tact. The warriors eventual y returned their captives, but then slaughtered the
colonists’ cattle, leaving the meat to rot. They then decamped to raid colonial
horse herds, leaving the Ohio indians and the British with hundreds of cap-
tive mouths to feed, many miles to traverse, and too few men and supplies to
attack the Fal s. The British commander reluctantly led his men and his pris-
oners back to detroit, grumbling that he could have “gone through the whole
country without any opposition, had the indians preserved the cattle.”7
at Fort pitt, Brodhead’s 1779 triumph faded quickly. instead of peace, his
intransigence had brought mounting terror and bloodshed. he dreamed of
retaliating against sandusky but logistical barriers repeatedly stymied his
plans. long- standing obstacles— factional divides, lack of provisions, the du-
bious value of government credit, and colonists’ reluctance to undertake long
campaigns— only worsened as the war dragged on. in 1780, parasites killed
nearly all the upper Ohio Valley’s swine, and the army lacked salt to preserve
what little meat remained. Farmers increasingly refused to sell their produce
for congressional paper, prompting Brodhead to commandeer food by force.
in retaliation, colonists hid their cattle in the hil s and “threaten[ed] to rise in
arms” against the troops. One provisioning party failed to find enough food
horrors, 1780–82
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to feed itself. local militia commanders faced similar problems. many men
refused to undertake militia service at al , often citing uncertainty about state
and county boundaries. Virginia and pennsylvania nominal y resolved their
boundary dispute in 1779, but failed to survey the actual line for several more
years, fueling ongoing hostility between their local partisans.8
a dispute between Brodhead and Westmoreland county militia officers
exemplified both the importance of government support and the divisiveness
that plagued revolutionary defenses. The Westmorelanders, led by county
commander archibald lochry and his father- in- law, Joseph erwin, main-
tained government- supported ranging companies, recruited for six- to twelve-
month terms. a long list of accusers reported that they chronical y misused
government- issued money and weaponry. guns meant to arm frontier com-
munities never reached their intended recipients; men paid to patrol the fron-
tier allegedly worked on their commanders’ farms or “loiter[ed] away their
time at the taverns, or straggling about the country.” in late 1779, as the
terms of two Westmoreland companies neared completion, Brodhead sought
to recruit their members as regular troops, hoping to keep them under closer
supervision. But when he ordered the companies to Fort pitt, the lochry fac-
tion refused to comply, demanding that Brodhead feed and pay their men, but
not command them. Brodhead tried to arrest the recalcitrant officers, includ-
ing erwin; when they eluded him, he stopped supplying their men with food.
The dispute simmered down by spring— Brodhead got his men and helped
supply a new ranging company— but animosity between army and militia of-
ficers would plague the region until war’s end.9
With no means of attacking Britain’s great lakes ports, revolutionary
commanders instead set out to burn indian towns and crops. such expedi-
tions required only weeks of militia service rather than months, and revolu-
tionary governments typical y supported them with ammunition, officers,
and sometimes regular troops. Virginian officer george rogers clark, who
had famously captured henry hamilton at Vincennes, took charge of opera-
tions in Kentucky. There, militia officers ordered homesteads to provide one
or two men along with fifteen or twenty days’ supply of food, while Virginia
provided ammunition. British officers reported that the Kentucky militia
could raise “three or four thousand in a few days” to raid across the Ohio. in
an august 1780 raid, clark and one thousand men destroyed four shawnee
towns and their crops, leaving the inhabitants to face starvation. The Virgin-
ians killed one captive “by ripping up her Bel y & otherwise mangling her”
and dug up graves in hopes of receiving a government- issued bounty for the
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corpses’ scalps. in retaliation, the shawnees captured and burned to death
one of clark’s men. They then rebuilt their towns to the northwest, asking
their neighbors to help feed them through the winter.10
But while short forays spread horror, longer campaigns yielded frustra-
tion and defeat. clark’s designs on detroit fell prey to the fractiousness and
recalcitrance of Ohio Valley colonists. he needed hundreds of men from
both Kentucky and the upper Ohio Valley, along with provisions for many
weeks of campaigning. Virginia gave him ample money, and pennsylvania
openly encouraged its citizens to join him. But despite this formal state sup-
port, many in the Ohio Valley still opposed him. Brodhead and western
pennsylvania officials accus
ed Virginia of seeking only “to acquire more ex-
tensive territory” and warned that clark’s long campaign would leave pitts-
burgh and its environs all but defenseless. Others feared that if clark got the
flour and beef he demanded, the upper Ohio Valley would face shortages.
many simply refused to participate. militia officers warned that men would
“suffer any punishment” rather than march with clark. meanwhile, wartime
inflation prevented clark and his allies from hiring volunteers or even from
clothing the recruits they could find.11
When persuasion and payment failed, clark turned to coercion. Virginia
had empowered him to draft men for his campaign. pennsylvania had not,
but in Westmoreland county lochry and his allies resolved to do so anyway.
in the disputed region, longtime Virginia partisans, led by dorsey pentecost,
decreed that they could draft any men living in territory that Virginia had
previously claimed. lochry’s and pentecost’s rivals accused them of using
“armed force . . . to dragoon the inhabitants” into a “hyghly oppressive and
abuseive” draft. But ordering a draft was one thing; implementing it quite
another. in monongalia county, rioting colonists at least temporarily halted
clark’s draft. elsewhere, continued doubts about the pennsylvania- Virginia
boundary convinced many colonists to refuse militia duty “under any gov-
ernment whatever.” clark and his allies assailed their critics’ homesteads, de-
stroying their crops and livestock, breaking a mil , and threatening to kill
them and their families.12
despite this brief reign of terror, far fewer men mobilized than clark had
hoped, and many of those who did soon deserted. determined to press on
regardless, clark set off downriver; lochry followed a few days later with
about one hundred men, hoping to catch up. They never did. a party of
British- allied indians, led by mohawk Joseph Brant, captured one of lochry’s
messengers and learned his location, direction, and numbers. Brant’s men
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127
descended on their camp, killing dozens, including lochry, and capturing
the rest. in Kentucky, colonists demanded that clark abandon his campaign
and build defensive stockades. With too few men to march into Ohio, he
bowed to the pressure. meanwhile, divisions within Brant’s party prevented
them from pursuing clark downriver or attacking his fort at the Fal s. as the
abortive campaign came to a close, both clark and Brant griped about what
they might have done with more compliant followers. Both colonists and in-
dians continued to depend on government resources to go to war, but they
paid little heed to official directives that contradicted their own needs.13
These abortive campaigns underscored both the flimsiness of govern-
ment authority and the potency of government influence. mobilizing either
indians or colonists proved a tall order. Britain’s indian allies depended on
gifts of food, blankets, weaponry, and other supplies, and the periodic sup-
port of imperial troops. But once in the field they acted according to their
own divergent interests and priorities, with little regard for British officers or
other indians. even with government support, colonists’ recalcitrance and
internal divisions left revolutionary defenses haphazard, permitting only
short forays to burn indian crops. much like the escalation of 1777– 78, the
renewed warfare of 1780 resulted directly from state sponsorship of violence.
and, once again, the scale and direction of that violence quickly escaped offi-
cial control.
By 1780, the goschachgünk delawares were the only Ohio indians who re-
mained at peace with the United states, and that friendship seemed tenuous.
They had no wish to go to war with their shawnee and Wyandot neighbors,
let alone other delawares. dunquat decried their support for “Virginian
devils” and urged them to maintain their old friendship. congress perenni-
al y failed to provide promised food, trade goods, and military protection.
Brodhead repeatedly postponed sending troops to fortify goschachgünk and
refused to share army flour with his allies unless they paid in venison. many
pennsylvanians and Virginians, meanwhile, openly threatened their lives.
The following spring, delaware misgivings mounted on hearing that penn-
sylvania had “offered a high reward for prisoners & indian scalps.”14
delawares adhered to this dubious alliance for both economic and politi-
cal reasons. during the war, Ohio Valley trade had col apsed. By the spring of
1779, the nation’s leaders complained that women and children were suffering
for lack of blankets, clothing, and other necessities. They also worried that
British- allied indians might attack their towns in retaliation for their
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neutrality. gelelemend and Welapachtschiechen likely concluded that they
could obtain physical and economic security only through a military alliance.
But their decision also reflected an older strategy that predated the current
conflict: the pursuit of formal diplomatic recognition within the composite
polity of the anglo- american state. delaware leaders aimed to secure a place
for their nation in the future postrevolutionary order, either as an additional
state of the union, as their 1778 treaty had promised, or as a distinct nation
bound to the american confederation through ties of trade, kinship, and di-
plomacy. They also clung to the hope that they could help mediate a peace
between the United states and British- allied indians.15
The alliance endured thanks in large part to the work of a moravian in-
dian. a widely respected leader of the delaware turkey phratry, israel
Welapachtschiechen had accepted baptism at the urging of his wife, an ad-
opted captive from pennsylvania, but he remained active in politics and di-
plomacy. in late 1778 he returned to the delaware council, replacing the
murdered White eyes as an advisor to gelelemend and a champion of the
nation’s fragile friendship with the United states. The following spring, ge-
lelemend and Welapachtschiechen led a delaware delegation to philadelphia,
where they pleaded for their nation’s sovereignty, territory, and neutrality.
When Welapachtschiechen and the others returned from philadelphia, they
had to take a long detour to avoid “several parties made up to destroy them.”
meanwhile, Brodhead recruited a few young delawares to fight, nullifying
the delegation’s case for neutrality. When gelelemend and Welapachtschi-
echen returned to Fort pitt, a young delaware man proudly presented them
the scalp of a British- allied delaware war captain. after years of campaigning
for peace, gelelemend now accepted the scalp, a symbolic declaration of war.
during the months that followed, delaware warriors increasingly joined
Brodhead’s men as scouts and in battle.16
in October 1780, gelelemend and pipe led more than thirty warriors to
pittsburgh to join Brodhead for a planned campaign. pipe, the delaware
leader who had clung longest to neutrality, now threw in his lot with the
United states. On reac
hing Fort pitt, they presented Brodhead with deer-
skins, which he had promised to accept as payment for food and other goods.
But the commandant had nothing to offer in return. he had failed to raise
militia and struggled even to feed his garrison. more delawares, including
women and children, soon arrived with more deerskins to trade, but Brod-
head had “neither Bread nor meat” to sell them. instead he pleaded for pa-
tience and assigned a few soldiers to guard them. after two weeks, the
horrors, 1780–82
129
delawares awoke one night to find their camp surrounded by armed men.
Joseph erwin, a Westmoreland militia officer and Brodhead antagonist, and
forty colonists had marched thirty miles to pittsburgh, determined to “de-
stroy” the United states’ only Ohio indian allies. according to Brodhead,
they aimed to kill men, women, and children, perhaps to claim pennsylva-
nia’s new scalp bounty. But when they reached the camp, Brodhead’s sentries
stood their ground. erwin’s gang had no compunction about slaughtering
indians, but they balked at attacking their white guards. instead, they re-
turned home, likely grumbling at the lost opportunity. The delawares hur-
ried away as wel . Back at Fort pitt, Brodhead worried that “it may not be an
easy matter to call them out again.”17
erwin’s gang failed to kill any delaware people, but they did kill the
United states– delaware alliance. a few leaders, fearing both the British and
americans, again asked Brodhead to build a fort for their protection. But the
pro- american camp had dwindled to a handful. gelelemend and
Welapachtschiechen renounced politics, left goschachgünk, and settled near
the moravian mission of salem. British sympathizers found an increasingly
warm welcome in delaware country, where they publicly threatened to kill
all those who remained “Friends to the states.” during February, the moravi-
ans received repeated reports that the goschachgünk delawares were “arm-
ing themselves and preparing for war.” On the 26th, word reached gelelemend