A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier (9 page)

Colonel David Williamson’s Pennsylvania militia murder the innocent Christian Delawares of Gnadenhutten.
Ohio Historical Society
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Yet despite this and unlike their white counterparts, the woodland Indians never adopted wanton slaughter of noncombatants as “policy” or employed it as a standard strategy or tactic. While it might occur as a matter of military expedience, there were only rare cases where the killing and scalping of women and children was actually the planned outcome of an attack. Rather, during the American Revolution, Indian leaders sometimes found themselves at odds over the Law of Innocence when dealing with their British allies. For instance, during discussions of an upcoming frontier campaign, one senior British officer casually instructed his Wyandot counterpart that his warriors were to “Kill all the rebels,” to “put them all to death, and spare none.” The Wyandot war chief objected strenuously and requested a clarification. Surely, the British really “meant that they should kill men only, and not the women and children.” However, the response he received from the British commander was as ironic as it was perverse: “No, no,” he was told, “Kill all, destroy all; nits breed lice!”
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A
NGLO
-A
MERICAN
-I
NDIAN
R
ELATIONS AND THE
A
LLEGHENY
P
LATEAU
: G
ERMS
, T
REATIES AND
L
IES

While widespread, direct confrontation between settlers and Native Americans on the Allegheny Plateau would not begin in earnest until the middle of the eighteenth century, the effects of a European presence on the plateau’s tribes began almost as soon as the British colonists arrived at Jamestown in 1607. Like ripples moving outward from a pebble dropped in a placid pool, the Jamestown colony triggered calamity and upheaval beyond the Alleghenies that would continue for almost two hundred years.

Even before the first white trapper had set foot on the Allegheny Plateau, his germs had already arrived, providing the first link in a disastrous and tragic chain of events. The Shawnee, Moneton, Monongahela and Fort Ancient tribes were struck by what became known as “virgin soil” epidemics. Having never been exposed to diseases such as measles and smallpox, hundreds of plateau Indians died. Today’s archaeologists believe it likely that Susquehannock Indians from eastern Maryland and Virginia first contracted these diseases from the English colonists and then inadvertently transmitted them during hunting and trading expeditions into the Indian lands west of the Alleghenies.
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For example, evidence of widespread death from disease was found at the site of a seventeenth-century village in the Kanawha Valley where archaeologists discovered several mass graves, with the largest containing close to forty bodies. Given that the remains exhibited no evidence of trauma, researchers concluded that these Indians had most likely died from diseases imported from the new British settlements east of the mountains.
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The next event that put pressure on the Indian tribes of the plateau, as well as those of the upper Ohio Valley, came from war. However, it was not war against the new colonists but war with the Iroquois nation. Interestingly, this, too, was a product of the growing European presence in North America. Not long after the French arrived on the upper St. Lawrence, they established a vibrant fur trade with the Iroquois, with beaver skins being the most highly prized product. These luxurious pelts were soon in such demand in European markets that the Iroquois could not provide too many. In addition, the Iroquois quite naturally began to crave the European goods they received in exchange for the furs. With items such as guns, powder, lead, cloth, blankets, colorful wool stockings and small brass kettles being especially valued, the Iroquois’ cravings quickly turned into dependence. As a result, they harvested more and more beaver, and the voracious appetite for the pelts drove the beaver population in what is now upper New York to near extinction. In the Iroquois’ minds, their only recourse was to expand their hunting grounds into the territories of neighboring nations.

Beginning around 1640, the Iroquois launched a series of “Beaver Wars” that saw the Iroquois Confederation attack tribes from Lake Huron to the Ohio Valley and the Alleghenies, one after another. The first target was the great Wyandot Confederacy, whom they savagely drove from their homeland around Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, scattering them southwest toward the Detroit region. After that, they simply moved like locusts through the woodlands and, by 1662, they were raiding Shawnee villages in the upper Ohio Valley and, within a few years, began attacking the villages of the Allegheny Plateau. By the end of the seventeenth century, with the unrelenting pressures of disease and war pressing down on them, the Shawnee had dispersed across the map from Illinois to South Carolina, with only a few hundred still along the Ohio River and on the Allegheny Plateau.
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Not surprisingly, the Iroquois became the dominant nation of the northwest, and in the mid-eighteenth century, when the British began negotiating for lands and the French looked for allies against English incursions, it was primarily the Iroquois with whom they dealt. Historians have long seen fit to describe the Iroquois and the other Indian nations within their sphere of influence as “pawns” or, worse, “puppets” in the wars for empire between Britain and France. In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth. During this time, the Iroquois, who used their dominion over the other tribes to speak for them, were adept at playing one European power against the other. In some cases, they merely desired an alliance in order to restock supplies of guns, lead and powder. However, in other situations, they desired to conduct what one historian describes as a “parallel war,”
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in which they concluded a temporary alliance that suited their immediate need to fight a common foe.

As discussed in an earlier chapter, the French and Indian War was a seminal event on the frontier that forever altered the fabric of life there. The Indian role during the war as French allies is the ideal example of the “parallel war” concept. The Indian nations clearly saw the difference between the French and British approaches to their colonization of North America, and that left them with an obvious choice in terms of an ally. While British settlers voraciously seized every bit of land in their path and threatened the Indians’ very way of life, the French asked for nothing but good trade. In 1758, an “old Indian on the Ohio” named Ackowanothio gave a speech to the colonists in Pennsylvania that provided a clear, unambiguous explanation for why the Ohio Valley Indians had allied with the French:

You wonder at our joining with the French in this present War. Why can’t you get sober and once think Impartially? Does not the law of Nations permit, or rather Command us all, to stand upon our guard, in order to preserve our lives, the lives of our Wives and Children, our Property and Liberty?…I will tell you, Brethren, your Nation always shewed
[sic]
an eagerness to settle our Lands, cunning as they were, they always encouraged a number of poor people to settle upon our Lands: we protested against it several times, but without any redress or help. We pitied the poor people: we did not care to make use of force, and indeed some of those-people were very good people, and as Hospitable as we Indians, and gave us share of what little they had, and gained our affection for the most part; but after all we lost our hunting Ground, for where one of those people settled, like pigeons, a thousand more would settle, so that we at last offered to sell it, and received some consideration for it: and so it went on ‘till we at last jump’d
[sic]
over Allegeny
[sic]
Hills, and settled on the waters of Ohio. Here we tho’t
[sic]
ourselves happy! We had plenty of Game, a rich and large Country, and a Country that the Most High had created for the poor Indians, and not for the White People. O
[sic]
how happy did we live here! but alas! not long. O! your covetousness for Land at the risque
[sic]
of so many poor souls, disturb’d
[sic]
our peace again. Who should have thought, that that Great King over the Water, whom you always recommended as a tender Father to his People, I say, who should have thought that the Great King should have given away that Land to a parcel of covetous Gentlemen from Virginia, called the Ohio Company, who came immediately and offered to build Forts among us, no doubt, to make themselves Master of our Lands, and make slaves of us
.
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During the course of the war, the Indians proved to be a valuable fighting force for the French, albeit one not as easily controlled as some in Paris might have preferred. The Indians considered themselves allies of the French but definitely not subordinates. They could not be ordered to undertake a military operation; rather, they had to be consulted with and convinced of its soundness in terms of both purpose and planning. Its outcome had to be presented as having some benefit for the Indians, and of course, a risk of high casualties was never acceptable.

However, by 1758, Indian support for France began to wane as the British cleverly undertook a series of actions designed to close the frontier to settlement, beginning with the Council of Easton. No sooner was the ink dry on that treaty’s paper than the British sought to spread the word of its provisions restricting settlement. Immediately after the council, they sent Frederick Christian Post and the Delaware sachem Pisquetomen from Easton across Pennsylvania to Fort Duquesne, where the French and Indians were preparing to attack advancing British forces under General John Forbes. The two men carried a message from Forbes urging the Indians to withdraw immediately from Duquesne:

When the Shawnee and Delaware gathered at the fort read Forbes’s message and realized that the new treaty closed the frontier to further settlement, they quickly abandoned the French and terminated the alliance. For the Indians, the objectives of the war with Great Britain had been achieved, and there was no further reason to fight. With almost all of their Indian support crumbling, the French destroyed Fort Duquesne and abandoned the mouth of the Ohio, surrendering control of the Allegheny region to the British.

Over the course of the next five years, as the British moved steadily toward victory over the French, British colonial officials moved to uphold the treaty and maintain peace with the Indian nations, who told them any breach of the treaty’s provisions would bring a new war west of the Alleghenies. To this end, the prominent Delaware sachem Keekyuscung (also known as Ketiushund) sent a friendly warning to the British:

That all the Nations had jointly agreed to defend their Hunting Place at Allegheny, and suffer no body to settle there; and as these Indians are very much inclined to the English Interest, for he begged us very much to tell the Governor, General, and all other People not to settle there. And if the English would draw back over the Mountain, they would get all the other Nations into their Interest, but if they staid and settled there, all the Nations would be against them, and he was afraid it would be a great War, and never come to a Peace again
.
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The British heard the Indian message very clearly and continued to tell the Indians precisely what they needed to hear. Only a few days after Forbes and his army seized the mouth of the Ohio, Colonel Bouquet sent a message to the Delawares, telling them, “We have not come here to take possession of your hunting Country…but to open a large and extensive Trade with you…to serve you in every necessary you want, and on the cheapest Terms.”
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However, as previously seen, British efforts to close the frontier were subverted by land speculators and corrupt colonial officials, and the settlement flood was quickly underway.