THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
John Mercer to
George Mercer
(March 9, 1768)
(Due to length divided here into two parts)
Mercer, John in: Mulkearn, George
Mercer Papers, University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1954,
pp. 297-310.
The next thing I shall take notice of is, That our Government was so imposed upon by brother Onas's Councillors & his Scoundrel Interpreter that they trusted Weiser with the King's present to the Ohio Indians with regard to which the Half King in his Speech at the Loggs town in 1752, says: Brethren. You told us you sent a present of Goods in the year 1748 which you say Conrad Weiser delivered us at this town. He may have told you so, but We assure you we never heard it from him. It is true he did deliver us Goods then, but we understood it was from our Brother Onas. He never made mention of the Great King our Father nor of our brother Assaragsa (the Govr of Virga).
Was there ever so villainous a peice of treachery fraud & presumption not to call it treason, to bestow the King's Goods with which he was intrusted in direct violation of that trust, & to a quite different purpose than his Ma'tie intended them. To attribute the King's bounty to the generosity of Onas, who always affected to make the Indians beleive he was the only white man able to protect them & all others were their Enemies of which you may see many more Instances in Weisers Report just mentioned.
But the next fact in my Opinion actually amounted to High treason. It is the treaty between Croghan, Onas's Plenipotentiary with the Wawiaghtas & Pinakashas March 1750. The Gist was present & signed as a Witness & tho Croghan knew that the King has sent in a large quantity of Goods as a present to the Ohio Indians & he himself had informed the Wyandot King & Council the 15th day of Janry before that Gist had been sent out by the Govr of Virginia to invite the Indians to meet & receive it, yet he acted Conrad Weiser over again invited the Indians to the Logs town in Onas's name & from whom he had carried out a present of Goods to the value of 100 Pensylva money, to receive the Kings Goods, & tho the French had their Ambassadors (as they were called) treating with the Indians in the French King's name& inviting them to a treaty Croghan never since mentioned the King of England but concluded & signed a treaty of Peace & War in the name of Onas by which the Indians were bound to assist the Pensylvanians, as much against any other of his Ma'ties Subjects as against either French or Indians. Gist took a Copy of it which I sent you & could not get time to take a Copy but as I read it this morning I think I may venture to say that will make out part of the Charge & Gist's Journal a fair Copy of which containing the Speeches was sent to Mr Hanbury will make out the rest.
I must now return to the Conferences at Harris's ferry & Lancaster in 1757 where we present 199 Mohawks Oneidas Tuscaroras, Onondagoes, Cayugas, Senecas, Nanticokes, Delawares & Connestogoes, & here Onas's friend George Croghan opens the Conferences with a Speech which begins thus.
Brethren
I am sent here by the Honble Sr Wm Johnson, to represent him at this meeting & I desire you all to give Attention to what I am going to say to you in behalf of your brother Onas & the wise men of this Government (Pennsylva).
And it is remarkable that in the Acct of the whole transaction between Croghan & the Indians before the Arrival of the Govr of Pennsylva (from April 1st to May 9) his Ma'ties name is not mentioned (page 301) except April 23, when Croghan says, 67 Onondago Warriors applied to him for Liberty to go to Fort Cumberland to join the Southward Indians who they understood were going to War against his Ma'ties Enemies at Ohio, he says, I granted their request & fitted them out for their Journey.- A most gracious condescension- as I dont doubt he paid himself to his utmost content for whatever he supplied 'em with. Nor had Croghan even mentioned his Master Sr William Johnson, as his Ma'ties Agent.
It is true the Govr in his first Speech to the Indians mentions Sr Wm under that Character also mentions the Indians having differences with the English in other Colonies, as well as Pennsylva & acknowledged as I before noticed that Teedyuscung complained of Onas's defrauding them of their Lands, but still the Conferences seem to be carried on purely in the name & for the separate Interest of Onas till May 17 when Croghan says he spoke to the Indians in the name of the Honble Sr Wm Johnson Bart his Ma'ties sole Agent & Superintendant of the Affairs of the six nations & their Allies & Depend when he tells them, the meeting was appointed upon Teedyuscung's complaint. That the Kings Subjects that settled Pennsylva & the neighbouring provinces by Law were not allowed to buy any of the Indians Lands & had not done it & if those who only had a right from the Crown to purchase their Lands had done them any Injustice the Pensylvanias were present & willing to make them Satisfaction but if they or any Pe or the people of any other provinces refused to do so, Sr Wm would represent their Case to his Ma'tie & procure them Satisfaction. And therefore insists to know all their complaints agt any of his Ma'ties Subjects.
This would have been a proper & ought to have been the first Speech at opening the conferences, which had then held 47 days & ended the 3d day after but then it might have appeared that the King of Great Britain had been a greater Man than Onas, but it is to be remarked that the Honble Colo John Stanwix had been present at the meeting the day before, was then present, & attended the next meeting the day before, was then present, & attended the next meeting on the 19th which was the last. And I presume Croghan & the Govr of Pennsylva too, might be apprehensive that Colo Stanwix might be alarmed had the Conferences been still carried on in the name of Onas only.
May 19. Little Abraham, a Mohawk Sachem, in his Answer to Sr Wm & the Govr of Pennsylvania joyntly as he said each of their Speeches was to the same purpose, told them, That their Complaints were, That a Delaware head man745 was killed tried & hanged at Amboy for killing a Gent who was his friend, his gun going off by (page 302) accident as he was going to shake hands with him thro a fence. 2d Some Shawnese going to war called at a house in Carolina where the Inhabitants rose & took them on Accot of some mischeif done there about that time & carried them to Charles town where they were imprisoned & their cheif man, called The Pride, died.746 3d That they the 67 nations after conquering the Delawares removed them & gave them Lands to plant & hunt on at Wyoming & Juniata, on Susquehannah, but the Pennsylvanians, covetous of Lands made plantations there & spoiled their hunting grounds, on which they complained to the 6 nations who looked over the Lands & found their Complaint true. That the French to whom they were drove back took advantage of it, & told them tho the French built trading houses on their Land they did not plant it they had their provisions from over the great water but the English planted all the countrey, drove them back so that in a little time they wou'd have no Land. By these Arguments the Delawares joined the French.
You may now find that Onas's undertaking in 1743 to be a Mediator for the
Govr of Virga & sending Weyser as Plenipotentiary to Shamokin
& Wyoming, was a Shamokin imposition, too easily swallowed by the Govr of Virga
who rather ought to have been applied & to have become Mediator, as his
Ma'ties Governor between his Subject Penn & his Pennsylvanians, & the
Indians & not in Weisers & the Indians Stile, for Onas to become
Mediator between the Indians- Onas's brethren & the Virginian's Onas's
Neighbours, who it seems were no way concerned in the quarrel, which Little
Abraham here shews to be about the Lands at Wyoming & Juniata, which the
Pennsylvanians had unjustly settled upon, as the Indians, complained. Penn had
made a purchase from the Indians in these parts, in 1740 as mentioned in Evan's
map, the Consideration & bounds of which it seems was disputed, & tho
the next year at Easton Teedyuscung, when he saw the six nations deed, for
those Lands & therefore acknowledged it being signed by Natimus751 a Delaware cheif- who he says had 44 dollars for
his Share & gives it up& but still maintain'd a claim752
for other Lands between Tohiccon Creek & the Kittochtinny Hills.- It is not
notorious that every foot of all those Lands were far within the bounds of
Pennsylvania where no Virginian ever had or could have any concern &
consequently could have nothing to do with the disputes. But now little Abraham
having discovered the true ground of the dispute, it is confirm'd by Weisers
own report in 1743. Tho Onas had artfully drawn his own head out of the Collar
& slipped it over that of the Govrs
of Virginia & Maryland & Weiser had in Onas's behalf duped the Indians
& made them swallow every thing
_______________________________
116 Lower Shawnee Town or Shawnee villages in the Scioto region figure in historical documents from 1673 to the American Revolution. William E. Meyer interprets Gabriel Arthur's account of his captivity in 1673 and 1674 to mean that there was in that early time a "Shawnee village near the present site of Portsmouth, Ohio."- Us. Bureau of Ethnology, Annual Reports, . . . (Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1879/80-1930/31), XLII, 736.
In 1731 the Shawnee traveled to Montreal to ask Sieur Marquis de Beauharnois, the governor of New France, "to indicate the place where he wished to place them." In reply Beauharnois ordered Sieur La Joncaire to accompany them to the north bank of the Ohio (Wisconsin Historical Society Collections, XVII, 156). There is no direct evidence that they were directed to Lower Shawnee Town. By 1736 La Joncaire reported his mission was completed, that the Shawnee were located on the Beautiful River (Ohio), and that they would not remove themselves without the orders from the French governors who had lighted the fire for them at that place (ibid., 243). Again there is no specific information that the Council Fire was lighted at Lower Shawnee Town; however, Celoron recorded that Langueuil held a conference there with the Shawnee while on his journey to Louisiana in 1739 (Galbreath, op. cit., p. 450). In 1747 Kinousaki, the loyal French Huron chief, spoke of the Shawnee at Scioto (NYCD., X, 162.). A letter of 1748 from the French minister to Galissoniere revealed that the Shawnee from around Detroit decided to leave and settle in the direction of La Belle Riviere. The letter continued, "Since the war [King George's, 1744-48] they have been joined by a considerable number of savages of all nations, forming a sort of republic (page 498) dominated by the Iroquois or Five Nations who form a part of it, and that, as the English almost entirely supply their needs, it is to be feared that they may succeed in seducing them." (Wisconsin Historical Society Collections, XVIII, 11-12).
The Indians from English-controlled territory began their migration westward about 1730. Peter Chartier, the half-breed turncoat, who began negotiations with the French at Detroit before 1740, led a band of Shawnee from the Allegheny to French-dominated Ohio (ibid., XVII, 331). This alliance lasted but a few years. Lack of French trade goods and antipathy for other Indians caused the Shawnee to desert the French at Detroit, part migrating to Scioto (Lower Shawnee Town) and the others with Chartier to the south among the Alabama Indians (ibid., XVIII, 20 and 20n). When Gist visited Lower Shawnee Town it was inhabited by Shawnee, some of whom had remained loyal to the English and some of whom had for a time followed Chartier to the French; and by Iroquois, Delawares, and other groups of Indians allied to the English. The French, alarmed by the persuasive power of abundant English trade goods at Lower Shawnee Town, attempted to woo the Shawnee back into the French sphere of influence and so weaken the "republic" (ibid., 21). Celoron tried in vain, in 1749, to induce the Shawnee to leave "St. Yotoc" (Lower Shawnee Town) and return to Detroit. He reported that the native village of 80 to 100 huts was inhabited for the most part by Shawnee, Iroquois with a few Indian from the Sault St. Louis Mission (Montreal) and the Lake of the Two Mountains, Miami, Loups (Delawares), and others from Upper Country tribes, all entirely devoted to the English (ibid., 45).
The Indians at Scioto remained in the English interest, and Lower Shawnee Town became a center from which English Traders carried on a lucrative trade in all directions. With the fall of Fort Duquesne, George Croghan, the Lowry brothers, Michael Teaffe, William Trent, and others lost huge sums in outstanding debts of the Indians and in goods confiscated by the French. Daniel and Alexander Lowry alone placed their losses at 1,877.9d. (The Ohio Company, 1753-1817, op. cit., p. 121). Although George Croghan reported the town destroyed by flood waters in 1753 (Hanna, op. cit., II, 129), the Lowry brothers attributed their loss to the taking of Fort Duquesne.
The Town is described as located on both the east and west banks of the Scioto at its mouth and, in part, on the south shore of the Ohio (near the site of present Portsmouth, Ohio, and Alexandria, Ky.).
320 James Glen, governor of South Carolina, in a letter to Governor Hamilton, gave the following explanation of the Shawnee's imprisonment in his province:
Upon their invasion of Catawba territory, the Six Nations who were constantly at war with the southern Indians had been accom- (page 557) panied frequently by Cauhnawauga Indians who were completely in the French interest. In the governor's opinion this was a clever ruse on the part of the French. By having offences against the whites committed in South Carolina, the French hoped to have that province seek revenge on the Six Nations. The Shawnee in question were taken captive by the South Carolina militia who were protecting the frontier and were imprisoned in the Charlestown jail (Glen to Hamilton, October 12, 1753, printed in Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, V, 699-700). At the conference in Winchester, September 1753, Scarouady and Andrew Montour agreed to go to South Carolina to intercede for the Shawnee and to negotiate for the release of their tribesmen (op. cit.). The Ohio Indians traveled from Winchester, where they had conferred with Virginia, to Carlisle, where they made a treaty with Pennsylvania in October (Pennsylvania [Colony] Treaties, etc., 1753, A Treaty Held with the Ohio Indians, at Carlisle, in October, 1753 [Philadelphia, B. Franklin, 1753]). During this conference the Indians were informed that their third and last representation to the French on the Ohio had been in vain; therefore, the Pennsylvania commissioners prevailed upon Scarouady and Andrew Montrou to forego their mission in behalf of the Sahwnee and to permit Pennsylvania to interced with South Carolina for the return of the captives.
This concern of the Shawnee over the fate of their kinsmen was unnecessary, for already Governor Glen had effected the release of two of the captured Shawnee and had sent htem to Philadelphia (Glen to Hamilton, October 12, 1753, op. cit.). Later John Patter was employed by the province to escort them to the Ohio whence they were taken and delivered to their tribesmen at Logstown in January, 1754.- George Croghan's Journal, January 12 - February 2, 1754, printed in Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, V, 731-35.
745 On June 23, 1727, Qequalia, a Delaware Indian King, was sentenced to death for the murder of John Leonard at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and was executed on July 8, the same year. Three chiefs and fifty other Indians attended the trial. When asked what they had to say in the matter, the spokesman replied: "We have thought of this matter, and desire you will tell Wequalia, That we neither have nor intend to do any thing in the Affair, it is he that has wronged the English, and not Us, and therefore he must himself make them Satisfaction without expecting any Assistance or hearing any more from us."
After his execution it was said of him that he had also murdered his own brother and other Indians. Only a few relatives accompanied Wequalia to the gallows, all other Indians shunned him- "refused to shew him the least Regard."- Account in Weekly News Letter, July 13, 20, 1727, and American Weekly Mercury, July 6, 13, 1727, as re-printed in Documents Relating to the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Post-Revolutionary History of the State of New Jersey (v. p., v. pub., 1880-1942), XI, 129-30, 131-33, 135.
746 The Pride, influenced by Peter Chartier, deserted to the French but later returned to the English interest. See note 116. This foray into Carolina took place in the latter part of 1752. For details see note 320.
751 Nutimus. Here Mercer refers to the Albany Purchase (1754).
752 Nutimus received forty-four dollars, his share of the purchase money (1754). Teedyuscung, speaker for the Delawares at Easton in 1758, having been shown the deed executed at Albany in 1754, remarked: "We have seen the Deed, and know it well. Nutimus, one of our Chief men, has signified it; and here sits one of our men, named Philip Compass, who was present when the sale was made; and remembers that Nutimus, Our Chief, received Forty-four Dollars as his Part, or Share of the Consideration Money. We agree to it, and acknoledge that the land was fairly sold. We give it up, and now confirm it. This is not the Land I have disputed with my Brethren, the English. That Land lies between Tohiccon Creek and the Kittochtinny Hills."
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